House of Dreams

by Liz Rosenberg

  That first afternoon Maud was ready to cry with exhaustion. But she saw that the pupils were bright and eager, if woefully unprepared. By the time she’d had tea that evening, Maud’s spirits had lifted. Still in her teens, Maud possessed the irrepressible optimism of youth. She managed to find pleasant housing with the Methodist minister, his wife, and their pretty little seven-year-old daughter — one of three Mauds in her class and, as it turned out, an eager pupil. Mr. Estey, the minister, was often away from home. Mrs. Estey, his easygoing wife, was glad of Maud’s company. The parsonage was beautifully landscaped and only half a mile from the school. Maud had the biggest room she’d ever known, with an open view of the bay. She quickly grew fond of Mrs. Estey and little Maud.

  The Bideford community made her feel welcome at once. Maud’s work as “schoolmarm” kept her too busy to be homesick during the school week. On weekends there were blueberry-picking outings, teas, dinners, moonlight drives, and picnics. And to her own surprise, Maud proved a popular teacher. Each week, more students showed up at her schoolroom door. After a month, she had gone from twenty students to thirty-eight. A few of these returning scholars were older than Maud. She was fond of them all, called them “a nice little crowd and very obliging,” and they showed their affection by bringing her handpicked flowers till Maud’s desk, she declared, was “a veritable flower garden.”

  Maud enjoyed the challenges of teaching. Not only did she encounter an ever-growing class of students of mixed abilities and ages, she also faced many other duties unconnected to teaching. The district kept her poorly supplied in kindling and in classroom necessities. Maud bought supplies out of her own pocket. It fell upon her to clean the classroom and put out the fire each night. Her teaching duties included copying out all the lessons by hand, preparing older students for their exams, organizing recitals, grading papers late into the night, and readying herself and the students for intimidating visits from the local school inspectors. For all of this labor she received less than two hundred dollars for the year.

  The Esteys’ parsonage provided a haven after the long work days. Unlike Maud’s earlier boarding experiences with poor food and freezing accommodations, young Mrs. Estey ran a tidy and gracious house. She was also a good conversationalist and an excellent cook.

  One day they entertained a visiting minister, and in his honor Mrs. Estey baked a cake. The hostess didn’t realize that she had accidentally flavored the cake with anodyne liniment — a medicine used to soothe aching muscles. The rest of the family stopped in horror after taking one awful bite, while the visiting minister calmly ate his way through the entire slice. Maud used this famous incident later in Anne of Green Gables, but gave the cooking mistake to poor Anne. Mrs. Estey more closely resembled the fictional minister’s wife who gently comforts Anne over the mistake.

  Maud was less fond of Mr. Estey, the head of the household, who reminded her of her hard-to-please Grandfather Macneill. Mrs. Estey deferred to her minister husband too often and too easily, Maud thought — and Mr. Estey didn’t hesitate to impose on Maud, either. She was expected to help fill in as organist at his Methodist church on demand, though Maud attended services at the Presbyterian church, and all her life disliked playing music in public. Recitation was one thing — playing the organ another!

  Maud made friends with a second cousin, Will Montgomery, and they had long, interesting conversations ranging from her favorite subject — books — to Russia’s foreign policy, and education for the masses. One morning, Will and his family rowed Maud to Bird Island for a picnic. Someone stole the boat, and they found themselves stranded. It was a cool autumn day; all traces of warmth vanished, and the picnickers faced the prospect of staying the night on Bird Island without food or shelter. Some men poled them to a nearby island, where Will constructed his own float. They finally arrived safe back home after midnight, with Maud vowing, like her great-great-grandmother before her, to keep away from boat journeys and stick to dry land.

  Whenever Maud was not busy with teaching or her new friends, she stayed in touch with her world through letters. She loved composing and receiving them — especially the “right kind” of letter, newsy and long. Mr. Mustard had finally given up his courtship, much to Maud’s relief. But she heard regularly from Will and Laura Pritchard, and Mary Campbell, her old college pal from Prince of Wales.

