Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  Norman brought back bad news from his trip to Warne’s New York office. Somehow they had failed to register the copyright for Peter Rabbit in the United States. Pirated editions, from which Beatrix would receive no royalties, began to appear in the spring of 1903, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. ‘I was very sorry to hear about the American edition,’ she wrote to Norman. ‘I trust they have not got hold of a copy of the mouse book [Tailor] also; but perhaps the private edition is not worth stealing.’ The enormous financial damage resulting from this oversight only became evident with time, but the lesson was not lost on Beatrix who had worried much earlier about copyright for other reasons. The necessity of protecting her intellectual property was reinforced during the Christmas season, when Rupert Potter bought a toy squirrel at the Burlington Arcade in Mayfair marketed as ‘Nutkin’.18

  The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin was published in August 1903 and became an instant success. ‘I am delighted to hear such a good account of Nutkin,’ she wrote to Norman. ‘I never thought when I was drawing it that it would be such a success — though I think you always had a good opinion of it.’ She asked for more copies, sympathizing with him that ‘it must be a troublesome business to distribute 10,000’. Beatrix began receiving amusing letters from delighted young readers that Norman forwarded to her from Bedford Street. ‘I shall always have a strong preference for cheap books myself — even if they did not pay,’ she wrote to him; ‘all my little friends happen to be shilling people. I do dislike the modern fashion of giving children heaps of expensive things which they don’t look at twice.’19

  The Tailor of Gloucester was published in October, in ample time for Christmas. In a presentation copy Beatrix wrote, ‘This is my own favourite amongst my little books.’ Over the years her opinion never wavered. Although Beatrix was always in love with the past, the Tailor was the only costumed romance she ever produced. In 1919 she wrote to the wife of the President of Magdalen College, Oxford: ‘It has always been my own favourite… I used to stay with some cousins on the edge of the Cotswolds, overlooking the vale of Severn; they told me the story of the tailor; and I added the mice & the old fashioned coats… The Tailor never caught on like the others, but he is far the best.’20

  The Tailor remains a public favourite, associated with the Christmas spirit, beloved because of the charming mice in their eighteenth-century finery, their heroic assistance to the poor, sick tailor, and the magic that the setting, the story and the illustrations weave. It has some of Potter’s most beautiful and most elaborate illustrations, breathtaking in their detail, particularly that of the Mayor’s embroidered waistcoat, which has since been identified and is still part of the costume collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But Beatrix always preferred her own privately printed edition to all others because ‘it contains more of the old rhymes (including the Christmas wedding day)…’21

  Her enthusiasm for the Tailor was soon confirmed by an unexpected source. Beatrix wrote to Norman just after Christmas with obvious pleasure, ‘Did you ever happen to see a review of the Tailor in The Tailor & Cutter, the paper which the mouse on the bobbin is reading?’ She had given a copy to her old Chelsea tailor, who in turn, had shown it to a traveller from the trade journal telling him how Beatrix had sketched his shop. The ‘beautiful’ review, as Beatrix called it, appeared appropriately on Christmas Eve. It read:

  …we think it is by far the prettiest story connected with tailoring we have ever read, and as it is full of that spirit of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, we are not ashamed to confess that it brought the moisture to our eyes, as well as the smile to our face. It is got up in choicest style and illustrated by twenty-seven of the prettiest pictures it is possible to imagine.22

  The three ‘little books’, as they were now called, had changed both Frederick Warne & Co. and Beatrix Potter. Warne’s had found their answer to Mrs Bannerman and acknowledged their happiness with the successful new writer on their list. And Beatrix had never been happier. Her work gave her satisfaction, and success gave her a new self-confidence. She had achieved what she had longed for: a little money of her own and a certain measure of independence. For the first time she got up in the morning with something purposeful to do. She had publishers to visit, proofs to approve, places she needed to visit to sketch, small but meaningful affairs to manage. She desperately hoped that the books might continue, for she had so many ideas.

