How the Heather Looks Page 23

  Almost involuntarily I cupped the palm of one hand and brought it down with a smack on the back of the other. He laughed. I seemed to have pleased him. “Perhaps modern children are not so different after all,” he said, giving me the compliment.

  “The Lake Country was a different place then,” he went on. “Not crowded with all these trippers who come just because it is a place to come to and who never care at all about it, really, but just dash through on those dreadful motorcycle things. There were not automobiles, of course, and we were quite isolated, except for our own families – and the Lake. The Lake was everything. I remember we used to arrive at night and we could hardly wait until next morning to rush down to the water’s edge to dip in our hands. Dip them in up to the wrist, you know. I suppose it was a kind of ritual, to show we could come back.” He paused again, looking out over the miles and miles of mountain turning crimson and mauve and purple before our eyes.

  “When I was a boy? I went to school at Windermere, that was before I went to Rugby. I ran away from school one day. I was trudging along the road when the coach came along. There were still coaches then. The man on the box was the friend of an aunt of mine, so he stopped the coach and hauled me up beside him and took me home. I remember my aunt used to be very fond of archery. She had friends who lived on Belle Isle, and in the afternoon the ladies would stand about in their long skirts and bend those great bows…. Well, the old people are dead now, and all we young ones have scattered hither and thither and grown old ourselves. But we always come back to the Lake….”

  He paused and pointed out toward the mountains. The Old Man of Coniston, the highest peak in the Lake District, stood out against the sky. That must be the Katchenjunga of the stories, I thought. “Do you see that skyline? When I used to be correspondent for the Manchester Guardian I sometimes thought I might never see England again. But I could always close my eyes and see that skyline – every peak of it – silhouetted against a sort of screen in my mind. I am never tired of looking at it. Even in Manchuria I could close my eyes and summon it at will.”

  He was silent for so long that I thought the interview was over and I pushed back my chair, intending to leave. He must have heard my chair scrape, for he put out his hand and said, “I notice you brought one of my books. Wait a minute while I fetch a pen and an electric torch.” He was back in a moment and with quick, deft strokes sketched in a little pen and ink drawing of Swallow and wrote his name underneath. I was terribly pleased and told him that Ian would be the envy of his friends.

  He seemed surprised. He said he didn’t know that American children still read books. He had been told that they couldn’t read at all, that they only watched television. “I’ve watched it myself,” he said, but it had seemed like journeying through strange country on a very fast train. “It’s like seeing everything through a little slot. You can never climb down or go back once you are aboard….”

  I laughed and said I thought that a wonderful description, but that American children still read books. Be that as it may, he said, his books were almost out of print in America, although they had been popular enough when they were first published there.

  I asked him if the books were still popular in England, and told him about Ian’s friend, Tommy, who claimed that his favorite was always the last one he’d read. He seemed pleased, then went on to say that as well as in England, he had an enthusiastic following in Czechoslovakia. “I keep getting letters from the children there,” he said. “They pass the old copies around among themselves and manage to hold on to them somehow. Of course Hitler banned them. He didn’t like his youth groups to know what English children were really like. We were supposed to be effete.”

  I decided to make one last try about the maps. Was Ambleside the North Pole? “Yes, well near it….” Was Bowness really Rio? “Yes.” Was this house Holly Howe? “No.” Where was Swallowdale? At once he became vague. The stories rather scrambled things about…. I mustn’t be too literal…. The same for Wild Cat Island…. I realized that he was not going to give out any information except to confirm what we had discovered for ourselves. He walked to the gate with me and he hung over it a minute or two, watching me walk down the road.

  “Come again,” he said, “or write to me….” I had gone a few yards farther when he suddenly called out, “Wait a moment. I’ve decided I like you. Wild Cat Island is not in Windermere at all – it’s borrowed from another lake.” And he gave me its name.

