Sunday, March 17, 2002
(Helen) Beatrix Potter was born July 28, 1866, in South Kensington, London, and grew up living the conventional sheltered life of a Victorian girl in a well-to-do household. She was educated at home by governesses, which left her little opportunity to mix with other children. Her only sibling, Bertram, was six years younger, and as was the custom with boys, was sent to boarding school at an early age. This left Beatrix alone with only her pets for company.
Young Beatrix would study her pets for hours noting their behavior then sketching them. She also drew landscapes, flowers and fossils. Many of her sketchbooks are housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
At 15, she kept a journal written in her own secret code. It wasn't until 15 years after her death that the code was deciphered revealing young Beatrix as a critic of the artists, writers and politicians of her day.
Her commercial career began with the publishing of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" by Frederick Warne in 1902. Over the next eight years, she would produce an average of two books every year -- 23 in total. The money she earned gave her some independence from her parents with whom she still lived.
In 1905, Norman Warne, youngest son of Frederick Warne and her editor, proposed marriage. Despite her parent's opposition -- they considered him a "tradesman" and thus, socially beneath them -- she accepted. His death from pernicious anaemia a few weeks later ended their engagement.
In 1905, Potter also bought her first property -- Hill Top Farm -- in the village of Sawrey, in Britain's Lake District, where as a child her family would summer. The farm and surrounding countryside began to appear in her stories.
In 1913, Potter, 47, married William Heelis, a local solicitor, and made Sawrey her permanent home. Writing and painting began to take second place to farming, sheep breeding and buying sketches of the Lakeland countryside to ensure their conservation.
For the last 30 years of her life, farming and preservation of the land were to become her main concerns.
She died Dec. 22, 1943, at 77, after a long battle with bronchitis. She left more than 4,000 acres and 15 farms to the National Trust, a government body that would ensure their safekeeping.