by Linda Lear
It was disappointing to Beatrix, who of course could not vote herself and disapproved of the women’s suffrage campaign, that the January 1910 general election returned a Liberal government. The vote in the Lake District was closer. ‘I am much rejoiced to see the results of the neighbouring Windermere & Kendal elections,’ she wrote to Harold Warne. ‘I promise faithfully to return to pigs & mice next week.’ This was the first and last time Beatrix would be involved in national politics, but only the beginning of her interest in local matters.15
Beatrix admitted that she was ‘over busy’, rushing off to Sawrey whenever she could get away from family obligations. Finally at the end of July, after much ado about finding a suitable holiday house and making special arrangements for lodging the coachmen, Beatrix and her parents arrived at Helm Farm in Bowness. Helm Farm was a charming whitewashed farmhouse with an old stone barn attached at the back. It stood atop a steep hill above the lake, which made horse and foot traffic to and from Bowness arduous. The inconvenient access left the Potters less inclined to go out than usual and consequently made it more difficult for Beatrix to spend time in Sawrey. ‘I don’t like leaving my parents for any length of time,’ she wrote to Millie in late August, ‘they are both very well in health, but they do not like this place… It is a fine view, but such a hill!’ Rupert had not been well just before leaving for Windermere, and Beatrix worried, knowing that she would have to go back to London if her father’s health deteriorated.16
She squeezed out every available moment at the farm, gardening and looking after the haying, but had little time or energy for books. ‘I cannot screw anything out of my head at present!’ she told Millie. ‘I have done a little sketching when it does not rain, and I spent a very wet hour inside the pig stye drawing the pig. It tries to nibble my boots, which is interrupting. I don’t think it ever answers to try & finish a book in summer, it makes me short of material afterwards if I do not sketch.’ She hoped to return to Sawrey later that autumn. For the first time in seven years there would be only one book for the year.17
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse was originally written out in a small leather-covered notebook as a New Year’s gift for Nellie Warne, Harold’s youngest daughter. Mrs Tittlemouse, who was first introduced as the heroine of the Flopsy Bunnies, is a story of a very fastidious country wood-mouse with a long tail. She lives in a bank under a hedge, and her housekeeping is put upon by a variety of careless callers with dirty feet, some of whom come hoping to be fed. Mrs Tittlemouse becomes so upset with her uninvited visitors that she threatens to ‘go distracted’ and shuts herself up in the nut-cellar until they leave, and she can get her little house cleaned up again to give a party for other equally tidy wood-mice.
This was a story that called upon Beatrix’s acute observation of the habits of a variety of insects and amphibians, and her experience drawing them. She includes bees, a beetle, a ladybird, a butterfly and a spider, as well as Mr Jackson, a large toad. In at least one version of the story Beatrix included woodlice, an earwig and a centipede among the uninvited guests. But Harold objected to having woodlice in a children’s story. Beatrix argued for keeping the word ‘slaters’, the generic word for woodlice, but later acquiesced to the much more innocuous description of them as the ‘creepy-crawly people’ hiding behind the plate racks. Like the more fantastical Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tittlemouse’s insect visitors reflect Beatrix’s microscopic understanding of their anatomy, coloration and behaviour. She painted her insects with accuracy but also with humour. The toad, she knows, moves crab-wise on land and only goes to find water for spawning in the spring. She also knows that toads are inordinately fond of honey and can smell it out. The fat spider who seeks shelter in the rain is very much like the spiders with hairy legs and jointed appendages that she drew under the microscope in the 1890s, as is the entomologically identifiable butterfly who lands on the sugar cube. Beatrix delighted in the drawings of the insects and in the details of Mrs Tittlemouse’s house, which has a cosy quality, not unlike the interiors she was creating at Hill Top. She had observed many such serious nest-making mice over the years, and all of Mrs Tittlemouse’s visitors had come at one time or another to call at Hill Top Farm.
