Lucy Maud Montgomery

by Mary Henley Rubio

  SELECTED LETTERS FROM L. M. MONTGOMERY TO OTHERS

  Published Letters

  Montgomery, L. M. The Green Gables Letters from L. M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905–1909. Ed. Wilfrid Eggleston. Toronto: Ryerson, 1960.

  Montgomery, L. M. After Green Gables: L. M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916–1941. Eds. Paul Gerard Tiessen and Hildi Froese Tiessen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. [A revised version of L. M. Montgomery’s Ephraim Weber: Letters 1916–1941. Waterloo: mlr editions, 1999. Includes Foreword.]

  Montgomery, L. M. My Dear Mr. M.: Letters to G. B. MacMillan. Eds. Francis W. P. Bolger and Elizabeth R. Epperly. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1980. [This selection was republished with a new Preface by Oxford University Press in 1992.]

  Unpublished Letters

  • Letters to various members of Aunt Annie Campbell family 1913–1941. Private Collection of George Campbell, Park Corner. • Letter to Thane Campbell. 6 October 1937. Private Collection, Park Corner. [Concerns about family gravestones.] • Letter to Shirley Ann Colcord. 22 October 1938. Private Collection. • Letter to “Evelyn.” Undated (1927?). Queen’s University Archives. • Letters to Eric Gaskell. Undated, circa June 1940; 17 February 1941. Source unknown. • Letters to Mr. Charles Gordonsmith and M. O. Hammond of The Globe and Mail. 1909–1936. Provincial Archives of Ontario. • Letters to Earl Grey. 26 September 1910; 7 December 1910. Public Archives of Canada. • Letters to Frederick Philip Grove. 13 March 1923; 3 April 1930. Grove Collection. University of Manitoba Archives. • Letter to Katherine Hale [Mrs. John Garvin]. 9 January 1928. Queen’s University Archives. • Letter to Evelyn Johnston. Undated. Queen’s University Archives. • Letters to Violet King. 13 April 1936; 25 January 1937; 14 April 1937; 17 May 1937; 6 April 1938; 2 June 1938; 23 November 1938; 18 March 1939; 7 November 1939. Private Collection of Violet King Morgan. • Postcards to Nora Lefurgey. 6 October 1932; 27 September 1939. Private Collection of Ed and Bette Campbell. • Letters to Jack Lewis. 3 March 1936; 4 February 1927; 28 February 1930; 19 January 1932; 14 February 1934; 3 March 1926; 28 December 1939. R. S. Lewis Collection. Parks Canada, PEI • Letters to John David Logan. 26 July 1912; 12 August 1912. • Letter to Nellie McClung. 23 January 1936. McClung Papers. Public Archives of British Columbia. • Letter to Joan McLennan (?). 19 March 1930. Private Collection (Davina Curnow). [Letter about a flood of letters from Australia.] • Letter to Lena McLure [a cousin]. 12 February 1933. Private Collection. • Letter to Eva Macneill. 30 March 1912. Private Collection of John and Jennie Macneill. • Letters to Penzie Macneill. 1885?–1894?. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of PEI. • Letters to Zella Cook Mustard and Isabel Mustard. 1920s–1937. Private Collection, Isabel St. John. • Letter to Lorne Pierce. 13 October 1926. United Church Archives. • Letter to Mrs. Seely. 17 August 1935. Private Collection of Ron Cohen. [Asking a fan to write to Hollywood about making Anne’s House of Dreams into a movie.] [A similar letter went to a “Helen,” n.d., asking the same thing and mentioning a “nervous breakdown.” Source of letter unknown.] • Postcard to Aileen Small. 3 October 1941. Private Collection, courtesy Aileen Small Oder. [Handwritten for Montgomery by M. A. Powell who was employed as companion, secretary, and nurse after Anita Webb left in January 1941] • Letter to Roberta Mary Sparks. 4 July 1933. L. M. Montgomery Collection. University of Guelph, courtesy Mrs. Roberta Robertson. • Letters to Morris Springer, 1936–1942. National Archives of Canada. • Letter to Mrs. Townsend. 2 June 1935. Private Collection, Park Corner. • Letters to Marian Webb and Myrtle Webb. 19 March 1933. Private Collections of Elaine Crawford and Ina Reed. • L. M. Letter to Ephraim Weber. 26 December 1941. Transcription by Wilfrid Eggleston. National Archives of Canada. • Letter to Gladys [Mrs. Harold Wilson, U.K.], n.d., circa 1931. Transcription in private collection of Mollie Gillen. [Published in the Harrap UK edition of Emily of New Moon, with a Foreword by Mary Wilson.] • Letter to “Aunt Margaret [Woolner (MacKenzie)].” 17 December 1911. Private Collection of Robert Woolner.

