In the Footsteps of L.M. Montgomery on Prince Edward Island

For those of you who have been anxiously anticipating more sewing projects, please rest assured that a whole host of them are forthcoming in the next few weeks!  We're very excited about them all and are looking forward to sharing them with you.  But in the meantime...

Beautiful fields of lupines splash brilliant colors across the Island's landscapes.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we visited Prince Edward Island three times in the 1990s, primarily because our entire family (even our dad!) adores Anne of Green Gables and we were all interested in seeing the place that inspired it.  Needless to say, after the first trip, we fell thoroughly in love with the Island and its people and it irresistibly drew us back a couple more times.  Lately, we've been discussing our mutual desire to return at some point in the future, and we brought out the old photo albums to reminisce and wallow in our very fond memories.  Here's a brief photo summary of some of the L.M. Montgomery historic sites we visited, interspersed with a couple of random Island views, to complement our previous post.  Enjoy!

This is the small house in New London (once called Clifton) where Lucy Maud was born on 30 November 1874.  The tiny upstairs bedroom interprets the event, with a cradle placed at the foot of the bed.  Also featured in this house museum are some of Maud's many and fascinating scrapbooks and her wedding ensemble.

When Maud's mother died a couple of years after the birth of her child, Hugh John Montgomery sent his baby daughter to live with her maternal grandparents, the Macneills, in Cavendish, on the north shore of PEI. Their homestead - the house where Anne of Green Gables was written - sadly no longer stands, but the foundation has been preserved and is open to the public.

Down a winding, tree-canopied path, across the road, and through "The Haunted Woods" (yes, these are the woods that inspired the ones in the book!)...

...is Green Gables house, which was the home of Maud's grandfather's cousins, brother and sister David and Margaret Macneill.

Parks Canada acquired the property in 1937 and restored it to its turn-of-the-century appearance. Each room has been staged to interpret an aspect of Anne's Green Gables, from the dining room...

...to Anne's room (note the "puffed sleeves" dress and the carpet bag!)...

...to Marilla's practically plain bedroom, complete with amethyst broach on the dresser...

...to Matthew's room...

The house also contains some Montgomery artifacts, including the typewriter on which Maud prepared Anne of Green Gables for publication.

In 1897, Maud left the cozy Cavendish community that she loved and went to teach for a year in Lower Bedeque. The one-room schoolhouse in which she taught still stands and has been restored to its appearance during Maud's tenure there. The house where she boarded, which was just across the street, has unfortunately disappeared.

One of LMM's favorite places on the Island was the home of her Campbell cousins at Park Corner. The house has come to be known as "Silver Bush," after the novel it inspired.

Maud stayed here often in this upstairs bedroom...

...and was married in the house's parlor, in front of the fireplace, in 1911.

The house remains in the Campbell family (incredibly lovely people to chat with) and is full of family heirlooms, including the Crazy Quilt that Maud and her cousins made, which is a truly stunning piece of work.

A view of Silver Bush, complete with "the Lake of Shining Waters."

The manuscript of Anne of Green Gables is owned by the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown and is frequently on display.  We were fortunate enough to catch it featured in two different LMM exhibits during our trips.

And of course, any pilgrimage in homage of LMM would not be complete without a visit to her final resting place in Cavendish, nearby the old Macneill property. Maud and her husband Ewan are buried together, right next to Maud's mother, Clara Macneill Montgomery, and her grandparents Alexander and Lucy Woolner Macneill.

Of course, there are many other gorgeous views to be seen around the Island, some Montgomery-related, like Dalvay by the Sea, which you might recognize as the "White Sands Hotel" of the TV Avonlea (and yes, it really is a hotel)...

...and some not-so-directly Montgomery related, but one can easily imagine them as views that the authoress herself could easily have seen and relished, like the picturesque West Point Lighthouse against the famous Island red sands (the lighthouse serves as a restaurant and inn, in addition to being a functional lighthouse, and was our absolute favorite place that we stayed)...

...and the typical, very lovely farms that define the landscape of this magical place.