Beatrix Potter

[Courtenay]

I visited that shop too, a few years ago! It's very sweet and it was fascinating to learn the "real" story behind The Tailor of Gloucester, which I'm sure you also read there, Anita.

If I recall correctly, the story goes that a real-life tailor in Gloucester, in the Victorian era, once came back to his shop after the weekend to find that the work he'd left cut out on Friday evening, ready for sewing up on Monday, had all been done for him. What he didn't know was that his two young apprentices had been out on a drinking binge on Friday night and were left so dishevelled that they were ashamed to go home the next morning, so they secretly hid out in the tailor's shop over the weekend and sewed the clothes for him while they were there — all except for one buttonhole, because they ran out of thread. The tailor apparently never did find out the truth and claimed in his own advertising that his clothes were sewn by the fairies!!

Beatrix heard this story while she was visiting her cousin in Gloucester and was inspired to write a new tale based on it, but she set it in an earlier era so she could indulge in painting "the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets — when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta" — and of course her tailor's secret assistants are little mice! Apparently it was her favourite out of all the books she wrote and illustrated.

Meanwhile, on another Potterish note, I'm just finishing a cross stitch design of Mrs Tiggy-winkle — the third of four kits I bought at Hill Top House a few years ago — and about to move onto the last one, of Jemima Puddle-duck and the "sandy-whiskered gentleman"... And I'm hoping to visit the Lake District later this year, as I'm moving to Manchester in a month's time and am looking forward to exploring favourite places in the north and discovering some more that I haven't seen yet!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, the story of the real-life tailor is fascinating, Courtenay.

The cross stitch kits sound lovely. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is one of my favourite Beatrix Potter characters.

Good luck with your move to Manchester, though I thought you were going to work in America?

[Courtenay]

Good luck with your move to Manchester, though I thought you were going to work in America?

I still am! It's just that the visa application process is taking its time (the official advice was that it could take 10-12 months... that was back in February), and in the meantime, I've got another job near Manchester on a 6-month contract. Long story!! But I'm really looking forward to it, and to the eventual move to the US when that works out.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Hope everything goes well for you, Courtenay!

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Moved from 'What other author are you reading at the moment?'


I see that some people here like Beatrix Potter

But did you know where she got her ideas from...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-zq_O12lls

Viv

[Courtenay]

While I have just as many reservations about right-wing-biased news sources as I do about left-wing-biased ones, those claims are ludicrous and I very much doubt anyone with at least half a brain will take them seriously. As it was pointed out in a discussion here recently, there's at least one Brer Rabbit story that bears a strong resemblance to a Russian animal tale... global folklore is like that.

If Peter Rabbit was seriously an appropriation of Brer Rabbit, Peter would get the better of Mr McGregor and leave the garden laughing and singing, not flee in terror for his life and have to be put to bed with a dose of chamomile tea!

Again, I could do without the "they're trying to destroy our British culture" dog-whistling — in my experience, it is genuinely only a minority of academic iconoclasts who come out with gormless whinges like this. But I very much doubt this tempest in a teacup will actually affect sales of Beatrix Potter's books and merchandise, here or worldwide. She's hugely popular in Japan, for example! (I can't read enough Japanese to tell, but I have heard it said that the Japanese translations of her books are really beautifully done.)

[Anita Bensoussane]

Tales of anthropomorphic animals have been in existence probably for as long as stories have been in vogue! No one would dispute that Beatrix Potter was carrying on an ancient tradition while making it her own in the process - and what's wrong with that? Whoever told the first Brer Rabbit tales would have done exactly the same thing, influenced to some extent by earlier folk tales and fables. As you say, Courtenay, "global folklore is like that"!

Animals like foxes, wolves, hares and rabbits often pose a threat to livestock or crops, so it's not surprising that they've been portrayed in tales from around the world as crafty, rascally creatures (while at the same time, particularly in the case of rabbits, being rather lovable and even admirable in some respects). From West Africa come the tales of Anansi the spider trickster, while stories from other regions of Africa and from parts of America feature trickster hares and talking rabbits. These may well have fed into the Brer Rabbit tales. As far as Europe is concerned, Aesop's fables contain anthropomorphic animals, as do a lot of the fairy tales collected by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. The same applies to traditional tales from India, Japan and elsewhere. And these stories would have been shared and spread by traders and travellers.

