How a little girl could have such talent is one of the most interesting aspects of both the Road to Avonlea series and the novel that inspired it, The Story Girl. It seems that the author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, drew upon her own life when endowing her heroine with these gifts.
Even at the age of 11, Maud was a mature writer and storyteller. And some of the earliest evidence we can find for this is in her letters written to her cousin Penzie Macneill, when Maud was just a little girl. The letters were found in the attic of Penzie’s son’s home and were later given to Father Francis Bolger, who used them in his book, The Years Before “Anne”.
It seems that Penzie’s little brother, Russell, would carry these letters back and forth between the two girls. Their correspondence shows some of Maud’s early tendencies to think about the past. She is often asking Penzie when she will see her again as well as using the phrase, “do you mind (remember)…” which shows that the two girls weren’t able to spend a lot of time together. Though they only lived about a 5-minute walk from each other, children of Maud’s era were not given the same liberties as children are now, and so the girls learned how to tell their own stories on the page.
Maud, age 10 or 11, wrote:
Princetown, April 27th
My darling Penzie,
I received your letter a week ago and if I wasn’t glad to get it. Thank you a hundred times over for the gum it was lovely. I am afraid you will think that I was hinting at you to send me some but I never thought of such a thing and I was surprised as well as delighted when I opened your letter and found it.
And so you have finished your quilt. You were pretty smart about it. I know it must be pretty it had such pretty pieces. I guess I will be home in about a week or perhaps two. Plenty of time I guess to go back to Sam Wyand’s field and yours. Won’t we have fun. And we must go around the shore some day too and up the sand hills to get the grass we lost this year. We must go earlier next time.
Don’t you mind the night I was down and the look on Rob’s [Penzie’s brother] face when he discovered us in the room. It is a mercy he didn’t drop the lamp. I haven’t any news to write so good bye with lots of love and kisses.
Your loving friend Maud.
To read more about Maud’s childhood and see her letters to Penzie, take a look at The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album.
- Photo of L.M. Montgomery was taken from The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album.
