Happy Easter

Thinking of Avonlea

Gone to Avonlea in my mind today...

I have been reading some of LM Montgomery's journal entries written during month of January. 

Typically sad at this time, her voice seemed eerie and mournful.  After reading the entries again (from a distance of many years hence), I noticed some things on her radar, specifically which concerned issues of aging, that I had not noticed before. 

For instance, when a childhood chum sent a photo of herself in maturity, Maud states she would not have known her, and she wished she had not seen the photo.

If you mix that in a bag with grief (her beloved cousin Frede died in January) and a long list of vain regret and tragedy from behind her, one sees that she was stressed and not at peace. She perhaps could see nothing in her future but more of the same...

"I need for something good to happen," is how she put it in one entry.

I wish I could reach back and help her.

Remembering LM Montgomery

Link to Heritage Prayer at P.E.I Heritage Buildings

I borrowed this from a PEI Blogger. It is called Heritage Prayer, and I agree with it 100 per cent.

Heritage Prayer

We keep forgetting all of those who lived before us.

We keep forgetting those who lived and worked in our communities.
We keep forgetting those who prayed and sang hymns in our churches before we were born.
We keep forgetting what our fathers have done for us.
We commit the sin, Lord, of assuming that everything begins with us.

We drink from wells we did not find.
We eat food from farmland we did not develop.
We enjoy freedoms which we have not earned.
We worship in churches which we did not build.
We live in communities we did not establish.
This day, make us grateful for our heritage.

Amen

cf. Cumberland Historic Village, near Ottawa - in the vestibule of Vars Knox United Church -

adapted from a prayer in the old Covenanters' Church - 1804, Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.

Found this photo in my picnic basket

This is an old photo that I took when "The Gift of Wings" was first published (Mary Rubio)

"The Gift of Wings"

Very good articles in this issue of the Shining Scroll Newsletter

There are some very informative articles to be found here in The Shining Scroll Newsletter:

The Shining Scroll Newsletter

I particulary enjoyed the article in Part II on Anita Webb.  Anita Webb grew up at Green Gables (her parents were the owners), was a relative of LM Montgomery and the last housekeeper/caretaker of LMM in Maud's home on Riverside Drive in Toronto where Maud passed away in 1942.

In Part II are also some very beautiful vintage postcards showing Halifax, NS around the time that Maud lived there in the late 1800's.  She did not like Halifax, a fact that I had forgotten till I read this article on Maud in Halifax. 

This is highly recommended reading for all who are interested in learning more deeply about the life of LM Montgomery.

Airbrushing Maud's Birthplace

LM Montgomery Birthplace, Clifton, PEI


A few years ago, here in New Bern, the State paid to have the electric wires at Tryon Palace run underground.  It sure makes a difference in appearance and ambiance, as you can see pictured above.

The Lucy Maud Album and LM Montgomery: The Norval Years

I came across this old photo showing a couple of books re:  LMM.  The book in the window was written by a Kindreds Spirit Friend, Deborah Quaile.  It is called, "LM Montgomery:  The Norval Years, 1926-1935" 

On "the problems of writing" - Dalhousie Gazette - 1939

A kind Canadian friend from Haliax mailed to me an obscure article which had appeared in the Dalhousie Gazette on February 24,1939.  The article is named "An Author Speaks" and is written by our mentor, LM Montgomery.  The introductory Editor's Note explains that "Miss LM Montgomery (Mrs. Macdonald)" was theretofore describing "the problems of writing."

Maud gives some excellent advice:

"Before attempting to write a book be sure you have something to say.  t need not be a very great or lofty or profound something.  It is not given to many o us to utter "Jewels five words long--That on the stretched forefinger of all time-- Sparkle forever."  But if we have something to say that will bring a whiff of fragrances to a tired soul or a weary heart, or a glint of sunshine to a clouded life, then that something is worth saying and it is our duty to try to say it as well as in us lies."  Dalhousie Gazette, Feb 24, 1939, LM Montgomery  

And here are other points which I highlighted from the article:

"Write only of the life you know." 

