Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  In the four years after his young wife’s death, Hugh John remained on Prince Edward Island. His occasional visits both thrilled and disturbed Maud, who sensed her grandparents’ reservations about her father. As a child she did not understand the reasons for their disapproval, but she did resent their attitude, and she denied her father’s shortcomings in her own mind. Her physical resemblance to her father was a daily reminder to her grandparents: her facial features and her short, slight physique favoured him rather than the taller, handsome Macneill and Woolner clans.

  As a young girl she loved visiting her Aunt Annie Macneill Campbell and her “merry Campbell cousins” in Park Corner. She preferred visiting the boisterous Campbell house to her well-to-do Grandfather Donald Montgomery’s home, across the road, where there was a more formal lifestyle, with servants. In reality, the Montgomerys of Park Corner cared little about Hugh John’s daughter “Maudie”: she was a girl, not a boy.

  When Maud’s father, Hugh John, was thirty-nine, and she was six, he departed for the west to seek his ever-elusive fortune, settling in Saskatchewan. Maud wrote in her journals that her father sent her affectionate birthday cards. Curiously, none of these have survived in her scrapbooks, which hold every other significant piece of paper and memorabilia that crossed her lifelong path. The truth about Hugh John’s merits as a parent does not matter, however: Maud excused him for all his delinquencies. But she also felt herself less worthy because he appeared tarnished in the Macneills’ eyes. Her Grandfather Montgomery’s lack of interest and her own father’s neglect intensified her own sense of unworthiness. Had she been a boy, she knew they would have valued her more.

  In some other respects, however, fate served Maud well when it dropped her off in her maternal grandparents’ home. Her firm, steady grandmother inculcated traits of discipline in tempestuous Maud, helping her learn, as “Anne of Green Gables” does, to control her impulses and to work towards goals. In fact, Lucy Woolner Macneill had learned to manage everything—cranky old in-laws, six children, and a husband given to fluctuating moods. A volatile little grandchild was only one more challenge. Lucy had raised each of her own three girls to be a “proper lady.” And likewise with Maud, the practical Lucy’s objective was to divert the child’s gifts into domestic channels so that she would eventually make a desirable, efficient wife. Although Maud had a sweet face as a child, she was not going to grow into a beauty like her mother, Clara, and she had to be made marriageable, with dignified womanly behaviour.21

  Proper, high-minded Lucy Woolner Macneill conveyed ideas about women’s place in society that would sadly trammel Maud throughout her life. Male dominance was inscribed in law and social practice. Women did not become “persons” in Canadian law until 1929. Church teaching also held that women must be subordinate to men. (In the Presbyterian Church, the elders, the members of the management session, and the ministers and moderators were, of course, all male.) The Bible taught women the virtue of submission to male authority. The saying that “A woman’s place is in the home” was unassailable conventional wisdom everywhere, and Maud quoted it herself in her early interviews.

  Maud’s life spanned a time when patriarchal structures were arguably more damaging to women than at any other period in history in the western world. In urban areas, industrialization was undermining women’s power in private spheres, without admitting them to public areas of power. “The Woman Question” was a hot topic in North America and Britain. A typical item from the Charlottetown paper on December 28, 1882, sneers at “women’s rights,” quoting King David in the Bible: “To everything there is a season,” and this was “not the season or the time for a ‘woman’s rights’ debate.” Maud’s well-intentioned grandmother, both by example and by edict, trained Maud in these near-universal cultural beliefs that women were biologically and mentally inferior to men. The ideal woman was an “angel in the house,” always quiet, patient, and ladylike. It is interesting, however, that Lucy was also, to an extent, an independent thinker: it would be Lucy who supported Maud’s wish for higher education, which her grandfather, Alexander Macneill, considered a waste of money.

