The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (37 page)

The rats, of course, were a continuing problem. The previous fall, she had written to Millie about her struggles with them:

 
The outbreak seems to have been brought under control by the summer of 1907, in part because of the building program, which included a new barn and milking parlor, zinc strips on the bottoms of the doors, and cement skirtings around the house—as well as the cat campaign managed by the farmer’s wife.

But Hill Top Farm and its animals were not Miss Potter’s only concerns, for she was actively engaged with her creative work.
The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit
and
The Story of Miss Moppet
had been published in panorama format in November 1906. For Christmas 1906, she gave Winifred Warne an illustrated story called
The Roly-Poly Pudding,
which she continued to work on throughout the year and into 1908, using the interiors of Hill Top as her settings. (In 1928, the book was renamed
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers,
to conform with the other titles.) In late August 1907, while on holiday in Keswick with her parents, she celebrated the publication of
The Tale of
Tom Kitten.
The first printing of 20,000 copies sold out in two months and a second printing of 3,000 copies was ordered in December, for Christmas sales. Warne was soliciting French and German publishers, but Beatrix (always a perfectionist when it came to published materials) was not pleased with the translations. In September, she wrote from Wales, where she and her parents were staying at Gwaynynog:

 
In addition to these creative efforts, she had begun work on her next book,
The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck.
On all fronts, and by any standard of measurement, 1907 was clearly one of Miss Potter’s most productive years.

On the matter of fairies, Beatrix Potter held a firm opinion. In a journal entry (November 17, 1896), she wrote:

 
In 1911, she wrote a story for two little girls in New Zealand about an oak fairy who tragically loses her home when her ancient oak—“enormous, tall and bold” is cut down and the wood used to build a bridge. “The Fairy in the Oak” ends happily, however, when the oak fairy takes up residence in the oak timbers of the bridge, “and may live there through hundreds of years; for well-seasoned oak lasts for ever—well seasoned by trials and tears.”

When Beatrix and Willie Heelis were married, Willie’s little niece, Nancy Nicholson, was delighted to discover that her belief in fairies—she called them Oakmen—was shared by Mrs. Heelis:

 
In 1916, Beatrix wrote a six-page story for Nancy’s Christmas present, featuring the Oakmen, whom she drew as dwarflike creatures with white beards, brown leggings, red coats, and red pointed hats. Later, she wrote to Fruing Warne that she would have liked to make a book of the fairy-tale letters she had written to Nancy, adding, “I see the little men peeping round the mossy stumps and stones whenever I go up to the wood.”

That project did not come to fruition. However, Beatrix did write a much longer tale,
The Fairy Caravan
(published in the United States in 1929) about a traveling animal circus that was invisible to humans, rewriting “The Fairy in the Oak” as the last chapter. The year before she died, she wrote that the inspiration for
The Fairy Caravan
came from a magical sight she had seen on the fellside:

I think it is not at all fanciful to say that Miss Potter believed in fairies to the very end of her own quite magical life.

 
Susan Wittig Albert

Resources

There are many excellent resources for a study of Beatrix Potter’s life and work and the Lake District of England at the turn of the century. Here are a few of those that I have found most useful in the research for this book and the series as a whole. Additional resource material is listed in the previous books and on my website,
www.mysterypartners.com
.

 
Beeton, Isabella.
Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861,
facsimile edition. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1969.

 
Denyer, Susan.
At Home with Beatrix Potter.
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 2000.

 
Hervy, Canon G.A.K., and J.A.G. Barnes.
Natural History of the Lake District.
Frederick Warne, London, 1970.

Jay, Eileen, Mary Noble, and Anne Stevenson Hobbs.
A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection.
Frederick Warne, London, 1992.

Lane, Margaret.
The Tale of Beatrix Potter,
revised edition. Frederick Warne, London, 1968.

 
Linder, Enid and Leslie.
The Art of Beatrix Potter,
revised edition. Frederick Warne, London, 1972.

 
Linder, Leslie.
A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter.
Frederick Warne, London, 1971.

 
Potter, Beatrix.
Beatrix Potter’s Letters,
selected and edited by Judy Taylor. Frederick Warne, London, 1989.

 
———.
The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897,
new edition, transcribed by Leslie Linder. Frederick Warne, London, 1966.

Rollinson, William.
The Cumbrian Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore.
Smith Settle Ltd, West Yorkshire, UK, 1997.

 
Rollinson, William.
Life and Tradition in the Lake District.
Dalesman Books, Clapham, Lancashire, UK, 1981.

Taylor, Judy.
Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman,
revised edition. Frederick Warne, London, 1996.

Taylor, Judy, Joyce Whalley, et al.
Beatrix Potter, 1866-1943: The Artist and Her World.
Frederick Warne with the National Trust, published by the Penguin Group, London and New York, 1987.

