The house mentioned in this incident is Church House, Knutsford, where Mrs. Gaskell’s uncle, Dr. Holland, resided. It is now known as Hollingford House.
The house mentioned in this incident is Church House, Knutsford, where Mrs. Gaskell’s uncle, Dr. Holland, resided. It is now known as Hollingford House.
Theday of Roger’s departure came. Molly tried hard to forget it in the working away at a cushion she was preparing as a present to Cynthia; people did worsted-work in those days. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven; all wrong; she was thinking of something else, and had to unpick it. It was a rainy day, too; and Mrs. Gibson, who had planned to go out and pay some calls, had to stay indoors. This made her restless and fidgety. She kept going backwards and forwards to different windows in the drawing-room to look at the weather, as if she imagined that while it rained at one window, it might be fine weather at another. “Molly—come here! who is that man wrapped up in a cloak,—there—near the Park wall, under the beech-tree—he has been there this half-hour and more, never stirring, and looking at this house all the time! I think it’s very suspicious.”
Molly looked, and in an instant recognised Roger under all his wraps. Her first instinct was to draw back. The next to come forwards, and say, “Why, mamma, it’s Roger Hamley! Look now—he’s kissing his hand; he’s wishing us good-bye in the only way he can!” And she responded to his sign; but she was not sure if he perceived her modest, quiet movement, for Mrs. Gibson became immediately so demonstrativethat Molly fancied that her eager, foolish pantomimic motions must absorb all his attention.
“I call this so attentive of him,” said Mrs. Gibson, in the midst of a volley of kisses of her hand. “Really it is quite romantic. It reminds me of former days—but he will be too late! I must send him away; it is half-past twelve!” And she took out her watch and held it up, tapping it with her forefinger, and occupying the very centre of the window. Molly could only peep here and there, dodging now up, now down, now on this side, now on that of the perpetually moving arms. She fancied she saw something of a corresponding movement on Roger’s part. At length he went away slowly, slowly, and often looking back, in spite of the tapped watch. Mrs. Gibson at last retreated, and Molly quietly moved into her place to see his figure once more before the turn of the road hid it from her view. He, too, knew where the last glimpse of Mr. Gibson’s house was to be obtained, and once more he turned, and his white handkerchief floated in the air. Molly waved hers high up, with eager longing that it should be seen. And then, he was gone! and Molly returned to her worsted-work, happy, glowing, sad, content, and thinking to herself how sweet is friendship!
When she came to a sense of the present, Mrs. Gibson was saying:
“Upon my word, though Roger Hamley has never been a great favourite of mine, this little attention of his has reminded me very forcibly of a very charming young man—asoupirant, as the French would call him—Lieutenant Harper—you must have heard me speak of him, Molly?”
“I think I have!” said Molly absently.
“Well, you remember how devoted he was to me when I was at Mrs. Duncombe’s, my first situation,and I only seventeen. And when the recruiting party was ordered to another town, poor Mr. Harper came and stood opposite the schoolroom window for nearly an hour, and I know it was his doing that the band played ‘The girl I left behind me,’ when they marched out the next day. Poor Mr. Harper! It was before I knew dear Mr. Kirkpatrick! Dear me. How often my poor heart has had to bleed in this life of mine! not but what dear papa is a very worthy man, and makes me very happy. He would spoil me, indeed, if I would let him. Still, he is not as rich as Mr. Henderson.”
That last sentence contained the germ of Mrs. Gibson’s present grievance. Having married Cynthia, as her mother put it—taking credit to herself as if she had had the principal part in the achievement—she now became a little envious of her daughter’s good fortune in being the wife of a young, handsome, rich, and moderately fashionable man, who lived in London. She naïvely expressed her feelings on this subject to her husband one day when she was really not feeling quite well, and when consequently her annoyances were much more present to her mind than her sources of happiness.
“It is such a pity!” said she, “that I was born when I was. I should so have liked to belong to this generation.”
“That’s sometimes my own feeling,” said he. “So many new views seem to be opened in science, that I should like, if it were possible, to live till their reality was ascertained, and one saw what they led to. But I don’t suppose that’s your reason, my dear, for wishing to be twenty or thirty years younger.”
“No, indeed. And I did not put it in that hard, unpleasant way; I only said I should like to belong to this generation. To tell the truth, I was thinkingof Cynthia. Without vanity, I believe I was as pretty as she is—when I was a girl, I mean; I had not her dark eyelashes, but then my nose was straighter. And now look at the difference! I have to live in a little country town with three servants, and no carriage; and she with her inferior good looks will live in Sussex Place, and keep a man and a brougham, and I don’t know what. But the fact is, in this generation there are so many more rich young men than there were when I was a girl.”
“Oh, oh! so that’s your reason, is it, my dear? If you had been young now you might have married somebody as well off as Walter?”
“Yes!” said she. “I think that was my idea. Of course, I should have liked him to be you. I always think if you had gone to the Bar you might have succeeded better, and lived in London, too. I don’t think Cynthia cares much where she lives, yet you see it has come to her.”
“What has—London?”
“Oh, you dear, facetious man. Now that’s just the thing to have captivated a jury. I don’t believe Walter will ever be so clever as you are. Yet he can take Cynthia to Paris, and abroad, and everywhere. I only hope all this indulgence won’t develop the faults in Cynthia’s character. It’s a week since we heard from her, and I did write so particularly to ask her for the autumn fashions before I bought my new bonnet. But riches are a great snare.”
“Be thankful you are spared temptation, my dear.”
“No, I’m not. Everybody likes to be tempted. And, after all, it’s very easy to resist temptation, if one wishes.”
“I don’t find it so easy,” said her husband.
“Here’s medicine for you, mamma,” said Molly,entering with a letter held up in her hand. “A letter from Cynthia.”
