are written either as mere "goody" books for parish libraries, and are
carefully watered down lest they should prove too sensational and
enthralling; or because they are written by people who have only a
surface knowledge of the characters they describe and the life they
would fain depict. "David Copperfield" is probably the most popular book
Dickens ever wrote, and is likely to outlive his other works, just
because he himself knew so thoroughly well all that his hero had to pass
through, and could draw from real knowledge the characters in the
background. And at the present time we are all able to understand the
Indian Mutiny in a way that has never been possible before, because Mrs.
Steel in her wonderful novel, "On the Face of the Waters," has, through
her knowledge of native life, given us a real insight into the heart of
a great nation.
Brilliant trash may succeed for two or three seasons, but unless there
is in it some germ of real truth which appeals to the heart and
conscience it will not live. Sensationalism alone will not hold its
ground. There must be in the writer a real deep inner knowledge of his
subject if the book is to do its true work. And we venture to think that
"Mary Barton," which for nearly half a century has been influencing
people all over the world, owes its vitality very largely to the fact
that Mrs. Gaskell knew the working people of Manchester, not as a
professional doler out of tracts or charitable relief, not in any
detestable, patronising way, but knew them as _friends_.
This surely is the reason why the characters in the novel are so
intensely real. What could be finer than the portrait of Mary herself,
from the time when we are first introduced to her as the young
apprentice to a milliner and dressmaker, to the end of the book, when
she has passed through her great agony? How entirely the reader learns
to live with her in her brave struggle to prove her lover's innocence!
One of the most powerful parts of the book is the description of her
plucky pursuit of the good ship _John Cropper_, on board of which was
the only man who could save her lover's life by proving an alibi.
But it is not only the leading characters that are so genuine and so
true to life. Old Ben Sturgis, the boat-man, rough of speech but with
more heart than many a smooth-tongued talker; his wife, who sheltered
Mary when she had no notion what manner of woman she was; Job Legh, who
proved such a good friend to both hero and heroine in their trouble, and
whose well-meaning deception of old Mrs. Wilson is so humorously
described; John Barton, the father, with the mournful failure at the
close of his upright life; old Mr. Carson, the rich father of the
murdered man, with his thirst for vengeance, and his tardy but real
forgiveness, when he let himself be led by a little child--all these are
living men and women, not puppets; while in the character and the tragic
story of poor Esther we see the fruits of the writer's deep knowledge of
the life of those she helped when released from gaol.
But Mrs. Gaskell looked on both sides of the question. In "North and
South," published in 1855, she deals with the labour question from the
master's standpoint, and in Mr. Thornton draws a most striking picture
of a manufacturer who is just and well-meaning--one who really respects
and cares for the men he employs. The main interest of this book lies,
however, in the character of the heroine, Margaret, who is placed in a
most cruel dilemma by a ne'er-do-well brother whom she shields. By far
the most dramatic scene is that in which, to enable Frederick to escape,
Margaret tells a deliberate falsehood to the detective who is in search
of him. The torture of mind she suffers afterwards for having uttered
this intentional lie, and the difficult question whether under any
circumstances a lie is warrantable, are dealt with in the writer's most
powerful way.
In 1853--the same year in which "Ruth" was published--the greatest of
all Mrs. Gaskell's works appeared, the inimitable "Cranford." For humour
and for pathos we have nothing like this in all the Victorian
literature. It is a book of which one can never tire: yet it can
scarcely be said to have a plot at all, being just the most delicate
miniature painting of a small old-fashioned country town and its
inhabitants. What English man or woman is there, however, who will not
read and re-read its pages with laughter and tears?
Cranford is said to be in many respects the Knutsford of Mrs. Gaskell's
childhood and youth, and there is something so wonderfully lifelike in
the descriptions of the manners and customs of the very select little
community that one is inclined to believe that there is truth in the
assertion. They were gently bred, those old Cranford folk, with their
"elegant economy," their hatred of all display, and their considerate
tact. There is pathos as well as fun in the description of Mrs.
Forrester pretending not to know what cakes were sent up "at a party in
her baby-house of a dwelling ... though she knew, and we knew, and she
knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been
busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes!"
