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| 1890's Telegrams to Rev. J.E. Reid of Toronto regarding two deaths. |
SO WHAT'S IN THOSE OLD BOOKS THAT MAKE THEM SO IMPORTANT - WHY NOT JUST BUY THEM AS REPRINTS - OR LOOK ON GOOGLE BOOKS?
SOME OF US OLDTIMERS OF HISTORY, PREFER HAVING HARD COPY IN FRONT OF US - TO HAVE AND TO HOLD
I have always found it difficult, to accurately describe the significance of ephemera....which is, by all weights and measures, simply "old and collectable paper." So it's best if I offer some illustrations, of paper we find of historical significance, such that we include it in our collection. We recycle twice as much as we keep. But one piece of paper, even with dog-ears, can be worth a frightening sum of money, because of the information it possesses in print or via graphics. These telegrams are not of considerable value, but unique in terms of their late Victorian period - being the closing years of the 1890's. The reality that paper is easily damaged and thrown-out, it is always a treasure to find single, vulnerable pieces of paper that have survived to this new century, in fair condition. I will be publishing further examples of ephemera over the coming weeks, to give you a broader profile, of the kind of items worth hanging on to, or selling to us.
The telegrams photographed above today's blog, are a few of the historic paper items, we acquired several years ago, when we helped sell-off the contents of a Gravenhurst estate; much of it remnants of the ministerial work of Reverend Reid, formerly of Toronto's Alhambra Church....from the early part of the 1900's into the 1940's.
The telegrams circa 1898-99, were sent to his father, Reverend John Reid, and reads as follows: The first message, sent via "The Great North Western Telegraph Company", is dated August 1, 1898, and notes the following to Rev. Reid: Wiarton, Ontario - Robert Roat is dead. Come at once." It is signed William Roat. The second is dated August 26, 1899, and reads, "Dr. George Cooke drowned this afternoon." Signed Dr. F.J. Capon. Related to this telegram, is another, dated August 27, which reads, "My brother was drowned yesterday. Funeral Tuesday at three." It is signed William Cooke. There is an envelope addressed to Mrs. J.E. Reid, of Indian Road, Toronto, from Canadian Pacific Communications, dated Nov. 10th, 1932. It reads, "Letter received today Glad to have you all come for weekend or any time Will pay your expenses while here. If weekend Mary could come Horse show here now Draw some Torontonians Will write letter tonight Expect to leave 15th or soon after. Love Lauretta." It was sent from New York City.
Last evening, while it was snowing and blowing, over most of our province, Suzanne and I opted to stay home, and huddle at hearthside, versus our normal dinner engagement, at one of the region's attractive dining establishments. Not good for their businesses, but I'm tired of getting stuck all over God's have acre, in this never-ending snow-a-rama. Good for winter carnivals and snowmobiling but crappy for day to day living. Unless your small business has to do with snow removal or winter generally. So we decided to pull out some boxes we've had stored away, and spent four solid hours going through ephemera we've built up for the past five years. We keep meaning to get around to it, and even antique dealers fall into the trappings of dastardly procrastination. In the storefront, here in Gravenhurst, we have refrained from displaying large quantities of paper heritage, settling instead, to move some of our larger pieces, including furniture, paintings, spinning wheels, cradles, doll buggies, blankets, and smaller items like books, glass, china, silver and kitchen collectables. We've put together a mulit-year plan to handle all this collectable material, and this summer we hope to have our archives collection ready to go...which will include items like the telegrams above, as well as a large quantity of Victorian era photographs, and many vintage advertising pieces too numerous to mention. It takes considerable effort and materials, to show off these items with the respect they deserve, considering their age and historical significance. So we've held off bringing this heritage collection in, until we can acquire the right cabinets for display purposes. So as we opened the cookery collection last July 1st, Suzanne's pet project, this year, we want to do the same for our heritage paper exhibition....all of which will be for sale. We found a lot of documents we had forgotten, such as the 1917 plans of subdivision, for what was known then as "Big Island," in Lake Muskoka, which would, with the granting of a postal outlet, become "Browning Island," in later years. This was an island once owned by the Boyd family, which is documented in Captain Levy Fraser's book, "The History of Muskoka," and was where many Gravehurst citizens travelled, by steamboat, for summer group picnics....courtesy the kindness of the Boyds, who logged much of the island. The nicely preserved plan was part of Rev. Reid's collection, as he owned a family cottage on the island, that had formerly been owned by his mother-in-law, Mrs. Sheridan, of Merton, Ontario. We also have a large collection of photographs taken by the Reid family, during their long stay on Big Island, and then Browning Island (same island, different name). This will eventually be put up for sale, this coming summer season.
So What's So Important About the Content of Old Books?
