CRANFORD %0tt/ict7i SfntroducUoTz ^- Mrs. Gaskell TT is regrettable that Mrs. Gaskell exacted from her husband and family the promise that they would neither themselves prepare any biography of her nor assist another in such a task. Whatever may have been her reason for laying such an obligation upon those nearest to her, — and probably we may seek it in the embroilment in which certain passages (since excised) in her work on Charlotte Bronte plunged her, — the fact remains that EngKsh literature is the poorer by the lack of the Life of a good and accomplished woman. There is a reason which operated even before the publication of the " Life " which will be recognized as a perfectly natural one. On the authority of the late Miss Meta Gaskell it appears that the daughters of Mrs. Gaskell, meeting Thackeray's daughters at Brighton, were informed by them that their father had expressed a desire that no biography of him should be written. On being told this Mrs. Gaskell thought it an excellent idea, and hoped her daughters would keep in mind that she also was opposed to the writing of a biography. xviii CRANFORD The loss is indeed a double one, for not only were the character and actions of Mrs. Gaskell worthy of careful presentation, but her friendships were many and warm, and we are thus deprived of the very numerous and interesting letters from notable men and women with whom she corresponded. The nearest approach to a biography is the volume entitled Mrs. Gaskell, Haunts, Homes, and Stories, by Mrs. Chadwick, now in its second edition, though the writer knows of the existence of at least two biographies by eminent writers, which have been prepared now for some years, and which will eventually see the light. Mrs. Gaskell's wishes with regard to a biography do not, however, stand in the way of the short memoir, or monograph, from without. Professor A. W. Ward, of Owens College, contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography an admirably concise and informing account of Mrs. Gaskell's career, and the same office was performed for the Encyclopcedia Britamiica by Miss F. Masson. In the compilation of the brief sketch which follows, both these articles, together with such others as could be found elsewhere, have been drawn upon. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson (afterwards Mrs. Gaskell) was born in Chelsea on September 29, 1 8 10. The house was in Lindsey Row, now numbered 93 Cheyne Walk. Her father, William Stevenson, a native of Berwick-on-Tweed, was the son of a sailor, and the descendant of Norwegian Stevensons, a sea- faring stock. The love of the sea was indeed in the family blood : Mrs. Gaskell thrilled to it, and her INTRODUCTION xix only brother was in the Merchant Service, WiUiam Stevenson, however, clave to the land. A man of unusual mental vigour and independence, he began life as a tutor, took a classical post at the Manchester Academy, and then, accepting the Unitarians' creed, underwent training for a minister. He suppHed the pulpit of Dob Lane Chapel, Failsworth, Manchester, from 1792 to 1796. Feeling, however, that to preach the gospel as a profession was an incongruity, he abandoned the pulpit and joined a farmer in Scotland as pupil, afterwards taking a farm of his own near Edinburgh. This sacrifice for the sake of conviction was doubtless in the mind of his daughter when she wrote North and South. He tilled the soil only for a brief space, and then, moving to Edinburgh, opened a boarding-house for students, became the Editor of the Scots Magazine^ and started in earnest upon the career of a busy literary man. In 1806, Lord Lauderdale, who had just accepted the post of Governor-General of India, asked Stevenson to accompany him as secretary ; but the project was overturned by the successful opposition made by the East India Company to the appointment. As some compensation, his lordship procured for Stevenson the office of Keeper of the Records to the Treasury. He therefore moved to Chelsea, and there remained for the rest of his Hfe, fulfilling his official duties, editing the Annual Register, and writing articles for the leading reviews, princi- pally on agriculture, education, and commerce. Mrs. Gaskell's mother was Elizabeth Holland, the daughter of a sturdy yeoman of Sandle Bridge, near XX CRANFORD Knutsford, in Cheshire. The Hollands were and are an old Cheshire family of sterling qualities. Peter Holland, the Knutsford doctor, was Mrs. Gaskell's uncle, and his son (her cousin) was Sir Henry Holland, a famous physician, who married a daughter of Sydney Smith. In Sir Henry Holland's Recollections will be found a pleasant character sketch of his and Mrs. Gaskell's grand- father. " The most perfect practical optimist " he had ever known, his grandson calls him ; adding, " living and farming his own land, he put to shame the many sayings, ancient and modern, as to the querulous nature of the agricultural mind. ... If a particular season was quoted to him as bad for one crop, he always vindicated it as good for another. ... I never visit this old and picturesque house at Sandle Bridge," Sir Henry continued, " without some remembrance of him coming to my mind, either as walking cheerfully over his fields, or tranquilly smoking his pipe in an arm-chair coeval with himself." Woodley, Mr. Holbrook's home in Cranford, is said to have been modelled upon the old house at Sandle Bridge, and probably in Mr. Holbrook we may look for a likeness of the author's grandfather. Mrs. Gaskell herself must have in- herited not a little of his nature : practical optimism was certainly one of her characteristics. Mrs. Stevenson, who already had one child, a boy, never recovered from her second confinement. She died when her daughter was a little more than a year old, and the little Elizabeth was handed over to the care of her maternal aunt, Mrs. Lumb.^ INTRODUCTION xxi [Mrs. Chadwick has discovered the entry of her mother's death 30th Oct., 181 1, EHzabeth Stevens, age 40. In the Chelsea rate-book the name appears in 1 8 10 as Stephens, and later as Stephenson.] The aunt, as Mr. Thomas Seccombe says in his Introduction to Cousin Phillis, was poor and had to practise in her modest household those elegant economies which supply such delectable fare to the reader of Cr an ford. Mrs. Gaskell always referred to her aunt in most affectionate terms. " She was my dearest friend— my more than mother — whose bodily appearance was a fit shrine for her pure and chastened spirit." This lady, who, owing to rather distressing circum- stances, was then living, with her invalid child, in re- tirement at Knutsford, in a cottage on the heath, was perhaps glad to have such additional distraction as a baby affords ; and when, soon afterwards, her own crippled daughter died, Mrs. Lumb took the place of mother to her tiny niece, and cared for her with the tenderest solicitude. Elizabeth had also another friend in Knutsford, in the person of her uncle Peter Holland, and the little town became as wholly her home as if she had been born there. With Mrs. Lumb the child remained until it was time for boarding- school, when she was sent to one at Stratford-on- Avon, for two years, spending the holidays there also. At the age of seventeen she left, and, joining her father and stepmother (for he had married again) at Chelsea, there continued her studies. Mr. Steven- son instructed his daughter in French, Italian, and xxii CRANFORD Latin. It was not, however, a bright chapter in her Hfe. Writing ten years afterwards to the Howitts, Mrs. Gaskell said : " Long ago I lived in Chelsea occasionally with my father and stepmother, and very^ very unhappy I used to be ; if it had not been for the beautiful, grand river, which was an in- explicable comfort to me, and a family of the name of Kennett, I think my child's heart would have broken." She had also her books, to which she was devoted, in those years Scott, Goldsmith, Pope, and Cowper being chief favourites. The Chelsea period was closed abruptly in March 1829 by the death of Mr. Stevenson ; when Eliza- beth, who had nursed him with loving care, returned to Knutsford. She was at that time nineteen, a graceful girl of noticeable beauty. It is told of her that, when on a visit to Edinburgh in the same year, more than one artist asked her to sit as a model. Mrs. Gaskell carried much of her comeliness into later life, as various portraits testify. Her face was an eminently kindly one, gentle and luminous, and in conformation typically early Victorian. Mrs. Ritchie quotes a friend of Mrs. Gaskell as saying of her appearance when young : " She had a well- shaped head, regular, finely-cut features ; her mien was bright and dignified, almost joyous ; and among her many other gifts was that of delightful com- panionship " ; and Miss Masson speaks of her exquisitely-shaped soft eyes and a smile of wonderful sweetness. The marble bust, executed by D. Dunbar in 1829, which until recently stood in the drawing-room at INTRODUCTION xxiii 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester, amply testifies to the correctness of these descriptions. A replica by Hamo Thorneycroft may be seen in the Christie Library at Manchester University. The original has been presented to the Manchester Art Gallery. The miniature by Joseph Thomson, also of Edin- burgh, in 1832, when Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was 22, and just before her marriage, is the most beautiful portrait we possess ; though the Richmond portrait of 1851, when Mrs. Gaskell was 41, was always regarded by the late Miss Gaskell as " the least unpleasing picture." The Samuel Lawrence portrait of 1864-5 represents Mrs. Gaskell at the age of 54 as much more matronly in appearance. Another place of sojourn at this time was New- castle, where William Turner, a Unitarian minister, was her host ; but though her absences were long and frequent, Knutsford, her " adopted native town," as she called it, always occupied the place of home in her mind. In 1832, however, a great change came ; for on August 30 of that year Elizabeth Stevenson became Mrs. William Gaskell. The marriage was solemnised in Knutsford Church, and all the town was gay. It was then, and is to this day, a custom at Knutsford on an occasion of re- joicing for the people to sprinkle red sand before the doors of their houses, and then, with white sand, to superimpose floral and other patterns. According to local legend, the practice originated in the circumstance that King Knut, after fording a neighbouring brook (hence the name Knutsford), xxiv CRANFORD was sitting on the bank to remove the sand from his shoes, when a bridal procession passed ; where- upon the king, shaking the sand towards the happy- pair, wished them as many joys and children as there were grains in his shoe. The Knutsford sand patterns not always being considered a sufficient earnest of good wishes, it was also usual for verses to be written embodying more explicit felicitations. Mrs. Gaskell, in a long account of Cheshire customs which she once sent to the Howitts, wrote : " When I was married, nearly all the houses were sanded, and these were the two favourite verses : — " Long may they live, Happy may they be, Blest with content And from misfortune free ! " Long may they live, Happy may they be, And blest with numerous Pro-ge-ny."2 The fact that the Knutsford people were so unanimous in celebrating Mrs. Gaskell's wedding proves that even then she had won a place in their hearts. William Gaskell (i 805-1 884), at that time twenty-seven years of age, was junior minister, under John Gooch Robberds, of the Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, in Manchester, one of the strongholds of the sect. He was the son of a canvas maker at Latch- ford, near Warrington, had been educated at Glasgow and Manchester College, York, and in 1828 was appointed to Manchester. At Cross Street he INTRODUCTION xxv remained to the end of his long life, becoming senior minister in 1854. Mr. Gaskell held from time to time the highest and most honoured places among Unitarians, and for many years he was one of the editors of the Unitarian Herald. At the Manchester New College he was Professor of English History and Literature from 1846 to 1853, and in 1854 was elected Chairman of Committee. During the illness of Principal Scott of Owens College he lectured for him on Logic and English Literature. His mind was luminous and richly stored, and his pupils speak of the unusual literary finish of his discourses. In 1878, a scholarship bearing his name was founded at the Unitarian Home Missionary College — then called Board — Manchester, of which institution he was a tutor from 1854 and Principal from 1876, succeeding John Relly Beard, as some commemoration of the completion of the jubilee of his Manchester ministry. Mr. Gaskell did not turn his thoughts much to authorship, but certain of his funeral sermons or orations have been reprinted, and Unitarians prize many of his hymns. He was an authority on Lanca- shire dialect, and to one edition of his wife's novel, Mary Barton, was added an etymological appendix from his pen. But although not intent upon writing himself, he encouraged and stimulated his wife throughout her busy literary career. Their union was indeed in every way a suitable and happy one. During the early years of her married life Mrs. Gaskell was in delicate health. She lived very quietly in Manchester,^ in intercourse with a few friends, attending to her children, of whom altogether xxvi CRANFORD she had seven, and fulfiUing the duties of the wife of a minister of the Gospel. She interested herself continually in the poor, and from the sincere and understanding friendship she had for them grew her first literary project, in which her husband joined her. Mr. Gaskell, who was always a busy philan- thropist, prepared a series of lectures to mill hands on " The Poets and Poetry of Humble Life," and these were delivered in various parts of Manchester in 1836, and eagerly listened to by large audiences of poor people, whose opportunities for hearing of the sympathy which fine intellects had felt for them had been very few. Mr. Gaskell and his wife were so much struck by this interest, that they decided, as we learn from a letter written in after years by Mrs. Gaskell to Mary Howitt,* upon experimenting themselves upon a similar kind of sympathetic verse. In Mrs. Gaskell's words : " We once thought of trying to write sketches among the poor, rather in the manner of Crabbe (now don't think this pre- sumptuous), but in a more seeing-beauty spirit ; and one — the only one — was published in Blackwood, January, 1837." The poem, in ten syllabled couplets, is entitled " Sketches among the Poor, No. I." It tells of a lone woman in the heart of Manchester, whose one dream was to be back once again among the green fields and blue skies of her childhood in the country. It was, however, not to be ; but in her last moments, by a happy delusion of illness, she believed the dream realised. That piece was Mrs. Gaskell's first literary effort. It is, however, usually considered that her career INTRODUCTION xivii as a writer began with the account of Clopton Hall, which she wrote in 1838 for William Howitt's Visits to Remarkable Places, published in 1840. Mary Howitt, writing of this article in her Autobiography , says that William Howitt's praise of it " so gratified and encouraged Mrs. Gaskell, that Mary Barton resulted " ; but so much intervened between the two productions that the statement must be con- sidered a little too emphatic. For one thing, in 1839-40-41 Manchester was overwhelmed by the cotton famine, and the Gaskells had more work than they could accomplish in mitigating the suffer- ing around them. Mrs. Gaskell's literary schemes, if any she had, were forgotten in the stress of action. She toiled day and night. Says Miss Masson : " From the first, although she never visited the poor as a member of any organised society, she sought by all means in her power to relieve the misery which, in a town Hke Manchester, she was constantly witnessing. She gave the most devoted help and tender sympathy to such cases of individual distress as came under her notice. She assisted Mr. Travers Madge in his missionary work among the poor, and was the friend and helper of Thomas Wright, the prison philanthropist." If that had been Mrs. Gaskell's ordinary charitable routine, it may be supposed that the special efforts of so impulsive and warm-hearted a woman would be splendidly vigorous. Her literary plans, we have said, were set aside, although, subconsciously, perhaps, they must have been germinating all the time. Her opportunities of seeing things as they are — and xxviii CRANFORD the observer of human nature has never such a chance of grim realities as in a famine — were many, and Mrs. Gaskell remembered them. When the time was ripe she turned them to account. Every poignant incident of the squaHd life around her, every fresh instance of what seemed to her the injustice of capitalists, brought Mary Barton nearer ; but the particular cause leading Mrs. Gaskell to begin that story was the death, in 1841, of her only son Willie, a baby of but ten months. [Mrs. Gaskell had four daughters : Miss Florence Gaskell (who married Mr. Charles Crompton, q.c), died in 1881 ; Miss Julia Bradford Gaskell, who died in Oct., 1908 ; Miss Margaret Emily (" Meta ") Gaskell, who died in Oct., 191 3 ; and Miss Marianne Gaskell (the widow of Mr. Edward Thurstan Holland), who is the only living representative of the family.] The loss so preyed upon her mind that Mr. Gaskell recommended story-writing as a diversion. Mary Barton was straightway begun. Once started, Mrs. Gaskell wrote rapidly, using backs of letters and any scraps of paper that came to hand,^ and the story was soon finished. The first volume was sent to William Howitt, whom, with his wife, the Gaskells had met in person on the Rhine in 1841, and he was extremely enthusiastic. Before, however, the novel could be published, it had to undergo an experience only too common with first books. The manuscript began its travels, and was so long about them that Mrs. Gaskell, as she used to say, " forgot all about it," and turned to other records of her famine experiences. Under the pseudonym of Cotton INTRODUCTION xxix Mather Mills, Esq., she contributed to Rowings Journal three stories of the poor : " Libbie Marsh's Three Eras," " The Sexton's Hero," and " Christmas Storms and Sunshine " ; and probably many other of her numerous short stories belong to these years. Meanwhile, after the manuscript of Mary Barton had been returned unread by one publisher, rejected perhaps by others, and had lain for a year unopened at Chapman and Hall's, that firm offered £^oo for the copyright. Mrs. Gaskell accepted ; and in 1848, Mary Barton : A 7 ale of Manchester Life, appeared. No author's name was printed on the title-page ; but many people were in the secret. During this period of anonymity Mrs. Gaskell very cleverly discussed, with a number of ladies in a Knutsford drawing-room, who the probable author could possibly be. The story, which is concerned with the conflict between capital and labour, does not show Mrs. Gaskell at her best. It is often crude in workman- ship, and is lacking in fine shades of character-drawing ; but it has the force of sincerity and sympathy. Mrs. Gaskell felt what she wrote. To this must be attributed its popularity. We must remember also that in 1848 such a story was a new thing.^ Were it to come fresh from the publisher's to-day, Mary Barton might find fewer readers. In 1848, however, it was read everywhere. It had also the publicity that follows attack in the press. Manchester was divided in opinion, and the battle between employers and proletarians was fought out in the local papers. The fact that Mrs. Gaskell had stated in her preface that she was ignorant of political economy XXX ' CRANFORD and the theories of trade (although she had studied Adam Smith as a preliminary training for the novel), and had not intentionally attacked any system, weighed nothing with her critics. In this controversy, however, Mrs. Gaskell and human nature won ; and her reputation, or at least the reputation of the author of Mary Barton (for anonymity was still preserved) was made. Many of the novelist's friendships with eminent men and women date from this book. Charles Dickens admired it greatly ; Charlotte Bronte, of whom more anon, thought it " clever, though painful," and was much drawn to the character of the writer ; it was one of the books which interested Miss Edge- worth in her declining days, and one of the few novels to meet with the approbation of Thomas Carlyle ; Walter Savage Landor inscribed a copy of verses to " The Paraclete of the Bartons " ; and among other enthusiastic readers of the novel, and of Mrs. Gaskell's works generally, were Mr. Ruskin, Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Jameson, Miss Florence Nightingale, Charles Kingsley, Lord Houghton ' (then Monckton Milnes), Benjamin Jowett, and Dean Stanley. A version soon circulated in France, into whose language almost all of Mrs. Gaskell's stories were translated. In that country, indeed, she had a comparatively large following. On her visits to Paris, Madame Mohl, who was her warm personal friend, Guizot, Montalembert, and other persons of note, were glad to do her honour. William Howitt has been mentioned as an important influence in Mrs. Gaskell's literary career. A greater was Charles Dickens. The INTRODUCTION xxxi two novelists met first at the dinner which in the spring of 1849 commemorated the publication of the first part of David Copperfield, and in January of the following year Dickens asked Mrs. Gaskell to help him with Household Words, which he was then projecting. The purpose of the magazine, he told her, was " the raising up of those that are down, and the general improvement of our social con- dition." It cannot be said that this purpose shone very clearly from Household Words^ pages, which provided good-humoured and entertaining beguile- ment rather than powder and shot for social re- formers and philanthropists ; but Dickens at that time no doubt meant it to be as he forecast. He went on : "I should set a value on your help which your modesty can hardly imagine ; and I am perfectly sure that the least result of your reflection or observation in respect of the life around you, would attract attention and do good. . . . My un- affected and great admiration of your book [Mary Barton] makes me very earnest in all relating to you," he added, and he concluded by offering to visit Mrs. Gaskell at Manchester if she would like to talk to him in person about her contributions. The immediate answer to the request was the short story, Lizzie Leigh, with which the new periodical began. An essay or so followed at irregular intervals ; and then, on December 13, 1851, came the opening instalment of Cranford, under the title, " Our Society at Cranford." Cranford is, in the opinion of the present writer, Mrs. Gaskell's most perfect and distinguished work. xxxii CRANFORD Its isolation is, indeed, something of a mystery. In all her books Mrs. Gaskell wrote occasionally very well, but technically Cranford is better — and con- sistently better — than any. It has more delicacy, more atmosphere, in short, more style. This was particularly noticeable in Household Words^ where there was no style, only manner. We may perhaps look for one cause in the circumstance that Cranford is the record of impressions gathered in childhood ; and such records have always a vitality not to be equalled, except in rare instances, by those of impressions gathered by older and less sensitive vision. But of Cranford so much is said later that here it is out of place to do more than remark that only of quite recent years has it become a popular book. At first it attracted but little attention, possibly from its lack of that somewhat lurid interest for which Mary Barton was remarkable, English readers being always better pleased when an author's subsequent books resemble the first than when new paths are attempted. Latterly, however, Cranford has come to its own, and Miss Matty is, and is likely to remain, a household name. Synchronously with Cranford, Mrs. Gaskell had been writing Ruth, — which appeared indeed before Cranford reached book form, — another sombre study of a social sore. Therein, with what then was considered courageous outspokenness, but would now be thought to approximate to cautious reserve, a fracture of the moral law was discussed. Again Mrs. Gaskell was greeted with hostile criticism, and again she received the support of many persons INTRODUCTION xxxiii competent to speak with authority. Among others, Charles Kingsley wrote of Ruth — " May God bless you, and help you to write many more such books as you have already written." An interesting letter on the subject from Mrs. Gaskell to Lord Houghton is worth quoting : " I am so glad you liked Ruth. I was so anxious about her, and took so much pains over writing it, that I lost my own power of judging, and could not tell whether I had done it well or ill. I only knew how very close to my heart it had come from. I tried to make both the story and the writing as quiet as possible, in order that ' people ' (my great bug- bear) might not say that they could not see what the writer felt to be very plain and earnest truth, for romantic incidents or exaggerated writing." Dickens, who also admired the novel, demurring (as a reference to his Letters will show) only to a technical point therein, commissioned Mrs. Gaskell to write the next serial story in Household Words^ and North and South was the result. Therein, although the problem of capital and labour is again prominent, she made a departure from strenuous fiction and never returned to it. Possibly the remarks of misunderstanding critics and people (her great bugbear) had been too clamorous ; possibly in Mary Barton and Ruth she had covered her more serious polemical ground ; whatever was the cause, Mrs. Gaskell henceforth confined herself in fiction to more or less pleasant stories of romantic or domestic interest, in which light and shade were blended in fairly equal proportions. xxxiv CRANFORD In her next book, which is that by which her name will probably be remembered after her stories are no longer read, Mrs. Gaskell abandoned fiction for biography. To explain this step it is necessary to go back into time some five years, to August, 1850. In that month Sir James Kay Shuttleworth had invited Mrs. Gaskell to Briery Close, near Bowness, to meet the author of Jane Eyre. Mrs. Gaskell, who had already corresponded with Char- lotte Bronte, accepted, and a friendship destined to endure until closed by the death of Charlotte Bronte was there established between