The Real Beatrix Potter

By Nadia Cohen

A revealing and surprising biography of the woman who defied Victorian expectations and gave the world Peter Rabbit.
 
Beatrix Potter’s children’s books have enchanted generations of young readers who adored the characters she created as well as her distinctive illustrations. Born into a typically repressed Victorian family, Beatrix was expected to achieve little more than finding herself a rich husband, and thus her parents felt there was no point in bothering to educate her. But the Potters underestimated their daughter. Stifled by the lack of stimulation, she educated herself in art and science, and developed a great love of the natural world.
 
The success of The Tale of Peter Rabbit proved her to be creative genius who could have become the toast of the London literary scene—but when her fiancé tragically died, Beatrix retreated to the Lake District where she reinvented herself as a successful farmer, a canny businesswoman, and an early environmental pioneer. Passionately campaigning to save the area from development, she helped establish the National Trust, and despite her great wealth Beatrix lived out her days in humble anonymity.
 
From a journalist who has authored biographies of Roald Dahl and A.A. Milne, this is an in-depth look at the woman behind the beloved books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526752765

Nadia Cohen

Nadia Cohen is an entertainment journalist who has worked at a number of national newspapers and magazines including Grazia and the Daily Mail. As a show-business correspondent she covered film festivals, premieres and award ceremonies around the world. Nadia was headhunted for the launch of a new American magazine, In Touch Weekly, and spent several years living and working in New York. She now lives in London and juggles family life with writing contemporary and historical biographies.

Book preview

Chapter One

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly for a woman who passionately committed her life to do all she could to conserve the lakes, forests and fells of the English countryside, Beatrix Potter was born into the fast-paced hustle and bustle of metropolitan London’s high society.

Her father Rupert was a wealthy man, thanks in part to his own father, Edmund Potter, who had been a successful self-made businessman from Glossop in Derbyshire. A calico printer by trade, Edmund had originally been born into terrible poverty in 1802 but he worked hard and gradually hauled himself up to become the owner of the largest calico printing works in England.

Edmund was well-respected, dynamic and popular, moving up through society’s ranks to become a successful local magistrate, before being elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Carlisle. Edmund used his position of political power to campaign for popular education, religious education and tolerance for all. Edmund’s fearsome wife Jessie Crompton was known to be a great beauty, who claimed she was so desperately sought after by men that she was actually mobbed on the streets of Lancaster, and received as many as three marriage proposals a week. She was certainly a catch for Edmund, and their son Rupert grew to become a successful and handsome man too.

Rupert was a student at the elite Manchester College when he met Helen Leech, the daughter of Jane Ashton and John Leech, a prosperous cotton merchant and shipbuilder from nearby Stalybridge. As well as standing to inherit a vast fortune, Helen was also very well connected as her cousin was Thomas Ashton, the first Baron Ashton of Hyde. She would make an excellent match for Rupert, and as soon as he had qualified as a barrister, he proposed.

Both families were delighted by the smooth connecting of these two key industrial northern families, and the wedding took place in August 1863 at Hyde Unitarian Chapel in the village of Gee Cross, just outside Manchester, conveniently just after Helen had inherited a fortune of £50,000 from her father.

The newlyweds would want for nothing, although as a result of being so comfortably off they were not particularly driven or ambitious when it came to earning money of their own. Rupert had been given every opportunity, but with Helen’s encouragement Rupert’s intended legal career at the bar took a back seat in favour of their glittering social life. Needless to say, an upwardly mobile couple like Mr and Mrs Rupert Potter soon found life in the north somewhat restrictive and made the move down to London as soon as they could. They felt better able to enjoy the trappings of their wealth in a large white stucco townhouse in an exclusive part of Kensington, where they set up home complete with an army of footmen, lady’s maids, a butler and a coachman. Their regular weekend retreat was Camfield Place, a sprawling stately home near Hatfield in Hertfordshire which Rupert’s parents bought for them, and where their granddaughter Beatrix would later be a regular visitor. Beatrix was always very close to her maternal grandmother and spent many happy hours at Camfield listening to Jessie’s stories about her ancestors. Jessie often insisted loudly that she, and therefore also Beatrix, was a Compton – and a Potter merely by marriage.

When Beatrix came to research their family tree in her old age, she discovered her great-grandfather Abraham Compton had been an outspoken, radical, eccentric character, who fascinated her. She felt sure she had inherited many of Abraham’s interesting characteristics, and wrote later: ‘I am descended from generations of Lancashire yeomen and weavers; obstinate, hard-headed, matter of fact folk.’

