The Tale of Holly How

by ALBERT, SUSAN WITTIG

  Rascal was delighted when Miss Potter asked him to escort her, but he was even more pleased when she began carrying on a conversation with him as they walked up Stony Lane. He had noticed that she seemed to talk to all of her animals in that way—as if they were Big Folk. It was a pleasant habit, and one that made him like her even more than he already did.

  “It’s been an eventful week,” she remarked as they tramped up the hill. “But everything seems to have turned out well in the end. Lady Longford is no longer in danger from that horrible Miss Martine, and Caroline is safely back at the Manor. Jack Ogden will to have to face justice, the badger-baiting was broken up, and Mr. Heelis found Tuppenny—quite remarkable, when one thinks about it. And I’ve hired a new contractor to replace Mr. Biddle, so perhaps the work at Hill Top Farm will be finished soon, after all.” She paused. “As far as I can see, there’s only one big problem left.”

  “The sheep,” Rascal barked.

  Miss Potter smiled down at him. “I feel like Bo Peep, you know. ‘Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep, and can’t tell where to find them.’ P’rhaps I shall put that nursery rhyme in a book some day.” Her smile faded. “Although I can’t think that these sheep will simply come home, wagging their tails behind them.”

  “Why not?” Rascal asked. “They’re heafed to Holly How. That’s where they live—at least as far as they know. If they can get loose from wherever they are, they’ll go straight home to Holly How. Maybe we should go have another look—”

  “We are going to Oldfield Farm, Rascal. I suspect that the sheep are there, and that Mr. Chance hopes I will buy them from him.” Miss Potter thumped her walking stick emphatically. “But if they’re mine, I’ll recognize them. They have lug marks—both ears are shear-halved.”

  Rascal knew all about lug marks, of course: slits, notches, or shapes cut into a sheep’s ear to establish its owner’s identity. An ear that was “shear-halved” had a large scallop cut out of the tip. And farmers like Ben Hornby, who managed land that was owned by the lord of the local manor, were entitled to mark both ears, not just one. Sheep thieves sometimes removed the lug marks by cutting off the ears of stolen sheep. No knowledgeable farmer would buy a sheep with no ears, of course, for it was clear evidence of theft. But Miss Potter was new to farming, and Mr. Chance might think that he could put one over on her. Rascal wondered grimly if the Holly How sheep had already had their ears cut off.

  The afternoon sun was dropping toward the west, the air was warm and sweet, and birds sang in the hedge. Rascal and Miss Potter walked past Tidmarsh Manor, and then past the lane that led to Holly How Farm. They had gone perhaps a quarter-mile farther when they saw, coming toward them, five Herdwick sheep—two ewes and three lambs—in the company of a large yellow dog, limping along behind them.

  “Tibbie!” Rascal yipped. “Queenie! Where are you going?”

  “Home, of course,” sighed Tibbie. “Where do you think?”

  “And I’m leavin’ Oldfield Farm,” Mustard growled. “I’ve had all I can take of Isaac Chance’s boot, and bein’ chained in t’ barn with nothin’ t’ eat. Even an auld dog like me can learn a new trick or twa.”

  “How’d the sheep get loose?” Rascal asked.

  Mustard shook his head. “You’re not goin’ to b’lieve this, but it was an owl.”

  “An owl!” Rascal exclaimed, thinking immediately of the professor.

  “I said you wouldn’t b’lieve it. He flew down and knocked t’ hasp off t’ barn door so’s I could get out. Flew to t’ sheep pen and did t’ same trick. Broad daylight, and bold as brass, he was.” He shook his head again in disbelief. “Reet maffled me, for sure. Ne’er saw such a thing in all me life.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” Miss Potter said, examining the sheep’s ears. “If it isn’t my Herdwicks, two ewes and three lambs!” She bent over and stroked Mustard’s head. “Thank you for returning them to me, Mustard. You’ve saved me a long walk, and worry, and a nasty confrontation with Mr. Chance.” She straightened up. “I’ll take them down to Hill Top Farm. You can go home now.”

  “I doan’t have nae hoame nae more,” Mustard said mournfully. “I’ll just tag along with you, if you doan’t mind, Missus.”

