Tag: Literary Travel

An Attempt at Time Travel: The Author of Mary Poppins, Gurdjieff, and a Paris Apartment

Dear Reader,

Have you ever wished you could time travel? I have, many times, since I first began my journey into the world of P. L. Travers and her Mary Poppins. At first, I dreamed of having tea with P. L. Travers in her townhouse in Chelsea, London, and talking about all things Mary Poppins. But as time went on and I delved deeper into her universe, I began to dream of a particular kind of time travel; time travel under a cloak of invisibility.

I would love to witness the events of her life firsthand instead of relying on the filtered perceptions of those who knew (or thought they knew) her. Just think how enlightening it would be, for example, to observe her interactions with her spiritual teacher, G. I. Gurdjieff, who, by the way, was a fascinating figure in his own right. Imagine what it would be like if I could see his apartment in Paris, hear the voices, see who sat where, notice what nobody back then thought important enough to record, and then come back to tell the tale.

Since I have no supernatural powers, all I could do to come somewhat closer to realising my impossible wish was to travel, in real time, to Paris and visit number 6, rue des Colonels-Renard, where Gurdjieff dispensed his wisdom while entertaining his pupils with exotic dishes he cooked himself, Armagnac toasts, readings from his manuscripts, and music played on his harmonium.

(Gurdjieff’s harmonium. Image reproduced from Jessmin and Dushka Howarth, It’s Up to Ourselves: A Mother, a Daughter, and Gurdjieff, via The Gurdjieff International Review.)

Rue des Colonels-Renard is a quiet street in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, close to the Arc de Triomphe and just a short walk from the bustle of the Champs-Élysées. Number 6 is an elegant five-story limestone building with an ornamented stone facade, tall windows, and wrought-iron balconies adorned with flower boxes.

The building was constructed in 1911, and the name of its architect, Henri Preslier, is immortalised on its facade.

My daughter and I arrived there a little after lunch on a hot and sunny day in early June. The absence of other pedestrians on the street made it easy for me to pretend that we were stepping back in time. All I had to do was ignore the cars parked along the sidewalk and focus on the building.

I knew that I would not be able to see the actual apartment, but I was hoping to get inside the building, feel the atmosphere of the vestibule, and climb the staircase. Alas, to my great disappointment, it was not meant to be. The wrought-iron entrance gate was locked.

There was, however, a small consolation. The entrance gate was not a conventional solid door, but a combination of glass and elaborate black wrought iron, which allowed me to catch a glimpse of the vestibule beyond. After first pressing my nose between the ornamental ironwork and peering through the glass portion of the door, I pulled out my cell phone and pressed the camera lens against the glass.

I don’t know whether the entrance gate is the original one from 1911. The building must have undergone some changes over the years, but the vestibule, with its patterned mosaic floor and tall, glazed wooden inner door, certainly retains the appearance of an early-twentieth-century Parisian apartment building. It is possible, then, that the space looks much as it did when Gurdjieff lived here, and P. L. Travers came to visit.

Still hoping to somehow get inside the building, we sat on the sidewalk across the street and waited to see if someone would come in or out. No one did. As we sat there, I wondered whether the entrance gate had been locked back then too, or whether that was a consequence of modern-day security concerns. Somehow, I had a feeling that things had been a little different in Gurdjieff’s time.

I imagined P. L. Travers walking along the sidewalk with her adopted son Camillus, who was around ten years old when he first met Gurdjieff. They came to visit him in September 1949, just a few weeks before his death the following month. I wondered, did P. L. Travers scold Camillus in the manner of Mary Poppins and instruct him to be on his best behaviour? And did Camillus display the same sense of excitement and anticipation as Jane and Michael Banks when Mary Poppins took them to visit her relatives?

My reverie was suddenly interrupted by the chiming of a church bell. You can hear it in the video below.

The solemnity of the moment did not last long. My daughter, who, quite understandably, was beginning to lose patience with my facade-gazing decided to ask me a perfectly ordinary question and catapulted me back right into ordinary reality. You can hear her talking in the background and me insistently shushing her.

