The Tale of Oat Cake Crag
Page 27
Which leaves Beatrix, Will, and the Potters, doesn’t it?
I don’t suppose it will come as any surprise that the letter that Beatrix received from her parents was scorching. But since it said all the things that the Potters had been saying for quite a few years, it was all old news to Beatrix. While she didn’t exactly dismiss their objections, she and Will read every sentence aloud together, laughing a little at the vehemence, which really sounded rather silly.
And then they kissed and promised each other not to be dispirited by her parents’ opposition, but to love each other and be faithful and true, and live patiently apart until the day when they could at last live together, happily ever after.
Historical Note
The tale of the hydroplane on Lake Windermere in 1911-1912 is a true one, although I have fictionalized certain details—including the dragon. For the curious, here is the true story of Beatrix Potter and the Water Bird.
The Water Bird, which some have called “Britain’s first seaplane,” began its life in Manchester, England, where it was built as a land plane. It was first flown in July 1911, and was then moved to Lake Windermere, to a hangar on Cockshott Point, where a float and airbags were substituted for the wheeled undercarriage. It made its inaugural seaplane flight on November 25, 1911, and after that, made an astonishing 60 flights on 38 days, its longest 20 miles at an altitude of 800 feet. The plane’s chief financial backer was a man named E. W. Wakefield from Kendal; its pilot was Stanley Adams. Early in 1912, a second plane joined the first, and Wakefield was said to have plans for five more, with which he hoped to establish a passenger route between Bowness and Grasmere.
There was a great deal of understandable enthusiasm for the project among local shopkeepers, who felt that aeroplanes would be good for business, and the press was regularly invited to take photos and write stories. The promoters energetically spread the word that the work they were doing had scientific merit and that the aeroplane—and specifically, the hydroplane—would prove useful if England went to war with the Germans. There was a great deal of war-talk in the years before fighting broke out, and the government was actively supporting experiments in flight.
But the local folk and those who loved the scenic beauty of the Lakes were not nearly as enthusiastic about the project. The letter Beatrix Potter begins on page 13 of this novel, expressing her unhappiness about the hydroplane, is an excerpt from one she wrote to Millie Warne on December 13, 1911. Potter spoke for the many who found the hydroplane not only a nuisance (what we today call “noise pollution”) but a serious hazard to boating, fishing, and transportation, and she found in this “a cause she could not ignore, for both personal and environmental reasons,” as Potter biographer Linda Lear puts it. In January 1912, Potter wrote to Country Life magazine, protesting that “a more inappropriate place for experimenting with flying machines could scarcely be chosen,” citing the “danger to existing traffic—the traffic of steamers, yachts, row-boats and Windermere Ferry.” She was specific about the situation:
We are threatened with the prospect of an aeroplane factory at Cockshott Point, between Bowness Bay and the Ferry Nab, and with the completion of five more machines before next summer. The existing machine flies up and down in the trough of the hills; it turns at either end of the lake and comes back. It flies at a comparatively low level; the nose of its propeller resembles millions of blue-bottles, plus a steam threshing machine.
The flying continued daily, although there was a brief respite in February, when Potter wrote to Harold Warne that “the hydrop. seems to be stopped with ice at present.”
Beatrix Potter wasn’t the only one writing letters. That same month, Canon Rawnsley, a personal friend of the Potters and one of the founders of the National Trust, wrote to The Times, saying that “the value of the shores of Windermere as a resort of rest and peace is seriously imperiled.” The barrage of letters continued for some weeks, and Potter herself launched a petition that garnered local and London signers. “I find radicals much more willing [to sign] than conservatives,” she wrote to Warne. The National Trust formed a committee “to preserve Windermere from being used as an experimental ground for the hydroplane” and lodged protests with the home secretary, who brought Parliament into the act. On March 20, 1912, a meeting of Members of Parliament and “interested parties” was held in the House of Commons, where objections were raised to this rude disturbance of the tranquility of the Lake District. At the end of the meeting, it was decided to ask the home secretary to hold an inquiry and regulate the air traffic under the new Aerial Regulation Act 1911.
