Appreciations and Testimonia
Professor Minto
“Mrs Gaskell was indeed a born story-teller, charged through and through with the story-teller’s peculiar element, a something which may be called suppressed gipsiness, a restless instinct which impelled her to be constantly making trial in imagination of various modes of life. Her imagination was perpetually busy with the vicissitudes which days and years brought round to others; she entered into their lives, laughed with them, wept with them, speculated on the cardinal incidents and circumstances, the good qualities and the ‘vicious moles of nature,’ which had made them what they were, schemed how they might have been different, and lived through the windings and turnings of their destinies, the excitement of looking forward to the unknown.…
“‘Sir,’ she seems to say to the nature-worshipper, ‘let us take a peep into some English household. Let us watch its inmates in comfort and in distress, I will tell you their history. You shall see how a Lancashire mechanic entertains his friends, how a country doctor gets on with his neighbours, how a coquettish farmer’s daughter behaves to her lovers. I have no strange experiences to reveal to you, only the life that lies at your doors; but I will show you its tragedies and its comedies. I will describe the characters of your countrymen to you, and I will tell you things about them that will interest you, some things that will make you weep and many that will make you smile.’” (Fortnightly Review, 1878.)
Dr. A. W. Ward
“The ‘century of praise’ which it would not be difficult to compose from the tributes, public and private, paid to the genius of Mrs. Gaskell by eminent men and women of her own generation, need hardly be invoked by its successors, to whom her writings still speak. Such a list would include, among other eulogies, those of Carlyle and Ruskin, of Dickens, who called her his ‘Scheherazade,’ and of Thackeray, of Charles Kingsley and of Matthew Arnold, of whom his sister, the late Mrs. W. E. Forster, drew a picture in his own happy manner, ‘stretched at full length on a sofa reading a Christmas tale of Mrs. Gaskell, which moves him to tears, and the tears to complacent admiration of his own sensibility.’ Lord Houghton, John Forster, George Henry Lewes, Tom Taylor, were among her declared admirers; to whom should be added among statesmen, Cobden and the late Duke of Argyll. Among Mrs. Gaskell’s female fellow-writers, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot, Harriet Martineau and Mrs. Beecher Stowe (facies non omnibus una) were at least alike to each other in their warm admiration of her. To these names should be added that of one whose praise came near home to Mrs. Gaskell’s heart—Mrs. Stanley, the mother of Dean Stanley. Among French lovers of her genius Ampère has already been mentioned, and with him should be named Guizot and Jules Simon.” (Introduction to Mary Barton, Knutsford Edition, 1906.)
Susanna Winkworth
“When we first knew Mrs. Gaskell she had not yet become celebrated, but from the earliest days of our intercourse with her we were struck with her genius, and used to say to each other that we were sure she could write books, or do anything else in the world that she liked. And the more we knew of her, the more we admired her. She was a noble-looking woman, with a queenly presence, and her high, broad, serene brow and finely-cut, mobile features, were lighted up by a constantly varying play of expression as she poured forth her wonderful talk. It was like the gleaming ripple and rush of a clear, deep stream in sunshine. Though one of the most brilliant persons I ever saw, she had none of the restlessness and eagerness that spoils so much of our conversation nowadays. There was no hurry or high pressure about her, but she seemed always surrounded by an atmosphere of ease, leisure, and playful geniality, that drew out the best side of everyone who was in her company.
“When you were with her, you felt as if you had twice the life in you that you had at ordinary times. All her great intellectual gifts—her quick, keen observation, her marvellous memory, her wealth of imaginative power, her rare felicity of instinct, her graceful and racy humour—were so warmed and brightened by sympathy and feeling, that while actually with her, you were less conscious of her power than of her charm.