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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Nancy Knickerbocker, No Plaster Saint: The Life of Mildred Osterhout Fahrni (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2001) |
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THE LIFE OF Mildred Osterhout Fahrni, the subject of this biography written by Nancy Knickerbocker, touched upon some of the great social movements and outstanding personalities of the 20th century. It is a case study of the interesting things that can happen to the person who takes the less travelled path. Mildred was born 2 January 1900 in a Methodist parsonage in rural Manitoba, the daughter of Reverend Abram and Hattie Osterhout. When she was fourteen, the family moved to British Columbia, where she attended school and university. In 1921 her mother died and, as the only daughter, she took on the role of housekeeper and caregiver for her father. She arranged one of her frequent escapes from domesticity by winning a scholarship in 1930 for one year of study at Bryn Mawr. There she met Muriel Lester, a British pacifist and social worker, who had embraced voluntary poverty and set up a community center, Kingsley Hall, in the slum district of Bow in East London. On Lester's invitation, Mildred volunteered for a six- month stint at the center. As luck would have it, her stay coincided with the visit of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who was in London to attend the Round Table Conference on Indian independence. Although the British government had offered him luxurious lodgings, he preferred to stay among the poor at Kingsley Hall. Mildred cooked for him and joined him in his pre-dawn walks. According to Knickerbocker, "meeting Gandhi was the "accident" that set her [Mildred's] life on a heroic course and freed her from the confines of a conventional western woman's story." (60) |
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Following a tour of Europe, including the Soviet Union, Mildred returned to Vancouver and resumed the role of housekeeper and dutiful daughter. She obtained a job as a social worker and took up CCF politics, attending the 1933 founding convention in Regina. In November she ran as a CCF candidate in the BC election, losing to Liberal candidate Gerry McGeer, who secured 9,572 votes to her 6,491. She ran in a federal by-election in the spring of 1938, losing again. Later that year she was off to India, where she stayed at Gandhi's ashram. Near the end of the visit, she mentioned to him that she did not want to leave India. "Then why go? You are welcome here. There is free room and board as long as you want to stay," he replied. She said she would feel justified in staying if she had something useful to do. "Well, you are a good little washer!" he answered. (113) Knickerbocker interprets this as a put-down that crushed Mildred's feelings: "One wonders how Mildred's life would have been different if he had taken her hand, looked her in the eye and appealed for her help. What if he had asked her to start a literacy program in his village, asked her to run a school or an orphanage, or to work with women, or seniors? What if? Her future hung on his reply?" (113) Here one starts to lose confidence in the biographer. Why is it up to Gandhi or anybody else to define Mildred's future? |
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Back in Vancouver, Mildred chafed under the tedium of looking after her increasingly "dependent, possessive, patriarchal, nervous, over-cautious, pessimistic, and devoted" father. (125) He died in July 1940, leaving Mildred free of responsibilities, but also in a precarious financial position, since she had depended upon him for money. In 1941 she married Walter Fahrni, a ship engineer eleven years her senior. The wedding, as described by the Vancouver Daily Province society page reporter, had unusual features. The toast to the bride was followed by toasts to the Rural Education Plan of India, the Industrial Cooperative Movement of China, the Seaman's Institute, and the International Student Service Refugee Fund. The marriage was equally unconventional, marked by long separations and unusual living arrangements (such as a cooperative with ten other adults, two teenagers, and four children in the same household). |
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Mildred kept up her activism in progressive causes. During World War II, she taught school in New Denver, one of the interior BC towns to which Japanese Canadians were relocated. She attended the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945, and in 1948 accepted the post of National Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international pacifist organization. The job required her to move to Toronto, where she lived until 1953, when she came back to Vancouver to work as the Western Secretary for the Fellowship. In keeping with her knack for being at the right place at the right time, she traveled to Montgomery, Alabama during the famous bus boycott. She interviewed Martin Luther King, whom she admired as a young Mohatma Gandhi. When her husband died in 1958, she rented out rooms to boarders and students, living out her radical peace vision with open-door hospitality to anyone who needed a meal or a place to stay. During a few months of every winter from 1963 to 1979, she worked at Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker community center in downtown Mexico City. Her long, interesting, and courageous life came to an end on 12 April 1992. |
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The biographer leaves the reader with as many questions as answers. Mildred's relationship with her father was clearly of utmost importance, but no coherent account is given of its dynamics or the impact, positive and negative, on her. We are told that as a young girl she was "eager — perhaps overeager — to please him." (16) We learn that when she was pondering whether or not to accept the invitation to Kingsley Hall, she was "hampered in her decision-making by her devotion to her father, and her feelings of guilt at having left him alone for a year." (45) When she decided to return home after her European travels, the author tells us "not surprisingly, her father played a large role in her dreams, reflecting a daughterly love underscored by guilt and a strong desire to rebel." (69) After Rev. Osterhout died, we are informed that Mildred suffered from an "eating disorder rooted in self-denial and repression." (131) What are we to conclude from all this? Did Mildred's oft-mentioned indecisiveness stem from unresolved conflicts with her father? If she had been able to make a declaration of independence, would her life have been more fulfilling and less scattered? |
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All through the book, statements are made that cry out for some kind of explanation or follow up. "She was probably eighteen when she experienced her first kiss, which left her feeling quite disgusted." (24) Why was she disgusted? "Rev. Osterhout had a rather difficult relationship with his son." (132) In what respect was it difficult? "The Fahrnis were known to sleep separately ('supposedly because of his snoring') and this fact led some of the co-op residents to wonder whether there was any 'passion in the marriage.'" (p. 166) Why is this significant? By the end of the book, the reader is caught up in the life of Mildred Osterhout, but is somewhat baffled by it. The link between her inner needs and drives and what the author calls her "super-sensitivity to the sufferings of humanity" is never elucidated. (191) The biographer does not play armchair psychologist or offer an explanation. As a result, the reader must connect the dots as best he or she can. |
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James M. Pitsula
University of Regina
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