Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  The Earl Grey Affair

  Maud’s reputation as a writer was spreading internationally. In the summer of 1910 the popularity of Anne carried Maud further into Canadian history, when she drew the admiration of the Governor General of Canada, Earl Grey, who made a trip to the Island especially to meet her.

  Sir Albert Henry George Grey (1851–1917) was Governor General of Canada from 1904 to 1911. During this period of extensive social change, he was an active reformer, supporter of Canadian culture, and traveller. Known also for his tireless promotion of unity within the Commonwealth, he sought to address as many “ordinary” Canadians as possible. Wilfrid Laurier (then prime minister) said Lord Grey gave “his whole heart, his whole soul, and his whole life to Canada.” Earl Grey was an articulate, gifted diplomat, without pretense or affectation.79 Respected throughout Canada, he took his duties seriously and was the first Governor General to travel to Hudson Bay and Newfoundland.

  Towards the end of his office in Canada (the next Governor General was sworn in early the following year), at the age of fifty-nine, Earl Grey undertook an expedition from Manitoba to Hudson Bay and the Maritimes. The members of the expedition had been largely chosen by Grey himself, and included geologists, journalists, and constables of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. Several notable academics from McGill University included the expedition doctor, Dr. John McCrae (1872–1918), lecturer in Pathology and Medicine, and Professor John MacNaughton (1858–1943), a distinguished professor of Classics noted for his wide-ranging literary knowledge and his sociable personality. These men were colleagues of another prominent McGill scholar, PEI native Dr. Andrew Macphail (1864–1938), who was then one of the Island’s most famous native sons. He was not part of Earl Grey’s party.

  The expedition was to evaluate the possibility of a rail link from the prairies to Hudson Bay. The expedition started at Norway House at the mouth of the Saskatchewan River; around August 10, 1910, they set off, travelling in twelve twenty-foot canoes, each paddled by two Cree guides, several hundred miles across north-eastern Manitoba. The group faced lengthy portages and rapids in their journey to York Factory, on Hudson Bay. Here they boarded the Earl Grey, a 250-foot steamship that had been built in 1909 for the Canadian government. This boat was an icebreaker as well as a passenger and freight ship that could cross the Northumberland Strait, from the mainland to PEI, in winter. The steamship, with a specially appointed suite for the Governor General, took them through the Hudson Strait, around northern Quebec and Labrador, to the Maritimes. They kept in touch with land through marine dispatch.

  On July 16, 1910, when first hearing of this planned venture from his colleagues, Dr. Andrew Macphail wrote to the Honourable Earl Grey, graciously inviting him to visit the Macphail ancestral homestead in Prince Edward Island on the last leg of the expedition. Earl Grey wrote him on July 23, 1910, to say that if they did have time to visit PEI, it would be,

  for the express purpose of offering the tribute of my homage to Miss Montgomery. I shd. like to thank her for Anne of Green Gables. I have not enjoyed a book more for a long time than I did hers—a Classic. I recommended all my friends in England to read it—but they nearly all were before me. They had read the book before I had!80

  By late August it was clear that the expedition had made good time, and the group could dock in PEI so that the Governor General of Canada, Earl Grey, could meet Maud.

  Dr. Andrew Macphail is an interesting character here.81 An important figure in PEI history, he was a high-profile academic at McGill. He was also devoted to improving the standard of living on Prince Edward Island, where he lived part of every year at the Macphail homestead. In 1907, Dr. Macphail was appointed McGill’s first professor of the History of Medicine, and in 1911, he founded the Canadian Medical Association Journal. A Renaissance man in the fullest sense, he was also a man of letters, founding and editing for over a decade The University Magazine, which discussed literature, philosophy, politics, industry, science, and art. He also published several books on a range of subjects. (His 1939 semi-autobiographical novel, The Master’s Wife, is his best-known work today.) His scientific study of agriculture on his farm in Prince Edward Island led him to scientific innovations that started the seed potato industry on PEI. At age fifty, he would enlist in World War I, in spite of having been blinded in one eye, and serve on the front for nearly two years in the medical corps where he helped found the Canadian Field Ambulance Service to provide care for injured soldiers.

