Who Was The Real Mary Poppins? | The Real Mary Poppins | Timeline

there's a queue of nannies outside sir she'll show me Illinois's at 8 o'clock at 8 o'clock jolly well be MARY POPPINS is one of the most celebrated fictional characters of all time loved by generations around the world [Music] she is a magical character who is totally believable Mary Bobby she's a character that's so resonant with something very vital in the human psyche [Music] but the creator of this beloved nanny the Australian author Pamela Travers has until now been virtually unknown she's said no absolutely not I don't want anybody to know anything about my life no no no no yet the extraordinary story of her life holds the key to mary poppins pamela lied about her upbringing and frequently reinvented her past [Music] while he was new there was something funny going on but I could never get from my mother pail trailers I could never get the truth locked in Pamela's childhood lies the secret of Mary Poppins you're Mary Poppins is gonna literally fly off the pages of your books and Pamela's explosive relationship with screen mobile Walt Disney over control of her character his most recently explored in the feature film saving mr. banks I know what he's going to do to her she'll be cavorting and twinky they were doomed to collide she won't approve the intake no no she was hell on Mary Poppins is not for sale long after Mary Poppins first flew into our lives we unravel the life of this mysterious author and reveal the origins of her famous creation a story she kept hidden for 70 years [Music] excuse me ma'am have you seen my daughter her name is Helen nope surely could it be prunella no a special name for Pamela Travers began reinventing her life from an early age though Chris and Helen Lyndon golf as a child she insisted on being called Ginty never heard of her as Helen golf fore didn't know that she was called that till very near the end of her life but most people called her Pamela it was a fashionable stage name that Pamela adopted as an actress in her 20s she would later at her father's first name Travers as her surname in her thirties Pamela gave herself the nom de plume P L Travers and in her 40s called herself mrs. Travers despite never marrying trying to get to know her is like unpeeling an onion and you can feel her just putting layers protective layers of story around to the supplement I think I think we tell stories often to protect ourselves there me and she she did it I'm kind of endlessly and never stopped when she died in 1996 the New York Times reported pamela was the granddaughter of the premier of Queensland the guardian claimed her father was a wealthy Irish farmer the truth is that Pamela's father Travers golf was born in debt food England he drifted to Australia in the 1890s became a lowly paid bank officer he loved storytelling poetry in all things Irish he was the son of a broker in London I don't think he'd ever been to Ireland but he used to radiate some song to her the whole time and I suppose the two of them between them managed to convince each other that it was all in a way true when I was much younger I was so umbilical kick try life gray-green bloom dusk that was the Celtic Twilight and my parents were I and I consider myself to be iron well I was just sort of amazed and she'd never spoken of it before and all our friends were our mutual friends they had no idea she was Australian Trevor's golf married Margaret Morehead in rural Queensland in 1898 nine months later Pamela was born they survived on Goff's meager wage from the bank her mother I think was a very anxious and depressed person so she was unable to give her too much and support her father was very maudlin and drank too much so he in turn waxed and waned so Pamela was never very sure where she stood with appearance because they were hot Nicole was whom nobody that took so much notice of children when I was a child and if a child who wrote anything it wasn't considered he'd invent clever it would be looked at if the grown-ups head at any time if they had let him put aside until the grown-ups could come around to it does not foster it wasn't encouraged it was just taken as a matter of course like daylight [Music] it was only in her final years that Pamela would share stories from her Australian childhood but it was a selective version of events she used to tell us how she liked to pretend you as a hen and go down to the far end of the garden where she found long grasses and she'd crawl him and make herself a little nesting place and and sit there for hours hatching or brooding and getting ready to hatch the eggs she imagined were beneath her which I think must partly explain the sort of world that was around her when she was growing up the reality of Pamela's upbringing in Australia was far from the sugar and spice of the bank's family that she would invent in the MARY POPPINS books [Music] that's the most tragic thing about the character that I think is that he has a beautiful life I mean it's it's irrelevant if one doesn't feel the beauty that exists in one's life and Travers can't he has these three daughters that he loves and adores and the wife that he loves but he can't experience that as deeply as he he wishes he could travers Goths