67 For a slightly different version of her recollections of the various volumes in the Royal Reader series, see Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 252–53.
68 For more on this memory, including commentary on Aunt Emily’s wedding dress, see Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 255. Compare this to Montgomery’s remarks in a journal entry dated two years earlier, during which she mentioned, concerning Aunt Emily leaving home after her marriage, “I don’t recall having missed her at all” (Montgomery, 3 May 1908, in CJLMM, 2: 185).
69 An allusion to Acts 3:2 (KJV): “the gate of the temple which is called beautiful.”
70 “Live-forevers” are robust perennial plants known for their green, coarsely toothed leaves and pithy stalks and for clusters of purplish-pink flowers shaped like stars.
71 Here and below, Montgomery’s recollections of Well and Dave Nelson appear with only minor variations in Montgomery, 1 August 1892, in CJLMM, 1: 130–35.
72 See chapter 20, “A Good Imagination Gone Wrong,” in Anne of Green Gables.
73 Properly, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” From Hamlet (ca. 1599–1602), a tragic play by Shakespeare. These lines are spoken by Hamlet immediately after he is visited by the ghost of his late father.
74 A wraith is “an apparition or spectre of a dead person; a phantom or ghost” (OED).
75 Montgomery published a poem with this title in The Ladies’ Journal, a Toronto magazine, in May 1898.
76 Properly, “in their death they were not divided,” referring to the strong bond between Saul and Jonathan, in 2 Samuel 1:23 (KJV). In chapter 26 of Anne of Green Gables, Anne narrates to Diana an unintentionally comic story entitled “The Jealous Rival; or, in Death Not Divided” (see AGG, 290–92).
77 These paragraphs about trees appear with only minor variations as part of a longer journal entry in Montgomery, 22 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 341–46.
78 “To ween” is an archaic transitive verb meaning “to think, surmise, suppose, conceive, believe, consider … in regard to what is present or past” (OED).
79 From “The Deacon’s Masterpiece; or, the Wonderful ‘One-Hoss Shay’: A Logical Story” (1858), a poem by Holmes.
80 Properly, “The lands of Dream among.” From “Lost Love,” a poem in Ban and Arrière Ban: A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes (1894), by Andrew Lang (1844–1912), Scottish poet. Chapter 3 of Anne’s House of Dreams, published the same year as “The Alpine Path,” is entitled “The Land of Dreams Among.”
81 Chapter 3 of the 1974 book version of “The Alpine Path” ends here.
82 Montgomery’s account of the wreck of the Marco Polo appears in slightly different form in Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 229–32. Her early essay on this event, published in 1891 and appearing earlier in this volume, was followed by a poem of the same name in 1892. Although Montgomery’s account here of the Marco Polo mentions that the ship was grounded on the Cavendish shore, she omits here the second half of this historical event, during which the ship was wrecked during a second bad storm.
83 Samuel Plimsoll (1824–1898), a member of the British Parliament and author of Our Seamen (1872), led an investigation of the overloading of cargo ships, which created unsafe conditions for crew members. The Unseaworthy Ships Bill went into law in 1876.
84 For the definition of deal planks, see “The Wreck of the ‘Marco Polo,’” note 12, above.
85 For Montgomery’s clarifying comments on the crash as reported in her journal, see “The Wreck of the ‘Marco Polo,’” note 16, above. In her journal, she specified the date of the crash (25 July 1883), omitted here, possibly to camouflage her age (Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 230).
86 See “The Wreck of the ‘Marco Polo,’” note 17, above.
87 In her essay “The Wreck of the ‘Marco Polo,’” Montgomery identifies this captain as P.A. Bull.
88 These paragraphs about the seashore and about Alexander Macneill’s dramatic stories appear with minor variations in Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 226–28. A passing reference to Montgomery’s Uncle John F. Macneill is omitted here, possibly due to the animosity between them but more likely to avoid confusion with Montgomery’s Uncle John Campbell, whereas the reference here to Oliver Wendell Holmes’s poetry is absent from that version.
