5. Article in ms. form at Shawfield Street, Chelsea.
6. Shusha Guppy, Looking Back: A Panoramic View of a Literary Age by the Grandes Dames of European Letters. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
7. The concern over being the oldest child appears in many reminiscences, including “A Remarkable Conversation About Sorrow,” interview on June 23, 1965 by Janet Graham, Ladies’ Home Journal.
8. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
9. “A Radical Innocence,” The New York Times, May 9, 1965.
10. The account of her mother’s distress and the tale of the white horse appear in “The Interviewer,” Parabola, 1988, and in a letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
11. Ibid.
12. P. L. Travers said twice she went to Normanhurst boarding school aged eleven. But as she consistently lowered her age, and as there is no record of her in the school’s magazine before 1913, this seems unlikely. The pupil records of the school no longer exist. The school itself closed in 1941.
13. Ms. note in Mitchell Library, Sydney.
14. Sheena and Robert Coupe, Speed the Plough: Ashfield 1788–1988 (Ashfield, Australia: Council of the Municipality of Ashfield, 1988).
15. Interview by Miss Arledge, undated, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
16. “Threepenny Bit,” article by P. L. Travers in ms. form, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
17. Jonathan Cott, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children’s Literature (New York: Random House, 1983).
18. Normanhurst School Magazine, issues 1913 through 1916, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
19. Good Weekend, January 25, 1986.
20. Roy Newquist, Conversations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967).
21. Rosemary Broomham, First Light: 150 Years of Gas (Sydney, Australia: Hale and Iremonger, 1987; Helen Rutledge, My Grandfather’s House (Sydney, Doubleday, 1986).
22. Guppy, Looking Back.
23. P. L. Travers, “A Note on Cliques,” Christchurch Sun, May 22, 1924.
4. THE CREATION OF PAMELA
1. Maryborough Chronicle, April 18, 1945.
2. P. L. Travers, Shakespeare in the Antipodes, unpublished ms., Mitchell Library.
3. Ibid.
4. Shusha Guppy, Looking Back: A Panoramic View of a Literary Age by the Grandes Dames of European Letters. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
5. Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press; London/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
6. All the World’s My Stage: The Reminiscences of a Shakespearean Actor Manager in Five Continents, unpublished ms. in La Trobe Library, Melbourne.
7. Travers, Shakespeare in the Antipodes.
8. The Triad, April 11, 1921.
9. Travers, Shakespeare in the Antipodes.
10. Maryborough Chronicle, April 18, 1945.
11. Ibid.
12. The Triad, May 10, 1922.
13. The Triad, July 10, 1923.
14. The Triad, November 10, 1923.
15. Roy Newquist, Conversations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967) and Guppy, Looking Back.
16. Maryborough Chronicle, April 18, 1945.
17. Ms. note in Mitchell Library, Sydney.
18. P. L. Travers, Aunt Sass (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941).
19. The Triad, February 11, 1924.
20. Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 10, B. G. Andrews and Martha Rutledge, 1986.
21. The Triad, May 1923 to December 1924.
22. Newquist, Conversations.
23. “Only Connect,” speech to the Library of Congress, October 31, 1966.
24. Travers, Aunt Sass.
25. “More Last Words: Pamela Passes London-ward,” Christchurch Sun, March 13, 1924.
26. This book was never published.
27. The Triad, February 11, 1924.
5. FALLING INTO IRELAND
1. “Letter to a Learned Astrologer,” Parabola, 1979.
2. “Song of Joyous Garnering,” Christchurch Sun, March 21, 1924.
3. “Now Hail and Farewell,” Parabola, 1985.
4. Australian Women’s Weekly, December 28, 1966.
5. The Triad, August 11, 1924.
6. McCall’s, May 1966.
7. Ibid.
8. Martin Green, Children of the Sun: A Narrative of Decadence in England After 1918 (London: Constable, 1977).
9. Ibid.
10. David Thomson, England in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965).
11. Ibid.
12. The Triad, July 10, 1924.
13. Autobiographical note, Shawfield Street, Chelsea; P. L. Travers, “The Death of AE, Irish Hero and Mystic” in The Celtic Consciousness, ed. Robert O’Driscoll (New York: Braziller, 1981).
