Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  Hill Top Farm now boasted a sizeable flock of chickens, turkeys and some ducks which produced income but also provided food on the farm. Rationing and wartime shortages meant that even rabbits were raised as farm stock, but Beatrix confessed, ‘I don’t half like having them killed.’ She was sometimes ambiguous about her flock of turkeys as well. They brought a fair price, but she did not look forward to the ‘horrid slaughter’. ‘Poor dears,’ she wrote, ‘they are so tame and tractable, but they do eat.’ Beatrix was generally quite philosophic about the inevitability of animal death, but the loss of her favourite farm collie Kep was particularly hard. His passing added to the gloomy mood of winter and of wartime.30

  There had been other losses unconnected with the war. Henry Roscoe, Beatrix’s well-intentioned mentor and devoted uncle, had died unexpectedly at Woodcote, and early in the new year came news that Hardwicke Rawnsley’s wife, Edith, had died after a long and painful illness. Rawnsley decided to retire as the Vicar of Crosthwaite, announcing he could not continue without the help and comfort of his wife of thirty-eight years. He moved to Grasmere, taking Allan Bank, famous as Wordsworth’s house, where he and Edith had planned to live. From there Rawnsley continued his efforts to raise money for the National Trust, which had been severely hampered by the economic strains of wartime. Beatrix, who had kept in touch with Rawnsley about various country matters, was saddened by Edith’s death, writing to him: ‘I am sure you will believe it was not carelessness that prevented my writing before with sympathy from us and my mother… really, I did not know how to write.’31

  Beatrix had been married to William for three years when Edith died. Some members of Rawnsley’s family later speculated that Beatrix had been the love of his life, but there is no evidence for this. Barely eighteen months after Edith’s death, Rawnsley married his secretary, Eleanor Simpson. Beatrix had known Eleanor for some years and maintained a cordial relationship with her from the outset. Her friendship with Hardwicke continued as it had always been, centred on issues of country life and preservation.32

  Writing to Millie at the end of the year, Beatrix complained: ‘I do seem to have so little time; & my writing time is after supper, with eyes that — like your legs — are beginning to feel anno domini… I hardly know what “legs” are, & seldom sit down except to meals.’ She bartered farmstuffs at the village shop for an extra bit of sugar, but she was quite cross when Agnes Anne at the shop inadvertently sold William cream of tartar instead of the necessary saltpetre. William had rubbed it into the hams before discovering the mistake. Labour, Beatrix confided to Millie, was now her greatest anxiety. She had managed to put together a ‘scratch crew’, but had lost all her domestic help. ‘I had a woman (lady) help last summer who is coming back, we expect rather a strenuous summer.’33

  Although Beatrix was preoccupied with her own farm, her attention never shifted far from her responsibilities as a landowner in the parish of Claife. When she purchased Hill Top Farm in 1905 she automatically became a member of the Landowners of Claife, an ancient body created after the enclosure of land to protect the freeholder’s rights. In 1912 she had been elected to the Landowner’s Community Association as a Representative Freeholder. Frederic Fowkes was the Association’s secretary. Even before her election Beatrix had taken a lively part in the group which enforced the repair and upkeep of roads, timber and property boundaries. It is likely that she had been associated with William Heelis as a member of this group, as he had been its legal adviser for some years.

  The Association was charged with the maintenance of the public quarry up Stoney Lane, and the equitable distribution of gravel and stone from the lake sites for road repair. The quarry had fallen into disrepair when the war started, and could no longer be safely mined; a condition which Beatrix wanted to remedy. Stoney Lane and the Kendal road had also been neglected. Beatrix had long been a friend of Fowkes’s wife Emily, and together they goaded him into holding regular meetings, electing new members, and enforcing the need for commons maintenance. Beatrix’s membership in the Association kept her active in village life. Through it she kept herself informed about boundary disputes, property values, upcoming sales, as well as a variety of important preservation issues that came before the group.34

