I love the author of Anne of Green Gables.
On a quiet, remote shelf on the eighth floor of Davis Library in Chapel Hill, I found her biography “The Gift of Wings” and read it all.
And it described her marriage and how damaging it turned out to be — to both of them. He was apparently jealous of her fame and success; and they were both depressed; and they both started taking barbiturates (prescribed by their incautious doctors) to ease their depressive symptoms. This was in the 1920s, 1930s, and I guess they didn’t realize back then how addictive these substances were. (And it makes you wonder what’s being prescribed today that’s also damaging.)
Her husband was also a minister. I’ve been re-reading “Magic for Marigold”, by the same author, and I was at the part where Marigold fears her mother is going to re-marry Mr. Thompson, the newly-widowed minister. One of the “mean girls” at school taunts Marigold by telling her that Mr. Thompson is a “bluenose”.
But what is a bluenose? Marigold asks.
Here’s the answer from the mean girl: “Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s a dope-fiend. .. It’s a terrible thing. The see hidjus faces wherever they look. There’s nothing too bad for them to do. And they’re that sly. Nobody would ever suspect them at first until they get so they can’t hide it. Then they have to be put away.”
When I first read this passage years and years ago, the “dope-fiend” accusation came so out of the blue — it’s so far removed from all the other associations and descriptions and happenings in the book — that it always jarred a bit. It always confused me, thinking where did that even come from?
Well, upon re-reading it now, it must be that Lucy Maud Montgomery was talking about her own husband. Magic for Marigold was published for in 1929, so that is well into their era of drug-addiction (which sadly persisted till they die). The part about seeing “hidjus faces” mirrors her husband who heard voices that he was damned to hell. He never told her these bouts of “melancholia” before they got married, so that could be the “sly” and “no one suspects them” part. She found out later. He would go into major depressions on account of hearing those voices, cause he worried it was true that he was going to hell. That’s when he would be administered the barbiturates. These are so addictive that his behavior would be unnatural whenever he stopped taking the drugs, due to withdrawal. So he would be administered more and more.
So that’s why I’m thinking now that the blue-nose “dope-fiend” is a reference to her husband. It was out-of-the-blue for me as a reader; but not for her as the writer.
When I first learned about her trouble with drugs and depression, I couldn’t believe it — not from someone who writes about snowy apple blossoms and velvet sunsets and pixie winds.
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