Where did Scrooge's sisters go?

[Hector]

Has anybody ever wondered where they went and, most importantly,
how they made a living after leaving the money bin? Did they all go
to Grandma Duck's farm? Could Elvira really support all those people?

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jul 27, 2017 1:12:02 GMT Hector said:

Has anybody ever wondered where they went and, most importantly,
how they made a living after leaving the money bin? Did they all go
to Grandma Duck's farm? Could Elvira really support all those people?

Well, I get the impression that Rosa meant for Quackmore to be educated and employable ... didn't Hortense tell Scrooge in Life of Scrooge that he'd be managing his finances? Therefore, I see him as a chartered accountant or some such, able to support his wife and children (this was the 1950s, so Hortense was probably a homemaker). Matilda, I have no idea ... in my headcanon she's an eternal spinster, and I can accept that she ended up as caretaker of Castle McDuck in her older years in Rosa's "Letter from Home", but in between ... I expect she hung around Hortense and Quackmore, but whether she lived with them, I don't know (the death of Hortense and Quackmore, which I believe has occurred, must have hit her pretty hard, since they're the only close contemporary relatives she's got with whom she's on speaking terms). Despite their estrangement with Scrooge, they all probably stayed in Duckburg (where Donald and Della grew up), but I don't think any of them lived on Grandma's farm.

[RobbK1]

Jul 27, 2017 2:15:57 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jul 27, 2017 1:12:02 GMT Hector said:

Has anybody ever wondered where they went and, most importantly,
how they made a living after leaving the money bin? Did they all go
to Grandma Duck's farm? Could Elvira really support all those people?

Well, I get the impression that Rosa meant for Quackmore to be educated and employable ... didn't Hortense tell Scrooge in Life of Scrooge that he'd be managing his finances? Therefore, I see him as a chartered accountant or some such, able to support his wife and children (this was the 1950s, so Hortense was probably a homemaker). Matilda, I have no idea ... in my headcanon she's an eternal spinster, and I can accept that she ended up as caretaker of Castle McDuck in her older years in Rosa's "Letter from Home", but in between ... I expect she hung around Hortense and Quackmore, but whether she lived with them, I don't know (the death of Hortense and Quackmore, which I believe has occurred, must have hit her pretty hard, since they're the only close contemporary relatives she's got with whom she's on speaking terms). Despite their estrangement with Scrooge, they all probably stayed in Duckburg (where Donald and Della grew up), but I don't think any of them lived on Grandma's farm.

Oh NO!!!!  The dreaded profession of chartered accountancy!  The most boring profession in The World (according to Monty Python).   Never, never invite one to a cocktail party!!! 

[Orora]

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be married to Ludwig Van Drake?

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 27, 2017 14:21:03 GMT Orora said:

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be married to Ludwig Van Drake?

Rosa decided it, but many people see both as bachelors, and a few quotes from Ludwig do support the idea — he outright states in the 1960's special Kids is Kids that he's bachelor, and the comic strips had him join a dating club at one point. We discussed all of this on another thread.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jul 27, 2017 8:46:12 GMT RobbK1 said:

Oh NO!!!!  The dreaded profession of chartered accountancy!  The most boring profession in The World (according to Monty Python).   Never, never invite one to a cocktail party!!! 

Yes. Well, I guess he'd be a "CPA" in the US. So maybe he was Scrooge's original "bean counter"! The thought of Donald's father being something as mundane as a CPA is both fitting and amusing somehow. Quackmore is a character that hasn't gotten a lot of attention in discussions, despite a pivotal role in Duck family dynamics. As far as I know, Rosa hasn't spoken much of him either, and he has a very small role in the whole Life of Scrooge saga.  I guess, if he really was a CPA, he had a good, steady job and could be considered a "success" in life, compared to Donald who can't hold a job and is seen as an underachiever.

