The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse
Encyclopedia
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter
, and published by Frederick Warne & Co
. in 1910. The tale is about housekeeping and insect pests in the home, and reflects Potter's own sense of tidiness and her abhorrence of insect infestations. The character of Mrs. Tittlemouse debuted in 1909 in a small but crucial role in The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies
, and Potter decided to give her a tale of her own the following year. Her meticulous illustrations of the insects may have been drawn for their own sake, or to provoke horror and disgust in her juvenile readers. 25,000 copies of the tale were initially released in July 1910 and another 15,000 between November 1910 and November 1911 in Potter's typical small book format.
Mrs. Tittlemouse is a woodmouse who lives in a "funny house" of long passages and storerooms beneath a hedge. Her efforts to keep her dwelling tidy are thwarted by insect and arachnid
intruders who create all sorts of messes about the place: a lost beetle leaves dirty footprints in a passage and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet leaves bits of cobweb here and there. Her toad neighbour Mr. Jackson lets himself into her parlour, stays for dinner, and searches her storerooms for honey but leaves a mess behind. Poor Mrs. Tittlemouse wonders if her home will ever be tidy again, but after a good night's sleep, she gives her house a fortnight
's spring cleaning, polishes her little tin spoons, and holds a party for her friends.
Potter's life had become complicated with the demands of aging parents and the business of operating a farm before the composition of Mrs. Tittlemouse, and, as a consequence, her literary and artistic productivity began a decline following the tale's publication. She continued to publish sporadically but much of her work was drawn from decades-old concepts and illustrations. Mrs. Tittlemouse marks the end of her two books a year output for Warnes. Scholars find the book's depictions of the insects its great attraction. One critic finds a "nightmarish quality" in the tale reflected in Mrs. Tittlemouse's almost endless war waged against insect pests. Characters from the tale have been modelled as porcelain figurines by Beswick Pottery
beginning in 1948, and the mouse's image appeared on a Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin in 1955. Other merchandise has been marketed depicting Mrs. Tittlemouse and her friends. Mrs. Tittlemouse was a character in a 1971 ballet film and her tale was adapted to an animated television series in 1992.
Mrs. Tittlemouse is a tale in which no humans play a part and one in which events are treated as though they have occurred since time immemorial and far from human observance. It is a simple story, and one likely to appeal to young children.
Mrs. Tittlemouse is a "most terribly tidy little mouse always sweeping and dusting the soft sandy floors" in the "yards and yards" of passages and storerooms, nut-cellars, and seed-cellars in her "funny house" amongst the roots of a hedge. She has a kitchen, a parlour, a pantry, a larder, and a bedroom where she keeps her dust-pan and brush next to her little box bed. She tries to keep her house tidy, but insect intruders leave dirty footprints on the floors and all sorts of messes about the place.
A beetle is shooed away, a ladybird is exorcised with "Fly away home! Your house is on fire!", and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet
is turned away with little ceremony. In a distant passage, Mrs. Tittlemouse meets Babbitty Bumble, a bumble bee who has taken up residence with three or four other bees in one of the empty storerooms. Mrs. Tittlemouse tries to pull out their nest but they buzz fiercely at her, and she retreats to deal with the matter after dinner.
In her parlour, she finds her toad neighbour Mr. Jackson sitting before the fire in her rocking chair. Mr. Jackson lives in "a drain below the hedge, in a very dirty wet ditch". His coat tails drip with water and he leaves wet footmarks on Mrs. Tittlemouse's parlour floor. She follows him about with a mop and dish-cloth.
Mr. Jackson stays for dinner, but the food is not to his pleasing, and he rummages about the cupboard searching for the honey he can smell. He discovers a butterfly in the sugar bowl, but when he finds the bees, he makes a big mess pulling out their nest. Mrs. Tittlemouse fears she "shall go distracted" as a result of the turmoil and takes refuge in the nut-cellar. When she finally ventures forth, she discovers everybody has left but her house is a mess. She takes some moss, beeswax, and twigs to partly close up her front door to keep Mr. Jackson out. Exhausted, she goes to bed wondering if her house will ever be tidy again.
The fastidious little mouse spends a fortnight spring cleaning. She rubs the furniture with beeswax and polishes her little tin spoons, then holds a party for five other little wood-mice wearing their Regency finery. Mr. Jackson attends but is forced to sit outside because Mrs. Tittlemouse has narrowed her door. He takes no offence at being excluded from the parlour. Acorn-cupfuls of honeydew are passed through the window to him and he toasts Mrs. Tittlemouse's good health.
Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter. She was educated by governess
es and tutors, and passed a quiet and solitary childhood reading, painting, drawing, tending a nursery menagerie of small animals, and visiting museums and art exhibitions. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holiday trips to Scotland, the English Lake District
, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire
home of her paternal grandparents.
Potter's adolescence was a quiet as her childhood. She grew into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home. She wanted to lead a useful life independent of her parents and considered a career in mycology
, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as an amateur and she abandoned fungi. She continued to paint and draw, and experienced her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card publisher.
In 1900, Potter revised a tale about a rabbit named Peter she had written for a child in 1893, and prepared a dummy book of it in imitation of Helen Bannerman
's 1889
bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. Unable to find a buyer, she published the book for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. Frederick Warne & Co
. had earlier rejected the tale, but, anxious to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted it following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke
. Potter agreed to colour the pen and ink illustrations of the private edition, and chose the then-new Hentschel three-colour process for reproducing her watercolours. On 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
was released.
Potter continued to publish children's books with Warnes and used her sales profits and a small legacy from an aunt to buy Hill Top
, a working farm of 34 acres (13.85 ha) in the Lake District
in July 1905. On 25 August, Potter's fiancé and editor Norman Warne
died suddenly; she became very depressed and was ill for many weeks, but rallied to complete the last few tales she had planned or discussed with him.
Mrs. Tittlemouse actually made her debut in 1909 in Potter's The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies
where she rescued the six children of Benjamin and Flopsy Bunny from Mr. McGregor
's grasp and was rewarded for her heroism with a quantity of rabbit wool at Christmas. In the last illustration, she is wearing a cloak and hood, and a muff and mittens fashioned from the wool. Mrs. Tittlemouse is a key (not a central) character in the tale, but a character incompletely personified, and one whose story Potter chose to develop in 1910.
Potter was an unsentimental naturalist who thought no creature either good or bad, and had no qualms describing earwig
s in Mrs. Tittlemouse's passage or woodlice in her pantry. Her publisher Harold Warne however had different ideas about what was appropriate for a children's book. He had become accustomed to Potter's unusual choice of animal subjects through the years, but, ever sensitive to public reaction, thought she had gone a bit too far in Mrs. Tittlemouse with the earwig and the woodlice. The earwig was, at his behest, transmogrified into a beetle and the woodlice into "creepy-crawly people" hiding in Mrs. Tittlemouse's plate rack. "I can alter the text, when I get the proofs," she wrote, "and will erase the offensive word 'wood-lice'!" Potter argued for the generic term "slaters" for the woodlice, but was overruled. It was decided that an illustration of a centipede (Miss Maggie Manylegs) would be withdrawn and replaced with a butterfly.
Potter usually tested a new work on an audience by writing the tale into an exercise book, pasting a few watercolour or pen and ink illustrations into the volume, and presenting the whole as a gift to a child. In the case of Mrs. Tittlemouse, Potter wrote the tale in a small leather-covered notebook 150 by 85 mm (5.9 by 3.3 ) with twenty-one pages of text and eight watercolours as a New Year's gift for Warne's youngest daughter, Nellie. Its inscription read, "For Nellie with love and best wishes for A Happy New Year. Jan. 1st. 1910".
The family called it "Nellie's little book" and, when the book was published with twenty-six colour pictures, the dedication remained the same. 25,000 copies of The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse were released in July 1910 and available in a 138 by 104 mm (5.4 by 4.1 ) small book format in either blue-grey or buff paper boards at 1/- or decorated cloth at 1/6. 10,000 copies were released in November 1910 and another 5,000 copies in November 1911. Potter was pleased with the bound copies she received. "The buff is the prettiest colour, though it may not keep so clean", she wrote to Warnes, "I think it should prove popular with little girls." Her father wrote to the Warne children that his daughter's sense of humour was ever-fresh and never dull.
Potter intended to follow Mrs. Tittlemouse with a tale about a pig in a large format book similar to the original Ginger and Pickles
. On one occasion, she passed an hour sketching inside the pig sty at Hill Top while the pig nibbled at her boots. She abandoned the pig book after fruitless attempts to make progress on it, and, instead, occupied the winter of 1910–11 with supervising the production of Peter Rabbit's Painting Book, and the composition of The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
.
Almost sixty years after the publication of Mrs. Tittlemouse, the character appeared in the 1971 Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter
, and, in 1992, her tale and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
were integrated into a single animated episode for the BBC
series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
.
