THE SECRET GARDEN Frances Hodgson Burnett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication, including its text and plates, may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

The Secret Garden

Copyright © Robin Books 2019

ISBN-10: 81-8132-037-9 ISBN-13: 978-81-8132-037-7 Published by: ROBIN BOOKS New Delhi Distributed by: ADARSH ENTERPRISES 4393/4, Tulsidas Street, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002 Ph: 011-23246131, 23246132 email: [email protected] Visit us at: www.adarshbooks.com Graphics by: Ramanuj – 9015539404

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B

orn in Cheetham, Manchester, England, on November 24,1849, Frances Hodgson Burnett developed her love for reading at a very young age. After her father’s death in 1852, she grew up under the care of her grandmother while her mother took charge of the family business. With an active imagination, Burnett wrote stories and enjoyed narrating them to her mother, cousins, and friends. She was educated at the Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen until 1863, when her mother, Eliza Hodgson, was compelled to sell the business and move. Burnett had to discontinue her education. In 1865, Burnett migrated with her family to Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Here she met Swan Burnett, who was left crippled after an injury in childhood. She introduced to him books and authors she had read. Three years later, in 1868, Burnett’s first story was published in Godey’s Lady’s Book. She had begun writing for a livelihood and wrote non-stop. Her stories were being published on a regular basis in Peterson’s Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Scribner’s Monthly. The next year, she supported her family financially and they moved into a new home. In 1872, Burnett visited England. In September of the following year, she married Swan and in September 1874, her first child was born. That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, her first full-length novel, was published in 1877. She started writing children’s fiction after meeting Louisa May Alcott and Mary Mapes Dodge—the editor of St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine. Many of her short works were published in this magazine. She also wrote and published adult fiction, which included Louisiana (1880), A Fair Barbarian (1881), and Through One

iv

Administration (1883). Her play Esmerelda (1881) was nineteenth century’s longest running play on Broadway. Little Lord Fauntleroy was Burnett’s first children’s novel. From November 1885 to October 1886, it was serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine, and was published in book form in 1886. Little Lord Fauntleroy established Burnett’s reputation as a writer. It was a bestseller and was translated into numerous languages. Burnett also wrote a play titled The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy which was staged on Broadway and was as successful as the book. In the winter of 1887, she wrote the Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax in Florence, and published Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s in the United States. A Little Princess, an expanded version of Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, was published in book form in September 1905. A huge success, it is still considered among children’s all- time favourite novels. Burnett lost her elder son in December 1890, after which she went into depression. In 1893, Burnett published The One I Knew Best of All, an autobiography dedicated to his elder son. In 1896, she published A Lady of Quality. The first in a series of successful adult historical novels, it was that year’s second highest bestselling book in the United States. It was followed by In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim in 1899 and The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhust in 1901. In 1906, Burnett published Queen Silver-Bell and RackettyPacketty House, and in the following year The Shuttle was published. Burnett returned to the United States in 1907, and became the editor of Children’s Magazine. She published The Secret Garden in 1911, the inspiration for which she had got from the walled gardens in Maytham Hall. The Secret Garden narrates the story of Mary Lennox, a contrary, aggressive, and unloved ten-year-old who goes to live with her uncle after her parents’ death. A classic of children’s literature, it became one of her most popular novels. Burnett’s other noteworthy works include The Lost Prince (1915), The White People (1917), The Head of the House of Coombe (1922) and its sequel, Robin (1922). Burnett breathed her last on October 29, 1924 and was buried in Roslyn Cemetery. She continues to remain popular for her children’s novels.

