Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  Maud was prostrate with grief over the breakup of Chester’s marriage. She sank into a deep depression, and her dependency on sedatives apparently increased. War in Europe had broken out, and she was now obsessed by the conviction that Stuart would be killed. There was little doubt that Stuart would be taken into military service as soon as he finished his residency: doctors were badly needed. Maud looked back to Rilla of Ingleside, about World War I, in which Anne’s beloved and poetic son Walter is killed. Stuart was only a five-year-old child when she wrote that book, but he had already shown the kind of special sensitivity that Walter embodied.

  In June 1940, shortly after Stuart’s graduation, Maud fell and broke her right arm, tearing the muscles and ligaments. She later typed a letter to Eric Gaskell, still national secretary of the CAA, saying that she was still “laid up” because of her arm and promising to answer him as soon as she could. She explained that she was typing the note with her left hand.

  Maud wrote to George MacMillan in Scotland, describing her injury and telling him that she could barely control her right arm enough to write now. She added that this coincided with “a bad nervous breakdown” in which she was plagued by a “fixed idea” that she would never be better. She told him that she can no longer find pleasure in her old joys, but instead feels “turned into another personality (July 23, 1940).” She described being at the mercy of an awful restlessness.

  Stuart was then interning in St. Michael’s Hospital. As an intern “on call” he usually slept at the hospital, but he telephoned home to his mother every day, according to Anita. At one point he became very alarmed over the deterioration in his mother’s health. One day he noticed her weaving and staggering as if she were drunk. He took a blood sample and had it analyzed.99 It showed a very high concentration of bromides. Doctors at that time did not understand the psychiatric dangers of bromide poisoning, but Stuart begged his mother to cut down on medication because he could see it was affecting her balance. Unfortunately, Maud seems to have been too psychologically dependent on these medications by this time to heed his advice. He was only a young and inexperienced doctor, and she was under Dr. Lane’s care. Dr. Lane continued to come in often to check on Maud—he lived across the street— and he also was clearly alarmed at her state.100

  After Luella’s flight and Maud’s breakdown, Chester stepped up the pressure for money. Downey had by now dissolved their legal partnership. As Maud’s psychological state continued to deteriorate, Chester became increasingly upsetting. Ewan coped no better. Maud grew rapidly worse over the summer of 1940. Again, it seemed that Chester was spinning out of control.

  However, apart from these breakdowns, Maud was still mostly lucid, even though she was obviously depressed and on medication. She wrote MacMillan again, telling him that he would never know what his “sane letter” had meant to her. She told him that she had been in “intolerable distress” since her last note to him, but she left out details. She said that Chester had tried to join the Osgoode Hall Contingent of the Canadian Officer Training Corps but was turned down because of short-sightedness. Stuart was interning: the medical council had decreed that interns could not be taken until their intern year was finished. She added that it was not the thought of Stuart going to war that had caused her break down. Several things, including the injury to her arm, had happened all at once. This letter of August 27, 1940 is so shaky that it is almost impossible to decipher it. On November 21, 1940, she sent MacMillan a postcard saying she was still not able to write.

  Anita was terribly alarmed but unable to turn things around. All Maud’s speaking tours had stopped, and they even quit going to movies. Maud lost the sense of humour that had always been the defining feature of her personality. She continued to cry a great deal, and she “couldn’t talk to other people—could only talk about herself and her illness in a pitiful way,” according to Anita. Unable to eat, Maud rapidly lost a lot of weight.

  Anita had never seen anyone in such a condition as Maud, and she didn’t understand how Chester’s behaviour, odious as she regarded it, could have brought her laughing and gay Aunt Maud to this. Dr. Lane regularly assured Maud that she would eventually improve. There is no record of the medications she took in this period, but it almost certain that her intake increased. No one knows if it was with or without the doctor’s knowledge.

  And then, on December 6, 1940, Margaret Webb—the wife of Anita’s brother Keith Webb—died of a miscarriage, leaving two baby girls and a devastated husband. Myrtle tried to care for her grandchildren, but her health was not good enough to look after them on a full-time basis. Anita was summoned. The loss of Anita was a terrible blow to Maud.

  On December 31, 1940, Maud managed a short note to Weber, acknowledging his last letter to her. She told him she had been ill for six months with a terrible breakdown, and she did not expect to recover, although the doctor said she would. She thanked Weber for a “long and true friendship,” and she told him that her breakdown had been caused by a serious fall, by the disturbing war news, and by “several private blows.” Stuart hired a nurse-companion named Mary A. Powell to replace Anita. By January 18, 1941, Anita was back on the Island.

  The news of Maud’s troubles now prompted Eric Gaskell, still national secretary of the Canadian Authors Association, to write her an encouraging letter wishing her a restoration of health. He also informed her that at the national executive committee meeting in Montreal, the “following resolution was adopted by unanimous vote of those attending: ‘That Mrs. L. M. Macdonald (L. M. Montgomery) be made an Honorary Member of the Canadian Authors Association, in grateful recognition of her rich contribution [to] Canadian literature.’ ” He added that “an honorary membership is the highest distinction of the CAA, and there may not be more than ten honorary members at any one time. The distinction is held for life, and the member so honoured is not required to pay any further dues (February 8, 1941).

