The Real Beatrix Potter

by Nadia Cohen

  Of course he had his critics, many laughed at such a preposterous plan and dismissed Rawnsley as a crackpot with his head in the clouds, many of them failing to comprehend why cash-strapped British people should ever want to part with their hard-earned money to buy land that was not theirs.

  But as soon as Beatrix heard his idea in full, it made complete and utter sense to her, and she pledged to support The National Trust as soon as she could and vowed to do anything in her power to further his cause as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She too feared what the future held, and reflected later: ‘I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. It has been a terrible time since, and the future is dark and uncertain. Let me keep the past.’

  National Trust archivist Liz Hunter McFarlane explained the unique relationship that had developed between Beatrix and Rawnsley:

  When Beatrix had first visited the Lake District as a young teenager she had met Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, a local clergyman, and they became friends when she spent holidays with her family at Wray Castle.

  By the time Beatrix moved north he had been appointed an honorary Canon of Carlisle Cathedral, having been offered the bishopric of Madagascar which he turned down because he felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility to stand out against the construction of too many new roads, pollution from mining and inadequate signing on footpaths in the Lake District.

  He opposed excessive numbers of pubs and the arrival of cinemas which he believed promoted sex and violence.

  With his friend, the social reformer John Ruskin, he came up with the idea for a national trust, which could be established to preserve places of outstanding natural beauty. In 1895 the National Trust became a reality and has been a vitally important charitable organisation ever since.

  Over the years Rawnsley had become one of Beatrix’s closest confidantes and advisers. They often talked at length about his determination to preserve the area for future generations and he indoctrinated the vital importance into Beatrix.

  She shared his great passion for the idea, even though by many she was considered an outsider.

  Noting that ‘off-comers are often more enthusiastic,’ Hunter McFarlane added that locals born and bred in the Lakes can still be resistant to change sparked by people who move there from other areas.

  After that pivotal holiday in Wray Castle, Beatrix had no further interest in returning to Scotland, which had been her favourite place in the world until then. From the age of 5 Beatrix had adored their family holidays to Dalguise, and loved the house they rented on the River Tay, but it was soon replaced in her affections. Once she was smitten with the windswept Cumbrian landscape, there was no turning back.

  She was not happy when her father suggested a return to Scotland the following summer, and as she explained in her diary:

  I am afraid there is a chance of going back to Dalguise. I feel an extraordinary dislike to this idea, a childish dislike, but the memory of that home is the only bit of childhood I have left. The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone but the greatest change is in myself.

  She had changed, and never forgot the vow she had made to help Rawnsley in whatever way she could. All she needed now was the money.

  Chapter Four

  Canon Rawnsley had a wide circle of influential friends already backing his campaign, including the poet Lord Tennyson who had published numerous volumes of verses by then. When he introduced Tennyson to Beatrix, she was left somewhat star struck at meeting a real writer for the first time.

  Tennyson was remarkably generous with his time, and encouraged Beatrix when she told him about her drawing as well as her amateur attempts at writing in her journal. As a result of his flattery and enthusiasm, which impressed Beatrix’s socially ambitious parents, they agreed she could have drawing lessons to further develop the talents that Lord Tennyson had pointed out to them himself.

  It was not much, considering Beatrix longed for a wide-ranging formal education, but she would take what she could get and would never dare to complain or question her parents. And so she took lessons in studying painting and drawing with a teacher at home until she was seventeen – there was still no question of her going to study at school or college: ‘I have great reason to be grateful to her,’ Beatrix said of her teacher later. ‘Though we were not on particularly good terms for the last good while. I have learnt from her free-hand, model, geometry, perspective and a little watercolour flower painting.’

  Beatrix was a headstrong pupil who already had many firm ideas of her own, which made her something of a challenge to teach. Her beleaguered tutors rarely seemed to last very long at Bolton Gardens.

  When Bertram finished his formal education at Charterhouse School it was assumed that he would continue on to university, since most of his contemporaries were heading off to Oxford or Cambridge to study for degrees. But Bertram shared his sister’s rebellious streak and he informed his parents in no uncertain terms that he had decided to become an artist.

  To his astonishment, Rupert and Helen did not seem able to come up with a decent objection to his unconventional plan; they had plenty of money to support his creative endeavours and at least it meant he would continue to live at home with them, and join them on family holidays each summer. Beatrix was delighted to have her brother back in London, of course there was no question of her being allowed to even consider finding herself a job of any description or earning her own income, and so she had plenty of time on her hands to join Bertram when he attended exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Art and various other galleries around London in pursuit of his new career.

  He made an ideal chaperone and allowed her to have a little more freedom than before, since as an unmarried woman it was frowned upon for her to go out alone. Even when Bertram was busy, or did not want his serious sister tagging along, Beatrix would still spend solitary hours at the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, both being a short walk from their Kensington home, and she spent many hours copying minute details of insects, plants and fossils. Despite her obvious talents, it never occurred to her that there might be a way of making a living from her talents.