Then, as if to confirm my sense of reverence, a pigeon flew overhead and circled the balconies on the top floor of the building before continuing its way. Somehow, the sight of it, combined with the chiming of the bell, made me feel at peace with the fact that I could not get inside the building.

And as I am writing this and looking again at the picture of the vestibule, I notice something that I had not noticed before. If you look closely, you can see my reflection in one of the glass panes of the inner wooden door. In a way, I was inside the building, albeit not in the manner I had expected. Maybe, even though I could not physically cross that threshold, I was allowed to see enough.

Descriptions of the interior of Gurdjieff’s apartment can be found in the written accounts of his pupils. I have not read them all, of course, but last year I discovered Margaret Anderson’s The Unknowable Gurdjieff and was thrilled to find brief descriptions of what his home looked and felt like.

Margaret Anderson was an American writer and editor of the influential avant-garde literary magazine The Little Review and one of Gurdjieff’s pupils. She later became a member of the Rope, a small group of lesbian women whom Gurdjieff brought together for special work. Her account in The Unknowable Gurdjieff includes recollections from the period after the Second World War, when Gurdjieff’s American pupils began returning to Paris, along with others, like P. L. Travers, who had spent the war years in the United States.

It was in May 1948 that Anderson returned to Gurdjieff’s apartment in Paris.

“It was May in Paris, but for us there was no spring. There was no time to notice the horse-chestnut trees blossoming in the Bois, or the illuminated fountains sparkling in the Place de la Concorde in the soft sweet light. There was time only to drive as fast as possible by the shortest route to Gurdjieff’s flat in the rue Colonel Renard – a street with as little French distinction as a page in a dictionary; a flat without sunlight or a single flower, where the motionless air reeked of Asiatic cooking and the heat was almost unbearable.”

“Gurdjieff’s small dingy familiar apartement in the rue Colonels Renard had not changed – details of destruction only emphasized its changelessness: the colours had faded, the furniture was shabbier, the dining-room carpet had worn through and now had big patches on it. (…) The pictures on the walls were new, but they had the same quality as the old ones – ‘everything but art’ as Jane had said long ago.”

Jane was Jane Heap, Anderson’s co-editor of The Little Review and her partner for many years. Heap became particularly devoted to Gurdjieff’s teaching and eventually taught his work herself, leading Gurdjieff groups in London. P. L. Travers belonged to one of these groups.

I found this observation about the pictures on his walls particularly interesting because Gurdjieff had strong opinions about art. He taught that true art must be objective, transmit spiritual truths, and cosmological laws. He disliked what he called subjective art which arose largely from the artist’s personality, emotions, associations, and unconscious impulses. And, yet he covered his walls with art that his pupils, many of whom were artistically sophisticated, considered dreadful.

The kitchen was a central room in Gurdjieff’s apartment, as food played an important role in his teaching. He used different teaching methods at different periods of his life, but during his final years, meals became an essential ritual for the transmission of his ideas.

Gurdjieff concocted exotic dishes and turned his table into a dramatic stage where he acted as a master tamer of egos, administering the external shocks he believed were necessary to awaken his pupils from their identification with their thoughts and emotions. His provocative remarks, the famous ritual of the Armagnac Toasts to the Idiots, readings from his manuscripts, and the music he played on his harmonium after meals all served to open his pupils to new “impressions.”

Beyond the kitchen, there was also a storeroom in the apartment where Gurdjieff kept his victuals and the spices he used in his cooking. On occasion, he also took pupils there for private conversations. Here is a description from Margaret Anderson’s book:

“There, in the midst of fruits and sweets and wines, with slender sausages of camel’s meat, bunches of scarlet peppers and sprays of rosemary and mint suspended like canopy above, as I watched him pouring coffee out of the old battered old thermos (…)”

I found this photograph of his storeroom in It’s Up to Ourselves: A Mother, a Daughter, and Gurdjieff, by Jessmin and Dushka Howarth. The photograph, however, is black and white, and the resolution is poor, so I find it a little difficult to mentally project myself into the room.

I used AI to reconstruct the photograph. The result is not entirely accurate. There are labels, objects, decorative items, and other details that cannot be established from the original photograph, while the sausages and herbs suspended from above are missing. Overall, however, the picture remains reasonably close to the original and, for me at least, the colours add liveliness and make it easier to get a sense of the place.

