However, it wasn't her childhood dolls' house and it wasn't the inspiration for the dolls' house illustrated in The Tale of Two Bad Mice either.
Beatrix acquired the house over thirty years after The Tale of Two Bad Mice was published and she would have been about 73 years old at the time. The house is though to date to circa 1865.
The National Trust House Steward at Hill Top said:
"Beatrix acquired the doll’s house in Hill Top from the sale of the estate of an amazing American lady called Rebecca Owen [d.1939] who lived near Hawkshead; being so similar to the one that Norman [Warne] originally made that it was too good an opportunity to miss."
And what about Winifred Warne's Dolls' House which did inspire the illustrations for The Tale of Two Bad Mice?
Very sadly, this house has gone missing, though it so nearly ended up at Hill Top as the National Trust House Steward at Hill Top explained:
"Fruing [Warne] asked Beatrix to look after the original dolls house after Harold [Warne] was arrested for embezzling the company's money in 1917, serving 18 month hard labour. However, Beatrix suggested that the original dolls house should be lent to a children’s hospital; Her mother hadn’t seen the scandalous reports in the newspapers and Beatrix didn’t want to make her aware of them – having the doll’s house back at home would have aroused her suspicions………..from all the research that has been done over the years it seems the doll’s house never emerged from the hospital and its whereabouts is no longer known."[Fruing and Harold Warne were Norman Warne's brothers and Beatrix's editors; by this time Norman Warne had passed away.]
'Beatrix Potter's Letters' (1989) by Judy Taylor, states that although Beatrix suggested the house go to a children's hospital: "The doll's house was sold to the family who lived next door to the Warne family and it has since been lost." No source is attached to the note so I don't know who is right.
Either way, the house seems to be lost and what I do know is that I will now dream forevermore about finding it peeping out from under a stall at a car boot sale or hiding in a dusty corner of a junk shop!
Many thanks to everyone for the great feedback and information I received following my last post.
Until next time,
Zoe
[For anyone interested in the details:
After an appeal for information on the amazing 'Dolls' Houses Past & Present' website (DHP&P), Rosemary Myers quickly confirmed Beatrix's ownership of the house by reference to 'English Dolls' Houses of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries' (1955) by Vivien Greene. Unfortunately, I don't own a copy of this book.
This prompted me to look through my own dolls' house books (I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before!) and I found the following entry in 'The Collector's History of Dolls' Houses' (1983) by Constance Eileen King:
"The doll's house at Hilltop, now owned by the National Trust, though often thought to have been the inspiration for the well-known story, was in fact obtained at a much later date. It seems likely that the well-made battlemented house in the style of the 1860s-70s was bought locally, as it appealed to Beatrix Potter's fascination with miniature objects and made a suitable repository of th food she had made for The Tale of Two Bad Mice."
[I'm not sure about "food she had made" as Beatrix's correspondence with Norman Warne mentions that the food was purchased by him from Hamleys toy shop in London.]
Edel from DHP&P also confirmed that there was a good photograph of Winifred Warne's house on page 124 of Margret Lane's 'The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter', taken from the same angle as the full view of the house in the book and very kindly sent me a scan of it (see above).
Apparently Lane's book mentions that Beatrix Potter's mother wouldn't allow her to visit Winifred Warne's parents to see the completed dolls' house as she thought the family beneath her in status. Beatrix had seen the house under construction by Norman Warne in his parents' basement, but only thought of using it for a story after it had gone to his niece Winifred, so she had to work from photographs.
Jenny from DHP&P mentioned that she had read somewhere that Winifred's house was missing, which led me to find an online excerpt from 'Beatrix Potter's Letters' (1989) by Judy Taylor, which contains a transcript of the letter in which sending the the dolls' house to Hill Top and/or lending it to a Children's hospital is discussed, as well as the note indicating that in fact it was actually sold to the Warne's next door neighbours instead.]
Edel from DHP&P also confirmed that there was a good photograph of Winifred Warne's house on page 124 of Margret Lane's 'The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter', taken from the same angle as the full view of the house in the book and very kindly sent me a scan of it (see above).
Apparently Lane's book mentions that Beatrix Potter's mother wouldn't allow her to visit Winifred Warne's parents to see the completed dolls' house as she thought the family beneath her in status. Beatrix had seen the house under construction by Norman Warne in his parents' basement, but only thought of using it for a story after it had gone to his niece Winifred, so she had to work from photographs.
Jenny from DHP&P mentioned that she had read somewhere that Winifred's house was missing, which led me to find an online excerpt from 'Beatrix Potter's Letters' (1989) by Judy Taylor, which contains a transcript of the letter in which sending the the dolls' house to Hill Top and/or lending it to a Children's hospital is discussed, as well as the note indicating that in fact it was actually sold to the Warne's next door neighbours instead.]
Great follow-up post Zoe. Though how on the earth the NT man could say the Hill Top house is similar to Winifred Warne's house?! Obviously he's not a dolls-houser himself ;-) But nice that they responded so quickly and helpfully to your query.
ReplyDeleteSo now we will all be dreaming of that red-brick late Victorian house that just might turn up somewhere.....
Thanks, Edel. I maybe should have said 'House Stewardess' as she was a lady but, I did think the same as you, it's not that similar but I guess to non-dolls' house buffs it might appear that way. Certainly, I heard none of the [hoards] of other visitors who passed through the room while I was viewing it [for some considerable time!] comment that it wasn't the same, even though the book was open at the correct page next to it - mind you, I don't speak Chinese or Korean..!
ReplyDeleteActually, when I've checked my photos, the book was open at the page showing the box of food and not the dolls' house.
DeleteSadly, in my experience dolls houses never ever emerge again from the children's ward of local hospitals. A sure death to a dolls house :-(
ReplyDeleteYes, I can well imagine that, Cestina. If, however, it was sold to the next door neighbours, I suppose it could still be with that family, though they would, surely, have been aware of the Potter connection, or have become aware of it subsequently, and its whereabouts documented. If it was sold or given away by the neighbours, however, I suppose it just might have survived. I doubt if anyone except us few care about it enough to get a national appeal for information as to its whereabouts going!
DeleteI’ve often wondered if the dollhouse made by Norman Warne wasn’t built from a plan from semewhere, perhaps Hobbies magazine.
ReplyDeleteI wonder that too, Shawn. I did look into that at the time I wrote this blog as the upstairs windows and the crisscross balconies are both exactly like features seen in the earliest Hobbies dolls’ house plans. Unfortunately, the earliest plans I’ve seen are in Rebecca Green’s article on Hobbies in the Dolls’ Houses Past and Present online magazine and they are for 1913, so a little later than when Warne made his. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find it in an earlier catalogue/magazine.
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