Beatrix Potter

by Linda Lear

  Sometime that spring Beatrix learned that a whole printing of Peter Rabbit had been destroyed when a bomb exploded at the binders. Luckily the ‘copper blocks & electros’ were safe at the printers. The event forced both Beatrix and her publisher to consider an alternative storage place for the irreplaceable blocks and drawings. They finally decided that the original drawings of Peter Rabbit would be safer with Beatrix in Sawrey than any place in London. ‘No place is safe,’ she wrote to Arthur Stephens on their receipt, ‘but the chances of any individual house being hit is small in the country.’ Beatrix had been trying to convince Warne’s to produce a ‘a cheap reprint’ in black and white for less than the 2s. 6d. that she considered too expensive for ‘a little gift book for “infants” or school baby-classes’. She encouraged Stephens to take the opportunity of the lost printing to experiment. ‘I cannot see any reason why it should interfere with the coloured edition — and if it did so I am afraid I would not be inconsolable. I do so dislike that idiotic prancing rabbit on the cover!’42

  When the Hyde Parkers returned to Suffolk in May 1941, Beatrix was keenly aware that once again she ran the risk of having evacuees settled at Hill Top. The very day they left, she wrote to Louie Choyce with the suggestion that she and her more-or-less invalid brother Tom ‘might like to come to Hill Top for a while… It would be a great pleasure to me to see you again — and frankly — (selfishly?) — I am concerned about the house & contents.’ The Barrow shipyards had been raided again and people were fleeing. Beatrix knew she could not keep an empty house for long. She offered suggestions for their employment and paid their train fares. ‘I hope you and Tom will be able to come and “hold the fort” and, if able later to do a little work, there would be opportunity! If I were not married I would go to Hill Top myself & give up this house; but W.H. is placid, he will never believe in scarcity of sugar or marmalade or arrival of evacs. Until they are on the door step!’ The problem was solved when Miss Choyce returned to Sawrey that summer. She and her brother lived in the two front rooms, watching over house and garden.43

  In June 1941 Beatrix wrote to Joseph again, asking him to come back to the Park for clipping instead of going to his usual summer haymaking. ‘I was at the Park this morning. George said he was not poorly? he seemed exhausted by this sudden intense heat… but whatever the climate he ought to go easy… George looks very tired. He says you are a great comfort to him because he can trust you absolutely, if you say you have looked [at] any stock — he knows you have — which he cannot be sure with a stranger.’ Upon learning that Joseph was indeed an experienced clipper, Beatrix offered him £70 for clipping and helping with the hay, chiding him for being ‘too modest’. Beatrix hoped that life would improve for the Walkers at Troutbeck, but Lucy Walker had undergone surgery on her neck, probably a thyroid or glandular tumour, and, while she struggled valiantly to continue with her farmwork, Beatrix was rightly worried. She made it a point to drive out to the Park at least once every fortnight and saved her petrol ration for the trip.44

  During the worst of the air raids on the northern coastal cities and naval bases in the summer and autumn of 1941 Beatrix kept up her reports to her American friends. She told Ivy Steel: ‘The bombs nearest here fell in fields & a road. I was told that some cows were much alarmed, but a family of geese continued calmly feeding!’ But later she reported the ‘destruction of a farm house, the whole family killed, including 5 evacuees’. She felt sorry for the evacuees, who had crowded into the countryside for safety, and she was worried about Ivy Steel’s Aunt Jessie, who had fled London during the Blitz, but she had also noticed that, like the town mouse and the country mouse, ‘all the townspeople go back. At one time there were crowds of evacuees, but they found the country cold & dull in winter. They said they would rather be bombed than bored.’45

  There was plenty to eat, but some things were short, such as ‘peppermints and eggs and oranges’. But Beatrix approved of the strict blackouts and rationing, except for eggs which got broken or turned bad before they were redistributed. Grateful for old friends whom she could rely on, Beatrix was heartened when the United States entered the war on 8 December 1941, but did not hide her feelings that it came belatedly. She listened to President Roosevelt’s speech on the wireless thinking to herself, ‘how many “December 7th’s” have there been in Europe?’ Christmas that year was bright and windless. Beatrix shared her anxieties with Bertha Mahony Miller. ‘I was never afraid of house work or outdoor work while I could do it, but I am rather infirm being so badly ruptured. There is plenty to eat and much to be thankful for.’ She looked forward to getting ‘over winter — without disaster — and see the spring sunshine again’.46

