Читать книгу Around Home - Peter McArthur - Страница 3

Table of Contents

“Around Home” seems to me the happiest of titles for a collection of essays by Peter McArthur. Home was to him the dearest of words. He abandoned the lights and companionships of Broadway to return to the simple pioneer home of his fathers in western Ontario, there to raise his family in quiet and simplicity and from thence to preach for the remainder of his days the happiness and wholesomeness of Canadian rural life.

When Peter McArthur passed unexpectedly to the Beyond on October 28, 1924, following an operation in a hospital at London, Ontario, there was a far-spreading feeling that a great friend and radiant personality had been lost. As humorist, poet, philosopher, lecturer and man of affairs he had entertained and instructed a widening audience for almost twenty years. He was known from coast to coast by his writings and platform work, and thousands who had never seen him followed with amusement the progress of the “Red Cow,” “Socrates” the ram, “Beatrice” the sow, “Bildad” the pup, and other titled creatures of the Ekfrid farmyard, whose doings he chronicled in his letters to the Toronto “Globe.”

Though the Sage of Ekfrid appeared to be immersed in the movements of the crows, the wild geese and the coming of new live stock, such thoughts really engaged only part of his attention, for his capacious and restless mind ranged the whole world. He united in unusual degree the qualities of the receptive and the creative mind, and could fashion a new fancy as applied to the life about him, or quote by the page from the classics of ancient and modern times. He knew intimately many political leaders and his occasional visits to Ottawa were marked as much by long and deep discussions of the political outlook as by hilarity from the meeting of famous story-tellers. He was an ardent admirer of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and after the Liberal Chieftain’s death, Mr. McArthur compiled a little volume of anecdotes and biography which preserves much important material. His contribution to the literature and records of his time comprised several volumes of biography, poetry, essays, humor, not to speak of the selections from his farm philosophy published in “The Globe.”

Peter McArthur was born March 10, 1866, on the farm to which he returned to spend his later years, near Appin, in Ekfrid Township, Middlesex County, Ontario. His father, Peter McArthur the elder, and his mother, Catherine McLennan, had come from Scotland in the mid-century immigration to the new lands of western Ontario, and here the pioneer cleared the land and built the house of squared logs which remained the home of the poet-philosopher to his death. Gaelic and English were spoken in the little home, and the readings from the Gaelic Bible by the Scottish father helped to give character and flavor to the boy’s mental habits.

Peter was naturally an omnivorous reader, and soon found the banning of “profane” books a handicap. A chance gift of fifty cents from a man who was buying wood from his father led Peter to a London bookstore, where he bought a copy of Robert Burns, and there ensued many hours of joy while the volume was devoured in secret. Then came a feast of Byron, with the committal of many poems to memory. There was a small Mechanics’ Institute library at Glencoe, and the forbidden sweets of this storehouse were made accessible through the connivance of a minister of the Free Church, Rev. John Ross. The minister later persuaded the parents to allow Peter free access to the library, and an orgy of reading followed. Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Adam Smith, Macaulay’s Essays, Boswell’s Johnson and other classics figured in this liberal education for the backwoods boy.

At twelve Peter entered the Wardsville High School and later the Strathroy High School. The latter course was made possible only by mortgaging the 25 acres of land his father had left him at his death. Here he became acquainted with Duncan McKellar, a young man of artistic taste and ability, later a poet of some standing, and the two were close chums until the latter’s death in 1899. Peter took his matriculation in 1887, taught school for a few months in Caradoc Township, and entered the University of Toronto in the fall of 1888.

One of Peter’s first acts at the University was characteristic. He became a leader of the Brute Force Committee, organized by the “Freshies” to combat the hazing of the tyrannical senior classes. McKellar and McArthur now became still more intimate and turned their interest to the writing of jokes and poems which they showered on “Puck,” “Judge” and the dailies of New York. Peter also sold jokes to “Grip,” a comic weekly published by J. W. Bengough, reaping therefrom about $2.50 per week, or the exact cost of his board and room. In February, 1889, he suddenly ended his university course and became a reporter on the Toronto “Mail.” Here he saw life and studied affairs from many angles, but continued to write jokes. Finding them copied widely in the United States, he decided to move nearer to his market and settled in New York in May, 1890.

