All Because of Posy, Kathleen O’Farrell

/ Garrulous Gwendoline

‘All Because of Posy‘ is another of my childhood books which had migrated to the culling pile, earmarked for going to the next charity drive.

(Take note for later:

Gwen = Gwendoline = Lyn)

My efforts to find background on the author, Kathleen O’Farrell, have not born much fruit, beyond her being a prolific writer of adventure stories for young girls. But we can praise her for that. In All Because of Posy, published by Peal Press, there is not a male protagonist to be found, giving rise to the tantalising prospect that O’Farrell was an early feminist.

When I opened the book to re-read, I quickly discovered that this book cannot be culled from my collection. Those of you who have read my memoir, I Belong to No One, will realise the importance of my substitute mother, Kulpie. I see from the flyleaf that she gifted this book to me for Christmas 1965, the year I was ten.

This is a well-written rollicking mystery adventure, which, with our jaded 21st century view, might say has a predictable and improbable plot resolution, but I can say, hand on heart, that when I was ten, it would have totally immersed me.

Posy is mourning the loss of her vibrant sister, Poppet, two years older, who lacks the same concerns for ladylike behaviour as her younger sister. Posy has only just turned thirteen and her correct name is Primula May. On holiday in Brackenthorpe Bay, near Sandcliffe (Norfolk??), Poppet proposes to swim to Rabbit Island early one morning. Posy won’t have a bar of it. Poppet goes out on her own, and of course, goes missing and her body is never found (or we wouldn’t have a plot). Posy blames herself.

Posy, already the paler of the two sisters, is wasting away with grief, and is sent to her father’s sister, Aunt Minnie, who runs a small, dry grocery store in Dingleford. By this time we have a bundle of minor characters, the only one who doesn’t have a forward role is Mother Mary Michael, from the school the two girls attended, but she does provide the motivation for Posy to question the perceived narrative of what happened to Poppet.

In Dingleford, Posy sees a young girl being driven in a blue limousine that is the image of Poppet. No one believes her, and her aunt forbids Posy to mention Poppet’s name again. Poppet, aka Patsy (her real name) lives with her ultra-rich reclusive aged grandmother, Mrs Melrose, in the big house on the hill. But Poppet came there mysteriously after being found wandering on a road near Sandcliffe and has lost her memory. Posy takes a job at the big house doing the mending. Posy is good at sewing. And lots of other lovely, considerate things, such as weighing up and bagging her aunt’s dry goods every morning before going up to the big house. Reckless Patsy, by contrast, has a habit of tearing her precious and pretty NYLON clothes (remember when that was an innovation?), which is just so like the careless and carefree Poppet.

One of the things I loved about this book, reading it as an adult, is how well-behaved, mature, and helpful all the young female characters are; more women than I will elaborate on here. Was this representative, or meant to instruct we gullible young girls? If so, it didn’t ultimately work with me. But it is sweet. I might have liked to grow up to be such an empathetic, caring, lovely girl as Posy. (Yeah, that was a fail).

Posy and Poppet’s parents (Mum’s real name is Patsy – did you see the connection coming? – spelt connexion, all the way through the book), despite all their love and hard work, are on the point of destitution on account of his failing heart, and have to give up their lovely unkempt, dilapidated home called Greydawn Cottage (whose doorknocker is a golden elf), with the massive garden which includes trees named Snow White, Gaylord (is that okay today?), Lofty Emerald, and Silver Gleam – because the girls loved naming things – and move into town to a two bedroom flat above a fish and chip shop.

