Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  That meeting, however, was postponed by a variety of inconveniences; some physical, some fabricated. ‘I am afraid I have not got on much, I was very disappointed that I could not call at the office,’ she wrote, without explanation. Beatrix wanted Norman’s reaction to her pen-and-ink drawings and planned to try again the following week. ‘It sometimes gives me a fresh start to have the drawings looked at. I will try to call on Thursday afternoon… I think the book will go all right once started. I have been rather upset & very distressed about one of my aunts who is dying, but I hope she will be soon released. I don’t suppose there is any hurry about the books but I would have been glad to get settled to work.’46

  But November continued uncooperative, both to the progress of the hedgehog book and to the relationship between author and editor. Another meeting was abandoned because of thick fog; another because of ‘muddles… with the servants’. Mrs Potter expected Beatrix to resolve the servant problems. ‘[They] make me rather tied,’ she confessed to Norman, and ‘there are so many things I wanted to ask about, it is very disappointing. I will try & get on with my work.’47

  Beatrix finally began drawing her hedgehog in late November. Mrs Tiggy was usually a very compliant subject, but she had her moments. As Beatrix described the problem to Norman, ‘Mrs Tiggy as a model is comical; so long as she can go to sleep on my knee she is delighted, but if she is propped up on end for half an hour, she first begins to yawn pathetically, and then she does bite! Never the less she is a dear person; just like a very fat, rather stupid little dog. I think the book will go all right once started.’ Her drawings of Mrs Tiggy are indeed some of her most endearing, as is the character of the hedgehog washerwoman, with her white frilled cap with prickles sticking through, her print apron and striped petticoat. She was, as Beatrix wrote in the last line, ‘nothing but a HEDGEHOG’ but as dear in illustration as she was in real life.48

  Beatrix’s attention was briefly diverted to the subject of nursery wallpaper, this time featuring Benjamin Bunny, and to necessary improvements to The Game of Peter Rabbit. She kept Norman informed on her progress on Tiggy-Winkle every few days, delighting in his encouragement. ‘The hedgehog drawings are turning out very comical,’ she reported. ‘I have dressed up a cotton wool dummy figure for convenience of drawing the clothes. It is such a little figure of fun, it terrifies my rabbit; but Hunca Munca is always pulling out the stuffing. I think it should make a good book, when I have learnt to draw the child.’ Lucie of the book proved especially difficult to draw, and the more Beatrix tried the worse it seemed. She told Norman she was going to visit her cousin, Alice Burton Davies at St Asaph, near Gwaynynog, in the spring. Conveniently, Alice’s little girl was about the right age for her to use as a model, and Beatrix hoped having a real child to draw would improve things.49

  It was apparent by year’s end that the rhyme book would not be ready for 1905, so once again there was the question of a second book. Warne’s wanted two books each year, not only for commercial advantage, but because of the way Beatrix worked and the length of time it took her to do the illustrations. Beatrix had also discovered she liked to work on two books at once, starting the second after she was well into the first. It was a method designed not only to vary the subject of her sketching and give her hand and eye a change, but also to have something else to think about. In early February 1905 Beatrix sent Norman the text for two stories: one about a frog named Jeremy Fisher, and another longer tale about a dog and cat. Explaining that the dog and cat story was ‘funny, but very greedy’, she reassured her editor that ‘there is one thing in its favour, children like conversations’. ‘I’m afraid you don’t like frogs,’ she admitted, ‘but it would make pretty pictures with water-forget-me-nots, lilies, etc. I should like to do both & I think I could, if the longer one were part black & white which takes very little time to process.’ While Norman considered the options, Beatrix finished Tiggy-Winkle.50

  By late February, some of the drawings of Tiggy-Winkle were ready for the block-maker and for Norman’s review. ‘Would Thursday afternoon be convenient to you to look over the hedgehog drawings, if I can arrange to bring them? I have finished a good many and should like to have them processed because I have used a different white… I have redrawn the birds & mice, it looks much better.’ The story was moving along well except for Beatrix’s persistent difficulties in drawing Lucie.51

