Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  As she worked, Beatrix kept a close eye on Warne’s financial restructuring. She was anxious about Fruing and aware that he was overworked. Reluctantly she approved the increased price of the little books to 2s., wishing sentimentally for prices to reflect the quality of things in a time now long past. After receiving a surprisingly large royalty cheque in March from the sale of Appley Dapply and the painting books, Beatrix wrote to Fruing, ‘I am surprised and pleased to hear that the books have done so well in these bad times, I expect people want a cheerful present for children, so they buy them.’21

  Finally in May she sent six drawings for the new book, ‘in desperation — I simply cannot see to put colour in them… It would have made a good book,’ she concluded, ‘with sight & cheerfulness to do it.’ Her writing and drawing was captured between lost sheep and the normal calamities of farm life. The kitchen boiler had collapsed and the plumber had enlisted in the army. ‘I do feel ashamed of my delay over the book,’ she wrote to Fruing. ‘I have seemed so rushed lately… I have just come in after a rough two hours search for some sheep & lambs with a boy — the old man being poorly. We got them; so that is done with. They are beggars to ramble, these hill sheep. I got 2 back from Coniston last winter that were making tracks for Scawfell [sic] where they were born.’ And then, in a comment which says much about her changed attitudes toward book-making, she added: ‘Somehow when one is up to the eyes in work with real live animals it makes one despise paper-book animals — but I mustn’t say that to my publisher!’22

  The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse is the most autobiographical of Potter’s little books. Cobbled together in wartime, it reflects her deep understanding of animal nature, but its subtext is her own happiness as a ‘country mouse’. Timmy Willie is carried away by mistake in a vegetable hamper from a garden in Sawrey to Hawkshead, a town only in comparison to the village of Sawrey, where he escapes immediate feline danger, but lands unceremoniously on the dining table of the elegant Johnny Town-mouse who is just then entertaining guests. Differences in manners, physiognomy, diet and ambient noise are remarked upon, parodying human class and culture. Timmy Willie tries unsuccessfully to adjust to his host’s accommodation, unnerved by the proximate cat, and snatches a ride back to his Sawrey garden and the peace of the countryside. Although Johnny Town-mouse reluctantly arrives for his promised visit during spring cleaning, he cannot abide either the herb pudding, the frightening farm noises or the deep quiet, and he takes the next hamper back to town. Beatrix offers her opinion of events at the end of the story, as she had in several other tales. ‘One place suits one person, another place suits another person. For my part I prefer to live in the country, like Timmy Willie.’

  Although some of the drawings are not up to her best work, reflecting her failing eyesight and her bifurcated attention, they are nonetheless enchanting, particularly those set in the garden and the countryside. The story is filled with local colour, as the best of her other Sawrey books were. The carrier’s cart, her favourite illustration, is pulled by Old Diamond, one of her farm horses. A young Mrs Rogerson, once a housemaid at Eeswyke, appears as the cook, and there are glimpses of the skyline and architectural elements of both Sawrey and Hawkshead, as well as the village gardens. Johnny himself is a caricature of Dr Parsons, one of William’s golfing partners, authentic even to the details of his golf bag and clubs. Beatrix is as interested in the varieties of mice, and their class distinctions, as she is in those of men, and her curiosity about each makes her satire worth savouring.23

  When Beatrix sent off the last drawings in August 1918 the carnage of war was coming to an ignominious end. With characteristic aplomb, she dedicated her tale ‘to Aesop in the shadows’. It was published in December, barely making it into the shops for Christmas. A review in the Bookman gave Fruing Warne such pleasure that he sent it to Beatrix, although she claimed she had long since ceased to read them: ‘Another volume for the Peter Rabbit bookshelf. Oh, such charming pictures and exciting letter press!… Miss Potter need not worry about rivals. She has none. Johnny Town-Mouse does even so accomplished an artist and writer as herself much credit.’ Given the sadness Beatrix had endured that year, such accolades must have boosted her flagging spirits.24

