26 Q The Secret Lge $Nature
Then, in late August 1981, Cooper received a phone call from
Frances in which she asked if he would come down again to Ramsgate
to visit her.
- Hoping she might at last be prepared to turn over to him the fifteen-
thousand-word essay she had once written on the fairies, Cooper du-
tifully turned up, driving all the way down fromyorkshire, arriving late
on a Sunday evening in September 1981.
The next day Frances asked him to drive her to nearby Canterbury,
where she went into the cathedral, leaving Cooper in a cafk across the
street.
When she rejoined him, Cooper says she seated herself opposite
him, "hands on chin, a thin, amused mouth, and brown eyes behind
round specs regarding me intently."
Launching into the subject of his interest, Cooper began tallung
about other fairy accounts-trees and streams and types of fairy life-
when Frances interrupted him. "What d'you think of that first photo-
graph?"
Cooper's mind flicked to the world-famous snap of Frances sur-
rounded by sprites as she looked at the camera.
Frances's eyes met his with amusement: "From where I was, I could
see the hatpins holding up the figures. I've always marveled that any-
body ever took it seriously."
Cooper says he gulped his coffee as his pulse accelerated.The truth
at last!
"That first photograph always haunted me," said Frances. "I
swore to Elsie I wouldn't tell anybody. But last month Glenn [Elsie's
son] confronted Elsie with the Shepperton picture [from the 1916
gift book], and Elsie admitted she'd copied cutout figures from it.
Glenn persuaded Elsie to confess, then rang up my daughter Kit and
told her."
"What about the other four photos?" Cooper asked, steadying him-
self. "Are they fakes?"
"Three of them," said Frances. "The last one's genuine. Elsie didn't
have anything ready, so we had to take one of them building up in the
bushes."