by Nadia Cohen
After researching the matter further, Hanks then discovered three handwritten manuscripts in children’s school notebooks, which were in the archive of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum along with a rough colour sketch of Kitty-in-Boots. ‘The tale really is the best of Beatrix Potter,’ she said, ‘It has double identities, colourful villains and a number of favourite characters from other tales (including Mr. Tod, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Ribby and Tabitha Twitchit). Most excitingly, our treasured, mischievous Peter Rabbit makes an appearance – albeit older, slower and portlier.’
Beatrix had been working from typeset strips of text, which she would cut up and paste into dummy books in order to decide where to put her illustrations. Beatrix had got Kitty as far as this stage before abandoning the project, and she had penciled in corrections but only seemed to have managed one rather unfinished watercolour painting, as well as a sketchy study for the frontispiece, showing a charcoal-coloured cat with a gun over her shoulder, wearing a hunting jacket and a bright red tie. Penguin Random House recently published the new version of the story with new drawings provided by Quentin Blake, one of Britain’s most renowned illustrators. The story begins: ‘Once upon a time there was a serious, well-behaved young black cat. It belonged to a kind old lady who assured me that no other cat could compare with Kitty. She lived in constant fear that Kitty might be stolen – “I hear there is a shocking fashion for black cat-skin muffs; wherever is Kitty gone to? Kitty! Kitty!”’
Hanks said Beatrix had always fully intended to publish the tale but the timing could not have been worse – her marriage to William was soon followed by the declaration of war, and concentrating on her farming business had got in the way. Those were not the only reasons that she never finished The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots. Beatrix also felt that her publishers were less than enthusiastic about it.
‘I was a good deal damped by neither you nor Fruing seeming to care much for the story,’ she wrote to Harold in July 1914 as she was struggling to find motivation to finish the story and time to complete the watercolour illustrations that Warnes wanted for every page. To add to her distractions, Beatrix’s father died later that year at the age of 81, following a short illness that began a few months after her wedding. Rupert’s death was not unexpected and no great tragedy, and Beatrix took the news very calmly in her stride but she knew her mother would be even more demanding than ever now she was a widow. Beatrix felt obliged to write to Warne just hours after Rupert’s death, explaining that was the reason for a further delay with Kitty: ‘I am sorry I have never been able to attend to business,’ the letter read, ‘He died very peacefully last evening.’
Rupert Potter had been an outspoken and difficult man when he was well, and his irritability and bad-tempered outbursts had only worsened when he was in physical pain towards the end of his life: ‘He was never very patient of discomfort, and his trials were very great,’ she wrote to Millie after his death. Beatrix had been made to feel guilty for leaving London so soon after her wedding, and even more so when her mother was grieving the loss of her husband. Alone in Bolton Gardens, Helen urged her daughter to come home to help her. Beatrix was concerned about her mother, and wrote: ‘She will miss him dreadfully, they had been so constantly together, and with few outside interests.’
Then, with the war raging on, Beatrix’s brother Bertram suddenly died in Scotland. The tragedy was a total shock to Beatrix and left both her and her mother devastated. Bertram had been Beatrix’s only ally when she had faced the toughest times of her life. He had spoken up on his sister’s behalf when she wanted to marry William when she wanted to move to the Lake District, and when she wanted to stay there. She often sought Bertram’s sensible advice on farming matters too. They shared a mutual understanding of how to handle their parents, and although Beatrix did not see Bertram often, they wrote to each other constantly and without his support and guidance she felt bereft.
She wrote mournfully to Millie: ‘I shall miss my brother sadly. We seldom met, but we wrote regularly and we could help each other.’
In another letter she told how the sad news had not really sunk in: ‘I don’t think I yet realise that Bertram is gone – in his prime and in his usefulness. I do think he found true happiness in hard useful manual work. He is buried like the Grasmere folk in the bend of a stream – a flowery graveyard with a ruined ivy-grown church, and graves of the Covenanters.’
It was a bleak time, with Bertram and Rupert gone. Constant news of men falling in battle meant that it became clear that many of the local men Beatrix knew would never return from the war. Although the guns and fighting felt far from Sawrey, she was as concerned about the situation as anyone else. She wrote to Harold explaining yet another interruption to the work he was still waiting for: ‘Dear Mr. Warne, I wonder how you are getting on in these bad times? I tried a little drawing in winter, but could not stick to it, also could not see, my eyes are gone so long sighted & not clear nearby. They are alright for general purposes, like poultry & outdoor work – I suppose I shall have to take to spectacles.’
She had never needed to distort or exaggerate the features of the animals to give them their distinctive characters before, she only enhanced their natural beauty with a little humour, which children responded to instantly. But as she turned fifty, Beatrix could no longer avoid the thorny issue of her failing eyesight, which she had mentioned to Harold in her last letter, and was persuaded that it might be best at this stage to commission another artist to illustrate the next book she was working on, called The Oakmen. Beatrix and the artist chosen for the job, Ernest Aris, were soon locked in a bitter creative dispute because she felt his paintings of her characters were too bold, and not like the subtle, delicate watercolours she was famous for. The tense working relationship between the two came to light many decades later in a revealing exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, called The Tale of Beatrix Potter and Ernest Aris, which explained how Beatrix had initially sent Aris a set of pencil designs with precise instructions detailing the colours and composition she wanted. She wrote to him praising his previous work, and giving plenty of details about how she would have illustrated the work herself if she could – such as giving the oakmen characters red clothes. For some reason, Beatrix deliberately concealed from him both her true identity and the full plot of the story.
