Frances Hodgson Burnett ~ "Waiting for the Party"

One would rightfully envision the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Little Princess, and The Secret Garden in England, would they not, amidst a pastoral scene of walled flora and fauna? Frances Hodgson Burnett was, indeed, born in England, but her family moved to the United States when Frances was fifteen.  In Waiting for the Party, a biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett, this fateful passage in her life is described: "She was fifteen and a half and her character was formed. The characteristics she showed then, so she herself maintained, were to stay with her for the rest of her life. She was curious, romantic, buoyant, compassionate, generous, restless and not very wise...The Hodgson family reached Tennessee in June."

 Not only did they move to the United States.  ~ they lived in two small towns in East Tennessee named New Market and Dandridge.  It was 1865, and the Civil War was just over. Although they saw destruction everywhere and had to live in a tiny cabin (which Frances compared to Fenimore Cooper), Frances was enraptured by the forests.

Historic marker dedicated to Frances in New Market, TN

"All you could see were the hills and the forests and the vast clear blue sky. A field sloped upwards beyond the log-cabin. There were green aisles of tall, broad-leaved Indian corn, and beyond the cornfield, the forest. 'There is a wide, wide distance - a distance which is more than a matter of mere space - between a great, murky manufacturing town in England, and the mountains and forests in Tennessee - forests which seemed endlessly deep, mountains covered with their depths of greenness, their pines and laurels, swaying and blooming, vines of wild grape and scarlet trumpet-flowers swaying and blooming among them, tangles with the branches of sumach and sassafras.' Frances stopped pretending in the old way. 'There was no need to pretend...' She began to deal with emotions. In Islingon Squre she had imagined - in the forests she began to feel."

She made money by teaching and gathering berries for the family to sell. She also gave music lessons and started a seminary for young people. She married Dr. Swan Burnett, and somewhere along the line, it seems she befriended the Williams in Greeneville. The Williamses lived in the Dickson-Williams Mansion, once called the "Showplace of East Tennessee." It was here that the famed Confederate General John Hunt Morgan met his untimely end.

The Dickson-Williams Mansion

There is now a room in the mansion dedicated to Frances Hodgson Burnett, and in it is the desk on which she wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy. Her own son had lamented the fact that there were no books for young boys, so she corrected the omission.

Frances Hodgson Burnett Desk

Vintage edition of Little Lord Fauntleroy

How thankful I am that she wrote her timeless classics for girls as well! And what a wonderful surprise to find yet another classical connection in my own backyard.

 

Secret Garden print by Charles Robinson