  On February 17, 1941, Maud thanked him, saying that her doctor assured her she would improve, but that “so many things combine to keep me down” that she doubted she would ever be her “old self” again.

  Eric Gaskell told me that he kept in touch with Maud largely by telephone, drawing on her contacts, ideas, and knowledge behind the scenes to further CAA work.

  On February 28, 1941, Maud sent MacMillan another postcard saying her health had still not improved. On May 10, Mary Powell sent a note to the Webers thanking them for the gift of a plant, saying Mrs. Macdonald was too sick to answer herself, but that she valued their friendship. By June 1941, Maud was despondent.

  Maud had some better periods through the spring and summer once she stabilized with the new nurse. She started thinking about the will that she had made in 1939, after Chester had reconciled with Luella. Now that he was no longer with Luella, that will needed attention again. But since Maud blamed both Luella and Chester for the marital troubles and final breakup, she was unsure how to handle it.

  On June 24, she attached a codicil to her will that revoked clause c, paragraph III, in her September 11, 1939, will, in which everything had been divided equally between Chester and Stuart (the only exception being her diaries [journals] and papers, which all went to Stuart). This June 24 codicil specified that 180 items on a list she had made on June 21, 1941, were to go to Chester only if he was living with Luella at the time of her death.

  Maud was thorough: she either documented the importance of each item or explained its provenance. If Chester was not living with Luella at the time of her death, these items were all to go to Luella to be held in trust for the children.101

  Everything else of her goods, furniture, and household effects not on this list was for Stuart, with the exception of her bedroom suite, and the living-room chesterfield and two chairs, which were marked for Ewan. Her sons were to share her books equitably. She specified that if Chester and Stuart wished to make a different distribution of her household goods and effects between themselves, they could do so.

  This list of Ju
ne 21, 1941, was formalized as part of the codicil to her will on June 24, 1941. Did Chester press her to leave him so many specific sentimental items by arguing that Stuart was being left the journals? Maud was apparently trying to force Chester to return to Luella by adding the proviso that he would get these heirlooms and sentimental items only if he was living with Luella at the time of her death. Perhaps she simply thought that she could avoid ill will between her sons after her death by making specific lists. Or perhaps she named all the items to prevent Chester from removing anything before the division took place. She was naturally worried, too, that her journals made enough references to Chester’s failings that he might destroy them.

  Two weeks after Maud signed the codicil to her will, she wrote in her journal the sole entry for 1941: “July 8, 1941: Oh, God, such an end to life. Such suffering and wretchedness.” That was the first entry since June 30, 1939, written just after Chester’s graduation from law school, shortly before he moved to Aurora with Luella. There were no more entries until the final entry the following year. Her letters to friends became miserable. On August 20, 1941, she wrote to Ephraim Weber a short note saying that she didn’t seem to be getting any better, and that recovery from a nervous breakdown was slow.

  Ewan still roamed, collecting prescriptions, some for him and some for Maud. Neither Maud nor Ewan could quit taking the medications that they had become dependent on to make them feel better. On August 26, 1941, Maud wrote MacMillan, that she was “no better” and “never will be.” She referred to “the blows” that had fallen on her “for years,” which she “tried to hide” from her friends. She added that she thought her mind was “going.” On October 3, 1941, Mary Powell was again writing notes on Maud’s behalf. To a Miss Small in Manitoba, she wrote, “Mrs. Macdonald appreciated your lovely letter very much. She is too ill to write you. Yours truly, M. A. Powell.”

  Maud was more forthright about her problems to the Park Corner relatives, and she wrote them directly herself. They were the only people— relatives or friends—to whom she would have felt comfortable admitting that her anxiety was caused more by Chester than by Ewan (whose illness she normally cited to outsiders as the cause of her worries). She wrote them on October 8, 1941, that Chester’s wife left him and that

  … he has broken our hearts this past 10 years though I have tried to hide it and seem bright and happy.…

  My heart is broken and it is that has broken me.

  In the meantime, Luella was still living with her father while she regained her health. Luella’s father insisted that she maintain contact with Maud and Ewan, because the children deserved to know their grandparents. But the Macdonalds were too far gone in illness and mental distress to show interest in the children. Luella found the trips very painful for all.

  When Luella visited once in the fall of 1941, she found Maud outside disposing of letters, books, and papers in a bonfire. Luella said Maud was “in the garage in a summer dress. She was having a great deal of trouble keeping on her feet. I don’t know how she kept standing. She was so frail, distraught, and wild looking. I was frightened. I had no experience with anyone looking like that.” She described Maud as being all bones and no flesh, a very tiny woman now that her weight was gone. Maud was cordial, but Luella was so disconcerted by her mother-in-law’s appearance that she took the children and left as soon as possible.

  On December 23, 1941, Maud wrote a last pathetic letter to MacMillan saying the year had been one of “constant blows.” She said that Chester had “made a mess” out of his life, and that Luella had “left him.” She commented that her husband’s nerves were in worse shape than hers. Then she added that she expected conscription would come and take her second son, leaving her without any motive to “recover” and “nothing to live for.”

