Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  Beatrix’s letter reveals that she had grown rather more cynical about the responsiveness of professional scientists to the observations of amateur naturalists. Thirty-three years after having her theory on the symbiosis of lichens and fungi rejected by the professionals of the Linnean Society, she characterized their attitude as one of ‘contemptuous incredulity’, no doubt having Thistelton-Dyer in mind. ‘They don’t believe that reptiles can “sing” and there is an end of it. Although it is an axiom of science that it is not possible to prove a negative.’ Adding that there was little hope that any further evidence would be taken seriously, she wrote philosophically, ‘And it makes no difference to the little “singing fishes”. I should like to hear them again; but I am growing deaf.’36

  Another exchange in The Times concerned the feeding of buzzards. It provoked a defensive letter from Beatrix to Hamer on the usefulness of buzzards on Trust property. ‘I have had large experience of buzzards,’ she wrote, ‘my Troutbeck shepherds have always favoured them, as they clear off field mice which eat a surprising amount of herbage up the fells.’ They could not possibly prey on ducks, as the article alleged, and were quite harmless, but she warned against anyone trying to domesticate them. Carrion crows, on the other hand, not only stole chicken eggs, but picked the eyes out of live sheep and lambs. ‘The crows are exterminating other birds, buzzards eggs included. I have been very vexed about them, and they are most difficult to shoot.’37

  Beatrix also turned her daily observations as land agent into short notes on such matters of wasted land, the toxic qualities of acorns and the questionable commercial value of spreading oaks. None of these notes was finished or published, but each underscores her close observations in the field and her command of livestock science and timber culture.38

  Beatrix’s long interest in the properties of dry rot also unhappily intruded into her work as land agent when she discovered this fungus in several Monk Coniston farmhouses and had to make expensive repairs. Her passion for collecting old oak and other vernacular furniture had been stimulated by the need to refurbish her tenants’ cottages and the old farmhouses. She kept abreast of the market in old oak, and local collectors and dealers knew she drove a hard bargain when she found a good piece at an estate sale or in an overlooked corner of a farmhouse kitchen. ‘I poked into a dark dirty little kitchen and amongst broken chairs & lumber beheld a carved & dated dark oak court cupboard…’, she had reported to Louie Choyce. ‘Unquestionably it is genuine & untouched — except by rats. It did not seem to be wormy. The back was eaten into holes… I think it is a very good cupboard, horribly dirty, but it will polish alright.’ The cupboard turned out to be a fine example of old country oak and was given pride of place in the Hill Top entrance hall, opposite the kitchen range. A blanket chest in her bedroom was carved with a tulip and pomegranate motif. She put a carved oak bible-box which housed her Bible on top of the chest. Eventually she acquired more than a dozen fine court cupboards and chests. Most of these found homes in her farmhouse kitchens, where she believed these fine vernacular pieces belonged and where they would be enjoyed by Lakeland farm wives, and eventually would be preserved by the National Trust. When Beatrix sent Tommy Stoddart and his wife out to manage Tilberthwaite, she gathered all the old oak furniture she could find, as well as some basic necessities, and had them hauled out to the farm. She sent Tommy’s wife an extensive list of the furniture and supplies, adding, ‘I have the bath that I was bathed in. Would you like it?’39

  These old furnishings enlivened all her houses, and especially at Hill Top where she combined them with other ‘treasures’: Chinese and English porcelain, a collection of Staffordshire earthenware and figurines, Doulton stoneware jugs, Wedgwood jasper and early Mason-ware (ironstone china). There were not many women in Near Sawrey who could afford or who understood such furnishings. But Beatrix enjoyed sharing her enthusiasms with Rebekah Owen, who was herself a collector of fine furniture and antiques. When Miss Owen moved to Italy, Beatrix bought some of her framed family silhouettes and hung them to the right of the Adam-style fireplace in the Hill Top parlour. Her most interesting piece from Miss Owen’s collection, however, was a small American Windsor chair, stained a very dark green. Miss Owen told her it had been made by the Shakers about 1800. Beatrix found its simplicity as well as its unusual colour appealing. She placed it next to the fine seventeenth-century tester bed with its ornately carved panels and ceiling that she found at a sale early in her marriage.40

