{"id":119,"date":"2021-07-05T12:23:09","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T16:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/thebookofsmall\/?post_type=chapter&p=119"},"modified":"2022-02-02T10:20:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T15:20:17","slug":"characters","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/chapter\/characters\/","title":{"raw":"Characters","rendered":"Characters"},"content":{"raw":"Strange characters came to little Victoria. It seemed as if people who could not fit in anywhere else arrived here sooner or later till Victoria poked, bulged and hollowed over queer shapes of strange people, as a snake, swallowing its food whole, looks lumpy during digestion. Victoria had some hard lumps to digest.\r\n\r\nSometimes they came, hurried by a firm push from behind given by relatives in the Old Country, around whose necks they had hung too heavily for many years, and who said, \u201cNow that travel is so easy, why not, dear? . . . Door to door without a stop! . . . Such an adventure! Victoria is a crown colony, not Canadian\u2014try it, darling!\u201d So the \u201cdarlings\u201d whose lives from birth had been humdrum, especially since the rest of the family had married and left the old home to them and nothing for its upkeep, nibbled at the thought, grabbed for the word \u201cadventure\u201d, sold up and sailed. Relatives saw them off, calling them \u201cold sports\u201d, begging them to write\u2014they, who had never had anything to write about in their whole lives were now launched proudly into adventure.\r\n\r\nSometimes it was a bachelor brother and spinster sister of the glued-together type of family remnants.\r\n\r\nAfter the whistle shrieked every mile of water washed the old land away fainter and fainter and hurried them into the unknown. They began to ache\u2014such vast quantities of water! Such vast quantities of land! The ache grew and grew. By and by they saw the western forests and the little town of Victoria drowned in silent loneliness; there was then no describing how they felt. They rented uncomfortable, mean little cottages or shacks and did with incompetent hands what well-trained Old Country servants had all their lives done for them. Too late! Turning back was impossible; the old home was sold, its price already seeping away too fast. There were many of these sad people in Victoria, shuddering when they saw a Western funeral, thinking of the cosiness of Old Country churchyards.\r\n\r\nThere were maiden aunts, who had attached themselves to the family circle of a married brother and who undertook the diction and deportment of his children, bitterly regretting the decision of Brother to migrate to Canada, but never for one moment faltering in their duty to Brother\u2019s family, standing between his children and colonialism. The Maiden Aunts swallowed their crosses with a difficult gulp. Auntie\u2019s job was discounted in the New World; Canadian-born children soon rebelled at her tyranny. She sank into a wilted, homesick derelict, sniffling by the fireside while the mother learned more or less to work with her own hands, so that she could instruct what Auntie called her \u201cheathen help\u201d in kitchen low art. Auntie herself refused to acknowledge base presences such as cook-stoves and wash-tubs.\r\n\r\nIn our family there were no maiden aunts. Our delicate little Mother had six living children and three dead ones and, with the help of her older daughters and the Chinese boy, Bong, we managed very comfortably without aunts. Many a useless servant-dependent woman from the Old Country was shown by my mother how to use her own hands and her own brain in her Canadian home with no other help than green Chinese boys.\r\n\r\nIn Toronto Street over James\u2019 Bay way there lived a most astonishing family, consisting of two brothers, Fat O\u2019Flahty and Lean O\u2019Flahty and a sister, Miss O\u2019Flahty. All were above middle age. They built a shanty entirely of driftwood which they gathered and hauled from the beach. They might be seen any hour of the day or night trundling logs home on a wheel-barrow, taking long rests on its handle while they smoked a pipe. The brothers never sawed the driftwood but used it any length, just as it came out of the sea\u2014mostly longish, round tree trunks rubbed smooth by rocks and sea on their long swims, where from no one knew.\r\n\r\nThe O\u2019Flahty\u2019s house looked like a bonfire heaped ready for lighting. The only place where the wood of the entire shanty was half-way level was at the ground and even there it was bumpy. The up ends of all the logs higgledy-piggledied into the sky, some logs long, some short. The door was made of derelict planks gathered on the beach, too, and the roof was of anything at all\u2014mostly of tin cans. It had a stovepipe sticking through the top. The fence round the O\u2019Flahty\u2019s small piece of ground was built to match the house.\r\n\r\nThe O\u2019Flahtys had lived in this strange house for some years when Mother heard that Miss O\u2019Flahty was very ill. She sent us post haste down, with some soup. We knocked on the gate which was padlocked. Fat O\u2019Flahty came and let us in. We walked on a plank up to the door which was also padlocked.\r\n\r\n\u201cShe\u2019s bad,\u201d he said and led the way into the shanty.\r\n\r\nIt was nearly dark and very smoky. In the centre of the one room stood a jumble of drift logs standing upright to make a little room. Fat O\u2019Flahty moved two logs aside and, when we were accustomed to the dark, we saw a white patch lying in the corner. It was Miss O\u2019Flahty\u2019s face. Her bed was made of logs too. It was built on the floor and had no legs. There was no space for us to step inside Miss O\u2019Flahty\u2019s bedroom. There was scarcely room for even our looks to squeeze in.\r\n\r\nFat O\u2019Flahty behind my sister said, \u201cDoes she look awful sick?\u201d and Lean O\u2019Flahty, peering behind Fat with some of the soup in a tin cup, said also, \u201cDoes she seem turrible bad?