Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  36. King and Stuart, House of Warne, 1–15, 30–31. Ironically, Potter’s fungi drawings were published in Step’s Wayside and Woodland series in 1967.

  37. Ibid. 13–15, 29–30. ASC, 74–8. Norman Dalziel Warne was born 6 July 1868. He was the youngest of eight children, but only three sons survived to adulthood. ‘Fruing’ was their mother Louisa Jane Warne’s maiden name.

  38. BP to F. Warne & Co., 18 December 1901, Letters, 56–7.

  39. BP to NDW, 22 May 1902, Letters, 62.

  40. HWBP, 110. TNR, 43. BP to F. Warne & Co., 18 December 1901, Letters, 56.

  41. BP to Mrs Hollins, 17 December 1901, FLP. BP to Miss Whitehead, 7 February 1902, PC. BP to F. Warne & Co., 19 January 1902, Letters, 59.

  42. BP to NDW, 30 April, 2 May 1902, Letters, 60–61. TNR, 46–7.

  43. Taylor, ‘The Tale of Bertram Potter’, 6.

  44. Marriage certificate, 20 November 1902. Author interviews with Liz Taylor, Melrose, Scotland, 14 April 2000; with Reita Wilson, Hawick, Scotland, 15 April 2000; with Helen Jackson, Perth, Scotland, 10 April 2000.

  45. Certificate of candidate for ballot, no. 8292, Monday, 30 April 1906; supporters’ sheet, Archives of the Athenaeum Club. Liz Taylor believes that Beatrix was told or found out about his marriage after a year or so, and sympathized with the couple, but it could have been much later. See Taylor, ‘Bertram Potter and the Scottish Borders’, BPS Studies, 2 (1986), 43–6.

  46. BP to NDW, 8 May 1902, Letters, 62. The first printing was made up in two bindings, cloth and paper. TNR, 47–9; ASC, 76, BP to NDW, 17 August 1902, Letters, 61–2.

  47. TNR, 48, 52–3. Potter’s final contract, signed in June 1902, called for a royalty of 1s. 4d. The first printing of 3,000 copies were without royalty, and some others, the sixth edition for example, were at a slightly higher rate. At a very conservative estimate, from October 1902 to October 1904 Potter earned approximately £438 on Peter Rabbit in addition to the £40 she had made from sales of the private editions. BP to NDW, 9 November 1903, Letters, 82.

  48. BP, ‘Roots,’ BPA, 209. BP to BMM, 25 November 1940, BPA.

  49. Peter Hollindale, ‘Animal Stories since Beatrix Potter and her Influence on the Genre’, BPS Studies, 8 (1999), 25–31; Peter Parker, ‘The Gardens of Beatrix Potter’, Hortus, 30 (Summer 1994), 106–5; Parker, ‘Gardening with Beatrix Potter’, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 96–109; Catherine Golden, ‘Beatrix Potter Naturalist Artist’, Women’s Art Journal, 11/1 (Spring/Summer 1990), 16–20; Hollindale, ‘Beatrix Potter and Natural History’, BPS Studies, 9 (2001), 54–66. BP Journal (28 May 1895), 387.

  50. The critical literature on The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the other ‘Little Books’, and on Potter’s art is immense: see Select Bibliography. Leslie Linder, ‘A View of Miss Potter’s Art in Writing and Illustrating Books’ (n.d. c. 1970), FWA.

  51. Frederick Warne & Company catalogue, 1902–3, 9, FWA. In their catalogue, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was added by hand to the list (January 1903, 115). Elizabeth Booth, unpublished lecture to the Beatrix Potter Society (July 2000).

  7 Ideas

  1. BP to Norah Moore, 25 July 1901, LTC, 71–6; BP to Noel Moore, 26 August 1897, LTC, 49–50. Whalley, BPS Studies, 3 (1989), 26. Red squirrels, Sciurus vulgarus, now rare, were still abundant in the Lake District when Potter was writing this story.

  2. BP to Norah Moore, 25 July 1901, LTC, 71–6; BP to Freda Moore, Christmas 1901, LTC, 76; Winifrede (Freda) Allen to William Heelis, 22 February 1944, PC.

