The Story Girl

The Story Girl / L.M. Montgomery
NY: Bantam, 1988, c1911.
258 p.

I seem to be ranging all across women's lives this week - from end of life to young marrieds to adolescents, in this book. The Story Girl is an episodic tale of the King family in Prince Edward Island, taking place while their cousin Sara Stanley (the Story Girl of the title) is visiting. 

Like many of L.M. Montgomery's stories, it covers a range of themes; nature, family ties, community stories, religious elements, lots of school and friendship in there too. This one is a little unusual in her oeuvre, though, as it's being told by one of the boys involved, as a memoir of sorts. This means we have an adult perspective on the events, which is sometimes more pronounced than at other times. It gives a sense of nostalgia for a "simpler time" as well, but I'm not sure it was a fully successful approach. 

I enjoyed the stories of the children and the scrapes they get themselves into -- some were quite amusing, some probably had more impact in 1911 when this was first published, for example, in one chapter they all freak out thinking the world is going to end the next day because they've seen it in the papers. The adults don't take their fear seriously at all, and it feels like they are even slightly mocking the group of children. It's a bit odd. 

Sara Stanley herself is a typical Montgomery heroine -- a bit set apart from everyone else because of her abilities to make up stories and/or tell old family stories in an impressive way. She's a bit dreamy, and she doesn't live with the others, she's staying with another aunt & uncle nearby, which also sets her apart a bit. This book and the characters were the inspiration for the tv series Road to Avonlea which was huge in the 90s, although it was changed up quite a lot for tv. 

I love Montgomery, but can't recall reading this one before. I've owned it for years, so I must have at some time, but nothing in it seemed familiar to me. I can't say it's my favourite of her work. It was quite episodic so there was no dramatic storyline to follow, and the inclusion of random stories thanks to Sara was a bit choppy for me. The structure of a character telling us about his childhood memories also didn't really engage me as much as some of her other books have. But, if you're a Montgomery fan, or just want a book about bygone days that works when you want to read a chapter at a time, with nothing dark or bleak about it, this is the one for you. 

LM Montgomery's After Many Years

After Many Years: Twenty-One "Long Lost" Stories / L.M. Montgomery; selected & edited by Carolyn Strom Collins & Christy Woster. 
Halifax: Nimbus, c2017.
296 p.

This is a new collection of some of the multitude of short stories that L.M. Montgomery wrote for small papers and magazines over her career. 

As noted on the cover, there are 21 stories, and they are of mixed appeal. A few of them, written for Sunday School papers, strongly remind me of the moral-laden "Uncle Arthur" stories I read as a child. There is over-the-top melodrama in a few, and a touch of the uncanny in another. There are misunderstandings between friends and lovers, interfering older women, cats, cakes, needlework, and a lot of wry humour. Also heaps of descriptions of all the beautiful settings of farms, woods, shore, even cities. It's pure LMM.

If you are already a devout reader of everything LMM (as I admit to being) you will enjoy reading this even if the stories don't really stand up to the more polished work in her novels. But you can see many of themes that she worked with making their appearance here in other shapes. At the end of each story the editors note which paper it first appeared in, whether or not it's listed in the official bibliography and a few notes on what else Montgomery was working on or living through at the time of its publication. I found these notes a bit distracting and unnecessary and would have preferred to se them as notes in the back matter. I don't think general readers who aren't academics or completists would bother with the extraneous info, being more interested in the story itself. That said, I did find a real gem when the story notes for "The Pineapple Apron" shared that LMM published a doily pattern herself in a needlework magazine. I loved that! 

I especially liked the darkness of "The Mirror", the thrill of "The Use of Her Legs", and the humour of "The Matchmaker". The longest story, "Hill o' the Winds" was an entertaining look at young love at cross purposes, and the endurance of family feuds. 

Overall this was a fun collection and the proceeds go directly to the LM Montgomery Institute at the University of PEI so it's a win win to buy it and read it. If you like LMM or just generally vintage short stories you will enjoy this light read. 

L.M. Montgomery's Scrapbooks

Imagining Anne: the Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery / Elizabeth Rollins Epperly
Toronto: Penguin, c2008.
170 p.

I ran across this book recently, and thought that today was the perfect day to feature it. Today is the anniversary of  Lucy Maud Montgomery's birth -- November 30, 1874.

L.M. Montgomery is one my favourite writers, and favourite Canadian women. She is so fascinating; the differential between her life and her optimistic writing can be overwhelming at times. She kept journals over most of her life, which I've read, and which can be very depressing in parts, as they were her outlet -- as journals are for many of us.

But there are other bits that are lovely, just like her novels. I personally love reading about the year she spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, when she was 16... probably because that's my hometown so I love the fact that she also lived there briefly.

Anyhow, I knew that she kept scrapbooks alongside her written journals, as more of a visual record that she might share with others, where she wouldn't share her private writing. But I hadn't had the chance to look through them all until now.

This book compiles pages from two of her scrapbooks kept from 1893-1910, her years on The Island (pre-marriage & moving to Ontario). Running alongside is commentary explaining the meaning and significance of the bits taped and glued in by Montgomery, provided by Montgomery scholar Elizabeth Epperly,who explains what's on the page and why it might be there, from pieces of a squirrel's tail (really!) to poems and newspaper articles, to flowers and lovely ladies from fashion magazines of the day. They are fascinating to pore over, and I'm very glad that they are printed in scrapbook size, as some of the articles require close examination even at this size. 

