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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sensation of going under its influence and when I come out of it I never feel one unpleasant after effect. My dentist tells me he never knew anybody like me in this respect. Just at the moment when I return to consciousness I have a fleeting sensation of having had the most beautiful time somewhere. Did I ever tell you of my last experience in this line? If I did pardon the repetition and skip it.
Just as I was “coming out” I heard myself saying—I put it this way because it was not I who said it—at least not the consciousness that is dictating these words. This consciousness heard something else speaking through my lips:
“Oh doctor, heaven is so interesting I’m sorry you called me back. I could write—a—a—a—”
I heard myself halt for a suitable word. I heard the dentist laughingly suggest “a book?”
“A book!” I heard myself scornfully casting this aside. “I could write a lifetime on the experiences I’ve been having.”
And with this I came into my own, wide-awake and conscious, with no recollection of any such “experiences.”
Wasn’t it odd? I’ve often thought about it. It did more than anything I ever heard or read to convince me of the separate existence of the soul. And yet it raised other difficulties. For that soul was not I—not, as aforesaid, the consciousness that is writing to you now. But all this is more or less awkward to define. Such things can’t be expressed in the symbols of earth—no words have been invented suitable for the conveyance of just exactly what I felt and how I felt it in that experience. Quite likely you will receive a wrong or at the best an utterly inadequate conception of it.
Ah, I agree with all you say of “soul moods”—states that can’t be expressed or communicated because words are too clumsy!
So “if I die before you do, you’ll write my life”? No, you won’t! Nobody shall. I’d haunt you if you did. Biography is a screaming farce. No man or woman was ever truly depicted. Biographies, even the best, are one—or at the most two-sided—and every human being has half a dozen different sides. It must always be that way until some medium of communication is found for “soul moods.” And I know I wouldn’t want some of my soul moods depicted—no, nor any of them—for the evil ones would shame me and the good ones would be desecrated by revelation.
I am pegging away at my new book. Can’t say definitely when my first one will be out. There is some hitch at present with the illustrating—artist sick or overworked or something of the sort. My “sequel” is moving on fairly well. I have everything blocked out—the complete skeleton, down to the last chapter. All the characters are living in my mind, all the incidents have happened, all the “talk” has been talked. I have only to write about them now.
I’m not doing much hack work. Sold a S.S. serial of seven chapters to the Toronto East and West. Got $40 only. It was far too cheap but Miss Fraser had been pestering me so long for a serial that I sent her one for patriotism’s sweet sake. If my book succeeds I’ll certainly cut out Sunday School stuff, though of course I’ll keep on with adult magazines.
I’m going to tell you something. I hope it won’t prove too much of a shock! The Canadian Magazine pays for poetry now. I sent it an old poem to get rid of it—the poem. It had been peddled to every American magazine and I gave it up in despair. The C.M. sent me two whole dollars for it—and asked for more! Certainly, Canada is forging ahead.
The Westminster, Toronto, also pays small sums for prose. I got $3 for a sketch. Your western sketches ought to take with them.
I enclose a Youth’s Companion poem. Do you know I haven’t written a single line of verse since July. I’m going to try to write a poem tomorrow though.
Do you know I was nearly run over by an automobile last night! Automobiles in Cavendish! There is no such thing as solitude left on earth!
Glad you told me about your horses. I’m sure you must love them. I only have a cat—“Daffy.” But he’s a peach! Really, he’s everything a cat should be, except that he hasn’t one spark of affection in his soul. But then somebody has said, “The highest joy a human being can experience is to love disinterestedly.” Daffy, therefore, gives this joy to me, since I cannot hope for any return of the affection I bestow on him. The only things he loves are his stomach and a certain cushion in a sunny corner. He is enormous in size, with a very fine coat of grey striped fur, black points and a magnificent plumy tail. He is a mighty hunter and catches and devours squirrels every day. As I love squirrels also I am torn between two affections.
Well, it is nearly dark and time I was getting ready for church, since I’m organist and must sit up on the choir platform and face the audience during the service. So I dare not slur my toilette but must appear point device. At our last choir practice we practised up “Behold, the Bridegroom Cometh” for a collection anthem. Yesterday I had to summon an extra session of the choir to learn a new piece since the “supply” who preaches for us tonight really is a bridegroom, having been married only last week! It would have been a good joke to let the thing go on but I thought the poor man might feel insulted and ministers are so scarce that we dare not play any tricks with our chances of getting one.
Bi-bi,
Yours fraternally,
L. M. Montgomery.
Cavendish, P.E.I.,
Monday Evening,
March 2, 1908.
My dear Mr. Weber:—
No, we are not snowed in! On the contrary, we have no snow at all. We have had very little snow at any time this winter and three weeks ago a thaw took away what little there was. Since then we have been bumping about in wagons or staying at home anathematizing the weather clerk. We have had a phenomenally mild and fine winter—not one storm and very few cold days. Last Saturday morning I started out, walked five miles, spent the day with a friend, and walked home again in the evening—not bad for the dead of winter.
I have been trying to get time to answer your letter for several weeks but never could get enough to do it all at once and I cannot bear to write a letter in sections if I can possibly help it. For the past month I have been extra busy with the somewhat tedious but after all most delightful task of reading and correcting the proofs of my book. I sent the last batch back Friday, and the book is to be out about the fifteenth. I’ll send you a copy and you can flesh your maiden sword of book criticism in it, always remembering that it is a story written more especially for girls and not pretending to be of any intrinsic interest to adults.
In regard to literature I’ve been jogging on as usual at the same old grind—an hour in the morning at magazine work, an hour in the afternoon at the typewriter, an hour in the evening at the sequel to my book. I have the latter about half done but I can’t get it to suit me as well as the first. There seems to be more of a “made to order” flavour about it and less of spontaneity.
I sold the Youth’s Companion a poem in December, “The Exile,” and got ten dollars for it. I enclose a copy. Christian Endeavour World sent $15 for a story. I notice the journals are raising their prices. They have risen fifty per cent these last two years. I had an article entitled “The Old South Orchard” in the January Outing. Soon after I received a letter from an American gentleman asking me where that orchard was “because he was determined to visit it if such a thing were possible.” I wrote back and told him that I was sorry to have to state that the location of the orchard was on the estates of my chateau en Espagne.
Last week the Blue Book, Chicago, sent $20 for a short story and Forward sent $6 for an insignificant June poem that had been declined so often by little magazines that pay from one to two dollars for a poem that I was very nearly putting it in the stove. “The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth”—and so do editors. To all appearances, you can’t account for one any more than the other!
No, we don’t feel the “stringency” here at all. We suffer some disadvantages