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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of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh, Marilla, can I use the rosebud tea-set?”
“No, indeed! The rosebud tea-set! Well, what next? You know I never use that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown tea-set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves. It’s time it was being used anyhow—I believe it’s beginning to go. And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps.”
“I can just imagine sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea,” said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. “And asking Diana if she takes sugar.” I know she
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Diana to tea. As a result; [sic] Diana just after Marilla had driven off to Carmody, Diana came over, looking ex dressed in her second best dress, and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking, but now she knocked at primly at the front door. And when Anne, dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Diana had been taken to the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten
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going to give them to eat—so I won’t tell you what she said we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s a bright red colour. I love bright red drinks, don’t you?“ They taste twice as good as any other colour.”
“The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the autumn frost had spared the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could. Diana had much to tell Anne of what went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Pye and she hated it. Gertie squeaked
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But Anne didn’t want to hear about Gilbert Blythe. She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.
Anne looked on the second shelf of the room pantry, but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the top shelf. Anne put it on a tray and set it on the table. with a tumbler.
“Now, please help yourself, Diana,” she said politely. “I don’t believe I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I wanted any, after all those apples.”
“Diana poured herself out a tumblerful, and sipped looked at its bright bright red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.
“That’s awfully nice raspberry
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nicer than Mrs. Lynde’s,” said Anne loyally. “Marilla is a famous cook. She is trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Diana, it is uphill work. There’s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in. ^Z8 Flour is so essential to cakes, you know. Marilla was very cross and I don’t wonder. I’m a great trial to her. ^A9 Why, Diana what is the matter?
Diana had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her hands to her head.
“I’m – I’m awful sick,” she said, a little thickly. “I – I – must go right home.”
“Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your tea,” cried Anne in distress. B9
“I must go home,” repeated Diana,
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in her eyes, got Diana’s hat and went with her as far as the Barry yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she ^C9 got tea ready for Matthew and Jerry, with all the zest gone out of the performance.
The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn to dusk, Anne did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon Marilla sent her down to Mrs. Lynde’s on an errand. In a very short space of time Anne came flying back up the lane, with tears rolling down her cheeks.D9
“Whatever has gone wrong now, Anne?” queried Marilla in doubt and dismay. “I do hope you haven’t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Lynde again.”
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Anne sat up, tragedy personified.
“Mrs. Lynde was up to see Mrs. Barry to-day and Mrs. Barry was in an awful state,” she wailed. “She says that I set Diana drunk Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition.
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of the stricter sort, dis Mrs. Barry among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Marilla recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Anne.
She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was twitching in spite of herself.
“Anne, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Diana currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you know the difference yourself?”
“I never tasted it,” said Anne. “I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so – so – hospitable. Diana got awfully sick and had to go home.^F9 Mrs. Barry is so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose.”
“I should think she would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to
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She’d listen Likely she’d listen to you quicker than to me.”
“Well, I will,” said Marilla, reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course. “Don’t cry any more, Anne. It will be all right.”
Marilla had changed her mind about its being all right by the time she got back Anne from Orchard Slope. Anne was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door to meet her.
“Oh, Marilla, I know by your face that it’s been no use,” she said ^sorrowfully “Mrs. Barry won’t forgive me?”
“Mrs. Barry, indeed!” snapped Marilla. “Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw she’s the worst. I told her it was all a mistake but she and you weren’t to blame, but she just simply didn’t believe me. And she rubbed it well
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Her face hardened. Mrs. Barry was a lady woman of strong prejudices and dislikes and her anger was of the cold sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Anne had made Diana drunk out of sheer malice,^prepense, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her d little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.
“What do you want?” she said stiffly.
Anne clasped her hands.
“Oh, Mrs. Barry, please forgive me. I did not mean to make – to – intoxicate Diana. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little ^orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only
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with her father,” said Mrs. Barry, going in and shutting the door. Anne went back to Green Gables calm with despair.
“My last hope is gone,” she told Marilla. “I went up and saw Mrs. Barry myself and she treated me very insultingly. Marilla, I do not think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good because, Marilla, I do not believe that God himself can do very much with such an obstinate woman as Mrs. Barry.”
“Anne, you shouldn’t say such things,” rebuked Marilla, striving to overcome that ^unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find growing upon