Posing A Lifelong Question

 “A writer is, after all, only half his book.  The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.” – P.L. Travers

While she spent her professional life as writer and actress under the name of P.L. Travers – Pamela Lyndon Travers was, in actuality, Helen Lyndon Goff.  And, she is forever engrained in our psyche for her creation of a magical English nanny named Mary Poppins.    

Goff utilized the pen and stage name of Travers because she wanted to honor the memory of her father, who died when she was 7.   She said her father was the most important man in her life, particularly in her growing up years.  “He shared a world of ideas about a world that both was and might be.”

 

Walt Disney & P.L. Travers

 Born in Australia in 1899, Travers emigrated to England in the early 1920s and became a successful actress before deciding to work as a journalist and write poetry.  In the early 1930s she tried creative writing and wrote “Mary Poppins.”

While working for the British Ministry of Information in World War II, she traveled to New York for meetings and while there was contacted by Roy Disney, Walt’s brother and business manager, about making a Mary Poppins movie.  But it took nearly 20 more years before Walt Disney could convince the irascible Travers to let him adapt the book.   Travers never gave a definitive answer about who Mary was or how she came about.   

“For me,” she said, “there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on.”

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