Beatrix Potter
From Philosopedia.org
Potter, (Helen) Beatrix (28 July 1866 - 22 December 1943)
A British Unitarian, Potter was born in Kensington, was never sent to school, and grew up a lonely child. She became self-taught and invented a cipher so elaborate that the half-million words she wrote in it were not deciphered until Leslie Linder broke the code and published The Journal of Beatrix Potter (1966).
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1893) began as a letter to the son of a former governess and was published at her own expense in 1901.
In 1913 at the age of 47 she married a Lakeland solicitor, William Heelis, and for the remainder of her life devoted herself almost entirely to her farms and the new National Trust (to which in her will she left 4,000 acres of land, cottages, and fifteen farms, now a part of Lake District National Park).
Potter identified with Unitarianism more because of family loyalties than acceptance of the Unitarian outlook. She once wrote, “I shall always call myself a Unitarian because of my father and grandmother, but for the Unitarians as a Dissenting body, as I have known them in London, I have no respect. Their creed is apt to be a timid, illogical compromise, and their forms of Service, a badly performed imitation of the Church.”
The relatives she named were friends of James Martineau, whose writings emphasized the primary role of the conscience of the individual. Her father, Rupert, had studied under Martineau at New College (Unitarian) in Manchester, England. As pointed out by Stephenie Pierson,
- Peter Rabbit, now a century old, has been “analyzed by child psychiatrists, scrutinized by scientists and botanists, lionized by authors and poets (Graham Greene, W. H. Auden, Maurice Sendak), parsed by philologists and linguists. He’s been held and chewed and read and loved by generations of small children on large laps. And he’s come out with his charm, his dignity, and his little blue waistcoat intact."
Potter, however, as described in Linda Lear's Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, wrote
- I never have cared tuppence either for popularity or for the modern child; they are pampered & spoilt with too many toys & books.
Children like Potter, Lear wrote, because they like the violence and darkness in her work. Peter Rabbit's father had had "an accident" and ended up in one of Mrs. McGregor's pies. Squirrel Nutkin got carried away by an owl "intending to skin him." The fox in "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck" suggests that Jemima should pick the flavorings and seasonings in which she later is to be cooked.
By 1905 Potter had accumulated over £1,000 in royalties. She inherited £35,000 when her father died in 1914. Her literary life was followed, from 1911 until her death, by her conservation efforts and her passionate advocate of nature.
Potter died at Castle Cottage in Sawrey in 1943. Her body was cremated, and her ashes were scattered in the countryside near Sawrey.
