The Sheila Variations

This April:

Anne of Green Gables turns 100 years old.

Even with all of this I feel like I haven't scratched the surface of what Anne of Green gables means to me (and actually - it's larger than that - it's Lucy Maud Montgomery who is the obsession, not just her most famous book). I will be obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery until I die. The fact that her journals have been published are a great great gift - and this October a biography is coming out (written by the editor of the journals - I've corresponded with her, lovely woman). Her success is something an author can only dream of. She was successful during her lifetime - Anne was a huge hit - but nothing could have prepared her for the posthumous MANIA of today.

Margaret Atwood has written about her fellow Canadian's work on the dawn of this important centennial anniversary here.

An excerpt from the piece that made me cry - and made me think: Yes. Yes. THAT is the magic of the book ... THAT is what, after so many readings, still gets me:

There's another way of reading Anne of Green Gables, and that's to assume that the true central character is not Anne, but Marilla Cuthbert. Anne herself doesn't really change throughout the book. She grows taller, her hair turns from "carrots" to "a handsome auburn", her clothes get much prettier, due to the spirit of clothes competition she awakens in Marilla, she talks less, though more thoughtfully, but that's about it. As she herself says, she's still the same girl inside. Similarly, Matthew remains Matthew, and Anne's best chum Diana is equally static. Only Marilla unfolds into something unimaginable to us at the beginning of the book. Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love - not Anne's duckling-to-swan act - is the real magic transformation.

I can barely get through that paragraph without sobbing.

Oh, and 2 days ago I was contacted by someone at Nowpublic - asking them if they could use one of my photos (the poster for Anne of Green Gables on the wall in the college theatre where I went to school - and played "Anne" when I was there) in their tribute page to Lucy Maud Montgomery and the anniversary of Anne of Green Gables' publication. I said of course!!

Slideshow of images here

Here's the post I wrote about Anne of Green Gables - and just from the tone in the comments you can tell how much that fictional character is loved.

And so. Happy birthday Anne with an E.

The Books: "Jane of Lantern Hill" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

And here is my last Lucy Maud book - and it's the second to last book she wrote: Jane of Lantern Hill. Published in 1937 ... only a couple of years after the Mistress Pat debacle - and interestingly enough, it has a lot of the same themes (the love of home, the need for a home - but this is always one of Lucy Maud's themes) - but Jane, in this book, spends the majority of her time separated from her father - who lives on Prince Edward Island - and she lives in Toronto - and seriously ACHES to get back to the island. The red roads, the ocean, the freedom of life there ... One of the reasons why this overwhelming love of home doesn't quite work with the "Pat" books is: Pat LIVES at home. She is not (like Anne, or Emily) an orphan, she barely spends a freakin' night away from her house - let alone her entire LIFE. She is not "in exile". She grows up in the same house, with two parents ... and so why this unbelievable attachment to the damn house? It makes no sense. That kind of displacement was very familiar to Lucy Maud - who did not grow up with her biological parents - who was basically abandoned by her father, who went out West, and created a new family from scratch - leaving Lucy Maud at home to be raised by grandparents. And then - once Lucy Maud married The Lunatic Husband - he whisked her off to various cities and towns far far away from Prince Edward Island, and - I don't know, this is just my impression - but I feel like she never ever reconciled herself to that geographical distance. She never got used to it. She never accepted it. Her entire soul and spirit yearned towards PEI and yet - til the end of her life - she never spent more than a month there at one time. People who experience their native land from exile often have a way deeper attachment to the soil than those who actually live there (see Joyce, see a bazillion others) ... Lucy Maud Montgomery was no exception. She lived far away from PEI for 30 years. And yet where did the majority of her books take place? Prince Edward Island. No one who has read her books can be indifferent to PEI. She writes about it with such love, such specificity - it's not a romanticized view, not exactly. To her, it felt like reality. There was no place on earth as beautiful or as desirable as PEI. So you wonder if she would have written about it so well if she had lived on PEI all that time. Perhaps exile sharpened her senses, her memory.

The story of Jane of Lantern Hill is actually kind of "modern", (for Lucy Maud anyway) - and touches on issues that were very personal for her, things she never spoke about or wrote about. Anne and Emily in her other books were both orphaned - which was not their fault (the very funny Oscar Wilde quote notwithstanding). Lucy Maud wrote about her sense of being alone in the world, thrown on the kindness of others - through these orphaned characters. But she never wrote a story from her own experience: her mother died, and her father felt he couldn't raise his daughter by himself - so he moved away, married someone else, started a family - and never sent for Lucy Maud. Even though he promised to. It's like he wiped her out of existence (I'm exaggerating - she did visit a couple of times, etc.) - but he had NO intention of "sending for" his young daughter. Which - if you really think about it - is pretty damn cold. But Lucy Maud coped - she accepted her life with very little bitterness, etc. - she didn't blame her father for this ... and yet in book after book after book she writes about orphaned girls. Girls with no parents. Parents do NOT exist in Lucy Maud's world. It's an indirect indictment of the lonely childhood her father left her to.

In Jane, the situation is: Jane's parents split up acrimoniously when she was still a baby. I don't think they got divorced - just separated. Her father, in a rage, moved back home to Prince Edward Island, where he grew up - and Jane's mother moved back in with HER mother, an imperious WITCH. The three of them live in a huge mansion in Toronto and Jane grows up in a rigid atmosphere of silence - her grandmother despises her, because of the resemblance to this hated and scorned ex-husband. Jane's mother is beautiful, and "modern" - much more modern than other mothers in Lucy Maud's books - and by that I mean, she wears makeup, perfume - she's an urban woman, going out to dinner parties, etc. But there's a sadness there. Jane is forbidden to ask questions about her father, whom she has never met.

Jane is a winning little child. You like her. She has spunk. She's not fanciful like Anne, or really really good at something like Emily - but she's the kind of person well liked by everyone. A person with the gift of human connection and friendship. Lucy Maud writes her well - you really GET her character. She's not a re-tread of Anne or Emily. She is her own person. For example: - Anne is a bumbling idiot at first when it comes to domestic issues - and puts salt into pancakes, and forgets the flour ... and Marilla has a hell of a time teaching her to cook. But Jane doesn't have that problem - she's kind of a brilliant cook, improvisational, enthusiastic, good at it - but - she doesn't even know this about herself - because her environment is so rigid, so "children should be seen and not heard" - that she isn't given a chance to discover who she is at ALL. She just tries to make herself as good and unobtrusive and unoffensive as possible - to avoid the wrath of her icy-eyed grandmother.

But then one day - out of the blue - her father writes to her mother demanding that Jane come stay with him for the summer. Jane is 10 or 11 years old. It is his "right" to see Jane, to meet her, he says. A huge family upset occurs. Jane doesn't want to go. She doesn't even KNOW her father! Her mother is a weakling, unable to stand up to her icy mother - and the grandmother is just a flat out witch. But eventually - fearful that he will turn it into a legal issue - they allow Jane to go. Jane goes reluctantly. Even though she is unhappy living in the big echoing marble mansion, with her grandmother - who hates her - she doesn't want to leave. She is afraid of the unknown. She doesn't know who she is yet.

So off she goes to Prince Edward Island. Fearful, hateful, cautious, resentful. Naturally - it turns out that her father is wonderful. You can see why he might not be a good husband - at least not to a woman like Jane's mother - he's a bit irresponsible with his money - you get that right away, he's unconventional - he's a writer - he doesn't care about material things - but you LOVE him. In my opinion, he is the only convincing father-figure Lucy Maud ever wrote. He accepts Jane as she stands. There are no preconceived notions about who she should be - she also is not expected to be a 'good little girl' - and follow the rules. She can swim all day if she wants to, she doesn't have to go to church if she doesn't want to - she can make the friends she wants to make - not have stupid "approved" friends. And he already loves her, because she is his daughter. So in that environment of acceptance - Jane just starts to blossom. She lives with her father in his little seaside cottage (called Lantern Hill, of course) - and she cooks - she's never had a chance to cook before - because the house in Toronto has servants doing everything for her. So after a couple of false starts - Jane becomes an awesome cook. It is the happiest summer of her life. She makes friends her own age for the first time - she has adventures - and she basically just falls in love with her dad. She comes alive. Even though she had never been to PEI before - by the end of the summer she knows: It is HOME.

Of course when it is time for her to return back to Toronto- and her mother - and her horrible grandmother - it ACHES. She doesn't know how to bear it. Jane has discovered her home soil. She must endure the back and forth - she misses her mother desperately - but her heart will always be in Prince Edward Island. It's kind of a complex little book - witih modern-era issues. And I personally think that some of her nature-writing in this book is her best ever - and that is quite a statement, because when she's writing about the natural world - she is always good.

In this excerpt - Jane is staying with her father - her relationship with him is new and fresh ... and she has announced to him that she finds the Bible boring. He feigns shock (but always in a humorous way) and tells her that the best place to read the Bible is in the great outdoors. God isn't meant to be contained in a man-made building. (Is this Lucy Maud digging at her stick-in-the-mud religious fanatic minister husband? Her books are FULL of hints that religion ruins God. Member Anne Shirley talking about how prayers shouldn't be in actual words - that she wanted to walk into the woods and feel a prayer? This would have been heretical to her husband, who feared the flames of hell to such an extent that he went mad. Anyway, I just wonder about that.) Jane's father feels that the Bible should only be read with the sound of the crashing waves in the air, etc. Jane is skeptical.

(Notice here how her father talks to Jane as though she is an intelligent person, not a little girl. He treats her like she is good company. Think back on being a little kid - and how much you cherished grown-ups who treated you like that - with respect. Lucy Maud really gets that.)

Also: notice the creativity and fluidity with which Jane's dad reads the Bible. It's unconventional. Can't you hear snippety know-it-all Christians arguing in a kneejerk way about where he gets it wrong? Which, of course, misses the entire point. Or - that IS the point. Jane has been turned off of religion through overly literal practice. Or, to be more blunt: Christians have turned her off God. Jane's dad couldn't give a shit about any of that. To him - God comes alive in nature. This was always true for Lucy Maud as well, who went to the ocean, the woods, to commune - (which is hugely ironic - seeing as she married an unimaginative unspiritually-minded minister.) Jane's father would probably be seen as a heathen by many. But Jane knows better. So does Lucy Maud. I love this whole passage. It's full of heart, it's smart ... and I can hear the two voices. (She re-uses a couple phrases here from other books. Any serious Lucy Maud fans will immediately recognize them.)

Excerpt from Jane of Lantern Hill by Lucy Maud Montgomery

After all Jane found it did not require a miracle to make her like the Bible. She and dad went to the shore every Sunday afternoon and he read to her from it. Jane loved those Sunday afternoons. They took their suppers with them and ate them squatted on the sand. She had an inborn love of the sea and all pertaining to it. She loved the dunes ... she loved the music of the winds that whistled along the silvery solitude of the sand-shore ... she loved the far dim shores that would be jewelled with home-lights on fine blue evenings. And she loved dad's voice reading the Bible to her. He had a voice that would make anything sound beautiful. Jane thought if dad had had no other good quality at all, she must have loved him for his voice. And she loved the little comments he made as he read ... things that made the verses come alive for her. She had never thought that there was anything like that in the Bible. But then, dad did not read about knops and taches.

"'When all the morning stars sang together' ... the essence of creation's joy is in that, Jane. Can't you hear that immortal music of the spheres? 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou, moon, in the vale of Ajalon.' Such sublime arrogance, Jane ... Mussolini himself couldn't rival that. 'Here shall thy proud waves be stayed' ... look at them rolling in there, Jane ... 'so far and no further' ... the majestic law to which they yield obedience never falters or fails. 'Give me neither poverty nor riches' ... the prayer of Agar, son of Jakeh. A sensible man was Agar, my Jane. Didn't I tell you the Bible was full of common sense? 'A fool uttereth all his mind.' Proverbs is harder on the fool than on anybody else, Jane ... and rightly. It's the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked. 'Whither thou goest I will gol and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee and me.' The high-water mark of the expression of emotion in any language that I'm acquainted with, Jane ... Ruth to Naomi ... and all such simple words. Hardly any of more than one syllable ... the writer of that verse knew how to marry words as no one else has ever done. And he knew enough not to use too many of them. Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less ... I love you ... he is gone ... he is come ... she is dead ... too late ... and life is illumined or ruined. 'All the daughters of music shall be brought low' ... aren't you a little sorry for them, Jane ... those foolish, light-footed daughters of music? Do you think they quite deserved such a humiliation? 'They have taken away my lord and I know not where they have laid him' ... that supreme cry of desolation! 'Ask for the old paths and walk therein and ye shall find rest.' Ah, Jane, the feet of some of us have strayed far from the old paths ... we can't find our way back to them, much as we may long to. 'As cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country.' Were you ever thirsty, Jane ... really thirsty ... burning with fever ... thinking of heaven in terms of cold water? I was, more than once. 'A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night.' Think of a Being like that, Jane, when the little moments torture you. 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.' The most terrible and tremendous saying in the world, Jane ... because we are all afraid of truth and afraid of freedom ... that's why we murdered Jesus."

Jane did not understand all dad said, but she put it all away in her mind to grow up to. All her life she was to have recurring flashes of insight when she recalled something dad had said. Not only of the Bible but of all the poetry he read to her that summer. He taught her the loveliness of words ... dad read words as if he tasted them.

" 'Glimpses of the moon ...' one of the immortal phrases of literature, Jane. There are phrases with sheer magic in them ..."

"I know," said Jane. " 'On the road to Mandalay' ... I read that in one of Miss Colwin's books ... and 'horns of elfland faintly blowing.' That gives me a beautiful ache."

"You have the root of the matter in you, Jane. But, oh, my Jane, why ... why ... did Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed?"

"Perhaps she liked it best," said Jane practically.

" 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings' ... to be sure. I wonder if that eminently sane suggestion has ever occurred to the commentators who have agonised over it. Can you guess who the dark lady was, Jane? You know when a poet praises a woman she is immortal ... witness Beatrice ... Laura ... Lucasta ... Highland Mary. All talked about hundreds of years after they are dead because great poets loved them. The weeds are growing over Troy but we remember Helen."

"I suppose she didn't have a big mouth," said Jane wistfully.

Dad kept a straight face.

"Not too small a one, Jane. You couldn't imagine goddess Helen with a rosebud mouth, could you?"

"Is my mouth too big, dad?" implored Jane. "The girls at St. Agatha's said it was."

"Not too big, Jane. A generous mouth ... the mouth of a giver, not a taker ... a frank, friendly mouth ... with very well cut corners, Jane. Nno weakness about them ... you wouldn't have eloped with Paris, Jane, and made all that unholy mess. You would have been true to your vows, Jane ... in spirit as well as in letter; even in this upside-down world."

Jane had the oddest feeling that dad was thinking of mother, not of Argive Helen. But she was comforted by what he said about her mouth.

Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.

"I knew him overseas ... he was killed ... listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.

"'And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.'

"What will you want to see when you get to heaven, Jane?"

"Lantern Hill," said Jane.

Dad laughed. It was so delightful to make dad laugh ... and so easy. Though a good many times Jane didn't know exactly what he was laughing at, Jane didn't mind that a bit ... but sometimes she wondered if mother had minded it.

One evening after dad had been spouting poetry until he was tired, Jane said timidly, "Would you like to hear me recite, dad?"

She recited The Little Baby of Mathieu. It was easy ... dad made such a good audience.

"You can do it, Jane. That was good. I must give you a bit of training along that line too. I used to be rather good at interpreting the habitant myself."

"Someone she did not like used to be rather good at reading habitant poetry" ... Jane remembered who had said that. She understood another thing now.

Dad had rolled over to where he could see their house in a gap in the twilit dunes.

"I see the Jimmy Johns' light ... and the Snowbeam light at Hungry Cove ... but our house is dark. Let's go home and light it up, Jane. And is there any of that applesauce you made for supper left?"

So they went home together and dad lighted his gasoline lamp and sat down at his desk to work on his epic of Methuselah ... or something else ... and Jane got a candle to light her to bed. She liked a candle better than a lamp. It went out so graciously ... the thin trail of smoke ... the smouldering wick, giving one wild little wink at you before it left you in the dark.

The Books: "Mistress Pat" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Yawn. The second (and thankfully last) book in the Pat series. It's endless. Mistress Pat. Pat's fear of change begins to seem pathological here as she grows older. Like - her sister goes to college and Pat grieves for months the "loss". Every single thing that says "change" is resisted. Judy Plum wants to go home to visit Ireland - and Pat so dreads this that she can barely show an enthusiasm for her friend. Pat - you can't do without Judy Plum for 3 months? What the hell is your problem? Get a LIFE. Trees are cut down. Pat mourns. Her brother marries someone she despises. Yes, that sucks, it does ... but get over it. Your brother is not YOU, Pat. She has stupid love affairs which I, the reader, cannot get into because I know Pat's heart isn't in it. Naturally, on the very last page of the book - she "falls in love" with Jingle (yes, that is his name) - her childhood friend - a kind of Gilbert-ish character - and Pat insists, over YEARS, that she does not love him - even though Jingle loves her. Then - in one moment - she realizes she DOES love him. Pat - grownups learn how to deal with their emotions, learn how to know their own mind. It's boring to read. And again, you can feel Lucy Maud losing steam. For example, the book is broken up into "years" - which doesn't really make sense in the context. If it were the story of Pat going to college, then having chapters be titled "First Year", "Second Year", etc. would make sense. But in this context - it just seems like everyone is marking time. Another thing is the length of the chapters. The "First Year" chapter is 100 pages long. It goes on forEVER. And every chapter after that gets shorter and shorter and shorter ... there's one montage that starts one of the "years" that literally goes like this: "It was summer ... it was autumn ... it was winter ..." Lucy Maud must have been very tired. But she was obligated to finish the book. So she basically just sketched it in. And you can FEEL that, when you're reading it.

Bets, her childhood friend dies. A brother and sister move into Bets' old house. Pat, because she has mental problems, decides not to like them - because they have moved into Bets' old house. Yeah, that's a good reason not to like somebody. But eventually they become friends. David and Suzanne are her friends - and I guess she starts to "date" David - even though the way it's written you know it's never going to go anywhere. It's not like with Emily's other lovers - Jarback Priest, et al ... these are characters who are alive, and her relationship with these people could go somewhere. It's not a literary device to track time passing. It's a real relationship. But Pat "goes out" with David for EVER and then ... I guess she breaks it off with him, I don't know ... the whole thing seems so tired.

Here's an excerpt. There are a couple of lines here that I think are quite good. The whole description in the paragraph starting "Pat went up to the Long House ..." I do like the "silence kneeling like a grey nun" line. But other than that - what we are seeing here - is a woman full of pathologies who cannot accept reality.

Excerpt from Mistress Pat.

They heard about the Long House at Winnie's. It was to have new tenants. They had rented the house for the summer ... not the farm, which was still to be farmed by John Hammond, the owner, who had bought it from the successor of the Wilcoxes.

Pat heard the news with a feeling of distaste. The Long House had been vacant almost ever since Bets had died. A couple had bought the farm, lived there for a few months, then sold out to John Hammond. Pat had been glad of this. It was easier to fancy that Bets was still there when it was empty. In childhood she had resented it being empty and lonely, and had wanted to see it occupied and warmed and lighted. But it was different now. She preferred to think of it as tenanted only by the fragrance of old years and the little spectral joys of the past. Somehow, it seemed to belong to her as long as it was

"Abandoned to the lonely peace
Of bygone ghostly things."

Judy had more news the next morning. The newcomers were a man and his sister. Kirk was their name. He was a widower and had been until recently the editor of a paper in Halifax. And they had bought the house, not rented it.

"Wid the garden and the spruce bush thrown in," said Judy. "John Hammond do be still houlding to the farm. He was here last night, after ye wint away, complaining tarrible about the cost av his wife's operation. 'Oh, oh, what a pity,' sez I, sympathetic-like. 'Sure and a funeral wud have come chaper,' sez I. Patsy dear, did ye be hearing Lester Conway was married?"

"Somebody sent me a paper with the notice marked," laughed Pat. "I'm sure it was May Binnie. Fancy any one supposing it mattered to me."

It seemed a lifetime since she had been so wildly in love with Lester Conway. Why was it she never fell in love like that nowadays? Not that she wanted to ... but why? Was she getting too old? Nonsense!

She knew her clan was beginning to say she didn't know what she wanted but she knew quite well and couldn't find it in any of the men who wooed her. As far as they were concerned, she seemed possessed by a spirit of contrariness. No matter how nice they seemed while they were merely friends or acquaintances she could not bear them when they showed signs of developing into lovers. Silver Bush had no rival in her heart.

In the evening she stood in the garden and looked up at the Long House ... it was suddenly a delicate, aerial pink in the sunset light. Pat had never been enar it since the day of Bets' funeral. Now she had a strange whim to visit it once more before the strangers came and took it from her forever ... to go and keep a tryst with old, sacred memories.

Pat slipped into the house and flung a bright-hued scarf over her brown dress with its neck-frill of pleated pink chiffon. She always thought she looked nicer in that dress than any other. Somehow people seldom wondered whether Pat Gardiner was pretty or not ... she was so vital, so wholesome, so joyous, that nothing else mattered. Yet her dark-brown hair was wavy and lustrous, her golden-brown eyes held challenging lights and the corners of her mouth had such a jolly quirk. She was looking her best to-night with a little flush of excitement staining her round, creamy cheeks. She felt as if she were slipping back into the past.

Judy was in the kitchen, telling stories to a couple of Aunt Hazel's small fry who were visiting at Silver Bush. Pat caught a sentence or two as she went out. "Oh, oh, the ears av him, children dear! He cud hear the softest wind walking over the hills and what the grasses used to say to aich other at the sunrising." Dear old Judy! What a matchless storyteller she was!

"I remember how Joe and Win and Sid and I used to sit on the backdoor steps and listen to her telling fairy tales by moonlight," thought Pat, "and whatever she told you you felt had happened ... must have happened. That is the difference between her yarns and Tillytuck's. Oh, it is really awful to think of her going away in the fall for a whole winter."

Pat went up to the Long House by the old delightful short cut past Swallowfield and over the brook and up the hill fields. It was a long time since she had trodden that fairy path but it had not changed. The fields on the hill still looked as if they loved each other. The big silver birch still hung over the log bridge across the brook. The damp mint, crushed under her feet, still gave out its old haunting aroma, and all kinds of wild blossom filled the crevices of the stone dyke where she and Bets had picked wild strawberries. Its base was still lost in a wave of fern and bayberry. And on the hill the Watching Pine still watched and seemed to shake a hand meaningly at her. At the top was the old gate, fallen into ruin, and beyond it the path through the spruce bush where silence seemed to kneel like a grey nun and she felt that Bets had come to meet her, walking through the dusk with dreams in her eyes.

Past the bush she came out on the garden with the house in the midst. Pat stopped and gazed around her. Everything she looked on had some memory of pleasure or pain. The old garden was very eloquent ... that old garden that had once been so beloved by Bets. She seemed to come back again in the flowers she had tended and loved. The whole place was full of her. She had planted that row of lilies ... she had trained that vine over the trellis ... she had set out that rose-bush by the porch step. But most of it was now a festering mass of weeds and in its midst was the sad, empty house, with the little dormer window in its spruce-shadowed roof ... the window of the room where she had seen the sunrise light falling over Bets' dead face. A dreadful pang of loneliness tore her soul.

"I hate those people who are going to live in you," she told the house. "I daresay they'll tear you up and turn you inside out. That will break my heart. You won't be you then."

The Books: "Pat of Silver Bush" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Three more Lucy Maud novels to go and then we will be done!! I have been saving the dad-blasted "Pat" books - mainly because the two "Pat" books stink up the field (to quote my sister's soccer coach from when she was little. "You stink up the field!") Pat of Silver Bush. It's truly bizarre to read them because they are both so bad. Lucy Maud didn't write bad books. I mean, she wrote so many of them - and with the exception of Kilmeny - they're all just GREAT. Kilmeny was one of her earlier books - it came out right after Anne of Green Gables [excerpt here] - but what's interesting about the two Pat books [this one and Mistress Pat] is that they were written so late in her career. Like - how did this amazing author who had written so much that was awesome - come up with 2 such stinkers?

Having read her journals, I know that that last decade of her life was hell on earth for her. The fact that she was able to write anything at all is quite something. And she did write other books during that decade - not just the Pat books. But she really lost her way with these two - and I have speculated as to why. Lucy Maud - living as she did far from Prince Edward Island - with her high-maintenance insane husband ... yearned, day and night, to go "home". She never really got used to living away from the sea, and whenever she would go back to PEI for a visit, her writing in her journals about the island, and the sea, and the fields of her home, and all that .... are so lush and so nostalgic and so full of yearning that they are almost painful to read. It's like - her real life, with her husband and her two kids, wasn't really the right life. She never should have moved from PEI. (But then again, if she had lived on PEI, she might not have written so eloquently and memorably about that island. Being in "exile" does wonders to someone's art. See Joyce.) But anyway, what I'm getting at here is that Lucy Maud Montgomery, a grown woman, a famous woman, lived in an almost constant state of agonizing homesickness. Like, it wasn't pleasant nostalgia - it hurt her - almost physically to be separated from PEI.

Now - anyone who has suffered through the Pat books knows - that's the whole theme of those books. Pat's love of her stupid home, Silver Bush. But the thing that doesn't work in the books is that: Pat LIVES at Silver Bush. She is not living out in, say, Manitoba, far from the red red roads of PEI. No. Pat is a little girl, LIVING at Silver Bush ... and she is so attached to her home that she literally gets sick - yes, sick - if she has to spend a night away from it. Or ... if a tree falls in a storm ... she grieves so much that she has to take to her bed. And this isn't just a childish attachment - the books start when Pat is 6 and ends when she's in her 20s - and this bullshit "Oh, how I love Silver Bush" thing never stops. And they're long books, too. Like - how many times do we, the reader, have to be told how intensely Pat loves her home? By the third chapter, I'm like, "Jesus. I get it. Okay? I get it. She loves her home." But it doesn't work for some reason.

I'd be eager to hear from other Lucy Maud fans what they think of this book. Does it work for you? Why? And if it doesn't work for you - why do you think?? Like - what is missing here, in your opinion? Where did Lucy Maud go wrong?

I believe that Lucy Maud was creating an outlet for her own homesickness ... which, of course, is a completely valid thing ... but she didn't do it in a way that makes a compelling book. She is somehow trying to make ME, the reader, love Silver Bush as much as Pat does. But the opposite occurs. Her narration keeps going back to the "how much Pat loves Silver Bush" thing that it actually starts seeming like a neuroses than anything else. I start to think that Pat could benefit from psychotropic drugs. Something is wrong with Pat. Like - why is she so homesick for her house when she lives there??? GET OVER IT, PAT. Get a LIFE, Pat. Lucy Maud also - unlike her other heroines - doesn't give us anything else about Pat to latch onto. It's not like Emily, or Anne, or Valancy ... characters who are three-dimensional, who have all KINDS of responses to things, who are complex people, and yet logical - by that I mean, Lucy Maud has made these people seem so real that their responses to things - in all different kinds of situations - seem life-like. These are not cardboard cutouts. These are not people with One Theme Only, One Theme Only, come on, sweet baby, come on ... Pat has ONE THEME. "I love my home." And you expect me to give a crap about that for 600 pages? No. I'm glad you love your home, Pat, I hope you're happy, but honestly - I think your attachment to your house (and, by extension, to things never changing) is actually neurotic - and I think you should, oh, go away to college. Go travel in Europe for a couple of months. Do SOMEthing that doesn't have to do with your stupid house. Lucy Maud makes a fetish of the house. It is described in such detail that I could probably draw a floor plan, and list every single pillow in every window seat, every dish in the cupboards .... Now, details are fine ... I mean, Lucy Maud described Green Gables in detail. Who of us can't remember that spare room? Or at New Moon, too? Each room has its own vibe, its own character ... but for some reason in those books it works, because - although the house is very important - it is, in the end, just background. In Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat - the house is the thing. The house comes to life more than PAT does. And why should I care about a house? I don't. Or I might - but not just because Lucy Maud TELLS me to. I love Green Gables because it feels like a vibrant other character in those books - and I love it because Anne loves it. It is background to other things.

But it's just interesting to me because Lucy Maud wrote so much and as far as I'm concerned she rarely faltered. Here she does. Her own powers of creativity failed her (the journals mention it briefly - how hard she found it to write these two books) - you can really feel it in Mistress Pat - where she completely runs out of steam maybe 150 pages before the book finally ends. The chapters get shorter and shorter and shorter as the book goes on ... Lucy Maud just has nothing else to give by the end of that book.

And because I know the background - the horror of grief and anxiety that she lived in, day after day after day ... the books end do end up seeming like a small triumph. Perhaps not of art - but of the WILL. (heh heh triumph of the will) No but I mean: she didn't WANT to write a book at that point. She wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for 5 months. Oblivion. But since she couldn't do that ... she forced herself to sit at her desk every day, with her madman husband down the hall, causing all kinds of problems, and black clouds of war gathering over Europe again - much to her horror - her ongoing horror ... and she ploddingly, determinedly, kept at it - and kept writing - until these two books were done. These were the books she had in her in those moments. And so she wrote them. And worked on them, and sweated over them ... she knew something was off. She knew that it wasn't a good sign that the books were so hard for her to write. But she just kept going.

I find that so admirable.

But still. The books stink up the field. It's okay. Lucy Maud wrote so many books that will be read by generations to come .... it's okay that a couple of them, only a couple, are stinkers.

So. The excerpt. Pat has made a friend - Bets Wilcox. Oh, and here's another thing that is bad about these books. Everything is foreshadowed WAY too clearly. In her other books, when you get those moments of the future - it can be either chilling, or exciting ... but here? You know from the first what will happen ... Like stupid Jingle, Pat's "boy"friend. You know that the childhood friends will grow up and Jingle will be a Gilbert-esque suitor, and Pat - with her neurotic horror of change - will not see Jingle "in that way". It's all basically set up from their first meeting - and Judy Plum, the gabby Irish servant, with her keen eyes - sees everything. But I think she sees too much because it leaves nothing to the reader. So Bets. Pat's dear friend. Who is barely developed as a character - we just hear what she looks like, and we know - basically because Judy Plum makes a cryptic comment - that Bets is not long for this world. And oh no, boo hoo, Pat will lose her best friend. The book is full of "foreshadowing" like this - but it's too obvious - so Lucy Maud doesn't develop things - it feels more like events march to some inevitable conclusion. VERY un-Lucy-Maud-like. She really lost her way here.

Okay - so Pat - who is 11 or 12 here - has a sleepover at Bets' house right across the way. But oh no! How on earth will neurotic dipshit Pat handle sleeping away from her beloved house for one night?? Because, as we have been told on every damn page, Pat loves her house with a passion. We, the reader, are supposed to sympathize with Pat. But no. THIS reader thinks, "It's about time to start to cut the ol' apron strings, Pat - because you're starting to sound like One-Note Johnny and that is very neurotic. Get a life, hon. Things DO change in the world. And you better start to get used to it." So Pat and Bets have their sleepover and the world, unbelievably, DOESN'T end ... so Pat starts to go spend the night there even more, now that she knows that her house will not cease to exist just because she is not there.

See? Neurotic.

Oh, and one other bad thing about these books: Lucy Maud relies too much on montage to get us from event to event. It's the Lucy Maud equivalent of Rocky IV. Way too many chapters have sections that read like: "So summer turned to fall. The leaves began to turn, the air began to get chilly, the maple leaves fell ..." etc etc etc etc. Long chapters with two-page montage sequences at the beginning - basically skipping over huge chunks of time. Lucy Maud couldn't get us from A to B without a montage in these books - and again, that is so unlike her. I mean, she would use such a device in other books too - but it never felt so ... imposed in the other books. Here you can tell she's running out of steam.

Lastly - in the excerpt below - when we hear about Pat's milestone - her "soul's awakening" - I just don't feel like Lucy Maud's heart is in it. Compare it to the moment when Emily lies awake all night in the haystack - staring up at the stars - and has a truly spiritual experience, a soul's expansion that will last her the rest of her life. THAT is what Lucy Maud is trying to do here - only in Pat of Silver Bush's world - not Emily's ... and it just doesn't ... quite ... work ...

Excerpt from Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Pat went up to the Long House over a silver road of new-fallen snow. Every time she turned to look down on home the world was a little whiter. Bets, who had not been in school that day, was waiting for her under the pine. Just above them the Long House, amid its fir trees, was like a little dark island in a sea of snow.

There was something about the long, low-eaved house with the dormer windows in its roof, that pleased Pat. And Bets' room was a delightful one with two dormers along the side and one at each end. It was very grand, Pat told Judy, with a real "set of furniture" and a long mirror in which the delighted girls could see themselves from top to toe. The west window was covered with vines, leafless now but a green dappled curtain in summer, and the east looked right out into a big apple tree. Pat and Bets sat by the little stove and ate apples until any one might have expected them to burst. Then they crept into bed and cuddled down for one of those talks dear to the hearts of small school-girls from time immemorial.

"It's so much easier to be confidential in the dark," Pat had told Judy. "I can tell Bets everything then."

"Oh, oh, I wudn't tell iverything to innybody," warned Judy. "Not iverything, me jewel."

"Not to anybody but Bets," agreed Pat. "Bets is different."

"Too different," Judy sighed. But she did not let Pat hear it.

To lie there, with the soft swish of the fir trees sounding just outside, and talk "secrets" with Bets ... lovely secrets, not like May Binnie's ... was delightful. Bets had recently been to some wedding in the Wilcox clan and Pat had to hear all about it ... the mysterious pearl-white bride, the bridesmaids' lovely dresses, the flowers, the feast.

"Do you suppose we will ever get married?" whispered Bets.

"I won't," said Pat. "I couldn't ever go away from Silver Bush."

"But you wouldn't like to be an old maid, would you?" said Bets. "Besides, you could get him to come and live with you at Silver Bush, couldn't you?"

This was a new idea for Pat. It seemed quite attractive. Somehow, when you were with Bets, everything seemed possible. Perhaps that was another part of her charm.

"We were born on the same day," went on Bets, "so if we're ever married we must try to be married the same day."

"And die the same day. Oh, wouldn't it be romantic?" breathed Pat in ecstasy.

Pat woke in the night with just a little pang of homesickness. Was Silver Bush all right? She slipped out of her bed and stole across to the nearest dormer window. She breathed on its frosty stars until she had made clear a space to peer t hrough ... then caught her breath with delight. The snow had ceased and a big moon was shining down on the cold, snowy hills. The powdered fir trees seemed to be covered with flowers spun from moonshine, the apple trees seemed picked out in silver filigree. The open space of the lawn was sparkling with enormous diamonds. How beautiful Silver Bush looked when you gazed down on it on a moonlit winter night! Was darling Cuddles covered up warm? She did kick the clothes off so. Was mother's headache better? Away over beyond Silver Bush was the poor, lean, ugly Gordon house which nobody had ever loved. Jingle would be sleeping in his kitchen loft now. All summer he had slept in the haw-mow with McGinty. Poor Jingle, whose mother never wrote to him! How could a mother be like that? Pat almost hated to go back to sleep again and lose so much beauty. It had always seemed a shame to sleep through a moonlit night. Somehow those far hills looked so different in moonlight. A verse she and Bets had learned "off by heart", in school that day came to her mind:

Come, for the night is cold,
And the frosty moonlight fills
Hollow and rift and fold
Of the eerie Ardise hills.

She repeated it to herself with a strange, deep exquisite thrill of delight, such as she had never felt before ... something that went deeper than body or brain and touched some inner sanctum of being of which the child had never been conscious. Perhaps that moment was for Patricia Gardiner the "soul's awakening" of the old picture. All her life she was to look back to it as a sort of milestone ... that brief, silvery vigil at the dormer window of the Long House.

The Books: "A Tangled Web" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Almost done with Lucy Maud! I'm skipping the rest of the short stories ... well, for now, anyway. Thank you, Melissa, for encouraging me in this direction. Ha!

But I couldn't skip A Tangled Web. Like Blue Castle [excerpt here] - this book kind of stands alone, in the canon of Lucy Maud. It's an adult comedy - rather soap opera-ish - and in my opinion Lucy Maud is in full command of all of her powers in this book. It's chock-full of characters - this book doesn't have a "lead" - which is one of the reasons why it stands alone. The "leads" of the book are two sprawling intermarried families - with a cast of a hundred characters - all of whom we get to know. Some better than others - but still, there isn't one journey that dominates. The story of this book is: ancient Aunt Becky Dark (nee Penhallow) is dying. She's a bazillion years old and she knows she's dying. Everyone is terrified of Aunt Becky - not because she's cruel (although her comments sometimes are) - but because she always says exactly what is on her mind. She is the terrifying "matriarch" of a tangled clan - and every single person is afraid of her, because she will not hesitate to tell the truth, right to their face. Big truths - like "I know you are not in love with your husband" or little truths, like "You wear too much makeup". Anyway, Becky has, in her possession, a family heirloom: this old heinous JUG - and this is the catalyst for the entire book. The jug has been in the family for generations. Stories are told about it. It has crossed the Atlantic. It has been in glass display cases. It has also been in pantries filled with blackberry jame. It is a jug. Becky knows she is going to die and so she gathers the entire clan in her sick-room ... they are all there, crowded inside, and spilling out onto the porch ... all of them with their private griefs and hopes and hatreds ... Lucy Maud is at her best in this kind of situation - You can't believe how many balls she keeps in the air here. There are so many characters! And Becky reads out her will to the group, knowing it is going to cause ruptions and fractures and feuds ... and she cackles with glee at the thought of it, the old trouble-maker. But the big thing is the jug. Everybody wants to know: who is going to get the jug? It's basically like - the LEADERship of the family will be passed on through this jug ... and so they all sit there, in that crowded room, and we get to know each one, as they sit there ... and everybody wants it for different reasons, and everybody feels that they, personally, are the ONLY true heir of the jug ...

What ends up happening is fantastic. It's a great premise for a book. Basically, Becky announces at this meeting that the recipient of the jug will not be announced until exactly a year from that date. And she has a list of stipulations of the type of person it will NOT be given to. No drinking, no swearing, no whatever ... the list goes on and on. Naturally the vices cover pretty much everybody in the room. So over the next year, desperate to be good enough to get the jug, everyone begins to change their behavior, subtly, in order to be worthy to get the jug. Drunkards stop drinking. Etc. etc. And of course, with a clan like this one - a "tangled web" - any tiny change will have resounding implications. So shit starts to hit the fan, left and right.

It's a wonderful book - I love it.

Here's the section at the beginning of the book where Becky reads out her will. I am just amazed at how many characters she can keep going, and how - with one or 2 lines apiece, we know everything we need to know about everybody. I love, too, Lucy Maud's sense of humor. I just respond to it.

Excerpt from A Tangled Web. by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Aunt Becky unfolded her will, and settled her owlish, shell-ringed glasses on her beaky nose.

"I've left my little bit of money to Camilla for her life," she said. "After her death its to go to the hospital in Charlottetown."

Aunt Becky looked sharply over the throng. But she did not see any particular disappointment. To do the Darks and Penhallows justice, they were not money-grubbers. No one grudged Camilla Jackson her legacy. Money was a thing one could and should earn for oneself; but old family heirlooms, crusted with the sentiment of dead and gone hopes and fears for generations, were different matters. Suppose Aunt Becky left the jug to some rank outsider? Or a museum? She was quite capable of it. If she did, William Y. Penhallow mentally registered a vow that he would see his lawyer about it.

"Any debts are to be paid," continued Aunt Becky, "and my grave is to be heaped up - not left flat. I insist on that. Make a note of it, Artemas."

Artemas Dark nodded uncomfortable. He was caretaker of the Rose River graveyard, and he knew he would have trouble with the cemetery committee about that. Besides, it made it so confoundedly difficult to mow. Aunt Becky probaby read his thoughts, for she said,

"I won't have a lawn-mower running over me. You can clip my grave nicely with the shears. I've left directions for my tombstone, too. I want one as big as anybody else's. And I want my lace shawl draped around me in my coffin. It's the only thing I mean to take with me. Theodore gave it to me when Ronald was born. There were times when Theodore could do as graceful a thing as anybody. It's as good as new. I've always kept it wrapped in silver paper at the bottom of my thrid bureau drawer. Remember, Camilla."

Camilla nodded. The first sign of disappointment appeared on Mrs. Clifford Penhallow's face. She had set her heart on getting the lace shawl, for she feared she had very little chance of getting the jug. The shawl was siad to have cost Theodore Dark two hundred dollars. To think of burying two hundred dollars!

Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been waiting all the afternoon for an opportunity to cry, thought she saw it at the mention of Aunt Becky's baby son who had been dead for sixty years, and got out her handkerchief. But Aunt Becky headed her off.

"Don't start crying yet, Alicia. By the way, while I think of it, will you tell me something? I've always wanted to know and I'll never have another chance. Which of your three husbands did you like best - Morton Dark, Edgar Penhallow, or Toynbee Dark? Come now, make a clean breast of it."

Mrs. Toynbee put her handkerchief back in her bag and shut the latter with a vicious snap.

"I had a deep affection for all my partners," she said.

Aunt Becky wagged her head.

"Why didn't you say 'deceased' parters? You were thinking it, you know. You have that type of mind. Also, tell me honestly, don't you think you ought to have been more economical with husbands? Three! And poor Mercy and Margaret there haven't been able even to get one."

Mercy reflected bitterly that if she had employed the methods Alicia Dark had, she might have had husbands and to spare, too. Margaret coloured softly and looked piteous. Why, oh why, must cruel old Aunt Becky hold her up to public ridicule like this?

"I've divided all my belongings among you," said Aunt Becky. "I hate the thought of dying and leaving all my nice things. But since it must be, I'm not going to have any quarreling over them before I'm cold in my grave. Everything's down here in black and white. I've just left the things according to my own whims. I'll read the list. And let me say that the fact that any one of you gets something doesn't mean that you've no chance for the jug as well. I'm coming to that later."

Aunt Becky took off her spectacles, polished them, put them back on again, and took a drink of water. Drowned John nearly groaned with impatience. Heaven only knew how long it would be before she would get to the jug. He had no interest in her other paltry knick-knacks.

"Mrs. Denzil Penhallow is to have my pink china candlesticks," announced Aunt Becky. "I know you'll be delighted at this, Martha dear. You've given me so many hints about candlesticks."

Mrs. Denzil had wanted Aunt Becky's beautiful silver Georgian candlesticks. And now she was saddled with a pair of unspeakable china horrors, in colour a deep magenta pink with what looked like black worms wriggling all over them. But she tried to look pleased, because if she didn't it might spoil her chances for the jug. Denzil scowled, jug or no jug, and Aunt Becky saw it. Pompous old Denzil. She would get even with him.

"I remember when Denzil was about five years old he came down to my place with his mother, one day, and our old turkey gobbler took after him. I suppose the poor bird thought no one else had a right to be strutting around there. 'Member, Denzil? Lord, how you ran and blubbered! You certainly thought Old Nick was after you. Do you know, Denzil, I've never seen you parading up the church aisle since but I've thought of that."

Well, it had to be endured. Denzil cleared his throat and endured it.

"I haven't much jewellry," Aunt Becky was saying. "Two rings. One is an opal. I'm giving that to Virginia Powell. They say it brings bad luck, but you're too modern to believe that old superstition, Virginia. Though I never had any luck after I got it."

Virginia tried to look happy, though she had wanted the Chinese screen. As for luck or no luck, how could that matter? Life was over for her. Nobody grudged her the opal, but when Aunt Becky mentioned rings many ears were pricked up. Who would get her diamond ring? It was a fine one and worth several hundreds of dollars.

"Ambrosine Wentworth is to have my diamond ring," said Aunt becky.

Half those present could not repress a gasp of disapproval and the collective effect was quite pronounced. This, thought the gaspers, was absurd. Ambrosine Wentworth had no right whatever to that ring. And what good would it do her - an old broken-down servant? Really, Aunt Becky's brain must be softening.

"Here it is, Ambrosine," said Aunt Becky, taking it from her bony finger and handing it to the trembling Ambrosine. "I'll give it to you now, so there'll be no mistake. Put it on."

Ambrosine obeyed. Her old wrinkled face was aglow with the joy of a long-cherished dream suddenly and unexpectedly realized. Ambrosine Winkworth, through a drab life spent in other people's kitchens, had hankered all through that life for a diamond ring. She had never hoped to have it, and now here it was on her hand, a great starry wonderful thing, glittering in the June sunshine that fell through the window. Everything came true for Ambrosine in that moment. She asked no more of fate.

Perhaps Aunt Becky had divined that wistful dream of the old woman. Or perhaps she had just given Ambrosine the ring to annoy the clan. If the latter, she had certainly succeeded. Nan Penhallow was especially furious. She should have the diamond ring. Thekla Penhallow felt the same way. Joscelyn, who once had had a diamond ring, Donna, who still had one, and Gay, who expected she soon would have one, looked amused and indifferent. Chuckling to herself Aunt Becky picked up her will and gave Mrs. Clifford Penhallow her Chinese screen.

"As if I wanted her old Chinese screen," thought Mrs. Clifford, almost on the point of tears.

Margaret Penhallow was the only one whom nobody envied. She got Aunt Becky's Pilgrim's Progress, a very old, battered book. The covers had been sewed on, the leaves were yellow with age. One was afraid to touch it lest it might fall to pieces. It was a most disreputable old volume which Theodore Dark, for some unknown reason, had prized when alive. Since his death, Aunt Becky had kept it in an old box in the garret, where it had got musty and dusty. But Margaret was not disappointed. She had expected nothing.

"My green pickle leaf is to go to Rachel Penhallow," said Aunt Becky.

Rachel's long face grew longer. She had wanted the Apostle spoons. But Gay Penhallow got the Apostle spoons to her surprise and delight. They were quaint and lovely and would accord charmingly with a certain little house of dreams that was faintly taking place in her imagination. Aunt Becky looked at Gay's sparkling face with less grimness than she usually showed and proceeded to give her dinner set to Mrs. Howard Penhallow, who wanted the Chippendale sideboard.

"It was my wedding-set," said Aunt Becky. "There's only one piece broken. Theodore brought his fist down on the cover of one of the tureens one day when he got excited in an argument at dinner. I won out in the argument, though - at leats I got my own way, tureen or no tureen. Emily, you're to have the bed."

Mrs. Emily Frost, nee Dark, a gentle, faded little person, who also had yearned for the Apostle spoons, tried to look grateful for a bed that was too big for any of her tiny rooms. And Mrs. Alpheus Penhallow, who wanted the bed, had to put up with the Chippendale sideboard. Donna Dark got an old egg dish in the guise of a gaily coloure china hen sitting on a yellow china nest, and was glad because she had liked the old thing when she was a child. Joscelyn Dark got the claw-footed mahogany talbe Mrs. Palmer Dark had hope for, and Roger Dark got the Georgian candlesticks and Mrs. Denzil's eternal hatred. The beautiful old Queen Anne bookcase went to Murray Dark, who never read books, and Hugh Dark got the old hour-glass - early eighteenth century - and wondered bitterly what use it would be to a man for whom time had stopped ten years ago. He knew, none better, how long an hour can be and what devastating things can happen in it.

"Crosby, you're to have my old cut-glass whiskey decanter," Aunt Becky was saying. "There hasn't been any whiskey in it for many a year, more's the pity. It'll hold the water you're always drinking in the night. I heard you admire it once."

Old Crosby Penhallow, who had been nodding, wakened up and looked pleased. He really hadn't expected anything. It was kind of Becky to remember him. They had been young togehter.

Aunt Becky looked at him - at his smooth, shining bald head, his sunken blue eyes, his toothless mouth. Old Crosby would never have false teeth. Yet in spite of the bald head and faded eyes and shrunken mouth, Crosby Dark was not an ill-looking old man - quite the reverse.

"I have a mind to tell you something, Crosby," said Aunt Becky. "You never knew it - nobody ever knew it - but you were the only man I ever loved."

The announcement made a sensation. Everybody - so ridiculous is outworn passion - wanted to laugh but dared not. Crosby blushed painfully all over his wrinkled face. Hang it all, was old Becky making fun of him? And whether or no, how dared she make a show of him like this before everybody?

"I was quite mad about you," said Aunt Becky musingly. "Why? I don't know. You were handsomer sixty years ago than any man has a right to be, but you had no brains. Yet you were the man for me. And you never looked at me. You married Annette Dark - and I married Theodore. Nobody knows how much I hated him when I married him. But I got quite fond of him after a while. That's life, you know - though those three romantic young geese there - Gay and Donna and Virginia, think I'm telling rank heresy. I got over caring for you in time, even though for years after I did, my heart used to beat like mad everey time I saw you walk up the church aisle with your meek little Annette trotting behind you. I got a lot of thrills out of loving you, Crosby - many more I don't doubt than if I'd married you. And Theodore was really a much better husband for me than you'd have been - he had a sense of humour. And it doesnt' matter now whether he was or wasn't. I don't even wish now that you had loved me, though I wished it for so many years. Lord, the nights I couldn't sleep for thinking of you - and Theordore snoring beside me. But there it is. Somehow, I've always wanted you to know it and at last I've had the courage to tell you."

Old Crosby wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Erasmus would never let him hear the last of this - never. And suppose it got into the papers! If he had dreamed anything like this was going to happen, he would never have come to the levee. He glowered at the jug. It was to blame, durn it.

"I wonder how many of us will get out of this alive," whispered Stanton Grundy to Uncle Pippin.

But Aunt Becky had switched over to Penny Dark and was giving him her bottle of Jordan water.

"What the deuce do I care for Jordan water," thought Penny. Perhaps his face was too expressive, for Aunt Becky suddenly grinned dangerously.

"Mind the time, Penny, you moved a vote of thanks to Rob Dufferin on the death of his wife?"

There was a chorus of laughter of varying timbre, among which Drowned John's boomed like an earthquake. Penny's thoughts were as profane as the others' had been. That a little mistake betweent hanks and condolence, made in the nervousness of public speaking, should be everlastingly coming up against a man like this. From old Aunt Becky, too, who had just confessed that most of her life she had loved a man who wasn't her husband, the scandalous old body.

Mercy Penhallow sighed. She would have liked the Jordan water. Rachel Penhallow had one and Mercy had always envied her for it. There must be a blessing in any household that had a bottle of Jordan water. ASunt Becky heard the sigh and looked at Mercy.

"Mercy," she said apropos of nothing, "do you remember that forgotten pie you brought out after everybody had finished eating at the Stanley Penhallow's silver-wedding dinner?"

But Mercy was not afraid of Aunt Becky. She had a spirit of her own.

"Yes, I do. And do you remember, Aunt Becky, that the first time you killed and roasted a chicken after you were married, you brought it to the table with the insides still in it?"

Nobody dared to laugh but everybody was glad Mercy had the spunk. Aunt Becky nodded unperturbed.

"Yes, and I remember how it smelled! We had company, too. I don't think Theodore ever fully forgave me. I thoguht that had forgotten years ago. Is anything ever forgotten? Can people ever live anything down? The honours are to you, Mercy, but I must get square with somebody. Junius Penhallow, do you remember - since Mercy has started digging up the past - how drunk you were at your wedding?"

Junius Penhallow turned a violent crimson but couldn't deny it. Of what use was it, with Mrs. Junius at his elbow, to plead that he had been in such a blue funk on his wedding-morning that he'd never had had the courage to go throughwith it if he hadn't got drunk? He had never been drunk since, and it was hard to have it raked up now, when he was an elder in the church and noted for his avowed temperance principles.

"I'm not the only one who ever got drunk in this clan," he dared to mutter, despite the jug.

"No, to be sure. There's Artemas over there. Do you remember, Artemas, the evening you waled up the church aisle in your nightshirt?"

Artemas, a tall, raw-boned, red-haired fellow, had been too drunk on that occasion to remember it, but he always roared when reminded of it. He thought it the best joke ever.

"You should have all been thankful I had that much on myeslf," he said with a chuckle.

Mrs. Artemas wished she were dead. What was a joke to Artemas was a tragedy to her. She had never forgotten - could never forget - the humiliation of that unspeakable evening. She had forgiven Artemas certain violations of her marriage vow of which every one was aware. But she had never forgiven - could never forgive - the episode of the nightshirt. If it had been pajamas, it would not have been quite so terrible. But in those days pajamas were unknown.

Aunt Becky was at Mrs. Conrad Dark.

"I'm giving you my silver saltcellars. Alec Dark's mother gave them to me for a wedding-present. Do you remember the time your and Mrs. Clifford there quarreled over Alec Dark and she slapped your face? And neither of you got Alec after all. There, there, don't crack the spectrum. It's all dead and vanished, just like my affair with Crosby."

("As if there was ever any affair," thought Crosby piteously.)

"Pippin's to have my grandfather clock. Mrs. Digby Dark thinks she should have that because her father gave it to me. But no. Do you remember, Fanny, that you once put a tract in a book you leant me? Do you know what I did with it? I used it for curl papers. I've never forgive you for the insult. Tracts, indeed. Did I need tracts?"

"You -- weren't a member of the church," said Mrs. Digby, on the point of tears.

"No - nor am yet. Theodore and I could never agree which church to join. I wanted Rose River and he wanted Bay Silver. And after he died it seemed sort of disrespectful to his memory to join Rose River. Besides, I was so old than it would have seemed funny. Marrying and church-joining should be done in youth. But I was as good a Christian as any one. Naomi Dark."

Naomi, who had been fanning Lawson, looked up with a start as Aunt Becky hurled her name at her.

"You're to get my Wedgwood teapot. It's a pretty thing. Cauliflower pattern, as it's called, picked out with gold lustre. It's the only thing it really hurts me to give up. Letty gave it to me - she bought it at a sale in town with some of her first quarter's salary. Have you all forgotten Letty? It's forty years since she died. She would have been sixty if she were living now - as old as you, Fanny. Oh, I know you don't own to more than fifty, but you and Letty were born within three weeks of each other. IT seems funny to think of Letty being sixty - she was always so young - she was the youngest thing I ever knew. I used to wonder how Theodore and I ever produced her. She couldn't have been sixty ever - that's why she had to die. After all, it was better. It hurt me to have her die - but I think it would have hurt me more to see her sixty - wrinkled - faded - grey-haired - my pretty Letty, like a rose tossing in a breeze. Have you all forgotten that golden hair of hers - such living hair. Be good to her teapot, Naomi."

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: The Girl and the Wild Race' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb.

The story I'm excerpting today is one of Lucy Maud's amusing romantic comedies. Judith is 27 years old and lives with her aunt. Judith has never been married - which basically causes her aunt conniption fits every time she thinks about. 27! And never married! It's not that Judith isn't pretty, or wifely, or a good match ... it's that the guy she has been secretly in love with since she was a kid - is not approved of by her aunt - who has chosen somebody else for her. Judith will not settle - and it's not like the guy she loves has ever declared himself. So it's a stalemate. Judith - a lovely laughing pretty girl - sits at home with her aunt, listening to her aunt bemoan the shame of being 27 and unmarried. Judith takes it all rather philosophically - she's not a gloom and doom type.

But then one day - Judith snaps. She declares to her complaining aunt that she will "marry the first man who asks". Word gets out in the little town - and word eventually reaches the guy Judith secretly loves - as well as the suitor her aunt approves of (as a matter of fact, her aunt sends the man an urgent message telling him to COME OVER HERE QUICK). And the two men end up having a race to get to Judith first - involving buggies racing across fields and fording streams, etc. The entire town gets involved - people rooting for one or the other - and Judith, who made a big show of saying she didn't care WHO she married - of course waits, with baited breath, to see if HER chosen one will reach her first.

It's a fun story - and I really like Judith's spunky personality.

Anyway - here's the moment where Judith finally snaps!

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - 'The Girl and the Wild Race' - by L.M. Montgomery.

The afternoon that Mrs. Tony Mack came in Mrs. Theodora felt more aggrieved than ever. Ellie McGregor had been married the previous week - Ellie, who was the same age as Judith and not half so good looking. Mrs. Theodora had been nagging Judith ever since.

"But I might as well talk to the trees down there in that hollow," she complained to Mrs. Tony. "That girl is so set and contrary minded. She doesn't care a bit for my feelings."

This was not said behind Judith's back. The girl herself was standing at the open door, drinking in all the delicate, evasive beauty of the spring afternoon. The Whitney house crested a bare hill that looked down on misty intervals, feathered with young firs that were golden green in the pale sunlight. The fields were bare and smoking, although the lanes and shadowy places were full of moist snow. Judith's face was aglow with the delight of mere life and she bent out to front the brisk, dancing wind that blew up from the valley, resinous with the odors of firs and damp mosses.

At her aunt's words the glow went out of her face. She listened with her eyes brooding on the hollow and a glowing flame of temper smouldering in them./ Judith's long patience was giving way. She had been flicked on the raw too often of late. And now her aunt was confiding her grievances to Mrs. Tony Mack - the most notorious gossip in Ramble Valley or out of it!

"I can't sleep at nights for worrying over what will become of her when I'm gone," went on Mrs. Theodora dismally. "She'll just have to live on alone here - a lonesome withered-up old maid. And her that might have had her pick, MRs. Tony, though I do say it as shouldn't. You must feel real thankful to have all your girls married off - especially when none of them was extry good-looking. Some people have all the luck. I'm tired of talking to Judith. Folks'll be saying soon that nobody ever really wanted her, for all her flirting. But she just won't marry."

"I will!"

Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black eyes were flushing and her round cheeks were crimson.

"Such a temper you never saw!" reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. "Though 'tweren't to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating."

"I will," repeated Judith stormily. "I'm tired of being nagged day in and day out. I'll marry - and what is more I'll marry the first man that asks me - that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself! How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?"

Mrs. Theodora's mental processes were never slow. She dropped her knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.

"It suits me real well, Judith," she said calmly, "you can marry the first man that asks you and I'll say no word to hinder."

The color went out of Judith's face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of, but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.

Judith sat in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in her hands.

The Books: The Doctor's Sweetheart: 'Emily's Husband' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - by L.M. Montgomery. This is another collection of short stories - all selected by Catherine McLay - in general these have higher quality than some of the other collections, which are made up of juvenilia, or things that Montgomery obviously wrote for money. The stories in this collection (with a couple exceptions) are juicy - the characters memorable, and her writing superb. I like this collection a lot.

First story I'll excerpt from is the one called "Emily's Husband". I like this one because of the characters. Emily is one of those classic Lucy Maud leads: she's a woman for whom pride is everything. This (of course) takes her into pretty much sinful territory. She's not just proud. She is hard. Who knows why. But that's the way she is. Lucy Maud writes such people so well - they're a common type in her work. She GETS the damage that such pride can wreak. She paid a price herself for her own pride - a price that she never stopped paying. Pride in these Lucy Maud archetypes often manifests itself in an imperious manner - a cold and haughty indifference ... even when beneath, the person is experiencing turmoil, rage, lust, whatever. The self-control that it takes - for these characters to save face - is often wrenching. You ache for them to just let go!

Emily's price that she paid is this: She married a man she loved - Stephen Fair. Stephen's mother lived with them - and this ended up being the thing that drove Emily away. Mrs. Fair was supposedly sweet and nice - but she was one of those types that Lucy Maud despises: sweet and kitteny on the outside, but vicious on the inside. Mrs. Fair set out to make Emily's life miserable - and she did. I don't remember what the issue was - maybe she thought Emily wasn't good enough for her son - but every word to Emily contained a barb, a dig, a hidden claw. Emily, with all her pride, and her sensitivity to insult - suffered in silence. Stephen felt the tension but didn't take sides. Of course Emily felt that in not taking sides - he was choosing his mother. So finally Emily burst - and told him to choose. Choose your mother or me. I refuse to live with that bitch one more second. (Of course she didn't say that, but it was implied!) Stephen, who was no slouch in the pride department, said - "Fine. Go home. If you leave though - don't come back!" Emily - in a rage - stalked across the fields to her family home, where she had grown up, and where her older sister now lived. And Emily never returned to her husband's home. 5 years went by. And over those years, Emily's rage did not soften - but hardened. It hardened her character. She became unyielding, unforgiving, and rather terrifying. It was her way of protection. Lucy Maud writes that Emily KNEW she had been in the wrong - but there was something in her that just could not give in. Lucy Maud, instead of judging such people, always has compassion for them. She aches for those who cannot express themselves, who let themselves harden up. She knows that pain. So it's a classic Lucy Maud situation. A fight leads to a long freeze. Even though the main parties live just across the way from each other - they never see each other, reference each other ... until ...

One day Emily comes home and gets some news ... I am excerpting the beginning of the story. I just like how Lucy Maud sets Emily up here - the voice, the haughtiness, the pale skin, the superior attitude ... It makes the end (which has Emily running over to her long-estranged husband's house - in a frenzy - through a rain storm - with branches slicing across her face - her hair tangled in the wind - and bursting in the door, begging him for forgiveness ...) SO much more satisfying. Because we know that she has never EVER let herself go like that.

Excerpt from The Doctor's Sweetheart and Other Stories - "Emily's Husband" - by L.M. Montgomery.

Emily Fair got out of Hiram Jameson's wagon at the gate. She took out her satchel and parasol and, in her clear, musical tones, thanked him for bringing her home. Emily had a very distinctive voice. It was very sweet always and very cold generally; sometimes it softened to tenderness with those she loved, but in it there was always an undertone of inflexibility and reserve. Nobody had ever heard Emily Fair's voice tremble.

"You are more than welcome, Mrs. Fair," said Hiram Jameson, with a glance of bold admiration. Emily met it with an unflinching indifference. She disliked Hiram Jameson. She had been furious under all her external composure because he had been at the station when she left the train.

Jameson perceived her scorn, but chose to disregard it.

"Proud as Lucifer," he thought as he drove away. "Well, she's none the worse of that. I don't like your weak women -- they're always sly. If Stephen Fair doesn't get better she'll be free and then --"

He did not round out the thought, but he gloated over the memory of Emily, standing by the gate in the harsh, crude light of the autumn sunset, with her tawny, brown hair curling about her pale, oval face and the scornful glint in her large, dark-grey eyes.

Emily stood at the gate for some time after Jameson's waggon had disappeared. When the brief burst of sunset splendour had faded out she turned and went into the garden where late asters and chrysanthemums still bloomed. She gathered some of the more perfect ones here and there. She loved flowers, but to-night the asters seemed to hurt her, for she presently dropped those she had gathered and deliberately set her foot on them.

A sudden gust of wind came over the brown, sodden fields and the ragged maples around the garden writhed and wailed. The air was raw and chill. The rain that had threatened all day was very near. Emily shivered and went into the house.

Amelia Phillips was bending over the fire. She came forward and took Emily's parcels and wraps with a certain gentleness that sat oddly on her grim personality.

"Are you tired? I'm glad you're back. Did you walk from the station?"

"No. Hiram Jameson was there and offered to drive me home. I'd rather have walked. It's going to be a storm, I think. Where is John?"

"He went to the village after supper," answered Amelia, lighting a lamp. "We needed some things from the store."

The light flared up as she spoke and brought out her strong, almost harsh features and deep-set black eyes. Amelia Phillips looked like an overdone sketch in charcoal.

"Has anything happened in Woodford while I've been away?" asked Emily indifferently. Plainly she did not expect an affirmative answer. Woodford life was not eventful.

Amelia glanced at her sharply. So she had not heard! Amelia had expected that Hiram Jameson would have told her. She wished that he had, for she never felt sure of Emily. The older sister knew that beneath that surface reserve was a passionate nature, brooking no restraint when once it overleaped the bounds of her Puritan self-control. Amelia Phillips, with all her naturally keen insight and her acquired knowledge of Emily's character, had never been able to fathom the latter's attitude of mind towards her husband. From the time that Emily had come back to her girlhood home, five years before, Stephen Fair's name had never crossed her lips.

"I suppose you haven't heard that Stephen is very ill," said Amelia shortly.

Not a feature of Emily's face changed. Only in her voice when she spoke was a curious jarring, as if a false note had been struck in a silver melody.

"What is the matter with him?"

"Typhoid," answered Amelia briefly. She felt relieved that Emily had taken it so calmly. Amelia hated Stephen Fair with all the intensity of her nature because she believed that he had treated Emily ill, but she had always been distrustful that Emily in her heart of hearts loved her husband still. That, in Amelia Phillips' opinion, would have betrayed a weakness not to be tolerated.

Emily looked at the lamp unwinkingly.

"That wick needs trimming," she said. Then, with a sudden recurrence of the untuneful note:

"Is he dangerously ill?"

"We haven't heard for three days. The doctors were not anxious about him Monday, though they said it was a pretty severe case."

A faint, wraith-like change of expression drifted over Emily's beautiful face and was gone in a moment. What was it - relief? Regret? It would have been impossible to say. When she next spoke her vibrant voice was as perfectly melodious as usual.

"I think I will go to bed, Amelia. John will not be back until late I suppose, and I am very tired. There comes the rain. I suppose it will spoil all the flowers. They will be beaten to pieces."

In the dark hall Emily paused for a moment and opened the front door to be cut in the face with a whip-like dash of rain. She peered out into the thickly gathering gloom. Beyond, in the garden, she saw the asters tossed about, phantom-like. The wind around the many-cornered old farmhouse was full of wails and sobs.

The clock in the sitting-room struck eight. Emily shivered and shut the door. She remembered that she had been married at eight o'clock that very morning seven years ago. She thought she could see herself coming down the stairs in her white dress with her bouquet of asters. For a moment she was glad that those mocking flowers in the garden would be all beaten to death before morning by the lash of wind and rain.

Then she recovered her mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled, to her own room under the north-western eaves.

When she had put out the light and gone to bed she found that she could not sleep. She pretended to believe that it was the noise of the storm that kept her awake. Not even to herself would Emily confess that she was waiting and listening nervously for John's return home. That would have been to admit a weakness, and Emily Fair, like Amelia, despised weakness.

Every few minutes a gust of wind smote the house, with a roar as of a wild beast, and bombarded Emily's window with a volley of rattling drops. In the silences that came between the gusts she heard the soft, steady pouring of the rain on the garden paths below, mingled with a faint murmur that came up from the creek beyond the barns where the pine boughs were thrashing in the storm. Emily suddenly thought of a weird story she had once read years before and long forgotten - a story of a soul that went out in a night of storm and blackness and lost its way between earth and heaven. She shuddered and drew the counterpane over her face.

"Of all things I hate a fall storm most," she muttered. "It frightens me."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! It will be the last. Sniff. We must leave our Blue Castle behind. Valancy and Barney go along with their lives - in a montage of the seasons ... and then comes the big moment. The revelation moment. Valancy had been told by her doctor that her heart was so bad that any sudden shock could kill her instantly. She is always aware of keeping her stress level down - which, of course, on Barney's island, is not hard at all. But one day - Valancy and Barney are walking home from town, along the railroad tracks, and Valancy's heel gets caught in the rails ... and naturally, at that moment, a train decides to suddenly appear around the corner, bearing down right at them. Valancy is stuck! Damsel in distress! She calls out to Barney - who drops everything and runs to her, desperately trying to get her heel loose. Valancy, panicked, begs Barney to save himself - let her die - she who is going to die soon anyway - but to save himself! Barney, of course, ignores this and keeps tugging at her foot. With seconds to spare - or milliseconds - Barney frees Valancy's foot and pulls her away - just as the train races by. Okay, so this is the big moment. The two of them stroll home, lost in their own thoughts. Valancy is thinking, with a sick kind of realization: I can't have a bad heart ... because if that moment didn't kill me ... if that moment wasn't a "sudden shock" I don't know what is ... the doctor must have made a mistake ... This makes her sick to her stomach because her whole marriage to Barney is based on the fact that she is going to die in about a year. If she's not going to die? Would Barney think she had tricked him into marrying her? Etc. Valancy feels ill. And Barney is lost in thought, too. Valancy assumes that he is thinking what she is thinking: If THAT didn't kill her, then she can't be all that sick ... However, it turns out (we find this out later) - that Barney is actually lost in thought, and kind of distant - because he realized, in a flash, at the prospect of losing Valancy - that he was in love with her. Instead of declaring himself, he instead becomes consumed by the thought that he must go talk to doctors about her heart condition, get the best specialists, try to save her, do anything ... ANYthing to save her! But he doesn't tell Valancy any of this. He just disappears into the night. The next day, Valancy goes to visit the doctor who gave her the diagnosis - and she asks him if there could be any error ... and blah blah ... turns out, he was flustered on that day he saw her - for personal reasons - and gave her the diagnosis meant for another woman, who had a similar name. Valancy had nothing wrong with her heart, then. And would probably live a very long and healthy life. Instead of jumping for joy at this news, Valancy is horrified. Full of dread. To avoid the confrontation with Barney, she writes him a note - telling him what happened - and that she didn't mean to trick him - and leaves her Blue Castle, and goes home to live with her horrible mother. Valancy is so changed now - she has known love and freedom - she has shed her old dowdy skin. She bobbed her hair. She bought a bathing suit. She tramps through the woods on snowshoes. She reads all day long if she feels like it. But now, there is nothing for her to do but go home. Her heart is broken. It is a defeat of her spirit. And her mother is so smugly self-satisfied when "Doss" returns. Her mother is a "serves you right" type of moron.

This last excerpt is Valancy, staring around her old room, saying good-bye to her happy life with Barney.

Naturally - through twists and turns of the plot - it all works out in the end ... but those chapters are more plot-driven than character-driven (as well they should be) ... and so not as excerpt-able, in my opinion.

Here is Valancy. "Home" again. Knowing she will not live a long long life ... and yet without Barney, without the beautiful island ... she will live a long life, trapped in the bosom of her horrible family. The dream is over.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy looked dully about her old room. It, too, was so exactly the same that it seemed almost impossible to believe in the changes that had come to her since she had last slept in it. It seemed - somehow - indecent that it should be so much the same. There was Queen Louise everlastingly coming down the stairway, and nobody had let the forlorn puppy in out of the rain. Here was the purple paper blind and the greenish mirror. Outside, the old carriage-shop with its blatant advertisements. Beyond it, the station with the same derelicts and flirtatious flappers.

Here the old life waited for her, like some grim ogre that bided his time and licked his chops. A monstrous horror of it suddenly possessed her. When night fell and she had undressed and got into bed, the merciful numbness passed away and she lay in anguish and thought of her island under the stars. The camp-fires - all their little household jokes and phrases and catch words - their furry beautiful cats - the lights agleam on the fairy islands - canoes skimming over Mistawis in the magic of morning - white birches shining among the dark spruces like beautiful women's bodies - winter snows and rose-red sunset fires - lakes drunken with moonshine - all the delights of her lost paradise. She would not let herself think of Barney. Only of these lesser things. She could not endure to think of Barney.

Then she thought of him inescapably. She ached for him. She wanted his arms around her - his face against hers - his whispers in her ear. She recalled all his friendly looks and quips and jests - his little compliments - his caresses. She counted them all over as a woman might count her jewels - not one did she miss from the first day they had met. These memories were all she could have now. She shut her eyes and prayed.

"Let me remember every one. God! Let me never forget one of them!"

Yet it would be better to forget. This agony of longing and loneliness would not be so terrible if one could forget. And Ethel Traverse. That shimmering witch woman with her white skin and black eyes and shining hair. The woman Barney had loved. The woman whom he still loved. Hadn't he told her he never changed his mind? Who was waiting for him in Montreal. Who was the right wife for a rich and famous man. Barney would marry her, of course, when he got his divorce. How Valancy hated her! And envied her! Barney had said, "I love you," to her. Valancy had wondered what tone Barney would say "I love you" in - how his dark-blue eyes would look when he said it. Ethel Traverse knew. Valancy hated her for the knowledge - hated and envied her.

"She can never have those hours in the Blue Castle. They are mine," thought Valancy savagely. Ethel would never make strawberry jam or dance to old Abel's fiddle or fry bacon for Barney over a camp-fire. She would never come to the little Mistawis shack at all.

What was Barney doing - thinking - feeling now? Had he come home and found her letter? Was he still angry with her? Or a little pitiful. Was he lying on their bed looking out on stormy Mistawis and listening to the rain streaming down on the roof? Or was he still wandering in the wilderness, raging at the predicament in which he found himself? Hating her? Pain took her and wrung her like some great pitiless giant. She got up and walked the floor. Would morning never come to end this hideous night? And yet what could morning bring her? The old life without the old stagnation that was at least bearable. The old life with the new memories, the new longings, the new anguish.

"Oh, why can't I die?" moaned Valancy.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

Yet another Valancy/Barney montage.

I love this one because ... with the crisis at the end of the excerpt - you can see that Barney basically lets Valancy love him with all her heart. He may not love her back in the same way (not yet anyway) - and he may kind of tease her about her intensity - but he doesn't try to hold her back, or make her not love him, or keep her calm, or talk her down from her feelings ... I guess I'm just speaking from my own experience where ... you know. When I'm in love, I am in LOVE, man. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I am not a modern woman. And so it is devastating when a guy - who also has feelings for me - tries to get me to calm down, be more cool about it, and not "let" me just go there. Go hot and cold, put on the brakes, whatever. Perhaps Barney feels safe in letting Valancy "go there" because as far as the two of them are concerned - this is not for a lifetime. Valancy will soon die ... so maybe he figures: "in the meantime, I'll just let her be in love with me. It's okay that she loves me that way."

Oh, and girls: in this excerpt it is quite explicit that they sleep in the same bed. I can't imagine either of them could lie there and not ... you know. Not that it's all about the sex, but I know it's on ALL of our minds!!!

(I love the cat Banjo. Lucky's cool, too - but I especially love psychotic split-personality cats like Banjo. They crack me up.)

Also, sorry, one more thing:

"empery of silence"

Lucy Maud's words. Jesusmaryandjoseph, that is gorgeous. It gives me the "flash". "Empery of silence". I wish I had come up with that.

Oops, one last thing: Knowing the misery of Lucy Maud's marriage, the unrelenting misery, passages like these make me ache with sympathy. She never sat around and talked with her husband, for hours on end, about books, and the world, and life. He was barely interested in anything outside of his own feverish conviction that he would burn for eternity in hell. He was, obviously, a barrel of laughs. She married him because ... uhm ... why? But he was no companion. He was no mate. He had ZERO sense of humor. He resented her writing. Etc. The guy was a jackass, sorry. I know he was ill, but man. I'm on her side, completely. So these long passages of companionship have an intensity to them that perhaps might not have existed if that part of Lucy Maud were satisfied in her real life. At least that's what I like to believe. Lucy Maud's life was hell - in many ways. But if it had been easier, perhaps she wouldn't have written so much or so poetically? She taps right into our deepest longings, dreams ... and maybe that's because she lived mainly in her dream-land in her head, too.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

New year. The old, shabby, inglorious outlived calendar came down. The new one went up. January was a month of storms. It snowed for three weeks on end. The thermometer went miles below zero and stayed there. But, as Barney and Valancy pointed out to each other, there were no mosquitoes. And the roar and crackle of their big fire drowned the howls of the north wind. Good Luck and Banjo waxed fat and developed resplendent coats of thick, silky fur. Nip and Tuck had gone.

"But they'll come back in spring," promised Barney.

There was no monotony. Sometimes they had dramatic little private spats that never even thought of becoming quarrels. Sometimes Roaring Abel dropped in - for an evening or a whole day - with his old tartan cap and his long red beard coated with snow. He generally brought his fiddle and played for them, to the delight of all except Banjo, who would go temporarily insane and retreat under Valancy's bed. Sometimes Abel and barney talked while Valancy made candy for them; sometimes they sat and smoked in silence a la Tennyson and Carlyle, until the Blue Castle reeked and Valancy fled to the open. Sometimes they played checkers fiercely and silently the whole night through. Sometimes they all ate the russet apples Abel had brought, while the jolly old clock ticked the delightful minutes away.

"A plate of apples, an open fire, and 'a jolly goode booke' are a fair substitute for heaven," vowed Barney. "Any one can have the streets of gold. Let's have another whack at Carman."

It was easier now for the Stirlings to believe Valancy of the dead. Not even dim rumours of her having been over at the Port came to trouble them, though she and Barney used to skate there occasionally to see a moive and eat hot dogs shamelessly at the corner stand afterwards. Presumably none of the Stirlings ever thought about her - except Cousin Georgiana, who used to lie awake worrying about poor Doss. Did she have enough to eat? Was that dreadful creature good to her? Was she warm enough at nights?

Valancy was quite warm at nights. She used to wake up and revel silently in the cosiness of those winter nights on that little island in the frozen lake. The nights of other winters had been so cold and long. Valancy hated to wake up in them and think about the bleakness and emptiness of the day that had passed and the bleakness and emptiness of the day that would come. Now she almost counted that night lost on which she didn't wake up and lie awake for half an hour just being happy, while Barney's regular breathing went on beside her, and through the open door the smouldering brands in the fireplace winked at her in the gloom. It was very nice to feel a little Lucky cat jump up on your bed in the darkness and snuggle down at your feet, purring; but Banjo would be sitting dourly by himself out in front of the fire like a brooding demon. At such moments Banjo was anything but canny, but Valancy loved his uncanniness.

The side of the bed had to be right against the window. There was no other place for it in the tiny room. Valancy, lying there, could look out of the window, through the big pine boughs that actually touched it, away up Mistawis, white and lustrous as a pavement of pearl, or dark and terrible in the storm. Sometimes the pine boughs tapped against the panes with friendly signals. Sometimes she heard the little whisper of snow against them right at her side. Some nights the whole outer world seemed given over to the empery of silence; then came nights when there would be a majestic sweep of wind in the pines; nights of dear starlight when it whistled freakishly and joyously around the Blue Castle; brooding nights before storm when it crept along the floor of the lake with a low, wailing cry of brooding and mystery. Valancy wasted many perfectly good sleeping hours in these delightful communings. But she could sleep as long in the morning as she wanted to. Nobody cared. Barney cooked his own breakfast of bacon and eggs and then shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber till supper time. Then they had an evening of reading and talk. They talked about everything in this world and a good many things in other worlds. They laughed over their own jokes until the Blue Castle reechoed.

"You do laugh beautifully," Barney told her once. "It makes me want to laugh just to hear you laugh. There's a trick about your laugh - as if there were so much more fun back of it that you wouldn't let out. Did you laugh like that before you came to Mistawis, Moonlight?"

"I never laughed at all - really. I used to giggle foolishly when I felt I was expected to. But now - the laugh just comes."

It struck Valancy more than once that Barney himself laughed a great deal oftener than he used to and that his laugh had changed. It had become wholesome. She rarely heard the little cynical note in it now. Could a man laugh like that who had crimes on his conscience? Yet Barney must have done something. Valancy had indifferently made up her mind as to what he had done. She concluded he was a defaulting bank cashier. She had found in one of Barney's books an old clipping cut from a Montreal paper in which a vanishing, defaulting cashier was described. The description applied to Barney - as well as to half a dozen other men Valancy knew - and from some casual remarks he had dropped from time to time she concluded he knew Montreal rather well. Valancy had it all figured out in the back of her mind. Barney had been in a bank. He was tempted to take some money to speculate - meaning, of course, to put it back. He had got in deeper and deeper, until he found there was nothing for it but flight. It had happened so to scores of men. He had, Valancy was absolutely certain, never meant to do wrong. Of course, the name of the man in the clipping was Bernard Craig. But Valancy had always thought Snaith was an alias. Not that it mattered.

Valancy had only one unhappy night that winter. It came in late March when most of the snow had gone and Nip and Tuck had returned. Barney had gone off in the afternoon for a long, woodland tramp, saying he would be back by dark if all went well. Soon after he had gone it had begun to snow. The wind rose and presently Mistawis was in the grip of one of the worst storms of the winter. It tore up the lake and struck at the little house. The dark angry woods on the mainland scowled at Valancy, menace in the toss of their boughs, threats in their windy gloom, terror in the roar of their hearts. The trees of the island crouched in fear. Valancy spent the night huddled on the rug before the fire, her face buried in her hands, when she was not vainly peering from the oriel in a futile effort to see through the furious smoke of wind and snow that had once been blue-dimpled Mistawis. Where was Barney? Lost on the merciless lakes? Sinking exhausted in the drifts of the pathless woods? Valancy died a hundred deaths that night and paid in full for all the happiness of her Blue Castle. When morning came the storm broke and cleared; the sun shone gloriously over Mistawis; and at noon Barney came home. Valancy saw him from the oriel as he came around a wooded point, slender and black against the glistening white world. She did not run to meet him. Something happened to her knees and she dropped down on Banjo's chair. Luckily Banjo got out from under in time, his whiskers bristling with indignation. Barney found her there, her head buried in her hands.

"Barney, I thought you were dead," she whispered.

Barney hooted.

"After two years of the Klondike did you think a baby storm like this could get me? I spent the night in that old lumber shanty over by Muskoka. A bit cold but snug enough. Little goose! Your eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket. Did you sit up here all night worrying over an old woodsman like me?"

"Yes," said Valancy. "I -- couldn't help it. The storm seemed so wild. Anybody might have been lost in it. When -- I saw you -- come round the point -- there -- something happened to me. I don't know what. It was as if I had died and come back to life. I can't describe it any other way."

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

The heavenly third act of the book (first act: Valancy at home with her family, second act: Valancy living with Abel and Cissy) is when she moves out to Barney's island, after the death of Cissy Gay. It's shocking. Cissy dies - and so Valancy is faced with a choice. Or, seemingly, she has no choice. She has to go home and live with her disapproving family again. Go back to her old cringing shy spinster self. But too much has changed. She now only has 8 months to live, or whatever it is ... and so ... she makes up her mind. And she asks Barney Snaith to marry her. I mean - go, Lucy Maud, with the shocking-ness!! Valancy tells the truth to Barney: Look, I only have 8 months left to live, and I love you. I know you don't love me ... but would you be willing to marry me and be with me until I die? Would you do that for me? And he contemplates it ... and he finally says to her, "You know I don't love you ... I've never thought of being in love. But you do that I have always thought you were a bit of a dear." And he agrees. So Valancy marries Barney Snaith. To the absolute HORROR of her family, who all remain convinced that Snaith is some sort of embezzler, or murderer, or man on the run. Lucy Maud does not, of course, take us into the marriage bed - but she suggests it ... and it's an interesting situation because: Valancy loves Barney but Barney does not love Valancy. However, he accepts her fully into his life - there's one room in his cottage that he will not allow her to go into (this all becomes clear later - he calls it Bluebeard's Chamber, as a joke) - but other than that - Valancy is perfectly free to do whatever she wants. And they obviously have a romantic relationship. Her family catches glimpses of her riding around town in the jalopy with Barney. Or - HORRORS! - eating out at a Chinese restaurant. There is a whimsy in the relationship ... which just comes off as so appealing. It reminds me a bit (without the neuroses and the torture, of course) of the love affair in Notorious. Ingrid Bergman says to Cary Grant, "This is a very interesting love affair." He asks, "Why?" She says, "Because you don't love me." He says, "Actions speak louder than words." Valancy and Barney are unconventional. Completely.

So here's an excerpt (the book has a lot of chapters like this ... almost like montage shots ... Valancy's time on the island, her marriage to Barney, what the two of them do together, how easy it is between them - but Lucy Maud is so good at this kind of writing - It's a montage, yes - but it never loses its specificity. We never feel like, as in some montages, that this is an author being LAZY, being unable to get us from point A to point B logically - so they resort to a montage. Lucy Maud uses these montage sequences very deliberately - and you really get the sense of this relationship. Of the seasons passing, of their feeling for each other growing, etc.)

These montage-chapters are absolutely sensuous.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin. There was really very little work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table.

"What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack!" Barney would say exultantly.

Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds, were something that cannot be expressed in mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into one great web of dusk.

The cats, with their wise, innocent little faces, would sit on the verandah railing and eat the tidbits Barney flung them. And how good everything tasted! Valancy, amid all the romance of Mistwis, never forgot that men had stomachs. Barney paid her no end of compliments on her cooking.

"After all," he admitted, "there's something to be said for square meals. I've mostly got along by boiling two or three dozen eggs hard at once and eating a few when I got hungry, with a slice of bacon once in a while and a jorum of tea."

Balancy poured tea out of Barney's little battered old pewter teapot of incredible age. She had not even a set of dishes - only Barney's mismatched chipped bits - and a dear, big, pobby old jug of robin's-egg blue.

After the meal was over they would sit there and talk for hours - or sit and say nothing, in all the languages of the world, Barney pulling away at his pipe, Valancy dreaming idly and deliciously, gazing at the far-off hills beyond Mistawis where the spires of firs came out against the sunset. The moonlight would begin to silver the Mistawis. Bats would begin to swoop darkly against the pale, western gold. The little waterfall that came down on the high bank not far away would, by some whim of the wildwood gods, begin to look like a wonderful white woman beckoning through the spicy, fragrant evergreens. And Leander would begin to chuckle diabolically on the mainland shore. How sweet it was to sit there and do nothing in the beautiful silence, with Barney at the other side of the table, smoking!

There were plenty of other islands in sight, though none were near enough to be troublesome as neighbours. There was one little group of islets far off to the west which they called the Fortunate Isles. At sunrise they looked like a cluster of emeralds, at sunset like a cluster of amethysts. They were too small for houses; but the lights on the larger islands would bloom out all over the lake, and bonfires would be lighted on their shores, streaming up into the wood shadows and throwing great, blood-red ribbons over the waters. Music would drift to them alluringly from boats here and there, or from the verandahs on the big house of the millionaire on the biggest island.

"Would you like a house like that, Moonlight?" Barney asked her once, waving his hand at it. He had taken to calling her Moonlight, and Valancy loved it.

"No," said Valancy, who had once dreamed of a mountain castle ten times the size of the rich man's "cottage" and now pitied the poor inhabitants of palaces. "No. It's too elegant. I would have to carry it with me everywhere I went. On my back like a snail. It would own me - possess me, body and soul. I like a house I can love and cuddle and boss. Just like ours here. I don't envy Hamilton Gossard 'the finest summer residence in Canada.' It is magnificent, but it isn't my Blue Castle."

Away down the far end of the lake they got every night a glimpse of a big, continual train rushing through a clearing. Valancy liked to watch its lighted windows flash by and wonder who was on it and what hopes and fears it carried. She also amused herself by picturing Barney and herself going to the dances and dinners at the houses on the islands, but she did not want to go in reality. Once they did go to a masquerade dance in the pavilion at one of the hotels up the lake, and had a glorious evening, but slipped away in their canoe, before unmasking time, back to the Blue Castle.

"It was lovely - but I don't want to go again," said Valancy.

So many hours a day Barney shut himself up in Bluebeard's Chamber. Valancy never saw the inside of it. From the smells that filtered through at times she concluded he must be conducting chemical experiments - or counterfeiting money. Valancy supposed there must be smelly processes in counterfeiting money. But she did not trouble herself about it. She had no desire to peer into the locked chambers of Barney's house of life. His past and his future concerned her not. Only this rapturous present. Nothing else matterred.

Once he went away and stayed away two days and nights. He had asked Valancy if she would be afraid to stay alone and she had said she would not. He never told her where he had been. She was not afraid to be alone, but she was horribly lonely. The sweetest sound she had ever heard was Lady Jane's clatter through the woods when Barney returned. And then his signal whistle from the shore. She ran down to the landing rock to greet him - to nestle herself into his eager arms - they did seem eager.

"Have you missed me, Moonlight?" Barney was whispering.

"It seems a hundred years since you went away," said Valancy.

"I won't leave you again."

"You must," protested Valancy, "if you want to. I'd be miserable if I thought you wanted to go and didn't because of me. I want you to feel perfectly free."

Barney laughed - a little cynically.

"There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - that's a bondage."

"Who said or wrote that 'the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is'?" asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps.

"Ah, now you have it," said Barney. "That's all the freedom we can hope for - the freedom to choose our prison. But, Moonlight" -- he stopped at the door of the Blue Castle and looked about him - at the glorious lake, the great, shadowy woods, the bonfires, the twinkling lights -- "Moonlight, I'm glad to be home again. When I came down through the woods and saw my home lights - mine - gleaming out under the old pines - something I'd never seen before - oh, girl, I was glad - glad!"

But in spite of Barney's doctrine of bondage, Valancy thought they were splendidly free. It was amazing to be able to sit up half the night and look at the moon if you wanted to. To be late for meals if you wanted to - she who had always been rebuked so sharply by her mother and so reproachfully by Cousin Stickles if she were one minute late. Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to. Leave your crusts if you wanted to. Not come home at all for meals if you wanted to. Sit on a sun-warm rock and paddle your bare feet in the hot sand if you wanted to. Just sit and do nothing in the beautiful silence if you wanted to. In short, do any fool thing you wanted to whenever the notion took you. If that wasn't freedom, what was?

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt!

One of my favorite parts of the book is the following excerpt. It stands out, as far as I'm concerned - in Lucy Maud's work. It's pure conversation ... meandering ... nowhere to go, nowhere to be ... and yet you can feel something blossoming beneath the words. It's beautiful.

Valancy is at a dance "up back" - meaning: "rough" - and things get a bit crazy and, in the world of Lucy Maud, scary. A bunch of drunken rowdy guys show up - and they all start wanting to dance with her, and she starts to feel a little bit threatened actually. (This is actually one of the only times that any threat of male violence against women ever shows up in her books. Rape is just not a thing discussed in Lucy Maud's books ... but the threat of it is there at the dance in Blue Castle.) And thank goodness - Barney Snaith, Valancy's secret crush, shows up - and basically drags her away to take her home. Abel Gay has to stay on, because he's part of the "band" (basically a trio of fiddlers) - so Snaith rescues her. And drives her home in his beat-up jalopy that he calls "Lady Jane" who, naturally, breaks down. So they sit and wait for another car to drive by (they're in the woods, basically) - and they have never been alone before, these two ... and Valancy obviously has a huge crush on the guy (in a kind of adolescent fan-worship way - his life, and how he bucks convention, really means something to her).

The excerpt below is the two of them sitting in the car, waiting. I find this excerpt strangely sad. Or maybe it's just my mood. Perhaps bittersweet is a better word choice than "sad".

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

"We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worthwhile saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."

"John Foster says," quoted Valance, " 'If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying."

"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while," conceded Barney.

They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped across the road. once or twice an owl laughed out delightfully. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney's island must be.

Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.

She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing - said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him - thought in which he did not predominate - was an impossibility.

She had realised, quite simply and fully, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.

She was no longer unimportant, little old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant - justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood - all the women who had ever loved in the world.

Barney need never know it - though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendour of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods. She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure! Valancy felt as if she had exchanged her shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire-new from the workshop of the gods. As far back as she could look, life had been dull - colourless - savourless. Now she had come to a little patch of violets, purple and fragrant - hers for the plucking. No matter who or what had been in Barney's past - no matter who or what might be in his future - no one else could ever have this perfect hour. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the moment.

"Ever dream of ballooning?" said Barney suddenly.

"No," said Valancy.

"I do - often. Dream of sailing through the clouds - seeing the glories of sunset - spending hours in the midst of a terrific storm with lightning playing above and below you - skimming above a silver cloud floor under a full moon - wonderful!"

"It does sound so," said Valancy. "I've stayed on earth in my dreams."

She told him about her Blue Castle. It was so easy to tell Barney things. One felt he understood everything - even the things you didn't tell him. And then she told him a little of her existence before she came to Roaring Abel's. She wanted him to see why she had gone to the dance "up back".

"You see - I've never had any real life," she said. "I've just - breathed. Every door has always been shut to me."

"But you're still young," said Barney.

"Oh, I know. Yes, I'm 'still young' - but that's so different from young," said Valancy bitterly. For a moment she was tempted to tell Barney why her years had nothing to do with her future; but she did not. She was not going to think of death tonight.

"Though I never was really young," she went on - "until tonight," she added in her heart. "I never had a life like other girls. You couldn't understand. Why" -- she had a desperate desire that Barney should know the worst about her -- "I didn't even love my mother. Isn't it awful that I don't love my mother?"

"Rather awful -- for her," said Barney drily.

"Oh, she didn't know it. She took my love for granted. And I wasn't any use or comfort to her or anybody. I was just a -- a -- vegetable. And I got tired of it. That's why I came to keep house for Mr. Gay and look after Cissy."

"And I suppose your people thought you'd gone mad."

"They did -- and do -- literally," said Valancy. "But it's a comfort to them. They'd rather believe me mad than bad. There's no other alternative. But I've been living since I came to Mr. Gay's. It's been a delightful experience. I suppose I'll pay for it when I have to go back -- but I'll have had it."

"That's true," said Barney. "If you buy your experience it's your own. So it's no matter how much you pay for it. Somebody else's experience can never be yours. Well, it's a funny old world."

"Do you think it really is old?" asked Valancy dreamily. "I never believe that in June. It seems so young tonight - somehow. In that quivering moonlight - like a young, white girl - waiting."

"Moonlight here on the verge of up back is different from moonlight anywhere else," agreed Barney. "It always makes me feel so clean, somehow - body and soul. And of course the age of gold always comes back in spring."

It was ten o'clock now. A dragon of black cloud ate up the moon. The spring air grew chill -- Valancy shivered. Barney reached back into the innards of Lady Jane and clawed up an old, tobacco-scented overcoat.

"Put that on," he ordered.

"Don't you want it yourself?" protested Valancy.

"No. I'm not going to have you catching cold on my hands."

"Oh, I won't catch cold. I haven't had a cold since I came to Mr. Gay's - though I've done the foolishest things. It's funny, too - I used to have them all the time. I feel so selfish taking your coat."

"You've sneezed three times. No use winding up your 'experience' up back with grippe or pneumonia."

He pulled it up tight about her throat and buttoned it on her. Valancy submitted with secret delight. How nice it was to have some one look after you so! She snuggled down into the tobaccoey folds and wished the night could last forever.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

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The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! So. Valancy is now behaving like a lunatic (according to her family). She is (gasp) speaking her mind, doing what she wants, not living by her mother's silly rules. But this is not even the beginning of the upset precipiated by Valancy learning she only has one year to live. Valancy is vaguely fascinated by a man named Abel Gay - a drunken free-spirit - who careens thru the upstanding town in his smoking bellowing jalopy. She somehow likes him. He seems to not live by society's rules. Valancy is jealous. Abel Gay (nicknamed "Roaring Abel" for obvious reasons) has a daughter - a young woman - who is dying of tuberculosis. Her name is Cissy. Cissy is a "fallen" woman - had a child out of wedlock (nobody knows who the father was) - and the child died. Because of this "sin" - Abel cannot get a nurse to come out and take care of Cissy. He does the best he can, in between bacchanalian binges. In conversing briefly with Abel - an idea suddenly comes into Valancy's head. She will go live with Abel and Cissy, and take care of Cissy in her final illness. And so that is what she does. Her family is beyond shocked. It's almost like - they didn't notice her for 29 years - and now she is all they can think about.

Valancy, meanwhile, goes off to the cabin in the woods - and settles in to her new free life. Barney Snaith (a supposed reprobate - mysterious, handsome) is a common visitor - he's as much of an outcast as Abel Gay. Valancy has had a crush-from-afar on Snaith for a while ... so suddenly she finds herself in his company and finds herself really falling for him. He remains mysterious, the opposite of an open book ... but even that Valancy doesn't mind. She's never had a beau. And she doesn't want one now - because she's dying. But she finally allows herself to just fantasize like crazy about Barney. She no longer is ashamed of imagining what he's thinking about, or what it would be like to kiss him ...

Valancy really starts to blossom, out there in the woods with the rejects.

And she just loves Cissy. A sweet bed-ridden woman, who just loves having Valancy there - loves the female company, and loves Valancy's sympathetic presence.

Here's an excerpt from the "living with Abel Gay" section of the book.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month's wages - which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey - Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crepe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown.

She passed the house on Elm Street twice - Valancy never even thought about it as "home" - but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire - and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her.

Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster's arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming - she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know.

Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of "up back" - a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had "turned Free Methodist" and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference.

Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had "no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian." But Valancy went in spite of him.

"We'll hear something worse than that about her soon," Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily.

They did.

Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance "up back" at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers.

But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper.

"You come with me to the dance," he ordered. "It'll do you good - put some colour in your face. You look peaked - you want something to liven you up."

Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners' dance wouldn't be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn't she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn't mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy did want to go.

She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear that to a party! Never. She pulled her green crepe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so -- so -- naked -- just because her neck and arms were bare. That was just her old-maidishness. She would not be ridden by it. On went the dress - the slippers.

It was the first time she had worn a pretty dress since the organdies of her early teens. And they had never made her look like this.

If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn't feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there - great crimson things glrowing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

"You look so nice and -- and -- different, dear," said Cissy. "Like a green moonbeam with a gleam of red in it, if there could be such a thing."

Valancy stooped to kiss her.

"I don't feel right about leaving you alone, Cissy."

