{"id":12540,"date":"2019-11-21T01:13:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T05:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=12540"},"modified":"2019-11-21T01:13:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T05:13:29","slug":"silver-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=12540","title":{"rendered":"Silver Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In late September, I took a road trip to Prince Edward Island<\/a> with two childhood friends during the week all three of us were 55 years old. We spent the weekend driving through New England and New Brunswick to get there<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 On Monday, we visited Green Gables Heritage Place<\/a> in nearby Cavendish, then walked through the Haunted Wood<\/a> to Montgomery Park<\/a> and L. M. Montgomery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s childhood home<\/a>, finishing up with a short drive along the shore<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Tuesday was very rainy, so we decided it was the day for museums, beginning with L. M. Montgomery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Birthplace in New London<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After browsing the memorabilia at her birthplace, we drove a few miles down the road to Park Corner, where a barn had a big \u00e2\u20ac\u0153GREEN GABLES MUSEUM\u00e2\u20ac\u009d painted on the side at Silver Bush, the home of L. M. Montgomery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Aunt Annie and Uncle John Campbell and her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153merry Campbell cousins.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silver Bush was special to me, because it was a place L. M. Montgomery loved with all her heart.\u00c2\u00a0 She hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lived in her birthplace long enough to remember.\u00c2\u00a0 The childhood home where she lived with her grandparents had been torn down.\u00c2\u00a0 And \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Green Gables\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a place some cousins lived that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d used as a model for her fictional heroine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home, but not a real place she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d actually lived.\u00c2\u00a0 But a much-loved family of cousins lived at Park Corner, and Maud spent a lot of time visiting there.\u00c2\u00a0 After she got married and moved away from the island, this was a place where she was sure to stay when she came back for prolonged visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At L. M. Montgomery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Birthplace, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen a replica of her wedding dress.\u00c2\u00a0 At Silver Bush, we saw the actual room where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d gotten married. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A card next to this screw on the landing says:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As one goes upstairs one sees the screw on the stair landing that Lucy Maud Montgomery used to measure her height by \u00e2\u20ac\u201c first she said it came to her nose and then to her knees.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A good friend of mine, Erin MacLellan, a writing buddy, had happened to visit Prince Edward Island just before my friends and me, leaving the same day we arrived.\u00c2\u00a0 At this museum, I finally thought to look for her name in the guest book, and there she was, just a couple days before me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A real live cat was sleeping in the cradle in this room!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Maud was such a frequent guest at Silver Bush, she had her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153own little bedroom.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In The Story Girl<\/a><\/em> and The Golden Road<\/a><\/em>, the Story Girl tells about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Blue Chest of Rachel Ward\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a chest of one of her relatives\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 wedding goods, sealed up when the wedding didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen, and opened when the bride-to-have-been died many years later.\u00c2\u00a0 That was a real story, and the blue chest was here at Silver Bush, with its former contents in a display case here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All the museums had some first editions of L. M. Montgomery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books, but these were autographed to the family that lived here, her cousins and aunt and uncle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Emphasizing how much L. M. Montgomery drew from her own life and the lives of her clan on Prince Edward Island, the caption on this cupboard told us that these dishes were from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153New Moon,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d her Aunt Emily\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Next to Maud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Crazy Quilt was an extended quotation from her journal:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was from twelve to sixteen completing the quilt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c five years; and verily it was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Labors Lost,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for by the time I had finished it crazy patchwork was out of the fashion.\u00c2\u00a0 My crazy quilt has been lying folded in that trunk ever since \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and will continue to lie folded.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps future generations may regard it as a curiosity as we look upon old samplers now.<\/p>

Nevertheless, I felt many a tug at my heart as I looked over it today.\u00c2\u00a0 It was compact of old memories; almost every gay piece or bit of embroidery called up some long-ago incident or place or face.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the dreams sewn into that quilt, they were as thick as Autumn leaves in Vallambroso.<\/p>

A great part of the delight of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crazy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d work was the excitement of collecting pieces for it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c silks, satins, velvets \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for of no meaner materials might genuine crazy patchwork be made.\u00c2\u00a0 Old boxes and drawers were ransacked and long hidden bits of finery joyfully found and used.\u00c2\u00a0 Contributions were levied on all my friends.\u00c2\u00a0 Did one get a new dress or hat a bit of the trimming must be begged.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes the work was at a standstill for weeks because of lack of scraps.\u00c2\u00a0 But eventually enough were collected and the quilt completed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a quaint cypher of many and many an old gayety and vanity and heartbeat.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I sent away a dollar to an American silk firm and received a package of pieces about four inches square cut from remnants.\u00c2\u00a0 They were always very rich and beautiful, with the glamor of the outer world about them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the world of wealth and fashion where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153grande dames\u00e2\u20ac\u009d disported themselves in whole robes of these materials.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a never-failing diversion of my chums and me to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153choose out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the various dresses we would have if given our pick of those gay samples.<\/p>

There are many pieces of dresses from my mother and aunts in that quilt.\u00c2\u00a0 Many wedding dresses figure there.\u00c2\u00a0 And all are covered with intricate stitching.\u00c2\u00a0 The result is a very nightmare of jumbled hues and patterns.\u00c2\u00a0 And once I thought it beautiful!<\/p>

Well, after all, it gave me pleasure in the making and so what matters if the result was not worth while?\u00c2\u00a0 I had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the joy of the working\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that was the essence of heaven.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Looking out the window, I doubt the view was very different from what Maud herself used to look out and see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I admit, though, that I very much want to come back to Prince Edward Island and visit Silver Bush on a sunny day.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe even splurge for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Matthew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Carriage Ride\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though that should really be from the train station to Green Gables, not here in Park Corner.\u00c2\u00a0 There are trails on the grounds here, too, that L. M. Montgomery used to take, but we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to try them in the rain.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, we spent a good amount of time in the lovely gift shop.\u00c2\u00a0 I took a picture of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Lake of Shining Waters\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as we drove back to our cottage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late September, I took a road trip to Prince Edward Island with two childhood friends during the week all three of us were 55 years old. We spent the weekend driving through New England and New Brunswick to get there.\u00c2\u00a0 On Monday, we visited Green Gables Heritage Place in nearby Cavendish, then walked through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prince-edward-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12540"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12564,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540\/revisions\/12564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}