by Linda Lear
24. Ibid. BP Journal (16 April 1885), 146; (24 August 1895), 397.
25. BPH to HPC, 28, 29 June 1928, BPA.
26. Ibid. Beatrix Potter, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, The Horn Book (February 1929), 3–10; Beatrix Potter, The Fairy Caravan (London, 1929). Mary Hutton to BPH, 21 November 1929, NT.
27. Willow Taylor, Through the Pages of My Life, edited by Judy Taylor (2000), 76–7. Willow grew up at Tower Bank, the inn next door to Hill Top, where her parents were the innkeepers. She became Curator of Hill Top in 1971, serving until 1985 and volunteering thereafter.
28. ‘Inventory of the Household Furnishings of No. 2 Bolton Gardens, 1914’. BPH to ELC, 26 April 1924, ELCL; BPH to FC, 27 December 1924, NT; BPH to MFHP, 13 July 1936, BPA.
29. The SPAB was founded in 1877 by William Morris. Many of the Pre-Raphaelite painters whom Beatrix admired were early members. BPH to MFHP, 10 February 1928, BPA; Philip Venning to Enid Bassom, 16 September 1998, BPS.
30. BPH to GN, 17 October 1928, V & A; BPH to GPC, 20 November 1928, BPA. Jack Heelis was the youngest child of William’s brother, Thomas Heelis, the Rector of Crosthwaite, and Ada. After nearly five years they moved to a place below Belmount. TMH, 39–41.
31. BPH to GPC, 20 November 1928, BPA. Copy of contract between Mrs H. B. Heelis and David McKay for US book rights in ‘The Caravan Stories’, 19 December 1928, BPS. Royalty began at 10 per cent and went to 15 per cent after 20,000 copies. There was an additional 6 per cent on supplementary reading editions. BPS. BPH to AMK, 18 January, 28 March 1929, BPA.
32. BPH to AMK, 28 February, 30 June, 28 July 1929, BPA.
33. BPH to AMK, 28 March, 11 October 1929, BPA. HWBP, 292–4, 431. McKay was not above publishing Potter piracies only six years later.
34. BPH to AMK, 23 August, 11 October 1929; BPH to HPC, 27 October 1929, BPA.
35. BPH to AMK, 31 October 1929, BPA: Alice M. Jordan, ‘The Fairy Caravan by Beatrix Potter’, The Horn Book (November 1929), 9–11. Jordan was a friend and colleague of Bertha Mahony at the time she opened the Bookshop. Later Jordan became editor of the book review section. Helen Chrystie, reviewing it in Saturday Review of Literature, thought it ‘a bit of a jumble’, but called the sketches ‘inexhaustibly delightful’. The New York Herald Tribune reviewer applauded the ‘beauty and poetry of the tale’, along with the ‘neat economy of phrase that made the earlier books such a delight to read aloud to children’ (Helen Chrystie, ‘Two Hemispheres’, Saturday Review of Literature (16 November 1929), 430; Marcia Dalphin, ‘Beatrix Potter’s World’, New York Herald Tribune (17 November 1929), 7).
36. BPH to GPC, 9 December 1929, BPA.
37. Storey, ‘Recollections’. BPH to JM, 15 January 1931, ML.
38. BPH to AMK, 20 February 1929, Letters, 313; BPH to AMK, 31 October 1929; BPH to GPC, 9 December 1929, BPA; BPH to HPC, 1 January 1930, BPA. Karen J. Lightner, ‘The Fairy Caravan “Explained” ’, BPS Studies, 7 (1997), 60–74, gives an explanation of the ‘explains’. Many versions exist. The ‘explains’ were so vital to appreciating the book that they were later published as part of the endmatter. A list of Potter’s ‘explains’ was published in HWPB, 296–305. Bruce L. Thompson also made some corrections and additions which add to the identification of places and her meaning; see BLT papers, CRO/K.
39. BPH to AMK, 17 December 1929, BPA. HWBP, 256–8. An early version of the story comes from a letter to her father from Ilfracombe in 1883. ASC, 171. BPH to BMM, 24 November 1941, BPA.
40. BPH to AMK, 21 June, 8, 15 July, 9 September 1930, BPA. HWBP, 257. Copy of contract between Mrs H. B. Heelis and David McKay for the US book rights in The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, 7 February 1930, BPS. McKay offered the same percentage scale of royalties as The Fairy Caravan, as well as an advance of £200. BPS.