14. “Only Connect,” speech to the Library of Congress, October 31, 1966.
15. Letter from Simone Tery to AE, 1933, in the Denson Collection, National Library of Ireland.
16. R. F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, vol. 1, The Apprentice Mage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
17. “Only Connect.”
18. Oliver St John Gogarty, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1937).
19. Ibid.
20. John Eglinton, A Memoir of AE (London: Macmillan, 1937).
21. Ibid.
22. Henry Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man: A Biography of George Russell “AE,” 1867–1935 (Gerrards Cross, UK: Colin Smythe Ltd, 1975).
23. Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
24. Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).
25. Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man.
26. AE [George William Russell], The Candle of Vision (London: Macmillan, 1918).
27. Hubert Butler, Independent Spirit (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996).
28. Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man.
29. Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920–1954 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977).
30. Butler, Independent Spirit.
31. Ms. note written by P. L. Travers, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
32. AE’s letter to P. L. Travers, October 5, 1927.
33. Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man.
34. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
35. “The Death of AE.”
36. “Only Connect.”
37. Ibid.
38. “The Death of AE.”
39. August 7, 1926.
40. “The Death of AE.”
41. Australian Women’s Weekly, interview by Bill Wilson, December 28, 1966.
42. Jonathan Cott, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children’s Literature (New York: Random House, 1983).
43. Letter dated December 22, 1926.
44. Tape of Travers talking to students at Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 15, 1966.
45. The Christchurch Sun, October 23, 1926.
46. “Only Connect.”
47. Letter to Leah Rose Bernstein, June 11, 1929, Denson Collection, National Library of Ireland.
48. Letter dated July 11, 1932, Denson Collection; letter to John Quinn, 1904; letter to Leah Rose Bernstein; letter to Yeats, July 11, 1932; Eglinton, A Memoir of AE.
49. Some of the description is from notes in the Denson Collection.
50. “The Death of AE”; Eglinton, A Memoir of AE.
51. Eglinton, A Memoir of AE.
52. Ruth Pitter’s letter to Alan Denson, National Library of Ireland.
53. Ms. note, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
54. “Only Connect.”
55. “The Death of AE.”
56. Letter to P. L. Travers, January 6, 1928.
57. Ms. note written by P. L. Travers, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
6. LOVERS, GURUS AND THE GLIMMERING GIRL
1. Letter dated October 5, 1927.
2. Burnand was editor of Punch from 1880
to 1906. Frank E. Huggett, Victorian England as Seen by Punch (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1978).
3. Letter dated October 4, 1927.
4. Letter dated August 19, 1927.
5. P. L. Travers, “The Death of AE, Irish Hero and Mystic” in The Celtic Consciousness, ed. Robert O’Driscoll (New York: Braziller, 1981).
6. Audiotape recorded at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, October 1966.
7. Shusha Guppy, Looking Back: A Panoramic View of a Literary Age by the Grandes Dames of European Letters. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)
8. Letter to Professor Carens, August 3, 1978, Mitchell Library.
9. Travers’s letter to a Mr. Hamilton, November 19, 1986.
10. Letter to P. L. Travers in Mitchell Library, writer’s name not given.
11. Letter to Leah Rose Bernstein, August 28, 1928.
12. Letters in the Denson Collection at the National Library of Ireland. Leah Rose wrote to Alan Denson, the compiler of this collection of AE’s letters:
“This was a beautiful romance. AE and I adopted each other, I as a model, he as my inspiration. We painted all day and talked all night. I regret now I didn’t go to Ireland with him but I was young and modest and afraid.”
13. Letter dated July 16, 1928.
14. The Irish Statesman, October 12, 1929.
15. The Irish Statesman, October 26, 1929.
16. “The Plane Tree,” April 23, 1927.
