As 1929 drew to a close, Maud was reading of more bank failures. She remembered the crash of 1907, and how she had used a bank failure to cause Matthew’s sudden death in Anne of Green Gables.40 To add another dimension to her anxiety, Ewan was badly shaken up in a serious accident when the radial train he was on collided with a snowplow, and he was consigned to bed. By the end of 1929, she was complaining of headaches, insomnia, and “feelings of imprisonment.” As she ended her seventh journal, she wrote, gamely, that she hoped that 1930 could be “better than its advent promises” (December 21, 1929).
By January 2, 1930, she discovered that a company in which she had invested heavily was skipping its dividend payments. From that point on, bad news about her investments cascaded down on her. She watched in horror as her investments began to plummet. By the time the stock market meltdown was over, all the money she had received in recompense after a decade of enervating litigation with Lewis Page was reduced to a handful of bills. A $14,000 sum invested in Simpson’s was worth only $1,680 by April 1932, and by December 1932, only $840. Her $3,000 investment in a Toronto insurance company was completely lost. (In the late 1920s, the average yearly salary of an Ontario man was around $1,000.) By summer 1930, Maud was concerned enough about money that in her short letters to fans she asked them to recommend her books to others. By the end of 1932, she would be typing her own manuscripts again, for the first time since 1909. Her collapsed finances—so soon after she’d thought she was set up for life—took another toll on her nerves. Would her stocks rise in time to pay for her sons’ educations? At the same time that her own investments were skipping their dividends in 1930, or simply disappearing, the financial situation of farmers and businessmen everywhere worsened. Her beloved Park Corner farm relatives desperately needed cash.
Like the rest of the world, Maud was moving into an uncharted realm, without the old landmarks of stability found in faith, religion, and social mores. This sense of impending upheaval, of destruction of the old order, took powerful symbolic form in a fire that hit the little community of Norval that winter. On the night of January 28, 1930, the beautiful old stone gristmill that lay in the heart of Norval ignited, exploded, and then burned like a raging inferno, spewing sparks for miles around. By morning it was a pile of ashes. The huge mill lay in the middle of the town, straddling the Credit River, a landmark for over a century. As it burned, threatening to engulf the entire village, the fire could be seen for at least five miles above the little glen, and, according to a contemporary newspaper account, “ice and snow surrounding the burning building was melted and formed a stream around the ancient structure like a moat.” A fire brigade from Brampton, eight miles away, arrived just in time to confine the fire to the mill, saving the rest of the village.
The destruction of the mill hastened the demise of Norval. The mill was only partly covered by insurance, and it would have cost $100,000 to rebuild it, so it was abandoned. Mill families moved away to find other work, and all of the subsidiary local businesses suffered—the bank, grocery, bakery, candy shop, hairdresser. After the mill burned, the picturesque little Scottish glen of Norval was on its way to becoming just another one of Ontario’s disappearing villages.
The only truly impressive remaining structure in Norval was now the stately brick Presbyterian church, with the handsome manse next door. Successful farmers in the region would continue to support the church, but as a student of history, Maud saw that even the Church itself, as an institution, was in serious decline.
The beautiful old mill had given the town much of its picturesque character. Maud missed the little beacon that burned all night in its cupola; it had been the first welcoming light she had seen in Norval when they’d arrived. And she missed the three weathervanes on the three chimneys. They had looked to her, against the night sky, like little trolls from Norse mythology. Their disappearance seemed a sad portent in a world whose beacons of light were everywhere being extinguished.
Only two weeks after the mill’s burning, with people still reeling from the loss of their livelihood and landmark, Norval put on its annual Old Tyme Concert. People caught on the wheel of accelerating change could reverse time, at least for an evening: this year they celebrated the “life of the ancient village.” There was a terrible irony to the theme they had chosen.
