The Books: Against the Odds: ‘A Question of Acquaintance’ (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement – ‘A Question of Acquaintance’ – by L.M. Montgomery

This story was written in 1929 and you can just feel Lucy Maud’s mastery of the form. I mean, she’s beyond a “master” – what I get from this is her absolute certainty and her seemingly effortless skill at telling a story. You don’t see the strings here. This seems to be true from her short stories after a certain point (and makes this one stand out in this particular collection, which is full of creaky here-is-the-moral type stories). A lot of the stories in this collection, while they have the Lucy Maud tone that I love so much, are also little more than their plot structures. She wrote a lot of those. They paid the bills. But by 1929, her bills were more than taken care of, and she wrote what pleased her. Sadly, this means she also wrote Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat which I have yet to get to in this book excerpt series – but don’t worry, we’ll get there! Anyway, what I’m trying to say is – stories like ‘A Question of Acquaintance’ are a joy. It’s about the characters. The plot is simple: A father with a daughter (no mother in the picture) – freaking out about his daughter’s marriage prospects – and does NOT approve of his daughter flirting with the man next door. The father wants her to marry somone HE approves of. Naturally, the father is WAY out of date … and is so crotchety and judgmental that everyone pretty much just humors him, and then goes ahead and does whatever they want to do.

Dr. Dimma lives with his daughter Merle. He is an old-fashioned man – and while he is scandalized by the fact that his daughter wears makeup, plays golf, and wears short skirts (it is, after all, the 1920s) – he knows that she is a CATCH and he has his heart set on a man named Clark Fairweather. The main thing that Dr. Dimma likes about Clark Fairweather is that he is a doctor, and Dr. Dimma thinks that it is the only profession worthy of respect. Merle, his lovely daughter, has a horrible habit of tossing roses over the fence at their next door neighbor – his roses! That he worked so hard at! She also goes to dances with the man, plays golf with him, and – in general – dates him. Dr. Dimma is out of his mind with apoplectic rage. Merle keeps trying to tell him the name of the next door neighbor (he just moved there) and how wonderful he is – but Dr Dimma will hear none of it. He doesn’t like the next door neighbor because he isn’t a doctor, also because he plays the violin at 2 in the morning, also because he is good-looking as a movie star, also because sometimes his pigs get loose and go into Dr. Dimma’s yard, also because one day when Dr. Dimma came back from an unsuccessful fishing trip the neighbor called out from his porch, “Caught anything yet?” The nerve! But Merle, who is sweet and obliging, and yet obviously does whatever she wants, is now staying out at all hours of the night with the man … and this must stop!! Dr. Dimma must stop it! She must marry Clark Fairweather!

Anyway, this whole thing ends up working itself out, of course … but it’s not about the plot – it’s about the WAY Lucy Maud gets us to the conclusion. It’s just fun, that’s all.

Here’s an excerpt.

Excerpt from Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement – ‘A Question of Acquaintance’ – by L.M. Montgomery

Dr. Dimma worshiped his own profession. No other counted for much in his eyes. He had always hoped Merle would marry a doctor. To have a son-in-law with whom he could discuss germs and operations and cancers would have been the height of bliss in his eyes. And there had been no lack of candidates. Merle could even have had Cleaver Robinson, whose researches into various elusive bacilli had already put him in the limelight. To be sure, poor Cleaver looked rather like a magnified bacilli himself. No wonder Merle couldn’t bear him. Dr. Dimma was not an unreasonable parent. But there was no fault to be found with Clark Fairweather personally, and it was high time Merle stopped her shilly-shallying with all the boys in Sangamo and settled down.

And no more roses over the fence. He’d see to that at once. Was he growing roses to see them wasted that way on a fellow who couldn’t tell a Gloire de Dijon from a cabbage rose? Weren’t they enough trouble and worriment without that? He didn’t see why he wasted time and energy over the beastly things. Slugs – and spiders – and blight – and mildew! Any man was a fool who made a hobby of rose-growing. Any man was a fool to give his daughter so much of her own way. He’d show her!

And Dr. Dimma, who worshipped Merle and would have died if he couldn’t grow roses, went down to breakfast in an atrocious humour with everything and everybody, and determined to make them feel it.

To make things worse, Merle was ten minutes late and told him his watch was wrong. It infuriated Dr. Dimma ever to be told his watch was wrong. He pounded the table and glared at her. Not that Merle cared. She was not in the least afraid of her father, though she had spent the most of her young life luring him to make up his mind as she wanted it made up, and explaining away his insulting remarks to her friends. Even now, behind his glare his pride in her was fairly sticking out of his bulging blue eyes. Not another girl in Sangamo was a patch on her. That trim, shining little black head of her! Those black eyebrows like little wings! Those fan-lashed velvety eyes! That dimple just below the red delightful mouth of her! That creamy throat above the linen collar of her pretty green sweater! A thoroughbred, every inch of her! Acres of family behind her. Showed her knees too much, of course. But at any rate they were knees that could be shown.

