Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Name: Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
Author: Linda Lear
ISBN: 0312369344

by Linda Lear

She was indeed obsessed with drawing—”I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result…” I think that was partly the background that she came from. Drawing and art were acceptable talents for girls to have and I would imagine that most girls her age, with money, would have governesses and would have been learning to draw. That it became an overriding passion for her is probably partly genetic—her parents were both amateur artists and her father was a very keen amateur photographer. There was also a certain amount of art in her background. One of her grandfathers was a philanthropic patron of the arts, for example, and her father collected the work of Randolph Caldecott. No, she wasn’t related to him, but he was a friend of her father’s. Rupert Potter would take reference photographs for Millais to use when he was painting in his studio or away from his subject. Some of these photographs are now in the National Portrait Gallery. As a result of that, Beatrix Potter met him several times. Her father also used to take her to the Royal Academy and other galleries and exhibitions in London. So, from quite a young age, she was exposed to great master paintings, Rembrandt , Titian and so on, but also to more contemporary artists, like the Pre-Raphaelites. She wasn’t just learning painting and drawing at home, she was able to see what other artists were doing. This was all made possible by her background. Her parents were extremely wealthy. Both came from the Manchester area and their families had made their money in the cotton trade. The Potters quite liked to play this down, in that they moved to London partly to establish themselves in society. Her father was a barrister by training, though he practised very little. But it was quite difficult for the Potters to be accepted into London society—they came from the north and probably had northern accents, their money had been made in trade and they were nonconformists, which closed off certain avenues. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter They had the money to behave like upper-middle class people, but their background didn’t gain them entry into all the circles that Mrs Potter would have liked to have been let into. They could afford the lovely long summer holidays that the upper classes enjoyed, and they could afford servants, they had a nice house in Kensington, they had a carriage, Beatrix had governesses and they sent their son away to school, but they mixed mostly with other nonconformists and other professionals rather than the real upper classes. Linda Lear’s primary interest is looking at people in relation to the natural world and science. Lear’s first and very successful biography was of Rachel Carson, who fits that bill. In America, she is the ‘go-to’ expert on Rachel Carson. She first came across Beatrix Potter when she discovered that she also had interests in those areas. She was looking for a new subject to write about and, quite by chance, she saw some of Potter’s fungi paintings, which are meticulously detailed and scientifically accurate and very, very beautiful. This completely amazed her and so she began researching Beatrix Potter’s life and discovered that there was a great deal more to her than just The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other little books. So, her biography started from that point of view, which is why it’s called ‘a life in nature’. She writes about the whole of Beatrix Potter’s life with great insight, but she concentrates very much on the influence of place, the influence of education, and the opportunities that enabled Beatrix Potter to learn through nature, through science and also through her drawing and painting. She follows this path right through to the last third of Beatrix Potter’s life, which is probably the third that people are least familiar with, when she was living and working as a farmer in the Lake District and had put the little books behind her. Many of her neighbours in the Lake District had no idea until she died, it was the obituaries that revealed the fact that the Mrs Heelis living in their midst and visiting sheep fairs and so on, was actually Beatrix Potter. “The book is also very good on how such a constrained background produced a woman of such independence and confidence” Linda