\u201d Their voices were frightened. Lean O\u2019Flahty held the tin cup of soup towards the sick woman. The dim patch of white face in the corner shook a feeble \u201cNo.\u201d The brothers groaned.\r\n\r\nMiss O\u2019Flahty died. Lean and Fat had her embalmed and put her into a handsome casket. She rode to the Outer Wharf in the same wheel-barrow which had lugged their building wood from the beach. The brothers trundled it. We were down at the Outer Wharf, seeing Auntie away by the San Francisco boat. \u201cOuch! It\u2019s a coffin!\u201d squealed Auntie as her cloak brushed it. Fat and Lean O\u2019Flahty were sitting one on either handle of the barrow, crying. When all were aboard, the brothers, each with a fist in his eye and with loud sniffs, wheeled the coffin down between decks and the O\u2019Flahty family disappeared. Next time we passed down Toronto Street their crazy house was gone too.\r\n\r\nAnother human derelict was Elizabeth Pickering\u2014she wore a bright red shawl and roamed the streets of Victoria, intoxicated most of the time. Occasionally she sobered briefly and went to the kindly Bishop to ask help. The Bishop handed her over to his maiden sister who specialized in correction. Elizabeth would settle herself comfortably, drawing a chair to the fire to toast her toes and doze till she became thirsty again. Then, with a great yawn, she would reach for the little packages the Bishop\u2019s wife had put near her on the table. Regardless of whether Aunt Cridge had finished her lecture on drink or not she would rise with a sympathetic, \u201cFeelin\u2019 yer rheumatics today, baint ye, pore soul? Me and you suffers the same\u2014its crool!\u201d\r\n\r\nOld Teenie was another familiar figure of our school days. Teenie was half-negro\u2014half crazy. Her hut was on Fort Street in the centre of a rough field and lay a little below street level. Boys used to throw stones onto her tin roof and then run away. Out came old Teenie, buzzing mad as a whole nest of wasps. Muttered awfulnesses came from her great padded bonnet. It shook, her tatters shook, so did wisps of grey hair and old Teenie\u2019s pair of tiny black fists.\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t know who looked after Teenie. She scoured with stick and sack the ditches and empty lots, putting oddments into her sack, shaking her stick at everyone, muttering, always muttering.\r\n\r\nNobody questioned where these derelicts came from. They were taken as much for granted as the skunk-cabbages in our swamps.\r\n\r\nVictoria\u2019s queer people were not all poor, either\u2014there were doddering old gentlemen. I can remember them driving about Victoria in their little buggies\u2014the fatter the man, the smaller the buggy! They had old nursemaid horses who trundled them as faithfully as any mammy does her baby in its pram. Every day, wet or fine, the horses aired their old men on Dallas Road. Knowing that their charges slept through the entire outing, the faithful creatures never moved from the middle of the road nor changed from a slow walk. The public also knew by the lolling heads and slack reins that the old men slept and gave their buggies right of way. Street traffic was not heavy, time no object. Chaises, gentlemen\u2019s high dog-carts passed the nursemaid horses briskly. The dog-carts paused at road-house bars and again overtook the patient plodding horses who walked their charges to a certain tree on Foul Bay Road, circled it and strolled home again just as the old men\u2019s Chinese cooks put their dinner on the table. The old horses were punctual to the dot.\r\n\r\nOne of these old men was very fond of children. When he met us, if he happened to be awake, he pulled up with a wheezy \u201cWhoa\u201d, meant both for us and for his horse. Taking a screw of paper from his pocket he bent over the wheel and gave us each a lollipop and a smile. He was so ugly that we were afraid, but Mother, who knew who he was told us he loved children and that it was all right. If, however, we saw his buggy coming in time we hid until it was past; he was such a very ugly old man!\r\n\r\nA family we knew had one of those \u201cPapa\u2019s-sister\u201d Aunts who took it upon herself to be a corrector of manners not only for her own nieces but for young Canadians in general. In fact she aspired to introduce elegance into the Far West. This elegant and energetic lady walked across Beacon Hill at seven-thirty on fine summer mornings, arriving at our house in time for family prayers and breakfast. In spite of her erect carriage she could flop to her knees to pray as smart as any of us. That over, she kissed us all round, holding each at arm\u2019s length and with popping, piercing eyes, criticized our tooth-brushing, our hair ribbons, our finger nails, recommended that we eat more porridge or less, told Mother to give us no raw fruit at all, always to stew it, no stone fruit at all, no candy, told us never to ask for second helps, but wait to be invited, had us do a little English pronouncing, then, having made us late, said, \u201cHurry! hurry! Lateness is unpardonable, dears! Ladies are never late.\u201d\r\n\r\nThen there were Brother Charlie and Sister Tilly, evidently sworn each to see other into the grave. This pair minced up Birdcage Walk like elderly fowls, holding their heads each a little to one side\u2014Charlie so that Tilly\u2019s lips could reach his deaf ear, Tilly so that she might direct her shriek straight into Charlie\u2019s drum. The harder she shrieked the higher she squeaked. Charlie, on the other hand, was far too gentlemanly to speak in public places above a whisper which he could not hear himself, so he felt it safest always to say \u201cYes, yes, dear Tilly\u201d or \u201cExactly so, Tilly dear\u201d when he should often have said, \u201cNo, Tilly, certainly not!\u201d\r\n\r\nBrother and sister whispered and squeaked up Birdcage Walk where they lived. They hopped up the two steps to the inset door of their cottage and cooed themselves in.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes, yes, dear Tilly, yes!\u201d","rendered":"

