Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  The closest railroad was eleven miles away, but items could be brought by sea, or overland by the Mayfield Road from Charlottetown, twenty miles south-east, the eleventh-largest city in the Dominion of Canada in the 1880s. The impetuous urgency of the outside world reached Charlottetown by telegraph and boat. Newspapers—most of them with heated political sympathies—were produced in Charlottetown and other smaller towns. Farmwives subscribed to women’s magazines from the Boston and New York areas, and kept up with current fashions. Peddlers (colporteurs) came around with their tin wares, patent medicines, housewares, books, and other items (including dyes that might turn a young girl’s hair green, as happened to Anne of Green Gables).

  The Island of Maud’s birth was on the cusp of technological and cultural advancements. Since 1852, telegraph cables had connected PEI with the mainland. Charlottetown, incorporated in 1855, had in 1859 replaced gas with electric lights. In 1866, the first horseless carriage, a steam-powered motor-car, was brought from Philadelphia by Father Belcourt of Rustico, the “first Canadian motorist, the first to import [a car] … and the first Canadian to have a car accident.”3 In 1873, the year before Maud’s birth, Prince Edward Island joined the Dominion of Canada, partly to fund the construction of Island railroads. Although time in Cavendish still moved to the diurnal and seasonal rhythms, new technologies were shrinking the world, and Cavendish citizens engaged with the intellectual debates of the times.

  Speakers and performers came to give programs in the local community hall. In between such events, the articulate and intelligent farmers of Cavendish organized formal debates over issues of the day such as “Should there be Free Trade between Canada and the United States?” “Slavery,” and “Imperial Federation.” On March 19, 1886, the topic was “Should women be given the right to vote?” (The first speaker argued that women paid taxes, so they should be able to vote; a second speaker countered that since women did not bear arms, they should not. The belief that women were inferior to men, responded the next speaker, had been long discredited. But, he added, a man and his wife were one before God, so they should have only one vote.) Maud’s Cavendish was a stimulating cultural and intellectual environment.4

  The minds of these sturdy, industrious Scottish immigrants could roil like the sea. They were easily inflamed by events, real or imaginary. Sharptongued words occasionally replaced the ancient claymores of medieval clan warfare. The Scottish custom of “flyting,” or mental fencing remained, with insults flung in fun, part of the oral tradition of the Celtic heritage.5Occasionally tempers flared, but the verbal tournaments usually ended with laughter. Most of Maud Montgomery’s immediate kindred were feisty and literate Scots-Canadians, particularly gifted in wit and rapier-like wordplay. Theirs was a culture that lived by words: first God’s, then man’s. A stern religion, which demanded constant self-examination, kept this explosive mixture in order. When disputes broke out, ministers were the peacekeepers, calming tempers.

  There were genuine theological schisms, however. The Presbyterian church was located in the centre of the community, on land provided by Maud’s Macneill clan. The Presbyterian Church was organized democratically, with power resting at the local level: historically, in Scotland, it had been a hothouse of violent internal feuds. Indeed, in Cavendish, there was also a Baptist church—founded by disgruntled Presbyterians—at the other end of the village. Serious doctrinal differences divided the two churches. The Baptists believed in salvation from sin by the ritual of immersion and public confession. Presbyterians thought sinful man could not achieve salvation so easily: many still believed in “Predestination,” the doctrine holding that man was inherently sinful, and only God determined who would be “saved.” These “Elect” (the “chosen ones”) were believed to be picked by an omnipotent God’s arbitrary will and pleasure—not necessarily by their good deeds in life. Still, children were taught to behave themselves, as there was no point in taking chances. Bad behaviour suggested exclusion from the “Elect.”

  In the late nineteenth century, bitter religious schisms soured Cavendish tempers for many years. This phenomenon took place elsewhere, of course: people were deeply suspicious of different faiths and ethnicities. However, the young Presbyterians and Baptists could put aside disputes if there was an interesting speaker or a “social”: church activities were the centre of village social life.

  Virtually everyone in Cavendish was related to everyone else through almost a century of intermarriage: of the forty families, ten were named Macneill. The other founding families—the Simpsons and the Clarks—had intermarried with the Macneills. Marrying cousins was common, and was beginning to cause concern. Maud’s grandfather was sensibly set against the practice. He observed both good and bad traits being intensified by intermarriage, sometimes producing a highly gifted person, but at other times resulting in mental instability. Sometimes, both came out in the same person.

