Cranford Page #3

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

								

acquaintances; but he shook hands with none until he had helped Miss
Brown to unfurl her umbrella, had relieved her of her prayer-book, and
had waited patiently till she, with trembling nervous hands, had taken up
her gown to walk through the wet roads.

I wonder what the Cranford ladies did with Captain Brown at their
parties.  We had often rejoiced, in former days, that there was no
gentleman to be attended to, and to find conversation for, at the
card-parties.  We had congratulated ourselves upon the snugness of the
evenings; and, in our love for gentility, and distaste of mankind, we had
almost persuaded ourselves that to be a man was to be “vulgar”; so that
when I found my friend and hostess, Miss Jenkyns, was going to have a
party in my honour, and that Captain and the Miss Browns were invited, I
wondered much what would be the course of the evening.  Card-tables, with
green baize tops, were set out by daylight, just as usual; it was the
third week in November, so the evenings closed in about four.  Candles,
and clean packs of cards, were arranged on each table.  The fire was made
up; the neat maid-servant had received her last directions; and there we
stood, dressed in our best, each with a candle-lighter in our hands,
ready to dart at the candles as soon as the first knock came.  Parties in
Cranford were solemn festivities, making the ladies feel gravely elated
as they sat together in their best dresses.  As soon as three had
arrived, we sat down to “Preference,” I being the unlucky fourth.  The
next four comers were put down immediately to another table; and
presently the tea-trays, which I had seen set out in the store-room as I
passed in the morning, were placed each on the middle of a card-table.
The china was delicate egg-shell; the old-fashioned silver glittered with
polishing; but the eatables were of the slightest description.  While the
trays were yet on the tables, Captain and the Miss Browns came in; and I
could see that, somehow or other, the Captain was a favourite with all
the ladies present.  Ruffled brows were smoothed, sharp voices lowered at
his approach.  Miss Brown looked ill, and depressed almost to gloom.
Miss Jessie smiled as usual, and seemed nearly as popular as her father.
He immediately and quietly assumed the man’s place in the room; attended
to every one’s wants, lessened the pretty maid-servant’s labour by
waiting on empty cups and bread-and-butterless 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.  He played for threepenny points with as grave an interest as
if they had been pounds; and yet, in all his attention to strangers, he
had an eye on his suffering daughter—for suffering I was sure she was,
though to many eyes she might only appear to be irritable.  Miss Jessie
could not play cards: but she talked to the sitters-out, who, before her
coming, had been rather inclined to be cross.  She sang, too, to an old
cracked piano, which I think had been a spinet in its youth.  Miss Jessie
sang, “Jock of Hazeldean” a little out of tune; but we were none of us
musical, though Miss Jenkyns beat time, out of time, by way of appearing
to be so.

It was very good of Miss Jenkyns to do this; for I had seen that, a
little before, she had been a good deal annoyed by Miss Jessie Brown’s
unguarded admission (à propos of Shetland wool) that she had an uncle,
her mother’s brother, who was a shop-keeper in Edinburgh.  Miss Jenkyns
tried to drown this confession by a terrible cough—for the Honourable Mrs
Jamieson was sitting at a card-table nearest Miss Jessie, and what would
she say or think if she found out she was in the same room with a
shop-keeper’s niece!  But Miss Jessie Brown (who had no tact, as we all
agreed the next morning) would repeat the information, and assure Miss
Pole she could easily get her the identical Shetland wool required,
“through my uncle, who has the best assortment of Shetland goods of any
one in Edinbro’.”  It was to take the taste of this out of our mouths,
and the sound of this out of our ears, that Miss Jenkyns proposed music;
so I say again, it was very good of her to beat time to the song.

When the trays re-appeared with biscuits and wine, punctually at a
quarter to nine, there was conversation, comparing of cards, and talking
over tricks; but by-and-by Captain Brown sported a bit of literature.

“Have you seen any numbers of ‘The Pickwick Papers’?” said he.  (They
were then publishing in parts.)  “Capital thing!”

Now Miss Jenkyns was daughter of a deceased rector of Cranford; and, on
the strength of a number of manuscript sermons, and a pretty good library
of divinity, considered herself literary, and looked upon any
conversation about books as a challenge to her.  So she answered and
said, “Yes, she had seen them; indeed, she might say she had read them.”

“And what do you think of them?” exclaimed Captain Brown.  “Aren’t they
famously good?”

So urged Miss Jenkyns could not but speak.

“I must say, I don’t think they are by any means equal to Dr Johnson.
Still, perhaps, the author is young.  Let him persevere, and who knows
what he may become if he will take the great Doctor for his model?”  This
was evidently too much for Captain Brown to take placidly; and I saw the
words on the tip of his tongue before Miss Jenkyns had finished her
sentence.

“It is quite a different sort of thing, my dear madam,” he began.

“I am quite aware of that,” returned she.  “And I make allowances,
Captain Brown.”

“Just allow me to read you a scene out of this month’s number,” pleaded
he.  “I had it only this morning, and I don’t think the company can have
read it yet.”

“As you please,” said she, settling herself with an air of resignation.
He read the account of the “swarry” which Sam Weller gave at Bath.  Some
of us laughed heartily.  I did not dare, because I was staying in the
house.  Miss Jenkyns sat in patient gravity.  When it was ended, she
turned to me, and said with mild dignity—

“Fetch me ‘Rasselas,’ my dear, out of the book-room.”

When I had brought it to her, she turned to Captain Brown—

“Now allow me to read you a scene, and then the present company can
judge between your favourite, Mr Boz, and Dr Johnson.”

She read one of the conversations between Rasselas and Imlac, in a
high-pitched, majestic voice: and when she had ended, she said, “I
imagine I am now justified in my preference of Dr Johnson as a writer of
fiction.”  The Captain screwed his lips up, and drummed on the table, but
he did not speak.  She thought she would give him a finishing blow or
two.

         [Picture: Endeavouring to beguile her into conversation]

“I consider it vulgar, and below the dignity of literature, to publish in
numbers.”

“How was the Rambler published, ma’am?” asked Captain Brown in a low
voice, which I think Miss Jenkyns could not have heard.

“Dr Johnson’s style is a model for young beginners.  My father
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