The following is taken from the ‘Chips’ article in Household Words, 3 (21 June 1851), pp. 305–6, in response to ‘Disappearances’ about the medical student who had disappeared, rumoured to have been murdered. It was included in the first volume (Cheap) edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), p. 68, as well as in The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 280, from which the present text is taken.
A correspondent has favoured us with the sequel of the disappearance of the pupil of Dr G., who vanished from North Shields, in charge of certain potions he was entrusted with, very early one morning, to convey to a patient: – ‘Dr G.’s son married my sister, and the young man who disappeared was a pupil in the house. When he went out with the medicine, he was hardly dressed, having merely thrown on some clothes; and he went in slippers – which incidents induced the belief that he was made away with. After some months his family put on mourning; and the G.’s (very timid people) were so sure that he was murdered, that they wrote verses to his memory, and became sadly worn by terror. But, after a long time (I fancy, but am not sure, about a year and a half), came a letter from the young man, who was doing well in America. His explanation was, that a vessel was lying at the wharf about to sail in the morning, and the youth, who had long meditated evasion, thought it a good opportunity, and stepped on board, after leaving the medicine at the proper door. I spent some weeks at Dr G.’s after the occurrence; and very doleful we used to be about it. But the next time I went they were, naturally, very angry with the inconsiderate young man.’
Disappearances
First published in Household Words, 3 (7 June 1851), pp. 246–50. It was reprinted in the Cheap edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855). The present text is taken from The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 267–80. Both Lizzie Leigh and The Grey Woman also include the ‘Chips’ article from Household Words (see Appendix above).
1. Detective and Protective Police: See, for example, ‘The Modern Science of Thief-Taking’, Household Words, 2 (13 July 1850), pp. 368–72; ‘Detective Police Party’, Household Words, 2 (27 July 1850), pp. 409–14; and ‘Three “Detective” Anecdotes’, Household Words, 2 (14 September 1850), pp. 577–87.
2. Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary: John Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London: 1791).
3. Caleb Williams: Things as They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), by William Godwin (1756–1836), considered to be the first detective novel, is the story of a servant, Caleb Williams, who spies on his employer, is arrested on false charges and then escapes from jail, adopting different disguises along the way. He is pursued and eventually captured by the ‘offended and injured gentleman’ he had spied upon, Mr Falkland.
4. Old Whig Society… Duchess of Devonshire… Mrs Crewe… Miss Linley: The Whigs were a political party who dominated the eighteenth century, made up largely of aristocratic landowners and wealthier members of the middle class; opponents of George III and in favour of a limited constitutional monarchy, they supported politicians who agreed with their views. Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806), had a reputation for flamboyance and was much admired in fashionable circles; a political activist for the Whig party, she was also a leading member of the ‘Devonshire House Circle’, among whom she included Frances Anne Crewe (?–1818) and the noted singer Elizabeth Linley (1754–92). See Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: HarperCollins, 1998).
5. Dogberrys: Dogberry and Verges are foolish, overbearing constables in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
6. grazier: ‘One who grazes or feeds cattle for the market’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
7. Chambers's Journal: Popular nineteenth-century literary and scientific journal founded by Robert Chambers, of W. and R. Chambers publishing firm, in 1832. (Originally named Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)
8. Evangeline: Narrative poem (1847) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), about a bride's life-long search for her missing bridegroom.
9. untamed Katherine of a bride: The ‘shrewish’ bride of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.
10. electric telegraph: First patented by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1837; the Electric Telegraph Company was formed in Britain in 1845.
11. Hare and Burke horrors: William Burke (1792–1829), and William Hare (1790–c. 1860) murdered at least fifteen people in Edinburgh in the 1820s and sold their corpses to Dr Knox's School of Anatomy for £8 to £14 before they were arrested. Burke was then hanged to a chorus of ‘Burke him!’ from the crowds, while Hare turned King's evidence and was set at liberty in 1829.
12. the time of Richard the Third: 1483–5.
13. Gerard and Garratt: The editor of the Knutsford edition of Gaskell's works, A. W. Ward, places ‘Gerrard or Garrat Hall in Ancoats, distant about a mile from Mrs. Gaskell's own house in Plymouth Grove – an ancient hall formerly in the possession of a member of the Trafford family, for whom the boys of the Manchester Grammar School were bound to offer daily prayer as one of their benefactors. But the story of his successor to the property… I should be slow to seek to identify, although he is conjectured to have been a shoot of “a branch of the tree of the Lord of the Manor of Manchester”’, (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 2, p. xxix).
14. sedan-chair: Covered chair placed on two poles and borne along by human carriers; a fashionable mode of transportation from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century.
The Old Nurse's Story
First published in A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire in Household Words, Extra Christmas No. (December 1852), pp. 11–20. The story appeared with ten others, including two by Charles Dickens, who also provided the loosest of framing devices by which to link them. For more information, see Deborah A. Thomas, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Number of Household Words and All the Year Round, 1850–1867’, in The Dickensian, ed. Michael Slater, 69 (January 1973), pp. 163–72. ‘The Old Nurse's Story’ also appeared in the Cheap edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), and the later edition of Lizzie Leigh (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 113–43, from which the present text is taken.
1. Westmorland: Gaskell is very careful to set the location of this story; Hester comes from the county of Westmorland, now part of Cumbria, and Crosthwaite Church (p. 18) is just outside Keswick, also in Cumbria.
2. massy andirons: Heavy ornamented utensils to support burning wood in a fireplace.
3. Agnes: Gaskell could at times be a little careless with detail; Agnes's name switches rather abruptly to Bessy in the original before reverting to Agnes – this has been corrected.
4. the younger sister: A younger sister would have been addressed by her first name, prefixed by ‘Miss’, whereas the oldest sister would have been addressed by ‘Miss’, followed by her last name.
5. Flesh is grass: 1 Peter 1:24: ‘For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away’ (Authorized Version here and below).
6. gowk: ‘A fool: a half-witted person’ (OED).
7. maud: ‘A grey striped plaid worn by shepherds in the south of Scotland’ (OED).
8. wiling: Deceiving, inducing by craft or cunning (or wiles).
9. Pride will have a fall: Proverbs 16:18: ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’
10. the figure of a tall old man… clinging to her dress: Charles Dickens wrote a series of increasingly exasperated letters to Gaskell urging her to change the ending so that only the child Rosamund would see the ghostly figures, though everyone sees the phantom child. Gaskell, obviously, refused. See The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, Nina Burgis, 10 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), vol. 6, 6, 9 November and 1, 4, 6, 17 December 1852, pp. 799–801, 812, 815, 817, 822–3. See also Annette B. Hopkins, ‘Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 9:4 (1945–6), pp. 357–85.
