We returned by way of the Caledonian Canal to Fort William, and thence by train. The sunset effects on the mountains along our way were wonderful. If I were to live near mountains for any length of time I should learn to love them almost as much as I love the sea.
August 13, 1912
Last Monday we visited Roslin Chapel, a wonderful specimen of Gothic work in perfect preservation. This is the chapel of Scott’s ballad, “Fair Rosabelle”:
“Seemed all on fire that chapel proud
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie.”
Wednesday we left Edinburgh and went to Alloa to visit friends. Thursday we ‘did’ Dollar Glen. I had never heard of this place until Mr. M. of Alloa told us of it, yet it is one of the wildest, grandest spots we have seen in all Scotland. If Scott had touched it with his genius it would be as widely known as the Trossachs. Indeed, it is much what I had imagined the Trossachs to be. Dollar Glen is like a deep gash cleft down through the heart of the mountain.
Stirling and Abbey Craig on Friday, places steeped with romance. Yesterday we came to Berwick to spend a week in the Marmion country. Mr. M. and Miss A. came with us. Berwick is a most quaint, antiquated old town. As we live on the Spittal side, when we want to go anywhere we have to be rowed over the river mouth by one of the half-dozen quaint old ferrymen who have boats for hire. Last night we all went for a walk along the Spittal shore by moonlight. It was beautiful but so like the Cavendish shore that it made me bitterly homesick.
Carlisle, August 20
We are spending Sunday in Carlisle perforce, since we could not get any farther last night, owing to the big railway strike which has been paralysing Britain this past week. At Berwick we did not suffer from it, nor heed it. We let the outer world go by and lived in realms of romance where ferry boats and shank’s mare were the only desired means of locomotion.
Last Monday we went to Holy Island and explored the ruins of the old Abbey which was the scene of Constance de Beverley’s death in Marmion. We had an enjoyable sail down to Holy Island but the return home was sadly different. It was quite rough and how that wretched little steamer pitched and rolled! Both our gentlemen became so overcome that they had to retire temporarily from the scene, while Miss A. and I fought off surrender only by a tremendous effort of will and would have suffered less I think if we had just allowed ourselves to go!
Luckily seasickness is never fatal and next day we were all ready for an excursion to Norham Castle, a very ruinous ruin.
Growing all over the grounds was a little blue flower which I never saw anywhere else save in the front orchard of the old home in Cavendish. Great-grandmother Woolner had brought it out from England with her. It gave me an odd feeling of pain and pleasure mingled, to find it growing there around that old ruined Scottish castle which seemed to belong so utterly to another time and another order of things. We walked from Norham to Ladykirk and then back by the Tweed. When we grew tired we sat down on its bank and dreamed dreams. What meeter place could there be for dreaming than the twilit banks of Tweed?
Next day we went to Flodden Field. It disappointed me unreasonably, it was all so peaceful, and harvest-hued, and agricultural. I felt as aggrieved as though I had had any right to expect to see a mediaeval battle being fought under my eyes.
Thursday afternoon we had a delightful little expedition to Homecliffe Glen and its deserted old mill. It might serve as a scene for a ghost story. In the midst of the ravine we came upon a clump of spruce trees literally loaded with gum, the first I had seen since leaving home. Spruce gum and the delights of picking it seem quite unknown in Scotland. We spent a half-hour picking it. To me and my husband the gum tasted delicious, but neither Mr. M. nor Miss A. liked its flavor declaring it was ‘bitter’.
York, England
August 27, 1912
Last Monday we went to Keswick and stayed there until Thursday. It is impossible to exaggerate the beauty of the Lake District:
“The haughtiest heart its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here.”
And then it is so interwoven with much of the best in English literature. The very spirit of Wordsworth seems to haunt those enchanted valleys, those wild passes, those fairy-like lakes.
Monday afternoon we took a coach-drive around Lake Derwentwater. All was beautiful. An interesting sight was the Castle Rock, which figures as the magic castle of St. John in Scott’s “Bridal of Triermain.” There is only one point where the resemblance to a castle – said to be very striking – can be seen, and we were not fortunate enough to see it from that particular point.