  Her love of country furniture and country craftsmanship paralleled the popularity of William Morris’s traditional designs for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and of the Arts and Crafts Movement in general. As a long-standing supporter of the Society, Beatrix was keenly aware of architectural and design trends, but above all she appreciated craftsmanship as the basis of all good design, regardless of period or style. She deplored poor workmanship and the disappearance of the old crafts. ‘Shoddy is king,’ Morris had famously declared, a sentiment Beatrix seconded. Her delight in simple handmade furniture also drew from John Ruskin’s views on the superiority of designs incorporating forms found in nature and of handmade objects. Hardwicke Rawnsley’s Keswick School of Industrial Arts had promoted local design traditions which Beatrix also encouraged. Never a blind follower of any one school, she was always attuned to what was afoot generally in the arts, no matter how remote her county life might appear.

  Her love of good mahogany or old oak furniture, her appreciation of the decorative arts and her sense of ‘home’ and of what spaces of comfort looked like derived from the houses that she had loved as a child. She incorporated that sense of comfort and of art and craft into the interiors of her little books. When she had a house of her own, she furnished it with a mix of artistic styles. In many respects she furnished Hill Top as a set on which she played out her imaginative stories. ‘I am “written out” for story books, and my eyes are tired for painting,’ she wrote to Bertha Mahony in 1934, ‘but I can still take great and useful pleasure in old oak — and drains — and old roofs — and damp walls — oh the repairs!’41

  Beatrix seized an opportunity to put her interest in country furniture and good craftsmanship to practical use when she oversaw the restoration of the whitewashed Yew Tree farmhouse in 1932 and 1933. The farm was named for a famous yew which once stood on land that had been in the Walker family for at least two hundred years. It was justly famous in the district for the delicate spinning gallery that ran across the front of the barn. Beatrix did not hesitate to spend what was needed to restore the dilapidated house, including most of a new roof. As she reported to Hamer in November 1932, ‘I can only say — if I have spent too much — I am totally unrepentant. I consider Yew Tree is a typical north country farm house, very well worth preserving.’ She had consulted with the SPAB about its proper restoration and used a preservative on the timbers recommended by their architect-secretary, A. (Albert) R. Powys, whose opinion on such matters she trusted. Beatrix was pleased with the workmanship, especially the masonry which had been done in the ‘old fashioned style’. As a witness to its reconstruction, she produced a fine pencil drawing of Yew Tree’s barn with its distinctive spinning gallery on 8 July 1932, about the time the farm was once again ready to tenant.42

  After many interviews, Beatrix selected Thomas Jackson and his wife for Yew Tree. Thomas also became the tenant farmer for the grazing land on Holme Fell and, with Beatrix’s financial help, he bought more sheep stock, in order to preserve the genetic strain of Yew Tree’s herd, which was the same as the sheep at Hill Top, and thereby created a permanent pool for Herdwick breeding.43

  Yew Tree Farm had always attracted tourists. To help defray the costs of her restoration, Beatrix turned the parlour of the farmhouse into a tearoom for tourists and walkers. The farmhouse already boasted a press cupboard marked ‘1685’ which had belonged to its earliest owner. She bought some local art and installed some of her more interesting oak and mahogany tables, a dresser, a variety
of chairs and other treasures. She framed several autographed letters, including one each from the poets William Wordsworth and Robert Southey which had belonged to her father, and hung them in an enclosed glass case on one wall.

