50:12 / 349 words
Muriel Gantry in the 1960s
Part 1 of 4
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On November 19, 1994, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke interviewed Muriel Gantry at her home, Moira Cottage, in Sible Hedingham, Essex, England, about her 36-year friendship with Savitri Devi, as part of his research for his biography of Savitri Devi, Hitler’s Priestess. In 2002, Professor Goodrick-Clarke sold his interview tapes to me, along with all of this other research materials.
Muriel Gantry (born Agnes Muriel Cox, 1913–2000) was a theatrical costume designer and seamstress in London. She was also the author of the novel The Distance Never Changes (London: Hutchinson, 1965), which was dedicated to Savitri (Maximiani Portaz) and another friend.
I apologize in advance for the quality of the recording, which is poor in general, and particularly bad on the first side of the second tape. Muriel Gantry’s accent is also hard to understand. She was more than 80 at the time of the interview, and apparently she gave it without benefit of her false teeth.
The sound is also bad at the opening of the first segment, because Muriel did not know that the tape was actually running and did not speak directly into the microphone. She was apparently reading over some of Goodrick-Clarke’s notes. (Her correction of Ram Gopal’s name never made it into the final edition of the book.)
In the first tape, Muriel gives information about Savitri’s family, recounts how she met Savitri in 1946 in London through her neighbor Veronica Vassar, and tells of their friendship through the 1950s. In the second tape, she talks about her friendship with Savitri in the 1960s, particularly connected with the Cotwolds camp in 1962, and Savitri’s final visit in 1982, when she died at Moira Cottage.
If anyone knows anything about Veronica Vassar and other people mentioned in these recordings, please contact me at [email protected].
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Greg Johnson
Editor-in-Chief
2 Comments
Thank you for this. Fascinating and enjoyable. I look forward to the rest of the interview.
Other than the first five minutes or so, the sound quality is not too bad. It just takes a few minutes for the technical problems to be worked out. And after another few minutes one becomes acclimated to her, ultimately, rather charming accent and then it is easy sailing.
I must wonder, however, to what extent her answers to the Jewish question(s) are honest. I am not an oral historian but I believe there is some special term for the reluctance of interviewees to be entirely truthful about every detail in their responses within the context of the interview situation, dependent upon, among other things, their perception of self, level of guardedness, their desire to conform to certain commonly held social standards, and the general unwillingness to deviate too far afield from what they believe the interviewer wants to hear. The term escapes me at the moment but the Jewish issue would seem likely to almost guarantee such methodological problems.
Now this is why I love counter currents!