Potter's source for the wildlife and the insect drawings in Mrs. Tittlemouse were those she had executed in her early adulthood, either directly from nature or by observing specimens in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum
. The interest in the book's illustrations lies in the microscopic accuracy of the insects rather than in any human qualities exhibited by Mrs. Tittlemouse or Mr. Jackson. Potter is uncharacteristically careless in the depiction of the insects however. They appear to be drawn for their own sake, or seem to be out of scale with the heroine, or to change scale without reason. The ladybird seems larger than Mrs. Tittlemouse, and the spider appears first larger than Mrs. Tittlemouse in one picture and then smaller in another. The bees are sometimes out of scale with both the toad and the mouse.
The nature artist and the fantasy artist in Potter are at odds: the mouse, the toad, and the insects share the same habitat but there seems no logical reason for the mouse and the toad to be humanized while the insects remain their natural selves. Logically, they should be humanized, too. While the toad is an invader like the insects, he does Mrs. Tittlemouse the service of ridding her house of the bees yet is inexplicably excluded from the party, an affront to the reader's sense of social right and wrong. It is possible Potter's carelessness in the details of Mrs. Tittlemouse can be attributed to a desire on her part to simply display her ability to draw from nature or to her interest in book production being supplanted by a growing interest in farming and local life and politics in Sawrey.
writes in Beatrix Potter (1986) that the tale is about housekeeping and dealing with insect pests in the home, and points out that it reflects Potter's pride and pleasure in keeping her house at Hill Top tidy. Tales about humanized mice came easily to Potter, but, unlike the urban mice in The Tailor of Gloucester
and The Tale of Two Bad Mice
, Mrs. Tittlemouse is a country mouse living beneath a hedge somewhere near Potter's Sawrey. With its narrow passages, small rooms, low ceilings, and well-stocked storerooms, Mrs. Tittlemouse's dwelling is similar to Potter's own at Hill Top. The author's obvious approval of Mrs. Tittlemouse's fastidious housekeeping has its source in her own pleasure in keeping her farmhouse neat, and (like Mrs. Tittlemouse) in being the mistress of her domain. Mrs. Tittlemouse's abhorrence of insect pests reflects Potter's own, but the artist in Potter preserves their beauty in the illustrations – she does not censor their antennae or their groping limbs. Potter thought girls would like the tale best, and would experience the same sort of reaction to insect pests she did – to wit, complete horror and disgust.
M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh
and author of Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003), points out that the tale is a comic one taking place completely indoors and one with an obvious anxiety about dirt. There is not the sort of revelry one would expect in a tale about a miniature household but rather a "desperate sense" of wanting to keep that household free of invaders and unwanted outsiders. The Tale of Two Bad Mice
is another tale about a miniature household, but there Potter is on the side of the invading two bad mice. Mrs. Tittlemouse is concerned as much about middle class proprieties as the dolls Lucinda and Jane in The Tale of Two Bad Mice
but, in Mrs. Tittlemouse, Potter is on the side of the invaded rather than the invaders, who are purely animals with no human characteristics.
Kutzer attributes some of the tale's anxiety to Potter's own unhappiness over her fame as a writer and the intrusiveness of visitors at Hill Top who assumed a presumptuous familiarity with the author or regarded her as nothing more than an exhibit for the tourist to take in. Potter was proprietary over Hill Top and jealously guarded it to and for herself and some of this jealousy is projected onto Mrs. Tittlemouse's anxiety about the sanctity of her home. She is not a recluse – she invites her friends to a party – but like Potter she needs to be in complete control.
Kutzer thinks the tale has a "nightmarish quality". Poor Mrs. Tittlemouse cannot keep one step ahead of the various intruders. Although the house is her own, she has no control over who inhabits it: she finds bees nesting in an empty storeroom and woodlice hiding in the plate rack. She is trapped in her own home, her hours occupied with fighting off invaders from without to the point where she is sure she will "go distracted". Although Mr. Jackson drives the unwanted intruders away, he leaves behind a mess of honey smears, moss, thistledown, and dirty footprints that Mrs. Tittlemouse invests two weeks of her life into cleaning up.
In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. gave the John Beswick Factory
of Longton, Staffordshire
rights and licences to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Mrs. Tittlemouse was among the first ten Beswick figurines produced in 1948, and was followed by Mr. Jackson in 1974, Mother Lady Bird in 1989, Babbitty Bumble in 1989, and another Mrs. Tittlemouse in 2000. A Mrs. Tittlemouse embossed plate was produced between 1982 and 1984.
Mrs. Tittlemouse appeared on the lid of a Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin in 1955, and in 1973, The Eden Toy Company of New York became the first and only American company to be granted licensing rights to manufacture stuffed Beatrix Potter characters in plush
. Mrs. Tittlemouse was released in 1975. In 1975, Crummles of Poole, Dorset began manufacturing Beatrix Potter enamelled boxes, and eventually released a 32 millimetres (1.3 in) diameter enamelled box depicting Babbitty Bumble and Mrs. Tittlemouse holding her book.
