by Linda Lear
Josefina’s recollection of their first visit is marked by an artist’s attention to detail and the soft lens of sentimentality that comes from recalling the event and the friendship between herself and Beatrix that followed. Tea was served in the farmhouse kitchen, which had a cheerful fire, dark oak furniture, a large table and red plush Victorian armchairs. The Banners remarked upon a fine Girton watercolour on the wall, a painting Beatrix showed off proudly. There were beautiful tall silver candlesticks on the table and silver-mounted guns in the hall. Josefina recalled they sat on ‘very straight-backed chairs, feeling rather like Pigling Bland and on our best behaviour because she was quite over-awing’. Beatrix was very interested in the two young artists and questioned them carefully about their work. Whether it was on this first visit, or some subsequent one, Delmar asked if he could see some of her original book illustrations. She returned from upstairs with bundles in brown paper, some fastened with blue ribbon. The Banners expressed their admiration for her art, but Delmar remembered that Beatrix responded, half to herself, ‘Aye, they’ll do nobody any harm.’21
Beatrix was attracted to this artistic pair by their energy and talent, and by the fact that when they came to the lakes on holiday they worked on the farms they visited and participated in country life. They, in turn, were flattered by her friendship, knowing that she did not make herself available to many, but they did not lionize her. Beatrix studied the work of many artists who came to paint in the Lake District, but she did not have many close artist friends. When the Banners were in the area, she found their company stimulating.
After buying the watercolour of the Coniston fells she had admired, Beatrix felt free to offer Delmar further advice on his drawing. She appreciated this particular landscape because she thought it reflected a temporary stage in landscape painting when the goal of the artist was to be typographically exact in detail. She explained to him, ‘So I seized on that landscape while I could get it, because for better or worse you may possibly not paint like that a few months or years hence.’ Having praised his clouds, she went on to suggest that he give some consideration to ‘studying trees’.22
Beatrix was rightly critical of many professional woodland landscape painters who never ‘considered how the branches grow from a tree trunk’. She told Delmar, ‘if you study an ash you will see every branch from the main trunk, or the stem of the young sapling, has come out in curves; and curved on and on with the weight of foliage. Other species in contrast grow upward. We can tell every tree in winter without reference to foliage by its mode of growth. So study them some spare moments Mr Banner; they will repay — they are — in the right place — as beautiful as rocks. And they have a nobility of growth which is usually entirely over looked.’ Several months later, after seeing the work of another fell painter at a Kendal gallery, she wrote to Josefina urging Delmar to get more light into his paintings. ‘Your husband has learnt clouds. Light next please. He has the drawing that is the foundation.’ It was therefore a great compliment when Beatrix acceded to Delmar’s repeated pleas to photograph her for a portrait in 1938. She refused to sit for such a thing — no time and no patience. He painted her in her good Herdwick wool coat and felt hat, against a background of the fells and scenes of the sheep show at Eskdale, holding a show programme in one hand, the umbrella that Norman Warne had given her in the other.23
Josefina de Vasconcellos Banner, on the other hand, was an altogether different sort of woman from anyone Beatrix had met before. She wrote poetry, loved music and dancing, did woodblock printing, and enjoyed handicrafts of all sorts, as well as being a fine sculptor. Josefina found Beatrix an ‘intuitive friend’: ‘She knew a lot without having to be told.’ After seven years with Delmar, Josefina was a desperately unhappy wife. Her marriage had never been consummated, and Delmar had banished her from his bed. Later she would understand that he was a homosexual, and that their relationship would never change. Beatrix sensed Josefina’s despair as well as her restless creative energy. In their letters and conversations she may have shared something of her own childhood and Norman’s tragic death, but the extant letters provide no details. What is clear is that Beatrix found pleasure in their friendship and much to admire in Josefina as an artist and independent spirit whose efforts to triumph over despair were not unlike her own.24
