by Linda Lear
24. David Wykes, ‘Sons and Subscribers: Lay Support and The College’, in Barbara Smith (ed.), Truth, Liberty, Religion: Essays Celebrating Two Hundred Years of Manchester College (1986), 32–77.
25. Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn (II), Admissions, 1896. The Black Books, V, Lincoln’s Inn, 1968. The Law List (1858). Men-at-the-Bar: A Biographical Hand-List (1885). The Black Books, VI, Book XLVI, p. 334, Lincoln’s Inn, 2001. In 1934 Beatrix acknowledged her father’s esteem for Lincoln’s Inn when she gave the Society a portrait of another of their famous members, Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, a north-country man who had been much admired by the Crompton and Potter families. The portrait of Brougham was painted by S. Gambardella, much admired by Millais, and had place of honour in the Potter dining room; G. F. Holborn to the author, 12 February 2003. BP Journal (30 January 1884, 9 April 1885), 67, 144.
26. ASC, 15. Rupert Potter Sketchbook, V & A.
27. The Law List (1858), 87. Rupert Potter, A Few Observations upon Lord Westbury’s Bill to facilitate the proof of title to, and the conveyance of Real Estates (1862). R. M. Jackson, The Machinery of Justice in England (4th edition, 1964).
28. In the 1867 case in question, Rupert appeared as English junior to a Scottish advocate in a Scottish appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The case of Dunlop v. Johnston concerned the effect of a husband’s subsequent bankruptcy on his wife’s post-nuptial settlement. In order to appear in a case before the Council, Rupert would have had to have achieved some standing. Dunlop v. Johnston (2 April 1876), Law Reports, Scotch and Divorce Appeal Cases before the House of Lords, vol. 1, sess. 1866–9, 109–17. The appeal was denied.
29. TBP, 15–16; MY, 16–17. Margaret Lane’s interpretation was based largely on the lack of obvious case records and the memory of Dora Roscoe, daughter of Rupert’s youngest sister Lucy. Dora would have been too young to remember much about her uncle’s legal practice and its specialized nature would have been beyond her knowledge. Last Will and Testament of Edmund Potter, 1883, 17 January 1884, Principal Probate Registry. Last will and testament of Clara Potter, 19 January 1906, Principal Probate Registry. Rupert was the sole executor of Clara’s estate.
30. Lord Justice James (Sir William Milbourne James) was a friend and legal associate, and Sir Louis Mallet, a neighbour in Bolton Gardens, was an authority on free trade, who had just been made the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for India. James was a member of the Reform Club and had been Vice-Chancellor of the Court of Chancery. Potter and Mallet were also related by the marriage of Mallet’s son and Rupert’s niece, Margaret Roscoe, the daughter of his youngest sister Lucy. Information on the mechanics of election supplied by the Athenaeum Club; ‘Certificate of Candidate for Ballot, 4590’, 27 April 1874, Athenaeum Archive, Ballot Books.
31. Helen’s sister Elizabeth and Walter Potter died in 1867 and 1871 respectively, leaving two children, Edmund and Edith. On the Leech marriage settlement, see BP to Edith Potter Gaddum, 8 June 1923, Letters, 281–2. Barbara Caine, Destined to be Wives (1986), 1–11. The lack of evidence has forced interpreters to rely primarily on two sources, neither particularly objective: Beatrix’s own comments in her journal and later in letters about her mother’s behaviour, personality and activities; and the family photographic record created by Rupert Potter. Helen’s opinions of her marriage, family life, children, and domestic and social responsibilities, in so far as we have record of them, are second-hand. There were two sides to Helen’s story but regrettably only one is available.
32. Bredbury, The Foundation, 4, 6–7. HWBP, 295. BPH to AMK, 13 July 1938, Letters, 39. Joyce Irene Whalley, BPSN, 84 (April 2002), 19.
33. Leech–Potter wedding quilt, 8 August 1863. Blickling Textile Conservation Studio, Blickling, Norfolk; NT; Pam Lancaster, ‘A Wedding Gift’, BPSN, 101 (July 2006), 8–9.
34. Bredbury, The Foundation, 2–4. Inquirer (30 July 1966), 5.
35. Caine, Destined to be Wives, 5–8.
36. Potter Family Album, ‘Helen Potter, 1873’, BPG. The bone structure of the jaw in Helen’s photographs and in a later caricature drawn by Beatrix suggest this conclusion; BP’s caricature of her mother, V & A.
