Beatrix and the Blessed Sacrament

J.S. Marcus’ Jan.21st article on Beatrix Potter in the Wall Street journal states that “at the height of her fame, she began to wind down her career to devote herself to sheep farming in England’s Lake District.”

In reality, she chose to devote herself to her husband and become Mrs. Heelis. Mrs. Heelis, as Mrs. Heelis, would of course be “a country woman” and involved in animal husbandry and care of the farm and gardens. Why should this fact be less accessible to the current readers of newspapers than the fact that she became a “woman farmer”?

The article continues and finishes in similar fashion:

The curmudgeonly Mrs. Heelis with muddy clogs

“…but according to a BBC radio documentary about the writer, she developed a curmudgeonly streak and, eventually a reputation for not liking children all that much. By the 1920s, Potter, now known as Mrs. Heelis, was shouting down misbehaving Lake District children…. this final incarnation of Beatrix Potter is evoked in the (new exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum) by a pair of her crude farmer’s clogs.”

 

Oh dear. Married, miffed by miscreants ruining her shrubberies, AND possessed of muddy farmer’s clogs. How far she managed to fall from the accolades and fame she earned for pictures of bunnies in waistcoats and hedgehogs in ruffled aprons!

 

When will the world realize that the measure of a person is in how small and insignificant, they’ve managed to become in some forgotten part of the world, and whether they have found someone to love, and love well?