Introduction 1 the Early Years
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Notes Introduction 1 Letter to Elizabeth Gaskell, 9 July 1853, in T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington (eds), The Brontës: Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1932), IV, 76. Gaskell reproduced this letter in the Life, Vol. II, Chapter XIII. 2 Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Preface to Cranford (London: Macmillan, 1891), p. xxi. 3 Margaret J. Shaen (ed.), Memorials of Two Sisters: Susanna and Catherine Winkworth (London: Longman, 1908), p. 24. 4 She uses the term in her ‘Modern Novelists – Great and Small’, Blackwoods, LXXVII, No. CCCCLXXV, May 1855. 5 [George Henry Lewes], ‘A Gentle Hint to Writing Women’, Leader, 18 May 1850, p. 189. Lewes wrote under the pseudonym of ‘Vivian’ in this article. 6 George Henry Lewes, ‘The Lady Novelists’, Westminster Review, LVIII, No. CXIII, July 1852, p. 131. 7 Bessie Raynor Parkes, Essays on Women’s Work (London, 1865), p. 121. Quoted in E. K. Helsinger, R. L. Sheets and W. Veeder (eds), The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837–1883, 3 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), III, 3. 8 Standard, 14 October 1887. 9 Wise and Symington op. cit., III, 68. 10 Eliza Lynn Linton, My Literary Life (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899), p. 93. 11 Julia Kavanagh to George Smith, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 12 Margaret Oliphant to Alexander Macmillan, Berg Collection, New York Public Library. 1 The Early Years 1 J. A. V. Chapple, Elizabeth Gaskell: The Early Years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 283 and 287. 2 Mrs Ellis H. Chadwick, Mrs Gaskell: Homes, Haunts and Stories (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, new and revised edition, 1913), p. 94. 3 Chapple, p. 452. 4 Anne Thackerary Ritchie, Preface to Cranford (London: Macmillan, 1891), p. x. 5 Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (Oxford: World’s Classics, 1913), p. 203. 6 Chapple, p. 332. 7 Letter of 2 July 1827, Chapple, p. 287. 175 176 Notes 8 Chadwick, p. 3. The author reveals her gender bias, however, in her late claim that, while Gaskell inherited the ‘intellectual side of her character’ from her father, ‘her genius as a housekeeper, cook, and general home man- ager, proved her to be a worthy daughter of her mother’ (p. 15). 9 Chapple, p. 285. 10 J. A. V. Chapple and Anita Wilson (eds), Private Voices: the Diaries of Elizabeth Gaskell and Sophia Holland (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996). 11 Diary entry, 9 December 1837, Ibid., p. 63. 12 See Rev. George A. Payne, Mrs Gaskell and Knutsford, second edition, (Manchester: Clarkson & Griffiths, and London: Mackie & Co, 1905). It should also be noted, however, that there may well be elements drawn from Gaskell’s schoolday experiences in Warwickshire in these por- trayals. 13 Letter to John Ruskin, ?late February 1865, Letters, pp. 747–8. 14 James Martineau became the new professor of mental and moral philosophy at Manchester New College in 1840, when the institution reopened in Manchester. William was clerical secretary and lecturer at the College, and he and his wife were friends of the Martineaus. 15 Memorials, pp. 25–6. 16 The young man, Charles Bosanquet, whom Gaskell and her daughters met in Heidelberg in 1858 found that his Anglican parents disapproved of his acquaintance with Unitarians and refused to meet them. See letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 16 April 1861 (Letters, pp. 647–51). 17 These texts are mentioned as used in the lessons received from her mother by the narrator of ‘My French Master’, and could well have been in Aunt Lumb’s collection of books. 18 Chapple, p. 236. 19 See Eleanor L. Sewell (ed.), The Autobiography of Elizabeth M. Sewell, (London: Longman’s, 1907). 20 See G. E. Maxim, ‘Libraries and Reading in the context of the economic, political and social changes taking place in Manchester and the neighbour- ing mill towns, 1750–1850’, unpublished thesis, University of Sheffield, 1979. The MS of the diary is held at Manchester Public Library. 21 Elizabeth Sewell, for example, describes the misery of the first school she attended, where the teachers were strict to the point of cruelty; and Charlotte Brontë’s sufferings at Cowan Bridge, rehearsed in Jane Eyre, became known to a wider public when Gaskell foregrounded them in her Life of Brontë. Gaskell clearly considered that good schooling was an important element in a girl’s upbringing; she took a lot of trouble over choosing a school for Marianne, rejecting one that taught only ‘accom- plishments’ (see Letter to Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, 12 December (1850), Letters, pp. 137–8). 22 This description, written by Jane Whitehill, the editor of the Gaskell/Norton letters, is reproduced in Chapple, pp. 450–2. 23 Chapple, pp. 450–1. 