Posted by Peter Hyland on September 17, 2000 at 15:46:51 from host213-120-47-8.host.btclick.com:
In Reply to: Re: More about Pauline Marshall, Broadcast and Memoirs... posted by Alan Hakim on September 16, 2000 at 17:48:39:
Alan – I am not sure what line you are pursuing here. The fact remains that Pauline Marshall has received very few invitations to speak at TARS meetings (the only other talk by her that I have traced was one to N Region in 1994). In Midland Region, I can’t remember Pauline ever being invited to speak. Taqui Altounyan was invited 3 times, and Josephine Russell once. I suspect that pattern was repeated in the other Regions. Pauline did once turn up, unannounced, at a Midland event (the Rugby School visit). After lunch, the then Chairman announced her presence, rather as an afterthought, but got it all wrong by introducing her as ‘the model for Nancy’. Pauline did not visit us again. To me, this typifies the official attitude.
In any case, whether or not Pauline and her sister were the visual inspiration for the Amazons is only part of the issue. The Rawdon Smith family were an integral part of Coniston social life at the time when AR was a close friend of the Collingwoods and Altounyans, and was gathering (unconsciously) material to be used later in the Swallows books. For this reason alone, Pauline’s testimony is invaluable, and surely as valuable as that of Taqui A. or Mrs Russell. However, TARS has chosen to ignore it, apart from magnanimously allowing her books to be sold on the bookstall. Pauline Marshall does not appear on the TARS video ‘The Ransomes Remembered’. I gather she has now left TARS.
It is obvious that Pauline has somehow offended the ‘inner circle’, the ‘high priest set’ of TARS.There is nothing that can be done about all this except lament the squandering of a prime resource. At least her views are being publicised belatedly on ‘another website’. I only wish it was via a TARS publication.