Madge Carpenter - Epilogue

Margaret Wheeler

EPILOGUE

to the stage-play: "Dear Mr. Shaw"
(adapted from Margaret's correspondence with G.B.S.,
1944-1950)

More than forty years after the death of Shaw and the close of this correspondence, Margaret and Charles are still living in West Cumbria.

The children who took up so much of Margaret's time in Workington have long since left the Park Lane home, producing talents and children of their own.

The obsessively distracting problem of the changeling children which caused Margaret to approach Shaw in the first place was settled astonishingly amicably and entirely without recrimination of any sort, seven years after his death in 1950 and the end of Margaret's correspondence with him. The beautiful fight in the courts never happened. Instead, the two families each came to share what they had in common with the other - Valerie and Peggy became great friends, and Margaret and Blanche became `aunties' to each other's families.

Margaret's long fight for recognition of the mistake made in the nursing home, and the way in which the two families eventually came to adopt each other in this way (with hindsight the only really practical solution possible, as Shaw had foreseen), has always provided a fascinating story. It was perhaps inevitable then that the history of Valerie and Peggy should eventually become the subject of television documentary programmes (although surprisingly Margaret's correspondence with Shaw on the subject evoked little general public interest), thus belatedly and obliquely bringing an inkling of Margaret's talents and achievements as a writer to the attention of a far larger audience - not least her own family.

But Margaret never did take up writing as a full-time professional activity - to her chagrin, family circumstances prevented her from ever contemplating doing so.
Instead, she took up her real love - drawing and sculpture - when in her fifties; and eventually produced over one thousand hand-built pieces.
Nonetheless she has never stopped writing, in her own way, and at her own pace; miraculously unconstrained from having to write for any particular editor or publisher or deadline; writing freely and naturally in the same way as she did to Shaw, and covering a vast range of topics of her own choice. Her talent has never faltered and is still to be reckoned with. Margaret reluctantly remains a full-time professional housewife, mother-of-a-family, now a pensioner in her late-eighties who still writes whenever she can find the time (although no longer staying up until 4 a.m. to do so) - to whom, and on whatever topic she pleases.

Recent recognition of her literary talent (due mainly to intense media coverage of the changeling children story - about which she has also written, quite separately from her correspondence with Shaw), has now led her rather wonderingly hoping to see her full lifetime's output one day published and made available to anyone who cares to read it.

To those who, like Shaw, have already read parts of it, the wonder is that she has remained unpublished for so long.

Martin Wheeler
Cheltenham, 1991

The full text of the playscript from which this text is extracted is available in either printed and bound book form, or as a PostScript file.
All enquiries should be addressed in the first instance to:
mwheeler@startext.co.uk

more about Madge:
[ Margaret Wheeler - short biography ] [ Dear Mr Shaw - text of Epilogue ]

selected texts by Madge:
[ Guardian reprint - Grandma (1964) ]
[ Reminiscences to Sheila (1981) ] [ Letter to G.B.S. (July 1946) ] [ Letter to G.B.S. (Aug. 1946) ]

Margaret's complete literary output throughout the whole of her life is currently being edited for publication, both digitally (in TEI-encoded format), and in conventional (i.e. printed book) form.
Serious enquiries from interested publishers should be sent via e-mail in the first instance.
Editors wishing to commission material on Margaret are welcomed, although journalists and free-lance media "researchers" after no more than free material for a story for their own financial gain will be politely turned away.

Information initially prepared and published by Sheila Bourner & Martin Wheeler
February 2000
to accompany the Channel4 TV social history documentary film series A Family Century

Margaret Wheeler

EPILOGUE

to the stage-play: "Dear Mr. Shaw" (adapted from Margaret's correspondence with G.B.S., 1944-1950)

to the stage-play: "Dear Mr. Shaw"
(adapted from Margaret's correspondence with G.B.S.,
1944-1950)