Elizabeth Gaskell: The Complete Novels + A Biography of the Author E-Book

Elizabeth Gaskell

• Herausgeber: Book House Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This book contains several HTML tables of contents.The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.Here you will find the complete novels of Elizabeth Gaskell in the chronological order of their original publication.- Mary Barton- Cranford- Ruth- North and South- Sylvia’s Lovers- Wives and Daughters

Leseprobe

Elizabeth Gaskell

THE COMPLETE NOVELS

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Table of Contents

Elizabeth Gaskell — An Extensive Biography

Mary Barton

Cranford

Ruth

North and South

Sylvia’s Lovers

Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell — An Extensive Biography

by Esther Alice Chadwick

 

Chapter 1 — Birth, Parentage, and Ancestry

Chapter 2 — Chelsea

Chapter 3 — Knutsford (1810-1825)

Chapter 4 — Church House and Tatton Park, Knutsford (1810-1825)

Chapter 5 — Sandlebridge (1810-1825)

Chapter 6 — Stratford-on-Avon (1825-1827)

Chapter 7 — Chelsea (1827-1829)

Chapter 8 — Newcastle-on-Tyne (1829-1831)

Chapter 9 — Edinburgh (1831-1832)

Chapter 10 — Marriage (1832)

Chapter 11 — Manchester (1832-1842)

Chapter 12 — Manchester (1842-1849)

Chapter 13 — Plymouth Grove, Manchester (1849-1852)

Chapter 14 — Plymouth Grove (1852-1856)

Chapter 15 — Silverdale

Chapter 16 — Plymouth Grove (1857)

Chapter 17 — Plymouth Grove (1858-1860)

Chapter 18 — Whitby (1859-1863)

Chapter 19 — Manchester (1860-1865)

Chapter 20 — Last Days at Manchester and Holybourne (1865)

Chapter 21 — Gaskell Memorials

Chapter 1 — Birth, Parentage, and Ancestry

“Though a Londoner by birth, I was early motherless, and taken when only a year old to my dear adopted native town, Knutsford,” wrote Mrs. Gaskell in 1838. She was always proud of being a native of the Metropolis, although she only lived there for a very short time after her birth in 1810, and for a period of two years before her father died in 1829.

Mrs. Gaskell was born in Chelsea, in a house in Lindsey Row, now a part of Cheyne Walk, on the banks of the Thames opposite Battersea Bridge. Here Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson — to give her full maiden name — first saw the light on Michaelmas Day, September 29th, 1810.

She was the second child of William Stevenson by his first marriage. Her mother was Elizabeth Holland, daughter of Samuel Holland, farmer and land agent of Sandlebridge, Cheshire. At the time of his daughter’s birth, William Stevenson was the keeper of the Records at the Treasury Office.

Mrs. Gaskell received her first name from her mother, who died soon after the birth of her daughter, and her second name was probably on account of the close friendship existing between William Stevenson and James Cleghorn of Dunse, in Berwickshire. It was James Cleghorn who fostered Stevenson’s love of agriculture, for he was a farmer who worked on scientific lines, and, like William Stevenson, wrote articles based on his own practical experience for the agricultural magazines.

James Cleghorn contributed to the Scots Magazine, of which William Stevenson was editor, and in 1811 he became editor of The Farmer’s Journal. The article on agriculture, in the seventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was written by him.

According to tradition, the Stevensons were of Norwegian descent and in some of the family papers the name is spelt Stevensen. Mrs. Gaskell’s father, in many ways a remarkable man, belonged to a distinguished Border family. He was born at Berwick-on-Tweed on November 26th, 1772. His father was a captain in the Royal Navy, and one of his brothers also became a sailor, whilst in later days his son John, born some little time before his daughter Elizabeth, showed the strong inclination for the sea which characterised the Stevenson family, and became a lieutenant in the Merchant Service. In 1827 he mysteriously disappeared at sea, but he is held in remembrance in Mrs. Gaskell’s stories as Poor Peter in Cranford and Master Frederick in North and South, and he probably suggested the strange article on Disappearances, which she wrote in 1851 for Household Words.

A nephew of William Stevenson, Father Joseph Stevenson, S.J., was the distinguished historian and archivist. He was the son of Robert Stevenson, of Berwick-on-Tweed. After attending a school at Durham, he entered the Glasgow University and determined to enter the Presbyterian ministry, but turned aside to antiquarian and literary pursuits. Then, after holding appointments connected with the keeping of the Public Records, he joined the Church of England, and entered Durham University to prepare himself for the ministry. Some years later, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In 1872 he obtained a pension for his historical researches. He died in 1895, and was buried at St. Thomas’ Church, Fulham. As a writer, his historical research, like that of his uncle, William Stevenson, was characterised by the amount of industry which it revealed, and the authentic information which he collected was a valuable addition to English literature.

William Stevenson’s mother was Isabella Thomson, who was second cousin to the well-known author of The Seasons. Thus Mrs. Gaskell could claim kindred on her father’s side with writers and littérateurs, and, if heredity is to count for anything, her father was responsible for her love of historical research, which is revealed in many of her stories.

In his early days, William Stevenson was a pupil at the local Grammar School at Berwick-on-Tweed under Joseph Romney. He was not noted as a boy for his love of study, for in a letter to Captain Stevenson, whose ship was stationed near Cork, his mother writes:

“The children are all very well and give me no trouble, except William, who hardly ever attends school, and is constantly running about the walls.”

But, as he grew older, William developed a love of learning, which he retained all through his subsequent life; whilst at college he preferred books to sports, and his favourite recreation was walking. This he kept up in his Chelsea days, enjoying the walk from Lindsey Row to the Treasury Office and back each day.

Towards the end of his schooldays at Berwick-on-Tweed, he showed no particular bent, but his love of study prompted his father to give him a classical and theological training, to prepare him for the Unitarian ministry. With this in view, he entered the Daventry Academy in 1787. This college was transferred to Northampton in 1789, and here William Stevenson stayed until he had completed his education. He was recognised at this time as an industrious student and a keen debater in classics and theology.

He was now qualified as a Unitarian minister, but with a view to increasing his knowledge, he went to Belgium, and before he attained his twentieth birthday obtained an appointment at Bruges as private tutor in an English family. Whilst at Bruges he became interested in the pioneer of printing in this country and, later, he wrote a short life of Caxton.