"Don't spin your book out too long...Gone With the Wind to the contrary nothwthstanding."

Though I appreciate the above quotes as good points of advice, my impression from the article is that Maud feels in herself a sense of loftiness.   Is she being a bit patronizing?

Maud once (better) described her talent as "my little knack".  I think this sums the "problems of writing" up much better. 

But, she could have said what she said without being so patronizing in this article!

We all have "little knacks", don't we?  We just don't all become famous because of them.

"suppression of all individuality"

Macneill Homesite Cavendish, PEI

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1910

Cavendish, PEI

"...I certainly ought to keep a servant.  To do the housework I do in connection with my increasing literary work is too much for me.  But grandmother would never hear of  such a thing and would think me crazy if I suggested it.

   Sometimes I feel as if I could not bear for one day longer this ceaseless tyranny in petty things to which she subjects me....My success, instead of making it easier, has made it twice as hard by doubling the worries and mortifications which attend my circumstances here.  I am well off and tolerably famous--but the conditions of my life are not even physically comfortable and I am beset with difficulties on every side---and all mainly because I must live in subjection to a woman who, always inclined to be domineering and narrow-minded, has had those qualities intensified by age until life with her means the utter suppression of all individuality in those who live with her.

    Well--well--well!  I went for a walk in Lover's Lane tonight and forgot all these worries for a time in its ideal beauty.  It is always lovely but tonight seemed more beautiful than I had ever known it.  The soft, warm rain of the afternoon had extracted all the woodland odors until the air was dripping with fragrance--dying fir, frosted ferns, wet leaves.  That walk this evening gave me such exquisite pleasure as is impossible to express in clumsy words and furnished me with a little strength to go on with life and work."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I., pp. 17-18, Rubio & Waterston

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The mother of a friend of mine passed away this week.  Within 3 days of that event, my friend's relationship status on Facebook changed from "complicated" to "married."  Of course, the notice of this easy transition made me think of Maud and her relationship with her grandmother.   Without trying to pass judgement on anyone or their reasons for what they do, I can't seem to turn off my study of human nature and wonder if Maud and Ewan were simply waiting for Grandmother to get out of the way so that they could marry?

The liability that I see in Maud's translations of her duty towards her Grandmother is the dishonesty of heart that is involved in it.

Dishonesty of heart, in my stream of consciousness analysis, eventually leads me to the subject of marriage to Ewan.  What immediately comes to mind are  words I once heard being pronounced as a portion of liturgy from a Hindu wedding ceremony I saw on TV--- "Beware--Beware!" 

Photo taken at Maud's birthplace at Clifton, PEI

Newspaper article that is showcased from the time after Maud became famous

Happy wild flowers, Lover's Lane, Cavendish, PEI

Maud on Charlottetown, boat trains, Victoria Hotel

Saturday Noon, June 22, 1918
Victoria Hotel
Charlottetown, PE Island

Glory be, here we are.  Last night we reached Sackville, three hours late.  I had been worried lest the boat train wouldn't wait for us, but it did.  We had a most tedious ride to Tormentine in the dark.  This was the first time I had travelled over the new car-ferry route.  Perhaps I shall like it when I get used to it but I found it horrible last night.  There seemed to be no end to the shifts and changes, and with a heavy grip and two tired children these were not exhilarating.  And amid all the men around me not one ever offered to carry that grip for me or lift a child.  ....It was past three when we finally got to bed at the hotel...

....Today was fine and distinctly cool.  The Island flavor is excellent.  But I feel very much like a stranger in Ch'town now.  It does not seem to be the town of my girlhood in any respect.  I took a walk round "The Square" and tried to "think myself back" but couldn't."
The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p 248, Rubio & Waterston 

The nice coffee shop lady at University of Prince Edward Island was telling us about how the train was taken off the Island in the old days.  It was hard to comprehend, but evidently, the train was placed on a ferry and taken to the Mainland.  This must be what Maud is referring to in the above reference to the "boat train". 

