I
Among women writers of the nineteenth century, none deserve more grateful
remembrance than Mrs. Gaskell. Though it is forty-six years since she
passed away, her stories are still eagerly read, and there is a growing
interest in her life, as was shown by the almost universal appreciation
last year when her centenary was celebrated. To the lovers of Mrs.
Gaskell’s works, age has not settled on them, the lavender may lie
between their pages, but it is still sweet, and there are many successful
novelists of our own time whose works are far less read and more out of
date than hers. Succeeding generations have kept her memory green, and
the continued reprints of her novels prove their worth, not only for the
period in which they were written, but for all time.
Such a busy, benevolent and beautiful life, though homely and uneventful,
could not be suppressed altogether, for her devotees the world over
claim her as one of their favourite authors, and as such they eagerly
ask to know something of the woman who has charmed and cheered them by
her kindly humour, and inspired and ennobled them by her sympathetic
treatment of the social wrongs created by our industrial system.
Mrs. Gaskell is surely coming to the fuller recognition which she so
justly deserves, although as a writer in the fifties and early sixties
she took her place as a worthy contemporary of Charlotte Brontë and
Charles Dickens, and had a most successful career. She who was always so
generous in her appreciation of others, cannot escape the willing homage
of her admirers.
Last August, when visiting a house where Mrs. Gaskell was often a very
welcome guest, I was privileged to read a letter in which she mentioned
her friend Florence Nightingale, for whom she expressed her great
admiration. Shortly afterwards I learnt that at that very hour Florence
Nightingale had passed away. That letter seemed to bring Mrs. Gaskell
nearer, though she had preceded her friend by nearly half a century.
Working on very different lines, those two noble women both heard a cry
of distress and felt compelled to do something to alleviate it. Of the
distinguished women of the nineteenth century few have deserved better
of their country than the author of _Mary Barton_ and the heroine of the
Crimean War.
There are not many who personally remember Mrs. Gaskell, but I have been
privileged to meet several, and they all think of her with gratitude,
not only as a successful novelist, but also as a most gentle lady, a
model mother, a devoted wife, and an excellent home manager and withal
a staunch and true friend. Her sympathies were ever with the poor and
needy, and she was a valuable acquisition to any cause which could secure
her services.
Her first great novel, _Mary Barton_, written under the influence of
strong emotion at the darkest time of her life, when she had lost her
only son, not only proved her genius as a writer, but it revealed
her intense sympathy for those who suffered injustice around her in
Manchester.
Though modest and retiring almost to a fault, she had the courage of her
convictions, and her pitiful story thrilled throughout the land, bearing
its supreme message for tolerance and assistance to those who could not
help themselves.
It was a bold step to criticise the doings of her neighbours, but how
well she did it in _Mary Barton_! and when that novel was judged to be
all on the side of the poor and against their employers, she struck the
balance admirably in _North and South_, by giving both sides of the
question.
It must be remembered that _Mary Barton_ was written more than sixty
years ago, when there was little organised help for the poor and
oppressed, either by the Churches or the State. It was her clarion note
which did much to arouse the rich and show them their rightful duty
towards the poor.
Mrs. Gaskell was not afraid to write a story with a purpose. She
practised what she preached, and with her husband, the faithful minister
of Cross Street Chapel, she did her best to alleviate the awful poverty
which she daily saw around her. This pioneer work which Mr. and Mrs.
Gaskell did so quietly and unostentatiously bore fruit in later days, and
Manchester holds their names in grateful remembrance.
Endowed with quick intuition, well-balanced judgment and sound common
sense, she found no difficulty in depicting the actual life of the
poverty-stricken operatives of Lancashire. Her first novel, in some ways
her best because of the intense feeling which breathes through it, placed
her at one bound in the ranks of the best writers of the day, a position
which she retained for the remaining years of her life, producing novels
which are noted for their pure and sweet homeliness and their tender
touch. She never aspired to sensationalism, but was content to give us
“everyday stories,” as she was wont to call them, and for that reason she
appeals to the young as well as the old and to all classes of society.
George Sand once remarked to Lord Houghton, “Mrs. Gaskell has done what
neither I nor any other female writers in France can accomplish, she has
written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and
yet which every girl will be the better for reading.”
_Mary Barton_, with its pathetic message, _Cranford_, that matchless
prose idyll, and the fascinating _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ are her best
known works, but there are no less than six other novels: _Ruth_, _North
and South_, _My Lady Ludlow_, _Sylvia’s Lovers_, _Cousin Phillis_, and
_Wives and Daughters_—her best and longest novel—all of which deserve
to be much better known. In addition, she wrote about forty articles
and short stories, principally for _Household Words_ and _All the Year
Round_, under the genial editorship of Charles Dickens. All these go to
prove that Mrs. Gaskell was not limited to one type of writing, and that
she was equally at home in dealing with so many and such varied subjects.
Unlike Charlotte Brontë, who, great artist as she was, had a very narrow
range, Mrs. Gaskell culled from many sources, and her canvas was often
very crowded, though her beautiful sketches of life are almost unrivalled
for fulness and variety. “No one ever came near her in the gift of
telling a story,” said one who knew her before she became a writer.
Mrs. Gaskell had a great aversion to criticism, and whilst very
indifferent to praise, she was acutely sensitive to blame, and for these
reasons she wished her works to be her only memorial, and that, apart
from the writer, they should be judged on their merits alone.
All that has been revealed of Mrs. Gaskell’s life proves how naturally
her own personality shone through her stories. “She is what her works
show her to have been—a good, wise woman,” wrote Frederick Greenwood in
his eulogium in the _Cornhill Magazine_ after her death.
The fact that many of her stories have been translated into several other
languages gives them a very wide and general popularity.