Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  A long entry in Maud’s journal explains her version of what went wrong on April 5, 1939. It was the last full journal entry, in fact, that she would ever write. There would be only about another fifty entries, all very short, between this entry on April 5 and her final words, written in March 1942.

  Maud’s entry opens by claiming that the mystery of Mrs. Thompson’s strange behaviour of the past ten days has been solved. (In a letter to Myrtle Webb, she said the strange behaviour had been going on for three months, which would backdate it to the beginning of February.) She writes:

  To find out that a woman whom you have treated with unvarying kindness and consideration and who, you were fatuous enough to believe liked you, has really been hating you for years and is capable of the worst unblushing insolence and falsehood towards you is a hard jolt. (April 5, 1939)

  Anyone reading the journal expects further explanation. But none is given. Instead, Maud recapitulates Mrs. Thompson’s employment history. She started working for Maud in April 1931, and left abruptly in August 1934, with no good explanation. Ethel Dennis replaced her, and after Ethel left in 1937, Mrs. Thompson returned with her seven-year-old daughter, June. And then by early 1939, Mrs. Thompson was again acting strangely. Maud does not explain what makes her think that Mrs. Thompson hates her.

  When I interviewed Mrs. Thompson in 1990 about her years with Maud, she was an articulate, insightful, and exceptionally well-spoken elderly woman, dignified but with a humorous twinkle in her eye. She had only good things to say about her former employer, whom she clearly remembered with great respect and genuine affection. She did reiterate, as Luella had said earlier, that Maud was not “naturally affectionate with children in that she would not take a small child on her knees just to be loving.” But Maud was always happy to babysit June. She would come back later in the evening to find June tucked in bed with Maud, both sound asleep. Mrs. Thompson found this endearing. She praised the order and organization in Maud’s house and commented that “Mrs. Macdonald” always pitched in and helped with the work whenever she could. Mrs. Thompson appreciated that Maud did not treat maids as “servants,” as most employers did. She and June sat with the family at the table and were always part of the conversation. During her tenure there, the Macdonald family would sit and talk and joke at the table. The atmosphere in the house was always civilized, she said, even though Chester “liked to argue, and would contradict you and hold his own position.”

  She thought that Ewan and Maud were “fairly well matched as a good solid couple.” She said they were never openly affectionate but you could see that they cared deeply for each other. Mrs. Thompson liked Ewan but saw little of him, because he thought it a man’s job to stay out of the women’s way in a house. In all the years she worked for Maud, she saw nothing really wrong with Ewan psychologically. She described him as a nice man, just “terribly clumsy,” rather “square,” and often “very slow in his thought processes,” something that puzzled her for she thought him an intelligent man. She made no connection to the medications he might have been taking.

  Chester was the only problem in an otherwise entirely pleasant household, she said. Like all the earlier maids, she disliked Chester, who was much “like his father” in “lacking the polish that came naturally to Stuart.” But Chester was in fact unlike the gentle Ewan, being outspoken, tactless, and often surly. He did not “mingle well in the community”—a “night and day” contrast with Stuart, who was likeable, sociable, able to “mix well” in a crowd. She observed that Chester “spent a lot of time reading light fiction” at home when he was in law school, and mentioned that he played with June a lot more than Stuart, but added nothing more on this topic. She characterized Stuart as “every inch a gentleman,” making an indirect comment about Chester through omission.86

  When things fell apart so suddenly early in January 1939, Maud wrote in her journal that Mrs. Thompson suddenly refused to join the family, and instead ate with June in the kitchen.

  Maud’s account leaves the reader waiting for full details of what appears to be far more than a misunderstanding. Instead, we hear about inconsequential matters—that Mrs. Thompson started talking about her mother’s health as if she were planning to leave. Then when Chester was bringing his children in for dinner one night, and more leaves would be needed in the table. Mrs. Thompson offered to eat in the breakfast nook with June. But at the last minute Stuart didn’t come home, so Mrs. Thompson joined them at the dining table, and they sat talking and drinking tea after the meal. Maud thought Mrs. Thompson might want to finish her day’s chores and go out, so she told her that if she would like to clear the table to go ahead. Mrs. Thompson said there was no need to hurry, and she continued sitting with them.

