Discovering the real Beatrix Potter

By Jayne Warren - 12/01/2007

"I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense."  From Beatrix Potter’s Journal, November 17th 1896.

Many a childhood has been enriched by the enchanting words and illustrations of Beatrix Potter, but relatively few would have known about the struggles and loneliness that lay behind such creativity. The acclaimed new film opening on January 5th, called "Miss Potter", will now reveal the hidden face of this determined woman, as portrayed by Renee Zellweger.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit alone has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide since it was first published in 1902, but for Beatrix, the path to fame was a long one.
She was born in Kensington, London on 28 July 1866, and educated at home by a succession of governesses, which provided little opportunity to mix with other children or her brother, Bertram, who was sent to boarding school. Her father, Rupert Potter, although trained as a barrister, mainly spent his days at Gentlemen's Clubs, while her mother spent her time visiting or receiving visitors.

So little Beatrix was left alone with her pet animals, including frogs, newts, and even a pet bat. And among her pets were two rabbits: the first was called Benjamin ("an impudent, cheeky little thing"), and the second was Peter, whom she took everywhere with her, even on trains, on a little lead. Potter would watch these animals for hours on end, sketching them. And gradually the sketches became better and better, developing her talent from an early age.

When Beatrix was 16 her parents took her on holiday near Ambleside in the Lake District, where she met Hardwicke Rawnsley, an early founder of the National Trust. His views on the need to preserve the natural beauty of Lakeland had a lasting effect on the young Beatrix, who had fallen in love with the rugged mountains and dark lakes - something that was to stay with her for the rest of her life.

For the next 21 years on and off, the Potters holidayed in the Lake District, and Beatrix closely observed the wild animals, making many sketches of the landscape. When she came of age, her parents appointed her their housekeeper and discouraged any intellectual development, instead requiring her to supervise the household.

 

However, in contrast to her parents' wishes, from the age of fifteen until she was past thirty, she recorded her everyday life in journals - using her own secret code-writing. (Even Beatrix herself, when she read back over it in later life, found it difficult to understand, and it was not until fifteen years after her death that the code was cracked.)

Interestingly, an uncle attempted to introduce her as a student at the Royal Botanical Gardens, but she was rejected because she was female. And although Potter was later one of the first to suggest that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae, her one attempt to publish was thwarted. Her uncle had to read her paper at the scientific society because they did not admit females. At the time the only way to record microscopic images was by painting them; her pictures of fungi were widely admired.

When she returned to London, she made greetings cards of her pictures, and eventually started a book. Rawnsley encouraged her to publish, but she struggled to find a publisher. Eventually Frederick Warne published "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" in 1902, when Beatrix was 36 years old, and the small book and her following works were extremely well received. She also became secretly engaged to the publisher, but her parents were set against her marrying anyone who worked for a living. He died before the wedding, causing a breach between Beatrix and her parents.

By 1903 Peter Rabbit had sold some 50,000 copies, and Beatrix bought a field in the Lake District with the income. In 1905 she bought a little farm in Sawrey, and for the next eight years busied herself writing more books and visiting her farm. After the death of Warne in 1909 she bought Hill Top Farm in the village of Sawrey, Cumbria, which became her main Lakeland base, and the setting of seven of her books. Tom Kitten and Samuel Whiskers lived there. Hill Top has been preserved as it was to this day, and is now the most visited literary shrine in the Lake District.  With the steady stream of royalties from her books, she continued to buy pieces under the guidance of William Heelis, a local solicitor, whom she married in 1913 aged 47.

Potter eventually wrote 23 books, published in a small format, and easy for a child to hold and read. By 1920 her writing efforts largely stopped due to poor eyesight, though her last major work The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, was published in 1930.
Some of her best loved works show the farm house and the village, and the farm was constantly alive with dogs, cats and even a pet hedgehog, naturally enough named "Mrs Tiggywinkle".

 

Potter was also engrossed in breeding and showing Herdwick sheep, and became a respected farmer, a judge at local agricultural shows, and President of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders’ Association. When her parents died, she used the funds to buy more farms and tracts of land. After some years Potter and Heelis later moved down into the village of Sawrey, and into Castle Cottage - where the local children knew her for her grumpy demeanour, and called her "Auld Mother Heelis".

When Beatrix died in December 1943, she left fourteen farms and 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust, together with her flocks of Herdwick sheep. The Trust now owns 91 hill farms, many of which have mainly Herdwick flocks with a total holding of about 25000 sheep. This was her gift to the nation, her own beloved countryside for all to enjoy.

But her astonishing legacy continued even after her death. In 1971 several 'Tales of Beatrix Potter' were set to music and danced by members of The Royal Ballet, and  "The Tale of Pigling Bland" was turned into a musical theatrical production by Suzy Conn and  performed in July 2006 in Canada. In 1982, the BBC produced "The Tale of Beatrix Potter", a dramatisation of her life, and in December Penguin published "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature", a new biography by Linda Lear which emphasized Potter's scientific accomplishments both as a botanical artist and as an amateur mycologist.

"Miss Potter", the film, opens nationwide on Friday 5th January, where Beatrix's secret story comes to the big screen, and is directed by Chris Noonan who made the charming film 'Babe' in 1995. It is set in the high summer days of late Victorian and Edwardian England, during which Beatrix develops her natural skills as artist and story-teller.

 

It also traces the courtship with publisher Norman Warne, played by Ewan McGregor, and how their relationship and his marriage proposal in 1905 changed Beatrix's life for ever, leading to separation, loneliness and finally tragedy - experiences that finally turned her into a woman of strong views and independence.

A real treat for people - and animals - of all ages.