Chapter 12: Nat's back!

The last chapter took place in "midsummer," and now we're up to "mid-August." That means it's time for a new round of colonial chores:

"She had been helping Judith and Rachel to make the winter supply of candles. It was hot sticky work. For two days they had been boiling the small gray bayberries that Kit and Judith had gathered in the fields, and Rachel had skimmed off the thick greenish tallow. It simmered now in the huge iron kettle, beneath which the fire must be kept glowing all through the long hot day. At the opposite end of the kitchen, at a good distance from the heat of the fire, the candle rods hung suspended between chairbacks. Back and forth the three women walked, carrying the candle rods, dipping wicks into the tallow, handing them back to cool, and dipping them again, till the wax fattened slowly into the hard slow-burning candles that would fill the house with fragrance all through the coming months."

It's also time for Kit to learn that her secret visits to Hannah's house haven't actually been going unnoticed. Rachel decides it's time to include Hannah in her good works: "I don't approve at all. But I can't bear to think of anyone going hungry when we have such plenty."

When Kit gets to Hannah's house, she finds a surprise waiting: "She had hoped to find Prudence there. Instead, as she came around the corner of the thatched cottage, she discovered Nat Eaton, his wiry tanned body bared to the waist, his axe spouting a fountain of chips as he swung at a rotting log."

Nat's on chore duty while the Dolphin's in town, which leads to Kit making an offer that should surprise anyone who's watched her whine her way through the past half-year:

"'Can I help?' Kit was astonished to hear her own voice."

Ah, the things we do to impress boys.

So she gets to help with the roofing. "Kit followed him into the swamp and stooped to gather great armfuls of the long grasses that fell behind his scythe. The strong sweet smell of it tickled her nostrils."

And she discovers that work can be fun, if you're doing it by choice. (Or if you're doing it at the side of an enigmatic and attractive young sailor.)

"This is the way I used to feel back in Barbados, Kit thought with surprise. Light as air somehow. Here I've been working like a slave, much harder than I've ever worked in the onion fields, but I feel as though nothing mattered except just to be alive right at this moment."

After they get the thatch tied down, Kit and Nat spend a while lounging on the roof and chatting -- about bird metaphors, Shakespeare, and Nat's view of the world, which includes:

• "A boy has to learn his numbers, but the only proper use for them is to find your latitude with a cross-staff. Books, now, that's different. There's nothing like a book to keep you company on a long voyage."
• "A man is loyal to the place he loves. For me, the Dolphin there is my country."

And suddenly he's a New Englander again, and we're back to the theme of independence, with Kit "bewildered and a little dismayed to glimpse under Nat's nonchalant surface a flash of the same passion that made life in the Wood household so uncomfortable."

When Kit realizes how late it is, Nat insists on walking her home, even though Kit has a bad feeling about this and would rather not explain him to her family: "Nat easily matched her nervous pace with his swinging stride, apparently quite unaware of her desire to be rid of him."

The family is waiting when they get back, along with the ever-present William (which is something Nat takes note of). Let's give Kit some credit: she doesn't try to weasel her way out of trouble at all. She knows how her uncle feels about Hannah Tupper, but she straight up tells him where she was and what she was doing, and puts up with another round of his growling and bluster.

To conclude the chapter, Speare gives us Mercy's opinion of Nat, based on their 30-second encounter. "Hannah will be all right if she has that seaman to help her. I like his looks." And we all know by now that Mercy is someone to listen to.

Betsy-Tacy fashion

When I first read the Betsy-Tacy books, I started building a collection of early-20th-century fashion links. I had great intentions of building an epic fashion post.

Instead, enjoy this collection of links. And be glad that you're not expected to wear a hobble skirt (although I wouldn't complain so much about the pompadour).

• How to do a Psyche knot
• How to do all sorts of knots
• All about the pompadour
• There is an entire blog devote to hobble skirts
• All kinds of stuff on this site
• And on this one
• Fashions from the first two decades of the century
• More fun tidbits
• Lots of pictures here
• Postcards

Chapter 11: Relationships are complicated

We have reached midsummer, and the dame school continues. Kit's trying very hard to toe the line after her run-in with the superintendent, which means she's constantly measuring herself against Mercy and falling short: "When her own voice rose in exasperation she was ashamed, remembering Mercy's unfailing patience."

And we're reintroduced to a character from the opening pages. Prudence Cruff hasn't had any screen time since they all arrived in Wethersfield, but it turns out she's the one who's been leaving little presents for Kit:

"The child came slowly from behind the tree. She was thinner than ever, clad in a shapeless sacklike affair tied about her middle. Her eyes, much too big for her pinched little face, gazed at Kit with longing. She reminded Kit of a young fawn that had wandered near the house one morning. It had drawn nearer just like this, quivering with eagerness at the food Mercy set out, yet tensed to spring at the slightest warning."

Prudence's parents won't send her to the dame school, but she wants to learn. Clearly, Prudence is Special. She's a quick study, and she's able to overcome her prejudices just as fast, like when Kit introduces her to Hannah.

