Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs:
Next book on the Memoir/Letters/Journals shelf is My Dear Mr. M:
A fascinating small volume, My Dear Mr. M. is the 39-year correspondence between Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, and an aspiring writer from Scotland, George Boyd MacMillan. They only met once in their entire lives, during Montgomery’s honeymoon trip to Scotland. Their correspondence began through a mutual writing friend, who wanted to create a literary circle of correspondents. The literary circle never really flourished, but Montgomery and MacMillan hit it off like gangbusters and began their own private correspondence. At the time they began writing to one another, in 1902, 1903, Montgomery was living at home with her grandparents and well on her way to becoming a successful short story writer, published in almost every Canadian magazine. A prolific and devoted writer, Montgomery was approaching her 30s, unmarried, independent (she had spent time as a teacher, as well as a reporter at a newspaper), and devoted to her craft. She and MacMillan bonded about their shared ambition. Then, of course, came the publication of Anne of Green Gables, which pushed Lucy Maud Montgomery far beyond MacMillan, in terms of accomplishment, but their correspondence continues. They write to one another, off and on, for almost 40 years. This volume, edited by Francis Bolger and Elizabeth Epperly only provides Montgomery’s side of the correspondence, but it’s an illuminating look at Montgomery. She doesn’t correspond with MacMillan as a fan or an acolyte – she really talks to him as she would a friend. Their letters are quite open. Of course there is a lot of omission as well. While Montgomery openly shares with MacMillan about her failed love affair with Herman Leard (something that marked her life), and some of her husband’s health problems – she also leaves things out. But that’s the way it goes with correspondence. It will never be an exhaustive record.
What I love about the correspondence is how free Montgomery obviously felt with this pen pal – something she didn’t feel with too many people. t speaks well of Mr. MacMillan, his openness, kindness, and interest in her viewpoint – that they could correspond about love and sex and writing and family with such freedom.
By the end, as is the case with Montgomery’s fifth volume of her journals, the letters get shorter, blunter, and more panicked in a wild despair. There are times when you can tell MacMillan gets concerned, and sends her brief notes to bolster her up, tell her to hang on, everything’s going to be okay. Like any friend would. She sends him brief postcards basically to tell him, “I can’t write anymore. But I got your cards and gifts. I am thankful for your friendship. I will never get better.” It is heartwrenching.
Despite the fact that MacMillan wanted to be a writer, too, there seems to be very little professional jealousy between the two, and the Montgomery that shows up in these letters is different from any other Montgomery we’ve seen yet. So far, there are not volumes of her letters that have been published. Writing a letter to a trusted correspondent is different than scribbling in one’s private journal. We see who Montgomery is here, with a friend. How willing she is to talk philosophically, to consider all sides, to open up about what she’s worried about. Here, with her good long-distance friend, she is intelligent, social, funny, open. He was obviously the type of man who didn’t dismiss a woman’s experience of life – but, rather, reveled in it. They were “kindred spirits”.
Reading this small sweet volume, I have a moment of being thankful that G.B. MacMillan came into what would prove to be a very lonely life. He was there for her. He was obviously a good and kind man.
Here is a letter from early on in their correspondence. Anne of Green Gables was not published yet. Montgomery was not married yet.
Excerpt from My Dear Mr. M:
Cavendish, P.E.I.
Can.
Monday Evening
April 1, 1907
…I loved one man in whom nobody could see anything to admire. I couldn’t care for the other who was in all respects admirable. If I had married B, I should have been unhappy all my life. If I had married A I should I believe have been happy but I would have deteriorated in every way – “lowered to his level,” as Tennyson says. But Tennyson is not always right. When I was a schoolgirl I very much admired and believed a line in his poem “Lancelot and Guinevere.”
“We needs must love the highest when we see it.”
I don’t believe it now. It is not true. We must admire the highest but love is an entirely different matter and is quite likely to leave the best and go to the worst. Oh, it is a horribly perplexing subject and I grow dizzy thinking of it. I think, too, love varies very much with different temperaments. What would be true for me might be altogether false with a woman of a different temperament. But my own experience has taught me to understand a great many of the strange and perplexing happenings of life. The rules laid down in novels won’t work out in real existence. I came across a bit of doggerel the other day that has more truth than poetry in it.
“There’s a lot of things that never go by rule,
There’s an awful lot of knowledge
That you never get at college,
There are heaps of things you never learn at school.”
And that’s about the way of it!
. . .
Now I’ve just got to finish this letter right up, owing to “circumstances over which I have no control.” It isn’t a satisfactory epistle, especially the part about love but I’ll try to discuss that subject more lucidly in future. I’ve been interrupted a score of times since beginning.
Ever yours sincerely,
L.M. Montgomery
Sheila,
It never ceases to amaze me how strangers, not only strangers to us in their character and personality, but completely unknown, down to their profession and even existence can so take hold of our interest. That letter of Montgomery’s had me mesmerized and I had absolutely no knowledge of her nor would have had a grain of interest in her books or memoirs.
I wonder if there’s any such letter writing going on today?
George – A friend and I were talking a while back about how things like biographies will be very different in the future – because a biographer will not have these long letters to rely on to show the person’s inner thoughts. I suppose people still keep journals – but there’s something so wonderful about reading a correspondence. That’s probably going to vanish.
When I first got email – 15 years ago or whenever – the novelty of it was such that I woudl write long long emails to my friends and get long long emails in response. Same as letter-writing only through a computer. That almost NEVER happens now. Emails are blunt and practical only – setting up times to meet, whatever …
Letters like these – between Montgomery and MacMillan – are probably very rare now. Biographies in the future will be different – because people delete their emails, too – it’s not like anyone will be able to rifle through a box in the closet and find a stash of letters.
Hi Sheila, I don’t know if you’ll get this because you posted this entry so long ago (right now I’m gleefully combing through your archives and fattening myself up on your LM Montgomery posts) — but I had to pipe up— biographers today may not have letters/emails to illuminate their subject’s inner thoughts and philosophies, but they will have people’s enormous masses of text messages! Although they are quite different – or are they? There’s that Black Mirror episode where a woman is able to somewhat re-create her dead husband through all his social media data.
Yes, text messages – but you don’t sit down and pour your heart out at length in a text message. You don’t get the sense of narrative, of someone’s VOICE. So I think we’re going to miss that in the future when biographers try to put together books about people in this era.
It’ll be different, that’s for sure!!
Thanks so much for reading and for commenting.