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 5

80

in the High School, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. Mr. Thomas A husband was enough of responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said they were a pair of babies and as poor as por church mice. They went to live in a weeny-teeny (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)little yellow(end superscript) house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that house but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard, Yes, and and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. I was Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs Thomas said I was the


PHOTO ANNOTATION

black and white photo of a small house with a covered front step and small chimney sticking up from the middle

"a weeny-teeny little yellow house": Montgomery was born in just such a house, which she described as yellowish brown. Perhaps she had her own experience in mind as she drafted this passage. Montgomery's photo of her own birthplace, here, includes a glimpse of the window of the room where she was born (far upper right).
Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph, L.M. Montgomery Collection

TEXT ANNOTATION

"she gave up teaching, of course.": Married women were not allowed to teach in Anne's (and Montgomery's) day.