  The Yew Tree tearoom opened for business in the summer of 1933, with Mrs Jackson as hostess. Although Beatrix thought Mrs Jackson a bit too ‘smush’ — or smart — preferring a ‘genuine farm kitchen’ — Mrs Jackson’s teas were popular with tourists and essential to making the farm pay that year. The following summer, when Mrs Jackson was too ill to run the tearoom, the lost revenue reinforced the value of opening Trust farms to tourists as a means of preserving them. ‘I think the little white farm houses and green fields in the dales are part of the character of the Lake district,’ Beatrix told Eleanor Rawnsley in 1934, ‘and I take such a pessimistic view of the future of our local farming… that I wish there may be a sufficient representative number of the old farms in the hands of the Trust.’44

  In opening Yew Tree to tourists and teas Beatrix showed herself a pragmatic preservationist. She consciously hoped to educate the public about the value of old farms and farmhouses, as well as turn a bit of profit. In her mind there was an important distinction between preservation to protect against the building of offensive non-vernacular structures, and preservation which preserved the character of the countryside. At Yew Tree, she intended to preserve both historic building and tradition by showing its relevance and adaptability to modern use.45

  It was ironic that after once lamenting the export of treasured English art and antiques by rich Americans, it was the Horn Book editor Bertha Mahony with whom Beatrix most completely shared her love of old furniture and good design. Beatrix and Bertha had become even closer after 1932 when Bertha married William Miller, the owner of an American furniture manufacturing business specializing in colonial maple reproductions. Bertha, at 50, was about the same age Beatrix had been when she married. The two women now shared not only a love of children’s books and old furniture, but the experience of a late-life domesticity.46

  In her 1934 Christmas letter Beatrix wrote to Bertha in some detail about her own Lakeland furniture collection, and described some of her favourite Chippendale and Queen Anne chairs. ‘The local furniture in this district was oak, rather out of fashion in the sale room now, but I collect any genuine pieces I can get hold of to put back into the farmhouses. The court cupboards with carved fronts are the most interesting as they are usually dated… The oldest I know is 1639.’ Beatrix found the differences between American and British styles intriguing. Bertha sent catalogues from her husband’s company so that Beatrix could compare her pieces with the American reproductions. Beatrix was intrigued to discover that the Chippendale and Sheraton chairs and settees made in the United States were more delicate than the robust mahogany chairs with which she was familiar.47

  Several years later the Millers sent Beatrix two volumes of Luke Vincent Lockwood’s illustrated Colonial Furniture (1926), which Beatrix studied intently. She made copious notes on the designs which she may well have intended to publish. She incorporated some of these in a letter to Bertha that reflects the depth of her expertise. ‘I have a theory only out of my own observations and probably only fanciful,’ she wrote. ‘I like to think that the craftsmen who carved our old cupboards were influenced by the strap work designs on the Scandinavian crosses, such as the Gosforth cross with its curious mixture of runic design and legend and early Christian symbolism.’ She also confessed, ‘I have always wanted to write a paper on cupboards for the Westmorland & Cumbrian Archaeological Society. But I am afraid it is one of the things I shall never do. A bad habit of procrastination, want of knowledge, and difficulty about procuring good photographs in dark narrow places.’48

  Some of these creative outpourings were the result of being housebound with gastric influenza, or what Beatrix called ‘a liver chill’, which sent her to bed for six weeks in the autumn of 1933. Beatrix found it ‘a great waste of time in one’s old age’ to be ill. William was also plagued by several colds. A severe one a year earlier had left him very deaf — an unfortunate condition for a solicitor who also served as a magistrates’ clerk. A specialist in Liverpool had brought about a ‘miraculous cure’ by clearing his eustachian tubes, but Beatrix worried that another bad cold would leave him deaf again. All in all, Christmas of 1933 was a dismal one. It came with news of ‘the death of one dear old friend [her distant cousin Fanny Cooper], the illness of another still older, the dark damp weather and the remains… of a liverchill. I have been out of sorts since early November… but it is ingrateful to grumble after such a splendid spring, summer and autumn.’49

