PG Wodehouse, at Dulwich College in , was told "he has the most distorted ideas about wit and humour; he draws over his books and examination papers in the most distressing way and writes foolish rhymes in other people's books", and Helen Fielding, at Wakefield Girls' High School, that she "must learn not to use such flowery language".
From Merchant Taylors School in Crosby, in around , Bainbridge's English report at least admits that "her written work is the product of an obviously lively imagination", although "it is a pity that her spelling derives from the same source". As for geography: "Her knowledge of the subject is so poor as to make one wonder if she is simple-minded. If that's what can be said of someone as fantastic as Bainbridge, then there's hope for us all.
School reports on writers deliver very bad reviews. Popular Conversations. Fill in the blank space with an antonym of the italicized word. Weegy: 1. He couldn't bear the cold of Alaska after living in the heat of Texas.
He has been accused of theft, but we What was one of the significance impacts of the scientific revolution Weegy: One of the significant impacts of the scientific revolution is that it resulted in developments in mathematics, Wind erosion is most common in flat, bare areas User: A logical Fill in the blank.
Among all the friends whom fame had brought to Charlotte, Mrs. Gaskell stood prominent for her literary gifts and her large-hearted sympathy. Williams, indicate the beginning of a friendship which was to leave so permanent a record in literary history:—. I have thought of one person to whom I should much like a copy to be offered—Harriet Martineau.
For her character—as revealed in her works—I have a lively admiration, a deep esteem. Will you inclose with the volume the accompanying note? Gaskell, authoress of Mary Barton ; she said I was not to answer it, but I cannot help doing so. The note brought the tears to my eyes. She is a good, she is a great woman. Proud am I that I can touch a chord of sympathy in souls so noble. In Mrs. Both these ladies are above me—certainly far my superiors in attainments and experience.
I think I could look up to them if I knew them. The note you sent yesterday was from Harriet Martineau; its contents were more than gratifying. I ought to be thankful, and I trust I am, for such testimonies of sympathy from the first order of minds.
When Mrs. Gaskell tells me she shall keep my works as a treasure for her daughters, and when Harriet Martineau testifies affectionate approbation, I feel the sting taken from the strictures of another class of critics. My resolution of seclusion withholds me from communicating further with these ladies at present, but I now know how they are inclined to me—I know how my writings have affected their wise and pure minds.
The knowledge is present support and, perhaps, may be future armour. If all be well, perhaps I shall see you next week. She has just sent me the Moorland Cottage. Chapman himself who asked her to write a Christmas book.
On my return home yesterday I found two packets from Cornhill directed in two well-known hands waiting for me. You are all very very good. A visit more interesting I certainly never paid. If self-sustaining strength can be acquired from example, I ought to have got good. But my nature is not hers; I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction, and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice.
Perhaps if I was like her I should not admire her so much as I do. She is somewhat absolute, though quite unconsciously so; but she is likewise kind, with an affection at once abrupt and constant, whose sincerity you cannot doubt.
It was delightful to sit near her in the evenings and hear her converse, myself mute. She speaks with what seems to me a wonderful fluency and eloquence. Her animal spirits are as unflagging as her intellectual powers.
I was glad to find her health excellent. I believe neither solitude nor loss of friends would break her down. I saw some faults in her, but somehow I liked them for the sake of her good points. It gave me no pain to feel insignificant, mentally and corporeally, in comparison with her. I had to change carriages three times and to wait an hour and a half at Lancaster.
Sir James came to meet me at the station; both he and Lady Shuttleworth gave me a very kind reception. This place is exquisitely beautiful, though the weather is cloudy, misty, and stormy; but the sun bursts out occasionally and shows the hills and the lake. Gaskell is coming here this evening, and one or two other people. Miss Martineau, I am sorry to say, I shall not see, as she is already gone from home for the autumn.
Give my kind regards to Tabby and Martha, and—Believe me, dear papa, your affectionate daughter,. And this is how she writes to a friend from Haworth, on her return, after that first meeting:—.
Gaskell, the authoress of Mary Barton , who came to the Briery the day after me. I was truly glad of her companionship. She is a woman of the most genuine talent, of cheerful, pleasing, and cordial manners, and, I believe, of a kind and good heart.
I think the former. Memoir seems to me to express a more circumstantial and different sort of account. My aim is to give a just idea of their identity, not to write any narration of their simple, uneventful lives. I depend on you for faithfully pointing out whatever may strike you as faulty. I could not write it in the conventional form— that I found impossible.