The Squire's Story
First published in Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire, in Household Words, Extra Christmas No. (December 1853), pp. 19–25. Like ‘The Old Nurse's Story’, it appeared with seven others, one of which was Gaskell's ballad, ‘The Scholar's Story’. The article by Deborah A. Thomas, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Number of Household Words and All the Year Round, 1850–1867’, in The Dickensian, ed. Slater, also provides additional information about the group of stories. The lack of internal connections between them can be gauged by Dickens's comment to Gaskell when he solicited her contribution to his Christmas ‘round’ in a letter dated 19 September 1853: ‘It is supposed to be told by somebody at the Xmas Fireside, as before. And it need not be about Xmas and winter, and it need not have a moral, and it only needs to be done by you to be well done, and if you don't believe that – I can't help it’ (The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 7, p. 151). ‘The Squire's Story’ was published in the Cheap edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), and in Lizzie Leigh (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 252–74, which is used for the present text.
1. Barford: See note 3 to ‘Lois the Witch’.
2. a younger son: A younger son would not be entitled to inherit either the estate or the title of his family, but in this case the intervening heirs die.
3. gentlemen's seats: Houses in the country.
4. blue garters fringed with silver… Bickerstaff's ward: The garters are those worn by members of the Order of the Garter, the highest order of British knighthood; ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’ was the pseudonym of Richard Steele (1672–1729) when he started the periodical The Tatler in 1709. ‘Bickerstaff’ wrote several columns about his nephews, of whom he was guardian, and described how he planned to make his youngest nephew ‘a page to a great lady of my acquaintance’ (p. 73). See The Tatler, With Notes and a General Index (Philadelphia: J. J. Woodward, 1831), no. 30, 18 June 1709, pp. 72–3; no. 207, 5 August 1710, pp. 351–2.
5. to make… slab: From Shakespeare's Macbeth, IV.i.32. ‘Slab’ means semisolid.
6. Since the days of the Roman Emperor… horses: Emperor Caligula made his horse, Incitatus, priest and consul, and had him fed from an ivory manger and golden pail.
7. Doncaster or Newmarket: In South Yorkshire and Suffolk (home of the Jockey Club), respectively; both have traditions of racing which date back to the seventeenth century.
8. aut a huntsman aut nullus: ‘Either a huntsman or nothing’. Gaskell adapts the motto of Cesare Borgia (1476–1507), ‘Aut Caesar, aut nihil’, which means ‘Either King or nothing’.
9. hacked off the tail of the fox: Traditionally the hunter who is first in at the kill is allocated the right to the bush (tail) as a trophy.
10. Catherine, his only child: Evidence of Gaskell's occasional haste and carelessness, as we learn later in the paragraph that Sir Harry has a son, Nathaniel.
11. Gretna Green: Village just past the Scottish borders, famous as the place where eloping couples went to be married, as Scottish marriage laws until 1856 were much less restrictive than English.
12. collect his rents from… the south: Renting out real estate in London and other desirable areas became an increasingly common means of acquiring new wealth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
13. buffo: Comic, burlesque.
14. Dissenter: Protestant who separates herself or himself from the Church of England due to theological disagreement and goes to a chapel.
15. Mordecai: Cousin of Esther, the wife of King Ahasuerus, refused to bow to the king's favourite, Haman (Esther 3:1–6); the reference here seems to suggest someone who refuses to bow to any but legitimate authority.
16. stage-coaches: Coaches that conveyed people and parcels between two places, usually inns, on specified days of the week.
17. beginning to be enclosed: The Enclosure Acts divided and consolidated common grazing and agricultural grounds – ‘commons’ – into privately owned and managed farms by means of hedges or fences. Enclosure was at its height between 1750 and 1860, and was completed by the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to contributing to the decline of the yeoman class of independent farmers, as well as those farmers who did not own any land themselves, hedges made hunting on horseback more of a challenge.
18. masculine Griselda: In ‘The Clerk's Tale’ (c. 1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), ‘patient Griselda’ is subjected to cruel trials by her husband, the Marquis Walter, in order to test her obedience to, and love for, him.
19. Dogberries and Verges: See note 5 to ‘Disappearances’.
20. Gentleman's Magazine: Monthly literary periodical founded by Edward Cave under the pseudonym ‘Sylvanus Urban’ in 1731, including contributions from Samuel Johnson (see n. 14 to ‘Curious, if True’) and Charles Lamb.
21. Charity covereth a multitude of sins: 1 Peter 4:8: ‘And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.’
22. treacle posset: Hot drink intended as a remedy for colds, made with milk, treacle and lemon juice.
23. Philologus: Man of letters (Greek). Davis mentions writing a response to an essay, presumably written by ‘Philologus’, a pseudonym which could have been used by any number of contributors.
24. tapped a barrel of ginger wine… out of his pocket: Pierced the cask of ginger wine which is now fermented as a result of being ‘set by to work’. Higgins uses the paper to seal the join to prevent the spigot from leaking.
25. Church-and-King-and-down-with-the-Rump: Cavalier toast, originating between 1648 and 1653, by supporters of Charles I, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War. ‘Rump’ is a contemptuous reference to the remains of the Long Parliament which abolished the House of Lords, executed Charles I in 1649, abolished the monarchy and declared England a commonwealth under Cromwell. Dissenters such as Miss Pratt would have found such a toast particularly offensive because religious minorities such as Jews, Antinomians, Anabaptists and Presbyterians found a degree of tolerance under the Puritan Cromwell (though not Catholics, Levellers or Diggers).
26. Claude Duval: French highwayman (1643–70), who came to England during the Restoration; he was greatly noted for his favour among women, but was eventually hanged at Tyburn.
The Poor Clare
First published in Household Words, 14 (13, 20, 27 December 1856), pp. 510–15; 532–44; 559–65. It appeared in Round the Sofa and Other Tales (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1859), with an elaborate framing device that Gaskell wrote to link the stories. The device centres around visitors to an invalid, and the stories they tell to entertain each other, and each story is prefaced with an introduction to the speaker and closed. Since the frame was written mainly to accommodate the volume publication of the stories, it has been omitted from this edition, which is taken from the reprinting of Round the Sofa as My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales; Included in ‘Round the Sofa’ (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1861), pp. 259–307.
1. Starkey Manor-house: This story is an example of Gaskell's skilful interweaving of historical fact and local legend with her own fiction. According to John Geoffrey Sharps, ‘The principal seat of the Starkie family at the time of the tale was Huntroyde, built near Pendle Forest in the late sixteenth century…It seems that Mrs Gaskell used the Forest [of Bolland (modern spelling: Bowland)] as a location for the manor-house of a well-known Lancashire family; both the Forest and the name of Starkey (the spelling varies) would be recognized by her readers as authentic, yet their conjunction was of her own inventing’ (Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention: A Study of Her Non-Biographic Works (Sussex: Linden Press, 1970), p. 250). J. A. V. Chapple publishes a newly discovered letter from Gaskell to Caroline Davenport (later Lady Hatherton), 13 February 1857, which describes a story she heard from a M. Bonette, in the dowager Lady Elgin's Parisian home: it was apparently a true experience that happened to Bonette's acquaintance ‘in the South of France, as far as the Man's falling in love with a mysterious Girl at a watering place, & her telling him of the Fiendish Double by which she was haunted for some sin of her Father's’. Chapple concludes that Gaskell drew on Lancashire superstition for inspiration for her story (‘Elizabeth Gaskell's Morton Hall and The Poor Clare’, Brontë Society Transactions, 20: 1 (1990), p. 49). See also A. W. Ward (ed.), The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 5, p. xx.
