Street of Riches Read online

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  INTRODUCTION

  The title given by translator Harry Binsse to the English version of Rue Deschambault was an appropriate choice. Rue Descham-bault is a quiet street rich in childhood memories for Christine, narrator of the book's eighteen episodes. In this drama of a girl's growing awareness, the recurring characters are the other members of her French-Canadian family: father Edouard, federal employee in the Ministry of Colonization, his wife Eveline (Maman) and their six surviving older children: Robert, Georgianna, Odette, Gervais, Alicia, and Agn&s. Neighbours, relatives, boarders, and new Canadian settlers play occasional roles.

  The parallels between Christine's life and that of the author are obvious. Rue Deschambault is the name of an actual street in St. Boniface, that suburb of Winnipeg where Gabrielle Roy was born and grew up. She herself was the youngest of eight children in a French-Canadian family of pioneer stock. After graduating from normal school she first taught in a small prairie village. Many of the experiences depicted have such an authentic note that the prefatory comment is a salutary warning not to interpret them as purely autobiographical:

  Certain events in this narrative took place in real life; but the characters and almost everything that happens to them are products of the imagination.

  The events themselves, with the notable exception of the story entitled "The Well of Dunrea," are commonplace and lacking in overt suspense. The thoughts and feelings of girlhood (delight in a bit of ribbon or a new hat, adolescent dreams and yearnings, a first infatuation and the choice of a means of livelihood), domestic tensions or triumphs, descriptions of nature - including a prairie storm - are all old cliches even in Canadian literature. Such subjects are familiar to readers of Montgomery's Anne oi Green Gables or Grove's Over Trairie Trails. Nor is the bifocal point of view of childhood reminiscence and mature reflection a novel technique. In Street ot Riches, however, the ordinary and commonplace are transformed into the fresh and original. There is throughout a subtle underlying psychological tension between personalities or ideals that draws the reader forward. Morley Callaghan once remarked that good stories are written "out of a kind of feeling for life and people drained through whatever peculiar intellectual system you have, or whatever kind of a heart you have." Gabrielle Roy's special distillation of personality is revealed in her selection and treatment of details and character. Inherent in her writing is a philosophy of life which recognizes the distinctive dignity of each individual in a universe that has beauty and meaning.

  The book begins with a low-keyed description of the initial embarrassment and eventual enrichment which result when Maman and then her neighbour take in Negro porters as boarders. The final tale is a quiet affirmation of the nobility of earning a living. In between is a series of tableaux which record the growth of sensitive Christine to young womanhood and an understanding of her own capabilities. Happy memories of innocent pleasures are balanced by the girl's increasing knowledge of the fragility of human relationships, the disappointed aspirations and inexplicable suffering in the world of grownups. Her father's angry reproach, which brings la petite misfre intense grief, is the occasion which helps her to understand his frustrated career and lonely life. The trip to prevent Geor-gianna's marriage illuminates Maman's own unfulfilled romantic dreams. Sister Alicia's insanity, asthmatic Aunt Th6r6sina's pitiful existence, and the tragedy of effervescent Giuseppe's sudden death seem to contradict the traditional idea of a merciful God.

  Yet somehow each of these unhappy events is softened by gentle irony or a compassionate glimpse of some natural compensation. Christine and her father are reconciled by sharing a leaden rhubarb pie which he had baked especially for her; nights spent reminiscing about his work to sympathetic daughter Agn&s bring an anodyne for his days of defeat; Odette's renunciation of "the affections of this world" to become a nun brings a feeling of pride as well as of sorrow to Maman; Death is a merciful release for Alicia; Aunt Therasina's body, so cold and confined in life, finds its final abode in a cemetery beside a sun-baked adobe above which birds sing all day long; Giuseppe's frail widow can leave the chilling loneliness of Manitoba and return to her beloved Italy. In these miniature dramas, at the end of misunderstanding or dispute, there is reconciliation; after anguish, there is peace; even after disillusionment, "through time's weird alchemy - that transformation in our memories which it alone is capable of effecting" there still remains a robust benevolence.

  Although the stories in this book may be read as self-contained anecdotes, together they develop a striking portrait of the interior life of Christine's family, and in particular of her parents and herself. Like those prototypes Rose-Anna Lacasse in Bonheur d'Occasion (The Tin Flute) and Luzina Tousignant in La Tetite Toule
  The rich quality of Maman's personality partially contributes to Papa's failure. Older than his energetic wife and travelling long distances in his work, he "needed to find at home a stable, firm base." But, like other husbands of Gabrielle Roy's stories - Azarius Lacasse in Bonheur d'Occasion or Alexandre Chenevert in Alexandre Chenevert, Caissier (The Cashier) -he somehow never fulfils his real promise. In the home, "had Papa behaved with us as he did with strangers, and Maman with him as she did when he was away, would they not have been perfectly happy together? . . ." In his work he is honest, industrious, and creative. But like Chenevert, Papa is forever losing those things which give zest to living: youth, hope, health, and sleep. His finest achievement, the settlement of the "Little Ruthenians" in an unsuspectedly fertile oasis at Dunrea, is ironically mocked by a cruel twist of fate. "The Well of Dunrea" is the story of Papa's life. It is also a sensitive and haunting apergu of the human predicament, a penetrating inquiry into the nature of death and the power of love and memory to sustain hope. This little Saskatchewan colony, which under Papa's guidance prospered, in which he was obeyed "as God had once been in His Eden," is devastated by a prairie fire. He escapes its flames by taking refuge in a deep well in which he experiences a state of profound indifference. Like Lazarus from the grave, he emerges safely from the well. Yet from that day he is a stranger to joy, a creature of the night who only really comes alive again in the face of misfortune, when he returns to "suffer all the more."

