by Linda Lear
The search for a proper rabbit manufacturer went on for several months. ‘I find that Harrod’s [sic] rabbits are very ugly,’ Beatrix told Norman in April after inspecting the store’s selection for workmanship and colour. She found a fur rabbit at Porters, a nearby shop in South Kensington that she knew well, but hesitated to proceed without Norman’s approval. ‘Do you think it would be worth while to let them make a sample one? Telling them carefully that the doll is copyright. It is a shop I have known for many years, I think I could get at the maker’s name by perseverance, they are civil people. I enjoyed going about the rabbits. I did not say who I was, Mrs Porter “knew Peter Rabbit” & I thought seemed rather keen on the dolls idea.’ By the end of the year, she reported confidentially, ‘The rabbit dollies are in great force at Whitely’s.’8
Beatrix’s instinct about the market for derivative merchandise was much in advance of her publishers’ and right on the mark. Not long after she registered her prototype for a Peter Rabbit doll, she was approached by a Mrs Garnett, a woman whom she knew only slightly, who had made a ‘frieze’ for her children’s nursery out of Peter Rabbit drawings. It had proved so popular with her friends that she wanted to show it to a wallpaper manufacturer. Although she was taken aback by Garnett’s ‘artless appeal’ to profit from her ideas, Beatrix agreed the idea of wallpaper had merit. ‘I should think it would make a very popular nursery paper,’ she told Norman. ‘Of course if it were done at all it ought to be done by me — but I find it rather awkward to say so. I think I could do it rather well — if it were not too much trouble. The idea of rooms covered with badly drawn rabbits is appalling.’ After this, Beatrix took control of the derivative market. Getting the colours right and determining the proper elevation of the figures proved more difficult than she had first thought but by early 1905 Beatrix confidently told Norman, ‘Mr McGregor is magnificent on the frieze.’ Soon she was redesigning it in different colours and wondering if Liberty’s, the prestigious fabric shop, might produce it. Although it took some time to find the right manufacturer, Peter Rabbit wallpaper was part of an eventual programme of ‘spin-offs’ from Potter’s books.9
Never short of new ideas for merchandise, Beatrix enjoyed thinking about how children might respond to the story or the character in another medium and was artistically challenged by the adaptive process. She liked being involved in the details of negotiations for various products, insisted that the quality of the original art be maintained in any adaptation, and maintained final approval for new merchandise. Beatrix also had an idea for a Peter Rabbit board game. She understood from the outset that while the other book characters might eventually be used as models for merchandise, Peter would always be the most sought after, so that any game had to centre around him.
In a letter to Norman at the end of 1904 Beatrix enclosed a sketch of a game board and a list of rules for playing The Game of Peter Rabbit. It was a square-to-square chase game with the object of keeping Mr McGregor from landing on the same square as Peter, thereby capturing him. ‘I think this is a rather good game,’ she wrote with pleasure. ‘I have written the rules at some length, (to prevent arguments!) but it is very simple, & the chances are strongly in favour of Peter.’ She needed feedback from real children, however, and asked Norman if he would ‘cut out two little wooden pawns, to represent Peter and Mr McGregor, and try the game with some child at Christmas.’ Remembering a game called ‘Go-Bang’ that she had played as a little girl, she wanted to make the map of McGregor’s garden larger and mount it on hinged pasteboard that folded in half. ‘It is too late to do anything with it this season,’ she acknowledged, ‘but I think it is a game that children might find exciting, if they were fond of the book.’10
Exhibiting the kind of artistic innovation which would have made her calico-designing grandfather proud, Beatrix usually knew exactly how she wanted something produced. In the case of the board game, she wrote, ‘I have tried it with the corks; it wants coloured wooden solid persons, like the old fashioned “Noah.” ’ At Norman’s suggestion, she made alterations to the garden map aware that if a child were playing the game with adults, the child would want to be ‘Peter’. But first she asked Norman to copyright the game, and even before the board or the moves were perfected, he dutifully registered it at Stationers’ Hall. Potter’s merchandising efforts would bring lucrative licences, producing an eventual royalty windfall for both Frederick Warne & Co., who held the copyright, and for the clever creator.11
Beatrix responded to Norman’s appreciation and his growing recognition of her artistry and professionalism, try as she might to hide it under the guise of the well-to-do amateur. As they discussed the evolution of her books and the step-by-step process by which they were designed and produced, she realized that his tactful criticism almost always improved her work. She was grateful for that, as well as for his practical advice. In fact there seemed little that Norman could not invent or improve. Beatrix’s pet mice, ‘Tom Thumb’ and ‘Hunca Munca’, were a case in point.
