Burnett lived at Great Maytham for almost ten years, but it was only after she returned to America that she wrote what would become her most famous novel.
I was very intrigued by the fact that just after Burnett left Great Maytham, the gardens were redesigned by the famous Arts and Crafts architect Edward Lutyens, and planted by his friend, the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. I did a great deal of research on Jekyll when I was writing A BITTER FEAST--the gardens at Beck House are based on Jekyll's designs, and Beck House itself was (fictionally) built at almost the exact time Lutyens was restoring Great Maytham.
Burnett, like Jekyll, was quite the character, eccentric and forward-thinking. She was also prolific, writing more than fifty popular novels, mostly for adults. It's unlikely she would have expected to be remembered for a children's book.
Of course, after seeing the video, I had to hunt up my copy of the book--which turned out to be not mine, but my daughter's, inscribed to her by her paternal grandmother on her 11th birthday. It had been years since I'd read it, and I picked it up more out of curiosity than a real desire to reread it, but after the first few pages I was hooked. I barely put the book down until I finished it the next day.
It's a simple enough story. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox, orphaned by a cholera epidemic in India, is sent to her widowed uncle's grand house on the Yorkshire Moors. Unloved and unloveable, Mary is left to her own devices, but she soon discovers a gate leading to a secret and neglected garden. Mary, her invalid cousin, and a local boy, Dickon, hatch a plan to bring the garden back to life, and in doing so, Mary and her cousin are made whole.
The prose is so lush, evocative, and joyous, and the children's emotional journey so compelling, that I hated for the book to end. My daughter's copy is a bit tattered, so I ordered my own, to read whenever I need a boost and a little escape from the present day woes.
So, dear REDS and readers, are you finding any classics a comfort these days?
