Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  The Blue Castle sold very well in its day, from England to North America to Australia in English, and in other languages as well. It has stayed in print. Its plot took on political overtones when it was made into a musical comedy in Poland in 1982, and well over a decade later that show was still a box office success there. In 1992, it was made into a successful play in Canada, authored by Hank Stinson, and it was performed in both Muskoka and Prince Edward Island. In 1987, the Australian writer Colleen McCullough wrote a book, The Ladies of Missalonghi, which had so many similarities to The Blue Castle that she was accused of plagiarism. (In the resulting international furor, McCullough acknowledged that she had read Montgomery so many times in her childhood that she might have unconsciously internalized the plot and characters.) Maud herself probably had a literary model in mind for Barney Snaith: his prose sounds much like that of John Burroughs (1837–1921), a famous naturalist whose works she enjoyed. Barney’s writing also echoes Maud’s own purple prose.

  When Valancy Stirling thwarts convention and marries Barney Snaith, his shack of a cottage recalls the cottage of John Mustard. No doubt John Mustard read this novel after it came out. He would have recognized the physical landscape of the novel, and the cottage, but he must have puzzled over its dashing, freewheeling, and raffishly charming Barney Snaith, who bore no resemblance to him, except in his love of escape into the deep woods. Nor would there have been any clear visible connection between Mrs. Ewan Macdonald—who had always been staid, distant, and formal with him, even as a girl in Prince Albert—and the sexually vibrant Valancy Stirling. As a minister who dealt steadily with the parables, metaphors, and symbols in biblical messages, he must have puzzled over the magical transformations of fiction and the secret thoughts that lay deep in Maud’s heart.

  If “Captain” Edwin Smith read the novel—and he undoubtedly did—he would have seen many of his own characteristics as adventurer and raconteur in the hero, Barney Snaith, who sweeps repressed Valancy off her feet. Both he and Snaith had travelled extensively, both loved driving on the open road, and he, like Barney, could be a charmer with blarney. Smith wrote well, too, about travel, beauty, and nature, and had published in various Canadian magazines. Would he have been flattered—or alarmed? Likely, he would have seen many of Maud’s traits in Valancy Stirling, for they had revealed some of themselves to each other in their late evening talks.

  Another man who would have read the novel was the egotistical Edwin Simpson, Maud’s former fiancé. He kept up with Maud’s novels and always bragged to others that he knew the sources of Maud’s characters. Did he fancy that he had only to look in the mirror to see some of the mysterious and deeply alluring Barney Snaith in himself?

  But the man who must have been most puzzled of all by the novel was the man to whom it was discreetly dedicated, a man whom Maud had never met in the flesh: Ephraim Weber, M.A., the quiet, earnest, stiff, intellectual Alberta teacher who had been her pen-pal for nearly twenty-five years. The dedication reads: “To Ephraim Weber who understands the architecture of blue castles.” Weber, a strict Mennonite by upbringing, must have been both flattered and deeply puzzled by this dedication. He may even have wondered, or fantasized about, the depths she could see in him that were not readily apparent to others, even perhaps to himself. Yes, he had dreams, but Weber’s dreams in life had remained in the architectural drawing stage. This dedication tweaked Ephraim Weber’s curiosity enough that he and his wife made a trip from the west and stopped to meet Maud just two years later. Maud found him a likeable but earnest bore. No record remains of what Mrs. Weber thought of Maud’s insight into her husband’s “blue castles.”

  This novel was certainly not written for children. It was even banned from some church libraries. First, it has an unwed mother in it, but, worse, when Roaring Abel skewers religious hypocrisy, he is so funny that readers cannot help laughing. Apparently, no one saw that this novel was close to being Maud’s own spiritual autobiography, a spillover mid-life crisis. It is ironic that at the same time Maud was choosing older heroines and mature themes for her novels, she was being demoted to the children’s shelves of bookstores and libraries by changing literary styles and other forces. This novel was the first to be banned in some libraries.

