32 See Montgomery, “How I Began to Write,” 71; Montgomery, “How I Began,” 145; “The Author of Anne of Avonlea,” 38.
33 Not included in this list is the Prince of Wales valedictory speech that Montgomery ghostwrote for her classmate James H. Stevenson in 1894 (included in this volume) or the few pieces published (most likely erroneously) under the names “S.M. Montgomery,” “L.W. Montgomery,” or “Lucy Ward Montgomery.”
34 Gerson, Canadian Women in Print, 35.
35 The numbers used to calculate these averages are limited to periodicals whose publication details are known. Several more poems and short stories appear in Montgomery’s scrapbooks or are mentioned in her earnings ledger, but their publication details are unknown, so these numbers should actually be slightly higher.
36 Alternative names used for later personal essays – “Lucy Maud Montgomery” for “Four Questions Answered,” “L.M. Montgomery MacDonald” [sic] for “The Day before Yesterday,” “Lucy M. Montgomery” for a reprint of “‘I Dwell among My Own People,’” and “Mrs. L.M. Macdonald (L.M. Montgomery)” for “Life Has Been Interesting” – may have been the choices of the editors of the publications in which these pieces appeared.
37 Gerson, “L.M. Montgomery,” 78n8. “At the Long Sault,” appearing in Scrapbook 8 with a handwritten note identifying the source of publication simply as “The Standard,” also appeared in The Watchman and Other Poems (see WOP, 116–19).
38 Montgomery, 21 October 1921, in LMMCJ, 2: 344.
39 It is worth mentioning that many of these inspirational quotations from the twenty-first century attribute to L.M. Montgomery extracts from Kevin Sullivan’s miniseries versions of Anne of Green Gables, including “Good Friends Are Always Together in Spirit,” which was even woven into the opening credits of the recent television series Anne with an “E.”
40 Hammill, Women, Celebrity, and Literary Culture, 100.
41 See Montgomery, “Live So That You Beautify Your Name.” These sentences were originally a dialogue between Diana and Anne in Anne of Avonlea. When Diana observes that “I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves,” mentioning Josie and Gertie Pye as examples of the latter, Anne declares this to be “a lovely idea”: “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with … making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself” (AA, 252–53; ellipsis in original).
42 See Montgomery, untitled extract. This sentence from Anne of Avonlea is spoken by adolescent handmaiden Charlotta the Fourth (see AA, 361).
43 See Montgomery, “The Sweetest Days.” This sentence is spoken by Anne in Anne of Avonlea (see AA, 210).
44 See Montgomery, “Our Mistakes.” Properly, “Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that to-morrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” This sentence is spoken by Anne in Anne of Green Gables (see AGG, 247), but the preceding sentence does not appear in the book.
45 Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), “The Daily Pantagraph’s” (28 June 1934), 4; Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette, “Your Questions Answered” (28 June 1934), 6; Harrisburg (PA) Telegraph, “Ask the Telegraph,” 10; Courier-News (Bridgewater, NJ), “Your Questions Answered,” 10; Pittsburgh Press, “Questions – Answers” (3 July 1934), 4; North Adams (MA) Evening Transcript, “Ask the Transcript,” 14.
46 Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), “The Daily Pantagraph’s” (18 January 1935), 4; Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette, “Your Questions Answered” (18 January 1935), 6; Kingsport (TN) Times, “Questions and Answers,” 4; Middletown (NY) Times-Herald, “Questions and Answers,” 4; Pittsburgh Press, “Questions – Answers” (18 January 1935), 14; Ithaca Journal, “Answers from Washington,” 6. I mentioned these two questions – but not their corresponding answers – in my headnote to “Something about L.M. Montgomery” in Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader.
47 See “Author Tells How.”
48 Wiggins, L.M. Montgomery, 183.
49 Thompson, “The Shadow on the House of Dreams,” 116. See Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 249–81; Montgomery, 7 February 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 281–83; Montgomery, 25 February 1918, in LMMCJ, 2: 5–8.
