The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery ~ 1926. This edition: McClelland-Bantam (Seal), 1988. ISBN: 0-7704-2315-9. Paperback. 218 pages.

My rating: After reading Kilmeny of the Orchard, an easy 10, but stepping back a bit, for general comparison to other novels of this vintage and genre (I’m thinking D.E. Stevenson here, I must admit, because I’ve been discovering her light romantic novels these past few months) how about a nice solid 8/10. Will that do, Blue Castle fans? I did enjoy re-reading this one, after a hiatus of many years.

*****

Though often referred to as one of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “forgotten” books, the internet abounds with reviews – its page on Goodreads – The Blue Castle  alone has over one thousand reviews, and seven thousand plus ratings. It scores an extremely respectable 4.22/5. This is a well-loved book!

Anything I say here would be superfluous to the discussion; I know others have covered this ground before, often with great eloquence and passionate approval. I’ll put forward my opinion nevertheless.

Montgomery’s stories tend to be full of stuffy matriarchs and patriarchs making life miserable for their cowed extended families; the worm turning sets the narrative in motion and has the reader cheering for the underdog; if all goes well we come to the end with a better appreciation for what makes everyone in that fictional little world tick. The Blue Castle is no exception; it follows the pattern perfectly, and with satisfying results. This story almost defines the comfort read, and I suspect that is how most of its advocates use it, to administer a little boost of fantasy and happy ending to real lives fraught – and whose life is completely free of these? – with anxiety and sadness.

*****

Valancy Stirling is having her twenty-ninth birthday, and her level of depression couldn’t be much lower. Living with her emotionally distant mother and whiny, elderly Cousin Stickles, Valancy’s days are a repetitive round of dusting and duty jobs; the attic chests overflow with the quilts the three have spent their countless hours piecing together, and every moment of Valancy’s time must be accounted for and justified.

Idleness was a cardinal sin in the Stirling household. When Valancy had been a  child she had been made to write down every night, in a small, hated, black notebook, all the minutes she had spent in idleness that day. On Sundays her mother made her tot them up and pray over them.

But Valancy has an even more insistent woe. In a world which values a woman by her achievement of a “good” marriage, Valancy is a confirmed spinster. No man has so much as looked at her with interest, and as her unvoiced desire for love increases with the years, so does her drabness and depression. Valancy is very much on the shelf, an unwanted piece of merchandise, and her large extended family, from her own bullying mother, to her perennially teasing rich bachelor Uncle Benjamin, to her gorgeous, patronizing, engaged-to-be-married cousin Olive, don’t let her forget it for a second.

Valancy’s only escape is into daydreams of a fantasy life.

Valancy, so cowed and subdued and overridden and snubbed in real life, was wont to let herself go rather splendidly in her day-dreams. Nobody in the Stirling clan, or its ramifications, suspected this, least of all her mother and Cousin Stickles. They never knew that Valancy had two homes–the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue Castle in Spain. Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women–herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night. Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they had known half the things Valancy did in her Blue Castle.

For one thing she had quite a few lovers in it. Oh, only one at a time…At twelve, this lover was a fair lad with golden curls and heavenly blue eyes. At fifteen, he was tall and dark and pale, but still necessarily handsome. At twenty, he was ascetic, dreamy, spiritual. At twenty-five, he had a clean-cut jaw, slightly grim, and a face strong and rugged rather than handsome. Valancy never grew older than twenty-five in her Blue Castle, but recently–very recently–her hero had had reddish, tawny hair, a twisted smile and a mysterious past.

Aha! That last lover has a counterpart in the real world, who shall soon be introduced. In the tradition of all romantic novels, something is about to happen.

In Valancy’s case, the immediate something is her independent decision to go secretly to a doctor for a consultation about her increasingly severe heart pains, which she has kept hidden from her overbearing family. She can’t go to the family doctor, as word would soon be out, so she decides instead to consult old Dr. Trent, a noted heart specialist who lives in the same (fictional) Ontario town of Deerwood as the Stirling clan.

Dr. Trent doesn’t say much during the examination, and while Valancy waits for his return to the consulting room, a phone call sends the doctor rushing away on another emergency. Valancy goes home no more enlightened as to her condition than she was before the appointment, but some weeks later a letter comes from Dr. Trent. He is sorry that he had to leave her hanging, but he has some bad news for her. Miss Sterling has an incurable heart condition, and could die at any moment. She might last a year at most, with extreme care and good luck. In the meantime, avoid all exertion and strong sentiment, and hope for the best. (Those of you with keen eyes will spot a clue in this paragraph. It’s there in the book, too.)

