Verso Pages
These back-of-page seemingly random, out-of-order scrap pieces are drafts of Montgomery’s early short stories and poems. Some were already published when she drafted Anne in 1905 and 1906, and others were probably typed up and kept elsewhere. Some verso scrap sheets show early experiments: “A Baking of Gingersnaps” (1895) was her first published short story; she tests the pen names Maud Cavendish and Maud Eglinton. After Chapter 15, she started writing Anne front-to-back. Why did she switch from scrap pages to fresh sheets?
View an index of the verso contents here, or explore the full collection of Verso pages below:
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Had Mr. Malcolm MacPherson dropped from the skies?
We afterwards discovered that he had come across lots and around the house from the back, but just then his sudden advent was almost uncanny. I ran downstairs and opened the door. On the step stood a man about six feet two in height, and proportionately broad and sinewy. He had splendid shoulders, a great crop of curly black hair, big, twinkling blue eyes, and a tremendous crinkly black beard that fell over his breast in shining waves. In brief, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was what one would call instinctively, if somewhat tritely, “a mag-
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settled herself in the old carved chair, and folded her hands. Peggy and I sat down on the stairs to await his coming in a crisping suspense. Aunt Olivia’s kitten, a fat, bewiskered creature, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, shared our vigil and purred in maddening peace of mind.
We could see the garden path and gate through the hall window, and therefore supposed we should have full warning of the approach of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson. It was no wonder, therefore, that we positively jumped when a thunderous knock crashed against the front door and re-echoed through the house.
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black silk, in which she looked un unnaturally fine. Her soft muslin became her much better, but we could not induce her to wear it. Anything more prim and bandboxy than Aunt Olivia when her toilet was finished it has never been my lot to see. Peggy and I watched her as she went downstairs, her skirt held stiffly up all around her that it might not brush the floor.
“‘Mr. Malcolm MacPherson’ will be inspired with such awe that he will only be able to sit back and gaze at her,” whispered Peggy. “I wish he would come and have it over. This is getting on my nerves.”
Aunt Olivia went into the parlor,
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remain away, thinking that the lovers would prefer their first meeting to be unwitnessed, but Aunt Olivia insisted on our being present. She was plainly nervous; the abstract was becoming concrete. Her little house was in spotless, speckless order from top to bottom. Aunt Olivia had herself scrubbed the garret garret floor and swept the cellar steps that very morning with as much painstaking care as if she expected that Mr. Malcolm MacPherson would hasten to inspect each at once and she must stand or fall by his opinion of them.
Peggy and I helped her to dress. She insisted on wearing her best
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born old maid; looking at her, and taking all her primness and little set ways into consideration, it was quite impossible to picture her as the wife of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson, or anybody else.
We soon discovered that, to Aunt Olivia, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson represented a merely abstract parop proposition—the man who was to confer on her the long-withheld dignity of matronhood. Her romance began and ended there, although she was quite unconscious of this herself, and believed that she was deeply in love with him.
“What will be the result, Mary, when he arrives in the flesh and she is compelled to deal with ‘Mr.
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if he tracks some mud into her house once in a while.”
Thus it was all arranged, and, before we realized it at all, Aunt Olivia was mid-deep in marriage preparations, in all of which Peggy and I were quite indispensable. She consulted us in regard to everything, and we almost lived at her place in those days preceding the arrival of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson.
Aunt Olivia plainly felt very happy and important. She had always wished to be married; she was not in the least strong-minded and her old-maidenhood had always been a sore point with her. I think she looked up upon it as somewhat of a disgrace. And yet she was a
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but we felt amused over it also. The recollection of her “Mr. Malcolm MacPherson” was too much for us every time we thought of it.
Father pooh-poohed incredulously at first, and, when we had convinced him, guffawed with laughter. Aunt Olivia need not have dreaded any more opposition from her cruel family.
