A Name for Herself

by L. M. Montgomery

  Judge Wallace5 then addressed the graduates, giving much good advice and encouragement to the members of each class, who all looked as if they meant to take it.

  Six degrees of Master of Arts were conferred, two of the recipients being ladies. Miss Forrest came in for a bouquet.

  In closing Bishop Courtney6 and Professor Falconer7 addressed the graduates. The Bishop’s address was delivered with all his own peculiar grace and charm, illumined by flashes of genial humor. In opening he had two or three tilts with the upper gallery people and got decidedly the best of it, whereupon they paid him the high compliment of listening in almost unbroken silence. He spoke seriously and wisely to the graduates on the importance of living earnest and uplifting lives.

  Professor Falconer’s address was also much appreciated. He urged upon the citizens of Halifax the importance of appreciating a college like Dalhousie in their midst, and made some very practical remarks concerning the work done by the college and the future of the graduates, especially that of the “average” man and woman. He urged them to aim at efficiency – to know and do something well – and above all to be sincere – to do their best and be content to stand or fall by it. University men and women, said the speaker, should set a standard along these lines.

  God Save the King was sung, the audience passed out and another class of Dalhousie’s sons and daughters was added to those who are winning honor and repute for their alma mater in the busy field of the world’s work.

  (1902)

  Netted Doily

  In a journal entry dated January 1902, while working in Halifax, Montgomery mentioned plans to design “a doily pattern for a fancy work journal for which I expect to get a dollar where with I mean to buy myself a new watch chain.”1 Appearing more than a year later in the Boston magazine The Modern Priscilla, this is Montgomery’s only known publication on women’s traditional crafts, which she enjoyed for most of her life. Twenty examples of her needlework are part of the L.M. Montgomery Collection at the University of Guelph archives.

  SET THIRTY STITCHES ON A CORD OVER A BONE MESH one-quarter inch wide. Tie ends together and work around. Net seven rows plain over a coarse knitting-needle.

  Net one row of loop-stitch.

  Net a row over mesh, putting two stitches in each loop.

  Net four rows plain over needle.

  Net one row, putting three into one over the mesh.

  Net seven rows plain over the needle.

  Net one row of loop-stitch.

  Net four rows plain over needle.

  Net one row plain over mesh.

  Net a row over mesh, putting one stitch into four loops at a time.

  Net a row over mesh, putting six stitches into every loop.

  Net three rows plain over needle.

  Net a row plain over mesh.

  Net over mesh, putting one stitch into every four loops at once.

  FIGURE 6 L.M. Montgomery’s netted doily, in The Modern Priscilla (Boston, MA), April 1903. (Courtesy of the Christy Woster Collection.)

  Net over mesh, putting four stitches into every loop.

  Net one row of loop-stitch.

  Net two rows plain over needle.

  Net five stitches over needle, turn, net four, turn, net three, turn, net two, turn, net one. Break off thread and fasten in at base of point. Net five more and proceed as before.

  The whole doily must be worked off in small points in this way. It is then darned with linen floss as shown in illustration.

  (1903)

  Innocent Irreverence

  Like “Netted Doily” above, this next contribution – a short joke about a child’s misunderstanding, appearing in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine of Philadelphia in July 1905 – is unique for Montgomery. But it does evoke a similar joke made in “Half an Hour with Canadian Mothers,” earlier in this volume, so there is little doubt that it came from her pen.

  OLIVER WAS IN THE FRONT YARD ONE DAY WHEN A GENTLEMAN passed by on the street. Oliver asked his nurse who it was.

  “That was Mr. Lord,” she responded.

  Oliver flew in to his mother in great excitement.

  “Muvver, oh muvver, God has just gone past – and he had a hard hat on!”

  (1905)

  PART 3

  The Upward Climb to Heights Sublime

  FIGURE 7 L.M. Montgomery. Undated photograph, ca. 1916. (Courtesy of the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library.

  Two Sides of a Life Story

  J.C. Neville

  This short story, signed “J.C. Neville” and appearing in one of Montgomery’s scrapbooks housed at the University of Guelph Library, uses non-fiction forms – the diary of Mrs. Fitzelroy, a letter written by William Cavendish – to tell a story of miscommunication and regret. As I discuss in more detail in the afterword to this volume, although Montgomery did not leave any evidence that she claimed authorship of this story – it appears in a scrapbook not otherwise concerned with her career – its style and motifs are unmistakably hers, and, furthermore, I have found evidence that she had republished one of her poems as “J.C. Neville” in 1908. But while the story cannot be dated until the original clipping is identified, it is worth noting that Montgomery placed it in a scrapbook following several pages of postcards and photographs pertaining to her honeymoon in England and Scotland – meaning that, regardless of when it was written, she wanted it to be perceived as a story that followed the start of her own marriage.

  (EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF MRS. FITZELROY)

  Tuesday, April Ninth

  I SAW A GHOST TODAY, HENCE I AM WRITING IN THIS JOURNAL tonight. There is no human being with whom I can discuss the matter, not even my husband – nay, my husband least of all.