Tuesday we went to Buttermere Lake; Wednesday we motored for eighty miles around Lake Windermere. Some of the huge rocks on the mountain tops are of very peculiar shape. One of them is named, ‘The Lady Playing on the Organ.’ It is on the very top of a majestic mountain and certainly does, from one point of view, look exactly like a woman seated at a huge organ. Somehow, it captivated my imagination and I wove a hundred fancies around it. Who was the player, sitting forever at her mighty instrument? And what wonderful melodies did she play on it when the winds of heaven blew about her and the mountain tempest thundered and the great stars stayed to listen?
That evening we walked out to the ‘Druid Circle’, a ring of large stones on a hill-top, supposed to have been in old time a temple of the sun.
Nothing I have seen thus far made such a vivid impression on me as this. The situation is magnificent. The hill is completely encircled by a ring of the most famous mountains in the Lake District, Helvellyn and Skiddaw among them, and the sense of majesty produced was overwhelming. Certainly those old sun-worshippers knew how to choose their sites. To stand there, at sunset, in the temple of a departed creed, surrounded by that assembly of everlasting hills and picture the rites, perchance dark and bloody, which must once have been celebrated there, was an experience never to be forgotten.
Friday we came to York, mainly to see the magnificent cathedral. It is magnificent, a dream of beauty made lasting in stone.
Yesterday afternoon I became the proud and happy possessor of a pair of china dogs!
I have been pursuing china dogs all over England and Scotland. When I was a little girl, visiting at Grandfather Montgomery’s I think the thing that most enthralled me was a pair of china dogs which always sat on the sitting room mantel. They were white with green spots all over them; and Father told me that whenever they heard the clock strike twelve at midnight they bounded down on the hearth-rug and barked. It was, therefore, the desire of my heart to stay up until twelve some night and witness this performance, and hard indeed did I think the hearts of my elders when this was denied me. Eventually I found out, I forget how, that the dogs did nothing of the sort. I was much disappointed over this but more grieved still over the discovery that Father had told me something that wasn’t true. However, he restored my faith in him by pointing out that he had only said the dogs would jump down when they heard the clock strike. China dogs, of course, could not hear.
I have always hankered to possess a pair of similar dogs, and, as those had been purchased in London, I hoped when I came over here, I would find something like them. Accordingly I have haunted the antique shops in every place I have been but, until yesterday, without success. Dogs, to be sure, there were in plenty but not the dogs of my quest. There was an abundance of dogs with black spots and dogs with red spots; but nowhere the aristocratic dogs with green spots.
Yesterday in a little antique shop near the great Minster I found a pair of lovely dogs and snapped them up on the spot. To be sure they had no green spots. The race of dogs with green spots seems to have become extinct. But my pair have lovely gold spots and are much larger than the old Park Corner dogs. They are over a hundred years old and hope they will preside over my Lares and Penates with due dignity and aplomb.
Russell Hotel, London
September 18, 1912
So much has been crammed into this past fortnight that I have a rather overfed fe
eling mentally. But when time is limited and sights unlimited what are harassed travellers to do? The British Museum, the Tower, Westminister Abbey, Crystal Palace, Kenilworth Castle, the Shakespeare Land, Hampton Court, Salisbury and Stonehenge, Windsor and Parks and Gardens galore!
Our hotel is in Russell Square, the haunt of so many of the characters in Vanity Fair. One expects to see Amelia peering out of a window looking for George, or perhaps Becky watching for Jos.
Our afternoon at Kenilworth Castle was a delight. Of course, we had to be pestered with a guide; but I succeeded in forgetting him, and roamed the byways of romance alone. I saw Kenilworth in its pride, when aspiring Leicester entertained haughty Elizabeth. I pictured poor Amy Robsart creeping humbly into the halls where she should have reigned as Mistress. Back they thronged from the past, those gay figures of olden days, living, loving, hating, plotting as of yore.
