Chapter III: Shorter Extracts (1)

The only biography which Mrs. Gaskell wrote was _The Life of Charlotte Brontë_, which is one of the best biographies ever written. It has now become a classic. At the time of her death, in 1865, Mrs. Gaskell was collecting material for a Life of Madame Sévigné.

Mrs. Gaskell has written very little that is autobiographical. She always studied to keep herself in the background, though her stories contain much that is based on her own life.

Autobiographical

Mary Barton

Preface to the Original Edition of 1848

Three years ago I became anxious (from circumstances that need not be more fully alluded to) to employ myself in writing a work of fiction. Living in Manchester, but with a deep relish and fond admiration for the country, my first thought was to find a framework for my story in some rural scene; and I had already made a little progress in a tale, the period of which was more than a century ago, and the place on the borders of Yorkshire, when I bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the workpeople with whom I was acquainted had laid open to me the hearts of one or two of the more thoughtful among them; I saw that they were sore and irritable against the rich, the even tenor of whose seemingly happy lives appeared to increase the anguish caused by the lottery-like nature of their own. Whether the bitter complaints made by them of the neglect which they experienced from the prosperous—especially from the masters, whose fortunes they had helped to build up—were well-founded or no, it is not for me to judge. It is enough to say, that this belief of the injustice and unkindness which they endure from their fellow-creatures taints what might be resignation to God’s will, and turns it to revenge in many of the poor uneducated factory-workers of Manchester.

The more I reflected on this unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which, from time to time, convulses this dumb people; the agony of suffering without the sympathy of the happy, or of erroneously believing that such is the case. If it be an error that the woes, which come with ever-returning tide-like flood to overwhelm the workmen in our manufacturing towns, pass unregarded by all but the sufferers, it is at any rate an error so bitter in its consequences to all parties, that whatever public effort can do in the way of merciful deeds, or helpless love in the way of “widow’s mites” could do, should be done, and that speedily, to disabuse the work-people of so miserable a misapprehension. At present they seem to me to be left in a state, wherein lamentations and tears are thrown aside as useless, but in which the lips are compressed for curses, and the hands clenched and ready to smite.

I know nothing of Political Economy, or the theories of trade. I have tried to write truthfully; and if my accounts agree or clash with any system, the agreement or disagreement is unintentional.

To myself the idea which I have formed of the state of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester, and which I endeavoured to represent in this tale (completed above a year ago), has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the Continent.

_October, 1848._

Edinburgh Society in 1830

From _Round the Sofa_, 1859

Mrs. Gaskell spent a winter in Edinburgh in 1830-31, and she
has woven some of her recollections in _Round the Sofa_. The
Mr. Sperano mentioned was probably Agostino Ruffini, a friend
of Mazzini’s, though he went as an exile to Edinburgh at a
later period.

After we had been about a fortnight in Edinburgh Mr. Dawson said, in a sort of half-doubtful manner to Miss Duncan:

“My sister bids me say, that every Monday evening a few friends come in to sit round her sofa for an hour or so—some before going to gayer parties—and that if you and Miss Greatorex would like a little change, she would only be too glad to see you. Any time from seven to eight to-night; and I must add my injunctions, both for her sake and for that of my little patient’s, here, that you leave at nine o’clock. After all, I do not know if you will care to come; but Margaret bade me ask you,” and he glanced up suspiciously and sharply at us. If either of us had felt the slightest reluctance, however well disguised by manner, to accept this invitation, I am sure he would have at once detected our feelings, and withdrawn it, so jealous and chary was he of anything pertaining to the appreciation of this beloved sister.

But, if it had been to spend an evening at the dentist’s, I believe I should have welcomed the invitation, so weary was I of the monotony of the nights in our lodgings; and as for Miss Duncan, an invitation to tea was of itself a pure and unmixed honour, and one to be accepted with all becoming form and gratitude; so Mr. Dawson’s sharp glances over his spectacles failed to detect anything but the truest pleasure, and he went on:

“You’ll find it very dull, I dare say. Only a few old fogies like myself, and one or two good, sweet young women; I never know who’ll come. Margaret is obliged to lie in a darkened room—only half lighted, I mean—because her eyes are weak—oh, it will be very stupid, I dare say; don’t thank me till you’ve been once and tried it, and then if you like it, your best thanks will be, to come again every Monday, from half-past seven to nine, you know. Good-bye, good-bye.”

Hitherto I had never been out to a party of grown-up people; and no court-ball to a London young lady could seem more redolent of honour and pleasure than this Monday evening to me.

