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House of Dreams

Page 21

by Liz Rosenberg


  Maud bequeathed her readers thousands of pages of beautiful writing — novels and stories, memoir, poetry, biography, and vignettes. She left behind thousands of pages of her journals, and hundreds of pages of lively letters. Her private writings are often as gorgeous as her published works. The wonder is not that L. M. Montgomery struggled, but that she rose above her suffering for so long and accomplished so much in the face of it. As she tried to explain to one young fan, fame and success were no guarantee against life’s sorrows. “What . . . can fence out the cares and problems that enter into all lives?”

  Maud suffered from chronic depression, and likely also from bouts of manic depression, yet she produced twenty novels and hundreds of short stories, even in her most difficult and desperate years. Writing for her was not merely a hobby, it was a way of life, a constantly renewed and renewing way of seeing the world. She was a noted speaker, a popular teacher, a pioneering newspaperwoman, an accomplished craftswoman, a capable homemaker, a world traveler, and a brilliant writer.

  In Anne of Green Gables, she transformed her personal story of abandonment into a glorious tale of love and rescue. Often sad, Maud provided laughter and joy for others. She was passionately loving and passionately beloved. Her friendships were deep and enduring. She, who married late and feared she would never have any sort of domestic happiness, raised two sons. She witnessed snowstorms and sun showers, sunrises and new moons she claimed she would “remember even into the halls of eternity.” Maud found life beautiful: to the very end, there were things to marvel at and to love. “Perfect happiness I have never had — never will have,” she confided to her journal. “Yet there have been, after all, many wonderful and exquisite hours in my life.”

  1874

  Born November 30, Clifton, Prince Edward Island, to Hugh John and Clara Macneill Montgomery

  1876

  Mother dies of tuberculosis

  1883

  The Nelson boys come to live with the Macneills. Wreck of the ship the Marco Polo near Cavendish

  1890 – 1891

  Trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to visit her father and his new wife and child. Maud destroys old journals and begins new. First publication, in Saskatchewan newspaper, “proudest day of my life”

  1893 – 1894

  Attends Prince of Wales College and earns first class teacher’s license

  1894 – 1895

  Teaches school in Bideford, PEI

  1895 – 1896

  Attends Dalhousie University in Halifax. Receives first payment for her writings, a five-dollar check

  1896 – 1897

  Teaches in Belmont, PEI, and becomes engaged to her cousin Edwin Simpson

  1897 – 1898

  Teaches in Lower Bedeque, PEI; falls in love with Herman Leard; breaks off engagement to Simpson. Returns to Cavendish to live with Grandmother Macneill when Grandfather Macneill dies

  1901 – 1902

  Works as newspaperwoman at Daily Echo in Halifax

  1903

  Ewan Macdonald begins as Presbyterian minister in Cavendish; Maud starts her lifelong correspondence with George Boyd MacMillan and Ephraim Weber

  1906

  Secretly engaged to Ewan Macdonald, who leaves to study in Scotland and suffers nervous breakdown

  1908

  Publication of Anne of Green Gables

  1909

  Anne of Avonlea; Ewan Macdonald accepts parish in Leaskdale, Ontario

  1910

  Kilmeny of the Orchard; Maud meets Earl and Lady Grey in September; in November travels to Boston to meet her publisher, L. C. Page & Company

  1911

  The Story Girl; Grandmother Macneill dies; Maud marries Ewan Macdonald at Park Corner on July 5; honeymoons in Scotland and England for three months; home to Leaskdale, Ontario, in September

  1912

  Chronicles of Avonlea; her eldest son, Chester Cameron, born July 7

  1913

  The Golden Road; trip to PEI

  1914

  First World War is declared; second child, Hugh Alexander, stillborn on August 13

  1915

  Anne of the Island; Ewan Stuart born October 7

  1916

  The Watchman and Other Poems

  1917

  Anne’s House of Dreams

  1918

  First World War ends; Maud suffers Spanish flu; goes to PEI to help nurse sick relatives at Park Corner

  1919

  “A hellish year.” Frede Campbell Macfarlane dies of Spanish flu in Montreal; Ewan suffers a nervous breakdown; Rainbow Valley; Maud sells all rights for Anne of Green Gables to Page, who immediately sells movie rights

