The Books: Chronicles of Avonlea – ‘The Winning of Lucinda’ (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

chroniclesavonlea.gifChronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: “The Winning of Lucinda”.

Lucinda Penhallow, the heroine of this very funny story, is one of Lucy Maud’s more memorable adult characters. I’m not sure why – maybe it’s just because of what ends up happening and the scene I’m going to excerpt, which I adore. There’s somehting about her I have always loved. I love her stubbornness (even though she is obviously a slave to her own pride and stubbornness), I love her sadness that she can barely admit to herself (not being married, feeling that her youth is passing her by), I love her pride, and then I love her behavior in the following excerpt when it all comes undone. I don’t know – it just seems like Lucinda would be someone I would like to hang out with.

Also, the plot of this story doesn’t have any of the artificial “oh my God what a coincidence” machinations that some of her other stories do. This is straight-up romantic comedy.

The plot: The Penhallows (very similar to the interweaving huge extended family she creates in Tangled Web – excerpt here) are a big sprawling nosy loving obnoxious well-to-do family – where everybody knows everybody else’s business, and gossip runs rampant. Lucinda is beautiful, a wee bit haughty, but beloved by all – she’s also 35 and unmarried, which is astonishing. The story opens at a Penhallow wedding celebration where the entire family is gathering at “the Grange” – to get ready. We learn, through a bit of exposition, that Lucinda and Romney Penhallow had been in love once – but 15 years ago they had had a quarrel, and Lucinda, in a fit of temper, said that she would never speak to him again. Her pride was stronger than her love for him, apparently, so in 15 years she has not said one word to him. And Romney, hurt, rebuffed, and finally – angry – hasn’t said one word to her. For 15 years. They see each other only at family gatherings – somehow they are distantly related – by marriage, I think – and when that happens, when Lucinda and Romney are at the same event – all the ladies sit back, whispering, wondering, watching the 2 NOT speak to each other. Nobody knows what the original argument was about. But 15 years ahve now gone by – and neither of them have married anyone else. (This is such a typical Lucy Maud device. She wrote a lot about people with pride so strong that NOTHING else can live alongside of it.) Lucinda and Romney both have taken the position: “Well … whatever happens … I will not be the one to speak first.” Lucinda, at times, finds herself getting melancholy – she is now 35 – full in her prime – and not married – and there is Romney, the man she once loved … and does she still love him?? We don’t know – but we do know that Lucinda, in all her pride, has fiercely promised to herself that she will not “speak first”. If Romney speaks first, she will not reject him … she will be open to talking with him … and maybe more?? But ONLY if he “speaks first”.

heh heh

Lucy Maud sets up her characters so well, doesn’t she??

So the two of them are at this big shindig. It has been a couple of years since they saw each other. Throughout the wedding celebration, the two are only aware of each other, and neither of them speak to the other. Then – after the wedding – through a total mix-up – Lucinda is left stranded at the church – without a way to get back to the Grange. Her ride left without her. She is in a rage about this. A silent rage. This means she will have to walk back to the Grange across the fields – in her delicate green voile dress and her delicate little slippers – she’s so PISSED. It’s like her whole life suddenly seems so UNFAIR, and she is PISSED about it.

So – in a rage – she starts off across the fields. It’s a moonlit night.

Oh – and I forgot – for some reason it comes up earlier in the story that Lucinda’s grandfather (“Old Grandfather Gordon”) had spent a lot of time as a miner – and from his mining days he had picked up a horrible habit of swearing. People still talk about his horrific swears – he couldn’t seem to help himself. This will end up being important later – Lucy Maud sets up her situation carefully, and then lets all hell break loose later.

I love the episode that follows. (Oh, and I love, too, how Lucy Maud blanks out the swear. It makes it even funnier – it really shows how swearing was kind of beyond the pale at that time.)


Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- “The Winning of Lucinda”.

She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible, slipped around the house in the kindly shadows, picked her way across the side lawn, and found a gate which opened into a birch-bordered lane where the frosted trees shone with silvery-golden radiance in the moonlight. Lucinda flitted down the lane, growing angrier at every step as the realization of how shamefully she seemed to have been treated came home to her. She believed that nobody had thought about her at all, which was tenfold worse than premeditated neglect.

As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane, a man who was leaning over it started, with a quick intake of breath, which, in any other man than Romney Penhallow, or for any other woman than Lucinda Penhallow, would have been an exclamation of surprise.

Lucinda recognized him with a great deal of annoyance and a little relief. She would not have to walk home alone. But with Romney Penhalow! Would he think she had contrived it so purposely?

Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it behind her, and silently fell into step beside her. Down across a velvety sweep of field they went; the air was frosty, calm, and still; over the world lay a haze of moonshine and mist that converted East Grafton’s prosaic hills and fields into a shimmering fairyland.

At first Lucinda felt angrier than ever. What a ridiculous situation! How the Penhallows would laugh over it!

As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance had played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward situation as little as most men; and certainly to be obliged to walk home over moonlit fields at one o’clock in the morning with the woman he had loved and never spoken to for fifteen years was the irony of fate with a vengeance. Would she think he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come to be walking home from the wedding at all?

By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane beyond it, lucinda’s anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour. She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.

The lane was a place of enchantment – a long moonlit colonnade adown which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly. The moonshine fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver light and clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in. On either side was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them a great silence unstirred by wind or murmur.

Midway in the lane, Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental recollection. She thought of the last time Romney and she had walked home together through this very lane, from a party at “young” John’s. It had been moonlight then, too, and – Lucinda checked a sigh – they had walked hand in hand. Just here, by the big gray beech, he had stopped her and kissed her. Lucinda wondered if he were thinking of it, too, and stole a look at him from under the lace border of her fascinator.

But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his pockets, and his hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the old beech without a glance at it. Lucinda checked another sigh, gathered up an escaped flutter of voile, and marched on.

Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped down to Peter Penhallow’s brook – a wide, shallow stream bridged over in the olden days by the mossy trunk of an ancient fallen tree. When Lucinda and Romney arrived at the brook, they gazed at the brawling water blankly. Lucinda remembered that she must not speak to Romney just in time to prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree! There was no bridge of any kind over the brook!

Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could no more than despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered – not in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms, as if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no mean avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through the water.

Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him, and she was so choked with rage over his presumption that she could not have spoken in any case. Then came the catastrophe. Romney’s foot slipped on a treacherous round stone – there was a tremendous splash – and Romney and Lucinda Penhallow were sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow’s brook.

Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung, in heart-breaking limpness, the ruined voile. The remembrance of all her wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes blazed in the moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been so angry in her life.

You d—–d idiot!” she said, in a voice that literally shook with rage.

Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.

“I’m awfully sorry, Lucinda,” he said, striving with uncertain success to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his tone. “It was wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned right under my foot. Please forgive me – for that – and for other things.”

Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung the water from the poor green voice. Romney surveyed her apprehensively.

“Hurry, Lucinda,” he entreated. “You will catch your death of cold.”

“I never take cold,” answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth. “And it is my dress I am thinking of – was thinking of. You have more need to hurry. You are sopping wet yourself and you know you are subject to colds. There – come.”

Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave and buoyant five minutes before, and started up the field at a brisk rate. Romney came up to her and slipped his arm through hers in the old way. For a time they walked along in silence. Then Lucinda began to shake with inward laughter. She laughed silently for the whole length of the field; and at the line fence between Peter Penhallow’s land and the Grange acres she paused, threw back the fascinator from her face, and looked at Romney defiantly.

“You are thinking of — that,” she cried, “and I am thinking of it. And we will go on, thinking of it at intervals for the rest of our lives. But if you ever mention it to me I’ll never forgive you, Romney Penhallow!”

“I never will,” Romney promised. There was more than a suspicion of laughter in his voice this time, but Lucinda did not choose to resent it. She did not speak again until they reached teh Grange gate. Then she faced him solemnly.

“It was a case of atavism,” she said. “Old Grandfather Gordon was to blame for it.”

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3 Responses to The Books: Chronicles of Avonlea – ‘The Winning of Lucinda’ (L.M. Montgomery)

  1. melissa says:

    I was waiting for this story… Loved it. (since I , um, just read it…)

    The setup for this story is so awesome. Instead of explaining the situation in her setup, one of the side characters puts her foot in her mouth and gets the situation explained to her.

    I love that Lucinda is still wearing Romney’s ring.

    I also love that its the Penhallow wedding – the night before Gilbert proposes and Anne accepts!

  2. red says:

    Melissa – oh, that’s right!! The Penhallow weddig is mentioned at the end of Anne of the Island – how could I forget??

    I just love Lucinda. I love how she is in a towering silent rage and then I love how she silently starts to laugh and laughs all the way across the fields. What a great character!!

  3. Much says:

    “The unhappy lovers” – my favourite phrase in this excerpt!

    Also, did you ever notice how much LMM seemed to love ethereal green dresses? I feel like they came up a lot, especially in Anne’s wardrobe. Perhaps LMM had an exquisite green dress in her youth that she loved … or perhaps she always wanted one and never got it.

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