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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stumps and wept; ^D16 but she was speedily consoled for, after all, ^as she and Diana said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish amusement as play-houses and there were more fascinating sports to be found on about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.
It was Anne’s idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied Tennyson’s poem in school the previous winter. ^E16 They had analysed it and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair
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yielding reluctantly, for, although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. “Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot. But first you must be the brothers and the father. ^F16 We must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother’s will be just the thing, Diana.”
The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast.
“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Ruby Gillis nervously, watching
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“Now, she’s all ready,” said Jane. “We must kiss her quiet brows and, Diana, you say, ‘Sister, fare well forever,’ and Ruby, you say, ‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can. Now push the flat off. Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine ‘lay as though she smiled.’ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”
The flat was accordingly pushed off, Diana and Jane scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, they were to be as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to
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oars? Left behind at the landing.
Anne gave one ^gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance – just one.
“I was horribly frightened,” she told Mrs. Allan the next day,” and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge ^and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Allan, most earnestly, but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. ^G16 It was proper to pray but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you don’t think much about making
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headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Anne had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, ^white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a ^frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come but meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one.
The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate Anne. lily maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? ^ H16 Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Anne
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and furious, in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crape. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!
“What has happened, Anne?” asked Gilbert, taking up his oars.
“We were playing Elaine,” explained Anne frigidly, ^without even looking at her rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the flat barge—I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?”
Gilbert obligingly rowed to the landing and Anne, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly on the shore.
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the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Gilbert had called her “carrots” and had brought about her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, ^J16 was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Gilbert Blythe! She would never forgive him.
“No,” she said coldly, “I shall never be friends with you, Gilbert Blythe.“ And I don’t want to be!”
“All right!” Gilbert sprang into his skiff with an angry colour in his cheeks. “I’ll never ask you to be friends again, Anne Shirley. And I don’t care either!”
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Mr. and Mrs. Barry being away. Here Ruby Gillis had su succumbed to hiy hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Jane and Diana flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Marilla had gone to Carmody and Matthew was making hay in the back field.
“Oh, Anne,” gasped Diana, fairly falling on the former’s neck and weeping with relief and delight, “Oh, Anne – we thought – you were – drowned – and we felt like murderers – because we had made – you be – Elaine. And Ruby is in hysterics – oh, Anne, how did you escape?”
“I climbed up on one of the piles,” ex-
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allowed to row on the pond any more.”
Anne’s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Barry and Cuthbert households when the events of the afternoon became known.
“Will you ever have any sense, Anne?” groaned Marilla.
“Oh, yes, I think I will, Marilla,” returned Anne ^optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. “I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.”
“I don’t see how,” said Marilla.
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