Strange characters came to little Victoria. It seemed as if people who could not fit in anywhere else arrived here sooner or later till Victoria poked, bulged and hollowed over queer shapes of strange people, as a snake, swallowing its food whole, looks lumpy during digestion. Victoria had some hard lumps to digest.<\/p>\n

Sometimes they came, hurried by a firm push from behind given by relatives in the Old Country, around whose necks they had hung too heavily for many years, and who said, \u201cNow that travel is so easy, why not, dear? . . . Door to door without a stop! . . . Such an adventure! Victoria is a crown colony, not Canadian\u2014try it, darling!\u201d So the \u201cdarlings\u201d whose lives from birth had been humdrum, especially since the rest of the family had married and left the old home to them and nothing for its upkeep, nibbled at the thought, grabbed for the word \u201cadventure\u201d, sold up and sailed. Relatives saw them off, calling them \u201cold sports\u201d, begging them to write\u2014they, who had never had anything to write about in their whole lives were now launched proudly into adventure.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it was a bachelor brother and spinster sister of the glued-together type of family remnants.<\/p>\n

After the whistle shrieked every mile of water washed the old land away fainter and fainter and hurried them into the unknown. They began to ache\u2014such vast quantities of water! Such vast quantities of land! The ache grew and grew. By and by they saw the western forests and the little town of Victoria drowned in silent loneliness; there was then no describing how they felt. They rented uncomfortable, mean little cottages or shacks and did with incompetent hands what well-trained Old Country servants had all their lives done for them. Too late! Turning back was impossible; the old home was sold, its price already seeping away too fast. There were many of these sad people in Victoria, shuddering when they saw a Western funeral, thinking of the cosiness of Old Country churchyards.<\/p>\n

