Saint Anne. By the way, Saint Anne holds not only an esteemed but an adventurous enshrinement in the heart of French Canada. It was she who protected the early navigators, she who encouraged, sheltered, finally havened the Breton sea-adventurers in the bays and coves of the Lower St. Lawrence. And the farther seaward reach the highways of this part of Canada to-day, the more popular appears Saint Anne for wayside shrines. She is a personality with a very human and approachable heart to all fishermen; and every little boat dancing in and out of Baie de Chaleur feels the eye of Ste. Anne upon her. La Protectrice de Pecheurs! Every fisherman carries a little figure of the saintly woman whose specialty is navigation, fishing, storms, boats, la morue, and a thousand-and-one angles of his life; and then, as if fearing something might be overlooked, clinches all with du Canada.
Therefore, where the abrupt Laurentians fling their beetling brows to the wild gales and dun sea-fog, there on la montagne at Percé, at the very top, as if to see well the little boats balanced in calm majesty on the quarter-deck of the continent, is a life-size figure of the Saint.
Many a time, lingering after the long steep climb, under the shadow of this figure-of-the-ages looking down upon the weathered arms of the cross upon the headland, I have been struck by the force of allegory brought into being by these two figures in juxtaposition. Out of the heart of the one, protective, evolve the protecting arms of the other. Yet there was no motif or thought of this behind the erection of these two figures. The cross is simply the cross of the Recollet Fathers and pioneer missionaries, renewed continually through the centuries whenever age and decay or some sudden storm made a new one necessary. Bonne Sainte Anne sur la Montagne was set up by the local fishermen of a generation ago.
All these things are written on the south side of the St. Lawrence, and as we take the shore-road west many a shrine and highway cross continue the tale of rural piety and peace. But it is possibly the north shore of the St. Lawrence including Ile d’Orleans where the shrine takes on clear-cut historic importance.
The most famous shrine in all America is situated at Saint Anne de Beaupré. Here Ste. Anne comes in close touch, laying her healing power yearly upon the spirits and ill-bodies of thousands of pilgrims hailing from widely separated regions of Canada and the United States, with a sprinkling from every other quarter of the globe.
One would think that a region overshadowed, as it were, by so dominant a force as Ste. Anne de Beaupré might easily show poverty in the matter of the simple farmers’ crosses and wayside and garden shrines of which we write, but along the Montmorenci and the Beaupré road quite the contrary is to be observed.
Remarking on this and the surprising frequency of the wayside crosses in this region, to a prominent Quebecquois, he assured us, to his thinking, there were not so many now as of old. “Why,” said he, “when I was a boy every house had one.” However their popularity may have decreased in the eye of the old-timer, backed by a memory reaching back more than three score years, they still recur frequently enough to-day to notch every mile of the twenty-one between Quebec City and Sainte Anne de Beaupré village. So that to the visitor, without such perspective, it is evident that the habitant of these parts had no intention of relinquishing his personal and intimate belief in the mascot of the Cross, Sacre Coeur, and bonne Ste. Anne for his farm, garden, mill, meadows or bit of roadway, because the world has a shrine at Beaupré that rivals Lourdes.
Nor do these milestones cease at the church. Rather they are to be happened on all along the road east to Saint Joachim, and peep out at intervals along the Cap Tourment road into the heart of the Laurentides at ’tite de Cap, St. Feréol, St. Tetes, etc., as far as the road and the habitant home pushes back into the heart of Northeastern Quebec.
In the wayside crosses of this north shore, however, we have fancied finer work in execution, though perhaps not so strong and bold a concept, as a rule, as in the sea-coast cross. This finer handiwork is no doubt traceable to the influence of the art in the basilica of Saint Anne with which the people hereabouts are in almost constant contact. At least the church gets the credit till one remembers that these wayside crosses are the handiwork of a long line of carvers dating back into Normandy and Brittany, and that to the Tremblays, Gigueres, Couchons, Desbarats, Gagnons, as well as other families, the Beaupré wood-carving of sacred figures and symbols “runs in the blood” and is an inherited talent handed down from generation to generation.