Of course, everything turns out right in the end. Poppet’s memory is restored, Posy’s claim is validated, their mother turns out to be the rich old lady’s daughter who was stolen by gypsies when she was very young, and the side characters restore their long-lost love (Mr Fairweather – the hermit who lives in the woods and looks after stray animals – who was struck off the medical register because he lost a patient, who was the brother of his girlfriend (I mean the dead patient), who went on to be a single nurse-on-the-shelf (I mean the sister of the dead patient) and a good friend of Posy and Poppet when they were still living in the enchanted Greydawn Cottage … look, are you keeping up with me here? – anyway, after his near death experience from falling out of a tree while trying to rescue a kitten, and then spending a cold couple of nights on the forest floor while his rescue animals starve – OMG I really, really hope you are keeping up here – then he clung to life in hospital in a touch and go scene, while Geraldine (the on-the-shelf nurse) wiped his fevered brow and whispered sweet nothings – find each other again after many wasted years. And I think they get married. Or engaged … Listen, it’s a side plot. Even I am getting confused by this point…)

It’s a sweet story, that did the ten-year-old me absolutely no harm, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed reading again after all these years. And …

It was All Because of Posy.

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32 thoughts on “All Because of Posy, Kathleen O’Farrell”

  1. I loved All Because of Posy. I received the book as a gift from a grown up cousin when I was 9. A few years later I named my puppy. Primula P. puppy dog, Posy for short.

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    • It’s so heartwarming the number of people who have engaged with this post, with warm memories of their own. Kathleen O’Farrell must have been well in touch with her readership. Thank you for taking the time to share the story of how you named your dog. x Gwen

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    • I am so pleased that my random post has brought a number of people forward who knew and loved Kathleen O’Farrell. Off-line, I have tried to put some of them in contact with each other, such as Maureen Martin with Kathleen’s daughter – who was kind enough to reach out and let me know of her mother’s passing. It is so nice of you also to let me know. What a life! A remarkable woman.

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  3. Hi, this is Maureen Martin–who knew Kathleen O’Farrell when I was a child. I didn’t receive any email from you. Please try again, so I can send you what info I have on her.

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  4. Wow! Such a plucky young woman! Female adventurers like these would never have been allowed in my childhood library….so I just waited and learned about life from the Tales of Chaucer! 🙂 Oh…I also love the cover photo. So not 2021! Thanks for the good read this morning.

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  5. The ability to work bits like this into your writing serves you well and keeps readers coming back:
    “Was this representative, or meant to instruct we gullible young girls? If so, it didn’t ultimately work with me. But it is sweet.”
    I enjoy reading your work. (No pressure!) 🙂

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  6. There’s two sides to writing in books isn’t there? I used to be ‘Please don’t write in my new book’ when I was youngster, but now when I open an old childhood book it is really lovely to see an inscription from someone who has now departed. I only have a couple that were for me, but I have some of my grandmother’s from here parents. I can just about decipher their handwriting. So pleased you kept and are keeping this one from the amazing and kind Kulpie.

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    • It’s lovely isn’t it. I have a bunch of other books than never made it to the culling pile as they were either gifted by Kulpie, or I won them academically. Not sure how the Posy book got muddled up. Do you remember a few years ago you commented on my attempt to follow the life history of the people who had formerly owned my Dickens collection? I know the telling of it all got a bit discombobulated …

      A Word or Two from Dickens

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      • You’ve reminded me and now I can’t believe my natural optimism for future generations. Humans have been so ingenious so far that many people take if for granted that we will engineer/tech ourselves out of the climate crisis. The trouble is it is going to have to get seriously, seriously bad for the majority of populations in affluent western countries to vote against the status quo. I mean, honestly, think of the energy expended for mining Bitcoin for goodness sake. By the time the majority vote for ‘revolutionary’ change the CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be or have already triggered the tipping points.

        I see the Covid Delta situation is worrying in NSW, hope you and your family are keeping safe.

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        • I suppose one upside is if we procrastinate for many more years then the people in charge will be the youth who have been brought up with the fear and alarm of what climate change is doing to their future. So perhaps they will be the ones to vote against the status quo.

          Yes, our NSW situation is deteriorating. And seems it all began with that one limousine driver I wrote to about a while back (the patient zero). Not that he is in the news any longer. There are many reasons for the spread, but the most critical concern is that is now leaking in to our Indigenous populations and that is very bad news. Shades of the smallpox epidemic that wiped out so many tribes after the First Fleet landed.
          Personally Bill and double-vaccinated and I be in a week. We venture out very little. I go for a little woodland walk, not on the beach promenade, and do stretching exercises on the lounge room floor on alternate days.
          Am tidying up my study and other things while I wait to hear what my agent thinks of my manuscript.
          Never bored.

