Dreams of Cavendish

Cavendish Shore September 2015

Rilla

"I b'lieve it's going to rain," said Cousin Sophia. "We have had an awful lot of rain this fall already. It's going to make it awful hard for people to get their roots in. It wasn't so in my young days. We gin'rally had beautiful Octobers then. But the seasons is altogether different now from what they used to be." Clear across Cousin Sophia's doleful voice cut the telephone bell. Gertrude Oliver answered it. "Yes—what? What? Is it true—is it official? Thank you—thank you."

Chapter xxxii, Rilla Of Ingleside, by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Is Campbell home at Park Corner haunted?

Pam Campbell, owner of Campbell home at Park Corner (and double cousin to LM Montgomery), told me that a few visitors have asked her if she had seen the spirit that lives upstairs in Stella's bedroom.  She claims to have never seen the spirit, and neither did I make any detections.

Is Park Corner haunted?

Fun with photo effects...

Bala Museum with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery goes on National TV on January 20th

Linda Hutton of Bala Museum being filmed by CBC

From Jack & Linda Hutton

WATCH CBC “The National” ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 20

FOR COAST-TO-COAST REPORT ON BALA’S MUSEUM

What an experience! We were interviewed and filmed for close to four hours over two days this week by three of the top pros at national CBC.

Their report will appear on CBC’s “The National” this coming Friday (Jan. 20),

providing breaking news does not delay it to another night.

We were asked to do a special presentation of our re-created 1919

silent movie, Anne of Green Gables on Wednesday evening at our

church. Excerpts of our presentation will be included in the report.

The film crew included Pat Softly, the producer, Deana Sumanac, arts reporter for “The National” and videographer Keith Whelan. All are top-flight CBC pros and great people. We felt as if we were losing family when they drove away waving from their CBC van.

WHERE CAN YOU SEE IT?

INSIDE CANADA: CBC’s hour-long flagship news program appears at 10 p.m. in most parts of the country, but check your local schedule to make sure the time is the same for you.

OUTSIDE (AND INSIDE) CANADA: The show can be seen anywhere in the world for a 24-hour period after its original showing in Canada.. Click on www.cbc.ca/thenational and then click on “Watch the Show”.

Jack and Linda

http://bala.net/museum/

Maud tells of an answered prayer

Ever since I learned that Edmund Fanning, Royal Governor of PEI and who also (a couple of centuries ago) owned a home up the road from me in Chapel Hill, used to visit Donald Montgomery at Fox Point, I have become very interested in the old house there, and in hearing of the times that Maud spent in Malpeque with her Aunt Emily and Uncle John.
Here is a passage from Journal IV, and one can learn here much about Maud and her place and her feelings of powerlessness . Poor Maud, it seems that no one in her life would have listened to her concerns about her beloved cat back home in Cavendish. She does not hold the power of "objection" nor, ultimately, of negotiation.  So Maud decides, what most of us would naturally do under the same circumstance - she prays!

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Journal IV, p 234, Rubio & Waterston

"Today in one of Ewan's books I happened to pick up there was a chapter on "answers to prayer." Some of them were a bit ludicrous it must be confessed.

I have prayed many prayers in my life. Few of them were answered. I have lived to be thankful some were not. Some were answered after a fashion. I prayed only one prayer in my life that was answered absolutely by the book.

One day during the winter I spent with Aunt Emily in Malpeque Uncle John brought home a stray dog he had found and tied it up in the barn, saying that, if no owner turned up, he was going to take it down to Grandpa (our old "Gyp" was dead.) This worried me terribly. I had never been able to keep a cat as long as Gyp lived and this dog was a big black sleek-looking fellow who was evidently no friend of cats either. I had left a beloved kitten at home and the thought of this dog after it filled me with anguish. For several days I was a haunted creature. Then a day came when Uncle John took me and Aunt Emily up to an examination in the school (Fanning School?) and left us there while he went on an errand. I knew he meant to go to Cavendish next day and take the dog. Desperately I prayed "Dear God, please let Uncle John tell me on the way home that a man has come for the dog!"

Uncle John returned. Aunt Emily and I climbed into the pung and started home on the Malpeque winter road that ran through every man's field and back yard. As we skimmed across a field below the school Uncle John turned to me and said, "A man came for the dog today"!!!

"The Shining Scroll Newsletter"

The very informative and interesting "Shining Scroll Newsletter" from the LMM Literary Society webpage can be linked here:

The Shining Scroll Newsletter


This is what you will find by linking to "The Shining Scroll Newsletter" 

"Part One was released in early December 2010. It features information about collecting L.M. Montgomery books, Joanne Wood’s excellent description of the publishing history of Montgomery’s books in Australia, and details about some of the donations that have been made of Montgomery related icons, material, and publications.

