Of Christmas, Books, and Fireplaces

Growing up, I shared a frigid over-the-garage bedroom with my two sisters, Patty and Kay.  Patty, the oldest by 18 months, had a twin bed.  Kay, the filling in the sister sandwich, took the bottom of the trundle bed and I took the top.  For those of you unfamiliar with the glories of the trundle, the lower bed is on wheels and slips under the upper for storage in tight spaces.  The upper bed was not as high as a bunk bed; I clambered up the side sans ladder.

This time of year one of my favorite memories is of my sister Kay reading Twas the Night Before Christmas to me on the night in question.  The youngest by more than five years, I had to go to bed first on this night-of-nights when waiting for Santa et. al. to arrive.

No doubt The Yule Log was playing on the TV downstairs.

For those of you unfamiliar with the glories of The Yule Log, it was three hours of commercial free television of Christmas music, backed by a continuous (seven minute) loop of a fireplace with, you guessed it, a burning log.  It was an annual event on New York's WPIX, one of the six stations that broadcast in our area.  This paragraph reads like kitsch sci-fi fantasy, but it is true.  Really!

Wikipedia provides a still photo:

A fan site has a video, which you can link to here:  The Yule Log  This is insane, but I'm getting a little choked up watching it.

In many parts of the world, one of Beatrix Potter's books, The Tailor of Gloucester, is the Christmas Eve story of choice.  In part, this is due to the winter setting, and Potter's sumptuous watercolors:

And in part it is due to the story itself, where industrious mice save the day for the old tailor. The Tailor of Gloucester, published in 1902, was Beatrix Potter's favorite among her many productions.  You can see digital versions of the illustrations, such as these two at the website for the Tate by following link:   Beatrix Potter's Illustrations for the Tailor of Gloucester

Here is the tailor himself, by his soporific hearth with its coal fire:

Luckily the mice were hard at work that night.

If you want to know how the turns out, you must read the book.  Or better yet, ask your sister to read it to you.

In honor of CyberMonday, BP=?

My sister Kay appears to be the font of all things unique where Beatrix Potter is concerned.  Last week she showed up with a copy of The Tale of Jeremy Fisher dated 1990 with a most unusual back cover.

Yes, readers, this BP equals Beatrix Potter and British Petroleum.  A brief web search yielded a photograph of the entire set, and in case you are in the market, let me give you the link to the seller's page: BP Box Set on ebay

The design features of the packaging are intriguing.  The truck looks less like a gasoline (petrol) tanker and more like a bookmobile.  I am puzzled by the ethnicity of the driver who, if I may be so bold, does not appear to be Anglo-Saxon in ancestry. He is driving on the grass rather than on the road, which will surely infuriate Mr. McGregor.  I'm trying to imagine the discussion at the table when art director presented this design. What messages was British Petroleum (or its ad agency) trying to send?

Reading various posts about this collection, there is expressed outrage about oil-covered Jemimas in connection with this and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico accident.   To be fair, that was two decades after this promotion was launched. Unless British Petroleum had a crystal ball, it is hard to blame them for finding the parallel of their initials and Miss Potter's irresistible.

BP was not alone in appealing to children to market its fossil fuel.  I grew up on dinosaurs, and fondly remember Sinclair Dinoland at the 1964 New York World's Fair.  Here's another ebay item, sadly already sold:

This sign sports Dino, the Flintstones' pet brontosaurus (yes, I know they've been renamed Apatosaurus, sigh), happily pumping gas and reminding us (especially our Mom) not to forget the S&H Green Stamps.

And if you think this sort of thing was is entirely retro, think again.  For cyber-Monday, you can buy the 2013 Hess truck to drive under a Christmas tree near you.  Buy your Hess Toy Truck here.

Green-Eyed Monster, Galanthus-Inspired

It was Shakespeare, not Beatrix Potter, who forever linked the phrase "green-eyed monster" with jealousy via Othello, written in or around 1603.  Arch-villian Iago dangles the metaphor in front of the title character. In my case, it applies not to fair Desdemona but to snowdrops.

