Silver Bush, as I said in my previous post, stands across the street from "Ingleside," in Park Corner, PEI. Maud's cousins, the Campbells, lived there, and the house was *really* called Silver Bush. Maud was married to Ewen Macdonald in the parlour here, and used to spend many hours at the house with her cousins. To me, this house looked most like I imagined any of the places I saw would look. It actually reminded me of the cover of Pat of Silver Bush!
Silver Bush was nice, but not as homey feeling as Ingleside. They've worked too hard to make the place a museum. It doesn't feel like anybody lived there when you go through it, now. The funniest thing was that there seems to be a rivalry between the people at Ingleside and Silver Bush--each place claims to be Maud's favorite place in the world. It feels like they are competing neck and neck for her affection. I bet she had enough to go around.
At Silver Bush, I saw the Blue Chest of Rachel Ward, which actually belonged to Eliza Campbell, Maud's cousin who was much older. Eliza was jilted on her wedding day by her fiance; he never showed. She had all of her gifts sent back and she locked up her trousseau into the blue chest, and went away. It was a huge scandal in those days, and she felt she was disgraced. The saddest thing is that Eliza's fiance didn't jilt her, he was erroneously jailed for not paying a tariff, and by the time he was released, she had gone away and he never found her again. So tragic! Another interesting thing is that the tour guides pointed out this was probably the color LMM refers to when she talks about the AVIS painting the Avonlea Hall blue. It really is awful, don't you think?
The other thing I loved seeing at Silver Bush was the bookcase where LMM's "bookcase friend," Lucy Grey, lived. Maud wrote her into the Anne books as Katie Maurice.
Last but not least, the Lake of Shining Waters borders the Silver Bush property. Maud really did call it that when she was a girl.
What do you think? Does Silver Bush look like you expected it would?
Gorgeous!! It's exactly how I pictured Silver Bush to be.