II Novels (continued 3)

Job assented.

“Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London. Wellnigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o’ them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were th’ Queen’s drawing-room, they said, and th’ carriages went bowling along towards her house, some wi’ dressed-up gentlemen like circus folk in ’em, and rucks o’ ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o’ th’ gentlemen as couldn’t get inside hung on behind, wi’ nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folks as might splash their silk stockings. I wonder why they didn’t hire a cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they wished to keep wi’ their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi’ wigs like th’ oud-fashioned parsons’. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited. Th’ horses were too fat to move quick; they never known want o’ food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us back when we tried to cross. One or two of ’em struck wi’ their sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put their spy-glasses in their eye, and left ’em sticking there like mountebanks. One o’ th’ police struck me. ‘Whatten business have you to do that?’ said I.

“‘You’re frightening them horses,’ says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can’t say their a’s and i’s properly), ‘and it’s our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her Majesty’s drawing-room.’

“‘And why are we to be molested,’ asked I, ‘going decently about our business, which is life and death to us, and many a little one clemming at home in Lancashire? Which business is of most consequence i’ the sight o’ God, think yo, our’n or them grand ladies and gentlemen as yo think so much on?’

“But I might as well ha’ held my peace, for he only laughed.”

John ceased. After waiting a little, to see if he would go on himself, Job said:

“Well, but that’s not a’ your story, man. Tell us what happened when you got to th’ Parliament House.”

After a little pause, John answered:

“If you please, neighbour, I’d rather say nought about that. It’s not to be forgotten or forgiven either, by me or many another; but I canna tell of our down-casting just as a piece of London news. As long as I live, our rejection of that day will abide in my heart; and as long as I live I shall curse them as so cruelly refused to hear us; but I’ll not speak of it no more.”

Major Jenkyns Visits Cranford

From Cranford, 1853

Major Jenkyns wrote to propose that he and his wife should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to Scotland—at the inn, if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house; in which case they should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day. Of course, it must suit her, as she said; for all Cranford knew that she had her sister’s bedroom at liberty; but I am sure she wished the Major had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins out and out.

“Oh! how must I manage?” asked she helplessly. “If Deborah had been alive, she would have known what to do with the gentleman-visitor. Must I put razors in his dressing-room? Dear! dear! and I’ve got none. Deborah would have had them. And slippers and coat-brushes?” I suggested that probably he would bring all these things with him. “And after dinner, how am I to know when to get up, and leave him to his wine? Deborah would have done it so well; she would have been quite in her element. Will he want coffee, do you think?” I undertook the management of the coffee, and told her I would instruct Martha in the art of waiting, in which it must be owned she was terribly deficient; and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs. Jenkyns would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town. But she was sadly flustered. I made her empty her decanters, and bring up two fresh bottles of wine. I wished I could have prevented her being present at my instructions to Martha; for she frequently cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl’s mind, as she stood open-mouthed, listening to us both.

“Hand the vegetables round,” said I (foolishly, I see now—for it was aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity): and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, “Take the vegetables round to people, and let them help themselves.”

“And mind you go first to the ladies,” put in Miss Matilda. “Always go to the ladies before gentlemen, when you are waiting.”

“I’ll do it as you tell me, ma’am,” said Martha; “but I like lads best.”

We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha’s; yet I don’t think she meant any harm; and, on the whole, she attended very well to our directions, except that she “nudged” the Major, when he did not help himself as soon as she expected, to the potatoes, while she was handing them round.

The Major and his wife were quiet, unpretending people enough when they did come; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant for the Major, and a steady elderly maid for his wife; but they slept at the inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to their master’s and mistress’s comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended her staring at the East Indian’s white turban and brown complexion, and I saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as he waited at dinner. Indeed, she asked me, when they were gone, if he did not remind me of Blue Beard? On the whole, the visit was most satisfactory, and is a subject of conversation even now with Miss Matilda; at the time, it greatly excited Cranford, and even stirred up the apathetic and Honourable Mrs. Jamieson to some expression of interest, when I went to call and thank her for the kind answers she had vouchsafed to Miss Matilda’s inquiries as to the arrangement of a gentleman’s dressing-room—answers which I must confess she had given in the wearied manner of the Scandinavian prophetess:

Mrs. Gibson Visits Lady Cumnor

From Wives and Daughters, 1866

It has been suggested that a statue might be erected in Hollingford [Knutsford] to Mrs. Gibson if all the people who have been amused by her were to subscribe.

Then, finally, Mrs. Gibson was to go to the Towers next day to lunch; Lady Cumnor had written a little note by Lady Harriet to beg her to come; if Mrs. Gibson could manage to find her way to the Towers, one of the carriages in use should bring her back to her own home in the course of the afternoon.

“The dear countess!” said Mrs Gibson, with soft affection. It was a soliloquy, uttered after a minute’s pause, at the end of all this information.

And all the rest of that day her conversation had an aristocratic perfume hanging about it. One of the few books she had brought with her into Mr. Gibson’s house was bound in pink, and in it she studied, “Menteith, Duke of, Adolphus George,” etc. etc., till she was fully up in all the duchess’s connections, and probable interests. Mr. Gibson made his mouth up into a droll whistle when he came home at night, and found himself in a Towers’ atmosphere. Molly saw the shade of annoyance through the drollery; she was beginning to see it oftener than she liked, not that she reasoned upon it, or that she consciously traced the annoyance to its source; but she could not help feeling uneasy in herself when she knew that her father was in the least put out.

Of course a fly was ordered for Mrs. Gibson. In the early afternoon she came home. If she had been disappointed in her interview with the countess she never told her woe, nor revealed the fact that when she first arrived at the Towers she had to wait for an hour in Lady Cumnor’s morning-room, uncheered by any companionship save that of her old friend, Mrs. Bradley, till suddenly, Lady Harriet coming in, she exclaimed, “Why, Clare! you dear woman! are you here all alone? Does mamma know?” And, after a little more affectionate conversation, she rushed to find her ladyship, who was perfectly aware of the fact, but too deep in giving the duchess the benefit of her wisdom and experience in trousseaux to be at all mindful of the length of time Mrs. Gibson had been passing in patient solitude. At lunch Mrs. Gibson was secretly hurt by my lord’s supposing it to be her dinner, and calling out his urgent hospitality from the very bottom of the table, giving as a reason for it, that she must remember it was her dinner. In vain she piped out in her soft, high voice, “Oh, my lord! I never eat meat in the middle of the day; I can hardly eat anything at lunch.” Her voice was lost, and the duchess might go away with the idea that the Hollingford doctor’s wife dined early; that is to say, if her grace ever condescended to have any idea on the subject at all; which presupposes that she was cognisant of the fact of there being a doctor at Hollingford, and that he had a wife, and that his wife was the pretty, faded, elegant-looking woman, sending away her plate of untasted food—food which she longed to eat, for she was really desperately hungry after her drive and her solitude.

And then after lunch there did come a tête-à-tête with Lady Cumnor, which was conducted after this wise:

“Well, Clare! I am really glad to see you. I once thought I should never get back to the Towers, but here I am! There was such a clever man at Bath—a Doctor Snape—he cured me at last—quite set me up. I really think if ever I am ill again I shall send for him: it is such a thing to find a really clever medical man. Oh, by the way, I always forget you’ve married Mr. Gibson—of course he is very clever, and all that. (The carriage to the door in ten minutes, Brown, and desire Bradley to bring my things down.) What was I asking you? Oh! how do you get on with the step-daughter? She seemed to me to be a young lady with a pretty stubborn will of her own. I put a letter for the post down somewhere, and I cannot think where; do help me look for it, there’s a good woman. Just run to my room, and see if Brown can find it, for it is of great consequence.”

