Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  I doubt you love anybody but your boys and your cat, and, I presume, your husband.… You love your cat; he knows it. You have a kiss—two kisses—for every creature in creation but not one speck of love for a hungry heart that has pleaded for it too long. You are like a lovely scintillating jewel whose radiant heart is cold and cruelly hard. (Isabel’s letter of February 8, described in Maud’s journal entry of February 11, 1932)

  Isabel insisted that she was not a “freak” who turned to Maud to escape her own dreary life (as Maud had suggested). Isabel allowed that she needed to be “psychoanalyzed” and perhaps she should be “shot.” Then Isabel dramatized her own death in the letter:

  To die for the love of L. M. Montgomery! That would invest me with glory and beauty and fame and I should have forever from the hearts of the world what I craved from you and you denied.

  Maud’s response was a mixture of pity, scorn, and fear. She had already tried plain speaking, telling Isabel frankly that her cravings were “lesbian” and that she had lost her balance due to being “possessed.” As Maud should have known from her experience with Ewan in his spells, there was no reasoning with a mentally disturbed person. Isabel alternated between abusive and pathetic responses, in letters and phone calls. Maud, in an increasingly poor state of mind herself, described herself as “hag-ridden.”

  The existence of homosexuality had come to world attention some thirty years earlier with the trial of Oscar Wilde in England, and his subsequent imprisonment for it. Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, an exploration of homosexuality, had set the world on its ear in 1928. Maud read everything on the topic that she could find in Toronto libraries and bookstores, including André Tridon’s Psychoanalysis and Love (1922), which included a chapter on “Unconscious Homo-sexualism.” Maud did not see homosexuality either as a crime or a sin; rather, she saw it as an attribute existing most likely from birth, beyond conscious control. However, whatever Isabel’s condition was, Maud regarded her an unbalanced, obnoxious pest whose persistent demands for “caresses” and “love” were disrupting her life.

  One young woman who spent some time in the Macdonald house remembered Isabel vividly, and described how her visits to the manse annoyed Maud, particularly when Isabel merely appeared without invitation. Maud always scheduled her days, planning out every minute in advance, and an unexpected visitor could disrupt a whole day. One visit stood out in memory: Isabel had come to Norval without being invited, and Maud had to stop what she was doing. She took Isabel into the parlour with grim resignation, to make polite, brief, and very formal conversation, intending then to send her home.

  In about fifteen minutes, Maud burst into the kitchen in a state of extreme agitation, saying in a shocked and disgusted voice, “She wants to hold hands with me!” Maud washed her hands compulsively several times, and paced around the kitchen. She said that she was “going to be sick,” and was so upset that it took some time for her to regain control of herself. After calming down, she returned to the living room, and said politely and smoothly to Isabel that Chester would now drive her home because she, Maud, had to get back to her work.

  Nora was the only person Maud felt comfortable talking to regarding the ongoing situation with Isabel Anderson. Nora, like Maud, kept a diary. In their respective diaries, they each give an account of Isabel. Comparing their versions illuminates Isabel’s obsession with Maud, as well as her writerly interest in exploring an interesting psychological situation. Nora is more factual in her entry of August 12, 1932:

  Eb and I drove to Maud’s the 12th and I came back yesterday [August 19]. Maud is a dear—with reservations … [the ellipsis points are Nora’s, and she does not explain, but she is likely referring to Maud’s occasional “grandness”]. The female pervert Isabelle [sic] Anderson visited Maud a whole day while I was there. Her ability for complete absence of all speech is phenomenal. How can Maud stand her? Is not even pretty …

  Maud describes this same visit in her journals in August 20, 1932:

  Nora and Ebbie came out. Eb camped out with the boys by the river and Nora and I went on a voyage to some magic shore beyond the world’s rim.… We joked—and talked beautiful nonsense—and did things just for the fun of doing them—and tried dozens of new recipes. And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed—and laughter as I have long been a stranger to.… And every evening after the supper dishes were finished, we walked four miles, in a lovely ecstatic freedom under a harvest moon, up the “town line road” to the station and back. I hadn’t believed there was anything like those walks left on earth. From the moment we found ourselves amid the moon-patterned shadows of that road every particle of care and worry seemed to be wiped out of our minds and souls as if by magic. Hope was then our friend again—we were no longer afraid of tomorrow.