  SELECTED PERSONAL INTERVIEWS, ETC.

  (Excludes a few important “off the record” interviews.)

  • Isabel Anderson. Personal interview. 29 August 1991. [Isabel was a fan whose persistent attentions caused Montgomery much distress in the Norval years.] • Edith Bacon. Personal interview. 1986. [Daughter of one of Montgomery’s earliest maids. Edith often visited the Macdonalds in the manse.] • Richard Braiden and Nora Lane Braiden. Personal interview. 20 March 1991. Toronto. [Nora’s father was Montgomery’s doctor and neighbour; Dr. Richard Braiden was Stuart’s classmate in medical school.] • Ed Campbell and Bette Campbell. Personal interviews in Haileybury, Ontario, and correspondence. Circa 1994–96. [Ed, the son of Nora Lefurgey Campbell, and a mining engineer in Haileybury, Ontario, vividly remembered visiting the Macdonalds in Norval.] • George Campbell. Personal interviews and telephone conversations. 1975 ff. Park Corner, PEI. [George is the grandson of Montgomery’s Aunt Annie Macneill Campbell, and he owns the home at Park Corner, PEI, where Montgomery was married.] • Constance Carruthers. Personal letter with enclosures, including the manuscript for “Who was Herman Leard?” dated January 1993. 13 August 1993. [Constance Carruthers gives many reactions to the Herman Leard love story from relatives and neighbours of the Leards. Mrs. Carruthers was the Director of Nursing at the Prince County Hospital in the 1960s and early 1970s.] • Mike Chepesuik. Interview. Summer 1985. [His wife Florence was a Cavendish Simpson, and after their marriage, they visited Montgomery in Norval.] • Wilda Clark and Harold Clark. Letters and interviews. 1975 ff. Uxbridge, Ontario. [Harold was in Montgomery’s Sunday School class, and Wilda, a lifelong fan, was the initial driving force behind the attempt to save the Leaskdale manse and church as designated historical sites.] • Lily Meyers Cook. Personal interview. April 1986. Richmond Hill, Ontario. [Lily Meyers was Montgomery’s maid from March 1918 to February 1925. Also, in this same time frame, I interviewed the daughter of Lily’s sister, an earlier maid named Edith Meyers (Lyons), who worked for Montgomery from circa January 1916 to December 1917.] • W. Peter Coues. Interview. 12 September 1991. Boston, Massachusetts. [Pete Coues was the cousin and literary executor for Lewis C. Page, Montgomery’s publisher between 1908 and 1919. Mr. Coues was a banking executive and financier in Boston who had close ties to Lewis C. Page all his life.] • Ethel Dennis Currie. Personal interview. 15 February 1999. Milton, Ontario. [Ethel Dennis was Montgomery’s maid from August 1934 to March 1937] • Elaine Laird Crawford and Robert Crawford. Personal interviews. 1975–2008. Norval, Ontario. [Elaine, the daughter of Marian Webb Laird of Norval, is the granddaughter of Myrtle and Ernest Webb of Cavendish, and the niece of Anita Webb of Cavendish and Toronto.] • Elsie Bushby Davidson. Correspondence and personal interviews. 1980–1993. Uxbridge, Ontario. [Elsie Bushby was Montgomery’s part-time maid for six months in early January 1925, and full-time until June 1926.] • David Dills and Kay Dills. Interviews and letters. 1992 onward. [As a little boy, David was taught by Isabel Anderson, and his wife Kay edited the Acton newspaper for many years, often publishing Isabel’s poetry.] • Mary Furness. Personal interviews and visit. Circa 1988. [Mary was Ewan’s niece, and she had vivid and fond memories of “Aunt Maud.”] • Eric Gaskell. Personal interview. April 1997. Ottawa. [Commodore Gaskell was a Canadian Authors Association executive who knew and was in contact with Montgomery for over a decade. Later a parliamentary secretary in Ottawa.] • Kathy Carter Gastle. Personal interviews and e-mails. 