Beatrix Potter
Page 27
By the early autumn Beatrix wrote to Harold Warne with the idea of getting started on several new books. Her energy was high and she had some stories she wanted Harold to consider. She sent the text of ‘The Faithful Dove’, a tale set in the town of Rye and written some years earlier and for which she had plenty of sketches. She also included a sequel to Benjamin Bunny, even though she was tired of drawing rabbits. ‘I must try and do another rabbit book,’ she had written to a young fan, William Warner, ‘all the little boys and girls like the rabbits best.’ This one was about Benjamin’s family of Flopsy Bunnies. Another story was about the village shop in Sawrey. ‘I should like to get rid of one of them,’ Beatrix told Harold. ‘When a thing is once printed I dismiss it from my dreams! & don’t care what becomes of the reviewers. But an accumulation of half finished ideas is bothersome.’ The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, the story about the village shop, were chosen as the books for 1909.42
Her letters to Harold Warne were now characterized by a new self-confidence and an increasing frustration with his erratic management of the publishing company, particularly his haphazard payment of her royalties and his inattention to her growing market in merchandise. There were too many unanswered enquiries about books and illustrations, too many unsettled licence agreements, and even agreements for her own books which remained unsigned. She had explained that she needed regular payment of royalties in order to continue improvements at the farm, pay bills and plan for future expenditures. In November Beatrix told Harold that she planned to buy another field in Sawrey and would need money for the deposit, while she financed the balance. But in early March 1909 Beatrix had to ask again, explaining that she needed a cheque, as arranged ‘on 15th’, because ‘there are one or two sales coming on & may be some bargains’.43
Sometime later Beatrix discovered that Warne’s had received a reasonable offer to produce Peter Rabbit dolls a year before, but Harold had not even bothered to answer the letter of enquiry. ‘I should very much prefer to manage the dolls myself, in future,’ Beatrix wrote to Harold. ‘I must ask you not to make any fresh arrangements without letting me know, I am seriously provoked about things being in such a muddle.’ It was a strong rebuke but elicited only ‘an enormous letter’ of justifications and explanations which irritated Beatrix even more. ‘I made no complaint about the management of my books,’ she told him, ‘… you are incorrigible as a correspondent.’44
Beatrix went to the farm briefly in February 1909 where she worked hard on the drawings for the Flopsy Bunnies, kept indoors by cold weather and snow. She had chosen the garden of Gwaynynog as the setting for this episode of disobedient and gluttonous bunnies who return to the rubbish heap in Mr McGregor’s garden. Unlike the earlier bunny books, the more formal Gwaynynog garden with its archways, beds and long vistas gave her simple plot a floral and horticultural abundance that captures the reader’s attention quite as much as the sleepy bunnies suffering the ‘soporific’ effects of too much lettuce.
The garden at Gwaynynog held a special place in Beatrix’s affections. She wrote about the garden again, probably during a summer visit in 1911, in an unfinished fairy tale, ‘Llewellyn’s Well’, which includes her description of the garden’s pleasures.
The garden lay behind the house, inside a mossy red brick wall. It was filled with apricots, apples and pears; and peaches in their season.