heavy drinking with ultimately shattered the family after a bout of pneumonia he died at home [Music] Pamela was just seven years old it turned her world upside down my mother's greatest regret and she never got over it was the early death of her father she couldn't understand how God could have allowed her to be deserted by the most loved person so early in her life [Music] the death of Travis Gough would set Palmer off on a lifelong search for a man to replace him and the role of the father would be crucial in the Mary Poppins books I think Pamela had a very idealized picture of what a man could be and she always saw in this picture her father she may never have found anyone who could measure up to what she thought her father was this memory she had of this wonderful man and of course he was really quite a rogue very good looking one Travis Goff passed on to his daughter a love of Irish writers WB Yeats James Stevens and George Russell who inspired Pamela to write she was enchanted by the romance of her father's heroes who explored the ancient myths and folklore of Ireland for Pamela the sunburned landscape of Australia never felt like home I was born I think shaved get me out of here because I knew from the very beginning that I was not constrained there this whole rather romantic picture of the Irish culture or whatever you want to call it which I think had a huge effect on her obviously did cuz that's where she went as soon as she could [Music] age 24 Pamela boldly headed to Dublin she paid her fare with help from an art and the money she had earned from publishing articles and poems in Australian magazines she cut her ties with Australia and would deny her true origins for the next 60 years [Music] pamela sent her writings to a father's hero the celebrated poet an intellectual giant George AE Russell in Ireland who was then editor of the Irish statesman they began an enduring relationship that would help steer the creation of Mary Poppins he was father figure a father that she had long lost Russell nurtured many young aspiring writers and poets but I think that he genuinely liked her more than most of them and so they had a step there their relationship grew from that in Dublin Pamela attended soirees mixing with the lights of TS Eliot and WB Yeats absorbing their esoteric philosophies and spiritual ideas she was in her element she soon became the darling of this bohemian world but it was the charismatic George a Russell who would become her mentor he had that remarkable quality of being able to find and cherish young writers he took me under his wing and let me shave the mother Ken's here that's extraordinary quality of loving kindness he was always deeply interested in all Indian teachings for the East and he interested me in [Music] Russell advised his young Protege to enrich her mind through travel in the late 1920s pamela visited Europe Russia Japan and America she wrote and published regularly sending money home to her mother in Sydney but she was plagued by ill health a constant theme throughout her life [Music] Pamela suffered pleurisy complained of lung and bowel problems and was in and out of health sanitariums she had a lot of hypochondriasis she had sort of neurotic illnesses and one always had to thread one's way through that to find out if she was seriously ill in some way and she had illnesses as well but the thing that always dominated was when she would arise from her couch of hypochondriasis depression or whatever it when she was down she was down but when she was up she was terrific in 1931 in England Pamela was wracked with anxiety and illness and feared she had TB the doctors advised her to live in the country she moved into a cottage outside London with Madge been and a friend of Russell's he encouraged Pamela to write fiction to let loose her powers of fantasy Gardner cooking you know I'm writing a lot a lot of OT miss Travers did miss fern and you still cooking and all you've stood the eighth's where it was at pound cottage that Mary Poppins appeared to Pamela at the age of 34 but the author remained evasive on just how she came into existence [Music] two or three chapters of Mary Poppins which surprised me as much as surprised by Sheraton you know I think in a way that our ideas perhaps floating around in the world and they pick on so do people I don't think it's the other way around the first of her aides mary poppins books was published in 1934 pamela dedicated it to her mother who had died six years earlier Pamela steadfastly refused to have her name on the cover she wanted to sign it anon which the publishers dismissed like George AE Russell she chose a pseudonym P L Travers the book was a popular success and Pamela commenced work on her flying nannies next adventures Robert my brother asked what is your work process how do you go about working you know do you sit at a desk do you write with a typewriter it's oh no no no she says I like to nest I get a corner and I sit down in the corner and I let all the feathers settle around me and then I get into the mood and it writes itself and I said really she would say I didn't write it it wasn't mine and that can sound pretentious or insincere or you know come on what do you mean it isn't yours but in her case I believe that