the two novelists. It was never quite of the closest, but we know from testimony on both sides that it was warm and real. On receipt of Mrs. Gaskell's first letter, in 1849, Charlotte Bronte had referred to her — to W. S. Williams — as " a good, a great, woman," adding that she was proud to be able to touch a chord of sympathy in souls so noble. " In Mrs. Gaskell's nature," she continued, " it mournfully pleases me to fancy a remote affinity to my sister Emily." In the spring of 1853, Charlotte Bronte stayed with the Gaskells in Manchester, and in the autumn Mrs. Gaskell returned the visit at Haworth. And then, when, in less than two years after, Charlotte Bronte's brief life was ended, Mr. Bronte, taking into consideration this intimacy and Mrs. Gaskell's literary gifts, asked her to become Charlotte Bronte's biographer. She acquiesced, and worked at her task with impulsive assiduity, growing, we may sup- pose, with every page more and more a zealous champion of the rare and lonely spirit whose life- INTRODUCTION xxxv story she was to disclose. Hence, when the book was published in 1857, it was found to contain passages which a more discreet biographer would have omitted. An extraordinary manifestation followed publication, and amid the battle of the critics and offended relatives, Mrs. Gaskell was handled roughly. In the end the first edition had to be suppressed, and another, that which is now procurable, substituted. (There is no space here in which to enter into detail : the whole story is told minutely in Mr. Clement Shorter's Charlotte Bronte and her Circle.) Shortcomings notwith- standing, the book is one of the most persuasive biographies in the language. It has fervour, life. Mrs. Gaskell was a novelist born, and she came to the story of Charlotte Bronte's sad career with all her narrative gifts in full play. But such was her mortification consequent upon the reception of the book, her third to be received, in many places, with acrimony, that Mrs. Gaskell abandoned biography for ever and ever, and, as has been stated, even forbade the writing of her own. The first decision, however, was so far recon- sidered, that subsequently one of Mrs. Gaskell's pet literary projects was a life of Madame de Sevigne, of whose letters she was a keen admirer. Certain researches towards the work were instituted both in Paris and Brittany, but death interrupted the scheme. Of all old French memoirs and accounts of French life and character Mrs. Gaskell was an eager reader. Among her other favourite authors, in later life, were Macaulay and Ruskin, and it is xxxvi CRANFORD told of her by Miss Masson that after perusal of Amos Barton^ she predicted for its anonymous author a great literary career. ^ This anonymous author and Mrs. Gaskell subsequently corresponded : there is extant a letter by George Eliot which acknow- ledges Mrs. Gaskell's " sweet encouraging words." From her tastes in reading, Mrs. Gaskell's preference for quiet domesticity may be deduced. She was in private life simple-minded and enthusiastic. People, as we have seen, were her bugbear : she was all for unpretentiousness and close friendships. Mrs. Bridell Fox, in a chapter of reminiscences,^ tells of once, as a girl, meeting Mrs. Gaskell at a party in London, the hostess of which showed a disposition to make that lady a lion. This Mrs. Gaskell resented, and the mere suggestion of her distaste being insufficient, she took refuge with two young friends, of whom Mrs. Bridell Fox was one, on a distant sofa, ramparted by a table, and there remained until it was time to go. After the biography of Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell's thoughts were again turned to the amelioration of the poor. The prospect of another cotton famine in Manchester in 1862 set her, says Miss Masson, anxiously thinking what could be done to relieve the coming distress, " and she decided, without any suggestion from others, on a plan of giving relief and employment together to the women mill-hands, which was an exact prototype of the great system of relief afterwards publicly adopted, namely, the sewing schools. When these were formed, Mrs. Gaskell merged the private scheme in the public INTRODUCTION xxxvii one, and worked most laboriously in the sewing- school nearest her home." Her next long story was Sylvia's Lovers, published in 1863, a romance of Whitby smugglers and the pressgang, based on very careful study of the period, the end of the last century. Cousin Phillis, a dainty idyll, is considered by some critics to be her most perfect story. Mr. Thomas Seccombe, for instance, says : " For absolute perfection in execution there is strong weight of testimony to prove that she never surpassed, if she ever even approached. Cousin Phillis.^^ Paul Elmer More refers to Cousin Phillis as " that flawless, radiant idyll," and Dr. Ward speaks of it as " an artistically perfect composition, and one of the gems of English imaginative prose." It was her principal work between the publication of Sylvia's Lovers and the beginning, in 1864, of the serial career of Wives and Daughters in Cornhill. In this, her last long novel, Mrs. Gaskell perhaps showed greatest command of character. The story shared something of the advantage which Cranford enjoyed, for Hollingford, the town where so many scenes have place, although it is unimportant in the book, is Knutsford once more : that is to say, the writer had as she wrote the priceless sense of home. The Doctor, Mr. Gibson, is full of reminiscences of her uncle, Peter Holland ; while the two girls are probably as rich in hints of herself. Take it for all in all. Wives and Daughters may be called, psychologically, Mrs. Gaskell's finest work in fiction, although in actual writing Cranford is, I think, its superior. George Sand's opinion is often quoted : " It is a book," she xxxviii CRANFORD said, " that might be put into the hands of an innocent girl, while at the same time it would rivet the attention of the most blase man of the world." The excellence of Wives and Daughters is additional reason for regret that its author did not live to finish it. Death came while the last chapters were yet only in her mind, and the story broke off abruptly in Cornhill, with a note by the editor, Mr. Frederick Greenwood, tracing the probable course of events, and expressing a sense of the loss which English readers suffered by Mrs. Gaskell's death. The end came with terrible suddenness. Mrs. Gaskell was at the time staying with her daughters at Holybourne, near Alton in Hampshire, in the house that she had recently bought as a gift to her husband. " Mama's last days," wrote her daughter Meta, " had been full of loving thought and tender help for others. She was so sweet and dear and noble beyond words." And then, without the least warning, came death, on the afternoon of Sunday, November 12, 1865. The cause was heart disease. The body was conveyed to Knutsford, and there buried in the graveyard belonging to the Unitarian Chapel, which has become a shrine for literary pilgrims, both English and American. The following inscription from the pen of her husband was engraved on a tablet in Cross Street Chapel, Manchester : — In Memory of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Wife of the Rev. William Gaskell, M. A., One of the Ministers of this Chapel, Widely honoured for her genius and the spirit in which it was exercised. INTRODUCTION xxxix Endeared by her rare graces of mind and heart to all by whom she was known, She fulfilled the duties of a wife and mother With a tenderness and fidelity which secured for her undying love, And so lived in Christian faith and hope that death, Which came without a moment's warning, had for her no sting. Born September 29th, 18 10. Died November 12th, 1865. Erected by the congregation in token of their respect and regard. To this tribute to Mrs. Gaskell's character it is not possible for a stranger to add anything. Of her work it may be said that no writer has quite taken her place. She had not the genius of either Charlotte Bronte or George Eliot ; yet, while ap- pealing also to sophisticated readers, she reached, perhaps, simpler minds than either of those writers. Her material was always normal. Her humour was natural and fresh, the humour of the normal home ; her pathos was natural and rightly rooted, the pathos of the normal home ; the griefs and joys and doubts of her characters were such as every- day life affords, the griefs and joys and doubts of the normal home. If it were permissible to apply but one word to Mrs. Gaskell's work, that word would •"be " homeliness." When homeliness is enforced by the literary skill of the born story-writer, it is irre- sistible. Hence Mrs. Gaskell's books, once begun, are still as hard as ever to lay aside. A companion tablet in memory of Mr. Gaskell, who survived his wife for many years, is also to be seen in Cross Street Chapel. Mr. Gaskell died on June 11, 1884, in his seventy-ninth year, and was xl CRANFORD buried with his wife at Knutsford. He had been the minister of Cross Street Chapel for fifty-six years. In February, 1898, the association of Mrs. Gaskell and the Cheshire town which she loved so well and described so exquisitely was publicly emphasised. Mr. R. H. Watt, as a personal tribute to Mrs. Gaskell's memory, caused to be built on the wall of the post office a bas-relief portrait of that lady, executed from a photograph taken a year or so before her death. In March, 1908, Mr. Watt erected a Memorial Tower in King Street, Knutsford, and the bas-relief was transferred from the post office to the tower. The tower was opened by Vice-Chancellor Hop- kinson, of Manchester University. Carved upon its sides are the titles of all her stories, while a replica of the Edinburgh bust faces the street. The tower is attached to the King's Coffee House. II The Cranford papers began in Household Words in December 1851, and continued at irregular intervals until May 1853. At first there was a Httle difficulty. In the opening chapter (which, when the papers were collected into a book, was divided into chapters i. and ii. as they now stand), Mrs. Gaskell's description of the duel between Miss Deborah and Captain INTRODUCTION xH Brown, the champions respectively of the Great Lexicographer and the inimitable Boz, led to a momentary hitch. To print this passage in a periodical conducted by himself was, Dickens considered, in- advisable, and he made, as is explained in the notes to the present edition, certain changes by which Captain Brown figured instead as the gallant defender of Thomas Hood. Dickens undoubtedly did right, but Mrs. Gaskell, like all writers who believe in their work, was depressed by any editorial alterations, and disturbed especially, one may suppose, by alterations at so early a stage. For a moment it looked as if trouble might ensue, but happily it was averted, the second instalment — the account of Mr. Holbrook — appeared, and all was well. "If you were not the most suspicious of women, always looking for soft sawder in the purest metal of praise," wrote Dickens to Mrs. Gaskell after reading this manuscript, '' I should call your paper delightful, and touched in the tenderest and most delicate manner. Being what you are, I confine myself to the observation that I have called it ' A Love Affair at Cranford,' and sent it off to the printer." Thenceforward there were no difficulties. Cranford is a blend of memory and invention. Much is true. The Rev. Henry Green, in his Uttle history of Knutsford (second edition, 1887) writes of a sick parishioner : " I lent her Cranford without telling her to what it was supposed to relate. She read the tale of ' Life in a Country Town,' and when I called again, she was full of eagerness to say, ' Why, sir, that Crayiford is all about Knutsford. My old xlii CRANFORD mistress, Miss Harker, is mentioned in it ; and our poor cow she did go to the field in a large flannel waistcoat because she had burned herself in a lime pit.' " Similarly we may suppose Mrs. Forrester's story of the recovery of her lace to be true, and it is known that the disappearance of Peter had a melan- choly precedent in the disappearance of Mrs. Gaskell's only brother, John Stevenson, a young sailor who, in the twenties, left England for India and was never heard of more. The Hon. Beatrice Tollemache, writing in Tem^ple Bar in August 1895, traced Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook to real life. In Captain Brown Mrs. Tollemache recognised Captain Hill of Knutsford, the adjutant of the Cheshire Yeomanry, and a regular visitor on matters concerning the regi- ment to Tatton, at the home of her father. Lord Egerton of Tatton. Captain Hill, who had risen from the ranks — he was a drummer boy in the Penin- sular War — was a notable local landmark in his Waterloo cloak, of which he was rightly proud. He had a story that the first thing that happened to him on returning to England after the defeat of Napoleon, was to be fined ten shillings for marching on the footpath ! Captain Hill, although he may have sat to Mrs. Gaskell for the portrait of Captain Brown, was more fortunate than that genial soldier ; for he died peacefully in his bed at an advanced age. Mrs. Tollemache goes on to give Mr. Peter Leigh as the original of Mr. Holbrook. Mr. Leigh, who owned land just outside the town, was an eccentric and a weather-prophet. From his observatory he kept a watch on the skies, and therefrom deduced the pre- INTRODUCTION xliii dictions that appeared year after year in his almanac. Any mistakes that might there occur were accounted for by unforeseen planetary disturbance. Mrs. Gaskell may have gone to Mr. Leigh for the linea- ments of Mr. Holbrook, but it is odd that she should have omitted all mention of his talents as a prog- nosticator. Personally we incline to the belief already stated, that in Mr. Holland of Sandle Bridge, Mrs. Gaskell's maternal grandfather, the real Mr. Holbrook is to be sought. The topography of Cranford is also the topo- graphy of Knutsford. Indeed, the town to-day seems not to have greatly changed. There are new houses, new fashions ; Manchester (or Drumble) is many minutes nearer, and signs of " progress " are everywhere evident ; but the town is still much in the hands of the Amazons, and its spirit remains. In the introduction, touched with the gentle, old- -world, smiling charm of which she alone of living writers has the secret, prefixed by Mrs. Ritchie to Mr. Hugh Thomson's illustrated edition of Cran- ford,^^ she mentions a Knutsford lady of quite recent times, who, to soothe her excitement on hearing of a wedding, " was obliged to have a dish of toasted cheese prepared, and to send for a friend to play bezique and share the news and the dainty." That shows the persistence of the Cranford spirit. Another lady, an American — Miss Alice Brown — has described, in a record of English days entitled By Oak and ^horn, the Cranford that may now be seen. She explored the Royal George and found the old Assembly Room where Signor Brunoni avoided Miss Pole and Miss xliv CRANFORD Pole still pursued ; she walked along Darkness Lane, gazed upon the house which is assumed to have had the honour of lodging the Hon. Mrs. Jamieson and Mr. Mulliner ; . contemplated the Vicarage where Miss Deborah's father composed the sermons that Rivingtons published ; and was shown the identical shop in which Miss Matty dispensed tea. At least there is a shop which has that reputation, and were it not for the circumstance that the builders were at work there, Miss Brown would have had the felicity of peeping through the very window near which Miss Matty kept a watch for customers. Finally, Miss Brown was so fortunate, she tells us, as to be present at a May Day festival, which is a notable affair at Knutsford, and to observe, in the procession, the very sedan chair that may have conveyed Miss Matty to and from evening parties. It is clear, therefore, that Knutsford still holds its own, Mrs. Ritchie suggests that Miss Deborah is certainly first cousin to Miss Pinkerton. But one might go farther, and advance the theory that not only was she Miss Pinkerton's relative, but also Miss Pinker- ton's pupil. There is the stamp of The Mall, Chis- wick, " an establishment which has been honoured by the presence of The Great Lexicographer and the patronage of the admirable Mrs. Chapone," on all her words and actions. Save perhaps one : it was not quite like The Mall for Miss Deborah to declare, when Major Gordon put his arm round Miss Jessie Brown's waist, that it was " the most proper place in the world for his arm to be in." That was the triumph of nature over Pinkertonism, and it is INTRODUCTION xlv Miss Deborah's great claim to our affection. With that noble sentiment she becomes human ; without it she would still be remote and awful, although her previous kindness to Miss Brown robbed her of a little of her terror. One would have given much to be within hearing while Miss Deborah, stuffing an apple with cloves, uttered with each clove " a John- sonian sentence." Not least among the Doctor's retinue of ladies, that blue-hosed and formidable company, is Miss Deborah Jenkyns. Miss Pole wins us by a similar impulse. For the greater part of the book Miss Pole is a delight, by reason of her invincible gentility, her resolute inquisitiveness, and her harmless deceptions that deceive no one, such as the story of the attempt on her house, culminating in the " elf-locks " of the principal desperado. She is a delight to the mind, and no more. And then comes Miss Matty's loss, . when Miss Pole, with her mystic note signed with inverted initials and her splendid renunciation of a portion of her infinitesimal income, has our hearts too. But for the warming of hearts, the crowning moment of the book is the appearance of the sturdy, defiant Martha, in Miss Matty's sad little ruined parlour, bearing before her the pudding shaped like a lion couchant. Those who can read the chapter in which this incident occurs, and confess to no moistening of the eyes or tightening of the throat, must be made of sterner stuff than flesh and blood. Here, and in the scene with Jim Hearn which follows," Mrs. Gaskell's art is at its finest : a less perceptive mind would have hesitated to allow Jim any reluctance. xlvi CRANFORD Although Martha's declaration of independence is (to one reader at any rate) the most " dissolving " incident in the book, there is another passage which falls not far behind. This is at the end of the fourth chapter, after Mr. Holbrook's death, when Miss Matty says, " God forbid that I should grieve any young hearts." « But Miss Matty is lovable throughout, steadily and irresistibly. In her Mrs. Gaskell has created one of the sweetest and gentlest figures in English fiction, and also one of the most pathetic, although the sadness of her lonely life is never very poignant, and we do not meet with her until time has smoothed its sharpest edge. It is indeed one of the peculiar characteristics of Cranford, that it presents an autumnal picture. Therein it differs most strikingly from other novels, which, although the autumn comes within their purview too, prefer rather to lavish themselves upon the spring. The emotion in Cranford is emotion remembered in tranquillity. Spring is there, but we do not have it at first hand ; we see it, as it were, reflected in an antique mirror. The youth of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, of Miss Pole and the Hon. Mrs. Jamieson, is a memory. Were it not for Martha in her enjoyment of the " capabiHties " of her kitchen, and Jim Hearn in his laborious love-making, we should be in the company only of elders throughout ; for Miss Mary Smith, the modest, observant, sympathetic historian, though but a girl in the beginning of the book and no more than a young woman at the end, has upon her shoulders what is called an old head. A critic of Cranford expressed the case adroitly when he said that we INTRODUCTION xlvii come to the story as to the fourth volume of a novel. To explain the difference in literary excellence between Cranford and Mrs. Gaskell's other books — Cranford has a distinction to which they never attain — two or three theories may be put forward. For one, it was, in a way that none of the others were, her own book. Most novelists have one story with which favourite incidents in their lives are peculiarly associated : association that makes, if not always for interest, at any rate for vitality and sincerity. With Dickens it was David Copperjield ; with Thackeray it was Pendennis ; with Mrs. Gaskell it was Cranford. "HI live at all," she said to her daughter on one occasion, " it will be through Cranford.'''' And it must be borne in mind that a book which describes scenes among which the author's childhood was passed has always a particular chance of being good. Having, as we have seen, spent at Knuts- ford her early years between the age of one and the time of her removal to school, Mrs. Gaskell knew it through and through. When Elizabeth was ten years of age her uncle, Peter Holland, surgeon, was fifty-four. He lived to be eighty-nine, and died in 1855. Taking her as he often did on his rounds of twenty or thirty miles in the gig to visit his patients, he would doubtless tell her many stories of the ancient halls, families, and churches of the neighbourhood, which she remembered, and which furnished her in after years with many of her stories, long and short. To describe it must have been a continuous joy. xlviii CRANFORD To understand and reproduce the spirit of a place it is necessary to have been brought up in it. Assiduous study of a town or district may, to a certain extent, enable one to acquire its local colour, but the really vivid impressions can be received only in childhood. It has been suggested that Mrs. Gaskell attempted to reap in Miss Austen's fields, and a comparison of the methods of the two novelists has often been made ; but it cannot be carried very far. Except that both deal with a provincial circle, and both work with something like Dutch minuteness, they have little in common. Miss Austen's humour has a sub-acidity entirely lacking in the historian of Cranford's foibles, and Mrs. Gaskell's interest in gentle recollections of the tender passion rather than in its actual workings, is diametrically opposed to the enjoyment of the analyst of Elizabeth Bennet's very present hopes and fears. But it is impossible to believe that Mrs. Gaskell did not take the keenest pleasure in reading the novels of her illustrious predecessor, and, as someone has suggested, certain of the characters of the two writers would very gladly have been on visiting terms. The Hon. Mrs. Jamieson, were she to stray by accident into Rosings, would surely feel perfectly at home there. Mrs. Gaskell may have thought of Jane Austen occasionally, as she planned the Cranford chapters in her head, but the style of the book was her own. There is a letter from Charlotte Bronte to her which helps to confirm the theory that Mrs. Gaskell followed the line of least resistance : " Thank you for your letter," Miss Bronte wrote ; " it was as pleasant as INTRODUCTION xlix a quiet chat, as welcome as spring showers, as reviving as a friend's visit ; in short, it was very like a page of \Cranjord,P Letters being the simplest and most [natural form of literary composition, it follows, if Mrs. Gaskell's letters were like Cranford, that the book was written without painstaking artifice. In her other books Mrs. Gaskell was more deliberately an inventor of stories. Cranfordy one suspects, came trippingly off the pen and taxed the mind but little. The deduction (although this is but conjecture) is I that when most herself Mrs. Gaskell wrote better ithan when most a conscious literary artist. Analogy hunters might point with as much reason ' to Miss Mitford as to Miss Austen, and even Bracebridge . Hall might be taken into account. But these com- i parisons are idle. Cranford stands alone and inde- 1 pendent. There was nothing quite in the manner : before and there has been nothing since, although more than one book of the past few years could be named which probably would not be just as it is had not Cranford come first. Lord Houghton, in esti- mating Mrs. Gaskell's work immediately after her death (in a brief notice in the Pall Mall Gazette), remarked of Cranford, that it was " the purest piece of humoristic description that has been added to British literature since Charles Lamb " ; but this was not very informing criticism. Some of the figures to which Elia gave life might have lived in the Cheshire town, it is true, — Captain Jackson, in particular, — but the association of Lamb with Mrs. Gaskell is confusing. They worked in different regions Lamb sought for oddity in human nature ; 1 CRANFORD Mrs. Gaskell was far more interested in the norm.- There is a writer now living, who, if these parallels must be instituted, approaches the method of Cranford more nearly (without imitation or through conscious influence) than any predecessor of Mrs. Gaskell ever did. Those bibliophiles who practise the pleasant habit of ranging their books in sympathetic groups, would find that Margaret Ogilvy falls into a place by Cranford very naturally and comfortably. At the Gaskell sale in February 1914, a first edition of Cranford bearing the author's signature — a presentation copy to her husband — was sold for ^55, and the first illustrated edition (1864, a presentation copy: J. B.G. from E.G. G.) realised ^31. Other autographed first editions brought the following prices : The Moorland Cottage, jf 20 ; Round the Sofa (3 vols.), ^31 ; Mary Barton (2 vols, bound in pigskin), £45- III A LIST OF MRS. GASKELL'S WRITINGS " Sketches among the Poor, No. i," Black- wood's Magazine. Written in collaboration with Mr. Gaskell. Probably Mrs. Gaskell's first appearance in print .... 1837 An account of Clopton Hall, written in 1838, in William Howitt's Fisits to Remarkable Places . . . . . . 1840 Mary Barton 1848 INTRODUCTION li ^he Moorland Cottage 1850 Ruth 1853 Cranford 1853 North and South 1855 Lizzie Leigh (Contained : " Lizzie Leigh," " The Well of Pen Morfa," " The Heart of John Middleton," " Disappearances," "The Old Nurse's Story," "Traits and Stories of the Huguenots," " Morton Hall," " My French Master," " The Squire's Story," " Company Manners," " Mr. Harrison's Con- fessions," " Libbie Marsh's Three Eras," " The Sexton's Hero," " Christmas Storms and Sunshine," " Hand and Heart," " Bessy's Troubles at Home ") .... 1855 The Life of Charlotte Bronte . ■. . .1857 My Lady Ludlow and Round the Sofa (Con- tained : "Round the Sofa," "My Lady Ludlow," "The Accursed Race," "The Doom of the Griffiths," " Half a Life-time Ago," "The Poor Clare," "The Half Brothers") 1859 Right at Last (Contained : " Right at Last," " The Manchester Marriage," " Lois the Witch," " The Crooked Branch ") . .i860 Sylvia^ s Lovers ...... 