The Real Beatrix Potter

by Nadia Cohen

  Caroline was three years younger than Beatrix but much more independent, and briskly confident in a wide range of strongly held views which often seemed quite controversial to her less worldly cousin. Caroline was a strident feminist who spoke disparagingly against the institution of marriage and expressed a blatant disinterest in having children, both of which were exceptionally shocking things for a young woman of her social standing to say at that time.

  Caroline was also contemptuous of religion and the clergy, and left Beatrix dumbfounded when she taught her all about social injustices, such as factory workers and farm labourers being paid appallingly low wages and the unsanitary living conditions they were forced to endure. These were issues that Beatrix had never considered before, and she was eager to learn more. Caroline and her father, a magistrate, asked Beatrix a barrage of probing questions about the way the Potters treated their servants and what their duties entailed, even wanting to know if Helen brushed her own hair or had someone to do it for her.

  Despite Caroline’s political views and scathing opinions about men, Beatrix still privately believed that a good marriage would be an achievement, at least in the eyes of her parents, although she did not feel it was ever likely to happen for her. Considering some of Caroline’s more modern ways of thinking, Beatrix wrote: ‘Latter day fate ordains that many women shall be unmarried and self-contained, nor should I personally dream to complain, but I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy marriage is the crown of a woman’s life, and that it is unwise on the part of a nice-looking young lady to proclaim a pronounced dislike of babies and all child cousins.’

  Overall Beatrix very much enjoyed the eye-opening trip, and took the opportunity to take as many photographs as she could of local wildlife and children with their pet rabbits so she could study them at home. She had been allowed to borrow some of her father’s precious camera equipment, including a tripod, which she took around the villages surrounding Harescombe Grange, capturing images of churches, farms, cottages and a particularly idyllic-looking cider mill – all of which would at some point appear in her books.

  The highlight of her stay by far came one afternoon when some local ladies joined Beatrix and Caroline for tea, and they all discussed the strange story they had heard about a tailor in the nearby town of Gloucester who had left a coat cut out, but unmade, in his shop one weekend. When he returned the following Monday morning, the tailor was astounded to find the coat finished. Pinned to the fabric was a scrap of paper that read ‘No more twist.’ Nobody could work out who had written the cryptic message or why. Beatrix listened intently to every detail of this baffling story, but of course said nothing, she was still far too shy, although she had absorbed and memorised every detail.

  A few days later she urged Caroline to please take her on a trip into the town, and asked to be shown where the tailor lived. Caroline pointed out the house and was highly amused when her supposedly sophisticated London cousin simply plonked herself down in the street to sketch out the house; passersby were most perplexed at the sight of Beatrix perched on a stranger’s doorstep.

  Caroline was even more confused the next day when Beatrix asked to be taken to see several more old cottages around the area, ideally homes belonging to friends who might be kind enough to invite this strange lady inside to inspect the fireplace, and allow her to wander freely around their bedrooms, and would not mind her opening wardrobe doors or peering into their kitchen dressers.

  Beatrix was also on a mission to meet the tailor himself as the new story was beginning to take shape in her mind. She had the background scenery in place, but she still required a visual image of her leading man.

  Of course neither she nor Caroline could have had any idea what a global phenomenon The Tailor of Gloucester would eventually become, but the project seemed fun and together they scoured the streets for the man Beatrix hoped would inspire her fictional tailor. Their search was fruitless and it was not until she was back in London walking through Chelsea that Beatrix found him. Glancing through a window, she noticed an old man wearing glasses sitting cross legged on a counter, sewing a garment. Beatrix was immediately intrigued. He seemed perfect for the part but she needed to take a closer look. Thinking fast she quickly tore a button off her coat and went into his shop asking for his help. The tailor cheerfully agreed to the small repair, giving Beatrix a proper chance to study him and his surroundings closely while she waited. Trying her best not to appear rude, she eagerly took in every detail of this quirky looking character. From the spectacles perched on the end of his nose to his curled tape measure, they would all appear in the finished story.

  The first draft was written as an illustrated letter for Noel Moore’s sister, Freda, who was ill in bed at the time. Beatrix dispatched it, along with her detailed paintings, to the Moore’s house in Wandsworth with a note explaining:

  My dear Freda, Because you are fond of fairy tales, and have been ill, I have made you a story all for yourself – a new one that nobody has read before.

  And the queerest thing about it is – that I heard it in Gloucestershire, and that it is true – at least about the tailor, the waistcoat and the ‘No more twist’!

  While Beatrix felt quite sure in her own mind that The Tailor of Gloucester was actually a far better story than The Tale of Peter Rabbit, she had no idea whether Warnes would have any interest in publishing a second book, or if they did whether they would want to make too many changes – she was especially worried that they might remove the nursery rhymes sung by the mice on Christmas Eve. She never imagined it would be very successful anyway, so instead of bothering Warnes with the idea she decided not to tell them about the story and had The Tailor of Gloucester printed privately herself, paying £40 for 500 copies.