Beatrix was pleased with the bound copies she received, certain that the book would be ‘popular with little girls’. The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse was published at the end of July. A rare note to one of the Moore daughters from Rupert Potter reveals that, despite his poor health, he still took pleasure in his daughter’s talents. ‘I think I am rather proud of my daughter’s freshness of humour which has never yet become dull,’ he wrote. It was a touching comment on the sometimes tempestuous relationship between father and daughter.18
In early October Bertram came to Bolton Gardens for a rare visit and Beatrix jumped at the opportunity to leave the field to him. It had been ‘a trying season’ and she was wanting a change. Rupert had become very irascible, complaining of his stomach. But when nothing serious could be found, Beatrix decided to stay away as long as possible. Most of the harvesting chores at Hill Top had been finished before she got there, but there were still apples to be gathered and stored, and there was always gardening to do. She did some sketching, but mostly worried about sheep sales — buying and selling — and the price of mutton. She had a hired a man to dig the garden while she divided perennials, and there was a new brood of chickens. ‘I have got some white pullets which amuse me, they are such pets,’ she wrote to Millie, ‘they will all try to jump on my knee at once if I sit on the doorstep, and two or three will allow me to pick them up & stroke them like a parrot. Their feet are rather dirty.’ It was clear that the pig book had been put aside.19
In mid-November Beatrix made another impromptu ‘bolt for it’ to Hill Top. She wanted to get her tax papers completed, a task which undoubtedly took her to the Heelis office in Hawkshead. In spite of a light snow, she was very glad she had come, cheered by how pretty the farm looked in winter. Beatrix had taken an interest in the local Grasmere games, a sporting tradition of long standing held in the beautiful lakeside village of Grasmere, where wrestling and hound trailing were especially popular. She had attended some of the games in August, perhaps in the company of William Heelis, who was an avid sportsman. She was especially intrigued when one of the temporary farm hands helping with the Hill Top harvest brought out a puppy he was training for the trail hound competition the following year, and demonstrated how the dog could track. Delighted with the demonstration, Beatrix watched the puppy following the aniseed scent his master had laid around the farm from a nearby hill. ‘The leaves are all off, it is very wintry looking, but I do not feel cold at all,’ she told Millie. In fact, Beatrix seemed to catch cold only when she returned to London — understandable, given its smoky air and contagious diseases, and where her life was increasingly stressful.20
Rupert Potter was now nearly 80 and Helen was in her seventies. Beatrix was effectively managing two households, Bolton Gardens and her farm, as well as arranging the several holiday trips the family made each season. The year 1910 marked a falling off of the intense creative activity that had sustained her since Norman’s death five years earlier. ‘I did not succeed in finishing more than one book last year,’ she wrote to a friend on New Year’s Day 1911. ‘I find it very difficult lately to get the drawings done. I do not seem to be able to go into the country for a long enough time to do a sufficient amount of sketching and when I was at Bowness last summer I spent most of my time upon the road going backwards & forwards to the farm — which was amusing, but not satisfactory for work. It is awkward with old people, especially in winter — it is not very fit to leave them.’ Her creative work and the hard physical energy she expended at the farm had been the key to warding off depression. But it was a slippery slope she clung to every winter in London. It was becoming harder and harder to escape to Sawrey, and once there, work on the farm kept her from sketching.21
In 1911 she managed to ‘squeeze out’ The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes, the least satisf