  “Taaake us down to Hill Top?” Tibbie’s bleat was disconsolate. “But we’re going to Holly How. Thaaat’s where we live!”

  “Not any more you don’t,” Rascal replied. “Your new home is with Miss Potter. Old Ben Hornby is gone, you know.”

  Tibbie nodded sadly. “We saaaw what Jack Ogden did. He didn’t mean to kill Mr. Hornby, though. They got into a fight on the edge of the cliff, and there was an aaacident.” She shuddered from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail. “It was appaaalling.”

  “Too bad you can’t testify at Ogden’s hearing,” Rascal said. “The Big Folk would get on much better in this world if they could hear what we have to say.” He paused, and the other animals nodded thoughtfully. It was something they had all wished from time to time. The world would be a more harmonious place if all of God’s creatures could talk to one another.

  “But now you have a new mistress and a fine new place to live,” Rascal went on cheerfully. “You’ll like it—really, you will. Lots of green grass, and a hill to climb, and Wilfin Beck running through the meadow for fresh water, and cows and horses for company.” He added, thinking this would please Tibbie, “And since you’re nearer the village, there will be more chance for news and gossip. And who knows—perhaps Miss Potter will put you into one of her little books.”

  “I don’t know about books,” said Tibbie, brightening somewhat, “but news is always nice.” She sighed. “Well, if we haaave to heaf to a new place, we’d best get on with the business. It’s not easy, you know. Come along, laaambs.” And with a resigned shake of her wooly head, she set off down the lane with her twin lambs. After a moment, and one last, longing glance up at Holly How, Queenie and her lamb hurried to catch up.

  Miss Potter, holding her walking stick like a shepherd’s crook, followed the sheep. And in spite of her efforts to make Mustard go back to Oldfield Farm, he tagged along at her heels, with Rascal.

  “So you’re looking for a new home, then?” Rascal asked, feeling some sympathy for the old yellow dog. Mustard was a country fellow and a bit rough around the edges, but manners weren’t everything. He had a good heart.

  “A new home,” Mustard said, “and a new job. Some of us has to work for a livin’ .” He paused. “Doan’t know any farmers in need of a dog, do you? Experienced herder, handy with sheep and cows. Good watchdog, too—sharp teeth, strong claws, sleeps with both eyes open. Doan’t eat more ’n his due, neither.” He glanced at Miss Potter, striding sturdily two paces ahead. “T’ lady farmer, f ’ instance. She have a dog at Hill Top?”

  “I don’t believe she does,” Rascal replied.

  “She does now,” Mustard said, and plodded onward.

  36

  Life Goes On

  After the police raid on the badger-baiting in the Sawrey Hotel stable, life in the twin hamlets of Near and Far Sawrey quickly returned to normal. The Flower Show was well attended and highly praised, although there was a great deal of grumbling about Mr. Calvin’s judging of the dahlias. The Esthwaite Vale Cycling Club organized a meet, and the cyclists bought every scone and sausage roll and tea cake that Sarah Barwick had on display in her bakery window. In fact, the bakery’s business improved so much that Sarah (who was now called “Sarah Scones” by the villagers) was able to hire Elsa Grape’s brother’s daughter to help with the sweeping and washing up and mind the shop when Sarah was making deliveries.

  Hard on the heels of July’s hay-making came August’s sheep-clipping, and the farmers were busy with their late summer work. Old he might be, but Mustard settled into his new job at Hill Top Farm as if he had always been employed there, and Isaac Chance (who heard at the pub that Miss Potter had recovered her missing sheep) never even came looking for him.

  And then, three weeks after Ben
Hornby’s death, Isaac Chance himself was dead, kicked in the head by his black horse, Blaze. Some in the village said it was purely an accident, others asserted that Chance had cruelly mistreated the horse and he’d only got what was coming to him. Captain Woodcock said privately to his sister Dimity that he was sorry that he’d never been able to gather enough evidence to charge Chance with burning the Holly How barn and poisoning the Holly How cows, but things had a way of working out for the best, didn’t they? Miss Potter, feeling the need for another horse to help out at Hill Top Farm, purchased Blaze and treated his whip welts and his sore hoofs. Once the old horse was feeling more like himself, he seemed eager to get to work.