  When she realised her friends were clamouring for copies of the self-published books, she changed her mind about having it printed professionally. Shortly before Christmas 1902, she found the courage to send a copy of the book to Norman Warne, who was now tasked with personally handling her work at the publishing house. She was still lacking confidence in her abilities at this early stage of her career: ‘I have not showed it to anyone, as I was rather afraid people might laugh at the words,’ she told Norman with characteristic uncertainty:

  I thought it a very pretty story when I heard it in the country, but it has proved rather beyond my capacity for working out. All the same it is quite possible you may like it. Things look less silly in type.

  I hope that at all events you will not think the story very silly. I undertook the book with very cheerful courage, but I have not the least judgment whether it is satisfactory now that it is done. I am afraid it is going to fall rather flat here.

  Norman was quick to respond, brimming with enthusiastic praise and entirely confident that they had another sure-fire hit on their hands. Beatrix was flattered by Norman’s kind and encouraging words, and was also delighted to learn that he did not have any plans to edit out any of the sections or characters she liked: ‘You have paid it the compliment of taking the plot very seriously; and I perceive that your criticisms are just, because I was quite sure in advance that you would cut out the tailor and all my favourite rhymes,’ she wrote to him,‘which was one of the reasons why I printed it myself. If it is a success it might be improved and reprinted someday. At present it is in most request amongst old ladies.’

  Beatrix realised she had now become a fully fledged author and illustrator; she had two professionally published books to her name, and was gradually becoming well known around the London literary scene. It was a strange feeling and she still could not quite believe that Warnes would be prepared to stake a heavy financial investment in achieving her dreams. She was so unsure that she even went so far as to suggest to Norman that if he was not confident that her next book would do as well as The Tale of Peter Rabbit then she would cover the publishing costs herself.

  She explained in a hurried letter dashed off as she prepared to make the long journey up to Cumbria for a
nother family holiday:

  I think I could at least try to do better than Peter Rabbit, and if you did not care to risk another book, I could pay for it. I very much enjoyed doing the rabbit book.

  I would go on with it in any event because I want something to do. I did not mean to ask you to say you would take another book.

  As the weeks wore on however, and sales continued to steadily soar, Beatrix was gradually beginning to have a little more faith in her abilities. Feeling bolder, she suggested that yet another of her illustrated letters, which she had sent almost ten years earlier to Noel Moore’s brother Eric about a frog who enjoyed fishing called Jeremy Fisher, might also make another good book. She explained to Norman: ‘I should like to do Mr Jeremy Fisher too, some day, and I think I could make something of him; though I am afraid your remark that the story is very interesting must have been sarcastic!’

  Once Norman had successfully managed to convince Beatrix that he meant it when he praised her, and that he was in fact deadly serious when it came to nurturing her talents, Beatrix went on to tell him about another story idea that had come to her while visiting her cousins the Hyde Parkers at their lavish estate, Melford Hall in Suffolk.

  Beatrix adored her regular stays at Melford Hall, and it was there, decades later, that four of her never-seen-before drawings were discovered by chance. The secret sketches had been hidden away, tucked inside books for safe keeping – perhaps by Beatrix herself – and were found at Melford when Josephine Waters, a house manager at the stately home, was doing some cleaning work.

  I was moving a bookcase together with a colleague, and whilst we were going through some of the books we discovered a drawing tucked inside, it was classic Potter style and we immediately knew it was one of hers. It was an absolutely spine-tingling moment, I remember all the hairs on the back on my neck stood up as we realised what we’d found. Working with a collection like this, it was a dream come true.

  Waters said the exact dates of when the drawings had been done could not be precisely known, but she confirmed that Beatrix would take extended holidays at Melford Hall between 1899 and 1916. When the four drawings were unearthed in 2016 Lady Hyde Parker, who still lives at Melford Hall with her husband, Sir Richard, agreed to allow the National Trust to put the rare finds on display.

  After her trip to Melford Hall, Beatrix also continued trying to perfect her squirrel drawings later that summer during a family holiday at the Lingholm Estate near Keswick in Cumbria. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tailor of Gloucester and The Tale of Jeremy Fisher had all been selling remarkably well, and she was on a roll.

  Spurred on by Norman’s encouraging words, she wanted to show him the squirrel story as soon as she could. During the trip Beatrix had spent hours carefully watching the playful squirrels scampering around the grounds of the grand property, and the creatures antics reminded her of a legend she had heard years earlier about American squirrels who sailed down a river on a raft using their tails as sails. She would eventually embellish the story to create The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, adding a character based on her brother’s pet owl, who would often have a mouse tail hanging out of his mouth.

  To test the waters once again she sent another illustrated letter to Annie’s children with a drawing of a red squirrel she named Nutkin. As The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin began to take shape, Beatrix also tested it out on various other children she knew, who all seemed to agree that it should be made shorter. Beatrix trusted children to tell her the truth, so after cutting the words down, the story of a red squirrel and his companions who set off by raft to Owl Island, paddling with their tails, was published to immediate acclaim.

