Jemima Puddle-duck and Samuel Whiskers at 100

As I noted on Monday, for the next several weeks as I’ve decided to have ‘Anniversary Fridays.’ I’m doing this as a weekly series simply because I started blogging more than halfway through the year, and if I don’t make myself post something weekly I simply won’t get to it all before 2009. So Anniversary Friday will be my way, until sometime in November, to commemorate all the books, characters, films, etc. that are celebrating a significant birthday this year.

First off is one of my favorites. Listening to NPR this week one would think that Leonard Bernstein is the only person celebrating a centennial this year (and a happy 400th anniversary to John Milton), but it’s not so. He is joined in that regard by both Jemima Puddle-Duck and the illustrious Mr. Samuel Whiskers. These were the title characters in the two books published by Beatrix Potter in 1908. Miss Potter, who turned 42 in 1908, had at this point been working for quite a while, with eleven children’s books published by 1907 (her first, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was published in 1902). It had been three years since her fiancé Norman Warne had died of pernicious anemia and Potter’s subsequent move to the Hill Top farm in Cumbria (shown here) in the Lake District of northern England. In addition to her agricultural activities she dedicated herself to her writing and illustrating, producing one or two books a year until her eyesight gave out around 1920.



Both The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers were connected to her previous book, 1907’s The Tale of Tom Kitten. In that book Potter struck upon one of her great group of characters, the irascible three children of Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, the three kittens Moppet, Mittens, and Tom. The trio is dressed for a self-important tea party but proceed to sully and lose all their clothing while outside waiting for the guests to arrive. Chief accomplices in this mischief is the Puddle-ducks, Mr. Drake Puddle-duck, Rebeccah, and one Jemima Puddle-duck. At this point Jemima is not distinguished from the other two in any way; they are simply all somewhat self-important (like Tabitha) and dim-witted. It was therefore yet another stroke of genius to subsequently single Jemima out as slightly more self-important and unobservant than her counterparts in her own book in 1908.

I won’t recount the story of The Tale of Jemima Puddle-duck, but it is one of Potter’s strongest, I think, in regards to its depiction of motherhood and loss; the natural world can sometimes raise its ugly head in Potter’s world, not without empathy for her young readers but still without flinching about the Hobbsian nature of life and death Potter the naturalist would have been sufficiently familiar with.

I own a copy of The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter, issued in 2002 for the Peter Rabbit centennial, and here is some of what it says about Jemima Puddle-duck:

“Beatrix Potter’s love of Hill Top and farming shine through this story. She painted her farm manager’s wife, Mrs. Cannon, feeding the poultry, while the children Ralph and Betsy (to whom this “farmyard tale” is dedicated) are also illustrated. Kep the collie was Beatrix’s favourite sheepdog, and Jemima herself was a real duck who lived at Hill Top. She is a most popular character: self-important, naïve, but very endearing.

“The story also contains many delightful views of Sawrey: Jemima’s wood can still be seen, the view from the hills above the farm, across Esthwaite Water, has not changed, and the Tower Bank Arms is still the local village pub. This blend of fantasy and reality, so often to be found in Beatrix Potter’s work, gives a ring of truth to her imaginary world.”



Near the end of The Tale of Tom Kitten, which is after all equally about Tom and his two siblings, Potter’s narrator says, “And I think that some day I shall have to make another, larger, book, to tell you more about Tom Kitten!” With The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, or the Roly-Poly Pudding that is exactly what she did; this was in her mind all along, of course, as the two books were being composed more or less at the same time, in 1906. After having created the suave villain of the foxy-whiskered gentleman in Jemima Puddle-duck she upped the ante, in my opinion, creating not just her greatest villain but one of her greatest characters ever in Samuel Whiskers; this is also the only Tale named after its antagonist (there is no Tale of Mr. MacGregor!), an indication of how strong Samuel Whisker’s character is. The Complete Tales sheds some light on the title, however; here’s what it has to say:

“When this story was first published in 1908, it was entitled The Roly-Poly Pudding, and it appeared in the larger size used for The Pie and The Patty-Pan. In 1926 it was reduced to the standard size and given the title we now know it by.

“The tale was actually written in 1906, when Beatrix was exploring the Hill Top, the farm she had recently bought. She described the house in a letter to a friend. ‘It really is delightful—if the rats could be stopped out! . . . I never saw such a place for hide and seek and funny cupboards and closets.’ Here was her inspiration for the further adventures of Tom Kitten: an old farmhouse, and her pet rat, to whom the book is dedicated, ‘In remembrance of Sammy, the intelligent pink-eyed representative of a persecuted (but irrepressible) race. An affectionate little friend and most accomplished thief.’”

Samuel Whiskers is indeed irrepressible: despite his intention to eat Tom (how is he to bake him?) he is one of Potter’s most endearing characters. Her affection for his real-life model comes through in her treatment of his villainy. I also love how she turned the traditional cat-and-mouse tale on its head. (Some American readers may benefit from knowing the difference between a Jell-O pudding and a traditional British savory pudding of the kind Samuel wants to make of Tom.)



Along with Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers is my favorite Beatrix Potter book. I bought my Potter collection in 2003 and began reading some of the shorter tales to Loretta when she was about one, in 2005. (Samuel Whiskers, it seems to me, is one of the longer, with a higher text-to-illustration ratios akin to The Tailor of Gloucester.) Loretta was therefore introduced to the character via the 1993 film in the half-hour animated series The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends. I intend to devote at least a complete post to these wonderful productions at some point, but suffice it to say that we watched nearly all of them and found each to be exquisite. They are among the most delightful literary adaptations I’ve ever seen on the screen, maintaining the integrity of the original stories and even expanding upon them; the character (and voice) of Samuel Whiskers is among the prime examples of this. I particularly appreciate the lyrical quality of the films, exemplified in the live-action opening credits as well as the cartoons, as opposed to the sharper style of something like the recent film Miss Potter (probably okay for adults, but not what I’m looking for for Loretta necessarily, although I should mention she adored the frenetically kinetic adaptation by Annie Poon; scroll through her “Animation” excerpts to find The Roly Poly Pudding). At this point I plan on purchasing the entire series, but I was delighted to find this example on YouTube, although I still recommend full-screen presentation:

After seeing this Loretta created the Roly-Poly Pudding Game, where she is Tom and I Samuel: I roll her up in a comforter/duvet, spread butter on her (i.e. tickle her face with my finger), and roll her flat, either with my hands or our actual rolling pin, until a Scottish terrier saws through the roof to save her. The game’s slacked off a bit recently, but for two years it was one of her absolute favorite things to do, over and over and over again… It wouldn’t have worked if I had tried to invent it and explain it to her, but since she created it organically out of the movie she absolutely adored it, along with Tom, Moppet, Mittens, and, dare I say, even Samuel. She has, since then, equally taken to the original book.

Thanks, then, to Beatrix Potter for one hundred years of enjoyment. Her tales are timeless, and I think we can look forward to one hundred years more.