  Lucy was already asleep in the car, but John and Ian were waiting impatiently for me. What had kept me so long? I was bubbling over the interview and could hardly wait to tell them about it and to show Ian the sketch in his book. Had I been able to find out about Wild Cat Island? I told Ian what Mr. Ransome had called out to me from over the gate. To really know was a sobering thought.

  “I don’t think it would be fair to tell,” said Ian.

  The last day at Windermere we drove over to Newlands to see the countryside described in The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. It was a long way we had mapped out for ourselves – all the way past Derwent Water (where Squirrel Nutkin had his adventures), then to Swinside and beyond. Once again we marveled at the scenery and several times let the children out for a run. Water, in any form, is irresistible, and in this country there were so many gills, becks, brooks, streams, tarns, rivers, meres, and lakes that even Ian could be satisfied.

  The countryside became extravagantly romantic. Even our big one-inch map seemed uncertain as to which roads were paved, which were not, and what was a mere footpath. We took a wrong turn just after Swinside and ended up in a sheep pasture. We just sat there, in the car, while some strange-looking little sheep came over to investigate us. They were smaller than most sheep and their fleece had a different cast to it – almost bluish. I still remember their faces – not stupid at all, but sweet and intelligent. John walked off to a farmhouse to find out where we were. “Skelghyl,” he said, when he came back, and then we remembered what it said in the book:

  “What are these dear soft fluffy things?” said Lucie.

  “Oh, those are woolly coats belonging to the little lambs at Skelghyl…. And here’s one marked for Gatesgarth, and three that come from Little-town. They’re always marked at washing!” said Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

  These were Herdwick sheep, the little breed that has tripped over the fells since prehistoric times. Their fleece is of such quality that until the invention of linoleum it was highly prized for the toughest carpets. Beatrix Potter, as Mrs. Heelis, became an enthusiastic supporter of the breed. As demand for the fleece declined she fought valiantly not to have the little sheep driven into extinction. She even had her clothes woven from Herdwick fleece (it’s almost waterproof) and could be seen tramping about the roads and footpaths in disreputable hat and long woolen skirts, often with a pointed stick in hand to pick up the litter left by careless trippers. Margaret Lane writes that Miss Potter was a familiar sight at cattle shows and sheep fairs. She raised Herdwick sheep herself and judged them herself (the first woman to do so). She was known and respected throughout the district not as Miss Potter, heiress, nor as Beatrix Potter, author-artist, but as Mrs. Heelis, the most knowledgeable sheep farmer in the Lake Country.

  John turned the car around by making a wide arc in the pasture, then headed back toward Swinside, where we took the other fork in the road. We drove through Little-town without knowing it, and came to a halt before a little church. This must have been Newlands, the very parish where Lucie Carr’s father was the vicar. If we had kept on we would have come to Buttermere and Crummock Water. It is just as well that we had not read Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Shield Ring at that time, because Ian would have given us no peace until we saw for ourselves where the Vikings built the “Road to Nowhere” up Rannerdale Beck from Crummock Water in order to fool the Normans, and where they fought their last, lost battle. Since then, studying the map carefully, we have been able to see how Butersdale (Buttermere) is hidden, and have been most intrigued by some shadowy let
ters that spell out “Crag houses.” What does that mean?

  At Newlands, John turned the car around once again and we drove back along the road. We came upon two houses built so close together that they almost connected. A barn and a farmyard were across the road from the living quarters. An old couple was sitting in the garden of one of the houses, so we asked them if they knew where we could find Little-town. They shook their heads. They were from London and hardly knew where they were themselves. Their son had sent them here for a holiday. They sounded so pathetic that I realized that Napoleon on St. Helena could not have been more lonely. Brighton or Blackpool was more their cup of tea.

  Lucy and I crossed the road to where a young woman was throwing out grain to a yardful of clustering hens. I asked her if she could tell us how to get to Little-town and she, rather surprised, told us that we had arrived. “Little-town” was the name of the farm. Several children, about Lucy’s age, were playing in the yard, but they were far too shy to accept her overture of friendship. I asked the woman if she minded if we looked about.