actory of her tales. She probably agreed to do it for all the wrong reasons: to satisfy demand from Warne’s for another book, for the money, and to court her growing American audience. The story featured a couple of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), an American import to Great Britain which began to flourish at the turn of the century, and an American chipmunk resembling the common eastern variety (Tamias striatus). Beatrix may have seen grey squirrels in the Sawrey woods, but it seems unlikely they had reached the Lake District by then. She did most of the squirrel drawings either from models at the zoo or from reference books at the Natural History Museum, and she had no live models of chipmunks. Because Timmy Tiptoes and Chippy Hackee are not drawn from nature, their images have a certain artificiality that her other animal characters do not have. They seem more like ‘stuffed animals’, particularly in facial appearance, than live ones. The squirrels’ solution to the problem of over-eating holds the tale together and the book sold well, but it seems marred by its mixed environment, including the surprising appearance of an American black bear. The awkwardness of both story and image reflects how difficult it was for Potter to write about nature that was outside her knowledge or that she had not directly observed.22
She put more energy into finishing Peter Rabbit’s Painting Book, the first of three such successful ventures. It contained pairs of outlined drawings of animal characters from her earlier books, with a short text under each pair. Beatrix had definite ideas about how the pictures in the painting books should be done. In the front of the book, she wrote brief instructions about the five colours a child needed and explained how to mix Antwerp blue with burnt sienna to make dark brown. She also included the admonition, ‘Don’t put the Brush in your mouth. If you do, you will be ill, like Peter.’ Both the painting book and Timmy Tiptoes were published in October. During the summer Beatrix suggested to Harold Warne that they should sell loose sets of outline drawings separately from the painting book. She tried out her new marketing idea on the two youngest Moore girls, Hilda and Beatrix, and their mother sent their painted pictures back to Beatrix so she could see the happy results. ‘People don’t buy two or three copies of the book…’ she reasoned to Harold, ‘but I quite think they would nearly all buy extra prints, & children might come again for more from their own pocket money if they were done for 3d or 4d… I should certainly like some for myself as soon as you have any.’ Harold accepted her suggestion, and single sheets were printed with the full text under each and were sold in an envelope in sets of twelve for 4d. The painting book had wide appeal and was immensely successful.23
Imperceptibly, the balance of Beatrix’s creative energy had shifted. By 1911, she was more happily focused on Hill Top and her life as a countrywoman in the village of Sawrey than on meeting the seemingly insatiable demand from Warne’s for books. But farming required capital, and Beatrix never forgot for an instant that the books were the key to maintaining and expanding her properties. Knowing that Harold Warne was in Jersey on holiday, Beatrix wrote to Fruing about her delinquent royalties. ‘I am not short. I am not of opinion that the circulation of the books is smaller than it ought to be, or any other of Mr Warne’s etcs. His letters are enough to drive anybody mad. I only want to know as a matter of banking arrangements whether the next cheque is going to be inside August, or whether it means September 15th… The difficulty of getting cheques at the time promised has sometimes rather perplexed and alarmed me…’24
There were other diversions. A new king, George V, would be crowned in June. In February Beatrix had been appointed to the committee on local coronation celebrations in the village, where tempers ran high. ‘There was such a row over the appointment of a committee that I don’t know how it will end,’ she wrote to Millie. ‘The chairman wanted 7 members & we emerged with 14, and several of the leading inhabitants left out; it is a regular mess! I am on the committee & a determined person; but unfortunately non-resident.’ Beatrix did what she could, including allowing some of the celebrations to be held on Bull Banks, one of the larger pastures below Oatmeal Crag, on Castle Farm.25
But the real reason for her winter visit to Sawrey was real estate. William Heelis had told her that two small pieces of land bordering Hill Top would soon come on the market. Beatrix and William tramped through the snow in the cold, making certain of the property lines and fences. Together these small strips would regularize the complicated boundary on the western side of Hill Top, close to Sawrey House. It would also enable her to construct a ‘good turnable fence of wood wire or stone’ on her property which would give her more control over a public access. Once again, Heelis acted as her agent, acquiring the two portions from Thomas Baines for £20.26
