Cranford Page #2

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

								

windows being previously closed, but in the public street! in a loud
military voice! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a
particular house.  The ladies of Cranford were already rather moaning
over the invasion of their territories by a man and a gentleman.  He was
a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring
railroad, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little
town; and if, in addition to his masculine gender, and his connection
with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being
poor—why, then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry.  Death was as true
and as common as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in
the streets.  It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite.  We had
tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of
visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything
that they wished.  If we walked to or from a party, it was because the
night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because sedan-chairs
were expensive.  If we wore prints, instead of summer silks, it was
because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded
ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very
moderate means.  Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man
who could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace.  Yet, somehow,
Captain Brown made himself respected in Cranford, and was called upon, in
spite of all resolutions to the contrary.  I was surprised to hear his
opinions quoted as authority at a visit which I paid to Cranford about a
year after he had settled in the town.  My own friends had been among the
bitterest opponents of any proposal to visit the Captain and his
daughters, only twelve months before; and now he was even admitted in the
tabooed hours before twelve.  True, it was to discover the cause of a
smoking chimney, before the fire was lighted; but still Captain Brown
walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the
room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man about the house.  He had
been blind to all the small slights, and omissions of trivial ceremonies,
with which he had been received.  He had been friendly, though the
Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic
compliments in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered
all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor.
And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his facility in
devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an
extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies.  He himself
went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the
reverse; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice
so highly esteemed as to make some counsel which he had given in jest to
be taken in sober, serious earnest.

It was on this subject: An old lady had an Alderney cow, which she looked
upon as a daughter.  You could not pay the short quarter of an hour call
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; therefore great was the sympathy and regret when, in an
unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime-pit.  She moaned so
loudly that she was soon heard and rescued; but meanwhile the poor beast
had lost most of her hair, and came out looking naked, cold, and
miserable, in a bare skin.  Everybody pitied the animal, though a few
could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance.  Miss Betsy
Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay; and it was said she
thought of trying a bath of oil.  This remedy, perhaps, was recommended
by some one of the number whose advice she asked; but the proposal, if
ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Captain Brown’s decided “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 thanked the Captain heartily; she
set to work, and by-and-by all the town turned out to see the Alderney
meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark grey flannel.  I have watched
her myself many a time.  Do you ever see cows dressed in grey flannel in
London?

                  [Picture: Meekly going to her pasture]

Captain Brown had taken a small house on the outskirts of the town, where
he lived with his two daughters.  He must have been upwards of sixty at
the time of the first visit I paid to Cranford after I had left it as a
residence.  But he had a wiry, well-trained, elastic figure, a stiff
military throw-back of his head, and a springing step, which made him
appear much younger than he was.  His eldest daughter looked almost as
old as himself, and betrayed the fact that his real was more than his
apparent age.  Miss Brown must have been forty; she had a sickly, pained,
careworn expression on her face, and looked as if the gaiety of youth had
long faded out of sight.  Even when young she must have been plain and
hard-featured.  Miss Jessie Brown was ten years younger than her sister,
and twenty shades prettier.  Her face was round and dimpled.  Miss
Jenkyns once said, in a passion against Captain Brown (the cause of which
I will tell you presently), “that she thought it was time for Miss Jessie
to leave off her dimples, and not always to be trying to look like a
child.”  It was true there was something childlike in her face; and there
will be, I think, till she dies, though she should live to a hundred.
Her eyes were large blue wondering eyes, looking straight at you; her
nose was unformed and snub, and her lips were red and dewy; she wore her
hair, too, in little rows of curls, which heightened this appearance.  I
do not know whether she was pretty or not; but I liked her face, and so
did everybody, and I do not think she could help her dimples.  She had
something of her father’s jauntiness of gait and manner; and any female
observer might detect a slight difference in the attire of the two
sisters—that of Miss Jessie being about two pounds per annum more
expensive than Miss Brown’s.  Two pounds was a large sum in Captain
Brown’s annual disbursements.

Such was the impression made upon me by the Brown family when I first saw
them all together in Cranford Church.  The Captain I had met before—on
the occasion of the smoky chimney, which he had cured by some simple
alteration in the flue.  In church, he held his double eye-glass to his
eyes during the Morning Hymn, and then lifted up his head erect and sang
out loud and joyfully.  He made the responses louder than the clerk—an
old man with a piping feeble voice, who, I think, felt aggrieved at the
Captain’s sonorous bass, and quivered higher and higher in consequence.

On coming out of church, the brisk Captain paid the most gallant
attention to his two daughters.  He nodded and smiled to his
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