The Books: Anne of Windy Poplars (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/children’s books:

Next book on the shelf is Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Green Gables) 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 (Anne of Green Gables) 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.”