  Then she describes Isabel’s visit:

  One day I had Isabel Anderson down. Nora was full of curiosity concerning her. I, on my side, had promised to have her down and had been dreading the martyrdom of a day spent alone with her. So I invited her to come … when I would have Nora to take the edge off her.… Isabel came on the bus. I suppose she had been looking forward to being alone with me, for a whole day and was bitterly disappointed on finding Nora here. For the first few minutes I really thought the girl was going to cry. At first Nora and I both tried to draw her out.… The most we could extract from her was a sulky yes or no. Nora and I finally reacted nervously and the spirit of perversity came upon us. We began to do what we had sworn we wouldn’t do—rag each other before Isabel.… Isabel sat and listened to the insults and reproaches we hurled at each other as if she couldn’t believe her ears. I’m sure it was a weird revelation to her of what friendship with me might be!! (August 20, 1932)

  Maud goes on to say that the boys kept up the jests at dinnertime, after which Chester was deputed to drive Isabel home. Isabel went in smouldering silence. Through Nora’s visit, Maud was pulled enough back into normalcy that she could register real annoyance at Isabel’s rude behaviour.

  I was simply very angry with Isabel. She had pleaded to be allowed to come down. I had asked her to come—given her the privilege of meeting one of my best friends, a brilliant woman of the world whom anyone should enjoy meeting. I had received her into the intimacy of my family circle. And all her thanks was this behaviour … (August 20, 1932)

  Maud finishes her high-handed account of the visit with the comment that she would love to have given the bad-mannered, sulky “Miss Isabel” a good spanking. Isabel, however, was not to be put off. She soon wrote Maud again:

  I love you so terribly.… My dear, don’t you see that I need you more often than your other friends. I hope you realize under my bland exterior an undercurrent of fierce resentment. Can’t I arouse in you the tiniest spark of pity for my languishing condition? (September 15, 1932)

  Maud growled in her journal that she certainly did sense the resentment:

  Although I have told her repeatedly that I cannot and will not tolerate physical caresses she coolly informs me that she is going to “save up” my kiss of greeting—a casual cool kiss I sometimes give her at meeting in the vain hope of satisfying her—by going without it until she can have twelve all at once! A regular Lesbian gorge. (September 15, 1932)

  Isabel continued to bombard Maud with letters. Maud wrote her a bracing and patronizing letter on November 22, 1932, telling her that their communications must cease since Isabel would not be contented with “such measure of friendship as is possible between a woman of my age and experience and a girl of yours.”

  You call this “love,” my dear. It is nothing of the sort. It is simply an obsession, as any psychiatrist would tell you. Their records are full of such cases, even to the wording of the letters, as you would realize if you had studied as many of them as I, in the pursuit of my profession, have done.… Some day you will suddenly awaken to the fact that you have recovered from it and are free once more. Then you will realize that this letter has been the truest kindness (November 22, 1932).<
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  Maud growled in her journals that Isabel’s letters showed that she was more unhappy after the visits than before, so they did no good. Return mail brought a piteous letter from Isabel pleading that she not be cut off into the “darkness of despair.” Isabel promised to think of Maud only as a “friend and be sensible …” (December 1, 1932).

  Next, Maud tried a new strategy, one most people would have tried much earlier: that of ignoring Isabel’s letters. Maud’s silence was shattered by two more letters from Isabel, to which Maud finally replied:

  I am a woman of 58. At that age one does not form deep new friendships with anyone, even with those of one’s own generation … I have no time in my overcrowded life for more. (January 22, 1933)

  Isabel fired back an intemperate, angry response:

  I see plainly that I am nothing whatever to you.… You have never tried to understand me or my point of view. You are stubborn and dogmatic and selfish and, like a spoiled child, have said, “If you don’t play my game I won’t play.” … You would cry over the loss of a miserable cat and you would deliberately, ruthlessly, unnecessarily crush a human soul struggling against what I sometimes feel is the approach of death.… I haven’t enough spirit left to hate you but your unjust and ungracious treatment has left me only bitterness and contempt … (January 22, 1933)

