The Books: At the Altar: ‘What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It’ (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

0553567489.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgAt the Altar – ‘What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It’ – by L.M. Montgomery

This one was written in 1935 – I’m always interested to read Lucy Maud’s short stories that she wrote AFTER she became an internationally known novelist. It’s fascinating to read her stuff from before “Anne” as well – just to see her developing her craft – I love all of that – but she kept writing short stories throughout her life. It’s amazing the output of this woman, it just boggles the mind. Once you get into the late 1930s, Lucy Maud is starting to break down. Her troubles begin to escalate (although I have to say – reading her journals – often I read her despair at this or that circumstance and I think: “WHY is this upsetting her so much??” That’s totally not fair of me – I’m not justifying myself – I’m just saying that that’s my response. So you had a fender-bender. Is that any reason to walk the floor at night, wringing your hands? So your son married someone you don’t really like. Fine. That sucks. But is it an unspeakable tragedy?)

I’m not sure what was going on with Lucy Maud, I mean in an uber sense – I have a couple of theories, because – for the most part in her journals – she doesn’t say: HERE is why I am so depressed all the time. Because who would say that? She was married to an imbecile (literally – he went mad a couple of years into their marriage and was never well again – she had to take care of him, almost like a baby). She had loved someone passionately in her youth – a hearty young handsome farmer – and it seems like she never really recovered from it (he died). Her kindred spirit cousin had died in 1918 in the influenza epidemic – and she basically decided to never have another friend. She was a once-in-a-lifetime type person. Also, World War I had completely changed her (as it completely changed the majority of that generation). She never “bounced back” from it, from the horror of it, the horrifying birth of the 20th century. And as the 30s moved on and it became apparent that another world war was approaching, her health eventually broke down completely. She could not face it.

Her work was her anchor, and also her escape. Not to mention her income! But deeper than that: her life as a minister’s wife went so against her own inclinations. Her life had to be social, filled with small talk, and filled with little tiny lies. ha. Ironic, right? But to be a successful minister, you had to get on the good side of everyone in the town – even if they were bitchy assholes … and the minister’s wife is like a celebrity – watched at every turn, criticized – criticized if she dresses too dowdy, criticized if she dresses too flowery … No matter what you do, you are on display. You kind of can’t win. Lucy Maud’s temperament was not a small-talk temperament and yet she married a man where small talk would be a requirement of her married life. Having teas, and socials, and quiltings, and Ladies Aid meetings, and having to head up little committees – and all that shit. Lucy Maud was an artist, for God’s sake, and she had to go off and do all this petty crap to keep up appearances. Her married life and its obligations (because she certainly didn’t love Ewan – this wasn’t a partnership – especially not after he went mad) left her almost no room to breathe. And yet still, with all of that – she managed to write practically a novel a year. It’s extraordinary.

So I look at this prose in this story – written in 1935 – when Lucy Maud’s journals start to get very fragmented – all she does is give updates on how anxious she is, and how horrible things are, and how she can’t talk about it … and I read this story and what I see is the triumph of her artistic spirit. It is truly beautiful to me. Sad, too – because i wish she had been happier – but who knows. A happy peaceful Lucy Maud might not have written so much and so well. She really NEEDED her writing. Not just for the money. But for spiritual and emotional reasons. If writing had been illegal in Canada, she would have gone underground. It was that essential to her mental health. And, I don’t know – I could be reading into this (ha – Yes, I think you are, Sheila) – but there’s something about her writing that shows all of this to me. It’s good writing on its own, don’t get me wrong … but I think one of the reasons it resonates is because Lucy Maud HAD to do this. There is an urgency and a drive in all of her prose. It shimmers with life. Also – that more often than not – her stories are FUNNY. This is not a woman who poured her tragic outlook on life into her work. This is a woman who believed, in all her soul, that a happy ending had as much worth as a sad. That a sad ending does not make you a better artist. She was a fierce believer in things working out. It’s amazing. What a life force. What hope.

Bless you, Lucy Maud.

Here’s the opening of this story ‘What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It’.


Excerpt from At the Altar – ‘What Aunt Marcella Would Have Called It’ – by L.M. Montgomery

If Aunt Marcella had allowed Glen to bob her hair this story would never have been told because there would have been no story to tell. But Aunt Marcella did not approve of bobbed hair at all. It was flying in the face of Providence for a girl to bob her hair, and … so Aunt Marcella said … she would be bald in her old age for her sins.

“You will thank me when you are sixty,” she told Glen.

“That is a long time to wait for gratitude,” said Glen darkly.

But Aunt Marcella was adamant, and Glen continued to wear her lovely golden-brown braid hanging down her back like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl of the century’s teens, when she would be eighteen in another month and every bit as modern as Aunt Marcella would let her be.

Aunt Marcella would not even allow her to put it up. It was intolerable. If she could even put her hair up in a lovely soft knot at the back of her neck … well, it might dawn on Dudley Wyatt’s perception that she was really grown-up and not the schoolgirl, devoted to dolls, that he considered her and, as seemed likely, would go on considering her until she was that mythical sixty of Aunt Marcella’s warnings.