Perhaps it was Ewan’s own sense of change and loss that partly motivated him to conceive and take on a major project: researching the history of his second charge, the Union Church of Glen Williams, which would celebrate its one-hundredth year as a congregation in 1933. The Presbyterian faith had drawn settlers into a cohesive congregation in 1833, and the Scottish stonemasons had finished the magnificent stone church in 1884. Doing something special to commemorate the centennial year was important to Ewan. The problem was that no one knew where to find the early records of the church. Somehow, with a historian’s instinct, he thought to look in a nearby community called the “Scotch Block,” where the congregation had initially worshipped in a small structure known as the “Boston Church.” He found enough records of the pre-1883 history of the congregation to fill in the early years from 1833 onward.
From that point on, Ewan was consumed with collecting materials, and visiting farmhouses to interview the older people in the congregation, happily believing that he would establish the church’s importance in history. Although he was a man of short-lived energy bursts, Ewan felt dedication to this—his—writing project. He carried it to fruition and was very proud of his accomplishment. The resulting thirty-six-page booklet was well done.41
Given that Ewan was Scottish, a reader cannot help but smile over the ambiguous characterization he offers of his predecessor: “Mr. Patterson was a good preacher and fearless debater. Like every Irishman he was warm in his sympathies and attached to his friends.” Was Patterson a beloved and colourful preacher, or was he an opinionated, hot-headed man who favoured the members of the congregation who had Irish or Scots-Irish ancestry? Mr. Patterson had been extremely learned, perhaps more so than Ewan, although the congregation judged Ewan’s sermons favourably. Ewan was said to “know his Greek and Roman history” very well, and to “have great intellectual insights into things.” He “could give a very perceptive discourse on just one Hebrew word. He went into the background to a lot of things, using ancient history to illustrate, and he didn’t just go on about stuff in the Bible,” said one of his parishioners in the 1980s. His sermons grew much livelier in this period when he had his own writing project.
No doubt Ewan hoped the booklet would strengthen his congregation by praising their long tradition of worshipping together through several generations. The names of the church’s founders were still in the congregation, names like Leslie, Stirratt, Henderson, Fraser, MacDonald, Reid, and McKane. But there were new names, too, for the church congregation grew through Ewan’s early tenure. His predecessor, the aforementioned Mr. Patterson, with his “warm” Irish sympathies, had presided over a very divisive Church Union vote in Norval, one that split and riled the entire community. People were glad to have the calm “peacemaker” that Ewan was.
Strangely, there is almost no mention of Ewan in Maud’s journals at all during this period, perhaps because he was happy and did not interfere with her life. She does not refer to Ewan’s working on the history booklet, nor does she say how much help, if any, she gave in the actual writing. But even if she did possibly polish portions of his work, the writing style is not hers, and certainly the project was one he proudly felt to be his.42
Ewan ended his history with a vision of hope that “the glories of the church of the future will be greater than that of even the present.” This was very different from Maud’s own vision of the future, and from her phrasing. Of the actual centennial celebration, held Monday May 28, 1933, Maud wrote wearily that it was celebrated in the same old way, with “old ministers preaching, special music, crowds of people …” She offered a jaded prophecy about the next centennial and forecast that even if the physical chur
ch structure itself might still be there in a hundred years, it would be inhabited by “owls and bats and wandering winds.” She added that if “Sunday services are held at all—they will not be held in little country churches. There will be just a few central churches in large cities and the services will be broadcast from them. Country people will sit in their homes, press a button and hear and see.”43Ewan’s view might be turned to the glories of the past, but Maud’s vision was of a spiritually impoverished future. Memories remained years later in Norval of her offhand remark made in a rare unguarded moment—a remark shocking to the women who heard it—that religion had become nothing more than a social club in this era.44
Isabel Anderson—a different kind of fan
In the 1930s, Maud was nearly consumed by another inferno—the passion she had stirred in a young woman from a nearby town. It is one of the strangest episodes in her entire life.
