Posted by Andy Morley on September 03, 2000 at 11:03:47 from 195.44.166.153:
In Reply to: Re: More about Pauline Marshall, Broadcast and Memoirs... posted by Peter Roche on September 03, 2000 at 09:10:58:
I can understand why you raise those points Peter. However, I would not want to see Pauline portrayed as in any way a 'maverick' from the TARS fold as a result of a thread begun by me. Pauline was involved in this story long before TARS was even thought of. I would say that if there is a maverick element at work, it is more to do with people who for some peculiar reasons of their own, try to cast doubt on certain areas of her personal history. This is obviously distressing for her as it would be for anyone. I should think that she was probably pretty startled when her father told her what Ransome had just told him - that she and her sister were to be the basis for the Amazon pirates. However, there have been far more startling things happen to her later on in life, things entirely unconnected with Arthur Ransome, and so far no-one has attempted to question her veracity with respect to those matters, though nothing would surprise me.
Just to demonstrate how unlike a maverick Pauline really is, let me anticipate on some of her memoirs. Her life was highly unconventional according to modern perceptions of the way things were in those days. However, I don't think she was in any way a rebel - she just happened to be in certain places at certain times, and did what came naturally I suppose.
It may seem unusual to think of women soldiers as far back as the 1940s, and officially of course she was not one as understand it (I'm subject to correction by her of course). But what else would you call someone who was part of an ack-ack crew, and whose particular skill was to recognise the different shapes of German fighters and bombers in silhouette against the night sky..?
This may seem unconventional against the background of the times, but in fact it was a logical consequence of a trend that included Florence Nightingale, which went on to encompass the use of female labour in munitions factories during the 1st World War and which later surfaced as genteel ladies driving vans during the General Strike. Setting aside these circumstances that could be considered exceptional, women in the past were often far from being the shrinking victims of repression that some more recent historians, writers and academics have suggested. Again subject to correction by Pauline, I don't _think_ that anything she did would have been in any way an act of rebellion, or even a conscious part of the feminist movement, though we will have to wait to see what she has to say about that.
However, when she did come into conflict with established views, it was not for the reasons you might expect. After a long spell in London working as part of the war effort, she found that her aircraft-spotting skills were not in great demand when peace broke out. I hope she'll forgive any minor inaccuracy on my part, but I believe that when she applied for funding to resume her studies of music at Cambridge after her years of war work, she was told in no uncertain terms that she should stop this idleness and go out and earn a living - or words to that effect. Fortunately she has since been able to see the funny side of that particular episode.
Things just seemed to happen to her. When she followed this particular recommendation and found herself working for a travel firm in the Mediterranean, it went bust and she was left without funds. I think the fact that people have always been willing to help her is a clear indication that she is far from being an awkward or maverick kind of person. In this particular instance, she was told by a friend to go and sit in a bar in a certain small town a few miles away on the other side of the island, and see what happened… This episode led to one of the more unusual episodes of her life, but if you want to read about it, you'll have to buy a copy of her memoirs.
It would be equally wrong to portray her as simply someone who went along for the ride. She has consistently taken these opportunities and built on them, well into middle age and beyond. I suppose that to an extent, I can understand how people whose lives are constrained within a very small sphere may find some of this hard to believe. If your own life has been dull and unexciting, you probably view those whose lives haven't as prone to exaggeration and tellers of tall stories.
Some of you may for example find it difficult to believe that a person of Pauline's age was sailing a fast racing dinghy on Coniston, until her recent accident. I don't want to give too much away about where she keeps her boat - take a look at the piece I wrote about it which you will get to by following the link I posted at the beginning of this thread for more information. But I must confess to being a little startled myself the first time that I saw her disappear backwards into an opening that can have been no more than 12 inches high and about 18 inches wide. I was also a little concerned yesterday when she casually mentioned feeling slightly dizzy after doing her daily 13 situps. However, on the subject of courage in the face of adversity, which now includes old age, let's leave the last word with Pauline:
"My father who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the 1914-18 war (being mentioned in dispatches) and was later a Colonel in the Territorial army, had alarmingly high standards of physical courage which he expected even from little girls. There was an occasion when I went with him and a group of adults from Bank Ground through the stile gate to next door Low Bank Ground. I went dancing ahead, a little girl in a cotton frock, to be met by a flock of geese who rushed towards me as one with their necks outstretched, hissing furiously. I immediately shinned up the nearest wall and the geese were pulling at my skirt as the grownups came through into the field. My father, over six foot tall, in riding breeches and heavy boots and carrying a shooting stick chased the geese away, exclaiming "Paulie, I'm ashamed of you!". When I recounted this to a Coniston farmer's wife not long ago, she said nothing would induce her to face a flock of angry geese who were bent on keeping her out. But all I knew was that my father was ashamed of me and I had to do something about it. So the next day I went through the stile gate carrying a stick and when, as before, the geese advanced on me hissing furiously, I thrashed the air with my stick and shouted "Boo, you rotten bullies!", whereupon the flock of geese turned as if synchronised and ran away from me with wings fluttering, ready to take to the air if I had continued to menace them. The moral seems to be that often it is fear that creates danger and not the other way about. However harsh the lesson may have seemed to be, I never forgot how to say boo to a goose. But I don't think I can recommend this as an ideal way to bring up little girls."
From "Where it all Began" © Pauline Marshall 1991.