How to Know the Ferns
When I am at the thrift store I always like looking through through the nature books. I have quite the collection of field guides and other nature books from my thrift store expeditions. During one day of thrifting, I found this book called 'How to Know the Ferns' and was charmed by it's title and the cover design. I like the title because it is so direct and also makes you kind of feel the ferns are sentient beings and you can find out things about them like what their favorite color is or what they like to do in their spare time. I like the book cover design because it is simple and pretty. But then, my eye was attracted to the name of the author of the book, Frances Theodora Parsons. It's a great name! I had to know more about this fern loving lady with a beautiful name.
It should come as no surprise that she was born during the Victorian Era. Her name is very Victorian, but so is her love of ferns. Francis Theodora had a sister who also had a beautiful, Victorian name: Alice Josephine. Francis was the sister full of curiosity for the natural world, which developed when she use to spend summers with her grandparents in the country. Alice was the sister who had a love of art and drawing and even did the illustrations for a few of her sisters naturalist books. Frances and Alice's father was a tea merchant. I imagine the house they grew up in being full of potted ferns and always smelling like exotic teas. The two sisters probably spent their days outdoors, then at night they'd sit by the fire, Alice drawing in a sketch book and Frances examining clippings of plants she had collected during the day, pressing them in books or admiring them under a magnifying glass.
Francis Theodora Parsons married twice, first a naval officer and then a politician. She had two children with her second husband, Russell and Dorothea. She suffered a horrendous tragedy, the death of Dorothea when she was only a toddler, and another loss of her husband in an automobile accident. With her battered heart, she moved to New York where she became involved in politics herself, including the women's suffrage movement.
Francis Theodora was strong willed but had a touch of whimsy in her heart. She sought out beauty in the world. It was the beauty of the world that started to mend her broken heart. It all started when her kindred spirit friend Marion Satterlee and her took long walks together, admiring all that was wonderful in nature. Francis Theodora expressed her love of nature through writing and Marion did through art. On their long nature walks together, I imagine them stopping to watch bee's landing on flowers, or observing little mother birds collecting plant trimmings to build nests. They probably scanned the landscapes for blasts of color and then eagerly went toward the color, bending down close to examine and admire the discovered wildflower. Francis Theodora and Marion ended up creating a book together: 'How to know the Wildflowers.' Parsons was the writer and Satterlee the artist. The book became a huge hit sensation. Famous people of their time such as Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling expressed fandom of the book. It was her love of wildflowers that really opened up Parson's world so that she could write more books about such topics as ferns.
Francis Theodora Parsons died in 1952, as an old woman. She had probably admired thousands upon thousands of plants in her lifetime. I imagine her as a very old woman telling stories to her great grandchildren about plants. I imagine her making them daisy chain crowns for their heads. I imagine them picking lavish bouquets together. Probably when they smelled certain wildflowers her great grandchildren thought of her, and in every walk in the woods they'd see her in the ferns.