“Oh, you dear little messenger of good news! There was one of the heathen deities in Mangnall’s Questions whose office it was to bring news. The letter is dated from Calais. They’re coming home! She’s bought me a shawl and a bonnet! The dear creature! Always thinking of others before herself: good fortune cannot spoil her. They’ve a fortnight left of their holiday! Their house is not quite ready; they’re coming here. Oh, now, Mr. Gibson, we must have the new dinner-service at Watt’s I’ve set my heart on so long! ‘Home’ Cynthia calls this house. I’m sure it has been a home to her, poor darling! I doubt if there is another man in the world who would have treated his step-daughter like dear papa! And, Molly, you must have a new gown.”
“Come, come! Remember I belong to the last generation,” said Mr. Gibson.
“And Cynthia won’t mind what I wear,” said Molly, bright with pleasure at the thought of seeing her again.
“No! but Walter will. He has such a quick eye for dress, and I think I rival papa; if he is a good stepfather, I’m a good stepmother, and I could not bear to see my Molly shabby, and not looking her best. I must have a new gown too. It won’t do to look as if we had nothing but the dresses which we wore at the wedding!”
But Molly stood out against the new gown for herself, and urged that if Cynthia and Walter were to come to visit them often, they had better see them as they really were, in dress, habits, and appointments. When Mr. Gibson had left the room, Mrs. Gibson softly reproached Molly for her obstinacy.
“You might have allowed me to beg for a newgown for you, Molly, when you knew how much I admired that figured silk at Brown’s the other day. And now, of course, I can’t be so selfish as to get it for myself, and you to have nothing. You should learn to understand the wishes of other people. Still, on the whole, you are a dear, sweet girl, and I only wish—well, I know what I wish; only dear papa does not like it to be talked about. And now cover me up close, and let me go to sleep, and dream about my dear Cynthia and my new shawl!”
FromCousin Phillis, first published as a serial in theCornhill Magazinefrom November, 1863, to February, 1864, and afterwards issued in book form in 1865. This exquisite prose idyll represents Mrs. Gaskell’s best work, and has been described as “a gem without a flaw”; as a short story it is certainly a model. The breath of the open country is ever around it. The places so graphically described are associated with Mrs. Gaskell’s maternal grandfather’s farm at Sandlebridge, near Knutsford.
FromCousin Phillis, first published as a serial in theCornhill Magazinefrom November, 1863, to February, 1864, and afterwards issued in book form in 1865. This exquisite prose idyll represents Mrs. Gaskell’s best work, and has been described as “a gem without a flaw”; as a short story it is certainly a model. The breath of the open country is ever around it. The places so graphically described are associated with Mrs. Gaskell’s maternal grandfather’s farm at Sandlebridge, near Knutsford.
A VISIT TO HOPE FARM
“Makeup your mind, and go off and see what this farmer-minister is like, and come back and tell me—I should like to hear.”…
I went along the lane, I recollect, switching at all the taller roadside weeds, till, after a turn or two, I found myself close in front of the Hope Farm. There was a garden between the house and the shady, grassy lane; I afterwards found that this gardenwas called the court; perhaps because there was a low wall round it, with an iron railing on the top of the wall, and two great gates between pillars crowned with stone balls for a state entrance to the flagged path leading up to the front door. It was not the habit of the place to go in either by these great gates or by the front door; the gates, indeed, were locked, as I found, though the door stood wide open. I had to go round by a side-path lightly worn on a broad grassy way, which led past the court-wall, past a horse-mount, half covered with stonecrop and a little wild yellow fumitory, to another door—“the curate,” as I found it was termed by the master of the house, while the front door, “handsome and all for show,” was termed the “rector.” I knocked with my hand upon the “curate” door; a tall girl, about my own age, as I thought, came and opened it, and stood there silent, waiting to know my errand. I see her now—Cousin Phillis. The westering sun shone full upon her, and made a slanting stream of light into the room within. She was dressed in dark blue cotton of some kind; up to her throat, down to her wrists, with a little frill of the same wherever it touched her white skin. And such a white skin as it was! I have never seen the like. She had light hair, nearer yellow than any other colour. She looked me steadily in the face with large, quiet eyes, wondering, but untroubled by the sight of a stranger. I thought it odd, that so old, so full-grown as she was, she should wear a pinafore over her gown.
Before I had quite made up my mind what to say in reply to her mute inquiry of what I wanted there, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, Phillis? If it is anyone for butter-milk send them round to the back door.”
I thought I could rather speak to the owner of that voice than to the girl before me; so I passed her, and stood at the entrance of a room, hat in hand, for this side-door opened straight into the hall or house-place where the family sate when work was done. There was a brisk little woman of forty or so ironing some huge muslin cravats under the light of a long vine-shaded casement window. She looked at me distrustfully till I began to speak. “My name is Paul Manning,” said I; but I saw she did not know the name. “My mother’s name was Moneypenny,” said I—“Margaret Moneypenny.”
“And she married one John Manning, of Birmingham,” said Mrs. Holman eagerly. “And you’ll be her son. Sit down! I am right glad to see you. To think of your being Margaret’s son! Why, she was almost a child not so long ago. Well, to be sure, it is five-and-twenty years ago. And what brings you into these parts?”
She sate herself down, as if oppressed by her curiosity as to all the five-and-twenty years that had passed since she had seen my mother. Her daughter Phillis took up her knitting—a man’s long grey worsted stocking, I remember—and knitted away without looking at her work. I felt that the steady gaze of those deep grey eyes was upon me, though once, when I stealthily raised mine to hers, she was examining something on the wall above my head.
When I had answered all my cousin Holman’s questions, she heaved a long breath, and said, “To think of Margaret Moneypenny’s boy being in our house! I wish the minister was here. Phillis, in what field is thy father to-day?”
“In the five-acre; they are beginning to cut the corn.”
