Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  The struggle between parents and daughter over when she would marry William continued at Lindeth Howe until the end of September. Beatrix had made a good offer on the Sawrey House Estate property, and would close on it at the end of the year. Construction at Castle Cottage went forward, plagued by slow contractors, bad weather and the usual unpredictability of payments from Warne’s. ‘I am not short but I am spending money on building,’ she told Harold in mid-September, still at Lindeth Howe, ‘and I ought to cut my coat according to my cloth! When one knows there is money overdue one is tempted to spending.’18

  The next phase of the crisis was, predictably, a domestic one. Rupert’s health improved so much at Windermere that Helen Potter decided Nurse Bryant had become superfluous. She refused to have her return with them to London. At the same time Helen also decided to rearrange all her household help; clearly another attempt to tie Beatrix to Bolton Gardens. Beatrix knew that, left on his own, her father would be ill again, and that she would be expected to help with his care. ‘We are in the most awkward fix,’ she complained to Fanny. ‘I feel I am deserting my post. But I am of nothing use [sic] compared with the nurse — I have never been in the way of doing little things for him, and he won’t pay the slightest attention to me — we both lose our tempers.’19

  Predictably, after returning to London, Beatrix fell ill again with a nasty cold. Her illness made her realize that she had to act or the cycle would endlessly repeat itself. ‘That decides the matter,’ she told Fanny. ‘I am going to get married! I can’t keep well in London, and my father is under no obligation to live in town.’ She hoped that in the end her parents would lease a house at Windermere, where she could keep an eye on them for at least part of the year. ‘Then it would be all right, for they like him now they have got over the shock, & he is very nice with old people & anxious to be friendly & useful… He is 42 (I am 47) very quiet — dreadfully shy, but I’m sure he will be more comfortable married — I have known him six years; he is in every way satisfactory, well known in the district and respected… My father didn’t much appreciate the match at first, but I tell him if I had chosen a wealthy man with a place of his own — I should have to have given up my farm which I am so fond of.’ Beatrix candidly revealed to her cousin, ‘When I got engaged last June I was quite of the mind to wait… but there was a good deal of bother — they were very silly they would not let Mr Heelis come to the house for ever so long — and I think the opposition only made us more fond of one another — he has waited six years already!… We have every prospect of happiness — if it pleases Heaven — I was engaged once before to someone who died… which is one reason I wish to get it over, I don’t seem to believe in it.’20

  By early October Beatrix and William had made their decision. ‘I think we shall get married very quietly & go away for a holiday, & then I shall come back here & make a desperate effort to see them settled with some proper attendant,’ she wrote. ‘I was feeling the going away very much,’ she confided to Gertrude Woodward, whom she had asked to be her witness at the ceremony, ‘but William has actually been invited up [to London] for a weekend soon — they never say much but they cannot dislike him.’ Beatrix reported that there had even been some light moments between her parents and William at Windermere: ‘A wasp which got “inside everything” & must have made Wm lively for once! Also he has asserted himself upon the subject of hens & put down Mr Simpson our new neighbour, to the satisfaction of J. C. [Cannon].’21

  The marriage of Helen Beatrix Potter to William Heelis took place in London on Wednesday, 15 October 1913. Since Beatrix was marrying an Anglican, Rupert and Helen insisted that the brief ceremony take place at the elegant and socially prestigious St Mary Abbots in Kensington, a parish church near to Bolton Gardens. It happened that St Mary Abbots was also the church that Rupert’s sister Lucy and Henry Roscoe had chosen for the marriage of their daughter, and where Sir John Millais’s daughter had been married. St Mary Abbots is a parish with a long and distinguished history, dating to medieval times. Rebuilt in 1872, the church has a large, almost cathedral-like, vaulted interior, a long nave and dramatic transept. The high altar before which Beatrix and William stood is of highly ornate gilt with Italian mosaic panels of the four Evangelists and an alabaster reredos. Behind the altar are large and elaborate stained-glass windows depicting the life and death of Christ. It was a setting completely out of character for both Beatrix and William, and while it must have been a concession of sorts to her parents, it was an odd wedding for the granddaughter of two stalwart Unitarian families, as well as for the son of the Rector of the country parish of Kirkby Thore.22