Lear has the benefit of being one of the most recent biographers, of course. There are earlier biographies, the first one was by Margaret Lane in 1946, and Judy Taylor’s later one (1986) is very good. But we know so much more now, and a contemporary biographer always has the benefit of everybody else’s research. Linda’s book, published in 2007, is quite long. It’s quite a dense read and the illustrations are in sections, rather than scattered throughout the book, so it is definitely a ‘read’ rather than lots of lovely pictures with a bit of text. But it tells you everything you could possibly need to know about Beatrix Potter in every part of her life and the notes and references are very rewarding. It’s particularly interesting on her background and the nonconformist side of her family, but it’s also fascinating as a picture of a young girl growing up in Victorian England and making the transition to the twentieth century, living in a strict household, but yearning to be something completely different and, of course, with an unexpected interest in science. The book is also very good on how such a constrained background produced a woman of such independence and confidence, so totally different from how you would have expected her to have turned out. If you divide her life approximately into thirds, in the first third she was a dutiful Victorian daughter, learning a certain amount, but totally educated by governesses or self-educated at home, leading a fairly restricted and isolated life but drawing all the while. She went on holiday with her parents, lovely long holidays to Scotland and later to the Lake District, and she wrote a lot of letters, including to children of her acquaintance. But by the time she was in her thirties, she realized that the sort of marriage that her parents might have wanted for her was not what she wanted and that she was not the sort of wife that young men were looking for. She was shy, her social life beyond her family and cousins and so on was virtually non-existent, and she didn’t miss it. But she did want independence—to be able to do things for herself which, in those days, was very difficult outside marriage, because daughters were supposed to stay at home with their parents. So, she needed to make some money and that’s where the little books came in. “She did want independence—to be able to do things for herself which, in those days, was very difficult outside marriage ” Her last governess, who became her friend, suggested that she might look at the letters that she’d been writing to children with little stories and pictures in them, to see whether they might be something she could turn into books. The writing of the little books really spans from about 1900 until 1913, though there were some later titles. It was a very short time, during which she wrote prolifically and was full of ideas. That’s the second third of her life. During those years, she started buying land in the Lake District, so her stories became very Lake District-based. The shift from writing to landowning wasn’t really a conscious decision, but she was making money from the books, which she spent on farms and land and then more farms and more land, building up responsibility for it all and being very hands-on. Then there were interesting things happening in the fields and on the fells—with the sheep, for example. Also her eyesight deteriorated with age, which made doing all the fiddly small illustrations difficult and, gradually, the writing lost out to her farming interests. She wrote very tellingly to her publisher in 1918, saying, “Somehow when one is up to the eyes in work with real live animals it makes one despise paper-book animals…!” Suddenly she was a full-time farmer. She ended up owning more than 4,000 acres, with something like 15 different farms. She was drawn into the world of an established, respected landowner, with all the responsibilities that go with that, and that was the last third of her life. There was no conscious decision from one day to the next. It was just how her life developed. And, it has to be said, she was still dependent on the royalties from the little books for this life. She understood that she needed the income that they were generating. No, not only her own efforts. She inherited money as well, from both of her parents. The Potters were very wealthy. I saw somewhere an equation that tells you what they would be worth in today’s money. It’s a lot.

