Maud bequeathed her readers thousands of pages of beautiful writing — novels and stories, memoir, poetry, biography, and vignettes. She left behind thousands of pages of her journals, and hundreds of pages of lively letters. Her private writings are often as gorgeous as her published works. The wonder is not that L. M. Montgomery struggled, but that she rose above her suffering for so long and accomplished so much in the face of it. As she tried to explain to one young fan, fame and success were no guarantee against life’s sorrows. “What . . . can fence out the cares and problems that enter into all lives?”
Maud suffered from chronic depression, and likely also from bouts of manic depression, yet she produced twenty novels and hundreds of short stories, even in her most difficult and desperate years. Writing for her was not merely a hobby, it was a way of life, a constantly renewed and renewing way of seeing the world. She was a noted speaker, a popular teacher, a pioneering newspaperwoman, an accomplished craftswoman, a capable homemaker, a world traveler, and a brilliant writer.
In Anne of Green Gables, she transformed her personal story of abandonment into a glorious tale of love and rescue. Often sad, Maud provided laughter and joy for others. She was passionately loving and passionately beloved. Her friendships were deep and enduring. She, who married late and feared she would never have any sort of domestic happiness, raised two sons. She witnessed snowstorms and sun showers, sunrises and new moons she claimed she would “remember even into the halls of eternity.” Maud found life beautiful: to the very end, there were things to marvel at and to love. “Perfect happiness I have never had — never will have,” she confided to her journal. “Yet there have been, after all, many wonderful and exquisite hours in my life.”
1874
Born November 30, Clifton, Prince Edward Island, to Hugh John and Clara Macneill Montgomery
1876
Mother dies of tuberculosis
1883
The Nelson boys come to live with the Macneills. Wreck of the ship the Marco Polo near Cavendish
1890 – 1891
Trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to visit her father and his new wife and child. Maud destroys old journals and begins new. First publication, in Saskatchewan newspaper, “proudest day of my life”
1893 – 1894
Attends Prince of Wales College and earns first class teacher’s license
1894 – 1895
Teaches school in Bideford, PEI
1895 – 1896
Attends Dalhousie University in Halifax. Receives first payment for her writings, a five-dollar check
1896 – 1897
Teaches in Belmont, PEI, and becomes engaged to her cousin Edwin Simpson
1897 – 1898
Teaches in Lower Bedeque, PEI; falls in love with Herman Leard; breaks off engagement to Simpson. Returns to Cavendish to live with Grandmother Macneill when Grandfather Macneill dies
1901 – 1902
Works as newspaperwoman at Daily Echo in Halifax
1903
Ewan Macdonald begins as Presbyterian minister in Cavendish; Maud starts her lifelong correspondence with George Boyd MacMillan and Ephraim Weber
1906
Secretly engaged to Ewan Macdonald, who leaves to study in Scotland and suffers nervous breakdown
1908
Publication of Anne of Green Gables
1909
Anne of Avonlea; Ewan Macdonald accepts parish in Leaskdale, Ontario
1910
Kilmeny of the Orchard; Maud meets Earl and Lady Grey in September; in November travels to Boston to meet her publisher, L. C. Page & Company
1911
The Story Girl; Grandmother Macneill dies; Maud marries Ewan Macdonald at Park Corner on July 5; honeymoons in Scotland and England for three months; home to Leaskdale, Ontario, in September
1912
Chronicles of Avonlea; her eldest son, Chester Cameron, born July 7
1913
The Golden Road; trip to PEI
1914
First World War is declared; second child, Hugh Alexander, stillborn on August 13
1915
Anne of the Island; Ewan Stuart born October 7
1916
The Watchman and Other Poems
1917
Anne’s House of Dreams
1918
First World War ends; Maud suffers Spanish flu; goes to PEI to help nurse sick relatives at Park Corner
1919
“A hellish year.” Frede Campbell Macfarlane dies of Spanish flu in Montreal; Ewan suffers a nervous breakdown; Rainbow Valley; Maud sells all rights for Anne of Green Gables to Page, who immediately sells movie rights
1920
Further Chronicles of Avonlea published illegally; Maud begins eight-year lawsuit with Page & Co.; Rilla of Ingleside
1922
Car accident in Zephyr; Ewan is sued and goes to court; summer trip to Muskoka
1923
Emily of New Moon; Maud is first Canadian woman to become Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Britain
1925
Emily Climbs; church union vote passes in Canada
1926
The Blue Castle; move to Norval, Ontario
1927
Emily’s Quest; Maud is presented to the Prince of Wales
1929
Magic for Marigold; stock market crash affects Maud’s finances
1930
Goes to Prince Albert to rekindle friendships of 1890
1931
A Tangled Web
1933
Pat of Silver Bush
1934
Chester and Luella’s baby Luella is born; Courageous Women, Maud’s first foray into biography
1935
Mistress Pat; Maud elected to Literary and Artistic Institute of France; moves to Riverside Drive, Toronto (Journey’s End); is made Officer of the Order of the British Empire
1936
Anne of Windy Poplars; Cavendish chosen as site for national park on Prince Edward Island
1937
Green Gables national site opens in Cavendish; Jane of Lantern Hill
1939
Anne of Ingleside; Maud’s last visit to PEI
1942
Dies on April 24; lies in state at Green Gables and is buried in Cavendish Cemetery (where Ewan Macdonald joins her one year later)
Page numbers refer to the print edition.