she did apprehend and Shepherd and shape but it came from something that she did not identify with personally [Music] pamela maintained for the rest of her life that she was not in fact the creator of mary poppins she was simply the vessel do you recall now any specific thought that that prompted the creation of this character I don't want to know where she comes from I feel visited by her I don't for a moment feel that I invented time although Pamela continued to deny authorship of Mary Poppins the books are littered with references to her own childhood most of the characters and Mary Poppins I Australians actually Pamela's Mary Poppins made comes from the goth family made they often had Irish nannies and they were very sort of spit-spot into bed no-nonsense kind of women one of them actually had a parrot headed umbrella [Music] she was inventing for herself a mythical world that she didn't have from seventeen Cherry Tree Lane isn't in England at all it all came from Australia thousand at the heart of each book is mr. banks like Pamela's own father he works in a bank in harbours the same mix of melancholy and exuberant cheer as Travers golf but he shares none of his failings when he not only died but had become more or less improvident through his heavy drinking it was all a terrible shock dizzy has an account hey that's good well give her a drink ain't gimme give her a hand a lot of chums authors have used the Jordans books to sublimate unhappy childhoods or problem childhoods and so you could see in Mary Poppins the idea of an author trying to find a secure background the the bankses family is very happy you've got the happy twins you've got the children you've got the extra baby you've got the father and the mother it's all very very happy and solid and secure [Music] it is tempting to assume that Mary Poppins came to rescue young Pamela but the author staunchly denied any such idea it was not her but her father that Mary Poppins came to save I said in the car what I've just realized of course that Mary Poppins didn't come for the children she came for mr. banks and she nearly fell out of the car she was so through ah you know one person has understood and I really think it's true if you if you read the books carefully Mary Poppins has come to remind mr. banks that he was a child once and some of the most powerful things in the book are moments when he sort of remembers your father you could have the death [Music] a35 as palma enjoyed the success of mary poppins her father figure and mentor George a Russell died of cancer his death tormented her and Pamela wrote of her nightmares describing Russell as her Zeus who calmed her insecurities as a writer through Russell Pamela had already met the next influential man in her life the Russian spiritual leader George Ivanovich kerchief to some Gurdjieff was revered as a seer others saw him as a charlatan influenced by many religions including Sufism a mystical branch of Islam he believed that through sacred dance movement and attention one could obtain supreme awareness it was the basis of all the work that she did it was the basis of all her her writing after she'd met him and I don't think she could have been the person that she became without the huge influence he had on her [Music] Girja of teachings influenced Pamela's relationship with Mary Poppins she maintained both author and character was servants to a higher power Gurdjieff like Russell encouraged Pamela to explore Eastern religions during her 30s and 40s Pamela studied Buddhism in Japan spent time with the Indian philosopher Krishnamurti and lived with the Navajo Indians in New Mexico one began to wonder I mean she was so Restless looking for something but I mean I hope this was she was traveling the whole time I think she grappled with many demons I think she tried to filter her understanding of herself through discipleship of various forms whether it was with Gore GF or following the philosophy of Zen one demon that plagued Pamela was a search for someone to share her life though her books featured the happy secure Banks family her own life was far from it now in her mid-30s she dreamed of a husband and perhaps children of her own I felt she had an absolute passionate longing for the for the love of a man whom she could really respect the first man in her life were much older I think maybe she was looking for a guru then later I think she wanted a lover and that her husband really to give her children I never remember her having any relationship that looked like something more than friendship that I can remember did you know I don't recall either she was a very very nice lady like flirter yeah and she did and she would charm gents right left and center and she had a real gift for that but I don't recall any sort of serious profound sort of yeah I think in general she preferred men to women if you want to get a kind of overview of her reaction she would have got sound equivocal yeah I think that is Pamela's Diaries hinted a greatest love the Irish poet Frances McNamara whom she had met at one of Russell's soirees and Dublin like many women she was taken instantly by his charm and good looks but she couldn't have picked a worse candidate for a husband or a father [Music] falling in love