And with that, my attempt to step inside Gurdjieff’s apartment comes to an end.

This is all for now. Next time, I will take you to Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, where we will attempt to go back in time to 1949 and witness the day of Gurdjieff’s funeral, at which, of course, P. L. Travers was present.

Until then, be well.

Lina

Mary Poppins in Paris: Where P. L. Travers Met G. I. Gurdjieff

Dear Reader,

When I first began reading and studying the life and writings of P. L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, I didn’t expect the journey to last as long as it has, or to carry me beyond the page. And yet it has led me all the way from Canada across London and Paris, where traces of her life still linger, and the list of places connected to her and Mary Poppins that I dream of visiting continues to grow.

In the first biography of P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins, She Wrote, Valerie Lawson reveals that Travers was one of G. I. Gurdjieff’s pupils and a lifelong follower of his spiritual teachings. At the time, I had never heard of Gurdjieff. In fact, I have no spiritual or religious background.

I spent my early childhood in Bulgaria in the 1980s, and the communist regime rejected any religious practice. The doors of the church next to my grandparents’ apartment were always locked, and I remember being told by my parents to stay away from it, lest someone see me and something bad happens. What exactly that would have been, nobody told me.

I had read Mary Poppins as a child in Bulgaria (the first two books in the series), and when I read in P. L. Travers’s biography that these stories contained elements and references to Gurdjieff’s teachings, the fires of curiosity were lit and I became compelled to find them. I can confidently say that I did find some of these references, along with other interesting connections. I am now writing a book about them, because posts cannot do justice to the subject. A deep dive is what is needed to truly appreciate the creative genius of P. L. Travers and the depth of her writing, and I sincerely hope that one day my book will be out in the world and that it will revive readers’ interest in the original Mary Poppins stories, and in the larger body of work of P. L. Travers.

Today’s post is the first in a series of three articles in which I want to share with you my experience of Paris in the footsteps of P. L. Travers. It was in Paris that she first met Gurdjieff in the late 1930s, and it was also there that she returned to visit him after the end of World War II.

Paris today is, of course, not the Paris of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet the buildings where their meetings took place still stand, quietly bearing witness to those encounters. The first meeting happened at Café de la Paix, and this is what P. L. Travers later wrote about it:

“It was a day I shall always remember for not merely did I learn things that only later I came to understand, but it pointed me in the direction my life was to take. On leaving my vital and benevolent host, he declined to say goodbye, “You will be back,” he said, and I agreed, not knowing that it would be several years before the prediction came true. War intervened, also the Atlantic Ocean, and it was not until peace broke out and I returned to London that the Golden Arrow, and I in it, could speed from its bow to Paris. ”

Café de la Paix, first inaugurated in 1862, is located near the Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera House) and is still open and bustling with life.

(I wish that big advertisement hadn’t been there when I took the picture…)

Walking in, I tried to imagine what it must have felt like for Travers to step through those same doors for the first time, and the trepidation of meeting someone who had acquired a mythical stature in her imagination, someone she had only heard about, yet whose teachings she had already begun to study.

Gurdjieff had a halo of mystery; he seemed almost like a character from a fairy tale. He spoke with a heavy accent and in parables, and his teachings can be described as a strange mixture of esoteric Christianity and Gnosticism, with echoes of Theosophy. He spoke of the inner friction of opposites, and of the need to suffer consciously, if one wanted to transcend them and awaken. His ideas were original and unique, and yet they also echoed ideas P. L. Travers had been introduced to by her literary mentor and Theosophist, George W. Russell (AE).

On the website of Café de la Paix, you can read that past regulars included Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, and Émile Zola. I am tempted to suggest they add Gurdjieff to the list, even if he was, and still remains, a controversial figure.

Café de la Paix was one of Gurdjieff’s favorite cafes, where he liked to spend time drinking coffee, writing his books, and meeting with his pupils. Louise Goepfert, a devoted pupil and translator of the German edition of Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, remembers him telling her that he always worked in cafes and dance halls because they were places where he could see people as they are, and where he could see those who were most drunk and most abnormal (Note to the reader: he was not politically correct in his formulations, but you must put this in the context of the times). Seeing them, he said, could produce an impulse of love in him, and from that, he said, he wrote his books.