24 Chapple, p. 451. 25 The book is held at the Harry Ransom Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, and makes fascinating reading. It also contains many engravings and pictorial illustrations. Notes 177 26 For details of Constance, see Chapple, pp. 252–4. Chapple notes the similari- ties between the tale of the girl in Thomson’s work and that in ‘Clopton House’, and also discusses Thomson’s literary career and output. 27 Although Gaskell says she has not managed to finish this text, it must have made an impact, since many years later she herself contemplated writing a biography of de Sévigné. See Letter to W. S. Williams, 1 February [?1862], Letters, pp. 675–6; and letter to George Smith, 18 March [?1862], Letters, p. 679. 2 The 1830s and 1840s: Marriage, Manchester and Literary Beginnings 1 See, for instance, Letters, pp. 34 and 45–6. 2 Letters and Memorials, II, 23. 3 Ibid., II, 391. 4 See letter to Lizzie Gaskell, July 1838, Letters, p. 20; and to Mary Howitt, 18 August 1838, Letters, p. 33. 5 See Terry Wyke, ‘The Culture of Self-Improvement: Real People in Mary Barton’, Gaskell Society Journal, Vol. 13, 1999, pp. 91–2. 6 For a history of the Portico, see Ann Brooks and Bryan Haworth, Portico Library: a History, (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing, 2000). 7 For details of this and other Victorian buildings in the city, see J. J. Parkinson- Bailey, Manchester: an Architectural History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 8 An article on ‘Emerson’s Lectures’ in Howitt’s Journal, 11 December 1847, has been attributed to Gaskell, but has never been verified. 9 Obituary in the Unitarian Herald. Quoted in J. A. V. Chapple and Anita Wilson (eds), Private Voices: the Diaries of Elizabeth Gaskell and Sophia Holland (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996), p. 107. 10 Mat Hompes, ‘Mrs E. C. Gaskell’, Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. CCLXXIX, No. 1976, 1895, p. 128. This article is a valuable source of information about Gaskell, but much of its material, being somewhat anecdotal and unauthen- ticated, cannot be considered wholly reliable. 11 Memorials, pp. 24–5. 12 Uglow, pp. 85–6. 13 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844–5), in Alasdair Clayre (ed.), Nature and Industrialization (Oxford: Oxford University Press and Open University, 1977), p. 123. 14 Jo Pryke, ‘Wales and the Welsh in Gaskell’s fiction: sex, sorrow and sense’, Gaskell Society Journal, Vol. 13, 1999, pp. 69–84. 15 Chapple, pp. 321–2. 16 The place itself and Gaskell’s account of it are variously referred to as ‘Clopton Hall’ and ‘Clopton House’. Ward, however, discussing Howitt’s publication of the piece, speaks of ‘ “Clopton Hall” – more properly Clopton House’, and entitles his reprint of the account ‘Clopton House’ (Knutsford, I, p. 502). 17 Mrs Chadwick (p. 84) claims that the discovery of bones in a chest and the mention of a lost bride in this piece have some reference to Samuel Rogers’ 178 Notes Ginevra, but there is no indication that Gaskell had ever read Rogers’ work. Edgar Allen Poe’s Gothic tales also come to mind here, but since his ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ did not appear in England until August 1840, it can- not be a direct source. Gaskell, however, probably knew Jane Austen’s parod- ic version of a similar incident in Northangar Abbey (1818). 18 ‘Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras’ was published as a separate booklet in 1850, and ‘The Sexton’s Hero’ and ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’ were reissued the same year as a contribution to a fete organized by Gaskell’s friend Mrs Davenport for the benefit of Macclesfield Public Baths and Wash-houses. 19 Elizabeth Gaskell, Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (Oxford: World’s Classics, 1913), p. 369. All other references will be to this edition and will be included in the text. 20 This good-natured frankness was noted by Gaskell herself as well as (less tol- erantly) by Margaret Hale in North and South. 21 As well as suggesting personal observation, this is also a consciously pictorial image, akin to contemporary engravings of the city seen from afar, as Alan Shelston has pointed out (Alan Shelston, ‘ “I would fain be in the country”: Elizabeth Gaskell and Manchester’, Portico Monograph No. 4, March 1996). It is in fact not possible to see Manchester from Dunham Park. Interestingly, too, the language used to describe the city here is almost identical to that used in Gaskell’s 1857 letter to Norton (Letters, p. 489). 22 Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (Oxford: World’s Classics, 1972), p. 161. 23 Gaskell had quite a lot of trouble with the title. Having first wanted to call it ‘John Barton’, she then suggested ‘A Manchester Love Story’, which was also rejected by her publisher. 24 Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), p. 9.