Anne Douglas Sedgwick (Madame Basil de Selincourt) is of American birth,
but has lived in England since her childhood. For many years she has
found an admiring audience as a writer of novels and short stories. In
1908 she was married to M. de Selincourt.
The title of the story hints at a reliance upon mere setting. And the
hepatica bed, with all that its associations signify, certainly makes
its generous atmospheric contribution to the charm of the narrative. But
as domestic entanglements begin to ensue, our interest in the flowers is
soon shifted to plot and theme. Our sustained sympathy rests with the
mother--the mother who has created in her home an atmosphere of the
truest and most sensibly refined culture. The promising son, sharing
this atmosphere and even enriching it, yields while at Aldershot before
the war to the superficial charm of a chorus girl, and marries her. Her
loud and garish presence in the home of quiet beauty and repose provides
an interesting but tragic study in contrast, and makes us continually
more anxious as we watch its influence upon the mother, yearning
pityingly for her absent son, yet plaintively relieved when news comes
that he has been killed in the war. Death has released him from the grim
necessity of living his mismated life and caring for the child born of
parents of such divergent types. The supreme merit of the mother's
character lies in her willing acceptance of the burdening problem. The
strength of the story, as we view it in its entirety, rests in a
skillful merging of effects which allows final emphasis upon character
portrayal and thematic situation.