  “You know,” I said brightly, “Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and all that….”

  She looked at me as though she thought me daft. “Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?” she said.

  I tried again. “Beatrix Potter wrote a book about this farm and this barnyard and a hedgehog who took in washing at Cat Bells….” (At least I had seen Cat Bells on the map. I must make a little sense!) Still she shook her head. We were not speaking the same language. Fortunately her husband came into the barnyard at that moment.

  “I’ve just brought in the ram. Going to saw off its horns….” He broke off suddenly when he saw me. By this time I felt a little shy. His wife tried to explain why I was there, speaking carefully so as not to let me know that she knew I was mentally deranged.

  “This lady,” she said, “says that there is a book written about Little-town.”

  “Aye, lass,” he said to his wife, “it’s true. A friend of Mother’s, she did it. Mrs. Heelis, it was. I’ll show you the book when you remind me. It’s in Mother’s box.”

  “And show it to your children, too,” I could not help adding. “It’s really for them. Children all over the world know this farm. We’ve come all the way from America just to see this barnyard….” But I could see that the young farm woman was still not convinced. She called her children to her and I saw her giving a long look at Lucy. Lucy was dressed in corduroy overalls (her little girls wore nylon dresses), and Lucy had bare feet. I had noticed that farm children all over England nowadays wear nylon. It must be so easy for a busy farmer’s wife to wash and dry. I do not begrudge any housewife her leisure, but I did feel a pang for something more aesthetic:

  “There’s one of my pocket-handkins!” cried Lucie – “and there’s my pinny!”

  Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle ironed it, and goffered it, and shook out the frills.

  “Oh that is lovely!” said Lucie.

  I suppose that Lucy’s garb was just as out of place in that scene as were the nylon dresses. Both the farmer’s wife and I were held by common bond: each of us was in desperate need of a Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, that “most excellent clear starcher.”

  Lucy had taken Sally Henny Penny’s advice too literally and was in truth going “barefoot, barefoot, barefoot.” A henyard was no place for her, so I took her across the road again. Ian and John were watching through the slats of a pen as the young farmer (he must have been terribly strong) wrestled with a huge old ram. He finally got him down far enough to grab a saw and to begin sawing off the pointed horns. The noise was dreadful. The ram bellowed and baaed, and the sound of the sawing rasped through the still damp air, bouncing off the hillside. Partly to get away from it we decided to try to find the famous path that Lucie took when she ran along the mountainside to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s.

  A turnstile was set between the two houses. Ian was through it and up the hill like a shot, losing himself in the mists that shrouded the hillside. The scene most certainly answered to the description in the book: “A hill that goes up – up – into the clouds as though it had no top!” We seemed to be walking through a cloud at that very moment. I looked at Lucy. Her face was aglow, transfigured. She had walked into another world, a place compounded of mists and watery sunshine, of reality and make-believe. To John and me, watching, it was uncanny to be in that place, with Little-town’s chimney just below us, and a red-haired Lucy running ahead of us along the path. I felt like pinching myself to make sure that we were not still at home, that we had not, for a moment, slipped off into a doze while starting to read Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle:

  Lucie scrambled up the hill as fast as her short legs would carry her; she ran along a steep path-way – up and up – until Little-town was right away down below – she could have dropped a penny down the chimney!

  But it was growing late. We had to get back to the hotel to pack. Tomorrow we would drive to the Cunard docks at Liverpool and next day we would be sailing for America. Lucy still trotted along the path, expecting any moment, we realized later, to come to “that door into the back of the hill called Cat Bells.” The sun was growing stronger now, the mist withdrawing as though an unseen hand were gathering back the folds of a curtain. We heard someone shouting at us and looked up to see Ian standing knee-deep in heather. The whole mountainside, as far as the eye could see, was steeped in bronze and purple. “Hey!” he shouted, “Now I know how the heather looks!”

