by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 02, 2010

Three Beatrix Potter stories began as letters written to children - including this story of a mouse and "The Tailor of Gloucester." The book opens with a quote from Potter's letter. ("Because you are fond of fairytales, and have been ill, I have made you a story all for yourself - a new one that nobody has read before.") And in the letter Potter insists that she actually heard the story in Gloucestershire, "and that it is true - at least about the tailor, the waistcoat, and the 'No more twist.'"

According to Wikipedia, a Gloucestershire tailor found the suit he was making for the mayor had already been completed in the night - presumably by his assistants - with a mysterious note attached which said "No more twist." The tailor encouraged "a local legend" that fairies had finished the suit for him, and this inspired Potter's own story where the late-night helpers are neighborhood mice. The plot resembles "The Elves and the Shoemaker," since Potter's aged tailor is also very sympathetic. But she livens up her tale with some charming story-telling- and magical glimpses into a secret society of talking animals!

Most of the story is about the aged tailor, and includes long lists of his garments and fabrics. ("In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets," the story begins, "when gentlemen wore ruffles , and gold-laced waistcoasts of paduasoy and taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester.") Potter gives her story a warm and friendly tone, which pulls the reader through its details about the tailor's profession. All the formal details make the story seem more realistic, which in the end makes its animal surprises more entertaining. And she must've sensed that her readers would be impatient with her human characters, since her first illustrations of the shop show the mice wearing clothes made from discarded fabrics!

The mice don't enter the story until the book's ninth page, but this adds a special enchantment to the moment when they finally appear. "Tip tap, tip tap, tip tap tip!" The tailor hears the sound from the kitchen, and peers through his spectacles at an upside-down tea cup. He lifts it up, and discovers "a little live lady mouse," who wears a fine blue dress and (in the illustration) honors the tailor with a curtsy. And then scrambles away under the wainscot...

There's more mice under tea-cups - trapped by the tailor's pet cat. But the mice remain a distant, mysterious community, as the tailor spends his last pennies and worries that he'll never finish the expensive suit which will make his fortune. He quarrels with the cat - who he'd sent on an errand to purchase twist for the fancy suit. But the story all comes together on a magical Christmas Day, when the cat prowls out to the tailor's shop - and discovers the mice hard at work finishing the tailor's suit!

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