Fred Taylor: Brother in the Shadows

315 Pages·2008·15.233 MB·English

by  John Virtue

BROTHER IN THE SHADOWS

Fred Taylor
bROTHER
IN
THE
sHADOWS
JOHN VIRTUE
MCGILL-QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY PRESS Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca
© McGill-Queen's University Press 2008
ISBN 978-0-7735-3359-1
Legal deposit second quarter 2008
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada
Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
Libr y and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Virtue, John, 1934-
Fred Taylor : brother in the shadows / John Virtue.
ISBN 978-0-7735-3359-1
i. Taylor, Frederick B., 1906-1987. 2. Artists-Canada-Biography.
3. Labor-Progressive Party-Biography. I. Title.
N6549.T393V57 2008 709.2 €2007-905880-9
This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Sabon 10.5/14
CONTENTS
Illustrations / vii
Preface / ix
Introduction / 3
i I remember many spankings with a flat-backed
wooden-handled hairbrush / 7
2, The moment you realize that you are enjoying
yourself, you feel guilty / 12
3 He never seriously bothered or teased me again / .20
4 You must be yellow / 29
5 I had been desperately lonely / 42
6 I am heading towards unhappiness / 50
7 There are freaks in every family 758
8 I did not think of falling in love with her / 66
9 The Party was happy to find a WASP like Fred Taylor / 75
10 I am unwilling to exchange my brush for a bayonet / 86
CONTENTS VI
ii You must never use my name to further your affairs / 97
12. Thinks me a crackpot / 107
13 He really didn't like his own children / 117
14 During the last fifteen years you have not been
self-supporting / 128
15 She says that she does not love me / 136
16 There will be no more money from me now that you are
an avowed Communist / 147
17 She genuinely believes in my potential as a painter / 155
18 You became for me a surrogate father / 162,
19 I earned 60 per cent and had an unearned income
of 40 per cent / 174
2.0 I'd much prefer to be in Canada / 184
21 I have not enjoyed the anonymity I cherished / 193
2,2, I'm going to knock you out / 204
2,3 I do not believe that I constitute any species of threat / 211
24 How's the hunting, Fred? / 217
25 Fred was the kindest, gentlest, most encouraging,
most supportive person / 227
26 I am still deeply in love with you / 235
27 I'm going to be married very soon / 244
28 He'd planned his suicide ever since Hemingway
killed himself / 249
Epilogue / 257
Notes / 261
Bibliography / 289
Credits / 291
Index / 293
A TIONSILLUSTR
Plunket Bourchier Taylor, wife Florence, and sons Edward
and Fred / 2
Fred Taylor, Canada's intercollegiate heavyweight boxing
champion / 36
Skiing etching, The Race, 1932, / 52
Dr Norman Bethune / 83
A bearded Fred Taylor 788
Stephen Leacock, subject of one of Fred Taylor's first portraits / 90
Quebec street scene, etching, 1948-49 / 93
Laying the Tracks, 1942 / 103
Miriam and Fred Taylor with sons Paul and Jeremy / 119
Ethel Teitelbaum / 142
Anti-war painting, Current Suspension, 1951 / 149
Nova Taylor, Fred's second wife / 159
Edward Taylor's son Charles / 163
At La Malbaie, Quebec, 1953 / 179
In the Market, San Miguel, 1961 / 189
Fred, Winifred, Nova, and Edward Taylor / 195
Scott Symons, Charles Taylor's best friend / 205
Artist Leonard Brooks, who settled in Mexico in 1947 / 219
ILLUSTRATIONS Vlll
E.P. Taylor in 1975 / 2,33
Rocks, Cactus and Sky, one of Fred's last paintings / 239
Fen Taylor, Fred's third wife / 250
Fred Taylor's Hull Riveting, used on a book cover / 2.59
PREFACE
FRED TAYLOR WANTED HIS BIOGRAPHY WRITTEN. Like SO many
people of his generation who had such an aspiration, he kept copies
of his correspondence, several diaries, and started to write his auto-
biography, a project he abandoned midway through.
I met Fred in 1979 when I was a foreign correspondent based in
Mexico City. My wife and I had purchased a house in San Miguel
de Allende so that we could take our young son's lungs out of the
capital's polluted air on weekends. We soon Jbecame integrated into
the art colony's rather large Canadian community.
After studying abroad, Fred took a keen interest in world affairs.
He always welcomed the insights that his journalist nephew Charles
Taylor gave him from his travels. Fred would take me aside to get
my opinion on politics in Mexico and the other countries in Latin
America to which I frequently travelled.
Once, when Fred and his wife returned to Canada for several
months, he entrusted the keys to his home to my wife and me and
asked us to check on it when we were in San Miguel. The first time
we entered the house, I saw on the coffee table Richard Rohmer's
biography of brother Edward, E.P. Taylor. Fred had heavily under-
lined some of the text and made marginal notations.