  3. Keith Clark, Beatrix Potter’s Gloucester (1988), 12–20.

  4. HWBP, 111–13. ASC, 80. Clark, Beatrix Potter’s Gloucester, 15–16.

  5. Ibid. Beatrix Potter, MS, ‘The Tailor of Gloucester’, Rare Book Collection, FLP. This is the opening line of the published version, set in the Regency period. Paduasoy is a corded silk fabric.

  6. HWBP, 113–14. TBP, 52.

  7. BP to NDW, 15, 21, 28 July 1902, Letters, 64–6.

  8. BP to NDW, 6 November 1902, FWA.

  9. BP to NDW, 6, 22 November, 1 December 1902, FWA; 17 December 1902, Letters, 69.

  10. BP to Mrs Wicksteed, 17 January 1903, V & A. To this old family friend Beatrix reported that, although her father has occasional bouts of lumbago, ‘his health has been better as he gets older’. BP to Angela, Denis and Clare Mackail, 1 January 1903, quoted in Margot Strickland, Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist (1977). Beatrix was already getting ‘fan’ mail from other children.

  11. A good example of the genre of natural history writing is the work of the English-born wildlife writer and Boy Scout leader Ernest Thompson Seton. Ruth K. MacDonald, Beatrix Potter (1986), 68. Potter’s anthropomorphism borrows from that of Charles Darwin’s observations, which tended to see animal life and human affairs as permeable one with the other. Eileen Crist, Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind (1999), 7, 80–84.

  12. BP, Photographs of Old Brown’s oak tree, 1903, BPG.

  13. Judy Taylor, ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’, in BP/AW, 111–15; MacDonald, Beatrix Potter, 67–70; Margaret Blount, Animal Land: The Creatures of Children’s Fiction (1975), 136–7; Gillian Avery, ‘Beatrix Potter and Social Comedy’, Rylands University of Manchester Bulletin, 76 (Autumn 1994), 190–94.

  14. BP to NDW, 5 February 1903, Letters, 70; 8 February 1903, FWA.

  15. HWBP, 118; the story of Beatrix in the Museum was told to Linder by Mrs Susan Ludbrook, the first curator of Hill Top. BP to NDW, 27 March 1903, FWA. Oliver Garnett, Melford Hall Suffolk: A National Trust Guide (2005).

  16. HWBP, 138–40. BP to NDW, 21 March 1903, Letters, 72–3.

  17. BP to BMM, 20 November 1942, BPA. The objection was Norman Warne’s.

  18. HWBP, 117. BP to NDW, 30 April, 15 December 1903, Letters, 74, 84. The squirrel was manufactured by Farnell and Company. In order to have secured US copyright for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Warne would have had to apply for it on the same day as the book was published in the UK. Even if that had occurred, it is unlikely that copyright could have been secured because the book had been privately published, even though the two versions were quite different. The Copyright Reform Act of 1891 allowed for a flourishing business in US piracies. Interview with James J. Barnes, Columbus, Ohio, 10 August 2004, and James J. Barnes, Authors, Publishers and Politicians (1974).

  19. BP to NDW, 20 August 1903, Letters, 80; BP to NDW, 8 September 1903, FWA.

  20. BP to Lady Mary Isabel Warren, 23 December 1919, Letters, 260; Avery, ‘Beatrix Potter and Social Comedy’, 185–8. Beatrix’s impression should be revised in the light of at least the first year’s royalty comparison, as the Tailor paid her more than Squirrel Nutkin.

  21. HWBP, 121.

  22. ‘The Tailor of Gloucester, A Xmas Fairy Tale’, Tailor & Cutter, 39 (24 December 1903), 779, reprinted in BPSN, 31 (December 1988–January 1989), 9–10.

  23. BP to NDW, 8 July 1903, Letters, 77.

  24. BP to HW, 14 July 1903, Letters, 78; ASC, 88–9.

  25. BP to HW, 15 July 1903, Letters, 79.

  26. Ibid.; BP to HW, 28 July 1903, FWA.

  27. BP to NDW, undated, September 1903, Letters, 81. Wynne K. Bartlett and Joyce Irene Whalley, Beatrix Potter’s Derwentwater, 65–71. ‘Derwentwater Sketchbook’, BPG.

