The Tale of Castle Cottage

by Susan Wittig Albert

  The badgers rarely went to the pub and hadn’t heard this news. “Oh, come now, Rascal !” Bosworth said, shocked. “Who could object to our Miss Potter?”

  “I shouldn’t like to say,” Rascal replied reluctantly, “since I’m only reporting what I’ve heard—and you know how bad humans are about gossiping. Some folks are even whispering that Mr. Heelis himself is considering breaking off the engagement. Not that I believe that for a minute,” he added hurriedly. “Mr. Heelis is devoted to Miss Potter. I can’t think that he’d do such a thing.”

  “Break off the engagement!” Bosworth exclaimed. “Oh, surely not! Oh, dear, dear me! That would be . . . It would be . . .” He stopped, stumped for a word that said exactly what he felt.

  “A tragedy,” Primrose said quietly, and folded her hands.

  “Just so,” said the badger, and fell silent.

  Hyacinth had said nothing during this exchange, but she agreed with Primrose and Uncle Bosworth. Miss Potter might not know everything there was to know about the real lives of badgers, but she was kind and good and had the best interests of the village at heart. And not just the village, but the entire Land Between the Lakes, as well. Hyacinth herself had occasionally encountered Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis on their Sunday afternoon walks in the lanes above the village and beside Esthwaite Water, surveying the meadows and wooded hillsides that might come up for sale.

  Hyacinth had heard the pair talking, too, and knew that they shared the same worry: that the old farms would be sold away and with them would go the traditions of the farming life, which revolved around the farmer’s sheep and cattle and fields of oats, barley, and potatoes, as well as the farm wife’s garden and dairy. The Land Between the Lakes was a place where the old ways were still practiced, where turfs of peat were graved for fuel and dried bracken was sledged down the fell-sides for winter animal bedding and fodder, and where rich butter and bright yellow cheeses were made in farmhouse dairies and haver bread, made from the farmer’s oats, was baked on hot iron griddles over farmhouse fires.

  And even though automobiles zipped through the narrow lanes at speeds approaching ten miles an hour and noisy hydroplanes raced up and down Windermere and telegraphs and telephones brought good news and bad from the far corners of the earth, the fell farmers could still weave a tight swill basket, shear a sheep, construct a perfectly round wooden cart wheel, and rive a clog of greenstone into slates as thin as oat cakes. The farm wives still knitted the family stockings, stirred their tasty tatie pots over their hearth fires, and wore their wooden-soled clogs when they went out into the muddy farmyard to steal the freshly laid eggs from their hens. They knew that it took a quart of fair cream to make a pound of good butter, and a fresh twig of rowan in the churn to keep the fairies from turning the butter bad. And of course they knew that the heads of newborn babes should be immediately washed with rum for protection from evil, and that rum butter with brown sugar and nutmeg must be served at the christening feast.

  But if the farms were sold, the farmers would have to move to the cities and holiday towns in search of work. The livestock would be sold, too, the houses torn down to make way for cottages, and the old ways entirely forgotten. Well, not quite, Hyacinth knew, for she and Uncle Bosworth were recording as many of the old practices as they could in the History, against the inevitable day when the Big Folk had forgotten their own traditional crafts. But she feared that Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis were right, and that the world they all loved would fall into the hands of off-comers from the city who wanted holiday cottages with a view and telephones and electric lights and metaled lanes so their motorcars wouldn’t mire down in the mud.

  Hyacinth frowned. It seemed as if Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis were the only Big Folks who understood this looming threat and were committed to doing something to stave it off. Clearly, Miss Potter could do more if she were living right here in the village, and Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis could certainly do more if they were married. But if Miss Potter stayed in London with her parents and Mr. Heelis got tired of waiting and looked for another wife—

  Hyacinth shuddered. For all of their sakes, something ought to be done. “Is there anything we can do to help?” she asked. She looked from Rascal to Uncle Bosworth and back again. The animals had lent a hand—paw, rather—in many of the difficult situations the villagers had found themselves in. “Surely there must be something that will break this stalemate and allow them to be married.”

  “Right you are,” Rascal said briskly. “There must be something. But what?”

  “Yes, what?” Primrose repeated, and Bosworth echoed her words.

