FT: Georgia Bradford, the Eponymous Heroine of Molly Whuppie
georgia bradford
GENRE: Original interpretation of fairy tales; in specific for this, an old Scots piece of folklore.
ARCHETYPE: Grandmother philanthropist.
REPRESENTATIVE JOURNAL ENTRIES: ONE
REPRESENTATIVE ROLEPLAY LOGS: Forthcoming!
PERSPECTIVE ESSAYS: Forthcoming!
NAME: Georgia Abigail Bradford, née Palmer
DATE OF BIRTH, AGE: 17 July 1921, 86 as of 11 March 2008
AFFILIATIONS: Pentamerone, Salvation Army, P.E.O., the Episcopalian Church in the United States of America
PROFESSION: Georgia, being a woman of a Different Time, prefers to call herself a "professional philanthropist" (or, if in a playful mood, a "lady of leisure"), but in reality, Georgia is retired and comfortably cared-for by a combination of her late husband's and her pension packages. Yet, as she's remarkably active and boisterous for her age, Georgia's time is mostly spent through clothing drive outreach with the Salvation Army and a chair on the Educational Loan Fund in her local chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, as well as a member of the vestry at the parish of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Prior to the "idling" timetable of retirement, Georgia was employed as a registered nurse for what she politely calls decades.
PERSONALITY: Georgia Bradford is not your cuddly grandmother with hugs, cookies, and teddy bears (although she does make a mean pound cake). She was forged in a harder time, when money was scarce and you made do with what you were given, and it means she has little tolerance for the 2000's tendencies to wax neurotic on the shrink chair and blame everyone but yourself. It doesn't matter if you're her child, grandchild, or her friend - start kvetching to her and Georgia will not hesitate in telling you that it "could be worse" and that if it was such an issue, you should suck up and figure out an exit strategy to wrap your little problem up. She considers herself to be fair, mostly because she'll take a dose of her own medicine and has frequently throughout her life. She figures that if she can still continue to work hard and get through as well as she always has in her advanced age, then kids half her age can at least try to manage.
Then again, "managing" is hardly the word for Georgia's life; try "surviving miraculously," instead. She's a hardy woman and remarkably resourceful, courtesy of equal parts birthdate and Tale within her, and is not above lowering her normally high scruples when placed in the face of danger. She frequently likes to joke about being the human cockroach, and although Georgia certainly should expect to die sometime within the next two decades, it is almost certain that she won't be passing in her sleep anytime soon. Since she's still in possession of a fine mind and good physical health, Georgia takes immense pride in the fact that she is still capable of keeping her house in repair and donating her time to those less fortunate than she. Being idle is not something Georgia Bradford specializes in, and it isn't something she'll try to entertain anytime soon. She's quite certain, after all, that if any of her contemporaries were given the blessing of such endurance, they too would be as prone to activity and mischief as she.
Being as in control of her faculties as she is, Georgia is loathe to relinquish any bit of said control in lieu of help from outside parties. In the Depression, she certainly didn't ask for help despite being turned out to an orphanage, and she certainly didn't ask for any help when she was suturing men on the battlefield, so what makes you think that she would accept your help with holding her groceries? It is a woman hard-pressed when Georgia deigns to ask for assistance on anything, for pride is possibly her biggest weakness. Such concepts of pride doesn't extend merely to being slow to ask for help, either; although Georgia was taught that it was terribly uncouth to speak on one's abilities, Georgia has great faith in herself and is prone to overestimating her capabilities. Whenever she manages to do so, though, Molly Whuppie manages to come to her rescue from within, ready to up Georgia's luck and insure that her mad-cap plans come to fruition.
Any of those "mad-cap plans," though? Mostly - no, consistently - Georgia will extend her cleverness and work ethic on behalf of her friends and family, for Georgia, crumudgeonly disregard for complaint and modern trappings aside, is remarkably prone to self-sacrifice. She understood that leaving her family forever was for the benefit of the whole, and some of the most exciting adventures in her early years were in order to insure the happiness of her sisters. When her family visits, Georgia gladly postpones any engagements in lieu for entertaining her darling children and grandchildren under the same roof, and when they leave, she often longs for the rowdiness within the walls of the Victorian. And so, she channels that affection and mothering instinct into her volunteerism with great gusto, for Georgia figures that with such energy as she has, she should share her blessings with the world for as long as she possibly can do. No one is nearly as lucky as she, and she knows this, and so unto that she tries her best to use what she has for the good of others.
