Unlikely Paradise: The Life of Frances Gage

UNLIKELY PARADISE

UNLIKELY PARADISE

The Life of

FRANCES GAGE

ALAN D. BUTCHER

DUNDURN PRESS

TORONTO

Copyright © Alan D. Butcher, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy Editor: Allison Hirst

Designer: Jennifer Scott

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Butcher, Alan D

Unlikely paradise : the life of Frances Gage / by Alan D. Butcher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55488-423-0

1. Gage, Frances, 1924-. 2. Sculptors--Canada--Biography. I. Title.

NB249.G34B88 2009        730.92        C2009-902454-3

1   2   3   4 5        13   12   11   10   09

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

www.dundurn.com

For Frances

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1    The Artist Goes to Sea

Chapter 2    A Sailor’s Days and Political Nights

Chapter 3    The Fairy Godmother

Chapter 4    The American Dream

Chapter 5    Sous les toits de Paris

Chapter 6    The Happy Heart: Living with Tom Thomson

Chapter 7    The Brightening Flame Flickers

Chapter 8    Paradise and Inferno

Chapter 9    The Magnet of Mammon

Chapter 10  A Kind of Victory

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I WOULD FIRST LIKE TO thank my editor at Dundurn Press, Allison Hirst, without whose keen eye and boundless expertise this book would have been the poorer. Her recommendations and rare common sense made so much difference. In addition, I would particularly like to thank Dorette Carter, curator of the Art Gallery of Northumberland, for her time and the information she provided in what was the first interview for the journey taken in these pages. Marnie Williamson, Frances’s classmate during the years at the former Ontario College of Art, added priceless background colour to those early days. Clare MacKay’s comments proved invaluable, as did those of Malcolm Wardman.

Rebecca Sisler has been Frances’s friend for many years, and her book Passionate Spirits: A History of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts gave me hours of reading enjoyment and, not incidentally, important material for this book.

Repeated proofreading, both by me and by others, has corrected errors and improved many a lazy paragraph. Any that remain are no one’s fault but mine. If I have overlooked a source, I apologize, and assure you your contribution is no less appreciated. There will always be errors and oversights in any manuscript. In such cases I must put myself at the mercy of the court of common sense. In many instances the only readily available source of information was my subject herself. To search out and confirm the correct spelling of a name, a name that occurred only once, might often have taken days, if not weeks. May I plead the obvious? There are just so many hours in a day, so many years in a lifetime. If I still stand accused, then I must shrug and accept guilt.

There has been a recent brouhaha over writers who have lied in the writing of biographies. There seems to be a tendency among some to turn to their lawyers when a memoir or biography calls fabrication fact, when every word is not historically true, when every quote is not word for word as uttered by the persons involved. I have not consciously sought lies to stand as truth but as Francis Bacon told us four hundred years ago, anyone undertaking a work such as the one at hand cannot but meet with many blanks and spaces which he must be forced to fill up out of his own wit and conjecture. I have indeed quoted people as having said this or that as much as half a century ago, and no, I cannot prove their remarks are correct and verbatim. Fifty years is a long time, and those who may have supposedly expressed those views are no longer with us to refute, modify, or confirm them. For literary purposes, I have quoted them; quotes, other than those attributed to Frances, are, in most instances, inventions. But all these quotes reflect what the characters might easily have said under the circumstances, in words I feel could have been theirs, expressing intentions or beliefs they probably would have held. In many instances I have fabricated remarks by Frances herself that were never recorded or uttered by her, but these, too, express what I believe she could have said, given the feelings and views expressed in her volumes of correspondence and a half-century of daily records. If you feel I’m wrong in doing this, you are entitled to your opinion, and like Voltaire, I will defend to the death your right to express it.

I have assiduously tried to avoid libel in my own statements and those attributed to others. At one point Frances referred to a confrere as a prick. Ever on the lookout for offensive material, I deleted it. However, I am dealing with the life of a human being, with all that implies; an offensive word or phrase may have slipped through the cracks, or indeed I may have used it because I felt it was apropos. If a reader gasps with outrage, I recommend revisiting the offensive material; I think you will find, on reflection, I am justified.

The cold January wind sweeps down the darkened alley. At the alley’s end, a young woman stands in the doorway of a dilapidated shack. Inside the shack the temperature is below zero, the stove doesn’t work, there is no plumbing, a single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, and she barely has a chair to sit on. She has little money and no prospect of earning more. The future is unknown.

She is the happiest woman in the world.

PROLOGUE

THE WOMAN STANDS IN THE doorway of her squalid shack. Already she thinks of it as hers though she took possession only the week before. She will remember that day forever: January 21, 1957.