with Frances who was a serial adulterer was a disaster say you might think but she's trying to repeat the past because in a way her father was a disaster so she is any attracted to disastrous men [Music] now she was crazy for him God knows if a virgin in Congress I don't know he was extremely attractive but he loved the whiskey too much he loved too many women his last wife I think was younger than his youngest daughter and he was simply insufficiently stable for her and she would have been a very demanding wife in 1937 Frances McNamara married for the third time to a woman half his age approaching 40 pamela decided to adopt a child she didn't look far she turned to Doris her 17 year old maid well she wanted to adopt me she said that I'd see the world I said well I don't want to see the world and I didn't want to go down there and none none she didn't want me to go anyway the idea to adopt a child was first ignited when a friend and her two children came to stay a pound cottage and this they sound really quite unfair but I suspect that it might have been an idea that she had that she would like to have a child and having a child is is very different to having an idea about it my parents knew Pamela and probably put her in touch with the homes when they knew she was hoping to adopt somebody [Music] pamela traveled to island to meet the hoenn family nazan biddy were on the fringe of Dublin's literary set there were poor drinkers and unwilling parents they had seven children all were adopted out she arrived at my grandfather's house in Killiney in South Dublin and there were these two babies on two adult beds in the upstairs room twins and emerged from my mother and she had to choose one or the other unable to make a decision Pamela consulted an astrologer in California who compared the babies horoscopes on his advice she adopted the younger twin a decision that would have lasting consequences my grandfather who was rather put upon in all this you know and living on capital a somewhat stingy man he said Oh Pamela go on don't take one take two they're small [Music] Pamela returned to London and two months later adopted Camilla's not just any child he was Irish and the cousin of Frances McNamara he was also the grandson of a great friend of Yeats who published George Russell's works all the men she adored rolled into one his twin Anthony was brought up by his grandparents in Ireland [Music] not long after Camilla's adoption Pamela commenced work on her third installment of Mary Poppins more than a decade after the first book it appeared the public was still hungry for more adventures of the whimsical nanny the books will go on to be published in 29 languages merry success is probably because she is bigger than the books themselves I think that Mary does have a very wide appeal she becomes a universal symbol of strength vitality of power so I think this is a very wide appeal right across the world in the same way as Shakespeare survives being done in German you know it's it's just one of those things it's a character that's so resonant with something very vital in the human psyche and the collective cycle Pamela firmly believed MARY POPPINS belonged in mythology my main interest as you were guests from all these books Mary Poppins and everything is in myth legend folklore fairy tale poetry I think Mary Poppins everything I've written Springs out of that as I understand Mary Poppins she arrives she sees there's a situation that's not quite right and when she's intervened and the situation has been transformed in some way she goes and that's an absolutely mythological pattern pamela wrote eight Mary Poppins books over six decades as a spiritual quest deepened so did the content of the books range of activities that this extraordinary nanny this almost cosmic nanny enters she talks and knows Orion she dances with the Sun she seems to be embedded in and at ease in a mythological universe the mythic aspect in the Zen aspect although they may not even be articulated by the young readers are definitely explanations of the universal appeal of Mary Poppins pamela was also fascinated by the concept of the shadow the idea of facing life's darker aspects and it directly played out in the Mary Poppins books [Music] look out look out she shrieked at them you're stepping on my shadow two of you standing right on its head the poor Singh will be distressed but I didn't think shadows could feel sad Jane not feel nonsense cried mrs. quarry they feel twice as much as you do I warn you children take care of your shadows or your shadows won't take care of you I think this whole issue of the shadows is interesting because you can you can have an idea of the ideal how you would like things to be but then the reality is is never going to be ideal the world is warts-and-all and I think that that can create quite a conflict and perhaps her interest in the shadow was in dealing with aspects of that conflict in herself [Music] I've always had a feeling that opposites meet somewhere and a reconcile I mean unless you can reconcile opposites in yourself you can't take another step Pamela's writings revealed her interest in reconciling conflict and bringing the shadow out into the light but she could not have imagined how it would play