2. after the Stuarts came in: James I, also known as James VI in Scotland (1566–1625), the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was the first Stuart king of England. He succeeded the childless Elizabeth I in 1603, and ruled until his death in 1625, after which he was succeeded by his son, Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649.
3. Heptarchy: Seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumberland.
4. James the Second… disastrous Irish campaign: James II (1633–1701), the last Roman Catholic king of Great Britain, took the throne in 1685 after the death of his brother, Charles II. James lost the throne in 1688 when William of Orange (William III) was invited to lead the English army against France, after which he and his wife, James's daughter, Mary II, took the throne. The Battle of the Boyne (July 1690) was part of James's attemptto regain the throne, but he lost. Protestants in Northern Ireland still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.
5. the court at St Germains: After losing his throne, James fled to exile in France, where he set up court at St Germains at the invitation of King Louis XIV.
6. divine right of kings: Belief originating from the medieval period that kings derived their authority from God, that they could demand unquestioning obedience from their subjects and that their actions were exempt from accountability to any earthly authority (such as Parliament). The fullest expression of this ideology is to be found in James I’s True Law of Free Monarchs (1598), but the theory was abandoned when James II lost his throne.
7. entail: Limitation on the settlement and the succession of property which forbids the property to be bequeathed at will by the possessor, or to be divided up unless this is expressly provided.
8. laws against the Papists: After the Protestant Reformation, a series of acts were imposed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forbidding Catholics to vote, own land, teach, publish or sell Catholic primers. The restrictions on property were not lifted until the Relief Act of 1778. The Test Act of 1673 excluded Catholics from holding public office, and was not formally repealed until the 1860s and 1870s, but in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act abolished many legal restrictions.
9. palmy days: Triumphant, flourishing time.
10. younger son: See note 2 to ‘The Squire's Story’.
11. Gray's Inn: Legal offices at the four Inns of Court in London, Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.
12. mulct: Extract payment, often by illegitimate or unscrupulous means.
13. Duke of Berwick's regiment: James Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick (1670–1734), illegitimate son of James II, was a leading officer in the French service and commanded an army of James's supporters.
14. Jacobite's: Supporter of the exiled James II and his male descendants after the Revolution of 1688.
15. grand tour: Wealthy young men traditionally travelled the Continent, visiting old and new sites of cultural interest, and meeting people of title and fashion.
16. Litany…Rose of Sharon: A litany is a formulaic, penitential prayer in lead/response form. For Rose of Sharon, see Song of Solomon 2:1: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.’
17. de vive voix: Questions asked during an oral examination.
18. wrinkle: Tip or hint.
19. unenclosed: See note 17 to ‘The Squire's Story’.
20. Sir Matthew Hale: (1609–76), As judge at the Bury St Edmunds assizes in 1661–2, Hale presided over the hearing in which two old women were indicted for witchcraft, with Sir Thomas Browne giving evidence for the prosecution. The reference to Hale here may be a little anachronistic, as he died well before this part of the story in the late 1710s.
21. Mr Defoe, who had written a book: ‘A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day After her Death, to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, the 8th of September 1705’ (1706), by Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), is considered to be the first modern ghost-story. Defoe is better known as the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
22. mutch: Woman's head-covering or cap.
23. witting: Knowing.
24. shriven: To have made confession and been absolved.
25. Poor Clare: The Convent of the Poor Clares was established by Clare Offreduccio de Favarone (1193–1253) in San Damiano, Italy, in 1212. This contemplative order is based upon the teachings and beliefs of Saint Francis of Assisi, and members of the enclosed community live according to the principles of poverty, sisterly communion and solitude. Ermentine of Bruges (1210–80) founded the Belgian communities of Poor Clares in Bruges, Ypres, Werken and Gand. Ward writes that the convent at Levenshulme, ‘within a quarter of an hour's walk from Plymouth Grove, Manchester’, could have been Gaskell's inspiration (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 5, p. xxi). In Gaskell's letter to Caroline Davenport, she describes hearing a history of the Poor Clares ‘from a Flemish Lady in (Belgium) Antwerp who had a sister – a poor Clare’ (Chapple, ‘Elizabeth Gaskell's Morton Hall, p. 49). Gaskell visited Antwerp in late 1841, which she describes in a letter to Elizabeth Holland, in The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. J. A. V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (Manchester: Mandolin Press, 1997), no. 15, p. 41. For Gaskell's ambiguous views on the conventual life, see her letter to Lady Kay Shuttleworth, 14 May 1850, in Letters, no. 72, pp. 116–18. Finally, for a brief mention of her husband's ‘abhorrence’ of Catholicism, see Gaskell's letter to W. W. Storey, 9 May 1862, in Letters, no. 507, p. 687.
26. Magdalen: Disciple of Christ, once a prostitute, but she reformed and was elevated to sainthood.
27. Antwerp… Austrians: Sharps places the action of this part of the story between ‘the end of the War of Spanish Succession and the beginning of that of the Austrian Succession’ (Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, p. 251). One result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13) was the handover of the Netherlands, including Antwerp, to the Austrian Habsburgs. Gaskell's story implies hostility and antagonism on the part of the Antwerp citizens against their foreign ‘masters’, the Austrians, with whom Gisborne has aligned himself.
28. Therefore, if thine enemy… drink: Romans 12:20. Interestingly, Gaskell does not provide the rest of the text which concludes: ‘for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’, which indicates perhaps her discomfort with the suggestion that to succour the enemy is actually to enrage him.
The Doom of the Griffiths
First published in the American periodical Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 16 (January 1858), pp. 220–34. It is the only story in this collection to be published in a periodical under Gaskell's own name. In England it appeared in Round the Sofa in 1859, and in My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales; Included in ‘Round the Sofa’ (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1861), pp. 186–217, from which the present text is taken.
1. Owen Glendower: Or Owain Glyndwr (c. 1354–c. 1416), the self-proclaimed Prince of Wales, led the last major attempt by a Welshman to overthrow English rule under Henry IV. He seized the crown in 1399 but was defeated twice by Henry IV’s son, who became Henry V. Glendower's efforts to establish Welsh statehood made him a national hero.