The outbreak of war in 1792 caused his return to England, after holding his tutorship for only a few months. Very shortly afterwards he was appointed minister at Dob Lane Unitarian Chapel, Failsworth, near Manchester, and he also became classical tutor in the Manchester Academy — a well-known educational institution at that period. Thus, like many Unitarian ministers of those days, he held two appointments, preaching on Sundays and teaching during the week.

Manchester, however, did not retain his services long. Whilst there, he was greatly influenced by Thomas Barnes, a Doctor of Divinity of Edinburgh University, who had received his early education from Philip Holland, a noted schoolmaster of Bolton, and a relative of the Hollands of Sandlebridge. Dr. Barnes was the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester, where afterwards Mrs. Gaskell’s husband was a minister for fifty-six years. It was Dr. Barnes who, with Dr. Percival and Mr. Henry, founded the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester in 1781. This was the first society of the kind in England.

William Stevenson afterwards developed conscientious scruples against being a hired minister, with the result that he resigned his preaching appointment. This doubtless suggested to Mrs. Gaskell the character of Mr. Hale, the clergyman in North and South, who resigned his living for conscientious reasons, and became tutor in smoky Milton, which has long been recognised as Manchester.

“When thou canst no longer continue in thy work without dishonour to God, discredit to religion, foregoing thy integrity, wounding conscience, spoiling thy peace, and hazarding the loss of thy salvation; in a word, when the conditions upon which thou must continue (if thou wilt continue) in thy employments are sinful and unwarranted by the word of God, thou mayest, yea, thou must believe that God will turn thy very silence, suspension, deprivation, and laying aside, to His glory, and the advancement of the Gospel’s interest. When God will not use thee in one kind, yet He will in another. A soul that desires to serve and honour Him shall never want opportunity to do it, nor must thou so limit the Holy One of Israel, as to think He hath but one way in which He can glorify Himself by thee. He can do it by thy silence as well as by thy preaching; thy laying aside as well as thy continuance in thy work. It is not pretence of doing God the greatest service, or performing the weightiest duty, that will excuse the least sin, though that sin capacitated or gave us the opportunity for doing that duty. Thou wilt have little thanks, O my soul! if when thou art charged with corrupting God’s worship, falsifying thy vows, thou pretendest a necessity for it in order to a continuance in the ministry.”

These lines were read out to Margaret by Mr. Hale in justification of his resolve to give up his living as Vicar of Helstone; they are a quotation from an old book in the clergyman’s library.

In 1797, Mr. Stevenson left Manchester and turned his attention to farming, for which he had a liking, going to East Lothian as an agricultural pupil. Very probably he was attracted to this district because at that time East Lothian was in the van of agricultural progress, and experiments were being made on scientific lines. His friend, James Cleghorn, was keenly interested in agricultural reform, and just about this time the first chair of agriculture in Great Britain was founded at Edinburgh University. When his education in agriculture was sufficiently advanced, Mr. Stevenson rented a small farm at Laughton, near Edinburgh, and worked it by scientific methods.

In My French Master — one of Mrs. Gaskell’s short stories — she tells of the amateur scientific farmer who lost more than he gained “over the very small scale of his operations,” and of the mother calculating: “If on twelve acres he managed to lose a hundred pounds a year, what would be our loss on a hundred and fifty?”

For four years Mr. Stevenson had to suffer reverses, some of which were beyond his control. There was a succession of bad harvests, and a fear of foreign invasion led to a panic and a run on the banks. This affected every branch of industry, and especially agriculture.

Therefore, in 1801, Mr. Stevenson gave up his little farm and went to live in Edinburgh, where he established a boarding house for University students in Drummond Street, at the same time acting as a “private coach” at the University. In order to supplement his income, he contributed to the Edinburgh Review, and in 1803 this versatile farmer-teacher became editor of the Scots Magazine.

Literature now claimed a good part of Mr. Stevenson’s time and talents, and for the next few years his articles on agriculture and other subjects were much appreciated. “He laboured with unremitting diligence, contributing to the Westminster Retrospective, Oxford Review and the Edinburgh Review, and also to the Foreign Reviews.” As “private-coach,” journalist, and editor, his life was one of incessant toil, but Edinburgh did much to foster his love of research, besides bringing him in contact with the cultured life of the University.

Four years after William Stevenson settled in Edinburgh, a young student from Cheshire, Henry Holland (afterwards the famous Sir Henry Holland, physician to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort), a son of Peter Holland, the genial surgeon of Knutsford, “who had his round of thirty miles and slept at Cranford,” came to Edinburgh as a medical student. He had previously studied at Glasgow University for two years, though not in medicine, and had been for a few months in a commercial house in Liverpool. Though only a youth of eighteen, he had already distinguished himself by drawing up a Survey of Cheshire for the Board of Agriculture, for which he was offered one hundred pounds if it proved satisfactory; so well was his task accomplished, that the Board paid him two hundred pounds, “for it was full of sound and well-prepared material,” wrote his father in 1806, to Josiah Wedgwood. Whether young Holland had met Mr. Stevenson, who was a tutor in Manchester, some ten years previously is doubtful, but it is very probable that some members of the Holland family had known Stevenson in Manchester. The two men were mutually attracted to each other; both had been brought up in the Unitarian faith, and both were interested in the cultivation of the land and in surveying. It is probable that this friendship between them led to Mr. Stevenson meeting his future wife, Elizabeth Holland, the mother of the novelist.

The love story is suggested in Cousin Phillis. This is not all true to fact, but there is sufficient to show where Mrs. Gaskell found her originals, although the story centres around the construction of the railway to Knutsford, which was opened in the year 1862.

The narrator of the story, Paul Manning, takes Mr. Holdsworth, “who had been such a great traveller,” to Heathbridge, which, from Mrs. Gaskell’s description, is easily identified as Sandlebridge, the home in which Mrs. Gaskell’s mother was reared, and of which Sir Henry Holland, in his Recollections, writes: “My cousin, Mrs. Gaskell, who knew Sandlebridge well, has pictured the place by some short, but very descriptive touches in one or two of her novels.” The two novels are Cranford, where Sandlebridge is known as Woodley, and Cousin Phillis, where it figures as Hope Farm, Heathbridge.