1863 J Dark Night's Work 1863 Cousin Phillis (Contained : " Cousin Phillis," " Company Manners," " The Sexton's Hero," " Mr. Harrison's Confessions ") . . . 1865 Hi CRANFORD The Grey Woman (Contained : " The Grey Woman," " Six Weeks at Heppenheim," " Libbie Marsh's Three Eras," " Curious if True," " Disappearances," " Hand and Heart," "Bessy's Troubles at Home," " Christmas Storms and Sunshine ") . Wives and Daughters ..... :865 :866 Mrs. Gaskell wrote also several magazine articles, principally in Household Words and All the Year Rounds which have not been republished ; and one or two prefaces. In later editions of her works the short stories were again rearranged more than once. In the foregoing list, although many editions are omitted, all Mrs. Gaskell's republished writings are mentioned. ^ CRANFORD CHAPTER I" OUR SOCIETY TN the first place, Cranford^^ is in possession of the Amazons ; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears ; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble,^^ distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there ? The surgeon has his round of thirty miles, and sleeps at Cranford ; but every man cannot be a surgeon. For keeping the trim gardens full of choice flowers without a weed to speck them ; for frightening away 3 4 CRANFORD little boy^s who look wistfully at the said flowers through; the jrailings ; for rushing out at the geese ^ * that occasionally venture into the gardens if the gates are left open ; for deciding all questions of literature and politics without troubling themselves with un- necessary reasons or arguments ; for obtaining clear and correct knowledge of everybody's affairs in the parish ; for keeping their neat maid-servants in admir- able order ; for kindness (somewhat dictatorial) to the poor, ^ ^ and real tender good offices to each other whenever they are in distress, the ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. " A man," as one of them observed to me once, " is so in the way in the house ! " Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other's proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other's opinions. Indeed, as each has her own in- dividuahty, not to say eccentricity, pretty strongly developed, nothing is so easy as verbal retaliation ; but, somehow, goodwill reigns among them to a con- siderable degree. The Cranford ladies have only an occasional little quarrel, spirted out in a few peppery words and angry jerks of the head ; just enough to prevent the even tenor of their lives from becoming too flat. Their dress is very independent of fashion ; as they observe, " What does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us ? " And if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent, " What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us ? " The materials of their clothes are, in general, good and plain, and most of them are nearly as scrupulous as Miss Tyler, of cleanly memory ^^; but I will answer for it, the last gigot, the last tight and scanty petticoat in wear in England, was seen in Cranford — and seen without a smile. OUR SOCIETY 5 I can testify to a magnificent family red silk umbrella, under which a gentle little spinster, left alone of many brothers and sisters, used to patter to church on rainy days. Have you any red silk umbrellas in London ? We had a tradition of the first that had ever been seen in Cranford ; and the little boys mobbed it, and called it " a stick in petticoats." It might have been the very red silk one I have described, held by a strong father over a troop of little ones ; the poor little lady — the survivor of all — could scarcely carry it. Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls ; and they were announced to any young people who might be staying in the town, with all the solemnity with which the old Manx laws were read once a year on the Tinwald Mount. " Our friends have sent to inquire how you are after your journey to-night, my dear " (fifteen miles, in a gentleman's carriage) ; " they will give you some rest to-morrow, but the next day, I have no doubt, they will call ; so be at liberty after twelve — from twelve to three are our calling-hours."^' Then, after they had called — " It is the third day ; I daresay your mamma has told you, my dear, never to let more than three days elapse between receiving a call and returning it ; and also, that you are never to stay longer than a quarter of an hour." " But am I to look at my watch ? How am I to find out when a quarter of an hour has passed ? " " You must keep thinking about the time, my dear, and not allow yourself to forget it in conver- sation." As everybody had this rule in their minds, whether they received or paid a call, of course no absorbing 6 CRANFORD subject was ever spoken about. We kept ourselves to short sentences of small talk, and were punctual to our time. I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had some difficulty in making both ends meet ; but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face. We none of us spoke of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic. The Cranfordians had that kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty. When Mrs. Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and ceremonies as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants' hall, second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little charity-school maiden, ^^ whose short ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray upstairs, if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge- cakes. There were one or two consequences arising from this general but unacknowledged poverty, and this very much acknowledged gentility, which were not amiss, and which might be introduced OUR SOCIETY 7 into many circles of society to their great improve- ment. For instance, the inhabitants of Cranford kept early hours, and clattered home in their pattens, under the guidance of a lantern bearer, about nine o'clock at night ; and the whole town was abed and asleep by half-past ten. Moreover, it was considered " vulgar " (a tremendous word in Cranford) to give anything expensive, in the way of eatable or drinkable, at the evening enter- tainments. Wafer bread-and-butter and sponge- biscuits were all that the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson gave ; and she was sister-in-law to the late Earl of Glenmire, although she did practise such " elegant economy." " Elegant economy ! " How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford ! There, economy was always " elegant," and money-spending always " vulgar and ostentatious " ; a sort of sour grapeism which made us very peaceful and satisfied. I never shall forget the dismay felt when a certain Captain Brown^^ came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke about his being poor — not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being pre- viously closed, but in the public street ! in a loud military voice ! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house. The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. He was a half- pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town ; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connec- tion with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor — why, then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and 8 CRANFORD as common as poverty ; yet people never spoke about that loud out in the streets. It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite. We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished. If we walked to or from a party, it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because sedan chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of summer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate means. Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man who could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace. Yet, somehow. Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford, and was called upon, in spite of all resolutions to the contrary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted as authority at a visit which I paid to Cranford about a year after he had settled in the town. My own friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any proposal to visit the Captain and his daughters, only twelve months before ; and now he was even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve. True, it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney, before the fire was lighted ; but still Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man about the house. He had been blind to all the small slights, and omissions of trivial cere- monies, with which he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool ; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith ; and with his manly frankness had OUR SOCIETY 9 overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and hig facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the reverse ; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to make some counsel which he had given in jest to be taken in sober, serious earnest. It was on this subject : An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the short quarter of an hour call with- out being told- of the wonderful milk or wonderful intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney ; therefore great was the sympathy and regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime-pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard and rescued ; but meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair, and came out looking naked, cold, and miserable, in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the animal, though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance. Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay ; and it was said she thought of trying a bath of oil. This remedy, perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose advice she asked ; but the proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Captain Brown's decided " Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my advice is, kill the poor creature at once." lo CRANFORD Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the Captain heartily ; she set to work, and by and by all the town turned out to see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel. 2» I have watched her myself many a time. Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in London ? Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of the town, where he lived with his two daughters. He must have been upwards of sixty at the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a residence. But he had a wiry, well- trained, elastic figure, a stiff military throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made him appear much younger than he was. His eldest daughter looked almost as old as himself, and betrayed the fact that his real was more than his apparent age. Miss Brown must have been forty ; she had a sickly, pained, careworn expression on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had long faded out of sight. Even when young she must have been plain and hard-featured. Miss Jessie Brown was ten younger than her sister, and twenty shades prettier. Her face was round and dimpled. Miss Jenkyns once said, in a passion against Captain Brown (the cause of which I will tell you presently), " that she thought it was time for Miss Jessie to leave oft' her dimples, and not always to be trying to look like a child." It was true there was something childlike in her face ; and there will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live to a hundred. Her eyes were large blue wonder- ing eyes, looking straight at you ; her nose was unformed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy ; she wore her hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened thi? appearance. I do not know whether OUR SOCIETY II she was pretty or not ; but I liked her face, and so did everybody, and I do not think she could help her dimples. She had something of her father's jauntiness of gait and manner ; and any female observer might detect a slight difference in the attire of the two sisters — that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds per annum more expensive than Miss Brown's. Two pounds was a large sum in Captain Brown's annual disbursements. Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I first saw them all together in Cranford Church. The Captain I had met before — on the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some simple alteration in the flue. In church, he held his double eye-glass to his eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his head erect and sang out loud and joyfully. He made the responses louder than the clerk — an old man with a piping, feeble voice, who, I think, felt aggrieved at the Captain's sonorous bass, and quavered higher and higher in consequence. On coming out of church, the brisk Captain paid the most gallant attention to his two daughters. He nodded and smiled to his acquaintances ; but he shook hands with none until he had helped Miss Brown to unfurl her umbrella, had relieved her of her prayer-book, and had waited patiently till she, with trembling nervous hands, had taken up her gown to walk through the wet roads. I wondered what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their parties. We had often rejoiced, in former days, that there was no gentle- man to be attended to, and to find conversation for, at the card-parties. We had congratulated our- selves upon the snugness of the evenings ; and, in 12 CRANFORD our love for gentility, and distaste of mankind, we had almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be " vulgar " ; so that when I found my friend and hostess, Miss Jenkyns, ^ ^ was going to have a party in my honour, and that Captain and the Miss Browns were invited, I wondered much what would be the course of the evening. Card-tables, with green-baize tops, were set out by daylight, just as usual ; it was the third week in November, so the evenings closed in about four. Candles, and clean packs of cards were arranged on each table. The fire was made up ; the neat maid-servant had received her last directions ; and there we stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hands, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came. Parties in Cranford were solemn festivities, making the ladies feel gravely elated as they sat together in their best dresses. As soon as three had arrived, we sat down to "Preference," 22 I being the unlucky fourth. The next four comers were put down immediately to another table ; and presently the tea-trays, which I had seen set out in the storeroom as I passed in the morning, were placed each on the middle of a card- table. The china was delicate eggshell ; the old- fashioned silver glittered with poHshing ; but the eatables were of the slightest description. While the trays were yet on the tables, Captain and the Miss Browns came in ; and I could see that, somehow or other, the Captain was a favourite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at his approach. Miss Brown looked ill, and depressed almost to gloom. While Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed nearly as popular as her father. He immediately OUR SOCIETY 13 and quietly assumed the man's place in the room ; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maid-servant's labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless ladies ; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout. He played for threepenny points with as grave an interest as if they had been pounds ; and yet, in all his attention to strangers, he had an eye on his suffer- ing daughter — for suffering I was sure she was, though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable. Miss Jessie could not play cards : but she talked to the sitters-out, who, before her coming, had been rather inclined to be cross. She sang, too, to an old cracked piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth. Miss Jessie sang " Jock of Hazeldean " a little out of tune ; but we were none of us musical, though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of appearing to be so. It was very good of Miss Jenkyns to do this ; for I had seen that, a little before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown's un- guarded admission {a profos of Shetland wool) that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough — for the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card- table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece ! But Miss Jessie Brown (who had no tact, as we all agreed the next morning) would repeat the information, and assure Miss Pole she could easily get her the identical Shetland wool required, " through my uncle, who has the best 14 CRANFORD assortment of Shetland goods of anyone in Edinbro'." It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths, and the sound of this out of our ears, that Miss Jenkyns proposed music ; so I say again, it was very good of her to beat time to the song. When the trays reappeared with biscuits and wine, punctually at a quarter to nine, there was conversation, comparing of cards, and talking over tricks ; but by and by Captain Brown sported a bit of literature. " Have you seen any numbers of The Pickwick Papers ? " said he. (They were then publishing in parts. 2 3) " Capital thing ! " Now Miss Jenkyns was daughter of a deceased rector of Cranford ; and, on the strength of a number of manuscript sermons, and a pretty good library of divinity, considered herself literary, and looked upon any conversation about books as a challenge to her. So she answered and said, " Yes, she had seen them ; indeed, she might say she had read them." " And what do you think of them ? " exclaimed Captain Brown. " Aren't they famously good ? " So urged. Miss Jenkyns could not but speak. " I must say, I don't think they are by any means equal to Dr. Johnson. Still, perhaps, the author is young. Let him persevere, and who knows what he may become if he will take the great Doctor for his model." This was evidently too much for Captain Brown to take placidly ; and I saw the words on the tip of his tongue before Miss Jenkyns had finished her sentence. " It is quite a different sort of thing, my dear madam," he began. " I am quite aware of that," returned she. " And I make allowances. Captain Brown." " Just allow me to read you a scene out of this OUR SOCIETY 15 month's number," pleaded he. " I had it only this morning, and I don't think the company can have read it yet." " As you please," said she, settling herself with an air of resignation. He read the account of the " swarry " which Sam Weller gave at Bath. -* Some of us laughed heartily. / did not dare, because I was staying in the house. Miss Jenkyns sat in patient gravity. When it was ended, she turned to me, and said, with mild dignity, " Fetch me Rasselas, my dear, out of the bookroom." When I brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown — " Now allow me to read you a scene, and {hen the present company can judge between your favourite, Mr. Boz, and Dr. Johnson." She read one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a high-pitched majestic voice ; and when she had ended, she said, " I imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr. Johnson as a writer of fiction." The Captain screwed his lips up, and drummed on the table, but he did not speak. She thought she would give a finishing blow or two. " I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish in numbers." " How was the Rambler published, ma'am .? " asked Captain Brown, in a low voice, which I think Miss Jenkyns could not have heard. " Dr. Johnson's style is a model for young be- ginners. My father recommended it to me when I began to write letters — I have formed my own style upon it ; I recommend it to your favourite." " I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such pompous writing," said Captain Brown. Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront, in i6 CRANFORD a way of which the Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends considered as her forte. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen written and corrected on the slate, before she " seized the half hour just previous to post-time to assure " her friends of this or of that ; and Dr. Johnson was, as she said, her model in these com- positions. She drew herself up with dignity, and only replied to Captain Brown's last remark by saying, with marked emphasis on every syllable, " I prefer Dr. Johnson to Mr. Boz." It is said — I won't vouch for the fact — that Captain Brown was heard to say, sotto voce^ " D — n Dr. John- son [ " If he did, he was penitent afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns's arm- chair, and endeavouring to beguile her into con- versation on some more pleasing subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the remark I have mentioned about Miss Jessie's dimples. J^n t4eQAf{^h, I J^tar/ie'^ Unlace CHAPTER II THE CAPTAIN TT was impossible to live a month at Cranford and not know the daily habits of each resident ; and long before my visit was ended I knew much concerning the whole Brown trio. There was nothing new to be discovered respecting their poverty ; for they had spoken simply and openly about that from the very first. They made no mystery of the necessity for their being economical. All that remained to be discovered was the Captain's infinite kindness of heart, and the various modes in which, unconsciously to himself, he manifested it. Some little anecdotes were talked about for some time after they occurred. As we did not read much, and as all the ladies were pretty well suited with servants, there was a dearth of subjects for conversation. We therefore discussed the circumstance of the Captain taking a poor old woman's dinner out of her hands one very slippery 2 17 i8 CRANFORD Sunday. He had met her returning from the bake- house 2 5 as he came from church, and noticed her pre- carious footing ; and, with the grave dignity with which he did everything, he reUeved her of her burden, and steered along the street by her side, carrying her baked mutton and potatoes safely home. This was thought very eccentric ; and it was rather expected that he would pay a round of calls, on the Monday morning, to explain and apologise to the Cranford sense of propriety ; but he did no such thing ; and then it was decided that he was ashamed, and was keeping out of sight. In a kindly pity for him, we began to say, " After all, the Sunday morning's occurrence showed great goodness of heart," and it was resolved that he should be comforted on his next appearance amongst us ; but, lo ! he came down upon us, untouched by any sense of shame, speaking loud and bass as ever, his head thrown back, his wig as jaunty and well- curled as usual, and we were obliged to conclude he had forgotten all about Sunday. Miss Pole and Miss Jessie Brown had set up a kind of intimacy on the strength of the Shetland wool and the new knitting stitches ; so it happened that, when I went to visit Miss Pole, I saw more of the Browns than I had done while staying with Miss Jenkyns, who had never got over what she called Captain Brown's disparaging remarks upon Dr. Johnson as a writer of light and agreeable fiction. I found that Miss Brown was seriously ill of some lingering, incurable complaint, the pain occasioned by which gave the uneasy expression to her face that I had taken for unmitigated crossness. Cross, too, she was at times, when the nervous irri- tability occasioned by her disease became past en- THE CAPTAIN 19 durance. Miss Jessie bore with her at these times, even more patiently than she did with the bitter self- upbraidings by which they were invariably succeeded. Miss Brown used to accuse herself, not merely of hasty and irritable temper, but also of being the cause why her father and sister were obliged to pinch, in order to allow her the small luxuries which were necessaries in her condition. She would so fain have made sacrifices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the original generosity of her disposition added acerbity to her temper. All this was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity — with absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and her juveniHty of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to perceive that Captain Brown's dark Brutus wig and padded coat (alas ! too often threadbare) were remnants of the military smartness of his youth, which he now wore un- consciously. He was a man of infinite resources, gained in his barrack experience. As he confessed, no one could black his boots to please him, except himself : but, indeed, he was not above saving the little maid-servant's labours in every way — knowing, most likely, that his daughter's illness made the place a hard one. He endeavoured to make peace with Miss Jenkyns, soon after the memorable dispute I have named, by a present of a wooden fire-shovel (his own making), having heard her say how much the grating of an iron one annoyed her. She received the present with cool gratitude, and thanked him formally. When he was gone, she bade me put it away in the lumber-room ; feeling, probably, that no present from a man who preferred Mr. Boz to Dr. Johnson could be less jarring than an iron fire-shovel. 