Category: Biography

A Little-Known Friendship 

The friendship between P.L. Travers and Helen Keller is a little-known fact and one that was brought to my attention by a generous reader of this blog. I am forever grateful to my readers who share my interest in the world of P.L. Travers and Mary Poppins and freely share their knowledge with me.

A few letters kept in the archives of Helen Keller reveal that she and Polly Thomson stayed at P.L. Travers’s home during their visit to the UK in 1946. Helen Keller recollects the visit in these words: 

“How often Polly and I recall the cozy evenings we spent with you, Camillus, and Moya by the fire in that dear, war-tried little house, surrounded by objects upon which your artistry has bestowed a fairy grace! “

And in another letter: 

“I prefer to tell you how two pilgrims in search of ways to succor the war-blinded of Europe were rested and cheered by their visits with you, Moya and darling Camillius. Besides taking you to our hearts we loved your house, bomb-wounded yet warm and sweet to the core, your fire crackling with a cheery message of peace that shall someday inundate all homes, the simple hospitality making us feel natural and free instead of feeling “guests,” and the talk on whose wings the hours flew unnoticed.“

The connections I make from reading P.L. Travers’s interviews and writings usually require time and effort, and although I enjoy the process, I must admit that it is immensely satisfying, albeit I feel a little mischievous, to read P.L. Travers’s private thoughts on matters she never discussed in interviews. 

Her correspondence with Helen Keller contains candid details about her relationship with her son, Camillus, and her feelings about single motherhood. In her interviews P.L. Travers rarely talked about Camillus and when she did, it was indirectly, by making references to a boy she knew well or a boy dear to her heart. This may appear strange, but I believe that she was trying to avoid questions about his adoption.  

The adoption of Camillus is discussed in P.L. Travers’s biography Mary Poppins She Wrote by Valerie Lawson, as well as in the documentaries about her life, and so I am not going to delve into the details of the adoption here, but just mention briefly, for those of you who are not familiar with the story, that P.L. Travers never told Camillus that he was adopted and that he had a twin brother, and other siblings. At the age of seventeen he discovered the truth when his twin brother came knocking on P.L. Traver’s door.  

As you can imagine Camillus was hurt and felt betrayed by the person he trusted most in life. His anger was mighty, and he never completely forgave her. This was a terribly sad and tragic event for both and P.L. Travers’s biggest regret in life was that she had not been a good enough mother for Camillus.  

And maybe from the outside one can say that she should have made better choices when it came to her son, the truth is she could not have done differently because she did what she could, what she thought was best, based on the level of awareness she had at the time.  

In her letters to Helen Keller, P.L. Travers writes about teaching Camillus how to swim and row during their summer vacation in Ireland and in the Wales, and how she is teaching him to handle a canoe on the Regent Park Lake. She mentions that he is taking violin lessons and “being very musical and with a good ear.”  

But what I find most interesting in this correspondence is that P.L. Travers appears to have been nostalgic of Camillus’s earliest childhood years. It is almost as if she was grieving the loss of their deepest connection, feeling the bond between them beginning to weaken as he was growing up and losing touch with the dreamland of fairytales. In a way they no longer shared a common way of perceiving the world. Camillus, like most of us when growing up, was interested in the external affairs of life and of becoming, whereas P.L. Travers always kept one foot in the land of myth and fairy tales, and looked for a deeper meaning of life, beyond the illusion of the ordinary. She wrote to Helen Keller: 

“He, when he first heard poetry, was enchanted by it, but now at the age of eight only wants it now and then. He is so busy being a gangster one moment, supervisor another, a policeman the next. Everything now is acting and there is very little dreaming. The house shakes with his thundering feet, he is always coming from or going somewhere and only at night remembers that he has a mother and is still small enough to sit in her lap and be rocked in the rocking chair.”  

This sentiment of hers was so strong that it made its way in Every Goose a Swan in Mary Poppins in the Park. Camillus is the Boy in the story. The Boy is engrossed in pretend play, he is a fearsome one- eyed pirate, but then when the Tramp dares him to go to Dead Man’s Drop he suddenly remembers that he has a mother, that if he leaves she would be anxious and that after all she was making pancakes and it was better for him to stop acting and be his other self. 

Another interesting aspect of this correspondence with Helen Keller is P.L. Travers’s frankness about her difficulties as a single parent, the frustrations of domestic life, and her difficulty at reconciling it all with her deep need to write.  

“Helen, you will understand how sad I have been at having to face the possibility of sending Camillus to boarding school. I aways wanted to keep him at home with me and let him go to a day school. But daily living becomes ever more difficult in England and the almost impossibility of finding anybody to help in the house will probably make it imperative. (…) I have broached the subject with him and his cheerful reply was “I will hit you if you do send me away!” However, as he grows I think he will quite like the idea and I hope to find a simple loving school which will not try and mould his abundant nature into too conventional a pattern. Then perhaps I shall have time to write.”

The boarding school she chose for Camillus was Dane Court Preparatory School for boys in Surrey. Joy Davidson, the wife of C.S. Lewis, sent her own two sons there after consulting P.L. Travers over tea. P.L. Travers’s high praise confirmed Joy Davidson’s impression of the school.  

“The one she liked best was Dane Court, in Surrey, about twenty miles southeast of London. It was the most expensive, “gracious, well-established, comfortable without being luxurious and modern without being faddist,” having adopted a progressive policy of not “whack(ing) the children.” 

Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis, by Abigail Santamaria. 

In conlusions, P.L. Travers did what she could to give Camillus a good education and a good start in life.

There are other things in the letters that will probably prompt me to write other blogposts, but this is it for this one, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading it.  

The Adventures of a Witch

AE Exhibition 4

This month’s blogpost is a guest post by Brian McKernan who has a specialist knowledge of George (AE) Russell – the literary mentor of P.L. Travers.

Brian says that although he had heard of AE since the days of his undergraduate Irish history tutorials, no-one seemed to be properly aware AE’s significance during the ‘birth of modern Ireland’ period. Within thirty years of AE’s passing, and across the following half century, AE became largely overlooked and regarded as a minor peripheral figure. Over the last four years Brian has played a central role in creating and developing an AE Group and the ‘AE Festival’ in Lurgan (Northern Ireland) where AE was born. Following the work of McKernan and his associates, the truth of this forgotten genius is once again beginning to be heard.

The group, known as The Lurgan & North Armagh George Russell Festival Society hold their festival in Lurgan each April to mark AE’s birth. The festival, which includes talks, walks, tours, creative workshops, exhibitions, school events and live music, has been developing at pace and aims to place AE back alongside some of the more readily recalled names in Irish history. The AE group have published articles and books on AE, created an active Facebook presence (AE Russell Appreciation Society – Lurgan), and have various local authorities now interested in supporting AE heritage. Plans for the creation of a large ‘AE Centre’ are currently at an early stage.

Brian McKernan’s post:

AE was a great believer in reincarnation and held that the ultimate purpose in life is perfection of the soul. Accordingly, he devoted himself to others, to society, to making the world a better place for everyone. He sought no fame, wealth or recognition for his brilliant talents and constant outpouring of good deeds.

My interest in Pamela Travers resulted from my research on AE. She made barely an appearance in my early studies – the chief AE biographer only giving her a passing mention at the end of his book, as a ‘young poetess who appointed herself his devoted nurse‘ when AE was dying. In hindsight, it is a wonder that I ever discovered the truth that Pamela and AE were immense friends from the time they met, up to his death, and for Pamela – across the following sixty years of her life. I have no doubt that both benefitted greatly from their mutual companionship, and now I sense that their bond is eternal.  As Pamela, a girl from so far away, became AE’s close friend in life, Lina (author of ‘The Mary Poppins Effect’) and I have reunited them in memory through our cross-Atlantic connection.

George William Russell, known simply as AE, was a benevolent genius who dedicated his life and energies to advancing a number of causes, in the main, related to the well-being of the people of Ireland. He did this through the Arts, Politics/Economics, the Co-operative movement, Social Reform, journalism, and his deep beliefs in the connectivity between the inner and outer worlds. And into this mix, in 1925, came a bright and lively young woman, who had more questions than answers, in her search for purpose, identity, love, home and success. AE loved unearthing, promoting and supporting new energetic and vibrant talent. Pamela was right up his street!

She was soon embraced by the Dublin literary scene,  where AE opened doors of opportunity for her both in London and America.  In the words of Pamela, “AE fished up friends for me from his inexhaustible cauldron.” AE understood that Pamela had an interest in mysticism and fairy tales long before she left Australia, so he helped her along the spirtual path and introduced her to the study of the spirit world, theosophy, mythology and Eastern Religions – all of which fascinated Pamela for the rest of her life.