There is an air of leisure and peacefulness in every page of the book,
for there was no hurrying life among those dignified old people. "I had
often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small
opportunities in Cranford: the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they
fell to make into a pot-pourri for some one who had no garden; the
little bundles of lavender-flowers sent to some town-dweller. Things
that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth
while to perform, were all attended to in Cranford."
Who has not laughed over Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney cow "meekly going
to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel" after her disaster in the
lime-pit! or over the masterly description of Miss Jenkyns, who "wore a
cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey-cap, and altogether had the
appearance of a strong-minded woman; although she would have despised
the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed! she knew
they were superior."
Dear old Miss Matty, however, with her reverence for the stronger
sister, and her love affair of long ago, has a closer hold on the heart
of the reader. The description of the meeting of the former lovers is
idyllic; and when Thomas Holbrook dies unexpectedly, soon after, the
woman whose love-story had been spoilt by the home authorities reverses
her own ordinance against "followers" in the case of Martha, the
maid-servant, but otherwise makes no sign.
"Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings--a concealment
she practised even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr. Holbrook
again, though the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little
table by her bedside. She did not think I heard her when she asked the
little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the
Honourable Mrs. Jamieson's, or that I noticed the reply:
"'But she wears widows' caps, ma'am!'
"'Oh? I only meant something in that style; not widows', of course, but
rather like Mrs. Jamieson's.'"
In the whole book there is not a character that we cannot vividly
realise: the Honourable (but sleepy) Mrs. Jamieson; brisk, cheerful Lady
Glenmire, who married the sensible country doctor and sacrificed her
title to become plain Mrs. Hoggins; Miss Pole, who always with withering
scorn called ghosts "indigestion," until the night they heard of the
headless lady who had been seen wringing her hands in Darkness Lane,
when, to avoid "the woebegone trunk," she with tremulous dignity offered
the sedan chairman an extra shilling to go round another way! Captain
Brown with his devotion to the writings of Mr. Boz and his feud with
Miss Jenkyns as to the superior merits of Dr. Johnson; and Peter, the
long-lost brother, who from first to last remains an inveterate
practical joker. One and all they become our life-long friends, while
the book stands alone as a perfect picture of English country town
society fifty years ago.
Mrs. Gaskell's shorter stories are scarcely equal to the novels, yet
some of them are very beautiful. "Cousin Phillis," for example, gives
one more of the real atmosphere of country life than any other writer
except Wordsworth. We seem actually to smell the new-mown hay as we read
the story.
Charming, too, is "My Lady Ludlow" with her genteel horror of dissenters
subdued in the end by her genuine good feeling. How often one has longed
for that comfortable square pew of hers in the parish church, in which,
if she did not like the sermon, she would pull up a glass window as
though she had been in her coach, and shut out the sound of the
obnoxious preacher! But, with all her peculiarities, she was the most
courteous of women--a lady in the true sense of the word--and when
people smiled at a shy and untaught visitor who spread out her
handkerchief on the front of her dress as the footman handed her coffee,
my Lady Ludlow with infinite tact and grace promptly spread _her_
handkerchief exactly in the same fashion which the tradesman's wife had
adopted.
Among the short tragic stories, the most striking is one called "The
Crooked Branch," in which the scene at the assizes has almost unrivalled
power; while among the lighter short stories, "My French Master," with
its delicate portraiture of the old refugee, and "Mr. Harrison's
Confessions," the delightfully written love-story of a young country
doctor, are perhaps the most enjoyable.
In 1863 the novel "Sylvia's Lovers" was published, and although, by its
fine description of old Whitby and the pathos of the story, it has won
many admirers, we infinitely prefer its successor, "Wives and
Daughters." There is something very sad in the thought that this last
and best of the writer's stories was left unfinished; but happily very
little remained to be told, and that little was tenderly touched in to
the almost perfect picture of English home life by the daughter who had
been not only Mrs. Gaskell's child but her friend. "Wives and Daughters"
will always remain as a true and vivid and powerful study of life and
character; while Molly Gibson, with her loyal heart and sweet sunshiny
nature, will, we venture to think, better represent the majority of
English girls than the happily abnormal Dodos and Millicent Chynes of
present-day fashion.
