Anne of Avonlea, Chapters Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

In which are learned the details of Miss Lavendar's backstory with Mr. Irving and Paul explicitly compares her to his "little mother," and Gilbert and Anne's predictions of a major storm are unfortunately accurate.

Today's cover comes from Dover Publications in 2002, through their Dover Evergreen Classics line. It's another "Anne standing in front of the schoolhouse" cover, but I've got an odd fondness for this one. Maybe it's the combination of the sepia tones with the red highlights, or the actual spark of personality in her face and pencil behind her ear, but I think it's mostly that she looks like she's dressed for a community theater production of The Pirates of Penzance, which has absolutely no basis in the text but is 100% something Anne would take part in. And it's period appropriate!

Our last couple of installments were pretty light on notes, but we're making up for it with a goodly number this time around:

2:38 - "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." This is another from our old friend Alexander Pope, whom we last saw only three chapters ago. This one is from "Eloisa to Abelard," another of his Latin imitations. This one is not a translation with satire like his "Imitations of Horace," though, but an original poem down in the style of the epistolary poems of Ovid. It retells the well-known medieval story of nun and scholar Héloïse and her tragic affair with her teacher, Peter Abelard. The quote in question come from a portion where Eloisa is talking about how happy vestal virgins must be, having no sins, regrets, or worldly expectations to weigh them down. The passage is also the source of another phrase you may be more familiar with:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

7:13 - "Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have maidenhood thrust upon them." This is a parody of the well-known Shakespearean quote from Twelfth Night: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." It's said by the character Malvolio, pompous steward to the wealthy countess Olivia. He reads it from a letter that he believes to be from her but is actually from several of the secondary characters, who wrote the letter as a prank to make him think Olivia was in love with him. This specific portion is where "Olivia" is assuring him that he need not worry that she so outranks him, and not to be afraid of the greatness that is most definitely now coming his way. In fact, he should start acting like he's already a nobleman and no longer a servant! (Spoilers: it does not go well for Malvolio.)

15:35 - "A Prophet in His Own Country." The title of Chapter 24 is a reference to a Biblical quote that appears in all four Gospels. The wording is different depending on the Gospel and the translation, but he basically says that a prophet may be accepted anywhere other than his own country. No one is going to accept that you're the Son of God (or can accurately predict the weather) when they know your parents, and your siblings, and remember you as a snot-nosed kid, and bought their furniture from you last week.

16:32 - "hymeneal altar." "Hymeneal" is an archaic word that means "having to do with weddings." It comes from the Greek god of weddings, Hymen, and is apparently unrelated to the anatomical word "hymen," despite its socially-constructed associations with "purity" on the wedding night. Seriously, people with hymens are not "sealed for freshness" like vacuum-packed lunchmeat. That's not a real thing.

26:07 - "how potent [the currant wine] was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good reason to know." In case you forgot when Anne accidentally got Diana drunk on "raspberry cordial."

28:15 - "Ginger’s gay dead body." I honestly thought this was a typo and supposed to be "gray dead body," because I suppose I had it in my head that Ginger was an African grey parrot. But no, it's like that on Gutenberg as well, so presumably it means that Ginger was a brightly-colored parrot like a macaw, and not that his dead body was especially happy or festive.

30:57 - "there was yet balm in Gilead." Another Biblical reference. The Balm of Gilead was a perfume/resin from a region that is now part of the country of Jordan. It was used medicinally and is mentioned in that context several times in the Bible. Most famously (and pertinently for Davy here) is in Jeremiah 8:22, where the prophet laments the fate of his people:

Is there no balm in Gilead,
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no recovery
For the health of the daughter of my people?

If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Anne of Avonlea, Chapters Twenty-One and Twenty-Two

In which Anne and Diana accidentally stumble upon an eccentric "old maid" in the woods who, to no one's surprise, turns out to be a kindred spirit, Anne and Marilla discuss said lady while chastising Davy, and the twins' final fate is settled, also to no one's surprise.



Greetings, quarantinos! Today we meet Miss Lavendar Lewis, who was mentioned by Rachel Lynde waaaaaaay back in Chapter One (which I read to you almost, uh, five years ago) when she told Anne about Paul Irving coming to the school, and how his father (now widowed) had been engaged to Miss Lavendar but they split up for reasons unknown. I'm sure none of this will be important at all!