Dressed out in new stiff book-muslin, made up to my throat—a frock which had seemed to me and my sisters the height of earthly grandeur and finery—Alice, our old nurse, had been making it at home, in contemplation of the possibility of such an event during my stay in Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and angelic to be ever worn short of heaven—I went with Miss Duncan to Mr. Dawson’s at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty room—perhaps I ought to call it an ante-chamber, for the house was old-fashioned, and stately and grand—the large square drawing-room, into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson’s sofa was drawn. Behind her a little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it, bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and that was all the light in the room, which looked to me very vast and indistinct after our pinched-up apartment at the Mackenzies’. Mrs. Dawson must have been sixty; and yet her face looked very soft and smooth and childlike. Her hair was quite grey; it would have looked white but for the snowiness of her cap, and satin ribbon. She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of French grey merino. The furniture of the room was deep rose-colour, and white and gold; the paper which covered the walls was Indian, beginning low down with a profusion of tropical leaves and birds and insects, and gradually diminishing in richness of detail, till at the top it ended in the most delicate tendrils and most filmy insects.

Mr. Dawson had acquired much riches in his profession, and his house gave one this impression. In the corners of the rooms were great jars of Eastern china, filled with flower leaves and spices; and in the middle of all this was placed the sofa, on which poor Margaret Dawson passed whole days, and months, and years, without the power of moving by herself. By-and-by Mrs. Dawson’s maid brought in tea and macaroons for us, and a little cup of milk and water and a biscuit for her. Then the door opened. We had come very early, and in came Edinburgh professors, Edinburgh beauties, and celebrities, all on their way to some other gayer and later party, but coming first to see Mrs. Dawson, and tell her their _bons-mots_, or their interests, or their plans. By each learned man, by each lovely girl, she was treated as a dear friend, who knew something more about their own individual selves, independent of their reputation and general society-character, than anyone else.

It was very brilliant and very dazzling, and gave enough to think about and wonder about for many days.

Monday after Monday we went, stationary, silent; what could we find to say to anyone but Mrs. Margaret herself? Winter passed, summer was coming.

* * * * *

People began to drop off from Edinburgh, only a few were left, and I am not sure if our Monday evenings were not all the pleasanter.

There was Mr. Sperano, the Italian exile, banished even from France, where he had long resided, and now teaching Italian with meek diligence in the northern city; there was Mr. Preston, the Westmorland squire, or, as he preferred to be called, statesman, whose wife had come to Edinburgh for the education of their numerous family, and who, whenever her husband had come over on one of his occasional visits, was only too glad to accompany him to Mrs. Dawson’s Monday evenings, he and the invalid lady having been friends from long ago. These and ourselves kept steady visitors, and enjoyed ourselves all the more from having the more of Mrs. Dawson’s society.

Cumberland Sheep-shearers

From _Household Words_, 1853

A graphic account of a visit which Mr. and Mrs. Gaskell and
their daughters made to the sheep-shearing at a Westmorland
farm near Keswick. The article aroused much interest among the
readers of _Household Words_. John Forster, writing to Dickens,
asked “who the deuce had written the delightful article on
sheep-shearing?”

Three or four years ago we spent part of a summer in one of the dales in the neighbourhood of Keswick. We lodged at the house of a small Statesman, who added to his occupation of a sheep-farmer that of a woollen manufacturer. His own flock was not large, but he bought up other people’s fleeces, either on commission, or for his own purposes; and his life seemed to unite many pleasant and various modes of employment, and the great jolly, burly man throve upon all, both in body and mind.

One day his handsome wife proposed to us that we should accompany her to a distant sheep-shearing, to be held at the house of one of her husband’s customers, where she was sure we should be heartily welcome, and where we should see an old-fashioned shearing, such as was not often met with now in the Dales. I don’t know why it was, but we were lazy, and declined her invitation. It might be that the day was a broiling one, even for July, or it might be a fit of shyness; but, whichever was the reason, it very unaccountably vanished soon after she was gone, and the opportunity seemed to have slipped through our fingers. The day was hotter than ever; and we should have twice as much reason to be shy and self-conscious, now that we should not have our hostess to introduce and chaperone us. However, so great was our wish to go that we blew these obstacles to the winds, if there were any that day; and, obtaining the requisite directions from the farm-servant, we set out on our five-mile walk, about one o’clock on a cloudless day in the first half of July.