  More unilluminating details follow in Maud’s account. The next morning Mrs. Thompson stayed down in the laundry room until Chester and Stuart left, and then ate with June and Maud. Maud inquired after her mother, who was supposedly still unwell, and suggested Mrs. Thompson take a few days off to visit her. Mrs. Thompson declined, saying she didn’t want June to miss school, even after Maud offered to look after June. Mrs. Thompson did not come to the table again at lunch, or for supper. She ate in the kitchen and kept June with her. More irregularities occurred in the next few days, all of which made it appear that Mrs. Thompson was trying to avoid the Macdonald family. Maud grew alarmed.

  Ewan became involved, and here we see a different view of him than the shambling, bumbling personality of the journals. He sat down with the two women, trying to resolve the problem. When he asked Mrs. Thompson why she was not coming to the table any more, she reputedly said, “Mrs. Macdonald knows very well why I am not coming to the table” (April 5, 1939). Ewan responded that Maud had no idea. Mrs. Thompson, flustered, finally said it was because Maud had ordered her to get up from the table to clean up the dishes on the Sunday night last. The account of the situation goes on in great detail, suggesting that Ewan conducted the interview quite effectively. Mrs. Thompson, in this account, appears to have been too rattled to talk, or unwilling to explain real reasons.

  Incensed that Mrs. Thompson blamed her, Maud confronted her again the next day, with Ewan present. Mrs. Thompson kept saying, “I’m not talking about it any more,” and fled the interrogation. Mrs. Thompson remained in the household until June’s school year was over, but she and June kept to themselves, and the Macdonald household remained very tense until she left.

  What really happened? The scenario that Maud depicts is so trivial that it could not have caused such a serious blow-up of a mutually beneficial, long-standing working relationship.

  Maud’s journals usually give the impression that she takes us into her confidence, revealing everything. But there were some stories that she withheld from her journals (such as the episode in which Ewan aimed the gun at Nora’s head, and the precise content of the gossip about her at various points in her life). The story of why Mrs. Thompson left is another lacuna in her narrative. The missing part of this story has come down through oral history. Mrs. Thompson confided the story to her long-time friend in Norval, Josie Laird, and Joy Laird heard it from her mother.87

  Mrs. Thompson told how she had gone down into the basement one day to attend to laundry, as usual. Chester was there, lying on his back on a couch reading novels, as he often did in the recreation room adjacent to the laundry. When Mrs. Thompson passed by, he suddenly “opened up his pants and began to play with himself in front of her.” He did this in an insulting, hostile way. She fled.

  She was appalled, but not just for herself. That room was her daughter’s playroom. Chester had always spent a great deal of time in the same room with June, lying on the couch reading. Any mother would worry: what might he do in little June’s presence?

  Paralyzed with shock and embarrassment, Mrs. Thompson did not at first know what to do. Finally, she decided that she must tell Maud about it. Maud’s response was shock and then anger. She was not furious at Chester, it appeared, but at Mrs. Thompson f
or telling her about it. Mrs. Thompson was stunned, confused, and hurt by this reaction. Maud seemed to have turned on her. From this point on, Mrs. Thompson did not want June, now a very pretty nine-year-old girl, spending time downstairs alone in Chester’s presence. Mrs. Thompson did not know what to do because she liked working for Maud, and June had access to a good school there.

  This story recalls Mrs. Thompson’s earlier departure from Maud’s employment in 1934, when she had no place to go and no real options for self-support as a single mother. June, of course, had been much younger then, and Chester spent much time playing with her. Maud herself commented on this in her journal, thinking it spoke well for him; she even took a picture of Chester holding June.