  In spite of her deadline, she enjoyed moments of spontaneity. A letter from Hugh Bridgeman, her first from a young American reader, merited a response. The boy had written to say how much he had enjoyed Two Bad Mice. In her reply Beatrix told him about her new hedgehog book, and about Hunca Munca. Her letter reveals how much she liked inventing stories as well as illustrating them. ‘I like writing stories,’ she told the youngster; ‘I should like to write lots and lots! I have ever so many inside my head but the pictures take such a dreadful long time to draw! I get quite tired of the pictures before the book is finished… I think you will like the next book but one, because it has got a dog in it.’52

  9

  Losses

  The potters spent a fortnight in Colwyn Bay and St Asaph in north Wales in late March 1905. The trip was designed so that Helen Potter could be near her ailing sister Harriet as well as take the family away from spring house-cleaning. Beatrix’s story about a ‘pussy cat who gives a tea party for a little dog’ would be the companion book to Mrs Tiggy and she was anxious to make a start on it. It was to be in a larger format, just as the rhyme book would have been, but only ten of the drawings would be in full colour, the rest in pen and sepia ink.1

  ‘If convenient to you I will call on Friday afternoon to go over the plan of the new book,’ Beatrix wrote to Norman before leaving London, ‘and I could bring away the proofs then, & you could print out any alterations required.’ She was busy sketching Duchess, a Pomeranian, using as a model a little dog she borrowed from a friend. The magpie, Dr Maggotty, she drew from birds at the Zoological Gardens. In a small sketchbook, Beatrix made careful notes concerning the anatomical structure and colouring of the bird’s feathers. ‘Brown black eye, nose a little hookier than jackdaw, less feathered.’ The bird’s tail, she observed, was over half the bird’s total length; parts of its feathers were ‘very blue’, and other parts ‘green’.2

  Like the story of Mrs Tiggy, The Tale of The Pie and The Patty-Pan was set in a real place, the village of Near Sawrey, where the Potters had spent the summers of 1896, 1900 and 1902. Beatrix had enjoyed sketching the three small Lakefield cottages just below the Kendal road, particularly the interior of the cottage owned by a Mrs Lord, with its pots of red geraniums on the window sill, the cosy stone-floored entry and carved oak furniture. She also sketched various village shops, the post office, whitewashed cottages, cottage doors, tiger lilies and snapdragons — almost anything that struck her fancy. Her sketches brimmed with her pleasure in country life and in the picturesque beauty of Sawrey.3

  In some, she had drawn an outline of a cat and had an idea for a ‘cat story’ set in Sawrey. She wrote it out during the wet and rainy holiday week in Hastings in 1903. It was called ‘Something very very nice’ and is replete with domestic details of a tea party. Her original version was an amusing and rather short, simple story. She put it aside when The Tale of Two Bad Mice was chosen as the next book. When she returned to the cat story in the spring of 1905, she felt the original needed a stronger plot. She rewrote the story, keeping the dog and cat, Duchess and Ribby, as the central characters in the tea party, and elaborating the setting.

  Once The Pie, as she called it, was selected as the second book for 1905, Beatrix made steady progress on the drawings and by May they were ready for Norman to see. Letters flew between them, often crossing each other as both artist and editor worked to match text to illustrations, blocks to proofs. Beatrix wrote to Fruing Warne on the black-edged stationery of a family in mourning on 2 May, ‘I think I had better bring the drawings on Wednesday afternoon on the chance that Mr Norman Warne coul
d look them over, I think it promises to make a pretty book.’ Harriet Burton had died at Gwaynynog and Beatrix was leaving for Wales. She had been very fond of this acid-tongued aunt, whom she had once likened to a weasel. She found Harriet’s outlook on life amusing, even a bit daring, and she enjoyed visiting Gwaynynog, even though her pets had to be smuggled in.4

