‘Poppins’ an exhaustive biography on author P L Travers

I confess I haven’t read the original Mary Poppins books. Indeed on beginning to read Mary Poppins, She Wrote I kept conjuring up images of Emma Thompson and Colin Firth in “Nanny McPhee” and Emma Thompson again in Nanny McPhee Returns. However, I think I might be forgiven due to the fact that it is Emma Thompson who was cast as P L Travers in Saving Mr Banks and both Mary Poppins and Nanny McPhee are nannies.

Even so, I gather, after reading this book that the Mary Poppins of the books isn’t as sugar sweet as Walt Disney studios portrayed her in the film. In fact perhaps one of the most interesting chapters in Mary Poppins, She Wrote is the one dealing with the battles between Disney and Travers on the studio’s treatment of the books.

Helen Lyndon Goff was born in Australia; her adored (but somewhat shiftless) father died when she was just seven years old and she spent the rest of her life looking for a substitute father, a Mr Banks (as she called the father in her Mary Poppins books).

Her mother seems to be a model for Mrs Banks in the books, a distant, ineffectual woman. After her father died Helen spent most of the rest of her childhood and adolescence in the care of her strict, rich Aunt Ellie – who became a model, in part for Mary Poppins herself. There is, as I understand from this book, a hard edge to the Mary Poppins stories, as well as magic and mystery and fairy tales that formed a great part of Pamela Lyndon – P L Travers’ (as Helen Lyndon Goff became when she started to write) own life.

Her writing career began with journalism writing reports of social events and critiques of drama productions in the Australian press. At first she wanted to be an actress, but then found writing was her m?tier. Fairy tales and myths from Europe, especially those of Ireland, entranced her. She built a fantasy around her dead father, believing him to be Irish.

Her Aunt Ellie was horrified when she became a journalist; nevertheless she paid Pamela’s fare to England. Once in England Pamela wrote for Australian papers and found work in London. But Ireland was calling. She met George (AE) Russell who became her first “Mr Banks”, surrogate father. When he died she turned to others, seeking a father as she consulted some dubious seers and pseudo prophets in Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti.

Indeed chapters of this overlong book are devoted to these somewhat shady characters. Always ailing with imaginary or real ills, nevertheless Pamela lived to the ripe old age of 95 – a wealthy woman (thanks to the Disney connection) but prickly to the end.

We might imagine that anyone who could write of the Banks family and Mary Poppins (especially if we only know them through the Disney films) would be a pleasant, easy going person, but Pamela seems to have been a difficult person to deal with, quarrelling with woman friends, argumentative. We learn little of her love life, if any, in this book. She never married but adopted Camillus, one of twin boys in Ireland.

Mary Poppins, She Wrote is an exhaustive biography yet it is essential reading for anyone interested in the Mary Poppins books, the magic and mysticism that make, so one gathers, the later books somewhat confusing for those who don’t dabble in myth and mysticism.

You’ll find this interesting if over-long book at outlets of Nigel R. Khan, nationwide.