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The Fairy Ring

Page 8

by Losure, Mary


  “Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event Described by A. Conan Doyle” and “the two most astounding photographs ever published!”: Strand Magazine 60, no. 360 (December 1920), pp. 463 and 462, Brotherton Collection.

  “Should the incidents here narrated . . . examination and judgment” and “final and absolute proof”: Doyle, p. 39.

  “Mr. Gardner, however, tested her . . . those in the photograph”: Ibid., p. 57.

  “They threw cold water . . . paintings that hung in our house”: undated letter from Elsie Wright Hill to the London Daily Mail in response to an article dated February 17, 1977, Brotherton Collection.

  “There is an ornamental rim . . . let themselves go in the dance!”: Doyle, p. 55.

  “fed up,” “Yes,” “simply vanished into the air,” “Yes,” “If anybody else were there, the fairies would not come out,” and “You don’t understand”: Ibid., pp. 67–69.

  “transparent,” “rather hard,” and “You see, we were young then”: Ibid., p. 70.

  “Do Fairies Exist? . . . Took the Snapshot” and “My mission to Yorkshire . . . that I failed”: Ibid., pp. 60–61.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I would suggest to Miss Elsie . . . what the ‘fairies’ really are”: London Times, January 5, 1921, Brotherton Collection.

  “I know children . . . have pulled one of them”: Doyle, p. 88.

  “with your help in Cottingley . . . shall be justified everywhere”: January 8, 1921, letter from Edward Gardner to Polly Wright, Brotherton Collection.

  “I am keeping them back . . . at the proper moment!”: November 29, 1920, letter from Edward Gardner to Arthur Wright, Brother Collection.

  “The Evidence for Fairies . . . Photographs”: Strand Magazine 61, no. 363 (March 1921), Brotherton Collection.

  “fairy’s bower” and “apparently considering . . . wonderful wings”: Doyle, p. 103.

  “We have now succeeded . . . splendidly”: Ibid., p. 101.

  “Never before, or otherwhere . . . been photographed!”: Ibid., p. 103.

  “Well, it would be interesting to have a few here in the classrooms” and “perfect fool”: Griffiths, p. 60.

  “Thinking about fairies, then?”: “There Were Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden,” Woman magazine, October 1975, p. 43, Brotherton Collection.

  “This is what I hated for years . . . I didn’t want to answer”: Griffiths, pp. 60–61.

  “mediumistic” and “subtle ectoplasmic or etheric material”: Gardner, p. 25.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Our normal selves came to the surface”: Griffiths, p. 65.

  “Gnomes and Fairies . . . Elsie sees a small imp.”: Doyle, pp. 108–115.

  “iridescent shimmering golden light”: Ibid., p. 121.

  “When we two one step”: Elsie Wright sketchbook, collection of Glenn Hill; also reproduced in Cooper, photo insert following p. 112.

  “change in the girls”: Doyle, p. 105.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “When the last fairy pictures were taken . . . that was the end of it all”: March 4, 1973, letter from Elsie Wright Hill to Leslie Gardner, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Bradford Central Library.

  “Briton in U.S. to Prove Fairies Exist”: undated unidentified clipping, Brotherton Collection. “Champion of Elfs Struts His Stuff” and “A Bit of Britain’s Gnome-land”: undated New York Evening Post clipping, Brotherton Collection. “Really, Truly They’re Fairies”: undated Los Angeles Examiner clipping, Brotherton Collection.

  “like a landscape in the moon”: Doyle, p. 125.

  “My husband always says . . . when he is laughing”: April 24, 1971, letter from Elsie Wright Hill to Leslie Gardner, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Bradford Central Library.

  “Love, Frances”: undated postcard, collection of Glenn Hill.

  “It was one of those things . . . always believed me”: “There Were Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden,” Woman magazine, October 1975, p. 43, Brotherton Collection.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Now I’ve told you, and I never want to hear about it again.”: Griffiths, p. 74.

  And one day, when Glenn was ten . . . And fairies were absolute nonsense: author interview with Glenn Hill.

  “She’s never been skeptical . . . my grandchildren all the time”: “There Were Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden,” Woman magazine, October 1975, p. 43, Brotherton Collection.

  “a touch of 1920s dash about her” and “She has a dazzling smile . . . half of the county”: “There Were Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden,” Woman magazine, October 1975, p. 43, Brotherton Collection.

  “Mind if I turn this on? I’m very interested in collecting data,” “They say, jointly, calmly and lightly . . . pair of them get together,” and “Once I was talking . . . fairies, do you, Elsie?”: Cooper, pp. 123–124.

  “an air of mystery and gentleness and holding back something”: Ibid., p. 125.

  “How big were the fairies? . . . No, I don’t think so.”: September 1976 Yorkshire Television (YTV) program, archives of the National Media Museum, Bradford, Yorkshire.

  “I’m sorry if I upset you . . . in the past” and “I’m known as a woman . . . what a stranger thinks?”: Griffiths, pp. 98–99.

