Wastrel’s Reviews > Swallows and Amazons > Status Update

Eg Mrs Dixon's "I'd come into the way of looking out for you" (i.e. 'I'd gotten into the habit of looking for you).

Also interesting sociolinguistic note: even Mrs Dixon refers to her husband as "Dixon". It's hard to overstate the extent to which British men of the early 20th century just *didn't have personal names*.

[Arthur Ransome was actually being a bit modern by calling himself that - unlike other famous authors of the era, like T.H. White, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, P.G. Wodehouse and so on.

My favourite example is the philosopher, G.E. Moore. Not only did all his friends and colleagues call him "Moore" or, in cases of extreme intimacy in private, "G.E.", but he was so deeply uncomfortable with actually being referred to by his name that even when his wife point-blank refused to call him by their surname or an initialism, he still refused to let her use either of his forenames. So she gave up, picked a new name at random, and from then on called her husband "Bill"...]

Anyway, I'm sure there's something interesting here about how Captain Flint in this novel is willing to let it be known his name is James (all other men in the novel are Mr so-and-so)... but I'm not sure if it's just because he's an adult who is willing to talk to children as equals, or whether there's a class issue at play here.

One thing not gone into explicitly in the novel, but very obvious to an attentive modern reader, is that Nancy is clearly a mafia don.

No, seriously!

At one point, a police officer is interviewing some of the children, who are the prime suspects in a breaking-and-entering and burglary.

Nancy arrives and demands he goes away.

"I'm sure I beg pardon, Miss Ruth", says the poor policeman. And "I had no sort of idea they were friends of yours." And Nancy then openly considers abducting the policeman if he doesn't drop the investigation.

At which point Peggy arrives and asks why the policeman is there, leading to this exchange:

"It was all a mistake, miss"
"Run away, Sammy, and don't make those mistakes again".

Bloody hell! [NB, 'Sammy' here isn't a racial insult, it's just the man's name]

As the terrified policeman escapes, Nancy agrees not to talk to his mother about his "mistake", but only "if you are good".

In case the exchange was ambiguous, Ransome then has one of the Swallows ask explicitly why the police were so frightened of Nancy, to which Nancy replies: "He's our policeman. He isn't afraid of anybody except his mother... and us, of course."

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Of course, what's really happening here in the 1920s is a combination of rural matriarchy (Sammy's mother clearly rules the family with an iron fist, and was Nancy's nurse when she was young) and in particular the feudal system - Nancy's family are (although not explicitly stated) clearly far, far richer than everyone else in the Lake District and probably a source of local employment (eg Sammy's mother hired for childcare), and there is an absolutely clear social hierarchy in which the locals are too terrified to every question the local ruling family on any matter, even serious criminal affairs. The Blackett's wealth and social power also explain why Peggy and Nancy are free to be SO "free-spirited" and dominant, whereas the Walker family, although clearly a step above the locals, are being trained into the imperial government service class (in this case, both the boys know that they will be ship's officers of some sort when they are older), so their curiosity and independence are encouraged, but not beyond the boundaries of responsibility and respectability. Peggy and Nancy, who will probably either make their own money in art/science or business or else marry someone even more high-status, are being raised without those sorts of limits, because for them the ability to always be the most noticeable woman in the room is more important.

But without that historical context, it pretty much does look like Nancy's family are mafiosi...