But for all her pride, her mind, her giving, Georgia does suffer from something of a giant flaw (other than, of course, the more than occasional loss of patience and a horrible temper): she often overlooks her own place in the scheme of large plans. It's partially from having a habit of thinking of others before herself and partially because of that lovely dose of hubris that warms the cockles of that heart of hers, but it's meant that she dismissed her Tale-ly symptoms until almost the last moment and, ironically, not quite noticed that her own marriage to Roger was terribly idiosynchratic to her otherwise to-the-T following of her Tale within her lifetime. When she was younger, however, this phenomenon also diluted down to simply not noticing when a certain man had great interest in her - or, in the case of Roger, was truly contrite for prior actions and had a great interest in her. It means she is rather prone, at the moment, to walk into some misadventures this late in her life. At the very least, she'll have the Molly Whuppie cunning about her... right?
LIKES: Forthcoming!
DISLIKES: Forthcoming!
HISTORY: The Palmers were the sort of family that enjoyed the lift of prestige that money gave a person in Chicago, with all the culture with none of the stockyards. Edward Palmer preferred the type of stock that haunted markets, anyway, and had built that pretty house on the hill for darling wife Cordelia and his children from his frequent trading at the Chicago Stock Exchange. He fancied himself, more than a little foolishly, as something of a heir to the Carnegie school of success, and felt wholly comfortable with the manner in which he was accumulating capital. In fact, about the only fears he had in the spring of 1921 was the fact that his latest child - who he thought to be George Edward, his first male heir after seven darling princesses - was yet another girl. If one were to ask Edward and Cordelia at a dinner party in the following months of the 1921 season, they would say that Georgia was nothing but a joy, all happiness and babbling, but it wasn't necessarily as if the parents Palmer had much experience with seeing this first-hand. Much like every other baby in the Palmer household, Georgia was passed off to Nanny Susanna and nurtured by the arms of many in the nursery, which turned into the many arms within her sisters' bedroom and so on. It was a typical, if not idyllic and enjoyable, privledged childhood in these early years, and Georgia was happy with her piece.
Then the Crash happened.
Naturally, the advent of the Great Depression was akin to throwing a burning match into the paper house of the Palmer's fortunes. Georgia, being only eight at the time of her family's topple from lavish splendor to soup kitchen beneficiaries, remembers little of the chaos resulting, but the next four years were rough: there was Edward leaving for work and never coming back, Cordelia rolling up her arms and finding a secretorial position, and her eldest sisters persevering to catch the most handsome old-money bachelors in the tri-state area and doing little else. So, when there was no money coming from Edward's supposed odd jobs and eight mouths to feed, Cordelia came to a decision: send the youngest three away, so that they might have a chance to eat, much less do anything else. There was a lot of researching and finding the "most optimal choice" in this time, while Georgia waited with Emmaline and Nan in the wings, fretting as to the nature of their fate.
It was a cloudy day in December when Georgia Palmer became a twelve-year-old orphan by proxy, but, as Georgia liked to think of it, she had her sisters at the very least. Also, to the state's credit, the orphanage was quite nice as orphanages go, what with the regular food supply and all, and even the matron on their floor was particularly generous with portions if she could help it. The Palmer girls found their sudden situation to be quite bearable, all and all, if it wasn't for that damnably cantaknerous head matron. She, really, was the source of all of Georgia's problems in that place - and, as it were, the real catalyst of our tale.
It started when Emmaline got sweet on a boy at the high school. Being orphanage residents, of course, meant that the Palmer girls were something of an oddity at school with their hand-me-downs and all, but what Emmaline Palmer might've lacked in a pretty frock, she more than made up for with sparkling eyes and a pleasant counterance. Yet Head Matron's fondness for a strict curfew meant that Emmaline was in dreadful danger of having to refuse a most delightful opportunity to enjoy the singular company of one Peter Stuvyesant at the local church social. So, just as Emmaline was about to give all up for lost, Georgia hatched a most ambitious plan: forge permission papers so that none of the other matrons would ask any questions, sneak the keys out of the Head Matron's office, and spirit Emmaline off to the land of chaste hand-holding and romance under the eyes of spiritual leaders. Emmaline and Nan balked, of course; how can such a thing even begin to be entertained as successful? And what to do if they were all caught, besides? But Georgia comforted her elder sisters by insisting that it would be only she that would do the dirty work. She only wanted Emmaline to be happy, after all, when the three of them had gotten such a short stick. So, Emmaline agreed after much hesitation, and Georgia managed to get her sister out of her proverbial prison and back, and with only the Head Matron screaming, "If I ever find out who you are, young lady...!" as Georgia snuck off to bed in the end.