  Beatrix continued to privately note her opinions on works of art she viewed in her journal, but she never considered sharing them publicly since she was only too sharply aware that her personal views would not have been of the slightest interest to anybody else at the time. Her mother reminded her of the fact frequently. Following one outing to an art gallery, she noted in her diary: ‘Went upstairs for a few minutes, looked at the old Italian pictures. No one will read this. I say fearlessly that the Michelangelo is hideous and badly drawn. I wouldn’t give tuppence for it except as a curiosity.’

  Thanks to Bertram allowing her greater access to more opportunities to study different artists, Beatrix became increasingly technical in her observations, particularly of the pre-Raphaelite artists who were very popular in London at the time. They may have been the toast of the town, but Beatrix was not easily impressed and picked faults in much of what she saw: ‘Did Reynolds paint the animals himself, if he did not paint the drapery in his portraits?’, she wrote. ‘I do not think they are all painted by the same hand. Many of them are bad, and the preference for long-haired dogs seems to suggest timidness about their drawing.

  ‘What are the canvasses primed with? What is drying oil?’

  Beatrix was increasingly starting to wonder about the technicalities of painting, particularly when it came to accurate representations of animals and the colours of the natural world, the subjects that seemed to fascinate her the most.

  In another diary entry, Beatrix wrote:

  Nature, with the exception of water and air, is made of colour. There is no such thing as its absence. What we call the highest and lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

  Bertram had been given a microscope, which Beatrix used far more often than he did since she was so fascinated by clos
e examinations of the intricacies of the spores of fungi, mosses and mould. She even persuaded her father to allow her to use one of his old cameras to take pictures of rocks and fossils when they were on holiday, so she could study the photographs more closely back in London. Beatrix was often genuinely excited by her latest discoveries, but studying fungus was considered to be a highly unusual hobby for a young lady, and not deemed a particularly alluring way to pass the time. And so, in order that she did not draw too much attention to herself – which would inevitably have led to her mother putting her foot down – Beatrix had to keep her drawings secret, even though she knew they were very good.

  As she explained in her journal, hers was hardly an appropriate pastime: ‘I have been drawing funguses very hard; I think some day they will be put in a book, but it will be a dull one to read.’

  Beatrix tended to be at her happiest in the summer months when she had a chance to scour damp forest floors and beaches to boost her collections of fungus and fossils. She found doing this kind of research peaceful and satisfying, particularly in the dense woodlands of the Lake District.

  Following one successful foraging trip she wrote:

  I found upwards of twenty sorts in a few minutes and joy of joys, the spiky Gomphidius glutinosus, a round, slimy, purple head among the moss, which I took up carefully with my old cheese knife, and turning over saw the slimy veil. There is extreme complacency in finding a totally new species for the first time.

  But Beatrix was always exasperated when the time came for her to be dragged back to London and her tranquility was shattered: ‘I was very sorry indeed to come away, with a feeling of not having half worked through the district, but I have done a good summer’s work,’ she wrote.

  Over time Beatrix built up an impressive collection of drawings, easily enough to fill a book, and it gradually started to dawn on her that it might actually be a possibility to have at least a fraction of her work published. The problem was that she had no idea how to enter the world of scientific publishing; she had no connections and it was almost impossible for her to ask for advice or guidance. She was unlikely to ever meet someone who could help her, and she knew it would cause a stir if she plucked up the courage to speak to the curators at the museums she visited since they were always men, and she was an unmarried woman.

  Beatrix was deeply frustrated by all the social restrictions that meant she could not simply ask for the information she wanted without risking gossip, which would inevitably find its way back to her mother’s ears: ‘The clerks seem to be all gentlemen and one must not speak to them, but if they take the line of being shocked it is perfectly awful to a shy person,’ she reflected.

  Finally she had a lucky break when her uncle Sir Henry Roscoe, a highly distinguished chemist who had been knighted in 1884 for his services to science, offered to take Beatrix to see the botanical gardens at Kew. She had been longing to visit the famous gardens and glasshouses to the west of London, but it would have been almost impossible for her to travel so far alone, and so her uncle’s act of kindness meant a great deal to her.

  She was far too afraid to request permission for the excursion from her parents, just in case they refused to allow it, so she did not tell them. Instead, to avoid her uncle knocking on the door and announcing himself to the housemaids, who would be obliged to report the visitor to Mrs Potter, Beatrix slipped unnoticed out of the house early one morning and waited outside in the street for dear Uncle Harry to take her to the train station. It was a daring risk for Beatrix to take, but it worked and she was thrilled to make her successful escape, although the excitement at the illicit journey was nothing compared to her joy at being allowed into Kew Gardens for what would turn out to be the first of a series of successful visits.

