Posted by Andy Morley on September 23, 2000 at 09:45:46 from 195.44.240.6:
I promised Pauline Marshall that I would transcribe a letter for her. An earlier letter from her, printed in the Gazette in July this year, is already transcribed in 0pen0penboat, and has been there for a week or so.
The recent reply from Jim Andrews both upset and angered her very much. In it, in order to try to prove his point, he made what I took to be a snide remark about a tragic accident with the Mavis when two people drowned. The episode happened a decade or so after Swallows and Amazons was written. It can have no bearing on the issue of which boat might have influenced Ransome. To try to make use of such an episode in this way certainly does not impress me. But as Jim himself says in his letter: "The public may judge for themselves".
After much heart-searching, Pauline decided that it was time to put this 60-year-old trauma behind her by getting it out in the open. Her letter was in the Gazette yesterday (Friday) along with an article about her by Karen Barden. However, the letter was rather changed by the paper so she has asked me to make a transcript of the full text and put it on the Internet.
I can to an extent understand why the Gazette wanted to take out some parts of this text. Those parts are the ones that really show how hurt and angry she feels. However, I have complied with her request to post the whole thing.
Pauline is a real person and boats like the Mavis and the Beetle were a real part of her childhood. Whatever you believe about what went on inside Athur Ransome's head, if you are in any way posessed of what might be considered "normal" human sensibilities, I think you will understand why these pontificating pedants who spring from no-where must be a source of irritation at best. When they start to make sly jibes about events so very tragic as those Pauline describes, then I don't blame her for being very angry indeed. And so I have done what she has asked me to.
These people (and there is an identifiable group of them) will no doubt continue unabashed. And I will continue to say what I think about them. But never mind me. Never mind even the bemused public, which if it reads this at all, will scratch its head in a baffled way. What effect do you think all this produces on some of the people who might be a little more informed..?
I leave you with a quote from Roger Barnes, who is the President of the Dinghy Cruising Association and who certainly sees through the Mavis (taken from a rather longer message about Coch-y-Bhondu):
I tend to keep away from the AR soc, although I was at the first ever rally (on Ranworth Broad) a number of years ago in a proper Broads Yacht and a little lugsail dinghy. But my feelings about AR books are very personal and tied up with my own childhood brought up in Cumberland and spending many weekends as a boy paddling in and sailing on Windermere: and I do not want to have all that spoilt by lots of geeky infighting about who were the real Amazons, etc. (I cannot help observing however that the boat styled "Amazon" in the museum near Bowness looks very little like AR's drawings of the same).
Regards
Andy Morley