Autograph letter signed, Windermere, to Noel Moore, September 3, 1895
Gift of Colonel David McC. McKell, 1959
I have been making pictures with windows for him and Molly like I make for you.
My rabbit lives in the garden & has grown so fat, I take him for a walk with a collar for fear he should run away.
My brother catches fish when it rains & paints a picture on fine days. This is a hen stealing corn out of a bag. This is a puppy we found in the middle of a wood, its mother lives in the next cottage, we think she kept it in a hole.
I remain yrs aff.
Beatrix Potter
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.