The diagnosis of imminent death sends Valancy over the edge. With nothing to lose, she immediately starts to voice the many thoughts regarding her relatives which she has kept hidden all these years. They are taken aback at mousy little Valancy’s sudden outspokenness. Not sure how to handle her, they retreat into enclaves to murmur “Crazy!”, but by and large they back off and observe her with startled eyes, an improvement of sorts from the previous incessant teasing.

Valancy then goes one further. She decides to move in with a childhood friend who has been a victim of circumstance (summer job away from home, love affair, illegitimate baby which only lives for a year etc.) and is now dying of “consumption” (tuberculosis). The good people of Deerfield have distanced themselves from the sad fate of Cissy Abel, especially since her father just happens to be the town drunk, “Roaring Abel”. The only person who has shown any sympathy for poor Cissy is another social outcast, the mysterious Barney Snaith, who is a reclusive type who lives alone on an island in nearby Lake Mistawis, showing up occasionally to beat around town in his decrepit old car in the company of Abel.

Valancy has only seen Barney twice before, but has been intrigued by his oddly handsome appearance and devil-may-care attitude. Wonder if that means anything? What do you think, dear fellow readers?

So that’s the set-up. (And oops, I forgot to mention that Valancy’s only other emotional outlet in her long, dreary twenty-nine years, other than her Blue Castle daydreams, has been reading the works of a certain John Foster, who writes romantically about the wonders of the natural world. Valancy has whole passages of his works memorized; she has been surreptitiously reading his books for years, as often as she can smuggle them from the sympathetic librarian and past her eagle-eyed mother.)

Poor Cissy dies. The Deerwood townspeople, influenced by the Stirling clan who have decided they need to regularize Valancy’s move to the Abel home by rallying round her, hypocritically show up in great force for the funeral. With Cissy dead and buried, Valancy is now rather at loose ends, and, to prevent having to return to her stifling old life, she comes up with an audacious idea.

And here I will leave you. I’m sure you will be able to make some good guesses as to what happens next. Or maybe not!

*****

Super-sentimental, but with a goodly leaven of outspoken criticism of societal and moral hypocrisies. Valancy speaks out and we cheer her on, wondering only that it took her so long to cast off the shackles of manners to do so. No, that’s not quite right. Valancy stays terribly polite; she merely exposes the sugar-coated – and sometimes blatantly naked – rudeness of the other people who have been immune to comment because of their aggressive superiority.

The plot has some cute twists and turns, and a not very surprising (but perfectly fitting) “surprise” ending.

Valancy’s island cabin to me is much more of a daydream ideal than her lavish Blue Castle in Spain; I sighed a bit over the thought of a cozy, tiny house on an island, with no need to earn an income or worry about the drains,  or deal with obnoxious neighbours or bossy family members (not saying that I have either – oh no! – but Valancy has had them, in spades, so my pleasure in her escape was purely vicarious in that aspect) – anyway – the vision of her island idyll is pure comfortable fantasy and I wish I could go there occasionally in real life versus merely through the escape of reading.

A more mature book in many ways than the earlier novels featuring Anne, Emily and the residents of Avonlea and other P.E.I. environs. It is often mentioned that this was written “for adults”, but there is nothing objectionable which a teen of today couldn’t handle; I’d say age range twelve and upwards would be just right. Definitely a “romance novel”, and could be classified as something of a “girls’/women’s book”,  though the men in my life have read and enjoyed it for the humour and the gently diverting story. Happy ending, in the best fairytale tradition.

And check out this Pinterest page, which I stumbled upon while searching out a picture of the probably fictional Grey Slosson car which Barney drives. Some lovely images collected here which I thought added greatly to this quite charming novel. And look at this lovely cover illustration, found on that page. I thought this was much better than that on the cover of my own paperback copy!

Blue Castle Images – Valancy’s World

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Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery ~ 1910. This edition: Ryerson Press, 1968. 5th Canadian Printing. Hardcover. 256 pages.

My rating: 3/10. (And I’m being generous.)