I was eager to see Café de la Paix, but at the same time I felt a little sad, because I knew the visit would not satisfy my desire to meet P. L. Travers. The only connection is through books, through accounts, and through the experience of places she once visited. That is all I can use to travel back in time. Imperfect as this connection may be, my visit to Café de la Paix will remain a favourite memory of my first trip to Paris.

The interior of the Café de la Paix has a hushed richness. Carpets, drapery, and upholstered seating absorb the sounds and create a sense of luxurious intimacy. Gilded moldings catch the light from crystal chandeliers, and mirrors stretching along the walls give the space an impression of expansiveness and movement. Above, a blue sky with white clouds is painted on the ornamented ceilings, adding an airy elegance and an overall feeling of sophistication. But above all, what stands out is the atmosphere of a place that has absorbed decades of conversations. If only its walls could talk.

As I took my seat, I tried to imagine P. L. Travers seated at a table in conversation with Gurdjieff, and then an amusing thought crossed my mind. What if I were sitting in that exact same place? What would such a temporal overlay look like? Our faces and gestures would pass through one another without resistance, our conversations mingling without interruption. A density of lived moments, layered one upon the other like an overexposed film, would leave a faint, ghost-like trace, as if the past had never fully withdrawn.

Then the waiter came to our table and I was pulled back into the present. And yet something of that brief reverie stayed with me. Whatever has changed in Paris, the rooms remain, and they still invite us to listen for the faintest echo of a life passing through.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this article, I invite you to subscribe to The Mary Poppins Effect, where I explore the work of P.L. Travers, the world of Mary Poppins, its connections to other literary worlds, and the symbolic imagination at the heart of classic children’s literature.

Until next time, be well.

Lina

Discover Mary Poppins’ London: A Literary Travel Guide for Fans of P.L. Travers – Part II 

Dear Reader, 

This post continues the story about my first Mary Poppins–themed trip to London with my daughter in the summer of 2023. In last month’s post, I shared our visit to P. L. Travers’s former homes at 50 Smith Street and 29 Shawfield Street in Chelsea. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here. 

In this blog post, we will visit St Paul’s Cathedral, stroll through Poppin’s Court near Fleet Street, shop for parrot-headed umbrellas at James Smith & Sons and admire the Mary Poppins statue in Leicester Square Gardens.  

St Paul Cathedral, London 

If you find yourself in London, a visit to St Paul’s Cathedral is, in my humble opinion, an absolute must. Its grandeur is astonishing—from the soaring colonnades to the magnificent domed ceiling—and the vast interior, adorned with intricate mosaics, takes your breath away the moment you step inside.

This iconic landmark was especially dear to P.L. Travers, who featured it not only in The Bird Woman chapter of her first Mary Poppins book, but also in her later 1975 Christmas tale The Fox at the Manger. I’ve explored this story in detail on the blog—you can read more in: A Christmas Story by Pamela L. Travers, The Nativity Reimagined by the Author of Mary Poppins, The Fox at the Manger (Part I) and (Part II). 

In The Bird Woman, Mary Poppins takes the Banks children to visit their father who works at the bank, where he, as described in the very first Mary Poppins story, East Wind, “sat on a large chair in front of a large desk and made money. All day long he worked, cutting out pennies and shillings and half-crowns and threepenny-bits.”   

I wish the idea of looking up banks around St Paul’s Cathedral had occurred to me while I was there, but it didn’t—so this will have to go on my list for my next trip to London. I’m talking about the bank where I believe P. L. Travers imagined Mr. Banks working: the Ludgate Hill branch of the City Bank at 45–47 Ludgate Hill, which, according to Memoirs of a Metro Girl, is now a wine bar.

The picture above was taken by Metro Girl and is shared here with her permission 🙂

How do I know this was the bank P. L. Travers had in mind when she wrote “The Bird Woman”? Because she writes: ‘They were walking up Ludgate Hill on the way to pay a visit to Mr. Banks in the City.’  