“He’ll not like being sent for then, else I shouldhave liked you to have seen the minister. But the five-acre is a good step off. You shall have a glass of wine and a bit of cake before you stir from this house, though. You’re bound to go, you say, or else the minister comes in mostly when the men have their four o’clock.”
“I must go—I ought to have been off before now.”
“Here, then, Phillis, take the keys.” She gave her daughter some whispered directions, and Phillis left the room.
“She is my cousin, is she not?” I asked. I knew she was, but somehow I wanted to talk of her, and did not know how to begin.
“Yes—Phillis Holman. She is our only child—now.”
Either from that “now,” or from a strange momentary wistfulness in her eyes, I knew that there had been more children, who were now dead.
“How old is Cousin Phillis?” said I, scarcely venturing on the new name, it seemed too prettily familiar for me to call her by it; but Cousin Holman took no notice of it, answering straight to the purpose.
“Seventeen last May-Day; but the minister does not like to hear me calling it May-Day,” said she, checking herself with a little awe. “Phillis was seventeen on the first day of May last,” she repeated in an emended edition.
“And I am nineteen in another month,” thought I to myself; I don’t know why.
Then Phillis came in, carrying a tray with wine and cake upon it.
“We keep a house-servant,” said Cousin Holman, “but it is churning day, and she is busy.” It was meant as a little proud apology for her daughter’s being the handmaiden.
“I like doing it, mother,” said Phillis, in her grave, full voice.
I felt as if I were somebody in the Old Testament—who, I could not recollect—being served and waited upon by the daughter of the host. Was I like Abraham’s steward, when Rebekah gave him to drink at the well? I thought Isaac had not gone the pleasantest way to work in winning him a wife. But Phillis never thought about such things. She was a stately, gracious young woman, in the dress and with the simplicity of a child.
As I had been taught, I drank to the health of my new-found cousin and her husband; and then I ventured to name my Cousin Phillis with a little bow of my head towards her; but I was too awkward to look and see how she took my compliment. “I must go now,” said I, rising.
FromCousin Phillis, 1865
“Hehad never spoken much about you before, but the sudden going away unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you, and how he hoped on his return that you might be his wife.”
“Don’t,” said she, almost gasping out the word, which she had tried once or twice before to speak; but her voice had been choked. Now she put her hand backwards; she had quite turned away from me, and felt for mine. She gave it a soft lingering pressure; and then she put her arms down on the wooden division, and laid her head on it, and cried quiet tears. I did not understand her at once, andfeared lest I had mistaken the whole case, and only annoyed her. I went up to her. “Oh, Phillis, I am so sorry—I thought you would, perhaps, have cared to hear it; he did talk so feelingly, as if he did love you so much, and somehow I thought it would give you pleasure.”
She lifted up her head and looked at me. Such a look! Her eyes, glittering with tears as they were, expressed an almost heavenly happiness; her tender mouth was curved with rapture—her colour vivid and blushing; but as if she was afraid her face expressed too much, more than the thankfulness to me she was essaying to speak, she hid it again almost immediately. So it was all right then, and my conjecture was well-founded. I tried to remember something more to tell her of what he had said, but again she stopped me.
“Don’t,” she said. She still kept her face covered and hidden. In half a minute she added, in a very low voice, “Please, Paul, I think I would rather not hear any more—I don’t mean but what I have—but what I am very much obliged—only—only, I think I would rather hear the rest from himself when he comes back.”
And then she cried a little more, in quite a different way. I did not say any more, I waited for her. By-and-by she turned towards me—not meeting my eyes, however; and putting her hand in mine just as if we were two children, she said, “We had best go back now—I don’t look as if I had been crying, do I?”
“You look as if you had a bad cold,” was all the answer I made.
“Oh! but I am—I am quite well, only cold; and a good run will warm me. Come along, Paul.”
So we ran, hand in hand, till, just as we were on the threshold of the house, she stopped:
“Paul, please, we won’t speak aboutthatagain.”
I never saw her so lovely, or so happy. I think she hardly knew why she was so happy all the time. I can see her now, standing under the budding branches of the grey trees, over which a tinge of green seemed to be deepening day after day, her sunbonnet fallen back on her neck, her hands full of delicate wood-flowers, quite unconscious of my gaze, but intent on sweet mockery of some bird in neighbouring bush or tree. She had the art of warbling, and replying to the notes of different birds, and knew their song, their habits and ways, more accurately than anyone else I ever knew. She had often done it at my request the spring before; but this year she really gurgled, and whistled, and warbled just as they did, out of the very fulness and joy of her heart. She was more than ever the very apple of her father’s eye; her mother gave her both her own share of love and that of the dead child, who had died in infancy. I have heard Cousin Holman murmur, after a long dreamy look at Phillis, and tell herself how like she was growing to Johnnie, and soothe herself with plaintive, inarticulate sounds, and many gentle shakes of the head, for the aching sense of loss she would never get over in this world. The old servants about the place had the dumb loyal attachment to the child of the land common to most agricultural labourers; not often stirred into activity or expression. My Cousin Phillis was like a rose that had come to full bloom on the sunny side of a lonely house, sheltered from storms. I have read in some book of poetry:
“A maid whom there were none to praise,And very few to love.”
“A maid whom there were none to praise,And very few to love.”
“A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.”
And somehow those lines always remind me of Phillis; yet they were not true of her either. I never heard her praised; and out of her own household there were very few to love her; but though no one spoke out their appreciation, she always did right in her parents’ eyes, out of her natural simple goodness and wisdom.
I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
II. BIOGRAPHICAL
III. SHORTER EXTRACTS
The only biography which Mrs. Gaskell wrote wasThe Life of Charlotte Brontë, which is one of the best biographies ever written. It has now become a classic. At the time of her death, in 1865, Mrs. Gaskell was collecting material for a Life of Madame Sévigné.