What engenders this envy?  Snowdrops, various species in the genus Galanthus, trump winter.  For me they begin to bloom in January, and for Beatrix Potter she reported them in flower not long after Christmas.  She loved them, "There are thousands in front of the windows and in the lane. That is why I have an untidy garden. I won't have the dear things dug up in summer, they are so much prettier growing in natural clams, instead of being dried off and planted singly."  I concur, Miss Potter.

So imagine, if you will, when my friend of pen-and-trowel, Judy Glattstein, sent me this image on Halloween.

These, I learned, are Galanthus reginae-olgae, native to Southern Greece, specifically the Peloponnese (which always bring's Ralph Kramden's "string of poloponies"to mind -- I was a huge fan of The Honeymooners).  However this is no laughing matter.  Snowdrops on Halloween?!?  I turned that particularly gardener's shade of green-with-envy.

Judy, who is doyenne of bulbs, told me that there is another in her garden, a cultivar named 'Potter's Prelude.' Blooming around Thanksgiving, ("hiss," goes the monster), it honors the fellow who found it, Jack Potter, rather than Beatrix.  Still, a nice connection.  For those of you who are fans of a more recent Potter named Harry, Severus Snape kept a glass jar of galanthus on his desk at Hogwarts, for potions no doubt.

Beatrix Potter was not above gardener's envy.  She sniffed when her friend and neighbor Cecily's dahlias outlasted her's.  It is a condition common to gardeners then and now, there and here.  And thank you, Judy, for inspiring this post and next year's bulb order.

For more about Judy's amazing garden follow this link:  Bellewood in Bloom, green-eyed monster guaranteed.

Stolen Plants Always Grow

In her first year of gardening at Hill Top Farm, Beatrix Potter acquired plants in a variety of ways.

Gardening neighbors showed up with donations. At one point Beatrix Potter wrote to her friend, Millie that she was being inundated with plants. I suppose that everyone in the village who had been putting off dividing those perennials got out their spades when they saw this newbee on the scene.
Mrs. Taylor showed up bring "a very well meant but slightly ill-time present of saxifrage… she brought out a large newspaper full."

Beatrix shopped at a nursery across the lake, easily accessible by the steam ferry that traveled from Far Sawrey to the opposite shore. About obtaining plants, she was not shy. "I went to see an old lady at Windermere, & impudently took a large basket & trowel with me. She had the most untidy overgrown garden I ever saw. I got nice things in handfuls without any shame."

My hands-down favorite of Beatrix Potter's plant acquisition strategies she described thusly, "… Stolen plants always grow, I stole some ‘honesty’ yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of garden refuse!"

The honesty to which Miss Potter refers is this plant:

Honesty (Lunaria annua) in bloom

Lunaria annua is a biennial, germinating and forming vigorous plants one season and blooming the following spring with a four-petalled magenta flower.  It is related to cabbages and kales in the Brassica family.  I always called it money plant, as it is really grown not for its blooms but for the papery sheaths that surround its seeds:

The sheathes of Honesty after the seeds fall

I suppose it is also called money plant, because it tends to multiply as, one hopes, as ones money does. Still, "honesty" is the perfect name for this Potter-pilfered plant.  I feel a particular affinity because I have been known on occasion to pinch seeds from someone else's garden.  Every year when a certain chartreuse-flowering tobacco (Nicotiana langsdorfii) blooms in my garden, I have a tiny twinge of guilt.  Or is that a frisson of pleasure?

The Wonderful World of Giveaways

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life

by Marta McDowell

Giveaway ends December 03, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Beatrix Potter's Cacti

One always hopes for earth-shaking discoveries from research.  Sitting in the Morgan Library Reading Room on August 23, 2011 with a stack of Potter reference materials on the table, I felt a strange vibration.  My chair was moving, so was the table and my laptop.  When I saw the puzzled look on the librarian’s face, I knew it wasn’t me.  Within seconds, the Huffington Post tweeted about the earthquake, centered in Virginia and that had nudged the eastern seaboard of the United States ever so slightly. But in addition to participating in a natural phenomenon usual to New York City that day, two pieces of plant-related Potter research came together with a satisfying click.

The twin motivations for this particular trip to the Morgan were an illustration in Linda Lear’s biography and selections from The Choyce Letters, edited by Judy Taylor.

In Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, plate 16 you will find ‘Leaves and Flowers of the Orchid Cactus’, a lyrical watercolour held in the Morgan Library’s Charles Ryskamp Collection.  

Orchid Cactus: http://www.nccsc.net/blog/grownups-guide-beatrix-potter

In The Choyce Letters, cacti are mentioned in three letters from Beatrix Heelis to her friend (and former employee) Louise Choyce as follows:

July 19 1939

I am interested to have the cutting of cactus, it may be like one that was in the cool greenhouse at Lindeth How  – a very delicate salmon pink; growing something like the common magenta, but larger and much more lovely. I think it should root easily. Its been a season for cactus. I have had 2 plants large scarlet cactus with 6 flowers each – a blaze of flame colour.

June 29 1943

I have been excited about your cactus, it has had 5 flowers – lovely – very like my old pink cactus, put prettier as the trumpet is pearly white instead of deep pink all over. It is such a pretty plant, with fresh green leafage. One of my scarlet has had 7 large flowers’ the other variety at Hill Top has had only one flower, it does not flower so freely as the pink.

August 16 1943

Your cactus has grown another (6^th) flower bud. I am trying a cutting from it; its [sic] a most pleasing variety.

My focus was to compare the cactus shown in the painting to those described in the letters.  In 2000, John F. Reed, retired Director of the Library at the New York Botanical Garden, had identified the specimen shown in the Morgan’s painting as Epiphyllum phylanthus.  Potter herself left us clues to its cultivation.  The catalog entry for the painting reads, “Signed at lower left, in pencil, H.B.P. 1886; inscribed on verso, at lower left, in pencil, At Camfield / Given to Miss Hammond. ’87 / Helen Beatrix Potter.” 

Commonly called Orchid Cactus, Epiphyllum phyllanthus is a large member of the family Cactaceae.  It is one species of sixteen from Central and South America, first described in 1812 by Englishman botanist Andrian Hawworth.  Bushy and semi-erect, E. phyllantus can grow up to three meters (nine feet) tall, earning its other common name:  Climbing Cactus.  Thankfully it does not have spines like the typical desert cactus.  It is used to growing in the jungle, nesting in soil pockets in the forks of trees.  If you invite this rather stiff green monster into your home or glass house, it may reward you with several large fragrant flowers that open on summer nights, buds pushing out from its scalloped green branches.  (Think epi- “upon” and –phyllum “leaf.”) The flowers do not resemble an orchid’s, but are equally exotic. 

I picture Beatrix Potter and her governess, Miss Hammond, strolling out after dinner to Camfield’s conservatory, their skirts brushing against the benches and gravel crunching underfoot.   The gardener would have passed along the message that the cactus would open that night.  Beatrix would have brought her sketchpad to capture the short-lived yellowish-white blooms, opening for a night or two, then fading until the following year.  Pity she did not record it in her journal, but alas, her mentions of Camfield in summer 1886 center on plumbing and insect infestations.

Also interesting to note, Potter’s 1886 painting of Epiphyllum phyllanthus is a botanical study with the bloom shown from two different viewpoints and the green, leaf-like stems carefully detailed. This layout and rendering is botanical art, that intersection of art and science.  It was during this period that Potter’s interests were moving toward scientific illustration. In A Victorian Naturalist Anne Stevenson Hobbs notes, “Most of her microscopic drawing dates from 1886-87: insects and spiders, the wing-scales of butterflies and moths.” (p. 144)  Her Epiphyllum painting is a precursor to her fervor for fungi which seems to have germinated in 1887.  

In the three Choyce letters, Mrs. Heelis refers to cacti that are easy to propagate in a range of colors:  the common magenta, scarlet, flame, pink and salmon.  I originally assumed that these were Schlumbergera, the so-called Holiday Cactus, which bloom in that color range in my sunroom from October through December.  But looking at the dates, I note that the cacti in question were blooming in summer, unlike the Schlumbergera of my acquaintance. 