  On 25 May Norman wrote to Beatrix before she left: ‘I think you have two dummy books of “The Pie & The Patty Pan” could you spare me one of these for a time? as I want to be quite clear about the size of the plates before going on with the blocks.’ He had looked at her drawings and was not satisfied with two plates of Duchess, the dog. He explained to Beatrix: ‘There seems to me to be too much bend about her nose & the division between the legs should be made clearer; my brothers find the same fault, so I think I will keep these two plates back & get you to look at them once more before making the blocks.’ The following day he wrote to say that the illustration of the two animals at tea still looked unfinished. ‘I like your brown pen & ink sketches very much & I think if you carry out the outline pictures for the Pie and the Patty-Pan in this spirit, there will be no difficulty in reproducing them in brown ink… we can go over them again together when we see how those I am putting in hand come out.’5

  Beatrix continued to struggle with her drawing of Duchess, at one point resorting to sending a photograph of the original Pomeranian to prove to Norman and Fruing that her model had the same thick and heavy ruff as the one she had drawn. It was not the first or the last time she would resort to photography to validate her artistic accuracy. The plates of the cat were turning out well, which made Beatrix feel that perhaps the dog was just too black.

  In early June Beatrix began to worry about the approaching summer holidays, wanting to get both Tiggy-Winkle and The Pie finished before Norman went away. ‘I don’t think I have ever seriously considered the state of the pie,’ she wrote, ‘but I think the book runs some risk of being over-cooked if it goes on much longer! I am sorry about the little dog’s nose. I saw it was too sharp, I think I have got it right.’ Several days later a deeper apprehension was apparent when she confided, ‘I wish another book could be planned out before the summer, if we are going on with them, I always feel very much lost when they are finished.’ And at the month’s end she wrote with more urgency, ‘I do so hate finishing books, I would like to go on with them for years.’6

  Beatrix had good reason to be anxious about continuing projects, for it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to visit the Warne office when Norman was there. Although she does not give specifics, there had been more unpleasantness at home about her frequent trips to Bedford Street, the inconvenience to Mrs Potter’s schedule and perhaps even open disapproval of the relationship. On 18 June Beatrix wrote apologetically, ‘I will bring the drawings again tomorrow unless prevented, still in doubt… I had not time to stop to ask about another book on Friday, and you were busy the time before. I should like to have some other work in prospect when these are finished. I have given up the idea of going away [for sketching], but I remember that you usually leave town at the beginning of July.’7

  While finishing touches were given to both books, there was the ongoing matter of merchandising. A manufacturer for both Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny nursery wallpapers had been found. Now Norman wanted Beatrix to consider a ‘pincushion’ doll of Mrs Tiggy. It would be a change of pace for her, and she was tired of redrawing plates. ‘The pincushion is a splendid idea,’ she wrote to him. ‘I should like to begin one at once — all the more so because I ought to be doing something else — as you very properly remark! It would be most pleasing to use large black pins for the eyes and nose. Mrs Tig is scattering pins all over the place, she moults about a third of them every season, they are simply stiff hairs. Perhaps I can try a model some evening.’8

  But Beatrix was still unhappy with the drawing of Lucie, and reluctant to let it go. ‘I wish I had drawn the child better,’ she complained. ‘I feel sure I could get into the way of it, only it is too much of a hurry.’ The text of Tiggy-Winkle was not quite to her liking, either. She explained to Norman: ‘I do not think the rhyme is right grammar — it is the “no” that throws it out — If it were “Smooth & hot — red rusty spot never here be seen — oh!” that would be all right. She is supposed to be exorcizing spots and iron stains, same as Lady MacBeth(!), the verb is imperative… I used to know my Latin grammar but it has faded.’ But Beatrix had convinced her editor and the changes were made.9

  Before leaving for the summer holiday Beatrix needed some of ‘Johnny Crow’s’ expert joinery. ‘It is Hunca Munca’s travelling box that is shaky,’ she explained, ‘it seems a shame to ask for joinering when it is such fine evenings, but perhaps it would not take so long to mend, I have so very much pleasure from her other little house.’ Norman, too, had recently lost one of his aunts, and Beatrix added her condolences. It was the only time she revealed her feelings about the death of Harriet Burton, to whom she would soon owe a great deal. ‘I was sorry to hear of your loss,’ she told Norman, ‘for I shall miss my own old aunt sadly in Wales.’10