She had rescued the two mice from the kitchen at Harescombe Grange in 1903 and tamed them. They proved interesting subjects, but her home-made cage allowed only limited visibility of their activities and was too fragile. Aware of Norman’s carpentry skills, Beatrix asked him to make her a new box for Hunca Munca, the female mouse, who was an especially good artist’s model as well as a sweet pet. Beatrix wrote to Norman, referring to him as ‘Johnny Crow’, a nickname that his nieces and nephews had given him. ‘I wish “Johnny Crow” would make my mouse “a little house”,’ Beatrix asked, ‘do you think he would if I made a paper plan? I want one with the glass at the side before I draw Hunca Munca again. Mine are apt to be ricketty [sic]!’12
Just before the new year, Norman presented Beatrix with a new mouse house featuring not only a glass front, but a ladder to an upstairs nesting loft. The mice were happily installed and Beatrix could now watch them go about their activities unimpeded. Knowing that Norman would be out of town soon, Beatrix wrote again with some urgency about the still undecided second book for 1904. ‘If neither the cat nor the mice would do, one might fall back on the rhymes — “Applely [sic] Dapply”. I think you will see the difficulty with the mice from what I have sketched already, but I could make a nice little book of them.’ The cage, her sketches, and the miniature scale of domesticity the little house presented had given her the idea that the mice were the perfect residents for a doll’s house like the one she had admired in Norman’s basement workshop. And so it was decided that the second book, tentatively titled ‘The Tale of the Doll’s House and Hunca Munca’, would be about the two mice, and that it and Benjamin Bunny, a sequel to Peter Rabbit, would be in identical small book format.13
The large doll’s house that Norman had built for Winifred was a three-storeyed affair with a brick paper exterior, a grey slate roof with gables, a turret and a flagstaff. It was a splendid reproduction of a proper Edwardian villa, and fully furnished. Around Christmas-time, Norman installed it at Fruing Warne’s house in Surbiton, south of London, so the little nieces could move their dolls in.
By February, Beatrix had planned a story featuring her fine little mouse, Hunca Munca. She wanted to use Winifred’s doll’s house as a model for one in the book, but it was now inconveniently some distance away. Norman arranged for Beatrix to come to Surbiton for lunch and do her sketching. Beatrix would have been delighted to accept, but Mrs Potter intervened. Although control of the carriage was the initial sticking point, as far as Helen Potter was concerned there had already been too much visiting at the Warne home and office. Aware of the almost daily letters between her daughter and Norman, she sensed that her daughter’s relationship with the Warne family, and with Norman in particular, was becoming more than just professional. She did not like its direction, nor did she like the Warnes, who were a family ‘in trade’. There was unpleasantness and Beatrix was forced to decline Norman’s invitation to Surbiton.
‘I was very much perplexed about the doll’s
house,’ Beatrix wrote to Norman in an effort to apologize for what she was afraid would be misinterpreted as rudeness on her part. ‘I would have gone gladly to draw it, and I should be so very sorry if Mrs Warne or you thought me uncivil. I did not think I could manage to go to Surbiton without staying [to] lunch.’ Clearly conflicted as to what she could offer as explanation and berating herself for failing to stand up to her mother, Beatrix continued, ‘I hardly ever go out, and my mother is so “exacting” I had not enough spirit to say anything about it. I have felt vexed with myself since, but I did not know what to do. It does wear a person out.’ Concerned that her inability to sketch the doll’s house might compromise the entire project, Beatrix reassured Norman, ‘I will manage to make a nice book somehow… I think I can do it from the photograph… but it is very hard to have seemed uncivil.’14
If Norman sensed the real reason for Mrs Potter’s opposition, he hid it well, and did his best to provide Beatrix with what she needed. He took more photographs of the doll’s house, and found two dolls at a shop in Seven Dials on the edge of Soho for her to use as models. He was also looking for some plaster food and a stove. ‘Thank you so very much for the queer little dollies, they are just exactly what I wanted,’ Beatrix wrote to him. ‘I will provide a print dress & a smile for Jane; her little stumpy feet are so funny. I think I shall make a dear little book of it, I shall be glad to get done with the rabbits.’ The dolls, Lucinda and Jane, were not to scale for Winifred’s doll’s house, but even so they proved perfect models. Sometime later, Norman also provided a policeman doll, borrowed from a reluctant Winifred.