A bit of additional research revealed starting in the 1830 and ‘40s restless horticulturists in England and across Europe were starting to cross and re-cross the rather unwieldy Epiphyllum phyllanthus with other genera, often smaller terrestrial cacti.  The result:  the introduction of hundreds of hybrid cultivars, named varieties in a wide range of color and bloom time and a much smaller habit.  One hundred years later, when Beatrix Heelis was writing to Miss Choyce, they were discussing these cacti, much better suited to a windowsill at Hill Top or Castle Cottage than their E. phyllanthus forebear.

The “Epies” as they are fondly known are easy to share as they propagate easily from cuttings.  As an experiment, my friend Cathy brought me a cutting of her night-blooming cereus (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) on her last drive down from Maine to New Jersey.  It was wrapped in a not-so-damp paper towel for about a week along the way.  I unceremoniously cut in it half, plunked it in a jar with a little water, and look:

It's ALIVE!!!

So it is possible that Louie Choyce sent a cutting of this “most pleasing variety” to her friend Beatrix Heelis through the post.  Perhaps a hybridizer can name a new specimen for Beatrix Potter one day soon.

Beatrix Potter and the Women of Kew

Beatrix Potter did not wear knickerbockers.  At least not that I know of.  In her journal in 1896, she recounts a hasty departure from a visit to Kew Gardens, "Uncle Harry was afraid of missing his train and we trudged across grass, under showers of red blossom and across the rock-garden, and distant glimpses of the two young women presumably in knickerbockers tying up flowers."  

Her eyes were not deceiving her.  The director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, William Thistleton-Dyer, had appointed the first female gardeners that same year.  They wore the same uniforms as the male gardeners, as seen in this picture from the Kew Library website.

It is possible that the women Beatrix spotted had been trained at the Horticultural College for Women at Swanley, Kent established in 1889.  The Kew Journal of May 1894 had an interesting take on possible hybridization:

"Cannot some arrangement be made whereby a Kewite and a Swanley Miss can join their forces and thus be a source oIf strength to each other?  We might then have gardeners offering their services for the outdoor department, wife to take charge of the orchids and fruit, or a woman gardener might undertake to manage a large garden, her husband to act as foreman.  Kew and Swanley should certainly have a special attraction for each other.  Double-barreled gardeners would be an advantage, and their offspring would be born gardeners; but alas! gardeners as a rule are forbidden to have offspring."

As far as I know, this never happened.

Beatrix Potter never gardened at Kew, but she consulted with them and used their library. And she did take up the idea of gardening on her property in the Lake District, even if not in knickerbockers.

"In the Very End of the Harvest!"

This week commemorates the 100th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's marriage. 

Helen Beatrix Potter married William Heelis on October 14, 1913 in St. Mary Abbott's Church in Kensington.  She was 47; he was 42.

If you know anything of Miss Potter's life story, you may already know that her first love, Norman Warne, died suddenly before their engagement was made public.  Her parents did not approve.  Norman, her editor at Frederick Warne & Company, was in the trades.  Their opinion was sadly made moot, as Norman died in 1905  Here is Norman shown with one of his nephews, an image from Margaret Lane's biography The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Norman Warne with a nephew, circa 1900

Seven years later, despite initial parental objections, Miss Potter married Mr. Heelis, a solicitor from Hawkshead who had helped her with some of her property transactions.  Here is a picture of Beatrix and Willie, as she called him, on the eve of their wedding.  It was taken in the back garden of 2 Bolton Gardens, her parents' home in London.  Once again thanks to Wikipedia, and to Judy Taylor's biography, Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman.

Beatrix Potter and William Heelis, October 13, 1913

Of her marriage, Beatrix wrote to an American friend quoting (roughly) Shakespeare, "Spring came to you at the farthest, in the latter end of the harvest."  By all indications, theirs was a happy marriage.  Perhaps partly because Willie did not interfere with her gardening projects.  The National Trust recorded oral histories from those who remembered Beatrix and Willie.  Harry and Ethel Byers, who had worked for Heelises, remembered Willie helping out with planting seeds, but only in the vegetable garden.

It does seem better, as a wise gardener once told me, if married couples who garden do so in separate beds.

Packrats of the World Unite!