Knowing that all Mrs. Gaskell’s novels are founded on fact, and that, except in Sylvia’s Lovers, those facts came out of her own life, or the lives of her relatives and friends, we can see a striking parallel between Mrs. Gaskell’s cousin, Henry Holland, taking Mr. Stevenson to his grandfather’s farm at Sandlebridge, with “his theodolite and other surveying instruments,” and Paul Manning taking Mr. Holdsworth to Hope Farm.

Mr. Holdsworth, like Mr. Stevenson, was acquainted with Horace and Virgil, “making them living instead of dead” to Farmer Holman, who compared his own “relish for Holdsworth’s intellectual conversation” to dram-drinking. “‘I listen to him till I forget my duties and am carried off my feet.’” Holdsworth still further won the old farmer’s heart by his “practical art of surveying and taking a level.”

The tale of Cousin Phillis shows that Mr. Holdsworth was received at Hope Farm with some diffidence, for when Paul asks the farmer if he likes Holdsworth, the reply is: “‘Yes! I like him!’” weighing his words a little as he spoke. ‘“I like him. I hope I am justified in doing it, but he takes hold of me, as it were; and I have almost been afraid lest he carries me away, in spite of my judgment.’”

Smith’s Treatise on Cheshire, commenting on the people of this county, says:

“They are ready to resist the enemy or stranger that shall invade their county, the very name whereof they cannot abide.”

This, says Smith, specially applied to the Scots. The antipathy to a Scot survived as a Cheshire characteristic to comparatively recent times, and there is a case on record where an estate was left to a daughter, with the understanding that she should be disinherited if she married a native of Scotland or one born of Scottish parents. The prohibited event took place. “Eve would have her apple, though it lost Eden.”

Mrs. Gaskell in Cousin Phillis points to this trait in the people’s character when Paul, referring to the meeting between Farmer Holman and Mr. Holdsworth, says:

“‘Men have always a little natural antipathy to get over when they first meet as strangers. But in this case each was disposed to make an effort to like the other; only each was to each a specimen of an unknown class.’”

There would, doubtless, be a certain amount of prejudice to be overcome by Samuel Holland, the Cheshire farmer, and William Stevenson, the Scottish editor and University “coach,” who was a native of the Border town of Berwick-on-Tweed, and whose mother was a Scot. Mr. Holdsworth’s superior learning and intellectual conversation, together with his “foreign manners,” captivated the simple country girl at Hope Farm. What a beautiful portrait of maidenhood Mrs. Gaskell has drawn in Cousin Phillis, and if she meant it for her own mother, what a tribute of love she gave to her whom she never knew.

“I see her now — Cousin Phillis. The westering sun shone full upon her, and made a slanting stream of fight into the room within. She was dressed in dark blue cotton of some kind; up to her throat, down to her wrists, with a little frill of the same wherever it touched her white skin. And such a white skin as it was! I have never seen the like. She had fight hair, nearer yellow than any other colour. She looked me steadily in the face with large, quiet eyes, wondering, but untroubled by the sight of a stranger.”

Towards the end of 1806, James Maitland, the eighth Earl of Lauderdale, was offered by Fox the position of Governor-General of India, and he, having a very high opinion of William Stevenson’s abilities, offered him the post of private secretary.

Just as Mr. Holdsworth, having given up his position, said to Paul Manning on receiving a letter from Mr. Greathed, “‘He wants to see me about some business; in fact, I may as well tell you, Paul, this letter contains a very advantageous proposal,’” so Mr. Stevenson, using Paul Manning’s words, may have said to young Holland, “‘I will go to-night. Activity and readiness go a long way in our profession. Remember that, my boy! I hope I shall come back; but if I don’t, be sure and recollect all the words of wisdom that have fallen from my lips...’”

“‘Then you don’t think you will come back?’”

“‘I will come back some time, never fear,’” said he kindly.

“‘I maybe back in a couple of days, having been found incompetent for the work; or I may not be wanted to go out as soon as I now anticipate.’”

The sudden call to London causes Holdsworth to betray his love for Phillis to Paul Manning.

“‘Love her! — Yes, that I do. Who could help it, seeing her as I have done? Her character as unusual and rare as her beauty. God bless her! God keep her in her high tranquillity, her pure innocence. Two years! It is a long time. But she lives in such seclusion, almost like the sleeping beauty, Paul; but I shall come back like a prince and waken her to my love. I can’t help hoping that it won’t be difficult, eh, Paul?’”

Mr. Stevenson was only making a precarious living in Edinburgh; he was known to be careless about money matters, and his boarding-house, like his farming, was not very remunerative. Writing and coaching did not add greatly to his income, hence his eagerness to accept Lord Lauderdale’s offer.

“‘You see, the salary they offer me is large; and, beside that, this experience will give me a name, which will entitle me to expect a still larger in any future undertaking.’”

“‘That won’t influence Phillis.’”

“‘No; but it will make me more eligible in the eyes of her father and mother.’”

“‘You give me your best wishes, Paul,’ said he, almost pleading. ‘You would like me for a cousin?’”

The end of the story of Cousin Phillis is disappointing, but in real life William Stevenson married Elizabeth Holland shortly after this offer from Lord Lauderdale, and Henry Holland became Mr. Stevenson’s nephew.

Much to the disappointment of William Stevenson, the East India Company strenuously opposed Lord Lauderdale’s appointment as Governor-General, and in consequence, he withdrew from the position; but as Mr. Stevenson had given up his Edinburgh work for the post of private secretary to Lord Lauderdale, and had come to London to help in the preparations for India, the Earl felt compelled to compensate him, and as there was a vacancy at the Treasury Office, he used his influence and secured for him the position of keeper of the Treasury Records.

Evidently Mr. Stevenson’s work at Edinburgh was greatly appreciated, for, shortly after this, he was offered by the Czar of Russia a professorship of technology at Karkhov University. The offer is said to have been made in most flattering language, but Stevenson declined and settled in London, living first at Mayfair and afterwards at Lindsey Row, where his famous daughter was born.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson’s mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Holland, of Sandlebridge, and grand-daughter of John Holland, of Dam Head, Mobberley, Cheshire, the head of the Cheshire branch of the well-known Lancashire family.

