The Real Beatrix Potter

by Nadia Cohen

  Unusually for the time the Potters were not regular churchgoers. They visited various different local Unitarian churches without being particularly loyal to any minister in particular, and did not insist on attending religious services regularly. The children grew up with simple spiritual beliefs but their parents were not particularly dogmatic about reciting daily prayers at home.

  The sound of laughter was rarely heard in the hushed rooms of the house however, and the Potters certainly did not approve of childish fun and games. Whenever possible, Beatrix and Bertram were kept away from other youngsters, who their parents feared would infect them with germs and, more worryingly, could be seen as bad influences who would derail them from their main aim of improving the family’s social standing through good marriages.

  Rupert and Helen were socially ambitious, and they worked hard at not betraying even a trace of the gritty, working-class entrepreneurialism that had made their northern fathers so rich. The Potters wanted for nothing, although all the money and coveted invitations held absolutely no interest for their clever little daughter, who was growing increasingly frustrated by their vapid existence. She would later go on to dismiss her parents as ‘apathetic’ and complained that they led ‘prosperous uneventful lives’.

  Beatrix felt unable to tell them how lonely and lost she truly felt. It was a time when children were very much seen and not heard, and so even if she had dared to speak her mind her parents almost certainly would not have listened. With confusing emotions-swirling around her young mind, not to mention hormonal changes that were never explained to her, Beatrix decided she needed to write her feelings down in order to deal with them.

  She first started keeping her journal when she was 14 years old, and continued for many years, inspired by her admiration of other great diarists she had read, including Samuel Pepys and James Boswell. While those luminaries were adult men when they started their diaries (Boswell had been a twenty-two-year-old City playboy and Pepys was a fast-tracked civil servant), Beatrix was at a very different stage in life indeed, with considerably less of note to remark upon. She sometimes framed her diary entries as letters to an imaginary friend called Esther, and vented her profound frustration at her comfortable, pointless existence. As young as 10 years old, she had recorded her desperate intention to ‘do something’, and at least now she had found an outlet to express her frustrations.

  Mrs Potter was baffled by her daughter’s peculiar attitudes, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Helen was a prim and starchy Victorian matriarch constrained by social circumstances and obeyed the rigid rules which tightly governed all aspects of female behaviour. All she wanted in return was a compliant and obedient daughter who would mind her manners, help run the household and later, in time, would be proud to take care of her parents when they required it. This was not a role that came naturally to Beatrix, who was adventurous, opinionated, mischievous and longed for freedom. Some commentators have observed how she was much like the pesky Peter Rabbit while her exasperated mother resembled his tormentor, Mr McGregor.

  As a result of this aching lack of external stimulation, for Beatrix life at Bolton Garden was horribly quiet and the days crawled by slowly. By the age of 14, Beatrix had started to suspect she did actually have things she would like to say, but of course there was nobody to say them to. In need of an outlet for her feelings she became obsessed with keeping a detailed diary, a daily habit that would stay with her many years. But jotting down observations was never going to satisfy her busy brain, and so she devised an elaborate code for her private thoughts, substituting letters for other letters, numbers or symbols.

  She also used her journal as a sketchbook, making copious notes, in tiny handwriting, about places she visited, as well as her often rather amusing, sarcastic and wry opinions on the polite society she felt so alienated from. She would also include her forthright views on art and artists. There were not too many amusing or entertaining anecdotes peppering her existence, and so she tended to stick to reporting mundane details of her day-to-day routines.

  Beatrix’s first journal began in 1881 and ended in 1897 when she became more absorbed in her scientific studies and was trying seriously to find a publisher for her drawings. While much of the content is fairly mundane, what the journals do reveal is just how achingly bored Beatrix was most of the time.

  As far as Beatrix was concerned, her journal was the only place where she could feel even remotely free, and she used it as a means of escape.

  She did not risk writing too much about her personal feelings but she wrote in great detail about her efforts to memorise poetry and passages from Shakespeare plays. She also jotted down interesting facts she had picked up, usually about nature and wildlife, or anything that surprised, fascinated or simply amused her.

  As a bored teenager whose every move was tightly controlled, Beatrix’s journal was the only place she could do as she pleased: ‘There is a vast amount in my head’, she wrote once. Another time she simply reported: ‘Manner of catching ducks in Egypt: Man swims in the water with his head inside a hollow pumpkin and surrounded by decoy ducks, and pulls wild ones under.’

  Since she was forbidden from participating in adult conversations – she was far too young and female for her views to be taken seriously or even worth listening to – Beatrix used her journal as a way of participating in world affairs instead. Her entries are peppered with references to political events and occasionally there are full transcripts of adult conversations she had overheard.

  Whenever she got the chance to escape the confines of Bolton Gardens, Beatrix would take long walks. The natural world excited her and she noted down every change in the weather, indeed most of her daily entries included a succinct weather report, regardless of the main subject matter. She also wrote in detail about the animals she and Bertram smuggled into the house. Besides her pet rabbit Benjamin Bunny, the journal also included details of the activities of a pair of lizards named Toby and Judy, and a green frog called Punch, who ‘has been on extensive journeys.’

