The Passions and Pluck of Beatrix Potter
Monday, January 5, 2009 at 9:56PM 
Ann guessed correctly that the microscopic studies of a ground beetle in last Friday’s mystery artist post were drawn by the author-illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (and thirty or so other children’s stories), Beatrix Potter. As you may have guessed from the sketches of beetles, Beatrix Potter was a rather unconventional woman.
Although her upbringing might sound a bit odd to us, for her time and social class, it was probably fairly typical. Her mother and father both inherited a fortune, and her father was a lawyer, but he didn’t have to earn an income, so he didn’t work much. Beatrix lived a rather isolated life, playing only with her younger brother. She had no formal schooling, but was educated at home by governesses, which meant, in Beatrix’s case, that she was mostly left alone to pursue her own interests.
And it’s in her interests that she shows us that she wasn’t an ordinary girl. She and her brother grew up surrounded by animals and plants—dogs, rabbits, frogs, salamanders and more as pets, and large gardens and moors for roaming. They spent their time together studying, sketching (and even dissecting) the birds and animals and insects they found. (Beatrix was only eight years old when she drew the caterpillars on the left.) When I was younger, I didn’t enjoy many of the typical girl activities, either, but little Beatrix Potter took things a lot further than I thought to go. I can’t help but admire her for that.
As she grew into young adulthood, Beatrix’s passion became mycology, the study of fungi. She collected fungi, dissecting, painting, and drawing them. Her hope was that her detailed illustrations would be used in a textbook, but that didn’t happen. She also developed a theory about the germination of mold spores, and her uncle Henry, who was a noted chemist, presented a paper she wrote on this to the Linnaean Society of London. Her theory was rejected out of hand by the all-male society, because, according to every biography I’ve read, she was an amateur and a woman.
It was only after he saw one of her self-published books that Frederick Warne decided to go ahead and publish Peter Rabbit, and you know how that worked out for him. Beatrix continued to publish books with Warne’s, using the money she earned to buy her own place, Hill Top Farm, where she set about learning the ins and outs of farming while she sketched the countryside around her (see below) and put together a children’s book or two per year.
Sketch of a Path in Snow (1909)
But that isn’t what you really want to know, is it? You want to know whether Beatrix Potter, solitary, unconventional girl ever found love, true love. Well, she didn’t have an easy road to it. She was engaged to her editor when she was thirty-nine, but he died after a short illness one month later. Beatrix bravely carried on (you knew she would, didn’t you?), writing her little books and adding to her farm properties. That’s no way, you might think, to meet eligible men, but it worked for Beatrix. It was while she was buying up a couple of pieces of land that she met the local solicitor whom she would later marry. Forty-seven years old, she was, but they still had thirty years of happy married life together.
After Beatrix Potter married, she became less author-illustrator and more farm manager. She did one more of her little books, and a few more books were put together from previous sketches and published in the United States. Her new passion was breeding and showing sheep—Herdwicks, to be precise—and she came to be considered an expert in that field, too. She also enjoyed the other pets and animals she kept, and did many of the physical tasks required on the farm, mucking about, making hay and fixing things.
As she grew older, she became known by the local children as a bit of a curmudgeon, hitting two little girls, so they said, for swinging on one of her gates. Do you suppose, having grown up isolated from other children and without children of her own, that she liked them more in theory than practice?
When she died at 77 in 1943, Beatrix Potter had 14 farms which she left to the National Trust, so all her land, even now, remains the countryside that she loved.
Let me show you a little more of Beatrix Potter’s work.
Sketch of a Chair and Window
She loved furniture, too. And gardening.
Sketch of an Onion Patch
And we must have at least one picture of Peter Rabbit.
Reader Comments (7)
I LOVED this post! What a great lady she was! I admire her curiosity and pluck.
interesting to learn more about one of my childrens' fave authors! thanks for sharing.
Great post!
What a lovely post - I really enjoyed the movie last year but I felt there was so much more to her life that could have been explored. She certainly inspires me to get out my sketch book. I love her drawings. Thanks Rebecca for a very enjoyable and informative post!
Rebecca,
I had seen this post, but my blog browsing time has been so limited I had not been able to read it through. Today, I decided to have lunch with you and got through it all. It is a delightfully presented account of this beloved author and illustrator, thank you for a nice read.
And thank you, Becky.
What a fantastic women Beatrix Potter was. Her love of animals was second to none and she has left a wonderful legacy for many generations of young kids to come. Her illustrations were a joy and I read every book as a child.