Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911, 1987.

When Mary Lennox arrives in England following the deaths of her parents, people think that she is a peculiar child. She was born and raised in India. She is very thin, and her skin has a yellowish tint because she was frequently ill there. She also has a sour disposition, and it’s not just because she is grieving for her parents. Mary comes from a wealthy family, but she has been emotionally neglected for most of her life. She has not experienced real affection from anyone in her life, so she feels little affection for anyone. Her father worked for the British government in India, and between his work and his own illnesses, he never really had time for Mary. Her mother was a beautiful but frivolous woman who spent most of her time at parties or entertaining her friends. Her mother never really wanted a child at all, and she left Mary’s care and upbringing to an Indian nurse, with the instructions that the nurse keep Mary out of sight as much as possible. Her mother just didn’t want to bother with her. Because her mother didn’t want to be bothered with hearing Mary cry, even as a baby, the nurse and other household servants gave Mary anything she wanted and let her do as she pleased to keep her content. As a result, Mary became a spoiled and unmanageable child, and governesses who came to teach her never stayed very long because she was so temperamental.

Everything changed when Mary was nine years old. A cholera epidemic broke out, and Mary’s nurse was the first to die in their household. (Mary’s frivolous mother even admits, in Mary’s presence, that she was warned to leave the area weeks ago, but she wanted to stay for the sake of a dinner party. When the nurse dies, she realizes for the first time that she’s been a fool.) The other servants forgot about Mary in their panic, and people fled the area. Mary is discovered alone in the house by soldiers, who inform her that her parents died during the night. Mary is cared for temporarily by a clergyman and his family, but she doesn’t get along with the other children because she is spoiled and temperamental. She likes to play alone, pretending that she is planting a garden, so the other children tease her about being Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary from the nursery rhyme. Then, she is sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven, at Mistlethwaite Manor. She knows nothing about her uncle or England, only that her uncle supposedly lives in an isolated house and never sees people.

The trip to England opens Mary’s eyes a little to the world and the ways of other people. She begins to notice that other children are treated differently from the way she’s always been treated. Other children seem to belong to adults who care for them, their mothers and fathers. Mary has never really felt like she belonged to anyone. In fact, many of her mother’s friends were completely unaware that she even had a child because Mary was always kept out of sight, and her mother had always lived like she wasn’t a mother at all. Mary has so little connection to her own parents that she doesn’t miss them at all when they’re gone. People keep saying that it’s such a shame that her mother was so beautiful and charming and that her daughter is so unattractive and unpleasant, but the adults also comment to each other that if Mary’s mother had spent any time with her or cared for her, Mary might be very different. Mary doesn’t think of herself as being unpleasant, although she often thinks other people are unpleasant.

On her arrival in England, she is met by her uncle’s housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, a no-nonsense woman. Mrs. Medlock tells her that her uncle’s manor is grand but gloomy and peculiar. It’s 600 years old, located near a moor, has over 100 rooms (most of them closed up and unused), is full of fine things, and has a garden around it. It all sounds very different from India, and Mary finds it hard to form an opinion about it. Mrs. Medlock is surprised at how unresponsive Mary is, and Mary says that there isn’t much point in her thinking or feeling anything because what she thinks and feels won’t change her situation. She has to go live at the manor whether she likes it or not. Mrs. Medlock admits that is true and that she doesn’t expect that Archibald Craven will pay much attention to her. He was married, and he and his wife loved each other very much, but his wife died, and that’s part of the reason why he lives like a hermit now. He also has a crooked back and doesn’t like for many people to see him. This begins to awaken some feelings in Mary. For the first time in her life, Mary feels a little sorry for her uncle, hearing about the sad death of his wife. It reminds her of something from a book. Mary begins to think that life at Mistlethwaite Manor sounds like it’s going to be lonely and dreary. Mrs. Medlock says that she will be expected to entertain herself most of the time.

Mary’s first impressions are indeed as lonely and gloomy as she expects. When she arrives, he is met by more servants, not her uncle. Mrs. Medlock is told that Mary’s uncle doesn’t want to see her and that she should be taken to her rooms. She is told that her uncle is leaving for London in the morning, and that she will be expected to keep to her rooms.

The only person who is pleasant to Mary is Martha, the house maid. Mary is surprised at Martha’s friendly and open manner because the servants in India always behaved in a servile way, even taking blows and abuse without complaint. When Mary sees the moor for the first time in daylight, Martha asks her if she likes it. Mary says that she doesn’t, but Martha tells her that it’s only because she’s not used to it and that she’ll like it better when she gets used to it. Mary asks Martha if she likes the moor, and Martha says she does. She describes to Mary all of the things that she likes about the moor, including the plants, the smells, the fresh air, and the sounds of the bees and birds. Martha waits on Mary a bit, but not in the way that the servants in India did. Mary is shocked to discover that there are some things that Martha expects her to do for herself, like dressing herself.

There is some racial talk at this point in the story, but the attitudes of the characters are somewhat mixed. Some of it seems to be inappropriate or derisive (mostly on Mary’s part), but some of it also seems friendly or interested in other races (mostly on Martha’s part). Martha says that things in India were different because there were more black people there inside of white people. The story uses the word “black”, apparently not making any distinction between people from Africa and people from India, like all non-white people are “black” by default. (My conclusion, from this part of the book and some later comments, is that Martha actually doesn’t know the difference.) Martha confesses that, when she first heard that Mary was coming from India, she might even be black herself. Mary is enraged at the idea that anyone would think of her as being “black” or a “native”, and she calls Martha a “daughter of a pig” because that’s what people in India would have thought of as one of the worst possible insults. Martha is unphased by this temper tantrum and just tells Mary that there’s no cause to be angry and that girls shouldn’t use language like this. Martha says that she wasn’t at all upset when she thought that a black girl might be coming to live at the manor because she’s never actually met a black person before and was looking forward to having that new experience. She says that she has nothing against black people and has heard that they are quite religious. Mary tells Martha that she doesn’t know anything about black people because they are only servants, not people, and she bursts into tears. Mary thinks this because the only non-white people she’s ever known were servants, and she doesn’t want to be thought poor and servile. To placate Mary, Martha admits that she doesn’t know much about these things, but Mary is the one who is about to get some new learning experiences.

