The Tale of Holly How (2 page)

Cast of Characters

(* indicates an actual person or creature)

Beatrix Potter*,
children’s author and illustrator, is the owner of Hill Top Farm, in the Lake District village of Near Sawrey. While the farmhouse is being renovated, Miss Potter stays with the Crooks at Belle Green. She has brought four animal companions to the village with her:
Josey
and
Mopsy Rabbit
*,
Tom Thumb Mouse
*, and
Tuppenny
, an orange guinea pig.

John
and
Becky Jennings
operate Hill Top Farm for Miss Potter. They have three children and a cat named
Felicia Frummety.

Dimity Woodcock
and
Captain Miles Woodcock
live in Tower Bank House, a large house overlooking the road to Hawkshead. Dimity volunteers for parish activities; her brother Miles is Justice of the Peace for Sawrey District and a trustee of Sawrey School.
Elsa Grape
keeps house and cooks for the Woodcocks.

Lady Longford
lives at Tidmarsh Manor, a large estate at the edge of Cuckoo Brow Wood. Her twelve-year-old granddaughter,
Caroline,
has recently come to live with her. Also at Tidmarsh Manor are
Maribel Martine,
Lady Longford’s secretary and companion;
Mrs. Beever,
the cook-housekeeper;
Mr. Beever,
the gardener and coach-man;
Emily,
the upstairs maid; and
Harriet,
the kitchen maid.
Ben Hornby
farmed Holly How Farm, one of the farms belonging to Tidmarsh Manor.

Sarah Barwick
has recently opened a bakery in Anvil Cottage.

Frances
and
Lester Barrow
own the Tower Bank Arms, the village pub and inn, which is located at the bottom of the hill, below Hill Top Farm.
Ruth Safford
helps Mrs. Barrow with housekeeping and waits tables in the pub.

Mathilda
and
George Crook
board guests in their home, Belle Green, at the top of Market Street. George owns and operates the village forge. Also in residence at Belle Green: a Jack Russell terrier named
Rascal
and the senior village cat,
Tabitha Twitchit*.

Grace Lythecoe
is the widow of the former vicar. She lives in Rose Cottage and plays an important role in village affairs.

Lucy Skead
is the village postmistress. She and her family live at Low Green Gate Cottage, which is also the village post office.

Margaret Nash
is Acting Head Teacher at Sawrey School. She lives in one of the Sunnyside Cottages with her sister,
Annie,
a piano teacher.

Dr. Harrison Gainwell
is Lady Longford’s choice for the position of Head Teacher at Sawrey School.

Bertha Stubbs
and her husband,
Henry
, live in the lefthand cottage in the row of Lakefield Cottages. Bertha cleans Sawrey School; Henry is a ferryman. A gray tabby cat named
Crumpet
lives with the Stubbses, but spends most of her time observing and commenting on people’s behavior.

Jeremy Crosfield
lives with his aunt in Willow Cottage, on Cunsey Beck. Jeremy, twelve, is an artist and naturalist and spends as much time as possible in the woods and fields.

Rose
and
Desmond Sutton
live with their six children in Courier Cottage. Dr. Sutton is the veterinary surgeon.

Lydia Dowling
is the proprietress of the village shop, located in Meadowcroft Cottage (which will later become famous as the Ginger & Pickles Shop in one of Miss Potter’s books). Lydia is assisted by her niece
Gladys
.

Vicar Samuel Sackett
is the vicar of St. Peter’s Church in Far Sawrey, and serves as a school trustee.

Dr. Butters,
the much-loved family doctor, lives in Hawkshead. He serves as a school trustee.

William (Will) Heelis
* is a solicitor with an office in Hawkshead and a school trustee. He is a good friend of Captain Woodcock’s.

Isaac Chance
operates Oldfield Farm, located just to the north of Holly How Farm.

Jack Ogden
builds stone walls and digs badgers for farmers in the Lake District.

Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil.,
is a tawny owl who lives in Cuckoo Brow Wood. He studies celestial mechanics and the habits of small furry creatures, and makes it his business to know everything that goes on in the neighborhood of Sawrey.