Re: Matilda, yes, I think there's enough evidence to state that Von Drake was always meant to be a bachelor, and so I disagree with Rosa that Matilda is married to him. Rosa only made that statement "off-screen" in an interview, and never put it in a story, so I feel free to disregard it. It's a shame Matilda never appeared in Gerardt's one-pagers featuring young Donald and Della; if there's any character that should appear, it's her (since the parents apparently aren't allowed to). Is the series over? Was Gerardts ever asked about Matilda?

[RobbK1]

Jul 27, 2017 15:03:12 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jul 27, 2017 8:46:12 GMT RobbK1 said:

Oh NO!!!!  The dreaded profession of chartered accountancy!  The most boring profession in The World (according to Monty Python).   Never, never invite one to a cocktail party!!! 

Yes. Well, I guess he'd be a "CPA" in the US. So maybe he was Scrooge's original "bean counter"! The thought of Donald's father being something as mundane as a CPA is both fitting and amusing somehow. Quackmore is a character that hasn't gotten a lot of attention in discussions, despite a pivotal role in Duck family dynamics. As far as I know, Rosa hasn't spoken much of him either, and he has a very small role in the whole Life of Scrooge saga.  I guess, if he really was a CPA, he had a good, steady job and could be considered a "success" in life, compared to Donald who can't hold a job and is seen as an underachiever.

Re: Matilda, yes, I think there's enough evidence to state that Von Drake was always meant to be a bachelor, and so I disagree with Rosa that Matilda is married to him. Rosa only made that statement "off-screen" in an interview, and never put it in a story, so I feel free to disregard it. It's a shame Matilda never appeared in Gerardt's one-pagers featuring young Donald and Della; if there's any character that should appear, it's her (since the parents apparently aren't allowed to). Is the series over? Was Gerardts ever asked about Matilda?

I agree that Ludwig was not likely to be married.  If he had been, why didn't we ever see his wife?  He was not a very "good catch", in any case, being absent minded and a highly egotistical, arrogant "know-it-all".  If he were to want a wife, he'd probably want he to be more of a cook, maid and secretary, and organiser of his life and calendar.  He'd also want her to think he was God's gift to Mankind (greatest, most intelligent, most creative, etc. person).  So, not very many women would want to be married to someone like that.  Western's writers introduced him to Disney Comics readers in 1961, as having those characteristics.

[Hector]

Maybe he and Matilda divorced?

[Matilda]

I agree with Baar Baar Jinx that Quackmore could support Hortense and the twins. If you want to take American history (too) seriously, I suppose you'd have to figure out how everyone survived the Depression, right? But in my headcanon, Quackmore found employment until he and Hortense died when Donald and Della were in their late teens or early 20's. I'm not sure whether Rosa meant the reference to past spankings in "A Letter from Home" to indicate that Matilda actually raised the kids for a while after their parents' death. Has Rosa said anything about that in interviews or online? I prefer to think that Donald and Della made it to (or nearly to) adulthood with their parents still alive. I think Donald and Della probably spent time on Grandma's farm during vacations, but never lived with her. Donald may have been alone at Grandma's some summers while Della was at Chickadees camp, since Donald washed out of the Junior Woodchucks and the Little Booneheads were too disorganized to run a summer camp.

As for how Matilda made a living...there weren't that many options for middle-class women in mid-20th-century USA. Teacher, secretary, nurse, that's what they told me in the early 1960's! Maybe she wrote (under a pen name) popular mysteries set in the places she had traveled to with Scrooge and Hortense. Or she got an advanced degree in ethics and wrote essays, newspaper columns and books about business ethics. Also under a pen name--if she wrote about business ethics as "Matilda McDuck," her relationship to Scrooge would dominate everyone's perception of her. The only job I can think of that would have let her travel, if she had come to enjoy traveling, would be that of a journalist. That would have been more possible for a single woman than for a married one, in those decades. One question with Matilda, of course, is when she moved back to Scotland.

[sirtao]

IIRC Donald's parents are at a Opera House in a Fantomius story, so they must be reasonably well-to-do

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 28, 2017 0:18:57 GMT sirtao said:

IIRC Donald's parents are at a Opera House in a Fantomius story, so they must be reasonably well-to-do

Not necessarily. I'm sure you could find examples of Donald & Daisy going to the opera if you did a little digging.