Martha, who describes herself as being a somewhat common person, says that her mother always said that it’s a wonder that rich children don’t all turn out like fools because they don’t do many things for themselves, and she says that it will be good for Mary to learn how to do some basic things to take care of herself, like how to get dressed without help. Mary tells Martha that it was “not the custom” for children in India to dress themselves because that was only life she ever knew. The servants used to dress her and do things for her like she was a little doll instead of a person, and at first, Mary doesn’t know what to do or say when Martha speaks to her in a personal way, like a human being, or insists that she do things for herself. It helps that Martha comes from a large family with twelve children. She might know a lot about the world and other cultures, but she knows a lot about what to do with children and what children can be capable of doing, and these are things Mary needs to learn.

Mary is surprised when Martha tells her about one of her brothers, Dickon. Dickon has a way with animals, and he has tamed some wild animals, including a wild pony that he can now ride. Mary has never been allowed to have a pet before, although she has always wanted one. Mary has rarely been interested in anything, but Dickon begins to fascinate her.

Since there is little in the house to amuse a child, Martha insists that Mary go outside by herself and explore. Nobody will entertain Mary, so she must learn to play and amuse herself. For a start, Martha says that Mary can go look at the gardens. Intriguingly, Martha mentions that one of the gardens is locked. Mary asks why, and Martha says that the garden used to belong to Mrs. Craven and that Mr. Craven has kept it locked since she died ten years ago. He even buried the key somewhere. In spite of herself, Mary begins to be very curious about the locked garden and the reason why it is kept locked. As she explores outside, she discovers that the house is surrounded by several walled gardens, most of which have open doors in their walls. It is winter, so most of the gardens are bare. It is dreary, but Mary sees a robin and is cheered by its singing.

Mary is not accustomed to people liking her or to liking other people, but she begins making friends with the gruff old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff. He can whistle for the robin, and it comes to him, and that intrigues Mary. The gardener tells Mary about robins and about the friendly robin in particular. Seeing him interacting with the bird prompts Mary to mention that she is lonely, a revelation that surprises her. Her nurse didn’t like her, and she was never allowed to play with other children, so she has never had any friends. Ben Weatherstaff understands about loneliness because he doesn’t have much company, except for the birds. He is accustomed to plain speaking, and he comments that he and Mary have much in common, both being sour of disposition and plain looks. Mary is surprised at this candor and at the image it has given her of herself. The only people who interacted with her before were servants, who were paid to praise their employers. It never occurred to Mary before how other people really saw her and that her lack of human contact and affection is part of the reason why she feels so sour, behaves badly, and has trouble feeling emotional connections to other people because, to her, that was just normal life. The move to England is starting to show her that what she has always thought of as normal isn’t really, and her version of normal wasn’t even really healthy for her. She is touched when the robin acts like it wants to be friends with her, the first living thing that really seems like it wants to like her, and Mary finds herself liking a living thing for the first time, too.

It starts to become routine for Mary to explore the gardens every day, and she begins to grow healthier with the fresh air and activity. The cooler climate of England agrees with Mary more than the warmer climate of India, and her explorations and time alone awakens her mind and imagination. Martha’s practical mother hass Martha give Mary a gift of a skipping rope and tells her to have Mary spend as much time outside as possible. Mary begins to like Martha’s mother and Dickon from the stories Martha tells her about them. She’s not accustomed to liking people, and it surprises her that she can like someone just by description, without even seeing them. Martha poses a question to Mary about whether or not she likes herself, a question her mother once asked her when she was being critical of other people. Mary never thought about it before, but she has to admit that, now that she thinks about it, she doesn’t really like herself, and she can now see why other people didn’t like her before.

Mary begins to grow closer to Martha, who is also lonely, in her own way. She misses her mother and all her brothers and sisters when she’s working at the manor, and the other servants make fun of her for her common speech and Yorkshire expressions. Mary doesn’t make fun of her speech because, after living in India, she understands that some people just speak different dialects and doesn’t consider it unusual to not understand everything a person says, so Martha doesn’t mind spending time with Mary and talking to her, answering her questions as best she can. It isn’t always easy because, as she admits to Mary, there are things about the house and Mr. Craven that she’s not allowed to talk about. Mr. Craven is a very private person, and Mrs. Medlock won’t let the servants gossip too much.

Mary asks Martha more about the locked garden and why Mr. Craven hates it. Martha says that she might as well know that he used to love it when Mrs. Craven was alive because the two of them tended it together and spent a lot of time there. There was a tree with a branch shaped like a seat, where Mrs. Craven liked to sit. One day, the branch broke, and Mrs. Craven was hurt so badly by the fall that she died the next day. Ever since, Mr. Craven can’t bring himself to enter the garden or even hear anybody talk about it.

Something that Martha refuses to explain to Mary is the mysterious crying noises that Mary sometimes hears. She makes excuses, like it’s the wind or another maid with the toothache, but Mary is sure that it’s a child crying inside the house. Mary tries to explore the house, but Mrs. Medlock stops her from poking around too much. It’s only outside that Mary is truly free to explore.

