The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog washerwoman (laundress) who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon the cottage and stays for tea. The two deliver freshly laundered clothing to the animals and birds in the neighbourhood. Potter thought the book would be best enjoyed by girls, and, like most girls' books of the period, it is set indoors with a focus on housework.
Potter's pet hedgehog, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle,Potter spelled the name 'Tiggy-winkle' but the name in the title of the published book became 'Tiggy-Winkle' (Lear 2007, p. 187). and Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman, were the inspirations for the eponymous heroine. Lucie Carr, a child friend of Potter's, was the model for the fictional Lucie. Potter's Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny make cameo appearances in the illustrations. The Newlands Valley and the surrounding fells are the sources for the backgrounds in the illustrations.
Mrs. Tiggy-winkle has been described as one of Potter's most positive creations.Taylor 1987, p. 121 Although Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is set in an identifiable place and time period, the tale is mythologized by reaching back to an age when household chores were performed manually and without the aid of modern mechanical inventions. The simple dwellings, rustic pathways, and stone fences enhance the tale's timeless aspect and suggest an unchanging countryside and its way of life.
Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a popular character and the subject of considerable merchandise over the decades including nursery ware and porcelain figurines. The tale has been published in braille and the Initial Teaching Alphabet, and has been translated into French, German, and Dutch. In 1971, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a character performed by Sir Frederick Ashton in The Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter. In 1993, the tale was adapted to animation and telecast as an episode of the BBC series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
Plot
A little girl named Lucie, living on a farm called Little-Town, has lost three handkerchiefs and a pinafore. She questions Tabby Kitten and Sally Henny-penny about them, but they know nothing. Lucie mounts a stile and spies some white cloths lying in the grass high on a hill behind the farm. She scrambles up the hill along a steep pathway which ends under a big rock. She finds a little door in the hillside and hears someone singing behind it.
Lucie opens the door and discovers a low-ceilinged kitchen and tiny objects. At the table stands a short, stout woman, who introduces herself as Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, a washerwoman. She has found Lucie's lost things, and launders them for her, as well as showing items belonging to her customers. They have tea together, though Lucie keeps her distance from Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle due to the prickles on her back.
The laundered clothing is tied up in bundles and Lucie's handkerchiefs are neatly folded into her clean pinafore. They set off together down the path to return the fresh laundry to the little animals and birds in the neighbourhood. At the bottom of the hill, Lucie mounts the stile and turns to thank Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. However, strangely, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle runs up the hill, not asking for the washing bill nor saying goodbye. Her clothes have disappeared, revealing Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle to be a hedgehog.
Following the events, some townspeople believe Lucie had fallen asleep on the stile and dreamed the encounter, despite having her laundry cleaned and the narrator themselves stating they have seen Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's door.
Background The story of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was inspired by Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman the Potters employed over the course of eleven summers at Dalguise House on the River Tay in Perthshire. Potter was 26 when, in 1892, she visited MacDonald while staying at Heath Park, Birnam. She wrote in her journal: "Went out with the pony ... to see Kitty MacDonald, our old washerwoman ... Kitty is eighty-three but waken, and delightfully merry ... She is a comical, round little woman, as brown as a berry and wears a multitude of petticoats and a white mutch. Her memory goes back for seventy years, and I really believe she is prepared to enumerate the articles of her first wash in the year '71". (The Scots Language Centre defines "mutch" as "A head-dress, especially a close-fitting day cap of white linen or muslin…specifically such as used to be worn by married women”.)
In 1942, the year before she died, Potter's thoughts returned to Kitty MacDonald when she wrote about a piece of crockery:Seventy eighty years ago it belonged to another old woman, old Katie MacDonald, the Highland washerwoman. She was a tiny body, brown as a berry, beady black eyes and much wrinkled, against an incongruously white frilled mutch. She wore a small plaid crossed over shawl pinned with a silver brooch, a bed jacket, and a full kilted petticoat. She dropped bob curtsies, but she was outspoken and very independent, proud and proper ... The joy of converse with old Katie was to draw her out to talk of the days when she was a wee bit lassie—herding the kine. The days when 'Boney' [Napoleon] was a terror ... the old woman wouldn't dwell upon hard weather and storms; she spoke of the sunshine and clouds, and shadows, the heather bells, ... "the broom of the Cowden Knowes", the sun and wind on the hills where she played, and knitted, and herded cattle and sheep. A bonny life it was, but it never came back ..."Linder 1971, p. 159
Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle may have been conceived as early as 1886, it was not until 1901 Potter began elaborating it while on holiday at Lingholm west of Derwentwater where she met young Kathleen and Lucie Carr, daughters of the local vicar. In 1902, it was put to paper. The Carr family lived at Skelghyl, but Potter took some artistic liberty and moved the house's location to Little Town in the text. The family came to tea at Lingholm often with Potter delighted by the one-year-old child's behaviour. On one occasion, Lucie left her gloves behind at Lingholm, and Potter transformed the incident into the fictional Lucie's propensity for losing her pocket handkerchiefs.Lear 2007, p. 189 A small copy book contains what is believed to be the earliest manuscript of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Its title page is inscribed: "Made at Lingholm, Sept. 01 told to cousin Stephanie at Melford Nov. 01—written down Nov. 02. There are no pictures, it is a good one to tell—"Linder 1971, p. 155
Potter used her cousin's daughter, Stephanie Hyde Parker, as audience for the draft of the story. She likely meant to dedicate the book to Stephanie, writing in the manuscript, "Now Stephanie, this is a story about a little girl called Lucie; she was smaller than you and could not speak quite plain." In the end however, the book was dedicated to Lucie Carr. Stephanie would receive the dedication to The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher in 1906.
