THE REGENT LIBRARY

MRS. GASKELL

Mrs. Gaskell.

After a drawing by Geo. Richmond, R.A.

THE REGENT LIBRARY

MRS. GASKELL
BY
ESTHER ALICE CHADWICK

LONDON
HERBERT & DANIEL
21 Maddox Street
W.

MRS. GASKELL

Contents

Introduction

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but it is still sweet, and there are many successful novelists of our own time whose works are far less read and more out of date than hers.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

II

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, to give Mrs. Gaskell’s maiden name, first saw the light on September 29th, 1810, in Chelsea, within sight of the Thames, which she describes as a great solace to her in later days, when she was “very, very unhappy.” The house in which she was born was in picturesque Lindsey Row, nearly opposite the old wooden Battersea Bridge beloved of artists and just at the bend of the river. The view from the house, which is now known as 93 Cheyne Walk, is still very fine.

Thirteen months almost to the day after Elizabeth Stevenson’s birth, her mother died at 3 Beaufort Row, Chelsea, at the age of forty, and was buried on October 30, 1811. After the mother’s death, the baby was taken care of by a neighbouring shopkeeper’s wife, until Mr. Stevenson could make arrangements for his little daughter to be taken to Mrs. Lumb—the beautiful Aunt Hannah—who lived on the heathside at Knutsford. Within a few weeks of the mother’s death, a friend of the Hollands, Mrs. Whittington, consented to take the baby back with her to Knutsford.

This statement concerning Mrs. Stevenson’s death and the age when Mrs. Gaskell was left motherless, which is now made public for the first time, is confirmed by Mrs. Gaskell herself, who, writing to Mary Howitt on August 18, 1838, says: “Though a Londoner by birth, I was early motherless, and taken when only a year old to my dear, adopted native town Knutsford.”

The long journey by stage-coach from Chelsea to Knutsford is said to have suggested “Babby’s” journey from London to Manchester in Mary Barton. Now that we know that Elizabeth Stevenson was a little over a year old, and not one month old as has been stated by every previous writer on the subject, it is easy to understand that Mrs. Gaskell had for her prototype of “Babby” a baby of about a year old. It has always puzzled me as a mother, how a baby as young as “Babby” is represented to be in Mary Barton could have survived after being fed on “pobbies,” and it is quite certain that a crust of bread, provided for the child according to the story, could not have been suitable for so young a baby.

Henceforth Knutsford—“My dear, adopted native town”—as Mrs. Gaskell affectionately termed it, became her home, until her marriage. The bringing of this baby to the little Cheshire town has led to the immortalising of the place as Cranford, for had Elizabeth Stevenson never lived there, the Knutsford of the Early Victorian period would probably have been buried in oblivion long ago, and whilst many have enjoyed the solace and charm of the place, it needed an artist “with something of an angel’s touch” to reveal the beauty of the little country town and its quaint, kindly society of old maids.

Mrs. Lumb’s house at Knutsford, where Elizabeth Stevenson grew to be a singularly beautiful girl, is still standing at the corner of the heath, over which the future novelist used to ramble and day-dream. In this neighbourhood she was surrounded by her mother’s people. At Church House was her uncle, Dr. Holland, “who had his round of thirty miles and lived at Cranford.” He was the father of the well-known Sir Henry Holland, physician to Queen Victoria. He delighted to take his niece with him on his country drives, just as Dr. Gibson of Hollingford, in Wives and Daughters, drove round the district with Molly Gibson.

Elizabeth Stevenson was fortunate in her parentage. Her father, William Stevenson, a remarkable and gifted man, was the son of Captain Stevenson of Berwick-on-Tweed. Formerly the name was spelt Stevensen, which betrayed its Scandinavian origin. Mrs. Gaskell was always fond of travel, and when about to start on a journey, she would remark, “The blood of the Vikings is stirring in my veins.”

If heredity is to count for anything, Elizabeth Stevenson derived much of her literary talent from her father, who, according to the Annual Register for 1830, “was a man remarkable for the stores of knowledge which he possessed and for the simplicity and modesty by which his rare attainments were concealed.” Mrs. Gaskell was very proud of her father’s memory, as well she might be. One who knew him wrote, “No man had so few personal enemies and so many sincere, steady friends. He was kind and benevolent, and had little of the pride of authorship.” These words might be written with all sincerity as equally applicable to his famous daughter.

William Stevenson played many parts. After his education was finished at the Daventry Academy, he became a tutor at Bruges, afterwards going to Manchester as Classical lecturer at the Academy and preacher at the Dob Lane Unitarian Chapel, Failsworth. Later he was a farmer in East Lothian, and then he moved to Edinburgh, where he became editor of the Edinburgh Review and a contributor to many magazines, besides writing a Life of Caxton. In 1807 he came to London as secretary to Lord Lauderdale, and eventually settled as Keeper of the Records at the Treasury Office, which position he held until his death in 1829. Mrs. Gaskell’s mother was Elizabeth Holland, fourth daughter of Samuel Holland of the Sandlebridge Estate, near Knutsford. He also owned an estate known as Dogholes, near Great Warford.

Grandfather Holland was a very lovable man, and doubtless he contributed something to the beautiful character of the farmer preacher, Mr. Holman, in Cousin Phillis, and in a less degree to Thomas Holbrook, Miss Matty’s faithful lover. The ancestral home at Sandlebridge is beautifully and accurately described as Hope Farm in Cousin Phillis, and as Woodley in Cranford. The history of several members of the distinguished Holland family was such that it could not escape wandering into the novels of such a genius as Mrs. Gaskell, though she never meant to put real people in her stories. If Leslie Stephen’s definition of a novel is correct, “transfigured experience, not necessarily the author’s own experience, but near enough to his everyday life to be within the range of his sympathy,” then Mrs. Gaskell’s novels bear the test well.

Little is known of the paternal grandmother, but her grandmother Holland is described as “A woman of extraordinary energy and will and rather the opposite of her husband, who, though firm, was far quieter and disposed to treat his servants with more leniency than his wife, who was exceedingly particular with them.” Sir Henry Holland, in his Recollections, says that his grandfather, Samuel Holland, was the most practical optimist he ever knew, and although he farmed his own land, he could never be got to complain of “the distemperature of the seasons,” and one of Samuel Holland’s own sons states that his father’s life had been “particularly smooth.”

