Visiting Beatrix Potter's Cottage / A Letter From Hill Top

My dear friend, this will be my last letter to you before my head is filled with sugar plums and mistletoe and I'm in full festive swing. But before the Christmas tree goes up, I'm enjoying the last few days of late autumn, and there's so much from the past few weeks that I forgot to tell you about. You reminded me that I never wrote to you about my visit to Beatrix Potter's house, so I've come up to my bedroom with a vase of sweetly scented paper whites and a steaming mug of tea and I'm putting pen to paper to tell you all about it. Back on a warm early autumn day when the skies were still bright blue and full of birds, mum and I set off first thing in the morning and drove a scenic twisty turny way to the Lake District. We arrived at Hilltop, Beatrix Potter's home, and were instantly charmed by the house as well as the village, which was full of pretty cottage gardens and roadside bake sales. Do you remember the first book you ever read? Mine was The Tale of the Fierce Bad Rabbit, which apparently I rattled off page by page at two years old. So you see, I owe Beatrix Potter a lifelong debt in providing me with the first book I read and loved and it meant a great deal to me to finally see Hilltop. Beatrix Potter's 17th century farmhouse looks just as if she only stepped out the door and will return any minute. You half expect to see a kettle whistling in anticipation on the big iron range. There are beautiful details everywhere you look and I was amazed and overjoyed to see that I have the very same writing slope she used. In fact, it's what I'm using as I write to you now. Hers was placed on a mahogany card table in her parlour. The rosewood inlaid with Mother of Pearl gleamed richly in the lamplight. I could just picture her bending over it. If you're a fan of Beatrix Potter's books, then you'll recognise aspects of Hilltop farm and garden that appear in her illustrations. In fact, Beatrix really used the place as a studio in which to work and she furnished and decorated it with an eye for the beautiful as well as the useful. It's hard to believe that before moving to Hilltop, Beatrix Potter had never gardened, for she quickly transformed her surrounding land into a beautiful orchard and luscious gardens. She saw the outside of her home as ever encroaching on the inside and she wrote, The flowers love the house, they try to come in. The golden-flowered Great St. John's Wort pushes up between the flags and the porch, and the old lilac bush that blew down had its roots under the parlour floor. Houseleek grows on the windowsills, wisteria climbs the wall, but nothing more sweet than the old pink cabbage rose that peeps in at the small paned windows. I would like to go back when the wisteria is in bloom, but Hilltop is surely beautiful in any season, and I hope you get the chance to see it yourself one day. Apart from my visits to the Lake District and to London, I have settled into a quiet routine in Yorkshire. Plenty of time at my desk working, but plenty of reading time too, interspersed with tramps about the countryside. The pheasants have returned and strut about our lawn like kings until the sharp bark of a neighbour's dog sends them scuttling in a panic under the old yew tree. The other day I looked out my window and saw a blue tit, very close, dancing along the drainpipe, a burst of blue and yellow feathers. I wish I had Beatrix Potter's talent with paintbrushes so I could capture what I see, but I was surprised and pleased to discover that she was a keen amateur photographer. She learnt from her father, and her Windermere diary entries are full of triumphs and vexations that make any fellow photographer smile in recognition. She too despaired of getting decent light, or was put off her stride by overly curious onlookers. I know how that feels. But she also delighted in capturing the shape of a boulder, or a particularly beautiful landscape. So, although I cannot paint, I now think of Beatrix as I set out with my camera, and I'm grateful at how much easier it is to be an amateur photographer nowadays. Week by week I love to observe the changes in a nearby garden. In the autumn it is particularly lovely, and it is full of late blooming roses, flaming rose hips, and chrysanthemums in every colour of the sunset. Fat orange squash bold in the vegetable patch, and huge yellow vine leaves lie scattered across the paths. There is colour everywhere. I capture what I can on camera, and supplement what the camera misses with poetry. Not mine, I hasten to add, but the verse of the great poets. I bring colour into the house too, in the form of buckets of blooms that I arrange in vases all over the rooms. An abundance of flowers is one of the things I miss most as we move into winter. The other day I read these lines of George McDonald's, and I thought you'd appreciate them too. Autumn clouds are flying, flying, over the waste of blue. Summer flowers are dying, dying, late so lovely new. Goldener lights set noon sleeping, like an afternoon. Colder airs come stealing, creeping, after sun and moon. And the leaves all tired of blowing, cloud-like over the sun, change to sunset colours, knowing that their day is done. Autumn sun is sinking, pinking into winter's night, and our hearts are thinking, thinking, of the cold and flight. The world dies every year, in a glorious blaze of colour, and I'm soaking up every last flaming leaf, before the muted grey, black and white of winter takes over. Already the mornings are shrouded in mist, but we're still getting some golden days of sunshine. On a fine afternoon, one of my favourite things to do, is to wander through a beautiful local deer park, that has been part of the Yorkshire landscape since medieval times, and which is home to over 500 wild red, fallow and seeker deer. I could watch these magnificent creatures for hours. The other day, I caught two deer having the most delicious mud bath. You could see they were having the time of their lives, and the strains of flanders and swan, drifted through my head. Do you know the song I mean? Mud, mud, glorious mud. That may jog your memory, but if not, do look it up. I hope you have been having a happy autumn. Let me know some of your highlights from the season. I am a little sad that winter will be here in only the blink of an eye, but of course there is all the sparkle and delight of Christmas to look forward to in December. All the red, green and gold decking the halls, and the scent of mince pies in the air. My next letter will be carrying the delectable tang of clove-studded oranges, and I'll be wishing you the compliments of the season. But until then, take care. All my love, Miranda.