Love and Argillite

the things you find in a used book store on Saint Valentine's eve

I love used book stores, dusty disorganized spaces filled to the rafters with old books- on shelves, on the floor, stacked on the radiators. Great teetering piles of book of every imaginable genre, just waiting to be discovered, and I find myself wondering, as I browse, about the stories the books themselves have to tell- who were their previous owners, and what are the stories behind their fly-leaf inscriptions?

Recently, while browsing such a store, I examined an inscribed first edition of the argillite bible - Haida Carving in Argillite, by Marius Barbeau. If you are a student of Haida art, and interested in the early history of argillite carving, or want to test the provenance of an old piece being offered for sale, Barbeau, invariably, is the scholar to turn to. This particular copy had the name ‘Grace Melvin’ on its cover, as well as a fly-leaf inscription that intrigued me.

It was inscribed, in small, spidery handwriting:

"To Dear Grace, from Marius”

Intrigued, I asked the book store owner, who told me, conspiratorially, that ‘Grace’, was Grace Melvin, and that long ago, she was Marius Barbeau’s lover. The book stayed on the store shelf, but an idea came home with me - Valentine’s day almost upon us, that long ago love affair deserved to be explored. It was time to wander the highways and byways of the internet in search of the real story- here’s what I found out:

Marius Barbeau was a serious, and very well known anthropologist and ethnographer. His biography fills several pages in Wikipedia, which calls him “a founder of Canadian Anthropology” and lists in detail his various professorships, and professional accolades, and his prolific writings - Haida Carving in Argillite amongst them. Wikipedia, while recording his academic career in detail, then devoted but a single sentence to his personal life:

“In 1914, Barbeau married Marie Larocque. They had a family together.”

But of Marie Larocque, or the family, there is no further mention nor any trace on the internet, they are but after-thoughts; flotsam in the wake of a great man. But neither is there any reference to a love affair with Grace. Doubtless such imbroglios tend to get scrubbed from the official record

Grace, I then learned, was an artist of some repute. Her online biography is also impressive, but equally buttoned down, full of her academic and artistic accomplishments, but devoid of any personal details, although, there are breadcrumbs that tease the imagination. Parsing her official bio, it is clear to me that Grace was a free spirit- a hippie, if you will, long before the term had been invented.

My evidence? she was, of course, an artist, described by contemporaries as having a vibrant, but exotic personal style, favouring bold colours and clothes of her own design. One telling line in her bio credits her with helping to found an artist’s colony on Hornby island, thirty years before hippie communes began popping up in the gulf islands. She must have been a kindred spirit

She eagerly took a leave of absence from a staid faculty position with the Glasgow School of Art to travel to Vancouver for a temporary post, to organize the design department with the fledgling Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University) Quite an adventure for an unmarried woman in her early thirties- Vancouver in the 1920’s- possibly as exotic a destination as Marrakech in the 60’s.

Something here in the misty northwest captured her heart, as she resigned her old position in Glasgow, and remained in Vancouver at the Vancouver School of Art for the following 25 years until her retirement. She told her students it was because she loved the place, the stunning natural beauty of the coast that energized her as an artist, but I think she stayed because of another love - Marius Barbeau.

Of that romance, had the store owner not told me, I would have never known. Although I whiled away most of a rainy afternoon poking about odd corners of the internet, I could discover but a single glancing reference even hinting at it online, in a chatty recollection by Irene Alexander (the BC artist responsible for designing the Woodward’s logo) about her old teacher:

“We always thought there was more than a book between them”

That piece though, also, delightfully, breathes some life into a dry Wikipedia profile - apparently Grace was small in stature, but fiery, and spoke with a thick Glaswegian accent, to the amusement of many.She was a force to be reckoned with.

Indeed there were several books between Grace and Marius. Grace was first enlisted to provide illustrations for one of his earlier books, but the collaboration grew, and she became the illustrator for many of his books and the co-author of one, The Indian Speaks, in 1943. Her online bio records simply that she had travelled the coast with him as far as Alaska on his field trips to record the dwindling evidence of indigenous culture.

Reading between the lines, I think what must have happened was that a staid and fusty middle aged academic, initially simply searching for someone to provide some sketches for a manuscript, met, and fell completely under the thrall of Grace, the much younger, free spirited sparkplug. The earliest they could have met would have been 1927, when he was 44 and she 31. Bubbly, vivacious, opinionated, full of life, Grace, the hippie chick, simply swept him off his feet.

How did their love develop? We are left with a single sentence in either of their online bios. ‘They made one or more field trips together up the coast of BC.’ Lets pry that open.

Travelling the BC coast in the 1920’s and 30’s meant taking a cruise on a Union Steamship Company boat, steaming the wild coast at a leisurely pace, whistle-stopping at every small logging show, fish camp and saw mill on the way, staring at the incomparable scenery. Captive for long, leisurely days, cocooned away from the mores of staid society in the bubble world of a coastal freighter, populated by rough men and loose women, all travelling to the coastal camps for their own reasons, and always in the background, the crumbling, haunting remnants of indigenous society, with its powerful monumental art, that they had come to study.

A heady brew of liberty, leisure and sex, and an exciting, intoxicating environment for the development of romance- no wonder Marius was knocked squarely off his academic pedestal and into Grace’s arms.

A summer fling, or the dawning of a longer-lasting relationship? the internet fails us here again, as it is silent as to how many of those sultry coastal jaunts they undertook together. According to the official record, Marius assumed a professorship at the University of Ottawa in 1942, and by 1945 was also lecturing in the summer at Laval, leaving precious little time for coastal trysts, and we know that Grace remained a resident of Vancouver until her death in 1977. So perhaps it was just a middle age crisis, and a passion that waned.

But yet, the book that sparked this meandering speculation wasn’t published until 1957 when Marius was 74, an age when the fires of passion were surely well banked, but still Dear Grace, now five years retired from her teaching duties, was thoughtfully sent a copy. so, their relationship endured. It was much more than a summer fling.

La Reve de Kamalmouk, by Barbeau was published later still, in 1962, with illustration credits given to Grace, and they collaborated again the same year with The Downfall of Temlaham. Into his eighties Grace was obviously still Marius’ go-to girl. I rather like the idea of the two lovers growing old together, still sharing, though separated by a continent, the passion of their art.

The internet has left but a single bread crumb to be followed. Apparently, in a locked room underneath the Vancouver Art Gallery, and accessible only at the discretion of the curator, is a collection of archival material related to our Grace- and listed amongst its contents are her diaries! Perhaps they can tell the full story of the love between Grace and Marius?

I wanted to post this piece on Valentine’s day, so a trek to the Art Gallery must await another day, and be the subject of another post- but only if you dear readers are interested -what say you- shall we pry into Graces diaries ?