The Cottage Tales Backstory 3: The Animal Characters

BookScapes 10, May 2024

Here is the May issue of BookScapes—the third in a series of four posts for readers of the Cottage Tales. If you’re looking for my short fiction, you’ll find it on the Short Reads tab. And if you’d like to customize the posts you receive from me, you can do that here.

I’ve been promising to put down a few thoughts on the animal characters in the Cottage Tales—things I thought about when I was working on those eight books, things I didn’t realize  until after I’d finished the series, and things I think about now, nearly 15 years later.

When I began writing the Cottage Tales in 2003, I had already written eleven books in the China Bayles series and nine Robin Paige historical mysteries—all fairly serious works of crime fiction. While I had occasionally written about animals, I had never used them as characters with agency: that is, characters whose purposes, plots, and agendas help to shape the narrative. I didn’t intend to do it in this series, either. I was going to write a biographical mystery, something like Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen mysteries.

Until Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle started to talk. Which changed everything.

Here is the point in the narrative of The Tale of Hill Top Farm (the first book in the series) where it happened. We are in Chapter Two. It is 1905 and Beatrix Potter has just arrived in the village of Near Sawrey to take possession of Hill Top Farm. She is directing the cart driver where to take her baggage, including her menagerie of small animals, who also serve as her drawing models:

“These go up to Belle Green,” Beatrix said when Spuggy had added her trunk and bag, and gave the old man sixpence.  “Please tell Mrs. Crook that I’ll be right along.”

“Mind, now!” Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle [Beatrix’s hedgehog] cried imperiously.  “Don’t jostle my basket!  And keep that dog away from me!”  A small fawn-colored Jack Russell terrier was dancing around the cart, barking gaily at the strange animals.

“Dog?” Mopsy [a rabbit] moaned.  “Did someone say ‘dog’?”

“Dog?  Dog?  Oh, woe!” twittered Tom Thumb [a mouse], who had come all the way across the lake with his head buried under a heap of litter in his traveling cage.  “Where in the world have we got to?  The ends of the earth?  Oh, rural life will never do, never do at all, at all!  I’m a town mouse!  A town mouse, I tell you!”

“We’ve reached Sawrey village, Tom,” Josey [a rabbit] said briskly.  “And don’t fret about the dog.  He’s just being friendly.”

 I can tell you honestly—honestly—that I had no idea that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle had something to say. That cry of annoyance—“Mind, now! Don’t jostle my basket”—literally echoed in my head as Spuggy was loading the luggage, and the other animals joined in, while I took notes.

The scene seemed magically to write itself after that, and when it was in the computer, I went into the living room and told my husband Bill what had just happened. He frowned and said “Copyright?”

Well, of course he was right. These creatures are Potter’s creations, characters in their own books, and their desire to become characters in this series required the negotiating of licensing agreements and etcetera with Potter’s British publisher. Which was deftly managed by my wonderful editor, Natalee Rosenstein, while I went on with the writing.

Once Mrs. T-W starts to talk, all the other animals find their voices—although the humans (regrettably) are never able to hear them. In addition to Beatrix’s animal companions, there is the little community of village animals: Rascal the Jack Russell Terrier, de facto village manager; Tabitha Twitchit, senior village cat; Crumpet, an excellent strategist, always angling for Tabitha’s position; Felicia Frummety, vain and a lazy mouser; and Max the Manx, the outsider cat-with-no-tail. They appear in most of the books, each with his or her distinct voice, personality, responsibilities, and plot functions. I often use the group as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on village events and offering bits of critical information unknown to humans, that only an observant animal might be privy to.

In contrast to the out-front village animals, the creatures of the Hill Top barnyard are mostly background characters with important jobs to do. There’s Kep the collie, Top Farm Dog; Mustard, an experienced elderly dog; Aunt Susan and Dorcas, the fat Berkshire pigs; Kitchen the Galway cow and Blossom, her calf; the Puddleducks and Boots, Bonnet, and Shawl, the hens; Tibbie and Queenie, the Herdwick sheep; and Winston the smart-alec pony. I drew most of these animals both from Potter’s stories and her letters. Some (like the Herdwicks) are important throughout her long life as a farmer and conservationist. One of the Puddleducks, Jemima, plays herself in her own delightful Potter book (The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck) and (with a twist) becomes a major character in The Tale of Briar Bank.

By the time I started writing the second book, I had realized that it would be fun and interesting to include wild creatures who might be out and about in the Land Between the Lakes. I chose badgers as the center of the wild community and created the Brockery, a badger sett at Holly How, a hill not far from the village. The sett is overseen by Bosworth Badger XVII, who is also responsible for updating the Badger History and Genealogy. The Brockery’s residents include badger helpers Parsley, Primrose, Hyacinth, and Thorn, plus rabbit door-minders Flotsam and Jetsam. The Brockery is widely known for its generous hospitality, and there are usually plenty of guests around Parsley’s famous dinner table. Professor Galileo Newton Owl lives in a beech at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood and drops in for frequent visits. Bailey Badger comes over from Briar Bank, often bringing his friend, Thorvaald the junior dragon. The sandy-whiskered gentleman fox stops by when he’s in the neighborhood.