Whether the inspiration comes from within or at the suggestion of the beauty in The Great Shrine, it is certain these wayside crosses, crucifixes, chapels and shrines of this Laurentian highway stand out among Canada’s finest landmarks. Seldom one of the crosses but has simple wood-carved symbols of the Crucifixion attached—cup, ladder, hammer, hands, nails, the crown of thorns. Not all are present on the very old-timers, but an absent cup, a wind-blown hammer, a broken nail gives them a greater grip, especially when about the weather-worn “foot” a wild rose has sprung up and been spared by the scythe of the mower. This same St. Lawrence section is also the rambling playground of the tiny garden shrine. It is as if the hand of an aviator had scattered from the clouds these miniature niches of the saints; so that one or more dropped into every garden far and near.
These little garden shrines, many no larger than the breadbox, are the pride of every habitant home-gardener. The entire household takes an interest—especially grandmere et grandpere. It is the old man’s fancy that every spring mixes the paint and guides the brush that freshens into new life the old colours.
And are they dun colours that he mixes? Most assuredly not!—White and light blue—the colours of the heavens.
The touches of life—the blood, the flesh, the hope—are given with real flowers, picked fresh every morning from the surrounding garden and set—a tiny bouquet votive-offering before the holy figure of “Mary”, “The Son of Mary” or maybe “Bonne Ste. Anne”.
The private gardens fringing the main street of Ste. Anne de Beaupré rival each other in these happy little shrines. All stand on elevations of stone or willow-wood post; and a clinging vine or tall peonies or ambitious poppies or nestling mignonette tone down the newness of the sky-colours and touch with effective life the tiny figure in plaster or bisque that symbolizes the faith of M’sieu and Madame.
In the garden of the summer home of two American ladies, adjoining the highway of Beaupré toward St. Joachim, is a specially attractive little shrine with a collaret of St. Joseph lilies—lilies which, appropriately enough, are always in full bloom, for the fete day of bonne Sainte Anne.
Some of the Quebec cross-makers often cut a niche in the cross in which is set the Christ-figure, the statue being protected from the weather by glass as in the case of the garden shrines. A good example of this is seen in the cross from the Indian village of Caughnawaga across the river from Montreal. This particular cross is further distinguished by the figure of a cock surmounting it.
On the highways of Quebec one likes the way trade salutes the cross. Men and boys passing in their two-wheeled carts find time to lift their hats and busy pedestrians often stop to murmur a prayer at the foot of the cross by the edge of the road. These things are a matter of course in picturesque, thrifty Quebec. They belong as naturally as the St. Lawrence or the Laurentians, but one is surprised on running into Sudbury in Ontario to see there, on the bare rocks high above the tracks, a large grotto, found on closer investigation to contain a life-size figure of “the virgin” as Regina Galloram.
Local men say it was erected by an old French Count, who had been coming to Sudbury for many years prior to 1914, but who failed to come over during the war. They say the Count sat daily in the grotto at the feet of Mary.
Then came the war. And the only word of him since has been the receipt by a townsman of a paper edged in black, as big as the page of a ledger covered with the names of relatives killed in action. Ontario may be proud of its wayside shrine.
At least two other widely separated wayside crosses are to be seen in Western Canada, one, a large crucifix in the Roman Catholic Hospital at The Pas; the other, a crucifix with figures on a platform in the cemetery at St. Norbert, near Winnipeg. There is also a shrine in a little wood at St. Norbert to which it is said small pilgrimages are made. However, it is undoubtedly rural Quebec which carries off the palm for wayside shrines and crosses. Somehow her “milestones” are an historic “part of the landscape”, belonging both to yesterday and to-day.
It is worthy of note, too, that the Quebec farm which has set up a shrine or cross somewhere along the road, invariably appears prosperous. And those localities most particular in the observance of this old custom brought from France by the first settlers are never down-at-heels. It is evident it is the industrious, thrifty landowners who have inherited their demesnes from industrious, thrifty and religious forefathers who look most carefully to the old cross, the milestone of the years as well as of the road.
Straight back without a break these old weather-beaten shrines of the seacoast and the narrow farms trace their lineage to that first Cross, where all roads meet.
CHAPTER XIV.
SAINT ANNE L’EGLISE.
AINT Anne de Beaupré, Saint Anne l’eglise!” Thus, the car conductor on the “Electric” between Quebec and Saint Anne de Beaupré on the arrival of the car at the station-gate to the great Shrine.
