by Linda Lear
‘It is an irritating noise here, a mile off; it must be horrible in Bowness,’ Beatrix explained to Millie. ‘It seemed to be flying very well; but I am extremely sorry it has succeeded, if others are built — or indeed this one — [it] will very much spoil the Lake. It has been buzzing up & down for hours today, and it has already caused a horse to bolt & smashed a tradesman’s cart.’ Potter was no Luddite protesting against modern technology for the sake of the old ways. The hydroplane was a hazard to boating, fishing and the quality of life around the lakes. It frightened animals aboard the ferry boat, interfered with hunting and fishing, and caused accidents. Its exhaust and gasoline polluted the lake, and the noise level, whether the plane was flying overhead or taking off and landing on the lake, altered a cherished quality of life in the lakes — solitude and tranquillity.32
A letter from Beatrix Potter appeared in the 13 January issue of Country Life magazine titled ‘Windermere and the Hydroplane’. Quoting from Cowper’s History of Hawkshead on the history of the Windermere ferry and its centrality to all commerce between the Kendal district of Westmorland and the northern part of Furness, Beatrix argued that ‘a more inappropriate place for experimenting with flying machines could scarcely be chosen… The first consideration should be given to the question of danger to existing traffic — the traffic of steamers, yachts, row-boats and Windermere Ferry.’33
The public debate over aeroplanes on the lake had begun a week or so earlier when The Times published a letter from Canon Rawnsley, who wrote as secretary of the National Trust, but also as one who cherished the inherent peace of the unique environment. ‘The value of the shores of Windermere as a resort of rest and peace’, he wrote, ‘is seriously imperilled and… residential property will be thereby deteriorated.’ E. W. Wakefield, a principal of the Lakes Flying Company who proposed the aeroplane factory, responded with an appeal to science and the need for military testing, as well as the importance of the hydroplane for surveillance. But Rawnsley and his committee knew that Wakefield also had plans to start local hydroplane passenger services between Bowness and Grasmere.
Beatrix’s next letter to The Times exposed Wakefield’s hidden agenda, predicting that a factory at Bowness and continued flying at low level ‘will turn Windermere into a pandemonium of sound’. She argued that the proper place for testing hydroplanes ‘is upon the sea’. ‘Canon Rawnsley says modestly that he does not desire to be a “spoil sport”. I respectfully maintain that work, business and the undisturbed customary use of centuries should be set before idle amusement.’34
After another week of exchanges, The Times printed a leading article stating that ‘the National Trust are using influence in support of the effort which Canon Rawnsley and the local protest committee are making to preserve Windermere from being used as an experimental ground for the hydroplane’, and reported that the opponents were lodging protests with the Home Secretary. Beatrix’s letters to The Times and to the various publishers to whom she circulated her petitions were signed ‘H. B. Potter’, and those to the locals, ‘H. B. Potter, farmer’. By August, the protest committee had forced the Home Office and the Board of Trade to open a public inquiry into the matter of hydroplanes on Windermere.35
The experience provided Beatrix with new insight into the constituencies of the Lake District and conservation politics. Remembering Rawnsley’s view that residents of the Lake District were not always able to act in the best interests of preserving their environment, Beatrix was not surprised by the opposition’s argument that they supported the aeroplane factory because the presence of more airmen in the local villages would be good for business. Economic gain for many of them was, understandably, a higher good than natural beauty and tranquillity. Beatrix was also chagrined to discover that most of what she termed ‘the aristocrat’ publishers of London would not sign her petition, whether they recognized her name or not. ‘I find radicals much more willing than conservatives,’ she wrote to Harold Warne, ‘which may be a good omen.’ She got fourteen firms to sign her petition, but was more impressed by the signatures of ‘34 doctors & nurses at the London Hospital, of whom 31 have visited the Lakes, collected by a nurse who had been to Sawrey’. In April Beatrix reported gleefully, ‘the roof of the hydro hangar has blown in, & smashed two machines… I hear one broke down & actually blocked the ferry the other day. It is quite monstrous to allow them in such an unsuitable place.’ By the end of the year Wakefield’s plans to build the aeroplane factory had been abandoned and soon after the hydroplanes left Windermere.36