AE liked her poetry and her Irish connection which was not just some romantic childhood fantasy. Her father’s parents were Irish, and he had been schooled in Ireland before eventually going to Australia. Pamela had relatives in Ireland, and she became acquainted with them when she visited AE in Dublin. After AE’s death, Pamela’s associations with Gurdjieff  and his followers can be seen as the continuum of the mystic elements she first explored with AE. 

Pamela was an exceptional person, determined and forthright, creative and intelligent, yet also delicate, unable to heal her childhood wounds, and searching for meaning in her life. AE was greatly impressed by her imagination and her fiercely rebellious nature. She was by no means an empty vessel into which he poured his ideas, but he had answers and directions which from the start helped her to explore and crystallise her core.

She was never his trainee or follower. He helped her. He connected with her. He raised her spirits and she raised his. Pamela admired AE, loved his company, and valued being educated by him. Such a warm and loyal mutuality grew between them that she became AE’s closest companion and comfort during his final days, taking charge of his personal affairs and final letters. She later wrote a beautiful piece about his passing, in ‘The Death of AE: Irish Hero and Mystic’. 

Pamela  accompanied AE’s remains from England back to Ireland, and was at his side as the mile long procession of mourners walked from AE’s famous office in the heart of Dublin, to his burial place close to 17 Rathgar Avenue where he had lived for thirty years. A little later, grieving deeply, she went back to Ireland and spent six weeks in Donegal, staying where she and AE had holidayed, to absorb what lingered of his spirit there. This was a special coastal place, complete with a fairytale cottage, hidden in a deep wood which overlooked the scenic Marble Hill Strand, where AE loved to paint and write poetry, and where they had been able to be alone together. In ‘The Death of AE: Irish Hero and Mystic’ Pamela offers glimpses of this holiday:

I stayed with him often in his beloved Donegal, at Janie’s-on-the-Hill above Dunfanaghy – a white washed cottage where at night one would hear the cows moving about in their stalls below the attic bedroom and in the daytime Janie churning butter or clanging the lid of the iron cauldron that swung on a chain above the peat fire and in which everything was cooked: bread, meat, cake, soup. … From Janie’s, he would take me with him on his excursions to friends in the neighbourhood or to those parts of woodland or strand that set up in him the strongest vibrations. Was he intentionally educating me, I wondered! No matter: it was being done, with or without intent.

Ninety years later, I went in search of these places, no doubt drawn there by AE’s spiritual gravitation. I found Janie’s farmhouse, fully matching Pamela’s description. I walked through the bog looking for the boots  she had left behind after getting stuck in the mud on a walk with AE, and I climbed up the trees overlooking the strand. I asked at Janie’s for directions to the fairy house but was told that it had been removed after it had fallen into disrepair, and the stone reused elsewhere. Despite this setback, I wanted at least to stand at the site of this sacred oasis where Pamela had soaked up AE’s strongest vibrations following his death. I made my way into the woods to the general area and walked in every direction, stopping and stirring – searching for any clue to its original location. I was drawn to a clearing in the woods with fairytale trees – magically shaped, like no trees I had ever seen before.

Tree near the Fairy House

However far I went, in any direction, I kept returning to this spot, as a fixed point to guide me safely back out of the woods. After a most unsuccessful and tiring hour, I decided to take one last look from where I now stood. I would turn round, one full circle on this spot, and then give up my quest. Halfway round, and looking as carefully and intently as possible, I saw something that seemed to be out of place. It was something ‘blue’. AE’s favourite colour was blue, and this looked like his favourite shade of blue.

As I tried to focus on this through the wiry tangled thicket, what I saw began to resemble a post, perhaps an old direction sign. I pressed slowly forward trying to get closer to the sign, one difficult step after another, trying not to get too badly scraped by thorns. My eyes scanned the tangled mass of branches and briars to the left of the post, and as I neared, things suddenly began to appear which I had not seen from further back. Right in front of me was a metre high wall. I clambered around the post and recognised (from my memory of an old photograph) that the post and the wall were parts of the porch of the Fairy House. I had found  it, on my very last attempt, and as I forced my way closer so much more became clear. The roof had collapsed in on the building and some parts of the walls were missing. Although the forest had worked hard to gobble up this magical abode, I was able to clamber into the large room, examine the crumbling fireplace and peer out through a side window. I was completely alone, but bursting to share my discovery. I thought of AE and Pamela being here and wondered if they had somehow played a part in my finding – could this have been spiritual gravitation at play?

Fairy House

I took photographs of these places and sent some to Lina along with a brief account of my Donegal adventure. We exchanged a series of emails, back and forth between Canada and Ireland, in which we shared our knowledge of Pamela, the Mary Poppins books and AE . I found myself seeing more and more of AE and his connection with Pamela in the Mary Poppins books.

Although AE spent much of his time writing thousands of serious journalistic articles about society, political turmoil and economic issues, it is practically impossible to find one complete piece which is not warmly wrapped in a blanket of spiritual wonder and mystical magic. He was tremendously imaginative and creative, and whimsical beyond compare, and exceptionally witty.

Myriad hidden spiritual thoughts, talking objects, life within pictures and a oneness with nature, flowed effortlessly and constantly from his mind. AE helped Pamela to explore unknown possibilities and imaginations primarily in conversation across the ten years friendship which saw her become a highly respected writer. They also wrote numerous letters back and forth across the Irish Sea when they were not together.

In early 1932 AE suggested in a letter that she should write a fantastic tale about a young witch.

When you go to your Cottage drop me a postcard with the address of that abode of the vulture witch with her broomstick. It would be rather a nice subject for a fantastic tale of a young witch who found that by white magic the broomstick would fly as well as by the black art & she went here and there doing good deeds or looking at loveliness & wonders. So think over a tale which would use all your powers of fantasy ‘The Adventures of a Witch’ and it may be the idea for letting you say all you want to say.

I see so much of AE and Pamela in the characters of Bert and Mary Poppins. From their first outing in a short 1926 story, in which Mary is a young and inexperienced nanny and where the magic emanates from Bert the Matchman, to the end of the second Mary Poppins book, when Mary has transformed into an older, wiser, and self-assured magical figure, I see how Pamela herself had grown aided by her great friend AE. At the close of Mary Poppins Comes Back, completed shortly after AE’s death, Pamela creates a personal element of closure between herself and AE. In 1926, in the story Mary Poppins and the Match-Man and then in 1934 in the story The Day Out, they rode the Merry-go round together, she on a black horse and AE on a white one, but then in 1935, with him gone, Pamela (Mary Poppins)  rides alone on a dappled horse, possibly symbolising a shared spiritual unity. The text includes utterances denoting finality – ‘Never again! Never again!’ .. ‘If only we could have gone on forever!‘ .. Mary gazes down at the children – ‘Her eyes were strangely soft and gentle in the gathering dusk‘ (AE’s favourite time of day) and says for the second time that day ‘All good things come to an end.‘

Mary Poppins chooses a return ticket (which is a strange option for such a ride, but may well relate to AE’s deep belief in reincarnation) thoughtfully saying ‘You never know’. The Merry-go-round spins and rises up beyond the trees and soon a new star appears in the night sky. Could this new star be her AE? On the final page Pamela writes –‘And high above them the great shape circled and wheeled through the darkening sky, shining and keeping its secret for ever and ever and ever…‘

On one occasion, Lina asked me if I had any thoughts on who Pamela could have been referring to when she dedicated Mary Poppins Comes Back ‘To PIP This Keepsake’. I immediately swung into action, thinking this would be a nice puzzle to try solving. I noticed that Pamela had also written ‘P-p! P-p!‘ to describe the sound  made by  Mr Bank’s pipe and I was drawn to the similarity between ‘PIP’, pipe, and P-p. As AE was very much on Pamela’s mind during the writing and completion of the book I wondered if this could all relate to AE. I factored in my belief that Pamela used to refer to AE as ‘the matchman’ due to him constantly leaving a trail or puddle of spent matchsticks wherever he went or sat. This messy habit was common knowledge to all who knew him, and he even had to have a special supply of matches arranged in advance of going on holiday to an isolated location. AE was never without his pipe, and I suppose his two most noticeable features were always his marvellous beard and the pipe. Then I remembered how Pamela had been the one who had sorted through AE’s belongings after he died, and thought that the best keepsake she could possibly have would be his pipe, as I believe he had taken his beard with him to the grave. I think the answer lies within these thoughts and would love to ask Pamela if that is correct. Of course, I could not ask her, so instead I asked Lina, who appreciated my imaginative proposition.

