The magic of Beatrix

Beloved characters featured at the Royal Ontario Museum

Beatrix Potter, born in July, 1866 never expected to become an icon. And yet, her iconoclastic stories of Peter Rabbit have sustained the minds and imaginations of children for over a century, as this month's exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, Peter Rabbit's Garden, testifies to.
As the rudimentary architectural shifts at the ROM begin to tear down its old facade, and as the plans to hoist a crystallized, post-modern shell onto the antiqued brick is staged, inside a more traditional celebration is happening, though fear not, Beatrice Potter has been modernized.
Potter probably could not have imagined the transformation of her simple, pastoral tales into over-sized digital mutations and models. Nor could she probably have imagined her sketches of Peter Rabbit and the accompanying text, circling the cereal bowls of thousands of children world-wide, including my own.
She didn't set out to make a mint selling china, and yet Potter's tales forged a consumerism that redefined our understandings of the "privileged" literary childhood. One wonders if Potter and Pottery Barn (for kids) could have been a collaboration. Of course, it's only speculation. But 150 million copies of her 23 storybooks later, Potter's words still speak to kids, at least they speak to the great nostalgia they evoke for their parents.
How could she have dreamt that a little sketch in a notebook, one inspired by a lonely childhood, of a rabbit she had befriended could have blown up to such a phenomenon? A four-foot-three-inch model of the mischievous rabbit meets visitors at the door of the exhibit.
Potter had little interaction with other children and was educated by a private governess in the Lake District, in England. Summer holidays took her to Scotland and other rural landscapes where she was said to "befriend" squirrels, rabbits, and gophers play out their schemes in the vegetable gardens her parents tended. Loneliness left much time for fantasy and she soon began to study their movements and make drawings, which soon became the prized characters Benjamin Bunny, Squirrel Nutkin, and Jemima Puddle-duck.
Many of these names derived from the names she gave to her pets, and she really thought nothing of their poetic resonance or the sketches she drew of the landscapes she did.
It wasn't until a family friend, Reverend Rawnsley encouraged her to paint and write more, an encouragement which eventually inspired a young Beatrix Potter to start a line of greeting cards of her pictures. In 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit came out, and it is interesting to look at the first edition of this book, tightly sealed at the ROM.
As well, you can take a look at Potter's clogs that she wore around the Lake District. Her third book, Squirrel Nutkin had background views based on Derwentwater, Catbells and the Newlands Valley. By 1903, Potter was a self-supporting woman, and decided to invest in - of all things - her own field near Sawrey. Unbelievably, Peter Rabbit had sold approximately 50,000 copies by that point. This allowed for her to purchase a second farm, where she wrote for the next several years. It's now a veritable tourist resort, but almost all literary lovers visit her residence at Hill Top to catch a glimpse of Potter's utopian writing base. It's also just a hop and skip to Wordsworth's home.
A lesser-known fact about Potter is that she became an expert breeder of Herdwick sheep and won many prizes at country shows. This exhibition at the ROM, however, celebrates the literary Potter and commemorates the 100th anniversary of the publishing of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Kids will also be interested in the part of the exhibit called A Victorian Childhood which gives a look into Potter's childhood setting - frugal and sparse - it might be a good experience to come following Thanksgiving.
Peter Rabbit's Garden is showing at the Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, until January 4, 2004. For more information call 416.586.8000.

Publication Date: 2003-11-02
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=3300