Re: Pirate Gold or Pearls


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Posted by Patrick Fox on July 13, 1999 at 18:01:09 from p08-pigeon-gui.tch.virgin.net:

In Reply to: Pirate Gold or Pearls posted by Leah Mickens on July 13, 1999 at 16:21:56:

Well, the "right" answer is presumeably pearls, since that what "actually" happens in Peter Duck. However, the inconsistency illustrates nicely the fact that Peter Duck and Swallowdale are the only two books to have been written out of order. While the events in Peter Duck precede those in Swallowdale, Peter Duck was actually written after Swallowdale.

As a result, Swallowdale provides the only glimpse that Ransome himself allows us to see of how he initially imagined the events in Peter Duck unfolding. That he originally planned to make it clear that Peter Duck was only a story is pushed firmly home, with comments about how it was made up in the cabin of a wherry in the winter evenings, and the frequent repetition, in Swallowdale, of the fact that these events only happened "in the story".

Since the publication of Christina Hardyment's "Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk" there's been much more flesh on this skeleton of a plot as to how Peter Duck came about, with the unused draft of the first two chapters of Peter Duck giving a lovely picture of wintry days in a wherry on the Broads, and being reminiscent of some of the more descriptive parts of Winter Holiday. And I'm not sure I agree with Christina Hardyment that it would have been "tedious" to keep switching back to life on the wherry from the main story. Running the two stories in parallel could have been a very effective contrast of real and imagined. On a simple point, its noticeable how the sleeping arrangements in the wherry echoed those in the Wild Cat, and I'm sure AR would have worked in much more cross fertilisation between real and imagined life. But perhaps he felt it made things too complicated.

Going back to the original point, while the obvious treasure at first thought would be "pirate gold", its clear that, especially if the story was no longer to be explicitly imagined, pearls of rather limited value will not overshadow the rest of the series with the sort of disruption that massive wealth coming to all the characters in the third book would cause. Otherwise, for example, when in We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea they're searching their pockets for money to pay the pilot, the reader would be thinking, "but they're all fabulously wealthy because of the pirate gold from Peter Duck!

Rambled on a bit, I'm afraid, but I do find the way in which we get to view the evolution of Peter Duck fascinating.

Cheers
Patrick


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