Samuel Holland was a very original character, and many of his quaint remarks are to be found in Cousin Phillis. Sir Henry Holland, in his Recollections of My Past Life, says: “My grandfather (Samuel Holland) was the most perfect practical optimist I have ever known. He could never be got to complain of the change or distemperature of the seasons.”

Elizabeth Stevenson’s mother came from a truly religious home, and Ebenezer Holman fits her father’s character as a good type of the best Dissenters of that day, who believed in the Bible as the one guide for everything, even to the deciding of the children’s names.

Most of Samuel Holland’s large family rejoiced in Biblical names, which included Samuel, Peter, and Thomas for his sons, and Mary, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Abigail for his daughters. Mrs. Gaskell’s maternal grandmother was Ann Swinton (a name still kept in the Holland family), a descendant of John Swinton, of Nether Knutsford, who is mentioned in the history of Cheshire as one of the two charterers who owned Over Peover, near Knutsford, in 1666.

Sandlebridge Farm came into the possession of the Holland family through Mary Colthurst, who was the sole heiress to the property, which had been owned by her family since 1650, according to the history of Cheshire. Mary Colthurst married John Holland in 1718. The Cheshire branch was related to the Lancashire Hollands, one of whom, Jane, daughter of Edward Holland, married Thomas Cholmondeley, the son of Robert, Earl of Leinster, who died in 1667. Thus the maternal relatives of Elizabeth Stevenson have long held an honoured name in Lancashire and Cheshire.

Of the children reared in the Sandlebridge home, the best known was Peter Holland, whose reputation spread beyond the country town of Knutsford, and who left behind him letters, which show “a refinement and cultivation not common to country surgeons of his time.”

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell became the most widely known of the descendants of the Hollands.

The most distinguished living representative of the Holland family is the present Lord Knutsford, Henry Thurstan Holland, a great-grandson of Samuel Holland, whose father, Sir Henry Holland, was first cousin to Mrs. Gaskell.

Through her mother’s brother, Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was related to the Wedgwoods and the Darwins, as well as the Turners of Newcastle-on-Tyne and the Willets of Newcastle-under-Lyne.

Mrs. Gaskell’s aunt, the first wife of Dr. Peter Holland, was a niece of Josiah Wedgwood, her mother being sister to the famous inventor of the pottery which bears his name. Another sister of Josiah Wedgwood was the mother of the well-known naturalist, Charles Darwin, who enjoyed having a good novel read to him as a recreation, and is said to have blessed all novelists. He took a great interest in Mrs. Gaskell’s novels when they were first issued, and was concerned to find himself portrayed in her last and best book, Wives and Daughters. It is not generally known that Darwin was the model for Roger Hamley in Wives and Daughters. To read the early life of Darwin at Cambridge and his voyage in the Beagle, leads one to recognise where Mrs. Gaskell looked for her original in depicting Roger Hamley. Charles Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, whom Mrs. Gaskell knew, though she is not the prototype of Molly Gibson.

All these families — the Hollands, Wedgwoods, and the Darwins — were Unitarians, and they were all keen educationists, taking an intelligent interest in the training of their children.

The history of the different families reveals the beautiful religious spirit that pervaded their respective homes.

Another family with whom the Hollands were connected was the Turners, who gave several noted ministers for four generations to the Unitarian ministry. Mr. Turner, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, married Mary, daughter of Thomas Holland, for his first wife, and Jane Willet, a niece of Josiah Wedgwood, for his second. The Willets were another well-known Unitarian family.

Chapter 2 — Chelsea

No more interesting place could have been found than historic and literary Chelsea for the birthplace of a future novelist and biographer, for there is no spot in England which can lay claim to have been the home of so many great thinkers, writers, and artists as the old-world “little village of palaces.” The very word Chelsea is redolent of literature and art, and suggests the names of many who are enrolled on the scroll of fame: Sir Thomas More, Sir Hans Sloane, Carlyle, Rossetti, Kingsley, Maclise, Turner, Whistler, Leigh Hunt, and other lesser lights. Amongst the distinguished women who have lived in Chelsea are George Eliot, Mary Mitford, Mrs. Carlyle, Mary Somerville, and Mary Astell, a pioneer of the Women’s Rights movements. These and others have all combined to make Chelsea one of the great literary shrines to which pilgrims from all parts of the world come to pay homage. But in no list of Chelsea writers is Mrs. Gaskell’s name to be found, and there are few people outside her own family circle who know the house in which she was born. Whilst many of the London houses in which distinguished people have lived have a tablet bearing the name and date of occupancy, there is nothing to distinguish the house associated with Mrs. Gaskell’s birth. This is probably because so little is known of her early life.

The house in which she was born is now 93, Cheyne Walk. At one time it was known as 1, Belle Vue, but in 1810, when Mrs. Gaskell was born there, it was 12, Lindsey Row. It commands a fine view of the river and Battersea Bridge.

Lindsey Row was formed by two blocks of houses, which at one time consisted of two large detached mansions, one being called Lindsey House and the other Belle Vue Lodge.

There is sufficient history associated with Lindsey Row to fill a volume. The larger house was built originally by Sir Theodore de Mayerne, who is said to have been physician to four kings — two English and two French. The house was afterwards bought and rebuilt by Robert, Earl of Lindsey, about 1668 A.D.Hence the name.

In 1751, Count Zinzendorf purchased it for the Moravian Society, and came to reside in the house. He afterwards built a Moravian Chapel, and added a burial ground at the back, on the site of the old garden of Beaufort House — another historic mansion in the immediate neighbourhood. Failing to establish a colony, the Moravians, in 1770, sold the house and it was subsequently divided into five tenements. Jennings, the famous collector, lived in one of these at the time of Elizabeth Stevenson’s birth.

In another lived Joseph Bramah, the inventor of the lock which bears his name. John Martin, the painter, resided here in 1848, and there he was honoured by visits from the Prince Consort. In later days, Whistler, the painter, who perpetuated so many characteristic scenes of the riverside at Chelsea, lived in Lindsey Row.