1990–2008. Norval, Ontario. [Kathy, the daughter of local Norval historian Joan Browne Carter and the goddaughter of Joy Laird, was at one point the mayor of Georgetown. She has worked to get Norval designated as another important Montgomery heritage site. Joan Browne Carter was a classmate of Stuart Macdonald and remembered the Macdonalds well.] • Doris Munsey Haslam. Personal interview. Circa 1992. [Daughter of Ettie Schurman Munsey, the fiancée of Herman Leard before he died. Ettie later married Singleton Windham Munsey.] • Catherine Agnes Mustard Hunt. Personal interviews. Comp
iler: Mustards of North America, Vol. 1. Georgetown, Ontario: Catherine Agnes Mustard Hunt, 1980. [Family historian, related to John A. Mustard.] • Mrs. Hants B. Hunter. Interview. 17 July 1983. [Memories of the Bedeque school in Montgomery’s time.] • Doris Stirling Jenkins. Personal interview. 1 July 1996. Summerside, PEI. [Daughter of the minister, John Stirling, who officiated at L. M. Montgomery’s marriage and funeral; Doris’s mother was a long-time friend of Montgomery.] • L. E. (Ted) Jones. Personal interviews. Summer 1997–98. [Taught in the Mining-Engineering field at the University of Toronto, and remembered Chester Macdonald.] • Joy Laird. Many personal interviews, with correspondence. 1991–2001. Norval, Ontario. [Friend and contemporary classmate of Stuart Macdonald in Norval.] • (Justice) Douglas Latimer. Interviews and correspondence. 1995 onward. [He employed Joy Laird in his law firm and later when he became a Justice in the Ontario Court of Justice. He was an invaluable source of information on both the Glen Williams and Norval communities.] • Cameron Leask and Jessie Leask. Personal interviews. 12 May 1986. [Cameron was a classmate and playmate of Chester and Stuart Macdonald. Leaskdale was named for his and Jessie’s forebears.] • Nora Lefurgey. Personal diary. Private collection of Ed and Bette Campbell. [Nora was a lifelong friend of Montgomery. Nora’s only surviving child was Ed (“Ebbie”).] • Nina Pickering Lunney. Personal Interview. Circa 1985. [Granddaughter of Marshall Pickering.] • Cameron Macdonald. Personal interview. Circa 1996. [L. M. Montgomery’s first grandson.] • David Macdonald. Personal interview. 31 August 1983. Ontario. [Grandson of Montgomery and a school principal.] • Ewan Stuart Macdonald. Personal interviews, with correspondence 1975–82. Toronto. [L. M. Montgomery’s son; medical doctor and professor at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.] • Luella Reid Macdonald. Personal interviews, with correspondence 1988 ff. Ontario. [Montgomery’s first daughter-in-law, and mother of her first two grandchildren; longtime Norval resident.] • Ruth Steele Macdonald. Personal discussions. 1980 ff. [Wife of Dr. E. Stuart Macdonald.] • Pauline McGibbon. Personal letter. 16 November 1992. [Montgomery’s books as a part of her “growing up,” and information about Montgomery’s books in the West Indies. The Honourable Pauline McGibbon was a Chancellor of the University of Guelph from 1977 to 1983.] • Marjorie McKee. Phone conversation. 16 June 1992. [Vivid memories of Robert Reid, Luella’s father, and met Montgomery at church functions.] • Dorothy Watson McLean. Personal Interview. 