Rupert and Helen, on the other hand, did not much care to be reminded of their gritty northern roots: they preferred to think of themselves as far more refined once they had moved to London. The genteel squares of Kensington, with their immaculately tended gardens, large houses with room below stairs for servants, and separate entrances for tradesmen, suited Rupert and Helen’s carefully crafted new image perfectly. Bolton Gardens was considered a highly desirable place to live; theirs was one of eight new homes constructed in 1862, on a sprawling 5-acre plot which had been a market garden and prior to that a cherry orchard – several of the original grand walnut trees remained intact, although they were felled while the Potters lived on the street.

The third floor of their tall and imposing townhouse would become the nursery on arrival of their daughter Helen Beatrix, who was born on 28 July 1866. As an only child for the first five years of her life, Beatrix led a solitary existence under the care of a series of nannies until her brother Walter Bertram followed in March 1872. Both children were always known by their middle names, a common Victorian tradition.

Rupert may not have stretched himself to undertake much in the way of paid legal work, but he was not without business acumen and invested his funds wisely in the stock market. On top of that he stood as the sole heir to inherit his father’s wealth, which was just as well since maintaining their London lifestyle was a challenge which Helen relished. She threw herself wholeheartedly into employing a small army of domestic staff, including butlers, coachmen and of course a constantly changing supply of uniformed maids on hand to serve her friends tea in the drawing room every afternoon at 4 pm.

Their leisure pursuits were studiously genteel. Although Rupert had chambers at Lincoln’s Inn in London where he officially practiced equity law and conveyancing, he was rarely seen at work, preferring to focus instead on indulging his hobbies of fishing, collecting art and photography, which was at the time in its early infancy. Cameras were the latest new invention, and everything about photography fascinated Rupert; he frequently treated himself to the very latest equipment as it became available, and soon became a highly accomplished amateur lensman.

Helen meanwhile had a weakness for canaries which she kept in ornate birdcages, trips to the seaside and the conversation of attractive gentlemen. She had a wide circle of appropriate and suitably connected friends among the cream of high society, and prided herself on how often her resemblance to the middle-aged Queen Victoria was remarked upon.

But for Beatrix the time dragged excruciatingly as every day fell into the same rigid, and often dreary, routine. Her parents would have breakfast in the dining room together at exactly the same time every morning, although the meal was eaten in silence and the children were not welcome at the table. Rupert would then depart for one of the gentlemen’s clubs he frequented, either the Athenaeum or the Reform Club, where he read the newspaper and enjoyed a convivial lunch with other gentlemen of leisure.

Meanwhile, back at Bolton Gardens the children barely left the confines of the top floor. Beatrix had a governess who taught her to read, write and play the piano. They would take a short break from these rudimentary lessons when a maid would deliver lunch to the nursery on a tray. Beatrix was served the same meal almost every day: a lamb cutlet followed by a bowl of rice pudding. Dinner, served sharply at 6 pm, was a solemn affair too, and of course another time when children were banished silently upstairs so as not to disturb their parents’ evening activities. Occasionally she was summoned to join her parents and their friends downstairs, but only ever for a matter of minutes.

Beatrix always had to wear a crisp and clean starched frock, striped cotton stockings and lace up boots, which she carefully polished every day. Vanity of any sort was very much frowned upon. She had plenty of toys and books, and was only allowed to leave the house if she was accompanied by her nurse or governess, who would take her out for a short walk each afternoon if the weather was fine and there was no risk of her catching a chill.

Unusually for the time the Potters were not regular churchgoers. They visited various different local Unitarian churches without being particularly loyal to any minister in particular, and did not insist on attending religious services regularly. The children grew up with simple spiritual beliefs but their parents were not particularly dogmatic about reciting daily prayers at home.

The sound of laughter was rarely heard in the hushed rooms of the house however, and the Potters certainly did not approve of childish fun and games. Whenever possible, Beatrix and Bertram were kept away from other youngsters, who their parents feared would infect them with germs and, more worryingly, could be seen as bad influences who would derail them from their main aim of improving the family’s social standing through good marriages.

Rupert and Helen were socially ambitious, and they worked hard at not betraying even a trace of the gritty, working-class entrepreneurialism that had made their northern fathers so rich. The Potters wanted for nothing, although all the money and coveted invitations held absolutely no interest for their clever little daughter, who was growing increasingly frustrated by their vapid existence. She would later go on to dismiss her parents as ‘apathetic’ and complained that they led ‘prosperous uneventful lives’.

