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 36

590 64

“Oh, Anne,” gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls’ dressing-room amid hearty cheers, “Oh, Anne, I’m so proud! Isn’t it splendid?”

And then the girls were around them and Anne was the centre of a laughing congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and during it all she managed to whisper to Jane,

“Oh, won’t Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news home right away.”

Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held in the big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.”

Matthew and Marilla were there


TEXT ANNOTATION

"64": This should be "664." Montgomery used a pencil to renumber many of the pages throughout the manuscript. She also used a pencil to cross out each of the Notes (see Notes pages) as she typed them into the final typescript. Perhaps she was renumbering these pages as she typed? And perhaps that multitasking would explain the rushed, cramped new page number here.

PHOTO ANNOTATION

cover of a small cream-coloured booklet with blue type announcing the Prince of Wales College Commencement

"Commencement": At her graduation from P.W.C., Montgomery read her winning essay on Shakespeare's "Portia" from the Merchant of Venice. That essay is reproduced in F.W.P. Bolger’s The Years Before Anne (pp. 140–42). The cover of the Commencement booklet is shown here (detail from Blue Scrapbook, p. 1; Imagining Anne, p. 13).
Confederation Centre of the Arts