Posted by PeterH on January 24, 2007 at 15:30:40 from 86.130.132.138 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: FRAM Stove - what happened to the ashes? posted by Adam Quinan on January 24, 2007 at 14:49:25:
The passage which Adam mentions, about the hot-pot on the ice, is also quoted in the latest Signals from TARSUS, and I was very glad to see it because, for me, the passage sums up the exact type of family background Mrs Blackett provided for the Amazons. On TarBoard from time to time there have been attempts to put the Blacketts in one ‘class’ or another, but this passage says it all, and is far more graphic than any amount of sociological terminology or classification. Difficult to put into words, but the impression is of people who were moneyed only to a certain extent, and the money they had was not to be thrown about. Common sense ruled, and you didn’t get ideas above your station. It is a very resolute, constrained, north-country type of ‘big house’ attitude, and I recognise it well. Let AR describe it to perfection:-
“And the whole lot of us spent the day on the ice. A big hot-pot and a basket of other things were sent down to us from the house . . . And the hot-pot was put down on the ice while the basket was being unpacked . . . And we all came skating along very, very hungry, and found no hot-pot. Just a pleasant smell . . .and a neat round hole in the ice through which the hot-pot had gone to the bottom of the lake.”
“What did you do?” asked Roger.
“Went without,” said Mrs Blackett. “What else could we do?”
(Perhaps the one criticism that could be made is that no one on the ice seemed to have an elementary knowledge of physics, but let’s gloss over that . . . . The anecdote is superb.)