He pronounces the name of this station with an air not expended on any of the other stopping-places along the line. The people in the car receive it in a different manner, as if with the baited breath of assurance that now “something is going to happen”, something they have long waited for, a miracle perhaps.
And so, daily, come and go the thousands of Pilgrims who have come and gone since those early years running back to 1658 when occurred here at this spot in the meadows “The First Miracle”. It was out there on the river, the Saint Lawrence, north of Ile d’ Orleans, on a small bateau, ancestress of the wood-boats that now go upward with the daily tide with their cargoes of firewood to Quebec, that Saint Anne first discovered herself to the crew of hard-pressed mariners, as habitant of this particular bit of shore. It was Saint Anne who snatched them from a watery grave in the treacherous river. And what a sea that bit of the river can make up! Only navigators in these parts can have any idea of the way that river, out there beyond the pier, can make up a sea! Old-timers and scientists say “There’s something about the gaps in the mountains back yonder,” pointing beyond the Côté, “that does it. They’ve got an awful spite in ’em when they brew a storm in their old cauldron.”
So, watching one of these storms and seeing the old-timers alongshore, from Visitation to Cap Tourment, shaking their heads, one is impressed by the fact, that nothing Sainte Anne could have done would have so firmly established her authority and power in the popular mind as the fact that she was not afraid of the river; that, never mind how hard a cross-sea were lifted up to the tide and the wind crossing swords for supremacy out here in this narrow passage beset with mud-banks and rocks, residue of the ice-age, she could, and did, guide that little boat to a safe landing here, and the sailors to the terra firma they had never expected to feel underfoot again.
Sailors are grateful. They belong to the Big-hearted. They promised Saint Anne an A.B.’s share of the voyage. And they kept their promise. They built her first church in these parts—a seamen’s church be it remembered.
And from that day to this Saint Anne l’Eglise has held true to her course. Every church that has been here erected has suffered the fortune of a ship at sea. The foundations of that first church were, as it were, laid in a gale. But staunchly it weathered the same and came to port all spars standing.
The little old Church still stands against the hillside, sheltered in an honoured old age in the arms of the Côté, anchored in its own little haven under the hill.
Soon the old church became too small, and the foundations of a new church were laid and, in time, the beautiful Basilica reared its two spires tall against the sky with the statue of Ste. Anne high between them, still in the “Crow’s Nest,” en garde. The Basilica became enshrined in the hearts of people far and near. Yearly its hold on public affection broadened until Saint Anne de Beaupré became a “Shrine” to a continent.
Five, six, seven thousand pilgrims in a day became the order and still they came, overflowing the pensions, spreading out on the benches in the yard, eating lunches under the maples in the garden and washing down the big slice with copious draughts of water from the big Fountain—Saint Anne’s fountain.
“Saint Anne’s” became as well known in the land as Ottawa, Quebec or Montreal, more popular than Halifax, Saint John or Vancouver. Why? It is the Capital of Faith, the Place of the Miracle. And faith lies very close to the human heart. Hence the Pilgrims by the thousands.
And each of these Pilgrims goes away to talk about and tell to others what he has seen and heard at this Canadian Lourdes. And the following year sees a wide increase in the number of people coming here and a greater geographical range of the pilgrimages, like spokes in a wheel narrowing to the hub. In the foundation stones of the Basilica were set forth in letters, deep-cut in the granite on the outside so that all the world might read, the characteristics of Saint Anne and the departments of life entrusted to her protection. They read like a splendid chapter out of some epic—La Protectrice de Pecheurs—de Navigateurs—du Canada.
Inside La Basilica, the same air of bigness; people coming and going; benediction in French or in English; the great altar at Mass, a concentration of flowers and—light; the sun itself throwing through the beautiful stained-glass windows a rich amethystine ray on the priestly robes, on the altar linen, on the purple and white Campanulas.
A thousand votive candles burn in the side chapels. Processions of the lame, the halt, the blind, creep faltering in step though bold in spirit to kiss the relic. Till ten o’clock at night the great doors stand open. In the Sacristy are the gifts that came dripping like dewdrops from the hands and hearts of the Pilgrims of the Ages and of the day. Things of inestimable intrinsic value rub edges with the intrinsically valueless—the gift of a poor servant girl with the handiwork of Anne of Austria. La Basilica! La Basilica!