  From the lesser figures and even the central personalities of her two parents, the focus of these stories shifts gradually to Christine herself. The curiosity, the blunt wisdom, the arch acquisitiveness, and the ignorant courage of childhood give way subtly to an increasing consciousness of her perceptive gifts. She has an acute sensory appreciation of the world about her: of the tinkling music made by coloured glass strips as she lies in a hammock recovering from whooping cough, or the sound of wind playing on telephone wires; of the motion of leaves seen from below; of the changing patterns of clouds in the sky. She dreams of voyages to exotic regions and other times. From this warm recognition of the pleasures of imagination Christine develops a desire to share her joy with others. One day in the attic, listening to the vibrant voices of nature, she suddenly understands her purpose in life: "I had been the child who reads hidden from everyone, and now I wanted myself to be this beloved book, t
hese living pages held in the hands of some nameless being."

  This intimate glimpse into Christine's creative process is richly revealing of the growth of the artist. The particularity of detail, the restraint, and even the quiet humour with which it is described reflect the unique sensibility of Gabrielle Roy. Many of the other incidents provide for the mature reader a nostalgic pleasure of recognition that is not confined by time or region despite the mention of a conversation about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and various allusions to the colonization of the Canadian West, or the use of horses, trolleys, and trains as the only means of transport. Although the events have taken place long ago and are told for the most part in a chronological sequence that has the fidelity of a documentary, they achieve a sense of immediacy because of the author's intuitive insight into the significance of the minutiae of ordinary life and her ability to present characters who are alive as individuals. Such a gift, as Maman sadly tells her daughter, "is a little like a stroke of ill luck, which withdraws others, which cuts us off from almost everyone." This remark is aptly illustrated in Gabrielle Roy's detached objectivity of treatment artfully combined with the sympathetic involvement of recollected participation. The ambivalence of her perspective from both the adult's and the child's point of view, the classic simplicity of the personalities and situations selected, and ah unobtrusive use of symbolism contribute to the note of universality.

  This universality of appeal is underlined by the fact that Street of Riches is a translation. In Great Canadians: A Century of Achievement (1966) Brian Moore calls Gabrielle Roy "The Woman on Horseback," the unconscious "prophet of a future French-Canadian intellectual revolution," and quotes her as saying at the time of publication of The Tin Flute :

  A path is opening. We [French Canadians] are forgetting to be afraid of ourselves and getting away from the habit of imitating others. We are getting down to our own truth and to our own experiences.

  Those familiar with the original Rue Deschambault may note the alteration of "Les Deserteuses" to "The Gadabouts" and detect the overtones of meaning in the final title "Gagner ma vie" and the connotation of a chronic invalid's vigils suggested by a word like Veilleux. Even a casual perusal calls to mind a series of French names, the expression of fond memories of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's government, and Maman's quiet defence to her husband's family in Quebec of his employment: "We are all subjects of the King of England . . . your brother, by settling in the West and laboring for the country's greatness, has not in the least denied his past as a French Canadian."

  Yet one of the achievements of this book is that most English-Canadian readers will scarcely be conscious that it deals primarily with French Canadians. Such an impression, although perhaps contradictory to the author's purpose, is a tribute to the breadth of humanity expressed. In La Tetite Toule d'Eau mutual effort and faith lead the English-speaking bureaucracy of Manitoba to work out a happy solution with the French-speaking Tousignants regarding the establishment of a school, and Luzina is gently tolerant of the different interpretations of Canada's past by Mademoiselle C6t6 and Miss O'Rourke. In this book, too, Maman seems to indicate that patience and understanding will bring her country to a harmonious resolution of its diversity of language and culture.

  Gabrielle Roy's realistic fresco of a Canadian family is remarkable for its vivid imagery. In a particularly striking passage the exhilaration aroused by the wind in a winter storm is described:

  I listened to the wind, first of all intent to grasp what it was saying, to define its great, crashing cymbals then its poor, plaintive wail, so long drawn out. With no other instrument than itself, how could the wind produce such a variety of sounds, an orchestra complete at times, with outbursts of laughter and pain ? Much later, when it was granted me to hear the Walkyries* cries, I told myself that here truly is the music of the wind heard in other days, when its myriad snow steeds dashed in full career over Manitoba.

  Although the Wagnerian crash of cymbals is rarely heard in Street of Riches, the wide range of emotion which it has caught and registered is suggestively symbolized by the wind's orchestral variety of sound.

