I have just put down Volume V, the last of these journals, with a feeling of such sadness and regret that L M Montgomery appeared, and I do stress 'appeared' to have taken her own life, such was her misery and sadness in the last few years of her life in Toronto. I bought the first of these volumes when I was actually visiting that city back in 2006 and many of the places and locations mentioned in this last of her Journals are familiar to me: the Fairmont Hotel, the Meridian (known as 'King Eddy') Hotel and Eastons where she used to shop regularly and where I purchased Volume 1. Unfortunately, it took me a while to track them down as I spoke to a shop assistant who was not only unhelpful and ungracious, but also ignorant having never heard of Lucy Maud Montgomery. 'Who?' was her response when I mentioned her name. True.
I did not start reading all these journals until last year when I had three volumes on my shelves, I don't know what triggered off my reading, I think perhaps a mention by a member of my on-line book group but I finally took them down, was half way through Volume 1 and decided I had better get hold of the others pretty darn quick as I knew I would have to read them all. In the end, I ordered them on line from a bookshop in Toronto as, even with the postage, it was cheaper than purchasing them in the UK as copies were at a premium.
Halfway through my reading of the Journals, I stopped and read a biography of L M Montgomery by Mary Rubio, who jointly edits the five volumes of her diaries (my review of this wonderful book is here) and while spending this morning finishing Volume V, I had the biography to hand again to check events only obliquely referred to by Lucy Maud, they were too painful for her to write about, which were explained in the Gift of Wings.
From her girlhood on Prince Edward Island, her struggles with her writing, her marriage to Ewen McDonald and their lives in Leakdale and Norval where he was the Minister, to her unhappiness and nerve racked final years in Toronto, these Journals are moving, sad and uplifting all at the same time. Over and over again when she had to deal with her husband's depressive fits, hide them from the parishioners, cope with problems with her two sons, the death of her cousin Frede who was her companion and confidante, she found solace in Prince Edward Island. Each time she visited she was refreshed, her spirits lifted and she found a happiness there unlike anywhere else (and it made me wonder why she did not return there instead of moving to Toronto?) She always referred to Cavendish, on PEI as 'home'.
Lucy Maud Montgomery stresses that she used this writing up of her life as a release, she put thoughts in writing that she could not say as a minister's wife, the journals became a necessity to her as she had no close friend that she could really speak to frankly. In the last volume she wonders why she is writing each day she is suffering so badly from a nervous breakdown but says that she needs to put her thoughts down and it is clear from her scrappy entries and writing in this final journal that she was suffering terribly from depression and nerves. Having had a brush with depression myself some ten years ago when my marriage ended, I can remember with great clarity the feeling of dread and panic that would rush in on me when I woke up each morning and while work helped and distracted my mind, as soon as I was home again or alone, back would come this awful feeling. It lasted some little time but once I sought help and started to get better I remember so well the sense of relief when this cloud, this dread hovering over me, gradually receded, so I do have a notion of how Lucy Maud was feeling though her suffering seems to be really quite dreadful and rendered her totally despairing and, worst of all, unable to write.
But she knew that as well as bad times, there were many good to balance these out and in one of the earlier Journals she emphasises that thought sometimes it may appear that life is hard and difficult, it is not always so. There are so many entries of joy and happiness and her rejoicing in the beauties of nature and it is this which enabled her to write so many glorious books.
I have a feeling that this is a very jumbled and disorganised review, but I have become so engrossed in LMM's life and her thoughts and fears that it is quite hard to write coherently so you will have to bear with me. I have read all of L M Montgomery's books and have loved each one. Now I know so much more about the background against which these were written and so much more about the author, I intend to return and read them all again. I have them all on my shelves. I will not rush through them but when I read each one I will write about it on Random and this time I will have the journals to hand so I can read Lucy Maud's thoughts as she wrote each title.
These five volumes are quite riveting. It was like having a ring side seat at this author's life as she let you become her companion and friend, privy to her hopes and fears, happiness and sorrows and it has been a privilege to read them. Quite quite wonderful.
"One cannot have imagination and the gift of wings, along with the placidity and contentment of those who creep on the earth's solid surface and never open their eyes on aught but material things. But the gift of wings is better than placidity and contentment after all."