Our party consisted of two grown-up persons and four children, the youngest almost a baby, who had to be carried the greater part of that weary length of way. We passed through Keswick, and saw the groups of sketching, boating tourists, on whom we, as residents for a month in the neighbourhood, looked down with some contempt as mere strangers, who were sure to go about blundering, or losing their way, or being imposed upon by guides, or admiring the wrong things, and never seeing the right things. After we had dragged ourselves through the long straggling town, we came to a part of the highway where it wound between copses sufficiently high to make a “green thought in a green shade”; the branches touched and interlaced overhead, while the road was so straight that all the quarter of an hour that we were walking we could see the opening of blue light at the other end, and note the quivering of the heated, luminous air beyond the dense shade in which we moved. Every now and then, we caught glimpses of the silver lake that shimmered through the trees; and, now and then, in the dead noontide stillness, we could hear the gentle lapping of the water on the pebbled shore—the only sound we heard, except the low, deep hum of myriads of insects revelling out their summer lives. We had all agreed that talking made us hotter, so we and the birds were very silent. Out again into the hot, bright, sunny, dazzling road, the fierce sun above our heads made us long to be at home; but we had passed the half-way, and to go on was shorter than to return. Now we left the highway, and began to mount. The ascent looked disheartening, but at almost every step we gained increased freshness of air; and the crisp, short mountain-grass was soft and cool in comparison with the high-road. The little wandering breezes, that came every now and then athwart us, were laden with fragrant scents—now of wild thyme—now of the little scrambling, creeping white rose, which ran along the ground and pricked our feet with its sharp thorns; and now we came to a trickling streamlet, on whose spongy banks grew great bushes of the bog-myrtle, giving a spicy odour to the air. When our breath failed us during that steep ascent, we had one invariable dodge by which we hoped to escape the “fat and scant of breath” quotation; we turned round and admired the lovely views, which from each succeeding elevation became more and more beautiful.

At last, perched on a level which seemed nothing more than a mere shelf of rock, we saw our destined haven—a grey stone farm-house, high over our heads, high above the lake as we were—with out-buildings enough around it to justify the Scotch name of a “town”; and near it one of those great bossy sycamores, so common in similar situations all through Cumberland and Westmorland. One more long tug, and then we should be there. So, cheering the poor tired little ones, we set off bravely for that last piece of steep rocky path; and we never looked behind till we stood in the coolness of the deep porch, looking down from our natural terrace on the glassy Derwentwater, far, far below, reflecting each tint of the blue sky, only in darker, fuller colours every one. We seemed on a level with the top of Catbells; and the tops of great trees lay deep down—so deep that we felt as if they were close enough together and solid enough to bear our feet if we chose to spring down and walk upon them. Right in front of where we stood there was a ledge of the rocky field that surrounded the house. We had knocked at the door, but it was evident that we were unheard in the din and merry clatter of voices within, and our old original shyness returned. By-and-by someone found us out, and a hearty burst of hospitable welcome ensued. Our coming was all right; it was understood in a minute who we were; our real hostess was hardly less urgent in her civilities than our temporary hostess, and both together bustled out of the room upon which the outer door entered, into a large bedroom which opened out of it—the state apartment, in all such houses in Cumberland—where the children make their first appearance and where the heads of the household lie down to die if the Great Conqueror gives them sufficient warning for such decent and composed submission as is best in accordance with the simple dignity of their lives.

Into this chamber we were ushered, and the immediate relief from its dark coolness to our over-heated bodies and dazzled eyes was inexpressibly refreshing. The walls were so thick that there was room for a very comfortable window-seat in them, without there being any projection into the room; and the long, low shape prevented the skyline from being unusually depressed, even at that height; and so the light was subdued, and the general tint through the room deepened into darkness, where the eye fell on that stupendous bed, with its posts, and its head-piece, and its footboard, and its trappings of all kinds of the deepest brown; and the frame itself looked large enough for six or seven people to lie comfortably therein, without even touching each other. In the hearth-place stood a great pitcher filled with branches of odorous mountain flowers; and little bits of rosemary and lavender were strewed about the room, partly, as I afterwards learnt, to prevent incautious feet from slipping about on the polished oak floor. When we had noticed everything, and rested, and cooled (as much as we could do before the equinox), we returned to the company assembled in the house-place.