  But every time a holiday loomed, Beatrix felt a certain panic that there would be no more books to consume her energies and offer a diversion from family demands. Facing the prospect of another long summer away from London, Beatrix wrote to Norman before she left for Keswick in July 1903 proposing another project.

  I had been a little hoping too that something might be said about another book, but I did not know that I was the right person to make the suggestion. I could send you a list to consider, there are plenty in vague state of existence, one written out in a small copybook which I will get back from the children and send to you to read. I had better try to sketch this summer, as the stock of ideas for backgrounds is rather used up. I would very much like to do another next winter.

  She ventured the opinion that both Tailor and Nutkin were complicated stories compared to Peter and suggested that the next ‘Little Book’ ought to be ‘more simple’.23

  She was surprised when her letter was unexpectedly answered by Harold Warne, as Norman had already left London on an extended selling trip. Harold invited her to come in to the office to discuss her ideas. This was not at all what Beatrix had in mind, for she wanted only to see Norman Warne. She hastily explained that she could not come and tried to cover her disappointment. ‘If I had not supposed that the matter would be dealt with through the post, I should not have mentioned the subject of another book at present. I have had such painful unpleasantness at home this winter about the work that I should like a rest, while I am away. I should be obliged if you will kindly say no more about a new book at present.’24

  Realizing later that she had been too quick in her reply, Beatrix wrote again suggesting to Harold that she might ‘make out a rough outline of the stories… & post it to you from Fawe Park, Keswick. I should not propose to work on any story while away, but if I knew what was likely to be chosen it would be a guide for sketching.’ She closed with a thinly veiled plea to have her letters forwarded to ‘Mr Norman Warne’.25

  Beatrix had become one of the most important authors on the Warne’s list. Aware from his initial meeting with Rupert Potter that Beatrix’s parents were demanding, Harold Warne gently encouraged her to send something for Norman to review on his return. Beatrix agreed. ‘I think I will send the rabbit story as well when I have copied it out, perhaps Mr Norman Warne might be amused to look it over when he comes back.’ When Norman returned, they agreed that one of the two new stories should be The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, a sequel of sorts to Peter Rabbit in which Peter and his cousin Benjamin boldly return to Mr McGregor’s garden in search of Peter’s lost coat and shoes. The choice of a second book remained undecided. Norman suggested that it might be something in a larger format, similar to that of the popular Johnny Crow’s Garden by L. Leslie Brooke which Warne’s had recently published.26

  By early September, Beatrix was looking forward to returning to London, although she admitted that ‘autumn is far away the best time at the Lakes’. She had been working hard and had painted a great many backgrounds. Fawe Park had proved an ideal setting for another ‘bunny book’. It was a large, comfortable country house estate, beautiful but less formal than Lingholm, and more to Beatrix’s liking. Its real appeal lay in its gardens and gardeners. Three sides of the house were landscaped in beautifully terraced gardens running down to the lake. Some, close to the house, were formal beds, but down the hillside, enclosed and hidden away from the road by a high brick wall, there was a kitchen garden with greenhouses, cold frames and a potting shed, as well as an orchard with espaliered fruit trees and arbours.

  Beatrix
probably began drawing the gardens just for their interest and colour without any plan for how she might use them. But soon she added these as backgrounds to the Derwentwater sketchbook she had begun. Once again she was fascinated with the details of the gardens — the baskets and crocks in the potting shed — with lettuces and how their leaves looked when first up, and with onions, drawing them both in and out of the ground in watercolours of striking beauty. She drew the garden wall, the overhanging pear tree and the cold frames and greenhouses in great detail. She worked all summer painting backgrounds, using another female rabbit she had brought along as her model. She confessed to Norman, ‘I think I have done every imaginable rabbit background, & miscellaneous sketches as well — about 70! I hope you will like them, though rather scribbled.’ Rupert once again took photographs of Fawe Park, its interior and the grassy shoreline, just as he had at Lingholm, but there are no extant photographs by Beatrix though it is likely that she used photography again to aid her recording of the gardens.27

