Frances Hodgson Burnett Quote
When Miss Minchin sent her sister, Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she could not open the door.I have locked it, said a queer, polite little voice from inside. I want to be quite by myself, if you please.Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking almost alarmed.I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister, she said. She has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of noise.It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them do, Miss Minchin answered. I expected that a child as much spoiled as she is would set the whole house in an uproar. If ever a child was given her own way in everything, she is.I’ve been opening her trunks and putting her things away, said Miss Amelia. I never saw anything like them--sable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing. You have seen some of her clothes. What do you think of them?I think they are perfectly ridiculous, replied Miss Minchin, sharply; but they will look very well at the head of the line when we take the schoolchildren to church on Sunday. She has been provided for as if she were a little princess.And upstairs in the locked room Sara and Emily sat on the floor and stared at the corner round which the cab had disappeared, while Captain Crewe looked backward, waving and kissing his hand as if he could not bear to stop.
When Miss Minchin sent her sister, Miss Amelia, to see what the child was doing, she found she could not open the door.I have locked it, said a queer, polite little voice from inside. I want to be quite by myself, if you please.Miss Amelia was fat and dumpy, and stood very much in awe of her sister. She was really the better-natured person of the two, but she never disobeyed Miss Minchin. She went downstairs again, looking almost alarmed.I never saw such a funny, old-fashioned child, sister, she said. She has locked herself in, and she is not making the least particle of noise.It is much better than if she kicked and screamed, as some of them do, Miss Minchin answered. I expected that a child as much spoiled as she is would set the whole house in an uproar. If ever a child was given her own way in everything, she is.I’ve been opening her trunks and putting her things away, said Miss Amelia. I never saw anything like them--sable and ermine on her coats, and real Valenciennes lace on her underclothing. You have seen some of her clothes. What do you think of them?I think they are perfectly ridiculous, replied Miss Minchin, sharply; but they will look very well at the head of the line when we take the schoolchildren to church on Sunday. She has been provided for as if she were a little princess.And upstairs in the locked room Sara and Emily sat on the floor and stared at the corner round which the cab had disappeared, while Captain Crewe looked backward, waving and kissing his hand as if he could not bear to stop.
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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.