22 @ The Secret Lqe of Nature
Mitchell: "Do gnomes come and go?"
Elsie: "Yes."
Mitchell: "I mean, why didn't you sort of make a grab for it?"
Elsie: "You couldn't.... It's like grabbing for a... for a ghost, or
something."
At the end of the TV shooting, Mitchell's conclusion, in support of
the orthodox establishmental approach, was that the whole thing had
been "a sort of unconscious trickery, ossified down the years into gentle
old ladies thinking they're telling the truth."
Among the crew and the production team, the general verdict was
that somehow there must have been trickery but that nobody would
ever know. Elsie and Frances, it was charitably assumed, had terminally
arrived at a state of chronic self-delusion.
A woman from the village who had watched the proceedings
summed up the villagers' opinion: "Oh, it was a joke.... Nobody in
Cottingley believed the fairies real."
When broadcast, the opening shots of the YTV program showed a
grinning Mitchell looking over cutouts of fairies produced by YTV
technicians. But journalist Cooper's faith was not shaken. He remarked
that "minds all over the West Riding [area of England] began to pon-
der on how Elsie might have acquired wire, tools, time, expertise and
the privacy for such a deception."
Cooper admitted the Cottingley fairies had "an 'improved' look
about them, but insisted that did not mean fairies weren't real.
Retaining his faith in Elsie and Frances, Cooper wrote to Elsie in
August of 1978, saying he was certain fairies had been seen on many
occasions and that in company with Yeats and others he believed
them to be all around us, "as are television, heat, light, and delta and
gamma rays."
To back up his views, Cooper tape-recorded the remarks of a very
sober professional forester, Ronnie Bennett, who worked in the woods
near Cottingley and whose testimony added substance to the girls'
story."As far as Nature's concerned," said Bennett,"I think I'm as close
to it as many'll ever get.... I have places in this wood where I've seen
Cottingley fairies... .What I saw was very similar to the photographs
you sent me.... I was astounded when I opened it and.. .there's one