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Queen of the Fairies

All children love fairies. Who among us does not have memories of springtime afternoons with Nurse in the gardens, watching those tiny, human-like forms flitting through the world on their delicate wings, who seem to be clad in the very blossoms among which they live?

Yet most of us, as we age, forget about the fairies. We rush past gardens and flower boxes with barely a glance for the blooms themselves, much less for the delicate creatures that hide so carefully among them. If we think about them at all, they are part of the hazy, distant memories of long-ago childhood, not a vital part of the landscape that supports every facet of our daily lives.

But there is one woman who did not forget. Who never did forget, in her eight-and-four-score years of life, despite a scientific world that laughed her to scorn. As I, with all of England, mourn the passing of this inestimable woman--beloved author, illustrator, and (at last) honored naturalist, I can think of no better way to honor Constance Sommers than to recall my childhood meeting with her in the summer of my seventh year.

I had always loved watching the fairies in the window boxes outside my family’s London home. In 1892, I visited my grandparents in the countryside, and a new world opened up to me, filled with more flowers—and more types of fairies—than I could have imagined. I spent every waking moment in my grandmother’s gardens. I watched fairies hatch from the hearts of blooming tulips, scatter thousands of dandelion seeds, and endlessly paint the delicate shades of apple blossoms.

My favorite place, however, was my grandmother’s rose garden. There I found fairies whose forms matched every species of rose to a shade—save one. The crowning jewel of my grandmother’s garden was a rose she had bred herself; its white blossoms, as large as my hand, were streaked with red, and its scent was like a thousand fresh-plucked fruits. I knew that such a flower could only be tended by the grandest and most beautiful of fairies, and I watched, breathless, week after week for this hypothetical fairy to show her face.

At last, on a morning when my quest left me restless with anxiety, I tiptoed out of my room and slipped out to the rose garden in the gray light of dawn. As soon as I reached the prized rose bush, I saw fairy even more beautiful than I had imagined. Every bit of her form, from her face to her tiny fingers and toes, was pure white, with only the faintest green specks in her gray eyes. One of grandmother's red-and-white blossoms seemed to splay from her waist like a dancer's skirt, and her wings were so transparent that in that dim light, she appeared to have none, and instead seemed to float upon the delicate breath of the dawn.

At first, I stood awestruck—this was truly a queen among fairies. Then I recalled—I couldn’t let her slip out of my grasp. In a twinkling, I caught her in a glass jar, with one of my grandmother's roses tucked safely inside to serve as shelter and food.

How I rejoiced in that treasure! I brought the fairy to my room and marveled at her graceful fluttering until breakfast time, when I slipped away to the kitchen to eat with Nurse. By the time I returned, the beautiful little fairy was splayed, lifeless, across the base of the jar.

I wept myself breathless, completely inconsolable. Nurse offered comfort and threatened punishment, but she could not quiet me. At last, my sobs drew Grandmother, who took one look at that lovely little fairy and said, "I suppose there's nothing to do but give it to Constance Sommers."

I knew that name—every child in England did. Constance Sommers had written and illustrated the marvelous tales of the flower fairies that had a place on every nursery shelf—and all this time, she had been one of my grandparents’ neighbors! Surely she, if anyone, could save this little fairy! After much begging and pleading, I was allowed, reluctantly, to accompany Grandmother as she brought the fairy to Miss Sommers.

The carriage brought us to a tidy brown brick cottage atop a hill, surrounded by the most glorious gardens I had ever seen. Flowers bloomed on shrubs and trees, climbed trellises and the walls of the cottage, and blanketed the ground with every color of the rainbow. Even from the carriage I could see dozens of fairies flitting among the blossoms. I was utterly enchanted. Were it not for the dead fairy I carried in the jar, I might have lost myself in ecstasy.

The moment we alighted from the carriage, a gate leading to a back garden opened, and a woman strode toward us. She was like the branch of a tree—impossibly tall, thin and knobby. Her hair—dark, with only whispers of silver—was cut close to her head. She wore a simple white shirtwaist and black skirt, and dozens of tools—pens, keys, scissors, lens—hung from a silver-chained chatelaine at her waist. Her eyes, caged behind gold-rimmed spectacles, darted a million directions, fairy-quick, as if cataloging the landscape.

At last, her eyes lit on me—or rather, upon the jar in my hands. She rushed toward me without so much as a glance at Grandmother. “Fairy?” she asked.

