The Tale of Two Bad Mice
Encyclopedia
The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter
, and published by Frederick Warne & Co
. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a dollhouse being constructed by her editor and publisher Norman Warne
as a Christmas gift for his niece Winifred. During the course of the tale's development, Potter and Warne fell in love and became engaged, much to the annoyance of Potter's parents who were grooming their daughter to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their London home.
The tale is about two mice who vandalize a dollhouse. After finding the food on the dining room table made of plaster, they smash the dishes, throw the doll clothing out the window, tear the bolster, and carry off a number of articles to their mouse-hole. When the little girl who owns the dollhouse discovers the destruction, she positions a policeman doll outside the front door to ward off any future depredation. The two mice atone for their crime spree by putting a crooked sixpence in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and sweeping the house every morning with a dust-pan and broom.
The tale's themes of rebellion, insurrection, and individualism reflect not only Potter's desire to free herself of her domineering parents and build a home of her own, but her fears about independence and her frustrations with Victorian domesticity. In a larger social context, the tale reflects the social unrest of England's working classes, their agitation for labour reform, and their urge to possess a piece of the pie the upper classes enjoyed.
The book was critically well received and brought Potter her first fan letter from America. The tale was adapted to a segment in the 1971 Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter
and to an anuimated episode in the BBC series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
. Merchandise inspired by the tale includes Beswick Pottery
porcelain figurines and Schmid music boxes.
Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter in London. She was educated by governesses and tutors, and passed a quiet childhood reading, painting, drawing, tending a nursery menagerie of small animals, and visiting museums and art exhibitions. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holidays in Scotland, the Lake District
, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire
home of her paternal grandparents.
Potter's adolescence was as quiet as her childhood. She matured into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home. She continued to paint and draw, and enjoyed her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card publisher. She hoped to lead a useful life independent of her parents, and tentatively considered a career in mycology
, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as nothing more than an amateur and she abandoned fungi.
Potter had grown fond of the children of her last governess Annie Carter Moore, and through the 1890s wrote them story and picture letters. Mrs. Moore recognized the literary and artistic value of the letters and urged her former charge to publish. In 1900 Potter revised a tale from 1893 she had written for five-year-old Noel Moore, and fashioned a dummy book of it in imitation of Helen Bannerman
's 1899
bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901.
Family friend Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley
had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses.Frederick Warne & Co
. had earlier rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke
. The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, instructed her to colour the pen and ink illustrations of the private edition (which she resisted but finally agreed to do), and to cut eleven of the illustrations so the book could be printed on one sheet of paper. The then-new Hentschel three-colour process was chosen for reproducing her watercolours, and on 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
was released.
Potter worked closely with her editor Norman Warne
, the youngest of Frederick Warne's three sons, and continued to publish books similar in concept, style, and format for the firm. Warnes wanted two books a year from Potter for commercial advantage, and in 1903 published The Tailor of Gloucester
and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
, a sequel to Peter Rabbit, began development in 1903 for intended publication in 1904, and the second book for 1904 was The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Although Potter's parents enjoyed her success with Peter Rabbit, they became annoyed with her obvious pleasure in her career. They complained she was spending too much time with her little books, jeopardizing her eyesight, neglecting her household responsibilities, and, worst of all, spending too much time in Norman Warne's offices. Potter was the dutiful Victorian daughter, but longed for some independence from her domineering parents.
, and named them Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca after characters in Henry Fielding
's play, Tom Thumb
. Tom Thumb was never mentioned in Potter's letters after his rescue from the trap (he may have escaped) but Hunca Munca became a pet and a model; she developed an affectionate personality and displayed good housekeeping skills.
Between 26 November 1903 and 2 December 1903, Potter took a week's holiday in Hastings
, and, though there is no evidence she did so, she may have taken one or both mice with her. She composed three tales in a stiff-covered exercise book during a week of relentless rain: Something very very NICE (which, after much revision, eventually became The Pie and the Patty-Pan
in 1905), The Tale of Tuppenny (which eventually became Chapter 1 in The Fairy Caravan
in 1929), and The Tale of Hunca Munca or The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Potter hoped one of the three tales would be chosen for publication in 1904 as a companion piece to Benjamin Bunny which was then a work in progress. "I have tried to make a cat story that would use some of the sketches of a cottage I drew the summer before last," she wrote her editor Norman Warne
on 2 December, "There are two others in the copy book ... the dolls would make a funny one, but it is rather soon to have another mouse book?", referring to her recently published The Tailor of Gloucester.
Warne received and considered the three tales. Potter wrote him that the cat tale would be the easiest to put together from her existing sketches but preferred to develop the mouse tale. She alerted Warne that she was spending a week with a cousin at Melford Hall
and would run the three tales past the children in the house. Warne favoured the mouse tale – perhaps because he was constructing a dollhouse in his basement workshop for his niece Winifred Warne – but for the moment, he delayed making a decision and turned his attention to the size of the second book for 1904 because Potter was complaining about being "cramped" with small drawings and was tempted to put more in them than they could hold. Warne suggested a 215 mm x 150 mm format similar to L. Leslie Brooke's recently published Johnny Crow's Garden, but, in the end, Potter opted for the mouse tale in a small format, instinctively aware the format would be more appropriate for a mouse tale and indicating it would be difficult to spread the mice over a large page. Before a final decision was made, Warne fashioned a large format dummy book called The Tale of the Doll's House and Hunca Munca with pictures and text snipped from The Tailor to give Potter a general impression of how a large format product would appear, but Potter remained adamant and the small format and the title The Tale of Two Bad Mice were finally chosen.
