A question naturally suggests itself at this point as to Mrs. Gaskell's birth and education. How far had she inherited her literary gifts? And in what way had her mind been influenced by the surroundings of her childhood and girlhood? Her mother, Mrs. Stevenson, was a Miss Holland, of Sandlebridge, in Cheshire; her father—William Stevenson—was at first classical tutor in the Manchester Academy, and later on, during his residence in Edinburgh, was editor of the Scots Magazine and a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review. He was next appointed Keeper of the Records to the Treasury, an appointment which caused his removal from Edinburgh to Chelsea; and it was there, in Cheyne Row, that Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, the future novelist, was born.
Owing to the death of her mother, she was adopted when only a month old by her aunt, Mrs. Lumb, and taken to Knutsford, in Cheshire, the little town so wonderfully described in "Cranford." For two years in her girlhood she was educated at Stratford-on-Avon, walking in the flowery meadows where Shakspere once walked, worshipping in the stately old church where he worshipped, and where he willed that his body should be left at rest; nor is it possible to help imagining that the associations of that ideal place had an influence on the mind of the future writer, doing something to give that essentially English tone which characterises all her books.
After her father's second marriage she went to live with him, and her education was superintended by him until his death in 1829, when she once more returned to Knutsford. Here, at the age of twenty-two, she was married to the Rev. William Gaskell, M.A., of Cross Street Chapel, Manchester; and Manchester remained her home ever after.
Such are the brief outlines of a life story which was to have such a wide and lasting influence for good. For nothing is more striking than this when we think over the well-known novels—they are not only consummate works of art, full of literary charm, perfect in style and rich with the most delightful humour and pathos—they are books from which that morbid lingering over the loathsome details of vice, those sensuous descriptions of sin too rife in the novels of the present day, are altogether excluded.
Not that the stories are namby-pamby, or unreal in any sense; they are wholly free from the horrid prudery, the Pharisaical temper, which makes a merit of walking through life in blinkers and refuses to know of anything that can shock the respectable. Mrs. Gaskell was too genuine an artist to fall either into this error or into the error of bad taste and want of reserve. She drew life with utter reverence; she held the highest of all ideals, and she dared to be true.
How tender and womanly and noble, for instance, is her treatment of the difficult subject which forms the motif of "Ruth"! How sorrowfully true to life is the story of the dressmaker's apprentice with no place in which to spend her Sunday afternoons! We seem ourselves to breathe the dreadful "stuffy" atmosphere of the workroom, to feel the dreary monotony of the long day's work. It is so natural that the girl's fancy should be caught by Henry Bellingham, who was courteous to her when she mended the torn dress of his partner at the ball; so inevitable that she should lose her heart to him when she witnessed his gallant rescue of the drowning child. But her fall was not inevitable, and one of the finest bits in the whole novel is the description of Ruth's hesitation in the inn parlour when, finding herself most cruelly and unjustly cast off by her employer, she has just accepted her lover's suggestion that she shall go with him to London, little guessing what the promise involved, yet intuitively feeling that her consent had been unwise.
"Ruth became as hot as she had previously been cold, and went and opened the window, and leant out into the still, sweet evening air. The bush of sweetbriar underneath the window scented the place, and the delicious fragrance reminded her of her old home. I think scents affect and quicken the memory even more than either sights or sounds; for Ruth had instantly before her eyes the little garden beneath the window of her mother's room, with the old man leaning on his stick watching her, just as he had done not three hours before on that very afternoon." She remembers the faithful love of the old labouring man and his wife who had served her parents in their lifetime, and for their sake would help and advise her now. Would it not be better to go to them?
"She put on her bonnet and opened the parlour door; but then she saw the square figure of the landlord standing at the open house door, smoking his evening pipe, and looming large and distinct against the dark air and landscape beyond. Ruth remembered the cup of tea that she had drunk; it must be paid for, and she had no money with her. She feared that he would not let her leave the house without paying. She thought that she would leave a note for Mr. Bellingham saying where she was gone, and how she had left the house in debt, for (like a child) all dilemmas appeared of equal magnitude to her; and the difficulty of passing the landlord while he stood there, and of giving him an explanation of the circumstances, appeared insuperable, and as awkward and fraught with inconvenience as far more serious situations. She kept peeping out of her room after she had written her little pencil note, to see if the outer door was still obstructed. There he stood motionless, enjoying his pipe, and looking out into the darkness which gathered thick with the coming night. The fumes of the tobacco were carried into the house and brought back Ruth's sick headache. Her energy left her; she became stupid and languid, and incapable of spirited exertion; she modified her plan of action to the determination of asking Mr. Bellingham to take her to Milham Grange, to the care of her humble friends, instead of to London. And she thought in her simplicity that he would instantly consent when he had heard her reasons."
The selfishness of the man who took advantage of her weakness and ignorance is finely drawn because it is not at all exaggerated. Henry Bellingham is no monster of wickedness, but a man with many fine qualities spoilt by an over-indulgent and unprincipled mother, and yielding too easily to her worldly-wise arguments.
Ruth first sees a faint trace of his selfishness—she calls it "unfairness"—when, on their arrival in Wales, he persuades the landlady to give them rooms in the hotel and to turn out on a false pretext some other guests into the dépendance across the road. She understands his selfish littleness of soul only too well when, years after, she talks to him during that wonderfully described interview in the chapter called "The Meeting on the Sands." He cannot in the least understand her. "The deep sense of penitence she expressed he took for earthly shame, which he imagined he could soon soothe away." He actually has the audacity to tempt her a second time; then, after her indignant refusal, he offers her marriage. To his great amazement she refuses this too. "Why, what on earth makes you say that?" asked he....