Whenever we found ourselves, happily and comfortably in Algonquin Park, our first visit was always to the Tea Lake dam. This was where Tom Thomson used to fish, during his years spent living, and painting, in the wilds of Ontario. I used to sit with our boys, Andrew and Robert, down on the rocks, below the waterfall, and we would study the basin, quite expecting to see the painter's ghost, which we fully believed, still, from time to time, cast a fishing line into the turbulent water coming over the dam. When I made my first trip to Canoe Lake, where Thomson used to live, I can remember crouching down on the sandy shore, in the midst of many canoes, and touching the lapping water, as if it was the connection I needed, to gain that intimacy with a legend of Canadian art. It was my own enchanting moment, with the biography of Tom Thomson. William Colgate also represents the word "enchanting," as well, while critiquing the artist's use of color. Dr. MacCallum felt the same. Thomson, according to those who knew him well, was indeed "one with nature." I felt his essence was still in that water, that as a matter of misfortune, took his life as subtly as it had given him inspiration.
In the 1943 first edition of the book by William Colgate, entitled "Canadian Art; Its Origin & Development," with an introduction by artist C.W. Jefferys, and published by The Ryerson Press, there is a section I have quoted frequently, in historical features, on the life and work of landscape artist, Tom Thomson. It is a well written piece, and offers some biographical insights about Thomson, differing somewhat from the other overviews published after his unexpected death, in July of 1917. Authors working on the Thomson story today, may decide to avoid the overview entirely, and this cheats the Thomson admirer, from some other important points of view, which in Colgate's case, is from the mid-Second World War; and long after the Group of Seven, broke ground on their new and exciting impressions of the Canadian wilds....which Thomson, by he way, had initiated. He died before the Group was formed, but his influences were powerfully intrusive on the work of his colleagues.
Here are some of the observations made by William Colgate, about Tom Thomson. This will explain in content, why a Thomson researcher likes to keep this material close at hand, including work by Blodwen Davies, Thomson's first biographer.
"Tom Thomson, it has been said by one who knew him well, was a natural painter. However, that may be, it is very questionable, if not highly improbable, that Thomson would have arrived at the place he did in Canadian painting, had it not been for the direct encouragement and financial aid he received from others; most of them from Dr. James MacCallum. He it was, who discerned in the first efforts of the struggling young painter, evidences of a genius, which under sympathetic appreciation, and intelligent criticism and direction, was to grow into something infinitely finer and richer than even he expected," notes the art historian, Colgate.
"It may be mentioned in passing, that Dr. MacCallum was and happily, still is, a patron of the arts of a kind familiar enough in European capitals, before the present war, but rare enough here, whose interest in painting especially took the very practical form of assisting in various ways, those painters who were thought to stand most in need of such aid. His friendship for such artists as Tom Thomson, J.E.H. MacDonald, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson is fairly well known. Not so common is the knowledge that he assisted these painters with useful advice and often with his means. That is to say, he bought their pictures and recommended their purchase by others; he received them into his summer home on Georgian Bay, which they made their headquarters during the outdoors painting season; and from his long and intimate knowledge of the district, he was able to name likely spots for sketching. With these painters and others less familiar, he has maintained for much of his life, a footing of friendly informality, in which all are believed to have found a common source of pleasure and inspiration. One of the fruits of this association, was the erection in 1925, of the Studio Building, in Severn Street, Toronto, devoted exclusively to the use of artists, and is without parallel in Canada. The project was the result of a collaboration between Lawren Harris and Dr. MacCallum, both of who were responsible for its design and supervised its construction."
Colgate writes, "It was in the late summer of 1912 that Thomson and MacCallum first met. Thomson had returned from a sketching and fishing trip to the Mississauga forest reserve, bringing back with him a number of rapid oil impressions of its wooded and rocky shorelines. The chance encounter, which occurred in the studio of J.E.H. MacDonald, may best be described in Dr. MacCallum's own words: 'The door opened and in walked a tall and slim, clean-cut, dark young chap, who was introduced to me as Tom Thomson. Quiet, reserved, chary of words, he impressed me as full of resolution and independence. After he had gone, I told MacDonald of how I had heard of him, and asked him to get some of his sketches, so that I might get an idea of what the country was like. This was done, and as I looked them over, I who had known the north since the days when Collingwood and Orillia were the railheads, realized their truthfulness, their feeling and their sympathy for the grim, fascinating northland. Dark they were, muddy in color, tight, and not wanting in technical defects; but they made me feel that the north had gripped Thomson as it had gripped me when, as a boy of eleven, I first sailed and paddled through its silent places. Some of the sketches, fished up from the foot of the rapids (Thomson and his companion Smithson Broadhead (by canoe) had been upset), I bought. The money was received with the remark, 'That will let me buy more paint'."