Beatrix was able to make only two other visits to Hill Top that spring. In early April she found it very cold with frequent blizzards, but no snow lying on the ground. ‘There are a good many polyanthuses [hybrid primrose] but everything is pinched and shrivelled, except the violets which happen to be at the foot of a wall,’ she reported. ‘There are quantities of lambs, extremely lively & pretty, and two calves have arrived since I came yesterday.’ She was pleased with her flower gardening, and hopeful that the crown imperial lilies Mrs Warne had given her years before might yet bloom at Hill Top. Back again in the middle of June, during Whitsuntide holiday, she happily busied herself singling a potential bumper crop of turnips to be used later as cattle feed, but privately she worried about the effects of an extended drought in the area. ‘The drought is dreadful on this light hilly soil, it is difficult to decide whether to move the hay, or let it wither up still worse.’ Such questions were crucial for fell farmers who worried about the survival of their livestock in bad weather.27
The Potters rented Lindeth Howe for the summer of 1911. It was a large nineteenth-century house, with garage, cottages and extensive gardens, in an elite area of Windermere known as Storrs Park. The house was once again on the top of a hill, not quite as steep as the one at Helm Farm, but still a hard walk up from the ferry. Beatrix went over to Sawrey about four days a week. ‘I go there on the Coniston coach in the morning & come back after tea… The lake and woods look lovely in the evening, when I get down to the ferry,’ she told Millie. But the daily travel took valuable time away from both farm work and her sketching.28
The summer weather was lovely but rather warm, and although the drought had been serious, Beatrix’s two pump wells ‘held out’. The flower garden had suffered most but she was very pleased with her crop of fruit, especially the apples. Her attention was diverted for several days by a Boy Scout encampment in the field just beyond the farmhouse. Beatrix told Louie Warne all about the camp in an amusing picture letter. ‘This is a camp of boy scouts — This is my house! & my apple trees, & me in my garden [drawings]… I find tents just above my chimnies [sic] and scouts all over everywhere, especially on the walls [drawing].’ Beatrix struck a deal with the Scout commander that the boys could take the small apples from two designated trees and some very hard pears. But as she explained to Louie, she expected him to send two boys for the apples and got ‘20 scouts & 1 trumpet’ instead (drawing). The picture letter shows the Scouts with apples stuffed in their shirt and shorts pockets. ‘Three cheers for the old lady!(!)’ they had called out. ‘The “old lady” has dismissed the scouts with strict injunctions to cook the pears.’ But minutes later a Scout reappears to ask for a ‘bucketful’ of sugar to cook the pears with (drawing). ‘I think it prudent to conduct the scout to “Ginger & Pickles,” as sugar is cheap,’ she told Louie. Although she fussed about her apple trees, the Scout encampment was the beginning of many more to follow, of both Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, and of Beatrix’s pleasure in accommodating the young people on her land.29
Beatrix had also discovered a new piece of legislation proposed as an addition to the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, to which she objected both as a farm woman and an employer of young farmhands. The proposed Act prohibited anyone under 16 years of age from being admitted to or participating in the slaughter of an
animal at a knacker’s yard. The Act came into effect in 1912 and carried a fine of up to £10. Beatrix drafted a letter of protest sometime that autumn, probably intending it for The Times. She argued that while it was unwise to allow young children to be present at a pig killing, since ‘there have once or twice been serious accidents, where they have tried to imitate the scene in play’, she insisted that a farm lad of 15 ½ was certainly able to assist ‘at the cutting up’. Recalling her own childhood, Beatrix opined, ‘The present generation is being reared upon tea — and slops.’30
These diversions were minor, however, compared with Beatrix’s participation in the local campaign mounted against the construction of an aeroplane factory at Cockshott Point on Windermere and the use of hydroplanes on the lake, both of which began in the winter of 1911. Here was a cause she could not ignore, for both personal and environmental reasons, and one she felt passionately about. Like her earlier petitions against free trade and the horse census, the campaign against what she called ‘the beastly fly-swimming spluttering aeroplane careering up & down over Windermere’ involved a letter-writing campaign and publicly aligned her with Hardwicke Rawnsley in another fight for the protection of the lakes.31