{"id":5254,"date":"2006-09-06T06:28:35","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T10:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5254"},"modified":"2024-10-27T11:39:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T15:39:20","slug":"the-books-chronicles-of-avonlea-old-lady-lloyd-l-m-montgomery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5254","title":{"rendered":"The Books: Chronicles of Avonlea<\/i> \u2013 \u2018Old Lady Lloyd\u2019 (L.M. Montgomery)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Book Excerpt: YA\/Children’s books:<\/p>\n

\"chroniclesavonlea.gif\"Next book on the shelf is Chronicles of Avonlea<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by L.M. Montgomery. Next story in the collection: “Old Lady Lloyd”.<\/p>\n

Perhaps her stories would seem sentimental or too obvious today – I know they do at times for me – but in a way, for me, it’s like watching old movies when the acting style was different … I certainly prefer modern short stories, and I certainly wouldn’t put any of her work up next to, say, Lorrie Moore – or any other master of the form … She wrote this stuff for MONEY and she tailored her stories for certain audiences. She wrote horror stories, ghost stories, love stories, stories which would fit right into a Good Housekeeping<\/i> mag or a Ladies Home Journal<\/i> – simple little domestic tales. The plots are sometimes clunky and a lot of times they depend on coincidence – unbelievable coincidence – showing up at just the right moment. But this, remember, is the style of the time. If you read Dickens now – while yes, his characters leave an indelible impression – a lot of the times it is in SPITE of the machinations of the Victorian-era plot devices. Again: this is not a criticism. It would be like watching an old movie and being literally unable to get used to the black and white, or noticing that: Hmmm, he’s supposed to be poor – yet look at his immaculate jacket! Etc. If you get hung up on the surface of things, you can miss so much of the jewels beneath. I’m not saying that some of Lucy Maud’s short stories aren’t crap (especially the ones published posthumously in the last 10 years or so) – because, oh boy, they ARE … but I think it would also be wrong to say that they are uninteresting. Maybe you need to be a Lucy Maud fan to find them interesting, but I find them interesting on a literary level as well. Lucy Maud wrote at a time when there were literally hundreds of magazines devoted to literature. That world no longer exists. If you look at The New Yorker<\/i>, it’s the same names publishing stories there week after week – there just aren’t as many options for starting writers to make a little cash. Lucy Maud, too, did not have any illusions … Ghost stories sold, and those magazines paid well – so she wrote a ton of ghost stories. Her novels are where she shines as a storyteller, a creator of worlds – but she had no shame in working in many different genres, if it paid. Also: that world no longer exists either.<\/p>\n

“Old Lady Lloyd” is almost novella length – it’s quite long. It tells the story of an interesting old woman who is known to the people in Spencervale as “Old Lady Lloyd”. She lives off by herself, she is known to be famously stingy, and she is also known to be haughty and almost frigidly proud. She wears elaborate silk dresses every day. She doesn’t go to church. She never donates to worthy causes. People are chased away from her door. Gossip rages about her. But we get to know her, through the story – and we learn a lot about her. We learn that she was left with no fortune at all when her parents died – and her oily cousin controls her money – and so she basically lives in poverty. She wears silk dresses every day because those are left over from her wealthy time and she can’t afford new clothes. And she is so humiliated about her poverty-struck state that she never lets on that she needs anything. She lives off of fruit that she picks in the woods, and she rations out her bread for herself. Spencervale has NO idea that she is so hard up. They no longer ask her to join sewing circles or what have you, because they are sick of her haughty airs – they do not recognize that it is all a front, to hide her poverty. We also learn that long ago she loved someone once – and he – in typical Lucy Maud fashion – spurned her. Or – no – they quarreled, and like a typical Lucy Maud heroine, she refused to forgive him when he begged for it. And he BEGGED. But her pride is too strong to give in. She turned him away. And of course – that meant the end of her happiness forever. He married someone else, moved away – etc. etc. He then died.<\/p>\n

Old Lady Lloyd lives in the past. She wears old silk dresses, she is laughed at by townspeople, she is feared, little kids think she’s a witch – and her life is very very bitter.<\/p>\n

But then one spring … her dead lover’s daughter Sylvia (who is now 20 years old) moves back to Spencervale. She has a job as a music teacher. Old Lady Lloyd recognizes the family resemblance immediately – and through the course of the story – begins to leave Sylvia little gifts on the woodland path that Sylvia uses to get to town. She leaves her fresh strawberries (which basically means a full meal to Old Lady Lloyd) … she leaves her flowers … she never lets on that it is her, and she doesn’t even think that Sylvia would know of her existence. But Old Lady Lloyd, a lonely old soul, sees in Sylvia the daughter she COULD have had … and so wants to do anything she can for her.<\/p>\n

Anyway … that’s the set up. The way it all turns out is, yes, sentimental, but I gotta tell ya – I get a little lump in my throat at the end of the story every time.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from “Old Lady Lloyd”. She has heard that Sylvia has been accepted to music school – yet she does not have the money to go. Old Lady Lloyd worries herself almost sick about this. It just so happens that Andrew Cameron, her businessman cousin, had a daughter who was also a singer – and I guess she died – so in her memory he set up a very lucrative music scholarship. He has sent 10 young needy people to music school already. Old Lady Lloyd feels that Sylvia MUST go to music school. So she decides to do what she has promised herself she would never do: go into town and ask her slick cousin for help. This is a proud proud woman, and having to beg for money is so against who she is – but love has opened her up. She no longer clings to pride. There are more important things.<\/p>\n