  Tibbie and Queenie and their lambs took up residence in the Hill Top meadow, finding a great deal to like in the sweet green grass and pleasant waters of Wilfin Beck. If they thought back to their former heaf at Holly How, it was only with the vague nostalgia that is often felt for an earlier home, whether that home was entirely happy or not. For her part, Queenie shuddered whenever she thought about being captured and imprisoned in the pen at Oldfield Farm. And Tibbie never wanted to think back on the appalling accident in which Mr. Hornby had been killed. So both were glad enough to get on with their new life at Hill Top.

  After the Great Raid, the wild creatures lived on Holly How in contentment and harmony, and the residents of The Brockery were untroubled by further alarms and excursions. Primrose brought a much welcomed new look to the old sett. Seeing that there was a great deal to be done in the long neglected chambers, she undertook their general cleanup and redecoration, arranging for sweeping out and for whitewashing parties, overseeing the laying of new carpets, and with Hyacinth’s help, sewing bedcovers and draperies. Bosworth Badger XVII, who spent a portion of every day instructing Thorn in the details of the History and Genealogy, couldn’t have been happier with the way things were going. Thorn showed such promise that Bosworth knew he would not hesitate—at the proper time, of course—to hand over to him the Badger Badge of Authority, together with full responsibility for The Brockery’s management. Bosworth himself had begun to anticipate the day that he would have nothing else to do but sit on his front porch and smoke, or visit Professor Owl’s astronomical observatory, or go looking for earthworms in the rain on Holly How.

  Caroline Longford was also getting on with her new life. Lady Longford, once she was no longer influenced by Miss Martine and was fully recovered from her temporary indisposition, found that she enjoyed being a grandmother, and that it was unexpectedly pleasant to have an active, energetic young girl living at Tidmarsh Manor. Of course, there were arguments, and Caroline had to learn to accommodate her grandmother’s wishes, but she was delighted when Lady Longford allowed her to have a pair of guinea pigs as pets. She was even happier when it was decided that she should attend the village school, where Miss Nash—to the satisfaction of the entire village—had taken her place as the new head teacher. Caroline and Jeremy became even closer friends when Lady Longford allowed Jeremy’s aunt to move into the old farmhouse at Holly How, which was much larger and more convenient than the small, damp cottage at Cunsey Beck.

  Others did not have so much to look forward to. Jack Ogden, who had played a part in the accident on Holly How, pled guilty to assault and battery against Ben Hornby, and was sent to prison for a term of ten years. To no one’s surprise, he was not charged with badger-baiting.

  The Wentworths, brother and sister, were bound over to the autumn assizes in Carlisle on charges of grand larceny and conspiracy to commit murder. Emily had made a new green dress for the trial. However, she would have to share the limelight with Mrs. Beever, who had been told that she would be required to testify to the theft of a packet of flypapers from her kitchen cupboard. Things looked dark for the pair, and it was generally expected that they would be found guilty and receive lengthy prison terms.

  As far as Miss Potter was concerned, the coming autumn brought many good things. She had, of course, to get through the difficult time at the end of August—the anniversary of Norman Warne’s death. The sharp grief was still there, and the sense that she had lost her only chance to marry the man she loved. But the pain was blunted somewhat by the passage of time and the continued challenges of Hill Top Farm. In September, the plumber put the pipes at the wrong end of the kitchen, but the problem was put right easily enough after she pointed it out. The joiner and plasterer finished the interior of the new addition, and the good weather held long enough to get the roof-ridge put on. It was also dry enough to get the garden dug, and she bought some new bushes at the nursery at Windermere and planted lavender and violets and sweet William. Mr. Jennings purchased fourteen more Herdwick ewes, bringing her flock to sixteen, so there would be a fine crop of lambs in the spring. Miss Potter, with Caroline and Jeremy, helped him cut bracken in the moor and haul it down in the pony cart to use as bedding in the barn.

  The news from Miss Potter’s publisher continued to be good. The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, published in July, went into a second printing in September. And after a great deal of putting off, Miss Potter at last finished the drawings for The Tale of Tom Kitten. The next book, she had decided, would be about the rude and unruly rats who had invaded the Hill Top attic.