"Oh, I'll be all right. I feel better tonight than I have for a long while. I've been feeling badly to see you sticking here so closely on my account. I hope you'll have a nice time. I never was at a party at the Corners, but I used to go sometimes, long ago, to dances up back. We always had good times. And you needn't be afraid of Father being drunk tonight. He never drinks when he engages to play for a party. But -- there may be -- liquor. What will you do if it gets rough?"

"Nobody would molest me."

"Not seriously, I suppose. Father would see to that. But it might be noisy and -- and unpleasant."

"I won't mind. I'm only going as a looker-on. I don't expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I've never seen anything except decorous Deerwood."

Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party "up back" might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn't be.

"I hope you'll enjoy it," she repeated.

Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel's old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.

Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful "up back," and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Excerpt 2! Of our favorite book, ladies! Yay!!! Spinsters everywhere: take hope! Valancy finds her Blue Castle! So can we!

Okay. So the next excerpt is hilarious. Valancy has gotten her "you have one life to live" letter. She has told no one. She doesn't inform her horrible mother that she is deathly ill. And although Valancy is scared, and sad ... that her life will end ... she suddenly wakes up to her own misery. She is no longer a victim. She starts to do things she has always wanted to do. Small at first: like sliding down the bannister. Her family is uptight enough that they are horrified by things like that. Then comes some kind of big family dinner. This is the moment. The entire Stirling realizes, at this dinner, that "something is wrong with Valancy". Of course the funny thing is (for this reader) that you start to realize that no, nothing is wrong with Valancy - her behavior at this dinner is perfectly rational. These people are annoying repetitive bores. Any right-minded person would be bored by their pompous irritating personalities. Valancy suddenly, at this dinner, without being cruel - or vicious - stops "playing nice". It's just that she suddenly sees with clear eyes - she has always been afraid of her family. And looking around at this dinner, she realizes: I was afraid of these boobs? Are you kidding me?

The story of the dinner goes on for multiple chapters - it's so funny - so I'll excerpt just a part of it.

Oh - and one of the jokes here - is that every time Valancy sneezes - every time - her mother reprimands her. And says, "A person should always be able to suppress their sneezes." These people are morons.

The moment when Valancy calls her uncle "old dear" and the response that gets makes me laugh out loud. Again: Lucy Maud is merciless with these people. They do not deserve mercy, in the context of this story. We don't try to understand the Wicked Stepmother, or try to see her side of things. Nope. She's evil. Get away from the beeyotch. This is the kind of story Lucy Maud is telling here. I particularly despise Uncle James. I know people like that. Horrible.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the clan envied her those gas-logs, except Valancy. Glorious open fires blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool, but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat - "Mary, will you have a little lamb?" Aunt Mildred told the same old story of once finding a lost ring in a turkey's crop. Uncle Benjamin told his favourite prosy tale of how he had once chased and punished a now famous man for stealing apples. Second Cousin Jane described all her sufferings with an ulcerating tooth. Aunt Wellington admired the pattern of Aunt Alberta's silver teaspoons and lamented the fact that one of her own had been lost.

"It spoiled the set. I could never get it matched. And it was my wedding-present from dear old Aunt Matilda."

Aunt Isabel thought the seasons were changing and couldn't imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs. Cousin Georgiana, as usual, discussed the last funeral and wondered, audibly, "which of us will be the next to pass away." Cousin Georgiana could never say anything as blunt as "die". Valancy thought she could tell her, but didn't. Cousin Gladys, likewise as usual, had a grievance. Her visiting nephew had nipped all the buds off her house-plants and chivied her brood of fancy chickens --"squeezed some of them to death, my dear."

"Boys will be boys," reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.

"But they needn't be ramping, rampageous animals," retorted Cousin Gladys, looking round the table for appreciation of her wit. Everybody smiled except Valancy. Cousin Gladys remembered that. A few minutes later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of her as "one of those shy, plain girls who can't get husbands," and glanced significantly at Valancy.

Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract discussion on "the greatest happiness." Everybody was asked to state his or her idea of "the greatest happiness".

Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness - for a woman - was to be "a loving and beloved wife and mother." Aunt Wellington thought it would be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to a great singer like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that her greatest happiness would be to be free - absolutely free - from neuritis. Cousin Georgiana's greatest happiness would be "to have her dear, dead brother Richard back." Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest happiness was to be found in "the poetry of life" and hastily gave some directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant. Mrs. Frederick said the greatst happiness was to spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her - Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. "We are all too prone," continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, "to live in selfishness, worldliness, and sin." The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.

"The greatest happiness," said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, "is to sneeze when you want to."

Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.

"Doss," he chuckled, "what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?"

"One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless," said Valancy. "You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don't you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don't succeed."

Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly - as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked her where the dog had bitten her.

"Just a little below the Catholic church," said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy.

"What do you mean?" said bewildered Aunt Alberta and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.

Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.

"Doss, you are horribly thin," she said. "You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?"

"No." Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. "But I can tell you where you'll find a beauty parlour in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins."

"Val-an-cy!" The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say "Doss".

"She's feverish," said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised whisper. "We've thought she seemed feverish for several days."

"She's gone dippy, in my opinion," growled Uncle Benjamin. "If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked."

"You can't spank her." Cousin Stickles was much agitated. "She's twenty-nine years old."

"So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine," said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, "when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect."

"Oh, but you know we're all dead," said Valancy, "the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren't - yet. That is the only difference."

"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, "do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?"

Valancy flushed scarlet - with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.

"Of course I do," she said. "It was good jam. I've always been sorry I hadn't time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh, look at Aunt Isabel's profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?"

Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself which, of course, destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, "I -- I wouldn't eat any more if I were you, Doss. It isn't that I grudge it -- but don't you think it would be better for yourself? Your -- your stomach seems a little out of order."

"Don't worry about my stomach, old dear," said Valancy. "It is all right. I'm going to keep right on eating. It's seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal."

It was the first time any one had been called "old dear" in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick's opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she dared not leave Valancy there.

Aunt Alberta's maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn't there. Uncle Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention Barney Snaith at every Stirling funciton, Valancy reflected. Whatever he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for her, though she had not yet faced this face. She could feel her pulses beating to her finger-tips.

Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed - the defaulting cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be allowed to exist at all in the neighbourhood of Deerwood. He didn't know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be allowed to be at large after all that he had done.

"What has he done?" asked Valancy suddenly.

Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.

"Done! Done! He's done everything."

"What has he done?" repeated Valancy inexorably. "What do you know that he has done? You're always running him down. And what has ever been proved against him?"

"I don't argue with women," said Uncle Wellington. "And I don't need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives or what he does there, that's proof enough. Find a mystery and you find a crime."

"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"

"I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark lane," shivered Cousin Georgiana.

"Murder me," said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.

"Just for the fun of it?" suggested Valancy.

"Exactly," said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. "When there is so much smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he came here first. I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."

"Criminal! Of course he's a criminal," said Uncle Wellington. "Nobody doubts it" -- glaring at Valancy. "Why, they say he served a term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. I don't doubt it. And they say he's in with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the country."

"Who say?" asked Valancy.

Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.

"He has the identical look of a jail-bird," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed it the first time I saw him."

"'A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and sighed to do a deed of shame.'"

declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over the managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.

"One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle," said Valancy. "Is that why you think him so villainous?"

Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.

"How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?" asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.

"Yes, how?" demanded Aunt Wellington.

"I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely," said Valancy composedly. "I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw."

"There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature's past life," said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. "But he can hardly be guilty of everything he's accused of, you know."

Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should she speak up in even this qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had she to do with him? For that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this question.

"They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis," said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely ignorant of him.

Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.

"That alone shows there is something wrong with him," decreed Aunt Isabel.

"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."

"The man hasn't a friend except Roaring Abel," said Uncle Wellington. "And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it would have been better for - for some members of his family."

Uncle Wellington's rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten -- that there were girls at the table.

"If you mean," said Valancy passionately, "that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay's child, he isn't. It's a wicked lie."

In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys's thimble party, they discovered that she had got - SOMETHING - in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.

Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed - or pretended to believe - that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.

"Hush -- hush!" implored Cousin Stickles.

"I don't mean to hush," said Valancy perversely. "I've hush-hushed all my life. I'll scream if I want to. Don't make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith."

Valancy didn't exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney Snaith's imputed crimes and misdemeanors matter to her? And why, out of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been poor, pitiful little Cecily Gay's false lover? For it did seem intolerable to her. She did not mind when they called him a thief and a counterfeiter and jail-bird; but she could not endure to think that he had loved and ruined Cecily Gay. She recalled his face on the two occasions of their chance meetings - his twisted, enigmatic, engaging smile, his twinkle, his think, sensitive, almost ascetic lips, his general air of daredeviltry. A man with such a smile and lips might have murdered or stolen but he could not have betrayed. She suddenly hated every one who said it or believed it of him.

"When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss," said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.

"But I'm not a young girl," retorted Valancy, uncrushed. "Aren't you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can't you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She's dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn't take a hand, too. As for Barney Snaith, the only crime he has been guilty of is living to himself and minding his own business. He can, it seems, get along without you. Which is an unpardonable sin, of course, in your little snobocracy." Valancy coined that concluding word suddenly and felt that it was an inspiration. That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another.

"Valancy, your poor father would turn over in his grave if he could hear you," said Mrs. Frederick.

"I dare say he would like that for a change," said Valancy brazenly.

"Doss," said Uncle James heavily, "the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still - especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?"

"No," said Valancy, "but I thought you had - especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating."

But her excitement had been too much for her. She knew, by certain unmistakable warnings, that one of her attacks of pain was coming on. It must not find her there. She rose from her chair.

"I am going home now. I only came for the dinner. It was very good, Aunt Alberta, although your salad-dressing is not salt enough and a dash of cayenne would improve it."

None of the flabbergasted silver wedding guests could think of anything to say until the lawn gate clanged behind Valancy in the dusk.

The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf:

The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

OH, how I love this novel. OH GOD. It's one of my escapes, a true fairy-romance that I find transportive ... If I ever find myself stuck, or feeling sorry for myself, or like a spinster (ha! let's retire that word, please) - all I need to do is pick up this magical novel. I find it intensely pleasurable to read - and in a weird way, this is my favorite thing that Lucy Maud has ever written. It is singular. It is its own thing. She never wrote another book like it. It feels like an exorcism ... and it also feels like it transported her. I love the Emily books - but they don't do for me what Blue Castle does - it's just a different experience. I really want this to come out right - because I think Lucy Maud does some of her best writing in this book, and I don't want to make the book sound trivial. In Blue Castle, we have some of her funniest writing, her most intensely gorgeous nature writing, her most brilliant characterizations ... but for me, personally, this book works the way watching, say, Notting Hill does. Or ... Kate & Leopold. I'm listing these romantic comedies that I absolutely LOVE ... movies that have the ability to really put a little hope in my heart, a little ... pep-talk "hang in there, Sheila, hang in there" ... There are many movies that work on me on that primal level, the level that aches for a mate, that doesn't want to give up, that wants to hope ... and for me Blue Castle works on that level.

It makes me feel like a teenager. A lovesick teenager.

The story is simple. And also cliched. But the beauty of it is not in the plot points ... but in HOW we get to the end of the story, the people we meet, the twists and turns ... It's almost archetypal, like a folk tale - if that makes any sense.

Valancy Stirling (her family calls her "Doss" and she despises the name - but they won't stop) is an unhappy 29 year old woman - unmarried, seriously on the shelf, as it were ... and completely dominated by her thoroughly unpleasant family. God, has Lucy Maud ever created such a bunch of relentless ignorant boring nincompoops in her writing career? She's merciless (and yet in a very funny way - I laugh out loud reading about these terrible people). Usually "bad" characters have SOME redeeming qualities in Lucy Maud's world. It's rare the truly bad seed. Miss Browning in Emily of New Moon comes to mind - she is truly a nasty human being, and she balances out the more humanistic approach to other "villains". Because you know what? Some people really ARE just assholes. But in Blue Castle, Lucy Maud takes the gloves off and turns her viciousness on people like Valancy's horrendous family. They are prudish, thin-lipped with decency and decorum ... and look at any sign of individuality (especially in Valancy) as the sign of the coming apocalypse. The book takes place in the 1920s, obviously - because there are mentions of bobbed hair (also seen by her family as harbingers of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and jalopies and stuff like that - but Valancy's stick-up-the-ass family clings to the Victorian ways. Valancy has zero freedom when the book opens. She doesn't have a job. She has to do everything her mother says, or else she will get the silent treatment, and Valancy has never before questioned the supremacy of her mother. Valancy is completely cowed by her family. She is who they say she is. She was always a plain little girl, never fit in, couldn't dance, had no social graces, was a dreamy odd-looking girl ... and was always compared unfavorably to her golden-haired smooth-mannered cousin Olive. Valancy could never win the Olive vs. Valancy battle - so she gave up. Valancy is, admittedly, quite a self-pitying thing when the book opens. She feels victimized by everything. And she has no sense of agency in her own destiny. She is victimized by her mother. She is victimized by her entire ridiculous judgmental family. She is single - and she feels victimized by this circumstance. She cannot imagine her way out of this kind of life. She is stuck. Big time. But she doesn't even see that she is stuck. According to Valancy, this is just her "lot" in life. This is the hand she has been dealt.

Until ...

She goes to the doctor (sneaking to the doctor SHE wants to go to, as opposed to going to the family doctor - who will then, naturally, gossip about her physical ailments to her whole family) to ask him about these shortness of breath "attacks" that she has. He examines her. And then tells her, via letter, that she is dying, she has some heart condition, and she only has a year to live. The letter is very blunt and perfunctory - but it is the catalyst. It is what, ironically, sets Valancy free.

She has a horrible night of the soul ... realizing that her life is going to end ... and suddenly she realizes how much she has wasted her life. All she has experienced (from parents, peers, men) has been rejection. She has had a second-hand life. Olive gets the beaux. Olive gets the pretty dresses. And Valancy sits on the sidelines. She has had ZERO first-hand experiences in her life. She has spent her entire time on the planet in a quivery state of fear and anxiety - fear of annoying her mother, fear of what people will say, fear of rejection .... And after that one "night of the soul" - Valancy literally throws out her old self, which was a lie anyway, erected to please her prudish ignorant mother, and begins to act like herself.

And it goes off like an atom bomb through the Stirling family.

Even small things - like Valancy not laughing at her uncle's stupid jokes ... It was always Valancy's role to laugh, obligingly - but she stops. Because she doesn't think the jokes are funny, and she actually thinks her uncle is kind of a stupid man who has never been particularly nice to her. Enough with conventions.

But the changes go deeper than internal ones ... Valancy starts taking some huge risks. She walks away from her family - without looking back - and goes out to live with Abel Gay and his daughter - Abel Gay is a drunken reprobate (and yet somehow a very likable character too) who spends his nights carousing and drinking and whoring (presumably) - and he needs help with his frail daughter, who had a baby out of wedlock - and is now dying (the daughter). So Valancy offers her services as a nursemaid - and goes out to live with these people who have been completely rejected and judged by society. And once she is in the bosom of these rejects, these supposed "losers" (who, naturally, are not that at all - they are warmer, more real, more "moral" than the nasty-minded Christians back home who have only JUDGED anjd shunned them - typical.) ... Valancy really starts to blossom.

It's a great story.

I'm going to do a bunch of excerpts, just because I love this book so much.

First excerpt is from the first chapter - where we meet the cast of characters - Valancy's horrible family.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle - by L.M. Montgomery.

She was glad it was raining - or rather, she was drearily satisfied that it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic, whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington - one always thought of them in that succession - inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to Valancy. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.

Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and despised, even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, "marrying money," would say to her in a pig's whisper, "Not thinking of getting married yet, my dear?" and then go off into the bellow of laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about Olive's new chiffon dress and Cecil's last devoted letter. Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.

Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring to her husband as "he", as if he were the only male creature in the world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her youth, would condole with Valancy on her sallow skin --

"I don't know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When I was a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in Canada, my dear."

Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn't say anything - or perhaps he would remark jocularly, "How fat you're getting, Doss!" And then everybody would laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Doss getting fat.

Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Valancy disliked but respected because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle - brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection - would probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his reputation, "I suppose you're busy with your hope-chest these days?"

And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.

"What is the difference between Doss and a mouse?"

"The mouse wishes to harm the cheese and Doss wishes to charm the he's."

Valancy had heard him ask that riddle fifty times and every time she wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place, Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Valancy had been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she offended him he would cut her out of his will - supposing she were in it. Valancy did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin's will. She had been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she endured his riddles and even smiled tortured little smiles over him.

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticize her in some way - Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism - she found something new with which to jab you every time. Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn't like it so well when other people said what they thought to her. Valancy never said what she thought.

Cousin Georgiana - named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been named after George the Fourth - would recount dolorously the names of all relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder "which of us will be the first to go next."

Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Valancy, because Valancy would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same reason, Cousin Gladys - really First Cousin Gladys once removed, according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated relationship - a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And Olive, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Valancy had not - beauty, popularity, love - would show off her beauty and presume on her popularity and flaunt her diamond insignia of love in Valancy's dazzled envious eyes.

There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington's wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic this year. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there were for that.

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Jane Lavinia' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

I like this story in the "orphan collection" as well. It doesn't rest its entire plot on an implausible coincidence ("Oh my lord, you have my mother's eyes ... oh my gosh, you must be my long-lost second cousin thrice removed!") This is a story of a young orphan named Jane Lavinia. She is 11 years old. She has some talent as an artist - her paintings have promise, and she loves to paint. It is something she does to lose herself in fantasy. She lives with her Aunt Rebecca - who is tough as nails (supposedly), unsympathetic towards artistic endeavors, and keeps Jane Lavinia very busy, milking cows, doing chores, etc. Jane Lavinia loves Aunt Rebecca, because she is family ... but Jane Lavinia is never sure if Rebecca loves her back. She has a sneaking suspicion that she might be a burden on her aunt ... that her aunt has taken her in as a duty. (Echoes of Emily here ... with her feelings about Aunt Elizabeth). 'Jane Lavinia' was published in 1906 - so it's pretty early, in terms of Lucy Maud's career - maybe 5 or 6 years in ... but there's a nice feel here, a really nice characterization - a dreamy sweet little orphan ... and a terrific literary character in Aunt Rebecca. It's all a cliche, of course - but whatever - the catharsis at the end always gets me.

Here's the ending. Jane Lavinia's artistic talents have been noticed by some city woman who offers to take Jane Lavinia away from Aunt Rebecca and get her to a good school in far off New York - get her art lessons - give her a chance to be a success. Jane Lavinia will have no shot at success if she stayed with Rebecca on the farm. Jane Lavinia is just a little girl but she decides to go with the city woman ... and Aunt Rebecca allows it.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Jane Lavinia' by L.M. Montgomery

On the morning of departure Jane Lavinia was up and ready early. Her trunk had been taken over to Mr. Whittaker's the night before, and she was to walk over in the morning and go with Mr. and Mrs. Stephens to the station. She put on her chiffon hat to travel in, and Aunt Rebecca did not say a word of protest. Jane Lavinia cried when she said good-by, but Aunt Rebecca did not cry. She shook hands and said stiffly, "Write when you get to New York. You needn't let Mrs. Stephens work you to death either."

Jane Lavinia went slowly over the bridge and up the lane. If only Aunt Rebecca had been a little sorry! But the morning was perfect and the air clear as crystal, and she was going to New York, and fame and fortune were to be hers for the working. Jane Lavinia's spirits rose and bubbled over in a little trill of song. Then she stopped in dismay. She had forgotten her watch - her mother's little gold watch; she had left it on her dressing table.

Jane Lavinia hurried down the lane and back to the house. In the open kitchen doorway she paused, standing on a mosaic of gold and shadow where the sunshine fell through the morning-glory vines. Nobody was in the ktichen, but Aunt Rebecca was in the little bedroom that opened off it, crying bitterly and talking aloud between her sobs, "Oh, she's gone and left me all alone - my girl has gone! Oh, what shall I do? And she didn't care - she was glad to go - glad to get away. Well, it ain't any wonder. I've always been too cranky with her. But I loved her so much all the time, and I was so proud of her! I liked her picture-making real well, even if I did complain of her wasting her time. Oh, I don't know how I'm ever going to keep on living now she's gone!"

Jane Lavinia listened with a face from which all the sparkle and excitement had gone. Yet amid all the wreck and ruin of her tumbling castles in air, a glad little thrill made itself felt. Aunt Rebecca was sorry - Aunt Rebecca did love her after all!

Jane Lavinia turned and walked noiselessly away. As she went swiftly up the wild plum lane, some tears brimmed up in her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips and a song in her heart. After all, it was nicer to be loved than to be rich and admired and famous.

When she reached Mr. Whittaker's, everybody was out in the yard ready to start.

"Hurry up, Jane Lavinia," said Mr. Whittaker. "Blest if we hadn't begun to think you weren't coming at all. Lively now."

"I am not going," said Jane Lavinia calmly.

"Not going?" they all exclaimed.

"No, I'm very sorry, and very grateful to you, Mr. Stephens, but I can't leave Aunt Rebecca. She'd miss me too much."

"Well, you little goose!" said Mrs. Whittaker.

Mrs. Stephens said nothing, but frowned codly. perhaps her thoughts were less of the loss to the world of art than of the difficulty of hunting up another housemaid. Mr. Stephens looked honestly regretful.

"I'm sorry, very sorry, Miss Slade," he said. "You have exceptional talent, and I think you ought to cultivate it."

"I am going to cultivate Aunt Rebecca," said Jane Lavinia.

Nobody knew just what she meant, but they all understood the firmness of her tone. Her trunk was taken down out of the express wagon, and Mr. and Mrs. Stephens drove away. Then Jane Lavinia went home. She found Aunt Rebecca washing the breakfast dishes, with big tears rolling down her face.

"Goodness me!" she cried, when Jane Lavinia walked in. 'What's the matter? You ain't gone and been too late!"

"No, I've just changed my mind, Aunt Rebecca. They've gone without me. I am not going to New York - I don't want to go. I'd rather stay at home with you."

For a moment Aunt Rebecca stared at her. Then she stepped forward anf flung her arms about the girl.

"Oh, Jane Lavinia," she said with a sob, "I'm so glad! I couldn't see how I was going to get along without you, but I thought you didn't care. You can wear that chiffon hat everywhere you want to, and I'll get you a pink organdy dress for Sundays."

The Books: Akin to Anne: 'Charlotte's Quest' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

Akin to Anne is a collection of Lucy Maud's stories - all having to do with orphans, people (mostly women) who are alone in the world and - at the end of a 10 page story - have discovered that their mother's second cousin is actually alive ... so ... family DOES exist. It's the same story (for the most part) over ... and over ... and over. It was one of Lucy Maud's ongoing themes, of course. The importance of family. This from a woman who was pretty much abandoned by her mother (who died) and then by her father (who left her behind with grandparents - moved out west - and started a new life out there, with a new wife - and never "called for" Lucy Maud) Lucy Maud was raised by stern cold grandparents - who ... sound rather exacting, and unsympathetic - and as they got older, much more difficult to deal with. Cranky, particular, aches and pains, demanding. Lucy Maud had an 11 year engagement because she was waiting for them to die - and her sense of duty would not let her abandon them. !!! Knowing what a disaster her marriage ended up being, I almost wish that Ewan had gotten sick of waiting. But no. He knew that he would never get another wife, because who the hell would marry that jackass except a woman who had had a disappointment in love when she was young, never got over it, and buried her heart forever? Nobody. So he waited. For 11 years. This just goes to show that Lucy Maud, even though she had a prickly relationship with her grandparents who probably would have preferred her to be a normal person - instead of a writer - horrors!! - she cherished them, because they were family. She was all alone in the world. She never dwelled on it, and she never said a bad word about her father in her journals. She made excuses for him. She rhapsodized over his rare letters. She went out there to visit his new family maybe ... twice? In her whole life? So he basically discarded his first child - started up again - and left her to fend for herself with the stern relatives of his dead first wife.

That dark belly underbelly of abandonment rarely makes it directly into Lucy Maud's stories. Anne is an orphan - but her imagination helps her to bear her years before Green Gables ... and her parents died when she was a baby, so she has romanticized them. She doesn't actively miss them. We don't have a depressive little Oliver Twist with Anne Shirley - we have a plucky little girl who has created an intense fantasy life to deal with her hard little life.

So these stories, monotonous as they can be when read all together, are very revealing. It's the most important thing in the world to know that you are not alone ... that you have people around you ... who are of your blood.

We have story after story about a poor work-hardened woman, living in a bleak boarding-house - (these characters are all the same, no individuality), and then discovering - through a random coincidence - that the rich man who just moved to town is actually her long lost brother - thought to be dead in the Klondike! So now she has family! Hooray!!! Etc. Over and over and over again ...

I won't bore you with those repetitive stories - only Lucy Maud die-hard fans would read all of them - but I actually find them kind of beautiful. I can really sense her personality, her concerns, her ... worries ... in these stories. There are a couple in the collection that do not follow the same pattern - and some that have a higher level of narrative prose - so I'll post excerpts from those.

The first story in the collection is "Charlotte's Quest" - published in the Family Herald in 1933. You can tell it was published at a late date. Her writing is strong, sure, and self-contained. The characters, while broad sketches, are clear, you know who they are ... They are individuals. They seem to have a breath of life to them, unlike the monotonous cardboard cutouts of many of the other stories.

Charlotte is 8 years old, and her mother is dead and her father only sees her as a "hindrance to his mountain-climbing". Her father has dropped her off at her aunt's and uncle's and has never been seen again. Charlotte is a serious rather ugly little girl with thick bushy black eyebrows - she is not cute, or sweet, like other little girls - she likes to read, and imagine things, and think by herself ...her aunt and uncle are loud, boisterous, social people and completely do not understand their niece. They want her to be like them. Charlotte has to share a bedroom with her loud cousins ... and she lives her life in complete misery. She is misunderstood, and totally alone in the world. She hears that there is a witch in the next town who will grant your wishes. So Charlotte sets out to find this witch - and ask the witch for a mother.

This is the scene where she finds the witch's house. I love the many levels in this scene. You can see where "Witch Penny" is coming from ... you can see the whole thing through her eyes too ... Very well done.

Oh, and also it's one of her rare sympathetic portraits of an Irish person. Normally they are drunk and filthy in her stories, little better than caricatures. Father Cassidy is a VERY sympathetic Irishman, in Emily of New Moon - and Judy Plum, in the interminable Pat books [excerpts here and here], is Irish - she's sympathetic too, even though gotta be honest: Judy Plum annoys me. If I had a housemaid like her, I'd want to slit my throat. Like: SHUT UP, PLUM. GIMME A MOMENT'S REST, FOR GOD'S SAKE. Speaking of "Pat" - this episode in the story below with the witch shows up in Pat of Silver Bush almost word for word, except that Pat is looking for a lost dog, not her mother.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne - 'Charlotte's Quest' by L.M. Montgomery

The Witch Penny's house was a little grey one nestling against the steep hill that rose from the pond about half a mile west of the small town. The gate hung slackly on its hinges. The house itself was shabby and old, with sunken window sills and a much-patched roof. Charlotte reflected that being a witch didn't seem to be a very profitable business.

For a moment Charlotte hesitated. She was not a timid child, but she did feel a little frightened. Then she thought of Mrs. Barrett rocking fiercely in her rocker and forever talking in her high, cheerful voice. "Mother is always so bright," Aunt Florence always said. Charlotte shuddered. No witch could be worse. She knocked resolutely on the door.

A thumping sound inside ceased. Had she interrupted Witch Penny in the weaving of a spell? ... and footsteps seemed to be coming down a stair. Then the door opened and Witch Penny appeared. Charlotte took her all in with one of her straight, deliberate looks.

She was grey as an owl, with a broad rosy face and tiny black eyes surrounded by cushions of fat. Charlotte thought she looked too jolly for a witch. But no doubt there were all kinds. Certainly the big black cat with fiery golden eyes that sat behind her on the lower step of the stair looked his reputed part.

"Now who may ye be and what may ye be wanting with me?" said Witch Penny a bit gruffly.

Charlotte never wasted breath, words or time. "I am Charlotte Laurence and I have come to ask you to find me a mother - that is, if you really are a witch. Are you?"

Witch Penny's look suddenly changed. It grew secretive and mysterious.

"Whist, child," she whispered. "Don't be talking of witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen."

"But are you?" persisted Charlotte. If Witch Penny wasn't a witch, she wasn't going to bother with her.

"To be sure, I am. But come in, come in. Finding a mother ain't something to be done on the durestep. Better come right upstairs. I'm weaving a tablecloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in the countryside promised to do one apiece for them. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all their tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night, and 'twas their ruination. But I've got far behind me comrades and mustn't be losing any more time. Ye'll excuse me if I kape on with me work while ye're telling me your troubles. It's the quane's own cloth I'm weaving, and it's looking sour enough her majesty will be if it's not finished on time."

Charlotte thought that Witch Penny's old loom looked very big and clumsy for the weaving of fairy tablecloths, and the web in it seemed strangely like rather coarse grey flannel. But no doubt witches had their own way of blinding the eyes of ordinary mortals. When Witch Penny finished it, she would weave a spell over it and it would become a thing of gossamer light and loveliness.

Witch Penny resumed her work and Charlotte sat down on a stool beside her. They were on a little landing above the stairs, with one low, cobwebby window and a stained ceiling with bunches of dried tansy and yarrow hanging from it. The cat had followed them up and sat on the top step, staring at Charlotte. Its eyes shone uncannily through the dusk of the staircase.

"Now, out with your story," said Witch Penny. "Ye're wanting a mother, ye tell me, and ye're Charlotte Laurence. Ye'll be having Edward Laurence for your father, I'm thinking?"

"Yes. But he's gone west to climb mountains," explained Charlotte. "He's always wanted to, but Mother died when I was three, and as long as I was small he couldn't. I'm eight now, so he's gone."

"And left ye with your Uncle Tom and your Aunt Florence. Oh, I've heard all about it. Your Aunt Florence's cat was after telling mine the whole story at the last dance we had. Your Aunt Florence do be too grand for the likes of us, but it's little she thinks where her cat do be going. Ye don't look like the Laurences - ye haven't got your father's laughing mouth - ye've got a proud mouth like your old Grandmother Jasper. Did ye ever see her?"

Charlotte shook her head. She knew nothing of her Grandmother Jasper beyond the fact of her existence, but all at once shhe knew who You-Know-Who was.

"No, it ain't likely ye would. She was real mad at your mother for marrying Ned Laurence. I've heard she never would forgive her, never would set foot in her house. But ye have her mouth. And what black hair ye've got. And what big eyes. And what little ears. And ye have a mole on your neck. 'Tis the witch's mark. Come now, child dear, wouldn't ye like to be a witch? 'Tis a far easier job than the one ye've set me. Think av the fun av riding on the broomstick."

Charlotte thought of it. Flying over the steeples and dark spruces at night. "I think I'm too young to be a witch," she said.

Witch Penny's eyes twinkled.

"Sure, child dear, 'tis the young witches that do be having the most power. Mind ye, everybody can't be a witch. We're that exclusive ye'd never belave. But I'll not press ye. And ye want me to find you a mother?"

"If you please. Nita Gresham got a new mother. So why can't I?"

"Well, the real mothers are hard to come by. All the same, mebbe it can be managed. It's lucky ye've come in the right time of the moon. I couldn't have done a think for ye next wake. And mind ye, child, I'm not after promising anything for sartin. But there's a chanct, there's a chanct ... seeing as ye've got your grandmother's mouth. If ye'd looked like your father, it wouldn't be Witch Penny as'd help ye to a mother. I'd no use for him."

Witch Penny chuckled. "What kind of a mother do ye be wanting?"

"A quiet mother who doesn't laugh too much or ask too many questions."

Witch Penny shook her head.

"A rare kind. It'll take some conniving. Here ..." Witch Penny dropped her shuttle, leaned forward and extracted from a box beside the loom a handful of raisins ... "stow these away in your liddle inside while I do a bit av thinking."

Charlotte ate her raisins with a relish while Witch Penny wove slowly and thoughtfully. She did not speak until Charlotte had finished the last raisin.

"It come into me mind," said Witch Penny, "that if ye go up the long hill ... and down it ... then turn yourself about three times, nather more nor less, ye'll find a road that goes west. Folly your nose along it till ye come to a gate with a liddle lane that leads down to the harbour shore. Turn yourself about three times more ... if ye forget that part of it, ye may look till your eyes fall out of your head, but niver a mother ye'll see. Then go down the lane to a stone house with a red door in it like a cat's tongue. Knock three times on the door. If there's a mother in the world for ye, ye'll find her there. That's all I can be doing for ye."

Charlotte got up briskly.

"Thank you very much. It sounds like a good long walk, so I ought to start. What am I to pay you for this?"

Witch Penny chuckled again. Something seemed to amuse her greatly.

"How much have ye got?" she asked.

"A dollar."

"How'd ye come by it?"

Charlotte thought witches were rather impertinent. However, if you dealt with them ...

"Mrs. Beckwith gave it to me before she went away."

"And how come ye didn't spend it for swaties and ice cream?"

"I like to feel I've something to fall back on," said Charlotte gravely.

Witch Penny chuckled for the third time.

"Says your grandmother. Oh, ye're Laurence be name but it goes no daper. Kape your liddle bit av a dollar. Ye've got a mole on your neck. We can't charge folks as have moles anything. It's clane against our rules. Now run along or it'll be getting too late."

"I'm very much obliged to you," said Charlotte, putting her money back in her pocket and offering her thin brown hand.

"Ye do be a mannerly child at that," said Witch Penny.

Witch Penny stood on her sunken doorstep and watched the little, erect figure out of sight.

"Sure, and I do be wondering if I've done right. But she'd never fit in up at the Laurences with their clatter. And once the old leddy lays eyes on her!"

Charlotte had disappeared around the bend in the road. Then Witch Penny said a queer thing for a witch. She said: "God bless the liddle cratur."

The Books: Magic for Marigold (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

This is a novel - published in 1929. It is one of her few stand-alone novels, there is no Marigold: The Sequel. And you know, there are hints throughout the book that Marigold might not be made for adulthood. There's something fragile about her. She was a weak baby, and she takes everything very hard as a young girl. I can't remember where in the text Lucy Maud gives hints - but I know they were there.

All of that being said - I guess I'm not too wacky about Marigold. She just wasn't that compelling a heroine for me. She seemed to have a good imagination (which all of Lucy Maud's heroines do - except for stupid Pat of Silver Bush who couldn't imagine her way out of a paper sack. What a boring nitwit. She should be hospitalized. I think there's something actually wrong with her.) But anyway, back to Marigold. She sees the trees as creatures like fairies or wizards, she adores the hills on the horizon, she makes up a fantasy world - what is over that hill? A land of magic and rainbows and blah blah blah. I guess, to be honest, I've heard it all before. Lucy Maud has done this story - and much better - with Emily in the wind barrens in the spruce bush, and Anne with the White Way of Delight ... I guess Marigold just doesn't stand out, for me. However, there are some hilarious episodes in this book. Like when Marigold hears a missionary talk at a prayer meeting - and becomes so suffused with the desire to become holy - that she prays 14 hours a day, she stops eating, she wants to be pale and holy ... her family just tolerates this pious ridiculousness, knowing it's a fanatical phase. That's rather amusing. Some of the Lesley family members are quite memorable. I love Uncle Klondike. The woman-hater. Who then, naturally, turns around and marries the feisty female doctor named Marigold. Marigold is named after her. Marigold's mother is a pale sad nonentity. Lucy Maud didn't write parents very well. She had no experience with them herself - so whenever there are parents in her books - she either kills them off immediately (like in Emily) - or they are long dead by the time the book starts (like in Anne). In the few books where the parents live - Marigold, the Pat books - they're just ... not convincing. The mothers are usually saintly, sickly, and basically sit back and watch everyone else live their lives. And the fathers are jolly, twinkley, and rather detached from the main family action. The REAL characters are always people like the aunts, the uncles, the servants, the relatives, the extended family. Lucy Maud wrote about THEM like nobody's business. These people LIVE.

The excerpt I've chosen below is - well, it's a long one - and to be honest, it's some of my favorite writing that Lucy Maud has ever done. In her whole career. It's all just one woman talking - an extended monologue. But ... God, it's Lucy Maud shining, at her very very best.

Marigold, a little girl, is hanging out with her ancient great-grandmother - who is 99 years old. Great-Grandmother (referred to as "Old grandmother") is crotchety, bedridden, with laser-beam eyes that don't miss a thing, everyone lives in fear of her, she says what's on her mind, she is intolerant of foolishness, she is unpredictable ... and she has also lived for a bazillion years - so nobody can imagine her dying. It seems fine to let Marigold, a 6 year old, a 7 year old, stay at home with the great-grandmother while all the adults go out to a dinner party. Marigold can keep her company, and everything will be fine.

But Great-grandmother has other plans. She hasn't been outside for years. She is surrounded by younger generations, who all treat her as though she is ancient, and feeble and barely human. She hasn't been out in the garden for 20 years.

So when the house is empty - excpet for Marigold - Great-Grandmother decides. She wants to go out into the garden and see the moonlight. And not only that: but after she has done so, she will go back to her bed and die. With as little fuss as possible. By herself. She will choose her moment when she will go.

And that's what happens.

But it's the time in the garden - with Marigold, the 7 year old girl who is kind of afraid of her great-grandmother, and Great-Grandmother, the 99 year old terrifying bossy old fossil ... that I want to excerpt. The thing about it is: The Great-Grandmother has been set up in the chapters before this one as the opposite of a poetic or a ... contemplative personality. She's not mean - she's just hard as nails, she is not a lot of fun, she makes Marigold memorize Bible verses even though it's a bright sunny day out and Marigold wants to play - she's so old that everyone is alienated by her - and she tells the truth even if it's terrible - and everyone cowers when she is around. That is how she has been set up.

But now comes her last night on earth. She has decided it is going to be her last night. Marigold doesn't know this. But we, the reader, can tell. She's moving towards the boundary between life and death.

Lucy Maud shows her genius in this excerpt. Parts very poignant, parts laugh out loud funny (the bees at the wedding! the icing on the cake!), parts profound, and parts just plain old good story-telling ... It's what I find so damn compelling about her writing.

I only read Magic for Marigold in its entirety once. But I have read this excerpt many many many times. It's one of the pieces of writing I go to, regularly, if I need strength, or comfort, or perspective. I cherish it. And the last moment of the excerpt - the "Edith" moment - never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

Excerpt from Magic for Marigold - by L.M. Montgomery

Old Grandmother sank down on the stone bench with a grunt. She sat there silent and motionless for what seemed to Marigold a very long time. The moon rose over the cloud of spruce and the orchard became transfigured. A garden of flowers in moonlight is a strange, enchanted thing with a touch of diablerie, and Marigold, sensitive to every influence, felt its charm long years before she could define it. Nothing was the same as in daylight. She had never been out in the orchard so late as this before. The June lilies held up their cups of snow; the moonlight lay silver white on the stone steps. The perfume of the lilacs came in little puffs on the crystal air; beyond the orchard lay old fields she knew and loved, mysterious misty spaces of moonshine now. Far, far away was the murmur of the sea.

And still Old Grandmother dreamed on. Did she see faces long under the mould bright and vivid again? Were there flying feet, summoning voices, that only she could hear in that old moonlit orchard? What voices were calling to her out of the firs? Marigold felt a funny little prickling along her spine. She was perfectly sure that she and Old Grandmother were not alone in the orchard.

"Well, how have you been since we came out here?" demanded Old Grandmother at last.

"Pretty comf'able," said Marigold, rather startled.

"Good," said Old Grandmother. "It's a good test - the test of silence. If you can sit in silence with any one for half an hour and feel 'comfortable', you and that person can be friends. If not, friends you'll never be and you needn't waste time trying. I've brought you out here to-night for two reasons, Marigold. The first is to give you some hints about living, which may do you some good and may not. The second was to keep a tryst with the years. We haven't been alone here, child."

No; Marigold had known that. She drew a little closer to Old Grandmother.

"Don't be frightened, child. The ghosts that walk here are friendly, homey ghosts. They wouldn't hurt you. They are of your race and blood. Do you know you look strangely like a child who died seventy years before you were born? My husband's niece. Not a living soul remembers that little creature but me - her beauty - her charm - her wonder. But I remember her. You have her eyes and mouth - and that same air of listening to voices only she could hear. Is that a curse or a blessing I wonder. My children played in this orchard - and then my grandchildren - and my great-grandchildren. Such a lot of small ghosts! To think that in a house where there were once fourteen children there is now nobody but you."

"That isn't my fault," said Marigold, who felt as if Old Grandmother were blaming her.

"It's nobody's fault, just as it's nobody's fault that your father died of pneumonia before you were born. Cloud of Spruce will be yours some day, Marigold."

"Will it?" Marigold was startled. Such a thing had never occurred to her.

"And you must always love it. Places know when they're loved - just the same as people. I've seen houses whose hearts were actually broken. This house and I have always been good friends. I've always loved it from the day I came here as a bride. I planted most of those trees. You must marry some day, Marigold, and fill those old rooms again. But not too young - not too young. I married at seventeen and I was a grandmother at thirty-six. It was awful. Sometimes it seems to me that I've always been a grandmother.

"I could have been married at sixteen. But I was determined I wouldn't be married till I had finished knitting my apple-leaf bedspread. Your great-grandfather went off in such a rage I didn't know if he'd ever come back. But he did. He was only a boy himself. Two children - that's what we were. Two young fools. That's what everybody called us. And yet we were wiser then than I am now. We knew things then I don't know now. I've stayed up too late. Don't do that, Marigold - don't live till there's nothing left of life but the Pope's nose. Nobody will be sorry when I die."

Suddenly Marigold gasped.

"I will be sorry," she cried - and meant it. Why, it would be terrible. No Old Grandmother at Cloud of Spruce. How could the world go on at all?

"I don't mean that kind of sorriness," said Old Grandmother. "And even you won't be sorry long. Isn't it strange? I was once afraid of Death. He was a foe then - now he is a lover. Do you know, Marigold, it is thirty years since anyone has called me by my name? Do you know what my name is?"

"No-o," admitted Marigold. It was the first time she had ever realised that Old Grandmother must have a name.

"My name is Edith. Do you know I have an odd fancy I want to hear some one call me that again. Just once. Call me by my name, Marigold."

Marigold gasped again. This was terrible. It was sacrilege. Why, one might almost as well be expected to call God by His name to His face.

"Say anything - anything - with my name in it," said Old Grandmother impatiently.

"I -- I don't know what to say, --- Edith," stammered Marigold. It sounded dreadful when she had said it. Old Grandmother sighed.

"It's no use. That isn't my name -- not as you say it. Of course it couldn't be. I should have known better." Suddenly she laughed.

"Marigold, I wish I could be present at my own funeral. Oh, wouldn't it be fun! The whole clan will be here to the last sixth cousin. They'll sit around and say all the usual kind, good, dull things about me instead of the interesting truth. The only true thing they'll say will be that I had a wonderful constitution. That's always said of any Lesley who lives to be over eighty. Marigold --" Old Grandmother's habit of swinging a conversation around by its ears was always startling, "what do you really think about the world?"

Marigold, though taken by surprise, knew exactly what she thought about the world.

"I think it's very int'resting," she said.

Old Grandmother stared at her, then laughed.

"You've hit it. 'Whether there be tongues they shall fail - whether there be prophecies they shall vanish away' -- but the pageant of human life goes on. I've never tired watching it. I've lived nearly a century - and when all's said and done there's nothing I'm more thankful for than that I've always found the world and people in it interesting. Yes, life's been worth living. Marigold, how many little boys are sweet on you?"

"Sweet on me." Marigold didn't understand.

"Haven't you any little beau?" explained Old Grandmother.

Marigold was quite shocked. "Of course not. I'm too small."

"Oh, are you? I had two beaux when I was your age. Can you imagine me being seven years old and having two little boys sweet on me?"

Marigold looked at Old Grandmother's laughter-filled and moonlight-softened black eyes and for the first time realised that Old Grandmother had not always been old. Why, she might even have been Edith.

"For that matter I had a beau when I was six," said Old Grandmother triumphantly. "Girls were born having beaux in my day. Little Jim Somebody - I've forgotten his last name if I ever knew it - walked three miles to buy a stick of candy for me. I was only six, but I knew what that meant. He has been dead for eighty years. And there was Charlie Snaith. He was nine. We always called him Froggy-face. I'll never forget his huge round eyes staring at me as he asked, 'Can I be your beau?' Or how he looked when I giggled and said 'no'. There were a good many 'no's' before I finally said 'yes'." Old Grandmother laughed reminiscently, with all the delight of a girl in her teens.

"It was Great-Grandfather you first said 'yes' to, wasn't it?" asked Marigold.

Old Grandmother nodded.

"But I had some narrow escapes. I was crazy about Frank Lister when I was fifteen. My parents wouldn't let me have him. He wanted me to run away with him. I've always been sorry I didn't. But then if I had I'd have been sorry for that, too. I was very near taking Bob Clancy - and now all I can remember about him was that he got drunk once and varnished his mother's kitchen with maple-syrup. Joe Benson was in love with me. I had told him I thought he was magnificent. If you tell a certain kind of man he's magnificent, you can have him - if you really want that kind of a man. Peter March was a nice fellow. He was thought to be dying of consumption, and he pleaded with me to marry him and give him a year of happiness. Just suppose I had. He got better and lived to be seventy. Never take a risk like that with a live man, Marigold. he married Hilda Stuart. A pretty girl but too self-conscious. And every time Hilda spent more than five cents a week Peter took neuralgia. He always sat ahead of me in church, and I was always tormented with a desire to slap a spot on his bald head that looked like a fly."

"Was Great-grandfather a handsome man?" asked Marigold.

"Handsome? Handsome? Everyone was handsome a hundred years ago. I don't know if he was handsome or not. I only know he was my man from the moment I first set eyes on him. It was at a dinner-party. He was there with Janet Churchill. She thought she had him hooked. She always hated me. I had gold slippers on that night that were too tight for me. I kicked them off under the table for a bit of ease. Never found one of them again. I knew Janet was responsible for it. But I got even with her. I took her beau. It wasn't hard. She was a black velvet beauty of a girl - far prettier than I was - but she kept all her goods in the show-window. Where there is no mystery there is no romance. Remember that, Marigold."

"Did you and Great-Grandfather live here when you were married?"

"Yes. He built Cloud of Spruce and brought me here. We were quite happy. Of course we quarreled now and then. And once he swore at me. I just swore back at him. It horrified him so he never set me such a bad example again. The worst quarrel we ever had was when he spilled soup over my purple silk dress. I always believed he did it on purpose because he didn't like the dress. He has been dead up there in South Harmony graveyard for forty years, but if he were here now I'd like to slap his face for that dress."

"How did you get even with him?" asked Marigold, knowing very well Old Grandmother had got even.

Old Grandmother laughed until she had hardly enough breath left to speak.

"I told him that since he had ruined my dress I'd go to church next Sunday in my petticoat. And I did."

"Oh, Grandmother." Marigold thought this was going too far.

"Oh, I wore a long silk coat over it. He never knew till we were in our pew. When he sat down the coat fell open in front and he saw the petticoat - a bright Paddy-green it was. Oh, his face - I can see it yet."

Old Grandmother rocked herself to and fro on the stone bench in a convulsion of mirth.

"I pulled the coat together. But I don't think your great-grandfather got much good of that sermon. When it was over he took me by the arm and marched me down the aisle and out to our buggy. No hanging round to talk gossip that day. He never spoke all the way home - sat there with his mouth primmed up. In face he never said a word about it at all - but he never could bear green the rest of his life. And it was my color. But the next time I got a green dress he gave our fat old waserwoman a dress off the same piece. So of course I couldn't wear the dress and I never dared to get green again. After all, it took a clever person to get the better of your great-grandfather in the long run. But that was the only serious quarrel we ever had, though we used to squabble for a few years over the bread. He wanted the slices cut thick and I wanted them thin. It spoiled a lot of meals for us."

"Why couldn't you have each cut them to suit yourselves?"

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"No, no. That would have been giving in on a trifle. It's harder to do that than give in on something big. Of course we worked it out like that after we had so many children the question was to get enough bread for the family, thick or thin. But to the end of his life there were times when he would snort when I cut a lovely think paper-like slice, and times when I honestly couldn't help sniffing wh en he carved off one an inch thick."

"I like bread thin," said Marigold, sympathising with Old Grandmother.

"But if you marry a man who likes it thick - and I know now that every proper man does - let him have it thick from the start. Don't stick on trifles, Marigold. The slices of bread didn't worry me when your great-grandfather fell in love with his second cousin, Mary Lesley. She always tried to flirt with every male craeture in sight. Simply couldn't leave the men alone. She wasn't handsome but she carried herself like a queen, so people thought she was one. It's a useful trick, Marigold. You might remember it. But don't flirt. Either you hurt yourself or your hurt some one else."

"Didn't you flirt?" asked Marigold slyly.

"Yes. That's why I'm telling you not to. For the rest - take what God sends you. That was a bad time while it lasted. But he came back. They generally come back if you have sense enough to keep still and wait - as I had, glory be. The only time I broke loose was the night of Charlie Blaisdell's wedding. Alec sat in a corner and talked to Mary all the evening. I flew out of the house and walked the six miles home in a thin evening dress and satin shoes. It was in March. It should have killed me, of course - but here I am at ninety-nine tough and tasty. And Alec never missed me! Thought I'd gone home with Abe Lesley's crowd. Oh, well, he came to his senses when Mary dropped him for something fresher. But I can't say I was ever very fond of Mary Lesley after that. She was a mischief-maker, anyhow, always blowing old jealousies into a flame for the fun of it.

"I got on very well with the rest of the clan, though my in-laws were mostly very stupid, poor things. Alec's mother didn't approve of us having such a big family. She said it kept Alec's nose to the grindstone. I had twins twice just to spite her, but we got on very well for all that. And Alec's brother Sam was a terrible bore. Nothing ever happened to him. He never even fell in love. Died when he was sixty, in his sleep. It used to make me mad to see any one wasting life like that. Paul was a black sheep. Always got drunk on every solemn or awful occasion. Got drunk at Ruth Lesley's wedding - she was married from here - and upset two stands of bees over there by the apple-barn just as the bridal party came out here to the orchard to be married. That was the liveliest wedding I was ever at. Never shall I forget old Minister Wood flying up those steps pursued by bees. Talk about ghosts!"

Old Grandmother laughed until she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

"Poor Ruth. She was so stung up she looked like a bride with the smallpox. Oh, well, she had only about half a brain, anyway. She always threw her arms about her husband in public when she wanted to ask him some small favor. How red and furious he got! And he always refused. You'd have thought she'd have learned some sense in time. Some women never do. Be sure you have some sense, Marigold, when it comes to handling the men."

"Tell me some more stories, Grandmother," entreated Marigold.

"Child, I could tell you stories all night. This orchard is full of them. Up there by the scabby apple-tree Bess Lesley swooned because Alexander McKay asked her to marry him too suddely. People 'swooned' in my day - 'fainted' in your grandmother's. Now they don't do either. But what a lot of fun they miss. Alexander thought Bess was dead - that he'd killed her with his abruptness. We found him on his knees by her, tearing his hair and shrieking blue murder. He thought I was a brute because I threw a dipperful of water over her. She came to very quickly - her curls were only paper ones - and such a looking creature as she was, with them hanging limp about her face and a complexion like a tallow candle. But she had a wonderful figure. It seems to me the girls look like sticks nowadays. Alexander clasped her in his arms and implored her to forgive him. She forgave him - and married him - but she never forgave me. Talking of ghosts - they had a haunted door in their house. Always found open no matter how it was shut and locked."

"Do you really believe that, Grandmother?"

"Of course. Always believe things like that. If you don't believe things you'll never have any fun. The more things you can believe the more interesting life is, as you say yourself. Too much incredulity makes it a poor thing. as for the ghosts, we had another haunted house in the clan - Garth Lesley's-over-the-bay. It was haunted by a white cat."

"Why?"

"Nobody knew. But there it was. The Garth Lesleys were rather proud of it. Lots of people saw it. I saw it. At least, I saw a white cat washing its face on the stairs."

"But was it the ghost cat?"

"Oh, there you go again. I prefer to believe it was. Otherwise I could never say I'd seen a real ghost. Over there in that corner where the three pines are, Hilary and Kate Lesley agreed to tell each other what they really thought of each other. They thought it would be fun - but they never 'spoke' again. Kate was engaged at one time to her third cousin, Ben Lesley-over-the-bay. It was broken off and later she found her photograph in his mother's album adorned with horns and a moustache. There was a terrible family row over that. In the tail of the day she married Dave Ridley. A harmless creature - only he would eat the icing off his wife's piece of cake whenever they went anywhere to tea. Kate didn't seem to mind - she hated icing - but I always wanted to choke him with gobs of icing until he had enough of it for once. Ben's sister Laura was jilted by Turner Reed. He married Josie Lesley and when they appeared out in church the first Sunday Laura Lesley went too, in the dress that was to have been her wedding one, and sat down on the other side of Ben. Alec said she should have been tarred and feathered, but I tell you I liked her spunk. There's a piece of that very dress in my silk log-cabin quilt in the green chest in the garret. You are to have it - and my pearl ring. Your great-grandfather found the pearl in an oyster the day we were engaged and had it set for me. It was reckoned worth five hundred dollars. I've left it to you in my will so none of the others can raise a rumpus or do you out of it. Edith-over-the-bay has had her eye on it for years. Thinks she should have it because she was my first namesake. She owes me more than her name if she but knew it. She wouldn't exist at all if it hadn't been for me. I made the match between her father and mother. I was quite a matchmaker in my time. They really didn't want to marry each other a bit but they were just as happy as if they had. All the same, Marigold, don't ever let any one make a match for you."

Old Grandmother was silent for a few moments, thinking over, maybe, more old, forgotten loves of the clan. The wind swayed the trees and the shadows danced madly. Were they only shadows ----?

"Annabel Lesley and I used to sit under the syrup apple-tree over there and talk," said Old Grandmother - in a different voice. A gentle, tender voice. "I loved Annabel. She was the only one of the Lesley clan I really loved. A sweet woman. The only woman I ever knew who would keep secrets. A woman who would really burn a letter if you asked her to. It was safe to empty your soul out to her. Learn to keep a secret, Marigold. And she was just. Learn to be just, Marigold. The hardest thing in the world is to be just. I never was just. It was so much easier to be generous."

"I could sit here all night and hear you tell about these people," whispered Marigold.

Old Grandmother sighed. "Once I could have stayed up all night - talking - dancing - and then laugh in the sunrise. But you can't do those things at ninety-nine. I must leave my ghosts and go in. After all they were a pretty decent lot. We've never had a real scandal in thhe clan. Unless that old affair about Adela's husband and the arsenic could be called one. You'll notice when Adela's books are spoken of, she's 'our cousin'. But when the porridge mystery comes up she's 'a third cousin'. Not that I ever believed she did it. Marigold, will you forgive me for all the pills I've made you take?"

"Oh, they were good for me," protested Marigold.

Old Grandmother chuckled.

"Those are the things we have to be forgiven for. But I don't ask you to forgive me for all the Bible verses I made you learn. You'll be grateful to me for them some day. It's amazing what beautiful things there are in the Bible. 'When all the morning stars sang together.' And that speech of Ruth's to Naomi. Only it always enraged me, too, because no daughter-in-law of mine would ever have said the like to me. Ah, well, they're all gone now except Marian. It's time - it's high time for me to go, too."

Marigold felt it was such a pity Old Grandmother had to die just when she had got really acquainted with her. And besides Marigold had something on her conscience.

"Grandmother," she whispered, "I -- I've made faces at you when you weren't looking."

Old Grandmother touched Marigold's little round cheek with the tip of her finger.

"Are you so sure I didn't see your faces? I did - often. They weren't quite as impish as the ones I made at your age. I'm glad I've lived long enough for you to remember me, little child. I'm leaving off - you're beginning. Live joyously, little child. Never mind the old traditions. Traditions don't matter in a day when queens have their pictures in magazine advertisements. But play the game of life according to the rules. You might as well, because you can't cheat life in the end.

"And don't think too much about what people will say. For years I wanted to do something but I was prevented by the thought of what my cousin Evelina would say. At last I did it. And she said, 'I really didn't think edith had so much spunk in her.' Do anything you want to, Marigold - as long as you can go to your looking-glass afterwards and look yourself in the face. The oracle has spoken. And after all, is it any use? You'll make your own mistakes and learn from them as we all do. Hand me my cane, child. I'm glad I came out. I haven't had a laugh for years till to-night when I thought of poor Minister Wood and the bees."

"Why, I've heard you laugh often, Grandmother," said Marigold, wonderingly.

"Cackling over the mistakes of poor humanity isn't laughing," said Old Grandmother. She rose easily to her feet and walked through the orchard, leaning very lightly on her cane. At the gate she paused and looked back, waving a kiss to the invisible presences behind her. The moonlight made jewels of her eyes. The black scarf wound tightly round her head looked like a cap of sleek black hair. Suddenly the years were bridged. She was Edith - Edith of the gold slippers and the Paddy-green petticoat. Before she thought, Marigold cried out,

"Oh - Edith - I know what you looked like now."

"That had the right sound," said Old Grandmother. "You've given me a moment of youth, Marigold. And now I'm old again and tired - very tired. Help me up the steps."

The Books: Against the Odds: 'The Strike at Putney' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is kind of cute. It's a relatively early one - 1903 - and it's pretty simple. It's about a small town - Putney - (kind of Avonlea-ish) - and it has to do with the ladies going on strike. The church in Putney is the pride of the area. It has a great minister, a devoted congregation, and it does a lot of good works. It has a Missions Aid society, a lecture series, a Ladies Aid society - it's very big on societies. Everyone is very involved.

Then comes the big tragedy.

I think a visiting minister was going to come and speak at an evening prayer meeting. He canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile: the Missions Aid Society had sent out an invitation for a female missionary, a famous one, to come speak at their meeting. Because the minister canceled - the Missions Aid Society voted to hold their meeting on that night - and have the missionary speak from the pulpit. It was going to be a great evening. But oh no no - to have a female in the pulpit? This cannot be!! (Sexist mo-fos. They deserve what they get.) All hell broke loose. The Missions Aid Society was told they could NOT hold their meeting that night ... and suddenly - the congregation ruptured. Men on one side, women on another.

So the women - just as devoted to their church as the men - decide to go on strike. Because naturally (naturally!!) all of the day to day stuff at the church (flowers, cleaning, supplies) is done by the women. Oh yes, it's fine for women to just serve men - but let them get out of line? Let them overstep their bounds? This cannot be! The ladies of Putney have had enough. They go on strike. Good. I wish they would have gone on strike forever. Get some REAL change going.

It's funny because Lucy Maud ended up marrying a minister - so all of this stuff ended up being her LIFE - not just her faith. She had to head up all of the societies, and missions aid teas, and luncheons ... Her life was almost totally taken up with that kind of stuff - a minister's wife was a big deal - she was always like a local celebrity (member Mrs. Allan in Anne of Green Gables??). So Lucy Maud is already writing about what she knows here.

It's a cute story.

Here's the moment when all the men realize that the women have struck.

Poor Eben Craig.

Against the Odds - 'The Strike at Putney' - by L.M. Montgomery

On Sunday morning the men were conscious of a bare, deserted appearance in the church. Mr. Sinclair perceived it himself. After some inward wondering he concluded that it was because there were no flowers anywhere. The table before the pulpit was bare. On the organ a vase held a sorry, faded bouquet left over from the previous week. The floor was unswept. Dust lay thickly on the pulpit Bible, the choir chairs, and the pew backs.

"This church looks disgraceful," said John Robbins in an angry undertone to his daughter Polly, who was president of the Flower Band. "What in the name of common sense is the good of your Flower Banders if you can't keep the place looking decent?"

"There is no Flower Band now, Father," whispered Polly in turn. "We've disbanded. Women haven't any business to meddle in church matters. You know the session said so."

It was well for Polly that she was too big to have her ears boxed. Even so, it might not have saved her if they had been anywhere else than in church.

Meanwhile the men who were sitting in the choir - two basses and two tenors - were beginning to dimly suspect that there was something amiss here too. Where were the sopranos and the altos? Myra Wilson and Alethea Craig and several other members of the choir were sitting down in their pews with perfectly unconscious faces. Myra was looking out of the window into the tangled sunlight and shadow of the great maples. Alethea Craig was reading her Bible.

Presently Frances Spenslow came in. Frances was organist, but today, instead of walking up to the platform, she slipped demurely into her father's pew at one side of the pulpit. Eben Craig, who was the Putney singing master and felt himself responsible for the choir, fidgeted uneasily. He tried to catch Frances's eye, but she was absorbed in reading the mission report she had found in the rack, and Eben was finally forced to tiptoe down to the Spenslow pew and whisper, "Miss Spenslow, the minister is waiting for the doxology. Aren't you going to take the organ?"

Frances looked up calmly. Her clear, placid voice was audible not only to those in the nearby pews, but to the minister.

"No, Mr. Craig. You know if a woman isn't fit to speak in the church she can't be fit to sing in it either."

Even Craig looked exceedingly foolish. He tiptoed gingerly back to his place. The minister, with an unusual flush on his thin, ascetic face, rose suddenly and gave out the opening hymn.

Nobody who heard the singing in Putney church that day ever forgot it. Untrained basses and tenors, unrelieved by a single female voice, are not inspiring.

There were no announcements of society meetings for the forthcoming week. On the way home from church that day irate husbands and fathers scolded, argued, or pleaded, according to their several dispositions. One and all met with the same calm statement that if a noble, self-sacrificing woman like Mrs. Cotterell were not good enough to speak in the Putney church, ordinary, everyday women could not be fit to take any part whatever in its work.

Sunday School that afternoon was a harrowing failure. Out of all the corps of teachers only one was a man, and he alone was at his post. In the Christian Endeavour meeting on Tuesday night the feminine element sat dumb and unresponsive. The Putney women never did things by halves.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'A Substitute Journalist' (L.M. Montgomery)

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Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is an example of one of the more plot-driven stories in the collection. It was published in 1903, I think, so it has more of a utilitarian feel to it than her later stories, which she could write just because she felt like it, being under no financial pressure. But still - there are some moments which have the true Lucy Maud stamp - it makes reading all of these stories really worthwhile, moments like these.

Clifford and Patty Baxter are brother and sister (adults). Only their mother is living - and she is a weak woman, weakened by too much hard work, and too much going it alone. They struggle to get by - and there is much anxiety. Lucy Maud writes about those folks as well - not just ancestral families with huge houses and a lot of pride (the Murrays). She writes about penny-pinching working girls who live in little flats, and have to scrimp and save. Clifford is in training with a local newspaper. No pay in the position - but it is expected that his internship as a journalist will lead to a salaried position. He's a reporter. Patty, the sister, is a homemaker at heart. She has no skills, and would like nothing more than to have the free time to cook, clean, sew, keep a nice house, etc. But during the course of this story, she is forced, by circumstances, to come out into the world ... and, naturally, it ends up working out very well for them. Clifford has a very important assignment for the newspaper - he has to go interview some big railroad magnate. Of course Lucy Maud puts the fire under the situation, upping the stakes. I can't remember exactly what the stakes are but it's something along the lines of: If Clifford doesn't interview this guy on this one particular day, then the moment will be lost. Maybe the guy is leaving town, who knows. So it's VERY important. Not just for the story - but for Clifford's future at the newspaper. If he can come through with this interview - then he will be added to the newspaper staff. And not sure what happens - but I do know that Clifford, who was out of town on some other story, missed his train - and wouldn't be able to get home until the next day - but that would be too late. He would miss his appointment to interview the railroad magnate. All will be lost! They NEED that potential income from the newspaper job - Clifford must not blow it! What should they do??? Well, little shy homemaker Patty makes a choice. A bold choice. She - who has no experience (with writing, journalism, or interviewing) will go and interview Railroad Man in Clifford's place. Patty doesn't even know the ISSUES behind the situation - like: why he needs to be interviewed, what questions to ask, what are the issues on the table ... but she figures that just showing up and feeling her way would be better than canceling outright.

So she picks up pen and paper and goes to meet the man at the appointed time.

Naturally, it all works out in the end. Not only does Clifford keep his job - but Patty's interview ends up being such a scoop that the newspaper offers HER a job as well. happy ending!

But here is the excerpt with the interview. I like how Lucy Maud draws character in quick bold strokes. They are immediately recognizable. And, in my opinion, even in a superficial story like this one - they have the breath of life. Like when Mr. Reefer suddenly looks at Patty - and recognizes her. Not like he knows her from somewhere - but that he SEES her. It's a beautiful moment.

Against the Odds - 'A Substitute Journalist' - by L.M. Montgomery

Patty had just time to seat herself at the table, spread out her paper imposingly, and assume a businesslike air when Mr. Reefer came in. He was a tall, handsome old man with white hair, jet-black eyes, and a mouth that made Patty hope she wouldn't stumble on any questions he wouldn't want to answer. Patty knew she would waste her breath if she did. A man with a mouth like that would never tell anything he didn't want to tell.

"Good afternoon. What can I do for you, madam?" inquired Mr. Reefer with the air and tone of a man who means to be courteous, but has no time or information to waste.

Patty was almost overcome by the "Madam". For a moment, she quailed. She couldn't ask that masculine sphinx questions! Then the thought of her mother's pale, careworn face flashed across her mind, and all her courage came back with an inspiriting rush. She bent forward to look eagerly into Mr. Reefer's carved, granite face, and said with a frank smile:

"I have come to interview you on behalf of the Chronicle about the railroad bill. It was my brother who had the assignment, but he has missed his train and I ahve come in his place because, you see, it is so important to us. So much depends on this assignment. Perhaps Mr. Harmer will give Clifford a permanent place on the staff if he turns in a good article about you. He is only a handyman now. I just couldn't let him miss the chance - he might never have another. And it means so much to us and Mother."

"Are you a member of the Chronicle staff yourself?" inquired Mr. Reefer with a shade more geniality in his tone.

"Oh, no! I've nothing to do with it, so you won't mind my being inexperienced, will you? I don't know just what I should ask you, so won't you please just tell me everything about the bill, and Mr. Harmer can cut out what doesn't matter?"

Mr. Reefer looked at Patty for a few moments with a face about as expressive as a graven image. Perhaps he was thinking about the bill, and perhaps he was thinking what a bright, vivid, pluckky little girl this was with her waiting pencil and her air that strove to be businesslike, and only succeeded in being eager and hopeful and anxious.

"I'm not used to being interviewed myself," he said slowly, "so I don't know very much about it. We're both green hands together, I imagine. But I'd like to help you out, so I don't mind telling you what I think about this bill, and its bearing on certain important interests."

Mr. Reefer proceeded to tell her, and Patty's pencil flew as she scribbled down his terse, pithy sentences. She found herself asking questions too, and enjoying it. For the first time, Patty thought she might rather like politics if she understood them - and they did not seem so hard to understand when a man like Mr. Reefer explained them. Patty was in full possession of his opinion on the famous railroad bill in all its aspects.

"There now, I'm talked out," said Mr. Reefer. "You can tell your news editor that you know as much about the railroad bill as Andrew Reefer knows. I hope you'll succeed in pleasing him, and that your brother will get the position he wants. But he shouldn't have missed that train. You tell him that. Boys with important things to do mustn't miss trains. Perhaps it's just as well he did in this case though, but tell him not to let it happen again."

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

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - '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 - '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!

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Their Girl Josie' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

Time to start with the daily excerpt again. More Lucy Maud. Another story from the collection Against All Odds (which is not my favorite of the posthumous collections.) It's not my favorite because many of the stories seem made to order. They're plot heavy, and many of them depend on a completely unbelievable coincidence for the resolution of the story. I'm more into her character-based stories ... of which today's excerpt is one.

Cyrus and Deborah Morgan were not only horrified when their son - THEIR SON - married an actress - AN ACTRESS - but it put in their staunch Presbyterian hearts a hatred of "play-acting" and theatre for all time. They are rigid, unforgiving - and although they have never actually gone to see a play, it doesn't matter. Anyone who is involved in theatre is pretty much evil and not respectable. They pretty much disowned their son - who went off in a huff - leaving them with silence, no news of him. Then came word that within a short period of time their son and his wife had died - and they left behind their child, now an orphan - a baby girl with the actress-y name of Joscelyn. Cyrus and Deborah, now elderly, stepped up - and took the child in. (The actress mother's actress sister had wanted to take the baby but the grandparents refused. Their grandchild should not be raised by an actress.) Their granddaughter. They did not approve of her parents - and they certainly did not approve of her name ... but they raised Joscelyn, and of course, they love her DEARLY. However, Cyrus has let Joscelyn know from a very early age that she will NOT be an actress, like her mother. He watches over Joscelyn nervously, for any signs of "play-acting" tendencies. It is his worst fear that she will go into the theatre. So Joscelyn was forced to have a very narrow rigid childhood - but even with those limitations, she blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She was a voracious reader. She had the signs of a great beauty. Cyrus and Deborah were proud of her, proud of her smarts, her cleverness ... they hemmed her in for her own good (or so they thought.)

Eventually, though, there is a revelation (and that's the scene below): Cyrus and Deborah surprise Joscelyn one day, they come home when they were not expected - and they find Joscelyn (age 17) dressed up in a costume of some kind - declaiming a monologue, acting up a storm through the old-fashioned sitting room - completely lost in her fantasy.

Cyrus and Deborah are HORRIFIED. You have to take this seriously. Theatre is still seen as a barely respectable way to spend your time, even when you make money at it. Even with all of their warnings and limits ... here is the "acting gene" come out.

Eventually there is a confrontation - and Joscelyn, who knows her own mind, runs away and goes into theatre. This, of course, means that Cyrus and Deborah completely cut her off, they want to hear no more of her, she has completely betrayed them. The end of the story comes, though, when Cyrus (not a bad old chap, really - he's just strict and kind of close-minded) hears that Joscelyn will be appearing in a play in a nearby town. She has since become famous ... and it is an event - Local girl come back to her hometown, etc. Cyrus, who has never been to a play, who truly thinks that theatre is Satanic, can't help himself. He buys a ticket and he goes to see it. And he sits in the theatre and watches Joscelyn - in this part - not a lascivious evil part, not a Satanic part - but a wife and mother, and instead of finding himself confronted with evil ... Cyrus gets swept away in the sweet normal story, about sweet normal people. He forgets that Joscelyn is Joscelyn. He roots for her. He weeps tears for her. He laughs when she gets the better of someone. He glowers with rage when she is treated badly. Etc. And by the end of the play, he is overwhelmed with pride for her gift ... and he sees what her gift is. That it is, indeed, a gift - and she MUST share it.

End of story.

I do like this story, of course, because of the theatrical nature of it - she's written a couple of stories about performers - usually singers - but there are a couple of stories about actresses (Sophie Sinclair in Windy Poplars?) - and I always love those - just because Lucy Maud "gets" it. She gets what the whole thing is about. It's a gift, like any other - like a painter, a writer, a poet.

So anyway, here's the moment when Cyrus and Deborah catch Joscelyn in the act.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Their Girl Josie' - by L.M. Montgomery

When Joscelyn was seventeen Deborah Morgan noticed a change in her. The girl became quieter and more brooding, falling at times into strange, idle reveries, with her hands clasped over her knee and her big eyes fixed unseeingly on space; or she would creep away for solitary rambles in the beech wood, going away droopingly and returning with a dusky glowing cheeks and a nameless radiance, as of some newly discovered power, shining through every muscle and motion. Mrs. Morgan thought the child needed a tonic and gave her sulphur and molasses.

One day the revelation came. Cyrus and Deborah had driven across the valley to visit their married daughter. Not finding her at home they returned. Mrs. Morgan went into the house while her husband went to the stable. Joscelyn was not in the kitchen, but the grandmother heard the sound of voices and laughter in the sitting room across the hall.

"What company has Josie got?" she wondered, as she opened the hall door and paused for a moment on the threshold to listen. As she listened her old face grew grey and pinched; she turned noiselessly and left the house, and flew to her husband as one distracted.

"Cyrus, Josie is play-acting in the room ... laughing and reciting and going on. I heard her. Oh, I've always feared it would break out in her and it has! Come you and listen to her."

The old couple crept through the kitchen and across the hall to the open parlour door as if they were stalking a thief. Joscelyn's laugh rang out as they did so ... a mocking triumphant peal. Cyrus and Deborah shivered as if they had heard sacrilege.

Joscelyn had put on a trailing, clinging black skirt which her aunt had sent her a year ago and which she had never been permitted to wear. It transformed her into a woman. She had cast aside her waist of dark plum-coloured homespun and wrapped a silken shawk about herself until only her beautiful arms and shoulders were left bare. Her hair, glossy and brown, with burnished red lights where the rays of the dull autumn sun struck on it through the window, was heaped high on her head and held in place by a fillet of pearl beads. Her cheeks were crimson, her whole body from head to foot instinct and alive with a beauty that to Cyrus and Deborah, as they stood mute with horror in the open doorway, seemed akin to some devilish enchantment.

Joscelyn, rapt away from her surroundings, did not perceive her grandparents. Her face was turned from them and she was addressing an unseen auditor in passionate denunciation. She spoke, moved, posed, gesticulated, with an inborn genius shining through every motion and tone like an illuminating lamp.

"Josie, what are you doing?"

It was Cyrus who spoke, advancing into the room like a stern, hard impersonation of judgment. Joscelyn's outstretched arm fell to her side and she turned sharply around; fear came into her face and the light went out of it. A moment before she had been a woman, splendid, unafraid; now she was again the schoolgirl, too confused and shamed to speak.

"What are you doing, Josie?" asked her grandfather again, "dressed up in that indecent manner and talking and twisting to yourself?"

Joscelyn's face, that had grown pale, flamed scarlet again. She lifted her head proudly.

"I was trying Aunt Annice's part in her new play," she answered. "I have not been doing anything wrong, Grandfather."

'Wrong! It's your mother's blood coming out in you, girl, in spite of all our care! Where did you get that play?"

"Aunt Annice sent it to me," answered Joscelyn, casting a quick glance at the book on the table. Then, when her grandfather picked it up gingerly, as if he feared contamination, she added quickly, "Oh, give it to me, please, Grandfather. Don't take it away."

"I am going to burn it," said Cyrus Morgan sternly.

"Oh, don't, Grandfather," cried Joscelyn, with a sob in her voice. "Don't burn it, please. I ... I ... won't practise out of it anymore. I'm sorry I've displeased you. Please give me my book."

"No," was the stern reply. "Go to your room, girl, and take off that rig. There is to be no more play-acting in my house, remember that."

He flung the book into the fire that was burning in the grate. For the first time in her life Joscelyn flamed out into passionate defiance.

"You are cruel and unjust, Grandfather. I have done no wrong ... it is not doing wrong to develop the one gift I have. It's the only thing I can do ... and I am going to do it. My mother was an actress and a good woman. So is Aunt Annice. So I mean to be."

"Oh, Josie, Josie," said her grandmother in a scared voice. Her grandfather only repeated sternly, "Go, take that rig off, girl, and let us hear no more of this."

Joscelyn went but she left consternation behind her. Cyrus and Debirah could not have been more shocked if they had discovered the girl robbing her grandfather's desk. They talked the matter over bitterly at the kitchen hearth that night.

"We haven't been strict enough with the girl, Mother," said Cyrus angrily. "We'll have to be stricter if we don't want to have her disgracing us. Did you hear how she defied me? 'So I mean to be,' she says. Mother, we'll have trouble with that girl yet."

"Don't be too harsh with her, Pa ... it'll maybe only drive her to worse," sobbed Deborah.

"I ain't going to be harsh. What I do for her is for her own good, you know that, Mother. Josie is as dear to me as she is to you, but we've got to be stricter with her."

They were. From that day Josie was watched and distrusted. She was never permitted to be alone. There were no more solitary walks. She felt herself under the surveillance of cold, unsympathetic eyes every moment and her very soul writhed. Joscelyn Morgan, the high-spirited daughter of high-spirited parents, could not long submit to such treatment. It might have passed with a child; to a woman, thrilling with life and conscious power to her very fingertips, it was galling beyond measure. Joscelyn rebelled, but she did nothing secretly ... that was not her nature. She wrote to her Aunt Annice, and when she received her reply she went straight and fearlessly to her grandparents with it.

"Grandfather, this letter is from my aunt. She wishes me to go and live with her and prepare for the stage. I told her I wished to do so. I am going."

Cyrus and Deborah looked at her in mute dismay.

"I know you despise the profession of an actress," the girl went on with heightened colour. "I am sorry you think so about it because it is the only one open to me. I must go ... I must."

"Yes, you must," said Cyrus cruelly. "It's in your blood ... your bad blood, girl."

"My blood isn't bad," cried Joscelyn proudly. "My mother was a sweet, true, good woman. You are unjust, Grandfather. But I don't want you to be angry with me. I love you both and I am very grateful for all your kind ness to me. I wish that you could understand what ..."

"We understand enough," interrupted Cyrus harshly. "This is all I have to say. Go to your play-acting aunt if you want to. Your grandmother and me won't hinder you. But you'll come back here no more. We'll have nothing further to do with you. You can choose your own way and walk in it."

With this dictum Joscelyn went from Spring Valley. She clung to Deborah and wept at parting, but Cyrus did not even say goodbye to her.

The Books: Against the Odds: 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Against the Odds is yet another one of Rea Wilmhurst's edited collections. The focus of this book is "tales of achievement" - each story has something to do with bucking the odds, going for what you want despite difficulties, etc. Lucy Maud made a nice little living from selling short stories - to magazines in Canada, but also in the States. She would sometimes write stories to order. If she knew a certain magazine liked Sunday School morals, then she'd write in a Sunday school moral. If a magazine was read only by women, she'd go for the romance. If a magazine focused on ghost stories and paranormal stories, she'd write that. It's amazing the variety within these stories. Yes, she keeps coming back to some of the same characters, the archetypes, but still - reading them all, as a whole, I am just left with admiration at how much she actually DID. And this is along with being married to a bozo, having 2 kids, and having a role as a busy (busy busy) minister's wife. She didn't just sit in a garret and write all day long. She had other obligations. So it's amazing.

The first story I want to excerpt in this collection is called 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - it was written in 1906, and I think it's charming.

Dorinda Page is 15 years old. She has spent a couple of years away with her Aunt Mary - but she is now back with her mother and her 5 siblings. Her father is dead, and her mother has had a helluva time going it alone. Money troubles torment her. There are mouths to feed, schooling to consider ... clothes, etc. It's overwhelming. Dorinda has been out of the fray for a couple of years so she comes home and is kind of shocked at the change in her mother, how worn out she is, how worried. Dorinda is a young woman with a very good attitude, you can tell - she talks to her mother one day and says, "Okay - so let's talk about our priorities. What is the main list of things we have to pay for? And we'll figure something out ... but let's list them first." So Mrs. Page lists what she thinks is most important: Leicester Page's college tuition, Jean Page's music lessons, roof needs to be shingled ... and Dorinda also says that her mother needs a new coat. During this conversation, it comes up that they have a rich uncle Eugene - and Dorinda asks her mother why don't they borrow the money from him? Turns out that Eugene apparently hates this branch of the family - some old feud (you know, Lucy Maud is big on those) and has not spoken to Mrs. Page in a bazillion years. He's stubborn, he's scary, and apparently he hates the Pages. So that settles that. But Dorinda, determined to help her mother, decides to do the unthinkable - she decides to go to her Uncle Eugene's, and ask him to lend them the money. This is a terrifying prospect, but Dorinda is (as the title says) "desperate".

This is one of Lucy Maud's show-pieces: a young girl going to confront a supposedly terrifying crotchety old man. She uses it often to great effect.

Here's what happens.

Excerpt from Against the Odds - 'Dorinda's Desperate Deed' - by L.M. Montgomery

Oaklawn, where Uncle Eugene lived, was two miles away. It was a fine old place in beautiful grounds. But Dorinda did not quail before its splendours, nor did her heart fail her, even after she had rung the bell and had been shown by a maid inot a very handsome parlour, but it still continued to beat in that queer fashion halfway up her throat.

Presently Uncle Eugene came in, a tall, black-eyed old man, with a fine head of silver hair that should have framed a ruddy, benevolent face, instead of Uncle Eugene's hard-lipped, bushy-browed countenance.

Dorinda stood up, dusky and crimson, with brave, glowing eyes. Uncle Eugene looked at her sharply.

"Who are you?" he said bluntly.

"I am your niece, Dorinda Page," said Dorinda steadily.

"And what does my niece, Dorinda Page, want with me?" demanded Uncle Eugene, motioning to her to sit down and sitting down himself. But Dorinda remained standing. It is easier to fight on your feet.

"I want you to do four things, Uncle Eugene," she said, as calmly as if she were making the most natural and ordinary request in the world. "I want you to lend us the money to send Leicester to Blue Hill Academy, he will pay it back to you when he gets through college. I want you to lend Jean the money for music lessons, she will pay you back when she gets far enough along to give lessons herself. And I want you to lend me the money to shingle our house and get Mother a new dress and fur coat for the winter. I'll pay you back sometime for that, because I am going to set up as a dressmaker pretty soon."

"Anything more?" said Uncle Eugene, when Dorinda stopped.

"Nothing more just now, I think," said Dorinda reflectively.

"Why don't you ask for something for yourself?" said Uncle Eugene.

"I don't want anything for myself," said Dorinda promptly. "Or - yes, I do, too. I want your friendship, Uncle Eugene."

"Be kind enough to sit down," said Uncle Eugene.

Dorinda sat.

"You are a Page," said Uncle Eugene. "I saw that as soon as I came in. I will send Leicester to college and I shall not ask or expect to be paid back. Jean shall have her music lessons, and a piano to practise them on as well. The house shall be shingled, and the money for the new dress and coat shall be forthcoming. You and I will be friends."

"Thank you," gasped Dorinda, wondering if, after all, it wasn't a dream.

"I would have gladly assisted your mother before," said Uncle Eugene, "if she had asked me. I had determined that she must ask me first. I knew that half the money should have been your father's by rights. I was prepared to hand it over to him or his family, if I were asked for it. But I wished to humble his pride, and the Carter pride, to the point of asking for it. Not a very amiable temper, you will say? I admit it. I am not amiable and I never have been amiable. You must be prepared to find me very unamiable. I see that you are waiting for a chance to say something polite and pleasant on that score, but you may save yourself the trouble. I shall hope and expect to have you visit me often. If your mother and your brothers and sisters see fit to come with you, I shall welcome them also. I think that this is all it is necessary to say just now. Will you stay to tea with me this eveing?"

Dorinda stayed to tea, since she knew that Jean was at home to attend to matters there. She and Uncle Eugene got on famously. When she left, Uncle Eugene, grim and hard-lipped as ever, saw her to the door.

"Good evening, Niece Dorinda. You are a Page and I am proud of you. Tell your mother that many things in this life are lost through not asking for them. I don't think you are in need of the information for yourself."

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

Next book on the shelf ...

At 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.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Touch of Fate' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of Lucy Maud's stories that takes place out in the wild west of the Canadian prairies. Even though her main childhood was in PEI - she did spend a number of years out in the prairies with her father (before he decided: "You know what? I'm not really into being a father. At least not to THIS child.") ... and I think she writes about it quite eloquently. Civilization is thin out there. The Indians are a problem. It's hard to get to. The whites cluster together in small communities. 'The Touch of Fate' takes place in the Canadian northwest. Violet Thayer, a beautiful coquettish young woman (kind of vain, if the truth must be told) comes out to this particular town to visit an old friend who is a schoolteacher there. There is a huge battalion of MPs there, and Mrs. Hill (wife of the head of the MPs) is thrilled at the advent of Violet - she wants to set her up with at least ONE of the eligible men in town. She gets to work. Violet, being a coquette, slays pretty much everybody. It's a tiny town, with no new faces. Mrs. Hill throws a party to welcome her to town - and Violet finds herself surrounded by men at all times. She loves it. She loves the attention. However ... there's one man who somehow does not fall under her spell. And naturally, he's the one who eventually gets her attention.

I really like the dialogue in their first conversation.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Touch of Fate' - by L.M. Montgomery

Violet was talking to Madison and watching John Spencer out of the tail of her eye. Spencer was not an M.P. He had some government post at Dufferin Bluff and this was his first call at Lone Poplar Villa since Miss Thayer's arrival. He did not seem to be dazzled by her at all, and after his introduction had promptly retired to a corner with Major Hill, where they talked the whole evening about the trouble on the Indian reservation at Loon Lake.

Possibly this indifference piqued Miss Thayer. Possibly she considered it refreshing after the servile adulation of the M.P.s. At any rate, when all the latter were gathered about the piano singing a chorus with gusto, she shook Madison off and went over to the corner where Spencer, deserted by the Major, whose bass was wanted, was sitting in solitary state.

He looked up indifferently as Violet shimmered down on the divan beside him. Sergeant Robinson, who was watching them jealously from the corner beyond the palms, and would have given his eyes, or at least one of them, for such a favour, mentally vowed that Spencer was the dullest fellow he had ever put those useful members on.

"Don't you sing, Mr. Spencer?" asked Violet by way of beginning a conversation, as she turned her splendid eyes full upon him. Robinson would have lost his head under them, but Spencer kept his heroically.

"No," was his calmly brief reply, given without any bluntness, but with no evident intention of saying anything more.

In spite of her social experience Violet felt disconcerted.

"If he doesn't want to talk to me I won't try to make him," she thought crossly. No man had ever snubbed her so before.

Spencer listened immovably to the music for a time. Then he turned to his companion witih a palpable effort to be civilly sociable.

"How do you like the west, Miss Thayer?" he said.

Violet smiled - the smile most men found dangerous.

"Very much, so far as I have seen it. There is a flavour about the life here that I like, but I dare say it would soon pall. It must be horribly lonesome here most of the time, especially in winter."

"The M.P.s are always growling that it is," returned Spencer with a slight smile. "For my own part I never feel it so."

Violet decided that his smile was ver becoming to him, and that she liked the way his dark hair grew over his forehead.

"I don't think I've seen you at Lone Poplar Villa before?" she said.

"No. I haven't been here for some time. I came up tonight to see the Major about the Loon Lake trouble."

"Otherwise you wouldn't have come," thought Violet. "Flattering - very!" Aloud she said, "Is it serious?"

"Oh, no. A mere squabble among the Indians. Have you ever visited the Reservation, Miss Thayer? No? Well, you should get some of your M.P. friends to take you out. It would be worth while."

"Why don't you ask me to go yourself?" said Violet audaciously.

Spencer smiled again. "Have I failed in politeness by not doing so? I fear you would find me an insufferably dull companion."

So he was not going to ask her after all. Violet felt piqued. She was also conscious of a sensation very near akin to disappointment. She looked across at Madison. How trim and dapper he was!

"I hate a bandbox man," she said to herself.

Spencer meanwhile had picked up one of Mrs. Hill's novels from the stand beside him.

"Fools of Habit," he said, glancing at the cover. "I see it is making quite a sensation down east. I suppose you've read it?"

"Yes. It is very frivolous and clever - all froth but delightful froth. Did you like it?"

Spencer balanced the novel reflectively on his slender brown hand.

"Well, yes, rather. But I don't care for novels as a rule. I don't understand them. The hero of this book, now - do you believe that a man in love would act as he did?"

"I don't know," said Violet amusedly. "You ought to be a better judge than I. You are a man."

"I have never loved anybody, so I am no position to decide," said Spencer.

There was as little self-consciousness in his voice as if he were telling her a fact concerning the Loon Lake trouble. Violet rose to the occasion.

"You have an interesting experience to look forward to," she said.

Spencer turned his deep-set grey eyes squarely upon her.

"I don't know that. When I said I had never loved, I meant more than the love of a man for some particular woman. I meant love in every sense. I do not know what it is to have an affection for any human being. My parents died before I can remember. My only living relative was a penurious old uncle who brought me up for shame's sake and kicked me out on the world as soon as he could. I don't make friends easily. I have a few acquaintances whom I like, but there is not a soul on earth for whom I care, or who cares for me."

"What a revelation love will be to you when it comes," said Violet softly. Again he looked into her eyes.

"Do you think it will come?" he asked.

Before she could reply Mrs. Hill pounced upon them. Violet was wanted to sing. Mr. Spencer would excuse her, wouldn't he? Moreover, he got up and bade his hostess good night. Violet gave him her hand.

"You will call again?" she asked.

Spencer looked across at Madison - perhaps it was accidental.

"I think not," he said. "If, as you say, love will come sometime, it would be a very unpleasant revelation if it came in hopeless guise, and one never knows what may happen."

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

Another story with one of Lucy Maud's thematic standbys: a long-ass courtship of 15 years ... not really going anywhere ... until one member of the couple takes drastic measures (pretends to start seeing someone else) ... and the other member of the couple is jealous, and suddenly realizes: I can't live without this person! Like 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. Or 'The Pursuit of the Ideal'. These are romances between practical middle-aged people. Lucy Maud so knows how to write about that.

In 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - Jerome has been "seeing" Anne for 15 years. I would say, in a less charitable way, that Anne has been stringing Jerome along - but I suppose she has her reasons. He asks her to marry him once a year, and she continuously turns him down. And yet every week they walk home from prayer meeting together. That is their main date. It is a declaration of commitment to a relationship (as anyone who reads Lucy Maud's books knows. Walking home from prayer meeting with a member of the opposite sex is as good as being engaged.) Jerome figures that if he just keeps asking she'll eventually cave. But 15 years is a long time. So one night - Jerome has had enough. He starts to see a woman named Harriet Warren - even going so far as taking her to a social in the next town. A gossipy neighbor informs Anne of this. The very next night, Jerome is not at prayer meeting. He has gone to prayer meeting at another church with Harriet Warren.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Way of the Winning of Anne' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she got home she looked at her face in the glass more critically than she had done for years. Anne Stockard at her best had never been pretty. When young she had been called "gawky". She was very tall and her figure was lank and angular. She had a long, pale face and dusky hair. Her eyes had been good - a glimmering hazel, large and long-lashed. They were pretty yet, but the crow's feet about them were plainly visible. There were brackets around her mouth too, and her cheeks were hollow. Anne suddenly realized, as she had never realized before, that she had grown old - that her youth was left far behind. She was an old maid, and Harriet Warren was young and pretty. Anne's long, thin lips suddenly quivered.

"I declare, I'm a worse fool than Jerome," she said angrily.

When Saturday night came Jerome did not. The corner of the big, old-fashioned porch where he usually sat looked bare and lonely. Anne was short with octavia and boxed the cat's ears and raged at herself. What did she care if Jerome Irving never came again? She could have married him years ago if she had wanted to - everybody knew that!

At sunset she saw a buggy drive past her gate. Even at that distance she recognized Harriet Warren's handsome, high-coloured profile. It was Jerome's new buggy and Jerome was driving. The wheel spokes flashed in the sunlight as they crept up the hill. Perhaps they dazzled Anne's eyes a little; at least, for that or some other reason she dabbed her hand viciously over them as she turned sharply about and went upstairs. Octavia was practising her music lesson in the parlour below and singing in a sweet shrill voice. The hired men were laughing and talking in the yard. Anne slammed down her window and banged her door and then lay down on her bed; she said her head ached.

The Deep Meadow people were amused and made joking remarks to Anne, which she had to take amiably because she had no excuse for resenting them. In reality they stung her pride unendurably. When Jerome had gone she realized that she had no other intimate friend and that she was a very lonely woman whom nobody cared about. One night - it was three weeks afterward - she met Jerome and Harriet squarely. She was walking to church with Octavia, and they were driving in the opposite direction. Jerome had his new buggy and a crimson lap robe. His horse's coat shone like satin and had rosettes of crimson on his bridle. Jerome was dressed extremely well and looked quite young, with his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face and clear blue eyes.

Harriet was sitting primly and consciously by his side; she was a very handsome girl with bold eyes and was somewhat overdressed. She wore a big flowery hat and a white lace veil and looked at Anne with a supercilious smile.

Anne felt dowdy and old; she was very pale. Jerome lifted his hat and bowed pleasantly as they drove past. Suddenly Harriet laughed out. Anne did not look back, but her face crimsoned darkly. Was that girl laughing at her? She trembled with anger and a sharp, hurt feeling. When she got home that night she sat a long while by her window.

Jerome was gone - and he let Harriet Warren laugh at her - and he would never come back to her. Well, it did not matter, but she had been a fool. Only it had never occurred to her that Jerome could act so.

"If I'd thought he would I mightn't have been so sharp with him," was as far as she would let herself go even in thought.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

I love when she has these old-fashioned Victorian titles. 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby'. Wonderful.

Miss Posonby is one of Lucy Maud delightful old-maid characters. She's prim, tidy, proper - and completely trapped by her circumstances (her father is a tyrant) ... Eventually, this story is about how Miss Posonby hears that an old beau of hers has returned to town - after 20 years being away - and someone is throwing a party for him ... and she wants to go, but her father refuses and, I believe, locks Miss Posonby in her room. What eventually happens is the two young girls next door (19, 18 years old) get all invested in Miss Posonby's old romance - she says she doesn't have a dress to go to the party anyway ... she says all of this out of her bedroom window, where she is locked in ... and the girls live across the way. Eventually, they lend her one of their dresses - and climb it up to her in the old oak tree outside her window. Miss Posonby, once she puts on the pretty dress, is revealed to be a beautiful ripe woman in her 40s, not the silly old maid who lives like Emily Dickinson in her tower-room. She goes to the party, is reunited with her old beau, and is happy! In her utter dissipation.

Here is the opening of the story. I love the tone Lucy Maud takes. It's comedic.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Dissipation of Miss Posonby' - by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Posonby sat and sewed at her window for hours at a time, but she never looked our way, partly, I suppose, from habit induced by modesty, since the former occupants of our room had been two gay young bachelors, whose names Jerry and I found cut all over our window-panes with a diamond.

Jerry and I sat a great deal at ours, laughing and talking, but Miss Posonby never lifted her head or eyes. Jerry couldn't stand it long; she declared it got on her nerves; besides, she felt sorry to see a fellow creature wasting so many precious moments of a fleeting lifetime at patchwork. So one afternoon she hailed Miss Posonby with a cheerful "hello", and Miss Posonby actually looked over and said "good afternoon," as prim as an eighteen-hundred-and-forty fashion plate.

Then Jerry, whose name is Geraldine only in the family Bible, talked to her about the weather. Jerry can talk interestingly about anything. In five minutes she had performed a miracle - she had made Miss Posonby laugh. In five minutes more she was leaning half out of the window showing Miss Posonby a new, white, fluffy, frivolous, chiffony waist of hers, and Miss Posonby was leaning halfway out of hers looking at it eagerly. At the end of a quarter of an hour they were exchanging confidences about their favourite books. Jerry was a confirmed Kiplingomaniac, but Miss Posonby adored Laura Jean Libbey. She said sorrowfully she supposed she ought not to read novels at all since her father disapproved. We found out later on that Mr. Posonby's way of expressing disapproval was to burn any he got hold of, and storm at his daughter about them like the confirmed old crank he was. Poor Miss Posonby had to keep her Laura Jeans locked up in her trunk, and it wasn't often she got a new one.

Friom that day dated our friendship with Miss Posonby, a curious friendship, only carried on from window to window. We never saw Miss Posonby anywhere else; we asked her to come over but she said her father didn't allow her to visit anybody. Miss Posonby was one of those meek women who are ruled by whomsoever happens to be nearest them, and woe be unto them if that nearest happen to be a tyrant. Her meekness fairly infuriated Jerry.

But we liked Miss Posonby and we pitied her. She confided to us that she was very lonely, and that she wrote poetry. We never asked to see the poetry, although I think she would have liked to show it. But, as Jerry says, there are limits.

We told Miss Posonby all about our dances and picnics and beaus and pretty dresses; she was never tired of hearing of them; we smuggled her library novels - Jerry got our cook to buy them - and boxes of chocolates, from our window to hers; we sat there on moonlit nights and communed with her while other girls down the street were enteretaining callers on their verandahs; we did everything we could for her except to call her Alicia, although she beggued us to do so. But it never came easily to our tongues; we thought she must have been born and christened Miss Posonby; "Alicia" was something her mother could only have dreamed about her.

We thought we knew all about Miss Posonby's past; but even pale, drab, china-blue women can have their secrets and keep them. It was a full half year before we discovered Miss Posonby's.

The Books: At the Altar: 'Them Notorious Pigs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - so let's get back into the daily excerpt thingie. Lucy Maud still chugging away!!

This story is really cute (and you can tell it will be funny by that ridiculous title). John Harrington is a well-to-do bachelor farmer - who pretty much despises women. He has no use for them at all. This story was originally published in 1904 with the name "The Nuisance of Women". Poor Harrington. Trapped in a world of women. Silly little things. So anyway - Mary Hayden, a young widow with 2 small children, has moved in next door. Harrington doesn't pay much attention to them - until ... Mary's pigs keep escaping from their pen, and running over into Harrington's yard, wreaking their pig havoc. Harrington is in a blind rage about this. Why can't that dern woman figure out how to keep her pigs locked up? He sends messages to her through his hired man - "could you please keep your pigs out of my garden?" Meanwhile, what he's thinking is: This is what happens when women try to run farms. She sends apologies back to him through her hired man, and says that it won't happen again. Then, whaddya know, the next day, the pigs get out, run into Harrington's yard, and totally kick up the dirt in his brand-new vegetable garden. So now Harrington has had it.