37. Census of 1881. Rupert bought the mews at numbers 4 and 11 for his household staff.
38. ASC, 17. ‘Births’, The Times (30 July 1866). Biographical profile, BPA, 213.
2 Exposures
1. Margaret Lane, Potter’s first biographer, embellished her account with such architectural detail, either to reinforce her view that Potter had endured a sad and solitary childhood as a virtual prisoner in her parents’ home, or because she incorrectly assumed its existence; ‘at the barred third-floor windows of the second house, there was stationed day after day a little girl who had leisure and solitude enough for the most prolonged study’, TBP, 13. The idea of virtual imprisonment was later repeated by Lane in MY, 12, and passed into accepted truth. See especially Marcus Crouch, Beatrix Potter (1960); Maurice Sendak, Caldecott & Company: Notes on Books and Pictures (1988); Alexander Grinstein, The Remarkable Beatrix Potter (1995); Alison Lurie, Don’t Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children’s Literature (1990), 90–98; and Ruth K. MacDonald, Beatrix Potter (1986). In a recent memoir of Potter, She was Loved: Memories of Beatrix Potter (2003), Josefina de Vasconcellos (Josefina Banner) carried on the view that Potter’s parents were insensitive and unloving, and her ‘nursery was Her prison’. Judy Taylor was the first to challenge this interpretation, offering a more sophisticated understanding of Victorian family life in her 1986 biography Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman. Lane, who in real life was the Countess of Huntingdon, was a writer of exceptional descriptive power. But neither Rupert Potter’s several photographs of number 2 and the surrounding houses nor Beatrix’s paintings from the nursery window indicate the existence of any bars.
2. ‘Memories of Camfield Place’, c. 1891, BP Journal, 444, 449.
3. BP Journal (2 April 1884), 81.
4. ‘Memories of Camfield Place’, 444–5.
5. Edmund Potter rented Kinnaird House from 1859 to 1862, and possibly earlier. Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, The Life and Experiences of Sir H. E. Roscoe, DCL, LLD, FRS, written by Himself (1906). Rupert Potter rented Tulliemet from Alexander Duncan, who was tenanted there in the 1870s; Records from the Collection at Blair Castle, Perthshire. J. Marle Bassett, ‘Beatrix Potter’s Perthshire “Home” ’, Highlander (July/August 1997); 19–22.
6. Edmund was friendly with Sir Curtis Miranda Lampson, the promoter of the Atlantic cable and telegraph, who rented Dalguise House 1861–3 and no doubt suggested it as a possible holiday house for Rupert. John Steuart was Master of the Supreme Court in Cape Town, South Africa, during the years the Potters rented the house. A rather ghastly beaux-arts tower was added to the house in 1885, changing its appearance dramatically. David C. Duncan, ‘The Significance of Dalguise for Beatrix Potter’, BPS Studies, 11 (2005), 18–34. BP Journal, 104, nn. 15, 16.
7. BP to Rupert Potter, n.d., Letters, 11; Rupert Potter to BP, 1874, V & A.
8. BP Journal (8 May 1884), 85.
9. Quoted in BP Journal (14 June 1884), 93, n. 32. Barbara Brill, William Gaskell, 1805–1884 (1984), 115–16. ‘John Bright in the Highlands’, Pall Mall Gazette (2 April 1889), is based upon an interview with Rupert Potter and a show of his photographs of Bright. W. Gaskell to BP, 23 August 1877, V & A.
10. W. J. Eggeling, Millais and Dunkeld: The Story of Millais’ Landscapes (1982), 5–18. Records from the Collection at Blair Castle, Perthshire. See also Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (1984). M. Harvey, ‘Rupert Potter and Millais’, Creative Camera (February 1973), 62–3.
11. BP Journal (1 September 1892), 261–2.
12. Census of 1871. ‘Memories of Camfield Place’, BP Journal, 446. This spelling of the nurse’s surname is taken from the 1871 census, and from the spelling on one of the cards from her in ‘Beatrix Potter’s Victorian Scrap Album, 1872–1878’, a
collection of 84 cards given to her by various family members; CCP. BP to FW, 3 January 1912, PC. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 207.
13. BP Journal (8 May 1884), 85.
14. Julia Briggs, ‘Women Writers and Writing for Children: From Sarah Fielding to E. Nesbit’, in Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs (eds.), Children and Their Books (1989), 221–41; Norma Clark, ‘The Cursed Barbauld Crew: Women Writers and Writing for Children in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Mary Hilton, Morag Styles and Victor Watson (eds.), Opening the Nursery Door (1997), 91–103; Anne Stevenson Hobbs, ‘Beatrix Potter’s Writings: Some Literary and Linguistic Influences — with a Scottish Slant’, BPS Studies, 3 (1989), 28–40; BP/AW, 35–40. John Goldthwaite, The Natural History of Make-Believe (1966), 59–73. BP to the Children’s Librarian (Katherine Watson), Denver Public Library, 19 November 1930, Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel was published in 1852 in a pirated version, and one children’s edition was illustrated by George Cruikshank. BP Journal (20 August 1896), 430. BP to Helen Dean Fish, Letters, 369: BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208.
