Notes on a Legend
Using materials which have come to light since the publication of his book on John Hornby,[1] the author writes a postscript to bring the subject's image into sharper focus to us.
The Legend of John Hornby was published in London and Toronto in November 1962. Five years had gone to tracing and collecting the necessary materials and in writing the book, but the starting–point was twenty years earlier than that. Ever since my school days I had been interested in polar literature, particularly the literature of the Antarctic, and had gone on reading everything I could find – not only the diaries and narratives, but also the detailed technical and scientific reports brought back by expeditions and the research and investigation that these reports had in turn stimulated. In 1937 I expected to be going to the Antarctic with an expedition to Grahamsland; and it was then that I picked up a copy, when it was first published, of Edgar Christian's diary – the clumsy, reticent, unexpressive, ill-spelt writing of a boy of eighteen who did not survive his first journey into the Barrens of the Eastern Arctic. It was on that journey too that John Hornby, who had travelled and lived in the Arctic on and off for twenty years, finally failed to survive.
Edgar Christian's diary might so easily never have been found. Like Robert Falcon Scott at the point of death near the end of his terrible return journey from the South Pole, Edgar Christian – his two companions dead more than a month – did the only intelligent thing that could conceivably have been done to protect the diary and other papers from being destroyed. Knowing that he would be dead himself within a few hours, he let the fire die out for the last time, and when the stove was cold enough buried the diary and papers in the ashes, and wrote a message on a piece of paper – "Whoever comes here look in stove" – and left the paper on top of the stove. The first people who found the place where the three men had died came a year later but did not see the message; and a year after that, when the police made their journey to investigate, they found the message almost by chance, for everything in the cabin was soaking wet and the writing was almost completely obliterated from the paper left on top of the stove.
What seized my attention at the time and remained vividly in my memory was the kind of experience that the diary implied rather than expressed – a sense of high adventure ineluctably decaying into desolation and perplexity; suffering of the most extreme kind; yet all this transformed by the unwavering confidence that he could survive "to tell the world of the finest man I have ever known." Edgar Christian's experience fused in my imagination with what I knew of Jens Munck, and Borckgrevinck, and Shackleton's open boat voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and Birdie Bowers, Wilson, and Cherry-Garrard on their winter journey in search of penguins' eggs. I tried to catch the quality of Christian's experience in a realistic reconstruction written in 1938 or 1939, but it was not published – or publishable. Not until I set about to prepare a radio programme based on the diary, in 1955, did I begin to realise that it was the "dear Jack" of the diary, not Edgar Christian, who was the central person: tantalizingly elusive and by habit and instinct devious, he was the commanding figure. I tried to find out more about him, but at first there was nothing to be known beyond the diary and the introduction and appendixes published with it. Even there, however, a few clues could be picked up that pointed to other documentary records; and these records, without actually providing much detailed information about Hornby, reinforced my feeling that the introduction to Unflinching – for whatever reason – was thin, often inaccurate, and inadequately based on reliable records. For the broadcast I repaired these defects as best I could, in order to provide an accurate setting for Edgar Christian's diary; and the broadcast had the unexpected result of putting me in touch with George Douglas at Lakefield. Without his help my book could not have been written; from him a number of lines of inquiry spread out, once he had agreed to place his papers at my disposal, and his memory, and the personal knowledge he had of John Hornby, a knowledge deeper and more exactly founded than anybody else's.
If I had been as critically self-conscious as most undergraduates are now forced to be, and as well armed with the fashionable terms and judgements that make a profitable if circular business of journalistic criticism, I should have told myself at once that I was only writing a piece about an "anti-hero" – the Ipcress inversion – and could have done that without making any more detailed inquiries, and could have reached a comfortably portable conclusion, predictably shallow, perhaps, but psychopathologically respectable, and doing no more violence to the subject of inquiry than is usually done to any material that is used as supporting evidence for a foregone conclusion. But I was critically much too naive for that approach: I simply set about to write something that would give the presence and feel of the central figure, and that would give also the feel of the country and what it is like to live there for a long time with slender resources. It was the way of life of a very unheroic, confused, and evasive though likable man, not typical even of himself, a man who stumbled sideways into whatever tenuous immortality his death had accidentally presented him with. Nothing was at stake, nothing planned; nothing lost, except three obscure lives; no motive as positive as curiosity or fascination or affection or ambition drove him. It all just happened; haphazard and yet as horrifyingly inevitable as the stealthy onset of a bad habit. Intrinsically there was not much of interest here. Yet because of my own haunted concern for the subject, I felt sure that it would come to life if only it could be traced in those quotidian and habitual patterns that led along an actual sequence of events in the life to an inevitable conclusion in death. It had to be treated from within; and yet it all had to be handled with the familiarity of a person who has lived that life for a long time and is so accustomed to the setting and the savour of the setting that he moves in it like a blind man moving about a house thoroughly known to him. Yet it must be assumed that he moves among people who are as familiar with the life and the setting as he is and need be told very little because they know so much. The writer must take on the ways of the central figure, wary but well-informed from repeated encounters with a familiar enemy and a familiar ghost, looking upon his world with a steady gaze but no longer with wonder or surprise or delight or fear.