  Back in Norval, by 1934, Chester was already the source of much gossip. Tales about his crude sexual advances towards the young women in the community were rampant. Aware of these stories, Mrs. Thompson would naturally have taken notice when he paid attention to June, and she may have seen something she did not like. Observant and intelligent, but a very gentle woman, and easily intimidated by Maud, Mrs. Thompson may simply have fled the Macdonald house on a flimsy pretext.88

  Although Maud did confide several times in her journals that there were far more serious problems with Chester than she could bear to commit to the page, it is unlikely that Maud could have imagined him as a sexual menace to a young girl. By the time that Mrs. Thompson told Maud about the incident in the Riverside Drive basement, Chester was back in his mother’s good graces, apparently reconciling with Luella. Mrs. Thompson’s story would have been very unwelcome: it would have burst her happy bubble and seemed an “insolence.” If Mrs. Thompson was rattled by Maud’s anger, and tried to buttress her support with details from Norval, any story of Chester’s earlier behaviour might explain Maud’s baffling statement that she had just learned that Mrs. Thompson had “hated” her all the years she had worked for her.89

  Maud knew in her heart that Chester had serious problems, and she was worried about them to the point of mortification. But she was a proud woman who could be imperious when threatened. Hearing that her son had committed an indecent act against someone in her employment would have been an unbearable humiliation. She treated her maids with respect, but deep inside she did not consider them to be her social equals in any respect, and she would always owe her own son her first loyalty.90

  Maud’s account of her dealings with Mrs. Thompson is told like the story of Herman Leard. It is both true and not true—true in the sense that it represents how Maud felt and how she saw things, but not true in that it is not the full story. Maud saw her journals as her story, and she described how she felt about things, but she did not feel obliged to roll out and display all the embarrassing facts—especially when she could not fully comprehend them, and in this case, did not actually witness them herself. Chester’s behaviour, to her, remained beyond the pale of her understanding.

  When she says there are some things about Chester that she simply cannot write in her journals, who can blame her? She intended her journals for eventual publication, and she kept hoping that Chester would eventually dignify his life. She came from a culture in which you kept dirty laundry out of public view at all costs. She makes the occasional statement like “Chester must be crazy” (March 22, 1938), without telling us exactly what he has done. Indeed, how could anyone offer a rational explanation for Chester’s exposing himself to his mother’s maid when he was trying to get back in his mother’s good graces? He set into play factors that would damage everyone.91

  This story begs another question: why would Mrs. Thompson have consented to return to the Macdonalds’ employ in Toronto if she thought Chester might act inappropriately around June? First, she might have expected that marriage would have matured Chester and settled his sexual drives. A law student, with children, was very different from a teenage boy preoccupied with sex. At the Toronto house, little June would be at school much of the time, while Chester would be working in the lawyer’s office and going to classes. He would undoubtedly move out of his parents’ house when he graduated and went into practice. In addition, Mrs. Thompson had not been able to get another position where she could keep June with her, and in every other way, Maud was a perfect employer. It was a very sad ending to a happy relationship between Maud and Mrs. Thompson and her small daughter, and the subsequent years were much more of a struggle for all of them as a result.

  Maud needed to find a new maid. She wrote to Myrtle Webb in Cavendish shortly after the mysterious contretemps with Mrs. Thompson. She asked if Anita, then twenty-seven, would like to come to Toronto and work for her as companion and maid. Maud proposed a trial year and then that if Anita wanted to move on to something else, there would be no hard feelings. Anita had discovered the limited employment opportunities on the Island, and this was an opportunity to go elsewhere. She was, like the other recent maids, to be paid twenty-five dollars a week, with two paid weeks of vacation, and with her evenings and every fourth Sunday off (or every other Sunday afternoon, if preferred). Maud added that if she could completely retire the mortgage on the Riverside house, she would be able to increase Anita’s wages (letter of April 6, 1939).

  Anita agreed to the terms, and a new chapter in Maud’s life began. Not only was Anita “family,” she was a big, strong, competent farmgirl, with a jolly sense of humour and a formidable, no-nonsense personality. Chester had never gotten on with any of the Webb children, especially the self-possessed and confident Anita, but would be leaving shortly after Anita arrived, establishing his own home with Luella (assuming he passed his final courses). Maud knew that Anita could well defend herself; she may even have looked forward to the feisty Anita keeping Chester in his place.

