L.M. Montgomery’s Poem “The Gable Window,” by Hughena Matheson

“Prince Edward Island . . . is really a beautiful Province—the most beautiful place in America,” L.M. Montgomery wrote in her autobiography The Alpine Path. Islanders and visitors will no doubt agree with Montgomery, who had a special window onto the Island’s beauty.

She often looked out at the Island landscape from the upstairs gable window in the Cavendish home where she lived with the Macneills, her maternal grandparents.

“The Gable Window,” by L.M. Montgomery, reproduced on a Project Bookmark Canada plaque at the Macneill Homestead, Cavendish, PEI

(From Sarah: This is the sixth guest post in “‘A world of wonderful beauty’: L.M. Montgomery at 150,” which began on October 30th and will continue through to Montgomery’s birthday, November 30th. You can find all the contributions to the blog series here . I hope you’ll join the conversations about LMM in the comments here and on social media: #LMM150. Thanks for celebrating Montgomery’s birthday with us!)

A few years ago, my husband and I made a trip to Prince Edward Island. Besides the usual tourist attractions, I wanted to visit that very spot, the Macneill Homestead, now a National Historic Site.

I remember the day we arrived at the homestead. It was just after the busy tourist season, and we had the whole area to ourselves. What a peaceful day! We could wander the area without crowds of other tourists.

I was excited to visit the plaque inscribed with Montgomery’s poem “The Gable Window.” I am a member of the Board of Project Bookmark Canada, the small organization that is creating a literary trail across Canada. This unique trail is marked with plaques (Bookmarks) with a poem or passage from fiction installed in the exact location the writers imagined when writing the words.

As I was reading “The Gable Window” in the very place Montgomery imagined when writing her poem, I looked at the scene in front of me. I felt I was back when the writer lived there. An Islander had told me that apparently, the scene had not changed much over the years.

The poem describes the view as it was in 1897 when twenty-three-year-old Montgomery had her poem published in The Ladies Journal. “It opened on a world of wonder,” she writes, “When summer days were sweet and long, / A world of light, a world of splendor, / A world of song.”

Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, a Montgomery scholar and founder of UPEI’s L.M. Montgomery Institute, had suggested “The Gable Window” poem to Project Bookmark. Why this poem? Epperly writes: “There are so many lush and beautiful passages describing the Macneill place in the Anne and indeed Emily books. And right there is where the Montgomery fan experiences that ‘I know this place’ feeling and a sense of awe. The poem describes the exact fields outside her window.”

Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, speaking at the unveiling of the L.M. Montgomery Bookmark, June 24, 2018

Kate Macdonald Butler, President of the Heirs of L.M. Montgomery (Inc.), was very supportive of the Cavendish Bookmark: “The Heirs of L.M. Montgomery are delighted that the first official Bookmark on Prince Edward Island will honour L.M. Montgomery, and be on the Macneill site in Cavendish she loved so much—where she wrote hundreds of short stories and poems in addition to Anne of Green Gables and three other novels.”

I read the poem a few times and, just like Anne Shirley, Montgomery’s famous fictional redheaded Islander, who loves poetry that “gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back” (Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 5), I got a “crinkly feeling” up and down my back.

Hughena Matheson was born and raised in Sydney, Cape Breton. She received a B.A. from Mount Allison University and then studied at the Ontario College of Education. For many years, Hughena taught English and Peer Tutoring in Ontario high schools. She was presented with a Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence (Certificate of Achievement) for 2001 – 2002, mainly for her work with Peer Tutoring. After retirement, Hughena worked for Rubicon Publishing, writing and editing for their series The 10. She also worked for Vitalink Canada Inc., marketing and selling educational materials to schools across Canada.

Hughena has served on the Board of Directors of Project Bookmark for many years, now in the position of president. She has written several articles about Bookmark for numerous newspapers across Canada. Also, she frequently writes opinion pieces for The Hamilton Spectator. She sent me this photo, taken when she and her husband visited the L.M. Montgomery Bookmark:

I (Sarah) took the photos of the L.M. Montgomery Bookmark, the unveiling ceremony, and lupines that appear earlier in this blog post. Since 2014, I’ve been volunteering with Project Bookmark Canada; you can read more about our Nova Scotia Reading Circle for Project Bookmark in this article Hughena wrote in 2017 for the organization’s newsletter. We meet at The Old Triangle pub in downtown Halifax, which we chose because it’s in the building where Montgomery worked as a journalist for the Daily Echo when she lived here from 1901 to 1902. Our group is currently working toward a Bookmark for Budge Wilson, author of several books, including a brilliant prequel to Anne of Green Gables entitled Before Green Gables.

Here’s a photo of Hughena and me in Toronto at the Bookmark for Ken Babstock’s poem “Essentialist” (taken by my daughter in the summer of 2023):

And here’s one more picture I took in PEI on the day the Montgomery Bookmark was unveiled:

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up to receive future guest posts in “‘A world of wonderful beauty’: L.M. Montgomery at 150.” The next post, “Discovering Anne of Green Gables in Tel-Aviv,” is by Nili Olay.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them.

Anne Lives On, by Naomi MacKinnon

People Who Love Our Places, by Logan Steiner

Read more about my books, including St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues, and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.

Guest post copyright Hughena Matheson 2024; additional text copyright Sarah Emsley 2024 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.