‘Gazing through window created by sea glass’
A view of N.L. writer Phebe Florence Miller
Mistress of the Blue Castle: The Writing Life of Phebe Florence Miller by Vicki Sara Hallett ISER Books $24.95 198 pages
Florence Phebe Miller (1889-1979) lived in Topsail, where she was postmistress and (as she would have termed it) poetess. Her position in the community was trustworthy and her family respectable; she was educated through Grade 11; she never married. She was also one of Newfoundland’s first serious female writers.
The unusual spelling of her first name was a family custom, though Miller was also known to her friends as “Peter” or “Pete” (after Peter Pan, because, she said, she never grew up), and to the younger members of her family as “Aunt Eve.”
She wrote lots and lots of poetry, of which a fair bit was published, hosted a writers’ group, and her lyrical volume, “In Caribou Land” (1929), was published by Ryerson Press, with a forward from E. J. Pratt. She may not be widely known today, but she hasn’t completely receded from cultural memory either. And her archives are extensive enough to allow for this biography.
But this is not a story of a life. It’s quite deliberately titled “The Writing Life” and it delves into the textual material Miller left, including poems, diaries, journals, scrapbooks, correspondence, and short local histories.
“The book will provide plenty of biographical detail about Miller’s life and work,” writes author Vicki Sara Hallett, ”but it will also provide a view of this life and work that openly implicates the author of the study and Miller’s environment (personal, professional, cultural, geographical) as influences on the narrative ... the perspective is like that of a person gazing through a window created from sea glass.” There is illumination and colour, if not crystal clarity.
There are two immediate points here: first, Hallett sees a biographer by necessity playing a role, and an intrusive one, in her subject’s story (she also compares writing a biography to spying); and second, there is no way any biography is ever complete. There are always gaps, intentional or accidental. For example, Miller was a diligent diary-keeper, but several years’ worth are missing. Did she destroy them? Were they lost? Or did she stop writing for some reason at some times?
Which still leaves lots of intriguing terrain. The unusual spelling of her first name was a family custom, though Miller was also known to her friends as “Peter” or “Pete” (after Peter Pan, because, she said, she never grew up), and to the younger members of her family as “Aunt Eve.” The multiplicity of names symbolizes the different ways she appeared to and connected with different groups of people.
Miller was the fourth of five children, and one of four girls, born to Joseph and Emma (Allen). In 1928 she was appointed postmistress and for several years was also in charge of the wireless station. She lived in her family home with another unmarried sister, Alice. Miller loved, and wrote much about, the outdoors.
Because Alice looked after the bulk of the domestic chores, Miller had time to write. She also had a room for it — “the cherished space of the Blue Castle, a blue-walled room above the post office in
Hallett sieves through all the balladry, salutations, even Miller’s headstone, to sculpt an image of Miller, contextualized by the exchanges with those around her, as well as the momentous events — women’s suffrage, two world wars, Confederation — occurring in her time.
her grandfather’s old house, just across the road from her home over-looking Conception Bay.” (The source of this nomenclature is another telling aside.) More than a space, this was also a salon, where Miller met with her three artistically-minded friends, solid comrades for decades.
These included Harold Macpherson, a successful and influential businessman; Mina Macdonald Brown, a civil servant and poet known as “Brownie Girl” or “Brown Mouse”; and Edwin Francis Duder, a poet, writer, and editor who left Newfoundland for New York in 1937, but continued to send letters to Miller until she died.
Hallett sieves through all the balladry, salutations, even Miller’s headstone, to sculpt an image of Miller, contextualized by the exchanges with those around her, as well as the momentous events — women’s suffrage, two world wars, Confederation — occurring in her time.
In turn “Miller’s diaries generally contain entries about daily chores, going to church, visits, and social gatherings, along with comments on her general health. She records the weather almost every day and comments on books she is reading. She lends book to friends and keeps track of this in the diaries, as well. Entries about food are not unusual, although her special attachment to things like chocolate and biscuits can be partly explained by the rationing and price inflations she went through during both wars. When someone comes to visit and brings these kinds of coveted items, it is cause for brief celebratory comment.”
Again, here thoughts and events are elided or excised, stemming from the selfcensorship, or self-editing, which is a persistent quality found in most diaries (and their keepers). The most significant romantic attachment in Miller’s life, for example, was someone named “Pats,” but the references are few, although they do include the heartbreaking day “Pats” left Newfoundland for ever.
Miller lived a long life and wrote almost continuously throughout it — her last journal entry was the day before she died. She felt things — the joy of being in the woods, the pang of aging, the sorrow of losing her friends and sisters — and inscribed them in prose and verse. Through these panes we still can perceive a person.