  Maud retained mixed feelings about her grandmother, describing her as rigid, narrow, and cold in her journals. But by all accounts, during Maud’s lifetime she spoke of her grandmother with love and affection. In a 1912 interview, Maud described her as the “very pretty, and so young-looking” grandmother, the only mother she ever knew. To her friends and acquaintances later in her life, Maud frequently praised her grandmother’s intelligence, her great fund of practical knowledge, her emotional stability, and her management skills.22 Maud learned to appreciate her grandmother’s steady ways. She knew that her grandparents, and her grandmother in particular, loved her, and that love inspired deep gratitude. There is no doubt much truth in Lucy Woolner Macneill’s obituary, which praised her “spirit, industry, and unfailing kindness.”23

  Living on the shores of time: the impact of school and church

  When Maud arrived in Cavendish as a baby, she was welcomed into a close-knit community, united by kinship, culture, and religion. Religion provided the conceptual framework for her formative years.

  A child’s week brought daily Bible-reading in the family and church-going. Children were depicted in sermons in ambiguous ways: sometimes as icons of innocence, but more often as beings conceived and born in a state of sin, needing God’s special election to be saved. Children grew up in a complicated world, where the forces of Good and Evil were in constant competition for their souls.

  The sermons Maud heard in the Presbyterian church depicted a dramatic Manichaean universe, full of visual symbols. Hell was a subterranean lake of fire, brimstone, and burning sulphur, presided over by a plotting, energetic Devil: every man, woman, and child was in danger of his corruption. Heaven was a place above the clouds with golden streets and winged angels sitting at God’s feet, chanting songs of praise. Maud was ever alert to the imagery used in these sermons and songs. She suffered from spasms of fear about Hell in childhood. The sermons were delivered extemporaneously by Presbyterian ministers rigorously trained in rhetoric as well as in languages, history, and moral philosophy. Parishioners would discuss points from an interesting sermon throughout the week.

  In Scotland, Presbyterianism had evolved as a branch of Christianity that fought (among other things) for the right to conceptualize a different relationship with God, based on individual conscience. Followers should communicate with God directly, independently of priests or bishops (preachers were mainly considered experts in the interpretation of the Bible, not conduits of God’s word). The word of God was available in the Bible, teaching both through formal commandments and stories. As the Bible put it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In practical terms, this meant that each Presbyterian—man or woman, boy or girl—must be taught to read. Only the literate could fully exercise their religion. (Towards this end, John Knox, the thunderous father of Presbyterianism in Scotland, had declared that there must be “a school in every parish.”) As a result, the Scots developed both a rich oral culture and a deep respect for books and learning, which they carried worldwide when they emigrated.

  The selection of ministers, as well as much church governance, was always handled at the local level by democratic process. This produced a different and more egalitarian society than that in England. In the Church of England governance came from above, and education of the lower classes was discouraged. The Scots had been taught to see public education of ordinary people as empowering.24

  Wherever they emigrated abroad, the Scots set up impressive local systems of education. The colony of Prince Edward Island passed a Free Education Act in 1852, believed to be the first of its kind in the British dominions.25 The Scottish settlers in Cavendish had established their own school in 1834; by 1872, two years before Maud’s birth, it was lauded as “unquestionably one of the best schools in the county; accordingly students from distant locali
ties frequently attended.” By the time Maud was ready for school, there were between forty and fifty pupils.

  Very early in her schooling, it was clear to her teachers (and others around her) that Maud had exceptional intelligence. She started school at age six, but had already taught herself to read from the school readers her aunts and uncles had used. Her Aunt Emily took her to school on her first day, and Maud later recalled humiliating herself by forgetting to remove her bonnet when she sat down at her seat. But she soon distinguished herself with her reading ability. In her journal entry of January 7, 1910, she remembered the praise from her teacher, Mr. James Kay Ross, on that first day of school. She was asked to read James Watt’s eighteenth-century poem “How Doth the Little Busy Bee” in the advanced Royal Reader. Mr. Ross announced to the rest of the one-room school: “This little girl reads better than any of you, although she is younger and has never been to school before.” Maud’s journal entry recalls this as the first compliment she ever received. In those days parents rarely praised their children overtly. Praise might lead to “conceit,” and that was akin to sinful pride. Maud was clearly eager to earn praise at school instead.

