The Books: “Emily Climbs” (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

Emily Climbs – by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

Okay – so we have been talking so much about Aunt Ruth in other Emily entries that I had to find an excerpt about her. There are so many that I love – she is quite a fearsome and unpleasant personality – but she is so comedically drawn … even when she is totally giving Emily a hard time, there’s something deeply deeply funny and absurd about Aunt Ruth.

So. Elizabeth is allowing Emily to go on to high school. The big high school in Shrewsbury. Ilse, Perry, and Teddy are going as well – and they are all rooming in one of the big dormitories. But no – a Murray would not be allowed to live like that – so Emily has to live with her Aunt Ruth, who lives in Shrewsbury. We have met Aunt Ruth before – and we know that she is not sympathetic, she is judgmental, and she is brutal – in terms of her honesty. But Emily is dying for a chance at more education – and this is the only way, so she sucks it up, and puts up with it. Oh yeah, and Elizabeth also made Emily promise that she would stop writing short stories and anything fictional for the entire three years of her high school years. Elizabeth is horrified that Emily would spend so much time on “lies”. At first Elizabeth wants to ban h er from writing altogether (some people just never learn) – but Cousin Jimmy, I believe, talks her into a more gentle restriction. Emily is surprised when Mr. Carpenter, her teacher/mentor, approves of this restriction! He thinks holding off on the fiction and only writing what is true will be good training for her.

Anyhoo, so off Emily goes, to start high school.

I’ll post an excerpt from one of the chapters made up entirely of random diary entries from Emily. It gives a great picture of Aunt Ruth.

Excerpt from Emily Climbs – by L.M. Montgomery Excerpt 3!

“I like Shrewbury and I like school but I shall never like Aunt Ruth’s house. It has a disagreeable personality. Houses are like people – some you like and some you don’t like – and once in a while there is one you love. Outside, this house is covered with frippery. I feel like getting a broom and sweeping it off. Inside, its rooms are all square and proper and soulless. Nothing you could put into them would ever seem to belong to them. There are no nice romantic corners in it, as there are at New Moon. My room hasn’t improved on acquaintance, either. The ceiling oppresses me – it comes down so low over my bed – and Aunt Ruth won’t let me move the bed. She looked amazed when I suggested it.

” ‘The bed has always been in that corner,’ she said, just as she might have said, ‘The sun has always risen in the east.’

“But the pictures are really the worst thing about this room – chromos of the most aggravated description. Once I turned them all to the wall and of course Aunt Ruth walked in – she never knocks – and noticed them at once.

“‘Em’ly, why have you meddled with the pictures?’

“Aunt Ruth is always asking ‘why’ I do this and that. Sometimes I can explain and sometimes I can’t. This was one of the times I couldn’t. But of course I had to answer Aunt Ruth’s question. No disdainful smile would do here.

“‘Queen Alexandra’s dog collar gets on my nerves,’ I said, ‘and Byron’s expression on his death-bed at Missolonghi hinders me from studying.’

“‘Em’ly,’ said Aunt Ruth, ‘you might try to show a little gratitude.’

“I wanted to say,

“‘To whom — Queen Alexandra or Lord Byron?’ but of course I didn’t. Instaead I meekly turned all the pictures right side out again.

“‘You haven’t told me the real reason why you turned those pictures,’ said Aunt Ruth sternly. ‘I suppose you don’t mean to tell me. Deep and sly – deep and sly – I always said you were. The very first time I saw you at Maywood I said you were the slyest child I have ever seen.’

“‘Aunt Ruth, why do you say such things to me?’ I said, in exasperation. ‘Is it because you love me and want to improve me – or hate me and want to hurt me – or just because you can’t help it?’

“‘Miss Impertinence, please remember that this is my house. And you will leave my pictures alone after this. I forgive you for meddling with them this time but don’t let it happen again. I will find out yet your motive in turning them around, clever as you think yourself.’

“Aunt Ruth stalked out but I know she listened on the landing quite a while to find out if I would begin talking to myself. She is always watching me – even when she says nothing – does nothing – I know she is watching me. I feel like a little fly under a microscope. not a word or action escapes her criticism, and, though she can’t read my thoughts, she attributes thoughts to me that I never had any idea of thinking. I hate that worse than anything else.