Then, while watching the robin the garden, Mary finds both the key to the locked garden and the door inside. At first, the old garden looks dead, but then, she finds some tiny growing things. Mary begins tending the garden herself, realizing that, if she weeds the garden, there will be more room for the plants to grow. She asks Martha some questions about plants and gardening, and Martha explains some things, saying that Dickon knows more about gardening. Martha is pleased by Mary’s new interest in gardening. She doesn’t know that Mary has gotten into the locked garden, but her mother said that it would do Mary good to have a little space to make a garden for herself. Without telling Martha her secret, Mary says that’s just what she wants to do. Martha helps helps Mary write a letter to Dickon, asking for his help getting gardening tools and seeds and getting her garden started.

When Mary finally meets Dickon, she lets him in on the secret of the locked garden, but she swears him to secrecy about it. Mary has come to identify with the garden because, like Mary herself, it’s been neglected for a long time. For ten years, it was left alone, and nobody cared whether it lived or died, but Mary cares. She is determined to help it live, and she doesn’t want anybody to stop her. Dickon also finds the secret garden fascinating, and he is willing to help tend it in secret. He shows Mary how to tell which plants are alive or dead, and he explains what they will need to do to restore the garden to its former glory.

Mr. Craven inadvertently gives Mary permission for her secret activities when he sees her for the first time, to check on how she’s doing. He apologizes to Mary for being a negligent guardian, admitting that he has forgotten to hire a governess for her. He is forgetful because his health is poor, but he says that he does care about her welfare. Mary begs him not to give her a governess right away because her health is improving from playing outside in the gardens. Mr. Craven admits that what she says agrees with advice that Martha’s mother has given him about caring for Mary, so he says that she may go without a governess for now and may spend as much time outside as she likes. He asks her if she would like any toys, dolls, or books, and Mary asks him if she can have some earth for planting things instead. Mr. Craven says that she reminds him of someone else, but he agrees that she can have any patch of earth that she likes, as long as it’s not being used for anything else. He is going to be traveling abroad for his health until next winter, so Mary knows that she will have plenty of time for working in the secret garden and Mr. Craven’s technical, if unknowing, permission.

The mystery of the crying that Mary sometimes hears is solved when she boldly investigates the sound one night and finds a strange boy, about her age. She asks him who he is, and he says that he is Colin Craven, Archibald Craven’s son. When Mary explains that Mr. Craven is her uncle, the two of them realize that they are cousins. Colin explains that people aren’t allowed to see him or talk about him because he is ill. His father worries that Colin will have a crooked back, like he does, and Colin doesn’t want anybody to see him like that. He admits to Mary that people used to take him places when he was younger, and people would stare at him and whisper about him, and he hated it. He could tell that people thought he looked sickly and that they were sorry for him. Colin thinks that he is too sickly to live to adulthood because he has heard people talking about the possibility of him having a lump on his back and the possibility of him dying when they think he couldn’t hear them or couldn’t understand. However, he has understood all of it from a young age, and it has always terrified him. He doesn’t even trust his doctor because his doctor is a relative of his fathers and stands to inherit the manor if Colin doesn’t live to adulthood. Colin can tell that the doctor is hoping that will happen. The doctor hasn’t actively tried to harm Colin, but he hasn’t been very much help, either.

Colin is every bit as spoiled as Mary was when she first arrived in England. Like Mary, he has been shut away from most people and looked after by servants, who give him anything he wants and do whatever he says because they feel sorry for him and because he throws fits when they don’t. His father rarely sees him because he looks like his mother, which makes him sad, and he fears that he will see Colin become deformed or sicken and die. In meeting Colin, Mary finds herself confronted by a child very much like herself, but it turns out that she’s more than a match for him. In fact, she’s exactly what Colin has needed, to the amusement of all the servants. She doesn’t give in to Colin’s imperiousness nor his hysterics. She offers him the reassurance that he has needed that he is not deformed nor likely to die when he admits to her what his real fears have been. She provides him companionship and also gives him new things to think about besides his worries. Because he rarely leaves his room, he doesn’t know anything about the secret garden, but after she has determined that he can be trusted to keep the secret, she tells him about it. Colin badly wants to see it, and Mary asks Dickon to help take Colin out to see the garden in his wheelchair. As the children enjoy and work in the garden, restoring it to life, it also offers new life to the neglected children. As the flowers grow and bloom, the children blossom, too.

The book is public domain now, and you can read it for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive. You can also read it in your browser through Lit2Go, which also includes audio readings of each chapter. There have been many different printings of this book with different illustration. The edition I used for the pictures on this review was from 1987. It has been made into movies several times.

My Reaction

Benefits of Nature and the Power of Positive Thinking

I love the atmosphere of The Secret Garden! The old manor house is wonderfully old-fashioned and gloomy. Mary’s bedroom has tapestries on the walls, and the house is mysterious and maze-like inside and surrounded by walled gardens and the open moor. Like Mary at the beginning of the story, I’ve never lived anywhere with a moor, and Martha’s descriptions of the plants and smells of the moor helped.

