The Sheila Variations

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Magical Bond of the Sea'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so I leave Emily behind with some regret ... she's my favorite ... but it's time to do some MORE Lucy Maud Montgomery excerpts. Her books take up 2 enter shelves - and since I'm also posting from short stories I like, from her collections, this is taking some time. But I'm in no rush.

Recently - through the 1990s - as Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals were being published - and as there was a resurgent interest in her (due to the television show, the movie, etc.) - a lot of her, uhm, "juvenilia" was dug up and published. Actually, not all of the collections were made up of her early short stories - some were the short stories that she continued to write throughout her career. She was always working on something - if not a novel, then these stories. Some are 5 or 6 pages long - others are more like novellas. Rea Wilmhurst, the editor, is someone we all owe a GREAT debt to. She's the one who put together all of these collections - and she did so SO beautifully, I think. Here's how she organized the stories (and it truly makes you in awe of Lucy Maud's output ... this was a woman who PRODUCED, man ... a workaholic): She identified some of Lucy Maud's more common themes - oh, and also genres - (orphans finding happiness and home, long-deferred romantic happiness, ghost stories/paranormal experiences, stories based on correspondence, romantic stories ending in marriage) and put together collections of stories in each of these themes. I love how she did it. There's an entire collection about stories that have something to do with the ocean - because the ocean was such a huge part of Lucy Maud's consciousness. For most of her life she ended up living away from the ocean - and she missed it so much that her heart nearly broke. She wrote a lot of stories about sea-faring folks, storms at sea, fishermen, etc. So there's an entire collection of those stories (that's the collection I'm gonna start with).

Some pre-date the publication of Anne of Green Gables - and so you can kind of feel her finding her way as a writer. Some of the stories are pretty bad - Lucy Maud wrote them for cash. She wrote them to order, too. Many of the stories depend on an outrageous coincidence which turns out making everything right (a la Dickens) ... but sometimes the story is just is its plot, and you can feel it creaking along. Sometimes they are way melodramatic. Sometimes they are treacly and would belong in a Sunday School pamphlet. But I loved reading them all because you can feel, first of all, Lucy Maud's work ethic. And I always found that so admirable. And also because - you can feel her working out some of the stories that she would later put into novels. Earlier versions of events show up in these stories all the time. If you're an autistic Lucy Maud freak, like I am, you will even recognize certain sentences: "Oh, she ended up using that sentence in House of Dreams ... oh, I remember that phrase, she put it into the grandmother's mouth in Magic for Marigold ..." Yes, it's that way with me. How entire books sit in my mind, word for word, I will never know ... but they do. So it's fun to read. In the Along the Shore collection there's a story called The Life Book of Uncle Jesse - which is, almost word for word, the story that ends up in House of Dreams - with "lost Margaret" and everything. Word for word. The story that ends up closing the collection, "A House Divided Against Itself" is almost word for word one of the plot-lines in her wonderful book Tangled Web - the two brothers arguing about the statue of Venus and one ends up getting caught in this hole in a rock in the shore - and the waves are coming in - and etc. etc. Word for word. Lucy Maud's books are often quite episodic - so these short stories acted as dress rehearsals. I love that. I love the little moment of recognition when I start to read one of them. I can feel her process, I can feel HER, if you will ... as a writer. It's really neat.

So yes, there is a lot of drivel here. But there's a lot that is truly wonderful as well, and I am thankful to Rea Wilmhurst for putting them all together. Oh, and even better: you get publication dates for the stories. So you can put together your own timeline ... and see where, in her life, she was working on it. Was it between Emily books? Was it BEFORE Anne? Rea Wilmhurst has even dug up stories from the late 1800s ... stuff Lucy Maud had published when she was 19, 20 ... and this stuff is hysterical - really melodramatic - some of it with Gothic horror overtones - she hasn't found her groove yet - but even that is really interesting, if you're a fan of her writing as a whole.