Peter Rabbit is not a full-blown trickster in the style of Brer Rabbit, though he is a scamp of a bunny who loves to pit his wits against Mr. McGregor despite the very real danger of ending up in a pie! Both Brer Rabbit and Peter Rabbit are lovable rascals, appealing to our sense of fun, our rebellious streak and our survival instinct, and we're largely on their side despite their disobedience or even, in the case of Brer Rabbit, blatant shamelessness.

If Dr Emily Zobel Marshall knew her Enid Blyton, she'd have a pop at her instead of Beatrix Potter. Enid not only retold many of the traditional Brer Rabbit stories but invented her own, including tales in which Brer Rabbit comes to her house, Old Thatch in Buckinghamshire, and meets her dog, Bobs!

In The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies (1925), later retitled The Adventures of Binkle and Flip, Enid introduces two mischievous bunnies who, like Brer Rabbit, are out to trick the other animals in their neighbourhood (Flip shows reluctance at times but allows himself to be led by Binkle). She not only acknowledges her debt to Brer Rabbit in the opening poem, but kills him off!

"Let me introduce you to a
Bad
Bold
Pair,
They live in Heather Cottage and you'll
Find
Them
There,
They're Flip and Binkle Bunny, and I
Think
You'll
Decide,
They're the biggest rascals ever met, since
Brer
Rabbit
Died!"

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Thanks Anita - fantastic analysis!

[Boodi 2]

Thanks Anita...I am a great 'fan of both Brer Rabbit and Peter Rabbit and family!!!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I like them both too, Boodi. Have you read The Adventures of Binkle and Flip (or The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, as it was called originally)? It was a favourite of mine when I was a youngster, and my daughter and son loved it too. Some of the things that Binkle and Flip get up to are hilarious. My children liked Beatrix Potter's tales as well, and my son was a huge fan of Brer Rabbit.

[Judith Crabb]

Coincidence. Last night I read David Chambers's article 'Enid Blyton and Brer Rabbit' in EB Journal No. 49 and was mightily impressed with Chambers's ability to cope with the sheer bulk of Brer Rabbit stories Blyton re-told or created over her entire career - 338 short stories, two plays and the picture strips. Sometimes she retold the same story at different stages of her career. I was especially impressed with Chambers's recognition of the transgressive nature of Brer Rabbit as member of an underclass where cheating and trickery and violence are means of survival - exceptional in a canon where law enforcement plays such a large role in resolving plots and restoring order and punishing wrong-doing. If she had written nothing else Blyton would have a footnote in the literary history of Brer Rabbit. What an amazing creative force she was.

[Boodi 2]

I like them both too, Boodi. Have you read The Adventures of Binkle and Flip (or The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, as it was called originally)? It was a favourite of mine when I was a youngster, and my daughter and son loved it too. Some of the things that Binkle and Flip get up to are hilarious. My children liked Beatrix Potter's tales as well, and my son was a huge fan of Brer Rabbit.

I have not yet read "The Adventures of Binkle and Flip", so that is something to look forward to, especially as I enjoyed "The Adventures of Bob Bunny", a very early story that appeared in Journal No.79

[Daisy]

My introduction to animal stories were those of Little Grey Rabbit and I had a few of these books by Alison Uttley. Somehow Beatrix Potter escaped me!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I read very little Alison Uttley as a child, Daisy, but then I didn't read much Beatrix Potter either. My sister and I had The Tale of Peter Rabbit in an anthology and we also borrowed a few titles from the library, including The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, but I didn't read most of the stories until I was an adult.

I'm sure you'd enjoy The Adventures of Binkle and Flip, Boodi, and I hope you get to read it.

Like you, Judith, I was very impressed with David Chambers' article about Brer Rabbit in Journal 49. He explores the evolution of the Blytonian Brer Rabbit stories (her retellings and her own creations) in incredible detail. Your post prompted me to reread the article and I was interested in his comments on Heyo, Brer Rabbit! (1938), which is a book I don't have:

At the beginning of Heyo, Brer Rabbit: tales of Brer Rabbit and his friends retold from the original Enid Blyton explains how stories of his exploits are to be found in the folklore of other countries and how he crops up in every country under different names.  She goes on to say he is nowhere so delightful or such a character as when he is Brer Rabbit, the American negroes' [not considered a pejorative term in the UK at the time Enid was writing] friend and brother creature.

