The Books: Akin to Anne: ‘Charlotte’s Quest’ (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans – ‘Charlotte’s Quest’ by L.M. Montgomery

Akin to Anne is a collection of Lucy Maud’s stories – all having to do with orphans, people (mostly women) who are alone in the world and – at the end of a 10 page story – have discovered that their mother’s second cousin is actually alive … so … family DOES exist. It’s the same story (for the most part) over … and over … and over. It was one of Lucy Maud’s ongoing themes, of course. The importance of family. This from a woman who was pretty much abandoned by her mother (who died) and then by her father (who left her behind with grandparents – moved out west – and started a new life out there, with a new wife – and never “called for” Lucy Maud) Lucy Maud was raised by stern cold grandparents – who … sound rather exacting, and unsympathetic – and as they got older, much more difficult to deal with. Cranky, particular, aches and pains, demanding. Lucy Maud had an 11 year engagement because she was waiting for them to die – and her sense of duty would not let her abandon them. !!! Knowing what a disaster her marriage ended up being, I almost wish that Ewan had gotten sick of waiting. But no. He knew that he would never get another wife, because who the hell would marry that jackass except a woman who had had a disappointment in love when she was young, never got over it, and buried her heart forever? Nobody. So he waited. For 11 years. This just goes to show that Lucy Maud, even though she had a prickly relationship with her grandparents who probably would have preferred her to be a normal person – instead of a writer – horrors!! – she cherished them, because they were family. She was all alone in the world. She never dwelled on it, and she never said a bad word about her father in her journals. She made excuses for him. She rhapsodized over his rare letters. She went out there to visit his new family maybe … twice? In her whole life? So he basically discarded his first child – started up again – and left her to fend for herself with the stern relatives of his dead first wife.

That dark belly underbelly of abandonment rarely makes it directly into Lucy Maud’s stories. Anne is an orphan – but her imagination helps her to bear her years before Green Gables … and her parents died when she was a baby, so she has romanticized them. She doesn’t actively miss them. We don’t have a depressive little Oliver Twist with Anne Shirley – we have a plucky little girl who has created an intense fantasy life to deal with her hard little life.

So these stories, monotonous as they can be when read all together, are very revealing. It’s the most important thing in the world to know that you are not alone … that you have people around you … who are of your blood.

We have story after story about a poor work-hardened woman, living in a bleak boarding-house – (these characters are all the same, no individuality), and then discovering – through a random coincidence – that the rich man who just moved to town is actually her long lost brother – thought to be dead in the Klondike! So now she has family! Hooray!!! Etc. Over and over and over again …

I won’t bore you with those repetitive stories – only Lucy Maud die-hard fans would read all of them – but I actually find them kind of beautiful. I can really sense her personality, her concerns, her … worries … in these stories. There are a couple in the collection that do not follow the same pattern – and some that have a higher level of narrative prose – so I’ll post excerpts from those.

The first story in the collection is “Charlotte’s Quest” – published in the Family Herald in 1933. You can tell it was published at a late date. Her writing is strong, sure, and self-contained. The characters, while broad sketches, are clear, you know who they are … They are individuals. They seem to have a breath of life to them, unlike the monotonous cardboard cutouts of many of the other stories.

Charlotte is 8 years old, and her mother is dead and her father only sees her as a “hindrance to his mountain-climbing”. Her father has dropped her off at her aunt’s and uncle’s and has never been seen again. Charlotte is a serious rather ugly little girl with thick bushy black eyebrows – she is not cute, or sweet, like other little girls – she likes to read, and imagine things, and think by herself …her aunt and uncle are loud, boisterous, social people and completely do not understand their niece. They want her to be like them. Charlotte has to share a bedroom with her loud cousins … and she lives her life in complete misery. She is misunderstood, and totally alone in the world. She hears that there is a witch in the next town who will grant your wishes. So Charlotte sets out to find this witch – and ask the witch for a mother.

This is the scene where she finds the witch’s house. I love the many levels in this scene. You can see where “Witch Penny” is coming from … you can see the whole thing through her eyes too … Very well done.

