Emily Carr to Charlie & Winnie Evitt, November 11 n.d. (With enclosed Betty Clyne note explaining why letter was sent to Nan).
It was horrid watching the boat drifting nearer and nearer to the rocks and bouncing like a cork. We had a little wet food and some wet blankets, but no shelter. Emily Carr to Charles and Winnie Evitt
The first letter I have chosen to showcase depicts one of Emily’s journeys up north to the Queen Charlotte Islands area (Haida Gwaii). She writes to friends Charles (Charlie) and Winnie Evitt from Prince Rupert BC, who she stayed with before her voyage up north.
It’s hard to say when exactly this excursion took place but the Vancouver Art Gallery reports a trip occurring to this region in the summer of 1912 where she worked on large canvas paintings of First Nations villages using her French training she had received the year previously. But her use of Fauvism and broken brushwork did not meet with positive reception when she displayed her paintings in Vancouver in 1913. Sadly, she deemed her project a failure as she received no funding from the government for her work.
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Vancouver Art Gallery
The year 1912 does seem like a likely year for this journey to take place. The year is corroborated again by circumstances in the letter itself. She mentions: “the usual running of a house like mine where the wants of four families have to be seen to as well as my own.” This is a reference to the boarding house she began in 1913. This would would make sense in the context of the letter and the proximity to the journey itself.
I must also comment on the attached letter to this letter written by Betty Clyne. Betty was a friend of Nan Cheney and she writes the circumstances in which she received this letter from Charlie and why she is sending it to Nan. If Charlie had not sent it to Betty and Betty had not sent it to Nan, and Nan had not donated her correspondence to RBSC at UBC, this letter would not be on display at all! It’s wild to think of how many hands passed before this page before it did mine. You can view Betty Clyne’s note to Nan above before the typed out letter to Charlie and Winnie.
The physicality of the pages is quite interesting as well. You can see they are tattered and some parts are corrected by Carr afterwards before she sent it. There is what looks like a coffee stain on page three and water stains on all of the pages. You can really get a sense as to the way she worked from this one form of communication.