  Norman left on another selling trip in early November, shortly after The Tailor of Gloucester was published, and Beatrix was again frustrated by his absence. ‘I am afraid I am not making a good start yet with the rabbit book,’ she explained to Harold Warne. ‘I have been rather bothered but I hope it will come right; when will Mr Norman Warne be coming back?’ She had a cold, she explained, and longed for time in the countryside in pleasant weather to do more sketching. ‘I wish I could get the new books settled,’ she wrote, obviously frustrated by the delay. Three days later Norman returned and Beatrix made arrangements to call at the Warne office to discuss the next book before leaving for a week in Hastings on the south coast. From there Beatrix sent Norman a copy book containing three stories: one about a cat, in which she used sketches of cottage interiors in Sawrey; one about a long-haired guinea pig; and another featuring a pair of mice she had brought home with her after a visit to Harescombe Grange the previous June. Before she left to spend the Christmas holidays at Melford Hall, she promised Norman she would ‘try the new stories on the children there’.28

  Beatrix’s new happiness and its source had not been lost on her parents. Before the summer holiday at Fawe Park, they complained she was working too hard, straining her eyes, spending too much time sketching, inattentive to her domestic responsibilities, out of the house too often, or a combination of all these. There had been criticism, adverse comment and ‘painful unpleasantness’. Beatrix returned from Fawe Park in September unchastened, yet ever the dutiful and deferential daughter. Now at the end of the year, she was happily committed to working with Norman Warne on another two new books for 1904. Observing this extended partnership, and their daughter’s pleasure in it, the Potters were justly alarmed.

  8

  Realities

  Bedford square was on the other side of London’s busy West End from Bolton Gardens, not distant geographically, but in style and substance the Warne and Potter households were worlds apart. The well-known Square on the western edge of Bloomsbury was distinguished by its rows of impressive Georgian brick houses, each with its wrought-iron balcony to the first floor windows. Nearly adjacent on the east was, and still is, the imposing British Museum, and beyond that, Russell Square, north of Holborn. Until 1893 Bedford Square had been sealed off by gates, a quiet oasis where tradesmen entered on foot. It was a neighbourhood of distinguished scientists and jurists, architects and authors, professionals and merchants, as well as assorted high-level Crown appointees.1

  Although the Warne house had a certain architectural formality and the requisite dark Victorian furnishings, light and air streamed through the lace curtains at the library windows just as abundantly as the echoes of spontaneous laughter from the visitors who seemed always to be about. There were servants, but no butler. The large and active Warne family and their friends made it a point not to let the recently widowed Louisa Jane Warne be too long without company. Although Millie and Norman lived at home, the Bedford Square house was the spontaneous gathering point for the whole family. When Frederick Warne was alive, the large dining room table was nearly always filled with people at the midday meal. After his death, the atmosphere remained one of ease and freedom, of good conversation and ready celebration, a place where children were especially welcome.

  Mrs Warne came from an old established Channel Islands family. She was a soft-spoken, interesting and observant lady in lace cap and ribbons, who had taken an active interest in her late husband’s publishing business and was now doted on by her whole family. Norman was her ‘baby’ and undoubtedly her favourite. He was also everyone’s favourite uncle or cousin, and he in turn was genuinely fond of his nephews and nieces. He played sports, especially tennis, cycled and swam with the boys, enjoyed catching moths with his brothers, dressed up as ‘Father Christmas’ during holiday parties, and roared with delight when the children discovered that it was ‘only Uncle Norman’ behind the beard and costume.2