In Summer there were white and damask roses, and the smell of thyme and musk. In Spring there were green gooseberries and throstles, and the flowers they call ceninen [daffodils]. And leeks and cabbages also grew in that garden; and between long straight grass alleys, and apple-trained espaliers, there were beds of strawberries, and mint and sage. And great holly trees and a thicket of nuts; it was a great big garden.45
Gwaynynog was also an ideal garden whose various aspects Beatrix replicated in miniature both at Hill Top and later at Castle Cottage. In 1912 and again in 1913, shortly before Fred Burton died, Beatrix also painted several fine airy landscapes around Gwaynynog, capturing once again her love of that green countryside.46
The Flopsy Bunnies was finished in March, and would be published in July. In April she wrote to Millie from Woodcote, where she had gathered some ‘dear little white violets under some nut bushes’, thinking of Mrs Warne’s final illness the year before, and of course, of Norman. ‘There are some yellow butterflies flitting about, I think Norman & Frue used to come up on the common between here & Shere to get butterflies. It is very pretty country and curiously quiet…’ Her parents were spending the spring holiday at the Lowood Hotel in Windermere while Beatrix went off to see her new lambs. But she had other personal business in Sawrey as well.47
11
Diversions
By the spring of 1909 Beatrix had published fourteen books which were now considered ‘nursery classics’, and which were paying her substantial royalties. She received additional income from merchandise licences based on her books. There were wallpapers, china tea sets, figurines, and soon a Peter Rabbit painting book and Jemima Puddle-duck doll, as well as wooden jointed rabbits. Beatrix took an active interest in all this merchandise and the licences for it. Commenting perceptively on a model for the Jemima doll, Beatrix wrote to Harold Warne, ‘The young lady has done the legs particularly well, and made the bonnet very neatly, also the tail. If she had less stuffing in the head below the chin it would allow a more graceful neck; but the shape really doesn’t matter so long as it is funny!’1
Beatrix had become a canny businesswoman. She used her royalty income not only for physical improvements to the farm, but to increase her herds of livestock, native Herdwick sheep, dairy cows and beef cattle, and to buy additional land. She wanted to protect her existing boundaries and expand her farm, particularly when land came on the market which was contiguous to her existing property or was offered at an especially attractive price.
When Beatrix bought Hill Top and Buckle Yeat Croft in 1905, her father’s firm of solicitors in London had acted for her. Only after the fact did she discover that she had been very poorly represented. In 1908 she sought the advice of W. H. Heelis & Son, a well-regarded local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead and Ambleside. It was an established firm, thoroughly familiar with the sometimes quirky traditions of property transfer in the Lake District. The Hawkshead office consisted of two partners, William Dickenson Heelis, and a cousin, William Heelis, formerly of Appleby, the county town of Westmorland. The latter had joined the firm ten years earlier and was known around the area as Appleby Billy to distinguish him from his cousin, who was called Hawkshead Willy. It was to the Appleby-bred solicitor that Beatrix went for assistance in buying more property in Near Sawrey. Heelis was then 38 years old. He was a tall, quiet, rather handsome man with an athletic build and an easy manner — some thought he resembled the poet Wordsworth, although he had rather larger ears. In December 1908 Beatrix had approached the local bank for a loan to buy some closes of pasture and woodland which were offered at a good price near Far Sawrey, a move that had the advice and support of her brother Bertram. But she also consulted with William Heelis, whose firm arranged for the conveyancing of the title. When Castle Farm came on the market the following spring, William Heelis acted as her solicitor.2
Castle Farm and its farmhouse, known locally as Castle Cottage, is opposite Hill Top and above the Kendal road. Its fields bordered Potter’s Buckle Yeat Croft and extended some distance to the northeast up Stoney Lane. Castle Farm consisted then of just over twenty acres. It included a farmhouse, outbuildings, a barn and a small dwelling house. The view from Castle Cottage looks out across Post Office Meadow directly to the Hill Top farmhouse. The farm was conveyed to Potter on 12 May 1909 for £1,573. It was a very good buy at the price, and was already tenanted, but the buildings needed some major improvements, particularly the laying of a water supply to the property. On Heelis’s recommendation Beatrix continued the existing arrangements, and went about the necessary improvements. The
addition of Castle Farm with fields contiguous to Hill Top provided an important buffer to Potter’s primary property, and added greater grazing capacity. But it also extended her property directly into the village of Near Sawrey, making her a more visible landowner in the local area. With the purchase of Castle Farm, William Heelis became Beatrix’s principal legal adviser, and unofficial property manager when she was away in London.3
The purchase of Castle Farm provided even more reasons for Beatrix to celebrate her participation in village life in her next book. Ginger and Pickles was a story based on old Mr Taylor’s shop in Smithy Lane where everyone came to make their purchases, to visit and to gossip. Beatrix had written the story first in a penny exercise book as a Christmas gift for Louie Warne in 1908. She put a crowd of familiar characters into this story to please Louie, but it also turned out to be a clever marketing device. Tom Kitten, Moppet and Mittens, the dolls Lucinda and Jane, even the policeman from Two Bad Mice, Peter Rabbit and his family, Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Jemima Puddle-duck, Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria, all visited the village shop and its proprietors, Ginger, a yellow tomcat, and Pickles, a terrier. Since the shopkeepers are the natural predators of some of their customers, tension is built up as to whether or not they can keep their predatory instincts in check long enough to make sales. Unlike Tabitha Twitchit’s shop, Ginger and Pickles gave credit, a concept which Beatrix explains in the story. Eventually poor management forces the shop to close, causing some disruption and inconvenience to village life.4
The story is not particularly complex, although it deals with such basic business matters as making a profit and keeping accounts. Potter’s drawings are especially rich in texture and detail and the book as a whole is vividly coloured. The animals wear bright clothing and the interior views of the shop are elaborately detailed and cleverly lit, with sunlight streaming though open windows and doorways. The tale was initially published in large format, to highlight Potter’s love of detail, but later it was republished in the now traditional small size.