  But Lucy, on the long drive back to the hotel, was still not satisfied. “Where did Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle go?” she asked.

  “Next time you can look for her,” I said.

  “Next time all by myself,” said Lucy. “Next time I’ll find the door….”

  Afterword

  The first edition of How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children’s Books appeared in 1965 and went out of print within two or three years. Although there continued to be a steady demand, no publisher – until now – was willing to risk a reissue. The only way to find a copy was to borrow it from a library or from someone who owned a copy. As an alternative, you could institute a search through the antiquarian book trade. Or you could steal. I have been informed that How the Heather Looks is the book most often stolen by retiring children’s librarians.

  A few years ago, after I had delivered a lecture, a dear little old lady approached me to say how disappointed she was in my choice of subject matter. She had come to hear me talk about How the Heather Looks. I had not so much as mentioned it! I pointed out to her that thirty years had passed since the book’s publication and that it had been out of print for almost as long. I’ve done a heap of living since.

  Dear Little Old Lady then told me that she owned a copy. Copies are hard to find. When I asked her how she had managed to buy one, she explained that she had worked as an assistant at her local library. Long ago I had given an autographed copy to Miss X, head children’s librarian there. Miss X died. When D.L.O.L. retired, she took the book with her. “I knew Miss X would have wanted me to have it,” said she. Butter would not have melted in her mouth.

  Another informant had come by her copy honestly – she bought it when it was still in print. She complained that she had lent her copy to a friend who was going to England. Upon return the friend refused to give up the book, saying it had not been lent but given. “She kept my copy for four years.” Finally the true owner borrowed a copy from a library and, illegally, photocopied the whole. She got her book back but, alas, the friendship suffered.

  I am told that in at least one small library the book was catalogued under Botany. “Heather: how it looks,” I presume. Much to my consternation I have also discovered that some young families have viewed Heather as a how-to book for raising children, suffering pangs of guilt because they did not read the same books to their children at a prescribed age. I caution against any recipe for perfect children, or for perfect families. I began the book in 1958. Before its publication, by Viking Press in 1965, our family had suffered death and schizophrenia. A
year later, in 1966, John and I were divorced.

  How the Heather Looks was written from the heart as well as the head, in a time of great trial. A friend and former neighbor of mine, Evelyn Bromberg, told me that she used to come into her kitchen at six in the morning and look across our two backyards to where she saw a light shining in my dining room. She knew that I had been up since four o’clock, first de-congealing over several cups of coffee, then banging away as many words as I could before my family woke for breakfast. Those were the good times. Sometimes weeks and months went by with nothing accomplished. Presumably in reproof, a spider, that ultimate yarn spinner, once wove a web across my typewriter.

  When I read Heather now I am struck by how young I was – how innocent and ignorant we all were back then, thank God! The book was my idea. I did the writing, connected the ideas. But it was my then husband, John, who so often pointed my research in the right direction. He was both an historian (Ph.D., Columbia) and a librarian (MLS, Berkeley) who possessed the requisite skills to follow hints and clues I discovered in texts, letters, biographies, or footnotes. He was also a good hand with maps. He introduced me to British Ordnance Survey and made the trip a reality by booking passage, hiring a car, planning routes, making reservations.

  He gave me a deeper understanding and respect for scholarship than I had hitherto possessed. He treated my work seriously and therefore made me treat it seriously in an era when a woman who worked at anything was considered suspect. A doctor who examined Lucy for her dizziness and upset stomach suggested that she might be ill because I was writing a book and therefore neglecting her. (Lucy was subsequently discovered to suffer from a brain tumor.) Another doctor was certain that my husband’s illness was caused by my poor housekeeping and my being overweight, therefore not sexy enough. The tragedy – though least of other tragedies – is that I believed them.