  When a woman writes such a sentence as the above it is a sign that all is not as it should be in her heart and life. A woman should see no ghosts she must conceal from her husband. For that matter, a woman who is married should have no need of a journal in which to find a vent for her subtle inner moods. Such should flow naturally to her husband in that sweet interchange of mutually sympathetic souls that needs no other outlet. It is a confession of a serious and vital lack when she must resort to an inanimate journal in her crises of feeling.

  FIGURE 8 “Two Sides of a Life Story” (detail), by “J.C. Neville.” Unidentified and undated clipping in L.M. Montgomery’s Red Scrapbook 1, the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. (Photograph by Benjamin Lefebvre.)

  I never kept a journal before my marriage, nor for some years after. I have never, indeed, kept a journal in any strict sense of the word. But as the years passed away, each seeming a little emptier than the last, a little more purposeless, a little less worth living, I drifted almost unconsciously into the habit of “writing out” the moods of sorrow and pain, of disquiet and discontent that came to me. Somehow, I could not go to my husband with them; he would not have understood my vague dissatisfactions for which I could certainly urge no material or definite cause; at the best, he would have laughed kindly at me. That I could not have borne; so I have made a confidant only of my pen and a blank page.

  Yet there is something I have never written of even in this journal. I have striven to forget it. At times – but at times only – I have cheated my heart into believing that I had forgotten. At other times, when I looked the issues of life squarely in the face, I knew I could never forget – never – never – never – not even in the ages of eternity. One cannot forget one’s own soul and the emotions that have branded themselves deeply into that soul. There are some things no woman can ever forget. And if she wilfully puts them aside and disregards them she sins against the very laws of her being, and sure and bitter will be her punishment. This I, Ethel Fitzelroy, have found to my cost. But only I and this inanimate confidant of a journal know it.

  Well, to my ghost! I met it on the street today, in the person of William Cavendish. I have never seen him since my mar
riage. I did not expect to see him today, for I had not known he was in St. Martin’s. I knew him at once, although he was terribly changed. He looked far older than his years; his hair was gray and his face – the frank, boyish face I remembered so well – was indescribably hard and bitter – cynical, I should say – the face of a man who has very little faith left in man or woman.

  After the first shock of mutual recognition flashing from eye to eye I would have stopped and spoken to him. But he raised his hat unsmilingly and passed on. I felt unutterably hurt and chilled. Yet I could not blame him. He is right in scorning me – did I not give him the right? And he is the only man in the world whose contempt has the power to hurt me.

  This evening I met Phil Larkins, who said that Will Cavendish had been in town, but had left on the evening train for the West. So I shall not meet him again. I am glad – glad – glad – for to meet him would only be to renew the old agony which the years have softened into a dull but constant aching sense of loss.

  Fourteen years ago, when I was a girl of eighteen, as happy and light-hearted as a girl of that age should be, I first met William Cavendish. We were drawn to each other from the beginning. He was a young bank clerk in my native town, and our social set was the same. We continued to meet frequently and ere long we learned to love each other deeply, with all the passionate tenderness of youth. Finally he told me his love and an understanding existed between us – an understanding only, for my parents would not permit a definite engagement. Not that they objected to Will, but they alleged my youth and his somewhat uncertain prospects as excellent reasons why our engagement should not be considered binding on either of us for at least two years more.

  Will was ambitious. He became discontented with his narrow and circumscribed round of duties; finally he listened to the lure of the golden West. We parted with fond assurances of mutual love and confidence. Heaven knows I meant to be true to him. During the first weeks of his absence I missed him bitterly and his fond and frequent letters were all that made my life worth while for me.

  I had at that time an intimate friend named Emma Ranford. At least, I considered her my friend. I had sometimes thought that she cherished a secret fondness for Will herself. But if so she concealed it well and affected to dislike him. I knew by her contemptuous silence that she affected to disapprove of my relations with him. Not long after his departure she began coming to me with various tales to his discredit. She had a correspondent in the western city where Will was living. This friend wrote to her of the wild life which Will was beginning to lead. He had fallen in with a fast set and was rapidly becoming, so she asserted, as dissipated as they. This and many other rumors were faithfully recounted to me. At first I refused to listen to or credit them. But Emma came to me oftener and oftener with them; constant dropping will wear away the hardest stone – constant insinuations will undermine the strongest faith. Finally I began to listen – and to believe. But in the final event it was Will himself who really gave the death-blow to my faith. His letters began to grow cold and infrequent; the intervals between them longer and longer. I believed, as Emma asserted, that he was ceasing to love me and my pride was bitterly hurt.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Fitzelroy, a handsome young surgeon attached to a certain steamer, had declared himself my lover. He was a fine, manly fellow and my parents, who had likewise heard the rumors about Will, favored his suit. I was urged and entreated to accept him. I liked him – respected him. I believed Will false to me, and my own angry pride was so intense that I believed also that I had ceased to love him. In an evil hour – yes, it was in an evil hour – I listened to the dictates of that pride, to Emma Ranford’s subtly worded insinuations and to Jack Fitzelroy’s pleadings. I became Jack’s promised wife, and I announced the fact in one brief, bitter letter to Will.