Just before New Year's 1904, Warne sent Potter a glass-fronted mouse house with a ladder to an upstairs nesting loft built to her specifications so she could easily observe and draw the mice. The dollhouse Potter used as a model was one Warne had built in his basement workshop as a Christmas gift for his four-year-old niece Winifred Warne. Potter had seen the house under construction and wanted to sketch it, but the house had been moved just before Christmas to Fruing Warne's home south of London in Surbiton
. Norman Warne invited Potter to have lunch in Surbiton and sketch the dollhouse, but Mrs. Potter intervened. She had taken alarm at the growing intimacy between her daughter and Warne; as a consequence, she made the family carriage unavailable to her daughter, and refused to chaperone her to the home of those she considered her social inferiors. Potter declined the invitation and berated herself for not standing up to her mother. She became concerned that the whole project could be compromised.
On 12 February 1904 Potter wrote Warne and apologized for not accepting his invitation to Surbiton. She wrote progress was being made on the mouse tale, and once found Hunca Munca carrying a beribboned doll up the ladder into her nest. She noted that the mouse despised the plaster food. She assured him she could complete the book from photographs. On 18 February 1904 Warne bought the Lucinda and Jane dolls at a shop in Seven Dials
and sent them to Potter. Potter wrote:
The policeman doll was borrowed from Winifred Warne. She was reluctant to part with it but the doll was safely returned. Many years later she remembered Potter arriving at the house to borrow the doll:
On 25 February Warne sent plaster food and miniature furniture from Hamleys
, a London toy shop. On 20 April the photographs of the dollhouse were delivered, and at the end of May Potter wrote Warne that eighteen of the mouse drawings were complete, and the remainder were in progress. By the middle of June proofs of the text had arrived, and after a few corrections, Potter wrote on 28 June that she was satisfied with the alterations. Proofs of the illustrations were delivered, and Potter was satisfied with them. In September 1904 20,000 copies of the book were published in two different bindings – one in paper boards and the other in a deluxe binding designed by Potter. The book was dedicated to Winifred Warne, "the girl who had the doll's house".
In the summer of 1905 Hunca Munca died after falling from a chandelier while playing with Potter. She wrote Warne on 21 July: "I have made a little doll of poor Hunca Munca. I cannot forgive myself for letting her tumble. I do so miss her. She fell off the chandelier; she managed to stagger up the staircase into your litte house, but she died in my hand about ten minutes after. I think if I had broken my own neck it would have saved a deal of trouble."
Between 1907 and 1912 Potter wrote miniature letters to children as from characters in her books. The letters reveal more about their characters and their doings. Though many were probably lost or destroyed, a few are extant from the characters in Two Bad Mice. In one, Jane Dollcook has broken the soup tureen and both her legs; in another, Tom Thumb writes Lucinda asking her to spare a feather bed which she regrets she cannot send because the one he stole was never replaced. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca have nine children and the parents need another kettle for boiling water. Hunca Munca is apparently not a very conscientious housekeeper because Lucinda complains of dust on the mantlepiece.
In 1971, Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb appeared in a segment of the Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter
, and, in 1995, the tale was adapted to animation and telecast on the BBC
anthology series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
.
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 retuen. 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 holday 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 diffiult 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."
The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll's-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll's-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful".
One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll's-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient!" Tom Thumb discovers the food is plaster and loses his temper. The two smash every dish on the table – "bang, bang, smash, smash!" – and even try to burn one in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" in the kitchen fireplace.
Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out the window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small odds and ends from the doll's-house including a bird cage and a bookcase that will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator.
Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll's-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll's-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom.
thinks The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a transitional work in Potter's career and reflects her concerns and questions about the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies. Changes in Potter's life were reflected in her art, Kutzer notes. In August 1905, Potter not only lost her editor and fiancé Norman Warne but purchased Hill Top
, a working farm in the Lake District
that became her home away from London and her artistic retreat. Two Bad Mice may be viewed as an allegory
in which Potter expresses not only her desire for her own home but her fears about and frustrations with domestic life. While earlier works reflect Potter's interest in broad political and social issues, Two Bad Mice demonstrates her interests shifting to local politics and the lives of countrypeople.
The book reflects Potter's conflicted feelings about rebellion and domesticity – about her desire to flee her parents' home via a "rebellious" engagement to Norman Warne and her purchase of a domestic space that would be built with her fiance. Kutzer points out that the tale has three settings: that of the humans, that of the dollhouse, and that of the mice, and that the
themes of the book include "domesticity and the role of domiciles within domesticity" and tensions about the pleasures and dangers of domesticity and of rebellion and insurrection.
The human and dollhouse worlds reflect Potter's upper middle class background and origins: the proper little girl who owns the dollhouse has a governess and the dollhouse has servants' quarters and is furnished with gilt clocks, vases of flowers, and other accoutrements that bespeak the middle class. Kutzer points out that Potter is not on the side of the repectable middle class in this tale however: she is on the side of subversion, insurrection and individualism. The book is a miniature declaration of Potter's increasing independence from her family and her desire to have a home of her own, yet at the same time reflects her ambivalence about leaving home and her parents.
