The Real Beatrix Potter

by Nadia Cohen

  Illustrators soon begin to go downhill. I will stick to doing as many as I can of my own books.

  Her parents took little pleasure in this remarkable new development in their daughter’s life. As far as they were concerned, Beatrix was nothing short of a disappointment to them, having totally failed to meet their expectations of her. Unmarried, cripplingly shy and plagued by poor health, she continued to languish in her childhood home, steeped in misery. Beatrix had made a little money from the greetings cards and assumed that was the end of her short-lived and unimpressive publishing career.

  Chapter Six

  Since so many of Beatrix’s early illustrated letters were so carefully preserved, it is safe to assume they were received with great delight and treasured by their grateful recipients. The original letter sent to Noel about Peter Rabbit, which still exists intact and is on display in Beatrix’s writing room at her home in the Lake District, shows page after page of drawings of the family of rabbits scampering among the lettuces, and of course Mr McGregor chasing them with his rake.

  Beatrix also sent similar letters to one of her favourite aunts, Lady Roscoe, the wife of her uncle Sir Henry Roscoe who had helped her present her mycology research at Kew Gardens, and of course to her dear friend from the Lake District, Canon Rawnsley. Rawnsley had been impressed with her obvious talent and suggested several times to Beatrix that the stories could be developed into popular children’s storybooks, and eventually he persuaded Beatrix that it might be an idea worth pursuing. She contacted Annie to see if her son Noel Moore still had any of the original letters she had sent him eight years before when he had been ill.

  Of course, Noel had kept all the letters and immediately agreed to send them back so that Beatrix could use them as the basis for creating a full story. Following Rawnsley’s sensible advice, Beatrix expanded it to become a first draft of a children’s story. She decided to simply call it The Tale Of Peter Rabbit. After a little research she sent the manuscript to a prolific children’s publisher called Frederick Warnes and Co. in London.

  Warnes had no interest in this unexpected submission from an unknown author however, and the story was swiftly rejected out of hand. Before she knew it the manuscript was returned to Bolton Gardens, and a maid handed it back to Beatrix with the morning post. She was inevitably disappointed, but with a newfound confidence and determination to succeed – thanks in large part to the ringing endorsement of Canon Rawnsley – she sent copies of her story off to six more publishers. Not one of them could see any financial potential in publishing Peter Rabbit either, and they all simply sent her ideas back ‘with or without thanks’, she sighed gloomily.

  But Beatrix was not to be discouraged by the stream of rejections, and displaying a resilience that would serve her well for the rest of her life, she felt sure there must be a way of overcoming this hurdle. All she needed to do was work out what that solution was. Before long, revealing herself to have a streak of steely determination which she later mused must have been inherited from her grandmother Jessie Compton, Beatrix decided to take matters into her own hands and publish the story herself.

  She revised the tale about four little rabbits once again, and fashioned it into a dummy book, imitating one of her own favourite books as the time, Helen Bannerman’s 1899 bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. The controversial undertones of that story and the series that followed about black children would come to horrify modern readers, since the name Sambo was later used as a derogatory racial slur. Bannerman’s books were eventually censored, although at the time the tales of a young boy who kept pet tigers in the Indian jungle were hugely popular with children. Beatrix particularly admired the illustrations of elephants, mongoose and tigers.

  Suitably inspired, and heeding more advice from Rawnsley, Beatrix withdrew all the money she had earned from the poetry pamphlet from a nearby Post Office and asked a friend at the National History Museum if she knew of any printers who might be able to help her. Luckily the friend’s father, Dr Woodwood, was then the editor of the Geological Magazine and could arrange printing of the story for eleven pounds. As far as Beatrix was concerned, the great advantage of publishing the book entirely at her own expense was that she was in complete change of every aspect of the project and could therefore ensure that it looked exactly as she wanted it to. She had very definite ideas about its appearance, and insisted it be published in a very small format, only five by four inches in size, with just a couple of sentences on each page and a picture on every facing page. The main change from the illustrations in the original letter to Noel was that the image on the front cover was to be washed with colour.

  She took delivery of an initial print run of 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in December 1901 and thoroughly enjoyed the process of being able to sell them to her friends and relations for one and two-pence a copy. They made wonderful Christmas presents and Beatrix was delighted by how well they were received, but in the back of her mind she was still convinced that people were only purchasing copies as a favour to her.

  That thought soon started to disappear when she started to get requests for several copies at a time, and as she noted:

  It caused a good deal of amusement amongst my relations and friends. I made about £12 or £14 by selling copies to obliging aunts.

  It is going off very well amongst my friends and relations, five at a time. If you had decided not to go with it, I would have certainly done it myself, it has given me so much amusement.

  I showed it this morning to some ladies who have a bookshop in Kensington, who wanted to put it in the window, on the spot; but I did not venture to do so – though I would have been much interested.

  Her little cottage industry was ticking along nicely, and by February 1902 she had sold all the books. Having run out of copies she ordered another 200 books to be printed at her own expense.