Recommended by

Libby Joy

"She was indeed obsessed with drawing—”I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result…” I think that was partly the background that she came from. Drawing and art were acceptable talents for girls to have and I would imagine that most girls her age, with money, would have governesses and would have been learning to draw. That it became an overriding passion for her is probably partly genetic—her parents were both amateur artists and her father was a very keen amateur photographer. There was also a certain amount of art in her background. One of her grandfathers was a philanthropic patron of the arts, for example, and her father collected the work of Randolph Caldecott. No, she wasn’t related to him, but he was a friend of her father’s. Rupert Potter would take reference photographs for Millais to use when he was painting in his studio or away from his subject. Some of these photographs are now in the National Portrait Gallery. As a result of that, Beatrix Potter met him several times. Her father also used to take her to the Royal Academy and other galleries and exhibitions in London. So, from quite a young age, she was exposed to great master paintings, Rembrandt , Titian and so on, but also to more contemporary artists, like the Pre-Raphaelites. She wasn’t just learning painting and drawing at home, she was able to see what other artists were doing. This was all made possible by her background. Her parents were extremely wealthy. Both came from the Manchester area and their families had made their money in the cotton trade. The Potters quite liked to play this down, in that they moved to London partly to establish themselves in society. Her father was a barrister by training, though he practised very little. But it was quite difficult for the Potters to be accepted into London society—they came from the north and probably had northern accents, their money had been made in trade and they were nonconformists, which closed off certain avenues. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter They had the money to behave like upper-middle class people, but their background didn’t gain them entry into all the circles that Mrs Potter would have liked to have been let into. They could afford the lovely long summer holidays that the upper classes enjoyed, and they could afford servants, they had a nice house in Kensington, they had a carriage, Beatrix had governesses and they sent their son away to school, but they mixed mostly with other nonconformists and other professionals rather than the real upper classes. Linda Lear’s primary interest is looking at people in relation to the natural world and science. Lear’s first and very successful biography was of Rachel Carson, who fits that bill. In America, she is the ‘go-to’ expert on Rachel Carson. She first came across Beatrix Potter when she discovered that she also had interests in those areas. She was looking for a new subject to write about and, quite by chance, she saw some of Potter’s fungi paintings, which are meticulously detailed and scientifically accurate and very, very beautiful. This completely amazed her and so she began researching Beatrix Potter’s life and discovered that there was a great deal more to her than just The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other little books. So, her biography started from that point of view, which is why it’s called ‘a life in nature’. She writes about the whole of Beatrix Potter’s life with great insight, but she concentrates very much on the influence of place, the influence of education, and the opportunities that enabled Beatrix Potter to learn through nature, through science and also through her drawing and painting. She follows this path right through to the last third of Beatrix Potter’s life, which is probably the third that people are least familiar with, when she was living and working as a farmer in the Lake District and had put the little books behind her. Many of her neighbours in the Lake District had no idea until she died, it was the obituaries that revealed the fact that the Mrs Heelis living in their midst and visiting sheep fairs and so on, was actually Beatrix Potter. “The book is also very good on how such a constrained background produced a woman of such independence and confidence” Linda Lear has the benefit of being one of the most recent biographers, of course. There are earlier biographies, the first one was by Margaret Lane in 1946, and Judy Taylor’s later one (1986) is very good. But we know so much more now, and a contemporary biographer always has the benefit of everybody else’s research. Linda’s book, published in 2007, is quite long. It’s quite a dense read and the illustrations are in sections, rather than scattered throughout the book, so it is definitely a ‘read’ rather than lots of lovely pictures with a bit of text. But it tells you everything you could possibly need to know about Beatrix Potter in every part of her life and the notes and references are very rewarding. It’s particularly interesting on her background and the nonconformist side of her family, but it’s also fascinating as a picture of a young girl growing up in Victorian England and making the transition to the twentieth century, living in a strict household, but yearning to be something completely different and, of course, with an unexpected interest in science. The book is also very good on how such a constrained background produced a woman of such independence and confidence, so totally different from how you would have expected her to have turned out. If you divide her life approximately into thirds, in the first third she was a dutiful Victorian daughter, learning a certain amount, but totally educated by governesses or self-educated at home, leading a fairly restricted and isolated life but drawing all the while. She went on holiday with her parents, lovely long holidays to Scotland and later to the Lake District, and she wrote a lot of letters, including to children of her acquaintance. But by the time she was in her thirties, she realized that the sort of marriage that her parents might have wanted for her was not what she wanted and that she was not the sort of wife that young men were looking for. She was shy, her social life beyond her family and cousins and so on was virtually non-existent, and she didn’t miss it. But she did want independence—to be able to do things for herself which, in those days, was very difficult outside marriage, because daughters were supposed to stay at home with their parents. So, she needed to make some money and that’s where the little books came in. “She did want independence—to be able to do things for herself which, in those days, was very difficult outside marriage ” Her last governess, who became her friend, suggested that she might look at the letters that she’d been writing to children with little stories and pictures in them, to see whether they might be something she could turn into books. The writing of the little books really spans from about 1900 until 1913, though there were some later titles. It was a very short time, during which she wrote prolifically and was full of ideas. That’s the second third of her life. During those years, she started buying land in the Lake District, so her stories became very Lake District-based. The shift from writing to landowning wasn’t really a conscious decision, but she was making money from the books, which she spent on farms and land and then more farms and more land, building up responsibility for it all and being very hands-on. Then there were interesting things happening in the fields and on the fells—with the sheep, for example. Also her eyesight deteriorated with age, which made doing all the fiddly small illustrations difficult and, gradually, the writing lost out to her farming interests. She wrote very tellingly to her publisher in 1918, saying, “Somehow when one is up to the eyes in work with real live animals it makes one despise paper-book animals…!” Suddenly she was a full-time farmer. She ended up owning more than 4,000 acres, with something like 15 different farms. She was drawn into the world of an established, respected landowner, with all the responsibilities that go with that, and that was the last third of her life. There was no conscious decision from one day to the next. It was just how her life developed. And, it has to be said, she was still dependent on the royalties from the little books for this life. She understood that she needed the income that they were generating. No, not only her own efforts. She inherited money as well, from both of her parents. The Potters were very wealthy. I saw somewhere an equation that tells you what they would be worth in today’s money. It’s a lot."

Beatrix Potter · fivebooks.com