58 I have corrected the original, which reads “tear down street!”
59 A literal translation of the French phrase “Revenons à nos moutons,” from the anonymous play La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin (ca. 1460), referring to a return to the subject at hand. The expression occurs again in Rilla of Ingleside (see RI, 11, 116). See also Montgomery, 6 April 1894, in CJLMM, 1: 201.
60 This anecdote was excerpted and appears in shorter form as “A Hallowe’en Charm,” in McCabe, “Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Table Talk,” 163.
61 A partner in marriage, “weal and woe” being an idiomatic expression referring to good and bad days, happiness and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, and so forth.
62 The expression “the eternal fitness of things” refers to the congruity between an action and its agent. This expression originated in The History of Tom Jones, Foundling (1749), a novel by Henry Fielding (1707–1754), English novelist and dramatist. In The Story Girl, the narrator posits that “a cat in a hayloft is a beautiful example of the eternal fitness of things” (SG, 103). The phrase also appears in Anne of Green Gables (see AGG, 72–73).
63 The origin of this expression is unknown, but it appears to refer to “stern parents.”
64 Montgomery’s Blue Scrapbook includes an unidentified clipping, “A Humane Pater,” containing the source of this story:
One reads so frequently of the paternal boot as applied to the undesirable youthful suitor that it is a pleasure to chronicle the more humane method adopted by a wealthy Glasgow merchant for choking off a “follower” of his daughter. The girl was very young, so was the follower, but nevertheless he called formally on the object of his affections. The merchant and his wife entered the room, the latter bearing a glass of milk and a huge slice of bread spread with butter and jam.
“Now dear, run away to bed,” said the kindly mother to her daughter; “it’s time that all good girls should be in bed.”
Then the Glasgow merchant addressed the astonished young man, –
“Now, youngster, you drink that glass of milk, and take that slice of bread and jam to eat on the road home – and hurry, for your mother must be anxious about your being out so late by yourself.”
The young man did not call again.
65 Orris root consists of “the fragrant rhizome of any of several irises of the Iris germanica group; a powdered preparation of such rhizomes, used in perfumery and formerly in medicine” (OED).
[DISMAL NOVEMBER]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 2 November 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 4 November 1901, 7.
66 See “Around the Table,” note 270, below.
67 Thanksgiving Day, an official Canadian holiday since 1879, was celebrated at various points in the autumn months until 1957, since when it has been celebrated consistently the second Monday in October. See Montgomery, 28 November 1901, in CJLMM, 2: 35–36; David Mills, Laura Neilson Bonikowsky, and Andrew McIntosh, “Thanksgiving in Canada,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, last modified 11 March 2016, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thanksgiving-day/.
68 Pseudonym of Léon Paul Blouet (1847–1903), French author.
69 This misunderstanding is reused in Anne of Avonlea (AA, 150).
70 Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (1855–1897), Irish author of light romantic novels appearing under the pseudonym “The Duchess.”
71 Allusion to “The Fox without a Tail,” from Aesop’s Fables, which ends with the following moral: “Distrust interested advice.”
72 Medium; in the middle. This expression appears in Samantha and the Race Problem (1892), a humorous novel by Marietta Holley, signed “Josiah Allen’s Wife.” The expression occurs again in Anne of Green Gables (see AGG, 424).
73 Ireland, first referred to as “Emerald Isle” in “When Erin First Rose,” a poem by William Drennan (1754–1820), Irish poet.
[WEDDING BELLS]
“Around the Table.” By Synthia [sic]. Halifax Daily Echo, 11 November 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 12 November 1901, 6.
74 This phrase is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American essayist and poet, but it reads as “All mankind love a lover” in his essay “Love,” in Essays: First Series (1841).
75 Popular nineteenth-century saying.
76 The article in question, which claims that “about a century has passed since woman’s fondness began to spoil the English novel,” was actually written by a woman: Neith Boyce (1872–1951), American novelist and playwright. The quoted phrase “for the deterioration of heroes” does not appear in the article.
77 To make a bad situation worse, an idiom popularized in the widely circulated 1848 speech “Slaveholding Insolence” by Cassius Marcellus Clay (1810–1903), American politician and anti-slavery activist.
78 This quoted phrase does not appear in the article itself. Boyce claims that “as she has prevented the hero of the novel from soaring to the lonely peaks which she can’t reach herself, so also she forbids him to ramp through the pleasant meadows, witlessly enjoying himself” (Boyce, “The Novelist’s Deadliest Friend,” 27).
79 Properly, Tommy and Grizel, a 1900 sequel to Sentimental Tommy (1896), by J.M. Barrie (1860–1937), Scottish novelist and playwright best known for Peter Pan.
80 Properly, “weariness of the flesh.” From Ecclesiastes 12:12 (KJV).
81 Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament, describing the origins of the earth and of humankind.
