The Museum at the End of the World

by John Metcalf

  Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,

  Rose the firs with cones upon them;

  Bright before it beat the water,

  Beat the clear and sunny water

  Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.”

  The congregation was becoming audibly restive. Legs were crossed and recrossed. Shoes scraped. Umbrellas fell. Coughing here and there erupted.

  Boredom and mothballs, thought Forde.

  Bollocks, too.

  The Very Reverend paused, made an ushering gesture towards the lectern. From the front UNB row rose an old man wearing a fringed buckskin jacket and a lumberjack shirt secured by a turquoise-tipped four-in-hand.

  “I would like to welcome Chief Alcide Simon of the Nashwaak Maliseet. What, you might ask, is the connection between Childe Chauncy and the Maliseet Nation?”

  He paused again and surveyed the congregation as if actually expecting an answer.

  Leaning forward, clasping the edges of the eagle, he said,

  “Canoes.”

  He straightened.

  “Cheemaun and Mishe-Nahma were fifteen-foot birchbark canoes built for the boys by the braves in the village at the mouth of the Nashwaak. These famous canoes were of a type called ‘St. John River’ birchbarks, the… the apogee of First Nations craftwork.

  “Chief Simon is going to honour us by reciting a traditional prayer and blessing in the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy dialect of the Algonquian language to welcome home Childe Chauncy’s soul.”

  And recite it the bugger did.

  Forde thought it would never end.

  This entire performance, he was coming to think, was the most peculiar event he’d ever attended in a church.

  Order of Service

  The pipers advanced down the nave upon the congregation, halted, threw their sticks and cords and ribbons up on their shoulders, girded up the bags, squawked into a dirgeful pilbroch.

  They then played Will Ye No Come Back Again?

  Forde sang the words inside his head.

  Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa

  Safely oer the friendly main

  …

  English bribes were a’ in vain

  The puir and puirer we mun be;

  Siller canna buy the heart

  That aye beats warm for thine and thee.

  Splendid sentiments, thought Forde.

  Though a warm, beating heart cut out at Culloden.

  And even bagpipes preferable to chanting in the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy dialect of Algonquian.

  But what connected bagpipes and the Forty-Five to Childe Chauncy?

  Order of Service

  Forde had to admit that the President’s suit was built: very dark blue, exquisitely cut, a suit shouting four thousand dollars. Everything about the President looked like a glossy, standout advertisement in a magazine heavy with sybaritic advertisements, perfect hair, perfect tan, dentrifice, shirt dazzling, cufflinks onyx and gold. Had he smoked, he would have carried a slim James Bond cigarette case in bluish-grey machined gunmetal.

  He drew his words of wisdom, a single sheet, from a thin leather folder.

  … an occasion sombre yet joyous…

  the cultural fabric of our nation…

  “Who among us”—he looked about him and smiled his smile—“of a certain age cannot recall the thrill of being introduced in high school to the verse of Childe Chauncy? It is serendipitous that…”

  His eyes flicked to his page.

  “…that the Very Reverend Butterfield has reminded us this morning of Childe Chauncy’s canoeing exploits in Mishe-Nahma, for I had chosen to refresh your memories of Childe’s lyric mastery by reading just the first stanza—for time presses upon us and our Premier yet has words for us—” bowing his head slightly towards Premier Toomer, half-reclined on the throne-thing—“reading the opening stanza of the poem, which so immediately proclaims itself as having only one possible author.”

  He paused and again surveyed the congregation.

  Paean of the Birchbark Men

  From the paddle

  Shards of silver,

  Water-boatman

  Malecite!

  Drive the birchbark

  ‘Neath dark willow,

  On balsam boughs

  Embrace the night.

  “This,” he looked down at the purple-draped box and allowed the lid to receive the slow, descending benediction of his palm, “this casket will tomorrow be interred beside the mortal remains of his friends and mentors, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Bliss Carman, in Poets’ Corner.”

  Forde wondered at the President assuming this portentuous tone, these sacerdotal mannerisms; he had, after all, only been CEO of Trinidad Asphalt and Bitumen Company and, before that, Bauxite in South America.

  “In his poem ‘The Grave Tree’ Bliss had wished for

  …a scarlet maple”

  Forde flinched.

  “For the grave-tree at my head,

  With the quiet sun behind it…

  Tomorrow the University of New Brunswick will pay the same tribute to Childe Chauncy by planting at his grave a hardy maple hybrid called Autumn Blaze.”

  Order of Service

  A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;

  Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:

  For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe:

  His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,

  On earth is not his equal.

  Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

  Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:

  Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

  Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same.

  And he must win the battle.

  Order of Service

  The Premier’s address was rambling, disjointed, mildly aggressive. Forde wondered if he could be drunk. Certainly, rumours swirled. He had been noted in the River Room of the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel in the late-night company of the Northrop Frye Poetry Chair.

  The main thread of his argument seemed to be that the graves of Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Childe Chauncy in Poets’ Corner should be publicized as a National Shrine. Were a National Shrine. In their own way, they were just as important as the Fathers of Confederation. Indeed, they themselves were Fathers of Confederation. Fathers of Cultural Federation. And were undoubtedly genuine and authentic.