Last Thursday we went to see the Temple Church, in the grounds of which Oliver Goldsmith is buried. The church is a quaint old place, set in a leafy square which, despite the fact that Fleet Street is roaring just outside it, is as peaceful and silent as a Cavendish road. But when I recall that square it is not of the quaint old church and Poor Noll’s grave that I shall think. No, it will be of a most charming and gentlemanly pussy cat, of exquisite manners, who came out of one of the houses and walked across the square to meet us. He was large and handsome and dignified, and any one could see with half an eye that he belonged to the caste of Vere de Vere. He purred most mellifluously as I patted him, and rubbed himself against my boots as though we were old acquaintances, as perchance we were in some other incarnation. Nine out of ten cats would have insisted on accompanying us over to Oliver’s grave, and perhaps been too hard to get rid of. Not so this Marquis of Carabas. He sat gravely down and waited until we had gone on, seen the grave and returned to where he sat. Then he stood up, received our farewell pats, waved his tail amiably, and walked gravely back to the door from which he had emerged, having done the honor of his demesne in most irreproachable fashion. Truly he did give the world assurance of a cat!
We sail for home next Thursday on the Adriatic. I am glad, for I am replete with sight-seeing. I want now to get back to Canada and gather my scattered household gods around me for a new consecration.
As my husband was pastor of an Ontario congregation, I had now to leave Prince Edward Island and move to Ontario. Since my marriage I have published four books, Chronicles of Avonlea, The Golden Road, Anne of The Island, and The Watchman, the latter being a volume of collected verse.
The “Alpine Path” has been climbed, after many years of toil and endeavor. It was not an easy ascent, but even in the struggle at its hardest there was a delight and a zest known only to those who aspire to the heights.
“He ne’er is crowned
With immortality, who fears to follow
Where airy voices lead.”
True, most true! We must follow our “airy voices,” follow them through bitter suffering and discouragement and darkness, through doubt and disbelief, through valleys of humiliation and over delectable hills where sweet things would lure us from our quest, ever and always must we follow, if we would reach the “far-off divine event” and look out thence to the aerial spires of our City of Fulfilment.
Contextual Pieces
MISS MARIETTA’S JERSEY
From: Household, July 1898
It was ten o’clock on a hot July morning, and Miss Marietta was helping Cordely shell the peas for dinner on the back veranda, which was always cool and pleasant, shaded as it was by Virginia creepers and sibilant poplars.
Miss Marietta, whose morning work was not done, was not dressed for the day. She had on her lilac wrapper, and her front hair was in curl papers. An ample white apron was tied around her trim waist and floated off in long, crisp streamers behind.
She was fair and forty, and could afford to admit it since she looked all of five years younger. Her round, plump face was flushed pinkly with the heat; she swayed easily back and forth in her rocker, holding the pan of peas in her lap, and running her fat, white fingers deftly up the green pods as she talked to Cordely.
Cordely was Miss Marietta’s cousin and “stayed” with her. She was paid wages for so doing, but nobody ever thought of her as “hired help.” She was much higher up in the social scale than that.
She was a thin, snapping, black-eyed woman, with angular elbows and nerves, and she shelled four peas to Miss Marietta’s deliberate one. But then Miss Marietta took things easy, and Cordely never did. It wasn’t her way.
“My, it’s dreadfully warm, isn’t it?” said Miss Marietta, making an ineffectual attempt to fan herself with a peapod. “I’m glad Hiram has decided not to begin haymaking until next week. I’m sure I shouldn’t feel like cooking for a lot of men in such weather.
“And I do hope Mr. Randall will come this afternoon and see about buying that Jersey cow. I shall never feel easy in my mind until she’s safely off the place,” she concluded.
“I guess Nathaniel Griffith won’t either,” said Cordely, giving her chair a vicious hitch around. “I wonder if he’s got over that last tantrum by now.
“My, but wasn’t he mad! He knows your cow is ever so much better than his, for all they look so exactly alike, and that helps to rile him up.”
“Well, it was very aggravating to find her in his best clover hay, I’ve no doubt,” said Miss Marietta, soothingly. “I’m sure I shouldn’t like to find his Jersey in my hay. But I must say I wouldn’t get into such a ridiculous fluster as he did for all. And — oh, goodness me, Cordely! Look there!”
