Burnett, Frances Hodgson (1849–1924)

views updated

Burnett, Frances Hodgson (1849–1924)

English-American author of novels and stories for children and adults, including The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and The Little Princess. Born Frances Eliza Hodgson on November 24, 1849, on York Street, Cheetham, Manchester, England; died on Long Island, New York, on October 29, 1924; third of five children of Edwin (a silversmith and dealer in hardware and interior furnishings) and Eliza (Boond) Hodgson (a homemaker); married Swan M. Burnett, September 19, 1873 (divorced, 1898); married Stephen Townesend (a physician and actor), 1900 (divorced, 1901); children: (first marriage) Lionel (1874–1890); Vivian (1876–1937).

Immigrated to Tennessee (1865); published first stories at 17 and first novel, That Lass o'Lowrie's (1877); published Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886); A Little Princess (1905); The Secret Garden (1911); wrote over 50 books, adapted several for the stage, published stories in Peterson's Ladies' Magazine, Scribner's, Harper's, and St. Nicholas.

Frances Hodgson Burnett once recalled that her life was "founded and formed upon books," claiming that her love of reading dated from the age of three when she picked out a verse from the New Testament. The middle child of five, Burnett spent much of her early childhood either immersed in books or dramatizing them with her dolls. She described herself as a "story maniac," one who was reprimanded for neglecting the friends she visited because of her avid interest in any book she happened to see lying on a table in their home. It is not surprising, then, that a girl who was addicted to reading as a child would become a writer as an adult.

The Hodgson family was prosperous when Frances was born in 1849 in Manchester, England. Her father's business flourished as long as the mills in the newly industrialized city flourished. When Frances was four, however, her father died of apoplexy, leaving her mother with five children to raise and a business to run. Eliza Hodgson not only had little commercial experience, but the economy of Manchester was affected negatively by the American Civil War and the decline in trade. In 1855, Eliza Hodgson sold their comfortable house and moved the family to smaller quarters in Islington Square, a marginal area of the city. Frances was one of the "Square children" as distinct from the working class "Street children." She described her neighborhood as "a sort of oasis in the midst of small thoroughfares and back streets where factory operatives lived and where the broadest Lancashire dialect throve." Although forbidden to play with the Street children (at least in part because she might start speaking in their lower-class accent), Burnett found their customs, manners, and language fascinating and the poverty of their lives engrossing. In the square at Islington, she first came to know many of the characters who would later appear in her books. The Islington house also had a back garden, which stimulated her imagination, "There were rosebushes and lilac-bushes and

rhododendrons, and there were laburnums and snowballs. Elephants and tigers might have lurked there, and there might have been fairies or gypsies." Burnett began to turn some of her material into stories, writing mostly on her slate (which had to be erased as soon as it was covered with writing) or between the lines of old account books donated by the cook. Her stories, she recalled, were "wildly romantic and preposterously sentimental," but Frances began, even at the age of ten or twelve, to develop her talents for description and plots.

Economic distress led Eliza Hodgson to accept her brother's invitation to move the family from Manchester to the United States in May 1865. Unfortunately, the Hodgsons discovered when they arrived in Knoxville, Tennessee, that, after the Civil War, hard times also existed on the other side of the Atlantic. The three girls and their mother settled in a log cabin in the tiny community of New Market. Due to her mother's poor health and the family's poverty, Burnett turned her energies toward earning a living. She started a small school, raised chickens, and gave piano lessons. In 1867, after they had moved closer to Knoxville, Frances submitted her first story to a publisher. Her purpose, she wrote, was "remuneration." Godey's Ladies Book accepted her manuscript on the condition that she submit an additional story. At age 17, she published her first two stories, netting a total of $35. Her work was popular with readers who enjoyed the tales of worthy heroes and heroines who over-came hardship and bad luck, and soon Frances had stories accepted by more prestigious magazines, such as Scribner's and Harper's. After her mother's death in 1870, Burnett became completely responsible for supporting her sisters with the proceeds from her writing.

I do not know whether many people realize how much more than is ever written there really is in a story.
—Frances Hodgson Burnett

In 1872, she became engaged to an old New Market acquaintance, Dr. Swan Burnett. Before they married, however, she spent a year in England, financed by the proceeds from her writing. During her lifetime, she crossed the Atlantic 33 times, building a life and reputation in both Europe and the United States. After their 1873 marriage, the Burnetts lived in Knoxville; their first son Lionel was born there in 1874. Frances longed for a more pleasant climate and a more cosmopolitan setting, and, in 1875, they moved to Paris, where her husband studied with French eye and ear surgeons, financed by the proceeds from Frances' writing. During this time, her first novel That Lass o'Lowrie's was published in Scribner's as a serial and also appeared as a book. In 1876, she gave birth to her second son Vivian. The family returned to the United States, settling in Washington D.C. where Burnett continued the frantic pace of her writing to pay the household expenses. By 1878, she was exhausted. "Write—write—write. Be sick, be tired, be weak and out of ideas, if you choose; but write! … Does anyone ever think I ought to be happy?" And although Burnett continued to produce an incredible amount of work, her fame was assured after the 1886 publication of her first full-length children's story, Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Like several of her other popular stories, Little Lord Fauntleroy was a modern version of the Cinderella myth, this time with a male hero. The title evokes an image of a simpering little boy in a velvet suit, with his hair in long golden curls. Had the story really featured such a title character, it is unlikely it would have achieved its phenomenal popularity. Some of the unfortunate associations of the name Lord Fauntleroy come from the illustrations by Reginald Birch in the original edition. Based on photographs of Burnett's younger son Vivian wearing curls and velvet, the image became a plague to small boys and a delight to late Victorian mothers. The notion of the hero as a sissy was not helped by the inexplicable practice of casting girls in the title role in several stage and screen adaptations, including a 1914 movie starring a quite womanly Mary Pickford . When Vivian died during a boating mishap off Long Island Sound in 1937, one headline screamed: ORIGINAL "FAUNTLEROY" DIES IN BOAT; the newspaper's subhead went on to say, "Vivian Burnett, Author's Son who Devoted Life to Escaping 'Sissified' Role, is Stricken at Helm—Manoeuvres Yawl to get 2 Men and 2 Women from Overturned Craft, Then Collapses."

Most critics agree that the actual Little Lord Fauntleroy was better than its reputation would suggest. It is the story of a brave, virtuous, and democratic American boy who wins over and reforms his arrogant and aristocratic grandfather. It includes unbelievable coincidences and a rather maudlin relationship between the little lord and his mother, called "Dearest." But compared to much of the contemporary children's literature, Burnett's "rags to riches" story was refreshingly unsentimental.

The success of Little Lord Fauntleroy brought several changes to Burnett—financial success, which she would work feverishly to maintain, and an increasing focus on writing for children rather than adults. Among the more than 20 books she wrote for a juvenile audience, two others are particularly important: Sara Crewe, which was revised and expanded to become A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden. Another story of the reversal of fortune, A Little Princess tells of a rich, pampered girl who is transformed into a virtual servant at Miss Michin's school when her father dies bankrupt. But because Sara is an essentially noble character, she triumphs over economic circumstances. Unlike Fauntleroy, which is told from an adult point of view, The Little Princess is related in Sara's voice. It benefits from less sentimentality and more autobiographical detail. Burnett recognized the importance of descriptive detail to her young audience. "It is not enough to mention they have tea," she said, "you must specify the muffins."

In 1911, Burnett published The Secret Garden, her most enduring work. Marghanita Laski called it "the most satisfying children's book I know." Much of the satisfaction and continuing appeal of the book come from Burnett's development of the major characters, Mary and Colin, from sickly and utterly unattractive to warm and healthy children through their creative work in the garden. The Secret Garden provides readers with models who come to believe in themselves and who follow their own consciences rather than the advice of their elders. On the other hand, the book ends with Mary in a secondary role to Colin, who seems to be assuming his place as the "natural" heir to the manor.

Burnett herself never played a subordinate role in her adult life, particularly as she always provided the majority of her family's income. With her earnings from Little Lord Fauntleroy and Sara Crewe, Frances and her sons set out in 1887 for 16 months in Europe. From this time, she and Swan Burnett spent little time together; they were usually on different sides of the Atlantic. The marriage ended in divorce in 1898.

Although Frances enjoyed increasing popularity and financial success, her personal life included considerable sorrow and suffering. Her older son Lionel died of consumption just before Christmas of 1890. Her second marriage, to Stephen Townesend, lasted only a year. He was ten years younger than Frances, and it seemed she married him mainly as a reward for his assistance in Lionel's last illness. "He talks about my 'duties as a wife' as if I had married him of my own accord," she wrote a friend, "as if I had not been forced and blackguarded and blackmailed into it." Some critics have suggested that Burnett was ambivalent about her non-traditional role as money earner, and that she tried to reconcile her fame and fortune with the conventional female role by playing a sort of fairy godmother.

During these years, Burnett rented a country house in England, called Maytham Hall. Some of the setting for The Secret Garden was drawn from its "nicely timbered park and beautiful old walled kitchen garden." The house included 17 or 18 bedrooms, as well as a library, billiard room, morning room, smoking room, drawing room, and several dining rooms. Burnett's writing had brought her a very long way from the log cabin in Tennessee—a reversal of fortune not unlike the experience in many of her stories. She published her autobiography, The One I Knew Best of All, in 1893. It was originally intended as a children's book, but it became an adult book during the writing process. Burnett said the memoir, subtitled A Memory of the Mind of a Child, belonged to grown-ups, "especially those who are interested in children as a sort of psychological study."

In 1905, she became an American citizen, and, in 1908, began construction of a large house at Plandome, Long Island, overlooking Manhasset Bay. Frances Hodgson Burnett continued to write until the end of her life. Her last major children's book, The Lost Prince, appeared in 1915. Published during World War I, the story tells of the rightful heir to the throne of Samavia, who seeks to restore justice, peace, and freedom for everyone. She also wrote several more adult books, the last, In the Garden, was published posthumously in 1925.

Frances Hodgson Burnett died at her Long Island house in 1924. Anticipating perhaps that much of her work would become unfashionable in the postwar world, she defended her purpose: "There is enough … in all our lives that we cannot get away from. What we all want is more of the other things—life, love, hope—and an assurance that they are true. With the best that was in me I have tried to write more happiness into the world."