  Norman was reserved in his own way, thoughtful rather than effusive, enjoying the intellectual challenges attendant on acquiring and publishing a superior line of books. Now in his mid-thirties, he worked long hours and was not particularly interested in the ‘ladies’, although his mother had not given up the hope of more grandchildren. Photographs show a tall, slender, attractive man with a receding hairline, wide-set hazel eyes framed by arched brows, a long, straight nose, a full moustache, and a strong chin. The family is said to have thought he resembled the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Norman Warne not only knew a great deal about book design and production, he was also mechanically skilled and enjoyed carpentry. He had devised a makeshift workshop in the basement and there produced bird houses, display cases for his moth collection, toys and even doll’s houses. ‘I really think I shall have to start building a new doll’s house if you dress such a lot of dolls,’ he promised one of his little nieces. But when he finally got around to it, the most elaborate doll’s house was built for his niece Winifred Warne for Christmas 1903.3

  Millie Warne, a decade older than Norman and eight years older than Beatrix, was a slender, almost frail woman with a pretty oval face and deep-set eyes. She was almost as shy as Beatrix herself, but was unpretentious and often amusing. She was also fond of the outdoors and of gardening. After they had met several times, Millie and Beatrix became easy friends. Occasionally Beatrix was invited by the Warne brothers to come to Bedford Square for holiday celebrations. Parties at Bedford Square were really for the children, and everyone played games.4

  Beatrix, now 37, was a handsome woman, and although still shy, refreshingly straightforward. She had a slightly rounded figure, and was always memorable with her pink cheeks, her easy flush and her bright blue eyes. Her hair still came loose from its pins in occasional wavy wisps around her face. She preferred tailored clothes without much ornamentation, and she was rarely without her large, black umbrella, though she could be properly suited out in fine fabrics, lace jabots and elaborate millinery if the occasion demanded.

  When not absorbed with her work on The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and while she was awaiting Norman’s decision about the subject of the second book for 1904, Beatrix turned her ingenuity to creating a Peter Rabbit doll. She was clearly unhappy with the ‘knock-off’ German rabbits advertised at Harrods, the big department store in Knightsbridge, and aware that ‘there was a run on toys copied from pictures’. After the Nutkin doll appeared in a local shop before Christmas, Beatrix took action. ‘I am cutting out calico patterns of Peter,’ she told Norman. ‘I have not got it right yet, but the expression is going to be lovely; especially the whiskers — (pulled out of a brush!). I think I will make one first of white velveteen painted… fur is very difficult to sew.’ Referring to the notebook of stories she had left with Norman earlier, she continued: ‘I cannot tell what to do about those stories, it would certainly be more amusing to do the one with toys… At present I intend to make dolls; I think I could make him stand on his legs if he had some lead bullets in his fe
et!’5

  A Peter Rabbit doll with his signature blue coat and black shoes was ready for the public on 15 December and Beatrix sent it to Norman to give to one of his nieces. ‘I hope the little girl will like the doll,’ she wrote. ‘There is some shot in the body & coat tail, I don’t think it will come out until the legs give way, children sometimes expect comfits out of animals, so I give fair warning!’ She took photographs of her creation and, in order not to be caught out again, registered the design at the Patent Office in Chancery Lane on 28 December 1903. She received Patent No. 423888.6

  She later referred to her merchandise somewhat derisively as her ‘sideshows’, but this was said disarmingly as she took a serious interest in it, and was quick to take advantage of the marketplace. She knew instinctively the kinds of derivative toys and accessories that might flow from her stories. At first Beatrix had to keep prodding Norman to ‘do something about the dolls’, but although he, too, was intrigued by the possibility of such collateral merchandise, it was left primarily to Beatrix to find a manufacturer. Undeterred, she did her own market research. She insisted that the dolls be made in Britain — a requirement which proved unexpectedly difficult as most of the soft toys then on the market were produced more cheaply in Germany and imported without tariff. Her efforts to find a domestic manufacturer marked the beginning of her scepticism about the benefits of the free trade policy her Potter grandfather had advocated so ardently.7