Biography, like any art, is a matter of selection and arrangement; but the biographer is ordered by certain canons of faithfulness, and his selection and arrangement are rigorously limited and shaped by the truth – if he can discern it – by the sheer fact that certain things happened in certain places at certain times and not otherwise. The more patiently the events are reconstructed, the more another more vital order of fact crystallizes – feelings, wishes, memories, forgets, driftings; and these impose further limits. The stern configuration of intractable events is the delight of biographical writing: the more you know, the more intricate the problems of securing free and illuminating movement so that the sequence of events set down becomes a shapely and self-declarative making. One way around the difficulty is to remain ignorant, to put in the shop window what few facts are readily at hand, dress them up in a plausible style, and use a comfortable rhetoric to provide snowbridges over the crevasses. But some people find it difficult to refrain from finding out, and part way is never far enough because honesty and curiosity require that we accept nothing less than all possible evidence. Then we run the risk of paralysis or of getting forced out of the imagined story by the weight of facts that will have it otherwise. And then, if the book were to be a genuinely imaginative construction – a presentation of the life, that is – it must not simply illustrate what was known or assumed from the start: for example, that John Hornby is an anti-hero, and we all know what anti-heroes are, and of course we all know about death-wishes – or at least about other people's death-wishes. It was necessary therefore to withhold judicious comment – the curse of the omniscient – about the only things that matter: if they matter they cannot be fully known or categorically stated; they can only be allowed to come before our attention in their full complexity and in their just simplicity. How that is to be done is another question.
All the time I was collecting the materials and working them up into manageable form (for the quantity of documentary material finally at my disposal was almost ten times the extent of the finished book), I became increasingly – even alarmingly – aware of the sheer technical problems involved in making the book. One was the uneven distribution of material: there was enough material almost to make a whole book out of any one of the last six chapters, yet the first two or three chapters were thinly provided and diligent search did not bring much more to light. Another much more exacting question was how to establish any rhythm when the climaxes did not rise far above the datum level of the other events, and there were no passages of obviously high intensity. Even the final crisis was prolonged and muted; it must not be blurred by a cumulative sense of anticlimax, nor elevated factitiously to a level that neither the actual events nor the circumstances warranted. The solution found itself in the way the detail came to handle itself.
It is commonly supposed either that detailed facts have a special sanctity, so it doesn't much matter how you handle them; or that factual detail is introduction only in order to convey "information." In poetry, however, where accuracy of the highest order is essential, detail of the most exact kind works towards ends far different from those of conveying "information." Poetry often uses a process that, for lack of a better word, I call "naming": many splendid examples of it could easily be pointed out in familiar poems that are often mistakenly said to be "descriptive." There is a way that lovers use detail in their letters, evocatively, rehearsing with liturgical care and reiteration those things seen, felt, touched, with the senses, remembered, that have become brilliant symbols of events and feelings. To tell these over is not merely to share what is already intimately and uniquely known between them, but to establish profound rhythms of recollection and to call back into felt reality moments of heightened recognition and profound feeling. For lovers, the naming of detail is a ritual of delight and nourishment, the delineation with swift vivid strokes of a universe that is peculiarly theirs and nobody else's. (In art of a high order we are sometimes allowed to enter such worlds.) And there is another kind of naming, more muted and incoherent, that is literally, in desolation, a piecing together of a world that threatens to slip away into nothingness – the swift rehearsal of a lifetime in the instant of drowning, the sharp laconic pattern of classical elegy.
An essential feature of naming is that the detail is not informative; rather, that it is already known thoroughly and intimately on both sides. And here, it seemed to me as I looked at what the intimidating mass of detail was forcing the writing to do, was the only possible procedure for this book. There must be a steady and relentless accumulation of detail – facts, names, dates, occurrences – all taken for granted, and nothing much explained or commented on, or as little as possible. The slow, pitiless accumulation of detail, liturgically ordered – like rain falling, or dew, or snow, or the oceanic deposits on the abyssal floor – would establish the rhythm, the tone, the emotional setting, the structural principles, the sense that the events were growing out of the people and yet that their grasp of events and of their implications was variable, inattentive, intermittent, uncertain.
As a method, I am not sure that this was deliberate: in writing, nothing much of virtue comes about through an act of will. I think I discovered what had happened when I had finished. I am not aware that any reviewer or critic has remarked upon the method: it may be that they were deceived – or that I am. These preliminaries are needed, however, to explain why, when there is little prospect of a new edition of The Legend of John Hornby and a chance of making alterations, corrections, and additions, I still find my concern for any new piece of evidence undiminished. Personal reports and records, details to be added or corrected, have come from a number of quarters. There is not space to tell it all: photographs almost every year that trace the gradual dissolution of the cabin on the Thelon River until now it takes a careful and informed search on the ground to find it; a .303 cartridge with its nose chalk-white from being forty years upended in the mud at the bottom of the Thelon outside the cabin letters written more than fifty years ago; transcripts of diary entries; unexpected visits and letters from strangers who witnessed some of the things I had written about or had known some of the people. Most of the key figures are dead now – George Douglas, D'Arcy Arden, Charles Critchell-Bullock, Olwen Rodstrom, Guy Blanchet, Prentice Downes, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Denny LaNauze, Father Michel. In various ways they allowed me to enter into the reality of their lives – most of them, except for Stefansson's, lives almost without record. Therefore the old letters and notes, these casual writings never intended for wider currency, I find precious and evocative, being traces of obscure events lived out long ago day by day in the vividness of their youth.
Some biographies are primarily records of personal achievement; others sketch out the inner life. There is yet another kind (of which I think mine is an example) that recovers the "feel" of an individual life – the figure being chosen almost by accident or through some coincidence of nature – and in doing so pays tribute to the miraculous accident of life and the terrible fragility of hope and the merciless erosion that time can work and the curious integrity that each person holds at the centre of life no matter how aimless or unsatisfactory that life may be. To make a point like that and then go on to support it with proof and illustration would make intolerable reading and would probably miss the life anyway. Hence the liturgical method: for a sacramental delicacy is needed to secure and leave uncorrupted whatever delight or disaster is sanctified by the reality of living.
So I set down here, as a liturgical act and a continuation of the liturgical act that the writing of the book was, a few of the documents that have come to me since The Legend of John Hornby was published. George Douglas would say, "to keep the record straight" – a favourite phrase of his.