  Writing The Blue Castle was emotionally draining for Maud. To calm and restore herself, she now took out the old diary of Charles Macneill that she had borrowed from Alec and May Macneill on her recent trip to the Island, and began copying it straight into her journal. It reminded her of how things were between 1892 and 1898: “it took me back again in a world where happiness reigned and problems were non-existent—for me at least … Pensie was alive to run with me under the moon and together we slipped back into … the Eden of childhood” (March 1, 1925).

  The act of copying helped her to begin reliving these years in preparation for picking up and finishing “Emily 3.” Copying the old—and dull—diary also took her mind off herself. She felt on the brink of a nervous collapse—she felt morbid, as if imprisoned. She knew she was in an abnormal state. She had spells where her hands began trembling uncontrollably (a common symptom of depression, as well; possibly a sign of too many of the medications the Macdonalds were prescribed). She had not felt such despair since her 1909–10 depression. There was no privacy from the children, Elsie, or Ewan. She started waking up at 3:00 a.m. (the classic time for depressives to wake) “in the grip of silly, senseless, gnat-like worries” (March 27, 1925). On March 29, she wrote: “I can’t see any chance of happiness or even of peace again.… I can’t help crying.” The next day she came down with the flu, and convinced herself that this was the cause of her fits of crying, but found no real consolation in that theory. Yet, by April 20, she had pulled herself together and she gave her unforgettably wonderful lecture on Mammoth Cave and its subterranean world to the Hypatia Club ladies in Uxbridge.

  As spring came, Ewan’s depression lifted. He was able to get his car out after the winter and go out visiting his parishioners. The Macdonalds now heard that Marshall Pickering had been confined to bed with a serious paralytic stroke. The accident and its aftermath had been equally destructive to each family. Pickering had been a vigorous man when the accident occurred in 1921, but the aftermath of public disapproval had been a strain, and his failure to get his money in spite of winning the lawsuit had caused further aggravation. It must have felt like salt being rubbed in the wound when he could see that Ewan was not going to pay the judgment because he “had no money,” while Maud herself continued to lend money to local people in need (something she does not record in her journals, but which old-timers in the community all remembered in the 1970s and 1980s). Whenever a parishioner had bad luck financially, “Mrs. Macdonald” would help out. Mrs. Isobel Mustard St. John recalled in the 1990s, for instance, how Maud had lent her uncle money to get through medical school. He paid Maud back every penny he borrowed, and was proud to do so because “most people never repaid Mrs. Macdonald.”

  Elsie, the new maid, continued to be a delight in the Macdonald household with her sunny disposition. She was eager to learn and eager to please, even though she suffered from recurring and painful chronic appendicitis. Elsie had a facility for making work into fun; she took great delight in simple things, like getting out the wash earlier than anyone else in the village. Late in her life, Elsie spoke affectionately about Maud as an employer. She said that Maud taught her how to plan meals, to cook many different dishes, to serve guests properly—in general, how to manage a good kitchen and run a tidy, well-organized house. Elsie said her own family had often subsisted through the winter on a skimpy diet of mostly potatoes. The many techniques for vegetable, fruit, and meat preservation and cooking that Maud taught her were a revelation in that era before electric refrigerators and freezers. She believed that she learned more from Maud than she would have from taking a full college course in Home Economics, a developing field of studies then for women. She said, in fact, that the knowledge she acquired at Mrs. Macdonald’s home ha
d allowed her to become “a lady” and “marry above her class.”

  Maud’s spirits began to rise steadily, too, when the days lengthened and warmed. A fundraising play she directed in the church was a big financial success, and her group was asked to present it in surrounding communities. But the winter had taken its toll: she wrote tersely in her journal, “Went to Guild tonight and conducted a programme on ‘Canadian Humour.’ Did not feel humorous.”