89 See “The Wreck of the ‘Marco Polo,’” note 14, above.
90 Properly, “Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!” Also from “The Chambered Nautilus,” by Holmes.
91 In her journal, Montgomery identifies this “chum” as Penzie Macneill (Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 227).
92 In her journal, Montgomery added here: “It is a spot I have always loved” (Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 227).
93 This “Yankee storm” occurred in October 1851. See Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 227–28.
94 Montgomery offered far more detail about this story in her journal. After the Franklin Dexter went ashore and all on board drowned, the bodies of four brothers were among the many that were buried in Cavendish churchyard. When their father insisted that they be disinterred so that they could be buried at home, “The coffins were put on board a trading vessel at New London, while the father returned home in a passenger vessel. The trading vessel was called the Seth Hall. She left New London harbour with the four bodies on board – and was never heard of again” (Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 228). This story appears in nearly identical form in a letter to MacMillan, in which she stated that the parents of the four sons had lived in Massachusetts (Montgomery to MacMillan, 21 May 1909, in MDMM, 44). Chapter 22 of The Golden Road, entitled “The Yankee Storm,” retells both stories.
95 The story of Captain Leforce is told with only minor variations in Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 228. Montgomery also narrates this story in her first published poem, “On Cape Le Force,” which appeared in November 1890 and which followed her 1889 entry on the subject for the essay writing contest hosted by the Montreal Daily Witness (see Montgomery, 19 February 1890, in CJLMM, 1: 21).
96 This paragraph appears with only minor variations in Montgomery to MacMillan, 21 May 1909, in MDMM, 45–46, and in Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 229 (in which she referred to “New London Point”). New London Point is now Cape Tryon. In a journal entry dated 1917, Montgomery revealed that Four Winds Harbour, the setting of Anne’s House of Dreams, had been based loosely on the harbour at New London, less than 10 kilometres northwest of Cavendish. See Montgomery, 21 July 1917, in LMMCJ, 1: 306.
97 In her journal, in place of this reference to “fairyland,” Montgomery quotes two lines from “Ode to a Nightingale,” a poem by Keats (Montgomery, 3 June 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 229; Rubio and Waterston, in CJLMM, 2: 229n1).
98 Capital city of Prince Edward Island, 40 kilometres southeast of Cavendish.
99 Built in 1872, the home of Annie Macneill Campbell (1848–1924), older sister of Montgomery’s mother, and her husband, John Campbell (1833–1917), 20 kilometres from Cavendish, was a second home to Montgomery. It remains open today as “Anne of Green Gables Museum,” a popular tourist site operated by descendants of the Campbell family. This paragraph and the anecdote about Montgomery’s first trip to Charlottetown appear with only minor variations in Montgomery, 16 March 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 217. The phrase “or before the war” later in the paragraph does not appear in this 1909 journal entry.
100 A reference to the alternate world depicted in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Carroll.
101 These two sentences first appear with slight variations in Montgomery, 31 December 1898, in CJLMM, 1: 427–28. Some of the later details about the Campbell home, including the pantry and the “certain old screw” in the wall, appear with minor variations in Montgomery, 2 March 1901, in CJLMM, 2: 7–8.
102 In Anne of Green Gables, eleven-year-old Anne expresses a similar fear: “I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining th
at perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a jack-knife and nip us” (AGG, 29).
103 In her journal, it was Fred Macneill who witnessed her catch of “quite a large trout,” and “I felt that I went up ten percent in his estimation” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 268). See also Montgomery, “The Gay Days of Old,” 164.
104 Parts of this paragraph appear in slightly different form in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 268.
105 This recollection of Montgomery’s fear of walking through the woods alone appears in slightly different form in Montgomery, 14 December 1907, in CJLMM, 2: 178.
106 The second instalment of the 1917 version of “The Alpine Path” ends here, as does chapter 4 of the 1974 book version.
107 This phrase likely refers to “death entered the world,” a common paraphrase of Romans 5:12 (KJV) pertaining to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin. The phrase is used in “God’s Love to Fallen Man,” an essay by John Wesley (1703–1791), English theologian and one of the founders of the Methodist church.
