Wives and Daughters Page #10

The daughter of a country doctor copes with an unwanted stepmother, an impetuous stepsister, burdensome secrets, the town gossips, and the tug on her own heartstrings for a man who thinks of her only as a friend. Wives and Daughters was first published serially in the Cornhill Magazine from August, 1864, to January, 1866. Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in November, 1865. She had completed all but the last chapter, and in that sense the book, which many consider her masterpiece, is unfinished. The editor of the Cornhill Magazine Frederick Greenwood, appended his comments about Gaskell's intentions for the story's ending.

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themselves as Mr. Gibson's most intimate friends, in right of their
regard for his dead wife, and would fain have taken a quasi-motherly
interest in his little girl, had she not been guarded by a watchful
dragon in the shape of Betty, her nurse, who was jealous of any
interference between her and her charge; and especially resentful and
disagreeable towards all those ladies who, by suitable age, rank, or
propinquity, she thought capable of "casting sheep's eyes at master."

Several years before the opening of this story, Mr. Gibson's position
seemed settled for life, both socially and professionally. He was
a widower, and likely to remain so; his domestic affections were
centred on little Molly, but even to her, in their most private
moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings;
his most caressing appellation for her was "Goosey," and he took a
pleasure in bewildering her infant mind with his badinage. He had
rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical
insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling. He
deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of
all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any
other than purely intellectual subjects. Molly, however, had her own
intuitions to guide her. Though her papa laughed at her, quizzed her,
joked at her, in a way which the Miss Brownings called "really cruel"
to each other when they were quite alone, Molly took her little
griefs and pleasures, and poured them into her papa's ears, sooner
even than into Betty's, that kind-hearted termagant. The child grew
to understand her father well, and the two had the most delightful
intercourse together--half banter, half seriousness, but altogether
confidential friendship. Mr. Gibson kept three servants; Betty, a
cook, and a girl who was supposed to be housemaid, but who was under
both the elder two, and had a pretty life of it in consequence.
Three servants would not have been required if it had not been Mr.
Gibson's habit, as it had been Mr. Hall's before him, to take two
"pupils" as they were called in the genteel language of Hollingford,
"apprentices" as they were in fact--being bound by indentures, and
paying a handsome premium to learn their business. They lived in the
house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or, as Miss Browning
called it with some truth, "amphibious" position. They had their
meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly in the
way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and
hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him
made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when,
as the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful
alacrity, gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow,
knocked against each other in their endeavours to get out of the
dining-room quickly; and then might be heard dashing along a passage
which led to the surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet
the annoyance he felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled
duties only made his sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or
ill manners, more bitter than before.

Beyond direct professional instruction, he did not know what to do
with the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to
be, to be plagued by their master consciously, and to plague him
unconsciously. Once or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh
pupil, in the hopes of shaking himself free from the incubus, but his
reputation as a clever surgeon had spread so rapidly that his fees
which he had thought prohibitory, were willingly paid, in order that
the young man might make a start in life, with the prestige of having
been a pupil of Gibson of Hollingford. But as Molly grew to be a
little girl instead of a child, when she was about eight years old,
her father perceived the awkwardness of her having her breakfasts
and dinners so often alone with the pupils, without his uncertain
presence. To do away with this evil, more than for the actual
instruction she could give, he engaged a respectable woman, the
daughter of a shopkeeper in the town, who had left a destitute
family, to come every morning before breakfast, and to stay with
Molly till he came home at night; or, if he was detained, until the
child's bed-time.

"Now, Miss Eyre," said he, summing up his instructions the day before
she entered upon her office, "remember this: you are to make good tea
for the young men, and see that they have their meals comfortably,
and--you are five-and-thirty, I think you said?--try and make them
talk,--rationally, I am afraid is beyond your or anybody's power; but
make them talk without stammering or giggling. Don't teach Molly too
much: she must sew, and read, and write, and do her sums; but I want
to keep her a child, and if I find more learning desirable for her,
I'll see about giving it to her myself. After all, I'm not sure that
reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman gets married
with only a cross instead of her name; it's rather a diluting
of mother-wit, to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the
prejudices of society, Miss Eyre, and so you may teach the child to
read."

Miss Eyre listened in silence, perplexed but determined to be
obedient to the directions of the doctor, whose kindness she and
her family had good cause to know. She made strong tea; she helped
the young men liberally in Mr. Gibson's absence, as well as in his
presence, and she found the way to unloosen their tongues, whenever
their master was away, by talking to them on trivial subjects in her
pleasant homely way. She taught Molly to read and write, but tried
honestly to keep her back in every other branch of education. It was
only by fighting and struggling hard, that bit by bit Molly persuaded
her father to let her have French and drawing lessons. He was always
afraid of her becoming too much educated, though he need not have
been alarmed; the masters who visited such small country towns as
Hollingford forty years ago, were no such great proficients in their
arts. Once a week she joined a dancing class in the assembly-room
at the principal inn in the town: the "George;" and, being daunted
by her father in every intellectual attempt, she read every book
that came in her way, almost with as much delight as if it had been
forbidden. For his station in life, Mr. Gibson had an unusually
good library; the medical portion of it was inaccessible to Molly,
being kept in the surgery, but every other book she had either read,
or tried to read. Her summer place of study was that seat in the
cherry-tree, where she got the green stains on her frock, that have
already been mentioned as likely to wear Betty's life out. In spite
of this "hidden worm i' th' bud," Betty was to all appearance strong,
alert, and flourishing. She was the one crook in Miss Eyre's lot,
who was otherwise so happy in having met with a suitable well-paid
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