In 1977, Schmid & Co. of Toronto
and Randolph, Massachusetts
was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter, and produced a Mrs. Tittlemouse music box playing "It's a Small World" the same year. A Mr. Jackson flat ceramic Christmas ornament followed in 1984, and a hanging ornament depicting Mrs. Tittlemouse in her little box bed in 1987.
The English language editions of Potter's books still bore the Frederick Warne imprint in 2010, despite the company being sold to Penguin Books
in 1983. In 1985 Penguin remade the book's printing plates from new photographs of the original drawings, and in 1987 released the entire collection as The Original and Authorized Edition.
Potter's books have been translated into almost 30 languages, including Greek and Russian. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse was translated into Afrikaans in 1930 as Die Verhaal van Mevrou Piekfyn and into Dutch in 1970 as Het Verhaal die Minetje Miezemuis. Under licence to Fukuinkan-Shoten of Tokyo, in the 1970s The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse and 11 other stories were released in Japanese. In 1986, MacDonald observed that the Potter books had become a traditional part of childhood in both English-speaking lands and those in which the books had been translated.
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
, and published by Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
. in 1910. The tale is about housekeeping and insect pests in the home, and reflects Potter's own sense of tidiness and her abhorrence of insect infestations. The character of Mrs. Tittlemouse debuted in 1909 in a small but crucial role in The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1909. After two full-length tales about rabbits, Potter had grown weary of depicting lagomorphs, and initially did not want to create another rabbit...
, and Potter decided to give her a tale of her own the following year. Her meticulous illustrations of the insects may have been drawn for their own sake, or to provoke horror and disgust in her juvenile readers. 25,000 copies of the tale were initially released in July 1910 and another 15,000 between November 1910 and November 1911 in Potter's typical small book format.
Mrs. Tittlemouse is a woodmouse who lives in a "funny house" of long passages and storerooms beneath a hedge. Her efforts to keep her dwelling tidy are thwarted by insect and arachnid
Arachnid
Arachnids are a class of joint-legged invertebrate animals in the subphylum Chelicerata. All arachnids have eight legs, although in some species the front pair may convert to a sensory function. The term is derived from the Greek words , meaning "spider".Almost all extant arachnids are terrestrial...
intruders who create all sorts of messes about the place: a lost beetle leaves dirty footprints in a passage and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet leaves bits of cobweb here and there. Her toad neighbour Mr. Jackson lets himself into her parlour, stays for dinner, and searches her storerooms for honey but leaves a mess behind. Poor Mrs. Tittlemouse wonders if her home will ever be tidy again, but after a good night's sleep, she gives her house a fortnight
Fortnight
The fortnight is a unit of time equal to fourteen days, or two weeks. The word derives from the Old English fēowertyne niht, meaning "fourteen nights"....
's spring cleaning, polishes her little tin spoons, and holds a party for her friends.
Potter's life had become complicated with the demands of aging parents and the business of operating a farm before the composition of Mrs. Tittlemouse, and, as a consequence, her literary and artistic productivity began a decline following the tale's publication. She continued to publish sporadically but much of her work was drawn from decades-old concepts and illustrations. Mrs. Tittlemouse marks the end of her two books a year output for Warnes. Scholars find the book's depictions of the insects its great attraction. One critic finds a "nightmarish quality" in the tale reflected in Mrs. Tittlemouse's almost endless war waged against insect pests. Characters from the tale have been modelled as porcelain figurines by Beswick Pottery
Beswick Pottery
J. W. Beswick was a pottery manufacturer, founded in 1892 by James Wright Beswick and his sons John and Gilbert in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. They are chiefly known for producing high-quality porcelain figurines such as farm animals and Beatrix Potter characters and have become highly sought after in...
beginning in 1948, and the mouse's image appeared on a Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin in 1955. Other merchandise has been marketed depicting Mrs. Tittlemouse and her friends. Mrs. Tittlemouse was a character in a 1971 ballet film and her tale was adapted to an animated television series in 1992.
Plot
Mrs. Tittlemouse is a "most terribly tidy little mouse always sweeping and dusting the soft sandy floors" in the "yards and yards" of passages and storerooms, nut-cellars, and seed-cellars in her "funny house" amongst the roots of a hedge. She has a kitchen, a parlour, a pantry, a larder, and a bedroom where she keeps her dust-pan and brush next to her little box bed. She tries to keep her house tidy, but insect intruders leave dirty footprints on the floors and all sorts of messes about the place.