  He was not averse to gathering-in other dead poets from other provinces so the entire nation of Canada could come to New Brunswick to pay homage to Canada’s cultural Titans. So that Forest Hill Cemetery would become a kind of Cultural Arlington.

  Forde, something of an expert in these matters, estimated that the Premier had ingested an eye-opener, followed over the course of the morning by three or four stiffeners, and was now at about what Forde thought of as the mid-Fink-Nottle stage.

  The Premier imagined that in the future small, tasteful mini-buses or little trains, perhaps Hop-On, Hop-Off, could carry visitors and tourists from the city’s major hotels to the Forest Hill Cemetery. That, at each grave, tourists could select the poem they wished to listen to and hear it over the headphones which would have been factored into the price of the bus-ticket.

  The central point, of course, being, the Premier continued, that there could be no question as to authenticity. As there was, of course, about Charlottetown. He would wager that not many among them knew that the painting of the Fathers of Confederation in the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, famous painting, right? Wrong! It was a copy. Which we know because the original painting was destroyed when Parliament burned down in 1916.

  You could not expect tourists to pay money to see, say, a suit of armour
hundreds of years old if it had been made recently in China.

  This was an incontestable point.

  But with Forest Hill there would be no question of authenticity.

  Nor need the vision end there. Anne of Green Gables he dismissed with a wave of his hand. Theatre New Brunswick could put on poetry evenings where an actor performed the life and works of Childe Chauncy or Sir Charles G.D. Roberts like that American actor what was his name did with Mark Twain. And as had been done with Dickens. A ticket to the evening performance could be combined with an All-Day Hop-On Hop-Off ticket. Hotels could integrate with a Childe Chauncy Menu or a Bliss Carmen Buffet….

  He could envision an All-Day Bus, Cemetery, Theatre, Dinner Ticket….

  Forde revised upwards his estimate of the number of stiffeners.

  Premier Toomer’s inchoate vision soared, capricious, catachrestic, swelling, slipping finally the surly bonds of earth.

  Order of Service

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

  let me hide myself in thee;

  let the water and the blood,

  from thy wounded side which flowed,

  be of sin the double cure;

  save from wrath and make me pure.

  Not the labours of my hands

  can fulfill thy law’s commands;

  could my zeal no respite know,

  could my tears forever flow,

  all for sin could not atone;

  thou must save, and thou alone.

  The cleft Forde found himself thinking about was the cleft of the gunsel’s moll, as seen from the viewpoint of Joe “Bananas” Bonano; he had, he thought, been too long away from home.

  He stood on the edge of the small group around the UNB President. That was Mrs. Tresillian. She reminded him instantly of a robin. Generous of breast, bright, and a little beady of eye, pretty and pugnacious.

  He remembered visiting his mother in England, working in her garden pulling down smothering ivy from the old brick walls, digging out a garden bed run wild. What was that word? Parterre. He liked that. Sounded posher than “bed.” And he’d driven the fork into the lawn to stand upright and had hunkered down for a rest. A robin, he remembered, red-breasted as a Christmas card, had flitted from the top of the wall, from where it had been overseeing operations, to perch on the handle of the fork, cheerfully overbearing, cocking its head as if to say, “Come on, lad. Get digging! Turn me up those white ones, those lovely grubs with ginger legs.”

  She looked just like that.

  The President noticed him and sketched an inclusionary gesture.

  “Mrs. Tresillian, Mr. Forde, our Writer-in-Residence.”

  “So you’re the young man deputed to trot the old bag about.”

  Forde inclined his head.

  “An honour,” he said, “and what will doubtless be a pleasure.”

  “Oooh,” she said.

  A tiny flick of his middle finger, the President murmured “Taxi.”

  Forde and Mrs. Tresillian walked up the nave towards the West Door.

  “Had that man gone on for five more seconds,” she said, “I’d have wet myself.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Gitche Gumee man.”

  Forde let out a strangled snort.

  “What?”

  She pulled his arm and stopped.

  “What?” she said, grinning up at him.

  “Gitchee Gumee!”

  *

  The waiter stood stolid.

  “Olives?” said Forde, “Or twist?”

  “If it’s Childe you’re after,” she said, “it’s Bliss you have to look at.”

  “Bombay Sapphire?”

  “Rule Britannia!” said Mrs. Tresillian.

  “Not?” said Forde to the waiter. “Then, oh, Beefeater.”

  “With my grandfather,” she said, “it was monkey see, monkey do. If Bliss had a new canoe, then…”

  “Yes, olives. Thank you.”

  “If Bliss wore turquoise jewellery, Childe wore turquoise jewellery. Big jewellry, Navajo, Ute, you know the kind of thing. If Bliss wore clumpy, homemade sandals, Childe made same. If Bliss wore cravats, Childe ditto.”

  “Made sandals?”

  “All part of the wretched health-thing. The feet in closer contact with Mother Earth. Grounded balance. Foot beauty. Greek dancing. Liberating the emotions. Breathing. Deportment. Carriage. Interpretive dance. The Delsartean System. Delcroze Eurhythmics. Isadora Duncan.”