  In late November Beatrix finally posted off to Mrs Miller ‘two old unfinished tales belonging to the Caravan series’, ‘The Solitary Mouse’ and ‘Wag-by-Wall’, which she intended as stories for Bertha’s granddaughter. ‘I cannot judge my own work,’ she told the editor. ‘Is not “Wag by the Wa” ’ rather a pretty story…? I thought of it years ago as a pendant to The Tailor of Gloucester — the old lonely man and the lonely old woman — but I never could finish it all; and after 9 months occasional nibblings — it seems likely to go into the post — unfinished yet!’47

  A few months later Bertha wrote asking permission to publish ‘Wag-by-Wall’ in The Horn Book. ‘On your own head be it!’ Beatrix replied. But she acquiesced, providing she could ‘polish’ it further. She explained to her friend, ‘I think the art of essay writing is to balance the main theme by ruthlessly cutting, no matter whether the incidents sacrificed are pretty or not… If you really decide to use it I should like to alter a few sentences.’ Beatrix had been copying old loose pages of several stories into one notebook and wanted to ‘compress’ the story further. ‘If the Horn book printed it…’ Beatrix continued, ‘it would have the benefit of safeguarding the copyright, in case Sally [Wag-by-Wall] were worth making into a separate book.’ The terms Bertha offered — $50 for serial rights — were satisfactory, but Beatrix wanted to be paid directly rather than forwarding payment through Warne’s, explaining, ‘They were not pleased about the Caravan.’48

  Beatrix wrote to Mrs Miller again the following day with more revisions. ‘I told you I think the Mouse is twaddle!’ But she continued to think that “‘Wag” is a pretty little story. I should like to print it someday in book form.’ Telling Miller that she would receive several lists of corrections, Beatrix likened herself to Mr Turveydrop, a Dickens character: ‘I “polish! polish! polish!” to the last revise…’ But she gave Bertha carte blanche to edit as she saw fit. She was pleased that Bertha was considering some of the ‘Caravan’ stories for publication, rather than ‘those wearisome rabbits’. Confined to the house by a bad cold, sciatica and severe winter weather in March 1942, Beatrix began copying out some of the other ‘Caravan’ stories, not with a view to their publication, but hoping that they might be preserved ‘in a continent that is safer than this little island’. Comparing herself to Anne Carroll Moore’s lifetime of achievements, Beatrix felt her accomplishments were meagre, confiding, ‘I have just made stories to please myself because I never grew up!’49

  Friends in America continued to send books and food parcels, uncertain what she lacked on the farm. Much of the butter, bacon and tea Beatrix gave away to neighbours in the village, but she was especially grateful when the packages contained any form of sugar, chocolate or dried seasonings. One parcel from Gail Coolidge contained concentrated lemon juice, which she put away for a time when it would be gratefully used against a bronchial cough. From Americans too came the sort of fan letters that she treasured. ‘I have been surprised at the number and friendliness — of the packets of dozens of letters from [the] U.S.A…. I don’t receive English letters like that; a good many from children, some wanting autographs, some enthusiastic grateful parents… But never does anyone outside your perfidiously complimentary nation write to tell me that I write good prose!’50

  21

  Reflec
tions

  Old age has a way of forcing a person back upon themselves. The pace of life slows and brings with it a natural inclination to reflect upon the past. The spring of her seventy-fifth year, 1942, was a difficult one and Beatrix had more time to indulge in introspection than she was accustomed to, most of it prompted by admirers of her work. The winter had been the third one in a row with heavy snowfall. Getting about was difficult and going out to Troutbeck Park was impossible. Beatrix was sorrier by far ‘for the sheep than for the Germans’, and worried about them growing weak and thin in the snow. She rummaged in her portfolios in the mornings, and sorted books and papers in the afternoon. Much of her time was taken with sending off packets of Rebekah Owen’s collection of Hardiana to Professor Carl Weber at Colby College in Maine. She had been fond of Miss Owen and, she told the professor when she took possession of Owen’s papers, ‘I am an old woman. I wish to sort her things.’ Beatrix began sending parcels of material to America in July 1941, and continued through November, after which she feared for their loss at sea, and so made up packets to post in a safer time. She found sorting Miss Owen’s collection intellectually interesting, a kind of impromptu literary detour. It took her mind off the war and she took pleasure in her continued correspondence with the professor, who was the beneficiary of her good will and of her personal analysis of Thomas Hardy’s work.1