  If Maud knew anything about this expedition, she had no inkling that it was being routed through Prince Edward Island strictly so that Canada’s beloved Governor General could meet her. Because of Macphail’s standing on the Island, the newspaper depicted it as a visit to Dr. Andrew Macphail’s impressive homestead.

  On September 6 Maud was absolutely astonished to receive an invitation from Lieutenant-Governor Benjamin Rogers, saying “His Excellency Earl Grey will be in C’town on Sept. 13th and wishes to meet you.” The same post brought a letter from Dr. Macphail telling her that he would be entertaining the Earl’s party at his home in Orwell, and she was invited to come. Maud wrote in her journal entry of September 7, 1910, that it “speaks something for ‘Anne’ … that she should have been sufficiently delightful to a busy statesman to cause him to single her out in his full life and inspire him with a wish to meet her creator.”

  With only seven days’ notice between the telegram and the event, Maud was thrown into a panic over what to wear. There were no clothes in her wardrobe appropriate for a viceregal occasion. She hastily engaged a local dressmaker (Bertie Hillman) and hurried to Charlottetown, where she bought a length of silk in one of her favourite colours, brown.

  She also bought and read a book published early that year by Dr. Andrew Macphail, Essays in Fallacy (1910). Dr. Macphail’s status on the Island ensured that this book had received front page attention in the Examiner of September 10, 1909, with the headline: “Dr. Andrew McPhail’s Essays Praised in England: Contemporary Review Recognizes Ability of P.E. Island’s Gifted Son.”82 The article goes on to state that “Dr. Andrew MacPhail’s essays on imperial policies and the future of Canada will materially affect the attitude of responsible thinkers throughout the Empire and in the United States …”

  Macphail was an outspoken social critic and had a great deal to say, among other topics, about women. One essay in his 1910 book, titled “The American Woman,” urges women to stop asserting their rights and instead remain submissive, quiet, long-suffering, and attentive to their husbands. Another, “The Psychology of the Suffragette,” condemns women agitating for women’s voting rights. (Island women would not obtain the right to vote until 1922.) Such behaviour “makes a man impatient and finally contemptuous of all femininity,” wrote Macphail.83 Macphail also criticized the proliferation of young female teachers, arguing that young males needed male models for their teachers. The increasing presence of women in schools, he argued, was undermining educational standards. Maud wrote respectfully in her journal that his book was “stimulating” with much “unpleasant truth” in it, but she goes no further, perhaps intimidated by the Examiner’s comment that “Dr. MacPhail’s incisive prose style reveals a mind of extreme ability stored with the best literature and trained by direct observation.”84

  Maud must have wondered nervously before she went to the Macphail homestead if the much venerated Dr. Macphail had indeed read Anne of Green Gables, which had been published two years earlier. If he had (as was likely), he would have seen that she had depicted the male teacher, Mr. Phillips, as a fool. By contrast, Anne’s other teacher, Miss Stacy, based on her own Miss Gordon, was a model for all young women to follow: this “lady teacher” inspired her students, touching their lives. At Dalhousie, Maud had published a serious essay on the importance of education for women. Still, she was well aware that her Grandfather Macneill and others like him (including the venerated Andrew Macphail) still disapproved of women teachers. Maud was not one to attack public opinion stri
dently—instead, she used humour in her novels, feeling it was more effective for ridiculing outdated ideas.85

  Maud attended the events in her new brown silk dress, hastily made for the occasion. The Earl Grey dropped anchor at 3:00 p.m. on September 13, in Charlottetown, off the Marine Wharf. Lieutenant-Governor Rogers went on board and brought the party ashore. At 4:00 p.m. they took a train to Uigg, where the guests enjoyed a reception and repast at the Macphail homestead in Orwell. This party included, among others, Lord and Lady Grey, Lord Lanesborough, Lord Percy, Dr. John McCrae, Professor John MacNaughton, Lieutenant-Governor and Mrs. Rogers, the Honourable John Agnew, and “Miss Maud Montgomery.” Later that evening, the group returned to Charlottetown by special train, returning after 10:00 p.m. The next day, they dined on board the Earl Grey. After the dinner, the boat sailed for Pictou, where it would anchor again, and Earl Grey and his party returned to Ottawa by rail.86

