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Green Gables Heritage Site

Address: Route 6, Cavendish
Link: http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/pe/greengables/visit/index_e.asp

The big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde’s Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert’s father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place LIVING at all.

“It’s just STAYING, that’s what,” she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them. I’d ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.”

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt. - Anne of Green Gables, ch.i

Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn’t really going to stay here! She would imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here.

A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea. - Anne of Green Gables, ch. iv

Green Gables is based on the hundred-acre farm [1] of L. M. Montgomery’s cousins, David and Margaret Macneill. Montgomery wrote that she drew inspiration from the location, rather than the actual house.[2] David Macneill’s home is indeed found in the midst of the woods, far from the main road, with Lover’s Lane nearby and a brook in the valley below.

Myrtle Webb, the adopted granddaughter of David and Margaret Macneill, came to live at Green Gables in 1894 when she was 11 years old. She became close friends with Montgomery in the 1900s, when Montgomery returned to Cavendish to take care of her grandmother. Montgomery liked to spend time at Myrtle’s home, and took many solitary walks in the woods surrounding the farm. After Montgomery married and moved to Ontario, she always stayed at Green Gables for part of her vacations on PEI - staying in the guest room that is now opposite “Anne’s room.” [3] She encouraged the Webb children to plant two silver birches on the north side of Green Gables, which can still be seen today. [4]

Myrtle and Ernest Webb and their large family lived at “Green Gables” until the 1940s. With Montgomery’s increasing fame and popularity, many enthusiastic tourists found their way to Cavendish and visited the Webb family farm. In 1937, The Green Gables National Park was created, and “Green Gables” was purchased by the Canadian government to form part of the park.[5]

Green Gables farm has undergone some changes since Anne of Green Gables was written. The roof was raised over the kitchen to create a second story for the growing Webb family. After Green Gables became a tourist attraction, the outbuildings of the farm -a hen house, granary, machine shed, and barns were torn down, only to be rebuilt to match their original form in the 1990s. (These buildings house visitor’s information and gift shops today.) Lover’s Lane was cut short by a new golf course. The interior of the house, however, remains similar to when the Webbs lived there.

Today, Green Gables remains a major tourist attraction on Prince Edward Island. The house has been carefully furnished, with some original furnishings and some props (such as Anne’s puffed sleeves dress), to match descriptions in the books. Outside, there is a lovely garden, the Haunted Wood trail, Lover’s Lane, and the Balsam Hollow trail (leading to the brook) to be explored.

[1] Heilbron, Alexandra. Remembering Lucy Maud Montgomery. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2001, pg. 37

[2] “Cavendish is to a large extent Avonlea. Green Gables was drawn from David Macneill’s house, though not so much the house itself as the situation and scenery, and the truth of my description of it is attested by the fact that everyone has recognized it.” - L.M. Montgomery, The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. II, Friday, Jan.27, 1911.

[3] Heilbron, Alexandra. Remembering Lucy Maud Montgomery. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2001, pg. 37

[4] Ibid., pg. 41

[5] Green Gables National Park Website