In The Bird Woman we learn that Mr. Banks is entirely absorbed in material pursuits and has no time for small pleasures. But we can hardly blame him—he is the sole provider for his ever-growing family (by the second book in the series, the Banks family counts five children). Hoping to offer him a rare moment of joy and respite, Mary Poppins and the children plan an outing for tea and Shortbread Fingers. Yet Jane and Michael are far more excited by the possibility of meeting the Bird Woman and her pigeons outside St Paul’s Cathedral than by the promised tea and shortbread.    

Because of the sharp contrast between the Bird Woman’s quiet act of feeding the birds and Mr. Banks’s worldly occupation, The Bird Woman takes on a distinctly spiritual undertone for the adult reader. The doves, traditionally associated with the Holy Spirit in Christianity, serve here as a visual metaphor for the nourishment of the soul. Clearly, P.L. Travers is concerned with our human struggle to balance material responsibilities with the quest for spiritual fulfilment.  

Yet for carefree Jane and Michael, the Bird Woman and her doves are simply companions to delight in and play with. For them, the magic of the day is found in this gentle, enchanting encounter—an experience that carries them beyond the ordinary and into a realm of wonder. 

I love how P. L. Travers conveys Jane and Michael’s understanding of the doves, while at the same time revealing her own gift for remembering how to see the world through the eyes of the child she once was. 

“There were fussy and chatty grey doves like Grand-mothers; and brown, rough-voiced pigeons like Uncles; and grey, cackling, no-I’ve-no-money-today  pigeons like Fathers. And the silly, anxious, soft blue doves were like Mothers. That’s what Jane and Michael thought, anyway.” 

Jane and Michael (and probably P.L. Travers) relate to the animal world far more naturally—and kindlier—than most adults. To them, the birds are not pests but companions, each a living being with its own character. We, on the other hand, tend to brush past pigeons and doves as if they were mere annoyances, hardly pausing to see them at all—too busy rushing for the train or speeding down the highway, intent on our own version of cutting pennies and shillings. 

I experienced my own version of feeding the birds—not at St. Paul’s Cathedral, but in St. James’s Park. While we were there, a little girl, slightly older than Jane and Michael Banks, had a bag full of seeds. She was not only feeding the birds but also offering seeds to passersby who, like me, wanted to join in the experience. It was deeply touching, and here is a short clip of me feeding the birds.

Feeding the birds in St. Jame’s Park

Many of the characters in the Mary Poppins stories—if not all—have their roots in the real-life experiences and encounters of P.L. Travers. She rarely revealed these inspirations openly, though hints occasionally surfaced in interviews she gave throughout her long writing career.  

I have never come across an interview in which P. L. Travers spoke about the origin of the Bird Woman. However, I did find an old picture of a man standing outside St Paul’s, his arms and shoulders alive with pigeons as he feeds them. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, while working as a freelance journalist near Fleet Street, P. L. Travers often passed by St Paul’s Cathedral, and I can’t help but wonder whether this man might have been the true inspiration behind the Bird Woman. 

St Paul’s Cathedral, as P.L. Travers writes in The Bird Woman, was built long ago by “A man with a bird’s name. Wren it was, but he was no relation to Jenny.” That man, of course, was Sir Christopher Wren, England’s most celebrated architect of his day. When my daughter and I visited St Paul’s Cathedral in the summer of 2023, we saw a lovely exhibit inside about Sir Christopher Wren and the reconstruction of the building after the Great Fire of London in 1666. 

Wren designed the Great Model of the cathedral in 1672–73. The version you see in the picture below was executed by William Cleere and a team of thirteen joiners. This design differed from the original in style, evolving from the “Greek Cross” plan by extending the nave and adding a domed bell tower. 

King Charles II, who awarded the reconstruction contract to Wren, requested a slight modification: the domed bell tower had to be replaced with a traditional spire. But Wren was not a man easily discouraged. Once the plans were approved and the contract signed, and construction was well under way, he discovered a loophole in the fine print: it permitted ornamental rather than essential changes. So, he made his alterations accordingly. 

St Paul’s Cathedral is also Wren’s final resting place. Below is a photo of a copy of Wren’s death mask—the original is preserved at All Souls College in Oxford. A little morbid, perhaps, yet also a fascinating human attempt at transcending death.  