I cannot find anything on the internet referring to "Victoria Hotel."  However, during my visit there,  I did see a pretty brick edifice nested deep in Historic Charlottetown that seemed to be of the period, and it looked to be a very nice Bed & Breakfast.  The signage called it "Victoria..."  but I cannot find anything about it on the Net, so I don't know if that edifice would be the"Victoria Hotel" from Maud's time.  I doubt it, most likely the hotel having been in downtown Charlottetown and gone now or with a new identity. 

Also, I can certainly relate to the above passage where Maud speaks of carrying the heavy grip and "no end to shifts and changes". 
I think she was saying that she was a weary traveler!!   Glory be!

"The Race that Knows Joseph"

The Guild, Charlottetown, venue of Tuesday night's wonderful performance, "Nine Lives of LM Montgomery" 

"Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph". Exodus 1

Until last Tuesday night when I attended the musical Nine Lives of LM Montgomery, I had never made the connection between "The Race that Knows Joseph" and dream interpretation.  This became evident in the wonderful song of the same name (The Race that Knows Joseph.).  Ah, yes, I said to myself!  Joseph was an interpreter of dreams.  This adds even more layers to my understanding of the whole identity of Maud's coining of the name.

Well, this morning, in my first waking moments as often happens to me,  I had a dream, or rather a sort of vision, like a movie short.  It went like this:

Maud was standing with her back against the side of a brick building which was several stories high.  I think the building may have been a hotel and there was a sidewalk surrounding the building, and an expanse of green lawn that also surrounded the perimeter of the building.  Suddenly, an ebullient little boy, Chester--well scrubbed and dressed in short pants--bounds happily around the corner from the other side. Maud stands dour faced with her back straight against the building and does not deign herself to peer around the corner to see where Chester has been or what he has been doing.  Perhaps she does not identify with the child, or perhaps she doesn't see her responsibility in monitoring what happens in the live's of little children. 

It could be either, or none of the above. Whatever her reasons were, it is very obvious from the dream that her back was against the wall (though she had options that she wasn't taking) and that she wasn't looking!

That's it!  Not much, but there it is.

Kindred Spirits Tea Room, Harkers Island, North Carolina

I don't go to Harker's Island very often any more so I don't know if this tea room still exists.

However, this is proof positive of just how far a distance that the long arm of Maud's talent could reach. 

It reached me, way down here in North Carolina!

Prince Edward Island,  I'll see you in 9 days.

Kindred Photography

Like Maud, I like to take photographs.

I am lucky enough to live in a land rich in photographic opportunities.  The people in my town like to dress up for any and all occasions.  These photos are from a large archive and were taken with a cheap camera. I have been playing  with these otherwise nice photos using a editing tool to make them look like newspaper clippings.  It's a good way to make poor quality photos work for you.

It's so strange, that I can only get the backs of these ladies, it's always this way in my photos of the dressed up people.

Maud tells the truth - the song and dance of duty

Duke analyzes life from behind the fence - "A Southern Green Gables" - New Bern, NC

"And no one would realize the bone-weariness she suffered as she did what duty demanded.  One part of her enjoyed it;  one part resented its intrusions.  She would write: "Sometimes I get so sick of them (mission bands, missionary auxiliaries, ladies' aids, Women's Institutes, Sunday School teachers' meetings, etc., etc., etc.) that I could hang myself on the handiest gooseberry bush rather than go to another.  And yet--it's odd--it's always in prospect only that I hate them.  When I go to them I find myself really quite enjoying them.  I like 'making things go,' having, so I have been told, a 'gift' that way.  It is really only because of the inroads they make on my time that I rise up and howl occasionally."  Yet she could write, "I have lost the art of living entirely...It isn't right.  We weren't meant to live like that."  Separately, she could have enjoyed any of her current activities.  All together, crammed into one life, they were too much." 

