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Daune Elizabeth Rashleigh was one of those highly charming amateur artists of a recently past generation who quietly gave beauty to this life without hardly being noticed.  Born on September 22, 1900 at Upton-Upon-Severn, Worcestershire, England of middle class parents, she lived for much of her life in a secret world and is almost unknown.

Her slight fame came from a very simple act as a child -- she wrote a letter -- and many years later, an exhibition. But the letter was addressed to Beatrix Potter and her reply was kept by Daune. Indeed, there were some similarities in their upbringing and talent. Both were from upper middle class families, educated at home by a German governess in a very secluded life and spent their time privately developing a skill for art. However, Daune was much more shy than even the young Beatrix Potter and became very reclusive as a child, hardly going out.

Daune As A Child

Her parents were Arthur and Edith Rashleigh, an old and distinguished family who had resided in Cornwall since the sixteenth centuary, but Arthur lived with his family at "Kaikoura", Malvern Wells, Worcestershire.  Her father had not inherited the baronetcy in his family because he was a younger son.  They had one other daughter, Rosamond, born in 1903. Daune's artistic talent probably came from her mother and she showed excellence at painting miniatures on ivory, creating embroidered pictures and sculpting wax portraits. After her sister married Sir John Langham in 1930 and went to live in Co. Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, she was left at home alone with her parents and quietly pursued her interests of art and gardening. She never married.

In 1940, during the Second World War, when the factories were depleted of men for military service, she decided to patriotically help by offering her artistic abilities to the Royal Porcelain Works in the nearby town of Worcester. This must have been a particularly  couragious act by her since she had never before worked for a living and was so nervous of the world. She was paid a total salary, including war bonus, of £1.97 1/2p GPB ( $3.30 USD ) for 47 hours per week hand-painting porcelain. She finished there at wars end and never had any kind of employment again.

In 1946 she moved with her parents to Dublin, Ireland and it was there in 1955 that an exhibition of her wax miniatures was held. This received enormous interest. In 1960 she finally moved to Fermanagh to be near her sister and died there in 1988. All her unusual life she was kind and sweet and loved art and her garden. Finding anything by her is a marvellous experience because it is a treasure from her secret world ... a world that, in a wider sense too, is most sadly no more. 

Her excellent biographer, the late Margaret Lane, once expressed that when writing about Beatrix Potter's life it was as if there were really two very different people. She was right. Helen Beatrix Potter, was born in South Kensington, London, England on July 28, 1866. Her parents, Rupert and Helen Potter had both inherited wealth from cotten manufacturing and lived the typical conservative lives of the English upper middle class. Although he was a qualified barrister he never practised and spent his time at gentlemen's clubs, visiting friemds and engaged in useful hobbies such as photography at which he was highly skilful, whilst his wife occupied herself with sewing and receiving and calling on social contacts -- mostly relatives. All the household duties were of course performed by servants so they both enjoyed long holidays at regular intervals initially in Scotland but later in the even more  breathtaking landscape of the English Lake District.  In 1872, their son, Bertram was born and the family was complete.

                                            Beatrix Potter in 1881, aged 15, with her springer dog,Spot.

The reason Beatrix -- she was called by her second name to avoid confusion with her mother -- showed two distinctly different characters durimg her life was because the first part was strongly influenced by her parents. Being naturally very loyal and dutiful to them and moreover kept with a reliance on their money she was really being what they desired her to be. That was,  to possess conservative views and manners, which is very apparent in her Journal, and to remain a spinster under their financial security and authority.  However, after the publication and unexpected popularity of her children's books beginning in 1902 with "The Tale Of Peter Rabbit", she began to acquire financial independence and her own natural personality was able to rebel against their set ideas of a daughter. As is usuually the case when someone feels released from a dictatorial environment, there was an attraction to experience and be the opposite. Whilst her earlier personality shows youthful well bred charm and wit, after the tragic death of her first fiancee, Norman Warne -- one of the family members of her pubishers -- in August, 1905 from leukemia aged only 33, she soon decides to live away from her parents and gradually changed into a less attracrive person. Possibly thinking that marriage had passed her by. She allows herself to become increasingly plump and to noticeably copy the lower classes in tasteless dress and brusquely assertive manners ... though most certainly not morally as the supposedly middle and upper classes of today!  This move from her parents was to a farm she purchased in 1905 at the tiny village of Near Sawrey, Cumbria called Hill Top-- a magical place for those with a sensitive imagination. Of all the many places I have been this was like walking into a dream world of bygone people and fairytale countryside. If she had married Norman Warne who was a very kind and educated family minded gentleman with a business in London, she would have most likely not become a farmer and remained more as the mostly artistic and intellectual lady she had been, though with much less shyness and the freedom to exercise her naturall resolve.

Beatrix Potter Outside "Hill Top" Cottage, Near Sawrey, Cumbria After Her Ownership.

From 1905 until 1913 whilst mainly residing at Hill Top she was at her most active in creating her young children's books, when fresh inspiration was easy and to make herself financially and independently secure. However, she was also supervising and learning about farming her stock of sheep which she planned to be her second means of income and ultimately the security for her mature years. Books need ideas and these will eventually become exhausted and popularity is like everything about people, very fickle. Farming is more permanent. Indeed, the only real reason she is so very popular today is because her life can be exploited commercially.

                                    Beatrix Potter and William Heelis On Their Engagement, Late 1912.

In October, 1913 she married the solicitor who was dealing with her further property transactions in the Lake District, William Heelis. Although tall, he was a mild and rather timid kind of gentleman and Beatrix was always the dominant party. Her primarily reason was likely convention and companionship. Nevertheless, they seemed to live happily together for the rest of her life. This was doubtless due to their characters being opposite types.  In 1914 her father died and Beatrix inherited a substantial legacy. Then in 1918 her only brother, Bertram, who had also married and become a farmer just over the border in Scotland, died aged just 46.  She had once written in her Journal that she was not a sentimental person, and she took the news of his death very much in this way. During these years, her Herdwick sheep farming had taken over completely and writing new stories was almost forgotten, although she had occasional attempts to start again. Her elderly mother had moved to the Lake District too and resided in a large house by Lake Windermere. She died in 1932.

Life on her farm during the Second World War was especially hard but at least she was not in danger of air raids as was the case for most town and city dwellers in England. On account of her fame, admirers would sometimes write ( she was a prolific letter writer ) or come to visit her. Some of these were Americans and these she seemed to generally like the best. One of her pet hates had been from lowly tourists in charabancs ( an early bus ) from the nearby Midland towns who often showed her no good manners. By this time she considered herself Mrs. Heelis and a farmer, and all her creative years and life at Bolton Gardens, London with her parents a very distant memory. At this time she wrote in a letter to a friend that she could no longer understand her own code writing she had used for secretcy in a diary written between about 1881 and January 1897, though she still possessed the numerous loose sheets which formed what later became, in the brilliant hands of her code breaker and transcription author, Leslie Linder, her highly interesting and illuminating Journal. During December 1943 she was suffering from a cold she could not overcome. Her last hours of life were spent staring from her bed at the distant snowy hills she knew so well until dusk came. Shortly after she died, aged 77, on December 22, 1943, having lived just long enough to know with expressed satisfaction the outcome of the war.  She also had become a different person.  Her heartbroken husband, who had scattered her cremated ashes at the spot  in Near Sawrey ( on the far side of the southern end of Esthwaite Water ) they once had often walked whilst courting, died soon afterwards in 1945. All her considerable estate was bequeathed to the National Trust in order to help protect the sublime beauty of the Lake District from future harmful exploitation.