Adapted from:
Cushing, Esther. "Emily Carr as Writer".
Montréal Gazette, November 28, 1953.
A miscellany of word-sketches and stories by that remarkably gifted Canadian artist, the late Emily Carr. "The Heart of a Peacock," is further evidence of her skill and talent as a writer, already clearly revealed in her earlier books. Sensitive and evocative, her prose is constantly enriched by her descriptive power as vivid as it is economical. With no striving for effect and no attempt to make good better, she never falls into the pitfall of over-embellishment so often the fate of the amateur. If her style has a fault it is a certain jerkiness which results from her habit of building up paragraphs by a sequence of short sentences. But at best her flair for compression and the essential is strikingly effective as it is in her description of the peacock of the title: "Bending his small, lovely head this way and that, dancing and spreading his tail in a shower of glory."
Though most of these pen pictures are autobiographical, like so much of her writing, they reveal little of Emily the painter. Many tell of her pets, "her creatures," to whom she was passionately devoted -- her birds, her dogs, her cats, Mary Anne and Adolphus in particular; her white rat, Susie; and finally Woo, her spoiled and petted Javanese monkey, whom she loved with tenderness and unfailing forbearance. Animal lovers will sympathize with her pleasure and interest in her furred and feathered family, her anxiety when they fell ill, her joy when they recovered, her heartache and sense of loss when they died.
Included also are episodes of her childhood, a story of romantic love (an unusual theme for her), and several moving Indian tales which like Klee Wyck illustrate her understanding of this race as well as her knowledge both of their strengths and weaknesses. Anyone who can read "In the Shadow of the Eagle" without getting a lump in the throat must be callous indeed.
Do not overlook the preface by Ira Dilworth; it contains interesting facts which increase the pleasure of the sketches.
The separate sections of the book are each preceded by a line drawing by the author. Her picture when she was about 18 is reproduced on the dust jacket. One wonders why so charming a photograph was treated in much cavalier fashion and placed outside not inside the book.
by ESTHER CUSHING
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Copyright. The National Library of Canada.
(Revised: 19 August 1997).
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