I managed to write 1200 words on my Novel-in-Progress. Jessamyn is almost out of the hayloft. As soon as daylight comes she can jump down. I’m happy about that. 

Writing is tough. So, in an effort to see how others have done things I’d like to do, I looked up L. M. Montgomery on the web, to see if anyone had an insightful essay. She wrote about Prince Edward Island so evocatively that one hundred years later people visit just to look at it. She writes scenes that make people cry or sometimes, laugh. But she wrote a lot more than is commonly discussed. 

I’ve read all of the Anne of Green Gables series as well as two books called Chronicles of Avonlea. One of the Anne books, Rilla of Ingleside, could probably be used to teach the names of battles of World War I.  

Montgomery also wrote a series called Emily of New Moon, another Pat of Silver Bush, and a book called Story Girl. Two of those feature a ‘special’ girl character who wants to be a writer, and tells spell-binding stories as a child/teenager. (Like Anne.) I didn’t really enjoy the stories, although you can find some strong defenders for them. 

She wrote a reasonably adult book called My Blue Castle**; late in life she wrote Jane of Lantern Hill** (some serious wish fulfillment for an unhappy eleven year old), and at some point a book with Marigold in the title, that begin with a family almost killing a new born baby because they won’t give it fresh air, sunshine, and reasonable amounts of food (the mom did die), and other random works.  

What caught my eye at one point, was a website called “Anne of Green Gables.’ Don’t waste your time. It isn’t about the books. It is about a television adaptation that was made in the 1990’s, and like all things for television it was remade to suit someone else’s sensibilities. (This problem goes way back, since there was a silent movie made in 1919, which moved Anne to New England and had her waving a shotgun and being super sugary sweet. Oh, yeah. Those two go together but only when the sweetness is a cover for some serious gravitas. But not in that movie. It sounds indigestible.) 

I got to the A of GG website by following a link which was titled “The Wisdom of Marilla Cuthbert.” Ah, but it is the wisdom of Marilla as interpreted by whoever that TV producer was, and Colleen Dewhurst, the actress who portrayed Marilla in said horrifying adaptation. When I say that Marilla is shown helping Rachel Lynde get into her corset, while telling her she’s fat, you will understand that we are not channeling L. M. Montgomery here. If Marilla had wise things to say, these people are not going to tell us about them. 

Colleen Dewhurst has acted in a bunch of stuff that I never watched. She does have a flinty face and initially, is quite reasonable as a grim Marilla. But after watching some bits (a favor I did you all so you wouldn’t have to bother) I decided that all she has going for her is that dour, unyielding, bony face. You can’t actually imagine her keeping house for her  brother, or loving him enough to take on Anne, or seeing Anne’s terror and being moved by it. She is seriously stuck on herself, as shown by calling her own ideas, Marilla’s Wisdom. 

As I prowled, I did notice something that I never realized before. The Anne books were not written in their chronological order. Anne’s House of Dreams is set three years after she says yes to Gilbert, but it was written right away. Much later, those three years are filled in with Anne of Windy Poplars. Two books about Anne’s children, including the aforementioned one about World War I, were written next. Anne of Ingleside which chronologically comes before Rilla of Ingleside was written 15 years later. That explains how Montgomery did such good ‘foreshadowing’. 

Hoping for a brisk little antidote to this poisonous A of GG website I went to Project Gutenberg Au and opened something random. It turned out to be stories about an Englishwoman who was staying, for unspecified reasons, in a German boarding house. Her fellow boarders are always asking her rude questions. They dress funny and are obsessed with status. She invents a husband to keep them quiet at one point. 

But after a while I realized that the author’s savage description of her fellow boarders was driven by a contempt for them as complete as the contempt they are depicted as showing her. I don’t know why the character was staying in this place to begin with, but she should have been a pre-WWI spy. The description of the relationship between the English and the Germans was definitely one that could lead to a full-blown war. 

At that point I shut all this stuff down and built myself an inkle loom out of PVC pipe, realizing at midnight that I had lost the caps I bought for the ends of one part. I’ll be visiting Home Depot and hoping to see the guy named Burundi (maybe he’s from there and someone got mixed up?). He found me four elbow connectors, when I and another clerk had failed. Burundi just kept looking further and further. Maybe I should hope not to see him since it would mean I had failed again to find something. But he wished me a Happy Fourth of July when he handed me my elbow connectors, and I wish that to all of you as well!

** you can find both of these on Project Gutenberg Au and they are fun… https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#montgomery