15. Joyce Irene Whalley, ‘Beatrix Potter before “Peter Rabbit”: Her Art Work’, BPS Studies, 3 (1989), 22–7. Miscellaneous drawings by Beatrix Potter 1874–9; Linder Bequest, V&A. See BP/V & A. ‘Corner of the School Room’, 26 November 1885, in ABP, 34. The specimen cabinet was recently discovered among the belongings of Bertram’s wife’s family.
16. Rupert and Helen were President and Patroness of the Club; minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the Dalguise Curling Club, Easter Dalguise, 20 October, 18 November 1874.
17. Vere Henry Lewis Foster (1819–1900) was a prolific producer of copybooks used to teach handwriting as well as drawing. They were first published by Blackie, now owned by Frederick Warne, and were widely used by schools in the last half of the nineteenth century. A sketch of antique Roman charioteers and rearing horses on the back of a card she sent to Beatrix indicates that Helen too enjoyed sketching from the copybooks. Beatrix wrote this on one of Rupert Potter’s drawings of birds done about 1872 or 1873; NT.
18. ABP, 2, 38: Joyce Irene Whalley to author, 25 May 2001, 17 March 2002. Vere Foster Manuals, various series, BP/V & A. Helen Beatrix Potter, Narcissus; Foxgloves and periwinkle 1876, BP/V & A. Transfer prints, BP/V & A. Anne Stevenson Hobbs, ‘Context and Content: Working on Beatrix Potter’s Art’, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 28–43.
19. ‘Impressions of Mrs Hugh Blackburn’, BP Journal (5 June 1891), 215–16. Mrs Hugh Blackburn, Birds Drawn from Nature (1868).
20. Blackburn’s Birds, edited by Rob Fairley (1993), 14–15. In Potter’s 1894 illustrations for Little Red Riding Hood, Blackburn’s even earlier work, The Cat’s Tale (1870), is an obvious influence. The late Dr Mary Noble argued persuasively that Potter modelled Jemima Puddle-duck, at least in name if not ornithological behaviour, on Jemima Blackburn.
21. Anne Lundin, Victorian Horizons: The Reception of the Picture Books of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway (2001), 2–17. Percy Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books (1971), 21. Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Books (1988). F. J. Harvey Darton, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life, third edition, edited by Brian Alderson (1982), 277. J. H. Plumb, ‘New World for Children’, in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb (eds.), The Birth of a Consumer Society (1982), 286–315. William Henley, ‘Randolph Caldecott’, Art Journal (July 1881), 212. Anne Carroll Moore, ‘Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott’, in Arthur King and A. F. Stuart, The House of Warne (1965), 18–29.
22. Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth (1839–1921) was the daughter of a businessman and grew up in Manchester. She wrote both fantasy and moral stories, and some of her children talked in baby language. BP to Helen Dean Fish, 8 December 1934, Letters, 369. Joyce Irene Whalley, ‘Beatrix Potter and the Illustration of Children’s Books’, BPS Studies, 8 (1999), 69–81.
23. Joyce Irene Whalley, ‘The Young Artist and Early Influences’, in BP/AW, 35–40. Ruari McLean, ‘Children’s Books During the Childhood of Beatrix Potter’, BPS Studies, 3 (1989), 8–14. BP Journal (8 December 1883), 59. BP to ACM, 17 January 1940, BPA. Warne & Co. were the English agent for St. Nicholas magazine.
24. BP to Helen Dean Fish, 8 December 1934, Letters, 369. Hobbs, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 29. [The editors,] ‘Beatrix Potter and Lewis Carroll’, BPSN, 70 (October 1998), 14–15.
25. BP to Mrs Ramsay Duff, 13 July 1943, BPA. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208. Percy Muir, English Children’s Books, 1600–1900 (1954), 86–92. Dale Schafer, ‘How Beatrix Potter’s Childhood Reading Influenced her Writing Style’, BPS Studies, 8 (1999), 91–103. BP to FW, 3 January 1912, PC. See also Laura C. Stevenson’s discussion in ‘A Vogue for Little Books: The Tale of Peter Rabbit and its Contemporary Competitors’, BPS Studies 10 (2003), 11–27. Ivy Trent of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Los Angeles, called my attention to the inventory of the Leech library at Gorse Hall: sale catalogue, Gorse Hall, Stalybridge (July 1885); CCP. BP to Denver Children’s Librarian, 19 November 1930, Denver Public Library. Whalley, BPS Studies, 8 (1999), 94. Hobbs, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 28.
26. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208.
