More than Mary Poppins: The Archive of P.L. Travers and Mary Shepard at Cotsen Children’s Library

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Ian Dooley

The below post was kindly provided by Miranda Marraccini, a Princeton University graduate student in the English department. In addition to specializing in Victorian poetry and the history of radical lady printers, Miranda works with us at Cotsen and, as you will see, lends us her more than capable scholarly and archival skills.

More than Mary Poppins: The Archive of P.L. Travers and Mary Shepard at Cotsen Children’s Library

by Miranda Marraccini

Mary Poppins is one of the most recognizable characters in English children’s literature. Most of us who have seen the 1964 Disney film imagine her looking and sounding like Julie Andrews: holding out a spoonful of sugar, then flying off over the rooftops with the aid of her parrot-handled umbrella. But what happens after Mary flies out of our lives? What is the consequence of her stern magic, the residue of her mysterious influence?

Well, as one collection at Cotsen shows, what happens post-Poppins is just as interesting as the familiar story of the book and film. In the 1990s, Cotsen acquired a collection of papers belonging to P. L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, and illustrator Mary Shepard. The collection contains personal letters, annotated drafts of stories, artist’s proofs of illustrations, legal documents, family photographs, and interesting scraps of every description.

Cotsen’s newly created Mary Shepard and P. L. Travers Archive is only a fraction of the global Travers archive. In 1989, when she was 90 years old, Travers sold most of her papers to the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, near her birthplace (Lawson 350). Cotsen’s collection, though smaller, is still illuminating. Consisting mostly of materials from her later life, it shows the post-Poppins Travers as she was: a deep and mystical thinker, a conflicted mother, a harsh critic, and unrelenting on what she considered points of principle.

AE (George Russell) at Ilnacullin, in County Cork, Ireland, where Travers spent a holiday in 1929 (Lawson 120). (Box 7, Folder 28)

Travers and AE at Pound Cottage, Mayfield, Sussex, in August, 1933 (Lawson 129). (Box 7, Folder 28)

These photos from our collection show Travers as a young woman. She moved to England in 1924, and spent formative time in Ireland with the writer and mystic George Russell, known as AE. AE fostered what became Travers’ lifelong passion for mythology. At different periods, she studied with gurus in India, lived on a reservation in the American Southwest, and was a dedicated student of the esoteric Russian spiritual teacher George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Travers saw commonalities in the fairy tales and ancient stories that children know around the world. She later developed her deeply personal theories in articles for Parabola Magazine, collected in What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story (1989).

Draft of a story for What the Bee Knows, “The Interviewer”. (Box 1 Folder 21)

Draft of a story for What the Bee Knows, “The Endless Story”. (Box 1, Folder 20)

Travers always imagined Mary Poppins as more than a children’s story. Mary herself, Travers believed, emerged from a rich tradition of female wisdom, living outside of time and somehow beyond the reach of human perspective (Lawson 155). Travers used the eight Mary Poppins books to reach a wider audience with her ideas about mythology. Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982) is Travers’ most myth-infused story, and also the most well-represented book within the Cotsen collection. In this story, Mary Poppins leads the Banks children on an adventure on Midsummer’s Eve, “the most magical night of the year.” It’s a night when the laws and rules dissolve like rain in the grass, and when anything can happen, possible or impossible.

A scratchboard drawing for Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane by Mary Shepard showing Mary Poppins along with some of the other characters in the story, who are constellations: Ursa Major (the bear), Orion, and Vulpecula (the fox). (Box 5, Folder 18)

In the sketches below by Poppins illustrator Mary Shepard, the Park Keeper of the story, normally a sensible man, begins to believe in the power of “Old Wives’ Tales,” which “were apt to turn out to be true.” The lovelorn Park Keeper follows the directions of a wiser character, who advises: “… if you walk backwards on Midsummer’s Eve, after putting an herb or two under your pillow—Marjoram, Sweet Basil, no matter what—you’ll back into your own true love as sure as nuts are nuts” (27).

An early sketch for the scene, which appears on page 31 of first American edition (Box 3, file 18).

An early sketch for the scene, which appears on page 31 of first American edition (Box 3, folder 18)

a later version, with comments by both Mary Shepard and P. L. Travers in the margins. (Box 5, file 11)

A later version, with comments by both Mary Shepard and P. L. Travers in the margins. (Box 5, folder 11)

Disappointingly, the Park Keeper backs into Mary Poppins, who is as likely to be his true love as a “gooseberry bush.” Shortly, however, he stumbles into a nighttime world of celestial magic, where constellations come down to Earth to gather herbs for their midsummer revels. By the end of the story, the Park Keeper recovers his childhood knowledge: his belief in magic, the mystery of the universe, and the possibility of impossibility. In the familiar sunlit park, he had forgotten. “It needed the dark to show things plain” (63).