I won't excerpt every one of the stories - and not the ones that show up in novels later - but I will excerpt the ones I like, or ones I find interesting, in terms of Lucy Maud's development.

So. Along the Shore. A collection of stories about the ocean.

First story in the collection has the insipid title "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - but it's a lovely little story. Nora Shelley is a fisherman's daughter, she lives with her big rowdy family in a tiny 3 room shack on the shore (always Prince Edward Island in these stories, you don't even have to ask). And somehow - a rich aunt swoops in and says that Nora, a beautiful girl, age 15 or so, should have a chance at a better life - she should get some education - maybe marry a rich man. But she needs to be groomed for that ... and Nora, in her heart, wants to have a chance to see the big world as well. (This plot reminds me a bit of Cathy being taken away in Wuthering Heights - and coming back a nicely groomed lady). Nora loves her family ... and doesn't want to hurt her parents, her father and mother, by rejecting the life they provide ... but she does want to take this chance. So they let her go. There's a little going-away party - and you get the sense, with one of the guys hovering on the outskirts, that someone has a crush on her, her childhood friend ... who is now working as a fisherman, a nice boy. But now he must watch her go. (Melodramatic chords ensue). So Nora goes off ... and she is gone for almost a year. She writes letters home about her brilliant life of parties and travel and balls ... and the letters are read outloud by her family and by neighbors crowding in to listen. Her father, a "grizzled" old fisherman, can feel that Nora is changing. That she is no longer one of them. It makes him sad but on some level ... he knew he needed to let her go. Nora doesn't even come home for a visit. She immerses herself in this rich world. But then ... (dum da DUM) ... one summer they return, and Nora is staying at the big house across the bay ... and apparently she is slated to go home and visit the next day ... and there is a millionaire named Clark Bryant who supposedly is "courting" her and is stayiing a bit at the big house ... and everything is kind of hectic, etc. Nora is kind of unconscious of her deepest desires (a typical Lucy Maud heroine: unaware of what she wants until THE MOMENT ARRIVES WHEN SHE REALIZES IT ... ) ... she's there in the big house, she just arrived ... when suddenly she looks out the window ... and sees the bay right there ... and sees the little fishermen's town across the water ... and then ...

Here's the excerpt. I love it because of her response to being out on the water ... and how Lucy Maud writes that part. It's glorious.

"The Magical Bond of the Sea" was published in The Springfield Republican in September of 1903.

So this pre-dates Anne by about 5 years. But, in my opinion, you can feel her certainty as a writer here, in a way that you cannot feel in some of the earlier stories. She's writing in HER way ... it is obviously Lucy Maud Montgomery writing - any fan of hers would recognize this prose right away. In some of the earlier stories (the ghost stories, for example) - it is not as apparent who is writing. Lucy Maud didn't put her STAMP on some of those. But her stamp is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Magical Bond of the Sea" - by L.M. Montgomery

At sunset on the day of her arrival Nora Shelley looked out cross the harbour to the fishing villagae. She was tired after her journey, and she had not meant to go over until the morning, but now she knew she must go at once. Her mother was over there; the old life called to her; the northwest wind swept up the channel and whistled alluringly to her at the window of her luxurious room. It brought to her the tang of the salt wastes and filled her heart with a great, bitter-sweet yearning.

She was more beautiful than ever. In the year that had passed she had blossomed out to a gracious fulfillment of womanhood. Even the Camerons had wondered at her swift adaptation to her new surroundings. She seemed to have put Racicot behind her as one puts by an old garment. In everything she had held her own royally. Her adopted parents were proud of her beauty and her nameless, untamed charm. They had lavished every indulgence upon her. In those few short months she had lived more keenly and fully than in all her life before. The Nora Shelley who went away was not, so it would seem, the Nora Shelley who came back.

But when she looked from her window to the waves and saw the star of the lighthouse and the blaze of the sunset in the window of the fishing-houses and heard the summons of the wind, something broke loose in her soul and overwhelmed her, like a wave of the sea. She must go at once -- at once -- at once. Not a moment could she wait.