In Mr. Gibson's second wife the author has given us a most subtle study
of a thoroughly selfish and false-hearted woman, and she is made all the
more repulsive because of her outward charms, her soft seductive voice
and her lavish employment of terms of endearment. Wonderfully clever,
too, is the study of poor little Cynthia, her daughter, whose relations
to Molly are most charmingly drawn.
The story was just approaching its happy and wholesome ending, and the
difficulties which had parted Roger Hamley and Molly had just
disappeared, when death summoned the writer from a world she had done so
much to brighten and to raise. On Sunday evening, November 12, 1865,
Mrs. Gaskell died quite suddenly at Holybourne, Alton, Hampshire, a
house which she had recently bought as a surprise for her husband. Sad
as such a death must always be for those who are left behind, one can
imagine nothing happier than "death in harness" for a worker who loves
his work.
".... There's rest above.
Below let work be death, if work be love!"
Her "last days," wrote one of those who knew her best, "had been full of
loving thought and tender help for others. She was so sweet and dear and
noble beyond words." That is the summing-up of the whole; and, after
all, what better could a long biography give us? The motto of all of us
should surely be the words of Mme. Viardot Garcia: "First I am a
woman ... then I am an artist." And assuredly Mrs. Gaskell's life was
ruled on those lines.
"It was wonderful"--wrote her daughter, Mrs. Holland, in a letter to me
the other day--"how her writing never interfered with her social or
domestic duties. I think she was the best and most practical housekeeper
I ever came across, and the brightest, most agreeable hostess, to say
nothing of being everything as a mother and friend. She combined both,
being my mother and greatest friend in a way you do not often, I think,
find between mother and daughter."
Some people are fond of rashly asserting that the ideal wife and mother
cares little and knows less about the world beyond the little world of
home. Mrs. Gaskell, however, took a keen interest in the questions of
the day, and was a Liberal in politics; while it is quite evident that
neither these wider interests nor her philanthropic work tended to
interfere with the home life, which was clearly of the noblest type.
The friend as well as the mother of her children, the sharer of all her
husband's interests, she yet found time to use to the utmost the great
literary gift that had been entrusted to her; while her sympathy for
those in trouble was shown not only in the powerful pleading of her
novels, but in quiet, practical work in connection with prisoners. She
was one of the fellow labourers of Thomas Wright, the well-known prison
philanthropist, and was able to help in finding places for young girls
who had been discharged from prison. For working women she also held
classes, and both among the poor and the rich had many close
friendships.
How far the characters in the novels were studied from life is a
question which naturally suggests itself; and Mrs. Holland replies to it
as follows: "I do not think my mother ever _consciously_ took her
characters from special individuals, but we who knew often thought we
recognised people, and would tell her, 'Oh, so and so is just like Mr.
Blank,' or something of that kind; and she would say, 'So it is, but I
never meant it for him.' And really many of the characters are from
originals, or rather are like originals, but they were not consciously
meant to be like."
For another detail which will interest Mrs. Gaskell's fellow workers I
am indebted to the same source:
"Sometimes she planned her novels more or less beforehand, but in many
cases, certainly in that of 'Wives and Daughters,' she had very little
plot made beforehand, but planned her story as she wrote. She generally
wrote in the morning, but sometimes late at night, when the house was
quiet."
Few writers, we think, have exercised a more thoroughly wholesome
influence over their readers than Mrs. Gaskell. Her books, with their
wide human sympathies, their tender comprehension of human frailty,
their bright flashes of humour and their infinite pathos, seem to plead
with us to love one another. Through them all we seem to hear the
author's voice imploring us to "seize the day" and to "make friends," as
she does in actual words at the close of one of her Christmas stories,
adding pathetically: "I ask it of you for the sake of that old angelic
song, heard so many years ago by the shepherds, keeping watch by night
on Bethlehem Heights."
[Signature: A E Bayly.
'Edna Lyall.']