In front of her, across the patch of overgrown ground, is the three-storey bulk of the Studio Building, built in Toronto more than forty years before by the wealthy painter Lawren Harris for his artist friends, many of whom would later form the famous Group of Seven. The shack had been a tool shed used by the workers during the construction of the building.

Now, standing in the doorway, looking north as the late afternoon shadows creep up the wall of the Studio Building, she shivers. The cold January wind reminds her that February is yet to come, and the shack will grow even colder. The small stove will fight the plain wooden uninsulated walls — and lose. Today it had already taken six hours to coax from it a tenuous Scrooge-like heat that allowed her to remove just one of the many layers of clothing she wore.

But the previous evening, despite the fact that she could see her breath in the arctic air of the shack, she had curled up beside the stove and read a book with deep pleasure. The light from the single bulb had illuminated the paintings of the Group of Seven that hung on the walls, looking down upon her, and she had been happy.

But now, casting her eyes back to the interior of the shack and seeing there the meagre signs of a sculptor’s studio, she feels a pang of something deeper than mere concern, rather a real fear of … what? Disaster? No, not yet. Still … on the work table there is the model of the small owl. Pretty little thing; it’ll be lovely when cast. Yes … the pang of concern again. When cast. And where, she thought, do I get the money for that casting? It’s cast or eat. Okay, not quite as bad as that — yet. She sighs, a sigh that carries an edge of exasperation. There must be thousands, well, hundreds of people in Toronto, in Canada, who would benefit from my work, my talent. I’ve learned the skills given me by some of the finest sculptors in the world, and my own talents are there, right there in these hands. Isn’t that enough? Is it? Have all those years of study been for nothing? The years here in the Ontario College of Art? The years studying in New York, in Paris? All those years? My whole life?

She turns and goes inside, her mind tormented by the shadows of an uncertain future, and the shades of an often unsatisfying past.

1

THE ARTIST GOES TO SEA

FRANCES HOLDS UP AN OLD photograph. It’s small, black and white; the product of a Kodak box camera of the twenties. A child — a baby really — stares out. The rumpled dress, the frills and ribbons, suggest a girl. She looks dishevelled; the clothes seem never to have seen an iron. She appears unhappy, and twists uncomfortably in her grown-up chair. She stares out, a cornered animal.

Frances frowns at the photo. I’ve got a funny expression on my face. Father had spanked me because I wouldn’t sit still. Her voice takes on a tone of mock outrage. Thanks a lot! She tosses the photo on the table. I think I was a year old, maybe. Hard to tell.

She was born Frances Marie Gage in Windsor, Ontario, on August 22, 1924, the third of four children of Russell Gage (no middle name) and Jean Mildred Collver.

Frances had a brother and two sisters. Robert was the first-born, followed by Marion, Frances, and Barbara. Both Robert and Barbara would eventually fall victim to alcohol dependency. Frances believed that not only genetics led Barbara to alcohol, but that her father’s unrelenting attitude, almost of dislike, of constant rejection, was to a great degree responsible.

Marion, on the other hand, was the good little girl, and smart enough to realize that if she sat in the corner and did nothing, she was treated all right, most of the time.

Frances, unfortunately for her, was the adventurous one, the one who got into all the scrapes and ended up on the short end of her father’s exasperation with children in general, and Frances in particular.

Frances’s cousin Keith Collver was her lifelong friend. In her early years they got into trouble together, regularly. One day her brother had returned home with his pockets full of apples, but like big brothers everywhere, he wouldn’t give her any. If you want some, go and get them yourself, he had said. So she and Keith went off along the highway, two little world travellers, three or four years old, in search of apples. Fortunately word got around, and the adventurers were met along the road by their mothers — with switches. Back home the pair were denied supper and put to bed on bread and milk, which Frances thought was very nice, actually.

Years later, Keith Collver survived the experimental Dieppe raid of the Second World War that was mounted in August 1942, during which 6,000 Allied troops — 5,000 of whom were Canadians — landed and suffered losses of 70 percent killed or captured. Keith Collver died in his sixties of bone cancer. Frances never ceased to mourn him.

All her life Frances was drawn to music. Wherever she lived, from basement rooms and cold-water walk-ups, to homes and studios she designed herself, there was always classical music playing softly in the background. Recordings and CBC Radio shared every hour of her life. She travelled widely in Europe, and recitals, symphonies, and musical stage performances were part of every trip. She played the violin in orchestras. She had a fine voice and sang in choirs in New York and Paris as well as Toronto. As a child she sang in the family car during the roadtrips they took together. Her father had a pretty good bass, and her mother a fine contralto. Her brother Bob used to complain that Frances wandered in and out of his tenor parts, but she kept harmonizing, if harmonizing is the right term, regardless of his baseless objections.

