Miss Potter tells the story of Beatrix Potter—well-known artist and author of several beloved children's books, including Peter Rabbit. In the following scene, Beatrix reacts to the death of her fiancée, Norman Warren. The two had become engaged in secret because of their differing social classes, and Beatrix was unable to be with him during his illness because her family had taken her away on vacation in hopes that her love for the tradesman would cool. She did not make it back in time for the funeral.

Returning home, Beatrix is greeted by a servant.

"Miss Beatrix! What are you doing in London? Is something wrong?" the servant asks.

"A friend died," Beatrix answers.

"Oh, I'm sorry. A close friend?"

Beatrix doesn't answer. Inside her room, she paces back and forth for a few moments, unsure of what to do next. Spotting a music box that has special significance because of Norman, she begins to weep.

In the next scene, the servant ascends the stairs carrying dinner on a tray. After unsuccessfully calling several times for Miss Beatrix, the servant says, "I'll leave your dinner outside the door then, Miss." We then see Beatrix lying in bed, awake but unable to respond in her deep sadness.

When the servant returns in the morning, the tray remains untouched. She knocks on the door again and says, "Saunders is here to take you to the station!"

"I shan't be going back to the lakes," Beatrix answers in a weak voice.

In the next scene, we once again find Beatrix pacing back and forth inside her room, seemingly desperate to find some way to move on. She spots a pile of art supplies on her desk and, after a brief pause to consider, dives into a chair and begins scribbling furiously with a sketch pencil.

The scene shifts to the afternoon. Beatrix is still behind her desk, this time moving a watercolor brush over a sheet of paper in intense concentration. Other sheets, all crumpled and discarded, cover the surface of the desk and the floor all around her. As the camera moves behind her, she puts a finishing touch on a colorful frog sitting on a lily pad, holding a fishing rod. The frog begins to move, animated by her imagination.

At first, everything seems to have returned to normal for Beatrix as an artist. The frog grins as he plops his line into the water, and Beatrix—finally able to lose herself in her art—grins back down at him. But then the music changes, and the fish swimming underneath the lily pad grows. It snatches the frog's pole away, then bumps the lily pad threateningly. Worried, Beatrix holds out her paintbrush and the frog leaps up to grab it. He hangs there for a moment, but then jumps back into the water.

It almost seems as if he is trying to run away from Beatrix more than the fish.

Frantic, Beatrix snatches the page away. Underneath, we briefly glimpse the frog again before he hops behind a row of cabbages. Peter Rabbit is also in this sketch, but he, too, runs away. Beatrix flips the page again, this time revealing a porch setting. Peter continues to flee, shattering a flower pot in his haste to get away.

As Beatrix turns the page again, Peter runs through a small store, scurrying a group of mice. With another turn of the page, he quickly sprints behind a goose named Mrs. Puddleduck—an incarnation from Beatrix's childhood. The goose also flees.

Beatrix continues to tear sheets from her notebook, desperate to keep sight of once-joyful companions that now seem to be slipping away. In the next page, Peter is gone. His signature blue coat remains, but is hung on a post in a field of corn. Large, black crows circle the picture. They settle on the post and begin tearing at the jacket with their beaks.

Horrified, Beatrix rips the page out and throws it away from her. We see it flutter down to the floor and join a growing pile of similar scenes—a dog barking madly in front of a broken fence, a squirrel rowing away in the middle of a lonely river, several sheep escaping over a crumbling wall, etc.

All of these images are creative representations of the taint that death brings into our lives. And when death is closest and unconquered, it can spoil the things we love—even chase away that which we hold most dear.

Content: rated PG.

Elapsed time: DVD scene 9; 01:08:20–01:11:50