Beatrix Potter

I don't read many biographies -- Jim is the history buff here, mostly reading about famous men in wars and politics. Not my thing. But after reading about the first archbishop in Santa Fe from a century ago (well, a fictionalized version), I got into an actual biography of a person from that time: Beatrix Potter. 

You know her, of course you do. She's the author of Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck and all the other classics from our childhoods long ago.

And from our children's childhoods and our grandchildren's too -- her exquisitely drawn animal characters have lived on for generations. First published in 1902, Peter Rabbit was followed by other imaginative and precisely drawn animals who had human personalities and misadventures that ended safely.

The author of the biography is Margaret Lane. Written in 1946 after Beatrix had died, but when Beatrix's husband was still alive to give interviews and provide personal letters and memories, the book's writing is itself of a different time and in a different cadence. The language is decorous and old fashioned and quaintly British. In a good way.

And the subject matter was quaint and very British. But Beatrix Potter was a unique character. 

Her upbringing was cruelly stifling beyond even Victorian standards. Her adulthood was too, under the rigid restrictions of her upper class status and gender. She was chastely and secretly engaged to her publisher when she first started writing her "little books" in 1902, but he died at age 37 before they could marry.

She went on to become a confirmed spinster, not entirely happy but hugely successful keeping herself occupied writing her stories and painting the detailed watercolor illustrations.

With publishing success came money, and with her money she bought her way out of her unhappy life.

She earned royalties enough to leave London society and buy a farm, and then several farms, and then substantial acreage in the rural Lake District in England. At age 47 she married a local man, William Heelis, and they had a long, happy marriage for 30 years. 

She stopped writing and became a sheep farmer. A real one, working the land and tending her flocks and well respected by local herdsmen, a formidable fixture at animal auctions and in the farming economy.

She stopped wearing corsets, and became an oddity dressed in multiple layers of tweed skirts and farmer's boots. She became a known character around the area, a little crotchety and opinionated. 

She was by all accounts extremely happy in the last 30 years of her life.

She left all of her substantial land holdings to the National Trust when she died, conserving the wild landscapes of the Lake District from runaway development. That's really her tangible gift to posterity -- the little books, yes, but the preservation of land was even more significant.

It's a dense biography, full of historical research and lots of details. The author captures the intense feeling of place Beatrix had in the last half of her life for her rustic village and primitive cottages and the upland fells she hiked and farmed.

Okay, I'm on a roll now, reading biographies. I'm currently in the middle of a factual biography of the midcentury fashion designer Claire McCardell. 

Who knew biographies were not all about dead men conducting wars!