Perhaps a light sprinkle of AE  and Pamela’s magical stardust helped me to discover the connection between them, and find my way to Lina’s blog. But if so, it may not be the first time this magic has come my way. Considering how I only really came across Pamela Travers through my uncommonly rigorous approach to studying AE’s life, I have recently discovered my own personal connection with her, which also links to AE. Remembering how  says, ‘Your own will come to you‘, I must tell you – the first poem AE published by Pamela was titled Christopher, and my son, named Christopher, was born on the very day  Pamela died – 23rd April 1996.

A Rose for Mary Poppins and P.L.Travers (Part II)

Mary Poppins rose 3

In my previous blog post I told the story of how P.L. Travers wished into physical reality three new varieties of roses. As it happened, she shared one of her personal wishes during an interview, and that interview set into motion a series of serendipitous events, which coalesced into three hybrid tea roses: one named after Pamela Travers, one after Mary Poppins, and a third one after Sleeping Beauty (P.L. Travers’s favourite fairy tale).

I have been poking around the Internet for years trying to find pictures of these roses only to find some technical notes describing their appearance. Until my own serendipitous experience last month. Just as I was about to post A Rose for Mary Poppins and P.L.Travers (on Valentine’s Day, wink, wink), I decided to double check the spelling of Dr. Dennison Morey’s name. I got it right, but my extra precaution paid off. The first reference that appeared in my Google search was Dr. Dennison Morey’s Country Garden Roses pamphlet for 1969 on eBay!

Cover Pamphlet

Picture of the cover of Dr. Dennison Morey’s Country Garden Roses pamphlet for 1969

I got goosebumps and then I hurriedly pulled out my credit card. What if some other Mary Poppins and P.L Travers fan found this and beat me to checkout?  Then, the frequent trips to the mailbox began and that was not because I did not know about the system of notifications of the status of my order. Only people with nerdy obsessions can understand this anxious anticipation.  I mean, there was no certainty that the pictures of the roses would be in the pamphlet. All I knew was that Pamela Travers was created in 1966, Mary Poppins and Sleeping Beauty in 1967. I had to wait.

A couple of weeks later, like fireworks, my heart burst with joy as I flipped through the pages of the pamphlet.

Dr. Dennison Morey

Not only did I get to see the pictures of Pamela Travers and Mary Poppins*, but I also read fragments from P.L. Travers’s correspondence with Dr. Morey.  Now I want to share it all with you, my mysterious readers.  

Pamela Travers rose

PAMELA TRAVERS PRR P HT (Morey 1966) 36’’-42’’. 30-35 petals. The gracious author of the treasured “Mary Poppins” stories and other lessons for young and old certainly deserves the honor of a rose. Pamela Travers asked only that her rose be pink, fragrant, healthy, vigorous, enthusiastic, happy, pleasant, easy to live with, adaptable, always in bloom, readily and willingly cut for the home, long lasting in the vase, prolific, long seasoned, bright, cheerful, and if possible, gentle, wise, and completely honest.

Undoubtedly this description echoes snippets from P.L. Travers and Dr. Morey’s correspondence, and it definitely feels like P.L Travers played the role of the Fairy Godmother bestowing praiseworthy virtues upon her rose. Could it be that she wished to embody these qualities herself (save of course from being “readily and willingly cut for the home” and “long lasting in the vase”). Possible, but not certain.

What is unequivocal though is that P.L. Travers gave a tall order to Dr. Morey. The words “Pamela Travers asked only that her rose be …”  followed by an extensive list of attributes suggests that Dr. Morey had a good sense of humour, and that P.L Travers was just maybe a little too demanding. She surely knew what she wanted. Regardless, Dr. Morey filled the order.

P.L. Travers’s request for her rose to be honest and cheerful took me by surprise. She associated these qualities with the daisy, which by the way she judged to be a child’s flower, precisely because of its openness and honesty.  Thinking about this apparent contradiction between her request and what she said about the allure and mystery of the rose in her interview with Frankel, I remembered another occasion on which she wrote about an open rose. It was in The Children in the Story in Mary Poppins in the Park, the fourth of the Mary Poppins books published in 1952. I will tell you more about this other rose in a future post.

How did Dr. Morey translate the attribute of honesty in rose language? I believe the answer is in the number of petals. Honest Pamela Travers has only 35 petals compared to mysterious Mary Poppins who has 157 petals.

Mary Poppins rose 1

PRR R HT (Morey 1967) 40’’ – 48’’, 150-157 petals. This remarkable new rose is a shell pink sport of the fabulous “Hallmark”, the first modern mildew resistant, fragrant red hybrid tea. Mary Poppins has all the robust stamina so characteristic of the “Hallmark” combined with a rich but delicate color.

The plant is strong vigorous and of upright habit. The stems are strong and straight, proudly holding the radiant blooms on high for all to admire. New growth starts before the flowers are finished, rapidly pushing a new crown of green and pink glory above the earlier growth.

The foliage is leathery, essentially immune to mildew and highly resistant to rust and blackspots, large and a rich apple green.

The flowers are double, full, high centered, long lasting and, considering the delicacy of the color, notably weather resistant.

The fragrance is of cedar and quite pronounced under favorable conditions. This is an unusually fine garden plant as well as an outstanding rose.

Mary Poppins (the fictional character) conceals a great deal about herself. She never tells where she comes from, nor what she thinks and who she truly is. It is logical then that her rose would conceal its essence in the depths of its petals.

The description is definitely reminiscent of Mary Poppins herself, and I am certain it was P.L. Travers who suggested the attributes of “robust stamina”, “strong vigorous and of upright habit”, “proudly holding the radian blooms for all to admire”. Even Mary Poppins herself could not disagree with this description. Afterall she was, or appeared at least to be, somewhat vain.

On page 4 of Dr. Dennison Morey’s Country Garden Roses pamphlet there is a section titled The Country Garden Gift Calendar. For 1969 the “Mary Poppins” hybrid tea  rose is suggested as the perfect gift for the young gardener.

All floribundaces are good choices for children’s gifts… with a minimum of care the young the junior gardener will receive bountiful blooms for many months each year from his own rosebush. And a rose such as the new pink “Mary Poppins” hybrid tea could bring special joy to a youngster, encouraging the love of growing things.

We can safely assume that the choice to offer this particular rose to budding gardeners had little to do with the actual attributes of the flower. The choice was obviously motivated by the popularity at that time of Disney’s Mary Poppins.

Both roses are pink and although I do not have proof for what I am about to assert, I have the feeling that pink was P.L. Travers’s favourite colour. Or why did she paint her front door at 29 Shawfield Street, London lolly pink?

Now a few words about the nature of P.L. Travers’s wish for a namesake rose. It is a charming wish and one that does not appear to have any useful purpose.  Most of our wishes are materialistic. We wish to obtain or to achieve something that has some functionality, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is also much joy to be found in whimsical wishes. They can bring new tonalities in our lives, a new tune to dance to. These kinds of wishes have deep symbolic meanings, they speak the language of our souls. So, do you know what is your heart’s whimsical wish?

One of mine is to find the living and breathing roses named after Pamela Travers and Mary Poppins!

* Sleeping Beauty remains to be found.

A Rose for Mary Poppins and P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins Rose

The rose was P.L. Travers’s favourite flower. For her it was “the flower of all flowers, furled and curled, never giving anything away.

A daisy is the child’s favourite. It’s so open. The daisy and the rose are the two ends of the stick. The rose is never, until the last moment unfolded.

P.L. Travers, Saturday Review, November 7, 1964

This is what P.L. Travers told Haskel Frankel on a gray November day, sitting in “a darkish corner” of a New York restaurant.

If Frankel knew about P.L. Travers’s spiritual life, her comment about “the two ends of the stick” would have, undoubtedly, prompted him to ask different questions, but Frankel was unaware of P.L. Travers’s allegiance to G.I. Gurdjieff and his spiritual teachings.

“Two ends of the stick” was an expression used by Gurdjieff to illustrate the polarities of life. P.L. Travers used it often in her interviews, and in her writings.  In this instance, she uses the differences in the physical attributes of the daisy and the rose as an illustration of two radically different attitudes towards life: that of the child, and the other of the adult. On one end there is innocence and trust, and on the other, vulnerability and the need for self-protection. However, if we choose to look at this metaphor not as a fixed image but as a flowing movement from the daisy towards the rose, we can understand something about the way P.L. Travers might have experienced her own process of maturation. It would have been interesting to discuss with her the possibility to use both ends of the stick, just like a funambulist.

