“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The drawing is very good. There were three beds in that room. Dick slept in one, the bed that you have pictured. His eldest sister slept in another, and a young brother in the third. There was also a smaller bed in which a maid slept. The family was not rich by any means. The maid was a relative of Throckmorton’s. In the beginning she worked for the family to save a decent dowry. However she was no beauty, and Throckmorton never really managed to pay her much above food and lodging.

These windows were not open however, except in periods of stifling heat which came seldom in England. This room was the front room and not as spacious as your sketch would make it appear. The mattress was straw but the bed itself was the best bed in the family, handed down from Throckmorton’s father. Throckmorton and his wife, Lessie, usually slept in it. It was given over to Dick because of his illness.

The top coverlet was an heirloom from Lessie’s family. Outside of the room there was a rickety staircase. On the other side of the staircase was a much smaller room where Throckmorton and Lessie slept during Dick’s illness, with a younger boy who was 3 at the time. The stairs led downward to the shop.

Behind the shop was another room that served as a kitchen and, you might say, parlor. In any case it was the family’s social room. Behind this was a storeroom with earthen floor, and a shed. An imbecilic boy sometimes did errands for Throckmorton about the shop. He slept in the shed. Lessie had already had and lost 4 children. One actually lived to be 18 and was born when Lessie was very young. The others died in childbirth or in the first year. Throckmorton had wanted a son to carry on his shop. The child who died at 18 would have been such a boy, and Throckmorton never really recovered from the lad’s death. He died incidentally of pneumonia: took sick and died within three days.

Throckmorton resented the fact that his eldest was a daughter, and it was for this reason that she was allowed to make the journey to France. She was 23 and unmarried. Since her parents had not married her off, and as she was somewhat of a strain on the family income, Throckmorton gave her a cash settlement. Lessie gave her goods, garments, material and some jewelry, and the parents bid the eldest good-bye.

Much love was bestowed upon the boy, Dick, and at his death Throckmorton was all the more bitter against this eldest child. Nor was there any love lost on the young woman’s part. She was temperamentally different from the other members of the family. The house was filled with mourning when Dick died. The 3-year-old boy lived into old age, turning into a prosperous tradesman dealing in wools and textiles. I am unable at present to tell you what Throckmorton’s shop actually dealt with.

They were drawn to each other because of those previous ties, and yet in that past life this daughter was extremely cruel, particularly in speech, to Throckmorton. Sensing of course the bitterness that he felt because she was not a boy—incidentally this is a strong subconscious motive—this caused her to bear him three sons to help allay his bitterness. She gave him these three sons as a gift or sacrifice; and when it seemed he would not accept them as such she turned against him, made too much of the sons to pay him back. The relative who is now your mother’s niece contributed to some degree to the unrest in the previous family as it existed in England. The young relative was very jealous of the older daughter for her position in the family, and for the dowry which was hers.

Her clothes were hand-me-downs from the daughter of the family, and since the maid was quite a few years younger than the daughter the clothes fit her poorly. She was glad to see the dissension between the father and the daughter. This time the present personality of the maid tries to make up for the jealousy, and for many quarrels that she initiated secretly between Throckmorton and his daughter, by malicious tattling and playing one member of the family against the other. I suggest you take a brief break, if this material hasn’t already broken you up.

I will give a brief sample, if you do not mind me using your own present family.

They married over the objection of her family. He actually had a small pharmacy which he ran himself, in Boston. On the side he sold whatever merchandise idiotic men and women would buy to secure lovers. Behind the respectable scenes such concern was high, and many a good churchgoer let ministers in the front door while they collected bottles supposedly filled to the brim with fleshy incentives in hidden back rooms.