Elizabeth Stevenson stayed in Knutsford until she was thirteen, the only variation being an occasional visit to her father at Chelsea. Knutsford, with its curious old customs, must have made a very vivid impression on her mind, since afterwards she was able to portray the little country town in no less than six of her stories depicting English village life in the early part of the nineteenth century. These quaint stories are perfect little miniatures set in the beautiful scenery which abounds in that part of Cheshire, and they give us glimpses of the novelist at her best.

How few could have found in bygone Knutsford, with its prim old maids, a few aristocratic families, and the necessary doctor and lawyer, so much excellent material with which to weave stories that have charmed succeeding generations in many lands. It was Mrs. Gaskell’s clear intuition which saw so much more than meets the eye of the ordinary mortal and supplied her with an unlimited and inexhaustible store, from which she could charm either by voice or pen. One who knew her before she was recognised as a gifted writer said of her, “She was a born story-teller,” and we can well believe it.

When nearly fourteen Elizabeth Stevenson was sent to an excellent boarding-school at Stratford-on-Avon, kept by the Misses Byerley, who were related to the Hollands, as well as to her stepmother. There she stayed for two years, including holidays. The school was once known as “The Old House of St. Mary,” and for a little while Shakespeare lived there. To be educated in a house in which Shakespeare once dwelt was a good augury for the future novelist.

Elizabeth’s schooldays were very happy. Writing to Mary Howitt in 1838, she says, “I am unwilling to leave even in thought the haunts of such happy days as my schooldays were.”

A book, presented to one of her schoolfellows, dated June 15th, 1824, lies before me, with Elizabeth Stevenson’s signature. She was noted for her kindness to her school friends, and, like Charlotte Brontë, when at Roe Head it was said of her that she could often be found surrounded by a group of eager listeners, and even as a schoolgirl she had, like her dear Miss Matty, a leaning to ghost stories.

Her first separate literary effort was a letter describing an afternoon spent at Clopton Hall, Stratford-on-Avon, in company with her school friends, which she sent to William Howitt, who readily accepted it for insertion in his “Visits to Remarkable Places.” It was written more than ten years after she left school, but it proves how observant as a girl she was, and how her love of research led her to explore the old house, rather than wander in the park which surrounds the hall.

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.

The Rev. Travers Madge was another who worked with the Gaskells, giving up his salary as a minister and devoting his life to the poor. The Misses Winkworth were also willing helpers, as also was John Bamford, whose poem, “God help the poor,” found a place in Mary Barton. In addition to the practical help which the Gaskells gave, they both cherished a wish to wield the pen in the interests of the poor, and in 1837 they jointly published in Blackwood’s Magazine a poem, marked No. 1, Sketches among the Poor. It is really a poetical rendering of the homely life of “Old Alice,” who figures so pathetically in Mary Barton. No other poem succeeded this, though it is well known that Mrs. Gaskell frequently expressed herself in verse, and Mr. Gaskell wrote a number of beautiful hymns, some of which are still to be found in various collections. He also translated hymns from the German, and was an expert in writing in the Lancashire dialect. In addition to his other duties, he was for a time a lecturer in English Literature and Logic at Owens College, now known as the Victoria University, Manchester.

The quiet life in Knutsford and Stratford-on-Avon inspired Mrs. Gaskell with those beautiful thoughts of the country which she has so well expressed in her pastoral stories, but it was the busy city of Manchester that roused her latent talent and winged her pen in writing of “the silent sorrows of the poor.”

The death of her only boy from scarlet fever in September, 1842, at Festiniog, where she had gone for a holiday, was succeeded by a lingering illness, and it was whilst lying on her couch that she found the necessary time to write her first novel. It has been said that Mary Barton contained too many death-bed scenes, but it is well to remember that it was from a death-bed that Mrs. Gaskell drew the inspiration which enabled her to depict in such realistic colours common scenes in the lives of the poor. The complaint that Mary Barton and Lizzie Leigh were much too sad—“stories with a sob in them”—probably prompted Mrs. Gaskell to prove that she could write in a humorous vein, hence her delightful sketches of Cranford Society. Mary Barton had attracted to her many literary friends, amongst the most enthusiastic being Charles Dickens, at whose request she became a regular contributor to Household Words, which he had just started. When Mrs. Gaskell sent him her first short paper entitled Our Society in Cranford, which included chapters one and two, she meant it for a complete sketch, but Dickens asked for more and still more, and so the history of the Cranfordian Society was chronicled bit by bit and afterwards compiled to form the book which is certainly the most popular of all Mrs. Gaskell’s works. “If my name is ever immortalised, it will be through Cranford, for so many people have mentioned it to me,” said Mrs. Gaskell, and she has proved a true prophet. Wherever the English tongue is spoken, Cranford is treasured, for its quiet, sunny humour is irresistible, and it has become a classic, which stands alone for its delightful winsomeness and tender pathos.

With splendid fidelity Mrs. Gaskell kept to her inimitable style, and the sketches are, as compared with those of Dickens and Thackeray, like carefully finished water-colour paintings beside the strong, bold canvas of a Rubens or a Vandyke. Instead of uproarious mirth Cranford provokes the kindly smile, which seldom broadens into a loud laugh, but it always leaves the reader the better for its kindly influence. Cranford gives the best reflection of Mrs. Gaskell’s beautiful character. She loved to tell stories of bygone days and to whet the appetite for amusing tales, which, while perfectly true to life, bordered on the ridiculous and dealt gently with the foibles and weaknesses of some phases of society. Of these stories she had a goodly store, which with gentle satire she could tell in her own sweet way. She was fond of making a pun or asking a riddle, which would at once arrest the attention, and, like Miss Galindo in My Lady Ludlow, she believed—“When everything goes wrong, one would give up breathing if one could not lighten one’s heart by a joke.”

In 1850, a short time before Mrs. Gaskell commenced Cranford, she met her great contemporary, Charlotte Brontë, at Briery Close, Windermere.

Sixty years afterwards, almost to the day, I was invited by the kind courtesy of the owner to visit this interesting house on the shores of Lake Windermere. The cosy drawing-room in which those two novelists met and their respective bedrooms, next to each other, from which there is a magnificent view of the lake and the hills beyond, are still held sacred to the associations of that August holiday in 1850, when the shy, elusive Charlotte Brontë first met her future biographer.

One of the party who met the two novelists during that visit once told me of the marked difference in these two women. Charlotte Brontë, in her black silk dress, sat on the couch nervous and shy, “looking as if she would be glad if the floor would open and swallow her, whilst Mrs. Gaskell, bright and vivacious, looked quite at home and equal to anything.” The two great novelists became attached to each other, and Charlotte Brontë visited Mrs. Gaskell’s home in Manchester on three separate occasions, and in return Mrs. Gaskell once spent a week in the old vicarage at Haworth. This friendship bore fruit in years to come, when Mrs. Gaskell was asked by old Patrick Brontë to write his daughter’s life, to which she willingly consented and at which she worked heartily and sometimes even passionately with so difficult a task.