  Though Maud had a happy year teaching in Bideford, there were times when she suffered from loneliness and gloom. Her mood swings were growing more pronounced and harder to manage. Maud had always been a girl of strong emotions — ranging on any given day from exuberance to despair. But now, approaching adulthood, her moods ran deeper, and the lows, in particular, brought her down further.

  In Maud’s time, there was little or no understanding of mental illness — and very poor treatment, even if she had been diagnosed. Maud’s contemporary, for instance, the British writer Virginia Woolf, suffered from severe bipolar disorder, and her “treatment” was to be sent to bed early, avoid writing and company, and drink plenty of milk.

  Maud turned to her journal for consolation and confession. Though still in her teens, she felt prematurely old and worn out. The “glory and the dream” seemed further out of reach, her childhood far away, especially now that she was playing the role of older and wiser teacher to others.

  But Maud could still spring back from her low moods. A “rapturous reunion” with friends, a brief trip back to Prince of Wales College, a shopping expedition, an evening spent petting the parsonage cat, a moonlight drive along snowy roads gleaming like “satin ribbon” — any of these were enough to lift her spirits into near ecstasy.

  That October, her male friend and escort Lem McLeod startled Maud by declaring his passion for her. She had always thought of Lem as a lighthearted suitor, but that night he turned serious. Nor could he be dissuaded or teased away from his purpose.

  “Maud, I came up here to-night to say something,” he insisted. He loved her dearly, he said, and asked how she felt. Was there anyone else? Maud, compelled to be truthful, admitted there wasn’t.

  She was determined to get an education, she explained — at which point Lem interrupted and asked once she’d got it, wouldn’t everything be “all right” between them? Maud stumbled through the rest of her refusal. She was too young to be considering marriage. “I’m young, too,” Lem said stubbornly. But he was “in earnest, Maud, indeed I am. And I hope you’ll consent some day.” He closed by wishing her success and happiness. “I wish you well. . . . Indeed I do.” His proposal was touching, dignified, and hopeless. Maud was fond of Lem, and always would be. She predicted — correctly — that he would become a successful businessman and find some other girl to marry. Still, she wrote ruefully, “It is an abominable business. . . . this telling a man you can’t marry him.”

  A new suitor named Lou Distant came along, happy to take her out for long drives. Maud was growing cynical about her beaus. She wrote of Lou, “He is really a very handy person,” but the love poems he sent her — copied word for word from popular magazines — made her howl with laughter. Lou would underline the phrases he especially liked: “She was so small, / a wee, pure bud,” and so on. That didn’t stop Maud from letting him escort her to parties and lectures. It didn’t prevent her from accepting his gifts, either. Lou brought Maud a new novel each time he came to visit — a particular blessing, since the Methodist manse was bare of all “frivolous” reading. She and Lou had “nice jolly” chats — although, Maud noted only half kiddingly, not as satisfactory as afternoons she spent alone with poetry and doughnuts. Free time had become a rare luxury. When Maud had the chance, she would snatch a spare hour and curl up by the fire, book in hand.

  That spring, the Toronto Ladies’ Journal accepted one of Maud’s poems, called “On the Gulf Shore.” Her payment was in compliments and honor, she noted wryly, but she was delighted by the recognition. The Ladies’ Journal was a popular and influential women’s magazine. Every token of progress spurred Maud to grea
ter efforts. During this busy period, she wrote hundreds of stories and poems, all the while keeping copious notes in her journal about her daily activities, thoughts, and observations.

  Maud’s yearnings returned to her own education as well. Her delightful year at Prince of Wales College had not opened doors as she’d hoped. She decided to try one year’s course of work at the prestigious Dalhousie University in the city of Halifax. Maud was convinced that further education would boost her writing career, and she cherished a secret hope that this move might also lead to a job in journalism. Halifax was fast becoming a center of commerce, immigration, and social change. Maud could not afford a full BA course but she believed — or tried to make herself believe — that even one year away at a “real college” in a real city could make a difference.