* * * * *
1 [Hornby to George Douglas, c 30 Jan 1913: written in ink on very thin paper with a graph watermark. The envelope is printed "The Hudson's Bay Company" and postmarked FORT SMITH FEB [?] 13; it is addressed to Douglas in New York and was redirected to Morenci, Arizona.
George Douglas, his brother Lionel, and August Sandberg had established at Dease Bay on the north shore of Great Bear Lake in the summer of 1911 in order to prospect for copper on the lower Coppermine River. Hornby, who had been on Great Bear Lake since 1908 and at Dease Bay since 1910, first met the Douglas party at Fort Norman on their way in; although he was not a member of their party, he travelled with them to the Arctic coast because of his experience in handling dogs. At the same time as the Douglases, an Oblate priest, Fr. Rouvière, also came to Dease Bay and established there to minister to the Coronation Gulf Eskimo that Hornby and Stefansson had met in the country north of Dease Bay. Douglas and his party left Dease Bay in the summer of 1912 immediately after returning from their Coppermine exploration. Hornby stayed on at Dease Bay. The year 1911–12 on Dease Bay was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between Hornby and George Douglas.
As soon as the Douglases had left, Fr. Rouvière was joined by another Oblate priest, Fr. Leroux. Hornby helped Rouvière build a cabin on what is now called Lac Rouvière (called Dease Lake in this letter) so that the priests could have a meeting place for the Eskimo nearer the Coppermine River and the Arctic coast. Hib Hodgson was known to Hornby because his uncle, a retired Hudson's Bay Company factor, had spent the year 1910–11 at Dease Bay and had offered the Douglases the use of the cabin he had built there.]
Fort Norman
Dear Douglas
I am still living at Dease River. I did not return to Fort Norman in the summer. I got fewer Musk–ox skins than I expected & then most of the Esquimaux did not turn up till very late. I went again to the Coppermine River, the cache in the woods was down but otherwise apparently untouched. Caribou were very plentiful this year & I was able to make a big cache close to Dease Lake (you call it Aping which in Esquimaux only means lake); I put up another shack on Dease Lake. I received no supplies from Fort Norman, but thanks to your kindness I was fairly well fixed for supplies. Though Father Rouvier had plenty & I even lent him the 8. m.m. Mauser rifle (which moreover he now has as if I had given [it to] him) since he promised me 100 lbs of flour & 25 lbs of beans, I had said nothing; but when I wanted flour & beans he said he could not spare them. The Esquimaux get their copper close to where you & Doctor [Sandberg] found the copper but further in the mountains. I was very ill last fall but nevertheless managed to come in for the packet. We have had the coldest winter I have ever experienced in Canada, & fortunately took a tent & stove with me for crossing the lake to Old Fort Franklin. I am returning shortly & after a short rest at Fort Confidence, I shall go again to the sea-coast & hope to be able to return in time to cross the ice in June. Your canoe I am sorry to say I lent to Father Rouvier for a short time & he scraped all the varnish off & broke two ribs & besides not cleaning it left it on the shore of the lake. When I came down I of course went to get it & though not able to clean it as it was in December, have fixed it up as before. Your York–Boat is still in the same place, but mine is at Fort Norman. I am taking back Hodgson's nephew with me. If there is anything I can do for you here, be assured I would do so after all your kindness to me. I intend to see all the places where the Esquimaux got their copper & then could let you know more about it. Next year I suppose I must really go out as I have not been to the Old Country for ever so many years. I enclose a short letter for Dr Sandberg which you [will] kindly forward for me & also you could read before sending. Leo Gaudet wishes to be remembered to you. Hoping you & your Brother are both quite well.
Yrs V. Sincerely
J. Hornby.
2 [Hornby to August Sandberg, c 30 Jan 1913: George Douglas's transcript, the original having been sent to Douglas with Letter 1 to be forwarded to Sandberg.
The Coppermine River is reached from Dease Bay by travelling up the winding Dease River, crossing into the Dismal Lakes, and so into the Kendall River. The journey to the Dismal Lakes is much shorter overland than by canoe. The dogs are well known from Douglas's Lands Forlorn and their pictures can be seen there.]
Fort Norman
Dear Sandberg
I am still living the life of an Indian but hope to be out this year. I came to Norman for the winter packet because I did not receive a single letter or newspaper in the summer; also I have not yet received my summer packet as I passed it on the trail, however am returning and shall get it at Great Bear Lake. I did not get as many Musk Ox skins as I expect[ed] nor were they very good.
We have had a very severe winter, but fortunately we were very lucky in making the crossing to Big Point for though we ran fast, it took us twelve hours. Previous to that we were delayed for one week at Caribou Point and if I had not had a tent and stove it would have been impossible to have stood it.
I have now five dogs, Potash (who got badly frozen), Punch, Jeff, Nigger and a large Husky dog.
I am returning again and shall go as far as the sea coast, but engaged Hodgson's boy to go with me. In the fall I paid a visit to the Windy Camp on the Coppermine River, it again justified its name. I crossed Kendall River, it was deep and dam cold.
Esquimaux did not come in such large numbers as before. I had intended to trap all winter on the Coppermine River and had fortunately made a large cache of caribou on Dease Lake (Aping which means Lake in Esquimax) but unfortunately just as it started to freeze and snow I caught a bad chill and nearly died. I indeed had a hard and miserable time but though I was extremely ill, it did not trouble me as I seemed absolutely indifferent whether I lived or died. I of course returned to Dease River as soon as I possibly [could] do so and then I had to rustle food for five dogs. Now however, I have Hodgson’s nephew returning with me and am taking plenty of supplies.
Wolves have been very bold this year. They killed two Indian dogs. Father Rouvier has dogs, which he flogs unmercifully. Father Rouvier and I came to Fort Norman, while we were encamped at Caribou Point a wolf came in the night and tore at his sleigh, the wolf got away because my dog Nigger was the only one which attacked him and we had no rifle with us.