Beatrix felt unable to tell them how lonely and lost she truly felt. It was a time when children were very much seen and not heard, and so even if she had dared to speak her mind her parents almost certainly would not have listened. With confusing emotions-swirling around her young mind, not to mention hormonal changes that were never explained to her, Beatrix decided she needed to write her feelings down in order to deal with them.

She first started keeping her journal when she was 14 years old, and continued for many years, inspired by her admiration of other great diarists she had read, including Samuel Pepys and James Boswell. While those luminaries were adult men when they started their diaries (Boswell had been a twenty-two-year-old City playboy and Pepys was a fast-tracked civil servant), Beatrix was at a very different stage in life indeed, with considerably less of note to remark upon. She sometimes framed her diary entries as letters to an imaginary friend called Esther, and vented her profound frustration at her comfortable, pointless existence. As young as 10 years old, she had recorded her desperate intention to ‘do something’, and at least now she had found an outlet to express her frustrations.

Mrs Potter was baffled by her daughter’s peculiar attitudes, and the feeling was entirely mutual. Helen was a prim and starchy Victorian matriarch constrained by social circumstances and obeyed the rigid rules which tightly governed all aspects of female behaviour. All she wanted in return was a compliant and obedient daughter who would mind her manners, help run the household and later, in time, would be proud to take care of her parents when they required it. This was not a role that came naturally to Beatrix, who was adventurous, opinionated, mischievous and longed for freedom. Some commentators have observed how she was much like the pesky Peter Rabbit while her exasperated mother resembled his tormentor, Mr McGregor.

As a result of this aching lack of external stimulation, for Beatrix life at Bolton Garden was horribly quiet and the days crawled by slowly. By the age of 14, Beatrix had started to suspect she did actually have things she would like to say, but of course there was nobody to say them to. In need of an outlet for her feelings she became obsessed with keeping a detailed diary, a daily habit that would stay with her many years. But jotting down observations was never going to satisfy her busy brain, and so she devised an elaborate code for her private thoughts, substituting letters for other letters, numbers or symbols.

She also used her journal as a sketchbook, making copious notes, in tiny handwriting, about places she visited, as well as her often rather amusing, sarcastic and wry opinions on the polite society she felt so alienated from. She would also include her forthright views on art and artists. There were not too many amusing or entertaining anecdotes peppering her existence, and so she tended to stick to reporting mundane details of her day-to-day routines.

Beatrix’s first journal began in 1881 and ended in 1897 when she became more absorbed in her scientific studies and was trying seriously to find a publisher for her drawings. While much of the content is fairly mundane, what the journals do reveal is just how achingly bored Beatrix was most of the time.

As far as Beatrix was concerned, her journal was the only place where she could feel even remotely free, and she used it as a means of escape.

She did not risk writing too much about her personal feelings but she wrote in great detail about her efforts to memorise poetry and passages from Shakespeare plays. She also jotted down interesting facts she had picked up, usually about nature and wildlife, or anything that surprised, fascinated or simply amused her.

As a bored teenager whose every move was tightly controlled, Beatrix’s journal was the only place she could do as she pleased: ‘There is a vast amount in my head’, she wrote once. Another time she simply reported: ‘Manner of catching ducks in Egypt: Man swims in the water with his head inside a hollow pumpkin and surrounded by decoy ducks, and pulls wild ones under.’

Since she was forbidden from participating in adult conversations – she was far too young and female for her views to be taken seriously or even worth listening to – Beatrix used her journal as a way of participating in world affairs instead. Her entries are peppered with references to political events and occasionally there are full transcripts of adult conversations she had overheard.

Whenever she got the chance to escape the confines of Bolton Gardens, Beatrix would take long walks. The natural world excited her and she noted down every change in the weather, indeed most of her daily entries included a succinct weather report, regardless of the main subject matter. She also wrote in detail about the animals she and Bertram smuggled into the house. Besides her pet rabbit Benjamin Bunny, the journal also included details of the activities of a pair of lizards named Toby and Judy, and a green frog called Punch, who ‘has been on extensive journeys.’

