Something Seraphic Single said about Canadian war dead reminded me that my awareness of Canadian soldiers in the First World War can be summarised as: Walter Blythe. And for you chaps out there, that means: Anne of Green Gables’s youngest son.
A Canadian relative of mine sent me the first three Anne books when I was in Primary 5, I think (eight years old? I was young for my year). After tearing through these, Wick Public Library – a fine little Carnegie library with a stuffed crocodile in the hall – provided most of the rest of the series. At some point someone gave me the Emily books. But it was only upon moving to the terrifying metropolis of Dundee at the age of nine that its much bigger (but ugly and crocodile-less) public library offered access to the last Anne book, Rilla of Ingleside. Although I’ve reread the books in my possession many times, I realised upon rereading Rilla last week (Edinburgh Central Library doing service this time – a rather larger Carnegie library, but no crocodiles) that it was probably the first time I’d read it since I was nine.
This may explain why I’d forgotton how thoroughly a World War I novel it is. Lots of bits and bobs from Anne stick in the mind, and I think they’re very good books to read at a formative age. I’ve never forgotten the line when Anne remembers what was said ‘by a very old, very true, very beautiful Book: weeping endureth a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’ Similarly Anne’s attitude to her family: when someone says to her rather sneeringly, ‘I believe you have six children?’, she replies, ‘Seven. Six living.’ But I suspect I’ve forgotten the structures containing such things. Was the weeping over Gilbert’s illness? Who was turning up their nose at large families? I forget.
As a result of such forgetfulness, then, I was surprised that Rilla began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and ended with the return of her sweetheart at the end of the war. Rilla is a unique Anne book – apart from Anne’s being a background character, it is entirely about a small Canadian community’s response to the war. The response is that all the brave young men volunteer to fight for their country (yes, their country; and we may also note that LMM has an entry in the new DNB, so the favour is returned). All the women wish they weren’t going, but would rather die than show anything less than a smiling face to their menfolk. And the local pacifist (who is not a personable example of the genre) ends up being shouted down at a prayer meeting. In case this sounds too paint-by-numbers, it is not: the characters are painted with their usual charm, and the story is of growth in virtue through adversity. The take on the War is very clear, however; there is a good deal of talk about how this is a battle for civilisation, and/or a period of judgement, which must be followed by a better world.
Here the comparison with Mrs Miniver comes in. I know practically nothing about WWI (I wrote a number of essays about its origins; none about the course of the war), but was vaguely surprised to see it presented in these very large-scale moral terms (rather than more simply repelling unjust invasions, etc). Quotations to follow when I update this. In any case, here again we seem to see largely (I think) false hopes that such catastrophe could surely only be followed by improvement. Rilla was published in 1920 (according to the LMM Institute – my ’50s copy said first published 1928, which would have been more interesting, really). I wonder what LMM was thinking? Did she think the world in 1920 showed signs of the right response to its situation? Was it becoming evident that the culture of the 1920s did not meet the moral standards set by the Blythe family? (The Emily books, come to think of it, seem generally untroubled by the passage of time into the ’20s – at least in terms of fashion. Hmm.)
Rilla is also monumentally unfashionable in the episode where Rilla rescues the baby of a recently-dead woman with a feckless absentee husband. Upon taking it home, Gilbert her father insists that if they are going to look after the baby, Rilla (aged 14) must do it herself, as her mother does not have the strengh. And Rilla does; and it is the making of her. It is hard to imagine anyone these days recommending becoming ‘primary carer’ for an infant in one’s teens, even in the context of a large and very supportive family. I’m not sure what I think about this, to be honest. It didn’t trouble me first time round, but I suppose I thought fourteen was impossibly grown-up by then, anyway.
The Anne series is particularly fine because it depicts life after the happy ending. Rilla is a very good end to the series because it opens up the next generation of happy endings; but, as various folk in the book remark, in Anne’s youth (Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908) no-one imagined that their children would be looking for happy endings in the midst of the Great War, or that the ending many would endure would be death in the trenches.
October 31, 2007 at 12:55 am
I enjoyed reading that – you raise some interesting questions. Of course, I don’t know what LM Montgomery was thinking when she wrote Rilla, but I did read her edited Journals a few years ago, and it was apparent that she died a broken and disappointed woman. It’s quite likely that this had something to do with the turn which post-war society took. Near the end of her life she said “Everything I have worked for has been destroyed”. In her own personal life, her two sons had let her down; both had married women she considered shallow and dull, in fact her eldest married his sweetheart secretly, without her knowledge and some years later was imprisoned for fraud, in his position as a solicitor – both these things may have had to do with declining post-war standards, reflected in her sons’ behaviour.
