Cornish Guardian (St. Austell & Fowey)
Conundrum of Beatrix Potter
Historian Barry West has spent seven years researching Beatrix Potter’s links to Cornwall and has finally solved a long-running mystery. He spoke to Olivier Vergnault
THE mystery surrounding the exact location where worldfamous author Beatrix Potter was once photographed in a rowing boat while on an Easter holiday in Cornwall, has been solved at last.
The discovery was made by Cornwall historian Barry West who has been researching Beatrix’s links to Cornwall for the last seven years.
He said: “Until last summer this location was not even known to the Beatrix Potter Society and after many years of painstakingly searching for the spot where Rupert Potter, her father, had taken the photograph, I was finally able to pinpoint it.”
While Beatrix Potter is undoubtedly associated with Sawrey in Lancashire, where she lived and wrote her famous books, before the Tales of Peter Rabbit were written and her books had become a global phenomenon, the author, illustrator and naturalist, enjoyed several holidays to Scotland and Cornwall too.
In March 1892, the Potters came to Falmouth for a family holiday. Beatrix would have been 26, and was still chaperoned while she was here.
Beatrix and her family travelled over the ‘Broad Gauge’, that is in an ordinary width carriage but with the wheels projecting almost outside it. Broad gauge would be abolished in May that very year. The last broad gauge train from Paddington through to Penzance was the Cornishman Express on Friday, May 20, 1892.
It was during her stay in Falmouth that year that she wrote the first of a series of beautifully illustrated letters. Dated April 11, 1892, and addressed to four-year-old Noel Moore, it is Beatrix’s earliest known picture letter. It would come to define her style of writing which has made her so endearing to generations of children ever since.
In it she describes a holiday trip to the seaside resort in a language easily understandable at his age, with illustrations that might pique his interest and retain his attention.
She wrote: “My dear Noel. Thank you for your very interesting letter, which you sent me a long time ago. I have come a very long way in a puffpuff to a place in Cornwall, where it is very hot, and there are palm trees in the gardens and camellias and rhododendrons in flower which are very pretty.
“We are living in a big house close to the sea, we go on the harbour in a steam boat and see ever so many big ships. Yesterday we went across the water to a pretty little village where the fishermen live. I saw them catching crabs in a basket cage which they let down into the sea with some meat in it and then the crabs go in to eat the meat and cannot get out.”
The letter shows a steam train, palm trees, cats, dogs, ducks and chickens living at the Falmouth Hotel which had been built in 1865.
It continues: “I shall be quite sorry to come away from this nice place but we have been here 10 days. Before we go home we are going for two days to Plymouth to see some bigger ships still.
“I shall come to see you and tell your Mamma all about it when I get home. I have got a lot of shells for you and Eric.
“This is a pussy I saw looking for fish. These are two little dogs that live in the hotel, and two tame seagulls and a great many cocks and hens in the garden. I am going today to a place called the Lizard so I have no time to draw any more pictures, and I remain
Beatrix Potter.”
The Potters returned to Cornwall and the Falmouth area in both 1893 and 1894. Her own journal tells us about how the family travelled and offers a wonderfully detailed yours affectionately. description of the landscape. Even in her late 20s the famous author had never taken a holiday without her parents.
In it she wrote of her stay in Cornwall, the people she met and the landscapes, walks and trips she took. However, Beatrix’s handwritten journal had been written in code and it took Potter expert Leslie Linder six years to decipher it.
Finally, on Easter Monday, April 6, 1958, when almost at the point of giving up, he spotted a sentence three lines up from the bottom of one page containing the Roman numerals ‘XVI’ and the number ‘1793’. It was at this point that the secrets began to unravel.
Much of the source of what we know about Beatrix’s early years are now available to the nation and in the public domain and have been published as journals. It is from her decoded journals that Cornwall historian Barry West was able to piece together some of Beatrix Potter’s stay in our county.
Barry said: “Many people will be familiar with the beautifully written and illustrated books that Beatrix Potter wrote, using her imagination and creativeness to bring to life the wonderful array of characters that she created.
“Even today she remains one of the best-selling English writers and illustrators of all time. What has most intrigued me and piqued my curiosity was the journal in which she recorded her activities and opinions about society, religion, art the world of work and current events.
“Of particular interest to me was how she took a real interest in all that she observed and recorded with such fine attention to detail. She describes the countryside, the people the architecture, the sea and the ships and trains.
“It is a gift, a wonderful insight into how life was all those years ago. In a time where our heritage and our culture is fast disappearing it helps us to imagine and see through her illustrations and words how life once was.”
He said that Beatrix’s journals show how in tune with nature she was. In one of her journals she wrote: “The spring growth is far more advanced in the South West and described green leaves bursting on hawthorn and some sycamores, where in London are bare sticks.”
One of her observations was that she thought the air was so pure that it “transmits every smell within 20 yards, from wall-flowers to fish and manure”.
Below is her description of Falmouth, which noted how cosmopolitan the town was and how fortunate she had been not to encounter too many drunken sailors. She wrote: “On many nights it was so warm that one could sit out till 9 o’clock watching the waves in the moonlight. It is a peculiarity of this climate that waves in the moon light. It is a peculiarity of this climate that, apart from actual sunshine, the night feels scarcely colder than the day, which happens because the warmth comes from the sea.
“This is a quiet, well-conducted town, which is the more remarkable owing to the number of British and foreign seamen loitering about. I have seen only one man drunk since we have been here, and observed no fighting or roughness of any sort amongst the sailors. They loll about in the main street, spitting on the pavement, their only objectionable habit; shake hands with one another in an elaborate manner, and stare unmercifully for the first week.
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Of particular interest to me was how she took a real interest in all that she observed and recorded with such fine attention to detail
Barry West