A Name for Herself
Page 7
But still in time to Portia comes the true fairy prince – he who, alone of all others, has the power to awaken in her heart a woman’s tenderest love. No titled lover he, with princely retinue or haughty lineage.3 Only a handsome young Venetian, with no fortune and nothing save his noble birth, courtly manners and manly spirit to recommend him. But Portia’s wayward heart has found its master, and her speech to Bassanio in the casket scene is a marvel of mingled maidenly delicacy and womanly love. Our hearts thrill with sympathetic joy when Bassanio chooses the right casket and wins both the picture and the beautiful original.
But over their bridal happiness comes a sudden chill – ill tidings for Bassanio. Antonio, his dearest friend, is in danger, and his presence is requested at once. Portia nobly rises to meet the occasion. With gentle firmness she tells Bassanio that he must go at once – with no word or look does she seek to keep him by her side, when duty calls him away. With true thoughtfulness, she conceals her own sorrow at the parting and strives to encourage him with her hopeful assurance and sympathy.
Then comes the grand climax of the play – the famous trial scene where all the tragic issues find their centre. And here we see Portia in a new light. We have beheld and loved her as the happy maiden, the loving woman and the gentle bride, now she claims our admiration as the possessor of a magnificent intellect. The friend to whom her husband owes most is in danger of his life at the hands of relentless Shylock. All efforts to save him have been fruitless. Never was woman’s quick wit more sorely needed and never did it come more promptly to the rescue.4 Disguised as a doctor of laws, Portia enters the court. Her pleading for mercy is unrivalled – grandly eloquent, tenderly sublime. And when it is of no avail, her subtle logic and keen judgment succeed where all the learned heads in Venice have failed, and Antonio is saved.5
Then comes the last beautiful scene, where, in the moonlit gardens of her home, Portia welcomes back her husband.6 A charming picture she presents in truth, this sweet bride of long ago, than whom no nineteenth century maiden can find a higher ideal of womanhood to emulate.
And as we turn away from the fairy scene of light and music with which the play concludes, we feel that Bassanio has indeed, won for his bride a woman worthy of his love. For as long as the English language is spoken or read, as long as genius is admired and womanly sweetness praised, the character of Portia will be regarded as one of the truest, noblest, fairest creations of Shakespeare’s master genius.
(1894)
“Which Has the Most Patience under the Ordinary Cares and Trials of Life – Man or Woman?”
BELINDA BLUEGRASS/ENID
In February 1896, in the midst of her year as an undergraduate student at Dalhousie University, Montgomery reported in her journal that she had won the top prize of five dollars in a contest sponsored by the Halifax Evening Mail for a letter answering this question: “Which Has the Most Patience under the Ordinary Cares and Trials of Life – Man or Woman?”1 After hearing through the grapevine that her submission signed “Enid” could not be considered for the prize because it did not put forth an argument, she made a second submission as “Belinda Bluegrass.”2
All entries were submitted evidently using pseudonyms to ensure anonymity – which was just as well, because the judge for the contest, Archibald MacMechan (1862–1933), happened to be Montgomery’s English literature instructor. As MacMechan reported in a letter also printed in the Evening Mail, “After careful consideration, it seems to me that the verses signed ‘Belinda Bluegrass’ are the best expression of what I personally believe to be the truth. They show thought as well as point and vivacity. The second place I would assign to the verses of ‘Eve.’ The prose letter signed ‘Enid’ also deserves honorable mention, on account of the sentiment expressed and the care taken in the composition.” In fact, it was because of MacMechan’s enthusiasm for the work of “Eve” that the Mail added a second-place prize of two dollars. It is worth noting, however, that while MacMechan described both of Montgomery’s submissions in some detail, he said nothing about the second-prize winner, whose work was not signed “Eve” at all but “Lilith” and whose views are remarkably similar to ones Montgomery would express in a 1909 letter to Ephraim Weber: “If woman has really more patience than man, it is, I believe, because her capacity for patience, at first no greater than his, is more developed by the circumstances of her life … I think the impartial decision must be that man, in his own sphere, is as patient as woman in hers.”3
Montgomery also pasted into her scrapbook an undated and unidentified clipping entitled “Personals” that suggested that the identity of the prize winners did not stay secret for long: “Miss Montgomery won the prize offered by the Evening Mail for the best letter on ‘Which has the more patience; man or woman?’ Fame cleaveth unto ‘they of Dalhousie.’” MacMechan, whom Montgomery categorized in an 1895 journal entry as “rather a weak man,” would later pan Montgomery’s work in his book The Headwaters of Canadian Literature (1924).4
As my letter must be brief,
I’ll at once state my belief.
And this it is – that, since the world began,
And Adam first did say,
“’Twas Eve led me astray,”5
A woman hath more patience than a man.
If a man’s obliged to wait
For some one who’s rather late,
No mortal ever got in such a stew,
And if something can’t be found
That he’s sure should be around,6
The listening air sometimes grows fairly blue.
