by Nadia Cohen
Following her somewhat pointless mercy mission to help her mother with the maid – yet another long and wasted journey as far as she was concerned – Beatrix boldly decided that she would be spending Christmas away from her parents that year, for the first time ever. She had never dared even suggest such a controversial idea before, and she knew they would be incandescent at the very suggestion, but her priority was William now and she wanted their first Christmas together to be special.
Beatrix had never cared much for food. To her it was simply fuel to sustain her through the day, and she had never bothered to master cooking much beyond bacon and potatoes. She tended to live on hunks of bread and cheese, or toasted teacakes with homemade jam. With the help of the new recipe book which had arrived from Millie, and William’s eager assistance in the kitchen, they pulled off their first traditional turkey dinner together, and afterwards Beatrix remarked: ‘I feel as if I had been married many years.’
If the previous ten years had been the most creatively productive years of Beatrix’s life, as she approached fifty she was entering the most emotionally content period she had ever known. She was rich and moderately famous, but becoming Mrs Heelis meant she could cast off the mantle of Miss Potter and the aspects of her old life she had grown to dislike – which included her parents’ tight grip. With the change of surname came an opportunity to completely reinvent herself, and for the next thirty years Beatrix insisted that nobody should be allowed to call her Miss Potter. Anyone who slipped up and inadvertently used her maiden name was given short shrift. From now on Mrs Heelis would be known as a shrewd, hard-working, outspoken woman who toiled the land, not a genteel lady who wore silk gowns to sip tea served by maids in the drawing rooms of Kensington. The London socialites she so despised would have been aghast had they seen how cheerfully Beatrix slipped into her muddy boots, never happier than when she was surrounded by animals and covered in muck.
In the Lake District nobody cared about her celebrity status or her bank balance, they had more important things to worry about. Over the years her fame was scarcely mentioned anymore, and she hoped it would eventually be forgotten entirely; many younger people in the village only realised who she was when they read her obituary in the newspapers. The only gossip-worthy thing about Beatrix and William was that they hardly ever went to church on Sundays. Beatrix argued that she did not like the local parson and anyway she had far too much work to do on the farm. She wrote: ‘I don’t go out much, haven’t time, and the little town seems nothing but gossip and cards. I’m afraid our own special sin is not attending church regularly, not loving the nearest parson; and I was brought up a Dissenter. I am very downright, but I get on with everybody.’
She did however have a King James Bible always open by her bedside, and reveled in its vocabulary. There were no days of rest as far as Beatrix was concerned, she was a busy woman – especially during the war years when she was desperately short of labourers and had no choice but to work even harder than ever.
Willie, as she fondly called her husband, was happy to help out too. They made a good team and nothing could dampen her spirits. She was totally absorbed in rural life, propped up by the good-humoured affection of her loving and loyal partner.
Being married to a local solicitor also helped with Beatrix’s frequent property purchases, since William oversaw all the paperwork for his wife. Like her, William also bought several properties and some land, and he too eventually left his estate to the National Trust. He included his offices in his bequest, which remained a solicitor’s practice until the 1980s when it was converted into a gallery where visitors can still see many of Beatrix’s original letters and works of art on display.
Chapter Fourteen
Beatrix’s enduring friendship with Canon Rawnsley, his wife Edith and their son Noel was perhaps the most influential in her life. It was of course Canon Rawnsley who Beatrix had turned to for advice when she first had the idea of publishing a children’s book, and he was certainly right about that. She had been in her mid-thirties when the idea of writing first started to take shape, but he guided and mentored her, and offered practical advice she could not find anywhere else.
Rawnsley loved the Lakes even more than Beatrix and, inspired by the Lakeland poet William Wordsworth and the artist and social critic John Ruskin, he wrote romantic verses in an attempt to express his adoration. He also wanted to use his boundless energy and creativity to devise more practical ways of protecting the region against rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.
Along with fellow open space campaigners Robert Hunter and Olivia Hill, Rawnsley discussed the pressing need for a body which could put land beyond any risk of development from slate quarrying, roads and tourism, and together they came up with The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or National Beauty. Rawnsley and Edith, an artist, were both passionate social reformers who had already set up the Keswick School of Industrial Arts together, and helped found the innovative Keswick High School.
The National Trust of course thrives to this day, and Beatrix’s environmental work for the Trust in the final years of her life is considered by many to be her greatest legacy. She had first heard the seed of Rawnsley’s original idea when she was just a teenager, but she never forgot what he had intended to do and when she had the money to help she remembered the promise she had made him. Had Rawnsley survived to see it bearing fruit, he would have been overjoyed.
