The Books: Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

Next book on the shelf is Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, No. 8) 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 (Anne of Green Gables, No. 8) 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.”