A Name for Herself

by L. M. Montgomery

  Polly and I picked all the flowers we could lay our hands on, but Theodosia wouldn’t. She said she felt so glad to be alive herself that she hadn’t the heart to shorten the life of even a wild blossom. Perhaps she was right, when you come to think of it.

  Nature has worked her yearly miracle the past week. She is a transfigured nature. And the miracle is none the less marvellous because it was expected or because we may have beheld it many times before. It always brings with it an unutterable sense of new birth and new life. For many weeks there have been hints of its coming. But through it all the real spirit of the spring slept. Now it has awakened. With a leap and a bound Nature passes to the full blossom of her spring, and the whole world, as we know it, is transformed.

  We wait longer for it than the children of more southern lands. But what we lose in delay is recompensed by the glory of the realization.

  The time is at hand when people begin to think of vacation. Short or long, it is the golden spot in the year for us. We want to make the most of it and have something of it to gladden the rest of the year after it is over. In connection with this let me tell you about the “vacation memory book” that Polly and I made last summer.

  We spent several weeks together in the country, and this book was devoted to our vacation haunts. We took an ordinary scrapbook, and on the first page we pasted a snapshot of the house where we stayed, and underneath we wrote a lot of original verses, which were pretty good fun for us, even if poor poetry. Following on each page were snapshots of all the places in wood and hills and shore that we visited, with an appropriate quotation or a bit of nonsense rhyme reminiscent of our good times. We put other souvenirs in as well, such as nicely pressed flowers from some pet spot. Every page is a memory of some delightful day, and when we turn its pages over in the winter we live our vacation once more. We are going to make another this summer, and I am sure that anyone who tries this plan will find pleasure in it.

  One day not long ago, when I was rummaging in the attic, I came across – guess what? Two bound volumes of Godey’s Lady’s Book, dated fifty years ago, when our grandmothers were young and our mothers were little girls.281 I carried them downstairs, and we spent the evening looking over them and fairly shrieking with laughter.

  Godey’s Lady’s Book was the fashionable magazine fifty years ago. Aunt Janet, to whose mother the book belonged, told us how eagerly its monthly visit was looked forward to – for, of course, in those days there were very few magazines – and how its pages of fashions and fancy work were conned and lingered over.

  But those books were really “too funny for anything,” especially the fashion-plates.

  “Do you really suppose that the present day fashions will look as queer fifty years hence as these do today?” asked Polly.

  Enormous hoop-skirts were in fashion then, multitudinous flounces, drooping mantillas,282 and oh, such funny bonnets. And as for the head-dresses of lace and ribbon, I don’t know how they ever managed to keep them on. Cork-screw curls were there, too, in odd little bunches on either side of placid, doll-like faces. They reminded me perfectly of the original illustrations in Thackeray’s works.283 The oddest hat of all was a broad-brimmed affair with a heavy flounce of lace dependent from the brim all round, and falling below the eyes. It made one think of a highwayman’s mask somehow. As for the children’s fashions you would think there were no children in those days at all – nothing but miniature men and women, for their clothes seemed to be a faithful copy of their elders’ in all but size.

  The reading matter was as quaint as the illustrations. Such lackadaisical poems, all breathing of heart break and daisies and blighted affections. And such quaint queries and equally quaint answers in the “letter box.” We had an evening’s solid enjoyment out of those books. What puzzled Ted most was how folks ever got “wooed and married and a’” in those days,284 for he declared that with such hoopskirts he didn’t know how a young man ever got close enough to a girl to see what she looked like, let alone proposing to her.

  “Fancy standing five yards away from a girl on the outer-most edge of a hoopskirt, and trying to say pretty things to her,” he said.

  “I guess they managed it somehow,” said Polly, serenely, “or else hoopskirts wouldn’t have remained in fashion as long as they did.”

  And then we saw Aunt Janet laughing.

  Cousin Rebecca came to our house last week. She is Aunt Janet’s cousin, not ours, by the way, and she is a born reformer. Of course she tried her hand on us.