Shortly after that, however, the dragon took matters into his own hands. Oh, no—I’m sorry. It wasn’t like that at all. It appears to have been a simple windstorm that did the damage. On April 4, 1912, Beatrix wrote to Harold Warne that she was “very pleased to hear that the roof of the hydro hangar has blown in, & smashed two machines.” One of the aeroplanes was repaired, but the Water Bird was totally destroyed.
The British Admiralty must have been disappointed in this outcome, for there was serious military interest in the plane. It is not recorded that Winston Churchill ever visited the Cockshott hangar, although he certainly might have. He was keenly interested in flying and in fact took flying lessons himself in 1912-1913, stopping only when his instructor died in a plane crash (as the fictional Oscar Wyatt dies in this book) and his wife, Clementine, put her foot down, grounding him. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill created the Royal Flying Corps in May 1912. It was his personal sense of urgency that got England into the air during the First World War and eventually made the seaplane an important weapon against enemy submarines.
In addition to inserting the dragon into the aeroplane story, I have taken a few other liberties with real-world facts, chiefly with the way Beatrix Potter tells her parents about her engagement. According to Linda Lear, she made that announcement some months later, in the summer of 1912, after which “there ensued another long and bitter contest of wills, not unlike the violent battle between badger and fox that she had described in Mr. Tod.” If I were Miss Potter, I think I would have chosen to tell them in a letter.
Susan Wittig Albert
Bertram, Texas, September 2010
Resources
Denyer, Susan. At Home with Beatrix Potter. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000.
Hervye, Canon G.A.K., and J.A.G. Barnes. Natural History of the Lake District. London: Frederick Warne, 1970.
Lear, Linda. A Life in Nature: The Story of Beatrix Potter. London: Allen Lane (Penguin UK) and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
Potter, Beatrix. Beatrix Potter’s Letters, selected and edited by Judy Taylor. London: Frederick Warne, 1989.
Potter, Beatrix. The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897, new edition, transcribed by Leslie Linder. London: Frederick Warne, 1966.
Potter, Beatrix. The Tale of Mr. Tod. London: Frederick Warne, 1912.
Taylor, Judy. Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Country-woman, revised edition. London: Frederick Warne, 1996.
Recipes
Oat Cakes
The oat cake has been the mainstay of Scottish breads for centuries, going back at least as far as the Roman invasion and likely before. It is traditionally made almost entirely of oats, the only cereal grain that thrives in northern Scotland. Oats made up the Scottish staple diet of porridge and oat cakes, a dietary pattern that flourished across the north of England. The oat cake is a flatbread, like a pancake, made from oatmeal and sometimes flour as well, and cooked on a griddle or baked in an oven. (You may also be familiar with its cousin, the Johnnycake, which is made of cornmeal and was often cooked on a board, shovel, or even stones, just as it had been done in Scotland long before.) This version is baked.
1 cup oats or quick-cooking oats
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup shortening
2-3 tablespoons cold water
Mix the
oats, flour, baking soda, and salt. Cut in the shortening with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a stiff dough forms. Roll ⅛ inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut into 2-inch rounds or squares. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375° until set and barely brown (12-15 minutes). Serve warm or freeze.
Potato and Sausage Soup
Potatoes were grown in every garden and were served at every meal. This modern recipe includes celery, but at Hill Top Farm, it would likely have been made with celeriac, which was grown as a root vegetable and valued for its celery-like taste. Also called celery root or turnip-rooted or knob celery, it contains much less starch than other root vegetables and was an important addition to soups and stews.
