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

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

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.”