BEATRIX POTTER
The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit
ELIZABETH BUCHAN
FREDERICK WARNE
Contents
1 ‘My Unloved Birthplace’
2 Early Struggles
3 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
4 Success with Writing
5 A Tragic Love Affair
6 Buying a Farm
7 A Proposal of Marriage
8 Married Life
9 Friends in America
10 Living in the Country
11 Old Age
12 The Debt We Owe to Beatrix Potter
Acknowledgements
Booklist: The Peter Rabbit Books
This book is dedicated to my parents
Beatrix Potter as a young woman.
Beatrix painted this picture of the view from her London home on a wintry day.
1
‘My Unloved Birthplace’
‘My stories will be as immortal as those of Hans Christian Andersen,’ Beatrix Potter once told a slightly astonished relation.
She was right; but even she would be surprised by quite how many people all over the world read and enjoy her books. For it is not only children who love and cherish the stories of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggy-winkle, Jemima Puddle-duck and all the other animals who have become household names. Older readers, too, find themselves captivated by the magic of Beatrix Potter’s beautiful illustrations and the simple directness of her prose.
In many ways, her story is a remarkable and satisfying one, because it was only quite late in life that she achieved real happiness. She was born into an age which did not encourage women to be successful or independent. From being a shy and rather lonely girl, whose sole purpose was to be a dutiful daughter to her parents, Beatrix grew into an astonishingly successful author who was able to earn money from her books. It was then that she felt able to break away from her family and do what she wanted to do: to marry the man of her choice and to live a peaceful, hard-working life as a farmer and sheep-breeder in the Lake District.
Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 and lived at No. 2, Bolton Gardens, in London—‘my unloved birthplace’ as she was to refer to it many years later, after it had been bombed during the Second World War. Tall and rather gloomy, the house was situated in a respectable and well-to-do area. It was the kind of house that needed a lot of work and a lot of servants to keep it in order.
Beatrix’s father, Rupert Potter, in his lawyer’s wig.
Mr and Mrs Potter were wealthy. Both their families had made money in cotton production in the North of England—an ancestry of which Beatrix was very proud. All her life, she was to admire the tough, levelheaded practicality of the Northerner. Rupert Potter, her father, had no need to work, although he was a qualified barrister. He and his wife lived a life of leisured and comfortable ease.
In many ways they took a great deal of trouble with Beatrix and her brother, Bertram, who was six years younger. But like many Victorians, Mr and Mrs Potter simply did not consider altering their habits to suit their children. After all, Beatrix had a clean, starched frock every morning and ‘cotton stockings striped round and round like a zebra’s legs’. She had a black wooden doll, and every afternoon Beatrix was taken for a walk by a nursemaid in the park. She was well looked after, compared to many children who lived in terrible poverty not far from Bolton Gardens.
Helen Potter, Beatrix’s mother.
Beatrix and Bertram became great companions and shared many interests, in particular, a fascination with animals. When he was old enough Bertram was sent away to school, leaving Beatrix on her own. Mr Potter had a circle of political and artistic friends and acquaintances, so Beatrix grew up knowing interesting and varied adult company. She was particularly fond of Mr Gaskell whose wife, Mrs Gaskell, was the well-known novelist. Beatrix once knitted a scarf for him. She got to know John Bright, the politician, and John Everett Millais, the painter who painted the famous picture of ‘Bubbles’, and she often visited his studio. Friends of her own age, however, were definitely not encouraged because Mrs Potter had a fear of germs!
Beatrix aged about four, with William Gaskell.
Beatrix with her brother Bertram.
As a result, Beatrix was never allowed the opportunity to develop any really special friendships—the kind where you can share secrets and loyally stick together. This is reflected in the sad, rather wistful note that sometimes creeps into her secret diary, which she began writing in code when she was fifteen. Nor was this lack of friendship compensated for by a truly intimate and loving relationship with her parents. She was fond of them, and of her father in particular. As she grew older a companionship developed between the two, but with Helen Potter, her mother, she was always to maintain a distance.
Beatrix, then, had to rely on her own resources from a very early age for her amusement. She was a rather unusual child with a strong vein of practical common sense and artistic gifts. Self-reliance came naturally to her.
Like many girls of her time and class, she was not sent to school. Instead she was taught by governesses. ‘Thank goodness …’ she once reflected, ‘I was never sent to school … it would have rubbed off some of the originality.’
At first a Miss Hammond supervised her reading, writing and arithmetic. ‘There is no general word to express the feelings I have always entertained towards arithmetic,’ said Beatrix. Later when Miss Hammond left, the Potters employed Annie Carter who was only three years older than her pupil. They got on very well and when Annie departed to get married and live in Wandsworth, Beatrix kept in close touch with her and her eight children. These children were to play an important part in Beatrix’s life.