  This letter infuriated Maud, and she wrote a vigorous and sarcastic reply in her own journal to each point in Isabel’s letter. Maud felt sure that Isabel would never bother her again, given the insults in her last letter. “I am free at last, thank heaven.… The girl is not sane and I deserve all I have got for being fatuous enough to think I could help her or guide her back to normalcy” (January 22, 1933). But Maud was wrong. Isabel’s letters continued, sometimes piteous, sometimes abusive.

  “I can’t set my foot on a writhing worm,” Maud would write about one of Isabel’s more grovelling letters on February 9, 1933, adding, “I can’t let a human being suffer so when I can prevent it. Am not I suffering hideously, with no one to comfort me and no prospect of any relief?” It was partly a measure of Maud’s own unsettled and depressed state of mind that she could not shake Isabel loose.

  Isabel’s passionate crushes were not just on women. She later pursued both married and unmarried men. Maud mentioned Isabel’s name to another minister’s wife, and learned that Isabel had chased her husband until the wife put a stop to it (May 3, 1932). Another minister from the area told Maud that Isabel was a mental case, whatever her sexual proclivities (October 6, 1934). This made Maud feel somewhat better, but she still could not completely shake off her unbalanced fan.45

  By 1930, Chester was ready to start university, at age eighteen. In her journals, Maud continued her ongoing narrative about children who disappoint their parents.

  One of Maud’s best friends in the Prince of Wales College days was Mary Campbell, now Mary Campbell Beaton. Maud came from a culture that valued loyalty to friends and family even when that meant cover-ups, and in June 1930, a letter came from a Toronto lawyer asking Maud to put up $1,000 in bail for Sutherland Beaton, Mary Campbell Beaton’s son. Sutherland Beaton had come to Maud earlier with a lie that persuaded her to lend him $100— which she now knew he had no intention of repaying. This handsome and silver-tongued young man had a history of theft and forging cheques on the Island that Maud did not know about. His parents always made restitution to keep him out of jail. Now, having moved to Toronto where he was not known, Sutherland was up to his old tricks, and he had been caught red-handed by his employer.

  The broken-hearted Mary Beaton spilled out the whole sad story of Sutherland’s ongoing crimes, and came up to Toronto for his trial. Maud, always loyal to old friends, went along with her to the courtroom to give moral support. Toronto newspapers described the grey-haired mother crying as her son stood in the dock, but they did not learn (fortunately for Maud) that disconsolate Mary was sitting beside a very famous friend. With restitution made, Sutherland, only nineteen, was put on probation for a year and released to his mother’s care. As Mary Beaton had to return to the Island, Maud was obliged to take responsibility for him until he found another position.

  For three weeks, the handsome Sutherland stayed with the Macdonalds, driving about with Chester and another local young man, chasing the pretty girls in the community. Maud lived in terror that the parishioners would connect this young rapscallion with the newspaper story, and then blame her for allowing a convicted thief to squire their daughters about. Maud did not expect Sutherland to change his ways, and she was greatly relieved when he decamped for Toronto with the announcement that he had found a job. She suspected the job was a lie—which it was—but she was glad to be rid of him. Maud felt enormous pity for Mary Beaton’s heavy heart. And she no doubt shuddered privately, given her concerns over Chester.

  This was Maud’s second experience with young men running afoul of the law. First there had been Leavitt, Ewan’s nephew, caught when he embezzled in Prince Edward Island. Disgraced, Leavitt had emigrated permanently to the United States. Now, here was Sutherland Beaton, an engaging young man who was also a pathological liar. Maud was getting a taste of what could happen when a beloved child went “bad.”

  As for Chester, the maids grimly tolerated his messiness, laziness, and disrespectful behaviour, but they would not have voiced to Maud their other real reason for disliking him: that they could not leave any valuables or money in their room, or the items would disappear. It is not clear when Maud first discovered that he was stealing, but she had known for a long time that his word could not be trusted. Stuart simply avoided Chester now that they were older, and continued sleeping in his tent to avoid sharing a room with his brother.