Initially she seemed pleased with his efforts, but at some point between receiving the paintings in September 1916 and that Christmas she decided to ditch his work and do the illustrations herself. Mr Aris, who probably suspected who he was actually corresponding with, dared to tell Beatrix that he thought her proposed colour scheme was ‘A little on the sombre side,’ and that bright colours were ‘Essential for children.’
It was a bold move. Beatrix never took kindly to criticism and this did not go down well with her at all. Their relationship immediately soured, and she told Warnes ‘His animals are not good,’ and he was removed from the project at once. Matters took a dramatic turn for the worse the following year when Warnes accused the artist of plagiarising Beatrix’s work for his own ends. It emerged that Mr Aris’s latest book, The Treasure Seekers, featured a rather familiar rabbit character called Peter. Aris argued that The Oakmen was not an original story either.
Emma Laws, Curator of Children’s Literature at the Victoria and Albert Museum, explained the rivalry between them:
Beatrix Potter’s drawings have a very distinct look and what she had in her mind was clearly very different to what Aris produced. Aris’s drawings are much bolder and more colourful than Potter’s and lack that all-important sense of place that characterises her best work. But I think he had a difficult job as he was working in the dark with only a few sketches and no knowledge of the story. If the book had been published it may have been an incongruous collaboration.
Beatrix persevered, and Warnes were loyal and patient until she eventually, half-heartedly, offered them a manuscript: ‘I’m afraid it’s all I can offer this spring,’ she said, ‘So make the
best of it!’
Amid swirling doubts about its originality, the book and both sets of illustrations were never seen by the public until they were displayed in London in January 2016. Beatrix may not have been particularly proud of the story, but when her fans finally read it they were thrilled. Actress Patricia Routledge, patron of the Beatrix Potter Society, remarked years later: ‘She was a wonderful story-teller. There’s nothing like it, tell a good story, tell it clearly, tell it well and you’ve got an audience. She was very scientific about her approach to animals. She was a bunny-boiler. She and her brother boiled a bunny to find out what the structure was like.’
There was no question that Warnes would ever consider refusing to publish anything that Beatrix submitted to the firm. She was more than just another author, she had long ago become part of their family, and all her books had been guaranteed bestsellers. Everyone at Warnes knew only too well, and often to their own cost, that Beatrix could be cantankerous and sometimes even downright difficult to deal with, but sales had already soared into their millions and it was clear Beatrix could never have kept up with the demand for more little books even if she had wanted to.
The little white books and their distinctive watercolour drawings were established nursery classics and had already become instantly recognisable to not one, but two generations of children growing up all over the world. Unwittingly Beatrix had created memorable stories which had become as familiar to children as traditional fairytales or Bible stories.
Warnes’ office in London was flooded with constant pleas from her loyal readers across the globe, begging her to produce more and more of her beloved whimsical tales. Her readers and her publishers would have liked her to carry on and on forever. Unfortunately by this stage Beatrix was lacking motivation to put pen to paper, and as the intricate details of the natural world became increasingly difficult for her to recreate, she had little choice but to stop trying. As she aged, Beatrix struggled to still manage the exquisite and luxurious works of art she had produced as a young woman, and her fascination with very small animals was being replaced by a more functional working relationship with large farmyard animals.
At this stage, the doughty Mrs Heelis had a practical, rather than romantic, approach to wildlife. She was no longer feeding baby bunnies saucers of milk, she was bidding on heifers at cattle markets. Mice were vermin to her now and gone were the days of keeping hedgehogs as pets, although Beatrix has since been credited with saving hedgehogs in Cumbria. Ecologist and author Hugh Warwick explained:
If we were to deconstruct the hedgehog – smelly, anti-social, nocturnal, spine-covered and reputed to be (though not actually) flea-ridden it would be considered an animal hard to love. But Beatrix Potter managed to sprinkle some magic over the hedgehog, transforming it into the irresistible companion of our gardens.
Take a moment to think of what she has managed to achieve above and beyond making millions of people around the world happy with her beautiful books. She has helped shift our perception of the hedgehog, make it now the charismatic icon of the country, and catalyse a conservation movement that helps not just the hedgehog but so much more garden wildlife besides.
Beatrix’s fantasy world had been dreamt up years earlier to fill the long and empty hours in London, but now she was a landowner and a contented wife, and the physical demands of manual labour left her too exhausted to imagine fluffy ducklings washing beneath rhubarb leaves. In short, Beatrix had lost much of her innocence, but she was simply far too busy to waste time mourning its passing.