Mrs. Gaskell has written very little that is autobiographical. She always studied to keep herself in the background, though her stories contain much that is based on her own life.
Preface to the Original Edition of 1848
Threeyears ago I became anxious (from circumstances that need not be more fully alluded to) to employ myself in writing a work of fiction. Living in Manchester, but with a deep relish and fond admiration for the country, my first thought was to find a framework for my story in some rural scene; and I had already made a little progress in a tale, the period of which was more than a century ago, and the place on the borders of Yorkshire, when I bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the workpeople with whom I was acquainted had laid open to me the hearts of one or two of the more thoughtful among them; I saw that they were sore and irritable against the rich, the even tenor of whose seemingly happy lives appeared to increase the anguish caused by the lottery-like nature of theirown. Whether the bitter complaints made by them of the neglect which they experienced from the prosperous—especially from the masters, whose fortunes they had helped to build up—were well-founded or no, it is not for me to judge. It is enough to say, that this belief of the injustice and unkindness which they endure from their fellow-creatures taints what might be resignation to God’s will, and turns it to revenge in many of the poor uneducated factory-workers of Manchester.
The more I reflected on this unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which, from time to time, convulses this dumb people; the agony of suffering without the sympathy of the happy, or of erroneously believing that such is the case. If it be an error that the woes, which come with ever-returning tide-like flood to overwhelm the workmen in our manufacturing towns, pass unregarded by all but the sufferers, it is at any rate an error so bitter in its consequences to all parties, that whatever public effort can do in the way of merciful deeds, or helpless love in the way of “widow’s mites” could do, should be done, and that speedily, to disabuse the work-people of so miserable a misapprehension. At present they seem to me to be left in a state, wherein lamentations and tears are thrown aside as useless, but in which the lips are compressed for curses, and the hands clenched and ready to smite.
I know nothing of Political Economy, or the theories of trade. I have tried to write truthfully; and if my accounts agree or clash with any system, the agreement or disagreement is unintentional.
To myself the idea which I have formed of thestate of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester, and which I endeavoured to represent in this tale (completed above a year ago), has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the Continent.
October, 1848.
FromRound the Sofa, 1859
Mrs. Gaskell spent a winter in Edinburgh in 1830-31, and she has woven some of her recollections inRound the Sofa. The Mr. Sperano mentioned was probably Agostino Ruffini, a friend of Mazzini’s, though he went as an exile to Edinburgh at a later period.
Mrs. Gaskell spent a winter in Edinburgh in 1830-31, and she has woven some of her recollections inRound the Sofa. The Mr. Sperano mentioned was probably Agostino Ruffini, a friend of Mazzini’s, though he went as an exile to Edinburgh at a later period.
Afterwe had been about a fortnight in Edinburgh Mr. Dawson said, in a sort of half-doubtful manner to Miss Duncan:
“My sister bids me say, that every Monday evening a few friends come in to sit round her sofa for an hour or so—some before going to gayer parties—and that if you and Miss Greatorex would like a little change, she would only be too glad to see you. Any time from seven to eight to-night; and I must add my injunctions, both for her sake and for that of my little patient’s, here, that you leave at nine o’clock. After all, I do not know if you will care to come; but Margaret bade me ask you,” and he glanced up suspiciously and sharply at us. If either of us had felt the slightest reluctance, however welldisguised by manner, to accept this invitation, I am sure he would have at once detected our feelings, and withdrawn it, so jealous and chary was he of anything pertaining to the appreciation of this beloved sister.
But, if it had been to spend an evening at the dentist’s, I believe I should have welcomed the invitation, so weary was I of the monotony of the nights in our lodgings; and as for Miss Duncan, an invitation to tea was of itself a pure and unmixed honour, and one to be accepted with all becoming form and gratitude; so Mr. Dawson’s sharp glances over his spectacles failed to detect anything but the truest pleasure, and he went on:
“You’ll find it very dull, I dare say. Only a few old fogies like myself, and one or two good, sweet young women; I never know who’ll come. Margaret is obliged to lie in a darkened room—only half lighted, I mean—because her eyes are weak—oh, it will be very stupid, I dare say; don’t thank me till you’ve been once and tried it, and then if you like it, your best thanks will be, to come again every Monday, from half-past seven to nine, you know. Good-bye, good-bye.”
Hitherto I had never been out to a party of grown-up people; and no court-ball to a London young lady could seem more redolent of honour and pleasure than this Monday evening to me.
Dressed out in new stiff book-muslin, made up to my throat—a frock which had seemed to me and my sisters the height of earthly grandeur and finery—Alice, our old nurse, had been making it at home, in contemplation of the possibility of such an event during my stay in Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and angelic to be ever worn short of heaven—I went with Miss Duncanto Mr. Dawson’s at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty room—perhaps I ought to call it an ante-chamber, for the house was old-fashioned, and stately and grand—the large square drawing-room, into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson’s sofa was drawn. Behind her a little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it, bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and that was all the light in the room, which looked to me very vast and indistinct after our pinched-up apartment at the Mackenzies’. Mrs. Dawson must have been sixty; and yet her face looked very soft and smooth and childlike. Her hair was quite grey; it would have looked white but for the snowiness of her cap, and satin ribbon. She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of French grey merino. The furniture of the room was deep rose-colour, and white and gold; the paper which covered the walls was Indian, beginning low down with a profusion of tropical leaves and birds and insects, and gradually diminishing in richness of detail, till at the top it ended in the most delicate tendrils and most filmy insects.