Hoping you are well.
Yours sincerely,
J. Hornby
3 [Leon Gaudet to George Douglas, 30 Jan 1913; written in ink on a sheet of the same thin graph-watermarked paper as Letter 1.
Hornby always misspelled and mispronounced Fr. Rouvière’s name, but Gaudet has it right. Gaudet was Hudson’s Bay Company factor at Fort Norman.]
Fort Norman
Jan 30th 1913.
Dear Sir.
As you would like to hear from Mr. Hornby by this mail, as he just came in, in time for the mail I told him to write you which I think he did. I think he intends going out this coming summer.
Your York boat is still at the place you left her, & Hornby’s is still here. I dont think he cares to dispose of it. He is returning soon now to the Dease River with Father Rouviere, to return on the last ice here if possible & is taking Hib Hodgson with him this trip, old Mr. Hodgson’s nephew you know. Burbank & Smith are still here below the River trapping.
I told Mr. Hornby about the Bottle of Brandy or Cognac you intended caching in his house for him, as he did not get his permit he was anxious to hunt for it, & I told him you probably forgot to cache it but he insisted that if you had said so you must have done it, but he has not found it yet.
I froze my big toe coming up from Cape Hope to meet the mail so I am an invalid just now so could not help him in the Search. Your Canoe is still in the garrett of our old Provision store awaiting your instructions.
With kindest regards to all & best wishes
Yours Sincerely
J. L. Gaudet
I think you did not write to anybody down here & there is much disappointment in some quarters. J.L.G.
P.S. Please remember me to Lionel and Doctor Sandberg.
4 [Hornby to George Douglas, 17 May 1913: written in pencil on a long narrow sheet of paper torn from a ledger book, being pp 63, 64, and contained within a small roughly torn sheet of ruled paper marked in pencil by Hornby: "G. Douglas Esq 99 John Street New York U.S.A." – and all placed in a covering envelope addressed in another hand. The envelope is postmarked FORT SMITH JU 26 and NEW YORK 9 2 1913. The text of the letter has several inserted and cancelled words, but these are not shown in the transcript.
Hornby wrote to Sandberg at the same time. In a letter of 25 Oct 1913 to Douglas, in which he reports receiving a letter from Hornby, Sandberg writes: "After all we came out of our trip without any hitch. And because everything went so smoothly one may be apt to minimize the danger. You know of course that Radford and his guide [Street] perished, killed it is said by their Eskimo guides. It did not really surprise me. He was not cut out for a traveller in forbidding lands like the barren north." Douglas's party met Radford and Street on their way in in the summer of 1911 (there is a photograph of them in Douglas's Lands Forlorn) and they left a lopstick on Lake Hanbury that Hornby was to see some years later.]
May 17th
Fort Franklin
Dear Douglas
I was very pleased to get a letter from you. Am sorry to hear that you probably will not return. I have just made another trip as far as Fort Franklin & am again returning on the ice & will probably not see the steamer, would do so if you were coming. I did not manage to see the native copper which the Esquimaux talk about. I certainly missed you this winter & if it had not been for what you gave, I should have had nothing in the winter. Father Rouvier arrived with an old rifle & I let him have the rifle you gave me & he promised me one hundred pounds of flour & beans but when in the winter I sent for it he said he could not spare it though he continually gave flour to an Indian woman & also to another Indian & still has your rifle. However besides this I found him acting in other ways against me but the Indians are a little afraid & dare not tell me much & also I find they are a menace to the English speaking race & it is our duty apart from religion to help the English Mission & I sincerely trust that he will regret that he has acted mean towards me, he used your small [canoe] for fishing & not only broke it but left [it] full of blood & scales on a barren point far away & I of course had to go & get it. As for the paddles I don't know. It must indeed surprise you that Father Rouvier is so selfish & mean but perhaps the reason [is] because I am not a Catholic, besides all this, he does not hesitate to lie. At the beginning of April I was prepared to start for the sea-coast & had arranged to take that little boy Harry & his dogs which I had fed all winter: but Father Rouvier knowing it, & without asking me took him to Fort Franklin. I went almost as far as the sea-coast but was forced to return owing to the late season as there was still too much [snow] & the caribou had not left the woods. The cache you made in the woods close to the Coppermine was pulled [down] by wolves which had been able to reach it on account of the deep [? hollow], wolverine had in despite of the fish-hooks got up. Curious to say it was the same day on which I reached there & all the clothes were scattered all around.
I intend to again return to Dease River & shall see the Esquimaux & will return in your small canoe about the same [route] you returned [by]. I hope to be able to send out a long & properly written letter & if I came out would of course pay you a visit.
Yrs. V. Sincerely.
J. Hornby
5 [Hornby to George Douglas, Aug 1914: written in ink on letterhead of Hotel Selkirk, Edmonton, the envelope postmarked EDMONTON AUG 1914 and LAKEFIELD SP 4 1914.
On 1 Sept 1913 Hornby left Dease Bay in Douglas's York boat Jupiter but was driven ashore and the boat wrecked half way to Franklin. Somehow he made his way late in the fall to Norman with the contents of the boat, which was part at least of the freight he refers to in this letter and included a collection of Eskimo artefacts now in the University of Alberta. At Fort Norman he met D'Arcy Arden going in to Dease Bay and nearly went back with him, but because of the strong rumours of war decided to come out to civilization.
R. M. Chipman, who was on the Mackenzie River when she stopped at Fort McPherson 14-16 July 1914, made the following entry in his diary: "On the day the steamer left, I talked with Hornby for about five minutes and during the conversation he told me he had fully decided on each of four separate things – to go up river on the steamer and go outside; to go as far as Fort Norman and to Great Bear Lake for another winter; to go over the Rat and the Bell [Rivers] and down the Yukon; to go to Herschel [Island] with us and either go outside on a whaler or go to the east with us. Six years in the North was quite enough, if not too much, for him."]