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          • Yes, vaccination is the key. My daughter, living in London, has finally caught Covid, but being double vaccinated she is more or less asymptomatic. She tested herself as her boyfriend contacted saying he was ill and had tested positive. He has only had one vaccination and has been quite poorly (like proper flu), but is staying in his parents’ house and they are keeping an eye on him. This is the problem with Delta as you are experiencing in NSW, extremely transmissible with high viral load and even double vaccinated can catch it and pass it on. Not venturing out very much sounds like the sensible response. Good luck with the manuscript.

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  8. Sounds like a cross between a fairy tale and a soap opera, Gwen. Just the sort I’d have enjoyed when I was ten. I’m guessing that you would have needed a happy ending back then and all loose ends tied up into a pretty bow. 😘

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  10. OMG – Poppet, Primula May, Dingleford, Mother Mary Michael, Greydawn Cottage, Mr. Fairweather, Geraldine! Have you ever heard of the television series Miss Fischer’s Murder Mysteries? A modern (sort of), fearless woman detective who can be naughty (sort of) and ruthless, but always with style? I remeber watching it during lockdown. My father used to always write inscriptions in books he gave me as a child. I’ve kept them all!

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      • Dear Gwen,
        I will search for your book and read it, if for no other reason than you helped me find the author of Cousin Anabelle’s Christmas! Kathleen O’Farrell.
        Do you have any idea where I might get a copy of that book? It’s strange how the title stuck in my mind, despite my not remembering much of the storyline. I’m curious about the book. I think I read it when I was 9 or 10. It was a library copy. I was in rural Ireland and the library van came around every 2 weeks. I’m almost sure that I took the loose cover off the book, as I often did then, but forgot to put it back on before returning it, so for years I would see the cover and feel a pang of guilt. Also, I associate the book with having a sort of anxiety attack for the first time. I have no idea if there was anything in the book that triggered it. Probably not, but I may have been reading it in the run up to Christmas and perhaps I got overly stimulated with the anticipation of Santa and all the excitement, which I think I used to get almost overwhelmed by. I hope you can help. I’d be interested to know about Kathleen O’Farrell. She sounds Irish by name but I gather she’s Australian?

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        • Dear Margaret,

          Thank you so much for your wonderful comment, and my apologies for the delay. It has been hectic recently, and it’s not even Christmas yet!

          My post about Kathleen O’Farrell turned up two interesting connections.

          First, a lady called Maureen Martin commented on my “About” page:

          “I see from your blog post on All Because of Posy that you’ve been looking for background on Kathleen O’Farrell. I might be able to help you there. I knew her when I was a child. My mother and Kathleen were friends and lived not far from each other, and many years later when they were both elderly women, they reconnected and were able to visit each other. My mother has passed away, and I don’t know if Kathleen is still alive. I remember her as a lovely warm lady, who was always kind to us kids. And I loved her books! I read All Because of Posy countless times, but never thought to tell her how much it meant to me. As one of a large family, I never thought of myself as very important, and it didn’t occur to me that my opinion might matter to a grown-up. I can tell you her married name, and a few other details. And with a little digging through my decades-long correspondence with my mother (I moved to the US in my early 20s), I can probably find out what town she was (is?) living in. I don’t want to put any of her personal info on the internet, but you can email me if you want.”

          I emailed, although don’t recall receiving an answer. Then a couple of months later I was contacted through my website by her daughter! It was a brief message saying she was pleased I love her book. Wasn’t that lovely of her!

          Obviously, Kathleen O’Farrell who hails from somewhere in Britain touched many young girl’s lives with her uplifting stories.

          I’ve asked that person if she knows where you might buy a copy but doubt I’ll receive an answer. I think you might have to email around some antiquarian book dealers. Aren’t there quite a lot of them in Hay-on-Wye?

          All the best, Gwen

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