THE STRANGE TALE OF PIGLING BLAND

I think all houses should have a window seat, preferably with a handy bookcase close by. To sit there, in the middle of a busy day, idly leafing through the pages of a book, is to find a cultural oasis in the sands of life’s desert. Even simply to look out of the window, watching the passers by, or the birds in the sky, is a haven of tranquility.

In fact, now that I come to think of it, one of my early memories is of sitting in the bow window of the spacious house in which I grew up, reading a book about the Channel Islands. I had picked it out of the bookcase attracted by its handsome blue binding and its title, racily picked out in gold blockwork, which suggested historical romance. So I was disappointed to find that it was only an upmarket travel guide, and quite devoid of musketeers. Still, I persevered in my moment of tranquility when in all probability I ought to have been feeding the pigs.

Had I known it then I could have pleaded efficiency. For I read somewhere that to remain maximally effective throughout a busy day requires periods of complete idleness. I was also in good company as Harold Macmillan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, did the same thing. Or so I learned later.

He quotes an incident in his autobiography, where, in the midst of some crisis or other, he sat in the Downing Street cabinet room and read Jane Austen for half an hour. That, it seemed, showed a better sense of proportion than the gadarene rush of politicians today. And so it came about that in the middle of a busy day recently, I found myself sitting by the window re-reading Beatrix Potter’s ‘Tale of Pigling Bland.’

In our household Beatrix Potter is read and re-read until the little square books collapse with age and over use. We renew them, I suppose, each generation and the current volumes were bought for Elder and Younger Daughter when they first learned to read, or maybe even before. Their names written in shaky script with an eclectic variety of implements appear on the fly leaves.

Occasionally they would try their infant hands at copying a long word like ‘Tiggywinkle’ - the handwriting starting big and bold and optimistically level. But with the rapid encroachment of the edge of the page, the puffed line of writing would shrink like a deflated balloon, arching downwards in a waterfall of letters. Now Younger Daughter is (officially) pregant we shall have to contemplate buying another set.

You can tell the favourite stories by how well-thumbed they are and if I tell you that the ‘Tale of Pigling Bland’ could almost pass for pristine, it might suggest that it wasn’t as popular as the others. Partly this is because it is possibly the longest of the Potter stories and partly perhaps because it tells an adult and chilling tale.

At its simplest it concerns a family of large white piglets who are dispersed from the farm on which they are born. Two of the pigs, Alexander and the eponymous Pigling Bland are given licences and sent off, amid much tearfulness on the part of the mother pig, Aunt Pettitoes, to market in Lancashire. The two pigs carry provisions and ‘conversation peppermints.’

(Now you may reasonably ask exactly what quality a peppermint requires to make it a ‘conversation’ peppermint - indeed what quality makes for ‘conversation sweeties,’ another term that crops up in the book. I do not know, myself, and so am asking).

Inevitably the two pigs do not make it to market. Alexander, the improvident one, loses his licence and is escorted home by a policeman to be ‘disposed of’ in the neighbourhood. Pigling himself, having lost his way, is kidnapped by a farmer and about to be disposed in a culinary direction when he discovers a similarly aged black Berkshire girl pig (Pig-Wig) in much the same predicament. Together they escape and head for the Westmorland county boundary, which, by a ruse, they manage to cross, hand in hand, to live a life of freedom growing vegetables.

But sitting in the window there re-reading this children’s tale, I found myself asking more than just about ‘conversation peppermints’. For here, surely, are all the mementoes of slavery - of families being broken up - of slaves being prodded and poked and hired in the market. Of licences to travel, and of the tearful mother forced to say goodbye to children whom she will never see again.

Then there is the curious white pig-black pig combination and the escape over some arbitrary line to freedom. Is this not Huckleberry Finn and Jim heading (but not quite reaching) the Ohio river? By the time Beatrix Potter was writing, of course, slavery had been abolished - at least formally. Is this just an innocent children’s tale - or is she trying to say something more, than the usual fable of right and wrong amongst the rabbits and the lettuces? Is this not a plea, disguised as innocent anthropomorphism, in favour of the unity of the human race?

So much to ponder from such a small white square of a book. Yes, get a window seat.

The picture shows Pigling Bland and Pig-Wig contemplating the free hills of Westmoreland