The Wheel of Things, A Biography of LM Montgomery, Mollie Gillen, p. 129   
______________________________________
"I've got an idea that a lot of work in this world gets done by lazy people.  That's the reason they work--because thy're so lazy...You work because you have to drive yourself to such a fury to begin. It's so hard to get started that once you do you're afraid of slipping back.  You'd rather do anything than go through all that agony again...Then people say you're a glutton for work, but it isn't so.   It's laziness--just plain, damned, simple laziness, that's all."

Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

All things being relative in a parallel world....July & August 1915

Maud wrote often of the "hot" summers on PEI with the house full of company (Uncle Leander and entourage.)  Her discomfort seems incredible after I found that the high temps for the Island are recorded as 73 degrees for the month of July.  Yesterday, it was 102 degrees here on the inner banks of North Carolina.  (73 degrees is the mark where we set our air conditioners in order to feel comfortable in our homes.)

Perhaps it felt hotter in Maud's grandmother's house, because of the baking that she was required to do, and with the long hair, dresses and layers of underclothing.

All things being relative in a parallel universe...
________________________________________
One of the important lessons that may be gleaned from reading Maud's Journals (and it's a big one) is that it might be better not to depend on your children for your happiness. This passage is coming from Maud long before some even harder blows befell her.  It seems evident by this passage that Maud was always prone to depression..

The Manse, Leaskdale, Ont
August 13, 1915

"It is just a year to-day since little Hugh was born dead.  Oh, that hideous day!  Shall I ever be able to forget its agony?  And will it be repeated in October?  This thought is ever present with me.  I have had some bad attacks of nervous depression lately--one last night that was almost unbearable.  My condition--the war news --the weather--all combined to make me very miserable.  Sometimes I feel so unutterably disheartened that if it were not for Chester it seems to me that I would rather not go on living."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p. 171, Rubio & Waterston 

----------------------------------------------------------

A lovely walk with her cousin Frede at Park Corner...

Park Corner

Sunday, July 18, 1915

Tomorrow I leave Park Corner...To-night Frede and I planned to have a walk together over the bridge in the dusk--a last farewell walk, the last one we could have there for many years--perhaps forever.  In the twilight we slipped away and had our hour.  The western sky was full of the hues of a weird sunset.  Before us the old pond lay in shadow and silver.  The evening was very still, very calm, very clear.  And through the stillness came the strangest, saddest most unforgettable sound in nature--the soft, ceaseless wash on a distant shore of the breakers of a spent storm.  It is more mournful than the rain wind of night--the heartbreak of all creation is in it.

  Frede and I walked back and forth over the bridge many times, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking lowly of the deepest thoughts in our hearts.  We seemed a part of the night--of the dreaming water, of the dusk in the cloudy firs, of the far remote stars, of that haunting moan of the sea.  And when the twilight suddenly was night and the shining new moon swung above the tree tops that bend over that old homestead, we walked away from the glamor in a silence that touched the lands of dream and tears."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p 170, Rubio & Waterston

"the old past was mine once more...."

As I am winding down the days till I board a plane in North Carolina to embark on my sojourn to PEI, I  am hoping to find a way to connect with Maud's feelings of homecoming.  It is nice to have this place--this blog--to share her record, and to validate my own feelings about this dream like Odyssey, to be where she has been, to see what she has seen, and perhaps to feel what she has felt.

It is a certain homecoming for me, too!

In a personal way, it seems strangely poignant that Maud--always self-searching and with a book on hand-- had missed the profoundly correspondent themes about home and self  in Thomas Wolfe's works.  After all, they were living in a contemporary world.  How could she have missed him?