This wide assortment of creatures make for some interesting collaborations and conflicts that serve as subplots and even central plots in the series. In Book 2, Bosworth assembles a band of animals to rescue a pair of badgers from the cruel badger-baiters. The foolish Jemima Puddleduck falls obsessively in love with the gentleman fox ( Hawthorn House). Ridley Rattail connives with the Cat Who Walks by Himself—based on a famous Kipling story—to evict friends who have overstayed their welcome in the Hill Top attics (Cuckoo Brow Wood). And Crumpet takes on the villainous crew of Rooker the Rat (Castle Cottage), in the melee revealing the whereabouts of a fabulous lost book. These animal plots are usually parallel and/or complementary to the human plots and may intersect, resolving the human plots.

“When the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.”—Rudyard Kipling

In an earlier post, I wrote about the arc of Miss Potter’s development in the series. Now, looking back, I can see that the recurring animal communities and characters have their own arcs. By series end, Bosworth realizes that it is time for him to retire and hand off the management of the Brockery and the maintenance of the History to a younger badger. In the Hill Top attics, Ridley and Rosabelle learn that there are too many rats; for their own survival, they need to impose population control. Fritz the Ferret and Manx the Manx, a very odd couple, discover mutual respect and affection, as do Bailey Badger and Thorvaald the unlikely dragon. Oh, that dragon! Still a teenager, he learns to hold his fire—a little—and earns his stripes when he destroys the seaplane, a sign of encroaching modern civilization and impending war with Germany (it is now 1913), as well as a threat to the pastoral peace of the Land Between the Lakes.

Writing this series taught me a great deal about the great usefulness of nonhuman characters. Of course, this was partly very good luck, since Beatrix has a genuine affection for the animal friends who live with her and appear in her stories and it was easy to import that into the books. But I quickly figured out that I could use Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle to reveal the tragic details of the death of Norman Warne, Beatrix’s fiancé (Hill Top Farm). Beatrix’s pets know all about her dreadful life with her tyrannical parents and sympathize with and comfort her in ways that no human can. And Bosworth and Owl—who know the landscape, its weather and its creature inhabitants—can fill in the natural history and folklore of the Land Between the Lakes better than any human.

I also learned that the barnyard and village animals could function just like human villagers, bridging elements in the plot and providing necessary information, often in an amusing way. For instance, Winston (the pony with an attitude) not only knows all the local roads but all the local gossip, and we can hear the latest news as he takes Miss Potter where she wants to go (sometimes over his vehement objections. His favorite word: “Na-a-a-y.”).

Even the wild animals have their important plot functions. In Holly How, Bosworth Badger organizes the animals’ rescue of Primrose and Hyacinth from the badger-baiting ring in the Sawrey Hotel stable. Professor Owl delivers the stirring call to arms (amended from Prince Harry’s famous speech before Agincourt): “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” And Tuppenny, the little orange guinea pig who gets lost in the fracas, helps Mr. Heelis and Miss Potter become better acquainted. Which is, after all, the overall plot of the whole series—the romantic plot, that is. Their wedding is tucked tidily away at the end of Castle Cottage.

In fact, once I got into the second and third book and could see how useful the animals were to the storytelling, their plots became important auxiliary features. Ultimately, I thought of the structure of each book as the Beatrix plot, in the context of the village plot (usually where the mystery was located), supplemented by an animal plot (often rather lighthearted). And all of it resolved by Beatrix, of course, usually with the help (naturally) of several animals.

Hawthorne House, for instance, is all about foundlings—babies who don’t belong where they are discovered—and restoration. Beatrix finds a baby girl on her doorstep and must discover how she got there and where her mother is. Out in the barnyard, Jemima Puddleduck is yearning to be a mother and must find somewhere to hide her eggs from the farmer’s wife (who heartlessly confiscates them for breakfast). And when her own eggs go missing, she finds a buried nest, fetches the eggs home to the barn, and instead of ducklings, hatches out a nest of baby . . . Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

But never fear. Beatrix finds the foundling baby’s mother, the baby herself finds her forever home, and Jemima’s unloved hatchlings are restored to their proper mother, who was no doubt wondering where they’d all gotten off to and was very glad to have them back.

You see? Through the magic of story, it all comes right in the end.

Thank you, as always, for reading. There’ll be one more topic in this Cottage Tales series: a post about the narrator, whose comments and mini-lectures (some not so mini!) intrude on the later books, to the delight of some readers and the irritation of others. I’m planning that post for the June 17 issue of BookScape.

In the meantime, there’ll be a LifeScapes post next Monday, May 27. And I’ve scheduled the next short fiction to begin on Wednesday, May 29.

Supporting subscribers, I’m available for comments and questions on today’s BookScapes post. It’s also time for our May Book Bundle (a selection of my signed books), so on Saturday, May 25, I’ll randomly choose from among commenters on today’s post and notify the winner via email.