Potter approves of the domestic and social rebellion of the mice and of their desire for a comfortable house of their own. Although, she disapproves of the sterility and uselessness of the dolls' lives, she understands the attraction of a comfortable domestic life made possible by servants.
Kutzer observes the tale is marked with a "faint echo" of the larger class issues of the times, specifically labout unrest. The mice, she suggests, can be viewed as representatives of the various rebellions of the working classes against working conditions of England and the growing local political and industrial conflicts revolving around issues such as the recognition of new unionism, working conditions, minimum wages, an 8-hour day, and the closed shop. She disapproved of the use of violence to attain reform but not of reform itself.
Kutzer further believes that however much Potter wished to provide an example of moral behaviour for the reader in the last pages of the tale (the mice "paying" for their misdeeds), her sense of fairness and the subtext of British class unrest actually account for the tale's ending. Social authority (the policeman doll) and domestic authority (the governess) are both ineffective against the desires of the mice: one illustration depicts the animals simply evading the policeman doll to prowl outside the house and another illustration depicts the mice instructing their children about the dangers of the governess's mousetrap. Their repentance is merely show: Tom Thumb pays for his destruction with a useless crooked sixpence found under the rug and Hunca Munca cleans a house that is tidy to begin with. Their respectful show of repentance covers up their continuing rebellion against middle class authority. Although Potter approves of the domestic and social rebellion of the mice and their desire for a comfortable house of their own, she disapproves of the emptiness and sterility of the dolls' lives in the dollhouse yet understands the attractions of a comfortable life made possible in part by the labour of servants.
thought Two Bad Mice a pleasant change from Potter's rabbit books (Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny) and believed neither Tom Thumb or Hunca Munca were completely bad, noting they both looked innocent and lovable in Potter's twenty-seven watercolour drawings. The reviewer approved Potter's "Chelsea-china like books" that were Warne's "annual marvels ... to an adoring nursery world".
Potter received her first fan letter from an American youngster in the wake of Two Bad Mice. Hugh Bridgeman wrote to say he enjoyed the book, and Potter in return wrote him, "I like writing stories. I should like to write lots and lots! I have ever so many inside my head but the pictures take such a dreadful long time to draw! I get quite tired of the pictures before the book is finished."
In 1947 Frederick Warne & Co. gave Beswick Pottery
of Longton, Staffordshire
rights and licenses to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Seven figurines inspired by Two Bad Mice were issued between 1951 and 2000: Hunca Munca with the Cradle; Hunca Munca Sweeping; Tom Thumb; Christmas Stocking; Hunca Munca Spills the Beads; Hunca Munca cast in a large-sized, limited edition; and another Hunca Munca.
In 1977 Schmid & Co. of Toronto
and Randolph, Massachusetts
was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter, and released two music boxes in 1981: one topped with a porcelain figure of Hunca Munca, and the other with Hunca Munca and her babies. Beginning in 1983, Schmid released a series of small, flat hanging Christmas ornaments depicting various Potter characters including several Hunca Muncas. In 1991, three music boxes were released: Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb in the dolls' bed (playing "Beautiful Dreamer
"); Tom Thumb instructing his children about the dangers of mouse traps ("You've Got a Friend
"); Hunca Munca spilling the beads from the pantry canister ("Everything is Beautiful
"); and the two mice trying to cut the plaster ham ("Close to You"). Another music box released the same year played "Home! Sweet Home!
" and depicted the exterior of the doll house, and, when reversed, the interior of the house with the bedroom upstairs and the dining room downstairs. Three separate mouse figurines could be placed here and there in the house.
in 1983. The task of remaking the printing plates for all 23 volumes of the Peter Rabbit collection from the very beginning with new photographs of the original drawings and new designs in the style of the original bindings was undertaken by Penguin in 1985, a project completed in two years and released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was the first of Potter's books to be translated when the Dutch edition of Peter Rabbit (Het Verhaal van Pieter Langoor) was published in 1912 under license by Nijgh & Ditmar's Uitgevers Maatschappij, Rotterdam. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Het Verhall van Kwakkel Waggel-Eend) followed the same year. Peter Rabbit and five other tales were published in Braille by The Royal Institute for the Blind in 1921. Twee Stoute Muisjes (Two Bad Mice) was first published in Dutch in 1946 and republished under license as Het Verhaal van Twee Stoute Muizen (The Tale of Two Bad Mice) by Uitgeverij Ploegsma, Amsterdam in 1969. Two Bad Mice was first published in German as Die Geshichite von den zwei bösen Mäuschen in 1939, and was under license to be published by Fukuinkan-Shoten, Tokyo in Japanese in 1971.
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
, and published by Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
. in September 1904. Potter took inspiration for the tale from two mice caught in a cage-trap in her cousin's home and a dollhouse being constructed by her editor and publisher Norman Warne
Norman Warne
Norman Dalziel Warne was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co. as editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and published the book in October 1902 to great success...
as a Christmas gift for his niece Winifred. During the course of the tale's development, Potter and Warne fell in love and became engaged, much to the annoyance of Potter's parents who were grooming their daughter to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their London home.