41. BPH to AMK, 9 September 1930, BPA. HWBP, 256–62. Ruth K. MacDonald, Beatrix Potter (1986), 83–6. Some critics have suggested that Potter realized her last writings were inferior, which was why she offered them to American publishers. Neither Stephens at Warne’s or McKay gave Little Pig Robinson the kind of critical response which might have improved the tale.
42. BPH to AMK, 15 July 1930, BPA.
18 Ventures
1. BPH to HPC, 27 October 1929, Letters, 321.
2. BPH to SHH, 20 October 1929, NT.
3. BPH to SHH, 28 October 1929, Letters, 323. Tarn Hows was even then one of the most visited spots in Lakeland. The Brathay is the river which flows down from Elterwater into Windermere.
4. Ibid.
5. Conveyance documents, Monk Coniston Estate, 1930, NT; BPH to SHH, 29 May 1930, NT. Bruce L. Thompson, The Lake District and the National Trust (1946), 142–52 for a description of the Monk Coniston properties. Marshall’s holdings included High and Low Yewdale, Yew Tree, High and Low Tilberthwaite, Stang End, Boon Crag, High Arnside and Rose Plantation.
6. BPH to SHH, 21, 17 October 1929, NT.
7. BPH to SHH, 29 May 1930, NT. Beatrix learned after the fact that Marshall signed a letter of intent with the Forestry Commission, but they could not act upon it until the Commission meeting in November 1929.
8. BPH to SHH, October 21, 1929. NT.
9. BPH to SHH, 23, 24, 25, 26 October 1929, NT.
10. BPH to SHH, 25, 27, 30 October 1929, NT.
11. BPH to SHH, 28, 30 October 1929, NT.
12. BPH to SHH, 31 December 1930, NT; BPH to BLT, 23 July 1932, NT.
13. BPH to SHH, 17 November, 12, 21 December 1929, NT.
14. Each of these parcels was described, numbered and coordinated with the number on the 1914 Ordnance Survey Map, along with the area in acres to the third decimal place; NT. ‘The Schedule of Beatrix Heelis’s Land Conveyances, 15 November 1905–11 November 1943’, BPS.
15. John Bailey, ‘Preserving the Lakes: A Generous Offer’, The Times, 15 February 1930.
16. BPH to SHH, 27 May 1930, NT. Miss Holt belonged to a Unitarian family from Liverpool who had made a fortune in shipping.
17. BPH to SHH, 2, 27 March, 29 April 1930, 17, 26 January, 25 February 1931, NT. Beatrix Heelis’s Farm Accounts, 1938–1943, BPS. BPH to SHH, 27 February 1931, Letters, 342–3.
18. BPH to SHH, 20 July 1932, Letters, 348; BPH to BLT, 23 July 1932, Letters, 349. It is likely that Beatrix also anonymously gave High Tarn Hows Cottage, which was held back from the main sale of Monk Coniston. Beatrix was anxious to secure it for the Trust and gave it to them as a gift in 1931. Sometime later she decided to make another anonymous gift of Thwaite Farm, which bordered Coniston Water and was already surrounded by Trust property. Her requested anonymity, however, was breached when her gift was mistakenly published in the Trust’s annual report for 1932 — an error that annoyed her exceedingly.
19. BPH to SHH, 14 September 1930, NT; BPH to Ivy Steel, 21 October 1930, DIDJ; BPH to CC, 13 December 1930, PC; BPH to Helen Dean Fish, 19 September 1930, BPA.
20. BPH to SHH, 16, 17, 20 October 1929, NT. The Heelises urged the suitability of a retired naval man, having Lieutenant-Commander Kenneth Duke, the husband of Beatrix’s second cousin, Stephanie Hyde Parker, specifically in mind. Samuel Hamer retired as secretary at the end of 1934 and was succeeded by Donald MacLeod Matheson.
21. BPH to BLT, 27 February 1931, NT. Thompson’s important survey was published as National Trust Properties in the Lake District (c. 1933). In 1932 Thompson became Northern Area Representative, the first full-time Trust staff member named anywhere in the country. He was responsible for all the Trust’s properties in the Lake District other than Monk Coniston.
