Where do the Baudelaires stay between books?

[Marlowe]

So each time after Olaf is exposed and the Baudelaires' guardian gives them up/dies/etc.... where exactly do the children go to stay? They'd be basically homeless after each of the first six books, so where do they reside as they wait during however much time it takes for Mr. Poe to find another guardian? I tried to think if it was possible for them to have lingered around in each setting for a bit longer until they hear from Mr. Poe again (like hiding out in the Orphan Shack, loitering around Paltryville) but it just doesn't work out. The most plausible answer would be for them to just go back to the Poe household and put up with Edgar & Albert. Or are there any other possibilities I'm missing?

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I really believe that they stay with Poe, and I believe that they stay for just a few days.

[Hermes]

I think the genral consensus is that they are with Mr Poe between books. But someo ne a while ago pointed out that many of eh books contain references to a full moon, which implies that they happen at intervals of about a month.

[Dante]

I am not especially certain that that detail about the full moon is correct, though with the first six books generally including a kind of settling-in period of unspecified length with each guardian, it wouldn't necessarily be significant even if true. But nevertheless, so far as the question posed goes, it's generally agreed that the Baudelaires are staying in Mr. Poe's house again; which also accounts for why it's never mentioned, for that would simply be to go over old ground. We know that Mr. Poe has sometimes had great difficulty finding homes for the Baudelaires, though, so it is not unlikely that some of those stays might have been quite extended. The idea of them having to stay on a little longer at whatever home they are leaving or being rejected from is interesting, but largely untenable; TBB even concludes with Mr. Poe telling the Baudelaires, "Tonight you will stay with me in my home, and tomorrow I shall go to the bank and figure out what to do with you." (TBB, p. 160) Which rather answers the question, if not very interestingly.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Doesn't that line indicate that they spent just one day there, between TBB and TRR? Or at least Poe wanted it to be just one day.

I found a reference to Full Moon in TRR, and an almost full moon in TWW. (Chapters 13 and 10 respectively).

If it is really the day of the full moon, between 22 and 27 days passed between the day of the full moon of a chapter and the day of "almost full moon" in the next book.

[gothicarchiesfan]

The timeline of the series is interesting because while the second half clearly takes place in just a few weeks, the first half could plausibly take place over a year or so.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I wouldn't say "Over a year" but it really has been a long time. But we know it lasted less than a year because of the birthdays if Klaus and Violet. Klaus started at 12 years old and turned 13 on TVV, and Violet started at 14 years old and turned 15 on TGG.

Jun 18, 2020 15:03:37 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

Doesn't that line indicate that they spent just one day there, between TBB and TRR? Or at least Poe wanted it to be just one day.

I found a reference to Full Moon in TRR, and an almost full moon in TWW. (Chapters 13 and 10 respectively).

If it is really the day of the full moon, between 22 and 27 days passed between the day of the full moon of a chapter and the day of "almost full moon" in the next book.

Despite that, I wouldn't take it too seriously. Now that I'm rereading and making a fanfic of a work that I created about 10 years ago, I even managed to calculate the exact day of the year when a certain event in history happened according to the phases of the moon that I quote, and season (and the hemisphere in which the story takes place). But I'm pretty sure it didn't cross my mind when I originally wrote it. I just wanted natural lighting good enough for the scene I was imagining. I'm not Daniel Handler, but I've read enough of ASOUE to know that he didn't want to emphasize calendars in the first part of the series.

[Hermes]

I certainly don't mean to imply that the author planned for the first half of the series to take six months: I'm sure if asked how much time it took he would just have said 'who knows?'. And in the second half, where we actually are able to work out how many days it took, it's not clear this represents the author's considered intention, since in unguarded moments he says things which suggest a longer time ('in the last few months Sunny had learned...' and 'perhaps our parents can't find us because we've been hiding and disguising ourselves for so long'). But if we are attempting a reconstuction of what 'really' happened, I think this is a plausible theory.

In any case, as Jean Lucio says, we know it can't be more than a year because of the birthdays.

The line from Mr Poe about 'tonight' needs only mean that he intended to keep them for one night; presumably finding a plae for them was, even at this point, harder than he expected. (In the books there's no suggestion their parents wanted them to be with Monty: and Monty is a fairly remote relative, who might well take some time to find.)

In the show, as far as I can see, things happen much more quickly, since we know where they are at every moment.

EDIT: There is a full moon in TMM, page 81. So the pattern lasts three books at least. I can't find one in TAA, but there the pattern is broken anyway, since they are at Prufrock Prep for a half-semester (and while one can never be sure of such things in Snicketland, I have never seen a good reason why that should not mean what it seems to mean).

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

It is interesting to think that Mr. Poe spent more time with the children than with any other tutor. I don't think we can count Nero as really a tutor ... After all, he himself denied having the power to put children in a decent room because they didn't have a tutor. Could Poe declare that he was the tutor himself if he wanted to?

[gothicarchiesfan]

Jun 19, 2020 12:51:48 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

It is interesting to think that Mr. Poe spent more time with the children than with any other tutor. I don't think we can count Nero as really a tutor ... After all, he himself denied having the power to put children in a decent room because they didn't have a tutor. Could Poe declare that he was the tutor himself if he wanted to?

I suppose he could have done but the question is, would he want to? 

[Marlowe]

Jun 19, 2020 12:51:48 GMT -5 Optimism is my Phil-osophy said:

It is interesting to think that Mr. Poe spent more time with the children than with any other tutor. I don't think we can count Nero as really a tutor ... After all, he himself denied having the power to put children in a decent room because they didn't have a tutor. Could Poe declare that he was the tutor himself if he wanted to?

You mean as a guardian? I don't think it's impossible that Poe intended to officially take them in at the end of TGG.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Thanks! Guardian! In Portuguese it was translate "Tutor"

[Hermes]

I think their parents will did say they had to be raised by a relative, didn't it (though the 'closest relative' thing is an invention of the movie)? So Poe would not have been able to become their guardian while relatives were available - and at that point, when Fagin, the last available relative, refused them, they wanted to go to VFDevotees.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Jun 19, 2020 16:45:44 GMT -5 Hermes said:

I think their parents will did say they had to be raised by a relative, didn't it (though the 'closest relative' thing is an invention of the movie)? So Poe would not have been able to become their guardian while relatives were available - and at that point, when Fagin, the last available relative, refused them, they wanted to go to VFDevotees.

Yes .. well remembered. But how were they stopped in the hands of Sir? I do not remember the degree of kinship. And Jerome? What is the degree of kinship of him with Baudelaire?

[Hermes]

We are never told: but that is not to say they weren't related. If Fagin is a nineteenth cousin, they may have been fifteenth cousins or the like.