INTRODUCTION

T

he Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) is a golden classic written in 1911. Frances was a British-born novelist and playwrighat, based in America. Her famous works include Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885-86), Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). This book, a classic in English children’s literature, has magical elements and deeper hidden messages. The main theme revolves around the importance of parenting and the different ramifications of the lack of parents’ attention and care. The main characters in the book such as Mary, Mr. Craven, and Colin undergo positive personality alterations as the story keeps on. It depicts the human transformation under the influence of love, nurture, and positivity. Therefore, the magic is all around them, the magic that changes them for good. The book also inspects the relationships between the physical healths of a person with their mindset; it conveys that the will to get better is, in fact, the most important and effective trick in the bag. The psychological outlook of the characters in the book change with the situations, and their physical states change accordingly. Another sub-theme involves the connection of well-being with the surroundings. When Mary is shifted from India to her uncle’s home in England, plenty of adventures and positive modifications await her. The main theme, however, remains the importance of human companionship. There are related elements of death. The deaths of Mary’s parents and that of Mrs. Craven bind the story together and

vi

further. Mr. Craven’s miserable state after his wife’s death and his neglect towards their son is one example of the result of loss of a companion. On the other hand, the transformation with the coming of Mary and the revival of his wife’s garden is the result of newfound companionships. With the magical elements of the garden itself, these human emotions and togetherness also contribute to the magic of the novel. The book was later adapted in various movies and television series, as well as, in theatre. The most famous being the 1993 film, titled The Secret Garden directed by Agnieszka Holland.

NOTES

H

ereafter, are some of the important quotations explained from the novel The Secret Garden: “The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.” This section raises two of the significant themes of the novel: the fantasy nature of the secret garden, and the restriction among rest and alertness. In the event that the patio nursery is a “sort of fairy place,” it isn’t one that causes otherworldly rest, however supernatural attentiveness. The secret garden is unequivocally lined up with Mistress Mary. Mary is ten years of age, and the garden has been shut for a long time. Up to the minute that she steps foot into the garden, Mary also is shut off—she has cherished nobody, and has been totally disliked. Since it has been for such a long time since anybody has tended the greenery enclosure, it is difficult to decide if its blossoms are in any condition. Essentially, Mary has had nobody to think about her since her introduction to the world, and has turned out to be waxen (of dead shading) and standoffish subsequently. Since Mary and the garden are so intently emblematically related,

viii

the reader understands that the revival of the garden may foretell and impact Mary’s own revival. “Well, it was rather funny to say [that Dickon was an angel],” Mary admitted frankly, “because his nose does turn up and he has a big mouth and his clothes have patches all over them and he talks broad Yorkshire, but—but if an angel did come to Yorkshire and lived on the moor—if there was a Yorkshire angel—I believe he’d understand the green things and know how to make them grow and he would know how to talk to the wild creatures as Dickon does and they’d know he was friends for sure.” Dickon Sowerby is, in some sense, the soul of Missel Moor. His eyes are depicted as resembling “bits of moorland sky,” and he scents of “heather and grass and leaves...as on the off chance that he were made of them.” When the pursuer first experiences him, he is sitting underneath a tree enchanting creatures with the music of his wooden pipe. This promptly summons the picture of panpipes, and serves to relate Dickon with the god Pan (the Greek divine force of Nature, Laughter, Passion, and Music). He thusly is displayed as having an uncannily cosy association with the wilderness and with wild things. He can “murmur blossoms out of the earth,” and motivates Mary’s moment and unquestioning adoration. The logical inconsistency in wording spoken to by the expression “Yorkshire angel” emerges out of the resistance among paradise and earth. Here, obviously Yorkshire speaks to earth, and is proven by Dickon’s normal appearance. He raises above such class refinements, be that as it may, in light of the fact that he is in some sense a great animal. The topic of how Dickon can be both totally of the earth and completely of the sky (even his eyes resemble bits of sky) is effectively settled when the pursuer reviews that, in the realm of The Secret Garden, the universe of nature is itself divine. In this way, Dickon can be, even in the Christian economy of the novel, the lord of nature. “One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at