  The story would involve a kitten who was put into a pudding, and dog (greatly resembling Rascal) who rescued him.

  She would call it The Roly-Poly Pudding.

  Historical Note

  Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866, into a wealthy, upper-middle class London family, and lived with her parents at 2 Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, London. Her life was a quiet but interesting one, filled with reading, visiting art exhibitions, drawing and painting, and traveling on holiday to Scotland or to the Lake District, where she enjoyed the freedom to ramble through the countryside. Beatrix was a delicate child, often ill, and had no childhood friends. She did not go to school (like other girls of her class, she was educated at home by governesses), but she and her brother Bertram, younger by five years, were avid naturalists, assembling their own miniature zoo in their third-floor nursery, where they studied the anatomy of specimens they collected. She was especially interested in fossils and fungi, and by the time she had reached her early twenties, she had compiled a substantial collection of botanical illustrations, a hobby in which she was encouraged by her father.

  But Beatrix sketched her pets, too—rabbits, mice, frogs, bats, lizards, birds. Her drawings of her beloved Belgian rabbit, Peter, led to The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which she sent in 1893 as a letter to the son of her favorite governess. Eight years later, Beatrix paid to have The Tale of Peter Rabbit privately printed. The little book came to the notice of Frederick Warne and Company, and they published it in October, 1902. An immediate success, Peter was followed by Squirrel Nutkin (1903), The Tailor of Gloucester (1903), Benjamin Bunny (1904), Two Bad Mice (1904), Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905), The Pie and the Patty-Pan (1905), Mr. Jeremy Fisher (July, 1906), and others, through 1913. Each book was a bestseller, and she soon became one of the most popular children’s authors in the Empire.

  Beatrix’s literary and financial success did not change her life in any remarkable way—until 1905, that is. In July of that momentous year, just days before her thirty-ninth birthday, she received an offer of marriage from her editor, Norman Warne, who had become her closest friend. She accepted his offer in defiance of her parents, who opposed the marriage on the grounds that the Warne family was “in trade.” The engagement was disastrously short, however, for Norman fell ill and died of acute leukemia only a month after they exchanged rings.

  Her fiancé dead, her hopes destroyed, her life devastated, Beatrix resolved on a new direction. In September, 1905, she agreed to purchase a small farm in the Lakeland hamlet of Near Sawrey, where she and her parents had gone on holiday. It would have seemed a strange idea to her parents, and especially unwelcome to her mother, who expected Beatrix to remain at Bolton Gardens to manage the servants and look after her when she was ill. But th
e Potters’ objections to their daughter’s farm must have been tempered by their relief that the marriage “into trade” no longer threatened. The purchase was completed that autumn, and Beatrix began the challenging work of renovating the old farmhouse and restocking the farm’s thirty-one acres.

  Much of what we know about Beatrix’s growing passion for Hill Top Farm comes from her letters. Writing to Norman’s sister Millie in April, 1906, she describes the house: “There is one wall 4 ft thick with a staircase inside it, I never saw such a place for hide & seek, & funny cupboards & closets.” In July of that year (the same month in which our story takes place), she tells Millie that she has found a swarm of bees and caught them:

  (it isn’t quite so valiant as it sounds!) they were lying on the grass near the quarry, we think they had been out all night, & blown out of a tree; they were very numbed, but are all right now & a fine swarm . . . I have bought a box-hive . . . . I borrowed a straw “skep” to catch them in, & put it down over them.

  And in August, she proudly reports that she has sold some stone from the small quarry on her property for the repair of Ees bridge, at the foot of Esthwaite Water. “I don’t think I shall make much profit . . . but I shall like to see my stone in the bridge.” In September, she is cutting and raking bracken for the animals’ winter bedding. By October, she is applying “liquid manure” to her apple trees (“a most interesting performance with a long scoop”) and planting herbs and flowers given to her by the villagers. The construction work was nearly finished, and on October 12, she tells Millie that she has lit the very first fire in her new library. “It was a great excitement. I laid the fire & lit it myself & it went straight up directly & gives a great heat.” The lighting of the library fire must have been a profoundly symbolic and satisfying moment for her. Truly, the life of the farm had become the center of her own life.