48. By April 9, 1907, about three weeks before Maud signed her contract for Anne of Green Gables, Ewan was back on the Island, looking for a new position. There were many open positions because ministers were leaving the mainland, but Ewan had a hard time finding a position. This is odd, but perhaps the depression he suffered in Scotland may still have been hanging on him.
49. Although the maple leaf became part of the current Canadian official flag only in 1965, this leaf had a long history of association with Canada, dating back to the 1700s.
50. In her 1911 series on the woods, Maud wrote in “The Woods in Autumn”: “Maples are trees that have primeval fire in their souls.… maples are the best vehicle for this hidden, immemorial fire of the earth and the woods.”
51. The complete ban lasted until 1913, when automobiles were permitted on the roads again, but only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, except in some districts that were still completely “closed.” These anti-automobile laws would not be fully terminated until 1919, at which point automobiles began their noisy assault on the pastoral Island again.
52. As Maud notes, Captain Smith was full of tales from his war experiences. After his graduation from the British Naval Academy, he was appointed to command an armed patrol ship in the North Sea. Here he protected fishing fleets and convoy routes on the east coast of England. In June 1917, he was “transferred to Dover for service on the French and Belgian Coast” where he “took part in … the bombardments of Zeebrugge and Ostend until December.” In January 1918 he was “appointed to command of [a] flotilla of twelve armed steam trawlers and until October [he] patrolled outside the Dogger Bank, being eight days out and only thirty-six hours in port, each trip,” according to his own account. At one point, he was selected to command the Guard of Honour during the visit of the King and Queen to the Naval Base of Grimsby. His fleet was “personally inspected by His Majesty,” who complimented him “on their appearance, and also on the appearance of the 144 officers and men” from the ships. It is never quite clear if Captain Smith commanded a genuine “ship of war” or merely “armed trawlers,” which were basically little fishing boats with small guns mounted on their sides. Smith, a spellbinding speaker, was quite adept at heightening glamour.
53. Smith had turned to selling insurance after his return from the war.
54. See her entry of September 21, 1919. Maud did not know then that Smith would not rise in the ministry despite his oratorical gifts. Church records show that after three years in Williamsburg, Ontario, (1923–26) Smith interrupted his ministry with another two years in commercial business. In 1928, he returned to the Church, first at Carleton Place, then in 1930 in Warkworth, Ontario; in 1934 he moved again, to Columbus, near Whitby and the lake; in 1936, to Milford, near Pictou, on Lake Ontario again. He retired in 1937, moved into the Toronto area where he and his wife Grace enjoyed their fiftieth wedding anniversary surrounded by their grown, devoted children. At one point late in his life, he spent time selling encyclopedias for money. He lived into his seventy-eighth year, dying in 1948.
55. Smith worked in the commercial world for two stints, and then went back to the ministry in other Ontario parishes near the water, after acquiring a Ph.D. in Indianapolis, Indiana, to bolster his credentials.
56. Over twenty years later, after Edwin Smith died, his wife, Grace, donated this typewriter to Parks Canada for display in the “Anne of Green Gables” house in Cavendish.
57. By 1919, Anne of Green Gables had been translated into Swedish (1909), Dutch (1910), Polish (1912), Danish (1918), and Norwegian (1918).
58. For instance, at the time she writes up the 1898 entries after 1919, Maud was buoyed to emotional heights because of the attentions of Captain Smith. She was undoubtedly—at least temporarily—tormented by feelings of attraction to his “wholesome” personality. This would have seemed sinful to her, given that people were taught that God could actually see into people’s minds and read their thoughts. In writing up her attraction to Herman, then, it appears that she is able to displace some of her feelings about Smith onto the story of Herman, and get double mileage out of her story by transmuting personal pain into literary art.
59. In 1897, she had been reading Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm, which suggested this “tragic” life-myth, given that she was in love with a man she could not marry. In 1920, when recopying her journals, the frustration with depressed Ewan, and the admiration of Edwin Smith, would have made the line even more relevant. If her facts about the Herman affair are tricky, the truth is not in the details, but in the broad sweep of human emotions. Maud was an artist, concerned with truth, not facts.