  Schooling was intense in nineteenth-century Cavendish. There were four school terms a year, with quarterly vacations. School went year round, with no summer break, and was held six days a week. On the seventh day, the Lord’s Day, there was Sunday school. At the end of the fourth term, students put on a concert to display their learning. Oral performance and self-expression were very important. Maud was an excellent public performer. She easily memorized long book passages and poems. Although she was naturally somewhat shy, she loved recitation. Around her, adults memorized favourite poems for personal pleasure and public performance. While still a child, Maud learned “The Cottar’s Saturday Night” for recitation. She also memorized the entire text of Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lady of the Lake” (its twenty-nine cantos run to fifty pages of small print).

  Mr. Ross, her first teacher, like those who followed him, had taken teacher training at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, studying Latin, Mathematics, Geography, Farming Principles, Literature, and Language Skills. He was as well trained as the average college graduate today. The school trustees examined each school at the end of the term, and a good showing was essential. A teacher whose students performed poorly brought public disgrace on himself and his community.

  After Mr. Ross left, the next teacher, James K. Fraser, who boarded with the Macneills, instituted a new pedagogical approach: giving prizes out of his own salary to reward students for good behaviour and performance. Through his generosity, Cavendish children obtained valued books, and Maud remembered him with kindness all her life. Like many other young Island men, he was teaching in order to make enough money to continue on to university to take theological training. In the spring of 1883 Mr. Fraser departed. He was replaced by a new teacher, a Mr. James McLeod, by all accounts a good teacher, but less popular because he resorted to the standard disciplinary method of whipping children.

  One important legacy from Mr. Fraser was a book he lent Maud, A Bad Boy’s Diry, by Little George (1880), about a mischievous child in constant trouble. When she was about nine, Maud began keeping her own diary, using this book as a model. She says that, “Although not very mischievous by nature, being bookish and dreamy, nevertheless I schemed and planned many naughty tricks for no other reason than that I might have them to write in my ‘dere diry’ “(May 12, 1902). She adopted the affected style of “little Georgie” in her writing. Paper was not easily obtained, but she could purloin discarded “letter bills,” which came to the post office in their home. She also acquired the small yellow notebooks sent by a well-known patent medicine firm, “Dr. Pierce’s of Buffalo.” She tied together sheets of paper with thread, enclosed her scribblings in blood-red covers, and began recording her private thoughts and imaginative life. This little red book started a journalizing habit she maintained all her life.

  Whatever their faults, Maud’s forebears were proud of their literacy, their educational system, their religion, and their cultural heritage in general. They believed that education was empowering, providing individuals with personal agency and the ability to make society better. They were clannish, morally serious, and imbued with a strong work ethic. They took pride in their self-sufficiency and their accomplishments, and the schools they set up contributed to their success. Maud gained enormous self-confidence and learned discipline at her school.

  Maud and her culture

  Young Maud’s mind was fed by the dramatic sermons she heard, along with the gentler Bible stories that were regular fare for children of her era. But it was stimulated also by a culture in which the ability to tell a story well brought people respect and power. Local events were turned into oral narratives. As one journalist later put it, “The Island is crammed with stories, stories of sailors and great storms, stories of ghosts and the Devil, stories of lovers and wooing and runaway matches, stories of queer people and witches, stories of the good little people themselves.”26

  The wreck of the Marco Polo near Cavendish on July 25, 1883, when she was nearly nine, had an important effect on Maud’s imagination. The fabled clipper ship—once the fastest in the world—ran full-sail, in a savage storm, straight towards the Cavendish beach. When the ship broke in half, the sailors clung to the heaving remains all night.