  I’m sure that you appreciate their difficulty, as do I. But whilst the animals’ hearts are in the right place, I can’t for the life of me think how three badgers and a dog—however willing and well-intentioned—could think of a way to change the plot of this particular story. They’re not going to do so at the moment, anyway, for they are about to be interrupted.

  There was a soft whoosh, a flutter of feathers, and a large brown shape lurched awkwardly onto the rock beside them. It teetered dangerously for a moment and at last righted itself. All four animals turned, startled.

  “Hullooo,” said the shape in a hollow voice. “Fooorgive me. I misjudged my landing. Doesn’t happen often,” it added defensively. “Ooonly when I’m wearing these confounded goggles.”

  “Oh, it’s you, Owl,” said Bosworth happily. “How very nice of you to drop in. Especially at midday,” he added, for the owl, whose habits were as nocturnal as their own, did not usually take to the skies at this hour. However, he was wearing his dark flying goggles. Although they might not promote stumble-free landings, they enabled him to go about in comfort during the daytime.

  The drop-in (as you have probably guessed) is Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil., the large tawny owl who resides in a hollow beech tree in Cuckoo Brow Wood, at the very top of Claife Heights. The Professor is universally respected for his diligent studies in astronomy, which he carries out from his treetop observatory on every cloudless night. Since he is both learned in astronomical studies and a superb flier, he has adopted as his motto the Latin phrase Alis aspicit astra, “Flying, he looks to the stars.” He is also widely known and (I regret to say, feared) for his studies in natural history. He is particularly expert—and takes quite a personal interest—in the habits of voles, mice, rabbits, and squirrels, and knows where they are likely to be found. He regularly studies the meadows and fell-sides from the air, his great owl eyes trained on the ground, alert for any movement, his great owl talons poised to pounce. Nothing much happens that is beneath his notice, so to speak.

  The Professor took off his goggles and settled his feathers. “Whooo?” he inquired in a genial tone.

  The badger, accustomed to the Professor’s method of beginning a conversation, replied, “Quite well, thank you. We’re having a picnic.”

  “Actually, we’ve just had it,” Primrose explained. “We’ve been celebrating Parsley’s birthday.”

  The owl brightened. “Very goood,” he intoned. “I say, a bit of birthday cake wooouldn’t come amiss.”

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” Primrose said regretfully. “I’m afraid we’ve finished it off. If we’d known you were coming, we would have been glad to save you a piece.” She paused. “But do come back this evening. We’re having ginger and treacle pudding for dessert. And I believe that your dragon friend, Thorvaald, will be joining us”

  The owl was exceedingly partial to ginger and treacle pudding. “Wooonderful!” he exclaimed happily. “I shall plan on returning this evening, then.” He bowed to Parsley, who had joined the group. “Please accept my best birthday wishes, my dear.” Without waiting for her reply, he turned back to Bosworth. “I have come with news, ooold chap.”

  “What sort of news?” Bosworth asked, immediately concerned. “Not bad news, I hope.”

  I am not surprised at Bosworth’s question, for there have been any number of upsets in the neighborhood in rece
nt times. A threatened footpath closing, a terrible accident at Oat Cake Crag, poison pen letters that nearly derailed the vicar’s wedding to Mrs. Lythecoe—and worst of all, a beastly hydroplane that buzzed noisily up and down the lake, wreaking all kinds of havoc. The wretched thing was destroyed in a mysterious storm (with the help of Thorvaald, an ambitious young dragon), but not before the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Churchill, had come down from London to inspect it. He must have liked what he saw, because not long after, it was reported that a similar flying machine was being fitted with guns and readied for possible war use.

  War! At the thought, the old badger shuddered. A former ship’s cat—a large, muscular creature with a sleek orange coat and a jaunty green mate’s cap—had stopped in at teatime several days before. He had taken passage on a freighter carrying grain from Le Havre to Liverpool and then hopped a goods lorry to visit his relatives in the northern Cumbria. The cat had reported that war with Germany was now being spoken of openly in France and Brussels and elsewhere, and that everyone seemed quite keen on the prospect. But the news had sobered the animals around the table, and the thought of war had chilled Bosworth to the bone.

