Autograph letter signed, Windermere, to Noel Moore, September 3, 1895
Gift of Colonel David McC. McKell, 1959
This letter contains two self-caricatures. One shows Potter contemplating the awful prospect of a ladder she would have to climb to view a roost of pigeons. In the other she is walking a rambunctious Peter Rabbit on a leash. An earlier letter to Noel contains a sketch of Peter's predecessor, Benjamin Bouncer, on a similar outing with a collar and a lead. She often sketched herself in her letters for humorous effect and included two notional self-portraits in her books, one in The Roly-Poly Pudding and another in The Tale of Pigling Bland.
My dear Noël,
I was so glad to get your nice little letter and to hear that you can walk about again. I hope you are having finer weather, it has been so wet here.
This is a tent near Skelwith bridge in a