Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Woman Behind The Books - Memoirs & Private Letters (Including The Complete Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy & The Blue Castle). Lucy Maud Montgomery
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L. M. Montgomery.
Cavendish, P.E.I.,
Sunday Evening,
December 16, 1906.
My dear Mr. W.:—
This is good weather for writing letters! As for sending them, that is a horse of another colour. We have a mail now just when the mailman can get along—every third day as a rule. Between times we have storms.
This is the evening of a very dull sleepy Sunday. We had no service near and couldn’t have gone to it if there had been owing to last night’s storm. I did start out after tea, grimly determined to do a constitutional; but had to give up and come back, the drifts proving too much for me. So I’ll write letters tonight for my Presbyterian ancestors are so thickly snowed over that I don’t think they’ll be able to turn in their graves because of it.
I thought you’d have a smile or two over that MS I sent. I re-read it before sending it to its owner and I laughed until I nearly cried. Your definition of “incoherent grasshopperishness” expressed all that criticism could say of it. Had I been the editor of Lippincotts I think I’d have bought the story and published it in the Walnuts and Wine department. Certainly nothing could be funnier.
No, I haven’t any flowers outside now. But I have some indoors. I have a lovely ’mum out—seven or eight great fluffy pale pink flowers out on it. The ’mum is a society lady, all frills and chiffons and languid grace. My bulbs are beginning to bloom too and I expect a continuance of them right through the winter. My Roman Narcissus and white hyacinths are out now. The latter are the sweetest things God ever made. They seem more like the souls of flowers than like flowers themselves. Yes, I like tall flowers too—and glowing deep-tinted riotous ones—and every kind. But I love best the flowers I coax into bloom myself, be they tall or small, white or rosy. It seems as if I were taking a hand in creation—giving life to those unsightly bulbs that hide such rainbow possibilities in their cores. Isn’t it strange how such ugly things can give birth to such beauty—the old mystery of good, like a white lily, springing out of the muck and mire of evil. It is possible that evil is necessary to the blossoming of good, just as the dirty clay and foul-smelling fertilizers are necessary to the unfolding of those blossoms! There’s a theological problem for you!
I smiled over one question in your letter. Do I do any housework? Well, rather—about all that is done here. I like it, too, except the rougher parts, and I’m very fond of cooking, etc., etc.
Well, I must tell you my great news right off. I think I’ve mortified the flesh sufficiently by holding it back till the fifth page. Two weeks ago Everybody’s accepted a short story of mine and sent me one hundred dollars for it! It was about 5000 words long and humorous. It had also been rejected twice, once by a magazine that pays $30 per story and once by a magazine that pays ten. Next? Of course I felt pleasantly tickled.
After this other successes seem small but I’ve got into several new places. The Blue Book, published by the Red Book Co. of Chicago, took a story for ten dollars. The Housekeeper (but I’d got into this before) paid $20 for an oft-rejected story. The Rural Magazine, Chicago, accepted a rural story to be paid for on publication. Watson’s Magazine New York sent $10 for a poem lately. I never got more than $5 or four from them for a poem before, but this was a long Christmas one. So far this year I’ve made over seven hundred dollars.
Did you ever read a children’s fairy tale Through the Looking Glass? It’s quite a classic in its way and the most delicious nonsense. One of the characters has by long practice become able “to believe seven impossible things every morning before breakfast.” But this faculty is not confined to the “Red Queen,” I imagine, judging from the beliefs some people entertain!
I haven’t got hold of many new books of late. One of the few was The Future Life by a noted French writer. It was interesting but not at all conclusive and left me with the conviction that the author, great scientist and all as he is, doesn’t really know a thing more about the future life than I myself know—or than anybody else knows for that matter. Argument or evidence can’t prove it—only the soul speaking in us can assure us of its own immortality. But in what shape is that immortality to be! Will I be I? Isn’t it strange—the horror with which we shrink from the thought of losing our individuality? Total annihilation would be preferable to becoming anybody else, even though that anybody else might be a hundred-fold better and nobler than ourselves.
Lately I’ve been thrashing out a new conception of life after death but so far I haven’t got to the stage where I can express it clearly in words. I don’t mean that it’s a belief—no, no, merely a theory. I don’t think I have really any belief in any particular kind of a future life. I believe that there is life after death, that’s all.
I have nothing more to say. Since the first of November I’ve hardly been out of our own yard—never once more than a mile from home. The weather last month was all rain—this month it’s all snow. So I’m going to cut this letter right off here and now. Thanks for your last picture postal. Best wishes for the Xmas season.
Yours sincerely,
L. M. Montgomery.
Cavendish, P.E.I.,
Thursday,
May 2, 1907.
My dear Mr. W.:—
We are just in the middle of housecleaning! I fear that statement will be more or less wasted on a mere man. If it were made to a woman she would appreciate the compliment of my sitting down to write her after a day of it. For the past four days I’ve been scrubbing and whitewashing and digging out old corners and I feel as if all the dust I’ve stirred up and swept out and washed off has got into my soul and settled there and will remain there forever, making it hopelessly black and grimy and unwholesome. Of course I know it won’t but knowing is such a different thing from believing.
Well, I must simply tell you my great news right off! To pretend indifference and try to answer your letter first would be an affectation of which I shall not be guilty. I am blatantly pleased and proud and happy and I shan’t make any pretence of not being so.
Well, last fall and winter I went to work and wrote a book. I didn’t squeak a word to anyone about it because I feared desperately I wouldn’t find a publisher for it. When I got it finished and typewritten I sent it to the L. C. Page Co. of Boston and a fortnight ago, after two months of suspense I got a letter from them accepting my book and offering to publish it on the 10-per cent royalty basis!
Don’t stick up your ears now, imagining that the great Canadian novel has been written at last. Nothing of the sort. It is merely a juvenilish story, ostensibly for girls; but as I found the MS. rather interesting while reading it over lately I am not without hope that grown-ups may like it a little. Its title is Anne of Green Gables and the publishers seem to think it will succeed as they want me to go right to work on a sequel to it. I don’t know whether I can do that and make it worth while however.
The Page Co. is a good company. Not one of the top-notchers, of course, such as Harpers or Macmillans: but it has published several successful books by well-known authors, including Charles G. D. Roberts and Bliss Carman.
I signed the contract today; it is a fearsomely legal looking document all red seals and “saids” and “whereases.” There is only one clause in it I don’t altogether like. I have to bind myself to give them the refusal of all the books I may write for the next five years. The insertion of such a clause is rather complimentary, I suppose, but I’d rather not have to agree to it. However, I’ve done so and the rest is on the knees of the gods. I don’t suppose the book will be out before the fall.
While I’m on the “trade” subject I might as well finish with it. I’ve had several successes lately; formerly I would have been delighted over them but now they are quite cast in the shade by my big fish.
The Housekeeper, Minneapolis, have accepted 20,000 word serial. I am to be paid the tenth of May. Don’t know what I will get but they pay