He stomps over there to give her a piece of his mind. And you can pretty much tell what is going to happen from their first encounter, although they take a while to get to it.

Here's what happens:

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Them Notorious Pigs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Harrington had never seen his neighbour at close quarters beforte. Now he could not help seeing that she was a very pretty little woman, with wistful, dark blue eyes and an appealing expression. Mary Hayden had been next to a beauty in her girlhood, and she had a good deal of her bloom left yet, although hard work and worry were doing their best to rob her of it. But John Harrington was an angry man and he did not care whether the woman in question was pretty or not. Her pigs had rooted up his garden - that fact filled his mind.

"Mrs. Hayden, those pigs of yours have been in my garden again. I simply can't put up with this any longer. Why in the name of reason don't you look after your animals better? If I find them in again, I'll set my dog on them, I give you fair warning."

A faint colour had crept into Mary Hayden's soft milky-white cheeks during this tirade, and her voice trembled as she said, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Harrington. I suppose Bobbles forgot to shut the gate of their pen again this morning. He is so forgetful."

"I'd lengthen his memory then, if I were you," returned Harrington grimly, supposing that Bobbles was the hired man. "I'm not going to have my garden ruined just because he happens to be forfetful. I am speaking my mind plainly, madam. If you can't keep your stock from being a nuisance to other people you ought not to try to run a farm at all."

Then did Mary Hayden sit down upon the doorstep and burst into tears. Harrington felt, as Sarah King would have expressed it, "every which way at once." Here was a nice mess! What a nuisance women were - worse than the pigs!

"Oh, don't cry, Mrs. Hayden," he said awkwardly. "I didn't mean - well, I suppose I spoke too strongly. Of course I know you didn't mean to let the pigs in. There, do stop crying! I beg your pardon if I've hurt your feelings."

"Oh, it's isn't that," sobbed Mrs. Hayden, wiping away her tears. "It's only - I've tried so hard - and everything seems to go wrong. I make such mistakes. As for your garden, sir, I'll pay for the damage my pigs have done if you'll let me know what it comes to."

She sobbed again and caught her breath like a grieved child. Harrington felt like a brute. He had a queer notion that if he put his arm around her and told her not to worry over things women were not created to attend to he would be expressing his feelings better than in any other way. But of course he couldn't do that. Instead, he muttered that the damage didn't amount to much after all, and he hoped she wouldn't mind what he said, and then he got himself away and strode through the orchard like a man in a desperate hurry.

Mordecai had gone home and the pigs were not to be seen, but a chubby little face peeped at him from between two scrub, bloom-white cherry trees.

"G'way, you bad man!" said Bobbles vindictively. "G'way! You made my mommer cry - I saw you. I'm only Bobbles now, but when I grow up I'll be Charles Henry Hayden and you won't dare to make my mommer cry then."

Harrington smiled grimly. "So you're the lad who forgets to shut the pigpen gate, are you? Come out here and let me see you. Who is in there with you?"

"Ted is. He's littler than me. But I won't come out. I don't like you. G'way home."

Harrington obeyed. He went home and to work in his garden. But work as hard as he could, he could not forget Mary Hayden's grieved face.

"I was a brute!" he thought. "Why couldn't I have mentioned th ematter gently? I daresay she has enough to trouble her. Confound those pigs!"

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Wooing of Bessy' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud wrote a really good dominating female character. Sometimes she was benign, even though she bosses everybody around - like Judith in 'The Miracle at Carmody' - she's a dominant boss-type lady but you love her anyway. And sometimes she is malignant - like Emmeline in 'The Courting of Prissy Strong'. I wrote about this a bit here. She's a type that comes up again and again in Lucy Maud's work - taking on different forms, attitudes - but she obviously was very interested in (and understood) rigid stubbornness and pride. (Think of the gravestone in Emily: "Here I stay".) Pride is a sin. Lucy Maud understood it well. I think she writes about pride-ful characters almost better than anyone.

So this particular story 'The Wooing of Bessy' features one of those not-so-benign dominant boss-ladies. It's a creepy story - at least psychologically. It has elements of 'The Son of His Mother' in it - the mother who cannot let go of her son - who is even willing to destroy her son's chance at happiness - to keep him with her. Ew. It's creepy. But you can tell - at least in 'Son of His Mother' - that Lucy Maud has some sympathy for these female characters who hold on so tight to things, and can't let go. You love Thyra. You're glad she's not YOUR mother, but you love her.

In 'The Wooing of Bessy' - Mrs. Eastman, mother of Lawrence Eastman - a young man - not even a teenager - he's 20 - but Mrs. Eastman hovers. Hovers. There is no father in the picture - I believe he is dead. Lawrence has started to see a girl named Bessy Houghton. She's 25 years old, and unmarried - which makes her an old maid in the town's eyes. Also, she always had a kind of mature older personality. Her parents are both dead - she inherited their huge farm - and she runs it, a capable businesswoman. And Lawrence takes a fancy to her, is falling in love with her, you can tell. But something in him knows he shouldn't tell his mother. He isn't openly devious - he just keeps his heart private (which is not an easy thing with such an intrusive mother). Mrs. Eastman gets wind of the romance at a quilting circle - she has never liked Bessy Houghton, thought she "put on airs" - and she is convinced that she is just toying with her son. Also she's 25!! First of all, that's ancient. Second of all, she's 5 years older than Lawrence and everyone knows that the MAN should be older! Oh no no, this must stop.

So Mrs. Eastman goes home and proceeds to stir up trouble.

You know, it occurs to me: reading Lucy Maud's journals - the ones where she has her 2 sons, and they're growing up - sometimes I want to reach in and say to her: Maud, you have to back off. You have to let go. If Chester fails an exam, he fails an exam - there's no need for you to literally take to your bed with a sick stomach over how much you're worrying. It's nuts!

She OBSESSES over them. Every quiz they take - her own ego and pride of them is on the line. Poor lady.

But she really understands that type of thing - this story was written in 1906 - long before she had children - but she understood that type of woman intimately.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Wooing of Bessy' - by L.M. Montgomery

Lawrence was brushing his pet mare's coat until it shone like satin, and whistling "Annie Laurie" until the rafters rang. Bessy had sung it for him the night before. He could see her plainly still as she had looked then, in her gown of vivid red - a colour peculiarly becoming to her - with her favourite laces at wrist and throat and a white rose in her hair, which was dressed in the high, becoming knot she had alwars worn since the night he had shyly told her he liked it so.

She had played and sung many of the sweet old Scotch ballads for him, and when she had gone to the door with him he had taken both her hands in his and, emboldened by the look in her brown eyes, he had stooped and kissed her. Then he had stepped back, filled with dismay at his own audacity. But Bessy had said no word of rebuke, and only blushed hotly crmson. Sge must care for him, h e thought happily, or else she would have been angry.

When his mother came in at the stable door her face was hard and uncompromising.

"Lawrie," she said sharply, "where are you going again tonight? You were out last night."

"Well, Mother, I promise you I wasn't in any bad company. Come now, don't quiz a fellow too close."

"You are going to dangle after Bessy Houghton again. It's time you were told what a fool you were making of yourself. She's old enough to be your mother. The whole settlement is laughing at you."

Lawrence looked as if his mother had struck him a blow in the face. A dull, purplish flush crept over his brow.

"This is some of George's work," he broke out fiercely. "He's been setting you on me, has he? Yes, he's jealous - he wanted Bessy himself, but she would not look at him. He thinks nobody knows it, but I do. Bessy marry him? It's very likely!"

"Lawrie Eastman, you are daft. George hasn't said anything to me. You surely don't imagine Bessy Houghton would marry you. And if she would, she is too old for you. Now, don't you hang around her any longer."

"I will," said Lawrence flatly. "I don't care what anybody says. You needn't worry over me. I can take care of myself."

Mrs. Eastman looked blankly at her son. He had never defied or disobeyed her in his life before. She had supposed her word would be law. Rebellion was something she had not dreamed of. Her lips tightened ominously and her eyes narrowed.

"You're a bigger fool than I took you for," she said in a voice that trembled with anger. "Bessy Houghton laughs at you everywhere. She knows you're just after her money, and she makes fun--"

"Prove it," interrupted Lawrence undauntedly. "I'm not going to put any faith in Lynnfield gossip. Provie it if you can."

"I can prove it. Maggie Hatfield told me what Bessy Houghton said to her about you. She said you were a lovesick fool, and she only went with you for a little amusement, and that if you thought you had nothing to do but marry her and hang up your hat there you'd find yourself vastly mistaken."

Possibly in her calmer moments Mrs. Eastman might have shrunk from such a deliberate falsehood, although it was said of her in Lynnfield that she was not one to stick at a lie when the truth would not serve her purpose. Moreover, she felt quite sure that Lawrence would never ask Maggie Hatfield anything about it.

Lawrence turned white to the lips. "Is that true, Mother?" he asked huskily.

"I've warned you," replied his mother, not choosing to repeat her statement. "If you go after Bessy any more you can take the consequences."

She drew her shawl about her pale, malicious face and left him with a parting glance of contempt.

"I guess that'll settle him," she thought grimly. "Bessy Houghton turned up her nose at George, but she shan't make a fool of Lawrence too."

Alone in the stable Lawrence stood staring out at the dull red ball of the winter sun with unseeing eyes. He had implicit faith in his mother, and the stab had gone straight to his heart. Bessy Houghton listened in vain that night for his well-known footfall on the verandah.

The next night Lawrence went home with Milly Fiske from prayer meeting, taking her out from a crowd of other girls under Bessy Houghton's very eyes as she came down the steps of the little church.

Bessy walked home alone. The light burned low in her sitting-room and in the mirror over the mantel she saw her own pale face, with its tragic, pain-stricken eyes. Annie Hillis, her "help", was out. She was alone in the big house with her misery and despair.

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

The plot-line of this sweet little story has a lot of similarties to "The Hurrying of Ludovic". Published in 1904 - pre-dating the publication of Anne - this story already shows Lucy Maud's strengths. She doesn't try to re-invent the wheel. Her stories (her good ones) have simple plots - and they are character-based. She's already in her stride here as a writer. Freda and Roger are good friends. The opening scene gives you their relationship in a matter of 2 or 3 exchanges. Roger is kind of a dreamer, likes to come hang out at Freda's house, which is cozy, and talk about his dreams. Freda is NOT really a dreamer - she's got a bit more fun in her. But she also is fond of Roger, likes making him hot chocolate, and likes teasing him about his dreams. Until one day .... Roger comes to her and declares that he has seen "his ideal". Meaning: woman. Freda doesn't respond - but also - for the first time - she doesn't tease. She just goes kind of quiet. Roger begins to rave about this woman he saw, a new woman in town ... with the face of a Madonna, with golden hair, eyes blue as the sky, whatever .... he goes on and on and on. Freda just listens. Freda is rosy and plump and twinkley. She is NOT his ideal. But Freda holds her counsel. Roger starts to pursue "his ideal" - and he comes over to Freda's to give her updates. The man is quite clueless. You never know what's going on in Freda's head, though - because the story is told from Roger's point of view. We, the reader, can definitely see what's going on with her - because of how Lucy Maud writes about her behavior ... but still, it's Roger's journey, not Freda's.

So one day, Roger moseys on over to Freda's, to jabber on, yet again, about "his ideal".

Only to find ....

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Pursuit of the Ideal' - by L.M. Montgomery

One day when Roger came he found six feet of young man reposing at ease in his particular chair. Freda was sipping chocolate in her corner and looking over the rim of her cup at the intruder just as she had been wont to look at Roger. She had on a new dark red gown and looked vivid and rose-hued.

She introduced the stranger as Mr. Grayson and called him Tim. They seemed to be excellent friends. Roger sat bolt upright on the edge of a fragile, gilded chair which Freda kept to hide a shabby spot in the carpet, and glared at Tim until the latter said goodbye and lounged out.

"You'll be over tomorrow?" said Freda.

"Can't I come this evening?" he pleaded.

Freda nodded. "Yes - and we'll make taffy. You used to make such delicious stuff, Tim."

"Who is that fellow, Freda?" Roger inquired crossly, as soon as the door closed.

Freda began to make a fresh pot of chocolate. She smiled dreamiliy as if thinking of something pleasant.

"Why, that was Tim Grayson - dear old Tim. He used to live next door to us when we were children. And we were such chums - always together, making mud pies, and getting into scrapes. He is just the same old Tim, and he is home from the west for a long visit. I was so glad to see him again."

"So it would appear," said Roger grumpily. "Well, now that 'dear old Tim' is gone, I suppose I can have my own chair, can I? And do give me some chocolate. I didn't know you made taffy."

"Oh, I don't. It's Tim. He can do everything. He used to make it long ago, and I washed up after him and helped him eat it. How is the pursuit of the Ideal coming on, Roger-boy?"

Roger did not feel as if he wanted to talk about the Ideal. He noticed how vivid Freda's smile was and how lovable were the curves of her neck where the dusky curls were caught up from it. He had also an inner vision of Freda making taffy with Tim and he did not approve of it.

He refused to talk about the Ideal. On his way back to town he found himself thinking that Freda had the most charming, glad little laugh of any girl he knew. He suddenly remembered that he had never heard the Ideal laugh. She smiled placidly - he had raved to Freda about that smile - but she did not laugh. Roger began to wonder what an ideal without any sense of humour would be like when translated into the real.

He went to Lowlands the next afternoon and found Tim there - in his chair again. He detested the fellow but he could not deny that he was good-looking and had charming manners. Freda was very nice to Tim. On his way back to town Roger decided that Tim was in love with Freda. He was furious at the idea. The presumption of the man!

The Books: At the Altar: 'The Gossip of Valley View' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

I think this might be my favorite TYPE of Lucy Maud romance: involving two maybe middle-aged people ... not too romantic ... but either good companions ... or ... who knows. I like when she writes about people past the first flush of youth, having romances. She always gets so much of it right (in my opinion). Like the wonderful story 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'. It's what happnes when people can no longer afford to be all romantic and dreamy-creamy, moonlight and roses ... it's what happens when that stuff fades ... and yet still you find yourself in love. And this story, 'The Gossip of Valley View', is very funny - true Lucy Maud:

A rumor starts in a small town - that Young Thomas Everett and Adelia Williams are going to be married. Now ... the two are not even courting ... Young Thomas Everett, a confirmed old bachelor who lives out on a farm with a grumpy housekeeper, hears the news about himself at the blacksmith one day and bursts into laughter. Adelia Williams? Nice little lady ... but he has no intention of getting married. But because of the laugh - and because neither of them out and out deny it - the gossip spreads. And spreads. I love how Lucy Maud describes this. The growing belief in the story ... people stopping Thomas on the street to congratulate him. He thinks it's all rather silly - he barely knows Adelia - but when the minister and his wife stop by Thomas' house and mention his engagement - Young Thomas gets a bit perturbed. This is getting far too serious. It's no longer a rumor - everyone believes it. Meanwhile, in the story - there has been NO contact with this Adelia Williams. He glances over at her in church during this whole thing - and she's glancing at him too. They both look away. So she obviously has heard the rumors too. Thomas does have the presence of mind to admire her rosy cheeks, and to think: She doesn't look like an old maid at all. But still: he has no idea who she is. All he knows about her is that she has the reputation of being a fantastic home-maker and house-keeper and cook and all that. That's it. The rumor keeps growing. People start just making shit up. Young Thomas hears whispered rumors about Adelia's trousseau - what color her hat will be - it's starting to not be funny. It's starting to be downright annoying. Finally, Young Thomas has had enough. His brother Charlie - who lives in - Manitoba? Winnipeg? Somewhere far from PEI, I'll tell you that - writes him a letter congratulating him on his upcoming engagement, and says, "Give Adelia a kiss for me!"

Young Thomas (who has also been having problems with his grumpy housekeeper) has now had enough. Enough of the rumors. And enough of the messy house. What they hey ... He goes over to see Adelia. This is the excerpt below. It's the end of the story.

This is our first time meeting Adelia. And I just LOVE her reaction. It makes me laugh - makes me feel like we could be friends. Also: it's just typical Lucy Maud.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'The Gossip of Valley View' - by L.M. Montgomery

Young Thomas shaved and put on his Sunday suit. As soon as it was safely dark, he hied him away to Adelia Williams. He felt very doubtful about his reception, but the remembrance of the twinkle in Adelia's brown eyes comforted him. She looked like a woman who had a sense of humour; she might not take him, but she would not feel offended or insulted because he asked her.

"Dang it all, though, I hope she will take me," said Young Thomas. "I'm in for getting married now and no mistake. And I can't get Adelia out of my head. I've been thinking of her steady ever since that confounded gossip began."

When he knocked at Adelia's door he discovered that his face was wet with perspiration. Adelia opened the door and started when she saw him, then she turned very red and stiffly asked him in. Young Thomas went in and sat down, wondering if all men felt so horribly uncomfortable when they were courting.

Adelia stooped low over the woodbox to put a stick of wood in the stove, for the May evening was chilly. Her shoulders were shaking; the shaking grew worse; suddenly Adelia laughed hysterically and, sitting down on the woodbox, continued to laugh. Young Thomas eyed her with a friendly grin.

"Oh, do excuse me," gasped poor Adelia, wiping tears from her eyes. "This is - dreadful - I didn't mean to laugh - I don't know why I'm laughing - but - I - can't help it."

She laughed helplessly again. Young Thomas laughed too. His embarrassment vanished in the mellowness of that laughter. Presently Adelia composed herself and removed from the woodbox to a chair, but there was still a suspicious twitching about the corners of her mouth.

"I suppose," said Young Thomas, determined to have it over with before the ice could form again, "I suppose, Adelia, you've heard the story that's been going about you and me of late?"

Adelia nodded. "I've been persecuted to the verge of insanity with it," she said. "Every soul I've seen has tormented me about it, and people have written me about it. I've denied it till I was black in the face, but nobody believed me. I can't find out how it started. I hope you believe, Mr. Everett, that it couldn't possibly have arisen from anything I said. I've felt dreadfully worried for fear you might think it did. I heard that my cousin, Lucilla Barrett, said I told her, but Lucilla vowed to me that she never said such a thing or even dreamed of it. I've felt dreadful bad over the whole affair. I even gave up the idea of making a quilt after a lovely new pattern I've got, because they made such a talk about my brown dress."

"I've been kind of supposing that you must be going to marry somebody, and folks just guessed it was me," said Young Thomas - he said it anxiously.

"No, I'm not going to be married to anybody," said Adelia with a laugh, taking up her knitting.

"I'm glad of that," said Young Thomas gravely. "I mean," he hastened to add, seeing the look of astonishment on Adelia's face, "that I'm glad there isn't any other man - because - because I want you myself, Adelia."

Adelia laid down her knitting and blushed crimson. But she looked at Young Thomas squarely and reproachfully.

"You needn't think you are bound to say that because of the gossip, Mr. Everett," she saidq uietly.

"Oh, I don't," said Young Thomas earnestly. "But the truth is, the story set me to thinking about you, and from that I got to wishing it was true - honest, I did - I couldn't get you out of my head, and at last I didn't want to. It just seemed to me that you were the very woman for me if you'd only take me. Will you, Adelia? I've got a good farm and house, and I'll try to make you happy."

It was not a very romantic wooing, perhaps. But Adelia was forty and had never been a romantic little body even in the heyday of her youth. She was a practical woman, and Young Thomas was a fine looking man of his age with abundance of worldly goods. Besides, she liked him, and the gossip had made her think a good deal about him of late. Indeed, in a moment of candour she had owned to herself the very last Sunday in church that she wouldn't mind if the story were true.

"I'll - I'll think of it," she said.

This was practically an acceptance, and Young Thomas so understood it. Without loss of time he crossed the kitchen, sat down beside Adelia, and put his arms about her plump waist.

"Here's a kiss Charlie sent me to give you," he said, giving it.

The Books: At the Altar: 'A Dinner of Herbs' (L.M. Montgomery)

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At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Speaking of maiden aunts! 'A Dinner of Herbs' is about a maiden aunt - who has elements of many other Lucy Maud heroines - Valancy from Blue Castle, Pat (stupid Pat) in her later years in Mistress Pat, and also Margaret in Tangled Web who ends up adopting a little boy and buying her own house - just to get away from being a maiden aunt in her bossy sister's house.

Robin Lyle is a maiden aunt. She lives with her brother, his bossy wife - and their clattering chattering family of loud bossy horrible children. Robin is put-upon, bossed within an inch of her life, and has no privacy. She is just expected to be grateful that she has a roof over her head. However, naturally, Robin is a PERSON and has secret desires of her own. For example, she's in love with Michael Stanislaws - the next-door neighbor - a guy who lives alone (well, he has 2 cats who follow him everywhere) - and has never married. They are good friends ... in a kind of aloof way. Typical Lucy Maud: they never say just what they mean until the very last second. Michael is a very PROUD person - he's poor, and I believe he's lame? The story was written in 1928 - a post World War I story - so I believe he fought in the war and came home changed from it. He's bitter. But Robin really likes him.

Anyhoo ... at the time the story opens, Robin has been proposed to by Irving Keyes - a pompous asswipe - but she feels she must say yes because ... she's a maiden aunt ... what other choice does she have? Oh - and she has also been informed by her horrible sister-in-law that she will now have to share a room with Gladys, her teenage niece. They need the room - they no longer can give Robin her own room. This is the main reason that she actually considers marrying the odious Irving Keyes - so she won't have to endure yet another chipping away of her privacy.

There's something I really like about the writing in this story. I can see why she used most of this stuff in later novels - it's good. The dialogue is good, the characters clear ... good writing.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'A Dinner of Herbs' - by L.M. Montgomery

Robin went to her room - the only spot on earth she had ever been able to call her own. And, as always when she went into it, the peace and dignity and beauty of it seemed to envelop her like a charm. She was in a different world - a world where George and Myra could not quarrel or the hired girl be impertinent to her; and the everlasting noise and racket of the household died away at its threshold like the spent wave of a troubled sea. For years all that had supported her through the drudgery of days spent waiting on a querulous invalid was the certainty of finding herself alone in her dear room at night where dreams gae some mysterious strength for another day.

The north window looked down on leagues of ripped sea and distant, misty, fairy-like coasts. Between it and the sand-dunes was only a dwindling grove of ragged old spruces.

The west window looked out on Owl's Roost, with its orchard and garden, where First and Second Peter prowled darkly, and Michael himself played the violin at hours when all decent people should be in bed. Sometimes, too, he ate his slender meals in the orchard, under an enormous apple tree, never dreaming that Robin Lyle was watching him from her window, and wishing shamelessly that she might play "Thou" to his crust of bread and jug of milk. Nor was the book of verse wanting. Michael read as he ate, propping his book up against the jug.

And now all this would be taken from her. She knew exactly what rooming with Gladys and her shrieking chums would mean. No more dreaming; no more shadowy hours of listening to Michael's stormy music in the orchard; no more early dawns watching the silent mysterious ships drift by the dunes to the harbour; never again alone with the night.

No, she could not endure it. Even sleek, prosperous Irving Keyes would be better than that.

"Life isn't fair," said Robin drearily, as if there was any use in saying it.

She went to the glass and looked at herself. She looked at her straight, black, bobbed hair, dark blue eyes and white, heart-shaped face; at her wide mouth quirked up at the corners so that she always seemed to be laughing even when very sad. And she thought of Blanche Foster's red-gold hair and flashing black eyes and brilliant complexion. Blanche Foster, who had always made Robin feel old and dowdy and silly. It was amazing that Irving Keyes didn't prefer her, but since he didnt ...

Robin shivered a little and sat down by the west window in the moonlight. The window was open, and the faint, cold, sweet perfumes of night drifted in - blent with the whiff of Michael Stanislaw's pipe, neither faint nor sweet, but very alluring. Once, when she was eighteen, she had had a fleeting fancy for Irving Keyes - and he knew it. Even yet he was attractive - until he spoke. But his funny vulgar stories and his great haw-haws! And his love for practical jokes! He still thought it a joke to stick o ut his foot and trip somebody up. And he still thought it wit to call eggs cackleberries.

Irving Keyes had been heard to boast that he had got everything he wanted in life. And now he wanted Robin Lyle. Robin thought he would get that too, despite his roars of laughter and the jigarees on his house.

What else was there for her? Arnold Clive? No! She shivered again. Austere, religious Arnold with the face of a fanatic: high, narrow brow, deep-set intolerant eyes, merciless mouth - quite out of the question! And, after all, she liked Irving very well.

She looked over at Owl's Roost. What a nice, gentle little old house it was; a nice lazy old house - a house that had folded its hands and said "I will rest." It had none of the Lyle efficiency and up-to-dateness about it, with a sly little eyebrow window above the porch roof and the magic of trees around it. She loved the trees around Owl's Roost. There were no trees around George's house. Myra thought shade unsanitary.

Michael was smoking his pipe at the fence with an orchard full of mysterious moonlit delights behind him. Robin wished she could go down and talk with him. She had sometimes talked with him over the fence. Not often, and yet she felt curiously well acquainted with him. They had laughed together the first time they had talked, and when two peoplel have laughed - really laughed - together they are good friends for life.

Though Michael did not laugh much. If anything, he was bitter. But there was something stimulating and pungent about his bitterness - like choke-cherries. They puckered your mouth horribly, but still you hankered for them.

"I wonder what he is thinking of," thought Robin.

She knew she only thought it. Yet a voice drifted up to her from the orchard.

"I'm thinking how very silvery that dark cloud must be on the moon side," said the voice. "Come down here and help me watch it leaving the moon. It's as good as an eclipse."

Robin flew downstairs, out of the side door and along the brick walk, worn by many feet. Michael was hanging over the fence. First Peter sat hunched up beside him, and Second Peter smoothed about his shoulder. First Peter always let Robin stroke him, but Second Peter swore at her. Second Peter was not to be hoodwinked.

Robin stood beside Michael on the other side of the fence, where the moonlight would lie white as snow on the flagged walk when the cloud passed. She had never been through the fence. There was no gate between the Lyle yard and the old orchard, lying fragrant and velvety under the enchantment of night.

They stood there together in a wonderful silence until the cloud had passed.

" 'He who has seen the full moon break forth from behind a dark cloud at night, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world,' " quoted Michael, whacking his pipe on the fence and putting it in his pocket. "Wasn't it worth watching, Miss Lyle?"

If there was one thing she hated more than another, it was having Michael call her "Miss Lyle". She hated it so much that she answered "Yes", stiffly and unenthusiastically.

"It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that something is bothering you," said Michael. "Tell First Peter about it and I'll listen in."

A perfectly crazy impulse mastered Robin. She would tell him. She had to tell soembody.

"I can't make up my mind which of two men to marry," she said bluntly.

Michael was silent for an appreciable space. All the soundsaudible were First Peter purring and a dog taking the countryside into his confidence two farms away. His silence got on Robin's nerves.

"That wasn't quite true," she said crossly. "There are two - but there's only one I could really consider possible. And the trouble is I don't want to marry him - or anyone," she added hastily, telling a second tarradiddle.

"Then why marry him?" said Michael. "Why marry at all if you don't want to, in this day of woman's emancipation?"

"The trouble is - I'm not emancipated," sighed Robin, wishing that First Peter would stop purring. It was outrageous that a cat should be so blatantly happy. Though why shouldn't he be happy? Couldn't he sit on Michael's shoulder and snuggle his nose against Michael's face? Wasn't he doing it now, darn him? Yet she was still talking on. "I'm twenty years behind the times. I'm thirty-three and I'm not trained to do anything. I've no special gift. I can't sew or teach or pound a typewriter. All I can do, or want to do, is keep house. And I must marry - or room witih Gladys."

"Do you think Irving Keyes would be a more agreeable room-mate?" said Michael sarcastically - though she had not said anything about Irving Keyes.

"Well, he won't plaster my dressing table with powder - or raise Cain when he can't find his hairpins - or yell to Baal if he has chilblains - or look in the mirror the same time I do - purposely," said Robin defiantly.

"I think I see what you're up against," said Michael, beginning to fill his pipe again.

"You don't - not fully - a man couldn't," snapped Robin. "Gladys will talk me to death about her beaus. Gladys thinks there's no fun in having a beau unless you can tell everybody about him and what he said and what he did. She'll laugh at my funny old pictures with big sleeves and hats high on the head. She'll come in and wake me up in the wee sma's. She'll insist on having the most awful silver pig with a blue velvet pincushion on his back on my table. She'll bring her rampageous school chums in and chitter-chatter for hours. And everything will be either wonderful or priceless. I'll never be alone any more," concluded Robin pathetically.

"That gets me," said Michael. "And the alternative is Irving Keyes. A handsome fellow with gobs of money. Why don't you like him?"

"I do. But I don't feel like marrying him, for several reasons."

"For instance ..."

"He likes bread thick, and I like it thin," said Robin flippantly. She felt she had been absurd in telling Michael as much as she had.

"Every proper man likes bread thick. I've no sympathy with you there."

"Our taste in jokes is entirely different."

"Ah, that's serious," said Michael, not sounding serious.

"And ..." Robin looked at another cloud that was creeping over the moon. "I - I want someone else."

"Oh!" Second Peter snarled, as if he had been pushed aside with a foot.

"He's the only man in the world for me," said Robin, looking straight at Michael.

"That's a large order out of approximately five hundred million men," said Michael drily.

He began to smoke insolently. The cloud was over the moon, and the world was dark. Robin felt cold and old and silly and empty.

"I must go in," she said.

"Wait a sec." Michael was rummaging in his pocket. "Here's something for your rose-jar."

He handed her over a paper bag full of dried rose-leaves.

"All I can give any woman now - withered rose leaves," he said lightly. "Irving's a good fellow. Perhaps you can teach him to laugh in the right place. I'd have a try."

The Books: At the Altar: 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

At the Altar is another one of the collections put together by Rea Wilmhurst in the 90s of Lucy Maud's work - her short stories, published throughout her life ... but never before compiled. Rea Wilmhurst put different stories together thematically - and all of these have to do with (obviously) getting married.

"Aunt Philippa and the Men" is a very funny story - a Lucy Maud romance with that tone of COMEDY that I love so much - none of that sentimental stuff. She's more interested in the absurdity. "Aunt Philippa" was published in Redbook in 1915 ... and Aunt Philippa is a clear rehearsal for Miss Cornelia in Anne's House of Dreams (which came out in 1917). They are very nearly the same character. The man-hating thing, the Methodist-hating thing, and also the good heart, the no-nonsense heart.

Ursula Goodwin is her niece and she has come to stay with Aunt Philippa for the summer. Ursula is in a bit of a crisis. She's in love with someone - and her father does not approve of the match because of some age-old feud with the guy's family. At least that's what I think it is. She has been forbidden to marry him. Meanwhile, she has quarreled with him as well ... so she thinks the whole thing might be off anyway ... but her parents are terrified that she will make up with this person whom they do NOT want her to marry ... so they ship her off to PEI and Aunt Philippa for the summer. Philippa picks her up at the ferry in her buggy and as they drive home, Philippa chats and rants and raves about the things that bug her. She gossips about the neighbor and the new minister ("I am of the opinion that he smokes"). She says that there are no good Methodists. Ursula protests: "My stepmother is a Methodist!" Philippa replies, "I would believe anything of a stepmother." You know, it's pure Lucy Maud comedy. Great stuff. So the summer goes by - and Ursula settles in to the slow PEI life ... but she misses Mark (her guy) and wonders what will happen with them. Oh, and Philippa has NO sympathy for romantic problems of any kind because she hates men and thinks they are all despicable and are not worth ONE DROP of your tears. So Ursula can't really confide in Philippa. She suffers in silence. But then - one day - Mark shows up at Aunt Philippa's door. His firm is going to send him to South Africa in a month. He will be gone indefinitely. Will Ursula marry him? Now?? Ursula hesitates ... she hates the thought of a quickie wedding like this ... it feels like running away ... and suddenly Aunt Philippa, the man-hater, swoops in and takes care of everything. Surprising everybody. There WILL be a wedding, and she will have it at her house ... and everything will be fine.

I'll post an excerpt from the wedding itself just because Philippa's one comment after they become man and wife is so hilarious. Just great stuff.

Excerpt from At the Altar - 'Aunt Philippa and the Men' - by L.M. Montgomery

For the next three weeks she was a blissfully excited, busy woman. I was allowed to choose the material and fashion of my wedding suit and hat myself, but almost everything else was settled by Aunt Philippa. I didn't mind; it was a relief to be rid of all responsibility; I did protest when she declared her intention of having a big wedding and asking all the cousins and semi-cousins on the island, but Aunt Philippa swept by objections lightly aside.

"I'm bound to have one good wedding in this house," she said. "Not likely I'll ever have another chance."

She found time amid all the baking and concocting to warn me frequently not to take it too much to heart if Mark failed to come after all.

"I know a man who jilted a girl on her wedding day. That's the men for you. It's best to be prepared."

But Mark did come, getting there the evening before our wedding day. And then a severe blow fell on Aunt Philippa. Word came from the manse that Mr. Bentwell had been suddenly summoned to Nova Scotia to his mother's deathbed; he had started that night.

"That's the men for you," said Aunt Philippa bitterly. "Never can depend on one of them, not even on a minister. What's to be done down?"

"Get another minister," said Mark easily.

"Where'll you get him?" demanded Aunt Philippa. "The minister at Cliftonville is away on his vacation, and Mercer is vacant, and that leaves none nearer than town. It won't do to depend on a town minister being able to come. No, there's no help for it. You'll have to have that Methodist man."

Aunt Philippa's tone was tragic. Plainly she thought the ceremony would scarcely be legal if that Methodist man married us. But neither Mark nor I cared. We were too happy to be disturbed by any such trifles.

The young Methodist minister married us the next day in the presence of many beaming guests. Aunt Philippa, splendid in black silk and point-lace collar, neither of which lost a whit of dignity or lustre by being made ten years before, was composure itself while the ceremony was going on. But no sooner had the minister pronounced us man and wife than she spoke up.

"Now that's over I want someone to go right out and put out the fire on the kitchen roof. It's been on fire for the last ten minutes."

Minister and bridegroom headed the emergency brigade, and Aunt Philippa pumped the water for them. In a short time the fire was out, all was safe, and we were receiving our deferred congratulations.

The Books: Along the Shore - 'Young Si' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the last story I will excerpt from this collection and then I'll move on to yet another one of Lucy Maud's books. Young Si is a simple little story that just works. No fireworks, no clunky plot ... no florid language!! A young woman named Agnes (who, from Lucy Maud's description - with her orange hair and violet eyes and creamy skin - is quite a looker) has gone to spend the summer at a boarding house near the sea. She is staying with a kindly family - who welcome her. There is a young daughter, Agnes - who is about 16 - who has a kind of girl-crush on Ethel and wants to show her around. Ethel is polite, sweet ... and yet there is something sad about the look in her eyes. We don't hear the story about why she is sad until halfway into the story. The first half of the story is from Agnes' eyes, basically. Ethel arrives at the house. The Bentley family take her in ... and start to tell her a bit about the town, and the characters who live there, etc. - and a man named Young Si comes up. Everyone seems fascinated by this person. Young Si suddenly appeared in their fishing village at some point last year - from out of nowhere - he stays by himself in a little fishing shack and works out on a boat. He quickly has gained the respect of all the fishermen for his brawn, his skill, and his cooperative nature - and yet there's something aloof about him. If you ask him where he is from, or anything about his past, he clams up. And yet Mr. Bentley (the man Ethel is staying with) can't hold back his admiration for this person's character.

On that first day - Agnes takes Ethel down to the beach to see the sights, to see the fishermen coming in with their catches. It is during this first walk - that Ethel comes face to face with this Young Si ... and ... well ... let's just say he is NOT who he says he is.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'Young Si' - by L.M. Montgomery

When she came out they started off, and presently found themselves walking down a grassy deep-rutted lane that ran through mown hay fields, green with their rich aftergrowth, and sheets of pale ripening oats and golden-green wheat, until it lost itself in the rolling sand hills at the foot of the slope.

Beyond the sand hills stretched the shining expanse of the ocean, of the faint, bleached blue of hot August seas, and reaching out into a horizon laced with long trails of pinkish cloud. Numberless fishing boats dotted the shimmering reaches.

"That furthest-off boat is Young Si's," said Agnes. "He always goes to that particular spot."

"Is he really all your father says?" asked Miss Lennox curiously.

"Indeed he is. He isn't any more like the rest of the shore men than you are. He's queer, of course. I don't believe he's happy. It seems to me he's worrying over something, but I'm sure it is nothing wrong. Here we are," she added, as they passed the sand hills and came out on the long, level beach.

To their left the shore curved around in a semi-circle of dazlling whiteness; at their right stood a small grey fish-house.

"That's Young Si's place," said Agnes. "He lives there night and day. Wouldn't it make anyone melancholy? No wonder he's mysterious. I'm going to get his spyglass. He told me I might always use it."

She pushed open the door and entered, followed by Ethel. The interior was rough but clean. It was a small room, lighted by one tiny window looking out on the water. In one corner a rough ladder led up to the loft above. The bare lathed walls were hung with fishing jackets, nets, mackerel lines and other shore appurtenances. A little stove bore a kettle and a frying pan. A low board table was strewn with dishes and the cold remnants of a hasty repast; benches were placed along the walls. A fat, bewhiskered kitten, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, was dozing on the window sill.

"This is Young Si's cat," explained Agnes, patting the creature, which purred joyously and opened its sleepy green eyes. "It's the only thing he cares for, I believe. Witch! Witch! How are you, Witch? Well, here's the spyglass. Let's go and have a look. Si's catching mackerel," announced Agnes a few minutes later, after she had scrutinized each boat in turn, "and he won't be in for an hour yet. If you like, we have time for a walk up the shore."

The sun slipped lower and lower in the creamy sky, leaving a trail of sparkles that ran across the water and lost itself in the west. Sea gulls soared and dipped, and tiny "sand peeps" flitted along the beach. Just as the red rim of the sun dipped in the purpling sea, the boats began to come in.

"Most of them will go around to the Point," explained Agnes, with a contemptuous sweep of her hand towards a long headland running out before them. "They belong there and they're a rough crowd. You don't catch Young Si associating with the Pointeres. There, he's getting up sail. We'll just have time to get back before he comes in."

They hurried back across the dampening sand as the sun disapeared, leaving a fiery spot behind him. The shore was no longer quiet and deserted. The little spot where the fishing house stood had suddenly started into life. Roughly clad boys were running hither and thither, carrying fish or water. The boats were hauled up on the skids. A couple of shaggy old tars, who had strolled over from the Point to hear about Young Si's catch, were smoking their pipes at the corner of his shanty. A mellow afterlight was shining over sea and shore. The whole scene delighted Ethel's artist eyes.

Agnes nudged her companion.

"There! If you want to see Young Si," she whispered, pointing to the skids, where a busy figure was discernible in a large boat, "that's him, with his back to us, in the cream-colored boat. He's counting out mackerel. If you go over to that platform behind him, you'll get a good look when he turns around. I'm going to coax a mackerel out of that stingy old Snuffy, if I can."

She tripped off, and Ethel walked slowly over to the boats. The men stared at her in open-mouthed admiration as she passed them and walked out on the platform behind Young Si. There was no one near the two. The others were all assembled around Snuffy' boat. Young Si was throwing out the mackerel with marvelous rapidity, but at the sound of a footstep behind him he turned and straightened up his tall form. They stood face to face.

"Miles!"

"Ethel!"

Young Si staggered back against the mast, letting two silvery bloaters slip through his hands overboard. His handsome sunburned face was very white.

Ethel Lennox turned abruptly and silently and walked swiftly across the sand. Agnes felt her arm touched and turned to see Ethel standing, pale and erect, beside her.

"Let us go home, " said the latter unsteadily. "It is very damp here - I feel chilled."

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Agnes penitently. "I ought to have told you to bring a shawl. It is always damp on the shore after sunset. Here, Snuffy, give me my mackerel. Thank you. I'm ready now, Miss Lennox."

They reached the lane before Agnes remembered to ask the question Ethel dreaded.

"Oh, did you see Young Si? And what do you think of him?"

Ethel turned her face away and answered with studied carelessness. "He seems to be quite a superior fishermen so far as I could see in the dim light. It was very dusky there, you know. Let us walk a little faster. My shoes are quite wet."

When they reached home, Miss Lennox excused herself on the plea of weariness and went straight to her room.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay, so after the TERRIBLE story from yesterday - now we come to 'The Waking of Helen' which is one of my favorites of this collection - and it's interesting, in and of itself, because it is one of the only stories of hers I can think of - that has a truly tragic ending. Tragedy (or at least long-lasting tragedy) was never Lucy Maud's bag ... but this story is sad. And you know what? Lucy Maud is amazing here. It's completely believable. It actually reminds me of a short story by, oh, Doris Lessing. It has that kind of bleak outlook ... and it ends with a suicide. A woman who gladly embraces death. It is her only option and she throws herself at it with open arms. But this story has no melodrama to it. You know how some of her stories are ONLY the plot? They're my least favorites of her stories ... but when she focuses on the CHARACTER - she's at her best. And that's what's going on in this story. It's about this Helen girl. She's quite different from any of her other heroines - I can't think of anyone analogous in any of Lucy Maud's other stories or novels. Helen stands alone. She is a sulky sullen unattractive misfit. And yet - with Lucy Maud's insight and compassion - we see what it is like for her, who she is, what is going on inside of this misfit ... and we know ... we just know that she is not going to make it.

The story is this:

A man named Robert Reeves has gone to spend the summer at a place like the Bay of Fundy (uhm - Siobhan??) - a place "noted for its tides". Reeves is a painter. He has heard about the beauty of light and shadow on this large bay and wants to spend the summer painting them. He boards with a local farmer and his wife - the Frasers. They are quiet rough people. No soft edges. They have a niece who lives with them, her parents are dead - Helen. She's probably 20 years old. She's unattractive, not at all verbal - never speaks ... and sits at the table, staring down at her plate. The girl has no future, really ... she lives in this isolated area, her uncle and aunt are gruff and unloving towards her ... and she's no beauty. But she knows the bay inside and out - so she accompanies Reeves on one of his jaunts. Reeves also wants to do a painting of her - standing on the shore. He just needs her as a figure in the painting ... he will pay for her time ... she says yes. She tells him stories of people getting trapped in some of the coves - and drowning - because they can't get out, and the tides are extreme ... they rise 20 feet at times ... So she warns him about certain areas, and when the tides come in and out ...

Reeves is kind to Helen, not realizing how dangerous this will be. He's kind to her not because he's interested in her romantically. He's kind to her because he is a kind man. And he likes her stories about the shore - and he actually finds her to be kind of an interesting person once she gets away from her uncle and aunt. But oh no ... what happens when a girl like this "wakes up", like the title says? She "wakes up" ... and falls in love with him ... (none of this is said - she never declares herself - but Reeves eventually intuits that she has become too attached to him ... just from one look she gives him, a look where her face is full and lit-up with emotion and love for him.) Reeves is horrified. He realizes he has been playing with fire. The girl has woken up ... and now he must crush her. So he tries to be gentle and kind ... and casually mentions his fiance in conversation ... "I'm looking forward to getting back to the city ... my fiance misses me ..." or whatever. Helen doesn't freak. She sits beside him, silently, listening. (The point of view of this story is mainly from Reeves' side ... although the narrator is rather omniscent - but we are never inside Helen's head). Anyway, Helen listens, quiet, nothing happens. And Reeves is relieved. He thinks maybe he mistook the look he saw on her face. Maybe she wasn't in love with him. He can now leave with a clear conscience. And on the day he leaves, Helen goes off for a walk on the shore, walks into one of the coves - one of the dangerous coves she had warned him about - and sits down, and waits for the tide. Waits for the tide to come in, and rise. The last image in the story is chilling: as the water starts to lap at Helen's skirt, higher by the minute ... Helen smiles.

That's the end of the story.

It's wonderful work - I think Lucy Maud is at her best here. And this story stands alone in all of her work. It has a different feel, it really does. And yet it doesn't seem artificial, or like Lucy Maud is "experimenting" in a form and doesn't really know her way around. It feels quite natural.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the story:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Waking of Helen' - by L.M. Montgomery

Reeves told Helen of his plan himself, meeting her in the evening as she was bringing the cows home from the low shore pastures beyond the marsh. He was surprised at the sudden illumination of her face. It almost transfigured her from a plain sulky-looking girl into a beautiful woman.

But the glow passed quickly. She assented to his plan quietly, almost lifelessly. He walked home with her behind the cows and talked of the sunset and the mysterious beauty of the bay and the purple splendour of the distant coasts. She listened in silence. Only once, when he spoke of the distant murmur of the open sea, she lifted her head and looked at him.

"What does it say to you?" she asked.

"It speaks of eternity. And to you?"

"It calls me," she answered simply, "and then I want to go out and meet it - and it hurts me too. I can't tell how or why. Sometimes it makes me feel as if I were asleep and wanted to wake and didn't know how."

She turned and looked out over the bay. A dying gleam of sunset broke through a cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the shore personified - all its mystery, all its uncertainty, all its elusive charm.

She has possibilities, thought Reeves.

Next day he began his picture. At first he had thought of painting her as the incarnation of a sea spirit, but decided that her moods were too fitful. So he began to sketch her as "Waiting" - a woman looking out across the bay with a world of hopeless longing in her eyes. The subject suited her well, and the picture grew apace.

When he was tired of work he made her walk around the shore with him, or row up the head of the bay in her own boat. He tried to draw her out, at first with indifferent success. She seemed to be frightened of him. He talked to her of many things - the far outer world whose echoes never reached her, foreign lands where he had traveled, famous men and women whom he had met, music, art, and books. When he spoke of books he touched the right chord. One of those transfiguring flashes he delighted to evoke now passed over her plain face.

"That is what I've always wanted," she said hungrily, "and I never get them. Aunt hates to see me reading. She says it is a waste of time. And I love it so. I read every scrap of paper I can get hold of, but I hardly ever see a book."

The next day Reeves took his Tennyson to the shore and began to read the Idylls of the King to her.

"It is beautiful," was her sole verbal comment, but her rapt eyes said everything.

After that he never went out with her without a book - now one of the poets, now some prose classic. He was surprised by her quick appreciation of and sympathy with the finest passages. Gradually, too, she forgot her shyness and began to talk. She knew nothing of his world, but her own world she knew and knew well. She was a mine of traditional history about the bay. She knew the rocky coast by heart, and every old legend that clung to it. They drifted into making excursions along the shore and explored its wildest retreats. The girl had an artist's eye for scenery and colour effect.

"You should have been an artist," Reeves told her one day when she had pointed out to him the exquisite loveliness of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rocks across a dark-green pool at their base.

"I would rather be a writer," she said slowly, "if I could only write something like those books you have read to me. What a glorious destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live forever! It must be the noblest human lot."

"Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble," said Reeves gently, "and many of them were unhappy."

Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul dreams.

"Do you know where I am taking you today?" she said.

"No - where?"

"To what the people here call the Kelpy's Cave. I hate to go there. I believe there is something uncanny about it, but I think you will like to see it. It is a dark little cave in the curve of a small cove, and on each side the headlands of rock run far out. At low tide we can walk right around, but when the tide comes in it fills the Kelpy's Cave. If you were there and let the tide come past the points, you would be drowned unless you could swim, for the rocks are so steep and high it is impossible to climb them."

Reeves was interested.

"Was anyone ever caught by the tide?"

"Yes," returned Helen, with a shudder. "Once, long ago, before I was born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep there - and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I've been afraid of the place ever since."

The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy walls of rock on either hand.

"I must come here some day and sketch it," said Reeves enthusiastically, "and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it."

"Do you think a kelpy would look like that?" said the girl dreamily. "I don't. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims."

"Well, never mind your sea kelpies," Reeves said, fishing out his Longfellow. "They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own haunts. I want to read you 'The Building of the Ship.' You will like it, I'm sure."

When the tide turned they went home.

"We haven't seen the kelpy after all," said Reeves.

"I think I shall see him some day," said Helen gravely. "I think he is waiting for me there in that gloomy cave of his, and some time or other he will get me."

Reeves smiled at the gloomy fancy, and Helen smiled back at him with one of her sudden radiances. The tide was creeping swiftly up over the white sands. The sun was low and the bay was swimming in a pale blue glory. They parted at Clam Point, Helen to go for the cows and Reeves to wander on up the shore. He thought of Helen at first, and the wonderful change that had come over her of late; then he began to think of another face - a marvellously lovely one with blue eyes as tender as the waters before him. Then Helen was forgotten.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

Okay - this story is HYSTERICAL - but not intentionally so. As a matter of fact - you know the "Averil" story that Anne wrote in Anne of Avonlea? This is like that. The language is like that. It was written in 1897 - a good 11 years before Anne came out - so perhaps she was still working on her craft? Or maybe she is just OBVIOUSLY writing for money here - writing a story to fit the needs of a certain magazine. But the language of this florid torrid romance is hilarious - and absolutely unrecognizable as Lucy Maud's prose. This is one of the reasons why it's interesting. There are a couple more stories like this - usually written early on - in the late 1800s - where it's almost baffling to think that this is the same writer who thought up the whole dyeing hair green episode, or getting Diana drunk episode, or any of the other episodes which eventually made Lucy Maud famous.

A Strayed Allegiance - I mean, even look at the title. Isn't it just soooo serious and melodramatic? I love it. Everybody in this story is an asshole. I guess Marian is KIND of not an asshole ... because she ends up having SOME commonsense and releasing Esterbrook Elliott (yes, his name is ESTERBROOK ELLIOTT - ha!!! Maud, come on!) from his engagement to her - so that he would be free to ruin his life and pursue Magdalen Crawford, the gorgeous and yet poor fishing girl with whom he is obsessed - like a man about to be driven out of his mind. (And uhm, yes, her name is MAGDALEN Crawford.) I mean, there's just so much that is funny about all of this - and it's a very enjoyable read, merely because the whole time you're thinking: "Okay, Maud, you're gonna have to eventually give this up ... and write what YOU want to write ..."

So Esterbrook Elliott is a total asshole, who uses words like "bequeath" and says stuff like, "My time, as you well know, is completely at your disposal." Like - nobody talks like a normal person in this story. It's all heightened and flowery. Marian and Esterbrook are engaged. Marian is a gentle kindly charitable woman who spends her days helping out the poor families who live in the fishing shacks by the beach. She brings them food, blankets, helps them with medical issues. In short, a freakin' saint. You know, just setting the stage for MAGDALEN to enter. The whore with the glowing deep eyes!!

And one day Esterbrook accompanies his beloved Marian on one of her charitable visits. There's a sick kid or something. And there - in the corner of the fishing shack - is the most beautiful woman Esterbrook Elliott has ever seen. Not only that, but the way Lucy Maud describes her -she's the most beautiful woman the world has ever known. She's like a freak supermodel. And yet she is sullen, imperious, etc. Esterbrook immediately practically wets his pants at the sight of her. It's love at first sight. (Although I have my doubts on that score. I think it's more like lust - and after these two knock boots - they will have NOTHING to talk about - and Esterbrook will have ruined his life for a hot piece of fish-wife ass.)

Marian, because she's a freaking saint, and doesn't understand anything about REAL life ... does not notice the blithering idiot her fiance has become. They leave and walk home - and he is distracted - lost in thought (blah blah. Get a grip on yourself, Esterbrook Elliott. Also, get a new name. Thanks.)

And then .... after he drops Marian off ... he cannot help himself ... he goes back to find Magdalen ...

Their first encounter is the excerpt below. I mean, just listen to the prose!!

Go, Lucy Maud with your florid torrid self!

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Strayed Allegiance' - by L.M. Montgomery

But the desire to see Magdalen Crawford once more and to look into the depths of her eyes was stronger than all else, and overpowered every throb of duty and resistance.

He saw nothing of her when he reached the Cove. He could think of no excuse for calling at the Barrett cottage, so he rode slowly past the hamlet and along the shore.

The sun, red as a smouldering ember, was half buried in the silken violet rim of the sea; the west was a vast lake of saffron and rose and ethereal green, through which floated the curved shallop of a thin new moon, slowly deepening from lusterless white, through gleaming silver, into burnished gold, and attended by one solitary, pearl-white star. The vast concave of sky above was of violet, infinite and flawless. Far out dusky amethystine islets clustered like gems on the shining breast of the bay. The little pools of water along the low shores glowed like mirrors of polished jacinth. The small, pine-fringed headlands ran out into the water, cutting its lustrous blue expanse like purple wedges.

As Esterbrook turned one of them he saw Magdalen standing out on the point of the next, a short distance away. Her back was towards him, and her splendid figure was outlined darkly against the vivid sky.

Esterbrook sprang from his horse and left the animal standing by itself while he walked swiftly out to her. His heart throbbed suffocatingly. He was conscious of no direct purpose save merely to see her.

She turned when he reached her with a slight start of surprise. His footsteps had made no sound on the tide-rippled sand.

For a few moments they faced each other so, eyes burning into eyes with mute soul-probing and questioning. The sun had disappeared, leaving a stain of fiery red to mark his grave; the weird, radiant light was startlingly vivid and clear. Little crisp puffs and flakes of foam scurried over the point like elfin things. The fresh wind, blowing up the ba, tossed the lustrous rings of hair about Magdalen's pale face; all the routed shadows of the hour had found refuge in her eyes.

Not a trace of colour appeared in her face under Esterbrook Elliott's burning ggaze. But when he said, "Magdalen!" a single, hot scorch of crimson flamed up into her cheeks protestingly. She lifted her hand with a splendid gesture, but no word passed her lips.

"Magdalen, have you nothing to say to me?" he asked, coming closer to her with an imploring passion in his face never seen by Marian Lesley's eyes. He reached out his hand, but she stepped back from his touch.

"What should I have to say to you?"

"Say that you are glad to see me."

"I am not glad to see you. You have no right to come here. But I knew you would come."

"You knew it? How?"

"Your eyes told me so today. I am not blind - I can see further than those dull fisher folks. Yes, I knew you wopuld come. That is why I came here tonight - so that you would find me alone and I could tell you that you were not to come again."

"Why must you tell me that, Magdalen?"

"Because, as I have told you, you have no right to come."

"But if I will not obey you? If I will come in defiance of your prohibition?"

She turned her steady luminous eyes on his pale, set face.

"You would stamp yourself as a madman, then," she said coldly. "I know that you are Miss Lesley's promised husband. Therefore, you are either false to her or insulting to me. In either case the companionship of Magdalen Crawford is not what you must seek. Go!"

She turned away from him with an imperious gesture of dismissal. Esterbrook Elliott stepped forward and caught one firm, white wrist.

"I shall not obey you," he said in a low intense tone; his fine eyes burned into hers. "You may send me away, but I will come back, again and yet again until you have learned to welcome me. Why should you meet me like an enemy? Why can we not be friends?"

The girl faced him once more.

"Because," she said proudly, "I am not your equal. There can be no friendship between us. There ought not to be. Magdalen Crawford - the fisherman's niece - is no companion for you. You will be foolish, as well as disloyal, if you ever try to see me again. Go back to the beautiful, high-bred woman you love and forgget me. Perhaps you think I am talking strangely. Perhaps you think me bold and unwomanly to speak so plainly to you, a stranger. But there are some circumstances in life when plain-speaking is best. I do not want to see you again. Now, go back to your own world."

Esterbrook Elliott slowly turned from her and walked in silence back to the shore. In the shadows of the point he stopped to look back at her, standing out like some inspired prophetess against the fiery background of the sunset sky and silver-blue water. The sky overhead was thick-sown with stars; the night breeze was blowing up from its lair in distant, echoing sea caves. On his right the lights of the Cove twinkled out through the dusk.

"I feel like a coward and a traitor," he said slowly. "Good God, what is this madness that has come over me? Is this my boasted strength of manhood?"

A moment later the hoof beats of his horse died away up the shore.

Magdalen Crawford lingered on the point until the last dull red faded out into the violet gloom of the June sea dusk, than which nothing can be rarer or divine, and listened to the moan and murmur of the sea far out over the bay with sorrowful eyes and sternly set lips.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

The moral of this story is: If you stop thinking about yourself so much, and start to do things for other people, then maybe you'll be much happier! Kind of simple - but I like the story. Frances Farquhar (Maud: what the hell kind of name is that) is a gorgeous girl, she lives in the city, she has a big family with kind of an illustrious name, and she has just been jilted. Her fiance dumped her, flat. And she, being gorgeous and rich, has no coping skills for rejection ... so she just plummets into the abyss of despair. Her brother tries to tell her, "He was horrible! A cad! A bounder!" She will hear none of it. Frances very very quickly becomes in love with her own grief. She finally goes to visit her aunt, in a quiet seaside town - an aunt she always felt was sympathetic, and also would just leave her alone. Frances basically wants to go somewhere where she can cry all day, and cry all night - and not have anybody get in her way. She doesn't want to be cheered up. She wants to wallow in the greatest tragedy ever known to man: SHE was rejected.

So this is what she does. She lies in bed at her aunt's and cries for 2 straight weeks.

Until finally her aunt intervenes. But she does so gently, and subversively - telling her that the minister's sister, Corona Sherwood (Corona, Maud??? What the hell?) is recovering from some long illness and aunt had promised to take her for a drive but she can't now - and would Frances mind going over and taking her out for a drive??

So - through meeting Corona - who is not at all what Frances pictured - she's a vibrant young pretty woman, like herself - and they immediately click ... so through Corona, Frances ends up getting involved with the community - through all the good works that the minister's family does. She befriends a sick little boy. She helps people. Blah blah. And by the end of the summer - she can't even remember why she was so damn sad about that popinjay who blew her off. Oh - and she falls in love with the minister. Here's the scene of their first encounter:

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar' - by L.M. Montgomery

When morning came Frances went home. It was raining, and the sea was hidden in mist. As she walked along the wet road, Elliott Sherwood came splashing along in a little two-wheeled gig and picked her up. He wore a raincoat and a small cap, and did not look at all like a minister - or, at least, like Frances's conception of one.

Not that she knew much about ministers. Her own minister at home - that is to say, the minister of the fashionable uptown church which she attended - was a portly, dignified old man with silvery hair and gold-rimmed glasses, who preached scholarly, cultured sermons and was as far removed from Frances's personal life as a star in the Milky Way.

But a minister who wore rubber coats and little caps and drove about in a two-wheeled gig, very much mud-bespattered, and who talked about the shore people as if they were household intimates of his, was absolutely new to Frances.

She could not help seeing, however, that the crisp brown hair under the edges of the unclerical-looking cap curled around a remarkably well-shaped forehead, beneath which flashed out a pair of very fine dark-grey eyes; he had likewise a good mouth, which was resolute and looked as if it might be stubborn on occasion; and, although he was not exactly handsome, Frances decided that she liked his face.

He tucked the wet, slippery rubber apron of his conveyance about her and then proceeded to ask questions. Jacky Hart's case had to be reported on, and then Mr. Sherwood took out a notebook and looked over its entries intently.

"Do you want any more work of that sort to do?" he asked her abruptly.

Frances felt faintly amused. He talked to her as he might have done to Corona, and seemed utterly oblivious of the fact that her profile was classic and her eyes delicious. His indifference piqued Frances a little in spite of her murdered heart. Well, if there was anything she could do she might as well do it, she told him briefly, and he, with equal brevity, gave her directions for finding some old lady who lived on the Elm Creek road and to whom Corona had read tracts.

"Tracts are a mild dissipation of Aunt Clorinda's," he said. "She fairly revels in them. She is half blind and has missed Corona very much."

There were other matters also - a dozen or so of factory girls who needed to be looked after and a family of ragged children to be clothed. Frances, in some dismay, found herself pledged to help in all directions, and then ways and means had to be discussed. The long, wet road, sprinkled with houses, from whose windows people were peering to see "what girl the minister was driving," seemed very short. Frances did not know it, but Elliott Sherwood drove a full mile out of his way that morning to take her home, and risked being late for a very important appointment - from which it may be inferred that he was not quite so blind to the beautiful as he had seemed.

Frances went through the rain that afternoon and read tracts to Aunt Clorinda. She was so dreadfully tired that night that she forgot to cry, and slept well and soundly.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is adorable. I love it. It has that Lucy Maud sense of the absurd - even in the middle of a love story - that I find so attractive. I guess it's how I see life. I'm not really a romantic person. I mean, I have been in love and all that, but the whole ROMANCE thing is not really my bag. My sense of humor gets in the way. This is why books by, uhm, Nicholas Sparks, for example, do nothing for me. The folks in them seem to lack a sense of humor ... and they're too unabashedly romantic. Even in the middle of my greatest love affair which shot through the sky of my life like a freakin' COMET ... I was never romantic like that. I am blunt. Detached. Snarky. I don't know - there's something in Lucy Maud's humor that really appeals to me. This story, especially - and in its own simple way it is my favorite in this particular collection.

It's written in diary-form - Marguerite Forrester, a young woman, living in a repressed way with her extremely strict aunt - keeps a journal about their summer vacation on the sandshore. Marguerite's parents died when she was a baby, so her aunt has brought her up and keeps her on the tightest leash imaginable. The whole story is about Marguerite trying to conduct this romance without her aunt knowing ... her aunt, too, despises men and thinks that they all are after only one thing and must be avoided at all costs. Marguerite is a good girl, she is not a rebel ... but in this case, she feels she must sneak around behind her aunt's back.

The way it happens is: Marguerite sits on the sandshore with her aunt, bored out of her mind. She picks up a pair of binoculars that they have - for bird-watching or whatever - and stares up and down the beach thru the binocs for sometime. Eventually - she sees a man - on a jetty of rocks at the edge of the beach. And he is looking directly at her, waving. She is horrified. She is busted! She puts the binocs down, terrified that her aunt will notice. A couple more days go by like this - with Marguerite looking around the beach with the binocs - and the man is always in the same place (and of course, he is young and handsome) - and he waits for her to rest the binoc-gaze on him - and he will wave, and smile. Marguerite's aunt would have a fit if she knew her niece was having secret "meetings" with a man like this. Marguerite writes in her journal with terror. And yet she starts to look forward to seeing him. Eventually - the man spells something out to her in the deaf-mute alphabet. It's a gamble - maybe she won't know sign language? But strangely enough - Marguerite does know the alphabet. Her roommate at boarding school had taught it to her - so that they could communicate their secrets to one another without the other girls finding out what they were talking about.

So Marguerite begins this "long-distance" communication with this strange man (whom she ends up knowing: he is the brother of her beloved roommate at school - and she had heard many stories about how great he was) - and they talk back and forth in deaf-mute - all behind the dozing aunt's back. If Marguerite is discovered "flirting" with a strange man - she will be in the deepest shit of her life!

But why this story is adorable - and so funny - is that ... this courtship is carried on via ALPHABET - so try to imagine saying, "I'm really attracted to you" but you have to spell it out. That would take too much time. So they end up boiling down their feelings into blunt short statements which won't take too much time to sign. It's kind of like the early 20th century version of IM or text messaging.

So here's their first "conversation".

Excerpt from Along the Shore - 'A Sandshore Wooing' - by L.M. Montgomery

July Twelfth

Something has happened at last. Today I went to the shore as usual, fully resolved not even to glance in the forbidden direction. But in the end I had to take a peep, and saw him on the rocks wiht his glass levelled at me. When he saw that I was looking he laid down the glass, held up his hands, and began to spell out something in the deaf-mute alphabet. Now, I know that same alphabet. Connie taught it to me last year, so that we might hold communication across the schoolroom. I gave one frantic glance at Aunt Martha's rigid back, and then watched him while he deftly spelled: "I am Francis Shelmardine. Are you not Miss Forrester, my sister's friend?"

Francis Shelmardine! Now I knew whom he resembled. And have I not heard endless dissertations from Connie on this wonderful brother of hers, Francis the clever, the handsome, the charming, until he has become the only hero of dreams I have ever had? It was too wonderful. I could only stare dazedly back through my glass.

"May we know each other?" he went on. "May I come over and introduce myself? Right hand, yes, left, no."

I gasped! Suppose he were to come? What would happen? I waved my left hand sorrowfully. He looked quite crestfallen and disappointed as he spelled out: "Why not? Would your friends disapprove?"

I signalled: "Yes."

"Are you displeased at my boldness?" was his next question.

Where had all Aunt Martha's precepts flown to then? I blush to record that I lifted my left hand shyly and had just time to catch his pleased expression when Aunt Martha came up and said it was time to go home. So I picked myself meekly up, shook the sand from my dress, and followed my good aunt dutifully home.

July Thirteenth

When we went to the shore this morning I had to wait in spasms of remorse and anxiety until Aunt got tired of reading and set off along the shore with Mrs. Saxby. Then I reached for my glass.

Mr. Shelmardine and I had quite a conversation. Under the circumstances there could be no useless circumlocution in our exchange of ideas. It was religiously "boiled down," and ran something like this:

"You are not displeased with me?"

"No - but I should be."

"Why?"

"It is wrong to deceive Aunt."

"I am quite respectable."

"That is not the question."

"Cannot her prejudices be overcome?"

"Absolutely no."

"Mrs. Allardyce, who is staying at the hotel, knows her well. Shall I bring her over to vouch for my character?"

"It would not do a bit of good."

"Then it is hoepless."

"Yes."

"Would you object to knowing me on your own account?"

"No."

"Do you ever come to the shore alone?"

"No. Aunt would not permit me."

"Must she know?"

"Yes. I would not come wihtout her permission."

"You will not refuse to chat with me thus now and then?"

"I don't know. Perhaps not."

I had to go home then. As we went Mrs. Saxby complimented me on my good colour. Aunt Martha looked her disapproval. If I were really ill Aunt would spend her last cent in my behalf, but she would be just as well pleased to see me properly pale and subdued at all times, and not looking as if I were too well contented in this vale of tears.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'A Soul That Was Not at Home'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

So this is the story of Paul and his Rock People in embryo. This story came out in 1909 (as did Anne of Avonlea) - so obviously this was a dress rehearsal. Many elements have changed once he appears in the Anne stories - but the character is exactly the same. And you know how Paul writes that letter to Anne and describes, in detail, his rock people? That shows up here in this story, word for word - only Paul is speaking it, rather than writing it. All of the Rock People are identical - Nora, the twin sailors ... you will recognize all of them. Beautiful - I love Paul.

In this story however, his circumstances are a bit different. Paul is an orphan (doesn't he have kind of an absentee father in the Anne books?) - and he is being raised by Stephen, a taciturn (that's putting it mildly) fisherman who used to be a beau of Paul's dead mother. So imagine THAT. Stephen may be taciturn - but his heart ... oh. my. God. He was in love with Paul's mother. But Paul's mother fell in love with someone else - whom she married - and he took her away from the little seaside town where she lived. And apparently she pined so for the sea that she became ill. (It happens, you know.) Her husband died - and she returned to her hometown, with her baby of 2 - but it was too late. She died within a couple of months. There was no one to look after baby Paul ... but Stephen, who had loved only one woman, and that was Paul's mother - stepped up and took the boy. And the two have been living in quiet restful harmony for 6 years. Stephen plays the violin at night. Paul sits on the beach in the day and writes stories about his Rock People in his big foolscap book. They are everything to each other. (It's a similar relationship to the one in "Each His Own Tongue" - that kind of intense unspoken bond between an older man and a young boy. It's almost painful.)

Anyway - a Miss Trevor stops to stay in the town, during the summer. I can't remember why she's there - but she's from the "city" (which probably means Charlottetown - not like Paris or anything like that). She comes, though, with the glamour of the outside world, and also artistic pretensions. She's also alone in the world. Anyhoo - she meets Paul one day on the beach and is completely taken by him. By his guilelessness, his beauty, and also his obvious gift of imagination. He immediately divulges about the Rock People, et al. To Miss Trevor, he looks like a prince - and is shocked to find that he lives in the bleached fisherman's shack over the dunes. Surely he should have better? (There's snobbery in Miss Trevor. You can feel it. When she meets Stephen, she patronizes him a bit. And it just kinda makes you really mad, reading it.) But she does get it in her head that Paul needs to have better schooling than could be offered here - and she wants to take him to live with her in town. She also is kind of obsessed with Paul's foolscap book and all the writing in it. She thinks Paul is a genius. A genius needs a better environment than a shack! (So she thinks.) So she asks Stephen if it would be all right ... and Stephen says, taciturn, you just don't know what's going on inside of him, he's too quiet and reserved - that she should ask Paul. If Paul wants to go, he can go. Paul is torn - he goes through some really bad moments. He loves Stephen. Loves him dearly ... but ... Stephen doesn't seem to care one way or the other if he stays or goes ... and Miss Trevor is so nice and so pretty ... but ... but ... how could he leave the Rock People??? Needless to say - Paul ends up going with Miss Trevor. And Stephen shows no emotion when he says goodbye. We, the reader, know that it is because he feels too much - but Paul thinks he doesn't care.

The excerpt below is from what happens when he gets to town. And goes to the end of the story. The Stephen moment that gets me in the throat is here.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "A Soul That Was Not at Home" - by L.M. Montgomery

At first Paul lay very still on his luxurious perfrumed pillows. It was the first night he had ever spent away from the little seaward-looking loft where he could touch the rafters with his hands. He thought of it now and a lump came into his throat and a strange, new, bitter longing came into his heart. He missed the sea plashing on the rocks below him - he could not sleep without that old lullaby. He turned his face into the pillow, and the longing and loneliness grew worse and hurt him until he moaned. Oh, he wanted to be back home! Surely had had not left it - he could never have meant to leave it. Out there the stars would be shining over the harbour. Stephen would be sitting at the door, all alone, with his violin. But he would not be playing it - all at once Paul knew he would not be playing it. He would be sitting there with his head bowed and the loneliness in his heart calling to the loneliness in Paul's heart all the miles between them. Oh, he could never have really meant to leave Stephen.

And Nora? Nora would be down on the rocks waiting for him - for him, Paul, who would never come to her more. He could see her elfin little face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully.

Paul sat up in bed, choking with tears. Oh, what were books and strange countries? -- what was even Miss Trevor, the friend of a month? - to the call of the sea and Stephen's kind, deep eyes and his dear rock people? He could not stay away from them - never - never.

He slipped out of bed very softly and dressed in the dark. Then he lighted his lamp timidly and opened the little brown chest Stephen had given him. It held his books and his treasures, but he took out only a pencil, a bit of paper, and the foolscap book. With a hand shaking in his eagerness, he wrote:

dear miss Trevor

Im going back home, dont be fritened about me because I know the way. Ive got to go, something is calling me. dont be cross. I love you, but I cant stay. Im leaving my foolscap book for you, you can keep it always but I must go back to stephen and nora

Paul

He put the note on the foolscap book and laid them on the table. Then he blew out the light, took his cap and went softly out. The house was very still. Holding his breath, he tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door. Before it ran the street which went, he knew, straight out into the country road that led home. Paul closed the door and stole down the steps, his heart beating painfully, but when he reached the sidewalk he broke into a frantic run under the limes. It was late and no one was out on that quiet street. He ran until his breath gave out, then walked miserably until he recovered it, and then ran again. He dared not stop running until he was out of that horrible town, which seemed like a prison closing around him, where the houses shut out the stars and the wind could only creep in a narrow space like a fettered, cringing thing, instead of sweeping grandly over great salt wastes of sea.

At last the houses grew few and scattered, and finally he left them behind. He drew a long breath; this was better - rather smothering yet, of course, with nothing but hills and fields and dark woods all about him, but at least his own sky was bove him, looking just the same as it looked out home at Noel's Cove. He recognized the stars as friends; how often Stephen had pointed them out to him as they sat at night by the door of the little house.

He was not at all frightened now. He knew the way home and the kind night was before him. Every step was bringing him nearer to Stephen and Nora and the Twin Sailors. He whistled as he walked silently along.

The dawn was just breaking when he reached Noel's Cove. The eastern sky was all pale rose and silver, and the sea was mottled over with dear grey ripples. In the west over the harbour the sky was a very fine ethereal blue and the wind blew from there, salt and bracing. Paul was tired, but he ran lightly down the shelving rocks to the cove. Stephen was getting ready to launch his boat. When he saw Paul he started and a strange, vivid, exultant expression flashed across his face.

Paul felt a sudden chill - the upspringing fountain of his gladness was checked in mid-leap. He had known no doubt on the way home - all that long, weary walk he had known no doubt - but now?

"Stephen," he cried. "I've come back! I had to! Stephen, are you glad - are you glad?"

Stephen's face was as emotionless as ever. The burst of feeling which had frightened Paul by its unaccustomedness had passed like a fleeting outbreak of sunshine between dull clouds.

"I reckon I am," he said. "Yes, I reckon I am. I kind of - hoped - you would come back. You'd better go in and get some breakfast."

Paul's eyes were as radiant as the deepening dawn. He knew Stephen was glad and he knew there was nothing more to be said about it. They were back just where they were before Miss Trevor came - back to their perfect, unmarred, sufficient comradeship.

"I must just run around and see Nora first," said Paul.

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'The Light on the Big Dipper'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is told from the point of view of a very resourceful 12 year old, and in typical and beautiful Lucy Maud fashion, she can get right into the psychology of a child. I love it when she does that. Lucy Maud, as an adult, can see how absurd some things are - how children deal with things ... and yet - and I think this is why she is so hugely successful with children, to this day - she takes them seriously. She respects them. She writes about them with respect. It's so fun to read these stories, even now, because of that.

Mary Margaret Campbell is 12 years old. Her father is a sea captain and has been gone for 2 long years on a voyage. While Captain Campbell is gone - Mary Margaret, her mother, and her younger sister Nellie - all go to live on an island out in the bay called Little Dipper. Mary Margaret's uncle has a lobster fishing operation out there - and wants someone to keep house for him. There's another island - in sight of Little Dipper - and it's called Big Dipper - and Mary Margaret's Uncle George runs the lighthouse there. Mary Margaret has spent many happy afternoons there - and Uncle George showed her how to light the light, and give the distress signal, and all that.

But now - happiness! Captain Campbell is finally coming home! Mrs. Campbell is going to pick up her husband on the mainland - and leaves Mary Margaret in charge of little Nellie. Mary Margaret is 12 years old, can cook, can do everything - she is very responsbile. So there are no worries about her being by herself.

All the grownups leave the island. Mary Margaret and Nellie have a nice afternoon. Mary Margaret makes dinner. She lights the fire. She gets Nellie ready for bed. All very responsible. Meanwhile, though - a storm is coming up. A bad one. Darkening sky, and it begins to SNOW - heavily. Mary Margaret sits down by the window, and waits for the light to blaze out of the lighthouse at Big Dipper. Once the sun has gone down, I mean. Mary Margaret knows Uncle George's routine, so she sits down to watch the light come on across the water. Only ... no light comes on. And now the storm is raging. Waves, rain, chaos ... still no light!

Mary Margaret knows that something is horribly wrong. And ... she doesn't know what to do! Responsible little Mary Margaret is in a panic! What about all the ships out on the water right now? How would they know where they were? Everyone was in mortal danger!!!! Why won't the light come on?

Finally, Mary Margaret knows that there is only one thing to do. She must row across the water to the lighthouse and light the lamp herself, see if Uncle George is all right. But what to do with Nellie?? The small 4 year old sister? Mary Margaret is afraid ... she doesn't know what to do ... so she ties her sister in a chair ... so at least she can't get free and hurt herself ... and then goes to row across the water.

Also: having grown up in a seaside town, surrounded by fisherfolk, with lighthouses being a daily part of my life ... I love Lucy Maud's description of the community here. The importance of lighthouses, the URGENCY of lighthouses, etc. The entire community being aware of the lighthouse, and invested in it working properly.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "The Light on the Big Dipper" - by L.M. Montgomery

Mary Margaret put on her jacket, hood and mittens, and took Uncle Martin's lantern. As she went out and closed the door, a little wail from Nellie sounded on her ear. For a moment she hesitated, then the blackness of the Big Dipper confirmed her resolution. She must go. Nellie was really quite safe and comfortable. It would not hurt her to cry a little, and it might hurt somebody a great deal if the Big Dipper light failed. Setting her lips firmly, Mary Margaret ran down to the shore.

Like all the Harbour girls, Mary Margaret could row a boat from the time she was nine years old. Nevertheless, her heart almost failed her as she got into the little dory and rowed out. The snow was getting thick. Could she pull across those black two miles between the Dippers before it got so much thicker that she would lose her way? Well, she must risk it. She had set the light in the kitchen window; she must keep it fair behind her and then she would land on the lighthouse beach. With a murmured prayer for help and guidance she pulled staunchly away.

It was a long hard row for the little twelve-year-old arms. Fortunately there was no wind. But thicker and thicker came the snow; finally the kitchen light was hidden in it. For a moment Mary Margaret's heart sank in despair; the next it gave a joyful bound, for, turning, she saw the dark tower of the lighthouse directly behind her. By the aid of her lantern she rowed to the landing, sprang out and made her boat fast. A minute later she was in the lighthouse kitchen.

The door leading to the tower stairs was open and at the foot of the stairs lay Uncle George, limp and white.

"Oh, Uncle George," gasped Mary Margaret, "what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Mary Margaret! Thank God! I was just praying to Him to send somebody to 'tend the light. Who's with you?"

"Nobody ... I got frightened because there was no light and I rowed over. Mother and Uncle Martin are away."

"You don't mean to say you rowed yourself over here alone in the dark and snow! Well, you are the pluckiest little girl about this harbour! It's a mercy I've showed you how to manage the light. Run up and start it at once. Don't mind about me. I tumbled down those pesky stairs like the awkward old fool I am and I've broke my leg and hurt my back so bad I can't crawl an inch. I've been lying here for three mortal hours and they've seemed like three years. Hurry with the light, Mary Margaret."

Mary Margaret hurried. Soon the Big Dipper light was once more gleaming cheerfully athwart the stormy harbour. Then she ran back to her uncle. There was not much she could do for him beyond covering him warmly with quilts, placing a pillow under his head, and brewing him a hot drink of tea.

"I left a note for Mother telling her where I'd gone, Uncle George, so I'm sure Uncle Martin will come right over as soon as they get home."

"He'll have to hurry. It's blowing up now ... hear it ... and snowing thick. If your mother and Martin haven't left the Harbour Head before this, they won't leave it tonight. But, anyhow, the light is lit. I don't mind my getting smashed up compared to that. I thought I'd go crazy lying here picturing to myself a vessel out on the reefs."

That night was a very long and anxious one. The storm grew rapidly worse, and snow and wind howled around the lighthouse. Uncle George soon grew feverish and delirious, and Mary Margaret, between her anxiety for him and her dismal thoughts of poor Nellie tied in her chair over at the Little Dipper, and the dark possibility of her mother and Uncle Martin being out in the storm, felt almost distracted. But the morning came at last, as mornings blessedly will, be the nights never so long and anxious, and it dawned fine and clear over a white world. Mary Margaret ran to the shore and gazed eagerly across at the Little Dipper. No smoke was visible from Uncle Martin's house!

She could not leave Uncle George, who was raving wildly, and yet it was necessary to obtain assistance somehow. Suddenly she remembered the distress signal. She must hoist it. How fortunate that Uncle George had once shown her how!

Ten minutes later there was a commotion over at Harbour Head where the signal was promptly observed, and very soon - although it seemed long enough to Mary Margaret - a boat came sailing over to the Big Dipper. When the men landed they were met by a very white-faced little girl who gasped out a rather disjointed story of a light that hadn't been lighted and an uncle with a broken leg and a sister tied in her chair, and would they please see to Uncle George at once, for she must go straight over to the other Dipper?

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Fair Exchange and No Robbery'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

Next story I'll excerpt (in this book that, er, nobody else appears to have read but me!!) is a really funny story -I like it a lot - it's a romance, but it's written in that way that Lucy Maud has - that really human voice, with an eye towards the comedy in any situation. She doesn't always use that tone - but it's one of my favorites of her narrative voices. Because - I get it. I get her sense of humor. Her impression that life is kind of abSURD. This story is like that.

There are two dear friends - who are in college. Katherine and Edith. Both are seriously involved with someone -Katherine with a guy named Ned and Edith with a guy named Sidney. But neither has met the others beau ... Ned goes to a different college, and Sidney is already out of college. The story opens with Katherine and Edith both getting ready for summer holidays. Katherine is going to spend the summer with her Aunt Elizabeth in a remote seashore town - and Edith is staying on the campus for the summer. But, through a random coincidence, Ned has transferred to Katherine's college and will be there - on campus for the summer - taking courses - and Katherine is bummed and kind of pissed that it should happen just as she is going away. Edith says that she will look out for Ned, and make him feel welcome, not to worry, not to worry. The girls also briefly exchange thoughts about their boyfriends - and you can see that both of them, while fond of their men, have a couple complaints. Katherine is bookish, and loves poetry. Ned laughs at poetry and thinks "women writers are an abomination". Edith's Sidney is VERY bookish - and kind of plain-faced. Katherine admires plain-faced men because they are not vain. Ned, on the other hand, is gorgeous - and very vain - so she has to take him down a peg. And yet she loves him, obviously - it's just two girls kind of complaining about their men and what they lack. Then it's off to vacation! Toodle-oo!!

We follow Katherine on her vacation - where she thinks she will die of boredom in this little seaside town with nothing to do. She ends up meeting a random man (their meeting is the excerpt below) ... and somehow they end up CLICKING. Not romantically - or, of course that is underneath - but ... they just have a good time together. It turns out that he is, actually, Edith's boyfriend - he is writing a book and needed a quiet place for the summer .. so they befriend each other ... and they can't admit what is REALLY going on because they are both involved with someone else. It is very hard for Katherine to say good-bye to him. She is devastated, frankly.

She goes back to the campus town - dreary, sad, not at all looking forward to seeing Ned ... and she comes back to the room she shares with Edith and overhears Edith and Ned inside, having a tormented conversation about what they should do ... how should they "break the news" to Katherine ... Oh, it's so awful ... Edith has STOLEN Katherine's boyfriend! Oh, what a tragedy this is!!

Naturally, to Katherine, it is not a tragedy at all. Because now she will be free to steal EDITH'S boyfriend ... and they can all stay friends ... it will be a fair exchange and no robbery.

This all sounds very prosaic when I write it out like that - but I just love how this story is written - the TONE. I love when she ponders that maybe he is a revivalist.

It was written in 1907 - a year before Anne of Green Gables was published.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Fair Exchange and No Robbery" - by L.M. Montgomery

To pass the time Katherine took to collecting seaweeds, and this involved long tramps along the shore. On one of these occasions she met with an adventure. The place was a remote spot far up the shore. Katherine had taken off her shoes and stockings, tucked up her skirt, rolled her sleeves high above her dimpled elbows, and was deep in the absorbing process of fishing up seaweeds off a craggy headland. She looked anything but dignified while so employed, but under the circumstances dignity did not matter.

Presently she heard a shout from the shore and, turning around in dismay, she beheld a man in the rocks behind her. He was evidently shouting at her. What on earth could the creature want?

"Come in," he called, gesticulating wildly. "You'll be in the bottomless pit in another moment if you don't look out."

"He certainly must be a lunatic," said Katherine to herself, "or else he's drunk. What am I to do?"

"Come in, I tell you," insisted the stranger. "What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, it's madness."

Katherine's indignation got the bettero f her fear.

"I do not think I am trespassing," she called back as icily as possible.

The stranger did not seem to be satisfied at all. He came down to the very edge of the rocks where Katherine could see him plainly. He was dressed in a somewhat well-worn grey suit and wore spectacles. He did not look like a lunatic, and he did not seem to be drunk.

"I implore you to come in," he said earnestly. "You must be standing on the very brink of the bottomless pit."

He is certainly off his balance, thought Katherine. He must be some revivalist who has gone insane on one point. I suppose I'd better go in. He looks quite capable of wading out here after me if I don't.

She picked her steps carefully back with her precious specimens. The stranger eyed her severely as she stepped on the rocks.

"I should think you would have more sense than to risk your life in that fashion for a handful of seaweeds," he said.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean," said Miss Rangely. "You don't look crazy, but you talk as if you were."

"Do you mean to say you don't know that what the people hereabouts call the Bottomless Pit is situated right off that point - the most dangerous spot along the whole coast?"

"No, I didn't," said Katherine, horrified. She remembered now that Aunt Elizabeth ahd warned her to be careful of some bad hole along shore, but she had not been paying much attention and had supposed it to be in quite another direction. "I am a stranger here."

"Well, I hardly thought you'd be foolish enough to be out there if you knew," said the other in mollified accents. "The place ought not to be left without warning, anyhow. It is the most careless thing I ever heard of. There is a big hole right off that point and nobody has ever been able to find the bottom of it. A person who got into it would never be heard of again. The rocks there form an eddy that sucks everything right down."

"I am very grateful to you for calling me in," said Katherine humbly. "I had no idea I was in such danger."

"You have a very find bunch of seaweeds, I see," said the unknown.

But Katherine was in no mood to converse on seaweeds. She suddenly realized what she must look like - bare feet, draggled skirts, dripping arms. And this creature whom she had taken for a lunatic was undoubtedly a gentleman. Oh, if he would only go and give her a chance to put on her shoes and stockings!

Nothing seemed further from his intentions. When Katherine had picked up the aforesaid articles and turned homeward, he walked beside her, still discoursing on seaweeds as eloquently as if he were commonly accustomed to walking with barefooted young women. In spite of herself, Katherine couldn't help listening to him, for he managed to invest seaweeds with an absorbing interest. She finally decided that as he didn't seem to mind her bare feet, she wouldn't either.

He knew so much about seaweeds that Katherine felt decidedly amateurish beside him. He looked over her specimens and pointed out the valuable ones. He explained the best method of preserving and mounting them, and told her of other and less dangerous places along the shore where she might get some new varieties.

When they came in sight of Harbour Hill, Katherine began to wonder what on earth she would do with him. It wasn't exactly permissible to snub a man who had practically saved your life, but, on the other hand, the prospect of walking through the principal street of Harbour Hill barefooted and escorted by a scholarly looking gentleman discoursing on seaweeds was not to be calmly contemplated.

The unknown cut the Gordian knot himself. He said that he must really go back or he would be late for dinner, lifted his hat politely, then sat down on the sand and put on her shoes and stockings.

"Who on earth can he be?" she said to herself. "And where have I seen him before? There was certainly something familiar about his appearance. He is very nice, but he must have thought me crazy. I wonder if he belongs to Harbour Hill."

The Books: "Along the Shore - 'Mackereling Out In the Gulf'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Another seafaring story - this one about fishermen. Although it's also a romance. Benjamin Selby has always loved Mary Stella - since he was little. They were childhood friends. He has cherished a dream, a hope that someday .... and because of that, she has factored into his plans, and the man he has become. He is trying to be a good enough man to deserve her, etc. You get this within a couple paragraphs. Mary Stella is a sweet girl, and kind to Benjamin. These are all fisher-folk - Benjamin is a big swarthy dude who works out on his boat all day. Anyhoo ... suddenly a new guy comes to town - a Frank Braithwaite - and he's a city person, or ... at least he's not one of THEM. But he's handsome, nice ... and he falls for Mary Stella. He does realize that he has a rival in Benjamin Selby - he understands that ... but Mary Stella (you kind of don't know what's going on with her. She seems rather insipid, if you ask me) ends up choosing Frank. Benjamin ends up seeing them in a romantic moment along the shore one day ... and it is so upsetting to him that it's practically anguish. This is his whole LIFE! A couple days later, Frank Braithwaite goes out in a boat with two French Canadian boys (who are, as they always are in Lucy Maud's world, almost minstrel show-y in their behavior) ... none of them are really competent sailors. So they're idiots, basically. And a storm comes up. A horrible storm. People gather on the shore, terrified ... looking out to sea for the boats to come back in ... and all of them do, except for the one with Frank in it. That boat is struggling mightily - and panic rises along the shore ... are they going to drown? So now Benjamin has to make a choice ... he could go out and save them, or he could let his hated rival die ... and maybe then he could have Mary Stella ...

Naturally, Benjamin makes the right choice.

The story itself is kind of simplistic, I guess - there's not much to it - but I'm excerpting it because of the ending which I think is quite touching and very well done.

Excerpt from Along the Shore - "Mackereling Out In the Gulf" - by L.M. Montgomery

Braithwaite came to the shore next day somewhat pale and shaky. He went straight to Benjamin and held out his hand.

"Thank you," he said simply.

Benjamin bent lower over his work.

"You needn't thank me," he said gruffly. "I wanted to let you drown. But I went out for Mary Stella's sake. Tell me one thing - I couldn't bring myself to ask it of anyone else. When are you to be - married?"

"The 12th of September."

Benjamin did not wince. He turned away and looked out across the sea for a few moments. The last agony of his great renunciation was upon him. Then he turned and held out his hand.

"For her sake," he said earnestly.

Frank Braithwaite put his slender white hand into the fisherman's hard brown palm. There were tears in both men's eyes. They parted in silence.

On the morning of the 12th of September Benjamin Selby went out to the fishing grounds as usual. The catch was good, although the season was almost over. In the afternoon the French Canadians went to sleep. Benjamin intended to row down the shore for salt. He stood by his dory, ready to start, but he seemed to be waiting for something. At last it came: a faint train whistle blew, a puff of white smoke floated across a distant gap in the sandhills.

Mary Stella was gone at last - gone forever from his life. The honest blue eyes looking out over the sea did not falter; bravely he faced his desolate future.

The white gulls soared over the water, little swishing ripples lapped on the sand, and through all the gentle, dreamy noises of the shore came the soft, unceasing murmur of the gulf.

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.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

This excerpt is near the end of the book - and it is some of my favorite prose of Lucy Maud's ever. It's practically elegiac. We're about 3 pages from the end of the novel here - and it feels like it will end this way. Which - I still remember my sensation the first time I read this book. I read it - and I read about the wedding that never was - and I was SHOCKED and yet somehow unbelievably thrilled, too - like: maybe now? Maybe now Emily's loneliness will end? Maybe now Emily and Teddy can say what needs to be said? FINALLY?? But then came this section and then came the chilling words: "Year after year ..." and I just remember finding it so unutterably sad when I first read it. And I still do ... but now that I know the ending ... the sadness doesn't feel quite so intense. Because I know that she will get a break soon. There will be a respite. To quote the Little River Band, help is on its way. But dammit, help doesn't arrive until the last damn page ... thanks for putting me through the wringer, Lucy Maud!

To me, this section proves that those who blithely say, "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" are full of shit. Or, to be kinder - they are not fully thinking about what they are saying. They either think that that cliche is true ... or they do not know what to say, and that cliche seems to fit the bill. So I would respond to someone who made the mistake of saying that to me with: "Try it." (stealing a line from Men in Black). TRY it before you say that to me. If you can say that - and if you can say that so easily - then it says to me 2 things. 1. We are not the same kind of person. Maybe for SOME people it is "better to have loved and lost" blah blah ... but this is not true for EVERYBODY. And #2, which is meaner: it says to me that you do not know what you are talking about, and frankly, nobody likes someone who blabbers on as though they are an expert in a subject they know nothing about. If I sound angry, then it's because I am. I mean, not really right now - but anyone who has suffered a loss of any kind will know what I'm talking about. The stupid shit that people say to you. Now, yes, yes, people are well-meaning, people say things because they don't know what to say, people rely on cliche to get their point across - and I have cut these people slack for many years. Thank God this is my blog and I don't have to cut anyone slack here. I can take a break here from having to be a good sport, and nice, and polite.

Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all my ASS.

And finally - this section moves me so much because of Emily's continuing commitment to her love for Teddy. Or - bah - that's a horrible way to say it. It's all in the last paragraph of the excerpt - which still, after reading it so many times, over so many years, brings me to tears. I don't really write in the margins of novels (I do in all my non-fiction books - I bracket stuff, write question marks, underline ... but not in novels or fiction.) but at some point in my life - I put a bracket around that last paragraph. It obviously means a lot to me. It helped me to make sense of what I was doing in my own life ... after I had loved and lost. And no - the cavalry did not run in on the very last page to save me. Help was NOT on its way in my case. But still: the sentiment expressed there, while very difficult, is something dear to my heart.

Many people who get rejected - or not even rejected - who just have things not work out - then turn that into anger and bitterness towards the one who did the rejecting. I call them the "Love/Hate People". As in: "You love me? Oh, I love you too! Oh - now you hate me? Then I hate you too!" You see it all the time. Love turned to hate. This kind of switch-over doesn't really work for me, even though I've been rejected and even though ... sometimes it's even warranted! Like with this dude. If anyone deserves to be scorned and hated by Sheila, it's that dude. But ... I just can't do it. I'm not carrying a torch for him or anything ... it's just that I can't HATE him ... I can't suddenly think he's a bad person, just because he acted like an ass. He's not a bad person. And I can't help but WISH HIM WELL. And his response to me - on that hot sidewalk - as I wished him well - tells me that he was expecting me to be yet another Love/Hate Person. He was baffled by my good will towards him. But I just ... sometimes I have WISHED that I was a Love/Hate Person. That I could just switch off the love - when someone disses me - or hurts me - that I could say, "Okay then - FUCK. YOU." And then I would get to be all pissed and self-righteous. But I can't do that. Sometimes I should, believe me, sometimes I should.

But it's the sentiment in that last paragraph below ...

I guess it's one of my ... credos, maybe you'd call it. I believe in love like that. I really do. Invisible ... not recognized by the rest of the world ... and yet real.

This'll be the last excerpt of the Emily books. sniff, sniff. We will move on to yet another Lucy Maud book after this one - but I have SO enjoyed hanging out with all the Emily fans over these past couple weeks. It's been a total joy.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

That summer was a hard time for Emily. The very anguish of her suffering had filled life and now that it was over she realised its emptiness. Then, too, to go anywhere meant martyrdom. Every one talking about the wedding, asking, wondering, surmising. But at last the wild gossip and clatter over Ilse's kididoes had finally died away and people found something else to talk about. Emily was left alone.

Alone? Ay, that was it. Always alone. Love -- friendship gone forever. Nothing left but ambition. Emily settled herself resolutely down to work. Life ran again in its old accustomed grooves. Year after year the seasons walked by her door. Violet-sprinkled valleys of spring - blossom-script of summer - minstrel-firs of autumn - pale fires of the Milky Way on winter nights - soft, new-mooned skies of April - gnomish beauty of dark Lomardies against a moonrise - deep of sea calling to deep of wind - lonely yellow leaves falling in October dusks - woven moonlight in the orchard. Oh, there was beauty in life still - always would be. Immortal, indestructible beauty beyond all the stain and blur of mortal passion. She had some very glorious hours of inspiration and achievement. But mere beauty which had once satisfied her soul could not wholly satisfy it now. New Moon was unchanged, undisturbed by the changes that came elsewhere. Mrs. Kent had gone to live with Teddy. The old Tansy Patch was sold to some Halifax man for a summer home. Perry went to Montreal one autumn and brought Ilse back with him. They were living happily in Charlottetown, where Emily often visited them, astutely evading the matrimonial traps Ilse was always setting for her. It was becoming an accepted thing in the clan that Emily would not marry.

"Another old maid at New Moon," as Uncle Wallace said gracefully.

"And to think of all the men she might have had," said Aunt Elizabeth bitterly. "My Wallace -- Aylmer Vincent - Andrew -"

"But if she didn't -- love -- them," faltered Aunt Laura.

"Laura, you need not be indelicate."

Old Kelly, who still went his rounds -- "and will till the crack of doom," declared Ilse -- had quite given up teasing Emily about getting married, though he occasionally made regretful, cryptic allusions to "toad ointment". There was none of his significant nods and winks. Instead, he always gravely asked her what book she did be working on now, and drove off shaking his spiky grey head. "What do the men be thinking of, anyway? Get up, my nag, get up."

Some men were still thinking of Emily, it appeared. Andrew, now a brisk youn widower, would have come back at the beck of a finger Emily never lifted. Graham Mitchell, of Shrewsbury, unmistakably had intentions. Emily wouldn't have him because he had a slight cast in one eye. At least, that was what the Murrays supposed. They could think of no other reason for her refusal of so good a match. Shrewsbury people declared that he figured in her next novel and that she had only been "leading him on" to "get material". A reputed Klondike "millionaire" pursued her for a winter, but disappeared as briefly in the spring.

"Since she has published those books she thinks no one good enough for her," said Blair Water folks.

Aunt Elizabeth did not regret the Klondike man - he was only a Derry Pond Butterworth, to begin with, and what were the Butterworths? Aunt Elizabeth always contrived to give the impression that Butterworths did not exist. They might imagine they did, but the Murrays k new better. But she did not see why Emily could not take Mooresby, of the firm of Mooresby and Parker, Charlottetown. Emily's explanation that Mr. Mooresby could never live down the fact that he had once had his picture in the papers as a Perkins' Food Baby struck Aunt Elizabeth as very inadequate. But Aunt Elizabeth at last admitted that she could not understand the younger generation.