Off went Mrs. Gibson, rather unwillingly; for there were several things she wanted to speak about, and she had not heard half of what she had expected to learn of the family gossip. But all chance was gone; for, when she came back from her fruitless errand, Lady Cumnor and the duchess were in full talk, the former with the missing letter in her hand, which she was using something like a baton to enforce her words.

“Every iota from Paris! Every i-o-ta!”

Lady Cumnor was too much of a lady not to apologise for useless trouble, but they were nearly the last words she spoke to Mrs Gibson, for she had to go out and drive with the duchess; and the brougham to take “Clare” (as she persisted in calling Mrs. Gibson) back to Hollingford followed the carriage to the door. Lady Harriet came away from her entourage of young men and young ladies, all prepared for some walking expedition, to wish Mrs. Gibson good-bye.

“We shall see you at the ball,” she said. “You’ll be there with your two girls, of course, and I must have a little talk with you there; with all these visitors in the house, it has been impossible to see anything of you to-day, you know.”

Such were the facts, but rose-colour was the medium through which they were seen by Mrs. Gibson’s household listeners on her return.

“There are many visitors staying at the Towers—oh, yes! a great many: the duchess and Lady Alice, and Mr. and Mrs. Grey, and Lord Albert Monson and his sister, and my old friend Captain James of the Blues—many more, in fact. But of course I preferred going to Lady Cumnor’s own room, where I could see her and Lady Harriet quietly, and where we were not disturbed by the bustle downstairs. Of course we were obliged to go down to lunch, and then I saw my old friends, and renewed pleasant acquaintances. But I really could hardly get any connected conversation with anyone. Lord Cumnor seemed so delighted to see me there again: though there were six or seven between us, he was always interrupting with some civil or kind speech especially addressed to me. And after lunch Lady Cumnor asked me all sorts of questions about my new life with as much interest as if I had been her daughter. To be sure, when the duchess came in we had to leave off, and talk about the trousseau she is preparing for Lady Alice. Lady Harriet made such a point of our meeting at the ball; she is such a good, affectionate creature, is Lady Harriet!”

This last was said in a tone of meditative appreciation.

Mrs. Gibson’s Little Dinner Party

From Wives and Daughters.

Mrs. Gibson intended the Hamleys to find this dinner pleasant; and they did. Mr. Gibson was fond of the two young men, both for their parents’ sake and their own, for he had known them since boyhood; and to those whom he liked Mr. Gibson could be remarkably agreeable. Mrs. Gibson really gave them a welcome—and cordiality in a hostess is a very becoming mantle for any other deficiencies there may be. Cynthia and Molly looked their best, which was all the duty Mrs. Gibson absolutely required of them, as she was willing enough to take her full share in the conversation. Osborne fell to her lot, of course, and for some time he and she prattled on with all the ease of manner and commonplaceness of meaning which go so far to make the “art of polite conversation.” Roger, who ought to have made himself agreeable to one or the other of the young ladies, was exceedingly interested in what Mr. Gibson was telling him of a paper on comparative osteology in some foreign journal of science, which Lord Hollingford was in the habit of forwarding to his friend the country surgeon. Yet every now and then while he listened he caught his attention wandering to the face of Cynthia, who was placed between his brother and Mr. Gibson. She was not particularly occupied with attending to anything that was going on; her eyelids were carelessly dropped, as she crumbled her bread on the tablecloth, and her beautiful long eyelashes were seen on the clear tint of her oval cheek. She was thinking of something else; Molly was trying to understand with all her might. Suddenly Cynthia looked up, and caught Roger’s gaze of intent admiration too fully for her to be unaware that he was staring at her. She coloured a little; but, after the first moment of rosy confusion at his evident admiration of her, she flew to the attack, diverting his confusion at thus being caught, to the defence of himself from her accusation.

“It is quite true!” she said to him. “I was not attending: you see I don’t know even the A B C of science. But, please, don’t look so severely at me, even if I am a dunce!”

“I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to look severely, I am sure,” replied he, not knowing well what to say.

“Cynthia is not a dunce either,” said Mrs. Gibson, afraid lest her daughter’s opinion of herself might be taken seriously. “But I have always observed that some people have a talent for one thing and some for another. Now Cynthia’s talents are not for science and the severer studies. Do you remember, love, what trouble I had to teach you the use of the globes?”

“Yes; and I don’t know longitude from latitude now; and I’m always puzzled as to which is perpendicular and which is horizontal.”

“Yet, I do assure you,” her mother continued, rather addressing herself to Osborne, “that her memory for poetry is prodigious. I have heard her repeat the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ from beginning to end.”

“It would be rather a bore to have to hear her, I think,” said Mr. Gibson, smiling at Cynthia, who gave him back one of her bright looks of mutual understanding.

“Ah, Mr. Gibson, I have found out before now that you have no soul for poetry; and Molly there is your own child. She reads such deep books—all about facts and figures: she’ll be quite a blue-stocking by and by.”

“Mamma,” said Molly, reddening, “you think it was a deep book because there were the shapes of the different cells of bees in it! but it was not at all deep. It was very interesting.”

“Never mind, Molly,” said Osborne. “I stand up for blue-stockings.”

“And I object to the distinction implied in what you say,” said Roger. “It was not deep, ergo, it was very interesting. Now, a book may be both deep and interesting.”

“Oh, if you are going to chop logic and use Latin words, I think it is time for us to leave the room,” said Mrs. Gibson.

“Don’t let us run away as if we were beaten, mamma,” said Cynthia. “Though it may be logic, I for one can understand what Mr. Roger Hamley said just now; and I read some of Molly’s books; and whether it was deep or not, I found it very interesting—more so than I should think the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ nowadays. I’ve displaced the Prisoner to make room for Johnnie Gilpin as my favourite poem.”

“How could you talk such nonsense, Cynthia!” said Mrs. Gibson, as the girls followed her upstairs. “You know you are not a dunce. It is all very well not to be a blue-stocking, because gentle-people don’t like that kind of woman; but running yourself down, and contradicting all I said about your liking for Byron, and poets and poetry—to Osborne Hamley of all men, too!”

Mrs. Gibson spoke quite crossly for her.

“But, mamma,” Cynthia replied, “I am either a dunce, or I am not. If I am, I did right to own it; if I am not, he’s a dunce if he doesn’t find out I was joking.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gibson, a little puzzled by this speech, and wanting some elucidatory addition.

“Only that if he’s a dunce his opinion of me is worth nothing. So, any way, it doesn’t signify.”

“You really bewilder me with your nonsense, child. Molly is worth twenty of you.”

“I quite agree with you, mamma,” said Cynthia, turning round to take Molly’s hand.

“Yes; but she ought not to be,” said Mrs. Gibson, still irritated. “Think of the advantages you’ve had.”

“I’m afraid I had rather be a dunce than a blue-stocking,” said Molly; for the term had a little annoyed her, and the annoyance was rankling still.

“Hush; here they are coming: I hear the dining-room door! I never meant you were a blue-stocking, dear, so don’t look vexed—Cynthia, my love, where did you get those lovely flowers—anemones, are they? They suit your complexion so exactly.”

“Come, Molly, don’t look so grave and thoughtful,” exclaimed Cynthia. “Don’t you perceive mamma wants us to be smiling and amiable?”