Even if Georgia's results hadn't meant Emmaline's matrimonial bliss months later, the young girl reckoned she would've done it again and again anyway, for the adrenaline that came from putting that mind of hers to work had been more than a little thrilling. So when Nan had met a boy at the market and were looking to elope a few years later, Georgia was more than ready to hatch up another scheme again, and not just due to the grand motivations of sisterly affections, either. Experience meant Nan had more than enough faith in her sister's abilities this time around - and for good reason, as she had a lot to ask due to the nature of the task. It wasn't just keys and permission, but hard loot that Nan needed; those dratted train tickets didn't simply grow on trees in 1938, as advantageous as that might have been. Yet if there was anything that Georgia had in spades, it was hubris, and so she set about to swipe from the Head Matron's very coffers before letting her sister loose into the night. To Georgia's rather smug satisfaction, everything she planned worked perfectly (which Georgia thought to be amazing, considering that her methods hadn't changed much), and the Head Matron was still left screaming out bald threats into the night. The woman never did learn it was Georgia, which made her departure from the orphanage a year after Nan's happy marriage all the more sweet. Yet at the same time, Georgia Palmer found the close of this particular chapter of her life to be unnerving, for she wasn't quite sure as to what to expect, and that was a first.
To an eighteen-year-old girl with no money or job skills at the end of the Great Depression, the United States Navy Nurse Corps looked to be quite the attractive alternative to whatever else Georgia could've been doing to pay for food. So she signed up, reservations about the United States' role on the world stage aside, but just as she started to find nursing to be a profession she accidently came to love and admire, a series of realizations almost took it away. It started with innocent dreams, as they always are wont to do in stories such as this, but Georgia dismissed them as rememberings of the mischief she had at the orphanage and didn't pause to analyze as to why the dreams were set in different time periods and places. But when what she was dreaming about at night started to interfere with her training, Georgia almost thought herself to be going absolutely insane. It was but moments before she sat to write her letter of resignation when Georgia was told that a man was here to see her, and he bore news that would revolutionize her life. He was a Librarian, and by the end of his presentation, Georgia wasn't particularly interested in the Atheneum bureaucracy and surprisingly calm in concern of the news that she was the reincarnation of a Scots heroine, but what Georgia found the most important was that she wasn't going crazy and that she could get back to work, which was what she found to be about the only thing of great importance in the scheme of things.
Besides, it was hardly as if the coming events were enough for Georgia to think of the status of her past lives. With Pearl Harbor, there was no hope for neutrality, but Georgia's eagerness to use her newly-perfected skills reflected the country's general eagerness to shift in the light of aggravation. There was no Pacific Front for Georgia and her newfound skills; rather, the Navy sent Georgia to England post-haste to help with patching up the various wounds of the brave pilots of the Royal Air Force and American volunteers alike. Her British equivalents were certainly more than happy to see fresh faces as reinforcements in the bloodied makeshift operating rooms and recovery wards dotted across the air fields, and Georgia was happy to make theory and book situations into something that could help others. It was a rough life, certainly, and not something that her sisters would've taken to gracefully, but Georgia did so with vigor and dedication.
Of course, Georgia'd be lying if she said that the only thing that she did during her service was work; the Brits knew how to throw a party, and all the service men knew how to show a girl a good time. Yet it was on the airfield and not the dance floor where Georgia met Roger Bradford, and in an almost comically cliché fashion, it was a love-hate relationship from the start. Admiration for his readiness to volunteer to a foreign air force courtesy of belief aside, Georgia found his arrogance and shock at such concepts as "woman" and "self-reliance" in the same sentence a guaranteed ticket to make her blood boil. To further her ire, he would never cease in trying to "make up" for their first meeting, either saying something to the point that he was sorely mistaken or other nonsense before running back to his group of pilot friends at the other end of the pub. Roger's group thinned as Normandy came and went, but it was very late in the war when one of his buddies became the ultimate wingman in the most bastardized sense of the phrase.
It was shortly before Operation Market Garden when Georgia met Frank Reeves, all delirious from the pain of the fire scorching him as it ran through the plane's tiny cockpit and the mangling he took courtesy of the shrapnel that ripped at his limbs. She'd heard the name before; he had been in her ward a few times and was a man who she had seen that incorrigible Bradford drink a couple of pints with, but now Frank was doing quite badly indeed. Still, despite it all, there was a certain feeling she had in her gut as she was taking gauze to his wounds and inserting the IV, and it wasn't the usual empathy and worry for her patient. It was a certain understanding, she found, and at that moment, Georgia knew that she was in the presence of another Tale. Although Frank couldn't say much at the point, Georgia was quite sure that he was also privvy to that vague sensation of camraderie, for there was no other reason why she could explain his pressing a photo towards her person and pleaing that she be the one to give it to his wife. He passed then, and Georgia couldn't help but feel a certain sadness for the brevity of their contact. Her feelings for Roger aside, Georgia knew that he and Frank had been close and so elected to be the one to tell him of his friend's death in person; upon her arrival, she found him quite sobered already, and the news was something that he took quietly and with a great amount of grace. When he managed to find out about Georgia's plan to find the widow Reeves, Roger insisted that he go with her to what ruins were left of London and help her find the woman as well, for his sake as well as hers. Georgia, softened by his grief, consented, and it ended up to be the catalyst of Roger and Georgia's reconciliation and the spark of their relationship. By the time the both of them were back on American soil, there were marriage plans and house-searching in Roger's native Queens. To her own surprise, Georgia rather fancied the sound of Georgia Bradford almost as she did the very idea of having a home - as much, even, if you caught her on the right day.
