Only a month later in 1910, Maud was entertained by another prominent man, her publisher, Lewis Coues Page, of Boston. Page had good reason to invite Maud to visit him, his firm, and his impressive residence: her books were earning him a fortune. Page was a shrewd businessman, exactly the kind of publisher Earl Grey had had in mind in his warnings to Maud. The first contract (for Anne of Green Gables) had specified that Maud’s royalty would be 10 percent of the wholesale price of her books, rather than the more customary 10 percent of the retail price. This was her first novel, and she had no experience with book contracts and publishers.94 Like many new authors, she was so keen to be published that she took what was offered, assuming that as standard.
The further “binding clause” in the Anne of Green Gables contract specified that Maud had to give subsequent books to Page at the same rate for a specified period. It was not unusual for publishers to put binding clauses into their contracts, but to insist her forthcoming titles remain at the same rate was both cunning and unfair. A decent publisher would have given her 10 percent of the retail price, or more after she established herself as a successful author. A writer of continuous “best-sellers” might have hoped for an escalating percent of the retail price. He repeated the same clause in contracts for her next two books, Anne of Avonlea and Kilmeny of the Orchard. By 1910, Maud had learned that she was being shortchanged, and she wrote to him that she did not intend to sign that binding clause in subsequent contracts.
Agents and writers’ unions were fairly new phenomena at that time, so writers were at the mercy of the publishers. Women writers were especially exploited, as they had little experience at defending their rights in public or in initiating legal challenges. Page knew his advantages and pressed them. He also knew that women fell readily for his personal charm.
Page had two motives for inviting Maud to Boston. The first was to show his quaint little Canadian country lass to the curious Boston press, introduce her to Boston socialites, and thus stoke the market for her books with the reading public. The second was to persuade her to sign another contract extending the same binding clause to all books written in the next five years.
Maud had been fighting depression in the autumn of 1910. While meeting Earl Grey in mid-September had been a boost, it was not long before her mood started sinking again. Also, being thrust into the public eye had been disorienting. The invitation to visit Page came on October 13. At first she decided against the visit, and started a letter to Page explaining that she could not come, but then, suddenly, she recalled experiencing a sudden “inrush of energy and determination”; she “felt strangely blithe and joyous” as she had “not felt for years,” and she decided to go after all.
She travelled to Boston by train, accompanied by her cousin Stella Campbell. Both women spent their first day, a Sunday, with a cousin, George Ritchie, and his family. On Monday a taxi arrived to take Maud, Stella, and Lucy Ritchie to Page’s office on Beacon Street, where Maud finally met Lewis Page and his brother, George Page, and others in the firm. The rest of the day Maud spent shopping in the Boston department stores in order to have a suitable wardrobe for the rest of the visit. She had never seen anything like the stores in Boston. She bought herself a brown broadcloth suit, as well as a beautiful hand-embroidered pink silk afternoon dress costing eighty dollars (an amount that would have been approximately half of her year’s teaching salary in Bideford).
She was to be a personal guest of Lewis Page and his wife, Mildred, at “Page Court,” their elegant home at 67 Powell Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. On arrival, she was met by a maid who took her to a guest room. Seeing herself in the bedroom in a full-length mirror was a new experience. She described the visit in her journal entry of November 29, 1910. As she descended the stairs, the “polished hardwood staircase” was “lined with a collection of prints” of the Page ancestors—a very impressive group. She was ushered into the library for tea with Mildred Page, who was “fairly good-looking but utterly without ‘charm.’ “The library was the most elegant room she had ever seen: built-in shelves filled with expensive books, large casement windows, and comfortable easy chairs before a large fireplace. On the wall hung the original painting of the cover of Anne of Green Gables. Later she enjoyed a formal dinner with the Pages and other houseguests, a couple on their honeymoon with connections to Italian royalty, the Boston banking world, and an American senator.
