TWO LITTLE KITTENS?
Thank you for Julie Peakman’s article about children’s fiction in the May issue. Knowing what books our ancestors read as children can be helpful in unexpected ways.
It was a mystery why my grandmother (born 1899) had the nickname Tom. Her sister, Ruby (born 1904), never called her by her real name of Olive, but always by this nickname. I was curious to know how she got it.
Then one day I found a tiny black-and-white photograph of the two sisters with a handwritten caption on the back that read “Tabitha and Tom”. Aha!
Beatrix Potter’s book The Tale of Tomcame out in 1907 just before Grandma’s eighth birthday. In the story, there is a cat called Tabitha Twitchit, with three unruly kittens called Moppet, Mittens and Tom. Tom Kitten is very naughty. Could this be the source of my grandmother’s nickname?
