L. M. Montgomery's Complete Journals, the Ontario Years: 1926-1929 | 
“The cover design of the Swedish Green Gables has always been one of the joys of my life. Anne is depicted as an exceedingly weird creature, carrying an enormous carpet bag with hair of a literal scarlet—not red or auburn or carrot but a bright glaring scarlet.”
—Nov. 21, 1926
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #LMMJournals
I tracked down the Swedish cover LMM describes. Its rendition of Anne is indeed “exceedingly weird”—but for me the weirdness is ⤵️
BarbaraJean (Cont‘d) … more in the middle-aged face than it is the hair! Although the hair is certainly scarlet!! What stood out to you from LMM‘s account of 1926? The drama with Elsie had me riveted!! Along with the continuing Pickering saga… (edited) 3w
BarbaraJean Also, here‘s an interesting article about the aforementioned Swedish Anne of Green Gables: https://annemanuscript.ca/stories/swedish-anne-of-green-gables/ 3w
Ruthiella She looks like she is 30 years old and pissed off! 🤣 3w
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lauraisntwilder That is a particularly awful cover. 3w
lauraisntwilder A couple of things stood out to me this week. There's something funny about reading a journal from the 1920s. When LMM looks back at her old scrapbooks, she still likes the fashions of '93...and so do I! But 1993, in my case 3w
lauraisntwilder I also noticed an uptick in exclamation points. Not sure if it means anything, just seemed like a lot more sentences ended with!!! I hope LMM gets to take a few naps in 1927. She's entirely too tired. 3w
BarbaraJean @Ruthiella Right?! This is NOT Anne! @lauraisntwilder It's SO awful. It's such a testament to LMM's sense of humor that she says it's “always been one of the joys of my life“ 😂 😂 I'd love to see her reaction to these: https://teaandinksociety.com/bad-book-covers-anne-of-green-gables/ 3w
BarbaraJean @lauraisntwilder Reading this 100 years on really is fascinating...I'm enjoying how easy it is to calculate years like that. LMM's reaction to the fashion plates struck me as snobby...but you're spot on with how relatable it is when I think back to “our“ 90s! Also: just think about what LMM would say about the fashions of 1993. 😆 Re: her exhaustion—it was so sweet and also sad when Stuart noticed how tired she was. Sometimes I want to shake Ewan! 3w
TheAromaofBooks I really connected with LMM's thoughts on her big move! We just moved this year out of our house where we had lived for 11 years and when she said something along the lines of basically “my old house had a lot of problems but at least they were familiar problems“ - like FOR REAL 😂 Our new place is objectively better, but I still sometimes find myself a little homesick for the old routines, too. 3w
TheAromaofBooks Reading these journals entries was making ME feel tired! Good grief, does she EVER get a break!? Like you and @lauraisntwilder mentioned, it's SO fun to me to be reading these almost exactly 100 years after they were written. Somehow it's made me feel more connected - maybe because it's easier to think of myself as LMM's age/stage of life? 3w
TheAromaofBooks I also found myself feeling worried for LMM. She talks about how Ewan gets when he is going into one of his depressive stages - disconnected, unwilling to work, headachy, not like himself, etc. But then she talks about HERSELF feeling all of those things - almost like she's also depressed...??? I just feel super bad for her. Although it does seem like she has more (congenial) people to talk with in her new neighborhood. 3w
lauraisntwilder @BarbaraJean I flagged that part about Stuart saying she was tired, too. She had really never been cared for affectionately, even as a child, except by friends (Frede!) and they're all dying or far away. @TheAromaofBooks Yes, the stuff about moving was so relatable. And you're right, she was clearly depressed. Every time something threatened Lucky the cat, it became so obvious how much she relied on him 3w
lauraisntwilder And, of course, it makes sense to love your pets, but sometimes that cat feels like the only member of "the race of Joseph" she has left. 3w
BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks I spent 4 volumes of the journals trying to figure out how old LMM is at any given point by looking up her birth year and calculating it that way. I feel silly not having realized until volume FIVE—once we got to the 1920s—how much easier it would have been to use my OWN age relative to the year we‘re reading. She‘s 104 years older than me. Now that the dates are in the 20s, the math finally makes sense to my English major brain😆 3w
BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks @lauraisntwilder Yep, her own depression is becoming really apparent, and you can see Ewan's mental health issues exacerbating it. It's so hard to read, because I still believe if she'd had a better support system all along (or had married someone who wasn't a minister, which limited what she felt she could share/who she could go to for support), her depression wouldn't have ramped up the way we see it doing here. ⬇ 3w
BarbaraJean (Cont'd) It's also becoming SO apparent why she will feel such deep grief when Lucky the cat dies, and will need to pour it out in a 20-page journal entry! It's not that she feels that loss more than Frede's death, it's that her grief for that dear cat brings up not just that loss, but also the loss of Frede and ALL of her losses and griefs, compounded over the years. 3w
TheAromaofBooks 100% on the Lucky thing - as I am getting older and starting to accumulate deaths of loved ones, you start to realize that grief isn't just the person you have most recently lost, it's compounded by everyone you already miss. I feel like we're already seeing LMM express that more frequently as she's lost her dearest friend, family, Park Corner, even the basic stability of her husband. And like you said, she's in a position where she feels like ⬇ 3w
TheAromaofBooks (cont'd) she can't share/unload with anyone - which means I think she's putting a lot of emotional pressure on a little cat that simply can't live forever! He's also a final connection to Park Corner that is going to be lost as well and it's SO sad. 3w
TheAromaofBooks I forgot to say earlier, I was so relieved at how things came out with the whole Pickering thing! I can't remember his name, but kudos to the treasurer guy who, despite knowing the Pickerings well (BECAUSE he knew the Pickerings well???) saw through the whole thing and worked it all out! I could not BELIEVE that whole thing was following them to their new home! 3w
BarbaraJean @TheAromaofBooks YES with how things landed re: the Pickerings! I had such a fellow feeling of dread when they found out the man they were worried about was the treasurer 😫 Then it turns out he's already on their side!! There were also the other little incidents: where they end up parked next to the Pickerings—and LMM is “introduced“ to the Pickerings' lawyer—it felt like John Mustard all over again. They CANNOT seem to escape the Pickerings! 3w
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