A Visit to an Old Bachelor

From Cranford, 1853

A few days after, a note came from Mr. Holbrook, asking us—impartially asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house—a long June day—for it was June now. He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which could be put up at his house.

I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day’s good hard talking to get over; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote and dispatched an acceptance in her name—fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with.

The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her; and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday.

She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows, as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields; and there was an old-fashioned garden, where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and gillyflowers; there was no drive up to the door: we got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path.

“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid of earache, and had only her cap on.

“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness in her voice, and almost in a whisper; for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us welcome; and while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old gentleman; who took me all round the place, and showed me his six-and-twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakspeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure, he called Byron “my Lord Byrron,” and pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English sound of the letters—“As Goëthe says, ‘Ye ever-verdant palaces,’” etc. Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and beauty.

When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace, and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour, by removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used; the real cooking place being at some distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the counting-house, when he paid his labourers their weekly wages, at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room—looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows—was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half-ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds, poetry and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical, or established favourites.

“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet somehow one can’t help it.”

“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matty, sotto voce.

“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great black leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlour; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”

It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty, or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat there all the rest of the day.

We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began:

“I don’t know whether you like new-fangled ways.”

“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Matty.

“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper will have these in her new fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father’s rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef’; and always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy.”

When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay; we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as bright as silver; but what were we to do? Miss Matty picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted; for they would drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shovelled up by his large round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing; and, if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas went away almost untouched.

After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty, and requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Matty, who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe; and then we withdrew.

“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matty, softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!”

Marriage

From Cranford.

But when she was gone, Miss Pole began a long congratulation to Miss Matty that so far they had escaped marriage, which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree; indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she could not keep herself from being married; and in what Lady Glenmire had said about Mr. Hoggins’s robbery, we had a specimen of what people came to, if they gave way to such a weakness; evidently, Lady Glenmire would swallow anything, if she could believe the poor vamped-up story about a neck of mutton and a pussy, with which he had tried to impose on Miss Pole, only she had always been on her guard against believing too much of what men said.

We were thankful, as Miss Pole desired us to be, that we had never been married; but I think, of the two, we were even more thankful that the robbers had left Cranford; at least I judge so from a speech of Miss Matty’s that evening, as we sat over the fire, in which she evidently looked upon a husband as a great protector against thieves, burglars, and ghosts; and said, that she did not think that she should dare to be always warning young people against matrimony, as Miss Pole did continually;—to be sure, marriage was a risk, as she saw now she had had some experience; but she remembered the time when she had looked forward to being married as much as anyone.

“Not to any particular person, my dear,” said she, hastily checking herself up as if she were afraid of having admitted too much; “only the old story, you know, of ladies always saying, ‘When I marry,’ and gentlemen, ‘If I marry.’” It was a joke spoken in rather a sad tone, and I doubt if either of us smiled; but I could not see Miss Matty’s face by the flickering firelight. In a little while she continued:

“But after all I have not told you the truth. It is so long ago, and no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time, unless, indeed, my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life; for even if I did meet anyone who wished to marry me now (and, as Miss Pole says, one is never too safe), I could not take him—I hope he would not take it too much to heart, but I could not take him—or any one but the person I once thought I should be married to, and he is dead and gone, and he never knew how it all came about that I said ‘No,’ when I had thought many and many a time——Well, it’s no matter what I thought. God ordains it all, and I am very happy, my dear. No one has such kind friends as I,” continued she, taking my hand and holding it in hers.

If I had never known of Mr. Holbrook, I could have said something in this pause, but as I had, I could not think of anything that would come in naturally, and so we both kept silence for a little time.

“My father once made us,” she began, “keep a diary, in two columns; on one side we were to put down in the morning what we thought would be the course and events of the coming day, and at night we were to put down on the other side what really had happened. It would be to some people rather a sad way of telling their lives”—(a tear dropped upon my hand at these words)—“I don’t mean that mine has been sad, only so very different to what I expected. I remember, one winter’s evening, sitting over our bedroom fire with Deborah—I remember it as if it were yesterday—and we were planning our future lives—both of us were planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the neighbouring cottages—but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and grave—which I did a year or two after this time—the little things drew back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I see a mother with a baby in her arms. Nay, my dear”—(and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from a fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears—gazing intently on some vision of what might have been)—“do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don’t think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my neck. Only last night—perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of this ball for Phoebe—my little darling came in my dream, and put up her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers before going to bed. But all this is nonsense, dear! only don’t be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly—better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”

A Love Affair of Long Ago

From Cranford.

And now I come to the love affair.

It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had offered to Miss Matty long ago. Now, this cousin lived four or five miles from Cranford on his own estate; but his property was not large enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman; or rather, with something of the “pride which apes humility,” he had refused to push himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the squires. He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq.: he even sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress at Cranford that his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman.

He despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in conversation; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added, that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than anyone she had ever heard, except the late Rector.

“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.

“Oh, I don’t know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the Rector, and Miss Jenkyns.”

“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.

“No; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank. You know she was the Rector’s daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley: Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”

“Poor Miss Matty!” said I.

“Nay, now, I don’t know anything more than that he offered and was refused. Miss Matty might not like him—and Miss Jenkyns might never have said a word—it is only a guess of mine.”

“Has she never seen him since?”

“No, I think not. You see, Woodley, Cousin Thomas’s house, lies half-way between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his market town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don’t think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I was walking with Miss Matty, in High Street; and suddenly she darted from me, and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after, I was startled by meeting Cousin Thomas.”

“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.

“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up my castle, as if by gunpowder, into small fragments.

Very soon after—at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda—I had the opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with his former love, after thirty or forty years’ separation. I was helping to decide whether any of the new assortment of coloured silks which they had just received at the shop, would do to match a grey and black mousseline-de-laine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves. I had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I watched him rather attentively, while Miss Matty listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the shop-boy’s question, “What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day, Sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down; and instantly I guessed who it was. She had made some enquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman.

“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarsenet two-and-twopence the yard”; and Mr. Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.

“Matty—Miss Matilda—Miss Jenkyns! God bless my soul! I should not have known you. How are you? how are you?” He kept shaking her hand in a way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often, as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental romance which I might be inclined to build, was quite done away with by his manner.

However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and then waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with “Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us. I am happy to say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holbrook was evidently full with honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again; he touched on the changes that had taken place; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns as “Your poor sister! Well, well! we have all our faults”; and bade us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matty again. She went straight to her room; and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying.

The Cat and the Lace

From Cranford.

Mrs. Forrester related a curious little fact to Lady Glenmire—an anecdote known to the circle of her intimate friends, but of which even Mrs. Jamieson was not aware. It related to some fine old lace, the sole relic of better days, which Lady Glenmire was admiring on Mrs. Forrester’s collar.