This admirable biography has become a classic, and is a fitting memorial to the author of Jane Eyre both as a tribute of affection from one novelist to another, and a faithful record of a noble life. “I did so try to tell the truth,” wrote the biographer, and we know how well she succeeded, though on the publication of the third edition she found herself in a veritable “hornet’s nest,” and the worry and trouble from one source and another caused a temporary distaste for writing. After a time, however, the desire for wielding the pen came back to her, and she wrote My Lady Ludlow and Round the Sofa Stories, which undoubtedly owe something to her Stratford-on-Avon days in 1824-27 and her life in Edinburgh in 1829-31.

After a holiday in the Isle of Man in 1856, Mrs. Gaskell took a new departure and decided to write a maritime story. A visit to Whitby in 1858 resulted in the truly pathetic tale of Sylvia’s Lovers, which has the quaint fisher town of Whitby for its background. Descriptions of the old seaport are beautifully and accurately rendered, and a visit to Whitby is not complete unless Sylvia’s Lovers has been read within sight and sound of the sea around that rugged coast. The farms and homesteads mentioned can be localised, and they answer minutely to the descriptions given. Haytersbank Farm, Sylvia’s old home, Moss Brow, where the Corneys lived, old Foster’s shop in the Market-place, are all still there.

Mrs. Gaskell confessed to having taken greater pains with Sylvia’s Lovers than with any other of her novels, and this historical story is one of her best and marks a second stage in her work. It is a story founded on fact in the cruel press-gang days, and Mrs. Gaskell has been wonderfully successful in her delineation of the characters. She does not try to make them perfect, but describes them with their flaws, and there is no exaggeration but just the unvarnished conversation natural to the people of the period with which the story deals. The descriptive parts are most perfectly rendered, and it was a high tribute to Mrs. Gaskell’s faithful word-painting when Du Maurier was led to use actual sketches of Whitby to help him in illustrating Sylvia’s Lovers before he knew that Monkshaven and Whitby were one and the same place. Some of the scenes are exquisitely drawn, and Mrs. Gaskell rose to her highest in word portraiture in Sylvia’s Lovers. The sailor’s funeral in the old God’s Acre around the ancient Parish Church is a masterpiece. The New Year’s Party at Moss Brow and Philip Hepburn going out into the darkness on that memorable night show a wonderful insight into human nature. The last scene, where Philip and Sylvia meet only to part again when it is too late, is a pathetic picture that few could have painted with such soul-stirring emotion.

Cousin Phillis is a prose idyll, which for beauty of language and wealth of original incidents is unique—“A gem without a flaw”—and one of the most perfect stories of old-world romance, fitted in the rich setting of her grandfather Holland’s picturesque farm at Sandlebridge, near Knutsford. It is a story to be read over and over again. The heroine, Phillis Holman, is one of the most perfectly sketched characters in any English novel, and yet there is nothing overdrawn, all is simple, quiet, and dignified, and withal so real and faithful to life. Though not as well-known as Cranford, Cousin Phillis richly deserves to hang side by side with it as a miniature of great beauty, in soft subdued colours. The story is surrounded by the atmosphere of the practical, religious home-life of the godly family at Hope Farm, which surely owes something to Mrs. Gaskell’s own kinsfolk.

This story was quickly succeeded by what, alas, became Mrs. Gaskell’s last and notably her best work, Wives and Daughters. She calls it an everyday story, and yet it grips the reader from the beginning to the end. The heroine is a typical well-bred English girl, who endears herself to her readers by her natural simplicity and common sense. The story is of Knutsford once more, and it takes us to the well-wooded parks and lordly mansions on the outskirts of the village. Those who knew the Knutsford of the fifties were wont to say how true to life it was. The characters are drawn with a master hand. Molly Gibson and Cynthia Kirkpatrick are a splendid study in contrasts, and Mrs. Gaskell’s powers were never more fully taxed, nor does she ever succeed so well, except perhaps when she draws Cynthia’s mother, the stepmother of Molly and the second Mrs. Gibson.

The book is nearly related to Cranford, for this story of Wives and Daughters is of the near kinsfolk of the Cranford dames. Though the novelist touches lightly the foibles and failings of Mrs. Gibson, she shows her clear insight and reads character with shrewdness, albeit so kindly.

Mrs. Gibson and Cynthia Kirkpatrick are worthy of Thackeray himself, and possibly owe something to his influence. Both characters are difficult to delineate, and in the hands of a less capable writer we should have despised and disliked them, but with the kindly benevolent spirit which shines through all Mrs. Gaskell’s works, we are driven to make allowances and pity their shallowness whilst smiling at the worldly wisdom displayed. How different would they have been revealed by George Eliot, and with what merciless scorn would Charlotte Brontë have treated them. “Molly Gibson is the best heroine you have had yet,” wrote Madame Mohl. She is certainly a cousin to Margaret Hale in North and South and a sister to Phillis Holman in Cousin Phillis. This type of English girlhood suited Mrs. Gaskell’s pen. Her heroines are generally better drawn than her heroes, which may be accounted for to some extent by the fact that she viewed everything from a woman’s standpoint, and that during the whole of her literary life she had the companionship of her own devoted daughters, well educated, happy, and like their mother, always anxious to do the right. Molly Gibson’s character has always been associated with Mrs. Gaskell’s own girlhood, but quite recently I received a letter from the grandson of one of Mrs. Gaskell’s school friends at Stratford-on-Avon, and he tells me that he was always given to understand that his grandmother was the prototype of Molly Gibson. Truly Mrs. Gaskell’s characters in many of her stories fit many originals, hence her determination to class them as “everyday stories,” though, as a matter of fact, they are probably not drawn from any one individual.

Mrs. Gaskell has suffered more than most writers from being accused of putting real people into her stories, but though imagination is a great quality, it is not more essential than the power to recognise and handle the simple facts of life; for while there are many who can create a character, few can faithfully delineate it, and the same is true of locality.

