House of Dreams

by Liz Rosenberg

  All Zephyr was buzzing with news of the accident. If automobiles were rare, automobile accidents were even rarer. For a while, the two-car pileup was all that the folks in Zephyr could talk about.

  In December of 1921 Maud had another one of her strange, predictive dreams. In it, she came home to find that Ewan was hanged and had come back to life. As if in answer to the dream, the Pickerings presented a bizarre Christmas gift to the Macdonalds: a letter demanding $500 toward Marshall Pickering’s prostate operation.

  Needless to say, the Macdonalds were flabbergasted — Maud outraged, Ewan distressed. The letter’s angry and demanding tone bothered them both. Had they been asked to pay for car repairs, they would have considered making amends, but to pay for a man’s already-scheduled prostate surgery was out of the question. Ewan earned only $1,500 a year for ministering to both his churches. But Maud was a wealthy woman, as the Pickerings knew.

  Ewan wrote back, explaining that since both parties had been at fault, both should pay equally for the damages. He also noted that Pickering’s prostate troubles had begun long before the accident.

  Pickering responded — by raising his demand to $1,500! When Ewan fought back — canvassing neighbors, hiring his own lawyer — Pickering raised the stakes yet again, now suing for $8,000: $1,000 for his operation, $5,000 for his sufferings, and another $2,000 for his wife. Pickering was a powerful but unpopular man. One neighbor exclaimed, “Eight thousand!! It’s more than his whole damned carcass is worth.”

  In the end, the local judge for the case inexplicably decided for Pickering, awarding him $1,000 for his operation, $500 for sufferings, and more than $1,000 for his wife. Granted, Pickering had connections in high places. But witnesses from the community declared themselves flabbergasted.

  This wasn’t the only unpleasant battle raging around the Macdonalds. The idea of church union was in the air. It began with the Anglicans, who proposed a United Church of Canada. Over the next few decades, the idea of a single Canadian United Church gained more support, and by the early 1920s, church union, as it was known, seemed likely to take place.

  Ewan stood to lose more than he gained by union. He was no longer an especially popular or effective minister; he had fallen a long way from the eager young man who set off in search of a brilliant career. Church union would mean a consolidation of ministries and a loss of jobs. What’s more, a Methodist minister was already in place in Zephyr, and there was no guarantee that Ewan would be chosen over him. Nonetheless, Ewan told a friend that he was not entirely opposed to union, but that Maud was dead set against it. She feared the United Church would become a large, impersonal bureaucracy, “ruled by a few at the top.” Ever the fierce loyalist, she clung to her Scottish Presbyterian ancestry.

  In the end, the United Church of Canada was voted forward by a strong majority of Congregationalists, Methodists, and about two-thirds of Presbyterians. The remaining one-third of Presbyterians stayed separate as “Continuing Presbyterians.” The Macdonalds were among this minority, and as Maud wrote to MacMillan, life was “made unhappy for us by the terrible . . . disruption in our church.”

  In Leaskdale, there was only the one Presbyterian church in town, and the local community supported Ewan as minister. But in Zephyr, things turned acrimonious. While Leaskdale voted solidly to remain Continuing Presbyterian, Zephyr’s smaller community was more divided, voting only twenty-three to eighteen to stay Presbyterian.

  The whole business left a bitter taste for the Macdonalds. Ewan, in particular, was relieved when in late 1925 he was chosen to lead a new church in nearby Norval. Norval was closer to Toronto, where Chester was attending a private high school.

  Maud and Ewan had been taking turns falling in and out of serious depressions for years. Both hoped a change of place might do the family good. Ewan had felt briefly energized by his legal battle against Marshall Pickering, but fell into despondency when he lost the case. He was ready to move without regret. For Maud, the move from Leaskdale to Norval was wrenching. She had put down roots; there in Leaskdale she had raised her boys. When it came time to say good-bye, she was tearful even at parting from the difficult congregants in Zephyr. Ewan felt no such sorrow.