I think it likely, too, that in her work as an authoress, she had wanted to contribute to the moral tone of society, to encourage young girls with noble aspirations and that she felt disappointed on that score. But maybe I am reading too much into it!
Actually I think it was a stroke of genius on Gilbert’s part to burden Rilla with caring for the baby – and may have been part of what LM Montgomery saw as her ‘work’ – that young girls can start early to develop womanly qualities. Rilla had the makings of a typical 20′s girl – frivolous, selfish and living only for fun, but her astute and loving father, wanted better for her than that. Rilla wasn’t scholarly or serious in any way, and learning to care for babies was helping her prepare for her future contribution to the world. After all it’s not that unusual in some countries for 14 year old girls to be looking after their own babies.
Well; I have come out of my shell of shyness to discuss Rilla of Ingleside and shall promptly crawl back into it!
October 31, 2007 at 1:09 am
Thank you for your comments!
Rilla had the makings of a typical 20’s girl – frivolous, selfish and living only for fun
Yes – I hadn’t seen that in the light of the ’20s, but that’s an interesting point.
I’d like to read LMM’s journals. For the moment I’m afraid the DNB entry is the only background reading I’ve done!
October 31, 2007 at 2:56 am
I believe LMM was absolutely crushed by the Second World War. Her life was already blighted by her dangerously depressed clergyman husband and by the necessity of keeping his mental illness a secret. Her dearest friends had died, too. But war was a special horror to her, and she was utterly–but utterly–aghast at the Nazis. She died in 1942, when things certainly still looked bad for the Allies. Meanwhile,I’m not exactly sure how much of an orthodox Christian LMM really was; she was very interested in spiritualism, I believe. Perhaps she was trying to find refuge from a dry-as-dust style of Canadian Protestantism.
My copy of Rilla says “1920.” Meanwhile, I think LMM’s narrative of the First World War is a very good snapshot of how English-speaking Canadians felt about “old grey mother England”, the Kaiser, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson sitting on his hands, and all the rest of it. (I love the bit where Susan says she never thought she would ever be interested the American presidential elections.) I read Rilla over the past two days, and it struck me how often Lloyd George (and not Robert Borden, the Canadian Prime Minister) is mentioned. The baby is named, in part, after Lord Kitchener, and not after (Canadian) General Earl Haig. Meanwhile, we renamed Berlin, Ontario “Kitchener, Ontario” during this war.
LMM makes it very clear that the baby would most likely have died had Rilla not scooped him up, and few would have cared. Prince Edward Island of 1914 was certainly no nanny state. Anne herself took care of babies when she was a child (see Anne of Green Gables). Come to think of it, so did I at 12. (Though not full time.)
Anne does think “Joy cometh in the morning” when she learns from a passing French-Canadian labourer that Gilbert has not died (Anne of the Island). The lady who makes the nasty cracks, including “What a family!” is a woman who once flirted with Gilbert back in college. I can’t find a copy of “Anne of Ingleside.” It is funny: now that I am an adult, I understand the nasty lady better. She was a big city sophisticate who made Anne feel small, but now I realize that she was green with envy of Anne, Anne’s wonderful marriage, her children, etc.
October 31, 2007 at 3:00 am
To the curious: Anne’s children were Joyce (a girl who lived only a day), James Matthew (Jem), Diana, Nan, Walter, Shirley (a boy; Anne’s maiden name was Shirley) and Bertha Marilla (Rilla).
October 31, 2007 at 3:17 am
One last point: our propaganda department went into overdrive in World War One. I don’t know if we bothered demonizing the Boers, but in World War One, Canadians were told that Germans were, well, Huns. I don’t actually know what happened in Belgium, but LMM’s characters were told, and I’ve certainly read elsewhere, that German soldiers raped Belgian nuns and other maidens and bayonetted babies. There was a strong belief that “they could come here” and carry on such shenanigans.
Odd that the Blythes (or their housekeeper) would think that Canada would have “become a German colony” had Britain lost. Perhaps that’s how much they identified with being a) British and/or b)a colony, not to mention c)imperialism. We were so very proud to belong to the British Empire, I don’t know how to express it. I see my British readers doubting and feeling a tad uncomfortable. I assure you, we LOVED the British Empire, possibly because we did so well out of it. Thanks for all the land grants! And thanks for making all those religious concessions to the Catholic “habitants” in Quebec because we Ontario folks got a publicly funded Catholic school board (protected by the constitution) out of it. Oh, and thanks for the soldiers who protected us from those greedy, land-grabbing Yanks!
