Posted by Robin Selby on December 17, 2018 at 01:16:01 user RobinSelby.
In Reply to: Re: Nancy's Grandfather posted by John Wilson on December 15, 2018 at 02:04:46:
Surely the most likely direction is from the sheep station to Sydney. A city dweller moving to a sheep station sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy. The problem about X years at the sheep station and Y years at Sydney is that both the episodes about the horse finding its way back after a dance and capsizing a dinghy in Sydney harbour sound more like teens than pre-teens. It is difficult to reconcile the two.
Incidentally, why was the future Mrs Walker sailing her cousin’s dinghy and not her own? Had her father (let us call him Fred) left the city for a sheep station where he lost all his money? That is why she set her cap at the dashing Lt Cdr Walker in his natty two-seater, who was independently wealthy and came from a good family (‘one of the Hampshire Walkers, you know’).
I can easily see Ransome inventing the Oxford story to get some Oxford/Cambridge tension going, regardless of any other story about Captain Flint’s background. This strikes me as a more natural explanation than Ransome thinking to himself ‘aha, this is meta fiction so I don’t have to bother about consistency’.
A genealogy would look a bit thin, since Ransome has killed off so many of the parents and grandparents.
I’d be happy for the article to appear in ATR or Mixed Moss, if anyone wants to publish it.
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