  “I thought to myself,” remarked Polly, apropos of an incident she was telling us.

  “How else should you think, my dear?” said Cousin Rebecca, judicially. “If you thought aloud you would have to say so. Either you ‘said to yourself’ or you simply ‘thought.’”

  “I nodded my head,” I remarked later on to Ted.

  “Did you ever hear of anyone nodding her legs or her elbows?” asked Cousin Rebecca. “You may properly say ‘I shook my head,’ for you can shake other things. But in the present development of the language you can nod no other part of yourself or of creation than your head. It is enough to say, simply, ‘I nodded!’”

  I tried to look meek. Later on Ted caught it, too.

  “I rose up,” he said.

  “Are people in the habit of rising down in Halifax, or is it possible for them to do so?” queried Cousin Rebecca, mildly. “If so, your use of ‘up’ is allowable – not otherwise.”

  No doubt Cousin Rebecca is right, and we are honestly trying to reform our English. But I don’t know that we love her any the better for it.

  (1901–1902)

  Half an Hour with Canadian Mothers

  This next piece – a blend of poetry, sketches, and child-rearing advice – appeared in the November 1901 issue of The Ladies’ Journal, a Toronto magazine to which Montgomery had already contributed a number of short stories and poems, including her first published story, “A Baking of Gingersnaps,” in 1895. The byline identifies the author as “Miss L.M. Montgomery” and announces her location as “Cavendish, N.S.” – indicating perhaps that the editor of the periodical conflated her home town in Prince Edward Island with her current residence in Halifax. Some of the elements included in the piece would eventually be republished on their own: the sketch “One Mother’s Opinion” in The Standard (Chicago) and The Pacific (Berkeley), the treatise “What to Teach Your Son” in at least three dozen North American newspapers under a variety of titles, and the poem “Mother’s Mending Basket” in The Ram’s Horn (Chicago).1

  MOTHER’S MENDING BASKET

  Now when the day’s work is over and done

  Mother sits down by the door

  In the soft light of the low setting sun

  Turning her basketful o’er.

  So many worn little garments to mend,

  So many rents to repair –

  Who but a mother has patience to spend

  So much of time and of care?

  Wee Neddie’s stockings are out at the knees –

  That is what marbles have done –

  Bobby, his jacket has torn on the trees

  Which he was climbing “for fun.”

  Willie’s new trousers, just worn once, and yet

  See, what a terrible tear!

  Will with contrition avows his regret,

  But “doesn’t know how it got there.”

  Kitty is out at the elbows and sleeves,

  Molly has tatters galore,

  Bess is in fringes and Baby Nell grieves

  Over holes in her new pinafore.

  Each one has something for mother to do,

  Deeming with consciences light,

  No matter what may be wrong or askew,

  “Mother will fix it all right.”

  Swiftly the dear patient fingers must move,

  Swiftly the bright needle gleams,

  As she sits there at her labor of love

  Dreaming her motherly dreams.

  Smiling o’er memo
ries happy and bright,

  Sighing o’er some that are sad,

  Mother will breathe o’er her basket to-night

  A prayer for each lassie and lad.

  THE CHILDREN’S GARDEN

  “Come with me and see the children’s garden,”2 said a dear old lady, with lovely silvery puffs of hair and bright, dark eyes, to me once.

  I knew that all her own children were long ago grown up and scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and even further; but I also knew that she had many grandchildren who loved to spend the vacation days at the old homestead, and I went with her, expecting to see, perhaps, a little plot of ground, somewhat untidily cultivated by childish hands, with straggling beds of gay-hued annuals.

  So that when I really found myself in the garden I stared.

  “Is this it?” I said.

  Mrs. Adair nodded.

  “Don’t dare to tell me you don’t think it is a lovely place,” she said.

  It was a lovely place. Had it been in front of the house one might have called it a lawn; but, being where it was, it was just a garden – a lovely, quaint, unworldly old garden, where trees and flowers and shrubs grew at their own sweet will in orderly confusion.