  What effect the letter had upon him I was left to conjecture, for I received no answer. But in the two years that followed I heard through Emma that he was becoming more and more dissipated and reckless. I endeavored to root out his memory from my heart as one utterly unworthy; I fancied that I had succeeded; but suddenly this delusion was rent from my eyes by Will’s return home.

  He had been unsuccessful in his pursuit of fortune in the West. But upon his return he secured an excellent position in a brokerage house in St. Martin’s. We met again; Jack Fitzelroy was away on an indefinite voyage in the steamer to which he was attached, and the old love between myself and Will, which I had thought dead, was renewed with redoubled intensity. But alas, it was not on my part accompanied by a renewal of the old fond faith and confidence. Will avowed repentance for the past three years, which he admitted had been somewhat careless and dissipated, but he averred that the reports which had reached my ears had been exaggerated by malice and jealousy, he vowed that the future should redeem the past,1 and he implored me to trust in my own love and his.

  For a time I wavered. My heart seconded Will’s appeal. But my broken trust was not so easily restored. The poison of malicious insinuation had done its work well; my family were now bitterly opposed to Will’s suit, and I persuaded myself that it was my duty to fulfill the promise I had made to Dr. Fitzelroy. This was my final decision. I shall never forget Will’s face when I told him! He went from me as one stricken with a mortal blow and from that moment until today I have never seen him. He went West again shortly afterwards, and I married Jack Fitzelroy.

  I have been his wife for eleven years, and I have realized every day of those years what a fatal mistake the woman makes who marries one man when her heart belongs to another. The world believes that I am a happy woman; I have everything to make me so – an indulgent husband, wealth, social position, charming friends. But I have never been able to delude myself into such a belief. I have learned too well that I bade adieu to my happiness when I sent from me the man I loved. Today, when I read the scorn in Will’s eyes, I realized as never before what a failure my life is – my life that might have been such a happy one had I trusted to my own heart.

  Oh, life is so empty! I am so tired! And that look on Will’s face! How he must hate me! That thought is the hardest of all to bear.

  (EXTRACT FROM LETTER WRITTEN BY WILLIAM CAVENDISH TO OLD FRIEND IN ST. MARTIN’S)

  Dear Morris:–

  What a letter of fatherly good advice you sent me, to be sure. The gist of it seems to be “marry and settle down.” Marriage in your eyes seems to be a sort of universal panacea for all the ills of life. It might be so with some. With me I fear it would prove quite otherwise.

  You wonder that I have never married. Well, I will tell you why on condition that you forevermore stop preaching marriage to me. When you have heard my brief story you will realize that you are wasting time and breath in doing so.

  Years ago, when I was a mere boy, I met and loved Ethel Leah. She was then in all the bloom of her beauty – a tall, slender girl with glorious brown eyes and the sweetest mouth a man could picture in his fairest dreams. She returned, or professed to return, my love, and when I went West to better my fortunes an understanding that amounted to an engagement existed between us.

  You know that my first western experiment did not turn out well. Moreover, I got into a fast set and lived a rather wild life. I supposed that rumors of this soon reached Ethel for I soon noticed a subtle difference in the tone of her letters. For my own part, I began to grow discouraged and reckless, owing to my lack of success. My own letters grew colder and fewer. I loved Ethel as fondly as ever but I felt an increasing chasm forming between us. I knew her parents would never consent to her marriage with a man who had failed. At this period I received a brief letter from her announcing her engagement to Dr. Fitzelroy. It came as a fearful blow. I never answered the letter. I said savagely that since she had chosen to discard me I would accept my dismissal with a pride equal to her own. But some motive power seemed gone from my life and during the next two years I went down hill rapidly, becoming more dissipated every day.

  In this fatal course I was at last arrested by
what seemed at the time to be a dire calamity. The firm with whom I was employed failed, and I found myself face to face with ruin. I returned home. For a time I felt utterly discouraged. Then I obtained a good position in my native city, and my prospects began to look bright again, for I had firmly resolved to live an entirely different life and repair my past mistakes.

  At this juncture I again met Ethel Leah, more beautiful than ever. Dr. Fitzelroy was away; we met frequently, and on my part the old love returned with trebled intensity. Before it had been but the love of a boy; now it was the love of a man. She, on her side, professed a similar reawakening of the old affection. But when I urged her to follow the dictates of this affection she failed in the test. Why should I write more of this! It is too painful! In the end she married Fitzelroy and I was left to believe that I had merely been the victim of a coquette, who had never at any time felt any real love for me.

  As you know, I again went West. This time fortune was kinder. Today I am a rich man. But life holds nothing for me. No other woman has ever filled Ethel’s place. I love her today as I have always loved her, in spite of her treatment of me.

  A few weeks ago during a flying trip east I met her on the street. My heart bounded as our eyes met. She half paused as if she would have spoken, but I passed on – I did not dare to linger. She looked well and happy; life has evidently treated her kindly and no doubt she is perfectly satisfied with it. I would not have it otherwise. I would not have her feel as I do, that all that was vital went out of life when love failed me.

  Well, that’s all. Don’t bore me with any get-married-and-behappy-ever-after advice again.

  Will write you next week about those Montana shares. We ought to be able to make a good thing out of them.