LMM Notes
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Chapter 26
402 476
her Aunt Josephine wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories. So we copied out four of our very best + sent them. She Miss Josephine Barry wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life. That kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)and almost everyone died.(end superscript) But I’m glad Miss [Barry] liked them. It shows me our club is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Allan says that ought to be our object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but I forget forget so often when I’m having fun. I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Allan when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it, Marilla?”
PHOTO ANNOTATION
"Aunt Josephine": Charlottetown had several grand homes where Miss Barry could have lived. Montgomery makes a valuable point, later in the novel especially, that Miss Barry’s wealth does not bring her the comfort that Anne’s spirit does. Here, "Westbourne," Charlottetown home of Benjamin Heartz, Esq., circa 1898, certainly was the kind of house a Miss Barry would live in.
Public Archives and Records Office of Prince Edward Island, Acc2806/9
TEXT ANNOTATION
"I'm glad Miss [Barry] liked them": Montgomery reflected on her own childhood story club in her 1917 autobiography. She wrote a few tales that would have appealed to Miss Barry. "A certain lugubrious yarn, 'My Graves,' was my masterpiece. It was a long tale of the peregrinations of a Methodist minister's wife, who buried a child in every circuit to which she was sent. The oldest was buried in Newfoundland, the last in Vancouver, and all Canada between was dotted with those graves. I wrote the story in the first person, described the children, pictured out their death beds, and detailed their tombstones and epitaphs" (Alpine Path, p. 57).