Before the concluding chapter of Wives and Daughters was finished the pen dropped from the novelist’s hand, just when she was at the zenith of her power as a writer. This novel was written as a serial for the Cornhill Magazine when Mr. Frederick Greenwood was editor. The latter part was written at Pontresina during the summer of 1865, when Mrs. Gaskell was travelling with her son-in-law, Mr. Charles Compton, Q.C., and her three daughters. She returned to Manchester in June, and was far from well. During the whole of her literary life she had been longing for a pied-à-terre in the country, where she could get the necessary quiet for her work. The North of England was too cold in the winter, though in the summer she found a delightful spot on Morecambe Bay—a little old-world village which is known by the euphonious name of Silverdale. There for a part of many summers she went with her daughters and her faithful nurse to a farm which is accurately described in Ruth. Silverdale lives as Abermouth in that noble story.

The country home which Mrs. Gaskell chose was known as The Lawn, Holybourne, near Alton, in Hampshire. She purchased it with the two thousand pounds which she received for Wives and Daughters, and she kept the secret from her husband, meaning to present it to him when it was altered and renovated to her own artistic taste. But alas! before it was completed she suddenly passed away on Sunday afternoon, November 14th, 1865. She had been feeling really better, and on that very Sunday attended service at the quaint old church at Holybourne in company with her daughters, when, during tea, without a moment’s warning her head lowered and she was gone. Writing of this sad time, one of her daughters wrote: “Mama’s last days had been full of loving thought and tender help for others. She was so sweet and dear and noble beyond words.”

Wives and Daughters was all but finished. She was waiting for some special information with regard to one of the characters, Roger Hamley, who, along with his brother Osborne, made an admirable pair to match Molly Gibson and Cynthia Kirkpatrick, before she concluded the story. The very last words that Mrs. Gaskell wrote are: “And now cover me up close, and let me go to sleep and dream about my dear Cynthia and my new shawl.” One who loved Mrs. Gaskell dearly said it would not be inappropriate to alter the words Cynthia to husband and new shawl to new house, for during her stay at Holybourne her thoughts were often with her husband, the busy Unitarian minister in Manchester, and she was looking forward “with the glee of a child” to giving him a country home in the South of England, to which she hoped he would retire with her, though she looked forward to many years of usefulness both for herself and her husband.

The brief stay at Holybourne, with its tragic ending, was a sad memory for the husband and daughters. The house is still in the possession of the family. The intended gift which the mother bought so cheerfully has been kept as a last token of love, though the family never resided there after Mrs. Gaskell’s death.

Mr. Frederick Greenwood added a tenderly written eulogium at the end of Wives and Daughters which has been published along with the novel, and it formed a beautiful and fitting close to the story. “What promised to be the crowning work of a life is a memorial of death. A few days longer and it would have been a triumphal column, crowned with a capital of festal leaves and flowers, now it is another sort of column—one of those sad white pillars which stand broken in the churchyard.”

Wives and Daughters was issued in book form in 1866 by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and was extremely popular, partly because of the tragic death of the author, but more so for the beauty of the story. To those who know the little Cheshire town of Knutsford, it is interesting to locate the Cumnor Tower and the Park gates through which Molly Gibson drove when attending her first garden party from Church House, formerly her uncle Holland’s home, now known by the picture postcards as Molly Gibson’s House. The home of the Hamleys is to be identified with one of the old halls in the district, but the charm of the story is its naturalness and the characters are so well balanced. When putting down the book one involuntarily says, as Mrs. Gaskell wrote of Charlotte Brontë, “If she had but lived.” This novel displays her as a writer grown to maturity, and as one who had advanced from simple, didactic, domestic stories for the Parish Magazine, to novels which charm a very much wider circle and are acceptable to all classes of society.

Mrs. Gaskell is buried in her beloved Knutsford, in the old Unitarian burial ground around the church, where a simple granite cross marks the resting-place. On her grave is often to be found a wreath or bouquet as a tribute of grateful homage from one of her many admirers. Her writing was done in the spirit of true helpfulness, and it is impossible to read her stories without feeling the better for their perusal. She brought a well-trained mind to her work, and whatever she did was done conscientiously. Her life was not an eventful one, but it was crowded with good deeds.

The revival of the Gaskell cult is helping to familiarise the present generation with her beautiful stories of the mid-Victorian period. It is noticeable that although she spent many of her holidays on the Continent, France, Germany, and Italy being her favourite holiday resorts, all her novels tell of English life, for she was careful never to get out of her depths. She wrote of what she had experienced and of what she saw in the daily life of those around her. Future generations will read Mrs. Gaskell’s novels and feel that she was a keen observer of humanity, and she had not only the desire but the capacity to comprehend it.

The outstanding qualities of her novels are individuality, truthfulness, and purity. The power of entering into the feelings of her characters is almost unique, as Mary Barton, Ruth, Sylvia’s Lovers and Wives and Daughters prove abundantly. Those of a past generation could best testify to the truthfulness of her stories. They were real word-pictures beautifully conceived and true to life, and there was an absence of exaggeration—one of Mrs. Gaskell’s pet aversions.

The purity of her writing is proverbial. There is no author who has excelled her in that quality, and her novels are all free from dross and censoriousness. Hers was a spirit that made for the morning and heralded a purer day, and the immortality of her name rests on the Pauline injunction, “Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Esther Alice Chadwick.

West Brae, Enfield, Middlesex,
August 25th, 1911.

Calendar of Principal Events in Mrs. Gaskell’s Life

I

[I. POETRY]

[II. ARTICLES AND SKETCHES]

Poetry was not Mrs. Gaskell’s forte, but her poetical instinct revealed itself especially in her prose idylls—Cranford and Cousin Phillis.

Almost all her articles and sketches were written for Household Words and All the Year Round, though Mrs. Gaskell’s fame rests on her novels. Charles Dickens eagerly secured Mrs. Gaskell as a regular contributor to his magazine, and her versatility was shown by the many different subjects which she discussed with so much ability.

Poetry

Sketches Among the Poor

Blackwood’s Magazine, January, 1837

No. I

This poem was written by Mrs. Gaskell in collaboration with her husband, and is her first published work. Writing to Mary Howitt in 1838, she says: “We once thought of trying to write sketches among the poor, rather in the manner of Crabbe (now don’t think this presumptuous), but in a more seeing-beauty spirit; and one—the only one—was published in Blackwood, January, 1837. But I suppose we spoke our plan near a dog rose, for it never went any further.” The poem is interesting, as it foreshadows Mrs. Gaskell’s sympathetic insight into the lives of the poor, and is a worthy prelude to her first novel, for the character of “Mary” is based on the same original as “Old Alice” in Mary Barton.

In childhood’s days, I do remember me

Of one dark house behind an old elm tree,

By gloomy streets surrounded, where the flower

Brought from the fresher air, scarce for an hour

Retained its fragrant scent; yet men lived there,

Yea, and in happiness; the mind doth clear

In most dense airs its own bright atmosphere.

