Charlotte E. Morgan

Charlotte E. Morgan is a famous author whose books have made her a literary ideal to Anne Shirley. Her visit to Green Gables brings that ideal into contact with an ordinary, awkward afternoon: the anticipated grand occasion begins with Anne covered in feathers, then becomes a lively meeting with a woman whose kindness and attentiveness matter more than her fame.

Identity and Reputation

Anne knows Charlotte E. Morgan through her work, especially The Rosebud Garden, and is eager to do something in honor of its author. When a letter from Priscilla Grant announces that Charlotte E. Morgan is on Prince Edward Island and may drive to Avonlea, Anne is almost unable to believe the news. The possibility of welcoming a celebrated writer transforms a proposed afternoon visit into a major event in her imagination.

That anticipation shapes the preparations. Anne asks Marilla Cuthbert to let her cook the whole dinner herself, wanting the meal to be a service she can offer the author. She imagines the visit through the heroines in Charlotte E. Morgan’s books, whose ability to rise to difficult circumstances becomes a model for how Anne thinks she ought to behave. The author is therefore important to Anne not only as a famous visitor but as the creator of characters whose conduct has become a standard Anne can apply to her own life.

The Visit and Its Reversal

The original plan is for Charlotte E. Morgan and Priscilla Grant to reach Avonlea around noon on Thursday, spend the afternoon at Green Gables, and go to the hotel at White Sands in the evening. Their itinerary changes at short notice. The friend with whom Charlotte E. Morgan had planned to spend the day in town telephones that the household is quarantined for scarlet fever. Since Charlotte E. Morgan is leaving on Monday, Priscilla suggests visiting Green Gables instead. They call at White Sands and bring along Mrs. Pendexter, a friend of Charlotte E. Morgan who lives in New York; Mrs. Pendexter’s husband is a millionaire, and she needs to return to the hotel by five.

Anne has been working with feathers from a bed tick when the visitors arrive. Her dress is covered with down, and escaped hair frames her head with a halo of feathers. She expects Mr. Shearer at the kitchen door and rushes to answer the knock without first seeing who is there. The guests are Priscilla Grant, Mrs. Pendexter, and a short, stout, gray-haired woman in tweed. Anne initially mistakes the tall, stately visitor in fine clothes, with a striking face and violet eyes, for Charlotte E. Morgan. The elegant woman is Mrs. Pendexter; the author Anne has been longing to meet is the gray-haired visitor.

Composure and Character

The mismatch between Anne’s expectation and the scene in front of her could have made the meeting an embarrassment. Instead, Anne recalls that Charlotte E. Morgan’s heroines rise to the occasion and treats that example as an obligation. Although mortified by her appearance, she greets the visitors and accepts the introductions calmly, then shows them to the spare room and parlor before going out to help Priscilla with the horse. Priscilla later says she has never admired Anne more than at that moment. The episode makes the author’s fiction unexpectedly practical: its imagined composure gives Anne a pattern for acting when she feels least prepared.

The dinner Anne had planned is displaced by a simpler meal. A carved chicken arrives along with new bread, butter, cheese, Marilla Cuthbert’s fruit cake, preserved plums, and pink-and-white asters. Anne initially feels the difference between this spread and the elaborate dinner she had intended to make. But once the meal begins, her attention moves from the menu to the visitor herself. Charlotte E. Morgan proves a delightful conversationalist, drawing on extensive travel and observation of men and women to tell stories and make witty, epigrammatic remarks. Her brilliance wins admiration, but the narrator also emphasizes a strong current of sympathy and kindheartedness beneath it, which wins affection.

Charlotte E. Morgan does not dominate the conversation. She is as skilled at drawing other people out as she is at speaking, and Anne Shirley and Diana Barry find themselves talking freely with her. Mrs. Pendexter, by contrast, says little; Anne later remarks to Diana that her beauty alone makes an impression. The distinction helps define Charlotte E. Morgan’s appeal in the encounter: her presence is not simply the authority of a celebrated name, but an active interest that makes her guests participants in the conversation.

Stories, Places, and Lasting Impression

After dinner, the visitors walk through Lover’s Lane, Violet Vale, and Birch Path, return through Haunted Wood, and stop at Dryad’s Bubble for a final half-hour of conversation. Charlotte E. Morgan asks how Haunted Wood got its name. She laughs until she cries at the explanation and at Anne’s dramatic account of a memorable walk there at twilight. The author who had first seemed to Anne like someone from the pages of a book becomes an appreciative listener to Anne’s own storytelling.

The visit thus reverses Anne’s initial measure of the occasion. She had worried over the perfection of the dinner and of the house, even cleaning the catch-all closet where the guest was unlikely to look. But Charlotte E. Morgan is won not by a flawless performance or an elaborate meal. She enjoys simple food, shares her stories without monopolizing the company, and responds warmly to the local tale Anne tells. The encounter gives Anne a more personal understanding of the author she admires: the maker of admired heroines is herself a gracious, sympathetic presence, and the meeting becomes memorable through conversation rather than ceremony.