22. BPH to MFHP, 14 December 1930, BPA; BPH to SHH, 8 October 1930, Letters, 334; BPH to CC, 13 December 1930, Letters, 335–6.
23. BPH to John Bailey, 15 February 1930, Letters, 329.
24. BPH to NNH, 5 May 1931, V & A; BPH to June Steel, 2 June 1931, DIDJ.
25. Lucy Walker to JM, 15 January 1932, Walker Letters, BPS. Lucy had written earlier of their concern for their employer’s health, much run down in caring for her mother.
26.
BPH to JM, 23 January 1932, ML. Elizabeth Battrick, ‘Some Thoughts on Beatrix Potter’s Books’, BPSN, 79 (January 2001), 12–13.
27. BPH to NNH, 5 June 1932; BPH to AMK, 18 December 1932, Letters, 352.
28. Certificate of death, Helen Potter, 20 December 1932, County of Westmorland; William was listed as being present at the time of death. See, for example, BPH to HPC, 14 December 1933, BPA.
29. BPH to Eleanor Rawnsley, n.d. 1933, quoted in TBP, 138.
30. Gross estate, probated: £69,105. Helen’s wealth was primarily in bonds and securities that derived from Rupert’s estate; Family Division, High Court of Justice, Rupert Potter’s Trust, W. B. Potter, deceased. Haddon & Turnbull, Hawick to Wm. Heelis, 2 May 1933, BPS.
31. ‘Helen Potter’, Inquirer, 31 December 1932; ‘Death of Bowness Nonagenarian’, Westmorland Gazette, 24 December 1932. BPH to JM, 31 January 1933, ML.
32. Lindeth Howe was sold in March 1933. At the public auction of household contents, Beatrix and William purchased nine items for £22.19s. Circular for the Sale of Lindeth Howe, Storrs Park, Windermere, William J. McVey, ‘Public Auction of contents of Lindeth Howe, March 23 & 24, 1933’, BPS; bill of sale, Wm. McVey, Auction of Household Contents of Lindeth Howe, BPS.
33. BPH to SHH, telegram, 23 February 1933; BPH to SHH, 23 February, 5 March 1933, Letters, 355–7.
34. BPH to CC, 8 April 1934, Letters, 361; BPH to Thomas Stoddart, 15 March 1934, PC. She supplied coal and firewood from old fencing, and helped Tommy get a good dog, also supplying dogfood as she did for the dogs at Troutbeck. Beatrix now personally managed three tenanted farms: Hill Top, Troutbeck Park, and the Tilberthwaites, which included Holme Ground and were managed as one property.
35. BPH to Mrs John B. Capper, c. 20 November 1930, NT. It is not known whether she sent the letter, but it would appear she had every intention of doing so. See Letters, The Times, 19 November 1930. ‘Musical Toads’ appeared in The Times, 8 November 1930.
36. BPH to Mrs John B. Capper, c. 20 November 1930, NT.
37. BPH to SHH, 7 November 1930, NT.
38. ‘Wasted Land’ is addressed ‘Sir’, and was written after 1930. ‘Oaks’, ‘Acorns’ and ‘Of Timber’ refer specifically to farms she managed for the Trust at Monk Coniston. All fragments seem written in response to newspaper articles. Reprinted in HWBP, 392–5; all in V & A.
39. Inventory of Hill Top Farm, BPG. BPH to ELC, c. 1925, ELCL. Lists of furniture, BPH to Mrs Thomas Stoddart, n.d. 1934; BPH to Mrs Stoddart, 14 March 1934, PC.
40. Susan Denyer, At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit (2000), 52–68; and ‘Beatrix Potter and the Decorative Arts’, BPS Studies, 7 (1997), 39–52. BPH to BMM, 11 October 1940, BPA. A Windsor chair painted dark green or black is one of the rarest and most valuable examples of this style. Julie Cole, ‘Educated Eye: The Windsor Chair’, Southern Accents (July-August 2005), 72.
41. Alison Smithson, ‘Beatrix Potter’s Places’, Studio International, 201 (1988), 20–21 (first published 1967); Graham Murphy, Founders of the National Trust (1987), 88–90. BPH to BMM, 13 December 1934, BPA. Vivienne Woolf, ‘At Home with Samuel Whiskers’, Country Life (5 December 1991), 13–15.