2. the Welsh prize poem at Oxford: A puzzling reference, as The Historical Register of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) lists no such prize. It is possible that Gaskell might have been thinking of the English essay by Starling William Day which won the Chancellor's Prize in 1853, entitled ‘Popular Poetry Considered as a Test of National Character’ (Oxford: T. and G. Shrimpton, 1853). Day mentions how ‘the Welsh bards chaunted to a warlike people the praises of “Owen swift and Owen strong”’ as an example of popular martial poetry.
3. ‘At my nativity…Hotspur's irreverent question in reply: From Shakespeare's I Henry IV (1598), III.i.13–14; Hotspur's reply is ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; / But will they come when you do call for them?’ III.i.52–3.
4. Sir David Gam…sought to murder Owen: David Gam (d. 1415), Welsh warrior, remained faithful to Henry IV during Owen's revolt, but rumours that he had plotted to assassinate Owen were unfounded. ‘As black a traitor as if he had been born in Builth’ refers to the ambush and assassination of Prince Llewelyn in 1282, who was beheaded in Buellt (now Builth Wells).
5. mark of Cain: Genesis 4.15: When Cain killed his brother Abel, he was driven from his home and feared retribution from everyone. ‘And the Lord said unto [Cain], Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.’ The ‘mark of Cain’, then, was actually a mark set upon him by God to protect him, but commonly means a brand to stigmatize him, as in Gaskell's story.
6. Merionethshire…Caernarvonshire: According to Worrall's Directory of North Wales, which was published twenty years after Gaskell's story, the geography in ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’ is very nearly precise, with a few minor spelling discrepancies. See John Worrall, Worrall's Directory of North Wales (Oldham: John Worrall, 1874), p. 239. Gaskell knew the area well, as she often holidayed in North Wales at her uncle Sam Holland's house in Plas Penrhyn, close to Tremadoc, Portmadoc and Cardigan Bay. Her ‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’ is also set in this area, as well as the scenes in Ruth where Ruth spends an idyllic few months in unmarried bliss with her seducer Bellingham. Jenny Uglow speculates that the plot of ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’ was ‘probably based on a local scandal heard at Plas Penrhyn’ (Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 122). Sadly, it was also at Portmadoc that Gaskell's nine-month-old son William died in 1845, a tragedy which is perhaps echoed in this story. Worrall's spells ‘Criccaeth’ as ‘Criccieth’, and ‘Ynysynhanarn’ is ‘Ynyscynhaiarn’.
7. dark: Harper's New Monthly Magazine (p. 221) reads ‘dank’, which may be more appropriate in this context.
8.Jesus College: Founded in 1571 ‘due to the initiative and generosity of Hugh Price, treasurer of St. David's Cathedral’, who ‘approached the Queen for her support’ (The Encyclopedia of Oxford, ed. Christopher Hibbert and Edward Hibbert (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 198). Historically the college attracted Welsh scholars (Price was Welsh).
9. Cambrian antiquities…Dr Pugh: I.e. Welsh manuscripts. William Owen Pughe (1759–1835), lexicographer and antiquary, produced the first Welsh–English dictionary (1793–1803) and edited the Cambrian Register, a publication of Welsh history and literature.
10. assizes: Periodic court sessions that travelled around to try civil and criminal cases.
11. Augharad: Should be spelled ‘Angharad’, a popular Welsh name.
12. incubus: Nightmare, or weight on the mind.
13. Oedipus Tyrannus: Also known as Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles (496–406 BC), the Greek tragedy of Oedipus who, learning from an oracle that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother, leaves his adoptive home in a futile effort to avoid his fate.
14. the Avenger: Ate, the goddess of vengeance in Greek mythology who was cast out of Olympus by Zeus, the king of the gods.
15. The March of the men of Harlech: A Welsh battle song commemorating the hold-out of Harlech Castle, the last stronghold to surrender to Yorkist forces in 1468, still sung today by Welsh male choirs.
16. cwrw: Beer.
17. mob-cap: Women's indoor cap worn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
18. triad: Literary device and common feature of the oral tradition dating back to bardic times, when collections or lists of figures and stories were traditionally grouped in threes as a mnemonic device. ‘Triads are a common feature of Welsh literature. The original ones (c. eighth–tenth centuries) were aides memoires for bardic tales, and presumably for their audiences… Typical examples are the “Three Great Treacheries”, “Three Red Ravagers”, “Three Frivolous Bards”. [Triads and] summaries of the poems survive, but only a very few of the poems themselves, specifically in the Mabinogion and a couple of other manuscripts. The Triadic form also continues to the present day, as in this example from “The Doom of the Griffiths”’ (my thanks to Kate Jones and Geoff Jones). The correct spelling of ‘ysgnbwr’ is ‘ysgubor’, ‘yd’ should be ‘pd’ and ‘ddiawd’ should be ‘ddiod’.
19. she was motherless: Gaskell was apparently very reserved about her feelings about the loss of her own mother, who died when she was a year old, but in a letter to George Hope, 13 February 1849, she wrote: ‘I think no one but one so unfortunate as to be early motherless can enter into the craving one has after the lost mother’ (Letters, no. 614, p. 797).
20. beds, closed up after the manner of the Welsh: ‘Besides low truckle beds, which could be pushed away under higher ones, additional beds might fold up into small cupboards’ (Richard Bebb, Welsh Country Furniture, Shire Album Series (Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 1994), p. 9).
21. fable of Undine: Undine was an elemental water-spirit written about by Paracelsus (Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim, 1493?–1541), who was created without a soul, but gained one when married to a mortal with whom she had a child.
22. yr buten: Should probably read ‘y butain’, meaning ‘the whore’ (Kate Jones and Geoff Jones).
23. mimming: Affected modesty or primness.
24. settle: A bench big enough for several people, similar to a movable church pew, with arms and back of varying heights.
25. bound up the jaw: To keep it from dropping in an undignified manner, a common practice in the care-taking of the dead.
26. the days of the Tudors: During the reigns of Henry VII–Elizabeth I (1485–1603).
Lois the Witch
First published in All the Year Round, 1 (8, 15, 22 October 1859), pp. 564–71; 587–97; 609–24. The present text is taken from Right at Last and Other Tales (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1860), pp. 85–240.
1. 1691: Gaskell explicitly opens her story more than six months before the witch-hunting epidemic began in Salem, Massachusetts, in February 1692; she based her historical background largely on the Unitarian minister of Boston, Charles W. Upham's Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusions in Salem, in 1692 (Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babcock, 1831). The character of Lois Barclay is most probably patterned after Rebecca Nurse, whose trial and execution for witchcraft are described by Upham (pp. 83–4). Additionally, A. W. Ward cites a visit Gaskell made to a country magistrate in Essex in the early 1850s, when her host ‘was hastily summoned to prevent an attempt to bring to her death an old woman in a neighbouring village, who was suspected by the inhabitants of being a witch. The incident… made a deep impression upon Mrs. Gaskell, who frequently made mention of it in her family’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxiii).
