Inklings // February 2026 (Tom’s Midnight Garden)

The prompt for February’s Inklings link-up (check out Heidi’s post here for the rules to link up!) is a poignant moment between old friends in book or film. I decided to share something from one of my favorite children’s books, Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.

Tom’s Midnight Garden is a book written in the ’50s, about a boy who has to stay at his aunt and uncle’s flat when his brother catches measles. He’s miserable there, until, one night, he hears the unreliable old grandfather clock in the hall below striking thirteen. He goes down to investigate, and finds that out the back door is a whole other world – a large beautiful Victorian garden. It’s not there during the daytime, only when the clock strikes thirteen in the night. He befriends a little girl there and has all sorts of adventures in his midnight garden.

The trouble is that the scene I want to share is an immense and massive spoiler, and if you haven’t read the book, I strongly, strongly advise you not to read the scene I’m sharing. I think that the effect is much greater if you don’t know what’s coming. So if you haven’t read the book, I’m afraid that this post is no more than a very strong recommendation to read the book for yourself. I think it’d make a perfect spring read; it has such a beautiful hushed, introspective, wistful (and surprisingly philosophical, actually) aesthetic to it, and is a quick and easy read to boot.

For those of you who have read the book, here is the scene.

~

A little later that morning Tom climbed up to Mrs. Bartholomew’s flat and rang the front doorbell. Mrs. Bartholomew opened the door, and was face-to-face with him: she was as he had expected her to be – old and small and wrinkled, with white hair. All that he had not been prepared for were her eyes: they were black, and their blackness disturbed him – that, and the way they looked at him.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’ve come to say I’m sorry,” Tom began.
She interrupted him: “Your name’s Tom, isn’t it? Your uncle mentioned it. What is your other name?”
“Long,” said Tom. “I’ve come to apologize -“
“Tom Long…” She had stretched out a hand and touched his arm with the tips of her fingers, pressing with them so that she might feel the fabric of his shirt and the flesh under the fabric and the bone beneath the flesh. “You’re real: a real flesh-and-blood boy: the Kitsons’ nephew… And in the middle of last night -“
Tom, trying not to be frightened by a queer old woman, said: “I’m sorry about last night.”
“You screamed out in the middle of the night: you woke me.”
“I’ve said I’m sorry.”
“You called out,” she insisted. “You called a name.” She lowered her voice; it sounded gentle, happy, loving – Tom could not say all the things it sounded, that he had never imagined for Mrs. Bartholomew. “Oh, Tom,” she was saying, “don’t you understand? You called me: I’m Hatty.”
The words of the little old woman were meaningless to Tom; only her black eyes compelled him. He allowed her to draw him inside her front door, murmuring to him softly and delightedly. He was in the tiny hall of her flat; and facing him was a Gothic barometer of familiar appearance.
“That’s the barometer from the Melbournes’ hall,” said Tom, as if in a dream.
…
Tom listened as she began her tale; but at first he listened less to what she was saying than to the way she was saying it, and he studied closely her appearance and her movements. Her bright black eyes were certainly like Hatty’s; and now he began to notice, again and again, a gesture, a tone of the voice, a way of laughing that reminded him of the little girl in the garden.
Quite early in Mrs. Bartholomew’s story, Tom suddenly leaned forward and whispered: “You were Hatty – you are Hatty! You’re really Hatty!”
She only interrupted what she was saying to smile at him, and nod.
…Tom must really say good-bye to Mrs. Bartholomew now, or he would be late for lunch and for going home. Already Aunt Gwen was anxiously looking out for him, on the floor below. From the front door of Mrs. Bartholomew’s flat, Tom saw her on the watch; and Mrs. Bartholomew saw her too.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Bartholomew,” said Tom, shaking hands with stiff politeness; “and thank you very much for having me.”
“I shall look forward to our meeting again,” said Mrs. Bartholomew, equally primly.
Tom went slowly down the attic stairs. Then, at the bottom, he hesitated: he turned impulsively and ran up again – two at a time – to where Hatty Bartholomew still stood. …
Afterwards, Aunt Gwen tried to describe to her husband that second parting between them. “He ran up to her, and they hugged each other as if they had known each other for years and years, instead of only having met for the first time this morning. There was something else, too, Alan, although I know you’ll say it sounds even more absurd. … Of course, Mrs. Bartholomew’s such a shrunken little old woman, she’s hardly bigger than Tom, anyway: but, you know, he put his arms right round her and he hugged her good-bye as if she were a little girl.”

Ack, it gets me every time. This is such a good book! You should all read it so we can flail incoherently over it together!

Have you read Tom’s Midnight Garden? What are your favorite children’s books? Any recommendations for spring reads?