Bosworth Badger XVII
lives in Holly How, in The Brockery, the oldest badger sett in the Land between the Lakes. Bosworth is responsible for
The Brockery Badger History and Genealogy
. A wide assortment of residents and guests lives in The Brockery.

Primrose, Hyacinth,
and
Thorn
are three badgers who are kidnapped from their sett at Hill Top Farm.

Tibbie, Queenie,
and their lambs are Herdwick sheep living on Holly How, under the care of
Ben Hornby,
of Holly How Farm.

1

Miss Potter Becomes a Farmer

NEAR SAWREY, JULY, 1906

It was high summer in the Lake District. The green meadows and hills were drowsy under the July sun, and there had been so little rain that even the nettles in the lane were limp and parched. The cloudless sky arching over the lakes and fells was the deepest blue, and the wandering breeze was laced with the fresh, sweet scent of wild rose and honeysuckle and the call of the skylark. It was the sort of warm summer day that Beatrix Potter loved, and a great relief after the chilly London spring that made her nose run and her joints ache.

But this morning, Beatrix was not thinking of the lovely weather. She was surveying her pigs.

“Well, now, Miss Potter,” said the farmer. “Wha’ dustha think? Will they do?”

Beatrix folded her arms and regarded the newly repaired pigsty and the six recently purchased Berkshire hogs, black and white and promisingly plump. “I think,” she said after a moment, “that they will do very well. And that they ought to be quite content in their new pigsty.” She added dryly, “It isn’t pretty, and Mr. Biddle certainly charged us enough, but I daresay it will do, too.”

“At least they woan’t be runnin’ up and down t’ Kendal Road, underfoot of t’ horses,” John Jennings replied in a practical tone. He rubbed his brown beard. “T’ auld fence was rotten reet through, top t’ bottom and all round. Had to be rebuilt, like it or not.”

That was undeniably true. Hill Top Farm, at the edge of the Lake District village of Near Sawrey, had been in the Preston family for half a century before Beatrix purchased it the year before. The buildings had been allowed to run down, the livestock had been sold when Mr. Preston died, and the whole place wore a sad, neglected look that begged to beg for a cleaning and fixing up. In fact, there seemed to be an endless amount of replacing, repairing, rebuilding, and restocking to do—and to pay for. Beatrix was new to farming (“nobbut a reet beginner,” the Sawrey villagers liked to say with a sarcastic chuckle), and every day seemed to bring a different and more costly surprise. Beatrix loved her new farm, but the expenses were certainly beginning to add up.

“She’s calculating how much those porkers are going to cost before they’re bacon,”
said Tabitha Twitchit, the senior village cat. Tabitha, a calico with an orange-and-white bib, lived at Belle Green, but, like most of the other village cats, went pretty well anywhere she pleased.

“A pretty penny, no doubt,”
Crumpet commented authoritatively.
“Things always cost more than Big Folks expect.”
Crumpet, a sleek, smart-looking gray tabby with a red leather collar, was an observant cat who made it her business to know everything that happened in Sawrey and considered herself an expert in practical psychology, and the way Big Folk thought and acted.

“Wait until she finds out that pigs never stop eating,”
Tabitha Twitchet went on with some disdain.
“That’ll make her think twice.”
Tabitha liked most barnyard animals—horses, cows, chickens, ducks, and even sheep. But she detested pigs, who in her view were greedy, smelly, lazy lay-abouts who deserved their ultimate fate: served up at the holiday table with an apple in their mouths, or made into rashers and tasty Cumberland sausages.

Felicia Frummety daintily licked one ginger-colored paw.
“Mrs. Jennings says that Miss Potter is making a mint of money from those little animal books of her
s,
so I doubt she’d fuss over the cost of a few pigs.”
Felicia lived at Hill Top, where she was supposed to be in charge of rat-and-mouse control. But although she caught one or two just often enough to make people think she was doing her job, the Hill Top rats and mice were mostly left to their own devices.