Habitants of the Côté looked down upon it with the utmost satisfaction. If La Basilica were the Shrine of all America, to them it was intimate—their dear Parish-Church, the Church where Mass for the Parish was said every Sunday morning. When any of them were sick, out of its great doors came the Blessed Sacrament in the hand of their Priest, heralded through the streets of the village by one of their boys, an acolyte with the bell. When any of them were to be married so early in the morning almost before the sun was up, was it not to La Basilica Cecile or Angelique, Henri or François repaired with their families for the ceremony? And when the Angel of Death flew low over the Côté was it not to La Basilica that all that was mortal of Madame or M’sieu went out to the last Mass?
Built in 1876 it was woven deep into the hearts of people widely scattered in habitat, widely removed from each other in wealth and social standing, antipodal in learning. It was the Mecca of the faithful, the objective of many an idle sightseer.
Built in 1876, for forty-six years it had been a landmark of the Beaupré countryside. Its tall shining towers were as channel-marks to the wood-boats a-wash on their way to Quebec. Chevals of distant farms knew the road to its door almost by heart. Old women from ’tite de Cap and Saint Feréol coming in to sell their quarts of wild framboise or the new pommes des terres crossed themselves, passing hurriedly to supply the hungry tables of les Pensions.
The blind beggar who lost his sight in its building gathered his pennies in his little tin cup at the gate. The old fellow with the row of empty bottles by the Steps of Scala Sancta eked out a living and sent a wave of cheer to many a poor sufferer in remote villages who wiping his face with a dash of water from Saint Anne’s well felt in body and soul a little—refreshment.
Then one morning a short while ago, a little tongue of fire, out-of-bounds, caught up in the palm of one of those gales brewed in the cauldron of the mountains to the north and northeast, as it played with wild fierceness down over the Côté and licked up the Saint Lawrence from the east, threw its lurid veil through the sacristy. Inch by inch, then suddenly, foot by foot, the servant, that was Light, became a master of destruction. The Brothers did their best from the first. But the fire driven by the gale was soon out of hand.
It swept into the church carrying all the great building before it. The fire department came with apparatus from Quebec. But in a few hours the Basilica was but a heap of smouldering ruins.
* * * *
All that was fundamental, of course, remains. Saint Anne is still “Saint Anne de Beaupré”, the Saint of the beautiful Meadow.
Her first miracle was wrought here long before there was any church. She saved the storm-tossed sailors of the Seventeenth Century on just such a night, from just such a gale.
Saint Anne is a character and must ever remain so, one of the very real personalities of Canadian life. An image of her rides in every fisherman’s pocket out of Percé, Baie de Chaleur outports, and in the mackerel-boats of Les Madeleines. A bisque or plaster figure of her stands above every habitant mantelpiece from Montreal to Tadousac.
But La Basilica belongs to a page of Canadian history, too. It was a part of a Canadian landscape for nigh on half a century, in which time it was the scene of many a miracle. Optimists encouragingly say “But it will be restored, or a better and larger church built. Anyway, that was even now almost too small for convenience. So many thousands of Pilgrims! Oh yes, a bigger church was needed.”
Thus the young folk look forward and plan. But the old, what of the old?
Aged men of the Côté feel that with the destruction of la Basilica something spiritual passed out of their lives. They felt it a gallery wherein were stored the life-pictures that they treasured. Memories of mothers and fathers in the old pews, themselves as boys by their side; memories of their own wedding, memories of first masses and of christenings ... of requiem masses.
What of the people who have received spiritual and physical aid here? Did not Saint Anne’s l’eglise fill a page in their life, a page licked up in the flames, and not to be re-written, as when an Hour-Book, finely illuminated, was lost in Time?
Who can restore the mazarene blue to the tablet of Labradorite that stood by the door? Who can bring back the voice of the great organ? Or who restore the exquisite lines of the old pulpit?
But the fundamental remains—the great out-doors, le jardin. Still the Pilgrims come. Still on calm evenings there will be the long processions through the dusk winding up the hill, faces aglow from the lighted candles in their paper ’sconces.
Still five thousand voices will sing “Magnificat, Magnificat!” Still, on midsummer mornings, the old Brother will go round, watering-pot in hand, among the flowers.
CHAPTER XV.
