Terry Pratchett, L. M Montgomery and Fairyland

Terry Pratchett’s description of Fairyland in The Wee Free Men has reminded me of a passage I came across recently in one of L. M. Montgomery’s books. She too has something to say about the place.

Their views and descriptions are very different. Terry Pratchett is all negative while L. M. Montgomery is all positive.

Terry Pratchett describes a kind of hell universe that people are relieved to escape from while L. M. Montgomery describes a heavenly paradise that produces an unbearable sense of loss in people who have been banished from it forever.

Terry Pratchett’s Fairyland is an actual world than can be visited by a few select people while L. M. Montgomery’s, although not open to most people, is an inner world.

Terry Pratchett’s Fairyland drains real worlds and has nothing to give while L. M. Montgomery’s world is a wellspring of wonders that can be brought out into our world and shared.

L. M. Montgomery’s description of Fairyland leaves out something important that Terry Pratchett highlights.

Two home truths from Terry Pratchett

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Stella Benson and August Strindberg have inspired many articles to date, and there are still more to come - eventually.

Although it was very interesting to find more independent confirmation of some of my ideas and familiar features and scenarios in their lives and works, it was very depressing to read about the suffering they endured, self-imposed or otherwise.

I needed to take a break from these people as it was all getting too much. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels were one of the best antidotes that I could think of.

I decided to take a second look at the books featuring the young witch Tiffany Aching and her little friends the Nac Mac Feegle. In addition to distraction and entertainment, I hoped to find some more wise words about magic and witches.

I soon found some article-inspiring material in The Wee Free Men, the first book in the Tiffany Aching series. Terry Pratchett makes some good points here.

He says that doing is better than dreaming in that working, thinking and learning are more beneficial, productive and effective than just wishing for things and repeating vague motivational phrases about following our star.

He also says that getting what we need is usually better for us than getting what we want.

Doing is better than dreaming

There is a scene in The Wee Free Men where the senior witch Miss Tick gives the young witch Tiffany some very useful advice:

Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said. 

“Are you listening?”

“Yes,” said Tiffany.

“Good. Now…if you trust in yourself…”

“Yes?”

“…and believe in your dreams…”

“Yes?”

“…and follow your star…” Miss Tick went on.

“Yes?”

“…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

This is very true. I have seen it for myself.

John Buchan and the hate-filled ‘humanitarians’

This article is a companion to the one featuring Rafael Sabatini’s wise words on the subject of equality as a by-product of envy. 

There are some related ideas in Mr Standfast, one of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay spy thrillers. Buchan suggests that humanitarianism and pacifism are a by-product of hatred:

“'Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,' he said. 'He is always lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has never encountered in person.

Men who are up against the real thing save their breath for action.'“

These words were written over 100 years ago, but they are still very relevant. They probably always were and always will be. 

I have seen for myself that some people ignore the suffering around them that they could or should be doing something about in favour of getting all worked up and ranting on about some injustice far away. 

Getting things the wrong way round is a characteristic of evil. 

And yes, letting off steam is often a substitute for action; the real activists just get on with it. The more noise some people make, the less they actually achieve. As Shakespeare put it in Macbeth:

“It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

Stella Benson and L. M. Montgomery

This article summarises a few common elements in the lives of novelists Lucy Maud Montgomery and Stella Benson.

They both had something to say about the feeling of being innately different from the people around them and the horrors of having to live an ordinary life. They both came to realise that their marriage was a terrible mistake.

Shared feelings of being different
Feeling fundamentally different is so common in creative people as to be almost a cliché. I have quoted Kathleen Raine on the subject. 

This feeling usually goes with the territory, although they don’t all go as far as Stella Benson did and believe that they have the souls of snakes!

As previously mentioned, Stella Benson felt different in kind from the throng of ‘real girls’ who surrounded her. Sometimes she felt superior to them. She wrote, “I know I have something infinitely more important which these giggling girls have not.“

L. M. Montgomery too felt this way. I mentioned in a previous article that, like many others of her kind, she felt that she did not fully belong in this world. She seems ambivalent about this:

“It was really dreadful to be so different from other people…and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star.” 

From Anne of Windy Poplars

Stella Benson's diaries

I came across this quotation from L. M. Montgomery recently:

“Only lonely people keep diaries.”

She kept a diary from the age of nine, and this is where she wrote the above words. I think that they are probably true in some cases but definitely not in all.

Sometimes diaries are kept primarily for record keeping purposes, to be used for reference in the future if necessary. Isaac Asimov for example kept detailed but mainly factual diaries for much of his life.

Journalling is a possible outlet for creative people who must write. It provides a way of exercising writing skills and keeping them honed; it keeps the channel of inspiration open.

The quotation made me think of Stella Benson, who kept a diary from the age of ten until shortly before she died. It is certainly applicable to her. In Stella’s own words:

“To set down a record of my contact with people...is most necessary to me. Because my most continuous sensation is a feeling of terrifying slipping-away from people - a most devastating loneliness - I have to place on record the fact that I was human and that even I had my human adventures.”

Two more writers who were discouraged from reading

This article was inspired by a quotation in the previous one, which is about L. M. Montgomery and writing:

“Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.”

-From Anne of Green Gables

Marilla’s words to Anne may well have come from someone L. M. Montgomery knew in real life, a grandparent perhaps.

Marilla is not alone in her views; her words have reminded me of two other writers who in childhood encountered people with this dismissive attitude and met with disapproval or worse just because they loved to read.

John Masefield, whose children’s books have been featured on here, had a horrible domineering aunt who disapproved of his love of reading and thought that it was a disgusting habit that should be broken. When he was 13, in an attempt to cure his addiction she sent him away to train for a life at sea.

More words about writing from L. M. Montgomery

This article contains a few more hard-hitting quotations on the subject of writers and writing from L. M. Montgomery.

She seems ambivalent about the whole business of being a writer, seeing it as both a gift and a curse:

“You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.”

From Emily Climbs

This may be true in some cases - artists often feel that their works fall far short of their visions - but the converse also applies: some writers may be proud of their productions while their readers may not think much of them.

Disapproval, criticism and discouragement

People who read a lot are often criticised for it, and people who try to write are often discouraged. L. M. Montgomery obviously experienced much disapproval herself:

“’I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,’ scoffed Marilla. ‘You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons. 

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.’”

From Anne of Green Gables

Although this disapproving attitude does a lot of damage, that last line seems quite funny to me.