  In a December 26, 1941, note to Weber, she said she could write only after “a hypo.” She referred again to the many “blows” that had fallen on her during the year. She implied that Ewan’s attacks of melancholy were the cause of her misery because people did not want a minister who had such attacks. This, of course, was nonsense: Ewan had been out of the ministry for six years. But an elderly husband who was subject to melancholic attacks was far more socially acceptable than having a young son exhibiting seriously anti-social behaviour.

  On January 6, 1942, in a note to Morris Springer, her long-time young correspondent in Chicago, she said she was very ill; she did not think that she would recover. She advised him that the only way to find out if he was any good as a writer was to send his writing out to magazines and newspapers. She said, “Goodbye and God bless you,” and ended by telling him she had had so many blows, together with the war, that she was “completely broken.”

  In her final months, Maud was deeply depressed, and yet she was rational enough that the two people I interviewed who talked to her shortly before her death found her completely lucid. On April 10 (or thereabouts), about two weeks before her death, Eric Gaskell spoke to her. She had been helping him organize a chapter of the Canadian Authors Association in Prince Edward Island. (There had been three famous literary people from the Island: Maud herself, Andrew Macphail [1864–1938], and Cyrus MacMillan [1882–1953]. Maud had agreed to be honorary president. She had given him many important contacts.)

  She phoned him again shortly before his trip to ask if there was anything else she could do. He told her everything was covered and thanked her for all the introductions. He remembered her saying almost pathetically, “I do wish people wouldn’t think of me only as a writer for children.” He talked to her again the following week. She told him that she was not feeling well and she knew she was “depressed,” but hoped to correct this by what she called a “period of relaxation.”102

  Eric Gaskell said that Maud was in a happy frame of mind when she last talked to him, and she joked and laughed. He described her as “open and friendly and interested in the project.” She spoke of her concern about the CAA—she thought it needed to be a more professional organization, admitting only people who actually were bona fide writers. Mr. Gaskell characterized Maud as a person who was “genuinely kind in a way that came naturally.”

  Another person who talked to Maud right before she died was Margaret Mustard of Leaskdale. She dropped in to see Maud around April 17, 1942. Margaret was one of several Leaskdale people who had stayed in touch with the Macdonalds. At the end of the visit, Margaret told Maud that she would drop back in a week. Maud responded that she had doubts that she would still be there in a week. Margaret did not understand what she meant, and left puzzled over the comment.

  Maud was deeply worried about finances by 1942. Writing had been her joy, but it had also been her income. If no books came out, her income would drop off. In 1940, she had earned substantial book royalties of $6,996. In 1941, without another book out, her book income had dropped to $1,421, the lowest in thirty-four years. She knew that her income would be even lower in 1942 if there was no new book. What would happen to her family without her income? She feared that she couldn’t afford to keep help any longer, but she could not do without it. She now felt the terror of possible financial insolvency. She was galled by the knowledge that Lewis Page was still making money from her early books. She had lent others a great deal of money when she had a large income, and now she was facing an old age without adequate resources herself. She had less than $10,000 in her savings account, and although she had stocks and bonds, that money was not readily accessible. She felt desperation about how long her reserves would hold up, especially with Chester demanding money.103 To a fan named Helen, she wrote a pathetic letter in shaky handwriting telling her that she was “very ill” with a “very bad nervous breakdown” and asking her to write the RKO Studios in Hollywood, California, urging them to make a movie of Anne of Ingleside.

  Despite all the farewell letters telling all her correspondents about her misery, and despite nothing but the two pathetic entries in her journal in the last years of her life, she somehow produced another man
uscript called The Blythes Are Quoted in this last year. It is a collection of her stories, many published earlier, linked together through a narrative device. Many of these stories are excellent, written when she was in her prime, and they might have carried the book. Her obituary in the New York Times stated that she put this manuscript in her publisher’s hands on April 23, 1942, the day before her death, and the manuscript was indeed located there in the 1970’s although most of the stories in it had already been published as The Road to Yesterday (1974).

  Maud found solace in rereading the books from her special bookcase. The writer she loved most, who had most inspired her in childhood, was Sir Walter Scott. His was a world with ideals, she felt. The poem she loved most, and could recite from beginning to end, was The Lady of the Lake. There is a four-line passage at the end of Section XIII that describes a curse laid on a character in the poem. It reads:

  Lay on him the curse of the wither’d heart

  The curse of the sleepless eye;

  Till he wish and pray that his life would part,

  Nor yet find leave to die.

  In her shaky handwriting, in the pencil she used at the end of her life (rather than the pen used to earlier underline her favourite passages), she wrote:

  Oh God that is my position.

  Then, on March 23, 1942, she began her final entry on page 479 of her tenth volume of the 500-page journal that had sustained her since she was fourteen years old:

  … since then [referring to the entry of July 8, 1941] my life has been hell, hell, hell. My mind is gone—everything in the world I lived for has gone—the world has gone mad. I shall be driven to end my life. Oh God, forgive me. Nobody dreams what my awful position is.