Recipes from the Land between the Lakes

Ridley Rattail has a preference for this traditional dish, which he finds occasionally in Mrs. Jennings’s pantry (but only occasionally, for the Jenningses leave nothing left over). The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that “bubble and squeak” is named for the sounds that are produced as the dish is cooked. Or as one satirical diner put it:

 
What Mortals Bubble call and Squeak
When midst the Frying-pan in accents savage
The Beef so surly quarrels with the Cabbage.

 
Heat the butter in a large frying pan. Add the onion and cook until soft and transparent. Add the potatoes, cabbage, and parsley. Mix well. Cook over medium heat, turning occasionally, for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with bacon and eggs for breakfast or as part of a supper dish.

These are the buns that have made Sarah Barwick famous throughout the Land between the Lakes.

 
To make buns:
Soften the yeast in warm water. Combine the milk, sugar, butter, and salt; cool. Add 1 1/2 cups flour and beat well; beat in the egg and yeast/water mixture. Gradually add the remaining flour to form soft dough, beating well between additions. Place in a greased bowl, turn to grease surface; cover and let rise in a warm place until double, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Turn out on a lightly floured board and divide in half. Form half into a ball and let rest while rolling the other half into 8×12-inch rectangle. Brush with 1/4 cup melted butter; sprinkle with 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1/4 cup currants. Roll lengthwise and seal edge; cut roll in 1-inch slices. Repeat with the second ball of dough.

 
To make topping:
In a saucepan, mix the brown sugar, butter, and corn syrup; heat slowly, stirring often. Divide into two 8×8×2-inch pans. Place rolls, cut side down, over mixture. Cover; let rise in a warm place until double, 35-40 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool 2-3 minutes; invert on a plate; remove the pan. Yield: 2 dozen sticky buns.

This famous cake is based on a trifle, which has a long history of appearances on the English table. Mrs. Beeton’s version, reprinted here, was the “definitive” one, Mrs. Beeton being the leading Victorian authority on all things domestic.

 
MODE: Procure a cake that is three or four days old—either sponge, Savoy, or rice answering for the purpose of a tipsy cake. Cut the bottom of the cake level, to make it stand firm in the dish; make a small hole in the centre, and pour in and over the cake sufficient sweet wine or sherry, mixed with the above proportion of brandy, to soak it nicely. When the cake is well soaked, blanch and cut the almonds into strips, stick them all over the cake, and pour round it a good custard. The cakes are sometimes crumbled and soaked, and a whipped cream heaped over them, the same as for trifles.

 
TIME. About 2 hours to soak the cake. Average cost, 4
s.
6
d.

When food was cooked in an open fireplace instead of on a kitchen range, a large pot always hung over the fire, filled with a thick soup of peas and other vegetables. In the morning, before the fire was lit, any porridge left from the previous meal was eaten cold, for breakfast. During the day, more peas and vegetables were added and the porridge was eaten hot. It would be no surprise to learn that some of the ingredients were actually nine days old. Pease porridge is traditionally served with sausage or boiled bacon or spread on thick slices of bread-and-butter.

 
Cover the soaked peas with water in a large pan. Add the salt, pepper, and onions. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 2 1/2 hours, adding more water if necessary. In the last 15 minutes, add herbs. Remove and discard the herbs and onion. Serve this thick soup with slices of hot bread.

Mrs. Beeton (recipe #1323) turns pease porridge into pease pudding with the addition of 2 tablespoons butter and 2 eggs. Excess water is drained, the peas are put through a colander with a wooden spoon, the eggs and butter are beaten in, and the pudding is steamed for an hour in a greased heatproof pudding basin. It is then inverted onto a platter and served hot, sliced.

—Beatrix Potter,
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, or The Roly-Poly Pudding

 
You certainly wouldn’t want to make a kitten roly-poly, but a Cumbrian bacon and onion roly-poly would do very well.

 
For steaming:
Prepare a large oven-proof lidded pan, such as a turkey roaster or fish kettle. Set a rack or trivet in the pan, of a height that will hold the pudding above the boiling water. You’ll also need baking parchment and aluminum foil.

To make the filling:
Mix the diced bacon, onion, garlic, herbs, and pepper. Set aside.

 
To make the dough:
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Rub in the lard and gradually add just enough water to make a soft, slightly sticky dough. On a floured board, roll out an 8×10-inch rectangle 1/4-inch thick. (You may need to make two smaller roly-polies if your pan won’t accommodate this length.) Distribute the filling over the surface, leaving a quarter-inch border across the top and both ends. With a pastry brush and water, wet this border. Roll up tightly along the longest side, starting with the edge nearest you. Smooth the long edge where it joins the body of the roll and pinch the ends lightly to seal in the filling. Loosely roll in several layers of baking parchment, leaving room for the dough to expand, and then in two layers of foil, leaving an expansion pleat. Fold up the ends of the foil and secure, to prevent water penetrating during steaming.