Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Elizabeth C. Stevenson,
was born in Chelsea, London, Sept. 29, 1810. She married a
Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. Her first literary work was
published anonymously, and met with a storm of mingled
approval and disapproval. Charles Dickens invited her to
contribute to his "Household Words," and it was in the pages
of that famous periodical, at intervals between December 13,
1851, and May 21, 1853, that her charming sketches of social
life in a little country town first appeared. In June, 1853,
they were grouped together under the title of "Cranford,"
meeting with wide approval, and have long taken rank as one of
the accepted English classics. The town which figures here as
Cranford is understood to have been Knutsford, in Cheshire,
which still retains something of that old-world feeling and
restfulness which Mrs. Gaskell embodied in the pages of her
most engaging book. "Cranford" is probably the direct
progenitor of many latter-day books of the class to which the
word "idyll" has been somewhat loosely applied. Its charm and
freshness are unfading; it remains unique and unrivalled as a
sympathetic and kindly humorous description of English
provincial life. Mrs. Gaskell died in November, 1865.
_I.--Our Society_
On the first visit I paid to Cranford, after I had left it as a
residence, I was astonished to find a man had settled there--a Captain
Brown. In my time Cranford was in possession of the Amazons. If a
married couple came to settle there, somehow the man always disappeared.
Either he was fairly frightened to death by being the only man at the
evening parties, or he was accounted for by being with his regiment, his
ship, or closely connected in business all the week in the great
neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on
the railroad.
I was naturally interested to learn what opinions Captain Brown had
managed to win for himself in Cranford. So, with all the delicacy which
the subject demanded, I made inquiries of my hostess, Miss Jenkyns. I
was surprised to learn that Captain Brown not only was respected, but
had even gained an extraordinary place of authority among the Cranford
ladies. Of course, he had been forced to overcome great difficulties.
In the first place, the ladies of Cranford had moaned over the invasion
of their territories by a man and a gentleman. Then Captain Brown had
started badly, very badly, by openly referring to his poverty. If he had
whispered it to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being
previously closed, his vulgarity--a tremendous word in Cranford--might
have been forgiven. But he had published his poverty in the public
street, in a loud military voice, alleging it as a reason for not taking
a particular house.
In Cranford, too, where it was tacitly agreed to ignore that anyone with
whom we associated on terms of equality could ever be prevented by
poverty from doing anything they wished. Where, if we walked to and from
a party, it was because the night was _so_ fine or the air _so_
refreshing, not because sedan-chairs were so expensive.
So the poor captain had been sent to Coventry. The ladies of Cranford
had frozen him out, until the day when the cow, an Alderney cow, had
broken the ice.
It happened like this. Miss Betsy Barker had an Alderney cow, which she
looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the regulation short
quarter of an hour's call--to stay longer was a breach of
manners--without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful
intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded
Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney.
One day the cow fell into a lime-pit, and Cranford grieved over the
spectacle of the poor beast being drawn out, having lost most of her
hair, and looking naked, cold and miserable, in a bare skin. Miss Betsy
Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay, and was about to prepare
a bath of oil for the sufferer, when Captain Brown called out: "Get her
a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her
alive. But my advice is, 'kill the poor creature at once.'" Miss Betsy
Barker dried her eyes, and in a few hours the whole town turned out to
see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark-gray flannel.
Do you ever see cows dressed in gray flannel in London?
On that day was born the respect of the Cranford ladies for Captain
Brown.
Soon after my arrival in Cranford, Miss Jenkyns gave a party in my
honour, and recalling the old days when we had almost persuaded
ourselves that to be a man was to be "vulgar," I was curious to see what
the ladies would do with Captain Brown.
The preparations were much as usual. Card-tables, with green baize tops,
were set out by daylight, and towards four, when the evening closed in,
we all stood dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our
hand, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came. The
china was delicate egg-shell; the old-fashioned silver glittered with
polishing; but the eatables were of the slightest description. While the
trays were yet on the table, Captain Brown arrived with his two
daughters, Miss Brown and Miss Jessie, the former with a sickly, pained,
and careworn expression; the latter with a pretty, round, dimpled face,
and the look of a child which will remain with her should she live to be
a hundred.
I could see that the captain was a favourite with all the ladies
present. Ruffled brows were smoothed and sharp voices hushed at his
approach. He immediately and quietly assumed the man's place in the
room; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maidservant's
labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies; and yet
did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were
a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a
true man throughout.
The party passed off very well in spite of one or two little hitches.
One was Miss Jessie Brown's unguarded admission--_à propos_ of Shetland
wool--that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper
in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible
cough, for the honourable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card-table
nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out
she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece!
