The Original Tales

Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes

Name: Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes
Author: Beatrix Potter

By Beatrix Potter · First published 1922

A rabbit named Cecily Parsley brews ale for gentlemen. Two rabbits sit smoking pipes outside the Pen Inn — a pub whose sign is a quill pen and an inkpot. Guinea-pigs tend a small garden. A nurse called Nanny Nettycoat is conjured from Beatrix's own childhood. Six short verses, six small worlds, the second of her two rhyme books.

The material is even older than *Appley Dapply*. The Cecily Parsley booklet had been hand-illustrated in January 1897 — twenty-five years earlier — and put away in a portfolio. The Guinea-pigs' Garden paintings dated from 1893. The "Nanny Nettycoat" rhyme came from Beatrix's own childhood at Camfield Place — her grandmother's house, where she had been "awakened at four in the morning by the song of the birds," under the eye of a nurse the children called Nanny Nettycoat.

Following the success of *Appley Dapply* in 1917, Frederick Warne asked for a sequel. Beatrix did not feel like making new pictures — "my eyes are getting weak and I am tired of doing them" — so she gathered up the old work, copied a few drawings fresh, and pieced them together. The book reached the shops in 1922. It was the last book she would actively prepare.

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First Edition Notes

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Particulars

Trade edition: 1922, Frederick Warne & Co.
Source material: Cecily Parsley booklet (January 1897); Guinea-pigs' Garden paintings (1893); Nanny Nettycoat manuscript (August 1897)
Dedication: "For little Peter of New Zealand" (Dr. R. P. Tuckey, then a small boy)
Origin: Old drawings revived after Beatrix declined to make new pictures — "my eyes are getting weak"
Position: The last book Beatrix actively prepared during her writing career

Curiosities

❦Beatrix's own childhood inspired the Nanny Nettycoat verse. Her childhood nurse at Camfield Place was "that little old lady with white woollen stockings, black velvet slippers and a mob-cap, who must have been just like my grandmother." She remembered tea by candlelight, "guttering, homely, lop-sided with fascinating snuffers in a tin dish."
❦One painting came from a small disaster. In 1893 Beatrix borrowed a guinea-pig from a friend — "a very particular guinea-pig with a long white ruff, known as Queen Elizabeth" — to paint. The pig "took to eating blotting paper, pasteboard, string and other curious substances, and expired in the night." Beatrix gave the painting to its owner instead.
❦The original Cecily Parsley booklet was hand-illustrated in January 1897. Its title page reads: "Nursery Rhymes — Cecily Parsley drawings original, Beatrix Potter, Jan. '97." Beatrix wrote: "I never met Cecily in print. It is an old rhyme."
❦The cover plan changed late. The rabbit-with-tray picture was first intended for the cover — Beatrix decided it looked "too much like Ap. Dap. cover figure" and moved it to the title page. The wheelbarrow picture became the cover instead.
❦The Pen Inn in one rhyme has a sign of an ink-bottle and quill — Beatrix's small joke for a pub frequented by rabbit-readers. She admitted she could not draw dressed rabbits coming to the inn door: "it comes to my mind's eye deserted!"