Her position seems to me one deserving of all sympathy. I often think of her. Will her novel soon be published? Somehow I expect it to be interesting.
She and I had some conversation about publishers—a comparison of our literary experiences was made. She seemed much struck with the differences between hers and mine, though I did not enter into details or tell her all.
Unless I greatly mistake, she and you and Mr. Smith would get on well together; but one does not know what causes there may be to prevent her from doing as she would wish in such a case.
I think Mr. Smith will not object to my occasionally sending her any of the Cornhill books that she may like to see. Williams and your daughters and Miss Kavanagh to all my letters, because that makes an empty form of what should be a sincere wish, but I trust this mark of courtesy and regard, though rarely expressed, is always understood.
Gaskell in her Manchester home, first in and afterwards in , and concerning this latter visit we have the following letter:—. Gaskell ,—Would it suit you if I were to come next Thursday, the 21st? That, I think, would be about your tea-time, and, of course, I should dine before leaving home. I always like evening for an arrival; it seems more cosy and pleasant than coming in about the busy middle of the day.
I think if I stay a week that will be a very long visit; it will give you time to get well tired of me. Gaskell and Marianna. As to Mesdames Flossy and Julia, those venerable ladies are requested beforehand to make due allowance for the awe with which they will be sure to impress a diffident admirer. I am sorry I shall not see Meta. Gaskell, yours affectionately and sincerely,.
In the autumn of Mrs. My prospects, however, of being able to leave home continue very unsettled. I am expecting Mrs. Gaskell next week or the week after, the day being yet undetermined. She was to have come in June, but then my severe attack of influenza rendered it impossible that I should receive or entertain her.
Since that time she has been absent on the Continent with her husband and two eldest girls; and just before I received yours I had a letter from her volunteering a visit at a vague date, which I requested her to fix as soon as possible. My father has been much better during the last three or four days. Of this there is abundant evidence in the biography; and Mrs. George Smith, the head of the firm of Smith and Elder, furnished some twenty letters. James Taylor, furnished half-a-dozen more; but the best help came from another quarter.
Gaskell to Miss Nussey, dated July 6th, It relates how, in accordance with a request from Mr. There she had made the acquaintance of Mr. Nicholls for the first time. She told Mr. Both Mr. Nicholls agreed to help to the utmost, although Mrs. Gaskell was struck by the fact that it was Mr. Nicholls, and not Mr. His feelings were opposed to any biography at all; but he had yielded to Mr. Nicholls, moreover, told Mrs. Gaskell that Miss Nussey was the person of all others to apply to; that she had been the friend of his wife ever since Charlotte was fifteen, and that he was writing to Miss Nussey to beg her to let Mrs.
Gaskell see some of the correspondence. But here is Mr. Will you suffer the article to pass current without any refutations? The writer merits the contempt of silence, but there will be readers and believers. Shall such be left to imbibe a tissue of malignant falsehoods, or shall an attempt be made to do justice to one who so highly deserved justice, whose very name those who best knew her but speak with reverence and affection?
Should not her aged father be defended from the reproach the writer coarsely attempts to bring upon him? Gaskell, who is every way capable, would undertake a reply, and would give a sound castigation to the writer. Her personal acquaintance with Haworth, the Parsonage, and its inmates, fits her for the task, and if on other p. Will you ask Mrs. Gaskell to undertake this just and honourable defence? I think she would do it gladly. She valued dear Charlotte, and such an act of friendship, performed with her ability and power, could only add to the laurels she has already won.
I hope you and Mr. My kind regards to both. His design seems rather to be to gratify the curiosity of the multitude in reference to one who had made such a sensation in the literary world. But even if the article had been of a less harmless character, we should not have felt inclined to take any notice of it, as by doing so we should have given it an importance which it would not otherwise have obtained.
Charlotte herself would have acted thus; and her character stands too high to be injured by the statements in a magazine of small circulation and little influence—statements which the writer prefaces with the remark that he does not vouch for their accuracy.
The many laudatory notices of Charlotte and her works which appeared since her death may well make us indifferent to the detractions of a few envious or malignant persons, as there ever will be such. We are both well in health, but lonely and desolate. He has therefore adopted your suggestion and applied to Mrs.
Gaskell, who has undertaken to write a life of Charlotte. Gaskell came over yesterday and spent a few hours with us. For this reason Mrs. Gaskell is anxious to see her letters, especially those of any early date.
