When she was ready to leave Belmont, she wrote, “I will be sorry to leave—as I always am to leave an old room.… How many more am I fated to leave yet in my wanderings!” (June 30, 1897). Here was a new theme, one that would become part of her interpretative framework from then on: a belief that she was cursed to be a rootless wanderer, never permanent, always forced to move on.
She worried incessantly. Her journal records one long entry on June 30, shortly preceding her engagement to Ed; no entries follow this until October 7, 1897.
That autumn, she read Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm50(1883). This book, which had already sold some 100,000 copies, questioned the moral certainties of Christianity, and had been denounced as “blasphemous” from church pulpits across America and Great Britain. It was also a feminist book: it overturned the traditional assumption that women, as sexual beings, entrapped men; rather, the novel depicts men trapping women. The heroine of this book eventually chooses death over marrying a man by whom she is pregnant, and to whom she is sexually attracted. The book was a revelation to Maud, reading it, as she did, during her entanglement with Ed. Like Schreiner’s heroine Lyndall, she felt tortured; she was certainly close to implosion, if not verging on being suicidal.
Another young woman with Maud’s ability might simply have left the Island to clear her head, and to find a life elsewhere. Hundreds of young men and women were leaving the Island every year. The Island newspapers of the period talked about the exciting opportunities off the Island. The 1890s had seen a remarkable change in the status and freedom of women. In the 1895–96 period, even the Island papers were full of talk of the assertive “New Woman” who was transforming society. Maud could have set off to be a newspaperwoman in London, as did Sarah Jeannette Duncan of Brantford, Ontario, or an editor for an American publishing house, like Jean McIlwraith of Hamilton, Ontario. Some exceptionally adventuresome and gifted Canadian women did leave their hometowns for professional work in urban centres in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, in the States, or in Great Britain. Maud knew a Miss Arbuckle in Summerside, PEI, who had gone to work for an American publisher, L. C. Page of Boston.
Maud was certainly talented enough to have worked her way up in the publishing world. Gifted in teaching, she could have found work in either community schools or private academies anywhere. She did not stay rooted in Prince Edward Island because she was provincial in outlook: she had already travelled to the Canadian west, Ottawa, Halifax—much farther than the norm for young women of her time. Nor did she stay because of her love of the landscape.
Instead, it was at this watershed time that her mood swings began to seriously affect the choices she made in her life. Depression had led her to accept Ed’s proposal, and that decision had deepened her melancholy. Her experience with mood swings in Belmont had left her feeling out of control, and her confidence was eroded. From Belmont onward, she became increasingly afraid of being “struck down” by her dark moods. As the victim of uncontrollable depression which made her increasingly anxious, she was unable to take the risks that equally gifted women with stable moods could take. She instinctively began to seek out situations where her life would be rigorously structured and predictable. She became fearful of cutting loose from the society she knew, lest she spin out of control, with no one to look after her. School teaching was hard, but it was safer than leaving the Island. The adventures she craved would have to take place in her reading and imagination.
Not privy to any of these thoughts, Ed was quite ready to organize her life around his own. He was leaving for another year of university, and he told Maud of a teaching position coming up in Lower Bedeque. He suggested that she apply for it, and he put in a good word for her there with Alf Leard, a friend of his who was vacating the post to study dentistry on the mainland. Maud obtained Alf’s position, and moved into one of the most traumatic periods of her life.
The question of Herman Leard
When Maud left Cavendish for Lower Bedeque in the fall of 1897, she wrote “I feel like a prisoner who has shut the door on all possibilities,” quoting a phrase from The Love Letters of a Worldly Woman (1891), by Lucy Lane Clifford.51 She felt she was in Ed’s clutches, under his surveillance, waiting for the dreary day when he would claim her.
Lower Bedeque was a small community on the South Shore of the Island, across from mainland Canada. The farms in this area were large and fertile, and the community long settled. Maud’s teaching position would start in October. She arranged to stay with Alf’s people, the Cornelius Leard family. They had a comfortable home right across from the school building. She would room with their daughter, Helen, who was her own age. It would be a huge change from miserable, lonely Belmont.
As soon as she settled into the very sociable Leard household, her prospects began to look brighter. Their home was as tidy as her grandmother’s. Mrs. Cornelius Leard, daughter of a Baptist minister from Nova Scotia, was cheerful and efficient. The Leards were people of substance in the community. Cornelius Leard’s farm was much larger than Maud’s grandfather’s.52 As a family, they were prosperous, articulate, well-dressed, self-directed, intelligent, and refined, although not intellectual and literary in the way Maud’s Macneill family was. They were also a relaxed family who enjoyed each other’s company, playing practical jokes and sharing merriment. They were skilled in many crafts, busy and happy in creation, and active in community affairs. The cheerful, easy atmosphere in the home began to make her feel comfortable and relaxed, just as visiting the Campbells of Park Corner always did.
Maud brought her own gifts to the Leard household through her storytelling ability and wit. She could make funny stories out of almost anything, and she was full of interesting book-talk. In the appreciative audience of the Leard family, she began to blossom again.
