The Wonderful Garden

E. Nesbit

Description

While their parents are away in India, Caroline, Charlotte and Charles are left with their great uncle Charles. Looking for entertainment, they come across an old book entitled “The Language of Flowers”, which seems to contain a variety of magical spells. The trio waste no time in trying to perform these invocations, which may or may not have been the cause of the decidedly queer things that happen next. Edith Nesbit's 1911 “The Wonderful Garden” is a fantastic example of children's literature that would make for perfect bedtime reading and is not to be missed by fans and collectors of her seminal literature. Contents include: “The Beginning”, “The Manor House”, “The Wonderful Garden”, “In Thessalonians”, “The Midnight Adventure”, “Hunted”, “Being Detectives”, “The Heroine”, “The Morning After”, “Brewing the Spell”, “The Rosicrucians”, “The Other Books”, “The Rosy Cure”, “The Mineral Woman”, “Justice”, “The Appeal to Caesar”, “The Le-O-Pard”, “The Leopard's-Bane”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Imaginaire
• Magical Realism
• Young Adult Fiction
• Queer

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 17 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528787628
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE WONDERFUL GARDEN
OR THE THREE C.’s
By
E. NESBIT
AUTHOR OF The Would-Be-Goods, The Amulet, Etc .
With illustrations by
H. R. MILLAR

First published in 1911


This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library


To Cecily, Kathleen and Mavis Carter With love from E. Nesbit
Crowl ink, Sussex , 1911.


Contents
E. Nesbit
CHAPTER I T HE BEGINNING
CHAPTER II THE MANOR HOUSE
CHAPTER III THE WOND ERFUL GARDEN
CHAPTER IV IN T HESSALONIANS
CHAPTER V THE MIDNIG HT ADVENTURE
CHAPT ER VI HUNTED
CHAPTER VII BEIN G DETECTIVES
CHAPTER VIII THE HEROINE
CHAPTER IX THE M ORNING AFTER
CHAPTER X BREWI NG THE SPELL
CHAPTER XI THE ROSICURIANS
CHAPTER XII TH E OTHER BOOK
CHAPTER XIII T HE ROSY CURE
CHAPTER XIV THE M INERAL WOMAN
CHAPTE R XV JUSTICE
CHAPTER XVI THE APP EAL TO CÆSAR
CHAPTER XVII T HE LE-O-PARD
CHAPTER XVIII THE LE OPARD’S-BANE
CHAPTER XI X F. OF H.D.
CHAPTER XX T HE WAXEN MAN
CHAPTER XXI THE ATONEME NT OF RUPERT
CHAPTER XXII THE PORTRAIT
CHAPTER X XIII THE END




Illustrations
And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady.
There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery.
‘You sit next hi m, Charles.’
‘They burned her f or a witch.’
‘How beautifully everything grows here.’
Of course they all l iked to try.
A hand was raised.
‘Just remember we’re yours to the death.’
‘I believed you—without that,’ sai d Charlotte.
They were the footprints, beyond any doub t, of a boy.
‘Fetches him a bite of something.’
‘If I whistle, y ou lay low.’
Showed her a green parrot sittin g on a nest.
He screwed up his nose.
‘It’s a Nihilist bomb, come away!‘
Rupert roll ed into bed.
He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there.
‘I can’t attend to yo u. Go away!‘
Found the broken paling and slip ped through.
Rupert was bundled into the body of the car.
Something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage.
‘It’s me; it’s Rupert,’ he shouted.
Charles had his first swim ming lesson.
Nothing much happened e xcept smoke.
Charlotte found a thin black-coated shoulder a very good plac e to cry on.
‘Take your last loo k,’ he said.


E. Nesbit
Edith Nesbit was born in Kennington, Surrey in 1858. Her family moved around constantly during her youth, living variously in Brighton, Buckinghamshire, France, Spain and Germany, before settling for three years in Halstead in north-west Kent, a location which later inspired her well-known novel, The Railway Children. In 1880, Nesbit married Hubert Bland, and her writing talents – which had been in evidence during her teens – were quickly needed to bring in e xtra money.
Over the course of her life, Nesbit would go on to publish approximately 40 books for children, including novels, collections of stories and picture books. Among her best-known works are The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1898), The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The Railway Children (1906). Nesbit is regarded by many critics as the first truly 'modern' children's writer, in that she replaced the fantastical worlds utilised by authors such as Lewis Carroll with real-life settings marked by the occasional intrusion of magic. In this, Nesbit is seen as a precursor to writers such as J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis. Nesbit was also a lifelong socialist; in 1884 she was among the founding members of the influential Fabian Society. For much of her adult life she was an active lecturer and prolific writer on socialism.
Having suffered from lung cancer for some years, Nesbit died in 1924 at New Romney, Ke nt, aged 65.





And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady.


CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING
It was Caroline’s birthday, and she had had some very pleasant presents. There was a blotting-book of blue leather (at least, it looked like leather), with pink and purple roses painted on it, from her younger sister Charlotte; and a paint-box—from her brother Charles—as good as new.
‘I’ve hardly used it at all,’ he said, ‘and it’s much nicer than anything I could have bought you with my own money, and I’ve wiped all the pa ints clean.’
‘It’s lovely,’ said Caroline; ‘and the beautiful br ushes, too!’
‘Real fitch,’ said Charles proudly. ‘They’ve got points li ke needles.’
‘Just like,’ said Caroline, putting them one after the other into her mouth, and then holding them up t o the light.
Besides the paint-box and the blotting-book, a tin-lined case had come from India, with a set of carved chess-men from father, and from mother some red and blue scarves, and, most glorious of imaginable gifts, a l eopard-skin.
‘They will brighten the play-room a little,’ said mother in her letter. A nd they did.
Aunt Emmeline had given a copy of Sesame and Lilies , which is supposed to be good for girls, though a little difficult when you are only twelve; and Uncle Percival had presented a grey leather pocket-book and an olive-wood paper-knife with ‘Sorrento’ on the handle. The cook and housemaid had given needle-book and pin-cushion; and Miss Peckitt, the little dressmaker who came to the house to make the girls’ dresses, brought a small, thin book bound in red, with little hard raised spots like pin-heads all over it, and hoped Miss Caroline would be kind enoug h to accept.
‘The book,’ said Miss Peckitt, ‘was mine when a child, and my dear mother also, as a young girl, was partial to it. Please accept it, Miss, with my humble b est wishes.’
‘Thanks most awfully,’ said Caroline, em bracing her.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Peckitt, straightening her collar after the sudden kiss. ‘Quite welcome, though unexpected; I had a bit of southernwood given to me this morning, which, you will find in the book, means a surprise.’
And it did, for the book was The Language of Flowers . And really that book was the beginning of this story, or, at least, if it wasn’t that book, it was the other book. But that comes later.
‘It’s ripping,’ said Caroline. ‘I do like it being red.’
The last present was a very large bunch of marigolds and a halfpenny birthday-card, with a gold anchor and pink clasped hands on it, from the boy who did the boots and knives.
‘We’ll decorate our room,’ said Charlotte, ‘in honour of your birthday, Caro. We’ve got lots of coloured things, and I’ll borrow cook’s Sunday scarf. It’s pink and purple shot silk—a perfect dream ! I’ll fly!’
She flew; and on her return they decorated their room.
You will perhaps wonder why they were so anxious to decorate their room with coloured things. It was because the house they lived in had so little colour in it that it was more like a print of a house in a book—all black and white and grey, you know—than like a house for real people to live in. It was a pale, neat, chilly house. There was, for instance, white straw matting on the floors instead of warm, coloured carpets; and on the stairs a sort of pale grey cocoa-nut matting. The window curtains were of soft cotton, and were palely lavender; they had no damask richness, no gay flowery patterns. The walls were not papered, but distempered in clean pale tints, and the general effect was rather like that of a very superior private hospital. The fact that the floors were washed every week with Sanitas gave a pleasing wood-yard scent. There were no coloured pictures in the house—only brown copies of great paintings by Raphael and Velazquez and peopl e like that.
The Stanmore children lived here because their father and mother were in India and their other relations in New Zealand—all except old Uncle Charles, who was their mother’s uncle and who had quarrelled with, or been quarrelled with by, their father and mother in b ygone years.
The owners of the house, whose name was Sandal, were relations of some sort—cousins, perhaps. Though they were called Uncle Percival and Aunt Emmeline they were not really thos e relations.
There was one thing about this so-called aunt and uncle—they were never cross and seldom unjust. Their natures seemed to be pale and calm like the colours of their house; and though the children had meat every day for dinner, Mr. and Miss Sandal never had anything but vegetables, and vegetables are said to be calming.
Now India is a highly-coloured country, as you may have noticed in pictures, and the Stanmore children felt faded in that grey house. And that is why they loved colour so much, and made so much fuss about the leopard-skin and the Indian embroideries and the marigold flowers and the little old red book and the wreath of gold forget-me-nots outside it encircling the words Language of Flowers .
‘When Aunt Emmeline sees how beautiful it is she’ll want to have the whole house scarved and leoparded, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Charlotte, hanging the pink scarf over a picture of a blind girl sitting on an orange, which is ca lled ‘Hope.’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ said Caroline. ‘I asked her once what old Uncle Charles’s house was like, that mother said was so beautiful, and she said it was far too full of things, and somewhat imperfectly ventilated.’
‘It’s a pity Uncle Charles was quarrelled with, I think,’ said Charlotte. ‘I shouldn’t at all have minded going to stay with him. I expect really he likes nice little girls. I wonder what the row was all about, and why they didn’t all kiss and be friends before the sun went down upon—like we’ re told to?’
I cannot