The Magical World of 'Miss Potter'

LONDON, Jan. 23, 2007 — -- For centuries, painters have been inspired by the mysterious light in England's Lake District. This national park on England's northwest coast is known for its stunning scenery, abundant wildlife and cultural heritage.

It was there that the poet William Wordsworth wrote that he "wandered lonely as a cloud." And it was there that Beatrix Potter, the author famous for her "Peter Rabbit" children's books, imagined the character Jemima Puddle-Duck searching for a place to lay her eggs.

"I just saw Jemima Puddle-Duck's gate. It's great," squealed an excited Serena Hopper from Australia as she shopped for souvenirs at Potter's Hill Top Farm. Hopper also had lunch at the fabled Tower Bank Arms, which features in Jemima's tale. An estimated 15 million tourists visit the Lake District, every year and "Miss Potter," the movie, will undoubtedly bring more.

And those who come to the Lake District will realize that there was a lot more to Potter than bunnies in blue jackets and a tragic love affair.

"Lots of things about her life I found completely astonishing," said the director of the movie, Chris Noonan. "There are so many things about her that go way beyond your preconceptions, or way beyond my preconceptions, anyway."

Generations of fans grew up with Peter Rabbit and his friends, but few people know, for example, that Potter started drawing fungi when she was a lonely 8-year-old. Her nature drawings are now on display at the Armitt Gallery, a few miles down the road from her farm. They are a long way from fluffy kittens.

There are intricate reproductions of mushrooms and fungi, a watercolor of bats in a barn. Fish. Frogs. Apparently, Potter even dissected rabbits and frogs, just to see how they moved.

"She was absolutely an expert," said gallery director Karan Herington-Howell. "She probably hasn't been equaled, even today."

But her drawings and paintings lay unpublished until the 1960s, long after Potter had died. And the paper she wrote in the early 1900s, explaining how lichens were formed, has been lost. She wasn't allowed to present it to a venerable London scientific society because it only admitted men.

It all might have been very different had Potter been born in more enlightened times.