III

Of Teddy Emily never heard, save from occasional items in newspapers which represented him as advancing steadily in his career. He was beginning to have an international reputation as a portrait painter. The old days of magazine illustrations were gone and Emily was never now confronted with her own face - or her own smile - or her own eyes - looking out at her from some casual page.

One winter Mrs. Kent died. Before her death she sent Emily a brief note - the only word Emily had ever had from her.

"I am dying. When I am dead, Emily, tell Teddy about the letter. I've tried to tell him, but I couldn't tell my son I had done that. Tell him for me."

Emily smiled sadly as she put the letter away. It was too late to tell Teddy. He had long since ceased to care for her. And she -- she would love him forever. And even though he knew it not, surely such love would hover around him all his life like an invisible benediction, not understood but dimly felt, guarding him from ill and keeping from him all things of harm and evil.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

So all this sad stuff happens ... Emily breaks off her engagement - scandalizing her entire family (they were scandalized by the engagement itself, but then when she broke it off!!) - and then the Teddy second-sight moment - and then he and Ilse come home for the summer and there's all this ... unrequited unspoken stuff going on. Emily is haughty with Teddy - and to my eyes, he is being SO obvious with her. He is giving her an opening. He is saying I'M INTERESTED IN YOU. And she misinterprets a lot of it ... or she's afraid to even MENTION the second-sight moment ... she's afraid that will mean he will KNOW ... etc etc. So there's all this pent-up stuff during the summer, and Ilse is having her own rageful unrequited situation with Perry. All she can talk about is Perry. And yet in one chilling moment she confides in Emily that she has never liked Teddy so much as now. Then there's the dinner party ... Emily was looking forward to it ... and she sees by accident a really intimate look and conversation pass between Ilse and Teddy and it is like her heart has been smashed to the floor like a piece of crockery. Ilse and Teddy leave - and Emily then starts in to have the worst autumn of her life. She obviously is having some sort of depressive response to things. She writes in her journal that life, during that autumn, was unlivable. But of course life goes on ... we read her journal entries, and interestingly enough - more and more they are about nature. She writes about the snow, the stars, the pumpkins, the sunset ... These entries also reflect her MOOD (Lucy Maud is always so good at that - how the landscape can somehow express the mood of the main character) ... but she's trying not to be introspective. She's just trying to survive.

And then comes the next summer - Teddy and Ilse do NOT come home. And Emily has a series of ridiculous love affairs that mean absolutely nothing - she is pretty much just amusing herself - and (of course) her entire family is completely scandalized. Especially when she is being courted by a visiting Japanese prince, and she seems to take it seriously!! She accepts gifts from him! She walks in the garden with him at night! A Japanese prince!

But some of the suitors are just freakin'; hysterical - and you can see how Emily's breezy unconcern for their feelings, and for the opinion of her prudish clan - drives everyone nuts.

My favorite of all of the "love affairs" (and it doesn't even qualify) is the excerpt below. To me, the almost SLAPSTICK energy here - the sense that you are in the presence of a CRAZY person - is classic Lucy Maud. I love how she pits sanity against insanity, she pits civilization against chaos ... and the results are always comedic (I wrote about that here somewhere before).

Anyway, here's one of the funniest episodes. I just LOVE this guy who shows up. He's such a loon.

Background: an editor friend of Emily's asks her to help him out of a bind. He has a story he has been publishing, serial-fashion - and he lost the last chapter. Not to be found anywhere. Editor is furious - beside himself - turns to Emily for help: could she read the rest of the story, and figure out a concluding chapter, and write it? He would pay her. Emily thinks it would be an amusing task so she does. She reads the story (it sounds like a Gothic torrid romance - and it's all about kings and queens - which Emily finds amusing. Does the writer KNOW any kings or queens?) - but Emily does a good job - she comes up with an ingenious ending, a way to tie together all the threads of the plot ... the editor is happy - and the piece is published. Yay! Emily forgets all about it.

Until ...

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

"I wonder if any of the readers will notice where the seam comes in," reflected Emily amusedly. "And I wonder if Mark Greaves will ever see it and if so what he will think."

It did not seem in the least likely she would ever know and she dismissed the matter from her mind. Consequently when, one afternoon two weeks later, Cousin Jimmy ushered a stranger into the sitting-room where Emily was arranging roses in Aunt Elizabeth's rock-crystal goblet with its ruby base - a treasured heirloom of New Moon - Emily did not connect him with A Royal Betrothal, though she had a distinct impression that the caller was an exceedingly irate man.

Cousin Jimmy discreetly withdrew and Aunt Laura, who had come in to place a glass dish full of strawberry preserves on the table to cool, withdrew also,w ondering a little who Emily's odd-looking caller could be. Emily herself wondered. She reamined standing by the table, a slim, gracious thing in her pale-green gown, shining like a star in the shadowy, old-fashioned room.

"Won't you sit down?" she questioned, with all the aloof courtesy of New Moon. But the newcomer did not move. He simply stood before her staring at her. And again Emily felt that, while he had been quite furious when he came in, he was not in the least angry now.

He must have been born, of course, because he was there - but it was incredible, she thought, he would ever have been a baby. He wore audacious clothes and a monocle, screwed into one of his eyes - eyes that seemed absurdly like little black currants with black eyebrows that made right-angled triangles above them. He had a mane of black hair reaching to his shoulders, an immensely long chin and a marble-white face. In a picture Emily thought he would have looked rather handsome and romantic. But here in the New Moon sitting-room he looked merely weird.

"Lyrical creature," he said, gazing at her.

Emily wondered if he were by any chance an escaped lunatic.

"You do not commit the crime of ugliness," he continued fervently. "This is a wonderful moment - very wonderful. 'Tis a pity we must spoil it by talking. Eyes of purple-grey, sprinkled with gold. Eyes that I have looked for all my life. Sweet eyes, in which I drowned myself eons ago."

"Who are you?" said Emily crisply, now entirely convinced that he was quite mad. He laid his hand on his heart and bowed.

"Mark Greaves - Mark D. Greaves - Mark Delage Greaves."

Mark Greaves! Emily had a confused idea that she ought to know the name. It sounded curiously familiar.

"Is it possible you do not recognize my name! Verily this is fame. Even in this remote corner of the world I should have supposed --"

"Oh!" cried Emily, light suddenly breaking in on her. "I -- I remember now. You wrote A Royal Betrothal."

"The story you so unfeelingly murdered - yes."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Emily interrupted. "Of course you would think it unpardonable. It was this way -- you see --"

He stopped her by a wave of a very long, very white hand.

"No matter. No matter. It does not interest me at all now. I admit I was very angry when I came herre. I am stopping at the Derry Pond Hotel ofThe Dunes -- ah, what a name - poetry - mystery - romance - and I saw the special edition of The Argus this morning. I was angry - had I not a right to be? - and yet more sad than angry. My story was barbarously mutilated. A happy ending. Horrible. My ending was sorrowful and artistic. A happy ending can never be artistic. I hastened to the den of The Argus. I dissembled my anger - I discovered who was responsible. I came here - to denounce - to upbraid. I remain to worship."

Emily simply did not know what to say. New Moon traditions held no precedent for this.

"You do not understand me. You are puzzled - your bewilderment becomes you. Again I say a wonderful moment. To come enraged - and behold divinity. To realise as soon as I saw you that you were meant for me and me alone."

Emily wished somebody would come in. This was getting nightmarish.

"It is absurd to talk so," she said shortly. "We are strangers --"

"We are not strangers," he interrupted. "We have loved in some other life, of course, and our love was a violent, gorgeous thing - a love of eternity. I recognized you as soon as I entered. As soon as you have recovered from your sweet surprise you will realise this, too. When can you marry me?"

To be asked by a man to marry him five minutes after the first moment you have laid eyes on him is an experience more stimulating than pleasant. Emily was annoyed.

"Don't talk nonsense, please," she said curtly. "I am not going to marry you at any time."

"Not marry me? But you must! I have never before asked a woman to marry me. I am the famous Mark Greaves. I am rich. I have the charm and romance of my French mother and the common sense of my Scotch father. With the French side of me I feel and acknowledge your beauty and mystery. With the Scotch side of me I bow in homage to your reserve and dignity. You are ideal -- adorable. Many women have loved me but I loved them not. I enter this room a free man. I go out a captive. Enchanting captivity! Adorable captor! I kneel before you in spirit."

Emily was horribly afraid he would kneel before her in the flesh. He looked quite capable of it. And suppose Aunt Elizabeth should come in.

"Please go away," she said desperately. "I'm -- I'm very busy and I can't stop talking to you any longer. I'm sorry about the story - if you would let me explain -"

"I have said it does not matter about the story. Though you must learn never to write happy endings - never. I will teach you. I wil teach you the beauty and artistry of sorrow and incompleteness. Ah, what a pupil you will be! What bliss to teach such a pupil! I kiss your hand."

He made a step nearer as if to seize upon it. Emily stepped backward in alarm.

"You must be crazy," she exclaimed.

"Do I look crazy?" demanded Mark Greaves.

"You do," retorted Emily flatly and cruelly.

"Perhaps I do - probably I do. Crazy - intoxicated with wine of the rose. All lovers are mad. Divine madness! Oh, beautiful, unkissed lips!"

Emily drew herself up. This absurd interview must end. She was by now thoroughly angry.

"Mr. Greaves," she said - and such was the power of the Murray look that Mr. Greaves realised she meant exactly what she said. "I shan't listen to any more of this nonsense. Since you won't let me explain about the matter of the story I bid you good-afternoon."

Mr. Greaves looked gravely at her for a moment. Then he said solemnly:

"A kiss? Or a kick? Which?"

Was he speaking metaphorically? But whether or no --

"A kick," said Emily disdainfully.

Mr. Greaves suddenly seized the crystal goblet and dashed it violently against the stove.

Emily uttered a faint shriek - partly of real horror - partly of dismay. Aunt Elizabeth's treasured goblet.

"That was merely a defence reaction," said Mr. Greaves, glaring at her. "I had to do that - or kill you. Ice-maiden! Chill vestal! Cold as your northern snows! Farewell."

He did not slam the door as he went out. He merely shut it gently and irrevocably, so that Emily might realise what she had lost. When she saw that he was really out of the garden and marching indignantly down the lane as if he were crushing something beneath his feet, she permitted herself the relief of a long breath - the first she had dared to draw since his entrance.

"I suppose," she said, half hysterically, "that I ought to be thankful he did not throw the dish of strawberry preserves at me."

Aunt Elizabeth came in.

"Emily, the rock-crystal goblet! Your Grandmother Murray's goblet! And you have broken it!"

"No, really, Aunty dear, I didn't. Mr. Greaves - Mr. Mark Delage Greaves did it. He threw it at the stove."

"Threw it at the stove!" Aunt Elizabeth was staggered. "Why did he throw it at the stove?"

"Because I wouldn't marry him," said Emily.

"Marry him! Did you ever see him before?"

"Never."

Aunt Elizabeth gathered up the fragments of the crystal goblet and went out quite speechless. There was - there must be - something wrong with a girl when a man proposed marriage to her at first meeting. And hurled heirloom goblets at inoffensive stoves.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

The whole 'furnishing of the Disappointed House' section is fantastically written. It's so domestic, so SPECIFIC - Lucy Maud gets into the decorating details with exquisite details ... the mirrors, the china, the knick knacks Dean brings in from all over the world, the pictures on the wall, the sofas ... Elizabeth's opinion on all of it ... and it's that very specificity that (to me) gives the whole section its eerie quality. Emily is putting all of her energy into furniture and wallpaper because what is WRONG is so wrong that to even look at it would seem like a betrayal. There's a moment where she admits to herself, at 3 a.m., that the house means more to her than Dean does ... but then Lucy Maud writes that she said that to herself and 'then refused to believe it the next morning.' Poor Emily. She knows the truth - her subconscious knows the truth - but she is REFUSING to look at it. And so she has moments of terrible haunting. Moments when she looks at the fireplace in the Disappointed House and remembers Teddy ... moments when she feels trapped by her engagement ring and like she wants to fling it away ...

It's depressing, yes, but Lucy Maud is at her best. Seriously. She's never been so successfully DARK as in this book. (She TRIED to be dark at points during Mistress Pat but by that point I am so annoyed at stupid freakin' Pat that I think she deserves what she gets. You're scared and haunted, Pat? Well, good. Maybe THAT will snap you out of your immature attachment to nothing ever changing. You need psychological HELP, Pat. Seriously. Get it, and soon. Ooooh, I can't wait to excerpt THOSE 2 books! The only ones where Lucy Maud fails - that's gonna be fun!!) But back to Emily: There are images from Emily's Quest that just stay with me - Emily pacing up and down the seashore in the middle of the night, in psychic agony. Staring at the emerald ring on her finger, hating it, thinking of it as a "fetter". Poor Dean - throwing himself into the fun of homemaking, for the first time in his life. And she sits beside him, staring into the fire, wondering if she will ever stop thinking of Teddy. Dean, now that he has captured her, relaxes a bit. He doesn't realize that the price Emily has had to pay to get to this point is too high. Her writing is done. She has lost interest in it. This may have made Dean happy ... but he didn't realize that this will come back to "get" him in the end. Nobody can give up a dream like that without serious repercussions. It has to be dealt with openly. You cannot force someone to downgrade or give up their dear dreams. Emily is not at that point yet ... she is just kind of listless and indifferent to the thought of all that ambition. The only thing she cares about is getting the right china for her house ... the house she loves so much. It is all she CAN care about.

It's an extremely eerie section.

And then it all culminates with Emily's last (at least in the books!!) second-sight experience. Each book has some kind of paranormal event ... where Emily is not just experiencing it, but changing the course of people's lives. Ilse Burnley's mother is found - after years of her whole family thinking she has run off with another man. Allan Bradshaw is found - he was trapped in an empty house for 4 days - he wouldn't have lived much longer - and Emily saw where he was in a dream. And now ... this moment. Where she reaches across the ocean - across the space-time continuum - to warn Teddy of impending disaster.

That's the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

II

But that letter from Ilse that day. Teddy was coming home. He was to sail on the Flavian. He was going to be home most of the summer.

"If it could have been all over - before he came," muttered Emily.

Always to be afraid of to-morrow? Content - even happy with to-day - but always afraid of to-morrow. Was this to be her life? And why that fear of tomorrow?

She had brought the key of the Disappointed House with her. She had not been in it since November and she wanted to see it - beautiful, waiting, desirable. Her home. In its charm and sanity vague, horrible fears and doubts woudl vanish. The soul of that happy last summer would come back to her. She paused at the garden gate to look lovingly at it - the dear little house nestled under the old trees that sighed softly as they had sighed to her childhood visions. Below, Blair Water was grey and sullen. She loved Blair Water in all its changes - its sparkle of summer, its silver of dusk, its miracle of moonlight, its dimpled rings of rain. And she loved it now, dark and brooding. There was somehow a piercing sadness in that sullent, waiting landscape all around her - as if - the odd fancy crossed her mind - as if it were afraid of spring. How this idea of fear haunted her! She looked up beyond the spires of the Lombardies on the hill. And in a sudden pale rift between the clouds a star shone down on her - Vega of the Lyre.

With a shiver Emily hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped in. The house seemed to be vacant - waiting for her. She fumbled through the darkness to the matches she knew were on the mantelpiece and lighted the tall, pale-green taper beside the clock. The beautiful room glimmered out at her in the flickering light - just as they had left it that last evening. There was Elizabeth Bas, who could never have known the meaning of fear - Mona Lisa, who mocked at it. But the Lady Giovanna, who never turned her saintly profile to look squarely at you. Had she ever known it - this suble, secret fear that one could never put in words? - that would be so ridiculous if one could put it in words? Dean Priest's sad lovely mother. Yes, she had known fear; it looked out of her pictured eyes now in that dim, furtive light.

Emily shut the door and sat down in the armchair beneath Elizabeth Bas' picture. She could hear the dead, dry leaves of a dead summer rustling eerily on the beach just outside the window. And the wind - rising - rising - rising. But she liked it. "The wind is free - not a prisoner like me." She crushed the unbidden thought down sternly. She would not think such things. Her fetters were of her own forging. She had put them on willingly, even desirously. Nothing to do but wear them gracefully.

How the sea moaned down there below the fields! But here in the little house what a silence there was! Something strange and uncanny about the silence. It seemed to hold some profound meaning. She would not have dared to speak lest something should answer her. Yet fear suddenly left her. She felt dreamy - happy - far away from life and reality. The walls of the shadowy room seemed slowly to fade from her vision. The pictures withdrew themselves. There seemed to be nothing before her but Great-aunt Nancy's gazing-ball hung from the old iron lantern - a big, silvery, gleaming globe. In it she saw the reflected room, like a shining doll's-house, with herself sitting in the old, low chair and the taper on the mantelpiece like a tiny, impish star. Emily looked at it as she leaned back in her chair - looked at it till she saw nothing but that tiny point of light in a great misty universe.

III

Did she sleep? Dream? Who knows? Emily herself never know. Twice before in her life - once in delirium - once in sleep she had drawn aside the veil of sense and time and seen beyond. Emily never liked to remember those experiences. She forgot them deliberately. She had not recalled them for years. A dream - a fancy fever-bred. But this?

A small cloud seemed to shape itself within the gazing-ball. It dispersed - faded. But the reflected doll's-house in the ball was gone. Emily saw an entirely different scene - a long lofty room filled with streams of hurrying people - and among them a face she knew.

The gazing-ball was gone - the room in the Disappointed House was gone. She was no longer sitting in her chair looking on. She was in that strange, great room - she was among those throngs of people - she was standing by the man who was waiting impatiently before a ticket-window. As he turned his face and their eyes met she saw that it was Teddy - she saw the amazed recognition in his eyes. And she knew, indisputably, that he was in some terrible danger - and that she must save him.

"Teddy. Come."

It seemed to her that she caught his hand and pulled him away from the window. Then she was drifting back from him - back - back - and he was following - running after her - heedless of the people he ran into - following - following - she was back on the chair - outside of the gazing-ball - in it she still saw the station-room shrunk again to play-size - and that one figure running - still running - the cloud again - filling the ball - whitening - wavering - thinning - clearning. Emily was lying back in her chair staring fixedly into Aunt Nancy's gazing-ball, where the living-room was reflected calmly and silverly, with a dead-white spot that was her face and one solitary taper-light twinkling like an impish star.

IV

Emily, feeling as if she had died and come back to life, got herself out of the Disappointed House, and locked the door. The clouds had cleared away and the world was dim and unreal in starlight. Hardly realising what she was doing she turned her face seaward through the spruce wood - down the long, windy, pasture-field - over the dunes to the sandshore - along it like a haunted, driven creature in a weird, uncanny half-lit kingdom. The sea afar out was like grey satin half hidden in a creeping fog but it washed against the sands as she passed in little swishing, mocking ripples. She was shut in between the misty sea and the high, dark sand-dunes. If she could only go on so forever - never have to turn back and confront the unanswerable question the night had put to her.

She knew, beyond any doubt or cavil or mockery, that she had seen Teddy - had saved, or tried to save him, from some unknown peril. And she knew, just as simply and just as surely that she loved him - had always loved him, with a love that lay at the very foundation of her being.

And in two months' time she was to be married to Dean Priest.

What could she do? To marry him now was unthinkable. She could not live such a lie. But to break his heart - snatch from him all the happiness possible to his thwarted life - that, too, was unthinkable.

Yes, as Ilse had said, it was a very devilish thing to be a woman.

"Particularly," said Emily, filled with bitter self-contempt, "a woman who seemingly doesn't know her own mind for a month at a time. I was so sure last summer that Teddy no longer meant anything to me - so sure that I really cared enough for Dean to marry him. And now to-night - and that horrible power or gift or curse coming again when I thought I had outgrown it - left it behind forever."

Emily walked on that eerie sandshore half the night and slipped guiltily and stealthily into New Moon in the wee sma's to fling herself on her bed and fall at last in the absolute slumber of exhaustion.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

Now the Emily books start getting really really sad. The whole unspoken unrequited love thing with Teddy really speaks to me - even though it's frustrating to read it. I want to tell her to give up her pride - to make herself more available to him - to not make Teddy have to WORK so hard. But if she did any of those things, she would not be Emily. But more than that: the hope of her little book she wrote - having the hopes crushed by rejection letters - and then totally crushed by Dean. Dean, in his gentle way, goes right for the jugular - and basically says, "Stop hoping that you can DO anything with your writing, Emily." Emily is grief-stricken. She has no Teddy. All she has is her writing. What would life be without her writing? How can she stop hoping? She burns up her book - and then almost immediately afterwards - regrets it. She can never get her book back (of course she doesn't have a copy ... this is 1914 or whatever - NOW she would have to erase it off her hard drive as well!) ... and her sadness is so intense that she feels she must go outside, she must get OUT, she is trapped, a trapped creature - so she runs out into the hall, trips on something, falls down the stairs, and her foot is pierced by Laura's sewing scissors which had been left on the landing. The injury is so serious that it is thought Emily will never walk again. She tries to recover. But everything is different now.

Anyhoo. Here's an excerpt from this section. It's all really bleak and sad. Great writing, though, as always. Oh - and this excerpt good because we had that big discussiong about the merits of Dean yesterday.

And, I don't know ... these books always feel, to me, like Lucy Maud's most personal ... and the darkness in them is a reflection of that. Lucy Maud had a sad life. Sometimes reading her journals (especially from about 1918 on) are unbearable. Her sadness is so huge, and she can't express it. She must remain calm, and quiet ... because her husband's mental illness is a secret, and obviously stigmatized ... and he would lose his livelihood if it "got out" that he was a nutjob. I often wonder if people in those towns knew about him ... I am SURE they did. Lucy Maud can't have been the only one. He was a reverend - which means he was a public figure. It's not like he could just hang out in the house, and be all insane and stuff. He was out, about, visiting, heading committees, giving services, giving sermons ... I wonder about the remembrances of others in that town (probably too late now to find out) ... But Lucy Maud still bore that up all on her own. Thank God she was a famous woman, with her own money, and her own life ... she was not reliant upon him for anything. It wasn't a real marriage. She suffered in silence for, oh, 30 years? You want to tell her to share with someone, to talk about it, to not be ashamed ... but if she did then she would not be Lucy Maud.

There are a lot of similarities in that situation to Emily's. Not the FACTS of the situation ... but the energy behind it.

Lucy Maud, when she lost her cousin Frede in the 1918 influenza epidemic - lost her only confidante. The only friend she had. Her kindred spirit. She probably could have talked to frede about this stuff ... She could at least have not felt so alone. When Frede died, that was it for Lucy Maud, in terms of friends. She was a one-friend type of person, she could not have another.

At this point in Emily's life - Ilse seems so far away, so ... unreachable. She swoops into town on her vacations, she's dressed insanely well but also really glamorously - with earrings, and silks ... she parties hard, dances all night long, etc. She seems to be having FUN all the time ... and so there is a barrier between Ilse and Emily. Emily now has this darkness within her ... a loneliness, a sadness. She feels she MUST hide it ... she can no longer confide in Ilse. (She probably COULD, come to think of it ... Ilse is probably just as baffled by the distance between them as Emily is ... but neither of them break the ice ...) They are too distant.

It's all just really sad.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

From October to April Emily Starr lay in bed or on the sitting-room lounge watching the interminable windy drift of clouds over the long white hills or the passionless beauty of winter trees around quiet fields of snow, and wondering if she would ever walk again - or walk only as a pitiable cripple. There was some obscure injury to her back upon which the doctors could not agree. One said it was negligible and would right itself in time. Two others shook their heads and were afraid. But all were agreed about the foot. The scissors had made two cruel wounds - one by the ankle, one on the sole of the foot. Blood-poisoning set in. For days Emily hovered between life and death, then between the scarcely less terrible alternative of death and amputation. Aunt Elizabeth prevented that. When all the doctors agreed that it was the only way to save Emily's life she said grimly that it was not the Lord's will, as understood by the Murrays, that people's limbs should be cut off. Nor could she be removed from this position. Laura's tears and Cousin Jimmy's pleadings and Dr. Burnley's execrations and Dean Priest's agreements budged her not a lot. Emily's foot should not be cut off. Nor was it. When she recovered unmaimed Aunt Elizabeth was triumphant and Dr. Burnley confounded.

The danger of amputation was over, but the danger of lasting and bad lameness remained. Emily faced that all winter.

"If I only knew one way or the other," she said to Dean. "If I knew, I could make up my mind to bear it - perhaps. But to lie here - wondering - wondering if I'll ever be well."

"You will be well," said Dean savagely.

Emily did not know what she would have done without Dean that winter. He had given up his invariable winter trip and stayed in Blair Water that he might be near her. He spent the days with her, reading, talking, encouraging, sitting in the silence of perfect companionship. When he was with her Emily felt that she might even be able to face a lifetime of lameness. But in the long nights when everything was blotted out by pain she could not face it. Even when there was no pain her nights were often sleepless and very terrible when the wind wailed drearily about the old New Moon eaves or chased flying phantoms of snow over the hills. When she slept she dreamed, and in her dreams she was forever climbing stairs and could never get to the top of them, lured upward by an odd little whistle - two higher notes and a low one - that ever retreated as she climbed. It was better to lie awake than to have that terrible, recurrent dream. Oh, those bitter nights! Once Emily had not thought that the Bible verse declaring that there would be no night in heaven contained an attractive promise. No night? No soft twilight enkindled with stars? No white sacrament of moonlight? No mystery of velvet shadow and darkness? No ever-amazing miracle of dawn? Night was as beautiful as day and heaven would not be perfect without it.

But now in these dreary weeks of pain and dread she shared the hope of the Patmian seer. Night was a dreadful thing.

People said Emily Starr was very brave and patient and uncomplaining. But she did not seem so to herself. They did not know of the agonies of rebellion and despair and cowardice behind her outward calmness of Murray pride and reserve. Even Dean did not know - though perhaps he suspected.

She smiled gallantly when smiling was indicated, but she never laughed. Not even Dean could make her laugh, though he tried with all the powers of wit and humour at his command.

"My days of laughter are done," Emily said to herself. And her days of creation as well. She could never write again. The "flash" never came. No rainbow spanned the gloom of that terrible winter. People came to see her continuously. She wished they would stay away. Especially Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ruth, who were sure she would never walk again and said so every time they came. Yet they were not so bad as the callers who were cheerfully certain she would be all right in time and did not believe a word of it themselves. She had never had any intimate friends except Dean and Ilse and Teddy. Ilse wrote weekly letters in which she rather too obviously tried to cheer Emily up. Teddy wrote once when he heard of her accident. The letter was very kind and tactful and sincerely sympathetic. Emily thought it was the letter any indifferent friendly acquaintance might have written and she did not answer it though he had asked her to let him know how she was getting on. No more letters came. There was nobody but Dean. He had never failed her - never would fail her. More and more as the interminable days of storm and gloom passed she turned to him. In that winter of pain she seemed to herself to grow so old and wise that they met on equal ground at last. Without him life was a bleak, grey desert devoid of colour or music. When he came the desert would - for a time at least - blossom like the rose of joy and a thousand flowerets of fancy and hope and illusion would fling their garlands over it.

The Books: "Emily's Quest" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

In a weird way, even with all its ... sadness and tragedy and thwarted passion (God almighty! The thwarted passion!!) - sometimes I think Emily's Quest is my favorite of the 3 Emily books (it's my least favorite of the titles though. It doesn't give a sense of the feel of the book at all.) I love this one because it, like all the others, is a blend of comedy and tragedy - we have her diary entries, we learn about her successes in writing ... we get the small domestic dramas (some second cousin the next town over is convinced that Emily "put her into a story" and she's upset about it) ... and then of course the romances.

Emily still hangs out with Dean Priest - but now that she's a woman of 19, 20, 21 years old ... the dynamic shifts a bit. It is Dean's moment, the one he has been waiting for since she was a small child. Which is kind of creepy, and reading the book - I STILL am wondering what she sees in Dean. As an adult, I mean. Other fans of the booK: what do YOU all think of Dean? What's your response to him? As her work grows in importance and relevance, as it starts to make her some money (not a lot at first, but some) ... Dean starts to resent it. He used to take her seriously - when she was a child, and her "work" was no threat to him, it might be something she would grow out of, it also made her charming and precocious ... but to keep on doing it? To have a passion in life other than ... him? He doesn't like that. I don't know. I want to smack Dean upside the head at times. He wants to CAPTURE Emily. And although I have never met the woman (uhm, she's fictional, remember?) and I do not know her personally, I do know one thing: you should never try to CAPTURE her. And you can never expect to be the only thing in her life. She will always have her writing. It will take her away from you. Deal. Are you man enough to deal? Dean Priest is not. It is not until Emily is completely BROKEN (this book goes to some pretty dark places) that she says, "Yes, I'll marry you, Dean." But she is only half a person by then. Her heart has been broken. And he is partly responsible for it. He condescended to her book, the book that she poured her heart and soul into. And it's not that she just wanted praise. Its that Dean LIED. Dean saw the special-ness of the book itself - but also saw how much it meant to her ... and oh no no we can't have THAT. We can't have Emily have a passion other than ME. So he lied. In my opinion, he's a selfish bastard. I can barely forgive him for that. And once he has broken her ... one she has burned up her book and injured herself by falling down the stairs and nearly died ... Dean thinks she is broken enough to accept being his wife. grrrr. I'm putting a dark spin on him but I don't know - that's what I see. Only then does Emily turn towards Dean, as something known and comforting ... his demands on her soul no longer bother her because her soul has been crushed. Lovely. And Dean Priest is the kind of person who would accept half a woman, because half is better than none at all. I don't know, I don't like the guy. He seemed oKAY when she was a kid - but even then there was something a little too ... proprietary about his affections for her. I dislike that intensely. Let Emily be. Don't assume you know her better than she knows herself. I've had people treat me like that before (also on this blog) and it is infuriating!

However, just because I don't understand something doesn't mean it's not interesting - quite the contrary. Dean is one of Lucy Maud's most interesting and intriguing characters. He's never expected, he always seems slightly creepy to me, and yet I trust Emily (fictional character that she is) - that something in her is fulfilled by their conversations. Perhaps his whimsy, his education, the fact that he has traveled the world ... also the fact that he is an ADULT, and he validates that she is SPECIAL. Like her father used to do. But nobody does that for Emily now. If anything it's the opposite. Emily isn't like anybody else and all of the adults around her are trying to force her into a different mold, a more conventional mold. Dean does not do that. Not at first, anyway. I do not understand Emily's attachment to Dean (anyone who said to me, "Don't worry about your art - Your smile and your eyes will get you way further than your art ever will" can expect to have my undying hatred forever) ... I am like Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura who wonder, "What does she see in him??" ... but that just makes it all the more fascinating. And almost horrifying - to watch everything unfold. Because ... that's how life is sometimes. Things DON'T work out the way you want them to. You DO make choices that you think might be temporary and then they turn out to be permanent. There AREN'T always happy endings. You don't end up with who you are suppoesd to end up with. You are haunted by another. Blah blah. Life tasted sweet once ... there were possibilities .. .hopes ... but now, no more. Give up. Give up. This is the journey that Emily goes on in this book. And there are parts of it that are so freakin' SAD, filled with such loss ... that I really related to it. I really relate to Emily. I have had attachments to men that the majority of the people in my life found inexplicable. I have resisted getting attached to anybody - because so many men have that proprietary thing going on ... and I can't bear it. Love me, but don't feel you must OWN me. Because I won't be owned. I have been that sad, and for that long. So I may not get why she finds Dean's company so refreshing ... but that's not because I think there is something wrong in the book, or in Lucy Maud's description of it. There's nothing MISSING. It's just my personal response to the events that unfold. I want to scream at the book, "NO! YOU CAN'T MARRY HIM, EMILY! THIS IS GOING TO BE A HUGE HUGE MISTAKE!" But Lucy Maud makes us squirm, makes us wait ... it goes until almost the very last second ... the situation requires a sudden reversal (very typical of Lucy Maud's plots - a situation goes on unchanged for 25 years and then suddenly, in 5 minutes, with one or 2 sentences, the whole thing transforms. "I always loved you!" "I never forgave you." "I never got your letter." Etc.) And in Emily's Quest this wait is really agonizing - the most agonizing of all of Lucy Maud's stories. Emily's soul is on the rack. I mean, this woman goes through the wringer. And - I love her for it. I ache for her. Tears fill my eyes when she finds happiness because it is so hard-won, so RIGHT.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book - an evening with Dean Priest.

And even though the excerpt itself is a foreshadowing of what will come - a cloud hangs over the whole thing, doesn't it?? - I love the typical Lucy Maud touch at the very end, where she talks about "thirty years later". Too funny. Really puts some perspective on it. It's never good to be TOO serious.

Excerpt from Emily's Quest - by L.M. Montgomery

Was Dean Priest changing from friend to lover? Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. Disagreeable nonsense. For she did not want him as a lover and she did want him madly as a friend. She couldn't lose his friendship. It was too dear, delightful, stimulating, wonderful. Why did such devilish things ever happen? When Emily reached this point in her disconneted musings she always stopped and retraced her mental steps fiercely, terrified to realise that she was almost on the point of admitting that "the something devilish" had already happened or was in process of happening.

In one way it was almost a relief to her when Dean said casually one November evening:

"I suppose I must soon be thinking of my annual migration."

"Where are you going this year?" asked Emily.

"Japan. I've never been there. Don't want to go now particularly. But whats the use of staying? Would you want to talk to me in the sitting-room all winter with the aunts in hearing?"

"No," said Emily between a laugh and a shiver. She recalled one fiendish autumn evening of streaming rain and howling wind when they couldn't walk in the garden but had to sit in the room where Aunt Elizabeth was knitting and Aunt Laura crocheting by the table. It had been awful. And again why? Why couldn't they talk as freely and whimsically and intimately then as they did in the garden? The answer to this at least was not to be expressed in any terms of sex. Was it because they talked of so many things Aunt Elizabeth could not understand and so disapproved of? Perhaps. But whatever the cause Dean might as well have been at the other side of the world for all the real conversation that was possible.

"So I might as well go," said Dean, waiting for this exquisite, tall, white girl in an old garden to say she would miss him horribly. She had said it every one of his flitting autumns for many years. But she did not say it this time. She found she dared not.

Again, why?

Dean was looking at her with eyes that could be tender or sorrowful or passionate, as he willed, and which now seemed to be a mixture of all three expressions. He must hear her say she would miss him. His true reason for going away this winter was to make her realise how much she missed him - make her feel that she could not live without him.

"Will you miss me, Emily?"

"That goes without saying," answered Emily lightly - too lightly. Other years she had been very frank and serious about it. Dean was not altogether regretful for the change. But he could guess nothing of the attitude of mind behind it. She must have changed because she felt something - suspected something, of what he had striven for years to hide and suppress as rank madness. What then? Did this new lightness indicate that she didn't want to make a too important thing of admitting she would miss him? Or was it only the instinctive defence of a woman against something that implied or evoked too much?

"It will be so dreadful here this winter without you and Teddy and Ilse that I will not let myself think of it at all," went on Emily. "Last winter was bad. And this - I know somehow - will be worse. But I'll have my work."

"Oh, yes, your work," agreed Dean with a little tolerant, half-amused inflection in his voice that always came now when he spoke of her "work", as if it tickled him hugely that she sholud call her pretty scribblings "work". Well, one must humour the charming child. He could not have said so more plainly in words. His implications cut across Emily's sensitive soul like a whiplash. And all at once her work and her ambitions became - momentarily at least - as childish and unimportant as he considered them. She could not hold her own conviction against him. He must know. He was so clever - so well-educated. He must know. That was the agony of it. She could not ignore his opinion. Emily knew deep down in her heart that she would never be able wholly to believe in herself until Dean Priest admitted that she could do something honestly worth while in its way. And if he never admitted it --

"I shall carry pictures of you wherever I go, Star," Dean was saying. Star was his old nickname for her - not a pun on her name but because he said she reminded him of a star. "I shall see you sitting in your room by that old lookout window, spinning your pretty cobwebs - pacing up and down in this old garden - wandering in the Yesterday Road - looking out to sea. Whenever I shall recall a bit of Blair Water loveliness I shall see you in it. After all, all other beauty is only background for a beautiful woman."

"Her pretty cowebs--" ah, there it was. That was all Emily heard. She did not even realise that he was telling her he thought her a beautiful woman.

"Do you think what I write is nothing but cobwebs, Dean?" she asked chokingly.

Dean looked surprised, doing it very well.

"Star, what else is it? What do you think it is yourself? I'm glad you can amuse yourself by writing. It's a splendid thing to have a little hobby of the kind. And if you can pick up a few shekels by it - well, that's all very well too in this kind of a world. But I'd hate to have you dream of being a Bronte or an Austen - and wake to find you'd wasted your youth on a dream."

"I don't fancy myself a Bronte or an Austen," said Emily. "But you didn't talk like that long ago, Dean. You used to think then I could do something one day."

"We don't bruise the pretty visions of a child," said Dean. "But it's foolish to carry childish dreams over into maturity. Better face facts. You write charming things of their kind, Emily. Be content with that and don't waste your best years yearning for the unattainable or striving to reach some height far beyond your grasp."

II

Dean was not looking at Emily. He was leaning on the old sundial and scowling down at it with the air of a man who was forcing himself to say a disagreeable thing because he felt it was his duty.

"I won't be just a mere scribbler of pretty stories," cried Emily rebelliously. He looked into her face. She was as tall as he was -- a trifle taller, though he would not admit it.

"You do not need to be anything but what you are," he said in a low vibrant tone. "A woman such as this old New Moon has never seen before. You can do more with those eyes - that smile - than you can ever do with your pen."

"You sound like Great-aunt Nancy Priest," said Emily cruelly and contemptuously.

But had he not been cruel and contemptuous to her? Three o'clock that night found her wide-eyed and anguished. She had lain through sleepless hours face to face with two hateful convictions. One was that she could never do anything worth doing with her pen. The other was that she was going to lose Dean's friendship. For friendship was all she could give him and it would not satisfy him. She must hurt him. And oh, how could she hurt Dean whom life had used so cruelly? She had said "no" to Andrew Murray and laughed a refusal to Perry Miller without a qualm. But this was an utterly different thing.

Emily sat up in bed in the darkness and moaned in a despair that was none the less real and painful because of the indisputable fact that thirty years later she might be wondering what on earth she had been moaning about.

"I wish there were no such things as lovers and lovemaking in the world," she said with savage intensity, honestly believeing she meant it.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 7!!

I think this'll be my last excerpt from this book, although I love it so. I may change my mind tomorrow. I reserve the right to do that.

This, for me, is one of the funniest episodes in the book ... it's so RIDICULOUS, and it totally feels like it could have happened, because life just is that absurd sometimes. Perry comes and knocks on the window at Aunt Ruth's - he needs to talk to Emily. He had been invited to dinner at some illustrious judge's house - and Emily had been dying to hear how it all turned out. Perry is kind of lacking in manners - or, no - let's just say that certain refined manners do not come naturally to him - he needs to be REMINDED. Emily reminds him. Stuff like: don't fidget. Don't eat stuff off your knife. Don't slurp when you take a sip of water. Etc. So it's 11 pm or something like that - and Emily had gone down to the dining room to get something - she was in her nightgown - and suddenly there is Perry at the window, knocking. Emily knew she SHOLUDN'T open the the window ... but ... well. She's not a girl who worries all that much about should and shouldn't. She opens the window - and then comes a long conversation, with Perry standing outside, and Emily standing inside - where Perry tells her all about dinner at the judge's house. First of all, the entire story of all of the mishaps during the dinner ... Lucy Maud is in rare rare form. This is one of the times I love her best - in her comedic moments, when things go WRONG. Especially when things go wrong and everyone WANTS them to go right. Like in Anne of Green Gables (excerpt here) when Marilla has the new minister and his wife over for tea and lets Anne make the pudding - and suddenly during the tea - with everyone at the table, nice and civilized - Anne stands up suddenly and shouts at Marilla, "A MOUSE DROWNED IN THE PUDDING. I FORGOT TO TELL YOU BEFORE!" I am laughing right now as I type this. hahahahaha Lucy Maud has a wicked and almost subversive sense of humor. It's like the Marx Brothers. It is, Sheila? Yes, it is. To me, the Marx Brothers are funniest when they are in a situation where it is required that they be really civilized and proper. Because then you see even MORE how ridiculous it all is. You see how ridiculous even the CONCEPT of "order" is. Anyway, so Perry's big meal at the judge's is like that. Perry trips, he falls, he spills stuff, he blurts out inappropriate things ... but apparently, the judge is even MORE impressed with this young upstart. He thinks Perry is kind of brilliant.

But it's what comes AFTER Perry telling the story that is so funny to me. It's just ... well, it's perfect.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"Why didn't you watch what the others did and imitate them?"

"Too rattled. But I'll say this - for all the style, the eats weren't a bit better than you have at New Moon - no, nor as good, by a jugful. Your Aunt Elizabeth's cooking would knock the spots off the Hardy's every time - and they didn't give you too much of anything! After the dinner was over we went back to the parlour - they called it living-room - and things weren't so bad. I didn't do anything out of the way except knock over a bookcase."

"Perry!"

"Well, it was wobbly. I was leaning against it talking to Mr. Hardy, and I suppose I leaned too hard, for the blooming thing went over. But, righting it and getting the books back seemed to loosen me up and I wasn't so tongue-tied after that. I got on not too bad - only every once in a long while I'd let slip a bit of slang, before I could catch it. I tell you, I wished I'd taken your advice about talking slang. Once the fat old lady agreed with something I'd said - she had sense if she did have three chins - and I was so tickled to find her on my side that I got excited and said to her, 'You bet your boots' before I thought. And I guess I bragged a bit. Do I brag too much, Emily?"

This question had never presented itself to Perry before.

"You do," said Emily candidly, "and it's very bad form."

"Well, I felt kind of cheap after I'd done it. I guess I've got an awful lot to learn yet, Emily. I'm going to buy a book on etiquette and learn it off by heart. No more evenings like this for me. But it was better at the last. Jim Hardy took me off to the den and we played checkers and I licked him dizzy. Nothing wrong with my checker etiquette, I tell you. And Mrs. Hardy said my speech at the debate was the best she had ever heard for a boy of my age, and she wanted to know what I meant to go in for. She's a great little dame and has the social end of things down fine. That is one reason I want you to marry me when the time comes, Emily - I've got to have a wife with brains."

"Don't talk nonsense, Perry," said Emily, haughtily.

"'Tisn't nonsense," said Perry, stubbornly. "And it's time we settled something. You needn't turn up your nose at me because you're a Murray. I'll be worth marrying some day - even for a Murray. Come, put me out of my misery."

Emily rose disdainfully. She had her dreams, as all girls have, the rose-red one of love among them, but Perry Miller had no share in those dreams.

"I'm not a Murray - and I'm going upstairs. Goodnight."

"Wait half a second," said Perry, with a grin. "When the clock strikes eleven I'm going to kiss you."

Emily did not for a moment believe that Perry had the slightest notion of doing anthing of the kind - which was foolish of her, for Perry had a habit of always doing what he said he was going to do. But then, he had never been sentimental. She ignored his remark, but lingered a moment to ask another question about the Hardy dinner. Perry did not answer the question: the clock began to strike elevent as she asked it - he flung his legs over the window-sill and stepped into the room. Emily realised too late that he meant what he said. She had only time to duck her head and Perry's hearty, energetic smack - there was nothing subtle about Perry's kisses - fell on her ear instead of her cheek.

At the very moment Perry kissed her and before her indignant protest could rush to her lips two things happened. A gust of wind swept in from the verandah and blew the little candle out, and the dining-room door opened and Aunt Ruth appeared in the doorway, robed in a pink flannel nightgown and carrying another candle, the light of which struck upward with gruesome effect on her set face with its halo of crimping-pins.

This is one of the places where a conscientious biographer feels that, in the good old phrase, her pen cannot do justice to the scene.

Emily and Perry stood as if turned to stone. So, for a moment, did Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had expected to find Emily there, writing, as she had done one month previously when Emily had had an inspiration at bedtime and had slipped down to the warm dining-room to jot it in her Jimmy-book. But this! I must admit it did look bad. Really, I think we can hardly blame Aunt Ruth for righteous indignation.

Aunt Ruth looked at the unlucky pair.

"What are you doing here?" she asked Perry.

Stovepipe Town made a mistake.

"Oh, looking for a round square," said Perry offhandedly, his eyes suddenly becoming limpid with mischief and lawless roguery.

Perry's "impudence" - Aunt Ruth called it that, and, really, I think he was impudent - naturally made a bad matter worse. Aunt Ruth turned to Emily.

"Perhaps you can explain how you came to be here, at this hour, kissing this fellow in the dark?"

Emily flinched from the crude vulgarity of the question as if Aunt Ruth had struck her. She forgot how much appearances justified Aunt Ruth, and et a perverse spirit enter into and possess her. She lifted her head haughtily.

"I have no explanation to give to such a question, Aunt Ruth."

"I didn't think you would have."

Aunt Ruth gave a very disagreeable laugh, through which a thin, discordant note of triumph sounded. One might have thought that, under all her anger, something pleased Aunt Ruth. It is pleasant to be justified in the opinion we have always entertained of anybody. "Well, perhaps you will be so good as to answer some questions. How did this fellow get here?"

"Window," said Perry laconically, seeing that Emily was not going to answer.

"I was not asking you, sir. Go," said Aunt Ruth, pointing dramatically to the window.

"I'm not going to stir a step out of this room until I know what you're going to do to Emily," said Perry stubbornly.

"I," said Aunt Ruth, with an air of terrible detachment, "am not going to do anything to Emily."

"Mrs. Dutton, be a good sport," implored Perry coaxingly, "It's all my fault -- honest! Emily wasn't one bit to blame. You see, it was this way--"

But Perry was too late.

"I have asked my niece for an explanation and she has refused to give it. I do not choose to listen to yours."

"But---" persisted Perry.

"You had better go, Perry," said Emily, whose face was flying danger signals. She spoke quietly, but the Murrayest of all Murrays could not have expressed more definite command. There was a quality in it Perry dared not disregard. He meekly scrambled out of the window into the night. Aunt Ruth stepped forward and shut the window. Then, ignoring Emily utterly, she marched her pink flanneled little figure back upstairs.

Emily did not sleep much that night -- nor, I admit, did she deserve to. After her sudden anger died away, shame cut her like a whip. She realized that she had behaved very foolishly in refusing an explanation to Aunt Ruth. Aunt Ruth had a right to it, when such a situation developed in her own house, no matter how hateful and disagreeable she made her method of demanding it. Of course, she would not have believed a word of it; but Emily, if she had given it, would not have further complicated her false position.

Emily fully expected she would be sent home to New Moon in disgrace. Aunt Ruth would stonily decline to keep such a girl any longer in her house -- Aunt Elizabeth would agree with her -- Aunt Laura woudl be heartbroken. Would even Cousin Jimmy's loyalty stand the strain? It was a very bitter prospect. No wonder Emily spent a white night. She was so unhappy that every beat of her heart seemed to hurt her. And again I say, most unequivocally, she deserved it. I haven't one word of pity or excuse for her.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 6!!

This is part of the section in the book where Emily has her second moment of "second sight". In Emily of New Moon (excerpt here) she "dreamt" she saw what happened to Ilse Burnley's mother - Ilse Burnley's mother didn't run off with another man so many years ago - Ilse Burnley's mother was taking a walk, and fell down an old nearly hidden well. And this turned out to be true. How could Emily know this? Lucy Maud writes about this event in a certain way: Emily isn't just upset at the thought that Ilse's mother ran off with another man, leaving her daughter and husband behind. Emily obsesses about it. She worries about it until she nearly makes herself sick. She loses appetite. She mopes. All joy is kind of sapped out of life for her. It's as though her entire consciousness is pouring into that mystery ... until she "sees" the truth.

In Emily Climbs this happens again. Emily and Ilse are taking a weekend - and going on a walking tour of the outlying areas of Shrewsbury - canvassing for subscriptions for the Shrewsbury Times. They're getting paid to do this - and they thought it would be fun. Emily gets permission from Elizabeth and Ruth to do this - they're going to stay one night with such and such a relative - so they have to make sure they're there by a certain time, and blah blah. Well, things don't work out in books the way they are supposed to - and Emily and Ilse decide to take a shortcut through the woods - after canvassing for a while - It should bring them out to a place where the town where they would spend the night would be visible. Instead of going all the way around the forest. Well, they come out on the other side - no town in sight. Just fields and farmhouses and church steeples. They are lost. It is sunset. No way will they make it to the appointed house by nightfall. So they decide to sleep in a haystack. It's a beautifully written section - Emily and Ilse - the country night - the two girls sharing secrets, looking up at the stars, talking about God, laughing ... a night to remember. The next day, they wake up for more canvassing, a little rumpled, with hay in their hair ... but ready to go.

And on their travels - they learn that a little boy, an Allen Bradshaw, has disappeared. A search party is out looking for him, but so far he is nowhere to be found. This, again, is one of those things that Emily fixates on. It's so upsetting to her, that she can't let it go. Ilse is able to put it out of her mind, but Emily walks along, worrying it to death. Where could he be? What happened to him? He CAN'T be dead ... he just can't!

I just love this one part of that larger story. Not sure why. It has something to do with her writing about the storm, or the oncoming storm ... Again, it's some of her best work. I can SEE that storm. And it just adds to the general anxietal feeling of the day ...

But more than that: like always: it's about character. Ilse is alive, as far as I'm concerned. Emily is alive. They are not just creatures on the page.

Oh, and the whole "house that belongs to me" section ... Later, of course, it turns out that Allan Bradshaw was exploring and accidentally got locked into that house (a summer cottage, no inhabitants at that time). But at the time - Emily is just inexplicably drawn to this random house.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

The story haunted Emily all the rest of the day and she walked under its shadow. Anything like that always took almost a morbid hold on her. She could not bear the thought of the poor mother at Malvern Point. And the little lad - where was he? Where had he been the previous night when she had lain in the ecstasy of wild, free hours? That night had not been cold - but Wednesday night had. And she shuddered as she recalled Tuesday night, when a bitter autumnal wind-storm had raged till dawn, with showers of hail and stinging rain. Had he been out in that - the poor lost baby?

"Oh, I can't bear it!" she moaned.

"It's dreadful," agreed Ilse, looking rather sick, "but we can't do anything. There's no sue in thinking of it. Oh" -- suddenly Ilse stamped her foot -- "I believe Father used to be right when he didn't believe in God. Such a hideous thing as this -- how could it happen if there is a God -- a decent God, anyway?"

"God hadn't anything to do with this," said Emily. "You know the Power that made last night couldn't have brought about this monstrous thing."

"Well, He didn't prevent it," retorted Ilse - who was suffering so keenly that she wanted to arraign the universe at the bar of her pain.

"Little Allan Bradshaw may be found yet - he must be," exclaimed Emily.

"He won't be found alive," stormed Ilse. "No, don't talk to me about God. And don't talk to me of this. I've got to forget it - I'll go crazy if I don't."

Ilse put the matter out of her mind with another stamp of her foot and Emily tried to. She couldn't quite succeed but she forced herself to concentrate superficially on the business of the day, though she knew the horror lurked in the back of her consciousness. Only once did she really forget it - when they came around a point on the Malvern River Road and saw a little house built in the cup of a tiny bay, with a steep grassy hill rising behind it. Scattered over the hill were solitary, beautifully shaped young fir-trees like little, green, elongated pyramids. No other house was in sight. All about it was a lovely autumnal solitude of grey, swift-running, windy river, and red, spruce-fringed points.

"That house belongs to me," said Emily.

Ilse stared.

"To you?"

"Yes. Of course, I don't own it. But haven't you sometimes seen houses that you knew belonged to you no matter who owned them?"

No, Ilse hadn't. She hadn't the least idea what Emily meant.

"I know who owns that house," she said. "It's Mr. Scobie of Kingsport. He built it for a summer cottage. I heard Aunt Net talking of it the last time I was in Wiltney. It was finished a few weeks ago. It's a pretty little house, but too small for me. I like a big house -- I don't want to feel cramped and crowded - especially in summer."

"It's hard for a big house to have any personality," said Emily thoughtfully. "But little houses almost always have. That house is full of it. There isn't a line or a corner that isn't eloquent, and those casement windows are lovable - especially that little one ihgh up under the eaves over the front door. It's absolutely smilig at me. Look at it glowing like a jewel in the sunshine out of the dark shingle setting. The little house is gretting us. You dear friendly thing, I love you - I understand you. As Old Kelly would say, ''may niver a tear be shed under your roof.' The people who are going to live in you must be nice people or they would never have thought you. If I lived in you, beloved, I'd always stand at that western window at evening to wave to some one coming home. That is just exactly what that window was built for - a frame for love and welcome."

"When you get through with talking to your house, we'd better hurry on," warned Ilse. "There's a storm coming up. See those clouds - and those sea-gulls. Gulls never come up this far except before a storm. It's going to rain any minute. We'll not sleep on a haystack tonight, Friend Emily."

Emily loitered past the little house and looked at it lovingly as long as she could. It was such a dear little place with its dubbed-off gables and rich, brown shingle tints, and its general intimate air of sharing mutual jokes and secrets. She turned aroun dhalf a dozen times to look upon it, as they climbed the steep hill, and when at last it dipped below sight she sighed.

"I hate to leave it. I have the oddest feeling, Ilse, that it's calling to me - that I ought to go back to it."

"Don't be silly," said Ilse impatiently. "There -- it's sprinkling now! If you hadn't poked so long looking at your blessed little hut we'd have been out on the main road now, and near shelter. Wow, but it's cold!"

"It's going to be a dreadful night," said Emily in a low voice. "Oh, Ilse, where is that poor little lost boy tonight? I wish I knew if they had found him."

"Don't!" said Ilse savagely. "Don't say another word about him. It's awful - it's hideous - but what can we do?"

"Nothing. That's the dreadful thing about it. It seems wicked to go on about our own business, asking for subscriptions, when that child is not found."

By this time they had reached the main road. The rest of the afternoon was not pleasant. Stinging showers came at intervals: between them the world was raw and damp and cold, with a moaning wind that came in ominous sighing gusts under a leaden sky. At every house where they called they were reminded of the lost baby, for there were only women to give or refuse subscriptions. The men were all away searching for him.

"Though it isn't any use now," said one woman gloomily, "except that they may find his little body. He can't have lived this long. I jest can't eat or cook for thinking of his poor mother. They say she's nigh crazy - I don't wonder."

"They say old Margaret McIntyre is taking it quite calmly," said an older woman, who was piecing a log-cabin quilt by the window. "I'd have thought she'd be wild, too. She seemed real fond of little Allan."

"Oh, Margaret McIntyre has never got worked up about anything for the past five years - ever since her own son Neil was frozen to death in the Klondyke. Seems as if her feelings were frozen then, too - she's been a little mad ever since. She won'kt worry none over this - she'll just smile and tell you she spanked the King."

Both women laughed. Emily, with the story-teller's nose, scented a story instantly, but though she would fain have lingered to hunt it down Ilse hustled her away.

"We must get on, Emily, or we'll never reach St. Clair before night."

They soon realized that they were not going to reach it. At sunset St. Clair was still three miles away and there was every indication of a wild evening.

"We can't get to St. Clair, that's certain," said Ilse. "It's going to settle down for ar steady ran and it'll be as black as a million black cats in a quarter of an hour. We'd better go to that house over there and ask if we can stay all night. It looks snug and respectable - though it certainly is the jumping-off place."

The house at which Ilse pointed - an old whitewashed house with a grey roof - was set on the face of a hill amid bright green fields of clover aftermath. A wet red road wound up the hill to it. A thick grove of spruces shut it off from the gulf shore, and beyond the grove a tiny dip in the land revealed a triangular glimpse of misty, white-capped, grey sea. The near brook valley was filled with young spruces, dark-green in the rain. The grey clouds hung heavily over it. Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds in the west for one magical moment. The hill of clover meadows flashed instantly into incredibly vivid green. The triangle of sea shimmered into violet. The old house gleamed like white marble against the emerald of its hilly background, and the inky black sky over and around it.

"Oh," gasped Emily, "I never saw anything so wonderful!"

She groped wildly in her bag and clutched her Jimmy-book. The post of a field-gate served as a desk- Emily licked a stubborn pencil and wrote feverishly. Ilse squatted on a stone in a fence corner and waited with ostentatious patience. She knew that when a certain look appeared on Emily's face she was not to be dragged away util she was ready to go. The sun had vanished and the rain was beginning to fall again when Emily put her Jimmy-book back into her bag, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"I had to get it, Ilse."

"Couldn't you have waited till you got to dry land and wrote it down from memory?" grumbled Ilse, uncoiling herself from her stone.

"No - I'd have missed some of the flavour then. I've got it all now - and in just exactly the right words. Come on - I'll race you to the house. Oh, smell that wind - there's nothing in all the world like a salt sea-wind - a savage salt sea-wind. After all, there's something delightful in a storm. There's always something - deep down in me - that seems to rise and leap out to meet a storm - wrestle with it."

"I feel that way sometimes - but not tonight," said Ilse. "I'm tired - and that poor baby ---"

"Oh!" Emily's triumph and exultation went from her in a cry of pain. "Oh -- Ilse -- I'd forgotten for a moment - how could I? Where can he be?"

"Dead," said Ilse harshly. "It's better to think so - than to think of him alive still - out tonight. Come, we've got to get in somewhere. The storm is on for good now - no more showers."

An angular woman panoplied in a white apron so stiffly starched that it could easily have stood alone, opened the door of the house on the hill and bade them enter.

"Oh, yes, you can stay here, I reckon," she said, not inhospitably, "if you'll excuse things being a bit upset. They're in sad trouble here."

"Oh -- I'm sorry," sttammered Emily. "We won't intrude - we'll go somewhere else."

"Oh, we don't mind you, if you don't mind us. There's a spare room. You're welcome. You can't go on in a storm like this - there isn't another house for some ways. I advise you to stop here. I'll get you a bit of supper - I don't live here - I'm just a neighbour come to help 'em out a bit. Hollinger's my name - Mrs. Julia Hollinger. Mrs. Bradshaw ain't good for anything - you've heard of her little boy mebbe."

"Is this where - and - he - hasn't - been found?"

"No -- never will be. I'm not mentioning it to her," with a quick glance over her shoulder along the hall -- "but it's my opinion he got in the quicksands down by the bay. That's what I think. Come in and lay off your things. I s'pose you don't mind eating in the kitchen. The room is cold - we haven't the stove up in it yet. It'll have to be put up soon if there's a funeral. I s'pose there won't be if he's in the quicksand. You can't have a funeral without a body, can you?"

All this was very gruesome. Emily and Ilse would fain have gone elsewhere - but the storm had broken in full fury and darkness seemed to pour in from the sea over the changed world. They took off their drenched hats and coats and followed their hostess to the kitchen, a clean, old-fashioned spot which seemed cheerful enough in lamp-light and fire-glow.

"Sit up to the fire. I'll poke it a bit. Don't mind Grandfather Bradshaw -- Grandfather, here's two young ladies that want to stay all night."

Grandfather stared stonily at them out of little, hazy blue eyes and said not a word.

"Don't mind him" -- in a pig's whisper -- "he's over ninety and he never was much of a talker. Clara -- Mrs. Bradshaw -- is in there" -- nodding towards the door of what seemed a small bedroom off the kitchen. "Her brother's with her -- Dr. McIntyre from Charlottetown. We sent for him yesterday. He's the only one that can do anything with her. She's been walking the floor all day but we've got her persuaded to lie down a bit. Her husband's out looking for little Allan."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradhsaw, with uncanny suddenness and positiveness.

"There, there now, Grandfather, I advise you not to get worked up. And this is the twentieth century now. He's still living back there. His memory stopped a few years ago. What might your names be? Burnley? Starr? From Blair Water? Oh, then you'll know the Murrays? Niece? Oh!"

Mrs. Julia Hollinger's "Oh" was subtly eloquent. She had been setting dishes and food down at a rapid rate on the clean oil-cloth on the table. Now she swept them aside, extracted a table-cloth from a drawer of the cupboard, got silver forks and spoons out of another drawer, and a handsome pair of salt and pepper shakers from the shelves.

"Don't go to any trouble for us," pleaded Emily.

"Oh, it's no trouble. If all was well here you'd find Mrs. Bradshaw real glad to have you. She's a very kind woman, poor soul. It's awful hard to see her in such trouble. Allan was all the child she had, you see."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century, I tell you," repeated Grandfather Bradshaw, with an irritable shift of emphasis.

"No -- no," soothingly, "of course not, Grandfather. Little Allan'll turn up all right yet. Here's a hot cup o' tea for you. I advise you to drink it. That'll keep him quiet for a bit. Not that he's ever very fussy - only everybody's a bit upset - except old Mrs. McIntyre. Nothing ever upsets her. It's just as well, only it seems to me real unfeeling. 'Course she isn't just right. Come, sit in and have a bite, girls. Listen to that rain, will you? The men will be soaked. They can't search much longer tonight - Will will soon be home. I sorter dread it - Clara'll go wild again when he comes home without little Allan. We had a terrible time with her last night, pore thing."

"A child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradshaw - and choked over his hot drink in his indignation.

"No -- nor in the twentieth neither," said Mrs. Hollinger, patting him on the back. "I advise you to go to bed, Grandfather. You're tired."

"I am not tired, and I will go to bed when I choose, Julia Hollinger."

"Oh, very well, Grandfather. I advise you not to get worked up. I think I'll take a cup o' tea in to Clara. Perhaps she'll take it now. She hasn't eatne or drunk since Tuesday night. How can a woman stand that -- I put it to you?"

Emily and Ilse ate their supper with what appetite they could summon up, while Grandfather Bradshaw watched them suspiciously, and sorrowful sounds reached them from the little inner room.

"It is wet and cold tonight -- where is he -- my little son?" moaned a woman's voice, with an undertone of agony that made Emily writhe as if she felt it herself.

"They'll find him soon, Clara," said Mrs. Hollinger in a sprightly tone of artificial comfort. "Just you be patient - take a sleep, I advise you - they're bound to find him soon."

"They'll never find him." The voice was almost a scream now. "He is dead - he is dead - he died that bitter cold Tuesday night so long ago. O God, have mercy! He was such a little fellow! And I've told him so often not to speak until he was spoken to - he'll never speak to me again. I wouldn't let him have a light after he went to bed - and he died in the dark, alone and cold. I wouldn't let him have a dog - he wanted one so much. But he wants nothing now - only a grave and a shroud."

"I can't endure this," muttered Emily. "I can't, Ilse. I feel as if I'd go mad with horror. I'd rather be out in the storm."

Lank Mrs. Hollinger, looking at once sympathetic and important, came out of the bedroom and shut the door.

"Awful, isn't it? She'll go on like that all night. Would you like to go to bed? It's quite airly, but mebbe you're tired an' 'ud ruther be where you can't hear her, pore soul. She wouldn't take the tea - she's scared the doctor put a sleeping pill in it. She doesn't want to sleep till he's found, dead or alive. If he's in the quicksands o' course he never will be found."

"Julia Hollinger, you are a fool and the daughter of a fool, but surely even you must see that a child can't be lost in the nineteenth century," said Grandfather Bradshaw.

"Well, if it was anybody but you called me a fool, Grandfather, I'd be mad," said Mrs. Hollinger, a trifle tartly. She lighted a lamp and took the girls upstairs. "I hope you'll sleep. I advise you to get in between the blankets though there's sheets on the bed. They wuz all aired today, blankets and sheets. I thought it'd be better to air 'em in case there was a funeral. I remember the New Moon Murrays wuz always particular about airing their beds, so I thought I'd mention it. Listen to that wind. We'll likely hear of awful damage from this storm. I wouldn't wonder if the roof blew off this house tonight. Troubles never come singly. I advise you not to git upset if you hear a noise through the night. If the men bring the body home Clara'll likely act like all possessed, pore thing. Mebbe you'd better turn the key in the lock. Old Mrs. McIntyre wanders round a bit sometimes. She's quite harmless and mostly sane neough but it gives folks a start."

The girls felt relieved as the door closed behind Mrs. Hollinger. She was a good soul, doing her neighbourly duty as she conceived it, faithfully, but she was not exactly cheerful company. They found themselves in a tiny, meticulously neat "spare room" under the sloping eaves. Most of the space in it was occupted by a big comfortable bed that looked as if it were meant to be slept in, and not merely to decorate the room. A little four-paned window, with a spotless white muslin frill, shut them in from the cold, stormy night that was on the sea.

"Ugh," shivered Ilse, and got into the bed as speedily as possible. Emily followed her more slowly, forgetting about the key. Ilse, tired out, fell asleep almost immediately, but Emily could not sleep. She lay and suffered, straining her ears for the sound of footsteps. The rain dashed against the window, not in drops, but sheets, the wind snarled and shrieked. Down below the hill she heard the white waves ravening along the dark shore. Could it be only twenty-four hours since that moonlit, summery glamour of the haystack and the ferny pasture? Why, that must have been in another world.

Where was that poor lost child? In one of the pauses of the storm she fancied she heard a little whimper overhead in the dark as if some lonely little soul, lately freed from the body, were trying to find its way to kin. She could discover no way of escape from her pain: her gates of dream were shut against her: she could not detach her mind from her feelings and dramatise them. Her nerves grew strained and tense. Painfully she sent her thoughts out into the storm; seeking, striving to pierce the mystery of the child's whereabouts. He must be found -- she clenched her hands -- he must. That poor mother!

"O God, let him be found, safe -- let him be found safe," Emily prayed desperately and insistently, over and over again - all the more desperately and insistently because it seemed a prayer so impossible of fulfillment. But she reiterated it to bar out of her mind terrible pictures of swamp and quicksand and river, until at last she was so weary that mental torture could no longer keep her awak, and she fell into a troubled slumber, while the storm roared on and the baffled searchers finally gave up their vain quest.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 5!

One of the reasons why I think Lucy Maud's books are so special - so ... long-lastingly good ... is that they seem to have everything in them. It feels so much like a slice of life - that it is totally transportive. There is tragedy, there are comedic mishaps, there are deep converstaions about the meaning of life, there is leisure-time when nothing much happens ... There isn't a sense of urgency, or over-importance - as in: Here Is a Great Book. It's a story. The story is told. And nothing is left out. So we hear about Anne's dresses for the dances at Redmond ... and we get to know about the knick-knacks in her little house of Dreams - the trees she loves, the things she cherishes ... but at the same time, we have the larger story of her LIFE going on - her baby dying, her marriage with Gilbert, etc. And if you read all of the books in a series, you just can rest easy on this continuity - Lucy Maud just takes charge. And so ... when Rachel Lynde dies ... you get a real sense of loss. Because she has been a constant character throughout. She is REAL. To me, these books feel REAL. You can see the cupboards of damson preserves, you can see the doilies, you can see the fire in the stove on a wintry night, you can see the delicate wallpaper ... and you can also see these fictional PEOPLE ... come to life. I'm not sure if I'm saying this correctly ... it's just that I feel like I am looking at an entire WORLD when I read these books.

Emily Climbs - with all of the journal entries included - is especially special to me ... because if you're a diary person, you know that not every day contains some big event. Sometimes you write in your diary about how you have a headache, or how you're pissed that you can't find a recipe you want for Thanksgiving, or how you have so many errands to do that you're kind of freaking out. Boring everyday life moments. But they aren't boring, if you look at them in another way. If you look at them as helping to build up the illusion that you are looking at something that is REAL. So Emily's diary entries - with all their trivia and miscellania - help to create the impression that we are looking at a LIFE, not reading a book.

I love those diary entries, man. There are some chapters which are made up entirely of the diary entries ... and they are a hoot. Because we are not worried about the larger plot in those chapters - we are just listening to Emily talk and tell stories ... We are getting quick snapshots of her life, her thought process ... These chapters kind of function like a montage. They're great - I love them.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite little diary entries from the book. It makes me laugh out loud. It's not a big enough story to warrant an entire chapter ... it doesn't illuminate anything special about Emily ... it's not an epiphany moment, or a growth moment ... it's just something hysterical that happened to her ... and when you add up 20 of these moments, 30? You really feel like you are learning about a real living girl here.

Here's the excerpt. It's hilarious.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"May 29, 19--

"Tonight Aunt Ruth came home with a portentous face.

"'Em'ly, what does this story mean that is all over Shrewsbury - that you were seen standing on Queen Street last night with a man's arms around you, kissing him?'

"I knew in a minute what had happened. I wanted to stamp - I wanted to laugh - I wanted to tear my hair. The whole thing was so absurd and ludicrous. But I had to keep a grave face and explain to Aunt Ruth.

"This is the dark, unholy tale.

"Ilse and I were 'dandering' along Queen Street last night at dusk. Just by the old Taylor house we met a man. I do not know the man - not likely I shall ever know him. I do not know if he was tall or short, old or young, handsome or ugly, black or white, Jew or Gentile, bond or free. But I do know he hadn't shaved that day!

"He was walking at a brisk pace. Then something happened which passed in the wink of an eye, but takes several seconds to describe. I stepped aside to let him pass -- he stepped in the same direction -- I darted the other way -- so did he -- then I thought I saw a chance of getting past and I made a wild dash - he made a wild dash - with the result that I ran full tilt against him. He had thrown out his arms when he realized a collision was unavoidable - I went right between them - and in the shock of the encounter they involuntarily closed around me for a moment while my nose came into violent contact with his chin.

"'I -- I -- beg your pardon,' the poor creature gasped, dropped me as if I were a hot coal, and tore off around the corner.

"Ilse was in fits. She said she had never seen anything so funny in her life It had all passed so quickly that to a by-stander it looked exactly as if that man and I had stopped, gazed at each other for a moment, and then rushed madly into each other's arms.

"My nose ached for clocks. Ilse said she saw Mrs. Taylor peering from the window just as it happened. Of course that old gossip has spread the story with her own interpretation of it.

"I explained all this to Aunt Ruth, who remained incredulous and seemed to consider it a very limping tale indeed.

"'It's a very stronge thing that on a sidewalk twelve feet wide you couldn't get past a man without embracing him,' she said.

"'Come now, Aunt Ruth,' I said, 'I know you think me sly and deep and foolish and ungrateful. But you know I am half Murray, and do you think any one with any Murray in her would embrace a gentleman friend on the public street?'

"'Oh, I did think you could hardly be so brazen,' admitted Aunt Ruth. 'But Miss Taylor said she saw it. I do not like to have one of my family talked about like that. It would not have occurred if you had not been out with Ilse Burnley in defiance of my advice. Don't let anything like this happen again.'

"'Things like that don't happen,' I said. 'They are foreordained.'

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 4!

This is an excerpt from another one of my favorite chapters. In it - Lucy Maud seems to cram an entire lifetime of experience. You feel like this has really HAPPENED. Emily is staying at Aunt Ruth's and going to high school. She enjoys it, except for the living with Aunt Ruth part. Then she gets involved with the spring play - and somehow, Aunt Ruth didn't get, originally, that this would be an actual PLAY (and we all know PLAYS are evil and actors are even worse!!) - so on the night of the play, Ruth finds out what is going on - and forbids Emily to take part in it. Emily fights back. Ruth is firm and unyielding. Emily has a big part in the play - so she pleads. She says she will go be in the play anyway. Ruth says, "If you disobey me - don't come back home tonight." Or something like that. Emily is in a RAGE. She stalks off - she has finally HAD IT with Aunt Ruth. She does the play. It's a great little triumph for her. She shines in her part, mainly because of the simmering RAGE beneath everything. Teddy walks her home. Emily doesn't believe Ruth will lock her out or anything - but she goes up to the door, and finds it locked. It is March, it is cold, it is 10 o'clock at night ... and she can't get into the house. This is the last straw. Emily is fed up with Aunt Ruth and how Ruth treats her. So - in a fit of rage and purpose - she is ON FIRE (I love how Lucy Maud describes it - anger like that DOES burn!!) - she decides to walk home to New Moon. She will no longer put up with Aunt Ruth. If that means she can't go to high school anymore, then so be it. It's 7 miles home. Emily is not wearing proper boots - she's wearing little kid slippers - it's freezing cold ... but she stalks home, the entire way - 7 miles - in a fury that carries her along. She gets home and it must be 2 or 3 in the morning - and she walks inside and Cousin Jimmy is up - totally shocked to see Emily, who is supposed to be in Shrewsbury, strolling into the kitchen. He realizes she is all upset and in a fury - so he sits her down, makes her eat doughnuts, and has her tell him all about it. So - for about 3 or 4 pages - Emily goes on complaining. It's a very funny section - because Jimmy agrees with everything she says (when he can get a word in edgewise) - but slowly - over the course of the complaining - Emily starts to get the strange uneasy feeling that she has kind of acted like an overdramatic little fool. It's so great the way Lucy Maud describes it ... We've all done stuff like that, especially high-tempered hot-headed teenagers - anyone who is known as 'sensitive' or 'dramamtic' - has had moments like this. Where you fly off the handle - and you feel TOTALLY justified - and in a TOWERING RAGE of self-righteousness and injured dignity ... and slowly ... you realize ... Uhm ... hm. Maybe I overreacted? it's not easy for Emily to admit this. She's so full of pride, and she hates to concede to Aunt Ruth anymore. But JImmy - with a couple of his simple pointed statements - makes her see that she needs to suck it up, go home to Aunt Ruth, and realize that she needs to be GRATEFUL to Aunt Ruth for taking her in. Because of Aunt Ruth - Emily is getting her chance at more education. She needs to be thankful for that. Emily fights against this, in her mind ... but gently ... and without judging her TOO much ... Jimmy prods her in the right direction.

So now it's like - 4 or 5 a.m. and Emily decides to walk back to Shrewsbury. Jimmy is kind of horrified at this thought - maybe Emily should wait until Elizabeth wakes up - and someone can drive her back?? But Emily's rage is done - she is no longer interested in making a big family SCENE - and she thinks it would be best if nobody knew about her little trek home.

So off she goes. To walk the 7 miles back home.

This walk back home is some of my favorite writing Lucy Maud has ever done.

Oh - and her little moment with Ruth at the very end is just perfection. It's not what you expect to happen ... you expect more of a scene, maybe ... but watch how Emily handles the moment. It's great.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily went back to Shrewsbury through the clear moonlight. She had expected the walk to be dreary and weary, robbed of the impetus anger and rebellion had given. But she found that it had become transmuted into a thing of beauty - and Emily was one of "the eternal slaves of beauty," of whom Carman sings, who are yet "masters of the world." She was tired, but her tiredness showed itself in a certain exaltation of feeling and imagination such as she often experienced when over-fatigued. Thought was quick and active. She had a series of brilliant imaginary conversations and thought out so many epigrams that she was agreeably surprised at herself. It was good to feel vivid and interesting and all-alive once more. She was alone but not lonely.

As she walked along she dramatised the night. There was about it a wild, lawless charm that appealed to a certain wild, lawless strain hidden deep in Emily's nature - a strain that wished to walk where it would with no guidance but its own - the strain of the gypsy and the poet, the genius and the fool.

The big fir trees, released from their burden of snow, were tossing their arms freely and wildly and gladly across the moonlit fields. Was anything ever so beautiful as the shadows of those grey, clean-limbed maples on the road at her feet? The houses she passed were full of intriguing mystery. She liked to think of the people who lay there dreaming and saw in sleep what waking life denied them - of little children's dear hands folded in exquisite slumber - of hearts that, perhaps, kept sorrowful, wakeful vigils - of lonely arms that reached out in the emptiness of the night - all while she, Emily, flitted by like a shadowy wraith of the small hours.

And it was easy to think, too, that other things were abroad - things that were not mortal or human. She always lived on the edge of fairyland and now she stepped right over it. The Wind Woman was really whistling eerily in the reeds of the swamp - she was sure she heard the dear, diabolical chuckles of owls in the spruce copses - something frisked across her path - it might be a rabbit or it might be a Little Grey Person: the trees put on half pleasing, half terrifying shapes they never wore by day. The dead thistles of last year were goblin groups along the fences: that shaggy, old yellow birch was some satyr of the woodland: the footsteps of the old gods echoed around her: those gnarled stumps on the hill field were surely Pan piping through moonlight and shadow with his troop of laughing fauns. It was delightful to believe they were.

"One loses so much when one becomes incredulous," said Emily - and then thought that was a rather clever remark and wished she had a Jimmy-book to write it down.

So, having washed her soul free from bitterness in the aerial bath of the spring night and tingling from head to foot with the wild, strange, sweet life of the spirit, she came to Aunt Ruth's when the faint, purplish hills east of the harbour were growing clear under a whitening sky. She had expected to find the door still locked; but the knob turned as she tried it and she went in.

Aunt Ruth was up and was lighting the kitchen fire.

On the way from New Moon Emily had thought over a dozen different ways of saying what she meant to say - and now she used not one of them. At the last moment an impish inspiration came to her. Before Aunt Ruth could - or would - speak, Emily said,

"Aunt Ruth, I've come back to tell you that I forgive you, but that this must not happen again."

To tell the truth, Ruth Dutton was considerably relieved that Emily had come back. She had been afraid of Elizabeth and Laura - Murray family rows were bitter things - and truly a little afraid of the results to Emily herself if she had really gone to New Moon in those thin shoes and that insufficient coat. For Ruth Dutton was not a fiend - only a rather stupid, stubborn little barnyard fowl trying to train up a skylark. She was honestly afraid that Emily might catch a cold and go into consumption. And if Emily took it into her head not to come back to Shrewsbury - well, that would "make talk", and Ruth Dutton hated "talk" when she or her doings was the subject. So, all things considered, she decided to ignore the impertinence of Emily's greeting.

"Did you spend the night on the streets?" she asked grimly.

"Oh, dear no - I went out to New Moon - had a chat with Cousin Jimmy and some lunch - then walked back."

"Did Elizabeth see you? Or Laura?"

"No. They were asleep."

Mrs. Dutton reflected that this was just as well.

"Well," she said coldly, "you have been guilty of great ingratitude, Em'ly, but I'll forgive you this time--" then stopped abruptly. Hadn't that been said already this morning? Before she could think of a substitute remark Emily had vanished upstairs. Mistress Ruth Dutton was left with the unpleasant sensation that, somehow or other, she had not come out of the affair quite as triumphantly as she should have.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

Okay - so we have been talking so much about Aunt Ruth in other Emily entries that I had to find an excerpt about her. There are so many that I love - she is quite a fearsome and unpleasant personality - but she is so comedically drawn ... even when she is totally giving Emily a hard time, there's something deeply deeply funny and absurd about Aunt Ruth.

So. Elizabeth is allowing Emily to go on to high school. The big high school in Shrewsbury. Ilse, Perry, and Teddy are going as well - and they are all rooming in one of the big dormitories. But no - a Murray would not be allowed to live like that - so Emily has to live with her Aunt Ruth, who lives in Shrewsbury. We have met Aunt Ruth before - and we know that she is not sympathetic, she is judgmental, and she is brutal - in terms of her honesty. But Emily is dying for a chance at more education - and this is the only way, so she sucks it up, and puts up with it. Oh yeah, and Elizabeth also made Emily promise that she would stop writing short stories and anything fictional for the entire three years of her high school years. Elizabeth is horrified that Emily would spend so much time on "lies". At first Elizabeth wants to ban h er from writing altogether (some people just never learn) - but Cousin Jimmy, I believe, talks her into a more gentle restriction. Emily is surprised when Mr. Carpenter, her teacher/mentor, approves of this restriction! He thinks holding off on the fiction and only writing what is true will be good training for her.

Anyhoo, so off Emily goes, to start high school.

I'll post an excerpt from one of the chapters made up entirely of random diary entries from Emily. It gives a great picture of Aunt Ruth.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

"I like Shrewbury and I like school but I shall never like Aunt Ruth's house. It has a disagreeable personality. Houses are like people - some you like and some you don't like - and once in a while there is one you love. Outside, this house is covered with frippery. I feel like getting a broom and sweeping it off. Inside, its rooms are all square and proper and soulless. Nothing you could put into them would ever seem to belong to them. There are no nice romantic corners in it, as there are at New Moon. My room hasn't improved on acquaintance, either. The ceiling oppresses me - it comes down so low over my bed - and Aunt Ruth won't let me move the bed. She looked amazed when I suggested it.

" 'The bed has always been in that corner,' she said, just as she might have said, 'The sun has always risen in the east.'

"But the pictures are really the worst thing about this room - chromos of the most aggravated description. Once I turned them all to the wall and of course Aunt Ruth walked in - she never knocks - and noticed them at once.

"'Em'ly, why have you meddled with the pictures?'

"Aunt Ruth is always asking 'why' I do this and that. Sometimes I can explain and sometimes I can't. This was one of the times I couldn't. But of course I had to answer Aunt Ruth's question. No disdainful smile would do here.

"'Queen Alexandra's dog collar gets on my nerves,' I said, 'and Byron's expression on his death-bed at Missolonghi hinders me from studying.'

"'Em'ly,' said Aunt Ruth, 'you might try to show a little gratitude.'

"I wanted to say,

"'To whom -- Queen Alexandra or Lord Byron?' but of course I didn't. Instaead I meekly turned all the pictures right side out again.

"'You haven't told me the real reason why you turned those pictures,' said Aunt Ruth sternly. 'I suppose you don't mean to tell me. Deep and sly - deep and sly - I always said you were. The very first time I saw you at Maywood I said you were the slyest child I have ever seen.'

"'Aunt Ruth, why do you say such things to me?' I said, in exasperation. 'Is it because you love me and want to improve me - or hate me and want to hurt me - or just because you can't help it?'

"'Miss Impertinence, please remember that this is my house. And you will leave my pictures alone after this. I forgive you for meddling with them this time but don't let it happen again. I will find out yet your motive in turning them around, clever as you think yourself.'

"Aunt Ruth stalked out but I know she listened on the landing quite a while to find out if I would begin talking to myself. She is always watching me - even when she says nothing - does nothing - I know she is watching me. I feel like a little fly under a microscope. not a word or action escapes her criticism, and, though she can't read my thoughts, she attributes thoughts to me that I never had any idea of thinking. I hate that worse than anything else.

"Can't I say anything good of Aunt Ruth? Of course I can.

"She is honest and virtuous and truthful and industrious and of her pantry she needeth not be ashamed. But she hasn't any lovable virtues - and she will never give up tryiing to find out why I turned the pictures. She will never believe that I told her the simple truth.

"Of course, things 'might be worse.' As Teddy says, it might have been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Alexandra.

"I have some pictures of my own pinned up that save me - some lovely sketches of New Moon and the old orchard that Teddy made for me, and an engraving Dean gave me. It is a picture in soft, dim colours of palms around a desert well and a train of camels passing across the sands against a black sky gemmed with stars. It is full ofl ure and mystery and when I look at it I forget Queen Alexandra's jewelry and Lord Byron's lugubrious face, and my soul slips out - out - through a little gateway into a great, vast world of freedom and dream.

"Aunt Ruth asked me where I got that picture. When I told her, she sniffed and said,

"'I can't understand how you have such a thing for Jarback Priest. He's a man I've no use for.'

"I shouldn't think she would have.

"But if the house is ugly and my room unfriendly the Land of Uprightness is beautiful and saves my soul alive. The Land of Uprightness is the fir grove behind the house. I call it that because the firs are all so exceedingly tall and slender and straight. There is a pool in it, veiled with ferns, and a big grey boulder beside it. It is reached by a little, winding, capricious path so narrow that only one can walk in it. When I'm tired or lonely or angry or too ambitious I go there and sit for a few minutes. Nobody can keep an upset mind looking at those slender, crossed tips against the sky. I go there to study on fine evenings, though Aunt Ruth is suspicious and thinks it is just another manifestation of my slyness. Soon it will be dark too early to study there and I'll be so sorry. Somehow, my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else.

"There are so many dear, green corners in the Land of Uprightness, full of the aroma of sun-steeped ferns, and grassy, open spaces where pale asters feather the grass, swaying gently towards each other when the Wind Woman runs among them. And just to the left of my window there is a group of tall old firs that look, in moonlight or twilight, like a group of witches weaving spells of sorcery. When I first saw them, one windy night against the red sunset, with the reflection of my candle, like a weird, signal flame, suspended in the air among their boughs, the flash came - for the first time in Shrewsbury - and I felt so happy that nothing else matterred. I have written a poem about them.

"But oh, I burn to write stories. I knew it would be hard to keep my promise to Aunt Elizabeth but I didn't know it would be so hard. Every day it seems harder - such splendid ideas for plots pop into my mind. Then I have to fall back on character studies of the people I know. I have written several of them. I always feel so strongly tempted to touch them up a bit -- deepen the shadows - bring out the highlights a little more vividly. But I remember that I promised Aunt Elizabeth never to write anything that wasn't true so I stay my hand and try to paint them exactly as they are.

"I have written one of Aunt Ruth. Interesting, but dangerous. I never leave my Jimmy-book or my diary in my room. I know Aunt Ruth rummages through it when I'm out. So I always carry them in my book-bag.

"Ilse was up this evening and we did our lessons together. Aunt Ruth frowns on this - and, to be strictly just, I don't know that she is wrong. Ilse is so jolly and comical that we laugh more than we study, I'm afraid. We don't do as well in class the next day - and besides, this house disapproves of laughter.

"Perry and Teddy like the High School. Perry earns his lodging by looking after the furnace and grounds and his board by waiting on the table. Besides, he gets twenty-five cents an hour for doing odd jobs. I don't see much of him or Teddy, except in the week-ends home, for it is against the school rules for boys and girls to walk together to and from school. Lots do it, though. I had several chances to but I concluded that it would not be in keeping with New Moon traditions to break the rule. Besides, Aunt Ruth asks me every blessed night when I come home from school if I've walked with anybody. I think she's sometimes a little disappointed when I say 'No'.

"Besides, I didn't much fancy any of the boys who wanted to walk with me.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 2!!

The chapter "In the Watches of the Night" is one of my favorite chapters in any Lucy Maud book ever. It's deep, wide, terrifying, romantic - it's like all of Jane Eyre compressed into one chapter. Lucy Maud starts the chapter by telling us where we are going to go:

Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain milestones on life's road - the wonderful hour when we passed from childhood to girlhood - the enchanged, beautiful - or perhaps the shattering and horrible - hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood - the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely behind us - the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realisation of age. Emily Starr never forgot the night when she passed the first milestone, and left childhood behind her forever.

And so she then takes us thru what happened - step by step by step. It is completely specific - there is nothing generalized about this. We all may have these moments - but each of us will have a completely different story to tell. This is Emily's story. And Lucy Maud just made all of this stuff up in her head. It's amazing. The chapter begins on a hot July night. It's a weeknight - and Emily and Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura are sitting in church at a prayer meeting. Emily is bored out of her mind. So to entertain herself, she starts looking around at the congregation, and basically people-watching. We hear her thoughts. She sees into people's souls - she can SEE the wife that despises her husband - she can SEE people's struggles, and silent worries. Her thoughts about the congregation go on for many pages. They are very entertaining. Oftentimes mean. She is merciless toward others (when they deserve it). Lucy Maud lets it go on for so long to really give the sense of Emily LOSING herself in this activity. And she does. Oh and I forgot - after prayer meeting, Emily was going to go and have a sleepover at Ilse's house. This is very important later. So - the prayer meeting ends. Everyone is secretly relieved - because nobody really likes the minister. They all start to jostle out of the church. Emily is still half-in her people-watching reverie - and forgets to bring her hymn book with her. She is outside the church - there's a big crowd - Elizabeth and Laura have gone off without her (knowing that she will be going home with Ilse) - but Emily can't find Ilse for a second in the throng - and before she forgets - she runs back inside to get her hymn book. Slipped inside the hymn book is a little piece of paper on which she had put down a couple of notes about her people-watching - notes that she would not anybody else to see. This is why the hymn book is so essential. Emily goes to the pew - the church is now empty - and the caretaker is putting out the lamps. Emily grabs her hymn book ... but her scrap of paper is not in it. Panic. Emily gets down on her hands and knees to look for it on the floor (which means - if anyone had looked into the church it would have looked empty) ... and in that fateful moment - the caretaker goes to the front door of the church, walks out, and locks the door behind him. Locking Emily into the dark church. It takes a while for Emily to realize her predicament ... and by that time, the thunder that had been growling all night - breaks out into a full storm. Emily is irrationally terrified of thunderstorms. So now begins her long night of utter terror. She stands at the door screaming (even though everyone has left): she screams for Elizabeth, Ilse, Laura ... and then, desperately, for Teddy.

Nobody hears of course. Ilse would assume that she decided not to sleep over and went home. Elizabeth and Laura would assume she was with Ilse. She would not be missed. For a while, she basically falls apart. She sits on the steps up to the church gallery, shivering, wincing, terrified. Finally, she pulls herself together. Finds her backbone. And also - the writer in her comes to life. Wouldn't this be interesting to write about someday?? She decides to go back into the main church, sit in a pew, and just wait it out. But as she goes to put her hand on the stair railing - she doesn't touch wood - she touches something hairy. This is the worst moment of the chapter. The horror that goes thru Emily ... then in a flash of lightning she sees a dog walk by. A dog. A dog somehow got locked in the church too. It takes a while for Emily to recover her equilibrium after touching him in the dark. She doesn't know whose dog it is - but he seems friendly - so she makes her way, in the dark, into the church and sits in a pew. Only a couple seconds go by before Emily just gets the sense that she is not alone. She knows that somebody else is in that church with her (besides the dog). And in a flash of lightning - he is revealed. (Terrifying moment). He is known as "Mad Mr. Morrison". He was once a normal man - but he lost his wife - and never recovered. He is now insane - and homeless - and is constantly "looking for his wife". As a matter of fact, he will go up to random women, and start stroking their hair, caressing them, thinking that she is his dead wife. He is known to be harmless - he would never HURT anybody - but still, he's kind of a creepy person and you do not want to be locked in a church with the dude. So Emily sees him in the flash of lightning - he is standing right in front of her - hands outstretched to touch her. Emily screams and runs. But there is nowhere for her to go. Then follows an agonizing hour? Couple of hours? With Emily hiding in between pews - as Mad Mr. Morrison searches for her. She has to keep moving - because he will catch up with her. This goes on forever. The way Lucy Maud describes Emily's terror is palpable. Emily has no critical mind left - or rationality. She is just a cringing little bundle of terror, trying to survive into the next second, without Mad Mr. Morrison getting her - in that dark empty church.

And then ... from the outside of the church ... she hears a voice calling, "Emily? Emily?"

It is Teddy. Teddy. Who heard her cry out for him. Only ... he was a couple of miles away. That's what's weird about it. He heard her cry his name ... and knew that he had to go to the church ... and so he left his house without his mother knowing, and came to 'save' Emily. It is all quite peculiar.

So Emily hears the voice - and screams - HELP HELP TEDDY TEDDY - she is out of her mind. Out. Of. Her. Mind. It's wrenching to read - because by now we love Emily. It's horrible to think of her so terrified and helpless.

Emily runs to the door, screaming out to Teddy about Mad Mr. Morrison being in there with her. Teddy shouts back that the key to let her out is hanging on the inside wall - if she can't find it he will break a window. In a flash of lightning - Emily sees the key, grabs it, opens the door - and falls out into Teddy's arms - just as poor Mad Mr. Morrison lunges at her from within the church. Teddy holds Emily - and scolds Mad Mr. Morrison about frightening Emily. Mad Mr. Morrison suddenly looks broken, desolate - and says, "I only wanted to find my beautiful Annie." And something in Teddy's heart has compassion for this poor man - it's heartbreaking - so Teddy says, "You'll find her someday." Emily, meanwhile, is still screaming, and sobbing, and shivering, and thrashing about in Teddy's arms. The terror she went thru has dissolved her self-control.

Teddy leads her over to the graveyard. By this point - the main thunder and lightning storm has passed ... and the moon has tentatively come out ... leaving the world a moonlit wonderland. They sit on one of the big slabs in the moonlight, and Emily cries in Teddy's arms. Teddy holds her. They talk about the weirdness of Teddy "hearing" her. Emily keeps saying, "But you couldn't have heard me ... you were too far away ..." And Teddy sticks to his guns. "I don't care. I HEARD you." There doesn't seem to be much else to say. Emily is slowly starting to calm down ... and suddenly ... she becomes completely aware of Teddy's arms around her ... of Teddy beside her ... the whole night trembles with romntic possibility. Teddy holds her ... looks down at her ... and says, "You are the sweetest girl, Emily" and leans in to kiss her. Emily has never been kissed - although someone at school TRIED to kiss her and she slapped him upside the head. Teddy had heard about that - but he somehow has a feeling that he won't get slapped.

But in that moment ... before their lips meet (DAMMIT) - suddenly Mrs. Kent - Teddy's insanely jealous mother - appears in the graveyard. She had heard her son leave the house - and she followed. Mrs. Kent hovers about her son - and considers anything that is a threat to their relationship - a threat. For example - he had a kitten he loved. Mrs. Kent drowned it. So, uhm. This is not a well woman. So to see Teddy making out with Emily in a graveyard ... this is a tragedy. A betrayal. Teddy is 15 years old at this point, 16 ... he should be allowed to have his own little romances if he wants - but not in Mrs. Kent's world. And from this night on - Mrs. Kent despises Emily. Emily is the threat. Emily is the one she needs to destroy.

Anyhoo - that's where I'll start the excerpt. With what happens at the very end of the chapter - when Mrs. Kent shows up.

Emily ends up having a shining moment here. Truth-teller. But of course - this truth-telling is the main reason why Mrs. Kent looks upon her as the most dangerous threat of all.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

"So you are trying to steal my son from me," she said. "He is all I have and you are trying to steal him."

"Oh, Mother, for goodness' sake, be sensible!" muttered Teddy.

"He - he tells me to be sensible," Mrs. Kent echoed tragically to the moon. "Sensible!"

"Yes, sensible," said Teddy angrily. "There's nothing to make such a fuss about. Emily was locked in the church by accident and Mad Mr. Morrison was there, too, and nearly frightened her to death. I came to let her out and we were sitting here for a few minutes until she got over her fright and was able to walk home. That's all."

"How did you know she was here?" demanded Mrs. Kent.

How indeed! This was a hard question to answer. The truth sounded like a silly, stupid invention. Nevertheless, Teddy told it.

"She called me," he said bluntly.

"And you heard her - a mile away. Do you expect me to believe that?" said Mrs. Kent, laughing wildly.

Emily had by this time recovered her poise. At no time in her life was Emily Byrd Starr disconcerted for long. She drew herself up proudly and in the dim light, in spite of her Starr features, she looked much as Elizabeth Murray must have looked over thirty years before.

"Whether you believe it or not it is true, Mrs. Kent," she said haughtily. "I am not stealing your son - I do not want him - he can go."

"I'm going to take you home first, Emily," said Teddy. He folded his arms and threw back his head and tried to look as stately as Emily. He felt that he was a dismal failure at it, but it imposed on Mrs. Kent. She began to cry.

"Go - go," she said. "Go to her - desert me."

Emily was thoroughly angry now. If this irrational woman persisted in making a scene, very well: a scene she should have.

"I won't let him take me home," she said, freezingly. "Teddy, go to your mother."

"Oh, you command him, do you? He must do as you tell him, must he?" cried Mrs. Kent, who now seemed to lose all control of herself. Her tiny form was shaken with violent sobs. She wrung her hands.

"He shall choose for himself," she cried. "He shall go with you - or come with me. Choose, Teddy, fo ryourself. You shall not do her bidding. Choose!"

She was fiercely dramatic again, as she lifted her hand and pointed it at poor Teddy.

Teddy was feeling as miserable and impotently angry as any male creature does when two women are quarreling about him in his presence. He wished himself a thousand miles away. What a mess to be in - and to be made ridiculous like this before Emily! Why on earth couldn't his mother behave like other boys' mothers? Why must she be so intense and exacting? He knew Blair Water gossip said she was "a little touched". He did not believe that. But - but - well, in short here was a mess. You came back to that every time. What on earth was he to do? If he took Emily home he knew his mother would cry and pray for days. On the other hand to desert Emily after her dreadful experience in the church, and leave her to traverse that lonely road alone was unthinkable. But Emily now dominated the situation. She was very angry, with the icy anger of old Hugh Murray that did not dissipate itself in idle bluster, but went straight to the point.

"You are a foolish, selfish woman," she said, "and you will make your son hate you."

"Selfish! You call me selfish," sobbed Mrs. Kent. "I live only for Teddy - he is all I have to live for."

"You are selfish." Emily was standing straight: her eyes had gone black: her voice was cutting: "the Murray look" was on her face, and in the pale moonlight it was a rather fearsome thing. She wondered, as she spoke, how she knew certain things. But she did know them. "You think you love him - it is only yourself you love. You are determined to spoil his life. You won't let him go to Shrewsbury because it will hurt you to let him go away from you. You have let your jealousy of everything he cares for eat your heart out, and master you. You won't bear a little pain for his sake. You are not a mother at all. Teddy has a great talent - everyone says so. You ought to be proud of him - you ought to give him his chance. But you won't - and some day he will hate you for it - yes, he will."