[BAD LUCK AND BAD ADVICE]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 16 November 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 18 November 1901, 3.
82 From “Young Benjie,” a ballad by Scott.
83 A meteor shower that peaks in November.
84 The original reads “there is known way,” but Montgomery adds the “no” in ink in her scrapbook copy.
85 See “[Dismal November],” published just two weeks prior to this instalment.
86 Unveiled in 1860, the Welsford-Parker Monument, which commemorates the British involvement in the Crimean War and which is found in Halifax’s Old Burying Ground, depicts a lion above a tall arch. Montgomery (as “Cynthia”) first wrote about this location in “A Half-Hour in an Old Cemetery,” reprinted earlier in this volume.
[A WALK IN THE PARK]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 23 November 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 25 November 1901, 7.
87 Point Pleasant Park, at the south end of the Halifax peninsula.
88 The Northwest Arm, an inlet, part of Halifax Harbour.
89 Properly, “the Warden of the Honour of the North.” From the “Halifax” portion of “The Song of the Cities,” a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), English poet and novelist.
90 Properly, “And thank God that it ain’t no wuss!” From “Give Thanks for What?,” a poem by William Augustus Croffut (1836–1915), American journalist and author.
91 A phrase found fifteen times throughout the Old and New Testaments, referring to the afterlife.
92 Properly, “beauty is its own excuse for Being.” From “The Rhodora,” a poem by Emerson.
93 Allusion to “Give me liberty, or give me death!,” attributed to Patrick Henry (1736–1799), American attorney who championed the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s.
94 The OED defines “ethyl” as “an alkyl group – C2H5, which occurs in ethanol and its derivatives (and of which there are two in ether), derived from ethane by loss of a hydrogen atom.”
95 In “[Collisions and Crossed Wires]” and “[Wedding Bells],” Cynthia’s byline appears (likely erroneously) as “Synthia.”
[CAKES AND DRESSES]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 2 December 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 3 December 1901, 3.
96 The term “pres
to, change” echoes the phrase “presto changeo,” an early twentieth-century American expression “announcing the climax of a conjuring trick or a sudden transformation” (OED).
97 The Halifax Conservatory of Music, founded in 1887, had been offering licences and diplomas in partnership with Dalhousie University since 1898.
98 I have corrected the original, which reads “he says intends.”
99 Flour (“And Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour, and threescore measures of meal”).
100 Butter (“she brought forth butter in a lordly dish”).
101 Sugar (“To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me”).
102 Raisins (“And they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins: and when he had eaten, his spirit came again to him: for he had eaten no bread, nor drunk any water, three days and three nights”).
103 See Nahum 3:12 (KJV), which suggests figs (“All thy strong holds shall be like fig trees with the firstripe figs: if they be shaken, they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater”).
104 See Numbers 17:8 (KJV), which suggests almonds (“And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds”).
105 Honey (“And all they of the land came to a wood; and there was honey upon the ground”).
106 Eggs (“As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool”).
107 Spice (“And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon”).
108 Milk (“And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him”).
109 Salt (“And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt”).
110 This verse reads “And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God.”
111 This verse reads “Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.” See also “High School Life in Saskatchewan,” note 3, above.
112 In this context, the verb “to squeeze” is used colloquially to refer to a loverly embrace.
[PRESENTS AND SECRETS]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 7 December 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 9 December 1901, 3.
113 “Little old woman up in the sky, / See how she makes the feathers fly! / She sits in the twilight overhead / And picks her geese for a feather-bed.” Nineteenth-century rhyme. In Anne of the Island, Davy Keith asks if this woman in the sky is God’s wife (AIs, 169).
114 Properly, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” From “Endymion,” a poem by John Keats (1795–1821), English poet.
115 Properly, Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471), Dutch priest and author of the influential devotional book The Imitation of Christ.
116 The Visits of Elizabeth (1900), an epistolary novel satirizing high society by Elinor Glyn (1864–1943), English author.
117 Persian poet and philosopher (1048–1131) whose poems first appeared in English as Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859), translated by Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883), English poet.
118 This 1887 book, subtitled Being a Handbook to Marriage and signed “A Graduate in the University of Matrimony,” has been attributed to Edward John Hardy (1849–1920), Irish clergyman and writer.
119 Reference to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, founded in the United Kingdom in 1824 and followed by a number of not-for-profit organizations around the world.
120 “He that will steal a pin will steal a better thing,” an American proverb.
121 One of the definitions of “prostration” in the OED refers to “extreme physical weakness or exhaustion; (also) extreme mental depression or dejection; an instance of this.” One of the examples in the OED definition is from Anne of the Island (see AIs, 15).
[PREACHMENTS ON CHRISTMASTIDE]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 14 December 1901, 1.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 16 December 1901, 7.
