by Linda Lear
Beatrix had little energy for work on a new book. But one of her short stories appeared in Country Life magazine on 25 October 1913, just ten days after her marriage, and under her married name. It was part of a feature called ‘Tales of Country Life’. The magazine’s editor, Anderson Graham, had selected ‘Fairy Clogs’ from several stories Beatrix had written about local life a few years earlier. The stories were rather dark and dealt with the harsh and sometimes tragic aspects of life in the north. They also included her early experiments using country dialect. ‘Fairy Clogs’ tells of two little children who are blown across the ice on their iron clogs following the dancing fairies. Beatrix often wrote down a story she had heard or retold a vignette in dialect and, like Harris’s Uncle Remus tales, she tried to capture in them some of the unique qualities of ordinary folk life.12
Before her father’s death, Beatrix had begun a story she called ‘The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots’. She explained to Harold Warne that it was about ‘a well-behaved prim black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life, and goes out hunting with a little gun on moonlight nights, dressed up like puss in boots’. By March she had made several drawings, including one for the frontispiece. It showed Miss Kitty holding the gun quite expertly, the result of having used William to model the correct posture. Since the story was slightly derivative of Charles Perrault’s fable ‘Puss in Boots’ and there was a convention against using traps in animal stories, Harold and Fruing responded with only moderate enthusiasm. In March Beatrix had told Harold, ‘I’m afraid it’s all I can offer this spring — so make the best of it!’ But when summer came, she had added little to it.13
Early in June Beatrix went up to London to work on her father’s estate, answer letters of condolence, and to have ‘all my top front teeth out!!’ Since her parents had already taken Lindeth Howe in Bowness for the summer, Beatrix spent three weeks later that month helping her mother and the London household get settled into the country house. ‘I have tried to get on with the book, but there are no plates finished yet,’ she complained in mid-July. ‘I am interested in the drawings again — in the sense of getting my mind on it, and feeling I could make something of it — if only I had time & opportunity.’ She regretted that she had not done more during the winter, but confessed that her enthusiasm had been dampened by the Warnes’ lack of enthusiasm. ‘It is very difficult to keep up to a fixed level of success,’ she explained. Harold Warne had ‘The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots’ set up in type and Beatrix pasted it into a dummy copy, but only the frontispiece was ever completed.14
Reluctant to go back to London after the war broke out, Helen Potter took a year’s lease on Beechmount, an unfurnished cottage on the western edge of Sawrey, had some furniture sent up from Bolton Gardens, and installed her coachman and his family in Buckle Yeat cottage. Beatrix persuaded Rupert’s only surviving sister, Aunt Polly (Mary Potter Wrigley) to keep Helen company for a time, renting an unfurnished cottage for her next to Beechmount. Beatrix made the best of the situation, telling William that it was ‘highly complimentary to him that these old ladies take refuge in the neighbourhood’. Privately she admitted that she was a bit thinner, since her mother and aunt kept her ‘on the trot’.15 When Rupert’s estate had been distributed and the taxes paid, Helen bought Lindeth Howe after it came on the market the following September, 1915. She sent for the rest of her furniture and belongings from London, installed a caretaker in Bolton Gardens, and moved her retinue to Bowness. Warne’s had no book by Beatrix Potter for their 1914 Christmas list, the first time since The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902. Beatrix tried a bit of drawing in the winter but could not stick to it. ‘My eyes are gone so long sighted & not clear nearby,’ she explained to Harold Warne, but probably a lack of enthusiasm rather than impaired vision was closer to the truth.16
The Great War of 1914–18 changed the nation and the countryside for ever. After the harvest had been gathered in 1914, a growing number of farmers encouraged their youthful workers and the youth of their own families to enlist. Beatrix’s harvest had been good, but she was worried about the mandatory conscription of farm horses. ‘All one can do at present is to forbear spending more than possible & cut down some wood, as there is going to be no coal.’ Like other rural residents, she anxiously watched the numbers of troops moving out on the railways that autumn, worried about German spies rumoured to have infiltrated the shipbuilding docks at nearby Barrow, and fretted over the security of the Thirlmere-Manchester reservoir. ‘The war is very horrid,’ she wrote to Millie; ‘W. put down his name as a special constable & Old volunteer reservist; but so far has not had any job. There seems no place for “volunteers”, it is enlistment or nothing… A great many lads have gone away.’ Several of William’s nephews had volunteered, and so had Bertram, but to Beatrix’s relief, he failed the medical. By the end of the year there were already ‘sad losses amongst local officers’ who had been sent to the front from the Sawrey area.17