The tale is about two mice who vandalize a dollhouse. After finding the food on the dining room table made of plaster, they smash the dishes, throw the doll clothing out the window, tear the bolster, and carry off a number of articles to their mouse-hole. When the little girl who owns the dollhouse discovers the destruction, she positions a policeman doll outside the front door to ward off any future depredation. The two mice atone for their crime spree by putting a crooked sixpence in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and sweeping the house every morning with a dust-pan and broom.
The tale's themes of rebellion, insurrection, and individualism reflect not only Potter's desire to free herself of her domineering parents and build a home of her own, but her fears about independence and her frustrations with Victorian domesticity. In a larger social context, the tale reflects the social unrest of England's working classes, their agitation for labour reform, and their urge to possess a piece of the pie the upper classes enjoyed.
The book was critically well received and brought Potter her first fan letter from America. The tale was adapted to a segment in the 1971 Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
Tales of Beatrix Potter is a 1971 ballet film with a plot based on the children's stories of English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The film was directed by Reginald Mills, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton , and starred artists of the Royal Ballet...
and to an anuimated episode in the BBC series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends is an animated television series based on the works of Beatrix Potter, featuring Peter Rabbit and other anthropomorphic animal characters created by Potter. It was originally shown in the UK on BBC between 1992 and 1995 and subsequently broadcast in the USA on...
. Merchandise inspired by the tale includes Beswick Pottery
Beswick Pottery
J. W. Beswick was a pottery manufacturer, founded in 1892 by James Wright Beswick and his sons John and Gilbert in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. They are chiefly known for producing high-quality porcelain figurines such as farm animals and Beatrix Potter characters and have become highly sought after in...
porcelain figurines and Schmid music boxes.
Background
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July 1866 to barristerBarrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
Rupert William Potter and his wife Helen (Leech) Potter in London. She was educated by governesses and tutors, and passed a quiet childhood reading, painting, drawing, tending a nursery menagerie of small animals, and visiting museums and art exhibitions. Her interests in the natural world and country life were nurtured with holidays in Scotland, the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
, and Camfield Place, the Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
home of her paternal grandparents.
Potter's adolescence was as quiet as her childhood. She matured into a spinsterish young woman whose parents groomed her to be a permanent resident and housekeeper in their home. She continued to paint and draw, and enjoyed her first professional artistic success in 1890 when she sold six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card publisher. She hoped to lead a useful life independent of her parents, and tentatively considered a career in mycology
Mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, medicinals , food and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as poisoning or...
, but the all-male scientific community regarded her as nothing more than an amateur and she abandoned fungi.
Potter had grown fond of the children of her last governess Annie Carter Moore, and through the 1890s wrote them story and picture letters. Mrs. Moore recognized the literary and artistic value of the letters and urged her former charge to publish. In 1900 Potter revised a tale from 1893 she had written for five-year-old Noel Moore, and fashioned a dummy book of it in imitation of Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman
Helen Bannerman was the Scottish author of a number of children's books, the most notable being Little Black Sambo. She was born in Edinburgh and, because women were not admitted as students into British Universities, she sat external examinations set by the University of St. Andrews and attained...
's 1899
1899 in literature
The year 1899 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Edgar Rice Burroughs begins working in his father's business.*Rainer Maria Rilke travels to Moscow to meet Leo Tolstoy....
bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo. Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901.
Family friend Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley
Hardwicke Rawnsley
Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley , was an English clergyman, poet, writer of hymns and conservationist, known as one of the co-founders of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty...
had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses.Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
. had earlier rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke
L. Leslie Brooke
Leonard Leslie Brooke was a British artist and writer who was born on 24 September 1862, in Birkenhead, England. His skillful and witty illustrations in Andrew Lang's Nursery Rhyme Book established his reputation as a leading children's book illustrator of pen-and-ink line drawings and watercolors...
. The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, instructed her to colour the pen and ink illustrations of the private edition (which she resisted but finally agreed to do), and to cut eleven of the illustrations so the book could be printed on one sheet of paper. The then-new Hentschel three-colour process was chosen for reproducing her watercolours, and on 2 October 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea...
was released.
Potter worked closely with her editor Norman Warne
Norman Warne
Norman Dalziel Warne was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co. as editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and published the book in October 1902 to great success...
, the youngest of Frederick Warne's three sons, and continued to publish books similar in concept, style, and format for the firm. Warnes wanted two books a year from Potter for commercial advantage, and in 1903 published The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902, and published in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1903...
and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in August 1903. The story is about an impertinent red squirrel named Nutkin and his narrow escape from an owl called Old Brown. The book followed Potter's hugely...
. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. The book is a sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit , and tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve...
, a sequel to Peter Rabbit, began development in 1903 for intended publication in 1904, and the second book for 1904 was The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Although Potter's parents enjoyed her success with Peter Rabbit, they became annoyed with her obvious pleasure in her career. They complained she was spending too much time with her little books, jeopardizing her eyesight, neglecting her household responsibilities, and, worst of all, spending too much time in Norman Warne's offices. Potter was the dutiful Victorian daughter, but longed for some independence from her domineering parents.
