A Name for Herself

by L. M. Montgomery

  In the autumn of 1895 I went to Halifax and spent the winter taking a selected course in English literature at Dalhousie College. Through the winter came a “Big Week” for me. On Monday I received a letter from Golden Days, a Philadelphia juvenile, accepting a short story I had sent there and enclosing a cheque for five dollars.154 It was the first money my pen had ever earned; I did not squander it in riotous living,155 neither did I invest it in necessary boots and gloves. I went up town and bought five volumes of poetry with it – Tennyson, Byron, Milton, Longfellow, Whittier. I wanted something I could keep for ever in memory of having “arrived.”156

  On Wednesday of the same week I won the prize of five dollars offered by the Halifax Evening Mail for the best letter on the subject, “Which has the greater patience – man or woman?”

  FIGURE 22 My “red letter day” came when I was nineteen and received my first cheque for a short story. I did not squander that five dollars in riotous living, nor invest it in necessary boots and gloves; no, I bought five volumes of poetry with it. I wanted something I could keep forever in memory of having “arrived.” (Courtesy of the L.M. Montgomery Collection, Archival and Special Collections, University of Guelph Library.)

  My letter was in the form of some verses, which I had composed during a sleepless night and got up at three o’clock in the wee sma’ hours to write down.157 On Saturday the Youth’s Companion sent me a cheque for twelve dollars for a poem.158 I really felt quite bloated with so much wealth. Never in my life, before or since have I been so rich!

  After my Dalhousie winter I taught school for two more years. In those two years I wrote scores of stories, generally for Sunday School publications and juvenile periodicals. The following entry from my journal refers to this period:

  “I have grubbed away industriously all this summer and ground out stories and verses on days so hot that I feared my very marrow would melt and my gray matter be hopelessly sizzled up. But oh, I love my work! I love spinning stories, and I love to sit by the window of my room and shape some ‘airy fairy’ fancy into verse. I have got on well this summer and added several new journals to my list. They are a varied assortment, and their separate tastes all have to be catered to. I write a great many juvenile stories. I like doing these, but I should like it better if I didn’t have to drag a ‘moral’ into most of them. They won’t sell without it, as a rule. So in the moral must go, broad or subtle, as suits the fibre of the particular editor I have in view. The kind of juvenile story I like best to write – and read, too, for the matter of that – is a good, jolly one, ‘art for art’s sake,’ or rather ‘fun for fun’s sake,’ with no insidious moral hidden away in it like a pill in a spoonful of jam!”159

  It was not always hot weather when I was writing. During one of those winters of school teaching I boarded in a very cold farmhouse. In the evenings, after a day of strenuous school work, I would be too tired to write. So I religiously arose an hour earlier in the mornings for that purpose. For five months I got up at six o’clock and dressed by lamplight. The fires would not yet be on, of course, and the house would be very cold. But I would put on a heavy coat, sit on my feet to keep them from freezing, and with fingers so cramped that I could scarcely hold the pen, I would write my “stint” for the day.160 Sometimes it would be a poem in which I would carol blithely of blue skies and rippling brooks and flowery meads! Then I would thaw out my hands, eat breakfast and go to school.

  When people say to me, as they occasionally do, “Oh, how I envy you your gift, how I wish I could write as you do,” I am inclined to wonder, with some inward amusement, how much they would have envied me on those dark, cold, winter mornings of my apprenticeship.161

  Grandfather died in 1898 and Grandmother was left alone in the old homestead. So I gave up teaching and stayed home with her. By 1901 I was beginning to make a “livable” income for myself by my pen, though that did not mean that everything I wrote was accepted on its first journey. Far from it. Nine out of ten manuscripts came back to me. But I sent them out over and over again, and eventually they found resting places. Another extract from my journal may serve as a sort of milestone to show how far I had travelled.

  “March 21, 1901.

