There is a wall running along the side of a small swath of land that is the yard of the property once known as the Lizzie Ann, a countryside residence in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, quite near New Hope. That house was once a dormitory of the Holmquist School for Girls. There dwelt a young Pearl S. Buck long before she would become a great writer.* There, years later, dwelt another fine writer, Elaine Jakes, in that selfsame house. Yet neither Elaine Jakes nor Pearl Buck (then Pearl Sydenstricker) knew when they were living in this humble abode that they would be such writers. Pearl was quite young, apparently living there (Elaine always attested) for a short time while her parents were on furlough from their mission in Chinkiang. (That brief stay, Elaine maintained, would compel Pearl eventually to return to Bucks County to buy Green Hills Farm, where she is now buried).

The young Pearl no doubt used her time there to reflect upon the bulk of her childhood, lived as it had been hitherto and would soon be again in China. Elaine, a middle-aged woman, used a pen to reflect in her personal notebooks on her life, there divulging wistful thoughts, fond memories, and not a few regrets. She had, as you may know from The Curious Autobiography, her own Chinese period. But she did not have the kind of family that her parents had enjoyed. Nor had she had the family that her sister did, nor that of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck. Rather, Elaine lived alone; she dwelt with books as her principal companions. Books were voices of the past, a past not her own, but no less important for it, creators of memory that she never had. They were, as they are for any good reader, best friends.

For that reason she was never lonely. Another reason that she was not lonely were the fairies that lived in that wall, the yard’s far wall that separates the Lizzie Ann from the Solebury School’s lower campus, which would later be rechristened the Hotel du Village—a title I always found just a bit off, as there is no village (as pronounced in French or English) in the immediate vicinity of that complex structure. It had been, after all, the women’s campus of the Solebury School, a direct descendant of the Holmquist School for Girls. Today it is an exquisite, even sumptuous, bed and breakfast, still separated from what was the Lizzie Ann by the fairy wall.

That wall was not significant for its natural luster, for it had none, unless one were to value its rustic feel and the rusticity of its rusticated concrete patches, for it was a crudely made concrete wall, with smoothed-out swatches of cement alternating quixotically with small patches of jagged stone, sometimes bedecked with moss, other times hidden behind weed-like wildflowers that grew out of cracks in the wall. No, this was by no means a wall of Nehemiah, no rebuild per se, yet it did show evidence of repair. Most significant were its cracks, which gave it some sense of venerable authority, if nothing else, while at the same time providing a place where fairies abode, who only emerged about dusk—and quite gingerly at that.

It is well known that the elfin hob of the Lizzie Ann had some commerce with these fairies, though he was loath to admit as much. He was, the reader will recall, a stowaway in the black trunk that came from the old country, from Wales, specifically from Llanelli (not at all pronounced the way it looks), or rather from a tiny suburb of Llanelli called Llwynhendy (also not pronounced the way it looks). That curious state of affairs and hitherto unseen development in human/Hobian relations has been well documented, both in previous iterations of this blog and in The Curious Autobiography proper. Yet the fairies were never mentioned there, in part because their actual provenance was, and remains, entirely unknown. There is a rumor that they first came from Piccadilly (but that would make them English), which in any case seems a mere onomatopoeia based on the ridiculousness of the word Piccadilly itself.

Clearly the fairies are not domestic. I say this because they normally took coins, with preference given to British pence or Canadian cents, from a coin dish—for Elaine kept such a dish—in the living room of the Lizzie Ann or from the tips of the less generous tippers at the Hotel du Village. These coins they would place, with great caution and entirely surreptitiously, in the zig-zagging wall cracks. Some say these were the doors of the fairies’ houses, but this is mere speculation, and ill-informed at that. Rather, I am certain that this numismatic collocation was an altruistic act, however one may parse it, as the coins were obviously placed there for the children who played in the yard to find. I shall in a future blog enlarge upon who these children were and precisely what their connection to Elaine Jakes was. Suffice it to say they had little money of their own, as they came from a family of modest means. Even the youngest of them, a little girl who once wanted to stay four years old forever, still remembers. The fairies knew about the children’s less than affluent circumstances and thus took—some might say “stole”—these coins for the children’s delight in the finding, mirabile inuentu puerili.

That fairies commit such acts should come as no surprise. Even the entirely undocumented and frankly ridiculous myth of the “tooth fairy” demonstrates that fairies are amply capable of transporting coins great distances. And, as obviously even a mythical creature such as the tooth fairy has no money of her own, she would have to have procured said income by clandestine, dubious means. Normally she would filch it from the parents of the child whose tooth was lost, of course, which is why parents are often believed to be the actual givers of money for teeth.

But I wax mythological. Let me return to the wall fairies of the Lizzie Ann, beings far more valid than the so-called tooth fairy. Those of the wall, while they may have been irritated from time to time by Gwilym the household hob—no doubt, if they were taking money from the change bowl—must have been in cahoots with him for this ultimately altruistic business, as I doubt he would have tolerated their frequent entrance into the Lizzie Ann unless he were in on the project. He did, it is now known, have a soft spot for children. And for cheese. And thus, undoubtedly, the fairies softened up the otherwise occasionally crusty and not infrequently sarcastic Gwilym with rather hard Parmesan cheese, the block version of which was his favorite non-Welsh cheese; he was otherwise always de gustibus loyal to the domestic Gymreig Hên Sîr—non disputandum.

His Parmesan leanings, however, were in evidence from the fact that he would regularly purloin that Italian cheese when it was left out, which it was from time to time, on the cheeseplate, whose covering bore the features of a face that had for generations frightened all the small children in the family. When that cover was in place, Gwilym had no chance to get to the cheese—no chance unless the fairies (obviously working as a team) would en masse lift the cheeseplate’s ponderous and stunning lid, while other fairies pulled out a giant glob of Parma’s best contribution to the world. Indeed, I’ve rarely had a better moment than eating Parmagiano in Parma, the city in which I was enjoying the cheese at Tiffany di Gianpaolo Conciatori just two weeks ago, so I understand Gwilym’s penchant, or rather his weakness, too well. At this point, I must publicly admit that I believe there may also be a dairy fairy, as Paestum’s mozzarella di bufala is a strong competitor to Parma’s Parmagiano. (If ever you are in Paestum, be sure to eat some at Nino and Sandro’s Ristorante del Hotel Poseidonia Mare, near the beach; for pizza in Paestum, try the world’s best da Pasquale at the Taverna del Parco on the aptly named Via Nettuno, no. 45).

But I laud the fairies, not simply for their industry but their desire to provide poor children with coins, which no doubt they in turn merely used to buy candy or some other ephemeral treat. Yet there is the important point. The fairies found purpose in giving, both giving Gwilym delight and, more importantly, the same to the children. They held a common goal of serving and working as a team, working together for a greater end. And there just might be something for us people, to learn from these fairies, whatever their provenance.

So raise a glass to those flitting sprites the next time you partake of wine and cheese, or walk beside a garden wall, or think of China or Pearl S. Buck, or think that you may have encountered an elfin hob, or can’t find the right change, or any change, in your change bowl, or, at the very least, when you brush your teeth. And forever keep in your heart the lesson of the fairies, whether they come from Llanelli, Llwynhendy, or Picadilly. Such a silly sounding word.

*I have no proof Pearl S. Buck lived in the Lizzie Ann; nevertheless, this is something Elaine consistently maintained.