Development and publication
The Tale of Two Bad Mice had its genesis in June 1903 when Potter rescued two mice from a cage-trap in her cousin Caroline Hutton's kitchen at Harescombe Grange, GloucestershireGloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, and named them Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca after characters in Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
's play, Tom Thumb
Tom Thumb (play)
Tom Thumb is a play written by Henry Fielding as an addition to The Author's Farce. It was added on 24 April 1730 at Haymarket. It is a low tragedy about a character who is small in both size and status who is granted the hand of a princess in marriage...
. Tom Thumb was never mentioned in Potter's letters after his rescue from the trap (he may have escaped) but Hunca Munca became a pet and a model; she developed an affectionate personality and displayed good housekeeping skills.
Between 26 November 1903 and 2 December 1903, Potter took a week's holiday in Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
, and, though there is no evidence she did so, she may have taken one or both mice with her. She composed three tales in a stiff-covered exercise book during a week of relentless rain: Something very very NICE (which, after much revision, eventually became The Pie and the Patty-Pan
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and released by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. It tells of a cat called Ribby and a tea party she holds for a dog called Duchess...
in 1905), The Tale of Tuppenny (which eventually became Chapter 1 in The Fairy Caravan
The Fairy Caravan
The Fairy Caravan is a book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was first published in 1929. The story follows the adventures of Tuppenny, a young guinea pig who runs away from home to join a travelling circus....
in 1929), and The Tale of Hunca Munca or The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Potter hoped one of the three tales would be chosen for publication in 1904 as a companion piece to Benjamin Bunny which was then a work in progress. "I have tried to make a cat story that would use some of the sketches of a cottage I drew the summer before last," she wrote her editor Norman Warne
Norman Warne
Norman Dalziel Warne was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co. as editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and published the book in October 1902 to great success...
on 2 December, "There are two others in the copy book ... the dolls would make a funny one, but it is rather soon to have another mouse book?", referring to her recently published The Tailor of Gloucester.
Warne received and considered the three tales. Potter wrote him that the cat tale would be the easiest to put together from her existing sketches but preferred to develop the mouse tale. She alerted Warne that she was spending a week with a cousin at Melford Hall
Melford Hall
Melford Hall is a stately home in the village of Long Melford, Suffolk, England. It is the ancestral seat of the Parker Baronets.The hall was mostly constructed in the 16th century, incorporating parts of a medieval building held by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds which had been in use since before...
and would run the three tales past the children in the house. Warne favoured the mouse tale – perhaps because he was constructing a dollhouse in his basement workshop for his niece Winifred Warne – but for the moment, he delayed making a decision and turned his attention to the size of the second book for 1904 because Potter was complaining about being "cramped" with small drawings and was tempted to put more in them than they could hold. Warne suggested a 215 mm x 150 mm format similar to L. Leslie Brooke's recently published Johnny Crow's Garden, but, in the end, Potter opted for the mouse tale in a small format, instinctively aware the format would be more appropriate for a mouse tale and indicating it would be difficult to spread the mice over a large page. Before a final decision was made, Warne fashioned a large format dummy book called The Tale of the Doll's House and Hunca Munca with pictures and text snipped from The Tailor to give Potter a general impression of how a large format product would appear, but Potter remained adamant and the small format and the title The Tale of Two Bad Mice were finally chosen.
Just before New Year's 1904, Warne sent Potter a glass-fronted mouse house with a ladder to an upstairs nesting loft built to her specifications so she could easily observe and draw the mice. The dollhouse Potter used as a model was one Warne had built in his basement workshop as a Christmas gift for his four-year-old niece Winifred Warne. Potter had seen the house under construction and wanted to sketch it, but the house had been moved just before Christmas to Fruing Warne's home south of London in Surbiton
Surbiton
Surbiton, a suburban area of London in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, is situated next to the River Thames, with a mixture of Art-Deco courts, more recent residential blocks and grand, spacious 19th century townhouses blending into a sea of semi-detached 20th century housing estates...
. Norman Warne invited Potter to have lunch in Surbiton and sketch the dollhouse, but Mrs. Potter intervened. She had taken alarm at the growing intimacy between her daughter and Warne; as a consequence, she made the family carriage unavailable to her daughter, and refused to chaperone her to the home of those she considered her social inferiors. Potter declined the invitation and berated herself for not standing up to her mother. She became concerned that the whole project could be compromised.
On 12 February 1904 Potter wrote Warne and apologized for not accepting his invitation to Surbiton. She wrote progress was being made on the mouse tale, and once found Hunca Munca carrying a beribboned doll up the ladder into her nest. She noted that the mouse despised the plaster food. She assured him she could complete the book from photographs. On 18 February 1904 Warne bought the Lucinda and Jane dolls at a shop in Seven Dials
Seven Dials
Seven Dials is a small but well-known road junction in the West End of London in Covent Garden where seven streets converge. At the centre of the roughly-circular space is a pillar bearing six sundials, a result of the pillar being commissioned before a late stage alteration of the plans from an...
and sent them to Potter. Potter wrote:
Thank you so much for the queer little dollies; they are exactly what I wanted ... I will provide a print dress and a smile for Jane; her little stumpy feet are so funny. I think I shall make a dear little book of it. I shall be glad to get done woth the rabbits ... I shall be very glad of the little stove and the ham; the work is always a very great pleasure anyhow.