Beatrix worried about all the young men she had known, particularly upset that ‘many fine lads from this part went to Gallipoli’ — an expedition that had resulted in enormous loss of life. She thought it must be a relief to families to have their loved ones safe in hospital instead of fighting such battles. The winter of 1915 brought heavy snows to Sawrey which increased her concern for the sheep on the fells, but did not lessen her appreciation of the physical beauty of the snow. ‘The snow was lovely, weeks of it crisp and dry in bright sunshine.’ But, she told Fruing, ‘Somehow winter seems more appropriate to the sad times, than the glorious summer weather, though we were thankful to have it for getting the crops.’ For the first time since they had married, William and Beatrix did not go to Appleby for Christmas 1915, unwilling to leave Helen Potter alone for the holiday. Like many other rural farmers, Beatrix had a ‘stay at home’ life during the early part of the war. She realized her eyesight was changing and that she needed glasses which could only be fitted in London, but for many reasons, London was a place she had no wish to go.18
Beatrix had a lot on her mind as the nation went to war. It was not only the declining agricultural markets that troubled her, but the persistent anxieties about her publishing income, as the promised accounts from Harold Warne had never materialized. About the time of her marriage, Beatrix had made arrangements in her will that in the event of her death, the copyrights in her books would remain with the publishing company. Now she began to wonder if that assignment had been wise. When the war broke out, she had agreed to forgo payments since business was volatile. Still she could not help making a plea for ‘the accounts’ or enquiring of Harold, ‘What has become of all the little side shows we discussed last spring? note papers? almanacs?’ She heard nothing. By May 1915 her patience, however admirable, was at an end. She had serious concerns about the company’s management and its future. She wrote to Harold, ‘I really must say I don’t like going on indefinitely without some sort of accounts, you did not send any statement as you talked of doing, after the New Year. The last I can lay my hand on is for 1922!!… I am a healthy person, but think what it would be like for unbusiness if I happened to wind up. If it has got beyond keeping account of, it would be better to say so.’ Harold’s explanations about cash flows, government restrictions and lack of office help were not sufficient to allay her concerns or diminish her scepticism. But there was little she felt she could do.19
Six months later, she turned to Fruing for some enlightenment. ‘I am getting seriously perplexed about the accounts… I promised not to ask the firm for payments while times were so difficult; but I think you will allow that the failure to send any statements at all is a trial of patience; and the overlapping and unpunctuality had begun long before the war… I am not out of temper; I am very sorry for you all… But I am tired of the muddle, and it is not all due to the war. Neither is it all due to Harold; I think it would have been courteous if you had sent a line of regret about the half yearly interest.’20
Beatrix had deliberately not shared her
concerns about Warne’s management with William, who had little patience for bad business practices. She felt ‘a repugnance to his intervening in any business between me and your family’, she confided to Fruing. But now Beatrix was prepared to force some changes. Telling Fruing that she wanted new copyright arrangements, she warned, ‘I shall have to take some steps about it — not in any unfriendly spirit, but to put the matter on a more businesslike footing. For one thing I should instruct my London solicitor to alter my will; I cannot leave this muddle to go accumulating.’ Fruing’s response to her threat is lost, but the stalemate continued. The following spring, Harold sent Beatrix a cheque for back royalties, but no accounts.21
Even with wartime restrictions, there were some happy compensations to country living — which Beatrix called ‘mild dissipations’. The Heelises had hosted two dances — ‘hops’ — for the school children and the farm servants. ‘My word how they did dance quadrilles like spinning tops! I never saw more cheerful parties, and some of the old singing games are curious & pretty,’ she wrote happily to Millie. Although she did not dance herself, Beatrix loved watching the dancers, especially William. She could be found in the back of the room, tapping her toe in time to the music, occasionally making a note about a verse or rhyme that pleased her. Beatrix enjoyed the rare merriment and made no complaint about spending all the next day ‘scrubbing the dining room’.22
Beatrix had become an upland fell farmer in a period of rapid rural and agricultural change. Even before the war broke out, agricultural prices were falling as wheat, wool and meat were undercut by imports. As prices fell, the cost of maintaining soil fertility increased and the use of fertilizers declined, drainage was neglected and erosion increased. Labour shortages caused by war recruitment did not begin to impact north-country farms until the spring planting season in 1916. The rising cost of labour encouraged a greater use of farm machinery, particularly for ploughing, harvesting and binding hay.
