The Books: “Along the Shore – ‘The Unhappiness of Miss Farquhar’” (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

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.