20 CRANFORD Such was the state oi things when I left Cranford and went to Drumble. I had, however, several correspondents who kept me au fait as to the pro- ceedings of the dear little town. There was Miss Pole, who was becoming as much absorbed in crochet as she had been once in knitting, and the burden of whose letter was something like, " But don't you forget the white worsted at Flint's " of the old song ; for at the end of every sentence of news came a fresh direction as to some crochet commission which I was to execute for her. Miss Matilda Jenkyns (who did not mind being called Miss Matty, ^^ when Miss Jenkyns was not by) wrote nice, kind, ram.bling letters, now and then venturing into an opinion of her own ; but suddenly pulling herself up, and either begging me not to name what she had said, as Deborah thought differently, and she knew ; or else putting in a postscript to the effect that, since writing the above, she had been talking over the subject with Deborah, and was quite convinced that, etc. — (liere probably followed a recantation of every opinion she had given in the letter). Then came Miss Jenkyns — Deborah, as she liked Miss Matty to call her, her father having once said that the Hebrew name ought ^ to be so pronounced. I secretly think she took the Hebrew prophetess for a model in character ; and, indeed, she was not unlike the stern prophetess in some ways, making allowance, of course, for modern customs and difference in dress. Miss Jenkyns wore a cravat, and a little bonnet like a jockey- cap, and altogether had the appearance of a strong- minded woman ; although she would have despised the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed ! she knew they were superior. But to return to her letters. Everything in them was THE CAPTAIN 21 stately and grand like herself. I have been looking them over (dear Miss Jenkyns, how I honoured her !), and I will give an extract, more especially because it relates to our friend Captain Brown : — " The Honourable Mrs. Jamieson has only just quitted me ; and, in the course of conversation, she communicated to me the inteUigence that she had yesterday received a call from her revered husband's quondam friend, Lord Mauleverer. You will not easily conjecture what brought his lordship within the precincts of our little town. It was to see Captain Brown, with whom, it appears, his lordship was acquainted in the ' plumed wars,' and who had the privilege of averting destruction from his lord- ship's head, when some great peril was impending over it, off the misnomered Cape of Good Hope. You know our friend the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson's deficiency in the spirit of innocent curiosity ; and you will therefore not be so much surprised when I tell you she was quite unable to disclose to me the exact nature of the peril in question. I was anxious, I confess, to ascertain in what manner Captain Brown, with his limited establishment, could receive so distinguished a guest ; and I dis- covered that his lordship retired to rest, and, let us hope, to refreshing slumbers, at the Angel Hotel, but shared the Brunonian meals during the two days that he honoured Cranford with his august presence. Mrs. Johjison, our civil butcher's wife, informs me that Miss Jessie purchased a leg of lamb ; but, besides this, I can hear of no preparation what- ever to give a suitable reception to so distinguished a visitor. Perhaps they entertained him with ' the feast of reason and the flow of soul ' ; and to us, who are acquainted with Captain Brown's sad want 22 CRANFORD of relish for * the pure wells of English undefiled,' it may be matter for congratulation that he has had the opportunity of improving his taste by holding converse vv^ith an elegant and refined member of the British aristocracy. But from some mundane failings who is altogether free ? " Miss Pole and Miss Matty wrote to me by the same post. Such a piece of news as Lord Mau- leverer's visit was not to be lost on the Cranford letter-writers : they made the most of it. Miss Matty humbly apologised for writing at the same time as her sister, who was so much more capable than she to describe the honour done to Cranford ; but, in spite of a little bad speUing, Miss Matty's account gave me the best idea of the commotion occasioned by his lordship's visit, after it had occurred ; for, except the people at the Angel, the Browns, Mrs. Jamieson, and a little lad his lordship had sworn at for driving a dirty hoop against the aristocratic legs, I could not hear of anyone with whom his lordship had held conversation. My next visit to Cranford was in the summer. There had been neither births, deaths, nor marriages since I was there last. Everybody lived in the same house, and wore pretty nearly the same well-preserved, old-fashioned clothes. The greatest event was, that the Miss Jenkynses had purchased a new carpet for the drawing-room. Oh the busy work Miss Matty and I had in chasing the sunbeams, ^^ as they fell in an afternoon right down on this carpet through the blindless window ! We spread newspapers over the places, and sat down to our book or our work ; and, lo ! in a quarter of an hour the sun had moved, and was blazing away on a fresh spot ; and down again we went on our knees to alter the position of the THE CAPTAIN 23 newspapers. We were very busy, too, one whole morning, before Miss Jenkyns gave her party, in following her directions, and in cutting out and stitching together pieces of newspaper so as to form little paths to every chair set for the expected visitors, lest their shoes might dirty or defile the purity of the carpet. Do you make paper paths for every guest to walk upon in London ? ^^ Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns were not very cordial to each other. The literary dispute, of which I had seen the beginning, was a " raw," the slightest touch on which made them wince. It was the only difference of opinion they had ever had ; but that difference was enough. Miss Jenkyns could not refrain from talking at Captain Brown ; and, though he did not reply, he drummed with his fingers, which action she felt and resented as very disparaging to Dr. Johnson. He was rather ostentatious in his preference of the writings of Mr. Boz ; would walk through the streets so ab- sorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns ; and though his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact, do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of literature. The poor, brave Captain ! he looked older, and more worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, unless he was asked about his daughter's health. " She suffers a great deal, and she must suffer more ; we do what we can to alleviate her pain ; — God's will be done ! " He took off his hat at these last words. I found, from Miss Matty, that every- thing had been done, in fact. A medical man, of 24 CRANFORD high repute in that country neighbourhood, had been sent for, and every injunction he had given was attended to, regardless of expense. Miss Matty was sure they denied themselves many things in order to make the invalid comfortable ; but they never spoke about it ; and as for Miss Jessie ! — " I really think she's an angel," said poor Miss Matty, quite overcome. " To see her way of bearing with Miss Brown's crossness, and the bright face she puts on after she's been sitting up a whole night and scolded above half of it, is quite beautiful. Yet she looks as neat and as ready to welcome the Captain at breakfast- time as if she had been asleep in the queen's bed all night. My dear ! you never could laugh at her prim little curls or her pink bows again if you saw her as I have done." I could only feel very penitent, and greet Miss Jessie with double respect when I met her next. She looked faded and pinched ; and her lips began to quiver, as if she was very weak, when she spoke of her sister. But she brightened, and sent back the tears that were glittering in her pretty eyes, as she said — " But, to be sure, what a town Cranford is for kindness ! I don't suppose anyone has a better dinner than usual cooked but the best part of all comes in a little covered basin for my sister. The poor people will leave their earliest vegetables at our door for her. They speak short and gruff, as if they were ashamed of it ; but I am sure it often goes to my heart to see their thoughtfulness." The tears now came back and overflowed ; but after a minute or two she began to scold herself, and ended by going away the same cheerful Miss Jessie as ever. " But why does not this Lord' Mauleverer do THE CAPTAIN 25 something for the man who saved his life ? " said I. " Why, you. see, unless Captain Brown has some reason for it, he never speaks about being poor ; and he walked along by his lordship looking as happy and cheerful as a prince ; and as they never called attention to their dinner by apologies, and as Miss Brown was better that day, and all seemed bright, I daresay his lordship never knew how much care there was in the background. He did send game in the winter pretty often, but now he is gone abroad." I had often occasion to notice the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities in Cran- ford ; the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they fell, to make into a pot-pourri for someone who had no garden ; the little bundles of lavender flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to burn in the chamber of some invalid. Things that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all attended to in Cranford. Miss Jenkyns stuck an apple full of cloves, to be heated and smell pleasantly in Miss Brown's room ; and as she put in each clove she uttered a Johnsonian sentence. Indeed, she never could think of the Browns without talking Johnson ; and as they were seldom absent from her thoughts just then, I'heard many a rolling, three-piled sentence. Captain Brown called one day to thank Miss Jenkyns for many little kindnesses, which I did not know until then that she had rendered. He had suddenly become like an old man ; his deep bass voice had a quavering in it, his eyes looked dim, and the lines on his face were deep. He did not — could not — speak cheerfully of his daughter's state, but he talked with manly, pious resignation, and not much. Twice over he said, " What Jessie 26 CRANFORD has been to us, God only knows ! " and after the second time, he got up hastily, shook hands all round without speaking, and left the room. That afternoon we perceived little groups in the street, all listening with faces aghast to some tale or other. Miss Jenkyns wondered what could be the matter for some time before she took the undignified step of sending Jenny out to inquire. Jenny came back with a white face of terror. " Oh, ma'am ! oh. Miss Jenkyns, ma'am ! Captain Brown is killed by them nasty cruel railroads ! " and she burst into tears. She, along with many others, had experienced the poor Captain's kindness. " How ? — where — where ? Good God ! Jenny, don't waste time in crying, but tell us something." Miss Matty rushed out into the street at once, and collared the man who was telling the tale. " Come in — come to my sister at once, — Miss Jenkyns, the rector's daughter. Oh, man, man ! — say it is not true," she cried, as she brought the affrighted carter, sleeking down his hair, into the drawing-room, where he stood with his wet boots on the new carpet, and no one regarded it. " Please, mum, it is true. I seed it myself," and he shuddered at the recollection. " The Captain was a-reading some new book as he was deep in, a-waiting for the down train ; and there was a little lass as wanted to come to its mammy, and gave its sister the slip, and came toddling across the line. And he looked up sudden, at the sound of the train coming, and seed the child, and he darted on the line and cotched it up, and his foot slipped, and the train came over him in no time. Oh Lord, Lord ! Mum, it's quite true — and they've come over to tell his daughters. The child's safe, though, with only a THE CAPTAIN 27 bang on its shoulder, as he threw it to its mammy. Poor Captain would be glad of that, mum, wouldn't he ? God bless him ! " The great rough carter puckered up his manly face, and turned away to hide his tears. I turned to Miss Jenkyns, She looked very ill, as if she were going to faint, and signed to me to open the window. " Matilda, bring me my bonnet. I must go to those girls. God pardon me, if ever I have spoken contemptuously to the Captain ! " Miss Jenkyns arrayed herself to go out, telling Miss Matilda to give the man a glass of wine. While she was away, Miss Matty and I huddled over the fire, talking in a low and awestruck voice. I know we cried quietly all the time. Miss Jenkyns came home in a silent mood, and we durst not ask her many questions. She told us that Miss Jessie had fainted, and that she and Miss Pole had had some difficulty in bringing her round ; but that, as soon as she recovered, she begged one of them to go and sit with her sister. " Mr. Hoggins ^^ says she cannot live many days, and she shall be spared this shock," said Miss Jessie, shivering with feelings to which she dared not give way. " But how can you manage, my dear ? " asked Miss Jenkyns ; " you cannot bear up, she must see your tears." " God will help me — I will not give way — she was asleep when the news came ; she may be asleep yet. She would be so utterly miserable, not merely at my father's death, but to think of what would become of me ; she is so good to me." She looked up earnestly in their faces with her soft true eyes, and Miss Pole told Miss Jenkyns afterwards she could 28 CRANFORD hardly bear it, knowing, as she did, how Miss Brown treated her sister. However, it was settled according to Miss Jessie's wish. Miss Brown was to be told her father had been summoned to take a short journey on railway business. They had managed it in some way — Miss Jenkyns could not exactly say how. Miss Pole was to stop with Miss Jessie. Mrs. Jamieson had sent to inquire. And this was all we heard that night ; and a sorrowful night it was. The next day a full account of the fatal accident was in the county paper ^^ which Miss Jenkyns took in. Her eyes were very weak, she said, and she asked me to read it. When I came to the " gallant gentle- man was deeply engaged in the perusal of a number of Pickwick,^^ which he had just received," Miss Jenkyns shook her head long and solemnly, and then sighed out, " Poor, dear, infatuated man ! " The corpse was to be taken from the station to the parish church, there to be interred. Miss Jessie had set her heart on following it to the grave ; and no dissuasives could alter her resolve. Her restraint upon herself made her almost obstinate ; she resisted all Miss Pole's entreaties and Miss Jenkyns's advice. At last Miss Jenkyns gave up the point ; and after a silence, which I feared portended some deep dis- pleasure against Miss Jessie, Miss Jenkyns said she should accompany the latter to the funeral. " It is not fit for you to go alone. It would be against both propriety and humanity were I to allow it." Miss Jessie seemed as if she did not half like this arrangement ; but her obstinacy, if she had any, had been exhausted in her determination to go to the interment. She longed, poor thing, I have no THE CAPTAIN 29 doubt, to cry alone over the grave of the dear father to whom she had been all in all, and to give way, for one little half-hour, uninterrupted by sympathy and unobserved by friendship. But it was not to be. That afternoon Miss Jenkyns sent out for a yard of black crape, and employed herself busily in trimming the little black silk bonnet I have spoken about. When it was finished she put it on, and looked at us for approbation — admiration she despised. I was full of sorrow, but, by one of those whimsical thoughts which come unbidden into our heads, in times of deepest grief, I no sooner saw the bonnet than I was reminded of a helmet ; and in that hybrid bonnet, half-helmet, half-jockey-cap, did Miss Jenkyns attend Captain Brown's funeral ; and, I believe, supported Miss Jessie with a tender, indulgent firmness which was invaluable, allowing her to weep her passionate fill before they left. Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and I, meanwhile, attended to Miss Brown ; and hard work we found it to relieve her querulous and never-ending complaints. But if we were so weary and dispirited, what must Miss Jessie have been ! Yet she came back almost calm, as if she had gained a new strength. She put off her mourning dress, and came in, looking pale and gentle, thanking us each with a soft long pressure of the hand. She could even smile — a faint, sweet, wintry smile — as if to reassure us of her power to endure ; but her look made our eyes fill suddenly with tears, more than if she had cried outright. It was settled that Miss Pole was to remain with her all the watching livelong night ; and that Miss Matty and I were to return in the morning to relieve them, and give Miss Jessie the opportunity for a few hours of sleep. But when the morning came, Miss 30 CRANFORD Jenkyns appeared at the breakfast-table, equipped in her helmet-bonnet, and ordered Miss Matty to stay at home, as she meant to go and help to nurse. She was evidently in a state of great friendly excite- ment, which she showed by eating her breakfast standing, and scolding the household all round. No nursing — no energetic strong-minded woman could help Miss Brown now. There was that in the room as we entered which was stronger than us all, and made us shrink into solemn awestruck help- lessness. Miss Brown was dying. We hardly knew her voice, it was so devoid of the complaining tone we had always associated with it. Miss Jessie told me afterwards that it, and her face too, were just what they had been formerly, when her mother's death left her the young anxious head of the family, of whom only Miss Jessie survived. She was conscious of her sister's presence, though not, I think, of ours. We stood a little behind the curtain : Miss Jessie knelt with her face near her sister's, in order to catch the last soft awful whispers. " Oh, Jessie ! Jessie ! How selfish I have been ! God forgive me for letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did ! I have so loved you — and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me ! " " Hush, love ! hush ! " said Miss Jessie, sobbing. " And my father ! my dear, dear father ! I will not complain now, if God will give me strength to be patient. But oh, Jessie ! tell my father how I longed and yearned to see him at last, and to ask his forgiveness. He can never know now how I loved him — oh ! if I might but tell him, before I die ! What a life of sorrow his has been, and I have done so little to cheer him ! " A light came into Miss Jessie's face. " Would THE CAPTAIN 31 it comfort you, dearest, to think that he does know ? — would it comfort you, love, to know that his cares, his sorrows " — Her voice quivered, but she steadied it into calmness, — " Mary ! he has gone before you to the place where the weary are at rest. He knows now how you loved him." A strange look, which was not distress, came over Miss Brown's face. She did not speak for some time, but then we saw her lips form the words, rather than heard the sound — " Father, mother, Harry, Archy ; " — then, as if it were a new idea throwing a filmy shadow over her darkened mind — " But you will be alone, Jessie ! " Miss Jessie had been feeling this all during the silence, I think ; for the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain, at these words, and she could not answer at first. Then she put her hands together tight, and lifted them up, and said — but not to us — " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." ^^ In a few moments more Miss Brown lay calm and still — never to sorrow or murmur more. After this second funeral. Miss Jenkyns insisted that Miss Jessie should come to stay with her rather than go back to the desolate house, which, in fact, we learned from Miss Jessie, must now be given up, as she had not wherewithal to maintain it. She had something above twenty pounds a year, besides the interest of the money for which the furniture would sell ; but she could not live upon that : and so we talked over her qualifications for earning money. " I can sew neatly," said she, " and I like nursing. I think, too, I could manage a house, if anyone would try me as housekeeper ; or I would go into a shop as sales- woman, if they would have patience with me at first." Miss Jenkyns declared, in an angry voice, that 32 CRANFORD she should do no such thing ; and talked to herself about " some people having no idea of their rank as a captain's daughter," nearly an hour afterwards, when she broiight Miss Jessie up a basin of delicately- made arrowroot, and stood over her like a dragoon until the last spoonful was finished : then she dis- appeared. Miss Jessie began to tell me some more of the plans which had suggested themselves to her, and insensibly fell into talking of the days that were past and gone, and interested me so much I neither knew nor heeded how time passed. We were both startled when Miss Jenkyns reappeared, and caught us crying. I was afraid lest she would be displeased, as she often said that crying hindered digestion, and I knew she wanted Miss Jessie to get strong ; but, instead, she looked queer and excited, and fidgeted round us without saying anything. At last she spoke. " I have been so much startled — no, I've not been at all startled — don't mind me, my dear Miss Jessie — I've been very much surprised — in fact, I've had a caller, whom you knew once, my dear Miss Jessie " Miss Jessie went very white, then flushed scarlet, and looked eagerly at Miss Jenkyns. " A gentleman, my dear, who wants to know if you would see him." " Is it ? — it is not " stammered out Miss Jessie — and got no farther. " This is his card," said Miss Jenkyns, giving it to Miss Jessie ; and while her head was bent over it. Miss Jenkyns went through a series of winks and odd faces to me, and formed her lips into a long sentence, of which, of course, I could not understand a word. " May he come up ? " asked Miss Jenkyns, at last. THE CAPTAIN 33 " Oh yes ! certainly ! " said Miss Jessie, as much as to say, this is your house, you may show any visitor where you like. She took up some knitting of Miss Matty's and began to be very busy, though I could see how she trembled all over. Miss Jenkyns rang the bell, and told the servant who answered it to show Major Gordon upstairs ; and, presently, in walked a tall, fine, frank-looking man of forty or upwards. He shook hands with Miss Jessie ; but he could not see her eyes, she kept them so fixed on the ground. Miss Jenkyns asked me if I would come and help her to tie up the preserves in the store-room ; and, though Miss Jessie plucked at my gown, and even looked up at me with begging eye, I durst not refuse to go where Miss Jenkyns asked. Instead of tying up preserves in the store- room, however, we went to talk in the dining-room ; and there Miss Jenkyns told me what Major Gordon had told her ; — how he had served in the same regiment with Captain Brown, and had become acquainted with Miss Jessie, then a sweet-looking, blooming girl of eighteen ; how the acquaintance had grown into love on his part, though it had been some years before he had spoken ; how, on becoming possessed, through the will of an uncle, of a good estate in Scotland, he had offered and been refused, though with so much agitation and evident distress that he was sure she was not indifferent to him ; and how he had discovered that the obstacle was the fell disease which was, even then, too surely threaten- ing her sister. She had mentioned that the surgedns foretold intense suffering ; and there was no one but herself to nurse her poor Mary, or cheer and comfort her father during the time of illness. They had had long discussions ; and on her refusal to 34 CRANFORD pledge herself to him as his wife when all should be over, he had grown angry, and broken off entirely, and gone abroad, believing that she was a cold- hearted person whom he would do well to forget. He had been travelling in the East, and was on his return home, when, at Rome, he saw the account of Captain Brown's death in Galignani.^^ Just then Miss Matty, who had been out all the morning, and had only lately returned to the house, burst in with a face of dismay and outraged propriety. " Oh, goodness me ! " she said. " Deborah, there's a gentleman sitting in the drawing-room with his arm round Miss Jessie's waist ! " Miss Matty's eyes looked large with terror. Miss Jenkyns snubbed her down in an instant. " The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in. Go away, Matilda, and mind your own business." This from her sister, who had hitherto been a model of feminine decorum, was a blow for poor Miss Matty, and with a double shock she left the room. The last time I ever saw poor Miss Jenkyns was many years after this. Mrs. Gordon had kept up a warm and affectionate intercourse with all at Cranford. Miss Jenkyns, Miss Matty, and Miss Pole had all been to visit her, and returned with wonderful accounts of her house, her husband, her dress, and her looks. For, with happiness, some- thing of her early bloom returned; she had been a year or two younger than we had taken her for. Her eyes were always lovely, and, as Mrs. Gordon, her dimples were not out of place. At the time to which I have referred, when I last saw Miss Jenkyns, that lady was old and feeble, and had lost something of her strong mind. Little Flora Gordon was staying THE CAPTAIN 35 with the Misses Jenkyns, and when I came in she was reading aloud to Miss Jenkyns, who lay feeble and changed on the sofa. Flora put down the Rambler when I came in. " Ah ! " said Miss Jenkyns, " you find me changed, my dear. I can't see as I used to do. If Flora were not here to read to me, I hardly know how I should get through the day. Did you ever read the Rambler F It's a wonderful book — wonderful ! and the most improving reading for Flora " (which I daresay it would have been, if she could have read half the words without spelling, and could have understood the meaning of a third), " better than that strange old book, with the queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading — that book by Mr. Boz, you know — Old Poz ; when I was a girl — but that's a long time ago — I acted Lucy in Old Poz" ^ * She babbled on long enough for Flora to get a good long spell at the Christ- mas Carol, which Miss Matty had left on the table. ^_^m tfia- Garden- CHAPTER IIP 5 A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO T THOUGHT that probably my connection with Cranford would cease after Miss Jenkyns's death ; at least, that it would have to be kept up by correspondence, which bears much the same delation to personal intercourse that the books of dried plants I sometimes see (" Hortus Siccus," I think they call the thing) do to the living and fresh flowers in the lanes and meadows. I was pleasantly sur- prised, therefore, by receiving a letter from Miss Pole (who had always come in for a supplementary week after my annual visit to Miss Jenkyns) pro- posing that I should go and stay with her ; and then, in a couple of days after my acceptance, came a note from Miss Matty, in which, in a rather circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how much pleasure I should confer if I could spend a week or 36 A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 37 two with her, either before or after I had been at Miss Pole's ; " for," she said, " since my dear sister's death I am well aware I have no attractions to offer ; it is only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company." Of course I promised to come to dear Miss Matty as soon as I had ended my visit to Miss Pole ; and the day after my arrival at Cranford I went to see her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss Jenkyns, and rather dreading the changed aspect of things. Miss Matty began to cry as soon as she saw me. She was evidently nervous from having anticipated my call. I comforted her as well as I could ; and I found the best consolation I could give was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of the deceased. Miss Matty slowly shook her head over each virtue as it was named and attributed to her sister ; and at last she could not restrain the tears which had long been silently flowing, but hid her face behind her handkerchief, and sobbed aloud. "Dear Miss Matty!" said I, taking her hand — for indeed I did not know in what way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the world. She put down her handkerchief, and said — " My dear, I'd rather you did not call me Matty. She did not like it ; but I did many a thing she did not like, I'm afraid — and now she's gone ! If you please, my love, will you call me Matilda ? " I promised faithfully, and began to practise the new name with Miss Pole that very day ; and, by degrees, Miss Matilda's feeling on the subject was known through Cranford, and we all tried to drop the more familiar name, but with so little success that by and by we gave up the attempt. 