Gothic Tales Read online

  4 [Elizabeth Gaskell], ‘Clopton Hall’, in William Howitt, Visits to Remarkable Places: Old Halls, Battle Fields, and Scenes of Striking Passages in English History and Poetry (London: Longman, Orme, Browne, Green, & Longmans, 1840), pp. 135–9.

  5 Cotton Mather Mills, Esq., ‘Life in Manchester. Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras’, Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress, 1 (June 1847), pp. 310–13, 334–6, 345–7; Cotton Mather Mills, Esq., ‘The Sexton’s Hero’, Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress, 2 (September 1847), pp. 149–52; Cotton Mather Mills, Esq., ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’, Howitt’s Journal of Literature and Popular Progress, 3 (January 1848), pp. 4–7. See also Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, p. 172, for further discussion of the implications of Gaskell’s pseudonym.

  6 Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, p. 259.

  7 Letters, no. 68, p. 106. In the same letter Gaskell asserts that ‘If Self is to be the end of exertions, those exertions are unholy, there is no doubt of that’ (p. 107). She seems to be suggesting, then, that the ‘cultivation’ of art for the sake of the artist, rather than for the sake of others, is not only inappropriate, but ‘unholy’. See also Letter no. 515, written to an unknown correspondent, dated 25 September [? 1862] where, in the midst of a bracing discussion of laundering techniques, Gaskell advises the would-be woman writer that ‘one should weigh well whether this pleasure [of writing] may not be obtained by the sacrifice of some duty’ (p. 694). Finally, it is also worth considering Gaskell’s summing-up of Charlotte Brontë’s priorities when she writes, in reference to Brontë’s marriage to Arthur Nicholls, ‘we lose all thought of the authoress in the timid and conscientious woman about to become a wife’ (The Life of Charlotte Brontë, p. 416).

  8 Uglow, ‘Introduction’, Curious, if True, p. ix.

  9 Letter to Eliza Fox, [? April 1850], in Letters, no. 69, p. 108.

  10 See, e.g., John Geoffrey Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention: A Study of Her Non-Biographic Works (Sussex: Linden Press, 1970), p. 119.

  11 For Gaskell’s love of gossip, see Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, pp. 48, 255, and 628 n. 4. Further evidence of Gaskell’s mixing of fact and fiction can be found in a letter to George Smith, 27 December [1859], in which she refers to her story ‘The Ghost in the Garden Room’, later renamed ‘The Crooked Branch’, as all true, as she heard it herself from Justice Erle and Tom Taylor in 1849 (Letters, no. 452, p. 596).

  12 William Maskell, Odds and Ends (London: James Toovey, 1872), p. 77. See also John Collinson, The History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, Collected from Authentick [sic] Records, 3 vols. (Bath: R. Crutwell, 1791), vol. 3, pp. 460–61; Collinson relates virtually the same story as Maskell, and Collinson’s words are then quoted in John E. Farbrother, Shepton Mallet: Notes on Its History, Ancient, Descriptive, and Natural (Shepton Mallet: Albert Byrt, 1859), p. 145. See also Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, pp. 119–20, for a discussion of the discrepancies between Maskell’s and Gaskell’s versions.

  13 See Samuel Butler, The Life and Letters of Samuel Butler, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1896), vol. 1, p. 91.

  14 See Henry Green, Knutsford: Its Traditions and History (Manchester: E. J. Norton, 1969), pp. 93–4. See also Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, pp. 120–21, for the difference between Green’s and Gaskell’s accounts.

  15 ‘A Disappearance’, Household Words, 3 (21 June 1851), pp. 305–6; ‘A Disappearance Cleared up’, Household Words, 4 (21 February 1852), pp. 513–14. Interestingly, the edition of ‘Disappearances’ which was published in Gaskell’s collection of stories, Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), concludes with a reprint of the first ‘Chips’ article which confirms the departure of the young man on a vessel, but does not mention his death (p. 55). The article reappears in The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 280, which is reprinted in the Appendix below.