  “Oh, nooo, not bad news at all,” the owl hastened to assure the badger. He beamed. “In fact, I daresay yooou will be delighted to hear it, I happened tooo fly over Slatestone Cottage shortly after dawn this morning, checking to see if the little rabbits in the neighbor’s garden had ventured out of their nest as yet. I heard a baby cry and went tooo have a looook in the window. Deirdre and Jeremy Crosfield have a new little boy.”

  “A boy!” Primrose exclaimed happily. “How wonderful. What have they named him?”

  The Professor cast a twinkling glance at the little dog. “I believe I overheard Deirdre call him Rascal. But please dooon’t quote me. I am occasionally wrong. Not often, mind. Just every now and then.”

  “Rascal?” Rascal sat up straight, his eyes wide with disbelief. “They’re calling their baby boy . . . Rascal?”

  “I wonder why,” Hyacinth murmured ironically.

  But of course they all knew that Rascal had been Jeremy’s special friend—sometimes his only friend—for a good many years. Jeremy returned Rascal’s affection and had even invited the little dog into the church when he and Deirdre were married. Unfortunately, the vicar had not approved this idea, but Rascal had fully enjoyed himself at the wedding party, where Deirdre had tied a satin ribbon around his neck and asked him to join in the dancing.

  “It hardly seems possible that our Jeremy is a dad,” Rascal muttered. Embarrassed, he turned away to hide the sudden mist in his eyes. “Seems daft, maybe, but I still think of him as a lad, rambling through the fells with his sketch book and charcoal.” He scrambled to his feet. “Well, now. I think I’ll just trot on over to Slatestone Cottage and have a quick look in. P’rhaps they have an errand or two that wants running.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t,” Primrose said quickly. “Mum and Dad will have their hands full with the new babe, you know. Wait a few hours and let them get settled, and they’ll be all the gladder to see you.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Rascal said reluctantly. “Well, then, p’rhaps I’ll go back down to the village and see who’s out and about and what they’re up to. Cheerio.” And off he went.

  The owl put his flying goggles back on. “I must be off myself.” He sighed. “A pity about that cake. I shall try tooo be more prompt next year. And I shall look forward tooo this evening.” And with two great flaps of his huge wings, he lifted himself into the sky, circled once, and flew in the direction of Claife Heights.

  And we shall take ourselves off, too, and follow Rascal to the village. It will soon be time for Miss Potter to meet Mr. Heelis. I don’t know about you, but I would like to see the two of them together again. I don’t want to miss their meeting, especially since it is to take place at Castle Farm, which (since it is the title of our book) must be an important part of our story.

  4

  Miss Potter Surveys a Mess

  [Castle Cottage] has been in such an awful mess. The new rooms are nothing like built yet & the old part has been all upset with breaking doors in the wall & taking out partitions. Those front rooms . . . are one long room now & the staircase is altered & we are going to have a bathroom—in the course of time—I think workmen are very slow.

  —Beatrix Potter to Barbara Buxton, 1913

  If Miss Potter had what we moderns would call a “pet peeve,” it would most likely be day-trippers. Even in her time, there were quite a few, especially in July and August, when people hoped to escape the stifling heat of the cities by coming to the Lake District. All summer long, the coaches and charabancs were crowded, noisy motorcars chugged up Ferry Hill, and dozens of bicyclists and fell-walkers puffed along the lane. The local residents made a little money from this tourist traffic, no doubt, but they were no end annoyed by it.

  And if Miss Potter could see today’s traffic in her quiet little village, she would be exceedingly annoyed, for it often feels as if Sawrey is completely overrun. On a fine midsummer afternoon, for instance, you are likely to find the streets and lanes crowded with swarms of visitors, especially if you have arrived at the same time as one of the tourist buses, some of which are the size of a Sawrey cottage! But because you’re a modern person, you are used to traffic and tourists and you won’t (I trust) let the throngs diminish your enjoyment of this picturesque little village, which looks very much as it did in Miss Potter’s day.

  If you’re visiting Hill Top, you will likely cross Windermere on the ferry, just as Miss Potter herself did. You will drive up Ferry Hill and through Far Sawrey. When you arrive in Near Sawrey, you will be directed by a uniformed traffic minder to put your automobile in the car park about two hundred yards from Hill Top, which is now owned and maintained by the National Trust. You will walk along Kendal Road, past Buckle Yeat Guest Cottage (do stop and admire the beautiful baskets of colorful petunias and blue lobelia and red and pink geraniums maintained by the friendly cottage hosts) and the Tower Bank Arms, where there is a wreath of pink roses blooming around the old clock above the front door.