Isabel Anderson had first introduced herself in a fan letter in 1926. She lived close by in the town of Acton, and she adored Maud’s novels. Maud drew the conclusion that the writer was a young girl with a precocious writing ability. The letter had extravagant phrasing in it, such as Anne and Diana might have written each other in their pre-adolescent fancies. Maud had written back warm, encouraging words. Soon more adoring letters arrived. Next, Maud was invited to have an evening meal with Isabel and her family.
To her surprise, Isabel was not a young girl but a thirty-four-year-old elementary school teacher. She lived with her mother and sister. Both of them were normal and pleasant, but Isabel had the strange intensity of an unbalanced personality. A fluent writer, she was dull and gauche in person. Maud felt alarmed. Gushing letters that were cute if written by a young girl were something else if written by a grown woman. Maud’s fears were well grounded: Isabel proved to be a different kind of fan, with a vengeance.
Maud had the novelist’s fascination with unusual characters, but Isabel was not a type she could identify. There were some superficial similarities between Isabel and herself: Isabel’s father had been the village postmaster, and Isabel herself was interested in writing poetry. Maud, having endured some very lonely periods in her own life, understood isolation. But there was no obvious reason for Isabel’s loneliness: she had a very nice mother, a friendly, talkative sister, relatives in the area, and a job as a teacher.
After their first meeting, Isabel pelted Maud with letters, presents, pleading invitations, and phone calls. Later, Isabel’s mother died and her sister escaped to be a missionary in the Canadian west. Isabel, already a social misfit, became even more estranged from other people, moved into a two-room apartment, and stepped up her pestering telephone calls. Maud felt sympathy for Isabel’s increasing psychological isolation, not to mention her lack of friends, hopes, and ambitions.
Isabel was no beauty, but she was at least as physically attractive as many other women who found mates. Something else seemed to be wrong. Then Maud received a letter from Isabel saying that she thought she was “losing her mind.” The only thing that would save her would be coming to the manse, and “sleeping with” Maud. By March 1, 1930, when Maud began writing Isabel into her journals, she was wavering between seeing Isabel as a lonely, neurotic young woman who merely wanted female friendship and seeing her as a woman sexually attracted to other women. Confused, Maud observed that the word “pervert” had been aired frequently in “certain malodorous works of fiction” (March 1, 1930).
Appalled by the thought of hosting Isabel, Maud wrote her that a friend was coming to visit so her spare room would be occupied, and that when the friend (Fannie Wise Mutch) left, Maud herself was going to the Island. That should have conveyed the message. It did not. As soon as Maud returned from the Island, Isabel continued her pleadings. No excuses worked. Isabel was entirely self-absorbed. At the end of February 1930, Isabel wrote Maud a “specially piteous letter.” Maud decided that she should feel compassion for her:
I had convinced myself that it was all nonsense to suppose Isabel a pervert. She was merely a lonely, neurotic girl who cherished a romantic adoration for me, thus filling a life that was otherwise piteously empty of everything that makes life worth living. And as such I wanted to help her if possible. (March 1, 1930)
Maud agreed to spend the night at Isabel’s home. Staying overnight and sharing beds with people was common when families were large and houses small, and especially before people had their own cars, allowing them to drive home at a late hour after a visit. Thus, Isabel’s request was not necessarily as strange as it might sound today.
The evening was a miserable one for Maud, as described in her journal entry of March 1, 1930. They ate with Isabel’s landlady and then retired to Isabel’s rooms. Maud found that Isabel was “as quiet, shy, restrained as—as— the simile will come into my mind—as a girl in the presence of her lover.” She had no conversational topics. At bedtime, Isabel announced, “I do not mean to sleep at all tonight. I mean to lie awake and revel in my happiness.” The bed they were to share was “fitted out like a bridal one—exquisite sheets, pillows, coverlet, blankets and puff—all evidently brand new and purchased for the occasion.” In spite of her misgivings, Maud slept well because she was tired, and in the morning she looked forward to her escape. “I was still inclined to think, in spite of Isabel’s queer speeches and queerer intensity of manner and personality that I had been utterly mistaken in my fears.”
