Gothic Tales (5 page)

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).

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 detail. 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).