Belle Vue Lodge, which formed part of Lindsey Row, was much smaller than Lindsey House. It was built in 1771 by the father of Charles Hachette, the well-known art collector, just after Lindsey House was divided into tenements. At a later date, Belle Vue Lodge was divided into three houses, varying in size, the middle house being much smaller than the other two.

It was in this house that Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born. It is a four-storied, red brick building, with small windows looking out over the Thames. It is said that she was born in the front bedroom on the second floor. Underneath this was the drawing-room, and on the ground floor were two small rooms. The front room was probably used as a dining-room, and the other would be convenient as a study for Mr. Stevenson. The front of the house and windows have been modernised, but otherwise the rooms are practically the same as they were in the days when the Stevensons lived there. After the roomy country house at Sandlebridge, this house, with its small rooms and no garden, would be a great contrast for Mrs. Stevenson.

Chelsea at this time was not part of London, and both rent and rates were very much lower than they are now, even allowing for the greater purchasing value of money at that time. William Stevenson’s house was rated at twenty pounds per annum.

In the Stevensons’ days, there were private gardens across the road, which several of the tenants rented, but Mr. Stevenson does not appear to have had one included with his house. There are still a few trees in front of the house, but the greater part of these gardens has been included in the Embankment. The large weeping willow, which was planted in 1776, once a feature of these gardens, has gone.

Here, from the fifteenth century, and possibly earlier, was the old ferry, replaced afterwards by the quaint wooden Battersea Bridge, beloved by artists, and familiar through the beautiful paintings by Turner, De Wint, and Whistler. It was just beyond this picturesque bend of the river that Turner came to live in a house which commanded a view of the setting sun towards the Surrey Hills, and gave him solace in his last lonely days.

Chelsea! What memories it would bring to Mrs. Gaskell when, in after years, she went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle at their home in Cheyne Row, which is some little distance from the Embankment, and must not be confused with Cheyne Walk. Mrs. Gaskell was born in a distinguished place and at an opportune time, the beginning of the nineteenth century, when so many eminent men and women came into the world. Yet how seldom is her name included in the list of distinguished people, whose centenaries, in some cases, have aroused such enthusiasm.

When the centenary of Richmond, the great portrait painter of the Victorian era, was commemorated in March, 1909, a list was given of the distinguished people whose portraits he had painted, and also of those with whom he had been most successful, but in neither list did Mrs. Gaskell’s name appear, although her portrait was one of his triumphs.

To be born in Royal Chelsea was to be “a native of no mean city,” and Mrs. Gaskell was always proud of her birthplace.

It was, as already stated, at the end of September, 1810, that Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born, and shortly afterwards her mother died. There was an elder child, John Stevenson, who afterwards became a sailor.

In one of her stories, Mrs. Gaskell writes: “My mother began to sink the day after I was born. My father sent to Carlisle [London] for doctors, and would have coined his heart’s blood into gold to save her, if that could have been; but it could not.

“My aunt Fanny used to say sometimes that she thought that Helen did not wish to live, and so just let herself die away without trying to take hold on life; but, when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all the doctors bade her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience with which she had acted through life. One of her last requests was to have Gregory laid in her bed by my side, and then she made him take hold of my little hand. Her husband came in while she was looking at us so; and, when he bent tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now, and seemed to gaze on us two... with a grave sort of kindliness, she looked up in his face and smiled... and such a sweet smile!... In an hour she was dead...

“My father would have been glad to return to his old mode of bachelor life, but what could he do with two little children? He needed a woman to take care of him, and who so fitting as his wife’s elder sister? So she had the charge of me from my birth; and for a time I was weakly, as was but natural, and she was always beside me, night and day, watching over me, and my father nearly as anxious as she...

“He needed something to love... and he took to me as, I fancy, he had taken to no human being before... I loved him back again right heartily. I loved all around me, I believe, for everybody was kind to me. After a time, I overcame my original weakliness of constitution, and was just a bonny, strong-looking lad, whom every passer-by noticed when my father took me with him to the nearest town.

“At home, I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the ‘young master’ of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antic, assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt not, on such a baby as I was.

“Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to him in deed and in action, but she did not often think about him; she had fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me, from the fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby.”

This all fits in with the few facts that are known of Elizabeth Stevenson’s birth, the death of her mother, and her adoption by her mother’s sister, who was two years older than Mrs. Stevenson. Gregory is the prototype of her brother, John Stevenson, and the baby, who figures as a boy in the story, is evidently intended for the novelist herself.

The father, sorrowing for the loss of his wife, and hardly knowing what was best to do, got a sympathetic neighbouring shopkeeper’s wife to take charge of his baby daughter until he could make further arrangements. Afterwards, his sister-in-law, Mrs. Lumb, of Knutsford, offered to take her sister’s baby and bring her up with her own little daughter, who was very delicate and a cripple. This aunt had a sad life. She married a Mr. Lumb, of Wakefield, and after her marriage discovered that her husband was insane, and she was obliged to live away from him. Returning to Sandlebridge for a time, she afterwards took the substantial house on the heath side of Knutsford, to which Elizabeth Stevenson was taken, and where she spent the first fifteen years of her life.

In adopting her niece, Mrs. Lumb cherished the hope that the baby would grow up to be a companion to her afflicted child, and would help to soothe the disappointment of her own married life. Thus, from the first, the little Elizabeth’s mission seems to have been to comfort and help those with whom she came in contact. Her cousin, the little cripple died, and the aunt was greatly comforted by having her sister’s child to take the place of her own daughter, and thus she became a second mother to the future novelist.

A journey from London to Knutsford in the early part of the nineteenth century was considered a great undertaking, and the difficulty of getting the young baby by stage-coach to her aunt’s home, in the month of November, when the days were short and the travelling slow, was a problem that faced the bereaved husband. However, a friend of the family, a Mrs. Whittington, offered to take charge of the little child and see her safely to Knutsford. Mrs. Lumb had her own delicate little girl to tend, or she would probably have paid a visit to Chelsea in order to fetch her niece.

This journey is said to have suggested the incident in Mary Barton, where the two grandfathers brought their motherless grand-daughter from London to Manchester by stage-coach. Whether this is so or not, the parallel is striking, and Mrs. Gaskell has given the details of the journey as only a mother, who had known the claims of a little one left motherless, could. In after years, children, especially babies, always found a warm place in Mrs. Gaskell’s heart, and she had ever a special solicitude for the bairns who had no mother, whatever their station in life might be.