Of Page himself, Maud wrote:
Lewis Page is a man of about forty and is, to be frank, one of the most fascinating men I have ever met. He is handsome, has a most distinguished appearance and a charming manner—easy, polished, patrician. He has green eyes, long curling lashes and a delightful voice. He belongs to a fine old family and has generations of birth and breeding behind him—combined with all the advantages of wealth. The result is one of those personalities which must be “born” and can never be achieved. (November 29, 1910)
Most women reacted to Page in this way: he was tall, urbane, elegant, and charming. According to Page’s literary executor and cousin, the late W. Pete Coues, when Page entered a room, he attracted everyone’s attention with his commanding presence and distinguished carriage. An “outstandingly handsome man,” he was always “well-dressed and avant-garde.” Still athletic, he exuded masculinity in a way that disarmed women. He was five years older than Maud. He had always moved in the top echelons of Boston society and was the embodiment of the aristocrats Maud had read about in British novels.
The entire setting was intoxicating. Maud asked if she might take photographs of the Page home, both inside and out. Her grandfather, Senator Montgomery, had owned a nice house, but it was nothing like “Page Court,” the North American equivalent of the splendid homes on great country estates of British royalty.
During her visit, Page treated Maud like royalty, with luncheons and receptions arranged in her honour, side trips to historic sites and museum tours, as well as book-signings. Boston journalists were invited to “Page Court” to interview Maud, and they wrote about her: “As the young author entered the Pages’ beautiful library one thought came to us: ‘It is a repetition of history: Charlotte Brontë coming up to London.’ By-and-by we found we were not alone in the idea.” One journalist, writing in The Republic, described Maud as,
… short and slight, indeed of a form almost childishly small, though graceful and symmetrical. She has an oval face, with delicate aquiline features, bluish-grey eyes and an abundance of dark brown hair. Her pretty pink evening gown somewhat accentuated her frail and youthful aspect.
… For all of her gentleness and marked femininity of aspect and sympathies, she impressed the writer as of a determined character, with positive convictions on the advantage of the secluded country life with its opportunities for long reflection and earnest study.… Bostonians are charmed with her unique personality no less than with her books; but for ourselves we should be more interested to know just how the pageant of our strenuous life has recast itself on the mind of this quiet but observant and philosophical sojourner.95
Page, who was skilled at fanning public interest, made sure that this magazine (and others) featured the “best-selling” status of Anne of Green Gables in the Boston media:
Every discerning critic realised that in “Anne” a new and original character had come into the world of fiction and would abide until she had become a classic. In these fickle days when of making books there is literally no end, six months is a long popularity for a book, but after over two years “Anne of Green Gables,” now in its twenty-fifth large edition, is selling as well as ever, and is known in every land of English speech.
By the time she left Boston, however, Maud was less impressed with Page. She had written him before she went down that she was unwilling to sign another contract with the “binding clause” in it. She knew that he was reaping huge profits from her books, and also that he should give her better terms. But Page was shrewd, intuitive, and used to getting his way with women—whether they were authors, employees,
maids, waitresses, or clerks.
Towards the end of Maud’s visit, Page asked her if he could bring home the next contract for her to sign. She agreed, assuming that he would have omitted the offending binding clause. On her final night, however, he came up to her bedroom with the contract. It would have been appropriate for him to ask her down to the library to read and sign the contract; but, cunning man that he was, he no doubt felt that an awed, repressed “spinster” of thirty-six, who was out of her element in his house and under the spell of his charm, would feel her most vulnerable in the intimacy of her bedroom. Maud was distressed to find the offending clause still in the contract. She wrote later:
Did Mr. Page reason thus:—“She has been my guest; I have been exceedingly good and agreeable to her; in my house and as my guest she won’t want to start a discussion which might end in a wrangle and stiffness; so she will sign it without question.”
