Posted by John Lambert on October 17, 2003 at 20:12:57 from 24.84.34.215 user John.
A few months ago there was a series of messages about the class and accent of the Blacketts. I don't believe the questions was settled, but I have this to add. In the Jonathan Cape edition of P&M, (Chapter XXI, p. 213, 1978 imprint), Nancy is desribing Sammy's questions to the GA after Dick's burglary. She quotes Sammy's words, "'Silver?' asked Sammy,'Coops and moogs? That's the stoof what they generally go for.'" She is imitating Sammy's Lake District accent, so we can assume she and her family didn't speak that way. The family probably were not natives of the region, even though her mother and father had climbed Kanchenjunga (Matterhorn) years earlier. They may have climbed it on a holiday to the Lakes, and later, had settled in the district. Even if their parents didn't speak with the local accent and the Amazons had gone to a school in the south, they still would have absorbed the local speech to a degree. So why would she have commented on Sammy's pronunciation, which to her, sounded amusing? I'm aware the AR probably wanted to make it clear that the Blacketts, the Walkers and the Callums all spoke with "educated" accents because he reasoned most people in this class would buy the books, but that's not my point. I want to explore the stories themselves,not the author's sales strategy.
John Lambert