  Beatrix was also active in the Footpath Association, a group Canon Rawnsley actively championed. Although Beatrix realized that tourists frequently caused damage to stone walls and carelessly left gates open, allowing livestock to roam, she vigorously insisted that landowners not impede access to footpaths on fell land. ‘Speaking for oneself,’ she told Rawnsley, ‘it is always a pity to hear of visitors being turned back from fell land. I speak with feeling as a farmer!… I have not forgotten the exasperation of seeing a large party of young women steeple chasing [sic] over a succession of newly “cammed” walls in pursuit of mushrooms. And a neighbour… has two heifers lost since Monday… The visitors are perfect terrors… and they are least in the way on the fells — if they would shut gates when they come down again.’ She added in a postscript, ‘I have seen a pretty good one [automatic gate] in Wales, worked with a log, but it won’t stay open for a cart unfortunately.’ Her attitude towards tourists and walkers was remarkably enlightened, and she was pragmatic about the need to accommodate tourism in Lakeland.35

  During the war years, William’s brothers and sisters and their children provided Beatrix with most of her light-hearted moments. George Heelis and his wife Sybil had two children, Rosemary and Colin, who regularly visited Castle Cottage. William’s sister Grace Nicholson, however, had a brood of five, including two younger girls, Esther and Nancy. The younger Nicholson daughters found their new aunt most intriguing. Beatrix took pleasure in nurturing the relationship with her nieces and nephews and relished her new role of benevolent aunt.36

  She first met the Nicholson children during the Christmas and Easter festivities at Appleby. She particularly enjoyed William’s sister Grace. They were close in age and both married to lawyers. They had common interests in gardening, herbs and herbal medicine. Like Beatrix, Grace was responsible for the family’s farm, and was especially knowledgeable about horses. Beatrix found her a sensible woman, often using her sister-in-law as a sounding board when she needed someone to listen to her problems. Grace also welcomed Beatrix’s relationship with Esther and Nancy, seeing that both girls enjoyed their new and altogether different aunt. Even though Beatrix could be a bit overbearing, Grace knew her advice and her efforts to help were completely well-intentioned.37

  Esther, then 14, was an eager scholar and a girl of earnest disposition. About 1915 Esther entered St Katharine’s School in Wantage, near Oxford, to prepare for a place at the university. Beatrix supported Esther’s ambition to become a teacher and quietly contributed to her tuition, making it possible for her to go to boarding school. Perhaps she remembered her earlier desire to help one of the Moore girls go to college, so now she thought to help Esther during wartime.38

  Nancy, the youngest child, who was also William’s god-daughter, was ten years younger than Esther. In 1916, when Nancy was seven, Beatrix and William invited her to come to Castle Cottage for an extended visit. Much to her delight, Beatrix discovered that Nancy not only had a steadfast belief in fairies, but enjoyed inventing stories of her own. Nancy told her aunt about the little people she called oakmen who lived in the trees. Beatrix was enchanted by Nancy’s imagination and the two began to exchange stories about the oakmen’s adventures. For Christmas 1916, Beatrix gave Nancy a story she had written about the oakmen. It consisted of six pages of text, each illustrated by a watercolour sketch in a loose-leaf binder. The oakmen resembled little gnome-like creatures with green suits and red caps. They lived in the larch wood up Stoney Lane. Each tree had its oakman occupant who peeped out of tiny doors and windows. Sometimes the oakmen met for a tea party which was set out on a toad-table with toadstools as chairs. But the tree-fellers came and cut down their homes, forcing an emergency relocation of all the oakmen to the new woods Beatrix had plante
d overlooking Moss Eccles Tarn.39

  ‘The Oakmen’ was one of several fairy tales Beatrix wrote about trees and the imaginary fairy creatures who lived in them. She had always noticed trees, fascinated by the way they grew, sensitive to their mysteriously long residence in the forests, and scientifically knowledgeable about their culture. She drew trees with a natural facility, beginning notably with ‘The Three Witches of Birnam Woods’, painted in Perthshire when she was 12. Around 1911 she sent a fairy story to two little girls in New Zealand, called ‘The Fairy in the Oak’. It is a rather sad story about ‘an enormous oak that had stood for centuries’ and that ‘did not want to leave the place it had grown’. Beatrix’s elaboration of tree fairies as oakmen for Nancy Nicholson testifies to her persistent fascination with trees, as well as with the fairies who inhabited them. But her scientific and agricultural interest in trees was equally passionate, and she had a ready pen to write on the subject of timber culture. In the course of farming in the Lake District, she developed particularly strong opinions on afforestation.40