  Forde made a bafflement face.

  Presumably in summation of this farrago, she made a dismissive gesture and said, “It was a load of… kale.”

  “Pardon?”

  “All of it,” she said, “bountiful, unmitigated kale.”

  “Sorry.. What do you mean, ‘kale’?”

  “Bung-full,” she said, “of Nature’s Goodness but tasting like stewed tin cans.”

  “Well,” said Forde, “cheers!”

  “And never mention to me,” she said with theatrical shudder, “salad.”

  They touched rims.

  “Bung-ho!” she said.

  They both savoured the icy advent.

  “Sandals,” she said. “You wish to hear The Bard on the joys of sandals?”

  She struck a schoolmarmish pose.

  Great toe, little toe, three toes between,

  All in a pointed shoe—

  Ne’er was so tiny a fo’castle seen,

  Nor so little room for the crew.

  “Childe?”

  “Bliss.”

  “How do you remember all this stuff?”

  “Some children had bedtime stories. I had Bliss Carman. My mother adored him. She was always quoting him to me, talking about him, and she had big photo albums with squashy padded covers and brass corners. Hundreds of photographs… ‘Blissikins,’ Mrs. King called him.”

  “And what did your father think?”

  “Actually, I’ve sometimes fantasized that Bliss was my real father. But he seemed more than a little…”

  She waggled a hand from side to side.

  “Oh, I see. And was he?”

  She turned palms up in a “Who knows?” gesture.

  “They had long, long hair, did I mention that? And they wore cravats and deerskin boots and Stetsons and they were encrusted with turquoise. To our eyes nowadays they’d look like dress-up cowboys, gay gunslingers.”

  “And your father? The real one? What did he think of your mother’s adoring Mr. Carman?” “Oh, he lit out for the Territories when I wasn’t much more than an infant.”

  She dropped an olive pit into the ashtray.

  “If I take the long view,” she said, “wisely so.”

  And was silent suddenly.

  “This um, this Mrs. King you mentioned. Who called Carman ‘Blissikins.’ Who was she?”

  “Oh, Carman lived with her and her husband for years.”

  “What do you mean ‘lived with’?”

  “Ah!” said Mrs. Tresillian with renewed sparkle, eyes saucy. “You’ve put your finger on it. As some think Bliss did too.”

  Forde realized with some fascination that Mrs. Tresillian was flirting with him.

  “It’s a matter of some speculation, my dear. She was arty and had pretensions. She liked having a tame poet. Carman’s ‘fame’ flattered her. She liked being a patron. She and Bliss wrote a stodge book together called The Making of the Personality—what they were doing ostensibly at the camp. But all this went on for, oh, some thirty years.”

  “The three of them?”

  “Her husband, well, difficult to even guess. He was wealthy and bankrolled her every whim. He thought of himself, I gathered, as being a little arty too when he wasn’t busy with sterner things. He bound books. A dull man, Dr. King, supremel
y dull. He was the Medical Examiner for The New York Insurance Company.”

  “He was complicit...?”

  “Who knows? And Bliss?”

  She did the hand-waggling thing again.

  “But dotty and hysterical though she was, he did adore her. He wrote this about her—

  …a soul more subtle

  Than the light of the stars,

  Frailer than a moth’s wing

  To the touch that mars;

  Wise with the silence

  Of the waiting hills

  When the gracious twilight

  Wakes in them and thrills...

  What do you think?

  Lovelier than morning,

  Dearer than the sun.

  It’s too awful to be anything but sincere.”

  Forde nodded.

  “But he was a moocher, too. Petulant. Years of pampered bed and board. Though if it was board and no bed…”

  She shrugged.

  Forde raised his martini glass by the stem, thumb and forefinger, made enquiring face.

  “Absolutely!” said Mrs. Tesillian.

  “But what were they doing? Apart from…”

  “A camp,” said Mrs. Tresillian. “A retreat.”

  “And when you say ‘camp’—...?”

  “Childe worked at one called Lifwynn, which apparently meant ‘Joy of Life’—that’s the one I knew—and Mrs. King’s camp was called Hengsthall, no idea, something to do with horses.”

  “And ‘camp’ means…?”

  “Though there was a donkey,” she said.

  She frowned.

  “Moke!” she said. “That was its name! Sorry? Well, at Lifwynn there was a hall, quite large, logs, a screened porch. And there were several wooden cabins, and cabinny sort of tents on wooden platforms. I remember that if you petted Moke your hand got covered in a sort of dust that smelled really horrible. There’s a word…”

  “Dander?” said Forde.

  “Oh, clever!”

  “So who went there?”

  “Oh, and a clearing in the birch woods where they lolled about and sunbathed and drew horoscopes and played with Tarot cards and painted en plein air and scrootled away on their recorders attempting to play ‘Greensleeves.’ Of course, when I say ‘work,’ Bliss and Childe didn’t actually work. They graced the joint with their ethereal presence. Recited the occasional poem. Added lustre. Stirred the juices.”