When the war started, women first moved into the more attractive and remunerative posts as shop assistants or delivery girls, or went to work in the munitions factories. Land work was viewed negatively by most women, and there was a widespread belief among farmers that women were incapable of performing dirty jobs, using horses or working in bad weather. But in 1916 the Women’s National Land Service Corps was established to promote the use of female labour and to offer those who joined some form of training, despite initial scepticism. The Times reported the inaugural meeting of the Service and followed this with a leading article, ‘Women Workers: Demand and Supply’. It urged farmers not only to hire women to work on the land, but to offer them adequate wages.23
Beatrix had given the employment of women serious consideration. To her amusement William had hired a little office girl to help replace the three clerks from the law firm who had enlisted, leading her to wonder ‘what will become of all these lady clerks after the war’. Like many of her fellow farmers, Beatrix doubted the commitment of women who applied to work through the WNLS. ‘I think there will have to be more [women] on the land in the future,’ she wrote to young Augusta Burn, ‘but in my opinion they will be ladies,’ not the ‘sham “lidies” turned out by the board schools [who] are so despicably afraid of dirtying their hands’. But she was realistic about planning for wartime shortages. ‘I have worked very hard, poultry & gardening on top of housekeeping,’ she continued, ‘& I never felt happier & better health; but I don’t know how long I can hope to keep it up at 50!’24
Beatrix and the Cannon family had been struggling with the farm work that spring. One son had already enlisted, and she anticipated that Willie Cannon, who was both ploughman and horseman and hence exempted from military service, would enlist after the ploughing was finished. Although John Cannon was resigned to manage as best he could, Beatrix was concerned because he was not robust and she knew they would be short-handed by summer. In March 1916 The Times ran several leaders about the employment of women on the land. Since Beatrix had firm opinions about women’s ability to do farm work and the kind of training and clothing they required, she wrote a letter on the subject of ‘women on the land’, which The Times published on 13 March under the pseudonym of ‘A Woman Farmer’.25
Her letter noted the high wages offered for women in the munitions factories, complaining that they drew skilled and trained farm girls from the land into unskilled jobs at wages no farmer could afford. She lamented that the WNLS had stooped to recruiting young women by touting ‘theatrical attractions of uniform and armlet’. Identifying herself as someone who had farmed for years and loved it, she proclaimed herself ready to employ the ‘right sort of woman’, to fill the shortage of farm labourers. Unable to resist adding her views to the ongoing debate over appropriate farming costume, Beatrix noted that ‘French women and North country girls have found it possible to work in a short petticoat.’
