Beatrix Potter at the Morgan Library & Museum

When I saw a news announcement about the Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan, I knew it would be worth the plane ticket to take my mother for her birthday on my last free weekend in May. My maternal grandmother--from whom I got my middle name--was a children's librarian, and my maternal grandfather was a Shakespeare scholar, so we all grew up with a lot of British literature, including Potter's delightfully illustrated little books about Tom Kitten, Mr. Jeremy Fisher (frog), and Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail (bunnies).

My Awesome Parents (MAP) drove up with my aunt to their brother and his wife's house in northern New Jersey on Saturday morning. We lunched on their back deck, watched my cousin's son play a little baseball in a Memorial Weekend tournament, played Trekking the National Parks, and chowed down on ribs.

Sunday morning MAP, Aunt B, and I took the NJ Transit train into Penn Station and then walked to the museum in time to join the queue at opening. We had wisely purchased tickets the day before and quickly got into the gallery. One room was dedicated to Potter's childhood in a wealthy London family who were also artistically inclined. She wasn't allowed to go to school like her younger brother, so she visited local museums with her governess, sketched in local parks, and practiced watercolors.

Potter developed into an extremely talented artist. She had a particular fascination with mushrooms and fungi, and she preferred the Lake District to London.

When she wrote letters, especially to children, she would add little drawings about the things she talked about, and sometimes she imagined little stories about her pets or wild animals.

The "picture letters" were the origins of her books that quickly became best sellers: the first run of The Tale of Peter Rabbit went from 450 to 2,000 to 28,000 in one year! She even had merchandising ideas, such as a board game and stuffed animals, like this Jemima Duck.

She eventually moved to the countryside, married, and ran farm. In addition to land conservation and preserving a heritage breed of sheep, she also invited the Girl Guides to camp on her property.

The original plan had been to have high tea for lunch at the museum cafe, but they had such a varied and enticing menu that everybody got a different entree, including one that was inspired by the Potter exhibit. Afterward we poked our heads into the original "Mr. Morgan's Library." Robber Baron John Pierpont "J.P." Morgan (1837-1913) had a small but extravagantly appointed building for his collection of books, manuscripts, and artefacts built in the early 1900s. His son, J.P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), opened it to the public with an annex built in 1928, and an airy glass atrium was added in 2006.

You HAVE to look UP!

It's a bibliophile's dream, here.

Then we hopped a bus uptown to Central Park, where we met one of my dad's old friends and her family. We walked around the pond, enjoying both the sun and the shade, while chatting amiably. Their son fished and played with the turtles. An Italian ice truck had a flavor for everyone, and we managed to take the subway back to Penn Station juuust in time to catch the train back for baseball on the telly and Aunt R's famous lasagna for dinner.