122 From “The Vision of Sir Launfal” (1848), a long poem by James Russell Lowell (1819–1891), American author.
123 Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI reigned as Kings of France between 1610 and 1792.
124 “The absolute truth; esp. used to emphasize that something, esp. a statement, is or should be true in every particular, with no facts omitted or untrue elements added” (OED), an expression that can be traced to the sixteenth century.
125 Allusion to “Variety is the spice of life,” a proverb that originates in the six-book poem The Task (1785) by William Cowper (1731–1800), English poet: “Variety’s the very spice of life, / That gives it all its flavour.”
[ILLUSIONS OF CHRISTMAS]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 23 December 1901, 1, 12.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 26 December 1901, 5.
126 Properly, “one of those things that no fellow can find out.” From Lord Dundreary and His Brother Sam: The Strange Story of Their Adventures and Family History (1863). The character originated in the play Our American Cousin (1858), by Tom Taylor 7 (1817–1880), English playwright. Montgomery’s version of the quotation was also used in Anne of the Island (see AIs, 74), and in Montgomery, “The ’Teen-Age Girl,” 273.
127 Archaic expression meaning “if it pleases you,” referring to a second plural possessive pronoun.
128 This expression appears in Anne of Green Gables (see AGG, 5), in “The Alpine Path” below, and in Montgomery’s journal entry dated 18 November 1901, in CJLMM, 2: 31. It is a type of Wellerism, an expression involving a proverb or saying misapplied to humorous effect, named after a character in The Pickwick Papers, a novel by Dickens that Montgomery later selected as one of six “Greatest Books in the English Language” for a piece published in the Bookseller and Stationer. The editors of The Annotated Anne of Green Gables note that “the source of this particular proverb is not known, but it bears relation to many proverbial statements about immunity to pain based upon proximity to it”; they add that the expression is evidence of xenophobia against the Irish (Barry, Doody, and Jones, in Montgomery, The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, 42–43n11).
129 Montgomery returns to this childhood illusion in The Story Girl (see SG, 56–57).
130 A character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), a children’s book by Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), English author and photographer. In chapter 8 of Anne of Green Gables, the narrator mentions that “Marilla was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up” (AGG, 83).
131 From Trilby (1895), a popular novel by George du Maurier (1834–1896), French-English author and cartoonist.
132 Montgomery was unable to go home to Cavendish for Christmas that year. For her Christmas plans in Halifax, see “The Alpine Path,” note 182, below.
133 The phrase is used figuratively to mean “to relax one’s efforts, take things easy” (OED), an expression that can be traced to the eighteenth century.
134 “A crystalline terpenoid alcohol found in peppermint and other natural oils, whose odour and taste produce a characteristic cooling sensation, used medicinally in decongestants and analgesics, and as a flavouring” (OED).
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 30 December 1901, 8.
Also in Morning Chronicle (Halifax), 31 December 1901, 7.
135 “On Our Way Rejoicing,” title of a nineteenth-century hymn with lyrics by John Samuel Bewley Monsell (1811–1875), Irish poet.
136 This phrase was popularized as a storytelling device in the collection of short stories Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), by Kipling.
137 This malapropism mistakes Herculaneum, the Ancient Roman city destroyed in 79 CE, for the word “Herculean,” referring to the strength of Hercules, a figure of Roman classical mythology who has been represented innumerable times in fiction, art, and popular culture. This phrase also appears in Anne of Avonlea (see AA, 128).
138 The expression “Tom, Dick, and Harry,” referring to “any three (or more) representatives of the populace taken at random,” originates in the mid-eighteenth century (OED). These generic characters return in “Many Admiring Glances Bestowed upon Graduates” later in this volume.
139 “Old Father Time,” a personification of time who is “conventionally represented as an aged man carrying a scythe and freq. an hourglass,” originates in the mid-sixteenth century (OED).
140 Traditional proclamation made at the death of a sovereign ruler, referring here to Edward VII (1841–1910), who had succeeded to the throne after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria (1819–1901), earlier that year; its origins are in fifteenth-century France.
[MISTAKES AND BLUNDERS]
“Around the Table.” By Cynthia. Halifax Daily Echo, 6 January 1902, 8.
141 Possibly an allusion to Discourses (1868), by John Riddell (1818–1868), Scottish preacher.
142 The origin of this “old rhyme” is unknown.
143 Bridgetown, a town in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis County, west of Halifax; North Mountain is located on the northern edge of the Annapolis Valley.
144 Sixteenth-century proverb referring to the obligation to accept even a poor offer when it is the only one available.
145 In Anne of Green Gables, when Anne tumbles off the roof at Diana’s house and Diana panics that Anne has been killed, Anne replies, “No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious” (AGG, 258).
A Name for Herself Page 41