There were maiden aunts, who had attached themselves to the family circle of a married brother and who undertook the diction and deportment of his children, bitterly regretting the decision of Brother to migrate to Canada, but never for one moment faltering in their duty to Brother\u2019s family, standing between his children and colonialism. The Maiden Aunts swallowed their crosses with a difficult gulp. Auntie\u2019s job was discounted in the New World; Canadian-born children soon rebelled at her tyranny. She sank into a wilted, homesick derelict, sniffling by the fireside while the mother learned more or less to work with her own hands, so that she could instruct what Auntie called her \u201cheathen help\u201d in kitchen low art. Auntie herself refused to acknowledge base presences such as cook-stoves and wash-tubs.<\/p>\n

In our family there were no maiden aunts. Our delicate little Mother had six living children and three dead ones and, with the help of her older daughters and the Chinese boy, Bong, we managed very comfortably without aunts. Many a useless servant-dependent woman from the Old Country was shown by my mother how to use her own hands and her own brain in her Canadian home with no other help than green Chinese boys.<\/p>\n

In Toronto Street over James\u2019 Bay way there lived a most astonishing family, consisting of two brothers, Fat O\u2019Flahty and Lean O\u2019Flahty and a sister, Miss O\u2019Flahty. All were above middle age. They built a shanty entirely of driftwood which they gathered and hauled from the beach. They might be seen any hour of the day or night trundling logs home on a wheel-barrow, taking long rests on its handle while they smoked a pipe. The brothers never sawed the driftwood but used it any length, just as it came out of the sea\u2014mostly longish, round tree trunks rubbed smooth by rocks and sea on their long swims, where from no one knew.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019Flahty\u2019s house looked like a bonfire heaped ready for lighting. The only place where the wood of the entire shanty was half-way level was at the ground and even there it was bumpy. The up ends of all the logs higgledy-piggledied into the sky, some logs long, some short. The door was made of derelict planks gathered on the beach, too, and the roof was of anything at all\u2014mostly of tin cans. It had a stovepipe sticking through the top. The fence round the O\u2019Flahty\u2019s small piece of ground was built to match the house.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019Flahtys had lived in this strange house for some years when Mother heard that Miss O\u2019Flahty was very ill. She sent us post haste down, with some soup. We knocked on the gate which was padlocked. Fat O\u2019Flahty came and let us in. We walked on a plank up to the door which was also padlocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s bad,\u201d he said and led the way into the shanty.<\/p>\n

It was nearly dark and very smoky. In the centre of the one room stood a jumble of drift logs standing upright to make a little room. Fat O\u2019Flahty moved two logs aside and, when we were accustomed to the dark, we saw a white patch lying in the corner. It was Miss O\u2019Flahty\u2019s face. Her bed was made of logs too. It was built on the floor and had no legs. There was no space for us to step inside Miss O\u2019Flahty\u2019s bedroom. There was scarcely room for even our looks to squeeze in.<\/p>\n

Fat O\u2019Flahty behind my sister said, \u201cDoes she look awful sick?\u201d and Lean O\u2019Flahty, peering behind Fat with some of the soup in a tin cup, said also, \u201cDoes she seem turrible bad?\u201d Their voices were frightened. Lean O\u2019Flahty held the tin cup of soup towards the sick woman. The dim patch of white face in the corner shook a feeble \u201cNo.\u201d The brothers groaned.<\/p>\n

Miss O\u2019Flahty died. Lean and Fat had her embalmed and put her into a handsome casket. She rode to the Outer Wharf in the same wheel-barrow which had lugged their building wood from the beach. The brothers trundled it. We were down at the Outer Wharf, seeing Auntie away by the San Francisco boat. \u201cOuch! It\u2019s a coffin!\u201d squealed Auntie as her cloak brushed it. Fat and Lean O\u2019Flahty were sitting one on either handle of the barrow, crying. When all were aboard, the brothers, each with a fist in his eye and with loud sniffs, wheeled the coffin down between decks and the O\u2019Flahty family disappeared. Next time we passed down Toronto Street their crazy house was gone too.<\/p>\n

Another human derelict was Elizabeth Pickering\u2014she wore a bright red shawl and roamed the streets of Victoria, intoxicated most of the time. Occasionally she sobered briefly and went to the kindly Bishop to ask help. The Bishop handed her over to his maiden sister who specialized in correction. Elizabeth would settle herself comfortably, drawing a chair to the fire to toast her toes and doze till she became thirsty again. Then, with a great yawn, she would reach for the little packages the Bishop\u2019s wife had put near her on the table. Regardless of whether Aunt Cridge had finished her lecture on drink or not she would rise with a sympathetic, \u201cFeelin\u2019 yer rheumatics today, baint ye, pore soul? Me and you suffers the same\u2014its crool!\u201d<\/p>\n

