‘But that was far from the whole story,’ Sarah Gristwood says. Summoning all her stoicism, she wrote later that she was glad she had not reached London in time to see Norman alive, confessing, ‘I should only have cried and upset him.’ It was a heartbreak from which Beatrix would never truly recover. The potential of their marriage was never to be fulfilled. Tragically, Norman had died from a rare form of leukaemia, aged just 37. Her urgent journey from Wales was to no avail he had already succumbed to his illness by the time she reached his home. The next morning, she received a telegram from Norman’s sister Millie telling her that he was gravely ill. On 24 August she wrote Norman a tongue-in-cheek letter about their future life together – ‘a silly letter all about my rabbits, and the walking stick that I was going to get for him to thrash his wife with’, she recorded in her diary – but he was never to read it. Perhaps she hoped to gently bring her parents round to the love match? At the end of July 1905, reaching a deadlock, she accompanied her family on holiday to North Wales. In her letters with Norman, Beatrix said of her mother, “People who only see her casually do not know how disagreeable she can be when she takes dislikes.”’Īnd so the engagement wasn’t announced, despite Beatrix wearing Norman’s gold engagement ring. ‘She saw his family as being tradespeople, which is ironic considering the Potters were from Lancashire industrialist stock. ‘Her mother didn’t see Norman as a suitable match for her daughter,’ says Helen. Beatrix’s unbending mother was shocked and deeply disapproved of the union. He would have been an escape from her family home, and a chance to enter into a marriage to someone who wouldn’t stop her from writing and creating,’ explains Helen Antrobus of the National Trust, a co-curator of the V&A Museum’s new Beatrix Potter: Drawn To Nature exhibition that celebrates the author’s life and works. Beatrix saw her path to independence through her writing and Norman was always encouraging. ‘It was an equal and creative partnership which led to love. But that doesn’t detract from the strength of their feelings – indeed, if you look at their correspondence, Beatrix had been dropping hints for some time that she would like the relationship to grow closer, telling him of a long walk she’d like to have taken, making a point of adding that, unfortunately, “I have no one to walk with.”’īy the time Norman proposed, he was 37 and Beatrix 39. ‘Even when, in the summer of 1905, Norman wrote her a letter proposing marriage, it crossed in the post with a business letter from Beatrix addressed to “Dear Mr Warne” and signed off “I remain yrs sincerely Beatrix Potter”. ‘Their courtship was conducted in a cloud of Edwardian restraint and propriety,’ says Sarah Gristwood, author of The Story of Beatrix Potter. Just when it appeared that Beatrix – now very old for a first-time bride of that era – would die a spinster, love blossomed across the printing presses. ‘What an appalling quantity of Peter,’ she remarked, in her typically dry style. It was an instant success when published in 1902 – the year she met Norman, then 34 – and within a year there were a further five editions. In 1901, the 35-year-old Beatrix self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit which soon attracted the interest of Frederick Warne Publishers. She once (while recovering from rheumatic fever) wrote in her diary: ‘I am well content to have a red nose and a shorn head, I may be lonely, but better that than an unhappy marriage.’ A barrister’s daughter, born into a Victorian upper-middle-class family, she defied convention early on by refusing to be pressurised into an advantageous match. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, she envisaged a life beyond that of a wife. I am getting almost more treasures than I can squeeze into one small book.’ ‘I received the parcel from Hamleys: the things will all do beautifully. ‘Dear Mr Warne,’ she wrote in one letter. Beatrix, in turn, never forgot to let him know how important these gifts were to her. As her editor, he wanted to encourage her work and so, when she told him about her idea for The Tale of Two Bad Mice (which she would also illustrate), he sent her doll’s house furniture so she could copy it. The love story between Beatrix and Norman is one not just of personal but also of professional admiration. It is an odd choice of gift for a 39-year-old spinster, but evidence of the growing bond between her and her dashing editor Norman Warne. Hidden in the folds of tissue is a set of exquisite doll’s house furniture, from tiny gilt chairs down to a miniature side of ham. ‘For me?’ she murmurs, setting down her pen. The housekeeper has delivered an elegant parcel from Hamleys toy store on London’s Regent Street. Beatrix in 1890, when she was in her mid-20s, and her first love, editor Norman Warneīeatrix looks up from her writing desk in surprise.
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