Posted by Peter H on September 28, 2007 at 19:26:57 from 86.151.95.57 user Peter_H.
Have you noticed that Ed keeps dangling the ‘Beckfoot plumbing’ bait? Well, ever a sucker, I am going to bite . . .
There is a mystery, not so much about the plumbing but about the plumbers. Ie the plumbers at Beckfoot in PP. Did they exist? These are the references I have found in PP with regard to the type of workmen at Beckfoot:-
In Chapter II, Peggy says that Mrs B is ‘busy with paperhangers and plasterers’. Later in Ch II the prospectors had supper ‘off a table made with the planks and trestles of the plasterers’ and Mrs Blackett talked of ‘the papering and plastering and what not’.
In Chapter IV – ‘It was no good trying to talk to Mrs Blackett until the paperers and plasterers had gone for the day’. . . . ‘It’d be much better if none of us were here while you’re finishing up the papering and painting’. . . . ‘workmen in every room’
In Chapter VIII – Nancy explains to Mrs Tyson that Mrs B ‘won’t be here just yet . . .not until the painters and paperers have gone’. Later, as Mrs T shows them the orchard camp, she tells them they would be as well there as in Beckfoot – ‘with the workmen up and down with their papering and painting’.
In Chapter XII – Mrs B: ‘I must hurry back to my plasterers and painters’.
In Chapter XVI – Mrs Tyson refers to Mrs B ‘in a scrow with her papering and painting, and the house thrutched up with the plumbers and all.’
In Chapter XXXIII – ‘Paperers and painters and plasterers were gone’.
Right, that’s 8 references to papering or paperers, 6 to plastering, and 6 to painting. There is only one ref to ‘plumbers’, and this is by Mrs Tyson. Why does she mention plumbers when no one else, even Mrs Blackett, has mentioned them? Did Mrs T get mixed up? After all, you only call in plumbers if the plumbing goes wrong, whereas the painting etc was part of a mammoth Beckfoot spring-clean.
The truth might depend on the meaning of ‘thrutch’. From the internet (not wikipedia) I learn that ‘Thrutch’ means to press, squeeze, crush; to crowd, or throng. Whilst one can imagine the house being ‘thronged’ with decorators, surely not with plumbers, who would be confined to the kitchen or bathroom.
One more thing – at the risk of being coarse, I see that ‘thrutch’ (a Lancashire word) also means 'to strain excessively on the lavatory’. If Beckfoot was ‘thrutched up’, this suggests a bizarre and somewhat unfortunate image. Is that why Mrs T thought the plumbers had been called?
OK, all you Beckfoot plumbing obsessives, sort that one out!