Your Humble Blogger picked up and reread Mary Poppins (NY: Harcourt 1997) whilst visiting friends. I have recently watched the wonderful Disney movie, but the books are my Mary. Julie Andrews does show the vanity, the imperturbability, the dishonesty, and of course the magic, but misses the vicious sarcasm. And, of course, there’s the transformation of Bert from match-man to master-of-ceremonies, jack-of-all-trades, and appalling (yet somehow appealing) Dick van Dyke music-hall clown.
And, of course, making the story about the Banks family learning Lessons about Life, including the importance of Fun, and the redemption of Stuffy Papa via the force of Anarchy. The books are about no such things. The important lessons the children learn are about not being impertinent, and not trusting adults. Mostly, however, they are just stories, some of them incomprehensible and disturbing, some of them treacly, and some of them, well, just stories. My favorite is the story of the gingerbread stars, which I always found particularly frightening. Not just the scary bit about the horrible woman who breaks off her fingers and feeds them to the babies, but the sense that grown-ups are lying to you about the way the world works, that they will betray you without compunction, and that you are at their absolute mercy.
Still, that image of the two monstrous gingerbread girls holding the ladders while Mary and the witch paste the stars in the sky is magnificent, isn’t it?
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-Vardibidian.