Today’s Visitor Vignette features one of my favourite signatures in the Innerpeffray Visitors’ Books, a young visitor to the library on 22nd August 1899.
Visitor Book Volume 2, f.58v.
Every time I come across this page, I am delighted all over again that Alice Mary Griffith allowed her son Rupert (aged 6) to sign his own entry. You can picture the interaction: Rupert watches other people signing the visitors’ book and wants to have a go. The adults around him make eye contact above his head, have that silent discussion about whether he’s too young, and eventually concede. Rupert takes up the pen, and in his very best handwriting, carefully forming each letter and making sure to dip the pen back in the ink on multiple occasions, inscribes his name. And the visitors’ books are forever blessed by this wonderful entry.
Although neither Rupert nor A. M. Griffith leave any indication as to their location or place of residence, the Bagshawe entries which bracket the Griffiths indicate that the party was staying presently in Crieff and visiting from Manchester and Cheltenham. And indeed, it was possible to track down records of Rupert and Alice Mary Griffith in and around Cheltenham.
Visitor Book Volume 2, ff.58v-59r.
Rupert Vardon de Burgh Griffith was born on the 25th December 1892 to Walter Hubert de Burgh Griffith and Alice Mary Griffith (née Gaitskell). He was baptised the following year, on 26th January 1893, in the same church where his parents had married in August 1891.
Certificate of Baptism for Rupert Vardon de Burgh Griffith, 26th January 1893
Certificate of Marriage between Walter Hubert de Burgh Griffith and Alice Mary Gaitskell, 11th August 1891
Rupert was educated in Cheltenham and by age 18 was studying at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, where the 1911 Census records “Rupert V de B Griffith” working as a “Gentleman Cadet.”
In the 1914 edition of Hart’s Annual Army Lists, digitised and available online through the NLS, Rupert is listed as a Second Lieutenant, having joined the Royal Fusiliers on the 13th March 1912, when he was 19. Almost exactly three years later, he was killed in action in St. Eloi, France, on the 12th March 1915, having been promoted to Lieutenant five months before. Rupert was buried in the Kemmel Chateau Military Cemetery in Belgium.
There is quite a lot of information already available about Rupert’s career in the Royal Fusiliers and his death during the First World War. His obituary includes his last words, “Cheer up, lads; time’s up in five minutes” and adds that he “was a good all-round athlete, his favourite sports being football, polo and rowing.” And now we can also add to his story that when he was 6 years old, he accompanied his Mum to the Library of Innerpeffray and convinced her to let him sign the visitors’ book himself.
While the vast majority of entries in the Innerpeffray visitors’ books are purely factual (with limited details such as the date, visitors’ names, their places of residence and occasionally their occupations), there are a few extended entries which provide additional information and so enable exact identification of their author. The portrait above shows naturalist Adam White, aged 42, likely taken as part of photography firm Maull and Polyblank’s ‘Literary and Scientific Portrait Club’ series, which was issued in forty monthly parts from 1856-1859.[i] Although the book title is too faint to decipher, I imagine that White is holding either one of his own publications or another influential zoological text.
Seven years after this portrait was taken, on Tuesday 26th September 1865, Adam White visited the Library of Innerpeffray and inscribed a rare extended entry in its visitors’ book. In addition to his name and the date of his visit, White includes his past occupation, current address, and details about his visit to the library, revealing that he “spent many hours” there.
Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.10v
His entry, pictured above, reads: “Adam White, for 27 years an assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum, spent many hours this day in the Library at Innerpeffray.” In the margin, underneath the date, he also adds, “& now resident 11. N. Melville Place, Edinburgh.” Had White only written a standard entry, with the date, his (fairly commonplace) name, and perhaps ‘Edinburgh’ as his location, it would likely have been much harder, if not impossible, to identify and discover more about him. But since we do have the extra information from his entry, we can actually find out quite a lot about Adam White – including details of a second visit to Innerpeffray within one of his written publications.
