Posted by Roger Wardale on September 23, 2014 at 14:44:45 user RogerW.
In Reply to: Re: Interview with Philippa Ryan posted by Peter Ceresole on September 23, 2014 at 09:51:15:
I did not intend my reference to Mr Jemmerling to be taken quite so literally. Taking the example of Squashy Hat, that AR admitted was based on Gnosspelius, how much wiser are we?
Six years older than Ransome, Oscar Gnosspelius was a bit of a polymath. He trained as a civil engineer and after some years surveying in Sweden, the Transvaal, Brazil and Angola, he became interested in aviation and when his ’Gnosspelius No 2’ flew off from Windermere, it became the first aircraft to successfully take off from water.
After war service, he joined Short Brothers and designed the Gnosspelius Gull for the company. He married Barbara Collingwood in 1925 and returned to the lakes prospecting for copper with WG Collingwood, assisted by John Willie Shaw.
When the copper failed, he set Shaw up quarrying for slate until the Second World War.
He constructed the ‘miner’s wheel’ so that the Altounyans could raise and lower Mavis’s centerboard.
I know very little more.
Squashy Hat was diffident to the point of shyness, especially with strangers, yet he responded to the fell fire, the loss of the GA, and her personal attack on the Beckfoot lawn admirably, shyness forgotten. One suspects that he was most comfortable in old clothes with people who shared his interest. He is presented as an experienced miner, good on hills with no time for boats.
How can we match Gnosspelius with Squashy Hat? Was ‘Gnossie’ shy? Tall? Calm in a crisis? Comfortable in old clothes? Uninterested in boats? Were these all figments of AR’s imagination? I do not think we can ever know.
Did he wear a squashy hat? Yes he did. His daughter Janet has said that he did not, but I have a copy of a photo taken by Barbara showing John Willie Shaw, Oscar Gnosspelius and Janet at the mouth of ‘Slater Bob’s Mine’, and he is wearing a good sized hat.