Poetry Review: A Child’s Garden of Verses

by Charlotte Webb

Recently, I discovered April is National Poetry Month.   I decided it would be fitting to review my favorite book of children’s poetry, A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson.  Yesterday, I cozied up on the sofa in front of the fire (it is still quite cold here, despite it being Spring according to the calendar) and opened up the well-worn book.  It is missing its paper illustrated cover.  I remember it had a lovely garden painting of children and flowers painted by Tasha Tudor in pinks, purples, and yellows.  On the inside I inscribed the book with a message to my oldest daughter for Christmas when she was three years old.  She is thirteen now.

I am not sure if the book has been as well loved by my children as it has been by me.  I believe it is somewhat inaccessible to them; I am speaking of my children under the age of ten.  With that in mind, as I read over the poems yesterday I pondered why my children had difficulty understanding and therefore enjoying the poems.

As I mentioned regarding the cover, the edition I have is illustrated by Tasha Tudor, one of my favorite children’s book illustrators.  I have read other books about Tasha Tudor.   One I remember distinctly was a photographical journey through her gardens.  She seems like a lovely woman and someone who I would most enjoy spending time with.  She lives on a farm that seems to have stopped in time long ago.  Her life looks quiet and I think perhaps a bit lonely.  Maybe that is why she has made friends with her flowers and paints their portraits so lightheartedly.   She seems to be one of those people who has remained a child forever in her heart, a child from yesterday’s years.  Her illustrations serve as a bridge for today’s child to the sentiments of a child who lived in a different age, Robert Louis Stevenson.  Without her illustrations the poems would be lost entirely on the dull ears of today’s children.

The book opens with a dedication to Stevenson’s nanny.  Before painting a picture in your mind of a prim woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun wearing a starched white dress, listen to a few of the accomplishments of this woman who Stevenson defined as, “My second Mother, my first Wife.”  Nursie, as Stevenson calls her in his poems, was his nature guide.  Together they hiked upon frozen waters, perhaps lakes and streams.  She taught him all the names of the common garden flowers.  Most impressively, she whittled him a whistle from a branch with his own knife!  Most endearingly, she shared picture-books with Stevenson, and read him story-books.

What child today has an elder companion such as Stevenson’s dear Nursie?  She was more than a nanny.  She was a naturalist, a bibliophile, and skilled with a pocket knife!  And despite numerous references made to her throughout his poems, the majority of Stevenson’s poems describe his adventures playing alone, mostly with nature, sometimes with the imaginary comrades from the land of his books.  So it seems that Nursie had also mastered the fine art of what Charlotte Mason called, “Masterly Inactivity.”  She allowed Stevenson to play independently of her yet certainly under the safety of her watchful eye.

What I find in Stevenson’s poems is a young boy educated upon books and things, as Charlotte Mason said.   He played in the hay loft, the meadow, and the garden.  He experienced rain and the “frosty pepper” of winter.  He dug in the sand and gazed at the stars.  He imagined voyages with sailors and battles with soldiers.   He dreamt of far-away places: mosques, minarets and camel caravans; Providence, Babylon and Malabar.

My children do not know these places.  When Stevenson writes of the trout and marten swimming in the stream, my children do not visualize anything other than a vague fish.  They do not have pictures in their minds of the common garden flowers Stevenson names.  Can they see with their minds’ eye a mosque?  Do they know what a minaret is?  Where is Providence, or Malabar?  Do they imagine only a Veggie Tales rendition of Babylon with dancing cucumbers and talking tomatoes?  Stevenson wrote, “I see the people marching by, as plain as day, before my eye.”  And I wonder what do my children see when I read his poems to them?

Stevenson described enjoying picture-books with Nursie during the winter when he could not be outside, “We may see how all things are, sea and cities near and far.”  As an artist I am always struck by the illustrations in Victorian picture-books.  They are realistic and detailed.  It is obvious that the artists took a great amount of time and skill when rendering their subjects.  There is no comparison to the picture-books published today.  The majority of today’s illustrations look like childish drawings.  They are simplified and cartoonish.  What kind of impressions do the current illustrations in children’s books leave in my children’s minds?  Can my children “see how all things are” as Stevenson did when he looked at his picture-books?

I finished reading Stevenson’s poems and my mind was filled with questions.  What do my children play?  Where do my children play?  What do my children read?  What knowledge of history, current events and geography do my children have?

I pondered how it seems in past times that children played out what they read about and what had been read to them.  Do children do that today?  In a school setting where is the time for book-inspired play?  What if children learn through play in the same way that animals do?  What if children learn not just through hearing stories but through acting them out?  What if it is through play that children take the narratives they hear of places and people and make them their own?  What if it is through imaginative play based upon fact that children assimilate new information? Then would all the dry facts that students hear in school be carried away like a seed on hard soil?  Never to implant?  Never to grow?

And what if we do not read to them stories that inspire play?  What if we do not fill their minds with people and places from all over the world?  What if we do not inspire and excite their thoughts by the romance of the exotic?  What will they have to play?  What will furnish their imaginations?

There in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter’s camp I lie,

And play at books that I have read

Till it is time to go to bed.

Robert Louis Stevenson “The Land of Story-Books”

 

I have posted the entire poem on my “Commonplaces” page.  The Children’s Garden of Verses is available free at The Gutenberg Project.