Now who is Jenny Wren? What did P.L. Travers meant by saying that Wren was not related to Jenny? The reference is a pun woven by P.L. Travers—one I had completely missed, since English folklore and nursery rhymes were not part of my upbringing. For those who may also be unfamiliar: the wren, a tiny brown bird, was affectionately called “Jenny Wren” in English tradition. She appears in old songs and nursery rhymes, often paired with Robin Redbreast as husband and wife. 

Children in P.L. Travers’s time would have instantly recognized “Jenny Wren” as shorthand for the little wren, and the playful wordplay would have delighted them. It signals to young readers that the world is whimsical, alive with hidden connections. The pun weaves together architecture (Wren), folklore (Jenny Wren), and the story’s imagery of birds and the mystical Bird Woman—perfect for a chapter set at St. Paul’s amid flocks of pigeons. 

And for adult readers, there’s yet another layer: an echo of Dickens. Jenny Wren is also a character in Our Mutual Friend. That reference escaped me as well, but this Dickens novel has now joined my ever-expanding TBR list. 

Poppin’s Court 

Not far from St Paul’s Cathedral, just off Fleet Street, you will come across a narrow lane called Poppin’s Court. When P.L. Travers first came to London she worked as a free-lance journalist on a street near Fleet Street and she must have passed by Poppin’s Court on her way to St Paul’s Cathedral, and it is, as her friend Brian Sibley wrote, possible that this is how she came up with the idea for the name of her famous nanny.  

Back in 2023, when my daughter and I visited Poppin’s Court, there was a Poppins Café, which may still be there. Sadly (for me), it had nothing to do with Mary Poppins. I would have loved to visit a Mary Poppins–inspired tea room based on the books.

Leicester Square Gardens 

If you have time, be sure to stop by Leicester Square, where you’ll find several statues capturing iconic movie moments from different decades since the 1920s — and of course, one of them is Mary Poppins. Although the Mary Poppins statue in Leicester Square celebrates the film character rather than the one from the books, I couldn’t resist trying to ‘fly away’ on her umbrella. 

Since this Mary Poppins statue was created many years after P.L. Travers’s death, we can only guess what she might have thought of it. What we do know is that she once wished for a statue of her character in London—though her dream location was Kensington Gardens. I will tell you more about that in a future post on this blog.  

James Smith & Sons Umbrellas  

If you want to get a parrot-headed umbrella like Mary Poppins’, you should definitely visit James Smith & Sons Umbrellas, a tiny shop founded back in 1830. I have no idea whether P.L. Travers knew about this shop or if she ever visited it. According to her own account, the inspiration for the parrot-headed umbrella came from a childhood memory of a servant’s umbrella in the Travers household in Australia (and maybe by something else, which I also plan to tell you about in a future post). But whether or not P. L. Travers ever visited this shop, I thoroughly enjoyed our own visit — dampened only by the scaffolding on the facade, which was under renovation.  

Here is a picture of a parrot-headed umbrella standing proudly beside another famous fictional character. I was tempted to purchase both, but the price tag quickly discouraged me. But two years later I am still thinking about this parrot headed umbrella … 

That’s it for now—thank you for reading! If this post brought you a little joy, just click the subscribe button in the bottom-right corner of your screen and join me for the next stop in my Mary Poppins adventures through London and beyond. You can also follow along on Facebook and Instagram for more glimpses into the magical world of Mary Poppins and P.L. Travers. 

Until next time, take care and be well. 

Discover Mary Poppins’ London: A Literary Travel Guide for Fans of P.L. Travers – Part I 

Introduction 

If you’re a devoted fan of Mary Poppins and P.L. Travers—like I am—or if you have a passion for literary travel, this blog post is for you. Through sharing my travel experiences, I hope to offer you some inspiration for visiting locations in London and its surroundings that are deeply connected to the enchanting world of Mary Poppins and her creator. 

