by Nadia Cohen
If the tourist attractions, the conferences, the movies and the musicals prove anything, it is that decades after Beatrix’s death any new discovery which sheds light on any aspect of her life is still sure to spark widespread fascination. If any of her handwritten letters are discovered there is always a frenzied bidding war at auctions around the world as experts assess their intrinsic worth.
Any Beatrix Potter memorabilia remains hugely valuable to experts, and can be hotly fought over by collectors and antique dealers. In 2018 the enduring hunger for artifacts even resulted in a dramatic murder when a coin enthusiast killed a fellow collector to get his hands on limited edition Beatrix Potter fifty-pence pieces.
Danny Bostock left Gordon McGhee covered in blood after stabbing him seventeen times when he was disturbed as he tried to steal the rare coins. The culprit, who shared McGhee’s hobby of collecting limited edition Beatrix Potter circulation coins, was convicted of murder and attempted arson and given a life sentence at Ipswich Crown Court in March 2019. Jurors in the grisly three-week trial heard how McGhee had offered Bostock some of his spare collectables, but following a fight in a pub Bostock broke into his flat and attempted to steal the coveted coins instead.
When McGhee came home and interrupted the robbery, Bostock stabbed him in the face and neck, turned on a gas hob and set light to a dishcloth in an attempt to cause an explosion and destroy all evidence of his brutal crime. The majority of McGhee’s prize coin collection has never been found.
In 2017 a 40-ft straw statue of Peter Rabbit built for the 150th anniversary of Beatrix’s birth was burnt down in a suspected arson attack. The tribute weighed 8 tonnes and took more than 1,000 volunteers to build on a farm in Cheshire: ‘The inspiration for the blue jacket came from recycling the blue bags our packaging arrives in,’ revealed a statement on the farm’s website. ‘We hand wove a thin layer of blue bags over the straw and we are really pleased with the outcome. The whole structure weighs in at an impressive 8 tonnes and Peter stands at 38 ft tall, with his 10 ft carrot and 10 ft ears!’
These stories of murder and arson would have utterly scandalised Beatrix who campaigned throughout her life against pubs, alcohol and films – all of which she firmly believed promoted violence. When the Lake District became popular with holidaymakers in search of entertainment there were soon plans to open a string of cinemas, but Beatrix disapproved of anybody wasting time and money watching films which she feared were full of sex and violence. She did not even really approve of children’s films, so it was hardly surprising that when Walt Disney’s animation studios in California eagerly offered to adapt The Tale of Peter Rabbit for a film in 1936, she did not hesitate: the answer was very firmly no. She did not think children should be wasting their time watching cartoons either.
Beatrix almost certainly would not have approved of Hollywood’s later takes on her life either. In 2006 actress Renee Zellweger starred alongside Ewan McGregor in Miss Potter, a biographical film focusing on her early career and romance with Norman. Critics ridiculed director Chris Noonan for casting an American superstar in the leading role, rather than a more down-to-earth English actress who would have represented Beatrix more realistically.
Critic Barbara Ellen wrote scathingly in The Guardian: ‘Beatrix, as played by Renee, was all twee glances and bunny pouts, Bridget Jones in a bustle. Nothing like the woman in the photograph at all.’
However the film was a hit at the box office and has since been credited with kick-starting a revival of Japanese tourists to the area. When Miss Potter was released worldwide, a delegation of officials from the Northwest Regional Development Agency flew to Japan for a series of marketing events which heavily promoted the film in a bid to reverse the substantial fall in the number of Japanese visitors to the area. Ten years earlier, in the mid-1990s, 619,000 Japanese tourists came to the UK every year, spending on average £539 each, and the National Trust had to issue a plea at Hill Top urging tourists to go elsewhere because it could not cope with the numbers. However, a meltdown in the Japanese economy, plus international terrorism scares, meant numbers fell steadily.
‘It’s astonishing the Japanese obsession with Beatrix Potter,’ said Steve Thomas, who ran the Rosemount guesthouse in Windermere at the time. ‘They always ask for directions to Hill Top. Ten years ago they came in droves. But the Japanese numbers have dropped dramatically.’
