The Young Men’s Liberal Club of Toronto under a very enterprising young president named Frank Yeigh, undertook to give the public a unique sort of entertainment. It was to be an evening with Canadian writers, as many as could be gathered together, and they were invited to read from their own works. So an invitation was sent to the young poetess of Brantford whose works were attracting so much attention.
Pauline’s warm, loyal heart had always been passionately on the side of her father’s people. She was far more Indian by nature than white, and she was proud of it. In many of her poems she had flamed out indignantly against the wrongs suffered by the Red Man at the hands of the Pale Face usurper. So for her reading at this momentous evening performance she chose one of these poems, A Cry of an Indian Wife: the farewell of a prairie wife to her brave as he sets forth to battle for his rights against the White Man.
Then there was a dress to get ready as well as a poem. Sister Evelyn and her mother helped with this and it was very pretty, a simple white, suitable for a poet-debutante, and armed with her poem she went away to the ordeal all in a flutter.
There were many names on the programme that night already high in the annals of Canadian literature but none of them made the impression of the Indian girl poetess. When this slim, handsome girl glided out upon the platform with the silent grace which was a part of her Indian inheritance, and began her recitation in her soft cultured voice the audience, which was growing a little weary, woke up. For Pauline Johnson had a strong, natural gift of interpretation and remarkable dramatic power. From the deep pathos of the opening lines:
“My forest Brave, my red-skin Love, farewell,” to the ringing challenge of the close:
“Go forth, nor bend to greed of white men’s hands!” she held her audience in tense silence. She was applauded tumultuously, receiving the only recall of the evening. She captured the press, too, and the next day her praises were sounded in every newspaper.
No one was quicker to see her possibilities than Mr. Yeigh, the young president who was responsible for the entertainment. Would she give a public recital of her works, he asked, all by herself? In two weeks so that it might be announced at once? She was terribly frightened at the thought, but laughing and breathless and all in a flutter she promised. And back home she hurried the next morning to prepare for what was really to be her coming out.
The second night was even a greater triumph than the first. At once Mr. Yeigh made arrangements for her to make a tour of the larger towns and cities of Ontario, and Pauline Johnson was launched on her life work. For the next sixteen years she toured Canada and parts of the United States, making two trips to England. And everywhere and always she delighted her audiences.
When Pauline was preparing for that first recital in Toronto she wrote for it one of her best loved poems, The Song My Paddle Sings. And it seemed afterwards that this lovely poem was a foreshadowing of her life.
West wind, blow from your prairie nest,
Blow from the mountains, blow from the west,
The sail is idle, the sailor too,
O! Wind of the West, we wait for you.
Was not that an unconscious description of the peaceful years at Chiefswood while she waited in the shelter of home dreaming of the breeze that would waft her out into the great world of action?
And then came her chance to launch out for herself and she grasped the opportunity:
I stow the sail, unship the mast,
I’ve wooed you long but my wooing’s past.
At first the voyage seemed all delight. Everything came to her so easily. She was beloved and admired from coast to coast and far beyond the seas.
August is laughing across the sky,
Laughing while paddle, canoe and I
Drift... drift....
But the years did not always bring easy paddling. Sorrows, bereavements and estrangements rose up like rocks in the stream of life. Often she was buffeted by the rapids:
Dash, dash,
With a mighty crash,
They seethe and bound and boil and splash!
And what a voyage it was! It lasted sixteen years and took her several times across the Atlantic, eight hundred miles up the great Caribou trail, and nineteen times over the Rocky Mountains! She recited in London drawing-rooms to the titled and the sophisticated, and to rough men in lumbering and mining camps; to cultured circles in Boston and New York and to lone settlers in prairie shacks. And always she gave her best, sang her lovely songs from coast to coast till her name and her poems became household words.
When she had been reciting for two years and was at the height of her fame she achieved another long-cherished ambition. She had been working hard to earn enough to take her to England where she hoped to have a book of poems published. When she went she was armed with letters of introduction from Lord Aberdeen, then Governor General of Canada, to many influential people in the Old Land.
She gave her recital several times and had her first book launched. It was called The White Wampum, and in Canada especially its sale was wonderful. Everyone wanted to read the beautiful verses they had heard from the lips of the author. “The Mohawk Princess” everyone called her. Indeed Pauline was a Princess according to Indian standards and loved to be called by her musical Indian name, Tekahionwake.
She returned to Canada and started another tour in company with Mr. Walter MacRaye who recited Drummond’s poems. These two made a fine team of artists and for many years their joint programme was a delight.
Pauline herself was a delight to the eye as well as the ear in these recitals. She wore the picturesque native costume of an Indian maiden, the historic dress of Minnehaha, fringed and embroidered buckskin, with beaded moccasins and belt of wampum. From her shoulders in graceful folds hung a vivid scarlet blanket, one that had belonged to her chieftain father, and the very robe that Prince Arthur of Connaught stood upon for the ceremony some years before when he was made a Chieftain of the Six Nations. In her dark waving hair she wore a scarlet feather and round her throat a necklace of cinnamon bear’s claws presented to her by Ernest Seton Thompson. She moved with the grace and lightness of the Indian, and when her moccasined feet slipped silently onto the platform she was such a delightful vision that she had captured her audience even before she began to speak.
