How Trennels was built.

[jackmerlin]

I know this has been brilliantly covered in fanfic, but I have been searching back through old threads and can't see that it has ever been discussed in a thread here. In Peter's Room we are told as a casual aside, that Trennels was built by a Joshua Marlow, who made his pile in the slave trade

Comments

[jackmerlin]

That's a really full and interesting answer. I like the ideas of complex links between modern characters and their ancestors, and the ambivalence the modern Marlows feel towards their role at Trennels.
I too like details that don't aid the plot; as you say, they give AF's writing a richness and depth that is lacking from many other Young Adult (and even straight adult) books.
Because the characters are so 'alive' for me, I do sometimes forget just how long ago they were written, and what a different world it was then. The Marlows - and their original readers - lived in such an all-white world. Not until the later books would the characters have started meeting people who would have made the slave trade a difficult reality for them, and even then not many in rural Dorset.
I wonder if there was conflict in the family among Joshua's more immediate descendants - the younger sons who joined the Navy when the Navy was trying to catch and stop slave ships, versus the elder son who was enjoying the benefits of inheriting Trennels? (I do feel the farm logs could yield more fic....)

[antfan]

the younger sons who joined the Navy when the Navy was trying to catch and stop slave ships

Is there anything in Hornblower? That - or another naval novel - might have put this in AF's mind. I do like the idea of a family feud on the issue!