Frances Hodgson Burnett Quote
Might I, quavered Mary, might I have a bit of earth?In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.Earth! he repeated. What do you mean?To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive, Mary faltered.He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.Do you—care about gardens so much, he said slowly.I didn’t know about them in India, said Mary. I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.A bit of earth, he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.You can have as much earth as you want, he said. You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want, with something like a smile, take it, child, and make it come alive.
Might I, quavered Mary, might I have a bit of earth?In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.Earth! he repeated. What do you mean?To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive, Mary faltered.He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes.Do you—care about gardens so much, he said slowly.I didn’t know about them in India, said Mary. I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made little beds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different.Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room.A bit of earth, he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind.You can have as much earth as you want, he said. You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want, with something like a smile, take it, child, and make it come alive.
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About Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.
Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.