2 These two pieces appear in Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader.
3 I have consulted surviving copies of issues of Everywoman’s World at Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa), on microfilm, and digitally through the Early Canadiana Online searchable database, but several gaps remain. Although I have verified that Anglin’s “My Career” began in the December 1916 issue and ended in the April 1917 issue and that “Julia Arthur’s Own Story of Her Career” began in May 1916 and ended in September 1916, I have been unable to locate the issues in which their respective remaining instalments appeared.
4 Farmer, “Will My Daughter Be an Author?,” 8. This image and this caption appear unidentified in SJLMM, 1: 344, and in Montgomery, 12 October 1906, in CJLMM, 2: 154.
5 Everywoman’s World, “The Ground Floor,” 1.
6 Church and De Bubna, “Tam: The Story of a Woman” (March 1884), 237.
7 Montgomery, 21 October 1916, in LMMCJ, 1: 251. See also Montgomery, 5 January 1917, in LMMCJ, 1: 268–69; Montgomery, 22 November 1926, in LMMCJ, 4: 97–98.
8 Preface to AP, 6.
9 For more on the publication and reception of the 1974 book version of “The Alpine Path,” see Lefebvre, “Introduction: A Critical Heritage,” 4–5; Lefebvre, “Epilogue,” 362–63.
10 See Rubio, “Satire, Realism, and Imagination”; Fredeman, “The Land of Lost Content”; Little, “But What about Jane?” This journal issue, minus the book reviews appearing therein, was reprinted in book form as L.M. Montgomery: An Assessment, edited by John Robert Sorfleet, in 1976.
11 Montgomery, 5 January 1917, in LMMCJ, 1: 269.
12 Everywoman’s World, editors’ note, 8.
13 Murray Simonski is credited as “superintending editor” on 1917 issues of this magazine, the only editor listed on the masthead. Montgomery mentioned correspondence with an editor in a journal entry dated January 1917, but she does not identify that editor by name. See Montgomery, 5 January 1917, in LMMCJ, 1: 268.
14 Montgomery did, in fact, refer publicly to her development of her career as a writer during her lifetime, including a short autobiographical sketch she published in July 1912 in The Editor: The Journal of Information for Literary Workers, although she downplayed her career in a different way than she does here: “There isn’t really much to say regarding my literary career. It has been made up of two elements: ‘hard work’ and ‘stick to it’” (Montgomery, “Letters from the Literati,” 4; see also Lefebvre, “Introduction: A Life in Print,” 9–10).
15 In a journal entry dated 1916 but not published until 2016, Montgomery revealed part of the deal of this editor’s “whim”: “They want 30,000 words” (Montgomery, 21 October 2016, in LMMCJ, 1: 251). The published text fell somewhat short of this mark at 25,000 words, not including the captions accompanying her photographs; perhaps for this reason, but more likely due to narrow expectations about women’s life narratives, Montgomery was asked for an additional thousand words on her love affairs. She refused to discuss her romances in such a public forum but took the opportunity to detail them in her journal. See Montgomery, 5 January 1917, in LMMCJ, 1: 269–75.
16 Properly, “The Fringed Gentian,” a poem that appears in chapter 5, “Fringed Gentian,” of the sixteen-chapter serial “Tam! The Story of a Woman” by Ella Rodman Church and Augusta de Bubna, in the March 1884 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book of Philadelphia. The clipping in one of Montgomery’s scrapbooks (see Epperly, Imagining Anne, 127) matches the Godey’s text. The source of this poem was identified by Carol Gaboury in the late 1980s (see “In Memoriam,” 1; Wiggins, L.M. Montgomery, 96). The poem and Montgomery’s changes to its text are discussed in the headnote to this piece. The Shining Scroll, a periodical of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society (Minnesota) edited by Mary Beth Cavert and Carolyn Strom Collins, takes its title from this poem.