  16 ‘Character-Murder’, Household Words, 19 (8 January 1859), pp. 139–40. See also Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, pp. 121–2, for a discussion of the ‘Chips’ articles.

  17 See Gaskell’s letter to Charles Eliot Norton, dated 9 March 1859, Letters, no. 418, pp. 534–6.

  18 See Green, Knutsford, pp. 119–21, for further discussion of the real-life Edward Higgins, where he also locates the legend in Thomas De Quincey’s Autobiographical Sketches (1834–53), and refers the reader to Higgins’s signed confession in Universal Museum and Complete Magazine, 3 (7 November 1767), pp. 580, 605.

  19 Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, p. 187.

  20 Charles W. Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusions in Salem, in 1692 (Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babcock, 1831), pp. 83–4.

  21 Ibid., pp. 126–9.

  22 See Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, p. 122.

  23 See Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention, p. 268, who challenges the idea that the story is based upon any historical origins, as there is no evidence to support the attempted assassination theory.

  24 For an in-depth reading of the power of ancestral curses in Gothic fiction, see Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 78–129.

  25 Gaskell made several trips to Heidelberg, the first one in 1841; see, for example, Letters, no. 15, pp. 40–45 and no. 485, pp. 647–50.

  26 ‘The law against witchcraft passed by Parliament in the year of Queen Elizabeth’s accession (1559 [actually 1558]) remained on our statute-book till 1736’ (A. W. Ward, The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 7, p. xx).

  27 Actually, there are many ways in which ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ can be seen as a ‘borrowing’ of Wuthering Heights, most notably in the scenes where the ghost of the little girl stands beseechingly at the window, trying to incite the real, live Rosamund out into the cold and snowy fells. Moreover, in an uncanny moment of her own literary doubling, Gaskell recounts a story in The Life of Charlotte Brontë that ‘made a deep impression on Charlotte’s mind’, but which eerily repeats the plot of her own short story, written five years before the biography. It tells of a Haworth woman who had been seduced by her brother-in-law, and became pregnant. Her outraged father locked her up in her room while ‘her elder sisters flouted at and scorned her’ (pp. 44, 45). Haworth legend reveals that the ghosts of the mother and her daughter continue to haunt the area.

  28 It is worth noting in this context Uglow’s point that ‘Lois the Witch’ invites the reader to criticize and reject the ‘masculine’ misreadings of the Old Testament by showing us the cruelties and prejudices inherent in the blind distortion of Scriptural readings (Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, p. 479).

  29 The families themselves can be seen as doubled constructs in this story; Owen’s domestic arrangement with Nest is the affectionate, mother-centred home which is the mirror opposite of the malicious, manipulative family created by Owen’s cruel stepmother, confusingly called ‘Mrs Owen’.

  30 The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson, 10 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), vol. 8, p. 4.

  31 Gaskell herself was raised by a ‘surrogate’ mother, her aunt Hannah Lumb, and surrounded by a community of women not too unlike those described in Cranford (1853). See Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, p. 31, and Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, ed. Elizabeth Porges Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

  FURTHER READING

  Although very little has been written on the stories of Elizabeth Gaskell, there are some excellent more general studies of her life and works, the best of which is Jenny Uglow's exemplary biography, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (London: Faber and Faber, 1993). Uglow examines all of the pieces in this collection in some degree, and provides a portrait of the writer in lively, well-researched d
etail. Patsy Stoneman's Elizabeth Gaskell (Sussex: Harvester, 1987) also discusses the stories, and Enid L. Duthie's The Themes of Elizabeth Gaskell (London: Macmillan, 1980) devotes a chapter to themes of ‘Mystery and Macabre’. Angus Easson's Elizabeth Gaskell (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) provides biographical information as well as discussions of each story, and there is a chapter on the short fiction in Arthur Pollard, Mrs Gaskell: Novelist and Biographer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965). Although unfortunately out of print, the Knutsford edition, The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, ed. A. W. Ward, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), provides relevant and useful historical information. Even more invaluable to the modern critic is John Geoffrey Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention: A Study of Her Non-Biographic Works (Sussex: Linden Press, 1970), which is exhaustively researched and includes relatively obscure background detail on all of Gaskell's works of fiction, short and long. Finally, no Gaskellian library is complete without The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. J. A. V. Chapple and A. Pollard (Manchester: Mandolin Press, 1997), which provides the clearest insight of all into the writer as written by herself.