17. “Prayer in a Field,” February 25, 1928.
18. Patricia Demers, P. L. Travers (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991). The Canadian academic Patricia Demers includes a chapter on Travers’s poetry of eroticism. Demers speculates that Travers was disappointed with various relationships, but has no evidence to prove there were any. She discusses the poems from a feminist point of view.
19. The New Triad, August 1927 to July 1928.
20. Letter to Professor Carens, August 1978.
21. Letter dated February 29, 1929.
22. Henry Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man: A Biography of George Russell “AE,” 1867–1935 (Gerrards Cross, UK: Colin Smythe, 1975); and letter in the Denson Collection, National Library of Ireland.
23. Letter to Professor Carens.
24. Letter dated February 13, 1930.
25. Letter dated May 6, 1930.
26. Letter dated December 2, 1930.
27. Letters to Joseph O’Neill and P. L. Travers, October and November 1930.
28. Letter dated December 2, 1930.
29. Undated letter, 1931.
30. “Some Friends of Mary Poppins,” McCall’s, May 1966.
31. Interviews with Doris Vockins, 1997 and 1998.
32. Letter dated December 15, 1931.
33. Letter, undated, late 1931.
34. Letter, undated, late 1931.
35. Letter dated January 20, 1931.
36. Letter dated February 18, 1932.
37. Letter dated March 6, 1932.
38. Letter dated August 11, 1932.
39. Hubert Butler, Independent Spirit (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996).
40. Audiotape recorded at Harvard, November 9, 1965, Mitchell Library.
41. Letter dated October 7, 1933.
42. Ms. note, Shawfield Street, Chelsea.
43. Letter dated October 7, 1933.
44. Peter Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon (London: Secker & Warburg, 1993).
45. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949).
46. J. G. Bennett, Witness (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962); Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus (London: HarperCollins, 1996).
47. A. R. Orage, Essays and Critical Writings of Orage, ed. Herbert Read and Denis Saurat (London: S. Nott, 1935).
48. James Moore, Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth (Shaftesbury, UK: Element Books, 1991).
49. Letters dated April 18 and 23, 1934.
50. Letter, undated, 1934.
51. Letter dated August, 1934.
52. Letters dated October 10 and December, 1934.
PROLOGUE TO PART 2
1. P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins Comes Back (London: L. Dickson & Thompson, 1935).
7. POPPINS AND PAMELA IN WONDERLAND
1. Speech to Smith College students, October 7, 1966.
2. Ibid.
3. Jonathan Cott, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children’s Literature (New York: Random House, 1983); Patricia Demers, P. L. Travers (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991).
4. Ms. note, Shawfield Street, Chelsea.
5. Letter to Joyce Madden, October 1964, Illinois State University.
6. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 20, 1978.
7. Staffan Bergsten, Mary Poppins and Myth (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1978).
8. June 1, 1928.
9. Jackie Wullschläger, Inventing Wonderland (London: Methuen, 1995).
10. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
11. Speech at Radcliffe College, January 1966.
12. The Art of Beatrix Potter (London: Frederick Warne, 1955).
13. Milo Reeve [P. L. Travers], “The Hidden Child” New English Weekly, April 10, 1947.
14. New Age Journal, August 1984.
15. Speech at Radcliffe College, January 1966.
16. Ibid.
17. Letter to Joyce Madden, October 1964.
18. Ibid.
19. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
20. Shusha Guppy, Looking Back: A Panoramic View of a Literary Age by the Grandes Dames of European Letters. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
21. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, February 19, 1977.
22. Letter to Joyce Madden, October 1964.
23. “Where Did She Come From?” Saturday Evening Post, November 7, 1964.
24. Interview by Melinda Green in ms. form, Mitchell Library.
25. Sun Herald, August 4, 1963.
26. “The Pen and the Hand,” Christian Science Monitor, October 15, 1960.