Of the Leards’ eight children—three boys and five girls—two of the daughters, Georgina and Millie, had grown up and left home. Both lived nearby in Central Bedeque, and they dropped in often to see their parents and younger siblings. Georgina had married Thomas Moyse, raising two sons who eventually became medical doctors; Millie, universally admired and very active in church and community, raised a large family of affluent, solid citizens.
The other six Leard children still lived at home. Herman, the eldest, was the son designated to take over the prosperous farm. Born on July 2, 1870, he was four years older than Maud. The next son, Alpheus, studying for a career in dentistry, was the one Maud replaced, taking his teaching position from October 1897 until May 1898 so he could study further.
Helen was dating Howard McFarlane, the man she would eventually marry. A noted craftswoman, whose exotic and original creations were exhibited and much admired, she eventually became a leader in the Women’s Institute. The three youngest children were Calvin, Mae, and “Fed” (Frederica). Calvin, a skilled carpenter, eventually inherited the farm, doing some fox-farming when that came into vogue. Frederica, who was a young girl during Maud’s residence in the house, grew up to run a fashionable tourist business in Fernwood. Mae became the dietitian in the Prince County Hospital. The Leards were a genteel and talented family, competent in all they did.
They had none of the unbalanced intensity of the Simpsons, the lifelessness of the Frasers, or the sharp twists of her Grandfather Macneill. Maud had grown up in a family whose tone was set by complicated, volatile people like her grandfather. The Leards sailed through their lives in less turbulent barks. Maud thoroughly enjoyed living with these happy, productive people.
Pursued by memories of Ed Simpson’s intense self-absorption and nervousness, Maud immediately took note of Herman’s unaffected openness. He was courteous, good-tempered, relaxed, and at ease with people. He listened to her talk and laughed at her witticisms and jokes. This was new for Maud— her grandfather and Ed had always demanded to be the centre of attention. For once, she felt appreciated for her personality. Maud began to feel Herman had an indefinable charm, and she spoke of being fascinated by his “magnetic blu
e eyes” (January 22, 1898).53 Maud had come into this house in the throes of a depression, and romantic feelings were predictable for someone who was lonely, emotionally vulnerable, and unhappily engaged.
Maud’s reputation as a very successful teacher had preceded her, and her travels off the Island gave her additional glamour. Her descent from two fine old families provided a nice pedigree in a culture that took especial note of “who you were.” Although no one would have called her beautiful, she dressed attractively and stylishly and had an extraordinary amount of poise. By her own account in her journals, verified through family memories, she and Herman “talked and jested and teased each other continually and kept the house ringing with mirth and laughter.” Her depression lifted, and her spirits soared to the other extreme, helped by her new circumstances and love interest.
Maud was susceptible to Herman’s romantic overtures, and undoubtedly encouraged them by flirting—a skill at which she was very adept. Soon he was entering her bedroom on the pretext of bringing her mail. Although Maud shared this bedroom with Helen, Helen was often away on dates. Herman lingered to talk. He brought her chocolates. Ed’s kisses had left her “cold as ice,” but she soon reports in her diary that “Herman’s sent flame through every vein and fibre of my being.” Next, she was fighting to control her emotional highs just as much as she had fought to control her lows.
She tried to dampen her romance with Herman, knowing she was engaged to Ed. She wrote dramatically, “for the sake of my self respect I must not stoop to any sort of an affair with another man” (April 8, 1898). She could not help herself, however:
If I had—or rather if I could have—kept this resolve I would have saved myself incalculable suffering. For it was but a few days later that I found myself face to face with the burning consciousness that I loved Herman Leard with a wild, passionate, unreasoning love that dominated my entire being and possessed me like a flame—a love I could neither quell nor control—a love that in its intensity seemed little short of absolute madness. Madness! Yes! (April 8, 1898)
The feelings Maud describes are consistent with clinical accounts of people gripped by a “manic” high, struggling to rein in overwhelming impulses that may at times feel overwhelming. Individuals with mood disorders are notorious for impetuous affairs of the heart that lead to extramarital affairs. However, the language she uses may also echo that in the “racy French novels” that the Charlottetown papers periodically railed against.54
Herman may have been confused by Maud’s actions, especially when she continually welcomed him into her bedroom when his family was out, but she says that she hustled him out as soon as their preliminary lovemaking reached a dangerous point. She wrote that the only reason that she did not succumb to her desire for Herman was the knowledge that he would have despised her if she did. Intercourse before marriage (especially without an avowed intention to marry) certainly laid a woman open to a man’s contempt in her culture; if it led to pregnancy, as often happened before birth control was available, it led to lifelong public shame. Maud’s lovemaking with Herman went against her own sense of morality. Brought up a strict Presbyterian in a culture that believed sexual activity outside of marriage was a very serious sin, Maud was playing with fire, and she knew it. What’s more, a betrothal was serious business in that era, and she was engaged to another man. Her behaviour could only have been construed as shamefully “loose” by the values of the time.