A beetle is shooed away, a ladybird is exorcised with "Fly away home! Your house is on fire!", and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet
Little Miss Muffet
"Little Miss Muffet" is a nursery rhyme, one of the most commonly printed in the mid-twentieth century. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 20605.-Lyrics:-Alternative Lyrics:...
is turned away with little ceremony. In a distant passage, Mrs. Tittlemouse meets Babbitty Bumble, a bumble bee who has taken up residence with three or four other bees in one of the empty storerooms. Mrs. Tittlemouse tries to pull out their nest but they buzz fiercely at her, and she retreats to deal with the matter after dinner.
In her parlour, she finds her toad neighbour Mr. Jackson sitting before the fire in her rocking chair. Mr. Jackson lives in "a drain below the hedge, in a very dirty wet ditch". His coat tails drip with water and he leaves wet footmarks on Mrs. Tittlemouse's parlour floor. She follows him about with a mop and dish-cloth.
Mr. Jackson stays for dinner, but the food is not to his pleasing, and he rummages about the cupboard searching for the honey he can smell. He discovers a butterfly in the sugar bowl, but when he finds the bees, he makes a big mess pulling out their nest. Mrs. Tittlemouse fears she "shall go distracted" as a result of the turmoil and takes refuge in the nut-cellar. When she finally ventures forth, she discovers everybody has left but her house is a mess. She takes some moss, beeswax, and twigs to partly close up her front door to keep Mr. Jackson out. Exhausted, she goes to bed wondering if her house will ever be tidy again.
The fastidious little mouse spends a fortnight spring cleaning. She rubs the furniture with beeswax and polishes her little tin spoons, then holds a party for five other little wood-mice wearing their Regency finery. Mr. Jackson attends but is forced to sit outside because Mrs. Tittlemouse has narrowed her door. He takes no offence at being excluded from the parlour. Acorn-cupfuls of honeydew are passed through the window to him and he toasts Mrs. Tittlemouse's good health.
Background
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866 in London to barristerBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter. She was educated by governess
Governess
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
es and tutors, and passed a quiet and solitary childhood reading, painting, drawing, tending a nursery menagerie of small animals, and visiting museums and art exhibitions. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holiday trips to Scotland, the English Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
home of her paternal grandparents.
Potter's adolescence was a quiet as her childhood. She grew into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home. She wanted to lead a useful life independent of her parents and considered a career in mycology
Mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicinals , food and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as poisoning or...
, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as an amateur and she abandoned fungi. She continued to paint and draw, and experienced her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card publisher.
In 1900, Potter revised a tale about a rabbit named Peter she had written for a child in 1893, and prepared a dummy book of it in imitation of Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman was the Scottish author of a number of children's books, the most notable being Little Black Sambo. She was born in Edinburgh and, because women were not admitted as students into British Universities, she sat external examinations set by the University of St. Andrews and attained...
's 1889
1889 in literature
The year 1889 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Theodore Roosevelt publishes the first of four volumes of The Winning of the West, with three more by 1896.-New books:*Gabriele D'Annunzio - Il piacere...
bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. Unable to find a buyer, she published the book for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
. had earlier rejected the tale, but, anxious to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted it following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke
L. Leslie Brooke
Leonard Leslie Brooke was a British artist and writer who was born on 24 September 1862, in Birkenhead, England. His skillful and witty illustrations in Andrew Lang's Nursery Rhyme Book established his reputation as a leading children's book illustrator of pen-and-ink line drawings and watercolors...
. Potter agreed to colour the pen and ink illustrations of the private edition, and chose the then-new Hentschel three-colour process for reproducing her watercolours. On 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea...
was released.
Potter continued to publish children's books with Warnes and used her sales profits and a small legacy from an aunt to buy Hill Top
Hill Top, Cumbria
Hill Top is a 17th-century house in Near Sawrey near Hawkshead, in the English county of Cumbria. It is an example of Lakeland vernacular architecture with random stone walls and slate roof...
, a working farm of 34 acres (13.85 ha) in the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
in July 1905. On 25 August, Potter's fiancé and editor Norman Warne
Norman Warne
Norman Dalziel Warne was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co. as editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and published the book in October 1902 to great success...
died suddenly; she became very depressed and was ill for many weeks, but rallied to complete the last few tales she had planned or discussed with him.