Early in 1904, Potter was putting the finishing touches on Benjamin Bunny and Two Bad Mice. At the same time, she began giving serious thought to developing the tale about Mrs. Tiggy-winkle and Lucie. She had been working on backgrounds and had been carrying her pet hedgehog with her when travelling. On 15 March she wrote to her editor Norman Warne, "I have been drawing the stump of a hollow tree for another hedgehog drawing".Linder 1971, p. 156
Potter and Warne agreed a volume of nursery rhymes would be created in 1905 but she also brought his attention to a story she had previously written, writing to him, "I think 'Mrs. Tiggy' would be all right; it is a girl's book ... there must be a large audience of little girls. I think they would like the different clothes." She began the illustrations in the summer once he agreed to the concept.Lear 2007, p. 186-188
Illustrations and production Potter biographer Linda Lear writes that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, unlike Potter's earlier work, was "a story set in a real place, about a real washerwoman, a real hedge-hog named Tiggy-winkle, and a child Lucie, from Little-town in the Newlands valley". In the summer of 1904, Potter again took her holiday at Lingholm, and drew pen and ink illustrations for the hedgehog book based on in watercolours made of the area the previous year. After returning to London in October, family matters prevented her from continuing work on the tale; she returned to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in late November 1904. The sketchbook scenes of the path above Little Town, the Newlands Valley, the fells, and Skiddaw were reproduced in the published book almost exactly as found in the sketchbook, except for the inclusion of the figures and some minor artistic liberties. Potter included in her illustrations a depiction a small door used to close abandoned mine shafts in the fells. During her explorations of the area she visited farms at Skelghyl and sheep farms in the fells.
The model for the preliminary illustrations of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle was Potter's own pet hedgehog. Potter wrote to Warne on 12 November, "Mrs. Tiggy as a model is comical; so long as she can go to sleep on my knee she is delighted, but if she is propped up on end for half an hour, she first begins to yawn pathetically, and then she does bite! Nevertheless, she is a dear person; just like a very fat rather stupid little dog. I think the book will go all right when once started." Three weeks later, she wrote, "The hedgehog drawings are turning out very comical. I have dressed up a cottonwool dummy for convenience of drawing the clothes. It is such a figure of fun." The dummy terrified her rabbit and her pet mouse pulled out the stuffing. "I think it should make a good book," she wrote, "When I have learnt to draw the child."Lear pp. 190–191
Although Potter had little difficulty with the landscapes, the kitchen, and the birds and animals, Lucie presented a serious problem. Potter recognized and admitted the human form eluded her and confessed she faced a worrisome challenge whenever it was absolutely necessary to bring a human into an illustration. She made a number of preliminary sketches of Lucie, changed the colour of her cloak, and enlisted a real child as a model.
Mrs. Tiggy-winkle's kitchen is typical of those seen by Potter in Lakeland and Sawrey, and presented no artistic difficulties. She had been sketching interiors for years.Taylor 1987, p. 122
By February 1905, the drawings for the book sent to be converted to blocks,Lear 2007, p. 192 and, in late March, she began The Pie and the Patty-Pan, the companion piece to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. Potter continued to fuss with the tale's text and illustrations. The proofs of the text arrived in the beginning of June, and Potter laboured over them. She reconsidered the rhyme writing to Warne,
She had enjoyed developing the book with Warne, and, on 2 July, sent him the remainder of the book, expressing her regret that its production was over. On 25 July proofs sent to her from the publisher showed spottiness that may have been caused by the summer heat affecting the chemicals used in the engraving process; the plates were re-engraved in September.Lear 2007, pp. 198, 204
Publication history and adaptations Twenty thousand copies of the book were released in a format in October 1905 with The Pie and the Patty-Pan.Linder 1971, p. 425 Another 10,000 copies were released in November 1905, and another 8,000 in January 1906. The dedication reads, "For the real little Lucie of Newlands"; Lucie's copy of the book was inscribed, "For little Lucie with much love from Beatrix Potter and from dear 'Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle' Sept. 24. 05."Linder 1971, p. 158