by Linda Lear
She illustrated some of these stories with unused pictures, but she also added new pen-and-ink drawings of her two new guinea pigs. She called the collection, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’. ‘I became so much interested in it,’ she confided later to Henry P.,
it grew longer and longer, and I kept re-writing earlier chapters. In spring, before lambing time I came in sight of a halt… but before I could finish off the series of stories… the spring work outside commenced — and various disappointments and annoyances; so that I had no time to ‘finish’ the adventures of the caravan. Besides being out of tune and cross. The wanderings of the circus company go on and on without end or ‘finis’; next winter I hope to write out carefully a sufficient number of varied tales up to a point that is a convenient breaking-off-place. I could have finished it after a fashion; but I like to do my work carefully.20
Beatrix was enjoying writing about times long past. Henry P.’s letters seemed to spark her memory. ‘I wonder if you will like this piece describing Spring… and Birds’ Place was so lovely if I could do justice to the recollection… I have written some amusing chapters about Paddy Pig’s adventures; he lost the caravan by wandering away into a wood, and by the time Pony Billy found him — he was ill through unwisely eating toadstool tartlets.’ She enclosed a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Almanac for 1929 in her letter to Henry P., ‘which’, she explained, ‘has fallen flat! People like it, but the shopkeepers did not, so there are not many on sale.’21
The possibility of a new publishing relationship in America was coincidentally reinforced by the unexpected visit of Alexander McKay, president of the firm of David McKay Co., a publisher of fine books in Philadelphia. McKay called on Beatrix in Sawrey late in 1927, undoubtedly at Bertha Mahony’s suggestion, ‘in search of a book that does not exist’. The McKay firm was an advertiser in The Horn Book, and Mahony had heard from Gail Coolidge that Beatrix had been writing some new stories. But it was to their mutual friend Mrs Hopkinson, the Boston painter’s wife, that Beatrix first reported McKay’s visit. ‘There has been an alarming visitation’ by an American publisher, Beatrix wrote, acknowledging that McKay had asked for a new book. Loath to be disloyal, Beatrix admitted: ‘It would vex my old publishers very much, and I don’t like breaking with old friends.’ But she was nonetheless impressed by McKay’s ‘very beautifully illustrated books’ and by the fact that he had come all the way to Sawrey. ‘Possibly’, she wrote, ‘I may arrange to have published something in America for the American market only.’22
Alexander McKay was a very persuasive man, and although Beatrix made no commitments, she was flattered that he had liked her fanciful caravan stories. When Beatrix acknowledged that she was considering giving a book to another publisher, Warne’s were understandably unhappy, but the British market for children’s books was once again in transition, and Fruing was not well. In the autumn he had pneumonia. His health improved enough for a holiday in February 1928 but then he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 66. The stress of bringing the family publishing business back from the brink of bankruptcy and the post-war challenges of book publishing had taken their toll. Fruing’s son, Norman, had not followed him into the firm, and so Arthur Stephens, Fruing’s brother-in-law and a member of the Warne board, became the new managing director. For Beatrix, Fruing’s death was the end of a family friendship as well as a long and deeply cherished business partnership. Alexander McKay’s visit had been well timed.23