M. JOBIN.
OW constantly experience reminds us that in the overwhelming presence of outstanding natural scenery, world events and great men, we are apt to completely lose sight of equally beautiful, though perhaps less magnificent scenery, events only a little less momentous and of many men, who except for the tedious bugbear of comparison, would be great in our sight, being truly great in themselves.
Personally our eyes were thus opened only a few summers ago at Saint Anne de Beaupré. For weeks our attention had been completely absorbed by the beautiful Basilica, its surrounding grounds, monasteries and convents. We desired above all to see a miracle, and to this end haunted the quaint church, stepping in to the beautiful garden whenever inclination suggested. Again and again we strolled along the hill-climbing woodsy road of “The Stations of the Cross”, the spreading maple trees overhead, the river in a flowing vista before.
Most of all we were interested in the pilgrims, individually no less than in the pilgrimages as a whole. At Saint Anne’s it is the pilgrim who furnishes a fascinating round of human interest, against a background of the church aglow with festive lighting from hundreds of electric bulbs, and the glowing, beckoning, flickering flame of thousands of red and green votive candles.
Then, one morning, something prompted us to turn our wandering footsteps toward the opposite end of the town away from the church. And there, in a plain old workshop, we experienced our awakening, the miracle we had been waiting to see—a miracle in Art rather than in healing. And yet, are not the two one?
As we climbed the road up the hill past Madame Giguere’s Pension, we were at once surprised and attracted by a life-sized figure of Napoleon Bonaparte occupying one of the roofs ahead.
Napoleon Bonaparte in Saint Anne de Beaupré? Can greater contrast be imagined than the realism of Napoleon and the realm of the spiritual out of which we had just emerged? Yet it was no mirage. There he stood, life-sized. After a moment of doubt we knew it must be some woodcarver’s “Sign”. For we recognized at sight that this “Napoleon” was some old “Figurehead” from a ship, “stranded here” as it were in this Old-World village of French Canada.
We could scarcely wait to meet the old Carver. Already we imagined him old. And—charming.
The figurehead proclaimed that he belonged heart and soul to the age of the sailing-ship. Therefore, we knew beforehand that we should find as the French say, Un Caractere. So we hurried and turned in down some steps and knocked at the door of the old shop.
In answer, there came to the door a little, almost aesthetic-looking old man with a sweet smile and an equally sweet voice. He stood a moment looking at us and at our camera, entering as if by intuition into our enthusiasm. Then he bade us, in a charming manner, combination of the sweetness of old age and courteous French, “Entrez, entrez!”
That was our first glimpse of Louis Jobin, whom we have since come to regard as “The Dean of Canadian Religious-figure Wood-carvers”—a man possessed of so sweet and simple a nature that he approaches easily and naturally, the carving of Christ on the Cross.
The little shop in its simplicity is just the place one might expect to find Jobin working in. Everything in it falls behind its master—not a single offending note. There is a wooden thumb to hold his hat. Everywhere on the walls bits of carving—models and patterns—an old trumpet, a cherub’s head, an angel’s wing. On the floor the old stove for heating, the tool-bench and the figure or figures on which he happens to be at work.
Jobin found for us one chair and that curious movable bench with legs resembling a colt’s, known in the trades as a “carpenter’s horse”. I sat the “horse” and never has one carried me into more enchanted country.
Jobin made us feel at home at once, continuing his work and chatting at the same time. There is about the man and his shop a sweet restful spirit of repose, as if no vaulting ambition had ever here o’erleaped itself to fall on the other side.
I cannot recall all that we talked about that first morning. I remember it rather as the occasion on which Jobin invited us to come in again whenever we felt inclined. It lingers as the morning on which we discovered that now rare nook “a woodcarver’s studio”.
It is no little thing to have such a door open to one in these days of hurry—a little shop full of the spell of Holy Figures, here and there, and about the door.
The acquaintance with Jobin has now extended over several summers and in that time we have learned from this old Canadian woodcarver’s lips many a legend of the Saints, legends that have none of the usual cut-and-dried wording of a book as they are told by this old man of Quebec, but all the vitality and realism which only one having working knowledge of them for a lifetime can give.
Monsieur Jobin, in point of years far up in the seventies, gives Saint Raymond as his birthplace but says that he spent much of his boyhood at Point aux Trembles above Quebec.