  28. BP to HW, 6 November 1903, Letters, 82; BP to NDW, 9 November 1903, Letters, 82–3. ASC, 91–2. BP to NDW, 2 December 1903, quoted in HWBP, 149; BP to NDW, 15 December 1903, Letters, 84.

  8 Realities

  1. Bedford Square, named for the ducal family who were once ground landlords of Bloomsbury, is no longer predominantly residential; most of the houses are now used as offices.

  2. Various correspondence between Winifred Warne and Margaret Lane, c. 1944–5; TBP, 58–9; ASC, 90–91; HD, 67–76.

  3. NDW to Jennie Stephens, 15 January 1899, Warne Family Papers, FWA. ASC, 87, 90.

  4. ASC, 91. Photographs, Warne Family Papers, FWA.

  5. BP to NDW, 15, 10 December 1903, Letters, 83–4, 85.

  6. BP to NDW,
15 December 1903, Letters, 84. TNR, 59–60. Patent Office Registration No. 423888, FWA.

  7. TNR, 60; Camilla Hallinan, The Ultimate Peter Rabbit (2002), 32–3. A limited edition of 2,500 dolls following her copyright design was finally produced in 1993.

  8. BP to NDW, 29 April 1904, Letters, 93–4; BP to NDW, 22 November (1904?), Letters, 109.

  9. BP to NDW, 23 October 1904, 22 November (1904?), 30 January 1905, 27 February 1905, Letters, 105, 109, 112, 114. Sanderson’s eventually published the wallpaper frieze.

  10. BP to NDW, 7 December 1904, Letters, 110–11.

  11. BP to NDW, 23, 25 October, 7 December 1904, Letters, 105, 110–11. TNR, 61–2.

  12. BP to NDW, 15 December 1903, Letters, 84. Beatrix had named her mice ‘Tom Thumb’ and ‘Hunca Munca’ after the hero and heroine of Henry Fielding’s eighteenth-century comedy Tom Thumb the Great. MY, 123–4. Johnny Crow’s Garden (1903) was the first in a series by Brooke featuring comic doggerel verse.

  13. BP to NDW, 1 January 1904, Letters, 84–5.

  14. BP to NDW, 12 February 1904, Letters, 85.

  15. BP to NDW, 18 February 1904, Letters, 86.

  16. BP to NDW, 24 February 1904, Letters, 88.

  17. BP to NDW, 12 February, 1 March, 20 April 1904, Letters, 85, 88, 93; BP to NDW, 20 April 1904. The photograph of the doll’s house is reproduced in ASC, 94. Judy Taylor, interview with Winifred Warne Boultbee, 1990: Boultbee’s memories are drawn from three different interviews: 1971, 1983 and 1990.

  18. BP to NDW, 15 March 1904, Letters, 90.

  19. BP to NDW, 3 March 1904, Letters, 89. In 1910 Beatrix commented to Millie Warne, ‘What games there seem to be with the suffragettes! It is very silly work’; 19 November 1910, FWA.

  20. BP to Miss Sharpley, 18 April 1904, PC; Sharpley and the other members are unidentified. BP to NDW, 10, 19 April 1904, Letters, 92.

  21. BP to NDW, 21 February 1904, 8 June 1904, Letters, 87, 95.

  22. HWBP, 72–87.

  23. In LTC, Judy Taylor reproduces all the miniature letters that were known in 1992; see especially pp. 9, 84–93, 138–45, 166–9.

  24. LTC, 110–13; HWBP, 72–87. Leslie Linder bought many of these miniature letters for his collection.

  25. BP to NDW, 16 June 1904, Letters, 95–6.

  26. BP to NDW, 11 December 1904, Letters, 111.

  27. BP/AW, 119, LTC, 78–9. BP to NDW, 12 September 1904, Letters, 103.

  28. ASC, 95. Times Literary Supplement (28 October 1904). BP to NDW, 2 November 1904, Letters, 106. Another 10,000 copies of Two Bad Mice were also printed. In the first two months Beatrix earned approximately £156 on Benjamin Bunny and she earned the same amount from Two Bad Mice in the first three months.