38 CRANFORD My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet. Miss Jenkyns had so long taken the lead in Cranford, that, now she was gone, they hardly knew how to give a party. The Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, to whom Miss Jenkyns herself had always yielded the post of honour, was fat and inert, and very much at the mercy of her oM servants. If they chose that she should give a party, they reminded her of the necessity for so doing : if not, she let it alone. There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father's shirts. I always took a quantity of plain sewing to Cranford ; for, as we did not read much, or walk much, I found it a capital time to get through my work. One of Miss Pole's stories related to a shadow of a love affair that was dimlyperceived or suspected long years before. Presently, the time arrived when I was to remove to Miss Matilda's house. I found her timid and anxious about the arrangements for my comfort. Many a time, while I was unpacking, did she come backwards and forwards to stir the fire, which burned all the worse for being so frequently poked. " Have you drawers enough, dear ? " asked she. " I don't know exactly how my sister used to arrange them. She had capital methods. I am sure she would have trained a servant in a week to make a better fire than this, and Fanny has been with me four months." This subject of servants was a standing grievance, and I could not wonder much at it ; for if gentlemen were scarce, and almost unheard of in the " genteel society " of Cranford, they or their counterparts — handsome young men — abounded in the lower classes. The pretty neat servant-maids had their choice of desirable " followers " ; and their mistresses, with- A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 39 out having the sort of mysterious dread of men and matrimony that Miss Matilda had, might well feel a little anxious lest the heads of their comely maids should be turned by the joiner, or the butcher, or the gardener, who were obliged, by their callings, to come to the house, and who, as ill-luck would have it, were generally handsome and unmarried. Fanny's lovers, if she had any — and Miss Matilda suspected her of so many flirtations, that, if she had not been very pretty, I should have doubted her having one — were a constant anxiety to her mistress. She was forbidden, by the articles of her engagement, to have " followers " ; and though she had answered, innocently enough, doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, " Please, ma'am, I never had more than one at a time," Miss Matty prohibited that one. But a vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured me that it was all fancy, or else I should have said myself that I had seen a man's coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand into the store-room at night ; and another evening, when, our watches having stopped, I went to look at the clock, there was a very odd appearance, singularly like a young man squeezed up between the clock and the back of the open kitchen door ; and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle very hastily, so as to throw the shadow on the clock face, while she very positively told me the time half an hour too early, as we found out afterwards by the church clock. But I did not add to Miss Matty's anxieties by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me, the next day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about it, she really was almost afraid to stay ; " for you know, miss," she added, " I don't see a creature 40 CRANFORD from six o'clock tea, till missus rings the bell for prayers at ten." However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave ; and Miss Matilda begged me to stay and " settle her " with the new maid ; to which I consented, after I had heard from my father that he did not want me at home. The new servant was a rough, honest-looking country girl, who had only lived in a farm place before ; but I liked her looks when she came to be hired ; and I promised Miss Matilda to put her in the ways of the house. The said ways were religiously such as Miss Matilda thought her sister would approve. Many a domestic rule and regulation had been a subject of plaintive whispered murmur to me during Miss Jenkyns's life ; but now that she was gone, I do not think that even I, who was a favourite,' durst have suggested an alteration. To give an instance : we constantly adhered to the forms which were observed, at meal- times, in " my father the rector's house." Accordingly, we had always wine and dessert ; but the decanters were only filled when there was a party, and what remained was seldom touched, though we had two wineglasses apiece every day after dinner, until the next festive occasion arrived, when the state of the remainder wine was examined into in a family council The dregs were often given to the poor : but occasionally, when a good deal had been left at the last party (five months ago, it might be), it was added to some of a fresh bottle, brought up from the cellar. I fancy poor Captain Brown did not much like wine, for I noticed he never finished his first glass, and most military men take several. Then, as to our dessert. Miss Jenkyns used to gather currants and goose- berries for it herself, which I sometimes thought A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 41 would have tasted better fresh from the trees ; but then, as Miss Jenkyns observed, there would have been nothing for dessert in summer-time. As it was, we felt very genteel with our two glasses apiece, and a dish of gooseberries at the top, of currants and biscuits at the sides, and two decanters at the bottom. When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit ; for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where ; sucking (only I think she used some more recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges ; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies ; and so, after dessert, in orange season. Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges. I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Matty to stay, and had succeeded in her sister's lifetime. I held up a screen, and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very offensive ; but now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the warm dining-parlour, and enjoy her orange as she liked best. And so it was in everything. Miss Jenkyns's rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal. In all things else Miss Matilda was meek and undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose ; and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness in order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the 42 CRANFORD power of her clever servant. I determined that I would not leave her till I had seen what sort of a person Martha was ; and if I found her trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress with every little decision. Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault ; otherwise she was a brisk, well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with us a week before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the Army List, returned to England, bringing with him an invalid wife who had never been introduced to her English relations. Major Jenkyns wrote to propose that he and his wife should spend a night at Cran- ford, on his way to Scotland — at the inn, if it did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house ; in which case they should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day. Of course it must suit her, as she said ; for all Cranford knew that she had her sister's bedroom at liberty ; but I am sure she wished the Major had stopped in India and forgotten his cousins out and out. " Oh ! how must I manage ? " asked she help- lessly. "If Deborah had been alive, she would have known what to do with a gentleman-visitor. Must I put razors in his dressing-room ? Dear ! dear ! and I've got none. Deborah would have had them. And slippers, and coat-brushes ? " I suggested that probably he would bring all these things with him. " And, after dinner, how am I to know when to get up and leave him to his wine ? Deborah would have done it so well ; she would have been quite in her element. Will he want A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 43 coffee, do you think ? " I undertook the manage- ment of the coffee, and told her I would instruct Martha in the art of waiting — in which it must be owned she was terribly deficient — and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs. Jenkyns would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself in a country town. But she was sadly fluttered. I made her empty her decanters and bring up two fresh bottles of wine. I wished I could have pre- vented her from being present at my instructions to Martha, for she frequently cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl's mind, as she stood open-mouthed, listening to us both. " Hand the vegetables round," said I (foolishly, I see now — for it was aiming at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity) ; and then, seeing her look bewildered, I added, " take the vege- tables round to people, and let them help themselves." " And mind you go first to the ladies," put in Miss Matilda. " Always go to the ladies before gentlemen when you are waiting." " I'll do it as you tell me, ma'am," said Martha ; "but I like lads best." We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha's, yet I don't think she meant any harm ; and, on the whole, she attended very well to our directions, except that she " nudged " the Major when he did not help himself as soon as she expected to the potatoes, while she was handing them round. The Major and his wife were quiet, unpretending people enough when they did come ; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather dis- mayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant for the Major, and a steady 44 CRANFORD elderly maid for his wife : but they slept at the inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to their master's and mistress's comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended her staring at the East Indian's white turban and brown complexion, and I saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as he waited at dinner. Indeed, she asked me, when they were gone, if he did not remind me of Blue Beard ? On the whole, the visit was most satisfactory, and is a subject of conversation even now with Miss Matilda ; at the time, it greatly excited Cranford, and even stirred up the apathetic and Honourable Mrs. Jamieson to some expression of interest, when I went to call and thank her for the kind answers she had vouchsafed to Miss Matilda's inquiries as to the arrangement of a gentleman's dressing-room — answers which I must confess she had given in the wearied manner of the Scandinavian prophetess — " Leave me, leave me to repose." ^^ And now I come to the love affair. It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had offered to Miss Matty long ago. Now this cousin lived four or five miles from Cranford, on his own estate ; but his property was not large enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman ; or rather, with something of the " pride which apes humility," he had refused to push himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the squires. He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq. ; he even sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress 2' at Cranford that his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman. He rejected all domestic innovations ; he would have the house door stand open in summer and shut in winter, without knocker A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 45 or bell to summon a servant. The closed fist or the knob of the stick did this office for him if he found the door locked. He despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in conversation ; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added, that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than anyone she had ever heard, except the late rector. " And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him ? " asked I. " Oh, I don't know. She was willing enough, I think ; but you know Cousin Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the rector and Miss Jenkyns." " Well ! but they were not to marry him," said I impatiently. " No ; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank. You know she was the rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley^* : Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that." " Poor Miss Matty ! " said I. " Nay, now, I don't know anything more than that he offered and was refused. Miss Matty might not like him — and Miss Jenkyns might never have said a word — it is only a guess of mine." " Has she never seen him since ? " I inquired. "No, I think not. You see Woodley,^^ Cousin Thomas's house, lies half-way between Cranford and Misselton ; and I know he made Misselton his market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty ; and I don't think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since — once, when I was walking 46 CRANFORD with Miss Matty, in High Street, and suddenly she darted from me, and went up Shire Lane.*° A few minutes after I was startled by meeting Cousii Thomas." " How old is he ? " I asked, after a pause of casth building. " He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,' said Miss Pole, blowing up my castle, as if by gun- powder, into small fragments. Very soon after — at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda — I had the opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook ; seeing, too, his first encounter with his former love, after thirty or forty years' separation. I was helping to decide whether any of the new assortment of coloured silks which they had just received at the shop would do to match a grey and black mousseline-de-laine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old man came into the shop for some woollen gloves. I had never seen the person (who was rather striking) before, and I watched him rather attentively, while Miss Matty listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches and gaiters, and drummed with his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the shop- boy's question, " What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day, sir .? " I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down ; and instantly I guessed who it was. She had made some inquiry which had to be carried round to the other shopman. " Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarsanet two-and- twopence the yard ; " and Mr. Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides. " Matty — Miss Matilda — Miss Jenkyns ! God bless my soul ! I should not have known you. How A LOVE AFFAIR OF LONG AGO 47 are you ? how are you ? " He kept shaking her hand in a way which proved the warmth of his friendship ; but he repeated so often, as if to himself, " I should not have known you ! " that any sentimental romance which I might be inclined to build was quite done away with by his manner. However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop ; and then, waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with " Another time, sir ! another time ! " he walked home with us. I am happy to say my client. Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holbrook was evidently full with honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again ; he touched on the changes that had taken place ; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns as " Your poor sister ! Well, well ! we have all our faults ; " and bade us good-bye with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matty again. She went straight to her room, and never came back till our early tea-time, when I thought she looked as if she had been crying. S^T^inc. cess CHAPTER IV A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR A FEW days after, a note came from Mr. Hol- brook, asking us — impartially asking both of us — in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his house — a long June day — for it was June now. He named that he had also invited his cousin, Miss Pole ; so that we might join in a fly, which could be put up at his house. I expected Miss Matty to jump at this invitation ; but no ! Miss Pole and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was improper ; and was even half annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover. Then came a more serious diffi- culty. She did not think Deborah would have liked her to go. This took us half a day's good hard 48 49 A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 51 talking to get over ; but, at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote and despatched an acceptance in her name — fixing day and hour, that all might be decided and done with. The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her ; and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on Thursday. She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had evidently never been there before ; and although she little dreamt I knew anything of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imagina- tions had clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved, jolting lanes. Miss Matilda sat bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows as we drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and pastoral. Woodley stood among fields ; and there was an old-fashioned garden where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the feathery asparagus formed a pretty background to the pinks and gilly-flowers ; there was no drive up to the door. We got out at a little gate, and walked up a straight box-edged path. " My cousin might make a drive, I think," said Miss Pole, who was afraid of earache, and had only her cap on. " I think it is very pretty," said Miss Matty, with a soft plaintiveness in her voice, and almost in a whisper, for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence 52 CRANFORD of hospitality. He looked more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness was only external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us welcome ; and, while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a bedroom, I begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old gentleman, who took me all round the place, and showed me his six-and- twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went along, he surprised me occa- sionally by repeating apt and beautiful quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakespeare and George Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were thinking aloud, and their true and beautiful words were the best expression he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure he called Byron " my Lord Byrron," and pro- nounced the name of Goethe strictly in accordance with the English sound of the letters — " As Goethe says, * Ye ever-verdant palaces,' " etc. Altogether, I never met with a man, before or since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of season and beauty. When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the kitchen — for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fireplace, and only a small Turkey carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might have been easily made into a handsome dark oak dining-parlour by removing the oven and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were evidently never used, the real cooking-place being at some distance. The room in which we were expected to sit was in a stifily- furnished, A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 53 ugly apartment ; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the counting-house, when he paid his labourers their weekly wages at a great desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room — looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows — was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in this respect. They were of all kinds — poetry and wild weird tales prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes, not because such and such were classical or established favourites. " Ah ! " he said, " we farmers ought not to have much time for reading ; yet somehow one can't help it." " What a pretty room ! " said Miss Matty, sotto voce. " What a pleasant place ! " said I, aloud, almost simultaneously. " Nay ! if you like it," replied he ; " but can you sit on these great black leather three-cornered chairs ? I like it better than the best parlour ; but I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place." It was the smarter place, but, like most smart things, not at all pretty, or pleasant, or home-like ; so, while we were at dinner, the servant-girl dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sat there all the rest of the day. We had pudding before meat ; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began — " I don't know whether you like new-fangled ways." 54 CRANFORD " Oh, not at all ! " said Miss Matty. " No more do I," said he. " My housekeeper will have these in her new fashion ; or else I tell her that, when I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father's rule, ' No broth, no ball ; no ball, no beef ; ' and always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef ; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better ; and the beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy." When the ducks and green peas came, we looked at each other in dismay ; we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. ' It is true the steel was as bright as silver ; but what were we to do ? Miss Matty picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Amine ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. ^^ Miss Pole sighed over her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted, for they zvould drop between the prongs. I looked at my host : the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shovelled up by his large, round- ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived ! My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing ; and if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would probably have seen that the good peas went away almost untouched. After dinner, a clay pipe was brought in, and a spittoon ; and, asking us to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked tobacco smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matty, and A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 55 requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth ; but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honour to Miss Matty, who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected ; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe, and then we withdrew. " It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor," said Miss Matty softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. " I only hope it is not improper ; so many pleasant things are ! " " What a number of books he has ! " said Miss Pole, looking round the room. " And how dusty they are ! " " I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson's rooms," said Miss Matty. " What a superior man your cousin must be ! " " Yes ! " said Miss Pole, " he's a great reader ; but I am afraid he has got into very uncouth habits with living alone ! " " Oh ! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric ; very clever people always are ! " replied Miss Matty. When Mr. Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields ; but the two elder ladies were afraid of damp and dirt, and had only very unbecoming calashes [see illustration, p. 108] to put on over their caps ; so they declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take to see after his men. He strode along, either wholly for- getting my existence, or soothed into silence by his pipe — and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked before me, with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him ; and as some tree or cloud or 56 CRANFORD glimpse of distant upland pastures struck him, he quoted poetry to himself, saying it out loud in a grand, sonorous voice, with just the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We came upon an old cedar-tree, which stood at one end of the house — "The cedar spreads his dark-green layers of shade." '^^ " Capital term — ' layers ! ' Wonderful man ! " I did not know whether he was speaking to me or not ; but I put in an assenting " wonderful," although I knew nothing about it, just because I was tired of being forgotten, and of being consequently silent. He turned sharp round. " Ay ! you may say * wonderful.' Why, when I saw the review of his poems in Blackwood,^^ I set off within an hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the. way) and ordered them. Now, what colour are ash-buds in March ? " Is the man going mad ? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote. " What colour are they, I say ? " repeated he vehemently. " I am sure I don't know, sir," said I, with the meekness of ignorance. " I knew you didn't. No more did I — an old fool that I am ! — till this young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March. And I've lived all my life in the country ; more shame for me not to know. Black : they are jet-black, madam." ** And he went off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of. When we came back, nothing would serve him but he must read us the poems he had been speaking of ; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 57 reading, of which she had boasted ; but she after- wards said it was because she had got to a difficult part of her crochet, and wanted to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss Matty ; although she did fall sound asleep within live minutes after he had begun a long poem, called " Locksley Hall," and had a comfortable nap, unobserved, till he ended ; when the cessation of his voice wakened her up, and she said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was counting — " What a pretty book ! " " Pretty, madam ! it's beautiful ! Pretty, indeed ! " " Oh yes ! I meant beautiful ! " said she, fluttered at his disapproval of her word. " It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr. Johnson's my sister used to read — I forget the name of it ; what was it, my dear ? " turning to me. " Which do you mean, ma'am ? What was it about ? " " I don't remember what it was about, and I've quite forgotten what the name of it was ; but it was written by Dr. Johnson, and was very beautiful, and very like what Mr. Holbrook has just been reading." ^^ " I don't remember it," said he reflectively. " But I don't know Dr. Johnson's poems well. I must read them." As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr. Holbrook say he should caU on the ladies soon, and inquire how they got home ; and this evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Matty at the time he said it ; but, after we had lost sight of the old house among the trees, her sentiments towards the master of it were gradually absorbed into a distressing 58 CRANFORD wonder as to whether Martha had broken her word, and seized on the opportunity of her mistress's absence to have a " follower." Martha looked good, and steady, and composed enough, as she came to help us out ; she was always careful of Miss Matty, and to-night she made use of this unlucky speech — " Eh ! dear ma'am, to think of your going out in an evening in such a thin shawl ! It's no better than muslin. At your age, ma'am, you should be careful." " My age ! " said Miss Matty, almost speaking crossly, for her, for she was usually gentle — " My age ! Why, how old do you think I am, that you talk about my age ? " " Well, ma'am, I should say you were not far short of sixty : but folks' looks is often against them — and I'm sure I meant no harm." " Martha, I'm not yet fifty-two ! " said Miss Matty, with grave emphasis ; for probably the remembrance of her youth had come very vividly before her this day, and she was annoyed at finding that golden time so far away in the past. But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance with Mr. Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in her early love, that she had shut it up close in her heart ; and it was only by a sort of watching, which I could hardly avoid since Miss Pole's confidence, that I saw how faithful her poor heart had been in its sorrow and its silence. She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day, and sat near the window, in spite of her rheumatism, in order to see, without being seen, down into the street. He came. He put his open palms upon his knees, A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 59 which were far apart, as he sat with his head bent down, whistling, after we had replied to his inquiries about our safe return. Suddenly he jumped up — " Well, madam ! have you any commands for Paris ? I am going there in a week or two." " To Paris ! " we both exclaimed. " Yes, madam ! I've never been there, and always had a wish to go ; and I think if I don't go soon, I mayn't go at all ; so as soon as the hay is got in I shall go, before harvest time." Wc were so much astonished that we had no commissions. Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his favourite exclamation — " God bless my soul, madam ! but I nearly forgot half my errand. Here are the poems for you you admired so much the other evening at my house." He tugged away at a parcel in his coat-pocket. " Good- bye, miss," said he ; " good-bye, Matty ! take care of yourself." And he was gone. But he had given her a book, and he had called her Matty, just as he used to do thirty years ago. " I wish he would not go to Paris," said Miss Matilda anxiously. " I don't believe frogs will agree with him ; he used to have to be very careful what he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young man." Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to Martha to look after her mistress, and to let me know if she thought that Miss Matilda was not so well ; , in which case I would volunteer a visit to my old friend, without noticing Martha's intelligence to her. Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and then ; and, about November, I had a 6o CRANFORD note to say her mistress was " very low and sadly off her food " ; and the account rriade me so uneasy, that, although Martha did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my things and went. I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced by my impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day's notice. Miss Matilda looked miserably ill ; and I prepared to comfort and cosset her. I went down to have a private talk with Martha. " How long has your mistress been so poorly ? " I asked, as I stood by the kitchen fire. " Well ! I think it's better than a fortnight ; it is, I know ; it was one Tuesday, after Miss Pole had been, that she went into this moping way. I thought she was tired, and it would go off with a night's rest ; but no ! she has gone on and on ever since, till I thought it my duty to write to you, ma'am." '* You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has so faithful a servant about her. And I hope you find your place comfortable ? " " Well, ma'am, missus is very kind, and there's plenty to eat and drink, and no more work but what I can do easily, — but " Martha hesitated. " But what, Martha ? " " Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers ; there's such lots of young fellows in the town ; and many a one has as much as offered to keep company with me ; and I may never be in such a likely place again, and it's like wasting an opportunity. Many a girl as I know would have 'em unbeknownst to missus ; but I've given my word, and I'll stick to it ; or else this is just the house for missus never to be the wiser if A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 6i they did come : and it's such a capable kitchen — there's such good dark corners in it — I'd be bound hide anyone. I counted up last Sunday night — r I'll not deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn's face, and he's a steady young man, fit for any girl ; only I had given missus my word." Martha was all but crying again ; and I had little comfort to give her, for I knew, from old ex- perience, of the horror with which both the Miss Jenkynses looked upon " followers " ; and in Miss Matty's present nervous state this dread was not likely to be lessened. I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by surprise, for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days. " And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promised to let her know how Thomas Holbrook went on ; and, I'm sorry to say, his housekeeper has sent me word to day that he hasn't long to live. Poor Thomas ! that journey to Paris was quite too much for him. His housekeeper says he has hardly ever been round his fields since, but just sits with his hands on his knees in the counting-house, not reading or anything, but only saying what a wonderful city Paris was ! Paris has much to answer for if it's killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived." " Does Miss Matilda know of his illness ? " asked I — a new light as to the cause of her indisposition dawning upon me. " Dear ! to be sure, yes ! Has she not told you ? I let her know a fortnight ago, or more, when first I heard of it. How odd she shouldn't have told you ! " Not at all, I thought ; but I did not say anything. I felt almost guilty of having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not going to speak of its 62 CRANFORD secrets — hidden, Miss Matty believed, from all the world. I ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda's little drawing-room, and then left them alone. But I was not surprised when Martha came to my bedroom door, to ask me to go down to dinner alone, for that missus had one of her bad headaches. She came into the drawing-room at tea-time, but it was evidently an effort to her ; and, as if to make up for some reproachful feeling against her late sister. Miss Tenkyns, which had been troubling her all the after- noon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth ; how she used to settle what gowns they were to wear at all the parties (faint, ghostly ideas of grim parties, far away in the distance, when Miss Matty and Miss Pole were young !) ; and how Deborah and her mother had started the benefit society for the poor, *^ and taught girls cooking and plain sewing ; and how Deborah had once danced with a lord ; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley's, and try to remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall, where they kept thirty servants ; and how she had nursed Miss Matty through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before, but which I now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr. Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old times through the long November evening. The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead. Miss Matty heard the news in silence ; in fact, from the account of the previous day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that he was gone, and saying — A VISIT TO AN OLD BACHELOR 63 '' To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well ! And he might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked Paris, v.here they are always having revolutions." She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matty could not speak, she was trembling so nervously ; so I said what I really felt : and after a call of some duration — all the time of which I have no doubt Miss Pole thought Miss Matty received the news very calmly — our visitor took her leave. Miss Matty made a strong effort to conceal her feelings — a concealment she practised even with me, for she has never alluded to Mr. Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her Bible on the little table by her bedside. She did not think I heard her when she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson's, or that I noticed the reply — " But she wears widows' caps, ma'am ! " " Oh ! I only meant something in that style ; not widows', of course, but rather like Mrs. Jamieson's." This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matty. The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook's death. Miss Matilda was very silent and thoughtful ; after prayers she called Martha back, and then she stood, uncertain what to say. " Martha ! " she said, at last, " you are young " — ■ and then she made so long a pause, that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped a curtsey, and said — " Yes, please, ma'am ; two-and-twenty last third of October, please, ma'am." 64 CRANFORD " And perhaps, Martha, you may sometime meet : with a young man you like, and who Ukes you. I did say you were not to have followers ; but if you meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he is respectable, I have no objection to his coming to see you once a week. God forbid ! " said she, in a low voice, " that I should grieve any young hearts." She spoke as if she were providing for some distant con- tingency, and was rather startled when Martha made her ready eager answer. " Please, ma'am, there's Jem Hearn, and he's a joiner making three-and-sixpence a-day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please, ma'am ; and if you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will give him a character for steadiness ; and he'll be glad enough to come to-morrow night, I'll be bound." Though Miss Matty was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love. iv- 'y:^' ^ Ji^a^in-s the CHAPTER V *' OLD LETTERS T HAVE often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies — careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction — any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaint- ance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a joint-stock bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer's day because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book ; of course the cor- responding pages at the other end came out as well, and this little unnecessary waste of paper (his private 5 65 66 CRANFORD economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money. Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in ; the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again. Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole inside of a half-sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation written on only one of the sides. I am not above owning that I have this human weakness myself. String is my foible. My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come. I am seriously annoyed if anyone cuts the string of a parcel instead of patiently and faith- fully undoing it fold by fold. How people can bring themselves to use india-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine. To me an india-rubber ring is a precious treasure. I have one which is not new — one that I picked up off the floor nearly six years ago. I have really tried to use it, but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance. Small pieces of butter grieve others. They cannot attend to conversation because of the annoyance occasioned by the habit which some people have of invariably taking more butter than they want. Have you not seen the anxious look (almost mesmeric) which such persons fix on the article ? They would feel it a relief if they might bury it out of their sight by popping it into their own mouths and swallowing it down ; and they are really made happy if the person on whose plate it lies unused suddenly breaks off a piece of toast (which he does not want at all) OLD LETTERS 67 and eats up his butter. They think that this is not waste. Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles. *^ We had many devices to use as few as possible. In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours, — she could do this in the dark, or by firelight, — and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to " keep blind man's holiday." They were usually brought in with tea ; but we only burnt one at a time. As we lived in constant preparation for a friend who might come in any evening (but who never did), it required some contrivance to keep our two candles of the same length, ready to be lighted, and to look as if we burnt two always. The candles took it in turns ; and, whatever we might be talking about or doing. Miss Matty's eyes were habitually fixed upon the candle, ready to. jump up and ex- tinguish it and to light the other before they had become too uneven in length to be restored to equality in the course of the evening. One night, I remember this candle economy particularly annoyed me. I had been very much tired of my compulsory " blind man's holiday," especially as Miss Matty had fallen asleep, and I did not like to stir the fire and run the risk of awaken- ing her ; so I could not even sit on the rug, and scorch myself with sewing by firelight, according to my usual custom. I fancied Miss Matty must be dreaming of her early life ; for she spoke one or two words in her uneasy sleep bearing reference to persons who were dead long before. When Martha brought in the lighted candle and tea, Miss Matty started into wakefulness, with a strange, bewildered look around, as if we were not the people she expected to see about 68 CRANFORD her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she recognised me ; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her usual smile. All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of looking over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers ; for she had often spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of something painful. To-night, however, she rose up after tea and went for them in the dark ; for she piqued herself on the precise neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about any of the things which had belonged to her mother ; and many of the letters were addressed to her — yellow bundles of love-letters, sixty or seventy years old. Miss Matty undid the packet with a sigh ; but she stifled it directly, as if it were hardly right to regret the flight of time, or of life either. We agreed to look them over separately, each taking a different letter out of the same bundle, and describing its contents to the other before destroying it. I never knew what sad work the reading of old letters was before that evening, though I could hardly tell why. The letters were as happy as letters could be — at least those early letters were. There was in them a vivid and intense sense of the present time, which seemed so strong and full, as if it could never pass away, and as if the warm, living hearts that so ex- pressed themselves could never die, and be as nothing OLD LETTERS 69 to the sunny earth. I should have felt less melancholy, I believe, if the letters had been more so. I saw the i tears stealing down the well-worn furrows of Miss Matty's cheeks, and her spectacles often wanted wiping. I trusted at last that she would light the other candle, for my own eyes were rather dim, and I wanted more light to see the pale, faded ink ; but no, even through her tears, she saw and remembered her little economical ways. The earliest set of letters were two bundles tied together, and ticketed (in Miss Jenkyns's hand- writing), " Letters interchanged between my ever- honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior to their marriage, in July, 1774." I should guess that the rector of Cranford was about twenty- seven years of age when he wrote those letters ; and Miss Matty told me that her mother was just eighteen at the time of her wedding. With my idea of the rector, derived from a picture in the dining-parlour, stiff and stately, in a huge full-bottomed wig, with gown, cassock, and bands, and his hand upon a copy of the only sermon he ever published — it was strange to read these letters. They were full of eager, passionate ardour ; short homely sentences, right fresh from the heart (very different from the grand Latinised, Johnsonian style of the printed sermon, preached before some judge at assize time). His letters were a curious contrast to those of his girl- bride. She was evidently rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing over in so many different ways ; but what she was quite clear about was a longing for a white " Paduasoy " *^ — whatever that might be ; and six or seven letters were principally occupied in 70 CRANFORD asking her lover to use his influence with her parents (who evidently kept her in good order) to obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white " Paduasoy." He cared nothing how she was dressed ; she was always lovely enough for him, as he took pains to assure her, when she begged him to express in his answers a predilection for particular pieces of finery, in order that she might show what he said to her parents. But at length he seemed to find out that she would not be married till she had a " trousseau " to her mind ; and then he sent her a letter, which had evidently accompanied a whole box full of finery, and in which he requested that she might be dressed in everything her heart desired. This was the first letter, ticketed in a frail, delicate hand, " From my dearest John." Shortly afterwards they were married, I suppose, from the intermission in their correspond- ence. " We must burn them, I think," said Miss Matty, looking doubtfully at me. " No one will care for them when I am gone." And one by one she dropped them into the middle of the fire, watching each blaze up, die out, and rise away, in faint, white, ghostly semblance, up the chimney, before she gave another to the same fate. The room was light enough now ; but I, like her, was fascinated into watching the destruction of those letters, into which the honest warmth of a manly heart had been poured forth. The next letter, likewise docketed by Miss Jenkyns, was endorsed, " Letters of pious congratulation and exhortation from my venerable grandfather to my beloved mother, on occasion of my own birth. Also some practical remarks on the desirability of keeping warm the extremities of infants, from my excellent grandmother." OLD LETTERS 71 The first part was, indeed, a severe and forcible picture of the responsibilities of mothers, and a warning against the evils that were in the world, and lying in ghastly wait for the little baby of two days old. His wife did not write, said the old gentle- man, because he had forbidden it, she being indisposed with a sprained ankle, which (he said) quite incapaci- tated her from holding a pen. However, at the foot of the page was a small " t.o.," and on turning it over, sure enough, there was a letter to " my dear, dearest Molly," begging her, when she left her room, whatever she did, to go up stairs before going down ; and telling her to wrap her baby's feet up in flannel, and keep it warm by the fire, although it was summer, for babies were so tender. It was pretty to see from the letters, which were evidently exchanged with some frequency between the young mother and the grandmother, how the girlish vanity was being weeded out of her heart by love for her baby. The white " Paduasoy " figured again in the letters, with almost as much vigour as before. In one, it was being made into a christening cloak for the baby. It decked it when it went with its parents to spend a day or two at Arley Hall. It added to its charms when it was " the prettiest little baby that e\'er was seen. Dear mother, I wish you could see her ! Without any parshality, I do think she will grow up a regular bewty ! " I thought of Miss Jenkyns, grey, withered, and wrinkled, and I wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of heaven ; and then I knew that she had, and that they stood there in angelic guise. There was a great gap before any of the rector's letters appeared. And then his wife had changed her mode of endorsement. It was no longer from 72 CRANFORD " My dearest John " ; it was from " My honoured Husband." The letters were written on occasion of the publication of the same sermon which was represented in the picture. The preaching before " My Lord Judge," and the " publishing by request," was evidently the culminating point — the event of his life. It had been necessary for him to go up to London to superintend it through the press. Many friends had to be called upon, and consulted, before he could decide on any printer fit for so onerous a task ; and at length it was arranged that J. and J. Rivingtons were to have the honourable responsi- bility. The worthy rector seemed to be strung up by the occasion to a high literary pitch, for he could hardly write a letter to his wife without cropping out into Latin. I remember the end of one of his letters ran thus : "I shall ever hold the virtuous qualities of my Molly in remembrance, dum memor ipse met, dum spiritus regit artus^"* which, considering that the English of his correspondent was sometimes at fault in grammar, and often in spelling, might be taken as a proof of how much he " idealised " his Molly ; and, as Miss Jenkyns used to say, " People talk a great deal about idealising nowadays, whatever that may mean." But this was nothing to a fit of writing classical poetry which soon seized him, in wh"ch his Molly figured away as " Maria." The letter containing the carmen was endorsed by her, "Hebrew verses sent me by my honoured husband. I thowt to have had a letter about killing the pig, but must wait. Mem., to send the poetry to Sir Peter Arley, as my husband desires." And in a post- scriptum note in his handwriting it was stated that the Ode had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, December 1782. OLD LETTERS 73 Her letters back to her husband (treasured as fondlv by him as if they had been M. 7. Ciceronis Epistolce) were more satisfactory to an absent husband and father than his could ever have been to her. She told him hov;^ Deborah sewed her seam very neatly every day, and read to her in the books he had set her ; how she was a very " forrard," good child, but zuould ask questions her mother could not answer, but how she did not let herself down by saying she did not know, but took to stirring the fire, or sending the " forrard " child on an errand. Matty was now the mother's darhng, and promised (like her sister at her age) to be a great beauty. I was reading this aloud to Miss Matty, who smiled and sighed a little at the hope, so fondly expressed, that " little Matty might not be vain, even if she were a bewty." " I had very pretty hair, my dear," said Miss Matilda ; " and not a bad mouth." And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her cap and draw herself up. But to return to Mrs. Jenkyns's letters. She told her husband about the poor in the parish ; what homely domestic medicines she had adminis- tered ; what kitchen physic she had sent. She had evidently held his displeasure as a rod in pickle over the heads of all the ne'er-do-wells. She asked for his directions about the cows and pigs ; and did not always obtain them, as I have shown before. The kind old grandmother was dead when a little boy was born, soon after the publication of the Sermon ; but there was another letter of ex- hortation from the grandfather, more stringent and admonitory than ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares of the world. He described all the various sins into which men 74 CRANFORD might fall, until I wondered how any man ever came to a natural death. The gallows seemed as if it must have been the termination of the lives of most of the grandfather's friends and acquaint- ance ; and I was not surprised at the way in which he spoke of this life being " a vale of tears." It seemed curious that I should never have heard of this brother before ; but I concluded that he had died young, or else surely his name would have been alluded to by his sisters. By and by we came to packets of Miss Jenkyns^s letters. These Miss Matty did regret to burn. She said all the others had been only interesting to those who loved the writers, and that it seemed as if it would have hurt her to allow them to fall into the hands of strangers, who had not known her dear mother, and how good she was, although she did not always spell quite in the modern fashion ; but Deborah's letters were so very superior ! Any- one might profit by reading them. It was a long time since she had read Mrs. Chapone,^*' but she knew she used to think that Deborah could have said the same things quite as well ; and as for Mrs. Carter ! ^^ people thought a deal of her letters^ just because she had written " Epictetus," but she was quite sure Deborah would never have made use of such a common expression as " I canna be fashed ! " Miss Matty did grudge burning these letters, it was evident. She would not let them be carelessly passed over with any quiet reading, and skipping, to myself. She took them from me, and even lighted the second candle in order to read them aloud with a proper emphasis, and without stumbling over the big words. Oh dear ! how I wanted facts instead of reflections, before those letters were concluded ! OLD LETTERS 75 They lasted us two nights ; and I won't deny that I made use of the time to think of many other things, and yet I was always at my post at the end of each sentence. The rector's letters, and those of his wife and mother-in-law, had all been tolerably short and pithy, written in a straight hand, with the lines very close together. Sometimes the whole letter was contained on a mere scrap of paper. The paper was very yellow, and the ink very brown ; some of the sheets were (as Miss Matty made me observe) the old original post, with the stamp in the corner representing a post-boy riding for life and twanging his horn. The letters of Mrs. Jenkyns and her mother were fastened with a great round red wafer ; for it was before Miss Edgeworth's Patronage had banished wafers from polite society. ^^ It was evident, from the tenor of what was said, that franks were in great request, and were even used as a means of paying debts by needy members of Parliament. The rector sealed his epistles with an immense coat of arms, and showed, by the care with which he had performed this ceremony, that he expected they should be cut open, not broken by any thoughtless or impatient hand. Now, Miss Jenkyns's letters were of a later date in form and writing. She wrote on the square sheet which we have learned to call old-fashioned. Her hand was admirably calculated, together with her use of many-syllabled words, to fill up a sheet, and then came the pride and delight of crossing. Poor Miss Matty got sadly puzzled with this, for the words gathered size like snowballs, and towards the end of her letter Miss Jenkyns used to become quite sesqui- pedalian.