2. Puritan colonists of New England: 700 Puritans went to America in 1630 under the leadership of John Winthrop (1587/8–1649), to escape persecution in England, and settled in the Massachusetts Bay area in the hope of forming a fully self-governing republic. The Puritans sought to differentiate themselves from Anglicanism and from Catholicism, and based their beliefs on those of the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484–1531) and John Calvin (1509–64) of salvation by election (see note 3 to ‘Curious, if True’ below), with an emphasis on individual salvation through conversion. The Puritans valued a simplified church service, having abandoned The Book of Common Prayer, and exhibited a now-famous moral and religious earnestness which justified daily acts by reference to the Bible; they supported a rigid acceptance of doctrine, and a disapproval of ritual in worship as well as in daily life. Gaskell draws on all of these characteristics, most notably the moral severity and the continual references to Scripture, though she offers an implicit criticism in the way some Puritans misread and misinterpret biblical texts.
3. Barford…1661: Gaskell attended the Byerley sisters’ school at Barford House, 3 miles from Warwick (1821 – 4), before it moved to the Avonbank Mansion in Stratford-upon-Avon. See Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, pp. 35–6. Mr Barclay seems to be entirely Gaskell's own invention (Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, p. 319), as is Hickson.
4. jessamine: Jasmine.
5. the day of the later Stuarts: See note 4 to ‘The Poor Clare’.
6. withes: Branches twisted together to bind, tie or plait.
7. the Miller Lucy: The Lucys were a wealthy and well-established family in Warwickshire, dating back at least to the twelfth century. Their mill was in Stratford-upon-Avon and burned down in 1974.
8. Edgehill: The first battle in 1642, fought in Warwickshire, of the Civil War (see note 25 to ‘The Squire's Story’).
9. schismatic: Independent or Presbyterian who separated from the Church of England on the basis of doctrinal disagreement.
10. expedition against Canada: See Upham: ‘A recent expedition against Canada had exposed the colonies to the vengeance of France’ (Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 12).
11. loss of their charter: The Massachusetts State Charter was withdrawn by the English crown in 1685 as a reaction to Puritan refusal to comply with royal policies.
12. Prudence: There may be some confusion here, as Widow Smith's daughter, who is only mentioned once, bears the same name as Grace Hickson's youngest child.
13. wampum-beads: Wampum is a Native American (Indian) word for beads made from shells which served as currency between the Native Americans and Europeans and between Native American tribes.
14. Golden Wasser: Literally ‘Gold Water’, a spiced liquor or spirit containing chips of gold or gold-like pieces.
15. punken-pie…brandered: Pumpkin pie, a traditional New England dessert – dating back to at least the seventeenth century – eaten especially on Thanksgiving. To brander is to cook by broiling or grilling.
16. Elder Hawkins: Elders were chosen by elect members, and officers of the church also acted as officers of the state. The civil commonwealth functioned in accordance with the framework of the Church; hence, religious heresy was seen as a civil offence.
17. Jacobite: See note 14 to ‘The Poor Clare’.
18. Archbishop Laud: William Laud (1573 – 1645), Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I, an overzealous opponent of Calvinism who enforced the kinds of rituals and ceremonies, such as the wearing of surplices and bowing when Jesus’ name was mentioned, so antithetical to Puritan doctrine. Many Puritans emigrated to America expressly because of Laud's intolerance and his attempts to enforce conformity to Anglican forms of worship.
19. minute-men: Militia to be ready at a moment's notice in the battle against the Native Americans; Gaskell quotes here almost word for word from Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 11.
20. Lothrop's business: In 1675 Thomas Lothrop and his men were ambushed and killed by Native Americans.
21. Blasphemed custard through the nose: Hudibras (1663–78), by Samuel Butler (1612–80), Part I, Canto I, l. 230; a satirical reference to the nasal whine of devout sectarians, such as the Puritans.
22. Inasmuch as ye…unto me: Cf. Matthew 25:40: ‘And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’.
23. see what fruit their doctrine bore: Matthew 7:20: See ‘Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.’ This suggests perhaps an implicit criticism of some of the Puritans’ literal readings of the Bible which do not take account of subtleties of context and meaning.
24. like a roaring lion: See 1 Peter 5:8: ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’
25. the devil is painted…Indians painted: The Puritan colonists believed both the ‘Indians’ and the French were sent by evil spirits in disguise to distract the New Englanders’ attention away from their just battle with Satan (Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 254–5). ‘King Philip's War’ (1675–6) was fought over the white colonists’ expulsion of the Native Americans from their hunting-grounds and effectively destroyed the Native resistance effort in southern New England; however, as Gaskell's story demonstrates, the colonists’ hostility and suspicion increased and intensified when the Native Americans entered into the pay of the French, who were Roman Catholics, in their war against England in 1690.
26. the Evil One in desert places: See Matthew 4:1: ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.’
27. a good day's journey to Salem: Upham confirms that in the 1690s, travel from Boston to Salem ‘was then the fatiguing, adventurous and doubtful work of an entire day’ (Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 12).
28. meeting-house: Place of worship (as opposed to established churches).
29. folio: A very large bound volume.
30. house-place: ‘Common living-room in a farm-house or cottage’ (OED).
31. Wellcome: In All the Year Round (p. 569), the name is ‘Wellbeloved’.
32. took the oaths to Charles Stuart, and stuck by his living: Those ministers who refused to recant their faith and swear allegiance instead to the order of service prescribed by the established church under Charles II lost their livings. Referring to the king as ‘Charles Stuart’ is deliberately contemptuous, denying his legitimacy.
33. settle: See note 24 to ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’.
34. Manasseh: Popular given name among Puritans. Manasseh in the Bible was the first-born son of Joseph, and the name means ‘one who causes to forget’ (Genesis 41:51). Interestingly, Manasseh was also the wicked king of Judah: see 2 Kings 21:1–18.
35. a girl of twelve years old: There is some suggestion that Prudence Hickson may be patterned after Pearl, Hester Prynne's daughter in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), who is frequently described as ‘impish’, ‘naughty’ and ‘perverse’. See Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, ed. Nina Baym (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1987), pp. 134, 183, 195. See also Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, p. 310, for a discussion of the ways in which Hawthorne and Gaskell ‘shadowed’ each other in their social and literary lives.
36. Cotton Mather: (1663–1728), MA, Presbyterian minister of the Second Church of Boston, son of the Rector of Harvard and political emissary, Increase Mather (1639–1723). Religiously conservative, Mather was also philosophically and scientifically radical, and helped champion the fight for inoculation against smallpox. He is often blamed for the Salem witch trials, although he never actually attended one; however, he did not actively speak out against them, and published The Wonders of the Invisible World, an Account of the Tryals if Several Witches, Lately Executed in New-England (1693), though Magnalia Christi Americana (A History of the Wondeful Works of Christian America) (1702), which comments on the witch trials, is usually considered his best work.