His answer to an inquiry if he carved or whittled much when a youngster, proved him a man of humour. “O, oui! I cut up all my father’s firewood into something or other.” Smiling at the recollection of those days he paused and raised himself chisel in hand. “There was a good deal of wood in my figures then. Their bodies were—what you call?—clumsy.” “Clumsy?” “Yes?”
But these early attempts were evidently of sufficient merit to determine his parents as to a trade for him. They apprenticed Louis to the woodcarver’s trade under M. Francois Xavier Berlingeret, a master carver of the city, of the generation before Jobin, so that Jobin represents in direct line a century of Canadian wood-carving. Jobin served three years. “Religious figures?” we inquired. “Oh, no. All sorts of carving with M’sieu Berlingeret. Some religious figures too, but in those days it was mostly ‘figureheads’.” Big wooden ships were everywhere.
“You know the figurehead?” He seemed very happy when we answered affirmatively. As his mind turned back to those days there came into his eye all the light and fire of an artist recalling some old masterpiece.
* * * *
His apprenticeship to Monsieur Berlingeret over, Jobin set out for New York “to finish”. In New York he worked for a year with Mr. Bolton, “John Bolton, an Englishman located at St. John Street, Battery Place”.
The mere mention of those New York days recalls to mind old haunts and famous old “figureheads” and carvers of Gotham. It was all “downtown” in those days,—“Battery Place” and “Castle Garden”. Then naturally followed talk of this carver and that, of this and that old sea-rover among the wind-jammers coming in and sailing out of New York fifty years ago.
It requires little imagination for us to be able to see this young French-Canadian artist in wood passing from one to another of these ships, searching with his artist’s eye for fine specimens of the figurehead-carver’s art on the bows. It was in reality like a morning spent in a Cosmopolitan Gallery wherein the work of artists from many lands appeared—here, a Scotchman, there a Dane, here a Norwegian, there a Nova Scotian. And when the latter, it was like happening suddenly upon “an old friend from home”.
When the year in New York ended, back came Jobin to Montreal. And from that day to this he has never left Canada but has given every day of his life-work to her. Canada reared him and with the exception of that brief year in New York she can claim him and his work.
It is somewhat in the nature of a revelation that there should have been, and that there continues to be, enough trade and demand for wooden figures to have kept this old carver busy for a lifetime. Woodcarving is one of the oldest Arts under the sun and the fact that woodcarving is so widely appreciated in Canada and the United States that a few of these old artists are in their shops every day regularly, keeping steadily at the bench from morning until night, every day of the working week, year in and year out, reveals a phase of the national life and taste which cannot but fill many, who deemed the day of the wooden figure a thing of the past, with surprise.
But, for affirmation, there is the venerable figure of Louis Jobin bending over an angel—a tiny gouge in his old fingers slithering lightly here and there, “bringing out” just a little more each time the spirit, which, when all is finished, speaks out to the forgetfulness of the medium.
The regularity with which orders come in, no less than the air of the shop itself, gives one even stronger assurance that when Jobin has passed to the Land o’ the Leal his mantle will fall to many a successor, provided the carver of the coming generation puts out work up to the standard of this old artist of Saint Anne’s.
Jobin belongs to a long line of woodcarvers whose genius has given the wooden figure a sure niche in the heart of Canada as long as there shall be saint or legend left.
The establishment of Jobin in Montreal after his return from New York extended over a period of five or six years. Making figureheads there for Captain McNeil, he recalls that one was the “Chief Angus”.
With a sweep of the arm, Jobin makes you see that proud hull—those royal-yards sweeping down the Saint Lawrence under the leadership of the spirited figure of the old Chief on the bow, leading one of the clan to victory on the high seas, and the ports of the world. Then the Frenchman speaks, and he recalls the figures of an “Avoçat”, for a gentleman of the legal profession. He recalls that it stood opposite the Court House on the Rue Notre Dame in Montreal. No doubt many an old Montrealler recalls this landmark of Notre Dame.
Jobin’s work in Montreal lasted as long as sails on the high seas created a demand for figureheads, and as long as the Red Indian with his calumet idled the day outside the Tobacconist shops. But steam blasted the growth and life of sails, and paper signs and bill-boards did away with the Indians except in Old Quebec city where the Red Man is still to be seen on Saint Jean Street.
