This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on May 10, 1941.
I had heard about the teacup reader at the Purple Parrot and so was glad of an excuse to go and see her. She was getting a reputation — not so much for foretelling the future as for her advice regarding the present.
It was she who recognized me.
“I wrote to you once,” she said, “about my poetry.” When she mentioned her name, I remembered her letter.
“But you were teaching then in Saskatchewan,” I said, “and I remember your poetry, too. It had merit.” She looked at me a moment without speaking.
“You were very encouraging,” she said. “But I remember one thing which I think summarized your letter. ‘Poetry,’ you wrote, ‘is like an egg; it is not enough for it to be good.’”
“And now you are a teacup reader,” I said. “And a good one, too, from all I can hear. I wish you would come to see me and tell me how the Saskatchewan schoolteacher has become Madame — at the Purple Parrot Tearoom, with eager people waiting in a queue, cup in hand.”
“Some day I will come walking up Lantern Lane,” she said, “And tell you the whole story.”
And one day she did, looking like an older sister of the Queen in a grey coat, with soft fur trimming at the elbows and a smart off-the-face hat and veil.
“I was teaching for eight years,” she began. “All in one school, and loved it. But something has driven me to write, though I have no illusions about my work. I know it does not quite ring the bell. But I wanted to do something for people — to add brightness to drab lives, to set young feet in right paths. I believe I am a born uplifter and according to all I can learn, no one loves an uplifter.
“But in my neighbourhood they really did love me. I settled their quarrels. It was I who was sent to break bad news. I shamed one old tight farmer into giving his daughter a decent wedding and let him think it was his own idea. I made another couple stop quarrelling by showing them the effect on their two children. They trusted me and listened to me. Raised my salary three times.
“There’s plenty of that I could tell you, but that will do. I was never entirely happy. Still had this itch to write. Then I wrote to you and you told me the truth. I think I would have stayed on but my neighbourhood changed — the young people went away and the school was consolidated. I was offered another position in a city school, but I came out here to live because I craved the beauty of the coast.
“I had saved enough money to live two or three years, even if I did not earn anything, and got a three-room suite which seemed like luxury to me, with a radio and a view of the sea. I travelled over the buslines in all directions, wrote poems about the broom and the Upland lilies. Then one day I heard of a man who sold his old horse to a fox farm when he was no longer able to pull the plow, and I put that in a poem which made my landlady cry.
“Encouraged my Mrs. Bond’s tears, freely shed, I sent the poem to the editor of a paper on the prairie. I knew he had been a country boy and thought he might be sentimental about some old grey horse on whose back he had ridden to school.
“One day I got his reply. I brought it with me. To me it is an important document:
“‘Dear Miss Stewart: Poetry needs more than rhyme these days, and more than rhythm — it must click! — like the White Cliffs of Dover, or London Bridge Is Falling Down. But I can see you are a person of good sense and great sympathy and I do not wish to discourage you. Why not try cup-reading? Your guess is as good as anyone’s and people are hungry for guidance, so hungry they are willing to take it from tea-leaves.
“Stick to the future, no one can contradict you on that, and tell your patrons they are misunderstood by those nearest and dearest to them. That’s safe — we all are. And tell them they have undiscovered capabilities hidden in their souls. We all have that, too. Begin as a teacup reader and you will see enough human nature then to write another Spoon-River Anthology. Best of luck. E.G.C.’
“I went to the library that day and read all that Encyclopedia Britannia has to say about astrology, and it was tough going. I went back the next day and the next and I learned about the stars and their reputed influence on people. I had books piled up around me filled with the wisdom of the ancients.
“But some way I could not relate it to the people below on the street, the hard-pressed women with stiff ankles, and string bags, on their way to the market.
“I saw the young soldiers and sailors walking with their girls and I had the great desire to do something for them. A desire so intense that it actually hurt me inside. I told myself they did not want any help or interference from me, a country school-teacher, aged 38, without money or talents.
“One day in the library, a woman came over and asked me what I thought I was doing with these books on astrology and fortune-telling. She was a faded blond with sharp green eyes, and before I could reply, asked me if I would fill in for her as a cup-reader for two weeks.
“‘I’m asking you because you look honest,’ she said. ‘I left my job once before to my best friend and when I came back she wouldn’t give it up. But I would trust you!’
“So I began — with my heart in my mouth and found out it is easy and pleasant and really quite wonderful. And the green-eyed woman got another job. Then I began to study psychology in deadly earnest and I learned something about human problems and found that I can really help people.
“The tea-leaves in the bottom of a cup is as good a place as any to being. It’s a point of departure — that’s all. It’s the dream of my life come true! It’s just what I did in the neighbourhood where I taught, only on a large scale. For they come back to me and bring their friends.
“I had a young couple last night in my suite for supper, who love each other, want to get married and still can’t stop fighting. I was able to help them. Now today I am feeling very pleased because I was asked to address a young people’s sports club. What do you think of that?”
“I hope you will do it, and keep on doing it,” I said. “And some day some big financial concern will snap you up to look after the social welfare of their employees.” She shook her head.
“No, I think I will stick to the teacups. I meet the run-of-the-mine there, the average people. That women with the load, the wayward girl, the discontented wives. The people Masefield said he would write about — the men hedged in with the spears. I know them and their problems — I will never write poetry now.”
“You do not need to write it,” I said, “poetry is merely harmony in words. You are putting harmony into lives.”
