Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Page 4
BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM
The most extensive primary source of biographical information about Gaskell is to be found in J. A. V. Chapple's and Arthur Pollard's edition of The Letters of Mrs Gaskell (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1966), invaluably supplemented by Further Letters of Mrs Gaskell, edited by John Chapple and Alan Shelston (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000). Other sources, with helpful introductions, are Jane Whitehill's Letters of Mrs Gaskell and Charles Eliot Norton (Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim & New York, 1973) and J. A. V Chapple's and J. G. Sharps's Elizabeth Gaskell: a Portrait in Letters (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1980). Also relevant is ‘Letters Addressed to Mrs Gaskell by Celebrated Contemporaries, Now in the Possession of the John Rylands Library’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xix (1935).
More general earlier studies of Gaskell's life and work include Mrs Ellis H. [Esther Alice] Chadwick's Mrs Gaskell: Haunts, Homes, and Stories (Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London, 1910; revised edition, 1913), which contains valuable material but also a number of inaccuracies; G. DeWitt Sanders's Elizabeth Gaskell, Cornell Studies in English, XIV (Yale University Press, New Haven, and Oxford University Press, London, 1929) which includes a bibliography by C. S. Northrup; Elizabeth Haldane's Mrs Gaskell and Her Friends (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1930); Annette Hopkins's Elizabeth Gaskell: Her Life and Work (John Lehmann, London, 1952).
Recent biographical studies include Winifred Gérin's Elizabeth Gaskell: a Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1976); Jenny Uglow's admirable critical biography, Elizabeth Gaskell: a Habit of Stories (Faber & Faber, London, 1993); and John Chapple's meticulously researched study of Gaskell's pre-professional life, Elizabeth Gaskell: the Early Years (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1997). Shirley Foster's Elizabeth Gaskell: a Literary Life (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2002) contains some of the new material made available by the second volume of the letters.
The most notable recent critical studies include Arthur Pollard's Mrs Gaskell: Novelist and Biographer (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1965); Edgar Wright's Mrs Gaskell: the Basis for Reassessment (Oxford University Press, London, New York and Toronto, 1965); Graham Handley's Sylvia's Lovers (Mrs Gaskell), Notes on English Literature series (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1968); Wendy Craik's Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel (Methuen, London, 1975); Angus Easson's Elizabeth Gaskell (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley, 1979); Enid Duthie's The Themes of Elizabeth Gaskell (Macmillan, London, 1980); Coral Lansbury's Elizabeth Gaskell (Twayne, Boston, Mass., 1984); Patsy Stoneman's Elizabeth Gaskell (Harvester, Brighton, 1987; Felicia Bonaparte's The Gypsy Bachelor of Manchester: the Life of Mrs Gaskell's Demon (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1992); Hilary Schor's Scheherazade in the Market Place: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Novel (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1992); Jane Spencer's Elizabeth Gaskell (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1993); Terence Wright's Elizabeth Gaskell ‘We Are Not Angels’: Realism, Gender, Values (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1995); and Deidre D'Albertis's Dissembling Fictions: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social Text (St Martin's Press, New York, 1997).
For bibliographical information, J. G. Sharps's Mrs Gaskell's Observation and Invention: a Study of her Non-Biographic Works (Linden Press, Fontwell, 1970) and Walter E. Smith's Elizabeth Gaskell: a Bibliographical Catalogue of First and Early Editions 1848–1866 (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1998) are indispensable.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The text used here is that of the one-volume fourth edition, illustrated by George du Maurier and published in late 1863. As is explained in the notes and in Appendix 2, the second edition, published in March 1863, a month after the first, contained many revisions, mainly of a dialectal nature; the third edition replicated the second, but Gaskell made further revisions for the fourth after various topographical and historical inaccuracies had been pointed out to her. This last edition is therefore assumed to be the most authentic, the final version produced in Gaskell's lifetime and the one from which subsequent editions were printed. Its text has been reproduced here exactly, except for the correction of a few printer's errors and inconsistencies.
