Writing to his editor Albert Erskine from the waterfront shack in Vancouver, B.C., where he and his wife Margerie Bonner lived and wrote from about 1940 to 1954, Malcolm Lowry describes the difficulties of life in the wilderness. His trips through the forest were the inspiration for his novella “The Forest Path to the Stream,” published in the volume of short stories, Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, to which the letter refers.
[Dollarton]
[July/August 1953]
Dear brother:
I’m sorry you still have no instalment but I reckoned without certain difficulties of adjustment, on top of which Margie with her hands full with me has little time to type recently, while I at about page 12 went & had another inspiration, a lengthy insert which in any case would have held up matters slightly, even though on the further bank there is a more or less lengthy stretch of pretty final draft. The cast {No reference to the play I haven’t written yet.} got loose too (as I think I intimated in my other letter) & I had to make a trip to the hospital the Friday after I wrote you to have a new one put on. (I thought I’d greet some of my old pals in the ward, only to discover 3/4 of them were dead.) The new cast having been put on I was then instructed (there being no room for me in the hospital to stay overnight) I’d have to make the return trip on crutches without putting my injured foot to the ground because the cast was still wet. Such a return trip through the forest to out house is physically impossible but it being equally impossible to explain to anyone how we lived we had to make it anyhow. I would still be making it but for Margie herself of course & a shining Christian deed rare in my experience which etemphasises how all ex-Consuls in the Lowry psyche should behave in future toward their fellow man & I hope will. A bloke had spotted my—our—plight from the road, stopped his car, & followed us into the forest. I—& we—were going well at that stage, I had renewed optimism, & declined further help beyond the steep hill I was going down, but the bloke insisted, saying that it was, as we had earlier thought it was, quite impossible, even with one person’s assistance; he knew because he’d been in a similar predicament himself he said,—the ground is in places too spongy to take crutches which simply sink in & there was worse to follow. True I had made the frightening trip up the hill through the forest earlier in the morning on the loosened cast but then I had a stick and moreover could walk after a fashion on the cast, it had not been so bad and there was no pain to speak of, now the pain & strain was so godawful the sweat was pouring off one in cascades & one had to stop every ten feet or so.
‘Well’ I said. ‘This is really damned noble of you sir…Our name’s Lowry.’
‘And mine Budd. William Budd. Just call me Billy. You haven’t heard of Billy Budd?’
We said yes & Moby Dick too but since he evidently did not understand us did not pursue the subject. The worst part was not the forest but just before reaching the house, which because of a cave in in the forest bank, now has to be approached by a plank running five feet or so above the beach & about ten feet long. Well, not even Billy Budd could walk the plank in crutches, I reflected! I had to make this last part of the journey to the great danger of the others on my seat and I was so demoralized finally it took me a week to recover, during which period it seemed to me from the pain that the leg was getting worse, not better, while the new cast didn’t seem any firmer than the old. However I’m glad to say that now the pain is very much less, & I seem definitely on the mend. The only bad factor has been that if the accident—as some unsympathetic psychiatrist might aver—was a form of device on the part of my psyche to produce a situation in which I would be physically incapable of doing any difficult chores at all—or even to sit in the sun (which I can’t, else the damned cast might melt)—& so give me that much more time to work, it wasn’t a very successful device. I have had so far extreme difficulty in working for more than twenty minutes at a stretch, after which I have to rest for about an equal period:—moreover it’s disrupted my methods of work to some extent, I’m used to working on several drafts at once, which involves much standing up and walking around, & that I’m not physically up to. What would have become of us in this situation for all Margie’s stoicism (not to mention my masochism) without our neighbour—the Manx boat builder, Quaggen of the Path to The Spring, I don’t like to think either: but somehow it all is working out—but I’m very sorry indeed for the delay. For the rest I’m glad to say that despite dog bites & all (which I didn’t tell you produced in Margie for some reason the exact symptoms of angina pectoris) Margerie is definitely very much better in health & getting better all the while so that all in all I feel pretty optimistic about everything apart from the original plan of Hear Us Oh Lord in regard to which I’m going to need some advice from your good self.
———
—Everything very much better since this was written!
Through those falls! Over those weeds!
Love
Malcolm
FURTHER READING
Richard Hauer Costa compares Malcolm Lowry’s wilderness writing to Thoreau’s in a 1974 essay from the journal Canadian Literature, available here.
Watch the National Film Board of Canada’s Oscar-nominated documentary on Lowry’s death, life, and work here.