“Yes,” said that lady, “such lace cannot be got now for either love or money; made by the nuns abroad they tell me. They say that they can’t make it now, even there. But perhaps they can now they’ve passed the Catholic Emancipation Bill. I should not wonder. But, in the meantime, I treasure up my lace very much. I daren’t even trust the washing of it to my maid” (the little charity school-girl I have named before, but who sounded well as “my maid”). “I always wash it myself. And once it had a narrow escape. Of course, your ladyship knows that such lace must never be starched or ironed. Some people wash it in sugar and water; and some in coffee, to make it the right yellow colour; but I myself have a very good recipe for washing it in milk, which stiffens it enough, and gives it a very good creamy colour. Well, ma’am, I had tacked it together (and the beauty of this fine lace is, that when it is wet, it goes into a very little space), and put it to soak in milk, when, unfortunately, I left the room; on my return, I found pussy on the table, looking very like a thief, but gulping very uncomfortably, as if she was half-choked with something she wanted to swallow, and could not. And, would you believe it? At first, I pitied her, and said, ‘Poor pussy! poor pussy!’ till, all at once, I looked and saw the cup of milk empty—cleaned out! ‘You naughty cat!’ said I; and I believe I was provoked enough to give her a slap, which did no good, but only helped the lace down—just as one slaps a choking child on the back. I could have cried, I was so vexed; but I determined I would not give the lace up without a struggle for it. I hoped the lace might disagree with her at any rate; but it would have been too much for Job, if he had seen, as I did, that cat come in, quite placid and purring, not a quarter of an hour after, and almost expecting to be stroked. ‘No, pussy!’ said I; ‘if you have any conscience, you ought not to expect that!’ And then a thought struck me; and I rang the bell for my maid, and sent her to Mr. Hoggins, with my compliments, and would he be kind enough to lend me one of his top-boots for an hour? I did not think there was anything odd in the message; but Jenny said, the young men in the surgery laughed as if they would be ill, at my wanting a top boot. When it came, Jenny and I put pussy in, with her fore-feet straight down, so that they were fastened, and could not scratch, and we gave her a teaspoonful of currant-jelly, in which (your ladyship must excuse me) I had mixed some tartar emetic. I shall never forget how anxious I was for the next half hour. I took pussy to my own room, and spread a clean towel on the floor. I could have kissed her when she returned the lace to sight, very much as it had gone down. Jenny had boiling water ready, and we soaked it and soaked it, and spread it on a lavender bush in the sun, before I could touch it again, even to put it in milk. But now, your ladyship would never guess that it had been in pussy’s inside.”

Small Economies

From Cranford

I have often noticed that almost everyone has his own individual small economies—careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction—any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer’s day, because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book; of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well; and this little unnecessary waste of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money. Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in; the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article, was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole inside of a half sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides. I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if anyone cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is not new; one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago. I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend to conversation, because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down; and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused, suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at all) and eats up his butter. They think that this is not waste.

Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles. We had many devices to use as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours; she could do this in the dark, or by firelight; and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to “keep blind man’s holiday.” They were usually brought in with tea; but we only burnt one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening (but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two candles of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always. The candles took it in turns; and, whatever we might be talking about or doing, Miss Matty’s eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to jump up and extinguish it, and to light the other before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of the evening.

One night, I remember, this candle economy particularly annoyed me. I had been very much tired of my compulsory “blind man’s holiday,”—especially as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir the fire and run the risk of awakening her; so I could not even sit on the rug and scorch myself with sewing by fire-light, according to my usual custom. I fancied Miss Matty must be dreaming of her early life; for she spoke one or two words, in her uneasy sleep, bearing reference to persons who were dead long before. When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea, Miss Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange bewildered look around, as if we were not the people she expected to see about her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her usual smile.

Elegant Economy

From Cranford

I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face. We none of us spoke of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic. The Cranfordians had that kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty. When Mrs. Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world; and talked on about household forms and ceremonies, as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants’ hall, second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little charity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray upstairs, if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up; though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.

There were one or two consequences arising from this general but unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility, which were not amiss, and which might be introduced into many circles of society to their great improvement. For instance, the inhabitants of Cranford kept early hours, and clattered home in their pattens, under the guidance of a lantern-bearer, about nine o’clock at night; and the whole town was abed and asleep by half-past ten. Moreover, it was considered “vulgar” (a tremendous word in Cranford) to give anything expensive, in the way of eatable or drinkable, at the evening entertainments. Wafer bread-and-butter and sponge-biscuits were all that the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson gave; and she was sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practise such “elegant economy.”

“Elegant economy!” How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford! There, economy was always “elegant,” and money-spending always “vulgar and ostentatious”; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied. I never shall forget the dismay felt when a certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke about his being poor—not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being previously closed; but, in the public street! in a loud military voice! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house. The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connection with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor—why! then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and as common as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in the streets. It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite. We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished. If we walked to or from a party, it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing; not because sedan-chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of summer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate means.

Sally tells of her Sweethearts

From Ruth, 1853

Mrs. Gaskell was noted as a kind mistress, and her servants stayed with her for years; one established a record and was in Mrs. Gaskell’s service for over fifty years.

But Ruth said she would rather hear about Sally’s sweethearts, much to the disappointment of the latter, who considered the dinner by far the greatest achievement.