  The past two years had brought interesting new friends into Beatrix’s life; people who sought her out because as children they had loved her stories, and as adults they were admirers of her craft. John Kingston Stone, a young New Zealand journalist, came to Sawrey on a trip to England in 1940, begging for a guide to the actual scenes and settings in her books that he was so fond of. Beatrix had agreed to meet him because she sensed that Stone was ‘one of the individuals who never grow up, and belonging to the age of Alice and the Water Babies’, and so invited him to Hill Top where together they pored over her portfolios. When they came to the famous picture of Jemima rushing down the hill, bonnet askew and shawl fluttering behind, Beatrix told him, ‘that is what I used to look like to the Sawrey people. I rushed about quacking industriously!’ Stone’s love of the English countryside had elicited a long discussion on the National Trust and her hopes for saving the countryside. ‘You found some of the England that is still unspoilt,’ she wrote to him later. ‘It is most unfortunate how much has been wilfully destroyed… I have tried to do my humble bit of preservation in this district.’ She also confided to Stone that she hoped the Trust would preserve Hill Top, telling him, ‘I have taken much pleasure in collecting some oddments… along with my land; it would be easy to maintain it — separately yet under one roof — with the modern farm house.’ She had found Stone a person of such quality that she could not help wishing ‘the N. T.’s present secretarial representative [Bruce Thompson] were like you!’2

  Reginald Hart, another collector seeking information on the origins of each of the tales, appeared in Sawrey the year after Stone’s visit. Hart was a keen photographer, a collector of children’s books, particularly admiring those of Randolph Caldecott. Like Stone, Hart had done his Potter homework. By profession he was an architect who had been sent by the Ministry of Works in London to work at Blackpool, where he had certain civil service responsibilities for the granting of building permits and the allocation of building materials. Hart not only shared Beatrix’s interest in the architecture of the Lake District, but like Stone, he shared her passion for the decorative arts, antique furniture, early pottery and slipware. Hart had written to Beatrix in 1940 hoping to add a photograph of Hill Top to his private collection, which he called ‘A Lakeland Enquiry’, and he also wanted to take photographs of Hawkshead, correctly identifying it as the setting for the illustrations of Johnny Town-Mouse.

  When Hart, his wife and three-year-old daughter Alison arrived during the summer of 1940, Beatrix had welcomed them warmly and spent time showing them her collection of Randolph Caldecott’s original drawings for The Mad Dog, which had been purchased by her father and were hung on the wall upstairs at Castle Cottage. The following year Beatrix sought his advice about building permits and repairs to her farm buildings, and graciously accepted Hart’s help in cutting through the bureaucratic red tape. They exchanged information about slipware, the paltriness of Lake District kitchen middens which yielded little pottery of merit, and her efforts to buy a rare old oak refectory table on sale at Bowness. Beatrix was impressed by Hart’s photographic skill and enjoyed corresponding with him. During their visit the following summer, Hart took some photographs of Beatrix, of her pekes, and of little Alison and Beatrix playing with them. Hart sent Beatrix copies of the photographs, which pleased her so much she asked for three more copies — to send to friends in the United States. ‘I am quite delighted with the photographs of the little dogs — and Alison is even more delightful!… You have a good lens,’ she told him, ‘it does not distort… Its very good of my lace edged cap (which seems to have hitched forward over my nose) and not too bad of the old woman!’3