And what a comrade of the trail she was! Mr.
MacRaye has written some reminiscences of their travels that are very delightful. He calls her, “the best-loved vagabond,” and adds, “It was always fair weather and good going on the trail with Pauline Johnson.” She never complained, no matter what the hardships. Indeed she loved best the tours that took them far away from the world of comfortable hotels.
Mr. MacRaye gives an amusing description of two widely contrasting evenings. The first is a rough shack far up the Caribou trail, with Pauline, the only woman in town, sitting at a rough, bare table with miners and prospectors, while the proprietor of the “Hotel” in undershirt and overalls cooked the meal at the other end of the room. The other picture is of a London dinner party given by Lady Ripon with Pauline as the guest of honor being handed in by a titled life guardsman. And the Indian Princess was equally at home in either picture.
Her pen was never idle during these strenuous years. Two other volumes of verse followed White Wampum: Canadian Born and Flint and Feather. Prose work of great beauty and strength came later when she decided to give up her recitals and settle in a home. Her mother had died in the meantime and the other members of the family were scattered in homes of their own. So she chose Vancouver for her home, and from it came the exquisite prose Legends of Vancouver.
But the brave song of the paddle was soon to cease. She had not been long settled in the beautiful city of her dreams among admiring and devoted friends when she was smitten with an incurable disease. The magic pen that had given such gems to Canadian literature was laid down and the much loved poetess was laid away under the Cathedral cedars of Stanley Park which she loved so well. There is a fitting me
morial over her grave and loving friends keep offerings of flowers always fresh. But her real monument is Siwash rock that rears its noble head above the swirling tide on the edge of Stanley Park.
But Pauline Johnson cannot die so long as her lovely verses are read. And many of them are immortal, especially those that came from her heart like the robin’s spring song in The Songster.
He sings for love of the season, When the days grow warm and long, For the beautiful God-sent reason That his breast was born for song.
She is at her best when she swings her canoe into the unexplored streams of life, this lovely Princess of the Paddle. We love her most when she leads us afar into the magic world of her dreams, searching for some Lost Lagoon. There she is the real poet, the Indian poet, with a note new and strange and all of the wild. And there free in her Happy Hunting Ground we leave her:
The cedar trees have sung their vesper hymn And now the music sleeps —
Its benediction falling where the dim Dusk of the forest creeps.
Mute grows the great concerto, and the light Of day is darkening, Good-night, Good-night!
CHAPTER XVII. A LEADER IN EDUCATION: ALETTA ELISE MARTY
ON THE opening day of the fall term a young girl of fifteen stood on the schoolhouse platform, facing the pupils. She was the new teacher who had come to take charge of this large, ungraded, rural school.
It had happened in this way. Her elder brother had been teaching these particular classes and, when he left to attend Normal School for six months, it had been difficult to find anyone to fill his place for the settlement was largely of German origin and that language was the one in common use. The inspector had urged him to have a leave of absence for the required time.
“You have a sister,” she said, “who passed her examinations this summer. She can act as your substitute. She speaks the language and would do your work while you are away.”
“But,” was the reply, “she has just turned fifteen and is only a child in short skirts, with her hair down her back.”
“That doesn’t matter. Let her put up her hair and lengthen her skirts. She will do all right.”
On his return home for the week-end the young man reluctantly broached the subject. At once his sister said:
“Of course I will go.”
So Aletta Marty began the work she was to follow all her life. At the end of the six months she went to Model School and from there took a position as teacher of another school.
The district in which this was situated was in the backwoods, thirteen miles from a railway station, in an isolated part of Perth County, Ontario. There was no Lutheran church in the vicinity, although a minister came every three weeks to hold a service in the schoolhouse.
One day, one of the trustees came to Aletta and said:
“Wouldn’t it be fine to have a Sunday School? Will you start one? If you can look after a Public School you can manage a Sunday School. I can sing and give out the hymns and take up the collection, if there is any, but I cannot lead in prayer or read the Scriptures. Will you do it?”
There was great need of such a service for the growing children and Aletta did not hesitate. She organized a Sunday School and arranged programs for the meetings.
When the holidays came and the young girl teacher went back to her parents’ home, she said, “Teaching is the greatest profession in life.”
She thought it was the most telling work anyone could do and this belief in the value of her chosen calling was in a large measure responsible for her future success.
Aletta Elise Marty was born in Mitchell, Ontario. Her father was French-Swiss and her mother German-Swiss and it was from the latter that the children had learned the German language. Mr. Marty, a skilled wood-cutter by trade, had emigrated to Canada and settled in the village of Mitchell. Wood-carving did not have as ready a sale in the new land as in the old so he invested in a ten-acre holding and raised market produce to supplement his income.
