The Fairy Caravan

Beatrix Potter's The Fairy Caravan (1929), one of her last books and the longest of any of them, had its origins in the 1903 The Tale of Tuppenny, about a guinea-pig, which was intended as one of the canonical series of Potter tales -- it was written contemporaneously with The Tale of Two Bad Mice and The Pie and the Patty-Pan. The original version of Tuppenny eventually appeared in the miniature format long after Potter's death, but she also re-wrote it as the opening chapter of The Fairy Caravan, describing how the guinea-pig runs away from his village. He falls in with a traveling caravan of performing animals who have a charm that prevents them from being seen by humans.

The structure of The Fairy Caravan is, as Potter herself admitted, "rambling." The format, in which the animals have adventures punctuated by stretches of their own story-telling, is very reminiscent of Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle books, which are also quite episodic and full of the animals' own tales. The structure was intended to accommodate odds and ends of Potter's writing that hadn't been fully developed elsewhere. There were plenty such; in fact, Potter made notes toward a Caravan sequel which would house more of these bits. (Some of this writing is preserved in Leslie Linder's invaluable A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter.)

Tuppenny isn't sustained as the lead character; the bulk of the narrative (14 of the 23 chapters) is dominated by the disappearance, rediscovery, and illness of Paddy Pig, who plays a Pigmy Elephant (among other parts) in the animals' circus. Potter later commented that Paddy was "tiresome," but she in fact had a sure hand with pigs (Pigling Bland, Little Pig Robinson), and Paddy's illness and recuperation makes for one of the funniest passages in any of her books. The animals, aware that "it is unsafe to allow a delirious pig to sleep on the cold ground," hide the ill Paddy in a stable, whose farmer owner " was having his...supper, quite unconscious that his stable had been requisitioned as a hospital for sick pigs." Convalescent aid is sought in the form of the cat nurse Mary Ellen, who drives Paddy quite mad with her ministrations:

"Was it a leetle sick piggy-wiggy? was it cold then?" purred Mary Ellen..."Bless its little pettitoes! No, it must not kick its blanket off its beddee beddee!"..."I'm skumfished!...Take away this awful cat!" screamed Paddy Pig.

I had no idea what "skumfished" meant at first -- it's Cumberland dialect for "discomfited"; Potter uses a lot of unusual words. But it has a great evocative sound, doesn't it?