  1920

  Further Chronicles of Avonlea published illegally; Maud begins eight-year lawsuit with Page & Co.; Rilla of Ingleside

  1922

  Car accident in Zephyr; Ewan is sued and goes to court; summer trip to Muskoka

  1923

  Emily of New Moon; Maud is first Canadian woman to become Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Britain

  1925

  Emily Climbs; church union vote passes in Canada

  1926

  The Blue Castle; move to Norval, Ontario

  1927

  Emily’s Quest; Maud is presented to the Prince of Wales

  1929

  Magic for Marigold; stock market crash affects Maud’s finances

  1930

  Goes to Prince Albert to rekindle friendships of 1890

  1931

  A Tangled Web

  1933

  Pat of Silver Bush

  1934

  Chester and Luella’s baby Luella is born; Courageous Women, Maud’s first foray into biography

  1935

  Mistress Pat; Maud elected to Literary and Artistic Institute of France; moves to Riverside Drive, Toronto (Journey’s End); is made Officer of the Order of the British Empire

  1936

  Anne of Windy Poplars; Cavendish chosen as site for national park on Prince Edward Island

  1937

  Green Gables national site opens in Cavendish; Jane of Lantern Hill

  1939

  Anne of Ingleside; Maud’s last visit to PEI

  1942

  Dies on April 24; lies in state at Green Gables and is buried in Cavendish Cemetery (where Ewan Macdonald joins her one year later)

  Page numbers refer to the print edition.

  Chapter Two: An Early Sorrow

  p. 16: “I loved my father . . . ever knew”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 160.

  Chapter Three: “Very Near to a Kingdom of Ideal Beauty”

  p. 26: “If I believe . . . stage of existence”: Ibid., p. 26.

  Chapter Six: Count Nine Stars

  p. 60: “very different indeed . . . my outward being”: Ibid, p. 16.

  Chapter Seven: “Darling Father” and Prince Albert

  p. 79: “Then whisper . . . humble name”: “The Fringed Gentian.” Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1884, vol. 108, p. 237.

  p. 83: “No decent father . . . such a trip alone”: Rubio, p. 67.

  Chapter Fourteen: Back in the House of Dreams

  p. 168: “This morning we . . . shall stop short”: Ibid., p. 112.

  p. 171: “I gazed always . . . moonlight, sunset”: Montgomery, “The Gay Days of Old,” p. 46.

  Chapter Fifteen: The Creation of Anne

  p. 181: “having ‘thought out’ . . . my household work”: Gammel, p. 148.

  p. 183: “I can never be a really great writer”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 21.

  p. 183: “I think we . . . reach its own”: Ibid., p. 9

  p. 183: “a wide green . . . there are Junes”: Ibid.

  p. 192: “the dearest . . . immortal Alice”: Andronik, p. 82.

  pp. 192 – 193: “I don’t think . . . of her name”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 41.

  Chapter Sixteen: “Yes, I Understand the Young Lady Is a Writer”

  p. 202: “a bilious headache”: Ibid., p. 52.

  p. 2
06: “Sleet blew . . . whole way home”: Gammel, p. 248.

  p. 210: “If two people . . . would be excellent”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 32.

  p. 212: “Color is . . . it is a passion”: Ibid., p. 13.

  Chapter Twenty: Dashing over the Traces

  p. 225: “Those whom the gods . . . ministers’ wives”: Rubio and Waterston, vol. 2, p. xiii.

  p. 227: “I like Leaskdale . . . I do not love it”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 65.

  p. 235: “It seemed passionately . . . leave it again”: Ibid., p. 68.

  p. 240: “All the sorrow . . . equal it in agony”: Ibid., p. 71.

  p. 241: “not had one decent dinner since the war began”: Ibid.

  p. 267: “I swear it as a dark and deadly vow”: Rubio, p. 289.

  p. 268: “I can’t afford . . . cater to it for awhile”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 119.

  p. 271: “dreamed it all out . . . September”: Ibid., p. 109.

  p. 276: “I content myself . . . turn a corner”: Ibid., p. 85.

  p. 276: “Ewan was maladroit . . . practical or mechanical . . . Whoa!”: Rubio, p. 238.

  p. 280: “made unhappy . . . in our church”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 127.

  p. 281: “it is one of the beauty spots of Ontario”: Ibid., p. 127.