  ‘You will be as welcome as the flowers of spring!’ Beatrix wrote to Joseph Moscrop, as the days lengthened and the snowdrops came out. ‘I have had an unlucky winter myself…’ she continued. ‘I was just feeling nicely again, when I tumbled over a board across a sill and put my right shoulder out… It was completely my own fault. I knew about the board. I felt very silly, but might have been worse if I had hit my head. I fell into the grip [gutter] in the shippon [cattle shed].’ Fly, one of her favourite sheepdogs, had been chewing at the door sill, and Beatrix had put the board across to stop her, but then forgot it was there. Later she discovered she had also pulled a muscle in her forearm. To her friend Louie Choyce, she was more candid: ‘Whenever I feel very well again — something goes wrong. I had an awful shaking up when I put my shoulder out.’ Her shoulder remained stiff, and it was painful to raise her hand above her head.50

  By summer Beatrix was feeling better. She and William had taken an unusual holiday weekend. ‘We motored through Northumberland, following Hadrian’s Wall and road to Chollerford… and next day over the Cheviots to my Scotch sister-in-law between Jedburgh and Hawick; it was a fine drive.’ Beatrix had always wanted to see the Roman Wall and although they tried to spend every August Bank Holiday with Mary Potter at Ashyburn, this extended outing was especially rewarding. ‘That is the only time I have slept out of this house since 2 years,’ she told Marian Perry. Beatrix took pleasure in sharing her farming experiences, especially comparing notes on breeding livestock and the latest prices of sheep and wool with Mary and also with her cousin Caroline, who raised cattle on her farms on Mull and at Argyllshire. ‘I am still stiff, always over busy, & feeling old,’ she told Caroline. ‘I do not resent older age; if it brings slowness it brings experience & weight. I am not “on” things; but I pull strings. The regional planning is very interesting just now.’51

  For the past several years, Beatrix had been actively trying to influence the County Council, which was charged with overseeing growth and planning in the Coniston Valley. Like her earlier work with the Landowners Association, her views commanded attention. She was optimistic about the zoning of private open spaces along lake shores because the large landowners would cooperate. But, as she explained to her cousin, she was less sanguine about smallholdings. The worst zoning was in the valleys. ‘If it is zoned for houses with 20–40 acres of land it will stop bungalows; but it may also destroy farms. Our pretty old white washed farm houses in the sheltered valleys are a feature of the district.’52

  One of her concerns grew out of her desire to preserve the vernacular architecture of the area wherever possible. ‘The destruction of pretty old cottages is much more serious — irreplaceable,’ she told her cousin. By the mid-1930s there was a shortage of old cottages in the villages for the elderly and for large, low-income families, a condition aggravated by the New Housing Act. This was aimed at town slums, but in practice it mandated that when the County Councils condemned an old country cottage as unfit, it was replaced with fixed-rent council housing. These units were usually twostoreyed houses that Beatrix scorned as ‘little hatbox council houses’. The housing and health inspector’s policies about which cottages were habitable and which were not were inconsistent and frequently arbitrary. Beatrix, who had once thought seriously of being the Lake District representative for the Society for the Pro
tection of Ancient Buildings, took up her pen in protest on several counts — worried that Near Sawrey cottages could be next and annoyed by the housing inspector’s remark that ‘all this talk about preservation is piffle’. She vented her frustration to Anne Carroll Moore, who was planning to visit: ‘You had better come… while there are any left; he says half Hawkshead wants pulling down. The new… council house is ugly and flimsy and “high rented” compared with our old thick walls and stone built chimnies. It seems very shortsighted policy when the Lake District depends so much on tourists and visitors.’53

  In a letter published in Country Life, Beatrix decried not only the hardship to a few cottage families who loved their old-fashioned seventeenth-century homes, but the change in Lake District architecture implicit in the council policies. ‘The ancient farm houses and cottages were long and low,’ she wrote. ‘New two-storeyed houses… are bound to be taller than the old local type. Two recently built Council houses near Coniston are conspicuous for miles. It is the fashion to decry bungalows… but at all events these amateur little houses, built by local quarrymen, do not flaunt their roofs and chimneys in the upper air and sky.’54