Memoir

by Farley Mowat

  Best wishes,

  Farley Mowat

  This time Cloud replied promptly and affirmatively but, rather than accepting my book and offering an advance against royalties (as was the norm), he proposed an option, for which he offered three hundred dollars.

  I was delighted – yet disappointed. An option was no guarantee of commitment and, moreover, that much money would barely cover our ordinary living expenses for two or three months. It was, however, better than nothing so I accepted.

  Cloud then sent me a succinct but definitive outline of what he expected the book to contain, including what amounted to a dissertation on method and purpose. Although smoothly phrased, his letter implied that the author’s role was that of artisan, while the editor was effectively the architect.

  My hackles rose. But I did not want to alienate the man who evidently considered himself in command of the project, and I contented myself with giving him some of my own thoughts about the proposed book.

  Dear Mr. Cloud: Jan. 16, 1950

  So far I have written five chapters – and discarded four. Now I leave the typewriter alone for a few days while I cut firewood.

  My information about the Eskimos is, as I have previously explained, by no means as complete as I would like. So I want to make another expedition to the Ihalmiut country but unless I obtain a good advance for the book I won’t have funds to finance it. As my grandmother was fond of saying, “I am in a quarry about this.”

  I have come to the conclusion that I must divorce my personal “travel” experiences from the book. I have come to feel that the best way to write it is as a straightforward history of the people, explaining my presence in a foreword only. Since it is the Eskimos who are important to the story, and not myself, I think this is the best plan.

  I think that the book should be as simple, as direct and unadorned as the life of the people it will try to portray. It will be no scientific treatise, nor will it be a “travel yarn” … it will begin with the genesis myth and then continue with the lives and history of the people from about 1850 until the present. My part in it will be that of narrator only. The central, tragic theme will therefore emerge in its own way without distortion.

  Please let me have your reactions as soon as possible and in the meantime I will get back to work, even though the cellar leaks, our new dog is in heat, and my wife has stomach flu!

  Cheerio,

  Farley Mowat

  This letter crossed with one from Cloud in which, though he wrote with a velvet touch, he made it painfully clear who would set the rules. He dismissed my plan for the book in summary fashion.

  Principles were at stake here but so was our livelihood. I bent to the wind and on January 21 returned the signed contract to Atlantic Monthly Press. I derived no joy from doing so. And received no applause. AMP took a month to acknowledge my surrender, and six weeks elapsed before I received the option fee.

  It had been nibbled at. Ten per cent had been retained by Wilkinson as the agent’s fee, which was as it should have been. But fifteen per cent of the whole had been seized by the U.S. government as “alien income tax.” After the exchange on the cheque had been paid, little more than two hundred remained. On March 5 I wrote:

  Dear Mr. Cloud:

  Yesterday I had a long letter from Mr. Wilkinson. It was in the nature of a lecture about the wisdom of heeding good advice. I went to bed and did some powerful thinking. The outcome is that I am scrapping my first six chapters and beginning again.

  Will send a progress report in a few weeks.

  Trust you are well.

  Mowat

  I had, with great difficulty, masked my feeling, but nevertheless hoped my pique was showing. Then I began work on the book anew.

  In July I bundled up what I had written (tentatively titled River of Men) and sent it to Dudley without a covering letter. The next move would be up to him.

  That spring and summer I did a number of things to keep our pot boiling, including broadcasting six programs about the Ihalmiut on CBC Radio and writing six magazine pieces, five of which, together with another to Saturday Evening Post, Wilkinson sold. With or without a book, I was earning a living for us.

  We also did a great deal of work about the house and property. It had always been my intention to become as nearly self-supporting as possible; now it was an imperative. That spring we planted a dozen fruit trees and prepared an enormous vegetable garden. In anticipation of a bumper crop, I dug and roofed a root cellar in which we eventually stored apples, cabbages, potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, and squash. I also built a chicken house and run that we stocked with laying hens and pullets destined for the pot, and I made plans to excavate a pond in which to rear ducks and our own fish.

  There were labours enough, but there were distractions too. On a whim I enrolled as a volunteer observer with the Dominion Meteorological Service, which supplied me with a sort of glorified doll’s house on stilts containing maximum and minimum thermometers and apparatus for measuring rain and snowfall. This convenient “hive” attracted a swarm of bees and we might eventually have had our own supply of honey if the bees had not been so possessive that I had to evict them.

  We also got to know our near neighbours better. Most of these were of the non-human variety, including salamanders, frogs, snakes, some of the more than a hundred species of birds we would eventually record, and over a dozen kinds of mammals ranging from Lilliputian water shrews to white-tailed deer who seemed to be of the opinion the vegetable garden was theirs. But visitors of the human kind also came by to distract and amuse us. Most were from afar, but some were local, dropping by occasionally to put us right on the finer points of country living. Initially I had had misgivings about attempting to make a life in rural Ontario but was now becoming more hopeful that it would work out. The mystery woman of the previous summer did not reappear, nor did Fran show any further interest in returning to Toronto.