27. Before going on a Continental tour of Italy, Germany and Austria in 1871 Rupert had adopted the dry plate process. Helen tried her hand with the camera as well. Photograph album, Marseilles, Genoa, & Pisa, Cotsen Occasional Press (1998) contains some of their European tour photographs; CCP. Other albums are in the BPG. In ‘John Bright in the Highlands’, Rupert refers to his photographs of his distinguished guests.
28. The earliest prints date from 1865 when he was at Lochgair in Argyllshire on holiday. Potter contributed to the Annual Exhibitions of 1885, 1886 and 1889. See Marseilles, Genoa & Pisa, CCP.
29. Helen Potter to BP, 12 February n.d., PC. It was thought that Rupert’s health benefited from the sea air, and in the 1880s and 1890s they chose the south coast for spring holidays.
30. ASC, illustration on p. 21. Vere Foster Drawing Books, V & A. Hobbs, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 35.
31. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208: BPH to MFHP, 4 October 1934, BPA.
32. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208. BPH to Mrs Ramsay Duff, 13 July 1943, BPA: ‘I have not been a greedy person; perhaps it is because my own upbringing was so spartan…’
33. BP Journal (3 October 1892), 279.
34. This study of animal anatomy was an expression of the Victorian passion for natural history. It was also common practice among artists, who needed to understand the body structure of the creatures they painted.
35. BP Journal (20–21 September 1893), 54. ASC, 32–3. The extant letters to their children, and the nurturing of their interests and talents, are expressive of the Potters’ affection for their children. A similar conclusion is offered by Elaine R. Jacobsen’s essay, ‘Americans Look at Beatrix Potter’, BPS Studies, 7 (1997), 75–92, which considers other evidence.
36. BP Journal (13 August 1896), 429.
37. TBP, 24, 27. Invitation list, Monday, 21 June 1875, FWA. Postal Directory, Local Studies Library, Kensington Library, London. For example, John Charles Wilson, from Oxford, was a house guest on the evening of the census of 1871.
38. Census of 1871, 1881, 1891. BP Journal (30 May 1885), 150.
39. BP Journal (5 February 1893), 311.
40. Ibid., 311–12. Census of 1881. Mary Rosalind Paget was a distinguished social reformer, nurse and midwife. She was made Dame in 1935. See DIDJ, introduction, pp. vii–ix.
41. BP Journal (5 February 1893), 312.
42. BP/AW, 50. BP Journal (25 December 1884), 123; (21–31 December 1895), 412. BP to Ivy Steel, 30 December 1929, DIDJ. Rupert chose to celebrate St Valentine’s Day instead, but even this remarkable keeping of the old Puritan tradition was inconsistent. See ‘Beatrix Potter’s Victorian Scrap Album, 1872–1878’, CCP, and Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (1983). There are additional cards sent to Bertram at BPG.
43. BP Journal (30 S
eptember 1884), 107–8. The influence of Unitarianism on Potter’s intellectual outlook has been neglected by scholars, but its cultural influence is central to her emotional and intellectual perspective. M. Daphne Kutzer, Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003), 16–18, supports this view.
44. BP Journal (23 February 1896), 418. Her rather outspoken views at this time were modified in later life. She was known to enjoy Anglican services, but seems to have preferred the Quaker meeting above all others. Inquirer (20 August 1966), 3. Obituary of Rupert Potter, Inquirer, (1914). James Ballantyne, ‘Origins of Essex Church, Notting Hill Gate, London’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 7 (1939–42), 130–38.
45. BP, ‘Roots’, BPA, 208–9.
46. Between 1875 and 1878 a Miss Madeline Davidson was briefly in charge. She appears in one of Rupert’s photographs at Dalguise in 1876, when Beatrix was about ten. Miss Hammond oversaw most of her education. Her given name is unknown and ‘Florrie’, perhaps for ‘Florence’, is a conjecture taken from a later reference.
47. BP Journal (21 June 1883), 48; (17 July 1883), 49.
48. Ann Bermingham, Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art (2000), 212–24.
49. BP to Miss (Kate) Wyatt, 27 November 1920, Letters, 266.
50. BP’s Art, 7–23, 30; see fig. 5, ‘Early rabbit at rest, 1880’. TNR, 14–20.
51. Whalley, BPS Studies, 8 (1999), 74–5.
52. Science and Art Form No. 213, February 1880; Art Form No. 899, May 1881; Examination in Second Grade Drawing at South Kensington, 21 May 1880; 17 June 1881. Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, CCP. BP Journal (28 May 1883), 47.
53. Ibid. (25 June 1884), 94; (13 August 1896), 429.
54. Lady Eastlake, the former Elizabeth Rigby, was herself a distinguished author and translator of German and Russian art history and criticism. Sir Charles Eastlake had much influence on Rupert, in addition to sponsoring him for membership of the Athenaeum. Rupert sought Lady Eastlake’s advice on matters of education for both his children.