^^ In one to her father, slightly theological and controversial in its tone, she had spoken of Herod, ^6 CRANFORD Tctrarch of Idumea. Miss Matty read it " Herod Petrarch of Etruria," and was just as well pleased as if she had been right. I can't quite remember the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss Jenkyns wrote the longest series of letters — on occasion of her absence on a visit to some friends near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.^* These friends were intimate with the commandant of the garrison there, and heard from him of all the preparations that were being made to repel the invasion of Buonaparte, which some people imagined might take place at the mouth of the Tyne. Miss Jenkyns was evidently very much alarmed ; and the first part of her letters was often written in pretty intelligible English, conveying particulars of the preparations which were made in the family with whom she was residing against the dreaded event ; the bundles of clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Alston Moor (a wild hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland) ; the signal that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning out of the volunteers under arms — which said signal was to consist (if I remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous manner. One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not a very wise proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of the Boy and the Wolf ; but so it was), and Miss Jenkyns, hardly recovered from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the sound, the breathless shock, the hurry and alarm ; and then, taking breath, she added, " How trivial, my dear father, do all our apprehensions of the last evening appear, at the present moment, to OLD LETTERS -]-] calm and inquiring minds ! " and here Miss Matty- broke in with — " But, indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at the time. I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford.^" Many people talked of hiding themselves in the salt mines — and meat would have kept capitally down there, only perhaps we should have been thirsty. And my father preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion; one set in the mornings, all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to fighting with spades or bricks, if need were ; and the other set in the after- noons, proving that Napoleon (that was another name for Bony, as we used to call him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon. I remember my father rather thought he should be asked to print this last set ; but the parish had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing." Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns (" poor Peter ! " as Miss Matty began to call him) was at school at Shrewsbury by this time. The rector took up his pen, and rubbed up his Latin once more, to correspond with his boy. It was very clear that the lad's were what are called show letters. They were of a highly mental description, giving an account of his studies, and his intellectual hopes of various kinds, with an occasional quotation from the classics ; but, now and then, the animal nature broke out in such a little sentence as this, evidently written in a trembling hurry, after the letter had been inspected : " Mother dear, do send me a cake, and put plenty of citron in." The " mother dear " probably answered her boy in the form of cakes and " goody," for there were none of her letters among this set ; but a whole collection 78 CRANFORD of the rector's, to whom the Latin in his boy's letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse. I do not know much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an ornamental language, but not very useful, I think — at least to judge from the bits I remember out of the rector's letters. One was, " You have not got that town in your map of Ireland ; but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, as the Proverbia say." Presently it became very evident that " poor Peter " got himself into many scrapes. There were letters of stilted penitence to his father, for some wrongdoing ; and among them all was a badly-written, badly-sealed, badly-directed, blotted note — " My dear, dear, dear, dearest mother, I will be a better boy ; I will, indeed ; but don't, please, be ill for me ; I am not worth it ; but I will be good, darling mother." Miss Matty could not speak for crying, after she had read this note. She gave it to me in silence, and then got up and took it to her sacred recesses in her own room, for fear, by any chance, it might get burnt. " Poor Peter ! " she said ; " he was always in scrapes ; he was too easy. They led him wrong, and then left him in the lurch. But he was too fond of mischief. He could never resist a joke. Poor Peter!" CHAPTER VI POOR PETER pOOR Peter's career lay before him rather pleasantly mapped out by kind friends, but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, in this map too. He was to win honours at Shrewsbury School, and carry them thick to Cambridge ; and after that, a living awaited him, the gift of his godfather. Sir Peter Arley. Poor Peter ! his lot in life was very different to^® what his friends had hoped and planned. Miss Matty told me all about it, and I think it was a relief to her when she had done so. He was the darling of his mother, who seemed to dote on all her children, though she was, perhaps, a little afraid of Deborah's superior acquirements. Deborah was the favourite of her father, and when Peter disappointed him, she became his pride. The sole honour Peter brought away from Shrewsbury was the reputation of being the best good fellow that 79 8o CRANFORD ever was, and of being the captain of the school in the art of practical joking. His father was dis- appointed, but set about remedying the matter in a manly way. He could not afford to send Peter to read with any tutor, but he could read with him himself ; and Miss Matty told me much of the awful preparations in the way of dictionaries and lexicons that were made in her father's study the morning Peter began. " My poor mother ! " said she. " I remember how she used to stand in the hall, just near enough the study door to catch the tone of my father's voice. I could tell in a moment if all was going right, by her face. And it did go right for a long time." " What went wrong at last ? " said I. " That tiresome Latin, I daresay." " No ! it was not the Latin. Peter was in high favour with my father, for he worked up well for him. But he seemed to think that the Cranford people might be joked about, and made fun of, and they did not like it ; nobody does. He was always hoaxing them ; ' hoaxing ^ is not a pretty word, my dear, and I hope you won't tell your father I used it, for I should not like him to think that I was not choice in my language, after living with such a woman as Deborah. And be sure you never use it yourself. I don't know how it slipped out of my mouth, except it was that I was thinking of poor Peter, and it was always his expression. But he was a very gentlemanly boy in many things. He was like dear Captain Brown in always being ready to help any old person or a child. Still, he did like joking and making fun ; and he seemed to think the old ladies in Cranford would believe anything. There were many old ladies living POOR PETER 8 1 here then ; we are principally ladies now, I know, but we are not so old as the ladies used to be when I was a girl. I could laugh to think of some of Peter's jokes. No, my dear, I won't tell you of them, because they might not shock you as they ought to do, and they were very shocking. He even took in my father once, by dressing himself up as a lady that was passing through the town and wished to see the Rector of Cranford, ' who had published that admirable Assize Sermon.' 5' Peter said he was awfully frightened himself when he saw how my father took it all in, and even offered to copy out all his Napoleon Buona- parte sermons for her — him, I mean — no, her, for Peter was a lady then. He told me he was more terrified than he ever was before, all the time my father was speaking. He did not think my father would have believed him ; and yet if he had not, it would have been a sad thing for Peter. As it was, he was none so glad of it, for my father kept him hard at work copying out all those twelve Buonaparte sermons for the lady — that was for Peter himself, you know. He was the lady. And once when he wanted to go fishing, Peter said, * Confound the woman ! ' — very bad language, my dear, but Peter was not always so guarded as he should have been ; my father was so angry with him, it nearly frightened me out of my wits ; and yet I could hardly keep from laughing at the little curtseys Peter kept making, quite slyly, whenever my father spoke of the lady's excellent taste and sound discrimination." " Did Miss Jenkyns know of these tricks ? " said I. " Oh no ! Deborah would have been too much shocked. No ; no one knew but me. I wish I had always known of Peter's plans ; but sometimes he did not tell me. He used to say the old ladies in the 6 82 CRANFORD town wanted something to talk about ; but I don't think the^ did. They had the St. Jameses Chronicle three times a week, just as we have now, and we have plenty to say ; and I remember the clacking noise there always was when some of the ladies got together. But, probably, schoolboys talk more than ladies. At last there was a terrible, sad thing hap- pened." Miss Matty got up, went to the door, and opened it ; no one was there. She rang the bell for Martha, and when Martha came, her mistress told her to go for eggs to a farm at the other end of the town. " I will lock the door after you, Martha. You are not afraid to go, are you ? " " No, ma'am, not at all ; Jem Hearn will be only too proud to go with me." Miss Matty drew herself up, and as soon as we were alone, she wished that Martha had more maidenly reserve. " We'll put out the candle, my dear. We can talk just as well by firelight, you know. There ! Well, you see, Deborah had gone from home for a fort- night or so ; it was a very still, quiet day, I remember, overhead ; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I suppose it was spring. My father had gone out to see some sick people in the parish ; I recollect seeing him leave the house with his wig and shovel-hat and cane. What possessed our poor Peter I don't know ; he had the sweetest temper, and yet he always seemed to like to plague Deborah. She never laughed at his jokes, and thought him ungenteel, and not careful enough about improving his mind ; and that vexed him. " Well ! he went to her room, it seems, and dressed himself in her old gown, and shawl, and bonnet ; just POOR PETER 83 the things she used to wear in Cranford, and was known by everywhere ; and he made the pillow into a little — you are sure you locked the door, my dear, for I should not like any one to hear — into — into — a little baby, with white long clothes. It was only, as he told me afterwards, to make something to talk about in the town ; he never thought of it as affecting Deborah. And he went and walked up and down in the Filbert walk — just half-hidden by the rails, and half-seen ; and he cuddled his pillow, just like a baby, and talked to it all the nonsense people do. Oh dear ! and my father came stepping stately up the street, as he always did ; and what should he see but a little black crowd of people — I daresay as many as twenty — all peeping through his garden rails. So he thought, at first, they were only looking at a new rhododendron that was in full bloom, and that he was very proud of ; and he walked slower, that they might have more time to admire. And he wondered if he could make out a sermon from the occasion, and thought, perhaps, there was some relation between the rhododendrons and the lilies of the field. My poor father ! When he came nearer, he began to wonder that they did not see him ; but their heads were all so close together, peeping and peeping ! My father was amongst them, meaning, he said, to ask them to walk into the garden with him, and admire the beautiful vegetable production, when — oh, my dear ! I tremble to think of it — he looked through the rails himself, and saw — I don't know what he thought he saw, but old Clare told me his face went quite grey-white with anger, and his eyes blazed out under his frowning black brows ; and he spoke out — oh, so terribly ! — and bade them all stop where they were — not one of 84 CRANFORD them to go, not one to stir a step • and, swift as light, he was in at the garden door, and down the Filbert walk, and seized hold of poor Peter, and tore his clothes off his back — bonnet, shawl, gown, and all — and threw the pillow among the people over the railings : and then he was very, very angry indeed, and before all the people he lifted up his cane and flogged Peter. " My dear, that boy's trick, on that sunny day, when all seemed going straight and well, broke my mother's heart, and changed my father for life. It did indeed. Old Clare said, Peter looked as white as my father ; and stood as still as a statue to be flogged ; and my father struck hard ! When my father stopped to take breath, Peter said, ' Have you done enough, sir ? ' quite hoarsely, and still standing quite quiet. I don't know what my father said — or if he said anything. But old Clare said, Peter turned to where the people outside the railing were, and made them a low bow, as grand and as grave as any gentleman ; and then walked slowly into the house. I was in the store-room helping my mother to make cowslip wine. I cannot abide the wine now, nor the scent of the flowers ; they turn me sick and faint, as they did that day, when Peter came in, look- ing as haughty as any man — indeed, looking like a man, not like a boy. ' Mother ! ' he said, ' I am come to say, God bless you for ever.' I saw his lips quiver as he spoke ; and I think he durst not say anything more loving, for the purpose that was in his heart. She looked at him rather frightened, and wondering, and asked him what was to do.^^ He did not smile or speak, but put his arms round her and kissed her as if he did not know how to leave off ; and before she could speak again, he was gone. We talked it over, and could not understand it, and she bade me POOR PETER 85 go and seek my father, and ask what it was all about. I found him walking up and down, looking very highly displeased. " ' Tell your mother I have flogged Peter, and that he richly deserved it.' " I durst not ask any more questions. When I told my mother, she sat down, quite faint, for a minute. I remember, a few days after, I saw the poor, withered cowslip flowers thrown out to the leaf heap, to decay and die there. There was no making of cowslip wine that year at the rectory — nor, indeed, ever after. " Presently my mother went to my father. I know I thought of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus ; for my mother was very pretty and delicate-looking, and my father looked as terrible as King Ahasuerus. Some time after they came out together ; and then my mother told me what had happened, and that she was going up to Peter's room at my father's desire — though she was not to tell Peter this — to talk the matter over with him. But no Peter was there. We looked over the house ; no Peter was there ! Even my father, who had not liked to join in the search at first, helped us before long. The rectory was a very old house — steps up into a room, steps down into a room, all through. At first, my mother went calling low and soft, as if to reassure the poor boy, ' Peter ! Peter dear ! it's only me ; ' but, by and by, as the servants came back from the errands my father had sent them, in different directions, to find where Peter was — as we found he was not in the garden, nor the hayloft, nor anywhere about — my mother's cry grew louder and wilder, ' Peter ! Peter, my darling ! where are you ? ' for then she felt and understood that that long kiss meant some sad kind of ' good-bye.' 86 CRANFORD The afternoon went on — my mother never resting, but seeking again and again in every possible place that had been looked into tw^enty times before, nay, that she had looked into over and over again herself. My father sat with his head in his hands, not speaking except when his messengers came in, bringing no tidings ; then he lifted up his face, so strong and sad, and told them to go again in some new direction. My mother kept passing from room to room, in and out of the house, moving noiselessly, but never ceasing. Neither she nor my father durst leave the house, which was the meeting-place for all the messengers. At last (and it was nearly dark) my father rose up. He took hold of my mother's arm as she came with wild, sad pace through one door, and quickly towards another. She started at the touch of his hand, for she had forgotten all in the world but Peter. " ' Molly ! ' said he, ' I did not think all this would happen.' He looked into her face for comfort — her poor face, all wild and white ; for neither she nor my father had dared to acknowledge — much less act upon — the terror that was in their hearts, lest Peter should have made away with himself. My father saw no conscious look in his wife's hot, dreary eyes, and he missed the sympathy that she had always been ready to give him — strong man as he was, and at the dumb despair in her face his tears began to flow. But when she saw this, a gentle sorrow came over her countenance, and she said, ' Dearest John ! don't cry ; come with me, and we'll find him,' almost as cheerfully as if she knew where he was. And she took my father's great hand in her little soft one and led him along, the tears dropping as he walked on that same unceasing, weary walk, from room to room, through house and garden. POOR PETER 87 " Oh, how I wished for Deborah ! I had no time for crying, for now all seemed to depend on me. I wrote for Deborah to come home. I sent a message privately to that same Mr. Holbrook's house — poor Mr. Holbrook ! — ^you know who I mean. I don't mean I sent a message to him, but I sent one that I could trust to know if Peter was at his house. For at one time Mr. Holbrook was an occasional visitor at the rectory — you know he was Miss Pole's cousin — and he had been very kind to Peter, and taught him how to fish — he was very kind to everybody, and I thought Peter might have gone off there. But Mr. Holbrook was from home, and Peter had never been seen. It was night now ; but the doors were all wide open, and my father and mother walked on and on ; it was more than an hour since he had joined her, and I don't believe they had ever spoken all that time. I was getting the parlour fire lighted, and one of the servants was preparing tea, for I wanted them to have some- thing to eat and drink and warm them, when old Clare asked to speak to me. " ' I have borrowed the nets from the weir. Miss Matty. Shall we drag the ponds to-night, or wait for the morning ? ' " I remember staring in his face to gather his meaning ; and when I did, I laughed out loud. The horror of that new thought — our bright, darling Peter, cold and stark and dead ! I remember the ring of my own laugh now. " The next day Deborah was at home before I was myself again. She would not have been so weak as to give way as I had done ; but my screams (my horrible laughter had ended in crying) had roused my sweet dear mother, whose poor wandering 88 CRANFORD wits were called back and collected as soon as a child needed her care. She and Deborah sat by my bedside ; I knew by the looks of each that there had been no news of Peter — no awful, ghastly news, which was what I most had dreaded in my dull state between sleeping and waking. " The same result of all the searching had brought something of the same relief to my mother, to whom, I am sure, the thought that Peter might even then be hanging dead in some of the famihar home places had caused that never-ending walk of yesterday. Her soft eyes never were the same again after that ; they had always a restless, craving look, as if seeking for what they could not find. Oh ! it was an awful time ; coming down like a thunderbolt on the still sunny day when the lilacs were all in bloom." " Where was Mr. Peter ? " said I. " He had made his way to Liverpool ; and there was war then ; and some of the king's ships lay off the mouth of the Mersey ; and they were only too glad to have a fine likely boy such as him (five foot nine he was) come to offer himself. The captain wrote to my father, and Peter wrote to my mother. Stay ! those letters will be somewhere here." We lighted the candle, and found the captain's letter and Peter's too. And we also found a little simple begging letter from Mrs. Jenkyns to Peter, addressed to him at the house of an old schoolfellow, whither she fancied he might have gone. They had returned it unopened ; and unopened it had re- mained ever since, having been inadvertently put by among the other letters of that time. This is it : — " My dearest Peter, — You did not think we should be so sorry as we are, I know, or you would never have gone away. You are too good. Your POOR PETER 89 father sits and sighs till my heart aches to hear him. He cannot hold up his head for grief ; and yet he only did what he thought was right. Perhaps he has been too severe, and perhaps I have not been kind enough ; but God knows how we love you, my dear only boy. Don looks so sorry you are gone. Come back, and make us happy, who love you so much. I know you will come back." But Peter did not come back. That spring day was the last time he ever saw his mother's face. The writer of the letter — the last — the only person who had ever seen what was written in it, was dead long ago ; and I, a stranger, not born at the time when this occurrence took place, was the one to open it. The captain's letter summoned the father J"and mother to Liverpool instantly, if they wished to see their boy ; and, by some of the wild chances of life, the captain's letter had been detained some- where, somehow. Miss Matty went on, "And it was race-time, ^^ and all the post-horses at Cranford were gone to the races ; but my father and mother set off in their own gig — and oh ! my dear, they were too late — the ship was gone ! And now read Peter's letter to my mother ! " It was full of love, and sorrow, and pride in his new profession, and a sore sense of his disgrace in the eyes of the people at Cranford ; but ending with a passionate entreaty that she would come and see him before he left the Mersey : " Mother ! we may go into battle. I hope we shall, and lick those French ; but I must see you again before that time." 90 CRANFORD " And she was too late," said Miss Matty ; " too late ! " We sat in silence, pondering on the full meaning of those sad, sad words. At length I asked Miss Matty to tell me how her mother bore it. " Oh ! " she said, " she was patience itself. She had never been strong, and this weakened her terribly. My father used to sit looking at her : far more sad than she was. He seemed as if he could look at nothing else when she was by ; and he was so humble — so very gentle now. He would, perhaps, speak in his old way — laying down the law, as it were — and then, in a minute or two, he would come round and put his hand on our shoulders, and ask us in a low voice if he had said anything to hurt us. I did not wonder at his speaking so to Deborah, for she was so clever ; but I could not bear to hear him talking so to me. " But, you see, he saw what we did not — that it was killing my mother. Yes ! killing her (put out the candle, my dear ; I can talk better in the dark), for she was but a frail woman, and ill fitted to stand the fright and shock she had gone through ; and she would smile at him and comfort him, not in words, but in her looks and tones, which were always cheerful when he was there. And she would speak of how she thought Peter stood a good chance of being admiral very soon — he was so brave and clever ; and how she thought of seeing him in his navy uniform, and what sort of hats admirals wore ; and how much more fit he was to be a sailor than a clergyman ; and all