“Well, you see, I don’t know as I should call them sweethearts; for excepting John Rawson, who was shut up in the mad-house the next week, I never had what you may call a downright offer of marriage but once. But I had once; and so I may say I had a sweetheart. I was beginning to be afeared though, for one likes to be axed; that’s but civility; and I remember, after I had turned forty, and afore Jeremiah Dickson had spoken, I began to think John Rawson had perhaps not been so very mad, and that I’d done ill to lightly his offer, as a madman’s, if it was to be the only one I was ever to have; I don’t mean as I’d have had him, but I thought, if it was to come o’er again, I’d speak respectful of him to folk, and say it were only his way to go about on all fours, but that he was a sensible man in most things. However, I’d had my laugh, and so had others, at my crazy lover, and it was late now to set him up as a Solomon. However, I thought it would be no bad thing to be tried again; but I little thought the trial would come when it did. You see, Saturday night is a leisure night in counting-houses and such-like places, while it’s the busiest of all for servants. Well! it was a Saturday night, and I’d my baize apron on, and the tails of my bed-gown pinned together behind, down on my knees, pipeclaying the kitchen, when a knock comes to the back door. ‘Come in!’ says I; but it knocked again, as if it were too stately to open the door for itself; so I got up, rather cross, and opened the door; and there stood Jerry Dixon, Mr. Holt’s head clerk; only he was not head clerk then. So I stood, stopping up the door, fancying he wanted to speak to master; but he kind of pushed past me, and telling me summut about the weather (as if I could not see it for myself), he took a chair, and sat down by the oven. ‘Cool and easy!’ thought I; meaning hisself, not his place, which I knew must be pretty hot. Well! it seemed no use standing waiting for my gentleman to go; not that he had much to say either; but he kept twirling his hat round and round, and smoothing the nap on’t with the back of his hand. So at last I squatted down to my work, and thinks I, I shall be on my knees all ready if he puts up a prayer, for I knew he was a Methodee by bringing-up, and had only lately turned to master’s way of thinking; and them Methodees are terrible hands at unexpected prayers when one least looks for ’em. I can’t say I like their way of taking one by surprise, as it were; but then I’m a parish clerk’s daughter, and could never demean myself to dissenting fashions, always save and except Master Thurstan’s, bless him. However, I’d been caught once or twice unawares, so this time I thought I’d be up to it, and I moved a dry duster wherever I went, to kneel upon in case he began when I were in a wet place. By and by I thought, if the man would pray it would be a blessing, for it would prevent his sending his eyes after me wherever I went; for when they takes to praying they shuts their eyes, and quivers th’ lids in a queer kind o’ way—them Dissenters does. I can speak pretty plain to you, for you’re bred in the Church like mysel’, and must find it as out o’ the way as I do to be among dissenting folk. God forbid I should speak disrespectful of Master Thurstan and Miss Faith, though; I never think on them as Church or Dissenters, but just as Christians. But to come back to Jerry. First, I tried always to be cleaning at his back; but when he wheeled round, so as always to face me, I thought I’d try a different game. So, says I, ‘Master Dixon, I ax your pardon, but I must pipeclay under your chair. Will you please to move?’ Well, he moved; and by and by I was at him again with the same words; and at after that, again and again, till he were always moving about wi’ his chair behind him, like a snail as carries its house on its back. And the great gaupus never seed that I were pipeclaying the same places twice over. At last I got desperate cross, he were so in my way; so I made two big crosses on the tails of his brown coat; for you see, whenever he went, up or down, he drew out the tails of his coat from under him, and stuck them through the bars of the chair; and flesh and blood could not resist pipeclaying them for him; and a pretty brushing he’d have, I reckon, to get it off again. Well! at length he clears his throat uncommon loud; so I spreads my duster, and shuts my eyes all ready; but when nought comed of it, I opened my eyes a little bit to see what he were about. My word! if there he wasn’t down on his knees right facing me, staring as hard as he could. Well! I thought it would be hard work to stand that, if he made a long ado; so I shut my eyes again, and tried to think serious, as became what I fancied were coming; but, forgive me! but I thought why couldn’t the fellow go in and pray wi’ Master Thurstan, as had always a calm spirit ready for prayer, instead o’ me, who had my dresser to scour, let alone an apron to iron. At last he says, says he,’Sally! will you oblige me with your hand?’ So I thought it were, maybe, Methodee fashion to pray hand in hand; and I’ll not deny but I wished I’d washed it better after blackleading the kitchen fire. I thought I’d better tell him it were not so clean as I could wish, so says I, ‘Master Dixon, you shall have it, and welcome, if I may just go and wash ’em first.’ But, says he, ‘My dear Sally, dirty or clean it’s all the same to me, seeing I’m only speaking in a figuring way. What I’m asking on my bended knees is, that you’d please to be so kind as to be my wedded wife; week after next will suit me, if it’s agreeable to you!’ My word! I were up on my feet in an instant! It were odd now, weren’t it? I never thought of taking the fellow, and getting married; for all, I’ll not deny, I had been thinking it would be agreeable to be axed. But all at once, I couldn’t abide the chap. ‘Sir,’ says I, trying to look shamefaced as became the occasion, but for all that, feeling a twittering round my mouth that I were afeared might end in a laugh.—‘Master Dixon, I’m obleeged to you for the compliment, and thank ye all the same, but I think I’d prefer a single life.’ He looked mighty taken aback; but in a minute he cleared up, and was as sweet as ever. He still kept on his knees, and I wished he’d take himself up; but, I reckon, he thought it would give force to his words; says he, ‘Think again, my dear Sally. I’ve a four-roomed house, and furniture conformable; and eighty pound a year. You may never have such a chance again.’ There were truth enough in that, but it was not pretty in the man to say it; and it put me up a bit. ‘As for that, neither you nor I can tell, Master Dixon. You’re not the first chap as I’ve had down on his knees afore me, axing me to marry him (you see I were thinking of John Rawson, only I thought there were no need to say he were on all fours—it were truth he were on his knees, you know), and maybe you’ll not be the last. Anyhow, I’ve no wish to change my condition just now.’ ‘I’ll wait till Christmas,’ says he. ‘I’ve a pig as will be ready for killing then, so I must get married before that.’ Well now! would you believe it? the pig were a temptation. I’d a recipe for curing hams, as Miss Faith would never let me try, saying the old way were good enough. However, I resisted. Says I, very stern, because I felt I’d been wavering, ‘Master Dixon, once for all, pig or no pig, I’ll not marry you. And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll get up off your knees. The flags is but damp yet, and it would be an awkward thing to have rheumatiz just before winter.’ With that he got up, stiff enough. He looked as sulky a chap as ever I clapped eyes on. And as he were so black and cross, I thought I’d done well (whatever came of the pig) to say ‘No’ to him. ‘You may live to repent this,’ says he, very red. ‘But I’ll not be too hard upon ye, I’ll give you another chance. I’ll let you have the night to think about it, and I’ll just call in to hear your second thoughts, after chapel to-morrow.’ Well now! did ever you hear the like? But that is the way with all of them men, thinking so much of theirselves, and that it’s but ask and have. They’ve never had me, though; and I shall be sixty-one next Martinmas, so there’s not much time left for them to try me, I reckon. Well! when Jeremiah said that, he put me up more than ever, and I says, ‘My first thoughts, second thoughts, and third thoughts is all one and the same; you’ve but tempted me once, and that was when you spoke of your pig. But of yoursel’ you’re nothing to boast on, and so I’ll bid you good-night, and I’ll keep my manners, or else, if I told the truth, I should say it had been a great loss of time listening to you. But I’ll be civil—so good-night.’ He never said a word, but went off as black as thunder, slamming the door after him. The master called me in to prayers, but I can’t say I could put my mind to them, for my heart was beating so. However, it was a comfort to have had an offer of holy matrimony; and though it flustered me, it made me think more of myself.”

Sally Makes Her Will

From Ruth.

In one of her letters George Eliot mentions “the rich humour of Sally,” and later goes on to say “Mrs. Gaskell has certainly a charming mind, and one cannot help loving her as one reads her books.”

Sally was, as usual, the talker; and, as usual, the subject was the family of whom for so many years she had formed a part.

“Aye! things was different when I was a girl,” quoth she. “Eggs was thirty for a shilling, and butter only sixpence a pound. My wage when I came here was but three pound, and I did on it, and was always clean and tidy, which is more than many a lass can say now who gets her seven and eight pound a year; and tea was kept for an afternoon drink, and pudding was eaten afore meat in them days, and the upshot was, people paid their debts better; aye, aye! we’n gone backwards, and we thinken we’n gone forrards.”

After shaking her head a little over the degeneracy of the times, Sally returned to a part of the subject on which she thought she had given Ruth a wrong idea.

“You’ll not go for to think now that I’ve not more than three pound a year. I’ve a deal above that now. First of all, old missus gave me four pound, for she said I were worth it, and I thought in my heart that I were; so I took it without more ado; but after her death, Master Thurstan and Miss Faith took a fit of spending, and says they to me, one day as I carried tea in, ‘Sally, we think your wages ought to be raised.’ ‘What matter what you think!’ said I, pretty sharp, for I thought they’d ha’ shown more respect to missus if they’d let things stand as they were in her time; and they’d gone and moved the sofa away from the wall to where it stands now, already that very day. So I speaks up sharp, and, says I, ‘As long as I’m content, I think it’s no business of yours to be meddling wi’ me and my money matters.’ ‘But,’ says Miss Faith (she’s always the one to speak first if you’ll notice, though it’s master that comes in and clinches the matter with some reason she’d never ha’ thought of—he were always a sensible lad), ‘Sally, all the servants in the town have six pound and better, and you have as hard a place as any of ’em.’ ‘Did you ever hear me grumble about my work that you talk about it in that way? Wait till I grumble,’ says I, ‘but don’t meddle wi’ me till then.’ So I flung off in a huff; but in the course of the evening, Master Thurstan came in and sat down in the kitchen, and he’s such winning ways he wiles one over to anything; and besides, a notion had come into my head—now, you’ll not tell” said she, glancing round the room, and hitching her chair nearer to Ruth in a confidential manner; Ruth promised, and Sally went on:

“I thought I should like to be an heiress wi’ money, and leave it all to Master and Miss Faith; and I thought if I’d six pound a year I could, maybe, get to be an heiress; all I was feared on was that some chap or other might marry me for my money, but I’ve managed to keep the fellows off; so I looks mim and grateful, and I thanks Master Thurstan for his offer, and I takes the wages; and what do you think I’ve done?” asked Sally, with an exultant air.

