The Beatrice Letters
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| Author | Lemony Snicket |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Brett Helquist |
| Cover artist | Brett Helquist |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Series of Unfortunate Events (companion) |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Released | September 4, 2006 (UK) September 5, 2006 (US) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 72 |
| ISBN | 0060586583 |
The Beatrice Letters is a book by Lemony Snicket. It is tangential to the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events, and was published shortly before the thirteenth and final installment. According to its cover, the book is "suspiciously linked to Book the Thirteenth", although the British edition merely states that it "contains a clue to Book the Thirteenth".
The book consists of thirteen letters, six from Beatrice Baudelaire to Lemony Snicket, six from Lemony Snicket to Beatrice Baudelaire, and one from Lemony Snicket to his editor (one of these appears in every book in the main series, but this is the first time such a letter has been incorporated into the plot). However, the two Beatrices, despite sharing a name, are clearly separate individuals, and while Lemony Snicket's letters are plainly written beginning from his childhood and ending shortly before Violet Baudelaire is born, the Beatrice writing to Snicket is apparently writing after the events of The End. The older Beatrice is the one referred to throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket as his deceased love, and her identity as the mother of the Baudelaire children from the series is revealed in The Beatrice Letters, but the younger Beatrice's identity is not directly explained, apart from the statement that she also has some connection to Violet, Klaus, and Sunny (although in The End it is revealed that she is the daughter of Kit Snicket).
In a June update from Harper Collins mailing list AuthorTracker, a quotation from the book is given: “The only other student I know in this class is O., who is nothing but an annoyance. As I write this, he is filling his notebook with anagrams of obscene words.”
In a July update from AuthorTracker, the book is said to include, "a note passed in class, a startling telegram, a coded sonnet, and a desperate plea for assistance between Snicket and Beatrice." It is also stated that the book "starts long before The Bad Beginning and extends far beyond The End." In fact the two correspondents are not writing back and forth. Lemony Snicket is obviously writing to the first Beatrice (the Baudelaire mother) and this takes place before the Bad Beginning. Actually, before Violet, Klaus and Sunny were even born. The letters from Beatrice, however, are written by the second Beatrice Baudelaire (Kit Snicket's daughter) and take place after "The End". When Lemony Snicket writes he mentions the Root Beer Floats that he and Beatrice share together, how much he loves her and hinted about what happened when he asked her hand in marriage. When Beatrice Baudelaire writes to Lemony Snicket she talks about how far away they are from each other and how they've never met. At the beginning of "The Beatrice Letters" Lemony Snicket mentions that he is eleven years old and the same age as Beatrice. Beatrice wouldn't have been a Baudelaire yet at the beginning of the book because she wasn't yet married to a Baudelaire. Alternatively, Snicket may just be disguised as an 11 year-old and may actually be a young adult. This may be the case as the language he uses in the first letter is not as complex as he writes in the books, yet some of the vocabulary he uses is far too advanced for an 11 year-old. Eg. "Your oral report on the history of the Sonnet." By the end of the book they both would have grown up and Beatrice would have been married to Bertrand Baudelaire, and become a Baudelaire herself. If at the beginning of the book Beatrice is already a Baudelaire then she must be the second Beatrice who was adopted by the Baudelaire orphans. At the end of the book Beatrice mentions that she is ten years old. Lemony Snicket is an adult at the end of the book so that would be another reason to assume that the letters are from another Beatrice. It also means that the time she writes these letters are nine years after The End.
The portfolio contains a booklet with facsimile correspondence and removable cardstock letters and a double-sided poster with art by Brett Helquist.
Each cardstock letter is mentioned in different, interesting ways. An example is that the first letter is an E, while on the next page, there is a letter from Snicket to Beatrice. A map Snicket had drawn for where Beatrice should meet him forms an E. Another example is that Fig. 3 (The Lock of Hair) forms a C, which is the letter on the cardstock before it. If you look at each letter that was sent and compare it to the letter on the punch out page before it, you will find that each letter(mail) has a letter that is the same as the punch out letter. The Paperweight is the S on the punch out card before it. The Hatpin is the I on the punch out page before it, and as already mentioned the Curl of Hair is the C and so on. The letters, in order, spell out EENSIKRACTAB. All the Card-stock letters and all the letter on the pieces of mail are identical.