  ‘I think she was in many respects the sweetest animal I ever knew,’ Beatrix added in 1886 after the death of one of her pet mice, referred to as both Miss Mouse and Xarifa. The same, much missed, pet would also appear in many of her later sketches and she even included a character called Xarifa in The Fairy Caravan, a novel which was not published until forty-three years after its namesake’s death. When Beatrix was 6 years old Rupert had presented her with some of his own drawings, a sheet of sketches featuring swans and ducks, which fascinated her. Two of the ducks were wearing hats and one had a bonnet fastened with a ribbon under the chin; many years later Beatrix’s famously foolish character Jemima Puddle-Duck would bear more than a passing resemblance to Rupert’s drawing.

  Since she was cooped up in the nursery for most of the day, Beatrix found herself almost entirely friendless as she neither shared in her parents social life nor had the chance to meet any other children. Although she was deeply solitary, Beatrix was not unhappy. She learnt to value her privacy and found ways of keeping herself occupied. Her first governess, Miss Hammond, left when Beatrix was in her early teens, apparently claiming that her pupil knew more than her and she had nothing further to teach, but Beatrix was sad to see her leave the schoolroom since she had been her chief companion.

  Unfortunately Beatrix tended to find teachers annoying, preferring to refine her artistic style on her own. Even as a shy teenager Beatrix could be quite caustic in her private appraisal of other people’s art, especially when their interpretations of plants and animals weren’t up to her exacting standards.

  When she was sixteen, her cousin Kate was painted by a popular artist named Briton Rivière, standing in front of a tall cupboard, preparing to feed two dogs. The best Beatrix could come up with to describe the finished painting was that it was ‘not as bad as I expected’. She never forgot the painting and apparently used it as the basis of an illustration in her book The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan. Perhaps he
r harsh judgment had something to do with the fact that Kate and her other cousins were sitting dutifully for portraits, getting engaged and of course married. Beatrix, meanwhile, was still sleeping in her childhood bedroom at home, playing with mice and writing journal entries to an imaginary friend.

  During her early teens Beatrix was even lonelier still, once Bertram was dispatched to boarding school. She knew there was no point in arguing to go to school herself, although years later she would come to reflect on this as a positive: ‘Thank goodness my education was neglected,’ she wrote,

  I was never sent to school. The reason I am glad I did not go to school – it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure). I fancy I could have been taught anything if I had been caught young; but it was in the days when parents kept governesses, and only boys went to school in most families.

  She had ‘the typical teenage worries about her future,’ said historian Emma Laws, ‘There was the added weight for a young woman of that era that you couldn’t just leave home if you weren’t married.’ Author Sarah Gristwood was struck by how desperately miserable Beatrix appeared to be at various points, and that her despair was largely ignored:

  Entry after entry in her journal breathes a depth of gloom that would surely set alarm bells ringing today, combined rather oddly with that bright-eyed interest in the world around her, and a tough-minded quality. It makes you realise just what a straitjacket the life of a Victorian daughter-at-home must have been for someone of her abilities.

  A large number of diary entries were comprised of her personal opinions on art following visits to galleries, since she was only too aware that nobody would have been remotely interested in hearing her views even if she had dared to voice them out loud. After one visit to the National Gallery she wrote: ‘I say fearlessly that the Michelangelo is hideous and badly drawn. No one will read this.’

  However, Helen became concerned that Beatrix’s enthusiasm for visiting galleries was causing her a level of excitement that was not normal or appropriate for a gentlewoman, and fearing it could make her appear eccentric, she attempted to stamp it out.

  Beatrix’s mother decided they had indulged and humoured their daughter’s academic blue-stocking hobbies for far too long, and if it were allowed to continue she may want to get a job. To them, anything resembling work for their daughter was out of the question. The battle lines were drawn: the war between Beatrix and her parents would rage for the next thirty years.

  Chapter Two

  All Rupert and Helen Potter wanted for their only daughter was for her to marry a gentleman. They were eager to shake off the shadows of their manufacturing past, and Beatrix was their best hope of social climbing their way into the aristocratic classes. They had her future clearly mapped out, but the problem was Beatrix did not show the slightest interest in fashion, tea parties or ballroom dancing. To make matters worse, she was no great beauty and the Potters had difficulty lining up potential suitors for her. She may have been bright and precocious, but Beatrix would never have dared defy her mother who expected her to help manage the servants, and of course find a suitable man to marry at the earliest opportunity. The Potters were eager for Beatrix to link their family through a good marriage to one of the wealthiest families in London. There was no chance she would agree to go to a ball or party alone, and so when her cousins visited from out of town they were tasked with taking Beatrix to dances. Of course, she hated them all.

  Beatrix would sit against the wall and refuse to participate, dance, socialise or even be introduced to anyone new. She usually would not stay long, and called for the coach to escape as soon as she had the chance. It was made crystal clear to Beatrix, however, that she would only be permitted to leave home on her wedding day, and not a moment before.

