Part 2

The marriage was an ideal one. The young wife at once threw herself into her husband’s work, helping in the Sunday School and visiting the sick and needy. Her beauty and winning personality endeared her to the members of her husband’s congregation, which was said to be the most intellectual and wealthy in Manchester in those days, more than thirty private carriages often being found waiting after the conclusion of the morning service. _Mary Barton_ gives the readers the other side of the society in which Mrs. Gaskell moved, and where she became “a very angel of light” in the poverty-stricken districts of Ancoats and Hulme.

Their home was always a centre of light and learning first for ten years at 14 Dover Street, afterwards at 121 Upper Rumford Street, and finally, from 1849, the present family residence in Plymouth Grove, which has always been noted for its sunny hospitality and genial intellectual atmosphere. Lord Houghton said of this home that such was its beneficent influence in the great cotton city, “It made Manchester a possible centre for literary people.” Mr. and Mrs. Gaskell gathered around them a warm circle of friends, who joined in trying to ameliorate the impoverished districts of that part of Lancashire. When the Chartist riots had reduced many of the cotton operatives to starvation, Mrs. Gaskell’s home was a rendezvous from which she distributed through her windows in the early morning loaves and other necessities.

Thomas Wright, a working-man of Manchester, who gave up all his spare time in visiting the prisons and helping the fallen, found good friends in the Gaskells. Mrs. Gaskell has written an appreciative note about him in _Mary Barton_. Mr. G. F. Watts painted “The Good Samaritan” in 1850, and presented it to the city of Manchester as a tribute of admiration to the noble philanthropy of Thomas Wright. Mrs. Gaskell was instrumental in getting Mr. Watts to paint the beautiful water-colour portrait of Thomas Wright, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ESTHER ALICE CHADWICK.

WEST BRAE, ENFIELD, MIDDLESEX, _August 25th, 1911_.

Calendar of Principal Events in Mrs. Gaskell’s Life

1810. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, born at 12 Lindsey Row, Chelsea, September 29th.

1811. Removed to 3 Beaufort Row, Chelsea, June, 1811.

Mother died, October, 1811, at 3 Beaufort Row.

1812. Elizabeth taken to Knutsford when fourteen months old.

1824. Sent to school at Stratford-on-Avon.

1827. Her only brother, John Stevenson, disappeared at Calcutta.

1829. Father died at 3 Beaufort Row, Chelsea.

Visited her relatives at Newcastle-on-Tyne.

1830. Visited Edinburgh.

1831. Marble bust sculptured by Dunbar.

1832. Married the Rev. William Gaskell, M.A., August 30th.

1832-42. Resided at 14 Dover Street, Manchester.

1837. Mrs. Lumb died at Knutsford, May 1st.

1842-49. Resided at 121 Upper Rumford Street, Manchester.

1844. Only son died at Festiniog, September, 1844.

1849-65. Resided at 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester.

1848. First novel, _Mary Barton_, published.

First met Charles Dickens.

1850. Mr. Gaskell’s mother, Margaret Gaskell, died in January.

1850. First met Charlotte Brontë, August, 1850.

Published _The Moorland Cottage_.

1853. Second novel, _Ruth_, published.

_Cranford_ published.

1854. Visited Paris and met Madame Mohl.

1855. _North and South_ published.

_Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales_ published.

1857. _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ published.

Edited _Mabel Vaughan_ and wrote preface.

1859. _Round the Sofa Stories_ published.

_My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales_ published.

1862. Preface to _Garibaldi at Cabrera_ by Colonel Vecchj.

Inaugurated Sewing schools for poor in Manchester.

1863. _Sylvia’s Lovers_ published.

Mrs. Gaskell’s daughter, Florence Elizabeth, married to Mr. Charles Compton, Q.C., on September 8th.

Visited Rome and stayed with W. W. Story.

1865. _Cousin Phillis_ published.

_Wives and Daughters_ published in “Cornhill Magazine.”

Mrs. Gaskell died at Holybourne, Hants, November 12th.

Buried, November 16th, in the Unitarian Chapel Burial Ground, Knutsford.

I

I. POETRY

II. ARTICLES AND SKETCHES

Poetry was not Mrs. Gaskell’s _forte_, but her poetical instinct revealed itself especially in her prose idylls—_Cranford_ and _Cousin Phillis_.