Beatrix finished work on the proofs during a long summer holiday in 1909. The Potters had taken Broad Leys, a large, comfortable estate with charming gardens near Bowness on Windermere. It was, however, some distance from the Windermere ferry, a long walk for Beatrix to and from Hill Top. It was becoming more and more difficult for Beatrix to sit relatively idle in London, dealing with servant problems or holiday arrangements, when there was so much to do at the farm, especially at harvest time when the hay needed to be got in and the bracken cut for winter bedding. Despite the distance she was required to travel each day, she spent a good deal of time at the farm, and managed to finish Ginger and Pickles in late August. It was published in October.5
‘The “Ginger & Pickle” book has been causing amusement,’ Beatrix reported to Millie. ‘It has got a good many views which can be recognized in the village which is what they like, they are all quite jealous of each others houses & cats getting into a book.’ She had dedicated it to old Mr John Taylor, who had been bedridden for some years and who had wanted to be put into a book. He once told Beatrix he thought ‘he might pass as a dormouse’. Sadly, Taylor did not live to see his characterization as an elderly dormouse, or Beatrix’s dedication.6
Beatrix later sent a copy to Mrs Bunkle, the Sawrey schoolmistress who owned the yellow-haired Tommy Bunkle, alias Ginger, explaining that sometimes she had to bow to necessity in her art, even at the expense of nature. ‘His colour is so unusual, I thought it was rather a shame to cover him up with clothes in the pictures, but unfortunately there is a demand for comic animals in coats, and trousers. I generally refuse to supply trousers on any terms; but it is an unfortunate fact that animals in their own natural pretty fur coats don’t sell so well as dressed up — and one has to consider the bills at this time of year’ — a clear reference to her recent purchases of farm property.7
Beatrix managed to squeeze in two nights at the farm before leaving the north to accompany her parents back to London. Her ‘chief occupation’, she told Millie, ‘is contemplating an important drain (clean water!) which ought to drain about half my farm and doesn’t!… I am going up on the hill after dinner to help rake bracken, I think it is the pleasantest “harvest”, it is not so hot as the haymaking.’ Beatrix was back in Sawrey again unexpectedly in October to attend to more drainage problems, hampered as usual in her business dealings by unpredictability of funds from Warne’s. She spent another week there in late November, a time of year she particularly enjoyed.8
There had been an early frost which made farm work more difficult, but did nothing to subdue her delight. She wrote to Millie, ‘It has been glorious weather but I shall be rather glad of a thaw… I managed to get some fruit trees moved today. The colours are most lovely in the sunshine, all the leaves are off the trees, but the copse wood and fern on the hills keep their colour all winter… The woods look crimson. I managed to do some sketching yesterday in a sheltered place.’ She had two Persian kittens and about twenty white pullets which had come into full feather and which she hoped would become good layers. A hen she brought from Sidmouth had turned out to be especially productive but, like Jemima, ‘she always gets over the fence and lays her egg in the garden, in a hole in the wall’. Beatrix was still preoccupied with repairs. ‘This morning I went to Hawkshead in the trap to see about the fire insurances’, no doubt meeting with William Heelis about their ‘re-arranging’. She had sold her two largest pigs, sad to break up the family, but pleased that they brought a good price, ‘their appetites were fearful — 5 meals a day and not satisfied’. To Millie she confessed, ‘was rather over done with the head yesterday, the poor little cherub had such a sweet smile, but in other respects it was disagreeable. It is rather a shame to kill them so young; one has no sentimental feeling about a large bacon pig.’ Clearly content with her life as a farm woman, she told Millie, ‘I have no particular plans of coming back, if I am not required at home & the weather keeps fine I may stop another week.’9
Pigs were much on her mind because it had also been decided that one of the books for 1910 would be about pigs (The Tale of Pigling Bland) and the other about a little wood-mouse (The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse). ‘I have got them planned out,’ she wrote to Harold Warne a month later, ‘but no drawings finished yet.’10
Unpredictably, Beatrix’s attention was diverted from both her sketching and her farming by the mercantile and rural-life issues at stake in the run-up to the first of two general elections held in Britain in 1910. She had always been interested in politics, indeed, it would have been difficult to grow up in the Potter household and not absorb the issues and the personalities of late-Victorian and Edwardian politics. Beatrix’s flirtation with politics had begun back in 1902 when she registered a patent for a Peter Rabbit doll, but was unable to find an English manufacturer who could compete against the cheap foreign doll. She had been dismayed to find the shops filled with unauthorized imports.