  29. HWBP, 85–6. These miniature letters are almost perfunctory and tell more about Beatrix’s activities than her characters.

  30. Ruth K. MacDonald, Beatrix Potter (1986), 32–8; M. Daphne Kutzer, Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003), 49–50.

  31. BP Journal (30 October 1892), 306–7.

  32. BP’s Art, 138–43. BP/AW, 116–18.

  33. BP to NDW, 14 September 1904; Letters, 104; MacDonald, Beatrix Potter, 72–5; Kutzer, Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code, 65–76. Kutzer argues Potter’s personal and domestic rebellion as well as her hostility towards the working classes and class agitation are the underlying themes of Two Bad Mice.

  34. See BP to Frida (sic) Moore, 26 January 1900, HWBP, 38–41, 149–50. LTC, 64–5. The more refined mice of Freda’s picture letter from Winchelsea reappear instead in Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes.

  35. BP to NDW, 25 September 1904, FWA. ‘The Tale of Two Bad Mice’, Bookman, Christmas 1904.

  36. See Elizabeth Logan, ‘The Tale of Two Bad Mice, an Author and an Editor’, in Miscellany Britannica: A Collection of Essays Based on Primary Material for the Study of Modern Britain in Stanford University Library Collections (1998), 50–63. Logan makes the point that Norman Warne was an exceptional critic and encouraged Potter to create her own style of expression. MY, 109.

  37. BP to NDW, 6 August, 14 September 1904, Letters, 98, 103–4.

  38. See Beatrix Potter’s Nursery Rhyme Book (2000), 18–19. BP to FW, 12 October 1920, Letters, 263. BP’s Art, 114. BP to NDW, 14 September 1904, Letters, 103–4. The two Pricklepins in the V & A collection are probably of two different hedgehogs. At least one Pricklepin was Mrs Tiggy-winkle’s ‘Uncle’. See HWBP, 229, and ‘The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots’. unpublished; HWBP, 223.

  39. BP to NDW, 2 July 1905, Letters, 121. BP Journal (1 August 1892), 250. BP, inscription to Lucie Carr, Christmas 1901, LTC, 106–7.

  40. HWBP, 155. In a small exercise book found at Hill Top which Linder believed to be the earliest manuscript of the tale, Beatrix had written ‘Made at Lingholm, Sept. 01, told to cousin Stephanie at Melford, Nov. 01 — written down Nov. 02. There are no pictures, it is a good one to tell.’

  41. Wynne K. Bartlett and Joyce Irene Whalley, Beatrix Potter’s Derwentwater (1995), 95–101.

  42. Beatrix Potter, The Derwentwater Sketchbook, 1909, facsimile (1984), 23, 58–9; Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. (Warne, 2002), 40. Lambs’ ears are cut in identifiable markings to indicate what farm they belong to. These markings are a matter of tradition and great importance, as they identify property. Each year a sheep’s coat is also given certain smit marks for similar purposes. It is these marks that Beatrix refers to in the story.

  43. LTC, 106–10. Beatrix Potter’s Nursery Rhyme Book, 10.

  44. BP to NDW, 20 October 1904, 12 September 1904, Letters, 104, 103. ‘Sept 19th ’04, The Greta, Near Portinscale, Keswick, H. B. P.’ Letters, 429; HWBP, 156.

  45. BP to NDW, 2 November 1904, Letters, 106.

  46. BP to NDW, 12 November 1904, Letters, 107.

  47. BP to NDW, 17 November 1904, Letters, 108.

  48. BP to NDW, 12 November 1904, Letters, 107.

  49. BP to NDW, 5 December 1904, Letters, 109.

  50. BP to NDW, 3 February 1905, Letters, 112–13.

  51. BP to NDW, 27 February 1905, Letters, 114.

  52. BP to Hugh Bridgeman, 5 March 1905, PC.

  9 Losses

  1. BP to NDW, 26 March 1905, Letters, 115. HWBP, 168–70.

  2. BP to NDW, 11, 13 April 1905, FWA. HWBP, 170.

  3. A patty-pan is a small round or scalloped tin pan used to bake pasties and some other small meat or fruit pies. As an empty tin it is commonly put upside down inside a larger pie to prevent the top crust from collapsing. In the story Duchess uses the patty-pan in this manner.