The winter of 1936–7 brought an unusual amount of snow to the Lake District. Beatrix found it ‘beautiful to look at, but hard for the mountain sheep when it lasts so long’. But Christmas was cold and wet. At first, Beatrix fretted about the quality of grass for keeping up butterfats in the dairy herd, but she was preoccupied with the widespread economic unrest in the farming world. ‘Too much [government] interference; well meant; unavoidable; but unsettling and very expensive.’ Wool prices were rising, ‘yet’, she told Louie Choyce, ‘men are wanting to give up sheep farming and turn to milk; although the dairy farmers grumble too.’ The worst blizzard to the Lake District in a generation hit on 1 March with the highest drifts Beatrix had ever seen.25
She insisted on getting out to Troutbeck as soon as roads were clear, only to find that in some intakes the drifts were level with the top of walls. ‘I went up the lane above the farm house walking in a narrow trod which the shepherds had trampled,’ she told Nancy Nicholson, ‘it was curious to look down over a seven foot wall, with snow elbow high on the other hand.’ There she watched the shepherds digging the sheep from the drifts. ‘We lost perhaps 30, perhaps more, when the drifts disappear… Our men got out about 400… mostly no worse.’ But there were other consequences from the long spell of snow showers and bitter weather. ‘I have lost all faith in the climate,’ she complained. ‘Good lambing weather is past expecting. There are 3 lambs here; and dead twins this morning. I am afraid there will be many dead lambs, from the fell sheep.’26
When Beatrix wrote her customary note to Joseph Moscrop in February asking him to come to the Park for spring lambing, he had surprised her by asking for a raise of a whole pound to £16. Beatrix objected, complaining of the drop in wool prices and the poor return at the fairs. ‘I really think you ought to be content with £15 Joseph! You are a hard nut!… Think it over.’ Even though she thought it a big increase, such negotiation was now part of the give and take that had become a tradition between them, and her objection was more rhetorical than real, while her fondness for Joseph was patent. ‘Spring would not be spring time without the smile of Joseph!’ she told him. By May, the damage of the harsh winter was evident everywhere.27
Late that spring there was a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and a thousand vets were mobilized to try to contain it. Beatrix was rightly alarmed. She had been expanding her herds of cattle at all of her farms, but particularly at Troutbeck where George Walker had been successfully raising and breeding shorthorns (both beef and dairy). Beatrix was as fascinated by the lineage of animals as she was of people. Although her interest in cattle dates from her summers at Dalguise, by 1937 she had invested time and considerable capital in their breeding, trying to create a line that would be adaptable to fell farming.
Much of her early interest in beef cattle came as a result of her close relationship with Mary Potter in Ancrum, and her annual visits to her in the Scottish Borders. Mary and Bertram had kept some fine specimens at Ashyburn. Perhaps because of her visits to the Borders, and her memories of summers in Perthshire, Beatrix became particularly enamoured of Galloways, a hornless breed associated more with the Scottish Lowlands than the fell farms of Lakeland. Her pleasure in them was akin to her passion for the Herdwick; an appreciation of the animal first for its ancient origins in the rugged coastal environment of Galloway, then for its beauty, its distinctive coat of thick black curly hair, and finally for its adaptability to poor land. Galloways are unrivalled as a grazing breed, utilizing coarse grass and still producing high-quality beef. Beatrix was convinced that Galloways could be successfully raised on her fell farms.28
In the late 1920s Beatrix had begun corresponding with C. S. Fo
rrester, a local stockman from Skitby, north of Carlisle on the Borders, in whom she came to have confidence and from whom she bought her first Galloway bull for the Park. She also bought both a black and a white bull, intending to cross them with the Galloways to create a line of Bluegrey, another breed of shorthorn. She was especially delighted with the white bull, and anxious for Joseph Moscrop, who was also an expert on cattle, to see him. ‘I like the look of him…’ she wrote. ‘I hope he is lucky. He was a luxury; we have a liking for the Agricultural products, man & beast, of the Northern Border, although expensive.’ She was fascinated with the bull’s beauty and made several sketches of it, but sadly, she had little luck with it as breeding stock.29