6 July 1992. Norval, Ontario. [Contemporary of Montgomery’s sons in Norval.] • John Macneill and Jennie Macneill. Interviews, visits, and correspondence. 1985 ff. [John inherited the farm of his grandfather, Montgomery’s Uncle John F. Macneill, and he and his wife, Jennie, have developed the site of L. M. Montgomery’s “old home.” Montgomery expresses joy in her 1930 journal entry when John is born and the family will continue.] • Helen Mason (Mrs. Ed Shafer). Personal interview. Circa 1995. [Helen’s mother, Mrs. Mason, was Montgomery’s maid from circa January 1927 to March 1931.] • Mary Maxwell. Personal interviews. 1997–2002. Norval, Ontario. [Norval schoolmate of Stuart Macdonald; later wife of Anglican minister in Norval.] • John Mustard. Telephone conversation. 11 December 1998. [Information about the Reverand John A. Mustard, his grandfather.] • Margaret Mustard. Interview. Circa 1980. Uxbridge, Ontario. [Good friend of Montgomery and one of the last people to visit her in Toronto.] • Ormand Pickard. Personal interview. Letter. 13 October 1991. Dunwich (Suffolk), England, UK. [Local historian and expert on the Woolners of Dunwich, Montgomery’s Grandmother Lucy Woolner Macneill’s family.] • Lem Prowse and Pauly Prowse. Personal interviews. Circa 1982. Charlottetown. [Dr. Prowse, from PEI, was Stuart’s classmate in medical school in Toronto and remained a lifelong friend.] • Margaret Russell. Interview. Circa 1990. Norval, Ontario. [Margaret had helped Montgomery with the church choir and knew her well; after a career teaching in Toronto, she retired to Norval, and lived in the family home on the “hill o’ pines.”] • Linda Sparks [Olive Watson]. Personal interview. 4 February 1998. [Through her friend, Anita Webb, Olive wore Montgomery’s wedding dress in a pageant.] • Isabel Mustard St. John. Personal interviews and correspondence. 1990s ff. Uxbridge, Ontario. [Daughter of Zella Cook Mustard, who knew L. M. Montgomery; the several related Mustard families in Leaskdale were pillars in the community and church.] • Roger W. Straus. Interview (telephone). Summer 1991. [After Lewis Page’s death in 1956, Straus bought out the Page Company to get the copyright to Montgomery’s titles, and he and his CFO, Robert Wohlforth, gave me information about Page and his firm.] • Mrs. Faye Thompson and June Thompson. Personal interview. 26 March 1991. [Mrs. Thompson was Montgomery’s maid from April 1931 to August 1934, and then again from March 1937 until June 1939. I interviewed June again in 2004.] • Barbara Wachowicz. Letters, documents, playbills, etc. 1982 onward. [A radio and television personality, writer, and librettist (The Blue Castle musical in Poland), Wachowicz provided much historical information about Montgomery’s reception in Poland.] • Anita Webb. Personal interviews. 1982–83. Toronto and Norval, Ontario. [Anita Webb, daughter of Myrtle and Ernest Webb of Cavendish, was Montgomery’s maid from circa July 1939 until early January 1941.] • Reg Winfield. Personal Interviews. December 1987. [Associated with the Barracloughs in Montgomery’s era.] • Robert Wohlforth. Personal interview. 11 September 1991. [Wohlforth was the Chief Financial Officer of Farrar Straus (later Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) from 1952 to 1990 who orchestrated the purchase of the L. C. Page Company at 53 Beacon Street by Roger Straus after Page’s death in 1956.] • Robert L. Woolner. Personal letter, with enclosures. 1 May 1995. [An attorney in Toronto who is descended from the PEI Woolners.]

