Potter’s Dark Materials

I have made many books about well-behaved people. Now, for a change, I am going to make a story about two disagreeable people, called Tommy Brock and Mr Tod. Nobody could call Mr Tod nice . . .

Thus, in 1912, Beatrix Potter opens the darkest of all her tales. Set in a brooding Cumberland landscape of crags, empty dwellings and moonlit woodland, the characters, menacing atmosphere and plot of Mr Tod have all the hallmarks of classic crime fiction – approaching, indeed, something much greater. In his essay on Potter published in 1933, Graham Greene placed the book ‘at the end of the period of great near-tragedies’ and speculated on the author’s state of mind when she wrote it. Greene’s own vision of evil had yet to find its first full expression in Brighton Rock (1938), but his discussion of Potter’s work is alert to the enemy within many of her novels. Some of these enemies are human: Mr McGregor, of course, in Peter Rabbit (1902) and, much later, the vile and squalid farmer Mr Thomas Piperson in Pigling Bland (1913).

Of those in the animal world, Greene omits to mention Old Brown, the owl in Squirrel Nutkin (1903) whose implacable dark eye and vicious beak, wrenching off that impertinent red tail, so frightened me as a child. But he is very good on ‘the gentleman with sandy whiskers’, Mr Tod’s first incarnation in Jemima Puddle-duck (1908); on Mr Drake Puddle-duck, advancing ‘in a slow sideways manner’ towards Tom Kitten in order to steal his discarded clothing; and on ‘the gross and brutal’ Samuel Whiskers, demanding of Anna Maria in 1907 that his ‘kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding’ be properly made with breadcrumbs.

But although the cavernous, rat-infested chimney-breast where Tom so nearly meets his end is disturbing, we enter in Mr Tod a whole landscape filled with tension, with images of murder and decay.

The sun had set; an owl began to hoot in the wood. There were many unpleasant things lying about, that had much better be buried: rabbit bones and skulls, and chickens’ legs and other horrors. It was a shocking place, and very dark.

We are worlds away from the quiet walled vegetable garden where two naughty young rabbits keep a watchful eye out for an irritable old gardener. Fierce and determined though Mr McGregor may be, his fury, his rake and sack and watering-can are essentially the stuff of domestic comedy, and escape is a wicket gate away, even if it does mean losing your little blue jacket.

In Mr Tod Peter and Benjamin are fully grown, and Benjamin has married Flopsy and has a young family to support. One fatal spring afternoon he and Flopsy leave them in the care of Old Mr Benjamin Bouncer, last seen in 1904 walking along the top of that vegetable garden wall smoking a pipe of rabbit tobacco. He has a little switch in his hand; he is looking for his son who, by the end of Benjamin Bunny, has been taken by the ears and thoroughly whipped for his naughtiness. Alas, in old age Old Bouncer is less vigilant of his grandchildren, and his tobacco has become an addiction. He admits to the family burrow the dreadful Tommy Brock, ‘a short bristly fat waddling person with a grin’, and when they have shared a cabbage leaf cigar he falls asleep. By the time he is woken by a distraught and furious Flopsy, the rabbit babies have been snatched from their fluffy bed of rabbit wool and hay, and Tommy Brock has vanished.

All the dark materials of crime or thriller writing are now in place. A group of established characters whom we love is threatened by not one but two ruthless killers: the one from the landed gentry, the other, with his spud and mole traps and horrid grin, a member of the rural lower orders. There are two plots: of trespass and revenge; of the saving of children in mortal danger. The atmosphere is fraught with suspense; much of the drama takes place by night, in a secluded and very frightening place; black comedy turns to a violent climax with a dramatic rescue; at the end, domestic harmony is restored.

As a child, I knew that Mr Tod was different from the other Potter tales. I was terrified by the fox’s gloomy house, overgrown with briars, in whose kitchen Tommy Brock conceals the babies in the oven, and I shared all Peter and Benjamin’s terror as they peer through the filthy window while the moonlight ‘makes a path of brightness across the dirty floor’ and twinkles on carving knife and pie dish. Bravely, the rabbits tunnel under the house all night, while Brock snores in Tod’s uncurtained bed; at sunrise, Mr Tod comes home ‘in the very worst of tempers’. A jay shrieks beside him through the misty trees, warning the rabbits, who tremble in their tunnel.

There follows, when fox discovers slumbering badger, one of the finest comic scenes in children’s literature, as a pailful of water is suspended over the bedhead. But earthy Brock is too clever for vengeful Mr Tod, and a battle ensues in which the two old enemies take the place apart. When a kettle of boiling water tips over the snarling fox, Brock rolls him screaming out of the door and the rabbits seize their moment. ‘Now for it! Run in, Cousin Benjamin! Run in and get them, while I watch at the door.’

Cut, in a master-stroke, to the burrow where Flopsy and Mr Bouncer have passed a sleepless night, and Flopsy is having ‘a complete turn out and spring clean to relieve her feelings’ while Mr B takes refuge behind a wicker chair. What joy when uncle and father burst in triumphantly, bearing their sackful of bunnies! Never has domestic life been sweeter as the reunited family settles down to dinner while the babies sleep in their basket before the fire . Meanwhile, over rock and crag, the battle rages on: villain against vicious villain, at one another’s throats until the end.

Beatrix Potter was not amused. She had, she wrote to him sharply, merely been suffering from the after-effects of flu. She did not like ‘the Freudian school’ of criticism.

Whatever it was that so darkened her palette, Mr Tod stands as a masterpiece. Here is human frailty opening the door to evil; here are terror, courage, comedy and violence; here is the return to social order, while the villains receive their just deserts: each other.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 1 © Sue Gee 2004