In the preparation of this current edition, the manuscript of the novel has also been consulted. The autograph manuscript of Sylvia's Lovers is held in the Special Collections of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, which acquired it in 1986. It comprises a handwritten copy of the novel itself, accompanied by a one-sheet ‘Directions to the Printer' (in Gaskell's hand), and is complete except for the following: pp. 1–46 of Volume I are missing; pp. 1–10 and 167–80 of Volume II are missing, as are two chapters, XIV and XV which exist in the printed three-volume editions; the last seven and a half chapters of Volume III are missing, the manuscript breaking off four pages before the end of Chapter IX. The division of chapters into volumes is also different here from that of the printed editions, reflecting Gaskell's offer to George Smith to make each volume more equable in size by moving ‘a little of the second [volume] into the first' (Letters, p. 678); thus the manuscript Volume I ends at Chapter XII, whereas the printed one ends at Chapter XIV having incorporated the first two chapters of the manuscript Volume II. The manuscript contains various corrections and insertions, some clearly in Gaskell's hand, others possibly editorial; the most notable of these variants or changes (a fascinating confirmation of the intermittent and piecemeal composition of the novel) appear in the notes.
“‘ I MAY DIE,’ HE SAID ‘FOR MY LIFE IS ENDED!’”
This book is dedicated to
MY DEAR HUSBAND
by her who best knows his value
CONTENTS
I Monkshaven
II Home from Greenland
III Buying a New Cloak
IV Philip Hepburn
V Story of the Press-gang
VI The Sailor's Funeral
VII Tête-à-Tête—The Will
VIII Attraction and Repulsion
IX The Specksioneer
X A Refractory Pupil
XI Visions of the Future
XII New Year's Fête
XIII Perplexities
XIV Partnership
XV A Difficult Question
XVI The Engagement
XVII Rejected Warnings
XVIII Eddy in Love's Current
XIX An Important Mission
XX Loved and Lost
XXI A Rejected Suitor
XXII Deepening Shadows
XXIII Retaliation
XXIV Brief Rejoicing
XXV Coming Troubles
XXVI A Dreary Vigil
XXVII Gloomy Days
XXVIII The Ordeal
XXIX Wedding Raiment
XXX Happy Days
XXXI Evil Omens
XXXII Rescued from the Waves
XXXIII An Apparition
XXXIV A Reckless Recruit
XXXV Things Unutterable
XXXVI Mysterious Tidings
XXXVII Bereavement
XXXVIII The Recognition
XXXIX Confidences
XL An Unexpected Messenger
XLI The Bedesman of St Sepulchre
XLII A Fable at Fault
XLIII The Unknown
XLIV First Words
XLV Saved and Lost
CHAPTER I
Monkshaven
On the north-eastern shores of England there is a town called Monkshaven,1 containing at the present day about fifteen thousand inhabitants. There were, however, but half the number at the end of the last century, and it was at that period that the events narrated in the following pages occurred.
Monkshaven was a name not unknown in the history of England, and traditions of its having been the landing-place of a throneless queen2 were current in the town. At that time there had been a fortified castle on the heights above it, the site of which was now occupied by a deserted manor-house; and at an even earlier date than the arrival of the queen, and coeval
with the most ancient remains of the castle, a great monastery had stood on those cliffs, overlooking the vast ocean that blended with the distant sky. Monkshaven itself was built by the side of the Dee, just where the river falls into the German Ocean.3 The principal street of the town ran parallel to the stream, and smaller lanes branched out of this, and straggled up the sides of the steep hill, between which and the river the houses were pent in. There was a bridge across the Dee, and consequently a Bridge Street running at right angles to the High Street;4 and on the south side of the stream there were a few houses of more pretension, around which lay gardens and fields. It was on this side of the town that the local aristocracy lived. And who were the great people of this small town? Not the younger branches of the county families that held hereditary state in their manor-houses on the wild bleak moors,5 that shut in Monkshaven almost as effectually on the land side as ever the waters did on the sea-board. No; these old families kept aloof from the unsavoury yet adventurous trade6 which brought wealth to generation after generation of certain families in Monkshaven.