  In spite of her busy farm schedule, Beatrix had managed to complete new frontispieces for both Miss Moppet and A Fierce Bad Rabbit as Warne’s were reprinting her panoramic books in the Little Book format. She considered ‘The Sly Old Cat’, which she had written originally for Nellie Warne in 1906, the best of the lot, but it remained unfinished. With the harvest approaching, Beatrix suggested that Warne’s hire Ernest A. Aris, a children’s writer and illustrator of some success, but few scruples, to copy her designs for ‘The Sly Old Cat’ since she had no desire to do so herself. ‘You will have to get used to the idea that my eyes are giving way,’ she told Harold, ‘whether you like it or not — and if I managed to do yet another book it would not be that cat story… but I do not draw cats well, & I am away from that sort of background.’41

  Beatrix’s interest in employing Aris had been prompted by some of his cribs which Harold Warne had sent her. Rather than be offended by Aris’s plagiarism, she suggested that Warne’s hire him. ‘His plagiarisms are unblushing,’ she told Harold, ‘and his drawings excellent.’ In fact, she thought Aris drew cats better than she did, but she thought his mice had overly large ears. ‘Frankly,’ she told Harold, ‘it does not annoy me because it is good.’ She urged Warne’s to offer him a sum for a set of designs. ‘I have wished for a long time that you would find some second string — this man to my thinking is just what we want if he would draw to order & take suggestions.’42

  Beatrix had become acquainted with Aris at Windermere some years before her marriage, when he worked briefly in a photographer’s studio. Although she took his measure as an opportunist, when Harold did nothing further Beatrix commissioned Aris herself for a set of designs for Nancy’s oakmen story, but deliberately concealed her artistic identity, writing in her married name. Without revealing the plot, she sent some rough sketches and instructions on composition and colouring for the gnomes and country backgrounds and asked for him for six drawings.

  Aris produced the drawings which Beatrix judged ‘uncommonly good’. She purchased the copyright and the drawings, apparently believing that Aris did not recognize her artistic identity. Aris went along with her subterfuge, but he probably knew exactly who ‘Mrs Heelis’ was from the outset. Nearly a year later, Beatrix asked Nancy Nicholson to let her borrow back her precious binder with its oakman story with the idea of making it into a book. She began work, but at some point she concluded that Nancy’s oakman story was not original, and she abandoned the idea of publishing it. But William was suspicious of Aris, and warned Beatrix that if she did not use the oakman character herself, Aris would.43

  In November 1917 Fruing alerted Beatrix to another more blatant Aris plagiarism. He had discovered a rabbit named ‘Peter’ in Aris’s latest book, The Treasure Seekers. Fruing wanted to lodge a protest both with the artist and his publisher, but Beatrix was strangely defensive of Aris. ‘I most certainly object to entrusting “Peter Rabbit” to that objectionable (but amusing) little bounder,’ she wrote to Fruing. ‘But I do blame his publishers [Gale and Polden] more than himself.’ In her opinion Aris was ‘the sort of person who will do anything for a few pounds; I was expecting an outbreak of his booklets this winter as he conceitedly said he was overwhelmed with orders… I don’t take Mr Arris [sic] seriously. But his publishers are rogues…’44

  Fruing, however, felt compelled to protest, as Aris had already imitated Jemima in an earlier book (Mrs Beak Duck). Aris reacted with hot denial, appealing directly to Beatrix, thereby acknowledging that he knew the identity of ‘Mrs Heelis’. With unmitigated ego, Aris explained he could not have plagiarized ‘Peter’ as he ‘had never heard of your book Peter Rabbit till now. It is probably one of your early ones.’ He had the additional audacity to add in a postscript, ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to give me a signed copy… It would be interesting to compare “the two Peters.” ’45

  Beatrix’s initial response to Aris’s plagiarism had been uncharacteristically restrained, which suggests that she had hoped for a collaborator and that she probably regretted her earlier deceit. Although she was ready to entertain the notion that probably ‘all rabbits are called Peter now’, Aris had gone too far. She wrote now more honestly, ‘Your work has considerable technical facility and no originality.’ She concluded that without a good deal of explanation from him, ‘I regret that I am unable to believe that your statements are truthful. Coincidence has a long arm but there are limits to coincidences.’ Aris was only momentarily chastened. He abruptly changed publishers in 1918, after which he produced six more books under the unlikely and rather ludicrous pseudonym ‘Robin A. Hood’.46

