In celebration of the 30th anniversary of Akage no An (a 1979 Japanese animation of Anne of Green Gables), Nippon Animation is producing an animated Before Green Gables, due to air on April 5th, 2009. The series is based on the 2008 prequel to the Anne series, Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson.

The Story Girl and The Golden Road focus on the lives of the King children on the King family farm, in the village of Carlisle. Thought most of their time is spent in the family orchard, a beloved haunt resonant with family stories and traditions, we hear often of nearby Markdale, and in The Golden Road the children visit Baywater.

Carlisle

Very little information is given about Cavendish. Sara Ray lives at the foot of the hill behind the spruce bush (ch. 2, TSG) , the Awkward Man’s house lies across the fields (ch.2, TSG), Mr. Campbell’s house is reached by going over a hill and through a wooded brook valley, towards Markdale Harbour. One passes Sara Ray’s house to go to church and to the schoolhouse. Peg Bowen’s house beyond the swamp and brook field (ch. 24, TSG), on the dividing line between Baywater and Cavendish (ch. 7, TGR).

Carlisle appears to be a woodsy place, with the typical rolling hills and farm meadows of Montgomery’s Island. “Carlisle” sounds like a romanticized version of Cavendish, and Montgomery was probably thinking of Cavendish as she wrote The Story Girl: the last book she wrote in her old home. The book resounds with Montgomery’s own sense of imminent departure from the Island.

Of course, no mention is made of a pond or sea near Carlisle - making the world of the King children seem more enclosed, and Carlisle more generic. All the sea stories are related to Markdale, a nearby harbour town. Similarly, the affairs of the Cavendish community are closely intertwined with those of Rustico (on Rustico harbour) to its east, and Stanley Bridge (on New London harbour) to the west.

Markdale is most likely Rustico. The real story of the Yankee Storm (ch. 22, TGR) actually occurred on the red cliffs that span between Cavendish and Rustico (the setting for the Shore Road in Anne of Green Gables, now part of the Green Gables National Park). Bev, Sara Stanley and Uncle Blair see a moonrise over Markdale Harbour (ch. 26, TGR), and from the hills of Cavendish, one can see Rustico Harbour to the east. When the Story Girl goes to Markdale to buy the dreambooks, this implies that Markdale has a general store, something which the farming community of Carlisle doesn’t. I don’t know if Rustico was commercial in LMM’s time, but Montgomery could have attributed a store to Rustico for convenience’s sake.

The King Farm

The old King homestead lies on a hill. There is a big willow by the gate (ch. 1, TSG), a brook field and harvest valleys to the west (ch. 2, TSG), a spruce and fir grove behind the house, a plantation of silver birches and polars dividing Uncle Alec’s house from Uncle Roger’s.

Then we opened the front door and stepped out, rapture swelling in our bosoms. There was a rare breeze from the south blowing to meet us; the shadows of the spruces were long and clear-cut; the exquisite skies of early morning, blue and wind-winnowed, were over us; away to the west, beyond the brook field, was a long valley and a hill purple with firs and laced with still leafless beeches and maples.

Behind the house was a grove of fir and spruce, a dim, cool place where the winds were fond of purring and where there was always a resinous, woodsy odour. On the further side of it was a thick plantation of slender silver birches and whispering poplars; and beyond it was Uncle Roger’s house.

Right before us, girt about with its trim spruce hedge, was the famous King orchard, the history of which was woven into our earliest recollections. We knew all about it, from father’s descriptions, and in fancy we had roamed in it many a time and oft. — The Story Girl, ch. 2

The orchard, fenced in by a spruce hedge, is to the right of the house. In the orchard there are birthday trees planted for all of the King family, a well with an Chinese pagoda roof, and Uncle Stephen’s walk - a double row of apple trees, leading towards the Pulpit Stone. (ch. 3, TSG)

“The Old Home”, photo by L. M. Montgomery c. 1900

The King homestead sounds like the Macneill homestead where L. M. Montgomery grew up. It is a white, orchard-embowered farmhouse, with a spruce grove behind. [1] The King farm adjoins Uncle Roger’s property, much like the Macneill homestead with Uncle John Macneill for a (far less jovial) neighbour.

Of course - as with all of Montgomery’s settings, it is not a direct copy. There are elements of the Park Corner home (”Silver Bush“) with the plantation of silvery birches. The Pulpit Stone has a real existence, and is located at the L. M. Montgomery Heritage Museum (home of Montgomery’s paternal grandfather).

The Pulpit Stone at the L. M. Montgomery Heritage Museum, photo by lmm-anne.net 2004

Places to Visit

Cavendish
Site of L. M. Montgomery’s Cavendish Home - the Macneill homestead where Montgomery grew up, the house no longer stands by the woodsy surroundings are still there
Cavendish Cemetary where a small anchor memorial is dedicated the the Yankee Storm
Cavendish Shore and North Rustico the “original” of Markdale

Park Corner
L. M. Montgomery Heritage Museum where the Pulpit Stone is found
Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush where Montgomery’s Campbell cousins, who inspired the merry King children, lived, and where the “Blue Chest of Rachel Ward” can be seen

Malpeque, Bideford
Montgomery Homestead at Fox Point where Donald Montgomery, original of Donald Fraser in the story “How Betty Sherman Won a Husband”, lived. David Murray, the original of Neil Campbell, lived at Bedeque (Montgomery taught school at Lower Bedeque)
Yeo House/ Green Park Museum - Donald Montgomery crossed Richmond Bay to propose to Nancy Penman (Nancy Sherman), who lived at Penman’s Point near Bideford. The Yeo House/Green Park Museum is located on this property now.