  The Norval manse was a large, handsome brick house, with indoor plumbing and electricity. Once again, Ewan would serve two local churches — one at Norval, and one in Glen Williams — but the parishioners of both congregations were equally well-to-do and friendly. The town of Norval appealed to Maud at once, and reminded her of beloved Cavendish. It was friendly, green, and rural, with a river running through it, yet was close to a railway line that could bring her swiftly into Toronto. Maud bragged to George MacMillan, “It is one of the beauty spots of Ontario.”

  Maud fell in love especially with the hill of pines rising up behind the manse. She watched the bright moonlight beaming over those pines; it filled a longing as nothing had since she had left Prince Edward Island. The beauty-hungry girl in Maud never died. Here in Norval she found a natural beauty to nourish her.

  The only bad news was that their new church treasurer was engaged to a relative of none other than Marshall Pickering, their driving adversary from Zephyr. Ewan had evaded the court judgment because he had no money to pay — and the court could not force him to use Maud’s money. But the very evening before they were to move to Norval, Ewan received warning that anything shipped by rail in his name would be seized on behalf of Marshall Pickering. The family quickly changed the labels on all the boxes to “Mrs. Macdonald.”

  Maud was initially energized by the move. She published both her adult novels — The Blue Castle and The Tangled Web — as well as a number of children’s novels: Emily’s Quest, Magic for Marigold, Pat of Silver Bush, and Mistress Pat, a sequel. She embarked on a reading tour of Western Canada, where at last she met her long-term pen pal Ephraim Weber and his wife. In Western Canada she also joyfully reunited with the now-married Laura Pritchard, sister of sweet “kindred spirit” Will Pritchard from Prince Albert days. Maud described the reunion: “We would embrace and kiss — draw back — look at each other — embrace again.” It was proof, Maud affirmed, “that love was immortal.”

  Maud had long since stopped believing in a traditional Christian afterlife. Sometimes she maintained there was no God at all, only science and “blind impersonal Chance.” Yet she believed in reincarnation, and in “an infinite ceaseless struggle” between good and evil. Of course, as she confessed to Ephraim Weber, she never discussed any of their unorthodox opinions in public. “I have to be exceedingly careful for my ministerial husband’s sake.”

  Maud actively involved herself in the new Norval church. She still loved “making things go,” as when helping out in the young people’s theatrical events. She was less fond of the endless rounds of mission bands, auxiliaries, Women’s Institutes, and Ladies’ Aids. “Sometimes I get so sick of them that I could hang myself on the handiest gooseberry bush rather than go to another,” she admitted.

  Ewan continued to suffer from periodic depressions during these years, and his memory worsened. Maud wondered what his congregation would think if they could see him at home — pawing at his head; frantically intoning psalms against damnation; staring off into space with a half-frightened, half-vacant expression. Maud herself suffered from increasingly dark moods and anxieties about her sons — Chester especially, who seemed “girl crazy” when young, and something worse as he grew older. Chester exercised little control over his impulses. His social skills, never strong to begin with, degenerated over time.

  Chester was bright but had a hard time settling in to anything, especially his studies. Like his father, he was overweight, clumsy, and unathletic. When Chester could not earn things honestly, he stole them — at first it was something as simple as a handful of cookies or attention; later on it would be money and valuables.

  Both Ewan and Chester were strangely affectless. Their reactions struck many people as abnormal. Father and elder son were enough alike that they clashed with e
ach other constantly.

  Maud began worrying about Chester in a deep, sick-hearted way in 1928, but we do not know precisely what sent her into panic mode. Her journal entries are deliberately vague. There was an awful incident in which he exposed himself to one of their domestic household workers — but Maud kept this incident well under wraps. Whatever triggered Maud’s anxiety was “something nasty and worrying that embittered life.” For once, she could not confide even in her “grumble” journal, or in her trusty pen pals. Her habit of secretly obsessing about Chester would continue to the bitter end.

  Stuart remained the stable, successful son. She began describing Stuart in her journals as her one “good son.” She became fearful and clinging. Stuart and a friend left on their own one night to go ice-skating, and the ensuing hunt for both boys — though it ended happily — fractured Maud’s already fragile nerves. Another time, Stuart nearly drowned when the Norval dam broke while he was swimming. After that, Maud was afraid to let him near the river that had twice almost claimed him.