Mr. Dawson had acquired much riches in his profession, and his house gave one this impression. In the corners of the rooms were great jars of Eastern china, filled with flower leaves and spices; and in the middle of all this was placed the sofa, on which poor Margaret Dawson passed whole days, and months, and years, without the power of moving by herself. By-and-by Mrs. Dawson’s maid brought in tea and macaroons for us, and a little cup of milk and water and a biscuit for her. Then the door opened. We had come very early, and in came Edinburgh professors, Edinburgh beauties, and celebrities, all on their way to some other gayer and later party, but coming first to see Mrs. Dawson,and tell her theirbons-mots, or their interests, or their plans. By each learned man, by each lovely girl, she was treated as a dear friend, who knew something more about their own individual selves, independent of their reputation and general society-character, than anyone else.
It was very brilliant and very dazzling, and gave enough to think about and wonder about for many days.
Monday after Monday we went, stationary, silent; what could we find to say to anyone but Mrs. Margaret herself? Winter passed, summer was coming.
People began to drop off from Edinburgh, only a few were left, and I am not sure if our Monday evenings were not all the pleasanter.
There was Mr. Sperano, the Italian exile, banished even from France, where he had long resided, and now teaching Italian with meek diligence in the northern city; there was Mr. Preston, the Westmorland squire, or, as he preferred to be called, statesman, whose wife had come to Edinburgh for the education of their numerous family, and who, whenever her husband had come over on one of his occasional visits, was only too glad to accompany him to Mrs. Dawson’s Monday evenings, he and the invalid lady having been friends from long ago. These and ourselves kept steady visitors, and enjoyed ourselves all the more from having the more of Mrs. Dawson’s society.
FromHousehold Words, 1853
A graphic account of a visit which Mr. and Mrs. Gaskell and their daughters made to the sheep-shearing at a Westmorland farm near Keswick. The article aroused much interest among the readers ofHousehold Words. John Forster, writing to Dickens, asked “who the deuce had written the delightful article on sheep-shearing?”
A graphic account of a visit which Mr. and Mrs. Gaskell and their daughters made to the sheep-shearing at a Westmorland farm near Keswick. The article aroused much interest among the readers ofHousehold Words. John Forster, writing to Dickens, asked “who the deuce had written the delightful article on sheep-shearing?”
Threeor four years ago we spent part of a summer in one of the dales in the neighbourhood of Keswick. We lodged at the house of a small Statesman, who added to his occupation of a sheep-farmer that of a woollen manufacturer. His own flock was not large, but he bought up other people’s fleeces, either on commission, or for his own purposes; and his life seemed to unite many pleasant and various modes of employment, and the great jolly, burly man throve upon all, both in body and mind.
One day his handsome wife proposed to us that we should accompany her to a distant sheep-shearing, to be held at the house of one of her husband’s customers, where she was sure we should be heartily welcome, and where we should see an old-fashioned shearing, such as was not often met with now in the Dales. I don’t know why it was, but we were lazy, and declined her invitation. It might be that the day was a broiling one, even for July, or it might be a fit of shyness; but, whichever was the reason, it very unaccountably vanished soon after she was gone, and the opportunity seemed to have slipped throughour fingers. The day was hotter than ever; and we should have twice as much reason to be shy and self-conscious, now that we should not have our hostess to introduce and chaperone us. However, so great was our wish to go that we blew these obstacles to the winds, if there were any that day; and, obtaining the requisite directions from the farm-servant, we set out on our five-mile walk, about one o’clock on a cloudless day in the first half of July.
Our party consisted of two grown-up persons and four children, the youngest almost a baby, who had to be carried the greater part of that weary length of way. We passed through Keswick, and saw the groups of sketching, boating tourists, on whom we, as residents for a month in the neighbourhood, looked down with some contempt as mere strangers, who were sure to go about blundering, or losing their way, or being imposed upon by guides, or admiring the wrong things, and never seeing the right things. After we had dragged ourselves through the long straggling town, we came to a part of the highway where it wound between copses sufficiently high to make a “green thought in a green shade”; the branches touched and interlaced overhead, while the road was so straight that all the quarter of an hour that we were walking we could see the opening of blue light at the other end, and note the quivering of the heated, luminous air beyond the dense shade in which we moved. Every now and then, we caught glimpses of the silver lake that shimmered through the trees; and, now and then, in the dead noontide stillness, we could hear the gentle lapping of the water on the pebbled shore—the only sound we heard, except the low, deep hum of myriads of insects revelling out their summerlives. We had all agreed that talking made us hotter, so we and the birds were very silent. Out again into the hot, bright, sunny, dazzling road, the fierce sun above our heads made us long to be at home; but we had passed the half-way, and to go on was shorter than to return. Now we left the highway, and began to mount. The ascent looked disheartening, but at almost every step we gained increased freshness of air; and the crisp, short mountain-grass was soft and cool in comparison with the high-road. The little wandering breezes, that came every now and then athwart us, were laden with fragrant scents—now of wild thyme—now of the little scrambling, creeping white rose, which ran along the ground and pricked our feet with its sharp thorns; and now we came to a trickling streamlet, on whose spongy banks grew great bushes of the bog-myrtle, giving a spicy odour to the air. When our breath failed us during that steep ascent, we had one invariable dodge by which we hoped to escape the “fat and scant of breath” quotation; we turned round and admired the lovely views, which from each succeeding elevation became more and more beautiful.