  Rupert Potter took the conventional photographs of Beatrix and William the day before the wedding in the back garden at 2 Bolton Gardens. Beatrix is shown standing next to William, who is seated comfortably in a garden chair. She is wearing a distinctive tweed suit, made from Herdwick wool, with a long skirt and matching jacket, a dressy blouse, with a high-necked lace jabot, and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed elaborately with flowers and lace. William is appropriately attired in a lounge suit.23

  Rupert ordered the carriage for the next morning at ten o’clock, and drove with Beatrix and her mother to the church. There is no indication of what the bride wore for the ceremony. The Revd Paul Maxwell Arnold conducted the service. Rupert and Helen witnessed their daughter’s marriage and signed the parish register, as did Gertrude Woodward and William’s cousin, Lelio Stampa, a don at Oxford whose mother had been a Heelis. There were apparently no other guests, nor is there record of any wedding breakfast. The son of the Potter’s longtime coachman recalled the wedding as a ‘very secret affair’. He attributed this to the bride’s fame and her fear that strange people might show up at the church. More likely, the ceremony had been hastily arranged to coincide with William’s London visit, and Beatrix’s desire to be married quickly and quietly.24

  Beatrix Potter was finally Mrs William Heelis. The newly-weds returned to Sawrey, probably the next day, for a brief honeymoon. Beatrix Moore, Beatrix’s god-daughter, remembers that Beatrix and William called on her mother before leaving London. All were amused to discover that the newly-weds were to collect a new white bull when they arrived at the railroad station at Windermere. When John Cannon met them with the bull in tow, he addressed Beatrix as ‘Miss Potter’, and was instantly instructed that she was ‘Mrs Heelis now’.25

  The marriage announcement in The Times identified William as of ‘Hawkshead Hall, Ambleside, youngest son of the late Revd. John Heelis’, and Beatrix as the ‘only daughter of Rupert Potter… and granddaughter of the late Edmund Potter, M.P., F.R.S. of Dinting Lodge, Glossop, and Camfield Place, Herts.’ The Westmorland Gazette offered more unusual details. The writer had obviously never been inside St Mary Abbots, but he had done his homework and knew the sort of local colour that would interest his readers: ‘In the quietest of quiet manners two very well-known local inhabitants were married in London. None of their friends knew of the wedding, which was solemnized in the simplest form, characteristic of such modest though accomplished bridegroom and bride.’ It went on to say: ‘Mr Heelis comes of one of the most athletic and sporting County families. He himself is one of the best all-round sportsmen in the Lake District. There is hardly a finer shot in the countryside. He is a keen angler. The bride is a successful exhibitor at local agricultural shows of shorthorn cattle and her name is known now all over the country for those charming books for children which have become so deservedly popular.’26

  Upon arriving back in Sawrey, Beatrix and William stayed for a brief time in a furnished bungalow above Castle Farm. It was remembered that Beatrix went up and down the Kendal road offering pieces of wedding cake to her village neighbours, a traditional gesture that would have been in keeping with her desire to be part of the community. Whether this is true or not, she did send wedding cake to several friends, including little Margaret Hough, who had written to congratulate her, and somewhat awkwardly to Millie Warne. A week after becoming Mrs H
eelis, Beatrix wrote to Millie, enclosing a clipping of the marriage announcement in The Times, and a piece of cake. ‘I am sending you belated cake, which I hadn’t courage to do before! Thank you so much for your kind letter, you did exactly what I should have wished [about Norman’s grave]. I am very happy, & in every way satisfied with Willie — It is best now not to look back. But I can assure you I shall always remain yrs very aff. Beatrix Heelis.’27

  13

  Partnerships

  ‘I feel very dumpy without my husband,’ Beatrix wrote from Bolton Gardens barely three weeks after her marriage to William, ‘it was hard luck to have to leave.’ She had returned to London to calm the domestic crisis of changing servants. Beatrix had settled comfortably into marriage, ‘the crown of a woman’s life’, as she had once described it and now happily knew it. She was understandably distressed by her forced separation from her new husband. To another friend she wrote conspiratorially, ‘It is rather too soon to have to leave the disconsolate Wm. People are sure to say we have quarrelled!’1