The policeman doll was borrowed from Winifred Warne. She was reluctant to part with it but the doll was safely returned. Many years later she remembered Potter arriving at the house to borrow the doll:
She was very unfashionably dressed; and wore a coat and skirt and hat, and carried a man's umbrella. She came up to the nursery dressed in her outdoor clothes and asked if she might borrow the policeman doll; Nanny hunted for the doll and eventually found it. It was at least a foot high, and quite out of proportion to the doll's house."
On 25 February Warne sent plaster food and miniature furniture from Hamleys
Hamleys
Hamleys is one of the world's largest toy shops. Its flagship store is in Regent Street, London. Major stores worldwide are in Dublin, Dubai, Amman, Glasgow, Mumbai and Chennai....
, a London toy shop. On 20 April the photographs of the dollhouse were delivered, and at the end of May Potter wrote Warne that eighteen of the mouse drawings were complete, and the remainder were in progress. By the middle of June proofs of the text had arrived, and after a few corrections, Potter wrote on 28 June that she was satisfied with the alterations. Proofs of the illustrations were delivered, and Potter was satisfied with them. In September 1904 20,000 copies of the book were published in two different bindings – one in paper boards and the other in a deluxe binding designed by Potter. The book was dedicated to Winifred Warne, "the girl who had the doll's house".
In the summer of 1905 Hunca Munca died after falling from a chandelier while playing with Potter. She wrote Warne on 21 July: "I have made a little doll of poor Hunca Munca. I cannot forgive myself for letting her tumble. I do so miss her. She fell off the chandelier; she managed to stagger up the staircase into your litte house, but she died in my hand about ten minutes after. I think if I had broken my own neck it would have saved a deal of trouble."
Between 1907 and 1912 Potter wrote miniature letters to children as from characters in her books. The letters reveal more about their characters and their doings. Though many were probably lost or destroyed, a few are extant from the characters in Two Bad Mice. In one, Jane Dollcook has broken the soup tureen and both her legs; in another, Tom Thumb writes Lucinda asking her to spare a feather bed which she regrets she cannot send because the one he stole was never replaced. Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca have nine children and the parents need another kettle for boiling water. Hunca Munca is apparently not a very conscientious housekeeper because Lucinda complains of dust on the mantlepiece.
In 1971, Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb appeared in a segment of the Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
Tales of Beatrix Potter is a 1971 ballet film with a plot based on the children's stories of English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The film was directed by Reginald Mills, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton , and starred artists of the Royal Ballet...
, and, in 1995, the tale was adapted to animation and telecast on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
anthology series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends is an animated television series based on the works of Beatrix Potter, featuring Peter Rabbit and other anthropomorphic animal characters created by Potter. It was originally shown in the UK on BBC between 1992 and 1995 and subsequently broadcast in the USA on...
.
Norman Warne
In 1894 Frederick Warne retired from active management of the Bedford Street publishing firm bearing his nameFrederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
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
Bedford Square
Bedford Square is a square in the Bloomsbury district of the Borough of Camden in London, England.Built between 1775 and 1783 as an upper middle class residential area, the sqare has had many distinguished residents, including Lord Eldon, one of Britain's longest serving and most celebrated Lord...
in Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
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
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902, and published in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1903...
and The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in August 1903. The story is about an impertinent red squirrel named Nutkin and his narrow escape from an owl called Old Brown. The book followed Potter's hugely...
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 retuen. She did, and the tale was accepted for 1904 publication as The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. The book is a sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit , and tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve...
. 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
Keswick
-Geography:A place in Australia:*Keswick, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide**Keswick railway station, Adelaide**Adelaide Parklands Terminal A place in Canada:*Keswick, Ontario...
. 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 holday in Hastings
Hastings
Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....
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
The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog and a washerwoman who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon...
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 diffiult disease to diagnose at that time. He was 37. His burial was held on 29 August in Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West 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."
Plot
Two Bad Mice reflects Potter's deepening happiness in her professional and personal relationship with Norman Warne and her delight in trouncing the rigors and strictures of middle class domesticity. For all the destruction the mice wreak, it is miniaturized and thus more amusing than serious. Potter enjoyed developing a tale that gave her the vicarious thrill of the sort of improper behaviour she would never have entertained in real life.The tale begins with "once upon a time" and a description of a "very beautiful doll's-house" belonging to a doll called Lucinda and her cook-doll Jane. Jane never cooks because the doll's-house food is made of plaster and was "bought ready-made, in a box full of shavings". Though the food will not come off the plates, it is "extremely beautiful".
One morning the dolls leave the nursery for a drive in their perambulator. No one is in the nursery when Tom Thumb and Hunca Munca, two mice living under the skirting board, peep out and cross the hearthrug to the doll's-house. They open the door, enter, and "squeak for joy" when they discover the dining table set for dinner. It is "all so convenient!" Tom Thumb discovers the food is plaster and loses his temper. The two smash every dish on the table – "bang, bang, smash, smash!" – and even try to burn one in the "red-hot crinkly paper fire" in the kitchen fireplace.
Tom Thumb scurries up the sootless chimney while Hunca Munca empties the kitchen canisters of their red and blue beads. Tom Thumb takes the dolls' dresses from the chest of drawers and tosses them out the window while Hunca Munca pulls the feathers from the dolls' bolster. In the midst of her mischief, Hunca Munca remembers she needs a bolster and the two take the dolls' bolster to their mouse-hole. They carry off several small odds and ends from the doll's-house including a bird cage and a bookcase that will not fit through the mouse-hole. The nursery door suddenly opens and the dolls return in their perambulator.