For what it's worth, this pre-Rosa appearance of Donald's parents (where Quackmore is surprisingly similar to his Rosa self in design) states that they were "not rich, but still fun-loving".



On the Scrooge McDuck Wiki, I stated that it's quite plausible the "not so wealthy" part came from Scrooge's low pay to all employees, including a chartered accountant.

[sirtao]

Donald has never been depicted as "poor". He's relatively well-to-do, in the lowest range of "small bourgeois" but just above "proletarian" he can have some luxuries once in a while.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jul 28, 2017 17:45:38 GMT sirtao said:

Donald has never been depicted as "poor". He's relatively well-to-do, in the lowest range of "small bourgeois" but just above "proletarian" he can have some luxuries once in a while.

On a chartered accountant's salary, Quackmore probably made a decent living and had reasonable savings, so upon the death of his parents, Donald must have inherited a certain amount. Depending on when/if Della died, that inheritance would go up. Donald himself has had trouble staying employed, but I guess he has that inheritance to fall back on (though it's not hard to see him squandering a good amount of it unless it's protected somehow). 

Matilda said:

One question with Matilda, of course, is when she moved back to Scotland.

She doesn't appear in the flashback scene of "Sign of the Triple Distelfink", does she? Of course, that doesn't prove anything (it seems like that was more of a Duck family reunion, and Matilda has no real connection to the Ducks beyond Hortense; or perhaps she was sick or something) but one could posit that she'd either moved back to Scotland by then or started her career in journalism and was already traveling. She may have been living in Scotland for decades before becoming caretaker of Castle McDuck. It'd be nice to hear what Rosa's thoughts are on the history of the McDuck sisters (considering he basically created this whole scenario).

[drakeborough]

Jul 27, 2017 2:15:57 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I expect [Matilda] hung around Hortense and Quackmore, but whether she lived with them, I don't know

Personally, I like to think that she mantained some independence, i.e. not depending economically from them and living in a separate house, even though I imagine she stayed in close contact with them.

Jul 27, 2017 14:21:03 GMT Orora said:

Wasn't Matilda supposed to be married to Ludwig Van Drake?

Well, it's better if such a discussion continues in the thread about the character, which has returned active these days.

Jul 27, 2017 15:03:12 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

It's a shame Matilda never appeared in Gerardt's one-pagers featuring young Donald and Della; if there's any character that should appear, it's her (since the parents apparently aren't allowed to). Is the series over? Was Gerardts ever asked about Matilda?

The series is still continuing, with a new one-pager coming out every week.

Jul 28, 2017 0:11:45 GMT Matilda said:

I'm not sure whether Rosa meant the reference to past spankings in "A Letter from Home" to indicate that Matilda actually raised the kids for a while after their parents' death.

I don't think so, though we may guess that Hortense would have gotten that line had the editor not prevented her use in the story.

Jul 28, 2017 0:18:57 GMT sirtao said:

IIRC Donald's parents are at a Opera House in a Fantomius story, so they must be reasonably well-to-do

From what I remember, Quackmore, Hortense and Matilda were in a theater in which the director had annuncied he would show "the eight wonder of the world", which turned out to be an elephant.

Jul 28, 2017 6:59:21 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

For what it's worth, this pre-Rosa appearance of Donald's parents (where Quackmore is surprisingly similar to his Rosa self in design) states that they were "not rich, but still fun-loving".

To me, he doesn't look so similar to Quackmore.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 28, 2017 18:17:33 GMT drakeborough said:

Jul 28, 2017 6:59:21 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

For what it's worth, this pre-Rosa appearance of Donald's parents (where Quackmore is surprisingly similar to his Rosa self in design) states that they were "not rich, but still fun-loving".

To me, he doesn't look so similar to Quackmore.

Not very much, but… that weird mustache-like haircut. Come on.