  “(If people wish to believe in Fairies . . . true or untrue Fairy Story”: undated letter from Elsie Wright Hill to the London Daily Mail in response to an article dated February 17, 1977, Brotherton Collection.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “weirdy grandmother”: February 17, 1989, letter from Elsie Wright Hill to Geoffrey Crawley, editor of the British Journal of Photography, archives of the National Media Museum, Bradford, Yorkshire. Elsie also told her son, Glenn Hill, that she wanted to reveal the secret out of concern for her grandchildren; author interview with Glenn Hill.

  The sequence of how the secret was revealed is based on the accounts given in Griffiths and Cooper, on the dates of various newspaper and magazine articles of the time, and on author interviews with Glenn Hill.

  “Men from Mars” and “Whatever Happened to Dragons?”: The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind Space & Time, issues 20 and 21, Brotherton Collection.

  “You’re a traitor” and “Tha’s properly muckied tha’ ticket wi’ me!”: Cooper, pp. 24 and 174.

  “Cottingley Fairies a Fake”: London Times, March 18, 1983, p. 3. “Secrets of Two Famous Hoaxers”: London Times, April 4, 1983, p. 3.

  “I am sorry someone has stabbed all our fairies to death with a hatpin”: London Times, March 18, 1983, p. 3.

  “No one has ever taken any notice of what I say”: Griffiths, p. 55.

  In time, they made up and were friends again: author interview with Glenn Hill.

  “Fairy Lady Dies with Her Secret”: Norman Lebrecht, London Sunday Times, July 13, 1986.

  The descriptions of Elsie Wright’s later life are taken from her letters to Leslie Gardner, West Yorkshire Archive Service, Bradford Central Library. I learned about her autobiography and its fate from her son, Glenn Hill.

  “photographs of figments of our imagination”: author interview with Glenn Hill.

  “(Either a pearl busting joke) . . . precious fairy land places” and “One man is standing aside . . . each side of the shell and away he floats”: Cooper, pp. 146–147.

  Chapters 2, 8, 12, 13, 14, 18 (second image), and 19 (first image): illustrations and images courtesy of Glenn Hill, Glenn Hill personal collection; photographs © 2011 by Don Losure.

  Chapter 4: Illustration from Princess Mary’s Gift Book, p. 104

  Chapter 5: “Alice and the Fairies,” July 1917. Courtesy of Science and Society Library. Photographer Glenn Hill.

  Chapter 6: “Iris and the Gnome,” September 1917. Courtesy of Science and Society Library. Photographer Glenn Hill.

  Chapter 9:“Come, Now a Roundel,” 1908, by Arthur Rackham (1867–1939). Private Collection/© Chris Beetles, London, U.K./The Bridgeman Art Library.

  Chapter 15 (first image): “Fair
y Offering Flowers to Iris,” August 1920. Courtesy of Science and Society Library. Photographer Glenn Hill.

  Chapter 15 (second image): “Alice and Leaping Fairy,” August 1920. Courtesy of Science and Society Library. Photographer Glenn Hill.

  Chapters 16 and 18 (first image): Photographs courtesy of the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University.

  Chapter 19 (second image): “Fairy Sunbath Elves Etc.,” August 1920. Courtesy of Science and Society Library. Photographer Glenn Hill.

  Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. Papers and photographs relating to the Cottingley fairies, Handlist #170.

  Butcher, W., & Sons Ltd. Photography with a MIDG Magazine Camera. (Instruction manual, undated.)

  Cooper, Joe. The Case of the Cottingley Fairies. London: Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster, 1997.

  Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Coming of the Fairies. New York: G. H. Doran, 1921.

  Gardner, Edward L. Fairies: A Book of Real Fairies. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1945.

  Griffiths, Frances. Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies: Frances Griffiths — In Her Own Words, with Additional Material by her Daughter Christine. Belfast: JMJ Publications, 2009.

  Lellenberg, Jon, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley, eds. Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. New York: Penguin, 2007.

  Briggs, K. M. The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

  Doyle, Charles Altamont. The Doyle Diary: The Last Great Conan Doyle Mystery. New York and London: Paddington Press Ltd., 1978.

  Hodson, Geoffrey. Fairies at Work and Play. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982.

  Purkiss, Diane. At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

  Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

  Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Holt, 1999.

  Mary Losure began her wandering career path backpacking in the mountains of California and Oregon and kayaking in Prince William Sound, in Alaska. She’s worked as a field botanist’s assistant, family farmer, and staff reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. A longtime contributor to National Public Radio, she says she began The Fairy Ring, her first book for children, after becoming “intrigued by the mystery of Frances and Elsie. Who were these girls? And how could they have bamboozled the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?” She lives with her husband in Minnesota.

  Copyright © 2012 by Mary Losure

  Cover photograph copyright © Glenn Hill/NMeM/

  Science & Society Picture Library

  Other image credits appear at the end of the book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted,

  or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,

  graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and

  recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5670-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5965-3 (electronic)

  Candlewick Press

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  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com

 

 

 


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