Courtesy of the Frank Reeves incident, Georgia decided to pay a few visits to the Pentamerone beyond those required in order to do research and the like on who she used to be. When she discovered sufficient parallels between what she did for Emmaline and Nan in her youth and Molly Whuppie's cunning exploits, Georgia was satisfied that her role in the experiences of Molly Whuppie were done and she was enjoying the "happily ever after" point in her life. Certainly, it felt that way; Roger, fresh from using his G.I. Bill to the fullest, managed to obtain tenure-track at New York University as a lecturer of criminal law, and she was starting a family of her own. Learning from her parents' and her story's mistakes, Georgia carefully limited her progeny to only three children and worked full-time as a registered nurse in Manhattan so that she wouldn't have to be forced to make such arduous choices. Her reincarnation's past was never really something that was made known to Georgia's family; after all, she only did the minimum of what the Atheneum required and thus could pass off her occasional visits to the West Side as visits to an old girlfriend from the service or whatnot. As her children grew up and their Victorian became something of an empty nest, Georgia started to take a little more vested interest in Tale happenings and the like as her need to fill her time grew. She'd occasionally visit a meeting or three within the Pentamerone or converse through the Compendium, but her time was still mostly devoted to work and her social life with Roger in tow.
It figures that on the fiftieth wedding anniversary, the damn bastard would have to go ahead and die. Roger had even planned to retire in 1996; he felt that he would be leaving on a high note and that the kids were top notch. There had been plans to travel the world and all that nonsense, but Georgia was much chagrined to find that he managed to pass away in his sleep immediately following a flight squadron reunion. It was the sort of thing that, if Georgia wasn't so fitful in grief, she'd be utterly infuriated about; instead, she rallied the troops (which, by this time, included a grand mass of grandchildren at her disposal) and set to burying her husband the right way. His memorial service attracted a fair amount of personnel from NYU, which included students and explained Georgia's curious first meeting with one Charlie Toussaint. As she shook his hand and allowed him to spout out his condolences, Georgia had that familiar feeling yet again, and what was more was that it seemed to remind her of a certain fighter pilot of fifty years prior. But, in keeping with Atheneum law, Georgia kept her mouth shut save for the usual "thank you for your sentiment" sort of message that a widow is expected to say and left it at that.
Years passed by, and with Georgia finding herself suddenly void of personal contact on a day to day basis, she found herself in something of a quandry. Even as a young girl, Georgia never found idleness to take well, and so retirement - now void of that epic love of her life and all that sentimental slog - was not an easy period for her to take to. So, with a traveling nest egg waiting to be spent and nowhere to go, Georgia began to invest her money and time in worthy charities. Bridge circles started to spring up, the occasional bingo night was enjoyed, and Georgia started spearheading committees within philanthropic organizations that she identified with greatly. In the same vein, she started to invest more time and money into the Atheneum by doing the various odd job, help with whatever a Librarian might ask, or even open up her house to the occasional wayward Tale that was at a loss for living quarters and couldn't be housed at the Pentamerone. Even so, she found out about Charlie Toussaint's discovery that he was the Steadfast Tin Soldier as something of an accident; when spotting a Librarian during her rounds of volunteer work at a local hospital (for really, you can take a nurse out of the hospital, but you can never take the hospital out of a nurse), she soon found herself looking at a sadly maimed boy. The déjà vu was more than a little much, suffice it to say, and Charlie's reaction upon seeing old Mrs. Bradford when he woke up? Well, for lack of a better word, the experience was special. But, after a nice talk and everything, the two came upon a understanding. It became the start of a bizarre, Boy Scout-meets-grandmother, friendship, with insistences that he be the one to clean out her gutters while she holds the lemonade and pound cake for afternoon refreshment.
At present, Georgia has a steady pattern to her life: indulge in her Salvation Army and P.E.O. work, make the occasional Pentamerone visit, nag Charlie to come over for a hot meal every once in a while, and ever-so-often listen to the boy's cases while the two of them nurse a glass of wine. With her children scattered across the country and her most constant companion being a pair of furry Cairn terriers, Georgia has accepted that she is in the twilight of her life and that her experiences as Molly Whuppie are soon to be passed on to a young babe in the wings. But what Georgia has managed to look over, as she is so painfully wont to do when it concerns her own matters, is that her experience as the Tale of Molly Whuppie might not actually be so finished, after all.
GAME(S) PLAYED: fairlytales
STATUS: Active
PLAYED-BY: Bea Arthur