David adds:

"Brer Rabbit has always been my favourite character...." she claims.

I assume Enid Blyton meant that Brer Rabbit was her favourite of the various trickster characters in folklore, rather than her favourite character in the whole of literature. Anyway, what's clear is that she was familiar with the trickster character tradition, aware that Brer Rabbit was one of numerous tricksters - animal, human, hybrid or deity - from around the world. Brer Rabbit, Anansi the Spider, Reynard the Fox, Coyote and Loki are some of the best-known, but there are many more. 

As David informs us, Enid Blyton wrote three hundred and thirty-eight Brer Rabbit stories in total (retellings and her own), spanning four decades:

In her workbook the first entry of a Brer Rabbit story is jotted down on January 24th 1924, 'Brer Rabbit Goes Out to Dine'. This and nine other stories written the same month were to make up her first book about him, Tales of Brer Rabbit, printed in 1925 as part of Nelson's Reading Practice series. Without fail Enid produced new Brer Rabbit stories every year from 1924 to 1959. 1933 was a lean year with only two, but this was unusual, typically there were many more. In 1938, a particularly good year, she produced fifty two new Brer Rabbit stories for Sunny Stories and a further nine for Teachers World.

The fact that Brer Rabbit featured so strongly in her work suggests that she and her readers (from whom she received regular feedback) were extremely fond of the rascally bunny. David points out that the Brer Rabbit tales subvert the conventions of society:

For not only is Brer Rabbit rude and lazy he regularly steals, lies, cheats and is allowed to get away with it.

That's true, and I think it's the playful nature of these stories and the irrepressible, larger-than-life quality of Brer Rabbit himself that make the tales so appealing nevertheless. Survival is all in Brer Rabbit's world as you said, Judith - he has to keep his wits about him and take advantage of situations that arise, or risk losing his life. Existence for him is a permanent battle in which normal rules and regulations don't apply, and his tenacity, good cheer, resourcefulness and sense of fun keep the reader rooting for him.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've been reflecting on Beatrix Potter (or at least on the stories I know pretty well, as I don't recall much about some of them and there are a number I haven't read). In composing folksy anthropomorphic animal stories of that kind, it's quite natural to include typical folk tale elements without acknowledging every influence - or even necessarily being fully aware of them all.

In The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, for example, a cunning fox gets into conversation with Jemima and tries to dupe her, pretending to be friendly and help her while all the time thinking of his stomach! He resembles the foxes in Chicken Licken, The Gingerbread Man, the Brer Rabbit stories (Brer Fox) and many other traditional tales. A wolf plays a similar role in Little Red Riding Hood.

The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies involves rabbits being rescued from a sack, which is then filled with vegetables and an old brush to fool their captor (Mr. McGregor) into thinking they're still there. The same idea (or similar) is to be found in folk tales like The Sly Fox and the Little Red Hen, and The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids.

The Tailor of Gloucester is based on a Gloucester legend which is very much like The Elves and the Shoemaker, while The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse is little more than a retelling of the traditional story The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.

In The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle we meet a little girl called Lucie who is always losing her pocket-handkerchiefs, echoing the nursery-rhyme Lucy Locket: 'Lucy Locket lost her pocket'. Snatches of nursery-rhyme are woven into many of Beatrix Potter's stories.

The Tale of Pig Robinson pays homage to two pieces of literature - Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussy Cat and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. On that occasion both are mentioned in the text, though the authors of both are known. That isn't the case with popular folk tales/fairy tales which were passed on orally for many years before being written down.

Taking all this into account (and I've only looked at a small sample of Beatrix Potter's output), it's not surprising that any Brer Rabbit influences go unacknowledged along with the vast majority of the other influences. The Brer Rabbit stories are just one of many inspirations which helped shape Beatrix Potter's work, along with other folk tales/fairy tales such as those collected by Perrault or the Brothers Grimm, or the ones related by Aesop. Many authors draw on folk tales, fairy tales, myths and legends in their writing - Beatrix Potter is not unusual in that. Traditional tales deal with universal themes and belong to us all, and their influence on later literature is readily recognised and accepted.