The Exceptional Mary D

The Extraordinary Esperantist

Jun 13, 2024

I was just listening to a radio programme about the idealistic international Esperanto movement and am reminded of my great friend, the late Mary Davies, a great Esperantist.

And then I glimpsed an image on television of the beautiful Isle of Arran and was reminded again of my old friend. Mary was a gifted painter, writer and healer. My novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings was inspired by tales told to me by this wonderful and somewhat mystical writer and artist who lived in retirement on the Isle of Arran and who also, in her time, drew buildings for a living. She was - remarkably - a note-taker and reporter for architectural historian Niklaus Pevsner and in her time helped to save important buildings from demolition.

Drawing from Mary's stories, experiences and documentation, my novel takes place in Poland in 1981 and Britain in 2006. What’s it about? It’s about the consuming nature of art, the shadowy place between now and the hereafter; it’s about passionate encounters arising from a confluence of cultures and the long journey of a mother and son to mutual understanding.

Always a spiritual person, Mary was a member of the Quaker Community and towards the end of her life she embraced the very inclusive Ba 'Hai faith. She attended her own funeral in the card-boards coffin, decorated with flower paintings by her friends at a party she held some years before. The last time I visited her the flowery cardboard coffin was standing in the corner, fulfilling the purpose of a cupboard.

I met the exceptional Mary Davies at a workshop I ran in Cumbria. Later we kept in touch. In her seventies she published and sold three fine novels including the very telling and sensitive Quiet Waters.

I visited her several times on Arran, including once when she regressed me to an earlier life. She believed she herself had gone through several incarnations.

Here in Bishop in my little writing room I have a board plastered with influential pictures and texts. Mary's picture, with her Polish friend Halina, has been there at its centre for a number of years. So, she has remained - and will remain - a true inspiration for me.

**Holy Isle from Lamlash Bay, Isle of Arran. © Colin**

I have always hoped that The Woman Who Drew Buildings will be a tribute to this exceptional woman, this very good soul. I find myself wondering which world Mary will grace in her next re-incarnation.

Mary knew I was interested in the idiosyncrasies of letters, notebooks, images and ephemera that I use to inspire my novels. She brought me two carrier bags full of her own idiosyncrasies. I was, she said, to use them as I wished. So, I met the challenge. We had long conversations about her experiences and the dilemma of using them as inspiration, for what I knew would be - in fact -pure fiction.

The Mary Davies Trust: Since its formation in 2012, the Trust has provided free and subsidised treatments to hundreds of Arran’s residents, at an annual cost of around £30,000 — almost entirely paid for from Mary’s estate.

The Woman Who Drew Buildings

In the extract below the list of objects which the boy finds in his mother's flat is the exact list of objects which Mary brought me in two carrier bags filled with materials about her travels and experiences in Poland in the 1980s.and told me to make of them what I would. ... And so I did and so I wrote this the novel which is dedicated thus:

‘For the exceptional and inspirational Mary Davies - painter, writer and healer.’

It took me some years to develop my imaginative take on all this material and all these ideas in order to allow the novel to emerge of its own volition. It became more fluid – easier - when my purely imagined characters got to grips with the material of their true-to-life inspiration. So The Woman Who Drew Buildings was the outcome of all these processes.

The Extract.

The extract below describes the moment when Adam, the estranged son of Marie Matheve, comes upon just such a cache of materials as his mother lies in a coma in hospital:

…Adam’s eye moved to the wardrobe and the pile of boxes above it. Now this he could disturb. He climbed on the dressing stool and started to pull down the boxes. He worked swiftly and as he worked his spirit lifted. He started to drop the boxes so their contents spilled on the polished floor – books, notebooks, papers, brochures, travel documents, bundles of clothes, bright scarves, packets of photos, sheaves of drawings in a disorganised pile….

…Adam selects a second bottle of wine from the fridge, took a new notebook from the pile in his bottom left drawer of his mother’s desk. Then he sits down and begins to make a careful list of the things that had spilled out of the drawer His face is burning with wine drunk too fast, his brain is racing, his hand is shaking, but one by one he lists the items from the bottom left-hand drawer.

Article in Esperantist magazine by Marie Mathéve, recounting her ‘Study in Poland.’
A newspaper article about the visit of Marie Mathéve’s visit to Poland on a Siropotimist grant to research buildings.
Photo of Marie and a younger (very pretty) woman leaning towards each other, making a triangle. On the back Marie has written; Jacinta Zielenska and me in the Cherzov flat.
Small published book of drawings of Krakov marked Ex Libris D. Adama Zielenski` Paperback with a brown paper cover to protect it.
Photographic slides, small and hard to see, with viewer.
Poland’s Progress edited by Michael Murray first pub 1944 this the third ed 1945
Krakow by Edward Hartig 1964. Coffee table book.
Poland by Irena and Jerzy Kostrowicki
Official 1981 guide to Krakow
Official guide to Katowice
Notebooks, many notebooks
Two small red Sylvine notebooks still with their 30p price tag on. Marked 'Poland Diary 1981'
One Winfield exercise book marked Paris Diary 1985
Daler Sketchbook full of Marie’s drawings eg: Cherrzov From My Bedroom; steelworks; estate with Tabac in foreground; old steelworks; coal mine looking towards Katowice; done in coloured markers, making her usual style brighter and bolder. But style is unmistakable.
Spiral Bound Daler Sketchbook with more subtle drawings from Brittany, Paris Luxembourg gardens, View from my window 8th floor Rue de Rennes; Paris. Louvre 1985.
Images of Katowice - All reproduced under CCL 3.0