Oh, and also it’s one of her rare sympathetic portraits of an Irish person. Normally they are drunk and filthy in her stories, little better than caricatures. Father Cassidy is a VERY sympathetic Irishman, in Emily of New Moon – and Judy Plum, in the interminable Pat books [excerpts here and here], is Irish – she’s sympathetic too, even though gotta be honest: Judy Plum annoys me. If I had a housemaid like her, I’d want to slit my throat. Like: SHUT UP, PLUM. GIMME A MOMENT’S REST, FOR GOD’S SAKE. Speaking of “Pat” – this episode in the story below with the witch shows up in Pat of Silver Bush almost word for word, except that Pat is looking for a lost dog, not her mother.

Excerpt from Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans – ‘Charlotte’s Quest’ by L.M. Montgomery

The Witch Penny’s house was a little grey one nestling against the steep hill that rose from the pond about half a mile west of the small town. The gate hung slackly on its hinges. The house itself was shabby and old, with sunken window sills and a much-patched roof. Charlotte reflected that being a witch didn’t seem to be a very profitable business.

For a moment Charlotte hesitated. She was not a timid child, but she did feel a little frightened. Then she thought of Mrs. Barrett rocking fiercely in her rocker and forever talking in her high, cheerful voice. “Mother is always so bright,” Aunt Florence always said. Charlotte shuddered. No witch could be worse. She knocked resolutely on the door.

A thumping sound inside ceased. Had she interrupted Witch Penny in the weaving of a spell? … and footsteps seemed to be coming down a stair. Then the door opened and Witch Penny appeared. Charlotte took her all in with one of her straight, deliberate looks.

She was grey as an owl, with a broad rosy face and tiny black eyes surrounded by cushions of fat. Charlotte thought she looked too jolly for a witch. But no doubt there were all kinds. Certainly the big black cat with fiery golden eyes that sat behind her on the lower step of the stair looked his reputed part.

“Now who may ye be and what may ye be wanting with me?” said Witch Penny a bit gruffly.

Charlotte never wasted breath, words or time. “I am Charlotte Laurence and I have come to ask you to find me a mother – that is, if you really are a witch. Are you?”

Witch Penny’s look suddenly changed. It grew secretive and mysterious.

“Whist, child,” she whispered. “Don’t be talking of witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen.”

“But are you?” persisted Charlotte. If Witch Penny wasn’t a witch, she wasn’t going to bother with her.

“To be sure, I am. But come in, come in. Finding a mother ain’t something to be done on the durestep. Better come right upstairs. I’m weaving a tablecloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in the countryside promised to do one apiece for them. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all their tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night, and ’twas their ruination. But I’ve got far behind me comrades and mustn’t be losing any more time. Ye’ll excuse me if I kape on with me work while ye’re telling me your troubles. It’s the quane’s own cloth I’m weaving, and it’s looking sour enough her majesty will be if it’s not finished on time.”

Charlotte thought that Witch Penny’s old loom looked very big and clumsy for the weaving of fairy tablecloths, and the web in it seemed strangely like rather coarse grey flannel. But no doubt witches had their own way of blinding the eyes of ordinary mortals. When Witch Penny finished it, she would weave a spell over it and it would become a thing of gossamer light and loveliness.

Witch Penny resumed her work and Charlotte sat down on a stool beside her. They were on a little landing above the stairs, with one low, cobwebby window and a stained ceiling with bunches of dried tansy and yarrow hanging from it. The cat had followed them up and sat on the top step, staring at Charlotte. Its eyes shone uncannily through the dusk of the staircase.

“Now, out with your story,” said Witch Penny. “Ye’re wanting a mother, ye tell me, and ye’re Charlotte Laurence. Ye’ll be having Edward Laurence for your father, I’m thinking?”

“Yes. But he’s gone west to climb mountains,” explained Charlotte. “He’s always wanted to, but Mother died when I was three, and as long as I was small he couldn’t. I’m eight now, so he’s gone.”

“And left ye with your Uncle Tom and your Aunt Florence. Oh, I’ve heard all about it. Your Aunt Florence’s cat was after telling mine the whole story at the last dance we had. Your Aunt Florence do be too grand for the likes of us, but it’s little she thinks where her cat do be going. Ye don’t look like the Laurences – ye haven’t got your father’s laughing mouth – ye’ve got a proud mouth like your old Grandmother Jasper. Did ye ever see her?”