37. in Zion…Aaron's beard: Cf. Psalm 133:1–3: ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even [the High Priest] Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments: As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.’
38. he saw a vision, or dreamed dreams: Acts 2:17: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’
39. Popish rubric: The Book of Common Prayer, first issued in 1549, and reissued in 1662, was the official liturgy of the Church of England. It was seen by the Puritans as Roman Catholic ‘popery’.
40. irreligious king: Charles II.
41. a very personal supplication for each: Puritans stressed simplicity of worship and extempore prayer that drew on everyday experience as well as Scriptural justification for inspiration, and which was freed from the ‘popish’ rituals.
42. Mr Tappau: Based on Revd Samuel Parris of Salem; his two daughters were said to be bewitched, on account of the fits they threw and the contortions of their faces and bodies. Parris's Native American servant was the first to be accused as a witch, and the hysteria which followed eventually led to Parris resigning from his situation and moving away. See Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 16–17, 20–22.
43. Mr Nolan: As Gaskell herself says later on, ‘Nolan’ is a disguised name. He is most probably based on Revd George Burroughs, who was accused of witchcraft, Upham suspects, because of his rivalry with Revd Parris (see note 42 above) (Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 55–6, 101–4).
44. Whom thou hatest I will hate: Reworking of Ruth 1:16, where Ruth vows to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, and accompany her on her return to her home in Judah: ‘And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’
45. Hallow-e'en: Also known as Nutcracker Night in some parts of England, according to Henry Green, where ‘Nuts are thrown into the fire by sweethearts and their swains, to learn something of the course of true love by the way the nuts burn or burst’ (Knutsford, Its Traditions and History (Manchester: E.J. Norton, 1969), pp. 82–3). Hallowe'en, renamed by the Christians as Eve of All Hallows, or All Saints, derives from a Celtic belief that on 31 October, witches and warlocks go abroad.
46. the Lord who taketh away can restore tenfold: See Job 1:21: ‘Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
47. even as Samuel did: See 1 Samuel 3:8: ‘And the Lord called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I: for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child.’
48. one of the elect: Like Manasseh's references to the ‘preordained course’, ‘the elect’ here refers to the Calvinist idea that certain spirits are chosen – ‘elected’ – by a merciful but ultimately unknowable God for salvation, and that this election by divine grace determines the course of a person's life. The Puritan investment in the combined forces of spiritual and state government is realized in the civic duties of the elect.
49. Hazael…great thing: Hazael is anointed by the prophet Elisha to be king of Syria: ‘And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, the Lord hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria’ (2 Kings 8:13).
50. Glory to Thee…this night: Bishop Thomas Ken, ‘Evening Hymn’, first published in A Manual of Prayers for the Use of Scolars of Winchester College (1674).
51. pipkin: Small earthenware cooking pot.
52. Gordion knot: Problem insoluble by usual methods, referring to an ingeniously tied knot faced by Alexander the Great, who simply cut it in half.
53. prelatist: Believer in heresy.
54. troth-plight: Engaged to be married.
55. mystery of Free-Will and Fore-Knowledge: Manasseh's Calvinist belief in election by divine grace later gives him justification to beg for mercy for Lois: if there is no free will, if God has ultimate control over the fates of mortals, then Lois deserves absolution for her sin of witchcraft.
56. general court: The sovereign body of the Massachusetts colony with some governing powers of the state.
57. herd of swine: See Matthew 8:32: Jesus met two people possessed by devils: ‘And he said unto them [the devils], Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.’
58. Master Matthew Hopkinson: Matthew Hopkins (?–1647) began witch-hunting in Essex in 1644, when he was paid to ride about on horseback looking for witches. Hopkins claimed he had found Satan's book which listed all English witches, and condemned twenty-four people before he was himself condemned and hanged as a witch.
59. pray for them that…persecute us: Cf. Matthew 5:44: ‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’
60. Newbury Falls: See Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 46–7, where he describes the confessions of a ‘diabolical meeting’ by these Falls, sworn to by fifty-five people who confessed to being witches.
61. cut off the right hand, and pluck out the right eye: Cf. Matthew 18:8–9: ‘Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off… And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.’
62. unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost: See Matthew 12:31–2: ‘Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.’
63. the shepherd David…his throne: 1 Samuel 16:14–23: When Saul was troubled by an evil spirit, David played his harp, ‘and the evil spirit departed from him’ (16:23). In this way, David is said to have controlled Saul's madness.
64. we are not to suffer witches in the land: See Exodus 22:18: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ See also Deuteronomy 18:10.
65. ‘and he blessed her unaware’: Cf. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner (1798), Il. 284–5: ‘A spring of love gushed from my heart / And I blessed them unaware!’
66. How beautiful is the land of Beulah: See Isaiah 62:4: Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken: neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.’ Also mentioned in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678–84), as the land of heavenly joy.
67. Geneva bands: Clerical collars similar to those worn by Calvin; to a nineteenth-century audience, they would have seemed distinctly low church.
68. Antony used…Caesar's murder: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, III.ii.73–4, where Antony turns the plebeians against Brutus with the lines beginning, ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…’
69. unbelieving Sadducees: Jewish group opposed to the Pharisees, seen as theologically conservative and rationalist.
70. Mr Goodwin: What follows is a brief summary of Cotton Mather's description of the ‘bewitching’ off our Goodwin children in his Late Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, Clearly Manifesting, Not only that there are Witches, but that Good Men (as well as others) may possibly have their Lives shortened by such evil Instruments of Satan (London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1691), pp. 1–53.
71. Assembly's Catechism: Puritan doctrine published in question-and-answer form.
72. Dr Martin Luther: Firm believer in witchcraft, Luther (1483–1546) claimed frequent interviews with the devil in which they disputed points of theology, and at one point threw his ink-pot at the devil in an effort to drive him off.
73. He knows not what he is saying: A version of Jesus’ words asking forgiveness for those who crucified him in Luke 23:34: ‘Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’
74. Mr Hathorn: John Hathorne (1641–1717), Salem magistrate cursed by one of his victims, and great-great-grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose change in name reflects the family's shame.
75. to tumble down like swine…the words of an eye-witness: Again, Gaskell neatly copies from Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 74, where he records the words of Jonathan Cary, an eyewitness to the trial, and accusations of those said to be bewitched by his wife. See also note 57 above.
76. balm in Gilead: See Jeremiah 8:22: ‘Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?’
77. to effect his mother's escape: Another nearly direct transcription from Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 35–6.
78. humble and solemn declaration of regret: For the declaration signed by the jurors, from which Gaskell copies nearly word for word, see Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 126–9.
79. Deut. xvii.6: ‘At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.’
80. 2 Kings xxiv.4: ‘And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon.’