Before the interview P.L. Travers’s publisher Harcourt, Brace & World sent Frankel a copy of the then newly issued, one-volume edition of Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins Comes Back. He found a note in the book with P.L. Travers’s conditions on interviews. He had to read her books and he was not allowed to ask personal questions.

P.L. Travers explained to Frankel that she does not want any personal questions because “they take away from the feeling of anonymity which I need for my writing.”  And, at the end of their meeting, she left the restaurant leaving behind the following statement: “Intimate life is the only life I can bear. I’m not interested in the passing scene because it passes.” She knew how to exit a scene on a dramatic note.

Despite her refusal to talk about her private life, P.L. Travers revealed one of her intimate wishes. She told Frankel that her greatest joy would be to have a rose named after her. “A Pamela Travers rose. Wouldn’t that be nice? Or even better, a Mary Poppins rose.”

P.L.Travers Rose

A beautiful wish that came true. Dr. Dennison Morey, a rose grower from California, happened to read P.L. Travers’s interview in the Saturday Review,  and he wrote to her. A correspondence ensued, and two years later, he bred two roses: one named Pamela Travers and the other named Sleeping Beauty. Why Sleeping Beauty? Because Sleeping Beauty was P.L. Travers’s favourite fairy tale, and because in some versions of the story Sleeping Beauty is called Briar Rose. And let’s not forget that her sleep in the castle is guarded by a thick hedge of thorny roses.

A year later, in 1967, Dr. Morey bred a third rose. This time he named it Mary Poppins. 

This occurrence in P.L. Travers’s life is pure magic at work. The fulfillment of her whimsical wish is just so serendipitous. It makes me wonder, is it just a question of luck, or is there some secret process to manifestation that cannot be set into motion without a sincere, heartfelt wish? There is also something else, something that deserves to be pondered on, something about the necessity of making the wish known to the world.

May all our heartfelt wishes come true. Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

 

Published
Categorized as Biography

Is There a Love Connection between Mary Poppins and Bert the Match-Man?

Mary Poppins and Bert Movie Poster

Movie Poster, Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins

The 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins certainly suggests such an interpretation. However, Mary Poppins’s author P.L. Travers had a different opinion and denied any romantic relationship between these two fictional characters. Who was right? Disney’s screenwriters or the author herself? The answer is not as straightforward as you may think. With the help of Irish historian Brian McKernan, I will attempt to offer a possible answer to this question.

The first Mary Poppins book was published in 1934, but a character in the name of Mary Poppins first appeared in 1926,  under the pen of twenty-seven years old P. L. Travers, in the short story  Mary Poppins And the Match-Man, published on November 13, 1926 in Christchurch’s newspaper The Sun. The story is about a seventeen years old girl, Mary Poppins, the underneath nurse of Jane and Michael and John and Barbara Banks, who on her Day Out, embarks on a magical adventure in a picture drawn by her friend, Bert the Match-Man.

A few years later P.L. Travers redrafted the story and included it in the first Mary Poppins book under the title “The Day Out”.  (If you want to read the two versions of the story side by side, click here.) “The Day Out” is also the basis of the song-and-dance sequence “It’s a Jolly Holiday with Mary” in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins movie.

Mary Poppins and the Match Man

Valerie Lawson, P.L. Travers’s biographer, wrote that the fact that Disney chose this particular story as an important scene in the movie always irritated P.L. Travers.

She later called “The Day Out” chapter “false” and the weakest of all her Mary Poppins adventures, but never explained why.    

Mary Poppins, She Wrote, by Valerie Lawson

Both versions of the story are rather similar. Bert has not made enough money from his paintings to take Mary Poppins out for tea and raspberry-jam-cakes. Mary Poppins tries to hide her disappointment behind a smile “with both ends turned up” and then Bert has an idea. Why don’t they go into one of his pictures? “Puff!” They go into a picture where it is “all trees and grass and a little bit of blue sea in the distance”. There they have tea, eat raspberry-jam-cakes and go for a Merry-go-Round ride. In the first story they also eat two plates of mussels which in the second version of the story are transformed into two plates of whelks. In one story the tea is served from a brass urn, and in the other from a silver one. In one story they each ride a black and white horse and in the other black and grey. In one story the Merrie-go-Round takes them to Margate and in the other to Yarmouth. But these are minor changes.

Mary Poppins and the Match Man modern

Illustration by Julia Sardà

However, there is one significant change, and that is the way P.L. Travers portrays the relationship between Mary Poppins and Bert. In the first story the romantic aspect is clear:

“Mary!” he cried, and you could see by the way he cried it that he loved her.

Mary Poppins smoothed out her dress and looked hard at her shoes and smiled at the Match-Man all at once, and you knew by that that she loved him too.                                                                                                      

In comparison, the 1934 version is not as explicit.

“Mary!” he cried, and you could tell by the way he cried it that Mary Poppins was a very important person in his life.

Mary Poppins looked down at her feet and rubbed the toe of one shoe along the pavement two or three times. Then she smiled at the shoe in such a way that the shoe knew quite well that the smile wasn’t meant for it.

Why did P.L. Travers change the story? Why was she so adamant about the absence of romance between Mary Poppins and the Match-Man? The answer, at least in part, can be found in McKernan’s reading of the 1926 version of the story.

Mary Poppins board (1)

According to McKernan, the character of Mary Poppins is a personification of young P.L. Travers and Bert the Match-Man the embodiment of her literary mentor George W. Russell (AE). The romance between Mary Poppins and the Match-Man reflecting Travers’s heart felt love for AE at that period in her life. (insert a link to previous post about AE)

McKernan combines other elements from AE’s life to support his interpretation of the story.  It appears from his research that young P.L. Travers nicknamed AE the “Match-Man” gently mocking his habit of leaving behind a trail of spent matches from the constant relighting of his pipe.

AE himself discussed his matches problem in a letter to his friend Lucy Kingsley Porter:   

I think I’ll get my own matches in Letterkenny. I would exhaust any stock you would lay in. I know myself. It’s nearly a box of matches to one pipeful. Mrs. Law used to know where I had been painting when she found a box-full of burnt out matches around a center where I had been sitting. I will let you provide the floor space.

Bert’s painting of pictures on the pavement also supports McKernan’s interpretation of this fictional character. AE had many talents and painting was one of them.  He loved to paint landscapes as well as magical figures inspired by his spiritual visions, and he used to carry chalks in his pockets and draw on pavements, walls and rocks.

AE loved to spend his summer holidays in the northwest county of Donegal in the village of Breaghy, where he rented a room in a hillside cottage, Janie’s-on-the-Hill.  At twilight he would gather his crayons and sketch pad, and head for the hills. 

8MB Women on Hillside.jpgWomen on Hillside, by George William  (AE) Russell

Young P.L. Travers accompanied AE on a few holidays during the 1920’s and went on painting excursions with him. She wrote about how he would paint “no sooner finishing one picture than starting on another. But one felt that this was less a series of emotional excursions than his way of finding out about the world he lived in.”

Once, AE offered P.L. Travers a paint-box, chalks and sketchbook affirming that if one has one gift then one has them all.

So, having arrived at his chosen position, a long yellow tongue of sand, laced with a thread of moving water that changed its colour as the sky changed, I sat beside him, making an occasional sweep of a crayon but more intent on watching his way of working than on what was in my sketch book.

The Death of AE: Irish Hero and Mystic, P.L. Travers

P.L. Travers not really interested in drawing herself, climbed on the branch of a nearby tree to observe AE’s crowding the canvas “with creatures from some other world”.  Somehow, busy as he was painting his visions, AE managed, without her noticing it, to sketch a picture of her resting on the tree branch.

…and there was I upon my branch, not at all a part of the scene but in a way a witness to it. As if one stood, unseen, at the portal of Paradise.

The Death of AE: Irish Hero and Mystic, P.L. Travers

Pam sketch by AE

Maybe on that particular day she was not able to see what he saw but she did become part of the magical scene in the story Mary Poppins And the Match-Man. 

Why then did P.L. Travers deny the love connection between Mary Poppins and the Match-Man? Well, by the time she wrote the stories for the first Mary Poppins book, her relationship with AE had evolved and deepened without ever becoming a romantic relationship. And, I also believe she had an additional reason. Mary Poppins had changed too and so had P.L. Travers.

In the first story Mary Poppins is not magical, the magic adventure clearly initiated by the Match-Man, and she dreams a very human dream of a life shared with a partner in a small house with a garden:

 They passed a little red house with sun flowers in its front garden.

“Just the sort of little house I always wanted! said Mary Poppins kissing her white-gloved hand to it.

