[Vwoolf] Fwd: checks cheques and bills
GILL LOWE
gill.lowe1 at btinternet.com
Sun Aug 13 06:47:14 EDT 2017
Just re-reading VW's Introductory Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies' Life As We Have Known It (Virago, 1982 ed.)
Woolf is 'looking at' Mrs Thomas, Mrs Langrish and Miss Bolt of Hebden Bridge. 'They were worth looking at':
'Certainly, there were no armchairs, or electric light, or hot water laid on in their lives; no Greek hills or Mediterranean bays in their dreams. Bakers and butchers did not call for orders. They did not sign a cheque to pay the weekly bills, or order, over the telephone, a cheap but quite adequate seat at the opera' (p.xxiii).
Gill
----Original message----
>From : jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Date : 20/07/2017 - 08:18 (GMTDT)
To : vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject : [Vwoolf] checks cheques and bills
This is from Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford's The
Inheritors (1901).
One day, indeed, the matter was brought
home to me by the receipt from Polehampton of bills instead of
my usual cheques. I had a good deal of trouble in cashing the
things; indeed, people seemed to look askance at them.
>From the SOED I gather that a "bill" in this context is the
equivalent of a promissory note. But how did such a bill work?
Incidentally, the writer/narrator is in Paris, so the assumption
seems to be that a cheque or bill written in England could be
cashed in France. It was not so when I grew up.
I write this two days after telling a US publisher that it's not
much use sending me a check, as no-one uses them in Norway any
more. The last one I wrote here was about a decade ago I think,
and my local bank charges 400 kroner (about 60 US dollars) to cash
a US check.
Jeremy H
On 17.07.2017 13:07, Stuart N. Clarke
wrote:
When I went to open a bank a/c in 1966 with the
Westminster, I was asked whether anyone could give me a
reference. I replied: “I believe my [half-]brother works
for your bank.”
(I’ve suddenly remembered something irrelevant but
comparable. A friend of mine did Art History under Quentin
Bell at Leeds. He applied for a job at the “Daily Mail”.
“What school did you go to?” My friend emigrated to
Australia.)
Back to cheques. In “Zuleika Dobson”, when the Duke of
Dorset gives his landlady a cheque (presumably made out to
CASH), he encourages her to go that day to the bank to cash
it, for she wouldn’t be able to cash it the following day in
view of his imminent suicide.
Stuart
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