Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on 09/12/00 from 172.17.4.90 via proxy home.cosco.com.cn:
In Reply to: Re: PM-Beckfoot servants. posted by Robert Hill on September 08, 2000 at 11:59:49:
Like the assumption, which I also make, that Beckfoot was in the Turner, not the Blackett, family, I have no reasonable grounds for this assuption, save that Nancy and Peggy's dislike of the GA is so powerful that I sense that she was felt by them as someone who wished to upset their existence quite permanently, and, since she disapproves (SD) of the way in which they are being brought up by their widowed mother, she might have suggested remarriage. Men were in short supply at the time, of course, due to the War, so it would not have been a real threat, but it is just the sort of thing that upsets children enormously!
Beckfoot would have been entailed to Jim, not to Molly, but it seems very natural that he would encourage her to live there with her daughters after Bob died, rather than keep up another house. This was often done at the time.
An Aga, a new thing at the time, saving fuel and labour, might have been one of the PP "improvements". The maid in SD need not have lived in, she could have been a part timer. But the household is going downhill. In SD the GA pays her curiosity call on Mrs Walker in a trap, in which Nancy and Peggy are driven with her at another point. The trap would need a driver. In SA and SD the Beckfoot launch, requiring a competent male to run it, is in use, whilst by PP there are no horses, just Rattletrap, an elderly and not very grand car! Rattletrap might have been bought secondhand to replace the pony and trap. The "improvements" were doubtless paid for by the publisher's cheques generated by "MIxed Moss"!