Maud:

Sunday, June 27, 1915

The Manse, Cavendish, PEI

   ...Last night I had a very dear, very sad, very strange and unlooked for experience.
     When I was on the Island before I shrank from the very thought of going near my old home.  This year I felt the same until last night.  I was on the manse veranda.  The dew was falling.  In the south-east a large, hazy, full moon was rising.  To my left lay the dark trees that screened th old house from sight.  suddenly an irresistible longing took possession of me to go to it once more--in that pale enchantment of moonlight when one might chance to slip back through some magic loophole into the olden years.  I could not withstand it.  I slipped over the church grounds and through the old gap in the fence through which I used to go to church.  I walked along the meadow edge where the foot path used to be, past the grove of spruces, and on till the old house lay before me in a soft, silvery shadow.  I turned aside for a moment to the old well and looked down it.  The ferns that always lined its sides had grown completely across it.
     I went on to the old kitchen door.  Beside it, every summer a certain shoot of balsam poplar used to start up, to be trodden down under passing feet.  Since the old house was closed it had been able to grow and so fast had it grown that the whole angle between the kitchen and the cook house was full of it.  It as as high as the kitchen roof.
     I went around to the end of the house and stood under my old window.  The moon was floating over the valley below.  I had looked on that very scene a thousand times on moonlit nights of long ago.  My heart beat with mingled pain and pleasure until it almost choked me.  Everything in that kind radiance seemed so much the same.  For a space the years turned back their pages.  The silent sleepers in the graveyard yonder wakened and filled their old places.  Grandfather and grandmother read in the lighted kitchen.  Old friends and comrades walked with me in the lane.  Daffy frisked in the caraway.  Above me my old white bed waited for me to press its pillow of dreams.
     Most of the windows were boarded up but the south one in the parlor was not.  through it I could see the bare old room distinctly with the black mantelpiece that was the admiration of my childhood.  I went around and stood on the stone steps of the front door.  The old "front orchard" and the grove beside it seemed more bowery and bosky than of yore but I think that was only because i have grown used to a thinner screen of trees on my Leaskdale lawn.  How lovely and lonely it all was, and yet how unreal.  I seemed to be in a dream--and yet it seemed th only waking.  Oh, as long as that moonlit magic worked the past was mine once more--the old past, before the last sad years had spent in the old home.  Oh, beloved old place, that half hour I spent with you last night was worth the coming from a far land.  You were glad, I think to have me back---me, who loved you so.  For there is not one living now but me who loves you--not one.  As I stood there I seemed to feel a presence enfolding me as if it claimed me--as if something that had been forsaken and desolate were once more rejoicing in my affection.  Have not old homesteads souls that cling to them until they crumble to dust?
   I could hardly tear myself away from the spot.  Perhaps the charm it had for me is not a wholesome one--not altogether one to which it was well to yield.  Perhaps the dead past should bury it's dead.  It may not be well to linger too long among ghosts, lest they lay a cold grasp upon you and bind you too closely to their chill, sweet, unearthly companionship.  Certainly all the pleasures and joys of my real life seemed to grow pale and fade into nothingness beside the strange enchantment of that shadowy tryst."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, pp 168 - 169, Rubio & Waterston

"...and he had an instant sense of something re-found that he had always known--something far, near, strange, and so familiar--and it seemed to him that he had never left the hills, and all that had passed in the years between was like a dream."

Thmas Wolfe, "You Can't Go Home Again"    

Going home....

"...it was silly, anyhow, to feel as he did about the place. But  why had he always felt so strongly the magnetic pull of home, why had he thought so much about it and remembered it with such blazing accuracy, if it did not matter, and if this little town, and the immortal hills around it, was not the only home he had on earth?"    

