Norman Warne - Career and Relationship With Beatrix Potter

Career and Relationship With Beatrix Potter

In 1894 Frederick Warne retired from active management of the Bedford Street publishing firm bearing his name in London and ceded control to his three sons, Harold, Fruing, and Norman before his death in 1901. Harold was a managing partner, Fruing was responsible for sales, and Norman handled production and some sales. Norman's brothers were both married men, but he was a 33-year-old bachelor living with his unmarried sister Amelia ("Millie") and his widowed mother in the family house in Bedford Square in Bloomsbury when the 35-year-old Potter met him in 1901. Potter almost always dealt with Norman during negotiations for the publication of Peter Rabbit and their terms of address had evolved from "Sir" and "Madam" to "Mr. Warne" and "Miss Potter" by the time a contract was signed in 1902.

In October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published and Potter became a frequent visitor to Warne's offices at the same time. She arrived in the Potter carriage with the elderly family cook Elizabeth Harper (or other servant as chaperone) or her fellow illustrator and friend Gertrude Woodward. Potter and Warne were never alone in each other's company. Potter's letters reveal a friendship was developing between the author and her editor-publisher as they discussed possibilities for future tales (Squirrel Nutkin and Mr. Jeremy Fisher in particular) and the complexities of the printing process.

In 1903, Potter wrote Warne that she was giving thought to a Peter Rabbit sequel to follow The Tailor of Gloucester and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin but learned Norman had left London on a selling trip. She was disappointed when Harold Warne invited her to the offices to discuss her ideas. She abruptly declined his invitation and asked that her letters be forwarded to Norman. Harold gently suggested she send the sequel for Norman's review at his return. She did, and the tale was accepted for 1904 publication as The Tale of Benjamin Bunny. Warnes wanted two books per annum from Potter, not only for commercial advantage but because she took an extraordinary amount of time to complete the illustrations. The second book for 1904 was yet to be determined when Potter left with her parents to summer at Fawe Park near Keswick. There she sketched backgrounds for Benjamin Bunny and returned to London in September. Norman left on another selling trip in November and Potter for a week's holiday in Hastings where she composed three tales. One was accepted as the companion piece to Benjamin Bunny and published as The Tale of Two Bad Mice.

The courtship between Potter and Warne was conducted through the medium of Two Bad Mice and the letters surrounding it. She had come to call him "Johnny Crow" in line with his nieces. Both took delight in developing the tale of the mice. Warne had a hand in the mechanics of the illustrations (supplying Potter with the dolls, the toy food, and the photographs of the dollhouse), but Potter's letters, though circumspect, reveal her increasingly intimate and loving relationship with him and her growing frustration with parents who dreaded bringing a man they considered their social inferior into the family and a man who would take their housekeeper, nurse, and general factotum away from them. She responded positively to Warne's growing appreciation of her professionalism and her artistry; they discussed the development of her works step-by-step and she realized his criticism and his advice always improved the product.

In July 1905 Potter was engaged in correcting proofs for The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle when Warne proposed marriage by letter on July 25. Potter accepted the same day. A firestorm was unleashed in the Potter household: her parents vehemently objected to her union with a man they considered their social inferior, a tradesman without professional accomplishment. Potter regarded her parents objections as hypocritical and unreasonable because both sets of her grandparents had been tradesmen engaged in the cotton trade. At some point, Warne and Potter exchanged rings but Potter ceded to her parents' demands and did not make a public announcement. The engagement would be a family secret. Meanwhile, Norman returned from a sales trip to Manchester very ill, and was ordered to complete bed rest on 29 July. Potter last saw him on 22 July before leaving on 4 August for a sketching trip to Wales. Warne died in his bedroom in Bedford Square on 25 August of lymphatic leukemia, a difficult disease to diagnose at that time. He was 37. His burial was held on 29 August in Highgate Cemetery in London. Potter had been summoned to London on the 25th by the Warnes but did not arrive until the 27th. Her grief was immeasurable. In December she sent Warne's sister Millie a watercolour sketch of a barley field she had completed the evening before Warne's death: "I try to think of the golden sheaves, and harvest," she wrote, "He did not live long but fulfilled a useful happy life."