The Park Keeper bumps into Mary Poppins. (Box 5, File 10)

The Park Keeper bumps into Mary Poppins. This illustration appears on page 35 of the first American edition. (Box 5, Folder 10)

the park keeper cries in the Bird Woman’s lap while Orion looks on, (Box 5, File 8). This illustration appears on page 49.

The park keeper cries in the Bird Woman’s lap while Orion looks on. This illustration appears on page 49. (Box 5, Folder 8)

In the sketch on the right above, the Park Keeper is overwhelmed by the rediscovery of his childhood knowledge: “He had known those figures when he was a boy, and many more besides. And he had forgotten what he had known, denied it, made it a thing of naught, something to be sneered at! He put his hands up to his eyes to hide the springing tears” (60).

The visible back-and-forth between P.L. Travers and Mary Shepard (later Mary Knox) in the margins of these sketches suggests that the two collaborated very closely on the Poppins illustrations. By all accounts, this is true. Our collection includes many professional letters between Travers and Shepard, from 1935, when the partnership started with Mary Poppins, onward. There are also tender personal letters in which Travers inquires after the health of Shepard’s husband, E. V. “Evoe” Knox.

The author/illustrator collaboration was not always amicable, however. Our collection documents a particularly longstanding disagreement between author and illustrator: the issue of copyright for the Mary Poppins illustrations. Although Travers maintained strict control of the content, Mary Shepard always retained the copyright on her own illustrations. Yet after the Mary Poppins movie came out, Shepard did not receive any portion of the multimillion dollars in box office profits (Lawson 257-258). (See Box 1, File 34.)

The dispute ended in Mary Poppins’ toes. In their original discussions about the first book, Mary Shepard had suggested that Mary Poppins should stand with her feet turned out in the “fifth position” of ballet, while Travers imagined them at right angles (Ross Lipson). In the movie, Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins stands with her feet in the fifth position. Shepard eventually won a small payment as compensation for this artistic contribution. The image below shows a legal decision in our collection, on the first page of which Mary Shepard explains the outcome of the case (with a sketch of Mary Poppins’s feet).

“Mr Knight [Shepard’s literary agent] succeeded by using Mary Poppins’s feet—my addition to her appearance—in the 5th position. Not mentioned here I received £1,000.” (Box 1, Folder 26)

If Travers’ interactions with Mary Shepard are sometimes thorny, so were her letters to other acquaintances. Our collection includes dozens of letters that Travers wrote to schools and amateur theaters refusing their requests to stage Mary Poppins plays and musicals.

Travers refuses permission to adapt Mary Poppins into a play. She writes “You cannot mix two media without failing to do justice to both. It doesn’t work”. (Box 1, Folder 5)

At crux of this refusal was the Mary Poppins film. Travers feared that any musical or play might mix elements from her books with popular elements from the film (for instance, the songs). For her this fusion was an unacceptable compromise. Since Travers held the rights to the story, Disney referred all requests to her. And she turned them all down, firmly. Travers’ relationship with Disney was chronicled in the recent film Saving Mr. Banks (2013).

Business correspondence like this makes up about half of our collection. Some documents in the collection, however, are intensely personal. P. L. Travers was always close-lipped about her private life, believing that her stories spoke for themselves. She once told an interviewer that her favorite author was “anonymous.” In Cotsen’s documents Travers emerges in slips and scraps, on hotel stationery and in ragged journals.

Image from Travers dream journal. (Box 2, Folder 34)

In her typewritten dream journal Travers records the nocturnal presence of important people in her life: her family, left behind long ago in Australia, as well as mystics Gurdjieff and AE. But she also dreams about “minced meat” and the Prince of Wales. One of her dreams (above) has an “erotic overtone.”

Overtones aside, Travers seems to have been involved in romantic relationships with women and men (Lawson 117). She was very close to, and lived with, her friend Madge Burnand. Among the houses they shared was Pamela’s idyllic Pound Cottage in Mayfield, Sussex.

Madge signs this photo of herself “Yours sincerely,” and Pamela labels it “a present.” (Box 7, Folder 29)

Madge and Pamela lived together at Pound Cottage before World War II. (Box 7, Folder 29)

Our archive contains other records of P. L. Travers’ family life. In 1939, months after war had been declared, Travers adopted a son, Camillus, from a family she had known in Ireland. The baby’s grandfather, Joseph Hone, had been an important publisher and biographer working with Ireland’s most illustrious literary figures, including AE (Lawson 189). Travers consulted an astrologer in California who told her Camillus was a better match for her than his twin brother. She took Camillus back to England. Some of the pictures below are from the war period, when Travers and her son were evacuated to New York.