*****

Boo, hiss.

I’m going to say this straight away. I did not like this book. If it were authored by anyone other than the iconic Lucy Maud Montgomery, it would already be in the box out in the porch, heading for the charity shop next trip to town. As it is, I will keep it just because I do like complete collections of things, and I have many (most?) of L.M. Montgomery’s other novels and short story collections, but I will not be re-reading it any time soon, if ever.

Oh, this book is so dismal, in so many ways.

Here I extend an apology to those of you who love this story, and see it as a sweet fairytale, and are able to accept it as a product of the time it was written in. That’s all well and good, and I often do the same, but in this case I look at the author in question, see that this novel was published two years after Anne of Green Gables – which is a very different (and much better) book in every conceivable way – and shake my head at the author. How could she?!

In the interests of full disclosure, I did read a number of reviews before I tackled this story, and I was prompted to read this for the Canadian Book Challenge by these two bloggers, Nan at Letters From a Hill Farm, and Christine at The Book Trunk.

Letters From a Hill Farm Review – Kilmeny of the Orchard

The Book Trunk Review – Kilmeny of the Orchard

Nan and Christine between them eloquently present the “for” and “against” arguments, and I was truly curious to see in which camp I would make my home.

Nan, Kilmeny’s all yours.

Hi there, Christine. Is there room for me by your fire?!

Spoilers follow. If you want to read and judge for yourself without my input stop here.

*****

“Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace,
        But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny’s face;
        As still was her look, and as still was her ee,
        As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea,
        Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea.
        .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
        Such beauty bard may never declare,
        For there was no pride nor passion there;
        .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
        Her seymar was the lily flower,
        And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower;
And her voice like the distant melodye
        That floats along the twilight sea.”

                                  — _The Queen’s Wake_
                                                 JAMES HOGG

Wonderfully promising start with a quote from James Hogg’s narrative poem about the lovely Kilmeny who spends seven years in fairy land and comes back mutely unable to tell what she has seen. So far, so good.

And the first few chapters are quite promising as well. We meet a young man, Eric Marshall, as he graduates from college one glorious springtime day, and we nod and smile at Montgomery’s flowery description of the scene.

The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick buildings of Queenslea College and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds’ dressing-room.

A young April wind, as fresh and sweet as if it had been blowing over the fields of memory instead of through dingy streets, was purring in the tree-tops and whipping the loose tendrils of the ivy network which covered the front of the main building.  It was a wind that sang of many things, but what it sang to each
listener was only what was in that listener’s heart.  To the college students who had just been capped and diplomad by “Old Charlie,” the grave president of Queenslea, in the presence of an admiring throng of parents and sisters, sweethearts and friends, it sang, perchance, of glad hope and shining success and high achievement.  It sang of the dreams of youth that may never be quite fulfilled, but are well worth the dreaming for all that. God help the man who has never known such dreams–who, as he leaves his alma mater, is not already rich in aerial castles, the proprietor of many a spacious estate in Spain.  He has missed his birthright.

And here’s our young hero:

Eric Marshall, tall, broad-shouldered, sinewy, walking with a free, easy stride, which was somehow suggestive of reserve strength and power, was one of
those men regarding whom less-favoured mortals are tempted seriously to wonder why all the gifts of fortune should be showered on one individual.  He was not only clever and good to look upon, but he possessed that indefinable charm of personality which is quite independent of physical beauty or mental ability.
He had steady, grayish-blue eyes, dark chestnut hair with a glint of gold in its waves when the sunlight struck it, and a chin that gave the world assurance of a chin.  He was a rich man’s son, with a clean young manhood behind him and splendid prospects before him.  He was considered a practical sort of fellow, utterly guiltless of romantic dreams and visions of any sort.

Eric has decided to join his father in the family retail business – his father is a successful department store mogul – much to the dismay of Eric’s older cousin, Dr. David Baker, who feels Eric’s talents would be better used if he were to pursue a law degree. But Eric nobly holds out that his father’s occupation is good enough for him. What a good son, I thought. Attaboy!

But before Eric can settle into his life in business, he receives a letter from a close friend who is working as a teacher on Prince Edward Island. The friend has fallen ill, and must take a leave of absence from his position. Will Eric please come and take over the school for the last part of the term?

