This book contains tales about various wild animals:
“...the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.”
The Cat walks through the Wet Wild Woods, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.
L. M. Montgomery knew this story, and it meant a lot to her. Her heroine Emily Starr mentions it after her friend Dean warns her about the pressure to conform at school:
“"...Don't let them make anything of you but yourself, that's all. I don't think they will.’
"No, they won't," said Emily decidedly. "I'm like Kipling's cat--I walk by my wild lone and wave my wild tail where so it pleases me. That's why the Murrays look askance at me. They think I should only run with the pack."”
From Emily Climbs (1925)
Later in the book, Emily gets the chance to go to live in New York. She is very torn, thinking about what she might gain and what she might lose:
“Would the Wind Woman come to her in the crowded city streets? Could she be like Kipling's cat there?”
She decides to remain with her people and the old farm on her beloved Prince Edward Island, even though it means missing many opportunities to broaden her horizons and have a career.
Lucy Maud Montgomery made some very different decisions, and she came to regret them as terrible mistakes.
’Good mixers’ and independent loners
L. M. Montgomery was forced by her position as a minister’s wife to be, or rather appear to be, a ‘good mixer’, a sociable person who gets on well with everyone.
She put on a good act and was very active in the community, but she was a loner at heart and her letters show what she really thought of good mixers and people who followed the herd and ran with the pack.
She said in a letter sent in October 1923 to fellow loner Ephraim Weber that she never knew a good mixer who was worth a brass farthing; she thought that they were lacking in character:
“... - all things to all men - painted card boards. The only people I ever knew who were really worth while were cats who walked by themselves...never pretending to be Maltese if they were tortoise shell. I distrust the mixers. They can’t be sincere if they mix well with everybody...You know as well as I do that the mixer has no real influence at all.”
L. M. Montgomery was forced by her position as a minister’s wife to be, or rather appear to be, a ‘good mixer’, a sociable person who gets on well with everyone.
She put on a good act and was very active in the community, but she was a loner at heart and her letters show what she really thought of good mixers and people who followed the herd and ran with the pack.
She said in a letter sent in October 1923 to fellow loner Ephraim Weber that she never knew a good mixer who was worth a brass farthing; she thought that they were lacking in character:
“... - all things to all men - painted card boards. The only people I ever knew who were really worth while were cats who walked by themselves...never pretending to be Maltese if they were tortoise shell. I distrust the mixers. They can’t be sincere if they mix well with everybody...You know as well as I do that the mixer has no real influence at all.”
From After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery's Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941
It is sad to think that L. M. Montgomery could safely express her real self and opinions about other people only in writing.
This is not the place to go into the terrible effect that this, together with being forced by circumstances to appear as something she was not, had on her, but there is a lot more to say about it and the problems faced in general by loners and people who are different on the inside from those around them.
A few associations
The Maltese cat mentioned by L. M. Montgomery is grey or bluish in colour and associated with the island of Malta.
Rudyard Kipling’s short story The Maltese Cat is about a very agile grey polo pony who comes from Malta.
In Stella Gibbons’s Shadow of a Sorcerer, Ruth calls Humphrey ‘Cat’ after Kipling’s Just So story because he is a bit of a loner.