  But Beatrix made it equally clear that she did not want to be someone’s wife, she wanted to be an artist. She had shown great talent for drawing almost from infancy, and her father had encouraged it. As well as the governesses employed to supervise Beatrix’s basic education in the nursery, Rupert also hired a succession of art teachers to give her supplementary lessons in oil and watercolour painting. An unused dressing room became her studio, and Rupert allowed her to join him on visits to galleries and exhibitions around town.

  He even introduced her to his highly influential friend, the pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais. The Potters entertained frequently at their lavish townhouse and their rapidly growing circle of influential society friends included a host of famous artists including Millais and Sir Charles Eastlake. Like her father, Beatrix was a fan of Millais’ early work, and commented in her teenage journal that his famous painting of Shakespeare’s Ophelia drowning in a river was ‘One of the most marvellous pictures in the world.’ Though Beatrix would never have dared discuss her artistic ambitions with either her father or any of his friends, Millais somehow had a glimpse at her drawings at some point and offered broad encouragement. Rupert was flattered by Millais’ praise and agreed to nurture Beatrix’s talent by employing a new art teacher to pass on some formal instruction.

  During one of his visits to Bolton Gardens, Millais asked Rupert for permission to ask Beatrix to sit for a portrait. Rupert agreed immediately without consulting Beatrix, who later admitted she had been rather afraid and intimidated by the attentions of such an eminent painter. Millais apparently told Beatrix that she reminded him a little of his own daughter Carrie, but there was no danger of her becoming vain and she described her own appearance bluntly as: ‘A find handsome girl but my face was spoiled by the length of my nose and upper lip.’

  Millais became a family friend, and his expert advice helped Rupert amass a vast and valuable art collection. Rupert was soon seen bidding on expensive paintings at Christies auction house far more often than he was ever found in his office. He also collected letters and children’s drawings, some of which he gifted to his daughter who prized them among her most treasured possessions.

  Beatrix’s wealthy grandparents also built up impressive collections of paintings by the great and good of the Victorian art scene, including Turner, Landseer and Leighton.

  Besides the art galleries and museums, which had become the only bright spot to break up the monotony of her long and dreary days, London held very little appeal for Beatrix. For her the highlights of any year would come when the family would decamp to the countryside for a few weeks for the Easter and summer holidays.

  At Easter, while the staff gave the house in Bolton Gardens its annual spring clean, the Potters tended to stay in a hotel at the seaside. Beatrix preferred the longer summer breaks when they would rent a furnished house in Scotland. For those extended vacations the entire household would join them, with all their servants on hand to tend to the family’s every whim. Rupert also relished these family holidays as they gave him a chance to indulge his passion for photography, and he loved taking pictures of the dramatic Scottish scenery and wildlife. There were countless carefully posed pictures of all the Potters gathered together, looking serious as they clustered on the steps of various country houses. He also took scores of awkwardly staged portraits of his stiff and unsmiling wife, who appeared not to share his enthusiasm.

  In the city Beatrix was dismayed by all the new building works she saw going on around their house. She felt increasingly stifled and suffocated by the pollution, and longed for the wide, open spaces of the Scottish countryside which she found inspirational and exciting. She loved being reunited with her beloved brother Bertram when he was home from boarding school for the holidays, and these family excursions gave them an early taste of freedom and independence, sparking Beatrix’s lifelong passion for nature and wildlife.

  Every time she managed to escape the confines of the house at Bolton Gardens, and the increasingly congested London streets surrounding it, Beatrix felt alive. The new sights and smells she discovered on every one of her long roaming rambles in the countryside came as a fresh revela
tion to her. She wrote later that she had appreciated it all so much more for having grown up in a city, which meant she never got bored of clean air and rural life: ‘It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London but our descent, our interests and our joy were in the North Country,’ she wrote.

  In Scotland, young Beatrix finally had a chance to study the wildlife she had only been able to read about in books before. She would sit for hours quietly watching frogs leaping in a stream, or closely studying mice washing their whiskers. With each passing summer afternoon she spent gazing at the animals, her imagination began to run riot.

  For many years these annual summer holidays were spent at Dalguise, an estate the Potters rented on the banks of the River Tay in Perthshire. There, Beatrix and Bertram were allowed a level of freedom never afforded to them in the capital. They could roam the unspoilt Scottish countryside for hours on end, firing their imaginations and passion for nature. As soon as breakfast was over, Beatrix and Bertram would disappear, usually to indulge their newfound passions for hunting and fishing. Both were forbidden on Sundays, when they had to join their parents at church, but on all the other days of the week they were permitted to roam the fields and streams uninterrupted.

  Early seeds of the famous fictional characters Beatrix would later create started to take shape at Dalguise, as she noticed all the tiny minutiae of not only the animals’ surprisingly individual and almost human characteristics, but also the intricacies of plants, trees and flowers. She would delight in the musty smell of the potting sheds and greenhouses, where she would crouch down to inspect an army of busy ants or earthworms.