One of the most prominent themes in the story is the love of nature. The children see miracles in nature, and they find their interactions with growing plants healing to their spirits and bodies. There is also a strong emphasis on the power of positive thinking. The children come to realize that many of their emotional and health problems stem from their negative thoughts, and they make a conscious effort to focus more on positive things, replacing old, negative habits with healthier ones. The improvements they experience in their lives and attitudes give them encouragement to keep working on improving their thinking habits.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s thoughts on healing and the power of positive thinking come from a time in her life when she suffered from severe depression and “nervous prostration.” While struggling to recover from her emotional disorder, she researched Christian Science, metaphysics, New Thought, and spiritualism. The philosophies of the characters in the story seem to be an amalgamation of different philosophies and schools of thought, not strictly adhering to anything in particular. There isn’t anything particularly religious about the children’s thinking, which I think makes sense because these neglected children probably haven’t been schooled much in religion. The children’s thoughts seem to be based on bits and pieces that they’ve read or heard about from others and some pieces of Eastern philosophy from Mary’s time in India, along with some things which seem to be their own invention. Colin thinks that the healing he experiences and the power of nature are some form of magic, and he decides that he’s going to spend his life experimenting with this type of magic and telling others about his discoveries. I found this part of the story interesting because Colin’s scientific concepts of magic and magical experiments remind me of Gerald Gardiner and the origins of Wicca (this Timeline documentary on YouTube explains it – the part about his youth is 10:30 in – that’s the part that reminded me the most of this book). Gerald Gardner was ill as a child because he was an asthmatic. The climate in Britain, where his family lived, didn’t seem to suit him, so his parents arranged for him to travel with a nanny. He spent much of his youth living away from Britain, in areas with warmer climates. The change of climate helped him, but during his travels, he also developed an interest in ritual healing magic and folk remedies, which he also believed helped him, and he conducted magical experiments to perfect his rituals. He combined these ideas and experiments with his own research into spiritualism and philosophical systems to form Wicca. Gerald Gardner was born before The Secret Garden was written, but his magical experiments and promotion of the Wicca movement occurred decades after this book was written, in the 1930s and 1940s, so Frances Hodgson Burnett couldn’t have used him for inspiration. I think it’s more that he found inspiration from similar spiritualist and philosophical sources, and he also used the natural environment in dealing with a chronic illness, as the author and the characters in the book did.

I don’t really believe in the more magical/metaphysical aspects of this type of philosophy, but a person’s environment can have a very real effect on their emotional and physical health. In my list of Cottagecore books, I talked about how people found solace in nature during the stress of the coronavius pandemic, and people have sought comfort in nature and the countryside for other forms of stress for generations. It’s a theme that often appears in vintage children’s literature, which made assembling the list of books with Cottagecore themes easy. People are often calmed by environments with plants and rooms with windows that allow them to see the outside world because they feel more natural. The need to feel in touch with the natural world was something discussed in the documentary about Gerald Gardner. It seems to be a fundamental human need, although people may experience it in different ways or on different levels.

There are also some scientific reasons why a person’s environment and the amount of time they spend outdoors can influence their health. Colin thinks of his magical experiments as a form of science, but more measurable forms of science include temperature, humidity, and the influence of sunlight in producing vitamin D in the human body. It’s not as romantic to look at it from this point of view, but these things to make a real difference to a person’s health. Some people’s bodies seem better adapted to certain types of climate, and moving to a different environment can potentially improve their health, depending on what conditions they have. The reason why my family moved to Arizona from the Midwest was that my grandfather suffered from arthritis from a relatively young age, and he was told by his doctor that he would improve in a warm, dry climate. My mother was also frequently ill in the Midwest, and her doctor said that it was because the winters in Ohio were too long and the summers were too short, so she was vitamin D deficient. People absorb vitamin D through the skin from sunlight as well as food, so spending time outside regularly can help them absorb more vitamin D. (Don’t overdo the sun bathing. Some time in the sun is good and can give your vitamin D a boost, but too much can lead to sun burns and skin cancer. There are happy mediums.) After the move to Arizona, both my mother and grandfather improved in health because the climate was better for their health conditions, and both of them could spend more time outside throughout the year.

They’re not the only ones I know of who have experienced this. Arizona has also been a destination for people with asthma for decades because they also seem to benefit from a warm, dry climate with plenty of sunshine and outdoor activity. In the Timeline Documentary about Gerald Gardner, they mentioned that one of the things Gardner did for his health after he returned to live in England was to become a nudist. I wondered if part of that could have been to maximize the amount of exposed skin that could absorb vitamin D. From what I’ve read, there does seem to be a link between low levels of vitamin D and asthma, but I’m not a healthcare professional, so I can’t be completely sure. My knowledge of this sort of thing is mainly anecdotal.

In the story, Mary didn’t seem to do well in India’s hot climate, but she felt better in England, where the climate was cooler. (I wondered early in the book if it was partly because her parents had her dressed in fashionable English clothes that were unsuited to India’s environment, but the book doesn’t clarify that point.) In England, she spends more time outside, partly because she needs to find ways to entertain herself, and also because being outside feels more comfortable to her than it did in India, so she receives more of the benefits of outdoor, physical activity. It seems like the key is noticing what your body seems to need and finding an environment that supports those needs or making lifestyle changes that allow you to take better advantage of the environment where you are. Of course, if you’re dealing with an illness, you should discuss treatment and lifestyle with your doctor and follow their guidance.

Racial Issues

There are some racial issues in this book, as I described above. The characters in the story have some false notions about people from India, although I found it interesting that Martha, who has never met anyone from India or people from different races in general, seems more positive and open to the experience of meeting different types of people than Mary. Of course, Mary has met people from India before, so she’s not curious about them. She thinks that she knows what they’re like, but her attitude is colored by her dysfunctional upbringing and her overall negative view of life and people in general. Even though she speaks about the Indians she knew in a derogatory way, I notice that, as she and Colin begin healing, she draws on her knowledge of Indian mysticism. She didn’t like her life in India because she was unhealthy and unloved there, but it does seem to have left its mark on her.

