Word: potter
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Many readers may have felt, as does Author Lane, that Beatrix Potter-whose pint-sized Tales have become classic portraits of a fast-fading age-possessed "small but authentic genius," but few could have said so to Miss Potter. For she was born and bred in a tradition of Victorian modesty so extreme as to win her a place among English eccentrics...
Topsy, a Pig, & Grandmama. Father Rupert Potter, a barrister, was as awe-inspiring as Jehovah (see cut). In London's respectable Earl's Court, he and Mrs. Potter ate breakfast, alone, in absolute silence. Then Mr. Potter went to his club. At 1 o'clock, a small cutlet and some rice pudding went up to the nursery by the back stairs. Then a Calvinist nurse named McKenzie came and took little Beatrix for a good walk...
...Never Grew Up." In the summer, the Potters went to Scotland or the Lake District, where Mr. Potter hunted and indulged his hobby-collecting autographed letters of the Lake Poets. It was there that Beatrix discovered "the child's half-real, half-fantastic world of pond and ditch, stone walls and foxgloves, woods and sandy warrens"-side by side with "the crowded informal cottage gardens," the cupboards and dressers, the huge ranges with their pans of dough rising under "an old clean blanket." All these things Beatrix carried back in her mind to London, and, in her own words...
...publishers promptly rejected it. With a second streak of audacity, Beatrix drew out her small savings and had The Tale of Peter Rabbit printed at her own expense. Then she resubmitted it to the firm of Warne & Co.; who, this time, accepted it. "I have not spoken to Mr. Potter," wrote Beatrix timidly to her publisher, "but I think, Sir, it would be well to explain the agreement clearly, because he is a little formal, having been a barrister...
Peter Rabbit was followed, in the next few years, by two more Tales-The Tailor of Gloucester, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. Then stern Father Potter called a halt. "I have had such painful unpleasantness at home," wrote Beatrix to her publisher, "that I should be obliged if you will kindly say no more about a new book." When Publisher Norman Warne, who had fallen head over heels in love with his shy little author, responded with a proposal of marriage, Mr. Potter was horrified. He forbade the marriage on the grounds that no daughter of his should marry "trade...