  4. BP to FW, 21 May 1905, Letters, 115.

  5. HWBP, 168–9, 170–71; NDW to BP, 25 May 1905, V & A. At some point Norman decided that Tiggy-Winkle would be produced in the same small format as Peter Rabbit and there was a sudden flurry to find a companion in that format, whereas The Pie would be in the larger one.

  6. BP to NDW, 6, 8, 26 June 1905, Letters, 119–20, 121.

  7. BP to NDW, 18 June 1905, FWA.

  8. BP to NDW, 8, 20 June 1905, Letters, 119–20.

  9. Ibid.

  10. BP to NDW, 26 June 1905, Letters, 121.

  11. BP to NDW, 2, 4 July 1905, Letters, 121, 122.

  12. Ibid. HWBP, 158.

  13. HD, 11–12.

  14. BP to NDW, 21 July 1905, Letters, 122.

  15. The letter is missing and doubtless destroyed, as is Beatrix’s response, if she ever made one in writing. Margaret Lane and Leslie Linder both assume that Beatrix was in Wales when she received Warne’s letter of proposal, but there is clear evidence that she received it in London. The date comes from a letter Beatrix wrote to Millie Warne seven months later, on 1 February 1906, Letters, 139.

  16. TBP, 68–9. Lane quotes from a missing letter from BP to Caroline Hutton.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Kelly’s Directory shows that a Miss Hammond resided at 51 Minster Road, West Hampstead, in July 1905. Since Florrie Hammond accompanied Beatrix to the Warne office the next day, Beatrix must have spent the nigh
t. BP to HW, 30 July 1905, Letters, 124. Winifred Warne Boultbee, ‘Some Personal Recollection…’, The Horn Book (1971), 587–8.

  19. BP to HW, 30 July 1905, Letters, 124.

  20. Watercolours dated at Amersham; see ABP, 82–3. See Lane’s account in the 1985 revision of TBP, 83–5. Evidence of the gift to Norman comes from BP to ALW, 15 July, 1917, CCP. Anne Stevenson Hobbs and Joyce Irene Whalley, Beatrix Potter: V & A Collection, items 974–6. BP/AW, 61.

  21. Diary of Edith Warne/Stephens, 1905, Warne/Stephens Archive, FWA.

  22. HD (1905).

  23. Ibid. 49.

  24. Louisa Jane Warne to Jennie Stephens, 20 August 1905, Warne/Stephens Archive, FWA.

  25. Edith Stephens, Immortelles, 25 August 1905. Warne/Stephens Archive, FWA. Last will and testament of Norman Dalziel Warne, 25 August 1905, probated 7 December 1905. He left an estate valued at £14,014. Certified death certificate: lymphatic leucoeythaemia, 2 ½ months.

  26. HD (1905). BP to ALW, 14 February 1906, CCP, mentions that she attended the funeral.

  27. HD (1905). It is possible the letter could have been from Millie Warne, though it is doubtful that she would have been in any state to write. The walking stick and thrashing refers to the proverb Beatrix and Norman had enjoyed: ‘a spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree — the more you beat them — the better they be.’

  28. Ibid. 52–3, 139.

  29. Judy Taylor, interview with David Henry Beckett, Kendal, 13 November 1989, PC. BP to ALW, 23 December 1905, in HD (1905). In this letter she comments on how young and serene Norman looked compared to her elderly aunt Clara Potter, who died at the age of 74 just before Christmas 1905.

  30. BP to ALW, 1 February 1906, Letters, 139. Norman’s death was publicly announced by the firm of Frederick Warne & Co. on black bordered notices dated 1 September 1905.

  31. BP to HW, 5 September 1905, Letters, 125–6.

  32. Ibid.

  33. BP to Winifred Warne, 6 September 1905, LTC, 120–21.

  34. BP to Winifred Warne, 6 September 1905, Letters, 127–30; BP to Mary Warne, 26 September 1905, Letters, 131–2; BP to ALW, 23 December 1905, in HD.