  The next phase of the Church Union vote loomed in the parish, and several families were still wavering between remaining Presbyterians or going over to the newly created United Church. Some people would sign a promise to support the “salary list” and then defect. The loss of a single family hurt the weakening Zephyr Presbyterian Church. The reasons that parishioners left a church did not generally arise from religious convictions; instead, they were financial, political, social, and personal. For instance, the Methodists had a nicer church and better Sunday School facilities. On the June day after people had to declare themselves definitively for one church or the other, Maud wrote: “The papers are full of flamboyant accounts of the ‘birth’ of the Great United Church.… It is rather the wedding of two old churches, both of whom are too old to have offspring” (June 11, 1925).

  There was a lot of ministerial traffic through the Macdonald manse in the aftermath of Union, and Maud thoroughly enjoyed squaring off against some offending ministers. She could not insult her husband’s parishioners, but when a pompous minister crossed her threshold and then patronized her, he was fair game. Maud had many traits that made her an excellent minister’s wife, but her need to trim people down to size occasionally was not one of them.

  Chester was now ready to start high school, but there was no high school in tiny Leaskdale. He might have boarded in Uxbridge, but Maud had very high aspirations for her sons, and this meant giving each boy the best education that she could afford. After surveying the possibilities, she chose St. Andrew’s, a boarding school in Aurora, north of Toronto. Chester studied for the entrance exam and made the grade. He was a gifted student, and although he still had serious problems relating to his peers, he had learned superficial social skills.

  His departure on September 10, 1925, was a sad day for Maud. Like many mothers, she felt anxiety when her first little fledgling left the nest. But she had more legitimate worries than most mothers: she remembered how Ewan’s malady had manifested itself every time he went off to a new school—to high school, to Prince of Wales College, to Dalhousie, and then his final and terrible breakdown in Glasgow. Chester’s behaviour, she wrote in her diary, was “on the knees of the Gods.” After depositing Chester at his new school, they stopped to visit Elsie’s grandmother on the way home. Maud was astonished when one of Elsie’s “rough” uncles told her he had read all her books. Ewan, Maud’s own husband, did not read them. When Chester came home for Thanksgiving she and the boys celebrated by going to see the new movie The Birth of a Nation. Ewan did not enjoy the new “moving pictures” that were becoming increasingly popular. Maud loved them.

  In the fall of 1925, the Delineator asked Maud for four more stories (about a new heroine, “Marigold”). For these four stories she would again be paid $1,600. (This was $100 more than Ewan was paid for his full year of work in two churches.)79 It was on October 30 that she got the news from her lawyers that Page’s lawsuit against her in New York had been denied. This meant that L. C. Page had exhausted his options and he could no longer hold up her royalties from the Stokes company. This was a huge relief.

  In November 1925 she was still trying to draft her third Emily book, but her heart was not in it. Emily was growing up. Her marriage was the foregone conclusion, demanded by the genre and the era. Maud’s fans were so involved in the story that many wrote her anxious letters, pressing the case for or against the various potential suitors. One fan wrote imploring her not to let Emily marry Dean Priest. Maud had no intention of this, of course. But another candidate for marriage—Teddy Kent—struck most mature readers as an unsatisfactory choice, too. Perry, the hired boy, despite his brilliance and potential, was socially unacceptable “for a Murray” (like Emily was). How to resolve this novel was a problem, so she put it aside in frustration.

  Finally, Evan had some hopeful news. The Reverend W. D. McKay, then moderator of the Toronto Presbytery, came to preach at their church for its anniversary service. He told Ewan about an opening in Norval, Ontario, a small town halfway between Guelph and Toronto. Maud caught certain remarkable details: that the large brick manse was outfitted with electricity, that it had an indoor bathroom, and that it was on a radial railway line that went to Toronto. Ewan was invited by the moderator to preach for the call in Norval just before Christmas in 1925. A few days later he received the news that he had been chosen. After years of trying for another parish, he was elated.

