Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

"She wrote it because she was a natural show woman and storyteller, and she wanted to tell her story, which was remarkable. She also needed the money. It was an instant bestseller, as she thought it might be, and it kept her going for a little while when she came back from the Crimea. It was a successful business enterprise. Most of it is about her role in the Crimea because she knew that that was what was going to catch public attention, and therefore that was what was going to make it sell. Se did talk about her early years in Kingston. She talked about the time that she spent travelling, not just to the Caribbean, but she went twice to England as well. She also wrote about the time she spent keeping a hotel in Panama. You have to pinch yourself sometimes when you’re gently relating the story of Mary’s life. But she did, indeed, keep a hotel in Panama on the Gold Rush route and spent a couple of years there. There was no canal at that time, so people had to cross the Isthmus of Panama if they wanted to get to the goldfields of California. But the book does concentrate on the Crimea because that was where the British readership’s interest was. “She was a national heroine” This particular edition of her autobiography, edited by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee, is really important. It was published in the 1980s, the first time that it had been printed since 1857, when the autobiography was launched. It’s the first time that Mary was recognized as someone really significant both in British and in Afro-Caribbean history. My goodness, yes. When she got back from the Crimea, she was as famous as Florence Nightingale. There was a huge party put on for heroes of the Crimea soon after the peace treaty was signed, and though Florence was invited, she declined to go. Mary Seacole went and sat in the middle of the stage with her brightest outfit on and her arms outstretched. Applause rose to the rafters. She was a national heroine. To address your point about your children knowing about her but your generation not: it’s largely thanks to this edition that I’m talking about, the one edited by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee, that she became part of the national curriculum."