But in the house of which I spake there dwelt

One by whom all the weight of smoke was felt.

She had o’erstepped the bound ’twixt youth and age

A single, not a lonely, woman, sage

And thoughtful ever, yet most truly kind:

Without the natural ties, she sought to bind

Hearts unto hers, with gentle, useful love,

Prompt at each change in sympathy to move.

And so she gained the affection, which she prized

From every living thing, howe’er despised—

A call upon her tenderness whene’er

The friends around her had a grief to share;

And, if in joy the kind one they forgot,

She still rejoiced, and more was wanted not.

Said I not truly, she was not alone,

Though none at evening shared her clean hearthstone?

To some she might prosaic seem, but me

She always charmed with daily poesy.

Felt in her every action, never heard,

E’en as the mate of some sweet singing-bird,

That mute and still broods on her treasure-nest,

Her heart’s fond hope hid deep within her breast.

In all her quiet duties, one dear thought

Kept ever true and constant sway, not brought

Before the world, but garnered all the more

For being to herself a secret store.

Whene’er she heard of country homes, a smile

Came brightening o’er her serious face the while;

She knew not that it came, yet in her heart

A hope leaped up, of which that smile was part.

She thought the time might come, e’er yet the bowl

Were broken at the fountain, when her soul

Might listen to its yearnings, unreproved

By thought of failure to the cause she loved;

When she might leave the close and noisy street,

And once again her childhood’s home might greet.

It was a pleasant place, that early home!

The brook went singing by, leaving its foam

Among the flags and blue forget-me-not;

And in a nook, above that shelter’d spot,

For ages stood a gnarlèd hawthorn-tree;

And if you pass’d in spring-time, you might see

The knotted trunk all coronal’d with flowers,

That every breeze shook down in fragrant showers;

The earnest bees in odorous cells did lie,

Hymning their thanks with murmuring melody;

The evening sun shone brightly on the green,

And seem’d to linger on the lonely scene.

And, if to others Mary’s early nest

Show’d poor and homely, to her loving breast

A charm lay hidden in the very stains

Which time and weather left; the old dim panes,

The grey rough moss, the house-leek, you might see

Were chronicled in childhood’s memory;

And in her dreams she wander’d far and wide

Among the hills, her sister at her side—

That sister slept beneath a grassy tomb

Ere time had robbed her of her first sweet bloom.

O Sleep! thou bringest back our childhood’s heart,

Ere yet the dew exhale, the hope depart;

Thou callest up the lost ones, sorrow’d o’er

Till sorrow’s self hath lost her tearful power;

Thine is the fairy-land, where shadows dwell,

Evoked in dreams by some strange hidden spell.

But Day and Waking have their dreams, O Sleep,

When Hope and Memory their fond watches keep;

And such o’er Mary held supremest sway,

When kindly labours task’d her hands all day.

Employ’d her hands, her thoughts roam’d far and free,

Till sense call’d down to calm reality.

A few short weeks, and then, unbound the chains

Which held her to another’s woes or pains,

Farewell to dusky streets and shrouded skies,

Her treasur’d home should bless her yearning eyes,

And fair as in the days of childish glee

Each grassy nook and wooded haunt should be.

Yet ever, as one sorrow pass’d away,

Another call’d the tender one to stay,

And, where so late she shared the bright glad mirth,

The phantom Grief sat cowering at the hearth.

So days and weeks pass’d on and grew to years,

Unwept by Mary, save for others’ tears.

As a fond nurse, that from the mother’s breast

Lulls the tired infant to its quiet rest,

First stills each sound, then lets the curtain fall

To cast a dim and sleepy light o’er all,

So age grew gently o’er each wearied sense

A deepening shade to smooth the parting hence.

Each cherish’d accent, each familiar tone

Fell from her daily music, one by one;

Still her attentive looks could rightly guess

What moving lips by sound could not express,

O’er each loved face next came a filmy veil,

And shine and shadow from her sight did fail.

And, last of all, the solemn change they saw

Depriving Death of half its regal awe;

The mind sank down to childishness, and they,

Relying on her counsel day by day

(As some lone wanderer, from his home afar,

Takes for his guide some fix’d and well-known star,

Till clouds come wafting o’er its trembling light,

And leave him wilder’d in the pathless night),

Sought her changed face with strange uncertain gaze,

Still praying her to lead them through the maze.

They pitied her lone fate, and deemed it sad;

Yet as in early childhood she was glad;

No sense had she of change, or loss of thought,

With those around her no communion sought;

Scarce knew she of her being. Fancy wild

Had placed her in her father’s house a child;

It was her mother sang her to her rest;

The lark awoke her, springing from his nest;

The bees sang cheerily the live long day,

Lurking ’mid flowers wherever she did play;

The Sabbath bells rang as in years gone by,

Swelling and falling on the soft wind’s sigh;

Her little sisters knelt with her in prayer,

And nightly did her father’s blessing share;

So, wrapt in glad imaginings, her life

Stole on with all her sweet young memories rife.

I often think (if by this mortal light

We e’er can read another’s lot aright),

That for her loving heart a blessing came,

Unseen by many, clouded by a name;

And all the outward fading from the world

Was like the flower at night, when it has furled

Its golden leaves, and lapped them round its heart,

To nestle closer in its sweetest part.

Yes! angel voices called her childhood back,

Blotting out life with its dim sorrowy track;

Her secret wish was ever known in heaven,

And so in mystery was the answer given.

In sadness many mourned her latter years,

But blessing shone behind that mist of tears,

And, as the child she deemed herself, she lies

In gentle slumber, till the dead shall rise.

Articles and Sketches

Clopton Hall

From W. Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places, 1840

This account of a visit to Clopton House, written in 1838, is Mrs. Gaskell’s first separate contribution to literature. It took the form of a letter addressed to William Howitt, after reading his Visits to Remarkable Places, and was included in his Visit to Stratford-on-Avon, published in 1840. The Mr. and Mrs. W⸺ mentioned here are Mr. and Mrs. Wyatt. The oil-painting of Charlotte Clopton “with paly gold hair” now hangs on the staircase of Clopton House.

