Tea at Trianon: The Conservatism of Beatrix Potter

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, October 23, 2026

The Conservatism of Beatrix Potter

From The Bridgehead:

Paul Kingsnorth has been grappling with the question of how to live in this revolutionary age on his Substack “The Abbey of Misrule,” noting at the outset that: “The storm is here and an age is ending, but new and old hearts stay steadfast on the margins. God is not mocked, and reality bats last. In an age of Big Everything, small remains beautiful and shall, in the end, inherit the Earth.” In his concluding essays, he suggests that becoming rooted in “people, place, and prayer” are key parts of the answer.

Kingsnorth’s proposal reminded me of Potter, who was the sort of conservative who knew precisely what she wanted to conserve—and how. Potter was born in 1866 in Kensington, London, to Rupert and Helen Potter, joined six years later by a little brother, Walter Bertram. She spent her childhood cultivating a deep love of art and nature. She and Walter populated their home with a menagerie of pets, including rabbits, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes, salamanders, and a rotund hedgehog. Walter even had a pair of long-eared bats that he left with Beatrix when he went to boarding school. She painstakingly painted and sketched them all with astonishing skill.
Potter’s pets and artwork turned into tales for children and in 1901 at the age of 36 she self-published the first edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit after publishers turned her down due to her insistence that the price must be kept low to keep the story affordable for children. The following year, Warne & Co. published an abridged version to an enthusiastic public reception, and several sold out editions. They asked Potter for more, and a series of stories were published in swift succession. There would eventually be 33 in all, and Potter became one of the most famous children’s authors of all time. (Read more.)