The World's Greatest Books - Volume 4 Part 30

_IV.--Years of Lamentation_

I was named in the year 1779 for the General a.s.sembly, and Mrs.

Balwhidder, by her continual thrift, having made our purse able to stand a shake against the wind, we resolved to go into Edinburgh in a creditable manner. We put up at Widow M'Vicar's, a relation to my first wife, a gawsy, furthy woman, taking great pleasure in hospitality. In short, everybody in Edinburgh was in a manner wearisome kind.

I was delighted and surprised to find Lord Eglesham at the levee, and he introduced me to his grace the Commissioner, who required me to preach before him. Fain would I have eschewed the honour that was thus thrust upon me; but both my wife and Mrs. M'Vicar were just lifted out of themselves at the thought. After the sermon the Commissioner complimented me on my apostolic earnestness, and Mrs. M'Vicar said I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of all this.

The year 1781 was one of dolour and tribulation, for Lord Eglesham was shot dead by a poaching exciseman, and Lady Macadam died of paralysis; but the year after was one of greater lamentation. Three brave young fellows belonging to the clachan, who had gone as soldiers in America, were killed in battle with the rebels, for which there was great grief.

Shortly after this the news came of a victory over the French fleet, and by the same post I got a letter from Mr. Howard, the mids.h.i.+pman, telling me that poor Charles had been mortally wounded in the action, and had afterwards died of his wounds.

Mrs. Malcolm heard the news of the victory through the steeple h.e.l.l being set a-ringing, and she came over to the manse in great anxiety.

When I saw her I could not speak, but looked at her in pity, and, the tears fleeing into my eyes, she guessed what had happened. After giving a deep and sore sigh, she inquired, "How did he behave? I hope well, for he was aye a gallant laddie!" And then she wept very bitterly. I gave her the letter, which she begged me to give to her to keep, saying, "It's all that I have left now of my pretty boy; but it is mair precious to me than the wealth of the Indies!"

_V.--Death of the Second Mrs. Balwhidder_

Some time after this a Mr. Cayenne, a man of crusty temper but good heart, and his family, American loyalists, settled among us. In the year 1788, a proposal came from Glasgow to build a cotton mill on the banks of the Brawl burn, a rapid stream which ran through the parish. Mr.

Cayenne took a part in the profit or loss of the concern, and the cotton mill and a new town was built, and the whole called Cayenneville.

Weavers of muslin were brought to the mill, and women to teach the la.s.sie bairns in our old clachan tambouring instead of hand-spinning.

Prosperity of fortune is like the golden hue of the evening cloud that delighteth the spirit and pa.s.seth away. In the month of February 1796, my second wife was gathered to the Lord. Her death was to me a great sorrow, for she was a most excellent wife, industrious to a degree. With her I had grown richer than any other minister in the presbytery.

I laid her by the side of my first love, Betty Lanshaw, and I inscribed her name upon the same headstone. Time had drained my poetical vein, and I have not yet been able to indite an epithet on her merits and virtues, for she had an eminent share of both. Above all, she was the mother of my children. She was not long deposited in her place of rest until things fell into amazing confusion, and I saw it would be necessary, as soon as decency would allow, for me to take another wife, both for a helpmate, and to tend me in my approaching infirmities.

I saw it would not do for me to look out for an overly young woman, nor yet would it do for one of my way to take an elderly maiden, ladies of that sort being liable to possess strong-set particularities. I therefore resolved that my choice should lie among widows of a discreet age, and I fixed my purpose on Mrs. Nugent, the relict of a professor in the University of Glasgow, both because she was a well-bred woman without any children, and because she was held in great estimation as a lady of Christian principle. And so we were married as soon as a twelve-month and a day had pa.s.sed from the death of the second Mrs.

Balwhidder; and neither of us have had occasion to rue the bargain.

