The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan

Development and publication

The Potter family summered occasionally at Lakefield, a country house in the village of Sawrey. "They came with their servants, their carriage and pair, and Miss Potter with her pony and phaeton," a village resident recalled. "Miss Potter was about the village sketching everywhere and often came to our house."

Close to Lakefield and off the road in their own enclosure were three dwellings known as Lakefield Cottages. Mr. Rogerson, a gardener and caretaker at Lakefield, lived in one of the cottages, and eventually his wife's two pedigree Pomeranians – Darkie and Duchess – would become the models for Potter's fictional Duchess. Darkie had a fine black mane, but Duchess was more intelligent and could sit up with a lump of sugar balanced on her nose.

In the summer of 1902, Potter sketched the interior of the third Lakefield Cottage belonging to a Mrs. Lord. These drawings included a watercolour and pen-and-ink sketches of the living-room, pen-and-ink sketches of the pots of geraniums on the living-room window sill, the entrance passage, the pantry, the stairs, some of the upstairs rooms, and details of the carved oak furniture. In some of the sketches Potter roughly outlined a cat. She also sketched the village including the sloping path down to the Lakefield Cottages and the post office door. These became the backgrounds for The Pie and The Patty-Pan.

During a rainy holiday in Hastings at the end of November 1903, Potter outlined a tale about a cat, a dog, and a tea party she called Something very very NICE. She discussed the Lakefield sketches as backgrounds for the tale with Warne. He proposed a large format volume similar to L. Leslie Brooke's Johnny Crow's Garden to do justice to the detail of the illustrations, but the entire project was set aside when The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Two Bad Mice were chosen for development and publication in 1904.

Potter had long wanted to develop a book of nursery rhymes, but such a project left Warne cold. Rhymes were already well represented in the firm's catalogue, and Warne felt Potter's unbridled enthusiasm for the genre would make the project a headache for him. In the past, he had tried to discourage Potter's interest in rhymes, believing her own stories superior, but she persisted. He reluctantly agreed to a book of rhymes for 1905, but Potter did not have it ready at the end of 1904, so he accepted the tea party tale instead. Early in 1905, it was decided the book would be published at the end of the year.

Plot

A dog named Duchess is invited to tea by her friend, a pussy cat called Ribby, who says she plans to serve a very special pie. Duchess suspects it'll be mouse flavor, but can't bring herself to tell Ribby she hates the taste of mouse. Instead, she decides she'll secretly switch it with one of her own pies made from ham and veal.

While Ribby is visiting the shops, Duchess sneaks into her house and places her pie in the top compartment of the oven—unaware Ribby's is already baking in the bottom compartment.

At tea, Ribby serves the mouse pie to Duchess, who thinks it's the ham and veal pie. After four servings, she notices the patty-pan she put in it is missing and begins to howl in panic, believing she has swallowed it. Unable to calm her down, Ribby is forced to fetch Dr. Maggoty, a magpie doctor.

While waiting for her return, Duchess discovers her pie is still in the oven and realizes what has happened. She hides the pie outside the back door, intending to retrieve it on her way home. Ribby returns with Dr. Maggoty, who treats Duchess before leaving. After bidding Ribby farewell, Duchess sneaks round the back to collect her pie, only to find Dr. Maggoty has eaten it.

Later, Ribby finds the smashed pie dish and the patty-pan in her garden and declares next time she'll invite her cousin Tabitha Twitchit to tea instead.

Scholarly commentaries

M. Daphne Kutzer, Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh at the time of her Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code (2003) believes The Pie and its two immediate predecessors (the tales of Two Bad Mice and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle) are transitional works in Potter's life and literary career. All three books confront the meaning of domesticity, work, and social hierarchies while exhibiting an underlying discomfort with the unyielding strictures of Victorian domesticity, and a disengagement from the broad political and social concerns of her earlier books to the more narrow political and social concerns of working farmers and rural people.

Ruth K. MacDonald of New Mexico State University at the time of her Beatrix Potter (1986) argues that the theme of The Pie is the very proper social relations between neighbours in a small town. She points to the overly formal quality of the letters exchanged between the heroines as one example of the theme, and another, she indicates, is the manner in which the two pass each other on the street without a word to one another because "they were going to have a party". Though Duchess probably does not speak to Ribby for fear of revealing her plan to switch the two pies, Ribby probably does not speak to Duchess out of an exaggerated sense of politeness or because she is rushed. At the hour of the party, Duchess is anxious to arrive on time, yet not too early, and loiters outside Ribby's cottage before delivering her most "genteel little tap-tappity" and asking "Is Mrs. Ribston at home?" MacDonald notes that these instances not only underscore the elaborate codes of behaviour Potter's fictional animals observe but, by extension, the villagers of Sawrey. For Potter, the result of such elaborate etiquette was nonsensical, distorted behaviour. Nevertheless, the cat and dog remain friends at the end of the story, and, in carefully avoiding any offence, their social pretenses and codes of etiquette are maintained.

Merchandise

Potter asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy. She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales with spinoffs such as a Peter Rabbit doll, an unpublished Peter Rabbit board game, and a Peter Rabbit nursery wallpaper between 1903 and 1905. Similar "side-shows" (as she termed the spinoffs) were conducted over the following two decades.

In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. gave Beswick Pottery of Longton, Staffordshire rights and licences to produce the Potter characters in porcelain. Ribby coming from the farm with butter and milk was released as a figurine in 1951; Duchess with a bouquet of flowers in 1955; Duchess holding the ham and veal pie in 1979; and Ribby and the broken pie dish in 1992. A limited edition tableau depicting Duchess and Ribby was produced only in 2000.

Schmid & Co. of Toronto and Randolph, Massachusetts was granted licensing rights to Beatrix Potter in 1977. A music box playing "Music Box Dancer" and topped with a porcelain figure of Duchess holding a bouquet was released in 1980.

Reprints and translations

As of 2010, all of Potter's 23 small format books remain in print, and available as complete sets in presentation boxes, and as a 400-page omnibus. First edition copies and early reprints of The Pie are offered by antiquarian booksellers. The Pie was available as a hardcover volume but also in paperback, audiobook, and electronic formats.

The English language editions of the books still bore the Frederick Warne imprint in 2010 though the company was bought by Penguin Books in 1983. The printing plates for the Potter books were remade from new photographs of the original drawings in 1985, and all 23 volumes released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.

Potter's books have been translated into nearly thirty languages including Greek and Russian. In 1986, MacDonald observed that the Potter books had become a traditional part of childhood in both English-speaking lands and those in which the books had been translated.