"Oh, no, no," moaned Mrs. Kent. She held up her hands as if to ward off a blow and shrank back against Teddy. "Oh, you are cruel - cruel. You don't know what I've suffered - you don't know what ache is always at my heart. He is all I have - all. I have nothing else - not even a memory. You don't understand. I can't - I can't give him up."

"If you let your jealousy ruin his life you will lose him," said Emily inexorably. She had always been afraid of Mrs. Kent. Now she was suddenly no longer afraid of her - she knew she would never be afraid of her again. "You hate everything he cares for - you hate his friends and his dog and his drawing. You know you do. But you can't keep him that way, Mrs. Kent. And you will find it out when it is too late. Good-night, Teddy. Thank you again for coming to my rescue. Good-night, Mrs. Kent."

Emily's good-night was very final. She turned and stalked across the green without another glance, holding her head high. Down the wet road she marched - at first very angry - then, as anger ebbed, very tired - oh, horribly tired. She discovered that she was fairly shaking with weariness. The emotions of the night had exhausted her, and now - what to do? She did not like the idea of going home to New Moon. Emily felt that she could never face outraged Aunt Elizabeth if the various scandalous doings of this night should be discovered. She turned in at the gate of Dr. Burnley's house. His doors were never locked. Emily slipped into the front hall as the dawn began to whiten in the sky and curled up on the lounge behind the staircase. There was no use in waking Ilse. She would tell her the whole story in the morning and bind her to secrecy - all, at least, except one thing Teddy had said, and the episode of Mrs. Kent. One was too beautiful, and the other too disagreeable to be talked about. Of course, Mrs. Kent wasn't like other women and there was no use in feeling too badly about it. Nevertheless, she had wrecked and spoiled a frail, beautiful something - she had blotched with absurdity a moment that should have been eternally lovely. And she had, of course, made poor Teddy feel like an ass. That, in the last analysis, was what Emily really could not forgive.

The Books: "Emily Climbs" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

This is the second book in the Emily series. There were times when this one was my favorite one out of the three - it's so rich, and funny - with so many of my favorite episodes that Lucy Maud has ever written (Emily going to interview the author - with the crazy dog running wild, Perry kissing Emily, the incident when Emily gets locked in the church, Emily walking the 7 miles home from Shrewsbury ...)

Again, I think that Lucy Maud was just at the top of her game, consistently, with the Emily series. She KNEW this character, this character is completely an individual, a living human being - and there isn't one false note in the whole thing.

I love, too, how a lot of this book - maybe half of it - is made up of Emily's actual diary entries. We get to hear Emily's voice in a really private way. We hear her thoughts, hear how she writes. It's a wonderful device and I think Lucy Maud really carries it off.

I'll do a bunch of excerpts from this one, too. Because it pleases me.

The first chapter shows Emily, in her room, a snowstorm outside - writing in her diary. Then we hear the entire diary entry - which is parts inspirational, part hysterical, part thoughtful. Emily is 13 years old.

Oh, and listen to the first sentence of the book. There's a melancholy in it. Lucy Maud the narrator inserts herself. She knows the future:

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down.

"before the world turned upside down". World War I. There's a chill in those words, you know? The chill that lies over the stillness and peace of the early 20th century, in looking back on it.

The excerpt below is the last couple paragraphs of the last chapter. I love it - because Lucy Maud comes right out and tells us what she, the author, is doing.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily looked at her candle - it,. too, was almost burned out. She knew she could not have another that night - Aunt Elizabeth's rules were as those of Mede and Persian: she put away her diary in the little right-hand cupboard above the mantel, covered her dying fire, undressed and blew out her candle. The room slowly filled with the faint, ghostly snow-light of a night when a full moon is behind the driving storm-clouds. And just as Emily was ready to slip into her high black bedstead a sudden inspiration came - a splendid new idea for a story. For a minute she shivered reluctantly: the room was getting cold. But the idea would not be denied. Emily slipped her hand between the feather tick of her bed and the chaff mattress and produced a half-burned candle, secreted there for just such an emergency.

It was not, of course, a proper thing to do. But then I have never pretended, nor ever will pretend, that Emily was a proper child. Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.

She lighted her candle, put on her stockings and a heavy coat, got out another half-filled Jimmy-book, and began to write by the single, uncertain candle which made a pale oasis of light in the shadows of the room. In that oasis Emily wrote, her black head bent over her book, as the hours of night crept away and the other occupants of New Moon slumbered soundly; she grew chill and cramped, but she was quite unconscious of it. Her eyes burned - her cheeks glowed - words came like troops of obedient genii to the call of her pen. When at last her candle went out with a sputter and a hiss in its little pool of melted tallow, she cane back to reality with a sigh and a shiver. It was two, by the clock, and she was very tired and very cold; but she had finished her story and it was the best thing she had ever written. She crept into her cold nest with a sense of completion and victory, born of the working out of her creative impulse, and fell asleep to the lullaby of the waning storm.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 6!!

Oh, there's just too much I want to excerpt. The whole section at Great-aunt Nancy's - just the description of her HOUSE - I love it ... her first conversation wtih Dean Priest - when Dean Priest, with his hunchback and his gleaming green eyes, decides to himself (actually, he says it out loud to Emily): "I think I'll wait for you." Emily has no idea what he's talking about, of course ... but we do. And you know what? He does wait for her. It's kind of creepy, yes, but there's something in Dean Priest that excites and challenges Emily - something she cannot get anywhere else. He respects her - he doesn't talk down to her. Then there's the beautiful section when she comes home and Elizabeth finally allows her to have her own room - she can have what was once her mother's room. The section where Emily is allowed to go into that room for the first time, and look at the pictures that her mother (whom she never knew) had put on the wall ... It helps Emily feel like she actually knows her mother. She loves her mother. Oh yes - and in the middle of all of this - Emily overhears Great-aunt Nancy and Caroline gossiping one day - and the story of Ilse Burnley's mother running away with another man comes out. To say that Emily takes this hard is an understatement. She obsesses so much about it, it makes her so unhappy and worried and anxious ... that she mopes about, she loses weight, she has no energy. She cant tell Ilse that she knows the story ... and this worries her too. Her main conviction, though, is that "Ilse's mother COULDN'T have done it." She does not believe for a second that Ilse's mother actually ran away. She COULDN'T have done it. Turns out that this is not just childish optimism and hope ... We are moving towards Emily's first experience with what Lucy Maud calls 'second sight'. The kind of knowledge that has nothing to do with the brain, or the intellect. Knowledge that comes from ... where. Who knows. Lucy Maud does not speculate - and Emily sure doesn't either. She is almost embarrassed by this "gift" when it comes out. It doesn't feel like a gift to her. But anyway - her spirit is so torn up by this horrible story of gossip ... that she can't get it out of her mind.

But I want to excerpt the part where Mr. Carpenter comes into her life. Because Mr. Carpenter is up there on my list of Most Favorite Lucy Maud Characters Created. I love him so much. It actually kinda hurts. I know it's silly, and he's a fictional character - but I truly love him.

I won't say anymore - I'll just post the excerpt. He's the new teacher at Emily's school. And he is completely different from the bitch in tights Miss Brownwell - who basically despised children, and was a bitter witch about her own life, so she punished her students about THAT. Bitch. Mr. Carpenter comes into the class ... and is a horse of a different color.

I love him because - well, you can see how Lucy Maud hints at the fact that there are deep wells of sadness and agony in this man. And yet ... he makes education come alive for these kids.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Mr. Carpenter never talked of his past or offered any explanation of the fact that at his age he had no better profession than teaching a district school for a pittance of salary, but the truth leaked out after a while; for prince Edward Island is a small province and everybody in it knows something about everybody else. So eventually Blair Water people, and even the school children, understood that Mr. Carpenter had been a brilliant student in his youth and had had his eye on the ministry. But at college he had got in with a "fast set" -- Blair Water people nodded heads slowly and whispered the dreadful phrase portentously - and the fast set had ruined him. He "took to drink" and went to the dogs generally. And the upshot of it all was that Francis Carpenter, who had led his class in his first and second years at McGill, and for whom his teachers had predicted a great career, was a country school-teacher at forty-five with no prospect of ever being anything else. Perhaps he was resigned to it - perhaps not. Nobody every knew, not even the brown mouse of a wife. Nobody in Blair Water cared - he was a good teacher, and that was all that mattered. Even if he did go on occasional "sprees" he always took Saturday for them and was sober enough by Monday. Sober, and especiall dignified, wearing a rusty black frock coat which he never put on any other day of the week. He did not invite pity and he did not pose as a tragedy. But sometimes, when Emily looked at his face, bent over the arithmetic problems of Blair Water School, she felt horribly sorry for him without in the least understanding why.

He had an explosive temper which generally burst into flame at least once a day, and then he would storm about wildly for a few minutes, tugging at his beard, imploring heaven to grant him patience, abusing everybody in general and the luckless object of his wrath in particular. But these tempers never lasted long. In a few minutes Mr. Carpenter would be smiling as graciously as a sun bursting through a storm-cloud on the very pupil he had been rating. Nobody seemed to cherish any grudge because of his scoldings. He never said any of the biting things Miss Brownell was wont to say, which rankled and festered for weeks; his hail of words fell alike on just and unjust and rolled off harmlessly.

He could take a joke on himself in perfect good nature. "Do you hear me? Do you hear me, sirrah?" he bellowed to Perry Miller one day. "Of course I can ehar you," retorted Perry coolly, "they could hear you in Charlottetown." Mr. Carpenter stared for a moment, then broke into a great, jolly laugh.

His methods of teaching were so different from Miss Brownell's that the Blair Water pupils at first felt as if he had stood them on their heads. Miss Brownell had been a martinet for order. Mr. Carpenter never tried to keep order apparently. But somehow he kept the children so busy that they had no time to do mischief. He taught history tempestuously for a month, making his pupils play the different characters and enact the incidents. He never bothered any one to learn dates - but the dates stuck in the memory just the same. If, as Mary Queen of Scots, you were beheaded by the school axe, kneeling blindfolded at the doorstep, with Perry Miller, wearing a mask made out of a piece of Aunt Laura's old black silk, for executioner, wondering what would happen if he brought the axe down too hard, you did not forget the year it all happened; and if you fought the battle of Waterloo all over the school playground, and heard Teddy Kent shouting, "Up, Guards, and at 'em!" as he led the last furious charge you remembered 1815 without half trying to.

Next month history would be thrust aside altogether and geography would take its place, when school and playground were mapped out into countries and you dressed up as the animals inhabiting them or traded in various commodities over their rivers and cities. When Rhode Stuart had cheated you in a bargain in hides, you remembered that she had bought the cargo from the Argentine Republic, and when Perry Miller would not drink any water for a whole hot summer day because he was crossing the Arabian Desert with a caravan of camels and could not find an oasis, and then drank so much that he took terrible cramps and Aunt Laura had to be up all night with him - you did not forget where the said desert was. The trustees were quite scandalized over some of the goings on and felt sure that the children were having too good a time to be really learning anything.

If you wanted to learn Latin and French you had to do it by talking your exercises, not writing them, and on Friday afternoons all lessons were put aside and Mr. Carpenter made the children recite poems, make speeches and declaim passages from Shakespeare and the Bible. This was the day Ilse loved. Mr. Carpenter pounced on her gift like a starving dog on a bone and drilled her without mercy. They had endless fights and Ilse stamped her foot and called him names while the other pupils wondered why she was not punished. Ilse went to school regularly - something she had never done before. Mr. Carpenter had told her that if she were absent for a day without good excuse she could take no part in the Friday "exercises" and this would have killed her.

One day Mr. Carpenter had picked up Teddy's slate and found a sketch of himself on it, in one of his favourite if not exactly beautiful attitudes. Teddy had labelled it "The Black Death" -- half of the pupils of the school having died that day of the Great Plague, and having been carried out on stretchers to the Potter's Field by the terrified survivors.

Teddy expected a roar of denunciation, for the day before Garrett Marshall had been ground into figurative pulp on being discovered with the picture of a harmless cow on his slate - at least, Garrett said he meant it for a cow. But now this amazing Mr. Carpenter only drew his beetling brows together, looked earnestly at Teddy's slate, put it down on the desk, looked at Teddy, and said,

"I don't know anything about drawing - I can't help you, but, by gad, I think hereafter you'd better give up those extra arithmetic problems in the afternoon and draw pictures."

Whereupon Garrett Marshall went home and told his father that "old Carpenter" wasn't fair and "made favourites" over Teddy Kent.

Mr. Carpenter went up to the Tansy Patch that evening and saw the sketches in Teddy's old barn-loft studio. Then he went into the house and talked to Mrs. Kent. What he said and what she said nobody every knew. But Mr. Carpenter went away looking grim, as if he had met an unexpected match. He took great pains with Teddy's general school work after that and procured from somewhere certain elementary text books on drawing which he gave him, telling him not to take them home - a caution Teddy did not require. He knew quite well that if he did they would disappear as mysteriously as his cats had done. He had taken Emily's advice and told his mother he would not love her if anything happened to Leo, and Leo flourished and waxed fat and doggy. But Teddy was too gentle at heart and too fond of his mother to make such a threat more than once. He knew she had cried all that night after Mr. Carpenter had been there, and prayed on her knees in her little bedroom most of the next day, and looked at him with bitter, haunting eyes for a week. He wished she were more like other fellows' mothers but they loved each other very much and had dear hours together in the little gray house on the tansy hill. It was only when other people were about that Mrs. Kent was queer and jealous.

"She's always lovely when we're alone," Teddy had told Emily.

As for the other boys, Perry Miller was the only one Mr. Carpenter bothered much with in the way of speeches - and he was as merciless with him as with Ilse. Perry worked hard to please him and practiced his speeches in barn and field - and even by nights in the kitchen loft - until Aunt Elizabeth put a stop to that. Emily could not understand why Mr. Carpenter would smile amiably and say "Very good" when Neddy Grey rattled off a speech glibly, without any expression whatever, and then rage at Perry and denounce him as a dunce and a nincompoop, by gad, because he had failed to give just the proper emphasis on a certain word, or had timed his gesture a fraction of a second too soon.

Neither could she understand why he made red pencil corrections all over her compositions and rated her for split infinitives and too lavish adjectives and strode up and down the aisle and hurled objurgations at her because she didn;t know "a good place to stop when she saw it, by gad," and then told Rhoda Stuart and Nan Lee that their compositions were very pretty and gave them back without so much as a mark on them. Yet, in spite of it all, she liked him more and more as time went on and autumn passed and winter came with its beautiful bare-limbed trees, and soft pearl-gray skies that were slashed with rifts of gold in the afternoons, and cleared to a jewelled pageantry of stars over the wide white hills and valleys around New Moon.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 5!!

Okay, so this entire chapter is hilarious and beautiful - I'll only excerpt a part of it - but it is Lucy Maud at her very best. It's comical - it has two very distinct voices - Emily's and Father Cassidy's - we are in Emily's shoes, of course - and yet, because we are a bit older than Emily, we can totally see Father Cassidy's point of view. We can see how he sees her - and we can see how unutterably delightful he finds her. Imagine: this little black-haired girl shows up on the doorstep of the rectory one day - unannounced - terrified because you are a Catholic and she doesn't know any Catholics and she has been taught that "papists" are bizarre and almost like they're members of a cult - and yet she is at the end of her rope, and she has come to ask a personal favor of you. To use your influence (because we all know that Catholics do whatever their priests tell them to do) with a member of your congregation - and ask him NOT to cut down the spruce grove over by New Moon. Father Cassidy is like ... wha????? But watch how she does it - and watch how Father Cassidy just falls in love with her. The guy has an Irish brogue - he's still a bit of the old country - and Emily comes to see him, terrified, she has not told Elizabeth or Laura where she has gone. She has taken it upon herself to walk the distance to the Catholic church in the next town, to talk to Father Cassidy. She's, like, 9 years old or something like that. Lucy Maud's sense of humor totally shines in chapters like this one - where the events border on the absurd. Father Cassidy talks with her a while - and eventually convinces her to stay for tea. He's fascinated by this small impish child who has shown up to demand that he intercede with a parishioner. hahahaha It's so brazen!! Father Cassidy sees her innocence - sees her guilelessness ... but he also sees something else. In the same way that Dean Priest, later, will see something else. He sees the future. Father Cassidy senses that this girl ... this girl is something special. He basically just wants to keep her talking.

I'll just excerpt a bit of it. It's my favorite bit - the ending epiphany moment always brings a little lump to my throat. Lucy Maud is marvelous.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

"Now you sit right down here, Elf, and be human for ten minutes and we'll have a friendly snack."

Emily was hungry - a nice comfortable feeling she hadn't experienced for a fortnight. Mrs. Cassidy's plum cake was all her reverend son claimed, and the cream cow seemed to be no myth.

"What do you think av me now?" asked Father Cassidy suddenly, finding Emily's eyes fixed on him speculatively.

Emily blushed. She had been wondering if she dared ask another favour of Father Cassidy.

"I think you are awfully good," she said.

"I am awfully good," agreed Father Cassidy. "I'm so good that I'll do what you want me to do - for I feel there's something else you want me to do."

"I'm in a scrape and I've been in it all summer. You see" -- Emily was very sober -- "I am a poetess."

"Holy Mike! That is serious. I don't know if I can do much for you. How long have you been that way?"

"Are you making fun of me?" asked Emily gravely.

Father Cassidy swallowed something besides plum cake.

"The saints forbid! It's only that I'm rather overcome. To be after entertaining a lady av New Moon -- and an elf - and a poetess all in one is a bit too much for a humble praste like meself. Have another slice av cake and tell me all about it."

"It's like this -- I'm writing an epic."

Father Cassidy suddenly leaned over and gave Emily's wrist a little pinch.

"I just wanted to see if you were real," he explained. "Yes -- yes, you're writing an epic -- go on. I think I've got my second wind now."

"I began it last spring. I called it The White Lady first but now I've changed it to The Child of the Sea. Don't you think that's a better title?"

"Much better."

"I've got three cantos done, and I can't get any further because there's something I don't know and can't find out. I've been so worried about it."

"What is it?"

"My epic," said Emily, diligently devouring plum cake, "is about a very beautiful high-born girl who was stolen away from her real parents when she was a baby and brought up in a woodcutter's hut."

"One av of the seven original plots in the world," murmured Father Cassidy.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just a bad habit av thinking aloud. Go on."

"She had a lover of high degree but his family did not want him to marry her because she was only a woodcutter's daughter --"

"Another of the seven plots -- excuse me."

"-- so they sent him away to the Holy land on a crusade and word came back that he was killed and then Editha -- her name was Editha -- went into a convent --"

Emily paused for a bite of plum cake and Father Cassidy took up the strain.

"And now her lover comes back very much alive, though covered with Paynim scars, and the secret av her birth is discovered through the dying confession av the old nurse and the birthmark on her arm."

"How did you know?" gasped Emily in amazement.

"Oh, I guessed it -- I'm a good guesser. But where's your bother in all this?"

"I don't know how to get her out of the convent," confessed Emily. "I thought perhaps you would know how it would be done."

Again Father Cassidy fitted his fingers.

"Let us see, now. It's no light matter you;'ve undertaken, young lady. How stands the case? Editha has taken the veil, not because she has a religious vocation because because she imagines her heart is broken. The Catholic Church does not release its nuns from their vows because they happen to think they've made a little mistake av that sort. No, no, -- we must have a better reason. Is this Editha the sole child av her real parents?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then the way is clear. If she had had any brothers or sisters you would have had to kill them off, which is a messy thing to do. Well, then, she is the sole daughter and heiress av a noble family who have for years been at deadly feud with another noble family -- the family av the lover. Do you know what a feud is?"

"Of course," said Emily, disdainfully. "And I've got all that in the poem already."

"So much the better. This feud has rent the kingdom in twain and can only be healed by an alliance between Capulet and Montague."

"Those aren't their names."

"No matter. This, then, is a national affair, with far-reaching issues, therefore an appeal to the Supreme Pontiff is quite in order. What you want," Father Cassidy nodded solemnly, "is a dispensation from Rome."

"Dispensation is a hard word to work into a poem," said Emily.

"Undoubtedly. But young ladies who will write epic poems and who will lay the scenes thereof amid times and manners av hundreds av years ago, and will choose heroines av a religion quite unknown to them, must expect to run up against a few snags."

"Oh, I think I'll be able to work it in," said Emily cheerfully. "And I'm so much obliged to you. You don't know what a relief it is to my mind. I'll finish the poem right up now in a few weeks. I haven't done a thing at it all summer. But then of course I've been busy. Ilse Burnley and I have been making a new language."

"Making a -- new -- excuse me. Did you say language?"

"Yes."

"What's the matter with English? Isn't it good enough for you, you incomprehensible little being?"

"Oh, yes. That isn't why we're making a new one. You see in the spring, Cousin Jimmy got a lot of French boys to help plant the potatoes. I had to help too and Ilse came to keep me company. And it was so annoying to hear those boys talking French when we couldn't understand a word of it. They did it just to make us mad. Such jabbering! So Ilse and I just made up our miunds we'd invent a new language that they couldn't understand. We're getting on fine and when the potato picking time comes we'll be able to talk to each other and those boys won't be able to understand a word we're saying. Oh, it will be great fun!"

"I haven't a doubt. But two girls who will go to all the trouble av inventing a new language just to get square with some poor little French boys -- you're beyond me," said Father Cassidy, helplessly. "Goodness knows what you'll be doing when you grow up. You'll be Red Revolutionists. I tremble for Canada."

"Oh, it isn't a trouble -- it's fun. And all the girls in school are just wild because they hear us talking in it and can't make it out. We can talk secrets right before them."

"Human nature being what it is, I can see where the fun comes in all right. Let's hear a sample av your language."

"Nat millan O ste dolman bote ta Shrewsbury fernas ta poo litanos," said Emily glibly. "That means 'Next summer I am going to Shrewsbury woods to pick strawberries.' I yelled that across the playground to Ilse the other day at recess and oh, how everybody stared."

"Staring, is it? I should say so. My own poor old eyes are all but dropping out av me head. Let's hear a bit more av it."

"Mo tral li dead seb ad li mo trene. Mo bertral seb mo bertrene das sten dead e ting setra. That means 'My father is dead and so is my mother. My grandfather and grandmother have been dead a long time.' We haven't invented a word for 'dead' yet. I think I will soon be able to write my poems in our language and then Aunt Elizabeth will not be able to read them if she finds them."

"Have you written any other poetry besides your epic?"

"Oh, yes -- but just short pieces -- dozens of them."

"H'm. Would you be so kind as to let me hear one av them?"

Emily was greatly flattered. And she did not mind letting Father Cassidy hear her precious stuff.

"I'll recite my last poem," she said, clearing her throat importantly. "It's called Evening Dreams."

Father Cassidy listened attentively. After the first verse a change came over his big brown face, and he began patting his fingertips together., When Emily finished she hung down her lashes and waited trembling. What if Father Cassidy said it was no good? No, he wouldn't be so impolite - but if he bantered her as he had done about her epic -- she would know what that meant.

Father Cassidy did not speak all at once. The prolonged suspense was terrible to Emily. She was afraid he could not praise and did not want to hurt her feelings by dispraise. All at once her "Evening Dreams" seemed trash and she wondered how she could ever have been silly enough to repeat it to Father Cassidy.

Of course, it was trash. Father Cassidy knew that well enough. All the same, for a child like this - and rhyme and rhythm were flawless - and there was one line -- just one line -- "the light of faintly golden stars" -- for the sake of that line Father Cassidy suddenly said,

"Keep on, -- keep on writing poetry."

"You mean?" -- Emily was breathless.

"I mean you'll be able to do something by and by. Something -- I don't know how much -- but keep on -- keep on."

Emily was so happy she wanted to cry. It was the first word of commendation she had ever received except from her father -- and a father might have too high an opinion of one. This was different. To the end of her struggle for recognition Emily never forgot Father Cassidy's "Keep on" and the tone in which he said it.

"Aunt Elizabeth scolds me for writing poetry," she said wistfully. "She says people will think I'm as simple as Cousin Jimmy."

"The path of genius never did run smooth. But have another piece av cake -- do, just to show there's something human about you."

"Ve, merry ti. O del re dolman cosey aman ri sen ritter. That means, 'No, thank you. I must be going home before it gets dark.'"

"I'll drive you home."

"Oh, no, no. It's very kind of you" -- the English language was quite good enough for Emily now, "But I'd rather walk. It's -- it's -- such good exercise."

"Meaning," said Father Cassidy with a twinkle in his eye, "that we must keep it from the old lady. Goodbye, and may you always see a happy face in your looking-glass!"

Emily was too happy to be tired on the way home. There seemed to be a bubble of joy in her heart - a shimmering, prismatic bubble. When she came to the top of the big hill and looked across to New Moon, her eyes were satisfied and loving. How beautiful it was, lying embowered in the twilight of the old trees; the tips of the loftiest spruces came out in purple silhouette against the northwestern sky of rose and amber; down behind it the Blair Water dreamed in silver; the Wind Woman had folded her misty bat-wings in a valley of sunset and stillness lay over the world like a blessing. Emily felt sure everything would be all right. Father Cassidy would manage it in some way.

And he had told her to "keep on".

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 4!!

I always loved this particular chapter, for some reason. I wished I could crawl in between the lines of the page and join Emily, Ilse, and Teddy around Cousin Jimmy's fire. So Teddy has come into the story. Emily and Ilse befriend Teddy - a boy in their class - and he has a mother who is, uhm, somewhat ODD, to say the least. She hovers over Teddy. Her entire life is her son. Again, this characterization is evidence that Lucy Maud knew exactly where she was going in this series ... because the climax with Teddy's mother does not occur until Book 3 - but the seeds of it are in place. Marvelous. This is why it's so wonderful to read these books over and over again. You see, with each reading, how good Lucy Maud really IS. "Oh, look ... foreshadowing there ..." But it's subtle. She never beats you over the head with it - it's just that she had carefully plotted out the journeys of these people - so she knew where she was going, and she knew how to set them up. So the payoff in that last book is HUGE. Teddy's mother is one of Lucy Maud's most tragic and irritating creations. She's a martyr - and yet ... her martyrdom causes her soul to shrivel, for her to lose her sense of humanity ... She does something so evil (eventually) - and yeah, I would call it evil - that Emily's life is nearly ruined forever. She has that kind of power ... and she uses it. From the very beginning, when Ilse and Emily befriend Teddy - and she peeks out the windows at them playing in the yard ... she knows. She knows that these two girls will grow into 2 women who conceivably could take her son away from her. Her own tragedy that befell her has caused her to go mad. Her connection to her son is unnatural. And Teddy feels it - even then - as a young boy. He knows his mother is not like other mothers. He loves her ... but there are times when her hovering presence makes him feel suffocated.

Oh, and then - also - there is the foreshadowing of Teddy's "call" to her.

And Ilse is, I believe, one of Lucy Maud's most WILD creations. Ilse lives by her own rules. Always and forever. She can be quite scandalous. But that is just who she is. When Emily meets her, Ilse is neglected horribly by her father - and her mother disappeared. It is believed (only this story is kept from Emily) that Ilse's mother ran off with another man. And her father has become so bitter - and Ilse reminds him of happier days - so he literally could barely care less what Ilse does. Ilse dresses in rags. She doesn't go to school. Or, she does when she FEELS like it. And she makes statements like, "No. I don't believe in God" - completely scandalizing everyone.

But then comes the autumn (this is the excerpt I'm posting today) - and Cousin Jimmy has to boil the pigs potatoes. There's a whole chapter about this ritual ... I just think Lucy Maud creates such a vivid LIVING picture here. I just want to be there.

There's reality in it - and yet - it's magical too. The way life sometimes is when you're a kid.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily was sure no built-in boiler could have the charm of the big pot. She helped Cousin Jimmy fill it full of potatoes after she came from school; then, when supper was over, Cousin Jimmy lighted the fire under it and puttered about it all the evening. Sometimes he poked the fire -- Emily loved that part of the performance -- sending glorious streams of rosy sparks upward into the darkness; sometimes he stirred the potatoes with a long pole, looking, with his queer, forked grey beard and belted "jumper", just like some old gnome or troll of northland story mixing the contents of a magical caldron; and sometimes he sat beside Emily on the grey granite boulder near the pot and recited his poetry for her. Emily liked this bet of all, for Cousin Jimmy's poetry was surprisingly good - at least in spots - and Cousin Jimmy had "fit audience though few" in this slender little maiden with her pale eager face and rapt eyes.

They were an odd couple and they were perfectly happy together. Blair Water people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling. But he swelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything. He had recited his poems a hundred times thus, as he boiled the pigs' potatoes; the ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, bent and wrinkled and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited. But it was his hour; he was no longer "simple Jimmy Murray" but a prince in his own realm. For a little while he was strong and young and splendid and beautiful, accredited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous, sensible Blair Water neighbours ever lived through such an hour. He would not have exchanged places with one of them. Emily, listening to him, felt vaguely that if it had not been for that unlucky push into the New Moon well, this queer little man beside her might have stood in the presence of kings.

But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well and as a consequence he boiled pigs' potatoes and recited to Emily -- Emily, who wrote poetry too, and loved these evenings so much that she could not sleep after she went to bed until she had composed a minute description of them. The flash came almost every evening over something or other. The Wind Woman swooped or purred in the tossing boughs above them -- Emily had never been so near to seeing her; the sharp air was full of the pleasant tang of the burning spruce cones Cousin Jimmy shovelled under the pot; Emily's furry kitten, Mike II, frisked and scampered about like a small, charming demon of the night; the fire glowed with beautiful redness and allure through the gloom; there were nice whispery sounds everywhere; the "great big dark" lay spread around them full of mysteries that daylight never revealed; and over all a purple sky powdered with stars.

Ilse and Teddy came, too, on some evenings. Emily always knew when Teddy was coming, for when he reached the old orchard he whistled his "call" -- the one he used just for her -- a funny, dear little call, like three clear bird notes, the first just medium pitch, the second higher, the third dropping away into lowness and sweetness long-drawn-out -- like the echoes in the Bugle Song that went clearer and further in their dying. That call always had an odd effect on Emily; it seemed to her that it fairly drew the heart out of her body -- and she had to follow it. She thought Teddy could have whistled her clear across the world with those three magic notes. Whenever she heard it she ran quickly through the orchard and told Teddy whether Cousin Jimmy wanted him or not, because it was only on certain nights that Cousin Jimmy wanted anybody but her. He would never recite his poetry to Ilse or Teddy; but he told them fairy stories, and tales about the old dead-and-gone Murrays in the pond graveyard that were as queer, sometimes, as the fairy stories; and Ilse would recite too, doing better there than she ever did anywhere else; and sometimes Teddy lay sprawled out on the ground beside the big pot and drew pictures by the light of the fire -- pictures of Cousin Jimmy stirring the potatoes -- pictures of Ilse and Emily dancing hand in hand around it like two small witches, pictures of Mike's cunning, little, whiskered face peering around the old boulder, pictures of weird, vague faces crowding in the darkness outside their enchanted circle. They had very wonderful evenings there, those four children.

"Oh, don't you like the world at night, Ilse?" Emily once said rapturously.

Ilse glanced happily around her -- poor little neglected Ilse, who found in Emily's companionship what she had hungered for all her short life and who was, even now, being led by love into something of her rightful heritage.

"Yes," she said. "And I always believe there is a God when I'm here like this."

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

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Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!!

I love this little excerpt just because it gives you a sense of the depths within Emily - depths that even she does not know are there. In a way, Emily is almost afraid of her own "depths" - the few times that her moments of precognition occur - or the time she has the prophetic dream - or the time in the last book where she "calls" to Teddy ... These are extraordinary events. Emily is tapped into some well-source of power. Something she is not at all in charge of. And this "side" of her almost scares her. She thinks it's best not to talk about that stuff. It makes her feel uncomfortable, different from other people. She brushes off Ilse or Teddy wanting to talk about it ... There are some things better left unsaid.

In this excerpt - Emily has been blown off by the first friend she made - the despicable Rhoda with the "sugar-brown hair". Rhoda was sweet and alluring, and "courted" Emily - Emily had never had a friend before, so she falls HARD for Rhoda. Then - in a devastating blow - Rhoda has a birthday party and invites every girl in the class EXCEPT Emily.

Nice to know that little girls could behave just as atrociously to one another back then as they do today.

But it's what happens directly after the blow-off that I am excerpting. It's as though thru the confrontation with her Aunt Elizabeth - she completley gets rid of all of her anger and hurt. It washes out of her. I can't think specifically of a moment in my life where that has happened - but I know it happens all the time. You are all worked UP about something, something is ALWAYS on your mind, you are working it over, worrying about it, angsting ... and then a random moment, unconnected, sets you free. The emotions move course. And 5 minutes later you're wondering: "Why on earth was I so upset?"

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily was of a nature which, even as a child, did not readily recover from or forget such a blow. She moped about New Moon, lost her appetite, and grew thin. She hated to go to Sunday School because she thought the other girls exulted in her humiliation and her estrangement from Rhoda. Some slight feeling of the kind there was, perhaps, but Emily morbidly exaggerated it. If two girls whispered or giggled together she thought she was being discussed and laughed at. If one of them walked home with her she thought it was out of condescending pity because she was friendless. For a month Emily was the most unhappy little being in Blair Water.

"I think I must have been put under a curse at birth," she reflected disconsolately.

Aunt Elizabeth had a more prosaic idea to account for Emily's languor and lack of appetite. She had come to the conclusion that Emily's heavy masses of hair "took from her strength" and that she would be much stronger and better if it were cut off. With Aunt Elizabeth to decide was to act. One morning she coolly informed Emily that her hair was to be "shingled".

Emily could not believe her ears.

"You don't mean that you are going to cut off my hair, Aunt Elizabeth," she exclaimed.

"Yes, I mean exactly that," said Aunt Elizabeth firmly. "You have entirely too much hair especially for hot weather. I feel sure that is why you have been so miserable lately. Now, I don't want any crying."

But Emily could not keep the tears back.

"Don't cut it all off," she pleaded. "Just cut a good big bang. Lots of the girls have their hair banged clean from the crown of their heads. That would take half my hair off and the rest won't take too much strength."

"There will be no bangs here," said Aunt Elizabeth. "I've told you so often enough. I'm going to shingle your hair close all over your head for the hot weather. You'll be thankful to me some day for it."

Emily felt anything but thankful just then.

"It's my one beauty," she sobbed. "It and my lashes. I suppose you want to cut off my lashes too."

Aunt Elizabeth did distrust those long, upcurled fringes of Emily's, which were an inheritance from the girlish stepmother, and too un-Murray-like to be approved; but she had no designs against them. The hair must go, however, and she curtly bade Emily wait there, without any fuss, until she got the scissors.

Emily waited -- quite hopelessly. She must lose her lovely hair -- the hair her father had been so proud of. It might grow again in time -- if Aunt Elizabeth let it -- but that would take years, and meanwhile what a fright she would be! Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy were out; she had no one to back her up; this horrible thing must happen.

Aunt Elizabeth returned with the scissors; they clicked suggestively as she opened them; that click, as if by magic, seemed to loosen something -- some strange formidable power in Emily's soul. She turned deliberately around and faced her aunt. She felt her brows drawing together in an unaccustomed way -- she felt an uprush as from unknown depths of some irresistible surge of energy.

"Aunt Elizabeth," she said, looking straight at the lady with the scissors, "my hair is not going to be cut off. Let me hear no more of this."

An amazing thing happened to Aunt Elizabeth. She turned pale -- she laid the scissors down -- she looked aghast for one moment at the transformed or possessed child before her -- and then for the first time in her life Elizabeth Murray turned tail and fled -- literally fled -- to the kitchen.

"What is the matter, Elizabeth?" cried Laura, coming in from the cook-house.

"I saw -- Father -- looking from her face," gasped Elizabeth, trembling. "And she said, 'Let me hear no more of this,' -- just as he always said it -- his very words."

Emily overheard her and ran to the sideboard mirror. She had had, while she was speaking, an uncanny feeling of wearing somebody else's face instead of her own. It was vanishing now -- but Emily caught a glimpse of it as it left -- the Murray look, she supposed. No wonder it had frightened Aunt Elizabeth -- it frightened herself -- she was glad that it had gone. She shivered -- she fled to her garret retreat and cried; but somehow, she knew that her hair would not be cut.

Nor was it; Aunt Elizabeth never referred to the matter again. But several days passed before she meddled much with Emily.

It was a rather curious fact that from that day Emily ceased to grieve over her lost friend. The matter had suddenly become of small importance. It was as if it had happened so long ago that nothing, save the mere emotionless memory of it, remained. Emily speedily regained appetite and animation, resumed her letters to her father and found that life tasted good again, marred only by a mysterious prescience that Aunt Elizabeth had it in for her in regard to her defeat in the matter of her hair and would get even sooner or later.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Excerpt 2!!

I just love this part - when Emily first goes to New Moon, after her father's death. Everything is new and strange, and her grief is still fresh ... so all of her impressions come rushing at her. Emily is very disoriented. And Aunt Elizabeth, to say the least, is NOT sympathetic to the whims and ups and downs of Emily's personality. She should be seen and not heard. She will not be allowed to 'wallow' in grief (uhm, her father died 2 days ago??) Etc. The rules come fast and furious at Emily. New Moon is beautiful and mysterious and interesting - but it is not at ALL comforting at first. Especially not the first night ... when Elizabeth sternly and coldly refuses to let Emily have her own room. She is too young. She must sleep with Elizabeth. Emily - who is only a child - still has a strong sense of herself, a strong sense of boundaries - she needs solitude, alone time ... This is NOT respected at New Moon. Elizabeth will NEVER get this about Emily. It is one of their most ongoing struggles.

I love the writing in the "New Moon" chapter and also in the next chapter "The Book of Yesterday". - Emily's arrival at her new home. It's so vivid - the shadowy kitchen, the hanging hams, the tall spruces, the dark house crowded with Victorian furniture - Emily grew up in a shabby little house in the woods, with maybe 3 or 4 rooms ... She is agog at her new surroundings, overwhelmed, exhausted, almost hallucinatory.

She wakes up the next morning and spends a couple of days hanging out with Cousin Jimmy (a marvelous character, my God, isn't he great?) - and he tells her the stories of the Murry family - a long established kind of intimidating family - a family Emily is part of but she knows nothing about.

When her dead mother, the beloved Juliet Murry, married a poor writer (Emily's father) - her family disowned her. They turned their backs. They can be very cold. Emily knows NONE of her own history.

Oh, and one thing. This chapter kind of sets up the whole rest of the series. Things are pointed out in this chapter that will only be resolved in the THIRD book of the series. Foreshadowing all over the place. Lucy Maud knew what the hell she was doing.

Oh, and the "Here I stay" story in the excerpt below is true. It was part of Lucy Maud's family history.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

Emily resigned herself with a sigh of disappointment to staying home; but it was very pleasant after all. Cousin Jimmy took her for a walk to the pond, showed her the graveyard and opened the book of yesterday to her.

"Why are all the Murrays buried here?" asked Emily. "Is it really because they are too good to be buried with common people?"

"No -- no, pussy. We don't carry our pride as far as that. When old Hugh Murray settled at New Moon there was nothing much but woods for miles and no graveyards nearer than Charlottetown. That's why the old Murrays were buried here -- and later on we kept it up because we wanted to lie with our own, here on the green, green banks of the old Blair Water."

"That sounds like a line out of a poem, Cousin Jimmy," said Emily.

"So it is -- out of one of my poems."

"I kind of like the idea of a 'sclusive burying ground like this," said Emily decidedly, looking around her approvingly at the velvet grass sloping down to the fairy-blue pond, the neat walks, the well-kept graves.

Cousin Jimmy chuckled.

"And yet they say you ain't a Murray," he said. "Murray and Byrd and Starr -- and a dash of Shipley to boot, or Cousin Jimmy Murray is much mistaken."

"Shipley?"

"Yes -- Hugh Murray's wife - your great-great-grandmother -- was a Shipley -- an Englishwoman. Ever hear of how the Murrays came to New Moon?"

"No."

"They were bound for Quebec -- hadn't any notion of coming to P.E.I. They had a long rough voyage and water got scarce, so the captain of the New Moon put in here to get some. Mary Murray had nearly died of seasickness coming out -- never seemed to get her sea-legs -- so the captain, being sorry for her, told her she could go ashore with the men and feel solid ground under her for an hour or so. Very gladly she went and when she got to shore she said, 'Here I stay.' And stay she did; nothing could budge her; old Hugh -- he was young Hugh then, of course -- coaxed and stormed and raged and argued -- and even cried, I've been told -- but Mary wouldn't be moved. In the end he gave in and had his belongings landed and stayed, too. So that is how the Murrays came to P.E. Island."

"I'm glad it happened like that," said Emily.

"So was old Hugh in the long run. And yet it rankled, Emily -- it rankled. He never forgave his wife with a whole heart. Her grave is over there in the corner -- that one with the flat red stone. Go you and look at what he had put on it."

Emily ran curiously over. The big flat stone was inscribed with one of the long, discursive epitaphs of an older day. But beneath the epitaph was no scriptural verse or pious psalm. Clear and distinct, in spite of age and lichen, ran the line, "Here I stay."

"That's how he got even with her," said Cousin Jimmy. "He was a good husband to her -- and she was a good wife and bore him a fine family -- an dhe never was the same after her death. But that rankled in him until it had to come out."

Emily gave a little shiver. Somehow, the idea of that grim old ancestor with his undying grudge against his nearest and dearest was rather terrifying.

The Books: "Emily of New Moon" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on the shelf ...

Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

I'm almost NERVOUS to start this. I love the Emily books so much. I need to calm down. I have a greater affinity for the Emily books than the Anne books (Madeleine L'Engle wrote a WONDERFUL essay about the Emily books - and how much they enchanted her and inspired her as a child) ... I love Anne Shirley, do not get me wrong ... but there are times when I feel a WEE bit like Leslie Moore, looking at Anne with resentful eyes, wondering, "Do you EVER have a bad day? Do you EVER give up hope? Do you EVER lie awake at night, tormented??" She doesn't seem to. After all, Lucy Maud makes a big point of telling us that she and Gilbert never fight in their marriage. Never fight. Mm-hmm. A bit of wishful thinking there, LM. I mean - Anne never comes off as saccharine, NEVER ... she's a living breathing funny warm human being ... but Emily? There's just something about Emily that I can totally click into. And this was so since I first read the books - which, I think, was late in high school or early college.

I think also there's the whole artist thing. Emily is a person who has a CALLING. She knows it from when she is a small child. She is a writer. This is her CALLING. The Emily books are much more autobiographical than the Anne books - and there are certain sections that are taken almost word for word from Lucy Maud's journals and personal essays, and the excerpt I'm posting today is one of them. Lucy Maud had written herself about "the flash" and what that meant to her, and what it WAS ... so she gives that gift to Emily. (Oh, and Lucy Maud said, later, that she also could "see the wallpaper in the air" when she was a kid, and liked to amuse herself doing so. There are lots of little similarities here between Emily and the author).

Emily is a darker book than Anne. The mood is darker. Emily herself is a darker personality than Anne, much more rigid and unbending. She refuses to be bullied, even though she is a child, and man - is she surrounded by grown-up bullies. There are no character transformations like there are in the Anne books. For example: in the Anne books - Mrs. Lynde, while a comic character, is pretty blunt and rude to Anne at first meeting her. She's kind of a busybody, and doesn't treat children like they are human beings. But in the end, we come to see that Mrs. Lynde is one of the warmest most wonderful people on the planet - she would literally give you the damn shirt off her back (if she thought you deserved it, that is) - and she LOVES Marilla, and she LOVES Anne. In her own Mrs. Lynde way, of course ... but we come to see that that first impression of her was just the tip of the iceberg. That kind of stuff doesn't really happen in the Emily books. Aunt Elizabeth doesn't transform, on closer knowing of her, into a warmer more loving person. We don't see that her coldness is actually masking a deep pool of lava-like love (like we do with Marilla). Aunt Elizabeth is, for her own reasons, a cold and uptight woman, who cannot bear disagreement, and MUST be the boss. Emily MUST succumb to her will. This is the source of most of their battles. Emily wins some of the battles, but Elizabeth wins most of them. Emily finally is able to live her own life a bit - but that is ONLY because she reaches the age of adulthood. I am not saying that Elizabeth is not complex - oh God, she is - and I LOVE her - I love that character, and how she is written. She is terrifying, and confusing ... and her clashes with Emily are terrifically written. Lucy Maud goes right into the psychology of it - she describes what is really going on. What Elizabeth is really feeling, even though she could never admit it to herself. Elizabeth thinks that Emily should not have a spirit of her own. Her will should be Elizabeth's will. Because she is a child.

God, there are just so many things I love about this series. I can't even get into it without writing a 20 page essay!!

And so I'm going to break with my own tradition (why not - it's my blog!!) and do a couple of excerpts from each Emily book. One is JUST NOT ENOUGH.

The first excerpt is from the very first chapter in Emily of New Moon. Emily fanatics will immediately know the chapter and what happens in it: Emily goes out for a walk by herself, and with her imaginary companion - The Wind Woman. Emily runs around, glorying in nature (what a pallid way to describe this chapter!!), having a marvelous time - although somehow, in the prose, Lucy Maud lets us know the darkness of this world, of Emily's world. The shabbiness of the house, the alone-ness of the child ... there's something dark in the MOOD, basically. Emily returns to her house after her walk (she's 8 years old, I think??) and the housekeeper greets her bluntly at the door, "You know, don't you, that your father is dying?"

Emily's mother is dead. Her father - an abstracted gentle man - takes care of her. They live far off out of town, and Emily has never gone to school. She has grown up only in the company of her father, the cats (who take on intense 3-dimensional personalities in this book - just as they did for Lucy Maud in real life), the trees (some of which Emily names), and the Wind Woman. Emily lives a life of the mind and a life of the imagination. Her father accepts this in her, he does not judge her, he does not try to clip her wings, or trim her into a more acceptable shape. But the book opens with Emily getting the news broken to her - that her father is dying. He doesn't have long to live.

The excerpt I am going to post (or, the first one) is from Emily's walk (and it is also the very end of the first chapter - the last line of the excerpt below is the last line of the first chapter.).

It's the whole "flash" thing. Lucy Maud wrote a lot about what she called "the flash" in her journals. And she also wrote about it in her long autobiographical essay The Alpine Path (which I will get to, later - I have placed THAT book in my "memoir" bookshelf. Forgive my autism). Anyway, she wrote about it almost exactly as she writes about it here.

I think this book just LIVES. I really do. There is something urgent and personal in the prose - something not careful - Lucy Maud uses dashes a lot (uhm, like I do) - because as her thoughts tumble out, this way, that way, they don't organize themselves into neat little sentences. It's a bit more breathless. The dashes are part of that.

Here's Emily. Out on her walk.

I love these books so dearly I don't even know what to say anymore.

Excerpt from Emily of New Moon - by L.M. Montgomery

And the barrens were such a splendid place in which to play hide and seek with the Wind Woman. She was so very real there; if you could just spring quickly enough around a little cluster of spruces -- only you never could -- you would see her as well as feel her and hear her. There she was -- that was the sweep of her grey cloak -- no, she was laughing up in the very top of the taller trees -- and the chase was on again -- till, all at once, it seemed as if the Wind Woman were gone -- and the evening was bathed in a wonderful silence -- and there was a sudden rift in the curdled clouds westward, and a lovely, pale, pinky-green lake of sky with a new moon in it.

Emily stood and looked at it with clasped hands and her little black head upturned. She must go home and write down a description of it in the yellow account book, where the last thing written had been, "Mike's Biograffy." It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down. Then she would read it to Father. She must not forget how the tips of the trees on the hill came out like fine black lace across the edge of the pinky-green sky.

And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came "the flash".

Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn't exactly describe it. It couldn't be described -- not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to anyone else.

It had always seemed to Emly, ever since she could rmember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond -- only a glimpse -- and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely -- went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it -- never summon it -- never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy, holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she writing down a 'description' of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.

She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering twilight, all agog to get home and write down her "description" before the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew just how she would begin it -- the sentence seemed to shape itself in her mind: "The hill called to me and something in me called back to it."

She found Ellen Greene waiting for her on the sunken front-doorstep. Emily was so full of happiness that she loved everything at that moment, even fat things of no importance. She flung her arms around Ellen's knees and hugged them. Ellen looked down gloomily into the rapt little face, where excitement had kindled a faint wild-rose flush, and said, with a ponderous sigh,

"Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?"

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Tannis of the Flats' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Tannis of the Flats" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is really interesting, I think, because of the racial aspect. Lucy Maud doesn't really deal with racial issues - at least not overtly - and this is the only story I can think of where she does. It doesn't take place on Price Edward Island, either - although one of the main characters is visiting FROM PEI - it takes place out on the wild west of the Canadian prairies - at a small settlement where a telegraph office has been set up. It's not as domesticated as Avonlea (or - it's not domesticated at all, let's say that) - and surrounding the town, in huddled teepees, are Indians - Indians who do odd jobs, or who just hang on the outskirts of what used to be their land, doing not much at all. Lucy Maud does not have a very high opinion of these people, you can tell that - and yet ... then there's Tannis ... a young Indian woman ... and while she has limitations (limitations ONLY due to her race - which Lucy Maud appears to believe is in the blood: Indians are lazy, sullen, and can't really go very far in life. Not just because the opportunities are not there, but because it is not in their BLOOD to be otherwise) ... but anyway, while Tannis has personal limitations (she is humorless, she has no sense of irony - which turns out to be a huge defect in this case, she doesn't do things for "fun", she is LITERAL) - she also, at the end of the story, does something so selfless, and so sacrificial that it takes your breath away. She gives up her chance at happiness - in order to get the man she loves what he needs (which, in this case, is another woman). Tannis is the heroine of the day. Tannis rises to a height unknown in the more polite and genteel white world. She is the one. So ... even though there are parts of the story where you realize the racist attitudes of pretty much everyone at that time towards the Indians ... Tannis is not a generalized stereotype. She is a real person, a real girl. It's a VERY interesting story - and one of my favorites that Lucy Maud has written. I can't really LOVE Tannis, because the way Lucy Maud writes her - she is not very lovable. But she is a heroine nonetheless.

Tannis ends up having a "flirtation" (although Tannis couldn't be a good flirt if you paid her) with a young man named Jerome Carey (a white man) who has come to work at the telegraph office. It is a temporary position for him - so he decides: what the hey, I'll hang out with Tannis to pass the time while I'm here, no big deal. Well, to Tannis everything is a big deal. Carey is playing with fire by flirting with this Indian girl. She takes nothing lightly. Uhm ... maybe I see myself in Tannis. I'm a horrible flirt as well. Or - it's hard for me to "just" flirt. When I flirt, I mean business. I prefer it that way. But Tannis isn't a light-hearted person, a coquette, a domesticated white girl ... she is a girl of the prairies ... and Jerome Carey ends up paying dearly for messing with her heart.

Anyway, here's the excerpt where Tannis is first described. You'll see the racist attitude towards mixed blood (oh, and Tannis is a half-breed - which many saw, including Cher, as being even WORSE than being an Indian. If you were a half-breed, that's all you ever heard. If you were a half-breed, how you loved to hate the word. And etc.) Interesting, though: even with Lucy Maud's attitude towards race and blood: you can tell that, on another level, she is criticizing the snobbery of the white world, the assumptioins of the white world. You must ADJUST your assumptions with different people ... you cannot assume that every woman is the same (this is for Jerome Carey) ... you have to learn how to read the signs ... do not treat everybody as though they are cutouts of each other. That way disaster lies. Tannis is NOT like other women. Jerome Carey doesn't read the signs.

I can think of one man in my life (*cough* doppelganger *cough*) who flirted outrageously with me one night - it wasn't even really flirting - he DECLARED himself to me - and yet ... he was not free ... not free to be with me ... yet he declared himself anyway, causing me to basically (no, not basically - literally) run off into the night away from him, away from the situation - and the repercussions of that night, for me, were disastrous. This began the long dark period of 2002 for me. Doppelganger flirted with the wrong girl. He knows it NOW - but in that moment he thought his overwhelming declaration would be welcome. He also couldn't help himself (his words.) Maybe he thought I was shallow, and uncommitted, and fabulously okay with myself ... like I appeared, and also like most girls in New York are, or appear to be. He didn't read the signs. Which were THERE. But man, did he mess with the wrong girl. It was horrible for him, it certainly was, to know how much he hurt me - it's years later and we're still SO AWKWARD when we run into each other - that declaration from 2002 still sits between us, screaming at us ... but it was more horrible for me. So I guess I relate to Tannis. Even though all the half-breed, racial blood characteristics, and yadda yadda talk is from another time altogether, and I certainly have more of a sense of humor than Tannis does. But still, I feel for her. I know what she goes through here.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Tannis of the Flats" - by L.M. Montgomery

Tannis was the daughter of old Auguste Dumont, who kept the one small store at the Flats, lived in the one frame house that the place boasted, and was reputed to worth an amount of money which, in half-breed eyes, was a colossal fortune. Old Auguste was black and ugly and notoriously bad-tempered. But Tannis was a beauty.

Tannis' great-grandmother had been a Cree squaw who married a French trapper. The son of this union because, in due time, the father of Auguste Dumont. Auguste married a woman whose mother was a French half-breed and whose father was a pure-bred Highland Scotchman. The result of this atrocious mixture was its justification - Tannis of the Flats - who looked as if all the blood of all the Howards might be running in her veins.

But, after all, the dominant current in those same veins was from the race of plain and prairie. The practiced eye detected it in the slender stateliness of carriage, in the graceful, yet voluptuous, curves of the lithe body, in the smallness and delicacy of hand and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a slumbering fire. France, too, was responsible for somewhat in Tannis. It gave her a light step in place of the stealthy half-breed shuffle, it arched her red upper liip into a more tremulous bow, it lent a note of laughter to her voice and a sprightlier wit to her tongue. As for her red-headed Scotch grandfather, he had bequeathed her a somewhat whiter skin and ruddier bloom than is usually found in the breeds.

Old Auguste was mightily proud of Tannis. He sent her to school for four years in Prince Albert, bound that his girl should have the best. A High School course and considerable mingling in the social life of the town - for old Auguste was a man to be conciliated by astute politicians, since he controlled some two or three hundred half-breed votes - sent Tannis home to the Flats with a very thin, but very deceptive, veneer of culture and civilization overlying the primitive passions and ideas of her nature.

Carey saw only the beauty and the veneer. he made the mistake of thinking that Tannis was what she seemed to be - a fairly well-educated, up-to-date young woman with whom a friendly flirtation was just what it was with white womankind - the pleasant amusement of an hour or season. It was a mistake - a very big mistake. Tannis understood something of piano playing, something less of grammar and Latin, and something less still of social prevarications. But she understood absolutely nothing of flirtation. You can never get an Indian to see the sense of Platonics.

Carey found the Flats quite tolerable after the homecoming of Tannis. He soon fell into the habit of dropping into the Dumont house to spend the evening, talking with Tannis in the parlor - which apartment was amazingly well-done for a place like the Flats - Tannis had not studied Prince Albert parlors four years for nothing - or playing violin and piano duets with her. When music and conversation palled, they went for long gallops over the prairies together. Tannis rode to perfection, and managed her bad-tempered brute of a pony with a skill and grace that made Carey applaud her. She was glorious on horseback.

Sometimes he grew tired of the prairies, and then he and Tannis paddled themselves over the river in Nitchie Joe's dugout, and landed on the old trail that struck straight into the wooded belt of the Saskatchewan valley, leading north to trading posts on the frontier of civilization. There they rambled under huge pines, hoary with the age of centuries, and Carey talked to Tannis about England and quoted poetry to her. Tannis liked poetry; she had studied it at school, and understood it fairly well. But once she told Carey that she thought it a long, round-about way of saying what you could say just as well in about a dozen plain words. Carey laughed. He liked to evoke those little speeches of hers. They sounded very clever, dropping from such arched, ripely-tinted lips.

If you had told Carey that he was playing with fire, he would have laughed at you. In the first place, he was not in the slightest degree in love with Tannis - he merely admired and liked her. In the second place, it never occurred to him that Tannis might be in love with him. Why, he had never attempted any love-making with her! And, above all, he was obsessed with that aforesaid fatal idea that Tannis was like the women he had associated with all his life, in reality as well as in appearance. He did not know enough of the racial characteristics to understand.

But, if Carey thought that his relationship with Tannis was that of friendship merely, he was the only one at the Flats who did think so. All the half-breeds and quarter-breeds and any-fractional breeds there believed that he meant to marry Tannis. There would have been nothing surprising to them in that. They did not know that Carey's second cousin was a baronet, and they would not have understood that it need make any difference, if they had. They thought that rich old Auguste's heiress, who had been to school for four years in Prince Albert, was a catch for anybody.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Only a Common Fellow' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Only a Common Fellow" - by L.M. Montgomery

One of Lucy Maud's beautiful little stories about the sacrifices people make sometimes, when you least expect it. I am strangely moved by this story - even though it's written in kind of a sentimental tone - and even if I, personally, think that the main love story is based WAY too much on looks to have much of a chance. However, maybe that is part of Lucy Maud's point (the title kind of hints at that). Mark Foster is not good-looking, or tall, or an appropriate romantic hero. He is "only a common fellow". And yet - he is a hero. By the end of this story he is revealed as a complete hero who has sacrificed his own happiness for Philippa's. You don't even really LIKE Mark Foster - because he is seen through the eyes of the sentimental old aunt who is the narrator, who thinks that her darling niece Philippa shouldn't be marrying him. Her darling niece Philippa had been in love with a man named Owen Blair - a man who was handsome, strong, good-looking, you know - "your basic nightmare". And he apparently had been killed on the fields of France "by the Huns". He never returned. Philippa's heart has broken. And her evil stepmother (a great character) has basically set Philippa up with Mark Foster, a wealthy man, so that she can get her off her hands. It will be a loveless marriage - and Philippa's father is too weak to do anything to stop it. But Isabella (the stepmother) is pleased as punch. Mark Foster is wealthy, there's a mortgage on the farm that Mark said he would take care of for her IF he could marry Philippa, she doesn't want Philippa around, a reminder of her husband's first marriage, and so that's THAT. Philippa has basically been SOLD to Mark Foster. One the morning of the wedding, Philippa lies in her bed crying. Her aunt comes to her. They both weep together. They weep for the memory of Owen Blair. Philippa asks her aunt to talk to her about Owen, almost like a bedtime story. It's a horrible situation - she's going to be married to Mark Foster in 2 hours, and here she is, lying in bed, dreaming about another man. Anyway, at the end of the story - with the house full of wedding guests, the ceremony about to take place, a knock comes on the door. The auntie opens the door - and there stands Owen Blair. Who apparently was NOT killed by Huns ... he had been injured - and he had written Philiippa many letters - telling her he loved her, he was injured, he would be home as soon as he could. Only Philippa never got those letters. Because the evil Isabella had confiscated them. Philippa stands there, in her wedding dress, torn between her duty - she had said she would marry Mark - and her love for Owen. Isabella is busted in her evil-ness. Philippa, who is a good girl, finally chooses - and she goes and stands by Mark. She said she would marry him and she will not go back on her word. Owen is stunned. But then comes Mark Foster's shining moment. He is "only a common fellow", and nobody likes him, but he actually does love Philippa - and he knows he cannot bear to be married to a woman who is in love with someone else. He thought she might come around, once her grief for Owen had subsided ... but now that he is alive ... everything has changed. Mark suddenly steps out and says, "I cannot be married to anyone who loves someone else. I thought you would learn to love me but that was when we beleived Owen was dead. Please. Go to Owen. Be with him." Isabella looks horrified - Mark glances at her and says, "Oh. One last thing." He takes the mortgage papers out of his pocket, and rips them up, right there and then. And walks off, leaving Philippa weeping in Owen's arms. The story ends with this moving paragraph:

I was glad for my dearie's sake and Owen's; but Mark Foster had paid the price of their joy, and I knew it had beggared him of happiness for life.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning part of the story. I like how Isabella is described when you first meet her. You just get who she is, instantly.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Only a Common Fellow" - by L.M. Montgomery

When she had talked it all out she lay down on her pillow again. I got up and went downstairs to light the fire. I felt terrible old and tired. My feet seemed to drag, and the tears kept coming to my eyes, though I tried to keep them away, for well I knew it was a bad open to be weeping on a wedding day.

Before long Isabella Clark came down; bright and pleased-looking enough, she was. I'd never liked Isabella, from the day Philippa's father brought her here; and I liked her even less than ever this morning. She was one of your sly, deep women, always smiling smooth, and scheming underneath it. I'll say it for her, though, she had been good to Phillippa, but it was her doings that my dearie was to marry Mark Foster that day.

"Up betimes, Rachel," she said, smiling andn speaking me fair, as she always did, and hating me in her heart, as I well knew. "That is right, for we'll have plenty to do to-day. A wedding makes a lot of work."

"Not this sort of wedding," I said, sour-like. "I don't call it a wedding when two people get married and sneak off as if they were ashamed of it - as well they might be in this case."

"It was Philippa's own wish that all should be very quiet," said Isabella, as smooth as cream. "You know I'd have given her a big wedding, if she'd wanted it."

"Oh, it's better quiet," I said. "The fewer to see Philippa marry a man like Mark Foster the better."

"Mark Foster is a good man, Rachel."

"No good man would be content to buy a girl as he's bought Philippa," I said, determined to give it in to her. "He's a common fellow, not fit for my dearie to wipe her feet on. It's well that her mother didn't live to see this day; but this day would never have come, if she'd lived."

"I dare say Philippa's mother would have remembered that Mark Foster is very well off, quite as readily as worse people," said Isabella, a little spitefully.

I liked her better when she was spiteful than when she was smooth. I didn't feel so scared of her then.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Conscience Case of David Bell' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Conscience Case of David Bell" - by L.M. Montgomery

Melissa: we're ALMOST AT EMILY! ALMOST!!! 2 more stories in this collection and then ... EMILY! hahahaha

Okay, so let me see if I can remember the who what where why when of this story. It appears that a new preacher has come to town - actually, I guess you might call him an itinerant preacher - an evangelist (Lucy Maud's people are, in general, Presbyterians - there are a lot of jokes about Methodists - the battle between the Prescyterians and the Methodists - so it seems that these are the two main religions of the people of Prince Edward Island. There are, of course, some Catholics - but those people are just filthy drunken no-good Irish - so nobody takes them seriously) But in this particular story, an itinerant preacher has "set up shop" in town - and an evangelical fever has swept through the community. Everyone wants to get up and testify. Testifying is good for the soul. In my opinion, it's kind of a group-think atmosphere - or a variation on the whole Large Group Awareness Training, which has now been identified as a cult atmosphere - but who am I to judge. (Uhm, yes. I judge. But you know.) Lucy Maud doesn't judge (or no, that's not true - she does. She judges pious judgmental people - as you can see from her humorous characterization of Miriam Bell below. It's not a HARSH judgment, but she definitely acknowledges how tiresome such people are). She is interested in how this whole testifying fever would impact somebody who had something on his conscience. Something he did NOT want to share with the community. Or even his family. His family, all worked up about the weekly revival meetings, wonders why their father won't testify. They feel hurt, they feel rejected, they want him to be a part of their enthusiasm, and also - I think they think that he might not be "saved" if he doesn't go along with the group-think. And their father - for the most part a lovely kind gentle man - has suddenly, over the last weeks, since itinerant preacher came to town, become grumpy, withdrawn, separate ... Lucy Maud paints a portrait of a very close and loving family (something she doesn't often do - if you think about her stories, most of them are people who are isolated - either by being orphaned, or whatever - and their families, while interesting and book-worthy, aren't exactly LOVING. She doesn't write stories, for the most part, about people who have a ton of siblings, for example. There are no novels she has written - except for the execrable Pat of Silver Bush series, which shows her inadequacies in this area as in others - where there's a big raucous family with brothers and sisters. Her heroines are alone in the world.) But I digress. The Bell family, in this story, is lovingly drawn - I think Lucy Maud does a very good job of giving a sense of this family, who they are, the different personalities of each, and how they love each other. It's not sentimental - Lucy Maud isn't good when she gets sentimental - but it feels real. I like all of these people.

I'll excerpt the opening scene of the story when everyone is getting ready to go to the revival meeting. You'll see what I mean about the atmosphere she creates. It's lovely. Also, Lucy Maud always sets up most of her exposition in the mouths of her characters - she lets THEM give the back story, and I like that a lot, good technique, it makes the whole thing seem much more real.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Conscience Case of David Bell" - by L.M. Montgomery

Eben Bell came in with an armful of wood and banged it cheerfully down in the box behind the glowing Waterloo stove, which was pouring warmth and ruddy color into the dismal little kitchen, making of it a homey, pleasant place.

"There, sis, that's the last chore on my list. Bob's milking. Nothing more for me to do but put on my white collar for the meeting. Avonlea is more than lively since the evangelist came, ain't it, though?"

Mollie Bell nodded. She was curling her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the whitewashed wall and distorted her round, pink-and-white face into a grotesque caricature.

"Wonder who'll stand up tonight," said Even reflectively, sitting down on the edge of the wood box. "There ain't many sinners left in Avonlea - only a few hardened chaps like myself."

"You shouldn't talk like that," said Mollie rebukingly. "What if father heard you?"

"Father wouldn't hear me if I shouted it in his ear," returned Eben. "He goes around, these days, like a man in a dream, and a mighty bad dream at that. Father has always been a good man. What's the matter with him?"

"I don't know," said Mollie, dropping her voice. "Mother is dreadfully worried over him. And everybody is talking, Eb. It just makes me squirm. Flora Jane Fletcher asked me last night why father never testified, and him one of the elders. She said the minister was perplexed about it. I felt my face getting red."

"Why didn't you tell her it was no business of hers?" said Eben angrily. "Old Flora Jane had better mind her own business."

"But all the folks are talking about it, Eb. And mother is fretting her heart out over it. Father has never acted like himself since these meetings began. He just goes there night after night, and sits like a mummy, with his head down. And almost everybody else in Avonlea hs testified."

"Oh, no, there's lots haven't," said Eben. "Matthew Cuthbert never has, nor Uncle Elisha, nor any of the Whites."

"But everybody knows they don't believe in getting up and testifying, so nobody wonders when they don't. Besides," Mollie laughed -- "Matthew could never get a word out in public, if he did believe in it. He'd be too shy. But," she added with a sigh, "it isn't that way with father. He believes in testimony, so people wonder why he doesn't get up. Why, even old Josiah Sloane gets up every night."

"With his whiskers sticking out every which way, and his hair ditto," interjected the graceless Eben.

"When the minister calls for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame," said Mollie. "If father would get up just once!"

Miriam Bell now entered the kitchen. She was ready for the meeting, to which Major Spencer was to take her. She was a tall, pale girl, with a serious face, and dark thoughtful eyes, totally unlike Mollie. She had "come under conviction" during the meetings, and had stood up for prayer and testimony several times. The evangelist thought her very spiritual. She heard Mollie's concluding sentence and spoke reprovingly.

"You shouldnt criticize your father, Mollie. It isn't for you to judge him."

Eben had hastily slipped out. He was afraid Miriam would begin talking religion to him if he stayed. He had with difficulty escaped from an exhortation by Robert in the cow-stable. There was no peace in Avonlea for the unregenerate, he reflected. Robert and Miriam had both "come out" and Mollie was hovering on the brink.

"Dad and I are the black sheep of the family," he said with a laugh, for which he at once felt guilty. Eben had been brought up with a strict reverence for all religious matters. On the surface he might sometimes laugh at them, but the deeps troubled him whenever he did so.

Indoors, Miriam touched her younger sister's shoulder and looked at her affectionately.

"Won't you decide to-night, Mollie?" she asked, in a voice tremulous with emotion.

Mollie crimsoned and turned her face away uncomfortably. She did not know what answer to make, and was glad that a jingle of bells outside saved her the necessity of replying.

"There's your beau, Miriam," she said, as she darted into the sitting room.

Soon after, Eben brought the family pung and his chubby red mare to the door for Mollie. He had not as yet attained to the dignity of a cutter of his own. That was for his elder brother, Robert, who presently came out in his new fur coat and drove dashingly away with bells and glitter.

"Thinks he's the people," remarked Eben, with a fraternal grin.

The rich winter twilight was purpling over the white world as they drove down the lane under the over-arching wild cherry trees that glittered with gemmy hoar-frost. The snow creaked and crisped under the runners. A shrill wind was keening in the leafless dogwoods. Over the trees the sky was a dome of silver, with a lucent star or two on the slope of the west. Earth-stars gleamed warmly out here and there, where homesteads were tucked snugly away in their orchards or groves of birch.

"The church will be jammed tonight," said Eben. "It's so fine that folks will come from near and far. Guess it'll be exciting."

"If only father would testify!" sighed Mollie, from the bottom of the pung, where she was snuggled amid furs and straw. "Miriam can say what she likes, but I do feel as if we were all disgraced. It sends a creep all over me to hear Mr. Bentley say, 'Now, isn't there one more to say a word for Jesus?' and look right over at father."

Eben flicked his mare with his whip, and she broke into a trot. The silence was filled with a faint, fairy-like melody from afar down the road, where a pungful of young folks from White Sands were singing hymns on their way to meeting.

"Look herer, Mollie," said Eben awkwardly at last, "are you going to stand up for prayers tonight?"

"I --- I can't as long as father acts this way," answered Mollie, in a choked voice. "I - I want to, Eb, and Mirry and Bob want me to, but I can't. I do hope that the evangelist won't come and talk to me special tonight. I always feel as if I were being pulled two different ways, when he does."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'In Her Selfless Mood' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "In Her Selfless Mood" - by L.M. Montgomery

A story of the complete sacrifice of a life in order to carry out her mother's dying wish (her mother who didn't even really love her that much) ... where nobody in the story is likable. Not one person. Not even our martyr - Eunice. Eunice is all hump-backed, and fierce, and loves her mother with every inch of her being. Her mother - Naomi - is kind of a loathsome woman. She lies in bed, dying, and she makes no bones about it: her love is for her son, Christopher. So she, in her last dying gasp, makes Eunice promise that she will always take care of Christopher, that she will never let anyone hurt him, and even when they both go to live at an aunt and uncles- she will make sure that no one lays a hand on him. This will be an uphill job - because, sadly enough, Christopher is kind of an asshole - and is not worthy at all of such attention. Or, maybe he is - maybe we all are - but you wish he at least would LOVE Eunice, or be grateful. He is not. He is openly creeped out by her and her hump and her intense interest in him. He wants her to back off, learn boundaries, whatever. Years pass. Well, eventually - you know - Christopher gets married - leaving Eunice as a boarder at this REALLY unsympathetic aunts and uncles. She has no life. No fulfillment. No purpose. She lives on other people's charity. Her brother doesn't need her anymore. I don't know, the whole thing is kind of depressing. You want to reach into the story and tell Eunice, the hump-back, that she doesn't HAVE to live at that aunt and uncles - and share a room with their daughter (who despises Eunice). You could run away! But oh no, she cannot do that. Because she needs to be near Christopher - even though he is now a grown man - so that she can watch over him, all the rest of the days of his life.

The whole thing is depressing. Eventually there's a smallpox epidemic - and Christopher (who no longer needs Eunice, lives with his wife, and thinks Eunice is kind of, uhm, freaky - anyway) comes down with the disease. And this is Eunice's big moment. Her ultimate fulfillment of that death-bed promise. She goes to nurse him since his wife has been banished from the house.

Blah. Eventually Christopher does die from smallpox - but not before saying to Eunice, "You're the best nurse ever." This, for her, is outward confirmation that she has "done good", as they say, that her mother would be pleased - so instead of facing the rest of her life, empty, bleak, unfulfilled - she lies down and dies. But she's smiling when she dies. Because she kept her mother's promise.

Wow, she really took that deathbed promise thing seriously there.

Here is the moment when Naomi dies. The whole thing is depressing. Everyone in the story is twisted, intense, violent, grim ... You kinda want to peek your head in the window and say, "Lighten up, Francis!"

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "In Her Selfless Mood" - by L.M. Montgomery

Outside, in the thickly gathering dusk, Caroline Holland and Sarah Spencer were at the dairy, straining the milk into creamers, for which Christopher was sullenly pumping water. The house was far from the road, up to which a long red lane led; across the field was the old Holland homestead where Caroline lived; her unmarried sister-in-law, Electa Holland, kept house for her while she waited on Naomi.

It was her night to go home and sleep, but Naomi's words haunted her, although she believed they were born or pure "cantankerousness".

"You'd better go in and look at her, Sarah," she said, as she rinsed out the pails. "If you think I'd better stay here tonight, I will. If the woman was like anybody else, a body would know what to do; but, if she thought she could scare us by saying she was going to die, she'd say it."

When Sarah went in, the sick room was very quiet. In her opinion, Naomi was no worse than usual, and she told Caroline so; but the latter felt vaguely uneasy and concluded to stay.

Naomi was as cool and defiant as customary. She made them bring Chrstopher in to say goodnight and had him lifted up on the bed to kiss her. Then she held him back and looked at him admiringly - at the bright curls and rosy cheeks and round, firm limbs. The boy was uncomfortable under her gaze and squirmed hastily down. Her eyes followed him greedily as he went out. When the door closed behind him she groaned. Sarah Spencer was startled. She had never heard Naomi Holland groan since she had come to wait on her.

"Are you feeling any worse, Naomi? Is the pain coming back?"

"No. Go and tell Car'line to give Christopher some of that grape jelly on his bread before he goes to bed. She'll find it in the cupboard under the stairs."

Presently the house grew very still. Caroline had dropped asleep on the sitting-room lounge, across the hall. Sarah Spencer nodded over her knitting by the table in the sick room. She had told Eunice to go to bed, but the child refused. She still sat huddled up on the foot of the bed, watching her mother's face intently. Naomi appeared to sleep. The candle by her bedside burned slowly. To Eunice, the elfin flame, which flickered gaily, seemed like an impish eye upon her. The wavering light cast grotesque shadows of Sarah Spencer's head on the wall. The thin curtains at the window wavered to and fro, as if shaken by ghostly hands.

At midnight Naomi Holland opened her eyes. The child she had never loved was the only one to go with her to the brink of the Unseen.

"Eunice -- remember!"

It was the faintest whisper. The soul, passing over the threshold of another life, strained back to its only earthly tie. A quiver passed over the long, pallid face.

A horrible scream rang through the silent house. Sarah Spencer sprung out of her doze in consternation, and gazed blankly at the shrieking child. Caroline came hurrying in with distended eyes. On the bed, Naomi Holland lay dead.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Education of Betty' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Education of Betty" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of those stories where I think, "Nice try, Maud, but not only am I NOT going there with you - I kinda resent you making me go there in the first place." Ha. I'm being dramatic - but seriously, 'The Education of Betty' is - I don't know. The whole thing seems ikky to me. And that is the best and most articulate assessment I can make. I dislike the assumption that Betty needs to stop being a tomboy, needs to be pruned and shaped. Ew. I liked her better before. I dislike the assumption of our narrator that he is totally in charge of Betty's entire life. Like - how she walks, dresses, whatever. I don't care what anyone says - I like Betty better when we first meet her - chasing dogs across the lawn, than in the last scene - where she is submissive, ladylike, and quivering with romantic possibility. Spare me. Also - I guess I just don't like the narrator himself. He comes across as smug, sexist, and unimaginative - not to mention jealous and ridiculous, he doesn't have the balls in the end to just say, "YOU MUST MARRY ME" - or, eventually he does - but not before driving her into the arms of someone else. Ew. Like, dude: your days as a tutor are long gone. Stop acting like you still get to control every move Betty makes, you smug control-freak. Ew. Ikky. Ikky. I read the story keep waiting for Betty to say, "You know what, Stephen? I've had it with you. I can grow up on my own. I can 'education' myself on my own. You're WAY too ikky, and WAY too invested in me, oh, learning how to walk slower, and keep my head erect, and comb my hair. Get a life, Stephen. Seriously."

I never feel this way about Lucy Maud's stuff, so whatever, in my opinion - this story is a huge misfire. You at LEAST need me to get on the narrator's side. But in this case, I am voting against him. Because I think Betty is fine and lovely just the way she is. She's not a terror. She's not a juvenile delinquent. No. She just, uhm, LIKES TO READ, and likes to RUN AROUND OUTSIDE, and dismisses with a scoff the idea that women need to be ladylike. Oh my gosh, what is WRONG with Betty????? We have to call in a tutor to help her get rid of THOSE crazy ideas.

Yeah. That kind of nonsense is what kept women down, and I resent that Betty's "education" really meant: Making her be like everyone else. So I find the story to be a huge bummer. It's supposed to be charming, and kind of cute - you can tell, in how she writes it - it's supposed to be a witty little domestic comedy. But it's not.

I am going to provide an excerpt from the beginning when we get to see Betty as herself. Infinitely more interesting than the calmed-down shy coquette at the end. Ew.

Now Lucy Maud is the QUEEN of unconventional female heroines. Is Emily Byrd Starr a normal little girl? Who plays with dolls and tea sets? Uhm NO. Is Anne Shirley in any way conventional? Maybe the only conventional thing about her is that she wants desperately to belong and fit in. But, uhm, other than that? She is totally original and herself. And it's not that these unconventional females don't have to learn tough lessons along the way - about how to get along in the world - how to know how to pretend to fit in (like with the whole Aunt Ruth debacle in Emily Climbs) - even if every fiber of your independent unconventional soul SCREAMS against conformity. Sometimes it is better to conform to get along - than to assert your different-ness.

Yes. SOMETIMES. But ALL the time? Like with Betty?

No. Won't go there wiht you, Lucy. And since in every other story you write there's some unconventional and gorgeous and lovable female running around - I'm just gonna assume this one is a misfire, and move on. No hard feelings, Maudie.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Education of Betty" - by L.M. Montgomery

I rode over to Glenby the next morning after my paternal interview with Sara, intending to have a frank talk with Betty and lay the foundation of a good understanding on both sides. Betty was a sharp child, with a disconcerting knack of seeing straight through grindstones; she would certainly perceive and probably resent any underhand management. I thought it best to tell her plainly that I was going to look after her.

When, however, I had encountered Betty, tearing madly down the beech avenue with a couple of dogs, her loosened hair streaming behind her like a banner of independence, and had lifted her, hatless and breathless, up before me on my mare, I found that Sara had saved me the trouble of an explanation.

"Mother says you are going to take charge of my education, Stephen," said Betty, as soon as she could speak. "I'm glad, because I think that, for an old person, you have a good deal of sense. I suppose my education hs to be seen to, some time or other, and I'd rather you'd do it than anybody else I know."

"Thank you, Betty," I said gravely. "I hope I shall deserve your good opinion of my sense. I shall expect you to do as I tell you, and be guided by my advice in everything."

"Yes, I will," said Betty, "because I'm sure you won't tell me to do anything I'd really hate to do. You won't shut me up in a room and make me sew, will you? Because I won't do it."

I assured her I would not.

"Nor send me to a boarding school," pursued Betty. "Mother's always threatening to send me to one. I suppose she would have done it before this, only she knew I'd run away. You won't send me to a boarding school, will you, Stephen? Because I won't go."

"No," I said obligingly. "I won't. I should never dream of cooping a wild little thing, like you, up in a boarding school. You'd fret your heart out like a caged skylark."

"I know you and I are going to get along together splendidly, Stephen," said Betty, rubbing her brown cheek chummily against my shoulder. "You are so good at understanding. Very few people are. Even dad darling didn't understand. He let me do just as I wanted to, just because I wanted to, not because he really understood that I couldn't be tame and play with dolls. I hate dolls! Real live babies are jolly; but dogs and horses are ever so much nicer than dolls."

"But you must have lessons, Betty. I shall select your teachers and superintend your studies, and I shall expect you to do me credit along that line, as well as along all others."

"I'll try, honest and true, Stephen," declared Betty. And she kept her word.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Son of His Mother'

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Son of His Mother" - by L.M. Montgomery

I find this to be one of Lucy Maud's most emotionally creepy stories. And again - while we can look in and see: "Wow, these people have some SERIOUS psychological issues" - they are not analyzed to death, the truths about them are just stated - and it takes an actual physical event to wipe away all of the problems. Which so rarely happens in real life. Like - a freaky obsessive person usually stays a freaky obsessive person (uhm, I should know). Anyway, I find Thyra Carewe to be one of Lucy Maud's strangest creations - and man, you just know this woman would totally benefit from major Prozac doses on a regular basis as well as deep deep psychoanalysis - but she lives in PEI at the beginning of the 20th century, so obviously these are not options for her. But: if Thyra were drugged up and made to be normal - then she wouldn't be so memorable, and there would be no need to write a story about her. So there's THAT.

Actually, there's a lot in the story that I find psychologically interesting - and also ... creeeepy. Thyra Carewe is an intense woman (uhm, that is putting it mildly) - who was widowed a year after her first (and only) child was born. So she and her son have been everything to each other through the years. Her son Chester. Her son Chester is EVERYTHING to her. The opening of the story makes it clear that there is - I don't want to say an unnatural bond between them - but - on some level, the intensity with which Thyra loves her son (especially now that he has become a young man - and is trying to loosen the apron strings) is - unnatural. She will not let go. Chester and she will grow old together. The thought of any other woman having him drives her into a frenzy. But Chester - who has always been a good boy, kind and patient wiht his mother, is now "seeing" someone (in early 20th century fashion - he goes over to her house at twilight, and sits with her for an hour) - Her name is Damaris Garland (I love that name) - and Thyra Carewe would be RIPSHIT if she knew Chester was seeing ANYONE seriously, so the entire town basically hides the truth from her. She thinks Chester is bringing the cows home, or whatever, when really he is "sitting" with Damaris. Thyra, blithely ignorant (ignorant in more ways than one), confident that Chester will never marry ("he doesnt' come from a marrying race" - Thyra was "old" when she had Chester - in her 40s - and her husband was even older than she was - Marrying is not in their DNA) - And Thyra is basically so rigid about Chester that she's like a tree bough about to snap off. You worry for her. The opening scenes tell us all we need to do. Chester is late coming home, and the SECOND the time has come when Chester SHOULD have walked through the door, Thyra begins to slowly freak out. She paces. She stands at the window, staring out, like a statue. We see her through the eyes of her neighbors - who pity her. "Poor Thyra ... if only she knew where Chester was right now ... she'd flip out." You want to slap Thyra. Chester is 18 years old - let the guy date somebody, Thyra. You are going to ruin your precious relationship wiht your son. He is already LYING to you about who he is, he is terrified to tell you he loves Damaris - you are being totally unreasonable, Thyra. But still: Lucy Maud writes her so well that you can't stop reading. Thyra Carewe is a VERY convincing character portrait. You are glad she's not your friend, you are glad she's not your mother - but still. She's interesting. (Reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones' response to the question, "Do you have to like the character you are portraying?" Jones bluntly said, "Nope. But you do have to want to watch that character.") You want to watch Thyra Carewe.

As she waits for Chester - this guy shows up at her door - he's basically the PEI version of a homeless dude. He is the guy in town who can't get his act together, he is also crippled and slouched over with rheumatism, and so - people in the town give him errands to do, to keep him occupied and employed. He is also quite a creation - and I have to say: Lucy Maud deals a lot in archetypes - so the same "type" show up in story after story, with little tweaks here and there. But August stands alone. I cannot think of another character even remotely like August in any one of her stories. August is the male version of a vicious gossip. Lucy Maud has written about female vicious gossips before - the kind of self-righteous moralistic bitches who glory in the suffering of another ("Well, I told her that it wouldn't be right for her to blah blah blah ... serves her right ...." Etc. THAT type shows up in Lucy Maud's stuff quite a bit) - but August is a bored person, malicious - he knows he is despised and pitied - he knows people are disgusted by his twisted rheumatic appearance - and this has corrupted his soul. He is the essence of Corrupt. He loves to be the bearer of bad news. He loves to tell someone bad news and then watch them blanch and gasp. This is because August is so beyond the pale, in terms of his own humanity - so much bad has already happened to him - that he could never blanch and gasp again. He feels outside the human family. He doesn't just resent this. That is too feeble a word. He hates all of humanity. And he is literally gleeful when he gets to watch a fellow human suffer. Horrible character.

Anyway, he shows up while Thyra is waiting for Chester - and ends up "breaking the news" to her that Chester is sitting at Damaris Garland's. Actually, there is nothing accidental about August's behavior. He comes to Thyra's house on the pretense of an errand - but his main goal is to tell her the bad news, and to have the joy of watching the proud stern imperioud Thyra be shaken. What fun that will be!!

This story is, what, 20 pages long? Obviously it's deep and powerful - look at how much I have written about it.

I highly recommend reading it - I think it's some of Lucy Maud's best work. It's dark, man. Really dark. And the catharsis at the end is well-deserved. It doesn't feel like a plot device - it takes your breath away the first time you read it.

Hard to choose an excerpt from this extraordinary little story - so I guess I'll just choose the opening to excerpt. Notice the bit about how Thyra treats Chester's dog. That's when I realize: Oh. Thyra is kind of nuts, and I'm a little bit creeped out right now.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Son of His Mother" - by L.M. Montgomery

Thyra Carewe was waiting for Chester to come home. She sat by the west window of the kitchen, looking out into the gathering of the shadows with the expectant immovability that characterized her. She never twitched or fidgeted. Into whatever she did she put the whole force of her nature. If it was sitting still, she sat still.

"A stone image would be twitchedly beside Thyra," said Mrs. Cynthia White, her neighbor across the lane. "It gets on my nerves, the way she sits at the window sometimes, with no more motion than a statue and her great eyes burning down the lane. When I read the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,' I declare I always think of Thyra. She worships that son of hers far ahead of her Creator. She'll be punished for it yet."

Mrs. White was watching Thyra now, knitting furiously as she watched, in order to lose no time. Thyra's hands were folded idly in her lap. She had not moved a muscle since she sat down. Mrs. White complained that it gave her the weeps.

"It doesn't seem natural to see a woman sit so still," she said. "Sometimes the thought comes to me, 'what if she's had a stroke, like her old Uncle Horatio, and is sitting there stone dead!'"

The evening was cold and autumnal. There was a fiery red spot out at sea, where the sun had set, and, above it, over a chill, clear, saffron sky, were reels of purple-black clouds. The river, below the Carewe homestead, was livid. Beyond it, the sea was dark and brooding. It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode and early winter, but Thyra loved it, as she loved all stern, harshly beautiful things. She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky. It was better to wait in darkness until Chester came home.

He was late tonight. She thought he had been detained over time at the harbor, but she was not anxious. He would come straight home to her as soon as his business was completed - of that she felt sure. Her thoughts went out along the bleak harbor road to meet him. She could see him plainly, coming with his free stride through the sandy hollows and over the windy hills, in the harsh, cold light of that forbidding sunset, strong and handsome in his comely youth, with her own deeply cleft chin and his father's dark gray, straightforward eyes. No other woman in Avonlea had a son like hers - her only one. In his brief absence she yearned after him with a maternal passion that had in it something of physical pain, so intense was it. She thought of Cynthia White, knitting across the road, with contemptuous pity. That woman had no son - nothing but pale-faced girls. Thyra had never wanted a daughter, but she pitied and despised all sonless women.

Chester's dog whined suddenly and piercingly on the doorstep outside. He was tired of the cold stone and wanted his warm corner behind the stove. Thyra smiled grimly when she heard him. She had no intention of letting him in. She said she had always disliked dogs, but the truth, although she would not glance at it, was that she hated the animal because Chester loved him. She could not share his love even with a dumb brute. She loved no living creature in the world but her son, and fiercely demanded a like concentrated affection from him. Hence it pleased her to hear his dog whine.

It was now quite dark; the stars had begun to shine out over the shorn harvest fields, and Chester had not come. Across the lane, Cynthia White had pulled down her blind, in despair of out-watchig Thyra, and had lighted a lamp. Lively shadows of little girl-shapes passed and re-passed on the pale oblong of light. They made Thyra conscious of her exceeding loneliness.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Sara's Way"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Sara's Way" - by L.M. Montgomery

One of the things that is so refreshing, for me, about Lucy Maud's work is how she doesn't pathologize her characters. Freud isnt "in" in her world. People's quirks are just that: quirks. Some people have annoying quirks, some people have evil quirks, some quirks are just lovable. It's all part of the human tapestry. "Sara's Way" is a perfect example of this, for me - it's a story I love. Sara is a girl who only becomes interested in someone (or in animals, as well) when they are down and out. She is a true underdog champion. She couldn't care less about birds. But let a bird be found on the lawn with a broken wing - and she falls INSTANTLY in love with it. This would be seen, nowadays, as a low level pathology - like maybe something is wrong with Sara, something needs to be fixed. Why doesn't she love things that are whole and strong? Why does she only love things that are weak? What is WRONG with Sara? Lucy Maud does not take this route. This is just the way Sara is. It is who she has been since she was a little girl and it is who she is now as a woman ... and so ... what will Sara's life be like, if we know this quirk of hers? Who will she marry? Will she marry? Nothing is WRONG with Sara, in Lucy Maud's eyes - even though the ladies in the town, as well as her mother, get frustrated with her because of this quirk. They talk about her behind her back. Sara knows she is talked about, but she doesn't care, because this is just the way she is. She loves broken things. She loves mothering to weakened animals. Okay - so now: in the course of this story - a man comes into her life. He is interersted in her. He tries to court her. She basically laughs in his face. She is SO not interested. Everyone thinks she is insane to not be interested. He's a good man, he makes good money, he would be a good provider ... Sara is crazy! But Sara just knows her own mind. Lucy Maud doesn't spell it out too clearly but you do get the jist: what would be in this fellow to FIX? Because without that element - Sara will never be interested. He seems perfectly fine all on his own. Sara could not care less about such creatures. And then - all of a sudden - this same fellow falls into disrepute. I cannot remember the reason but I know it has something to do with making bad investments - and losing a ton of money. Suddenly, this golden boy doesn't have such a whiff of success around him. He is scorned by the small town - practical people who think that being bad with your money is a sign of deeper more sinful issues. He becomes almost a pariah. Sara sees him out and about, and he looks like a ghost of his former self. He is gaunt, pale, upset, and averts his eyes away from her. I am sure you can guess where this is going. The women in her life - her mother, her neighbors, all say, "Thank goodness you had the presence of mind to stay away from THAT trainwreck, Sara! He's barely better than a criminal!" Sara, in one fell swoop, knows what she must do. This once-strong man is now the equivalent of the bird with the broken wing. And (like the title of the story says) it is not Sara's way to ignore that. She now has something to fix. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that her attentions, her love - will make this broken man stand strong again. So she basically goes to him and proposes marriage. He can't believe it, naturally. Doesn't she hate him and scorn him? No, she does not. She now loves him. Because he needs her.

I love the straightforward way Lucy Maud tells this moving tale. Sara, for me, comes to life - and I actually would love to have read a full book about her. She's a good character - someone I would love to see in a variety of different situations. A very unexpected personality, a great female character - for me, Sara is in Lucy Maud's canon of unforgettable women.

Here's the opening of the story where this whole dynamic is set up. Notice Lucy Maud's gift with storytelling. The ladies in the town do all the exposition for her.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Sara's Way" - by L.M. Montgomery

"How does Sara like teaching at Newbridge?" asked Mrs. Jonas, helping herself a second time to Mrs. Eben's matchless black fruit cake, and thereby bestowing a subtle compliment which Mrs. Eben did not fail to appreciate.

"Well, I guess she likes it pretty well - better than down at White Sands, anyway," answered Mrs. Eben. "Yes, I may say it suits her. Of course it's a long walk there and back. I think it would have been wiser for her to keep on boarding at Morrison's, as she did all winter, but Sara is bound to be home all she can. And I must say the walk seems to agree with her."

"I was down to see Jonas' aunt at Newbridge last night," said Mrs. Jonas, "and she said she'd heard that Sara had made up her mind to take Lige Baxter at last, and that they were to be married in the fall. She asked me if it was true. I said I didn't know, but I hoped to mercy it was. Now, is it, Louisa?"

"Not a word of it," said Mrs. Eben sorrowfully. "Sara hasn't any more notion of taking Lige than ever she had. I'm sure it's not my fault. I've talked and argued till I'm tired. I declare to you, Amelia, I am terribly disappointed. I'd set my heart on Sara marrying Lige - and now to think she won't!"

"She is a very foolish girl," said Mrs. Jonas judicially. "If Lige Baxter isn't good enough for her, who is?"

"And he's so well off," said Mrs. Eben, "and does such a good business, and is well spoken of by everyone. And that lovely new house of his at Newbridge, with bay windows and hardwood floors! I've dreamed and dreamed of seeing Sara there as mistress."

"Maybe you'll see her there yet," said Mrs. Jonas, who always took a hopeful view of everything, even of Sara's contrariness. But she felt discouraged, too. Well, she had done her best.

If Lige Baxter's broth was spoiled, it was not for lack of cooks. Every Andrews in Avonlea had beent trying for two years to bring about a match between him and Sara, and Mrs. Jonas had borne her part valiantly.

Mrs. Eben's despondent reply was cut short by the appearance of Sara herself. The girl stood for a moment in the doorway and looked with a faintly amused air at her aunts. She knew quite well that they had been discussing her, for Mrs. Jonas, who carried her conscience in her face, looked guilty, and Mrs. Eben had not been able wholly to banish her aggrieved expression.

Sara put away her books, kissed Mrs. Jonas' rosy cheek, and sat down at the table. Mrs. Eben brought her some fresh tea, some hot rolls, and a little jelly-pot of the apricot preserves Sara liked, and she cut some more fruit cake for her in moist, plummy slices. She might be out of patience with Sara's "contrariness", but she spoiled and petted her for all that, for the girl was the very core of her childless heart.

Sara Andrews was not, strictly speaking, pretty, but there was that about her which made people look at her twice. She was very dark, with a rich, dusky sort of darkness, her deep eyes were velvety brown, and her lips and cheeks were crimson.

She ate her rolls and preserves with a healthy appetite, sharpened by her long walk from Newbridge, and told amusing little stories of her day's work that made the two older women shake with laughter, and exchange shy glances of pride over her cleverness.

When tea was over she poured the remaining contents of the cream jug into a saucer.

"I must feed my pussy," she said as she left the room.

"That girl beats me," said Mrs. Eben with a sigh of perplexity. "You know that black cat we've had for two years? Even and I have always made a lot of him, but Sara seemed to have a dislike to him. Never a peaceful nap under the stove could he have when Sara was home - out he must go. Well, a little spell ago he got his leg broke accidentally and we thought he'd have to be killed. But Sara wouldn't hear of it. She got splints and set his leg just as knacky, and bandaged it up, and she has tended him like a sick baby ever since. He's just about well now, and he lives in clover, that cat does. It's just her way. There's them sick chickens she's been doctoring for a week, giving them pills and things! And she thinks more of that wretched-looking calf that got poisoned with paris green than of all the other stock on the place."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Return of Hester"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Return of Hester" - by L.M. Montgomery

Lucy Maud wrote ghost stories. They paid well - and I also think that there was a part of her that really sympathized and believed in the supernatural. All you need to do is read her journals to get that. Her cousin (and kindred spirit) Frede died in the 1918 influenza epidemic and Lucy Maud never really recovered from it (and Lucy Maud died in 1942!) Her grief always seemed to be fresh. She was not a "friend"-ish type person ... Frede was her friend, and when she died, that was it. But there are multiple times in the journals when Lucy Maud got the sense that Frede was trying to communicate with her from beyond. Through her cats - through her dreams ... She believed that there was a thin veil between the living world and the spirit realm - Frede was still with her. This kind of unexplainable phenomenon also shows up in her novels - especially in the Emily books - where she makes it quite clear that Emily has the gift (or curse) of "second sight". Emily does not WANT this gift. It makes her feel uncanny, almost devilish. But in each of the books in those series - there is one incident - one unexplainable incident - when Emily breaks the boundaries between this world and the next - or not even the next world - she has unexplainable ESP moments - where she is actually able to communicate with someone who is across the ocean, or whatever. So Lucy Maud, while she wrote ghost stories because they paid well, also had a rather spooky strain in her ... you can tell, in the prose. She doesn't condescend to the genre.