I’m not sure whether different editions of this book have changed the parts about Mary’s racial attitudes or not, but I know that there are some simplified or abridged editions, for those who might enjoy the general story without dealing with the objectionable parts.

Posted on by TracyC

The Children of Green Knowe

Green Knowe

The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston, 1954, 1955, 1982, 1983.

Seven-year-old Toseland is traveling by train to stay with his great-grandmother Oldknow at the old family home, Green Noah, for Christmas. His mother is dead, and his father now lives in Burma with his new wife, who Toseland doesn’t know very well. He has no brothers or sisters, and he spends most of his time at boarding school, so he is often lonely, wishing that he had a family outside of school, like the other boys. His great-grandmother is the only other relative he has, and he has never met her before. He is a little nervous at the idea of meeting her because he knows that she must be very old.

When Toseland arrives at the station, it’s raining, and there has been flooding, but there is a taxi-man waiting to take him to the house. When he arrives, he is immediately fascinated by the large, old house and all of the things in it. It reminds him of a castle, and he marvels at how his great-grandmother could live in such a place. He is surprised at how at home he feels there and how easily he likes and gets along with his great-grandmother. For the first time in his life since his mother died, he really feels at home, and when he asks if the house partly belongs to him, too, his great-grandmother reassures him that it does.

The two of them talk about what to call each other. Toseland’s great-grandmother asks him to call her Granny (although she is still often called Mrs. Oldknow throughout the book), and she asks him if he has any nicknames. Toseland says that the boys at school call him Towser and his stepmother calls him Toto, but he doesn’t like either nickname. Granny Oldknow says that Toseland is a family name and there have been other Toselands before him. The last one was his grandfather, and his nickname was Tolly, so Granny asks him if he would like to be called that also. Toseland says that he likes that nickname better than the others, and his mother used to call him that, so he is called Tolly from that point on.

Granny Oldknow shows Tolly to his room and helps him begin to unpack. It’s a wonderful room with many old toys that used to belong to the other children who have lived in the house in the past. Among the toys is an old dollhouse which Tolly realizes is a miniature version of the house they’re in. When he finds the miniature version of his room, he notices that there are four beds in it instead of one. He asks Granny Oldknow if other children stay at Green Noah, and she cryptically says that they do sometimes, and he might see them, but they come when they want to.

Tolly becomes fascinated by a portrait of three children in old-fashioned clothes with their mother and grandmother. Granny Oldknow tells him that those three children lived in the house long ago. The oldest boy was an earlier Toseland, who was nicknamed Toby. His younger brother was named Alexander, and their little sister was named Linnet. Granny Oldknow had been an orphan when she was a child and was raised at Green Noah by an uncle. Because she was an only child, she often lonely and liked to pretend that the children in the picture were her siblings, so Tolly decides that he’d like to do the same thing.

Tolly asks his great-grandmother questions about Toby, Alexander, and Linnet and learns details of their lives. Toby had a sword because he was going to be a soldier when he grew up, a pet deer, and a horse named Feste who loved him. Alexander had a book in Latin that he loved to read and a special flute. Linnet used to keep birds in a wicker cage that is still in Tolly’s room, along with the toy mouse that used to belong to Toby. Sometimes, Tolly thinks that toys in his room move when he’s not looking, and at night, he hears children moving about and laughing, and he thinks that it’s the three children from the painting.

Tolly comes to the conclusion that the three children are still around Green Noah and that they’re playing hide-and-seek with them. He tries to play with them, too, and the children apparently give him a twig in the shape of a ‘T’. Granny Oldknow tells him that she used to play hide-and-seek with the children when she was young, and they would give her an ‘L’ twig because her first name is Linnet, like the little girl in the painting. Later, he hears the children singing Christmas carols. Tolly becomes frustrated that the children tease him and never really show themselves to him, but Mrs. Oldknow tells him that “they’re like shy animals” and that he has to give them a chance to decide that they’re ready to come to him.

He finds the key to the old toy box in his room, and inside the box, he finds more things that belonged to the three children. When he shows them to Mrs. Oldknow, she talks about how things were when the three children were alive at Green Noah. Tolly is shocked when he realizes for the first time that Toby, Alexander, and Linnet are all dead. Mrs. Oldknow gently tells him that they lived at Green Noah centuries ago and could not be alive now. Sadly, the children all died young in the Great Plague during the 17th century. Their illness was sudden and brief, and they all sickened and died in one day along with their mother. Tolly and his great-grandmother are descended from the children’s older brother, who wasn’t at home when this happened. However, the children never left Green Noah, which used to be called Green Knowe years ago. Tolly still loves the children, even though they’re ghostly and elusive. He craves the sense of family he gets from them, having been deprived of family feelings for so much of his young life.

Mrs. Oldknow continues to tell Tolly stories about the three children and other members of his family. As his connection to his ancestors grows, Tolly begins to catch glimpses of the children more and more, and eventually, he’s able to see them and talk to them. He asks the children about their mother, and the children say that she’s in heaven but doesn’t mind them coming back to visit their old home from time to time. The children don’t seem sad at being dead, enjoying the freedom of playing around their old home with the animals and the spirits of their old pets, who keep them company. Their final illnesses had only lasted a few hours before they died, and their deaths happened so long ago that they say that they hardly remember the Great Plague and what it felt like. Tolly is still sad and frustrated that the children appear and disappear so suddenly, but his attachment to them grows and so does his attachment to Green Noah itself. As Christmas comes, Tolly develops a bond with his family, both living and dead, and a realization that the old family home that connects them is also his home, a place they can all return to.