Beatrix shared his fears about the many dangers threatening to destroy the Lake District, its ancient agricultural traditions and distinctive landscape. It was primarily farming country, but its wild beauty made it so much more than working land. Farmers were guilty of destroying certain aspects of their land for their own ends; that infuriated Rawnsley, but he understood that native people were not the true enemy. Tourists, who were then known locally as trippers, infuriated him too, but to his mind the main problem were struggling private landowners who could be swayed to sell off their land for huge profits. Ruthless, greedy developers swooped whenever a farmer died or went bankrupt and lured them with generous offers; smaller farms were highly susceptible to falling prey to the highest bidder when times were hard.
When Beatrix became aware of the problem, having witnessed it first-hand among her new farming friends she wrote to Mrs Rawnsley saying: ‘Small-holders are hopeless. First they sell off all sheep stocks; and then they cut all timber, and concentrate on hens.’
Canon Rawnsley suggested that Beatrix lend her own buying power to their campaign, which was then focused on outbidding the developers by trying to buy up pieces of land with road frontages so that the main thoroughfares could not be widened any further for traffic. Rawnsley’s scheme quickly gathered momentum as many farmers preferred to sell to the National Trust and then rent their homes back, since there were many benefits to having a charity as their landlord. As a charity National Trust did not need to pay income tax or death duties, so could afford regular maintenance and proper repairs to the properties whenever they were needed. Farmers found the new regime sympathetic and generous, and they too shared the same aim – stopping their beloved countryside being ruined by careless tourists.
A major stumbling block was that in order to survive The National Trust needed to rely heavily on the very people it was fighting against – donations from tourists themselves. It depended largely on public subscriptions and every time Rawnsley wanted to buy another acre, more funds had to be raised from the public. Often the sales were not straightforward; there could be complex public appeals or planning restrictions to navigate, and although usually the Trust met the required criteria, purchases sometimes required high levels of organisation and expensive legal advice.
If the planning appeals failed the Trust could see stretches of land or historic properties broken up and sold into smaller, cheaper pieces. Passionate supporters of the charity often found themselves emotionally invested in these sales, and were devastated to see precious places carved up in this way. Beatrix cou
nted herself very firmly among those who believed in the aims of The National Trust. It matched her own views exactly and she began to donate large chunks of her fortune to buying land whenever she could. She naturally had great sympathy with anyone who wanted to preserve her beloved Lake District, and she was in a fortunate position to be able to use her money as she wished. With no children or family to support, and happy to live frugally with William, the Trust received regular donations from Beatrix, some came in her own name but more often she preferred to donate anonymously to avoid any unwanted attention.
Archivist Liz Hunter McFarlane explained:
She made a series of canny business moves, such as buying up road frontages to ensure the land behind them was worthless, proving that she was becoming an exceptionally shrewd businesswoman.
She had no children to leave her money to, and wanted the nation to benefit from her good fortune and so she helped lobby to put new laws in place to protect her beloved Lake District, which is now a conservation area, which would never have happened without her. Without Beatrix Potter, many experts believe, the Lake District would not still be here today.
When she was alive she talked a lot about the importance of conserving the area, an idea which had really started with the poet William Wordsworth, another local lad, whose greatest work was inspired by the landscape he grew up with. Like Beatrix, and the artist John Ruskin, Wordsworth talked a lot about protecting the traditional rural ways of life.
Canon Rawnsley and Beatrix would spend many long hours discussing how to police the area and he personally encouraged her to go out and buy up great swathes of farmland, which they could protect for the nation.
Beatrix also started to think about what might happen to her own land after she was gone. When she had first bought Hill Top she wanted to hide away and grieve quietly for Norman in her rural retreat. Now she owned hundreds of acres of fields and hillsides, several other farms, a wood and a quarry, as well as dozens of cottages, and she was not stopping there. Beatrix was purchasing all the land she could with the specific intention of passing it on to the Trust, just as Rawnsley himself would have done if he had anything like her wealth. She was snapping up as much as she could, helped each time by William who had a long standing local reputation as a well-respected solicitor, and made the sales go through far more smoothly than Beatrix would have done without his help.
William’s local knowledge also helped Beatrix hear of upcoming sales she may not have otherwise known about, including some land in Tilberthwaite that it transpired had belonged to her great-grandfather Abraham Crompton many years earlier. After ensuring it was safely back within her family, Beatrix wrote to Caroline Clark: ‘I should have liked to keep it for my lifetime, but on the whole it seemed wiser to make a gift of it to The National Trust when they bought the surrounding property.’
In another letter an old friend Samuel Cunningham, Beatrix revealed her far-reaching plans to save as much of the district as she could afford, purchasing small scattered properties whenever she could lay her hands on them:
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.
Canon Rawnsley died in 1920 and Beatrix felt a strong compulsion to continue the work he had started in his memory. She was already involved in several other charitable ventures, for instance every year she designed Christmas cards for the Invalid Children’s Aid Association, but the work she undertook for The National Trust felt like she was granting a spiritual request left to her by her friend.