She was dressed for dinner, but with tingling fingers she threw off her costly gown and put on her dark travelling suit again. She left her hair as it was and knotted a crimson scarf about her head. She would slip away quietly to the boathouse, get Davy to launch the little sailboat for her - and then for a fleet skim over the harbour before that glorious wind! She hoped not to be seen, but Mrs. Cameron met her in the hall.

"Nora!" she said in astonishment.

"Oh, I must go, Aunty! I must go!" the girl cried feverishly. She was afraid Mrs. Cameron would try to prevent her going, and all at once she knew that she could not bear that.

"Must go? Where? Dinner is almost ready, and --"

"Oh, I don't want any dinner. I'm going home - I will sail over."

"My dear child, don't be foolish. It's too late to go over the harbour tonight. They won't be expecting you. Wait until the morning."

"No -- oh, you don't understand. I must go -- I must! My mother is over there."

Something in the girl's last sentence or the tone in which it was uttered brought a look of pain to Mrs. Cameron's face. But she made no further attempt to dissuade her.

"Well, if you must. But you cannot go alone - no, Nora, I cannot allow it. The wind is too high and it is too late for you to go over by yourself. Clark Bryant will take you."

Nora would have protested but she knew it would be in vain. She submitted somewhat sullently and walked down to the shore in silence. Clark Bryant strode beside her, humoring her mood. He was a tall, stout man, with an ugly, clever, sarcastic face. He was as clever as he looked, and was one of the younger millionaires whom John Cameron drew around him in the development of his huge financial schemes. Bryant was in love with Nora. This was why the Camerons had asked him to join their August house party at Dalveigh, and why he had accepted. It had occurred to Nora that this was the case, but as yet she had never troubled to think the situation over seriously.

She liked Clark Bryant well enough, but just at the moment he was in the way. She did not want to take him over to Racicot - just why she could not have explained. There was in her no snobbish shame of her humble home. But he did not belong there; he was an alien, and she wished to back to it for the first time alone.

At the boathouse Davy launched the small sailboat and Nora took the tiller. She knew every inch of the harbour. As the sail filled before the wind and the boat sprang across the upcurling waves, her brief sullenness fell away from her. She no longer resented Clark Bryant's presence - she forgot it. He was no more to her than the mast by which he stood. The spell of the sea and the wind surged into her heart and filled it with wild happiness and measureless content. Over yonder, where the lights gleamed on the darkening shore under the high-sprung arch of pale golden sky, was home. How the wind whistled to welcome her back! The lash of it against her face - the flick of salt spray on her lips - the swing of the boat as it cut through the racing crests - how glorious it all was!

Clark Bryant watched her, understanding all at once that he was nothing to her, that he had no part or lot in her heart. He was as one forgotten and left behind. And how lovely, how desirable she was! He had never seen her look so beautiful. The shawl had slipped down to her shoulders and her head rose out of it like some magnificent flower out of a crimson calyx. The masses of her black hair lifted from her face in the rush of the wind and swayed back again like rich shadows. Her lips were stung scarlet with the sea's sharp caresses, and her eyes, large and splendid, looked past him unseeing to the harbour lights of Racicot.

When they swung in by the wharf Nora sprang from the boat before Bryant had time to moor it. Pausing for an instant, she called down to him, carelessly, "Don't wait for me. I shall not go back tonight."

Then she caught her shawl around her head and almost ran up the wharf and along the shore. No one was abroad, for it was supper hour in Racicot. In the Shelley kitchn the family was gathered around the table, when the door was flung open and Nora stood on the threshold. For a moment they gazed at her as at an apparition. They had not known the precise day of her coming, and were not aware of the Camerons' arrival at Dalveigh.

"It's the girl herself. It's Nora," said old Nathan, rising from his bench.

"Mother!" cried Nora. She ran across the room and buried her face in her mother's breast, sobbing.

Posted by sheila