Last modified: Fri Jul 4 22:58:10 JST 2008
The Selected Journals of L M Montgomery Vol 2 p.40, Jan 27, 1911 には
The idea of getting a child from an orphan asylum was suggested to me years ago as a possible germ for a story by the fact that Pierce Macneill got a little girl from one, and I jotted it down in my notebook." L. M. Montgomery wrote. In 1892, two P. E. I. couples, Pierce and Rachel Macneill, and John and Annie Clark wished to 10-12 year old adopt orphan boys from England to help on the farm. When their orphans arrived by train at Hunter River station on September 22nd, Clark and Macneill were surprised to find a five-year-old boy and his three-year-old sister! The Macneills telegraphed to Halifax, and discovered that there were no boys available in the shipment from England. Authorities decided to send the little girl to Pierce Macneill's so that she would be near her brother. The Macneills were informed that arrangements could be made to give the child to another couple if they did not wish to keep her; the Macneills did, and named her Ellen. Montgomery writes: "there is no resemblance of any kind between Anne and Ellen Macneill, who is one of the most hopelessly commonplace and uninteresting girls imaginable.
日記ではイングランドから送られたとある点が Looking for Anne ではノヴァスコシアから来たと説明されているので、食い違いはありますが。
以下の日記の "Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By mistake a girl is sent them." を、以前に新聞報道を切り抜いてノートに貼った物だと解釈した解説してあるのが「完全版 赤毛のアン」です。
The Selected Journals of L M Montgomery Vol 1 August 16, 1907 より抜粋
Two years ago in the spring of 1905 I was looking over this notebook
in search of some suitable idea for a short serial I wanted write for
a certain Sunday School paper and I found a faded entry, written ten
years before:--"Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy. By
mistake a girl is sent them." I thought this would do. I began to
block out chapters, devise incidents and "brood up" my heroine.
Somehow or other she seemed very real to me and took possession of me
to an unusal extent. Her personality appealed to me and I thought it
rather a shame to waste her on an ephemeral little serial. Then the
thought came, "Write a book about her. You have the central idea and
character. All you have to do is to spread it out over enough chapters
to amount to book."
The result of this was "Anne of Green Gables"