The book is the first in a series and is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

This is a ghost story, but it’s not a scary ghost story. There’s nothing frightening about the three ghost children. It’s sad that they died so young, but at the same time, they’re not very sad about it themselves. They seem to enjoy playing together endlessly with the animals around their old home and seeing the new relatives who inhabit the house, their older brother’s descendants. Even their former pets are no longer sad at the children’s passing because they are also spirits who continue to play with them through the centuries. There is one semi-scary part of the story involving a witch’s curse placed on an old tree called Green Noah, which is how the name of the house was changed from Green Knowe, but Tolly is protected by the ghosts of his ancestors.

There is never any desire for the characters to rid Green Noah of its ghosts. They are family and are part of the place, as much a part of it as the living are. The ghosts do not feel trapped there, either. They are just revisiting the home they loved and the family members who now live there. They can come and go as they please, and the ghost children often do.

This also is not the kind of story where a child knows that a place is haunted but can’t convince the adults or tries to hide the ghosts’ presence from the adults. Mrs. Oldknow is fully aware that the ghosts are there and has known about them since her own childhood. Generations of children in the family have probably known about them and played with them, and they are also not the only family ghosts who inhabit the old house. At one point, Tolly and Mrs. Oldknow hear a woman singing and the rocking of a cradle, and Mrs. Oldknow says that she’s heard it before around Christmas, a grandmother singing to a baby. Tolly is confused because even little Linnet wasn’t a baby when she died, and Mrs. Oldknow says that this isn’t the children’s grandmother but somebody from generations earlier than the three children. This grandmother ghost has been around so long that Mrs. Oldknow doesn’t know who she or the baby are supposed to be, although we are told that they are about 400 years old, where the three children died about 300 years earlier. Generations of the same family have lived in the house and have all left their mark on it, and part of them is still there. Now, Tolly has also become part of this family home, and it’s also a part of him. The ghosts are hesitant to fully show themselves to Tolly at first and seem more attached to Granny Oldknow, probably because she’s lived there longer, since she was an infant. The ghosts know her, and she knows all of their stories. However, they are all family, and Tolly develops a new connection to his family as his great-grandmother tells him the stories about them, and he can hear and see the ghosts more often.

Really, that feeling of connection and connectedness is the primary focus of the story. In the beginning, Tolly is lonely, feeling like he doesn’t have a family and doesn’t belong anywhere or to anyone. His father lives far away in Burma with his new wife, and Tolly doesn’t feel connected to them. His mother is gone, and he spends most of his time at school, even having to remain there during the holidays when other students are going home to their families. His great-grandmother inviting him to Green Noah is the first time that Tolly feels a real connection to anyone in his family since his mother’s death, and through her stories and his encounters with the ghosts, he comes to see that he really is part of a much larger family, going back ages. Just because most of his family is now dead or scattered doesn’t mean that they’re not his family. They still love him, and he loves them, even across the centuries. Green Noah really is a family home, and it’s a place that family can return to, even those who seem to be gone forever. It’s a place that has known both the joys of a happy family and the tragedies of loss that families experience from time to time. Through it all, it’s still home, and importantly, it becomes the home that Tolly has been wishing for.

The story takes place in the days leading up to Christmas, and by Christmas, Tolly has received important presents. First, the ghostly Alexander grants him the give of his special flute, which had been a reward from King Charles II for singing so beautifully for him when he was alive. Tolly also has musical talents, and his great-grandmother decides to switch him to a different school so he can develop his talents and so he can stay at Green Noah during his school holidays. On Christmas, Tolly also receives his own pet dog, very much like the one that the ghostly Linnet owned, and he names his dog after hers, just as he has been named after all the other Toselands who have gone before.

In some ways, the story reminds me a little of When Marnie Was There (some people might know the story from the Miyazaki movie version), which has similar themes of family and belonging and ancestors reaching out across time to remind children that, while life is brief and often complicated, love is eternal and everyone belongs somewhere and to someone. However, The Children of Greene Knowe is a much gentler story, and it also contains some shorter stories about Tolly’s family.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bassumtyte Treasure

BassumtyteTreasureThe Bassumtyte Treasure by Jane Louise Curry, 1978.

When young Tommy Bassumtyte’s parents died, he went to live with his grandfather. However, his grandfather is now dead, and he is living with his 92-year-old great-aunt, who is in a wheelchair, and her 72-year-old daughter, who has recently had her driver’s license revoked due to her poor eyesight. Although the pair of them have taken good care of Tommy, neighbors have become concerned that they will not be able to do so for much longer because of their age and failing health. Rather than see Tommy sent to a foster home, they decide that he must go to the man who Tommy learns should really be his legal guardian, a distant cousin also named Thomas who lives in the family’s ancestral home, Boxleton House, in England.

The elder Thomas Bassumtyte, who should have taken Tommy when his grandfather passed away, has also since died, but his son, also named Thomas, agrees to take him. Tommy is quickly shipped off to England before there can be a custody hearing in the United States about him because the relatives fear that some official might try to prevent Tommy from being sent out of the country. Tommy is eager to go because he remembers fantastic stories that his grandfather told him about Boxleton House. The current Thomas Bassumtyte also lives there, although the place has become rather run-down, and he fears that he will not be able to keep the place much longer. Thomas was a mountain climber, but he was injured in a fall and hasn’t been able to work much since. He tells Tommy that the two of them might have to move when he is fully recovered and can do more work for the Foreign Office, but Tommy loves Boxleton House from the first moment he sees it and wants to stay.