The magnates of Monkshaven were those who had the largest number of ships engaged in the whaling-trade. Something like the following was the course of life with a Monkshaven lad of this class:—He was apprenticed as a sailor to one of the great shipowners—to his own father, possibly—along with twenty other boys, or, it might be, even more. During the summer months he and his fellow apprentices made voyages to the Greenland seas, returning with their cargoes in the early autumn; and employing the winter months in watching the preparation of the oil from the blubber in the melting-sheds, and learning navigation from some quaint but experienced teacher, half schoolmaster, half sailor, who seasoned his instructions by stirring narrations of the wild adventures of his youth. The house of the ship-owner to whom he was apprenticed was his home and that of his companions during the idle season between October and March. The domestic position of these boys varied according to the premium paid; some took rank with the sons of the family, others were considered as little better than servants. Yet once on board an equality prevailed, in which, if any claimed superiority, it was the bravest and brightest. After a certain number of voyages the Monkshaven lad would rise by degrees to be captain, and as such would have a share in the venture; all these profits, as well as all his savings, would go towards building a whaling vessel of his own, if he was not so fortunate as to be the child of a ship-owner. At the time of which I write, there was but little division of labour in the Monkshaven whale fishery. The same man might be the owner of six or seven ships, any one of which he himself was fitted by education and experience to command; the master of a score of apprentices, each of whom paid a pretty sufficient premium; and the proprietor of the melting-sheds into which his cargoes of blubber and whalebone were conveyed to be fitted for sale. It was no wonder that large fortunes were acquired by these ship-owners, nor that their houses on the south side of the river Dee were stately mansions, full of handsome and substantial furniture. It was also not surprising that the whole town had an amphibious appearance, to a degree unusual even in a seaport. Every one depended on the whale fishery, and almost every male inhabitant had been, or hoped to be, a sailor. Down by the river the smell was almost intolerable to any but Monkshaven people during certain seasons of the year; but on these unsavoury ‘staithes’7 the old men and children lounged for hours, almost as if they revelled in the odours of train-oil.
This is, perhaps, enough of a description of the town itself. I have said that the country for miles all around was moorland; high above the level of the sea towered the purple crags, whose summits were crowned with greensward that stole down the sides of the scaur8 a little way in grassy veins. Here and there a brook forced its way from the heights down to the sea, making its channel into a valley more or less broad in long process of time. And in the moorland hollows, as in these valleys, trees and underwood grew and flourished; so that, while on the bare swells of the high land you shivered at the waste desolation of the scenery, when you dropped into these wooded ‘bottoms' you were charmed with the nestling shelter which they gave. But above and around these rare and fertile vales there were moors for many a mile, here and there bleak enough, with the red freestone cropping out above the scanty herbage; then, perhaps, there was a brown tract of peat and bog, uncertain footing for the pedestrian who tried to make a short cut to his destination; then on the higher sandy soil there was the purple ling, or commonest species of heather growing in beautiful wild luxuriance. Tufts of fine elastic grass were occasionally to be found, on which the little black-faced sheep browsed; but either the scanty food, or their goat-like agility, kept them in a lean condition that did not promise much for the butcher, nor yet was their wool of a quality fine enough to make them profitable in that way to their owners. In such districts there is little population at the present day; there was much less in the last century, before agriculture was sufficiently scientific to have a chance of contending with such natural disqualifications as the moors presented, and when there were no facilities of railroads9 to bring sportsmen from a distance to enjoy the shooting season, and make an annual demand for accommodation.
There were old stone halls in the valleys; there were bare farmhouses to be seen on the moors at long distances apart, with small stacks of coarse poor hay, and almost larger stacks of turf for winter fuel in their farmyards. The cattle in the pasture fields belonging to these farms looked half starved; but somehow there was an odd, intelligent expression in their faces, as well as in those of the black-visaged sheep, which is seldom seen in the placidly stupid countenances of well-fed animals. All the fences were turf banks, with loose stones piled into walls on the top of these.