I wonder if you know Clopton Hall, about a mile from Stratford-on-Avon. Will you allow me to tell you of a very happy day I once spent there? I was at school in the neighbourhood, and one of my schoolfellows was the daughter of a Mr. W⸺, who then lived at Clopton. Mrs. W⸺ asked a party of the girls to go and spend a long afternoon, and we set off one beautiful autumn day, full of delight and wonder respecting the place we were going to see. We passed through desolate half-cultivated fields, till we came within sight of the house—a large, heavy, compact, square brick building, of that deep, dead red almost approaching to purple. In front was a large formal court, with the massy pillars surmounted with two grim monsters; but the walls of the court were broken down, and the grass grew as rank and wild within the enclosure as in the raised avenue walk down which we had come. The flowers were tangled with nettles, and it was only as we approached the house that we saw the single yellow rose and the Austrian briar trained into something like order round the deep-set diamond-paned windows. We trooped into the hall, with its tesselated marble floor, hung round with strange portraits of people who had been in their graves two hundred years at least; yet the colours were so fresh, and in some instances they were so life-like, that looking merely at the faces, I almost fancied the originals might be sitting in the parlour beyond. More completely to carry us back, as it were, to the days of the civil wars, there was a sort of military map hung up, well finished with pen and ink, shewing the stations of the respective armies, and with old-fashioned writing beneath, the names of the principal towns, setting forth the strength of the garrison, etc. In this hall we were met by our kind hostess, and told we might ramble where we liked, in the house or out of the house, taking care to be in the ‘recessed parlour’ by tea-time. I preferred to wander up the wide shelving oak staircase, with its massy balustrade all crumbling and worm-eaten. The family then residing at the hall did not occupy one-half—no, not one-third of the rooms; and the old-fashioned furniture was undisturbed in the greater part of them. In one of the bed-rooms (said to be haunted), and which, with its close pent-up atmosphere and the long shadows of evening creeping on, gave me an ‘eerie’ feeling, hung a portrait so singularly beautiful! a sweet-looking girl, with paly gold hair combed back from her forehead and falling in wavy ringlets on her neck, and with eyes that ‘looked like violets filled with dew,’ for there was the glittering of unshed tears before their deep dark blue—and that was the likeness of Charlotte Clopton, about whom there was so fearful a legend told at Stratford church. In the time of some epidemic, the sweating-sickness or the plague, this young girl had sickened, and to all appearance died. She was buried with fearful haste in the vaults of Clopton chapel, attached to Stratford church, but the sickness was not stayed. In a few days another of the Cloptons died, and him they bore to the ancestral vault; but as they descended the gloomy stairs, they saw by the torchlight, Charlotte Clopton in her grave-clothes leaning against the wall; and when they looked nearer, she was indeed dead, but not before, in the agonies of despair and hunger, she had bitten a piece from her white, round shoulder! Of course, she had walked ever since. This was ‘Charlotte’s chamber,’ and beyond Charlotte’s chamber was a state-chamber carpeted with the dust of many years, and darkened by the creepers which had covered up the windows, and even forced themselves in luxuriant daring through the broken panes. Beyond, again, there was an old Catholic chapel, with a chaplain’s room, which had been walled up and forgotten till within the last few years. I went in on my hands and knees, for the entrance was very low. I recollect little in the chapel; but in the chaplain’s room were old, and I should think rare, editions of many books, mostly folios. A large yellow-paper copy of Dryden’s ‘All for Love, or the World Well Lost,’ date 1686, caught my eye, and is the only one I particularly remember. Every here and there, as I wandered, I came upon a fresh branch of a staircase, and so numerous were the crooked, half-lighted passages, that I wondered if I could find my way back again. There was a curious carved old chest in one of these passages, and with girlish curiosity I tried to open it; but the lid was too heavy, till I persuaded one of my companions to help me, and when it was opened, what do you think we saw?—BONES!—but whether human, whether the remains of the lost bride, we did not stay to see, but ran off in partly feigned and partly real terror.

The last of these deserted rooms that I remember, the last, the most deserted, and the saddest was the Nursery—a nursery without children, without singing voices, without merry chiming footsteps! A nursery hung round with its once inhabitants, bold, gallant boys, and fair, arch-looking girls, and one or two nurses with round, fat babies in their arms. Who were they all? What was their lot in life? Sunshine, or storm? or had they been ‘loved by the gods, and died young?’ The very echoes knew not. Behind the house, in a hollow now wild, damp, and overgrown with elder-bushes, was a well called Margaret’s Well, for there had a maiden of the house of that name drowned herself.

I tried to obtain any information I could as to the family of Clopton of Clopton. They had been decaying ever since the civil wars; had for a generation or two been unable to live in the old house of their fathers, but had toiled in London, or abroad, for a livelihood; and the last of the old family, a bachelor, eccentric, miserly, old, and of most filthy habits, if report said true, had died at Clopton Hall but a few months before, a sort of boarder in Mr. W⸺’s family. He was buried in the gorgeous chapel of the Cloptons in Stratford Church, where you see the banners waving, and the armour hung over one or two splendid monuments. Mr. W⸺ had been the old man’s solicitor, and completely in his confidence, and to him he left the estate, encumbered and in bad condition. A year or two afterwards, the heir-at-law, a very distant relation living in Ireland, claimed and obtained the estate, on the plea of undue influence, if not of forgery, on Mr. W⸺’s part; and the last I heard of our kind entertainers on that day was that they were outlawed, and living at Brussels.

A Greek Wedding

From “Modern Greek Songs,” Household Words, 1854

Mrs. Gaskell was a keen student of popular customs and traditions, and several of her articles prove how observant and delightfully inquisitive she always was, where an opportunity of investigating any tradition or custom presented itself.

Now let us hear about the marriage-songs. Life seems like an opera amongst the modern Greeks; all emotions, all events, require the relief of singing. But a marriage is a singing time among human beings as well as birds. Among the Greeks the youth of both sexes are kept apart, and do not meet excepting on the occasion of some public feast, when the young Greek makes choice of his bride, and asks her parents for their consent. If they give it, all is arranged for the betrothal; but the young people are not allowed to see each other again until that event. There are parts of Greece where the young man is allowed to declare his passion himself to the object of it. Not in words, however, does he breathe his tender suit. He tries to meet with her in some path, or other place in which he may throw her an apple or a flower. If the former missile be chosen, one can only hope that the young lady is apt at catching, as a blow from a moderately hard apple is rather too violent a token of love. After this apple or flower throwing, his only chance of meeting with his love is at the fountain; to which all Greek maidens go to draw water, as Rebekah went, of old, to the well.