  When Stuart left for boarding school, Maud missed him terribly. “This house is always strangely empty when Stuart’s laugh has gone out of it.” She could not turn to Ewan for strength, comfort, or even companionship. Over the years, husband and wife had drifted steadily further apart.

  Ewan’s resentment of Maud’s fame and of her local popularity increased over time. When Maud’s Sunday-school class presented her with a basket of Christmas roses, her husband turned away without a word. And though they all depended on the income from her work, Ewan was clearly not an L. M. Montgomery fan. Maud wrote in her journal, “Ewan secretly hates my work — and openly ignores it.”

  More and more, Maud came to rely on their hired help to get through her days. She depended on her household workers for the externals of her life, and she and Ewan both depended heavily on the few psychotropic drugs available. Unfortunately, the medicine that helped in one way harmed them in others. Ewan Macdonald was now taking a potentially deadly cocktail mix of tranquilizers, bromides, and sleeping pills. It made him sleepy, vague, and irritable, and it further eroded his failing memory. Maud, too, self-medicated with sleeping pills, wine, and tranquilizers. Starting in 1930, she began taking hypodermics, too, first for allergies, then for nerves.

  There was no widespread acknowledgment of bipolar condition during Maud’s lifetime; manic depressives were told to rest and were kept away from things that excited or stimulated them. Virginia Woolf, Maud’s contemporary, was ordered to stop writing altogether. Luckily, Maud’s husband did not often urge upon her that particular cure. Only as long as Maud was still able to write and escape into stories could she survive.

  Some of the family’s household helpers proved more helpful than others. Maud grew enormously fond of the lively Elsie Busby, for instance, but was horrified one night when she heard Elsie, her voice coming clearly through the heating grate, announcing that she “hated the Macdonalds.” A few days later, the distraught author discovered that Elsie had combed through her private notes.

  Maud lived in fear of that early childhood refrain “What will people say?” The idea that a maid knew her secrets and could easily spread them abroad appalled her. She fired Elsie immediately, but Elsie’s successors were not all improvements. A maid named Margaret was, according to Mary Rubio, “eccentric and morose, with few skills in either housekeeping or cooking.” Another worker gossiped incessantly. But a minister’s wife could not afford to be a harsh or particular mistress. Sometimes Maud kept workers on simply because she was afraid to fire them.

  The Great Depression, which financially devastated the lives of so many, also struck the Macdonald family. Some of the companies Maud had invested in heavily were failing. In 1930, one $14,000 investment’s value fell to less than $2,000. Another $3,000 investment in a Toronto insurance company failed entirely. By the end of 1932, Maud was typing her own manuscripts for the first time in years, to avoid paying a professional typist. Though Maud was still wealthy by most standards, she had suffered serious losses and believed that her family stood near collapse. Would she have enough money to put both her boys through college? Maud had once believed they were well set for Ewan’s retirement, but the 1929 stock market crash shook that security.

  The Park Corner relatives turned to Maud often for financial help, as did other friends and family members. Of the many loans she made over the years, very few were ever paid back. Even the amiable treasurer of the Norval church “borrowed” church funds, and Maud covered the difference. She worked harder than ever at producing and selling stories. Maud began responding to fan letters by urging her admirers to tell her publishers how much they liked her work.

  She also encouraged them to write to RKO Pictures about a favorite book — not Anne of Green Gables, of course, from whose films she knew she would never see a penny. But she was nonetheless delighted when, in 1934, a new, improved “talkie” version of Anne of Green Gables debuted. Maud made no profit from it, but she enjoyed the film. The actress who played Anne even changed her stage name to Anne Shirley, and reprised the role in a later film. Maud watched the new movie four times. When Maud wrote to George MacMillan about it, he replied he’d already seen the movie in Scotland — seven times!

  Though critics favored more modern and experimental fiction, Maud’s popularity among readers continued. A warm fan letter could save her day, bringing a welcome bit of light. But she often found herself pestered and pursued by strangers claiming to be relations or long-lost friends, demanding money, visits, and autographs. On Maud’s rare visits home to Cavendish, she was badgered by people coming around to see “their” beloved author. They could not understand Maud’s desire for privacy or for time alone with her family. She once wrote that “every freak” who had ever read Anne of Green Gables considered themselves her “kindred spirit.” But one fan outdid them all — the eccentric and determined Isabel Anderson.

