Today is the anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) and this year marks the centenary of the publication of one of her most popular children’s books, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin; so this week’s picture is her illustration to a particularly ominous moment in that story.
The eponymous hero, a mischievous squirrel with a fondness for infuriating riddles, has taken his taunting of the sleepy but increasingly irascible owl, Old Brown, to a new pitch of cheeky exuberance:
“Nutkin became more and more impertinent – “Old Mr B! Old Mr B! / Hickamore, Hackamore, on the King’s kitchen door; / All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men, / Couldn’t drive Hickamore, Hackamore, / Off the King’s kitchen door!” Nutkin danced up and down like a sunbeam; but still Old Brown said nothing at all.”
In a patch of woodland lightly veiled by mist, Potter shows an almost coquettish Nutkin performing a pirouette on the doorstep of Old Brown’s treehouse. The owl fixes him with a baleful stare, frowning and flexing his talons. Meanwhile the naughty squirrel’s immaculately behaved companions observe the scene uneasily and await developments. A chorus of watchful conformists, ears pricked and beady eyes open wide, they fear the worst. In the ensuing scuffle Nutkin will lose his fine bushy tail, and almost his life. But at the instant shown here the action is poised delicately between comedy and tragedy.
Like several of Beatrix Potter’s other books, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin was based on one of the “picture letters” which the author (childless herself) used to send to the children of her friend, Annie Moore, when they were ill or unhappy. In this instance the dedicatee was Norah Moore, who was eight years old at the time. The idea for the...
