![]() ![]() The tiny, chubby spinster had certainly found herself a tall, good-looking and vigorous fellow to wed.Īcross country lives a woman who knew Mrs William Heelis well. He fished and shot and was keen on country dancing. Here is William with his golf clubs another shows him playing bowls. ![]() 'It always shocks the Beatrix Potter Society when I say that the aunts thought Willie was marrying beneath him,' Brigadier Heelis says. He knows plenty about her husband, who was his great-uncle William. 'Did she become more like her mother?' 'Oh, no,' he says, clearly startled by the idea.īrigadier John Heelis, 72, who lives outside Appleby in Cumbria, has just finished a biography of Beatrix Potter. ''Did she become less shy after her marriage?' I ask Harry Becket. Only then, to help her, did Bertram reveal to them that he himself had been married for years. Her parents had been against that marriage and were still disapproving when, eight years later, she told them she wanted to marry William Heelis.īertram, her younger brother, came down from his farm in Scotland to plead for his sister with their unyielding parents. Her first chance at a life of her own ended in 1905 with the sudden death of her fiance - and editor - Norman Warne, from pernicious anaemia. ![]() Peter Rabbit, in his blue jacket with gold buttons, did all the disobeying. Not every daughter did, of course, but Beatrix Potter remained dutiful. One daughter was expected to stay unmarried and look after her parents. This was a real Victorian household, he says. ![]()
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