Beatrix Potter & Animals: Frogs

Beatrix held a life-long fascination with frogs, stemming from her early studies of the breathing systems of her pet frog, Punch (whom she kept for ‘five or six years’), and numerous newts. Her interest was also sparked by her father’s collection of Randolph Caldecott’s ‘Frog pictures’, as she called them. ‘I did try to copy Caldecott…’ she confessed ‘but…I did not achieve much resemblance.’

The character of Mr. Jeremy Fisher started out life in a picture letter sent to Eric Moore, in September 1893 (the day after she sent the one about Peter Rabbit to his brother, Noel).

The following year she sent a series of sketches inspired by Caldecott’s A Frog he Would A-Wooing Go, to Ernest Nister & Co., London. Entitled A Frog he would a-fishing go, she had intended her illustrations to be published as a booklet, but Nister replied that: ‘People don’t want frogs now…’ and so they appeared as a double page in their 1896 Holiday Album, Pictures and stories for little folks, instead. A further disappointment to her, was the fact that her illustrations were accompanied by someone else’s verse — Clifton Bingham’s.

Beatrix eventually paid Ernest Nister & Co. £6 for the return of the nine zinc blocks for her drawings and their copyright and tried to convince Norman that they would make a good book: ‘I think I could make something of him’ she replied in one of their final exchanges of correspondence.

The original frogs were sketched at Dunkeld from where her picture letter was sent, but it was in 1905, after the death of Norman, that she went to Sawrey and sketched frogs there. The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher was published the following July.