MRS. CROWE. MRS. ARCHER CLIVE. MRS. HENRY WOOD
_By_ ADELINE SERGEANT
MRS. CROWE. MRS. ARCHER CLIVE. MRS. HENRY WOOD
Mrs. Catherine Crowe, whose maiden name was Stevens, was born at Borough
Green, in Kent, about 1800, and died in 1876. She married Colonel Crowe
in 1822, and took up her residence with him in Edinburgh. Her books were
written chiefly between the years 1838 and 1859, and she is best known
by her novel, "Susan Hopley," and her collection of ghost stories, "The
Night Side of Nature." She was a woman of considerable ability, which
appears, however, to have run into rather obscure and sombre channels,
such as showed a somewhat morbid bent of mind, with a tendency towards
depression, which culminated at last in a short but violent attack of
insanity. But love of the unseen and supernatural does not seem to have
blunted her keenness of observation in ordinary life, for her novels,
the scenes of which are laid chiefly among homely and domestic
surroundings, display alike soundness of judgment and considerable
dramatic power. As a writer, indeed, Mrs. Crowe was extremely versatile;
she wrote plays, children's stories, short historical tales, romantic
novels, as well as the ghost stories with which her name seems chiefly
to be associated in the minds of this generation. It is evident too,
that she believed herself--rightly or wrongly--to be possessed of great
philosophical discrimination; but it must be acknowledged that her
philosophical and metaphysical studies often led her into curious byways
of speculation, into which the reader does not willingly wander.
* * * * *
It is worth noting that Mrs. Crowe's ideas respecting the status and
education of women were, for the days in which she lived, exceedingly
"advanced." In "Lilly Dawson," for instance, a story published in 1847,
she makes an elaborate protest against the kind of education which women
were then receiving. "It is true," she says, "that there is little real
culture amongst men; there are few strong minds and fewer honest ones,
but they have still more advantages. If their education has been bad, it
has at least been a trifle better than ours. Six hours a day at Latin
and Greek are better than six hours a day at worsted work and
embroidery; and time is better spent in acquiring a smattering of
mathematics than in strumming Hook's lessons on a bad pianoforte."
Her views of women in general are well expressed in the following words
from the same work of fiction. "If, as we believe, under no system of
training, the intellect of woman would be found as strong as that of a
man, she is compensated by her intuitions being stronger. If her reason
be less majestic, her insight is clearer; where man reasons she sees.
Nature, in short, gave her all that was needful to enable her to play a
noble part in the world's history, if man would but let her play it out,
and not treat her like a full-grown baby, to be flattered and spoilt on
the one hand, and coerced and restricted on the other, vibrating between
royal rule and slavish serfdom." Surely we hear the voice of Nora Helmer
herself, the very quintessence of Ibsenism! It must have required
considerable courage to write in this way in the year 1847, and Mrs.
Crowe should certainly be numbered among the lovers of educational
reform. In many ways she seems to have been a woman of strong
individuality and decided opinions.
* * * * *
Her first work was a drama, "Aristodemus," published anonymously in
1838; it showed considerable ability and was well regarded by the
critics. She then wrote a novel, "Men and Women, or Manorial Rights," in
1839; and in 1841 published her most successful work of fiction: "Susan
Hopley, or the Adventures of a Maid-servant." This story was more
generally popular than any other from her pen, but it is to be doubted
whether it possesses more literary ability or points of greater interest
than the rest.
Mrs. Crowe then embarked upon a translation of "The Seeress of
Provorst," by Justinus Kerner, a book of revelations concerning the
inner life of man; and in 1848 she published a book called "The Night
Side of Nature," a collection of supernatural tales gathered from many
sources, probably the best storehouse of ghost stories in the English
language. Its interest is a little marred by the credulity of the
author. She seems never to disbelieve any ghost story of any kind that
comes in her way. From the humble apologies, however, with which she
opens her dissertation on the subject, it is easy to see how great a
change has passed over people's minds in the course of the last fifty
years, with respect to the supernatural. If Mrs. Crowe had lived in
these days, she would have found herself in intimate relations with the
Society for Psychical Research, and would have had no reason to excuse
herself for the choice of her subject. She divides her book into
sections, which treat of dreams (where we get Sir Noel Paton's account
of his mother's curious vision); warnings; double-dreaming and trance,
with the stories of Colonel Townshend's voluntary trance and the
well-known legend of Lord Balcarres and the ghost of Claverhouse;
doppel-gaengers and apparitions (including the stories of Lady
Beresford's branded wrist and Lord Lyttleton's warning); and other
chapters descriptive of haunted houses, with details concerning
clairvoyance and the use of the crystal. It is interesting to find among
these the original account of "Pearlin Jean," of which Miss Sarah Tytler
has made such excellent use in one of her recent books. An account of
the phenomena of _stigmata_ and the case of Catherine Emmerich, are also
described in detail. Lovers of the supernatural will find much to
gratify their taste in a perusal of "The Night Side of Nature."