Eric happily agrees, and off he goes to the Island. He is much taken by the beauty of the setting, and by the quaint friendliness of the natives. The only jarring note is struck one evening when he sees an elderly man and a young man together.

Eric surveyed them with some curiosity.  They did not look in the least like the ordinary run of Lindsay people.  The boy, in particular, had a distinctly foreign appearance, in spite of the gingham shirt and homespun trousers, which seemed to be the regulation, work-a-day outfit for the Lindsay farmer lads.  He
had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders, and a lean, satiny brown throat above his open shirt collar.  His head was covered with thick, silky, black curls, and the hand that hung down by the side of the wagon was unusually long and slender. His face was richly, though somewhat heavily featured, olive
tinted, save for the cheeks, which had a dusky crimson bloom. His mouth was as red and beguiling as a girl’s, and his eyes were large, bold and black.  All in all, he was a strikingly handsome fellow; but the expression of his face was sullen, and he somehow gave Eric the impression of a sinuous, feline creature basking in lazy grace, but ever ready for an unexpected spring.

The other occupant of the wagon was a man between sixty-five and seventy, with iron-gray hair, a long, full, gray beard, a harsh-featured face, and deep-set hazel eyes under bushy, bristling brows.  He was evidently tall, with a spare, ungainly figure, and stooping shoulders.  His mouth was close-lipped and
relentless, and did not look as if it had ever smiled.  Indeed, the idea of smiling could not be connected with this man–it was utterly incongruous.  Yet there was nothing repellent about his face; and there was something in it that compelled Eric’s attention.

Eric shrugs and moves on. That evening, his landlord fills him in on the story. The elderly man Thomas Gordon, a local farmer, and the boy is an Italian orphan whose mother died at his birth. His father immediately deserted and has not been seen since. He was raised up by the Gordons, bachelor Thomas and his spinster sister Janet, but nature is apparently proving stronger than nurture.

“Anyhow, they kept the baby.  They called him Neil and had him baptized same as any Christian child. He’s always lived there.  They did well enough by him.  He was sent to school and taken to church and treated like one of themselves.  Some folks think they made too much of him.  It doesn’t always do with that kind, for ‘what’s bred in bone is mighty apt to come out in flesh,’ if ‘taint kept down pretty well.  Neil’s smart and a great worker, they tell me.  But folks hereabouts don’t like him.  They say he ain’t to be trusted further’n you can see him, if as far… 

Later this same evening, Eric goes for a walk and stumbles upon an old orchard, trees in full bloom. Wandering through the fragrant dusk, he hears the delicate strains of a violin, and, tracing them to their source, startles a lovely young maiden playing ethereal and perfectly in-tune music among the apple trees. Eric thinks she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and eagerly approaches her but the girl gasps in terror and flees, uttering not a word or a sound.

More investigation reveals that this is the mysterious Kilmeny Gordon, niece of the afore-mentioned Thomas and Janet Gordon, and house mate of Italianate Neil. She lives in seclusion and seldom appears in public; apparently she is mute, and also is cursed by being an illegitimate child. Her mother was married to a man, Ronald Fraser, whose first wife was mistakenly thought to be dead; when the first wife showed up very much alive. Ronald abandoned wife number two and went off with wife number one, to die “of a broken heart” shortly thereafter. Kilmeny is born  into an atmosphere of grief and resentment, and has been unable to speak since birth, though apparently her “organs of speech” are normal enough. Kilmeny’s mother is quite a piece of work – sullen and angry at her sad fate, she takes it out on everyone in the family, and I can’t help but think her death, which has occurred three years prior to the opening of the story, was probably a huge relief to all concerned.

I’m going to condense the rest of the story, though you can probably figure out what happens next.

Neil is already in love with Kilmeny. Eric falls in love with her and dismisses the prior claim of the shifty Italian fellow. Kilmeny communicates through the strains of her violin music (Neil, also innately musically gifted by his inborn heritage, apparently only had to show her how to hold the bow and her vast natural ability did the rest) and by writing on a slate hung around her neck. The courtship proceeds with Eric marvelling at this luscious find – a pure, innocent, beautiful girl – all his! Oh, go slow, do not frighten the shy little thing! – and with Kilmeny totally in awe of this handsome, obviously noble, manly man from another world.

