POTTER ABOUT PERTHSHIRE
Each summer, the Potter family would bundle the household, pets and all, onto a train from London to Perthshire. Benjamin Bouncer, the rabbit, squirmed the whole way. They would spend three months at a country estate, entertaining friends and allowing Beatrix, later of Peter Rabbit fame, and her brother Bertram to explore the countryside. Beatrix took Benjamin for hops on a lead.
The family went to Perthshire for 11 consecutive summers from 1870, as well as a couple of times in the early 1890s. Beatrix, who was four on the first trip, loved these holidays, calling the area “home sweet home”. How different it was from her privileged but lonely upbringing in Kensington, where her father Rupert, a barrister, and her mother Helen,