At last, perched on a level which seemed nothing more than a mere shelf of rock, we saw our destined haven—a grey stone farm-house, high over our heads, high above the lake as we were—with out-buildings enough around it to justify the Scotch name of a “town”; and near it one of those great bossy sycamores, so common in similar situations all through Cumberland and Westmorland. One more long tug, and then we should be there. So, cheering the poor tired little ones, we set off bravely for that last piece of steep rocky path; and we never looked behind till we stood in the coolness of thedeep porch, looking down from our natural terrace on the glassy Derwentwater, far, far below, reflecting each tint of the blue sky, only in darker, fuller colours every one. We seemed on a level with the top of Catbells; and the tops of great trees lay deep down—so deep that we felt as if they were close enough together and solid enough to bear our feet if we chose to spring down and walk upon them. Right in front of where we stood there was a ledge of the rocky field that surrounded the house. We had knocked at the door, but it was evident that we were unheard in the din and merry clatter of voices within, and our old original shyness returned. By-and-by someone found us out, and a hearty burst of hospitable welcome ensued. Our coming was all right; it was understood in a minute who we were; our real hostess was hardly less urgent in her civilities than our temporary hostess, and both together bustled out of the room upon which the outer door entered, into a large bedroom which opened out of it—the state apartment, in all such houses in Cumberland—where the children make their first appearance and where the heads of the household lie down to die if the Great Conqueror gives them sufficient warning for such decent and composed submission as is best in accordance with the simple dignity of their lives.
Into this chamber we were ushered, and the immediate relief from its dark coolness to our over-heated bodies and dazzled eyes was inexpressibly refreshing. The walls were so thick that there was room for a very comfortable window-seat in them, without there being any projection into the room; and the long, low shape prevented the skyline from being unusually depressed, even at that height; and so the light was subdued, and the general tintthrough the room deepened into darkness, where the eye fell on that stupendous bed, with its posts, and its head-piece, and its footboard, and its trappings of all kinds of the deepest brown; and the frame itself looked large enough for six or seven people to lie comfortably therein, without even touching each other. In the hearth-place stood a great pitcher filled with branches of odorous mountain flowers; and little bits of rosemary and lavender were strewed about the room, partly, as I afterwards learnt, to prevent incautious feet from slipping about on the polished oak floor. When we had noticed everything, and rested, and cooled (as much as we could do before the equinox), we returned to the company assembled in the house-place.
This house-place was almost a hall of grandeur. Along one side ran an oaken dresser, all decked with the same sweet evergreens, fragments of which strewed the bedroom floor. Over this dresser were shelves, bright with most exquisitely polished pewter. Opposite to the bedroom door was the great hospitable fireplace, ensconced within its proper chimney corners, and having the “master’s cupboard” on its right-hand side. Do you know what a “master’s cupboard” is? Mr. Wordsworth could have told you; ay, and have shown you one at Rydal Mount, too. It is a cupboard about a foot in width, and a foot and a half in breadth, expressly reserved for the use of the master of the household. Here he may keep pipe and tankard, almanac and what not; and although no door bars the access of any hand, in this open cupboard his peculiar properties rest secure, for is it not “the master’s cupboard”? There was a fire in the house-place, even on this hot day; it gave a grace and a vividness to the room, and being kept within proper limits, it seemed nomore than was requisite to boil the kettle. For, I should say, that the very minute of our arrival our hostess (so I shall designate the wife of the farmer at whose house the sheep-shearing was to be held) proposed tea; and although we had not dined, for it was but little past three, yet, on the principle of “Do at Rome as the Romans do,” we assented with a good grace, thankful to have any refreshment offered us, short of water-gruel, after our long and tiring walk, and rather afraid of our children “cooling too quickly.”
While the tea was preparing, and it took six comely matrons to do it justice, we proposed to Mrs. C. (our real hostess) that we should go and see the sheep-shearing. She accordingly led us away into a back yard, where the process was going on. By a back yard I mean a far different place from what a Londoner would so designate; our back yard, high up on the mountain-side, was a space about forty yards by twenty, overshadowed by the noble sycamore, which might have been the very one that suggested to Coleridge:
“This sycamore (oft musical with bees—Such tents the Patriarchs loved),” etc., etc.
“This sycamore (oft musical with bees—Such tents the Patriarchs loved),” etc., etc.
“This sycamore (oft musical with bees—
Such tents the Patriarchs loved),” etc., etc.
At the gate by which this field was entered from the yard stood a group of eager-eyed boys, panting like the sheep, but not like them from fear, but from excitement and joyous exertion. Their faces were flushed with brown-crimson, their scarlet lips were parted into smiles, and their eyes had that peculiar blue lustre in them, which is only gained by a free life in the pure and blithesome air. As soon as these lads saw that a sheep was wanted by the shearers within, they sprang towards one in the field—themore boisterous and stubborn an old ram the better—and tugging and pulling and pushing and shouting—sometimes mounted astride of the poor obstreperous brute, and holding his horns like a bridle—they gained their point, and dragged their captive up to the shearer, like little victors as they were, all glowing and ruddy with conquest. The shearers sat each astride on a long bench, grave and important—the heroes of the day. The flock of sheep to be shorn on this occasion consisted of more than a thousand, and eleven famous shearers had come, walking in from many miles’ distance to try their skill, one against the other; for sheep-shearings are a sort of rural Olympics. They were all young men in their prime, strong, and well made; without coat or waistcoat, and with upturned shirt-sleeves. They sat each across a long bench or narrow table, and caught up the sheep from the attendant boys who had dragged it in; they lifted it on to the bench, and placing it by a dexterous knack on its back, they began to shear the wool off the tail and under parts; then they tied the two hind-legs and the two fore-legs together, and laid it first on one side and then on the other, till the fleece came off in one whole piece; the art was to shear all the wool off, and yet not to injure the sheep by any awkward cut; if any such an accident did occur, a mixture of tar and butter was immediately applied; but every wound was a blemish on the shearer’s fame. To shear well and completely, and yet do it quickly, shows the perfection of the clippers. Some can finish off as many as six score sheep in a summer’s day; and if you consider the weight and uncouthness of the animal, and the general heat of the weather, you will see that, with justice, clipping or shearing is regarded as harder work than mowing. But most shearers arecontent with despatching four or five score; it is only on unusual occasions, or when Greek meets Greek, that six score are attempted or accomplished.