Miss Marietta pointed with a gasp across the yard. Cordely looked and saw. She sprang up, scattering peas and pods wildly over the clean veranda floor in her flight.
“Goodness gracious, Marietta! That cow has been in again. However could she have jumped out? And he’s mad clear through.”
Scuttling through the yard gate at a lively rate was a demure little Jersey cow, and behind her came Miss Marietta’s next-door neighbour, Mr. Nathaniel Griffith, very red and puffing and angry as he bounced up the veranda steps and faced the two women.
“Now, see here, Miss Hunter,” he spluttered, “this isn’t going to do — I don’t intend to put up with it. This is the third time, ma’am, I’ve found that Jersey cow of yours in my clover hay. Think of that! I warned you last time. Now, ma’am, what do you mean by letting her in again?”
Mr. Griffith stopped, perforce, for want of breath. Miss Marietta rose in distress.
“Dear me, Mr. Griffith! I’d no idea that cow was in again. I don’t know how she got out, I’m sure. I’m very sorry—”
“Sorry, ma’am! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my hay — trampled it from centre to circumference. It isn’t to be endured — I won’t endure it!
“Oh, you needn’t scowl at me back there, Miss Cordely Hunter. I’m talking to Miss Marietta. I’m a patient man, Miss Hunter.”
“Very!” Cordely could not have helped saying it to save her life, any more than she could have kept the sarcastic inflection out of it when she did say it. “Only your patience will be the cause of your bursting a blood-vessel yet, if you go on in such a fashion a hot day like this. If I was a man, Nathaniel Griffith, I would try to have a little common sense.”
“Hush, Cordely,” said Miss Marietta, with dignity.
“Mr. Griffith, I regret very much that my cow has been so much trouble to you. Perhaps if you had kept your fences in better order she might not have been. They are not very good, I notice.”
“My fences are all right,” snapped Mr. Griffith. “There weren’t ever the fences built that would keep a demon of a cow like that out. Much a pair of old maids know about fences, or farming either.”
Miss Marietta carefully set her pan of peas on a bench and stood up, the better to overwhelm Mr. Griffith. Her mild blue eyes were sparkling dangerously, and her cheeks were very red.
“I may be an old maid, Mr. Griffith,” she said, with calm distinctness, “I’ve no doubt that I am; but it isn’t because I’ve never had the chance to be anything else, and there are people not one hundred miles from here who know it, too.”
Mr. Griffith grew pink all over his shiny little face to the very top of his bald head. He stepped backward awkwardly and fanned himself with his hat.
Miss Marietta was mistress of the situation after that last effective shot, and she knew it. Cordely could not repress a little chuckle of triumph as she watched him down the steps and across the yard.
When he passed out of sight up the lane, Miss Marietta sat down again with a sigh.
“Dear me, Cordely, how very unpleasant! And me to be caught in my wrapper and curl papers, too! We must certainly do something with that cow. It is quite unbearable. What a dreadful temper Mr. Griffith was in! and he has tramped those peas you spilled right into the floor.”
“The old monster! I’d have liked to pitch the whole panful at his head,” returned Cordely, vindictively. “Why didn’t you fly at him? I’d have done it if I’d been in your place.”
“Dear me, Cordely, what good would that have done? I’ve no doubt it was very trying to find that cow in his hay again. Of course, he need not have been quite so ridiculous.”
“He can’t and won’t ever forgive you for refusing to marry him,” said Cordely. “That’s what’s rankling in his mind — not Jersey cows or hay either. Didn’t he get red, though? How many times did you refuse him, Marietta?”
“Twice,” said Miss Marietta, with apparent satisfaction, “and the last time pretty decided, too. It doesn’t become him to be casting up to me that I’m an old maid. He is an old bachelor because nobody would have him.
“I suppose it’s no wonder the poor man flies into tempers. I should think it would spoil any one’s temper to have to put up with a housekeeper like Mercy Fisher. I don’t suppose the poor soul has a decent meal from one end of the year to the other.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 794