  She had finished what she later referred to as ‘that unlucky book’ under the most difficult circumstances. Her brother Bertram had died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage at Ashyburn, just outside the tiny village of Ancrum, on 22 June 1918. Although Beatrix and Bertram rarely saw one another after the war began, they continued to share common interests in farming and in animal husbandry, just as they had earlier embraced a shared delight in natural history and art. It was Bertram who encouraged Beatrix to get a self-binding machine for harvesting corn, and to put together a ‘complete outfit of farm machinery’. ‘I shall miss my brother sadly,’ she confided to Millie the week following Bertram’s death, ‘we seldom met, but he wrote regularly about farming matters, & we could help one another a bit, by exchange. He sent me a splendid ram last year.’25

  Bertram and Mary had a fine farm in the Scottish Borders. After Rupert died in 1914, Bertram, who was then financially independent, renounced any intention to return to England. Mary had transformed his sad and lonely life. He had been very happy and proud of her, referring to her as his ‘M.P.’ But his life was marred by bouts of drinking, and his alcoholism was both recognized and tolerated charitably by his farmhands and neighbours as ‘his little weakness’. Bertram, the artist-farmer, fitted in well with the Border country acceptance of the eccentric, and he had found a niche for himself. He hosted an annual football match for his workers at the New Year, spoiled them with higher wages and shorter hours than most and held musical events at the farm for special holiday entertainment. He and Mary had unofficially adopted Mary’s niece Margaret, ‘Hetty’ Hutton Douglas, whom they sent off to boarding school in the Lake District during the war.

  Bertram and Charlie Blaikie, a younger man whom Bertram had befriended as a boy and whom he regarded as a son, had gone out early in the morning to work on his fish ponds. Feeling unwell, Bertram started for the house when he was struck down and died a few hours later without regaining consciousness. He left everything to Mary, with generous legacies to Hetty and to Mary’s sister Elizabeth, to Blaikie, and to several of his farm workers. Mary was his executrix, but since neither she nor Helen Potter was up to handling the requirements, most of the legal work fell to Beatrix and William.26

  Beatrix was devastated by her brother’s sudden death. She told Hardwicke Rawnsley several months later, ‘I don’t think I yet realize that Bertram is gone — in his prime and in his usefulness. He had such a fine farm; and although his nature — sensitive and like his father’s — and patriotic & upright to a rare degree — made him feel the war very keenly — I do think he found true happiness in hard useful manual work. It is good to remember how much more cheerful & contented he had seemed towards the last.’ Beatrix took special comfort from the place where Bertram had chosen to be laid to rest, describing for Rawnsley the picturesque cemetery in Ancrum: ‘He is buried like the Grasmere folks in the bend of a stream — a flowery graveyard with a ruined ivy grown church and graves of the covenanters on the banks of Ale Water.’27

  The week before Bertram died, Beatrix had been upset by the arrival of William’s call-up papers. Fortunately his age, 46, and an old ‘football knee’ placed him in Grade 3, which meant that he did not have to go. There was more than enough for him to do at home. The harvest had begun in promising weather but had quickly changed to terrible storms, floods and rains. The two farm boys came down with measles, and the older lad caught influenza, leaving Beatrix with old John Cannon and two girls. Between storms, she tried to save her apple crop. She was also anxious for her ‘old mother’, who had been deeply shocked at losing Bertram.28

  Beatrix was nothing if not resilient, and found humour in her daily life on the farm and in her life with William. She complained to Nancy Nicholson that William was a ‘heartless man. I
was stung by a wasp — (where I sit down). It was in my bath towel; and when I called out to your Uncle Willie who was safe in bed asleep — he calmly said “It doesn’t matter”, and went on sleeping.’ She always found pleasure and amusement in her real animals. Sarah, the pig, who followed Beatrix about like a dog and tended to be overly affectionate, had been ‘ill with eating too many plum stones. I gave her castor oil in porridge… The fish man has begun to come again’, and the cat Judy ‘has just brought a cod’s tail into the hall. She is teaching the kittens to mouse… Perhaps she wants to teach them to fish… It rains and rains and rains.’29