out in her own life as was common at the time she did not tell Camila's he was adopted or that he was a twin I always knew there was something funny going on because she was terrified that I should ever learn I found out his name I just looked it up and I discovered I was drinking in the same in a pub in Chelsea that he actually lived just across the road so after a couple of points I just went and knocked on the door and I think I caused a bit of consternation he was throwing out what he wasn't relied in so he couldn't have been thrown out by my mother's housekeeper but then she knew that the rat was such at the cupboard so that's when she told me and then I bumped into him again and I said what the devil's going on he said oh don't you know you're my twin brother you know when she took my twin brother out of his cradle you know and chose him on the sort of toss of a tarot card or something you know I think she displayed her a certain lack of sensitivity wouldn't you say you know so I never really had much time for I don't think she understood what the consequences or ramifications of what she did you know it did to both him and me I felt betrayed cheated took many many years for me to get over it I was upset to know that for 17 years I've been told a lie you know I'd had a passport from the dot and it had this funny name in it home and I'd asked her losses for her home you know where do I get that name from and I'm pretty sure she said to me she denied it later that my father had died in the tropics and as a matter of fact my father until 57 was still alive and I never met him his father nat hone died when Camillus was 19 just two years after he learnt of his adoption he and Anthony have led separate lives they have not spoken for 20 years oh yeah how you doing kid you night to see probably to see despite having grown up in different countries the similarity in their lives is uncanny he married a girl called Frances and so they died do you have a daughter called Katherine and I had a daughter called Kate so I said thank God we're not identical twins we'd be living in the same bed wouldn't we two people whose lives had little in common was that of Pamela Travers and Walt Disney when he approached the author in 1944 for the rights to Mary Poppins Pamela flatly refused him but fully aware of the universal appeal of the flying nanny Walt persisted for almost 20 years one day we were asked to come into Walt Disney's office he handed us this book and he said and he had this great look in his eye and he said read this and tell me what you think my kids liked it my wife likes it that's all he said and he said also you know what a nanny is we said yes I go right no no no English nursemaid the first to Mary Poppins books were a success in America and when Disney initially made contact with Pamela she was hard at work on her next book Walt Disney made an approach to mrs. Travers she quite naturally and quite in tune to her character said no thank you I'm not having any to do with that I don't want to be having my character presented as an animated cartoon [Music] The Walt Disney film studios in the 1940s were famous for producing animated films like Dumbo and Bambi Walt's Midas touch had turned the Disney name into a colossal money machine turning over 100 million dollars a year just in Disney branded goods alone but for Pamela the idea of turning her flying nanny into a cartoon was inconceivable Disney the master of persistence did not give up we had no idea he'd been actually negotiating with her for gosh close to 20 years welcome mrs. P L Travers to the City of Angels thing it smells like Jasmine chlorine and sweat I think she looked down on film Hollywood was a anathema a pretend place am a dark cardboard place and she wasn't willing or interested in exploring but in 1959 Disney seduced Pamela with an offer she couldn't refuse $100,000 down payment and 5% of the producers gross pamela relented on two conditions that she be a consultant and the film not be animated walked is they had never employed anyone as a consultant who was an author on one of his films he wanted freedom to do whatever he wanted to do with the film but it shows how important he thought this project was that he was prepared to go that extra mile and even he didn't know what he was gonna have to put up with what he and he decided it's angle with pamela responsible is not a word we made it up well unmake it up Richard Sherman and his brother Robert were in-house composers at Disney they were instrumental in realizing the Mary Poppins books to the screen along with Bill Walsh and Don dagradi they loved Pamela's stories but they were in for a shock from the very outset everything that we talked about she didn't like I mean it was like negative it's hard to explain why that was but she just said you selected the worst stories in the book and we said we think they're the most colorful stories we love them why don't you use Tarara boom-de-ay as a song because we didn't write it it's an original musical I like Greensleeves well I like Greensleeves too but but it's not an original song it's everybody knows it we want something new and fresh why and it was a difficult time it was truly a difficult time this entire script is Pimsleur where is