  Maud wrote Myrtle again on April 29, saying that she still did not know when the “secretive” Mrs. Thompson was leaving. (Maud’s inability to discuss this basic question with Mrs. Thompson indicates that she was unnaturally ill at ease over the situation.)92 She enclosed a snap of Stuart and Margaret with the admission that he wouldn’t want it sent to anyone, but since it was so good of him, she was sending it anyway. (Stuart was still writing to Joy Laird, and would in fact give her his 1939 medical pin as a token of a commitment deeper than friendship.)

  With her outlook on life improving again, Maud began work on a new book on April 17, 1939, with the provisional title Jane and Jody. It was to focus on the maltreated Toronto orphan named young Jody. Maud escaped from the house throughout April on various trips, including one to the Art Gallery of Toronto to look at modern art with the Fireside Study Club. (She quipped that the art looked as though the artists had painted their nightmares.) She spoke at the local I.O.D.E. meeting. Margaret Russell, the talented and attractive daughter of the Russells in Norval, by then a very successful young teacher in Toronto, came for lunch.

  When Chester had come to his mother on May 3, 1939, and told her that, “Well, at last you have pushed me through school,” she wrote: “He has had his last lecture—after nine years!!” Later she added tersely that he was not worth the worry she had expended on him, but that he had to be “fitted to do something” since he had a family to support. She expected little from him as a lawyer, despite his having “brains that could put him in the front rank if he had worked” (May 18, 1939). She knew there would be other worries with him. “I can never trust Chester, alas,” she wrote on June 2, 1939, without further comment.

  That month he was called to the bar. He had graduated near the bottom of his class. (In his second year, he had ranked fifth from the bottom—ninety-fourth out of ninety-nine—but the record of his third and final year’s grades are now missing.) The legal field was overcrowded. While other young lawyers were attending lectures, working part-time in law firms, and making lifelong friendships with each other that would be useful in networking later on, Chester was out chasing the wind.93

  One day Chester confirmed that “a friend” of his, the established lawyer Donald F. Downey, wanted to know how much cash Che
ster could raise to enter Downey’s law practice. To Maud, this seemed almost too good to be true. The money from RKO Studios had just come through, and Maud settled on $2,000—a very large sum at that time.94

  It seemed odd to Maud that Downey did not want Chester in his Toronto office but intended to send him up north to mining country. They discussed one northern location, then another, and finally settled on Aurora, slightly north of Toronto, where Chester had gone to St. Andrew’s. Next, Mr. Downey made the rather unusual step of calling Maud—not Ewan—into his office. According to her account, he opened with the statement that he supposed she, like most mothers, thought her son was perfect. Then he told her what she already knew: that Chester was unkempt in his person, cocksure in his opinions, and lazy—all qualities that would militate against success. He did give her one comforting positive: Chester had more “legal brains” than anyone else he knew. That rang true with Maud, of course. Clearly, Downey wanted her to know that he felt he was taking a risk with Chester, and if Chester failed, Downey himself would not be to blame. Her $2,000 was to be a gamble. (As it turned out, Downey dissolved his partnership with Chester within the year.)

  After her depressing interview with Mr. Downey on June 26, 1939, Maud wrote: “Will I ever be done hearing people say nasty things to me of Chester? No, I don’t think so. He has faults that Mr. Downey does not know of and one of them I fear will wreck him completely yet.” However, she admits that she will miss her drives and fellowship with Chester.

  There is no picture of Chester and his mother standing proudly on the day of his graduation, only a graduation headshot of him in her journals. Chester found a small house in Aurora, and in July 1939 he moved in with Luella and their two children to start their new life.

  In the meantime, Stuart had worked hard to complete his medical degree at the University of Toronto. He finished his fifth year of study in 1939 and began interning at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto that autumn. He was rarely home. Most of his time was spent in the hospital, sleeping on a cot in the doctors’ quarters when on overnight duty. He chose obstetrics and gynaecology as his specialty, having found the happiest event in all medical fields of medicine to be handing a mother her new baby. (His patients laughed about his standard line for announcing little boys: “This one has a handle on him.”)