Chapter Two: An Early Sorrow
p. 16: “I loved my father . . . ever knew”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 160.
Chapter Three: “Very Near to a Kingdom of Ideal Beauty”
p. 26: “If I believe . . . stage of existence”: Ibid., p. 26.
Chapter Six: Count Nine Stars
p. 60: “very different indeed . . . my outward being”: Ibid, p. 16.
Chapter Seven: “Darling Father” and Prince Albert
p. 79: “Then whisper . . . humble name”: “The Fringed Gentian.” Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1884, vol. 108, p. 237.
p. 83: “No decent father . . . such a trip alone”: Rubio, p. 67.
Chapter Fourteen: Back in the House of Dreams
p. 168: “This morning we . . . shall stop short”: Ibid., p. 112.
p. 171: “I gazed always . . . moonlight, sunset”: Montgomery, “The Gay Days of Old,” p. 46.
Chapter Fifteen: The Creation of Anne
p. 181: “having ‘thought out’ . . . my household work”: Gammel, p. 148.
p. 183: “I can never be a really great writer”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 21.
p. 183: “I think we . . . reach its own”: Ibid., p. 9
p. 183: “a wide green . . . there are Junes”: Ibid.
p. 192: “the dearest . . . immortal Alice”: Andronik, p. 82.
pp. 192 – 193: “I don’t think . . . of her name”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 41.
Chapter Sixteen: “Yes, I Understand the Young Lady Is a Writer”
p. 202: “a bilious headache”: Ibid., p. 52.
p. 2
06: “Sleet blew . . . whole way home”: Gammel, p. 248.
p. 210: “If two people . . . would be excellent”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 32.
p. 212: “Color is . . . it is a passion”: Ibid., p. 13.
Chapter Twenty: Dashing over the Traces
p. 225: “Those whom the gods . . . ministers’ wives”: Rubio and Waterston, vol. 2, p. xiii.
p. 227: “I like Leaskdale . . . I do not love it”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 65.
p. 235: “It seemed passionately . . . leave it again”: Ibid., p. 68.
p. 240: “All the sorrow . . . equal it in agony”: Ibid., p. 71.
p. 241: “not had one decent dinner since the war began”: Ibid.
p. 267: “I swear it as a dark and deadly vow”: Rubio, p. 289.
p. 268: “I can’t afford . . . cater to it for awhile”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 119.
p. 271: “dreamed it all out . . . September”: Ibid., p. 109.
p. 276: “I content myself . . . turn a corner”: Ibid., p. 85.
p. 276: “Ewan was maladroit . . . practical or mechanical . . . Whoa!”: Rubio, p. 238.
p. 280: “made unhappy . . . in our church”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 127.
p. 281: “it is one of the beauty spots of Ontario”: Ibid., p. 127.
p. 283: “Sometimes I get . . . go to another”: Ibid., p. 137.
p. 290: “set aside . . . of daily events”: Rubio and Waterston, Selected Journals, vol. 4, p. xv.
p. 296: “the house of her dreams”: Rubio, p. 444.