Old Teenie was another familiar figure of our school days. Teenie was half-negro\u2014half crazy. Her hut was on Fort Street in the centre of a rough field and lay a little below street level. Boys used to throw stones onto her tin roof and then run away. Out came old Teenie, buzzing mad as a whole nest of wasps. Muttered awfulnesses came from her great padded bonnet. It shook, her tatters shook, so did wisps of grey hair and old Teenie\u2019s pair of tiny black fists.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know who looked after Teenie. She scoured with stick and sack the ditches and empty lots, putting oddments into her sack, shaking her stick at everyone, muttering, always muttering.<\/p>\n

Nobody questioned where these derelicts came from. They were taken as much for granted as the skunk-cabbages in our swamps.<\/p>\n

Victoria\u2019s queer people were not all poor, either\u2014there were doddering old gentlemen. I can remember them driving about Victoria in their little buggies\u2014the fatter the man, the smaller the buggy! They had old nursemaid horses who trundled them as faithfully as any mammy does her baby in its pram. Every day, wet or fine, the horses aired their old men on Dallas Road. Knowing that their charges slept through the entire outing, the faithful creatures never moved from the middle of the road nor changed from a slow walk. The public also knew by the lolling heads and slack reins that the old men slept and gave their buggies right of way. Street traffic was not heavy, time no object. Chaises, gentlemen\u2019s high dog-carts passed the nursemaid horses briskly. The dog-carts paused at road-house bars and again overtook the patient plodding horses who walked their charges to a certain tree on Foul Bay Road, circled it and strolled home again just as the old men\u2019s Chinese cooks put their dinner on the table. The old horses were punctual to the dot.<\/p>\n

One of these old men was very fond of children. When he met us, if he happened to be awake, he pulled up with a wheezy \u201cWhoa\u201d, meant both for us and for his horse. Taking a screw of paper from his pocket he bent over the wheel and gave us each a lollipop and a smile. He was so ugly that we were afraid, but Mother, who knew who he was told us he loved children and that it was all right. If, however, we saw his buggy coming in time we hid until it was past; he was such a very ugly old man!<\/p>\n

A family we knew had one of those \u201cPapa\u2019s-sister\u201d Aunts who took it upon herself to be a corrector of manners not only for her own nieces but for young Canadians in general. In fact she aspired to introduce elegance into the Far West. This elegant and energetic lady walked across Beacon Hill at seven-thirty on fine summer mornings, arriving at our house in time for family prayers and breakfast. In spite of her erect carriage she could flop to her knees to pray as smart as any of us. That over, she kissed us all round, holding each at arm\u2019s length and with popping, piercing eyes, criticized our tooth-brushing, our hair ribbons, our finger nails, recommended that we eat more porridge or less, told Mother to give us no raw fruit at all, always to stew it, no stone fruit at all, no candy, told us never to ask for second helps, but wait to be invited, had us do a little English pronouncing, then, having made us late, said, \u201cHurry! hurry! Lateness is unpardonable, dears! Ladies are never late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there were Brother Charlie and Sister Tilly, evidently sworn each to see other into the grave. This pair minced up Birdcage Walk like elderly fowls, holding their heads each a little to one side\u2014Charlie so that Tilly\u2019s lips could reach his deaf ear, Tilly so that she might direct her shriek straight into Charlie\u2019s drum. The harder she shrieked the higher she squeaked. Charlie, on the other hand, was far too gentlemanly to speak in public places above a whisper which he could not hear himself, so he felt it safest always to say \u201cYes, yes, dear Tilly\u201d or \u201cExactly so, Tilly dear\u201d when he should often have said, \u201cNo, Tilly, certainly not!\u201d<\/p>\n

Brother and sister whispered and squeaked up Birdcage Walk where they lived. They hopped up the two steps to the inset door of their cottage and cooed themselves in.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, yes, dear Tilly, yes!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":17,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[47],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-119","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-standard"],"part":85,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/119\/revisions\/120"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/85"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/119\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/thebookofsmall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}