at 31 Lynwood Terrace. The little stream runs past the back of the house, and the photographs were taken not more than a hundred yards away. When Miss Wright made the acquaintance of the fairies she was accompanied by her cousin, Frances Griffiths, who resides at Dean Road, Scarborough.
One photograph, taken by Miss Wright in the summer of 1917, when she was sixteen, shows her cousin, then a child of ten, with a group of four fairies dancing in the air before her, and in the other, taken some months afterwards, Elsie, seated on the grass, has a quaint gnome dancing beside her.
There are certain facts which stand out clearly and which none of the evidence I was able to obtain could shake. No other people have seen the fairies, though everybody in the little village knew of their alleged existence; when Elsie took the photograph she was unacquainted with the use of a camera, and succeeded at the first attempt; the girls did not invite a third person to see the wonderful visitors, and no attempt was made to make the discovery public.
First I interviewed Mrs. Wright, who, without hesitation, narrated the whole of the circumstances without adding any comment. The girls, she said, would spend the whole of the day in the narrow valley, even taking their lunch with them, though they were within a stone’s throw of the house. Elsie was not robust, and did not work during the summer months, so that she could derive as much benefit as possible from playing in the open. She had often talked about seeing the fairies, but her parents considered it was nothing more than childish fancy, and let it pass. Mr. Wright came into possession of a small camera in 1917, and one Saturday afternoon yielded to the persistent entreaties of his daughter and allowed her to take it out. He placed one plate in position, and explained to her how to take a “snap.” The children went away in high glee and returned in less than an hour, requesting Mr. Wright to develop the plate. While this was being done Elsie noticed that the fairies were beginning to show, and exclaimed in an excited tone to her cousin, “Oh, Frances, the fairies are on the plate!” The second photograph was equally successful, and a few prints from each plate were given to friends as curiosities about a year ago. They evidently attracted little notice until one was shown to some of the delegates at a Theosophical Congress in Harrogate last summer.
When he came home from the neighbouring mill, and was told the nature of my errand, he said he was “fed up” with the whole business, and had nothing else to tell. However, he detailed the story I had already heard from his wife, agreeing in every particular, and Elsie’s account, given to me in Bradford, added nothing. Thus I had the information from the three members of the family at different times, and without variation. The parents confessed they had some difficulty in accepting the photographs as genuine and even questioned the girls as to how they faked them. The children persisted in their story, and denied any act of dishonesty. Then they “let it go at that.” Even now their belief in the existence of the fairies is merely an acceptance of the statements of their daughter and her cousin. Mrs. Wright certainly gave me the impression that she had no desire to keep anything back, and answered my questions quite frankly. She told me that Elsie had always been a truthful girl, and there were neighbours who accepted the story of the fairies simply on the strength of their knowledge of her. I asked about Elsie’s career, and her mother said that after she left school she worked a few months for a photographer in Manningham Lane, Bradford, but did not care for running errands most of the day. The only other work she did there was “spotting.” Neither occupation was likely to teach a fourteen-year-old girl how to “fake” a plate. From there she went to a jeweller’s shop, but her stay there was not prolonged. For many months immediately prior to taking the first photograph she was at home and did not associate with anyone who possessed a camera.
At that time her father knew little of photography, “only what he had picked up by dodging about with the camera,” as he put it, and any suggestion that he had faked the plate must be dismissed.
I ascertained that Elsie was described by her late schoolmaster as being “dreamy,” and her mother said that anything imaginative appealed to her. As to whether she could have drawn the fairies when she was sixteen I am doubtful. Lately she has taken up water-colour drawing, and her work, which I carefully examined, does not reveal that ability in a marked degree, though she possesses a remarkable knowledge of colour for an untrained artist.
Sir A. Conan Doyle says that at first he was not convinced that the fairies were not thought-forms conjured up by the imagination or expectation of the seers. Mr. E. L. Gardner, a member of the Executive Committee of the Theosophical Society, who made an investigation on the spot and also interviewed all the members of the family, records his opinion that the photographs are genuine.
Later in the day I went to Bradford, and at Sharpe’s Christmas Card Manufactory saw Miss Wright. She was working in an upper room, and at first refused to see me, sending a message to the effect that she did not desire to be interviewed. A second request was successful, and she appeared at a small counter at the entrance to the works.
She is a tall, slim girl, with a wealth of auburn hair, through which a narrow gold band, circling her head, was entwined.
Like her parents, she just said she had nothing to say about the photographs, and, singularly enough, used the same expression as her father and mother —“I am ‘fed up’ with the thing.”
She gradually became communicative, and told me how she came to take the first photograph.
Asked where the fairies came from, she replied that she did not know.
“Did you see them come?” I asked; and on receiving an affirmative reply, suggested that she must have noticed where they came from.
Miss Wright hesitated, and laughingly answered, “I can’t say.” She was equally at a loss to explain where they went after dancing near her, and was embarrassed when I pressed for a fuller explanation. Two or three questions went unanswered, and my suggestion that they must have “simply vanished into the air” drew the monosyllabic reply, “Yes.” They did not speak to her, she said, nor did she speak to them.
When she had been with her cousin she had often seen them before. They were only kiddies when they first saw them, she remarked, and did not tell anybody.
“But,” I went on, “it is natural to expect that a child, seeing fairies for the first time, would tell its mother.” Her answer was to repeat that she did not tell anybody. The first occasion on which fairies were seen, it transpired, was in 1915.
In reply to further questions, Miss Wright said she had seen them since, and had photographed them, and the plates were in the possession of Mr. Gardner. Even after several prints of the first lot of fairies had been given to friends, she did not inform anybody that she had seen them again. The fact that nobody else in the village had seen them gave her no surprise. She firmly believed that she and her cousin were the only persons who had been so fortunate, and was equally convinced that nobody else would be. “If anybody else were there,” she said, “the fairies would not come out.”
Further questions put with the object of eliciting a reason for that statement were only answered with smiles and a final significant remark, “You don’t understand.”
Miss Wright still believes in the existence of the fairies, and is looking forward to seeing them again in the coming summer.
The fairies of Cottingley, as they appeared to the two girls, are fine-weather elves, as Miss Wright said they appeared only when it was bright and sunny; never when the weather was dull or wet.
The strangest part of the girl’s story was her statement that in their more recent appearances the fairies were more “transparent” than in 1916 and 1917, when they were “rather hard.” Then she added the qualification, “You see, we were young then.” This she did not amplify, though pressed to do so.
The