By the summer of 1928 Beatrix was earnestly planning out the book which would become The Fairy Caravan. The idea for these tales dates from her pleasure in seeing Ginnet’s Travelling Circus in Ambleside in 1895. She wrote then: ‘I would go any distance to see a Caravan… it is the only species of entertainment I care for.’ Her tale begins with Tuppenny, the long-haired guinea pig, who ran away from his jeering friends and joined Alexander and William’s travelling circus. The circus caravan with its troop of animals travelled over fell and tarn giving performances for the invisible Little Folk. Beatrix’s pets and farm animals are among the circus troupe, which is led by Pony Billy and Sandy, a white West Highland terrier, modelled after Beatrix’s childhood terrier of the same name. Charles, the handsome rooster, was drawn from Beatrix’s favourite cock, who lived to an old age and had never been beaten in battle. But the most engaging character is Xarifa, the sleepy dormouse, who tells Tuppenny stories to keep herself awake. Xarifa’s tales include vivid descriptions of identifiable Lakeland places, embellished by legend and lore. There are vistas drawn from Troutbeck, old-fashioned names of flowers, descriptions of birdsong and performances occurring through the magical power of fern seeds which make the animals invisible to the human eye. Even Beatrix’s knowledge and fascination with fungi is included.24
Beatrix herself appears in several of the tales, as ‘Mistress Heelis’, including the story of how she once lost her clogs, but most notably in a chapter about Herdwick sheep. The sheep hold conversations about various pastures of merit and tell their own stories based on Beatrix’s memory of summertime walks out on Troutbeck Tongue. Tibbie Woolstockit, Maggie Dinmont and Hannah Brighteyes, and of course Hill Top Queenie, one of her prize-winning Herdwicks, go through bad and bright weather and across craggy summits and down fells, aided by faithful dogs. The caravan tales end with a version of Beatrix’s beloved old story of ‘The Fairy and the Oak’, proving her view that ‘all fairies are peppery’.25
‘I will send you a copy of the first chapter of “Over the hills & far away” ’, Beatrix wrote to Henry P. in June, ‘but you must understand there is not so much exclusively guinea pig in the other later chapters after Tuppenny joins the caravan. I don’t know what Miss Mahony is thinking of my delays — but I can not write if I am out of humour.’ The next day she sent the boy a handwritten revised version of ‘The Tale of Tuppenny’, explaining, ‘I have written perhaps six pieces of this length, but there are connecting pieces that I am not satisfied with yet; and I want another fairy tale (partly invented) to round off this collection… You see — you and I take our fiction very seriously.’ She sent the chapter to Bertha Mahony, who promptly bought it for The Horn Book, where it appeared as the leading feature in February 1929.26
There were good reasons why Beatrix was ‘out of humour’ in the spring of 1928, most having to do with the demands of managing two very different farms, dealing with the idiosyncracies of her elderly mother and housing problems at Hill Top. After Bertram’s death in 1918 Beatrix and William made it a point to go to her mother’s home, Lindeth Howe, for lunch on Sunday afternoons. When the war ended, Helen began a ritual visit to Castle Cottage nearly every Wednesday afternoon, arriving punctually in her large carriage dressed entirely in black. Sometimes she came for tea, other times she arrived to find Beatrix, dressed in her sturdy woollens, clogs on her feet, working in the garden or busy with her animals. She stayed precisely one hour. Never more, rarely less. Henry Byers, who as a young man worked for Beatrix as a gardener, later recalled, ‘I never saw that old woman smile. She always looked miserable and she never stayed long. You could set your watch by her arrival and departure.’27
Wealthy as Helen Potter was, she was quite stingy, especially when it came to Beatrix. The settlement of Bertram’s estate had presented unforeseen difficulties since it involved the reapportioning of considerable sums from his will, his father’s will and the Leech marriage settlement. Concerned about Mrs Potter’s increasing wealth and the death duties her estate would incur, William used the ritual Sunday dinner trying to convince his mother-in-law to increase Beatrix’s £300 yearly allowance, suggesting she put £15,000 worth of securities into her daughter’s name, and that she give some money to appeals from the National Trust. Helen had no inclination to do either, and selfishly believed that if she gave stock to Beatrix her own spending would be curtailed.