When the sheep is divided into its fleece and itself, it becomes the property of two persons. The women seize the fleece, and, standing by the side of a temporary dresser (in this case made of planks laid across barrels, beneath which sharp scant shadow could be obtained from the eaves of the house), they fold it up. This, again, is an art, simple as it may seem; and the farmers’ wives and daughters about Langdale Head are famous for it. They begin with folding up the legs, and then roll the whole fleece up, tying it with the neck; and the skill consists, not merely in doing this quickly and firmly, but in certain artistic pulls of the wool so as to display the finer parts, and not, by crushing up the fibre, to make it appear coarse to the buyer. Six comely women were thus employed; they laughed, and talked, and sent shafts of merry satire at the grave and busy shearers, who were too earnest in their work to reply, although an occasional deepening of colour, or twinkle of the eye, would tell that the remark had hit. But they reserved their retorts, if they had any, until the evening, when the day’s labour would be over, and when, in the licence of country humour, I imagine, some of the saucy speakers would meet with their match. As yet, the applause came from their own party of women; though now and then one of the old men, sitting under the shade of a sycamore, would take his pipe out of his mouth to spit, and, before beginning again to send up the softly curling white wreaths of smoke, he would condescend on a short, deep laugh and a “Well done, Maggie!” “Give it him, lass!” for, with the not unkindly jealousy of age towards youth, the old grandfathers invariably took partwith the women against the young men. These sheared on, throwing the fleeces to the folders, and casting the sheep down on the ground with gentle strength, ready for another troop of boys to haul it to the right-hand side of the farmyard, where the great outbuildings were placed; where all sorts of country vehicles were crammed and piled, and seemed to throw up their scarlet shafts into the air, as if imploring relief from the crowd of shandries and market carts that pressed upon them. Out of the sun, in the dark shadow of a cart-house, a pan of red-hot coals glowed in a trivet; and upon them was placed an iron basin holding tar and raddle, or ruddle. Hither the right-hand troop of boys dragged the poor naked sheep to be “smitten”—that is to say, marked with the initials or cypher of the owner. In this case the sign of the possessor was a circle or spot on one side, and a straight line on the other; and, after the sheep were thus marked, they were turned out to the moor, amid the crowd of bleating lambs that sent up an incessant moan for their lost mothers; each found out the ewe to which it belonged the moment she was turned out of the yard, and the placid contentment of the sheep that wandered away up the hill-side, with their little lambs trotting by them, gave just the necessary touch of peace and repose to the scene. There were all the classical elements for the representation of life: there were the “old men and maidens, young men and children” of the Psalmist; there were all the stages and conditions of being that sing forth their farewell to the departing crusaders in the “Saint’s Tragedy.”
We were very glad indeed that we had seen the sheep-shearing, though the road had been hot, and long, and dusty, and we were as yet unrefreshed and hungry.
FromHousehold Words, 1853
Weseemed to have our French lessons more frequently in the garden than in the house; for there was a sort of arbour on the lawn near the drawing-room window, to which we always found it easy to carry a table and chairs, and all the rest of the lesson paraphernalia, if my mother did not prohibit a lessonal-fresco.
M. de Chalabre wore, as a sort of morning costume, a coat, waistcoat, and breeches, all made of the same kind of coarse grey cloth, which he had bought in the neighbourhood. His three-cornered hat was brushed to a nicety, his wig sat as no one else’s did. (My father’s was always awry.) And the only thing wanted to his costume when he came was a flower. Sometimes I fancied he purposely omitted gathering one of the roses that clustered up the farm-house in which he lodged, in order to afford my mother the pleasure of culling her choicest carnations and roses to make him up his nosegay, or “posy,” as he liked to call it. He had picked up that pretty country word, and adopted it as an especial favourite, dwelling on the first syllable with all the languid softness of an Italian accent. Many a time have Mary and I tried to say it like him, we did so admire his way of speaking.
Once seated round the table, whether in the house or out of it, we were bound to attend to our lessons; and somehow he made us perceive that it was a part of the same chivalrous code that made him so helpfulto the helpless, to enforce the slightest claim of duty to the full. No half-prepared lessons for him! The patience and the resource with which he illustrated and enforced every precept; the untiring gentleness with which he made our stubborn English tongues pronounce, and mis-pronounce, and re-pronounce certain words; above all, the sweetness of temper which never varied, were such as I have never seen equalled. If we wondered at these qualities when we were children, how much greater has been our surprise at their existence since we have been grown up, and have learnt that, until his emigration, he was a man of rapid and impulsive action, with the imperfect education implied in the circumstance that at fifteen he was a sous-lieutenant in the Queen’s regiment, and must, consequently, have had to apply himself hard and conscientiously to master the language which he had in after life to teach.
Twice we had holidays to suit his sad convenience. Holidays with us were not at Christmas, and Midsummer, Easter, and Michaelmas. If my mother was unusually busy, we had what we called a holiday, though in reality it involved harder work than our regular lessons; but we fetched, and carried, and ran errands, and became rosy, and dusty, and sang merry songs in the gaiety of our hearts. If the day was remarkably fine, my dear father—whose spirits were rather apt to vary with the weather—would come bursting in with his bright, kind, bronzed face, and carry the day by storm with my mother. “It was a shame to coop such young things up in a house,” he would say, “when every other young animal was frolicking in the air and sunshine. Grammar!—what was that but the art of arranging words?—and he never knew a woman but could do that fast enough. Geography!—he would undertake to teachus more geography in one winter evening, telling us of the countries where he had been, with just a map before him, than we could learn in ten years with that stupid book, all full of hard words. As for the French—why, that must be learnt; for he should not like M. de Chalabre to think we slighted the lessons he took so much pains to give us; but surely we could get up the earlier to learn our French.” We promised by acclamation; and my mother—sometimes smilingly, sometimes reluctantly—was always compelled to yield. And these were the usual occasions for our holidays.
