Dora writes that she would prefer John and Kate to attend a "... simpler school than Dartington, possibly in Switzerland." She thinks of Dartington as a snobbish school and fears it will produce fascists and "bright young people".

"If I close here, it will be less for financial reasons than because I am tired of casting my pearls before the bourgeois swine. All the same, we should have done very well indeed these last 18 months if you hadn't severed your connection with the school [i.e. Beacon Hill School]."