_VI.--The Last Sermon_

Two things made 1799 a memorable year; the marriage of my daughter Janet with the Rev. Dr. Kittleword of Swappington, a match in every way commendable; and the death of Mrs. Malcolm. If ever there was a saint on earth she was surely one. She bore adversity with an honest pride; she toiled in the day of penury and affliction with thankfulness for her little earnings.

The year 1803 saw tempestuous times. Bonaparte gathered his host fornent the English coast, and the government at London were in terror of their lives for an invasion. All in the country saw that there was danger, and I was not backward in sounding the trumpet to battle. I delivered on Lord's Day a religious and political exhortation on the present posture of public affairs before a vast congregation of all ranks. The week following there were meetings of weavers and others, and volunteers were enrolled in defence of king and country.

In the course of the next four or five years many changes took place in the parish. The weavers and cotton-mill folk and seceders from my own kirk built a meeting-house in Cayenneville, where there had been for a while great suffering on account of the failure of the cotton-mill company. In the year 1809 the elders came in a body to the manse, and said that, seeing that I was now growing old, they thought they could not testify their respect for me in a better manner than by agreeing to get me a helper; and the next year several young ministers spared me from the necessity of preaching.

When it was known that I was to preach my last sermon on the last sabbath of 1810, everyone, including the seceders to the meeting-house, made it a point to be in the parish kirk, or to stand in the crowd that made a lane of reverence for me to pa.s.s from the kirk door to the back-yett of the manse. It was a moving discourse, and there were few dry eyes in the kirk that day; for my bidding them farewell was as when of old among the heathen an idol was taken away by the hand of the enemy. Shortly after, a deputation of the seceders, with their minister at their head, came to me and presented a server of silver in token of their esteem of my blameless life, and the charity I had practised towards the poor.

I am thankful that I have been spared with a sound mind to write this book to the end, having really no more to say, saving only to wish a blessing on all people from on high, where I soon hope to be, and to meet there all the old and long-departed sheep of my flock, especially the first and second Mrs. Balwhidders.

ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL

Cranford

Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Elizabeth C. Stevenson, was born in Chelsea, London, Sept. 29, 1810. She married a Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. Her first literary work was published anonymously, and met with a storm of mingled approval and disapproval. Charles d.i.c.kens invited her to contribute to his "Household Words," and it was in the pages of that famous periodical, at intervals between December 13, 1851, and May 21, 1853, that her charming sketches of social life in a little country town first appeared. In June, 1853, they were grouped together under the t.i.tle of "Cranford,"

meeting with wide approval, and have long taken rank as one of the accepted English cla.s.sics. The town which figures here as Cranford is understood to have been Knutsford, in Ches.h.i.+re, which still retains something of that old-world feeling and restfulness which Mrs. Gaskell embodied in the pages of her most engaging book. "Cranford" is probably the direct progenitor of many latter-day books of the cla.s.s to which the word "idyll" has been somewhat loosely applied. Its charm and freshness are unfading; it remains unique and unrivalled as a sympathetic and kindly humorous description of English provincial life. Mrs. Gaskell died in November, 1865.

_I.--Our Society_

On the first visit I paid to Cranford, after I had left it as a residence, I was astonished to find a man had settled there--a Captain Brown. In my time Cranford was in possession of the Amazons. If a married couple came to settle there, somehow the man always disappeared.

Either he was fairly frightened to death by being the only man at the evening parties, or he was accounted for by being with his regiment, his s.h.i.+p, or closely connected in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on the railroad.

I was naturally interested to learn what opinions Captain Brown had managed to win for himself in Cranford. So, with all the delicacy which the subject demanded, I made inquiries of my hostess, Miss Jenkyns. I was surprised to learn that Captain Brown not only was respected, but had even gained an extraordinary place of authority among the Cranford ladies. Of course, he had been forced to overcome great difficulties.

In the first place, the ladies of Cranford had moaned over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman. Then Captain Brown had started badly, very badly, by openly referring to his poverty. If he had whispered it to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being previously closed, his vulgarity--a tremendous word in Cranford--might have been forgiven. But he had published his poverty in the public street, in a loud military voice, alleging it as a reason for not taking a particular house.