Regardless of the poor reviews, it worked; Beatrix’s books are often used as teaching aids in Japanese classrooms and she has long been one of the biggest selling children’s authors in Japan. The country even boasts its own Beatrix Potter theme park, a chain of juice bars called Peter Rabbit, and a full-size replica of Hill Top was built on the edge of Tokyo Zoo.
Peter Rabbit remains an iconic children’s character across the globe, particularly in Asia and across the Far East where Beatrix has an almost regal status. Each year around 19 million tourists visit the Lakes, a huge number that takes a heavy toll on the environment. At least a third of all visitors to Hill Top and Hawkshead come from Japan, and since 2010 more than 70,000 Japanese tourists have been asked to donate £5 for to a visitor payback scheme to help fund sustainable tourism in the Lakes.
John Moffat, general manager for the National Trust’s Beatrix Potter properties said:
It’s funny how things can follow a cycle. Beatrix Potter created a little rabbit called Peter that, along with his friends, enabled her to buy acres of land and property in the Lake District, which she then left to the National Trust to look after for future generations.
Today that same little rabbit is helping to raise money from our overseas visitors to looks after those special places and support our ongoing conservation work. I think Beatrix would be very proud.
The project focuses on repairing and maintaining footpaths and preserving traditional skills such as dry stone walling, as well as helping conserve threatened species such as red squirrels and osprey. Under the scheme, organised by the Lake District Japan Forum, thousands of visitors have agreed to support the project when booking holidays, receiving a Peter Rabbit pin badge and certificate in return.
Every two years hundreds of enthusiasts travel from as far afield as Japan, Australia, Europe and USA, as well as from across the UK, to visit Cumbria for the biennial Beatrix Potter Society Conference. Chair Carol Thompson explained:
Throughout the week, original Beatrix Potter works and artefacts will be on show in the hotel for the delegates and members. Beatrix was a multi-talented woman, and our choice of market place traders reflects that. There’s a wide variety of work, and it’s all marvelous. The artefacts we have on show are particularly interesting – these are things that are owned by the Society, but are usually kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. This is our chance to show them off, as it is the first time they have been displayed outside London.
We have items such as letters from Beatrix to Millie Warne, the sister of Norman Warne, to whom Beatrix was engaged to for a short time, and there are greeting cards she designed and printed, and a watercolour that she painted when she was just ten.
It’s all really revealing.
With the inclusion of a children’s art competition, the conference is not only welcoming a broad spectrum of nationalities, but also people from across the age ranges.
Thompson went on:
Dear old Beatrix has always been popular with people in those countries, but I think more recently people have been following our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and reading our newsletter, Pottering About.
With our art competition for local schoolchildren, we wanted to get younger children reading something other than Peter Rabbit or Squirrel Nutkin, and because it was the centenary of The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse, we decided to base it on that. The society exists to promote and highlight the work of Beatrix Potter, so it is great that so many people are involved.
Although Miss Potter was deemed a success in terms of reviving Japanese interest in the Lake District, a more recent fi
lm was not nearly so well received. Sony’s 2017 computer-animated recreation of the Peter Rabbit story did not go down at all well with purist Potter fans. Many critics felt that the CGI film, called Peter Rabbit, in which comedy actor James Corden provided the voice of a wise-cracking, twerking Peter drastically changed the essential character of its eponymous hero. ‘Peter Rabbit emerges as a bully, and there really isn’t any evidence for that in the story,’ said Matthew Dennison, author of Over the Hills and Far Away.
Libby Joy, of the Beatrix Potter Society, agreed that the author would not have approved of something ‘so far removed from her original story.’
Film critic Stuart Heritage wrote in The Guardian:
In a concrete bunker situated miles below civilization lives a crack team of scientists dedicated to one thing and one thing only: ruining Peter Rabbit as comprehensively as they can. There’s something genuinely harrowing about the sight of Peter Rabbit – gentle, Edwardian Peter Rabbit – thoughtlessly injuring some birds, or grabbing a pile of lettuce leaves and making it rain like a banker in a strip club.