81. Justice Sewall: Samuel Sewall (1652–1730), appointed by special commission to try the witchcraft cases in Salem, did observe a private day every year for ‘humiliation and prayer’, and fifty years after the trials his son arranged restitution for the relatives of the victims.
The Crooked Branch
First published as ‘The Ghost in the Garden Room’ in The Haunted House, All the Year Round, Extra Christmas No. (13 December 1859), pp. 31–48. This set of eight stories has the most consistent framing device written by Dickens, according to Harry Stone, ‘The Unknown Dickens: With a Sampling of Uncollected Writings’, Dickens Studies Annual, ed. Robert B. Partlow, Jr., 1 (London: Feffer and Simons, Inc., 1970), pp. 1–22. However, as it was Dickens who wrote the introductory paragraphs, they have been dropped from this edition. It appeared under the title ‘The Crooked Branch’ in Right at Last and Other Tales (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1860), pp. 241–318, from which the present text is taken.
1. bedgown…linsey: A bedgown is ‘a kind of jacket worn by women of the working class in the north’ (OED). ‘Linsey’ is a coarse linen fabric.
2. kine: Cows.
3. Benjamin: The character is very close to a fictional representation of the gloomy explanation Gaskell gives for the misbehaviour of Branwell Brontë, in her biography of Charlotte Brontë: ‘There are always peculiar trials in the life of an only boy in a family of girls. He is expected to act a part in life; to do, while they are only to be; and the necessity of their giving way to him in some things, is too often exaggerated into their giving way to him in all, and thus rendering him utterly selfish’ (The Life of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Elisabeth Jay (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1997), p. 138).
4. articled clerk: In this case, apprentice to an attorney.
5. settle: See note 24 to ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’.
6. creepie-stool: Low stool on three legs.
7. bound: Entered into apprenticeship.
8. crook: Chimney hook for hanging kettles or pots.
9. dunna wax up so: Don't flare up in this way.
10. King George: Presumably George IV (reigned 1820–30), as the story begins before Benjamin is born, in the early part of the century; by the time the story has reached this far, Benjamin is in his early 20s, which would place the action roughly coterminous with the reign of George IV.
11. welly: Nearly, almost.
12. go-cart: Bottomless framework on rollers which enables a child to move around without falling over.
13. turned bottom upwards: To bar the door, or to fence the child round for protection.
14. house-place: See note 30 to ‘Lois the Witch’.
15. clothes-presses: Movable chests or wardrobes for clothes.
16. mistaking guineas for shillings: A guinea was worth one pound, one shilling; there were twenty shillings to a pound.
17. troth-plight: See note 54 to ‘Lois the Witch’.
18. dree: Dreary.
19. brass farthing: Coin worth one-quarter of a nineteenth-century penny.
20. To Memory Dear: Traditionally part of an inscription on a tombstone.
21. a hole into a box: Presumably a pillarbox, or postbox, which would not be historically accurate here, since none was in use until 1852.
22. shippon: Cow-shed.
23. the Prodigal…his father's house: See Luke 15:11–32, for the famous parable of the younger son who asked for his inheritance early and left home; he squandered his wealth to the point where, destitute, he begged a stranger for food, and was sent out to eat with the swine. Repentant and humble, he returned to his father's house, where he was welcomed with love and the ‘fatted calf’.
24. redd up things a bit: Tidy up.
25. York Assizes: See note 10 to ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’.
26. shandry: ‘A light cart or trap on springs’ (OED).
27. the very stones… rise up: See Luke 19:40: Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem are singing his praises when some Pharisees ride up and ask Jesus to silence them. ‘And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.’
28. starving i’ the cold: Dying of cold.
Curious, if True
First published as one of the first stories in William Thackeray's new journal, Cornhill Magazine, 1 (February 1860), pp. 208–19. It was reprinted in The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 82–104, from which the present text is taken.
1. ‘Curious, if True’: Sources vary on the form of this title. In the Cornhill Magazine, the title has a comma. In The Grey Woman and Other Tales, the comma is omitted at the start of the story and in the table of contents, which are probably mistakes, as it appears in the headings at the top of every page. The Knutsford edition, The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, ed. Ward, vol. 7, omits the comma; Uglow has put it in Curious, if True: Strange Tales by Mrs Gaskell (London: Virago Press, 1995); and Angus Easson, who takes The Grey Woman as his copytext, has the title as ‘Curious, If True’, in Cousin Phillis and Other Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. xii. See also Introduction, pp. xvii–xviii.
2. Richard Whittingham, Esq.: Gaskell draws on a number of popular fairy-tale characters which would have been familiar to a nineteenth-century audience. In addition to Dick Whittington, for whom Whittingham is mistaken, they include, in order of appearance, Bluebeard's wife (‘Madame de Retz’), Cinderella, Poucet, Puss in Boots and his master, the Marquis of Carabas, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty (and later her Beast), the White Cat and Little Red Riding Hood. The fairy stories which Gaskell alluded to originate in Charles Perrault's Histoires et contes du temps passé (Amsterdam: Jacques Desbordes, 1708). ‘The White Cat’ can be found in Countess d'Aulnoy [Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville], Fairy Tales, trans. J. R. Planché (London: G. Routledge & Co., 1855), pp. 433–69. For the English retelling of all of these stories, see Andrew Lang (ed.), The Blue Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889), which also contains ‘The History of Jack the Giant-killer’ and ‘The History of Whittington’. Also worth consulting is Iona and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), which charts the first appearance of many of these stories in English.
3. sister of Calvin's: John Calvin (1509–64), French theologian and religious reformer. He systematized Protestant doctrine and greatly influenced Puritanism in particular.
4. table d'hôte: Buffet supper for hotel residents.
5. salle à manger: Dining-room.
6. Lochiel's grandchild… pillow of snow: In Tales of a Grandfather, Walter Scott describes how the clan chief Cameron of Lochiel found ‘one of his sons, or nephews’ using a snow-ball for a pillow: ‘Indignant at what he considered as a mark of effeminacy, he… kicked the snow-ball away from under the sleeper's head, exclaiming, – “Are you become so luxurious that you cannot sleep without a pillow?”’ (Tales of a Grandfather: History of Scotland, 7 vols., vol. 3, in The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1870), 30 vols., vol. 24, pp. 119–20).
7. patois: Dialect speech.
8. battants: Bars to secure a door.
9. Monsieur le Géanquilleur: Reference in ‘patois’ to Jack the Giant-killer.
10. flambeau: Candlestick or lighted torch.
11. Marché au Vendredi: Place in town where the Friday market is held.
12. Hôtel Cluny: In Paris, housing medieval collections and tapestries.
13. embonpoint: Stoutness.
14. Dr Johnson… retrace his steps: James Boswell recounts how Samuel Johnson's friend Dr [William] Adams described seeing Johnson (1709–84), essayist and biographer, when he was quite ill, ‘in a deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and restlessly walking from room to room’ (Life of Johnson, ed. Christopher Hibbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 127).