Although there is no trace of a second entry by him in the visitors’ book, we know that White visited the Library of Innerpeffray on at least two occasions. Published in the monthly periodical Good Words, White’s article on ‘Spiders’ reads:
“Come with me to that well-known point in Strathearn, called Whitehill, on an autumn morning. The sun is breaking through the mist, which conceals the lovely prospect all around. The view of the country, from the Ochils to the Grampians, from “fair” Perth to the woods of Strathallan and Drummond Castle, is spread out before you, but hidden. […] I was on my way to examine for a second time, the curious library of Lord Maderty at Innerpeffray, where are many books that belonged to the great Marquis of Montrose.”
Adam White, ‘Spiders’, Good Words, 7 (1866), 212-16 (p. 213).
Born in Edinburgh on 29th April 1817 to Mary Ann (née Gellatly) and Thomas White and educated at Edinburgh’s Royal High School, our young Zoologist started work at the British Museum in London in 1835, at the age of 18. Working alongside influential naturalists such as John George Children (1777-1852), John Edward Gray (1800-1875), and Edward Doubleday (1810-1849), White was mainly involved in identifying, naming and cataloguing arachnids, beetles, insects, and crustaceans. A prolific writer, White published a multitude of books and papers about his zoological findings, with biographer Ann Datta estimating that he produced “more than sixty scientific papers” in the twenty-eight years between 1839 and 1867.[ii] White also wrote on non-scientific matters, and between 1847 and 1851 he spearheaded the campaign for the creation of a National Museum of Scotland, penning many letters to politicians and members of the Edinburgh press.[iii]
Despite working in the Zoological Department for 27 years, White never rose above the position of Zoological Assistant – a snub which his biographers claim was “due to real or imagined difficulties with his superior,” John Edward Grey. Nevertheless, White had an excellent reputation as “an active and effective curator” and was a candidate for various professorial jobs in Edinburgh before and after he retired from the British Museum due to ill health in 1863. Indeed, two years after leaving the British Museum and in the same year as his first visit to Innerpeffray, he printed a pamphlet filled with testimonials for future employers. One of these letters of recommendation was written by no less than Charles Darwin, for whom White had catalogued some of the arachnids collected during his journey on the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin’s letter, written at his home in Kent on the 26th December 1851, reads:
My Dear Sir,
I have much pleasure in expressing my high opinion of your Zoological attainments; and your great zeal for every branch of Natural History must strike all who are acquainted with you.
Your papers in the scientific journals show how successfully you have worked out original materials. I have often had occasion to visit the working department in the British Museum, and I have invariably found you, permit me to add, most zealous and obliging in your endeavours to aid me in every possible way, and in giving me all the information in your power.
You are at full liberty to show this letter to any one; and I beg to remain, my dear Sir,
Yours sincerely,
Charles Darwin, Esq.
Charles Darwin to Adam White, ‘Letter No. 1466’, 26 December 1851, Darwin Correspondence Project
White did not only correspond with Darwin, and the letter above is just one example of correspondence with notable nineteenth-century figures. In May 1907, O. J. Stevenson wrote an article for The Canadian Magazine, on ‘The Eccentricities of Genius,’ with extracts from a series of letters from White’s archive, then in the possession of a relative in Toronto.[iv] The article reveals that in 1847, White took it on himself to promote a proposed memorial of English poet William Cowper in Westminster Abbey by writing to individuals including Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth to ask for their support. (While Dickens refused “point blank to sympathise with [the] proposal”, Wordsworth was exceedingly supportive and “even offered to increase the amount of his contribution should it be found necessary.”)[v] Stevenson also includes a letter from Wordsworth to White in 1844, wherein Wordsworth agreed to be quoted in a future publication: “I should deem it an honour to have any extracts from my poems inserted in such a book, as I have no doubt yours will prove.”
Mr. AdamWhite, from an 1846 pencil sketch by Scottish artist Norman Macbeth, as featured in ‘The Canadian Magazine’, May 1907, p. 7.
In 1865-66, White wrote letters to both Alfred Tennyson and Coventry Patmore enquiring “as to their opinion of the value of natural history as a subject of the school course”. Patmore’s personal response infers that he had crossed paths with White while they both worked at the British Museum – White having retired a few years prior and Patmore a few weeks away from retiring from his Assistant Librarian position.
British Museum, Dec. 4, 1865.