“My watch isn’t wrong,” he shouted. Dr. Dimma always believed that if he contradicted loud enough, people would be convinced. “Here I am, worn out after a sleepless night, and in a hurry to get down to the hospital. Do you realize that I have an important consultation at ten? And you keep me waiting for hours for my breakfast?”

Merle didn’t ask why he didn’t go ahead without her. She knew no meal had any pleasure for him if she were not facing him across the table. To him she was not only Merle – she was youth, beauty, mystery, romance – everything that had deserted the life of a rotund, bald-headed, elderly doctor. Instead, she went round and kissed him.

“Now, Daddy dearest, don’t be cross,” she pleaded.

Generally this placated the doctor. He liked to feel that his womankind felt the need of placating him. But the iron had bitten too deeply. A fiddle at three o’clock played by a nobody! “Caught any yet?”

“Never mind standing there in a skirt that is a sheer impertinence. Go and sit down.”

Merle sat meekly enough. Trouble of some kind was brewing. Perhaps she, too had heard the fiddle! And understood better than the doctor what had been played.

“Did I,” said Dr. Dimma impressively, “see you throwing a rose at that fellow next door last night?”

“You’re only asking that for rhetorical effect, Daddy,” said Merle coolly. “Of course you saw me throw a rose.”

Dr. Dimma snorted ironically.

“Of course,” he mimicked. “Well, this has got to stop.”

“What has got to stop?”

“Everything – everything. I won’t have you running around with that fellow. We don’t know him.”

“I do,” said Merle.

“Ah, you do. What do you know about him, miss? What’s his pedigree?”

“Daddy dear, he isn’t a horse. He’s very nice. He plays a beautiful game – such a pity you don’t care for golf, Daddy – and – and – pehaps he’s your future son-in-law. So you really ought to know him.”

Dr. Dimma glared at her and banged the table. He knew Merle was only trying to tease him, but still!

“Son-in-law! No, thank you!” The doctor’s sarcasm was terrible. “No son-in-law for me who plays the fiddle when decent people should be asleep.”

“But, Daddy, he was overseas and he’s been subject to insomnia ever since. Besides, it helps him to think.”

“Oh, blame everything on the war. That fellow never smelled powder. As for thinking – don’t tell me he thinks. A he-doll like that couldn’t even try to think.”

“You’re unjust, Daddy. It isn’t his fault that he’s good-looking. And – and,” Merle added dreamily, “you have no idea how divinely he can kiss!”

Dr. Dimma almost choked over the mouthful of coffee he had just taken in.

“What do you know – has he dared – has he dared -”

“Daddy, you’ll have apoplexy. Now, dearest, stop spluttering. I haven’t made up my mind yet that I really want him. But he’s such a relief after Clark.”

“What’s the matter with Clark?” glared Dr. Dimma. “He’s clever and rich and good-looking, isn’t he? And he’ll make you an affectionate husband.”

“An affectionate husband. Oh, Daddy, you’re so Victorian,” groaned Merle. “Affectionate husbands are outmoded. We like the cavemen. The only thing I really have against Clark is the fact that his face demands side-whiskers a generation too late.”

“Look here, Merle, I’m serious and I want you to be. You’ve got to stop associating with this – this -”

“His name is -”

“I know his name. It’s all I do know about him, except the self-evident fact that he’s an idler and a –”

“He’s been -”

“Not a word. The Dimmas have been in Sangamo for six generations. You’ll be good enough to remember what I say, Merle. I mean every word of it. And you’ll find I’m firm.”

Merle stood up. It was time to put an end to the interview. She felt a little anxious, though she didn’t show it. There had been one or two times in her life when she couldn’t wheedle her father. When Dr. Dimma really did make up his mind on any point, he had never been known to change it. And she knew his reverence for ancestry and pedigrees only too well.

“You’d be more convincing, Daddy love, if you weren’t so cross. Being a tyrant isn’t being firm, you know. Now, don’t let’s quarrel this lovely morning.”

“Merle, remember what I say -”

“Of course I’ll remember it. How can I help remembering when you’re shouting at me like that! And glaring! You’re such a nice-looking father when you don’t glare. I’ve tried to bring you up properly, darling, but I can’t seem to break you of glaring. Now, run along to your little hospital. I’m going out to the club with the Benson girls. We’re the committee for the dance tomorrow night, you know.”

Dr. Dimma snorted. He didn’t approve of the Benson girls – though their pedigree equalled the Dimmas’. But for that matter he approved of none of those silky sophisticated creatures Merle ran with – snaky, hipless things, with shingle-bobs, and mouths that looked as if they had been making a meal of blood, and legs that might as well be naked, who powdered their noses publicly with the engaging unconcern of a cat washing its face in the gaze of thousands. Where were the girls of yesteryear? Girls that were girls – ah! But times had changed. Still, had a father no righst at all? This was all it came to – all your years of sacrifice and care. They flouted you – just flouted you in their slim insolence. Well, he’d show them – he’d show her, the darned little fool, playing fast and loose with a man like Clark Fairweather. It was time somebody brought her up with a round turn, even an outmoded father who had worshipped her and slaved for her, and was now told for his reward that a man he objected to could kiss divinely!