Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  Beatrix particularly dreaded having to tell William about the scandal. She knew he would have little sympathy with Harold’s crime, and undoubtedly he had feared just such an outcome for some time. Beatrix regarded her loyalty to the Warne family as a private matter and did not want William to interfere. ‘My husband is quite unconscious at the other side of the table,’ Beatrix wrote to Millie. ‘I hate having to tell him… I don’t think I can come to London myself, and to tell the truth I am very unwilling to, for I should not like Mr Heelis to be any way acting [legally involved]? I don’t mean that he is a hard man; but he is so different to Norman.’ Realistically she warned Millie that she would probably have to involve her London solicitor in order to safeguard her ‘share of the copyrights & original drawings from other creditors’.3

  On 11 April The Times published an account of Harold’s forgeries and on 26 April he pleaded guilty in the Central Criminal Court and was sentenced to eighteen months of hard labour at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. Fruing Warne was exonerated of any knowledge of the forgeries and took charge of a company on the verge of bankruptcy — one whose major asset was the published and future work of Beatrix Potter. Beatrix instructed Braikenridge & Edwards to deliver to her the original illustrations of all nineteen of her published books and her two painting books, which she received two days before Harold’s sentencing. In June Beatrix went up to the Covent Garden office to see to the safekeeping of her copyrights.4

  Fruing was forced to sell all the firm’s property as well as his personal possessions in order to raise enough money to stop the company’s debtors from foreclosing. He sold his house in Surbiton and moved his stunned and uncomprehending family into a tiny place near Richmond Park. Harold’s wife, Alice, was forced to sell all her assets at public auction and move her family back to her father’s house. Millie rented out her north London house at Eton Villas, and went to live with her sister Edith.5

  Among Fruing’s first acts was to send Beatrix the account statements she had been so long denied. Then he asked for her help to save the publishing house. Treading lightly at first, he asked if she might keep Winifred’s doll’s house — the one Norman had made which had been featured in Two Bad Mice — since he now had no room for it. Although Beatrix was willing, her mother had not seen the newspaper reports of Harold’s arrest and disgrace, and Beatrix was not anxious to make her aware of it. ‘One doesn’t want to start anyone asking questions gratuitously,’ Beatrix explained, suggesting the doll’s house might be lent to a children’s hospital.6

  Fruing hoped to persuade Beatrix not only to reassign the merchandise contracts and to expand the ‘side shows’, but also to start a new book. Beatrix was willing to help, even sympathetic, but her continued involvement was contingent on Harold never having anything to do with the business again. ‘One thing I am firm about, if I am to go on working for the firm, he must not come back.’ Trying rather badly to put a good face on things, she told Fruing, ‘It is dreadfully sad for you and Mary, I do feel sorry for you. But when she gets over the wrench of leaving a pretty home — there will be less housekeeping in a smaller house.’7

  As a practical matter, Beatrix realized that she needed to help Frederick Warne & Co. survive. After rummaging through her portfolios, Beatrix wondered if it ‘would be too shabby’ to put together a version of ‘Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes’ for Christmas 1917. ‘½ a loaf is better than no bread, (and such bread too)… I find I could scrape together sufficient old drawings to fill a book the size of “Miss Moppet.” I would do several pencil outline [sic] if you will supply pasted up blank books. I’m afraid this sounds very lazy, but you don’t know what a scramble I live in; and the old drawings are some of them better than any I could do now, I suppose the larger ones would reduce all right.’ Fruing jumped at the idea even though the rhymes had been passed over several times since she first offered them in 1902. Beatrix selected six rhymes and their illustrations to make a small book to fit the series. ‘I hope Apply Dap will be in time to be useful,’ she wrote, ‘and that it will be as good a season as can be had during this war.’

  Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes included the endearing little brown house mouse, Appley Dapply, with her freshly baked pies, taken from some of the mice sketches she had used to illustrate ‘You know the old woman who lived a shoe?’ Beatrix chose a drawing from 1893, old Mr Pricklepin, the little hedgehog modelled on Mrs Tiggy-winkle, and introduced the ‘amiable guinea-pig’. In spite of the fact that the drawings had been done at different times, with different margin outline styles, it turned out to be a charming book and sold very well. Tom Kitten’s Painting Book had appeared in June, while Appley Dapply and the revised Peter Rabbit Painting Book appeared in October. A second printing of the rhyme book was required a month later. ‘I am much pleased with A. D.,’ Beatrix wrote to Fruing in late October, ‘it makes a pretty little book.’8

  While it is probably claiming too much to say that Beatrix’s contributions saved the firm in 1917, without them Warne’s could not have risen from the ruins. As she was the largest creditor and their most valuable artistic property, the firm had to have her cooperation and agreement in order to continue to do business. Beatrix was far too tied up at the farm to travel back and forth to London for creditors’ meetings, and since she did not wish to involve William in the financial post mortem, she was represented by Braikenridge & Edwards, who recommended that the firm be restructured. She agreed that part of Warne’s indebtedness to her could be paid in allotted shares and debentures rather than in royalties, but she stood firm on her condition that Harold Warne ‘never meddles again’. ‘I bear him no grudge,’ she told Fruing, ‘but I know & remember what a trial he has been, even to me, for many years.’ By the end of 1917 the relationship between the firm and Beatrix Heelis had been restored to the point where she felt comfortable enough to return her original drawings to London.

  Beatrix was aware that now she would have no relief from Fruing’s request for new books, and that both financially and artistically she was committed in ways she had not been previously. Just when she wanted to move on in her country life, she was pulled back in. She did what she could out of loyalty to Norman’s memory, her real affection for the Warne family, and gratitude to the firm which had taken a risk on an unknown woman writer and made her famous. But Beatrix had made a pragmatic business decision in sticking with the firm. Had she not, she would have had to physically remove all her printing blocks, find another publisher, and renegotiate licences and copyright — all at a time when she was not producing new work. She also understood that leaving would seriously jeopardize any hope of the firm’s financial recovery. In May 1919 a new entity, Frederick Warne & Company Limited, was registered for business, with Fruing as managing director.9

  Between 1907 and 1917 Beatrix had been the driving force in the licensing of merchandise, such as that with J. I. Farnell of Acton who produced and sold the Jemima Puddle-duck doll. But the war had altered relations with German producers, and Beatrix seized the opportunity to terminate agreements that had not worked to her advantage. She advised Fruing to end the relationship with Levien, a German company which had produced and sold china tea sets which she had never liked, as well as to terminate the agreement with Hughes, another German firm which produced soft rabbit toys. Pressed by the increasing number of pirated products appearing in the shops, Beatrix and Fruing had been negotiating with Grimwades to produce moulded figures based on book characters, as well as a new design for a children’s china tea set. But wartime shortages made production difficult. It was not until 1922 that Grimwades china tea sets finally appeared in shops.10

  But Beatrix took every opportunity to license new items and to increase her income with new merchandise. Handkerchiefs were produced in attractive little boxes by Messrs John Brown & Co., as well as Peter Rabbit slippers. Wooden puzzles and little packets of children’s stationery which featured a variety of characters were soon available. Bookcases in white enamelled wood, made to ho
use the entire set of little books, previously only available to bookshops or travellers for display, were introduced to the public and proved popular. Fruing kept Beatrix informed at every turn and, while she commented on every item, shrewdly judging its quality, requesting adjustments when she thought the work inferior or had a better idea, she insisted that Fruing take charge of the administration of the licences.11

  Saving the publishing firm became a family affair. Mary Warne, Fruing’s wife, suggested an alternative version of the old Peter Rabbit board game that Beatrix had designed for Norman in 1904, but which had never been published. Mary’s game used all the little book characters instead of just Peter Rabbit and Mr McGregor. Renaming it ‘Peter Rabbit’s Race Game’, she sent a sample for Beatrix to evaluate. Beatrix tried out both old and new versions on Esther and Nancy and reported the results to Fruing in September 1917. Although she preferred her own game as it required more skill, both nieces preferred Mary’s version as more elaborate and more like the games that were sold in toy fairs. Mary’s version was a ‘race between competitors, being separate books’ while hers was a contest between characters. ‘Dice throws combined with choice of routes would make the best game,’ she wrote to Fruing. ‘But I haven’t either time or intellect to work it out, and I don’t really much care: I get so very sick of both versions! The smaller niece preferred yours; but then the little wretch learnt how to throw sixes.’12