27. Letter to Mary Shepard, March 3, 1962.
28. Speech given at Radcliffe College, January 1966.
29. Guppy, Looking Back.
30. Ian Woodward, “Meet the Creator of Mary Poppins,” Women’s Weekly, 1975; interview on Boston radio station, 1965.
31. Christian Science Monitor, October 15, 1980.
32. Ms. note in Mitchell Library.
33. “The Pooh Poppins Connection,” Hampstead and Highgate Express, May 21, 1982.
34. Guppy, Looking Back.
35. Christian Science Monitor, October 15, 1980.
36. Shepard’s unpublished autobiographical notes.
37. Speech given at Radcliffe College, January 15, 1966.
38. Radcliffe College, January 8, 1966.
39. Guppy, Looking Back.
40. Nicolette Devas, Two Flamboyant Fathers (London: Collins, 1966).
41. Augustus John, “Chiaroscuro,” quoted in Devas, Two Flamboyant Fathers.
42. Oliver St John Gogarty, It Isn’t This Time of the Year at All! An Unpremeditated Autobiography (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1954).
43. Devas, Two Flamboyant Fathers.
44. Ibid.
8. A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT FOR A DEATH
1. Letter to Lesley, an Australian friend, October 23, 1935.
2. Letter dated January 2, 1935.
3. Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920–1954 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977).
4. Letters to Joseph O’Neill, January 26, 1935 and to P. L. Travers, February 9 and 18, 1935.
5. Letter to Lesley.
6. Note written by P. L. Travers, 1942, Mitchell Library.
7. Letter dated May 22, 1935.
8. James Moore, Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth (Shaftesbury, UK: Element, 1991).
9. Letter to Lesley.
10. Letter dated July 4, 1935.
11. Letter to Lesley.
12. Henry Summerfield, That Myriad M
inded Man: A Biography of George Russell “AE,” 1867–1935 (Gerrards Cross, UK: Colin Smythe, 1975).
13. Rough of letter written by P. L. Travers, dictated by AE, Mitchell Library.
14. Letter from P. L. Travers to Professor Carens, 1978.
15. Notes by P. L. Travers in 1942; “The Death of AE, Irish Hero and Mystic” in The Celtic Consciousness, ed. Robert O’Driscoll (New York: Braziller, 1981).
16. Letter to Lesley and typed notes of P. L. Travers.
17. Lecture given at Smith College, October 7, 1966.
18. Letter to Lesley.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
9. THE CROSSING OF CAMILLUS
1. P. L. Travers, Aunt Sass (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941).
2. Patricia Demers, P. L. Travers (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991).
3. Interview with Doris Vockins, then seventy-six years old, October, 1997.
4. William Patrick Patterson, The Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff’s Special Left Bank Women’s Group (Fairfax, CA: Arete Communications, 1999).
5. Maryborough Chronicle, April 18, 1945.
6. Letter to Staffan Bergsten, March 20, 1977.
7. Interview with Doris Vockins.
8. Doris says she left because her parents moved to Dunstan’s Cross, nearer the village of Mayfield. Pamela did not offer to drive Doris to and from work and the three miles from Mayfield to the cottage was too far for her to walk. Doris left without acrimony.
9. New English Weekly, November 16, 1939.
10. Interview with Joseph Hone, October 1997.
11. Joseph Hone, Children of the Country: Coast to Coast Across Africa (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986).
12. Interview with Sally (Hone) Cooke-Smith, October 1997.
13. Interviews with Joseph Hone and Camillus Travers.
14. Interview with Joseph Hone.
15. Interview with Sally Cooke-Smith.
16. Interview with Camillus Travers.
17. New English Weekly, January 11 and August 15, 1940.
18. Interview with Andrew Firrell, October 1997.
10. THROUGH THE DOOR TO MABELTOWN
1. P. L. Travers, I Go By Sea, I Go By Land (London: Peter Davies, 1941).
2. Carlton Jackson, Who Will Take Our Children? (London: Methuen, 1985).
3. Travers’s letter to a Mr. Hamilton, November 19, 1986.
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