The long hours of solitude that stretched out between lessons and seeing her parents, gave Beatrix the chance to create her own special and absorbing world. She had a gift for really looking at things and she was a born artist. Her father, who had a great interest in painting and drawing, encouraged her in this pursuit. From a very early age, she produced excellent work. Her subjects were mostly animals, insects and plants—the things that fascinated her—all drawn and painted with remarkable skill and sensitivity.
A page of caterpillars from the sketchbook Beatrix kept when she was nine years old.
A corner of the schoolroom at Bolton Gardens, drawn by Beatrix. This is where Beatrix and Bertram kept their pets. A birdcage can be seen by the fireplace and a tortoise is on the rug in front of the fire.
There is a delightful study of caterpillars which she did when she was only nine, and another of a rabbit, done in 1880 when she was fourteen.
Then there was the private zoo. Whenever they had a chance, she and Bertram would collect beetles, caterpillars, mice, frogs, hedgehogs, lizards, bats—anything! These would be smuggled up to the children’s rooms, and long hours were then spent watching and recording the animals’ and insects’ habits. Beatrix and Bertram even took the dead bodies of some animals and boiled them because they wanted to study the skeletons. There was always something interesting to think about, and many of their animals became well-loved pets.
Each Easter, the Potter family left London for a month. Usually they would stay at a seaside resort on the South Coast, or at Camfield Place in Hertfordshire, the home of Beatrix’s grandmother. In the summer, the holiday was extended to three months, and from the age of five until she was fifteen, Beatrix stayed at Dalguise House in Perthshire. After that, Dalguise was no longer for hire and the Potters took their holiday in the Lake District, a part of England that Beatrix was later to immortalise in her books. It was on these visits that Beatrix grew to love the countryside with a passion.
For her, D
alguise spelt freedom and beauty. It was a wonderful ‘fairyland’ of wild flowers, animals, fungi, woods and streams. Except for Sundays, non-fishing days when Mr Potter and his guests took Beatrix and Bertram on long walks, the children were left to themselves. Together, they scoured the fields and hedgerows for toadstools, caterpillars, birds’ eggs and snakeskins. Beatrix drew and painted to her heart’s content, relishing every moment.
With each year that passed, Beatrix’s feeling of ‘coming home’ intensified. It was among the sights and smells of the countryside, so very different from the crowds and built-up streets of the city, that the artist and writer in her was allowed to grow.
A family party at Dalguise House in Scotland. Mr Potter and his friends enjoyed fishing and some of the salmon they have caught can be seen on the grass in front of Beatrix.
2
Early Struggles
When Annie Carter left to become Mrs Moore in June 1885, Beatrix considered that at nineteen she was, at last, grown up.
She now faced the question: what was she going to do with her life? Because she was a girl, Beatrix was not expected to have a career and, if she remained unmarried, her duty would be to take care of her parents in their old age, the fate of many Victorian spinsters. Beatrix had never been given the opportunity to shine at social gatherings where she might have attracted a suitable husband. She had no real friends of her own age and often felt shy and awkward in company. In her journal there are hints that she found it all unbearably tedious and black at times. Perhaps as a result she was often ill. In 1885 she had a bad attack of rheumatic fever when much of her hair fell out, leaving her with a permanent bald patch. In 1887 she had another bout that weakened her heart.
She dealt with her fits of depression by keeping up her studies and her painting. The urge to set down on paper anything that she considered beautiful was irresistible. ‘I cannot rest,’ she wrote. ‘I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me, it is a stronger desire than ever.’ She spent many hours at what is now the Natural History Museum in Kensington, studying and drawing the exhibits. She learnt whole Shakespeare plays by heart, and kept up her journal written in the smallest of handwriting. Many years later, it was deciphered. Its entries reflect someone who was shrewd, practical, sometimes funny, and an interested observer of what was going on in the world.
Beatrix’s watercolour study of a lizard, painted from different angles.
Beatrix aged nineteen, on holiday with her father and brother at her grandparents’ house. Her hair had been cut short after her illness.
A page of Beatrix’s code writing.
London was not a peaceful place and Beatrix describes with relish the riots, dynamite plots, horrid murders and political agitation that she read about in the newspapers. Like her father, Beatrix took a critical interest in painting and went with him to see many exhibitions, noting her reactions in great detail. Her journal also reveals that she was an active photographer and, as she grew older, increasingly fascinated by her hobby of fossil collecting. Even stronger was her passion for the study of fungi. On holiday in August 1894 she excitedly records finding ‘upwards of twenty sorts in a few minutes’. She spent hours drawing and painting the many specimens she collected, with exquisite care.
Fossils from Troutbeck in the Lake District, painted by Beatix in 1895.
She thought hard about fungi. She discovered a way of germinating spores and developed her own ideas about this process. Sir Henry Roscoe, her uncle, was so impressed with these ideas that in May 1896 he decided to introduce her to some of his scientific friends who worked at Kew Gardens. Sadly, his initiative came to nothing. The rather stuffy gentlemen who worked at this establishment were not willing to admit that a young girl might have something serious to offer. Beatrix did achieve one success, however, when a paper she had written was read out at a meeting of the Linnean Society, a distinguished scientific body devoted to the study of natural history. It was read for her by Mr George Massee, an official at Kew, because women were not allowed to attend the meetings.
