The day the article was published, I climbed to my favorite spot on the cliff tops above the bend in Marine Drive and watched spring rush in across the North Sea. The winds were wild and sent the waves crashing against the rocks below. I loved this time of year, before the tourists arrived from the West. Summer brought the thrill of Catlin’s Pierrot shows in the Arcadia, the Punch and Judy shows on the pier, and Cricket Week, but spring gave me dunes to play in and empty beaches and the castle all to myself. I loved the rush and boom of the water in the caves. I loved to walk along the prom as waves raced across the road, sloshing around the omnibus wheels and soaking anyone who got in the way. But no matter how long I lingered by the sea, no matter how much I dawdled on my way home, I couldn’t avoid Conan Doyle’s article. It was waiting on the kitchen table when I got home.
The new photographs that Elsie and I had taken the previous summer were included, the names Iris and Alice still used in the descriptions. I could hardly bear to look, wincing at the photographs of Elsie (Iris) and the fairy with the harebells and of myself and the leaping fairy. And yet despite the guilty conscience that nagged as I read the article, I again found myself interested in Conan Doyle’s thoughts on fairy life and especially in his detailed accounts of fairy sightings from all over England and Ireland, the descriptions matching that of my beck fairies. “Taking a large number of cases which lie before me, there are two points which are common to nearly all of them. One is that children claim to see these creatures far more frequently than adults. . . . The other is, that more cases are recorded in which they have been seen in the still, shimmering hours of a very hot day than at any other time.” It gave me great confidence to know that others had seen what I had.
Again, the reporters were waiting. I did my best to avoid them and their intrusive questions, but they were more persistent this time, and the mocking from the girls at school was more sustained. Things became so difficult that my parents considered taking me out of school and sending me to relatives in Bradford. I was relieved when Mummy said they’d decided against it.
“You’ll just have to put up with a bit of ragging until this all dies down,” she said. “And it will. I promise.”
I remembered that cold April evening in Cottingley when Mummy sang Nellie Melba and promised better times would come in the summer. I had to trust her again.
But all hopes of an end to the fairies were dashed when Mr. Gardner made an unexpected visit to Scarborough. Over apple pie and a pot of tea, it was suggested that I return to Cottingley once again that summer during my school holidays, when Elsie and I would be joined by a Mr. Geoffrey Hodson, a renowned psychic friend of Conan Doyle’s.
“Mr. Hodson is a gifted spiritualist,” he explained. “He will try to create the right aural conditions for the nature spirits to appear and will be able to authenticate your fairy sightings. He will use a new cinema camera to film the events. If he can capture the elementals on film . . . well!”
I wasn’t sure what “aural” conditions were, but didn’t want to appear ignorant by asking.
“And ACD is working on a book about the events,” he added. “Isn’t that something?”
“A book about us?” I asked, my apple pie sticking to the roof of my mouth.
“Yes. I believe the title is to be The Coming of the Fairies. He hopes to publish next year. I imagine it will be of great interest.”
I felt sick and asked to be excused, but curiosity got the better of me and I listened secretly at the door. Mr. Gardner told Mummy he believed I was “mediumistic”—that I had the power to see things other people couldn’t. “Frances is surrounded by an etheric material, Mrs. Griffiths. I believe it is this material that draws the nature spirits to her.”
Whatever it was that drew the nature spirits to me, I had no desire to be observed by strange men from London when it happened. And anyway, I doubted the beck fairies would make an appearance with so many people around. They were shy, quiet creatures, not performers on the stage at the Spa.
By the time Mr. Gardner left, it was agreed that I would travel to Cottingley during the final week of my summer holidays. A few days later, I found a letter Daddy was writing to confirm things. “. . . We will do whatever we can to meet your requirements next August and will wait for further word from you re the arrangements. Meanwhile, Mrs. Griffiths and her sister will fix up Frances’s stay at Cottingley. . . . We were interested to read in Monday’s issue of the Scarborough News a short account of your Manchester lecture. We must certainly keep our eyes open for fairies when next we have flowers in the house.”
I was now nearing fourteen, and Elsie nearing twenty. If I found the thought of sitting by the beck for hours looking for fairies a tedious prospect, I dreaded to think what Elsie would make of it all. Worst of all, I would miss my beloved Cricket Week when all the stars came to Scarborough. It wasn’t fair. I sulked in my bedroom and wrote to Johanna in Cape Town. I told her that even if I did see fairies in Cottingley that summer, I wouldn’t tell Mr. Hodson. If he wanted to see fairies, he would have to do so himself.
I tried to forget about Cottingley over the following weeks and months as I enjoyed the sea air and long walks along the foreshore. Only occasionally did I find myself looking for signs of fairies among the long grasses and cliff top meadows, but I didn’t see them. I presumed it was too cold for fairies in Scarborough’s wild spring breezes. It was barely tolerable for a girl with a thick woolen coat.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. August 1921.
Summer arrived in a rush, and too soon I was back on the train, hurtling toward the West with Mummy beside me. I was sullen and quiet and kept my head in my book all the way there. I had no interest in the passing landscape that had once intrigued me. I just wanted to get this over with and get back to Scarborough.
But despite my frustration at being dragged back to Cottingley again, my mood lifted as soon as I saw Elsie leaning against the door of Number 31, as tall as a lamppost and prettier than ever. She squeezed my hand as we stepped inside and whispered, “Ruddy fairies,” which made me laugh and made me feel much better.
When I asked why the curtains in the front room were drawn in the middle of the day, Aunt Polly said it was to keep the sun off the good furniture and that I wasn’t to be worrying about curtains. When she stepped out of the room, I asked Elsie if people had been snooping.
She nodded. “’Fraid so. Fairy hunters. Cottingley’s swarming with them, carrying nets and cameras. Daft beggars. As if they’re going to see fairies making that much of a clatter.”
“Fairy hunters.” My stomach tightened into a painful knot so that I didn’t even fancy any of Aunt Polly’s parkin.