  While she was on holiday in Roxburghshire that summer, visiting her brother Bertram who had decided to move to Scotland, she was stunned to hear that several more strangers who she did not know were now requesting copies of the book. She was just contemplating investing more of her savings in a third print run when everything changed. The publishers at Warnes who had rejected her initial manuscript had seen a copy of the story printed and bound, and now they had changed their minds. The publishers wrote to Beatrix once again, admitting their change of heart, explaining that they had been wrong to dismiss this woman out of hand, and they could predict great potential in her and Peter Rabbit. This time Warnes agreed that they would publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit as a small hardback book, on the condition that she must first change all the drawings from black and white to full colour illustrations. They gently admonished her for taking matters into her own hands and self-publishing the books, but as Beatrix explained, she had been left with no choice but to print them privately because she insisted on one colour illustration on the front, and could not find anyone prepared to share her vision. It was only when Warnes saw her pen and ink sketches in print that they agreed they would all actually look much better in full colour.

  Beatrix was stunned by the turnaround but shrewd enough not to instantly capitulate to their demands. After all, their initial rejection still stung. For the first time in her life, Beatrix felt that she had some power and control over her own destiny; it was a rather thrilling feeling. Although she was initially concerned that her parents would not approve of her striking business deals, when she returned from visiting Bertram and broke the news that she had been offered a potentially lucrative publishing contract her father sat up and took notice.

  Rupert took a surprising amount of interest in helping his daughter negotiate the terms of her first ever publishing contract. Until this point father and daughter had very little in common, but now they had an awful lot to discuss. Beatrix and Rupert had long, involved conversations about royalties, copyright issues and sales percentages. This was a whole new world to Beatrix, but Rupert had not forgotten his legal training and was able
to strike a very good deal on her behalf. For the first time, even Helen began to take an interest in her daughter’s achievements when she appreciated its potential financial value. But Beatrix was not thinking about the money, she was simply delighted to be busy for the first time in her life, and she thought of little else. When it came to creating the new illustrations, which had been requested for every page of the story, she was advised to no longer focus solely on the animals themselves, but also needed to ensure that the backgrounds were beautifully crafted works of art in themselves.

  Beatrix had clear ideas about precisely where she wanted each illustration to fall in the pages of the books, which meant she was taking a keen interest in the intricacies and restrictions of the printing presses. She wanted to learn how to take full advantage of the latest technology that she now unexpectedly had at her fingertips. Beatrix was fascinated by every aspect of the process, from creating the printing plates to meticulously checking the proofs and the marketing opportunities that would later follow. At that time however, children’s book publishing was an exclusively male industry, and for a woman to appear out of nowhere and start telling the men exactly what she wanted – and when and how she wanted it – left most of those men agog. Taking charge of her own future in this way meant Beatrix was many years ahead of her time. She was not intimidated by money-men who tried to patronise her or keep her out of the loop, nor was she bothered by the misogynistic attitudes of the men she met at the printing factories, because she was solely focused on one thing and one thing only – making sure her books looked just right.

  The process of colour printing, which was certainly not widely used at the time, required expensive zinc plates, but Beatrix insisted on them and somehow everyone agreed. Although Warnes may have been wondering quite what they had got themselves into with their latest signing, and were quite reluctant to cover the extra costs at first, Beatrix meant business.

  She managed to persuade them to see things her way by offering to take a lower share of the royalties after publication to cover the extra cost of the initial printing and the zinc plates. Beatrix had her family’s wealth to fall back on, so could easily afford to take the financial gamble, and it meant that the cover price of the books was kept low. She was always adamant that her readers, who she later referred to as her ‘Little Friends’ should never have to pay more than a shilling for a book.

  Suddenly life at Bolton Gardens did not seem so dull after all. Beatrix was blossoming into a businesswoman, and she actually dared to imagine a future for herself away from the confines of her parents’ strict and deeply tedious domestic regime. A new person seemed to be emerging: a demanding, hard-headed woman who had no qualms when it came to asking for precisely what she wanted, and Beatrix herself later suggested she had inherited her entrepreneurial grandfather’s business acumen. Until this point, Beatrix’s life had been sheltered and cushioned by her parents, but that had not made her naive. If anything, she was simply more determined to succeed. For years she had been waiting for something to sink her teeth into and now she had her chance to shine.

  Beatrix was ready to spread her wings a little, but whether she liked it or not she was still living under her father’s roof and he still had ultimate say when it came to her financial affairs. She had little choice but to allow Rupert complete charge of the nitty gritty of the legal and financial negotiations; as he reminded his daughter frequently, he had been a qualified barrister in the past.

  Beatrix understood that Rupert had her best interests at heart, but his interference had the undesirable effect of making her feel inexperienced and unsure of herself. In letters she sent to Frederick Warne, she was forced to admit that she did not fully understand the minutiae of copyright law, although she found her father’s explanations rather muddling and unhelpful too: ‘I must apologise for not understanding, but I would like to be clear about it,’ she wrote. ‘I am aware that these little books don’t last long, even if they are a success; but I should like to know what I am agreeing to. I have not spoken to Mr Potter, but I think, Sir, it would be well to explain the agreement clearly, because he is a little formal.’