“How much money Miss Potter makes is no business of Mrs. Jennings—and certainly not yours, Felicia Frummety,”
Crumpet growled. It was her belief that Felicia (who had been only a ginger cat with no particular claim to distinction before Miss Potter came along and gave her a clever name) had begun to put on airs, as if being the chief cat at Hill Top had some special merit.
“Especially since you don’t bother to earn your keep,”
she added with a sniff. Cats who were derelict in their duties were beneath contempt, in her opinion.

“I do too earn my keep!”
Felicia retorted, narrowing her eyes.
“I caught a mouse just yesterday. And anyway, what right do you have to criticize me?”

“She has every right,”
Tabitha said slyly.
“For one thing, she’s much older than you are.”

“Older!”
Crumpet spat.
“I am not a day older than that hussy!”

“Call me names, will you?”
Felicia snarled, unsheathing her claws. “
Why, I’ll—”

“Hod on!” the farmer cried. “Hold that flaysome din!” He threw a dirt clod at the animals, who scampered away to the safety of the stone wall. To Beatrix, he said, “Ben Hornby is sellin’ off some of his Herdwick ewes and lambs at Holly How Farm. He keeps good sheep, Ben does, and I’ve bought two of his ewes and their lambs, to increase t’ flock here. Five, all told. Like t’ drive up there wi’ me tomorrow afternoon to have a look at ’em, a-fore Ben brings ’em down here?”

“Yes, indeed,” Beatrix replied promptly. Mr. Hornby was reputed to breed the best Herdwicks in the district. Having Ben Hornby’s Herdwicks in her flock would mean a fine crop of lambs next spring.

Hearing the clang of milk pails, she turned to look toward the farmhouse, where Mrs. Jennings was rinsing buckets under the outdoor pump. The seventeenth-century house was built of Lake District stone, in traditional Lake District style, with a slate roof and slate-capped chimneys, eight-over-eight mullioned windows, and a simple porch—a plain, rather austere little house, some might think, but pure in its simplicity and already very dear to Beatrix. When the new extension was finished—a handsome two-story wing that replaced the old lean-to kitchen and added quite a bit of room to the house—the five Jenningses would live there. And she would finally have the farmhouse all to herself.

If
it was finished, Beatrix thought glumly. Mr. Biddle, the building contractor who was handling the work, seemed determined to create all sorts of delays and distractions. He liked to pretend that the delays were caused by problems in the drawings she had given him, but Beatrix thought it more likely that he simply didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a woman. They had already had several rows, each one worse than the one before. The very worst was yesterday, when he told her that he wanted to tear out the cupboards and the secret, unused staircase—the only way to keep out the rats, he claimed. Beatrix agreed that the rats were a serious problem. But the cupboards and closets and staircase hidden in the wall were among the many things she loved about the old house. Rats or no rats, she was
not
having them torn out! And if Mr. Biddle didn’t follow her instructions, she would dismiss him, although it would mean another delay in finishing the house.

But even when the house was finally done, Beatrix knew that she wouldn’t be able to live there all year round. Her mother and father expected her to be with them, either at the family home in Bolton Gardens, or on their various holiday excursions, and Beatrix did her best to be a dutiful daughter. Like it or not, she had to spend most of her time in London, where she managed the servants, looked after her mother, and tried to squeeze her own work into whatever time was left over—not a very happy arrangement, but that’s how it was, and she did her best to endure it.

It had been on one of their family holidays that Mr. and Mrs. Potter had rented a large house called Lakefield and Beatrix had discovered the twin hamlets of Near and Far Sawrey, nestled between two lakes: Windermere, the largest and deepest lake in England, and Esthwaite Water, which Beatrix thought the prettiest. The names of the two Sawreys always confused casual visitors, for they seemed entirely backward. The hotel, Sawrey School, St. Peter’s Church, and the vicarage were located in Far Sawrey, which lay at the top of Ferry Hill, just a mile from Lake Windermere. Near Sawrey, on the other hand, was smaller and less important and farther away, another half-mile further on. But the confusion was cleared up when visitors glanced at a map and realized that “far” and “near” described the distance to the ancient market town of Hawkshead, for centuries the most important settlement in the area. Near Sawrey (
sawrey
was an Anglo-Saxon word for the rushes that flourished along the shore of Esthwaite Water) was only three miles from Hawkshead, whilst Far Sawrey was a half-mile farther away.

