From _North and South_.
Mrs. Gaskell was undecided about a title for her novel, when
Charles Dickens, reading the following, came to the conclusion
that _North and South_ would be most suitable. Mrs. Gaskell was
inclined to give the name of the heroine, Margaret Hale, as the
title.
Margaret liked this smile; it was the first thing she had admired in this
new friend of her father’s; and the opposition of character, shown in all
these details of appearance she had just been noticing, seemed to explain
the attraction they evidently felt towards each other.
She arranged her mother’s worsted-work, and fell back into her own
thoughts—as completely forgotten by Mr. Thornton as if she had not been
in the room, so thoroughly was he occupied in explaining to Mr. Hale
the magnificent power, yet delicate adjustment of the might of the
steam-hammer, which was recalling to Mr. Hale some of the wonderful
stories of subservient genii in the _Arabian Nights_—one moment
stretching from earth to sky and filling all the width of the horizon, at
the next obediently compressed into a vase small enough to be borne in
the hand of a child.
“And this imagination of power, this practical realisation of a gigantic
thought, came out of one man’s brain in our good town. That very man
has it within him to mount, step by step, on each wonder he achieves to
higher marvels still. And I’ll be bound to say, we have many among us
who, if he were gone, could spring into the breach and carry on the war
which compels, and shall compel, all material power to yield to science.”
“Your boast reminds me of the old lines:
‘I’ve a hundred captains in England,’ he said,
‘As good as ever was he.’”
At her father’s quotation Margaret looked suddenly up, with inquiring
wonder in her eyes. How in the world had they got from cog-wheels to
Chevy Chace?
“It is no boast of mine,” replied Mr. Thornton; “it is plain
matter-of-fact. I won’t deny that I am proud of belonging to a town—or
perhaps I should rather say a district—the necessities of which give
birth to such grandeur of conception. I would rather be a man toiling,
suffering—nay, failing and successless—here, than lead a dull prosperous
life in the old worn grooves of what you call more aristocratic society
down in the South, with their slow days of careless ease. One may be
clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.”
“You are mistaken,” said Margaret, roused by the aspersion on her beloved
South to a fond vehemence of defence, that brought the colour into her
cheeks and the angry tears into her eyes. “You do not know anything
about the South. If there is less adventure or less progress—I suppose
I must not say less excitement—from the gambling spirit of trade, which
seems requisite to force out these wonderful inventions, there is less
suffering also. I see men here going about in the streets who look
ground down by some pinching sorrow or care—who are not only sufferers
but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is not that
terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice
which I see here. You do not know the South, Mr. Thornton,” she
concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with herself
for having said so much.
“And may I say you do not know the North?” asked he, with an
inexpressible gentleness in his tone, as he saw that he had really hurt
her. She continued resolutely silent; yearning after the lovely haunts
she had left far away in Hampshire, with a passionate longing that made
her feel her voice would be unsteady and trembling if she spoke.
“At any rate, Mr. Thornton,” said Mrs. Hale, “you will allow that Milton
is a much more smoky, dirty town than you will ever meet with in the
South.”
“I’m afraid I must give up its cleanliness,” said Mr. Thornton, with the
quick gleaming smile. “But we are bidden by Parliament to burn our own
smoke; so I suppose, like good little children, we shall do as we are
bid—some time.”