” Nicholson wa “MacPherson was a good fellow enough, but horribly poor,” said father. “I hear he has done very well out west, and if he and Olivia have a notion to marry of each other they are welcome to marry as far as I am concerned. Tell Olivia she mustn’t take a spasm
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he won’t be very cross—were opposed to his attentions and were very cool to him. I think that was why he never said anything to me about getting married then. And after a time he went away, as I have said, and I never heard anything of from him directly for many a year. Of course, his sister sometimes gave me news of him. But last June I had a letter from him. He said he was coming home to settle down for good on the old Island, and he asked me if I would marry him. I wrote back and said I would. Perhaps I ought to have consulted your father, but I was afraid he would think I ought to refuse Mr. Malcolm Mac-
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I do hope he won’t think me foolish. He did not think Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was a fit person for me to marry once. But that was long ago, when Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was very poor. He is in very comfortable circumstances now.”
“Tell us about it, Aunt Olivia,” said Peggy. She did not look at me, which was my salvation. Had I caught Peggy’s eye when Aunt Olivia said “Mr. Malcolm MacPherson” in that tone I must have laughed, willy-nilly.
“When I was a girl the MacPhersons used to live across the road from here. Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was my beau then.“ But my family—and your father especially—dear me, I do hope
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And – tell your father, won’t you? —I—I—don’t like to tell him—Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and I are going to be married.”
“Married!” gasped Peggy. And, “married!” I echoed stupidly.
Aunt Aunt Olivia bridled a little.
“There is nothing unsuitable in that, is there?” she asked, a li rather crisply.
“Oh, no, no,” I hastened to assure her, giving Peggy a surreptitious kick to divert her thoughts from laughter. “Only you must realize, Aunt Olivia, that this is a very great surprise to us.”
“I thought it would be so,” said Aunt Olivia complacently. “But your father will know—he will remember.
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chair that had appertained to her great-grandmother. She folded her hands in her lap, and looked at us with shy appeal in her blue-gray eyes. Plainly she found it hard to tell us her secret, yet all the time there was an air of pride and exultation about her; somewhat, also, of a new dignity. Aunt Olivia could never be self-assertive, but if it had been possible that would have been her time for it.
“Have you ever heard me speak of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson?” asked Aunt Olivia.
We had never heard her, or anybody else, speak of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson:, but volumes of explanation could not
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the supper. table Ma picked up the baby and sat down at the head of the table. Little Teddy laughed and pinched her face—Ma’s face! Ma looked very grim, but she fed him his supper as skilfully as if it had not been thirty years since she had done such a thing. But then, the woman who has once learned the mother knack never forgets it.
After tea Ma despatched Pa over to William Alexander’s to borrow a high chair. When Pa returned in the twilight, the baby was fenced in on the sofa again, and Ma was stepping briskly about
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That was pretty soon after Prissy’s father had died. She and Emmeline were living alone together. Emmeline was thirty, ten years older than Prissy; and if ever there were two sisters totally different from each other in every way, those two were Emmeline and Prissy Strong.
Emmeline took after her father; she was big and dark and homely; and she was the most domineering creature that ever stepped on shoe leather. She simply ruled poor Prissy with a rod of iron.
Prissy herself was a pretty girl—at least most people thought so. I can’t honestly say I ever admired her style much myself. I like some-
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thing with more vim and snap to it. Prissy was slim and pink, with soft, appealing blue eyes, and pale gold hair all clinging in baby rings around her face. She was just as meek and timid as she looked and there wasn’t a bit of harm in her. I always liked Prissy, even if I didn’t admire her lo looks as much as some people did.
Anyway, it was plain her style suited Stephen Clark. He began to drive her, and there wasn’t a speck of doubt that Prissy liked him. Then Emmeline just put a stopper on the affair. It was pure cantankerousness in her. Stephen was a good match and nothing could
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so rebuked remembered it for a spell.
All at once I knew she must have discovered about Stephen and Prissy, for Prissy stopped going to prayer meeting.
I felt real worried about it, someway, and although Thomas said for goodness’ sake not to go poking my fingers into other people’s pies, I felt as if I ought to do something. Stephen Clark was a good man and Prissy would have a beautiful home; and those two little boys of Althea’s needed a mother if ever boys did. Besides, I knew quite well that Prissy, in her secret soul, was hankering to be married. So was Emmeline, too—but nobody wanted