Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea
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
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!”