60. See Rubio, “ ‘A Dusting Off’: An Anecdotal Account of Editing the L. M. Montgomery Journals,” in Working in Women’s Archives, pp. 51–78.
61. See The Blue Castle, chapter XIV.
62. Maclean’s, vol. 32, September 1919, no. 9.
63. The following Friday, Captain Smith drove Maud from Leaskdale to Whitby to give readings to the young women at Whitby Ladies’ College. On June 11, 1921, Ewan collided with Marshall Pickering.
64. See Red Scrapbook #2, pp. 177 and 192 ff., for Smith’s film showings.
65. Significantly, Emily of New Moon is dedicated to another man in Maud’s life: George Boyd MacMillan, her longtime correspondent in Scotland. Neither Smith nor Ewan would ever have a book dedicated to them, despite their influence in her life.
66. The late Margaret Laurence (1926–1987) remarked to her friend and biographer, Clara Thomas, that Montgomery had everything right in her Emily trilogy: Maud had accurately portrayed all the impediments that stood in the way of young women aspiring to become writers in small-town Canada (or America).
67. When I handed Alice Munro a gift copy of the first volume of The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, Volume 1, at the Ginger Press Bookstore in Owen Sound, Ontario, in late 1985, she looked at it for only a second to see what it was, and then, without missing a beat or without making any identifying reference to Emily of New Moon, she responded by quoting the end of the novel: “I am going to write a diary that it may be published when I die.”
68. Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History, p. 54.
69. Maud would have been very happy if she could have lived to hear Margaret Laurence say in a 1966 CBC television interview with the young Adrienne Clarkson that Canadian women’s literature started with L. M. Montgomery, who was read by all the young girls in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. Later, Clarkson, who would become the Governor General of Canada, wrote in 1999 that in 1942 Montgomery gave her, when she was a young immigrant outsider, a “profound understanding of what Canada is.” Clarkson added that Montgomery’s fiction shows that “purpose and vision and balancing all aspects of a human life and its obligations to others … will bring the richest human rewards.” Montgomery “understood emotions and … motivation; her people are Canada,” wrote Clarkson.
70. See “The Author of Anne,” vol. 32, September 1919, no. 9.
71. It barely seems credible that anyone, especially a child, could memorize this poem. But other people have similar stories about learning all of “The Lady of the Lake.” One comes to me through Professor G. Douglas Killam. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Mr. Canfield, the principal of Lord Lister Junior High School in New Westminster, B.C., would assemble the entire school once a year to listen to him recite this entire Scott poem.
72. In 1991, Jack and Linda Hutton bought Mrs. Pyke’s house and turned it into a museum that celebrates the Macdonalds’ holiday and Bala’s history.
73. Mustard had picked out one of the best spots on the lake, and the place where their cottage was located now holds a multi-million-dollar vacation home.
74. John Mustard’s admirable personal qualities had already been clear to his professors when he was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, where he took an Honours B.A. in Classics. Their letters of reference commented on his “unimpeachable” moral character a
nd his “large share of good common sense which counts for a good deal.” One referee even mentioned his “fine physique,” noting it was necessary in a schoolteacher. Altogether, his referees praised him as a man of “model character, good parts, and amiable disposition.” After teaching in Prince Albert, Mr. Mustard took his theology degree at Knox College in Toronto, finishing in 1894. His niece, Isobel Mustard St. John, characterized him as a scholarly and sincere preacher, not as one who held listeners spellbound. This modesty, earnestness, and kindness inspired enormous devotion and affection in his congregations. In 1946, the Reverend John Mustard was given an honorary Ph.D. for his lifetime accomplishments—fifty years of stellar service to the Presbyterian Church.
75. Isabel Mustard St. John, John Mustard’s niece, who knew Maud in the Leaskdale years, commented in the 1990s that she agreed that her uncle would have bored someone like Maud. But he continued to rise in the Church hierarchy, whereas Captain Smith, whose career in the ministry petered out, moved into smaller churches (partly to be near water).