It seemed to Glen that she had always been in love with Dudley Wyatt, although she had known him only from the age of twelve, when he had come to live next door to them at Nokomis Lodge. Glen always avowed that her legs trembled the first time she saw him, by which token she knew that she had fallen in love. But Dudley took no notice of her. He was all for Isabel. Not that he was in love with Isabel at all. To him, sixteen-year-old Isabel was just one of the two children at the Lindens. But she was a very clever child and he liked to talk to her. Nobody thought Glen had any brains because she hardly ever talked. And at twelve she had been anything but pretty … a gaunt, scrawny creature with two sunburned pigtails. Glen would go hatless, to Aunt Marcella’s mid-Victorian horror.

“What kind of complexion will you have when you are sixty?” she asked. “Besides, I call it ‘Brazen’ to go about without a hat.”

Aunt Marcella never pronounced an adjective without making you see it spelled with a capital.

But even at sixteen Isabel was a beauty … a tall, willowy thing with golden-brown hair and big owlish eyes that were the tint of a copper-grey sea. And, although Dudley Wyatt did not seem to have any kind of eyes for women at all, Glen believed in her secret soul that, if Isabel hadn’t been so pretty, Dudley would not have detected her cleverness so quickly. As it was, he thought her a wonder. Aunt Marcella didn’t. Aunt Marcella did not believe in a woman having brains.

“I call it ‘Unwomanly’ to be so clever,” she told Isabel severely. “Aping the men!”

“But most men are really very stupid,” said Isabel.

“I call that ‘Flippant’,” said Aunt Marcella, “and I dislike flippancy above all things.”

“Besides, if you are not clever you bore the men after your novelty wears off,” persisted Isabel.

“I have never been a man,” said Aunt Marcella superfluously, “but I think it takes some time for them to tire of beauty. And ‘bore’ was not considered a nice word when I was a girl.”

And then Uncle Maurice’s daughter had died and Uncle Mauriece had come home and taken Isabel out west with him. That was five years ago and she had never been back since. But she was still tremendously clever and had graduated with highest honours. Aunt Marcella called that very ‘Unfeminine’ but Dudley exulted.

He wrote to Isabel occasionally and took the keenest interest in her career. He also made quite a bit of Glen, but still only as a child who was a dear little thing, rather dumb. Glen knew she was dumb when Dudley was about. She wasn’t going to talk to him as a child and when she tried to talk to him as a grown-up her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. She had a horrible feeling that if she did talk to him like a grown-up Dudley would smile kindly, as at a precocious child, and tell her to run away and tuck up her doll-babies.

Oh … Glen clenched her hands … life wasn’t fair to women! Why … why … were men so blind? Couldn’t he see she wasn’t a child any longer? Couldn’t he see the love she had to give him? It was bitter to have such a gift to give and nobody wanting to take it. Glen wouldn’t have minded so much if Dudley had hated her … if only he hated her as a woman. She couldn’t go on being regarded as a child.

“I love him, and he doens’t even know that I exist,” she sighed. “He thinks me somebody who doesn’t exist … the twelve-year-old arms-and-legs I was when he came here first. Why can’t I make him see? He won’t see! He looks at me with the condescending kindness one shows a child … and then I feel exactly like a caterpillar someone has stepped on.”

That night he strolled past as she sat on the porch and called out teasingly, “Tell me what you are thinking of, Glennie?”

Good heavens, suppose she did tell him? Suppose she called back, “I’m thinking of you and how heavenly it would be if you came in here and sat down beside me and said, ‘I love you, Glen,’ and … and … kissed me.”

Just what would happen? Well, she knew one thing that would. Aunt Marcella, by the living-room window, would die of frustration because she woudl not be able to find an adjective strong enough to describe such behaviour. But even thn Dudley would probably only say something like, “You’ve mistaken me for Clark Adams.”

Clark Adams! That immature creature of twenty!

“I don’t care for boys … I get on better with men,” Glen heard herself calling back.

But of course she had really said nothing when he asked her that question. He hadn’t expected her to say anything. If only she could have thought of something quite daring to say! Something that a child couldn’t think of saying. Isabel, now, could have said a dozen provocative things. Even she herself could have said them to Clark Adams. But she had said nothing … had only given a foolish little giggle … and Dudley had gone on, his dog slouching at his heels, on one of those long hikes of his that she longed to share. But Dudley had asked her only once and Aunt Marcella disapproved, tilting her hawk nose.

“I call it ‘Unladylike’ to go striding over the country like a man, or like one of those dreadful girls in knickerbockers,” said Aunt Marcella. “I suppose you hardly class yourself among them, Glen.”

The joke was that Glen was dying to wear knickers, or do anything else that might make Dudley realize that she was grown-up and beautiful … hair just as glossy and golden-brown as Isabel’s, eyes just the same coppery grey, shoulders just as smooth and delicious. But of what use was it? Dudley never saw her shoulders.

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