It is difficult for us today to know how much of the mass of legend that surrounds the name of Lemon Mary Verbena, or Little Lemon as she is more usually called, is true. It is with the object of sifting the authentic from the merely legendry that I have thought it worth while to write this short biographical note and in it I am concerned rather to gather the facts together than to draw any moral tale from her life. To the discerning reader the moral is writ plain enough in the life itself short though it was, for any words of mine to be superfluous.

For two generations now Little Lemon's name has been a household word, a word to conjure with where children are concerned and many a happy wife and motherI have known has told me that the secret of her happiness is simply this, that she has founded her inner life on the shining example of Little Lemon.

In Germany today she is regarded almost as a saint and little statuettes of her may be bought in the Arts & Crafts shops. In England we are more reserved in our her worship or is it perhaps that we are less quick to recognise saintliness when it is in our midst ? Whatever the cause Little Lemon in this country remains a very human child and is as real a friend to our little ones today

2

as she was to us in childhood and to our mothers before
us; to girls the expression "not quite Little Lemon's
form" or "Little Lemon would not have done that" takes
the place of the boys "not cricket" or "not quite pukha"
And yet there was no hint of priggery in Little Lemon's
life as her letters and poems show, poems quick with a
vibrant joy of living made all the more intense by the
inner knowledge she appears to have had of how soon it
was all to end, the sunshine and the birdsong etc. etc.

The exact date of her birth is unknown. That she was
born in April we know because one of the poems called
*My Birthday* seems to make it abundantly clear -

" In April
Pomegranates
Are not lovely things
But just a tree
Whose leaves
Make crimson wings
On every branch empty branch "

The year of her birth must have been between 1870 and
1873 because in the end of 1870 her elder brother was
born and in 1873 her only sister Anne who did not sur-
vive the second year so that Little Lemon was never to
know a sister's affection. This loss coupled with her &
mother's early death, Mrs Verbena died in 1878, must have

been directly responsible

3

been directly responsible for a great deal in Lemon's
character and did much to foster the " mother spirit"
which she showed in the care of her seven motherless
brothers.

All seven were older than her so that one might have
expected her to be spoilt by them; I once said this to
hereldest brother Robert, whom I had the privilege of
meeting, and it was then that he told me just what an
inspiration her fair delicate beauty was to them, an
inspiration which lasted all their lives.

Robert, Percival, the twins Jeremy and Timothy, John,
Mathew and Luke, who was killed in the South African
war, were all big men with their father's dark brown
eyes, high colour and curling hair. Lemon must have
taken after her mother whose early pictures show her with
just the same straight fair hair parted with a Madonna-
like simplisity, perhaps she inherited from her mother t
too that tendency to consumption which was finally res
ponsible for her early death.

Lemon never seems to have played with dolls, her
mother-instinct was fully occupied in mending her &
brothers' socks writing to them at school and packing
the hampers of tuck which she dispatched to them regu-
larly every week. Although a year younger than Luke,
her favourite brother, she taught him Latin and was res

4

ponsible for him getting a scholarship for Stoneybury.
But although Lemon did not care for dolle every sick
bird and homeless kitten made its way to her and was
welcome, the only time she ever lost her temper was when
the village boys tied a tin can to the tail of her faithful dog Tray, but was not this a righteous wrath, one that Our Lord Himself would have pardoned ?

In 1880 when only nine or ten years of age she nursed
the twins through measles and her father used afterwards
to say that he would never have saved them without her.
It was the Christmas after the twins recovery that Lemon's
artistic genius first began to show itself and it was
with the object of entertaining the convalescents that she
wrote her first pantomine "The Turtle under the Myrtle"

It is in this pantomine that the most beautiful of all
her lyrics occurs and I must be forgiven if I quote it
in full -

"Little Turtle
With a sprig of myrtle
Held up skyward
O quite perfect "

The pantomine was produced that Christmas by the
Verbena family and a copy of one of the programmes is at
still in the possession of Mr. Robert Verbena's nephew,
Mr. Percival Lemon Verbena, who has given me permission

to reproduce it.

A PANTOMINE

" The Turtle under the Myrtle "by L.M.V.

Dram. PERS.

The Turtle Mr. Robert Verbena
The Myrtle Mr. Percival Verbena
Ist. Hare Mr. Jeremy Verbena
2nd. Hare Mr. Timothy Verbena
Gardener Mr. John Verbena
Clown Mr. Mathew Verbena
Princess Mr. Luke Verbena

XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX

The whole thing was set to the most delightful incident-
and original music and it is difficult to know if Lemon
had lived whether she would finally have turned to music
or literature. The loss to both arts is immeasurable
and yet if she had not died when she did we should not be
the richer today by"the Letters" ( Published by Duckworth
15/3 net) Letters written during her last illness to her
brother Luke, then a cadet at Sandhurst.

The year after the pantomine " The Poems " were privately printed by Dr. Verbena ( Duckworth 20/- net) Recently

one of these came into the market and was brought by an
American collector, Mr. Tong of New York, for £4,5000.

Perhaps the best known of these poems is "The Fig" and
the one about which there has been the keenest controversies

The Fig
" The fig
Is coming into leaf
And big
Green butterflies
Perch on the point
Of every twig."

Walter Pater attributes this poem to the period of
Lemon's last illness when her father had taken her to
the south of Italy in the vain hope that the sun might
work the miracle they all longed for. But the date of
this book of verse makes the theory quite impossible and
to my mind it is far more likely that the inspiration
came to Lemon on one of her many visits to Kew Gardens.

The poem "My Birthday" on the other hand clearly
refers to the period to which Walter Pater attributes
" The Fig" showing as it does what an appeal the south
made to the child's budding genius. It was published in
the book of "Posthumous Verse" (Hodder and Stoughton 25/
net or £2.25 in calf)

In the winter of 1885 Lemon caught the chill which
settled on her lungs and after a year's illness was to

prove fatal. At first her father attended her but finally
much against her will, other advice was sought and she
was sent abroad.

It is from Italy that most of " The Letters" were
written, letters which still astonish one inspite of
their familiarity by their deep philosophical insight.
Her greatest sorrow was that her illness made it imposs-
ible for her to visit the churches and picture galleries
she had so longed to see and which she and Luke had
long planned to visit together.

By July 1886 it was all too obvious, even to Dr. Verbe-
that his daughter could not recover, by her special wish
her brothers were not told that there was no hope of
recovery and only Luke was summoned to her bedside.
She died in his arms on September 18. 1886.

"They are not dead but gone before."

April 15.1928

The Rectory
Little-Bodingham-on-the-

Wold
nr. Chertsey