  Maud’s description of the reception at the Macphail homestead in her journals treats only on comic aspects of the encounter. She recalls how she and Earl Grey strolled out to the orchard to talk in private about her writing. There, they sat on the steps of the outhouse, which had been fixed up with dainty curtains for the occasion. She speculates that Earl Grey was perhaps unaware of the purpose of the outside toilet when he preferred its steps to the Macphail house for unaffected, unpretentious “real” talk.

  Strangely, Maud wrote little about the people she met at this reception. Dr. John McCrae was the official physician for the expedition. Born and raised in Guelph, Ontario, he would later make his name known internationally by writing “In Flanders Fields,” the most famous war poem to come out of World War I. At the time of the Earl Grey reception, Dr. McCrae was a thirty-seven-year-old bachelor, two years older than Maud, sharing her birthday of November 30. Maud does not mention meeting this handsome, charming, and distinguished fellow Scottish-Canadian, although she certainly would have been presented to him. After his death in 1918, Maud paid tribute to him by using his poem as the model for Walter Blythe’s famous poem in Rilla of Ingleside. Anne’s son, Walter Blythe, shares McCrae’s literary sensitivity, modesty, idealism, and devotion to duty—all traits and values Maud admired.

  Maud did comment on Dr. Andrew Macphail, a man so venerated on the Island that the Island papers carried accounts of his every publication, of every movement he made either on or off the Island, and every off-Island guest who came to his homestead. (For instance, at one point an Island paper announced that Dr. Macphail’s friend, Rudyard Kipling, would be visiting him on the Island the following year, a visit that seems not to have taken place.) Of Macphail, Maud wrote, “the doctor himself is a strange-looking man—[he] looks like a foreigner” (September 16, 1910). Macphail was very high-minded, noted for his principles, his strong views, and his seriousness, and Maud’s characterizing him as a “foreigner” was certainly not a compliment. In a xenophobic era (and Island) that even feared little orphan children like “Anne,” this gratuitous tag in her private journal was in fact little less than insulting.87

  It is no surprise that the visit of the revered Earl Grey was headline news in the Island papers. The Charlottetown Examiner announced on September 14, 1910: “EARL GREY, GOVERNOR GENERAL NOW VISITING PEI.” Maud is mentioned only in the third paragraph. Similarly, the Patriot ran several articles before the visit, and the front page on September 14, 1910, charted the “movements of the vice regal party,” mentioning only in the second paragraph that “Miss Lucy Maud Montgomery” was one of the guests. Maud recalls how many of the people in Cavendish were stunned to hear about her invitation to meet Earl Grey. (Her dearest relatives—her Aunt Mary Lawson and cousins Bertie McIntyre and Stella Campbell—were thrilled by the honour.) Although Islanders often saw her name in the newspapers for poetry, and she had received attention for the success of Anne of Green Gables, she still had a small profile on the Island compared to a man like Dr. Andrew Macphail. The “Earl Grey affair” raised Maud’s status throughout the Island.88

  Later, the Patriot of October 10, 1911, ran an account of a sketch in another magazine in which Maud informed a journalist that Earl Grey told her he “had determined when he came to the Island to see at least two persons, the authoress of ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ and Dr. Andrew Macphail and his potatoes.” She must have had a twinkle in her eye when she repeated this characterization by Earl Grey, linking her name to books and Macphail’s to potatoes. This article also attributes to Earl Grey the opinion that “Canadians were a very fine people, but one thing he had against them was that they were so apt not to appreciate the work of one of their own until it had been admired by others.”89

  Maud and Earl Grey continued to correspond for several months, improving her mood and self-confidence considerably. He had asked for copies of her books and she sent them. He advised her against writing sequels, saying they were “never as good.” He sent her the current Bookman so she could see its portrait of Mrs. Gaskell, the English writer, whom both of them admired. He wrote:

  Like Mrs. Gaskell you possess what The Bookman describes as the three fairy gifts of the English Novelists, viz: knowledge of human Nature, Imagination, a natural love for a good story, and a pretty style.