Her seriousness about breeding and selling beef cattle is apparent from the increasing numbers listed in her farming accounts, beginning about 1936. These animals were much more costly than sheep, and her experimentation was a serious financial investment, but as war approached, it made sense economically. In 1937 her farm inventory lists 94 cattle, of which 36 were beef, but two years later, she had a total herd of 112, of which 64 were beef.30
But raising cattle, like sheep, was a volatile business, and Beatrix’s hopes went up and down. In the spring she wrote to Joseph about the availability of heifers at Road Head or any dispersal sales, telling him, ‘I am worried about the cattle at Troutbeck Park. I don’t think I shall go on keeping a galloway bull, and rearing home bred heifers. The younger cows are nothing like as sound as the original Road head’s. Although they are bigger and fine looking — too many have gone wrong at 3rd or 4th calf. A sure sign of Johne’s disease… I believe heifers are less likely to be infected than young calves. They pick up the microbes as calves, but it does not become a serious state for several years.’31
Beatrix’s observations about cattle going bad after several calvings were unusually insightful for the time as no one understood the cause of ‘Johne’s disease’, which infected cattle, sheep and goats, and was soon to become a worldwide problem. Even in the late 1930s it had become particularly virulent in England, Scotland and Wales, where commonly sheep and cattle infected each other. Johne’s was a wasting disease similar to tuberculosis in its aetiology, and it had no cure. Cattle simply wasted away, unable to digest food. They could be infected in the womb, by nursing, or by contaminated milk, and calves were most susceptible in the first two years of life. It was highly contagious, and vaccines were of little use. It is now suspected that tuberculosis, and therefore Johne’s disease in cloven animals, can be spread by the badger, a creature Beatrix had already made the villain in The Tale of Mr. Tod, but which she unwittingly protected when she banned hunting by otter hounds or harriers at Troutbeck Park. Despite the risk, Beatrix persisted in her efforts to breed Galloways and increased her herds whenever she found good stock, enjoying the animals and, on the whole, making money by it.32
By far the most time-consuming and personally challenging changes Beatrix confronted during these jittery pre-war years had to do with her evolving relationship with the National Trust. The appointment of Donald M. Matheson as Trust secretary in 1935 had been expected. Bruce Logan Thompson, who had been the Trust’s northern representative since 1933, was named land agent for the northern district in 1936, the first land agent for the Trust anywhere in England. Prior to his appointment, Beatrix informed the new secretary that she and William would retire from active management of the Trust’s portion of Monk Coniston at the end of the year. ‘I shall be glad to give him [Thompson] any information which may be useful for the management of the Trust’s Coniston estate,’ Beatrix wrote. ‘This management will be a much simpler matter when the delapidations [sic] consequent on 30–40 years of neglect have been remedied.’ But it was another year before the Trust took over their half of the estate.33
Thompson was then nearly 40 years old, a studious, thoughtful man who had known and admired Hardwicke Rawnsley, and followed him into the Trust. Since at least 1931 Thompson had been a frequent presence in the Lake District, completing his survey of Trust properties in the northern area, and after 1933 overseeing all the Trust properties there other than Monk Coniston. When Thompson was named land agent, he already had an extensive understanding of many of the local problems relating to the Trust, and although he did not have agricultural training, on every other level he knew nearly as much about Lakeland’s past and present as Beatrix Heelis.34
Bruce Thompson also had the advantage of not being an off-comer, a status that Beatrix could never overcome. He was named after his uncle, Bruce Logan, who had made his fortune in the carriage trade in Windermere; the same gentleman who had generously allowed Beatrix to observe the fox-hunt on the Troutbeck fells in 1924. Thompson had grown up in Bowness and Windermere, where for generations his family had owned the Ferry Hotel. The same year he was appointed land agent he married his wealthy cousin, Mary Rigg, whose family was also in the hostelry business, being proprietors of the famed Windermere Hotel.35
