• Dedication
• L. M. Montgomery’s Comments
• Original Manuscript
• Drawn from Life
• Previous Incarnations

Rainbow Valley was written in 1918. It is noted that L. M. Montgomery’s writing is an important source of income to her, and her frustration with being typecast within a genre is also apparent.

Dedication

Goldwin Lapp

Rainbow Valley is dedicated “To the memory of Goldwin Lapp, Robert Brookes, and Morley Shier, who made the supreme sacrifice that the valleys of their home land might be kept sacred from the ravage of the invader.” Rainbow Valley was written during the first World War, when Montgomery was the minister’s wife in Leaskdale, Ontario. Goldwin Lapp was the first boy in the Leaskdale congregation to enlist and died in January 1917. Seargeant Robert Brooks (Montgomery mispelled his name as ‘Brookes’, perhaps thinking of British WWI poet Rupert Brooke) died in August 1918, assisting a wounded man to safety in the third battle of the Somme. Morley Roy Shier was a public school teacher who becae an aviator and Flight Lieutenant in the Air Force during the war. Born 1894, he was the youngest of the three soldiers and he died in October 1918.

L. M. Montgomery’s comments

Here are excerpts from L. M. Montgomery’s journal and letters with comments on the writing and publication Rainbow Valley .

Thursday December 26th, 1918

I finished my ninth book Rainbow Valley the day before Christmas. I am so thankful it is done. Everything has dragged so since I had the flue. It isn’t as good as “Anne’s House of Dreams” – in my opinion- but still averages up pretty well of its kind. But I’m tired of the kind. I’ve outgrown it. I want to do something different. But my publishers keep me at this sort of stuff because it sells and because they claim that the public, having become used to this from my pen, would not tolerate a change. (...click to read more)

Original Manuscript

This was written from fall 1917 to December 24 1918, and is 407 pages long with 35 pages of notes. Montgomery created detailed typed and handwritten outlines for each chapter and for the entire novel. The chapter (Montgomery called chapters “sections”) outline includes what will happen, bits of dialogue and desctriptions, lists of the subjects for description, and detailed character sketches. A sample note from ch. xi “In February Mr. Meredith asks rosemary to marry him. She wishes to and asks Ellen to release her from her promise. Ellen stonily refues. So Rosemary says no to Mr. Meredith.” The MS is written on the back of the notes, on the typed MS of Anne of the Island, and on blank backs.

Drawn from Life

On Aug 24th, 1919, L. M. Montgomery wrote:

One of the stories [Frede]* would have recognized. It was the one of Mary Vance chasing Rilla Blythe with a codfish. Chester and Amy Campbell** were the originals of that and Frede was never tired of laughing over it with her Macdonald*** cronies. —Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery

*Frederica Campbell is L. M. Montgomery’s dearest friend, who had passed away in January 1919.
** Chester is L. M. Montgomery’s son and Amy Campbell is his cousin on P. E. I.
***Frede taught at Macdonald College.

“The only other bit of ‘real life’ in it is the ghost the children saw on the dyke. Of course that is the old ghost that Well and Dave Nelson and I saw ,which turned out to be grandmother with a tablecloth.” —Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery August 24, 1919

One night we had a real ghost scare - the “real” qualifying “scare,” not “ghost.” We were playing at twilight in the hayfield south of the house, chasing each other around the fragrant coils of new-cut hay. Suddenly I happened to glance up in the direction of the orchard dyke. A chill began galloping up and down my spine, for there, under the juniper tree, was really a “white thing,” shapelessly white in the gathering gloom. We all stopped and stared as though turned to stone.

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“It’s Mag Laird,” whispered Dave in terrified tones.

Mag Laird, I may remark, was a harmless creature who wandered begging over the country side, and was the bugbear of children in general and Dave in particular. As poor Mag’s usual apparel was dirty, cast-off clothes of other persons, it did not seem to me likely that this white visitant were she. Well and I would have been glad to think it was, for Mag was at least flesh and blood while this-!

“Nonsense!” I said, trying desperately to be practical. “It must be the white calf.”

Well agreed with me with suspicious alacrity, but the shapeless, grovelling thing did not look in the least like a calf.

“It’s coming here!” he suddenly exclaimed in terror.

I gave one agonized glance. Yes! It was creeping down over the dyke, as no calf ever did or could creep. With a simultaneous shriek we started for the house, Dave gasping at every step, “It’s Mag Laird,” while all that Well and I could realize was that it was a “white thing” after us at last!

We reached the house and tore into Grandmother’s bedroom, where we had left her sewing. She was not there. We swung round and stampeded for a neighbour’s, where we arrived trembling in every limb. We gasped out our awful tale and were laughed at, of course. But no persuasion could induce us to go back, so the French-Canadian servants, Peter and Charlotte, set off to explore, one carrying a pail of oats, the other armed with a pitchfork.

They came back and announced that there was nothing to be seen. This did not surprise us. Of course, a “white thing” would vanish, when it had fulfilled its mission of scaring three wicked children out of their senses. But go home we would not until Grandfather appeared and marched us back in disgrace. For what do you think it was?

A white tablecloth had been bleaching on the grass under the juniper tree, and, just at dusk, Grandmother, knitting in hand, went out to get it. She flung the cloth over her shoulder and then her ball fell and rolled over the dyke. She knelt down and was reaching over to pick it up when she was arrested by our sudden stampede and shrieks of terror. Before she could move or call out we had disappeared.

So collapsed our last “ghost,” and spectral terrors languished after that, for we were laughed at for many a long day. —The Alpine Path