Then there was a slight breeze between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown
over the relative merits of Dr. Johnson and the author of "Pickwick
Papers"--then being published in parts--as writers of light and
agreeable fiction. Captain Brown read an account of the "Swarry" which
Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed very heartily. _I_ did not
dare, because I was staying in the house. At the conclusion Miss Jenkyns
said to me, with mild dignity, "Fetch me 'Rasselas,' my dear, out of the
book-room."
After delivering one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac in
a majestic, high-pitched voice, Miss Jenkyns said, "I imagine I am now
justified in my preference for Dr. Johnson over your Mr. Boz as a writer
of fiction."
The captain said nothing, merely screwed his lips up and drummed on the
table; but when Miss Jenkyns returned later to the charge and
recommended the doctor's style to Captain Brown's favourite, the captain
replied, "I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any
such pompous writing."
Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront in a way of which the
captain had not dreamed. How could he know that she and her friends
looked upon epistolary writing as their forte, and that when in a letter
they "seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to assure" their
friends of this and that, they were using the doctor as a model?
As it was Miss Jenkyns refused to be mollified by Captain Brown's
efforts later to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing
subject. She was inexorable.
Captain Brown endeavoured to make peace after this memorable dispute by
a present to Miss Jenkyns of a wooden fire-shovel (his own making),
having heard her say how much the grating of an iron one annoyed her.
She received the present with cool gratitude and thanked him formally.
When he was gone she bade me put it in the lumber-room, feeling probably
that no present from a man who preferred Mr. Boz to Dr. Johnson could be
less jarring than an iron fire-shovel.
Such was the state of affairs at the time when I left Cranford and went
to Drumble. I had, however, several correspondents who kept me _au fait_
as to the proceedings of the inhabitants of the dear little town.
_II.--The Captain_
My next visit to Cranford was in the summer. There had been neither
births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last. Everybody lived in
the same house, and wore pretty near the same well-preserved,
old-fashioned clothes. The greatest event was that the Misses Jenkyns
had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh, the busy work Miss
Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams as they fell in an afternoon
right down on this carpet through the blindless windows! We spread our
newspapers over the places and sat down to our book or our work; and,
lo! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved and was blazing away in a
fresh spot; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of
the newspapers. One whole morning, too, we spent in cutting out and
stitching together pieces of newspapers so as to form little paths to
every chair, lest the shoes of visitors should defile the purity of the
carpet. Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in London?
The literary dispute between Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns continued.
She had formed a habit of talking _at_ him. And he retaliated by
drumming his fingers, which action Miss Jenkyns felt and resented as
disparaging to Dr. Johnson.
The poor captain! I noticed on this visit that he looked older and more
worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as bright and
cheerful as ever, unless he was asked about his daughter's health.
One afternoon we perceived little groups in the street, all listening
with faces aghast to some tale or other. It was some time before Miss
Jenkyns took the undignified step of sending Jenny out to inquire.
Jenny came back with a white face of terror.
"Oh, ma'am! Oh, Miss Jenkyns, ma'am! Captain Brown is killed by them
nasty cruel railroads." And she burst into tears.
"How, where--where? Good God! Jenny, don't waste time in crying, but
tell us something."
Miss Matty rushed out into the street, and presently an affrighted
carter appeared in the drawing-room and told the story.
"'Tis true, mum, I seed it myself. The captain was a-readin' some book,
waitin' for the down train, when a lass as gave its sister the slip came
toddling across the line. He looked up sudden, see'd the child, darted
on the line, cotched it up, and his foot slipped and the train came over
him in no time. The child's safe. Poor captain would be glad of that,
mum, wouldn't he? God bless him!"
The great rough carter turned away to hide his tears. I turned to Miss
Jenkyns. She looked very ill, as though she were going to faint, and
signed to me to open a window.
"Matilda, bring me my bonnet. I must go to those girls. God pardon me if
ever I have spoken contemptuously to the captain."
Miss Brown did not long survive her father. Her last words were a prayer
for forgiveness for her selfishness in allowing her sister Jessie to
sacrifice herself for her all her life.
But Miss Jessie was not long left alone. Miss Jenkyns insisted she
should come and stay with her, and would not hear of her going out into
the world to earn her living as a saleswoman. "Some people have no idea
of their rank as a captain's daughter," she related indignantly, and
stumped out of the room. Presently she came back with a strange look on
her face.
"I have been much startled--no, I've not been startled--don't mind me,
my dear Miss Jessie, only surprised--in fact, I've had a caller whom you
once knew, my dear Miss Jessie."
Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet.
"Is it?--it is not----" stammered out Miss Jessie, and got no farther.
"This is his card," said Miss Jenkyns, and went through a series of
winks and odd faces at me, and formed a long sentence with her lips, of
which I could not understand a word.
Major Gordon was shown upstairs.
