Many elements in the life, letters and works of L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery are of great relevance to this blog; several topics and publications associated with her have been featured or referenced on here in various articles in the past.
This article contains some further extracts of interest from The Green Gables Letters, which were written by Lucy Maud to her pen friend Ephraim Weber between 1905 and 1909.
Each of these extracts reminds me of something that I have read in the works of another writer.
Everything that L. M. Montgomery has to say about the art of writing, the compulsion to write for example, is of great interest and worth highlighting.
This is her advice to Ephraim Weber:
“...don’t give up writing; it’s the best method of soul cultivation there is; even if you never published another thing the writing of it would bring you a beatitude.”
This reminds me of what Steve Hassan has to say about how cult leavers benefit from writing their story down.
The connection between Irish Catholics and the colour green has been mentioned earlier. Their long-term enemies the Irish Protestants favour the colour orange.
The battle continued when Irish people emigrated to the New World.
This amusing anecdote describes an incident outside the building of L. M. Montgomery's American publisher L. C. Page & Company:
“In July a big party of Orangemen were going on a picnic. At the Boston North St. station, they saw a copy of Anne of Green Gables bound in green on a newsstand. They took, or pretended to take—they were likely half drunk—the title as a personal insult, marched across to the Page building, the band playing horrible dirges, and nearly mobbed the place. One of the editors came out and told them that although the title might be offensive “the heroine, Anne, had hair of a distinct orange hue.” Thereupon they “adopted” Anne as their mascot, gave her three cheers and went on their way rejoicing.”
So the Orangemen accepted Anne's orange connection and overlooked the green.
This story has made me think of the rejection by both the Red and the White sides in the Wars of the Roses of a member of the Prune family because he wore a pink rose! By coincidence, L. M. Montgomery says in one of her letters that she much prefers pink roses to red ones.
The copy of Anne of Green Gables that was mentioned in the above anecdote was published in 1908. The wholesale price at the time was 90 cents; a first edition such as this one can now cost over £12,000:
The great and immediate success of Anne of Green Gables brought out the worst in some of the people in L. M. Montgomery's life.
The article about money and envy in Stella Gibbons's My American contains some of Lucy Maud's thoughts on the subject of envy in the form of extracts from The Green Gables Letters.
Here is a little more from the same source:
“I’ve written a successful book, which will probably bring me in some hard cash. This fact has many results. One of the results is this. An old schoolgirl chum, on whom I have always been on friendly terms, suddenly becomes cool, says spiteful things of me and my book, displays incivility and rudeness to me whenever we meet and finally withdraws herself into lofty disregard of my existence.
I have not “put on airs” about my book at all. Why then should she behave so? Some people say she is jealous. I hate to think so but am forced to do so. Whatever be the cause I have lost an old friend. You will say such “friendship” is not real and is better lost. I agree with you. Nevertheless, old affections rooted in childhood are lasting things and I have felt a good deal of pain over my friend’s attitude.”
This is very sad, but I know from experience that such behaviour and rejections are common in the lives of people who leave the herd – or their circle of friends – and go where the others can't follow.
The comment about old affections rooted in childhood is very similar to something Charlotte Brontë said about a brother and sister in one of her early works:
“Natural affection is a thing never rooted out, where it has once existed.”
From the novelette Captain Henry Hastings (1839)
Speaking of Jesus Christ, L. M. Montgomery says this:
“...he, in common with most great teachers and reformers, had an element of fanaticism—for want of a better word—in his character. It seems to me that it is a necessary ingredient in a highly-organized, sensitive character to enable it to make headway against a brutal world and all its sins and follies. Without it, it could not stand against its foes.”
Single-minded dedication is often essential for survival and protection in a hostile world and for very ambitious people to achieve their goals against all the odds, and great Masters and reformers may indeed be so committed to a cause as to appear fanatical.
Fanatics and fanaticism appear in many of John Buchan's novels, and not in a good way. Here is just one example:
“...the meaning of a fanatic was suddenly revealed to me. One or two distorted notions, a wild imagination, and fierce passions...”
From Salute to Adventurers (1915)
A little more material from The Green Gables Letters will appear in a future article.
Although the colours on the cover of this edition of The Green Gables Letters are not as bright as those on the flag of the Irish Republic, they still remind me of the Orange and Green anecdote:
