books with toxic undercurrents of rape, scandal, and physical abuse instead of the flowery stories for children that had sealed her fame, but her efforts had done nothing to revive her literary reputation. Alone in her garden in 1910, she had plenty of time to think things over.
Solitude used to be a blessing. It was in solitude that she discovered the seedy and the beautiful side of Manchester, England, the city in which she was a little girl, blissfully unaware of her family’s rapid slide into poverty and obscurity. It was in solitude that she discovered the wilds of the countryside around Knoxville, Tennessee, where she moved with her mother and siblings in search of a better life away from Manchester’s dying economy, which had been ravaged by the decline of cotton production due to the American Civil War. A lonely teenager, Frances picked wild grapes in the woods, selling the fruit and using the proceeds to buy paper for the writing she had already discovered could bring in infinitesimal sums to help support her family. Back then, she feared she would never be successful: her surroundings were simply too plain and fortune too far away to grasp. “What is there to feed my poor, little, busy brain in this useless, weary, threadbare life? I can’t eat my own heart forever,” she wrote fretfully to a suitor. “I can’t write things that are worth reading if I never see things which are worth seeing, or speak to people who are worth hearing. I cannot weave silk if I see nothing but calico—calico—calico.”
The calico years stretched into a decade, and Frances, who described herself as “a pen-driving machine,” knew that writing was her only hope. She staunchly ignored the repeated proposals of her Knoxville neighbor, Swan Burnett, returning briefly to England in pursuit of glamour and success. On her return, she finally gave in to Swan’s steadfast courtship, agreeing to accompany him to Paris as he pursued studies in his specialty, eye and ear medicine. The newlyweds were poor, but as Frances continued to write, their fortunes improved steadily. By the time her breakthrough novel,
Frances had long forgotten her calico by the time her little sons came along, breaking the solitude she felt under the surface of her outwardly successful marriage. Her treatment of them provoked a minor scandal in itself when she allowed them to sleep at her feet while she wrote her best sellers, giving rise to ugly talk when it was revealed that they dug in her expansive gardens using her finest silver. They were her best friends, her confidants, her literary inspiration for books like
But motherhood, as revered as it was in Victorian society, was not enough to shade Frances from unsavory accusations. She may have been a mother, but she was one who smoked cigarettes and indulged in expensive, opulent art and clothing. At first she was a glamorous enigma, but her growing fame meant growing scrutiny. Her frivolous dress and love of society earned her the slightly mocking nickname “Fluffy,” a moniker she took in stride, even adopting the name in her correspondence. Though she had plenty of time for balls, at-homes, and parties, Frances kept to a brutal work schedule, often appearing at social functions peaked and exhausted. The gossips were intrigued. She was clearly unhappy in her marriage, and for a while stifled, bored wives were stock characters in her popular novels. And why did she work so hard, anyway? Couldn’t her husband pay the bills?
Truth be told, she had supported Swan for so long that she knew no other way. Yes, it was unconventional for a woman to be the family breadwinner, but she saw no reason to stop once the money really appeared. Her exhaustion pointed to a deeper problem, an addiction to self-sacrifice and stress. Finally she collapsed, taking a three-year sabbatical from writing and devoting herself to her sons.
The years that followed bore little resemblance to anything but her most sordid tales. Unable to risk the fallout of a divorce, Frances soldiered on in an untenable relationship, the constant nagging of the publicity hounds who followed her every move making a bad marriage even worse. The rumors were incessant, but so were her own infidelities, some of which kept her away from the United States for long periods of time. She was overseas with Stephen Townesend, a much younger man, when she got news that her son Lionel had a mild case of influenza.
Herself struggling to recover from a riding accident that had left her in a coma for several days, Frances had no way of knowing that her son’s illness was severe. It is unclear when she realized that Lionel was dying, but she did not hurry to his bedside. Her erratic visits were punctuated by liaisons with Stephen and long absences that involved giving away toys at children’s charity events in her ailing son’s name. Finally, she returned to Lionel. She took him overseas, seeking relief at sanatoriums across Europe, but to no avail. The sixteen-year-old died of tuberculosis in December 1890.
Still devastated six years after Lionel’s death, Frances finally found the strength to do what she had feared for years. But her 1898 divorce only created more marital troubles. Stephen transformed from ardent lover to angry man, finally blackmailing her into a marriage marred by angry episodes that seemed to be related to Stephen’s bipolar illness. “He talks about ‘my duties as a wife,’ “ wrote an angry Frances, “as if I had married him of my own accord—as if I had not been forced and blackguarded and blackmailed into it.” Frustrated by the bad press surrounding her attachment to a much younger man, Frances protested, then resigned herself to paying him to stay away from her until their divorce two years later. Had it really come to this?
Frances’s own childhood story was full of enchantment, of odds and tatters, and finally, of riches. The tales this childhood had inspired gained her acclaim and money. Now, weathered with years of hardship and strain, she looked back onto that little girl in a new light, squinting hard to see the woman inside who was more than frivolous “Fluffy.” Despite everything, she was still unabashedly romantic and guardedly optimistic. She was a woman who believed in vague spirits and mysticism in the face of the loss of everything she held dear. Looking inside, Frances began to write.
She had always found solace in the outdoors, and her garden became her greatest comfort. Surrounded by her books, her grandchildren, and the unorthodox spirituality she had dabbled in since her son’s death, she knew it was time to rest. Finally free from the years of self-sacrifice and toil, the constant pressure to conjure up money and prestige out of thin air with that pen of hers, she had a moment to breathe in and out again. And then she did what she always did. She started writing, devoting herself to another children’s story. But this time it was different. This time, she had magic on her side.
Any girl who has snapped sourly at her parents or scowled at well-meaning friends won’t just identify with the loathsome, dour heroine of
Mary is not a favorable candidate for transplantation of any kind. She longs for companionship but fears it, wilting in her uncle’s locked-up house and unable to adjust to servants who don’t do as she bids them, food that doesn’t taste as it ought, and a climate that’s the polar opposite of the Indian heat in which she was raised. She seems poised to curl up and die in the interminable English winter that chilled this California girl to the bone every time I picked up
The details of
Yes, Mary grows, and having a place of her own is part of the equation. The garden, that “bit of earth” she is granted so grudgingly, is to be her new home for now. Left for dead so many years ago, the garden becomes a
