The Tale of Beatrix Potter by Margaret Lane

Author:Margaret Lane [Potter, Beatrix]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780723265528
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2011-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

ii

Her activities at Sawrey were, sure enough, soon interrupted by further family visiting, this time to Gwaynynog, near Denbigh, to stay with her Uncle Frederick Burton, possessor of another cotton fortune and a large house and beautiful estate. Under the charm of her new enterprise her spirits were recovering, and over the surface of her letters to Millie Warne the old quiet unstressed humour begins to pass again like a faint ripple. ‘It is warmer here,’ she wrote from Gwaynynog; ‘what it will be like in the course of the evening I tremble to think, for there is an immense fire in the gun-room, which my uncle inhabits. It is a little panelled room, very snug in winter; and I shall proceed to draw one of the guns after supper … Considering he is over eighty and has been run over this summer I think he is wonderful …’

Among the formal garden and solid comforts of Gwaynynog her thoughts were on the little farm garden at Sawrey: ‘I am going to get some of the wild daffodil bulbs which grow in thousands here. They grow about Windermere, but there are none in my orchard, though plenty of wild snowdrops’; and she was back at Sawrey as soon as she could escape. ‘It is beautifully fine here at last—regular autumn weather with heavy dew at night and gossamer all over the grass in the morning … I am feeling a bit knocked about: I brought back a cold from Wales … The waitress had a violent cold at Gwaynynog : a nice girl, but always goes about with her mouth wide open, so there was no escape … I wonder whether I shall do any sketching, or waste all my time gardening! It is rather too early to transplant, but I mean to stick in sticks with labels where things are to go.’

This time, accompanied by her friend Miss Woodward, she was able to stay in lodgings in the village while the local builder probed the structure of Hill Top. ‘I have had an amusing afternoon thoroughly exploring the house. It really is delightful—if the rats could be stopped out! There is one wall four feet thick, with a staircase inside it : I never saw such a place for hide and seek, and funny cupboards and closets. The beds seem all right, she has had a fire once a week. Tabitha Twitchit’—the farmhouse cat—‘is so extremely pleased to see me; I am afraid she is pleased not to see the hedgehog, which she disliked.’ ‘The first thing I did when I arrived was to go through the back kitchen ceiling … The joiner and plasterer were much alarmed, and hauled me out. I was very much amused. It was a very bad ceiling … Cannon,’ she finished up triumphantly, ‘has bought sixteen ewes, so there will be lambs next spring!’

‘I am just in time to overlook the other chimney stack with great interest. He burrowed into the back of it this morning without any downfall, thank goodness.

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