Mrs. Crowe did not exhaust the subject in this volume, for she issued a
book on ghosts and family legends, a volume for Christmas, in the year
1859; a work full of the kind of stories which became so popular in the
now almost obsolete Christmas Annual of succeeding years. It is also
curious to note, that in 1848, Mrs. Crowe produced a work of an entirely
different nature, namely, an excellent story for children, entitled
"Pippie's Warning, or Mind Your Temper"--another instance of her
versatility of mind.
"The Adventures of a Beauty" and "Light and Darkness" appeared in 1852.
The latter is a collection of short tales from different sources, partly
historical and partly imaginative, and certainly more in accordance with
the taste of modern days than her elaborate domestic stories. Mrs.
Crowe's taste for the horrible is distinctly perceptible in this
collection. There is an account of the celebrated poisoners, Frau
Gottfried, Madame Ursinus, and Margaret Zwanziger, whose crimes were so
numerous that they themselves forgot the number of their victims; and of
Mr. Tinius, who went about making morning calls and murdering the
persons whom he honoured with a visit. The histories of Lesurques, the
hero of the "Lyons Mail," and of Madame Louise, Princess of France, who
became a nun, are well narrated; but nearly all the stories are
concerned with horrors such as suggest the productions of Mr. Wilkie
Collins. "The Priest of St. Quentin" and "The Lycanthropist" are two of
the most powerful.
Her next novel, a more purely domestic one, was "Linny Lockwood," issued
in 1854. A sentence from the preface to this book anticipates--rather
early, as we may think--the approaching death of the three-volume
novel: "Messrs. Routledge and Co. have been for some time soliciting me
to write them an original novel for their cheap series; and being
convinced that the period for publishing at L1 11s. 6d., books of a kind
that people generally read but once, is gone by, I have resolved to make
the experiment."
She wrote another tragedy, "The Cruel Kindness," in 1853, and abridged
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" for children. In 1859 a pamphlet on "Spiritualism
and the Age we Live in," constituted the last of her more important
works, although she continued, for some time after recovery from the
attack of insanity which we have mentioned, to write papers and stories
for periodicals.
In spite of Mrs. Crowe's love for the supernatural and the horrible, she
is one of the pioneers of the purely domestic story--that story of the
affections and the emotions peculiar to the Victorian Age. She is allied
to the schools of Richardson and Fanny Burney rather than to those of
Sir Walter Scott or Miss Austen; for although her incidents are often
romantic and even far-fetched, her characters are curiously homely and
generally of humble environment. Thus, for instance, "Susan Hopley" is a
maid-servant (though not of the Pamela kind nor with the faintest
resemblance to Esther Waters); Lilly Dawson, although proved ultimately
to be the daughter of a colonel, passes the greater part of her earlier
life as a drudge and a dependent; and Linny Lockwood, while refined and
educated, is reduced to the situation of a lady's maid. The
circumstances of her heroines are, as a rule, extremely prosaic, and
would possibly have been condemned by writers of Miss Austen's school as
hopelessly vulgar; but Mrs. Crowe's way of treating these characters and
their surroundings bears upon it no stamp of vulgarity at all. Its great
defect is its want of humour to light up the sordid side of the life
which she describes. She is almost always serious, full of exalted and
occasionally overstrained sentiment. And even when treating of
childhood, it is rarely that she relaxes so far as (in "Lilly Dawson")
to describe the naughtiness of the little girl who insisted upon praying
for the cat. This is almost the sole glimpse of a sense of fun to which
Mrs. Crowe treats us in her numerous volumes.