Posted by Adam Quinan on February 26, 2002 at 20:20:08 from 192.75.48.2:
In Reply to: Purported Attack on Nancy posted by Prue Eckett on February 26, 2002 at 19:35:04:
Thanks for your clarification Prue, if you were suggesting that Nancy put Roger and Titty Walker on the label and the porter chose only to shout out Roger's name, then that I can understand.
What I find difficult to believe was that Nancy would only put Roger's name on the label because society would have frowned on her putting Titty's name as well.
I think that your idea of 1930s English society is a bit more rigid than reality, my parents are/were about the same age as Roger and Titty and grew up in a fairly formal middle-class family (my grandfathers were a doctor and an army officer respectively). They have told me some of what their life was like compared to my 1960s free and easy upbringing and there was much more formality, such as visiting card etiquette and the official way of responding to formal invitations and writing thank you letters and the different ways of addressing letters to a wife compared to a widow and how the older unmarried daughter was called Miss Blackett but her sister would be addressed as Miss Margaret Blackett. That is to say nothing of not playing card games on a Sunday etc.
However, what I understand as your idea that even that sort of society would dictate that you could only address a letter to a brother when you really wanted to write to his sister or face social ostracism is beyond my belief. If even the Great Aunt had wanted to address a letter to Titty and not Roger, then she would have done so. She would not have felt obligated to write to Roger. If the GA had wished to write to Mrs Walker, then her letter would have been addressed to Mrs Edward Walker, not Commander Walker.