pogomom's Full Review: Robert Louis Stevenson and Margaret Campbell Hoope...
A Child’s Garden of Verses By Robert Louis Stevenson
Congratulations are in order to forkids on her 400th Epinions offering. This accomplishment is truly awe-inspiring. I take great pride in sharing in her joyous celebration by submitting this review of the book that had enormous impact during my tender years. To forkids, our esteemed Kids and Family Expert (among other equally deserved hats), I join the following members in offering my two cents to this commemorative event:
Having a sister, three years my senior, afforded me the opportunity to experience both sibling abuse (rivalry) and doting. Sis took enormous pride in bringing home papers from elementary school studded with gold stars and always marked by her teacher’s red pencil with the capital letter “A.” After school, she forced her lessons upon me, her earnest student. The attention was not only gratifying but served to advance my education at a very early age. Today, reading at three years is not uncommon; back in the 1950s it was a sign of great things to come. My parents, grandparents and our family friends rewarded me with the Golden Book series, Disney Books and HighLights for Children. I read aloud to my mother and friends with the zeal of a young Sarah Bernhardt. Receiving books for a birthday gift was the norm but this one remains with me as a most cherished possession and reminder of a simpler world.
To summarize A Child’s Garden of Verses as merely a book of poetry by one of our most beloved authors would be a great disservice. The theme running throughout this beautifully illustrated work of art is life from a child’s point of view. Penned in 1885, A Child’s Garden of Verses remains current and perfect in its vision thanks to the insights provided by Stevenson into his own childhood. Still, the project evokes a feeling of nostalgia and yearning for simpler days when “nursie” cared for the wee ones’ needs and the universally happy and disturbing thoughts normally internalized by children are shared by Stevenson.
The famed novelist dedicates this collection to his second mother, his first wife: “To Alison Cunningham From Her Boy.” The genius of Stevenson’s gift is not lost in this compilation of reminiscences from his earliest days. The honesty that comes with every simple phrase attracted me to “A Child’s Garden” when I first read the opening lines. I related and craved the ability to travel back in time and share the garden with young Robert.
I received many gifts on my fifth birthday. Of all the items arriving gaily wrapped in bright paper and beribboned by mothers of my friends and relatives, this one book remains with me not only in form but also in spirit. While the Ginny Dolls, Hula Hoops and games lost their luster and attraction, Grandma’s gift became a part of my nightly routine.
The lush illustrations, some unnerving and others soothing, added a sense of history to my habitual enjoyment of the written words. One drawing in particular grabbed my attention. Accompanying “My Shadow” was a dark watercolor representation of a young girl in a long white peasant style nightgown. She climbed a richly carpeted staircase with heavily carved wooden handrails. In her hand was the object of my desire, an old-fashioned candleholder with a curved metal handle and an attached drip tray composed of gleaming brass. The flame’s brilliance illuminated the scene casting elongated shadows of the stair railing and the young girl onto the wall behind her. This powerful image stays with me; easily evoked by reciting my favorite poem:
My Shadow
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow -
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepyhead,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
Picking a favorite from the sixty-four poems presented required no conscious effort. My Shadow fit like a glove, becoming as much a part of me as other best friends acquired in my youth. The timeless message of this and all the prose contained between the leather bindings reeks of innocence and imagination lost as the years pile up and we face the inevitable. Returning to my “Child’s Garden” serves as a personal time machine by bringing me back to a formerly owned myopic view of life and my surroundings.
Four distinct chapters divide this work into representations of equally unique trains of thought:
· A Child’s Garden of Verses takes us through more than forty memories conjured by Stevenson’s brilliant mind. Recalling the frustration of being sent to Bed in Summer while daylight still prevailed to the various simple musings expressed in A Thought, At the Sea-side and Young Night-Thought brings us into a world not so far from our own youth. In Whole Duty of Children the oldest reprimand to assault young ears echoes in:
A child should always say what's true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table;
At least as far as he is able.
Memorable poems of few lines and much meaning give insight into Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncluttered views in Rain, Pirate Story, Foreign Lands, Windy Nights, Travel, Singing, Looking Forward, A Good Play, Where Go the Boats? and Auntie's Skirts.