She spent all the money she had, and when the Trust urged her to help buy a strip of foreshore near the Windermere Ferry, which came on the market in 1927, Beatrix found she was not in a position to help and tried to persuade her mother to donate. Helen did not share her daughter’s passion, and in a bid to swiftly raise the funds needed, Beatrix sent fifty of her original signed drawings to the Boston Bookshop for Boys and Girls to sell for a guinea each.
In 1930 the sprawling Monk Coniston estate was put up for sale, with a very strong possibility it could be broken up, and Beatrix pulled out all the stops to buy it immediately from the Marshall family. The slate quarries provided work for over one hundred men, and Beatrix wanted to save not only the mining legacy, but also the pastoral farming on the lower ground and woodland industries surrounding it. It was her most expensive purchase to date and the deal she struck meant the Trust would buy back half the property and retain the other half for her lifetime.
Beatrix did not manage to purchase every piece of land she wanted, and was inevitably disappointed if she was outbid or moved too slowly to make the sale, so she was delighted to secure Monk Coniston. She was in regular correspondence with the Trust’s secretary Mr S.H. Hamer and wrote to him: ‘The things I have had to miss are a vexatious remembrance. However – I am glad I had the pluck not to miss Monk Coniston.’
Monk Coniston was a huge financial outlay but she was determined to ensure the property was preserved for the nation. She always considered her efforts to be practical necessities rather than acts of generosity to be praised. It infuriated her when her philanthropy was given special mentions at meetings or in National Trust reports, and she complained in 1932:
I have read today the report of the annual meeting and I am exceedingly annoyed about it. The announcement about Thwaite Farm, in direct contradiction to my expressed wish, was quite gratuitous, when two other acquisitions were described as anonymous.
Willie and I had made up our minds to give a good deal more if my mother had died last time when she was so ill. Now I won’t.
Beatrix quickly calmed down and did go on to give a great deal more, particularly after her mother left her a vast inheritance, which she put to good use acquiring yet more land for the trust.
Her donations did not simply involve passing property on, she often undertook to manage them on behalf of the Trust, making sure they were kept clean and in good working order. None of her tenants got away with the slightest transgression or misdemeanor; she was notoriously strict when it came to looking after her property empire, and became famous for her unblinking stare.
Her war against the tourists, or ‘off comes’ as she too now thought of them, never really reached a peaceful conclusion. If she had any spare time she would spend it litter picking. In the final years of her life Beatrix was infuriated by the rubbish left by ‘trippers’ visiting the local beauty spots for picnic lunches. She could not understand why they simply ignored the rubbish bins.
Even when she owned dozens of houses and cottages she always refused to rent them out as holiday lets. The idea appalled her and Beatrix insisted that they stay with the sitting tenants or be rented out to farmers. She insisted in the stipulations of her will: ‘My house property shall continue to be let at moderate rents to good tenants.’ Beatrix wanted to ensure that these houses would always belong to the people who had been born and bred in the Lakes, not holidaymakers who were simply passing through and would drive up the prices, making it harder for locals to stay where they belonged.
She also took it upon herself to help out with the planting of new trees and woodlands, felling dead specimens and preserving valuable or beautiful trees. Whereas once she had preserved her feelings for the hills and fells with her paintbrushes and pencils, now she could do something more practical to ensure they remained intact. She saw herself as a loving caretaker, protecting her cherished landscape from ruin.
Chapter Fifteen
If Beatrix had her way she would never have to write another word – she would rather be known as a conservationist than an author. With children’s stories placed very firmly on the back burner, the only writing that Beatrix was interested in firing off was angry lett
ers to The Times newspaper, complaining about the adverse effect that labour shortages were having on rural communities like hers.
However, publishing was the only way she knew that was guaranteed to bring her large sums of money, so when she wanted to expand her farming empire again there was nothing else for it. Life at Hill Top had been very much her main focus since becoming Mrs Heelis, but she was savvy enough to know that giving up writing entirely would be a mistake. Whether she liked it or not, she needed the money, and published six more stories over the next ten years, although it was clear her heart was no longer in it. Critics have since argued that the work Beatrix produced in the years following her wedding were hastily patched together from old drawings and notes she already had in her portfolios, and were of a much lower standard than her previous efforts. As well as being distracted by the farm and her husband, Beatrix was also troubled by failing eyesight, which meant fine drawing became increasingly difficult for her. As the drawings lost their shape and power, the stories also seemed to lose much of their poetry and magic.
She had been half-heartedly working on a new book, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, when the First World War was declared, and she shelved the project to focus on the farm. ‘I have not hammered out any name for the next book,’ she wrote to Harold Warne in February 1914, ‘But will do so as soon as I can.’ Writing was so low on her list of priorities that it was not published until it was rediscovered more than a century later. The story, which featured some of her best-known characters including Peter Rabbit, was eventually released in 2016 after publisher Jo Hanks stumbled across an out-of-print biography of the author from the 1970s, which referred to the story in a letter Beatrix had sent to Warnes, along with an unedited manuscript.