In the following journal entry, Maud defends her depiction of Anne and also explains where the inspiration for some of the book’s other plot-lines came from.
“The Spectator, in reviewing Green Gables—very favorably, I might say—said that possibly Anne’s precocity was slightly overdrawn in the statement that a child of eleven would appreciate the dramatic effect of the lines,
‘Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian’s evil day.’
But I was only nine years old when those lines thrilled my very soul as I recited them in Sunday School. All through the following sermon I kept repeating them to myself. To this day they give me a mysterious pleasure.
I remember that Maggie Abbott and I swore eternal friendship as Anne and Diana did. Only we did not do it in a garden but standing on a high loft beam in Uncle John Montgomery’s barn at Malpeque. Amanda and I also once wrote out two “Notes of Promise”, vowing everlasting faith, had them witnessed by two of the schoolgirls, and finished them up with a red seal. I have mine yet somewhere. I think I was true to my vow. But if Amanda thinks she was, her ideal of friendship must be very different from mine…
Anne’s idea that diamonds looked like amethysts was once mine. I did not know there were such stones as amethysts but I had read of diamonds. I had never seen one nor heard one described, and I pictured to myself a beautiful stone of living purple. When Uncle Chester brought Aunt Hattie to see us after their marriage I saw the little diamond in her ring and I was much disappointed. “It wasn’t my idea of a diamond”—well, many things in life and in the world have not been like my idea of them! I love diamonds now—I love their pure, cold, dewlike sheen and glitter. But once they were a bitter disillusion to me.”
To read more of Maud’s recollections of the writing of her many novels, as well as her personal life, take a look at The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vols. I & II, or click here.
Photo: (Left) L.M. Montgomery in 1884. (Right) Anne Shirley, played by Megan Follows.