"She had been wanting an excuse to take Prudence to Hannah. She had a feeling that the child needed that comforting refuge even more than she did herself."

Also, as if we needed a reminder of one of the key aspects of Kit's personality:

"As always, she had acted on impulse, never stopping to weigh the consequences. Now, too late, she began to wonder."

Moving on, the courtship of William Ashby continues apace. Kit is still a reluctant participant at best, and further exposure to William is not turning her into a fan.

"Every evening he must report exactly which trees had been cut, which boards fashioned. Today, he reported, as the family moved inside to escape the twilight mist that rose from the river, he had overseen the carpenter who was splitting the white oak for the clapboards."

Foreshadowing alert: Judith is totally into the whole house-planning thing.

"She had a flair for line and form and a definite mind of her own, and it was plain, to Kit at least, that as William planned his house Judith was comparing it, timber for timber, with the house she dreamed for herself."

While Kit is trying to avoid thinking about William -- and while she's being utterly transported by the Anne Bradstreet poems John chooses for their evening entertainment -- she discovers that the romantic polygon that is young Wethersfield has another side to it:

"Mercy and John Holbrook! How right - how incredibly, utterly right - and how impossible!"

Except, of course, Judith thinks John is totally hers. And Kit knows Mercy doesn't want to get in the way of that. But at least she's looking outside herself, taking in interest in the rest of the family. And wondering (with a further foreshadowing alert): "What must it be like to care for someone like that?"

Blackbird Pond IRL

Thanks to Constance for passing this article along.

The Boston Globe has a piece on literary places in New England to take kids during spring vacation. And one of them is Wethersfield, where the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum occupies the house that served as the inspiration for The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

And the library has a map (PDF warning) of places mentioned in the book, showing their contemporary locations.

Chapter 10: Guess Who's Back

Hannah, it turns out, is a Quaker. Which is just a bit outside the norm for Puritan New England. ("The Quakers are queer stubborn people.") "Just a bit" translates into "Hannah and her husband were branded and exiled from Massachusetts." There was just a wee bit of prejudice against the egalitarian sects in those days.

(This gives me a chance to plug an excellent-but-overlooked book, Ann Turnbull's No Shame, No Fear. Does not stint on the details of the early days of the Society of Friends.)

This is a detail Kit decides not to share with William, who's still showing up at the house and courting-without-actually-saying-so. In fact, she doesn't tell him about Hannah at all, because Miss Unobservant has started to notice the signs that reveal when she's scandalizing him:

"She could never be sure what thoughts were hidden behind that impassive face, but she had learned to recognize the sudden stiffening of his jaw muscles that meant she had said something shocking."

John Holbrook is also continuing to show up at the house, and is also not showing any actual interest in Judith, though everyone assumes he's after her. Unfortunately -- as far as Kit and Matthew are concerned -- he's also started subverting his own opinions to those of his teacher -- and we know Gershom Bulkeley is unpopular in the Wood house.

And while all the not-quite-romantic-intrigue is going on, Kit continues to visit Hannah. If it were up to her, she would probably just move in there, since it's the only place in Wethersfield she actually likes.

Oh, and remember the "seafaring friend" introduced in the last chapter? He makes an appearance here, only he's not the withered old man Kit imagined:
"There, unbelievably, was Nathaniel Eaton, the captain's son, leaning easily against the doorpost, with that well-remembered mocking smile in his blue eyes."
Here's what we learn about Nat in this chapter:

• He's good with the elderly, particularly when they have occasional memory issues: "He seemed not to have noticed anything amiss, but very casually he reached out his hand and covered Hannah's worn fingers with his own."
• He has blue eyes. Very blue: "She had forgotten the intense blue of his eyes, like the sea itself."
• He has a softer side. Or at least he did when he was eight: "'Tis a strange thing, that the only friends I have I found in the same way, lying flat in the meadows, crying as though their hearts would break."
• He can irk Kit without even trying: "She might have told him, but looking up she caught a hint of 'I told you so' in those blue eyes that silenced her."
• He has layers. Like an onion: "What a contradictory person he was, she thought, hurrying along South Road. Always putting her at a disadvantage somehow, and yet, now and then, surprising her, letting her peek through a door that always seemed to slam shut again before she could actually see inside."

Odds we're going to be seeing more of Mr. Eaton? Pretty good, I'd say.

Chapter 9: A Tempest in the School Teapot

Yes, totally stealing from Anne of Green Gables here. This is what management gurus call "synergy."

Kit's got a real paid job now, helping Mercy teach Wethersfield's youngest kids how to read. And oh my is she glad Mercy is handling the hornbook-reading beginners. Kit may not think much of the primers her kids use, but at least she gets to skip phonics.

Ten days into the session, Kit feels like she's found her niche. And it's totally because of her fancy dresses:

"The children admired her pretty clothes, they brought her strawberries and daisies, they argued over who would sit next to her, and every day they waited with delighted anticipation to see what she would do and say next."

Again, Speare throws in a line here that makes me wonder how sheltered and/or unobservant Kit was back on Barbados. Because here's how she thinks of the students:

"Sober little adults they had appeared on that first day, dressed in fashions much like their parents'."