Only then, in the lean years that followed these changes, did Jobin move to Quebec—the home-city of sacred “figures”, and begin what turned out to be his forte and life-work,—the carving of religious figures.
He tells how he had a shop first in Quebec City. But from Quebec out to the quiet shop in the little town of Saint Anne de Beaupré was for a man of Jobin’s feeling a short and natural step. At last his barque had come from the busy marts of the New York waterfront into this quiet little haven, whose main street has at one end this little shop and at the other la Basilica, Mecca of a continent.
Every evening at the close of the day’s work the striking figure of the old carver may be seen on the street of Saint Anne’s wending his way to Benediction. And, however numerous the pilgrims, his is one of the figures to be remembered—a benediction in its sweet humility.
Jobin has been an indefatigable worker. In his day the number of figures carved by his hand is almost incredible. The very mechanical part must have occupied more than a lifetime of a man less talented and sure of every stroke. He talked of one figure after another so rapidly that track of all could not be kept. Yet not one of his figures seen could in any sense of the word be termed “mechanical”; rather, he was able to work quickly because his every stroke ran true.
There is, of course, a difference in his work, depending on the ultimate position to be occupied by the figure. Those to stand out of doors on an eminence, or on the roof of some church to be viewed from a distance, are executed in big broad touches of the chisel. Detail would be lost if indeed it did not spoil in such instances. But the figure to stand in some church, and to be closely approached by a supplicant, lacks nothing in detail of line that would express the fine nature and understanding of the saint that is symbolized.
All of Jobin’s work, whether Saint or otherwise, has about it a distinctly individual touch, so that once you are familiar with his work you are able to see a figure for the first time and say at once whether it is a Jobin or not.
Since our first acquaintance with Monsieur we have happened on many a “figure” of his. And nothing affords us greater pleasure than to come on one at some unexpected place and moment. These we recall to Monsieur on the occasion of a next visit. And how it delights the old man to hear of these, his “art-children”, whom he never expected to hear from more.
It pleased him that we should recognize the Province of Quebec as his Gallery and go along her highways and byways with an eye open for his figures.
It was during one of these conversations that he let fall that he carved the figure of “The Blessed Virgin” on the top of Trinity Cap on the far-famed Saguenay. Jobin gives the dimensions as twenty-five feet in height and says that around the head of “Mary” he carved twelve stars. He carved it in 1880 or just forty-two years ago, long before many who now view it were born. Many have wondered why the figure on this cape, twin with Cape Eternity on this scenic river of eastern Canada? Here is the reason from the carver’s lips. A gentleman out driving was in a run-away accident. The carriage was thrown over a very steep cliff but almost by a miracle he was pitched to safety as the voiture went down. He wished to erect a memento of his wonderful escape and as the accident had been over a cliff, he conceived the idea of having an heroic figure of the Blessed Virgin erected on the beautiful and beetling Cap Trinité.
From the Blessed Virgin to Neptune seems indeed a far call. Yet it was mention of this figure which recalled to Jobin’s memory that about the same time he did this he also carved the figure of Neptune to stand on the old hotel of that name on Mountain-Hill Street near South Matelot, in Quebec.
The student of history, abroad in Quebec, is familiar with the old carved-wood figure of General Wolfe, now sacredly preserved, after an escapade to the West Indies, in the library of the Historical Society of Quebec. But few there be who know that Jobin carved the substitute which fills in the niche in the old house on the street corner, and that it is thanks to Jobin that Wolfe still mounts guard on the corner of Rue Saint Jean. A new interest must cling to this old scarlet-coated figure of the General whose romantic boat-ride down the river to attack the city in the rear gave Quebec to the Empire. It is said that a condition of an old will provides that a figure of Wolfe must always stand in this niche in the old house facing the street, so that the passing world may never forget how much it owes to Wolfe.
Jobin’s work of carving sacred figures either for use in churches, in cemeteries, in church or monastery gardens, or as crosses and calvaires by the roadside, has been deeply appreciated. For some churches he has carved practically every figure in use.
For l’eglise at Saint Henri, he says he has carved as many as thirty-two figures in all; for the church at Riviere de Loup, seventeen; for the church at Saint Foye, three—the Blessed Virgin, Christ on the Cross and The Sacred Heart.
