“The first story was accepted and all subsequent stories sent. Then Mrs. Burnett graduated to Peterson’s Magazine. The Petersons were great friends of Mrs. Burnett in her early days. They recommended that she send some of her stories to the Century, which she did, but the quality of them was so English that the Century editors suspected they were not original but copied by the little Tennessee girl from stories in English magazines. When her second story was sent to them, they gave expression to their doubt. The thing was explained to them, and the publication of the stories—I believe the first was Surly Tim’s Troubles—was made immediately.
“Mrs. Burnett has always kept in touch with England and English life. As soon as she had made her success, in fact, just after the publication of That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, she went back to England, and has spent some part of nearly every year in England since then. She has lived in all sections of England and has had houses in London; one at 63 Portland Place, and another in Charles Street, Mayfair. She has had country homes in Norfolk, Kent and Surrey. For nearly fifteen years she leased a very interesting old house in Kent, Maytham Hall, really the manor house of a very ancient estate. The house stands in the most wonderful of Kentish gardens, which Mrs. Burnett, with her enthusiasm for gardening, made even more beautiful than they were when she took them.
“Maytham Hall was the homestead of an ancient family of Moneypenneys. On the corner of the Hall grounds stands an ancient Norman church—the church of the Hundred of Rolvenden which is mentioned in the Domesday Book. All the Moneypenneys are buried in this church, which, in its simple way, is of remarkable beauty. Their tombstones surround the great Hall pew, which is almost as big as a room, and has tables and chairs in it. The Hall grounds stand between two very picturesque villages, both appanages of the estate, one called Rolvenden Village and the other Rolvenden Street. They are as picturesque as they can be, full of the quaint old gaffers and gammers.
“As to the American side of Mrs. Burnett, she has lived over here in touch with the most characteristically and the most broadly American society in Washington and later in New York and its vicinity. As a young girl she saw a good deal of New York life and it was during that time, I imagine, that she got the impressions that produced the earlier part of The Shuttle. Her saying that she was ‘English by birth and American by the birth of her two sons’ I have always thought an amusing expression of her case. In describing Bettina to me, once, she said that Bettina was a woman’s version of the cleverness and sense of values that the first Reuben Vandenpoel expressed. This seems to me to be the underlying quality in Bettina. Her sense of the world of things backed by her balance, her self-control and her typical American practicality.”
Mrs. Burnett loathes New York for its noise and dirt. Though she no longer has Maytham Hall with its great terraced lawns and its rose gardens she has a big country place near Manhasset, Long Island, New York, called Plandome. It is within commuting distance of New York but oh, how different!
A comfortable, rambling house is surrounded by gardens for which Mrs. Burnett buys flowers as uncontrollably as a bibliophile buys books. The house faces northwest and has “remarkable glimpses of sunsets.” Mrs. Burnett naturally has many children as visitors. For them there is a great doll house, the home of Lady Annabelle, who is larger than many of the youngsters that call on her, and who has a wonderful wardrobe. The big house is full of nests of children’s toys. It also contains much age-darkened furniture brought over from Maytham Hall, principally oak pieces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which Mrs. Burnett has collected. Lady Annabelle’s residence, for example, was formerly a bread and cheese cupboard which an antiquarian would tell you was probably made by a skilled woodworker not later than the year 1500.
As if visitors were not enough, in such numbers as are hers, Mrs. Burnett is always “neighborizing.” To children who live near by her she read chapters of The Secret Garden as they were finished. Now, she is a most skillful reader. A very little girl of the lot sat listening for hours on end. Impressions which flowered in The Secret Garden came from Maytham Hall where the rose gardens are surrounded by walls about 900 years old. Peasemarsh, Smallhive, Benenden are the names of towns not far from Maytham Hall and all over the countryside you may encounter, or could not many years back, children wearing red cloaks given them by the Earl of Cranbrook. And what is the secret of The Secret Garden? What does all this delightful picturesqueness enclose? Why, an idea, namely, that if a healthful thought be planted in the mind it pushes out unhealthful thoughts; and that if the body be unwell it adjusts itself to the healthful thought and grows well. The secret garden which, with its roses, surrounds the characters of the story, plants in their minds all sorts of healthful thoughts. Mrs. Burnett is not metaphysical, however. “Her roses, she declares, are always sincere and endlessly instructive.”
She has suffered much from people who have interviewed her and have not understood her, departing to write what they wanted her to say. She has a philosophy but it is written in her books, definitely and decidedly. It has no other existence and it cannot be separated from the tales which are its embodiment. It is a peculiar characteristic of hers that the moment an idea—a “concept” philosophically speaking—formulates itself in her mind it does so as some part of a story. Her pleasant persons and places have as definite ideas and theories and beliefs as the most serious thesis but since they never presented themselves abstractly to Mrs. Burnett they are not so conveyed by her. It is really presumptuous, under the circumstances, to endeavor to express them abstractly as we have just done in the case of The Secret Garden.
This will seem a hard saying to most of us, who are trained to try to get at the kernel of everything. All modern education is designed to teach men and women to think and express themselves abstractly with ease and freedom and surety. Why? Because since the Greeks certain abstractions and abstract thought and expression generally have been prized as the best and safest and handiest medium of intellectual exchanges. They are the intellectual coinage—a kind of verbal money that obviates the clumsy old methods of barter. But while we are all used to money and would not do without it we have to remember that the majority of mankind still carries on a vast amount of intellectual exchange by barter. You tell me an actual incident or a story you have heard and I tell you what I have experienced or heard. We “swap” experiences and knowledge and each benefits by what he gets from the other without so much as drawing a single abstract conclusion or generalization. The method has its disadvantages but lack of interest is not one of them!
Understand this and you understand Mrs. Burnett. She is dealing with you as you would deal with your neighbor. You would not go to your neighbor and say: “It is possible to live too long.” You would go and tell him: “John Smith’s mother isn’t treated decently. Yesterday,” etc., and you would relate the actual occurrence. He would nod. And he would tell you something in exchange. And neither of you would generalize about your respective narrations, but each of you would take the lesson in them well to heart. That is the way of the world and of neighbors. It is Mrs. Burnett’s easily comprehended way too.