108 This memory appears in slightly different form as part of a recollection of Montgomery’s childhood pets in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 263–65. A substantially different version of this anecdote appears in Montgomery, 2 January 1905, in CJLMM, 2: 120.
109 The Cavendish Presbyterian Church was torn down in 1899; it was rebuilt at its current location in 1901 and became the Cavendish United Church in 1925. Montgomery’s funeral was held at this church on 29 April 1942 (see “Island Writer”).
110 In her journal, Montgomery referred to Sacrament Sunday as “the annual Communion Sunday,” a reference to the congregation partaking in the sacrament of Holy Communion, which historically happened infrequently in the Presbyterian Church; Montgomery’s comments dovetail with suggestions that, at some churches, Sacrament Sunday could be more a carnival than a church service. See Montgomery, 24 July 1899, in CJLMM, 1: 439–40.
111 Hymn with lyrics by John Morrison (1746–1798), Scottish poet and minister.
112 I have corrected the original, which reads “were made learn our catechism.”
113 This recollection appears in slightly different form in Montgomery, 29 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 352. The quotation is from “The Race That Long in Darkness Pined,” an eighteenth-century hymn with words adapted from Isaiah 9:2 by John Morrison. The Spectator review of Anne of Green Gables, first published on 13 March 1909, appears as “[An Alternative Entertainment]” in Volume 3 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader (“Anne of Green Gables,” 65–66).
114 From “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” a poem by Wordsworth. Montgomery also used this quotation as the title of chapter 36 of Anne of Green Gables. This paragraph appears in earlier form in Montgomery, 29 September 1894, in CJLMM, 1: 241.
115 Also from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” by Wordsworth.
116 This paragraph first appears in slightly different form in Montgomery, 2 January 1905, in CJLMM, 2: 119, as part of a journal entry in which Montgomery reflected on the “starved childhood mine was emotionally” (Montgomery, 2 January 1905, in CJLMM, 2: 118). This paragraph appears with only minor variations in Emily of New Moon (see ENM, 7).
117 For alternative accounts of Montgomery’s childhood reading, see Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 258; Montgomery, “The Gay Days of Old,” 166–67.
118 See “Around the Table,” note 281, above. For an earlier mention of Godey’s Lady’s Book in her journals, see Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 258.
119 Likely an allusion to The History of the World (1614), by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618), English author and adventurer, a massive project that was continued after Raleigh’s death and reissued in multiple forms. The General History of the World, Being an Abridgment of Sir Walter Raleigh with a Continuation from the Best Historians to the Present Times, had appeared in four volumes in 1708. An unrelated volume entitled A General History of the World, Briefly Sketched, Upon Scriptural Principles, by Christian Gottlob Barth (1799–1862), German minister and author, and revised by D.P. Kidder, had appeared in 1847.
120 From the 1845 revised version of “To Helen,” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), American author.
121 Queen Victoria (1819–1901) reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to her death.
122 See “Around the Table,” note 212, above.
123 See “Around the Table,” note 9, above.
124 Rob Roy (1817), a historical novel by Scott set before the Jacobite rising of 1715; The Pickwick Papers (1837), by Dickens; Zanoni (1842), by Bulwer-Lytton. As I note in the afterword to this volume, Rob Roy and The Pickwick Papers had been among Montgomery’s answers to the question “What Are the Greatest Books in the English Language?” in a article published in 1916.
125 John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), American poet; John Milton (1608–1674), English poet. In a journal entry dated 1914, Montgomery listed Byron and Scott as her favourite poets (Montgomery, 15 April 1914, in LMMCJ, 1: 154). Montgomery selected excerpts from the work of some of these poets as epigraphs to some of her novels: Whittier for Anne of Avonlea and Chronicles of Avonlea, Byron for The Story Girl, Tennyson for Anne of the Island, and Longfellow for Rainbow Valley.
126 The source of this allusion is unknown. The phrase “the music of the immortals” also appears in Rainbow Valley (see RV, 26), and in Montgomery, “An Autobiographical Sketch,” 255. These comments on poets read in childhood also appear in Montgomery, 3 March 1909, in CJLMM, 2: 216, in which only “the music of the immortals” is within quotation marks.