  Beatrix’s efforts to obtain some relief from the demand from Warne’s for new books, and her willingness to explore a sort of partnership with Aris, underscore her weariness with deadlines and her disillusionment with her publisher, who now owed her a great deal of money and had never yet produced any satisfactory accounts. Beatrix had given Warne’s permission to raise the price of the little books from 1s. to 1s. 3d. in 1916. But she had used the opportunity to change the indefinite term of the copyright assignment to Warne’s, ‘in view of the uncertain future for all trade’. Due to the lack of acceptable accounting, she judged the original agreements between Warne’s and herself ‘virtually a dead letter’. ‘It is unthinkable that I should ever quarrel with you & your family,’ she told Harold Warne, ‘but if there were ever a reconstitution of your business in the uncertain future I think I ought not to be in that indefinitely tied up position, in view of my easyness in the past.’ Without a new Potter book in 1916, Warne’s had reissued a shortened Peter Rabbit’s Painting Book. The left-over illustrations were now added to a few new ones to create Tom Kitten’s Painting Book, scheduled for publication in June 1917.47

  For most of the spring of 1917 Beatrix was occupied with an unpredictable labour supply at Hill Top and was ‘not in particularly good temper’. She now had 160 acres under the plough. But in the very middle of the ploughing season, her best ploughman got his call-up and the weather turned cold and wet. The fundamentals of British farming changed dramatically when agricultural imports were cut off by the successful German U-boat blockade. The sudden demand for increased domestic food production and the cultivation of new, sometimes marginal land — all with the immediate goal of saving the country from starvation — made for a volatile market. Beatrix’s efforts at self-sufficient farming and profitable livestock production were made even more uncertain by the imposition of agricultural subsidies, the unpredictably of labour, and her dependency on a plough horse.48

  ‘We have a wild day here…’ she wrote to Harold in March, ‘all day wet lambs before the fire — the third dead since breakfast has just expired! There is not an atom of grass & the hill flocks must be in a pitiable state. Mine being fed hay — yet they have no milk.’ But at the end of the month, Beatrix’s attention was abruptly changed from the problems of farming to those of publishing when Frederick Warne & Co.
was rocked by public scandal.49

  14

  Salvages

  Harold warne and his brother Fruing had been walking near their office in Covent Garden when the police arrested Harold and charged him before the Lord Mayor in Mansion House with ‘uttering [passing] a bill of exchange for £988.10s.3d. knowing it to be forged’. On 3 April The Times reported an alleged forged bill charge against Harold Edmund Warne, 56, making the crime public.1

  The forgeries, totalling some £20,000, stemmed from Harold’s efforts to siphon money from the publishing company into a small fishing business on Jersey in the Channel Islands, a business he had inherited from his mother. Through mismanagement, he had allowed it to run into significant debt. Now both businesses were in financial ruin. A meeting of Frederick Warne & Co.’s principal associates and creditors was hastily convened. Fruing wrote to Beatrix explaining the situation on 5 April. She had not seen an earlier newspaper report of the arrest and had not been represented at the meeting, even though she was the firm’s largest creditor. Although she was stunned by the news, she could not have been completely surprised.

  Not yet aware of the extent of Harold’s fraud, Beatrix wrote of her distress to Millie:

  I would thankfully have sunk my share of the debt to have hushed the matter up… I’m afraid it must be a pretty bad job or surely it would have been kept quiet. I have felt for a long time there was a great risk of ending in a smash… I am writing to express as well as I can my exceeding sympathy with you and Alice [Harold’s wife] in this dreadful trouble — it is more than sympathy — fellow suffering.

  Considering the nature of Harold’s crime and his long history of prevarications, Beatrix’s initial reaction was uncommonly charitable: an effort to make the best of a tragic situation for everyone. ‘I was always afraid he would go off his head with business worries,’ she told Millie, ‘but he is such a self deceiving optimist he has apparently done something worse. I don’t bear him the least grudge.’ But she was deeply hurt by his betrayal. For the next two years, she did what she could to rescue her publisher from ruin, all the while keeping her farms and family viable amidst the anxieties and turmoil of war.2