  Maud scrimped and saved all year. Even with the cost of room and board at Bideford, she managed to save $100 out of her $180 salary. But it was not enough to cover her precious year at Dalhousie. Yet again, Grandmother Macneill came through for her ambitious granddaughter. Lucy Macneill contributed eighty dollars of her own savings to enable Maud to achieve her dream. For the cash-strapped farmwoman, eighty dollars was an enormous gift. It represented a significant portion of Lucy’s life savings.

  Grandfather Alexander Macneill staunchly opposed the Dalhousie plan, of course. Maud believed that even Grandmother Lucy herself did not really approve or understand. But there was nobody else to help — Hugh John still paid nothing toward his daughter’s education, and Maud had limited earning power. One last time, the elderly Lucy Macneill stepped into the breach alone.

  Maud finished that first teaching year in Bideford overwhelmed by affectionate going-away speeches and farewell events. She’d ended up with more than sixty students. All the schoolgirls wept to see her go, as did many grown women. Maud herself was moved to tears. The children, she wrote, had “crept into my heart.” The students presented a farewell program and chipped in to buy Maud a jewelry box trimmed in silver. Each child brought a bouquet and an armful of ferns. Maud kept their good-bye speech safely tucked away in one of her scrapbooks.

  Maud left Bideford in June, calling it “a very happy year,” but she did not make her exit altogether unscathed. Once again, a young suitor she had thought of so little proved serious. Now it was Lou Distant, that “handy person.” Maud turned him down as gently as she could, assuring Lou, as she had Lem McLeod, that he would soon forget her. This time she was mistaken. Years later she met with Lou Distant and found him a heartbroken man. Under the lapel of his tattered suit jacket he still wore a token Maud had given him years earlier.

  Maud spent her summer at home in Cavendish — where for the first time in her life she felt homesick for another place. Her only friend in town now was the teacher Selena Robinson, and once Selena left for New Glasgow, Maud was bereft. Grandmother Lucy had done all she could in providing Maud with financial support; emotional support would not be forthcoming. Grandfather seethed with disapproval. Cavendish neighbors and friends clucked their amazement at Maud’s plans. One woman said she couldn’t imagine “what in the world” Maud needed with more education. “Do you want to be a preacher?” she demanded.

  On September 16, 1895, Maud’s grandmother, now in her seventies, again drove her granddaughter where she needed to go, this time all the way across Prince Edward Island to the ferry for Dalhousie, in Nova Scotia. Maud stopped and spent a relaxing night with friends in Charlottetown. But Grandmother Macneill turned the carriage around and made the long, strenuous return drive back to Cavendish without help or company.

  HALIFAX!” Twenty-one-year-old Maud printed the city’s name in all capital letters in her journal entry of September 17, 1895. It was, she noted, a momentous arrival “worthy of capital letters!” Compared to Prince Edward Island, Halifax — sitting on a peninsula four and a half miles wide and two miles long — seemed to Maud a grand metropolis.

  Halifax housed one of the busiest harbors in the world, feeding its shipyards, railways, and factories. The city boasted all the new modern conveniences — gas lamps, an electric streetcar system, telephones, a brand-new city hall. There were elegant neighborhoods of grand mansions, but also the immigrant poor crowded into tenements and factories. Maud saw a bustling city of extreme wealth on one hand, dire poverty on the other. The newly built Grand Theatre and Opera House accommodated two thousand spectators. Its seats were upholstered in crimson velvet, the walls hung with red and gold. Meanwhile, Chinese immigrants walked around the city carrying heavy bags of laundry on their backs, working as many as twenty hours a day.

  Maud counted on Halifax to further her career. Surely, among all that hustle and bustle, someone would offer her a job in journalism or publishing. She’d left behind remote Prince Edward Island, where she suspected that even the PEI postmark on her submissions branded her as quaint and unsophisticated.

  Maud’s college, Dalhousie University, was a new, untested institution, almost as green as Maud herself. It was founded as a nonsectarian college in 1818, but for its first fifty years, not a single student or teacher crossed its halls. The first graduating class consisted of fewer students than Maud’s one room schoolhouse in Bideford.