127 The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), a religious allegory by Bunyan; New Tabernacle Sermons (1886), by Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902), American preacher. This recollection of her childhood reading of these texts also appears in Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 260.
128 The Young Disciple; or, A Memoir of Anzonetta R. Peters, signed Rev. John A. Clark, had been published in Philadelphia in 1837. Although Montgomery refers to it here as “a thin little volume,” it runs over three hundred pages.
129 See Clark, The Young Disciple, 294.
130 George Whitefield (1714–1770), an English preacher who helped found the evangelical Methodist movement. In her journals, in which this description appears with minor variations, Montgomery quotes a line from a hymn by Whitefield referring to the afterlife, “But what must it be to be there?” (Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 260). She destroyed her childhood journal when she was fourteen (see Montgomery, 21 September 1889, in CJLMM, 1: 3) but later regretted doing so.
131 The phrase “cabbages and kings” is from a poem appearing in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1872), by Carroll. Chapter 5 of the 1974 book version of “The Alpine Path” ends here.
132 This section and the “Evening Dreams” anecdote appeared in print first in Montgomery, “How I Began to Write,” 67–70. The section from the anecdote about “Evening Dreams” to the acceptance of her first short story also appeared with only minor variations in Montgomery, 21 March 1901, in CJLMM, 2: 10–15.
133 The Seasons (1730), by Thomson. Here and below, I have left intact Montgomery’s misspelling of his name as “Thompson.”
134 This sentence does not appear in past iterations of this anecdote; it refers presumably to a shortage of paper during the First World War.
135 Montgomery told this anecdote about her father’s lukewarm reaction to her first poem several times, including in a 1921 essay in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune entitled “Blank Verse? ‘Very Blank,’ Said Father,” included in Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader.
136 I have corrected the original, which reads “‘Lives’ to my friends.”
137 Alma Macneill, Montgomery’s third cousin. Montgomery’s recollection of Alma appears in earlier and more detailed form in Montgomery, 1 July 1894, in CJLMM, 1: 223–24.
138 An acrostic is
“a (usually short) poem (or other composition) in which the initial letters of the lines, taken in order, spell a word, phrase, or sentence” (OED).
139 Here and in her 1911 essay “How I Began to Write,” Montgomery does not identify the visitor in question – Izzie Robinson, Montgomery’s schoolteacher, who was not visiting but boarding with Montgomery and her grandparents – and omits any mention of the animosity between them. See Montgomery, 21 March 1901, in CJLMM, 2: 10–12; Montgomery, 7 January 1910, in CJLMM, 2: 270–71; Montgomery, “How I Began to Write,” 69; Montgomery, 15 July 1923, in LMMCJ, 3: 153–54.
140 Montgomery would publish the short story “Miss Marietta’s Jersey” in the July 1899 issue of this Boston periodical; she would then rework the story into part of Anne of Avonlea.
141 The Charlottetown Examiner, a Liberal weekly newspaper, had been founded in 1847 and would later merge with the Guardian. In her essay “How I Began to Write,” she anonymizes the name of the newspaper: “It was not called The Standard, but that name will do” (Montgomery, “How I Began to Write,” 70).
142 In her journal entry describing this anecdote, Montgomery identifies these friends as Jamie Simpson and Amanda Macneill. In a later entry, Montgomery names a “Janie” Simpson as one of the children of her neighbour William Simpson who were classmates of hers. See Montgomery, 27 January 1911, in CJLMM, 2: 355–56; Montgomery, 28 January 1912, in CJLMM, 2: 393.
143 In chapter 35 of Anne of the Island, twenty-one-year-old Anne reminisces about her own Story Club experience and likewise calls this story her “masterpiece” (AIs, 278).
144 Although several reviews of Montgomery’s books commented on the element of humour, the closest equivalent to this extract is a journal entry dated 1913 in which she stated that “my forte is in writing humor” (Montgomery, 27 September 1913, in LMMCJ, 1: 130).
145 Montgomery describes this cross-Canada train trip in a series of journal entries dated 9 to 20 August 1890, in CJLMM, 1: 35–41.
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