I nodded and lifted the jar toward her. She took it and examined it with those sharp eyes—which quickly widened. “I’ve never seen this kind before.” Those eyes pierced me. “Where did you find it?”

She was speaking to me, not Grandmother! Never before had an adult addressed me so directly. “In Grandmother’s rose garden,” I said. “Can you save it?”

The head moved—one sharp shake. “It’s dead. Perfectly preserved. Do you have more?”

“N...no.”

“If you get some, I’ll pay triple the going rate. Could be a new species.”

She bombarded me with questions—what kind of flower the fairy resembled, the location of the garden, the soil conditions, the time of capture, the surrounding flowers. Grandmother answered the more technical ones, but since she hadn’t seen the fairy until I’d shown it to her dead in a jar, most of the questions about it fell to me. I was terribly shy, but under the circumstances, too bewildered to be afraid. As Miss Sommers jotted down my answers in a small diary, I had my first brush with a scientific approach to fairies—and I was fascinated.

As she questioned, Constance Sommers wandered through her gardens, making note of various fairies—lilies, honeysuckle, hollyhocks—but clearly intending me to follow and continue with the interview. I had never felt so important. I answered the questions to the best of my ability—and she seemed impressed.

“You’ve got a good eye,” she said. “Good memory.”

As if I could have forgotten anything about the queen of the fairies!

I trailed Miss Sommers through her back garden, losing Grandmother somewhere along the way. At last, Miss Sommers approached one of the cottage’s side doors. With a twist of one of the keys at her waist, the door opened, and I followed her inside.

At first, I thought we’d entered another garden. Every surface—every wall, ceiling, shelf and dozens of tables—seemed to be covered in framed flowers. Enchanted, I stepped closer to the nearest one, and found that it was the lilaced purple skirt of a flower fairy.

My enchantment turned to horror. Every single one of those surfaces—every frame—was filled with flower fairies, each one as lifeless as the beautiful specimen in my jar.

I ran away screaming.

I took only two steps out the door before Miss Sommer’s hand came down upon my shoulder like an iron shackle. She stood over me, as immovable as stone. “Where are you going?”

She did not sneer. She did not sympathize. She didn’t try to soothe or placate me. She simply asked. Before such unshakable practicality, I was helpless. My screams stopped.

She pulled me back into that room and plopped me onto a low wooden stool. Frozen as I was, I didn’t resist. Then she opened the door, tipped the fairy onto a table, and went to work.

Her hands were like two fairies, constantly in motion, yet always sure where they were going. I forgot about the walls and simply watched her work. With minuscule brushes, she cleaned the fairy’s lifeless form, then arranged it inside another wooden frame. She posed it with its hands outstretched, its nearly invisible wings positions halfway down so as to catch some of the light in rainbows. I recognized in this work the same hand that had painted such delicate pictures of living fairies. Though the fairy’s end was tragic, she was turning it into something beautiful.

As she worked, she lectured—I believe she forgot I was only a visiting seven-year-old, and not a potential apprentice. She explained how the preservation of specimens allowed for further study. She spoke about competing theories as to the origins of the fairies—whether they were one species that took on camouflage based upon the nearby blossoms, or multiple species that were born with each flower—whether they were somehow tied to the flower’s life cycle or whether they were an independent species laying eggs within the blossoms.

I have heard it said many times over the years that Constance Sommers did not like children. Certainly, she did not handle children with delicate patronizing care, as the adults of that generation and that class tended to do. Certainly, she had attention only for her work. But I believe it was simply that she was no respecter of age. Whether her listener was seven or seventy years of age, so long as they respected her work, she allowed them to stay.

That day, I stayed for hours as she utterly captivated my mind and imagination. My little fairy, who met such a tragic end, became a crowning jewel of her collection, vital to her later discoveries about the camouflage abilities of rose fairies. Those discoveries were not published by the scientific community for decades—her gender and field of study made it almost impossible for her to be taken seriously, until later developments in ecology made her work impossible to ignore.

But what adults could not accept, children welcomed with open minds. The fairy of the white-and-red-striped rose featured in her next picture book—as Queen of the Fairies.

Now, I am grateful that, in recognizing both the artistic and scientific achievements of this remarkable woman, the rest of England knows what I learned that day—that title truly belongs, and always will belong, to Constance Sommers.

#the bookshelf progresses #fantasy #this is not what i wanted it to be at all #but the story that was so clear in my head fizzled out halfway #and since i don't want to get days and days behind i'm just gonna post what i managed to come up with

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