  Other sketches Beatrix made while staying at Lingholm included one of her pet rabbit lying in front of an ornate fireplace in the grandly decorated house, and it has since been suggested that she wrote other Peter Rabbit tales while staying at the house, although they were never published. In 2013 the house was granted Grade II listed status in tribute to Beatrix’s dedicated work in trying to preserve the area. Former culture minister Ed Vaizey explained the decision by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, saying:

  Beatrix Potter’s tales are loved and cherished by people young and old around the world and Lingholm as the inspiration for so many of these classic children’s stories deserves to be protected.

  But as well as its historical association the house itself is remarkable for the quality of its design and the fact much of the interior remains intact.

  By the time The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin appeared in 1903, Beatrix was receiving sacks of fan mail, usually in the form of enthusiastic letters from young readers telling her how much they were enjoying the books and pleading for more. The children’s letters bought Beatrix enormous amusement, and knowing that the books were bringing pleasure to youngsters was the main reason that she was so insistent that the price of the books should never be increased, so that they would always be easily affordable for all children. Warnes may have been keen on more than one occasion to raise the price of the books beyond a shilling each, but personal profit was not something that ever motivated Beatrix. She was much more interested in promoting children’s literacy than boosting her own bank balance: ‘I shall always have a strong preference for cheap books myself, even if they did not pay; all my little friends happen to be shilling people. I do dislike the modern fashion of giving children expensive things which they don’t look at twice,’ she explained to her publishers.

  Most of the children who wrote to Beatrix begged her to please write more stories about Peter Rabbit, since no matter how many more books she published, he would always be the most popular character Beatrix created. They all wanted to know what happened to the naughty little bunny next. Beatrix Potter told a young fan in 1908 that she was ‘trying dreadfully hard to think about another story about Peter’, because ‘all the little boys and girls like the rabbits best.’ She told another young correspondent that she had been attempting to write a sequel, but had not yet succeeded in coming up with a good enough plot.

  She wrote: ‘I thinked and thinked and thinked last year; but I didn’t think enough to fill a book! …So I made a story about Jemima Puddle-Duck instead – and it will be in the shops very soon. I hope you will like it.’ In this sweet, four-page illustrated letter to a boy called William Warner, which went on sale in 2016 at an online marketplace called The Saleroom, with an auction estimate of £4,000 to £6,000, Beatrix wrote about the house where she was staying at the time:

  There are lots of wild rabbits in the garden. There is a quite black rabbit who lives at the top of a bank opposite my bedroom window, and when I am dressing in the morning I can see him sitting on a stump washing his face with his paws.

  I have got a rabbit, but it is brown; I call it Joseph. It is very tame & licks my hands, but I think if it got out, it would run away into the wood. It lives in a hutch and has a nice little yard where it can run about and eat grass. A little brown mouse called Dusty is running about the table while I write, it has been sniffing at this letter. I am sure it wants to send its love to you!

  The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin was released to great acclaim, but Beatrix was not there to enjoy being the toast of the town. Her parents had insisted she join them for a three-month family holiday at Fawe Park in Keswick, and although she loved the Lake District, three months felt like an awfully long time to be away from London – and Norman: ‘Our summer holiday is always a weary business’, she told him, although she was finding yet more inspiration up there.

  Beatrix told Norman that she had hit upon a new story idea for him about her own well-travelled, tame and fastidiously clean pet hedgehog, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

  Chapter Eight

  Halfway through that interminably long holiday when Beatrix longed to be back in London, she received a hefty royalty cheque for The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. It is not known exactly how much she earned, but it was the most money she had ever made. She was proud of herself, but with typical modesty she put the success d
own to Norman’s clever marketing strategy rather than her own talents as an author and artist: ‘I am rather surprised to hear about Nutkin,’ she wrote to him. ‘It seems a great deal of money for such little books. I cannot help thinking it is a great deal owing to your spreading them about so well. It is pleasant to feel I could earn my own living.’

  While she used the remaining six weeks to sketch more background scenery, the plotline of the story about her fussy pet hedgehog Mrs Tiggy-Winkle had not developed very far and she was forced to admit to Norman that she would have nothing to show him on her return to London, despite her lengthy absence:

  I have not begun on the hedgehog book yet, I am ashamed to say; but I think it is not a bad thing to take a holiday. I have been working very industriously drawing fossils at the museum, upon the theory that a change of work is the best sort of rest! But I shall be quite keen to get to work on the books again.

  Part of the problem was that the real Mrs Tiggy-Winkle was not much good at holding the poses and postures that Beatrix wanted to capture. To Beatrix’s great frustration she kept scurrying away or dozing off, and there was no hope of her keeping on the tiny clothes Beatrix wanted to dress her in, so she ended up fashioning a model hedgehog out of wool to sketch from instead: ‘Mrs Tiggy as a model is comical,’ she explained to Norman.

  So long as she can go to sleep on my knee she is delighted, but if she is propped up on end for half an hour, she first begins to yawn pathetically, and then she does bit! Nevertheless she is a dead person; just like a very fat, rather stupid little dog.

  The hedgehog drawings are turning out very comical. I have dressed up a cotton wool dummy for convenience of drawing the clothes. It is such a little figure of fun; it terrifies my rabbit; but Hunca Munca is always at pulling out the stuffing. I think it should make a good book.