Lucinda and Jane are speechless when they behold the vandalism in their house. The little girl who owns the doll's-house gets a policeman doll and positions it at the front door, but her nurse is more practical and sets a mouse-trap. The narrator believes the mice are not "so very naughty after all": Tom Thumb pays for his crimes with a crooked sixpence placed in the doll's stocking on Christmas Eve and Hunca Munca atones for her hand in the destruction by sweeping the doll's-house every morning with her dust-pan and broom.
Illustrations
Ruth K. MacDonald, author of Beatrix Potter (1986), believes the success of The Tale of Two Mice lies in the plentiful and meticulous miniature details of the dollhouse in the illustrations. Potter persistently and consistently pursued a mouse-eye perspective and accuracy in the drawings. She could not have clearly seen the staircase down which the mice drag the bolster because it was impossible to take a photograph at that location, yet she placed herself imaginatively on the staircase and drew the mice in anatomically believable postures and in scale with the features of the dollhouse. She took so much pleasure in the many miniature furnishings of the dollhouse that Warne cautioned her about overwhelming the spectator with too many in the illustrations. The small format of the book miniaturizes the illustrations further, and their outline borders make the details appear even smaller both by the illusion of diminution the borders create and by limiting the picture to less than the full page.Themes
M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at PlattsburghState University of New York at Plattsburgh
The State University of New York at Plattsburgh is a four-year, public liberal arts college in Plattsburgh, New York. The college was founded in 1889 and opened in 1890. The college is currently part of the State University of New York system and is accredited by the Middle States Association of...
thinks The Tale of Two Bad Mice is a transitional work in Potter's career and reflects her concerns and questions about the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies. Changes in Potter's life were reflected in her art, Kutzer notes. In August 1905, Potter not only lost her editor and fiancé Norman Warne but purchased Hill Top
Hill Top
Hill Top can refer to:* Hill Top, Stanley, County Durham, England* Hill Top, Teesdale, County Durham, England* Hill Top, Cumbria, England * Hill Top, New South Wales, Australia* Hill Top, a small area of West Bromwich, England...
, a working farm in the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
that became her home away from London and her artistic retreat. Two Bad Mice may be viewed as an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
in which Potter expresses not only her desire for her own home but her fears about and frustrations with domestic life. While earlier works reflect Potter's interest in broad political and social issues, Two Bad Mice demonstrates her interests shifting to local politics and the lives of countrypeople.
The book reflects Potter's conflicted feelings about rebellion and domesticity – about her desire to flee her parents' home via a "rebellious" engagement to Norman Warne and her purchase of a domestic space that would be built with her fiance. Kutzer points out that the tale has three settings: that of the humans, that of the dollhouse, and that of the mice, and that the
themes of the book include "domesticity and the role of domiciles within domesticity" and tensions about the pleasures and dangers of domesticity and of rebellion and insurrection.
The human and dollhouse worlds reflect Potter's upper middle class background and origins: the proper little girl who owns the dollhouse has a governess and the dollhouse has servants' quarters and is furnished with gilt clocks, vases of flowers, and other accoutrements that bespeak the middle class. Kutzer points out that Potter is not on the side of the repectable middle class in this tale however: she is on the side of subversion, insurrection and individualism. The book is a miniature declaration of Potter's increasing independence from her family and her desire to have a home of her own, yet at the same time reflects her ambivalence about leaving home and her parents.
Potter approves of the domestic and social rebellion of the mice and of their desire for a comfortable house of their own. Although, she disapproves of the sterility and uselessness of the dolls' lives, she understands the attraction of a comfortable domestic life made possible by servants.
Kutzer observes the tale is marked with a "faint echo" of the larger class issues of the times, specifically labout unrest. The mice, she suggests, can be viewed as representatives of the various rebellions of the working classes against working conditions of England and the growing local political and industrial conflicts revolving around issues such as the recognition of new unionism, working conditions, minimum wages, an 8-hour day, and the closed shop. She disapproved of the use of violence to attain reform but not of reform itself.
Kutzer further believes that however much Potter wished to provide an example of moral behaviour for the reader in the last pages of the tale (the mice "paying" for their misdeeds), her sense of fairness and the subtext of British class unrest actually account for the tale's ending. Social authority (the policeman doll) and domestic authority (the governess) are both ineffective against the desires of the mice: one illustration depicts the animals simply evading the policeman doll to prowl outside the house and another illustration depicts the mice instructing their children about the dangers of the governess's mousetrap. Their repentance is merely show: Tom Thumb pays for his destruction with a useless crooked sixpence found under the rug and Hunca Munca cleans a house that is tidy to begin with. Their respectful show of repentance covers up their continuing rebellion against middle class authority. Although Potter approves of the domestic and social rebellion of the mice and their desire for a comfortable house of their own, she disapproves of the emptiness and sterility of the dolls' lives in the dollhouse yet understands the attractions of a comfortable life made possible in part by the labour of servants.
