Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 19

326.
“I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,” pleaded Anne.

“I’m not saying it isn’t. But you’re not going to begin gadding about to concerts and staying out all hours of the night.(begin strikethrough)”(end strikethrough) X10

“But it’s such a very special occasion,” mourned Anne, on the verge of tears. “Diana has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as if birthdays were common things, Marilla. (begin superscript)Y10(end superscript) Please, mayn’t I go?(begin strikethrough)”(end strikethrough), Marilla?”

“You heard what I said, Anne, didn’t you? Take off your boots now and go to bed. It’s past eight.”

“There’s just one thing more, Marilla,” said Anne,(begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)Z10(end superscript) “Mrs. Barry told

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note X10
Pretty doings for children. I’m surprised at Mrs. Barry’s letting Diana go.”

LMM Note Y10
Prissy Andrews is going to recite (begin strikethrough)”(end strikethrough)‘Curfew must not ring tonight.’ That is such a good moral piece, Marilla, I’m sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns. And oh, Marilla, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed he is; he’s going to give an address. That will be just about the same thing as a sermon.

LMM Note Z10
with the air of producing the last shot in her locker,


TEXT ANNOTATION

"It isn't as if birthdays were common things, Marilla.": Anne's comment is both hilarious and dear. It reveals her innocence and how starved she is for celebration. After all, birthdays are rather common, but special birthdays are not common at all.

One must wonder, since she seldom mentions birthdays at all in her journals, if and how Montgomery celebrated birthdays in her youth. Montgomery included in her scrapbooks some early calendars (for 1890, 1893, and 1896), marking "jolly rackets" with dots. Not one of them shows a dot by her birthday, November 30(begin superscript)th(end superscript).

PHOTO ANNOTATION

a gilt-lettered cover of a book with a prominent bell in the center

"Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight" [in Y10]: Rose Hardwick Thorpe's poem (1887) where the heroine, at great personal peril, clings to the clapper of the church bell so that curfew, the time when her lover was scheduled to be executed, cannot be sounded. The piece was published and sold as an (often illustrated) book in the late 19(begin superscript)th(end superscript) century.