The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher

Background

In July 1905, Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm in the Lake District with the profits from the sales of six children's books and a small legacy from an aunt. Thereafter, her works focused on village and country life, and introduced larger and more varied casts of animal characters, and plots with sinister villains. Although Jeremy Fisher is not as closely concerned with either Hill Top or village life as other tales of the period were or would be, Potter completely rewrote an earlier version of the tale to make the setting and characters consistent with the Lake District countryside.

Composition and publication

The origin of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher lies in a story and picture letter Potter sent from the estate of Eastwood at Dunkeld, Scotland, on 5 September 1893 to Eric Moore, the son of her former governess, Annie Carter Moore. The day before, Potter had sent a similar story and picture letter about Peter Rabbit to Eric's brother, Noel.

Page from Nister's Comical Customers at the New Stores of Comical Rhymes and Stories with Potter's illustrations, ca. 1895. The wooden boat would become a waterlily pad in Jeremy Fisher.

The frog letter to Eric begins, "[O]nce upon a time there was a frog called Jeremy Fisher, and he lived in a little house on the banks of a river [...]". The tale was set on the River Tay where Potter was summering at the time of the letter's composition with her parents and brother. The hero was based upon the several closely observed frogs Potter had kept over the years, and the plot was one not only certain to amuse a child, but one to provide plenty of opportunity for artistic and literary development.

In 1894, Potter created a series of pen-and-ink sketches called "A Frog he would a-fishing go" for the fine art colour printers, Ernest Nister. She had been doing a number of small commissions for the firm and thought her frog series would make a booklet. The firm expressed little interest: "We certainly cannot make a booklet of it as people do not want frogs now." Nister nonetheless continued negotiations for the series, and Potter finally received the price she requested. The sketches were published in a Nister children's annual, Comical Customers at the New Stores of Comical Rhymes and Stories.

Following the hugely successful publication by Frederick Warne & Co. of Potter's first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, the author decided to develop the frog story further and bought back her drawings and Nister's printer's blocks to protect any future copyright concerns. While developing The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in 1902, Potter wrote her publisher Norman Warne from Melford Hall in Suffolk, the home of her cousin Ethel, Lady Hyde Parker, "I should like to do Mr. Jeremy Fisher too some day." She had great faith in the Jeremy character and told Warne, "I think we can make something of him."

Potter was staying with her cousin Ethel, Lady Hyde Parker, at the ancestral seat of the Parker family, Melford Hall in Suffolk, when she wrote her editor Norman Warne that she wanted to develop Jeremy Fisher. The book would eventually be dedicated to Lady Hyde Parker's daughter, Stephanie. (Melford Hall, Long Melford, Suffolk, England, May 2004)

As the manuscript developed (once the concept was accepted by Warne in 1905), the setting was moved from the River Tay to Esthwaite Water, a lake in the environs of Sawrey and Hawkshead. Elements of Moss Eccles Tarn on Potter's Hill Top farmland were incorporated into the tale's illustrations. Potter planted the small stretch of water with the waterlilies seen in the illustrations. It was at the Tarn that Potter and her husband William Heelis would later keep a small boat.

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher was the last book Potter discussed with Norman Warne before his sudden and unexpected death in August 1905. After his death, his brother Harold Warne became Potter's editor. She wrote him not long after his brother's death suggesting the frog book be developed and indicated his brother had given the project his approval: "We had thought of doing the larger half-crown book of verses "Applely [sic] Dapply" & the frog "Mr. Jeremy Fisher" to carry on the series of little ones. I know some people don't like frogs! but I think I had convinced Norman that I could make it a really pretty book with a good many flowers & water plants for backgrounds. That book would be easy & plain sailing [...]".

Moss Eccles Tarn in the vicinity of Potter's Hill Top Farm became the setting (with nearby Esthwaite Water) for Jeremy Fisher when Potter began developing the tale in 1905. (Moss Eccles Tarn, October 2005)

In October 1905, Potter went to her recently-purchased Hill Top Farm in Lancashire to look the place over. She wrote: "I have been drawing a frog today with a fishing rod, I think it is going to be a funny book." Warne finally agreed to the Jermey Fisher tale, and it was published in July 1906.