The ceremony of betrothal is very simple. On an appointed evening, the relations of the lovers meet together in the presence of a priest, either at the house of the father of the future husband, or at that of the parents of the bride elect. After the marriage contract is signed, two young girls bring in the affianced maiden—who is covered all over with a veil—and present her to her lover, who takes her by the hand, and leads her up to the priest. They exchange rings before him, and he gives them his blessing. The bride then retires; but all the rest of the company remain, and spend the day in merry-making and drinking the health of the young couple. The interval between the betrothal and the marriage may be but a few hours; it may be months and it may be years; but, whatever the length of time, the lovers must never meet again until the wedding day comes. Three or four days before that time, the father or mother of the bride send round their notes of invitation; each of which is accompanied by the present of a bottle of wine. The answers come in with even more substantial accompaniments. Those who have great pleasure in accepting, send a present with their reply; the most frequent is a ram or lamb dressed up with ribands and flowers; but the poorest send their quarter of mutton as their contribution to the wedding-feast.

The eve of the marriage, or rather during the night, the friends on each side go to deck out the bride and groom for the approaching ceremony. The bridegroom is shaved by his paranymph or groom’s man, in a very grave and dignified manner, in the presence of all the young ladies invited. Fancy the attitude of the bridegroom, anxious and motionless under the hands of his unpractised barber, his nose held lightly up between a finger and thumb, while a crowd of young girls look gravely on at the graceful operation! The bride is decked, for her part, by her young companions; who dress her in white, and cover her all over with a long veil made of the finest stuff. Early the next morning the young man and all his friends come forth, like a bridegroom out of his chamber, to seek the bride, and carry her off from her father’s house. Then she, in songs as ancient as the ruins of the old temples that lie around her, sings her sorrowful farewell to the father who has cared for her and protected her hitherto; to the mother who has borne her and cherished her; to the companions of her maidenhood; to her early home; to the fountain whence she daily fetched water; to the trees which shaded her childish play; and every now and then she gives way to natural tears; then, according to immemorial usage, the paranymph turns to the glad yet sympathetic procession and says in a sentence which has become proverbial on such occasions—“Let her alone! she weeps!” To which she must make answer, “Lead me away, but let me weep!” After the cortège has borne the bride to the house of her husband, the whole party adjourn to church, where the religious ceremony is performed. Then they return to the dwelling of the bridegroom, where they all sit down and feast; except the bride, who remains veiled, standing alone, until the middle of the banquet, when the paranymph draws near, unlooses the veil, which falls down, and she stands blushing, exposed to the eyes of all the guests. The next day is given up to the performance of dances peculiar to a wedding. The third day the relations and friends meet all together, and lead the bride to the fountain, from the waters of which she fills a new earthen vessel; and into which she throws various provisions. They afterwards dance in circles round the fountain.

Tenir un Salon

From “Company Manners,” Household Words, 1854

This article gives an insight into the remark which has often been made, “if anybody in Manchester knew how tenir un salon it was certainly Mrs. Gaskell”; she studied and practised the art of entertaining to perfection.

Madame de Sablé had all the requisites which enabled her tenir un salon with honour to herself and pleasure to her friends.

Apart from this crowning accomplishment, the good French lady seems to have been commonplace enough. She was well-born, well-bred, and the company she kept must have made her tolerably intelligent. She was married to a dull husband, and doubtless had her small flirtations after she early became a widow; M. Cousin hints at them, but they were never scandalous or prominently before the public. Past middle life, she took to the process of “making her salvation,” and inclined to the Port-Royalists. She was given to liking dainty things to eat, in spite of her Jansenism. She had a female friend that she quarrelled with, off and on, during her life. And (to wind up something like Lady O’Looney, of famous memory) she knew how tenir un salon. M. Cousin tells us that she was remarkable in no one thing or quality, and attributes to that single, simple fact the success of her life.

Now, since I have read these memoirs of Madame de Sablé, I have thought much and deeply thereupon. At first, I was inclined to laugh at the extreme importance which was attached to this art of “receiving company”—no, that translation will not do!—“holding a drawing-room” is even worse, because that implies the state and reserve of royalty;—shall we call it the art of “Sabléing”? But when I thought of my experience in English society—of the evenings dreaded before they came, and sighed over in recollection, because they were so ineffably dull—I saw that, to Sablé well, did require, as M. Cousin implied, the union of many excellent qualities and not-to-be-disputed little graces. I asked some French people if they could give me the recipe, for it seemed most likely to be traditional, if not still extant in their nation. I offer to you their ideas, fragmentary though they be, and then I will tell you some of my own; at last, perhaps, with the addition of yours, oh most worthy readers! we may discover the lost art of Sabléing.

Said the French lady: “A woman to be successful in Sabléing must be past youth, yet not past the power of attracting. She must do this by her sweet and gracious manners, and quick, ready tact in perceiving those who have not had their share of attention, or leading the conversation away from any subject which may give pain to any one present.” “Those rules hold good in England,” said I. My friend went on: “She should never be prominent in anything; she should keep silence as long as anyone else will talk; but, when conversation flags, she should throw herself into the breach with the same spirit with which I notice that the young ladies of the house, where a ball is given, stand quietly by till the dancers are tired, and then spring into the arena, to carry on the spirit and the music till the others are ready to begin again.”

“But,” said the French gentleman, “even at this time, when subjects for conversation are wanted, she should rather suggest than enlarge—ask questions rather than give her own opinions.”

“To be sure,” said the lady. “Madame Récamier, whose salons were the most perfect of this century, always withheld her opinions on books, or men, or measures, until all around her had given theirs; then she, as it were, collected and harmonised them, saying a kind thing here, and a gentle thing there, and speaking ever with her own quiet sense, till people the most oppressed learnt to understand each other’s point of view, which it is a great thing for opponents to do.”

“Then the number of the people whom you receive is another consideration. I should say not less than twelve or more than twenty,” continued the gentleman. “The evenings should be appointed—say weekly—fortnightly at the beginning of January, which is our season. Fix an early hour for opening the room. People are caught then in their freshness, before they become exhausted by other parties.”

The lady spoke: “For my part, I prefer catching my friends after they have left the grander balls or receptions. One hears then the remarks, the wit, the reason, and the satire which they had been storing up during the evening of imposed silence or of ceremonious speaking.”

“A little good-humoured satire is a very agreeable sauce,” replied the gentleman, “but it must be good-humoured, and the listeners must be good-humoured; above all, the conversation must be general, and not the chat, chat, chat up in a corner, by which the English so often distinguish themselves. You do not go into society to exchange secrets with your intimate friends; you go to render yourselves agreeable to everyone present, and to help all to pass a happy evening.”