15. aristocratic ‘de’ for a prefix: Implying nobility or possession of a title, as does ‘von’ (p. 279).
16. chasseur: Huntsman or footman.
17. changes… since the days of Louis XVI: Louis XVI (1754–93) was guillotined by revolutionaries in Paris on charges of counterrevolution, and his execution was a public exhibition of the death of the monarchy. The ‘changes in the order of the peerage’ refer, presumably, to the emigration of many French nobles to England and other places following the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the resultant Terror; emigration intensified after Louis XVI's execution to avoid imprisonment and/or execution. See also note 7 to ‘The Grey Woman’ below.
18. eau sucré: Sugared water.
19. the emperor: Probably Napoleon III (1808–73), who was Emperor of France 1852–71.
20. vouée au blanc: Devoted to all things white.
21. John Bull? John Russell? John Bright: John Bull, a representative of the ‘typical’ Englishman, in common use in Gaskell's time. John Russell (1792–1878), the first Earl Russell, was Prime Minister 1846–52, and Foreign Minister in 1859. (He was elected Prime Minister again in 1865.) John Bright (1811–89), was an anti-Corn Law reformer, orator and Member of Parliament.
22. King Arthur's knights… help at England's need: See Elizabeth Gaskell's letter to Mary Howitt, [18 August 1838]: ‘And if you were on Alderley Edge, the hill between Cheshire and Derbyshire, could not I point out to you the very entrance to the cave where King Arthur and his knights lie sleeping in their golden armour till the day when England's peril shall summon them to her rescue’ (Letters, no. 12, p. 32).
23. Monsieur Sganarelle… ragaillardir l'affection: From the play by Molière, pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, The Reluctant Doctor (Le Médicin Malgré Lui) (1666), where Sganarelle defends his beating of his wife. Janice K. Kirkland translates: ‘There are little things which are from time to time necessary in love; and five or six blows with a sword between people who love each other can only revive their affection.’ She goes on to add that Gaskell has actually ‘changed one word in Molière's original lines: Sganarelle says “coups de baton” or blows with a stick, meaning wife-beating; Gaskell changes it to blows with a sword or rapier, meaning wife-murder’ (“Curious, if True”: Suggesting more’, Gaskell Society Journal, 12 (1998), p. 26).
24. reform bill, or the millennium: Many reform bills were introduced into Parliament between 1832 and 1870, all with the intention of increasing the franchise and extending similar political liberties, but none was passed until 1870, five years after Gaskell died. Whittingham's reference to the ‘millennium’ may be an ironic comment that such civil liberties could only occur in a never-never land of political and social equality, in contrast with which this magical château is much more grounded in reality.
25. Madame la Féemarraine: Fairy Godmother. Ward suggests that ‘the fairy-godmother who has assembled the ghostly evening-party in the enchanted chateau for our delectation, is our old friend Madame d'Aulnoy’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxvi).
The Grey Woman
First published in All the Year Round, 4 (5, 12, 19 January 1861), pp. 300–306; 321–8; 347–55. The present text is taken from The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 5–81.
1. Heidelberg: See Gaskell's letter to Elizabeth Holland, written some time in 1841, in which she describes a trip she made to Heidelberg, including a detailed description of the Neckar Valley and a ‘noble castle’, perhaps the inspiration for the château Les Rochers (Letters, no. 15, p. 42). See also Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, pp. 335–6; he suggests that the story is probably based on Gaskell's 1841 trip, rather than those she made in 1858 and 1860.
2. old Palatinate days: The Palatinate refers to geographical divisions of Germany into the Upper and Lower Palatinate, later absorbed into Bavaria and other nearby states. The ‘old Palatinate’ probably means the time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, at which point the lands on the west side of the Rhine were incorporated into France from 1801 to 1814. It may be during this annexation that Herr Scherer's mills were burned down. Ward places the main action of Anna Scherer's experiences in ‘that part of France which lies on the left bank of the Middle Rhine, and south of the Moselle’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxviii).
3. Utrecht velvet: Worsted, mohair or cotton plush used to upholster furniture.
4. sins of the fathers are visited on their children: Numbers 14:18: ‘The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’ This is a key Gothic theme, that children are ‘cursed’ by their ancestor's crimes, occurring in such novels as Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1860) – as well as ‘The Poor Clare’ above.
5. Schöne Müllerin: Perhaps a reference to Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller), a song cycle (1823) by Franz Peter Schubert, but surely an odd one, since Anna's story takes place nearly thirty-five years before it was written.
6. pottage: Meat and vegetables boiled down to the consistency of thick soup.
7. ’89…events taking place at Paris: The start of the French Revolution, when the middle class established a parliamentary republic, which spread to become a popular revolt against an aristocratic, feudal society. The Bastille, prison and strategic fortress, was seized by the labouring population who effectively deposed Louis XVI and eventually abolished the monarchy. Anna comments at the end of her story on how her daughter's lover changed his name to sound less aristocratic, an indication of how out of control the revolutionaries and the Terror had become by the mid 1790s.
8. angel Gabriel: One of the archangels, according to Luke 1:26–38, who appeared to Mary to tell her she was to conceive Jesus: ‘And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God’ (1:30). Obviously, in this context, this is an ironic comparison with M. de la Tourelle.
9. Lefebvre: An example of Gaskell's economy with names: this surname also occurs in her ‘Traits and Stories of the Huguenots’, and, as Le Febvre, in My Lady Ludlow.
10. Les Rochers: Ward suggests that the bandits’ hideout could be a re-working of the castle of Schmittburg, inhabited by ‘Schinderhannes’ and his gang (see below, note 15), located near the site of sheer rock (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxx).
11. corbeille de mariage: Wedding presents.
12. chauffeurs: ‘Brigands who terrorised the left bank of the Rhine during the first years of the French Revolution’ (Enid L. Duthie, The Themes of Elizabeth Gaskell (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 148).
13. farrier's: One who shoes horses and treats their diseases.
14. galette: ‘A broad thin cake of bread or pastry’ (OED).
15. Schinderhannes: Ward suggests that Gaskell's character is based on the real-life Johannes Bückler (1778-1803), known as Schinderhannes (he had been an apprentice to an executioner (Schinder)), who chose a life of felony instead, including the robbery of a Marquis La Ferrière, which led to his eventual execution (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, pp. xxix–xxxi).
16. salle-à-manger: Dining-room.
17. Numéro Un. Ainsi les Chauffeurs se vengent: Number One. Thus the Chauffeurs avenge themselves.
18. sage-femme: Midwife.
19. Lutherans: There is some confusion, as Anna initially advises her daughter to consult the priest Schriesheim, which contrasts oddly here with her insistence that she is a Lutheran (unlike her husband).