Just watch a man who tries
To soothe a baby’s cries,
Or put a stove pipe up in weather cold,
Into what a state he’ll get;
How he’ll fuss and fume and fret
And stamp and bluster round and storm and scold!
Some point to Job with pride,
As an argument for their side!7
Why, it was so rare a patient man to see,
That when one was really found,8
His discoverers were bound
To preserve for him a place in history!
And while I admit it’s true
That man has some patience too,
And that woman isn’t always sweetly calm,
Still I think all must agree
On this central fact – that she
For general all-round patience bears the palm.
BELINDA BLUEGRASS
IT WAS THE DAY WHEN ALL THE GUARDIAN ANGELS CAME to the Benign Giver to ask a boon for each several charge. One by one they came, in bright procession, and departed rejoicing; but one stood apart with drooping wings and veiled face.
Last of all he, too, approached the Giver and knelt in reverence before Him.
“Oh, Benign Giver,” murmured the sorrowing spirit, “I am woman’s guardian angel, nor know I what boon to crave for her who needeth all. From cradle to grave her path is through sorrow and pain and self-sacrifice. She brings man’s children forth in agony, she rears them in anxiety, she gives them up to the world in bitterness and anguish of heart. Daily she is beset with unnumbered trials. Grant then, most Benign Giver, some boon to compensate and strengthen.”
He ceased. All heaven was hushed. Through the silence sounded the Giver’s voice. “Sad spirit,” He said, tenderly, “take from My hand this most precious boon for woman, this boon bestowed on none other of My creatures – the gift of long-suffering, all-forgiving, divine patience.”
Then the guardian angel unveiled his face and passed from the shining multitude with joy on his radiant brow.
ENID
(1896)
Crooked Answers
L.M.M.
In November 1896, Montgomery recorded in her journal that she had received a letter from her second cousin Edwin Simpson (1872–1955), asking if she would like to correspond with him. Montgomery had mentioned Simpson in passing in her journal on a few occasions prior to this – she ended up taking over his school in Belmon
t during the 1896–1897 academic year while he attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown – but he would play an increasing role in this record of her life after she reluctantly accepted his marriage proposal in June 1897 (despite the growing physical repulsion she felt for him) and then spent the better part of a year trying to extricate herself from that promise.1 Although during this period Montgomery mentioned in her journal the publication of several short stories and poems in North American periodicals, absent from this record of her life and her career is any mention of the publication in the spring of 1896 (while she was studying at Dalhousie University in Halifax) of two sketches in The Prince of Wales College Observer, a follow-up student publication to The College Record – on whose masthead Edwin Simpson leads as “Manager.”2 The extent to which this piece or the two that follow are autobiographical is impossible to ascertain, given that Montgomery rarely went into details in her journal about her actual experience teaching; that said, the form of the personal essay makes these pieces seem like fact rather than fiction. Several of these “crooked answers” would appear again in “Half an Hour with Canadian Mothers” later in this volume and in “Facts and Fancies,” chapter 11 of Anne of Avonlea.
WHEN, ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, I LEFT P.W.C., the proud possessor of a first-class license, I had some ideas about school teaching, which experience has rubbed out of my mind. For one thing I did not believe that the amazing answers of pupils one sometimes reads in the funny columns of papers, ever did or could have any foundation in fact. But a year’s experience as a teacher in a country school soon convinced me to the contrary.
All the crooked answers to be recorded below I can vouch for as genuine, and too hopelessly original ever to be forgotten.3
One boy in the primer class was noted for his startling answers. It was very hard on my nerves at first; after some time I got used to it. The first day I took him in hand I asked him what the sheep gave us, having first carefully led the subject up to the expected answer, “wool.” He looked up cheerfully.
“Lambs,” he piped confidently, and I collapsed. Well, he was certainly right. Nobody could deny that, though it wasn’t just what I expected. It was the same boy who, being asked to spell “catch,” in the presence of a certain critical visitor,4 shouted out with all the energy of conscious correctness, “S-n-o-w-catch!”
But it was another lad who tried to spell “speckled” one day, and couldn’t manage it.
“Well,” he said, after many futile efforts, “I can’t spell it, but I know what it means.”
“Well, what,” I asked with all the unsuspecting rashness of an inexperienced schoolma’am.
“Tom Jones’ face,” he said with a guileless look at the aforesaid Tom, whose freckles were famous in the school. Tom took it out of him at recess though; and I was careful of calling for impromptu meanings after that.
It was not only in the lower grades such answers were given. The fourth class pupils were especially noted for their bon mots.5 I shall never forget one boy’s definition of “ecclesiastic.” He spelled the word correctly, and then announced triumphantly that it meant “a tremendous teacher.” I have sometimes thought that he got “religious” and “tremendous” mixed up, but it is a subject that does not respond to speculation. It was another fourth-class boy who said that a glacier was “a man who put in window frames.”
