by Linda Lear
The most fundamental change at Hill Top was the departure of the now frail John Cannon and his family as tenants in the spring of 1919. Beatrix hired John Mackereth, an honest, hard-working man who was knowledgeable about breeding Galloway cattle, as her new manager. The post-war market for cattle had improved, and Beatrix, who had been assiduously raising more Galloways each year, benefited. Shortly after Cannon retired, the great influenza epidemic of 1918, which had rampaged across western Europe, reached the British north and lingered into spring planting time. The village of Sawrey was not spared; neither were her employees, although Beatrix and William escaped that first winter. This particular human epidemic was just waning when foot-and-mouth disease broke out among Westmorland cattle. Beatrix’s herd at Hill Top was unaffected, but she, like all the other local farmers, was apprehensive. Cattle movements were completely halted. ‘The cattle disease is a great anxiety, and one feels much sympathy for neighbours who have got it,’ she wrote to Fruing Warne. ‘The finest herd in the district has been slaughtered, 70 head; many of them quite unaffected, and others recovering. It [slaughter] may be the wisest course; but the remedy is more alarming than the disease, which seems to be not a severe type, but terribly infectious.’ Beatrix always thought it strange that the ‘scientifics never find an innoculation’ against influenza or ‘against cattle plague either’.9
In between these two epidemics there were seasonal outbreaks of measles among the village children. Normal activities of those adults who were not caring for the sick were curtailed in an effort to minimize the contagion. ‘Nearly all the children in the village have had measles, some were pretty bad, if they got cold it seemed to affect their ears,’ Beatrix told her niece. Beatrix herself had toothache and then earache. But she was deeply concerned about the waves of disease which periodically ran through the community and about the inadequacy of rural health care when they did. Beatrix decided the Hawkshead district needed a nurse, and not just any sort of nurse, but a Queen’s Nurse. She found a congenial ally for this endeavour in her friend and neighbour Emily Fowkes.10
Although Emily was a good deal older than Beatrix, they had known each other since Beatrix had first come to Lakefield. Emily’s family had been members of the Quaker community at Colthouse for generations, and Beatrix sometimes accompanied her to the Quaker Meeting there. In accordance with the best ideals of the Dissenting tradition they shared, Beatrix and Emily decided to do something about the lack of nursing care.
Beatrix’s interest in district nursing, particularly in finding a suitable Queen’s Nurse for the area, had several sources. The most immediate was her experience with the influenza pandemic of 1918. In such a crisis there was little health care available to rural communities, especially in remote villages, and few tenant farmers, shepherds or labourers could afford to have a doctor visit them. After nearly twenty years of being a farmer and landowner in Sawrey, Beatrix was well acquainted with the periodic outbreaks of contagious diseases, but by the 1920s she had also had first-hand experience of women who died needlessly in childbirth, and of the elderly who endured illness and death without aid or comfort on the remote fell farms. Beatrix’s commitment to secure the services of a Queen’s Nurse for Sawrey and her commitment to district nursing undoubtedly drew on her long-standing admiration for the Paget family, her London neighbours in the Boltons, who had been pioneers in district nursing services and midwifery. Rosalind Paget, the younger daughter, had become well known after the war as a Queen’s Nurse, and particularly as an advocate for the health care needs of women and children.11
The district nurse system was organized around parish jurisdictions, and in rural areas several parishes joined together to form a district committee. But to secure a district nurse it was first necessary to enlist the support of Canon Thomas Irving, Vicar of St Michael and All Angels in Hawkshead, a person with whom Beatrix had little to do, and with whom she disagreed on a number of issues, including the treatment of animals. Luckily, Irving had also concluded after the influenza epidemic that there was a need for a trained nurse and was prepared to support the necessary fund-raising. The next step was to get approval for the geographic area the district nurse would cover, raise the required £160 a year for her salary, establish an endowment fund and find housing. Beatrix, who was a natural behind-the-scenes organizer, contacted Mrs Balm-Jones, a Hawkshead lady of means and political skills, who put together a temporary committee. Beatrix and Emily were surprised to discover real opposition to the idea from many of the older women of the parish who for years had taken on the job of midwife, and saw no reason to be supplanted by a Queen’s Nurse. But plans moved forward nonetheless.