“What have you done?” asked Ruth.

“Why,” replied Sally slowly and emphatically, “I’ve saved thirty pound! But that’s not it. I’ve getten a lawyer to make me a will; that’s it, wench!” said she, slapping Ruth on the back.

“How did you manage it?” asked Ruth.

“Aye, that was it,” said Sally; “I thowt about it many a night before I hit on the right way. I was afeared the money might be thrown into Chancery, if I didn’t make it all safe, and yet I could na’ ask Master Thurstan. At last and at length John Jackson, the grocer, had a nephew come to stay a week with him, as was ’prentice to a lawyer in Liverpool; so now was my time, and here was my lawyer. Wait a minute! I could tell you my story better if I had my will in my hand; and I’ll scomfish you if ever you go for to tell.”

She held up her hand, and threatened Ruth as she left the kitchen to fetch the will.

When she came back, she brought a parcel tied up in a blue pocket-handkerchief; she sat down, squared her knees, untied the handkerchief, and displayed a small piece of parchment.

“Now, do you know what this is?” said she, holding it up. “It’s parchment, and it’s the right stuff to make wills on. People gets into Chancery if they don’t make them o’ this stuff, and I reckon Tom Jackson thowt he’d have a fresh job on it if he could get it into Chancery; for the rascal went and wrote it on a piece of paper at first, and came and read it me out loud off a piece of paper no better than what one writes letters upon. I were up to him; and, thinks I, come, come, my lad, I’m not a fool, though you may think so; I know a paper will won’t stand, but I’ll let you run your rig. So I sits and I listens. And would you belie’ me, he read it out as if it were as clear a business as your giving me that thimble—no more ado, though it were thirty pound! I could understand it mysel’—that were no law for me. I wanted summat to consider about, and for th’ meaning to be wrapped up as I wrap up my best gown. So says I, ‘Tom! it’s not on parchment. I mun have it on parchment.’ ‘This ’ill do as well,’ says he. ‘We’ll get it witnessed, and it will stand good.’ Well! I liked the notion of having it witnessed, and for a while that soothed me; but after a bit, I felt I should like it done according to law, and not plain out as anybody might ha’ done it; I mysel’, if I could have written. So says I, ‘Tom! I mun have it on parchment.’ ‘Parchment costs money,’ says he very grave. ‘Oh, oh, my lad! are ye there?’ thinks I. ‘That’s the reason I’m clipped of law.’ So says I, ‘Tom! I mun have it on parchment. I’ll pay the money and welcome. It’s thirty pound, and what I can lay to it. I’ll make it safe. It shall be on parchment, and I’ll tell thee what, lad! I’ll gie ye sixpence for every good law-word you put in it, sounding like, and not to be caught up as a person runs. Your master had need to be ashamed of you as a ’prentice if you can’t do a thing more tradesman-like than this!’ Well! he laughed above a bit, but I were firm, and stood to it. So he made it out on parchment. Now, woman, try and read it!” said she, giving it to Ruth.

Ruth smiled, and began to read, Sally listening with rapt attention. When Ruth came to the word “testatrix” Sally stopped her.

“That was the first sixpence,” said she. “I thowt he was going to fob me off again wi’ plain language; but when that word came, I out wi’ my sixpence, and gave it to him on the spot. Now go on.”

Presently Ruth read “accruing.”

“That was the second sixpence. Four sixpences it were in all, besides six-and-eightpence as we bargained at first, and three-and-fourpence parchment. There! that’s what I call a will; witnessed according to law, and all. Master Thurstan will be prettily taken in when I die, and he finds all his extra wage left back to him. But it will teach him it’s not so easy as he thinks for, to make a woman give up her way.”

Betty’s Advice to Phillis

From Cousin Phillis, 1865

Phillis was carried downstairs, and lay for hour after hour quite silent on the great sofa, drawn up under the windows of the house-place. She seemed always the same, gentle, quiet and sad. Her energy did not return with her bodily strength. It was sometimes pitiful to see her parents’ vain endeavours to rouse her to interest. One day the minister brought her a set of blue ribbons, reminding her with a tender smile of a former conversation in which she had owned to a love of such feminine vanities. She spoke gratefully to him, but when he was gone she laid them on one side, and languidly shut her eyes. Another time I saw her mother bring her the Latin and Italian books that she had been so fond of before her illness—or rather, before Holdsworth had gone away. That was worst of all. She turned her face to the wall, and cried as soon as her mother’s back was turned. Betty was laying the cloth for the early dinner. Her sharp eyes saw the state of the case.

“Now, Phillis!” said she, coming up to the sofa; “we ha’ done a’ we can for you, and th’ doctors has done a’ they can for you, and I think the Lord has done a’ He can for you, and more than you deserve, too, if you don’t do something for yourself. If I were you, I’d rise up and snuff the moon, sooner than break your father’s and your mother’s hearts wi’ watching and waiting till it pleases you to fight your own way back to cheerfulness. There, I never favoured long preachings, and I’ve said my say.”

A day or two after Phillis asked me, when we were alone, if I thought my father and mother would allow her to go and stay with them for a couple of months. She blushed a little as she faltered out her wish for change of thought and scene.

“Only for a short time, Paul. Then—we will go back to the peace of the old days. I know we shall; I can, and I will!”

Practical Christianity

From My Lady Ludlow, 1859

“There has Mr. Gray been twice at my house, while I have been away in the mornings, talking to Sally about the state of her soul and that sort of thing. But when I found the meat all roasted to a cinder, I said, ‘Come, Sally, let’s have no more praying when beef is down at the fire. Pray at six o’clock in the morning and nine at night, and I won’t hinder you.’ So she sauced me, and said something about Martha and Mary, implying that, because she had let the beef get so overdone that I declare I could hardly find a bit for Nancy Pole’s sick grandchild, she had chosen the better part. I was very much put about, I own, and perhaps, you’ll be shocked at what I said—indeed, I don’t know if it was right myself—but I told her I had a soul as well as she, and, if it was to be saved by my sitting still and thinking about salvation and never doing my duty, I thought I had as good a right as she had to be Mary, and save my soul. So, that afternoon, I sat quite still, and it was really a comfort, for I am often too busy, I know, to pray as I ought. There is first one person wanting me, and then another, and the house and the food and the neighbours to see after. So, when tea-time comes, there enters my maid with her hump on her back, and her soul to be saved. ‘Please, ma’am, did you order the pound of butter?’ ‘No, Sally,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘this morning I did not go round by Hale’s farm, and this afternoon I have been employed in spiritual things.’

“Now, our Sally likes tea and bread-and-butter above everything, and dry bread was not to her taste.

“‘I’m thankful,’ said the impudent hussy, ‘that you have taken a turn towards godliness. It will be my prayers, I trust, that’s given it you.’

“I was determined not to give her an opening towards the carnal subject of butter; so she lingered still, longing to ask leave to run for it. But I gave her none, and munched my dry bread myself, thinking what a famous cake I could make for little Ben Pole with a bit of butter we were saving; and, when Sally had had her butterless tea, and was in none of the best of tempers because Martha had not bethought herself of the butter, I just quietly said:

“‘Now, Sally, to-morrow we’ll try to hash that beef well, and to remember the butter, and to work out our salvation all at the same time, for I don’t see why it can’t all be done, as God has set us to do it all.’ But I heard her at it again about Mary and Martha, and I have no doubt that Mr. Gray will teach her to consider me as a lost sheep.”