If he did, I justified his craft for I decided to sign it for just those reasons. (November 29, 1910)
In forcing Maud’s hand, Page got his way in the short term. But he also made a fatal mistake. Maud would never trust him again. With her innate sense of morality, she felt that she had been cheapened by acquiescing to a business deal that diminished her. She would soon be hearing alarming tales from other people who dealt with Page and considered him unscrupulous.
Yet, the trip had been exhilarating. She had spent wildly for some expensive clothes. She had drunk “Chateau Yquem” for the first time and loved it. She had taken wonderful trips to historical sites. Boston was a place of immense culture and elegant living, and she envied the life of the elite. She began to dream of a new life—if her income and celebrity continued, and if Ewan became a successful minister, eventually moving to a large urban centre where she could be part of a literary world.
Back on the Island, it was more apparent than ever that life was changing. The population demographics of Prince Edward Island were undergoing a significant transformation: the well-educated younger generation, finding more opportunity elsewhere, had for some time been leaving for mainland Canada or the United States.96
Maud’s father’s generation had left the Island in droves when the railways opened up the Canadian west, and the exodus from the overpopulated Island was continuing. In a speech reported in the Examiner on February 16, 1911, Andrew Macphail claimed that in just one single day in September 1908 exactly 5 percent of the adult male population had left the Island. Although this is almost certainly an exaggeration, the Island’s population did decline significantly in the four decades following 1891. By 1910, the desire to leave the Island for opportunity elsewhere was a contagious fever raging through the younger generation. The Island had seemed an idyllic, changeless place in Maud’s childhood, but now it felt increasingly like an isolated backwater.
As previously mentioned, after Ewan returned from his studies in Scotland in spring 1907, he had trouble obtaining a good parish on the Island. Many other ministers were leaving for the mainland, some merely to find work and others to find new experiences. One who had taken this step was the very successful Reverend Edwin Smith, who had trained at Pine Hill Seminary like Ewan, and had inducted Ewan at Cavendish. Smith had resigned at Cardigan, PEI, in May 1909. In September 1909, Ewan resigned at Bloomfield and obtained a parish in Ontario; in so doing, he positioned himself with the other adventurous go-getters on the move.
Island newspapers lamented that the best and brightest young Islanders were departing for greater opportunity elsewhere. Maud had been worried about Ewan’s fizzle in Scotland, but she took some heart when he showed this initiative. The town Ewan was moving to—Leaskdale, Ontario—was close to Toronto. Maud had already met journalists from Toronto: Marjory MacMurchy and Florence Livesay (wife of the distinguished journalist J. F. B. Livesay, and mother of the future poet Dorothy Livesay). They had sought her out in PEI, and she had enjoyed the contact. Her taste of the culture in the big city of Boston had enlarged her “scope for imagination.”
Maud loved her Island, but she knew that she would not be able to stay on the Macneill homestead when her grandmother passed on. Like her Uncle Leander, Andrew Macphail, and her cousin Murray, she could return to the Island for summer vacations. The Island papers treated her with respect, but they were prouder still of Islanders who drew attention on the world stage—especially if they always attributed their success to their Island beginnings, as Andrew Macphail had done. If you were born on the Island and moved away, you were always an “Islander.” Maud’s successful cousin, Murray Macneill, was actually raised on the mainland, but he regularly visited the Island with his parents as he grew up, and was always considered to be an “Islander” by virtue of lineage. Moving away did not mean loss of your Island heritage and identity. Ewan’s move excited Maud.
But although Ewan had showed this initiative, Maud continued to worry. His letters from Leaskdale were stiff and dull. By January, the excitement of Earl Grey’s visit was wearing off, and Maud had slipped into another depressive episode. “I cannot even write my worries out here—they go too deep and cut too keenly,” she wrote in her journal at age thirty-six. “I write continually, with a gnawing worry at my heart all the time.… If I had anyone to share the worry with me—to talk things over with—to assist—to encourage! But I have no one” (January 15, 1911).