Hawkshead, Wray, Graythwaite and Sawrey elected two representatives to form the nucleus of a general committee. Beatrix and Miss Alcock-Beck, another long-time friend from Sawrey, were elected from Sawrey. The District Nursing Association approved the Hawkshead District Nurse Association application in October 1919. The minimum subscription was set at 2s. 6d. Non-subscribers would pay 6d. a visit. The endowment fund was doubled by the end of the year from a variety of endeavours, including jumble sales, refreshment booths at parish functions, and outright donations. Beatrix was elected treasurer of the local committee, and Miss Peacock from the Hawkshead parish became the secretary. The two women decidedly did not get on, but Beatrix controlled the funds and zestfully dominated the early committee meetings. She also had difficulties with the secretary of the larger Hawkshead group, whom she regarded as a gossip and whose visits she found ‘unpleasant prospects’. In spite of the petty politics, in December 1919 she got her way. Beatrix wrote to her sister-in-law in some excitement: ‘there is at last a prospect of a district nurse, rather old at 49 — but we are going to try her, she has had plenty of experience but principally in towns.’ Nurse Filkin received her enthusiastic support, and Beatrix found herself much more publicly involved in directing the charity than she had ever imagined.12
The Queen’s Nurse was an active, wiry little woman who had served in both the Boer War and the Great War. She moved into a small cottage that Beatrix owned at Hanniken, on the outskirts of Hawkshead, and allowed her to live in rent free. From there she went about her rounds on a bicycle. Although Nurse Filkin worked under the direct supervision of the local doctor, it was the three-village committee which met once a month that saw to the organization of her rounds and raised the money to pay for the necessary medical supplies. But in practicality she reported to Mrs Heelis, who controlled the funds, kept track of supplies and directed her visits. Beatrix was aware that Nurse Filkin had a quick tongue, but she had also observed from personal experience that there ‘could not be a kinder hearted woman’. Beatrix was often required to defend the enormously overworked nurse. After one difficult meeting with Miss Peacock in August 1923 Beatrix wrote to her sister-in-law,
I believe I partly kept my temper but I remember telling her that neither she nor I, being childless, were competent to discuss the conduct of a confinement… I can see that the Secretary would prefer a ‘homely’ half brained woman, but I am firmly against it, especially if the doctors won’t employ her… This one is a most excellent nurse, but rather peppery and a sharp tongue. She will take any saying from me; but apparently she answers back Miss Peacock and the doctor.13
Beatrix won that particular battle with Peacock, but by February 1924 Nurse Filkin had worn herself out. Beatrix, who as honorary treasurer and acting secretary of the local association had raised enough money to put the nursing fund on a sound financial basis, was now charged with finding a replacement. Everyone now saw the ‘advantage of having a capable and much-liked nurse…’. Beatrix had heard of a Queen’s Nurse from Lancashire who, with her young son, might be coaxed back to the area. She now campaigned to convince Celia Edwards to take the post. ‘It is a very healthy district; the scattered cottages are what takes time — I understand that you are an active cyclist, and not afraid of wet weather. The bicycle is a Swift, an easy one to use.’ When Edwards decided t
o apply, Beatrix took the risk of engaging her, ‘unofficially’, confident she could push her selection through the committee.14
Beatrix prepared Celia Edwards well for what she would find in Hawkshead, describing the Hanniken cottage, the local shops, and the various physicians who practised in the district. Nurse Edwards proved a great success and served the district for nearly a decade. Although she was employed by several local physicians, she too relied upon Beatrix for information on who was ill and who needed visiting. Most days Nurse Edwards called at Castle Cottage to get her list updated. After 1925 Beatrix no longer served as an officer of the committee, but she remained a principal, usually anonymous, benefactor and kept her finger on the pulse of the local committee. In addition to supplying the nurse’s cottage, Beatrix dipped into her own pocket to help buy Nurse Edwards a car, a discounted Morris Cowley, so she could manage the high waters around Hawkshead during the winter, and get about the fell farms in bad weather. The nurse always had a Christmas turkey from Hill Top Farm. Among the locals it was well known that ‘Mrs Heelis was awfully keen on the district nursing’.15
Beatrix’s desire to have a Queen’s Nurse was not totally altruistic, especially after 1922 when William’s brother, Arthur John, one-time Rector of Brougham, became too ill to live on his own and moved into the spare bedroom at Castle Cottage. No one else in the extended Heelis family had been willing to take the Revd AJ in, so Beatrix and William brought him to Sawrey as a more or less permanent lodger. AJ, as he was called in the family, was emotionally troubled and often chronically ill with a variety of digestive and bowel complaints. He was not an easy or particularly pleasant patient, and he was also a chain-smoker. Beatrix worried that he would set himself and the cottage on fire. His personal hygiene was such that it was very difficult for Beatrix to care for him. She did her best, but it was a great relief to be able to call on Nurse Filkin or Nurse Edwards when AJ got too sick for her to handle.