The Land of Counterpane, The Land of Nod, System, Escape at Bedtime and My Shadow let us into his realm of understanding a world less tactile and more foreboding in nature. Imagination run amok in the shape of a young boy born one hundred and fifty years ago takes us by the hand and leads us through his days.
· The Child Alone exposes an imaginary friend in The Unseen Playmate. Instead of a contrived or schizoid view of this phenomenon, Stevenson explains that the playmate only comes to happy, good children. Expressing the joy of stretching his imagination to the limits in My Ship and I and My Kingdom, we share in the pleasure of taking beloved toys and casting them in roles of the youth’s choosing. Building blocks, toy soldiers, nuts gathered during a walk in the woods and the flickering flames of a winter’s hearth fire all become something greater in the mind of a child. Inanimate objects to the cluttered adult mind take on a life of their own when viewed by an untainted eye.
· Garden Days explores the wonders of nature through eight stages beginning with Night and Day, a study of the rigid laws of nature combined with the daily routine within Stevenson’s household. Explaining the joy of the daylight hours, our gift includes studies of Nest Eggs, The Flowers, Summer Sun, Autumn Fires, The Dumb Soldier, The Gardener and Historical Associations. Of these, The Dumb Soldier is a personal favorite. The author bestows the gift of ‘being’ upon a toy soldier hidden in the grass during a play scrimmage. The soldier witnesses all the great things nature offers but is unable to voice his pleasure. That chore is left to Stevenson in the closing lines:
Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows.
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.
· Envoys are Stevenson’s gifts to his loved ones. Within the final chapter reside personal messages entrusted to special people in his life. To Willie and Henrietta offers thanks to childhood playmates that truly understand the depth of meaning within the rhythmic phrasing. The threesome spent hours playing among the gardens and would spend many more hours watching their own children experience the same joy.
The brief To My Mother and To Auntie send wishes of memories found and reminders to adults that it was not that long ago since they, too, shared in the wonder of all things new.
To Minnie offers thanks to another beloved though inanimate friend in the shape of a statue coveted by a small boy. To My Name-Child is especially moving in that it was written to his son about the fact that he would share his father's world renown through the blessing of his name.
To Any Reader serves as the perfect closure for the relationship borne within pages between the reader and the poet:
As from the house your mother sees
You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear, he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.
The End
More Prose and Fiction by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Tales and novels:
New Arabian Nights, 2 vol. (1882; the stories in vol. 1 appeared as Latter-Day Arabian Nights, 1878; those in vol. 2 had appeared in The Cornhill and other magazines); Treasure Island (1883; serialized in a slightly different form in Young Folks, 1881-82); More New Arabian Nights, with Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson (1885); Prince Otto (1885); Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886); Kidnapped (1886; in Young Folks, 1886); The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887), including "Thrawn Janet" and "Olalla"; The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses (1888; in Young Folks, 1883); The Master of Ballantrae (1889; serialized in Scribner's Magazine, 1888-89); Catriona (1893), a sequel to Kidnapped; The Ebb-Tide, with Lloyd Osbourne (1894; serialized in To-Day, 1893-94); Weir of Hermiston (unfinished 1896); St. Ives, completed by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, pseudonym "Q" (1897).
Essays and miscellaneous:
An Inland Voyage (1878); Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879); Virginibus Puerisque (1881), collected essays, mainly from The Cornhill Magazine; Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882); Memories and Portraits (1887), 16 essays; Across the Plains (1892), 12 essays; Vailima Letters, to Sidney Colvin (1895); From Scotland to Silverado, ed. by J.D. Hart (1966), brings together all Stevenson's previously published and unpublished writings about his trip to California in 1879-80.
Poetry:
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885); Underwoods (1887), 38 poems in English, 16 in Scots; Ballads (1890); Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896). Collected Poems, ed. by J. Adam Smith, 2nd ed. (1971), is the standard edition of Stevenson's poetry.
And one more time: Congratulations Forkids!!!
From your not-so-secret admirers!
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