its heart where is its reality where is the gravitas I think that Travers really was frightened that it would all be taken away it would be destroyed what she didn't know about Mary Poppins was that she would survive she would survive the clash of course she would survive being put into a different culture and interpreted in a wholly new way I've simply gone off the color I understand the possessory a passion one has in order to keep control of you know a creation that you did but no she's she's in that we can't make the picture without the color red the film is set in London for pete's sake but right down to that kind of thing I refuse to have the color red in my film what can you do well there's there busses and mailboxes and guards uniforms and things hat being was fly I don't know what it is I I'm suddenly very anti red Walt didn't like those meetings too much I mean I knew it was about two weeks worth of meetings and after the first day he had had a lot of script to read he went down to Palm Springs to eat and we were stuck with Tamela you know they didn't like each other I mean right up to the end they did not like each other she was hell on wheels these were two people with very very strong wills there was a man who had built one of the great studios he was a self-made man here was Pamela a woman who was not easily swayed from her view on anything in the world and the two were doomed to crash they were doomed to collide mrs. Travers was trying to protect her baby you know it she loves her books and she loves her characters we were trying to make a movie based on her stories and I try to explain that to her one day I said you know we can't put your book or books on the screen it's impossible all we can do is take the essence of the books the characters particularly your principal character and make her come to life on the screen and a singular story so Jolly holidays in Bao means wonderful I have a question about it actually how in the world does mr. Disney propose to train all the Penguins to dance I've heard about his implausibly leave trees so I presume he does have some insane penguin wrangling scheme but it does seem a little far-fetched even for him can you train a penguin to dance no I I don't think you can train your animated dick hey what cartoons dick after locking horns for two weeks a frustrated Disney suggested Pamela write her own treatment of the script back in England she obliged leaving Walt and his team free to write their version of the film but Pamela still had not signed over the rights we actually went a little bit up the wall after she left because we didn't know whether we were gonna do the picture or not after all that time but with no regular income and dwindling sales of her books Hamelin needed the money the Disney Deal would potentially set her up for life she signed in 1963 the film went into production she remained a consultant but in fact the next thing she saw was when she went to the premiere in Hollywood alongside Walt Disney and Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke and saw for the first time what exactly had been done with her book tonight on Hollywood awaits the will premiere of Walt Disney's Mary Poppins acclaimed by everyone as his greatest achievement and starring Julie Andrews first motion picture as Mary Poppins Pamela center telegrams walked his men to say that it was a glorious piece of entertainment it was colorful it was amusing it was entertaining it was fallacious it was this it was that it was all of those things without once mentioning all the things that she would later so readily tell people were wrong with the film [Music] yeah always made out she thought it was terrible who couldn't seem to find anything good about you to talk but we all used to remonstrate with her and say she was exaggerating and that it must be fairly ok since so many people absolutely loved it and she would sort of what you call it dimmer and protests you didn't like the cartoony bits horrified Dickie Van Dyck just about finished it off for her because he really was not a very good English chimney sweep Oh perhaps a smudge or two so happens today I'm a chimney sweep but was so frightened no no don't take on so fertile take care of you like I was your own firm wasn't really about the accent for Pamela what it was really about was the fact that Bert gets to play the pivotal role which Mary Poppins should play in the film he's the person who reconciles the children with their parents your dad's a fine gentleman and he loves you but you think father really needs our help he's a person who shows mr. banks the error of his ways songs give treat ridiculous and she did have great problems with the fact that the children's letter to Mary Poppins was destroyed by the father of the family she felt this was something which was inconceivable that her father could have done [Music] despite her criticisms of the film MARY POPPINS became a Disney's highest-grossing film at the time making Pamela a very wealthy woman her book sales trebled and the film went on to win five Academy Awards the day after the Academy Award night my brother Bob and I took our four Oscars and put them on his desk and he didn't even look at us he says well you know of course you hit a home run