“Can’t I say anything good of Aunt Ruth? Of course I can.

“She is honest and virtuous and truthful and industrious and of her pantry she needeth not be ashamed. But she hasn’t any lovable virtues – and she will never give up tryiing to find out why I turned the pictures. She will never believe that I told her the simple truth.

“Of course, things ‘might be worse.’ As Teddy says, it might have been Queen Victoria instead of Queen Alexandra.

“I have some pictures of my own pinned up that save me – some lovely sketches of New Moon and the old orchard that Teddy made for me, and an engraving Dean gave me. It is a picture in soft, dim colours of palms around a desert well and a train of camels passing across the sands against a black sky gemmed with stars. It is full ofl ure and mystery and when I look at it I forget Queen Alexandra’s jewelry and Lord Byron’s lugubrious face, and my soul slips out – out – through a little gateway into a great, vast world of freedom and dream.

“Aunt Ruth asked me where I got that picture. When I told her, she sniffed and said,

“‘I can’t understand how you have such a thing for Jarback Priest. He’s a man I’ve no use for.’

“I shouldn’t think she would have.

“But if the house is ugly and my room unfriendly the Land of Uprightness is beautiful and saves my soul alive. The Land of Uprightness is the fir grove behind the house. I call it that because the firs are all so exceedingly tall and slender and straight. There is a pool in it, veiled with ferns, and a big grey boulder beside it. It is reached by a little, winding, capricious path so narrow that only one can walk in it. When I’m tired or lonely or angry or too ambitious I go there and sit for a few minutes. Nobody can keep an upset mind looking at those slender, crossed tips against the sky. I go there to study on fine evenings, though Aunt Ruth is suspicious and thinks it is just another manifestation of my slyness. Soon it will be dark too early to study there and I’ll be so sorry. Somehow, my books have a meaning there they never have anywhere else.

“There are so many dear, green corners in the Land of Uprightness, full of the aroma of sun-steeped ferns, and grassy, open spaces where pale asters feather the grass, swaying gently towards each other when the Wind Woman runs among them. And just to the left of my window there is a group of tall old firs that look, in moonlight or twilight, like a group of witches weaving spells of sorcery. When I first saw them, one windy night against the red sunset, with the reflection of my candle, like a weird, signal flame, suspended in the air among their boughs, the flash came – for the first time in Shrewsbury – and I felt so happy that nothing else matterred. I have written a poem about them.

“But oh, I burn to write stories. I knew it would be hard to keep my promise to Aunt Elizabeth but I didn’t know it would be so hard. Every day it seems harder – such splendid ideas for plots pop into my mind. Then I have to fall back on character studies of the people I know. I have written several of them. I always feel so strongly tempted to touch them up a bit — deepen the shadows – bring out the highlights a little more vividly. But I remember that I promised Aunt Elizabeth never to write anything that wasn’t true so I stay my hand and try to paint them exactly as they are.

“I have written one of Aunt Ruth. Interesting, but dangerous. I never leave my Jimmy-book or my diary in my room. I know Aunt Ruth rummages through it when I’m out. So I always carry them in my book-bag.

“Ilse was up this evening and we did our lessons together. Aunt Ruth frowns on this – and, to be strictly just, I don’t know that she is wrong. Ilse is so jolly and comical that we laugh more than we study, I’m afraid. We don’t do as well in class the next day – and besides, this house disapproves of laughter.

“Perry and Teddy like the High School. Perry earns his lodging by looking after the furnace and grounds and his board by waiting on the table. Besides, he gets twenty-five cents an hour for doing odd jobs. I don’t see much of him or Teddy, except in the week-ends home, for it is against the school rules for boys and girls to walk together to and from school. Lots do it, though. I had several chances to but I concluded that it would not be in keeping with New Moon traditions to break the rule. Besides, Aunt Ruth asks me every blessed night when I come home from school if I’ve walked with anybody. I think she’s sometimes a little disappointed when I say ‘No’.

“Besides, I didn’t much fancy any of the boys who wanted to walk with me.