Mary Poppins And the Match-Man, P.L. Travers, 1926

In the books Mary Poppins is no longer the shy young girl in need of a mentor. In the books Mary Poppins is herself the initiator of the magical adventures and the one dispensing the lessons. She is a self-sufficient, magical creature beyond the laws of our world. She is the “Great Exception”, the Starling in the story “John and Barbara’s Story” tells us. She is the only human who has transcended its human nature and accessed to a higher state of being.

P.L. Travers imagined Mary Poppins as a self-sufficient, independent and mysterious creature who feels at home wherever she goes. There is simply no place for the Match-Man next to such a powerful Mary Poppins. At least not in the mind of P.L. Travers.

Hope you enjoyed this post and that you will come back to read more about P. L. Travers and her magical Mary Poppins.   

Re-examining the Relationship between Irish Poet and Mystic AE and Young Pamela L. Travers

2019 Lurgan Book cover

By some serendipitous coincidence Irish historian Brian McKernan found my blog and read one of my very first blogposts: The Lover Archetype and Friend Monkey (I).

I wrote back then that George W. Russell’s (AE) did not reciprocate the romantic feelings of young Pamela and that he failed to make her feel special as a woman, a statement I based on the fact that he wrote to her about his other interests and flings. From that assertion I extrapolated that his attitude reaffirmed Pamela’s childhood experience of not being lovable enough, and then, I concluded that the relationship remained platonic because AE was emotionally unavailable.

My assumption about AE’s emotional unavailability as the primary reason for the platonic nature of the relationship between him and young Pamela prompted McKernan, who has spent the last couple of years researching AE’s life, to reach out and offer a different perspective. The ensuing correspondence gave nuance to my understanding of their relationship. But, before I offer you some snippets from our correspondence, a word about McKernan’s work. 

McKernan’s initial goal was to read about AE “to build up a basic story about him so that his birthplace-Lurgan, could hear his story.”  It appears that AE despite his numerous contributions to the Irish society has been largely forgotten by the public.

AE Exhibition 1

 

AE EXIBITION, Rushmere Shopping Centre, Septembre 2019, Curated by Brian and Michael McKernan

McKernan hopes that the memory of AE’s life and achievements will inspire the younger generations and maybe even reverse the sad reality of Lurgan. Today, says McKernan, Lurgan is “socially divided (Catholic/Protestant, Nationalist/Unionist) and the suicide rate locally among young people is so high, the place needs a role model, a hero they can all celebrate together, and which tells them their town has some greatness in its DNA.” An honorable mission.

AE Exhibition 2

After spending considerable amount of time immersed in the world of AE, McKernan developed a true appreciation of his genius. His admiration grew as he realised that AE “acted differently from most men” because of his spiritual beliefs and visions which made him experience life on a different level than most men.

McKernan explains that AE considered ordinary human love to be of an ephemeral nature. He aspired to a higher, more lasting spiritual connection:

AE understood, as we all generally do, about romance, lust and temptation, but he believed so much in a higher love, where two people’s spirits meet, that he forced himself to hold back from the lower base human lust. He wrote a poem ‘The Spell’ in which he directly addresses the opportunities coming his way (sex, lust, romance) and how feeling that he is too old for this is pretty annoying. He regretted letting Pam (P.L. Travers) down. He regretted letting others down. Sometimes he wished he could just let himself succumb to temptation.

THE SPELL   

Now as I lean to whisper

To earth the last farewells,

The sly witch lays upon me

The subtlest of her spells:

Beauty that was not for me,

The love that was denied,

Their high disdainful sweetness

Now melted from their pride:

They run to me in vision,

All promise in their gaze,

All earth’s heart-choking magic,

Madness of nights and days.

These gifts are in my treasure,

Though fleeting be the breath;

Here only to wild giving

Is love made fire by death.

This spell I put upon thee

Must, in thy being burn,

Till from the Heavenly City

To me thou shalt return.

About AE writing to Pamela about his other crushes, McKernarn writes:

As for his ‘other flings’ and writing about them, that was not something he did a lot, but with Leah Bernstein, Simone Tery and Pamela he enjoyed their attention, like forbidden fruit, and they enjoyed this little bit of nonsense and fun too.

There was nothing false about the relationship says McKernan. “AE was simply reluctant to romance the outer Pamela and preferred the more lasting spiritual bond to Pamela’s inner self. And Pamela was reluctant to “jump all over him for a brief breaking down of a slightly awkward and hindering barrier”. The bond between Pamela and AE was strengthen by their shared similarities. “Pamela shared so many similarities with AE – like her sharp wit, innate intelligence, deep and sincere spiritual outlook.”

Anyhow, one thing is certain, AE’s influence was transformative and tributary for setting the course of Pamela L. Travers’s life as a writer and for the creation of Mary Poppins. McKernan writes:

He (AE) completely welcomed her into his world and circle of friends – something she needed. Before this transformative friendship began, she was floating quite aimlessly, with no sense of place. He gave her full acceptance and status.

In her essay The Death of AE: Irish Hero and Mystic, Pamela writes about her relationship with AE. “I do not know in which role he saw me, as a daughter, acolyte, apprentice, or as all three…” “Was he intentionally educating me, I wondered! No matter: it was being done, with or without intent.”

Despite the initial infatuation, the relationship evolved into one between a teacher and his student and lasted until AE’s death ten years later. Their bond extended to AE’s son Diarmuid Russell who became Pamela’s literary agent and then to Diarmuid Russell’s daughter Pamela, who was named after her.

All this indicates that AE appreciated young Pamela enough to resist the initial temptation. He was wise enough and aware enough of his personal situation, age, his marriage to his ailing wife and, of course the fact that Pamela wanted a life he couldn’t give her. It is possible then that he wrote to her about his ‘other flings’ precisely because he wanted to maintain a certain distance in order to preserve a lasting relationship. He played the role he knew he could fulfill, that of the guiding mentor.

Pamela wanted to be a poet and it was through poetry that she met AE. However, McKernan notes, it was AE who finally moved her from poetry to prose, “just like he moved his friend William Butler Yeats from Art (painting) to poetry”. If it was not for AE, McKernan believes, there would be no Mary Poppins for us.

He helped her to develop the characters, plots and stories which became the Mary Poppins’ books. Although he had never accepted any financial gain for helping his protégés, he did accept a share of her first Mary Poppins’ royalties in 1934 as he had been so involved in the process.  

In my next blogpost I will tell you more about the connections between AE and Mary Poppins as revealed by McKernan.

Hope you’ll come back to read more about Pamela L. Travers and her Mary Poppins.

 

Feathered Omens

 

Picture of the feather

At twenty-four Pamela L. Travers was determined to be the master of her own destiny. Strong headed, propelled by the need to escape the limited existence commanded by the needs of her family, Pamela decided to leave it all behind and search for that elusive “something else”.

And as I grew, amidst all the abundance, I began to feel a wanting. Lacking nothing, I came to now lack – a longing, even nostalgia for something I had never known. In all the completeness, I was incomplete, a cup only half full. This ache, this lonely weight of heart came upon me always at sunset, when the long rays lay across the earth like stripes on the back of a zebra. ‘There must be Something Else!’ I would say. Achingly, I would say it. But all, I knew, was Here and Now, and if all, then within the all that Something Else awaited me, infolded, implicate. Was it an answer to an unheard question? If a question, how would I know the answer?

Pamela L. Travers, Now, Farewell and Hail, 1985

The call to adventure, in Pamela’s case, the call to Ireland, was too compelling to be ignored. And according to her, it urged her from her early childhood:

Brian Sibley:       You said to me earlier that from the moment you were born you knew that you would be leaving Australia and you would be coming back to Ireland. What was it that put that idea into your head?

P.L.Travers:         How do you know the idea was put in my head. I am perfectly convinced that I was born saying “Get me out of here.”

Brian Sibley:       But you were happy there?

P.L.Travers:        Very.

Brian Sibley:       So, was it something about Ireland that was calling you as it were?

P.L.Travers:        Well, you like to make that assertion, I don’t. It was just in me, that I wouldn’t be staying there, the others would say we’ll do this and do that when we are grown up and I used to say calmly but I will not be here. And I was always laughed at.

P L Travers: The Woman behind Mary Poppins

At the time of the recording of this conversation, Pamela L. Travers’s biography was not yet written, and not much was known about the details of her life in Australia. And, Pamela disclosed only what she wanted to disclose which, it turned out, was often slightly misrepresented, especially when it came to her father. There are different possible interpretations for the reasons of these distortions, but what is now certain is that her father exerted great influence upon her young and impressionable mind.