This house-place was almost a hall of grandeur. Along one side ran an oaken dresser, all decked with the same sweet evergreens, fragments of which strewed the bedroom floor. Over this dresser were shelves, bright with most exquisitely polished pewter. Opposite to the bedroom door was the great hospitable fireplace, ensconced within its proper chimney corners, and having the “master’s cupboard” on its right-hand side. Do you know what a “master’s cupboard” is? Mr. Wordsworth could have told you; ay, and have shown you one at Rydal Mount, too. It is a cupboard about a foot in width, and a foot and a half in breadth, expressly reserved for the use of the master of the household. Here he may keep pipe and tankard, almanac and what not; and although no door bars the access of any hand, in this open cupboard his peculiar properties rest secure, for is it not “the master’s cupboard”? There was a fire in the house-place, even on this hot day; it gave a grace and a vividness to the room, and being kept within proper limits, it seemed no more than was requisite to boil the kettle. For, I should say, that the very minute of our arrival our hostess (so I shall designate the wife of the farmer at whose house the sheep-shearing was to be held) proposed tea; and although we had not dined, for it was but little past three, yet, on the principle of “Do at Rome as the Romans do,” we assented with a good grace, thankful to have any refreshment offered us, short of water-gruel, after our long and tiring walk, and rather afraid of our children “cooling too quickly.”

While the tea was preparing, and it took six comely matrons to do it justice, we proposed to Mrs. C. (our real hostess) that we should go and see the sheep-shearing. She accordingly led us away into a back yard, where the process was going on. By a back yard I mean a far different place from what a Londoner would so designate; our back yard, high up on the mountain-side, was a space about forty yards by twenty, overshadowed by the noble sycamore, which might have been the very one that suggested to Coleridge:

“This sycamore (oft musical with bees—
Such tents the Patriarchs loved),” etc., etc.

At the gate by which this field was entered from the yard stood a group of eager-eyed boys, panting like the sheep, but not like them from fear, but from excitement and joyous exertion. Their faces were flushed with brown-crimson, their scarlet lips were parted into smiles, and their eyes had that peculiar blue lustre in them, which is only gained by a free life in the pure and blithesome air. As soon as these lads saw that a sheep was wanted by the shearers within, they sprang towards one in the field—the more boisterous and stubborn an old ram the better—and tugging and pulling and pushing and shouting—sometimes mounted astride of the poor obstreperous brute, and holding his horns like a bridle—they gained their point, and dragged their captive up to the shearer, like little victors as they were, all glowing and ruddy with conquest. The shearers sat each astride on a long bench, grave and important—the heroes of the day. The flock of sheep to be shorn on this occasion consisted of more than a thousand, and eleven famous shearers had come, walking in from many miles’ distance to try their skill, one against the other; for sheep-shearings are a sort of rural Olympics. They were all young men in their prime, strong, and well made; without coat or waistcoat, and with upturned shirt-sleeves. They sat each across a long bench or narrow table, and caught up the sheep from the attendant boys who had dragged it in; they lifted it on to the bench, and placing it by a dexterous knack on its back, they began to shear the wool off the tail and under parts; then they tied the two hind-legs and the two fore-legs together, and laid it first on one side and then on the other, till the fleece came off in one whole piece; the art was to shear all the wool off, and yet not to injure the sheep by any awkward cut; if any such an accident did occur, a mixture of tar and butter was immediately applied; but every wound was a blemish on the shearer’s fame. To shear well and completely, and yet do it quickly, shows the perfection of the clippers. Some can finish off as many as six score sheep in a summer’s day; and if you consider the weight and uncouthness of the animal, and the general heat of the weather, you will see that, with justice, clipping or shearing is regarded as harder work than mowing. But most shearers are content with despatching four or five score; it is only on unusual occasions, or when Greek meets Greek, that six score are attempted or accomplished.

