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STORY OF ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

Great Canadian writer remains

HERE is an irresistible fascina-
tion in the lives of great men,
men of intellectual genius and
creative originality who have

“gone something so’ constructive

with their lifetime as to further
human , ,knowledge’ and enrich
the lives of others. Thompson
Seton was one of these.

_ As far as I personally was con-
cerned he became a subject al-

. most of hero-worship when I first

Giseovered his hooks in my teens
and later heard him lecture to a

. capacity audience in one of the

great halls of London.

His popular fame rests prim-
arily on his books on animal

. stories. Some of these, as for in-

stance his Wild Animals ! Have
Known, first published in 1898,
still remain best sellers, have
een translated into many lang-
uages, and have long since pass-

_ed the million mark.

- art schools, the Royal Academy”

“-Seton’s fame ‘as an author,
however, does not rest solely on
his story books for, he has writ-
ten a number of serious works
in a total of over 40 volumes
(plus innumerable papers), among

them such books as the Birds of ©

Manitoba, Art Anatomy of Ani-
mals, Boy - Scouts - of - America
Handbook, The Book of Wood-
craft and Indian Lore and the
largest and most important,
Lives of Game Animals, in eight
volumes, a scientific classic and
the standard book of reference
on the subject.

This took seven years to write
with the help of his second wife,
Julia, during which all other
activities were suspended. The
work was based on over 50 years
of accumulated observations and
sketches and is, of course, illust-
rated by Seton himself, some in-
dication of his infinite capacity
for work.

His early achieved fame as an
artist, first in his school days in
Toronto and later in the Paris

Schools .in London and in the
United States. : :

+ bo

Seton lived his early life under -
recurring. .intervals of poverty:

and in ill health. Not till he had

~ found a market for his talents in
‘<* the most highly competitive en-
. vironment in the world, the city

of New York, did he ultimately
reach the state of comparative
affluence that he enjoyed for the
rest of his days yet success in no

way impaired his enthusiasm for -

: work nor his undying love of the

wilderness. In combination they
were not merely his bread and

‘ butter but his very breath of

’ Alife.

Seton was a master of English

= In the fullest sense. It could not

only be considered above re-

’ proach in any university depart-

- ment of English, but

' with the eloquence and charm
- wf the artist.

The commonest criticism level-
Yed at Seton’s animal stories is
that he humanizes his characters.
Here is an example of what I
smean, the’ closing paragraphs
from the stery, “Lobo, King of
«Currumpaw,” when. this wolf was

finally trapped.

“T set meat and water beside
him, but he paid no heed. He
jay calmly on his ‘breast, and
gazed with these steadfast yel-
low eyes away past me down
through the gateway of. the
-eanyon, over the open plains —
his plains—nor moved a muscle
when I touched him. When
the sun went down he was still

it flows

gazing fixedly across the prairie.
I expected he would call up his
band when night came, and pre-
pared for them, but he had call-
ed once in his extremity, and
none had come; he would never
call again.

“A lion shorn of his strength,
an eagle robbed of his freedom,
or a dove bereft of his mate, all
die, it is said, of a broken heart;
and who will aver that this grim
bandit. could bear the three-fold
brunt heart-whole?
know that when the morning
dawned, he was lying there still
in his position of calm repose,
his body unwounded, but his
spirit was gone — the old King-
wolf was dead.”

If we look at this passage criti-
cally, it is certain enough that
Seton is not being scientific “for
he surely knew that nothing has
ever died of a broken heart. Yet
animals have died without injury
from unknown causes under the
circumstances in which this wolf
found himself.

The apparent docility or sullen
taciturnity of Lobo when finally

ERNEST THOMPSON. SETON

chained have been repeated and
fully documented in other cases
of timber wolves freshly caught.

Here is another example yet
more extreme,
story “Mother Teal and the Over-
land Route.’ ;

«| As the days went by, and
the grand finish of her task
drew near, the little greenwing
felt the mother love growing in
her heart to be ready for the

--ten little prisoners that her de-

votion was to set free. They
were no longer mere eggs, she
felt, and sometimes she would
talk to them in low, raucous
tones, and they would seem to
answer from within in whisper-
ed peepings or perhaps in
sounds that have no human
name because too fine for hu-
man ear. So there is small
wonder that when they do come
out they have alréady learned
many of the few simple words
that make up teal talk.

“The many hazards of the
early nesting time were rapidly
passed, but a new one came.
The growing springtime had
turned into a drought. No rain
had fallen for many, many days,
and as the greatest day of all
drew near, the mother saw with
dismay that the pond was
shrinking, quickly ~ shrinking.
Already it was rimmed about
by a great stretch of bare mud,
and unless the rains came soon,
the first experience of the little
ones would be a perilous over-
land journey.

“Tt was just as impossible to
hurry up the hatching as it was
to bring rain, and the last few

This only I.

taken from his ,

high on list of best sellers

days of the mother’s task were,
as she had feared, in view of
a wide mud flat where once had
been a pond.”

