shootingstar
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2022
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- German
- Home Country
- Germany
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- Germany
(Loudon musing, having missed to invite his father to Paris)
. . . I had never encouraged him to come. I was proud of him, proud of his handsome looks, of his kind gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others were happy, proud, tooo - meanly proud, if you like - of his great wealth and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art,; I told myself, I had even partly believed, he did not want to come, I had been, and still am, convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short, I had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one iota of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation. . .
(R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrecker, Chapter IV, In Which I Experience Extremes Of Fortune)
Please, what do you take was to be to mean in this context? Does it express future (in the past) or deduction and conclusion or anything else? Be to has so many meanings, and it seems to be backshift involved because of the reported speech.
. . . I had never encouraged him to come. I was proud of him, proud of his handsome looks, of his kind gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others were happy, proud, tooo - meanly proud, if you like - of his great wealth and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art,; I told myself, I had even partly believed, he did not want to come, I had been, and still am, convinced that he was sure to be unhappy out of Muskegon; in short, I had a thousand reasons, good and bad, not all of which could alter one iota of the fact that I knew he only waited for my invitation. . .
(R. L. Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, The Wrecker, Chapter IV, In Which I Experience Extremes Of Fortune)
Please, what do you take was to be to mean in this context? Does it express future (in the past) or deduction and conclusion or anything else? Be to has so many meanings, and it seems to be backshift involved because of the reported speech.
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