Her work on the winter scenes for The Tale of Mr. Tod was further delayed by the necessity of going to Stalybridge, the home of her maternal grandparents, to open the Golden Jubilee celebration of the Stalybridge Church and Sunday School Bazaar. Rupert had officiated at the opening of the Bazaar in 1900, and ‘as there seemed no one left of the family’, Beatrix felt obligated. She anticipated selling quite a lot of books there, but was shocked to discover that the school officials expected them to be donated gratis. Beatrix made up the wholesale price. It was a big spring event for Stalybridge, with printed programmes announcing that ‘Miss Beatrix Potter of London’ would open the Bazaar. A similar notice in the Unitarian Inquirer quoted Beatrix as saying ‘Of Stalybridge (church) I know little; of Hob Hill (school) I have heard much.’37
Beatrix had been working on the text of The Tale of Mr. Tod since the previous November. It was a longer tale than her other books and based in part on a tale from Uncle Remus. She had copied it out from an old notebook, changing the setting to the Sawrey countryside, even placing the fox’s earth ‘at the top of Bull Banks, under Oatmeal Crag’, fields on Castle Farm that she had explored extensively. For this tale there would be more pen-and-ink sketches than watercolours; an indication not only of her bifurcated time in sketching at the farm, but also a reflection of her desire to work in other media.
Soon after receiving the text of Mr. Tod, Harold Warne had written questioning the name ‘Tod’ for a fox. He also suggested that this longer book should begin a new series with an entirely different format from the shorter ‘Peter Rabbit Books’. Beatrix was indignant. “‘Tod” is surely a very common name for fox? It is probably Saxon, it was the word in ordinary use in Scotland a few years ago, probably is still amongst country people. In the same way “brock” or “gray” is the country name for badger. I should call them “brocks” — both names are used in Westmoreland [sic].’ She also objected to the idea of a new series simply because ‘I find it so difficult to continue to make “fresh” short stories’ and there had been no falling off in sales of the little books.38
The early spring of 1912 found Beatrix emotionally unsettled. There were severe strikes in the country; one by the coal miners adversely affected the countryside, causing economic hardship in the village of Sawrey. She had not been to Hill Top in two months and longed to get away from Bolton Gardens, but could make no plans. Her father had been ‘out of sorts, but won’t have the doctor’. Finally in early April she left London. ‘The country doesn’t show much sign of spring yet,’ she wrote to Harold from Sawrey. ‘Yesterday was very fine, but I spent it at the selling off of an unlucky (& deserving) neighbour… nobody had come to the sale from the outside driving distance.’ The weather was mild and there were a ‘quantity of lambs — nearly all twins. But the pig has only six pink cherubs.’ She was able to do some background drawings for Mr. Tod. In July she came again for a meeting of a committee on footpaths to which she had been elected. Historically, access to footpaths across private lands had been a controversial issue. Hardwicke Rawnsley was a long-time advocate of open footpaths and his views once again influenced hers. Potter’s election to this committee signified her deeper involvement in local affairs, not only as a large landowner in Sawrey, with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, but as someone with recognizable expertise about boundaries and rights of way, and as an advocate of open access to fields and fells.39
Although most of the colour blocks for Mr. Tod were
finished, she had still to correct some of the fox’s anatomy and so spent time in the Natural History Museum looking at photographs and reference books, trying to distinguish the anatomical lines of the true English red fox (Vulpes vulpes) from other species. She took the precaution of asking Harold Warne if he objected to the name ‘Bull Banks’ where Mr Tod had an earth. ‘One thinks nothing about bulls and tups in the farming world; but after you objected to cigars it occurred to me to wonder. “Bull Banks” is a fine-sounding name, but I could just as well call it “Oatmeal crag.” ’ No one at Warne’s objected. Telling Millie that ‘spring had been a scramble’, she reported that her father was still ‘out of sorts’ but hoped that he would be better out of London. The Potters had decided to go back to Broad Leys in Windermere in July, a house that was also inconvenient to the ferry and hence to the farm. ‘I must make the best of it,’ Beatrix wrote with resigned acceptance.40
