Posted by Bruce A Clarke on September 15, 2000 at 15:37:28 from 203.149.33.253:
In Reply to: Re: PM-Beckfoot servants. posted by Robert Hill on September 15, 2000 at 14:55:51:
There has been quite some supposition in the recent words about the Beckfoot servants, that the Blacketts were hard up. I don't think this is the case.
In the 1930's, depression time for most of the industrialised world, the Blacketts still had a car, a large house (whether left to Jim or Mollie seems irrelevant), a motor launch, a sailing dinghy, a rowing boat, a cook, telephone and the ability to support Jim Turner on wild goose expeditions and the girls to attend boarding schools. Mollie also was fortunate enough to have enough money to go on a sea voyage to recuperate.
Hardly poverty!
It seems more likely that the family had some inherited wealth which returned an income such that they could maintain a good upper middle class lifestyle. AR seemed to live a similar way and there never seems to be poverty either in his autobiography or in his stories, he just assumed that society was the way he showed it.