FROM THE EDITOR:

At long last – April. It can be lush and lovely or as mercurial in nature as those of us who are born under the Sign of the Ram.

By now, the resort city has mostly cloaked itself in the pastel hues of true spring, so how can any of us turn dour at the sight of the showers that bring May flowers?

In this fourth month of the year, the pace and pulse quicken, the social calendar is chock full of possibilities for fun and relaxation, and visitors continue to discover what we enthusiastically can affirm – a colorful past and promising future dwell side by side in this picturesque berg of mountains and lakes.

One need not be from here to appreciate its charm, uniqueness, interesting mix of people, southern hospitality and sophistication. My mother, Mary Virginia Proctor Brown, was a Hot Springs native who, unlike her only child, traveled far and wide in her early 20s, but always came back to the place where her heart was most at home.

In re-reading her personal journal, circa 1931, I am caught up again by the imagery of a young woman’s trip to Europe and her highly descriptive passages about dining at the Shakespeare Hotel, seeing the country cottage of his wife, Anne Hathaway, and finding England “just the way I wanted it to look.”

She was obviously enthralled by the native flora there, noting, “The flowers are so bright and varied and look like they should be in a tropical garden.” How she would have loved our Garvan Woodland Gardens.

I want to think that she perhaps spent that April in Paris, experiencing nightlife in the City of Light, albeit chaperoned by my grandmother, and then being dazzled by the “playful” fountains at Versailles. Amusingly, the one thing that really captured her attention during an extensive day tour was Napoleon’s Tomb, which she called, “really wonderful and the most impressive thing I’ve seen in Paris so far.” Neither the Eiffel Tower nor the Louvre held such fascination for her, although mother penned that at the world-famous museum, she was on a fast track and “saw the important things only.”

During this latest perusal of mother’s writings and shared sentiments, I saw a brief mention of the Russian artist who drew a crayon portrait of her while she was exploring Paris. Now framed and hanging in the bedroom of my home, the creation is a remarkably accurate depiction of what she looked like at the time.

Three or so decades after her excursion abroad, mother took up painting, turning out several nice scenic watercolors and still life presentations. As she and so many others have said, Hot Springs is an artist’s tapestry, visually rich and a multi-colored backdrop that enhances the many aspects of living in the Spa City. Melinda B. Gassaway Executive editor