  Beatrix directed the company to produce Mary’s game rather than hers. ‘I have not sent mine,’ she told Fruing, ‘for on thinking it over I believe yours is the more likely one — and I hope Mary will have a success with it next Christmas, and please consider it hers — Let her use any profit for Christmas presents.’ It was a generous gesture, for when the game was finally produced at the end of 1919 it sold well for many years.13

  Visits from the extended Heelis family lightened what would otherwise have been a very gloomy summer of 1917. In August Beatrix invited Sybil’s children, Rosemary and Colin, for a fortnight and begged Sybil to allow them to stay another week. ‘I’m sure it is doing them both a world of good to run wild for a bit. Colin is improved by school, quite talkative.’ She hoped Grace would send the girls so that all the cousins ‘overlapped’. When the Nicholson nieces arrived they declared they were staying ‘for three weeks!’ Beatrix worried about the weather, which had been extraordinarily inclement, ‘4 ½ inches of rain last week’, but she too wanted them to stay longer so that she could take them to Coniston and then to Windermere on the steamer. ‘Nancy is delightful,’ Beatrix told Grace, ‘we are getting accustomed to hard articles in bed! and think they are enjoying themselves in spite of the rain.’ Esther and Nancy stayed till the end of August. ‘You needn’t thank us for having them,’ she wrote to Grace, ‘it has been a great pleasure — they are both dears. Tell Esther if she ever wants a quiet place to study in, she must remember the farm.’14

  Beatrix enjoyed writing to Esther and Nancy during the school term. In September she sent Nancy a picture letter telling how she and John Cannon had rescued her prize cow just before it fell off a precipice, backed through a poorly repaired fence by an errant bull. She sent Nancy a copy of the newly published Appley Dapply, telling her she had found ‘a very young prickle pin last week running about lost on the hill opposite the farm. I carried it home in my pocket, but it died next day, I don’t know what was the matter with it.’15

  Beatrix’s letters to the Nicholsons often contained small details of her married life. To her sister-in-law she wrote, ‘I flatter myself that I have learnt to make hay, without advice from a party who plays golf till 7 pm on a workable Saturday! It is a little annoying to be lectured when one has been breaking ones back…’ After the August Bank Holiday, she reported, ‘Willie… worked every evening at hay & we had a grand hay time, about 100 carts.’ ‘Tell Nancy’, Beatrix instructed, that ‘there are swarms of rabbits, we had a hunt amongst the cabbages one evening’. In September she wrote to Nancy about Mr Tod, who had got into the yard at Hill Top and killed ten out of eleven birds. ‘We have gathered 5 corpses on the hill but there is hardly enough on them to make a pie, the hen is nothing but bones & feathers. Your Uncle Willie went up with his gun but it was too late… The cock chickens were ready to kill but I would have preferred to eat them myself and 5 were nice pullets. He has left one cock chicken, I expect it got away into the road.’ Beatrix had more success but less drama with her fruit trees.16

  Beatrix and William visited Battlebarrow for Easter in 1918. Beatrix used the occasion to offer to pay Esther’s fees at Somerville Hall if she got a place. James, Grace and Esther were perhaps a bit embarrassed by Beatrix’s generosity, but Beatrix would have none of it, writing, ‘I hope and trust that no awkward feeling of obligation may stand in the way of Esther’s advantage — I don’t think it will or ought to do.’ Her letter reveals her genuine commitment to family and to country, an emotion she would not normally have articulated. It also expresses her views on the upbringing of children and her unrepentant Victorian standards. ‘I have no boy or girl to bring up, to help their country,’ she wrote. ‘I see all these wretched shirkers & unsound youths & odious self conscious girl workers — and so much of the best gone down. We cannot do too much for the healthy unspoilt younger children; they are the hope of the future.’ Beatrix’s estimate of Esther’s potential proved remarkably accurate: ‘I never saw more promising material than Esther; she has the brains, balanced by a solid body and unusual common sense.’17