  During this first post-nuptial visit to London, Beatrix spent considerable time going through personal possessions in her old third floor schoolroom, cleaning out drawers and dressers. The sorting process resurrected painful memories of her engagement to Norman Warne. She had been looking unsuccessfully for a small gold pin that Norman had given her, but instead found a packet of letters from him that were ‘so upsetting’ that she could not go through them. ‘There are things I scarcely know what to do with — like his pipe — I scarcely ought to be keeping them,’ she confided. But she did keep them. Norman’s umbrella remained in its place at Hill Top, and she continued to wear his engagement ring on her right hand.2

  ‘I wish I were out of London & back in Sawrey,’ she complained to her cousin Edith, ‘I never knew 10 days go so slowly!… Willie is coming for me on Saturday thank goodness.’ She also complained that ‘Nobody remembers to call me Mrs Heelis’ in London. There was no time to visit Millie, but Beatrix did not hesitate to ask her friend for a special wedding present: a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Cookery for All. A ‘nice useful present that I shall always use & remember you by… & write my name in it!’ she directed. When the cookbook arrived, Beatrix was amused to discover that ‘Mrs Beeton had grown so stout’. Proud of her newly acquired domesticity, she reported, ‘I already take exception to her direction to fry bacon in a cold pan. Wm. prefers blue smoke before the bacon is laid on the frying pan. There are probably more disputes over bacon & plain potatoes than any other eatable. I can do both — (and very little else!).’3

  By Christmas-time, Beatrix boasted of further culinary progress. She and William were cooking ordinary ‘messes — “mingled with really elegant suppers”. Wm. took a turn at pastry “a la Mrs Beeton” ’ and they did ‘roasts and veg. really well…’ Beatrix had acquired enough confidence by spring to attempt a local herb pudding she fancied William would enjoy, a dish of ‘nettles, & various spring leaves, it is very good when properly assorted’. She added with deep happiness, ‘I feel as if I had been married for many years.’ She had also discovered that her skills with a needle were employed, as ‘Mr Heelis walks through the toes of his stockings so it is lucky I like darning!’4

  For their first married Christmas William took his bride back to his family home in Appleby and introduced her to his large family. Beatrix was understandably nervous, but nonetheless pleased to be part of the large Heelis gathering. It felt somewhat odd to be away from her parents, but they had ‘never kept up anything different to a usual Sunday’. Christmas at Battlebarrow House introduced Beatrix to a true Dickensian Christmas holiday. The countryside about Appleby opened into the fertile Eden valley. It was a lush contrast to the more rugged fell sides that characterized Sawrey. Blanche and May, the two older Heelis sisters, both spinsters, presided over the festivities. Every available Heelis relation gathered for the occasion. The Stampa cousins, George and Lelio, and their wives and children came. James Nicholson, who had married William’s sister Grace, and their five children were all there, as they lived nearby in Kirkby Thore. Alec Heelis, the eldest Heelis brother, who at one time had been Mayor of Appleby, and his wife Aday were the hosts. Alec and Aday had given William and Beatrix a dozen place settings of cutlery as a wedding present. Beatrix privately regarded the gift as ostentatious, thinking half that number quite sufficient. That first Christmas Beatrix and William began a popular tradition of bringing a Hawkshead cake, a confection of puff pastry full of raisins and sugar, as their contribution to the festivities. Beatrix had always liked celebrations, even though she was shy about conversation. She was inherently curious about people and enjoyed observing the customs and activities of a gregarious family, especially watching the children.5