It was the fashion in those days to keep children much less informed than they are now on the subjects which interest their parents. A sort of hieroglyphic or cipher talk was used in order to conceal the meaning of much that was said if children were present. My mother was proficient in this way of talking, and took, we fancied, a certain pleasure in perplexing my father by inventing a new cipher, as it were, every day. For instance, for some time I was called Martia, because I was very tall of my age; and, just as my father began to understand the name—and, it must be owned, a good while after I had learned to prick up my ears whenever Martia was named—my mother suddenly changed me into “the buttress,” from the habit I had acquired of leaning my languid length against a wall. I saw my father’s perplexity about this “buttress” for some days, and could have helped him out of it, but I durst not. And so, when the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was executed, the news was too terrible to be put into plain English, and too terrible also to be known to us children, nor could we at once find the clueto the cipher in which it was spoken about. We heard about “the Iris being blown down,” and saw my father’s honest, loyal excitement about it, and the quiet reserve which always betokened some secret grief on my mother’s part.
We had no French lessons; and somehow the poor, battered, storm-torn Iris was to blame for this. It was many weeks after this before we knew the full reason of M. de Chalabre’s deep depression when he again came amongst us; why he shook his head when my mother timidly offered him some snowdrops on that first morning on which he began lessons again; why he wore the deep mourning of that day, when all of the dress that could be black was black, and the white muslin frills and ruffles were unstarched and limp, as if to bespeak the very abandonment of grief. We knew well enough the meaning of the next hieroglyphic announcement, “The wicked, cruel boys had broken off the White Lily’s head!” That beautiful queen, whose portrait once had been shown to us, with her blue eyes and her fair, resolute look, her profusion of lightly powdered hair, her white neck adorned with strings of pearls! We could have cried, if we had dared, when we heard the transparent, mysterious words. We did cry at night, sitting up in bed, with our arms round each other’s necks, and vowing, in our weak, passionate, childish way, that if we lived long enough, that lady’s death avenged should be. No one who cannot remember that time can tell the shudder of horror that thrilled through the country at hearing of this last execution. At the moment there was no time for any consideration of the silent horrors endured for centuries by the people, who at length rose in their madness against their rulers. This last blow changed our dear M. de Chalabre. I never saw him again in quite the samegaiety of heart as before this time. There seemed to be tears very close behind his smiles for ever after. My father went to see him when he had been about a week absent from us—no reason given, for did not we, did not everyone know the horror the sun had looked upon? As soon as my father had gone, my mother gave it in charge to us to make the dressing-room belonging to our guest-chamber as much like a sitting-room as possible. My father hoped to bring back M. de Chalabre for a visit to us; but he would probably like to be a good deal alone; and we might move any article of furniture we liked, if we only thought it would make him comfortable.
FromIntroduction to Mabel Vaughan, 1857
Ifit were not an Irish way of expressing myself, I should call prefaces in general, the author’s supplement to his work; either explaining his reasons for writing it, or giving some additional matter, which could not be included, or else was forgotten in the book itself.
Now as I am not the author of the following story, I cannot give her reasons for writing it, nor add to what she has already said; nor can I even give my opinion of it, as by so doing I should have to reveal much of the plot in order to justify praise, or explain criticism.
Such alterations as might be required to render certain expressions clear to English readers the authoress has permitted me to make in the body ofthe work; some foot-notes I have appended explanatory of what were formerly to me mysterious customs and phrases; and, here and there, I have been tempted to make additions, always with the kindly granted permission of the authoress.
In conclusion, I may say a few words on the pleasant intercourse we English are having with our American relations, in the interchange of novels, which seems to be going on pretty constantly between the two countries. Our cousinly connection with the Americans dates from common ancestors, of whom we are both proud. To a certain period, every great name which England boasts is a direct subject of pride to the American; since the time when the race diverged into two different channels, we catch a reflex lustre from each other’s great men. When we are stirred to our inmost depths by some passage or other inUncle Tom, we say from all our hearts, “And I also am of the same race as this woman.” When we hear of noble deeds—or generous actions; when Lady Franklin is helped in her woeful, faithful search by sympathising Americans; when theResoluteis brought home to our shores by the gallant American sailors, we hail the brave old Anglo-Saxon blood, and understand how they came to do it, as we instinctively comprehend a brother’s motives for his actions, though he should speak never a word.
It is Anglo-Saxon descent which makes us both so undemonstrative, or perhaps I should rather say, so ready to express our little dissatisfaction with each other, while the deeper feelings (such as our love and confidence in each other) are unspoken. Though we do not talk much about these feelings we value every tie between us that can strengthen them; and not least amongst those come the links of a common literature. I may be thought too like thetanner in the old fable, who recommended leather as the best means of defence for a besieged city, but I am inclined to rank the exchange of novels between England and America as of more value, as conducive to a pleasant acquaintanceship with each other, than the exchange of works of a far higher intrinsic value. Through the means of works of fiction, we obtain glimpses into American home-life; of their modes of thought, their traditional observances, and their social temptations, quite beyond and apart from the observations of a traveller, who after all, only sees the family in the street, or on the festival days, not in the quiet domestic circle, into which the stranger is rarely admitted.
These American novels unconsciously reveal all the little household secrets; we see the meals as they are put upon the table, we learn the dresses which those who sit down in them wear (and what a temptress “Fashion” seems to be in certain cities to all manner of vulgar extravagance!); we hear their kindly family discourse, we enter into their home struggles, and we rejoice when they gain the victory. Now all this knowledge of what the Americans really are is good for us, as tending to strengthen our power of understanding them, and consequently to increase our sympathy with them. Let us trust that they learn something of the same truth from reading fiction written on this side of the Atlantic; the truth that, however different may be national manifestations of the fact, still, below accents, manners, dress, and language, we have