  She was very pleased that Warnes had agreed to publish all the drawings in colour but was unsure whether that meant she should start again from scratch and redo all the pictures. The last thing she wanted was for Warnes to think she was inexperienced, and so she decided to consult Canon Rawnsley, whose guidance and wisdom she had always valued: ‘I am perfectly willing to redraw the whole if desired,’ she explained to him. ‘I did not colour the whole book for two reasons – the great expense of good colour printing, and also the rather uninteresting colour of a good many of the subjects, which are most of them rabbit brown and green.’

  While she was confident of her animal drawings, she was far less sure of herself when it came to representations of human figures, and was not surprised when Warnes asked her to redraw Mr McGregor several times.

  She returned to spend some time studying the workers toiling on Bertram’s farm, although she was far too shy to dream of asking them to model for her. Beatrix instead asked her brother to give his honest opinion of the faces and bodies she was working on: ‘My brother is sarcastic about the figures,’ she revealed to her publisher. ‘What you and he take for Mr McGregor’s nose was intended for his ear, not his nose at all. The people are very suitable here, if one was not afraid of them, especially the cook. If I cannot manage any other way, I will photograph her in the right position, and copy the photograph. I never learnt to draw figures. The rabbits will be no difficulty.’

  Beatrix had loved her time on Bertram’s Scottish farm and incorporated much of the peripheral scenery into the new drawings, including the potting shed, cucumber frame and even the geranium plants on the windowsill.

  At last feeling satisfied that The Tale of Peter Rabbit was in the best possible shape for professional publication, Warnes went ahead. They predicted a moderate success, and Beatrix obviously did not expect her little books to do particularly well either, convinced that any popularity they did enjoy would be short-lived anyway.

  She kept her expectations low, admitting she was happy to earn very little or even no profit from them, since the truth was she was simply grateful for the opportunity to finally see her work in print. She decided to make the best of the experience while it lasted, never daring to imagine that writing or drawing might become an enduring career plan. ‘I should like to take the opportunity of saying that I shall not be surprised or disappointed to hear that the figures work out badly for the first edition of Peter Rabbit,’ she wrote with typical modesty.

  Of course, everyone’s predictions were wide of the mark. The moment the books hit the shelves they became a phenomenal publishing sensation, and Beatrix was hooked. There was no going back to her old life now. Almost immediately, she was flooded with letters from children and adults alike who adored Peter and his naughty little siblings – and to her astonishment she even received an admiring and encouraging letter from Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories. With Conan Doyle’s ringing endorsement spurring her on, Beatrix felt sure she had been right all along to obsess over every detail of every page, down to typesetting and endpapers.

  Quite by accident she had stumbled upon something she was really rather good at, and Beatrix would never look back. Harold and Fruing Warnes, who had taken over Warnes and Co. from their father Frederick, did not expect Beatrix’s ‘little book’ to become a best-seller, and they gave Peter Rabbit to their younger brother Norman as a project to keep him occupied while they dealt with more high profile authors. The partnership between Beatrix and Norman would transform all their lives forever.

  Chapter Seven

  Within the first few months of publication The Tale of Peter Rabbit had sold more than 20,000 copies, an astonishing turn of events which nobody had predicted. Beatrix hoped it had not simply been a flash in the pan, and started to think that perhaps she should capitalise on her su
ccess and carry on writing.

  Brimming with confidence for the first time in her life, she felt ready to start working on an adaptation of another whimsical story, which she had heard while she was staying with her cousin Caroline Hutton in Gloucester. Caroline was a frequent visitor to the Potter’s house in Bolton Gardens and often invited Beatrix back to stay at her home, Harescombe Grange in Stroud. It wasn’t until she was already 28 years old that Beatrix plucked up the courage to ask her parents if she could be allowed to go alone to visit her cousin in the countryside. To nobody’s great surprise, Rupert and Helen were highly disapproving of the startling idea of a grown woman travelling unsupervised, but whichever way they attempted to argue against it, Beatrix was far too old for them to ban her altogether. Eventually they gave their grudging consent, warning their daughter darkly of all the sinister dangers that she was bound to encounter on the treacherous journey, and predicting that she would almost certainly faint on the train.

  Simply trying to make the basic travel arrangements became such a battle of wills that Beatrix started to wonder if it was even worth going to so much trouble for a few days away: ‘I had not been away independently for five years,’ she wrote. ‘It was an event. It was so much an event in the eyes of my relations that they made it appear an undertaking to me, and I began to think I would rather not go. I had a sick headache most inopportunely, though whether cause or effect I cannot say.’

  In the end, Caroline intervened and volunteered to travel up to London so that she could then escort Beatrix safely back to Stroud herself. Many years later Caroline recalled: ‘I am always glad that in spite of her mother’s objections I managed to get her to my own home.’