The Tale of Mr. Tod was finished before Beatrix left for Windermere. She dedicated it to Francis William Clark of Ulva, the two-year-old son of her dear cousin Caroline Hutton who had married Francis William Clark, the Laird of Ulva, and was living and farming on a small island off the coast of Mull. The opening paragraph of the new story was one that she was particularly proud of, since it got away from the familiar setting of ‘once upon a time’. It also highlighted her mood and her approach to this last book set at Sawrey. Her original manuscript began: ‘I am quite tired of making goody goody books about nice people. I will make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr Tod.’ The principal characters, the badger and the fox, were both villains, although Beatrix’s sympathies seem to lie with the fox in the endless struggle they waged with each other — perhaps because badgers were known predators of hedgehogs. But Harold Warne objected to the opening and suggested some sweeter alternatives. Beatrix knew a good beginning when she saw one and altered it only slightly. ‘If it were not impertinent to lecture one’s publisher,’ she told him, thoroughly exasperated with his literary timidity, ‘you are a great deal too much afraid of the public for whom I have never cared one tuppenny-button. I am sure that it is that attitude of mind which has enabled me to keep up the series. Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.’ In the end, they reached a compromise; Beatrix agreed to drop ‘goody goody books’ and substituted ‘well-behaved’ for ‘nice’.41
The forty-two pen-and-ink sketches in Mr. Tod are deliberately framed by heavy lines, making them resemble woodcuts. They give the violent story a primitive quality suited to the atmosphere of primal enmity. Potter chose this style because it suited the mood of this longer, darker tale, where moonlight was a motif. All along, her chief interest had been with language and with more complex plot and character development, and with ‘more reading’. While Mr. Tod is a dark book, set in Sawrey’s bleak winter with views of Esthwaite Water in several sketches, Beatrix cleverly incorporates Peter and Benjamin, Old Mr Bunny, and the Flopsy Bunnies, ensuring its appeal to readers of her other tales. The fox and the badger are both primarily, though not invariably, nocturnal animals, and she accurately captures their mutual gastronomic preference for small bunnies. Badgers (Meles meles), with their labyrinthine setts, would have been as familiar to Beatrix as rabbits and farm animals. But badgers in the wild are not like the disreputable character she creates in Tommy Brock. They are extremely clean animals and excellent housekeepers, maintaining their setts immaculately, and badgers do not smell.42
As some of Potter’s previous stories had been ‘girl books’, The Tale of Mr. Tod appealed perhaps more to boys. The enmity between Brock and Tod was instinctual and their physical battle rages from the kitchen floor out over the rocks and crags with ‘dreadful bad language! I think they have fallen down the stone quarry.’ The fighting scene was as real as the tension over whether or not the Flopsy Bunnies would ever be rescued. Six-year-old Harold Botcherby’s response to the story must have been typical of that of other boys. He wrote asking Beatrix about the outcome of the battle, wondering if the two enemies were still fighting. Beatrix, not at all adverse to carrying on with the story, responded to young Harold, describing the end of the fight and detailing the injuries to each, but telling young Botcherby that, sadly, Mr Tod and Tommy Brock ‘are still quarrelling’. ‘Tommy Brock’, she said, was ‘a nasty person. He will go on living in Mr Tod’s comfortable house till spring time — then he will move off into the woods & live out of doors — and Mr Tod will come back very cautiously — & there will need to be a big spring cleaning!’ Botcherby, who grew up to be an artist himself, must have been delighted with her visually graphic reply.43
As Beatrix had predicted, the summer at Broad Leys proved difficult, although it was briefly enlivened in August by a visit from Norah and Joan Moore, who came in time to care for a hatch of little chicks in the incubator. ‘I don’t know when I remember such a summer,’ Beatrix wrote to Millie. ‘My hay was nearly all got in before the rain, but… it is sad to see other peoples haycocks rotting.’ She went to the farm three or four days each week, walking the long way back to the ferry at the end of the day, and frequently getting caught in the rain. Beatrix tried to put an amusing face on her growing exhaustion: ‘Today I came by road instead of by steamer, in state, in the farm gig with a swill tub on the back seat. We have rather a crowd of little pigs.’ One can only imagine how Mrs Potter reacted when she witnessed her daughter’s arrival in such a conveyance.44