Development and publication
In the years following Warne's death and the purchase of Hill Top, Potter produced tales and illustrations inspired by her farm, its woodland surroundings, and nearby villages. She provided Warnes with two books per annum, but, by 1910, she was juggling the demands of ageing parents with the business of operating Hill Top, and, as a result, her literary and artistic productivity began to decline. She published only one book in 1910, The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, and wrote to a friend on New Year's Day 1911:I did not succeed in finishing more than one book last year ... I find it very difficult lately to get the drawings done. I do not seem to be able to go into the country for a long enough time to do a sufficient amount of sketching and when I was at BownessBowness-on-WindermereBowness-on-Windermere is a town in South Lakeland, Cumbria, England. Due its position on the banks of Windermere the town has become a tourist honeypot. Although their mutual growth has caused them to become one large settlement, the town is distinct from the town of Windermere as the two still...
last summer I spent most of my time upon the road going backwards & forwards to the farm – which was amusing, but not satisfactory for work.
Mrs. Tittlemouse actually made her debut in 1909 in Potter's The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1909. After two full-length tales about rabbits, Potter had grown weary of depicting lagomorphs, and initially did not want to create another rabbit...
where she rescued the six children of Benjamin and Flopsy Bunny from Mr. McGregor
Mr. McGregor
Mr. John McGregor is a fictional character in three children's books by author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. He is an elderly, serio-comic villain of Scots background intent upon keeping hungry rabbits out of his vegetable garden...
's grasp and was rewarded for her heroism with a quantity of rabbit wool at Christmas. In the last illustration, she is wearing a cloak and hood, and a muff and mittens fashioned from the wool. Mrs. Tittlemouse is a key (not a central) character in the tale, but a character incompletely personified, and one whose story Potter chose to develop in 1910.
Potter was an unsentimental naturalist who thought no creature either good or bad, and had no qualms describing earwig
Earwig
Earwigs make up the insect order Dermaptera, found throughout the Americas, Africa, Eurasia, Australia and New Zealand. With 1,800 species in 12 families, they are one of the smaller insect orders...
s in Mrs. Tittlemouse's passage or woodlice in her pantry. Her publisher Harold Warne however had different ideas about what was appropriate for a children's book. He had become accustomed to Potter's unusual choice of animal subjects through the years, but, ever sensitive to public reaction, thought she had gone a bit too far in Mrs. Tittlemouse with the earwig and the woodlice. The earwig was, at his behest, transmogrified into a beetle and the woodlice into "creepy-crawly people" hiding in Mrs. Tittlemouse's plate rack. "I can alter the text, when I get the proofs," she wrote, "and will erase the offensive word 'wood-lice'!" Potter argued for the generic term "slaters" for the woodlice, but was overruled. It was decided that an illustration of a centipede (Miss Maggie Manylegs) would be withdrawn and replaced with a butterfly.
Potter usually tested a new work on an audience by writing the tale into an exercise book, pasting a few watercolour or pen and ink illustrations into the volume, and presenting the whole as a gift to a child. In the case of Mrs. Tittlemouse, Potter wrote the tale in a small leather-covered notebook 150 by 85 mm (5.9 by 3.3 ) with twenty-one pages of text and eight watercolours as a New Year's gift for Warne's youngest daughter, Nellie. Its inscription read, "For Nellie with love and best wishes for A Happy New Year. Jan. 1st. 1910".
The family called it "Nellie's little book" and, when the book was published with twenty-six colour pictures, the dedication remained the same. 25,000 copies of The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse were released in July 1910 and available in a 138 by 104 mm (5.4 by 4.1 ) small book format in either blue-grey or buff paper boards at 1/- or decorated cloth at 1/6. 10,000 copies were released in November 1910 and another 5,000 copies in November 1911. Potter was pleased with the bound copies she received. "The buff is the prettiest colour, though it may not keep so clean", she wrote to Warnes, "I think it should prove popular with little girls." Her father wrote to the Warne children that his daughter's sense of humour was ever-fresh and never dull.
Potter intended to follow Mrs. Tittlemouse with a tale about a pig in a large format book similar to the original Ginger and Pickles
The Tale of Ginger and Pickles
The Tale of Ginger and Pickles is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1909. The book tells of two shopkeepers who extend unlimited credit to their customers and, as a result, are forced to go out of business...
. On one occasion, she passed an hour sketching inside the pig sty at Hill Top while the pig nibbled at her boots. She abandoned the pig book after fruitless attempts to make progress on it, and, instead, occupied the winter of 1910–11 with supervising the production of Peter Rabbit's Painting Book, and the composition of The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1911. Timmy Tiptoes is a squirrel believed a nut-thief by his fellows, and imprisoned by them in a hollow tree with the expectation that he will confess under...
.