Betty Gives Paul Manning a Lecture

From Cousin Phillis, 1865

I remember one thing more—an attack which Betty the servant made upon me one day as I came in through the kitchen where she was churning, and stopped to ask her for a drink of buttermilk.

“I say, cousin Paul” (she had adopted the family habit of addressing me generally as Cousin Paul, and always speaking of me in that form), “something’s amiss with our Phillis, and I reckon you’ve a good guess what it is. She’s not one to take up wi’ such as you” (not complimentary, but that Betty never was, even to those for whom she felt the highest respect), “but I’d as lief yon Holdsworth had never come near us. So there you’ve a bit o’ my mind.”

And a very unsatisfactory bit it was. I did not know what to answer to the glimpse at the real state of the case implied in the shrewd woman’s speech; so I tried to put her off by assuming surprise at her first assertion.

“Amiss with Phillis! I should like to know why you think anything is wrong with her. She looks as blooming as anyone can do.”

“Poor lad! you’re but a big child after all; and you’ve likely never heared of fever-flush. But you know better nor that, my fine fellow! So don’t think for to put me off wi’ blooms and blossoms and suchlike talk. What makes her walk about for hours and hours o’ nights when she used to be abed and asleep? I sleep next room to her, and hear her plain as can be. What makes her come in panting and ready to drop into that chair”—nodding to one close to the door—“and it’s ‘Oh! Betty, some water, please?’ That’s the way she comes in now, when she used to come back as fresh and bright as she went out. If yon friend o’ yours has played her false, he’s a deal for t’ answer for; she’s a lass who’s as sweet and as sound as a nut, and the very apple of her father’s eye, and of her mother’s too, only wi’ her she ranks second to th’ minister. You’ll have to look after yon chap, for I, for one, will stand no wrong to our Phillis.”

What was I to do or to say? I wanted to justify Holdsworth, to keep Phillis’s secret, and to pacify the woman all in the same breath. I did not take the best course, I’m afraid.

“I don’t believe Holdsworth ever spoke a word of—of love to her in all his life. I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Ay, ay! but there’s eyes, and there’s hands, as well as tongues; and a man has two o’ th’ one and but one o’ t’other.”

“And she’s so young; do you suppose her parents would not have seen it?”

“Well! if you ax me that, I’ll say out boldly, ‘No.’ They’ve called her ‘the child’ so long—‘the child’ is always their name for her when they talk on her between themselves, as if never anybody else had a ewe-lamb before them—that she’s grown up to be a woman under their very eyes, and they look on her still as if she were in her long clothes. And you ne’er heard on a man falling in love wi’ a babby in long clothes.

“No!” said I, half laughing. But she went on as grave as a judge.

“Ay! you see you’ll laugh at the bare thought on it—and I’ll be bound th’ minister, though he’s not a laughing man, would ha’ sniggled at th’ notion of falling in love wi’ the child. Where’s Holdsworth off to?”

“Canada,” said I shortly.

“Canada here, Canada there,” she replied testily. “Tell me how far he’s off, instead of giving me your gibberish. Is he a two day’s journey away, or a three, or a week?”

“He’s ever so far off—three weeks at the least,” cried I in despair. “And he’s either married, or just going to be. So there!” I expected a fresh burst of anger. But no; the matter was too serious. Betty sate down, and kept silence for a minute or two. She looked so miserable and downcast, that I could not help going on and taking her a little into my confidence.

“It is quite true what I said. I know he never spoke a word to her. I think he liked her, but it’s all over now. The best thing we can do—the best and kindest for her—and I know you love her, Betty——”

“I nursed her in my arms; I gave her little brother his last taste o’ earthly food,” said Betty, putting her apron up to her eyes.

“Well! don’t let us show her we guess that she is grieving; she’ll get over it the sooner. Her father and mother don’t even guess at it, and we must make as if we didn’t. It’s too late now to do anything else.”

“I’ll never let on; I know nought. I’ve known true love mysel’, in my day. But I wish he’d been farred before he ever came near this house, with his ‘Please Betty’ this, and ‘Please Betty’ that, and drinking up our new milk as if he’d been a cat. I hate such beguiling ways.”

I thought it was as well to let her exhaust herself in abusing the absent Holdsworth; if it was shabby and treacherous in me, I came in for my punishment directly.

“It’s a caution to a man how he goes about beguiling. Some men do it as easily and innocent as cooing doves. Don’t you be none of ’em, my lad. Not that you’ve got the gifts to do it, either; you’re no great shakes to look at, neither for figure, nor yet for face, and it would need be a deaf adder to be taken in wi’ your words, though there may be no great harm in ’em.” A lad of nineteen or twenty is not flattered by such an outspoken opinion even from the eldest and ugliest of her sex; and I was only too glad to change the subject by my repeated injunctions to keep Phillis’s secret. The end of our conversation was this speech of hers:

“You great gaupus, for all you’re called cousin o’ th’ minister—many a one is cursed wi’ fools for cousins—d’ye think I can’t see sense except through your spectacles? I give you leave to cut out my tongue, and nail it up on th’ barn door for a caution to magpies, if I let out on that poor wench, either to herself, or anyone that is hers, as the Bible says. Now you’ve heard me speak Scripture language perhaps you’ll be content, and leave me my kitchen to myself.”

Descriptive

Green Heys Fields

From Mary Barton, 1848

This is a description of the neighbourhood near Mrs. Gaskell’s home at the time of writing Mary Barton, and it was the accuracy with which she described Manchester and its surroundings that led her readers to the conclusion that “Cotton Malther Mills, Esq.,” the nom de guerre under which she hid her identity, was none other than Mrs. Gaskell. Writing of Mary Barton a few weeks after it was published, Miss Winkworth said, “I knew by the first few words it was hers (Mrs. Gaskell’s)—about Green Heys Fields, and the stile she was describing to me.”

There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as “Green Heys Fields,” through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flat and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood (the great and usual recommendation of level tracts of land), there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountainous district, who sees and feels the effect of contrast in these commonplace but thoroughly rural fields, with the busy, bustling manufacturing town he left but half an hour ago. Here and there an old black and white farm-house, with its rambling outbuildings, speaks of other times and other occupations than those which now absorb the population of the neighbourhood. Here in their seasons may be seen the country business of haymaking, ploughing, etc., which are such pleasant mysteries for townspeople to watch; and here the artisan, deafened with noise of tongues and engines, may come to listen awhile to the delicious sounds of rural life: the lowing of cattle, the milkmaid’s call, the clatter and cackle of poultry in the old farmyards. You cannot wonder, then, that these fields are popular places of resort at every holiday time; and you would not wonder, if you could see, or I properly describe, the charm of one particular stile, that it should be, on such occasions, a crowded halting-place. Close by it is a deep, clear pond, reflecting in its dark green depths the shadowy trees that bend over it to exclude the sun. The only place where its banks are shelving is on the side next to a rambling farmyard, belonging to one of those old-world gabled black and white houses I named above, overlooking the field through which the public footpath leads. The porch of this farm-house is covered by a rose tree; and the little garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only druggist’s shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and wild luxuriance—roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary, pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and indiscriminate order. This farm-house and garden are within a hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and blackthorn; and near this stile, on the farther side, there runs a tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue sweet violet on the grassy hedge bank.