By reciting Irish poetry and recounting Celtic myths, her father, quite unknowingly, planted a special seed in Pamela’s oversensitive imagination. The seed grew deep roots of fascination with Ireland and these roots, eventually, reached the Irish soil. As soon as Pamela arrived in Ireland, she contacted George William Russell (A.E.) who not only responded to the poem she sent him but also introduced her to his close friend, the legendary, W.B. Yeats. This is how Pamela, almost by magic, entered into the Irish literary establishment of that time. 

The prospect of her long trip across the ocean to the other side of the Earth must have been unsettling for young Pamela, even if the departure was desired. Fears and doubts must have been her companions, after all she was making a leap of faith towards the unknown. What made her answer the call to adventure? It is an arduous task, shun by most of us. How did she overcome these uneasy feelings? Was it the explosive combination of her inherent rebelliousness along with some youthful naiveté that allowed her to push through her doubts? One thing we do know is that she relied on the guidance from a feather.

A few days before Pamela sailed to England a bird’s feather drifted down to her feet as she was walking on the street. She stopped and scooped it up. Her biographer Valerie Lawson writes “Soft, but finely shaped, the tail feather might have come from a magpie. She tucked it into her handbag. This omen was to travel with her, those fifty days to London.”

The feather remained with Pamela for much longer than the trip to England. She kept it for the rest of her life.

The fact that Pamela saw in it a good omen, a sort of a sign of protection from above, confirms both that she needed reassurance and guidance at that moment in her life, and also that she was sensitive to the spirit world. Shamans believe that a feather from a bird can connect a person with the specific archetypal energies of that bird. Did the magpie have something to communicate to Pamela?

Interestingly enough a magpie is believed to indicate an encounter with the spirit realm and the metaphysical world but in a rather unusual way. Now this strikes me as a “funny” coincidence because Pamela did encounter the spirit world right from her arrival in Ireland. George W. Russell was a member of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society founded by the controversial Madame Helena Blavatsky. And he also claimed to be able to see fairies and enjoyed painting his visions.

As for W.B. Yeats, well, he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an organization devoted to the study of the occult, metaphysics and paranormal activities. Not surprisingy then, Pamela’s literary initiation was strongly influenced by the esoteric beliefs of George W. Russell and W.B. Yeats.

But that was only the prelude to her spiritual journey. The most unusual spiritual encounter, and the most influential one, was her meeting with the spiritual master and magi G.I. Gurdjieff.

Gurdjieff

The least that can be said about Gurdjieff’s esoteric system and his teaching methods is that they were unconventional. He himself presented his system as The Fourth Way by distinguishing it from the other three known spiritual paths, namely those of the fakir, the monk and the yogi which all require “the most difficult thing, (…) a complete change of life, with a renunciation of all worldly things.” Gurdjieff’s Forth Way, which he also qualified as esoteric Christianity, did not require such renunciation from his pupils, his followers remained in the usual conditions of their lives.

The teachings, known as The Work were transmitted orally during meetings, often times preceded by a meal and Toasts to the “Idiots”, a ritual remotely reminiscent of the Masonic Toasts. Gurdjieff believed that “Alcohol opens, it shows many aspects of your interior; it is very important for knowing someone”. The Work consisted of these meetings and individually crafted exercises of self-observation and the performance of sacred dances, which Gurdjieff choreographed to music he himself composed with the help of Thomas de Hartmann.

According to Gurdjieff’s theory the average man functions on automatic pilot mode pushed by external circumstances. In order to transcend this ordinary unconscious state of existence, one must first awake to one’s nothingness and the fact that one lacks unity from within. To get his pupils to come to that realisation he used some questionable techniques of humiliation and applied mental shocks. One of his techniques to encourage his pupils to pursue their journey on the path of the Fourth Way was to convince them that man was born without a soul, and unless they developed one they would die as dogs and become food for the moon. He taught that the prerequisite for the development of the individual soul is the achievement of a unified sense of self, which is acquired by practicing self-remembering and total detachment from outside influences. The self-remembering as taught by Gurdjieff consists essentially of the practice of entering into oneself and sensing simultaneously with the body, the emotions and the mind one’s existence. As for attaining detachment, Gurdjieff instructed his pupils to “Create an ideal for yourself. This will save you from automatic attachments. Thinks about this consciously and automatically this will grow and form a center of gravity.”

Did Gurdjieff’s teachings help Pamela find the answers to her existential questions? Nothing is less certain, but he did teach her to be a questioner. Her friend, author Brian Sibley, says that she was an endless questioner and someone who never gave any straight answers. She was an adept of knowledge acquired through experience.

It is doubtful that young Pamela interpreted the appearance of the feather as a sign of her upcoming spiritual journey. She needed hindsight to see the connection. But don’t we all? Doesn’t this seem to be our human predicament? Things often make sense only with hindsight.

Pamela L. Travers and the “Tale of Beatrix Potter” (Part II)     

Beatrix Potter 2

Her rigorous Victorian childhood reads like the record of life on an island rock. Year after year, alone in a nursery in Bolon Gardens, she lunched on a daily cutlet and a plate of rice pudding much as a castaway might regale himself from a single clump of lichen.  

The Hidden Child, Pamela L. Travers.  

This week’s post delves deeper into the reasons which might have inspired Pamela L. Travers’s lifelong reverence for Beatrix Potter.  

I believe that Pamela L. Travers’s admiration was probably sparked after she read Potter’s biography “The Tale of Beatrix Potter”. I doubt that it could have been any other way. “The Tale of Beatrix Potter”  by Margaret Lane was Potter’s first biography published only a couple of years after her death. Prior to that not much was known about her personal life. And without the details of her life I am not sure Pamela would have had the same interest.  

I believe that Pamela L. Travers admired Potter not only for her artistic talent, but because she felt that, just like herself, Potter gave expression in her stories to the hidden child within (see Pamela L. Travers and the “Tale of Beatrix Potter” (Part I)).  

Pamela L. Travers and Beatrix Potter both experienced, early in their childhoods, the neglect of their emotional needs.  Potter’s biographer, Margaret Lane, put it in a nutshell by writing that Beatrix was born in a time and a social class that had very little understanding of children. This affirmation pretty much encapsulates Pamela’s own situation.   

That being so, both girls grew up unnoticed, somewhere on the fringes of the lives of the grown-ups around them, only to find themselves later on burdened by selfish parental expectations. Pamela L. Travers had to give up on her pursuit of higher education and her acting dreams to work as a secretary to help support her widowed mother. As for Potter, she was expected to dedicate her life to the care of her parents who, for that reason, opposed her plans to marry and have a life of her own.  However, there is yet another reason for which, I believe, Pamela L. Travers held Beatrix Potter in high regard.  

Beatrix Potter succeeded in reinventing her life exactly the way she wanted it to be, and contrary to Pamela, without any excess or overt rebellion.   

It is the second act in Beatrix Potter’s life that must have struck Pamela’s psyche.  At the same age at which Pamela wrote her book review of Potter’s biography, Potter was already married and happily living in her estate in the countryside enjoying her life as a farmer, her illustrated stories no longer occupying her mind. As for Pamela, she was single, living with her adopted son in London and still looking for that elusive “something else” from her childhood.   

And as I grew, amidst all the abundance, I began to feel a wanting. Lacking nothing, I came to now lack – a longing, even nostalgia for something I had never known. In all the completeness, I was incomplete, a cup only half full. This ache, this lonely weight of heart came upon me always at sunset. There would be Something Else! I would say. Aching, I would say it. But all I knew was Here and Now, and of all, then within the all that Something Else awaited me, unfolded, implicate. Was it an answer to an unheard question? If a question, how would I know the answer? 

Pamela L. Travers Now, Farewell and Hail 1985.  

While Pamela spent her long life chasing after something she could not articulate, Potter had a clear understanding of what would be the right life for herself. Pamela judiciously noted that fact herself.

To begin with she (Beatrix Potter) knew exactly what she wanted. Her first glimpse of the countryside, Miss Lane tells us, aroused in her the lifelong passion that became articulate only with the purchase of Hill Top Farm.

Pamela L.Travers, The Hidden Child, 1947

So, one girl completely reinvented her life in alignment with her inner nature and the other continued her search for herself, following one guru after the other, desperately looking for guidance. 

At the end, it was the determined, quiet and patient Beatrix, not the rebellious and mischievous Pamela, who succeeded in creating her ideal life.   

Although Pamela did break out of her expected role as the provider of her widowed mother and her younger siblings, and made a life of her own as journalist and writer, her life was not a fulfilling one.  