"The Return of Hester" is about two sisters - again, the Lucy Maud archetypes. There is Hester - the strong domineering sister. And Margaret, the more submissive sister. Hester and Margaret's parents have died - and the two sisters are everything to each other. Hester is a fierce woman (although also quite loving) - and has family pride that could cut glass. She is FIERCE and forbidding. Margaret is a bit more open. Anyway - when Margaret is about 18 - Hester goes away for a month - and during that time, a man named Hugh Blair starts to court Margaret. Margaret (the narrator of the tale) says that she lived a lifetime in that one month. She fell in love with Hugh Blair. It was her "moment" - her one moment in the sun. Hester returned from her trip, found out about the love affair and put a stop to it pronto. I think because Hugh Blair is not "good enough" for Margaret. That family pride, you know. Margaret begs, pleads, cries - but Hester will not budge. So Margaret, moron that she is, submits. She tells Hugh Blair no. Hugh Blair then begs and pleads. Margaret cannot go against Hester. Not because Hester is evil - but because their relationship is so strong. So then years pass. Hugh Blair (naturally) has never married. In my life, they always marry. But in Lucy Maud's world, when your main love affair ends ... you never have another one. And then - after an illness - Hester dies. On her deathbed, she says to Margaret, "Please promise me ... that you will never marry Hugh Blair." Margaret, beside herself with grief at losing Hester, says, "Don't be silly ... it's been years ... he doesn't love me anymore ..." Hester, going into the white light, says, "He has never married ... the moment I die, he is going to come around again ... Do not say Yes. Promise me." Margaret, like a moron, promises. So Hester dies. And whaddya know, a week later - Hugh Blair comes calling. He sees his moment and he takes it. He has never stopped loving Margaret. Margaret, in the first throes of grief, puts him off - tells him No - she is out of her mind. Hester was everything to her. Hugh again begs. Margaret says No.

The book begins at this moment.

Here's the spooky excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Return of Hester" - by L.M. Montgomery

That was three weeks ago - and now I sat alone in the moonlit rose-garden and wept for him. But, after a time, my tears dried and a very strange feeling came over me. I felt calm and happy, as if some wonderful love and tenderness were very near me.

And now comes the strange part of my story - the part which will not, I suppose, be believed. If it were just for one thing, I think I should hardly believe it myself. I should feel tempted to think I had dreamed it. But because of that one thing I know it was real. The night was very calm and still. Not a breath of wind stirred. The moonshine was the brightest I had ever seen. In the middle of the garden, where the shadow of the poplars did not fall, it was almost as bright as day. One could have read fine print. There was still a little rose glow in the west, and over the airy boughs of the tall poplars one or two large, bright stars were shining. The air was sweet with a hush of dreams, and the world was so lovely that I held my breath over its beauty.

Then, all at once, down at the far end of the garden, I saw a woman walking. I thought at first that it must be Mary Sloane, but, as she crossed a moonlit path, I saw it was not our old servant's stout, homely figure. This woman was tall and erect.

Although no suspicion of the truth came to me, something about her reminded me of Hester. Even so had Hester liked to wander about the garden in the twilight. I had seen her thus a thousand times.

I wondered who the woman could be. Some neighbor, of course. But what a strange way for her to come! She walked up the garden slowly in the poplar shade. Now and then she stooped, as if to caress a flower, but she plucked none. Halfway up she came out into the moonlight and walked across the plot of grass in the center of the garden. My heart gave a great throb and I stood up. She was quite near to me now - and I saw that it was Hester.

I can hardly say just what my feelings were at this moment. I know that I was not surprised. I was frightened, and yet I was not frightened. Something in me shrank back in a sickening terror; but I, the real I, was not frightened. I knew that this was my sister, and that there could be no reason why I should be frightened of her, because she loved me still, as she had always done. Further than this I was not conscious of any coherent thought, either of wonder or attempt at reasoning.

Hester paused when she came to within a few steps of me. In the moonlight I saw her face quite plainly. It wore an expression I had never before seen on it - a humble, wistful, tender look. Often in life Hester had looked lovingly, even tenderly, upon me; but always, as it were, through a mask of pride and sternness. This was gone now, and I felt nearer to her than ever before. I knew suddenly that she understood me. And then the half-conscious awer and terror some part of me had felt vanished, and I only realized that Hester was here, and that there was no terrible gulf of change between us.

Hester beckoned to me and said,

"Come."

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Brother Who Failed"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Brother Who Failed" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story is kind of like, oh, a This Is Your Life episode - or maybe a very special Oprah episode. Robert Monroe - member of the Monroe family, all of whom are brilliant and accomplished - overhears a bitchy gossip say something about him like, "It's such a shame HE never made anythign of himself." Robert Monroe is a farmer, lives on a little farm by himself ... is a kindly man, proud of his brothers and sisters accomplishments ... and he is devastated to hear that he is perceived as a failure, and also as an embarrassment to the rest of the family. He is so kindly and so sweet that it never even occurred to him!! Well, word gets back to his siblings - all of whom are coming to town for a family gathering - that Robert needs a little pick-me-up - so as they sit around the dinner table, one by one they all get up and share storeis about Robert, and how he helped them at one time, how he did something selfless, how he came to the rescue ... Robert just has to sit there and take it. He is love-bombed from every direction. Like I said: it's kinda Oprah-ish, but that's okay - Oprah very often makes me cry, and so does this wee story. It's really about: how do we measure success? Monetary? How many kids you have? How much you travel? Your grades? Sure, all of these things are what we are judged by in life - but there's much more. Lucy Maud has a way of seeing those who are mainly invisible, the Robert Monroes of the world. Her inspiration was Prince Edward Island - and all she needed to do was look there, to see people - men - women - living quiet lives, maybe "unimportant" in terms of the grand scheme of things - but with a 360 degree scope of experience: love, grief, rage, loss, humor, shame, resilience ... She saw it all there.

Here's a brief excerpt. Not much happens here - this is right before Robert overhears the vicious gossip. I include it because it's such a wonderful example of Lucy Maud's poetic nature writing. She is SO good at it.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Brother Who Failed" - by L.M. Montgomery

Robert went across the yard and sat down on a rustic bench in the angle of the front porch. It was a fine December evening, as mild as autumn; there had been no snow, and the long fields, sloping down from the homestead, were brown and mellow. A quiet hush, holding something of magic in it, rested like an unseen mantle on the dark forest, brooding field, and the once flowering, fertile valley. The earth was like a tired old man patiently awaiting his well-earned sleep. Out to sea, a dull, red sunset faded out into somber clouds, and the soft sound of the waves breaking on the shore was wafted on the evening breeze.

Robert rested his chin on his hand and looked across the vales and hills, where the feathery gray of leafless hardwoods was mingled with the sturdy, unfailing green of the conebearers. He was a tall, bent man, with thin, gray hair, a lined face, and deeply set, gentle brown eyes, - the eyes of one who, looking through pain, sees rapture beyond.

He felt very happy. He loved his family clannishly, and he was rejoiced that they were all again near to him. He was proud of their success and fame. He was glad that James had prospered so well of late years. There was no canker of envy or discontent in his soul.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'The Dream Child"' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Dream Child" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is one of Lucy Maud's more openly tragic stories. When you get to her collection of ghost stories (published posthumously - as in, the last 10 years) - you see a lot of this kind of writing - quivering wtih passion, grief, strong strong emotions - nobody has a sense of humor. Life is tragic. Bad Things Happen. She was a big believer (and she had a whole philosophy about it) that there is no shame in the Happy Ending, that a book shouldn't be considered less important or less worthy just because things work out in the end. But at the time that she was writing - happy endings were not in vogue (I guess they never really are, if you think about it) - and so she was defensive about being seen as a lightweight. Which is so ridiculous. How anyone could read Emily of New Moon (excerpt here) or Blue Castle (excerpt here) and ever think of her as a "lightweight writer" I will never know.

But anyway - when she puts on her Tragic Mask (as she does in this story) - she tends to tip over into melodrama. At least that is my assessment. She does good melodrama - it gets gothic, the writing is a bit florid - and people quiver with unspeakable pain. Melodrama.

There is a married couple. The story is told first-person from the perspective of the husband. Oh, they are happy. What a happy courtship they had. They live in a little house by the sea. They are happy happy happy. Then their son is born. They had never thought they could be MORE happy. But then lo - they were. Happy happy happy. The child lives 20 months or something like that - and then dies suddenly. And the wife loses it. She cracks up. Her grief is so intense that weird psychic shit starts happening. The husband begins to wake up in the night only to find his wife is not there. He goes out looking for her and finds her wandering along the shore, staring out into the ocean ...She says that she has heard the baby calling for her. She calls it her "dream-child". She can hear it just over that next dune, just over that NEXT dune ... she chases the sound of the dream-child's cry. Husband tries to bring her back to the house. She flips OUT. So he walks the shore with her. This starts to happen more and more often. Every other night he wakes up and finds her wandering along the shore, in between waking and dreaming, listening for the cries of her dream-child, and then following the sound when it comes (the husband can hear nothing).

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Dream Child" - by L.M. Montgomery

What a horror brooded over that spring - that so beautiful spring! The time had come of lazy days, sunny blue skies, of the soft patter of sudden showers welcomed by the yet-to-be-weeded soil; of daffodils and iris and violets, or orchards transformed into pink and white fairylands; of the murmuring of babbling brooks and the sweet song of birds. Yes, the delicious joys of spring were abroad in the land. Almost every night of this wonderful time the dream-child called his mother, and we roved the gray shore in quest of him.

In the day she was herself; but, when the night fell, she was restless and uneasy until she heard the call. Then follow it she would, even through storm and darkness. It was then, she said, that the cry sounded loudest and nearest, as if her pretty boy were frightened by the tempest. What wild, terrrible rovings we had, she straining forward, eager to overtake the dream-child; I, sick at heart, following, guiding, protecting, as best I could, then afterwards leading her gently home, heart-broken because she could not reach the child.

I bore my burden in secret, determining that gossip could not busy itself with my wife's condition so long as I could keep it from becoming known. We had no near relatives - none with any right to share any trouble- and so I carried on alone, for grief is ever proud.

I thought, however, that I should have medical attention, and I took our old doctor into my confidence. He looked grave when he heard my story. I did not like his expression nor his few guarded remarks. He said he thought human aid would avail little; she might come all right in time; humor her as far as possible, watch over her, protect her. He needed not to tell me that.

The spring went out and summer came in - and the horror deepened and darkened. I knew that suspicions were being whispered from lip to lip. We had been seen on our nightly quests. Men and women began to look at us pityingly when we went abroad.

One day, on a dull, drowsy afternoon, the dream-child called. I knew then that the end was near the end had been near in the old grandmother's case sixty years before when the dream-child called in the day. The doctor looked graver than ever when I told him, and said that the time had come when I must have help in my task. I could not watch by day and night. Unless I had assistance I would break down.

I did not think that I should. Love is stronger than that. And on one thing I was determined -- they should never take my wife from me. No restraint sterner than a husband's loving hand should ever be put upon her, my pretty, piteous darling.

I never spoke of the dream-child to her. The doctor advised against it. It would, he said, only serve to deepen the delusion. When he hinted at an asylum, I gave him a look that would have been a fierce sword for another man. He never spoke of it again.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Jane's Baby' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Jane's Baby" - by L.M. Montgomery

This story has a complicated plot involving two feuding sisters - who are fighting over an orphaned baby in their family - they basically keep kidnapping the baby back and forth from each other, because THEY want to raise it. I believe the sisters are feuding because one of them (Charlotte) went off and married someone that the other sister (Rosetta) disapproved of. They are the Lucy Maud sister archetypes: Charlotte is weak and sweet, Rosetta is strong and bossy. The two have not spoken for years. But - as the opening scene shows - all they do is think about each other. And it is "Jane's baby", Jane's orphaned baby, that forces the two sisters (who, naturally, actually love each other to death) to get back together, to reconcile.

But I love this opening scene. It's Lucy Maud in "high comedy" mode, and I love it.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Jane's Baby" - by L.M. Montgomery

Miss Rosetta Ellis, with her front hair in curl-papers and her back hair bound with a checked apron, was out in her breezy side yard under the firs, shaking her parlor rugs, when Mr. Nathan Patterson drove in. Miss Rosetta had seen him coming down the long red hill, but she had not supposed he would be calling at that time of the morning. So she had not run. Miss Rosetta always ran if anybody called and her front hair was in curl-papers; and, though the errand of the said caller might be life or death, he or she had to wait until Miss Rosetta had taken her hair out. Everybody in Avonlea knew this, because everybody in Avonlea knew everything about everybody else.

But Mr Patterson had wheeled into the lane so quickly and unexpectedly that Miss Rosetta had had no time to run; so, twitching off the checked apron, she stood her ground as calmly as might be under the disagreeable consciousness of curl-papers.

"Good morning, Miss Ellis," said Mr. Patterson, so somberly that Miss Rosetta instantly felt that he was the bearer of bad news. Usually Mr. Patterson's face was as broad and beaming as a harvest moon. Now his expression was very melancholy, and his voice positively sepulchral.

"Good morning," returned Miss Rosetta, crisply and cheerfully. She, at any rate, would not go into eclipse until she knew the reason therefor. "It is a fine day."

"A very fine day," assented Mr. Patterson solemnly. "I have just come from the Wheeler place, Miss Ellis, and I regret to say --"

"Charlotte is sick!" cried Miss Rosetta rapidly. "Charlotte has got another spell with her heart! I knew it! I've been expecting to hear it! Any woman that drives about the country as much as she does is liable to heart disease at any moment. I never go outside of my gate but I meet her gadding off somewhere. Goodness knows who looks after her place. I shouldn't like to trust as much as a hired man as she does. Well, it is very kind of you, Mr. patterson, to put yourself out to the extent of calling in to tell me that Charlotte is sick, but I don't really see why you should take so much trouble - I really don't. It doesn't matter to me whether Charlotte is sick or whether she isn't. You know that perfectly well, Mr. Patterson, if anybody does. When Charlotte went and got married, on the sly, to that good-for-nothing Jacob Wheeler --"

"Mrs. Wheeler is quite well," interrupted Mr. Patterson desperately. "Quite well. Nothing at all the matter with her, in fact. I only --"

"Then what do you mean by coming here and telling me she wasn't, and frightening me half to death?" demanded Miss Rosetta indignantly. "My own heart isn't very strong - it runs in our family - and my doctor warned me to avoid all shocks and excitement. I don't want to be excited, Mr. patterson. I won't be excited, not even if Charlotte has another spell. It's perfectly useless for you to try to excite me, Mr. Patterson."

"Bless the woman, I'm not trying to excite anybody!" declared Mr. Patterson in exasperation. "I merely called to tell you --"

"To tell me what?" said Miss Rosetta. "How much longer do you mean to keep me in suspense, Mr. Patterson? No doubt you have abundance of spare time, but -- I -- have not."

" -- that your sister, Mrs. Wheeler, has had a letter from a cousin of yours, and she's in Charlottetown. Mrs. Roberts, I think her name is --"

"Jane Roberts," broke in Miss Rosetta. "Jane Ellis she was, before she was married. What was she writing to Charlotte about? Not that I want to know, of course. I'm not interested in Charlotte's correspondence, goodness knows. But if Jane had anything in particular to write about, she should have written to me. I am the oldest. Charlotte had no business to get a letter from Jane Roberts without consulting me. It's just like her underhanded ways. She got married the same way. Never said a word to me about it, but just sneaked off with that unprincipled Jacob Wheeler --"

"Mrs. Roberts is very ill. I understand," persisted Mr. Patterson, nobly resolved to do what he had come to do, "dying, in fact, and --"

"Jane ill! Jane dying!" exclaimed Miss Rosetta. "Why, she was the healthiest girl I ever knew! But then I've never seen her, nor heard from her, since she got married fifteen years ago. I dare say her husband was a brute and neglected her, and she's pined away by slow degrees. I've no faith in husbands. Look at Charlotte! Everybody knows how Jacob Wheeler used her. To be sure, she deserved it, but --"

"Mrs. Roberts' husband is dead," said Mr. Patterson. "Died about two months ago, I understand, and she has a little baby six months old, and she thought perhaps Mrs. Wheeler would take it for old times' sake --"

"Did Charlotte ask you to call and tell me this?" demanded Miss Rosetta eagerly.

"No; she just told me what was in the letter. She didn't mention you; but I thought, perhaps, you ought to be told--"

"I knew it," said Miss Rosetta, in a tone of bitter assurance. "I could have told you so. Charlotte wouldn't even let me know that Jane was ill. Charlotte would be afraid I would want to get the baby, seeing that Jane and I were such intimate friends long ago. And who has a better right to it than me, I should like to know? Ain't I the oldest? And haven't I had experience in bringing up babies? Charlotte needn't think she is going to run the affairs of our family just because she happened to get married. Jacob Wheeler --"

"I must be going," said Mr. Patterson, gathering up his reins thankfully.

"I am much obliged to you for coming to tell me about Jane," said Miss Rosetta, "even though you have wasted a lot of precious time getting it out. If it hadn't been for you I suppose I should never have known it at all. As it is, I shall start for town just as soon as I can get ready."

"You'll have to hurry if you want to get ahead of Mrs. Wheeler," advised Mr. Patterson. "She's packing her trunk and going on the morning train."

"I'll pack a valise and go on the afternoon train," retorted Miss Rosetta triumphantly. "I'll show Charlotte she isn't running the Ellis affairs. She married out of them into the Wheelers. She can attend to them. Jacob Wheeler was the most--"

But Mr. Patterson had driven away. He felt that he had done his duty in the face of fearful odds, and he did not want to hear anything more about Jacob Wheeler.

The Books: Further Chronicles of Avonlea: 'Her Father's Daughter' (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Her Father's Daughter" - by L.M. Montgomery

This is a great little story. David and Isabella Spencer were married and they had a baby girl. (The story starts on the eve of this baby girl's wedding - so she's an adult now) But there is a past full of pain between the two parents. David is a sailor (this is a big theme in Lucy Maud's work - "going to sea") - which makes sense, seeing as where she grew up, and the whole maritime culture of it). But there was something shameful (to some) about those who wanted to 'go to sea' - it wasn't respectable - and also, in other of her stories - it's tragic - because anyone who "goes to sea" usually isn't seen for years on end. So mothers weep, wives mourn, etc. Usually, in Lucy Maud's world, a guy who "goes to sea" does so secretly - sneaking off in the night - to avoid the weeping and wailing. In "Her Father's Daughter", though - Isabella Spencer is flat out prejudicial against sailors, and anyone who works off of the ocean. (Uhm, then why do you live on PEI, Isabella??). She thinks it's not respectable work, only reprobates are sailors - you should stay and work on the LAND, like her forefathers, THAT is respectable work. (I may not be remembering this quite clearly - it's been a while - but that's what I recall) She told him to give up the sea. He (and Lucy Maud understands this so well) feels that it will break his heart. There are just those who cannot LIVE without being on the ocean everyday. I myself grew up in a state with a maritime culture - and I can attest to that personality type. It still exists. These fishermen, yes, they make great money - but many of them do it for other reasons as well. They MUST be out on the ocean every day. There is no other possible life for these people. They would crumple up and die, emotionally, in Kansas. David Spencer is that kind of person. So Isabella makes a completely unreasonable request of him. But he's in love, they're newlyweds, and he says yes. For 6 years all goes well - until suddenly - he starts to get the call again. An old sea-captain friend of his comes back into his life - and offers him a job And suddenly he knows. Not only does he know he must take the job - he also knows that Isabella has been WAY too hard ... and he cannot go so against his own nature like that. They have had a baby girl named Rachel, love of David's life - but he MUST take the job with the captain. Isabella, a hard woman, says, "If you take this job, don't come back." David takes the job. He doesn't come back. Or - he does come back, eventually, but not to Isabella's house. He lives in a small shanty on the shore. It is a huge scandal in the town. Isabella raises Rachel alone. She is bitter and hard - she does not allow Rachel to see her father - as a matter of fact, I think Rachel doesn't even know if her father is alive or dead - even though he lives just across the fields. She is raised as though he does not exist.

During her childhood - she has a couple of encounters on a beach with a kindly smiling man - who seems to take an interest in her. She is just a little girl so she doesn't think too much of it - but later, much later, she remembers his eyes - how they looked at her - and she just knows. That was her father.

Rachel grows up - and is now engaged to be married. She is in love. OAs she and her mother write out invitations, Rachel drops her bomb. Her father must be allowed to come to the wedding. Isabella - who has lived a life where she never admits she has been wrong, never yields, ever - says Absolutely not - I will not allow that man in our lives again. Rachel insists. Isabella argues. And you realize that Rachel, as pretty and sweet and young as she is, has some of her mother's unyielding nature in her. She is willing to NOT get married at ALL if her father is not allowed to be there. It's that important to her. Isabella is beyond frustrated - having met her match in her own daughter. She says "fine, whatever" and flounces out of the room. The invitation goes out to David Spencer.

On the eve of the wedding - Rachel stands up in her room in her wedding dress. A note has been sent to her from her father saying "I cannot enter the house I was turned out of." (2 stubborn people - David and Isabella!) "But I wish you all the happiness in the world." Guests awill be arriving any moment.

The wedding is minutes away. But Rachel - reading this note - suddenly is filled with a sense of purpose. No. No. Her father MUST attend.

So she basically sneaks out of the house - in her wedding dress - and runs across the fields to get him. That's the excerpt.

And can I just say this? I love Frank.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Her Father's Daughter" - by L.M. Montgomery

It was quite dark when she reached the Cove. In the crystal cup of the sky over her the stars were blinking. The sound of rippling waves, lapping on the shore, broke the stillness. A soft little wind was crooning about the eaves of the little gray house where David Spencer was sitting, alone in the twilight, his violin on his knee. He had been trying to play, but could not. His heart yearned after his daughter - yes, and after a long-estranged bride of his youth. His love of the sea was sated forever; his love for wife and child still cried for its own under all his old anger and stubbornness.

The door opened suddenly, and the very Rachel of whom he was dreaming came suddenly in, flinging off her wraps and standing forth in her young beauty and bridal adornments, a splendid creature, almost lighting up the gloom with her radiance.

"Father," she cried brokenly, and her father's eager arms closed around her.

Back in the house she had left, the guests were coming to the wedding. There were jests and laughter and friendly greeting. The bridegroom came, too, a slim, dark-eyed lad who tiptoed bashfully upstairs to the spare room, from which he presently emerged to confront Mrs. Spencer on the landing.

"I want to see Racherl before we go down," he said, blushing.

Mrs. Spencer deposited a wedding present of linen on the table which was already laden with gifts, opened the door of Rachel's room, and called her. There was no reply; the room was dark and still. In sudden alarm, Isabella Spencer snatched the lamp from the hall table and held it up. The little white room was empty. No blushing, white-clad bride tenanted it. But David Spencer's letter was lying on the stand. She caught it up and read it

"Rachel is gone," she gasped. A flash of intuition had revealed to her where and why the girl had gone.

"Gone!" echoed Frank, his face blanching. His pallid dismay recalled Mrs. Spencer to herself. She gave a bitter, ugly little laugh.

"Oh, you needn't look so scared, Frank. She hasn't run away from you. Hush; come in here - shut the door. Nobody must know of this. Nice gossip it would make! That little fool has gone to the Cove to see her -- her father. I know she has. It's just like what she would do. He sent her those presents - look - and this letter. Read it. She has gone to coax him to come and see her married. She was crazy about it. And the minister is here, and it is half-past seven. She'll ruin her dress and shoes in the dust and dew. And what if someone has seen her! Was there ever such a little fool?"

Frank's presence of mind had returned to him. He knew all about Rachel and her father. She had told him everything.

"I'll go after her," he said gently. "Get me my hat and coat. I'll slip down the back stairs and over to the Cove."

"You must get out of the pantry window, then," said Mrs. Spencer firmly, mingling comedy and tragedy after her characteristic fashion. "The kitchen is full of women. I won't have this known and talked about if it can possibly be helped."

The bridegroom, wise beyond his years in the knowledge that it was well to yield to women in little things, crawled obediently out of the pantry window and darted through the birch wood. Mrs. Spencer had stood quakingly on guard until he had disappeared.

So Rachel had gone to her father! Like had broken the fetters of years and fled to like.

"It isn't much use fighting against nature, I guess," she thought grimly. "I'm beat. He must have thought something of her, after all, when he sent her that teapot and letter. And what does he mean about the 'day they had such a good time'? Well, it just means that she's been to see him before, sometime, I suppose, and kept me in ignorance of it all."

Mrs. Spencer shut down the pantry window with a vicious thud.

"If only she'll come quietly back with Frank in time to prevent gossip, I'll forgive her," she said, as she turned to the kitchen.

Rachel was sitting on her father's knee, with both her white arms around his neck, when Frank came in. She sprang up, her face flushed and appealing, her eyes bright and dewy with tears. Frank thought he had never seen her look so lovely.

"Oh, Frank, is it very late? Oh, are you angry?" she exclaimed timidly.

"No, no, dear. Of course I'm not angry. But don't you think you'd better come back now? It's nearly eight and everybody is waiting."

"I've been trying to coax father to come up and see me married," said Rachel. "Help me, Frank."

"You'd better come, sir," said Frank heartily. "I'd like it as much as Rachel would."

David Spencer shook his head stubbornly.

"No, I can't go to that house. I was locked out of it. Never mind me. I've had my happiness in this half hour with my little girl. I'd like to see her married, but it isn't to be."

"Yes, it is to be - it shall be, " said Rachel resolutely. "You shall see me married. Frank, I'm going to married here in my father's house! That is the right place for a girl to be married. Go back and tell the guests so, and bring them all down."

Frank looked rather dismayed. David Spencer said deprecatingly, "Little girl, don't you think it would be --"

"I'm going to have my own way in this," said Rachel, with a sort of tender finality. "Go, Frank. I'll obey you all my life after, but you must do this for me. Try to understand," she added beseechingly.

"Oh, I understand," Frank reassured her. "Besides, I think you are right. But I was thinking of your mother. She won't come."

"Then you tell her that if she doesn't come I shan't be married at all," said Rachel. She was betraying unsuspected ability to manage people. She knew that ultimatum would urge Frank to his best endeavors.

Frank, much to Mrs. Spencer's dismay, marched boldly in at the front door upon his return. She pounced on him and whisked him out of sight into the supper room.

"Where's Rachel? What made you come that way? Everybody saw you!"

"It makes no difference. They will all have to know, anyway. Rachel says she is going to be married from her father's house, or not at all. I've come back to tell you so."

Isabella's face turned crimson.

"Rachel has gone crazy. I wash my hands of this affair. Do as you please. Take the guests - the supper, too, if you can carry it."

"We'll all come back here for supper," said Frank, ignoring the sarcasm. "Come, Mrs. Spencer; let's make the best of it."

"Do you suppose that I am going to David Spencer's house?" said Isabella Spencer violently.

"Oh, you must come, Mrs. Spencer," cried poor Frank desperately. He began to fear that he would lose his bride past all finding in this maze of triple stubbornness. "Rachel says she won't be married at all if you don't go, too. Think what a talk it will make. You know she will keep her word."

Isabella Spencer knew it. Amid all the conflict of anger and revolt in her soul was a strong desire not to make a worse scandal than must of necessity be made. The desire subdued and tamed her, as nothing else could have done.

"I will go, since I have to," she said icily. "What can't be cured must be endured. Go and tell them."

Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in front of the procession. They were too amazed to even talk about the strange happening. Isabella Spencer walked behind, fiercely alone.

The Books: "Further Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Materializing of Cecil'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Materializing of Cecil" - by L.M. Montgomery

Second story in this collection - it's hysterical. It's almost like a Three's Company episode (sorry for the low-brow comparison, but it's true.)

Charlotte Holmes is a spinster. Or - gentler term - an old maid. One time, long long ago, a boy wrote a poem to her - while in grade school. That is the extent of her romantic associations. She is known as an old maid. It's over for her - she's 40 years old, whatever, she's not bitter. She admits to herself that it's not that she had thwarted her chances. She knows in her heart that she never "met the right guy" - she just never had her heart engaged with anyone, so she's an old maid now. She's fine with her life. She loves sewing, her cats, church, she loves to write poetry, she's not bitter. The only thing that bugs her is the PITY. People in Avonlea PITY old maids (uhm, that shit is still going on, Lucy Maud - the smug pity of married people with kids - it's still odious!!). Charlotte doesn't want to be pitied because she is quite happy! But then, on her 40th birthday, she is at a sewing circle with a bunch of younger women, who are all chattering about their beaus. She doesn't mind. She sits, listening, pleasantly ... until one of them asks her, out of the blue, "Have you ever had a beau, Miss Holmes?"

And a small demon suddenly enters the placid Charlotte Holmes - she tells a lie - an out and out lie - and eventually ... all freakin' hell breaks loose. It's hilarious (mainly because I didn't have to go thru it!! I'm sure I wouldn't find it hilarious if I had had to LIVE it) - like: the thought of getting so BUSTED in your pathetic lie ...

Great story.

Here's an excerpt from the sewing circle when Charlotte, nice sweet old maid Charlotte, suddenly becomes a demon and begins to weave a web of evil lies.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "The Materializing of Cecil" - by L.M. Montgomery

I was sitting by the window and Wilhelmina Mercer, Maggie Henderson, Susette Cross, and Georgie Hall were in a little group just before me. I wasn't listening to their chatter at all, but presently Georgie exclaimed teasingly:

"Miss Charlotte is laughing at us. I suppose she thinks we are awfully silly to be talking about beaux."

The truth was that I was simply smiling over some very pretty thoughts that had come to me about the roses which were climbing over Mary Gillespie's sill. I meant to inscribe them in the little blank book when I went home. Georgie's speech brought me back to harsh realities with a jolt. It hurt me, as such speeches always did.

"Didn't you ever have a beau, Miss Holmes?" said Wilhelmina laughingly.

Just as it happened, a silence had fallen over the room for a moment, and everybody in it heard Wilhelmina's question.

I really do not know what got into me and possessed me. I have never been able to account for what I said and did, because I am naturally a truthful person and hate all deceit. It seemed to me that I simply could not say "No" to Wilhelmina before that whole roomful of women. It was too humiliating. I suppose all the prickles and stings and slurs I had endured for fifteen years on account of never having had a lover had what the new doctor calls "a cumulative effect" and came to a head then and there.

"Yes, I had one once, my dear," I said calmly.

For once in my life I made a sensation. Every woman in that room stopped sewing and stared at me. Most of them, I saw, didn't believe me, but Wilhelmina did. Her pretty face lighted up with interest.

"Oh, won't you tell us about him, Miss Holmes?" she coaxed, "and why you didn't marry him?"

"That is right, Miss Mercer," said Josephine Cameron, with a nasty little laugh. "Make her tell. We're all interested. It's news to us that Charlotte ever had a beau."

If Josephine had not said that, I might not have gone on. But she did say it, and moreover, I caught Mary Gillespie and Adella Gilbert exchanging significant smiles. That settled it, and made me quite reckless. "In for a penny, in for a pound," thought I, and I said with a pensive smile:

"Nobody here knew anything about him, and it was all long, long ago."

"What was his name?" asked Wilhelmina.

"Cecil Fenwick," I answered promptly. Cecil had always been my favorite name for a man; it figured quite frequently in the blank book. As for the Fenwick part of it, I had a bit of newspaper in my hand, measuring a hem, with "Try Fenwick's Porous Plasters" printed across it, and I simply joined the two in sudden and irrevocable matrimony.

"Where did you meet him?" asked Georgie.

I hastily reviewed my past. There was only one place to locate Cecil Fenwick. The only time I had ever been far enough away from Avonlea in my life was when I was eighteen and had gone to visit an aunt in New Brunswick.

"In Blakely, New Brunswick," I said, almost believeing that I had when I saw how they all took it in unsuspectingly. "I was just eighteen and he was twenty-three."

"What did he look like?" Susette wanted to know.

"Oh, he was very handsome." I proceeded glibly to sketch my ideal. To tell the dreadful truth, I was enjoying myself; I could see respect dawning in those girls' eyes, and I knew that I had forever thrown off my reproach. Henceforth I should be a woman with a romantic past, faithful to the one love of her life - a very, very different thing from an old maid who had never had a lover.

"He was tall and dark, with lovely, curly black hair and brilliant, piercing eyes. He had a splendid chin, and a fine nose, and the most fascinating smile!"

"What was he?" asked Maggie.

"A young lawyer," I said, my choice of profession decided by an enlarged crayon portrait of Mary Gillespie's deceased brother on an easel before me. He had been a lawyer.

"Why didn't you marry him?" demanded Susette.

"We quarreled," I answered sadly. "A terribly bitter quarrel. Oh, we were both so young and so foolish. It was my fault. I vexed Cecil by flirting with another man" -- wasn't I coming on! -- "and he was jealous and angry. He went out West and never came back. I have never seen him since, and I do not even know if he is alive. But -- but -- I could never care for another man."

"Oh, how interesting!" sighed Wilhelmina. "I do so love sad stories. But perhaps he will come back some day yet, Miss Holmes."

"Oh, no, never now," I said, shaking my head. "He has forgotten all about me, I dare say. Or if he hasn't, he has never forgiven me."

Mary Gillespie's Susan Jane announced tea at this moment, and I was thankful, for my imagination was giving out, and I didn't know what question those girls would ask next. But I felt already a change in the mental atmosphere surrounding me, and all through supper I was thrilled with a secret exultation. Repentant? Ashamed? Not a bit of it! I'd have done the same thing over again, and all I felt sorry for was that I hadn't done it long ago.

When I got home that night Nancy looked at me wonderingly and said:

"You look like a girl to-night, Miss Charlotte."

"I feel like one," I said, laughing, and I ran to my room and did what I had never done before -- wrote a second poem in the same day. I had to have some outlet for my feelings. I called it "In Summer Days of Love Ago", and I worked Mary Gillespie's roses and Cecil Fenwick's eyes into it, and made it so sad and reminiscent and minor-musicky that I felt perfectly happy.

The Books: "Further Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Further Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Another short story collection! We're gonna be doing LM for the next couple of months. Oh, I'm so happy!!

First story in this collection is a very funny little domestic drama - the kind of which Lucy Maud was just a MASTER of. There's also a sprinkling of romance - but the COMEDY is what is paramount here. I love her sense of humor. I just get it, I respond to it.

So anyway, first story is called "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat".

The elements in the story:

-- Sue and Ismay are sisters - they are adults, neither married, and are living in the old family house

-- They have a fussy old Aunt Cynthia - of whom they both live in a kind of mild state of fear.

-- Sue has a "friend" named Max - who has asked her to marry him once a year for the past 10 years or whatever. They are best friends - but Sue is just convinced that he is not the man for her, even though she adores him, and loves having him around. (A recurring Lucy Maud theme.) Oh - and funny thing ... Anne Shirley (excerpt here) shows up in a peripheral way here. There's a rumor that maybe Max wants to court Anne Shirley - and even though Sue doesn't want to marry Max, she ... well ... she certainly doesn't want him courting anyone else!!

-- Aunt Cynthia descends upon Sue and Ismay one weekend and she's going out of town or something and she wants them to take care of Fatima - her white Persian cat - a cat that Sue and Ismay both despise. But because they live in fear of Aunt Cynthia, they say "sure, we'll take care of Fatima"

-- Of course - Fatima is lost during her stay with Sue and Ismay. UTTER PANIC ENSUES. It's hysterical - literally, Sue and Ismay are beside themselves. Max gets involved in the drama - mainly because he is such a good "friend" of Sue (you just love Max - he's a very humorous character, the kind of guy I think I would like)

Anyway, it all turns out all right in the end.

But here's an excerpt that gives the flavor of why I love this little story. Lucy Maud, when she's "on", is such a great example of how to keep it simple. She was SO good at that. Her short stories have nothing extraneous - and yet you still get the sense that they are chock-full of reality, and ... you always feel like you are peeking through someone's window - getting a glimpse of a full life lived. She's marvelous.

Here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Further Chronicles of Avonlea - "Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat". by L.M. Montgomery.

"You can take care of that horrid Fatima beast yourself," said Ismay, when the door closed behind Aunt Cynthia. "I won't touch her with a yardstick. You had no business to say we'd take her."

"Did I say we would take her?" I demanded, crossly. "Aunt Cynthia took our consent for granted. And you know, as well as I do, we couldn't have refused. So what is the use of being grouchy?"

"If anything happens to her, Aunt Cynthia will hold us responsible," said Ismay darkly.

"Do you think Anne Shirley is really engaged to Gilbert Blythe?" I asked curiously.

"I've heard that she was," said Ismay absently. "Does she eat anything but milk? Will it do to give her milk?"

"Oh, I guess so. But do you think Max has really fallen in love with her?"

"I dare say. What a relief it will be for you if he has."

"Oh, of course," I said, frostily. "Anne Shirley or Anne Anybody Else, is perfectly welcome to Max if she wants him. I certainly do not. Ismay Meade, if that stove doesn't stop smoking I shall fly into bits. This is a detestable day. I hate that creature!"

"Oh, you shouldn't talk like that, when you don't even know her," protested Ismay. "Every one says Anne Shirley is lovely --"

"I was talking about Fatima," I cried in a rage.

"Oh!" said Ismay.

Ismay is stupid at times. I thought the way she said "Oh" was inexcusably stupid.

The Books: "Kilmeny Of The Orchard" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Kilmeny Of The Orchard by L.M. Montgomery.

Okay. So I'm gonna be honest. This book is ridiculous. Doesn't mean I haven't read it a bunch of times - because some of the writing (the nature writing in particular) - is good - and also, it's Lucy Maud - so I've read all of her books multiple times - but the premise is ridiculous, the very REALITY of the book is ridiculous - it's like you have to blind your eyes to REALITY in order to accept this book.

Here are some of the themes:

-- Looks are all that matter. Kilmeny is described as literally the most beautiful girl in the world. Therefore: she is good. Anyone with a physical deformity of any kind should be ashamed of themselves - because basically that means that they have something ugly in their souls.

-- If you have foreign blood in you (meaning: anything other than Scotch or British) - you are not to be trusted.

-- You must believe in deus ex machinae. Kilmeny has not spoken for most of her life (for no apparent reason) - and at the very moment when she needs to - out comes her voice!!!

-- Oh and if you're mute? You should be ashamed and hide yourself away from the world And if you're a person who falls in love with a mute, then you must treat it as the biggest tragedy that has ever befallen you.

I mean, I guess it was a different time - yadda yadda - more provincial, there was more open prejudice against, you know, evil people like ... ITALIANS ... but for the most part, I am not confronted with the fact that Lucy Maud wrote her books at the beginning of the 20th century - her stuff still reads well, it's not sentimental or treacly - but this one? I read it and I want to bust in on all the morons living their stupid provincial racist lives and say, "Okay, guys, here's the deal, mkay? Just because he is half-Italian does not automatically mean that he is more prone to murder. That's the first thing. Second of all: who gives a crap that she's mute? Why does she have to never leave her farm in shame? Why are you all bummed out that she's mute? And lastly: Kilmeny is obviously meant to be a supermodel or something. Dude: STOP obsessing on how beautiful she is. She's not PERFECT, just because she's a babealicious babealolio. Let her be HUMAN, how 'bout that? Stop being so focused on her beauty."

So the story is: Eric Marshall is a 24 year old schoolteacher - and Lucy Maud makes some vague reference to the fact that he has been having a hard time recently. Maybe living a wild life? Running away from the expectations of his father? So he comes to this small sleepy town, and boards with someone, and teaches - and is basically all wrapped up in himself. Until one day - on a walk - he comes across THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD, standing in the woods. I think 2 pages are given to describing every nook and cranny of Kilmeny's stupid beauty. We hear about the flush on the cheek, the teeny lovable dimple, the long lashes, the creamy skin, the long black hair ... it goes on and on and on.

Lucy Maud makes Kilmeny's beauty a fetish. It's bizarre. She never really comes to life.

But anyway - blah blah - turns out Kilmeny never leaves her house - she sits there day in day out because she is mute, and this is the most shameful thing in the world. But - she can HEAR. She just can't speak. Nobody can understand why. She has a little slate around her neck and writes what she wants to say on that. You get the sense that there are some deep psychological issues with this babealicious babealoliio. She lives with her very strict aunt and uncle - her mother is dead. There are many many romantic and dramatic secrets in Kilmeny's past. And poor Eric just wants to be her friend. Yeah, right, Eric. You just want to be her friend. WhatEVS. Get a life, Eric.

Oh, and Kilmeny has a half-brother or something like that - and he has Italian blood in him (cue evil music) - and Eric has an immediate revulsion to him. But it just comes off as racist or stupid the way Lucy Maud writes it. It's not anything in his CHARACTER that causes the revulsion. It is the FOREIGN-NESS of him.

Get over it, Lucy. Sheesh. Big world outside of Canada with all kinds of races and peoples living good lives. Get over your damn Scotch Presbyterian self. Also: are you aware that some people who are babealicious babealolios actually have ugly mean little souls? Outer beauty is NOT everything. Stop making a fetish of it. Kilmeny could very well be a bitch on wheels - her beauty has nothing to do with her inner self.

Anyway, I do like the writing in this excerpt. Eric goes to speak with Kilmeny's strict aunt and uncle (whom he has never met) - basically to ask permission to hang out with Kilmeny. I just like the description of this old-timey room. Lucy Maud is able to make me go back in time in such excerpts.

Oh, and Eric is good-looking. And he knows it. He's a metrosexual in 1910. I dislike Eric, too. He's a shallow looks-obsessed pretty boy.

Excerpt from Kilmeny Of The Orchard by L.M. Montgomery.

Eric walked into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fahioned room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished with age, made even Mrs. Williamson's "parlour set" of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a Bible, and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. The walls, wainscoted half way up in wood and covered for the rest of it with a dark, diamond-patterned paper, were hung with faded engravings, mostly of clerical-looking bewigged personages in gowns and bands.

But over the high, undecorated black mantel-piece, in a ruddy glow of sunset light striking through the window, hung one which caught and held Eric's attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was the enlarged "crayon" photograph of a young girl, and, in spite of the crudity of the execution, it was easily the centre of interest in the room.

Eric at once guessed that this must be the picture of Margaret Gordon, for, although quite unlike Kilmeny's sensitive, spirited face in general, there was a subtle, unmistakable resemblance about brow and chin.

The pictured face was a very handsome one, suggestive of velvety dark eyes and vivid colouring; but it was its expression rather than its beauty which fascinated Eric. Never had he seen a countenance indicative of more intense and stubborn will power. Margaret Gordon was dead and buried; the picture was a cheap and inartistic production in an impossible frame of gilt and plush; yet the vitality in that face dominated its surroundings still. What then must have been the power of such a personality in life?

Eric realized that this woman could and would have done whatsoever she willed, unflinchingly and unrelentingly. She could stamp her desire on everything and everybody about her, moulding them to her wish and will, in their own despite and in defiance of all the resistance they might make. Many things in Kilmeny's upbringing and temperament became clear to him.

"If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her," he thought. "Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her. I should never have dreamed of disputing or questioning anything she might have said. The strange power in her face is almost uncanny, peering out as it does from a mask of beauty and youthful curves. Pride and stubbornness are its salient characteristics. Well, Kilmeny does not at all resemble her mother in expression and only very slightly in feature."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The End of a Quarrel'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The End of a Quarrel".

So this is the last story in the collection known as The Chronicles of Avonlea. I really like it. It has another Lucy Maud leitmotif: the couple who quarrel over NOTHING, or have a mere misunderstanding - and yet the two have such personal pride that nobody makes up with the other for, oh, 20 years. And suddenly - in one dramatic moment - all those years are brushed away, and all is forgiven. All it takes, in Lucy Maud's world, is 2 minutes to wipe away 20 years of anger. I think she might be onto something there - but still ...

I love the last scene of this story (when all the years are brushed away) - and I think it's actually kind of SEXY. Lucy Maud wasn't really a SEXY writer - she always does the fade-out at sexy moments - and she still does here, but I always just LOVE this last moment ... it's kinda like Rhett Butler taking Scarlett up the stairs. You don't get to SEE what happens next but it's fun to imagine.

Nancy Rogerson grew up in Avonlea. She and Peter Wright "went together" for quite some time - until they mysteriously quarreled - and that was that. What did they quarrel over? Nancy corrected his grammar and he flipped OUT. Nancy was (is) a bit of a snob. She got educated. Peter Wright was just a simple farmer, and he didn't like his school-marm girlfriend telling him not to say "ain't", thank you very much. So after they quarreled - Nancy went off to school to become a nurse - and she has since then lived far away from Avonlea, having a career. She is a career woman. At a time when, you know, women were not doing such a thing. She never married. She thinks she's FINE with that. (Oh, and that's another Lucy Maud theme: people who have no idea what is going on in their own hearts. They literally go for YEARS thinking: "I am fine with this situation, I got no problems with it" - and they truly believe that - until they have one moment of revelation and then they realize: "Wait a minute - I am actually viciously unhappy and I am in LOVE with him!!" etc.) Peter Wright, meanwhile, stayed on his farm, and has (conveniently) never married. In real life, they always marry. Like - when you lose someone in real life, you really LOSE them. But we're in Lucy Maud's world now. Nancy Rogerson has not thought of Peter Wright in 15 years. But she has now come back to Avonlea for a visit, and she sits out on her porch reminiscing with her childhood friend (who has that kind of smiling pity for Nancy, because Nancy has never gotten married or had children). Nancy catches a glimpse of Peter's farm through the trees and asks, innocently, "How is he doing?" She learns he never married. But Nancy doesn't believe that that matters to her. She has forgotten Peter. He belongs to the past. Whether or not he is married makes no difference to HER.

But then one night ... she's taking a walk ... she passes by his house ... and suddenly ......... she finds herself peeking through the windows, he's not home, and she sees what a freakin' MESS the place is. Because we all know that men are perfectly helpless to, you know, wash the damn dishes if he doesn't have a wife. Nancy sees the filth and feels bad ... and suddenly she gets a little mischievous plan. What if she went inside and cleaned up his kitchen for him? And made him a little tea, and a snack - and had it waiting for him when he got back? SHE wouldn't be waiting for him - she would just do this thing as a joke, and then sneak away, and he would come home and wonder: who has been in my house? What good fairy has been here? Nancy thinks this would be very funny, so she gets to work.

This is the last scene of the book. I just find it perfect. I think the two of them have behaved like perfect IDIOTS for 20 years - what a waste of time - but still - I love this drawing-back-the-veil scene, and I love how she has written it.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The End of a Quarrel".

Nancy went in, threw off her hat, and seized a broom. The first thing she did was to give the kitchen a thorough sweeping. Then she kindled a fire, put a kettle full of water on to heat, and attacked the dishes. From the number of them, she rightly concluded that Peter hadn't washed any for at least a week.

"I suppose he just uses the clean ones as long as they hold out, and then has a grand wash-up," she laughed. "I wonder where he keeps his dish-towels, if he has any."

Evidently Peter hadn't any. At least, Nancy couldn't find any. She marched boldly into the dusty sitting-room and explored the drawers of an old-fashioned sideboard, confiscating a towel she found there. As she worked, she hummed a song; her steps were light and her eyes bright with excitement. Nancy was enjoying herself thoroughly, there was no doubt of that. The spice of mischief in the adventure pleased her mightily.

The dishes washed, she hunted up a clean, but yellow and evidently long unused, tablecloth out of the sideboard, and proceeded to set the table and get Peter's tea. She found bread and butter in the pantry, a trip to the cellar furnished a pitcher of cream, and Nancy recklessly heaped the contents of her strawberry jug on Peter's plate. The tea was made and set back to keep warm. And, as a finishing touch, Nancy ravaged the old neglected garden and set a huge bowl of crimson roses in the centre of the table.

"Now I must go," she said aloud. "Wouldn't it be fun to see Peter's face when he comes in, thugh? Ha-hum! I've enjoyed doing this - but why? Nancy Rogerson, don't be asking yourself conundrums. Put on your hat and proceed homeward, constructing on our way some reliable fib to account to Louisa for the absence of your strawberries."

Nancy paused a moment and looked around wistfully. She had made the place look cheery and neat and homelike. She felt that queer tugging of her heartstrings again. Suppose she belonged here, and was waiting for Peter to come home to tea. Suppose -- Nancy whirled around with a sudden horrible prescience of what she was going to see! Peter Wright was standing in the doorway.

Nancy's face went crimson. For the first time in her life she had not a word to say for herself. Peter looked at her and then at the table, with its fruit and flowers.

"Thank you," he said politely.

Nancy recovered herself. With a shame-faced laugh, she held out her hand.

"Don't have me arrested for trespass, Peter. I came and looked in at your kitchen out of impertinent curiosity, and, just for fun, I thought I'd come in and get your tea. I thought you'd be so surprised - and I meant to go before you came home, of course."

"I wouldn't have been surprised," said Peter, shaking hands. "I saw you go past the field and I tied the horses and followed you down through the woods. I've been sitting on the fence back yonder, watching your comings and goings."

"Why didn't you come and speak to me at church yesterday, Peter?" demanded Nancy boldly.

"I was afraid I would say something ungrammatical," answered Peter drily.

The crimson flamed over Nancy's face again. She pulled her hand away.

"That's cruel of you, Peter."

Peter suddenly laughed. There was a note of boyishness in the laughter.

"So it is," he said, "but I had to get rid of the accumulated malice and spite of twenty years somehow. It's all gone now, and I'll be as amiable as I know how. But since you have gone to the trouble of getting my supper for me, Nancy, you must stay and help me eat it. Them strawberries look good. I haven't had any this summer - been too busy to pick them."

Nancy stayed. She sat at the head of Peter's table and poured his tea for him. Sje talked to him wittily of the Avonlea people and the changes in their old set. Peter followed her lead with an apparent absence of self-consciousness, eating his supper like a man whose heart and mind were alike on good terms with him. Nancy felt wretched - and, at the same time, ridiculously happy. It seemed the most grotesque thing in the world that she should be presiding there at Peter's table, and yet the most natural. There were moments when she felt like crying - other moments when her laughter was as ready and spontaneous as a girl's. Sentiment and humour had always waged an equal contest in Nancy's nature.

When Peter had finished his strawberries, he folded his arms on the table and looked admiringly at Nancy.

"You look well at the head of a table, Nancy," he said critically. "How is it that you haven't been presiding over one of your own long before this? I thought you'd eet with lots of men out in the wordl that you'd like - men who talked good grammar."

"Peter, don't!" said Nancy, wincing. "I was a goose."

"No, you were quite right. I was a tetchy fool. If I'd had any sense, I'd have felt thankful you thought enough of me to want to improve me, and I'd have tried to kerrect my mistakes instead of getting mad. It's too late now, I suppose."

"Too late for what?" said Nancy, plucking up heart of grace at something in Peter's tone and look.

"For -- kerrecting mistakes."

"Grammatical ones?"

"Not exactly. I guess them mistakes are past kerrecting in an old fellow like me. Worse mistakes, Nancy. I wonder what you would say if I asked you to forgive me, and have me after all."

"I'd snap you up before you'd have time to change your mind," said Nancy brazenly. She tried to look Peter in the face, but her blue eyes, where tears and mirth were blending, faltered before his gray ones.

Peter stood up, knocking over his chair, and strode around the table to her.

"Nancy, my girl!" he said.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Miracle at Carmody'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Miracle at Carmody".

A break in the Dean Martin frenzy to go back to my LM Montgomery obsession ...

"The Miracle at Carmody" is about two sisters who have adopted a young boy. The sisters, Salome and Judith, are what I would call LM Montgomery archetypes. Their parents are dead. Judith is 10 years older than Salome - and is a tough tough cookie. Salome is kind of submissive, sweet, and lets Judith be the boss. They had a series of tragedies of a family which left them weakened (and yet also very well-off, having inherited a small fortune). Their mother, sweet and religious, had died when Salome was 10 and Judith was 20. Then when Salome was 19, she had a boyfriend - and he was killed. Then their father died - and right around that same time Salome developed some sort of degenerative hip disease which has left her nearly crippled. She cannot walk without a cane. She has not been upstairs in their house for 15 years. At around that time, of all the tragedies, Judith - who had decided when their mother died - that Salome was going to have EVERYTHING that she could not have (Judith was never courted by anyone, never had a beau, she is kind of stern, not attractive, whatever) - and when Salome became a cripple, Judith went to war with the world, in her mind. She stopped going to church (which is the main issue in the story) - she rails at any minister who tries to talk about everything happening for a reason - Judith is HARD on this issue. She stopped believing in God altogether. What good is this all-loving God if all these bad things can happen? Judith has a "SHOW YOURSELF TO BE THE SAVIOR" rage in her. And when God proves to be as useless as she imagined, when he refuess to show himself, she is DONE with him. Her hatred has become a rock-hard thing in her. She won't let Salome go to church either, even though Salome begs. Salome eventually acquiesces - because she realizes she cannot win an argument with her sister. And so they go along for years - 20 years - in this way. Judith sounds like a tyrant - and she is, kind of - but Lucy Maud also lets us know that she is not a BAD person (she's not like Emmeline Strong, another bossy older sister, in "The Courting of Prissy Strong" - excerpt here). Judith's hard-ness comes from being HURT, not from being a shrew. She feels that God has ROBBED them of happiness. She feels that Salome should be married, with children ... but no, she hobbles through their house, doing little domestic projects, now in her 40s, and it's over. Every time Salome picks up her crutches, Judith burns with rage. Okay - so eventually - they adopt this little boy, who was suddenly left orphaned when his parents were killed in a fire. It is all Salome's idea. She aches for a child. Judith finally caves - and so Lionel Hezekiah, a little 6-year-old hellion. He is a hellion, he gets into all kinds of trouble, he wreaks havoc on their neat lives, and yet - he is lovable. You can't help but love him. Salome loves him more than Judith does - Judith is more of the fierce disciplinarian of the pair. But you do get the sense that Lionel Hezekiah is in good hands.

Eventually though (and I have to say, I think Lucy Maud is a wee bit obvious here) Lionel Hezekiah confides in Salome and says that he thinks he is just going to KEEP being a bad little boy - because he's not allowed to go to Sunday school and church like the other little boys. Salome is horrified. Judith will not allow Lionel Hezekiah to be brainwashed by religion, or by God - that mo-fo up in the sky who likes to MESS with us down here. But Lionel Hezekiah has a whole monologue to Salome where he basically says, "My goal in life now, since I can't go to Sunday school and learn about right and wrong, is to be an old drunken hellraiser like Abel Blair - he lives a great life! He drinks and parties and whores around and I want to be just like him!" (This is a paraphrase. Obviously) Salome is so upset - she literally feels like it is life or death that Lionel Hezekiah get some religion. He is already, at age 6, going down the path of just not caring about ANYthing. Oh, and he also says to Salome something like, "Well, you and Judith don't go to church - so why should I care?"

She and Judith have a huge argument. Salome does have a backbone in there, beneath the sweet submissiveness, and on this she will not budge. She is GOING to go to church. She is GOING to set a good example to Lionel Hezekiah. Judith is in a rage. Salome stays firm.

So she limps over to the church - after 20 years of staying away.

Here's the excerpt of what happens next.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Miracle at Carmody".

When the people began to come in, Salome felt painfully the curious glances directed at her. Look where she would, she met them, unless she looked out of the window; so out of the window she did look unswervingly, her delicate little face burning crimson with self-consciousness. She could see her home and its back yard plainly, with Lionel Hezekiah making mud-pies joyfully in the corner. Presently, she saw Judith come out of the house and stride away to the pine wood behind it. Judith always betook herself to the pines in times of mental stress and strain.

Salome could see the sunlight on Lionel Hezekiah's bare head as he mixed his pies. In the pleasure of watching him, she forgot where she was and the curious eyes turned on her.

Suddenly Lionel Hezekiah ceased concocting pies, and betook himself to the corner of the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to climb up to the top of the storm-fence and from there to mount the sloping kitchen roof. Salome clasped her hands in agony. What if the child should fall? Oh! why had Judith gone away and left him alone? What if -- what if -- and then, while her brain with lightning-like rapidity pictured forth a dozen possible catastrophes, something really did happen. Lionel Hezekiah slipped, sprawled wildly, slid down, and fell off the roof, in a bewildering whirl of arms and legs, plump into the big rain-water hogshead under the spout, which was generally full to the brim with rain-water, a hogshead big and deep enough to swallow up half a dozen small boys who went climbing kitchen roofs on a Sunday.

Then something took place that is talked of in Carmody to this day, and even fiercely wrangled over, so many and conflicting are the opinions on the subject. Salome Marsh, who had not walked a step without assistance for fiteen years, suddenly sprang to her feet with a shriek, ran down the aisle, and out of the door!

Every man, woman, and child in the Carmody church followed her, even the minister, who had just announced his text. When they got out, Salome was already halfway up her lane, running wildly. In her heart was room but for one agonized thought. Would Lionel Hezekiah be drowned before she reached him?

She opened the gate of the yard, and panted across it just as a tall, grim-faced woman came around the corner of the house and stood rooted to the ground in astonishment at the sight that met her eyes.

But Salome saw nobody. She flung herself against the hogshead and looked in, sick with terror at what she might see. What she did see was Lionel Hezekiah sitting on the bottom of the hogshead in water that came only to his waist. He was looking rather dazed and bewildered, but was apparently quite uninjured.

The yard was full of people, but nobody had as yet said a word; awe and wonder held everybody in spellbound silence. Judith was the first to speak. She pushed through the crowd to Salome. Her face was blanched to a deadly whiteness; and her eyes, as Mrs. William Blair afterwards decalred, were enough to give a body the creeps.

"Salome," she said in a high, shrill, unnatural voice, "where is your crutch?"

Salome came to herself at the question. For the first time, she realized that she had walked, nay, run, all that distance from the church alone and unaided. She turned pale, swayed, and would have fallen if Judith had not caught her.

Old. Dr. Blair came forward briskly.

"Carry her in," he said, "and don't all of you come crowding in, either. She wants quiet and rest for a spell."

Most of the people obediently returned to the church, their suddenly loosened tongues chattering in voluble excitement. A few women assisted Judith to carry Salome in and lay her on the kitchen loungge, followed by the doctor and the dripping Lionel Hezekiah, whom the minister had lifted out of the hogshead and to whom nobody now paid the slightest attention.

Salome faltered out her story, and her hearers listened with varying emotions.

"It's a miracle," said Sam Lawson in an awed voice.

Dr. Blair shrugged his shoulders.

"There is no miracle about it," he said bluntly. "It's all perfectly natural. The disease in the hip has evidently been quite well for a long time. Nature does sometimes work cures like that when she is let alone. The trouble was that the muscles were paralyzed by long disuse. That paralysis was overcome by the force of a strong and instinctive effort. Salome, get up and walk across the kitchen."

Salome obeyed. She walked across the kitchen and back, slowly, stiffly, falteringly, now that the stimulus of frantic fear was spent; but still she walked. The doctor nodded his satisfaction.

"Keep that up every day. Walk as much as you can without tiring yourself, and you'll soon be as spry as ever. No more need of crutches for you, but there's no miracle in the case."

Judith Marsh turned to him. She had not spoken a word since her question concerning Salome's crutch Now she said passionately,

"It was a miracle. God has worked it to prove His existence to me, and I accept the proof."

The old doctor shrugged his shoulders again. BNeing a wise man, he knew when to hold his tongue.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Courting of Prissy Strong'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Courting of Prissy Strong".

This is one of Lucy Maud's many stories that feature two contrasting old-maid sisters - one who is strong, rigid, and bossy - and one who is weak, retiring and submissive. Sometimes (like in "Miracle at Carmody" - excerpt here) - the strong sister is also a good person, who means well, who is just overly protective. Usually the parents are dead in these stories - and so the sisters only have each other. But sometimes, like in "The Courting of Prissy Strong", the stronger sister is pretty much an evil wench, who refuses to allow her weaker sister to have a will of her own. Prissy Strong is the weak sister, and Emmeline Strong is the strong one. Prissy is not allowed to not only have a LIFE of her own - but not allowed to have her own thoughts, ideas, or plans. Prissy is way too submissive to even really MIND - but eventually - when an old beau comes sniffing around, looking to court Prissy again (who is now in her 40s) - Emmeline puts a stop to it real quick. She will have NONE of this.

A kindly neighbor couple ends up intervening. One of them is the narrator of this story. Basically, there is much sneaking around that has to be done, Emmeline needs to be lied to - sometimes it's way better to lie to someone than to try to reason wiht them - because someone like Emmeline does not deserve respect. She's too evil. heh.

Oh, and Anne and Diana show up, randomly, in this story - I love it when that happens. They somehow get involved in the spirit of this thing - basically: how will Prissy elope with her old beau, without Emmeline catching onto the plan? Emmeline is suspicious, rigid, bossy, and rules Prissy with an iron thumb. Prissy is never left alone. How will this be handled?

I love Thomas, the fat husband of the narrator. He is an "elder" in the church - and there's just something about him, the little we see of him, that I love. He can't STAND Emmeline. He tries to be good and spiritual and proper and religious, as befits as elder, but all of this stops when confronted with the bitch-fest that is Emmeline.

The plot finally involves our narrator having to climb up onto her roof and put a red scarf around a ventilator - which is the signal for Stephen (the old beau) that Emmeline has left the premises - and then he runs over, spends a couple minutes with Prissy, courting her - and then has to hide in the barn if Emmeline comes back unexpectedly. This goes on for a while until they finally decide to get married. But they must elope. Our narrator (while Thomas, her fat husband, who has tried to avoid getting all involved in this) sets the whole thing up - tells Stephen to get the marriage license ready and she will talk to Rev. Leonard (the same Rev. Leonard who was featured so prominently in "Each His Own Tongue" - excerpt here) - and they would need to be ready to get married at the drop of a hat - because it all would depend on Emmeline miraculously leaving Prissy alone for 10 minutes. Oh wait - and Emmeline has gotten so suspicious that Prissy is 'seeing' her old beau again - that whenever she leaves the house, she LOCKS PRISSY INSIDE. So that's the kind of bitch we are dealing with here.

I love this ending scene when it all comes together.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Courting of Prissy Strong".

Then I walked around the house to the only window that hadn't shutters - a tiny one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room where the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking that I pitied her with all my heart.

"Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?" I asked.

"Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They're sick with measles, and Emmeline couldn't take me because I've never had the measles."

Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.

"Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to my house," I said exultantly. "We'll have Stephen and the minister here in no time"

"I can't - Em'line has locked me in here," said Prissy woefully.

I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got in or out of that closet window.

"Well," I said finally, "I'll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow, and we'll see what can be done when he gets here."

I didn't know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator, for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up on the ladder there'd probably be a funeral instead of a wedding. But Anne Shirley said she'd put it up for me, and she did. I have never seen that girl before, and I've never seen her since, but it's my opinion that there wasn't much she couldn't do if she made up her mind to do it.

Stephen wasn't long in getting there, and he brought the minister with him. Then we all, including Thomas - who was beginning to get interested in the affair in spite of himself - went over and held council of war beneath the closet window.

Thomas suggested breaking in doors and carrying Prissy off boldly, but I could see that Mr. Leonard looked very dubious over that, and even Stephen said he thought it could only be done as a last resort. I agreed with him. I knew Emmeline Strong would bring an action against him for housebreaking as likely as not. She'd be so furious she'd stick at nothing if we gave her any excuse. Then Anne Shirley, who couldn't have been more excited if she was getting married herself, came to the rescue again.

"Couldn't you put a ladder up to the closet window," she said, "and Mr. Clark can go up it and they can be married there. Can't they, Mr. Leonard?"

Mr. Leonard agreed that they could. He was always the most saintly-looking man, but I know I saw a twinkle in his eye.

"Thomas, go over and bring our little ladder over here," I said.

Thomas forgot he was an elder, and he brought the ladder as quick as it was possible for a fat man to do it. After all, it was too short to reach the window, but there was no time to go for another. Stephen went up to the top of it and he reached up and Prissy reached down, and they could just barely clasp hands so. I shall never forget the look of Prissy. The window was so small she could only get her head and one arm oout of it. Besides, she was almost frightened to death.

Mr. Leonard stood at the foot of the ladder and married them. As a rule, he makes a very long and solemn thing of the marriage ceremony, but this time he cut out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary; and it was well that he did, for just as he pronounced them man and wife, Emmeline drove into the lane.

She knew perfectly well what had happened when she saw the minister with his blue book in his hand. Never a word said she. She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and strode upstairs. I've always been convinced it was a mercy that closet window was so small, or I believe that she would have thrown Prissy out of it. As it was, she walked her downstairs by the arm and actually flung her at Stephen.

"There, take your wife," she said, "and I'll pack up every stitch she owns and send it after her, and I never want to see her or you again as long as I live."

Then she turned to me and Thomas.

"As for you that have aided and abetted that weak-minded fool in this, take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again."

"Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire!" said Thomas.

It wasn't just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are all human, even elders.

The girls didn't escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.

"This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea," she said. "You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell. That's all you ever go out of Avonlea for - just to fetch and carry tales."

Finally she finished up with the minister.

"I'm going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this," she said. Her tone and look said a hundred other things. She whirled into the house and slammed the door.

Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put poor, half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.

"I am very sorry," he said in that gentle, saintly way of his, "for the Baptists."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Pa Sloane's Purchase'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Pa Sloane's Purchase".

Lucy Maud Montgomery could write flowery prose with the best of them. Her descriptions of nature - snowy fields, the seashore, flower gardens - are superb. But there are also stories like 'Pa Sloane's Purchase' where NONE of that stuff would be appropriate - because the people themselves are not romantic. Having a sudden intense description of a sunset in the middle of a domestic comedy like 'Pa Sloane's Purchase' would have just been Lucy Maud being self-indulgent. Stories like this one shows me how much she was in control of her own art. Pa and Ma Sloane are taciturn farming people, they have been married for 30 years. Ma Sloane totally bosses Pa, Ma Sloane handles the money, and Pa Sloane works the farm, and pretty much does what Ma Sloane says. Their children are grown. They are doing fine. Pa Sloane doesn't mind being bossed. He is not a man of resentment. The ONLY thing he resents is that Ma Sloane will not allow him to go to auctions - his favorite thing in the world to do on a Saturday is to go to some farm auction, and make some bids. It is one of the greatest pleasures of his life. But Ma Sloane watches him like a hawk, and nixes any of his attempts to go. She is tight-fisted with their money - and Pa Sloane is a weeeeeee bit more relaxed about financial stuff ... but Ma Sloane runs the household. She gets frustrated with Pa Sloane bidding on some broken down piece of equipment with the promise that he will "fix it up" - and then of course, he never does, and the broken down piece of equipment ends up just taking up space in their barn. So ... one day - there;s going to be a big auction because a nearby couple had died - within weeks of each other - and all of their belongings were being auctioned off. Pa Sloane, in his quiet passive-aggressive way, got Ma Sloane to agree to let him go - but only if she went with him. At the last minute, some domestic issue comes up - and Pa Sloane gets to go alone. Ma Sloane is a bit in a panic and shouts after his departing buggy, "DON'T BID ON ANYTHING!' But we're dealing with a true bidding ADDICT here. To ask him "not to bid" WHILE he is at an auction - is really just too much ...

Here's what happens. It's a sweet funny story, written in the simple humorous language of a story told round a fire. No frills. Good job, Maud. Look how she gets into Pa Sloane's little world - and it's FUNNY - but she respects him, too. She's not mocking him.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Pa Sloane's Purchase".

When Pa arrived at the Carmody store, he saw that the little yard of the Garland place below the hill was already full of people. The auction had evidently begun; so, not to miss any more of it, Pa hurried down. The sorrel mare could wait for her shoes until afterwards.

Ma had been within bounds when she called the Garland auction a "one-horse affair". It certainly was very paltry, especially when compared to the big Donaldson auction a month ago, which Pa still lived over in happy dreams.

Horace Garland and his wife had been poor. When they died within six weeks of each other, one of consumption and one of pneumonia, they left nothing but debts and a little furniture. The house had been a rented one.

The bidding on the various poor articles of household gear put up for sale was not brisk, but had an element of resigned determination. Carmody people knew that these things had to be sold to pay the debts, and they could not be sold unless they were bought. Still, it was a very tame affair.

A woman came out of the house carrying a baby of about eighteen months in her arms, and sat down on the bench beneath the window.

"There's Marthy Blair with the Garland baby," said Robert Lawson to Pa. "I'd like to know what's to become of that poor young one!"

"Ain't there any of the father's or mother's folks to take him?" asked Pa.

"No. Horace had no relatives that anybody ever heard of. Mrs. Horace had a brother; but he went to Manitoba years ago, and nobody knows where he is now. Somebody'll have to take the baby, and nobody seems anxious to. I've got eight myself, or I'd think about it. He's a fine little chap."

Pa, with Ma's parting admonition ringing in his ears, did not bid on anything, although it will never be known how great was the heroic self-restraint he put on himself, until just at the last, when he did bid on a collection of flower-pots, thinking he might indulge himself to that small extent. But Josiah Sloane had been commissioned by his wife to bring those flower-pots home to her; so Pa lost them.

"There's that's all," said the auctioneer, wiping his face, for the day was very warm for October.

"There's nothing more unless we sell the baby."

A laugh went through the crowd. The sale had been a dull affair, and they were ready for some fun. Someone called out, "Put him up, Jacob." The joke found favour, and the call was repeated hilariously.

Jacob Blair took little Teddy Garland out of Martha's arms, and stood him up on the table by the door, steadying the small chap with one big brown hand. The baby had a mop of yellow curls, a pink and white face, and big blue eyes. He laughed out at the men before him and waved his hands in delight. Pa Sloane thought he had never seen so pretty a baby.

"Here's a baby for sale," shouted the auctioneer. "A genuine article, pretty near as good as brand-new. A real live baby, warranted to walk and talk a little. Who bids? A dollar? Did I hear anyone mean enough to bid a dollar? No, sir, babies don't come as cheap as that, especially the curly-headed brand."

The crowd laughed again. Pa Sloane, by way of keeping on the joke, cried, "Four dollars!"

Everybody looked at him. The impression flashed through the crowd that Pa was in earnest, and meant thus to signify his intention of giving the baby a home. He was well-to-do, and his only son was grown up and married.

"Six," cried out John Clarke from the other side of the yard. John Clarke lived at White Sands, and he and his wife were childless.

That bid of John Clarke's was Pa's undoing. Pa Sloane could not have an enemy; but a rival he had, and that rival was John Clarke. Everywhere at auctions, John Clarke was wont to bid against Pa. At the last auction he had outbid Pa in everything, not having the fear of his wife before his eyes. Pa's fighting blood was up in a moment; he forgot Ma Sloane; he forgot what he was bidding for; he forgot everythinge except a determination that John Clarke should not be victor again.

"Ten," he called shrilly.

"Fifteen," shouted Clarke.

"Twenty," vociferated Pa.

"Twenty-five," bellowed Clarke.

"Thirty," shrieked Pa. He nearly burst a blood-vessel in his shrieking, but he had won. Clarke had turned off with a laugh and a shrug, and the baby was knocked down to Pa Sloane by the auctioneer, who had meanwhile been keeping the crowd in roars of laughter by a quick fire of witticisms. There had not been such fun at an auction in Carmody for many a long day.

Pa Sloane came, or was pushed, forrward. The baby was put into his arms; he realized that he was expected to keep it, and he was too dazed to refuse; besides, his heart went out to the child.

The auctioneer looked doubtfully at the money which Pa laid mutely down.

"I s'pose that part was only a joke," he said.

"Not a bit of it," said Robert Lawson. "All the money won't be too much to pay the debts. There's a doctor's bill, and this will just about pay it."

Pa Sloane drove back home, with the sorrel mare still unshod, the baby, and the baby's meager bundle of clothes. The baby did not trouble him much; it had become well used to strangers in the past two months, and promptly fell asleep on his arm; but Pa Sloane did not enjoy that drive; at the end of it, he mentally saw Ma Sloane.

Ma was there, too, waiting for him on the back doorstep as he drove into the yard at sunset. Her face, when she saw the baby, expressed the last degree of amazement.

"Pa Sloane," she demanded, "whose is that young one, and where did you get it?"

"I -- I -- bought it at the auction, Ma," said Pa feebly. Then he waited for the explosion. None came. This last exploit of Pa's was too much for Ma.

With a gasp, she snatched the baby from Pa's arms and ordered him to go out and put the mare in. When Pa returned to the kitchen, Ma had set the baby on the sofa, fenced him around with chiars so that he couldn't fall off, and given him a molasses cooky.

"Now, Pa Sloane, you can explain," she said.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's".

Okay, here's the magic of Lucy Maud: I can't count how many times I've read this story, and every time - it is a delight. Seriously. How many authors can you say that about? She has SO many stories and books like that for me - that I can just keep coming to them, and finding joy in reading them. This story is HYSTERICAL. Not only that - the two lead characters are emblazoned in my mind - they are such individuals - and it's so fun to just sit back and watch the whole disaster unfold. Even though I already know how the story will end ... it's also one of my favorite "endings". The story ends just perfectly.

We've got the two leads: Angelina MacPherson - an unmarried Sunday School teaching woman. She hates men. She's known for it in Avonlea. She's a feminist. She is so angry at the girlie name her mother foisted on her - that to retaliate she calls herself "Peter" and always has. She doesn't want to be associated with any silly name like "Angelina". She is treated with deference, because - it seems like everyone is, uhm, a little bit AFRAID of her. Men become used to just being ABUSED by her, and women cower in fear. She just stalks through her life, righteously, organizing everyone else, being slightly judgmental towards everyone, and rolling her eyes at the foibles of men.

Then there's Alexander Abraham Bennett, an old bachelor, who lives in complete SQUALOR on his old farm. He is a woman-hater. Known for it in Avonlea. He is a successful man - not a loser, or a drunk - He just won't have a housekeeper, and so everything is falling apart, and coated in dust. He has a dog. He refuses to go to church. He is an eccentric. Ever since his sister died, uhm, 20 years before?? - not one woman has set foot inside his house. As a matter of fact, if a woman comes to ask him to donate to charity or whatever - he has been known to chase them off his property with a pitchfork. He hates women.

Okay, so there's our set-up. Peter McPherson (let's call her what SHE wants to be called) drives out to Alexander Abraham's to find out why Jimmy Spencer, a young boy who works for Alexander, hasn't been in Sunday School for 3 weeks. She has heard the stories about his hatred of women and how he won't let any woman come near him - and SHE is having NONE of it. SHE knows how to handle men. Because she despises them and has contempt for their sorry stupid irresponsible little lives.

(Uhm, and have I mentioned that this story turns into a great romance? One of my favorites of her romances?? hahahahaha These two crackpots who make a huge show of hating the opposite sex ....)

When she arrives at his house, she gets out of her buggy - she has her cat with her for some reason - and they are immediately attacked by his dog - who is so fierce that she is forced to climb up a tree. She hangs out up in the tree for a while (already this is amusing - because in the first 3 pages of the story, you get the picture of this woman - this judgmental perfectionist woman - and now she is shimmying up a tree in alarm.) Finally, she decides she can wait no longer to be saved - so she climbs INTO an open window - into the house of Alexander Abraham - where no woman has set foor in 20 years. She immediately sees what a mess his house is - and her fingers itch to begin cleaning with a vengeance - but for now she has other fish to fry. FURIOUS at how she has been treated by his dog, she stalks downstairs - and there is Alexander Abraham, sitting downstairs - and he looks at her, horrified, as she emerges from WITHIN his house. How on earth did that WOMAN get in here??

At that very moment, the doctor drives up in his buggy - Alexander runs and flings open the door - and the doctor informs him that because of the smallpox outbreak in town, and because Alexander Abraham had not been vaccinated - he has to put him under quarantine. And sadly - because Peter crawled through the window - she also will not be allowed to leave. She will now have to stay at Alexander Abraham's.

These two people are FURIOUS at being stuck with each other. She is contemptuous, he is a crank - she sends for all of her clothes - and so the quarantine begins. One of the first things she MUST do is to clean his house from top to bottom. Not out of kindness towards HIM, oh no. Just because it is a MORAL obligation to ANY fellow human creature that they do not WALLOW IN THEIR OWN FILTH. She cleans - and Alexander Abraham sits back and just GLARES at her.

Guys, this story is just wonderful. You would think that these two self-righteous temperamental people would never fall in love ... but ... but ... OH! I just love it!!

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the quarantine.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's".

Alexander Abraham was sitting on a chair looking at me. Presently he said,

"I am not curious -- but will you kindly tell me why the doctor called you Peter?"

"Because this is my name, I suppose," I answered, shaking up a cushion for William Adolphus and thereby disturbing the dust of years.

Alexander Abraham coughed gently.

"Isn't that -- ahem! -- rahter a peculiar name for a woman?"

"It is," I said, wondering how much soap, if any, there was in the house.

"I am not curious," said Alexander Abraham, "but would you mind telling me how you came to be called Peter?"

"If I had been a boy, my parents intended to call me Peter in honour of a rich uncle. When I -- fortunately -- turned out to be a girl, my mother insisted that I should be called Angelina. They gave me both names and called me Angelina, but as soon as I grew old enough, I decided to be called Peter. It was bad enough, but not so bad as Angelina."

"I should say it was more appropriate," said Alexander Abraham, intending, as I perceived, to be disagreeable.

"Precisely," I agreed calmly. "My last name is MacPherson, and I live in Avonlea. As you are not curious, that will be all the information you will need about me."

"Oh!" Alexander Abraham looked as if a light had broken in on him. "I've heard of you. You -- ah -- pretend to dislike men."

Pretend! Goodness only knows what would have happened to Alexander Abraham just then if a diversion had not taken place. But the door opened and a dog came in -- the dog. I suppose he had got tired waiting under the cherry tree for William Adolphus and me to come down. He was even uglier indoors than out.

"Oh, Mr. Riley, Mr. Riley, see what you have let me in for," said Alexander Abraham reproachfully.

But Mr. Riley - since that was the brute's name - paid no attention to Alexander Abraham. He had caught sight of William Adolphus curled up on the cushion, and he started across the room to investigate him. William Adolphus sat up and began to take notice.

"Call off that dog," I said warningly to Alexander Abraham.

"Call him off yourself," he retorted. "Since you've brought that cat here, you can protect him."

"Oh, it wasn't for William Adolphus' sake I spoke," I said pleasantly. "William Adolphus can protect himself."

William Adolphus could and did. He humped his back, flattened his ears, swore once, and then made a flying leap for Mr. Riley. William Adolphus landed squarely on Mr. Riley's brindled back and promptly took fast hold, spitting and clawing and caterwauling.

You never saw a more astonished dog than Mr. Riley. With a yell of terror he bolted out to the kitchen, out of the kitchen into the hall, through the hall into the room, and so into the kitchen and round again. With each circuit he went faster and faster, until he looked like a brindled streak with a dash of black and white on top. Such a racket and commotion I never heard, and I laughed until the tears came to my eyes. Mr. Riley flew around and around, and William Adolphus held on grimly and clawed. Alexander Abraham turned purple with rage.

"Woman, call off that infernal cat before he kills my dog," he shouted above the din of yelps and yowls.

"Oh, he won't kill him," I said reassuringly, "and he's going too fast to hear me if I did call him. If you can stop the dog, Mr. Bennett, I'll guarantee to make William Adolphus listen to reason, but there's no use trying to argue with a lightning flash."

Alexander Abraham made a frantic lunge at the brindled streak as it whirled past him, with the result that he overbalanced himself and went sprawling on the floor with a crash. I ran to help him up, which only seemed to enrage him further.

"Woman," he sputtered viciously, "I wish you and that fiend of a cat were in -- in --"

"In Avonlea," he finished quickly, to save Alexander Abraham from committing profanity. "So do I, Mr. Bennett, with all my heart. But since we are not, let us make the best of it like sensible people. And in future, you will kindly remember that my name is Miss MacPherson, not Woman!"

With this the end came, and I was thankful, for the noise those two animals made was so terrific that I expected the policeman would be rushing in, smallpox or no smallpox, to see if Alexander Abraham and I were trying to murder each other. Mr. Riley suddenly veered in his mad career and bolted into a dark corner between the stove and the wood-box. William Adolphus let go just in time.

There never was any more trouble with Mr. Riley after that. A meeker, more thoroughly chastened dog you could not find. William Adolphus had the best of it and he kept it.

Seeing that things had calmed down, and that it was five o'clock, I decided to get tea. I told Alexander Abraham that I would prepare it, if he would show me where the eatables were.

"You needn't mind," said Alexander Abraham. "I've been in the habit of getting my own tea for twenty years."

"I daresay. But you haven't been in the habit of getting mine," I said firmly. "I wouldn't eat anything you cooked if I starved to death. If you want some occupation, you'd better get some salve and anoint the scratches on that poor dog's back."

Alexander Abraham said something that I prudenly did not hear. Seeing that he had no information to hand out, I went on an exploring expedition into the pantry. The place was awful beyond description, and for the first time a vague sentiment of pity for Alexander Abraham glimmered in my breast. When a man had to live in such surroundings, the wonder was, not that he hated women, but that he didn't hate the whole human race.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Aunt Olivia's Beau'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Aunt Olivia's Beau".

This story is a total HOOT. I love it! It's Lucy Maud at her best. The plot doesn't show its machinations, everything seems to just unfold naturally, and - I remember the first time reading it - truly not knowing how it would all work out. And the way she DOES work it out? It's so satisfying! It's as good as any romantic-comedy big-finish! I mean, there's no 'slow clap' - but there might as well be!

Lucy Maud had a great love for the delicate spinster character. She despised bitter spinsters - women who hated other women for being happy, etc. - but she had a great affection for those little "aunt" characters, who maintained their femininity, even if they were a bit prissy about it, still took care of their appearance, and still never 'aped' youth - a woman who has grown older gracefully, and who has accepted her spinster status gracefully. Who is a wonderful aunt, fun and girlish, etc. Miss Lavendar is another one - but Lucy Maud's books and stories are full of such characters.

Olivia Sterling is one of those spinster characters. Actually, Lucy Maud would call her an "old maid" - which has a slightly softer connotation than "spinster". Aunt Olivia is a confirmed old maid. She lives alone, she keeps an IMPECCABLE house (she's actually rather OCD about cleanliness), she is good friends with her two mischievous nieces (who are young ladies - one of whom is the narrator of this tale) - Her nieces love to come and hang out at Olivia's house. They sew together, they gather flowers, whatever - but Olivia is a mild non-judgmental fun person to be with. She has sympathy for their young romances, wants to hear all the details ... she's not one of those people who has grown older and has contempt for youth. She loves youth! But she's an old maid - make no mistake about it. She is a fussy personality, you get that right away. Her house is so clean that it's actually almost frightening. She is set in her ways.

So the nieces are DUMBFOUNDED at the beginning of the story when Aunt Olivia shyly tells them that she has a beau and his name is Malcolm McPherson. Malcolm McPherson had lived in East Grafton 20 years prior - and maybe had a crush on the younger Olivia - then he moved away and has not been home in 20 years. But now he is coming home - he sparked up a correspondence with old-maid Olivia - asked her to marry him - and she said yes!

Her nieces are ... they literally have no words. They try to be happy for her ... and they ARE ... but ... Olivia just doesn't seem the marrying TYPE. She had never been courted - and now she is so set in her ways ... who is this Malcolm McPherson? Was he nice? How would he fit in to her fussy type-A sort of lifestyle???? The nieces are DYING to meet him and watch the drama unfold.

I won't tell what eventually happens - because it's all just too funny and too perfect - and I even get a little lump in my throat at times when I read those last 2 scenes (sniff!!) - but my excerpt is the "reunion scene" between Olivia and Malcolm McPherson.

The last sentence of the first paragraph makes me laugh out loud - but there are SO many sentences that do the same thing in this entire story. I love, too, how they always refer to him as "Mr. Malcolm MacPherson". He's never just Malcolm or Mr. MacPherson - he's "Mr Malcolm MacPherson." It's repeated a gazillion times, and it just keeps getting funnier.

This story is one of my favorites of hers.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Aunt Olivia's Beau".

The day on which Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was expected, peggy and I went over. We had planned to remain away, thinking that the lovers would prefer their first meeting to be unwitnessed, but Aunt Olivia insisted on our being present. She was plainly nervous; the abstract was becoming concrete. Her little house was in spotless, speckless order from top to bottom. Aunt Olivia had herself scrubbed the garret floor and swept the cellar steps that very morning with as much painstaking care as if she expected that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson would hasten to inspect each at once and she must stand or fall by his opinion of them.

Peggy and I helped her to dress. She insisted on wearing her best black silk, in which she looked unnaturally fine. Her soft muslin became her much better, but we could not induce her to wear it. Anything more prim and bandboxy than Aunt Olivia when her toilet was finished it has never been my lot to see. Peggy and I watched her as she went downstairs, her skirt held stiffly up all around her that it might not brush the floor.

" 'Mr. Malcolm MacPherson' will be inspired with such awe that he will only be able to sit back and gaze at her," whispered Peggy. "I wish he would come and have it over. This is getting on my nerves."

Aunt Olivia went into the parlour, settled herself in the old carved chair, and folded her hands. Peggy and I sat down on the stairs to await his coming in a crisping suspense. Aunt Olivia's kitten, a fat, bewhiskered creature, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, shared our vigil and purred in maddening peace of mind.

We could see the garden path and gate through the hall window, and therefore supposed we should have full warning of the approach of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. It was no wonder, therefore, that we positively jumped when a thunderous knock crashed against the front door and re-echoed through the house. Had Mr. Malcolm MacPherson dropped from the skies?

We afterwards discovered that he had come across lots and around the house from the back, but just then his sudden advent was almost uncanny. I ran downstairs and opened the door. On the step stood a man about six feet two in height, and proportionately broad and sinewy. He had splendid shoulders, a great crop of curly black hair, big, twinkling blue eyes, and a tremendous crinkly black beard that fell over his breast in shining waves. In brief, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was what one would call instinctively, if somewhat tritely, "a magnificent specimen of manhood."

In one hand he carried a bunch of early goldenrod and smoke-blue asters.

"Good afternoon," he said in a resonant voice which seemed to take possession of the drowsy summer afternoon. "Is Miss Olivia Sterling in? And will you please tell her that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson is here?"

I showed him into the parlour. Then Peggy and I peeped through the crack of the door. Anyone would ahve done it. We would have scorned to excuse ourselves. And, indeed, what we saw would have been worth several conscience spasms, if we had felt any.

Aunt Olivia arose and advanced primly, with outstretched hand.

"Mr. MacPherson, I am very glad to see you," she said formally.

"It's yourself, Nillie!" Mr. Malcolm MacPherson gave two strides.

He dropped his flowers on the floor, knocked over a small table, and sent the ottoman spinning against the wall. Then he caught Aunt Olivia in his arms and -- smack, smack, smack! Peggy sank back upon the stair-step with her handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. Aunt Olivia was being kissed!

Presently, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson held her back at arm's legnth in his big paws and looked her over. I saw Aunt Olivia's eyes roam over his arm to the inverted table and the litter of asters and goldenrod. Her sleek crimps were all ruffled up, and her lace fichu twisted half around her neck. She looked distressed.

"It's not a bit changed you are, Nillie," said Mr. Malcolm MacPherson admiringly. "And it's good I'm feeling to see you again. Are you glad to see me, Nillie?"

"Oh, of course," said Aunt Olivia.

She twisted herself free and went to set up the table. Then she turned to the flowers, but Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had already gathered them up, leaving a goodly sprinkling of leaves and stalks on the carpet.

"I picked these for you in the river field, Nillie," he said. "Where will I be getting something to stick them in? Here, this will do."

He grasped a frail, painted vase on the mantel, stuffed the flowers in it, and set it on the table. The look on Aunt Olivia's face was too much for me at last. I turned, caught Peggy by the shoulder, and dragged her out of the house.

"He will horrify the very soul out of Olivia's body if he goes on like this," I gasped. "But he's splendid - and he thinks the world of her - and, oh, Peggy, did you ever hear such kisses? Fancy Aunt Olivia!"

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Old Man Shaw's Girl'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Old Man Shaw's Girl".

To me, this story is a bit of a clunker. I mean, it's sweet, and all - but it's a bit too saccharine for me, and also: the plot shows its skeleton way too plainly. It seems to me obvious from the get-go that Old Man Shaw's girl will NOT have been turned into a snooty city girl after her years away from her father. She seems too sweet and loving for that. So Old Man Shaw being thrown into a tizzy seems too artificial. I don't know - it doesn't really work for me (even though I love some of the actual writing in this piece - the bit about the roses especially - the theme of the "rose bush that never blooms - but then one day - spectacularly - it is ALL OVER BLOSSOMS" shows up in Lucy Maud's writing again and again and again). I also think that the characterization of Mrs. Peter Blewett (who shows up in other stories as well as her novels) is really great observation - the kind of person who is truly UPSET when other people are happy. You know those people? The rain on the parade people? The people who rain on your parade and SMILE as they do so? Because they like to spread misery? That's a real kind of person, and Lucy Maud nails it.

I know that Lucy Maud had a fierce protective side to her, when it came to Prince Edward Island. I think if she met someone who said, "I don't know HOW anyone could STAND to live on this remote little island!" - she would write them off forever. That person could have turned out to be Mother Teresa, and Lucy Maud wouldn't have cared. Either you love PEI - or you are the devil's spawn, not worth worrying about. So in this story she's kind of expressing that. Old Man Shaw loves his island, and his little simple cottage - but when he suddenly sees it through the scornful eyes of an outsider - he is horrified. Will his daughter, now that she's educated and a young lady, be satisfied living here? Will she, the light of his life, scorn him? How will he live?

I mean, I get it - but for me, it just doesn't work.

Here's an excerpt where the evil seed is planted in Old Man Shaw's head. He's a widow and his daughter has been spirited away to go to a fancy private school on the mainland somewhere - he has not seen her in 3 years. He is busy making preparations for her return, so excited to see her again, so excited to have her back. But then ... a mischief-maker ruins his hopes ....

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Old Man Shaw's Girl".

And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was coming home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt's pleadings and reproaches and ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and start for home a week later. Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a state of beatitude, making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the bench in the sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction that all was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do save count the hours until that beautiful, longed-for day after tomorrow. He gave himself over to a reverie, as sweet as a day-dream in a haunted valley.

The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red roses - they were as vivid as herself, with all her own fullness and joy of living. And besides these, a miracle had happened in Old Man Shaw's garden. In one corner was a rose-bush which had never bloomed, despite all the coaxing they had given it - "the sulky rosebush," Sara had been wont to call it. Lo! this summer had flung the hoarded sweetness of years into plentiful white blossoms, like shallow ivory cups with a haunting, spicy fragrance. It was in honour of Sara's homecoming - so Old Man Shaw liked to fancy. All things, even the sulky rose-bush, knew she was coming back, and were making glad because of it.

He was gloating over Sara's letter when Mrs. Peter Blewett came. She told him she had run up to see how he was getting on, and if he wanted anything seen to before Sara came.

Old Man Shaw shook his head.

"No'm, thank you, ma'am. Everything is attended to. I couldn't let anyone else prepare for Blossom. Only to think, ma'am, she'll be home the day after tomorrow. I'm just filled clear through, body, soul, and spirit, with joy to think of having my little Blossom at home again."

Mrs. Blewett smiled sourly. When Mrs. Blewett smiled, it foretokened trouble, and wise people had learned to have sudden business elsewhere before the smile could be translated into words. But Old Man Shaw had never learned to be wise where Mrs. Blewett was concerned, although she had been his nearest neighbour for years, and had pestered his life out with advice and "neighborly turns".

Mrs. Blewett was one with whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was to render happiness in other people a personal insult. She resented Old Man Shaw's beaming delight in his daughter's return, and she "considered it her duty" to rub the bloom off straightway.

"Do you think Sara'll be contented in White Sands now?" she asked.

Old Man Shaw looked slightly bewildered.

"Of course she'll be contented," he said slowly. "Isn't it her home? And ain't I here?"

Mrs. Blewett smiled again, with double distilled contempt for such simplicity.

"Well, it's a good thing you're so sure of it, I suppose. If 'twas my daughter that was coming back to White Sands, after three years of fashionable life among rich, stylish folks, and at a swell school, I wouldn't have a minute's peace of mind. I'd know perfectly well that she'd look down on everything here, and be discontented and miserable."

"Your daughter might," said Old Man Shaw, with more sarcasm than he had supposed he had possessed, "but Blossom won't."

Mrs. Blewett shrugged her sharp shoulders.

"Maybe not. It's to be hoped not, for both your sakes, I'm sure. But I'd be worried if 'twas me. Sary's been living among fine folks, and having a gay, exciting time, and it stands to reason she'll think White Sands fearful lonesome and dull. Look at Lauretta Bradley. She was up in Boston for just a month last winter and she's never been able to endure White Sands since."

"Lauretta Bradley and Sara Shaw are two different people," said Sara's father, trying to smile.

"And your house, too," pursued Mrs. Blewett ruthlessly. "It's such a queer, little, old place. What'll she think of it after her aunt's? I've heard tell Mrs. Adair lives in a perfect palace. I'll just warn you kindly that Sary'll probably look down on you, and you might as well be prepared for it. Of course, I suppose she kind of thinks she has to come back, seeing she promised you so solemn she would. But I'm certain she doesn't want to, and I don't blame her either."

Even Mrs. Blewett had to stop for breath, and Old Man Shaw found his opportunity. He had listened, dazed and shrinking, as if she were dealing him physical blows, but now a swift change swept over him. His blue eyes flashed ominously, straight into Mrs. Blewett's straggling, ferrety gray orbs.

"If you've said your say, Martha Blewett, you can go," he said passionately. "I'm not going to listen to another such word. Take yourself out of my sight, and your malicious tongue out of my hearing!"

Mrs. Blewett went, too dumbfounded by such an unheard-of outburst in mild Old Man Shaw to say a word of defence or attack. When she had gone, Old Man Shaw, the fire all faded from his eyes, sank back on his bench. His delight was dead; his heart was full of pain and bitterness. Martha Blewett was a warped and ill-natured woman, but he feared there was altogether too much truth in what she said. Why had he never thought of it before? Of course White Sands would seem dull and lonely to Blossom; of course the little gray house where she was born would seem a poor abode after the splendours of her aunt's home. Old Man Shaw walked through his garden and looked at everything with new eyes. How poor and simple everything was! How sagging and weather-beaten the old house! He went in, and upstairs to Sara's room. It was neat and clean, just as she had left it three years ago. But it was small and dark; the ceiling was discoloured, the furniture old-fashioned and shabby; she woudl think it a poor, mean place. Even the orchard over the hill brought him no comfort now. Blossom would not care for orchards. She would be ashamed of her stupid old father and the barren farm. She would hate White Sands, and chafe at the dull existence, and look down on everything that went to make up his uneventful life.

Old Man Shaw was unhappy enough that night to have satisifed even Mrs. Blewett, had she known.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Winning of Lucinda'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles 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."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Little Joscelyn'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Little Joscelyn".

Lucy Maud was a big believer in the importance of moments. That one good moment could balance out a hundred bad moments. There's the beautiful episode in Windy Poplars (excerpt here) about Pauline (I think that's her name, right??) who is basically trapped taking care of her querulous sickly bossy and, frankly, AWFUL mother. Anne befriends Pauline and learns that a good friend of hers is getting married - and Pauline wants to go. It means she would have to be away from taking care of her mother for one weekend. Her mother says NO. Even though Pauline is in her 40s, for God's sake. The answer is NO. Pauline is heartbroken - but years of slavery has weakened her will. Anne ends up coming up with a plan. She offers to "take care" of the awful mother for a weekend so Pauline would be free to go. This is what ends up happening. Pauline returns from this one weekend and tells Anne all about it - the heart to heart she had with her dear cousin, the moonlight on the lake, the fact that a man said a sweet thing to her about how nice her hair was ... These are GEMS. Pauline goes back to slavery with her mother - it's not that she throws off her duties - but she says to Anne, "My mother needs me ... she's not all that bad ... and at least I got to have my perfect weekend." There is a certain pathos in this - but also a certain triumph. Pauline will have the memory of her perfect weekend to last her lifetime. And we leave her, thinking: That's okay. One perfect weekend is nothing to sneeze at.

This is a theme that Lucy Maud visits again and again and again. I think it's a mistake to read into all of this biographically TOO much (or at least to make a fetish of it) - Mainly because I think that takes away from her artistry and the power of her imagination. Yes, she had a real life, and of course that real life informed her work ... but she also, like novelists throughout the ages, just made shit up. She was a storyteller. An amazing one. But this theme - the one shining moment that can last a lifetime theme - comes up again and again - and this is the theme of "Little Joscelyn".

The story is simple. The Morrisons live on a big rambling farm. There's a bossy wife, a kind of henpecked husband, a bunch of kids - and then an aged aunt - who is the star of our story. She is old. Old and infirm. And also - you can tell that senility has begun to creep in. She lives in the past. She is desperately unhappy in her present - her hands are crippled by rheumatism, she can no longer move ... and she is completely dependent on her relatives - who, frankly, don't treat her all that well. Or - they take care of her - but they don't love her. Taking care of her is a duty. She feels this keenly.

But once upon a time - 20 years ago - the family had an orphan girl live with them for a summer - "little Joscelyn". She was a bright and beautiful young child - and out of all the members of the family she bonded the deepest with Aunty Nan. The two were, in the words of Anne Shirley, kindred spirits. You know how the very young and the very old sometimes understand each other perfectly? Because their spirits are close in age. That's what happened. It was the happiest summer of poor Aunty Nan's life. To be loved like that.