Like most children, Frances loved every animal, then and forever. Again, like every child, she once brought home a cat. Her father, however, wasn’t having any of that. They had a dirt cellar, and the family wasn’t about to see a stray cat use the cellar as its litter box. Her parents really didn’t like animals that much anyway. Frances was thus faced with one of the first big decisions in her life. She couldn’t just throw the cat away; it would probably come back, and her parents would punish her for having deliberately engineered it. So, rather than call the affair a complete loss, she sold the cat to a passerby for a nickel. Hey, a nickel was a lot of money back then. She was now a young titan of the business world. But in those early days, Big Business didn’t play an enduring role in her life; within a day or two she would drag home another cat or dog, hoping against all odds to be able to keep this one. When she eventually took control of her own life she was never without a dog and at least one cat, an unbroken series of heartwarming companions down all the years. But in those early days, within her family, her love of animals was a lonely passion.

Her father was five-foot-six, a stocky and powerfully built man. His hair, which he retained until late in life, was blond; all his children were blond. In appearance, Frances took after him; there was never a question of whose child she was. He was a determined, no-nonsense individual, firm in his opinions. As the only male child he had been spoiled by three sisters and became, as a result, unwaveringly self-centred. He was always right, never wrong. He expressed himself bluntly, and did not seem concerned if he offended. Once, when introduced to Russell Gage, a new acquaintance remarked, in the way one parent will with another, Ah, yes, you belong to Frances. Russell Gage was not the man to let that pass. No, he said, "Frances belongs to me."

When her father was angry he would go out to the barn and beat the horses. This was incomprehensible to Frances. But, she said, when you’re angry you take it out on whatever you’ve got, and he took it out on us, as well, when he was frustrated. This behaviour coloured her life. She could never forgive, or forget, such treatment of an animal.

Her brother Robert, though treated as severely as his three sisters, was nevertheless the first-born, The Male. He was the second coming of Christ, said Frances. He had the Gage name, she added with a cold smile. Tragically, Robert’s only son was killed in a car accident at the age of twenty-seven. So the name is gone, said Frances. Then her voice rose. But I’ve still got it!

Her paternal grandparents were farmers, and had attempted to raise her father to be a farmer, too. He had no education, other than the basic elementary grade school, but through his own diligence he had rejected farming and become a self-taught engineer. Today, the idea of a self-taught engineer is akin to being a self-taught brain surgeon, but in turn-of-the-century communities it was possible to be self-taught in areas that would be unthinkable now.

Shortly after Frances’s birth, he lost his business. He’d had an automobile franchise in partnership with another man. The partner withdrew, taking half the company’s funds, and the business collapsed. But Russell Gage was ambitious. He would never be without a job, even during the Depression, and after losing the car dealership, he joined the Ford Motor Company, starting right at the bottom. Later he moved to General Motors and rose to mid-management level as an engineer.

Frances’s mother was very Irish: rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes, curly hair. Her disposition was gentle, most of the time, but she could suddenly blow up. If you were smart you learned to recognize the signs. She was a fraction of an inch taller than her husband, and somewhat portly. Her nose had a distinct aquiline cast — the Celtic beak, as Frances called it. She was a good cook, a characteristic that Frances did not inherit. Her major failing was a lack of self-confidence, again not inherited by Frances, who, despite her many claims to the contrary, never lacked conviction. Her mother’s want of self-assurance was not helped by her husband’s often blunt assessments. Once, when she remarked, with reference to her cooking methods, that she made up a lot out of her own mind, her husband snorted derisively. Can’t be much left, then, can there? In assessing her mother, Frances said: She was just an unhappy woman who spent all her time looking after four kids.

Frances’s feelings for her father were reflected in her relations with her paternal grandmother. She did not get along well with Grandma Gage. Once when Frances was a child she had a penny — one of the big pennies that were current in the twenties. She was playing in front of a store, considering how she might invest the penny in some candy, when it accidentally fell from her pocket and a tough kid put his foot on it and wouldn’t give it back. She rushed to her Grandma and cried Help! He won’t give me my penny! Grandma Gage coldly turned her back. You have to fight your own battles, she said. Frances mourned the loss of her penny and also felt a burning resentment toward her grandma; she had reached out for help and been rejected. In the end, Frances accepted the fact. She was right. I had to fight my own battles.

Frances claimed that she ran away from home when she was eight or nine years old. It was actually a visit to nearby cousins but, for a little girl, running away is much more exciting than visiting. Anyone can visit; it takes guts to run away.

Frances had cousins who lived on a farm in Ancaster, Ontario, just west of Hamilton. In Frances’s eyes the farm was a paradise of horses, cows, ducks, and pets. She loved it. So one day she decided to visit them … and walked. Of course, it took her most of the day because she inevitably met a friendly dog, and studied the petals of a flower, and watched an ant as it hurried along a dirt path; so many important and interesting things. When she neared Ancaster, she spoke to people at various garages and on the street, or homeowners standing in their driveways, and asked where Charlie Gage lived. Ultimately she arrived at the Gage farm.

