K
Kentucky Kache
Guest
The little ad tacked up in the store was advertising for a woman to "live-in or keep house" for a 44-year-old bachelor.[1] The ad neglected to say that the house he wanted kept was a 3.75 by 4.0 metre shack of handhewn beams, boards and spruce shingles a stone's throw from a rural road, with no running water or electricity, no foundation, an outhouse its only amenity and the sole bedroom a miniature triangular loft accessed by "stairs" in one corner of the shack. Nor did the ad mention how a single woman could keep her reputation intact by living in such small quarters with a bachelor.
It was 1937 and Maud Dowley's parents had just died, the parents who had looked after and protected her for all of her 34 years. Maud's grade 5 education, diminutive frame and birth defects that had left her shoulders sharply sloped and her chin resting perpetually on her chest, made it next to impossible for her to support herself. Her brother took in his dependent sister for a short spell before unceremoniously sending her to live in Digby, NS, with an aunt. Maud Lewis wanted more from life than that.
According to her biographer, Lance Woolaver,[1] she walked 6 miles from Digby to Marshalltown to answer Everett Lewis's ad, but he sent her away without an answer. She returned several days later with an ultimatum: if she was to be a live-in housekeeper she would do it as his wife or not at all. They married in 1938, but Everett was not to enjoy Maud's housekeeping services for long. Severe rheumatoid arthritis had twisted her hands into grotesque caricatures of themselves and she was soon unable to cook and clean. Her childhood hobby of painting folk art re-emerged and she began to create from memory joyous, colourful scenes of everyday rural Nova Scotian life on anything Everett could scrounge, from old plywood, to seashells, the house itself and even the wood stove. Supporting one deformed hand with the other she churned out hundreds of paintings. By day she worked at the small front window on a collapsible metal TV table, and by night Everett brought her an oil lamp to see by, made her meals and cleaned the house. By day he sold fish and Maud's folk art -- she was too shy to sell it herself -- and later they sold her art from their house.
As Maud's fame grew, so too did their finances, but Everett kept the money to himself and never spent a cent to improve their little shack. Legend has it that he buried the money in their yard. According to Woolaver, Maud seems not to have minded their life of poverty, happy in her own small world despite her painful deformities and recurring illness. "I'm contented here," she once said. "I ain't much for travelling anyway. As long as I've got a bit of brush in front of me, I'm all right." [1] She died in 1970, having never ventured farther than an hour from her birthplace, near Yarmouth. Everett outlived her by 9 years, only to die violently at the hands of a robber trying to find the legendary money. Maud Lewis's folk art is currently on a cross-country tour organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
It was 1937 and Maud Dowley's parents had just died, the parents who had looked after and protected her for all of her 34 years. Maud's grade 5 education, diminutive frame and birth defects that had left her shoulders sharply sloped and her chin resting perpetually on her chest, made it next to impossible for her to support herself. Her brother took in his dependent sister for a short spell before unceremoniously sending her to live in Digby, NS, with an aunt. Maud Lewis wanted more from life than that.
According to her biographer, Lance Woolaver,[1] she walked 6 miles from Digby to Marshalltown to answer Everett Lewis's ad, but he sent her away without an answer. She returned several days later with an ultimatum: if she was to be a live-in housekeeper she would do it as his wife or not at all. They married in 1938, but Everett was not to enjoy Maud's housekeeping services for long. Severe rheumatoid arthritis had twisted her hands into grotesque caricatures of themselves and she was soon unable to cook and clean. Her childhood hobby of painting folk art re-emerged and she began to create from memory joyous, colourful scenes of everyday rural Nova Scotian life on anything Everett could scrounge, from old plywood, to seashells, the house itself and even the wood stove. Supporting one deformed hand with the other she churned out hundreds of paintings. By day she worked at the small front window on a collapsible metal TV table, and by night Everett brought her an oil lamp to see by, made her meals and cleaned the house. By day he sold fish and Maud's folk art -- she was too shy to sell it herself -- and later they sold her art from their house.
As Maud's fame grew, so too did their finances, but Everett kept the money to himself and never spent a cent to improve their little shack. Legend has it that he buried the money in their yard. According to Woolaver, Maud seems not to have minded their life of poverty, happy in her own small world despite her painful deformities and recurring illness. "I'm contented here," she once said. "I ain't much for travelling anyway. As long as I've got a bit of brush in front of me, I'm all right." [1] She died in 1970, having never ventured farther than an hour from her birthplace, near Yarmouth. Everett outlived her by 9 years, only to die violently at the hands of a robber trying to find the legendary money. Maud Lewis's folk art is currently on a cross-country tour organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