  Just inside the gate, which was arched over by twin lilac trees, were two huge clumps of tiger lilies, like gorgeously bedight sentinels on guard.3 All around the enclosure – which was about two acres in extent – ran a double row of trees of all kinds – apples, pears and plums, mixed up with white birches, branching willows, tall poplars and even a big pine in one corner.

  Trees were scattered here and there all over it, and between them ran winding paths, bordered by shrubs and old-fashioned perennials – peonies and hollyhocks, foxgloves and “bride’s bouquet,” sweet William and “bleeding hearts,” and a score of others.4

  It was like no garden I had ever seen before – it was quite the sweetest and most delightful, with all the charm and distinction of really lovely old, old things.

  “It’s a place one might dream of, or in,” I said. “It has grown through the years – I hate brand new things. But a children’s garden!”

  Mrs. Adair smiled.

  “You expected something different, didn’t you? But this is really my children’s garden. Let us sit down and I will tell you about it.”

  We found an old stone bench under a couple of big willows, where lilies of the valley crept about our feet, with their spikes of fragrant bells.

  “You are quite right in thinking this a garden that has grown,” said Mrs. Adair. “Forty-eight years ago my little first-born son was laid in my arms, and his father said:

  “‘I’ve just bought the two-acre lot from Moore, wifie. We can have it for a garden, and I’ll go out and stick a tree down in honor of the heir.’

  “You see that magnificent willow across from us? That was Frank’s birth tree, and the beginning of our garden. It just went on from that. For every baby that came to us a new tree was planted here. That big apple tree over there is Alma’s tree.5 The rowans on the slope are Allan’s. The hedge of cherry trees on the west side were planted by his father on the day Rodney was born. Each of my ten children has a birth tree here.6

  “Then, whenever the anniversary of a birthday came round it was commemorated by a tree. Of course, some of the birthdays were in winter, and we had to wait until spring came to plant the tree, but it was always selected on the day itself.

  “As soon as the children grew old enough they did their own planting. Little Tom was only three years old when he toddled home from the woods with a pine sapling and put it in the corner there. It was a few inches high. Look at it now.

  “Twice death came to our home and took one of our babies away. But we always remembered their birthdays just the same.

  “When the children, one by one, grew up and went away to school, we marked their vacation home-comings by some addition to our garden. When they married we did the same thing. And to this day, whenever they come back to visit the old home, they bring something for the garden in memory of their visit. Charles is a missionary in Japan, you know; he brought and set out those Japanese maples the last time he was home.

  “Many of them bring rare trees and shrubs now, and they are very beautiful; but I think I love best the old-fashioned things which my boys and girls planted and tended here long ago, when they were little lads and lasses in blouses and pinafores.

  “Nowadays the grandchildren have a share in it, too, and every vacation visit leaves its souvenir here. We have never tried to keep up any formal arrangement. It was an unwritten law that anyone who planted anything here should just stick it in where he pleased.

  “We fell into the habit of commemorating our children’s successes in this way: For instance, when ten-year-old Teddy carried off the prize for general proficiency in his class he planted one of those clumps of tiger lilies at the gate, and, twelve years later, when he graduated from college, leader of his class, he came home and planted the other clump.

  “So you see, my dear, this old garden is just our family history, written out in a script of leaf and blossom. Everything in it has some treasured memory attached to it – sweet or sad or merry.

  “Edith planted these lilies of the valley here on the very first day she was able to come to the garden after a long and dangerous illness. Millicent planted the honeysuckle by the trellis on her graduation day, and that big white rose bush came from a little slip in Sara’s wedding bouquet of bride roses.

  “Do you see that big circle of snowball trees over in the centre of the garden, with the two tall silver poplars behind them? My husband and I planted the poplars on our silver wedding day, and the children planted a snowball each.

  “Next year we hope to have our golden wedding, and something more will be added to our garden.

  “Last year, when our eldest grandson came home with the soldier boys from South Africa he planted the ‘Paardeberg tree’7 – you see it – that little maple sapling behind the poplars. The boys ran mostly to trees, you know, and the girls to flowers. When I come here all the past seems to live again for me. I wouldn’t exchange this rambling old garden for the most beautiful lawn in the world, my dear.”