My sisters and I come from a long line of packrats.  Our mother kept programs, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, letters, tiny little notebooks with all of her expenditures -- the list goes on.  And these apples did not fall far from that tree. Yesterday a card arrived in the mail from my sister Kay.  She sent me a bookmark from her days as a manager of B. Dalton Bookseller stores.

A souvenir of the late 1980s, this bookmark tells a story of its own.  Beatrix Potter's original publisher, Frederick Warne & Co., was acquired by Penguin Books in 1983.  As part of Penguin, Warne created new editions of Beatrix Potter's books with sumptuous new reproductions of her artwork.  The new editions hit the streets in 1987, according to the Penguin website:
http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/publishers/yr/frederickwarne.html

It seems likely that this bookmark was a promotional item that was part of the launch of the new editions of the little books.  Both companies, the publisher and the bookseller are shown.  Three registered trademark symbols are shown.  It was during these years that Penguin/Warne began to license the Beatrix Potter characters, a campaign that continues today.

I doubt Beatrix Potter would have approved the phrase "The Original Peter Rabbit Books" leading the list of her titles.  She got tired of the "bunny books" (her phrase).  Her favorite biij was The Tailor of Gloucester which has mice and a cat, as well as a tailor, but narry a bunny.  Still, she was a savvy businesswoman and no doubt would have appreciated the marketing push.

Beatrix Potter was a packrat too, thank goodness for those of us who are interested in her interests.  So that this bookmark survived several decades and several moves, and that my sibling could put her hands on it (I salute you, sis) is a special gift for me.

My sister's note read, "I knew there was a reason I was holding onto this little souvenir all these years -- little did I know my little sister was writing the perfect book for this bookmark to belong in!  Love you kid -- Kay."

Sisters are precious things.  Let's keep them.

The Joy of Old Books

I learned from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature that her Potter grandparents gave her Sowerby’s British Wildflowers, published 1882.  Her copy, inscribed and dated 12 October 1884 is in the Beatrix Potter Collection at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo.  The problem, or joy, of Internet surfdom is that one can indulge one’s desires at the speed of the keyboard.   On to the Antiquarian Book Exchange, ABE.com, where bookseller Neil Summersgil from Lancashire posted the following:

Book Description: Imperial octavo, L, 186pp, 90 fine engraved plates, mostly hand coloured, illustrating 1780 flowers. Original green cloth, rebacked with the original attractive gilt spine laid down, sl spotting endpapers, minor toning to margins. Overall a Good solid copy.

Beatrix Potter's inscribed copy of Sowerby's at the Daito Bunka Reference Library

When the postman, well, postwoman, delivered it – thrilling.  I love opening book boxes, especially from England. So how did I use this book.  In her journal on Friday September 30, 1892 Beatrix sees a man by the roadside in Birnam and writes, "He was gathering a handful of purple devil’s-bit scabious in the ditch, and being already overladen with bundles, I thought him an enthusiast or intelligent herbalist according to the idiosyncracy of peripatetic natives."

Devil's Bit Scabious courtesy of WikiCommons

From Sowerby's Index of English names I learned that Devil’s bit is Scabiosa succisa with regular blue flowers (both male and female parts).  A common wildflower, about a foot tall, it blooms from August to October, matching the date of the Journal entry.  There is an engraved, colored plate that includes the illustration of the plant.

Sowerby was John Edward Sowerby, who lived from 1825-1878.  He was third generation of a dynasty of London botanical artists, starting with grandfather, James, original author of English Botany, and father Charles, a founding member of the Royal Botanic Society.   BTW English Botany -  a sort of family business - was first put out by his grandfather in 1790 and then in a new edition by his father, Charles.

John continued to update and reissue the family book, English Botany, in monthly installments from his shop in Lambeth, and illustrate many books with Charles Johnson:  The Ferns of Great Britain, British Poisonous Plant, The Grasses of Great Britain, The Useful Plants of Great Britain   But my favorite title with Sowerby illustrations is M. C. Cooke’s Rust, smut, mildew & mould; an introduction to microscopic fungi.

If you would like to see these books, but don’t have room on your bookshelves, you can use the internet archive of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.  It has page-by-page scans that you can view online or download.   But there is something about holding the book itself.