Part Two of The Shining Scroll records an overview of the 2010 Montgomery conference held on Prince Edward Island, Christy Woster’s research on the book that inspired a very young Lucy Maud Montgomery to start keeping a journal, discovery of an “Anne” dress pattern, and a summary of the first Laura Ingalls Wilder conference.


Part Three of The Shining Scroll features many stories centered on Prince Edward Island. Carolyn Collins reveals the story behind “Captain Jim’s lighthouse” from Anne’s House of Dreams in her article on Cape Tryon and the “Four Winds Lighthouse.” Carolyn also has an update on “Melrose Cottage,” the home of Montgomery’s aunt Margaret Montgomery Sutherland (read about Montgomery’s photograph of it in Elizabeth Epperly’s Through Lover’s Lane, p. 81) and an artifact from the ship, the Marco Polo (the subject of one of Montgomery’s earliest essays). We note with sadness the passing of Montgomery friends and champions, Joan O’Brien, Ruth Campbell, and Georgie Campbell MacLeod. Mary Beth Cavert writes the story of one of Montgomery’s friends in Leaskdale, Margaret Leask Mustard, to introduce the 2011 centennial and celebration of Montgomery’s arrival in Ontario. Lastly, Carolyn Collins describes one of the most rare of all Montgomery books, a little book of poetry from 1905."

Mary Beth Cavert and Carolyn Collins

Herman

Herman Leard's gravestone - Bedeque, PEI 

Post Cards from Maud's Island

After returning home from PEI I soon discovered that the pixels on my new camera were set too low for quality photos.  Thereby, my PEI photos--though not completely spoiled---could have turned out better.

My new hobby is to buy very cheap photo frames at yard sales and then try to tweak my most sentimental
photos into something pretty in order to frame them to the walls in my apartment.

So, I've been working with the PEI photos trying to transform them to what they should have been.

Not 100%, but not bad either.  I may create these in to postcards for my Kindred friends at Christmas.

I feel that I am meant to return to PEI to try again.  Oh, may it be so!!

"9LoLMM" - Maud's Birthday In Cavendish

My Kindred buddy, Adam Michael James, mentions me in this video tour of Cavendish which was filmed last November 30th on Maud's birthday.

Rainbow Valley & Rosemary West



"Rosemary West stepped aside from the by-path and stood in that spell-weaving place."


My dear old friend works as a a clerk in a used book shop down in Florida.   He sends me things.  Recently, he found the frontispiece from an early edition of  "Rainbow Valley" stuffed in the bottom of a box.  He almost threw it away.  Instead, he thought of me and mailed the page along with some other interesting Victorian pieces.

So very Maudish!

   

OCTOBER - "The moon of falling leaves"



Pumpkin Patch - Christ Episcopal Church, New Bern, NC 



Saturday, Oct. 12, 1895

How fast "the moon of falling leaves" is slipping away.

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p. 146,  Rubio & Waterston 

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

Friday, October 11, 1889

...The maple leaves are just splendid now. I picked my basket full and then just roamed around, having a fine time in spite of  an impertinent little shower that came pattering down, making the maples overhead rustle like silvery music.  I just love the woods....

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol. I p. 2, Rubio & Waterston

________________________________________________________

Saturday, October. 8, 1898

The "moon of falling leaves" again!  How swiftly it comes around from year to year, each year seeming swifter than the last. 

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p. 225, Rubio & Waterston

 _______________________________________________________________

OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.

Anne reveled in the world of color about her.

"Oh, Marilla," she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs" 'I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill--several thrills? I'm going to decorate my room with them."

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Chapter XVI

Lucy Maud and Bayard: My two mentors at opposite ends of the pole

1941

July 8, 1941

"Oh God, such an end to life.  Such suffering and wretchedness".

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol. V., Rubio & Waterston

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bayard Wootten:  1875- 1959

"I have always been chasing something, but one of the surprises that life as held for me is that I am happier as an old woman than I ever was as a young one.  Perhaps the reason for this is that I realize now it does not matter whether we arrive. The joy is in the going."  

"Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten" , Jerry W. Cotten, p. 92

Louisiana House, New Bern, North Carolina

Bayard Wootten Photograph

____________________________________________________

Maud writes for "The Daily Echo"

  

For a period of time during Maud's stay in Halifax she was employed as a newspaper woman by the Halifax Daily Echo.  The assignment was to write a sassy column for the Echo which was titled  "Around the Table" by Cynthia.   

In Cynthia's column Maud has fabricated (?) some characters who maintain daily interactions and conversations about some pretty mundane subjects.  One of the mundane subjects that tickled my funny bone was the day that Polly "straightened out her top bureau drawer." 

