Further Chronicles of Avonlea

shewyer - L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

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Publié par	shewyer
Publié le	08 décembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	24
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Project Gutenberg's Further Chronicles of Avonlea,
by Lucy Maud Montgomery #8 in our series by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
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**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla
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Title: Further Chronicles of AvonleaAuthor: Lucy Maud Montgomery
Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5340] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 2, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK FURTHER CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA
***
This book has been put on-line as part of the
BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the Celebration of
Women Writers through the combined work of
Leslee Suttie and Mary Mark Ockerbloom.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
Reformatted by Ben Crowder
<crowderb@blankslate.net>
http://www.blankslate.net/lang/etexts.phpFURTHER
CHRONICLES OF
AVONLEA
Which have to do with many personalities and
events in and about
Avonlea, the Home of the Heroine of Green
Gables, including tales
of Aunt Cynthia, The Materializing of Cecil, David
Spencer's
Daughter, Jane's Baby, The Failure of Robert
Monroe, The Return
of Hester, The Little Brown Book of Miss Emily,
Sara's Way, The
Son of Thyra Carewe, The Education of Betty, The
Selflessness of
Eunice Carr, The Dream-Child, The Conscience
Case of David Bell,
Only a Common Fellow, and finally the story of
Tannis of the
Flats.
All related by
L. M. MONTGOMERY
Author of "Anne of Green Gables," "Anne of
Avonlea," "Anne of the
Island," "Chronicles of Avonlea," "Kilmeny of the
Orchard," etc.INTRODUCTION
It is no exaggeration to say that what Longfellow
did for Acadia, Miss Montgomery has done for
Prince Edward Island. More than a million readers,
young people as well as their parents and uncles
and aunts, possess in the picture-galleries of their
memories the exquisite landscapes of Avonlea,
limned with as poetic a pencil as Longfellow
wielded when he told the ever-moving story of
Grand Pre.
Only genius of the first water has the ability to
conjure up such a character as Anne Shirley, the
heroine of Miss Montgomery's first novel, "Anne of
Green Gables," and to surround her with people so
distinctive, so real, so true to psychology. Anne is
as lovable a child as lives in all fiction. Natasha in
Count Tolstoi's great novel, "War and Peace,"
dances into our ken, with something of the same
buoyancy and naturalness; but into what a
commonplace young woman she develops! Anne,
whether as the gay little orphan in her conquest of
the master and mistress of Green Gables, or as
the maturing and self-forgetful maiden of Avonlea,
keeps up to concert-pitch in her charm and her
winsomeness. There is nothing in her to disappoint
hope or imagination.
Part of the power of Miss Montgomery—and
the largest part—is due to her skill in
compounding humor and pathos. The humor ishonest and golden; it never wearies the reader;
the pathos is never sentimentalized, never
degenerates into bathos, is never morbid. This
combination holds throughout all her works,
longer or shorter, and is particularly manifest
in the present collection of fifteen short
stories, which, together with those in the first
volume of the Chronicles of Avonlea, present a
series of piquant and fascinating pictures of
life in Prince Edward Island.
The humor is shown not only in the presentation of
quaint and unique characters, but also in the words
which fall from their mouths. Aunt Cynthia "always
gave you the impression of a full-rigged ship
coming gallantly on before a favorable wind;" no
further description is needed—only one such
personage could be found in Avonlea. You would
recognize her at sight. Ismay Meade's disposition
is summed up when we are told that she is "good
at having presentiments—after things happen."
What cleverer embodiment of innate obstinacy
than in Isabella Spencer—"a wisp of a woman who
looked as if a breath would sway her but was so
set in her ways that a tornado would hardly have
caused her to swerve an inch from her chosen
path;" or than in Mrs. Eben Andrews (in "Sara's
Way") who "looked like a woman whose opinions
were always very decided and warranted to wear!"
This gift of characterization in a few words is
lavished also on material objects, as, for instance;
what more is needed to describe the forlornness of
the home from which Anne was rescued than thestatement that even the trees around it "looked like
orphans"?
The poetic touch, too, never fails in the right place
and is never too frequently introduced in her
descriptions. They throw a glamor over that
Northern land which otherwise you might imagine
as rather cold and barren. What charming Springs
they must have there! One sees all the fruit-trees
clad in bridal garments of pink and white; and what
a translucent sky smiles down on the ponds and
the reaches of bay and cove!
"The Eastern sky was a great arc of crystal,
smitten through with auroral crimsonings."
"She was as slim and lithe as a young white-
stemmed birch-tree; her hair was like a soft dusky
cloud, and her eyes were as blue as Avonlea
Harbor in a fair twilight, when all the sky is a-bloom
over it."
Sentiment with a humorous touch to it prevails in
the first two stories of the present book. The one
relates to the disappearance of a valuable white
Persian cat with a blue spot in its tail. "Fatima" is
like the apple of her eye to the rich old aunt who
leaves her with two nieces, with a stern injunction
not to let her out of the house. Of course both Sue
and Ismay detest cats; Ismay hates them, Sue
loathes them; but Aunt Cynthia's favor is worth
preserving. You become as much interested in
Fatima's fate as if she were your own pet, and the
climax is no less unexpected than it is natural,especially when it is made also the last act of a
pretty comedy of love.
Miss Montgomery delights in depicting the romantic
episodes hidden in the hearts of elderly spinsters
as, for instance, in the case of Charlotte Holmes,
whose maid Nancy would have sent for the doctor
and subjected her to a porous plaster while waiting
for him, had she known that up stairs there was a
note-book full of original poems. Rather than bear
the stigma of never having had a love-affair, this
sentimental lady invents one to tell her mocking
young friends. The dramatic and unexpected
denouement is delightful fun.
Another note-book reveals a deeper romance in
the case of Miss Emily; this is related by Anne of
Green Gables, who once or twice flashes across
the scene, though for the most part her friends and
neighbors at White Sands or Newbridge or Grafton
as well as at Avonlea are the persons involved.
In one story, the last, "Tannis of the Flats," the
secret of Elinor Blair's spinsterhood is revealed in
an episode which carries the reader from Avonlea
to Saskatchewan and shows the unselfish devotion
of a half-breed Indian girl. The story is both
poignant and dramatic. Its one touch of humor is
where Jerome Carey curses his fate in being
compelled to live in that desolate land in "the
picturesque language permissible in the far
Northwest."
Self-sacrifice, as the real basis of happiness, is afavorite theme in Miss Montgomery's fiction. It is
raised to the nth power in the story entitled, "In Her
Selfless Mood," where an ugly, misshapen girl
devotes her life and renounces marriage for the
sake of looking after her weak and selfish half-
brother. The same spirit is found in "Only a
Common Fellow," who is haloed with a certain
splendor by renouncing the girl he was to marry in
favor of his old rival, supposed to have been killed
in France, but happily delivered from that tragic
fate.
Miss Montgomery loves to introduce a little child or
a baby as a solvent of old feuds or domestic
quarrels. In "The Dream Child," a foundling boy,
drifting in through a storm in a dory, saves a heart-
broken mother from insanity. In "Jane's Baby," a
baby-cousin brings reconciliation between the two
sisters, Rosetta and Carlotta, who had not spoken
for twenty