17 Here, Montgomery omits her birthdate of 30 November 1874. A profile of Montgomery by Marjory MacMurchy published in 1914 had listed Montgomery’s birth year as 1877 (MacMurchy, “L.M. Montgomery of the Island,” 129), a mistake that persisted in several obituaries after her death on 24 April 1942; an earlier profile by MacMurchy had listed Montgomery’s birthdate as “some time in the seventies or eighties of the nineteenth century” (MacMurchy, “L.M. Montgomery: Story Writer,” 122).
18 Properly, “compass’d by the inviolate sea.” From “To the Queen,” a poem by Tennyson.
19 Properly, “haunt of ancient Peace.” From “The Palace of Art,” a poem by Tennyson.
20 Montgomery would rework parts of this paragraph for her contribution to The Spirit of Canada, published in 1939 (see Montgomery, “Prince Edward Island,” 353).
21 L.M. Montgomery dedicated Anne of Green Gables, her first book, to the memory of her father (1841–1900) and of her mother (1853–1876), who had married each other on 4 March 1874, less than nine months before her birth. See “Family Tree,” 505; Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery, 27.
22 Montgomery reveals here only part of her ancestry. In a piece published in 1929 in Ontario Library Review, she added Irish and French ancestors to the list (Montgomery, “An Autobiographical Sketch,” 255). In a journal entry also dated 1929, she considered that she was “a queer mixture racially – the Scotch Macneills, the English Woolners and Penmans, the Irish of Mary McShannon (Hugh Montgomery’s wife) and that far-off French descent” (Montgomery, 27 June 1929, in LMMCJ, 4: 265).
23 Montgomery’s great-great-grandparents, Hugh Montgomery and Mary McShannon, had arrived in Prince Edward Island in 1769 (see Rubio and Waterston, Introduction to SJLMM, 1: xiii). She told this anecdote with only minor variations in Montgomery, 27 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 411. Years later, she told this story to G.B. MacMillan, but with some new details: in this telling, PEI at the time of Hugh and Mary Montgomery’s arrival was “all woods, except for a few French and Indian settlements around the shore,” and she recorded Mary Montgomery’s words used to announce her intention never to set foot on a boat again: “Here I stay” (Montgomery to MacMillan, 7 March 1939, in MDMM, 196–97). In Emily of New Moon, this story appears in similar form and features Hugh Murray and Mary Shipley, ancestors of Emily Byrd Starr – except in this version of the tale, the words “Here I Stay” appear on Mary Shipley Murray’s tombstone as a form of revenge from her husband (ENM, 73–74).
24 The American Revolutionary War, during which the thirteen colonies in the United States fought for independence against Great Britain, concluded in 1783.
25 Bedeque, a rural community in the western part of Prince Edward Island. Montgomery taught in Lower Bedeque in 1897–1898.
26 Richmond Bay, now known as Malpeque Bay, on the north shore of PEI. Montgomery tells this story with only minor variations in her journal, but with one major difference involving what she calls “two conflicting stories as to their coming to P.E. Island.” The first was that the Penmans had been “a family of United Empire Loyalists who came to Canada at the close of the American War of Independence” and that the beauty of the Penman daughters allowed them to marry well in spite of the family’s poverty, and the second concerned George Penman’s job as paymaster in the British army. In this account, Montgomery marries the two “conflicting” stories into one (see Montgomery, 23 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 405). She also told the story with the same details in an early letter to G.B. MacMillan; see Montgomery to MacMillan, 5 June 1905, in MDMM, 9–10. Prior to reworking this story into The Story Girl (see SG, 72–79), she had published a version of it as a stand-alone short story, “A Pioneer Wooing,” in 1903.
27 See “From Prince Albert to P.E. Island,” note 28, above.
28 The term “suffragette,” the earliest known usage of which is 1906, refers to “a female supporter of the cause of women’s political enfranchisement, esp. one of a violent or ‘militant’ type” (OED). The major goal of women’s suffrage was to obtain the vote for women. Women in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta were given the right to vote in provincial elections in 1916, with women in British Columbia and
Ontario following in 1917, the year this piece was published; women were then granted the right to vote in federal elections in 1918. See Veronica Strong-Boag, “Women’s Suffrage in Canada,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, last modified 25 August 2016, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/suffrage/. In a 1910 interview, Montgomery is quoted as claiming that “no, I am not a suffragette … I am a quiet, plain sort of person, and while I believe a woman, if intelligent, should be allowed to vote, I would have no use for suffrage myself”; another report from this visit to Boston confirmed the impression that Montgomery “has no favor for woman suffrage” (“Says Woman’s Place,” 51; “Miss L.M. Montgomery,” 65).
