Posted by John Wilson on September 09, 2000 at 12:35:16 from wakefield-cacheflow.itnet.co.nz:
In Reply to: Re: Picts and Martyrs - electric power, Beckfoot posted by Bruce A Clarke on August 29, 2000 at 04:42:42:
When the D’s are returning from their first sail in the Scarab (PM ch 16 p 159) they pass Beckfoot in the twilight, and though it was still daylight out-of-doors they saw “the glimmer of a lamp or candles in the drawing-room”. While a lamp can sometimes be electric as in “bedside-lamp” the sentence does suggest to me a house without electricity.
Beckfoot was previously the Turner house where Jim and Molly (or Mary; see the GA’s letter at the end of PM)Turner were brought up by the GA, and as the Turner estate also had to support Jim’s worldwide roaming (and his get-rich-quick schemes like finding gold in South America), perhaps there was not enough money to install electric light!