  That summer was blisteringly hot but with frequent rains so we got the bumper crop I had hoped for. The exhausted soil, fertilized with about fifty jeeploads of well-rotted manure from an abandoned farm, produced with such generosity that we filled the root cellar and could not even give away all the surplus.

  The hens were laying well. My woodshed was bulging. The house was snug and welcoming. When, toward the end of October, I heard from Dudley Cloud again after a hiatus of nearly six months I found myself in no tearing hurry to reply.

  Dear Mr. Cloud: Nov. 8, 1950

  Thank you for your letter. I must admit to having felt some curiosity over the long silence that ensued when the new outline for “River of Men” went off into the blue.

  It has been out of mind for some time now but I will keep your new list of suggestions before me and will endeavour to deal with them.

  You ask about the theme. Put simply, it is an appeal for better understanding of the entire problem facing the survival of native people and an attempt to show it is impossible to bring such people into our world through a policy of cultural, physical, moral, and economic destruction….

  I too hope the “situation will develop” in a manner satisfactory to us all and in the not-too-distant future. My wife insists there is no need to exterminate her by slow starvation just to prove a point.

  Best wishes.

  Farley Mowat

  Copy to Max Wilkinson.

  Cloud may have thought he had pushed me far enough, or perhaps he was reacting to a hint from Wilkinson that Atlantic had better offer me a contract or I might submit the manuscript to Dodd, Mead, another and larger American publisher, which was showing interest in it.

  On December 10 Cloud wrote in friendly fashion, finally offering to publish River of Men, providing the offer was affirmed by his editorial board, which was dominated by the Boston publishing house of Little, Brown and Company, and assuming I was agreeable to some further “necessary” changes.

  My reply was perhaps less enthusiastic than he may have anticipated.

  Dear Mr. Clou
d: Dec. 13, 1950

  I am excited by the prospects for The River and only hope the Editorial Board agrees with you.

  I am enclosing revisions for a new Foreword and Chapter 1. If this is not what you have in mind, perhaps you would enlighten me more specifically.

  Have read much of the ms for the book once again (I enjoyed it!) but am not attempting any more revisions until I have seen your suggestions.

  Best,

  Farley Mowat

  Dudley evidently read me loud and clear. Only two or three days after hearing from me he wrote again, this time assuring me the editorial board’s assent would be forthcoming and predicting that AMP/ Little, Brown would publish my book, assuming, of course, that we all agreed to some further “minor” revisions.

  Although there was still no contract I concluded it was time to bite the bullet.

  Dear Dudley: Jan. 10, 1951

  I have by this mail sent off a new first chapter to Max, who will doubtless send it along to you pronto.

  My wife, who has no shame in such matters, says she feels much good would come of a trip by the Mowats to Boston, at someone else’s expense, of course. She means good for the Mowats.

  You ask if I know W.O. Mitchell at Maclean’s magazine. Answer is, not very well though I have tried to sell him stories. No luck. He turned ’em down and then Max sold them to SatEvePost. But a new editor at Maclean’s did buy a short story from me.

  I am also sending along a copy of my journal of my 1947 barrenland trip in case you think there might be a book in that.

  F.

  To my enormous relief, a contract arrived for signing shortly after I had sent this letter. With it came a tentative invitation for Fran and me to visit Boston in March or April (a prospect that made Fran ecstatic), and an assurance the book would be published in the autumn of 1952.

  Dudley also asked me to reply to a letter from a Mr. Mann – an American academic who had seen my first story in Saturday Evening Post.

  Mr. Mann recommended that Atlantic have nothing to do with me. He accused me of concealing the fact that I had not been alone on my 1947 expedition and implied I was untrustworthy.

  Dear Dudley: Jan 12, 1951

  Herewith the contract duly signed. Also my reply to Mr. Mann, who is a friend of Dr. Francis Harper, see below. I don’t think I ever burdened you with the gen about my feud with Harper so here it is, in brief.

  In May of 1947 Harper, an American zoologist, and I went off together to Nueltin Lake to survey the fauna and the flora. He was under the auspices of the Arctic Institute, who paid his way. I was freelancing for the Royal Ontario Museum and paying my own shot.

  We had never met before and as it turned out we didn’t get along any too well. It may be rude of me to say it but the old boy – he was my father’s age – was minus some buttons. I was stupid enough not to realize it, and I took him seriously – for a while. But when he tried to convince me that slavery was the only solution to the “negro problem,” and that it should be reaffirmed in the US South, I blew her! That’s the trouble with being a rebel – you tend to lose your sense of humour just when you need it most. He wasn’t quite so bad about Indians and Eskimos, but he just hated half-breeds or any sort of mixed bloods, and it turned out we had to spend a lot of time with a family of them at Nueltin Lake.

  The upshot was that he and I stopped talking. He’d sit on his side of the cabin and write me letters reflecting on the ancestry of the Mowat clan (there are quite a bunch of Cree-Mowats in the Canadian north), which pissed me off more than a little. But I was at least smart enough not to pour fuel on the fire, and I took the first opportunity to go off travelling with one of the half-breeds. Which is how I got to spend time with the Ihalmiut.

