Miss Montgomery of Bideford Parsonage: A Teacher to Us All

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I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to sit in the chair, but our guide had momentarily left the room and I couldn’t help it. My husband-to-be in less than a week and I had been left standing alone in the former bedroom of Miss Montgomery, the not-yet famous author. At the time this was her room, she was simply the schoolmarm for Prince Edward Island’s Bideford community. With nobody to tell me otherwise, I gingerly slid into L. M. Montgomery’s desk chair. (To be fair, nothing in the museum we were in is original, the chair looked fairly modern, and papers on the desk seemed to invite inspection, so I assumed it was ok?) Staring out the large window on the other side of the desk at the view of the bay Montgomery would have seen as she graded papers here, I began to ponder all the ways that Lucy Maud Montgomery has, through her novels, become a teacher to us all.

Before she became famous for her writing, Montgomery, like her famous character Anne Shirley (of Green Gables), returned home to PE Island after completing a college degree in teaching. While Anne was able to take a teaching position close to home in her beloved Avonlea, Montgomery was not able to stay close to home. She was given a post in Bideford for the first year of her teaching career. Today Bideford is only about an hour by car from where Montgomery grew up in Cavendish. At the time she was teaching, however, it would have been a trip of about five hours by train (according to our tour guide at the Elmira Railway Museum). Thus it was long enough that she wouldn’t be going home to Cavendish each evening. Instead she found lodging in Bideford during her tenure there and that lodging was at the Bideford Parsonage.

When Montgomery showed up in Bideford to begin her year-long tenure as teacher at the one-room schoolhouse, she had planned to stay with family friends. She quickly discovered, however, that the Parsonage, the home of the local minister and his wife, was the closest house to the school building. So with a hope of shortening her walk to work to just a half-mile, she knocked on the door of the Parsonage and asked if she could rent a room. The couple let her have a large room on the second floor next to the minister’s in-home chapel room, and thus, thanks to Bideford’s dedicated Montgomery fans, The Parsonage has been preserved as yet another PE Island L. M. Montgomery museum.

We arrived at the two-story yellow house on a rainy afternoon and were greeted at the door by the sole employee for the day. She would be our guide through the house and then charge us for entrance after the tour. Right away we noticed our guide had a thicker accent than the Canadians we’d spoken with in the Cavendish area. One out of every third word was lost on me. More exploration of the West side of the island would later confirm that the population of West PEI had their own accent, and according to our local wedding planner, Western PEI seems to have a distinct culture from Central and Eastern PEI as well. Montgomery would have found herself teaching the children of a ship-building community here in Bideford, who were probably quite a different crowd than that of her farming community back in Cavendish.

The Parsonage, having been modernized since Montgomery resided there, has been renovated to look like it did during her lifetime. Architects were able to discover the original footprint of the stairs, and the stove, and other large items, and return the house to how it would have looked during that era. Also, by going through at least 10 layers of wallpaper, the wallpaper design of the time period was rediscovered and has been reproduced to repaper the walls. Once renovated, the house was decorated with items from the time period that were either donated or replicated.

As we passed through the living room, our guide told us that couples used to come to the house to get married by the minister so many were wed right there by the window. As we were on the island to have our own wedding in a week, I found this momentarily diverting.

In the dining room, the table was set with a China tea set and I could just picture Montgomery sitting there having tea with the minister’s wife and other neighborhood ladies. In another room a Crokinole game board was set on a table. This is a game I regularly play at home so it was fun to imagine Montgomery spending her evenings playing this too. (If you’re unfamiliar with Crokinole, it’s like a small version of shuffleboard and you can order your own board on Amazon, or  from Etsy!*)

And just beyond the Crokinole table was an outhouse room attached to the house! Originally the room with the Crokinole table was more of a work shed/storage room so they would not have been having game nights just outside the stinky outhouse, but it sure must have seemed the height of luxury at the time to not have to go outside to get to the toilet!

The effect of seeing the tea set, the Crokinole board, and the loo really humanized Montgomery for me. She became less of a shadowy idea of an author in my head, and more of a solid, living, laughing, young woman. And I couldn’t help but wonder what Montgomery would think of the microwave that now sits in the corner of the shed… the museum staff also use the room as a break room, but to their credit, they’ve attempted to hide the microwave under a cloth during tour times!

It was with this new perception of Montgomery that I now momentarily sat at her desk as our tour guide had rushed downstairs to greet another couple that had just arrived to tour the house. After three trips to the island and having read all eight Anne books, The Story Girl, and The Blue Castle, I contemplated the lessons I’ve learned through Montgomery’s books and exploring the PE Island house museums dedicated to the authoress.

Lessons from L. M. Montgomery

“I don’t want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.”
― Anne of the Island

As soon as I started brainstorming wedding venue and ceremony ideas, this quote kept repeating itself in my head. I knew at the end of the day, all that really mattered was that we get married and celebrate with our nearest and dearest. We didn’t need a lot of fanfare, or a big to-do, or copious amounts of decor, we just needed a place where we could all enjoy each others company and make memories together. Although we did settle on a destination wedding in the end, we decided to make it a simple affair. Instead of spending an excessive amount of flowers we used just a few well-placed paper-flowers hand-made by us and our guests. Instead of spending on live music, we just used a Spotify playlist. Rather than spend our funds on a showy wedding & reception we put most of our funds towards experiences we would have with our guests over the course of a week. It really was this one refrain from L. M. Montgomery running through my head that guided our planning process and will continue to guide the choices we make through our married life.

Read: Reader I Married Him: Our Anne of Green Gables Inspired Wedding on Prince Edward Island

“Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it… yet.”
― Anne of Green Gables

I say this to myself ALL THE TIME! I would consider myself an awkward and accident-prone person. I’m the kind of person that runs through conversations I’ve just had over and over with my awkwardness haunting me long after I’m sure the other participant has forgotten our talk. And I tend to learn by trial and error most days. So giving myself the space to make mistakes and know that tomorrow is always a fresh start is incredibly mentally freeing.

And on a more personal note…

“[…] it is awkward to have two girls of the same name in the same crowd. Besides, Sara Stanley doesn’t like her name and she’d rather be called the Story Girl.”
― The Story Girl

If you’re confused here, it’s probably because you’ve missed the note at the bottom of my About page where I disclose that my first name is actually Sara. And truth be told, I’ve never liked the name much exactly because it’s so common. There’s inevitably always someone else at school/work/in a social group that shares my name! While reading The Story Girl  I came across this line and I’ve never related to a line or character in a book more! By the end of the book I found myself coming around to my own name because it reminds me of Sara Stanley.

I slid out of the chair just as our guide returned. She finished guiding us through the remaining rooms and then gave us the directions to the location of the former school house where Montgomery once taught. Although the old Bideford school house no longer exists, the site has been turned into a picnic site in honor of Montgomery.

Unlike Montgomery, we had the luxury of driving the half-mile. I hopped out of the car and approached the cairn at the far side of the site. Standing in front of it, I imagined it was Miss Montgomery, as she was probably called by her students, standing at the head of a classroom of rowdy children of all grade levels.

If Lucy Maud Montgomery were alive today, it might surprise her that, although the one-room school house where she once taught no longer stands, she has continued to teach generations of children through her now famous novels and become a teacher to us all.

As it was still raining, it wasn’t a great day to picnic. Instead, our Bideford Parsonage guide had suggested we go to nearby Backwoods Burger in Tyne Valley for lunch, so we hopped back in the car and did just that.

Let’s Chat!

What have you learned from L. M. Montgomery’s novels? Or is there another author whose books have taught you life lessons? Share with us in the comments below!