50 Buss, Mapping Our Selves, 164, 165.
51 Lee, “Protecting Her Brand,” 184, 189.
52 Rubio, “Subverting the Trite,” 122.
53 York, Literary Celebrity in Canada, 78, 80.
54 Thompson, “The Shadow on the House of Dreams,” 116.
55 Lee, “Protecting Her Brand,” 193, 190, 191.
56 Rubio, Introduction, 8; York, Literary Celebrity in Canada, 87.
57 Richardson, “‘Anne of Green Gables,’” 354; see also “A Canadian Novelist.” My thanks to Mary Beth Cavert for bringing this version of Montgomery’s interview with Richardson to my attention.
58 Everywoman’s World, “The Summit Is Reached,” 25.
Notes
THE WRECK OF THE “MARCO POLO”
By Lucy Maud Montgomery. Montreal Daily Witness, 5 March 1891, 2. Also in Scrapbook 7 (“Written March 1890 / Published February 1891 / In Montreal Witness”).
Also with minor variations as “The Wreck of the Marco Polo” in Daily Patriot (Charlottetown), 11 March 1891, 1. Also in Bolger, The Years Before “Anne,” 33–36. Also excerpted in McCabe, The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album, 61–62.
1 “Noted Author Dies Suddenly,” 360.
2 This error about Montgomery’s age seems to coincide with an error about her birthdate. See “The Alpine Path,” note 17, below.
3 See Montgomery, 19 February 1890, in CJLMM, 1: 21. Montgomery stated in this journal entry that she had received “honorable mention” for her 1889 submission. George Alley, the judge for Prince Edward Island, does not use this term in his report published on 1 June 1889; instead, he names the “best essay” for Queens County and adds three more stories “in the order of merit among the contributions of this county,” the second of which is “a legend graphically told of a tragedy said to have occurred about the time of the establishment of British rule in the island on a spot which has perpetuated the memory of one of the principal actors in the occurrence by deriving from him its name.” This report does not identify any of the contributions by title or author. In her copy of this clipping in her Blue Scrapbook, housed at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Montgomery drew in pencil a box surrounding this text, indicating that she recognized this vague description as a reference to her essay. Although the judge included Montgomery’s entry in those he “recommend[ed] for publication,” this piece does not appear to have been published. Montreal Daily Witness, “Dominion Prize Competition,” 3.
4 This event also formed the basis of Lynn Manuel’s picture book The Summer of the “Marco Polo” (2007).
5 Montreal Daily Witness, “Canada Prize Competition,” 3. A clipping of this comment about Montgomery’s essay (omitting the remainder of the report) appears in Scrapbook 7, on the same page as the clipping of the published essay along with the unsigned editorial comments (“The End of a Famous Ship, Well Known to Song and Story”) used to introduce Montgomery’s essay. Winning second prize for Queens County was “Master Nathan J. Lockhart,” whose essay on “The American Gale” – referring to “an October 1851 storm [that] destroyed more than 70 schooners near Cavendish” (Rubio and Waterston, in Montgomery, CJLMM, 1: 21n3) – was deemed by the judge to be “a favorite sketch selected by many of the competitors.” The rivalry between Montgomery and Lockhart “anticipated the Gilbert and Anne rivalry” in Anne of Green Gables (Gammel, Looking for Anne of Green Gables, 119) and was dramatized in Melanie J. Fishbane’s Maud: A Novel Inspired by the Life of L.M. Montgomery (2017).
6 See Montgomery, 7 December 1890, in CJLMM, 1: 53.
7 See Montgomery, 10 July 1931, in SJLMM, 4: 138–39; Globe (Toronto), “Canadian Photos.”
8 Montgomery’s essay “How I Began to Write,” first published in the Circle of Young Canada column in 19
11, appears in Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader. This Globe contest, which ran from 1929 to 1937, involved drawings, poems, stories, essays, or letters submitted by readers between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one; it memorialized Agnes Delamoure, who had edited the column as “Nancy Durham” from 1915 until her death in 1928. See Globe (Toronto), “Nancy Durham Memorial Contest”; Globe (Toronto), “‘Nancy Durham’ Dies.”