When the sheep is divided into its fleece and itself, it becomes the property of two persons. The women seize the fleece, and, standing by the side of a temporary dresser (in this case made of planks laid across barrels, beneath which sharp scant shadow could be obtained from the eaves of the house), they fold it up. This, again, is an art, simple as it may seem; and the farmers’ wives and daughters about Langdale Head are famous for it. They begin with folding up the legs, and then roll the whole fleece up, tying it with the neck; and the skill consists, not merely in doing this quickly and firmly, but in certain artistic pulls of the wool so as to display the finer parts, and not, by crushing up the fibre, to make it appear coarse to the buyer. Six comely women were thus employed; they laughed, and talked, and sent shafts of merry satire at the grave and busy shearers, who were too earnest in their work to reply, although an occasional deepening of colour, or twinkle of the eye, would tell that the remark had hit. But they reserved their retorts, if they had any, until the evening, when the day’s labour would be over, and when, in the licence of country humour, I imagine, some of the saucy speakers would meet with their match. As yet, the applause came from their own party of women; though now and then one of the old men, sitting under the shade of a sycamore, would take his pipe out of his mouth to spit, and, before beginning again to send up the softly curling white wreaths of smoke, he would condescend on a short, deep laugh and a “Well done, Maggie!” “Give it him, lass!” for, with the not unkindly jealousy of age towards youth, the old grandfathers invariably took part with the women against the young men. These sheared on, throwing the fleeces to the folders, and casting the sheep down on the ground with gentle strength, ready for another troop of boys to haul it to the right-hand side of the farmyard, where the great outbuildings were placed; where all sorts of country vehicles were crammed and piled, and seemed to throw up their scarlet shafts into the air, as if imploring relief from the crowd of shandries and market carts that pressed upon them. Out of the sun, in the dark shadow of a cart-house, a pan of red-hot coals glowed in a trivet; and upon them was placed an iron basin holding tar and raddle, or ruddle. Hither the right-hand troop of boys dragged the poor naked sheep to be “smitten”—that is to say, marked with the initials or cypher of the owner. In this case the sign of the possessor was a circle or spot on one side, and a straight line on the other; and, after the sheep were thus marked, they were turned out to the moor, amid the crowd of bleating lambs that sent up an incessant moan for their lost mothers; each found out the ewe to which it belonged the moment she was turned out of the yard, and the placid contentment of the sheep that wandered away up the hill-side, with their little lambs trotting by them, gave just the necessary touch of peace and repose to the scene. There were all the classical elements for the representation of life: there were the “old men and maidens, young men and children” of the Psalmist; there were all the stages and conditions of being that sing forth their farewell to the departing crusaders in the “Saint’s Tragedy.”

We were very glad indeed that we had seen the sheep-shearing, though the road had been hot, and long, and dusty, and we were as yet unrefreshed and hungry.

My French Master

From _Household Words_, 1853

We seemed to have our French lessons more frequently in the garden than in the house; for there was a sort of arbour on the lawn near the drawing-room window, to which we always found it easy to carry a table and chairs, and all the rest of the lesson paraphernalia, if my mother did not prohibit a lesson _al-fresco_.

M. de Chalabre wore, as a sort of morning costume, a coat, waistcoat, and breeches, all made of the same kind of coarse grey cloth, which he had bought in the neighbourhood. His three-cornered hat was brushed to a nicety, his wig sat as no one else’s did. (My father’s was always awry.) And the only thing wanted to his costume when he came was a flower. Sometimes I fancied he purposely omitted gathering one of the roses that clustered up the farm-house in which he lodged, in order to afford my mother the pleasure of culling her choicest carnations and roses to make him up his nosegay, or “posy,” as he liked to call it. He had picked up that pretty country word, and adopted it as an especial favourite, dwelling on the first syllable with all the languid softness of an Italian accent. Many a time have Mary and I tried to say it like him, we did so admire his way of speaking.

Once seated round the table, whether in the house or out of it, we were bound to attend to our lessons; and somehow he made us perceive that it was a part of the same chivalrous code that made him so helpful to the helpless, to enforce the slightest claim of duty to the full. No half-prepared lessons for him! The patience and the resource with which he illustrated and enforced every precept; the untiring gentleness with which he made our stubborn English tongues pronounce, and mis-pronounce, and re-pronounce certain words; above all, the sweetness of temper which never varied, were such as I have never seen equalled. If we wondered at these qualities when we were children, how much greater has been our surprise at their existence since we have been grown up, and have learnt that, until his emigration, he was a man of rapid and impulsive action, with the imperfect education implied in the circumstance that at fifteen he was a sous-lieutenant in the Queen’s regiment, and must, consequently, have had to apply himself hard and conscientiously to master the language which he had in after life to teach.

Twice we had holidays to suit his sad convenience. Holidays with us were not at Christmas, and Midsummer, Easter, and Michaelmas. If my mother was unusually busy, we had what we called a holiday, though in reality it involved harder work than our regular lessons; but we fetched, and carried, and ran errands, and became rosy, and dusty, and sang merry songs in the gaiety of our hearts. If the day was remarkably fine, my dear father—whose spirits were rather apt to vary with the weather—would come bursting in with his bright, kind, bronzed face, and carry the day by storm with my mother. “It was a shame to coop such young things up in a house,” he would say, “when every other young animal was frolicking in the air and sunshine. Grammar!—what was that but the art of arranging words?—and he never knew a woman but could do that fast enough. Geography!—he would undertake to teach us more geography in one winter evening, telling us of the countries where he had been, with just a map before him, than we could learn in ten years with that stupid book, all full of hard words. As for the French—why, that must be learnt; for he should not like M. de Chalabre to think we slighted the lessons he took so much pains to give us; but surely we could get up the earlier to learn our French.” We promised by acclamation; and my mother—sometimes smilingly, sometimes reluctantly—was always compelled to yield. And these were the usual occasions for our holidays.