My Mary Poppins-Themed Trips to London and its Surroundings 

In the summer of 2023, I finally fulfilled my long-held dream of visiting London—and the cherry on top was that my daughter decided to join me on the adventure. The trip was inspired by my love for P.L. Travers and Mary Poppins, and my daughter’s enthusiasm for Harry Potter. We also carved out time for some book shopping, exploring iconic historical landmarks, and visiting the Charles Dickens Museum. However, in this blog post, I’ll be focusing specifically on the Mary Poppins side of our journey. 

So, let’s begin with a truly special address for any Mary Poppins fan. 

50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London  

P.L. Travers lived at 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London with her adopted son, Camillus, from 1946 to 1962. It was here that she wrote Mary Poppins in the Park, the fourth book in the series. Today, the building proudly bears an English Heritage blue plaque in honour of her literary legacy. I used to come across photos of fans on its doorstep shared on social media, and I must admit, I always looked at them with a hint of envy. But now, it was my turn to see the place where she once lived and to experience history in a truly sensory way. 

I remember fighting the urge to break into a run as we emerged from the Tube station and began walking down King’s Road. I glanced at the shop windows lining the sidewalks and the red double-decker buses on the street, their colours unusually vivid in the bright daylight, like freshly painted canvases. Even my daughter could sense my heightened emotional state and the spring in my step, and she teased me, ‘You do realise you’re not actually going to meet her in person?’ And I knew she was right—but this was the closest I could ever get to meeting her in the physical world. 

In fact, I could hardly believe I was finally just steps away from something I had dreamed about for years—and had often doubted would ever come true. For one reason or another, it was never the right time; something always held me back from booking the trip. This may sound strange to experienced travellers, but I’m not much of a traveller myself—and Canada is a long way from London. So, this first trip to London was a big deal for me on many levels and as it turned out, the experience was truly transformative.

Now you can imagine my disappointment when we reached the corner of Smith Street and I saw a huge construction box blocking the entrance to 50 Smith Street.

The only positive thing, as suggested by a friend who saw the picture afterwards, was that there was a blown-up reproduction of the blue commemorative plaque on display, but that was probably just a friend’s way of trying to lift my spirits.  

In a moment of madness (and ignoring my daughter’s rational arguments), I dialed the number displayed on the notice in the window of the construction box. It said that all visitors or anyone seeking access could call the number on the notice. Well, I was definitely a visitor wanting access. The person on the other end of the line clearly didn’t agree—they actually dared to hang up on me. Needless to say, I was offended, but as I gradually came to my senses, I realised not only was I acting a bit unhinged, but I also had a second chance just a few minutes’ walk down King’s Road: Number 29 Shawfield Street, the last residence of P.L. Travers.  There really was no need to get so agitated. 

29 Shawfield Street, Chelsea, London 

P.L. Travers lived at number 29 Shawfield Street for the last thirty years of her life and it is in her the study on the second floor that she wrote Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane and Mary Poppins and the House Next Door, the last two books in the series.

As we turned the corner onto King’s Road and began walking toward Number 29 Shawfield Street, I felt a tinge of sadness that only deepened when I saw the front door, no longer pink as it had been when P.L. Travers lived there. We walked back and forth along the sidewalk, trying—but not quite succeeding—to be circumspect. After all, how circumspect can you really be when snapping selfies in front of someone’s front door? 

It was a weekday, and I had convinced myself that the residents of Number 29 were probably at work. But then, a postman happened to walk by and rang the doorbell—and suddenly, the door opened. Feeling a bit embarrassed, we crossed to the other side of the street and sat on the edge of the sidewalk, while I continued to stare intently at the front door. 

How I envied all those who had visited her here and, even if only briefly, had been granted a glimpse into her personal world. Below are two personal accounts from people who visited her home and the lasting impression it made on them.

“She lives in a small Georgian house in Chelsea. Her sitting room, where she received me, is light, airy and sparsely furnished. She sits on the corner of a long sofa the rest of which is covered with stacks of books, letters, various publications. On the creamy wall hang a Paul Klee, portraits of great grandmothers and aunts, a drawing of P.L. Travers by AE (George Russell), a Tree of Life by one of her students … The mantle piece is covered with photographs of family and friends, including many children.”    

