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Writer, Explorer, Bicyclist

05 Mar

FLYNN QUIZ:

What famous writer and explorer bought a plantation from Errol?

CLUE:

In addition to writing and exploring, did a lot of bicycling, too!

— Tim

 
8 Comments

Posted in Behind the Scenes, Errol Flynn's Homes, Flynn and..., Gentleman Tim, Main Page, Young Errol Flynn

 

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  1. Gentleman Tim

    March 7, 2019 at 8:03 am

    She traveled the islands of the South Seas, and often wrote of those travels, in accounts read around the world. She was one of the first European women to explore the Sepik and Fly Rivers.

    [img]http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks12/1202531h-images/papua-00a.jpg[/img]

     

  2. Gentleman Tim

    March 8, 2019 at 12:16 am

    In 1933, she and her brother purchased Errol Flynn’s tobacco plantation.

     

  3. twinarchers

    March 8, 2019 at 7:00 pm

    Sorry sport. No idea

     

    • Gentleman Tim

      March 9, 2019 at 8:45 am

      Speaking of sport:

      At the height of the Bicycle Craze she contacted Richard J. Mecredy, the proprietor of the Dublin-based Irish Cyclist, expressing her interest in cycling and journalism. In 1891 she became a contributor to the magazine and two years later she became sub-editor. She liked to bike, and biked quite a bit.

      Mercredy is known for having invented Cycle Polo in the 1890s, in our yesterday woman’s home country of Ireland. It’s still played today around the globe today.

      But, despite her love for bicycling, she was a top flight writer who harbored a desire to see the Pacific Ocean, and in 1904 she was engaged by the London Daily Graphic to report on the Pacific islands,reportedly sailing around the Pacific islands in her own cutter.

      In 1907 she sailed to Papua, New Guinea on a commission from The London Times and the Sydney Morning Herald, but remained for twenty-seven years She joined exploration parties and managed plantations, including one with her brother Ramsay, the one purchased from Errol Flynn in 1933.

       

  4. Gentleman Tim

    March 9, 2019 at 9:01 am

    She wrote nearly 50 books and numerous travelogue articles. One of her books became a major Australian movie, the most expensive of its day. Here’s the theme song written for it, “The Adorable Outcast”:

    And there’s the cover art for one of magazine articles:

    [img]http://grimshaworigin.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Vaiti_Total_1.jpg[/img]

     

  5. Gentleman Tim

    March 9, 2019 at 9:28 am

    Here’s how she once described herself:

    I am a Victorian.

    I was born in the ‘Seventies, in a big lonely country house five miles–a whole hour’s journey–from Belfast.
    I was governessed and schooled and colleged. I was taught to ride and play games. I was taught to behave. To write notes for Mamma. To do the flowers. To be polite but not too polite, to Young Gentlemen. To accept flowers, sweets and books from them, but no more. To rise swiftly with the rest of the six daughters and sons when Papa came into the breakfast-room, to kiss him ceremoniously, and rush to wait upon him. He liked it, and we liked it.

    I went to dances, and waltzed to “The Blue Danube,” “Sweethearts,” and “Estudiantina.” I went to afternoon parties. I was chaperoned. My three sisters were good girls, and content.

    But I was the Revolting Daughter–as they called them then. I bought a bicycle, with difficulty. I rode it unchaperoned, mile and miles beyond the limits possible to the soberly trotting horses. The world opened before me. And as soon as my twenty-first birthday dawned, I went away from home, to see what the world might to give to daughters who revolted. What it gave me first was the offer of a journalistic post.

    There were maps of far-away places, maps with tantalizing blanks in them; maps of the huge Pacific, colored an entrancing blue. I swore that I would go there.
    I made a London newspaper commission me; I went.

    Long ago, when travel was travel, and the South Sea unknown to tourists; when the charm of the island world was still unbroken. I went to all the chief island groups, and lived in most; I saw the inner New Hebrides, Solomons and New Guinea, at their rawest and fiercest; I roamed all over the East beyond the East, before anyone had begun to think of Java, or the Bali kings had prophetically committed suicide on their coral reefs.

    I had so many adventures that they cease to seem adventures.

     

    • mmcshrry

      March 9, 2019 at 10:57 pm

      I can’t take any credit for this. The last tip made it too easy with Google.

      www.irishtimes.com…

      Reading SHOWDOWN for the first time. What a gloriously enjoyable page-turner. Forty pages to go. Near the end of Chapter Sixteen!!!

       

      • Gentleman Tim

        March 9, 2019 at 11:25 pm

        The credit goes to you, mmcshrry. Congratulations!

        I had no idea who Beatrice Grimshaw was until a few days ago, when I read the article you just linked. What a fascinating character, and a great writer. Errol never ceases to amaze me who ultimately orbited around him – even in his early days, before he gained fame around the globe, or even Down Under.

        For a wealth of info on this distinguished author and adventurer, see this link:

        Beatrice Grimshaw, South Pacific Adventurer, Travel Writer and Novelist

        Flynn during the era when Beatrice Grimshaw bought the plantation in Laloki from him:

        [img]https://robertmatzen.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/ef-age-21.jpg[/img]

        btw: “She was a keen cyclist, and broke the women’s world 24 hour record by five hours.”