I do not know whether it was on a holiday granted by the masters, or a holiday seized in right of Nature and her beautiful spring-time by the workmen, but one afternoon (now ten or a dozen years ago) these fields were much thronged. It was an early May evening—the April of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more threatening. The softness of the day tempted forth the young green leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows, which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water below, were now of that tender grey-green which blends so delicately with the spring harmony of colours.

Groups of merry and somewhat loud-talking girls, whose ages might range from twelve to twenty, came by with a buoyant step. They were most of them factory girls, and wore the usual out-of-doors dress of that particular class of maidens: namely, a shawl, which at midday or in fine weather was allowed to be merely a shawl, but towards evening, or if the day were chilly, became a sort of Spanish mantilla or Scotch plaid, and was brought over the head and hung loosely down, or was pinned under the chin in no unpicturesque fashion.

Their faces were not remarkable for beauty; indeed, they were below the average, with one or two exceptions; they had dark hair, neatly and classically arranged, dark eyes, but sallow complexions and irregular features. The only thing to strike a passer-by was an acuteness and intelligence of countenance, which has often been noticed in a manufacturing population.

There were also numbers of boys, or rather young men, rambling among these fields, ready to bandy jokes with any one, and particularly ready to enter into conversation with the girls, who, however, held themselves aloof, not in a shy, but rather in an independent way, assuming an indifferent manner, to the noisy wit or obstreperous compliments of the lads. Here and there came a sober, quiet couple, either whispering lovers or husband and wife, as the case might be; and if the latter, they were seldom unencumbered by an infant, carried for the most part by the father, while occasionally even three or four little toddlers had been carried or dragged thus far, in order that the whole family might enjoy the delicious May afternoon together.

A Lancashire Tea-party in the Early Forties

From Mary Barton.

Mrs. Barton produced the key of the door from her pocket; and on entering the house-place it seemed as if they were in total darkness, except one bright spot, which might be a cat’s eye, or might be, what it was, a red-hot fire, smouldering under a large piece of coal, which John Barton immediately applied himself to break up, and the effect instantly produced was warm and glowing light in every corner of the room. To add to this (although the coarse yellow glare seemed lost in the ruddy glow from the fire), Mrs. Barton lighted a dip by sticking it in the fire, and having placed it satisfactorily in a tin candlestick, began to look further about her, on hospitable thoughts intent. The room was tolerably large, and possessed many conveniences. On the right of the door, as you entered, was a longish window, with a broad ledge. On each side of this hung blue-and-white check curtains, which were now drawn, to shut in the friends met to enjoy themselves. Two geraniums, unpruned and leafy, which stood on the sill, formed a further defence from out-door pryers. In the corner between the window and the fireside was a cupboard, apparently full of plates and dishes, cups and saucers, and some more nondescript articles, for which one would have fancied their possessors could find no use—such as triangular pieces of glass to save carving knives and forks from dirtying table-cloths. However, it was evident Mrs. Barton was proud of her crockery and glass, for she left her cupboard door open, with a glance round of satisfaction and pleasure. On the opposite side to the door and window was the staircase and two doors, one of which (the nearest to the fire) led into a sort of little back kitchen, where dirty work, such as washing up dishes, might be done, and whose shelves served as larder and pantry and store-room and all. The other door, which was considerably lower, opened into the coal-hole—the slanting closet under the stairs, from which to the fire-place there was a gay-coloured piece of oil-cloth laid. The place seemed almost crammed with furniture (sure sign of good times among the mills). Beneath the window was a dresser, with three deep drawers. Opposite the fire-place was a table, which I should call a Pembroke, only that it was made of deal, and I cannot tell how far such a name may be applied to such humble material. On it, resting against the wall, was a bright green japanned tea-tray, having a couple of scarlet lovers embracing in the middle. The fire-light danced merrily on this, and really (setting all taste but that of a child’s aside) it gave a richness of colouring to that side of the room. It was in some measure propped up by a crimson tea-caddy, also of japan ware. A round table on one branching leg, really for use, stood in the corresponding corner to the cupboard; and, if you can picture all this, with a washy, but clean stencilled pattern on the walls, you can form some idea of John Barton’s home.

The tray was soon hoisted down, and before the merry clatter of cups and saucers began, the women disburdened themselves of their out-of-door things, and sent Mary upstairs with them. Then came a long whispering, and chinking of money, to which Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were too polite to attend; knowing, as they did full well, that it all related to the preparations for hospitality: hospitality that, in their turn, they should have such pleasure in offering. So they tried to be busily occupied with the children, and not to hear Mrs. Barton’s directions to Mary.

“Run, Mary dear, just round the corner, and get some fresh eggs at Tipping’s (you may get one apiece, that will be fivepence), and see if he has any nice ham cut, that he would let us have a pound of.”

“Say two pounds, missis, and don’t be stingy,” chimed in the husband.

“Well, a pound and a half, Mary. And get it Cumberland ham, for Wilson comes from there-away, and it will have a sort of relish of home with it he’ll like—and Mary” (seeing the lassie fain to be off), “you must get a pennyworth of milk and a loaf of bread—mind you get it fresh and new—and, and—that’s all, Mary.”

“No, it’s not all,” said her husband. “Thou must get sixpennyworth of rum to warm the tea; thou’ll get it at the ‘Grapes.’ And thou just go to Alice Wilson; he says she lives just right round the corner, under 14, Barber Street” (this was addressed to his wife); “and tell her to come and take her tea with us; she’ll like to see her brother I’ll be bound, let alone Jane and the twins.”

“If she comes she must bring a tea-cup and saucer, for we have but half a dozen, and here’s six of us,” said Mrs. Barton.

“Pooh, pooh! Jem and Mary can drink out of one, surely.”

But Mary secretly determined to take care that Alice brought her tea-cup and saucer, if the alternative was to be her sharing anything with Jem.

Alice Wilson had but just come in. She had been out all day in the fields, gathering wild herbs for drinks and medicine, for, in addition to her invaluable qualities as a sick nurse and her worldly occupations as a washerwoman, she added a considerable knowledge of hedge and field simples; and on fine days, when no more profitable occupation offered itself, she used to ramble off into the lanes and meadows as far as her legs could carry her. This evening she had returned loaded with nettles, and her first object was to light a candle, and see to hang them up in bunches in every available place in her cellar room. It was the perfection of cleanliness; in one corner stood the modest-looking bed, with a check curtain at the head, the whitewashed wall filling up the place where the corresponding one should have been. The floor was bricked, and scrupulously clean, although so damp that it seemed as if the last washing would never dry up. As the cellar window looked into an area in the street, down which boys might throw stones, it was protected by an outside shutter, and was oddly festooned with all manner of hedgerow, ditch, and field plants, which we are accustomed to call valueless, but which have a powerful effect either for good or for evil, and are consequently much used among the poor. The room was strewn, hung, and darkened with these bunches, which emitted no very fragrant odour in their process of drying. In one corner was a sort of broad hanging shelf, made of old planks, where some old hoards of Alice’s were kept. Her little bit of crockery-ware was ranged on the mantelpiece, where also stood her candlestick and box of matches. A small cupboard contained at the bottom coals, and at the top her bread and basin of oatmeal, her frying-pan, teapot, and a small tin saucepan, which served as a kettle, as well as for cooking the delicate little messes of broth which Alice was sometimes able to manufacture for a sick neighbour.