There had been tragedy too — a serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, the first since Beatrix had farmed Hill Top. Fortunately, the farm was just outside the area where the livestock were quarantined so Beatrix’s own herds were unaffected, but the local markets were closed and other commerce inconvenienced by police orders affecting livestock movements. There was understandable anxiety in the neighbouring agricultural community. A pickpocket had been working in the village of Near Sawrey, and then came the accidental death of a young farmer who had a wife and three little children. ‘He was a bad husband,’ Beatrix explained to Millie near the seventh anniversary of Norman’s death, ‘but somehow that seems to make it more shocking. I think it is a comfort to have pleasant memories, if nothing else.’45
The physical wear and tear on Beatrix, as well as the extra effort of finishing the book, was evident by the time the Potters left Windermere in September 1912. She had never had such an exhausting summer. ‘I have done no sketching — alas —’ she confessed to Millie, ‘partly the weather, & partly fatigue. I have kept very well & managed the going backwards & forwards; but it takes it out of me.’ What she did not confess to Norman’s sister was that she was also harbouring an agonizing secret.46
In June William Heelis, her devoted and respected Hawkshead solicitor, had asked Beatrix to be his wife and she had happily accepted him. But she did not immediately tell her parents, knowing once again that they would vehemently disapprove. When she did confide in them, probably late in the summer, there ensued another long and bitter contest of wills, not unlike the violent battle between badger and fox that she had described in Mr. Tod. Under prolonged siege, Beatrix’s health broke down.
12
Satisfactions
Beatrix had fallen in love with William Heelis in much the same way as she had with Norman Warne: slowly and companionably. Although Norman’s early death robbed her of a happy marriage, Beatrix was in many ways unusually lucky in love for a woman of her class and time. She had been able to get to know Norman as a person as well as an artist and tradesman, to discover his temperament over time, and to see him at work and at play with his family, even with the encumbrance of chaperones. Similarly, she was able to meet and work with William Heelis, though this time without chaperones, first as a business and financial adviser in Hawkshead, then to get to know him in the community while working together on community matters. By the time William proposed to her, Beatrix was comfortable with his character and his temperament. This d
epth of understanding was highly unusual for a couple at a time when middle- and upper-class marriages were commonly arranged on the basis of suitability of family, and meetings between the betrothed couple were severely circumscribed.
The two men in Beatrix Potter’s life had much in common both physically and temperamentally. They were both tall and thin, quiet and reflective, and accomplished at their particular craft. Both were athletic, and both had a certain inherent sweetness in their personalities. In the same way as she had come to love Norman, Beatrix discovered the satisfaction and security that came from William’s knowledge of the Lake District and its customs, and she relied on his advice about her properties in the same way as she had trusted Norman’s expertise in publishing.
Both Norman and William came from large families, which was attractive to a woman raised essentially as an only child. William was the youngest of eleven siblings, seven boys and four girls. Both men were younger than she, William by nearly five years, but that disparity bothered no one except one or two of his older sisters. Beatrix had loved Norman for his imagination and his humour, and she similarly delighted in William’s love of nature, his knowledge of the countryside and his zest for being out in it, whether he was fishing, shooting, golfing, bowling, boating or country dancing.
William Heelis had been a much sought-after Hawkshead bachelor — so the more intriguing question to the Hawkshead locals was what he found attractive in this 46-year-old Londoner, undoubtedly destined to be a spinster dutifully looking after her elderly parents. He was obviously fascinated by the wealthy London lady who had shown a great independence of spirit in buying a small hill-country farm and in insisting on becoming part of a country village. It may have been her intense blue eyes and her obvious intelligence that initially attracted him. She had unexpected flashes of humour and understatement, a quick wit and a subtle rebelliousness, but Heelis was certainly impressed by her determination to learn about country ways and to carry on a life of her own as far as she could find time to create one. He must have found Beatrix refreshingly forthright, and was secure enough to admire a woman who was both informed and opinionated. He respected Beatrix’s literary success, but must have been more amazed by the watercolours she made of the places he knew and loved too. He knew nothing of the publishing business, or of children’s literature, and it is likely that she did not talk about her books or her past.
