by Moe Zilla

Created on: December 03, 2010

Beatrix Potter once described this as her second favorite story (next to "The Tailor of Gloucester.") A cat invites a dog for dinner, and her invitation is formal and enthusiastic. "Come in good time, my dear Duchess, and we will have something so very nice. I am baking it in a pie-dish - a pie-dish with a pink rim. You never tasted anything so good!

"And you shall eat it all..."

I like how Potter creates tension in this story just from the polite manners of the two animals. (It's a transitional work that confronts "the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies," according to Wikipedia, "while exhibiting an underlying restiveness with the unyielding strictures of Victorian domesticity...") The dog replies that he'll be there, and then inquires: "I hope it isn't mouse?" But he's worried the question was impolite, and scratches it off of his reply before handing it to the postman.

Unfortunately, he really doesn't want to eat a mouse pie, but he's too polite to share this with his cat host. Instead, he decides to slip over to swap a veal and ham pie into the cat's oven when the cat isn't looking! All the social pretension makes these shenanigans seem that much more mischievous. When Ribby the cat returns from buying groceries, "There seemed to be a sort of scuffling noise in the back passage, as she was coming in at the front door." But the dog slips out the back door, and his plan is underway.

Beatrix Potter cleverly describes all the preparations for the party with a straight face. (The dog returns home, brushes its furs, and even picks a bouquet of flowers, while waiting patiently for the agreed upon dinner-time to arrive.) But hanging over all this is the possibility of an icky mouse pie waiting in the oven - and, also, the dog's second veal and ham pie waiting in another oven above it. (The cat's oven has two ovens, with some ornamental handles in between, and the dog had been too confused to pull of a switch!)

"At a quarter past four to the minute, there came a most genteel little tap-tappity. 'Is Mrs. Ribston at home?' inquired Duchess in the porch..." Although at the crucial moment of confrontation, it helps to know what a Patty-Pan is. (It's a piece of tin sometimes inserted into the pie in order to hold its crust up.) When the cat pulls the mouse pie from the oven, the dog offers to slice it up himself - and he's startled to discover that there's no patty-pan in it after all. The dog concludes he must've eaten it, and asks the cat to send out for "Dr. Maggotty" (a very formal-looking magpie).
 
It's a surprisingly intriguing story, though I felt a little sorry for the cat when she realized what the dog was up to. She'd worked so hard to throw the perfect dinner party - but in the end discovers that her dinner guest had other plans!

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