Almost sixty years after the publication of Mrs. Tittlemouse, the character appeared in the 1971 Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
Tales of Beatrix Potter is a 1971 ballet film with a plot based on the children's stories of English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The film was directed by Reginald Mills, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton , and starred artists of the Royal Ballet...
, and, in 1992, her tale and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1909. After two full-length tales about rabbits, Potter had grown weary of depicting lagomorphs, and initially did not want to create another rabbit...
were integrated into a single animated episode for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends is an animated television series based on the works of Beatrix Potter, featuring Peter Rabbit and other anthropomorphic animal characters created by Potter. It was originally shown in the UK on BBC between 1992 and 1995 and subsequently broadcast in the USA on...
.
Illustrations
Mrs. Tittlemouse called upon Potter's keen observation of insects, arachnids, and amphibians, and her youthful experience drawing them. Their depictions in text and illustration reflect her understanding of insect anatomy, colouration, and behaviour; they are rendered with accuracy, humour, and true to their individual natures – she knew that toads only seek water during the spawning season, for example, and that they can smell honey. The spider and the butterfly are very much like those she drew from microscopic studies in the 1890s.Potter's source for the wildlife and the insect drawings in Mrs. Tittlemouse were those she had executed in her early adulthood, either directly from nature or by observing specimens in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
. The interest in the book's illustrations lies in the microscopic accuracy of the insects rather than in any human qualities exhibited by Mrs. Tittlemouse or Mr. Jackson. Potter is uncharacteristically careless in the depiction of the insects however. They appear to be drawn for their own sake, or seem to be out of scale with the heroine, or to change scale without reason. The ladybird seems larger than Mrs. Tittlemouse, and the spider appears first larger than Mrs. Tittlemouse in one picture and then smaller in another. The bees are sometimes out of scale with both the toad and the mouse.
The nature artist and the fantasy artist in Potter are at odds: the mouse, the toad, and the insects share the same habitat but there seems no logical reason for the mouse and the toad to be humanized while the insects remain their natural selves. Logically, they should be humanized, too. While the toad is an invader like the insects, he does Mrs. Tittlemouse the service of ridding her house of the bees yet is inexplicably excluded from the party, an affront to the reader's sense of social right and wrong. It is possible Potter's carelessness in the details of Mrs. Tittlemouse can be attributed to a desire on her part to simply display her ability to draw from nature or to her interest in book production being supplanted by a growing interest in farming and local life and politics in Sawrey.
Scholarly commentaries
Ruth K. MacDonald of the New Mexico State UniversityNew Mexico State University
New Mexico State University at Las Cruces , is a major land-grant university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States...
writes in Beatrix Potter (1986) that the tale is about housekeeping and dealing with insect pests in the home, and points out that it reflects Potter's pride and pleasure in keeping her house at Hill Top tidy. Tales about humanized mice came easily to Potter, but, unlike the urban mice in The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902, and published in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1903...
and The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a dollhouse being constructed by her editor and...
, Mrs. Tittlemouse is a country mouse living beneath a hedge somewhere near Potter's Sawrey. With its narrow passages, small rooms, low ceilings, and well-stocked storerooms, Mrs. Tittlemouse's dwelling is similar to Potter's own at Hill Top. The author's obvious approval of Mrs. Tittlemouse's fastidious housekeeping has its source in her own pleasure in keeping her farmhouse neat, and (like Mrs. Tittlemouse) in being the mistress of her domain. Mrs. Tittlemouse's abhorrence of insect pests reflects Potter's own, but the artist in Potter preserves their beauty in the illustrations – she does not censor their antennae or their groping limbs. Potter thought girls would like the tale best, and would experience the same sort of reaction to insect pests she did – to wit, complete horror and disgust.
M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh
State University of New York at Plattsburgh
The State University of New York at Plattsburgh is a four-year, public liberal arts college in Plattsburgh, New York. The college was founded in 1889 and opened in 1890. The college is currently part of the State University of New York system and is accredited by the Middle States Association of...
and author of Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003), points out that the tale is a comic one taking place completely indoors and one with an obvious anxiety about dirt. There is not the sort of revelry one would expect in a tale about a miniature household but rather a "desperate sense" of wanting to keep that household free of invaders and unwanted outsiders. The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a dollhouse being constructed by her editor and...
is another tale about a miniature household, but there Potter is on the side of the invading two bad mice. Mrs. Tittlemouse is concerned as much about middle class proprieties as the dolls Lucinda and Jane in The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a dollhouse being constructed by her editor and...
but, in Mrs. Tittlemouse, Potter is on the side of the invaded rather than the invaders, who are purely animals with no human characteristics.