  As a child, Maud observed human nature in its most elemental form—in a tightly knit rural village where inhabitants were bound together through shared experiences and communal memory. Bickering among the clans and the branches of a family was carried to school with the children, intensified, and returned home. Tales spread from one house to the next. People’s fear of being “talked about” was an effective means of social control. Along with other children, Maud was constantly reminded of the catchphrase “What will people say?” Continuous watchfulness made Cavendish an easily agitated hive of gossip—an immensely rich landscape for a future novelist.

  What’s in a name?

  A Cavendish pedigree depended on three factors. First, how long had a given family lived on Prince Edward Island? Next, did they have “connections” in “the Old Country”? And finally, did they have material wealth, personal integrity, and political clout? On all three grids, Maud Montgomery was born to high position, and she grew up knowing this. She carried the Montgomery name, as well as the Macneill and Woolner heritage.

  The Montgomerys had been among the earliest British settlers on Prince Edward Island, coming to Canada by choice in the early 1770s as well-to-do Scottish Lowlanders, they had received grants of land for military service. (The post-1800 Scottish immigrants, mostly from the Highlands, were of a lower economic class and left Scotland under duress, fleeing the “Highland clearances,” the economic change brought by the arrival of sheep farming, forcing people out of Scotland as the feudal clan system broke up.) The Prince Edward Island Montgomerys spoke English, not Gaelic like the Highlanders. Established in Canada decades before the influx of the Highlanders, Maud’s Montgomery ancestors claimed descent from a “cadet” in the house of the Earl of Eglinton, based in Ayrshire, Scotland, and felt in a much higher class.

  In fact, the Scottish Montgomeries claimed to be among the oldest of the Scottish clans, arriving in the United Kingdom in the train of William the Conqueror in 1066. They traced their ancestry to a French knight called “Mundegumbri,” who had settled in what is now Ayrshire in the twelfth century. The historical record shows that the Montgomerie clan prospered through the centuries, acquiring titles of nobility. In 1388, Sir John Montgomerie was immortalized in Scottish balladry for the capture of the legendary Harry Hotspur. It is worth noting that the Prince Edward Island Montgomerys had no written proof of these ancestral connections, but Maud nevertheless grew up with great pride in her paternal name.

  In family legend, three Montgomery brothers sailed for Upper Canada. One stopped in Prince Edward Island at the insistence of his seasick wife, Mary McShannon Montgomery—she was said to have bribed the ship’s captain with whisky to let her go ashore, and then refused to embark on the ship again. Later in her life, Maud heard the story of what happened to the other two brothers who sailed on to Upper Canada: one stayed, and is alleged to have given his name to Toronto’s Eglinton Avenue; the other is believed to have returned to Scotland, never to be heard from again. (Maud told these legends in speeches and adapted them in her fiction, writing that Mary McShannon Montgomery’s hus
band’s revenge was to inscribe on his wife’s eventual tombstone, “Here I Stay!”)

  But ship records do not fully support these legends. A recently discovered list from the brigantine the Edinburgh—which sailed in July 1771 from Campbelltown, Kintyre, Scotland, to Malpeque, Prince Edward Island—records only one Hugh Montgomery and his family, as well as another relative. The record indicates they paid their way only to PEI.6 But another legend that Maud grew up hearing appears to be true—that Mary McShannon’s family were professional “harpers” to the Scottish Montgomerie clan because of their talents in storytelling and playing musical instruments.7

  The Canadian Montgomerys possibly romanticized their connections; however, records do show that the Scottish Montgomeries were exceptional as a colourful, dramatic clan, characterized as a “hard-living, hard-riding set” who did “not enjoy long lives.”8 Maud’s grandfather, Donald Montgomery (born in 1808), told how he was once stopped in the street by a stranger who mistook him for the current head of the Scottish Montgomerie clan, Archibald William, the thirteenth Earl of Eglinton (1819–1861). In fact, Maud’s grandfather and his Scottish contemporary did share a facial likeness, so there may have been truth in his story.9