As it happened, Beatrix’s letter to The Times was read by a woman with some farming experience. Miss Eleanor L. Choyce’s enquiry was forwarded to Beatrix in Sawrey, where it received intense scrutiny and a thoughtful reply. Beatrix’s description of both herself and Hill Top remarkably summarizes her experience as a country woman and her outlook on life in middle age. Relieved that Miss Choyce sounded like a mature woman, Beatrix wrote candidly that she and her husband had been impressed with her credentials, and asked for a photograph and references.26
Beatrix explained that she did not depend on her 120-acre farm exclusively for a living and that she could pay a ‘proper wage’. Hill Top then consisted of nine arable acres, ‘the rest meadow hay & hill pastures, 2 horses, 9 or 10 cows, young stock (rear many calves), 60 sheep, 47 being lambing ewes’. She described herself as ‘50 this year — very active and cheerful’, but feared that she and her farm housekeeper would be overworked, and needed help ‘with the garden & haymaking’ for the coming summer. ‘I have farmed my own land for 10 years as a business (before & since marriage) and I have got it into such good order it would be a pity to let it go down.’ Beatrix described the farm and her work: ‘I have poultry, orchard, flower garden, vegetables… Mrs C. I & this girl all help with hay, & I single turnips when I can find time, & look after some intake land on the fell.’
Concerned to give an accurate picture of domestic arrangements and a clear understanding of the household, Beatrix explained that her husband was a solicitor and ‘as there are all sorts of people in the world I may say he is a very quiet gentleman, & I am a total abstainer!!… We live very quietly in a cottage separate from the old farm house… It is best to speak straight out; the great difficulty with a stranger woman is the boarding. I can see Mr Heelis does not want a lady living here [Castle Cottage]’ but she hoped to find a woman who could live in the front part of the old farmhouse (Hill Top) for the summer and who would be a ‘careful occupier’ and take care of the ‘old oak’ furniture. She described the village and the reticence of village people to embrace strangers, confessing ‘I don’t go out much, haven’t time; & the little town seems nothing but gossip & cards. I’m afraid our own special sin is not attending church regularly; not loving the nearest parson; & I was brought up a dissenter.’ She hoped Miss Choyce would not think her rude for asking for references and ended her long letter with a brief selfportrait. ‘I am very downright; but I get on with every body. I can make jam, while there is sugar; but should be glad to learn more cooking!’ She did, however, have one initial reservation about Miss Choyce, which in typical fashion, she laid out bluntly: ‘Your letter is very earnest; I wonder if you have a sense of humour!’
Eleanor Louisa Choyce, or ‘Louie’ as her family called her, was only ten years younger than Beatrix. Not only was she a lady and a proficient farm worker, but she was also a woman of some musicality and proved to be excellent company. Miss Choyce was between positions. She had most recently been the governess to a wealthy family in Gloucestershire. The youngest child had just gone off to boarding school and she was looking for something different. Intrigued by the letter pri
nted in The Times, Choyce offered her credentials to ‘A Woman Farmer’. Beatrix checked her references and was only slightly worried that Miss Choyce’s previous farming experience would be ‘rather wasted in this post’. Miss Choyce accepted the position and arrived in Sawrey in late April 1916. Almost immediately she was diagnosed with measles, though Beatrix kept insisting it was influenza with a rash. After two weeks of virtual quarantine, an unlucky beginning to any employment, Louie settled companionably into Hill Top Farm.27
Louie was a rather large-boned woman with a ‘cheerful rosy face’ and an easy manner. She fitted into the Heelis entourage quite comfortably, delighted with Beatrix’s garden and with the farm. Beatrix was also taking care of the garden at Eeswyke that summer. In a letter to her mother, Louie described the huge azalea bushes there and of walking some distance with Beatrix to gather broom tips, foxglove leaves and barberry. ‘Mrs Heelis isn’t a bit of a driver…’ she reassured her mother. ‘I simply do like her exceedingly.’ Louie’s descriptions underscore the unpretentiousness of the Heelis household, and provide an observant portrait of Beatrix Heelis: ‘she is quite out of the common… short, blue-eyed, fresh-coloured face, frizzy hair brushed tightly back, dresses in a tweed skirt pinned at the back with a safety-pin… Mr Heelis is a quiet man, very kind. They believe together in the simple life.’28
It was a busy spring and both women worked exceedingly hard. Miss Choyce probably left sometime in the early summer after all the planting was finished, with high praise from Beatrix, and the expectation that she would return the following spring. Beatrix need not have worried that she had employed a ‘sham lidy’. Her investment was, as it turned out, in a farming friendship which would last the rest of her life.29