All 4 pictures depict Camillus Travers as a young child. (Box 7, folder 31)

Our archive compiles evidence of what was at times a complicated relationship between Camillus and his mother. It includes dozens of letters that Camillus wrote home from school, telling his mother about his grades and his classes, his little worries and triumphs. It includes a document Travers signed, releasing Camillus from jail where he was held on a drunk driving charge as a young man. And it includes a letter to Camillus that Travers wrote in the last year of her life, in the loose, unspooled writing of very advanced age. She begs Camillus to come see her, reminding “I will be 96 in August—not long!”

Letter from a teenage Camillus Travers at school to his mother. He writes “My Darling Mother, Please forgive me for not writing before—I have had another attack of torpidity.” (Box 2, File 22)

Record of Camillus Travers’ arrest and release on a drunk driving charge or “moving offence”. (Box 2, Folder 22)

Letter from Pamela Travers to her son, Camillus. “Darling Camillus, Do come & see me. I need to talk to you. I will be 96 in August—not long! Your faithful & loving M.” (Box 2, Folder 22)

Travers felt that young Camillus connected her with the world of fairy tale, which lives on in the imaginations of children, through generations. As a character in Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane explains: “Didn’t your grandmother tell you nothing? Mine told it to me and hers told her. And her grandmother told it to her, and away and away, right back to Adam” (28).

In Cherry Tree Lane, “night changes the world and makes the known unknown” (75). Our archive makes us rethink the familiar, brightly colored world of Mary Poppins, shadowing it with the obscurities of myth and symbol that absorbed Travers all her life.

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Sources

Lawson, Valerie. Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Ross Lipson, Eden. “Mary Shepard Dies at 90; ‘Mary Poppins’ Illustrator,” New York Times, October 2, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/02/arts/mary-shepard-dies-at-90-mary-poppins-illustrator.html.

For more information about the paper of P. L. Travers see the guide to her papers in the Mitchell Library of New South Wales:

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/mssguide/ptravers.pdf

You can find Cotsen’s Mary Shepard and P. L. Travers archive on the Princeton University Library Finding Aids website at:

http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/COTSEN2

Mother Goose: a Visual Icon and its Changes…

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Jeff Barton

A (Very) Short History of “Mother Goose” in Print

In a recent posting on the Cotsen blog, I talked about how American children’s books publisher McLoughlin Brothers depicted the “traditional” figure of Mother Goose and how the always-innovative McLoughlin didn’t hesitate to change, update, or appropriate this depiction for their own purposes. In doing so, I talked in very general terms about the “traditional” associations of Mother Goose and the roots that stories connected with her have in folk tales. But no matter how much McLoughlin Brothers may have tried to lay claim to the figure of Mother Goose, they obviously didn’t invent her. What sort of traditional literary (and pictorial) antecedents for Mother Goose are they hearkening back to?

Title Page: “Histoire, or Contes du Temps Passe” (Amsterdam, 1697) Cotsen 25130

The earliest printed version of “Mother Goose” stories was published in Paris in 1697, as: “Histoires, ou Contes du Temps Passe” (“Histories, or Tales of Times Past”). Apparently, this was a popular book, because three unauthorized editions were published the end of the year, probably in Amsterdam. The title page of these versions (one shown at left) plays it cagey, noting: “Suivant la copie à Paris — “following the Paris copy” — with “à Paris” in large capitals, so a casual book-shopper (or unsuspecting cataloger!) might not notice that this isn’t actually the Paris first edition.

Frontispiece: “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye” (Cotsen 25130)

Mother Goose isn’t mentioned on the title page either, but the book’s engraved frontispiece has the inset caption: “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye”: “Tales of Mother Goose” (as you can see at right). The frontispiece depicts a somber, oldish woman, telling tales to three children at night, while she spins in front of a roaring fireplace. (Note the bright candle, the cat happily sitting near the fire, and the appearance of the three children, pictured much like miniature adults, as was generally the practice at this time.)

With the perspective of book history, this figure is recognizable as Mother Goose, but it’s definitely a sterner version than we saw in McLoughlin Brothers’ (much later) books — a not altogether surprisingly one for its era. Also worth pointing out is that “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye” was not first published as a children’s book, but rather as a literary form of tales popular with the French court.

Some thirty years later, the collection of tales was translated into English by Robert Samber and published as: “Histories, or Tales of Past Times” (1729). Numerous versions for children followed, including at least ten editions by Newbery & Carnan or Benjamin Collins, entitled: “Histories, or, Tales of Past Times, told by Mother Goose.”

