Posted by Robert Hill on June 16, 1998 at 12:25:06:
In Reply to: Re: Who owns Beckfoot? posted by Peter Hyland on June 15, 1998 at 16:16:35:
Presumably, before the marriage of Molly Turner and Bob Blackett,
Beckfoot was in the Turner rather than the Blackett family.
I've always assumed that; indeed I've always assumed that it was at
Beckfoot that Molly and Jim were brought up by their Aunt Maria.
It may be that there's clear evidence of this in the text of tP&tM
or other books. If anybody is currently reading any of the lake books,
perhaps they could look out for relevant passages.
Aunt Maria (since her name is Turner) must have been the sister of
the father of Molly and Jim (call him Y, reserving X for his father,
who was presumably Molly's tactful grandfather, mentioned in Maria's
letter to Molly at the end of tP&tM).
Probably Y (and perhaps X before him) was at one time the owner
of Beckfoot. But Y and his wife (Z) must have both died when Molly and
Jim were small children. What would have happened to Beckfoot then?
Would it have gone to Maria? Or gone into trust for Molly and/or Jim?
Perhaps there were other brothers and/or sisters of Y and Maria,
but they all had spouses and children of their own, and no room
for two more, so Maria was left to take on ("as a duty", she
would have said) the bringing up of Molly and Jim.
It is conceivable that when Y was alive, Beckfoot belonged not to
him but to Maria, and Y and Z lived elsewhere, and then when Y and Z
died, Molly and Jim went to live with Maria at Beckfoot.
But this seems most unlikely for several reasons.
It seems much more likely that Beckfoot belonged to Y
when he was alive, and Molly and Jim were born there.
Unfortunately none of this answers the original question
of who owned the house at the time of the books.