It was a time when her talents as a writer were first being recognized. In one week in 1896, her short stories and poems were accepted in three different publications: ā$5 + $5 + $12!ā she wrote. āI really feel quite bloated by so much wealth.ā
Her affection for Dalhousie comes through on the pages of her scrapbooks, in the snips of black-and-gold ribbon, newspaper clippings, convocation programs and fin-de-siecle fashion illustrations of women wearing satin gowns with glorious puffed sleeves.
Montgomery scholar Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, a Dal alum herself (MA 1974), writes about the scrapbooks and the profound influence they have on L.M. Montgomeryās fiction, in Imagining Anne (Penguin Canada). Like Budge Wilsonās Before Green Gables, the beautiful book has been released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables.
āShe wrote about pilipiliĀž» in her journals and itās there in her scrapbooks,ā says Ms. EpperlyāBetsy to her friends. āShe looks back on it so fondly. And, of course, she fleshes out the experience in Anne of the Island, calling Dalhousie āRedmond College.ā The year she spends at pilipiliĀž» turns into a full-fledged BA for Anne.ā
While at pilipiliĀž» College, L.M. Montgomery boarded at the Halifax Ladies College, an imposing mansion that used to stand on the south-end of Barrington Street. At one point, after a bout of measles, she was moved out of the infirmary to a tiny white room on a floor called āthird-and-a-half,ā which included only five rooms. Even after she recuperated, she asked to remain.
During the writing of Before Green Gables, Mrs. Wilson and Ms. Epperly discussed the authorās stay at the Halifax Ladies College. And it struck Mrs. Wilson: she believes she stayed in the same room when she was a student at the school half a century later.
āI actually feel shivery thinking of it,ā says Mrs. Wilson, whose parents transferred her to the school because she was constantly sick while attending what was then LeMarchant Street School. (Her Grade 2 class there had 66 children compared to the six students at the ladies college.) āThe room was very, very white: a white bedspread, white chair, white lamp. If Montgomery was in that room and didnāt want to leave it, she was happy there. I was also so fond of that room. It is still very vivid to me today.ā
Mrs. Wilson surmises that when L.M. Montgomery was imagining Anneās room in Green Gables, she was remembering the little room at the Ladies College. Described at the beginning of the 1908 novel as āpainfully bareā and āof a rigidity not to be described in words,ā Anne comes to regard the room as a peaceful sanctuary, where she would sit and daydream at the open window.
āI feel in my bones that it was the same room,ā says Mrs. Wilson.
Ms. Epperly finds the connection spooky. āI canāt say definitively because I never saw that room. But I think authors have intuition about these things. And I would trust Budgeās instincts on that.ā