Beatrix had immediately felt at home in this little bit of England, which some people called the Land between the Lakes. She loved the fells that thrust skyward beyond blue Esthwaite Water, the velvety green valleys dotted with fluffy white tufts of grazing sheep, the craggy hills strong and unmoving under the dancing clouds, the sparkling becks laughing in the sun. Sawrey was only a day’s railway ride from London and less than that from the densely populated Midlands, but the village seemed to Beatrix to be on the other side of the moon. The only way across Lake Windermere was an unreliable steam ferry, whilst the roads over the fells were steep and treacherous. And because Sawrey was isolated, it seemed to Beatrix to be somehow unchanging and unchangeable. This was a welcome thought in the first decade of a new century that had already brought with it more changes than most sensible people welcomed: speeding motorcars, shrill telephones, harsh electric lights, titanic steamships, a new and untried king, and a Liberal government.

From her very first visit, Beatrix had felt comfortable with the quaint, old-fashioned ways of the village, and she was delighted when her parents rented Lakefield for another holiday season. She spent many happy hours wandering along the shore of the lake and sketching in the village. And when she learnt that Hill Top Farm was for sale, she didn’t hesitate. She knew she wanted it, and she had the money to buy it: the royalties from her children’s books and a small legacy from her aunt. She had paid twice what the farm was worth, the villagers said. She suspected that they were right, for her father’s solicitors had arranged the purchase, and she hadn’t been permitted to bargain for a lower price.

But the cost hadn’t mattered, except as a matter of pride, for Beatrix had the feeling that everything in her life had led up to the moment that Hill Top Farm finally belonged to her, and that buying the farm was the single most important thing she had ever done. From that moment on, she knew, her life would be different.

Beatrix also knew that the farm would not have assumed such an enormous importance if it hadn’t been for what happened to Norman. The previous July, just a year ago, Norman Warne, her editor at Frederick Warne and Company, had asked her to marry him. Norman was a kind, gentle man who had encouraged her to keep on drawing and writing her “little books.” First, of course, there was
The Tale of Peter Rabbit,
and after that,
The Tailor of Gloucester,
and then several more, very quickly, until they had produced seven books together. She visited his office in Bedford Street frequently, and the two of them exchanged almost daily letters as they worked out the various problems that always seemed to crop up.

But her parents, who had very little enthusiasm for her literary efforts, made sure that Beatrix was always chaperoned on the trips to Bedford Street and refused to allow her to accept even a luncheon invitation from Norman’s mother. When she told them that Norman had proposed, they objected, loudly and angrily. Beatrix was a gentleman’s daughter, her mother pointed out, and Norman and his family were “in trade” and socially beneath them. Couldn’t she see that a Potter could never marry a Warne? Couldn’t she see how much she was hurting her mother and flaunting her father’s wishes?

But Beatrix knew her own heart. She wrote to Norman to tell him yes and to accept his engagement ring. Even though her parents forbade them to tell anyone other than their immediate families about their engagement and although they could not marry straightaway—not for years, perhaps—Beatrix was determined to make her own happiness. Someday, somehow, she would become the wife of the friend she had grown to love.

But the happiness that she hugged to herself like a sweet, warm hope had quickly turned to a bleak and chilly grief. Norman fell ill with an acute form of leukemia and died a month after their engagement. Beatrix was desolate, whilst her father and mother could scarcely hide their relief that the marriage they dreaded was no longer a threat. Not even the thought of her work could lift Beatrix out of her despair. In fact, drawing and writing now seemed utterly impossible. Norman had not only been her friend and her editor, he had been her best audience, for he seemed to know instinctively what children would like. He had encouraged and guided her at every step along the way. Without him, she was lost. Without him, how could she go on?