“The orchard was very silent and dreamy in the thick, deeply tinted sunshine of the September afternoon, a sunshine which seemed to possess the power of extracting the very essence of all the odours which summer has stored up in wood and field. There were few flowers now; most of the lilies, which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before, were withered. The grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt. But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were kindling and a few misty purple asters nodded here and there. The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate, indestructible charm.”
–L.M. Montgomery, Kilmeny of the Orchard

It feels a bit strange to write that I had not read Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables until just recently. I had read a number of her other books, including other Anne books and some Emily books (about the adventures of Emily of New Moon), and several collections of her short stories. I loved her as a writer, but in some obscure way I was afraid to read Anne of Green Gables, her most famous book. I was afraid it would not live up to my expectations. I had watched the Canadian movie version, in which Anne was played by Megan Follows, and I loved it so much that I was worried the book itself might let me down.

I should not have worried. Anne of Green Gables is a wonderful book, both touching and very very funny.

Just before reading Anne of Green Gables, I read Kilmeny of the Orchard, and it’s . . . not. As in, neither funny nor particularly touching. It’s the story of a young man, a privileged young man, who goes to teach on Prince Edward Island and meets a beautiful, really stunningly beautiful, really incredibly impossible beautiful, young woman with one mysterious defect (his words, not mine) . . . she can’t speak. They fall in love, because he is basically the first young man she has ever seen, and she is just so beautiful that it doesn’t matter that she has no money, no knowledge of the world outside the farm she has grown up on, basically nothing to bring to a relationship except her beauty and untouched purity, and oh yes, she plays the violin. Plus she can’t talk back, although she and the young man seem to get along well enough because she can write on a slate.

This is a typically icky Victorian plot. You could find buckets of such books in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and as I’m sure you expected, in the end Kilmeny’s muteness turns out to be psychological. It’s cured by her love for Eric, the young man, which is a good thing because she feels as though she could not possibly marry him with such a defect (her words, not mine). As the novel progresses, all obstacles to their union fall away rather easily, like the fall of a silk robe from the shoulders of Gibson girl. Eric’s rich father could object, but he doesn’t because Kilmeny is just so stunningly beautiful that she would make an appropriate wife for anyone, plus she reminds him of his beloved dead wife, Eric’s mother. Yes, I know, icky.

So there we have it. What kept me reading Kilmeny of the Orchard, other than its very short length (134 pages)? Well, there is my love for turn-of-the-century literature. But there is also no denying that the book is beautifully written. Lucy Maude Montgomery is a cracking good writer, whether she’s writing great books or bad ones. As you can see in the passage I excerpted above. Her descriptions of the orchard, and of Prince Edward Island in general, make up for the weaknesses in characterization and plot. Their loveliness comes not just from the imagery she describes so well that I can see the orchard on that September afternoon, but from the sentences themselves. It’s in the way she puts them together.

“There were few flowers now; most of the lilies, which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before, where withered. The grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt.”

What beautiful rhythm. It would not be at all the same if she wrote, as a modern editor might suggest, “The grass had become ragged, sere, and unkempt.” That would not capture the lilting, unhurried pace of a sunny September afternoon. The lilies queened it, as they do. The torches of the goldenrod — yes, I can see that, because goldenrod does exactly that, it stands up and blazes. Purple asters are misty because there are so many little flowers on a stem that from any distance they look like a purple mist. So her images are both evocative and precise.

And this: “The orchard kept its own strange attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered beauty and innate, indestructible charm.”

Ok, yes, it’s thoroughly of its era, when old age for a woman was approximately thirty . . . But it’s beautifully written and I love the image it evokes, of the orchard aging in this way. You can see that the spring glory of its flowers has passed, it has borne its fruit, which may have already fallen, but there is something innate and indestructible — imagine the trunks of fruit trees that will stand like strong brown limbs through the winter snows, and blossom again in spring. In a sense, the novel is a love story between an author and the orchard she created.

Honestly, if I were Kilmeny, I would write on my slate, “Thanks, Eric, but this is a really nice orchard, I mean I really like this orchard, so have fun in the big city but I think I’ll be fine here. I have a violin, after all.”

The thing is, Kilmeny of the Orchard was published the year after Anne of Green Gables, and Anne of Green Gables is a really good, I mean really really good, book. It’s got all the beautiful language, but it also has perceptive characterization, excellent pacing and plot (will Anne be allowed to go to the church picnic with Diana and the other girls? I had to know. I could not put it down and stayed up until 2 a.m. to find out), and the one thing Kilmeny of the Orchard does not have at all, not even a little — it’s very very funny.

I had to find out how the author of Anne of Green Gables could have written Kilmeny of the Orchard, and the answer is that Kilmeny’s story was written earlier, as a magazine serial. After the success of the red-haired orphan who breaks slates over people’s heads, Montgomery’s publisher said “I want another novel and I want to publish it a year later,” and this was the only thing Montgomery could give him — a patched-up serial, while she wrote her next Anne book. I suspect that publishers have been responsible for bad books in exactly this way since they invented themselves . . .

While trying to figure out how Kilmeny of the Orchard came into being, I came across a review on Goodreads that I found particularly illuminating. The reviewer said something like, “Kilmeny is the romantic heroine Anne imagines herself to be, but can never become.” And I thought, yes! That makes perfect sense! Kilmeny has long black hair and is impossibly beautiful. Anne has red hair, as she often laments, and the most endearing thing about her is that she simply never shuts up. Anne of Green Gables is filled with long paragraphs that are simply Anne going on and on while Marilla says, “The muffins in the oven are burning.” And the muffins burn, and then we listen to Anne lamenting the burned muffins and her red hair, and spinning a new romantic adventure for herself, for another couple of pages.

I don’t have any great wisdom to offer here. Just a few observations: First, good writers are going to write bad books, sometimes. That’s just how it is. Both readers and writers should expect it. Second, if I really love a writer’s style, I will read a bad book by that writer, regardless. I will read L.M. Montgomery’s bad books with pleasure, ignoring Eric and even Kilmeny, pretending that it’s really a book about an orchard, and the happy ending is that those annoying protagonists finally leave the wonderful, magical orchard alone to dream in the September sunshine.

(The image is the first edition of Kilmeny of the Orchard, published in 1910.)