In Cranford, too, where it was tacitly agreed to ignore that anyone with whom we a.s.sociated on terms of equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything they wished. Where, if we walked to and from a party, it was because the night was _so_ fine or the air _so_ refres.h.i.+ng, not because sedan-chairs were so expensive.

So the poor captain had been sent to Coventry. The ladies of Cranford had frozen him out, until the day when the cow, an Alderney cow, had broken the ice.

It happened like this. Miss Betsy Barker had an Alderney cow, which she looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the regulation short quarter of an hour's call--to stay longer was a breach of manners--without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney.

One day the cow fell into a lime-pit, and Cranford grieved over the spectacle of the poor beast being drawn out, having lost most of her hair, and looking naked, cold and miserable, in a bare skin. Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay, and was about to prepare a bath of oil for the sufferer, when Captain Brown called out: "Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my advice is, 'kill the poor creature at once.'" Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and in a few hours the whole town turned out to see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark-gray flannel.

Do you ever see cows dressed in gray flannel in London?

On that day was born the respect of the Cranford ladies for Captain Brown.

Soon after my arrival in Cranford, Miss Jenkyns gave a party in my honour, and recalling the old days when we had almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be "vulgar," I was curious to see what the ladies would do with Captain Brown.

The preparations were much as usual. Card-tables, with green baize tops, were set out by daylight, and towards four, when the evening closed in, we all stood dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hand, ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came. The china was delicate egg-sh.e.l.l; the old-fas.h.i.+oned silver glittered with polis.h.i.+ng; but the eatables were of the slightest description. While the trays were yet on the table, Captain Brown arrived with his two daughters, Miss Brown and Miss Jessie, the former with a sickly, pained, and careworn expression; the latter with a pretty, round, dimpled face, and the look of a child which will remain with her should she live to be a hundred.

I could see that the captain was a favourite with all the ladies present. Ruffled brows were smoothed and sharp voices hushed at his approach. He immediately and quietly a.s.sumed the man's place in the room; attended to everyone's wants, lessened the pretty maidservant's labour by waiting on empty cups and bread-and-b.u.t.terless ladies; and yet did it all in so easy and dignified a manner, and so much as if it were a matter of course for the strong to attend to the weak, that he was a true man throughout.

The party pa.s.sed off very well in spite of one or two little hitches.

One was Miss Jessie Brown's unguarded admission--_a propos_ of Shetland wool--that she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was a shopkeeper in Edinburgh. Miss Jenkyns tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough, for the honourable Mrs. Jamieson was sitting at the card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a shopkeeper's niece!

Then there was a slight breeze between Miss Jenkyns and Captain Brown over the relative merits of Dr. Johnson and the author of "Pickwick Papers"--then being published in parts--as writers of light and agreeable fiction. Captain Brown read an account of the "Swarry" which Sam Weller gave at Bath. Some of us laughed very heartily. _I_ did not dare, because I was staying in the house. At the conclusion Miss Jenkyns said to me, with mild dignity, "Fetch me 'Ra.s.selas,' my dear, out of the book-room."

After delivering one of the conversations between Ra.s.selas and Imlac in a majestic, high-pitched voice, Miss Jenkyns said, "I imagine I am now justified in my preference for Dr. Johnson over your Mr. Boz as a writer of fiction."

The captain said nothing, merely screwed his lips up and drummed on the table; but when Miss Jenkyns returned later to the charge and recommended the doctor's style to Captain Brown's favourite, the captain replied, "I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such pompous writing."

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront in a way of which the captain had not dreamed. How could he know that she and her friends looked upon epistolary writing as their forte, and that when in a letter they "seized the half-hour just previous to post-time to a.s.sure" their friends of this and that, they were using the doctor as a model?

As it was Miss Jenkyns refused to be mollified by Captain Brown's efforts later to beguile her into conversation on some more pleasing subject. She was inexorable.