Looking Back, by Shusha Guppy 

“P.L. Travers lives in a quiet, small period house in the Chelsea section of London, and everything in her home contributes to a visitor sensing the emptiness of plenitude and the plentitude of emptiness – exemplified in, her upstairs study, by several beautiful Japanese scroll and screen paintings, mostly by Sengai: a willow almost breaking in the wind; six persimmons; a cock crowing to the morning and a little hen bird nearby; the depiction of the syllable mu (literally meaning “not” or  “without” and referring to a famous Zen koan and the extraordinary  “Ten Oxherding Pictures” (attributed to the twelfth- century Chinese Zen master Kaku-an Shi-en).  

Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, by Jonathan Cott 

I tried to picture her stepping out of the front door, then slowly descending the three steps. I imagine her gaze fixed on the pavement as she walks down the street, her mind clearly elsewhere. Then she stops. Something has caught her eye. It must be the small star embedded in the sidewalk. She smiles. She loved pointing it out to friends who came to visit, inviting them to find it too—as if it were a secret only she could truly see. 

How many people before me had walked that same stretch of pavement, searching for the star? And how many had actually found it? Not being able to see it myself was somewhat of a letdown. Could it be that she made it up? Or had time and countless footsteps worn it away?

Then I remembered reading a blog post by her friend, writer Brian Sibley in which he recounts his first encounter with her and, at the very end of his recollections, mentions the star on the pavement. 

“Light was failing, but I found it, at last: just as Pamela had said – a star-shape, faintly but clearly marked in the surface of a paving stone. Doubtless it was some rouge imprint on the surface from the manufacturing of the cement paving-stone, but I was remembering the words of the old snake, the Hamadryad, on that night of the full moon when Mary Poppins took Jane and Michael to the zoo: ‘We are all made of the same stuff… The tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star – we are all one, all moving to the same end…’ ” 

Chelsea Physic Garden, London 

London’s oldest botanical garden, the Chelsea Physic Garden, is just around the corner from 29 Shawfield Street. It was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries with the mission to grow medicinal plants for study and healing. Located in London, the garden played a key role in botanical research, plant exchange, and the advancement of medical science. Chelsea Physic Garden was open to the public in 1987 with the aim to increase public awareness and support for its historical and scientific significance.   

I don’t know for sure if P.L. Travers ever visited the garden, she was 88 years old at the time, but it is possible. What I do know is that in her eighties she was very interested in the medicinal and magical properties of plants, probably motivated by a desire to find a cure, or at least some relief from her digestive problems. Her granddaughter Kitty, recalling childhood memories in an interview for the BBC, said her grandmother was always drinking strange teas and concoctions. These were probably the infusions she made from the herbs she cultivated on her balcony at 29 Shawfield Street.  

In an interview she gave to South East at Six, a local BBC teatime news bulletin for viewers in London and the South East, promoting her book Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, we see P.L. Travers at the end of the video standing on her balcony, gathering herbs into a small wicker basket, a wooden birdhouse behind her. The balcony has a quiet, romantic storybook charm befitting of a writer steeped in fairy tales and mythology.

While the herbs aren’t central characters in the plot of Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, they do take on a magical, symbolic role during the Midsummer’s Eve adventure of the Banks children. The book also includes at its end a list of herbs with both common and Latin names that are mentioned in the story—a tangible nod to P.L. Travers’s knowledge of plants.

Occasionally, she also gave herbs as a gift to friends who came to visit her at her home.  

“At the time I visited P.L. Travers in July 1979, I was feeling perplexed and confused about several things in my life, whose murkiness contrasted sharply with the clarity of the pictures in her study. (…) She also took me to her garden in the back, where she was growing more than twenty varieties of herbs, many of which appear in her recent Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane. (“Taste all of them,” she suggested, “they will do you good.”) Then, as a friendly gesture, she cut off some rosemary sprigs and gave them to me (“This will last forever and bring you good luck. It means “To Remember”) 

Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, by Jonathan Cott 

This is all for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that you’ll return to read more about Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, and my adventures as I continue to explore their world. In the next blog post, I’ll be continuing the story of my Mary Poppins-themed trips to London and its surroundings, so stay tuned! And do let me know if you go on a Mary Poppins adventure of your own—or if you enjoy literary trips in general. 

Until next time, be well!