  If it’s mealtime and you’re feeling peckish, you may be tempted by the pub menu posted outside the Tower Bank’s green-painted front door. You might consider a Cumberland sausage (supplied by Woodall’s of Waberthwaite, purveyors of traditional Cumberland sausage, by appointment to HM Queen Elizabeth II), served with mashed potatoes and onion gravy. Or perhaps you would prefer the Cumbrian beef and ale stew with herb dumplings, also recommended. If you’re in the mood for dessert, try the sticky toffee pudding (wonderful!). And if the day is foggy or chilly, you can toast your toes at the fire in the grate of the old fireplace or sit at the bar and warm yourself with a half-pint of fine local ale. You will find that the old pub looks much as it did a century ago, when it was the center of the village social life, a place to barter and trade, to hear the latest news, to play a game of darts or cards, and to complain about the weather and taxes.

  After your visit to the pub, you will want to get on to Hill Top, where you must expect to wait for admission. The house is now a museum, and only a certain number of people are allowed to purchase tickets and go inside at any one time. While you wait, you can browse in the gift shop, admire Miss Potter’s cottage garden—a delightfully haphazard jumble of herbs, flowers, and vegetables—or look over the fence toward the lovely green hill where Tibbie and Queenie, Miss Potter’s Herdwick ewes, once raised their annual families of rambunctious little lambs. While you’re waiting, you’re sure to hear conversations in a half-dozen different languages, for children of all nationalities have read Miss Potter’s Little Books and now, grown up and with their own youngsters in tow, have come to visit the place where she lived.

  But I’m about to tell you something that most people don’t know, for Miss Potter’s real home in Sawrey was not Hill Top Farm; it was Castle Cottage. Hill Top was very dear to her heart, it is true. She could retreat there from London and
her parents, and she wrote and drew many of her little books there. But the house itself was rather like a holiday cottage, and she was rarely able to spend more than a fortnight there at any given time.

  In actuality, Beatrix Potter’s real home was Castle Cottage, where she spent the last thirty years of her life. After you’ve toured the house at Hill Top and you’re walking back in the direction of the car park, glance up the hill to the north (to your right), past the other houses in the village. The large white house at the top of the hill—slate roof, whitepainted chimneys with red top hats, red-trimmed windows, and a porch with a skylight—is Castle Cottage. To get there, you will walk up the lane, past the row of cottages that used to include Ginger and Pickles’ village shop and Rose Cottage and the joiner’s workshop and the blacksmith’s forge and Croft End Cottage. At the corner, turn to the right, then turn left when you reach Post Office Meadow, and walk up the hill to Castle Cottage. Neither the house nor the grounds are open to the public. But as you stand at the gate and peek into the garden, perhaps you can imagine Miss Potter, dressed in her gray Herdwick tweeds and her old black felt hat, a woven basket over her arm and clippers in hand, coming out of the door and stepping into the green and neatly kept garden, with blooming flowers and trimmed hedges behind a stone fence.

  So. That is Castle Cottage as it is now.

  It did not look that way on this particular July afternoon in 1913, however. Beatrix, dressed in those same tweeds and black felt hat, is taking the same route to Castle Cottage that I have just described. But the village is not yet a tourist destination—if it were, I daresay that Miss Potter would have found another place to live straightaway!—and as she comes down the steep walk from Hill Top (the path is behind the Tower Bank Arms), there are only a few people about. Harry Turnell, the brewer’s drayman, in his leather apron, shirt sleeves rolled past the elbows, is delivering kegs of beer and ale to the Tower Bank Arms. Robert Franklin, wearing his handwoven rush farmer’s hat, trundles a wooden wheelbarrow loaded with two red hens and a rooster in a wooden cage. And a pair of fell-walkers in short pants and knee stockings, kitted out with knapsacks and walking sticks and pert green felt hats, are striding along as boldly as if they are setting out to climb the Matterhorn instead of merely hiking up Coniston Old Man, on the other side of Esthwaite Water.