Dear Douglas
Am sorry I have not written before, I have about 450 lbs of freight coming up on the Hudson's Bay Co. transport & had been expecting it daily, I have just learnt that the steamer had broken down on the Athabasca Rv, & consequently nothing will be here till Monday Aug. 31st & perhaps Tuesday, so shall either leave here Tuesday or else Wednesday. I had intended to telegraph & let you know the exact day I would reach Lakefield. Will tell you all news when I see you.
Yrs V. Sinc.
J. Hornby
6 [Leon Gaudet to George Douglas, 27 Aug 1914: written in ink on thin paper with graph watermark as Letters 1 and 3, and addressed to Douglas in New York.
The Oblate fathers, Rouvière and Leroux, were murdered by two Eskimo on the Coppermine in the late autumn of 1913 on their way back to Dease Bay from Coronation Gulf. Hornby had been out of touch with them but had warned them that the Eskimo might "get ugly." Gaudet's letter is the first inkling that something might have happened to the priests.]
Fort Norman
Aug 27/14
Dear Mr Douglas
Here I am again waiting for the Steamer McKenzie River as usual. I am still stationed at Fort Good Hope & came up to meet the steamer & as usual she is late already by 3 weeks only.
Your Canoe is still safe & sound in our garret of the same old store. Mr. Hornby has gone out this summer also the Hodgson family. Mr Fair the N[orthern] T[rading] Co's man also gone. My brother Tim is in charge here for the H.B.Co.
Mr. Hornby has sold his old York boat to us & I am taking her down the River if the steamer ever come down. There might have been some accident for she is fearfully late.
Mr. Arden who is a mining prospector is gone up to Great Bear Lake with Hibbert Hodgson to prospect on the Coppermine River for J. K. Cornwall so it is rumored. The Fathers Rouviere & Father Leroux, who are up there since over a year have not turned up for their supplies also so I cannot give you any news concerning them.
I think Mr. Hornby told me that he had used your York boat last year & that she was wrecked somewhere on Great Bear Lake. You may probably see him & be able to get details of the facts. I had the misfortune of losing my Dear Mother last April. As I think I have given you all the news that will interest you, I will close with kindest regards to your brother & Doctor Sandberg & best wishes to your self.
Yours Sincerely
J. L. Gaudet.
P.S. By the way we have an A[n]glican Minister with his wife stationed here this year. J.L.G.
7 [Hornby to George Douglas, 24 Sept 1914: written in pencil on ruled letter paper, the envelope postmarked QUEBEC SEP 29 1914 and LAKEFIELD OC 1.
As soon as Hornby had collected his freight in Edmonton he came directly to Lakefield to discuss with Douglas how best to join up, and spent eight days there 8-15 Sept. Douglas urged him to make his own way to England and take a commission, but Hornby – either because he was short of money or in too much of a hurry – wavered and then took the easy way.
Douglas evidently wrote Sandberg a lively account of Hornby's visit to Lakefield: Sandberg wrote from New Mexico on 9 Oct 1914: "It was with some surprise I read about Hornby's visit with you. I thought he was wedded to a roving life in the wilderness. It must, I imagine, have been quite a strain to have Hornby amongst nice, respectable well settled people. I presume that if one lives so long among savages one's own savage instincts begin to crop out. And now he is going to adventure in the war. Wonder how he will stand the discipline of a military life. I daresay he is hardy enough to stand the hardships better than most. ... I wonder whether he is going to lay his bones to rest in the soil of France or whether he is going back to the happy hunting ground at Great Bear Lake."]
Valcartier.
Sept 24th 1914.
Dear Douglas
I did go down to Valcartier & join the Canadian contingent as a trooper, altho. I could have joined in England with a commission. We have orders to be ready to leave within 15 minutes. You were quite right when you said that I would [find] that military life was different to what I am accustomed to. However I had always intended to go to the war not because I knew I would like [it], but because I thought all who could, should go.
I am with the 19th Alberta Dragoons, I certainly don't care for drill but will stay with it to the finish. I am decided to put up with anything which is necessary or needful. I find that I am no longer so active as I used to be & I feel much older in every way. I will write a long letter to you when I am [a]bord the boat, at present we dont know whether we go to England or to France.
However the war can't last long & after that I shall take a long rest, perhaps a longer rest than I expect. Here we know absolutely nothing about what is going on. We have put our horses on bord & expect to leave any minute, most of the troops are already embarked & we undoubtedly all leave by Monday Sept 15th.
Will you kindly remember me to Mrs Charlie Tate, Rev [?] & Mrs McKenzie, Mrs Grier & family, also to Allen & Mrs Allen.
Yrs V. Since
J. Hornby
Co Colonel Jamieson
Divisional Cavalry
Canadian Overseas Contingent
8 [Hornby to George Douglas, 11 Oct 1914: written in indelible pencil on a single small sheet of writing paper with printed letterhead all but the first line of which Hornby has crossed out – "FIRST CANADIAN CONTINGENT | Y.M.C.A. REPRESENTATIVE H. A. PEARSON | Home address: 15 Toronto Street, Toronto", in an envelope printed "On service for the King" and with the YMCA Toronto address, postmarked PLYMOUTH PAQUEBOT 15 OCT 14; addressed to Douglas in Lakefield, and redirected to New York.]