42. BPH to SHH, 28 November 1932, Letters, 350. BPH, ‘Yew Tree Farm, Coniston. July 8, 1932’, BPG. Powys was SPAB secretary from 1911 until his death in 1936.
43. When the last tenant left in May 1932 Beatrix wrote to Hamer about the ‘splendid [Herdwick] sheepstock’ at Yew Tree, and urged the purchase of a landlord’s flock hoping to make it into a Herdwick stock farm. This was a fight with the Trust that she eventually lost. BPH to SHH, 12, 30 May, 19 July 1932, NT.
44. The autographed letters were put into a large wooden framed case under glass. BPH to MFHP, 18 October 1933, BPA. The exact meaning of ‘smush’ is unknown, but her meaning is clear from the context. BPH, drawing of Yew Tree Farm, Coniston, 8 July 1932, BPG. BPH to Eleanor Rawnsley, 24 October 1934, Letters, 367.
45. BPH to BMM, 13 December 1934, BPA. Photograph provided to author courtesy of Mrs Jean Birkett, Yew Tree Farm, Coniston. Tourists and teas returned to Yew Tree Farm in 2004 when the current Trust tenants revived the tea shop. Terry Fletcher, ‘Tea with Beatrix Potter’, Cumbria Magazine (September 2004), 22–3.
46. BPH to BMM, 13 December 1934, BPA. William Miller was the owner of the W. F. Whitney Company. Bertha Mahony continued to use her maiden name professionally, and I refer to her hereafter as both Mahony and Miller.
47. Woolf, ‘At Home with Samuel Whiskers,’ 5–7; Susan Denyer, ‘Beatrix Potter and the Decorative Arts’, 46–51. BPH to BMM, 13 December 1934, BPA.
48. Fragment, on old oak furniture and decoration, n.d., NT. This fragment comes from her reading of Lockwood and, while it was not written to any particular correspondent, she used it as the basis of her letter to Bertha. Clearly she had in mind some further use. BPH to BMM, 11 October 1940, BPA. The text is different from that illustrated in Denyer’s book, suggesting there are several versions of her notes. Denyer, At Home, 53, 70.
49. BPH to NNH, 18 December 1933, V & A; BPH to SHH, 26 January 1933, NT; BPH to CC, 19 December 1933, Letters, 360; BPH to Nora Burt, 30 December 1933, NT. Fanny Cooper was married to a physician, Dr Charles Cooper; after Fanny’s death in late 1933, BPH continued to correspond with her husband. BPH to Charles Cooper, 28 January 1934, NT.
50. BPH to JM, 30 January, 26 March 1934, ML; BPH to ELC, 12 April 1934, ELCL.
51. BPH to MFHP, 31 August 1934, BPA; BPH to CC, 19 December 1933, 8 April 1934, Letters, 360–61; BPH to Ivy Steel, 5 August 1935, DIDJ.
52. BPH to CC, 8 April 1934, Letters, 361. Incomplete letter intended for Country Life, c. 1932, on spoiling the Coniston Valley, V & A.
53. BPH to unknown correspondent, on spoiling the Coniston Valley, c. 1937, V & A; BPH to ACM, 17 April, 18 December 1937, BPA; BPH to GN, 28 November 1937, V & A.
54. BPH to Editors, Country Life, 14 November 1937, CCP; ‘Letters’, Country Life, 27 November 1937. BPH wrote to the editors again to be sure that her letter would be published; BPH to Editors, 14 November 1937, CCP.
55. Harvey May, BPSN, 88 (April 2003), 26.
19 Passages
1. BPH to CC, 15 February 1937, NT.
2. Edith Potter Gaddum (1863–1937) was Beatrix’s double first cousin. Beatrix was particularly fond of William Gaddum, who was a trustee for her mother and for herself. BPH to GN, 31 January 1936, V & A.
3. Ibid. There is an unconfirmed tale that she could not get the buttons of her dress undone and so slept in it until Mrs Rogerson arrived the next morning.
4. BPH to NNH, 17 December 1936, V & A; BPH to Celia Edwards, 19, 21 October 1937, PC; BPH to GN, 28 November 1937, V & A. During the war Nurse Heaton went about on her bicycle to conserve petrol. Documents of the Nursing Trust (established as the governing board of the Hawkshead, Wray and Sawrey Nursing Charity), which were once in the possession of the firm of Gately and Heelis, have been lost.