  “Munsey’s came to-day with my poem ‘Comparisons’ in it, illustrated.162 It really looked nice. I’ve been quite in luck of late, for several new and good magazines have opened their portals to this poor wandering sheepkin of thorny literary ways. I feel that I am improving and developing in regard to my verses. I suppose it would be strange if I did not, considering how hard I study and work. Every now and then I write a poem which serves as a sort of landmark to emphasize my progress. I know, by looking back, that I could not have written it six months, or a year, or four years ago, any more than I could have made a garment the material of which was still unwoven. I wrote two poems this week. A year ago, I could not have written them, but now they come easily and naturally. This encourages me to hope that in the future I may achieve something worth while. I never expect to be famous. I merely want to have a recognized place among good workers in my chosen profession. That, I honestly believe, is happiness, and the harder to win the sweeter and more lasting when won.”163

  In the fall of 1901 I went again to Halifax and worked for the winter on the staff of the Daily Echo, the evening edition of the Chronicle. A series of extracts from my journal will tell the tale of that experience with sufficient fulness.

  “11 November, 1901.

  “I am here alone in the office of the Daily Echo. The paper is gone to press and the extra proofs have not yet begun to come down. Overhead, in the composing room, they are rolling machines and making a diabolical noise. Outside of the window the engine exhaust is puffing furiously. In the inner office two reporters are having a wrangle. And here sit I – the Echo proof-reader and general handy-man. Quite a ‘presto change’ from last entry!164

  “I’m a newspaper woman!

  “Sounds nice? Yes, and the reality is very nice, too. Being of the earth, it is earthy, and has its drawbacks. Life in a newspaper office isn’t all ‘beer and skittles’ any more than anywhere else.165 But on the whole it is not a bad life at all!166 I rather like proofreading, although it is tedious. The headlines and editorials are my worst thorns in the flesh.167 Headlines have a natural tendency to depravity, and the editor-in-chief has a ghastly habit of making puns over which I am apt to come to grief. In spite of all my care ‘errors will creep in’ and then there is the mischief to pay. When I have nightmares now they are of headlines wildly askew and editorials hopelessly hocussed, which an infuriated chief is flourishing in my face.

  “The paper goes to press at 2.30, but I have to stay till six to answer the ’phone, sign for wires, and read extra proofs.

  “On Saturdays the Echo has a lot of extra stuff, a page of ‘society letters’ among the rest. It usually falls to my lot to edit these. Can’t say I fancy the job much, but the only thing I positively abhor is ‘faking’ a society letter. This is one of the tricks of newspaperdom. When a society letter fails to turn up from a certain place – say from Windsor – in due time, the news editor slaps a Windsor weekly down before me and says blandly, ‘Fake up a society letter from that, Miss Montgomery.’

  “So poor Miss Montgomery goes meekly to work, and concocts an introductory paragraph or so about ‘autumn leaves’ and ‘mellow days’ and ‘October frosts,’ or any old stuff like that to suit the season. Then I go carefully over the columns of the weekly, clip out all the available personals and news items, about weddings, and engagements, and teas, etc., hash them up in epistolary style, forge the Windsor correspondent’s nom de plume – and there’s your society letter!168 I used to include funerals, too, but I found the news editor blue-pencilled them. Evidently funerals have no place in society.

  “Then I write a column or so of giddy paragraphs for Monday’s Echo. I call it ‘Around the Tea-Table,’ and sign it ‘Cynthia.’169

  “My office is a back room looking out on a back yard
in the middle of the block. I don’t know that all the Haligonian washerwomen live around it, but certainly a good percentage of them must, for the yard is a network of lines from which sundry and divers garments are always streaming gaily to the breezes. On the ground and over the roof cats are prowling continually, and when they fight, the walls resound with their howls. Most of them are lank, starved-looking beasties enough, but there is one lovely gray fellow who basks on a window sill opposite me and looks so much like ‘Dafty’ that, when I look at him, I could squeeze out a homesick tear if I were not afraid that it would wash a clean spot on my grimy face.170 This office is really the worst place for getting dirty I ever was in.”