  Beatrix had something else to celebrate at the end of a most momentous year. On 30 December she concluded the purchase of the sixty-six-acre addition to Hill Top Farm she had wanted. It included fields which had been part of the Sawrey House Estate. Pleased to have her western borders regularized, the greater part of this purchase included parcels on the other side of the Kendal road accessed by Market Street and Stoney Lane, particularly eighteen-odd acres of what was then known as Moss Heckle Intake and the western part of Moss Heckle Tarn. Beatrix and William considered the tarn, the boggy intake and the southern paddocks especially desirable properties. She paid £1,225 for the whole, and had the satisfaction of resolving her quarrels with the owner of Sawrey House. Beatrix went about quietly stocking the tarn with trout for William, who loved to fish, and repaired the small tarn boat they kept there.6

  At last her own person, Beatrix Heelis began to settle into the partnerships that were to shape the rest of her life. Her country solicitor husband and his family, her farms, the Sawrey community and the predictable rounds of country life which she embraced more ardently each year provided the context within which these partnerships were sustained. Beatrix began her new life as Mrs Heelis with a quiet confidence in who she was and what she was about, but she scarcely had time to enjoy it before events overtook her.

  On New Year’s Eve Beatrix set out once again for London, where her father’s health continued to deteriorate. During the spring of 1914 she was back and forth to London several times a month, leaving little energy for farming or for creating new stories. In early March she wrote to Millie, ‘I was up [in London] not long ago, but was too much worried about my father, to go anywhere. He has failed very much since Christmas and the doctor does not seem at all sure what is the matter with him.’7

  As a realist Beatrix knew her father’s illness could ‘only have one end… It is a miserable state.’ In an effort to relieve Rupert’s intense pain, his physician, Sir Alfred Downing Fripp, reluctantly decided to operate, but Rupert died on 8 May of stomach cancer, with his wife and daughter at his bedside. Beatrix wrote to Harold, ‘We are very thankful it is over, as we feared he might drag on for weeks longer — he went suddenly at the end. I suppose he was just worn out.’8

  Beatrix ended her vigil with a severe sore throat. When William arrived, they took rooms at a hotel across the road where Beatrix could get some rest. A week later she wrote to Millie from Sawrey, ‘I have been by no means well… I choke & cough, & Wm hops out of bed & applies all manner of poultices and pilasters, perhaps too many contradictory sorts.’ She was already worrying about what to do with her mother, who could not be left alone. The couple had been so constantly together and with few outside interests. It was ‘A trying, tiring time’.9

  Rupert Potter left a will with three codicils and an estate valued after probate at £132,757, or the equivalent of about £7 million today. To his daughter he specifically bequeathed the phaeton cob harness, stable furniture and accessories, and all his cameras and camera equipment. To Bertram, he left his guns and fishing rods, tackle and equipment, and the large silver salver that had been given to his father by the grateful creditors of Edmund Potter and Company. Rupert was generous to his household staff, past and present, and left a genero
us bequest to the Essex Street Chapel in Kensington.

  Rupert named Helen, Beatrix and Bertram as his trustees. He gave his children £35,000 each, leaving the rest of his estate in trust for his wife, together with Bolton Gardens and the mews properties. After Helen’s death, the trust was to be divided equally between Beatrix and Bertram. The bulk of his wealth came not from real property, but from very conservative investments in stocks and bonds. Some had been inherited from his father, but many of the best investments were those he had made in railways, especially American companies, and in municipal, corporate and government bonds in countries around the world. As a conservative investor, he had used his wealth to create wealth, believing the future lay in transportation and urbanization. Beatrix, who acted as executrix on behalf of her mother and brother, sold about £12,000 of securities to cover the estate duties and small legacies. On 4 August, a month after settling his estate, Britain declared war on Germany. Beatrix was grateful her father had been spared the anxiety of war.10

  Beatrix and William did not move into Castle Cottage until well into the new year and renovations were still incomplete. Although Beatrix deemed it ‘an awful mess’, she was glad to be there. She had lived in three separate houses since her marriage and was understandably anxious to get settled. Mrs Mary Agnes Rogerson, whom Beatrix had hired as housekeeper in 1911, did her best to get the newly-weds settled. ‘The new rooms are nothing like built yet,’ Beatrix wrote to a young friend, ‘& the old part has been all upset with breaking doors in the wall & taking out partitions. Those front rooms… are one long room now & the staircase is altered, & we are going to have a bathroom — in the course of time…’11