29 According to Mary Henley Rubio, “Maud’s maternal great-great-grandfather, John Macneill (born circa 1750), had come to Charlottetown from the Kintyre peninsula of Argyllshire, Scotland, around 1772” (Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery, 22). In her journal, Montgomery uses similar phrasing but dates John Macneill’s arrival in Canada “somewhere around the year 1780” (Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 373).
30 Hector Macneill (1746–1818), Scottish poet. This description of Montgomery’s poet relative and the titles of these poems appear with minor variations in a 1913 profile by MacMurchy (see MacMurchy, “L.M. Montgomery: Story Writer,” 122). See also Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 373. Robert Burns (1759–1796), Scottish poet.
31 Montgomery mentions William Macneill in her journals using similar phrasing, but omits here the fact that he “was the first white male English child – and I think the first white male child of any race – to be born in Charlottetown” (Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 373).
32 George III (1738–1820) ruled as King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1801, then as King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death.
33 This body of water features prominently in Anne of Green Gables. As Montgomery states later in this memoir, it is often attributed erroneously to Cavendish Pond. See Montgomery, 27 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 350.
34 This anecdote about Elizabeth Townsend appears in slightly different form – minus the epitaph on her husband’s tombstone – in Montgomery, 27 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 411.
35 Antigua is an island in the West Indies.
36 This epitaph appears in nearly identical form in Montgomery, 27 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 409–10, except that James Townsend’s age at his death is listed as his “67th year,” rather than his eighty-seventh.
37 Compare this with Montgomery’s private assessment about Grandfather Macneill in her journal: “He had a rich, poetic mind, a keen intelligence and a refined perception. He was a good conversationalist and a lover of nature. His faults were an irritable temper, a vanity that sometimes made him a little ridiculous and at other times smarted under imaginary slights, and, worst of all, an utter disregard of the feelings of other people – or, rather, a failure to realize that they had any feelings” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 269).
38 This description of her great-uncle appears in longer form in her journal, where she refers to him as “Uncle Jimmie,” suggesting he was a prototype for “Cousin Jimmy” in Emily of New Moon and its sequels. See Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 388–89.
39 The words “mute inglorious” originate in “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” a poem by Thomas Gray (1716–1771), English poet.
40 It was actually The Golden Road (1913) that Montgomery had dedicated “to the memory of Aunt Mary Lawson who told me many of the tales repeated by the Story Girl.” She had dedicated The Story Girl “to my cousin Frederica E. Campbell in remembrance of old days, old dreams, and old laughter.” Mary Lawson had died in 1912 (see Montgomery, 10 October 1912, in LMMCJ, 1: 86–87).
41 In her journals, in which this description of Aunt Mary Lawson appears with only minor variations, Montgomery referred to PEI as a “colony” rather than as a “Province” (Montgomery, 8 June 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 413).
42 Clara Macneill Montgomery died of tuberculosis on 14 September 1876 (Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery, 27). The description here of Montgomery’s memory of her mother’s funeral appears with only minor variations in Montgomery, 8 April 1898, in CJLMM, 1: 390; see also Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 249.
43 Montgomery claimed in her journal that she had already written of her earliest memory for an audience, in the form of an English assignment at Dalhousie University for Archibald MacMechan, who gave her positive feedback on it (see Montgomery, 9 October 1895, in CJLMM, 1: 290). Chapter 1 of the 1974 book version of “The Alpine Path” ends here.
44 This statement attributed to Aunt Mary Lawson also appears in Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 390.
45 Montgomery repeated this saying in her journals: see Montgomery, 2 June 1931, in SJLMM, 4: 125. This joke appears with different surnames in Anne’s House of Dreams (see AHD, 45), which was published the same year as “The Alpine Path.”
