Today's cover is from a Grosset and Dunlap edition from 1936, and is a great example of how the fashions of the time were often taken more into consideration than anything actually in the book. I mean, you can't even try to pretend that look anything like 1880s style, or even the styles of 1909, when the book was written. And I suppose you could generously consider her hair to be auburn there, which is at least sort of close to red, but really. You can at least get that right. As it is, this looks a lot more like a Nancy Drew cover than Anne Shirley. Though, come to think of it, Nancy was also published by Grosset and Dunlap in the 1930s. It's quite possible it's the same cover artist, or at least a house style the artists were supposed to conform to.1:38 - "All Sorts and Conditions of Men... and Women." The title of Chapter 5 is a reference to a line from The Book of Common Prayer, which (for those of us not in the Anglican Church) was a book that laid out prayers and services for specific occasions, like morning prayers, evening prayers, funerals, baptisms, etc. This line is from, appropriately enough, the "Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of Men," which basically is a sort of all-purpose prayer for any in need of help.
2:47 - "Bliss is it on such a day to be alive." Anne of course properly attributes the source of her altered quotation to William Wordsworth. The poem specifically is the succinctly titled "The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement," and the actual line is "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!" Man, the French Revolution sounds amazing! Really though, I'll stick with the scent of fir.
8:22 - The "vale of tears" that Eliza insists on seeing the world as is an old Christian phrase referring to the idea that the physical world is just a place full of sorrow and sadness that we leave behind when we go to heaven.
25:04 - "a fighting animal." This was a surprisingly tricky one to find out. The most famous quote defining man as a fighting animal is from George Santayana, where he says "Man is a fighting animal, his thoughts are his banners, and it is a failure of nerve in him if they are only thoughts." However, he said this in his book Dialogues in Limbo which was published in 1925, well after Anne of Avonlea. Most other references, like Gilbert here, leave the source as "someone." Eventually though, through an 1880 quoting from "I believe the late Lord Palmerston." Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was Prime Minister of the UK under Queen Victoria from 1855-1858 and from 1859 until his death in 1865. The quote is from a January 8, 1862 letter to Richard Cobden, a politician whose anti-war views often put him at odds with Palmerston. The full quote reads:
It would be very delightful if your Utopia could be realized, and if the nations of the earth would think of nothing but peace and commerce, and would give up quarrelling [sic] and fighting altogether. But unfortunately man is a fighting and quarrelling animal; and that this is human nature is proved by the fact that republics, where the masses govern, are far more quarrelsome, and more addicted to fighting, than monarchies, which are governed by comparatively few persons. [Emphasis added]Ah, that explains it! No one ever really makes reference to the "and quarreling" bit, just the fighting. It would take Gilbert's point a little less dramatic if he said he wanted to quarrel with disease and pain and ignorance.
If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!
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