R.M.P.S. Arcadian
Oct 11th 1914
Dear Douglas
It has been given out that this will be the last occasion on which we will be able to send letters to Canada; directly we land on the other side (whether we go to England or France I can't say) we will be only allowed to send postcards. Our quarters on this boat are excellent & the food is good. Our transport is composed of thirty boats travelling in three lines all close with the ships following close behind each other & the convoy consists of three battleships & seven cruisers, at nights only stern-lights showing. I hope the war is over before spring; for then all being well, I hope to go North again. I perceive that what people say is the Call of the Wild is really the Call to return & live according to Nature. After having served the Call of Patriotism I shall not stay long in the old Country. Please remember me to Mackenzie & Mrs & Miss Mackenzie, also to Mrs Ch. Tate & Mrs Allen.
Yrs V. Sinc
J. Hornby.
9 [Hornby to George Douglas. Two postcards. (a) [8 Feb 1915]: written in indelible pencil on a picture postcard of "Choir & Screen, Salisbury Cathedral", postmarked SALISBURY 7.15 pm 8 FE 15, addressed to Douglas at Lakefield and redirected to Arizona. (b) [27 Feb 1915]; written in indelible pencil on a standard field postcard with formal entry from "J. Hornby, 19th Alberta Drag, Canadian Exp Conting," postmarked FIELD POST OFFICE DX 26 FE 15 and TORONTO MAR 15 1915, addressed to Douglas at Lakefield and redirected to Arizona.
Douglas went to England in the autumn of 1914 to try to enlist, but neither the Air Force nor the Navy would accept him because of his deafness. After working for a time as a marine engineer he returned to Canada late in Jan 1915. He had seen a certain amount of Hornby in England. Sandberg wrote on 26 Jan 1915: "I can readily imagine that our friend Hornby would resent military service. The life in the northern wilds or the 'Lands Forlorn' [the title of Douglas's book about the Coppermine exploration] where civilisation and its restraint on the individual does not exist, or at least in a small degree is undoubtedly more suited to his taste, unless he could be one of the 'idle rich', although I cannot think that this would fit in very well on him either. Probably Great Bear Lake is his proper home."]
(a) Leave tomorrow for France. Hope to be able to write a letter.
J. Hornby
(b) Just a line in case unable to write more. Remember me to all. Would that we were again in the north [no signature]
10 [Mrs. A. N. Hornby to George Douglas, ? 4 July 1915: addressed to Douglas at Tombstone, Arizona, postmarked 4 JUL 15.]
Parkfield
Nantwich
Dear Mr Douglas
Send you Jack's address, have just had a letter from him "July 4" saying he was quite well & has got a commission but what in I do not know, however I will write to you again & let you know. Jack is always wishing he could be back in Canada & so do I, as then he would be safe. Jack has been in the trenches & he says no one can imagine the dreadful sights one sees, & the terrible suffering of the wounded who are left sometimes for hours without attention. I shall send your letter to Jack & hope he will find time to write to you.
Yrs sincerely
Ada Hornby
so nice of you to take an interest in my boy.
[enclosed with the letter, the printed address:] Private John Hornby, 2064, 1st Canadian Division, British Expeditionary Force, 19th Alberta Dragoons, Divisional Cavalry, France.
11 [D'Arcy Arden to George Douglas: extracts from four letters 31 July 1918 to Jan 1920.
After taking his commission, Hornby was awarded the Military Cross in June 1916 for gallantry in the face of the enemy. On 4 July 1916 he was seriously wounded, returned to Canada, and in the summer of 1917 made his way down the Mackenzie and Bear Rivers to Great Bear Lake and reached Dease Bay to find D'Arcy Arden installed there. He therefore went on to the old Melvill establishment in McTavish Bay, now named Hornby Bay.]
31 July 1918: Fort Norman
... You ask about Hornby. Yes I saw him often last winter he stayed in the N.E. part of McTavish Bay. I believe he had the same house when you were here. He came back to this country last summer without anything at all and I think put in a very hard winter, he is not fit for this country now. The war has affected poor Hornby very much he is not the man like he was when you were here before. Sometime last March I went out to see him and found him starving and completely out of his head. I think if he stays at the lake this winter some thing will happen to him.
1 Dec 1918: Dease Bay
... I did not leave Fort Norman until very late this year, and I spent some five weeks in McTavish Bay and landed at my house here Oct 15th. I met Hornby as soon as I landed and gave him your regards. Hornby is wintering at his place in McTavish Bay or rather "Hunters Bay" as he calls it.
30 July 1919: Dease Bay
... Hornby is here now just arrived from the lake after an absence of two years without White mans food. he has been in a deplorable condition now for two years, but now he is fed up again he looks somewhat better.
Jan 1920: ?Dease Bay
... Hornby went out last fall, but probably you will have heard from him.
12 [H. S. Wilson to George Douglas, 9 Nov 1928: extracts from a long letter.
At 3.30 in the afternoon of 21 July 1928, H. S. Wilson in charge of a four-man party travelling down the Thelon River on behalf of the Nipissing Mining Corporation, noticed "fairly recent chopping on left [that is, northern] bank" and sighted a small cabin on the high ground above the river. Hornby had died on 16 April 1927, Harold Adlard on 4 May, and Edgar Christian on 1 June. Wilson's party were the first to discover what had happened to Hornby and his companions. As soon as Douglas had word of the discovery he wrote to Wilson asking for details. (A full investigation was made, and Edgar Christian's diary discovered, by an RCMP patrol a year later.)]
... Outside the cabin, lying to one side of the door, and parallel to the front of the cabin, there were two bodies. One body, apparently that of the first man to die [Hornby], was well wrapped up in burlap with an outer wrapping of canvas, but the second body [Adlard] was rather loosely tied up in a red Hudson Bay blanket. The remains of the third member of the party were found on a bunk in one corner of the cabin and completely covered by a couple of blankets. This appeared to be Hornby [actually Christian] for his hair was streaked with grey.
