Emily Climbs

L. M. Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery

• Publisher: Read & Co. Children's
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473316805
• eBook ISBN: 9781473373884

This delightful sequel continues the journey of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Emily Starr as she navigates the challenges of growing up and pursues her literary dreams.

Now a teenager, Emily leaves her home at New Moon Farm to attend Shrewsbury High School. Her determination to succeed is unwavering, even as she faces new obstacles and the scepticism of her conservative Aunt Elizabeth. Despite these challenges, Emily's passion for writing only grows stronger, and she continues to pour her heart into her stories, poems, and letters.

During her time in Shrewsbury, Emily deepens her friendships with Ilse Burnley, Teddy Kent, and Perry Miller, while also encountering new people who influence her life in unexpected ways. She struggles with the constraints placed on her by society and her family but finds solace and freedom in her creative pursuits.

Originally published in 1925, Emily Climbs beautifully captures the trials and triumphs of a young woman determined to follow her dreams, showcasing Lucy Maud Montgomery's signature blend of humour and warmth.

Salad Days

This book is not going to be wholly, or even mainly, made up of extracts from Emily’s diary; but, by way of linking up matters unimportant enough for a chapter in themselves, and yet necessary for a proper understanding of her personality and environment, I am going to include some more of them. Besides, when one has material ready to hand, why not use it? Emily’s “diary,” with all its youthful crudities and italics, really gives a better interpretation of her and of her imaginative and introspective mind, in that, her fourteenth spring, than any biographer, however sympathetic, could do. So let us take another peep into the yellowed pages of that old “Jimmy-book,” written long ago in the “look-out” of New Moon.

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“February 15, 19—

“I have decided that I will write down, in this journal, every day, all my good deeds and all my bad ones. I got the idea out of a book, and it appeals to me. I mean to be as honest about it as I can. It will be easy, of course, to write down the good deeds, but not so easy to record the bad ones.

“I did only one bad thing to-day—only one thing I think bad, that is. I was impertinent to Aunt Elizabeth. She thought I took too long washing the dishes. I didn’t suppose there was any hurry and I was composing a story called The Secret of the Mill. Aunt Elizabeth looked at me and then at the clock, and said in her most disagreeable way,

“’Is the snail your sister, Emily?’

“’No! Snails are no relation to me,’ I said haughtily.

“It was not what I said, but the way I said it that was impertinent. And I meant it to be. I was very angry—sarcastic speeches always aggravate me. Afterwards I was very sorry that I had been in a temper—but I was sorry because it was foolish and undignified, not because it was wicked. So I suppose that was not true repentance.

“As for my good deeds, I did two to-day. I saved two little lives. Saucy Sal had caught a poor snowbird and I took it from her. It flew off quite briskly, and I am sure it felt wonderfully happy. Later on I went down to the cellar cupboard and found a mouse caught in a trap by its foot. The poor thing lay there, almost exhausted from struggling, with such a look in its black eyes. I couldn’t endure it so I set it free, and it managed to get away quite smartly in spite of its foot. I do not feel sure about this deed. I know it was a good one from the mouse’s point of view, but what about Aunt Elizabeth’s?

“This evening Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth read and burned a boxful of old letters. They read them aloud and commented on them, while I sat in a corner and knitted my stockings. The letters were very interesting and I learned a great deal about the Murrays I had never known before. I feel that it is quite wonderful to belong to a family like this. No wonder the Blair Water folks call us ‘the Chosen People’—though they don’t mean it as a compliment. I feel that I must live up to the traditions of my family.

“I had a long letter from Dean Priest to-day. He is spending the winter in Algiers. He says he is coming home in April and is going to take rooms with his sister, Mrs. Fred Evans, for the summer. I am so glad. It will be splendid to have him in Blair Water all summer. Nobody ever talks to me as Dean does. He is the nicest and most interesting old person I know. Aunt Elizabeth says he is selfish, as all the Priests are. But then she does not like the Priests. And she always calls him Jarback, which somehow sets my teeth on edge. One of Dean’s shoulders is a little higher than the other, but that is not his fault. I told Aunt Elizabeth once that I wished she would not call my friend that, but she only said,

“’I did not nickname your friend, Emily. His own clan have always called him Jarback. The Priests are not noted for delicacy!”

“Teddy had a letter from Dean, too, and a book—The Lives of Great Artists—Michael Angelo, Raphael, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Titian. He says he dare not let his mother see him reading it—she would burn it. I am sure if Teddy could only have his chance he would be as great an artist as any of them.

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“February 18, 19—

“I had a lovely time with myself this evening, after school, walking on the brook road in Lofty John’s bush. The sun was low and creamy and the snow so white and the shadows so slender and blue. I think there is nothing so beautiful as tree shadows. And when I came out into the garden my own shadow looked so funny—so long that it stretched right across the garden. I immediately made a poem of which two lines were,

“If we were as tall as our shadows
How tall our shadows would be.

“I think there is a good deal of philosophy in that.

“To-night I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But it wasn’t wasted time. I grew in it—I know I did. And there was something about some of the sentences I liked. ‘I am afraid of the grey wood’—that pleased me very much. And—’white and stately she walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.’ I think that is rather fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, I can’t cut that out—not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his point of view and feel ashamed of it. Mr. Carpenter was quite merciless over my essay to-day. Nothing about it suited him.

“’Three alas’s in one paragraph, Emily. One would have been too many in this year of grace!’ ‘More irresistible—Emily, for heaven’s sake, write English! That is unpardonable.’

“It was, too. I saw it for myself and I felt shame going all over me from head to foot like a red wave. Then, after Mr. Carpenter had blue-pencilled almost every sentence and sneered at all my fine phrases and found fault with most of my constructions and told me I was too fond of putting ‘cleverisms’ into everything I wrote, he flung my exercise book down, tore at his hair and said,

“’You write! Jade, get a spoon and learn to cook!’

“Then he strode...

Table of contents

• EMILY CLIMBS
• Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Writing Herself Out
• Salad Days
• In the Watches of the Night
• “As Ithers See Us”
• Half a Loaf
• Shrewsbury Beginnings
• Pot-pourri
• Not Proven
• A Supreme Moment
• The Madness of an Hour
• Heights and Hollows
• At the Sign of the Haystack
• Haven
• The Woman Who Spanked the King
• “The Thing That Couldn’t”
• Driftwood
• If a Body Kiss a Body
• Circumstantial Evidence
• “Airy Voices”
• In the Old John House
• Thicker than Water
• “Love Me, Love My Dog”
• An Open Door
• A Valley of Vision
• April Love