  During salvage operations, the Marco Polo’s captain stayed in Alexander Macneill’s house. People came for their mail, and stayed to listen to the captain and Grandfather Macneill swap yarns. Maud and other children hovered. The salty old captain recounted stories about the Marco Polo’s unusual design, her dramatic launching years earlier, and her record-breaking round-the-world voyages. It was a storytelling feast. Grandfather responded with stories drawn from his Island life, flavoured with rich and poetic language from the Bible, his own extensive reading, and the oral tradition of the Scots. That shipwreck was a bonanza for a gifted spinner of stories like Alexander Macneill.27

  The salvage operation ended and the captain paid off his “rough tars” with a bag of gold sovereigns in front of wide-eyed Maud. She had never seen anything like the sailors from this crew, some twenty men—Norwegians, Swedes, Dutchmen, Germans, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Spaniards, and two Tahitians, with “wooly heads, thick lips, and gold earrings.” The sailors painted the “quiet village a glowing scarlet” all summer. After they all departed, Maud listened to her grandfather as he turned the tale of the Marco Polo into local legend, crafting it in his own style.

  The Marco Polo’s wreck stretched Maud’s emerging sense of narrative possibilities, and it showed her the intense pleasure in story. It proved that someone who could tell tales well could rivet the attention of others. It demonstrated to her that the local events around her could be turned into a story. She developed a new respect for her grandfather, who shaped his stories better than others; she listened, admired, enjoyed, and learned. She tucked the story of the Marco Polo away in her repertoire, and later in adolescence she used it and some of her grandfather’s other stories to help launch her public career.

  Maud had a very unusual memory, with excellent recall of anything she had either read, heard, or felt. She also absorbed the techniques of oral storytelling. (Being able to remember great numbers of poems, stories, or local tales—and to better others’ stories in playful competition—is still part of the Island culture.)

  There were other good raconteurs in the Macneill family, too: Maud’s eccentric Great-Uncle Jimmie Macneill (who would reappear as Cousin Jimmie in the Emily trilogy) and her grandfather’s older sister, Mary Macneill Lawson, a widow who moved around, living with different relatives, drawing her narratives from family history and local happenings. Women’s stories were told whenever women did church work together, had quilting parties, or visited for afternoon tea.

  Maud wanted to be a storyteller, but she had few listeners at home. If her grandfather was in the kitchen, he dominated, and she and h
er grandmother remained silent. When her father visited in the fall of 1883, he listened to her storytelling and to her writing. When she read him some of her poetry, he laughed at her blank verse, calling it “very blank indeed.” This, of course, was very hurtful. She had to turn elsewhere for listeners.

  Maud adopted the role of a “Story Girl” with her playmates at school and in the extended family. She had lots of friends, including many Macneill cousins. In her Uncle John F. Macneill’s house, across the field, were six first cousins. The oldest girl, Lucy, three years younger than Maud, was a devoted playmate for many years. Down the shore road towards Rustico was a second cousin, Pensie Macneill, two years older than Maud. Maud’s third cousin, Amanda Macneill, was her own age and her closest friend for a time. Maud held her own through her storytelling ability. And there were more cousins over at Park Corner. The effusive and irrepressible Campbells also lived in a storytelling family, and they competed vigorously in the telling of yarns and funny stories when she visited.28 For several years, from when Maud was seven until she was eleven, her grandmother boarded two boys, Wellington and Dave Nelson. About her own age, the tractable and less-imaginative Nelson boys were an admiring and uncritical audience for her—a good reason for her to call them the best playmates she ever had.

  Storytelling had many functions in Maud’s culture besides entertainment. It was also a method of teaching children family values. And it provided a bulwark against the erasures of death and time. When people were buried, they did not leave the community, or pass out of mind. They merely became an absent presence, moving into “eternal” time. Maud and others repeated endless tales about the departed; walking through the graveyard was often a stimulus to these tales. The village graveyard was next to the Cavendish school, across the road from Maud’s grandfather’s property and the Presbyterian Church. Children could play in the graveyard, and the dead were never far away.