"The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse" is a variation on the ancient fable about a country mouse who discovers that he dislikes life in the city. (Beatrix Potter even dedicated the book "to Aesop in the shadows.") But though the plot is familiar, Potter's illustrations and story-telling skills keep the story fresh. It's one of the last books that she ever wrote, and it seems like she's using everything that she'd learned throughout her career.
The story opens when Timmy Willie is mistakenly carried into town in a hamper that carries a gardener's vegetables. ("Timmy Willie crept in through a hole in the wickerwork, and after eating some peas - Timmy Willie fell fast asleep.") I like how Potter describes "a jolting, and a clattering of horse's feet" - staying true to the perspective of the little mouse. Soon the hamper is waiting on a city doorstep, and the little mouse hears barking dogs, the laughter of the cook, and little boys whistling down the street.
Beatrix Potter had a real talent for writing fairy tales, and I like the way she gradually introducers her characters. The mouse frightens the cook, and flees into the first hole he can find - and inside the hole, he crashes down onto the tablecloth at a mouse dinner party, where he breaks three glasses. There's an outburst of surprise from a new mouse name Johnny Town-mouse, but "he instantly recovered his manners." And then "with the utmost politeness," he makes introductions to the stranger of his nine other dinner guests.
The little country mouse is nervous, and it seems like Potter has tapped into some gentle social satire. Suddenly the humble mouse is confronted with an elegant eight-course dinner, and he's worried about matching the polite manners of his new benefactors. But he learns to his horror that they allow the youngest mice to be chased by cats, and that night he even smells the tell-tale scent of a cat on the sofa pillow where they offer to let him sleep. And in a wonderful drawing, he remembers his cozy burrow back in the garden - with his smiling, red-breasted robin friend passing by in the background.
"I confess I am a little disappointed," says Timothy Town-mouse. "We have endeavoured to entertain you," he adds, very formally calling Timmy Willie by the longer "Timothy William." But soon both mice have learned that they're happier living in the homes where they grew up, and the story bounces its way to a predictably satisfying conclusion. It had been years since Beatrix Potter had prepared new illustrations for a book, but apparently she still lavished this one with the special touch that it needed. And she even ends the book with an autobiographical sentence.
"For my part I prefer to live in the country, like Timmy Willie."