Helen had finally agreed to sell the Potter family home at 2 Bolton Gardens. Beatrix and William spent a miserable week in London in June 1924 trying to clear the place, sorting
through fifty-eight years’ worth of possessions, deciding what to keep and what to sell. Beatrix sent off three van loads of furniture and personal belongings to her ‘imperious old mother’ in Bowness. The London house was ‘grimy with London soot’, but it was a relief to Beatrix to get rid of the place. ‘I was never very well or happy there in old times, and I had no affection for the place,’ she wrote to her cousin afterwards. She was afraid that her mother would burn important old letters, so she put all the books and old letters into sacks and trunks and hauled them back to Sawrey to go through herself.28
Beatrix was unimpressed by new buildings that had gone up in London since she had last been there; a ‘jumble of old and new’, which she did not think improved the city much. Beatrix had always been a keen observer of architecture and had taken pleasure in drawing churches, cottages and farm buildings. She appreciated good design and was attuned to how a building related to and extended its natural surroundings. In 1925, inspired by her visit to London and by the need to preserve the vernacular architecture of the Lake District, Beatrix joined the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), once again following the lead of Hardwicke Rawnsley, who had also belonged to it. Her concern for the preservation of old buildings and good architecture was a natural extension of her efforts to preserve fell farms.29
But the most perplexing housing problem was the necessity of clearing her personal treasures out of Hill Top in the autumn of 1928 so that William’s nephew John (‘Jack’) Heelis and his wife would have a place to live. Jack Heelis had joined the Hawkshead law practice, which was in a state of crisis as William’s cousin and law partner, W. D. Heelis, had been confined to bed. Jack had impetuously married Wynne Yeadon, and in order to help William, Beatrix had allowed the young couple to move into Hill Top until they could afford a place on their own. Beatrix confided to her sister-in-law that she felt it ‘a bit of a wrench’, particularly as she had to push out a window, and put in another WC and a bath. ‘Henry P will be grieved to hear that I have had to dismantle the dear old house where Tom Kitten lived,’ Beatrix wrote. ‘I hope at the end of three years I may be able to put my pretty things back; some are squeezed in here, and others lent out amongst friends in the village.’ Beatrix liked Jack, but she judged Wynne a poor housekeeper. The newly-weds sat around listening to the wireless, and they did not appreciate the farm cats or the rats that came along with the old house. ‘I was maliciously pleased to hear that Sam [Samuel Whiskers] had been upstairs and made himself a nuisance,’ she told Gail Coolidge. ‘They are quite nice young people; but I regard them as cuckoos. I never thought I would be giving up the old house to anybody.’30
But in spite of all these distractions, by the end of the year Beatrix was close to signing a contract with Alexander McKay. McKay had offered her an agreement based on an escalating percentage of royalty, plus an advance of £200, rather than a single lump sum upon delivery. Beatrix worried about some of the financial details, and she was even more anxious that the stories revealed too much of herself, that they were too autobiographical and might be found silly. ‘Sometimes,’ she confessed to Gail Coolidge, ‘I feel I don’t want to print the stories at all, just keep them for the private edification of Henry P. and me. I guess we will keep some of them private and unprinted; they are more & more peculiar; I wonder what makes me spin such funny spider webs.’ Pleased with the financial terms McKay offered, however, Beatrix took courage and signed a contract for ‘The Caravan Stories’ on 19 December 1928.31
Now committed to a new book for an older audience, Beatrix struggled with the drawings, particularly with the coloured ones. In February she told McKay, ‘I am afraid that book is like the curate’s egg when he breakfasted with the bishop — “parts of it are excellent!” Some of it is awful bosh; and this colour drawing is — will it process? My eyes have lost the faculty of seeing clean colours.’ But even she judged the new pen-and-ink drawings satisfactory, especially those of the sheep, the fell landscapes and the woods in moonlight. In the end, she managed to do all the drawings herself. McKay gave her encouragement and attended to her directions about how she wanted things done. In spite of delays with the art and proofing, the experience proved a pleasant one.32
Although Warne’s tried to intimidate Beatrix about potential loss of copyright if the book was not published in Britain, she was not easily bullied. But she knew she must register the copyright there even though she had no desire to see the book in print. Acting as her own agent, she contracted with George Middleton, an Ambleside printer, and arranged for one hundred unbound sets of the American edition to be shipped to him. The first eighteen pages, including the preface and dedication, were discarded so that a new set of pages printed at Ambleside could be inserted. To this privately printed edition she added a page on which were sketches of her favourite sheepdogs with their names written underneath. On the title page she used her married name, Beatrix Heelis. William was insistent that she have absolute proof of copyright date in case anyone tried to pirate it. Accordingly the requisite three copies were deposited at Stationers’ Hall in London at the same time as the book was published in America. Beatrix gave some of the privately printed editions to her relatives, friends and neighbours, making sure that her shepherds and farmhands got autographed copies. The rest she kept for herself. ‘Part of the 100 I intend to hoard,’ she told her American publisher, ‘taking experience by the disappearance of the first editions of Peter.’ Ironically, she also made sure McKay had a copy of the English binding, with an extra line block just in case of any copyright infringement.33
The Fairy Caravan was published in the United States in October 1929, and bore a simple dedication, ‘To Henry P.’ Beatrix wanted the book to ‘stand on its own merits’ without any sort of publicity or fanfare, and she wrote out two prefaces. Finally she decided on the old rhyme she had first shared with Gail Coolidge, and the briefest of explanations:
As I walk’d by myself,
And talked to myself,
Myself said unto me —
Through many changing seasons these tales have walked and talked with me. They were not meant for printing; I have left them in the homely idiom of our old north country speech. I send them on the insistence of friends beyond the sea.