While downstairs Miss Jenkyns told me what the major had told her. How
he had served in the same regiment as Captain Brown and had fallen in
love with Miss Jessie, then a sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen;
how she had refused him, though obviously not indifferent to him; how he
had discovered the obstacle to be the fell disease which had stricken
her sister, whom there was no one to nurse and comfort but herself; how
he had believed her cold and had left in anger; and finally how he had
read of the death of Captain Brown in a foreign newspaper.
Just then Miss Matty burst into the room.
"Oh, Deborah," she said, "there's a gentleman sitting in the drawing-
room with his arm round Miss Jessie's waist!"
"The most proper place for his arm to be in. Go, Matilda, and mind your
own business."
Poor Miss Matty! This was a shock, coming from her decorous sister.
Thus happiness, and with it some of her early bloom, returned to Miss
Jessie, and as Mrs. Gordon her dimples were not out of place.
_III.--Poor Peter_
My visits to Cranford continued for many years, and did not cease even
after the death of Miss Jenkyns.
Miss Matty became my new hostess. At first I rather dreaded the changed
aspect of things. Miss Matty, too, began to cry as soon as she saw me.
She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my visit. I comforted
her as well as I could, and I found the best consolation I could give
was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the
deceased.
Miss Matty made me her confidante in many matters, and one evening she
sent Martha to go for eggs at a farm at the other end of the town and
told me the story of her brother.
"Poor Peter! The sole honour he brought from Shrewsbury was the
reputation of being captain of the school in the art of practical
joking. He even thought that the people of Cranford might be hoaxed.
'Hoaxing' is not a pretty word, my dear, and I hope you won't tell your
father I used it, for I should not like him to think I was not choice in
my language, after living with such a woman as Deborah. I don't know how
it slipped out of my mouth, except it was that I was thinking of poor
Peter, and it was always his expression.
"One day my father had gone to see some sick people in the village.
Deborah, too, was away from home for a fortnight or so. I don't know
what possessed poor Peter, but he went to her room and dressed himself
in her old gown and shawl and bonnet. And he made the pillow into a
little--you are sure you locked the door, my dear?--into--into a little
baby with white long clothes. And he went and walked up and down in the
Filbert Walk--just half hidden by the rails and half seen; and he
cuddled the pillow just like a baby and talked to it all the nonsense
people do. Oh, dear, and my father came stepping stately up the street,
as he always did, and pushing past the crowd saw--I don't know what he
saw--but old Clare said his face went grey-white with anger. He seized
hold of poor Peter, tore the clothes off his back--bonnet, shawl, gown,
and all--threw them among the crowd, and before all the people lifted up
his cane and flogged Peter.
"My dear, that boy's trick on that sunny day, when all promised so well,
broke my mother's heart and changed my father for life. Old Clare said
Peter looked as white as my father and stood still as a statue to be
flogged.
"'Have you done enough, sir?' he asked hoarsely, when my father stopped.
Then Peter bowed grandly to the people outside the railing and walked
slowly home. He went straight to his mother, looking as haughty as any
man, and not like a boy.
"'Mother,' he said, 'I am come to say "God bless you for ever."'
"He would say no more, and by the time my mother had found out what had
happened from my father, and had gone to her boy's room to comfort him,
he had gone, and did not come back. That spring day was the last time he
ever saw his mother's face. He wrote a passionate entreaty to her to
come and see him before his ship left the Mersey for the war, but the
letter was delayed, and when she arrived it was too late. It killed my
mother. And think, my dear, the day after her death--for she did not
live a twelve-month after Peter left--came a parcel from India from her
poor boy. It was a large, soft white India shawl. Just what my mother
would have liked.
"We took it to my father in the hopes it would rouse him, for he had sat
with her hand in his all night long. At first he took no notice of it.
Then suddenly he got up and spoke. 'She shall be buried in it,' he said.
'Peter shall have that comfort; and she would have liked it.'"
"Did Mr. Peter ever come home?"
"Yes, once. He came home a lieutenant. And he and my father were such
friends. My father was so proud to show him to all the neighbours. He
never walked out without Peter's arm to lean on. And then Peter went to
sea again, and by-and-by my father died, blessing us both and thanking
Deborah for all she had been to him. And our circumstances were changed,
and from a big rectory with three servants we had come down to a small
house with a servant-of-all-work. But, as Deborah used to say, we have
always lived genteelly, even if circumstances have compelled us to
simplicity. Poor Deborah!"
"And Mr. Peter?" I asked.
"Oh, there was some great war in India, and we have never heard of Peter
since then. I believe he is dead myself. Sometimes when I sit by myself
and the house is quiet, I think I hear his step coming up the street,
and my heart begins to flutter and beat; but the sound goes, and Peter
never comes back."