And then Joscelyn went away. And gained quite a bit of fame as a singer. She lost touch with Aunty Nan - because she basically had a very unhappy childhood and doesn't want to remember her lean years. She doesn't realize what her disappearance has done to Aunty Nan. She barely remembers Aunty Nan. You know ... little kids can be selfish, too. They are self-centered. They don't realize.

So anyway - Aunty Nan hears that Joscelyn is going to be coming back to the hometown for one night only to give a concert. Aunty Nan wants to go. The answer from the relatives is a resounding NO. Aunty Nan cries like a little child in her disappointment. It's kind of heart-wrenching to read, actually. You wish that you lived right next door and had a buggy - because then YOU would take Aunty Nan to see the concer and see Little Joscelyn after all these years. Aunty Nan sits in her room, crying by herself.

The hired boy - a little scrappy fellow - who loves Aunty Nan - decides that this is ridiculous. She should be able to see Joscelyn. For some reason he gets it. This is actually life or death. Aunty Nan will not live much longer. If she could just see Joscelyn one last time ... So he (beautiful little boy) goes into town by himself, goes to the palatial house where Joscelyn is staying, asks to see her - and basically pleads with Joscelyn to come out to the farm - even for just half an hour - to see Aunty Nan again. Joscelyn hems and haws. She only has a limited amount of time, she is in a rush ... she, you see, has forgotten. She has forgotten the kindness of this little old woman in her childhood ... she had forgotten that this little old woman had loved her. And that she was the only one. But the hired boy, a tough little boy, begs. Joscelyn eventually caves. She goes back to the farm with him.

Aunty Nan has no idea that Joscelyn is coming. That her dream is about to come true. That her "shining moment" has arrived.

Got a lump in my throat here. This shit works, it really does.

Here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- "Little Joscelyn".

It was sunset when they reached Gull Point Farm. An arc of warm gold was over the spruces behind the house. Mrs. William was out in the barn-yard milking, and the house was deserted, save for the sleeping baby in the kitchen and the little old woman with the watchful eyes in the upstairs room.

"This way, ma'am," said Jordan, inwardly congratulating himself that the coast was clar. "I'll take you up to her room."

Upstairs, Joscelyn tapped at the half-open door and went in. Before it closed behind her, Jordan heard Aunty Nan say, "Joscelyn! Little Joscelyn!" in a tone that made him choke again. He stumbled thankfully downstairs, to be pounced upon by Mrs. William in the kitchen.

"Jordan Sloane, who was that stylish woman you drove into the yard with? And what have you done with her?"

"That was Miss Joscelyn Burnett," said Jordan, expanding himself. This was his hour of triumph over Mrs. William. "I went to Kensington and brung her out to see Aunty Nan. She's up with her now."

"Dear me," said Mrs. William helplessly. "And me in my milking rig! Jordan, for pity's sake, hold the baby while I go and put on my black silk. You might have given a body some warning. I declare I don't know which is the greatest idiot, you or Aunty Nan!"

As Mrs. William flounced out of the kitchen, Jordan took his satisfaction in a quiet laugh.

Upstairs in the little room was a great glory of sunset and gladness in human hearts. Joscelyn was kneeling by the bed, with her arms about Aunty Nan, and Aunty Nan, with her face all irradiated, was stroking Joscelyn's hair fondly.

"O little Joscelyn," she murmured, "it seems too good to be true. It seems like a beautiful dream. I knew you th eminute you opened the door, my dearie. You haven't changed a bit. And you're a famous singer now, little Joscelyn! I always knew you would be. Oh, I want you to sing a piece for me - just one, won't you, dearie? Sing that piece people like to hear you sing best. I forget the name, but I've read about it in the papers. Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

And Joscelyn, standing by Aunty Nan's bed, in the sunset light, sang the song she had sung to many a brilliant audience on many a noted concert platform - sang it as even she had never sung before, while Aunty Nan lay and listened beatifically, and downstairs even Mrs. William held her breath, entranced by the exquisite melody that floated through the old farmhouse.

"O little Joscelyn!" breathed Aunty Nan in rapture, when the song ended.

Joscelyn knelt by her again and they had a long talk of old days. One by one they recalled the memories of that vanished summer. The past gave up its tears and its laughter. Heart and fancy alike went roaming through the ways of the long ago. Aunty Nan was perfectly happy. And then Joscelyn told her all the story of her struggles and triumphs since they had parted.

When the moonlight began to creep in through the low window, Aunty Nan put out her hand and touched Joscelyn's bowed head.

"Little Joscelyn," she whispered, "if it ain't asking too much, I want you to sing just one other piece. Do you remember when you were here how we sung hymns in the parlour every Sunday n ight, and my favourite always was 'The Sands of Time are Sinking'? I ain't never forgot how you used to sing that, and I want to hear it just once again, dearie. Sing it for me, little Joscelyn."

Joscelyn rose and went to the window. Lifting back the curtain, she stood in the splendour of the moonlight and sang the grand old hymn. At first Aunty Nan beat time to it feebly on the counterpane, but when Joscelyn came to the verse, "With mercy and with judgment," she folded her hands over her breast and smiled.

When the hymn ended, Joscelyn came over to the bed.

"I am afraid I must say good-bye now, Aunty Nan," she said.

Then she saw that Aunty Nan had fallen asleep. She would not waken her, but she took from her breast the cluster of crimson roses she wore and slipped them gently between the toil-worn fingers.

"Good-bye, dear, sweet mother-heart," she murmured.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Each In His Own Tongue'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Each In His Own Tongue".

This story is an amazing piece of work - and Lucy Maud herself, as I recall, was very proud of it. It's well-written - but it's also one of those stories where every single person in it is ALIVE and complex and ... distinct. Abel Blair: it seems that he has a full life off the page, his life will continue after the story ends. Janet ... who is she?? Naomi - I mean, there aren't many people in this story, but each person is a three-dimensional mini-portrait of a human being. Kind of extraordinary.

I also love the story because it is Lucy Maud's statement about the sacred-ness of art (that also shows in the title). She lived in a strict rigid Presbyterian community - where any kind of leisure-time outside of a sewing circle - was frowned upon. Not even frowned upon. OPENLY discouraged. Yet ... writing was her art. There was nothing she could do but write. (This comes up in the Emily series, too (excerpt here), when Emily is forbidden to write by her rigid aunt Elizabeth who thinks "making up stories" is the first step on the way to total degradation of the soul.) That attitude is not so out of style as you might think - I've written about it before. This story is Lucy Maud's protest against that kind of rigid uptight STUPID thinking.

The plot is this: Young Felix Moore lives with his grandfather, Reverend Stephen Leonard. Felix's parents are dead. His mother married a musician - a violinist - which apparently broke her father's heart (her father being Rev Stephen Leonard). She had married the musician completely against his wishes - and he soon was proven right: the guy she married was dissipated, drunk, irresponsible, and traveled all the time because of his music. She broke her heart over this and died. But before she died - she gave birth to Felix. Felix comes to live with his grandfather. They love each other with an intensity that is all-encompassing - Lucy Maud doesn't take the easy way out and make the Reverend a bitter old man, with no redeeming qualities. No, she makes him a loving man, a man who truly has a CALLING to be a minister - one of those special special people. But he has a blind spot - and that is music. Felix has a gift for the violin. The whole story opens with Felix playing the fiddle for his neighbor, Abel Blair (a drunken old reprobate - who nevertheless somehow transcends all of that when listening to Felix - he sits there listening to Felix play and promises himself to be better, to stop drinking, to live a good life, to turn his eyes towards God - there is God in Felix's music - this is Lucy Maud's point about art.) But anyway - the Reverend has it in his head and in his heart that Felix will be a minister. This is his plan for his grandson. The thought that Felix might become a musician is ... well, it just will NOT happen. He will NOT have Felix live a drunken dissipated life, traveling with a low class of people, and not living in the light of God. So he forbids Felix to have a violin, even though Felix wants one - and Felix is forced to sneak around. This is what happens when you make someone go against their nature: you make other bad things happen as well. Felix is a good little boy, and he loves his grandfather dearly. He is not malicious, or even bitter ... He's a little kid, but he knows that he must play the violin. It is not even an option to NOT play the violin. His grandfather's ruling FORCES Felix to behave duplicitously. To lie and sneak.

So it's kind of a tortured set-up.

The whole thing comes to a head when a local "bad woman" is lying on her death bed. Lucy Maud doesnt' list this woman's sins exactly - but you can guess. She was beautiful once, she played men for fools, she slept around, she used and abused men, and she wrecked lives. She probably slept with married men - she had absolutely no scruples. Her beauty, which could have been something that marked her for GREAT things, instead turned her down the path of sexual manipulation. Her sins are many. She is on her death bed - and her illness has already chipped away at her sanity. Her beauty is gone. She thrashes about in her bed, tormented. The end is near. She calls for the Reverend. She has to clear her conscience. Or ... that language is so weak - clear her conscience?? No - she needs the Reverend to prepare her to meet her Maker. She has not gone to church since she was a child. She is terrified - terrified - of meeting God. Inconsolable. The Reverend goes to her bedside in the middle of the night - and prays with her - but she will have none of that. Her agony is too acute. And here's where Lucy Maud's title comes into play: Language, while wonderful, can be limited. You must realize that divinity, that God, does not only exist in language - words cannot describe him, contain him ... and sometimes God shows up in something concrete, or in something more abstract. Oh, but this pisses some people off - literal people who feel that they must KNOW. That they do KNOW. Oh well, but those people are stupid, and I try not to worry what stupid people think about important subjects.

Now remember: Lucy Maud has already set up that Reverend Stephen Leonard is not a caricature of a rigid unloving minister. He is the opposite. He is a deeply holy man, beloved by the community. He does GOOD in the world. But his GOOD-ness is no help to Naomi. There is a long tortured scene between the two of them where he tries to tell her that all she needs to do is ask for forgiveness - and God WILL forgive. Repent!! To Naomi, these are just words. They do not take away her torment. The Reverend goes at it in many different ways - sitting with her, talking with her, telling her about the love of God ... but she cannot hear it. Her agony, instead of going away, gets stronger - because she knows the end is so near. If she goes into that bright light screaming in terror - she has no idea what will happen to her afterwards. Finally - the Reverend (you just love him - even though you wish he would get that Felix ALSO has a "calling" - just as divine as the calling to serve God) kneels, puts his head in his hands, he is devastated at his failure to help Naomi - and pleads to God, "Help me, Lord. Help me speak to her in a language she understands."

Suddenly - at the door of Naomi's little shack - is Felix. Standing there with a lantern. He has been sent there by Janet, the maid at the manse - she has sent Felix down with a lantern for Stephen's return home in the dark. He stands there, a little boy looking on this horrible death-struggle. His grandfather's agonized face. Naomi's thrashing about. She catches a glimpse of him and calls him to her. She stares at him with gleaming insane eyes and tells him to take down the fiddle she has on the wall and play for her. She has heard that he plays and she wants to hear some music. Since his grandfather has been so useless to her, and she's going to die at any minute - she might as well enjoy some tunes.

Anyway - the excerpt I've chosen is what happens after that moment. And I've read it a bazillion times, and it still GETS me.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery- "Each In His Own Tongue".

"Take down that fiddle on the wall and play something for me," she said imperiously. "I'm dying -- and I'm going to hell - and I don't want to think of it. Play me something to take my thoughts off it - I don't care what you play. I was always fond of music - there was always something in it for me I never found anywhere else."

Felix looked at his grandfather. The old man nodded; he felt too ashamed to speak; he sat with his fine silver head in his hands, while Felix took down and tuned the old violin, on which so many godless lilts had been played in many a wild revel. Mr. Leonard felt that he had failed his religion. He could not give Naomi the help that was in it for her.

Felix drew the bow softly, perplexedly over the strings. He had no idea what he should play. Then his eyes were caught and held by Naomi's burning, mesmeric, blue gaze as she lay on her crumpled pillow. A strange, inspired look came over the boy's face. He began to play as if it were not he who played, but some mightier power, of which he was but the passive instrument.

Sweet and soft and wonderful was the music that stole through the room. Mr. Leonard forgot his heart-break and listened to it in puzzled amazement He had never heard anything like it before. How could the child play like that? He looked at Naomi and marvelled at the change in her face. The fear and frenzy were going out of it; she listened breathlessly, never taking her eyes from Felix. At the foot of the bed the idiot girl sat with tears on her cheeks.

In that strange music was the joy of innocent, mirthful childhood, blent with the laughter of waves and the call of glad winds. Then it held the wild, wayward dreams of youth, sweet and pure in all their wildness and waywardness. They were followed by a rapture of young love -- all-surrendering, all-sacrificing love.

The music changed. It held the torture of unshed tears, the anguish of a heart deceived and desolate. Mr. Leonard almost put his hands over his ears to shut out its intolerable poignancy. But on the dying woman's face was only a strange relief, as if some dumb, long-hidden pain had at last won to the healing of utterance.

The sullen indifference of despair came next, the bitterness of smouldering revolt and misery, the reckless casting away of all good. There was something indescribably evil in the music now -- so evil that Mr. Leonard's white souls huddered in loathing, and Maggie cowered and whined like a frightened animal.

Again the music changed. And in it now there was agony and fear - and repentance and a cry for pardon. To Mr. Leonard there was something strangely familiar in it. He struggled to recall where he had heard it before; then he suddenly knew - he had heard it before Felix came, in Naomi's terrible words! He looked at his grandson with something like awe. Here was a power of which he knew nothing - a strange and dreadful power. Was it of God? Or of Satan?

For the last time the music changed. And now it was not music at all - it was a great, infinite forgiveness, an all-comprehending love. It was healing for a sick soul; it was light and hope and peace. A Bible text, seemingly incongruous, came into Mr. Leonard's mind -- "This is the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Felix lowered the violin and dropped wearily on a chair by the bed. The inspired light faded from his face; once more he was only a tired boy. But Stephen Leonard was on his knees, sobbing like a child; and Naomi Clark was lying still, with her hands clasped over her breast.

"I understand now," she said very softly. "I couldn't see it before - and now it's so plain. I just feel it. God is a God of love. He can forgive anybody -- even me -- even me. He knows all about it. I ain't skeered any more. He just loves me and forgives me as I'd have loved and forgiven my baby if she'd lived, no matter how bad she was, or what she did. The minister told me that but I couldn't believe it. I know it now. And He sent you here to-night, boy, to tell it to me in a way that I could feel it."

Naomi Clark died just as the dawn came up over the sea. Mr. Leonard rose from his watch at her bedside and went to the door. Before him spread the harbour, gray and austere in the faint light, but afar out the sun was rending asunder the milk-white mists in which the sea was scarfed, and under it was a virgin glow of sparkling water.

The fir trees on the point moved softly and whispered together. The whole world sang of spring and resurrection and life; and behind him Naomi Clark's dead face took on the peace that passes understanding.

The old minister and his grandson walked home together in a silence that neither wished to break. Janet Andrews gave them a good scolding and an excellent breakfast. Then she ordered them both to bed; but Mr. Leonard, smiling at her, said,

"Presently, Janet, presently. But now, take this key, go up to the black chest in the garret, and bring me what you will find there."

When Janet had gone, he turned to Felix.

"Felix, would you like to study music as your lifework?"

Felix looked up, with a transfiguring flush on his wan face.

"Oh, grandfather! Oh, grandfather!"

"You may do so, my child. After this night I dare not hinder you. Go with my blessing, and may God guide and keep you, and make you strong to do His work and tell His message to humanity in your own appointed way. It is not the way I desired for you - but I see that I was mistaken. Old Abel spoke truly when he said there was a Christ in your violin as well as a devil. I understand what he meant now."

He turned to meet Janet, who came into the study with a violin. Felix's heart throbbed; he recognized it. Mr. Leonard took it from Janet and held it out to the boy.

"This is your father's violin, Felix. See to it that you never make your music the servant of the power of evil - never debase it to unworthy ends. For your responsiblity is as your gift, and God will exact the accounting of it from you. Speak to the world in your own tongue through it, with truth and sincerity; and all I have hoped for you will be abundantly fulfilled."

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'Old Lady Lloyd'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: "Old Lady Lloyd".

Perhaps her stories would seem sentimental or too obvious today - I know they do at times for me - but in a way, for me, it's like watching old movies when the acting style was different ... I certainly prefer modern short stories, and I certainly wouldn't put any of her work up next to, say, Lorrie Moore - or any other master of the form ... She wrote this stuff for MONEY and she tailored her stories for certain audiences. She wrote horror stories, ghost stories, love stories, stories which would fit right into a Good Housekeeping mag or a Ladies Home Journal - simple little domestic tales. The plots are sometimes clunky and a lot of times they depend on coincidence - unbelievable coincidence - showing up at just the right moment. But this, remember, is the style of the time. If you read Dickens now - while yes, his characters leave an indelible impression - a lot of the times it is in SPITE of the machinations of the Victorian-era plot devices. Again: this is not a criticism. It would be like watching an old movie and being literally unable to get used to the black and white, or noticing that: Hmmm, he's supposed to be poor - yet look at his immaculate jacket! Etc. If you get hung up on the surface of things, you can miss so much of the jewels beneath. I'm not saying that some of Lucy Maud's short stories aren't crap (especially the ones published posthumously in the last 10 years or so) - because, oh boy, they ARE ... but I think it would also be wrong to say that they are uninteresting. Maybe you need to be a Lucy Maud fan to find them interesting, but I find them interesting on a literary level as well. Lucy Maud wrote at a time when there were literally hundreds of magazines devoted to literature. That world no longer exists. If you look at The New Yorker, it's the same names publishing stories there week after week - there just aren't as many options for starting writers to make a little cash. Lucy Maud, too, did not have any illusions ... Ghost stories sold, and those magazines paid well - so she wrote a ton of ghost stories. Her novels are where she shines as a storyteller, a creator of worlds - but she had no shame in working in many different genres, if it paid. Also: that world no longer exists either.

"Old Lady Lloyd" is almost novella length - it's quite long. It tells the story of an interesting old woman who is known to the people in Spencervale as "Old Lady Lloyd". She lives off by herself, she is known to be famously stingy, and she is also known to be haughty and almost frigidly proud. She wears elaborate silk dresses every day. She doesn't go to church. She never donates to worthy causes. People are chased away from her door. Gossip rages about her. But we get to know her, through the story - and we learn a lot about her. We learn that she was left with no fortune at all when her parents died - and her oily cousin controls her money - and so she basically lives in poverty. She wears silk dresses every day because those are left over from her wealthy time and she can't afford new clothes. And she is so humiliated about her poverty-struck state that she never lets on that she needs anything. She lives off of fruit that she picks in the woods, and she rations out her bread for herself. Spencervale has NO idea that she is so hard up. They no longer ask her to join sewing circles or what have you, because they are sick of her haughty airs - they do not recognize that it is all a front, to hide her poverty. We also learn that long ago she loved someone once - and he - in typical Lucy Maud fashion - spurned her. Or - no - they quarreled, and like a typical Lucy Maud heroine, she refused to forgive him when he begged for it. And he BEGGED. But her pride is too strong to give in. She turned him away. And of course - that meant the end of her happiness forever. He married someone else, moved away - etc. etc. He then died.

Old Lady Lloyd lives in the past. She wears old silk dresses, she is laughed at by townspeople, she is feared, little kids think she's a witch - and her life is very very bitter.

But then one spring ... her dead lover's daughter Sylvia (who is now 20 years old) moves back to Spencervale. She has a job as a music teacher. Old Lady Lloyd recognizes the family resemblance immediately - and through the course of the story - begins to leave Sylvia little gifts on the woodland path that Sylvia uses to get to town. She leaves her fresh strawberries (which basically means a full meal to Old Lady Lloyd) ... she leaves her flowers ... she never lets on that it is her, and she doesn't even think that Sylvia would know of her existence. But Old Lady Lloyd, a lonely old soul, sees in Sylvia the daughter she COULD have had ... and so wants to do anything she can for her.

Anyway ... that's the set up. The way it all turns out is, yes, sentimental, but I gotta tell ya - I get a little lump in my throat at the end of the story every time.

Here's an excerpt from "Old Lady Lloyd". She has heard that Sylvia has been accepted to music school - yet she does not have the money to go. Old Lady Lloyd worries herself almost sick about this. It just so happens that Andrew Cameron, her businessman cousin, had a daughter who was also a singer - and I guess she died - so in her memory he set up a very lucrative music scholarship. He has sent 10 young needy people to music school already. Old Lady Lloyd feels that Sylvia MUST go to music school. So she decides to do what she has promised herself she would never do: go into town and ask her slick cousin for help. This is a proud proud woman, and having to beg for money is so against who she is - but love has opened her up. She no longer clings to pride. There are more important things.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "Old Lady Lloyd"

When the Old Lady reached the town, she ate her slender little lunch and then walked out to the suburb where the Cameron factories and warehouses were. It was a long walk for her, but she could not afford to drive. She felt very tired when she was shown into the shining, luxurious office where Andrew Cameron sat at his desk.

After the first startled glance of surprise, he came forward beamingly, with outstretched hand.

"Why, Cousin Margaret! This is a pleasant surprise. Sit down -- allow me, this is a much more comfortable chair. Did you come out this morning? And how is everybody out in Spencervale?"

The Old Lady had flushed at his first words. To hear the name by which her father and mother and lover had called her on Andrew Cameron's lips seemed like profanation. But, she told herself, the time was past for squeakishness. If she could ask a favor of Andrew Cameron, she could bear lesser pangs. For Sylvia's sake she shook hands with him, for Sylvia's sake she sat down in the chair he offered. For no living human being's sake could this determined Old Lady infuse any cordiality into her manner or her words. She went straight to the point with Lloyd simplicity.

"I have come to ask a favour of you," she said, looking him in the eye, not at all humbly or meekly, as became a supplicant, but challengingly and defiantly, as if she dared him to refuse.

"De-lighted to hear it, Cousin Margaret." Never was anything so bland and gracious as his tone. "Anything I can do for you I shall be only too pleased to do. I am afraid you have looked upon me as an enemy, Margaret, and I assure you I have felt your injustice keenly. I realize that some appearances were against me, but --"

The Old Lady lifted her hand and stemmed his eloquence by that one gesture.

"I did not come here to discuss that matter," she said. "We will not refer to the past, if you please. I came to ask a favour, not for myself, but for a very dear young friend of mine - a Miss Gray, who has a remarkably fine voice which she wishes to have trained. She is poor, so I came to ask you if you would give her one of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training, you will not make any mistake."

The Old Lady stopped talking. She felt sure Andrew Cameron would grant her request; but she did hope he would grant it rather rudely or unwillingly. She could accept the favour so much more easily if it were flung at her like a bone to a dog. But not a bit of it, Andrew Cameron was suaver than ever. Nothing could give him greater pleasure than to grant his dear Cousin Margaret's request - he only wished it involved more trouble on his part. Her little protege should have her musical education assuredly - she should go abroad next year - and he was de-lighted --

"Thank you," said the Old Lady, cutting him short again. "I am much obliged to you - and I ask you not to let Miss Gray know anything of my interference. And I shall not take up any more of your valuable time. Good afternoon."

"Oh, you mustn't go so soon," he said, with some real kindness or clannishness permeating the hateful cordiality of his voice - for Andrw Cameron was not entirely without the homely virtues of the average man. He had been a good husband and father; he had once been very fond of his Cousin Margaret; and he was really very sorry that "circumstances" had "compelled" him to act as he had done in that old affair of her father's investment. "You must be my guest tonight."

"Thank you. I must return home tonight," said the Old Lady firmly, and there was that in her tone which told Andrew Cameron that it would be useless to urge her. But he insisted on telephoning for his carriage to drive her to the station. The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there; she even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him a second time for granting her request.

"Not at all," he said. "Please try to think a little more kindly of me, Cousin Margaret."

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her dismay, that her train had just gone and that she would have to wait two hours for the evening one. She went into the waiting-room, and sat down. She was very tired. All the excitement that had sustained her was gone, and she felt weak and old. She had nothing to eat, having expected to get home in time for tea; the waiting-room was chilly, and she shivered in her thin, old, silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart likewise. She had won Sylvia's desire for her; but Sylvia would go out of her life, and the Old Lady did not see how she was to go on living after that. Yet she sat there unflinchingly for two hours, an upright, indomitable old figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the forces of physical and mental pain, while happy people came and went, and laughed and talked before her.

At eight o'clock the Old Lady got off the train at Bright River station, and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of the wet night. She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was falling. Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to the marrow. She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream. Blind instinct alone guided her over the last mile and up the lane to her own house. As she fumbled at her door, she realized that a burning heat had suddenly taken the place of her chilliness. She stumbled in over her threshold and closed the door.

The Books: "Chronicles of Avonlea - 'The Hurrying of Ludovic'" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

So I'm going to make what might be a rather controversial executive decision. There are a couple of collections of Lucy Maud's short stories - a couple put together while she was alive - and MANY put together after her death - and of course I will include them in the book excerpt thing, because she wrote them, and they are part of her, uhm, CANON. But I just can't choose ONE story out of each collection to be representative of the whole - because I'm too obsessive - so I'm going to choose excerpts from - well, not ALL the stories - but MANY of them. These collections of stories are pretty wonderful (some of her earlier work - the stuff that was put together after her death - is pretty bad - it was her bread and butter for the many years before Anne was published - so she wrote them "to order" for certain magazines, and it shows - but a lot of these stories are as good as mini-novels). So here we are at Chronicles of Avonlea - a collection that was originally published in 1912, in the first wave of her fame. Anne shows up in some of these stories (always peripherally, though) - She's home on her vacation from Queen's or Redmond - and she manages to do a little matchmaking in her spare time.

The first story in the collection is "The Hurrying of Ludovic". It's an adorable story. Theodora Dix and Ludovic Speed (I mean, come on, the NAMES!!) have been "seeing" each other for 15 years. Ludovic Speed is the opposite of his own last name. He meanders, he walks slowly, he talks slowly. Theodora Dix is a comfy homey sort of woman - and even though Ludovic has never had a sense of urgency in his courting of her, she doesn't really worry about it. She assumes that eventually they'll get married, eventually he'll get around to proposing her. But ... when? It is against Ludovic Speed's nature to hurry - or make a stand. He totally takes Theodora for granted. He walks her home from prayer meeting every week, and then they sit up in her sitting room until 10 o'clock - talking and arguing and conversing - and then Ludovic walks home, only to do it all again the next week. It takes Anne Shirley, home from Redmond for the summer, to hurry Ludovic along. She is friends with Theodora and one night Theodora finally admits that she does want to get married, and she thinks that Ludovic needs a wife (he doesn't eat right, his clothes need mending, he lives with an old aunt who is a terrible housekeeper) - and she also wants to know that Ludovic actually has at least a LITTLE bit of fire in him. So Anne comes up with a plan to make Ludovic jealous. To "hurry" him along.

And of course it all ends happily. Because that's the kind of short stories that Lucy Maud wrote.

Oh - and one last thing: If Lucy Maud had never published "Anne" - if she had never become famous - she probably still would have been making a rather nice living off of short stories. She was ALWAYS writing, and ALWAYS sending stuff out. Her output is incredible. How could one woman write so much in just one lifetime?

And you'll see in the prose below - how rich and full these worlds she creates are - even in the short story form.

Excerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery - "The Hurrying of Ludovic"

The curtain rose on the first act after prayer meeting on the next Thursday night. It was bright moonlight when the people came out of church, and everybody saw it plainly. Arnold Sherman stood upon the steps close to the door, and Ludovic Speed leaned up against a corner of the graveyard fence, as he had done for years. The boys said he had worn the paint off that particular place. Ludovic knew of no reason why he should paste himself up against the church door. Theodora would come out as usual, and he would join her as she went past the corner.

This was what happened; Theodora came down the steps, her stately figure outlined in its darkness against the gush of lamplight from the porch. Arnold Sherman asked her if he might see her home. Theodora took his arm calmly, and together they swept past the stupefied Ludovic, who stood helplessly gazing after them as if unable to believe his eyes.

For a few moments he stood there limply; then he started down the road after his fickle lady and her new admirer. The boys and irresponsible young men crowded after, expecting some excitement, but they were disappointed. Ludovi strode on until he overtook Theodora and Arnold Sherman, and then fell meekly in behind them.

Theodora hardly enjoyed her walk home, although Arnold Sherman laid himself out to be especially entertaining. Her heart yearned after Ludovic, whose shuffling footsteps she heard behind her. She feared that she had been very cruel, but she was in for it now. She steeled herself by the reflection that it was all for his own good, and she talked to Arnold Sherman as if he were the one man in the world. Poor, deserted Ludovic, following humbly behind, heard her, and if Theodora had known how bitter the cup she was holding to his lips really was, she would never have been resolute enough to present it, no matter for what ultimate good.

When she and Arnold turned in at her gate, Ludovic had to stop. Theodora looked over her shoulder and saw him standing still on the road. His forlorn figure haunted her thoughts all night. If Anne had not run over the next day and bolstered up her convictions, she might have spoiled everything by prematurely relenting.

Ludovic, meanwhile, stood still on the road, quite oblivious to the hoots and comments of the vastly amused small boy contingent, until Theodora and his rival disappeared from his view under the firs in the hollow of her lane. Then he turned about and went home, not with his usual leisurely amble, but with a perturbed stride which proclaimed his inward disquiet.

He felt bewildered. If the world had come suddenly to an end or if the lazy, meandering Grafton River had turned about and flowed up hill, Ludovic could not have been more astonished. For fiteen years he had walked home from meetings with Theodora; and now this elderly stranger, with all the glamor of "the States" hanging about him, had coolly walked off with her under Ludovic's very nose. Worse -- most unkindest cut of all -- Theodora had gone with him willingly; nay, she had evidently enjoyed his company. Ludovic felt the stirring of a righteous anger in his easy-going soul.

When he reached the end of his lane, he paused at his gate, and looked at his house, set back from the lane in a crescent of birches. Even in the moonlight, its weather-worn aspect was plainly visible. He thought of the "palatial residence" rumour ascribed to Arnold Sherman in Boston, and stroked his chin nervously with his sunburned fingers. Then he doubled up his fist and struck it smartly on the gate-post.

"Theodora needn't think she is going to jilt me in this fashion, after keeping company with me for fifteen years," he said. "I'll have something to say to it, Arnold Sherman or no Arnold Sherman. The impudence of the puppy!"

The Books: "The Golden Road" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery.

The Golden Road is the second book in the series about "The Story Girl" (first excerpt here) - the second and final book. The melancholy that was only hinted at in the first book now comes much more to the forefront (you'll see what I mean in the excerpt). "The golden road" means childhood - and in this book - the children are approaching the end of it. It's like little Jackie Paper's betrayal of Puff. That song always killed me as a little kid - because I was SO on Puff's side. I would NEVER betray Puff, etc. But that's what happens ... you grow up ... Puff is left behind. Lucy Maud remembers very well what that moment is like (so many people forget - and often it is up to authors to remind us) - and "The Golden Road" tells about that specific moment. The kids still cling to childhood - although life continues to intervene, pulling them forward.

The Story Girl's father (who basically abandoned her) returns at the end of this book - and amazingly the Story Girl holds no resentment towards him (this is akin to Lucy Maud's whole experience with her father) - she is overjoyed to see her father. But what the advent of her father means is that he is now going to take her away. She will be joining him now in his global gallivanting - and the little band of friends are going to be broken up. Bev and Felix also get the word from their father from Rio de Janiero that he will be coming to fetch them as well - he misses them desperately - and needs to have the family be together again. So everything is going to change ... all at once.

But before that moment - the adventures continue. They get up a newspaper which they publish once a month. Every issue of this newspaper (with etiquette tips, and gossip columns, and "news" stories) is included in this book. Some of it is laugh out loud funny.

There are resolutions that come to mysteries and conundrums set up in the first book. The mysterious and dreamy Awkward Man (that is his name, apparently) finds his love and takes her home with him. He will be lonely no more. The kids finally get to hang out with Peg Bowen, the witch, up close and personal - when they take shelter in her hut during a blizzard. A couple of other loose ends are tied up, including the big ol' loose end of what will happen to the Story Girl. Her humble homely aunts and uncles have a vague sense (even though they are strict unimaginative Presbyterians) that she could "be something" some day ... that she needs to have an education ... that the life of a housewife or a farmer's wife is not for her ... but who will give her this education? Who will provide for her?

At the end of the book - the Story Girl leaves - waving out the window of her buggy - tears streaming down her face - at all of her little friends and cousins, promising to keep in touch, even though now - she will be living in London and Paris with her father.

Childhood has ended. They have come to the end of the Golden Road. These are simple sweet books about childhood, with hilarious tales of mischief, and recipes gone bad, and dares gone haywire - but running through them is a yowl of pain, that all beautiful things must come to an end.

Here is a chapter that comes near the end of the book. The group of friends sense that their time of heavenly togetherness and blissful oblivion is coming to a close. So every moment they have together is piercingly sweet, and almost sad.

At the end of this excerpt comes a perfect example of what I meant when I said that the future flits across these books like a shadow. Bev, the narrator, is writing from the future. He knows the end. He knows what is going to happen. He never shows his cards, because that is not what the books are about - but the knowledge is still there.

Excerpt from The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery.

"It'll be awfully dull when you fellows go," muttered Dan.

"I'm sure I don't know what we're ever going to do here this winter," said Felicity, with the calmness of despair.

"Thank goodness there are no more fathers to come back," breathed Cecily with a vicious earnestness that made us all laugh, even in the midst of our dismay.

We worked very half-heartedly the rest of the day, and it was not until we assembled in the orchard in the evening that our spirits recovered something like their wonted level. It was clear and slightly frosty; the sun had declined behind a birch on a distant hill and it seemed a tree with a blazing heart of fire. The great golden willow at the lane gate was laughter-shaken in the wind of evening. Even amid all the changes of our shifting world we could not be hopelessly low-spirited - except Sara Ray, who was often so, and Peter, who was rarely so. But Peter had been sorely vexed in spirit for several days. The time was approaching for the October issue of Our Magazine and he had no genuine fiction ready for it. He had taken so much to heart Felicity's taunt that his stories were all true that he had determined to have a really-truly false one in the next number. But the difficulty was to get anyone to write it. He had asked the Story Girl to do it, but she refused; then he appealed to me and I shirked. Finally Peter determined to write a story himself.

"It oughtn't to be any harder than writing a poem and I managed that," he said dolefully.

He worked at it in the evenings in the granary loft, and the rest of us forebore to question him concerning it, because he evidently disliked talking about his lterary efforts. But this evening I had to ask him if he would soon have it ready, as I wanted to make up the paper.

"It's done," said Peter, with an air of gloomy triumph. "It don't amount to much, but anyhow I made it all out of my own head. Not one word of it was ever printed or told before, and nobody can say there was."

"Then I guess we have all the stuff in and I'll have Our Magazine ready to read by tomorrow night," I said.

"I s'pose it will be the last one we'll have," sighed Cecily. "We can't carry it on after you all go, and it has been such fun."

"Bev will be a real newspaper editor some day," declared the Story Girl, on whom the spirit of prophecy suddenly descended that night.

She was swinging on the bough of an apple tree, with a crimson shawl wrapped about her head, and her eyes were bright with roguish fire.

"How do you know he will?" asked Felicity.

"Oh, I can tell futures," answered the Story Girl mysteriously. "I know what's going to happen to all of you. Shall I tell you?"

"Do, just for the fun of it," I said. "Then some day we'll know just how near you came to guessing right. Go on. What else about me?"

"You'll write books, too, and travel all over the world," continued the Story Girl. "Felix will be fat to the end of his life, and he will be a grandfather before he is fifty, and he will wear a long black beard."

"I won't," cried Felix disgustedly. "I hate whiskers. Maybe I can't help the grandfather part, but I can help having a beard."

"You can't. It's written in the stars."

"T'ain't. The stars can't prevent me from shaving."

"Won't Grandpa Felix sound awful funny?" reflected Felicity.

"Peter will be a minister," went on the Story Girl.

"Well, I might be something worse," remarked Peter, in a not ungratified tone.

"Dan will be a farmer and will marry a girl whose name begins with K and he will have eleven children. And he'll vote Grit."

"I won't," cried scandalized Dan. "You don't know a thing about it. Catch me ever voting Grit! As for the rest of it - I don't care. Farming's well enough, though I'd rather be a sailor."

"Don't talk such nonsense," protested Felicity sharply. "What on earth do you want to be a sailor for and be drowned?"

"All sailors aren't drowned," said Dan.

"Most of them are. Look at Uncle Stephen."

"You ain't sure he was drowned."

"Well, he disappeared, and that is worse."

"How do you know? Disappearing might be real easy."

"It's not very easy for your family."

"Hush, let's hear the rest of the predictions," said Cecily.

"Felicity," resumed the Story Girl gravely, "will marry a minister."

Sara Ray giggled and Felicity blushed. Peter tried hard not to look too self-consciously delighted.

"She will be a perfect housekeeper and will teach a Sunday School class and be very happy all her life."

"Will her husband be happy?" queried Dan solemnly.

"I guess he'll be as happy as your wife," retorted Felicity reddening.

"He'll be the happiest man in the world," declared Peter warmly.

"What about me?" asked Sara Ray.

The Story Girl looked rather puzzled. It was so hard to imagine Sara Ray as having any kind of future. Yet Sara was plainly anxious to have her fortune told and must be gratified.

"You'll be married," said the Story Girl recklessly, "and you'll live to be nearly a hundred years old, and go to dozens of funerals and have a great many sick spells. You will learn not to cry after you are seventy; but your husband will never go to church."

"I'm glad you warned me," said Sara Ray solemnly, "because now I know I'll make him promise before I marry him that he will go."

"He won't keep the promise," said the Story Girl, shaking her head. "But it's getting cold and Cecily is coughing. Let us go in."

"You haven't told my fortune," protested Cecily disappointedly.

The Story Girl looked very tenderly at Cecily - at the smooth little brown head, at the soft, shining eyes, at the cheeks that were often over-rosy after slight exertion, at the little sunburned hands that were always busy doing faithful work or quiet kindnesses. A very strange look came over the Story Girl's face, her eyes grew sad and far-reaching, as if of a verity they pierced beyond the mists of hidden years.

"I couldn't tell any fortune half good enough for you, dearest," she said, slipping her arm round Cecily. "You deserve everything good and lovely. But you know I've only been in fun - of course I don't know anything about what's going to happen to us."

"Perhaps you know more than you think for," said Sara Ray, who seemed much pleased with her fortune and anxious to believe it, despite the husband who wouldn't go to church.

"But I'd like to be told my fortune, even in fun," persisted Cecily.

"Everybody you meet will love you as long as you live," said the Story Girl. "There that's the very nicest fortune I can tell you, and it will come true whether the others do or not, and now we must go in."

We went, Cecily still a little disappointed. In later years I often wondered why the Story Girl refused to tell her fortune that night. Did some strange gleam of foreknowledge fall for a moment across her mirth-making? Did she realize in a flash of prescience that there was no earthly future for our sweet Cecily? Not for her were to be the lengthening shadows or the fading garland. The end was to come while the rainbow still sparkled on her wine of life, ere a single peter had fallen from her rose of joy. Long life was before all the others who trysted that night in the old homestead orchard; but Cecily's maiden feet were never to leave the golden road.

The Books: "The Story Girl" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery.

Okay - so now we're moving out of the comfort of the Anne series - into the wilds of all her OTHER books. The Story Girl is first in a two-part series - and the lead girl is Sara Stanley, aka "The Story Girl". However- unlike her Anne books (excerpt here) or her Emily books (excerpt here) - in this one The Story Girl is seen from the outside. The book is a first-person narration - rare in Lucy Maud's work (except, actually, for her short stories - there's a lot of first-person narration there - but The Story Girl and The Golden Road (excerpt here) are the only first-person books.) And the person telling the story is NOT The Story Girl - so we are seeing her from someone else's eyes the whole time, which I think is really interesting.

I love these two books. Lucy Maud wrote them for a couple reasons - one because she didn't JUST want to write about Anne. The Story Girl was published in 1910 - so Lucy Maud is in the first wave of her fame. She didn't just want to repeat herself. Second of all, she wanted to reach out to the young BOY audience as well. These two books are her way of doing that. The first-person narrator is a boy - and the books are light on the nature descriptions - there's next to no romance (the kids are all young - The Story Girl is the oldest one, and she is only 14) - and the books are FULL of hi-jinx. Lucy Maud has never been so mischievous as in these books. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The kids scheme, plan, make up games, decide to cook dinner for their elders and use sawdust instead of flour by accident, they get freaked out, they have serious problems, they get ill, they sit around on snowy nights and tell stories - but mainly, it is the story of all the MISCHIEF they get into, on purpose or not. This is a book about childhood, on the ground-level. She's right there in it with them. BUT (and here is why I think she's such a special writer): you also get the sense, somehow, that Bev (the narrator) is not telling us about these events NOW - but he is looking back on them, way back on them, from his own adulthood. There's a certain nostalgia that keens through these pages - there's also (at times) a shadow that falls over the narration here and there - a shadow from the future. Like with Cecily. You know, somehow - through things Bev says and hints at - that Cecily will die young. She doesn't die within the course of the two books - but you know that she is not going to make it, and that ... Oh. It's going to be so so sad for those kids. It will be the moment they leave childhood behind. So these books are elevated somehow - by this sense of retrospect. I LOVE that aspect of them. It's painful. It's like the last paragraph of Stephen King's It which ... gives me a little pang inside every time I read it, or even right now, when I am just thinking about it (excerpt here). The nostalgia for the intensity of childhood. The pain of separating from your childhood friends, and also moving off "The Golden Road" of childhood. Nostalgia is great. But it doesn't feel good, all the time. You miss those days gone by. You miss them so much that it aches. This is what I get from these two books.

Bev is our narrator. Bev is a boy. Bev??? Don't ask me. Bev and Felix are being sent to live with relatives because their father is being sent on business to Rio de Janiero. I believe their mother is dead. Bev and Felix have never been to see these relatives - so it is all new to them. It is also their father's childhood home (on PEI, of course) - so they have heard all about it - the red roads, the cherry blossoms, all the little landmarks (trees and stones and walls, etc.) that their father had described to them so lovingly. So even though Bev and Felix miss their dad, they feel so close to him - seeing where he grew up.

They stay with Uncle Alec and Aunt Janet who have 3 kids - Felicity, Cecily and Dan. At the next farm over stays Sara Stanley with her Aunt Olivia (Sara's mother is dead). The other kids who hang out in this gang are Peter, the "hired boy" (you just love him) - and Sara Ray - a small pale kind of annoying little worrywart. They all embrace Bev and Felix ... and the adventures then begin.

The Story Girl is a born storyteller. The book is full of her stories - some of them are true, or legends from the town - how so-and-so proposed to his wife, etc. Some are hilarious, others are tragic. She tells stories about ancient Greece and Rome - but she also tells poetic stories, about how the Milky Way became the Milky Way, etc. Her voice holds everyone in thrall. She knows it, too. She knows she has a special voice. And whatever else her storytelling ability is - it is also a gift. There are times when it is even an uncanny gift - when she has the ability to transform herself into an ancient crone, back to a straight tall prince, back to the crone .... and those listening see the ENTIRE thing unfold in their mind's eye. Sara Stanley is that good. All the kids love her stories, and say, "Oh, tell this one! Tell that one!"

The excerpt I chose is this: the kids are usually very stuck as to what they can "play" on Sundays. Their normal games would not do, because it's the Sabbath, and so ... usually the alternatives they come up with are almost worse than their normal games. Much trouble is caused on Sundays. Sara has an idea ... why don't the boys have a sermon-writing and sermon-saying contest? And the girls will be the judges. That sounds like a good Sunday game!

The boys are all stressed out ... they sit and work on their sermons, they write them out, they murmur the words to themselves, they are in an agony of stress about having to PERFORM them ... totally terrifying. Then comes the day of the contest. They all go into the orchard to what is known as The Pulpit Stone. The girls sit in a semi-circle, waiting, ready, agog. The boys start to do their sermons. Felix is terrified. Bev is proud of his writing. Blah blah ... they all do okay.

But then comes Peter. The 'hired boy'. And the entire game changes. That's the excerpt I'll do - because it's pretty damn funny. I love it.

Excerpt from The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery.

Peter made quite a handsome little minister, in his navy blue coat, white collar, and neatly bowed tie. His black eyes shone, and his black curls were brushed up in quite a ministerial pompadour, but threatened to tumble over at the top in graceless ringlets.

It was decided that there was no use in waiting for Sara Ray, who might or might not come, according to the humour in which her mother was. Therefore Peter proceeded with the service.

He read the cahpter and gave out the hymn with as much sang froid as if he had been doing it all his life. Mr. Marwood himself could n ot have bettered the way in which Peter said,

"We will sing the whole hymn, omitting the fourth stanza."

That was a fine touch which I had not thought of. I began to think that, after all, Peter might be a foeman worthy of my steel.

When Peter was ready to begin he thrust his hands into his pockets - a totally unorthodox thing. Then he plunged in without further ado, speaking in his ordinary conversational tone - another unorthodox thing. There was no shorthand reporter present to take the sermon down; but, if necessary, I could preach it over verbatim, and so, I doubt not, could everyone that heard it. It was not a forgettable kind of sermon.

"Dearly beloved," said Peter, "my sermon is about the bad place - in short, about hell."

An electric shock seemed to run through the audience. Everybody looked suddenly alert. Peter had, in one sentence, done what my whole sermon had failed to do. He had made an impression.

"I shall divide my sermon into three heads," pursued Peter. "The first head is, what you must not do if you don't want to go to the bad place. The secon dhead is, what the bad place is like" -- sensation in the audience -- "and the third head is, how to escape going there.

"Now, there's a great many things you must not do, and it's very important to know what they are. You ought not to lose no time in finding out. In the first place you mustn't ever forget to mind what grown-up people tell you - that is, good grown-up people."

"But how are you going to tell who are the good grown-up people?" asked Felix suddenly, forgetting that he was in church.

"Oh, that is easy," said Peter. "You can always just feel who is good and who isn't. And you m ustn't tell lies and you mustn't murder any one. You must be specially careful not to murder any one. You might be forgiven for telling lies, if you was real sorry for them, but if you murdered any one it would be pretty hard to get forgiven, so you'd better be on the safe side. And you mustn't commit suicide, because if you did that you wouldn't have any chance of repenting it; and you mustn't forget to say your prayers and you mustn't quarrel with your sister."

At this point Felicity gave Dan a significant poke with her elbow, and Dan was up in arms at once.

"Don't you be preaching at me, Peter Craig," he cried out. "I won't stand it. I don't quarrel with my sister any oftener than she quarrels with me. You can just leave me alone."

"Who's touching you?" demanded Peter. "I didn't mention no names. A minister can say anything he likes in the pulpit, as long as he doesn't mention any names, and nobody can answer back."

"All right, but just you wait till to-morrow," growled Dan, subsiding reluctantly into silence under the reproachful looks of the girls.

"You must not play any games on Sunday," went on Peter, "that is, any week-day games -- or whisper in church, or laugh in church -- I did that once but I was awful sorry - and you mustn't take any notice of Paddy - I mean of the family cat at family prayers, not even if he climbs up your back. And you mustn't call names or make faces."

"Amen," cried Felix, who had suffered many things because Felicity so often made faces at him.

Peter stopped and glared at him over the edge of the Pulpit Stone.

"You haven't any business to call out a thing like that right in the middle of a sermon," he said.

"They do it in the Methodist church at Markdale," protested Felix, somewhat abashed. "I've heard them."

"I know they do. That's the Methodist way and it is all right for them. I haven't a word to say against Methodists. My Aunt Jane was one, and I might have been one myself if I hadn't been so scared of the Judgment Day. But you ain't a Methodist. You're a Presbyterian, ain't you?"

"Yes, of course. I was born that way."

"Very well then, you've got to do things the Presbyterian way. Don't let me hear any more of your amens or I'll amen you."

"Oh, don't anybody interrupt again," implored the Story Girl. "It isn't fair. How can any one preach a good sermon if he is always being interrupted? Nobody interrupted Beverley."

"Bev didn't get up there and pitch into us like that," muttered Dan.

"You mustn't fight," resumed Peter undauntedly. "That is, you mustn't fight for the fun of fighting, nor out of bad temper. You must not say bad words or swear. You mustn't get drunk - although of course you wouldn't be likely to do that before you grow up, and the girls never. There's prob'ly a good many other things you mustn't do, but these I've named are the most important. Of course, I'm not saying you'll go to the bad place for sure if you do them. I only say you're running a risk. The devil is looking out for the people who do these things and he'll be more likely to get after them than to waste time over the people who don't do them. And that's all about the first head of my sermon."

At this point Sara Ray arrived, somewhat out of breath. Peter looked at her reproachfully.

"You've missed my whole first head, Sara," he said. "That isn't fair, when you're to be one of the judges. I think I ought to preach it over again for you."

"That was really done once. I know a story about it," said the Story Girl.

"Who's interrupting now?" said Dan slyly.

"Never mind, tell us the story," said the preacher himself, eagerly leaning over the pulpit.

"It was Mr. Scott who did it," said the Story Girl. "He was preaching somewhere in Nova Scotia, and when he was more than half way through his sermon - and you know sermons were very long in those days -- a man walked in. Mr. Scott stopped until he had taken his seat. Then he said, 'My friend, you are very late for this service. I hope you won't be late for heaven. The congregation will excuse me if I recapitulate the sermon for our friend's benefit.' And then he just preached the sermon over again from the beginning. It is said that that particular man was never known to be late for church again."

"It served him right," said Dan, "but it was pretty hard lines on the rest of the congregation."

"Now, let's be quiet so Peter can go on with his sermon," said Cecily.

Peter squared his shoulders and took hold of the edge of the pulpit. Never a thump had he thumped, but I realized that his way of leaning forward and fixing this one or that one of his hearers with his eye was much more effective.

"I've come now to the second head of my sermon -- what the bad place is like."

He proceeded to describe the bad place. Later on we discovered that he had found his material in an illustrated translation of Dante's Inferno which had once been given to his Aunt Jane as a school prize. But at the time we supposed he must be drawing from Biblical sources. Peter had been reading the Bible steadily ever since what we always referred to as "the Judgment Sunday", and he was by now almost through it. None of the rest of us had ever read the Bible completely through, and we thought Peter must have found his description of the world of the lost in some portion with which we were not acquainted. Therefore, his utterances carried all the weight of inspiration, and we sat appalled before his lurid phrases. He used his own words to clothe the ideas he had found, and the result was a force and simplicity that struck home to our imaginations.

Suddenly Sara Ray sprang to her feet with a scream -- a scream that changed into strange laughter. We all, preacher included, looked at her aghast. Cecily and Felicity sprang up and caught hold of her. Sara Ray was really in a bad fit of hysterics, but we knew nothing of such a thing in our experience, and we thought she had gone mad. She shrieked, cried, laughed, and flung herself about.

"She's gone clean crazy," said Peter, coming down out of his pulpit with a very pale face.

"You've frightened her crazy with your dreadful sermon," said Felicity indignantly.

She and Cecily each took Sara by an arm and, half leading, half carrying, got her out of the orchard and up to the house. The rest of us looked at each other in terrified questioning.

"You've made rather too much of an impression, Peter," said the Story Girl miserably.

"She needn't have got so scared. If she'd only waited for the third head I'd have showed her how easy it was to get clear of going to the bad place and go to heaven instead. But you girls are always in such a hurry," said Peter bitterly.

"Do you s'pose they'll have to take her to the asylum?" said Dan in a whisper.

"Hush, here's your father," said Felix.

Uncle Alec came striding down the orchard. We had never before seen Uncle Alec angry. But there was no doubt that he was very angry. His blue eyes fairly blazed at us as he said,

"What have you been doing to frighten Sara Ray into such a condition?"

"We -- were just having a sermon contest," explained the Story Girl tremulously. "And Peter preached about the bad place, and it frightened Sara. That is all, Uncle Alec."

"All! I don't know what the result will be to that nervous, delicate child. She is shrieking in there and nothing will quiet her. What do you mean by playing such a game on Sunday, and making a jest of sacred things? No, not a word --" for the Story Girl had attempted to speak. "You and Peter march off home. And the next time I find you up to such doings on Sunday or any other day I'll give you cause to remember it to your latest hour."

The Story Girl and Peter went humbly home and we went with them.

"I can't understand grown-up people," said Felix despairingly. "When Uncle Edward preached sermons it was all right, but when we do it it is 'making a jest of sacred things.' And I heard Uncle Alec tell a story once about being nearly frightened to death when he was a little boy, by a minister preaching on the end of the world; and he said, 'That was something like a sermon. You don't hear such sermons nowadays.' But when Peter preaches just such a sermon, it's a very different story."

"It's no wonder we can't understand the grown-ups," said the Story Girl indignantly, "because we've never been grown-up ourselves. But they have been children, and I don't see why they can't understand us. Of course, perhaps we shouldn't have had the contest on Sundays. But all the same I think it's mean of Uncle Alec to be so cross. Oh, I do hope poor Sara won't have to be taken to the asylum."

The Books: "Rilla of Ingleside" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote this book in a fiery passion and it was published in 1921. She considered it the best thing she ever wrote. Even years later. She considered this her best book. There were a couple of things going on in her life as she wrote it: Uhm, WWI. So there was THAT. The whole book takes place during WWI - which wrenched Canada into the 20th century. Also - her dearly beloved kindred-spirit cousin Frede had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic - and she basically never recovered from the loss. She was still in pretty much OPEN mourning 10 years later, 11 years later ... she never made another "friend", that was it for her. So Frede died in 1918 - the world war completely consumed her every waking breath - she didn't passively wait out the war, she LIVED it. Every battle, every move forward, every setback ... she was extremely patriotic, she hated 'the Huns' - she devoured newspapers, she felt sickened at the bloodshed, she was a woman consumed. Rilla of Ingleside is her book about all of that.

Anne and Gilbert's children are now almost all grown up. Rilla, the youngest, is 14 years old. So when war breaks out - her sons all go. Anne doesn't know how to find the strength - there is a heart-wrenching scene when she gets the word that Walter, her son who abhors war (he's the poet), has signed up. (He's like Sergeant York, a bit.) She tries not to be "selfish" - when other mothers have lost sons, have sacrificed so much - she tries to be brave - and she IS brave - but it breaks her heart.

The household becomes a war household. The town is a war town. There are parades of soldiers going off to war. The women stay home, join the Red Cross, and read the newspaper every day, and learn how to pronounce the names of towns they have never heard of before, towns in foreign lands. Canada loses its provincial isolation. Women (or a lot of women - not all women) are just as involved in the war effort as the men - even though they don't go to battle. It is not just emotional involvement - although there is THAT. Having a girlfriend or wife or mother to write home to when you are at war is not a small thing. But they sew, they make bandages, they become nurses - the entire country basically stops what it's doing, and turns its entire focus onto winning this apocalyptic battle.

Lucy Maud's journals during WWI are an amazing historical document - I think anybody who is interested in WWI, and first-person experiences, should not leave those journals out of their library. Every day - she'll report to her journal what happened in Europe the day before - and the response of the town - etc. Every single inch gained ... every inch lost ... the big battles, the ones still remembered, the small ... Every single one is hashed out in those journals. Lucy Maud used her journals as the basis for much of Rilla of Ingleside.

Of course there are romances, and small comedic episodes - but for the most part: this is a war book. This is also a book about Canada. I'm surprised this book isn't more remembered. It should be.

"Real life" also moves on ... there's a very funny 'war wedding' that goes on, Rilla has a sweet beginning romance with one of the Ford boys (member Leslie Moore? It's her son) - but then he goes off to war - and now she just writes him letters, and waits it out, and tries to bear it. Rilla is kind of a silly girl, you can see that - she's the youngest of 6, so she was fussed over, petted, babied. She's kind of vain, and has a rather frivolous personality. Lucy Maud does this on purpose, obviously. The war, and what the Blythe family loses, changes everyone forever. Rilla - without having one "a-ha" moment - which would be phony - changes. She finds depths of strength within her she never knew she had. She becomes a woman. A grown woman. Strong, deep, reliable, and in touch with the deeper wellsprings of life. She gives up frivolity.

I wanted to choose an excerpt, though, that shows the book's true feel - the feeling of the WAR - and I knew exactly what chapter to choose.

Like I said: any person who is really serious about WWI (in the way I'm serious about the Soviet empire - and collect any and all books about it - fiction or non) - should read Rilla and should also read Lucy Maud's war journals. They're amazing historical documents - not just the history of Canada, but the whole world at that time.

This excerpt is from the chapter called "Black Sunday". Oh - and "Mrs. Blythe", of course, is Anne. The "Cousin Sophia" mentioned is a total drip who thinks that the war has been sent to them to punish them all for their collective sinful ways. She's one of THOSE morons. The great thing too about this book is that it's all the same stuff going on then that's gone on in every war: there are the pacifists, there are those who actuall sympathize with the enemy, there are those (all women, of course) who just don't care about world events and go on with their idiotic trivial lives of childrearing and cooking and sewing (that's what Rebecca West calls such women: "idiots" - women who don't read the newspaper - who make a big deal out of REFUSING to read the newspaper, as though that is something to be proud of, women who willfully huddle in their domestic concerns while the world tailspins into horror and carnage - women who only pay attention to world events when it affects them PERSONALLY - idiots) - there are defeatists, there are extremists, there are people who are blood-thirsty for the Huns, and those who just know that the threat caused by Germany must be stopped ... etc. It's all the same. You would recognize the world she described. But oh - to not have the Internet to race to when you hear horrible news ... That's part of the agony. Having to WAIT for the news.

Excerpt from Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever held before in the history of the world. And in that week there was one day when all humanity seemed nailed to the cross; on that day the whole planet must have been agroan with universal convulsion, everywhere the hearts of men were failing them for fear.

It dawned calmly and coldly and greyly at Ingleside. Mrs. Blythe and Rilla and Miss Oliver made ready for church in a suspense tempered by hope an dconfidence. The doctor was away, having been summoned during the wee sma's to the Marwood household in Upper Glen, where a little war-bride was fighting gallantly on her own battleground to give life, not death, to the world. Susan announced that she meant to stay home tha tmorning - a rare decision for Susan.

"But I would rather not go to church this morning, Mrs. Dr. dear," she explained. "If Whiskers-on-the-moon were there and I saw him looking holy and pleased, as he always looks when he thinks the Huns are winning, I fear I would lose my patience and my sense of decorum and hurl a Bible or a hymn-book at him, thereby disgracing myself and the sacred edifice. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I shall stay home from church till the tide turns and pray hard here."

"I think I might as well stay home, too, for all the good church will do me today," Miss Oliver said to Rilla, as they walked down the hard-frozen red road to the church. "I can think of nothing but the question, 'Does the line still hold?'"

"Next Sunday will be Easter," said Rilla. "Will it herald death or life to our cause?"

Mr. Meredith preached that morning from the text, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved," and hope and confidence rang through his inspiring sentences. Rilla, looking up at the memorial tablet on the wall above their pew, "sacred to the memory of Walter Cuthbert Blythe", felt herself lifted out of her dread and filled anew with courage. Walter could not have laid down his life for naught. His had been the gift of prophetic vision and he had foreseen victory. She would cling to that belief - the line would hold.

In this renewed mood she walked home from church almost gaily. The others, too, were hopeful, and all went smiling into Ingleside. There was no one in the living-room, save Jims, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Doc, who sat "hushed in grim respose" on the heart-rug, looking very Hydeish indeed. No one wa in the dining-room either -- and, stranger still, no dinner was on the table, which was not even set. Where was Susan?

"Can she have been taken ill?" exclaimed Mrs. Blythe anxiously. "I thought it strange that she did not want to go to church this morning."

The kitchen door opened and Susan appeared on the threshold with such a ghastly face that Mrs. Blythe cried out in sudden panic.

"Susan, what is it?"

"The British line is broken and the German shells are falling on Paris," said Susan dully.

The three women stared at each other, stricken.

"It's not true -- it's not," gasped Rilla.

"The thing would be -- ridiculous," said Gertrude Oliver -- and then she laughed horribly.

"Susan, who told you this -- when did the news come?" asked Mrs. Blythe.

"I got it over the long-distance phone from Charlottetown half an hour ago," said Susan. "The news came to town late last night. It was Dr. Holland phoned it out and he said it was only too true. Since then I have done nothing, Mrs. Dr. dear. I am very sorry dinner is not ready. It is the first time I have been so remiss. If you will be patient I will soon have something for you to eat. But I am afraid I let the potatoes burn."

"Dinner! Nobody wants any dinner, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe wildly. "Oh, this thing is unbelievable -- it must be a nightmare."

"Paris is lost - France is lost - the war is lost," gasped Rilla, amid the utter ruins of hope and confidence and belief.

"Oh God --- oh God," moaned Gertrude Oliver, walking about the room and wringing her hands. "Oh --- God!"

Nothing else -- no other words -- nothing but that age-old plea - an old, old cry of supreme agony and appeal, from the human heart whose every human staff has failed it.

"Is God dead?" asked a startled little voice from the doorway of the living room. Jims stood there, flushed from sleep, his big brown eyes filled with dread. "Oh, Willa - oh, Willa, is God dead?"

Miss Oliver stopped walking and exclaiming, and stared at Jims, in whose eyes tears of fright were beginning to gather. Rilla ran to his comforting, while Susan bounded up from the chair upon which she had dropped.

"No," she said briskly, with a sudden return of her real self. "No, God isn't dead -- nor Lloyd George either. We were forgetting that, Mrs. Dr. dear. Don't cry, little Kitchener. Bad as things are, they might be worse. The British line may be broken but the British navy is not. Let us tie to that. I will take a brace and get up a bite to eat, for strength we must have."

They made a pretence of eating Susan's "bite", but it was only a pretence. Nobody at Ingleside ever forgot that black afternoon. Gertrude Oliver walked the floor -- they all walked the floor; except Susan, who got out her grey war sock.

"Mrs. Dr. dear, I must knit on Sunday at last. I have never dreamed of doing it before for, say what might be said, I have considered it was a violation of the third commandment. But whether it is or whether it is not I must knit today or I shall go mad."

"Knit if you can, Susan," said Mrs. Blythe restlessly. "I would knit if I could -- but I cannot -- I cannot."

"If we could only get fuller information," moaned Rilla. "There might be soemthing to encourage us -- if we knew all."

"We know that the Germans are shelling Paris," said Miss Oliver bitterly. "In that case they must have smashed through everywhere and be at the very gates. No, we have lost -- let us face the fact as other peoples in the past have had to face it. Other nations, with right on their side, have given their best and bravest -- and gone down to defeat in spite of it."

"I won't give up like that," cried Rilla, her pale face suddenly flushing. "I won't despair. If Germany overruns all France we are not conquered. I am ashamed of myself for this hour of despair. You won't see me slump again like this. I'm going to ring up town at once and ask for particulars."

But town could not be got. The long-distance operator there was submerged by similar calls from every part of the distracted country. Rilla finally gave up and slipped away to Rainbow Valley. There she knelt down on the withered grey grasses in the little nook where she and Walter had had their last talk together, with her head bowed against the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. The sun had broken through the black clouds and drenched the valley with a pale golden splendour. The bells on the Tree Lovers twinkled elfinly and fitfully in the gusty March wind.

"Oh God, give me strength," Rilla whispered. "Just strength - and courage." Then like a child, she clasped her hands together and said, as simply as Jims could have done, "Please send us better news tomorrow."

She knelt there a long time, and when she went back to Ingleside she was calm and resolute. The doctor had arrived home, tired but triumphant, little Douglas Haig Marwood having made a safe landing on the shores of time. Gertrude was still pacing restlessly but Mrs. Blythe and Susan had reacted from the shock, and Susan was already planning a new line of defence for the channel ports.

"I heard up at Marwood's of the line being broken," said the doctor, "but this story of the Germans shelling Paris seems to be rather incredible. Even if they broke through they were fifty miles from Paris at the nearest point and how could they get their artillery close enough to shell it in so short a time? Depend upon it, girls, that part of the message can't be true."

This point of view cheered them all a little, and helped them through the evening. And at nine o'clock a long-distance message came through at last, that helped them through the night.

"The line broke only in one place, before St. Quentin," said the doctor, as he hung up the receiver, "and the British troops are retreating in good order. That's not so bad. As for the shells that are falling on Paris, they are coming from a distance of seventy miles - from some amazing long-range gun the Germans have invented and sprung with the opening offensive. That is all the news to date, and Dr. Holland says it is reliable."

"It would have been dreadful news yesterday," said Gertrude, "but compared to what we heard this morning it is almost like good news. But still," she added, trying to smile, "I am afraid I will not sleep much tonight."

"There is one thing to be thankful for at any rate, Mrs. Oliver, dear," said Susan, "and that is that Cousin Sophia did not come in today. I really could not have endured her on top of all the rest."

The Books: "Rainbow Valley" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Published in 1919 - this is the second book about Anne's 6 children ... and the spectre of World War I slowly approaches. Lucy Maud is writing it during the war - and although the book takes place prior to World War I, the shadow hangs over it. It is as though she realizes (as the whole world realizes) that the old world has died away. Welcome to the 20th century. Modern warfare. A carnage unlike anything humanity had ever experienced. Technology. All that. Rainbow Valley is her last "Anne" book to take place PRIOR to all of that, to the horrible awakening. And Lucy Maud manages to convey the consciousness of that old world, and its fragility, and the fact that it doesn't have long to live, in her prose. She has a way of letting us know what is coming. Listen to the second to the last paragraph:

He stood up on a hillock, tall and splendid, with his open brow and his fearless eyes. There were thousands like him all over the land of the maple.

There's the whole thing in the book about responding to the 'call of the Piper'. In the innocent world of the book, it just means - approaching adulthood, facing the unknown - who is ready to heed the call of the Piper? But Lucy Maud manages to suggest a more ominous meaning. The call of the Piper is actually (although no one knows it yet) war.

Nobody knows that war is coming, that it will wrench their worlds apart, that all the boys who we now know as cute little guys with fishing poles will be going off to Europe to the trenches. That the womenfolk (who are all now still little girls with pinafores) will have thier hearts dragged along behind them, living the war in every agonizing breath. None of that is here yet - but you can feel it. In the way Lucy Maud writes. Somehow, it's melancholy. Even though the whole book is a funny heartwarming book about a rowdy group of kids playing in their favorite spot, Rainbow Valley ... the overall impression left from the book is almost one of a keening sadness. Did anyone else pick up on this? It's not sentimental, or overt ... Lucy Maud is just writing about a world that no longer exists and she is grieving it. Grieving for what this young generation will have to go through. Grieving for the lost innocence of her country. I really feel that in Rainbow Valley.

So we have Anne and Gilbert's kids - 6 of them. They're lovely kids, individuals, each distinct and separate from the other. The Blythes live next door to the old dusty manse where the widowed minister lives with HIS brood of kids. The minister (Rev. Meredith) is a lovely man, a wonderful minister, and he LOVES his children - but he kind of sucks as a father. He lets them run wild. He has no idea what they are doing, where they are going. The kids dress themselves (sometimes to disastrous results) - they sit and sing in the graveyard (causing huge scandals in the town) - they run WILD. They are a huge scandal. They are very mch loved by everyone, because they are kind-hearted sweet smart kids - but they are just insanely mischievous. They are always daring each other to do stuff, to disastrous results. Oh - and they are totally aware that their father is basically in a prolonged state of mourning for their mother - and so they are very very sensitive about anything that will hurt him. So if they get in trouble, because someone in the town "told" on them, and their father tells them how disappointed he is in them ... then they realize that they must "do penance" and punish themselves for hurting their father yet again. These "penances" usually cause even more trouble than the original mischief.

But you just love these kids. Especially Faith Meredith. Fatih Meredith, the oldest girl in that family, a golden-haired red-cheeked MANIAC, is one of Lucy Maud's great child creations. I was disappointed to see her fade into the distance in the next book (she goes to Europe with the Red Cross, I believe). I think Faith could have had her own book as an adult - it would have been really interesting to see who she would have become. She's gorgeous, she's wild, she has a fiery temper, she has a good sense of right and wrong - but she's just WILD. There's one episode where she rides a pig through the middle of the town on a dare - and i swear, every time I read that episode tears of laughter fall down my face. I don't know why it strikes me so funny - maybe because of Lucy Maud's description of the terrified pig ... of the scandalized townspeople watching Faith gallop by ON A PIG ... It's just hilarious to me.

There are side plots. Mary Vance - the white-haired orphan girl who Miss Cornelia eventually adopts after she is basically camping out at the manse for weeks, after running away. Now SHE is a trouble-maker. Big-time. Also - eventually - Rev. Meredith starts to court someone again (in his own dreamy abstracted way) and the Meredith kids are terrified (even though they love Rosemary) because Mary Vance told them that all stepmothers are evil, even if they started OUT nice.

The excerpt I chose is a small one. It always makes me laugh. It is ridiculous - but it's an example, i think, of why Mark Twain loved her writing. She gets into childhood like almost no other author (except for maybe Twain himself., And Dickens. But let's just say: very few authors really GET IT.) She does. This episode is SO FUNNY to read, but so tragic to the little 6 year old girl involved.

Excerpt from Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery.

Rilla Blythe walked proudly, and perhaps a little primly, through the main 'street' of the Glen and up the manse hill, carefully carrying a small basketful of early strawberries, which Susan had coaxed into lusciousness in one of the sunny nooks of Ingleside. Susan had charged Rilla to give the basket to nobody except Aunt Martha or Mr. Meredith, and Rilla, very proud of being entrusted with such an errand, was resolved to carry out her instructions to the letter.

Susan had dressed her daintily in a white, starched and embroidered dress, with sash of blue and beaded slippers. Her long ruddy curls were sleek and round, and Susan had let her put on her best hat, out of compliment to the manse. It was a somewhat elaborate affair, wherein Susan's taste had more to say than Anne's, and Rilla's small soul gloried in its splendours of silk and lace and flowers. She was very conscious of her hat, and I am afraid she strutted up the manse hill. The strut, or the hat, or both, got on the nerves of Mary Vance, who was swinging on the lawn gate. Mary's temper was somewhat ruffled just then, into the bargain. Aunt Martha had refused to let her peel the potatoes and had ordered her out of the kitchen.

"Yah! You'll bring the potatoes to the table with strips of skin hanging to them and half boiled as usual! My, but it'll be nice to go to your funeral," shrieked Mary. She went out of the kitchen, giving the door such a bang that even Aunt Martha heard it, and Mr. Meredith in his study felt the vibration and thought absently that there must have been a slight earthquake shock. Then he went on with his sermon.

Mary slipped from the gate and confronted the spick-and-span damsel of Ingleside.

"What you got there?" she demanded, trying to take the basket.

Rilla resisted. "It'th for Mithter Meredith," she lisped.

"Give it to me. I'll give it to him," said Mary.

"No. Thuthan thaid I wathn't to give it to anybody but Mithter Mer'dith or Aunt Martha," insisted Rilla.

Mary eyed her sourly.

"You think you're something, don't you, all dressed up like a doll! Look at me. My dress is all rags and I don't care! I'd rather be ragged than a doll baby. Go home and tell them to put you in a glass case. Look at me -- look at me -- look at me!"

Mary executed a wild dance around the dismayed and bewildered Rilla, flirting her ragged skirt and vociferating "Look at me -- look at me" until poor Rilla was dizzy. But as the latter tried to edge away towards the gate Mary pounced on her again.

"You give me that basket," she ordered with a grimace. Mary was past mistress in the art of "making faces". She could give her countenance a most grotesque and unearthly appearacne out of which her strange, brilliant, white eyes gleamed with weird effect.

"I won't," gasped Rilla, frightened but staunch. "You let me go, Mary Vanth."

Mary let go for a minute and looked around her. Just inside the gate was a small "flake", on which half a dozen large codfish were drying. One of Mr. Meredith's parishioners had presented him with them one day, perhaps in lieu of the subscription he was supposed to pay to the stipend and never did. Mr. Meredith had thanked him and then forgotten all about the fish, which would have promptly spoiled had not the indefatigable Mary prepared them for drying and rigged up the "flake" herself on which to dry them.

Mary had a diabolocial inspiration. She flew to the "flake" and seized the largest fish there - a huge, flat thing, nearly as big as herself. With a whoop she swooped down on the terrified Rilla, brandishing her weird missile. Rilla's courage gave way. To be lambasted with a dried codfish was such an unheard-of thing that Rilla could not face it. With a shriek she dropped her basket and fled. The beautiful berries, which Susan had so tenderly selected for the minister, rolled in a rosy torrent over the dusty road and were trodden on by the flying feet of pursuer and pursued. The basket and contents were no longer in Mary's mind. She thought only of the delight of giving Rilla Blythe the scare of her life. She would teach her to come giving herself airs because of her fine clothes.

Rilla flew down the hill and along the street. Terror lent wings to her feet, and she just managed to keep ahead of Mary, who was somewhat hampered by her own laughter, but who had breath enough to give occasional blood-curdling whoops as she ran, flourishing her codfish in the air. Through the Glen street they swept, while everybody ran to the windows and gates to see them. Mary felt she was making a tremendous sensation and enjoyed it. Rilla, blind with terror and spent of breath, felt that she could run no longer. In another instant that terrible girl would be on her with the codfish. At this point the poor mite stumbled and fell into the mud-puddle at the end of the street just as Miss Cornelia came out of Carter Flagg's store.

Miss Cornelia took the whole situation in at a glance. So did Mary. The latter stopped short in her mid career and before Miss Cornelia could speak she had whirled around and was running up as fast as she had run down. Miss Cornelia's lips tightened ominously, but she knew it was no use to think of chasing her. So she picked up poor, sobbing, dishevelled Rilla instead and took her home. Rilla was heart-broken. Her dress and slippers and hat were ruined and her six year old pride had received terrible bruises.

The Books: "Anne of Ingleside" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

Sixth in the Anne series - but I think this was one of the last books she wrote. I'll have to check. [Checked: It was the second to last. Her last book was "Jane of Lantern Hill" (excerpt here)] Anne of Ingleside was published in 1939 - which always amazes me. What a horrible year that was. A horrible year for the world. There are a couple of foreshadowing moments in this book - because, after all, she has already written Rilla of Ingleside (excerpt here) - so she knows what happens. There's a moment when Anne sees a shadow of a cross over her son Walter's bed - and "later she would look back on that ...." etc.

Anne of Ingleside is the story of Anne and Gilbert raising their brood of children. Each child has his or her own big episode in the book - and the narrative is told from that child's point of view. So we're inside Jem's head, or Walter's head, or whatever. We see Anne and Gilbert, characters we now love and feel we know, through their kids eyes - as parents. They're called "Mother" and "Dad". I admit that when I was a teenager, reading the books for the first time, I got kind of frustrated. Because ... where is Anne??? What's going on with HER? But as an adult, it seems right. Anne is in the book, as herself, with her point of view, in the beginning, and intermittently throughout - and then there's a huge brou-haha that takes up the end of the book - where Anne feels that Gilbert is neglecting her, and then she becomes convinced that Gilbert still pines for his college girlfriend Christine. This is really the only hint we ever get that Anne and Gilbert ever have marital strife. Or - not even strife - how 'bout an ARGUMENT? How 'bout a little reality? Lucy Maud's marriage was so bad and so ... shameful to her (mental illness being so stigmatized) that she never really wrote about marriage - I think it was too hot to go near. Leslie Moore is tragic and interesting (excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams here) - and then she gets married and we never hear of her again. Lucy Maud's books END with marriages. I'm not saying there's anything bad with that - it just becomes noticeable as a theme. Anne and Gilbert are the only married couple that we really follow through their marriage, we see from the inside out, and Lucy Maud turns her focus onto the kids, rather than onto the grown-ups. In a way, this was VERY smart of her - because it kept the interest going for new generations. Anyway, just an observation.

Some of my favorite episodes in this book:

-- the nightmare of Aunt Mary Maria - who comes to stay and then just won't go home. What a drip. I was frustrated with Gilbert for not standing up to her.

-- the tragic chapter where Nan becomes convinced (because a little evil child TOLD her) that she was adopted - that she is actually the daughter of a horrible old fishwife down on the shore

-- when Walter walks all the way home because he's convinced that something bad is happening at home ... Turns out Anne is just having another baby - named Marilla - who eventually will star in her own book Rilla of Ingleside.

-- Anne's disastrous match-making attempt - very very funny

And frankly, I'm gonna be honest here: I just flipped through this book this morning and remembered a lot of it - but it's not lodged in my memory the way the events of some of the other books are. But the excerpt I chose? It's in my head forever. I probably think about this episode, oh, once a month? Seriously. It comes floating through my mind, and I sit, and ponder it for a second, before moving on. I remember the details - the descriptions - but mostly I remember the EVENT. Lucy Maud gets DARK here, and maybe that's why I remember it so clearly. Not sure.

Anyway - Walter (Anne's son) asks her, after overhearing someone mention it: "What happened at Peter Kirk's funeral?"

Anne refuses to tell him. It is not a story for children. But then, in a moment of reflection, she sits and remembers it, thinks back on it.

In my opinion, this is Lucy Maud at her best. All the names, the gossip, the stories, the glimpses into other people's hearts ...

Excerpt from Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery.

It had been in November ... the first November they had spent at Ingleside ... following a week of Indian summer days. The Kirks lived at Mowbray Narrows but came to the Glen church and Gilbert was their doctor; so he and Anne both went to the funeral.

It had been, she remembered, a mild, calm, pearl-grey day. All around them had been the lonely brown-and-purple landscape of November, with patches of sunlight here and there on upland and slope where the sun shone through a rift in the clouds. "Kirkwynd" was so near the shore that a breath of salt win blew through the grim firs behind it. It was a big, prosperous-looking house but Anne always thought that the gable of the L looked exactly like a long, narrow, spiteful face.

Anne paused to speak to a little knot of women on the stiff flowerless lawn. They were all good hard-working souls to whom a funeral was a not unpleasant excitement.

"I forgot to bring a handkerchief," Mrs. Bryan Blake was saying plaintively. "Whatever will I do when I cry?"

'Why will you have to cry?" bluntly asked her sister-in-law Camilla Blake. Camilla had no use for women who cried too easily. "Peter Kirk is no relation to you and you never liked him."

"I think it is proper to cry at a funeral," said Mrs. Blake stiffly. "It shows feeling when a neighbour has been summoned to his long home."

"If nobody cries at Peter's funeral except those who liked him there won't be many wet eyes," said Mrs. Curtis Rodd drily. "That is the truth and why mince it? He was a pious old humbug and I know it if nobody else does. Who is that coming at the little gate? Don't ... don't tell me it's Clara Wilson."

"It is," whispered Mrs. Bryan incredulously.

"Well, you know after Peter's first wife died she told him she would never enter his house again until she came to his funeral and she's kept her word," said Camilla Blake. "She's a sister of Peter's first wife ..." In an explanatory aside to Anne, who looked curiously at Clara Wilson as she swept past them, unseeing, her smouldering topaz eyes staring straight ahead. She was a thin slip of a woman with a dark-browed, tragic face and black hair under one of the absurd bonnets elderly women still wore ... a thing of feathers and "bugles" with a skimpy nose veil. She looked at and spoke to no one, as her long black taffeta skirt swished over the grass and up the verandah steps.

"There's Jed Clinton at the door, putting on his funeral face," said Camilla sarcastically. "He's evidently thinking it is time we went in. It's always been his boast that at his funerals everything goes according to schedule. He's never forgiven Winnie Clow for fainting before the sermon. It wouldn't have been so bad afterwards. Well, nobody is likely to faint at this funeral. Olivia isn't the fainting kind."

"Jed Clinton ... the Lowbridge undertaker," said Mrs. Reese. "Why didn't they have the Glen man?"

"Who? Carter Flagg? Why, woman dear, Peter and him have been at daggers drawn all their lives. Carter wanted Amy Wilson, you know."

"A good many wanted her," said Camilla. "She was a very pretty girl, with her coppery red hair and inky black eyes. Though people thought Clara the handsomer of the two then. It's odd she never married. There's the minister at last ... and the Rev. Mr. Owen of Lowbridge with him. Of course he is Olivia's cousin. All right except that he puts too many 'Oh's' in his prayers. We'd better go in or Jed will have a conniption."

Anne paused to look at Peter Kirk on her way to a chair. She had never liked him. "He has a cruel face," she thought, the first time she had ever seen him. Handsome, yes ... but with cold steely eyes even then becoming pouchy, and the thin pinched merciless mouth of a miser. He was known to be selfish and arrogant in his dealings with his fellow-men in spite of his profession of piety and his unctuous prayers. "Always feels his importance," she had heard someone say once. Yet, on the whole, he had been respected and looked up to,.

He was as arrogant in his death as in his life and there was something about the too-long fingers clasped over his still breast that made Anne shudder. She thought of a woman's heart being held in them and glanced at Olivia Kirk, sitting opposite to her in her mourning. Olivia was a tall, fair, handsome woman with large blue eyes ... "no ugly woman for me," Peter Kirk had said once ... and her face was composed and expressionless. There was no apparent trace of tears ... but then, Olivia had been a Random and the Randoms were not emotional. At least she sat decorously and the most heartbroken in the world could not have worn heavier weeds.

The air was cloyed with the perfume of the flowers that banked the coffin ... for Peter Kirk, who had never known flowers existed. His lodge had sent a wreath, the church had sent one, the Conservative Assocation had sent one, the school trustees had sent one, the Cheese Board had sent one. His oine, long-alienated son had sent nothing, but the Kirk clan at large had sent a huge anchor of white roses with "Harbour At Last" in red rosebuds across it, and there was one from Olivia herself .. .a pillow of calla-lilies. Camilla Blake's face twitched as she loked at it and Anne remembered that she had once heard Camilla say that she had been at Kirkwynd soon after Peter's second marriage when Peter had fired out of the window a potted calla-lily which the bride had brought with her. He wasn't, so he said, going to have his house cluttered up with weeds.

Olivia had apparently taken it very coolly and there had been no more calla-lilies at Kirkwynd. Could it be possible that Olivia ... but Anne looked at Mrs. Kirk's placid face and dismissed the suspicion. After all, it was generally the florist who suggested the flowers.

The choir sang "Death like a narrow sea divides that heavenly land from ours" and Anne caught Camilla's eye and knew they were both wondering just how Peter Kirk would fit into that heavenly land. Anne could almost hear Camilla saying, "Fancy Peter Kirk with a harp and halo if you dare."

The Rev. and Mrs. Owen read a chapter and prayed, with many "Oh's" and many entreaties that sorrowing hearts might be comforted. The Glen minister gave an address which many privately considered entirely too fulsome, even allowing for the fact that you had to say something good of the dead. To hear Peter Kirk called an affectionate father and a tender husband, a kind neighbour and an earnest Christian was, they felt, a misuse of language. Camilla took refuge behind her handkerchief, not to shed tears, and Stephen Macdonald cleared his throat once or twice. Mrs. Bryan must have borrowed a handkerchief from someone, for she was weeping into it, but Olivia's down-dropped blue eyes remained tearless.

Jed Clinton drew a breath of relief. All had gone beautifully. Another hymn ... the customary parade for a last look at "the remains" ... and another successful funeral would be added to his long list.

There was a slight disturbance in a corner of the large room and Clara Wilson made her way through the maze of chairs to the table beside the casket. She turned there and faced the assembly. Her absurd bonnet had slipped a trifle to one side and a loose end of heavy black hair had escaped from its coil and hung down on her shoulder. But nobody thought Clara Wilson looked absurd. Her long sallow face was flushed, her haunted tragic eyes were flaming. She was a woman possessed. Bitterness, like some gnawing incurable disease, seemed to pervade her being.

"You have listend to a pack of lies ... you people who have come here 'to pay your respects' ... or glut your curiosity, whicher it was. Now I shall tell you the truth about Peter Kirk. I am no hypocrite ... I never feared him living and I do not fear him now that he is dead. Nobody has ever dared to tell the truth about him to his face but it is going to be told now ... here at his funeral where he has been called a good husband and a kind neighbour. A good husband! He married my sister Amy ... my beautiful sister, Amy. You all know how sweet and lovely she was. He made her life a misery to her. He tortured and humiliated her ... he liked to do it. Oh, he went to church regularly ... and made long prayers ... and paid his debts. But he was a tyrant and a bully ... his very dog ran when he heard him coming.

"I told Amy she would repent marrying him. I helped her make her wedding dress ... I'd rather have made her shroud. She was wild about him then, poor thing, but she hadn't been his wife a week before she knew what he was. His mother had been a slave and he expected his wife to be one. 'There will be no arguments in my household,' he told her. She hadn't the spirit to argue ... her heart was broken. Oh, I know what she went through, my poor pretty darling. He crossed her in everything. She couldn't have a flower-garden ... she couldn't even have a kitten ... I gave her one and he drowned it. She had to account to him for every cent she spent. Did ever any of you see her in a decent stitch of clothes? He would fault her for wearing her best hat if it looked like rain. Rain couldn't hurt any hat she had, poor soul. Her that loved pretty clothes! He was always sneering at her people. He never laughed in his life ... did any of you ever hear him really laugh? He smiled ... oh yes, he always smiled, calmly and sweetly when he was doing the most maddening things. He smiled when he told her after her little baby was born dead that she might as well have died, too, if she couldn't have anything but dead brats. She died after ten years of it ... and I was glad she had escaped him. I told him then I'd never enter his house again till I came to his funeral. Some of you heard me. I've kept my word and now I've come and told the truth about him. It is the truth ... you know it" ... she pointed fiercely at Stephen Macdonald ... "you know it" ... the long finger darted at Camilla Blake ... "you know it" ... Olivia Kirk did not move a muscle ... "you know it" ... the poor minister himself felt as if that finger stabbed completely through him. "I cried at Peter Kirk's wedding but I told him I'd laugh at his funeral. And I am going to do it."

She swished furiously about and bent over the casket. Wrongs that had festered for years had been avenged. She had wreaked her hatred at last. Her whole body vibrated with triumph and satisfaction as she looked down at the cold quiet face of a dead man. Everybody listened for the burst of vindictive laughter. It did not come. Clara Wilson's angry face suddenly changed ... twisted ... crumpled up like a child's. Clara was ... crying.

She turned, with the tears streaming down her ravaged cheeks, to leave the room. But Olivia Kirk rose before her and laid a hand on her arm. For a moment the two women looked at each other. The room was engulfed in a silence that seemed like a personal presence.

"Thank you, Clara Wilson," said Olivia Kirk. Her face was as inscrutable as ever but there was an undertone in her calm, even voice that made Anne shudder. She felt as if a pit had suddenly opened before her eyes. Clara Wilson might hate Peter Kirk, alive and dead, but Anne felt that her hatred was a pale thing compared to Olivia Kirk's.

The Books: "Anne's House of Dreams" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction bookshelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

What a wonderful book this is. I love every book in the series - and in each one I have my favorite episodes - but for some reason, this one really GETS me. I think it has something to do with the saga of the heartbroken Leslie Moore, and how much that character gets under my skin.

It is easy, at times (and I think Lucy Maud was cognizant of this) to feel like Anne strolls under a lucky star or something. Her unhappiness occurred as a young girl ... and after that, the power of her personality has just swayed everyone she has met. Even her heartache has a sort of ... charmed quality to it. She never gets REALLY dark. (That's one of the reasons why I love the Emily books too (one excerpt here) - even more than the Anne books. They are much closer to Lucy Maud's actual autobiography - and what can I say, I like DARK. I like to at least know that even if a character DOESN'T succumb to the darkness, they COULD. It seems like Anne's philosophy of life is such that it could never really bring her to her knees. This is not a criticism. There are people like that in real life as well.) Cranks become good friends, foes become admirers, etc. Leslie Moore is the first friend to really challenge this. Anne's charm will not work on Leslie. Why? Because Leslie's life has been TOO hard, and there are some tragedies that CANNOT be smiled their way out of, or charmed out of existence. I am making Anne sound shallow here and that is totally not the case - but there are some people who seem to have things work out for them (thru karma or good luck or whatever) - and others carry the weight of the world. Now Anne, in her sensitivity, does not understand why Leslie would automatically dislike her - like: what did she do??? She has never before been disliked for being FORTUNATE. After all, she was an orphan! She was impoverished! She had a hardscrabble life until Matthew and Marilla came along - but even then: she was always the oddball in Avonlea. Her clothes weren't right. She didn't have parents. Nobody in their right mind would be JEALOUS of Anne because of her good fortune! Maybe they would be jealous of her because of how she writes, or because of how she uses her imagination, but because of her good fortune? No. Not until Leslie Moore. Leslie's soul has been warped by her own life tragedy - and no matter what Anne does, it wouldn't matter. Anne has something Leslie knows she will never have: a husband, companionship, happiness ... and this loneliness has corrupted Leslie. She stares at Anne with dull smouldering resentment - Anne cannot fight this. She doesn't know how to "win Leslie Over" because ... there is nothing she can do. What can she do - be less happy with Gilbert in order for Leslie to be happy? This, in my mind, is such an insightful observation about the married and unmarried of this world. There can be smugness about married people - that is completely unconscious - and there can be a prickly bitterness about single people - that is completely unconscious. It's hard to bridge that gap.

Anne suffers a tragedy during House of Dreams - her first real tragedy as an adult. A loss that makes her question her belief in God, that makes her almost go crazy. We love Anne even more for faltering in the face of such strife. Don't we? I know I did. A "plucky heroine" who shows no sign of doubt or uncertainty would become an insufferable prig after a while. Being optimistic is all well and good ... but what about people who truly suffer loss? How on earth could "put on a happy face" help them? Leslie and Anne eventually do become "friends" - but it's almost like they are two wild animals, circling around each other warily. Anne senses that her very existence is an insult to Leslie. If she's happy about making baby booties, Leslie's heart breaks. This is not because Leslie is a selfish bitch. It is because loneliness messes people UP and that fact needs to be acknowledged. Not to wallow in victimhood or whatever - but to just acknowledge the reality that loneliness can twist what was once straight. It is NOT easy to bear (for some). It is not easy for Leslie to bear. Loneliness can make you GLORY in other people's hardships, and you can RESENT other people's ease. It's evil - you feel like you are evil. Lucy Maud, with her life of ... unrelenting loneliness (famous to the masses, but oh, what a home life) ... understood this so so well. She doesn't write about it a lot - but glimpses of it are there in the Leslie Moore character in House of Dreams. What is it like to feel that you are barred forever from ease? Peace? Happiness? Contentment? What is it like when the things that other people take so for granted (having a nice chat at the end of the day with their husband, sharing a meal, knowing that someone else is in the house with you) ... are SO foreign to you? Lucy Maud was behind that glass wall. She had nothing that other people had. Her marriage was not a real marriage. It was a nightmare. She ENDURED it. He was a petulant child. He was no mate. But she looked around and saw ... people coupling up ... sharing life's struggles ... TOGETHER ... That was not for her.

I have gone on and on ... but as you can see, this is what this particular book means to me.

In a way, it is her first ADULT book. Leslie Moore is a character who made an indelible mark on my mind ... and I love love love Anne's journey in relation to her.

Anne confides to Captain Jim (another great character) how she feels that Leslie will never open up to her, be her friend. Captain Jim says to her that Leslie's life has been so unrelentingly tragic that it must be hard for Leslie to deal with anyone who seems so happy. Anne thinks about this, remembers her own awful childhood, and says, "I wasnt happy before I came to Green Gables." Captain Jim says, "Yes, but that was just the normal unhappiness of a child who is not looked after. You haven't had any tragedy. And that's why there's a barrier there."

Anne, with her optimistic belief in the good of people, in the good that a bit of laughter can do on a dark day ... she is troubled by this. And yet she doesn't give up on Leslie. She doesn't PUSH herself on Leslie ... she just tries to be there for her ... and when Leslie suddenly rebuffs her, or suddenly the claws come out - she tries not to take it personally.

For me - this book is all about Leslie. The scene where she breaks down - and lets Anne in - (the chapter called "barriers swept away") still brings me to tears today even though I have read it a gazillion times.

But there's so much else in here to love. Uhm - Miss Cornelia? The man-hater? With the bright green house and the fierce political opinions? I love her. Dammit. I love her. And how she up and marries at the end of the book?? hahahaha Anne and Gilbert are literally stunned into silence when she breaks the news. Gilbert's like: "But ... don't you hate men?"

And Captain Jim - the crusty old sea captain with all the old stories - who takes a liking to Anne and Gilbert (who wouldn't??). He runs the lighthouse - and they spend many a night up there with him, listening to him tell tales.

And then of course - Anne and Gilbert are in their honeymoon phase. So everything is beautiful. I think Lucy Maud outdoes herself with some of her descriptive passages in this book. The chapter where she and Gilbert drive into Four Winds for the first time - and they catch a glimpse of Leslie - and the sun is setting - and Anne sees her home for the first time ... that whole chapter is some of the best writing Lucy Maud has ever done, I think.

But naturally, I have to choose an excerpt about Leslie. Anne has only seen Leslie once - and did not know who she was. Anne was just struck by her intense beauty, and also by the fact that this girl obviously dislikes her on sight, glaring at her as she and Gilbert drive by in the buggy. Anne is baffled by this, but more than that - she is hurt. What has she done? What has she ever done to this woman?

Here's the excerpt where ... well, Anne and Leslie meet on the shore. Notice here how - for example - when Anne thinks she is bonding with Leslie about the "house of dreams" -she goes on about being happy with her prince in a small house - totally assuming that she and Leslie are on the same page - when she has really misread the situation horribly (we the reader don't know Leslie's full story until the next chapter). Lucy Maud makes a point here about the casual cruelty (unconscious!!) of happy people. The casual assumptions they make. Because THEY are happy ... they think everyone should be happy. But also, they assume that everyone will speak the same language. This is not about smug self-righteous people. This is something that is very human. Anne, at this point, does not know Leslie's tragedy - so she does not know that her every word is a knife in Leslie's heart. And, of course, none of that is her fault. It's not HER fault that she's happy and that Leslie is not ... but in order to truly become Leslie's friend - a serious shifting has to occur, on both sides. And again: the fact that Anne, in the beginning, mis-reads Leslie because of her own happiness makes Anne even more lovable. Because it's such a human thing to do.

Excerpt from Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

She loved the gentle, misty harbour shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders, and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain, lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds Harbour. Now it was over, and the shore lay clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and rock in a splendid white turmoil -- the only restless thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.

"Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of storm and stress for," Anne exclaimed, delightedly sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below, where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

"I'm going to dance and sing," she said. "There's no one here to see me -- the sea-gulls won't carry tales of the matter. I may be as crazy as I like."

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the little headland that ran out to the east of the cove; then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was sitting on a boulder of the headland, half-hidden by a jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a strange expression - part wonder, part sympathy, part -- could it be? -- envy. She was bare-headed, and her splendid hair, more than ever like Browning's "gorgeous snake," was bound about her head with a crimson ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat work-hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea personified -- all its mystery, all its passion, all its elusive charm.

"You -- you must think me crazy," stammered Anne, trying to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this stately girl in such an abandon of childishness --she, Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to keep up -- it was too bad!

"No," said the girl, "I don't."

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless; her manner slightly repellant; but there was something in her eyes -- eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading -- which turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead, she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.

"Let's introduce ourselves," she said, with the smile that had never yet failed to win confidence and friendliness. "I am Mrs. Blythe - and I live in that little white house on the harbour shore."

"Yes, I know," said the girl. "I am Leslie Moore -- Mrs. Dick Moore," she added stiffly.

Anne was silent for a moment from sheer astonishment. It had not occurred to her that this girl was married - there seemed nothing of the wife about her. And that she should be the neighbour whom Anne had pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this astonishing change.

"Then -- then you live in that gray house up the brook," she stammered.

"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long ago," said the other. She did not offer any explanation or excuse for not having one.

"I wish you would come," said Anne, recovering herself somewhat. "We're such near neighbours we ought to be friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds - there aren't quite enoguh neighbours. Otherwise it is perfection."

"You like it?"

"Like it! I love it! It is the most beautiful place I ever saw."

"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore slowly, "but I've always thought it was very lovely here. I -- I love it, too."

She spoke as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had an odd impression that this strange girl -- the word "girl" would persist - could say a good deal if she chose.

"I often come to the shore," she added.

"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met here before."

"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do. It is generally late - almost dark - when I come. And I love to come just after a storm - like this. I don't like the sea so well when it's calm and quiet. I like the struggle - and the crash - and the noise."

"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea at Four Winds is to me what Lover's Lane was at home. Tonight it seemed so free - so untamed - something broke loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was why I danced along the shore in that wild way. If Miss Cornelia Bryant had seen me she would have foreboded a gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."

"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She had an exquisite laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and unexpectedly with something of the delicious quality of a baby's. Anne laughed, too.

"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams several times."

"Your house of dreams?"

"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I have for our home. We just call it that between ourselves. It slipped out before I thought."