Oh, and I fully realize that I am misspelling "lavender" here, but that's how it's spelled in the book, both for her name and when talking about the actual plant. It's like this in both my paperback and in the Project Gutenberg version, so it doesn't appear to just be an issue with the typesetting of my edition, nor can I find any evidence that this is some sort of "old-fashioned" spelling that Montgomery might have been using, so I guess maybe it's just a mistake that has somehow been carried through for over a century? And no one has wanted to fix it because, like me, they don't want to just change the spelling of a character's name? And they kept the spelling for the plant to, I don't know, make it less obvious? Anyway, I'll spell it correctly if I talk about the plant, but I'll retain the spelling for her name because. . . well, it's her name.

Our cover this time is from an Australian edition from 1955, published by Angus & Robertson (the same folks who did that fourth-wall-breaking cover from the '80s), and I am once again unable to find the artist's name. This one is interesting because it is, I think, the only one I've found that specifically features Paul Irving, despite the rather large part he plays in this particular volume. At least, I assume it's him. I can't think what other young boy might be walking alongside Anne, both carrying school items, while holding a small bouquet and staring up with a dreamy (one might almost say "vacant") expression.) Anyway, it's pretty enough, not wildly inaccurate, and applies to this specific book, so well done!

Just a couple of notes:

19:25 - "horns of elfland." This comes from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who you may remember from when Anne and her friends reenacted his telling of the story of the Lady of Shalott back in Anne of Green Gables, with hilarious results. This particular one comes from his poem "The Splendor Falls," which describes a sunset he saw over a waterfall in the mountains of Ireland. Go and read it; it's lovely and quite short.

24:51 - "Kerrenhappuch." Keren-happuch was an exceedingly minor character in the Bible. Remember the delightful story of Job? Where Job was a pious and righteous man, and Satan bet God that he was only so righteous because he had a comfy life and enjoyed God's protection, so God let Satan ruin Job's life by killing off his wife and children, financially ruining him, and stealing his health? And Job refused to get angry at God for his misfortunes, just accepting that it was all God's will while despairing that he did not know why? And God rewards his faith by healing him, giving him even more wealth than he had before, a brand-new wife,  and seven new sons and three new daughters who were said to be the most beautiful women in the land? Yeah, Keren-happuch was the youngest of those daughters. Her name means "horn of kohl," so a container of eyeliner, I guess? It's unclear whether Diana was referencing her directly or just picked a weird name that happened to have a Biblical origin, as other people have indeed been called that, and it seems as though it would have been an egregiously old-fashioned name even then.



If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!

Anne of Avonlea, Chapters Nineteen and Twenty

In which Anne has a very nice day with three boys of varying levels of tediousness, then is surprised with hosting duties while at her least presentable; and in which your narrator is once again unable to restrain himself from complaining about Paul Irving.



Hi-ho, everyone! I hope you're all holding up well, staying home as much as possible and being careful if and when you must leave. Let's escape back into Avonlea for a bit, shall we?

Today's cover comes from the very edition I'm reading from, a Bantam Classics paperback from 1992 with cover art by Ben Stahl. It's a rather lovely painting, though it does fall a bit into that "generic" category I mentioned last time. We've got a pretty well-put-together Anne amidst a bunch of pretty flowers with what I assume is the schoolhouse in the background. Nothing really to tie it to this specific book so much.

Only a couple of mostly-simple notes this time around:

25:38 - "help Mr. Harrison haul dulse." I really expected this to be some sort of grain, but apparently it's a type of red seaweed that's been harvested for food for centuries in Ireland, Iceland, the northeastern US, and the Atlantic coast of Canada (which is, of course, where Prince Edward Island is.) Oh, and fun fact in case you didn't know: seaweed is not a plant, but is actually a type of algae.

35:22 - "forced to content herself with her black lawn." Lawn in this context is a type of plain weave linen, simple and fairly hard-wearing, but not as coarse and cheap as (say) wincey.

37:54 - "feast of reason and flow of soul." Anne here is quoting the great 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope, from his Imitations of Horace. Horace, in turn, was a 1st century CE Roman lyric poet whose works were very popular with Neoclassical writers like Pope. A popular thing for many of these writers to do was to translate classical works like Horaces Satires but update the cultural references, thus satirizing things in the present day in an imitation of the satires of 1800 years prior. Anyway, that's what Pope was doing here, and he used the phrase Anne quoted to describe congenial conversation.



If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!