  Maud’s all-caps enthusiasm for the city wore off quickly, and just as quickly, homesickness set in. But Maud resolved to make the most of her time. While the other Dalhousie girls lived clustered together high up on what was called the “Third-and-a-Half” floor, Maud was placed below them, physically and otherwise. Many of the Dalhousie girls were well-to-do. College was merely a premarital experiment, a lark. They took their time going through their studies, while Maud again crammed two years’ worth of education into one.

  The Halifax Ladies’ College had strict rules for its residents. The one Maud liked least — and broke most often — was lights out at ten. Many times she’d whisk herself into bed, still fully dressed, book in hand.

  “It is really a hideous and depressing apartment,” she mourned. The wealthy Dalhousie girls made little effort to make Maud feel welcome. The campus itself, she declared, offered only “a large ugly brick building in bare ugly grounds.” She could not help comparing it to the spruce-lined woods of her little Cavendish schoolhouse, and the carefree, sociable life at Prince of Wales College.

  But Maud was as eager to love as to be loved. She began tutoring the children of Chinese immigrants in her spare time. She took long walks in search of nature’s consolations. Tourists flocked to Halifax’s elegant new Public Gardens, with its formal gardens, fountains, and bandstand. Maud preferred the lesser-known Point Pleasant Park. There, among green trees, with a glimpse of blue water and stretches of wildflowers, she felt at home.

  And Maud had a positive genius for finding beauty in unlikely places. By October Maud described her daily walk, past a hospital and poorhouse grounds, as “lovely.” She worked feverishly on new poems and stories, and threw herself into sightseeing, visiting Halifax’s famous monuments and attending her first-ever football game. If she could not find someone to go about the city with her, she summoned her courage and ventured out alone — and managed to enjoy herself.

  Then one night in October, Maud went to bed early with an aching head. The next morning, the Dalhousie matron opened Maud’s door, peeked inside, took one look and declared that Maud had come down with — measles!

  One other Dalhousie pupil fell ill with measles, too, a petulant Miss Rita Perry, whom Maud had always disliked. The two unfortunates were whisked to the hospital infirmary and put to bed. They stayed in isolation for two weeks, on a strict diet of plain tea and toast. At first, Maud and Miss Perry were too sick to care, but as they began to recover, the tedium and isolation wore thin. So did the meager diet. Thrown into close quarters, the two girls came to like each other better than ever before or after — “talking freely of cabbages and kings — and men! And things to eat!”

  The kind infirmary nurse nourished her patients by reading them stories. The other Dalhousie girls sent daily letters and
stood outside their window, pantomiming the week’s gossip. When Maud and Miss Perry had recovered, Maud moved upstairs to the “Third-and-a-Half” floor near the other girls, with a cozy room to herself.

  Maud flung herself into her studies that winter in a valiant effort to catch up. She was determined not to waste a penny of her own money or of Grandmother Macneill’s. Writing home, she emphasized the long hours dedicated to studies. But in her journal she noted with satisfaction attending a church social in a “crème-colored crepe dress with a pink silk collar” with a fillet of “pale pink silk ribbons” in her hair.

  Thin and still wan from her recent illness, Maud fought homesickness every day. Staying busy helped; it was an art Maud had mastered early. By Christmas she was desperate to get home for a visit. All the Dalhousie girls were leaving.

  Maud was hurt when Grandmother Macneill advised her to stay on at school for the holidays. It was wise, Grandmother wrote, to avoid the icy winter roads. Maud knew what grandmother really meant. Her visit home would be more trouble than it was worth — especially to Grandfather Macneill. “Grandfather doesn’t want to be bothered meeting me or taking me back.”

  If she needed reminding of her status in the family, that Christmas drummed the message home. No other college girl remained unclaimed. Maud spent her holidays in the company of a few Dalhousie teachers, including a formidable Miss Kerr who, Maud maintained, “Nature must have intended as a man . . . and got the labels mixed.” Two of the teachers were feuding, and Maud was afraid to speak for fear of provoking a battle.