In history that class generally surpassed themselves. It was certainly startling to hear that Thomas a Becket was “canonized as a snake;”6 and it gave my faith a sad blow to discover that “William Tyndale wrote the New Testament.”7
In one examination paper I recollect a particularly striking answer to the question, “What did Charles do after the battle of Dunbar?” The answer, “He ran away and went up a tree,” was written in perfect good faith, mind you, and I dare say that pupil has been wondering ever since why she didn’t get full marks for that question.8
In geography the discoveries they made were amazing. I found out that “the Suez canal connected Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,”9 and that “the Isthmus of Panama joined South America and Greenland.”10 One patriotic boy said that the “Atlantic Ocean was in P.E. Island.” In definitions they were equally felicitous. One boy said that a cape “was a portion of land that had caved in,” and a girl, after much serious thought on the subject, announced that a continent was “a piece of water with some land in it.” It was the same girl who solemnly assured me that there were 365 days in a month!
When I sat down to correct their compositions I generally had a treat. How deliciously original some of them were! One boy, I remember, took “Courting” as an optional subject, and with all the wisdom of twelve years, declared in his opening paragraph that “courting is a very pleasant thing, which a great many people go too far with.” That composition bore evidence of deep and searching thought.
Another boy – the one who gave “crab-apple” as a noun, which was the name of an animal – started out to write a composition on “Birds.” His first sentence was “Our cat catches birds.” From that he branched out and gave me the history, character, habits and accomplishments, not only of his own particular and individual cat, but of every other feline in the neighborhood. But not another word did he say about “birds.”11
The invariable closing sentence of most of those compositions will serve admirably to conclude this article:
“This is all I can think of, and so no more at present from
L.M.M.”12
(1896)
The Bad Boy of Blanktown School
L.M.M.
Written in close proximity to “Crooked Answers,” this sketch likewise takes teaching as its subject, although once again, it is difficult to ascertain to what extent the piece is autobiographical. In a journal entry dated 18 September 1894, Montgomery mentioned welcoming two new students to her class, including “George Howells, the traditional ‘bad boy’ of the district,” whose grandfather had “served a life sentence in prison for shooting another man,” but there is no further mention of him in that record.1 In this sketch, she anonymized the name of her school and omitted its location; but while she introduced her subject as “George” within quotation marks, implying that she had changed his name to protect his identity, the mention of a student named George Howells in her journals indicates that she had not actually done so. This piece appeared in The Dalhousie Gazette, Dalhousie’s student newspaper (which is still published today), in March 1896, toward the end of Montgomery’s sojourn as a student at that institution. George anticipates “bad boy” Anthony Pye in Anne of Avonlea, except that Montgomery does not have the success Anne has in reforming him.
HIS SHADOW DARKENED OVER MY PATH ON THE VERY first day on which I was installed as mistress of Blanktown school. The trustees said that the children were pretty easy to manage, but solemnly warned me that I would have serious trouble with “George.” They added that I might depend on them to back me in any emergency that might arise in my dealings with that obstreperous youth.
For the next two months, though George did not materialize, I heard enough about him to drive any teacher, just entering on professional life, to the verge of insanity. Not a day passed but some of George’s characteristics were impressed upon me. In the first place, he was reputed to be “not all there.” There was something terrible in the vagueness of this; and I never could see the point because, when I did fall in with George, I rather thought there was a little too much of him there for my peace of mind. George’s grandfather had killed a man; George’s father had a most unsavory reputation; and George would appear to have inherited all the shining virtues of his ancestors, with a few of his own thrown in. I was informed that he had been expelled from the school regularly once a year, since his A, B, C days, after many desperate conflicts with the reigning pedagogue, and that he was a thief, liar, braggart and bully, all in one. In short, so far as I could discover, George’s mission in life seemed to be to keep school teachers in perpetual remembrance of the fact that eart
h is not their home. George evidently did not shine in the haunts of civilized life, for weeks passed by and I saw him not. I had almost begun to think that George was some mythical bugbear for frightening inexperienced schoolma’ms, when, one gloomy November day, he came.
I was trying to impress on a five-year-old the ancient and immemorial fact that “the cat caught the mouse,” when the door was thrown violently open, and a tall, loose-jointed, raw-boned lad strode into the room, slammed his books on a desk, and flung himself into a seat with an expression that said, “Here I am, and there you are. Which of us is going to come off best?”
I have always been proud of the fact that I kept calm at this trying crisis. I disposed of my small student leisurely, and then sailed down the aisle to interview George, who awaited me with an appalling grin. George’s physiognomy was not exactly prepossessing, but it had the merit of uniqueness. Nobody ever looked quite like George. Freckles! You never saw so many large, well-developed, healthy-looking freckles on any one face in your life. His eyes could look three ways at once, his hair stood straight up on end in aggressive defiance, and as for his mouth – you could have cut mouths for a dozen boys from it and still have a good piece left over. He generally went about with it wide open; it was hard on your nerves till you got used to it. Once in a while he would remember and shut it. If, through the hum of the schoolroom, came now and then a sharp, sudden snap, suggestive of a rat-trap going off, everybody knew it was George closing his mouth, and didn’t stop to investigate. George’s voice, however, was his main attraction. It was of great compass, was cracked in three distinct places, and regularly fell all to pieces at the end of every sentence, when he was reading.