Thompson had a deep interest in the history and culture of the Lake District. He had read history and archaeology at St John’s College, Cambridge, and was an active member of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society and a trustee, along with William Heelis, of the Armitt Trust Library. He was a handsome, courtly man, with a quiet, self-effacing manner, tending to the philosophic and the intellectual. He was well known in the local villages and immensely well liked by farmers as well as gentlemen. He and Mary raised fell ponies for the National Trust, and they often rode out together to the Trust farms to collect the rent. Tom Storey also knew and liked Thompson, having known both him and his wife before he came to work at Hill Top. Thompson was also a popular leader in the Boy Scout movement, and even when he lived in London, he had frequently accompanied Scout troops to camps, sometimes using Beatrix’s land in Hawkshead and at Troutbeck, where she had welcomed them. Beatrix Heelis and Bruce Thompson had much in common, and their paths and passions intersected at important points, but their relationship after 1936 was neither easy nor predictable.36
Thompson’s appointment as land agent was an obvious, as well as an inspired, choice. Although he lacked Rawnsley’s robust passion and combative style, his knowledge and quiet demeanour had their own merits. It is impossible to know, then, why Beatrix Heelis found him so unsuitable as a land agent, but she did. Most likely it was a clash of personality and style, and more than a little jealousy on Beatrix’s part.
Beatrix knew from experience that none of the members of the Lake District Estates Committee, to whom Thompson reported, had any substantive agricultural experience, and yet for the first time the National Trust was faced with significant estate work in Coniston: keeping up physical property as well as agricultural land and livestock. On this account she was justifiably concerned that her seven years of back-breaking work for the Trust would be undone by an inept agent and committee that would allow the property, especially the farms, ‘to fall back into ruin’. She considered Thompson a dilettante who did not understand the essentials of estate management: the chronic expenses and the constant repairs necessary to ‘buildings damaged by tempest; woodlands; drains, occupation roads and paths etc.’ This legitimate concern was aggravated by significant differences in style between the two. Thompson was deliberative and thoughtful, whereas Beatrix usually knew her mind and got on with it. She was blunt and forthright, and she appreciated this quality in her shepherds and her farmers, even when it verged on rudeness. Thompson, by contrast, was unfailingly courteous and diplomatic, regardless of how rude or crusty she was. For whatever combination of reasons, Beatrix found little to admire in Bruce Thompson and was never enthusiastic about his appointment, and never wholeheartedly supported him.37
Knowingly or unknowingly Thompson challenged Beatrix’s real or assumed authority on several levels. His appointment as land agent of necessity took away some of her local independence and altered her status with the Coniston farmers and tenants. It also allowed him to do things that she, as temporary cu
stodian, had not been able to do, and she was understandably jealous of that authority. She complained that he did not listen, and although he was solicitous of her opinion, he sometimes went ahead and did things his own way. Unfortunately Bruce Thompson’s sins were those of both omission and commission, and probably there was nothing he could have done, particularly as manager of the Trust’s Monk Coniston farms, that would have gained her approval. This is regrettable, for had the two been able to forge a close working alliance, the National Trust’s work in the Lake District would have been immeasurably more successful.
Trust officials transferred Monk Coniston to Thompson’s oversight in January 1937. Although the Heelises had indicated when they bought the whole of Monk Coniston in 1930 that they intended to give the portion they retained to the Trust as a bequest after their deaths, that gift was by no means assured. Therefore Trust officials walked a tightrope in their management of Monk Coniston, hoping that nothing would be done to offend the Heelises or make them change their mind about the ultimate destination of the larger, and more valuable half of the estate. Beatrix was aware of the power she wielded and was not above threatening to withdraw her gift. So while she continued to manage her Monk Coniston farms, the Trust, in the person of Bruce Thompson, rather awkwardly took over the rest.38
