92. the SECRET GARDEN

Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911

A garden abandoned ten years ago comes to life after ten year old Mary, an orphan recently sent to live in MisselthwaiteManor, accidentally discovers the key to its door. With the help of her new friend Dickon, a twelve year old boy with the magical green thumb and who talks to animals, they transform their secret to a glorious magnificent wild garden. A young boy, Colin emotionally abandoned ten years ago by his father comes to life after Mary accidentally finds him, befriends him and takes him to this magical garden. As the three children play, run, laugh, share stories, exercise and eat in their secret garden, Mary finds friendship and happiness, and Colin finds his way back to his father.

'When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She has a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression.'(opening lines)

'Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.'(8)

'"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's proud of it in his way-- and that's gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old, and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's a hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked. And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been there for ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground-- some of them," She paused and took another breath. "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.'(13)

'Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.'(44)

'But Dickon laughed. "Eh!" he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it, "there doesn't seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there's flowers an' such like, an' such lots o' friendly wild things runnin' about makin' homes for themselves, or buildin' nests an' singin' an' whistlin', does there?"(99)

"It's the best thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand up to him that's as spoiled as himself."(155)

'It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing that had been funny as well as dreadful-- that it was funny that all grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.'(160)

"Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is never have his own way-- or always to have it. She doesn't know which is th' worst."(166)

"When I was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like an orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't you-- none o' you-- think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks." What children learns from children,' she says, "is that there's no sense in grabbin at th' whole orange-- peel an' all. If you do, you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat,'"(178)

'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 for ever and ever and ever.'(195)

'Oh! The things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show colour, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner... Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.'(214)

"I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us..."(217)

"You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things."(219)

a Tor Book First Edition 1990
271 pages
Book owned