To those who are familiar with the Lancashire dialect, as spoken by the working classes in Manchester, how natural and pathetic the story of the “babby’s” journey with her grandfathers reads, as told by Job Leigh to Mary Barton! He is retailing his experience of bringing his baby grand-daughter from London to Manchester in company with the paternal grandfather of the helpless orphan child.

“‘We’d the stout little babby to bring home. We’d not overmuch money left; but it were fine weather, and we thought we’d take th’ coach to Brummagem, and walk on... The babby had been fed afore we set out, and th’ coach moving kept it asleep, bless its little heart! But when th’ coach stopped for dinner it were awake, and crying for its pobbies...

“‘My heart ached for th’ little thing. It caught wi’ its wee mouth at our coat sleeves and at our mouths... Poor little wench! it wanted its mammy, as were lying cold in th’ grave.’”

The story of Elizabeth Stevenson’s journey from London to Knutsford would be told to her in later life by her aunt, and this so impressed itself on her memory, that it became an incident in the book which made her name.

In later life, Mrs. Gaskell was wont to refer to herself as “a born traveller,” and, like Ruskin, she had a lingering regret for the passing away of the stage-coach. Driving was always more congenial to her than a railway journey. It soothed her nerves and tended to stimulate thought. She was always glad to accompany her husband when he drove to different places in connection with his preaching engagements; and, when a little girl at Knutsford, she loved to drive in the dog-cart with her uncle, Dr. Peter Holland, when on his rounds.

In the autumn of 1865, a little while before her death, Mrs. Gaskell had planned a long driving tour through certain country districts of England, from Manchester to her last home at Holybourne. Relays of horses were to be ready at fixed places en route,but for some reason that tour was never made, although it had long been talked of. Her last ride from her home in Manchester to her new home in Hampshire was made by rail.

Mr. Stevenson, in the spring of 1811, left his house in Lindsey Row with its sad memories, and removed to a house just round the corner in Beaufort Row, now called Beaufort Street, the site of which had at one time been the garden to Beaufort House, another Chelsea mansion, with an interesting history.

Mr. Stevenson lived at No. 3, Beaufort Row, with his son and a housekeeper until 1814, when he married again. His second wife was Catherine, daughter of Alexander Thomson, postmaster of Savannah, Georgia.

If heredity is to count for anything, Mrs. Gaskell owed much of her literary ability to her father, for, in addition to his work as editor of the Scots Magazineand frequent contributions to the Edinburgh Review and The Retrospective Review, he published Remarks on the very Inferior Utility of Classical Learning, A System of Land Surveying, 1805 and 1810, General View of the Agriculture of Surrey, 1809, General View of the Agriculture of Dorset, 1812, Historical Sketch of Discovery, Navigation, and Commerce, 1824. He also contributed an article on Chivalry to Dr. Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia and wrote the Life of Caxton, in addition to other treatises, for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. For several years, too, he compiled the greater part of the Annual Register. Longman’s Obituary for 1830 stated: “The literary and scientific world has sustained a great loss in the death of Mr. Stevenson, a man remarkable for the stores of knowledge which he possessed, and for the simplicity and modesty by which his rare attainments were concealed... William Stevenson had the true spirit of a faithful historian, and, contrary to the practice too prevalent in those days, dived into original sources of information.”

In later years his daughter Elizabeth was noted for this same “true spirit,” and no trouble was considered too great in order to obtain accurate and authentic information. A letter before the writer, addressed to a high authority on the subject of her quest, shows her anxiety to be absolutely sure of her facts before committing them to paper. Mrs. Gaskell much enjoyed diving into “original sources of information,” and the harder the hunt for her particular point, the more she enjoyed tracing it to its source. Nothing daunted her, and she had a genius for eliciting information from what would seem to be unlikely sources. The intellectual side of her character was certainly inherited from her father, and her genius as a housekeeper, cook, and general home manager, proved her to be a worthy daughter of her mother, who had received an excellent domestic training in her home at Sandlebridge. One of Mrs. Gaskell’s daughters said that her mother was the best housekeeper and cook she had ever known, and those who knew the novelist in her Manchester days confirm this.

Some of Mrs. Gaskell’s admirers have claimed that characters and scenes in her novels and stories were all the creation of her brilliant imagination. It has been considered derogatory to her ability to suggest that Cranford and Knutsford are synonymous, and that Miss Jenkyns was Miss Holland. In this connection, one of Mrs. Gaskell’s daughters wrote to Edna Lyall, saying:

“My mother never meant to put real people into her stories, but even her children would sometimes recognise the characters, and say, ‘Oh! so-and-so is just like Mr. Blank,’ and she would reply, ‘So he is, but I never meant it for him.’”

Those who knew something of Mrs. Gaskell’s relatives and friends found it easy to recognise certain characters and places in her stories. These may have suggested themselves unconsciously to Mrs. Gaskell, who nevertheless painted them in such colours as to make them easily recognisable. The fact that some of her relatives were very original and somewhat eccentric has given additional interest to her stories.

But, as Charlotte Brontë said of Shirley, “You are not to suppose that any of the characters are intended as literary portraits. It would not suit the rules of art, nor of my own feelings... We only suffer reality to suggest never to dictate. The heroines are abstractions, and the heroes also. Qualities I have seen, loved, and admired, are here and there put in as decorative gems, to be preserved in that setting.”

So it was with Mrs. Gaskell, though in some cases, the characters portrayed the originals so well, that they were easily recognised. Some of her own relatives at Knutsford and elsewhere were not so well pleased with some of her stories for that reason; but, except the Cranford characters, few of the originals have been discovered by anyone outside her own family circle.

Chapter 3 — Knutsford (1810-1825)

It was to the little country town she was taken by stage-coach shortly after her mother’s death, and there she lived with her aunt, Mrs. Lumb, on the heath side for the first fifteen years of her life.

As a baby she was said to be frail and delicate, but in her aunt she found a second mother, who was devoted to her, especially after the death of her own crippled daughter, Marianne Lumb, who died shortly after Elizabeth Stevenson came to live with her. Mr. Peter Holland, the genial surgeon of Knutsford, took great interest in his little niece from Chelsea, and became the guardian of her health.

