Neville recalls that in August 1941 - after an idle imaginal act months earlier, in February, in which he fell asleep feeling himself present in his mother's home in Barbados during a snowbound lecture night - he received a cable, in late August, saying his mother was desperately ill. He notes that with England at war there was little transportation and little further word, so the cable itself was almost all the news he had.
Date (happened)
c. August 1941
conclusion
Why
dc1-agreement-20261004, pm-actor-551 (PM 8702)
Reasoning
All 4 claims agree on c. 1941-08: passage:542974; hist_event:5960; estimated (no source recorded); passage:554110.
c. August 1941
stated · preferred
Reasoning
This is not computed from the telling date - he directly narrates the year (opening the story 'Back in 1941') and names the month himself ('late August') as part of one continuous first-person account of the February snowstorm and its seven-month aftermath. The precision is only to 'late August' (circa), but confidence in what he actually said is certain.
c. 1941
estimated · possible
Source
corpus anchor: Neville's mother dies, 1941 (hist_event 5960, certain)
Why
Passage itself never states the year for this anecdote; inferred from the mother's-death anchor, not read off the source.
Reasoning
The witness passage narrates receiving a cable about his mother's illness and sailing for Barbados, but only gives relative weekdays ('Thursday...Friday night'), no year. The most defensible year is the one already anchored for his mother's death (1941); an illness cable prompting an urgent voyage plausibly falls in the same year as the death it precedes, so this is circa/possible rather than exact.
c. August 1941
estimated · probable
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 008): its source hist_event 7751 does not exist on www: left off
Reasoning
The frame's Barbados-1941 stay item (7751, 'receives cable that his mother is desperately ill', c. 1941-08) appears to describe the same cable and voyage; adopting its month precision over the bare year-level circa-1941 estimate.
August 1941
stated
Reasoning
Passage 554110, continuing from 554109's 'Back in 1941, when my Mother died,' has Neville say 'one day in the month of August I received a letter from my brother' telling him their mother was dying -- an explicit month and year, in lecture 2148, 'He Is Dreaming Now'.
Told / reported
25 October 1971
estimated · probable
Why
d0 (1957, catalog #67) is superseded here by d1 (1971-10-25) on both source-preference and confidence grounds.
Reasoning
Lecture nid 1752 has two delivery claims that disagree. d0 is a doubtful, legacy_unreviewed catalogue claim (year-only 1957, 'Neville lectures catalog #67') - inside the exact #49-#76 consecutive catalogue block this lane has been warned runs error in one direction. d1 (1971-10-25, probable) comes from the transcript's own byline dateline. Per lane instruction, a transcript-sourced claim is preferred over a catalogue-sourced one even when the catalogue claim is stronger-labelled; here the plain confidence tiebreak (probable beats doubtful) already agrees, so both rules converge on d1 without needing to apply the override silently.
4 January 1966
estimated
Reasoning
This anecdote is recounted in 'Your Future', whose delivery claim is 1966-01-04 at certain confidence, so the telling date is that lecture date, distinct from the happening date of the voyage itself.