  The thirteenth Earl of Eglinton was notoriously dashing and romantic. He had a love of gaming as well as an excessive—and fatal—love for chivalry and romance. In 1839, at the age of twenty, he mounted the largest and last medieval tournament of the nineteenth century. Two years in preparation, this pseudo-tournament consumed most of his fortune, and, thanks to the unpredictable Scottish climate, was a complete disaster. Some hundred thousand spectators watched the debacle of pseudo-medieval knights on horses tilting and jousting in slippery mud, trying to hold anachronistic umbrellas over their heads to protect their elegantly embroidered clothes and armour from the rain.10 One historian says that this tournament “marked a turning point” for Lord Eglinton, who “ceased to spend most of his time enjoying himself and became the epitome of the Victorian gentleman, an indefatigable public servant, a faithful husband, unfailingly considerate and courteous to everyone, genuinely loved by all classes, good at everything except money management. When he died, Blackwood’s Magazine wrote, ‘Of him it may emphatically be said that honour was his polar star’ “(108, 110).11

  Maud’s grandfather, Senator Donald Montgomery, was a distinguished member of the Prince Edward Island legislature from 1832 to 1874. After the Island entered the Canadian Confederation in 1873, he served in the Senate of Canada for twenty years until his death, at age eighty-six, in 1893. In a society where property brought status, Senator Montgomery held 225 acres of prime land at Park Corner, some thirteen miles west of Cavendish. He had nine children with his first wife, Ann Murray; his second wife, Louisa Cundall Gall, a plain-faced woman, possessed an independent income and excellent social connections on the Island.

  Among the Senator’s sons, Hugh John (Maud’s father, born in 1841) had many of the same traits as the fabled Montgomerie clan of Scottish history: they were charmers, full of personal style and love of romantic chivalry; they were energetic and extravagant, good at making money but poor at handling it; they shared physical traits like heavy-lidded eyes and exceptionally small hands and mouths. Maud inherited these same physical features. She apparently did not know that several Montgomerie ancestors had written poetry and published it privately.12

  Maud’s maternal great-great-grandfather, John Macneill (born circa 1750), had come to Charlottetown from the Kintyre peninsula of Argyllshire, Scotland, around 1772. Of the twelve children from his marriage to Margaret Simpson, nine sons were reputed to be “clever, high-spirited and domineering.” (The records say nothing of the daughters.) Around 1790, John Macneill obtained farm property out on the North Shore of the Island and moved there with two other Scottish families, the Simpsons and the Clarks, to found the community of Cavendish.13

  The Macneills also boasted a notable lineage. In the “Old Country,” Hector Macneill (a cousin of the early John Macneill) had published books of poetry in Scotland steadily from 1795 until his death; he is mentioned in Lord Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. According to Maud, legend held that several of the ballads attributed to his Ayrshire friend, the famous Robert Burns, were written by him (including “Come under my Plaidie” and “I lo’e ne’er a laddie but ane”). Maud treasured her copy of the Published Works of Hector Macneill Esquire (1856), and she always spoke of the literary strain running through her Macneill clan as an important part of her sense of herself, as well as her potential. In fact, a notable literary and artistic strain was present in both clans.

  In Canada, John Macneill’s oldest son, William Simpson Macneill (1781–1870), apprenticed under the famous colonial lawyer and writer Thomas McCulloch of Nova Scotia. W. S. Macneill lived in Cavendish as a farmer, businessman, Commissioner of Public Works, and magistrate (this involved writing wills, performing marriages, and facilitating educational and other progress). For his bride, Eliza Townsend of Park Corner, he built the house in which his great-granddaughter Lucy Maud Montgomery would be raised. Only its foundations remain today, restored by Macneill’s great-grandson, John Macneill (born in 1930), on the farm he inherited and maintains as a historic site with his wife, Jennie Moore Macneill, and their son. In the PEI House of Assembly from 1814 to 1838, William Simpson Macneill wore the mantle of Speaker so well that the name “Speaker Macneill” stuck. Over one hundred years later, his severe-looking portrait in the Charlottetown legislative chambers reputedly so discomfited another Speaker that he had it moved out of his view. Speaker Macneill had what Maud later described as the “good” Macneill traits: intellect, stability of purpose, and an excellent memory. She recounted that he also embodied the clan’s faults: volatility of temper, tendency towards clan jealousy, and fierce pride. Speaker Macneill and his wife had eleven children. In his prime, he was said to have known the name of every man, woman, and child on the Island.14