According to the lore of Boxleton House, a distant ancestor of theirs hid a treasure there, but no one has been able to find it. If young Tommy and Thomas can find it, it would solve many of their problems, and they would be able to keep the house and restore it. All young Tommy has is the mysterious rhyme that his grandfather told him and the strange medallion that his great-grandfather brought with him when he went to the United States in the late 1800s. Thomas tells him that the treasure was supposedly hidden by a distant ancestor of theirs who was fond of riddles, called Old Thomas.

The Bassumtytes were secretly Catholic during the reign of Elizabeth I. Old Thomas was alive then and had a son called Tall Thomas. Tall Thomas traveled frequently and was mysterious about the places he went. One night, he returned to Boxleton House with a young baby, who he said was his son. He had married in secret, and his young wife had died shortly after giving birth. Tall Thomas also brought her body back to Boxleton for burial. However, that wasn’t Tall Thomas’s only secret. Although he remarried, giving his son a stepmother, and lived on for a number of years, he was eventually executed for smuggling messages for the captive Catholic queen, Mary, Queen of Scots. The family was stripped of its noble title and only barely managed to hang onto their house and land. If there was a treasure hidden during this time, it was probably something that the Bassumtytes were afraid would be confiscated by the queen’s soldiers as punishment for the family’s disloyalty or something that Mary had given to Tall Thomas to hide for her.

As Thomas tells Tommy more about the house and the family’s history, he points out Tommy’s uncanny resemblance to Small Thomas, Tall Thomas’s son, as shown in an old painting. Tommy feels a strange connection to Small Thomas, and begins seeing and hearing strange things. An older woman comforts him in the middle of the night, having him recite the same rhyme that his grandfather taught him. A small painting later reveals that this woman was Small Thomas’s grandmother. She appears to Tommy other times, giving him a glimpse back in time and clues to solve the puzzles of Boxleton House.

It is only when Thomas accepts the advice of a family friend who works for a museum that they come to understand the full significance of their family’s heirlooms and the hidden treasure. The treasure may not be quite what the Bassumtytes have always believed it was, but then, the Bassumtytes themselves aren’t quite who they always thought they were, either.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Candleshoe

candleshoeCandleshoe by Michael Innes, 1953.

I own the movie version of the book, which was originally named Christmas at Candleshoe (although it’s not about the holiday).  It contains the text of the original story, but the picture on the front cover is from the movie.

The Disney movie is very different from the original book.  For one thing, the hero of the story is a boy (Jay), not a girl (Casey/Margaret), and unlike the movie version, the child’s identity is established for certain by the end of the book. The book has a happy ending, and so does the movie, but part of the movie’s point was that the idea of family isn’t dependent on blood relations alone, so it isn’t important whether Casey is really Margaret or not (although there are strong hints that she is).

The book is a bit hard to follow at first because it jumps back and forth between different places and different sets of characters, although it all takes place during the course of a single day and night.  Actually, I’m not sure this can really be called a children’s book, but I included it here because of the movie tie-in.  Because of the difficulty level of the book, I’d really recommend it for older children or adults.  Personally, I have to admit that I liked the movie better.

The story takes place in the mid-twentieth century, after WWII. There are two manor houses involved, Benison Court and Candleshoe. Benison Court, the newer of the two, is owned by the Spendloves, and Candleshoe, the older one, is owned by the elderly Miss Candleshoe. The two families are related, and neither one of them has as much money as they used to. The Spendloves take in some extra money by offering tours of Benison Court and showing people paintings and antiques owned by the family for generations. To raise some additional money, they decide to sell a couple of the paintings by Titian. To their surprise, the expert they call in to evaluate the paintings tells them that the paintings are forgeries.  Archdeacon, who cares for the antiques and library at Benison, reminds the Spendloves that during the war, the paintings were sent to Candleshoe for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, a couple of American tourists, the wealthy Mrs. Feather and her son Grant, having seen Benison, stop by Candleshoe. Mrs. Feather is fascinated by the old place, in spite of its state of disrepair, and Miss Candleshoe invites them to have dinner there and spend the night. Mrs. Feather has an interest in purchasing Candleshoe for herself and fixing it up.  Miss Candleshoe and her longtime friend, the retired chaplain, Armigel, know that there is not enough money for them to fix up Candleshoe, and they like the idea of traveling, so they are willing to consider selling the manor house. This plan does not sit well with Jay, the orphaned son of Miss Candleshoe’s housekeeper, Mrs. Ray.

After Mrs. Ray died, Miss Candleshoe cared for Jay, and now, with Miss Candleshoe and Armigel showing signs of senility, Jay has been handling much of the practical running of Candleshoe. On this particular evening, Jay is worried about more than the possible sale of the property. He has been noticing strange people paying unusual attention to the house. He suspects, correctly, that they intend to break into the house that night, and he has assembled a small army of local children, armed with antique weapons, to defend the place. Grant, befriending Jay, admires the boy’s practical turn of mind but worries that they are not up to the task of handling the siege that is coming to this isolated country house. As the danger presses closer, the Spendloves, Archdeacon, and the art expert are heading toward Candleshoe in search of the missing paintings.

The answer to all of these problems may lie in the strangest feature of the house: the Christmas box, a stone monument in the gallery made by Gerard Christmas and dedicated to the memory of an ancestor of the Candleshoes, who may have been a pirate. According to the lore of Candleshoe, the box will open at a time when Candleshoe is in crisis and will save the day.

The book is available online through Internet Archive.

But, is Casey Really Margaret?!

I think so. I want to say, “yes, she is,” but “I think so” is about as definite as I can be because the movie changed the story from the original book.