  “November 18, 1901.171

  “Have had a difficult time trying to arrange for enough spare minutes to do some writing. I could not write in the evenings, I was always too tired. Besides, I had to keep my buttons sewed on and my stockings darned. Then I reverted to my old practice, and tried getting up at six in the morning. But it did not work, as of yore. I could never get to bed as early as I could when I was a country ‘schoolma’am’ and I found it impossible to do without a certain amount of sleep.

  “There was only one alternative.

  “Hitherto, I had thought that undisturbed solitude was necessary that the fire of genius might burn and even the fire for pot-boiling. I must be alone, and the room must be quiet. I could never have even imagined that I could possibly write anything in a newspaper office, with rolls of proof shooting down every ten minutes, people coming and conversing, telephones ringing, and machines being thumped and dragged overhead. I would have laughed at the idea, yea, I would have laughed it to scorn. But the impossible has happened. I am of one mind with the Irishman who said you could get used to anything, even to being hanged!172

  “All my spare time here I write, and not such bad stuff either, since the Delineator, the Smart Set and Ainslies’ have taken some of it.173 I have grown accustomed to stopping in the middle of a paragraph to interview a prowling caller, and to pausing in full career after an elusive rhyme, to read a lot of proof, and snarled-up copy.”

  “Saturday, December 8, 1901.174

  “Of late I’ve been Busy with a capital B. ’Tending to office work, writing pot-boilers, making Christmas presents, etc., mostly etc.

  “One of the ‘etcs.’ is a job I heartily detest. It makes my soul cringe. It is bad enough to have your flesh cringe, but when it strikes into your soul it gets on your spiritual nerves terribly. We are giving all the firms who advertise with us a free ‘write-up’ of their holiday goods, and I have to visit all the stores, interview the proprietors, and crystallize my information into two ‘sticks’ of copy. From three to five every afternoon I potter around the business blocks until my nose is purple with the cold and my fingers numb from much scribbling of notes.”175

  “Wednesday, December 12, 1901.176

  “It is an ill wind that blows no good and my disagreeable assignment has blown me some. The other evening I went in to write up the Bon Marche, which sets up to be the millinery establishment of Halifax, and I found the proprietor very genial.177 He said he was delighted that the Echo had sent a lady, and by way of encouraging it not to weary in well doing178 he would send me up one of the new walking hats if I gave the Bon Marche a good write-up. I rather thought he was only joking, but sure enough, when the write-up came out yesterday, up came the hat, and a very pretty one it is too.”

  “Thursday, December 20, 1901.179

  “All the odd jobs that go a-begging in this office are handed over to the present scribe. The very queerest one up to date came yesterday.

  “The compositors were setting up, for the weekly edition, a story called ‘A Royal Betrothal,’ taken from an English paper, and when about half through they lost the copy. Whereupon the news-editor requested me to go to and write an ‘end’ for the story. At first I did not think I could. What was set up of the story was not enough to give me any insight into the solution of the plot. More over, my knowledge of royal love affairs is limited, and I have not been accustomed to write with flippant levity of kings and queens.

  “However, I fell to work and somehow got it done. To-day it came out, and as yet nobody has guessed where the ‘seam’ comes in. If the original author ever beholds it, I wonder what he will think.”180

  I may remark, in passing, that more than ten years afterward I came across a copy of the original story in an old scrapbook, and was much amused to discover that the author’s development of the plot was about as different from mine as anything could possibly be.

  “Thursday, December 27th, 1901.

  “Christmas is over. I had been rather dreading it, for I had been expecting to feel very much the stranger in a strange land.181 But, as usual, anticipation was discounted by realization. I had a very pleasant time although not, of course, so wildly exhilarating as to endanger life, limb or nerves, which was, no doubt, just as well.

  “I had a holiday, the first since coming here, and so was haunted all day by the impression that it was Sunday. I had dinner at the Halifax with B. and spent the afternoon with her. In the evening we went to the opera to see The Little Minister. It was good but not nearly so good as the book. I don’t care for dramatized novels. They always jar on my preconceptions of the characters. Also, I had to write a criticism of the play and cast for the Chronicle and I dislike that very much.”182

  “Saturday, March 29, 1902.183

  “This week has been a miserable one of rain and fog and neuralgia. But I’ve lived through it. I’ve read proofs and dissected headlines and fought with compositors and bandied jokes with the marine editor. I have ground out various blameless rhymes for a consideration of filthy lucre, and I’ve written one real poem out of my heart.