And oh yes, the locals all call Eric “Master”, presumably because of his schoolmaster role, but it sounds a little odd in daily conversation, as if it should be accompanied (and it often is) by forelock tugging of the peasant-before-nobility type.

Eric is predictably infatuated with Kilmeny, and persists in haunting the orchard in her company, until his landlady mentions that perhaps it would be nice if Eric would go to Kilmeny’s guardians and mention his interest. “Never thought of that!” says Eric (I’m paraphrasing) and off he goes to immediately win over the dour and suspicious Gordons with his shining goodness and innate nobility. (Neil glowers in the corner.)

What else? Let’s see. Oh – Kilmeny wonders at why Eric is so taken with her – “I’m so ugly!” she moans – oops, sorry – writes on her slate. Turns out that she has never looked in a mirror in her whole eighteen years – her mother broke them all in a fit of pique after her abandonment, and Janet and Thomas have never thought to replace them.

Eric proposes, because despite Kilmeny’s “great affliction” he can’t wait to get his hands on this delectable young creature. Kilmeny refuses him. Scritch, scritch, scritch -“I will only marry you if I gain the power of speech!”

Eric calls in his old friend Dr. Baker, who examines Kilmeny and decides, along with her aunt and uncle, that her affliction has been caused by her mother’s trauma, visited in some mysterious way upon the newborn babe. If a great surge of desire to speak were to come over Kilmeny, she would at long last be able to utter! But as this doesn’t seem likely to happen, Kilmeny and Eric decide to part.

Both mope around, until Eric, unable to withstand the desire to see his love one more time, ventures into the orchard. He passes sullen Neil, building a fence. He sees Kilmeny, and is overcome with grief and sorrow at his imminent loss. Kilmeny sees him, and she sees something else – the hot-blooded Italian is coming up behind Eric with axe upraised!

Do I need to go on?

Voice is achieved. Neil drops the axe in horrified remorse and promptly leaves the Island, removing himself permanently from the picture, to the relief of absolutely everyone. (Poor Neil. He is the one sympathetic character in this whole thing.) The engagement is back on. Eric’s father sees Kilmeny and is immediately smitten with his son’s bucolic sweetheart. Birds sing, etc. etc. etc. and the curtain sweeps shut.

*****

There are so many objectionable elements to this melodrama. The characters are impossibly stereotyped, and the situations are contrived to the nth degree.

What was all the nonsense about Neil and his ethnic “stain”? He was raised from babyhood as a member of the family, but his demotion from Kilmeny’s foster “brother” to merely an inconvenient hired boy is swift and brutal, with no visible consequences except to Neil himself. The xenophobic comments regarding Neil’s heritage come straight from the author, via the mouths of her characters. Nowhere is there any indication that this is a plot device, except for one or two mentions that Neil’s perpetual sullenness is a reaction to the way he is viewed and treated by everyone else in his community. Damned from birth, and by birth.

And poor Kilmeny – she too is damned by birth. Because of her mother’s “sin” – rejection of her dying father’s request for a reconciliation, plus a poor marital choice – the innocent baby is doomed by some supernatural power to muteness. That doesn’t make any sort of sense whatsoever, but all of the characters meekly accept it as a viable reason and a fair enough fate.

Eric’s infatuation with the virginal Kilmeny, and his desire to teach her about love and the world is more than a little creepy, as is his willingness to abandon her because of her “affliction”. I mean, the girl has everything – unearthly beauty, musical ability approaching genius, and perfect (if tiny) handwriting! What’s a mere voice matter when she has so many other sterling qualities and delicious possibilities to offer?

The whole thing creeped me out, and I’m hard pressed to find any excuse for Lucy Maud Montgomery’s authorial sloppiness and moral negligence in this particular effort. It did remind me of some of the more forgettable of her short stories, so all I can think is that she popped it off one thoughtless day and sent it out into the world and had it accepted because of the previous excellence and best-sellerism of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea.

Not recommended.

Oh – one more thing. What is with that awful cover, pictured way above? Kilmeny looks dressed for 1940s’ tennis, but for the improbable shoes. This novel was set in horse and buggy times, dear illustrator – it was originally published in 1910! And she looks like a sturdy, athletic Nordic blond – in the book she is a delicately featured, blue-eyed, black-haired, “fairy child”. Apparently a cover illustration with only a tenuous relation to the text within is not a modern phenomenon.

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