  Although Beatrix never met Samuel Cunningham, he too found favour as a correspondent because of his knowledge and perspective on rural life. Cunningham was a Unionist politician from Northern Ireland with whom Beatrix began to correspond sometime in 1936. He had been a businessman in Belfast and came from old Whig stock; his father, like Rupert, had been a barrister. Cunningham raised several varieties of cattle and had a large dairy herd out in the countryside. He was also a passionate and very knowledgeable gardener. In all likelihood Cunningham wrote to Beatrix about his pleasure in her animal drawings, wondering why she never wrote much about dogs. Beatrix replied that she could only ‘describe little rubbish, like mice and rabbits — dogs, sheep and horses are on a higher level’. Their letters ranged over a variety of congenial topics: livestock management, animal pests, farming and the war.4

  Most of all, Beatrix and Cunningham shared a passion for the preservation of the countryside. In one of the most complete statements of her philosophy of land preservation, Beatrix told him, ‘For years I have been gradually picking up land, chance bargains, and specializing on road frontages and the heads of valleys. I have a long way towards three thousand acres… It is an open secret it will go to the Trust eventually… I own two or three strikingly beautiful spots. The rest is pleasant peaceful country, foreground of the hills, I think more liable to be spoilt than the high fells themselves.’ Beatrix found corresponding with these similarly spirited men, Stone, Hart and Cunningham, invigorating. They all shared a passion to leave the world better than they found it, and were propelled forward in hard times by curiosity to see what would happen next. ‘I would rather keep going till I drop — early or late — never mind what the work is, so long as it is useful and well done.’ ‘I am sometimes surprised at myself, being contented,’ she wrote to Cunningham. ‘I lift my eyes to the hills, and I am content to look at them from below.’ Then she added almost to herself, ‘I did dream of getting an old pony (or a donkey) but I think I am safer pottering about on my own old legs…’5

  These friendships, the writing she had been doing for The Horn Book and the renewed critical interest in her reputation led Beatrix to think about her life’s accomplishments. Such reflection was reinforced during a severe case of bronchitis that sent her to bed for over a month in May 1942, and by the receipt of a very large royalty cheque from her English publisher for nearly two hundred thousand copies of her little books. ‘Prodigious!… The world goes mad on astronomical figures,’ she told her publisher, Arthur Stephens. She could hardly imagine such a number of books, but it pleased her.6

  In May 1942, ‘The Lonely Hills’, Beatrix’s essay drawn from parts of the ‘Caravan’ stories, appeared in The Horn Book. Bertha Mahony Miller had taken her reminiscences about country dancing and her musings about walking out on the Troutbeck Tongue, and melded them into a pleasant reverie on country life, as unwilling as Beatrix to let such tales ‘float away out of existence’. The phrase ‘the lonely hills’
was one Beatrix had always loved and found comfort in. She explained to Mrs Miller that the title, indeed the moral of the essay, was from Wordsworth’s poem, the ‘Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle (Upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors)’. The proper wording, she told her, was ‘[T]he sleep that is among the lonely hills’. ‘I have so often thought of those lines, since the silence of the starry sky has been interrupted by aeroplanes, which at first we detested as an intrusion but since the war we delight to see them.’7

  In her essay Beatrix recalls some of the country things that she loved and found beauty in: the music of the breeze in the hemlocks, the song of the brook running over pebbles, the ‘pretty jingling tunes’ of the English folk dances. She remembered reverently observing a ‘weird dance’ of the wild fell ponies to ‘music of Piper Wind’ in that ‘lonely wilderness behind the table-land on Troutbeck Tongue’. Then she had wandered in the ‘company of gentle sheep, and wild flowers and singing waters’, and ‘listened to the voices of the Little Folk’. ‘In the calm spacious days that seem so long ago, I loved to wander on the Troutbeck fell. Sometimes I had with me an old sheep dog, “Nip” or “Fly”, more often I went alone. But never lonely.’ Beatrix described the Tongue as an ‘uncanny’ place of ‘silences and whispering echoes’, remembered the black Galloway cattle that seemed like ‘dark specks moving slowly’, the ‘shaggy cows’ and the shepherds as they ‘drove down a thousand sheep from the high fell for dipping’. Her reverie ends with an evocation of the strength and comfort she found in that special place blurred by rising, swirling mist, the peace the fells offered to all who would look up. ‘Memories of “old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago”; sorrows of yesterday and today and tomorrow — the vastness of the fells covers all with a mantle of peace.’ It was a fitting essay in a time of war, and a unique reflection from the writer in her old age.8