Pollyanna Comes Back

Orange Blossoms, Drivel, Gladness

Nine years ago, when Pollyanna and its sequel Pollyanna Grows Up had newly burst upon the view, one reviewer, more prophetically than he knew, remarked : "Pollyanna retires from her second book at the age of 20 and she is 'glad, glad, glad for -- everything,' for she and Jimmy love each other. . . . Two other incidental romances and some mysteries still remain unsolved ; so [he added apprehensively] it may be necessary for more 'glad' books to follow."

Precisely this has happened. This maddeningly idyllic girl has reappeared.*

The Story. Pollyanna Whittier, inventor of the famed "glad game" (which consists of picking out silver linings for all the blackest clouds), marries Jimmy Pendleton in Chapter One and becomes forthwith "just the entrancing, glad little bride you would expect her (from the previous Pollyanna books**) to be." It rains on her wedding-day, Jimmy hasn't much money, their apartment looks out on fire-escapes, Jimmy eats up the chicken-salad she was saving for dinner, just because he happens to find it alone and unprotected in the icebox -- but things of this sort are, to Pollyanna, merely added reasons for finding something to be "glad" about. Even when the War comes and Jimmy must leave for Plattsburg, does she weep? Certainly not! She strokes his hair, "murmurs tender comforting things," sews his buttons on, sends him away with a smile.

Then she goes back to her old home in Beldingsville, Vt., lives with her Aunt Polly. Here it was that she had arrived some years before (in Pollyanna), a forlorn little orphan determined to play the "glad game." This was the same little corner she had brightened before, and naturally it falls on its neck to make her welcome, it has not forgotten the wistful little minister's daughter who even found something to be "glad" about when a pair of crutches was all that came for her in the missionary barrel.

Beldingsville has apparently become an ideal community, through her min istrations, so it beams upon her now and is "glad" with her. She industrious ly makes bandages and comfort-kits, exposes a woman who has been writing poison-pen letters to send to the sol diers. But meanwhile she never writes Jimmy about her great "secret," for which of course she is "gladder" than ever.

When James Senior comes back from the War, and is asked to pick out James Junior from a group of eight babies, he, of course, chooses the right one, inevitably, because James Junior looks up and laughs at him, "glad", while the other seven howl in misery.

The Significance. When Eleanor H. Porter, author of the first two Pollyanna books, died four years ago, Pollyanna ostensibly died with her.

But her publishers were loath to lose such a goldmine. They cast about for a successor, and now they have blandly announced that they "felt that the lamented death of the creator of Pollyanna should not deprive the public of the eagerly awaited continuation of the story of Pollyanna and the glad game.

They believe that in this 'labor of love' Harriet Lummis Smith, herself a well-known author,* has carried on with unqualified success."

The ethics of the proceeding seem a little hazy. One wonders whether Pollyanna's creator would be unqualifiedly "glad" at this calm appropriation of her brainchild. It is true, however, that there have been and still are voracious readers of this drivel. Over half a million copies of Pollyanna were sold, it was translated into five languages, including Japanese, and a Finnish edition is now under way. A prodigious mushroom crop of "Glad dubs" sprang up in its wake, and innumerable families were afflicted with "glad" little girls who, when a bee stung them, were glad it wasn't two bees.

The Author. Harriet Lummis Smith, author of much juvenile literature, started work in her Philadelphia studio as soon as the publishers decided that Mrs. Porter's mantle was to descend upon her. Said she: "I have the same outlook on life [as Mrs. Porter] --a wholesome and cheerful outlook -- and I flatter myself that I, too, have a sense of humor."

*POLLYANNA (Trade Mark) OF THE ORANGE BLOSSOMS, THE THIRD GLAD (Trade Mark) BOOK--Harriet Lununis Smith-- Page, Boston

--PoilyaiHM and PollyaMU Grow-Up. *The Friendly Terrace books, the Peggy Raymond book-.