The Civil Years
his singular innocence, or rather by reason of it, he was the last man in the world to be imposed upon.
In all this devastating labour he never neglected the assembling of himself together with those who write and those who paint. Indeed, he had himself some small skill in line and colour. His hands were the hands of an artist—too fine and small for a body that weighted 180 pounds, and measured more than five feet eleven inches in height. There was in Montreal an institution known as "The Pen and Pencil Club". No one now living remembers a time when it did not exist. It was a peculiar club. It contained no member who should not be in it; and no one was left out who should be in. The number was about a dozen. For twenty years the club met in Dyonnet's studio, and afterwards, as the result of some convulsion, in K. R. Macpherson's. A ceremonial supper was eaten once a year, at which one dressed the salad, one made the coffee, and Harris sang a song. Here all pictures were first shown, and writings read—if they were not too long. If they were, there was in an adjoining room a tin chest, which in these austere days one remembers with refreshment. When John McCrae was offered membership he "grabbed at it", and the place was a home for the spirit wearied by
[127]
