Posted by Ed Kiser on June 13, 2014 at 09:09:44 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: Dogs Home Layout posted by Mike Field on June 11, 2014 at 16:42:12:
If you look in the drawing of Jackie leaning against the doorway in PM, the beams are not that unreachable. The drawing from the outside also seems to show that the top of the window is on the same level as the top of the door, thus permitting beams to be present just a few inches above each opening.
In his book, the "Dogs' Home" is an imaginary place some of whose features may have been suggested to the author by this real place being refurbished, but that does not mean that the imaginary place IS what we see today in the real world. The beams in the REAL place are much too high for hammocks. Possibly, there used to be an "upstairs" or loft, accessed by a ladder, but such features has nothing to do with the building we have in PM. This imaginary one can have lower beams than the real one.
The same can be said about Beckfoot. The "real" Beckfoot is the image I have in my head, an image that has developed by years of encountering those occasional mentions in the books. To someone else, their concept of the "real" Beckfoot will no doubt be not quite the same as the one that I "see" but is none the less quite "real" to that person. Beckfoot is a fictious place. It does not exist in reality. While Ransome may have had certain features in real houses in mind as he came up with his own image of Beckfoot in his writings, Beckfoot is just am image composite of several real houses, and also, features that were only in the author's mind when writing about it. There are still some unanswered puzzles in my mind, but the answer is not necessarily to be found in any REAL house. As to the bathroom, that simple statement: "Water in the bathroom", leaves me with two interpretations because there is no verb. If she is saying that "Water IS in the bathroom", then that is a source of water, and somehow, that water gets to that room. They can get water for the vase of flowers from there. But if what she is reminding the others of, is: "Be sure there is water in the bathroom" or in other words, be sure the wather pitcher in the bathroom is filled from some other source located elsewhere.
It is quite a tease to try to see real world places that in some ways remind us of those beloved locations in those imaginary stories we know and love.
But the image that is each reader's mind, that is the "real" one for us.
And that is the one that is important.
Ed Kiser [kisered@aol.com]