Even so, Beatrix realised that it was not going to be possible to immerse herself in the study of fungi. Gradually all her work was packed up into portfolios and put away.
By now, Beatrix also knew that she could not depend on Bertram for regular companionship. He seldom stayed at home for long and eventually left London altogether and went to live in Scotland, where he became a farmer. In November 1896 Beatrix bleakly records: ‘We came home on October 6th. Bertram going North on the 5th.’
She still had her animals and they never failed to provide her with amusement and inspiration. Poor Miss Xarifa, her mouse, had died, as had Bertram’s bat and Punch, the frog. Sammy, her pet rat, went on holiday with her, as well as her rabbit, Benjamin Bouncer. Benjamin was always much admired and petted wherever he went, so much so that he got toothache from too many peppermints. Of Peter, her other rabbit, Beatrix wrote that he was very good at tricks and that his temper was unfailingly sweet. Her hedgehog, the ‘very stout short person’ who was later to be immortalised as Mrs Tiggy-winkle, always travelled concealed in a basket.
Spike Cap fungus, one of the toadstools Beatrix found on holiday in the Lake District in August 1894.
Beatrix with Benjamin Bouncer on a lead.
Beatrix had achieved one small triumph during these years. Her uncle Henry Roscoe had suggested that Beatrix might earn some money by selling her drawings. Early in 1890, with the help of her brother, she arranged to show some rabbit drawings to the firm Hildesheimer & Faulkner, who bought them there and then (for the grand sum of £6) to use as Christmas cards. Beatrix was elated. Her first act was to give Benjamin Bouncer, who had been such a faithful model, a cupful of hemp seeds.
3
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix kept in touch with her ex-governess Annie Carter, now Mrs Moore, and grew very fond of her children. Whenever Mrs Potter permitted her to go, Beatrix drove over the river to peaceful Wandsworth. Her arrival was always greeted with great excitement. The carriage door would open and out Beatrix would climb, often bearing her box of white mice or her rabbit, and sometimes presents.
She got into the habit of writing to the children when she was on holiday. In September 1893 she wrote to Noel, the eldest, who was ill in bed. ‘My dear Noel,’ she began, ‘I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.’ The letter, sprinkled with pen and ink drawings, went on to tell the story of what was to become the most famous rabbit in the world.
Noel Moore.
Noel kept his letter; and the children were so delighted with the other letters they received describing Squirrel Nutkin, Mr Jeremy Fisher and their adventures, that they kept theirs too.
The success of her venture with Hildesheimer & Faulkner gave Beatrix’s thoughts a new direction. Perhaps she could publish her stories? Seven years after she had written her first picture letter to Noel, she asked to borrow it back and set about turning it into publishable form. In a small exercise book she wrote out her words on one page, and on the opposite page stuck in pen and ink drawings. A coloured illustration was included as a frontispiece.
With the help of her good friend Canon Rawnsley, whom she had met on one of the family holidays in the Lake District, Beatrix sent off her manuscript to six publishers. Back came six rejections—a daunting experience for any would-be author.
Characteristically, Beatrix did not give up. She decided instead to use some of her savings to publish the book privately. Taking advice about the right kind of printers from another friend, Beatrix arranged for 250 copies to be printed. In December 1901, The Tale of Peter Rabbit rolled off the presses. Beatrix gave some copies away and sold the rest for 1s. 2d. (6p) each. They proved so popular that she had to have 200 more printed.
The Peter Rabbit picture letter that Beatrix wrote to Noel Moore.
Beatrix’s privately-printed edition of
The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
The first commercial edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published in 1902.
Meanwhile Canon Rawnsley had sent another version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, written by him in verse, to a publishing firm called Frederick Warne & Co. They liked the drawings but not the verses! Would Miss Potter consider turning her black and white drawings into coloured ones, and was she prepared to turn the verses into prose?
Beatrix agreed to their requests. Using her privately printed edition as her guide, she entered wholeheartedly into the negotiations that followed.
From the beginning she displayed an excellent grasp of the technicalities of publishing a book and, surprisingly for someone who had had rather a sheltered upbringing, a good business sense. She wanted the book to be small enough for children’s hands to hold comfortably. She wanted it to be cheap. She had views on the colour of the cloth binding, on the quality of the illustrations and was very particular about the exact wording of her story. As a result, Frederick Warne found they were dealing with a politely determined author who knew exactly what she wanted.
Her instincts were correct. The small, beautifully produced, inexpensive books that became her trademark hit just the right note with parents and children. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published by Warne in 1902. By the end of 1903 it had sold 50,000 copies. Beatrix Potter, the author, was launched.
4
Success with Writing
Once started on this new venture, Beatrix found the ideas came thick and fast. ‘I was cram full of stories,’ she later wrote. The publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit had unlocked the door to her creative impulses and had given her the key to an enchanted world.