76. Urea is an ingredient in Veronal.
77. See Scrapbook of Reviews, p. 266.
78. See Maud’s “An Autobiographical Sketch,” The Ontario Library Review, March 1929, volume 23, pp. 94–96.
79. At the same time, the Reverend John Mustard, in Toronto, received about $3,000 for a year in one large church.
PART THREE: THE NORVAL YEARS
1. See Red Scrapbook #2, p. 251 ff.
2. Maud’s own McShannon ancestors were Scots-Irish, and the Montgomery clan seat in Ayrshire looked over towards Ireland.
3. The Mail and Empire, June 23, 1926.
4. Both Chester and Stuart became chain-smokers.
5. Ila May had literary ability and was the Boys’ and Girls’ Editor at the Winnipeg Free Press at the time of her marriage to William D. MacKenzie. Maud did not like her other half-sister, Kate, who was much like her mother.
6. This letter of October 15, 1926, is in the Queen’s University Archives.
7. In his 1927 An Outline of Canadian Literature, Pierce writes somewhat ambiguously that Anne of Green Gables is “deservedly a classic of its kind, not because of its excellence of style or plot, but because of the altogether charming character, Anne” (p. 38).
8. See The Toronto Telegram, March 24, 1937.
9. Deacon admired and praised the younger generation of innovative fiction writers like Hemingway and Morley Callaghan, but he did not understand the new Modernist poetry. He characterized these young Canadian poets as “a group of highly mannered writers, who make a cult of obscurity …” This statement made him some enemies among the new generation of influential academic critics like A. J. M. Smith. See p. 216, Clara Thomas and John Lennox.
10. Thomas and Lennox, p. 104.
11. “Poteen” is a colloquial term for homebrew, according to Thomas and Lennox.
12. See Thomas and Lennox, p. 214.
13. See Thomas Guthrie Marquis, English-Canadian Literature, pp. 564–65.
14. See MacMechan, Head-waters, pp. 210–12.
15. See journal entries of November 10, 1936, where she says she has “no love” for him; and April 8, 1938, where she says he has always “pursued me with malice.…” See also her letter to G. B. MacMillan about him in June 1930.
16. Thomas and Lennox, p. 42.
17. See Thomas and Lennox, p. 83.
18. In 1922, Maud had written in her journal her own response to this term: “Today I had a nice letter from Sir Ernest Hodder Williams (of Hodder and Stoughton) and some English reviews of Rilla. All were kind but one which sneered at my ‘sentiment.’ The attitude of some English critics towards anything that savors of sentiment amuses me. It is to them as the proverbial red rag to a bull.… Can’t they see that civilization is founded on and held together by sentiment. Passion is transient and quite as often destructive as not. Sentiment remains and binds. Perhaps what they really mean is sentimentality, which is an abominable thing. But my books are not sentimental. I have always tried in them to register normal and ordinary emotions—not merely passionate or unique episodes.” (January 27, 1922)
19. Thomas and Lennox, p. 63.
20. See Black Scrapbook #1, p. 165.
21. See Black Scrapbook #1, p. 145.
22. See letter of February 6, 1928, to G. B. MacMillan in My Dear Mr. M., p. 136.
23. See Black Scrapbook #1, p. 145.
24. See letter to G. B. MacMillan, February 6, 1928, p. 136.
25. This letter is in the Queen’s University Archives.
26. It was believed by many mental health experts in earlier eras that masturbation could actually lead to mental illness, and the practice of “spilling one’s seed,” either through masturbation or as a method of birth control, was also condemned in the Bible. See Robert D. Hare’s Without Conscience, which lists “precocious sexuality” as one of several early indicators of psychopathy on p. 66 and p. 69.
27. Recounting this story in the 1980s, Joy Laird, who had babysat and played with the Brown children, wiped tears from her eyes. The lifelike doll from the Brown children linked her to Stuart, who had experienced the tragedy with the same intensity that she had.
28. When Stuart was in his mid-sixties, he recounted that his mother had kept him home so she would not be lonely herself. He was very fond of his mother, and rarely criticized her, but he still resented this.