Here Seton has his little teal
almost thinking aloud in the
King’s English, most certainly
unforgivable. Yet, having told
his story so that kids can under-
stand it, Seton does not forget to
add a rider:

“All this the mother felt in-
stinctively, even if she did not
set it forth in clear expression;
and as soon as the ten young
were warmed and lively, she led
them into the grass.”

% 5 3 %
In 1903 Seton wrote his book

Two Little Savages, the story of
two Ontario youngsters who grew

up in the wilderness wanting only:

to become good Indians and turn-
ing into rather fine whites in-
stead, under the inspiration of
the sky and the wind and the
woods. It is a book of woodcraft,
brimming with information servy-
ed up in Seton’s own inimitable
inanner. y

I wonder wherein lies his
magic touch? It is doubtless a
thing in that profundity of un-
derstanding that is able to ex-
press itself in the illuminated
Janguage of the artist.

Here is a firal quotation to
illustrate my point, the two last
paragraphs of his book Wild
Animals | Have Known, from the
story of Redruff, the last grouse
to be killed through the avarice
of man in Ontario’s Don Valley.
It is a sermon, not just a lesson,
in conservation, and more potent
than many lessons. Here it is:

“Phe wind, blew down’ the

valley from the north. The
snow-horses went racing over
the wrinkled ice, over the Don
Flats, and ‘over the marsh to-
ward the lake, white, for they
were driven snow, but on them,
scattered dark were riding
plumy fragments of partridge
ruffs—the famous rainbow ruffs.
And they rode on the winter
wind that night, away and
away to the south, over the
dark and boisterous lake, as
they rode in the gloom of his
“Mad Mood flight, riding and rid-
ing on till they were engulfed,
the last trace of the Don Valley
race.

“For now no partridge comes
to Castle Frank. Its woodbirds
miss the martial spring salute,
and in Mud Creek Ravine the
old pine drumlog, since unused,
has rotted in silence away.”

@ Condensed from a radio ad-
dress by Professor William
Rowan, long an admirer of
and an authority on the work
of Ernest Thompson Seton,

- famed Canadian naturalist
and author.
. Seton’s books are also

popular in the Soviet Union
where they have been trans-
lated into several languages.

In best Stevenson tradition

Currently showing in this province, Long John Silver
‘can be considerd as a legitimate extension of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s characters in Treasure Island. The pace and the

plot are’in Stevenson’s own tradition.

Here Robert Newton,

in the title role, is shown with Kit Taylor, who plays young
Jim Hawkins.

A good picture for the youngsters.

Lambert's new novel

strips war

“EMILY CARR

Emily Carr honored

Emily Carr, the Canadian artist
whose work commanded little at-
tention while she lived, was hon-
ored in her native Victoria this
week as few have been. On Wed-
nesday, in front of the house
where she was born, Dr. Ira Dil-
worth, editor of her writings, un-
veiled a bronze plaque set in a
block of stone erected by the fed-
eral Historic Sites and Monv-
ments Board.

In ‘the ten years since her
death, Emily Carr’s paintings,

which she seldom sold and fre-.

quently destroyed, have been
given honored place in art gal-
leries\ and her writings, publish-
ed in book form, are widely read.

A scene from Walt Disney’s The Vanishing Prairie.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 13, 1955 — -

of glamofl

N his first novel, The. Twert F
Thousand Thieves, Eric Lam
bert described the experien®
of his fellow Australians fi8
in the desert; now, in The “e
erans (obtainable here 2 th
People’s Cooperative Booksto™
337 West Pender Street, oi
$2.75), he turns to.the war agai"

the Japanese in New Guinea:
But first he tells how-his het
Bill Farr, comes home £r0™ (4,
rica to find Sydney “occupl¢ ip"

Americans and rife with
tion and black marketeers.
To his disgust the finds th sath
father is mixed up ‘in the > iis

market. Was it for this that
comrades died in the desert fl
father and son are reuni he
hat iy

at pis

the older man announces 11° 5
has tipped all the. illegally
tained goods over a cliff. jag
. After endless days of tral it
the Australians pack into va
landing-barges to edge ' wit?
the “dim green island” filled
hate and death. «wat
Lambert ‘brings to ; iv
writing the same truth and gt
cerity that Wilfred Owen brow sg
to his poetry. In fact, a5 I
The Veterans, I think of ing
lines of Owen’s “What Pa 4
bells for these who die
MEE ia -
Lambert is a master, of ae
acter study. Read this book
you will ‘get to know Bill owt
comrades as you know your 1,

as one by one they are kil no”
Perhaps the most movils os
ment in the whole book your’ ;
when by a tragic mistake 9 "pet
officer. orders his patrol 10 watt
fire only to discover aft grin?
that the shadows they at" ,
at are fellow Australians. — 0
Lambert writes as a ™4 ‘
has seen war in all its hor™ pot
its degnadation. Yet this a,
just another war book. hd
se ose

It is ‘a memorial for th
died and a reminder fF

who lived. R

LLEW GARONe
pA