Posted by JOhn Wilson on November 23, 2006 at 03:39:21 from 202.154.138.90 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: Holiday Tasks, more on posted by Owen Roberts on November 20, 2006 at 09:55:19:
The GA’s comment on the police in PM via Nancy, asking “if that was all we got by paying income tax” probably does reflect AR’s feeling on the tax liability from his royalties!
Having boarding school fees for two (and no possibility of government subsidy, unlike Service families like the Walkers) may have meant a drop in living standards for Molly Turner, even if the school was not one of the more expensive ones like Roedean. Probably in the North, unless SW when their mother comes to see them before they go off to school indicates that their school was in the South like the Swallows’ schools. In WH AR writes of Nancy & Peggy, living in the north, at the foot of the great hills and skating every year. “And at school too ...” there were a few skating days.
Anyway Laurence, your steam launch is silent. I was thinking of steam locomotives which certainly chuff, though that is when they are getting under way and the steam is not given time to work expansively (the cutoff setting?). And did the Beckfoot launch (no name apart from Beckfoot?) have an oil or diesel engine?
Re Public Libraries, the Wellington (NZ) one here has most of AR’s books, many are the older Cape hardbacks. Plus the collected works of Marx & Engels, in 40 or so volumes! In which Edward Gibbon Wakefield the coloniser of New Zealand
gets several mentions as a political economist.