1½ pounds mild sausage
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
4 medium white potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup cold milk
1½ cups yellow cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste
In a large, heavy saucepan, brown the sausage and chop into small pieces. Remove the sausage from the pan and drain off the fat. Set aside. Melt the butter in the saucepan. Sauté the onion, celery, and garlic. Add the broth, water, and potatoes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Drain. Mash about half the potatoes in the pan. Leave the remaining in chunks. Add the sausage and stir until heated. Just before serving, add the milk, stirring constantly. Add the cheese and stir until melted. Season with salt and pepper.
Mathilda Crook’s Mother’s Soda Bread Recipe
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
⅓ cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons dried herbs (a combination of thyme,
marjoram, sage, chives, and rosemary)
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 cups buttermilk
¼ cup butter, melted
Preheat oven to 325°. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.
Combine the flour, baking powder, oats, salt, baking soda, and dried herbs. Blend the egg and buttermilk together, and add all at once to the flour mixture. Mix just until moistened. Stir in the melted butter. Pour into the greased pan. Bake for 65-70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the bread comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. For best flavor, wrap in foil for several hours, or overnight.
Parsley’s Honey Cake
½ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup butter
¾ cup honey
2 tablespoons cold water
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Heat the sugar, butter, honey, and water in a large pan. When the butter has melted, beat in the eggs and vanilla. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to the sugar and egg mixture in three additions, beating well after each. Put into a greased 8-inch square pan. Bake at 350º for about 40 minutes. Frost while warm.
HONEY FROSTING
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon cold water
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
Mix the honey and water, then stir in the sugar. Pour over the warm cake.
Mrs. Jennings’ Apple Pudding
When Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm in 1905, there were already a number of apple trees on the place. She wrote to Millie Warne the next fall that she was busy with gardening chores, which included “putting liquid manure on the apple trees.” In a letter dated October 6, she drew a picture of herself shoveling manure with a long-handled scoop. “The apples on the old trees prove to be very good cookers,” she added. “We have had some for dinner.” Miss Potter might have liked them baked in this traditional apple pudding.
SYRUP
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
¼ cup butter
1 cup water
APPLE BATTER
1⅓ cup sifted all-purpose flour
2½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
cup brown sugar
¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup milk
2½ cups sliced apples mixed with ⅓ cup brown sugar
To prepare the syrup: In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar, cornstarch, and butter. Stir in the water; cook over low heat until thickened. Pour the mixture into a lightly buttered 10-by-6-inch baking dish. To prepare the batter: In a bowl, combine the sifted flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and brown sugar. Blend in the melted butter and milk, stirring just until dampened. Stir in the sliced apples mixed with brown sugar. Pour the apple batter over the syrup in the baking dish. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.
Glossary
Some of the words included in this glossary are dialect forms; others are sufficiently uncommon that a definition may be helpful. My source for dialect is William Rollinson’s The Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition, and Folklore. For other definitions, I have consulted the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, Oxford University Press, London, 1989).
Allus. Always.
Auld. Old.
Awt. Something, anything.
Beck. A small stream.
Betimes. Sometimes.
Bodderment. Trouble.
Dust, dusta, dusnta. Does, do you, don’t you.
Goosy. Foolish.
How. Hill, as in “Holly How,” the hill where Badger lives.
Mappen. Mayhap, perhaps.
Mebbee. Maybe.
Nae. No.
Nawt. Nothing.
Off-comer. A stranger, someone who comes from far away.
Pattens. Farm shoes with wooden soles and leather uppers.
Reet. Right.
Sae. So.
Sartin, sartinly. Certain, certainly.
Scotch, as in “Scotch that aeroplane.” To damage, crush, destroy something dangerous.
Seed wigs. Small, oblong tea cakes, flavored with caraway seeds.
Sumbody. Somebody, someone.
Summat. Somewhat, something.
Taties. Potatoes.
Trippers, day trippers. Tourists, visitors who come for the day.
Verra or varra. Very.
Worrit. Worried.
Wudna, wudsta. Would not, would you.