Travel for Pennies

Upon her death in 1943, the will of Beatrix Potter revealed that she had left just about everything she owned, a legacy for the Lake District in the UK the ensures that all farming will remained undisturbed and the the small businesses, such as Lake District bed and breakfasts would continue to survive in the this quaint and beautiful region of the United Kingdom.   Potter was born in South Kennsington, London into a very privileged world on July 28th, 1866.  She was raised in an isolated environment, by a nanny.  She became fond of, as most children do, animals the wild and the animals she kept as her pets.  She spent time, much time as she was always alone, without other children, drawing and coloring her various companions and the flora and fauna in which they lived.  While her brother was sent to boarding school, she was not encouraged by her parents to further nor pursue any kind of intellectual or scholastic studies.  Through her self taught art, she became one of the leading mycologists, widely respected.

As a child, she did in fact have a rabbit named Peter.  It has been written that she took him everywhere.  She was amazed and amused with the animals.  They were her constant and often her only companions.  As the years passed her drawings and paintings of them became better and better.  She became, of her own volition, a very advanced artist at a very young age.  She was put in charge of household duties at the age of fifteen, and remained so until she turned 30.  She did record these years in a journal, in her own coded language, a code that took twenty years after her death to decode.  And Potter did not just draw animals with charming stories, she was the first to discover the relationship that exists symbiotically between algae and fungus.  She made advances in the germination of spores that trained and educated scientists did not discover.  And she did this through simple observation and artistic endeavors.  A paper of hers was presented by her uncle sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, at the Linnean Society.  Women could not attend such discussions at that time.

Potter’s children’s stories are what she is most remembered for today.  They have been translated into almost every language spoken, made into animated films, and Hollywood films about the story of her life. And as stated before, upon her death, left just about her entire estate to the Lake District, a region where she will be remembered for her stories and for so much more.

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