Beatrix Potter was a famous stickler for protecting her work – she refused to sell the Peter Rabbit rights to Walt Disney – so there is no way on Earth that she’d have ever given the green light to a slow-motion car crash like this.
In the United States the film was accused of ‘allergy bullying’ for a scene in which the rabbits attack Mr McGregor’s son with blackberries, knowing he will have an anaphylactic reaction. The New Yorker magazine slammed the film for: ‘Violence and a puerile sense of humour. An object lesson in how not to adapt a beloved volume to the screen.’ The review went on to criticise Sony for ‘Replacing the fable-like simplicity of her stories with a knowing veneer of contemporaneity, and in so doing overlooking the suggestive darkness at the core of Potter’s work.’
Prior to this, Peter Rabbit had been made into a children television series for the BBC’s CBeebies channel, which Libby Joy said had also ‘Taken all sorts of liberties’ in order to make it exciting and keep children watching.’
Dennison added that Beatrix would not have been keen on the idea of her work appearing on television or film, and suggested the only successful adaptation of her work she may have enjoyed personally would have been the ballet:
You take the books and translate them into abstract language, that is mostly visual. I think the ballet does work.
The problem with putting the creations on screen is that they become cutesy, which is really quite un-Potter. Very early on in her career, she decided to design dolls based on her characters, so that no one else could get it wrong.
She was not exactly possessive, but she had a very clear idea in her head of how the books should be. They came about through really close, careful work. There was nothing accidental or spontaneous about them. And she was a bit beady – she was tough with her publishers on things like how much white space or text there was. Every single detail she really thought about.
She’s not cutesy – bad behaviour gets punished, and she’s quite contemptuous of Jemima Puddle-Duck, who only wants a child. She’s not a cuddly person, and the problem is when her characters are translated to the screen, the danger is they become cuddly.
It may never have been her intention, but what Beatrix created remains an unrivaled and widely acclaimed library of little books which has yet to be equaled in the fiercely competitive world of children’s literature. Whether she would have approved or not, today, every fifteen seconds someone somewhere in the world will buy a Beatrix Potter book. And there’s little doubt which tale it is likely to be.
She may have resisted being synonymous with Peter in the early days, but late in life, writing to a young admirer, Beatrix cheerfully described herself as ‘The Peter Rabbit Lady’, and posterity has not disagreed with her. It wouldn’t dare.
The engagement photograph of Beatrix Potter and William Heelis. She met her husband, a solicitor from Hawkshead, when he acted for her in the purchase of Castle Farm. They were happily married from October 1913 until her death in 1943.
One of the earliest photos of Beatrix, taken by her father Rupert who was fascinated by photography and often made his children pose while he got to grips with his latest equipment.
Beatrix as the proud new owner of Hill Top in Sawrey, the first of many properties, which she originally bought as a holiday home to share with her former fiancé Norman Warne.
Beatrix later bought the neighbouring property, Castle Farm, for her and William to make their marital home, although she always kept Hill Top for herself.
Beatrix’s bedroom at Hill Top, where she often retreated for occasional nights after the wedding, and where she died with William by her side in December 1943.
Beatrix’s Lakeland home now, which she bequeathed to the National Trust as a museum, on the strict instruction that it be left exactly as it was during her lifetime.
Beatrix’s beloved kitchen garden, the inspiration for Mr McGregor’s famous vegetable garden in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
The original version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which started out as an illustrated letter from Beatrix to her former governess’ son Eric Moore when he was ill.
A rather awkward looking family portrait taken by Rupert during one of the Potter’s lengthy summer holidays. Now on display at Hill Top.
A small sample of the many insect specimens collected by Beatrix and her brother Bertram to study the anatomy of animals.
The office of WH Heelis and Co. in Hawkshead, where Beatrix met William. It is now a gallery displaying much of her original work.
The desk where Beatrix wrote most of her famous stories in her study at Hill Top, surrounded by paintings by her brother Bertram.
