Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden
Brownsmith's Boy, a Romance in a Garden, by George Manville Fenn.
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This is an absolutely delightful book, which has most of its early
action in a market garden, and then more in another one. The author is
a great naturalist, and he has much to teach us about the way in which
work should be done to raise fruit and vegetables to be taken to London
daily for the market. Somehow that sounds boring but there is so much
action entwined with these facts that they are made far from boring.
The action takes place about 1835. The hero lives with his mother in a
house overlooking the garden. When she dies he is taken in by Old
Brownsmith to be taught the skills of a market gardener. Another boy,
Shock, hangs about the garden, sleeping rough and living on a primitive
diet of snails, hedgehogs and rabbits and whatever he can get. There is
an uneasy relationship between the boys, with Shock constantly doing
unkind and strange things, and our hero, Grant Dennison, longing to get
to know him better.
I particularly loved the episode where an old worker, Ike, takes the
even older horse, Basket, for his regular overnight trip to the London
fruit and vegetable market, taking Grant with him.
There are plenty of the usual Manville Fenn episodes of terror and
near-disaster, and indeed it is a lovely book. Do read it.
NH
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BROWNSMITH'S BOY, A ROMANCE IN A GARDEN, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
THE BOY IN THE GARDEN.
I always felt as if I should like to punch that boy's head, and then
directly after I used to feel as if I shouldn't care to touch him,
because he looked so dirty and ragged.
It was not dirty dirt, if you know what I mean by that, but dirt that he
gathered up in his work--bits of hay and straw, and dust off a shed
floor; mud over his boots and on his toes, for you could see that the
big boots he wore seemed to be like a kind of coarse rough shell with a
great open mouth in front, and his toes used to seem as if they lived in
there as hermit-crabs do in whelk shells. They used to play about in
there and waggle this side and that side when he was standing still
looking at you; and I used to think that some day they would come a
little way out and wait for prey like the different molluscs I had read
about in my books.
But you should have seen his hands! I've seen them so coated with dirt
that it hung on them in knobs, and at such times he used to hold them up
to me with the thumbs and fingers spread out wide, and then down he
would go again and continue his work, which, when he was in this state,
would be pulling up the weeds from among the onions in the long beds.
I didn't want him to do it, but he used to see me at the window looking
out; and I being one lonely boy in the big pond of life, and he being
another lonely boy in the same big pond, and both floating about like
bits of stick, he seemed as if he wanted to gravitate towards me as bits
of stick do to each other, and in his uncouth way he would do all sorts
of things to attract my attention.
Sometimes it seemed as if it was to frighten me, at others to show how
clever he was; but of course I know now that it was all out of the
superabundant energy he had in him, and the natural longing of a boy for
a companion.
I'll just tell you what he'd do. After showing me his muddy fingers,
and crawling along and digging them as hard as he could into the soil to
tear out the weeds, all at once he would kick his heels up in the air
like a donkey. Then he would go on weeding again, look to see if I was
watching him, and leave his basket and run down between two onion beds
on all-fours like a dog, run back, and go on with his work.
Every now and then he would pull up a young onion with the weeds and
pick it out, give it a rub on his sleeve, put one end in his mouth, and
eat it gradually, taking it in as I've seen a cow with a long strand of
rye or grass.
Another time he would fall to punching the ground with his doubled fist,
make a basin-like depression, put his head in, support himself by
setting his hands on each side of the depression, and then, as easily as
could be, throw up his heels and stand upon his head.
It seemed to be no trouble to him to keep his balance, and when up like
that he would twist his legs about, open them wide, put them forwards
and backwards, and end by insulting me with his feet, so it seemed to
me, for he would spar at me with them and make believe to hit out.
All at once he would see one of the labourers in the distance, and then
down he would go and continue his weeding.
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