Kutzer attributes some of the tale's anxiety to Potter's own unhappiness over her fame as a writer and the intrusiveness of visitors at Hill Top who assumed a presumptuous familiarity with the author or regarded her as nothing more than an exhibit for the tourist to take in. Potter was proprietary over Hill Top and jealously guarded it to and for herself and some of this jealousy is projected onto Mrs. Tittlemouse's anxiety about the sanctity of her home. She is not a recluse – she invites her friends to a party – but like Potter she needs to be in complete control.
Kutzer thinks the tale has a "nightmarish quality". Poor Mrs. Tittlemouse cannot keep one step ahead of the various intruders. Although the house is her own, she has no control over who inhabits it: she finds bees nesting in an empty storeroom and woodlice hiding in the plate rack. She is trapped in her own home, her hours occupied with fighting off invaders from without to the point where she is sure she will "go distracted". Although Mr. Jackson drives the unwanted intruders away, he leaves behind a mess of honey smears, moss, thistledown, and dirty footprints that Mrs. Tittlemouse invests two weeks of her life into cleaning up.
Merchandise
Potter asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales with spinoffs such as a Peter Rabbit doll, an unpublished Peter Rabbit board game, and a Peter Rabbit nursery wallpaper between 1903 and 1905. Similar "side-shows" (as she termed the ancillary merchandise) were produced over the following two decades.In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. gave the John Beswick Factory
Beswick Pottery
J. W. Beswick was a pottery manufacturer, founded in 1892 by James Wright Beswick and his sons John and Gilbert in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. They are chiefly known for producing high-quality porcelain figurines such as farm animals and Beatrix Potter characters and have become highly sought after in...
of Longton, Staffordshire
Longton, Staffordshire
Longton is a southern district of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, and is known locally as the "Neck End" of the city. Longton is one of the six towns of "the Potteries" which formed the City of Stoke-on-Trent in 1925.-History:...
rights and licences to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Mrs. Tittlemouse was among the first ten Beswick figurines produced in 1948, and was followed by Mr. Jackson in 1974, Mother Lady Bird in 1989, Babbitty Bumble in 1989, and another Mrs. Tittlemouse in 2000. A Mrs. Tittlemouse embossed plate was produced between 1982 and 1984.
Mrs. Tittlemouse appeared on the lid of a Huntley & Palmer biscuit tin in 1955, and in 1973, The Eden Toy Company of New York became the first and only American company to be granted licensing rights to manufacture stuffed Beatrix Potter characters in plush
Plush
Plush is a textile having a cut nap or pile the same as fustian or velvet.Originally the pile of plush consisted of mohair or worsted yarn, but now silk by itself or with a cotton backing is used for plush, the distinction from velvet being found in the longer and less dense pile of plush...
. Mrs. Tittlemouse was released in 1975. In 1975, Crummles of Poole, Dorset began manufacturing Beatrix Potter enamelled boxes, and eventually released a 32 millimetres (1.3 in) diameter enamelled box depicting Babbitty Bumble and Mrs. Tittlemouse holding her book.
In 1977, Schmid & Co. of Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
and Randolph, Massachusetts
Randolph, Massachusetts
The Town of Randolph is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 32,112. Randolph adopted a new charter effective January 2010 providing for a council-manager form of government instead of the traditional town meeting...
was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter, and produced a Mrs. Tittlemouse music box playing "It's a Small World" the same year. A Mr. Jackson flat ceramic Christmas ornament followed in 1984, and a hanging ornament depicting Mrs. Tittlemouse in her little box bed in 1987.
Reprints and translations
As of 2010, all 23 of Potter's small format books remain in print, and are available as complete sets in presentation boxes. A 400-page omnibus edition is also available. First editions, early reprints, and limited edition facsimiles of the Mrs. Tittlemouse manuscript are available through antiquarian booksellers.The English language editions of Potter's books still bore the Frederick Warne imprint in 2010, despite the company being sold to Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1983. In 1985 Penguin remade the book's printing plates from new photographs of the original drawings, and in 1987 released the entire collection as The Original and Authorized Edition.
Potter's books have been translated into almost 30 languages, including Greek and Russian. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse was translated into Afrikaans in 1930 as Die Verhaal van Mevrou Piekfyn and into Dutch in 1970 as Het Verhaal die Minetje Miezemuis. Under licence to Fukuinkan-Shoten of Tokyo, in the 1970s The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse and 11 other stories were released in Japanese. In 1986, MacDonald observed that the Potter books had become a traditional part of childhood in both English-speaking lands and those in which the books had been translated.