46 Compare this to a journal entry dated 1910: “The first six years of my life are very hazy. I do not seem to have any connected memories of them. Here and there a picture like scene stands out in vivid colours” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 250). Three additional early memories included in this journal entry – all of them ending in young Montgomery screaming in terror – are omitted from this public memoir.
47 Emily Macneill (1856–1927), the younger sister of Montgomery’s mother, who married John Montgomery of Malpeque (Rubio and Waterston, in CJLMM, 1: 115n5). Commenting on this aunt in a journal entry dated 1905, Montgomery admitted, “I have never cared for her … I can never forgive her for the sneer and slurs she used to call upon my childish ambitions and my childish faults” (Montgomery, 2 January 1905, in CJLMM, 2: 117).
48 Properly, “No brilliant but distant shore.” From “Heaven,” an unsigned mid-nineteenth-century poem.
49 Montgomery tells this anecdote about her childhood belief in heaven with only minor variations in Montgomery, 27 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 357. In Anne of Avonlea, young Davy Keith would gain a similar misunderstanding about the location of heaven (see AA, 174–75).
50 “But now ’tis little joy / To know I’m farther off from heav’n /Than when I was a boy.” From “I Remember, I Remember,” a poem by Thomas Hood (1799–1845), English poet. This quotation also appears in Montgomery, 27 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 357.
51 Properly, “Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” From “The Higher Pantheism,” a poem by Tennyson.
52 See Revelation 21:21 (KJV): “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”
53 Built in the 1870s, the Senator Donald Montgomery House in Park Corner, 20 kilometres from Cavendish. Also known as the Lucy Maud Montgomery Heritage Museum, it was reopened as Montgomery Inn in 2016.
54 A slightly different version of this anecdote appears in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 250–52.
55 Montgomery here omits a sentence that appears in the version of this story told in her journal: “One of these – to hold the burned hand in a saucer of kerosene oil – made the burn far worse” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 251).
56 This anecdote is told with only minor variations in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 252. Another version of this anecdote in Montgomery’s journals is told in a substantially different way, although the only detail that contradicts this version is that it was young Montgomery who read this prediction in the newspaper. See Montgomery, 23 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 407.
57 See 1 Corinthians 15:52 (KJV).
58 In the version of this anecdote appearing in her journals, the quotation reads “low-descending sun.” Properly, “Count that day lost whose low-descending sun / Views from thy hand no worthy action done,” an unsigned poem from the late seventeenth century. The quoted phrase also appears in Montgomery, “[Seasons in the Woods],” 91.
> 59 See Isaiah 63:3 (KJV): “I have trodden the winepress alone.”
60 This anecdote appears with only slight variations in Montgomery’s journals, in which she identified this man as “old Mr. Muirhead of Summerside” (Montgomery, 23 May 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 406–7).
61 See Romans 3:13 (KJV). The first instalment of the 1917 version of “The Alpine Path” ends here, as does chapter 2 of the 1974 book version.
62 These last two sentences appear with only minor variations in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 254.
63 Montgomery’s recollections of having to eat dinner at home and to wear buttoned boots and “baby aprons” to school first appear with minor variations in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 261.
64 In her journals, in which this recollection of her humiliating second day of school is told with only minor variations, Montgomery identified this “big” girl as “Pensie Macneill, I think” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 253). Montgomery and Penzie (Pensie) Macneill (1872–1906) had been close childhood friends; a sample of letters written by the adolescent Montgomery and sent to Penzie during the former’s year in Saskatchewan are included in Bolger, The Years Before “Anne,” 86–104, 111–33. Recollections of Penzie are included in Montgomery’s 1936 article “Come Back with Me to Prince Edward Island,” which centres on a farm diary that had been kept by Penzie’s father, Charles Macneill.
65 The version of this anecdote in Montgomery’s journals includes details about Montgomery’s teachers and classmates that are omitted here (see Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 253–54).
66 Produced in Great Britain, the Royal School Primer and the six Readers that followed this volume consisted of fiction, poetry, spelling, reading comprehension, and writing exercises. In many cases, editions were published to dovetail with the curricula of specific provinces.
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