What intrigues me is Pamela’s failure to heal the hidden child within? Why was it that little Lyndon (Pamela L. Travers’s real name, of which she was quite protective) never found peace? How was it that Beatrix Potter succeeded in healing her childhood wounds while Pamela only exacerbated them throughout her life?  

This post is an attempt to answer this question by examining a little closer what appears to have been emotionally similar childhood experiences.  

Both girls felt lonely but it was Beatrix Potter who was the one leading the most confined existence. She was not schooled, it was not expected nor required for girls of her social class. Beatrix spent her days alone in the silence of her nursery only to escape briefly for a daily walk with her governess. Pamela on the other had went to school and to Church and played with her peers.    

However, despite the lack of interest of her parents, Beatrix Potter was luckier that Travers because she had a governess, Miss Hammond, who “encouraged her awakening interest in nature and drawing and gave her that feeling of loving confidence in an older presence which she otherwise night have missed“.   

Potter’s secluded childhood, despite its smothering atmosphere, provided a sense of unshakable stability. Her parents were predictable, living in calm routine and without the stress of financial troubles. There were no uncertainties, no ambiguities in Beatrix’s childhood that could have prevented her from forming a firm sense of self. Beatrix was introverted by nature, and the secure, undisturbed home environment allowed her to concentrate all of her attention on her own fantasies and interests: nature and painting.   The family summer vacations to Scotland also played a major role in Beatrix’s grounding in nature. These regular trips provided Beatrix with a basis of comparison of a different way of living than the one adopted by her parents in London.  

..and from the first moment of wandering out into the lanes and fields her imagination found the food it had been waiting for. Everything that she saw was suddenly ‘real’…. Here, in white-washed cottages and among rick-yards, whole families lived in a way which her instinct told her was sensible and right.  

Pamela L.Travers, The Hidden Child, 1947

Beatrix Potter loved the natural world and surrounded herself with many pets who soothed her lonely days in her nursery. She had a hedgehog, a mouse, a rabbit and a bat in a birdcage. She spent innumerable hours painting, in extraordinary detail, her pets and the flowers she gathered and dried during her summers in Scotland. 

Things were different for Pamela.  As a child, she did not benefit from a benevolent older presence nor a stable environment. She was often times dispatched to relatives, her mother busy with her two younger sisters. Pamela was often scolded and criticized and even ridiculed by her parents.  Pamela’s father was emotionally unavailable due to his heavy drinking, which also caused his early and sudden death when Pamela was only seven years old (see Pamela L. Travers’s First Gods Part I).  

The unexpected loss of her father caused Pamela intense pain which was amplified by what she perceived as God’s betrayal of her trust. From then on things did not get any better. Her mother attempted suicide when Pamela was only ten years old. Travers’s memory of the event (which she kept secret for the bigger part of her life) is heart breaking (see Pamela L. Travers’s First Gods Part II).   

Pamela L. Travers’s loneliness was of a different kind. She was left alone to deal with difficult psychological experiences and her trust in people and life was shattered. There was no guiding presence and no stability to develop a clear identity. She spent her adult years swinging between opposites. Why else would she write:    

For in the children’s world there must be no uncertainties, no might-be, maybe cloud of grey but only the solidest black and white”  

Pamela L.Travers, The Hidden Child, 1947

And this is how, most likely, Mary Poppins came into life, she was born from the unmet emotional needs of Helen Lyndon Goff, the hidden child within Pamela L. Travers. Pamela’s inner child was fragmented and needed a mediator to make sense of life so, she kept summoning Mary Poppins back into her life…

Pamela L. Travers and “The Tale of Beatrix Potter” (Part I)

Beatrix Potter1

I have long held that the secret of the successful children’s book is that it is not written for children. … Outside appreciation of any kind is of secondary importance to the true children’s writer. For him the first and ultimate requirement is that the book should please himself. For he is the one for whom the  book is written. With it he puts to sleep his wakeful youth and tells the story of the hidden child within him. Such works are more often than not the results of an imaginative mind playing its light over lonely childhoods. What the child lacked in those tender years the imagination gives back to it. 

Pamela L. Travers 

This is what Pamela L. Travers wrote, under the pen name of Milo Reve, in her review of Beatrix Potter’s biography “The Tale of Beatrix Potter” written by Margaret Lane.  

When Beatrix Potter died in 1943, few knew the full story of her life and the “Tale of Beatrix Potter“, published in 1946, was the first account of her life. I wish I could ask Pamela if she was assigned to read and review the book or was she the one who chose the subject of her article. Anyhow, the tales of Beatrix Potter were part of Pamela L. Travers’s childhood reads, so in either case I believe she very much enjoyed the task. 

Pamela L. Travers’s book review was entitled “The Hidden Child” and was published in the New English Weekly on April 10, 1947 and luckily for me, it was reproduced in its entirety as an Appendix in Patricia Demers’s book “P.L. Travers“, a scholarly book I purchased some time ago on Amazon.  

The apparent intensity of Pamela’s deep understanding of the essence of the children’s writer is worthy of attention since all who knew her unanimously attest that she was quite self-absorbed and somewhat alienated from others. Pamela L. Travers was not particularly empathetic and her intimate relationships seem to have been quite tumultuous and complicated. Then, probably, any insight that she might have had of another human being’s experience must have been a resonance of an experience of her own.   

I knew about Pamela L. Travers’s lifelong admiration for Beatrix Potter, her biographer Valerie Lawson skimmed through the subject in her book “Mary Poppins She Wrote” but never dove into what might have motivated such veneration. Sadly, Lawson missed the significance of Pamela L. Travers’s appreciation of Beatrix Potter. Instead, she made condescending comments about both Pamela’s life and artistic choices. Seeing that Pamela never explained herself, that she wrote her first Mary Poppins book in a beautiful cottage in the country side, and that she loved to garden, Lawson concluded that Pamela was trying to imitate Potter in every way. Lawson never met Pamela L. Travers, yet, she went as far as to affirm that Pamela undertook to write her version of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale simply because she wanted to follow into Potter’s footsteps who wrote her detailed version of the Cinderella story. (Pamela L. Travers’s retelling of the Sleeping Beauty was explored in depth on this blog, see About the Sleeping Beauty Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V and Part VI.)  

It is somewhat strange and disappointing that the only thing that Lawson retained from her reading of the “Hidden Child” was that Pamela loved the sweet femininity of the female animal characters in Beatrix Potter’s stories for their ability to nurture and put things to right…  

Never before and probably never after did Pamela reveal so plainly the pattern of her inner torments and somehow it remained totally unnoticed by the outside world.

What makes me say that? Well, for one, at the time when Pamela L. Travers wrote “The Hidden Child“, she was 48 years old and she had successfully published three of her Mary Poppins books, and was herself considered as a successful children’s writer (despite the fact that she always denied having written the Mary Poppins stories with the intention to please children). And, what’s even more significant is that she continued to write children’s stories until late into her eighties. Listed below is the chronology of her fiction writings… 

  • Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934 
  • Mary Poppins Comes Back, London: L. Dickson & Thompson Ltd., 1935 
  • I Go By Sea, I Go By Land, London: Peter Davies, 1941 
  • Aunt Sass, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941 
  • Ah Wong, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943 
  • Mary Poppins Opens the Door, London: Peter Davies, 1943 
  • Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944 
  • Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Peter Davies, 1952 
  • Gingerbread Shop, 1952 
  • Mr. Wigg’s Birthday Party, 1952 
  • The Magic Compass, 1953 
  • Mary Poppins From A to Z, London: Collins, 1963 
  • The Fox at the Manger, London: Collins, 1963 
  • Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972 
  • Mary Poppins in the Kitchen, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975 
  • Two Pairs of Shoes, New York: Viking Press, 1980 
  • Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, London: Collins, 1982 
  • Mary Poppins and the House Next Door, London: Collins. 1988 

What does that signify? It means that Pamela L. Travers’s inner child was never appeased, she did not succeed to set herself free to find her fate in the grown-up world. And this is where Beatrix Potter succeeded in her life journey. I believe that this is the main reason for Pamela’s fascination.  

After reading the “Hidden Child” I decided to read the “Tale of Beatrix Potter”   and see if I could find some evidence supporting my perception of the emotional connection that Pamela L. Travers must have felt when reading the “Tale of Beatrix Potter“. And indeed, reading the book, I realized that there were some obvious similarities between the early emotional experiences of both writers. 