Now began the eighteen years of life in the world’s largest cities, the first twelve in New York, then two years in London, England, and four more in New York before the return to the farm. He “free-lanced” for a time, selling his jokes and poems to “Life,” “Judge,” “Truth,” “Town Topics” and other bright periodicals of that day and enjoying a bohemian existence among the “jolly good fellows.” He was close friend of Bliss Carman, Charles G. D. Roberts, Richard Hovey and other rovers like himself, and they tasted life in many forms like bees flitting from flower to flower. In March, 1895, Mr. McArthur became assistant Editor of “Truth,” the first paper printed by photo color process. In this position he did much to introduce a brilliant band of writers then coming into notice, including Stephen Leacock, O. Henry, Harold MacGrath, Ellis Parker Butler and Duncan Campbell Scott.

Two years in London brought the honor of contributions appearing in “Punch” and the “Review of Reviews,” with the formation of happy friendships and the ripening of observation and experience of life. Back in New York at thirty-eight, he plunged into advertising as partner in an agency, and with his fine originality wrote numerous pamphlets which were insidious announcements of business ventures in story form. It was profitable, but it was not satisfying, and it was not a full expression of Peter McArthur.

The great change of his life came in the summer of 1908; the return to the farm home of his father and of his own boyhood. He cast the life of the city aside and thereafter had little patience with the noise and bustle of large centres, for his love of the quiet of the countryside was genuine. He found his opening in an arrangement to write a weekly farm letter to “The Globe,” later increased to twice a week. He won his audience at once, and his audience never left him. His neighbors laughed at the jolly stories of happenings on the little farm in Ekfrid and perhaps thought him a better writer than a farmer. City folks who had once lived on a farm renewed the associations of their youth, while hard-shell urbanites envied the happy life of the humorous observer of this countryside. It seemed incredible that one small farm could contribute so richly to the record of rural life in Canada. His readers shared the delight over the arrival of a new litter of pigs, they enjoyed the scamper of the colts in the woodlot, and they felt the satisfaction of “tapping” the maples in Spring or of pitting the turnips when the frost came in autumn. The ever-changing seasons were reflected and glorified in Peter McArthur’s humor and imagination, until the Ekfrid acres seemed a possession of each of his thousands of readers.

Here in this happy corner of a happy Province Peter McArthur lived with his wife, his four sons and one daughter. “Farming is above all a home-building occupation, rather than a money-making business,” he once wrote, and he lived up to his definition. He conducted his farm, with the aid of his sons, but he spent much time in writing. Sometimes he wrote at his desk; sometimes in a tent at the edge of the woodlot, far from even the noise of passing motor cars and close to the infinite variety of Nature herself.

When at last his summons came, and the outpouring of regret in letter and newspaper tribute gave some comfort to his family, he was laid away on the hillside of the Appin cemetery by the graves of his father and mother. A genial October sunshine warmed and lighted the landscape as he himself had warmed and lighted the pathway of so many other wayfarers through life. Two poems added to the Anglican ritual, as read by Rev. William Willans, expressed the spirit of the occasion for the writer and friend so deeply lamented. The first was “Life” by Peter McArthur, embodying much of his serious philosophy, and the second “The Grave Tree,” by his friend Bliss Carman. Under a scarlet maple Peter McArthur was laid away, and friends and admirers eased their grief as they turned homeward with this assurance as voiced by his fellow-poet:

“Then fear not, my friends, to leave me

In the boding autumn vast;

There are many things to think of

When the roving days are past.

Leave me by the scarlet maple,

When the journeying shadows fail,

Waiting till the Scarlet Hunter

Pass upon the endless trail.”

M. O. HAMMOND.