Posted by Ed Kiser on September 17, 2008 at 19:45:43 user Kisered.
An item of trivia came to my notice during my recent re-read of WH.
It seems that Mrs. Dixon had picked up the D's from the Callum parents
and had ridden with them on the train to get them to the Dixon house.
Perhaps the Callums felt that the D's were too young to make the trip
on their own.
Interesting the little things that one picks up on when re-reading
for the umpteenth time.
WH CH1
The main road, along which they had come from the station
the night before, after their railway journey with Mrs. Dixon,
ran close past the front of the house, where there was a strip of
garden and a front door that was hardly ever used, for the Dixons
and all their friends went through the farmyard to the door that
opened into the big farm kitchen.
Mrs. Blackett had gone with the D's to check on school papers
that defined what exposure to infection would do to their
return to school after the holidays.
WH CH9
"Aye," said Mrs. Dixon, at last, "I have them. Mrs. Callum,
poor lamb, she gave them to me just as we were catching that
train, and you know what it is, Mrs. Blackett, catching trains in
towns, not like going up to the station here and having a word
with old Bob, that's been porter and guard these thirty years. Yes,
she gave me all their papers, but I've never looked into them to
this day, though I had it in my mind to look tomorrow, with them
going back to school so soon."
It also seems that the D's mother had been a resident of the Lake area
in her childhood.
WH CH1
Mrs. Dixon had been their mother's nurse when she
was a little girl...
And as their mother's nurse, Mrs. Dixon took care of Mrs. Callum when
as a child she had come down with mumps also.
WH CH9
"What's to be done about it, Mrs. Blackett? Why, what do you
think, now? I nursed their mother through mumps thirty year
ago, and if they get mumps here, why, they're welcome, and I'll
nurse them, too.
It seems that in WH, Dick and Dorothea are having their first visit
to the Lake. It is as if when Mrs. Callum grew up and met the future
Mr. Callum, her life was with him and was no longer associated with
the Lake, so their two children were brought up in the city, not
the Lake. But remembering her own childhood, she recognized it would
be a great place for those two to spend their holidays, especially
as she knew Mrs. Dixon from her childhood days.
One might imagine that the two children would have expressed some
interest in seeing the place their mother lived as a child, but
there is no mention of that ancestral home at the Lake.
That is the joy and reward for re-reading. You see stuff that got missed
on previous readings.
Ed Kiser, Kentucky