When she was about four years old, her father married again, and soon there was a half-brother and then a half-sister to take her place in the Chelsea home. She occasionally visited Chelsea, but from the little we know, these visits did not leave happy memories, and she was glad to get back to her home on the borders of the Knutsford heath.

Her own brother, John Stevenson, stayed with his father, and occasionally came over to Knutsford, much to the delight of his sister, though probably to the dismay of his aunt, for this only brother of Lily Stevenson — the name by which she came to be known among her relatives — was a mischievous, merry boy, who was fond of playing pranks much as Poor Peter did in Cranford.

Her childhood was quite uneventful; she was reared in a quiet, domesticated home, and was surrounded by religious influences. Mrs. Lumb, who had been brought up in the pious home at Sandlebridge, along with Elizabeth Stevenson’s mother, was a Dissenter and a member of the old Unitarian Church in Knutsford, to which Elizabeth was taken on Sundays when quite young, becoming a teacher in the Sunday School before she was fifteen, and taking the class of younger children in the school, for she was always devoted to little children. “I was never ambitious... but I thought I could manage a house (my mother used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little children — the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms to come to me; when I was a girl, I was half my leisure time nursing in the neighbouring cottages; but I don’t know how it was, when I grew sad and grave — which I did a year or two after this time — the little things drew back from me, and I am afraid I lost the knack, though I am just as fond of children as ever, and have a strange yearning at my heart whenever I see a mother with her baby in her arms.”

The “year or two after this time” refers to the two years which she spent at a boarding-school at Stratford-on-Avon. Afterwards she returned to Knutsford, sorrowing for the loss at sea of her only brother and anxious about her father’s health.

As a child, Elizabeth was highly strung and imaginative, having her heights and depths of joy and sorrow; whatever she experienced she felt keenly, being always over-sensitive. It was so in later life. Whatever pleasure came in her way she enjoyed to the full, and sorrow, either of her own or of those she loved, affected her acutely.

In My French Master she tells something of the quiet, even flow of her early life with her aunt, in the home which was really a small farm, for her aunt kept her pigs, and poultry, ducks and geese, and “set up her cow; a mark of respectability in Cranford, almost as decided as setting up a gig is among some people,” as the narrator of Cranford wrote.

Here, in this quiet home on the heath side, “where we fetched and carried and ran errands, and became rosy and dusty, and sang merry songs in the gaiety of our hearts,” Elizabeth Stevenson grew to be a beautiful girl, sometimes sad, at times wandering across the heath, delighting in solitary rambles and nature study; at other times enjoying the games and romps with her young friends and cousins in her own home or at her grandfather Holland’s farm.

Once when on a visit to Sandlebridge, whilst romping with these cousins, she rushed through one of the bedrooms and jumped out of the open window on to the lawn beneath, much to the alarm of her relatives, but fortunately she was not injured.

In after years, one who knew her says that she looked back upon her childhood’s days as having been rather lonely. Her strong imaginative powers caused her to picture a world where there was more life, more excitement, and probably more struggles.

Here, in Knutsford, everything moved with the regularity of clock-work. Every day had its fixed duties; baking days and washing days came round week by week, and there was little variety beyond the small tea-parties; hence the eagerness with which she looked forward to the change to boarding-school when she was about fifteen. Before the entrance of the railway into Knutsford in 1862, the town was very isolated. The visit of a travelling circus or of a conjuror, such as Signor Brunoni, of Cranford fame, was an event of great importance, and even to-day a travelling circus causes great excitement in the quiet country town.

Very little is known of Elizabeth Stevenson’s early education, but her aunt Lumb — whom she speaks of as her mother in her stories — had had an education befitting her position as the daughter of a well-to-do farmer and land agent. The Hollands, like most Unitarians of those days, were keen educationists. There was a “Ladies’ Seminary, to which all the tradespeople in Cranford sent their daughters,” but there is no record of Elizabeth Stevenson being a pupil at the school.

“I was brought up by old aunts and uncles,” writes Mrs. Gaskell, and they, along with her cousins, Miss Mary and Miss Lucy Holland — well-educated women, and much older than Elizabeth Stevenson — who lived at Church House, Knutsford, probably helped in supervising her lessons in her early days.

In My French Master, which is largely autobiographical, the novelist writes: “My mother undertook the greater part of our education. We helped her in her household cares during part of the morning; then there came an old-fashioned routine of lessons, such as she herself had learnt when a girl — Goldsmith’s History of England, Rollin’s Ancient History, Lindley Murray’s Grammar, and plenty of sewing and stitching.”

Elizabeth’s visits to her father at Chelsea were utilised for improving her education, for her father was always anxious that his daughter should be well equipped as far as learning went, and he it was probably who gave her the first lessons in modern languages.

In North and South, the novelist says of Margaret Hale, a more or less unconscious portrait of Elizabeth Stevenson herself, “Margaret looked round upon the nursery; the first room in that house with which she had become familiar nine years ago, when she was brought, all untamed from the forest, to share the home, the play, and the lessons of her cousin.” This may refer to her visits to her uncle, Mr. Swinton Holland, in Park Lane, London, or she may have shared the lessons of her half-sister, Catherine Stevenson, in her father’s house in Beaufort Row, Chelsea.

Evidently her early education was derived from various sources, but it proved to be sound and efficient, for when fifteen she was sufficiently advanced to take up French, Latin, and Italian at the boarding-school at Stratford-on-Avon, to which she was sent.

As a child, Elizabeth Stevenson was an omnivorous reader, delighting in poetry, and often committing her favourite poems to memory; her most difficult subject was said to be arithmetic, but she was fond of history and languages. She was very outspoken, and never hesitated to give her own opinion. Tins in after years was considered a fault, and more than once got her into trouble. “In my own home, whenever people had nothing else to do, they blamed me for want of discretion. Indiscretion was my bugbear fault. Everybody has a bugbear fault; a sort of standing characteristic — a pièce de résistance — for their friends to cut at; and, in general, they cut and come again.” It was this want of discretion in later days that led Mrs. Gaskell to publish all she heard of Bran well Brontë’s reckless conduct, a step which afterwards caused her so much anxiety, besides giving pain to others.