As children, they were both kept fed and sheltered, but other than that they were pretty much ignored by their parents and were left to their own devices. Both girls experienced the neglect of their emotional needs and their budding talents were disregarded.  Both loved and felt a deep connection with nature. Both were destined to take care of their parents and both desperately wanted to find and did find their way out. As young adults they both suffered from bouts of depression and both ended up writing stories that appealed to children.  

But I believe that Beatrix Potter’s transformation in the second half of her life, from a timid and lonely child to a farmer, conservationist and a business woman caused Pamela L. Travers’s admiration. 

Once Potter married, she lost all interest in writing and devoted herself to her husband and her true love, nature.  Beatrix Potter became Mrs. Heelis, a sheep farmer, nature conservationist and an estate owner. 

Pamela L. Travers’s interpretation of Potter’s metamorphosis gives a glimpse of her own inner yearning. 

And this retrospective (the story of the child within) my go on for book after book until the time comes when the child is appeased and freed. That the tales cease then is not necessarily a sign of failing imagination but rather that the writer has set himself free to find his fate in the grown-up world. …Beatrix Potter’s life is a perfect example of this pattern. … Full and rich with immediate life she had no overspill for the hidden child; indeed, because of that late fullness the child no longer needed her. She became what she had instinctively longed to be…  

Pamela L.Travers

Here it says it all…for those who listen…and do not judge… 

Pamela L. Travers continued, book after book, in her attempt to soothe her inner child, little Lyndon, (Pamela’s real name) without ever succeeding to move genuinly into the next stages of her life. 

The next post will examine in more detail  the similarities and the differences between the childhood experiences of  Pamela L. Travers and Beatrix Potter. Hope you stay tuned. 

 

 

Pamela L. Travers Goes By Sea, She Goes By Land

Pamela L. Travers I Go by Sea.PNG

The previous two posts focused on the religious references in Pamela L. Travers’s writings.  One of these posts analysed the story of “Ah Wong” which was written for a private readership in 1943, and then the second one was about the story of “Johnny Delaney” which was also written for a private readership in 1944.

These two stories were composed during Pamela L. Travers’s war time evacuation to the United States. At that time, she was quite depressed and homesick. Her emotional state pushed her to revisit her early childhood memories, probably as an attempt to relieve her from the psychological pain.

In the story of “Ah Wong,” the reader first gets a glimpse of Pamela’s early religious upbringing, and then witnesses the change in the narrator’s beliefs which occurs after her father’s sudden death. There is no longer a reference to a personified benevolent God but a mystic flow of life; a river that sends the narrator into life and Ah Wong to his death.

In the second story, the character, Johnny Delaney, is described as a bitter man with deep seeded feelings of unworthiness. Johnny feels betrayed by God and the Church.  I believe that all of Johnny’s feelings to have been Pamela’s own as well.

In both stories, there is a sense of ambiguity towards God. In the story of the Fox and the Manger published in 1963 (when Pamela was in her sixties), and which will be the subject of next week’s post, the same ambivalence towards her religious upbringing is also apparent.

I was surprised at the religious references in I Go By Sea, I Go By Land, a book written by Pamela L. Travers and published in 1941. This story has an uncharacteristic frame of hope. It possesses an overall sense of trust in a benign providence, something that Pamela L. Travers totally lacked.

It helped me to interpret this peculiar discrepancy when I learned that Pamela herself dismissed the book as “a mere bibelot…. written at the request of my publisher…all of us took assignments which weren’t properly in our line.”

The publisher in question was Eugene Reynal from W.W. Norton, and he suggested Pamela write an account of her experience of evacuation to the United States. We can speculate that the motivation behind the writing of this books was not so much a spontaneous self expression; but rather, a conscious effort to write something hopeful for her readers in a time of hopelessness. And this all came about because of her publisher’s demand.

Again, just as in the stories of “Ah Wong” and “Johnny Delaney,” the narrator in this story is a child. In this instance the child’s name is revealed to the reader. The eleven-year-old girl, Sabrina, keeps a diary of her adventure. Sabrina and her brother James, who is nine, are accompanied on this journey by a family friend named Pel, and Pel’s baby Romulus. 

The book is separated in two sections. The first, I Go by Sea, is about the experience of the war, leaving one’s homeland and one’s family, and the actual crossing of the ocean. The second part, I Go by Land, is about the children’s adaptation to their new life in America.

It is interesting to note that the book begins with a religious hymn, a prayer for protection, which reappears a few times in the first part of the story and which has inspired the title of the book. Here it is:

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on.

Before I lay me down to sleep

I give my soul to Christ to keep.

Four corners to my bed

Four angels round me spread.

Two to foot and two to head

And four to carry me when I’m dead.

I go by sea, I go by land

The Lord made me with His right hand

If any danger come to me,

Sweet Jesus Christ deliver me

He is the branch and I am the flower

Pray God send me a happy hour

And if I die before I wake

I pray that Christ my soul will take.

 

Now, I don’t know much about religion so I had to do a quick search about the religious references in the book, and I found some interesting information.

The hymn’s origin is Thomas Ady’s collection A candle in the Dark (1656) and was written to speak out against the Catholic Church and the atrocities inflicted on witches and other poor souls by the inquisition. Somehow, this hymn, known also as the “black paternoster,” escaped the anti-witchcraft and anti-Catholic sentiments of the 17th century to become a favorite children’s rhyme in England, especially in the 20th century. Some believe that this may be credited to Anglican priest, scholar and hymn-writer, Sabine Baring-Gould. (Pamela was brought up Anglican).

There are no religious references in the second portion of the story apart from a visit to a Cathedral in Montreal at the evacuee’s arrival in Canada. Pel takes the children to the Cathedral to light some candles even though she mentions they are not Catholics. Then, at the very end of the book, the characters sing the famous Victorian berceuse “Now the day is over” composed by the above-mentioned Anglican priest, Sabine-Baring-Gould.  

Now the day is over

Night is drawing night

Shadows of the evening

Steal across the sky.

Jesus give the weary

Calm and sweet repose

With thy tendering blessing

May our eyelids close.

 

Grant to little children

Visions bright of thee,

Gard the sailors tossing

On the deep blue sea.

 

Through the long night-watches

May thine angels spread

Their white wings above me

Watching round my bed.

 

When the morning wakens

Then may I rise

Pure and fresh and sinless

In the holy eyes.

 

Glory to the Father

Glory to the Son,

And to thee, blessed Spirit,

While the ages run.

Despite the hopeful notes in the story, there are still signs of Pamela’s own lack of faith in an external benevolent force.

Additionaly, I found the character of Pel almost as interesting as Sabrina. Pel is a writer and travels with a baby, in a bassinette, named Romulus. Of course, it is obvious that the name Pel stands for P.L. and the baby Romulus in the story stands for Pamela’s adopted baby Camillus. Once you realize that, then Pel’s advice to Sabrina takes on a new significance: “Nobody can help you, you have to do it on your own. And it takes time, I am only learning it now.” So much for faith in a benevolent force.

The character Pel expresses Pamela’s vision of her Higher Self, the ideal she wanted to embody: “She (Pel) makes you laugh and dance inside yourself and at the same time you feel that she is somebody who will always be there and that is a very safe feeling.”

The character Sabrina, on the other hand, is the bearer of Pamela’s emotional scars from her childhood. When you know that Pamela L. Travers’s mother tried to commit suicide when Pamela was ten years old, the following passage about Sabrina’s anxieties (while watching Pel sleep) is heartbreaking because it probably unveils Pamela’s real-life experiences as a child:

I am frightened when I see grown-ups asleep. They look as though they have forgotten everybody and gone right away into themselves. I feel that perhaps they will never wake up again and we shall be left quite alone and I kept going close to Pel to make sure she was still breathing. She has a very small breath just like mother’s. No sound at all and hardly a movement. Mother makes me very anxious. Sometimes when she is asleep I am afraid she is dead and I think of it in the night. Once, I thought of that and went into her room. It was dark and very still and I was afraid to go near the bed.

I am convinced that this is an autobiographic element. I believe Pamela truly experienced this sort of anxiety. Her father fell ill when she was seven years old and the last time she saw him was before going to bed; he was dead the next morning.

The same split between a vision of a Higher Self and a little girl with painful memories is present in the story Friend Monkey which was written some thirty years later;  thus unresolved issues from her childhood followed Pamela L. Travers until her very end.

I have the third edition of the book which was printed in 1967 and contains Pamela L. Travers’s Foreword. The end of the foreword is quite melancholic and it encapsulates Pamela L. Travers’s belief about life:

After childhood, our lives are no longer our very own. The world comes in and demands its share and unless we are cleaver or – lucky, perhaps – we forget a very great deal.

Pamela L. Travers