"Meanwhile," writes William Colgate, "Tom Thomson went back to the engraving house to resume his work as a commercial designer, making folder and catalogue dummies and hand lettered advertisements, in which branch of art he was, in no sense, a competitor of MacDonald. His work here, although respectable enough, was for the most part undistinguished. With the coming of spring, however, Thomson once more became free to roam and sketch at will. When autumn came again, he returned to the city, bringing with him the harvest of his knowing hand and observing eye. To quote Dr. MacCallum again:
'The north country gradually got him, body and soul. He began to paint that he might express the emotions that the country inspired in him; all the moods and passions, all the sombrences and all the glory of color, were so felt that they demanded from him pictorial expression. He never gave utterance in words to his feelings of the glories of nature. Words were not his instruments of expression; color was the only medium open to him. Truthfulness was his one aim and goal. When I demurred to anything he had painted, he was content to say merely, 'Yes, it is just like that.' Of all our Canadian artists he was the greatest colorist; not from any desire to be original, or to make sensation did he use color. His aims were truthfulness and beauty; beauty of color, of feeling, and of emotion. To him his most beautiful sketches were only paint. He placed no value on them - all he wanted was more paint so that he could paint others. He enjoyed appreciation of his work; criticism of it he welcomed; but truthfulness was unassailable, for he had seen it. Those of us who camped or canoed with him, soon learned that he never painted anything, which he had not seen. He was not concerned with any special technique, any particular mode of application of color, or of this kind of brushstroke or that. Was it true to nature, the technique varied as the subject varied. Drawing was the expression of form and form might be expressed by any method, so long as the form was true. Untrained in the schools, he had to devise his own technique. His color was varied, brilliant and beautiful, but used so as to express some emotion or feeling. His color sings, not in ragtime, but in the Hosannas of the joy and exultation of nature'."
Colgate continues, by noting, "Thomson began painting out-of-doors about 1910, and continued until his death in 1917. At first, as we have seen, his sketches were dull, tight and timid, showing little, if any, of that effulgent and glowing color, later to be distinguish his manner, but none the less revealing an intimate feeling of the country. His first large canvas, 'A Northern Lake,' painted from a sketch, and exhibited at the 1913 Exhibition of the O.S.A., was bought, let it be said to his credit, by the Provincial Government of Ontario. In the fall of 1913, Thomson returned from a sketching trip to the north expecting to resume his duties as commercial artist at Grip Limited, who had meanwhile obligated themselves to keep his job open for him. They did not; and Thomson, without funds or immediate prospects of any, was hard put to make a living. Fortunately, at this point, Dr. MacCallum, his friend and mentor, came to his assistance and soon a financial arrangement was effected, whereby Thomson was to keep on painting, and the doctor was to be reimbursed with pictures, sold to him at prices set by the artist. By this time Thomson's painting had greatly improved; for he now, 'sought to depict lightning flashes, moving thunder storms with branches lashing in the wind.' These sketches shown to A.Y. Jackson, so interested him, that he asked to meet Thomson, and ended by inviting him to share his studio with him. At the next O.S.A. exhibition in 1914, Thomson showed two pictures, one of which, 'Moonlight, Early Evening,' was purchased by the National Gallery, Ottawa. This marked the beginning of his rise to fame, a fame which was to extend in the process of time, far beyond the borders of his own country."
The author concludes of the artist, "From year to year Thomson grew in the capacity to summarize, in the beauty of his color arrangements, in confidence and ease of execution, and it brilliance of technique. His acute sense of design and color, 'wove enchantment into a sketch, never cluttering or confusing it, but rather integrating it with a richer simplicity and a more subtle significance.' The concentration of purpose, together with his natural genius, and an intimate knowledge of his subject, are shown in probably more than four hundred sketches, and perhaps twenty large and finished canvases, which he left. There were, it is fair to conjecture, possibly as many slight or experimental pictures as well. But it is to be remembered that Thomson led the vanguard of the new movement in Canadian art. He it was, who 'painted a world of phenomena of color and of form, which had not been touched by another artist'. His sketches are a complete encyclopedia of all the phenomena of Algonquin Park and, aside from their artistic merits, have a historical value which demands 'that they should be preserved in the National Gallery."
"In July 1917, he died, suddenly and tragically, bringing to an end, a life short of complete fulfilment"
This is why I keep old books like this, close at hand, and as I plan to write much more about the life and art work of Tom Thomson, it will stay in my archives for some time to come. I'm preparing for 2017, for the memorial recognition of it being one hundred years since his death. I've got a few more evasive old books, to chase down before then. I remember when my book collecting buddy, Dave Brown, was in hospital, in Hamilton, and checking out one night, to go out with his friends for dinner. They took him to one of his favorite restaurants, which happened, of course, to be next to a book shop he used to frequent. They let him go in, while they went to the restaurant, and when he finally arrived for dinner, he was carrying a book he had just purchased. "You just never know when you're going to need a good book." Dave surely liked his book collection, as big and intrusive as it was on his life. He passed away a week later.
As for the alleged and yet to be proven, Tom Thomson tenor banjo, in our possession, (you can archive back to a week ago, to read all about it), we have had a huge amount of attention, and offers of expert help to identify it....and many more requests to give in a whirl. Let's just say we've made quite a few folks happy this week, to have strummed a banjo that may have been in the hands of Canada's best known landscape artist. I'll keep you updated on further developments.
Thanks so much for visiting today's blog. So much more to come. Drive safely out there. Isn't this crazy weather? I'm not sure even Thomson would have wanted to sketch out there......preferring to huddle (like us) by the woodstove in his ramshackle artist's shack in Toronto. This is now situated at the McMichael Gallery, in Kleinberg, Ontario.
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