9 Montgomery begins her report by outlining her evaluation criteria: first, the presence of “a well-defined and original plot,” with the reminder that “a ‘story,’ no matter how well written, is not a story unless it has a central plot”; second, whether “the plot is worked out well and logically”; and third, “the literary style of the story” (Montgomery, “Kindly Criticisms,” 20).
10 A rural Prince Edward Island village founded in 1790, the home primarily of Canadian settlers of Scottish ancestry. Montgomery had been living with her maternal grandparents since shortly after the death of her mother when she was twenty-one months old. Although this essay locates Cavendish as “bordering on the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” it does not identify the province of Prince Edward Island except in Montgomery’s signature.
11 According to Martin J. Hollenberg, the Black Ball line of packets was founded by James Baines (who bought the Marco Polo in Liverpool in 1852) and his partners, even though the name coincided with that of two rival companies. See Hollenberg, Marco Polo, 27–29.
12 A deal blank is “a slice sawn from a log of timber (now always of fir or pine), and usually understood to be more than seven inches wide, and not more than three thick; a plank or board of pine or fir-wood” (OED).
13 Captain Bull of Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, had bought the Marco Polo in 1882.
14 As Montgomery explains in “The Alpine Path,” later in this volume, this fishing station was named after the Siege of Cawnpore (now Kanpur), India, part of the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
15 Possibly a reference to The Seamans Secrets (1594), a navigation manual by John Davis (ca. 1550–1605), English explorer.
16 In her journal, Montgomery recorded that while she had heard the sound of the crash from the schoolhouse, the sight of the crash was one she would “always regret not having seen.” Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 230.
17 While the word “tar” has been used figuratively “in derogatory reference to someone of mixed black (or Indian, etc.) and white origin,” Montgomery seems to be using it here as “a familiar appellation for a sailor” (OED). She would repeat this term in “The Alpine Path,” A Tangled Web (see TW, 52), and Mistress Pat (see MP, 161), always in reference to sailors.
18 The Marco Polo had also been launched from Saint John, now the largest city in New Brunswick, in 1851.
19 “A fine day in the middle of a period of bad weather” (OED).
20 From the verb “to stave,” referring to something broken in pieces.
21 Several hired hands named Buote appear in Montgomery’s book-length fiction: Jerry Buote in Anne of Green Gables, Leon Buote in Chronicles of Avonlea, and Pacifique Buote in Anne of the Island.
22 A boat that sports “a fishing net designed to hang vertically in the water, the ends being drawn together to enclose the fish” (OED).
23 Properly, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” From Troilus and Cressida (1609), a play by William Shakespeare (ca. 1564–1616), English playwright and poet.
A WESTERN EDEN
By Lucy Maud Montgomery. Prince Albert Times and Saskatchewan Review, 17 June 1891, 4. Also in Scrapbook 7. Also in Bolger, The Years Before “Anne,” 37–40, 47.
Also, by Lucy Ward Montgomery, in Manitoba Daily Free Press (Winnipeg), 4 July 1891, 3.
1 Montgomery, 6 June 1891, in CJLMM, 1: 72; Montgomery, 18 June 1891, in CJLMM, 1: 74.
2 Properly, Alexander McLachlan (1818–1896), Scottish-born Canadian poet who has been dubbed “The Robbie Burns of Canada.” The extract reproduced here is from his poem “Hurrah for the New Dominion,” with several minor variations in terms of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling, indicating that even by age sixteen, Montgomery had started referencing literary allusions from memory, a habit she would continue throughout her life.
3 From Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), American poet. The original publication prints the term “forest primeval” without quotation marks, but Montgomery adds these in ink in her scrapbook.
4 From “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” a poem by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), Scottish novelist and poet.
5 The name Saskatchewan is derived from the Cree term kisiskâciwanisîpiy, meaning “swift-flowing river.” The Saskatchewan River, almost 2,000 kilometres long, begins approximately 50 kilometres east of Prince Albert. See Brandi Newton, “Saskatchewan River,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, last modified 4 May 2017, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/saskatchewan-river/.
