Free Eastern Passage by Farley Mowat

I have seen your suggestions
.
    Best
,
    Farley Mowat
    Dudley evidently read me loud and clear. Only two or three days after hearing from me he wrote again, this time assuring me the editorial board’s assent
would
be forthcoming and predicting that AMP/ Little, Brown
would
publish my book, assuming, of course, that we all agreed to some further “minor” revisions.
    Although there was still no contract I concluded it was time to bite the bullet.
    Dear Dudley:                       Jan. 10, 1951
    I have by this mail sent off a new first chapter to Max, who will doubtless send it along to you pronto
.
    My wife, who has no shame in such matters, says she feels much good would come of a trip by the Mowats to Boston, at someone else’s expense, of course. She means good for the Mowats
.
    You ask if I know W.O. Mitchell at
Maclean’s
magazine. Answer is, not very well though I have tried to sell him stories. No luck. He turned ’em down and then Max sold them to SatEvePost. But a new editor at
Maclean’s
did buy a short story from me
.
    I am also sending along a copy of my journal of my 1947 barrenland trip in case you think there might be a book in that
.
    F
.
    To my enormous relief, a contract arrived for signing shortly after I had sent this letter. With it came a tentative invitation for Fran and me to visit Boston in March or April (a prospect that made Fran ecstatic), and an assurance the book would be published in the autumn of 1952.
    Dudley also asked me to reply to a letter from a Mr. Mann – an American academic who had seen my first story in
Saturday Evening Post
.
    Mr. Mann recommended that Atlantic have nothing to do with me. He accused me of concealing the fact that I had not been alone on my 1947 expedition and implied I was untrustworthy.
    Dear Dudley:                       Jan 12, 1951
    Herewith the contract duly signed. Also my reply to Mr. Mann, who is a friend of Dr. Francis Harper, see below. I don’t think I ever burdened you with the gen about my feud with Harper so here it is, in brief
.
    In May of 1947 Harper, an American zoologist, and I went off together to Nueltin Lake to survey the fauna and the flora. He was under the auspices of the Arctic Institute, who paid his way. I was freelancing for the Royal Ontario Museum and paying my own shot
.
    We had never met before and as it turned out we didn’t get along any too well. It may be rude of me to say it but the old boy – he was my father’s age – was minus some buttons. I was stupid enough not to realize it, and I took him seriously – for a while. But when he tried to convince me that slavery was the only solution to the “negro problem,” and that it should be reaffirmed in the US South, I blew her! That’s the trouble with being a rebel – you tend to lose your sense of humour just when you need it most. He wasn’t quite so bad about Indians and Eskimos, but he just hated half-breeds or any sort of mixed bloods, and it turned out we had to spend a lot of time with a family of them at Nueltin Lake
.
    The upshot was that he and I stopped talking. He’d sit on his side of the cabin and write me letters reflecting on the ancestry of the
Mowat clan (there are quite a bunch of Cree-Mowats in the Canadian north), which pissed me off more than a little. But I was at least smart enough not to pour fuel on the fire, and I took the first opportunity to go off travelling with one of the half-breeds. Which is how I got to spend time with the Ihalmiut
.
    To shorten a lamentable tale, he wrote to me after returning stateside telling me I was not to use his name in any way in any writing I might do. I was more than agreeable, and thought it was very nice of him to make it official. I trust you won’t have many more Manns on your neck, but you may, in which case you can turn them over to me if you think it safe
.
    Glad you see something in my arctic journal. I feel a good travel book can come out of it