It's also intriguing to see LMM's handwriting all over many pages, and to note that she took care to shape her own narrative as much in these scrapbooks as she did in the journals; there are torn bits where she removed things, or added extra things to older pages much later on. Her love of colour, flowers, fashion, and friendships comes through in these pages, but as Epperly notes, she doesn't include references to some of the most important happenings in her life during this time, ranging from a traumatic romantic life to the publication of Anne of Green Gables itself.

LMM is endlessly fascinating, and I think it is because of this combination of open-heartedness and optimistic writing and sharing, and the dark depths she experienced and kept private, and often removed from her own record. This book just adds to her mystique, and was a perfect book to read through slowly, a few pages at a time. It really evokes a life and a lifestyle that is both familiar and utterly foreign to us now.
 

One of many things I really enjoyed about this book was that LMM kept little circular swatches of fabric stuck to a page -- she loved fashion and this was so cool to me as an fellow sewist! Check it out at this online exhibit page for an example.

You can look into the PEI and the Ontario Scrapbooks further thanks to an online exhibition hosted by PEI's Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Do go take a look, there is a LOT to explore. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

LMM's literary magazine, created with friends

 

 

Mistress Pat of Silver Bush

Pat of Silver Bush / L.M. Montgomery

Toronto: Seal, 1988, c1933.

278 p.

Mistress Pat / L.M. Montgomery

Toronto: Seal, 1988, c1935.

277 p.

The last few weeks I've been slowly rereading this duo of books by L.M. Montgomery. I recall enjoying them when I was much younger, though I didn't really grasp Pat's pathological fear of change then. This time around, while I was often impatient with the emphasis on this characteristic of Pat's, I also understood her melancholy at how fast time was passing, how quickly things changed, how time wouldn't just stand still for one minute so she could get a grasp on it.

I also knew, this time around, that L.M. Montgomery felt that Pat was most like her, of all her heroines. That she was going through some dark times as she was writing these books, and Pat's feeling of everything being cursed by being connected with her was part of Montgomery's own fear. Pat loses her friend Bets in the first book to sudden illness, and her next friend Suzanne Kirk in the second book to sudden marriage - both of these seemingly random occurrences reflect Montgomery's own sense of uncontrollable loss at this time in her life. 

Pat's resistance to change is really her most observable characteristic. And yet at the same time these books seem changeless. Pat spends 10 years doing much the same things, for the whole second book, and it's notable how often spring turns to summer turns to autumn, how frequently she is gazing at a sunset as the day ends. Every now and again there is a little bit of self-awareness, a little glimpse at her loneliness and dare we say boredom, a glimpse that she pushes away to continue on with the same routine. Her childhood friend Hilary Gordon (Jingle) is absent through most of the second book, although we all know what has to happen at the end. And unlike many other readers, I find Hilary much more appealing than Gilbert Blythe or Teddy Kent.

There are some odd elements in these stories. Pat's angelic mother, who doesn't really have a role in the book other than being invalided in her room, is largely absent as a character - Pat's true maternal figure is their Irish servant Judy Plum, who recalls other servants like Rebecca Dew from Anne of Windy Poplars, or Susan Baker from Rilla of Ingleside. Judy talks in a constant brogue (which, yes, gets a bit old quickly), and has her own particular way of saying things -- she is a "character". And yet she is the only one who truly understands Pat's sensitivity and character, and it is Judy who sets things right in the end.

Through both of these books, Pat is obsessively attached to Silver Bush, letting her connection to her home shape her life -- in the way she turns down a teaching career to stay home and run the show when her mother is invalided, in the way she rejects many suitors who would take her away from Silver Bush, in her loathing of her brother's wife who is seen as an interloper into their world. And in the end, it takes catastrophic, unavoidable change to convince her to leave PEI and admit who it is that she truly loves -- and it's not Silver Bush.

SPOILERS NEXT:

What I find most interesting in these books is the idea of tradition vs. modernism -- while Montgomery despised modernist writing & poetry, there is almost a breath of it here in Jingle's character. He loves Pat, but is also able to leave to follow his own dream of being an architect. He travels the world and takes in inspiration from other places, eventually building a house for Pat in BC. It's this sense that the world is becoming wider, and that in creating a literal firestorm at the end of this book, Montgomery isn't leaving Pat any choice; she'll have to join the modern world. Did she feel that way herself - that her past and her attachment to it couldn't be shaken loose, but that somewhere deep down, she wanted everything leveled, to be given a chance to start over? We will never know, but since she wrote these books while struggling through awful times in her life, perhaps a clean slate was a tempting idea, one that she gave Pat in the end.

Rereading these two as an older reader really gave me much more to ponder. Pat is not as fey, ambitious or clever as Anne or Emily, but there is something to her that is memorable nonetheless. And I found the domesticity in this much easier to take than in Jane of Lantern Hill, where it seems strange and overdone to me. If you've read any or all of these books, feel free to weigh in with your comments!