6 In her scrapbook copy, Montgomery includes an asterisk here, along with a handwritten note that is undecipherable at times: “as it is said that whoever drinks of the waters of this river can never afterwards stay away from [illegible] always return no matter where they go.”
7 Properly, “And one, a full-fed river winding slow.” From “The Palace of Art,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), English poet.
8 I have corrected the original, in which “does not” is jumbled as “dot,” as per the Manitoba Daily Free Press version of the text.
9 A historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), published in 1826 and set during the French and Indian War of 1754–1763.
10 See Genesis 37:3 (KJV): “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours.”
11 Saskatchewan would become a province of the Dominion of Canada in 1905.
12 Slight misquotation from “To the West! To the West!,” a poem by Charles Mackay (1814–1889), Scottish author.
13 From “The Maple Leaf Forever,” a song by Alexander Muir (1830–1906), Scottish-born Canadian poet and songwriter, written in 1867 in honour of Confederation.
14 In the version of this publication in the Manitoba Daily Free Press, this date is changed to “July 1, 1891.”
FROM PRINCE ALBERT TO P.E. ISLAND
By L.M. Montgomery. Daily Patriot (Charlottetown), 31 October 1891, 1–2. Also in Scrapbook 7. Also in Bolger, The Years Before “Anne,” 52–59.
1 Montgomery did not specify in her journal which of her grandfathers had made this suggestion, but presumably it was her paternal grandfather, Donald Montgomery (1808–1893), who encouraged her writing ambitions, rather than her maternal grandfather, Alexander Macneill (1820–1898), who opposed her quest for higher education and who likely resented her appropriation of some of his oral stories as the basis of her first publications. See Montgomery, 22 October 1891, in CJLMM, 1: 104; Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery, 39.
2 Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery, 66; Montgomery, 5 September 1891, in CJLMM, 1: 97–98.
3 The original publication reads “pressing of finger tips,” but Montgomery crosses out “pressing” and adds “kissing” in ink in her scrapbook copy.
4 Saskatoon, located approximately 150 kilometres southwest of Prince Albert, had been founded in 1882.
5 In her scrapbook, Montgomery adds a handwritten note at this point: “A Saskatchewan is an Indian word meaning ‘mighty waters.’” See “A Western Eden,” note 5, above.
6 Regina, located approximately 250 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon, had been known as Wascana until 1882 and became the capital when Saskatchewan became a province in 1905.
7 “Displaying or characterized by initiative and energy” (OED).
8 Pullmans were railway sleeping cars manufactured by the Pullman Company, beginning in the 1860s.
9 From the French “en déshabillé,” meaning “undressed.”
10 Now Kenora, located about 200 kilometres ea
st of Winnipeg in northwestern Ontario.
11 A town in southwestern Manitoba, almost 300 kilometres west of Winnipeg.
12 A city 210 kilometres west of Winnipeg. Montgomery does not mention Rat Portage, Virden, and Brandon in the order in which she would have encountered them travelling from west to east.
13 To “boodle” is to practise bribery. Montgomery refers here likely to the Baie des Chaleurs Scandal, involving a railway line through eastern Québec whose construction had been underwritten by the Governments of Québec and Canada. A Senate inquiry launched on 4 August 1891 revealed that “the Québec government had been bribed with its own railway subsidy, the money probably having been used to pay off election expenses.” P.B. Waite, “Baie des Chaleurs Scandal,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, last modified 12 December 2013, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/baie-des-chaleurs-scandal/.
14 The word “waste” is used here in the sense of “uninhabited (or sparsely inhabited) and uncultivated country; a wild and desolate region, a desert, wilderness” (OED).
15 From “In October,” by Archibald Lampman (1861–1899), Canadian poet.
16 Now the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario, since its merger with Port Arthur and the townships of McIntyre and Neebing in 1970.
17 The Manitoba, a luxury steamship built in 1871.
18 Presumably, this refers to the Kaministiquia River, which empties into Lake Superior at Thunder Bay.
19 The original publication reads “friend,” but Montgomery corrects this in ink to “fiend” in her scrapbook copy.
A Name for Herself Page 38