  To Millie Warne, however, Beatrix’s recital of farm events was more sobering. ‘The corn is a complete loss in the north. It is mostly oats, but it affects human food because there is such trouble this winter how to feed the animals. I do grudge the good clover which we ploughed up to make room for corn… And we have 8 pigs, got in hopes of plenty of grain.’ That number included Sarah, whom she confessed she could never eat. But she was hopeful that better times were ahead. ‘Isn’t the war news wonderful?’30

  The Allies and Germany had begun to negotiate a peace settlement in November. The Peace of Paris that officially ended the war was a diplomatic event that occurred far from Sawrey. Nearer at hand were food shortages, influenza and rain. Beatrix sensed it was the end of an era; a time when Timmy Willie’s country values would be increasingly eroded and change would be everywhere.

  15

  Opportunities

  Outwardly life for Beatrix and William at Castle Cottage and Hill Top Farm after the war continued much as it had before. Beatrix tended to the business of farming, and William went to his Hawkshead law office. Together they enjoyed taking the boat out on Moss Eccles Tarn in the late afternoon. There were many days like one she later described when ‘Mr Heelis & I fished (at least I rowed!) till darkness… it was lovely on the tarn, not a breath of wind & no midges.’ Their life moved more or less within the accustomed rhythms of farm and family.1

  Farmers still went out lambing in the middle of the night, the weather remained harsh and unpredictable, and the daily grind of keeping the animals healthy, the milk pure and the harvest gathered went on as before. But the deeper marks of change to rural life in the Lake District were visible everywhere. Tourism returned with a vengeance, providing new sources of income for those lucky farmers near scenic areas who could offer food or lodging. Roads had to be widened to accommodate the crowds of trippers, automobiles and charabancs. Harvesters and threshing machines, once a rarity, were now commonplace, even at Hill Top. Electricity was widely available and accepted, though Beatrix permitted it only in her barns and not in either farmhouse. She wrote by candlelight until William arrived home in the evening and only then lit the gas lamps — there were no exceptions — and housekeepers who objected did not remain long at Castle Cottage. There were water closets at both Hill Top and Castle Cottage, but she obstinately opposed them for her tenanted farms and cottages, where she insisted that earth closets were adequate. She was not so old-fashioned about telephones when they became available, and installed one for her mother at Lindeth Howe, or about motor cars, to which she was simply resigned. ‘Some people think it is spoiling the countryside,’ she wrote to a young friend, ‘but there is no help, for everybody will have a small car or a motor byke [sic] presently.’ By 1925 the Heelises owned two cars. William used one to go between his two offices in Hawkshead and Ambleside and later drove ‘all over the district like a doctor’. Beatrix thought herself too old to learn to drive and so employed one of the farmhands, Tommy Christopherson, who ordinarily was occupied with drains and fences, to drive her in the two-seater.2

  Technology and mechanization contributed to an increase in land values and added ease for some, but at a price. Rural trades shrivelled and patronage from the old gentry and ecclesiastical institutions evaporated, their places taken by an expanded and increasingly remote government bureaucracy. Poverty was more widespread and more visible. Small farms failed and were put up for sale. Land development flourished all over Lakeland, and old buildings were torn down, rather than repaired. The bonfires that celebrated the armistice in 1918 yielded to a new kind of economic uncertainty about the future of fell farming. Beatrix and William were among many who considered buying land in Canada, somewhere along the St Lawrence River, and emigrating. But the idea was a fleeting one and not terribly practical, given their family responsibilities.3

  But the post-war years also brought Beatrix unexpected opportunity. She had never adapted quickly or without a certain ambivalence to change, but she was extraordinarily resilient. There were changes at her farms, within her immediate family, and within the Sawrey community which she could not ignore. With typical realism, she asked questions and looked for solutions. She took advantage of the opportunities for wide associations and new friendships and discovered in the process that she was enjoying herself, feeling that she was contributing to something larger than her own self-interest. She also discovered that she was not as invisible in Near Sawrey as she had assumed. For the first time since her marriage, new activities nearly usurped her passion for writing books for children.