  Then he adds, with playful seriousness, in this letter of September 20, 1910:

  I see I have endowed you with 4 as against The Bookman’s 3 gifts. I must consult The Bookman again to see where we differ. At any rate this triple or still more this quadruple possession gives you great power, and consequently the burden of a proportionate responsibility.

  He cautions her to “withstand the temptations of publishers who will want you to sell your unborn soul for their advantage” and advises her,

  to keep your undeveloped influence as a sacred lamp, which shall be a light to yourself, the Island, Canada, the Empire and to the English-speaking peoples of the world. Young as you are, you have already been able to make the name of Prince Edward Island known wherever the English tongue is spoken. That is much: but having got so far, that is only a stepping stone to more important accomplishments.

  He forecasts in his letter of September 20, 1910, that if she can only be “sufficiently inspired” from her “sea-girt nest in Prince Edward Island” she will “touch the heart and fire the imagination of the whole Empire.”

  Maud replied to Earl Grey on September 26, with the characteristic modesty of a woman writer who could not admit to ambition, since women were supposed to have none. Part of her long letter reads:

  I do not think I am a very ambitious woman. I do not care much for fame; and from its attendant shadow of publicity I shrink. But I do wish to give back to the world something of the joy and pleasure I have received from its heritage of “the thought of thinking souls” of the past. I think I know my limitations. I am not a genius. I shall never write a great book. But I hope to write a few good ones … (September 26, 1910, Public Archives of Canada, Earl Grey papers)

  Earl Grey’s influence, or attempted influence, did not end there. On September 27 he wrote to Professor John MacNaughton at McGill suggesting that he write an article on “Miss Montgomery.” MacNaughton was a highly respected scholar, and when on the Island, he had expressed admiration for Maud’s literary skills.90 Grey wrote:

  I wish you would write a review of Miss Montgomery’s novels for the “University Magazine,” if MacPhail [its editor] approves; but being an Islander I expect he will reserve that appreciation for his own pen …

  Earl Grey promised to send Kilmeny, The Story Girl, and Maud’s poems to MacNaughton, adding:

  You can introduce into your review, if you like, the incident at MacPhail’s Farm, where I pointed out that her open volume, on which young MacPhail’s 3 candles were resting, evidently had formed the basis of all his illumination. As you pointed out at the Consolidated School, her candle is going to illuminate the Island in every land where the English language is spoken. (Letter of September 27, 1910)91

  MacNaughton replied promptly:

/>   Your Excellency, I am very much indebted to you for the kind and gracious letter which I got yesterday. I saw Dr. Macphail last night and found him not as enthusiastic about Miss Montgomery’s work as we are but perfectly willing to let me write about it … (Letter of September 29, 1910)

  We can only speculate about Macphail’s private response to Earl Grey’s adulation of Maud. Maud Montgomery and Andrew Macphail were as different as could be in personality and style. Was his pride piqued to hear Earl Grey suggest that Maud’s humorous novels were the basis of so much international “illumination,” a term that had been used in reviews to describe his own collections of thoughtful and serious essays?

  Professor MacNaughton never wrote the article on Maud, whether because of Macphail’s disapproval or because of other demands on his time.92 Earl Grey was deeply interested in the fledgling Canadian cultural and literary world, and sympathetic to it. He would have known that a serious article by a major male scholar at McGill would have influenced the course of Maud’s career. Sensing her talent, he wanted to encourage it, providing her with the same kinds of puffs and praise that academic and professional men regularly gave to each other.93

  Whatever the underlying politics of Earl Grey’s visit to the Island, and its aftermath, his admiration of Maud was a significant boost to her self-respect, raising her confidence at a low point in her life. However, writing a best-seller had not wiped out the damage from her childhood—her underlying sense that she was of little importance.

  The 1910 trip to Boston