  When Isabel first wrote, Maud assumed from Isabel’s gushing style that she was a precocious young girl. Maud responded kindly. She was startled to discover that the fan who had expressed such schoolgirlish adoration was in fact a thirty-four-year-old teacher. But once Maud had written back encouragingly, Isabel Anderson could not be stopped. She plied Maud with letters, gifts, invitations, and phone calls. She would not let Maud rest till she had — somehow — managed to coax Maud into an overnight visit, all the while acting, Maud noted acidly, like “a blushing girl in the presence of her lover.”

  Isabel began coming to the Norval manse without invitation. She sulked and fumed when Maud did not respond, and even threatened suicide. A family friend remembered that during one unwelcome visit, Maud burst into the kitchen and announced in horror, “She wants to hold hands with me!” Maud eventually managed to shake off her stalker — who went on to pursue other objects of her affection with equal vigor.

  True companionship was harder to find. Maud often turned to the consolation and company of her cats. Maud’s much-adored Daffy had died years earlier, and Maud was heartbroken. “Get another cat,” advised the unsympathetic Ewan. Maud didn’t believe she could ever love another pet — till she met Good Luck, or Lucky, as he was called. Truly a cat with nine lives, Lucky survived a number of close calls — including a bout of double pneumonia.

  Meanwhile, the vivacious and fun-loving Nora Lefurgey Campbell, Maud’s great friend from years ago, moved nearby. Nora’s visits were a delightful cure for loneliness. “Our minds seemed to strike sparks from each other,” Maud enthused. She unearthed old photographs that Maud and Nora had taken, posing in bathing suits by the shore of Prince Edward Island. They teased and insulted each other, quoted from Shakespeare, or sat silently appreciating the glory of a “sunset sky of rose and dark gold.” Another night, in the “little violet-blue hour,” they spent two wordless hours absorbing the beauty of an apple orchard. Nora offered a much-needed respite from the anxieties of daily life.

  In 1931, the Macdonalds learned that Chester had flunked out of his
first year of engineering studies at the University of Toronto and had been asked to leave the program. Maud reacted hysterically, as she often did when misfortunes came upon her sons. She wept all the way home, tears soaking into the collar of her coat. She’d always had a tendency toward the dramatic and felt things keenly, but these characteristics had grown sharper over time. So, too, had her exaggerated pride and vanity — the twin curses of her life. Her worry over her sons bordered on obsession. When Chester failed at life, at work, and in his studies, Maud was convinced the whole world talked of nothing else.

  As more troubling news of Chester reached Maud’s ears, she wrote, “I have spent two days in hell. I cannot see how I am to go on living. I have suffered so dreadfully that I feel as if I were going insane. And I have had to keep up a face to the world when something in my soul was bleeding to death.”

  It was around this time that, according to Mary Rubio, Maud “set aside her journal for almost three years. From 1933 until 1936, Maud was able only to scribble rough notes of daily events.” Her journal entries became hard to decode. Not until 1936 did Maud go back and pick up the broken thread of those lost years. In September 1933, she wrote merely, “another hideous thing has come and a new worry.” She does not explain, but one may suppose it had to do again with Chester. His name had failed to appear on an exam pass list — an omission that was righted the next day. No one ever had quite the same power to touch Maud’s deepest sympathy, or to wound her. “I feel,” she wrote about her eldest son, “as if something in me has been hurt to death.”

  Stuart was training to be a doctor and was making waves as a young gymnast, winning the 1933 Canadian national title in junior gymnastics. But Maud barely took time to celebrate his triumphs. She fretted and fumed about his girlfriend, Joy Laird, a pretty and affectionate girl Stuart had first met in Norval.

  To Maud, who had always written in her stories against parental interference in matters of the heart, Stuart’s relationship came as “a new little gnawing worry.” Maud did her utmost to kill the romance, writing her younger son a scolding letter and extracting from him a promise that he would end things with Joy. Small wonder that Maud wrote in her journal, “I haven’t liked myself one day this week.” Yet she seemed unable to control her own behavior.