Aletta was the youngest of a family of seven children. She, like her brothers and sisters, did her share of the work. Each had certain tasks that had to be done before they left for school. Aletta put the downstairs rooms in order while her sisters prepared the vegetables for dinner and washed the dishes, the latter a job that Aletta did not like. Other chores awaited them on their return at four o’clock.
In this way they were all expected to work systematically. No haphazard methods were allowed. Thrift and economy were lessons they learned early in life.
Aletta knew the value of money and from the age of fifteen practically paid her own way. This was not done without sacrifice. Many things that a young girl craved to have she had to do without.
She taught school during the day and studied at night to improve her own education. If she found this irksome at times she did not complain. She was eager to forge ahead and knew that only by hard work could this be accomplished.
“She had teaching blood in her veins,” wrote a friend, “for not only was she of the race of the great educational reformers, Rousseau and Pestalozzi, but her ancestors had furnished members to that great profession.”
She managed to save enough money from teaching to complete a course in Arts at Queen’s University, part of which was taken extra-murally. In 1894 she graduated and received the University Medal in Modern Languages.
For the next twenty-five years she taught French and German in the High Schools of St. Thomas and Ottawa. Her ability was so marked that the attention of leading educationalists was drawn to her.
When there came an opening in Toronto for an inspector of Public Schools Miss Marty’s name was suggested. At first there was considerable opposition. There were two reasons advanced against her appointment. One was the fact that she was a woman and the other that she had been educated outside the city.
Mrs. A. C. Courtice, who was a trustee on the Board of Education at that time, believed that Miss Marty was the best qualified person to fill the position and fought valiantly for her. Finally, in 1919, she was appointed, the first woman inspector in Ontario, and the first woman to hold the office in Canada.
For a number of years she performed the arduous duties connected with this work satisfactorily. Her exceptional ability and the ease with which she handled the most critical situations showed that the judgment of those who had advised her appointment had been justified.
Not long after she became Inspector of Public Schools she was given the degree of LL.D. from Queen’s University, the first woman in Canada to be thus honoured.
Dr. Marty was always interested in people and quick to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. Many loans were given to pupils who otherwise would have found it difficult to carry on. One young woman, not knowing Dr. Marty’s address, wrote to her sister.
“She lent me money,” she stated, “to put me through Model School. She has never asked me to return it but now I am sending it back.”
Another girl, a Scotch lassie, one of the older pupils in her first school, paid this tribute to Dr. Marty:
“Do you know,” she said, some years later, “if it hadn’t been for Miss Marty I don’t think I could ever have got through the examinations. She said to me, ‘See here! Of course you can do it. One can do what one wants if the heart is put into it. You can, and you must!’”
The result was that the girl had studied hard and had become a teacher. A new sphere of life was opened up for her and she was able to leave the cramped environment of the backwoods.
Dr. Marty’s interests were varied. She had a talent for organization that put any society, in which she held office, on a firm footing. On this account she was greatly in demand for executive positions. But, although she was sympathetic to many causes, it was the profession of teaching to which she gave her entire self. She considered it the noblest calling that one could choose and had nothing but scorn for the men and women who entered upon it lightly, without feeling the responsibility attached to those in whose hands lay the training of youth.
Sh
e was thorough in all that she did. She felt that if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing well. Once when she was a young girl she was washing out some of her clothes. As she bent over the washboard, scrubbing vigorously, an elder sister remarked, “Child, you will tire yourself.”
“But,” was the reply, “I must have them clean. I believe in doing any job as well as it possibly can be done.”
She found time in her busy life to write a number of books: The Ontario High School Reader; the Essentials of French Pronunciation; an Educational Creed; Creative Young Canada.
Aletta Marty was not a pedagogue only. She was an extremely human person. Her large dark eyes could flash with anger when she encountered injustice or cruelty, while they would soften with pity and affection over a tale of struggle or courage.
She was not averse to turning her hand to any task, no matter how humble, if there was need. Once, when she was teaching, she boarded at a home where the mistress happened to be ill and a new Irish maid had come to do the work. Miss Marty chanced to be in the kitchen when the smoke from burning sausages filled the air.
“Och!” said the maid, “I don’t know how to fry thim things. They all get black.”
Aletta Marty did not stop to correct the maid’s grammar or give her a lesson in proper English. She seized an apron and the frying pan and out went the blackened remains.
Fortunately there was still a supply uncooked and these were soon done to a turn. The thorough training she had had in her girlhood in all branches of housework had not been forgotten. The Irish maid looked on admiringly and later said to her mistress:
“That teacher woman can do anything. She could even fry thim sausages.”
Dr. Marty had an intense love for her Alma Mater, Queen’s University, and was anxious that the high standards of its graduates should not be lessened. She was always ready to help with any cause in connection with Queen’s and gave liberally of her means toward any project connected with it. She was the first convener of the Residence Committee and worked hard to procure sufficient money to proceed with the building that was to house future women students.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 784