  p. 283: “Sometimes I get . . . go to another”: Ibid., p. 137.

  p. 290: “set aside . . . of daily events”: Rubio and Waterston, Selected Journals, vol. 4, p. xv.

  p. 296: “the house of her dreams”: Rubio, p. 444.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Journey’s End

  p. 310: “true tragedy . . . nor fixative journals”: Rubio and Waterston, Writing a Life, p. 116.

  p. 311: “I do not ask . . . I am better”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 201.

  p. 311: “He was always after money”: Rubio, p. 565.

  p. 312: “The past year . . . to live for”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 204.

  p. 315: “arteriosclerosis and . . . neurasthenia”: Rubio, p. 585.

  p. 316: “My attitude . . . lay it down’”: Tiessen and Tiessen, p. 105.

  p. 318: “I have read all her books and I know her”: Heilbron and McCabe, p. 6.

  p. 318: “‘Poor Maud’ . . . ‘Too bad!’”: Rubio, p. 584.

  p. 318: “feel their pulses . . . sweetness and light”: Ibid.

  EPILOGUE

  p. 324: “What . . . can fence . . . into all lives?”: Ibid.

  Andronik, Catherine M. Kindred Spirit. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1993.

  Bolger, Francis W. P. The Years Before Anne. Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation, 1974.

  Bolger, Francis W. P., and Elizabeth R. Epperly, eds. My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G. B. MacMillan from L. M. Montgomery. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992.

  Eggleston, Wilfrid, ed. The Green Gables Letters: From L. M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905 – 1909. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1960.

  Gammel, Irene. Looking for Anne of Green Gables. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.

  Heilbron, Alexandra, and Kevin McCabe, eds. The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999.

  Montgomery, L. M. “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career.” Pts. 1 – 6. Everywoman’s World, June – November, 1917.

  ———. “The Gay Days of Old.” Farmers’ Magazine 18 (December 15, 1919): 46.

  Rubio, Mary Henley. Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Gift of Wings. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.

  Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston, eds. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery. 5 vols. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985 – 2004.

  Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. Writing a Life: L. M. Montgomery. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995.

  Simpson, Harold H. Cavendish: Its History, Its People, Its Founding Families. Amherst, NS: Harold H. Simpson & Associates, 1973.

  Tiessen, Hildi Froese, and Paul Gerard Tiessen, eds. After Green Gables: L. M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916 – 1941. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

  In addition, the L. M. Montgomery Research Centre at the University of Guelph made available to me countless useful notebooks, daybooks, letters, articles, and artifacts — including samples of Maud’s own exquisite needlework and the famous spotted china dogs she purchased on her honeymoon. All uncited quotes come from Maud’s unpublished personal journals or from her published memoir, “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career.”

  There are many fine websites dedicated to the life and work of L. M. Montgomery. Among the most useful to young scholars is the L. M. Montgomery Literary Society, which is always publishing new articles on various aspects of her biography, friends, relations, and work. They may be found at http://lmmontgomeryliterarysociety.weebly.com/.

  I have many people to thank for the creation of this book. The bibliography suggests some of the authors and scholars who helped paved my way, kindred spirits and fellow admirers of L. M. Montgomery’s work. Deep thanks to the estate of L. M. Montgomery for their gracious help and guidance. Thanks to the staff at the L. M. Montgomery Research Centre at the University of Guelph, who shared their time and resources, providing access to daybooks, journals, letters, and artifacts. Finally, I must thank the incomparable Mary Rubio, whose adult biography of L. M. Montgomery was an inspiration, and who was so giving of her time, energy, encouragement, and expertise.

  I am forever grateful to my editor, Liz Bicknell, and the remarkable folks at Candlewick Press. To Paul Janeczko, for making the initial introductions. Thanks to the provost at Binghamton University and the dean of Harpur College for timely grants and support. And last but not least, I owe an eternal debt to my late husband, David Bosnick, who drove us all to Canada, and who, along with the rest of my family, lovingly tolerated the many hours I spent behind closed study doors.

  None of this would have been possible without Maud herself. To quote the author, “Dead and in your grave, your charm is still potent enough to weave a tissue of sunshine over the darkness of the day. I thank you.”

  Text copyright © 2018 by Liz Rosenberg

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Julie Morstad

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2018

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

  The illustrations in this book were done in ink.

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com

 

 

 


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