5. BPH to NB, 30 March, 18 December 1935, NT; BPH to Dr Henderson, 10 February 1931, NT; BPH to Mary Wilkinson, 19 September 1930, FLP.
6. John Heelis, ‘On William Heelis’, 11 August 1985, PC. ASC, 183. [Mary Agnes Rogerson,] ‘Beatrix Potter’s Housekeeper Looks Back on Life at Sawrey’, Westmorland Gazette (29 July 1966). Storey, ‘Recollections’.
7. ASC, 183. Elizabeth Battrick, ‘Some Thoughts on Beatrix Potter’s Books’, BPSN, 79 (January 2001), 13.
8. BPH to MFHP, 1 March, 13 July 1936; BPH to Betty Harris Stevens, 13 July 1936, BPA. Beatrix herself is inconsistent with the spelling of the dogs’ names.
9. BPH to Ivy Steel, 14 April 1936, DIDJ; BPH to Miss Dobson, 26 October 1936, PC.
10. BPH to Betty Harris Stevens, 4 September 1930, BPA. Betty married Richard K. Stevens in April 1931. Mrs Stevens’s reminiscence, Beatrix Potter Colloquium, FLP, 1966.
11. BPH to Ivy Steel, 20 January, 14 April 1936, DIDJ.
12. BPH to Ivy Steel, 1 June 1936, DIDJ; BPH to Dick and Betty Stevens, 10 September 193
6, BPA. LTC, 193–7. BPH to Ivy Steel, 27 August 1936; BPH to June Steel, 20 September 1936, DIDJ. BPH’s letters to Ivy continued until September 1943. Beatrix’s letters are in the Toronto Public Library as part of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections.
13. BPH to child friends in Denver, 12 July 1936, Denver Public Library. ASC, 185. See LTC, 15. Noel Moore (1887–1969) retired from the London mission in 1955 and lived near his brother Eric, serving as chaplain to an Anglican convent for mentally retarded girls. His career in the Church, however, was marred by a conviction for paedophilia in 1951, although he was permitted to serve as Vicar to St Mary’s Church, Buxted, East Sussex, after four years in prison. ‘Child Abuse Shame of Boy Inspired Peter Rabbit’, Mail on Sunday, 28 May 2006, 51. Selwyn Goodacre, ‘Beatrix Potter and the Moores’, BPS Studies, 11 (2005), 60–69.
14. These included: Busk Farm, Dale End, Penny Hill Farm, Low Oxenfell Farm, the Elterwater closes and Great Intake. Conveyance schedule and description of Heelis Properties, 1943, BPS. Bruce L. Thompson, The Lake District and the National Trust (1946), 140–52, 173–5.
15. Delmar Banner (1896–1983). BPH to DB, 4 October 1936, V & A.
16. Josefina’s given name was sometimes Anglicized as ‘Josephina’, a spelling which Beatrix occasionally uses. The chronology of their friendship is difficult to untangle as both Delmar and Josefina published memoirs of their friendship with Potter. Delmar published an ‘Appreciation’ in The Times (30 December 1943), and another, ‘Memories of Beatrix Potter’, Nineteenth Century and After, 140 (October 1946), 230–32. From the poetic style of both pieces, however, it is likely that Josefina was the primary author, as Delmar’s style was extremely pedantic. Both contain similar phrasing to interviews Josefina gave to W. R. Mitchell and other Lakeland historians. In a reprinted edition of Banner’s ‘Memories of Beatrix Potter’, ‘So I Shall Tell You a Story…’: Encounters with Beatrix Potter (1993), 44–50, Judy Taylor included excerpts from a letter from Josefina Banner to Margaret Lane. Margaret Lewis, Josefina de Vasconcellos: Her Life and Art (2002), 53–67. BPH to DB, 8, 23 September, 4 October 1936, V & A. Josefina’s manuscript ‘Posted at Sawrey, selections from letters set in a Patchwork’, V & A, written about 1961, was considered by C. W. Stephens at Warne’s and by Leslie Linder, but proved unsuitable for publication. Josefina de Vasconcellos, She was Loved: Memories of Beatrix Potter (2003) contains some of the same material and was published when she was 98. She died in July 2005 at the age of 100.