  To shorten a lamentable tale, he wrote to me after returning stateside telling me I was not to use his name in any way in any writing I might do. I was more than agreeable, and thought it was very nice of him to make it official. I trust you won’t have many more Manns on your neck, but you may, in which case you can turn them over to me if you think it safe.

  Glad you see something in my arctic journal. I feel a good travel book can come out of it – and not just a quickie follow-up to River of Men either.*

  Something distinctively different. Let me have it back as soon as possible so I can begin real work on it. And fear not that I will abandon all else once it is before me. I am already at work on a boys’ book with two chapters rolled out.

  On invitation from Maclean’s new editor I’m doing a piece about my war that looks like potential material for a book. Strangely enough it would be a war book devoid of syphilitic soldiers and wholesale whoring. I sometimes feel the war I knew could not have been the same one many of my literary contemporaries apparently enjoyed. The men I soldiered with were pretty normal individuals who could actually think two consecutive thoughts that weren’t concerned with women or booze. No doubt Jones, Vidal et al. would consider my lads quite abnormal – and perhaps they were. But I wonder if perhaps you publishers haven’t conditioned the public to expect such juvenile excrescences from war writers? Something on this side of the Atlantic Ocean has certainly made it tough to portray men at war as Men, not large-gonaded adolescents.

  Fran is training me for our visit to Boston. Makes me wear shoes at least part of every day and I am no longer allowed to use the cutlery when searching for fleas. So do not fear, I shall not disgrace you and your good wife.

  Cheers.

  F.

  Dear Dudley: March 2, 1951

  Have received your amended version of the MS and am dealing with suggested changes. I’m satisfied with most of the cutting and trimming you did, except I note you deleted all preliminary descriptive material about the Barrens so I have slyly reintroduced some of this. Perhaps I am wrong but it seems to me the reader might like to feel a little of the Rock of Ages between his finger tips before venturing into the land it came from.

  Max has written to say he is expecting AMP’s advance royalty payment and that my share – $540.00 – should soon be on its way.

  Best wishes.

  Farley

  The “amended version” of the manuscript had in fact been copy edited by Dudley’s wife, Jeannette, and it was to her I wrote my next letter.

  Dear Mrs. Cloud: March 19, 1951

  Five days of solid labor (note spelling à la Webster) and the first six chapters are ready to be returned to you. But tell me, who is this fellow Webster who is now my Spelling Master? I’ve looked him up in my Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911 edition) and can’t get a line on him.

  I think it’s a dirty trick anyway. For 29 years I’ve been labouring to spell correctly and am now told I have learned the wrong way. Dammit, Max says I punctuate like Chaucer, so why can’t I be allowed to spell that way too?

  Anyhow I’ve paid close attention to all the corrections you and Dudley have made, and have hunted out and slaughtered innumerable “thats.”

  Who is the Canadian publisher going to be? You know how anxious I am to have the book co-published in Canada by a Canadian company. No doubt this is all well in hand but I would appreciate being soothed.

  F.

  March came and went, bringing no further news of a visit to Boston. In fact, I heard nothing more from Atlantic until late in April, when Dudley wrote, complimenting me for having put my book “into final shape for spring publication.”

  Spring publication? This was a bombshell. Hurriedly I read on and discovered to my chagrin and fury that my book, which had been slated for publication in the autumn of 1951 (in time for the Christmas trade) had, without anyone consulting me, been shifted to February of the succeeding year. February – the dead season in book publishing!

  Dudley had tried to soften my reaction to this bad news by pointing out that Little, Brown might not be willing to publish my book at all if I insisted on being “obdurate” and demanding that the original publication date be adhered to.

  The prospect of postponement was hard enough to bear. W
orse followed in the next paragraph, where Dudley firmly scotched my hopes for co-publication with a Canadian company. Little, Brown, he wrote, “was adamantly opposed to relinquishing any portion of its exclusive North American rights.” It intended to distribute the book in Canada under its own imprint, possibly but not necessarily through McClelland & Stewart. Furthermore, if I insisted on a Canadian imprint, Little, Brown could be expected to suspend publication “indefinitely.”

  Dudley refrained from telling me to shut up and back off but Max had no such compunctions. When he heard about this contretemps he wrote:

  “If you insist on being difficult you had better find yourself another agent.”

  Something else was on his mind too. Both he and Dudley had been trying to interest me in writing an “action novel” about the north. “That,” Max insisted, “would be as good as finding gold up there, could actually be about finding gold and could result in all of us finding a useful chunk of gold down here.”

  I now began to pull in my horns and wrote to Dudley.

  Dear Dudley: May 12, 1951

  I guess your decisions about timing and about Canadian publication must prevail. Hell’s bells, what do I know about the publishing business? And what could I do if I did?

  One thing I do agree with is that the name, River of Men, won’t do. There have been too damn many Rivers published recently, but here is the best I can offer as an alternative.

  The Desperate People

  Inuit Ku (River of Men in Eskimo)

  People of the Deer

  Plains of Kaila

  Blood of the Barrens (Zane Grey would like that one).

  I have a number of small corrections to make on the setting copy for What’s Its Name. However, there will no doubt be plenty of time to do that before Little, Brown publishes the book – if and when….