* * * * *

It was the fashion in those days to keep children much less informed than they are now on the subjects which interest their parents. A sort of hieroglyphic or cipher talk was used in order to conceal the meaning of much that was said if children were present. My mother was proficient in this way of talking, and took, we fancied, a certain pleasure in perplexing my father by inventing a new cipher, as it were, every day. For instance, for some time I was called Martia, because I was very tall of my age; and, just as my father began to understand the name—and, it must be owned, a good while after I had learned to prick up my ears whenever Martia was named—my mother suddenly changed me into “the buttress,” from the habit I had acquired of leaning my languid length against a wall. I saw my father’s perplexity about this “buttress” for some days, and could have helped him out of it, but I durst not. And so, when the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth was executed, the news was too terrible to be put into plain English, and too terrible also to be known to us children, nor could we at once find the clue to the cipher in which it was spoken about. We heard about “the Iris being blown down,” and saw my father’s honest, loyal excitement about it, and the quiet reserve which always betokened some secret grief on my mother’s part.

We had no French lessons; and somehow the poor, battered, storm-torn Iris was to blame for this. It was many weeks after this before we knew the full reason of M. de Chalabre’s deep depression when he again came amongst us; why he shook his head when my mother timidly offered him some snowdrops on that first morning on which he began lessons again; why he wore the deep mourning of that day, when all of the dress that could be black was black, and the white muslin frills and ruffles were unstarched and limp, as if to bespeak the very abandonment of grief. We knew well enough the meaning of the next hieroglyphic announcement, “The wicked, cruel boys had broken off the White Lily’s head!” That beautiful queen, whose portrait once had been shown to us, with her blue eyes and her fair, resolute look, her profusion of lightly powdered hair, her white neck adorned with strings of pearls! We could have cried, if we had dared, when we heard the transparent, mysterious words. We did cry at night, sitting up in bed, with our arms round each other’s necks, and vowing, in our weak, passionate, childish way, that if we lived long enough, that lady’s death avenged should be. No one who cannot remember that time can tell the shudder of horror that thrilled through the country at hearing of this last execution. At the moment there was no time for any consideration of the silent horrors endured for centuries by the people, who at length rose in their madness against their rulers. This last blow changed our dear M. de Chalabre. I never saw him again in quite the same gaiety of heart as before this time. There seemed to be tears very close behind his smiles for ever after. My father went to see him when he had been about a week absent from us—no reason given, for did not we, did not everyone know the horror the sun had looked upon? As soon as my father had gone, my mother gave it in charge to us to make the dressing-room belonging to our guest-chamber as much like a sitting-room as possible. My father hoped to bring back M. de Chalabre for a visit to us; but he would probably like to be a good deal alone; and we might move any article of furniture we liked, if we only thought it would make him comfortable.

The Interchange of Novels between English and American Authors

From _Introduction to Mabel Vaughan_, 1857

If it were not an Irish way of expressing myself, I should call prefaces in general, the author’s supplement to his work; either explaining his reasons for writing it, or giving some additional matter, which could not be included, or else was forgotten in the book itself.

Now as I am not the author of the following story, I cannot give her reasons for writing it, nor add to what she has already said; nor can I even give my opinion of it, as by so doing I should have to reveal much of the plot in order to justify praise, or explain criticism.

Such alterations as might be required to render certain expressions clear to English readers the authoress has permitted me to make in the body of the work; some foot-notes I have appended explanatory of what were formerly to me mysterious customs and phrases; and, here and there, I have been tempted to make additions, always with the kindly granted permission of the authoress.

In conclusion, I may say a few words on the pleasant intercourse we English are having with our American relations, in the interchange of novels, which seems to be going on pretty constantly between the two countries. Our cousinly connection with the Americans dates from common ancestors, of whom we are both proud. To a certain period, every great name which England boasts is a direct subject of pride to the American; since the time when the race diverged into two different channels, we catch a reflex lustre from each other’s great men. When we are stirred to our inmost depths by some passage or other in _Uncle Tom_, we say from all our hearts, “And I also am of the same race as this woman.” When we hear of noble deeds—or generous actions; when Lady Franklin is helped in her woeful, faithful search by sympathising Americans; when the _Resolute_ is brought home to our shores by the gallant American sailors, we hail the brave old Anglo-Saxon blood, and understand how they came to do it, as we instinctively comprehend a brother’s motives for his actions, though he should speak never a word.