 Thomas Wolfe,

 You Can't Go Home Again

                     Asheville, North Carolina   

Maud:

Cavendish trip, 1913

..."Voices were calling to me that could not be resisted--voices of the past, fraught with all the past's enchantment.  They summoned me imperiously and I obeyed the summons.  I slipped out into the darkness of the summer evening and went to find the lost years....
  ...In the dim, still, eerie twilight I slipped down the hill, over the bridge across the brook and up the dark path under the spruces.  It was the old way home.  I found the little gate in the fence and went through.... 
....Yes, there it was.  In the fading gray light I could see the old gray house hooded in shadows--I could see the little window of my old room--
.....I wept bitterly...."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, p. 126, Rubio & Waterston

"… for once seen, and list the moment that he sees it, it is his forever and he can never forget it. And then the slow toiling train has passed these lives and faces and is gone, and there is something in his heart he cannot say."

Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River  

Crimes of the Heart

"Yes; it was a crime to marry you. I have paid for it."
Irene Forsyte to Soames Forsyte, "The Forsyte Saga",  John Galsworthy

There is a strange feeling of sadness that has been falling on me as I am preparing for our trip to PEI in July. It seems as if Maud comes to me, and then I feel her intense love of the Island.  It is her marriage, and her disappointment over it that is getting to me. As I am shopping for my traveling clothes I begin to think of Maud's great attention to detail in the choosing of her honeymoon trousseau. Anyway, it all went so bad over time. It makes me sad.

Maud
" I had been feeling contented all morning.  I had gone through the ceremony and the congratulations unflustered and unregretful.  And now, when it was all over and I found myself sitting there by my husband's side-my husband!--I felt a sudden horrible inrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free!  I felt like a prisoner--a hopeless prisoner.  Something in me--something wild and free and untamed--something that Ewan had not tamed--could never tame--something that did not acknowledge him as master--rose up in one frantic protest against the fetters which bound me.  At that moment if I could have torn the wedding ring from my finger and so freed myself I would have done it!  But it was too late--and the realization that it was too late fell over me like a black cloud of wretchedness. I sat at that gay bridal feast, in my white veil and orange blossoms, beside the man I had married--and I was as unhappy as I had ever been in my life."

 The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery - Vol I, p 68, Rubio & Waterston
_______________________________________________________________________

"Oh! Jolyon, yes.  He's in love, I feel he's in love.  And he'd say:  'My mother once married without love!  How could she have!'  It'll seem to him a crime!  And so it was!"

Irene Forsyte - "The Forsyte Saga", John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga - Granada Television 2002

Fate - and the Nine Lives of LM Montgomery

Mike and Leo

It seems incredibly fortuitous that during our upcoming July Odyssey on PEI,  there will be a happening!  Adam-Michael James and co-writer Leo Marchildon are working on a musical reunion of their well known production, "The Nine Lives of LM Montgomery."   We haven't heard the final details yet, but according to Mike, the stars are lining up!

Methinks I can see the hand of Maud in this.  If only someday, I can meet Mrs. Mary Rubio to ask a few questions that have been burning in my mind.  That will happen too, if it's meant to be.

Counting Down the Days to PEI - feeling a sadness for Maud

New Bern, North Carolina - my home

"bannered with crimson, sentineled by star.." LM Montgomery

 
It is 31 days till the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, a long yearned for visit to PEI -Maud's home and her lovely vista of childhood wonder.

Today, I feel a sadness for Maud that almost brings me to tears.  I think it has to do with some words by Thomas Wolfe which are ringing like a sad bell.  It is a quote from "Look Homeward Angel" where he describes his feelings of being "lost, on this weary unbright cinder".  Maud never knew that she was lost and in darkness.  The outside world was so beautiful to her.

Perhaps when the ugliness crept into her life,  if she had known, like Wolfe, that being lost and in darkness is the common state of man, she would not have felt so desperately alone.

I hope to get a sense of the spirit of Maud Montgomery on my visit to PEI, though I'm not sure that it is necessary to travel there to get it.

Still, Maud loved the island so very much!! There must be some shadow or a whispering of her spirit which is lingering there.

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. 

Thomas Wolfe - Look Homeward Angel