  Maud’s grandfather, Alexander Marquis Macneill, was a man of local substance and stature. He inherited his father’s property, was a justice of the peace, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, postmaster of Cavendish, and a good businessman. His apple orchards drew envy, and they, with his mackerel fishing business, provided him with a rare commodity in a nineteenth-century rural community: a steady supply of cash. That he had grown up in the shadow of an intimidating and powerful father, Speaker Macneill, without attaining either his father’s political standing or that of his brother (William S. Macneill, an M.P.P. for North Rustico), may have contributed to his personal irascibility. Alexander Macneill, though often a difficult and temperamental man, was a solid and respected citizen. He was also known as a storyteller of great skill. The Macneills of his generation were intense, often brilliant, dedicated, hard-working, judgmental, and sharp-edged. As well, they prided themselves on their quick wit. They may not have had the easygoing charm of the Montgomerys, but they were impressive and respected as leaders in the community.

  Maud was also proud of her heritage on her grandmother’s side. Her slender and stylish maternal grandmother also came from a remarkable family. Lucy Woolner Macneill (1824–1911) claimed a family connection with Sir Thomas Woolner, the English sculptor who reputedly told the story of “Enoch Arden” to his friend, English Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. Her mother, Sarah Kemp Woolner, was possibly related to Sir Robert Kemp, a major landowner in the East Anglian community of Dunwich, England; Sarah Kemp had married Robert Woolner, a “working farmer” who rented the large Corporation Farm just outside Dunwich.15 The communities on England’s east coast were populated by tall, slender, and graceful East Anglians, claiming physical traits from eleventh- and twelfth-century Scandinavian traders and raiders, and the Woolners were generally handsome, talented, well-grounded, and sensible people.

  Dunwich, England—Maud’s grandmother’s birthplace—is known for its ancient and distinguished history. It was a port city when the Romans invaded Britain in A.D. 43. In 631, its
first bishop founded a school there, believed to be the fifth school established in England. By the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086, Dunwich had three thousand inhabitants. But it was a city built on eroding cliffs. By 1585, its sandy headland, seventeen churches, their graves and graveyards, and the bulk of the medieval town had washed into the ocean. It acquired the name of “City in the Sea.”

  By 1824, the year of Lucy Woolner’s birth, the population of Dunwich had dwindled to some two hundred people. In local legend, submerged church bells rang under the sea, making an eerie, otherworldly sound. Following storms, old skulls from the graveyards were still occasionally washing up on the beach at the end of the twentieth century. Until the British Reform Bill of 1832 (which dispensed with “rotten boroughs”), Dunwich—the seat of the powerful Downing family of Britain, who gave their name to Downing Street in London—remained a town of wealth and tradition for political reasons.

  But when Maud’s ancestors left it, it was a city in fast decline. By the late nineteenth century, romantic and historic Dunwich remained a haunt for artists, poets, and writers. This “Old Country” background was a source of pride to colonial Canadians. Alexander Macneill had learned the town’s history from his wife’s father, and romanticized it through his own storytelling. While it was Lucy’s place of birth, it was he who recreated it in narrative. Maud had heard so much about the romance of Dunwich that she went to visit it on her honeymoon.

  In 1836, Maud’s great-grandparents, Robert and Sarah Woolner, established themselves in Rustico (near Cavendish) through extraordinarily precise and methodical planning. When Maud’s grandmother Lucy was eleven, her father sent her oldest brother, Chester (age seventeen) to scout Prince Edward Island as a site for emigration. Chester purchased property, and prepared a home to receive the family the following year. In May 1836, Robert Woolner and his wife arrived with their younger children, horses, cattle, farm implements, and seeds, in time to put in spring crops. They came to a finished house—good planning, given that Sarah would deliver her eighth child a few weeks later. Chester then returned to work the farm to the end of its lease; profits from the English farm helped pay for the family’s expensive move. That organizational precision was the Woolner style. Most immigrants came with few possessions, their way paid by emigration societies. The dignified, cultured Woolners were intelligent, good managers, and self-determining—likewise, resourceful people of remarkable ability.16