She felt anxious about what would happen when her grandmother died and she would be obliged to embark on a life with Ewan. She liked him very much as a person, but what would their marriage bring? She had seen by his experience in Scotland that he could slump into depression; they had no mutual intellectual interests; being a minister’s wife was unpaid servitude; and she wondered if she would be able to keep up her writing career.
Another writer with her income and success might have moved alone to a big city to work, hoping to meet a man more suitable for marriage. But she had already known loneliness and terrible depression in Halifax; she felt she could not risk that misery again. Moreover, she did want to have children, and a normal life as a married woman and mother. At thirty-six, time was running out for her.
Ewan was not without virtues: he was relatively good-looking (important to her); being a minister gave him social standing (also important); he was gentle and kind (a welcome relief after her grandfather); and as the minister at Cavendish, he had been a jolly, easygoing man who did not get upset over little things, as she did. These attributes all had a calming effect on her own high-strung nature. Weighing all in the balance, she did not have the courage to break yet another engagement after Ewan had waited so long for her.
The next few months were lived between writing happy fictions and writing bleak journal entries. Her incredible discipline kept her going professionally. She continued writing the novels that Page requested, while still finding time to send stories and poems to periodicals. At least twenty-six short pieces were published in 1909, and at least ten in 1910, including some with such suggestive titles as “A Soul That was Not at Home,” “The Dream Child,” “The Courting of Prissy Strong,” “A Valentine Mistake,” and “A Garden of Old Delights.” As long as she was able to access her imaginative worlds, she could temporarily escape the real one. In Maud’s worst moods she suffered constant headaches, wrote compulsively in her journal, and dreamed of death. In better moods, she was hopeful. She could not see around “the bend in the road,” but she had dreams.
In March 1911, the inevitable happened: Lucy Woolner Macneill died. She and Maud had both contracted a deadly influenza. Lucy developed pneumonia, called “the old person’s friend” in the days before antibiotics, when it meant almost certain and peaceful death for the elderly. As she wished, Lucy Macneill died in her own home, cared for till the end by Maud. Lucy’s son, John F. Macneill, who had not visited or spoken to his mother in five years, visited her when she was dying, and was said to have left with “bowed head” (Maud’s retrospective journal entry of January 28, 1912). He would finally have his house, but he had estranged his mother i
n pressing for it. Lucy’s oldest son, Leander, came home for the funeral. He was himself declining with a debilitating nerve disease, which had made Lucy’s final years particularly sorrowful: Leander was her favourite son, the one who had always doted on his mother.
The death of her grandmother seemed inconceivable to Maud, even though for some time Lucy’s health had been failing. Her grandmother had always been there: although strict and at times firm with her oversensitive grandchild, she had also supported Maud in important ways when Grandfather Macneill would not, making sacrifices even in the face of his disapproval. Maud felt a deep sense of gratitude to the dignified, quiet, but strong grandmother who had taken her in when her father wanted to find a home for her after her mother’s death. Maud knew that her grandmother’s stability, discipline, and training had enabled much of her literary success.
With her aunts and friends helping, Maud cleared out the house. Most of the furniture went to her Aunt Annie Macneill Campbell in Park Corner (where it remains in the Campbell home and museum). Maud gave her organ to Cavendish Presbyterian Church (where it still is, although the church is now a United Church). Her spool bed went to Ernest and Myrtle Webb (and was passed down through Myrtle’s daughter Marion to her daughter, Elaine Laird Crawford of Norval, Ontario).
When everything else was distributed or burned as rubbish, Maud closed up the house so that her Uncle John F. Macneill could finally claim it. He must have done so bitterly, for Prescott, the son for whom he had wanted the house, had died the previous year. John let the house stand empty and eventually fall to ruin. Some time later he tore it down to prevent tourists from overrunning his property in search of L. M. Montgomery’s childhood home. (His grandson, John Macneill and his wife Jennie have restored the foundations and grounds, and they are now a tourist site of tasteful, peaceful, and genuine authenticity in Cavendish.)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Page 19