Go back to A Clear Water Stream main page
Mastigouche Photographic Essay
(to accompany A Clear Water Stream, chapter 9, 'Canadian Backwoodsman')
There is a small collection of photographs recording HW's visit for two weeks to the Fishing and Game Club at Mastigouche in the wilds of Quebec Province in September 1930 at the invitation of his American publisher, John Macrae of Dutton Publishing (E. P. Dutton & Co.), who had published all HW's earlier books. This is the only place that HW writes about, or indeed makes any reference to, this rather splendid and unusual holiday, which included journeying by canoe up rivers and across lakes.
This modern map helps to locate the area around Mastigouche:
HW sailed from Southampton on 6 September 1930 in RMS Empress of France, arriving in Montreal on 13 September where he was met by Macrae's son Elliott, known as 'Jimmy', who features as Charles in HW's novel The Gold Falcon, set in New York and based on HW's subsequent sojourn in that city – which HW tells us he is bound for, at the end of the chapter here. Macrae himself is 'Homer'.
The small family party (it included Macrae's son-in-law) and their guest travelled on to Mastigouche, where their guide was a French-Canadian named René, plus a cook, and seemingly enough porters to take on the physical work of dealing with canoes and provisions.
HW noted in a letter to his wife soon after he arrived:
We are just about to leave here – after one day in the home lakes – and go into the mountain lakes. It is a fairly big club – almost a hotel – but all wood built, the tools being mostly axes. Log cabins etc. Walls of axe-smoothed balsam – a pine tree. The canoes are lovely, 60lbs. The guides carry them from lake to lake. Balance a careful business. The lakes are all stocked. So far, only little fish of the kind we put back in the Bray! French Canadian guides – no English spoken. I wear moccasins. Boots too heavy. Lovely things. Deer hide: feels like naked feet, & so silent and comfortable. My fishing coat much admired. . . . Macrae very nice, also son and son-in-law. . . .
It is not possible to put the 'Mastigouche' photographs into any definite order (although most have captions written by HW on the reverse,which are also given here), but that hardly matters. They make a striking visual accompaniment to the story told in this book.
The first three were clearly taken at the same time; it was probably a warm day, with HW taking off his fishing jacket for the second shot, and then his hat for the last; and one can imagine John Macrae and René taking turns to hold the camera:
The next few photographs are of their journey to the lakes in canoes:
A close-up of the centre part of the above reveals the canoe, barely visible in the larger photograph:
A photograph of HW on a river crossing is followed by one of Jimmy and John Macrae, both, rather disconcertingly, armed with rifles:
The fishing begins:
In case HW's handwriting is too difficult to decipher (and for the non-fisherman), the fly used was a 'wet Coch-y-Bondhu', the Coch-y-Bondhu being a traditional (and effective) fly commonly used in the UK, and 'wet' meaning that it was fished a foot or two below the surface rather than floating on top. 'Worked as a minnow' means that HW drew the fly slowly in towards him, holding the rod in his right hand while gathering in the line with his left at uneven speeds, so making the fly make sudden darts under water in imitation of a small minnow. How productive this fly and method of fishing was on this occasion can be seen below:
Three photographs were taken of HW and his catch: above, with René; below, with the cook; and lastly, on his own:
The lake water was evidently warm enough to tempt some of the party for a swim, but from the two photographs below, it looks pretty bracing!
All too soon, it was time to head back:
*************************
The following four photographs of wintry scenes would appear to be of this area: but there is no information attached. Perhaps they were taken by René and sent on to HW later, to show the area in winter?
*************************
Finally, a reprise of the beautiful otter cup carved by René: so obviously a treasured memento of a quite amazing experience in HW's life:
*************************
HW was also corresponding regularly at that time with T. E. Lawrence ('El Laurens' – Lawrence of Arabia), and included the following powerfully evocative description in a letter to TEL, written on 29 September 1930, the last evening of the trip:
Your letter cheered me in the land of coloured falling leaves and dark deep lakes, where the cries of the crickets in the woods tell sadly of the Ice and the Silence soon to bind a blank land. This country is spirit country; the air dreams of before the glaciers. For all its trees and blue skies, its grasses and its golden sun, it is a sad and ruinous tract, where the cry of the loon far across the water is a little insane, like the cry of one whose blue eyes are pierced by ice. It has suffered; it dreams of the sun everlasting; but the glaciers will grip hill and hollow again, scrape away life and all its seeds and cocoons, and leave it bare as the granite rocks rising from the edge of the dark lake. . . . I will come and fetch you to Shallowford when I come back . . .
If I'd Shakespeare's skill I'd write a sonnet beginning
For / Of / With / the marriage of true minds etc
I must end. The lamps are alight. The great birch wood fire roars and thunders in the vast open chimney; the loon cries sadly in the star-shivering lake outside, Sirius glitters above the trees on the hills, where the arctic zone's tremble and arise with wan light to the zenith, Sirius shakes his wondrous fires in the Ice Silence. . . .
The following day, 30 September, the fishing trip ended and Mastigouche closed down for the winter. HW accompanied his hosts to New York, where he spent the following six months, renting an apartment in Greenwich village. Dutton's edition of The Village Book had been published the previous week, receiving tremendous reviews, and HW was lionised by literary New York. Then he settled down to revise (that is to say, re-write) The Dream of Fair Women (1931) and then began preparing his material for The Gold Falcon, a masterly view of 1930s New York wrapped up in his powerful story line, and incorporating his intense affaire with Barbara Sincere.
(See entry for The Gold Falcon for details of this and his subsequent very successful lecture to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, 'Hamlet and Modern Life' including poetry of the First World War, particularly that of Wilfred Owen. This lecture was also delivered at Harvard and Yale universities.)
*************************
Go back to A Clear Water Stream main page