  ARCHIVAL MATERIALS COMPILED BY MONTGOMERY

  Black Scrapbook #1, ca. 1923–27. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. [In Scrapbooks of clippings, programs & other memorabilia / compiled by L. M. Montgomery, ca. 1910–1936.]

  Black Scrapbook #2, 1931–1935. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. [See Scrapbooks of clippings, programs & other memorabilia / compiled by L. M. Montgomery, ca. 1910–1936. XZ5 MS A002.]

  Red Scrapbook #1, ca. 1910–1914. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. [In Scrapbooks of clippings, programs & other memorabilia / compiled by L. M. Montgomery, ca. 1910–1936.]

  Red Scrapbook #2, ca. 1913–1926. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. [In Scrapbooks of clippings, programs & other memorabilia / compiled by L. M. Montgomery, ca. 1910–1936.]

  Scrapbook of Reviews from around the world which L. M. Montgomery’s clipping servicesent to her, 1910–1935. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. XZ5 MS A003. [See pages 131–50 for clippings on the Mary Miles Minter firm.]

  Scrapbooks of clippings, programs & other memorabilia / compiled by L. M. Montgomery, ca. 1910–1936. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph Library Archives, Guelph, Ontario. XZ5 MS A002.

  OTHER CITED SELECTED WRITINGS BY MONTGOMERY

  Autobiographical writing

  Montgomery, L. M. The Alpine Path. Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry and Whiteside [1975]. [Reprint of Montgomery’s 1917 biographical sketches published in Everywoman’s World.]

  ———. “An Autobiographical Sketch.” The Ontario Library Review. March 1929 (Vol. 23):

  94–6.

  ———. “The Gay Days of Old: A Well-known Author’s Reminiscences of Her Girlhood on a Canadian Farm,” Farmers Magazine (circa 1920: p. 176). In Scrapbook of Reviews from around the world which L. M. Montgomery’s clipping service sent to her, 1910–1935. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph.

  ———. “I Dwell among My Own People.” Towards A Canadian Literature: Essays, Editorials and Manifestos. Vol 1. 1752–1940. Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1984. [Also in Scrapbook of Reviews. University of Guelph.]

  _______. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery. Eds. Mary Rubio and Eliza
beth

  Waterston. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985–2004. [Vol. 1, 1889–1910: 1985; Vol. 2, 1920–1921: 1987; Vol. 3, 1921–1929: 1992; Vol. 4, 1929–1935: 1998; Vol. 5, 1935–1942: 2004. See introductory essays and notes.]

  _______. Unpublished Sections of the Holograph Journals, 1889–1942. L. M. Montgomery Collection, University of Guelph.

  Other Montgomery references

  Montgomery, L. M. “The Blue Castle.” Canadian Countryman. 1927. [Serialized installments of this novel.]

  ———. “The Blythes are Quoted.” L. M. Montgomery Collection. University of Guelph. [Her April 25, 1942, obituary in The New York Times states that she had been in ill health for two years, but that a collection she compiled “last winter” was turned over to her publishing house “today.” That manuscript is in the University of Guelph Archives, and many of the stories were published earlier in The Road to Yesterday. McGraw-Hill, 1974; Seal Books, 1993.]

  _______. “The Bride Dreams.” The Canadian Bookman. March 1922: 101.

  _____. “Each in His Own Tongue.” Chronicles of Avonlea. Boston: L. C. Page, 1912.

  _______. “The Man Who Forgot.” Family Herald January 1932: 23–24, 41, 44.

  ________. “Spring in the Woods.” The Canadian Magazine. May 1911: 59–62. Followed by

  “The Woods in Summer.” September 1911: 399–402; “The Woods in Autumn.” October 1911: 574–77; “The Woods in Winter.” November 1911: 62–64. [This four-part series provides another link to the travel and nature writing and speaking of Edwin Smith, John Burroughs, and the imaginary “John Foster” in The Blue Castle.]