Elizabeth Stevenson became very proficient in the French language, and in after fife some of her happiest holidays were spent in France, often with her friend, Madame Mohl, in the Rue du Bac in Paris.

Fortunately, Knutsford was able to furnish an efficient French teacher — a Monsieur Rogier — who, during Elizabeth’s girlhood, was employed as a dancing master by the aristocratic families in that part of Cheshire.

Mrs. Gaskell owed much of her interest in French literature, her love of France, and her fluency in the language to her teacher, and in My French Master she refers to him under the name of M. de Chalabre.

“Those happy lessons! I remember them now, at a distance of more than fifty years... 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 mispronounce, and re-pronounce certain words; above all, the sweetness of temper which never varied, were such as I have never seen equalled.”

The novelist tells of M. de Chalabre’s aversion to dirty boots. “If our lessons with my mother were ended pretty early, she would say — ‘You have been good girls; now you may run to the high point in the clover-field, and see if M. de Chalabre is coming; and if he is, you may walk with him; but take care and give him the cleanest part of the path, for you know he does not like to dirty his boots.’

“This was all very well in theory; but, like many theories, the difficulty was to put it in practice. If we slipped to the side of the path, where the water lay longest, he bowed and retreated behind us to a still wetter place, leaving the clean part for us; yet when we got home, his polished boots would be without a speck, while our shoes were covered with mud.”

Mr. Green, in his history of Knutsford, also refers to the same subject:

“There was on the moor a very rare plant, to be found only in three or four places in the whole kingdom; it is the marsh saxifrage, and it grew on a very swampy part of the moor, on a plot of ground which did not exceed fifty square yards. The Count D’Artois (afterwards Charles X of France) had a rage for rare plants, and his floral passion was known to a French dancing-master then resident in Knutsford — Rogier was his name. The Professor waited on the Count, and together they set out exploring — ditch after ditch they successfully crossed — when, lo! one wide and deep, with the peculiarly unctuous mire of the locality, arrested their eager progress; Rogier, being light and a dancing-master, skilfully pirouetted across the abyss; but the Count, being heavy and not a dancingmaster, floundered in, and, like a second Falstaff, having an alacrity at sinking, experienced no little trouble to get again on firm ground.” Lady Ritchie says that the saxifrage was always Mrs. Gaskell’s favourite flower, and Sir Henry Holland refers to this rare plant being found near his early home at Knutsford.

The great statesman, William Pitt, who was a relative of the Cholmondeleys at Knutsford, received lessons in his youth from Monsieur Rogier, who remarked: “There was nothing whatever in Pitt’s dancing to indicate what a great man he would become.”

Knutsford has become the Gaskell shrine, and is the one that is usually associated with Mrs. Gaskell’s name, although she spent the greater part of her life in “Drumble,” the busy city of Manchester, sixteen miles away.

Not only was Knutsford the home of her childhood, but it was in the Knutsford Parish Church that she became the bride of the Rev. William Gaskell, a well-known Unitarian minister of Manchester, and it is in the quiet graveyard, around the ivy-covered Unitarian chapel at Knutsford, that she is buried.

It was this little country town that supplied her with most of the material for her writing, and it was in those novels which portray Knutsford scenes and characters that she put her best work, and these are her most popular stories. The name Knutsford has several suggested origins, the most commonly accepted being that it is derived from the Danish king, Knut or Canute. Tradition says that in 1017, King Canute, on his way to the north, forded the little stream — the Lily — which flowed through the village, and ever afterwards it was called Knutsford. Mrs. Gaskell took much trouble to get the correct origin of the word, and her theory was, that it was derived from the past participle of the verb “to knit,” which was formerly “knut,” and she thought the name was given because the two streams were joined or knit together in their passage through the town, for there is no actual foundation for the tradition that the Danish king was ever at Knutsford.

A local historian says that an old way of spelling Knutsford is Knottesford, and in a very old map of Cheshire, in the Chetham Library at Manchester, dated 1577, the name is written Knottesfrith, but in the Domesday Book it is known as Cunetsford, which supports the popular derivation of the word. The coat of arms of Knutsford is a figure of King Canute, sitting in front of the sea, bidding the waves retire, and the words underneath are “Canute’s Ford.” Whilst the Rev. Henry Green, minister of the Unitarian Chapel at Knutsford, was collecting his notes for his lectures on the town, Mrs. Gaskell gave him valuable assistance, writing many letters to get authentic information. Afterwards, when he decided to amplify these notes with a view to publication, she “gladly did what she could to help him.” Mr. Green went to Knutsford in the year 1827, just before Elizabeth Stevenson returned to Knutsford after she left the school at Stratford-on-Avon; but he did not give his lectures on “Knutsford: Its Traditions and History,” until 1858, publishing them with some additions in 1859; this was six years after Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford appeared, and it is very probable that he was prompted to write on Knutsford, because he found in Cranford so many historical facts connected with the little town, with which he had made himself quite familiar during his thirty years’ residence.

Knutsford is known in Mrs. Gaskell’s stories under six different names, and in each she gives a true picture of life in a country town in the early Victorian era.

Duncombe was the first name under which Knutsford appeared in fiction, in Mrs. Gaskell’s short story, Mr. Harrison’s Confessions, published as a serial in 1851, in a magazine known as The Ladies’ Companion.

This story, which deserves to be better known, is a sort of prelude to Cranford, for it has the same kindly humour and touching pathos, and it tells of some of the neighbours of the familiar friends who are so well known in Cranford.

Knutsford and Cranford have become quite synonymous, and it is said that the present Lord Knutsford jokingly said, when having to choose a title on his elevation to the peerage, “How would Lord Cranford of Knutsford sound?”

After an interval of twelve years, Mrs. Gaskell’s thoughts again turned to “her dear native town” for a subject. In 1863 she wrote Cousin Phillis, the best and most perfect of her short stories, in which Knutsford figures as “Eltham.”

Just as Mr. Harrison’s Confessions paved the way for Cranford, so Cousin Phillis was the forerunner of Wives and Daughters, Mrs. Gaskell’s last and longest story, for, without any interval, one succeeds the other, both depicting the same district, which in Wives and Daughters is known as Hollingford.

In Mr. Harrison’s Confessions, Mrs. Gaskell gives a very faithful description of the country town.