but the bases were loaded you got lucky [Music] she would never have accepted that the Walt Disney film had helped keep the life of her books so prominently alive and yet that's the truth the Mary Poppins books are and remain the success they are partly because of the Walt Disney film [Music] though the film gave Pamela an income for life she continued to write essays and articles and published her eighth Mary Poppins book at the age of 89 [Music] she softened in her old age and revealed details of her Australian childhood to close friends but was she ready to reveal the true beginnings of Mary Poppins shortly before she died the author then in her mid-90s sold 28 boxes of meticulously recorded material including family letters diaries and original transcripts of her work to the Mitchell Library in Sydney a door left him ty Singh Lee a jar for a woman whose hose Ellis Lee guarded her life story but in the archives there is no trace of the source of her beloved nanny the answer lies elsewhere I think she was a bit like Mary Poppins a bit vain and never explained anything I could see that in a funny sort of way my mother was trying to be like Mary Poppins with me she didn't want to be too kind she thought kindness killed the cat said she thought it was the best way of dealing with a obstreperous young boy was was to pretend to be tough strict the tacit they're gonna make crying I could always hold a heart coming out underneath could I have another drink please Roger her main regret was that she had not been able to be a better mother to Camilla's right has really put their their need to write first that is the thing that is most important in their lives and their families seem to always come second Yates's poem says it in one way it's man is forced to make perfection of the life or of the work man must choose between one or the other it's very difficult to combine high creativity with ordinary life [Music] Pamela Travers died at home in London in 1996 aged 96 yet she did not take a secret to the grave as she feared biographers pored over the details of her life but Pamela in keeping with her elusive nature had already revealed the source of her flying nanny a decade earlier not in any mainstream publication but in an obscure American magazine of myth parabola which she believed few would ever read here she finally told the truth about the origins of Mary Poppins the secret she had kept hidden for 70 years she wrote how on one stormy night a year after her father had died her mother declared she was going to drown herself in the creek leaving nine year-old Pamela alone with her two younger sisters the sound of the door made in closing was if a ballad told you've made the silence in the room who seem louder than the rain large-eyed the little ones looked at me and I knew that what they needed from me was what we all needed from her security reassurance I put a log on the failing fire brought an Ida down from a bedroom and we lay together on the hearth rug the warm downy quilts around us like a bird's wing shielding a hatch of nestlings there was no need for me to think of a story for suddenly he was there before us the little horse occult brother finally made with narrow Withers I can see him now mane and tail neatly trimmed hurrying off on some pilgrimage [Music] in that moment the magic white horse rescued the children from the nightmare transporting them across glimmering seas on wonderful adventures as her story reveals the white horse resurfaced years later as her treasured character Mary Poppins I'm not realized that she had this extraordinary gift of telling enthralling stories she dates her ability to create somebody like Mary Poppins back to the magic white horse Margaret Gough returned but Pamela's imagination had taken flight I suppose that was the moment when my mother discovered that she couldn't take things for granted that she had to make up her end story both in terms of her life and in terms of her books [Music] Pamela Travers reinvented her own story to conceal and cope with a painful childhood in Australia the death of her daughter and the deep trauma of her mother's attempted suicide but from this dark time she has conjured one of the most enduring literary characters of all time the legacy of Mary Poppins lives on long after she first flew into our homes more than 80 years ago the movie remains a family favorite the books have never been out of print and the stage show continues to play in theaters around the world I think there really was a touch of genius about the creation of of Mary Poppins she was a character that we all sort of half recognized half long for somebody who is capable of magic and indulgence on one hand but there's a bit of a dragon on the other the best and kindest thing that was ever said about her was in an article in The Observer in London I was talking about children's fears at night and said that there are a few books very few books the children turned to one of these is Mary Poppins and that pleased me very much because it shows that perhaps this strong dependable figure whoever she is can perhaps be relied on by a child [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Length: 55min 44sec (3344 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2017