Charlotte shook her head. She knew nothing of her Grandmother Jasper beyond the fact of her existence, but all at once shhe knew who You-Know-Who was.

“No, it ain’t likely ye would. She was real mad at your mother for marrying Ned Laurence. I’ve heard she never would forgive her, never would set foot in her house. But ye have her mouth. And what black hair ye’ve got. And what big eyes. And what little ears. And ye have a mole on your neck. ‘Tis the witch’s mark. Come now, child dear, wouldn’t ye like to be a witch? ‘Tis a far easier job than the one ye’ve set me. Think av the fun av riding on the broomstick.”

Charlotte thought of it. Flying over the steeples and dark spruces at night. “I think I’m too young to be a witch,” she said.

Witch Penny’s eyes twinkled.

“Sure, child dear, ’tis the young witches that do be having the most power. Mind ye, everybody can’t be a witch. We’re that exclusive ye’d never belave. But I’ll not press ye. And ye want me to find you a mother?”

“If you please. Nita Gresham got a new mother. So why can’t I?”

“Well, the real mothers are hard to come by. All the same, mebbe it can be managed. It’s lucky ye’ve come in the right time of the moon. I couldn’t have done a think for ye next wake. And mind ye, child, I’m not after promising anything for sartin. But there’s a chanct, there’s a chanct … seeing as ye’ve got your grandmother’s mouth. If ye’d looked like your father, it wouldn’t be Witch Penny as’d help ye to a mother. I’d no use for him.”

Witch Penny chuckled. “What kind of a mother do ye be wanting?”

“A quiet mother who doesn’t laugh too much or ask too many questions.”

Witch Penny shook her head.

“A rare kind. It’ll take some conniving. Here …” Witch Penny dropped her shuttle, leaned forward and extracted from a box beside the loom a handful of raisins … “stow these away in your liddle inside while I do a bit av thinking.”

Charlotte ate her raisins with a relish while Witch Penny wove slowly and thoughtfully. She did not speak until Charlotte had finished the last raisin.

“It come into me mind,” said Witch Penny, “that if ye go up the long hill … and down it … then turn yourself about three times, nather more nor less, ye’ll find a road that goes west. Folly your nose along it till ye come to a gate with a liddle lane that leads down to the harbour shore. Turn yourself about three times more … if ye forget that part of it, ye may look till your eyes fall out of your head, but niver a mother ye’ll see. Then go down the lane to a stone house with a red door in it like a cat’s tongue. Knock three times on the door. If there’s a mother in the world for ye, ye’ll find her there. That’s all I can be doing for ye.”

Charlotte got up briskly.

“Thank you very much. It sounds like a good long walk, so I ought to start. What am I to pay you for this?”

Witch Penny chuckled again. Something seemed to amuse her greatly.

“How much have ye got?” she asked.

“A dollar.”

“How’d ye come by it?”

Charlotte thought witches were rather impertinent. However, if you dealt with them …

“Mrs. Beckwith gave it to me before she went away.”

“And how come ye didn’t spend it for swaties and ice cream?”

“I like to feel I’ve something to fall back on,” said Charlotte gravely.

Witch Penny chuckled for the third time.

“Says your grandmother. Oh, ye’re Laurence be name but it goes no daper. Kape your liddle bit av a dollar. Ye’ve got a mole on your neck. We can’t charge folks as have moles anything. It’s clane against our rules. Now run along or it’ll be getting too late.”

“I’m very much obliged to you,” said Charlotte, putting her money back in her pocket and offering her thin brown hand.

“Ye do be a mannerly child at that,” said Witch Penny.

Witch Penny stood on her sunken doorstep and watched the little, erect figure out of sight.

“Sure, and I do be wondering if I’ve done right. But she’d never fit in up at the Laurences with their clatter. And once the old leddy lays eyes on her!”

Charlotte had disappeared around the bend in the road. Then Witch Penny said a queer thing for a witch. She said: “God bless the liddle cratur.”