in that way, just to make my father think she was quite glad of what came of that unlucky morning's work, and the flogging which was always in his mind, as we all knew. But oh, my dear ! the bitter, bitter crying POOR PETER 91 she had when she was alone ; and at last, as she grew weaker, she could not keep her tears in when Deborah or me was by, and would give us message after message for Peter (his ship had gone to the Mediterranean, or somewhere down there, and then he was ordered off to India, and there was no overland route then) ; but she still said that no one knew where their death lay in wait, and that we were not to think hers was near. We did not think it, but we knew it, as we saw her fading away. " Well, my dear, it's very foolish of me, I know, when in all likelihood I am so near seeing her again. " And only think, love ! the very day after her death — for she did not live quite a twelvemonth after Peter went away — the very day after — came a parcel for her from India — from her poor boy. It was a large, soft, white India shawl, with just a little narrow border all round ; just what my mother would have liked. " We thought it might rouse my father, for he had sat with her hand in his all night long ; so Deborah took it in to him, and Peter's letter to her, and all. At first he took no notice ; and we tried to make a kind of light careless talk about the shawl, opening it out and admiring it. Then, suddenly, he got up, and spoke : ' She shall be buried in it,' he said ; * Peter shall have that comfort ; and she would have liked it.' " Well, perhaps it was not reasonable, but what could we do or say ? One gives people in grief their own way. He took it up and felt it : * It is just such a shawl as she wished for when she was married, and her mother did not give it her. I did not know of it till after, or she should have had it — she should : but she shall have it now.' 92 CRANFORD " My mother looked so lovely in her death ! She was always pretty, and now she looked fair, and waxen, and young — younger than Deborah, as she stood trembling and shivering by her. We decked her in the long soft folds ; she lay smiling, as if pleased ; and people came — all Cranford came — to beg to see her, for they had loved her dearly, as well they might ; and the countrywomen brought posies ; old Clare's wife brought some white violets, and begged they might lie on her breast. " Deborah said to me, the day of my mother's funeral, that if she had a hundred offers she never would marry and leave my father. It was not very likely she would have so many — I don't know thati she had one ; but it was not less to her credit to say so. She was such a daughter to my father as I think there never was before or since. His eyes failed him, and she read book after book, and wrote and copied, and was always at his service in any parish business. She could do many more things than my poor mother could ; she even once wrote a letter to the bishop for my father. But he missed my mother sorely ; the whole parish noticed it. Not that he was less active ; I think he was more so, and more patient in helping everyone. I did all I could to set Deborah at liberty to be with him ; for I knew I was good for little, and that my best work in the world was to do odd jobs quietly, and set others at liberty. But my father was a changed man." " Did Mr. Peter ever come home ? " " Yes, once. He came home a lieutenant ; he did not get to be admiral. And he and my father were such friends ! My father took him into every house in the parish, he was so proud of him. He never walked out without Peter's arm to lean upon. POOR PETER 93 Deborah used to smile (I don't think we ever laughed ; again after my mother's death), and say she was i quite put in a corner. Not but what my father always wanted her when there was letter-writing or reading to be done, or anything to be I settled." I " And then ? " said I, after a pause. I " Then Peter went to sea again ; and, by and by, I my father died, blessing us both, and thanking 1 Deborah for all she had been to him ; and, of course, our circumstances were changed ; and instead of living at the rectory, and keeping three maids and a man, we had to come to this small house, and be content with a servant-of-all-work ; but, as Deborah used to say, we have always lived genteelly, even if circumstances have compelled us to simplicity. Poor Deborah ! " " And Mr. Peter ? " asked I. " Oh, there was some great war in India — I forgot what they call it — and we have never heard of Peter since then. I believe he is dead myself ; and it sometimes fidgets me that we have never put on mourning for him. And then again, when I sit by myself, and all the house is still, I think I hear his step coming up the street, and my heart begins to flutter and beat ; but the sound always goes past — and Peter never comes." " That's Martha back ! No ! /'ll go, my dear ; I can always find my way in the dark, you know. And a blow of fresh air at the door will do my head good, and it's rather got a trick of aching." So she pattered off. I had lighted the candle, to give the room a cheerful appearance against her return. " Was it Martha ? " asked I. 94 CRANFORD " Yes. And I am rather uncomfortable, for I heard such a strange noise, just as I was opening the door." " Where ? " I asked, for her eyes were round with affright. " In the street — just outside — it sounded Hke " " Talking .? " I put in, as she hesitated a little. -^ "No! kissing"— C/iccrcA Jfatcse CT6e JeBa^(^air' CHAPTER VII «« VISITING /^NE morning, as Miss Matty and I sat at our ^^^ work — it was before twelve o'clock, and Miss Matty had not changed the cap with yellow ribbons that had been Miss Jenkyns's best, and which Miss Matty was now wearing out in private, putting on the one made in imitation of Mrs. Jamie- son's at all times when she expected to be seen — Martha came up, and asked if Miss Betty Barker might speak to her mistress. Miss Matty assented, and quickly disappeared to change the yellow ribbons, while Miss Barker came upstairs ; but, as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was rather flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see her return with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite unconscious of it herself, and looked at us with bland satisfaction. Nor do I think Miss Barker perceived it ; for, putting aside the little circumstance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very much absorbed in her errand, which she delivered herself of with an oppressive modesty that found vent in endless apologies. 95 ()6 CRANFORD Miss Betty Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford who had officiated in Mr. Jenkyns's time. She and her sister had had pretty good situa- tions as ladies' maids, and had saved money enough to set up a milliner's shop, which had been patronised ^ by the ladies in the neighbourhood. Lady Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss Barkers the pattern of an old cap of hers, which they immediately copied and circulated among the elite of Cranford. I say the elite, for Miss Barkers had caught the trick of the place, and piqued themselves upon their " aristocratic connection." They would not sell their caps and ribbons to anyone without a pedigree. Many a farmer's wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss Barkers' select millinery, and went rather to the universal shop, where the profits of brown soap and moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to (Paris, he said, until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to wear what the Mounseers wore) London, where, as he often told his customers, Queen Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had been complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her head-dress.®^ Miss Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of miscellaneous customers, throve notwithstanding. They were self-denying, good people. Many a time have I seen the eldest of them (she that had been maid to Mrs. Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess to a poor person. JThey only aped their betters in having " nothing to do " with the class immediately below theirs. And when Miss Barker died, their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in VISITING 97 shutting up shop and retiring from business. She also (as I think I have before said) set up her cow ; a mark of respectabiHty in Cranford almost as decided as setting up a gig is among some people. ^2 gj^^ dressed finer than any lady in Cranford ; and we did not wonder at it ; for it was understood that she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps and outrageous ribbons which had once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five or six years since she had given up shop, so in any other place than Cranford her dress might have been considered passSe. And now Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her house on the following Tuesday. She gave me also an impromptu invitation, as I happened to be a visitor — though I could see she had a little fear lest, since my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might have engaged in that " horrid —cotton trade," and so dragged his family down out of " aristocratic society." She prefaced this invitation with so many apologies that she quite excited my curiosity. " Her presumption " was to be excused. What had she been doing ? She seemed so over- powered by it, I could only think that she had been writing to Queen Adelaide to ask for a receipt for washing lace ; but the act which she so characterised was only an invitation she had carried to her sister's former mistress, Mrs. Jamieson. " Her former occupation considered, could Miss Matty excuse the liberty ? " Ah ! thought I, she has found out that double cap, and is going to rectify Miss Matty's head-dress. No ! it was simply to extend her in- vitation to Miss Matty and to me. Miss Matty bowed acceptance ; and I wondered that, in the graceful action, she did not feel the unusual weight and extraordinary height of her head-dress. But I 98 CRANFORD do not think she did, for she recovered her balance, and went on talking to Miss Betty in a kind, con- descending manner, very different from the fidgety way she would have had if she had suspected how singular her appearance was. " Mrs. Jamieson is coming, I think you said ? '^ asked Miss Matty. " Yes. Mrs. Jamieson most kindly and con- descendingly said she would be happy to come. One little stipulation she made, that she should bring Carlo. I told her that if I had a weakness, it was for dogs." " And Miss Pole ? " questioned Miss Matty, who was thinking of her pool at Preference, in which Carlo would not be available as a partner. " I am going to ask Miss Pole. Or course, I could not think of asking her until I had asked you, madam — the rector's daughter, madam. Believe me, I do not forget the situation my father held under yours." " And Mrs. Forrester, of course ? " " And Mrs. Forrester. I thought, in fact, of going to her before I went to Miss Pole. Although her circumstances are changed, madam, she was born a Tyrrell, and we can never forget her alliance to the Bigges, of Bigelow Hall." Miss Matty cared much more for the little cir- cumstance of her being a very good card-player. " Mrs. Fitz-Adam — I suppose " " No, madam. I must draw a line somewhere. Mrs. Jamieson would not, I think, like to meet Mrs. Fitz-Adam. I have the greatest respect for Mrs. Fitz-Adam — but I cannot think her fit society for such ladies as Mrs. Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns." VISITING 99 Miss Betty Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth. She looked at me with side- long dignity, as much as to say, although a retired milliner, she was no democrat, and understood the difference of ranks. " May I beg you to come as near half-past six, to my little dwelling, as possible. Miss Matilda ? Mrs. Jamieson dines at five, but has kindly promised not to delay her visit beyond that time — half-past six." And with a swimming curtsey Miss Betty Barker took her leave. My prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who usually came to call on Miss Matilda after any event — or indeed in sight of any event — to talk it over with her. " Miss Betty told me it was to be a choice and select few," said Miss Pole, as she and Miss Matty compared notes. " Yes, so she said. Not even Mrs. Fitz-Adam." Now Mrs. Fitz-Adam was the widowed sister of the Cranford surgeon, whom I have named before. Their parents were respectable farmers, content with their station. The name of these good people was Hoggins. Mr. Hoggins was the Cranford doctor now ; we disliked the name, and considered it coarse ; but, as Miss Jenkyns said, if he changed it to Piggins it would not be much better. We had hoped to discover a relationship between him and that Mar- chioness of Exeter whose name was Molly Hoggins ; ^' but the man, careless of his own interests, utterly ignored and denied any such relationship, although, as dear Miss Jenkyns had said, he had a sister called Mary, and the same Christian names were very apt to run in families. Soon after Miss Mary Hoggins married Mr. loo CRANFORD Fitz-Adam she disappeared from the neighbourhood for many years. She did not move in a sphere in Cranford society sufficiently high to make any of us care to know what Mr. Fitz-Adam was. He died and was gathered to his fathers without our ever having thought about him at all. And then Mrs. Fitz-Adam reappeared in Cranford (" as bold as a lion," Miss Pole said), a well-to-do widow, dressed in rustling black silk, so soon after her husband's death that poor Miss Jenkyns was justified in the remark she made, that " bombazine would have shown a deeper sense of her loss." I remember the convocation of ladies who as- sembled to decide whether or not Mrs. Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded in- habitants of Cranford. She had taken a large rambling house, which had been usually considered to confer a patent of gentility upon its tenant, because, once upon a time, seventy or eighty years before, the spinster daughter of an earl had resided in it. I am not sure if the inhabiting this house was not also believed to convey some unusual power of intellect ; for the earl's daughter. Lady Jane, had a sister. Lady Anne, who had married a general officer in the time of the American war, and this general officer had written one or two comedies, which were still acted on the London boards, and which, when we saw them advertised, made us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was paying a very pretty compliment to Cran- ford. Still, it was not at all a settled thing that Mrs. Fitz-Adam was to be visited, when dear Miss Jenkyns died ; and, with her, something of the clear know- ledge of the strict code of gentility went out too. As Miss Pole observed, " As most of the ladies of good family in Cranford were elderly spinsters, or widows VISITING loi without children, if we did not -reiax,^^ -little, and become less exclusive, by and by we should have no society at all." .\ <■ Mrs. Forrester continued on the saint; side. " She had always understood that Fitz meant something aristocratic ; there was Fitz-Roy — she thought that some of the King's children had been called Fitz-Roy ; and there was Fitz-Clarence now — they were the children of dear good King William the Fourth. Fitz-Adam ! — it was a pretty name, and she thought it very probably meant * Child of Adam.' No one, who had not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz ; there was a deal in a name — she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ffs — ffoulkes — and he always looked down upon capital letters, and said they belonged to lately-invented families. She had been afraid he would die a bachelor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs. fFaringdon, at a watering- place, he took to her immediately ; and a very pretty genteel woman she was — a widow, with a very good fortune ; and ' my cousin,' Mr. ffoulkes, married her ; and it was all owing to her two little ifs." Mrs. Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meeting with a Mr. Fitz-anything in Cranford, so that could not have been her motive for settling there. Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of being admitted in the society of the place, which would certainly be a very agreeable rise for ci-devant Miss Hoggins ; and if this had been her hope it would be cruel to disappoint her. So everybody called upon Mrs. Fitz-Adam — every- body but Mrs. Jamieson, who used to show how honourable she was by never seeing Mrs. Fitz-Adam when they met at the Cranford parties. There I02 CRANFORD would De onlx eigh-; or ten ladies in the room, and Mrs. t'itz-Adam was the largest of all, and she invariably- used^ to sta'nd up when Mrs. Jamieson came in, and curtsey very low to her whenever she turned in her direction — so low, in fact, that I think Mrs. Jamieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she never moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her. Still Mrs. Fitz-Adam persevered. The spring evenings were getting bright and long when three or four ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker's door. Do you know what a calash is ? It is a covering worn over caps, not unlike the heads fastened on old-fashioned gigs ; but sometimes it is not quite so large. This kind of head-gear always made an awful impression on the children in Cranford ; and now two or three left off their play in the quiet sunny little street, and gathered in wondering silence round Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and myself. We were silent too, so that wc could hear loud, suppressed whispers inside Miss Barker's house : " Wait, Peggy ! wait till I've run upstairs and washed my hands. When I cough, open the door ; I'll not be a minute." And, true enough, it was not a minute before we heard a noise, between a sneeze and a crow ; on which the door flew open. Behind it stood a round- eyed maiden, all aghast at the honourable company of calashes, who marched in without a word. She recovered presence of mind enough to usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now converted into a temporary dressing-room. There we unpinned and shook ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and gracious company- face ; and then, bowing backwards with " After you, ma'am," we allowed Mrs. Forrester to VISITING 103 take precedence up the narrow staircase that led to Miss Barker's drawing-room. There she sat, as stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd- sounding cough, from which her throat must have even then been sore and rough. Kind, gentle, shabbily- dressed Mrs. Forrester was immediately conducted to the second place of honour — a seat arranged something like Prince Albert's near the Queen's — good, but not so good. The place of pre-eminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson, who presently came panting up the stairs — Carlo rushing round her on her progress, as if he meant to trip her up. And now Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman ! She stirred the fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her distance sufficiently. She and her mistress were on very familiar terms in their everyday intercourse, and Peggy wanted now to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on thorns to hear, but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to repress. So she turned away from all Peggy's asides and signs ; but she made one or two very mal-apropos answers to what was said ; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, " Poor, sweet Carlo ! I'm forgetting him. Come downstairs with me, poor ittie doggie, and it shall have its tea, it shall ! " In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before ; but I thought she had forgotten to give the " poor ittie doggie " anything to eat, judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded 104 CRANFORD — I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry ; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses ; but somehow the heaps disappeared here. I saw Mrs. Jamieson eating seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything ; and I was rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much of scented soap. She always gave us Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs. Jamie- son was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker's want of knowledge of the customs of high life ; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not unlike a cow's. After tea there was some little demur and difficulty. We were six in number ; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was Cribbage. But all, except myself (I was rather afraid of the Cranford ladies at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they ever engaged in), were anxious to be of the " pool." Even Miss Barker, while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently hankering to take a hand. The dilemma was soon put an end to by a singular kind of noise. If a Baron's daughter-in-law could ever be supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs. Jamieson did so then ; for, overcome by the heat of the room, and inclined to doze by nature, the temptation of that very comfort- able arm-chair had been too much for her, and Mrs. Jamieson was nodding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us ; but, by and by, even her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound asleep. VISITING 105 " It is very gratifying to me," whispered Miss Barker at the card-table to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game, she was "basting"^* most unmercifully — "very gratifying indeed, to see how completely Mrs. Jamie- son feels at home in my poor little dwelling ; she could not have paid me a greater compliment." Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or four handsomely-bound fashion- books ten or twelve years old, observing, as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she knew young people liked to look at pictures. Carlo lay and snorted and started at his mistress's feet. He, too, was quite at home. The card-table was an animated scene to watch : four ladies' heads, with niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table in their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough ; and every now and then came Miss Barker's " Hush, ladies ! if you please, hush ! Mrs. Jamieson is asleep." It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs. Forrester's deafness and Mrs. Jamieson's sleepiness. But Miss Barker managed her arduous task well. She repeated the whisper to Mrs. Forrester, distorting her face considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was said ; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to herself, " Very gratifying, indeed ; I wish my poor sister had been alive to see this day." Presently the door was thrown wide open : Carlo started to his feet, with a loud snapping bark, and Mrs. Jamieson awoke ; or, perhaps, she had not been asleep — as she said almost directly, the room had been so light she had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but io6 CRANFORD had been listening with great interest to all our amusing and agreeable conversation. Peggy came in once more, red with importance. Another tray ! ." Oh, gentility ! " thought I, " can you endure this last shock ? " For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I doubt not, prepared, although she did say, " Why ! Peggy, what have you brought us ? " and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure) all sorts of good things for supper — scalloped oysters, potted lobsters, jelly, a dish called " little Cupids " (which was in great favour with the Cranford ladies, although too expensive to be given, except on solemn and state occasions — macaroons sopped in brandy, I should have called it, if I had not known its more re- fined and classical name). In short, we were evidently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best ; and we thought it better to submit graciously, even at the cost of our gentility — which never ate suppers in general, but which, like most non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions. Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had, I daresay, been made acquainted with the beverage they call cherry- brandy. We none of us had ever seen such a thing, and rather shrank back when she proffered it us — " just a little, leetle glass, ladies ; after the oysters and lobsters, you know. Shellfish are some- times thought not very wholesome." We all shook our heads like female mandarins ; but, at last, Mrs. Jamieson suffered herself to be persuaded, and we followed her lead. It was not exactly unpalatable, though so hot and so strong that we thought our- selves bound to give evidence that we were not accustomed to such things by coughing terribly — almost as strangely as Miss Barker had done, before we were admitted by Peggy. VISITING 107 " It's very strong," said Miss Pole, as she put down her empty glass ; " I do believe there's spirit in it." " Only a little drop — just necessary to make it keep," said Miss Barker. " You know we put brandy- paper over preserves to make them keep. I often feel tipsy myself from eating damson tart." I question whether damson tart would have opened Mrs. Jamieson's heart as the cherry-brandy did ; but she told us of a coming event, respecting which she had been quite silent till that moment. " My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me." There was a chorus of " Indeed ! " and then a pause. Each one rapidly reviewed her wardrobe, as to its fitness to appear in the presence of a Baron's viddow ; for, of course, a series of small festivals were always held at Cranford on the arrival of a visitor at any of our friends' houses. We felt very pleasantly excited on the present occasion. Not long after this the maids and the lanterns were announced. Mrs. Jamieson had the sedan- chair, which had squeezed itself into Miss Barker's narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally " stopped the way." It required some skilful manoeuvring on the part of the old chairmen (shoe- makers by day, but when summoned to carry the sedan dressed up in a strange old livery — long great- coats, with small capes, coeval with the sedan, and similar to the dress of the class in Hogarth's pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker's front door. Then we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street as we put on our calashes and pinned up our gowns ; Miss Barker io8 CRANFORD hovering about us with offers of help, which, if she had not remembered her former occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more pressing.