I grew up on Anne of Green Gables,
the classic L. M. Montgomery novel about a spirited redhead with an
immense imagination and a vocabulary to match. Having loved that book
and enjoyed the ones that followed, I was intrigued when I came across Akin to Anne,
a collection of short “orphan” stories written by Montgomery mostly
before the publication of her most famous novel. The book was published
posthumously after Rea Wilmshurst collected and edited the stories, each
of which had originally appeared in one of about a dozen different
periodicals.
The book includes 19 stories in all, along with an
introduction, acknowledgments and editorial note. In most of the
stories, the orphan in question is a child, or at least a teenager,
though in some cases, the focus is on lonely adults – and nearly every
story does include at least one lonely adult who is as pleased to be a
benefactor as the orphan is to find one. Most of the main characters are
also female, though four involve boys and are among my favorites.
In The Fraser Scholarship,
a studious lad named Elliot receives a scholarship mostly because his
last name is Campbell, and he feels compelled to refuse it because
Campbell is merely his adoptive name. In Ted’s Afternoon Off, a
gentle boy with a gift for violin-playing has the opportunity to go to a
picnic for the first time in his life but decides to pass it up in
order to spend the afternoon with a lonely neighbor.
In both
cases, the main character does something virtuous, and this leads to his
discovery by a distant relation in the first case and an ardent mentor
in the second. This theme is very prevalent throughout the book; either
the orphan or an acquaintance makes a self-sacrificing choice leading to
a revelation that changes the orphan’s life. Many of the stories
include a statement right near the end along the lines of, “Just think,
this never would have happened if I hadn’t done ____. I’m so glad I
did!” It gets a bit repetitive, but then all of these stories have
multiple similarities, and it’s easy to see shades of Anne in them.
While Anne herself does not stumble upon any unknown relatives, she helps facilitate reunions of this sort, and in Akin to Anne,
we find long-lost relatives and friends of relatives popping up
everywhere. It really is a small world in this book. Perhaps Montgomery,
raised mostly by her austere grandparents, dreamed of being swept away
by a glamorous aunt with a comparable disposition and so wrote this sort
of thing for a succession of characters. It gets to be very predictable
and certainly not very realistic when character after character just
happens to run across someone who has been seeking her out for years, or
would have if her existence had been known. The story usually ends with
the orphan and the guardian competing for the right to claim the
greater share of happiness.
My favorite story is the longest by
far at about 35 pages, and that’s not mere happenstance. We get to know
the characters quite a bit better in The Running Away of Chester:
hardworking Chester, who has had it with being worked to the bone by
his cruel step-aunt; maternal Miss Salome, who hires him to work at her
farm; and gruff Clemantiny, who runs Miss Salome’s household. There’s a
lot more time to flesh them out and make them feel real, and Clemantiny
is particularly interesting because her stern manner hides a deep
affection for the boy who showed up half-starved on the doorstep.
Chester is also one of the most honorable and sympathetic children in
the book.
The stories, aside from the high concentration of
coincidence, are well-written, full of the lavish descriptions for which
Montgomery is known. Most of them are quite short; only three exceed
ten pages. It’s probably best not to read them all at once as I did. If
you space the reading out, you might not be as aware of the fact that
the tales are all so similar. Some are more inventive than others, but
all of them involve a lonely person finding happiness through human (but
non-romantic) companionship. They are feel-good stories, and saving
each one for a time of loneliness might make them more appreciated.
While Montgomery’s sparkling wit rarely shines through, her desire for a
happy ending is in full force, and she does make us root for these
displaced people’s contentment. All of these themes are realized more
effectively in Anne of Green Gables and other novels, but if you’re a fan of her later works, Akin to Anne is a fascinating trip through her early musings on the subject of orphanhood.
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