Day 7 – Hopping Down the Bunny Trail

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” –Beatrix Potter

Blythe House – https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/archives

Blythe House is an archival location for many of the collections from the Victoria and Albert museum.  Here, we were given a brief history of Leslie and Enid Linder who were involved with the works of Beatrix Potter.  As Potter wrote in code, Leslie spend a great deal of time deciphering her journal writings.  Beatrix started writing her journal at the age of 15.  She did not include punctuation, so her coded writing looked like scribbles.  Through this process she found her voice as an author and simply wrote about what she observed, read, and heard in life.  Her journal includes over 200,000 words.  Leslie Linder later spent 5 years looking through these pages and deciphering her journal line by line.  Someone once said, “I think but for Leslie’s pursuit to find Beatrix’s code, his enthusiasm – and his finances – she might never have reached the popularity and importance that she now has.”  Leslie Linder broke the code in 1958.

One of the archivists, Ann Marie, then showed us several archival items, many of which were related to Beatrix Potter.  They had an impressive collection of illustrations which were very quaint.  Another item I liked was a small library shelf complete with a set of miniature books.  The items were also all in wonderful condition.  I was particularly interested in how they were housed.  The illustrations were bordered by mat board and were very securely hinged in place to ensure no edges or corners were unnecessarily bent.