Reception
A reviewer in BookmanBookman
Bookman may refer to:* Bookman , a character in the manga series D.Gray-man* Bookman , a person who engages in bookselling* Bookman , a person who loves books...
thought Two Bad Mice a pleasant change from Potter's rabbit books (Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny) and believed neither Tom Thumb or Hunca Munca were completely bad, noting they both looked innocent and lovable in Potter's twenty-seven watercolour drawings. The reviewer approved Potter's "Chelsea-china like books" that were Warne's "annual marvels ... to an adoring nursery world".
Potter received her first fan letter from an American youngster in the wake of Two Bad Mice. Hugh Bridgeman wrote to say he enjoyed the book, and Potter in return wrote him, "I like writing stories. I should like to write lots and lots! I have ever so many inside my head but the pictures take such a dreadful long time to draw! I get quite tired of the pictures before the book is finished."
Merchandise
Potter confidently asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales with a Peter Rabbit doll, a board game, and a nursery wallpaper between 1903 and 1905. Similar "side-shows" (as she termed the ancillary merchandise) were conducted over the following two decades.In 1947 Frederick Warne & Co. gave Beswick Pottery
Beswick Pottery
J. W. Beswick was a pottery manufacturer, founded in 1892 by James Wright Beswick and his sons John and Gilbert in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. They are chiefly known for producing high-quality porcelain figurines such as farm animals and Beatrix Potter characters and have become highly sought after in...
of Longton, Staffordshire
Longton, Staffordshire
Longton is a southern district of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, and is known locally as the "Neck End" of the city. Longton is one of the six towns of "the Potteries" which formed the City of Stoke-on-Trent in 1925.-History:...
rights and licenses to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Seven figurines inspired by Two Bad Mice were issued between 1951 and 2000: Hunca Munca with the Cradle; Hunca Munca Sweeping; Tom Thumb; Christmas Stocking; Hunca Munca Spills the Beads; Hunca Munca cast in a large-sized, limited edition; and another Hunca Munca.
In 1977 Schmid & Co. of Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
and Randolph, Massachusetts
Randolph, Massachusetts
The Town of Randolph is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 32,112. Randolph adopted a new charter effective January 2010 providing for a council-manager form of government instead of the traditional town meeting...
was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter, and released two music boxes in 1981: one topped with a porcelain figure of Hunca Munca, and the other with Hunca Munca and her babies. Beginning in 1983, Schmid released a series of small, flat hanging Christmas ornaments depicting various Potter characters including several Hunca Muncas. In 1991, three music boxes were released: Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb in the dolls' bed (playing "Beautiful Dreamer
Beautiful Dreamer
"Beautiful Dreamer" is a parlor song by Stephen Foster . It was published posthumously in March 1864 by Wm. A. Pond & Co. of New York. The first edition declares on the title page that "Beautiful Dreamer" is "the last song ever written by Stephen C. Foster. Composed but a few days prior to his...
"); Tom Thumb instructing his children about the dangers of mouse traps ("You've Got a Friend
You've Got a Friend
"You've Got a Friend" is a song from 1971, originally written and performed by Carole King. It was included in her album Tapestry of 1971, but was made famous by James Taylor's cover version the same year...
"); Hunca Munca spilling the beads from the pantry canister ("Everything is Beautiful
Everything Is Beautiful
"Everything is Beautiful" is a song by Ray Stevens. It has appeared on many of Stevens' albums, including one named after the song, and has become a pop standard and common in religious performances. The children heard singing the chorus of the song, using the hymn, "Jesus Loves the Little...
"); and the two mice trying to cut the plaster ham ("Close to You"). Another music box released the same year played "Home! Sweet Home!
Home! Sweet Home!
"Home! Sweet Home!" is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari, Maid of Milan, the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by Payne...
" and depicted the exterior of the doll house, and, when reversed, the interior of the house with the bedroom upstairs and the dining room downstairs. Three separate mouse figurines could be placed here and there in the house.
Translations and reprints
Potter's 23 little books have been translated into nearly thirty languages including Greek and Russian. The English language editions still bear the Frederick Warne imprint though the company was bought by Penguin BooksPenguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in 1983. The task of remaking the printing plates for all 23 volumes of the Peter Rabbit collection from the very beginning with new photographs of the original drawings and new designs in the style of the original bindings was undertaken by Penguin in 1985, a project completed in two years and released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was the first of Potter's books to be translated when the Dutch edition of Peter Rabbit (Het Verhaal van Pieter Langoor) was published in 1912 under license by Nijgh & Ditmar's Uitgevers Maatschappij, Rotterdam. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Het Verhall van Kwakkel Waggel-Eend) followed the same year. Peter Rabbit and five other tales were published in Braille by The Royal Institute for the Blind in 1921. Twee Stoute Muisjes (Two Bad Mice) was first published in Dutch in 1946 and republished under license as Het Verhaal van Twee Stoute Muizen (The Tale of Two Bad Mice) by Uitgeverij Ploegsma, Amsterdam in 1969. Two Bad Mice was first published in German as Die Geshichite von den zwei bösen Mäuschen in 1939, and was under license to be published by Fukuinkan-Shoten, Tokyo in Japanese in 1971.
External links
- The Tale of Two Bad Mice at Wired for BooksWired for BooksWired for Books is an online educational project of the WOUB Center for Public Media at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The website features author interviews, dramatic audio productions of classic literature, readings of poetry, short stories, lectures, essays, and children's literature.Nearly...
- The Tale of Two Bad Mice at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...