My Dear White, —I and my children have been delighted with your lucubrations in natural history. I entirely think with you as to the utility of obtaining, if possible, a place for natural history in the ordinary educational course. It is a study of which even a smattering is an advantage. Almost everything one learns concerning our fellow creatures of the field and air increases our friendship for them and our pleasure in their society. Some day you must come and see my bird cage; it contains fifty-four little fellows from all parts of the world, living together on excellent terms.
Yours most truly,
Coventry Patmore.
As featured in O. J. Stevenson, ‘The Eccentricities of Genius’, The Canadian Magazine, May 1907, pp. 7-8.
When Adam White died in Glasgow on 30th December 1878, he was a highly regarded curator and writer with an admirable scientific reputation. He had authored a library’s worth of papers, articles, and books; enjoyed membership of exclusive groups such as the Linnean Society, the Entomological Society of London, and the Botanical Society of London; had corresponded with men such as Darwin, Dickens, Wordsworth, and Tennyson; and had personally furthered the scientific field of Natural History. Finally, in addition to himself naming numerous species of insects and arachnids, he was appropriately memorialised by John Obadiah Westwood, who named the ‘Taphroderes whitii’ in his honour:
I am indebted to A. White, Esq., the author of numerous valuable papers on Entomological subjects, for directing my attention to this very interesting insect in the Cabinet of the British Museum placed under his charge, and whose name I have much pleasure in associating with so curious a species.
J. O. Westwood, ‘The Cabinet of Oriental Entomology’, (London: William Smith, 1848), p. 32.
Taphroderes Whitii, as illustrated in J. O. Westwood, The Cabinet of Oriental Entomology (London: William Smith, 1848), p.32.
[i] ‘Maull’, The British Museum <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG165838> [accessed 28 June 2022].
[ii] Ann Datta, ‘White, Adam (1817-1878), Naturalist’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[iii] E. G. Hancock, ‘Adam White’, in The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, ed. by Bernard Lightman (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), iv, 2147–48.
[iv] O. J. Stevenson, ‘The Eccentricities of Genius’, The Canadian Magazine, May 1907, pp. 1–9.
[v] It appears that White’s appeal was not successful as, although there is a stained glass window in Westminster Abbey commemorating William Cowper, it was “Given by George William Childs, American citizen, 1876” – thirty years after White’s correspondence with prospective sponsors. (‘William Cowper’, Westminster Abbey Commemorations).
Works Cited:
‘Adam White’, The British Museum <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG162220> [accessed 29 June 2022]
Darwin, Charles. Letter to Adam White, ‘Letter No. 1466’, 26 December 1851, Darwin Correspondence Project <https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-1466.xml> [accessed 23 June 2022]
Datta, Ann, ‘White, Adam (1817-1878), Naturalist’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29234> [accessed 22 June 2022]
Hancock, E. G., ‘Adam White’, in The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, ed. by Bernard Lightman (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), iv, 2147–48
‘Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1’ (Innerpeffray: Library of Innerpeffray, 1859-1897)
‘Literary and Scientific Portrait Club: Photographs by Maull & Polyblank, circa 1855’, National Portrait Gallery <https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/set/192/Literary+%26+scientific+club+by+Maull+%26+Polyblank> [accessed 29 June 2022]
‘Maull’, The British Museum <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG165838> [accessed 28 June 2022]
Stevenson, O. J., ‘The Eccentricities of Genius’, The Canadian Magazine, May 1907, 1–9, Toronto Public Library <https://archive.org/details/canadianmagazine29torouoft/> [accessed 29 June 2022]
Westwood, J. O., The Cabinet of Oriental Entomology (London: William Smith, 1848), Biodiversity Heritage Library <https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/34273> [accessed 25 June 2022]
White, Adam, ‘Spiders’, Good Words, March 1866, 212–16, ProQuest British Periodicals <https://www.proquest.com/historical-periodicals/spiders/docview/3300769/se-2?accountid=14755> [accessed 01/02/2021]
‘William Cowper’, Westminster Abbey Commemorations <https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/william-cowper> [accessed 28 June 2022]
White, Adam, A Popular History of Birds, Comprising a Familiar Account of their Classification and Habits. (London: Lovell Reeve, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, 1855), Wellesley College Library <https://archive.org/details/popularhistoryof00whit_0/> [accessed 27 June 2022]
White, Adam, A Popular History of British Crustacea; Comprising a Familiar Account of Their Classification and Habits (London: Lovell Reeve, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden., 1857), Smithsonian Libraries <https://archive.org/details/popularhistory00whit> [accessed 30 June 2022]
White, Adam, Heads and Tales; or, Anecdotes and Stories of Quadrupeds and Other Beasts, Chiefly Connected with Incidents in the Histories of More or Less Distinguished Men, (London: James Nisbet & Co., 21 Berners Street., 1870), University of California Libraries <https://archive.org/details/headstalesoranec00whitiala> [accessed 30 June 2022]
As it is the 155th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth on the 28th July 2021, we are celebrating by exploring some of the links between Beatrix Potter and the Library of Innerpeffray.
