Mary Poppins in London
When I was a little girl, I watched the movie Mary Poppins. Tis British nanny who never explained anything and had magical ways of getting things done be- came a role model for me. I adored her air of mystery, laughed at her quick wit and longed to be her. In 2013, a year after earn- ing my City of London guiding qualifica- tion, I started doing a walking tour dedicated to this fantastic character and have met hundreds of Mary Poppins fans along the way. As we are all excited about the long-awaited sequel Mary Poppins Returns to hit the cinemas in December 2018, we are taking the opportunity to give you an ‘everything you need to know’ guide to this London icon.
Te Ceatr Mary Poppins was written by Australian-
born author P. L. Travers. She started life as Helen Lyndon Goff, daughter of Deptford- born Travers Robert Goff and Queensland-
Helen Goff a.k.a. P. L. Travers as a young actress
born Margaret Moorhead. He was a bank clerk, and she was from a well-to-do fam- ily. Tey married, and nine months later Helen ‘Lyndy’ Goff was born on 9th August 1899. When her father was pro- moted in 1905, the family moved to Allora, in south-east Queensland. She had two younger sisters, Barbara and Moira. Her alcoholic father died in 1907, so mother and daughters moved in with Aunt Ellie in Bowral, New South Wales. She at- tended school and longed to be an actress. Aunt Ellie and her mother didn’t approve of this, but allowed her to be part of a trav- elling Shakespeare company. She adopted the name Pamela Lyndon Travers by choosing her first name “because she liked it” and her father’s first name as her new surname. She wrote for local newspapers under the initials P.L. Travers, in the style of J.M. Barrie; this is the same tactic that J.K. Rowling used. Both did this because
being a woman writer might somehow sway the readers, so incognito was the idea.
Te Inspiration Travers never gave a straight answer about
the origins of Mary Poppins. She once said it was a name she had seen written in a book. Another time, she described a vision she had at twilight that gave her the idea. Nevertheless, she had told her mentor and friend George William Russell (known as ‘Æ’) about an idea for a story about a white witch, and he encouraged her to ex- plore this idea. Te book was written in 1933 when she was living in a thatched- roof cottage in Mayfield, just near Tunbridge Wells. It came out in 1934 and was a huge success. She was living in Mayfield with her friend and long-time roommate Madge Burnand, the daughter of a publisher. Travers never married and had a few close relationships with women in her life, but there is no firm evidence
Julie Andrews, Walt Disney & P. L. Travers at the première
P. L. Travers 16 FOCUS The Magazine November/December 2018
www.focus-info.org
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