Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes
Beatrix Potter (London 1866 - Near Sawrey, Cumbria 1943)
Category
Manuscripts and documents
Date
1904 - 1905
Materials
Ink, Paper, Pencil, Watercolour
Measurements
198 x 150 mm; 1 sheet (Extent)
Order this imageCollection
Beatrix Potter Gallery, Cumbria
NT 242235.13
Summary
Loose sheet from the manuscript dummy HIL.R.34 containing a pencil and ink-written rhyme along with a pencil and watercolour drawing of a seated mouse. This sheet was slipped in between pages 24 and 25 of the dummy book. On the reverse of the sheet is part of a faint pencil drawing of a kitchen range with fender and teapot and pots on shelves. I've heard that Tommy Tittlemouse/ Lived in a tiny little house - / Thatched with a roof of rushes brown/ And lined with hay and thistle-down. See also HIL.R.34, the dummy book; HIL.R.34.1 - HIL.R.34.12 and HIL.R.34.14 - HIL.R.34.49, further rhymes and illustrations. See Beatrix Potter's Art by Anne Stevenson Hobbs (page 155, plate 162) for a more developed watercolour illustration (in the Linder Trust collection now at the Victoria and Albert Museum) of Tommy Tittlemouse outside his house for the 1905 Appley Dapply; and (page 102, plate 100) a watercolour titled 'Golden Corn' and dated October 1899, of mice gathering corn into a nest in a cornfield, which is perhaps a precursor of the Tommy Tittlemouse-type mouse. Compare also the illustrations of Timmy Willie for The Tale of Johnny Townmouse, especially HIL.RP.631; and see Beatrix Potter's Art (page 154, plate 161) for earlier versions of Timmy Willie and Johnny Town Mouse in the illustration 'The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse' of c1905.
Makers and roles
Beatrix Potter (London 1866 - Near Sawrey, Cumbria 1943), writer