  Apart from these full-length works, there are several articles written about some of the stories in this collection. For the publishing background to ‘The Old Nurse's Story’, it is worth consulting Annette B. Hopkins, ‘Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 9: 4 (1945–6), pp. 357–85. Also of interest is Carol A. Martin, ‘Gaskell's Ghosts: Truths in disguise’, Studies in the Novel, 21: 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 27–40. Janice K. Kirkland, ‘“Curious, If True”: Suggesting more’, and Peter Stiles, ‘Calvin's encounter with Cinderella: Vital antinomies in Elizabeth Gaskell's ”Curious, If True (1860)”’, in Gaskell Society Journal, 12 (1998), pp. 21–7 and 14–20, are particularly interesting. J. R. Watson, ‘“Round the Sofa”: Elizabeth Gaskell tells stories’, Yearbook of English Studies, 26 (1996), pp. 89–99, also provides useful readings.

  New work on the Gothic genre is continually being produced, but readers interested in the genre in particular would be well advised to consult the standard text in the field, David Punter's The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (London: Longman, 1980), which is still one of the best sources for a wide-ranging approach to the fiction. Also useful is Fred Botting, Gothic (London: Routledge, 1996), which introduces the history and conventions of the genre. Of especial interest is Maggie Kilgour's The Rise of the Gothic Novel (London: Routledge, 1995), an ambitious overview of the field which provides excellent, detailed readings of the most famous works of Gothic fiction, as well as some lesser-known examples. For an excellent study of Victorian Gothic fiction, see Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  NOTE ON THE TEXTS

  The stories and novellas in this collection are arranged chronologically, in order of their first published appearance in periodicals; the texts are taken from the last volume editions published in England during Elizabeth Gaskell's lifetime, over which she presumably exercised some level of authorial control (see headnotes to Notes for details).

  However, a close collation of the various editions reveals very few differences between the texts.

  p. 51 l. 31

  procession (for periodical's ‘possession’)

  p. 99 l. 18

  than (then)

  p. III l. 5

  of the slight (of slight)

  p. 113 ll. 26–7

  craving of desire (craving desire)

  p. 119 l. 11

  whit (wit)

  p. 267 l. 5

  woeful (woful)

  p. 330 l. 5

  re-enter (re-inter)

  The text has been emended to ‘It seemed’ (p. 299 1. 26), although both printed versions read ‘I seemed’. Spellings which were inconsistent and misleading have been modernized: sat (for sate), Madam (Madame), staunch (stanch), spurted (spirted), befall and befell (befal and befel). When spellings vary between stories, these have been left, with one exception: ‘grey’ and ‘gray’ appear frequently and vary between tales and within a tale, and ‘grey’ has been imposed throughout. Other textual changes and inconsistencies are discussed in the Notes.

  Since the pieces come from several sources, minor stylistic details have been housestyled to: single quotation marks, no stop after titles (e.g. Mr, Mrs, St), ‘iz’ spellings (e.g. recognize), spaced en-dashes (and em-dashes for 2em-dashes) and no comma in a series before the conjunction.

  Disappearances

  I am not in the habit of seeing the Household Words regularly; but a friend, who lately sent me some of the back numbers, recommended me to read ‘all the papers relating to the Detective and Protective Police’,1 which I accordingly did – not as the generality of readers have done, as they appeared week by week, or with pauses between, but consecutively, as a popular history of the Metropolitan Police; and, as I suppose it may also be considered, a history of the police force in every large town in England. When I had ended these papers, I did not feel disposed to read any others at that time, but preferred falling into a train of reverie and recollection.