“Strangers should not be admitted,” said the lady, taking up the strain. “They would not start fair with the others; they would be ignorant of the allusions that refer to conversations on the previous evenings; they would not understand the—what shall I call it—slang? I mean those expressions having relation to past occurrences, or bygone witticisms common to all those who are in the habit of meeting.”

“Madame de Duras and Madame Récamier never made advances to any stranger. Their salons were the best that Paris has known in this generation. All who wished to be admitted had to wait and prove their fitness by being agreeable elsewhere: to earn their diploma, as it were, among the circle of these ladies’ acquaintances; and, at last, it was a high favour to be received by them.”

“They missed the society of many celebrities by adhering so strictly to this unspoken rule,” said the gentleman.

“Bah!” said the lady. “Celebrities! what has one to do with them in society? As celebrities, they are simply bores. Because a man has discovered a planet, it does not follow that he can converse agreeably, even on his own subjects; often people are drained dry by one action or expression of their lives—drained dry for all the purposes of a ‘salon.’ The writer of books, for instance, cannot afford to talk twenty pages for nothing, so he is either profoundly silent, or else he gives you the mere rinsings of his mind. I am speaking now of him as a mere celebrity, and justifying the wisdom of the ladies we were speaking of, in not seeking after such people; indeed, in being rather shy of them. Some of their friends were the most celebrated people of their day, but they were received in their old capacity of agreeable men; a higher character, by far. Then,” said she, turning to me, “I believe that you English spoil the perfection of conversation by having your rooms brilliantly lighted for an evening, the charm of which depends on what one hears, as for an evening when youth and beauty are to display themselves among flowers and festoons, and every kind of pretty ornament. I would never have a room affect people as being dark on their first entrance into it; but there is a kind of moonlight as compared to sunlight, in which people talk more freely and naturally; where shy people will enter upon a conversation without a dread of every change of colour or involuntary movement being seen—just as we are always more confidential over a fire than anywhere else—as women talk most openly in the dimly-lighted bedroom at curling-time.”

“Away with your shy people,” said the gentleman. “Persons who are self-conscious, thinking of an involuntary redness or paleness, an unbecoming movement of the countenance, more than the subject of which they are talking, should not go into society at all. But, because women are so much more liable to this nervous weakness than men, the preponderance of people in a salon should always be on the side of the men.”

I do not think I gained more hints as to the lost art from my French friends. Let us see if my own experience in England can furnish any more ideas.

First, let us take the preparations to be made before our house, our room, or our lodgings can be made to receive society. Of course, I am not meaning the preparations needed for dancing or musical evenings. I am taking those parties which have pleasant conversation and happy social intercourse for their affirmed intention. They may be dinners, suppers, tea—I don’t care what they are called, provided their end is defined. If your friends have not dined, and it suits you to give them a dinner, in the name of Lucullus, let them dine; but take care that there shall be something besides the mere food and wine to make their fattening agreeable at the time and pleasant to remember, otherwise you had better pack up for each his portions of the dainty dish, and send it separately, in hot-water trays, so that he can eat comfortably behind a door, like Sancho Panza, and have done with it. And yet I don’t see why we should be like ascetics; I fancy there is a grace of preparation, a sort of festive trumpet call, that is right and proper to distinguish the day on which we receive our friends from common days, unmarked by such white stones. The thought and care we take for them to set before them of our best, may imply some self-denial on our less fortunate days. I have been in houses where all, from the scullion-maid upward, worked double tides gladly, because “Master’s friends” were coming; and every thing must be nice, and good, and all the rooms must look bright, and clean, and pretty. And, as “a merry heart goes all the way,” preparations made in this welcoming, hospitable spirit, never seem to tire anyone half so much as where servants instinctively feel that it has been said in the parlour, “We must have so-and-so,” or “Oh, dear! we have never had the so-and-so’s.” Yes, I like a little pomp, and luxury, and stateliness, to mark our happy days of receiving friends as a festival; but I do not think I would throw my power of procuring luxuries solely into the eating and drinking line.

My friends would probably be surprised (some wear caps, and some wigs) if I provided them with garlands of flowers, after the manner of the ancient Greeks; but, put flowers on the table (none of your shams, wax or otherwise; I prefer an honest wayside root of primroses, in a common vase of white ware, to the grandest bunch of stiff rustling artificial rarities in a silver épergne). A flower or two by the side of each person’s plate would not be out of the way, as to expense, and would be a very agreeable, pretty piece of mute welcome. Cooks and scullion-maids, acting in the sympathetic spirit I have described, would do their very best, from boiling the potatoes well, to sending in all the dishes in the best possible order. I think I would have every imaginary dinner sent up on the “original” Mr. Walker’s plan; each dish separately, hot and hot. I have an idea that, when I go to live in Utopia (not before next Christmas), I will have a kind of hot-water sideboard, such as I think I have seen in great houses, and that nothing shall appear on the table but what is pleasant to the eye. However simple the food, I would do it and my friends (and may I not add the Giver?) the respect of presenting it at table as well-cooked, as eatable, as wholesome as my poor means allowed; and to this end rather than to a variety of dishes, would I direct my care. We have no associations with beef and mutton; geese may remind us of the Capitol, and peacocks of Juno; a pigeon-pie, of the simplicity of Venus’ doves, but who thinks of the leafy covert which has been her home in life, when he sees a roasted hare? Now, flowers as an ornament do lead our thoughts away from their present beauty and fragrance. I am almost sure Madame de Sablé had flowers in her salon; and, as she was fond of dainties herself, I can fancy her smooth benevolence of character, taking delight in some personal preparations made in the morning for the anticipated friends of the evening. I can fancy her stewing sweetbreads in a silver saucepan, or dressing salad with her delicate, plump, white hands—not that I ever saw a silver saucepan. I was formerly ignorant enough to think that they were only used in the Sleeping Beauty’s kitchen, or in the preparations for the marriage of Ricquet-with-the-Tuft; but I have been assured that there are such things, and that they impart a most delicate flavour, or no flavour to the victuals cooked therein; so I assert again, Madame de Sablé cooked sweetbreads for her friends in a silver saucepan; but never to fatigue herself with those previous labours. She knew the true taste of her friends too well; they cared for her, firstly, as an element in their agreeable evening—the silver saucepan in which they were all to meet; the oil in which their several ingredients were to be softened of what was harsh or discordant—very secondary would be their interest in her sweetbreads.

“Of sweetbreads they’ll get mony an ane,

Of Sablé ne’er anither.”

On Furnishing, Conversation, and Games

From “Company Manners,” Household Words, 1854