  Not surprisingly, Maud felt some ambivalence about leaving Leaskdale, and she began to feel sentimental about the manse where her children had been born, and where she had written all her books since The Golden Road. But she knew it was time to move on. Most of all, she hoped that the change would lift Ewan’s melancholy permanently. If that happened, she would be able to resume a social life with the literary groups in Toronto, and from Norval she could get to Toronto more easily. She was starved for the intellectual companionship and fellowship that she had enjoyed in Toronto before Ewan’s breakdown in 1919. Now it looked as if Ewan might be getting a new lease on life—and with that, she and her family would, too.

  Ewan accepted the call to Norval shortly after Christmas. They planned to move in February 1926. Both parishes were distressed over the Macdonalds’ departure, particularly over the loss of Maud, who had brought so much to the community: intellectual input into the women’s meetings and clubs, and outstanding work with the young people in both churches.

  Maud sorted and started packing their belongings the first week of January, continuing steadily for the intervening weeks. Some furniture was sold, as the Norval manse was much larger and required bigger pieces of furniture. As Maud packed, she sorrowed over each room she dismantled, particularly the parlour, so full of memories of her little babies and of Frede. Various men helped Ewan crate up the furniture they were taking, and it is a measure of his improved mental health that he was able to help pack.

  Many parishioners came to tell them how sad they were to see them leaving. Sessions often ended in tears. In the third week of January, Maud wrote a paper for the Guild on Marjorie Pickthall and noted that it was the last one she would read there. In 1911, when she had first arrived in Leaskdale and was still unpacking, she read them a paper on England; now she was reading them another paper, this one on a Canadian poet.

  On February 9, 1926, the Leaskdale Women’s Missionary Society honoured Maud at a meeting attended by all seventy-five members. Their address thanked her for the “honour you have conferred upon our place, it has become known as the home of L. M. Montgomery Macdonald, the world-known Authoress …” The feeling was so genuine that Maud found she had to fight tears during the meeting. On February 11, the Zephyr church gave a farewell reception, presenting her with a golden pen and Ewan with a leather-bound copy of The Book of Praise. She had not expected to feel sorry to leave Zephyr, but she did. At another farewell occasion at Leaskdale Church on February 12, they were given more presents and one hundred dollars in gold. February 14 was Ewan’s last Sunday of preaching in these congregations. He did well. In the end, Maud found parting a bittersweet experience. She had put down much deeper roots than she realized. Ewan, however, felt no attachment to Leaskdale, and had no regret at leaving. That was Ewan, flat in the kind of emotions that nearly swept Maud off her feet.

  February 14 was also their last night in the manse. Ewan was out late trying to wrap up loose ends, and he returned after Maud had fallen into bed in exhaustion. He woke her with the news that he had been handed a note from a friend in Zephyr saying that Pickering was telling people he planned to seize the railway car with
their possessions if they were shipped in Ewan’s name. The movers were coming at eight o’clock the next morning. Maud sprang out of bed, and she and Ewan worked frantically until four in the morning changing all the name tags from “Rev. Macdonald” to “Mrs. Macdonald.”

  They hoped now to leave the Pickering affair and Zephyr problems behind. Maud knew that if Ewan should only stay well, all would be fine. Life looked hopeful again.

  PART THREE

  ——

  The Norval Years

  1926–1935

  CHAPTER 15

  The movers came early on February 15, 1926, taking the re-labelled crates without incident. (Pickering’s tale, it seemed, had been floated only to scare them.) They spent the next two nights with Leaskdale parishioners, allowing Ewan time to finish up church business. On Wednesday, February 17, at 9:00 a.m., the Macdonalds left Leaskdale in three cutters; they stayed overnight at the Walker Hotel in Toronto. The next day they were met by Ernest and Ida Barraclough, parishioners who would host them until their furniture arrived in Norval. Maud felt heartened when they settled in the Barracloughs’ well-appointed house to a warm supper and good conversation.