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 21

344 398

flavouring did you use?”

“Vanilla,” said Anne, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting the cake. “Only vanilla.”
B13
“Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you used.”

Anne fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labelled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”

Marilla took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

“Mercy on us, Anne, you’ve flavoured that cake with anodyne liniment. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault.—I should have warned you—but for

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note B13
Oh, Marilla, it must have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak–"

"Baking powder fiddlesticks!


TEXT ANNOTATION

"anodyne liniment": Montgomery used Mrs. Estey's accident with the liniment, according to Cicely Devereaux, in three short stories before she wrote Anne: "A New-Fangled Flavoring" (1898), "Patty's Mistake" (1902), and "The Cake that Prissy Made" (1903) (see Broadview, Appendix A, pp. 344–364).

PHOTO ANNOTATION

newspaper ad with large type and small, full of claims about the benefits of liniment

"anodyne liniment": A common name for any number of herbal or medicinal liquids, often used topically or ingested to treat pain, coughs or other ailments. It might contain anything from camphor to violet, oils to extracts, opium to tobacco, depending on the brand and the manufacturer. Liniment was advertised as treating a wide array of aches and pains, given the lack of regulations. Pictured here, an ad for John's Anodyne liniment from the Charlottetown Guardian, April 1892. It claims to be "Originated by an Old Family Physician": "From Rheumatism, Sciatica, Neuralgia, Nervous Headache, Diphtheria, Coughs, Catarrh, Bronchitis, Asthma, Cholera-Morbus, Diarrhœa, Lameness, Soreness in Body or Limbs, Stiff Joints or Strains, will find in this old Anodyne relief and speedy cure."
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