She chose the Regency period for the tale, reflecting her love for the work of Randolph Caldecott. When Fruing Warne (Norman Warne's brother) thought the frog's colouration incorrect, Potter brought a live frog in a jar to the Warne offices to settle the question.

The book was dedicated to her cousin's daughter Stephanie Hyde Parker – "For Stephanie from Cousin B.". At a later date, Potter's letters to children included miniature invitations and responses running between Jeremy and his friends, An illustration for the rhyme, "The Rain it Raineth Every Day", depicting Jeremy fishing in the rain was intended for Potter's pet project, Book of Rhymes (1905), but the book was never published.

Plot

Jeremy Fisher is a common frog (Rana temporaria), a species whose distribution extends across Europe. (Photographed in Essex, England, 2008)

The Tale of Jeremy Fisher is simple, and designed for an audience about the same age as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Like Peter Rabbit, Jeremy Fisher occurs in a distant and undefined past though that past can be narrowed to the Regency period as evinced by Jeremy's dress. Jeremy Fisher is a frog, and, one rainy day, goes fishing. Should he catch enough minnows, he will invite to dinner his friends, Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise and Sir Isaac Newton. Jeremy suffers several misadventures on the water: his toe is tweaked by a water-beetle, and his fingers are pricked by a stickleback. A trout swallows him, but takes a dislike to the taste of the frog's fishing jacket and spits him out. Jeremy swims for shore, certain he will never go fishing again. In the last few pages, Jeremy is home again and welcoming his friends. He serves an elegant dinner of roasted grasshopper with ladybird sauce, which, in the author's opinion, must have been nasty.

Critical commentaries

Potter scholar and biographer Linda Lear notes, "[Potter] wanted to do a frog story for some time, because it was amusing and offered the opportunity for the naturalist illustrations she delighted in [...] The text and illustrations for this story are some of the most balanced and compatible of all her writing. Nature is described and illustrated truthfully: beautifully tranquil as well as unpredictably aggressive." The simple story of Jeremy Fisher is rife with careful observation of nature, and the fictional animals behave in the ways of their real world counterparts – Jeremy likes a rainy day and Ptolemy eats vegetable matter. The tale reveals the roots of Potter's art in the works of Randolph Caldecott. She later wrote: "I did try to copy Caldecott, but [...] I did not achieve much resemblance."

Randolph Caldecott was a Potter childhood favorite and she acknowledged his influence on Jeremy Fisher: "I did try to copy Caldecott, but [...] I did not achieve much resemblance."

Jeremy's social position and those of his friends are established through the clothing they wear: Jeremy wears the dress of a Regency gentleman, Sir Isaac Newton wears a black and gold waistcoat and tailcoat, and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise wears the chain and medallion of his office. Potter is not as critical of Jeremy as she is of her other indolent upper class characters such as the dolls in The Tale of Two Bad Mice. Although Potter sharply critiqued the upper class elsewhere, in Jeremy Fisher her tone has mellowed. It is possible her relocation to Sawrey and Hill Top Farm may have produced in her a willingness to accept the silliness of the middle class and the eccentricities of the upper class without being overly judgemental.

The book faithfully depicts the leisure activities of upper class British gentlemen – poling and punting, fishing for sport rather than sustenance, and serving or attending elegant dinner parties. It is likely Potter modeled her characters on her barrister father, Rupert Potter, and his associates at the Athenaeum and the Reform clubs in London. The sole concern for these wealthy gentlemen was to fill their many leisure hours with interesting activities and to pursue those activities with a passion bordering on obsession. Potter paid homage to this indulgent (and virtually useless) lifestyle in Mr. Jeremy Fisher, but brought the real world uncertainty of life for a frog to the tale in Jeremy's encounter with the trout. Even then, a gentleman (or frog) of the leisure class would have viewed a brush with death as an anecdote to entertain his peers.

Adaptations

In 1971, Michael Coleman danced the role of Jeremy Fisher in The Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter. In 1993, Jeremy Fisher was adapted to animation and telecast as an episode in the BBC anthology series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.

References

Footnotes