Emily Climbs by L. M. Montgomery, for the #1925Club

When I was about 13, my family went to Martha’s Vineyard to spend a day with my father’s law partner. His children were younger so I begged to be taken to the local library (What, you say, you needed an excuse?). And what do you think I found on a discard table near the Chilmark Library door but a three-book series I’d never heard of by the author of Anne of Green Gables - also set on Prince Edward Island, but about a different orphan. They were first edition hardcovers; unfortunately falling apart, but I have cherished them anyway. All three are delightful page-turners.

Emily Byrd Starr is introduced to the reader when her father dies and she is hiding under a table as her relatives decide who will raise her. Finally, her deceased mother’s siblings decide to take her in: her strict Aunt Elizabeth Murray, her kind (but often cowed) Aunt Laura, and her lovable Uncle Jimmy, who is sometimes whimsical and sometimes not all there. Emily is just as imaginative as Anne Shirley but less extroverted and a more gifted writer. Both her imagination and her writing get her in trouble with Aunt Elizabeth, but she comes to love New Moon, home to several generations of proud Murrays, and makes three close friends, Ilse, the doctor's daughter; Teddy, a neighbor and budding artist; and Perry, her family's hired boy.

Don't blame me for the tape!

In the second book, Emily Climbs, my choice for the 1925 Club, she and her friends have completed the village school and at 14, she longs to attend Shrewsbury High School, about seven miles from New Moon. This means boarding with her critical Aunt Ruth and promising Aunt Elizabeth she won’t write any fiction during these three years, but Emily is delighted to be undertaking this new adventure with her friends. She thrives academically and sometimes gets into scrapes with her best friend, Ilse, including an unusual episode. Emily occasionally has the second sight: she once helped reveal that Ilse’s mother had died tragically near home, when it was believed the young woman had abandoned her husband and daughter. One weekend when Emily and Ilse take refuge from a storm in the countryside, they find a household in upheaval because a seven-year-old has been missing for days. Emily is worried about the boy and while she is sleeping draws a picture in her journal of the house where he is hidden, where no one thought to look. Her vision is greeted with skepticism but the boy is rescued just in time.

During this awkward visit, the missing child’s eccentric grandmother tells Emily how she once spanked the future (albeit briefly) king of England, Edward VIII, back when her husband was a shepherd near Balmoral.* Emily listens, enthralled, and knows she is going to turn this narrative into an unforgettable story. Publication of this story brings Emily praise and recognition, as well as the opportunity to leave Prince Edward Island for possible fame and fortune.

In one memorable chapter, Emily enters a school contest for the best poem and loses to a rival (who cheated, Emily finds out later). A professor from McGill had offered a “complete set of Parkman” as the prize. Back then, I was intrigued but pre-Internet, I did not know historian Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was a Boston native or about his monumental seven-volume work, France and England in North America. As a Harvard sophomore, he became determined to write the history of the 200-year rivalry between France and England for dominance of North America, from the earliest voyages of Cartier and Champlain to the final defeat of the French at the Battle of Quebec in 1759, and he devoted his life to this project. In recognition of his accomplishments, the Society for American Historians annually awards the Francis Parkman Prize for the best book on American history. He died in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, which boasts a Francis Parkman Drive adjacent to Jamaica Pond that I drive on often (unfortunately, his works reveal some regrettable biases but we won’t dwell on that today).

Parkman

Despite some serious themes about loyalty, obsession, pride, and Emily’s second sight, this is a lively and often funny story about an thoughtful girl determined to be a writer, who recognizes that inspiration comes from one’s surroundings, whether grand or humble.

I read Emily Climbs after many years for the #1925Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year. Even if you have not read Anne of Green Gables, you should give Emily a chance.  The Emily books are darker and more complex, and well worth reading.

Title: Emily Climbs
Author: L. M. Montgomery
Publication: Frederick A. Stokes, hardcover, 1925
Genre: Juvenile fiction/series
Source: Personal copy

* The future Edward VIII actually visited Prince Edward Island in 1919 as part of a royal tour of Canada.  He liked Calgary so much he bought a ranch there, which he visited several times.