Marigold Lesley lives at Cloud of Spruce, an ancestral home facing Harmony Harbour.  Young Marigold’s world, largely composed of her own daydreams, is very insular, but there are hints of the outer world with the “spruce hill” behind the house, the dreamy harbour and the magical realm “over-the-bay.”

Harmony

[left] A Google Map of New London Harbour

Harmony Harbour is described with several landmarks by “the Anglican Church over the bay”, “the dreamy [sand] dunes” with the Gulf Shore beyond, the harbour mouth which Marigold and Budge explore (ch. 21), and the “Head of the Bay,” where the Weed Man (ch.12) and some of the Lesley relatives live.

(click for description)

The descriptions match New London Harbour (which is also Four Winds Harbour in the Anne books and Queen’s Harbour in Jane of Lantern Hill.) Magic for Marigold was published in 1929, and this is the part of PEI that LMM knew best from her island vacations in the 1920s, split between Park Corner and Cavendish. The Anglican church over the bay is the Anglican church at Springbrook, PEI.

[right] Anglican church at Springbrook, PEI, photo by L. M. Montgomery c.1890s

Montgomery would have been familiar with this vista towards the purple hills “over the bay” from the Cavendish side of the harbour. A long strip of sand-dunes run from the sand-bar on the harbour, all along the shore of what is now Green Gables National Park, turning into rock capes at the eastern end. The Gulf Shore beyond the dunes is doubtless the long Cavendish shore, lying along the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Harmony seems to be located on the east side of the harbour, across the bay from Springbrook, not too far from the sand-dunes. In chapter 10, Princess Varvara runs away from the Summer Hotel on the Dunes - the Cavendish dunes should not be too far from Cloud of Spruce. The imaginary Harmony Village might be Bayview or Stanley Bridge.

There is a real place called “Harmony” on PEI, from which Montgomery borrowed the name, but she admits she has never visited the village. [1] It is located in Prince County, far away from the north shore landscape Montgomery describes again and again in all her books.

Unlike its real-life counterpart, Harmony Harbour has no sand-bar, nor lighthouse, is described, but perhaps Montgomery deleted these references in her imagination to generalize the location of Harmony Harbour. Just like Four Winds is supposedly “60 miles” away from Avonlea (Cavendish), Princess Varvara says that her relatives went to Cavendish, but she couldn’t go because there were measles there, thus displacing the location of Harmony.

Cloud of Spruce

Cloud of Spruce is a cream brick homestead, covered with vines. An orchard runs up the big spruce hill behind it, and a garden lies before it, with a white gate halfway towards the harbour (ch 3,2). There is a church barn, called the “apple barn.”(ch. 3,2) Marigold has a playhouse in a square of currant bushes. (ch.3,6) The Orchard Room of Cloud of Spruce - Old Grandmother’s bedroom - has a door that opens out to the orchard, which Marigold calls the “Magic Door,” and must pass through to see Sylvia. “The Green Gate” lies up the slope. There is a spring on the hill, which Marigold calls the “White Fountain.”

Cloud of Spruce, the original Lesley homestead, where Old Grandmother and Young Grandmother and Mrs. Leander and the baby and Salome Silversides lived, was on the harbour shore, far enough out of Harmony village to be in the real country; a cream brick house–a nice chubby old house–so covered with vines that it looked more like a heap of ivy than a house; a house that had folded its hands and said, “I will rest.” Before it was the beautiful Harmony Harbour; with its purring waves, so close that in autumnal storms the spray dashed over the very doorsteps and encrusted the windows. Behind it was an orchard that climbed the slope. And about it always the soft sighing of the big spruce wood on the hill. — Magic for Marigold, ch. 1, 1

Cloud of Spruce is imaginary. Originally called Cloud o’ Pines, perhaps Montgomery was thinking of the “hill o’ pines” she could see from the window of her Norval home. [1]

Russell’s Hill o’ Pines, photo by L. M. Montgomery

Spruce trees are more common than pines on PEI [2], so Montgomery probably altered this to be more in keeping with the Island landscape. Green Gables, New Moon, and many other farms in Montgomery’s novels all have spruce woods behind them.

[1] Magic Island, by Elizabeth Waterston
[2] Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery v.2. Entry on favourite tree “There were few pines in Cavendish-an odd one or two back in the woods. Indeed, there are not many anywhere on the Island. It is the habitat of spruce and fir.”

Places to Visit

Green Gables National Park, which covers the long shoreline of Cavendish, including a long stretch of sand dunes along the Gulf of St. Lawrence
Stanley Bridge, possibly the area of Harmony