I don't claim to be an expert in seventeenth-century fashion, but dressing kids in miniature versions of adult clothing was a pretty standard practice (up into the twentieth century, in fact). Presumably all the other children Kit has encountered have been wearing "fashions much like their parents'," so is it just the fact that these kids are in more Puritan styles that jumps out at her?

Moving on: The other reason Kit finds herself enjoying teaching is that she's managed to incorporate stories into her day. Mercy is still a little reluctant ("Was it right, she questioned Kit, to bribe children into good behavior by these stories?"), but the kids love it.

However. Kit's next experiment, in which she decides to have her students act out the day's story, adds another point in the "Kit's totally unobservant" column.

"By chance she had chosen the three most obstreperous pupils in the school to be her thieves and robbers, and the hapless boy who represented the traveler was the priggish little scholar they most cordially disliked."

This, out of the half-dozen students she works with. Apparently she hasn't been paying much attention to their personalities.

Not surprising, then, that the experiment turns into a disaster. Not only does she demonstrate that she can't keep the students in line -- just as the superintendent walks in -- she does it via one of the Puritans' taboos, something she's already run into ("Play-acting!").

Kit's response is to run away. To the Meadow. Which is where the title character -- or at least a person who one would assume is the title character -- gets her first close-up. Hannah Tupper is "a woman with short-cropped white hair and faded, almost colorless eyes set deep in an incredibly wrinkled face," and she and Kit click straight off.

The way Speare phrases it, you really get the sense that it's the people not in positions of power that fall for Kit's charms:

"Like the school children, she had accepted Kit without a question or suspicion, and like a child she scuttled ahead now, confident that Kit would accept her in the same way."

Hannah gives Kit the doting she needs right then, and a cake and a kitten to go along with it. Suddenly Kit's feeling worlds better, to the extent that she's even able to imagine that there's a little something going on between Hannah and the sailor who brings her coral and other trinkets:

"Kit almost laughed. Of all the unlikely things -- a romance! She could imagine him, this seafaring friend, white-haired and weatherbeaten, coming shyly to the door with his small treasures from some distant shore."

Future chapters will show that that's not exactly the case. Hmm. How many sailors have been introduced in the text so far?

Chapter 8: New Clothes Solve Everything

Or at least they make the little things better. In this case, Kit gets a new homespun dress that she can actually work in, and Judith starts being almost friendly.

And while that's happening, Kit's first actual friend makes an appearance, though it's at a distance for now. We're given a bit of foreshadowing:

"How often she would come back she had no way of foreseeing, nor could she know that never, in the months to come, would the Meadows break the promise they held for her at this moment, a promise of peace and quietness and of comfort for a troubled heart."

Kit thinks the Meadows are pretty excellent, but Judith points out the practical things, like the fact that it floods on a regular basis, which is why it's the perfect home for the local outcast.

"Nobody but Hannah Tupper would live there by Blackbird Pond."

And Speare points out that everyone loves a good bit of hyperbole. (Spoiler alert: There are no actual witches in this book. But we still get stuck with the imagery.)

"that lonely figure in the ragged flapping shawl - it was easy enough to imagine any sort of mysterious brew in the pot!"

And so to work.

"Kit could never get over her amazement at her cousin. Judith, so proud and uppity, so vain of the curls that fell just so on her shoulder, so finicky about the snowy linen collar that was the only vanity allowed her, kneeling in the dirt doing work that a high-class slave in Barbados would rebel at. What a strange country this was!"

Once again, Kit's attitude toward slavery is totally unexamined. The closest thing we get to breaking it down here is the acknowledgement that she accepts the existence of different classes of slaves, just like we know she's cool with different classes of Englishmen.

"What was she doing here anyway, Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter, squatting in an onion patch?"

Which is why she starts thinking about the appeal of William Ashby. There's still nothing to write home about in William himself, but Kit knows this is her chance to move back toward the caste she occupied before leaving Barbados.

"Did it seem likely that his mother, who sat so elegantly in meeting, had ever touched a chokeweed? There were no blisters under those soft gloves, Kit wagered. She knew by now that the humble folk who sat in the very back of the Meeting House were servants of the fine families of Wethersfield. William would own servants himself, beyond a doubt."

A) Another indication that Kit's vision of her future includes slave ownership. This is something we'll have to return to in the last chapter. B) Why does no one ever talk about William's father? His mother gets a couple appearances, but Mr. Ashby Senior is mentioned precisely once in the book.

Finally, this chapter ends with some humanizing of Matthew. When Judith is chatty at the beginning of the chapter, she mentions that he's entitled to a bigger plot of land, but doesn't have anyone to help cultivate it. At the end, Mercy provides some context: there were sons, but they didn't make it out of childhood.

So now we see that the Wood family had the potential to be at least a bit better off economically, but the usual way of accumulating wealth through kinship networks (i.e. putting your sons to work for you) is unavailable to them. Plus, now Matthew and Rachel are both, on some level, tragic figures.

Which, as far as Kit's concerned, doesn't make her uncle any less of a grouch, though.