  Beatrix’s relationship with her publisher, Frederick Warne and Company Ltd., was the first to require sorting out. The Warne’s restructuring was completed in the spring of 1919 with Beatrix’s approval of the financial terms, but to move ahead they needed a new book from her. Her successful adaption of Aesop for The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse and her enthusiasm for this material prompted her to work up an amalgam of fables featuring Miss Jenny Crow and the Fox. She sent a draft of it to Fruing telling him, ‘I hope very much this may find favour? As I have (perhaps rashly!) started some of the pictures. Also crow shooting starts on Saturday so I have hopes of both models & pies.’4

  But Fruing did not like it, and bluntly said so. ‘Practically,’ he wrote, ‘you have adopted the idea of putting together five of Aesop’s tales into modern language for children — with the result that your Publisher is disappointed; it is not Miss Potter, it is Aesop.’ He suggested instead the ‘very brilliant little MS in that Pigeon story’ (The Tale of the Faithful Dove), a story about a pigeon stuck in a chimney that Beatrix had written for the Warne children in 1908. Beatrix was offended and reacted defensively, explaining she had no time for ‘namby pamby pigeons for this season’. Besides, she told him, birds did not lend themselves to ‘dressing up’ in any case.5

  Fruing realized he had offended her, but his efforts to placate fell flat. ‘The thing that principally concerns & interests me at the present,’ Beatrix wrote, ‘is a bad drought, the crops are burnt up like August.’ Very much put off, Beatrix let it be known that the publisher no longer had much influence with her.

  You do not realize that I have become more — rather than less obstinate as I grow older; and that you have no lever to make use of with me; beyond sympathy with you and the old firm, nothing else would induce me to go on at all. You see I am not short of money. I never have cared tuppence either for popularity or for the modern child; they are pampered & spoilt with too many toys & books. And when you infer that my originality is more precious than old Aesop’s you do put your foot in it!6

  She did a few more drawings, more for herself than for Warne’s, for what she now referred to as ‘The Tale of the Birds and Mr. Tod’. In August she sent a new idea for the cover but told Fruing, ‘you must not count on my going on doing books of coloured illustrations. Find someone else.’ Thoroughly disheartened by his criticism, and finding it harder and harder both to do close work and to create new stories for younger children, Beatrix had tired of deadlines, pressure and feelings of obligation. She wrote offering only ‘very moderate apologies’.

  I am glad you are having a good season — apart from my misdeeds — which you will have to put up with sooner or later — for you don’t suppose I shall be able to continue these d… d little books when I am dead and buried!! I am utterly tired of doing them, and my eyes are wearin
g out. I will try to do you one or two more for the good of the old firm; but it is quite time I had rest from them. Especially as there is still other work that I should like to finish for my own pleasure.7

  In retrospect, Fruing Warne made a serious misjudgement when he rejected Potter’s retelling of Aesop. The new fables were particular favourites of hers and were characterized by her unique way of retelling fine old tales that children never tire of hearing. Beatrix had an unfailing eye for capturing animal nature. Her interpretation was imaginative yet faithful to the foibles of both humans and animals. Although the initial drawings may have been somewhat muddy, she had embellished them with the same distinctive details of Lake District scenery and rural customs that she had put into the best of the Sawrey books. There had been plenty of ‘Potter’ in ‘The Tale of Jenny Crow’.

  But her loyalty to the old firm was too strong to abandon them for long. Despite her protests, every so often she rummaged in her old portfolios to see what she might pull together. But the effort only caused her to wonder ‘how I ever drew so much and well, while I could see’. To an old acquaintance she confided that her difficulty in producing a new book was not simply her fading eyesight, but a lack of passion for the subject. ‘Somehow since the war I have never felt as if I could concentrate my attention on drawing, there is a great deal of work in the illustrations. It is much easier for me to attend to real live pigs & rabbits; and after all I have done about 30 books, so I have earned a holiday. I have been much amused with two large litters of little pigs which I have been rearing this autumn.’ In the autumn of 1920 she suggested once more that she might pull together another book of rhymes from the ones she had gathered as ‘Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes’, but Fruing remained unenthusiastic, sceptical that they would sell. Liberated from his requests, Beatrix was fully occupied with her farm.8