_IV.--Friends in Need_
The years rolled on. I spent my time between Drumble and Cranford. I was
thankful that I happened to be staying with Miss Matty when the Town and
County Bank failed, which had such a disastrous effect on her little
fortune.
It was an example to me, and I fancy it might be to many others, to see
how immediately Miss Matty set about the retrenchment she knew to be
right under her altered circumstances. I did the little I could. Some
months back a conjuror had given a performance in the Cranford Assembly
Rooms. By a strange set of circumstances the identity of Signor Brunoni
was revealed. He was plain Samuel Brown, who had fallen out of his cart
and had to be attended by our doctor. I went to visit the patient and
his wife, and learned that she had been India. She told me a long story
about being befriended, after a perilous journey, by a kind Englishman
who lived right in the midst of the natives. It was his name which
astonished me. Agra Jenkyns.
Could Agra Jenkyns be the long lost Peter? I resolved to say nothing to
Miss Matty, but got the address from the signor (as we still called him
from habit), spelt by sound, and very queer it looked, and posted a
letter to him.
All sorts of plans were discussed for Miss Matty's future. I thought of
all the things by which a woman, past middle age, and with the education
common to ladies fifty years ago, could earn or add to a living without
materially losing caste; but at length I put even this last clause on
one side, and wondered what in the world Miss Matty could do. Even
teaching was out of the question, for, reckoning over her
accomplishments, I had to come down to reading, writing, and
arithmetic--and in reading the chapter every morning she always coughed
before coming to long words.
I was still in a quandary the next morning, when I received a letter
from Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up and with so many seals on it
to secure secrecy that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it.
It summoned me to go to Miss Pole at 11 a.m., the a.m. twice dashed
under as if I were likely to come at eleven at night, when all Cranford
was usually abed and asleep by ten. I went and found Miss Pole dressed
in solemn array, though there were only Mrs. Forrester, crying quietly
and sadly, and Mrs. FitzAdam present. Miss Pole was armed with a card,
on which I imagine she had written some notes.
"Miss Smith," she began, when I entered (I was familiarly known to all
Cranford as Mary, but this was a state occasion), "I have conversed in
private with these ladies on the misfortune which has happened to our
friend, and one and all have agreed that while we have a superfluity, it
is not only a duty but a pleasure--a true pleasure, Mary!"--her voice
was rather choked just here, and she had to wipe her spectacles before
she could go on--"to give what we can to assist her--Miss Matilda
Jenkyns. Only in consideration of the feelings of delicate independence
existing in the mind of every refined female"--I was sure she had got
back to the card--"we wish to contribute our mites in a secret and
concealed manner, so as not to hurt the feelings I have referred to."
Well, the upshot of this solemn meeting was that each of those dear old
ladies wrote down the sum she could afford annually, signed the paper
and sealed it mysteriously, and I was commissioned to get my father to
administer the fund in such a manner that Miss Jenkyns should imagine
the money came from her own improved investments.
As I was going, Mrs. Forrester took me aside, and in the manner of one
confessing a great crime the poor old lady told me how very, very little
she had to live on--a confession she was brought to make from a dread
lest we should think that the small contribution named in her paper bore
any proportion to her love and regard for Miss Mary. And yet that sum
which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth
part of what she had to live on. And when the whole income does not
nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will
necessitate many careful economies and many pieces of self-denial--small
and insignificant in the world's account, but bearing a different value
in another account book that I have heard of.
The upshot of it all was that dear Miss Matty was comfortably installed
in her own house, and added to her slender income by selling tea! This
last was my idea, and it was a proud moment for me when it realized. The
small dining-room was converted into a shop, without any of its
degrading characteristics, a table formed the counter, one window was
retained unaltered and the other changed into a glass door, and there
she was. Tea was certainly a happy commodity, as it was neither greasy
nor sticky, grease and stickiness being two of the qualities which Miss
Matty could not endure. Moreover, as Miss Matty said, one good thing
about it was that men did not buy it, and it was of men particularly she
was afraid. They had such sharp, loud ways with them, and did up
accounts and counted their change so quickly.
Very little remains to be told. The approval of the Honourable Mrs.
Jamieson set the seal upon the successful career of Miss Matty as a
purveyor of tea. Thus did she escape even the shadow of "vulgarity."
One afternoon I was sitting in the shop parlour with Miss Matty, when we
saw a gentleman go slowly past the window and then stand opposite to the
door, as if looking out for the name which we had so carefully hidden.
His clothes had an out-of-the-way foreign cut, and it flashed across me
it was the Agra himself! He entered.
Miss Matty looked at him, and something of tender relaxation in his face
struck home to her heart. She said: "It is--oh, sir, can you be Peter?"
and trembled from head to foot. In a moment he had her in his arms,
sobbing the tearless cries of old age.
* * * * *