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 24

260 434
Diana is to sing a solo. I’m in two dialogues (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)N14(end superscript) The boys are going to have a dialogue, too. And I’m to have two recitations, Marilla. I just tremble when I think of it, And we’re but it’s a nice thrilly kind of tremble. And we’re to have a tableau at the last—Faith, Hope and Charity. Diana and Ruby and I are to be in it, all draped in white with flowing hair. I’m to be Hope, with my hands clasped—so—and my eyes uplifted. (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)O14(end superscript) Josie Pye is sulky because she didn’t get the part she wanted in the dialogue. She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy queens must be slender. Jane Andrews is to be the queen and I am to be one of her maids of honour. (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)P14(end superscript) I’m to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Ruby Gillis is going to lend me her slippers because I haven’t

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note N14
The Society for the Suppression of Gossip and The Fairy Queen.

LMM Note O14
I'm going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don't be alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to groan (begin strikethrough)in one(end strikethrough) heartrendingly in one of them and it's really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Marilla.

LMM Note P14
Josie says she thinks a red-haired fairy is just as ridiculous as a fat one but I do not (begin strikethrough)mind(end strikethrough) let myself mind what Josie says.



TEXT ANNOTATION

"The Society for the Suppression of Gossip and The Fairy Queen" [in N14]: These were popular recitation pieces, as Montgomery noted in her diary entry for January 27, 1911, when she was identifying what was based in fact and what was imaginary in her first three books, but Anne in particular. Complete Journals, The P.E.I. Years Volume 2, p. 355.

PHOTO ANNOTATION

the schoolchildren of Avonlea, with fake beards and dour expressions, emerging from a curtained area for their tablea

"a tableau": Short for tableau vivant, or "living picture," tableau was a popular entertainment and art form, where (usually) costumed participants are arranged in a meaningful scene or pose and then revealed to an audience. The tableau Miss Stacy has chosen, "Faith, Hope, and Charity" is from the Bible, I Corinthians, 13:13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

In Anne of Green Gables–The Musical(begin superscript)TM(end superscript), the historic scene depicted in a tableau is the meeting of the “Fathers of Confederation,” in 1864 in Charlottetown, when Canada as a nation was born. In the play, Mrs. Lynde hilariously (wrongly) guesses that the tableau is “The Last Supper.”
Confederation Centre of the Arts, photo by Louise Vessey