According to Maud’s account of her romance with Herman in her journals (which she recopied, and undoubtedly retouched and reshaped, some twenty years later when she had become world-famous), very early in the Bedeque year she decided that Herman was beneath her socially; although she was physically attracted to him, she would never consider marrying him. Later, she would claim that she discounted him because “he had no trace of intellect, culture, or education—no interest in anything beyond his farm and the circle of young people who composed the society he frequented. In plain, sober truth, he was only a very nice, attractive young animal!” (April 8, 1898). But in actual fact, Herman was considered the “best catch” in the community of Bedeque. Popular and well liked, he was a fine young man who stood to inherit the large and successful family farm. His family was different from hers, but they were in no way inferior. They produced very successful professionals—dentists, doctors, businessmen, and teachers—and were pillars of the community.
By early spring, Maud was positive that she wanted out of the engagement with Ed. Her physical caresses with Herman had intensified her awareness of her revulsion to Ed. She wrote Ed, asking to break off the engagement, after nearly a year of agonizing over it.
Ed Simpson’s response was that of a stubborn, strong-minded man. When she asked him “to release” her from her engagement, he told her that he would only under certain conditions.55 Perhaps in his own conceit he could not fathom why any woman in her right mind would reject him. Perhaps he thought that as a “weak woman” Maud could not possibly understand herself and her feelings. She wrote a series of increasingly firm letters before he would consent to liberate her from her promise to marry him.
Alf Leard was returning from his educational leave to take up the Bedeque school again, and Maud knew she would have to leave the Leard home. She was heartily tired of teaching and wanted to spend all her time writing. During the school year, with all of her emotional turmoil over matters of love, she had somehow still managed to write, likely energized by the sense of well-being that comes from a hot romantic affair. She published approximately five poems and five stories between October 1897 and April 1898, making some $25 from her writing. (Alf Leard’s salary was $56.25 for each of the four quarters of the year, but Maud was paid only $45.00 per quarter for her Bideford teaching.) She believed that if she could only write full time, she could make enough to live on.
But there was a dilemma. She could not admit to her grandparents that she was tired of teaching; she had argued for an education on the grounds that she wanted to teach. Her grandfather’s sarcasm on hearing that she now wanted to quit would have been insufferable. In addition, her relationship with her aging, cranky grandfather was so tense that she knew returning to live with him in Cavendish would be impossible. Her mood swings made her feel too vulnerable to live on her own, even if she could have afforded it. She had no place to go.
And then fate intervened. On March 6, 1898, a telegram informed Maud that her Grandfather Macneill had dropped dead the previous day. She went home for the funeral, then returned briefly to finish her term. She could now live in the Cavendish home that she loved, with her grandmother, who, despite her faults, had always been remarkably supportive. And Maud hoped to rein in her turbulent emotions once back in her grandmother’s routine-bound orbit. Since Grandmother was still reasonably fit and active, she could continue doing most of the cooking and housework, and Maud could write on a regular schedule. Others would see that she was returning the care her grandmother had given her, and she knew that the community would think exceedingly well of her for doing so. The approval of the Cavendish community was extremely important to Maud, given that she had spent so much of her adolescence feeling she did not have it.
And what about her “mad” love for Herman, the “nice, attractive young animal”? That romance ended, by Maud’s account, when she returned to Cavendish. The real end of this love story, however, came a year later, after Maud and her grandmother had settled into life together. One day in June 1899, it was reported that Herman Leard had died of the complications from influenza.56 Maud was stunned. Her attraction to him had been hard to subdue even in absence. To learn that he was dead when the memory of his physical presence was still so strong was ghoulish. Because she did not attend the funeral, Maud lacked the visual imagery to place Herman firmly under the sod. She was stricken with grief—and relief—all at once, caught in a longing that could never be satisfied, and one that would intensify in memory. She wrote much later: “I did not shed many tears.… No agony could ever equal
what I once endured. It is easier to think of him as dead, mine, all mine in death, as he could never be in life, mine when no other woman could ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips.” (This comes from her diary entry of July 24, 1899, which she recopied into her journals after 1919.) Herman had loved her, she declared, “or pretended to—with a love passionate and sensual enough, of no very lofty or enduring type; but never, never as I loved him” (July 24, 1899). This last statement is a curiously discordant one; by Maud’s own account, her “love” for Herman had been rooted solely in sexual attraction. The comment not only reveals a crack in her own story, but suggests that she may have known he was trifling with her while planning to marry someone else.
Maud carried the memory of Herman in her heart long after he was buried—nourishing, burnishing, and cherishing it in a highly romantic fashion. She found gripping pathos for her diary in her account of falling in love with someone who was not “worthy” of her.
When The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: Volume I (1889–1910) was published in 1985 (nearly ninety years after the events they recount), Maud’s account of her love affair with Herman Leard raised eyebrows of old-timers in the Bedeque area. To begin with, the Leards had been a respected family, not crude people beneath Maud’s “class.” (Maud, who had read many, many nineteenth-century British novels, did have a sense of being in a privileged class—one to which the titled Montgomerys and the literary Macneills belonged, and possibly from which the Leards were excluded.) But her account did not square with the memories of the Lower Bedeque community in another important respect—in that of her romance with Herman Leard. Descendants of third parties, as well as those of the Leard family, tell a very different story.
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