Mary Wren and Her Secret Garden
It seems that dolls inspired by beautiful stories published by wonderful authors, are the request of the day. This summer we start with sweet Mary Lennox, from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
I hope you enjoy my interpretation.
The first time I read this book (Illustrated by Inga Moore) was back in 2013. I had just started homeschooling my young daughters and Spring was barely in the horizon. We headed to the local library and acquired the heaviest load of literary bounty, to read together while still sipping hot chocolate, eating toast slathered with Grandma’s raspberry jam and nestled on the couch under blankets. We were easing into our homeschooling journey by way of reading as many books as we could.
I discovered a plethora of English authors by reading to my daughters, and this book in particular opened such a magical world of gardens and animal husbandry.
We longed for the idea of owning our own garden one day, as we only had a mere square of grass in the backyard in our then city dwelling, not knowing that indeed very soon, we would be rewarded by the Universe with about a whole acre to play with. Already booming with day-lilies, peonies, lilacs, vinca, irises, bleeding hearts, snowdrops and masses of elderflowers.
We loved the book so much, we read it about 3 more times. It became a nice Spring tradition, to read how a garden in Yorkshire wakes up under the care of a timid, naive but stubborn child gardener. How her health and interest for life awaken the same as the roses and the crocuses, and her appetite.
If you haven’t read the book or is not in your local library, you can listen to this beautiful rendition on YouTube by Stephen “Red Fox” Garnett. He does a pretty good job. Since I don’t own a copy of the book, I listened to it while working on Mary Wren. I’ve also linked the free e-book at the beginning of the post.
If you want to check out different illustrated versions, this video does a pretty good job of showing her collection, and amazingly it starts with the very first book we read, the one illustrated by Inga Moore.
Mary Wren is a custom doll. Both her Mom and I love the 1993 movie version with Kate Maberly as Mary Lennox and Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock. Since that is the one my daughters and I also watched many times. My youngest used to play to be Colin, while my eldest was sometimes Mary and sometimes Dickon. I always had to be Mrs. Medlock, they never let me be Martha!
As you can see, I tried to stay as true to Mary’s description as possible. Hoping that as she fattens up by eating lots of delicious porridge, and gets her legs strong by using her jumping rope, she is comfortable in her clothes.
There is something very tender and sweet about my Mary, who by the way wanted a middle name and chose Wren. We couldn’t be more pleased at this addition!
And while Mary still has more clothes and a little story to tell you, for now I have presented her to you in this outfit: a beautiful and ever-so-soft cotton double-gauze dress with light blue florals and eyelets. This dress has long sleeves with nice cuffs, a peter pan white line collar and a wide long skirt.
Under it she wears her vintage cotton bloomers, her nice grey socks and her wool boots. Over it she wears a linen over-dress with a wide lace ruffle at the armscye.
To complete this outfit she has a slouchy wool bonnet with a little bit of blue ribbon, cinching it so it stays put.
Thank you for coming to see Miss Mary Wren. She will come back shortly to take you on an adventure and show you her second dress. We are ever so proud she asked us to make this dress and hope her Mom approves of the design.
To be continued.