Title page and facing frontispiece of the 10th edition of “Histories,” Collins ed. (Salisbury: 1791) Cotsen 32589

As you can see from the photo above, Mother Goose is now cited in the title itself: “Tales … told by Mother Goose.” What had previously been suggested visually — that Mother Goose is the teller of the tales — is made explicit on this 1791 title page, which presents her as the nominal author.

And take a look at the woodcut frontispiece facing the title page in this edition. It looks an awful lot like the engraved frontispiece of our faux-Paris edition, doesn’t it? The English publishers are hearkening back to the earlier French versions by using such a similar illustration. And the frontispiece here also mentions Mother Goose in its inset caption — “Mother Goose’s Tales” — in a way that reinforces the idea that the teller of tales is Mother Goose herself. Illustration reiterates text here, as is often the case in children’s books.

“Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime…”

While cataloging new Cotsen Library acquisitions recently, I came across another, quite different, version of Mother Goose: “Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime, called Harlequin and Mother Goose, or the Golden Egg…” (1806). The text of this little book within paper wrappers is not a tale itself, but rather a play-text and description of a staged pantomime production, a very popular form of English comedic theater, featuring songs and fairly outrageous slapstick humor. (These stage productions often adapted familiar tales; “The White Cat,” one of the fairy tales collected by Madame d’Aulnoy, provided the basis for another popular English popular pantomime of this era.)

Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime, called Harlequin and Mother Goose … (London: 1806?) Cotsen 30522

Let’s take a closer look at the frontispiece illustration of Mother Goose. Quite a different depiction than we saw above in the earlier books’ illustrations, or in the later McLoughlin versions! The caption below tells us this is: “Mr Simmons in the character of Mother Goose.” In other words, Mother Goose is portrayed as the man who played her role onstage in this pantomime, an interesting piece of gender and role reversal.

Samuel Simmons was one of the stars of the theater company, as evidenced by the 1807 playbill (shown below) for this production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where he receives top billing. (Even though the top of the playbill was cropped off by a prior owner, the name of the company remains quite visible). Note too, this pantomime was the second half of a “double-feature,” with “The Tempest”! Such twin-bills were common in theater at the time, usually presenting abridged versions of one or both plays. In an era before television or the Internet, the plays were indeed the thing in terms of popular entertainment.

Playbill for Thursday, February 26, 1807 for the Covent Garden Theatre (Cotsen 7251157)

Another, apparently later, version of “Fairburn’s New Pantomine” in Cotsen’s collection instead pictures the era’s famous clown Joseph Grimaldi on its frontispiece and replaces the title page text, “embellished with a colored frontispiece of Mother Goose” with printed decorative rules. (Both seem to be variations of the undated first edition; two later editions note “2nd” and “3rd” editions, resp.) Why this variation in what seems to be the first edition, though? Perhaps for the sake of variety, or to freshen up the item for sale? After all, the play opened in 1806 and ran for ninety two productions; buyers might not take a second took at an “old” booklet they had seen in the shop for months? Or perhaps Grimaldi got better reviews? Perhaps Fairburn decided that Grimaldi was a better sales incentive to a potential buyer of the printed “Descriptions”? Lacking more evidence from the items themselves or from an external source, I can’t say for certain at this point. But that’s something to work on a bit more, as is the question of dating Cotsen’s different versions of “Fairburn’s Description” with more certainty.

Printed materials like “Fairburn’s Description” or printed play-texts were meant to appeal both visually and textually to potential buyers, but they were ephemeral sports of publications not necessarily meant to last on the shelves of someone’s library; as such they often lack the basic sort of bibliographical information usually found in books, such as a date of publication. The same is true of playbooks from Shakespeare’s era, as hard as that may be for us to imagine now — relatively cheap pamphlet-like publications, usually undated.

The correlation between the sales of printed items issued by Fairburn (or printed playbooks authored by Shakespeare & Co.) and the sale of tickets to attend actual theater performances is a tricky one, as those who study Elizabethan playbooks and plays know all too well. (Changes on the title-pages or covers of Elizabethan playbooks — aka. “quartos” — sometimes seem to have been made just to prompt sales, not necessarily due to any real changes in the text itself, although usually there were indeed “additions” to the text or a new production staged.) But I think it’s safe to say that the combination of at least three printed editions of “Fairburn’s New Pantomine” and an opening run of over ninety performances of the play itself attests to noteworthy popularity of this version of “Mother Goose.”

And I hope you’ve seen how the depiction of the figure of Mother Goose changed over time, from the stern, story-telling woman of 1697 to the gender-challenging comic depiction in 1807 to the kindly old grandmother depicted by McLoughlin Brothers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Changes inevitably seem to come to even the most seemingly “traditional” literary or cultural figures, prompted by changing times. “Traditional” doesn’t necessarily mean fixed, static, or unchanging.