‘I think she was in many respects the sweetest animal I ever knew,’ Beatrix added in 1886 after the death of one of her pet mice, referred to as both Miss Mouse and Xarifa. The same, much missed, pet would also appear in many of her later sketches and she even included a character called Xarifa in The Fairy Caravan, a novel which was not published until forty-three years after its namesake’s death. When Beatrix was 6 years old Rupert had presented her with some of his own drawings, a sheet of sketches featuring swans and ducks, which fascinated her. Two of the ducks were wearing hats and one had a bonnet fastened with a ribbon under the chin; many years later Beatrix’s famously foolish character Jemima Puddle-Duck would bear more than a passing resemblance to Rupert’s drawing.

Since she was cooped up in the nursery for most of the day, Beatrix found herself almost entirely friendless as she neither shared in her parents social life nor had the chance to meet any other children. Although she was deeply solitary, Beatrix was not unhappy. She learnt to value her privacy and found ways of keeping herself occupied. Her first governess, Miss Hammond, left when Beatrix was in her early teens, apparently claiming that her pupil knew more than her and she had nothing further to teach, but Beatrix was sad to see her leave the schoolroom since she had been her chief companion.

Unfortunately Beatrix tended to find teachers annoying, preferring to refine her artistic style on her own. Even as a shy teenager Beatrix could be quite caustic in her private appraisal of other people’s art, especially when their interpretations of plants and animals weren’t up to her exacting standards.

When she was sixteen, her cousin Kate was painted by a popular artist named Briton Rivière, standing in front of a tall cupboard, preparing to feed two dogs. The best Beatrix could come up with to describe the finished painting was that it was ‘not as bad as I expected’. She never forgot the painting and apparently used it as the basis of an illustration in her book The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan. Perhaps her harsh judgment had something to do with the fact that Kate and her other cousins were sitting dutifully for portraits, getting engaged and of course married. Beatrix, meanwhile, was still sleeping in her childhood bedroom at home, playing with mice and writing journal entries to an imaginary friend.

During her early teens Beatrix was even lonelier still, once Bertram was dispatched to boarding school. She knew there was no point in arguing to go to school herself, although years later she would come to reflect on this as a positive: ‘Thank goodness my education was neglected,’ she wrote,

I was never sent to school. The reason I am glad I did not go to school – it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure). I fancy I could have been taught anything if I had been caught young; but it was in the days when parents kept governesses, and only boys went to school in most families.

She had ‘the typical teenage worries about her future,’ said historian Emma Laws, ‘There was the added weight for a young woman of that era that you couldn’t just leave home if you weren’t married.’ Author Sarah Gristwood was struck by how desperately miserable Beatrix appeared to be at various points, and that her despair was largely ignored:

Entry after entry in her journal breathes a depth of gloom that would surely set alarm bells ringing today, combined rather oddly with that bright-eyed interest in the world around her, and a tough-minded quality. It makes you realise just what a straitjacket the life of a Victorian daughter-at-home must have been for someone of her abilities.

A large number of diary entries were comprised of her personal opinions on art following visits to galleries, since she was only too aware that nobody would have been remotely interested in hearing her views even if she had dared to voice them out loud. After one visit to the National Gallery she wrote: ‘I say fearlessly that the Michelangelo is hideous and badly drawn. No one will read this.’

However, Helen became concerned that Beatrix’s enthusiasm for visiting galleries was causing her a level of excitement that was not normal or appropriate for a gentlewoman, and fearing it could make her appear eccentric, she attempted to stamp it out.

Beatrix’s mother decided they had indulged and humoured their daughter’s academic blue-stocking hobbies for far too long, and if it were allowed to continue she may want to get a job. To them, anything resembling work for their daughter was out of the question. The battle lines were drawn: the war between Beatrix and her parents would rage for the next thirty years.

Chapter Two

All Rupert and Helen Potter wanted for their only daughter was for her to marry a gentleman. They were eager to shake off the shadows of their manufacturing past, and Beatrix was their best hope of social climbing their way into the aristocratic classes. They had her future clearly mapped out, but the problem was Beatrix did not show the slightest interest in fashion, tea parties or ballroom dancing. To make matters worse, she was no great beauty and the Potters had difficulty lining up potential suitors for her. She may have been bright and precocious, but Beatrix would never have dared defy her mother who expected her to help manage the servants, and of course find a suitable man to marry at the earliest opportunity. The Potters were eager for Beatrix to link their family through a good marriage to one of the wealthiest families in London. There was no chance she would agree to go to a ball or party alone, and so when her cousins visited from out of town they were tasked with taking Beatrix to dances. Of course, she hated