The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. V: 1935-1942, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, 2004.
Almost 100 years after the publication of her first novel, Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery remains the most popular Canadian novelist on the horizon. No storyteller has won more hearts than the unpretentious Presbyterian minister's wife from Cavendish, P.E.I.
Four volumes of the author's journals have been released over the past 20 years. The fifth, covering Montgomery's life from 1935 to her death in 1942, has finally been published. While her talent shines in novels, it also manifests itself in these journals. The prose is like a clean window pane through which her readers can see things exactly as they were for Montgomery.
And what a mess her life is from the moment she enters the west Toronto stone house purchased in retirement.
Her husband, suffering for years from a mental illness, is oblivious to everything about his wife — from her birthday to her success as a writer. Montgomery's eldest son secretly marries a girl from their former church in Norval, Ont. He fathers two children and then carries on an affair with a woman from the Toronto Presbyterian church that the family attends. The maids drive Montgomery crazy with their mood swings, and even the cats aren't friendly, except for 'Lucky' who dies on her.
Through it all, Montgomery tries to maintain a normal existence. She joins her fellow scribblers at the Women's Press Club. She sees the latest movie at the Runnymede theatre. The neighbours are invited in for a game of euchre. When a friend at her Study Club confesses that they were initially "frightened" of her, Montgomery confides in her journal, "How silly to think that, just because a woman has written a few successful books, she is an awe-inspiring creature with whom people cannot feel really comfortable!!"
Montgomery emerges from these journals as an ordinary person who just happens to possess a literary genius. However, her own ending isn't as inspiring as those she wrote. Though she never appears to be seriously ill during the last years of her life, Montgomery — like Matthew Cuthbert — dies in her 60s from a weak heart. The strain, it would appear, is simply too much.
Her final journal entry, registered a month before her death on Apr. 24, 1942, is a far cry from the buoyant spirits that gave birth to the red-haired orphan that lit up the lives of Matthew and Marilla and made Montgomery such a beloved author: "Since then my life has been hell, hell, hell. My mind is gone — everything in the world I lived for has gone — the world has gone mad. I shall be driven to end my life. Oh God, forgive me. Nobody dreams what my awful position is."