So as for the big sweeping moral strokes of “Rilla”, we Canadians really thought we were fighting and dying for the Cause of Humanity. That’s what it says on WWI memorials all over the place. It seems like strange hyperbole, when you consider that the next war was much more obviously fought for the Cause of Humanity, but Prussianism scared the living daylights out of everybody in 1914. And now that I am reading about it all the time, it is obvious why this was. You would NOT want the Red Baron and his band of merry men setting up in your house. Prussian officers were known to elbow even women off sidewalks. Now, imagine that in 1914!
October 31, 2007 at 11:44 pm
It is terrifically important that Rilla does save the baby’s life, at the cost (initially) of her dignity and then of her autonomy (in a certain sense). (Rilla’s driving home with the baby in a soup tureen reminds me slightly – frivolously – of the ‘Nan carries a cake’ episode (the motif of embarrassing female burdens in the works of LM Montgomery: anyone up for a dubious PhD??).) The utter need of the child, with no State help on hand, is horrifying (again, I don’t remember this at all from reading the first time – the reality of human poverty had perhaps not sunk it. Perhaps it still hasn’t). And perhaps it is a greater lesson now when a child would not be bereft of ‘care’ under such circumstances. I’d forgotten about Anne’s own youthful experiences.
I am fascinated by Canadian British patriotism. Again, the Canadian-ness of the Anne books really didn’t hit home first time round. I suspect this is because children are very good at accepting a fictional world in its entirety, and at maintaining the boundary between fact and fiction (example: children can enjoy stories with golliwogs in while completely failing to associate these ‘blackfaced’ creatures with the darker-skinned people they encounter in their own lives. And a good thing too). (This is, of course, another wild generalisation based on purely anecdotal evidence, but what else are blogs for?) Robertson Davies’ novels I read while at secondary school and, I think, university (undergrad). Their world is so very familiar; I think I even vaguely remember being surprised upon realising that they weren’t set in England. In his case, I do mean England. Davies’ world is in some ways not as familiar (for me) as Anne’s, since so many PEI folk in the stories are Presbyterians. I didn’t pick up on the ‘German colony’ fear – that is interesting. I wonder if Britons’ discomfort with Canadian fondness for the Empire is at all akin to Scots Nats’ denials that Scots can possibly feel British? plus the usual monumental embarrassment about the whole Empire thingy, I suppose.
Interesting also about the propaganda re Huns. And mentioning Prussianism does help. Elbowing women off pavements? That really is a symptom of something wrong.
November 1, 2007 at 12:13 am
Robertson Davies’ main characters are always Canadians, but they do go to England and then onto other countries in Europe (e.g. Switzerland for psychotherapy) a lot. Ontario, though a financial powerhouse, was a bit of an artistic backwater until Davies and others worked hard to turn that around. Thus he seems to have associated England with English-speaking Art.
Davies became a very politically incorrect old man. Very Old Guard, and in a city where the myth “we are old immigrants” reigned, his deep-rootedness in the old Canada of the Empire rubbed various people the wrong way. Hilariously, he wrote something like, “Unlike most people in Canada, I have no English blood.” (His ancestors were Welsh and, I think, Scots.)
The Prussians were glaikit sumphs, but I wish we had them now as allies in southern Afghanistan.
November 1, 2007 at 12:16 am
Sorry, the myth is “we are ALL immigrants.” This is nonsense, of course, because the majority of us were not actually immigrants, and neither were our parents or, I will venture to say, grandparents.
November 1, 2007 at 12:29 am
The Prussians were glaikit sumphs, but I wish we had them now as allies in southern Afghanistan.
That should be on a poster somewhere. It summarises many things worth saying about recent war ventures.
January 15, 2010 at 3:01 am
Rilla of Ingleside is a nice bit of propaganda for the Allies. I don’t see it as one of Mrs. Montgomery’s better efforts. All of the myths about the Huns seem to have been accepted by her with very little questioning.
January 16, 2010 at 12:37 am
Well, she wrote the book in 1921 before we could all look back with fresh eyes on the horrors of 1914-1919. Very likely she–and most Canadians in 1921–had no idea that the war propaganda was just propaganda. A full tenth of our fighting men had been killed, so nobody was feeling particularly interested in exonerating Jerry. And, written in 1921, it came a bit late to be propaganda, nicht wahr?