Another passage which confuses me.....

Question

'Mrs Trail (the priest's wife) and the young ladies (his daughters) would as soon have missed going to church as to one of his Lordship's parties.'

I don't understand this sentence.

Thank you for giving up your time.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

They would have been equally eager to miss going to church as to miss one of his lordship's parties.

Not knowing the context (i.e., whether they liked to go to church or not), I can only guess that it means they would have not wanted to miss church, and therefore they would not have wanted to miss one of the parties either. In other words, I believe the amount of eagerness is "none at all". That is, they would have been equally reluctant to miss going to church as to miss one of his lordship's parties.

"would as soon have" is often used to indicate comparison with something less desirable.

I would as soon have slapped him in the face as looked at him.

MrPedantic · Answer

There seems to be some grammatical confusion in this sentence:

1. 'Mrs Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missed going to church as to one of his Lordship's parties.'

This naturally implies (by the position of 'as soon', in conjunction with the 2nd 'to'):

2. 'Mrs Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missed going-to-church as [have gone] to one of his Lordship's parties.'

But in fact the sense required is:

3. 'Mrs Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missed going-to-church as [have missed going]-to-one-of-his-Lordship's-parties.'

Hence the oddity. In effect, the second 'to' has to do too much work.

Perhaps Thackeray meant to write:

4. 'Mrs Trail and the young ladies would have as soon missed going to church as one of his Lordship's parties.'

MrP

Another passage which confuses me.....

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