  In response to Esther’s letter of thanks, Beatrix wrote: ‘It is pleasant to have made you happy! I have on several occasions through a sense of duty helped several uninteresting persons; now at last I look forward to the pleasure of pleasing myself as well as you.’ But she also let Esther know that one day she would be obliged to help Nancy when her turn came to go to university. Teasingly, Beatrix warned: ‘If you get plucked over the Greek…??? I wash my hands of you!!’ Esther struggled with Greek but she did not disappoint.18

  Although Fruing Warne had asked Beatrix for another book even before Appley Dapply had been published, Beatrix was too busy with farming matters to give much thought to it. Food shortages were rampant and rationing had become an ominous burden; making do kept everyone busy. On a particularly cold day near Christmas 1917, Beatrix had found time to answer a letter from 11-year-old Thomas (Tom) Harding, who lived at Histon Manor, Cambridge. Tom came from a family of zoologists and writers and was interested in her farm animals. Beatrix’s response put a good face on farming in wartime. She told the boy,

  I have a big farm and a very great deal to do since the war… There are 3 horses… 14 cows, a lot of calves & young cattle, and 80 ewes & 40 young sheep & some pigs & 25 hens & 5 ducks, & there were 13 turkeys… Jemima [Puddle-duck] & Rebeccah are white, Semolina is a comical little Indian runner. She made a very deep nest under a nut bush & sat on 11 eggs… But alas — Semolina never turned her eggs. The bottom eggs were always stony cold, only the top ones hatched. I called the two children Tapioca & Sago. We have eaten Sago. It was rather dreadful & the stuffing disagreed with my conscience… I have lots of rabbits, Belgians — Old Benjamin & Cottontail are pets, but I’m afraid we do have rabbit pies of the young ones.

  To Fruing Warne Beatrix confided more personal hardships. She was doing all the cooking, including food for the hens and the dogs. ‘Four of us have got through very nicely on 3 ½ lbs meat… a rabbit & pheasant… I presume the hens are now to be killed, as they are due to lay again. We are governed by idiots.’19

  Nonetheless Beatrix had not forgotten Fruing’s request for another book. Although she had enough illustrations of rhymes left over, Fruing preferred a story. At the beginning of the year she asked, ‘Do you think this mouse story would do? It makes pretty pictures, but not an indefinite number as there is not a great deal of variety… A few years ago I amused myself by writing out several of Aesop’s fables, this is one that got rather longer than the others.’ Aesop’s Fables was a natural source for Pot
ter’s intellect and artistry. Her versions of the fables always reflected the true characteristics of animals. When she altered Aesop, it was in order to more faithfully interpret animal nature within her imaginary world. Beatrix had illustrated such tales as ‘The Fox and the Grapes’, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ and ‘The Fox and the Stork’ in the late 1890s, but the fable of ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’, which explains why some people prefer the country and some the town, was a natural choice, and very nearly biographical. The charm of her version and setting comes from the sympathetic manner in which she lays out the social and environmental alternatives. Although the sophistication of the city mouse, Johnny, is captured with style and élan, our sympathies are immediately with Timmy Willie who longs for the simplicity of the countryside as Beatrix once had. She sent Warne odd scraps of text and pictures done years earlier, desperately snatching time between sowing turnips, battling an infestation of turnip fly, and the beginning of lambing.

  Beatrix pasted up the drawings of the new mouse book in a dummy, ironically made from The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. She thought it would make ‘a pretty book’. Several titles for the new book were discarded as inaccurate or confusing. In the end, ‘The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse’ was selected. The change in title required a commensurate change in the first paragraph of the original manuscript: ‘Timmy Willie… went to town by mistake in a hamper’ was changed to ‘Johnny Town-Mouse was born in a cupboard. Timmy Willie was born in a garden.’20