Archibald Craven and Lilias Craven (husband and wife)

Archibald Craven and Lilias Craven were husband and wife, and their brief, intensely loving marriage was the emotional heart of Misselthwaite Manor before Lilias's sudden death shattered it, leaving Archibald a recluse who sealed off the garden she had loved and could barely bear to look at his own son.

Marriage and the Garden

When Archibald Craven married Lilias, she was a sweet, pretty young woman whom he adored so completely that he would have walked the world over to get her a blade of grass she wanted. People had assumed she married him for his money, but Martha, the housemaid, insisted she had not. The couple created a private garden together, which Lilias made and loved. They tended the flowers themselves, allowing no gardener inside, and would spend hours there reading and talking, shut in behind the locked door. Lilias used to sit on the bent branch of an old tree, over which she had trained roses to grow. Ben Weatherstaff, the old gardener, remembered her bending over the roses and kissing them as if they were children or robins. He recalled that she was "main fond" of flowers that pointed up to the blue sky, yet she also loved the earth itself.

Lilias's Death and Archibald's Grief

One day, while Lilias was sitting on the bent branch, it broke. She fell to the ground and was so badly hurt that she died the next day. The doctors thought Archibald would go out of his mind and die as well. After her death, he locked the garden door, dug a hole, and buried the key. He would not allow anyone to go inside or even to talk about the garden. His grief made him "queerer than ever": he cared about nobody, refused to see people, and spent most of his time away from Misselthwaite. When at home, he shut himself up in the West Wing, allowing only his old servant Pitcher to see him. He became a sour, miserable man whose face would have been handsome if it had not been so wretched. His shoulders were high and rather crooked, and his black hair was streaked with white.

The Unseen Son

Lilias died giving birth to their son, Colin. Archibald could not bear to look at the baby, raving that it would be another hunchback like himself and had better die. For ten years he avoided the boy, seeing him only when Colin was asleep. He supplied doctors, nurses, and luxuries, but shrank from the thought of his son. Colin, aware of this, told Mary that his father almost hated him because his mother's death made it wretched for him to look at his child. The portrait of Lilias, with her laughing face and agate-gray eyes rimmed with black lashes, hung in Colin's room behind a rose-colored silk curtain that Colin himself had ordered drawn, because he sometimes could not bear to see her smiling at him while he was ill and miserable.

The Dream and the Return

For ten years Archibald wandered through beautiful, remote places in Europe—Norwegian fiords, Swiss valleys, the Austrian Tyrol, the Lake of Como—but his mind remained filled with dark, heartbroken thoughts. He had let his soul fill with blackness and refused to let any light pierce through. Then, on the very day that Colin first entered the secret garden and cried out that he would live forever, Archibald sat by a stream in an Austrian valley and felt a strange calmness. He looked at a mass of blue forget-me-nots and thought tenderly of their beauty, and something seemed to unbound and release in him. He whispered to himself, "I almost feel as if—I were alive!" Later, at the Lake of Como, he dreamed that he heard Lilias's voice calling him, sweet and clear: "Archie! Archie! In the garden!" He answered, "Lilias! Lilias!" and the voice came back like a golden flute: "In the garden!" He received a letter from Susan Sowerby urging him to come home, and he decided to return at once. When he arrived at Misselthwaite, he walked to the secret garden, drawn by an inexplicable force, and there he found Colin—no longer a crippled invalid but a tall, handsome boy glowing with life, who burst through the ivy-covered door and ran into his arms. Colin told him, "It was the garden that did it—and Mary and Dickon and the creatures—and the Magic." Archibald, his soul shaking with unbelieving joy, put his hands on his son's shoulders and said, "Take me into the garden, my boy. And tell me all about it."