Helen Beatrix Potter Heelis (1866-1943) is remembered today as a respected mycology expert, one of the most popular children’s authors of the Victorian period, and the creator of unforgettable fictional characters including Jemima Puddle-Duck, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Squirrel Nutkin, and many more. Perhaps her most well-known book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was first conceived of while Beatrix was staying near Dunkeld in 1893. Writing a letter to the son of one of her former governesses, she came up with a story about “four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.” Little did she know then that Peter Rabbit would one day become a household name!
Beatrix Potter Letter to Noel Moore 1893 c. National Trust
It is a well-known fact that Beatrix Potter and her family spent many summer holidays in Perthshire, with her father, Rupert Potter, renting Dalguise House near Dunkeld every summer between 1871 and 1881.[1] Interested in the sport and freedom of Scotland, with its plentiful shooting, fishing and beautiful opportunities for walking and photography, the extended Potter family often travelled away from London between May and October.[2] Before becoming regular guests at Dalguise, we know that the Potters stayed with Edmund Potter near Alness in Easter Ross, and in Tulliemet House in 1870.[3] Excitingly, we now have evidence from the Innerpeffray Library visitors’ books that the Potters also stayed in Scotland in 1868 and 1869.
On the 26th August 1868, a month after Beatrix’s second birthday, the following signatures were entered into the visitors’ book:
Innerpeffray Visitor Books Vol 1, f15r
Rupert Potter and Mrs. R Potter, Kippen, and Mrs. Leech and daughter, London.
Rupert Potter (1832-1914), Beatrix’s father, was a barrister and successful amateur photographer who married Beatrix’s mother, Helen Leech (1839-1932) on the 8th August 1863. The Potters were visiting with Helen’s mother, Beatrix’s maternal grandmother, Jane Ashton (1806-1884) and one of her daughters, Beatrix’s aunt – most likely the eldest daughter of Mrs Leech, Jane (1833-1876), who never married and remained close to home. Although Mrs Leech and her daughter write their location as London, Rupert and Helen write that they were staying at Kippen Estate while visiting Scotland, rather than their usual London address. Although there is a village called Kippen in Stirlingshire, as below where the Potters wrote ‘Garvock’ to refer to Garvock House in Dunning, it seems more likely that they were referring to Kippen House, also in Dunning, which was built in the 1840s.
Postcard showing Kippen House, Dunning
The following year, on the 13th August 1869, we find the Potters returning to Innerpeffray for a second time, this time accompanied by Reverend William Gaskell as well as Mrs and Miss Leech:
Innerpeffray Visitors’ Books Vol 1, f.16v
Mrs and Miss Leech, London; Revd. W. Gaskell, Manchester; and Mr and Mrs Rupert Potter, Garvock and London.
In the summer of 1869, the Potter family was again holidaying with Beatrix’s maternal grandmother and aunt, as well as Unitarian minister and close friend of the family William Gaskell (1805-1884). It was common for the Victorian middle classes to “invite friends to join them on holiday,” and the Potters frequently invited friends and family to join them in Scotland – “especially those who liked to fish and who would endure Rupert’s endless photography sessions.”[4] Gaskell was a close friend and teacher of Rupert Potter’s, having known Rupert’s father Edmund since his university days. Indeed, Jenny Uglow, biographer of William’s wife Elizabeth, states that William often joined the Potters on their annual summer holidays but never invited his wife to accompany him – she emphasizes that he “needed escape, less, one sometimes feels, from the city than from his growing family.”[5] It appears that he preferred spending his leisure time with the Potters rather than his own family.