It is Anglo-Saxon descent which makes us both so undemonstrative, or perhaps I should rather say, so ready to express our little dissatisfaction with each other, while the deeper feelings (such as our love and confidence in each other) are unspoken. Though we do not talk much about these feelings we value every tie between us that can strengthen them; and not least amongst those come the links of a common literature. I may be thought too like the tanner in the old fable, who recommended leather as the best means of defence for a besieged city, but I am inclined to rank the exchange of novels between England and America as of more value, as conducive to a pleasant acquaintanceship with each other, than the exchange of works of a far higher intrinsic value. Through the means of works of fiction, we obtain glimpses into American home-life; of their modes of thought, their traditional observances, and their social temptations, quite beyond and apart from the observations of a traveller, who after all, only sees the family in the street, or on the festival days, not in the quiet domestic circle, into which the stranger is rarely admitted.

These American novels unconsciously reveal all the little household secrets; we see the meals as they are put upon the table, we learn the dresses which those who sit down in them wear (and what a temptress “Fashion” seems to be in certain cities to all manner of vulgar extravagance!); we hear their kindly family discourse, we enter into their home struggles, and we rejoice when they gain the victory. Now all this knowledge of what the Americans really are is good for us, as tending to strengthen our power of understanding them, and consequently to increase our sympathy with them. Let us trust that they learn something of the same truth from reading fiction written on this side of the Atlantic; the truth that, however different may be national manifestations of the fact, still, below accents, manners, dress, and language, we have

“All of us one human heart.”

E. C. G.

Biographical

Description of Charlotte Brontë

From the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_

This is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal description of Miss Brontë. In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure—“stunted” was the word she applied to herself—but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as they appeared to me in her later life. They were large, and well-shaped; their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any other human creature. As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork, of whatever kind—writing, sewing, knitting—was so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves.

I can well imagine that the grave serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned”; and in 1831, the period of which I now write, we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the wife and daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.

Patrick Brontë’s Views on the Management of his Children

From the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_

The ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day on education had filtered down through many classes, and spread themselves widely out. I imagine Mr. Brontë must have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from these two theorists. His practice was not half so wild or extraordinary as that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of Mr. Day’s. She had been taken by this gentleman and his wife to live with them as their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before the time of which I am writing. They were wealthy people and kind-hearted, but her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest description, on Spartan principles. A healthy merry child, she did not much care for dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real cruelty was this. They had a carriage, in which she and the favourite dog were taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it was to be left at home being tossed in a blanket—an operation which my aunt especially dreaded. Her affright at the tossing was probably the reason why it was persevered in. Dressed-up ghosts had become common, and she did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next mode of hardening her nerves. It is well known that Mr. Day broke off his intention of marrying Sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding, she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing thin sleeves. Yet Mr. Day and my aunt’s relations were benevolent people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits, which their pupils would experience, in the future life which they must pass among the corruptions and refinements of civilisation.

Mr. Brontë wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he succeeded, as far as regarded his daughters; but he went at his object with unsparing earnestness of purpose. Mrs. Brontë’s nurse told me that one day when the children had been out on the moors, and rain had come on, she thought their feet would be wet, and accordingly she rummaged out some coloured boots which had been given to them by a friend—the Mr. Morgan, who married “Cousin Jane,” she believes. These little pairs she ranged round the kitchen fire to warm; but, when the children came back, the boots were nowhere to be found; only a very strong odour of burnt leather was perceived. Mr. Brontë had come in and seen them; they were too gay and luxurious for his children, and would foster a love of dress; so he had put them into the fire. He spared nothing that offended his antique simplicity.

Visit to Charlotte Brontë at Haworth Vicarage

From the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_

Haworth is a long, straggling village: one steep narrow street—so steep that the flagstones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, that the horses’ feet may have something to cling to, and not slip down backwards; which if they did, they would soon reach Keighley. But if the horses had cats’ feet and claws, they would do all the better. Well, we (the man, horse, car, and I) clambered up this street, and reached the church dedicated to St. Autest (who was he?); then we turned off into a lane on the left, past the curate’s lodging at the Sexton’s, past the school-house, up to the Parsonage yard-door. I went round the house to the front door, looking to the church;—moors everywhere beyond and above. The crowded grave-yard surrounds the house and small grass enclosure for drying clothes.