  BRANDON CONRON

  The University of Western Ontario

  The Two Negroes

  When he built our home, my father took as model the only other house then standing on the brief length of Rue Deschambault—still unencumbered by any sidewalk, as virginal as a country path stretching through thickets of wild roses and, in April, resonant with the music of frogs. Maman was pleased with the street, with the quiet, with the good, pure air there, for the children, but she objected to the servile copying of our neighbor's house, which was luckily not too close to ours. This neighbor, a Monsieur Guilbert, was a colleague of my father's at the Ministry of Colonization and his political enemy to boot, for Papa had remained passionately faithful to Laurier's memory, while Monsieur Guilbert, when the Conservative party came into power, had become a turncoat. Over this the two men quarreled momentously. My father would return home after one of these set-tos chewing on his little clay pipe. He would inform my mother: "I'm through. I'll never set foot there again. The old jackass, with his Borden government!"

  My mother concurred: "Certainly. You'd do far better to stay home than go looking for an argument wherever you stick your nose."

  Yet no more than my father could forgo his skirmishes with Monsieur Guilbert could she forgo her own with our neighbor's wife.

  This lady was from St. Hyacinth, in the Province of Quebec, and she made much of it. But above all she had a way of extol-ing her own children which, while lauding them, seemed to belittle Maman's. "My Lucien is almost too conscientious," she would say. "The Fathers tell me they have never seen a child work so hard."

  My mother would retort: "Only yesterday the Fathers told me again that my Gervais is so intelligent everything comes to him effortlessly; and apparently that's not too good a thing, either."

  My mother was most skillful in parrying what she called Madame Guilbert's "thrusts." Despite all this—or perhaps because of it—our two families could scarcely get along without each other.

  Often of an evening my mother would go out on the open porch in front of our big house and say to my sister Odette, "Supper is ready. Run over and tell your father; he's still at the Guilberts'. Bring him back before any argument begins."

  Odette would sally forth across the field. When she reached the Guilberts', there my father would be, his pipe clamped between his teeth, leaning against our neighbor's gate and chatting peaceably with Monsieur Guilbert about rosebushes, apple trees, and asparagus. So long as the two men were on such subjects, there was no need for alarm; and here Monsieur Guilbert was willing enough to accept my father's views, since he granted that my father knew more about gardening than he did. Then Odette would espy Gis&e's face at one of the upstairs windows. Gis&le would call out, "Wait for me, Odette; I'm coming down. I want to show you my tatting."

  In those days they were both fanatically devoted to piano playing and to a sort of lacemaking that involved the use of a shuttle and was, if my memory serves me well, called tatting.

  Then my mother would send my brother Gervais to see what on earth could be keeping my Father and Odette over there. At the field's edge, Gervais would encounter his classmate Lucien Guilbert, and the latter would entice my brother behind an ancient barn to smoke a cigarette; needless to say, Madame Guilbert always maintained that it was Gervais who had induced Lucien to indulge this bad habit.

  Out of patience, Maman would ship me off to corral them all. But I would chance to meet the Guilberts' dog, and we would start playing in the tall grass; among us all, now at loggerheads, now so closely knit, I think that only I and the Guilbert dog were always of the same temper.

  At last my mother would tear off her apron and come marching along the footpath to reprimand us. "My supper's been ready for an hour now!"

  Madame Guilbert would then appear on her own porch and graciously exclaim, "Dear, dear! Do stay here for supper,
seeing as you're all here anyway."

  For Madame Guilbert, when you yielded her her full rights to superiority and distinction, was a most amiable person. Still, it was difficult to avoid, throughout an entire evening, the subject of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, or to settle once and for all which boy had induced the other to smoke; and the consequence was that often enough we came home from these kindly visits quite out of humor with the Guilberts.

  Such was our situation—getting along together happily enough, I avow—when the unknown quite fantastically entered our lives, and brought with it relationships more difficult, yet how vastly more interesting!

  II

  Neither family in those days was well off; there were times when sheer necessity made us keenly aware of its harsh grasp, and my mother had acquired the habit of saying, "We must make our minds up to rent a room. The house is so large we'll scarcely notice it." My mother, however, began to be fearful of the shady character or the humble workingman who would appear every evening and come into our home filthy from his toil.

  Whenever she spoke of this, she seemed so obviously to feel Madame Guilbert's disapproval weighing upon her that we all laughed a little at Maman; for, on other occasions, she was well able to hold her head high and announce that, "as for her, her conscience was clear . . ." or that "she didn't care a fig for what others might say "

  Her lodger was becoming more and more of an ideal being. The fellow must go to bed early, never touch hard liquor, be quiet, neither too young nor too old . . . and if possible be distinguished.

  So often had she heard that adjective on Madame Guilbert's lips that my mother had no use for it, but she strove all the same to twist its meaning toward what to her constituted true distinction. Yet where would one find this exemplary being who would give us money and not cause us the least trifling annoyance—who, to suit Maman's taste, would be at once invisible and distinguished?