Whether or not Casey is actually Margaret, the lost heir to Candleshoe, is the burning question everyone is left with after watching the Disney movie Candleshoe. The movie deliberately left Casey’s true identity unresolved at the end, probably because they wanted to have the people at Candleshoe decide to accept her into their family on her own merits, not just because they had to because she’s the heir to the place. In the beginning, the audience is told that missing heir of Candleshoe, Margaret, was kidnapped as a young child by her own father, apparently in some kind of marital/custody dispute, and that she disappeared after his death in a car accident and has not been located although attempts to find her were made in the ten years that have passed since her disappearance. Casey is a teenage girl who was apparently an abandoned child with an unknown past and no memory of her early life who bears an odd resemblance to Margaret, including a couple of distinctive scars that are like ones Margaret was known to have. She is recruited as by con artist to play the part of Margaret, returning to Candleshoe as the lost heiress in order to gain access to the house and find a hidden treasure. Although Casey initially came to Candleshoe under false pretenses as part of a con with the promise of a share of the Candleshoe treasure and a red Ferrari as her payment, she eventually becomes fond of the people there and decides that she can’t let them be cheated by the real villain. Casey proves herself to be part of the Candleshoe family through her loyalty to them, and in the end, they would accept her whether she really was Margaret or not. It’s a nice sentiment, but viewers still have the urge to ask who Casey really is.

Casey is legitimately an orphan or abandoned child, found at about the right time and the right age and in the right place to really be Margaret. She has no memory at all of her early childhood, her parents, or where she came from, and she also bears some telltale scars that match ones that young Margaret was known to have. That’s what we’re told about Casey. Casey’s history is never explained in detail in the movie (we never find out under what circumstances she was found and entered into the Los Angeles foster care system), but from what we do know, her history meshes well enough with Margaret’s known past that it would seem plausible for her to actually be Margaret. Is she really Margaret, and Harry Bundage, the con man, just persuaded her that she was only pretending in order to use her for his own ends? Or, is the real Margaret still out there somewhere? If Casey actually is Margaret, did she lose her memory in the car crash that killed her father, or did he abandon her somewhere before his death, even though he had kidnapped her from her mother and took her to a completely different country?

When Harry Bundage is briefing Casey about Margaret’s background, he poses the theory that Margaret was in the car when her father crashed it and that she may have wandered off in a state of shock after the accident. That explanation might be partly for the benefit of the viewers, helping to explain how Casey could be Marget and not remember it. A young child suffering from shock might be unable to tell anyone who she was or what had happened to her. An accident may even have left some bruising that might have obscured the telltale scars that could have identified her, but again, the matter is never fully settled, and we just don’t know enough of Casey’s background to make a full connection. There are enough pieces to make it possible, maybe even probable, but nothing that definitively settles the matter.

In the final scene of the movie, Casey asks Margaret’s grandmother what will happen if Margaret is ever really found and comes home, and the grandmother says cryptically that maybe she already has. It’s a brief hint that the grandmother thinks Casey might really be her kidnapped granddaughter, even though she accepts that Casey was lying to her earlier about things she said she remembered and knows that Casey herself thought that she was just an imposter. Casey does have those telltale scars, and it does seem like quite a coincidence that two random girls of the same age and similar circumstances would have identical sets of scars. However, the movie stops short of declaring that Casey really was Margaret all along, and the unanswered questions still rankle viewers. So, some of us turned to the original book to get more detail, but it turns out that it doesn’t completely help.

As I said, the original book was different from the movie. Not only was the child hero in the book a boy instead of a girl, he wasn’t kidnapped and taken to America the way that Margaret was. In the book, Jay definitely knows who his mother was, and it’s the question of who his father was that establishes his identity as the heir to Candleshoe. It turns out that Jay’s father was the nephew of the lady of Candleshoe, making her his great-aunt rather than his grandmother. Her nephew had been a ne’er-do-well, and although his family didn’t know it, he had married an American woman before his death. He died not too long after the marriage, but by that point, he had fathered Jay. Jay’s mother knew about her husband’s family, but she wasn’t sure yet whether or not she wanted to tell them about Jay. She took the job as housekeeper so she could observe the family and decide whether or not to reveal their relationship. Unfortunately, she died in an accident before she made up her mind. By the end of the book, Jay’s identity is established, and he is definitely proven and recognized to be the heir to Candleshoe, and because of that, I believe that Casey really is the missing Margaret. At least, that’s as close to confirmation as we’re likely to get. If the child in the book was the rightful heir to Candleshoe, it would make sense if the child in the movie was, too, even if it’s not really the same child.

Of course, that’s not full proof, and it doesn’t answer the questions about Margaret’s kidnapping or her father’s accident or how Casey was found and placed in foster care in California without anyone else connecting her with the missing Margaret when Margaret’s disappearance was reported to the authorities and newspapers. I have a theory that Harry Bundage was right that Margaret was in the car during the accident and that she did wander away from the scene of the accident in shock and possibly suffering injuries that covered up her identifying scars, but that’s still just a theory. There’s nothing in the movie or book that I could use to prove it. We don’t even know exactly why Margaret’s father in the movie kidnapped her in the first place or why Margaret’s mother died not long after she disappeared. (A convenient accident or illness for story purposes so there’s one less person to try to identify Casey/Margaret, or did she kill herself out of despair at the loss of her husband and daughter? The movie doesn’t say, so those are just guesses, too.) There’s a lot of backstory missing, and the book doesn’t clarify these points because of the differences between the book and movie. I guess it’s not really important to the story in the movie, but inquiring minds still want to know.