  “I hate my ‘pot-boiling’ stuff. But it gives me the keenest pleasure to write something that is good, a fit and proper incarnation of the art I worship. The news-editor has just been in to give me an assignment for to-morrow, bad ’cess to him.184 It is Easter Sunday, and I have to write up the ‘parade’ down Pleasant Street after church, for Monday’s Echo.”185

  “Palmday,186 May 3, 1902.

  “I spent the afternoon ‘expurgating’ a novel for the news-editor’s use and behoof. When he was away on his vacation his substitute began to run a serial in the Echo called ‘Under the Shadow.’187 Instead of getting some A.P.A.188 stuff as he should have done, he simply bought a sensational novel and used it. It was very long and was only about half done when the news-editor returned. So, as it would run all summer, in its present form, I was bidden to take it and cut mercilessly out all unnecessary stuff. I have followed instructions, cutting out most of the kisses and embraces, two-thirds of the love-making, and all the descriptions, with the happy result that I have reduced it to about a third of its normal length, and all I can say is ‘Lord, have mercy on the soul of the compositor who has to set it up in its present mutilated condition.’”189

  “Saturday, May 31, 1901.

  “I had a good internal laugh to-night. I was in a street car and two ladies beside me were discussing the serial that had just ended in the Echo. ‘You know,’ said one, ‘it was the strangest story I ever read. It wandered on, chapter after chapter, for weeks, and never seemed to get anywhere; and then it just finished up in eight chapters, licketty-split. I can’t understand it!’

  “I could have solved the mystery, but I didn’t.”190

  I WRITE ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

  In June, 1902, I returned to Cavendish, where I remained unbrokenly for the next nine years. For the first two years after my return I wrote only short stories and serials as before. But I was beginning to think of writing a book.191 It had always been my hope and ambition to write one. But I never seemed able to make a beginning.

  I have always hated beginning a story. When I get the first paragraph written I feel as though it were half done. The rest comes easily. To begin a book, therefore, seemed quite a stupendous task. Besides, I did not see just how I
could get time for it. I could not afford to take the time from my regular writing hours. And, in the end, I never deliberately sat down and said “Go to! Here are pens, paper, ink and plot. Let me write a book.” It really all just “happened.”

  I had always kept a notebook in which I jotted down, as they occurred to me, ideas for plots, incidents, characters, and descriptions. In the spring of 1904 I was looking over this notebook in search of some idea for a short serial I wanted to write for a certain Sunday School paper. I found a faded entry, written many years before: “Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them.” I thought this would do. I began to block out the chapters, devise and select incidents and “brood up” my heroine. Anne – she was not so named of malice aforethought, but flashed into my fancy already christened, even to the all-important “e” – began to expand in such a fashion that she soon seemed very real to me and took possession of me to an unusual extent. She appealed to me, and I thought it rather a shame to waste her on an ephemeral little serial. Then the thought came, “Write a book. You have the central idea. All you need do is to spread it out over enough chapters to amount to a book.”

  The result was Anne of Green Gables. I wrote it in the evenings after my regular day’s work was done, wrote most of it at the window of the little gable room which had been mine for many years. I began it, as I have said, in the spring of 1904. I finished it in the October of 1905.192

  Ever since my first book was published I have been persecuted by the question “Was so-and-so the original of such-and-such in your book?” And behind my back they don’t put it in the interrogative form, but in the affirmative. I know many people who have asserted that they are well acquainted with the “originals” of my characters. Now, for my own part, I have never, during all the years I have studied human nature, met one human being who could, as a whole, be put into a book without injuring it. Any artist knows that to paint exactly from life is to give a false impression of the subject. Study from life he must, copying suitable heads or arms, appropriating bits of character, personal or mental idiosyncracies, “making use of the real to perfect the ideal.”193