Andrew Clarke lives a few miles away from Borley in nearby Pentlow. He is a very active associate of the Borely Ghost Society, and contributes many "Sidelights" to that research. In April, 2002, he asked me, "Do you recognise your mothers' personality at all, in the heroine of Fifteen Months in a Haunted House? How do the two differ? . . . wasn't Marianne much livelier, healthier, more exuberant, more enterprising, less passive?"
My response follows.
Much has been made of my mother's lust for life, including my previous writings. She was anxious that I share her enthusiasm for life and everything we could possibly put into it. She DID question my desire to travel because, "there really isn't anything to see when you get there. It's all the same." Upon reflection, she may have been subconsciously hoping I didn't want to travel back to England!
At any rate, she was constantly encouraging everyone she met to "live!" She was a pioneer in establishing resources for the aging (6 to 106), including trips, music lessons, BINGO parties. . . .everything was possible, and there were no limits. "I've ridden in everything but a submarine," she told me after hitching a ride on a garbage truck. "And I hope to do that some day!"
Back at Borley, she was frightened by the seance and left. On the other hand, she talked out loud to the "spirits." Whilst in the US, she constantly pestered me to take her to a "REAL ghost town!" She wanted to experience a place tourists hadn't ruined. It is obvious she was hoping for MORE contact - like that she remembered from Borley.
Perhaps she was ambivalent, and I believe her later testimony is replete with examples showing this waffling. Whilst trying to dismiss much of what happened, she never denied the wall writings, the floating slitteo, lights in the window, and the materializing tumblers as anything less than unexplained and remarkable.
Undoubtedly, one of the things that numbed her down a bit in regard to the phenomena was the UNWANTED attention. During the first decades of life, she imagined herself in better circumstances than actually surrounded her. Some of the more exciting choices may have been embarrassing, and the attention the haunting produced threatened to expose these flights of fancy. ESPECIALLY after she was publically criticised for being the source of some of the phenomena. If people had not attacked her in this way FROM THE BEGINNING, I'm sure she would have delighted more in the phenomena - remember, it was she and Ian who put a sheet on a clothesline to scare Francois d'Arles!
It also very possible that she told Lionel something like, "Be careful what you write. We don't want people poking about in our personal lives." I know she repeated a variation of that theme to me over and over and over again. (See several pages in Things My Mother tried To Teach Me.) Her devoted servant, Lionel may have TONED DOWN her reactions/participation/comments in his writings.
She dismissed the diaries as something to keep Lionel busy, and I doubt she told him not to write them at all - just to not write about their personal lives.
She may have already formed some paranoia about that time frame - fear that her private life would become public IF Lionel should have the good fortune to have his work published. I mean, if the bus loads were already coming to call WITHOUT his help, how frequent would the visitors and reporters visit AFTER he was published!
That may have been in the back of her mind, but as long as it was only a glorified Circulating Letter or jumbled diary, she had nothing to fear from his hobby. As I said, ambivalent. Ambivalence that was to follow her throughout the rest of her life as on one hand she herself wanted to be a famous author, and on the other hand, worried about the spotlight fame would bring. I have chronicled these curious contrasts elsewhere.