Why this children’s author has endured
TOMORROW Beatrix Potter would have been 150 years old. Or, to put it in a different, better way, Beatrix Potter is 150 years old because even in these days of Pokemon Go she is very much with us and still has much to tell us. Her life was a model of how to express yourself and find freedom and fulfilment while still being kind to the loved ones who would hold you back. Her success was the product of enthusiasm, hard work and independent-mindedness; her happy marriage was proof that love has no timetable; her care of the countryside and her legacy there speak to us today and so do her books.
Like all art that lasts her stories contain truth as well as beauty. Her illustrations have skill and charm almost beyond compare but the tales gently tell us that nature and indeed human nature could often be red in tooth and claw. This year is the centenary of the birth of Roald Dahl, one of the very few children’s authors who can compete with her in popularity. Not only was Beatrix Potter a far better person, she also matters more.
Her stories usually had a little moral but her readers didn’t always take the bait. The Tale Of Mr Jeremy Fisher provides every reason why nobody should ever go fishing. It’s boring, often fruitless and sometimes dangerous.
Mr Jeremy, you may remember, is a frog. He gets wet, bitten, then swallowed by an enormous trout and that would have been that if the trout hadn’t hated the taste of his mackintosh and spat him out. So no fish for his dinner guests but happily they had bought sandwiches.
Remember that at the beginning of Peter Rabbit his mother tells Peter not to go into Mr McGregor’s garden. Why? Not because it would just be rude but because it was as dangerous as could be. Mrs McGregor had put Peter’s father into a pie.
BEATRIX Potter grew up in privileged circumstances in London. From upstairs in her parents’ house she would have been able to see the top of the new Natural History Museum, which was eventually finished in 1881. Natural history was a Victorian obsession. Beatrix, who was educated by a governess at home, was grateful not to have gone to a school that would have forced her to do all sorts of things she wasn’t interested in.
As a girl she spent much of her time doing nature drawing and thanks to her family had access to leading naturalists, to botanists at Kew Gardens and the friendship of the famous painter Sir John Everett Millais. She started writing little stories and making them into picture-letters and sending them to children she knew.
In 1893 when she was 27 she made the Peter Rabbit story longer and sent it to publishers. When they showed no enthusiasm she paid to have 250 copies printed privately. They were snapped up.
The drawings were in black and white but now Frederick Warne, Potter’s publisher then and evermore, got the point. Potter somewhat reluctantly added colour and rather belatedly in 1902 Peter Rabbit was published and 114 years and 22 books later – Benjamin Bunny, Squirrel Nutkin, The Tailor Of Gloucester and the rest – it has been carrots all the way.
She made a Peter Rabbit doll, devised a Peter Rabbit game and was enthusiastic about Peter Rabbit wallpaper. Her publisher Norman Warne (Frederick’s son) fell in love with her and proposed marriage. Beatrix was nearly 40 but her parents disapproved. Warne was “in trade” and that really would not do. But Beatrix accepted. Within a year, betrothed but not married, Norman died of leukaemia.
Rich and having always loved the country and her ancestors’ origins in north-west England, Beatrix had bought a farm near Windermere in the Lake District. She employed the services of local solicitor William Heelis and they fell in love. Her parents still did not approve – their daughter and a country solicitor! Beatrix was 47.
The couple married in London and she made her life in the Lake District. She bought more land and became a noted sheep breeder and very important in conserving thousands of Lake District acres.
Hers was a life of creativity and enterprise, of upper-class dutifulness, of loss, then finding liberation, love and fulfilment in middle age. Beatrix Potter died in 1943 leaving 14 farms and 4,000 acres of the Lake District, as well as nearly all her original illustrations, to the National Trust.
FERGUS KELLY IS AWAY