Why, hello, Frances! said Charlie. He looked around. Where are your parents?

In Hamilton. Frances was busy looking for the horses.

Charlie was puzzled. How did you get here?

Walked.

The Gages were horrified, and immediately telephoned the Hamilton Gages. Uh-oh, thought Frances, now I’m in for it. But my father didn’t say a word. I was gone all day and they hadn’t even missed me. That’s how treasured I was. Walked all the way, she added with a certain pride.

Uncle Charlie and his wife had two children whom they cherished, a closeness that did not go unremarked by the adventurer from Hamilton. This is a sappy kind of family, she thought. They hug each other. But this sappy family also had equally beloved animals, and this was something Frances could understand. I remember when they buried their old horse. They got a big shovel pulled by another horse — a sort of horse-powered backhoe — and they ceremoniously buried the old horse behind the barn, because they loved him so much. They were my kind of people.

Frances’s love of animals was firm, enthusiastic, and openly expressed. Beneath the surface, however, there simmered another drive, unrecognized, unformed, but present. And it was growing.

Rebecca Sisler, author of Passionate Spirits: A History of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, 1880–1980, says that artists spring from every background, and that virtually all exhibit an interest in art from their earliest years. They do not appear to make a conscious choice of art over another profession. They gravitate to art unconsciously, as they would to breathing.

Recognition first came to Frances Gage in the summer of 1932, at the age of eight. On that summer day, Frances was sitting on her front porch working on a mud sculpture. In her critical eye it had a certain merit. When Mr. O’Connor, a neighbour, passed by, his interest was caught by the work-in-progress.

That sculpture, he said — and the words may have changed the girl’s life — is very good.

Mr. O’Connor took the little sculpture to Sovereign Potteries in Hamilton, where they fired it. But there are times when nothing goes right, and this was one of those times. The clay Frances had used was dirty clay from the nearby creek and it exploded in the company’s oven.

But perhaps Mr. O’Connor’s sharp eye had seen something in the young sculptor that no one else had seen; maybe he had looked into a little heart and seen what might yet be. Or maybe he was just a nice man who was touched by the expression of loss on the girl’s face when he told her of the accident. A few days later, he arrived on Frances’s doorstep with a small package of Sovereign Potteries’ clay. The real thing! She was beyond words. This was the purest clay, used for fine porcelain.

Mr. O’Connor’s considerate gesture made a profound impression on the girl. I did some marvellous things with that clay, said Frances.

Her father threw them in the furnace.

One of them was a horse’s head, Frances said. "I was very fond of horses. It was one of the things my father threw in the furnace. I found it when I was cleaning out the clinkers. That was one of my chores, sifting the ashes to retrieve unburned coal.

My mother used to say ‘Everything you do is so messy!’ My parents were brought up in farming communities where everything had to be tidy and have a reason. No one would ever sit down and do anything that lacked a purpose because there was always something constructive to do. You shelled peas or knitted something for the baby or tilled your soil. Because of my family’s background, it was a surprise to them that I would do something as ‘silly’ as become an artist. But I did it.

Both of Frances’s grandmothers may have provided a genetic artistic background. Her father’s mother had wanted to be a painter but in those days farmers’ wives didn’t do what they wanted, they did what the farm, and their husbands, demanded. However, her husband died young, and she took up painting. Her work showed a certain facility, and with professional training she might easily have produced some noteworthy canvases. Frances’s grandmother on her mother’s side took the literary route, writing poetry. She wrote of her desire to walk in the woods instead of immersing herself in the unending work of the house, animals, and children.

Away from the fly-sweep, an hour let it rest,

the woods are calling me.

While memory fails where the flies are a pest,

the woods are calling me.

How could I live in the great busy town,

‘thout the breath of the wildwood and leaves fluttering down,

The great trees might miss me if I wasn’t around,

the woods are calling me.¹

From early days in Hamilton the family moved to Oshawa. Here Frances attended King Street School and ultimately the Oshawa Collegiate and Vocational Institute, where her growing artistic talents were recognized and encouraged by her art teacher, Dorothy Van Luven. Frances graduated from Oshawa Collegiate in 1944, and won the award for Most Outstanding Girl of the School.

Friends indirectly fostered Frances’s own artistic inclination. Una Brown Noble, a neighbour and a painter, became a great friend. For two summers, in 1934 and 1935, she took Frances to Algonquin Park, the beautiful nature reserve 145 kilometres north of Oshawa, Ontario. "I don’t know why anybody would want to be bothered by a