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but it is still sweet, and there are many successful novelists of our own time whose works are far less read and more out of date than hers.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.