Shortly after she returned home, however, she received a letter from Isabel, who had wept at the station when Maud left her. It read:
My Darling—
It really is quite delicious to write that I ought to be washing a few things but it is really too romantic a night. But the sweet incense of your presence still broods around me like a dream from which I am only half awake.
Darling, I love you so terribly, I do. I have a suspicion that if my chronic indisposition were accurately diagnosed much of it must be pronounced “love.” To say that I worship you is a most colourless statement of the fact. I can’t tell you how much I loved having you. You are just as pretty as ever you can be with your lovely long braids and your sweet, sweet face, and the blue dressing gown, and I adore you. I want you again. I simply cannot endure not to have you again soon. It sounds quite ungrateful, I know, but I am suffering all the agonies of being in love. I have derived some comfort from sleeping in the precise spot you occupied half hopeful that some of the dear warmth might still be found to linger. But I crave something tangible. I want to hold in my arms what is dearer than life to me—to lie “spoon fashion” all through a long long night— to cover your wee hands, your beautiful throat and every part of you with kisses. I’m just mad with love for you.
She concluded:
Perhaps tomorrow I shall be sorry I wrote this. But it is true … And after this shameless confession don’t you think I am a terrible creature? (March 1, 1930)
Maud certainly did. After reading the letter, she fled to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands with repulsion. She did not know what to do. It was hardly a situation to discuss with women in the church. She wrote in her journals that she was unable to discuss it even with Ewan, who would simply judge Isabel, rather ironically, as “out of her mind” (March 1, 1930).
Ewan had been in his right mind for nearly four years now, except for periods of minor depression, and for once, his response might have been more clear-headed than his wife’s. Maud was now afraid to cut Isabel out of her life for fear that she might become totally unhinged and create a public scandal. Maud also recalled her own loneliness and depressed state before marriage, and knew that part of being a minister’s wife was helping the lonely and sick. As a novelist and student of human behaviour, she was fascinated by Isabel’s weirdness, but totally repelled by the inappropriate words and actions.
Maud reacted as she always did under extreme stress: she began a long writing project in her journals that was largely mechanical. She assembled all the reviews of her novels that her clipping service had sent her and line
d up all the contradictory statements about each novel. This must have taken days. Then she embarked on a more extended project of going through her other scrapbooks and boxes of memorabilia and commenting on these (March 1, 1930).
But no escape was to be found from Isabel. By the next summer she was sending Maud veiled hints of suicide. Maud suspected that this was just self-dramatization, but she also recognized that someone as disturbed as Isabel was unpredictable and might commit suicide. She remembered the Prince Edward Island papers that published all the graphic and gory details of suicides, speculating on motives and causes. Maud also had seen Ewan’s periodic mental problems, so serious that his doctor once warned her never to let him out of her sight lest he try to kill himself. Maud reflected tartly that Isabel was so miserable that she would be as well off dead as living (June 1, 1931). But she continued to worry, and in this case, felt cold terror imagining what people would say.
By this time Isabel possessed a sizeable cache of Maud’s letters, dating back several years. The thought of Isabel’s body being found with these letters on her breast and a suicide note saying she had killed herself because of Maud’s failure to love her was simply too appalling to contemplate. It would make national and possibly even international news. Maud thought, not unreasonably, that people would find her continuing to tolerate Isabel so bizarre that they would imagine that there truly was a scandal under the story.
Maud and Isabel became locked in an ongoing battle: Isabel trying to manipulate Maud, and Maud determined to keep her at arm’s length. Maud repeatedly wrote to Isabel, describing the kind of ordinary friendship she could give her. She forbade Isabel to write of “love.” This brought protests from Isabel:
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