Inside the cabin there was a small stove, a couple of trunks, several suitcases, and various other articles. The only food in the cabin consisted of a small quantity of tea, but there were several pots lying around, some of which were filled with bones. One suitcase was filled with correspondence, old diaries and other papers bearing the name of J. Hornby, but we were unable to find a diary recording the experience of the party prior to their death.
We remained at the cabin only a couple of hours and, as far as possible, we left things undisturbed. …
At first thought it may seem strange that a man of Hornby's experience should perish of starvation; but when one reflects on the lack of positive knowledge regarding the distribution of game, during the winter months, in this section of the country, it is not difficult to understand how such a thing could have happened. For instance, no doubt Hornby, and probably others, thought that since the caribou migrate to the woods for the winter, they should be, during the winter, as abundant in the isolated woods along the Thelon river as they are at the edge of the main woods northeast of Slave Lake. Prior to Hornby's trip there was no definite information on this point, as heretofore no one had attempted to winter in such an oasis, separated from the main woods by many miles of barren land. If therefore, caribou do not winter in such a place but return to the edge of the main woods, it is evident that Hornby would be forced to rely upon other animals as a source of food. This would leave the party in a serious position, for, in addition to cutting down their food supply, they would be unable to obtain adequate winter clothing, without which it is almost impossible to travel in the barren lands.
... The Hornby party therefore probably would not reach the point at which they constructed their cabin till relatively late in the season, perhaps as late as the middle of September. In this case it is possible that the southward migration of the caribou had preceded them and they would thus miss this opportunity to lay in a food supply for the winter.
... After finding the Hornby party, I think that everyone was glad to get a little nearer civilization.
13 [Correspondence between George Douglas and Vilhjalmur Stefansson regarding the inclusion of an article on Hornby in the projected Encyclopaedia Arctica (which, though prepared, was never published.)]
(a) George Douglas: undated MS note of ? early 1950, perhaps written for Stefansson.
He [Hornby] made no contribution to the history or to the general knowledge of the country or its inhabitants. To those who really knew him, he was merely the subject of many amusing stories. I can relate many from my own [? memory]. He had many fine traits such as generosity mixed up with most exasperating ones. He often visited us here: my wife got a lot of amusement & interest out of his visits but he couldn't stand any kind of regularity, method, or order. He was lacking in some of the essential requirements of a good traveller in the North though he was good with dogs. He was no hunter, indifferent fisherman. He was a good walker, runner, or packer. He was good with dogs except in getting something for them to eat by his own unaided efforts. For he was certainly no hunter. He was highly inconsistent and in most things quite unreliable. An important exceptional was his staying with the job once he got started in the wilds. Among these letters are some to myself & to Denny LaNauze written within a few days of each other in 1924 saying completely opposite things. There was no intention to mislead. His intentions were genuine in both; he had simply "changed his mind" & he was doing that all the time.
(b) Vilhjalmur Stefansson to George Douglas, 31 May 1950.
Dear George,
Still and all, the Encyclopedia cannot go to press without a good article on Hornby, discriminating, thoroughgoing, candid in the candid-camera sense, treating both the person and the legend. You and Bullock are the men to do it. The ideal would be, I now feel, to get Bullock to write a first draft for you to knock down here and bolster there, with many additions and a few subtractions.
Your letter of May 25, after many facts and sidelights, ends with a footnote: "I have always thought it was a misfortune for Bullock that he ever got involved with Hornby." Is that, perhaps, one of the main angles of the Hornby saga – that it was a misfortune for Melvill, Mackinlay (how was the name spelled?), Bullock, Christian? Were there exceptions to the rule; was it, for instance, no hard luck for Mackinlay? And were there perhaps others? My knowledge is pretty nearly a blank for the period after 1911, except for what you and Dick [Finnie] have told me, and Bullock – but these reports I do not remember with the clarity of the knowledge that covers the years 1908–11. I do remember some of the things Melvill told me of the years immediately before 1908. ...
So we await with mutual interest, I take it, a letter from Bullock. I'll let you know what I hear and you, I trust, will do similarly.
(c) George Douglas to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 9 Feb 1955.
So long as Hornby was alive we were not obliged to think of him. This happy immunity ceased with his inevitable end by starvation and every once in a while for the last 30 years I am under the necessity of writing long letters describing just what he really was in contradiction of what he was supposed to be.
Hornby has come into the picture several times the last 10 years. On one occasion when you were getting out the Encyclopaedia Arctica and we had some discussion as to whether he deserved a place in a work of serious historical value. At the time your arguments seemed good to me though I shied off the job. You then put it up to Bullock and he produced a quite brilliant sketch, but unreliable: more exciting to the imagination, with which Bullock was over endowed, than satisfactory to the judgment, in which Bullock was deficient. ...
14 [Ralph McConnochie to George Whalley, 16 July 1967. The letter was revised and amplified after a meeting in Kingston on 17 July.]
When Hornby first went to Canada in 1904 he went to stay with Cecil Armitstead, a relative, at Onoway north of Edmonton. He soon associated with a friend of Armistead's, Allan McConnochie, who ran what was called the Hobo Ranch 25 miles from Onoway near Lac Ste Anne. Here, packing supplies upcountry with the Hudson's Bay Company and into the Rockies for the surveyors and railway construction gangs, Hornby learned the woodcraft and ways of the trail that made it possible for him to go to Great Bear Lake in 1908 as a member of Cosmo Melvill's hunting and trading expedition.
I am just starting to read your book "The Legend of John Hornby" and a good many of the names you mention in connection with Hornby's early years in Alberta hit me like a sledge hammer.
The Cecil Armitstead, of Onoway, with whom Hornby first stayed, was Uncle Cecil or, rather, my mother's uncle. Billy Yates was Uncle Billy, married to my mother's oldest sister. The J. N. C. Seton was Uncle Nigel, married to my father's sister. The Allan McConnochie frequently mentioned was my dad. I have pleasant memories of many other names you mention plus others omitted. There is a tangled web of family relationships tying many of these names together.