As Jobin told of the Saint Foye “figures” he rasped the wood of a new figure growing under his hand. He paused in his work as he recalled “That church was burned, but my figures they....” No word completed the sentence but the rasp went up in a dramatic sweep to indicate the high standing figures escaping the flames.
Of the roadside calvaires carved by Jobin, one at Beaumont is a good example. Another stands at Visitation. The latter is a new one erected last summer.
Although much of Jobin’s work is bought in the Province of Quebec, orders are constantly coming to the old carver of Saint Anne’s from other parts of Canada. And many a figure in the United States attests to his skill as woodcarver.
It is one of the interesting incidents of the Jobin figures that, before sending them out in the world, they are taken down to the Basilica to be “blessed”.
We have seen a pious pilgrim kiss the hand of one of these waiting figures,—taking it for one of the regular figures of the Basilica garden. This incident is a tribute to the quality of soul attained by Jobin in his work.
Luck indeed attends the pilgrim to Saint Anne’s who happens there at the “Blessing” of one of these figures. For picturesqueness in ceremony it has few equals—the figure on the grass under the trees, the priest in his robe, holy-water in hand, generously be-sprinkling, as it were, this Soul of the Woods.
The Basilica garden at Saint Anne’s is rich in Jobin “figures”. The large gilded figure that stood on the roof was, however, not one of his, though the little Saint Anne in the old church, he says, is.
Last winter he was at work on a new figure for the fountain in the yard to be given to Saint Anne’s by a wealthy American.
The weather has always stood in the way of the popularity of the wooden figure. Jobin now sheathes his figures that are to stand in the open.
If some such measure had only been used in early days, how much richer in figures would Canada be. Many of her old-timers, some of them brought over from France by early pioneers have been completely lost through wind and weather.
Wealthy societies and churches with a taste for gold often have had Jobin completely overlay the entire figure with gold-leaf. Mr. Jobin’s nephew is the shop’s operator in laying on the leaf. This too is a most interesting process, and the little shop offers as it were “a double bill” on the mornings when in addition to Jobin carving, the nephew is also at work gilding a finished angel or saint.
Part of the charm of mornings in the Jobin shop is the almost constantly changing subjects on which he is at work. Sometimes he chisels away on a Saint Anne, sometimes on the face or flowing robes of the blessed Vierge; at other times a triumphant angel with a trumpet, or a petitioning angel with folded wings, humbly kneeling.
One morning we dropped in to find him at work on an heroic-sized Christ-figure on the Cross. It was like coming on the old carver at his devotions. An holy silence pervaded the little shop. We dropped into the chair and upon the horse as silently as into a pew in church. Jobin carved by inspiration. No model stood in sight. Further, this old man of three-score, carved as one who has seen the Master very close and feels no need of outward suggestion. So the Old Masters must have painted, one thinks.
After a while, Jobin, resting, talked a little, quite easily. Then he began to work again continuing to speak now and then. The chisel gouged lightly back and forth and then with one of his worn hands he brushed away the shavings and critically eyed his work on the Face, to see if it told in its lines, so far as wood, or paint or marble, can, its Love, its wonderful Patience and its Strength.
As we sat watching in the quiet of that old shop, it was impossible to tell which spoke the more directly, the Figure as it slowly came to perfection or the childlike figure of the old Master-Carver bending so gently over the image of the Lord.
Not one, but several mornings, we came to watch. And as we watched and listened to the quiet voice of this old Quebec-carver, now nearing the end, it was in our heart to wish that all Canada could step over the threshold to witness this strange scene, wherein one of her forest trees in the hand of one of her talented sons, is metamorphosed from a tree into the Figure of the Saviour of the World.
CHAPTER XVI.
ROMANCE AND THE TWO-WHEELED CART.
Two wheels are both leisurely....
WO wheels are both leisurely and elegant. No doubt it was these considerations which in the beginning of Time decided Romance on riding in a two-wheeled cart. We cannot imagine Romance anything but leisurely. She lives where time stands still, yet paradoxically hitches to the wheels of Progress. It is true we cannot imagine the automobile or even the aeroplane without a four-wheel carriage. But it is equally difficult to think of either of these as leisurely. They are the symbols of speed and utility in a commercial age. Nevertheless, despite the new order of this age of speed, Romance, though not utterly ignoring car and plane, continues to ride in her old cart—