But Norman persisted in his efforts to get Beatrix to Surbiton, suggesting perhaps Mrs Potter could come to lunch as well. Beatrix’s explanation of why this plan would not work was nearer the truth. ‘I don’t think that my mother would be very likely to want to go to Surbiton,’ she told Norman, ‘you did not understand what I meant by “exacting.” People who only see her casually do not know how disagreeable she can be when she takes dislikes.’ Beatrix’s frustration and her helplessness to change the situation were transparent, but so too was her loyalty and sense of duty. ‘I should have been glad enough to go. I did not know what to do.’15
Ever resourceful, Norman sent Beatrix some doll’s house furniture and a box of doll’s house food on platters. ‘I received the parcel from Hamley’s this morning; the things will all do beautifully,’ Beatrix replied happily, ‘the ham’s appearance is enough to cause indigestion. I am getting almost more treasures than I can squeeze into one small book.’ The furniture and the food inspired some of her best illustrations, including a back view of Hunca Munca mercilessly chopping away at the indigestible plaster ham! Regardless of parental obstacles, The Tale of Two Bad Mice was not only turning out to be an enjoyable collaborative adventure, but was also providing the subtext of a love story.16
Beatrix worked on the book in high spirits, enjoying the details of the interior of the doll’s house as well as Hunca Munca’s antics. ‘I stopped her in the act of carrying a doll as large as herself up to the nest, she cannot resist anything with lace or ribbon; (she despises the dishes),’ she reported. Norman supplied Beatrix with interior and exterior views of the doll’s house. Their enjoyment of working together on the book, even in this bifurcated way, was obvious and infectious. They shared the sorts of small personal details that deepen a relationship. ‘The inside view is amusing,’ Beatrix wrote after looking at the photographs, ‘the kind of house where one cannot sit down without upsetting something, I know the sort! I prefer a more severe style…’ In due course the book was finished. Beatrix dedicated it to Winifred Warne: ‘for W. M. L. W. the little girl who had the doll’s house.’17
The Potters were away from London a good part of the spring, first to the Burtons at Gwaynynog, in Denbigh, and then to Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast. Beatrix took Hunca Munca, who was ‘very discontented in the small old box’, and her pet hedgehog, Mrs Tiggy-winkle, ‘carefully concealed — my aunt cannot endure animals!’ She told Norman she had been ‘drawing the stump of a hollow tree for another hedgehog drawing; there is not much sign of spring yet but the moss is very pretty in the woods’. The idea for a book about Tiggy-winkle was taking shape, even though Norman was not convinced such an unusual animal would make a popular children’s story.18
While at Gwaynynog Beatrix enlisted her uncle, Fred Burton, who collected antique furniture, to help her select a handsome Sheraton bureau with impressive joinery that she could use as a bookcase. Before she left London she had received a sizeable royalty statement. ‘I was very much amused about the money,’ she wrote to Norman. ‘I do happen to have been making myself an expensive present.’ But she also had other uses for the money, explaining, ‘I am going to send one of the little [Moore] girls to college some day, either “Norah” of the squirrel book or “Frida” [sic], but there is time enough yet. Their mother was my governess.’ Both investments reflect Beatrix’s north-country values: fine old furniture and education for women. Although Beatrix did not support the contemporary women’s rights movement, her Unitarian tradition had long advocated higher education for women.19
In April the Potters visited the charming town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast for a fortnight. Beatrix enjoyed fine weather and good sketching. She made several drawings of the town, the main street, its shops and houses, and enjoyed some long but lonely walks. She appears to have been the secretary of a postal drawing society and received some sketches from one of the society members while she was on holiday. Much earlier Beatrix had belonged to a drawing society, but now, as a well-known illustrator, it is interesting that she continued an involvement. She was known to the members by her real name, and obviously took her role seriously, seeing to it that members’ portfolios were received and reviewed promptly. While she was still in Dorset, Norman sent a ledger showing unexpectedly brisk sales of Nutkin. Beatrix replied, ‘it seems a great deal of money for such little books… It is pleasant to feel I could earn my own living.’ Her original desire for financial independence was now being fulfilled quite beyond her expectations, but it is likely that she already had other ideas of how she wanted to invest her profits.20
