Charlotte E. Morgan’s Surprise Visit to Green Gables

Charlotte E. Morgan’s surprise visit to Green Gables reverses a disappointment Anne Shirley had already tried to accept. After an earlier dinner fiasco and a letter announcing that the visit was off, Anne is caught unprepared when Charlotte E. Morgan arrives after all. Her feathers, stained nose, and improvised meal make the encounter comic, but its deeper turn is from anxious performance toward genuine conversation and companionship.

A Visit Apparently Lost

The visit had been the object of Anne Shirley’s eager anticipation, and its apparent cancellation came just after a trying day. The guests at the earlier dinner had left tactfully; Anne Shirley and Diana Barry washed the dishes in unusual silence, each with a headache. Anne Shirley then went to the east gable and remained there until Marilla Cuthbert returned from the post office at sunset with a letter from Priscilla Grant. The letter explained that Charlotte E. Morgan had sprained her ankle so badly she could not leave her room, and that by the time she recovered she would have to return to Toronto. The news seemed to close the matter.

Anne Shirley acknowledged her disappointment but tried to resist the bleakness of treating one failed expectation as proof that good things would not come. She reminded herself that other welcome surprises had come true for her, while admitting that this particular loss hurt. Marilla Cuthbert answered that Anne Shirley would probably face more disappointments in life, and gently criticized her habit of investing so much hope in a desired event that its loss became despair. The unexpected visit, when it came, did not erase that earlier disappointment; it overturned the assumption that the visit was over.

The Door Opens on a Different Surprise

A few days later, Anne Shirley was occupied with shifting feathers from one bed tick to another. She had also recently made a freckle lotion from a magazine recipe, having long tried unsuccessfully to remove her freckles. After using the lotion, she returned to the feather work, which left her white dress covered with down and her hair crowned with feathers. Hearing a knock, she assumed that Mr. Shearer had come and hurried to the kitchen door without first restoring her appearance.

Instead, Priscilla Grant stood on the doorstep with two companions. Anne Shirley immediately took the tall, elegantly dressed woman, whose striking face and violet eyes commanded attention, to be Charlotte E. Morgan. The actual Charlotte E. Morgan was the short, stout, gray-haired woman beside her; the imposing stranger was Mrs. Pendexter. Anne Shirley’s first mistake was quickly overshadowed by the more pressing shock of being discovered in feathers. Still, recalling how the heroines in Charlotte E. Morgan’s books rose to a difficult occasion, she greeted the party calmly and introduced herself as if she were properly dressed. Priscilla Grant later said she had never admired Anne Shirley more.

The changed plan had been made only the night before. Charlotte E. Morgan had intended to spend the day with a friend in town before leaving on Monday, but that friend canceled because the household was quarantined for scarlet fever. Priscilla Grant proposed visiting Green Gables instead, knowing how much Anne Shirley wanted to meet Charlotte E. Morgan. They had also stopped at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter, a friend from New York whose husband was a millionaire. Their stay would be brief: Mrs. Pendexter had to return to the hotel by five o’clock. The visit thus arrived not through a return to the original plan but through a last-minute opening created by its disruption.

Feathers, Dye, and an Improvised Dinner

While helping Priscilla Grant put away the horse, Anne Shirley noticed her companion watching her with puzzled curiosity. She wondered whether Priscilla Grant understood what it took to move feathers between bed ticks. Before Anne Shirley could escape upstairs, Diana Barry entered the kitchen. Anne Shirley urgently told her who was in the parlor, then added that there was nothing prepared for dinner but a cold ham bone. Diana Barry’s bewildered look made Anne Shirley think the feathers were the problem, until Diana Barry explained that Anne Shirley’s nose was bright red.

Anne Shirley ran to the small looking glass over the sink and discovered the cause: she had mistaken Marilla Cuthbert’s red dye for marking rug patterns for her freckle lotion. She had already suffered through one failed effort to remove freckles, in which the skin on her nose peeled while the freckles stayed; now the effort had left her nose scarlet. Diana Barry suggested washing it. The dye came off easily, and Anne Shirley changed into her black lawn dress because the muslin she had hoped to wear was still on the clothesline. The succession of mishaps plays against her earlier determination to look right for the visit, but neither the red nose nor the ruined outfit becomes the afternoon’s defining fact.

Diana Barry returned carrying a covered platter sent by her mother: a carved chicken. The meal was supplemented with fresh bread, butter, cheese, Marilla Cuthbert’s fruit cake, and preserved plums. Pink-and-white asters decorated the table. Anne Shirley thought the simple spread meager beside the elaborate dinner she had previously planned, but the hungry guests ate with evident enjoyment. Mrs. Pendexter said little, yet her graceful manner made even eating chicken and preserves seem refined. Anne Shirley later joked to Diana Barry that a woman so beautiful did not need to talk in order to make an impression. Diana Barry, for her part, found it surprising that a relative of an English earl should take a second helping of plum preserves; Anne Shirley proudly answered that even the earl would not have turned up his nose at Marilla Cuthbert’s preserves.

Conversation and the Pleasure of Improvisation

Charlotte E. Morgan proved more engaging than Anne Shirley had expected from the imposing literary figure she had imagined. She had traveled widely, observed many kinds of people, and turned her experience into witty, concise observations. Her sparkle was matched by genuine sympathy and kindness. She did not monopolize the conversation: she drew Anne Shirley and Diana Barry out as skillfully as she told stories herself, and both girls found themselves speaking freely with her. The visit became an exchange rather than an audience granted to a celebrated guest.

After dinner, the party walked along Lover’s Lane, through Violet Vale and Birch Path, and back through Haunted Wood to Dryad’s Bubble. There they sat talking for another half hour. Charlotte E. Morgan asked how Haunted Wood had acquired its name and laughed until she cried at the story, especially Anne Shirley’s dramatic account of a memorable walk there at twilight. The walk carried the gathering beyond the table and into places that already belonged to Anne Shirley’s imaginative life; her account of the wood gave the guests a way into that local history.

When the visitors had gone, Anne Shirley told Diana Barry that listening to Charlotte E. Morgan and looking at Mrs. Pendexter had been equally delightful. She even wondered whether they had enjoyed themselves more because they had not known the guests were coming and had not been burdened with elaborate serving. Rather than letting the earlier dinner failure determine the meaning of hospitality, the surprise visit gave her a more relaxed measure of it: a simple meal, free conversation, a walk through familiar paths, and the pleasure of company. The event’s comic reversals—from cancellation to arrival, feathers to composure, and anticipated abundance to a plain chicken supper—make the unplanned gathering feel less like a substitute for the lost occasion than a better one.