\nExcerpt from Chronicles of Avonlea<\/a>\"\"<\/i> by L.M. Montgomery – “Old Lady Lloyd”<\/b><\/p>\n

When the Old Lady reached the town, she ate her slender little lunch and then walked out to the suburb where the Cameron factories and warehouses were. It was a long walk for her, but she could not afford to drive. She felt very tired when she was shown into the shining, luxurious office where Andrew Cameron sat at his desk.<\/p>\n

After the first startled glance of surprise, he came forward beamingly, with outstretched hand.<\/p>\n

“Why, Cousin Margaret! This is a pleasant surprise. Sit down — allow me, this is a much more comfortable chair. Did you come out this morning? And how is everybody out in Spencervale?”<\/p>\n

The Old Lady had flushed at his first words. To hear the name by which her father and mother and lover had called her on Andrew Cameron’s lips seemed like profanation. But, she told herself, the time was past for squeakishness. If she could ask a favor of Andrew Cameron, she could bear lesser pangs. For Sylvia’s sake she shook hands with him, for Sylvia’s sake she sat down in the chair he offered. For no living human being’s sake could this determined Old Lady infuse any cordiality into her manner or her words. She went straight to the point with Lloyd simplicity.<\/p>\n

“I have come to ask a favour of you,” she said, looking him in the eye, not at all humbly or meekly, as became a supplicant, but challengingly and defiantly, as if she dared him to refuse.<\/p>\n

“De<\/i>-lighted to hear it, Cousin Margaret.” Never was anything so bland and gracious as his tone. “Anything I can do for you I shall be only too pleased to do. I am afraid you have looked upon me as an enemy, Margaret, and I assure you I have felt your injustice keenly. I realize that some appearances were against me, but –”<\/p>\n

The Old Lady lifted her hand and stemmed his eloquence by that one gesture.<\/p>\n

“I did not come here to discuss that matter,” she said. “We will not refer to the past, if you please. I came to ask a favour, not for myself, but for a very dear young friend of mine – a Miss Gray, who has a remarkably fine voice which she wishes to have trained. She is poor, so I came to ask you if you would give her one of your musical scholarships. I understand her name has already been suggested to you, with a recommendation from her teacher. I do not know what he has said of her voice, but I do know he could hardly overrate it. If you send her abroad for training, you will not make any mistake.”<\/p>\n

The Old Lady stopped talking. She felt sure Andrew Cameron would grant her request; but she did hope he would grant it rather rudely or unwillingly. She could accept the favour so much more easily if it were flung at her like a bone to a dog. But not a bit of it, Andrew Cameron was suaver than ever. Nothing could give him greater pleasure than to grant his dear Cousin Margaret’s request – he only wished it involved more trouble on his part. Her little protege should have her musical education assuredly – she should go abroad next year – and he was de<\/i>-lighted —<\/p>\n

“Thank you,” said the Old Lady, cutting him short again. “I am much obliged to you – and I ask you not to let Miss Gray know anything of my interference. And I shall not take up any more of your valuable time. Good afternoon.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, you mustn’t go so soon,” he said, with some real kindness or clannishness permeating the hateful cordiality of his voice – for Andrw Cameron was not entirely without the homely virtues of the average man. He had been a good husband and father; he had once been very fond of his Cousin Margaret; and he was really very sorry that “circumstances” had “compelled” him to act as he had done in that old affair of her father’s investment. “You must be my guest tonight.”<\/p>\n

“Thank you. I must return home tonight,” said the Old Lady firmly, and there was that in her tone which told Andrew Cameron that it would be useless to urge her. But he insisted on telephoning for his carriage to drive her to the station. The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there; she even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him a second time for granting her request.<\/p>\n

“Not at all,” he said. “Please try to think a little more kindly of me, Cousin Margaret.”<\/p>\n

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her dismay, that her train had just gone and that she would have to wait two hours for the evening one. She went into the waiting-room, and sat down. She was very tired. All the excitement that had sustained her was gone, and she felt weak and old. She had nothing to eat, having expected to get home in time for tea; the waiting-room was chilly, and she shivered in her thin, old, silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart likewise. She had won Sylvia’s desire for her; but Sylvia would go out of her life, and the Old Lady did not see how she was to go on living after that. Yet she sat there unflinchingly for two hours, an upright, indomitable old figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the forces of physical and mental pain, while happy people came and went, and laughed and talked before her.<\/p>\n

At eight o’clock the Old Lady got off the train at Bright River station, and slipped off unnoticed into the darkness of the wet night. She had two miles to walk, and a cold rain was falling. Soon the Old Lady was wet to the skin and chilled to the marrow. She felt as if she were walking in a bad dream. Blind instinct alone guided her over the last mile and up the lane to her own house. As she fumbled at her door, she realized that a burning heat had suddenly taken the place of her chilliness. She stumbled in over her threshold and closed the door.<\/p>\n