A few more books followed as Beatrix half-heartedly continued to draw inspiration from the world around her, although it was all a little different now. The centre of Beatrix’s rural life was the warm kitchen of her cosy farmhouse, with its scrubbed flagstone floor and cooker with saucepans bubbling on the hob. Later illustrations featured details such as her own knitted kettle holder, her teapot and rag rugs, the flower-patterned wallpaper, plump feather cushions and the crockery she had carefully arranged on the dresser when she moved into Hill Top. She would often cover her fictional tables with freshly baked pies, a jug of fresh milk and yellow butter on a dish, so accurately brought to life readers felt like they could almost smell them. These domestic images were perfect records of the contentment Beatrix was relishing with her husband at that stage in her life. Beatrix and William would meet back at the fireside each evening when he returned from his office in Hawkshead and she came in from the farm at the end of the working day.
She no longer wished to spend any spare time she had discussing printing schedules, the merits of her painting or talent for storytelling. She had left her old life behind years ago, and she thought it was disrespectful to her husband when letters continued to arrive addressed to Miss Potter and not Mrs Heelis. Yet beyond Sawrey, Miss Potter was far from forgotten. Book sales were showing no sign of slowing down.
She was still sometimes praised as a serious artist, not simply a children’s book illustrator, and was considered a major creative talent, often being compared to the most important and high profile writers and artists around.
The accolades did not mean much to Beatrix anymore, she rarely bothered to read appreciative press cuttings and glowing features which were forwarded on to her from the offices in London: ‘Great rubbish, absolute bosh!’ was her opinion of a piece in The Listener magazine by Janet Adam Smith, who had ranked her among a number of influential British artists including Constable and the landscape painter Samuel Palmer, who also focused on expanses of Northern scenery. Smith wrote: ‘She has in full measure Samuel Palmer’s gift of suffusing a landscape with innocence, happiness and serenity.’
It was high praise indeed, but meaningless to Beatrix who always dismissed such effusive accolades as nonsense. After receiving a copy of the article from Warnes, she promptly replied: ‘I revere the names of the immortals and I have this much in common with them, that like them I have tried to do my best, and taken satisfaction in so doing, from love of painting…but to compare the manner of my work with theirs is silliness.’
Smith also sent Beatrix a copy of her article, accompanied by a gushing letter saying: ‘Your illustrations often give the reader the same kind of pleasure as the pictures of these earlier English artists do. I read somewhere the other day that Constable, asked by a friend what he was working on, said: “I am trying to out the Dewy Freshness into it”; and that phrase, the Dewy Freshness, did also seem to describe some of your illustrations.’
Beatrix was not easily won over. She did not particularly appreciate being compared to any other artists, no matter how well intentioned it may have been. She had little patience for this or any other type of flattery and fired off another witheringly brusque reply:
I have too much common sense to resent a suggestion that my painting manner is not original, but founded on another painter’s manner; but I think it is silly to suggest it is founded on Constable – a great artist with a broad style. When I was young it was still permissible to admire the Pre-Raphaelites; their somewhat niggling but absolutely genuine admiration for copying natural details did certainly influence me.
The opinion which an artist or writer holds of his own work is always interesting, but it is unwise to accept it as the only criterion.
Neither was Beatrix especially thrilled when Graham Greene wrote a scathing essay about her, which appeared in the London Mercury in 1933, comparing her with the author E.M. Forster, who, he claimed, similarly ‘Put aside sex and death with a gentle detachment’, and said that the action in her stories appeared to be observed by ‘An acute and unromantic observer.’
Beatrix never really cared for any such critical analysis of her work, and after Greene’s essay was published she wrote him a reportedly ‘acid letter’, denying his suggestion that The Tale of Mr Tod had been prompted by emotional trauma. Beatrix told him that she had in fact been ill at the time, and sharply dismissing ‘the Freudian school’ of criticism that she took Greene’s essay to exemplify.
Privately, Beatrix was still somewhat astounded by her success and still did not really believe or understand why her stories were so popular: ‘I believe my attitude of mind towards my own successful publications has been comical; at one time I loathed Peter Rabbit, I was so sick of him. I still cannot understand his perennial success.’
Despite her popularity, Beatrix was still unsure of her own talents, and wrote to a friend: ‘It is a fact that I could not appraise my own manuscript. Sometimes I thought it was a remarkable work; other times I thought it was such absolute bosh I felt shy about having it printed at all. You may ask, why print them at all, then? I suppose, vanity, and the desire to see them in the dignity of printed type, without the expense of myself paying for the printing.’
However much she may have protested, readers around the world adored her much-loved illustrations which they felt depicted a particularly unique snapshot of life in rural England, and in the years after her marriage Beatrix also started to find herself under some pressure to please her growing army of readers across the Atlantic.
Chapter Sixteen
What had been clear for some time now was that Beatrix was reluctant to waste valuable time sitting at her desk coming up with new stories when she could have been outside farming, but she could not ignore the demands from the outside world – particularly her loyal following in America. Beatrix regularly received bulging postbags from children in the United States, where her books were – and still are – phenomenally popular, but there was certainly no question of her setting sail across the Atlantic. The idea of foreign travel for business or pleasure baffled her, and Beatrix found it difficult to muster even the faintest enthusiasm for a country she had never visited, and certainly did not intend to discover at this stage of her life.