I think it would be a splendid idea to have top bureau drawers fitted out out with handy sets of pigeon-holes which would keep the little trifles in place and prevent laces from getting mixed up with ribbons ad belts and ties from becoming interfaced.  Things keep fresh and smart so much longer when they are kept neatly folded among their own kind.  The Halifax Daily Echo - date unknown

Maud uses her column to give advice to amateur photographers on how to acheive an image using trick photography:  

If you want to make a "winter moonlight scene" here is how you go about it.  Take an ordinary negative of some landscape.  Don't have leafiness in it.  Evergreen trees and an old farm house or so make the best picture for this. The Halifax Daily Echo, May 12, 1902 

I wonder if the people of Nova Scotia looked forward to reading the next installment of "Around the Table"?

Synchronicity

Last week (around the time that I received the Halifax packet)  a full Harvest moon appeared in the night sky over North Carolina. Thereby,  my camera and I headed down to the river in an attempt to capture the beauty of the moment.  However, I know nothing about night photography and the flash of the camera got in the way.  The result was not good.  The flash just overtakes the image when it bounces off of the leafiness of the trees  The moon recedes in importance.  I wonder what Maud is saying about leafiness.  She isn't very clear with her point.


Harvest Moon over the Neuse River in New Bern, NC

Below are photographs of some LMM spots of interest that were pointed out to me by my trusty tour guide (and Kindred Spirit) in Halifax.  These locations are the places where Maud would have boarded during her time in Nova Scotia.   2 of the boarding homes-- sadly enough- have been torn down and replaced by uglier edifices.





Maud doesn't like the deepness..

Morning in New Bern, NC

(I find the following interesting given the fact that Maud was constantly trying to analyze Ewan by reading Psychology books.  I wonder if she ever asked him what was bothering him so badly???  Is the following our evidence of Maud's view of life through rose colored glasses?  I wonder...very interesting comment from Maud.)  

Friday, July 10, 1931

Norval, Ont

...I have been re-reading Macaulay's Life by Trevelyan.  I read it first that winter in Prince Albert. Found it delightful then and found it just as delightful still.  But most of its charm is due to Macaulay's letters.  One criticism the writer of the introduction makes is that Macaulay's letters show nothing profound in his nature.  Very likely.  Very likely--nay, almost certainly--had they been profound they would not have been delightful.  The ocean depths are profound--but I prefer a sunlit meadow for my strolling.  Anyhow, I should like to have got letter from Macaulay.  

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Rubio & Waterston, Vol IV, p 139 

Photo Collage of July trip to Maritimes




Nova Scotia, Charlottetown, Bedeque, Park Corner, Clifton 

 

Maud's Memories of Home

Macneill Homestead Cavendish, PEI

Saturday, July 11, 1931

"...The mention of cheese wakens another memory.  It is evening.  Grandmother and Grandfather are adjusting the cheese hoop under the press.  I am standing by watching them and drinking in the loveliness around me.  June was walking over the fields.  The sun had just set and I saw that loveliest of all created things--a young moon in an amber evening sky.

And the lambs were playing in the pasture field by the house.

Do lambs play like that now?  I suppose they do, only I never have a chance to see them.  But what gorgeous times those lambs did have at their evening games while their placid old mothers nibbled on around them.  In a drove thy tore from one end of the field and back again, the noise of their small hoofs like mild thunder.  They would run those races until dark fell--seemingly just for the joy of running.  I never saw such happy creatures."    

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Rubio & Waterston, Vol. IV p 141 

"Mornng along Shore" by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Morning Along Shore

Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!

All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest­
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast!

Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine!

Sweet, its cradle-lilt partaking,
Dreams that hover o'er the sea,
But the lyric of its waking
Is a sweeter thing to me!

Who would drowze in dull devotion
To his ease when dark is done,
And upon its breast the ocean
Like a jewel wears the sun?

"Up, forsake a lazy pillow!"
Calls the sea from cleft and cave,
Ho, for antic wind and billow
When the morn is on the wave!

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Photos by Rosemary Osterhus - New Bern, NC

"...with dignity and aplomb!!"

Staffordshire Dogs seen at Bridgeton Antique Mall, Bridgeton, NC on August 14, 2010  

Sunday, August 27, 1911
York, England

"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 piece....

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 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 some few dogs with red spots, but nowhere the aristocratic dogs with green spots.  I had about given up in despair.  But, yesterday in a little antique shop near the Minster I found two pairs of lovely dogs--and bought them on the spot, lest they be enchanted dogs which would vanish forever if I made them not mine immediately.  To be sure, they had no green spots.  The race of dogs with green spots seem to have become extinct.  But one pair of them had lovely gold spots and were much larger than the Park Corner dogs....I hope thy will preside over my hearth with due dignity and aplomb."        The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I, p. 76, Rubio & Waterston     

A few more random photos - Green Gables

Signage at Green Gables

The more I look at some of the photos, the more I become intrigued with particular shots.  Here are some of the ones that I don't think that I previously posted.  Sometimes, the photos seem to be dancing with light and shadows.

Coming out of Balsam Hollow, Green Gables

Lover's Lane

Lover's Lane

Back of Green Gables

Lover's Lane