Beatrix Potter.
To Henry P., Beatrix wrote: ‘I hope by this time you have received your copy of Our Book!’ Other specially signed copies were delivered to her friends: Mary Gill, Ivy Steel, Anne Carroll Moore and several of the librarians Moore had sent to Sawrey. Copies also went to Bertha Mahony and to Marian Perry. Beatrix approved McKay’s printing. ‘I like type, paper and all,’ she wrote, thanking him, but unable to resist pointing out three typographical errors. ‘I hope it will give satisfaction to both of us — And I may add — to my most exacting critics — my own shepherds and the blacksmith. I do not care tuppence about anybody else’s opinion.’34
The Fairy Caravan sold only adequately in America. Anne Carroll Moore lent it her imprimatur, as did public libraries all over the country. Beatrix particularly liked a review by Alice M. Jordan in The Horn Book. Jordan, Supervisor of Work with Children at the Boston Public Library, picked out the qualities that Beatrix herself liked best, writing: ‘Full of the spirit of the north country April, sunshiny open meadows, frisking lambs and skimming swallows, here is a book for the springtime when fairy adventures are afoot.’ But it had such a specific English setting and folklore that its appeal was limited in America.35
Bemused by the local acclamation accorded to The Fairy Caravan, Beatrix reported to Gail Coolidge, ‘they are all claiming bits, and disputing whose [sic] who.’ ‘It has been a great pleasure to receive such kind understanding letters from you and others in America… I feel you take me seriously!… I am sure the average Londoner would care nothing about Herdwick sheep!’ The Fairy Caravan had given her a great deal of pleasure. It was a personal book, full of tales that first of all pleased her. ‘It would have been rather a pity’, she confided, ‘if I had shuf
fled off this mortal coil with most of those chapters inside my head. And it surprises myself that some of the late written chapters are as good as any, for instance the sheep anecdotes, and the woods by moonlight. It seems I can still write and invent.’36
Beatrix ordered a dozen copies of the American edition and gave the very first one to Tom Storey. He remembered how ‘she came over from Castle Cottage and said, “Here, Storey, this is a copy of The Fairy Caravan I’ve written, sent from America and I’m giving you the first one.” ’ It was signed and in the back she had sketched her favourite sheepdogs. The inscription reads: ‘To Tom Storey in memory of Queenie and the sheep dogs.’
The approval of her shepherds meant more to Beatrix than anything else. ‘That chapter [about Herdwick sheep] made my old shepherd [John Mackereth] cry with pleasure; that is appreciation worth having,’ she told Henry P.’s mother. Joseph Moscrop was one of those shepherds whose approval Beatrix very much coveted. His copy was from the small stock she had printed in Ambleside. In it she wrote: ‘In remembrance of Troutbeck Park and sheep, May 30, 1930.’ Moscrop gave The Fairy Caravan a close reading, later writing her a letter about it. ‘Now you have paid me the compliment of reading the Caravan with careful attention — not merely skimming, but dijesting [sic] the immortal work (!?).’ Nothing could have pleased her more.37
Beatrix was aware that the places she mentioned and the north-country vernacular that she used would be somewhat mysterious to American readers. For McKay’s children, to whom she dedicated the book, she wrote out definitions of terms and identified people and places — a glossary of sorts — in the text and the illustrations. She also sent these ‘explains’, as she called them, to Henry P. They constitute a primer on Lakeland farming and offer usual insights into Beatrix’s daily life in the Lake District. The ‘explains’ include farming terms, local colloquialisms, places, reminiscences, details about her dogs and other farm pets, old Celtic words for counting sheep, and other terms unique to north-country life. She took particular trouble in the explains about her sheep, telling McKay: ‘I have two sheep stocks… we keep the old pedigree flock here, on the low ground farm; and the main flock goes on the fells… The young sheep and rams are brought down in summer. I am conceited enough to say I am the only person who could have written about the sheep; because I know them and the fell like a shepherd; but the Herdwick men are not articulate.’ All in all she was pleased with the way she had woven the tapestry of her memories, her travels over the landscape and north-country lore into a fanciful, entertaining tale, assuring McKay, ‘Every anecdote is fact — except possibly: the fairies?’38
