Nurse McKenzie et Annie Carter⎮Nurse Mc Kenzie and Annie Carter

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Nurse Mc Kenzie fut la toute première gouvernante de la jeune Beatrix. Tout droit descendue des Highlands Ecossais et malgré ses principes d’éducation très stricts, cette dernière lui parlait d’un monde empli de fées dans lequel elle croyait fermement et qui ne manquait pas d’influencer et de faire rêver la petite fille solitaire.

Annie Carter, quant à elle fut sa dernière gouvernante. Beatrix était alors âgée de 17 ans. N’ayant que trois ans de différence avec elle, les deux jeunes femmes se lièrent rapidement d’amitié et le restèrent leur vie durant. C’est à son fils, le petit Noël Moore, malade et âgé de 5 ans seulement qu’elle écrira la célèbre lettre qui inspira l’Histoire de Pierre Lapin.

Miss Mc Kenzie was Beatrix’s first nurse. She came from the Scottish Highlands and had a strong belief in witches and fairies and talked a lot about them to the young girl who was left under her strict guidance. Thus, Beatrix Potter would always be keen on fairy tales of all kinds.

Many years later, Annie Carter was her last governess and the two young women only having a three-year age difference got on particularly well to the point that she became a lifelong friend and some kind of confidante in her early womanhood. She is the one who insisted that Beatrix should take back the picture letters she had drawn to her children to turn them into commercially viable stories. Annie Moore née Carter married an engineer and got eight children who all received some affectionate picture letters from Beatrix Potter wherever she was in the country. The most famous ever, is the one she wrote to young Noël Moore, then aged five and who was sick, trying to cheer him up with the story of four little rabbits whose names were, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter. The rest is the famous story we have all heard about when the Tale of Peter Rabbit was finally published.

Beatrix Potter enfant et rêvant des histoires de fées de Miss Mc Kenzie. Adolescente, elle fut instruite par Annie Carter. (à droite)

Beatrix Potter as a child dreaming about Miss Mc Kenzie’s fairy stories. As a young girl, she was left under the care of Annie Carter (right)

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