Two years ago I was allowed by the courtesy of the owner to wander through Clopton Hall, which was once the Manor House. It has been partly rebuilt, but the recess parlour, in which the merry schoolgirls had tea, is still there with its beautiful painted windows, and the priest’s room, in which our future novelist crept on her hands and knees, is to be seen with its barred windows and texts painted on the walls, and on the old oak staircase are oil paintings of Charlotte and Margaret Clopton, which Mrs. Gaskell mentions. Lovers of Mrs. Gaskell’s works should not fail to read her graphic account of “A Visit to Clopton Hall.”
About the year 1827 Elizabeth Stevenson returned to her good Aunt Lumb at Knutsford, but shortly afterwards her only brother, a naval lieutenant, left his ship when in port at Calcutta and was never heard of again. He it was, doubtless, who suggested “Poor Peter” in Cranford and “Dear Frederick” in North and South, though both these characters were allowed to return to their homes again. It is said that the posting of the letter to “Poor Peter” in India is founded on actual fact.
The disappearance of her brother was followed by her father’s serious illness, which took her to Chelsea, where she devotedly nursed him until his death in 1829. Afterwards we find her leaving her stepmother and half-brother William and her half-sister Catherine, and returning once more to Knutsford, where she did not remain long, as at this time she paid a long visit to Newcastle-on-Tyne, to the home of the Rev. William Turner, so beautifully described in her second novel, Ruth, in “A Dissenting Minister’s Household.” In the quiet atmosphere of this religious home, she found her prototype for Thurstan Benson. Thurstan, as she explains, was an old family name, and it is still retained in the family. There was a Thurstan Holland of Denton, in the early part of the fifteenth century, who was one of her ancestors.
From Newcastle-on-Tyne Elizabeth Stevenson went to spend the last winter of her maidenhood in Edinburgh. There her remarkable beauty attracted painters and sculptors, and fortunately she was persuaded to sit to David Dunbar, a former pupil of Chantrey. He sculptured the beautiful marble bust of the fair debutante, which, enclosed in a glass case, is one of the most cherished possessions in her old home at Manchester. About this time she also had an exquisite miniature painted, the pose of which reminds us of the description of Ruth by Bellingham: “Such a superb turn of the head, she might be a Percy or a Howard.”
In August, 1832, before she had attained her twenty-second birthday, Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was married to the Rev. William Gaskell, M.A., minister of Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester. The ceremony was performed in the old Parish Church of Knutsford, as Dissenters were not allowed to be married in their own chapels in those days. The Hollands and the Gaskells were already connected by marriage, Mr. Gaskell’s sister having married Charles Holland, a cousin of Elizabeth Stevenson.
In one of her letters, Mrs. Gaskell tells us that the streets of Knutsford were sanded in accordance with the custom at weddings, and that there were general rejoicings. The honeymoon was spent in North Wales, in the neighbourhood of Festiniog, where Mr. Charles Holland had extensive slate quarries.
The marriage was an ideal one. The young wife at once threw herself into her husband’s work, helping in the Sunday School and visiting the sick and needy. Her beauty and winning personality endeared her to the members of her husband’s congregation, which was said to be the most intellectual and wealthy in Manchester in those days, more than thirty private carriages often being found waiting after the conclusion of the morning service. Mary Barton gives the readers the other side of the society in which Mrs. Gaskell moved, and where she became “a very angel of light” in the poverty-stricken districts of Ancoats and Hulme.
Their home was always a centre of light and learning first for ten years at 14 Dover Street, afterwards at 121 Upper Rumford Street, and finally, from 1849, the present family residence in Plymouth Grove, which has always been noted for its sunny hospitality and genial intellectual atmosphere. Lord Houghton said of this home that such was its beneficent influence in the great cotton city, “It made Manchester a possible centre for literary people.” Mr. and Mrs. Gaskell gathered around them a warm circle of friends, who joined in trying to ameliorate the impoverished districts of that part of Lancashire. When the Chartist riots had reduced many of the cotton operatives to starvation, Mrs. Gaskell’s home was a rendezvous from which she distributed through her windows in the early morning loaves and other necessities.
Thomas Wright, a working-man of Manchester, who gave up all his spare time in visiting the prisons and helping the fallen, found good friends in the Gaskells. Mrs. Gaskell has written an appreciative note about him in Mary Barton. Mr. G. F. Watts painted “The Good Samaritan” in 1850, and presented it to the city of Manchester as a tribute of admiration to the noble philanthropy of Thomas Wright. Mrs. Gaskell was instrumental in getting Mr. Watts to paint the beautiful water-colour portrait of Thomas Wright, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.