29. The Norval contemporaries of Stuart all still had exceptionally fond memories of him in the 1980s. Older people such as Margaret Russell, who had been a teacher all her life, also remarked that it was “obvious” to her that Maud favoured Stuart, but she added that this was very understandable: he was smart, cheerful, and likeable.
30. As Elizabeth Waterston has noted, Montgomery drew on the many new 1920s ideas about early childhood education that were being studied by Dr. William E. Blatz, an influential professor of early childhood education at the University of Toronto, and the first director of the Institute of Child Study, established in 1926.
31. His obituary is in the Boston Sunday Herald of May 29, 1927, p. 4.
32. When L. C. Page died in 1956, his estate had dwindled down to about $300,000, including his firm in Boston and his home in Brookline (worth $34,000). In his will, written a few days before his death, he squared off with some relatives by telling them what he would have left them if they had not displeased him. To his church, St. Aidan’s Church in Brookline, Massachusetts (the church where John F. Kennedy’s family worshipped and where Kennedy was baptized), Page donated $1,000 for a memorial to himself, and $500 towards Mass offerings for the “repose of my soul.”
33. I interviewed Nora’s son Edward (“Ebbie”) Campbell, a mining executive in Haileybury, Ontario, in the 1990s.
34. See Black Scrapbook #1, p. 103.
35. See Black Scrapbook #1, p. 85.
36. This famous recitation poem, “The curfew must not ring tonight,” was written by Rose Hartwick Thorpe (1850–1939).
37. See the Guelph Mercury, May 11, 1929.
38. Nora’s family tragedy is given a passing and sympathetic mention in Maud’s journals, but when Maud’s favourite cat, Lucky, dies some years later, she spills out nearly forty handwritten pages of grief in her tenth volume.
39. Luella Reid described them as “the oddest teeth ever seen … they were like whale’s teeth, long and narrow, bunched together, lots piled together, especially on the bottom. They were cruel teeth to have.”
40. The severity of the devastating American crash in 1907 led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve system.
41. CENTENNIAL: Union Presbyterian Church (Esquesing), 1833–1933.
42. In 1983, the update of Ewan’s history stated unequivocally and without factual basis that Mrs. Macdonald had written the 1933 booklet. Luella Reid, later Chester’s first wife, remembered vividly how consumed Ewan had been with the project, working on gathering materials, talking about them, and writing them up. She said he positively radiated happiness during th
is time, and she was indignant over the denial of his authorship.
43. Articles about the possibility of television were written in the late nineteenth century, and in 1927 President Herbert Hoover appeared on an early television, and the papers reported that images could be transmitted up to two hundred miles. Maud first mentions “television” in her journals on December 4, 1927.
44. Maud’s “shocking” remark about religion was repeated to me by a Norval resident long before her journals were published. For some of Maud’s statements on religion, see October 7, 1897; January 7, 1910; January 31, 1920; October 21, 1921; March 15, 1925 (first entry of two for that date); October 30, 1925; January 24, 1932; August 25, 1932.
45. Isabel Anderson continued teaching elementary school in Acton for forty years. According to some of Isabel’s former students in the 1980s and 1990s, parents dreaded the time when their children would advance to her classroom. When she died, at age ninety-nine, she received a fulsome obituary that praised her exemplary life and her great love for her students. I was astonished to find that Isabel, born in 1896, was still alive in the late 1980s, living in my town of Guelph in a nursing home. She was the only hostile person I met in my quarter-century of interviewing people about L. M. Montgomery, who was almost universally remembered with affection and admiration.
46. Interview with Mrs. Dorothy Watson McLean in the 1980s.
47. Maud probably was sexually inexperienced at sixteen, but surely not “unawakened,” and it seems likely that she wants to assure her future readers that she “behaved herself,” so she glossed and clarified the memory.
48. This legendary civil engineering professor held various patents for new engineering techniques, and after he began teaching at the University of Toronto, he enlisted Rudyard Kipling to write the engineers’ creed, which became part of the ceremony that inducts engineers into their professional brotherhood.
49. Letter to Lena McLure, daughter of Chester McLure, Maud’s second cousin, sent care of Chester McLure, to Chateau Laurier, Ottawa.
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