By 1910 merchandise was a large part of Potter’s royalty income, and the British government’s adherence to free trade was having an adverse impact on her business interests and the protection of her copyright. It did not help that part of her problem lay on the immediate doorstep at 10 Bedford Street, where Harold Warne’s desk was piled high with unanswered letters from toy manufacturers and other would-be vendors, or that she still smarted over the pirated editions of Peter Rabbit that continued to flood the market in the United States. When free trade and unfair copyright laws became issues in the general election, Beatrix became politically active.11
Although she had absorbed the litany of free trade from her Potter grandfather and his friends, by 1909 Beatrix believed that the extension of the franchise had changed the weight of the argument, and that tariff reform was necessary to correct the imbalance. She undertook her own campaign for fair trade, or protectionism, which by January 1910 consumed her in painting and printing up posters, and writing leaflets in support of the Unionist campaign for tariffs. To one of he
r young fans she wrote, ‘I am so busy over the Election my fingers are quite stiff with drawing.’12
One of her handmade posters read ‘Poor Camberwell Dolly is Dead’ and featured a doll, once a familiar part of the south London toy trade, leaning limply against a gravestone on which was printed, ‘Here lies the Camberwell Wax Doll killed by Free Trade with Germany.’ Beatrix called these posters her ‘Camberwell Beauties’, alluding privately to the butterfly with white-edged wings first observed in Camberwell in 1748, but by then as extinct as the English doll. Her other poster displayed a recognizable Peter Rabbit doll made in Germany, carrying an expensive price tag. The poster read: ‘Made in Germany’. Beatrix’s fair-trade posters reflected the current anti-German protectionist sentiment pervasive in England at the time, as well as her own commercial self-interest. ‘These posters are bold practice, I must have made 60.’13
Beatrix was realistic enough to know that copyright protection and doll manufacturing were not issues that would persuade farmers to abandon free trade. The government’s rationale for a horse census was another matter, as conscription of horses was an important issue among farmers. ‘It is useless to talk to farmers about dolls,’ she wrote to her printer, ‘But if there is a subject which enrages us — it is meddling with our horses! (I am a one-horse farmer, amongst other trades.)’ For this audience Beatrix created a separate leaflet, titled ‘The Shortage of Horses’, printed by the firm of Edmund Evans. It was a much more closely reasoned statement addressing the present shortage of horses in rural areas, and the very real prospect of conscription of horses in wartime. ‘No doubt we should be paid for our horses,’ Beatrix wrote, ‘but what about our ruined crops?’ However, the connection between horse conscription and free trade was a stretch. When the leaflet appeared, it was signed ‘Yours truly, North Country Farmer.’ Beatrix insisted that ‘It must not be let out the horse leaflet is written by a female.’ Evans printed over a thousand, and Beatrix, with the help of Miss Hammond’s niece Margaret, known as Daisy, spent days stuffing and addressing hundreds of envelopes. She sent it to the printers of agricultural show catalogues, country papers, and advertisers of farm equipment.14