ix

the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so...And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowned everything it possibly could into that one place.” The storyteller’s all-encompassing contemplation on the inclination that one will live everlastingly uncovers that Hodgson Burnett is drawing vigorously upon crafted by Immanuel Kant (a German thinker of the Enlightenment) in setting up the inclination’s source. The storyteller says that one may have this feeling one will live everlastingly when one takes a gander at a dusk; when one stands in a profound wood; when gazes toward the monstrous night sky. Unsurprisingly, these precedents are drawn from nature. Kant, in his book Critique of Judgment, said that one will frequently, when gone up against with a genuinely massive normal scene (his models incorporate the sea and a mountain) have an inclination he called “sublime.” This heavenly inclination happens in light of the fact that the tremendousness of the scene suggests the hand of God. In with respect to it, we understand that there is a power and knowledge endlessly bigger than our very own behind the organization of the world. In this manner, the experience of nature furnishes Burnett’s youngsters with an acknowledgment that they will live always in light of the fact that it guarantees them of the nearness of God: in the event that the Christian God exists, at that point unceasing life exists. “Mrs. Sowerby answered. “I never knowed [magic] by that name but what does the name matter? ...The same thing as set the

x

seeds swelling and the sun shining made thee a well lad and it’s the Good Thing. It isn’t like us poor fools as think it matters if us is called out of our names. Th’ Big Good Thing doesn’t stop to worry... It goes on making worlds by the million—worlds like us. Never thee stop believing in the Big Good Thing and knowing the world’s full of it...The Magic listened when tha sung the Doxology. It would have listened to anything tha’d sung. It was the joy that mattered.” While the youngsters’ singing of the Hymn adds to the Christian relationship of enchantment, Mrs. Sowerby’s discussion on the idea of enchantment propose that Hodgson Burnett wants it to be non-denominational. Susan says that it doesn’t make a difference what name you call this power—it is the existence rule, which influences the blooms to develop, and makes Colin well, and is in charge of every new life (the world that every individual is.) It is a maker, or some likeness thereof, and all it needs is our happiness. The enchantment is displayed here as being amazingly rich, and is subsequently connected with the maternal (yet virginal) individual of Mrs. Sowerby and, by method for the secret garden, with the late Mistress Craven. On the other hand, the stale universe of the home is connected with Master Craven (and, by augmentation, with his high society manliness). It is dependent upon the individual pursuer to choose, obviously, regardless of whether the possibility of enchantment can really be disassociated from its intensely Christian Researcher underpinnings. “One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.



xi

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.” This entry gives a kind of dynamic of one of the book’s focal subjects: the possibility that all disease is psycho-substantial (brought about by the mind), and subsequently one need possibly think positive considerations in the event that one is to be well. This thought originates from Christian Science, which holds that negative considerations are the human blunder to be found at the foundation of all infection. One must power out appalling considerations with pleasing ones, for “two things can’t be in one spot.” This idea is in charge of both Colin and Mary’s wondrous transforms. When they are thinking about the greenery enclosure and nature, of Dickon and of their own blooming fellowship, they can never again fret about their very own oppositeness or with dread of turning into a hunchback and biting the dust an early demise. The fairly foolish epigraph that finishes up the section looks at both the positive considerations and the changed Colin and Mary with a rose, which obviously alludes back to the resurrection and development of the secret garden.

CONTENTS About The Author Introduction Notes

iii v vii



1. There is no One left

1



2. Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

6



3. Across the Moor



4. Martha 17



5. The Cry in the Corridor 31



6. “There Was Someone Srying—There Was!”

37



7. The Key to the Garden

43



8. The Robin who Showed the Way

49



9. The Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived in

56

13

10. Dickon

65

11. The Nest of the Missel Thrush

75

12. “Might I Have a Bit of Earth”

82

13. “I am Colin”

90

14. A Young Rajah

102

15. Nest Building

112

16. “I Won’t!” Said Mary

123

17. A Tantrum

130

xiv

18. “Tha’ Munnot Waste no Time”

137

19. “It has Come!”

143

20. “I Shall Live Forever—and Ever—and Ever!”

153

21. Ben Weatherstaff

160

22. When the Sun Went Down

169

23. Magic

174

24. “Let Them Lough”

185

25. The Curtain

196

26. “It’s Mother”

203

27. In the Garden

212

1.

THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

W

hen Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeablelooking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all. 1