  “I shouldn’t think you would,” I said. “Why, it’s sacred! And the whole idea embodied in it is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard of.”

  WHAT TO TEACH YOUR SON

  Teach him to be true to his word and his work.

  To respect religion for its own sake.

  To face all difficulties with courage and cheerfulness.

  To form no friendship that can bring him into degrading associations.

  To respect other people’s convictions.

  To reverence womanhood.

  To live a clean life in thought and word, as well as in deed.

  Teach him that true manliness always commands success.

  That the best things in life are not those which can be bought with money.

  That to command he must first learn to obey.

  That there can be no compromise between honesty and dishonesty.

  That the virtues of punctuality and politeness are excellent things to cultivate.

  That a gentleman is just what the word implies – a man who is gentle in all his dealings with the opinions, feelings and weaknesses of other people.

  WHAT TO TEACH YOUR DAUGHTER

  Teach her to be true and honorable in all her relationships.

  To have a solid base for her life, to cultivate fixed habits and the strength of repose.

  To have high ideals and live up to them.

  To mean what she says and say only what it is right to mean.

  To think clearly and judge wisely.

  Teach her that the best part of all pleasures is sharing the enjoyment with somebody else.

  That work is always worthy when it is well done.

  That happiness is living in harmony with God and His laws.

  That the more she gives to her friends of her love, her conf
idence and her loyalty, the more she will receive from them in return.

  That everyone’s life is a part of God’s plan.

  That the finest manners are born of unselfishness and loving kindness.

  That nobility of character and womanliness are not dependent on education, appearance or social station.

  That a woman should be proud of her womanhood and never desecrate it by aping mannishness.

  ONE MOTHER’S OPINIONS

  The “Little Mother,” who was sewing,8 and the Schoolma’am, who was curled up in an armchair, were talking. The Schoolma’am always said she got many a hint from the “Little Mother” which helped her wonderfully in ruling her motley little subjects in the brown schoolhouse.

  Presently five-year-old Winnie ran in, bubbling over with excitement about an accident that had befallen her doll. The “Little Mother’s” sewing had to be laid aside while she listened to Winnie’s story, sympathized and comforted the little maid, and finally saw her run happily off to her play again.

  “How could you stop your work and listen to it all so interestedly, when you were in a hurry to finish your sewing?” asked the Schoolma’am. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have had the patience.”

  The “Little Mother” smiled.

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t have, either, always. But last summer I learned a lesson one day, when I was calling on Mrs. Clifford. You know her daughter, Edith Clifford, that bright, handsome girl, who is so clever and ambitious. Mrs. Clifford was talking to me about Edith. She said that Edith never confided in her – never talked to her of her plans and hopes, her failures and successes, as she did to her own girl friends, or as other girls did to their mothers. She said she felt completely shut out of her daughter’s inner life. The tears were in her eyes as she spoke. I felt so sorry for her, and yet I couldn’t help thinking she was greatly to blame herself for it, although I am sure she would have been much surprised had anyone told her so, for she has always been a most affectionate and self-sacrificing mother. But often when I was there, when Edith was a tiny girl, I have seen her come to her mother, just as Winnie came to me now, eager to tell some little incident or plan which seemed very trifling to a busy woman, but of great importance in the eyes of a child. Mrs. Clifford would push her away, sometimes impatiently, saying: ‘Edith, dear, mother is too busy,’ or ‘There, there, I haven’t time to bother now.’ Edith’s face would cloud over and she would go away with quivering lips. What wonder if, after repeated repulses, the child came to think that none of her little interests mattered to her mother? She has grown up with that impression, and it can never be effaced.9 I thought of all this while Mrs. Clifford was speaking, and I made a compact with myself never to risk the loss of my child’s confidence in like manner. I believe that if Winnie, when she comes to me in her small trials and triumphs now, always finds me ready to listen and sympathize or suggest, she will continue to do so when she grows into young girlhood.”