“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or
consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with
love, grace, and gratitude.”
—Denis Waitley
I enjoy Beatrix Potter’s children’s tales with their
detailed and charming illustrations, but after reading a biography of her a few
years ago (Linda Lear’s excellent Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, see links below), my
respect and admiration for her grew until she became one of my heroes. In honor
of her birthday yesterday, I want to share with you a little of what could be
called “The Tale of Beatrix Potter.”
Once upon a time...Helen Beatrix Potter was born 150 years ago on July 28, 1866
in London. She was educated at home by governesses, as was the custom for girls
of her social class. She and her younger brother, Bertram, kept a number of
pets in the schoolroom, including rabbits, a hedgehog, mice, and bats. She
observed these pets closely, sketched them, and wrote stories about them.
During family holidays in Scotland and the English Lake District, she explored
freely, spending hours observing and sketching what she saw. From 1881 to 1897
she kept a journal (in a code that wasn’t cracked until 1958) where she wrote
down her observations.
She loved the study of natural history: archaeology,
geology, entomology, and especially mycology, the study of fungi. Scottish
Naturalist Charles McIntosh encouraged her to make her fungi drawings more
technically accurate, and her studies resulted in a scientific paper on how
fungi spores reproduce. Fungi expert George Massee delivered that paper on her
behalf at a meeting of the Linnean Society, where women couldn’t even attend
the meetings, let alone read papers. (Though I’m not enamored of mushrooms
myself, I always think of her when an interesting one pops up in my yard.)
Her earliest published works included greeting card
designs and illustrations for the publisher Hildesheimer & Faulkner. Her
work on other people’s stories made her long to publish her own, so she adapted
one of her earliest stories she’d created for a picture letter sent to the son
of one of her old governesses. In 1901, Beatrix published The Tale of Peter
Rabbit herself after several publishers turned her down. After seeing the
success of the book, in 1902, the publishing firm of Frederick Warne & Co.
decided they would publish it after all, if Beatrix would redo her black and
white illustrations in color. After that, she wrote two or three little books a
year, until 1930 when the last one, The Tale of Little Pig Robinson,
came out.
Beatrix was also a smart marketer, and created the first licensed literary character, a Peter Rabbit doll. She invented other toys, a Peter Rabbit game, and painting books for Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
In 1905, Beatrix became engaged to her editor, Norman Warne,
but sadly he died of leukemia before they could be married.
After Norman’s death, Beatrix used income from her books and
a small inheritance to buy Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the Lake District.
Hill Top became a sanctuary for her, and she wrote and painted some of her most
popular tales there, including The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of
Jemima Puddle-Duck. If I ever get back to England, I’d love to visit Hill Top Farm, which is part of the National Trust and open to visitors.
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| Potter and Heelis on their wedding day |
In 1909, she bought Castle Farm, the property across the
road from Hill Top. Beatrix wanted to preserve the Lake District from
development, and this was one practical way to do that. During this time, she
met solicitor William Heelis who helped her with her property purchases. They
married in 1913, when Beatrix was 47, and moved to Castle Cottage on Castle
Farm. Happily married for 30 years, the Heelises were deeply involved in the
community. In addition to her writing and art, Beatrix grew fascinated with
raising Herdwick sheep, becoming a respected breeder and winning prizes at
local shows. When she died in 1943, she left 15 farms and more than 4,000 acres
to the National Trust.
Beatrix Potter’s work and life inspire me. I’m amazed by
what she was able to accomplish at a time when not many options were open to
women. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about this remarkable woman, and that you’ll
check out some of the links below.
Do you have a favorite Beatrix Potter story?
“I have just made
stories to please myself, because I never grew up.”
—Beatrix Potter
More Fun Stuff:
Many Beatrix Potter stories are available on Project Gutenberg.
Miss Potter (fictionalized movie version of her life)
Introduction by Ted Kooser: Faced by a loss, and perhaps by a loss of words, many of us find something to do with our hands. Here's a poem about just that by Arden Levine, published in 2015 in an issue of Agni Magazine. Ms. Levine lives in New York.
Offering
She tells him she's leaving him and he
bakes a pie. His pies are exquisite,
their crusts like crinoline.
He doesn't change clothes, works
in slacks, shirtsleeves rolled.
Summer makes the kitchen unbearable
But he suffers beautifully, tenderly
cuts the strawberries, pours
into the deep curve of the bowl.
She hadn't missed his hands since
last they drew her to his body.
Now she watches them stroke the edges
of the dough, shape it like cooling glass.
When the oven opens, his brow drips,
he brings his hands to his face.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2015 by Arden Levine, “Offering,” (AGNI Magazine, 2015). Poem
reprinted by permission of Arden Levine and the publisher. Introduction
copyright ©2016 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser,
served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Welcome to summer reruns! About once a month, I’ll be sharing a post from the archives. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2011.
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| Photo courtesy D. Sharon Pruitt, Pink Sherbet Photography |
Comparisons. I can be feeling perfectly fine about myself and suddenly crash and burn because I started comparing myself to someone else…my neighbor, a fellow freelancer, a friend, even my husband! I look at my personality and accomplishments and feel inferior. How does she achieve so much in the same time I have? It sure looks like he is having a great time while I’m over here tongue-tied and sweating. You get the picture.
This is where my shaky self-esteem reveals itself. I tend to denigrate what I’ve done—“Oh, it’s not that hard to do such-and-such (because if I’m able to do it, anyone can)”—or compare what I perceive to be my weakness with someone else’s strength.
Comparisons in which I come out ahead can be dangerous, too. I become less empathetic—because, once again, if I can do it, anyone can! It’s easy to become critical of others when you “compare down.”
Guilt. I must have some sort of overactive guilt gene, because I fight guilt feelings all the time. Even when I’m occupied in something “productive” I find myself feeling guilty about not doing something else that’s productive. Crazy, huh? And the guilt alarm bells really go off when I do something just for me, which I do quite frequently despite the guilt. I may do whatever-it-is, but the guilty feelings shadow my happiness. It’s far too easy to let guilt become too large a part of the emotional landscape.
“What people think.” How many times do we do things—or avoid doing them—because of what other people think? Women especially have a hard time with this because we’re often raised to be people-pleasers. We want to be liked and we want to fit in. That’s not bad unless it causes us to give up essential dreams and parts of ourselves to do so.
I wish I could say I’ve conquered these happiness busters, but I’m still working on it. At least I’ve learned to recognize when they appear, and sometimes I even manage to banish them. It helps when I remember my belief that we’re basically all doing the best we can. Sure, we fail and make mistakes, but we’re human. At times, failures and mistakes are the best we can do while we stretch outside our comfort zones.
What are some of your happiness busters? How do you handle them?
“Make treating yourself a priority and always remember
your life is happening now. Don't put off all your dreams and pleasures to
another day. In any balanced personal definition of success there has to be a
powerful element of living life in the present.”
—Mireille Guiliano