The spring of 1904 was a busy one. Beatrix was finishing two books, working on a rabbit doll, creating other merchandise, and always thinking about the next book. Warne’s suggested she might illustrate the work of another writer whose book they wanted to publish. But Beatrix declined their offer, not only because she wanted to husband her time for her own books, but because she enjoyed being recognized as the illustrator of her own work. ‘With regard to illustrating other peoples books,’ she told the publisher, ‘I have a strong feeling that every outside book which I did, would prevent me from finishing one of my own. I enjoy inventing stories — any number — but I draw so slowly & laboriously, that there are sure to be favourites of my own left undone at the end of my working life-time, whether short or long… I will stick to doing as many as I can of my own books.’ She did, however, agree to design the Warne catalogue for the winter of 1904. ‘I should be delighted to try to make a design on approval for the book-list. I don’t know if I should succeed but I can try,’ she wrote modestly. ‘I think the usual price for that sort of thing is about £2 if you think that reasonable.’ She was also designing new endpapers for The Tale of Two Bad Mice.21
About the time Nutkin appeared, Beatrix began sending miniature letters to some of her young friends. These tiny letters were frequently conversations between animal characters in her books that continued the story or offered amusing new anecdotes about their activities. They allowed Beatrix to carry on conversations with the children who, although growing older, were still interested in her fantasy animals and what happened to them after the story ended.22
Each tiny letter was folded in such a way that it became its own envelope. Each was addressed and had a small stamp drawn in red crayon. There were no drawings in these miniature letters, simply a few brief sentences from one character t
o another. Sometimes the letters arrived with their own red tin British postbox. Others, like those to the Moore children, came in a miniature mail-bag inscribed ‘G. P. O.’ [General Post Office]. Beatrix did not stop writing picture letters, especially when she was on holiday, but these miniature letters could be done quickly. They became more complex as the books and cast of animal characters grew, and were often quite amusing.23
An early letter from Squirrel Nutkin to Old Brown read: ‘Dear Sir, I should esteem it a favour if you will let me have back my tail, as I miss it very much. I would pay postage. yrs truly Squirrel Nutkin. An answer will oblige.’ Another to ‘Mrs Tom Thumb, Mouse Hole’, was written after The Tale of Two Bad Mice was published. ‘Miss Lucinda Doll requires Hunca Munca to come for the whole day on Tuesday. Jane Dollcook has had an accident, she has broken the soup tureen and both her wooden legs.’ A letter to Mrs Rabbit from Tiggy-winkle, the hedgehog laundress, offers an apology for too much starch. ‘Indeed I apologize for the starch & hope you will forgive me. Indeed it is Tom Titmouse if you please ’m, he does want his collars that starchy, my mind does get full of pins!’ Frequently the miniature letters told something of Miss Potter’s activities, or hinted at what the next book might be.24
By the middle of June, both The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Two Bad Mice were nearly finished. Beatrix spent a great deal of time going over the page proofs, making corrections, while resisting the changes suggested by the copy editor. ‘I wish the printer could set Hunca Munca on one line,’ she wrote, ‘at all events on this page where first mentioned.’ “ ‘Leant against” instead of “stood” and “conversed,” children like a fine word occasionally.’ She had very particular reasons for her choice of language; sometimes it was rhythm and cadence, sometimes it was the sound of a word, or just something that amused her. She had an intuitive sense about what children liked. Endings and beginnings of books were always very important and she took great trouble with them. For The Tale of Benjamin Bunny she specified, ‘I would like the book to end with the word “rabbit tobacco” it is a rather fine word.’ It was also a word drawn from Uncle Remus.25