Photograph of Reverend William Gaskell and Beatrix Potter, taken during one of “Rupert’s endless photography sessions” in the grounds of Dalguise House
On this visit to Innerpeffray, the Potters recorded their location as both Garvock and London, indicating that their long-term residence was in London but at the present time they were staying in Garvock House while in Scotland.
Postcard showing Garvock House Dunning
The following month, the Potters visit Innerpeffray Library for the third time on the 6th September 1869. Their entries in the visitors’ book reveal that although the Leeches were not present, the Potters were joined by Beatrix’s paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter (1802-1883), who writes his place of residence as his Hertfordshire home, Camfield Place:
Innerpeffray Visitor Book Vol 1, f17r
Mr Edmund Potter M.P., Camfield, Hatfield, Herts; Mr. and Miss Potter, also from Camfield; and Mr and Mrs R Potter, Garvock.
It is clear from their three separate visits that Rupert and Helen Potter enjoyed their trips to Innerpeffray – dedicating time from two summer holidays to visit and on each occasion bringing a different visitor to see the library. Innerpeffray was an accessible tourist destination from both Garvock and Kippen by carriage, train or even bicycle – it would take around three hours to walk or one hour to cycle to the library from either location on modern roads. Although Innerpeffray was still easily accessible by train from Dalguise House, they must have considered it too long a journey, as the Potters do not appear again in the visitors’ books.
Map showing the locations of the Potters’ Scottish holiday residences in relation to Innerpeffray Library: Garvock, Kippen, and Dalguise House
Noticeably absent from all of these visitors’ book entries is Beatrix Potter herself! Aged two and three years old at the time of the respective visits, Beatrix may have been left at home with her nurse rather than joining her parents and grandparents at Innerpeffray Library. It is true that Beatrix often spoke of her lonely childhood, where she spent little time with her parents while in London, cared for instead by her nurses and governesses. However, Beatrix also wrote that her “happiest moments” were those spent in Scotland, where “she got extra attention from her father.”[6] Perhaps, away from the stricter rules of London society, “where every activity was carefully regimented and supervised,” the Potters brought their daughter with them while touring Scotland.[7]
Bookplate of Edmund Potter, Camfield Place.
From an early age, Beatrix was an intelligent young girl who was encouraged by friends and family to love stories and books. Reverend William Gaskell, who was a regular holiday companion and visited Innerpeffray with the Potters in August 1869, was chairman of the Portico Library in Manchester from 1849 to 1884 and was recorded as having borrowed more than 700 books between 1850 and 1859.[8] Her grandfather Edmund Potter, who accompanied the Potters to Innerpeffray in September of that same year, had “built a reading room and library which was kept well stocked with books and newspapers.”[9] Although her paternal grandmother, Jessy Crompton Potter, did not accompany her husband Edmund on his trip to Innerpeffray, Beatrix often wrote that she remembered “the stories told by her adoring grandmother” in the library of Camfield Place.[10]With these bibliophile friends and relatives knowing the importance of books on young, impressionable minds, perhaps Beatrix was indeed brought to see the Library of Innerpeffray. Without her name written in the visitors’ books, we can only guess – but I for one would like to think so.
Isla Macfarlane, PhD Student
[1] Lynne McGeachie, Beatrix Potter’s Scotland: Her Perthshire Inspiration (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2010), p. 29.
[2] ‘Beatrix Potter Exhibition Garden’, Birnam Arts Visitor Attractions <https://www.birnamarts.com/visitor-tourist-attractions/beatrix-potter-exhibition-garden/>.
[3] Linda Lear, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2007), p. 27.
[8] Barbara Brill and Alan Shelston, ‘Manchester: “A Behindhand Place for Books”: The Gaskells and the Portico Library’, The Gaskell Society Journal, 5 (1991), 27–36 (pp. 27–28) <https://www.jstor.org/stable/45185290>.
