Why is Patrick an Only Child?

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

Pam and Geoff Marlow are remarkably fecund; but Helena and Anthony Merrick only have one child. Anthony Merrick seems to be a fairly strict Catholic, so why is it that Patrick is their only child?

I wonder whether Helena Merrick, being a rather pragmatic Catholic (see Patrick's remark about fish on fridays in Attic Term, for example), was secretly using some form of contraception. Or perhaps they were playing Vatican Roulette and were just lucky...

I guess from AF's point of view, Patrick needs to be an only to contrast with the Marlows; and maybe he also represents her: she was also an only child.

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably because Patrick only became a Catholic retrospectively when AF needed one to comment on the play in End Of Term - after all, in Falconer's Lure he had a cousin who was a vicar!

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

However, considering the Merricks' social class, lots of siblings for Patrick would be more likely, Catholic or not.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Heir and a spare, you mean? Hmm, true. Maybe one or other parent had fertility problems and it was a glorious unlikeliness that they ended up with Patrick at all?

If there was a sibling or siblings who died, you'd think Patrick would have mentioned it.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

To quote Jilly Cooper: "birth control is flagrantly middle class". I think fertility - or possibly just not much of a sex life - would cover it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Evelyn Waugh, cited in Nancy Mitford Noblesse Oblige, I think, about bc as an mc indicator. Though quite likely also in J Cooper.

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the vicar, but now you mention it...

Though it's at half term she turns him into a Catholic, when Mrs Marlow needs somewhere for her mother to hear Mass

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

So it is! I'd forgotten Madame Orly, though I can't think how anyone could.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Patrick only became a Catholic retrospectively when AF needed one to comment on the play in End Of Term - after all, in Falconer's Lure he had a cousin who was a vicar!


Not all that astonishing? I know an Anglican Vicar whose brother is a Catholic priest, and a Catholic nun whose father is an Anglican bishop.
The owner of the computer I'm using is the Catholic daughter of an Anglican bishop and his father waa a Baptist minister. Then there are all those Anglican clergy in the Quaker chocolate families.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Vatican Roulette wasn't allowed pre-Vatican II - I suspect either they were being very pragmatic indeed or they only managed the one.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Is this so? Because the FPA* were providing instruction on the safe period well before then, and I assume that this would have been of most interest to those who were not allowed to use more efficient methods (as well as no doubt a certain % who were just squicked out at 'putting things up inside themselves'). Only this morning dug out a 'safe period' calculator (1930s, German) to illustrate a talk I'm giving.

*Though I've no idea what the Catholic Marriage Advisory Centres of the same period were up to.

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Pre Vatican II there were women in working class parishes in Dublin who were accused of murder in the confessional because they hadn't had a child for two years - contraception of any kind was an absolute no-no. Actually, I was wrong - it's *after* Vatican II, to be precise - it's 1968 and Humane Vitae that allowed "natural contraception". The Lambeth Conference in 1930 changed things for Anglicans and most other Prods followed suit over time.

I know of one couple who had four kids between 1964 and 1969 (three of them unplanned) and then started using Vatican roulette. Only one mistake after that - in 1972.

Even now, I suspect that if the Catholic church were ever to go further on artificial contraception, it will only allow absolute barrier methods such as condoms and caps and not permit the pill or the coil.

The pill is permitted for medical reasons with the contraceptive effect at that point regarded as a side-effect, and that's the principle under which condoms are most likely to be permitted in the near future, since church law is unequal in these situations.*

*I can elaborate for *hours* on this and have some rather good sources on the theological side of things...

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I shall soon, on my lj, tell the story of my mother's Uncle Jack, which is pertinent both to this and to the concept of marriage.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

My grandmother had only one child, in 1935 after which my grandad went round every priest he could find to get one to tell him contraception was OK to save the mothers life, so there were priests who would say it, even then.

As to VAtican Roulette, my mum planned three kids using the rythm method and got our dates of birth when she wanted too, so it's not always as chancy as all that :-)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Success depends a lot on the regularity and length of the individual cycle (as well as individual's mathematical skills!).

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing some gynecological disaster or other; the Merricks don't strike me as the sort of people who would think one heir enough.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

It's out of the question that the disaster could be on Mr Merrick's part?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I suppose there could have been a Tragic Hunting Incident.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Maybe (i) either a very late marriage by one or both, hence not much time for children - I don't know if we ever find out how old the Merricks are when Patrick is 16, but I wouldn't be surprised by mid-50's, and I definitely think older than 40ish.

Or (ii) one or other was not good at producing children - I know a couple who tried everything, natural and artificial, to have a child, and no luck; they were 23 years married and had given up all hope when along came a daughter. (On the other hand, I work with a lady who had twins by AI and was told by doctors she was physically incapable of having any more children; 18 months later, along came no. 3)

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

Ithought Mr Merrick was the same age as Geoff Marlow, isn't there a mention in Falconer's Lure about them and Jon doing things together as kids?

Maybe Mrs Merrick is the Older Woman? Would explain why both Ginty and Nicola are a bit frightened of her

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

There's something when they're round the breakfast table where Jon and Geoff are talking about hawking with their Dad, and Jon says that Geoff was fishing quietly in the bay while "the rest of us" were rushing round the country looking for lost hawks. But he doesn't specify who "the rest of us" is - there are no more brothers, or presumably sisters - Anthony Merrick may be on the list, but it doesn't say. Or is there another reference later on?

Anyway, if Anthony is Geoff's age, and assuming that Geoff was about 22 when as a penniless lieutenant he married under-age Pam, and Giles followed quickly with the twins 8 years later, then he would be 31 when the twins were born, and 29 when Patrick was born. For what that proves. :-)

My view, for what it's worth, is that at least one of Anthony or Helena Merrick isn't very good at producing children. I suspect they would have had at least 2, for choice.

[aella_irene]

Personally, I'm torn between

I wonder whether Helena Merrick, being a rather pragmatic Catholic (see Patrick's remark about fish on fridays in Attic Term, for example), was secretly using some form of contraception. Or perhaps they were playing Vatican Roulette and were just lucky...


and fertility problems.

Or possibly a combination...

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

I believe that there's an interview with AF somewhere on the internet - yes, here (http://www.maulu.demon.co.uk/AF/author/interview95.html) in which Sue Simms "mentioned that I'd always felt it to be a slight discrepancy that Patrick seems to be an Anglican in Falconer's Lure (at least, he has a cousin who is a vicar), but emerges as a fully-blown Catholic, complete with aristocratic recusant ancestors, in End of Term. Was this because she had become a Catholic in between the two books? No -- again, I'd failed to take the needs of an author into account. "I actually became a Catholic in 1947, considerably before either of those two books were written. I wasn't thinking about Catholicism in Falconer's Lure; but in End of Term, the Christmas play needed to be described from the point of view of the audience. The trouble was, I didn't know the proper Anglican vocabulary -- so Patrick became a Catholic!"

What did you do in the War, Daddy?

[charverz.livejournal.com]

One possible explanation is that Anthony Merrick spent 4-5 years in a prisoner of war camp. If captured 1n France in 1940, that would account for 5 years; if Singapore in 1941 possibly more, given travel time. The health effects might have aggravated the issue of children.