Chapter Twenty-One: Journey’s End
p. 310: “true tragedy . . . nor fixative journals”: Rubio and Waterston, Writing a Life, p. 116.
p. 311: “I do not ask . . . I am better”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 201.
p. 311: “He was always after money”: Rubio, p. 565.
p. 312: “The past year . . . to live for”: Bolger and Epperly, p. 204.
p. 315: “arteriosclerosis and . . . neurasthenia”: Rubio, p. 585.
p. 316: “My attitude . . . lay it down’”: Tiessen and Tiessen, p. 105.
p. 318: “I have read all her books and I know her”: Heilbron and McCabe, p. 6.
p. 318: “‘Poor Maud’ . . . ‘Too bad!’”: Rubio, p. 584.
p. 318: “feel their pulses . . . sweetness and light”: Ibid.
EPILOGUE
p. 324: “What . . . can fence . . . into all lives?”: Ibid.
Andronik, Catherine M. Kindred Spirit. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1993.
Bolger, Francis W. P. The Years Before Anne. Prince Edward Island Heritage Foundation, 1974.
Bolger, Francis W. P., and Elizabeth R. Epperly, eds. My Dear Mr. M: Letters to G. B. MacMillan from L. M. Montgomery. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Eggleston, Wilfrid, ed. The Green Gables Letters: From L. M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905 – 1909. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1960.
Gammel, Irene. Looking for Anne of Green Gables. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
Heilbron, Alexandra, and Kevin McCabe, eds. The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1999.
Montgomery, L. M. “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career.” Pts. 1 – 6. Everywoman’s World, June – November, 1917.
———. “The Gay Days of Old.” Farmers’ Magazine 18 (December 15, 1919): 46.
Rubio, Mary Henley. Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Gift of Wings. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.
Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston, eds. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery. 5 vols. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985 – 2004.
Rubio, Mary, and Elizabeth Waterston. Writing a Life: L. M. Montgomery. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995.
Simpson, Harold H. Cavendish: Its History, Its People, Its Founding Families. Amherst, NS: Harold H. Simpson & Associates, 1973.
Tiessen, Hildi Froese, and Paul Gerard Tiessen, eds. After Green Gables: L. M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916 – 1941. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
In addition, the L. M. Montgomery Research Centre at the University of Guelph made available to me countless useful notebooks, daybooks, letters, articles, and artifacts — including samples of Maud’s own exquisite needlework and the famous spotted china dogs she purchased on her honeymoon. All uncited quotes come from Maud’s unpublished personal journals or from her published memoir, “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career.”
There are many fine websites dedicated to the life and work of L. M. Montgomery. Among the most useful to young scholars is the L. M. Montgomery Literary Society, which is always publishing new articles on various aspects of her biography, friends, relations, and work. They may be found at http://lmmontgomeryliterarysociety.weebly.com/.
I have many people to thank for the creation of this book. The bibliography suggests some of the authors and scholars who helped paved my way, kindred spirits and fellow admirers of L. M. Montgomery’s work. Deep thanks to the estate of L. M. Montgomery for their gracious help and guidance. Thanks to the staff at the L. M. Montgomery Research Centre at the University of Guelph, who shared their time and resources, providing access to daybooks, journals, letters, and artifacts. Finally, I must thank the incomparable Mary Rubio, whose adult biography of L. M. Montgomery was an inspiration, and who was so giving of her time, energy, encouragement, and expertise.
I am forever grateful to my editor, Liz Bicknell, and the remarkable folks at Candlewick Press. To Paul Janeczko, for making the initial introductions. Thanks to the provost at Binghamton University and the dean of Harpur College for timely grants and support. And last but not least, I owe an eternal debt to my late husband, David Bosnick, who drove us all to Canada, and who, along with the rest of my family, lovingly tolerated the many hours I spent behind closed study doors.
None of this would have been possible without Maud herself. To quote the author, “Dead and in your grave, your charm is still potent enough to weave a tissue of sunshine over the darkness of the day. I thank you.”
Text copyright © 2018 by Liz Rosenberg
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Julie Morstad
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2018
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
The illustrations in this book were done in ink.
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Liz Rosenberg, House of Dreams
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