  In late June it seemed likely that the Potters would return to Derwentwater and Lingholm for the summer; if they did, Beatrix planned to continue work on the rhyme book. She called Norman’s attention to one rhyme in particular that she wanted to illustrate: it featured a botanical form she knew by heart. ‘ “Nid Nid Noddy, we stand in a ring,” ’ she told him, ‘I meant it for mushrooms dancing in the moonlight with little faces peeping underneath their caps. I will try to sketch out some ideas, perhaps you would let me know when you are back in August & able to consider them.’11

  The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was finished at last in early July. ‘I enclose the remainder of Tiggy regretfully,’ Beatrix wrote to Norman. ‘I began that story in Aug. 86, & I am just beginning to be able to do it — and without undue “slaving”!’ Although this book had required a different kind of collaboration from Two Bad Mice, Beatrix and Norman had enjoyed working on it. Her beautiful watercolours of Derwentwater, as well as her little hedgehog, and even her struggles with the figure of Lucie, had drawn them closer. Beatrix dedicated Tiggy-Winkle ‘for the real little Lucie of Newlands’, inscribing her copy, “ ‘For little Lucie with much love from Beatrix Potter and from dear ‘Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’… ” ’ Two days later she wrote to Norman again about The Pie and The Patty-Pan. ‘I am very glad you liked the remaining drawings, if the book prints well it will be my next favourite to the “Tailor.” ’12

  Rupert Potter had procrastinated too long about where to go on holiday. By the time he decided, Lingholm had been rented. So instead of leaving for the north around 20 July, the Potters made alternative plans to rent an estate called Hafod-y-Bryn (‘The summer place on the hill’), in Llanbedr, Merionethshire, a small village on the west coast of Wales, where there was both fresh-and salt-water fishing. This part of Wales was new to the Potters. The house stood on high ground with some twenty acres of garden and woodlands overlooking Cardigan Bay. It had been built by Samuel Pope, QC, from Manchester, who had come to London about the same time as Rupert, and had been a fellow member of the Reform Club. Although Pope died in 1901, Rupert knew that the estate was available.13

  Beatrix had assumed they would leave for Wales before the end of the month. She planned to call at Bedford Street on Saturday, 22 July, to select the proper dummy for Appley Dapply, since there was some discrepancy in margin size. But she also needed Norman’s comfort as she had not seen him since Hunca Munca’s tragic death. Beatrix had probably been playing with the little mouse when the accident happened, and she felt terribly guilty. ‘I have made a little doll of poor Hunca Munca,’ she explained to Norman. ‘I cannot forgive myself for letting her tumble, I do so miss her. She fell off the chandelier, she managed to stagger up the staircase into your little house, but she died in my hand about 10 minutes after. I think if I had broken my own neck it would have saved a great deal of trouble.’ Obviously dis
traught, Beatrix ended her letter pleading, ‘I should like to get some new work fixed before going away to Wales. I am feeling all right for work, but very worried.’14

  Reading between the lines, Beatrix must have suspected that Norman would formally ask her to marry him before she left for the summer holiday. On Tuesday, 25 July Beatrix either saw or was sent the proofs for Tiggy-Winkle, and was much distressed by their spottiness. She suspected the problem had been caused by the interaction between the hot weather and the hydrochloric and nitric acid, but there was no time now to re-engrave the plates. She sent Norman her summer address in Wales as of Thursday, 27 July. On that same Tuesday Beatrix did indeed receive a letter from Norman formally asking her to marry him. Then 39 years old, she accepted his proposal.15

  When Beatrix revealed the news of Norman’s proposal and her intention to accept him, the household at 2 Bolton Gardens must have nearly come undone. The Potters vehemently disapproved of their daughter marrying a publisher, a man without professional accomplishment by their standards, and objected to a union with a family ‘in trade’. His was precisely the sort of family and social status they had worked to distinguish themselves from. Beatrix did not question her parents’ right to object, but she believed their opposition to Norman was patently hypocritical and unreasonable. ‘Publishing books’, she said quietly to Caroline Hutton, whose confidence she sought, ‘is as clean a trade as spinning cotton’, a direct reference to the profession of her maternal grandparents. Helen Potter found the proposed liaison particularly abhorrent. Whatever Rupert’s private views were, he supported his wife’s opposition.16