  Her impressive knowledge of the plants would eventually lead to several hard-won meetings with the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens and a number of other eminent botanical experts who were of course highly sceptical about this peculiar but well-informed woman who was constantly asking so many pertinent questions. They would have rather ignored her, but Beatrix was nothing if not persistent and flying in the face of convention, she showed her drawings to every scientist she met. Most of them waved her away or passed her on to a colleague. But luckily for Beatrix, Roscoe seemed to share her mischievous delight in upsetting the establishment, and with his help she eventually managed to wangle herself a private audience in front of the director himself, Mr Thiselton-Dyer.

  Beatrix said he had: ‘A dry cynical manner, puffing a cigarette but wide awake and boastful.’ He was initially quite taken aback at finding a woman with such obvious talent, Beatrix’s watercolour drawings were flawless and she was bursting with fresh ideas. Sadly, each of their subsequent encounters were strained and uncomfortable. The idea that a young woman should have taken it upon herself to conduct experiments without any official guidance, and that she had gone on to independently develop her own ideas and theories, confounded the men in charge at Kew.

  Beatrix had already managed to secure herself a ticket to use the library but the Director was highly sceptical of her motives and wrote to Sir Henry urging him not to bring Beatrix back. She was young, an unknown amateur and – shockingly – a female, which apparently left him with no option but to make it abundantly clear that Beatrix was not welcome among the eminent male scientists at Kew Gardens.

  She recalled:

  Uncle Harry said he was a little rough-spoken and knew nothing about the subject. He would not show me his letter. I imagine it contained advice that I should be sent to school before I began to teach other people.

  I fancy he may be something of a misogynist, vide the girls in the garden who are obliged to wear knickerbockers; but it is odious to a shy person to be snubbed as conceited, especially when the shy person happened to be right, and under the temptation of sauciness.

  He did not address me again, which I mention not without resentment, for I was getting dreadfully tired, but I had once or twice an amusing feeling of being regarded as young.

  Fortunately her uncle had faith in Beatrix and her obvious intelligence, and he urged her to gather her thoughts coherently and write a paper on her favourite subject, the spores of moulds, which he offered to read on her behalf to the Linnaean Society of London. Nineteenth-century botany was an exclusively man’s world, so of course there was no question of Beatrix being allowed to present her own research to a society comprised entirely of men, or even for her to be revealed as the true author of the essay, since women were not even allowed to attend the meetings – let alone address the members.

  It was all the motivation that Beatrix needed, and she quickly produced a number of beautiful drawings of fungi and mushroom specimens which she used to illustrate her scientific observations. Henry passed her paper to an expert called George Massee who presented her research to the all-male Linnean Society. Unfortunately, it was never published because they quickly discovered a woman had written it, and Beatrix was exposed. She was so badly humiliated that she started to doubt her own findings and dropped the project; no copy of her original presentation has survived.

  National Trust historian Liz Hunter McFarlane said that painful encounter at Kew Gardens could have changed the entire course of Beatrix’s life; had she received a more positive reaction from the male-dominated scientists in charge that day then she may have devoted her future to mycology:

  Before she decided to focus solely on children’s literature Beatrix was very interested in botany and mycology but found she was unable to present her research papers in public because, as a woman, her ideas would be largely discredited.

  Beatrix worked briefly at Kew Gardens in West London but found the men working alongside her to be difficult, patronising and unable to include her because she was not formally educated.

  Gradually she became worn down by being unable to work as she wanted, and to express and discuss her new ideas. She was exhausted by the process of constantly fighting to make herself heard
and turned away from the scientific research which she found so very fascinating.

  What is clear from this brief battle which Beatrix fought and inevitably lost is that she longed to work; while she really never needed money, she simply wanted to use her brain. Her parents were extremely wealthy and it was never suggested that she should provide for herself, which is why they had not felt the slightest compulsion to give her the same standard of education that was automatically provided for her brother Bertram without question. All that was required of Beatrix was to make a good match, but as Liz Hunter McFarlane explained, she confused men with the way she saw herself as their equal in all things:

  Beatrix was not particularly good looking and she was never going to do that. There was something in her character that meant she could not bring herself to be meek or subservient to a man.

  She was incredibly intelligent although she had never received any formal education, she was well educated but entirely self-taught. The problem was she had nobody to share her great wealth of knowledge with. She was not able to converse freely with people because people simply did not take her seriously.

  She had a phenomenal talent for capturing the natural world around her, the flora and fauna of landscapes and her mycological studies had a remarkable level of accuracy but after her experience at Kew the mycological studies she undertook were just for her own pleasure. She moved away from science after that.

  From then on she feared her life in London would consist simply of vacuous women taking tea at each other’s houses. She thought London was dirty, smoggy and claustrophobic, and she felt restricted by the social constraints placed on women.

  Beatrix knew she would never be taken seriously in the world of science; the few introductions she had made at Kew Gardens had lead to nothing. None of the scientists were prepared to help her, and she was forced to accept that nobody but Bertram would ever share either her enthusiasm for fungus nor the beauties she saw in mould.