  The friction between Chester and his father intensified. Maud found herself in the role of a buffer between Chester and his father. She had no more control over Chester than Ewan did, yet she felt blamed for everything because of Ewan’s belief that it was a mother’s job to raise the children.

  For Chester, morose and lonely, the summer of 1930 was particularly boring. He didn’t want a job, but even if he had, there was no work available during the Great Depression. With little to occupy his time, Chester pursued girls, making use of his parents’ car. He had never made lasting friends of his own sex, and now he turned to girls for comfort and attention—and more. The nicer girls in the community avoided him, but there was one local girl with a poor reputation who did often go driving into the country with him. Everyone in the community talked about this, and Maud was wild with anxiety.

  One of his contemporaries, a young woman of about eighteen who had lived a stone’s throw from the manse, told me of a time when she was home alone during the day, and was suddenly surprised to find Chester in the house with her. He tried sweet-talking, without success; then he tried to catch her, and chased her around, telling her he would “never love anyone but her.” She was an athletic girl, and she managed to flee the house. After that, she kept the door locked whenever her parents were out.46

  Finally, Chester started dating Luella Reid, a petite and plain-looking girl in the Norval church. The Reids lived out on a farm, and Luella was not privy to all the village gossip about Chester’s behaviour with other girls. Maud and Ewan were relieved because Luella was considered a “nice” girl. They hoped that as soon as Chester went off to the University of Toronto in the fall of 1930, he would buckle down to work, develop more social skills, mature in his interests—and put less focus on girls.

  As soon as Chester had departed for university (where he took up residence in Knox College in the University of Toronto), and Stuart was back at St. Andrew’s, Maud started a month-long trip, travelling by train to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in Western Canada. She wanted to go out west again for several reasons—to rekindle old friendships, to meet the rest of her father’s second family, and to see if she could retrieve some of the money lent to Irving Howatt, Stella Campbell’s old beau from Park Corner days.

  Everywhere she went she also
gave speeches to large audiences: at the Women’s Canadian Club and a reception in Saskatoon; at the Canadian Club in Prince Albert; at a school class and at the Press Club in Winnipeg. She visited Irv Howatt—whom she found “shabby as a singed cat”—and she saw it would be impossible to reclaim the $4,000 loan she had given him through Stella. It was enough to educate a son, she grumbled privately.

  She travelled to her father’s grave and was profoundly moved:

  There separated from me by a few feet of earth was what was left of father—of the outward man I knew. I might call to him but he would not answer. I felt so tenderly, preciously, dreadfully near to him. As if, under that sod, his great tired beautiful blue eyes had opened and were looking at me. (October 14, 1930)

  Nearby was the grave of Will Pritchard—Laura’s brother—who had died very young, and to whose memory she would dedicate her last book, Anne of Ingleside, in 1939. He had been a very good comrade when she was sixteen. She assured the future readers of her journals that, “at that time sex meant nothing to my unawakened body,” and that she “never felt for him even the passion of sentiment which at that time I thought was love.… But I liked Will Pritchard better than any boy or man I have ever met in my life.” She recounts how she and Will used to “prowl about together” in the hills and bluffs outside Prince Albert (October 10, 1930); a reader may suspect that she is “protesting too much.”47 After Will’s death, a thin golden ring he had taken from her was returned to her (October 7, 1897), and she is said to have worn it on her little finger for the rest of her life.

  Maud could hardly wait to return home after so many memories were stirred up in the west. Still, she wrote that the emotions had been “a wonderful agony.” Her gift of wings brought great highs: “It is wonderful to feel so deeply, even if the feeling be half pain. One lives when one feels like that. Its illumination casts a glow over life backward and forward and transfigures drab days and darkened paths” (October 12, 1930). Her description of this visit continues, showing how her life was affected by living with such a good memory. Every event and place in Maud’s childhood was “something that is of eternity, not of time” (October 12, 1930), because she did not—indeed, could not— forget it.