"So Miss Russell's little white house is your house of dreams," said Leslie wonderingly. "I had a house of dreams once -- but it was a palace," she added, with a laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by a little note of derision.

"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I suppose all girls do. And then we settle down contentedly in eight-room houses that seem to fulfil all the desires of our hearts - because our prince is there. You should have had your palace really, though -- you are so beautiful. You must let me say it - it has to be said - I'm nearly bursting with admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw, Mrs. Moore."

"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie," said the other with an odd passion.

"Of course I will. And my friends call me Anne."

"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking stormily out to sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had always been as brown and plain as the brownest and plainest girl at the fishing village over there. Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"

The abrupt chagne of subject shut the door on any further confidences.

"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne. "Gilbert and I were invited to her house to a state tea last week. You've heard of groaning tables."

"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the newspaper reports of weddings," said Leslie, smiling.

"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned - at least, it creaked - positively. You couldn't have believed she would have cooked so much for two ordinary people. She had every kind of pie you could name, I think - except lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon pie at the Charlottestown Exhibition ten years ago and had never made any since for fear of losing her reputation for them."

"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"

"I wasn't. Gilbert won her heart be eating - I won't tell you how much. She said she never knew a man who didn't like pie better than his Bible. Do you know, I love Miss Cornelia."

"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I have in the world."

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss Cornelia had never metnioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her. Miss Cornelia had certainly talked freely about every other individual in or near Four Winds.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them, across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come here - and seen nothing but jsut that - I would go home satisfied."

"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores are wonderful," agreed Anne. "My little sewing room looks out on the harbour, and I sit at the window and feast my eyes. The colours and shadows are never the same two minutes together."

"And you are never lonely?" asked Leslie abruptly. "Never - when you are alone?"

"No. I don't think I've ever been really lonely in my life," answered Anne. "Even when I'm alone I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendship - and nice, jolly little times with people. Oh, won't you come to see me - often? Please do. I believe," Anne added, laughing, "that you'd like me if you knew me."

"I wonder if you would like me," said Leslie seriously. She was not fishing for a compliment. She looked out across the waves that were beginning to be garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes filled with shadows.

"I'm sure I would," said Anne. "And please don't think I'm utterly irresponsible because you saw me dancing on the shore at sunset. No doubt I shall be dignified after a time. You see, I haven't been married very long. I feel like a girl, and sometimes like a child yet."

"I have been married twelve years," said Leslie.

Here was another unbelievable thing.

"Why, you can't be as old as I am!" exclaimed Anne. "You must have been a child when you were married."

"I was sixteen," said Leslie, rising, and picking up the cap and jacket lying beside her. "I am twenty-eight now. Well, I must go back."

"So must I. Gilbert will probably be home. But I'm so glad we both came to the shore tonight and met each other."

Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled. She had offered friendship frankly but it had not been accepted very graciously, if it had not been absoutely repelled. In silence they climbed the cliffs and walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery, bleached, wild grasses were like a carpet of cramy velvet in the moonlight. When they reached the shore lane Leslie turned.

"I go this way, Mrs. Blythe. You will come over and see me some time, won't you?"

Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her. She got the impression that Leslie Moore gave it reluctantly.

"I will come if you really want me to," she said a little coldly.

"Oh, I do - I do," exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness which seemed to burst forth and beat down some restraint that had been imposed on it.

"Then I'll come. Good-night -- Leslie."

"Good-night, Mrs. Blythe."

The Books: "Anne of Windy Poplars" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Chronologically (in Anne's life) this book comes after Anne of the Island (excerpt here) - but in Lucy Maud's chronology, she wrote Anne's House of Dreams (excerpt here) next. Later, she went back and filled in the Windy Poplars blank. This also happened with Anne of Ingleside (excerpt here) - I think that was the last "Anne" novel she wrote - but it is not the last in the series, Rilla of Ingleside is. (excerpt here). World War I came along and swept away all of her distractions, all of her former concerns - Lucy Maud had to write about WWI, so she skipped ahead to Anne's children so that she could incorporate the war into a book.

Anne of Windy Poplars is the story of the 3 years Anne spends teaching in Summerside, PEI. She is now engaged to Gilbert Blythe - but they can't get married right away because he is going to medical school. She finds a room in a house in Summerside (and, of course, because she is Anne Shirley, the room has "scope for imagination") - and begins her adventures teaching there. The majority of this book is letters to Gilbert. And I've got to say this: Poor Gilbert. He's in medical school, probably buried in books, and he literally is receiving 30 page letters almost every other day from his chatty fiance - who blithers on about the smell of the violets, and the bitchy Pringle family, and the red cheeks of Rebecca Dew, and .... I mean, I'm just trying to see it from his perspective. Did he ever roll his eyes when he saw a BIG FAT letter in his mailbox? Did he ever feel like: "I cannot keep up with this ..." These have to be the most detailed letters in the history of letter writing. When did Anne have time to write them?? Because presumably she was also corresponding with Marilla, with Diana, and etc. etc. Also, the first time I read this book I was 15 or something like that - and I was SO frustrated that the lovey-dovey parts of the letters were NOT shared! Lucy Maud was very coy in that respect and I HATED that. Let me hear how Anne tells Gilbert she loves him! Also: Anne: why the hell does it matter what type of pen you have? Don't be such a tease. I guess (ahem) I'm still annoyed at that!! hahahahaha

So Anne lives in Summerside for 3 years. In that time she is responsible for, 5 matchmaking successes? I lost count. The best part of the book, I think, is her blossoming friendship with Katherine Brooke, another teacher at the school. Katherine is a tough nut to crack. She is bitter, snarky, and at times truly MEAN to Anne. She makes personal digs at her, as though she harbors some personal resentment. Anne doesn't get it. But Anne, being Anne, senses that ... there is "something" there ... that they could be friends if only Katherine would let go of whatever it is she's holding onto. Anne invites her home to Green Gables for the Christmas holiday. And lo and behold, the ice melts. Katherine is a really good character - very well-written.

Other episodes in the book that come to mind:

-- Anne is nearly run out of town by the Pringle family, who can't stand her - until she inadvertently shuts them up with an old journal she finds in an attic of their sea captain ancestor. In the journal, he descirbes a shipwreck he experienced - where he and his shipmates ate one of their friends who had died. The Pringles are so horrified that Anne has this blackmail chip held over their heads - that they call off the dogs, and never give her any problems again.

-- the whole Little Fellow thing ("I know his dog's name was Carlo") - and the mean father - and the photograph that changes everything

-- Rebecca Dew. Great characte.r Actually - both of the Aunts are great characters, too. You think they're gonna be picky and spinsterish - but in reality they are kind of dreamy, filled with fantasies - which they hide from one another, but feel perfectly fine whispering to Anne.

-- the triumph of Sophy Sinclair! I always loved that.

-- the ridiculous (and very VERY funny) episode in the Tomgallon House (for once, Anne has met her match in terms of TALKING - Anne can barely get a word in edgewise)

I decided to choose the following excerpt because it always made me laugh - and it also shows Lucy Maud's wicked and original sense of humor. I love that about her - especially now that I know the circumstances under which she wrote her books, and her general nervous disorder (or whatever she had - she had something, that's for certain).

Anne Shirley very quickly becomes the confidante of the young women in the town. Since she is engaged, she is 'safe' - she won't be their rival. So Trix Taylor comes to ask Anne for help. Her sister Esme is the shyest thing imaginable, afraid of everything ... and a handsome young doctor (Lennox Carter) is courting her ... but the entire Taylor family lives in TOTAL fear of their father's "sulking fits" - If he has a "sulking fit" on, forget it - don't even ask if you can borrow the buggy - just wait out the storm. Cyrus Taylor, the father, sulks - but not just sulks - he glowers - he sits in a towering silence - he TERRIFIES everyone around him. So Lennox Carter is going to come and have dinner at the Taylor household - obviously to ask Cyrus for Esmes hand in marriage - but it just so happens that Cyrus Taylor has suddenly taken on a "sulking fit" - and will not be snapped out of it. Trix is panicked. Esme HAS to marry Lennox ... but if Lennox asks for her hand THAT night, Cyrus will certainly say No. Because of the sulking fit. So she asks Anne if she wouldn't mind coming to dinner and ... working her magic ... smoothing the edges ... maybe drawing Cyrus out of his shell, so that Lennox and Esme can get married, and all will be well. Everything is quite urgent ... Trix basically BEGS. Anne says fine, she'll do what she can.

When she arrives at the Taylor household, she can feel the tension in the air. Everyone is tiptoeing around Cyrus - they have made his favorite meal for supper - they wait on him - and he just sits, in a towering sulky silence.

They sit down to dinner. So here's the excerpt. I love Mrs. Cyrus, just need to say that. I love her.

Excerpt from Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery.

Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, "For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She coudn't eat any of it after that ... and she was so fond of it. She didn't believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn't eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix or Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she must talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head ... things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn't have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him ... rap his knuckles ... stand him in a corner ... treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.

Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.

Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner ... an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was ost difficul to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.

Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do ... perhaps he was afraid of sayiing something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.

"Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?" said Mrs. Taylor faintly.

Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles ... and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,

"Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?"

Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood ... she had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.

But Anne's remark had an effect ofn Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless ... Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now ... it didn't matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.

"Such an affliction for poor papa," said Trix, addressing Dr. Carter across the table. "And him only sixty-eight."

Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years. But he remained silent.

"It's such a treat to have a decent meal," said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. "What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs ... nothing but fruit and eggs ... just for a fad?"

"Does your father ...?" began Dr. Carter bewilderedly.

"What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like ... deliberately bit her?" demanded Trix.

"Till the blood came," added Pringle solemnly.

"Do you mean to say your father ...?"

"What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the way it was made didn't suit him?" said Trix.

"What would you think," said Pringle, "of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?"

"When she would so love to have one," sighed Trix.

"What would you think of a man," continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, "who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present ... nothing but a pair of goloshes?"

"Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart," admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne's and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?

"Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing ... nothing -- of picking up the roast, if it isn't perfectly done, and hurling it at the maid?"

Dr. Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor, as if he feared Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf.

"What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?" asked Pringle.

Anne thought Cyrus would speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant.

"What would you think of a man who let his aunt ... his only aunt ... go to the poorhouse?" asked Trix.

"And pastured his cow in the graveyard?" said Pringle. "Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet."

"What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?" asked Trix.

"The great Pepys did that," said Dr. Carter with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne ... only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of those things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, "I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for information."

"What would you think," kept on Trix, "of a man who opens and reads his wife's letters?"

"What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral ... his father's funeral ... in overalls?" asked Pringle.

What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing amttered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.

"What," she asked queitly, "would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn't bear to think of them starving to death?"

A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme's unexpected defense of her father.

"And he can crochet so beautifully ... he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago."

Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.

"I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn't know what I was doing. And I'm deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I'm deaf?"

"She didn't say you were, Papa," cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.

"Oh, no, she didn't say it. None of you said anything. You didn't say I was sixty-eight when I'm only sixty-two, did you? You didn't say I wouldn't let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted ... when?"

"Never, Poppa, never," sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. "And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa."

"When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody's funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?"

"Never, Poppa, never," wept Mrs. Cyrus. "You've always been a good provider ... the best."

"Didn't you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?"

"Yes, oh yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter."

"Well, then!" Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne's. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.

"I've got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit ... that's mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won't forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess ... I know you're all glad the darn thing is smashed ... and bring on the pudding."

The Books: "Anne of the Island" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery.

I love this one. I love all of them but I love this one especially. This is the story of Anne's college years - and so many people come into the story here who become Anne's lifelong friends - and I just love them all. I LOVE Philippa (Phil, for short). She is a college chum - and a group of them end up renting a house together. Phil, Anne, Priscilla and Stella. These four girls make up the heart and soul of this book. You just wish you lived in that town and you could go hang out at Patty's Place (the name of their house). It's all very exciting - their classes, professors, their various romances ... Each girl is distinct. Lucy Maud is so good at letting us know WHO someone is, and then keeping that character consistent (through multiple books, written over a 30 year period - now that is quite a feat). Phil doesn't talk like Priscilla - you could tell who was speaking even if Lucy Maud didn't write: "Phil said" or "Priscilla said".

Gilbert Blythe is also at college - (as well as google-eyed Charlie Sloane. Poor Charlie Sloane.) He and Anne hang out together. They are "friends". Any time Gilbert tries to make it something more, he gets the brush-off. But Gilbert is now on the other side of the fence - he can't let it go. He tries to be her friend - but his feelings for her are more, and that's final. Anne, for reasons best known to herself (it has something to do with her Ideal Man, and Gilbert just is NOT that) just doesn't want to "go there" with Gilbert. She still has girlhood dreams of Prince Charming, and getting swept away by a tall dark stranger, and all that. Gilbert has been her friend since they were 11. He's studying to be a doctor. He just doesn't have that romantic aura of mystery. Gilbert goes through hell in this book. Eventually, he just comes out and states his intentions (GO, GILBERT!) He stops trying to move the conversation towards romance, or the future - and says what he means and what he wants. He tells her he loves her, and he wants to marry her. Anne, heart-stricken (because she does really "like" Gilbert) tells him no. And to please never mention it again. Their friendship is kind of ruined. Lucy Maud has one paragraph where she describes Gilbert's response - and it says it all:

There was another pause -- so long and so dreadful that Anne was driven at last to look up. Gilbert's face was white to the lips. And his eyes -- but Anne shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or -- horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert's face?

That happens halfway through the book. In the second half, Anne does meet a tall dark romantic stranger. During a rainstorm in the park, they meet up in a gazebo to keep dry. He is new at school. He is rich. His name is Royal Gardner. I mean, come ON. As a reader, it's frustrating - because you read about Royal - and you see how he says all the right things, lovey-dovey things, and he sends her flowers, and blah blah ... but ... but ... how on earth could they possibly be right together? But we've all made mistakes in love. We've all put our Ideals before Reality. Well, maybe not all of us, but many of us. Anne sees the trappings, and decides that he is Prince Charming. No matter that he doesn't really have a sense of humor. No matter that his mother is a total nightmare (the story of her surprise visit to Patty's Place is so funny!! Of course she shows up unannounced on the day the girls are cleaning). Anne is "in love". All of her friends, though, are kind of skeptical. They like Roy, but ...

This is not the only storyline in the book, of course. Other things happen: Diana gets married. Ruby Gillis develops consumption (the chapter where Anne goes to visit Ruby at night, and they sit in the moonlit garden and talk about the death that is approraching - is one of my favorite chapters in the book. SO GOOD. Her writing ...) Anne also does some summer-school teaching. The story of Phil's romance (or - her last romance, I should say) is wonderful. Phil is a great character: she's rich, she's smart, she's gorgeous, and she is not serious about anything. Or, no, that's not true: she's serious about math. She's a math whiz. She gets straight As. But other than her schoolwork, all she does is date 3 or 4 guys at the same time, keeping everyone hanging. And she has two guys at home waiting for her every word (uhm - Alec and Alonzo are their names, of course). If you look just at the surface of Phil, you might think she was a vain and silly girl. And maybe she is. But she also admits it. She says flat out, "I can't be poor. I'm just going to have fun while I can - and then marry a rich rich man." She seems to have a huge ego - and no sense that she could actually lose herself in someone else, that she could actually fall in love. Until she does. And of course it is with someone so inappropriate for her (in the eyes of the world, and her blueblood family) - someone she never would have picked out for herself - someone who has none of the "qualifications" she has listed for a husband ... but ... she falls head over heels. Why? Because he makes her laugh, and he also looks at her as though he SEES her. He sees right THROUGH her. He sees past the vanity, and the clothes, and the fun-girl facade - and sees the serious-hearted beautiful soul inside. She feels revealed. He is a minister. He is POOR. But she falls head over heels. And put a fork in Phil, she's done. No more dating, she kicks all the hovering guys to the curb, and decides: well, I guess I'm going to be a poor minister's wife. Because there's no other man for me. There's something in that whole Phil subplot that I really love, and always have. To me, it shows Lucy Maud's understanding of the depths we can go to to fool ourselves, and also - that sometimes all it takes is one person to say: "Yes. I SEE you. You know I do. I SEE you." And the best part is that Phil is the LAST person you would think would have such an experience. Isn't that the way it so often goes in life?

What are some of the other episodes you all love?? So many good ones to choose from this book.

Here's an excerpt. Anne is home in Avonlea for her summer vacation. Gilbert has proposed to her - and she said no. Not only does Anne have to deal with her own grief that she has ruined a good friendship, she also has to deal with all of her friends saying: "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, ANNE SHIRLEY?"

Excerpt from Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery.

Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer. Priscilla came for a merry visit in June; and when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving. Paul and Charlotta the ourth came "home" for July and August.

Echo Lodge was the scene of gaeities once more, and the echoes over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.

"Miss Lavender" had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and prettier. Paul adored her, and the companionship between them was beautiful to see.

"But I don't call her 'mother' just by itself," he explained to Anne. "You see, that name belongs just to my own little mother, and I can't give it to any one else. You know, teacher. But I call her 'Mother Lavender' and I love her next best to father. I -- I even love her a little better than you, teacher."

"Which is just as it ought to be," answered Anne.

Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years. His face and eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly "kindred spirits".

Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.

"You don't think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma'am?" she demanded anxiously.

"I don't notice it, Charlotta."

"I'm real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don't want no Yankee acent. Not that I've a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma'am. They're real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time."

Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore -- Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora's elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight."

"Didn't you find your Rock People?" asked Anne.

Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.

"The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all," he said. "Nora was there -- but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed."

"Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed," said Anne. "You have grown too old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanged boat with the sail of moonshine' and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you."

"You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did," said old Mrs. irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.

"Oh, no, we don't," said Anne, shaking her head gravely. "We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts."

"But it isn't -- it is given us to exchange our thoughts," said Mrs. Irving anxiously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not understand epigrams.

Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history. Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to general pleasantness of life.

"What a nice play-time this has been," said Anne. "I feel like a giant refreshed. And it's only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport, and Redmond, and Patty's Place. Patty's Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavender. I feel as if I had two houses -- one at Green Gables and one at Patt's Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn't seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little I couldn't see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now ''tis a handbreadth, 'tis a tale.'"

"Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?" asked Miss Lavender quietly.

"I am just as much Gilbert's friend as ever I was, Miss Lavender."

Miss Lavender shook her head.

"I see something's gone wrong, Anne. I'm going to be impertinent and ask what. Have you quarrelled?"

"No, it's only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can't give him more."

"Are you sure of that, Anne?"

"Perfectly sure."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe," said Anne petulantly.

"Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne -- that is why. You needn't toss that young head of yours. It's a fact."

The Books: "Anne Of Avonlea" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne Of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

As Anne fans will remember: at the end of Anne of Green Gables - [SPOILER ALERT - THIS SPOILER ALERT IS MAINLY FOR TRACEY WHO HASN'T READ THEM YET BUT WHO REALLY SHOULD - JUST BECAUSE I REALLY REALLY THINK SHE WILL FLIP OVER THEM]

Okay - so at the end of Anne of Green Gables (excerpt here) Matthew dies, and this huge life-event puts Anne's plans into a tailspin. She had graduated from Queen's College - a 2 year teaching college - and was going to go on for further education. The first girl on the Island to do so. But in lieu of the changed circumstances, she really didn't feel like she should leave Marilla all alone. Gilbert Blythe had been "given" the Avonlea school - he was going to be teaching there in the fall - but when he heard about Anne's situation, he secretly went to the Board and asked if Anne could take the position in the school, instead of himself. Because it would be so convenient for her - she could live at home, to help Marilla, AND have a job. It is a selfless act on Gilbert's part ... and for most of the book of Anne of Green Gables - she and Gilbert have been sworn enemies. Because he had pulled her hair and called her "carrot-top". When he was 11 years old. Anne is still holding a haughty grudge at age 17. hahahaha Actually, I wouldn't say that she and Gilbert are sworn enemies - because that would imply Gilbert feeling the same way. I think it's just that Anne considers Gilbert to be her sworn enemy, and even as she grows older - she feels that she just cannot give up her grudge. She is too proud for that. (Naturally, in the context of the book - all of this is VERY romantic.) So anyway - the fact that her sworn enemy would make such a sacrifice to help HER out - sort of snaps her out of her haughty hatred of him. He would do this ... for her??? The last scene in Green Gables is Anne going up to Gilbert - as they pass each other on the lane - and saying, "I don't know how to thank you ..." and finally, finally, these two people make up. They don't KISS and make up - oh no - not yet - we have a couple more books to wait for all THAT stuff to start happening ... but they shake hands, and from them on - they are friends. It's like they have walked out of childhood in that moment. They're going to be adults now. Adults don't hold grudges. And these two should definitely be friends. Gilbert, in a way, with his male intuition (often more primal and instinctive than female intuition), always sensed the, shall we say, chemistry between the two of them. He might not have been like, "I will marry her some day!" But he was like: "Wow. Look at that new girl. I NEED her to notice me. Because I think she's smart and I bet we could get along great." So - in his 11 year old boy personality - pulling her hair and shouting "carrot top" was his way of doing that, of saying "I like you. You;'re different. We should be friends." Anne is a bit slower to catch onto this. She truly believes that she hates Gilbert. Sometimes you want to SHAKE ANNE out of her ridiculous ideas! Especially when you get to Anne of the Island (excerpt here). I mean: GILBERT IS RIGHT THERE, ANNE. AND YOU GO OUT WITH THAT DARK-HARIED FOP??? OPEN YOUR EYES! Oh well, I guess we all have to go through something like that - although I have usually been on the Gilbert side of the fence, staring in horror at some guy I truly believed was IT - a guy I loved more than anything - and watching, in horror, as he marries some bossy bitch who treats him like shit.

But I digress.

So the next book in the series is about Anne's year of teaching in the little Avonlea schoolhouse.

There are some great episodes in this book - and one of my favorite ones in ALL the series happens in this book - when she and Diana are going to ask a neighboring woman if they can buy her platter (they really need it - and they THINK she has one just like the one they need) - and the lady is not home, so Anne crawls up onto the roof (Anne. That is so inappropriate) of the little pantry shed so that she can peek through the window in the roof, I believe, just to PEEK and see if she can see the platter. She doesn't want to STEAL it, she just wants to SEE it. And naturally the roof caves in. But not entirely. Anne is stuck halfway down. So her torso emerges from the damn roof, and her legs dangle down into this lady's shed. I am laughing out loud as I type this. I laugh out loud every time I read the episode. Diana tries to pull her out - but the beams poke into Anne's side - it cannot be done. So they just have to wait for the lady to return. Naturally, a huge rainstorm comes. Diana runs to the buggy, gets the umbrella, and gives it to Anne - then Diana sits in the buggy. So there is Anne, sticking halfway out of a neighbor's roof, HOLDING AN UMBRELLA. Seriously - I am laughing out loud right now. And naturally, the lady drives up the lane right at this point. And she is, naturally, somewhat amazed to see a girl sticking up out of her roof holding an umbrella. I just can see the whole tableau in my mind and it NEVER strikes me as anything less than hilarious.

I also love when she accidentally sells her neighbor's cow. She thinks she is selling her own cow, but in reality - she sells Mr. Harrison's cow. Like: Anne. Please don't sell other people's livestock. Her response when she discovers what she has done ... and of course, in true Anne fashion, she goes over to confess to her scary neighbor what she has done ... and eventually, they become lifelong friends. He is an old crank, a true curmudgeon - but there's something about Anne that delights him. She seems to have that effect on people.

Other episodes from the book (and please, dear fellow readers - tell me your favorite episodes from this book!!) are:

-- befriending Paul - her favorite student. A fanciful little boy who Anne truly believes is a genius
-- dealing with Anthony Pye - the sullen bully of the school
-- Marilla adopts twins. Marilla! Davy and Dora ... they are orphaned ... they are 8 years old, I believe and they come to stay at Green Gables. Davy is an absolute terror and Dora is goodness personified. Davy gets into some horrible scrapes - but of course - you love him more. You always love those who struggle more.
-- Oh, and Miss Lavender!! Diana and Anne discover an old romantic stone house out in the middle of the woods one day ... and there's a beautiful "old" lady living there - her hair is white, but I think she's only in her 40s. She is sort of like Anne - living in a fantasy world - only she's a full adult. Anne recognizes a kindred spirit immediately. They become friends. Dear dear friends. of course there was a sad thwarted romance in Miss Lavender's past - we eventually hear the whole thing (Lucy Maud is very big on MISUNDERSTANDING being the root of all evil. So many of her huge plot points, especially with romances, hinge on one person completely misunderstanding the message. Or not getting the message at all. "40 years ago, I wrote you a letter asking you to come join me and marry me!" The response is: "I never got the letter." Etc.)

Let's see. What else. Oh yes - Anne and Diana create an "Improvement Society" - they want to plant public gardens in Avonlea, and have rotted trees removed, and have so and so pull down his old crumbling barn, and basically improve the look of the place. A group of their friends join - and they take subscriptions and deal with resistance - and in general, try to shake Avonlea into some sense of civic responsibility.

There are many more great episodes - I'd love to hear some of your favorites.

The book ends with Mr. Lynde dying - and Rachel Lynde decides to move in with Marilla. Although they bicker and snipe at each other, they are truly good friends, and a comfort to one another. Mrs. Lynde can help raise the twins and help out Marilla. Which then frees Anne up. She then decides that she will go to college. The book ends there - on the crossroads. Anne is going to go to college. Her year of teaching is at an end. Oh - and Gilbert will be at the same college. So .... hmmmmmmm

Anyway, I had a hard time picking an excerpt - but I decided to go with something that I think demonstrates the true special-ness of Lucy Maud Montgomery's storytelling ability (as well as her writing). In a lot of her books - we read the protagonist's letters. Windy Poplars (excerpt here) is almost ALL letters. In the Emily series (which I actually like better than the Anne series - amazing!!) - the second book in the series has extensive excerpts from Emily's private journal. Lucy Maud doesn't just go for straight narration.

And listen to this letter. Anne is describing her teaching experiences to a friend. But ... I don't know ... what I really get from this excerpt is how many STORIES Lucy Maud has to tell. This letter feels REAL to me - as though she might have copied it verbatim from a letter she either once wrote or received. It seems that real to me. It also makes me laugh out loud. The student "Barbara Shaw" is the most clumsy girl in school. Disasters follow in her wake. Stoves blow up. Roofs cave in. Barbara is a magnet for tripping, falling, rolling, bruised knees ... anyway, the excerpt ends with Barbara's composition. We have already gotten to know Barbara's disasters. So listen to what she writes.

Excerpt from Anne Of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery.

"Teaching is really very interesting work," wrote Anne to a Queen's Academy chum. "Jane says she thinks it is monotonous but I don't find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day, and the children say such amusing things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when they make funny speeches, which is probably why she finds teaching monotonous. This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell 'speckled,' and couldn't manage it. 'Well,' he said finally, 'I can't spell it but I know it means.'

"'What does it mean?' I asked.

"'St. Clair Donnell's face, miss.'

"St. Clair is certainly very much freckled, although I try to prevent the others from commenting on it ... for I was freckled once and well do I remember it. But I don't think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy called him 'St. Clair' that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don't think I'll take any notice of it.

"Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said, 'If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' 'A mouthful,' said Lottie. And in the nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads shouldn't be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, 'Because it would rain the next day.'

"It's so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusment until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent cause. She says a man in Grafton went insane once and that was how it began.

"Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a snake? Rose Bell says he was ... also that William Tyndale wrote the New Testament. Claude White says a 'glacier' is a man who puts in window frames!

"I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner hour and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves. I asked them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some of the answers were commonplace enough ... dolls, ponies, and skates. Others were decidedly original. Hester Boulter wanted 'to wear her Sunday dress every day and eat in the sitting room.' Hannah Bell wanted 'to be good wihtout having to take any trouble about it.' Marjory White, aged ten, wanted to be a widow. Questioned why, she gravely said that if you weren't married people called you an old maid, and if you were your husband bossed yo; but if you were a widow there'd be no danger of either. The most remarkable wish was Sally Bell's. She wanted a 'honeymoon'. I asked her if she knew what it was and she said she thought it was an extra nice kind of bicycle because her cousin in Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married and he had always had the very latest in bicycles!

"Another day I asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had ever done. I couldn't get the older ones to do so, but the third class answered quite freely. Eliza Bell had 'set fire to her aunt's carded rolls.' Asked if she meant to do it she said, 'not altogether.' She just tried a little end to see how it would burn and the whole bundle blazed up in a jiffy. Emerson Gillis had spent ten cents for candy when he should have put it in his missionary box. Annetta Bell's worst crime was 'eating some blueberries that grew in the graveyard.' Willie White had 'slid down the sheephouse roof a lot of times with his Sunday trousers on.' 'But I was punished for it 'cause I had to wear patched pants to Sunday school all summer, and when you're punished for a thing you don't have to repent of it,' declared Willie.

"I wish you could see some of their compositions ... so much do I wish it that I'll send you copies of some written recently. Last week I told the fourth class I wanted them to write me letters about anything they pleased, adding by way of suggestion that they might tell me of some place they had visited or some interesting thing or person they had seen. They were to write the letters on real note paper, seal them in an envelope, and address them to me, all without any assistance from other people. Last Friday morning I found a pile of letters on my desk and that evening I realized afresh that teaching has its pleasures as well as its pains. Those compositions would stone for much. Here is Ned Clay's, address, spelling, and grammar as originally penned.

"'Miss teacher ShiRley
"'Green gabels.
"'p.e. Island can

"'birds

"Dear teacher I think I will write you a composition about birds. birds is very useful animals. my cat catches birds. His name is William but pa calls him tom. he is oll striped and he got one of his ears froz of last winter. only for that he would be a goodlooking cat. My unkle has adopted a cat. it come to his house one day and wouldent go away and unkle says it has forgot more than most people ever knowed. he lets it sleep on his rocking chare and my aunt says he thinks more of it than he does of his children. that is not right. we ought to be kind to cats and give them new milk but we ought not to be better to them than to our children. this is oll I can think of so no more at present from

"'edward black ClaY.'

"St. Clair Donnell's is, as usual, short and to the point. St. Clair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the postscript out of malice aforethought. It is just that he has not a great deal of tact or imagination.

"'Dear Miss Shirley

"'You told us to describe something strange we have seen. I will describe the Avonlea Hall. It has two doors, an inside one and an outside one. It has six windows and a chimney. It has two ends and two sides. It is painted blue. That is what makes it strange. It is built on the lower Carmondy road. It is the third most important building in Avonlea. The others are the church and the blacksmith shop. They hold debating clubs and lectures in it and concerts.

"'Yours truly,
"Jacob Donnell.

"'P.S. The hall is a very bright blue.'

"Annetta Bell's letter was quite long, which surprised me, for writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as St. Clair's. Annetta is a quiet little puss and a model of good behaviour, but there isn't a shadow of originality in her. Her is her letter; --

"'Dearest teacher,

"'I think I will write you a letter to tell you how much I love you. I love you with my whole heart and soul and mind ... with all there is of me to love ... and I want to serve you for ever. It would be my highest privilege. Taht is why I try so hard to be good at school and learn my lessons.

"'You are so beautiful, my teacher. Your voice is like music and your eyes are like pansies when the dew is on them. You are like a tall stately queen. Your hair is like rippling gold. Anthony Pye says it is red, but you needn't pay any attention to Anthony.

"'I have only known you for a few months but I cannot realize that there was ever a time when I did not know you ... when you had not come into my life to bless and hallow it. I will always look back to this year as the most wonderful in my life because it brought you to me. besides, it's the year we moved to Avonlea from newbridge. My love for you has made my life very rich and it has kept me from much of harm and evil. I owe this all to you, my sweetest teacher.

"'I shall never forget how sweet you looked the last time I saw you in that black dress with flowers in your hair. I shall see you like that for ever, even when we are both old and gray. You will always be young and fair to me, dearest teacher. I am thinking of you all the time ... in the morning and at the noontide and at the twilight ... I love you when you laugh and when you sigh ... even when you look disdainful. I never saw you look cross though Anthony Pye says you always look so but I don't wonder you look cross at him for he deserves it. I love you in every dress ... you seem more adorable in each new dress than the last.

"'Dearest teacher, good night. The sun has set and the stars are shining ... stars that are as bright and beautiful as your eyes. I kiss your hands and face, my sweet. May God watch over you and protect you from all hard.

"'Your afecksionate pupil
"'Annetta Bell.'

"This extraordinary letter puzzled me not a little. I knew Annetta couldn't have composed it any more than she could fly. When I went to school the next day I took her for a walk down to the brook at recess and asked her to tell me the truth about the letter. Annetta cried and 'fessed up freely. She said she had never written a letter and she didn't know how to, or what to say, but there was a bundle of love letters in her other's top bureau drawer which had been written to her by an old 'beau'.

"'It wasn't father,' sobbed Annetta, 'it was someone who was studying for a minister, and so he could write lovely letters, but ma didn't marry him after all. She said she couldn't make out what he was driving at half the time. But I thought the letters were sweet and that I'd just copy things out of them here and there to write you. I put "teacher" where he put "lady" and I put in something of my own when I could think of it and I changed some words. I put "dress" in place of "mood". I didn't know just what a "mood" was but I s'posed it was something to wear. I didn't s'pose you'd know the difference. I don't see how you found out it wasn't all mine. You must be awful clever, teacher.'

"I told Annetta it was very wrong to copy another person's letter and pass it off as her own. But I'm afraid that all Annetta repented of was being found out.

"'And I do love you, teacher,' she sobbed. 'It was all true, even if the minister wrote it first. I do love you with all my heart.'

"It's very difficult to scold anybody properly under such circumstances.

"Here is Barbara Shaw's letter. I can't reproduce the blots of the original.

"'Dear teacher,

"'You said we might write about a visit. I never visited but once. It was at my Aunt Mary's last winter. My Aunt Mary is a very particular woman and a great housekeeper. The first night I was there we were at tea. I knocked over a jug and broke it. Aunt Mary said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of her skirt. The next morning when I got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with the dinner dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I'd have broken everything in the house. When I got better it was time to go home. I don't like visiting very much. I like going to school better, especially since I came to Avonlea.

"'Yours respectfully,
"'Barbara Shaw.'"

The Books: "Anne Of Green Gables" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is Anne Of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

Buh-bye, Madeleine. Hello, Lucy Maud. Two of my obsessions back to back. Life is good. By the way, I went to Amazon to find a link to the book "Anne of Green Gables" - just flat out the book - just THE BOOK - and literally had a hard time finding a link to it. It has been so taken over - I;'ve seen copies of it that are abridged - ABRIDGED - it's not a long book to begin with!! Or dumbed-down vocabulary versions - for kids who have never heard of a dictionary. There are also Anne of Green Gables cookbooks, and journals, and audio books - and look, fine, you people are making a ton of money off of this industry, while Lucy Maud sleeps peacefully (God willing - and God knows she deserved it, after her miserable life) in her grave - but at LEAST let the first link on your stupid page be a link to, you know, THE ACTUAL BOOK THAT STARTED THIS WHOLE THING. HER book, not your dumbass abridged versions, or your dumbed-down "my first classics" versions. How 'bout giving me a link to HER BOOK? The one that compelled Mark Twain (MARK TWAIN) to write her a letter and say that "Anne is one of the immortal girls of literature, just like Alice ..." How 'bout that? I was pissed off scrolling through until page 9 or 10 to find a straight link to her actual book - with no doo-dads of gee-gaws or bric-a-brac added to it.

I got a comment rom an irate Canadian when I said I loved this book - this was long ago on this blog. The irate Canadian wrote in mostly caps: "YOU LIKED THIS BOOK? Canadians HATE this book!" I said to the irate Canadian that although it is hard to believe, I do not choose my beloved books using the criteria: Whether Or Not Canadians Would Approve.

The importance of this book in my life runs on multiple levels - first of all, it's flat out a great book. Anne is an amazing character - a complete original - I mean, once you meet that girl, you can never EVER forget her. She is emblazoned upon my brain. And it's also one of those books where - certain episodes seem to never fade from my mind. It's an episodic book - of the kind people don't really write anymore - and some of the episodes are now considered classic:

Anne dyeing her hair green
Anne getting Diana drunk by accident
The mouse drowned in the pudding
Smashing her slate over Gilbert's head when he calls her "carrot top"
Puffed sleeves

I mean, I could go on and on. L.M. Montgomery has woven some sort of spell - you literally watch this girl grow and change - You love her SO much, and there are times when you laugh out loud at some of the problems she causes, or some of the things she does - but ... it's never cute, or too moralistic, or too NEAT. Anne is strictly a human girl. She's not a lesson-to-be-taught, she's not a symbol. She LIVES.

Basically, the plot is: Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert are an elderly brother and sister, who live on a farm on Prince Edward Island. Their house is called Green Gables. They are in their 60s, and they figure they need some help on the farm - so they send to an orphanage for a young boy. They could raise him properly, but mainly - he could grow up to be a perpetual hired hand,. Some sort of fatal error occurs, the message is mixed up - and a girl is sent. A young fantasist with long carrot-orange braids - named Anne Shirley. An orphan. Who has had a hard-knock life so far, being shuffled about as a servant girl in horrible situations. A brou-haha ensues. Marilla is strict, stern (what an awesome character she is, huh??) ... eventually, of course, Anne stays.

The story is also about - how love can transform you. Marilla and Matthew find themselves LOVING this girl. For Matthew it is easy to love her. He is quiet, shy, kind, and just basically falls in love with Anne immediately. Marilla is a bit of a tougher nut to crack. "What use would she be to us???" she says sternly to Matthew. Matthew replies, 'We might be of some use to her."

So Anne stays.

This is a classic book of literature - even with all the brou-haha surrounding it - even with the INDUSTRY now devoted to keeping the Anne of Green Gables thing going - come hell or high water ... It's a classic book. Mark Twain was right. Anne Shirley is one of the "immortals".

Also, it's Lucy Maud's first novel. Way to hit it out of the park, LM.

One of the funniest parts of the book is watching Marilla - strict practical Marilla - try to deal with Anne ... especially in the beginning. Marilla has never been married, she doesn't have experience with kids anyway ... but this type of child? The type of child who lives in a fantasy world and who literally can talk for 20 minutes straight without a pause? Marilla has a hard time with that.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book. Anne has just arrived. There is the brou-haha over her gender. Anne stays at Green Gables until the mistake can be sorted out. Marilla realizes, through experiencing Anne a bit, that she is almost a primitive child - like: she has not been brought up at ALL. She has all sorts of heathen-ish ideas about God and prayer - she hates church - she makes no bones about saying anything that pops into her head OUT LOUD ... so Marilla decides this child needs to be brought up proper, so she lets Anne stay. (Of course - you already get the idea that there are unplumbed depths in Marilla ... that perhaps this little redheaded witch has started to melt her down a bit ... )

This excerpt is where she tried (TRIES) to teach Anne to pray properly. She gives Anne a little card with a prayer on it and tells her to learn it by heart. Watch how Marilla desperately tries to deal with Anne ... it's so funny, in a way. Marilla is so stern and practical - and Anne just babbles on and on as though Marilla will completely understand what she is talking about .... It's hysterical, too, because the mere FACT that Marilla does not interrupt some of these long long monologues, shows that she gets sucked in in spite of herself.

Excerpt from Anne Of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

Anne set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had brought in to decorate the dinner-table -- Marilla had eyed that decoration askance, but had said nothing -- propped her chin on her hands, and fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.

"I like this," she announced at length. "It's beautiful. I've heard it before -- I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday-school say it over once. But I didn't like it then. He had such a cracked voice and he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a disagreeable duty. This isn't poetry, but it makes me feel just the same way poetry does. 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name.' That is just like a line of music. Oh, I'm so glad you thought of making me learn this, Miss --- Marilla."

"Well, learn it and hold your tongue," said Marilla shortly.

Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments longer.

"Marilla," she demanded presently, "do you think that I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonela?"

"A -- a what kind of a friend?"

"A bosom friend -- an intimate friend, you know -- a really kindred spirit to whom I confide my inmost soul. I've dreamed of meeting her all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it's possible?"

"Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she's about your age. She's a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when she comes home. She's visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You'll have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Barry is a very particular woman. She won't let Diana play with any little girl who isn't nice and good."

Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with interest.

"What is Diana like? Her hair isn't red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It's bad enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn't endure it in a bosom friend."

"Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty."

Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.

But Anne waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful possibilities before it.

"Oh, I'm so glad she's pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself -- and that's impossible in my case -- it would be best to have a beautiful bosom friend. When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren't any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept her best china and her preserves there -- when she had any preserves to keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything. Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice lived, instead of into Mrs. Thomas' shelves of preserves and china. And then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Hammond it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully, too, I know she did, for she ewas crying when she kissed me good-bye through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Hammond's. But just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every word you said, even if you didn't talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice -- not quite, but almost, you know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta, and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had become so attached to her that I hadn't the heart to imagine a bosom friend at that asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination there."

"I think it's just as well there wasn't," said Marilla drily. "I don't approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to put such nonsense out of your head. But don't let Mrs. Barry hear you talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she'll think you tell stories."

"Oh, I won't. I couldn't talk of them to everybody -- their memories are too sacred for that. But I thought I'd like to have you know about them. Oh, look, here's a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just think what a lovely place to live -- in an apple blossom! Fancy going to sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn't a human girl I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers."

"Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull," sniffed Marilla. "I think you are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk. But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you've got anybody that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it."

"Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now -- all but the last line."

"Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea."

"Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?" pleaded Anne.

"No; you don't want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have left them on the tree in the first place."

"I did feel a little that way, too," said Anne. "I kind of felt I shouldn't shorten their lovely lives by picking them -- I wouldn't want to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was irresistible. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?"

"Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?"

Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the window.

"There -- I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming upstairs. Now I'm going to imagine things into this room so that they'll always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound so luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my h air. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn't -- I can't make that seem real."

She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.

"You're only Anne of Green Gables," she said earnestly, "and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I'm the Lady Cordelia. But it's a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn't it?"

She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook herself to the open window.

"Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon, dear birches down in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house on the hill. I wonder if Diana is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I shall love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I'd hate to hurt anybody's feelings, even a little bookcase girl's or a little echo girl's. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every day."

Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out on a sea of daydreams.

The Books: "Anne of Green Gables" (adapted by Donald Harron)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is Anne of Green Gables : A Musical , lyrics and music by Donald Harron and Norman Campbell - adapted by Donald Harron

Well. I played Anne Shirley in a college production of this musical. I don't quite know what to say about it and I haven't written much about it - at least not directly. I've written about it indirectly - because of the boyfriend I had at the time - who played Gilbert Blythe. (Here's one of those posts.) We were co-stars. We started going out during the rehearsal process. And we proceeded to break up and get back together again and break up and get back together again throughout the entire run of the show. We were SO tiresome. But the fact of playing Anne of feckin' Green Gables - it was an absolute dream come true. I can't even describe it. It's rare that a dream that runs THAT deep can ever come true, but this one did. My experience of being that girl made such a deep impact on me - it changed me forever. It also was one of the most challenging things I had ever done. I'm a singer - but this role was way more difficult than anything I had ever done - being in the chorus is worlds away from being the lead - and having to carry the show - It was a daunting prospect. I lost 25 pounds. I have never been so skinny in my life. I weighed 100 pounds. I had amazing costumes. I had to go from the age of 11 to the age of 17 during the course of the show. I did this with costume changes, etc., but I had to ACT that change as well. I had to go from little girl to young woman. I had one quick change which had to occur in 20 seconds. I stood backstage, stock still, arms stuck straight out - and a crew of costume people basically undressed me and dressed me again - just in time for me to race back onstage in time for my next line. I wasn't allowed to "help" - no. It was quicker to have the team do it. It was amazing. Teamwork. Collaboration. I had three wigs (one that had to be green, for the infamous moment when Anne accidentally dyes her red hair green) ... it was a huge event. I felt famous. For a good month, I felt as famous as I had ever felt. I was famous. In Rhode Island, I was famous. The show became a finalist in the ACTF - a big deal in college theatre - THE big deal in college theatre - and we traveled the show to New Hampshire to the finalists. On a stage bigger than any stage I have been on since. Amazing experience. One for the books. To quote Anne Shirley herself, it was an "epoch in my life". A high-water mark. A true triumph. And well-deserved. I worked my ASS off.

The production was spectacular.

Here's the scene when Matthew first brings Anne home from the train station. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, farmers, brother and sister, had sent away for an orphan boy to help on the farm. But there was a mix-up and the orphanage sent a girl. Matthew, who is shy, was unable to tell the ecstatic Anne that she needed to be sent back ... they have a long drive home to the farm, and Anne, a chatty little girl who has had a terrible loveless life, raves about her happiness, and how excited she is. Matthew walks into the house with Anne - and Marilla - a stern spinster - immediately says: "Where is the BOY?" All hell breaks loose. Anne is devastated. Anne is a melodramatic fantasist - she speaks in flowery language - she "acts" out her life ... and yet, and yet ... she is always completely real. She is precocious - but she is not obnoxious. She must be, at all times, completely and utterly sincere. Mark Twain sent a note through his secretary to LM Montgomery after the publication of Anne of Green Gables - and here is what it said:

Mr. Clemens directs me to thank you for your charming book and says I may quote to you from his letter to Francis Wilson about it: "In Anne of Green Gables, you will find the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice."

It's wild - I'm looking at my script right now - filled with my stage directions and emotional notes ("Always retreat from pain. Retreat from any painful situation") scribbled in the margins. I was 19 years old. I feel very odd right now. Kind of melancholy. There are ghosts in this script.

From Anne of Green Gables : A Musical , lyrics and music by Donald Harron and Norman Campbell - adapted by Donald Harron

[Enter Matthew and Anne. Matthew hesitates, takes a deep breath]

MATTHEW. You come right on in.

MARILLA. [upstairs] Matthew?

MATTHEW. Yes, Marilla.

[Marilla comes downstairs]

MARILLA. Why, Matthew Cuthbert!

MATTHEW. Yes.

MARILLA. Who's that?

MATTHEW. Eh?

MARILLA. Where's the boy?

MATTHEW. Oh well ... well now, there wasn't any boy. There was only ... her.

MARILLA. There must have been a boy. We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us a boy.

MATTHEW. Well, she didn't. She brought her.

MARILLA. This is a pretty piece of business!

ANNE. [slamming down the suitcase] You don't want me! You don't want me because I'm not a boy! Oh, I might have known it! [Sits in a slump at the table]

MATTHEW. I got to water the mare. [Exits]

MARILLA. There, there, child, there's no need to cry so!

ANNE. There is need! This is the most tragic thing that has ever happened to me!

MARILLA. Well, we're not going to throw you out of doors, tonight at any rate. Now what's your name?

ANNE. Would you please call me Cordelia?

MARILLA. Call you Cordelia? Is that your name?

ANNE. Well, no, it's not exactly my name ... actually it's Anne. Anne Shirley, but whenver I'm in dire anguish, I've always imagined that my name is Cordelia. At least I always have of late years.

MARILLA. Fiddlesticks! If your name is Anne, that's what you should be called. It's a good plain sensible name, you've no need to be ashamed of it.

ANNE. Well, if you call me Anne, would you please call me Anne spelled with an "e"?

MARILLA. What difference does it make how it's spelled?

ANNE. Oh, it looks so much nicer.

MARILLA. Very well, then, Anne with an "e", can you tell me how this mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us a boy. Were there no boys at the orphanage?

ANNE. Oh yes, an abundance. But I distinctly heard Mrs. Spencer say that you wanted a girl, and the matron said she thought I'd do.

MARILLA. A girl would be of no use to us! We want a boy to help Matthew on the farm. Take your hat off over there. And help me with the table; we'll have supper.

ANNE. Oh, I couldn't eat. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you're in the depths of despair?

MARILLA. I don't know. I've never been there so I can't say.

MATTHEW. [entering] She's tired, Marilla. Best put her to bed.

MARILLA. Very well, child, bring your bag and come with me.

MATTHEW. Good night.

ANNE. How can you say it's a good night when you know it must be the very worst night I've ever had! My life is a perfect graveyard of broken hopes. [Follows Marilla upstairs]

MARILLA. What was that!

ANNE. That's a sentence I read in a book once and I say it to myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything.

MARILLA. You can sleep in here.

ANNE. [flops on the bed and stares out the window] .... OOOOOOH!

MARILLA. Mercy, child, what's the matter?

ANNE. A tree of your very own! Imagine!

MARILLA. It's a big tree and it blooms great, but the cherries don't amount to much. Small and wormy.

ANNE. Snow Queen.

MARILLA. What?

ANNE. I'll call the tree Snow Queen, because it reminds me of the blinding vision of the White Way of Delight.

MARILLA. You've got a tongue in your head, that's for certain. Now I want you to get undressed.

ANNE. I have my best underwear on. The matron said you never know when you might get cut up in a train wreck.

MARILLA. [looking in the suitcase] I suppose you have a nightgown?

ANNE. I have two.

MARILLA. They look kinda flimsy. You'd best wear both of them. After you're undressed I want you to say your prayers.

ANNE. Oh, I never say any prayers.

MARILLA. Don't you know who God is?

ANNE. The matron at the orphanage told me that God is the one who made my hair red and I've never cared about Him since.

MARILLA. I'm afraid you're a very wicked little girl to talk this way. This is a Christian house and while you're in it you'll say your prayers. And when you've finished, I want you to blow out the candle. No, on second thought I'd best wait here 'til you're done. You're liable to set the house on fire.

ANNE. You may take the candle. After I'm in bed I'll imagine out a nice prayer to say.

MARILLA. No, no, child. You must kneel by your bed to pray to your Maker.

ANNE. [kneels] I'm ready. What do I say?

MARILLA. Uh ... ah ... now I lay me down to sleep ... You'd best talk to the Lord in your own words, child.

ANNE. [Her voice getting deeper in tone] I'll do my best. "Gracious heavenly Father, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable ..."

MARILLA. Mercy on us, what was that?

ANNE. That's the way the minister who came to the orphanage used to do it.

MARILLA. Stop your chattering and get on with your prayers. And use your own words.

ANNE. My dear God ... Oh, Miss Cuthbert, even though I'm not going to stay here at Green Gables, I think I could make a much nicer prayer if I imagined that I am.

MARILLA. Never mind your imaginings. Just thank Him humbly for the blessings He has given.

ANNE. That's where I need my imagination!
Dear God,
Thank you for the White Way of Delight
and the Snow Queen.
I'm really extremely grateful for them.
And that's all the blessings I can think of just now
to thank You for.
As for the things I want
it would take a great deal of time to mention them all,
so I'll only name the two most important:
Please let me stay at Green Gables,
And please let me good-looking when I grow up.

I remain,
Yours respectfully,
Anne Shirley.

There, did I do it alright? I could have made it much more flowery if I'd had time to think it over!

MARILLA. Go to sleep now.

ANNE. Oh, I just thought. I should have said "Amen" in place of "yours respectfully", the way the ministers do. Do you suppose it will make any difference?

MARILLA. I don't suppose so. Now go to sleep. [Goes downstairs. Matthew is waiting in the rocking chair] This is what comes of sending someone instead of going ourselves. One of us will have to drive over to Mrs. Spencer's tomorrow, that's for certain. The child will have to go back to the orphanage.

MATTHEW. Yes, I suppose so.

MARILLA. You suppose so? Don't you know it?

MATTHEW. Well, now, she's a nice little thing, Marilla. It seems kind of a pity to send her back when she's so set on staying.

MARILLA. Matthew Cuthbert! You don't mean to say you think we ought to keep her! What good would she be to us?

MATTHEW. We might be some good to her.

MARILLA. I never heard of such a thing. She'll have to be dispatched straightaway back to where she came from.

MATTHEW. Well now, I could maybe hire a boy to help me ... and she'd be company for you. She's a real interesting little thing.

MARILLA. I'm not suffering for company ... I believe that child has you bewitched! I can see plain as plain that you want to keep her.

MATTHEW. You should have heard her talk coming from the station.

MARILLA. Oh, she can talk. I saw that straightaway. It's nothing in her favor either. I don't like children who have so much to say. I don't want an orphan girl, and if I did she isn't the style I'd pick out. We're not going to keep her, so you might as well spare your breath to cool your porridge.

MATTHEW. Well now, it's just as you say, of course, Marilla.

MARILLA. Where are you gadding off to? You haven't touched a bite of your supper.

MATTHEW. I don't suppose I'm hungry either. [Picks up lantern and exits]

MARILLA. How could Mrs. Spencer have made such a mistake?

Unbearable excitement

As I have described here before (in particular, in this piece, about my 10 year wait for Norman Rush to write another damn book) - when I am a fan of something, I am a fan of that something to such a degree that it can swipe away everything else, it can obscure everything - it completely takes over. It is a passion, over-riding, thrilling. Norman Rush' long-awaited sequel, in fact, STUNK, but ... I still read every word, realizing how much the thing stunk, feeling a vague sense of disappointment, sure ... but not enough to wipe out the immense pleasure that his first book had given me. (And still gives. I probably read the damn thing once a year.)

These passions which get a grip on me (er ... this... er ... that...) can barely be described as pleasurable. Although, of course, they are. But it's a pleasure akin to pain. I love it so much it hurts.

If that makes me sound like a fragile little lunatic, so be it.

I have always been this way. I think it used to make my parents a bit nervous for me when I was little - like such highs brought about by these passions would probably be accompanied by an equally severe low. I still remember my mother gently telling me, when I was 10 or something, that "we won't be able to listen to 'Oliver' any more." BWAHAHA I had obviously just started to play the soundtrack for the 10th time in one afternoon ... and my mother, oh so gently, came in and stopped me. We lived in a small house. If I played Oliver ten times in a row, the entire family had to listen along.

Anyway.

Perhaps some of you will remember when I posted all of those Lucy Maud Montgomery quotes. My obsession with LM Montgomery goes way back. It continues to this day. It began as a childhood thing, loving all of her novels, then it transformed as I got older ... and then in the last 10 years, her journals started to be published.

This is when I really got to know this woman. Those JOURNALS! My GOD! So illuminating.

I DEVOURED them. As it stands, there are four published volumes. The last volume was published a while ago (it feels like centuries to me) - and only brings us up to the year 1935. LM Montgomery died in 1942, a broken woman. I have a volume of letters she wrote to a pen pal, and the letters of the 1940s are almost unreadably despairing. She has lost vocabulary. Letter after letter: "I have completely lost my health. I will not get better. I am broken. Something is broken in me ..." Etc. Some kind of breakdown has occurred, a breakdown from which she never recovered.

But the journals, so far, have not covered that last stretch of her life.

It's been so long since one of the volumes appeared I kind of gave up hope. Occasionally, I would go and check Amazon, to see if anything new was there under LM Montgomery ...

And this morning, I found a new URL in my referral log (www.anneshirley.net ... Anne Shirley, is, of course, the "Anne" of LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables). Anyway, Joanne, who runs this site which appears to be a fan site/information site about Lucy Maud and about Anne Shirley ... tripped over my Lucy Maud literary posts, and linked to them, kindly. I started to scan through her site, and came across the following post, which made my heart literally push against my rib cage in excitement:

The fifth and final volume of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals is scheduled to be released on October 8. Edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston for Oxford University Press, this volume spans the years 1935 to 1942.

I can't describe how excited I am. October 8!!! The excitement is unbearable.

I literally cannot wait to get my hands on that book. I feel like a little kid again ... overcome by this old passion ...

I know that the journals will not be a happy read. Already, by the 4th volume of the journals, Lucy Maud was reaching incoherence, and displaying an increasing incapability of feeling joy. (Except for when she was writing her novels.) The novels are filled with joy, wonder, the fullness of life. Her journals are unremittingly bleak. Bleak stuff.

But I love this woman. I love this woman as much as if I actually knew her. I cherish her. That's what it is. I cherish every word she ever wrote - even in her cornier books, even in her lesser known books - there are lines of such startling beauty and comedy and insight that she takes my breath away.

I am sorry she ended her life so broken, so alone, so grief-struck. The letters at the end of her life bring tears to my eyes, they are so hopeless and dark. And yet I cherish those bleak "I'm a broken woman" sentences as well ... because they were written by her.

October 8!!!!

Geek on Parade

What you will see unfurling below you, in a spectacular display of autism and geeky pride, is the result of MONTHS of research a couple years ago ...

I'll give you the background.

One of my geek credentials is Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the "Anne of Green Gables" series, and many many more, all wonderful books. I have them all. Have read them all multiple times. Over the past 10 years, volumes of her journals have been published - which was like, for me, being a kid in a candy store.

There are 4 volumes altogether. They are addictive. There is so much to say about her, her life, her writing ...

I came up with an idea for a project - which hasn't come to fruition yet, so I will not divulge it here. Dont' want anyone to steal my great idea.

But once the idea came, I went on a rampage of research. And when I say rampage, I mean rampage.

I kept notes, I kept a filing cabinet, I color-coded my notes, I filed them in different folders - it was completely autistic and obsessive. I get SO MUCH DONE when I am motivated. My research led me onto tangents, which led me onto further tangents - until the project was completely out of control. I gave myself the assignment to read all of her favorite books - which I did.

At least the ones I could get my hands on.

LM Montgomery was born in the 1880s, and died in the early 1940s. She published 42 best-selling books, and hundreds and hundreds of short stories. Her first novel was Anne of Green Gables which was a runaway best-seller, and spawned many many many sequels. 8 in all. The need for "more" about Anne never ended. She describes getting a pleading letter from a Muslim girls in India, saying, "When will there be another book about Anne??" That's just one example. She was bombarded with letters, throughout her career, asking for "more, more, more".

I admire her so much. She did not have a particularly happy life. She married badly. She had a love in her girlhood which - ended tragically - and she never recovered. 60 years later, she describes driving her car by the town where this youthful romance had once happened, and feeling her heart pulling up out of her chest, aching for him.

It's crazy.

BUT - and here's why I admire her - she had an extremely unhappy marriage. And yet - because of her wild passion in her early 20s for this other man - she was a romantic, at heart - and ALL of that stuff, all of that repressed stuff went into her books. I think that's why girls love her books so much. They are so romantic, without being mushy. No, LM Montgomery, strict upstanding Presbyterian, couldn't be mushy. But she does believe in love, and she was quite militant about her belief in the happy ending. That there is no "shame" in a happy ending.

Until I read her journals, I had no idea what a courageous outlook that really was.

I thought she was just optimistic.

But when I read her diaries, I realized: Wow. Her life has given her nothing but grief. It gets worse and worse and worse. And what kept her alive, what kept her heart going, was her writing.

And NOBODY writes a happy ending like Lucy Maud Montgomery.

She usually delays the happy ending until the very last page. You read the entire book, thinking, "Oh my God, I hope these two hook up ... I hope they get together..." and not until the last paragraph, does she give you what you want.

Again, until I read her journals, I thought that it was just a literary style, something that stamped a book as "hers". When I read about her life, the thwarted love, the broken heart, the terrible marriage to a man who went mad almost directly following their marriage - she had had no idea he had a history of mental illness (who the hell talked about such things in 1901??) - and so there she was, saddled with a mental invalid for the next 35 years ...

So of COURSE her books would be filled with pain, and loss ... unresolved until the very last page.

She HAD to have happy endings. It was the only thing that would get her through each moment, the belief that sometimes, somewhere, things work out, and people are happy.

Back to my project:

I kept EXTENSIVE files on her. She was a voracious reader, and she kept notes of what she read in her journals.

I'm posting a TON of them below, for any of you literature-freaks, or critics out there. I've read a lot of them now - because of this project. I read "Decline and Fall of the Goddamn Roman Empire" because Lucy Maud loved it so much. I read the poetry of Tennyson for the first time. I read Washington Irving (one of her favorites). I read freakin' "Pilgrims Progress", for God's sake.

I'm insane, I know, and I know I'm geeky - but I'm sure there are some literature and language-hounds out there who will like to read these words.

The woman certainly knows how to turn a phrase.

I put an Amazon link to every book in question at the bottom of each post (when I could locate the books ... Many of them are so obscure and out-of-print you could never find them.)

And so now: here is the Geek-Parade.

LM Montgomery on "Wuthering Heights", by Emily Bronte

"By times, I read 'Wuthering Heights', which was a very poor choice for such a day and such an illness. There is not one agreeable character in the book -- no one who seems really sane. Yet it has a wild, indescribable, inescapable charm."

"Wuthering Heights", by Emily Bronte

LM Montgomery on "Androcles and the Lion", by GB Shaw

"Shaw is very brilliant. I think he must be a reincarnation of Voltaire. And yet -- satirically true as he is, his writings lack the essential truth after all. And he is too conscious of George Bernard Shaw. He is always saying, in effect, 'Oh, am I not clever. You must think me tremendously clever. You can't deny it.' "

Androcles and the Lion, by GB Shaw

LM Montgomery on "Puck of Pook's Hill" by Rudyard Kipling

"I forget all my worries while under its magic. And there are critics who say Kipling is 'outmoded'. It is to laugh. I would not give the tale of the Captains of the Wall for all the reeking sex stuff of the past 20 years."

"Puck of Pook's Hill" by Rudyard Kipling

LM Montgomery on "Charlotte Bronte", by EF Benson

"I do not think Charlotte was in the least like the domineering little shrew he pictures her, anymore perhaps than she was like the rather too saintly heroine of Mrs. Gaskell's biography. I do not put any faith in Beson's theory that Branwell wrote parts of 'Wuthering Heights' and inspired the whole. There is no foundation in the world for it beyond the assertion of two of Branwell's cronies that he read the first few chapters of it to them and told them it was his own. They may have been telling the truth, but I would not put the least confidence in any statement of Branwell's. He was entirely capable of reading someone else's manuscript and trying to pass it off as his own. No doubt he was more in Emily's confidence than Charlotte ever knew and had got possession of her manuscript in some way. Benson blames Charlotte for her unsympathetic attitude to Branwell. I imagine that an angel would have found it rather difficult to be sympathetic. Benson cannot understand a proud sensitive woman's heart. I love Charlotte Bronte so much that I am angry when anyone tries to belittle her. But I will admit that she seemed to have an unenviable talent for disliking almost everyone she met ... And the things she says about the man she afterwards married!"

LM Montgomery on "The Bonnie Brier Bush" and "Auld Lang Syne" by Ian Maclaren, written in 1895

"Re-read them some of these sleepless nights and forgot my worries in the old charm. What delightful books they are! What a good taste they leave in your mouth! You feel after all that there are some decent people in the world -- that folks are not all Elmer Gantrys ... These tales of Scottish rural life have oddly the same flavor as the Cavendish of my childhood ... As I read one book, I went back -- back -- back to a world where there were no Reds or war debts or Hitlers."

I am posting this in reverse order ... In one of the posts below, I explain the devastating psychological effect that WWII had on LM Montgomery. So much so that her health and her sanity broke, and she died. She could not face another war. And she was a great Canadian patriot - but as anyone who has studied WWI knows, the carnage of that war set a new precedent - the world reeled from it. The thought that it was starting up again caused LM Montgomery to go mad. Her journals at the end of her life get increasingly fragmented, black, hopeless, and disjointed - filled with memories of a 'happy childhood' - even though her childhood had been miserable. She wanted escape, and she finally got it. Her house, where she died, was called, coincidentally, 'Journey's End'.

LM Montgomery on "The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay"

"One criticism the writer of the introduction makes is that Macaulay's letters show nothing profound in his nature. Very likely -- nay, almost certainly -- had they been profound they would not have been delightful. The ocean depths are profound -- but I prefer a sunlit meadow for my strolling. Anyhow, I should like to have got letters from Macaulay."

The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay

LM Montgomery on "Henry VIII and his Wives", by Francis Hackett, 1929

"It is so well-written that it is enchanting -- and the subject matter would make any book interesting. My own troubles seem very slight beside Katherine of Aragon's and Anne Boleyn's. Henry is one of the enigmas of the race. One simply cannot believe that anything like him happened."

LM Montgomery on "Roughing It" by Mark Twain

"I had a good laugh re-reading 'Roughing It' -- came on his account of 'Tom Quartz' -- the cat who was blown up in a mine. I have read that a score of times and every time I read it, I simply double up in spasms. Tonight I laughed until the tears came into my eyes. Old Tom did me more good than all the rotten medicine I've been taking this year."

What an amazing compliment. A book better than medicine. Beautifully enough: Mark Twain ended up reviewing LM Montgomery's first book 'Anne of Green Gables' - and his championing of this weird book was one of the reasons it caught on - despite the book's obvious merit. He wrote that Anne Shirley was 'one of the immortal characters in literature'. Endorsement from Twain ain't too shabby!

"Roughing It" by Mark Twain

LM Montgomery on "The Universe Around Us", by James Jeans, 1929

I love this excerpt - because it shows the breadth of her understanding and curiosity. The changes she saw ... from growing up in a sleepy PEI town, during the Victorian era ... to experiencing 2 World Wars ... and Einstein ... To watch her adjust to these changes (or not ... she died right at the beginning of WWII. Her heart was broken, that the world was going to war again. She crumpled - emotionally - and then - her health broke - and then her sanity went- and she died. All within the first months of war.) But here she is, reading a science book, trying to understand the new physics.

"Time was when I loved books on astronomy -- and understood them. I can't understand the new ones -- they seem to require a new language. When a scientist like Jeans tells me that a 'quantum' of energy can 'pass from one orbit of the atom to another without crossing the intervening space' I metaphorically turn up my toes. Of this be true, the materialists have their last prop knocked from under them. I accept the 'quantum theory' becaue Sir James Jeans hands it out to me. But neither he nor anyone else can make me accept the 'planetesimal hypothesis.' "

Universe Around Us, by J. Jeans

LM Montgomery on Herodutus

"I think I would have liked Heodutus very much, by the way. He really is an old duck."

LM Montgomery on "Strange Fugitive", by Morley Callaghan

"This is a much be-trumpeted novel by a new Canadian writer who takes himself very seriously. I began to read it from interest -- and forced myself to finish it because it was a gift. It was the deadliest dull thing I ever tried to read. Callaghan's idea of 'Literature' seems to be to photograph a latrine or pigsty meticulously and have nothing else in the picture.

We have a latrine in our backyard. I see it before a garden of color -- over it a blue sky -- behind it a velvety pine. These things are as 'real' as the latrine.

Callaghan sees nothing but the latrine and insists blatantly that you see nothing else also. If you insist on seeing sky and river and pine, you are a 'sentimentalist'.

Callaghan is no newly risen star. He is not even a meteor. He is merely a Roman candle shooting up sparkously, and then sputtering out into darkness."

"Strange Fugitive", by Morley Callaghan, 1928

LM Montgomery on "The Lays of Ancient Rome", by Thomas Macaulay

"Not literature of course -- oh, dear no! But I am philistine enough to prefer it to modern hysterics. What a swing and fire 'Horatius' has, what dramatic intensity from first to last.

How can man die better than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?

"The Lays of Ancient Rome", by Thomas Macaulay

LM Montgomery on "Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind", by Valentine Dobree

"It was a simple little story about a child -- dear, wholesome, understanding. And then right in the middle of it came the most hideous loathsome bestial incident -- the vilest thing I ever read in any book. Not more than half a page long as far as words go but reaching down to the primeval slime of crawling things. I flung the book from me. It turned me sick. There was no need for it -- it didn't belong to the book. I am no prude. I have read a great many books where sex played a prominent part -- great books, which I enjoyed. This was worse than dirt -- it was verminous. I poked it into the fire and held it down with the tongs and watched it burn with delight. Why did the author put such a thing into what else would have been a charming book? Was she afraid of the laughter of her world if she wrote a wholly decent book? Then why didn't she pour pornography over every chapter and omit that damnable half-page?"

LM Montgomery on Charlotte Bronte

"Charlotte Bronte only made about 7,000 by her books ... It seems unfair and unjust. What I admire most in Charlotte Bronte is her absolute clear-sightedness regarding shams and sentimentalities. Nothing of the sort could impose on her. And she always hewed straight to the line. I have been asking myself, 'If I had known Charlotte Bronte in life - how would we have reacted upon each other? Would I have liked her? Would she have liked me?' I answer, 'No.' She was absolutely without a sense of humor. She would not have approved of me at all. I could have done her whole heaps of good. A few jokes would have leavened the gloom and tragedy of that Haworth Parsonage amazingly.

People have spoken of Charlotte Bronte's 'creative genius'. Charlotte Bronte had no creative genius. Her genius was one of amazing ability to describe and interpret the people and surroundings she knew. All the people in her books who impress us with such a wonderful sense of reality were drawn from life. She herself is Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe. Emily was Shirley. Rochester, whom she did create, was unnatural and unreal. Blanche Ingram was unreal. St. John was unreal. Most of her men are unreal. She knew nothing of men except her father and brother and the Belgian professor of her intense unhappy love. Emmanuel was drawn from him, and therefore is one of the few men in her books who is real."

Jane Eyre
Villette

LM Montgomery on Charlotte Bronte

"It is customary to regret Charlotte Bronte's death as premature. I doubt it. I doubt if she would have added to her literary fame. Resplendent as her genius was, it had a narrow range. I think she reached its limit. She could not have gone on forever writing 'Jane Eyres' and 'Villette's' and there was nothing in her life and experience to fit her for writing anything else...

There was a marked masochistic strain in Charlotte Bronte -- revealing itself mentally, not physically. This accounts for Rochester. He was exactly the tyrant a woman with such a strain in her would have loved, delighting in the pain he inflicted in on her." [Note from Sheila: Hmm. Yes, Rochester in 'Jane Eyre' was a wack-job, and mean, and scary, and he had that strange little cross-dressing incident, yet by the end of the book, I COMPLETELY have fallen in love with him. I have a masochistic strain, I guess.] "And this same tendency was the cause of her cruelty to Lucy Snowe -- who was herself. She persecutes Lucy Snowe all through 'Villette' and drowns her lover rather than let the poor soul have a chance at happiness. I can't forgive Charlotte Bronte for killing off Paul Emmanuel. I don't know whether I like Lucy Snowe or not -- but I am always consumed with pity for and sympathy with her, whereas Charlotte delights in tormenting her -- a sort of spiritual vicarous self-flagellation."

Damn, that is quite an analysis.

LM Montgomery on "The Life of Charlette Bronte" by Elizabeth Gaskell

"It is a fascinating book. Perhaps because it is so full of mystery -- the mystery of those three strange Bronte women -- those 'gray sisters' and their weird lives.

Emily Bronte is a mysterious figure. The impression left of her from reading The Life is not a pleasant one. She seemed to have no friends. Yet Charlotte loved her devotedly. The picture drawn of her stubborn gallant senseless heroic fight against death is a wonderful one. Nothing in literature is more poignant and pathetic than her sudden useless capitulation at the last moment -- 'If you call a doctor, I will see him now.' Too late -- too late ... Her genius was really greater than Charlotte's -- and even narrower. But the world did not know it when she died. Strange Emily Bronte."

"The Life of Charlette Bronte" by Elizabeth Gaskell

Amazingly, this biography is still in print, and has never gone out of print, even though it was first published in 1857. It is easy to find, in paperback, and there are multiple copies of it at Barnes & Noble, what have you. It is THE raging-success story in the biography genre. Any book written on the Brontes now still has to contend with Gaskell's book, so overpoweringly authoritative was it. I've read it multiple times.

LM Montgomery on "Saint Joan" by GB Shaw

"Shaw's play is a ripe and wonderful thing, but I don't think his Joan is the real Joan either. That Joan is still an enigma."

"Saint Joan" by GB Shaw

LM Montgomery on "Studies in MUrder", by Edward Pearson

"In 1892 or thereabouts - the US and Canada were convulsed over the famous Lizzie Borden murder case in Fall River, Mass. The papers were full of it...I remember some of the Cavendish boys driving home from prayer meeting one night singing that horrible quatrain which was broadcast at that time. She was found not guilty.

A few days ago, something, I do not know what, recalled her to my mind. I thought 'I wonder if she is living still and if she was or was not guilty.'

The very next day, by one of those curious coincidences, I read a review of a new book bearing the idyllic title 'Studies in Murder' -- in which one of the cases described was the Borden Murder. I sent for it.

There is no doubt in my mind that she was guilty. And yet it is almost as impossible to believe that she could have done it ... There was never any scrap of real evidence at the trial to connect Lizzie Borden with the murder ...

She is living today. Will she ever confess? Has she ever felt remorse for her crime? I confess I would like to see this woman -- talk with her."

"Studies in Murder", by Edward Pearson

I absolutely love this woman. LM Montgomery is in her 50s, writing that ... I relate to that kind of curiosity about people who do terrible things.

LM Montgomery on Mrs. Hemans' Poems

"Why have some lines of poetry a potent and indescribable influence over us -- an influence that is not conditioned by their merit? There are four lines of Mrs. Hemans which have always, from the time I first read them as a child, opened the doors of magic to me:

The sounds of the sea and the sounds of the night
Were around Clotilde as she knelt to pray
In a chapel where the mighty lay
On the old Provencal shore.

Today they recurred to me and I shivered with profound delight. Why? They are not great poetry. Her lines make my heart ache with a supernal fleeting ecstasy. Is it because of the picture they paint? Is it because 'the sounds of the sea and the sounds of the night' were around me in childhood? Is it because of the romance always associated with 'the old Provencal shore'? It does not seem to me that the secret is in any of these things. It goes deeper still -- to some former life and some intense moment in that life -- perhaps!"

The poetical works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans

Mrs. Hemans - a typical Victorian female author - publishing under her married name - wrote poems about nature. I have a copy of one of her books, and yes, they are lovely. Tame, but lovely. She was one of the most popular poetesses of her day. A best-seller. Strange. Who remembers her now?

LM Montgomery on "The Blind Bow-Boy" by Carl Van Vechten

"This book is an incredible compound of stupidity, vanity, and nastiness. Yet it has been praised in reviews as 'exceedingly clever and brilliant'. I should class it with the dull dirty things obscene little boys scribble on the walls of waterclosets. Faugh! I flung the thing into the furnace when I had finished it and washed my hands to get rid of the atmosphere of putrescence.

The book is a pigsty."

Gee, Lucy, how do you really feel?

"The Blind Bow-Boy" by Carl Van Vechten

LM Montgomery on "Les Miserables" by Victory Hugo

"I never read it before. I can hardly explain why. I heard about it when I was very young. I knew it was one of those books everybody ought to read -- one of the acknowledged masterpieces of the world. Several times I had an opportunity of reading it but could not prevail on myself to begin it. I always meant to 'some day' but the someday never came. What was the reason? I do not know. But this fall I said, 'Now, I'm going to make myself read Les Miserables.' I made myself read the first few chapters. Then there was no further making. Or rather, the difficulty lay in making myself stop.

I read hours when I should have been sleeping. One part of me enjoyed the book, another part shuddered in pain over it -- but always it was fascinating.

I am through with it -- I don't think I'll ever want to read it again -- but I would have missed a wonder of life if I hadn't read it."

"Les Miserables" by Victory Hugo

LM Montgomery on "Queen Victoria" by Lytton Strachey

"Lord, how he smashes our old idols! When I was a child and young girl, the Victorian myth was in full flower ... In those days every home boasted a framed picture of the queen. I thought her ugly. Strachey's book rather justifies me to myself. Poor Victoria hadn't any chance to be bad if she wanted to be -- and I do think she got tired at times of being so exceedingly proper ... Her reign was a very wonderful epoch and its wonder made of a dumpy and dowdy little woman a symbol."

"Queen Victoria" by Lytton Strachey

LM Montgomery on "Tommy and Grizel" by J.M. Barrie

"The book has all its old charm ... especially as one can't help hoping all the way through -- yes, though it were at the 20th reading -- that Barrie will 'find a way' to end it happily. Barrie has to a superlative degree the power of creating atmosphere and character, so that his books give us the sensation of reading about people and places we have known well, and consequently have all the charm of a newsy letter from home. In a much smaller degree, I have the same knack myself.

I cannot help thinking that it was a great pity that Barrie forsook writing books and took to writing plays ... He has cheated the world.

Somehow I can never rid myself of the idea that Barrie was depicting himself in Tommy. And was his wife drawn from Grizel? She divorced him -- why, has never been satisfactorily explained."

"Tommy and Grizel" by J.M. Barrie

LM Montgomery on "History of the Reformation of the 16th Century", by J. H. Merle D'Aubigne

"Long ago I read in D'Aubigne's 'History of the Reformation' a horrible tale of some poor creature who was tortured at an auto da fe by being lowered from a beam into a slow fire for a few minutes and then hoisted up again ...

There is a Devil and he is the Spirit of cruelty that is rampant in the whole universe and that drags its bestial trail over every page of history."

"History of the Reformation of the 16th Century", by J. H. Merle D'Aubigne

LM Montgomery on "The History of England", by J.A. Froude

"[Froude's] unsurpassable description of the long duel between [Elizabeth] and Mary Stuart is as fascinating as fiction. He makes Elizabeth and Mary live -- I feel as if I knew them both, intimately. It is odd - but I have always been on Elizabeth's side in that famous struggle ... I don't think I would have liked Elizabeth at all in the flesh. Nevertheless, I have always been on her side.

They certainly had colorful sovereigns in those days. What a difference between the Tudors and 'Farmer George'. What a contrast between 'Queen Bess' and 'Victoria'.

It was not a cheerful book, but in my present mood I don't care for cheerful books ... Poor Mary ... I think she was to be pitied. How very unhappy she was! If she had been happier, she might have been kinder."

LM Montgomery on Guy deMaupassant

"One wearies of his 'eternal triangle' but in some respects his style is very wonderful. But he is obsessed by sex and cannot write about anything else. I wonder if he believed that there was one decent woman in the world.

Well, he died insane -- so his point of view on life is not to be taken too seriously."

Guy deMaupassant

LM Montgomery on Lord Byron

"Don't like the man as well as I like his poetry -- for I do like Byron's poetry very much. It thrills some chords in my being as no other poet can do. Byron is out of fashion -- but he is immortal for all that. Passion is always immortal and he touched too poignantly all its notes, of spirit as well as sense, ever to be forgotten. But his letters make a disagreeable impression on me. They give a sense of unreality and posing. And his life -- what a series of tragedies it was! For himself and the women entangled in it. He was a being of storm-cloud and lightning flash -- beautiful, ruinous, transient."

That pretty much sums up Byron for me as well.

LM Montgomery on the Bible

Lucy Maud Montgomery married a Presbyterian minister - who ended up going mad. He became convinced that he was going to hell, and he went insane with fear. Montgomery, although she was a minister's wife, was quite unconventional in her own religious leanings - very open-minded, actually - and a bit New Age-y - or, I guess at that time they called it "spiritualist". She believed fully in ESP, and the dead trying to contact the living, etc. She also said that she NEVER felt religious in a church. She only felt religious when she was out in nature, walking in the woods, or on a beach. She hid all of these heretical thoughts from her wacko husband.

Geek lecture over.

"I like reading the Bible -- most of it. I like the folklore of Genesis and the drama of the Exodus and the gorgeous furnishings of the tabernacle and the doings of the kings and the good maledictions of the Psalms and the warm imagery of the Song of Solomon, and the cynicism of Ecclesiastes and the worldly wisdom of the Proverbs and the idyll of Ruth and the blazing fire of the Prophets and the wonders of Jesus' teaching and the poetry of Revelations."

LM Montgomery on "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", by Edward Gibbon

LM Montgomery read the entire 3-volume thing 3 or 4 times in her life. She loved it. I read it, because she read it. I'm nuts. But it is extraordinary indeed.

"I am on my third volume of him now ... I read one volume, then I plunge into the most frivolous novel I can find ... He is so big and massive that he seems to suck one's individuality clean out of one -- swallow one up like a huge placid slowly-moving river. As I march with his stately procession of forgotten heroes and forgotten fools I get the uncomfortable feeling that I am as insignificant as a grain of dust amid so many centuries of 'baffled millions who have gone before'. And I know I am -- but it is an abominable feeling and one not to be tolerated."

"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon

LM Montgomery on "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon

More on Decline and Fall.

"I finished 'Decline and Fall' this evening. It is the third time I have read it...It is a monumental piece of work. I know of no historian so coldly impersonal as Gibbon. He seems more like a machine recording history ... This makes for the proper impartiality; but it is also largely accountable for what, after all, must be called the monotony of his style. Almost the only portions of his history in which we get a glimpse of Gibbon himself -- the intellect behind the machine -- are in his famous chapters on Christianity and his sprinkling of sly spicy smutty stories. Naturally these -- the chapters, I mean -- are therefore the most interesting part of the work ... Gibbon doesn't overdo but his smirk rather gives the effect of a Satyr leering suddenly around the columns of Karnak."

"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon

LM Montgomery on "The Twentieth Plane", by Albert Watson

The 20th Plane is a novel, published in 1919, to huge success. It's all about the other "plane" of existence, where those we love who have died, wait for us to pass over. L.M. Montgomery, while a strict Presbyterian herself, had great curiosity about "what comes after", and lost many people she loved. She believed greatly that they still hovered about her. Anyway, here's what she has to say about this long-forgotten book.

"I was much disappointed in it. It was absolute poppycock -- utterly unconvincing. And I was so ready to be convinced, for since Frede died, I would give anything if I could only be convinced that she still exists and that there might be a faint hope of getting some communication from her, even by the medium or the ouija board. But my intellect absolutely refused any credence to the so-called 'revelations'.... There was a certain enjoyment in the book, though, because it is really exquisitely funny -- all the funnier because it is so deadly serious. The 'pink twilight' and the 'orange sun' of the 20th Plane don't appeal to me, and the 'bill of Fare' which the departed eat is farcical - 'synthetic beef tea' and 'juice of a rice product'. How Frede would have howled. There isn't a single non-famous spirit in Dr. Watson's calling list, except his mother ... There don't seem to be any grocers or butchers or carpenters on the 20th Plane."

"The Twentieth Plane", by Albert Watson

LM Montgomery on "Ben Hur" by Lew Wallace

"There is a certain couplet in Ben Hur which always makes me incredibly homesick.

No more does the Nile in the moonlight calm Moan past the Memphian shore.

Gods! There comes the ache! I see that moonlit shore ... I yearn for it -- I could weep with very longing to see it again. I must have seen it once."

"Ben Hur" by Lew Wallace

LM Montgomery on "The Way of All Flesh" by Samuel Butler

"A clever book but not by any means the great novel some have pronounced it. It is full of truths and half-truths and yet it is on the whole a very false book. It impresses me as having been written by a man who was incapable of feeling any lofty or inspiring passion or even any decent pleasing ordinary emotion. He therefore refused to believe that any other person could feel such ... Real pleasure I found not in reading the book, but a certain titillating intellectual delight I did find."

The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler

LM Montgomery on "The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1662"

"I never read it before, though I have heard of it all my life. It is the most unique book. No one but an Englishman could have written it. It is a book without a spark of wit, without a gleam of conscious humor, without passion, imagination or insight. It is a book which deals almost wholly with commonplace people and incidents. And yet it is packed with interest from cover to cover and is irradiated on every page with unconscious humor. Its great charm is its sense of reality. It is impossible to believe that it is over 200 years since Pepys lived. He must have been alive yesterday. The people he mentions -- his neighbors and servants and sweethearts -- are alive. We know them. Pepys himself is a most naive and engaging old sinner in his love of fine clothes, of 'good eating' and of 'gadding abroad looking for beauties.' The book is delightful. I always come back to my own world after reading it with a jolt."

The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1662

Has anyone besides myself read this book? It is hilarious, a gossip-fest of Elizabethan London. Pepys ends every single entry, EVERY SINGLE ONE, with "And so, to bed".

LM Montgomery on Wordsworth

... as she re-read some of his stuff during World War I:

"The classic calm and repose and beauty of his lines seemed to belong to another planet and to have as little to do with this world-welter as an evening star."

LM Montgomery on Rupert Brooke

"His poems are very wonderful. His 'Song of the Pilgrims' is one of the most exquisite things I have ever read. One feels that a great poet died in Lemnos, a victim to that fatal Gallipoli error. One drop of his blood was worth an ocean of Hun gore. If he could do such in youth, what might he not have done in maturity?"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke

And here's the 'Song of the Pilgrims', by Rupert Brooke:

(Halted around the fire by night, after moon-set, they sing this beneath the trees.)

What light of unremembered skies
Hast thou relumed within our eyes,
Thou whom we seek, whom we shall find?...
A certain odour on the wind,
Thy hidden face beyond the west,
These things have called us; on a quest
Older than any road we trod,
More endless than desire....
Far God,
Sigh with thy cruel voice, that fills
The soul with longing for dim hills
And faint horizons! For there come
Grey moments of the antient dumb
Sickness of travel, when no song
Can cheer us; but the way seems long;
And one remembers....
Ah! the beat
Of weary unreturning feet,
And songs of pilgrims unreturning!...
The fires we left are always burning
On the old shrines of home. Our kin
Have built them temples, and therein
Pray to the Gods we know; and dwell
In little houses lovable,
Being happy (we remember how!)
And peaceful even to death
O Thou,
God of all long desirous roaming,
Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing,
And crying after lost desire.
Hearten us onward! as with fire
Consuming dreams of other bliss.
The best Thou givest, giving this
Sufficient thing -- to travel still
Over the plain, beyond the hill,
Unhesitating through the shade,
Amid the silence unafraid,
Till, at some sudden turn, one sees
Against the black and muttering trees
Thine altar, wonderfully white,
Among the Forests of the Night.

LM Montgomery on Mrs. Hemans' Poems

"I read them all through once before. In my childhood, those sweet and tender lyrics of hers were a source of great pleasure to me. I admit that I love them yet ... I think Mrs. Hemans has been hardly dealt with by our hurrying feverish get-rich-quick age. Surely sweetness and charm of sentiment have their place in literature, as well as strength and grandeur. A violet is a dear thing though it is not a star, and a ferny dell is delightful though it is not a 'heaven-kissing hill'. In one mood, Mrs. Hemans gives me quite as much pleasure as Kipling does."

The poetical works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans

LM Montgomery on "Adam Bede", by George Eliot

"It is a great novel in spite of its inartistic ending. I could have pardoned the marriage of Adam and Dinah, however, if it had not been brought about in such a hurried and artificial manner. Mrs. Poyser is a delightful creature in a book. Out of it she might not be so agreeable. The character of Hetty Sorrel is wonderfully analyzed. Dinah is just a little bit too good for 'human nature's daily food.' Yet there are such people -- and the rest of us are not fit to untie their shoe-laces. Nevertheless, Dinah does not enlist our sympathy or interest. We don't care a hoot whether she ever gets a husband or not. But our hearts go out to poor, pretty, vain, sinning, suffering Hetty. After all, it is the sinners we love and pity -- perhaps because they are nearer to ourselves and we recognize so many of our hidden weaknesses in them."

"Adam Bede", by George Eliot

LM Montgomery on Tennyson's "Guenivere"

"Tennyson says 'We needs must love the highest when we see it.' But that is false -- utterly false! There is no such compulsion -- more's the pity. We must admire the highest when we see it -- but it does not command our love. Guenivere was right when she said, 'The low sun makes the color.'"

LM Montgomery on Bill Carman

"Carman is the foremost American poet of the present ... Some of Carman's work is very charming -- yes, that's just the word for it -- charming. A large dose of it palls. He has only one or two notes and the constant repetition of these become monotonous, no matter how much they pleased at first. Then, he deals only with the joy of life. And no poet can be great who does not take the pain of life also into his poetry."

LM Montgomery on "Romola", by George Eliot

"Read 'Romola' again. Oh, truly, there were giants in those days in literature. My books seem so trivial and petty compared to those masterpieces."

"Romola", by George Eliot

LM Montgomery on "Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan

"This book was read and re-read with never-failing delight. Many a time did I walk the strait and narrow path with Christian and Christiana -- although I never liked Christiana's adventures half so well as Christian's. For one thing, there was such a crowd with Christiana; she had not half the fascination of that solitary intrepid figure who faced all alone the shadows of the dark valley and the encounter with Apollyon. I am proud of liking 'Pilgrim's Progress'."

Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (I cannot believe I actually read this damn book. But I did.)

LM Montgomery on Tennyson

"I detest Tennyson's 'Arthur'! If I'd been Guinevere, I'd have been unfaithful to him too. But not for Lancelot -- he is just as unbearable in another way. As for Geraint, if I'd been Enid, I'd have bitten him. These 'patient Griseldes' of women deserve all they get!

I like Tennyson because he gives me nothing but pleasure. I cannot love him because he gives me nothing but pleasure ... I love best the poets who hurt me.

But I think I shall have some love for Tennyson after this -- for today I read a verse in 'In Memoriam' which I do not think I can ever have read carefully before -- which scorched me with a sudden flame of self-revelation and brought to me one of those awful moments when we look into the abysses of our own natures and recoil in horror. The verse was:

Do we indeed desire the dead Should still be near us at our side? Is there no baseness we would hide, No inner vileness that we dread?"

Idylls of the King

LM Montgomery on Wordsworth

"Even he occasionally says something so vital and poignant that I am ready to cry out with the agony of it -- and so I love him too, in spite of his much balderdash."

LM Montgomery on Robert Browning

"I love best the poets who hurt me. When in reading a poem I come across some line that thrusts itself into my heart -- then is my soul knit unto the soul of that poet forevermore. Browning hurts me worse than any poet I have ever read -- so I love him most."

I have not been able to get into him. Any Robert Browning fans out there? What am I missing?

LM Montgomery on Tennyson

"I cannot think he is a supremely great poet. There is something lacking in him. He is very beautiful -- very graceful. In short, the Perfect Artist. But he seldom lets us forget the artist -- we are never swept away -- Not he -- he flows on serenely. And that is good. But an occasional bit of wild nature would make it better still."

LM Montgomery on Keats

"On the whole, I do not like Keats. His poems are, in reality, too full of beauty. One feels stifled in roses ... There is little in Keats' poems except luscious beauty -- so much of it that the reader is surfeited."

Interesting point. I have to say that I can see what she means.

LM Montgomery on Sir Walter Scott

"His magic never fails ... I always come back to him ... What a delight the few novels of Scott which I could get to read in early life were to me! There was one around the house -- an old paperbound Rob Roy -- over which I pored until I read it to pieces. Then I got hold of The Talisman and Ivanhoe, thanks to Nate ... To me, Scott's novels are blent with the brightest memories of those old days."

Rob RoyThe TalismanIvanhoe

LM Montgomery on "Pickwick Papers", by Charles Dickens

"I first read it when a child -- there was an old coverless copy lying around the house and I reveled in it. I remember that it was a book that always made me hungry."

I love that. I picked up the book again, and read it - during the research-frenzy - and was overwhelmed by the scrumptious descriptions of eggs, and breakfasts, and ales, and pies ... LM was right on.

"Pickwick Papers", by Charles Dickens

LM Montgomery on "Adam Bede", by George Eliot

"'Adam Bede' is a cup of mingled pain and pleasure ... It is a powerful book with an inartistic ending. Her delineation of character is a thing before which a poor scribbler might well throw down her pen in despair."

Adam Bede, by George Eliot

LM Montgomery on "The Alhambra", by Washington Irving

"It is a volume of pure delight. For a time I forgot everything and wandered happily in the deserted halls and courts of the old Moorish palace with Irving ... drinking in with him the romance and charm of a civilization long dead ... The book seemed to me the gateway to an enchanged world ... I stepped in, and lo, I walked with happiness and youth and pangless pleasure again."

Tales of the Alhambra, by Washington Irving

LM Montgomery on "House of the 7 Gables", by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"It is a weird melancholy creation and every few sentences I would stumble over a sentence that brought stinging painful tears to my eyes ... I love the book and found pleasure in reading it ... It has the indefinable charm of all his books -- that airy, fantastic, elusive fancy of his permeates every line of it."

The House of 7 Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

LM Montgomery on "Isabel Carnaby", by ET Fowler

"The book is clever but too talky. The people in it seem to be so constantly occupied in saying 'smart' things and perpetrating epigrams that they haven't time to do anything of consequence."

Isabel Carnaby, by ET Fowler

LM Montgomery on "The Ascent of Man", by Henry Drummond

"It is a remarkably clear and convincing statement on the theory of evolution ... Drummond makes a good, but not, I think, wholly successful attempt to reconcile science with -- so-called -- revelation. His analogies seem good as far as they go ... but he stops when it suits him."

God. She could be describing almost every so-called pundit on the right and the left in these polarized days. They stop when it suits them.

The Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond, 1894

LM Montgomery on "King Solomon's Mines", by Rider Haggard

"I always liked it because it was so full of adventure and I do love that with a love that has outlived childhood. What care I if it be 'wild and improbable', and 'lacking in literary art' ... The one essential thing I demand of a book is that it should interest me."

Amen, LM.

King Solomon's Mines, by Rider Haggard

LM Montgomery on "Vanity Fair" by Thackeray

"I read it long ago ... I did not like it then -- probably because it hit some of my pet illusions too hard. I was too young. It takes a more mature mind than mine then to appreciate Thackeray. When I read it this winter, I wondered how I failed to see its charm before. Oh, that delightful Becky!"

Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray

LM Montgomery on "The Story of an African Farm" by Olive Schreiner

"It is one of my favorites. It is speculative, analytical, rather pessimistic, iconoclastic, daring, and very unconventional. But it is powerful and original and fearless and contains some exquisite ideas. It is like a tonic, bitter but bracing. Also, many people call it a dangerous book ... There is more of truth than pleasantness in many of its incisive utterances."

Because of LM Montgomery, I ordered this book through Amazon - and was completely swept away by it. It's kind of shocking, actually - what this author wrote about, in the context of her time and place. Very daring book.

The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner

LM Montgomery on "Lady of the Lake" by Walter Scott

"How I always gloried in that poem -- its spirited description, its atmosphere of romance, the dramatic situations with which it abounded! What food it was for my eager young mind and fancy! I used to pore over it in the old schoolhouse when I should have been wrestling with fractions ... It was nourishment for heart, mind and soul ..."

Lady of the Lake, by Walter Scott

LM Montgomery on "The Children of the Abbey", by Regina Maria Roche

"Heaven send I never have to wade through such another 'book' ... I cannot imagine a worse 'future punishment' than to be condemned to read such books for all eternity ... It is the mushiest slumpiest book I ever read, possessing a most lachrymose heroine who fainted in every chapter and cried quarts of tears if anyone looked sidewise at her."

Ha!! Believe it or not: I found a 2nd-hand copy of this book - during my research-mania - and read a chapter of it. I felt that was all I needed, to see what the book was like. Let's just say this: that Lucy Maud was actually being KIND in her criticism of it.

The Children of the Abbey, by Regina Maria Roche

LM Montgomery on "Barrack-Room Ballads" by Kipling

"They are capital -- full of virile strength and life. They thrill and pulsate and burn, they carry you along in their rush and swing, till you forget your own petty interests and cares, and burst out into a broader soul-world ... We can never be quite so narrow again."

I love that one. What a compliment. "We can never be quite so narrow again."

Barrack-Room Ballads, by Rudyard Kipling

LM Montgomery on "Quo Vadis", by Henry Sienkiewicz, 1897

"It is immensely powerful -- a perfect picture of the splendor and corruption of Imperial Rome and the court of Nero out of which rises the pure and awful beauty of early Christianity."

Quo Vadis, by Henryk K. Sienkiewicz, 1897

LM Montgomery on "A Window in Thrums", by JM Barrie

"Barrie touches common places and they blossom out into beauty and pathos."

A Window in Thrums, by JM Barrie

LM Montgomery on "The Quick or the Dead", by Amelie Rives

"It is powerfully written but too morbid and lacks proportion ... it ends in an exasperating way that makes one conscious of a desire to take the heroine and shake a little common sense into her."

LM Montgomery on "Scarlet Letter"

"Marvelously powerful book, both in style and analysis. What a power of character-painting ... such deep stormy passion-wrung characters. The hero is a man, the heroine a woman, and the true portrayal of such must ever appeal forcibly to the great heart of humanity, throbbing through all its varied phases of passion and pain."

Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

LM Montgomery on "Vanity Fair" by Thackeray

"I didn't like it. The good characters are inane, sickly, and sweet things, and the bad ones are so clever and interesting that it is vexing to see their downfall."

What an interesting comment. Villains usually are more interesting. Not likable, perhaps, but Interesting.

Vanity Fair, by William Thackeray

LM Montgomery on Washington Irving vs. Emerson

"What a difference there is between Emerson and Irving ... Emerson had the greater intellect, Irving the greater heart. But for my own part, I go in for the heart."

LM Montgomery on Washington Irving

"He is delightful. His style is so easy and graceful. 'Rip Van Winkle' is charming."

Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving

LM Montgomery on Emerson

"To be interested in Emerson you must get right into the groove of his thought and keep steadily on it. Then you can enjoy him. There can be no skipping or culling, if you want to get at his meaning. I admire and appreciate Emerson, although I do not always understand him ... His style is clean, precise, and cold, with all its beauty. I think his ideals are rather impracticable. He doesn't seem to take 'human nature' sufficiently into account."