Posted by John Wilson on August 19, 2001 at 15:38:14 from 202.154.130.238:
In Reply to: Re: Matterhorn - they were children posted by Prue Eckett on August 18, 2001 at 23:21:20:
Jim Turner says in ML that he started at Oxford but chucked it before Oxford chucked him! He also tells Missee Lee (a Cambridge graduate; the only worthwhile thing at Oxford is the marmalade) that the only time he was in gaol was after a boat race, one of the few that Oxford won, when he pinched a policeman’s helmet. Later on, in PP, Timothy mentions a scrape with the police in Peru.
After Oxford he went off round the world, traditional for the “black sheep” of a family. In SA “the man on the houseboat” says that he was a bad lad in his youth, but like George Washington and unlike “the boy in the boat” (John) he never told a lie (about the firework).
Before both WH and PP Jim Turner is abroad again. It would be a challenge to work out from the descriptions of his study and the houseboat how many places he had been to! He also mentions Java in SD and the Himalayas in ML.
Molly Blackett has the Turner family home Beckfoot rather than her brother Jim. Would the family home normally have gone to the eldest son (primogeniture) even if there were older daughters?
But Molly and her two girls needed a home. Jim who was unmarried and often globe-trotting just needed a study (like Dick’s museum it was untouched during renovations).
Bob Blackett’s death - the 1918 influenza epidemic seems about right to me.