  First of all I remembered, with a smile, the unexpected manner in which a relation of mine was discovered by an acquaintance, who had mislaid or forgotten Mr B.’s address. Now my dear cousin, Mr B., charming as he is in many points, has the little peculiarity of liking to change his lodgings once every three months on an average, which occasions some bewilderment to his country friends, who have no sooner learnt the 19, Belle Vue Road, Hampstead, than they have to take pains to forget that address, and to remember the 27½, Upper Brown Street, Camberwell; and so on, till I would rather learn a page of Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary,2 than try to remember the variety of directions which I have had to put on my letters to Mr B. during the last three years. Last summer it pleased him to remove to a beautiful village not ten miles out of London, where there is a railway station. Thither his friend sought him. (I do not now speak of the following scent there had been through three or four different lodgings, where Mr B. had been residing, before his country friend ascertained that he was now lodging at R—.) He spent the morning in making inquiries as to Mr B.’s whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen were lodging there for the summer, and neither butcher nor baker could inform him where Mr B. was staying; his letters were unknown at the post-office, which was accounted for by the circumstance of their always being directed to his office in town. At last the country friend sauntered back to the railway-office, and while he waited for the train he made inquiry, as a last resource, of the book-keeper at the station. ‘No, sir, I cannot tell you where Mr B. lodges – so many gentlemen go by the trains; but I have no doubt but that the person standing by that pillar can inform you.’ The individual to whom he directed the inquirer's attention had the appearance of a tradesman – respectable enough, yet with no pretensions to ‘gentility’, and had, apparently, no more urgent employment than lazily watching the passengers who came dropping in to the station. However, when he was spoken to, he answered civilly and promptly. ‘Mr B.? tall gentleman, with light hair? Yes, sir, I know Mr B. He lodges at No.8, Morton Villas – has done these three weeks or more; but you'll not find him there, sir, now. He went to town by the eleven o'clock train, and does not usually return until the half-past four train.’

  The country friend had no time to lose in returning to the village, to ascertain the truth of this statement. He thanked his informant, and said he would call on Mr B. at his office in town; but before he left R— station, he asked the book-keeper who the person was to whom he had referred him for information as to his friend's place of residence. ‘One of the Detective Police, sir,’ was the answer. I need hardly say that Mr B., not without a little surprise, confirmed the accuracy of the policeman's report in every particular.

  When I heard this anecdote of my cousin and his friend, I thought that there could be no more romances written on the s
ame kind of plot as Caleb Williams;3 the principal interest of which, to the superficial reader, consists in the alternation of hope and fear, that the hero may, or may not, escape his pursuer. It is long since I have read the story, and I forget the name of the offended and injured gentleman, whose privacy Caleb has invaded; but I know that his pursuit of Caleb – his detection of the various hiding-places of the latter – his following up of slight clues – all, in fact, depended upon his own energy, sagacity and perseverance. The interest was caused by the struggle of man against man; and the uncertainty as to which would ultimately be successful in his object; the unrelenting pursuer, or the ingenious Caleb, who seeks by every device to conceal himself. Now, in 1851, the offended master would set the Detective Police to work; there would be no doubt as to their success; the only question would be as to the time that would elapse before the hiding-place could be detected, and that could not be a question long. It is no longer a struggle between man and man, but between a vast organized machinery, and a weak, solitary individual; we have no hopes, no fears – only certainty. But if the materials of pursuit and evasion, as long as the chase is confined to England, are taken away from the store-house of the romancer, at any rate we can no more be haunted by the idea of the possibility of mysterious disappearances; and any one who has associated much with those who were alive at the end of the last century, can testify that there was some reason for such fears.