I don’t know that I ever saw a spot more exquisitely clean; the most dainty place for that I ever saw. To be sure, the life is like clock-work. No one comes to the house; nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlour, all over the house. Miss Brontë sits alone in her parlour; breakfasting with her father in his study at nine o’clock. She helps in the housework; for one of their servants, Tabby, is nearly ninety, and the other only a girl. Then I accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors: the heather-bloom had been blighted by a thunderstorm a day or two before, and was all of a livid brown colour, instead of the blaze of purple glory it ought to have been. Oh! those high, wild, desolate moors, up above the whole world, and the very realms of silence! Home to dinner at two. Mr. Brontë has his dinner sent in to him. All the small table arrangements had the same dainty simplicity about them. Then we rested, and talked over the clear, bright fire; it is a cold country, and the fires were a pretty warm dancing light all over the house. The parlour had been evidently furnished within the last few years, since Miss Brontë’s success had enabled her to have a little more money to spend. Everything fits into, and is in harmony with, the idea of a country parsonage, possessed by people of very moderate means. The prevailing colour of the room is crimson, to make a warm setting for the cold grey landscape without. There is her likeness by Richmond, and an engraving from Lawrence’s picture of Thackeray; and two recesses, on each side of the high, narrow, old-fashioned mantel-piece, filled with books—books given to her, books she has bought, and which tell of her individual pursuits and tastes; _not_ standard books.

She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw; and she copied niminipimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals (“stippling,” don’t the artists call it?), every little point put in, till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to _draw_ stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing; but in so small a hand, that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.

But now to return to our quiet hour of rest after dinner. I soon observed that her habits of order were such that she could not go on with the conversation, if a chair was out of its place; everything was arranged with delicate regularity. We talked over the old times of her childhood; of her elder sister’s (Maria’s) death—just like that of Helen Burns in _Jane Eyre_; of those strange, starved days at school, of the desire (almost amounting to illness) of expressing herself in some way—writing or drawing; of her weakened eyesight, which prevented her doing anything for two years, from the age of seventeen to nineteen; of her being a governess; of her going to Brussels; whereupon I said I disliked Lucy Snowe, and we discussed M. Paul Emanuel; and I told her of ⸺’s admiration of _Shirley_, which pleased her, for the character of Shirley was meant for her sister Emily, about whom she is never tired of talking, nor I of listening. Emily must have been a remnant of the Titans—great-granddaughter of the giants who used to inhabit earth. One day, Miss Brontë brought down a rough, common-looking oil-painting, done by her brother, of herself—a little rather prim-looking girl of eighteen—and the two other sisters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, with cropped hair, and sad, dreamy-looking eyes.… Emily had a great dog—half mastiff, half bull-dog—so savage, etc.… This dog went to her funeral, walking side by side with her father; and then, to the day of its death, it slept at her room door, snuffing under it, and whining every morning.

We have generally had another walk before tea, which is at six; at half-past eight, prayers; and by nine, all the household are in bed, except ourselves. We sit up together till ten, or past; and after I go, I hear Miss Brontë come down and walk up and down the room for an hour or so.

We went, not purposely, but accidentally, to see various poor people in our distant walks. From one we had borrowed an umbrella; in the house of another we had taken shelter from a rough September storm. In all these cottages, her quiet presence was known. At three miles from her home, the chair was dusted for her, with a kindly “Sit ye down, Miss Brontë”; and she knew what absent or ailing members of the family to inquire after. Her quiet, gentle words, few though they might be, were evidently grateful to those Yorkshire ears. Their welcome to her, though rough and curt, was sincere and hearty.

We talked about the different courses through which life ran. She said, in her own composed manner, as if she had accepted the theory as a fact, that she believed some were appointed beforehand to sorrow and much disappointment; that it did not fall to the lot of all—as Scripture told us—to have their lives fall in pleasant places; that it was well for those who had rougher paths, to perceive that such was God’s will concerning them, and try to moderate their expectations, leaving hope to those of a different doom, and seeking patience and resignation as the virtues they were to cultivate. I took a different view: I thought that human lots were more equal than she imagined; that to some happiness and sorrow came in strong patches of light and shadow (so to speak), while in the lives of others they were pretty equally blended throughout. She smiled, and shook her head, and said she was trying to school herself against ever anticipating any pleasure; that it was better to be brave and submit faithfully; there was some good reason, which we should know in time, why sorrow and disappointment were to be the lot of some on earth. It was better to acknowledge this, and face out the truth in a religious faith.

On Reviewers

From the _Life of Charlotte Brontë_