To get things in proper perspective, my dad was a character, a word that has changed its meaning over the last 50 years. Today it tends to mean screwball. In the old days it meant someone you would like to meet. My dad had been orphaned in the early 1890's. Somewhere around 1893 his putative adoptive parents decided to move to California. My father did not like California, Americans, or his new parents. So, at about the age of 12, he ran away and gradually worked his way up into Northwestern Alberta. It took him four years. What the attraction was, I do not know. I suspect a family relationship with Ed Sibbald, the Hudson's Bay Company Factor at Lac Ste Anne, Alberta. Most HBC men were born in Scotland, in those days, and so had been my dad. Uncle Ed married Aunt Ethal, mother's sister. In any event, around the turn of the century, my dad had a contract to pack in supplies between Edmonton and various places North and West of there, for the HBC.
The Hobo Ranch, mentioned in your book (and Hobo was quite a respectable word in those days) was our place; it was quite possibly a staging point [for young men who came out from Britain], a more or less communal enterprise. I know that John Yates (the missing Yates of your text) and my dad had each pre–empted a quarter section across the road from each other, partly because of a never-failing spring-fed creek (pron. crick) that cut through both properties, partly because the land was more or less open parkland, partly because there was a very large hay-meadow at the western end of Lac Ste Anne where a good-sized creek, graced with the name of Sturgeon River, entered the Lake. The Hobo Ranch was a rather large two-storied log structure. John Yates's place was frame, and much smaller. (Some time before World War I all the Yateses came into money and John got delusions of grandeur. He moved his house one winter from the top of a knoll across from our place to a location more favourable for installing a piped water system. And he put in a flush toilet for God sakes! Only trouble was that he put the reservoir tank (made of wood staves) up in the attic and the darn thing was continually springing a leak or over-flowing. It was an unnerving experience to use that bathroom.) Onoway was way up thataway, maybe 25 miles. Jack Hornby and my dad, any given Friday, would cheerfully agree to walk 25 miles in less than 5 hours.
The Armitstead homestead was a farm in flat heavily wooded country which had been very difficult to clear. The Yates and McConnochie ranches were in more rolling country, open parkland, my dad raising horses, Yates sheep. The horses were "quarter horses" so called for their speed over a quarter mile, and were small tough horses for packing and general saddle riding, probably descendants of the Indian horses.
My dad joined up immediately war was declared, went with the first contingent, and returned in 1919. He sold his horses when he enlisted, the family moved in to Edmonton, and they seem to have taken up the ranch again in 1919. In 1920 the whole family moved to Costa Rica to buy a coffee plantation. My dad came straight back to sell the ranch. The family came back to Vancouver about 1923. I think Hornby visited our family in Edmonton two or three times during the war, but I don't remember when.
The Hobo Ranch was a mile or so off the Southern end of Lac Ste Anne, near a place now called Darwell. When a spur line first came through a corner of our place, possibly in 1912 [after Hornby had left], the station was called Hobo. It was later changed because some brass in Montreal thought it undignified. What happened serves them damn well right. Everybody stopped using the line, and that line was torn up toute de suite. The Hobo Ranch was a group of characters and the only price of admission was ability to survive in a friendly, helpful, yet by nature hostile world. In the modern vernacular you had to produce or get dead. Hornby, possibly because of his small size, must have been adopted by my father, also rather small, and must have been taught some of the survival secrets my dad knew, and must have been a very good pupil.
When Hornby came to our part of the world in 1904 the latch-string was always out in every house within 50 miles or so. That very pleasant phrase originated out West. Hornby came as a perfect stranger but, as he stood the test of time, he must have been acceptable. He must have learned, early, such esoteric things as throwing a diamond hitch and how to cook bannock or rabbit stew over an open fire.
The standard HBC package was as close to 90 lbs as it could be made. Sugar came in 100 lb sacks, often five 20's. Flour came in 98 lb sacks, sometimes in a double-size called a barrel. My dad could park a couple of such barrels on the back of his neck and run a lop-sided trot down the road.
Uncle Billy Yates's place was 100 miles or so west of ours, a few miles out of Edson. He also raised horses. He was a packer and along with my dad, Uncle Nigel Seton, Billy McLeod, "Dick" Dickenson, Jack Hornby and others carried many tons of goods and supplies and [many] people into and out of the mountains to the West.
There was a third Yates, Uncle Syd, who might have been involved with the Hobo Ranch menage. He was a successful rancher in the Okanagan Valley when I met him about 30 years ago. Why he was "Uncle" Syd I don't know. He must, at one time have been married to someone who was an aunt of one of my contemporaries.
My dad was born in 1881, married in 1905. The marriage before long marked the end of the idyllic male situation at the Hobo Ranch, so Hornby saw the last couple of years of the Gold Age there.
* * * * *
There is no need to justify on scholarly grounds the importance of any of these items. John Hornby is not a person of the intellectual stature or imaginative scope that warrants preserving every word or every record of what he said or did or was said to have said or done; these documents are not likely to be of any use to anybody but myself. But each bears witness to the life I was writing about; and these documents – being, as it happens, quite typical – show from what sort of whole cloth the book was finally cut. Here, where considerations of rhythm and proportion are not paramount, some papers can be transcribed in full. Any reader who is curious enough, or is given to studious habits of inquiry, can easily find where each document fits into the published account, and will see where and how far what was written without the benefit of these records needs now to be altered a little by a correction, some amplification, a touch of emphasis, the removal of a conjecture. But mostly I set these down out of affection, turning them over in the mind as we might turn in our fingers of a water-washed stone or a lump of flint with its ancient patina unbroken, thinking perhaps that it could be an Eskimo carving.