There was comparative fertility and luxuriance down below in the rare green dales. The narrow meadows stretching along the brookside seemed as though the cows could really satisfy their hunger in the deep rich grass; whereas on the higher lands the scanty herbage was hardly worth the fatigue of moving about in search of it. Even in these ‘bottoms' the piping sea-winds, following the current of the stream, stunted and cut low any trees; but still there was rich thick underwood, tangled and tied together with brambles, and brier-rose, and honeysuckle; and if the farmer in these comparatively happy valleys had had wife or daughter who cared for gardening, many a flower would have grown on the western or southern side of the rough stone house. But at that time gardening was not a popular art in any part of England; in the north it is not yet. Noblemen and gentlemen may have beautiful gardens; but farmers and day-labourers care little for them north of the Trent, which is all I can answer for. A few ‘berry' bushes, a black currant tree or two (the leaves to be used in heightening the flavour of tea, the fruit as medicinal for colds and sore throats), a potato ground (and this was not so common at the close of the last century as it is now), a cabbage bed, a bush of sage, and balm, and thyme, and marjoram, with possibly a rose tree, and ‘old man’10 growing in the midst; a little plot of small strong coarse onions, and perhaps some marigolds, the petals of which flavoured the salt-beef broth; such plants made up a well-furnished garden to a farmhouse at the time and place to which my story belongs. But for twenty miles inland there was no forgetting the sea, nor the sea-trade; refuse shellfish, sea-weed, the offal of the melting-houses, were the staple manure of the district; great ghastly whale-jaws, bleached bare and white, were the arches over the gate-posts to many a field or moorland stretch. Out of every family of several sons, however agricultural their position might be, one had gone to sea, and the mother looked wistfully seaward at the changes of the keen piping moorland winds. The holiday rambles were to the coast; no one cared to go inland to see aught, unless indeed it might be to the great annual horse-fairs11 held where the dreary land broke into habitation and cultivation.
Somehow in this country sea thoughts followed the thinker far inland; whereas in most other parts of the island, at five miles from the ocean, he has all but forgotten the existence of such an element as salt water. The
great Greenland trade of the coasting towns was the main and primary cause of this, no doubt. But there was also a dread and an irritation in every one's mind, at the time of which I write, in connection with the neighbouring sea.
Since the termination of the American war,12 there had been nothing to call for any unusual energy in manning the navy; and the grants required by Government for this purpose diminished with every year of peace. In 1792 this grant touched its minimum for many years. In 1793 the proceedings of the French had set Europe on fire, and the English were raging with anti-Gallican excitement, fomented into action by every expedient of the Crown and its Ministers. We had our ships; but where were our men? The Admiralty had, however, a ready remedy at hand, with ample precedent for its use, and with common (if not statute) law to sanction its application. They issued ‘press warrants,’ calling upon the civil power throughout the country to support their officers in the discharge of their duty. The sea-coast was divided into districts, under the charge of a captain in the navy, who again delegated sub-districts to lieutenants; and in this manner all homeward-bound vessels were watched and waited for, all ports were under supervision; and in a day, if need were, a large number of men could be added to the forces of his Majesty's navy. But if the Admiralty became urgent in their demands, they were also willing to be unscrupulous. Landsmen, if able-bodied, might soon be trained into good sailors; and once in the hold of the tender, which always awaited the success of the operations of the press-gang, it was difficult for such prisoners to bring evidence of the nature of their former occupations, especially when none had leisure to listen to such evidence, or were willing to believe it if they did listen, or would act upon it for the release of the captive if they had by possibility both listened and believed. Men were kidnapped,13 literally disappeared, and nothing was ever heard of them again. The street of a busy town was not safe from such press-gang captures, as Lord Thurlow14 could have told, after a certain walk he took about this time on Tower Hill, when he, the attorney-general of England, was impressed, when the Admiralty had its own peculiar ways of getting rid of tiresome besiegers and petitioners. Nor yet were lonely inland dwellers more secure; many a rustic went to a statute fair or ‘mop’,15 and never came home to tell of his hiring; many a stout young farmer vanished from his place by the hearth of his father, and was no more heard of by mother or lover; so great was the press for men to serve in the navy during the early years of the war with France, and after every great naval victory of that war.