Beatrix had no fireplace in the spare bedroom at the cottage and no indoor water closet for him to use, so it was especially difficult to house a sick person in cold weather. During holidays when she had company or needed to travel, AJ went back to his sisters in Appleby or sometimes stayed with friends in Blackpool. But he so enjoyed being with Beatrix that he escaped his sisters and even his friends as soon as he could. He was especially happy when Louie Choyce was there as she played the piano and sang, and the two were equally bad at bridge. For a woman raised in a rigid Victorian household with servants, who had not been adept at nursing her own father, Beatrix’s nursing care of AJ was extraordinarily generous. She did it quite willingly out of respect for William and his family, seeing it as her duty. She was uncomplaining, and realistic about AJ’s longterm prognosis, telling Louie, ‘his heart is weak & he might go suddenly; but myself I think he will last some time, wearing out by repeated illnesses.’ Sadly, her prediction was all too accurate, as AJ’s descent into invalidism continued until his death three years later in January 1926. By then his care and presence had become a fixture not only of her routine, but of her heart. His death left a gap. She wrote to Fruing Warne, ‘Our poor invalid Arthur Heelis has peacefully fallen asleep. It is a release for him & will be a relief when one gets used to it.’ But it took her a long time to do so. Six years later she wrote to a young friend, ‘I never thought how much I would miss him, when I missed his stick tapping on the bedroom floor.’16
The extended Heelis family was also responsible for getting Beatrix involved in the Girl Guide organization. William’s eldest sister Blanche had been a supporter of the outdoor programme for young girls, and their niece, Sylvie Heelis, became a Guide leader in Hawkshead after the war. Companies of Girl Guides, generally between the ages of 11 and 15, and their younger counterparts, the Brownies, raised money every year to go camping in the countryside, where they lived in the open and learned outdoor skills. At first Beatrix simply obliged her niece by allowing the Guides to use one of her fields near Hawkshead, but she discovered she derived pleasure from her interaction with them and admired their energetic leaders. The Guide companies exposed Beatrix to young women who shared her curiosity about the natural world, and who were grateful to be out of the crowded, unhealthy cities and to spend a week outdoors in the beautiful Lake District. Until the economic depression of the 1930s made it difficult for companies of Guides to afford an overnight camping trip, Beatrix enjoyed a regular flow of Guides camping on Heelis land, and contributed to their experience with touching generosity.17
Local sites were arranged between Beatrix and Joy Brownlow, known as Brownie, the County Camp Adviser. At first, the companies stayed either at her fields near Hawkshead on the western side of Esthwaite or on land closer to Sawrey. In spite of the girls’ tendency to leave a litter of hair ribbons and slides in the hay which the sheep could eat, Beatrix allowed them to sleep in an empty barn at Hawkshead when the weather turned inclement. Beatrix and Joy Brownlow began a regular correspondence in the off-season and Beatrix was always pleased when Joy wrote early each year to make sure the Sawrey fields were available. Beatrix watched the girls learn the discipline of successful group living, and discover how to survive outdoors in all sorts of weather. Sometimes she entered into their merriment.18
In May 1928, the 1st Chorlton-cum-Hardy Company, which had become one of her favourite groups, came to Troutbeck Park. They invited Beatrix for tea to celebrate one Guide’s eighteenth birthday and to stay for a piece of cake. Asked to sign their log book, Beatrix drew a picture of Peter Rabbit sharing a large cake with a blue uniformed Guide. Soon a tradition was established that each company would make a log book for their hostess describing what they had done during their camp. These log books were frequently decorated with rabbits looking much like Peter, sketches of the local wildlife, and photographs of the girls for Mrs Heelis. They recorded the times Mrs Heelis came to tea, or when the Guides recited something for her. The Skylark Guides offered her some physical labour in return for sharing such a beautiful setting. Their log book reads, ‘As it was a lovely day, we decided to go and cut bracken for Mrs Heelis.’ It includes a photograph of the girls cutting bracken and burning thistles.19
