The Clan McEoch of Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts had Winter Holiday dedicated to them. They wrote to Arthur Ransome in September 1932 with what he called "a first-rate letter"; The letter has not survived but there is a bundle of photos in Leeds labelled "McEnoch"; some of a snowy New England winter by a lake, and other photos of Cape Horn Buenos Aires and the Persian Gulf. Christina Hardyment wrote that Ransome thought he owed them something, and perhaps the germ of Dorothea’s character lay in the author of the McEoch letter (CFT p58).