In February I got my first royalty cheque for the amount due me up to the close of the year. It was for seventeen hundred and thirty dollars. Not bad for the first six months of a new book by an unknown author, I think. I get nine cents out of the wholesale price of 90c. It seems rather disproportionate to the publisher’s share; but I suppose when you consider that they’ve got to run their business out of the profits as well as make up for what they lose on books that don’t succeed it is not likely they clear much more than the author after all.
If you can get hold of a book by Bliss Carman called The Making of Personality, read it. I know you’ll find it both delightful and helpful. I did. A friend lent it to me lately and I thought so much of it I’m going to send for it for my own library. It embodies a fine and excellent philosophy of life and has the charm of beautiful literary finish besides.
Now for your letter:—
So you have removed to Vancouver. You don’t exactly say you like it, or the reverse. I’ve heard much in its praise but I don’t fancy I’d like to live there. I have a lawyer uncle there, my mother’s brother, Chester B. Macneill. So you are—or were—rooming at a Christian Scientist’s. Well, I hope her “science” will guard her unlocked doors! It is laughable to see the extremes to which the human mind will go. I believe there is a good deal in mental healing, where no organic disease is present, but I fear ’twould prove a poor defence against a sneak thief were he “so dispoged.” Are you following the Emmanuel Movement in Boston? I am and feel considerable interest in it. It is practically Christian Science purged of its absurdities. Last fall I was reading some of its articles and decided to try to cure myself of sick headaches, from which I had suffered every few weeks for eight years. I’ve been to several doctors and tried all sorts of medicines—got eyeglasses but though there was a very slight improvement it was not a cure and did not last. Well, I began last November. Every night when I found myself dropping off to sleep I would repeat to myself “Remove the cause of my headaches.” I really hadn’t the least faith in it. But it is a simple fact that I have never had a headache since I began! I discontinued the “treatment” after a month but there has been no return of the headaches. I am not altogether convinced—it is possibly only a coincidence and they might have stopped anyhow. But I am “almost persuaded” that it was the mental suggestion which did it. Anyhow “faith” had nothing to do with it, for I had none.
I have been trying to cure my nervous trouble but can’t see that it did any good—although perhaps my present improvement is the result of it instead of my tonics!
Did you get the copy of my Island Hymn? I sent it to Didsbury before I knew of your change of location. I believe it was sung and presented as a stage picture at a concert in the Opera House in town the other night. The author and composer were called before the curtain and cheered. But only the composer could respond. The author couldn’t go. She had to stay home and wish she could.
In regard to photos—I intend to have some new ones taken in the spring and if they are decent I will send you one. My pictures seldom resemble me. I am a petite person with very delicate features; my photos, at least the “head and bust” ones represent me usually as a strapping personage with quite a large pronounced face. The last one I had taken—the one that has been so generously scattered over the continent in magazines and advertisements, was considered good of me. I sat for one the other day as the Page Co. insisted on a new one for the Book News Monthly. They wanted a head and shoulders picture and the result is not like me, though passable as a picture. I am not having any finished from it. I shall be very much pleased to have one of yours in return any time you may be ready to send it.
You have my sympathy in regard to your father’s death. I have had a double experience of those brutal telegrams announcing the death of a dear one. They are like a blow in the face. A letter softens it a little but a telegram cannot. I think a sudden death is hard on the survivors; but I agree with you fully that is the most desirable of deaths for the one most vitally concerned. I pray I may die so. I don’t want to know I’m going to die. And yet I have a horrible fear that I’ll die by inches, as you say. When I read of someone having died in his sleep I always envy him. What a strange thing this death is. We all know we are going to die sometime but the knowledge never worries us or clouds our happiness here, as a general thing. Theologians have done much to surround death with horror and dread. If we listened to Nature’s teachings we should be happier, truly believing (I hold) that death is simply a falling asleep, probably with awakening to some happy and useful existence, at the worst an endless and dreamless repose. Isn’t the Christian (?) doctrine of eternal torment as hellish as the idea it teaches? How could men ever have so libelled God? They must have judged Him from their own evil hearts. They would have tortured their enemies eternally if they could. God had power, therefore He would. Such seems to have been their argument. I admit that a consciousness of sin and remorse is a hell in itself. But I believe that “as long as a human soul lives it can turn to God and goodness if it so will.” Nobody wilfully chooses evil. We choose it because we deceive ourselves into thinking it good and pleasant. When we find that it isn’t we turn from it. Sometimes, in the case of bad habits, we cannot turn from it. But I believe that only lasts while the physical body on which the habit is impressed lasts. When it is destroyed the habit will also be destroyed and the liberated soul will get “another chance,” with the warning of its bitter experiences.
Well, we believe and believe. Some day we’ll know—or else there will be no curiosity.
I find I’m getting tired. I can’t write as long at a stretch without growing weary as I could formerly. So I’ll say good-night. I’m going to address this to Didsbury as I’m not certain where you may be. They will probably forward it.
Yours faithfully,
L. M. Montgomery.
P.S. Please do not mention to anyone how much my royalty was.
Cavendish, P.E.I.,
Thursday Evening,
Sept. 2, 1909.
My dear Mr. Weber:—
I have been waiting for weeks in the vain hope of getting enough time to write you a decent letter “at one fell swoop,” and not simply by fits and starts—five minutes now and ten minutes later on, as most of my letters have been written this summer. We have had a houseful of company and I’ve been so busy!
This is a good evening for letter writing, insomuch as it is pouring rain, and therefore I am not likely to be interrupted by callers. But I have a cold and headache and so am not exactly in the mood for writing. But I must not delay any longer, for I want to acknowledge your photo which came a few days ago and I was vastly pleased to get. I cannot, of course, judge if it is “true to life” but it looks as if it ought to be. Thank you very much for it. I have one to send you in return, but I shall not forward it until I am sure your present address will “stay put” long enough for you to get it, or it may go astray. When you receive this letter drop me a postal with your permanent address and I’ll forward the photo “immediately and to onct.” My friends like it. They say it is very like me in the face but my figure looks much too stout in it. I’m really very slight.
Well, I’ve been very busy all summer and yet I’ve accomplished nothing. A satisfactory epitome of a summer, is it not? Our guests left last week, however, and now I mean to settle down, if possible, to a good autumn’s work. I’ve begun work at a new book, with a new heroine. It’s to be called The Story Girl and I have the first sentence and the last paragraph written!
The new Anne book is out—I got my copies day before yesterday. We soon get used to things. I was quite wild with excitement last year on the day my first book came. But I took this one very coolly and it caused merely a momentary ripple on the day’s surface. Its “get-up” is very similar to the first. You’re to get a copy. I ordered it sent to you direct from the publishers to “Calgary, Alberta,” so be on the look-out for it if you move on. I enclose an autograph card which you can paste on fly-leaf if you wish.
I