The cardstock letters appear to be an anagram of 'Beatrice Sank', either that or 'Baticeer Sank', as Beatrice is implied to be a baticeer. This might be in reference to the boat (which, by the illustrations, appears the be the boat used to escape by the orphans and Olaf at the end of The Penultimate Peril) or the person. The letters can also spell "Brae in Casket." This seems to be a likely possibility, as the letters that the paperweights imitate (S-T-I-C) is an anagram of "cist," which is a type of coffin. Another possibility is 'A Brae Snicket'. This would make sense as "brae-men" are referred to throughtout the book. Also, it is revealed that there are two Beatrice Baudelaires. Some believe that one is the Baudelaire's mother, and the other their sister. However, in The End, it reveals that the second Beatrice is Kit Snicket's daughter, who the Baudelaires become the guardians of. One letter (apparently written by the younger Beatrice) says she remembers "Sunny appearing on the radio to discuss her recipes." Since Sunny is a mere toddler in the main series, this would indicate that The Beatrice Letters does, in fact, extend beyond The End. Another, written by Lemony Snicket to, possibly, the older Beatrice, says to "look for the eleven year old wearing a green necktie" when referring to himself. This may prove that this starts before the Bad Beginning, as Snicket writes the books as an adult. To further support this, there is another identical shape of Beatrice on the cover. (See the back of the silhouette's hair.) The letters in the book are correspondence between Lemony and the two Beatrices, although it is left for the reader to determine which Beatrice is which. However the "Beatrice Sank" anagram may just be a reference to the boat which was named after Beatrice Baudelaire as the Beatrice Letters extended after the thirteenth book. Furthermore the Beatrice (the boat) was built by B who may in fact be yet another Beatrice, or Bertrand, the Baudelaires' deceased father. Or, since the name of the boat in The Penultimate Peril was named the Beatrice, the "Beatrice Sank" anagram could refer to how the Beatrice did, in fact, get destroyed at sea. It is implied in Lemony Snicket's letter to his editor at the end of the book that he has intentionally placed the letters so that they can be unscrambled in a number of different ways, as he says, "...But letters are not letters, so the arrangement of letters could spell more than one thing...".
Of interest in this story is that Beatrice is identified to be a baticeer, purportedly one who trains bats. As a glance in a dictionary will make clear, there is no such word in the English language. Rather, baticeer turns out to be an anagram for Beatrice.
The book also makes regular reference to a poem called My Silence Knot. This is, of course, an anagram of Lemony Snicket.
Also of interest is that all of the punch-out letters combined with the four paperweight letters can spell "baticeer niece stalks."
It is confirmed in the Harper Collins Children's Books Book Blast website, that the following are 'shocking revelations' that will be found in The Beatrice Letters:
- Code Class is boring.
- Long ago, Lemony Snicket was an assistant obituary spell-checker.
- Surprisingly, Beatrice was 10 years old, or more likely, Lemony and Beatrice met when they were 10.
- Punch-out letters should be removed and arranged to reveal at least one important secret message, then stored in one of two hidden file folders.
- Root beer floats matter a great deal.
A fold out poster is included in the book, and when used in conjunction with The End it is possible that the wreckage of the boat, with the fragments of a sign that says Beatrice, is the boat that the four orphans set out on, and that the second Beatrice, is in fact Kit Snicket's daughter. When the boat crashed, the Baudelaires and Beatrice (the baby) were separated and now Beatrice is trying to get Mr. Snicket to help her track down the Baudelaires. Also, taking hints from both The End and The Beatrice Letters indicates the original Beatrice--the one Lemony Snicket fell in love with--is in fact Violet, Klaus and Sunny's mother, yet one Beatrice is the younger Beatrice, because she states that she remembered "Sunny on the radio" (thus Sunny is an adult at that time). Further evidence can also be drawn upon, from the push out letters, that spell Beatrice Sank. Beatrice was the boat that the orphans set out upon, so the boat evidently sank.
However, the spatulas from The Penultimate Peril are seen amongst the wreckage, yet there was no indication of them being used as oars.
This book also reveals that Beatrice, the one that Snicket loved, was classmates with the Duchess of Winnipeg or R, and Snicket apparently believed he embarrassed Beatrice in front of R. The letter R is on a ring mentioned in The End, and is related to the Duchess of Winnipeg before it circulates around the members of VFD.
An interesting note to make is that though Lemony Snicket mentioned in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography that after "a confusing if exciting childhood", he "met a woman, fell in love, and was never happy again". However, some sources about the Beatrice Letters indicate that Lemony and Beatrice met when they were ten, and a ten-year old would certainly count as a child, so there is some confusion
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