ESSAY
The hidden life of Beatrix Potter
Peter Rabbit was the mind child of a solitary soul
Today, on the 28th of July, we celebrate the birth anniversary of one of the most popular children’s novelist’s and illustrators, best known today for her “Tale of Peter Rabbit”-Beatrix Potter. Her lush garden scenery, chock full of dandyish foxy-whiskered gentlemen, mischievous rabbits and wild mice running amok has entertained children over generations past yet the woman behind the story has not warranted as much popular attention.
Born in 1866, Beatrix was a shy and lonely child who lived a solitary life from the onset. Growing up in a respectable Victorian household, she never spent time with her parents at their home in South Kensington, did not go to school and was left mostly to her own devices. A governess, who was to inspire her interest in nature and drawing was her only companion but she too left after having taught her pupil everything in her repertoire. What the future naturalist did have in abundance was the company of her dearly beloved pets-a rabbit, a couple of mice, some bats and a family of snails. The loving detail with which she sketched her animals speaks for a deep bond grown out of an isolated childhood.
Her summers on the Lake District were the only bit of freedom afforded to her in a daily life that was as stringent as it was monotonous. For the first time, she could enjoy the open pastures, interact with barnyard animals and gather specimens of leaves, fungi, rocks, insects and bones. The sketches she later made of everything from butterflies and kittens to horses and spiders were highly detailed, later to be reflected in her animal characters yet not in her human ones- Potter was more adept in drawing the world she knew and understood, that of animals.
She had a mind for the scientific as well, having devoted herself parallel to drawing to the study of biology, mycology, entomology and botany from the age of 9. In fact, her research paper “On the germination of the spores of Agaricineae” was much admired by the Royal Botanical Gardens and read to the Linnean Society of London. Unfortunately (or fortunately for posterity!), her research was formally rejected, causing her to venture into children’s literature instead.
The experiences she made as a child in many ways inform the plot of her stories. These may appear juvenile at a first glance, as stories of anthropomorphic animals invariably seem unless they are called Animal Farm, yet the subject matter is deeply serious. All the children in her tales have absent parents and deal with life-threatening situations, restriction of one kind or another being the common theme. Constricting clothing, garden walls, tree trunks, barnyard equipment and humans serve as foils to individual freedom in many cases. Although there is no proof for Potter having suffered from depression, it does not seem too far a leap to assume that she channelled her loneliness into writing, producing a creative outlet of sorts to void her negative feelings.
Consider these lines taken from her diary when she was on the cusp of adulthood:
“’I have begun the dark journey of life… will it go on as dryly as it has begun?’”
In the end, her life much resembled a roller coaster, full of exhilarating but also spirit dampening moments-her first love and publisher Norman Warne was an example for both. Their engagement was not approved by Potter’s parents, who could not stomach the idea of a son-in-law following a trade yet for her, he represented both the companionship and the freedom her life had been missing altogether. His subsequent death of leukemia devastated her, considering the fact that she could not confide her sorrow to her immediate family. Hollywood immortalised her pain in the filmography “Miss Potter”, with Renee Zellweger portraying her acute distress to a T.
Still, in her forties, the author finally managed to separate herself from a family she found stifling by acquiring a farm in the Lake District and achieving financial freedom with her books. A later marriage to a solicitor seems to have brought its own kind of happiness though the bond may have been more about companionship than love-Norman Warne was to remain her soulmate to the last.
The enduring appeal of Beatrix Potter’s stories may have to do with the spirit of irreverence contained within them-vibrant, romping children defying the stale rules and the rigid figures of their misguided parents, whose clothing emulating the order and dignity of the human world ironically goes against their nature as animals. Peter, by leaving behind his clothes while fleeing from Farmer McGregor, represents the ultimate message Potter found in her own life-that the only way of existing is by breaking free of societal bounds and being true to oneself. Having come to her own late in life, this is how she described her attitude to age:
I do not resent older age; if it brings the slowness it brings experience and weight.. .to quote an old friend, ‘Thank god I have the seeing eye’, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough lands seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again. Also do you not feel it rather pleasing to be so much wiser than quantities of young idiots? I begin to assert myself at 70…
For those of us longing to escape the rigmarole of conformity to live according to our truest selves, a potent message can be found in her stories up to this day, which is, that taking a step out into the wider world,into the plains and bogs and fields may be a way to get outside ourselves in order to pursue the freedom we seek. For the more timid among us, following a little rabbit brave enough to emerge from his burrow with our mind’s eye might just be the push we need to get started on that path.
Sources
De Wilde, M.L (2008) Victorian Restriction, Restraint, and Escape in the Children ‘s Tales of Beatrix Potter. MA. Grand Valley State University. Available from https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1696&context=theses [accessed 28 July 2020]
Storr, A. (2015) Solitude: A Return to the Self. New York: Simon & Schuster
