Cranford Page #17

Cranford is an episodic novel by the English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It first appeared in instalments in the magazine Household Words, then was published with minor revisions as a book with the title Cranford in 1853.

• Novel

								

evident, from the tenor of what was said, that franks were in great
request, and were even used as a means of paying debts by needy members
of Parliament.  The rector sealed his epistles with an immense coat of
arms, and showed by the care with which he had performed this ceremony
that he expected they should be cut open, not broken by any thoughtless
or impatient hand.  Now, Miss Jenkyns’s letters were of a later date in
form and writing.  She wrote on the square sheet which we have learned to
call old-fashioned.  Her hand was admirably calculated, together with her
use of many-syllabled words, to fill up a sheet, and then came the pride
and delight of crossing.  Poor Miss Matty got sadly puzzled with this,
for the words gathered size like snowballs, and towards the end of her
letter Miss Jenkyns used to become quite sesquipedalian.  In one to her
father, slightly theological and controversial in its tone, she had
spoken of Herod, Tetrarch of Idumea.  Miss Matty read it “Herod Petrarch
of Etruria,” and was just as well pleased as if she had been right.

I can’t quite remember the date, but I think it was in 1805 that Miss
Jenkyns wrote the longest series of letters—on occasion of her absence on
a visit to some friends near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  These friends were
intimate with the commandant of the garrison there, and heard from him of
all the preparations that were being made to repel the invasion of
Buonaparte, which some people imagined might take place at the mouth of
the Tyne.  Miss Jenkyns was evidently very much alarmed; and the first
part of her letters was often written in pretty intelligible English,
conveying particulars of the preparations which were made in the family
with whom she was residing against the dreaded event; the bundles of
clothes that were packed up ready for a flight to Alston Moor (a wild
hilly piece of ground between Northumberland and Cumberland); the signal
that was to be given for this flight, and for the simultaneous turning
out of the volunteers under arms—which said signal was to consist (if I
remember rightly) in ringing the church bells in a particular and ominous
manner.  One day, when Miss Jenkyns and her hosts were at a dinner-party
in Newcastle, this warning summons was actually given (not a very wise
proceeding, if there be any truth in the moral attached to the fable of
the Boy and the Wolf; but so it was), and Miss Jenkyns, hardly recovered
from her fright, wrote the next day to describe the sound, the breathless
shock, the hurry and alarm; and then, taking breath, she added, “How
trivial, my dear father, do all our apprehensions of the last evening
appear, at the present moment, to calm and enquiring minds!”  And here
Miss Matty broke in with—

“But, indeed, my dear, they were not at all trivial or trifling at the
time.  I know I used to wake up in the night many a time and think I
heard the tramp of the French entering Cranford.  Many people talked of
hiding themselves in the salt mines—and meat would have kept capitally
down there, only perhaps we should have been thirsty.  And my father
preached a whole set of sermons on the occasion; one set in the mornings,
all about David and Goliath, to spirit up the people to fighting with
spades or bricks, if need were; and the other set in the afternoons,
proving that Napoleon (that was another name for Bony, as we used to call
him) was all the same as an Apollyon and Abaddon.  I remember my father
rather thought he should be asked to print this last set; but the parish
had, perhaps, had enough of them with hearing.”

Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns (“poor Peter!” as Miss Matty began to call
him) was at school at Shrewsbury by this time.  The rector took up his
pen, and rubbed up his Latin once more, to correspond with his boy.  It
was very clear that the lad’s were what are called show letters.  They
were of a highly mental description, giving an account of his studies,
and his intellectual hopes of various kinds, with an occasional quotation
from the classics; but, now and then, the animal nature broke out in such
a little sentence as this, evidently written in a trembling hurry, after
the letter had been inspected: “Mother dear, do send me a cake, and put
plenty of citron in.”  The “mother dear” probably answered her boy in the
form of cakes and “goody,” for there were none of her letters among this
set; but a whole collection of the rector’s, to whom the Latin in his
boy’s letters was like a trumpet to the old war-horse.  I do not know
much about Latin, certainly, and it is, perhaps, an ornamental language,
but not very useful, I think—at least to judge from the bits I remember
out of the rector’s letters.  One was, “You have not got that town in
your map of Ireland; but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, as the
Proverbia say.”  Presently it became very evident that “poor Peter” got
himself into many scrapes.  There were letters of stilted penitence to
his father, for some wrong-doing; and among them all was a badly-written,
badly-sealed, badly-directed, blotted note:—“My dear, dear, dear, dearest
mother, I will be a better boy; I will, indeed; but don’t, please, be ill
for me; I am not worth it; but I will be good, darling mother.”

Miss Matty could not speak for crying, after she had read this note.  She
gave it to me in silence, and then got up and took it to her sacred
recesses in her own room, for fear, by any chance, it might get burnt.
“Poor Peter!” she said; “he was always in scrapes; he was too easy.  They
led him wrong, and then left him in the lurch.  But he was too fond of
mischief.  He could never resist a joke.  Poor Peter!”




CHAPTER VI—POOR PETER


POOR Peter’s career lay before him rather pleasantly mapped out by kind
friends, but Bonus Bernardus non videt omnia, in this map too.  He was
to win honours at the Shrewsbury School, and carry them thick to
Cambridge, and after that, a living awaited him, the gift of his
godfather, Sir Peter Arley.  Poor Peter! his lot in life was very
different to what his friends had hoped and planned.  Miss Matty told me
all about it, and I think it was a relief when she had done so.

He was the darling of his mother, who seemed to dote on all her children,
though she was, perhaps, a little afraid of Deborah’s superior
acquirements.  Deborah was the favourite of her father, and when Peter
disappointed him, she became his pride.  The sole honour Peter brought
away from Shrewsbury was the reputation of being the best good fellow
that ever was, and of being the captain of the school in the art of
practical joking.  His father was disappointed, but set about remedying
the matter in a manly way.  He could not afford to send Peter to read
with any tutor, but he could read with him himself; and Miss Matty told
me much of the awful preparations in the way of dictionaries and lexicons
that were made in her father’s study the morning Peter began.

“My poor mother!” said she.  “I remember how she used to stand in the
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