In 1931 the Chorlton gang came again, under the leadership of Nora Burt and Kitty Holdsworth, two Guide leaders who had become quite fond of Mrs Heelis. The weather was unusually wet and dismal, and the outing was threatened when one of the girls developed appendicitis. Beatrix called in Nurse Edwards and then lent her own car and driver to Nora to take the young woman to hospital in Manchester. Nora Burt’s note of thanks began a friendship that continued for the next decade. Beatrix took a special interest in Nora, who had shown such ability in the emergency and was particularly pleased when the young woman decided on a career in nursing. ‘It is always a pleasure to help Guides,’ Beatrix wrote, ‘and it brings its own reward — for surely it is blessing when old age is coming, to be able still to understand and share the joy of life that is being lived by the young.’20
Part of Beatrix’s commitment to the Guides sprang from her understanding of what such an experience would have meant to her when she was a young girl and in want of friendships and of doing something useful. ‘I wish they had been invented when I was young,’ she wrote to a friend. ‘All I can do in old age is to lend them camps (and dry blankets!)… It is a grand thing to enjoy play and enjoy work, which is what the Scouts & Guides learn to do.’21
She frequently gave the Guides autographed copies of her books as prizes for their competitions, and even allowed them to take photographs of her, commenting on one in 1928, ‘The camp makes such a pretty picture. I can recognize many of the guides. We had a laugh at me — I ought to have had my fine new teeth in! I look a good natured old body at all events.’ Her active support of Girl Guiding as well as her encouragement of nursing careers for young women like Nora Burt underscore her interest in young people and her pleasure in sharing the countryside with them. As she told a friend in 1928, ‘If I have done anything — even a little — to help
small children on the road to enjoy and appreciate honest simple pleasures — of the sort that leads to becoming Boy Scouts or Girl Guides — I have done a bit of good.’22
Beatrix’s pleasure in the Guides and her friendships with the girls, some of whom visited her for years afterwards, contrasts markedly with her reputation among some of the local village children, who were not only afraid of the sharp-tongued Mrs Heelis, but took some delight in taunting her. The Guides were polite and orderly visitors, under the supervision of other disciplined young people. They had also come a long way and even made sacrifices to travel to the Lake District and felt privileged to be on her property. Local children were under no such supervision and often had little desire to learn or to improve themselves. They took the countryside for granted and created their own fun. Pinching apples, climbing on her walls and fences, generally being silly or even rude was simply a normal part of being a country child in a small village. Mrs Heelis, who could be sternly disapproving and was somewhat idiosyncratic in dress and behaviour, was sometimes the object of their teasing and deliberate provoking. Beatrix enjoyed young people, especially bright and imaginative ones, but as a Victorian woman, she expected well-behaved children and would not tolerate rudeness.23
About the same time as Beatrix began her activities on behalf of the District Nursing Association and the Girl Guides, she received a letter from her father’s surgeon, Sir Alfred Fripp, inviting her involvement in the Invalid Children’s Aid Association (ICAA), a national charity for children established in 1888. Fripp’s committee wanted to launch a special appeal to better-off children to help fund a hospital bed at the ICAA home at West Wickham in Kent. As Beatrix explained to Fruing Warne, ‘he wants the help of Peter Rabbit, with the use of a picture printed on the appeal’. She liked the idea of raising money for a Peter Rabbit bed and asked Warne’s to give Fripp something they could use. Beatrix did what she could to help write an appeal letter from Peter Rabbit that had the right tone, and to design a penny stamp collecting card. ‘Miss Beatrix Potter’ appeared on the letterhead of the ICAA’s Peter Rabbit Committee, but in parentheses it identified her as ‘Mrs W. Heelis’.24
