Status Updates From Beatrix Potter: A Life in N...

When her brother was old enough for boarding school, she came out and no longer needed a governness. As an adult, she attended family parties and they held a special party to recognize her emergence. Because of her painful shyness, she did not enjoy it. Even though she was pretty and slim with clear blue eyes, her awkwardness kept away suitors. She faces the issue of being depending on her family with few choices.

When she took art exams, she earned scores of excellence. She and her teacher had different visions of art. Her parents were connected to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and artists gave her tips. She preferred their style but her favorite mediums wass watercolor. She was 17 when she went to her first exhibition. It blew her mind. In time, she realized she learned more from art museums than from teachers.

To her horror, it died the next day and she had to tell the neighbor. It did not ruin their relationship and she appreciated them even more when she became an adult. She feared that taking art lessons would change her unique and different style. Her teacher stretched her by exposing her to different media. She did not want lessons to interfere with her expertise in watercolor.

To her horror, it died the next day and she had to tell the neighbor. It did not ruin their relationship and she appreciated them even more when she became an adult. She took art lessons in a variety of media. She was worried because she knew her style was different and unique. She feared a teacher might change her style. She struggled with being stretched and she and her teacher had different artistic visions.

Based on her reflections, she was closest to her father and grandfather. There was a family with little girls who lived next door but she was never encouraged to play with them (or could it also be the other way around?). There was a widow with older, unmarried daughters who moved in and they had pet guinea pigs. Beatrix borrowed one to sketch and paint but it ate a lot of irregular stuff and drank ink.

She was closer to her father than her mother. Her mother was busy with the household and raising her brother. Her father compensated during the boy’s nursery years by giving Beatrix more attention. They had similar tastes and she benefitted from learning photography. It allowed her to put more realistic details into her work, which is funny because, in her stories, her animals wore clothes and did human things.

She and CM would have disagreed over faith issues but CM was quite magnanimous in her outlook. She was firm in her beliefs but was open and generous to nonbelievers. Beatrix did not care for creeds and believed that rationality should be an important part of faith. It would been interesting to see what would have happened if her imagination had crept into her faith.

They collected and counting the bones and drew the pieces. They loved their pets but they also wanted to learn about them once dead. She was very introverted and was glad that her education was “neglected.” She thought that school would have killed her personality’s uniqueness or killed her due to her introversion. Her brother did board at other schools. I was correct that Unitarianism isolated her family.

She learned art from a variety of sources. Like CM, she hated moralizing realistic stories that preached. She and her brother collected quite a menagerie of animals and those animals traveled with them. They seemed to have three different places where they lived during the year and I can imagine it would have taxed her mother. The kids were avid nature notebookers. If a pet died, they stripped it boiled the carcase.

This book flows well with the picture studies I’ve been doing, especially the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists, and the German Romantics. Beatrix is 20 years younger than CM and most likely what her education has in common has to do with the spirit of the air. She first had a nurse who became her younger brother’s nurse when she needed a governess. She had tutors for languages.

Some of her drawings reflected her fantastical ideas like a rabbit on ice skates. It was more than just flora and fauna that interested her. She had a great love of the scenery, in particular Scotland. They often spent an entire month on summer holiday there and she adored that life. Her father was an avid photographer and he has many photographs of her and some with famous people.

She had her own botanical collection and her rooms became like a naturalist museum. She had a Scottish nurse, chosen for her discipline. The woman was an odd combination of Calvinist and spinner of Scottish fairy tales and folk lore. None of the religion sunk in but the stories filled her imagination. She read the staples found on CM’s list but there is no mention of PNEU.

Because her parents were artistic, she imitated them. They took their sketchbooks outdoors and she did the same. They filled their sketchbooks and she did as well. She and her brother also copied from illustrations in children’s books. Her father gave her tips as well as his artistic friends. She was an avid naturalist and collected specimens and preserved dead ones.

Ch. 2 There’s a belief that Beatrix was literally locked up with bars on her windows. While she did not have a lot of social gatherings with society children, she did spend time with her grandparents and on summer holidays in Scotland with her father’s friends who were often literary and artistic. She prefered life in the country the most because it suited her natural inclinations.

They lived in the Kensington area. They both aspired to move up in society but did not feel it necessary to hide their roots in trade nor their dissenting views. A strong Unitarian streak ran in both sides of the family. While her grandmother founded a school for the lower classes, her mother was not into that. Beatrix’s mother seemed to live a more-closed off life than her grandmother.

Not much is known about her mother, partially because of the requirements of the “angel in the house” mentality, but also because her mother may not have been very likeable. Her father was a lawyer in the chancery (BLEAK HOUSE) but there is not a lot of records of his cases. His interests (photography, art, philanthropy) caused him to leave his wife home alone a lot.

Ch. 1 This chapter focuses on family. Her grandfathers lived a rags to riches life and they even knew each other. It is like reading an Elizabeth Gaskell novel because they were from Manchester and the families knew the Gaskells. What is different is that unlike Mr. Thornton they ran in unitarian circles and cared strongly about the arts and culture. Like him, they cared about the poor, but for philanthropic reasons.

I need a book to fall asleep that is not going to tempt me to add more time on the timer, especially the first week of school.

Ironically, this book is like the last one, except that this is nonfiction and the other, fiction. Both have young women in the Victorian era who figure out how to carve a life of respectability and flourish on their own terms.