I think I understood you to say that you had some; if so, we should feel obliged by your letting us have any that you may think proper, not for publication, but merely to give the writer an insight into her mode of thought. Of course they will be returned after a little time. Excitement on Sunday our Rush-bearing and Mrs. To this letter Miss Nussey made the following reply:—. I had not heard of Mr. A letter from Mr.
Nicholls was forwarded along with yours, which I opened first, and was thus prepared for your communication, the subject of which is of the deepest interest to me. I will do everything in my power to aid the righteous work you have undertaken, but I feel my powers very limited, and apprehend that you may experience some disappointment that I cannot contribute more largely the information which you desire.
I possess a great many letters for I have destroyed but a small portion of the correspondence , but I fear the early letters are not such as to unfold the character of the writer except in a few points. You perhaps may discover more than is apparent to me.
You will read them with a purpose—I perused them only with interests of affection. I will immediately look over the correspondence, and I promise to let you see all that I can confide to your friendly custody. I regret that my absence from home should have made it impossible for me to have the pleasure of seeing you at Brookroyd at the time you propose.
I am engaged to stay here till Monday week, and shall be happy to see you any day you name after that date, or, if more convenient to you to come Friday or Saturday in next week, I will gladly return in time to give you the meeting. I am staying with our schoolmistress, Miss Wooler, in this place.
I wish her very much to give me leave to ask you here, but she does not yield to my wishes; it would have been pleasanter to me to talk with you among these hills than sitting in my home and thinking of one who had so often been present there. Gaskell and Miss Nussey met, and the friendship which ensued was closed only by death; and indeed one p.
Gaskell was energetically engaged upon a biography of her friend which should lack nothing of thoroughness, as she hoped. Smith to the Chapter Coffee House, where the sisters first stayed in London. They covered many pages of note-paper. Gaskell was persuaded in her own mind that he had never known of its publication, and we shall presently see that she was right. Charlotte had distinctly informed her, she said, that Branwell was not in a fit condition at the time to be told.
Did Emily accompany Charlotte as a pupil when the latter went as a teacher to Roe Head? Why did not Branwell go to the Royal Academy in London to learn painting?
Did Emily ever go out as a governess? Did she ever make friends? Gaskell ,—If you go to London pray try what may be done with regard to a portrait of dear Charlotte.
It would greatly enhance the value and interest of the memoir, and be such a satisfaction to people to see something that would settle their ideas of the personal appearance of the dear departed one.
It has been a surprise to every stranger, I think, that she was so gentle and lady-like to look upon. Anne took her place and remained about two years. I do not know whether it was conduct or want of finances that prevented Branwell from going to the Royal Academy. Probably there were impediments of both kinds. My very last wish would be to appear in the book more than is absolutely necessary.
If it were possible, I would choose not to be known at all. It is my friend only that I care to see and recognise, though your framing and setting of the picture will very greatly enhance its value.
Gaskell, yours very sincerely,. At first all was well. Sir James Shuttleworth expressed the hope that Mr. Gaskell, published in his Life , and more than once reprinted since. You have had a delicate and a great work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the book will do good. It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over cleanly though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity is now as in all ages till now quite compatible with the knowledge of evil.
I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself. Shirley disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! I shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be from a review in the current Fraser of remarkable strength and purity.
It was a short-lived triumph, however, and Mrs. Gaskell had associated him with numerous eccentricities and ebullitions of temper, which during his later years he always asserted, and p.
Nicholls had also his grievance. There was just a suspicion implied that he had not been quite the most sympathetic of husbands. The suspicion was absolutely ill-founded, and arose from Mr. But neither Mr. Nicholls gave Mrs. Gaskell much trouble. They, at any rate, were silent. Trouble, however, came from many quarters. Yorkshire people resented the air of patronage with which, as it seemed to them, a good Lancashire lady had taken their county in hand.
They were not quite the backward savages, they retorted, which some of Mrs. Between Lancashire and Yorkshire there is always a suspicion of jealousy.
Gaskell had spoken of wasteful young servants, and the young servants in question came upon Mr. Three whole pages were devoted to the dramatic recital of a scandal at Haworth, and this entirely disappears from the third edition.
Gaskell defended the description in Jane Eyre of Cowan Bridge with peculiar vigour. Carus Wilson, the Brocklehurst of Jane Eyre , and his friends were furious.
They threatened an action. There were letters in the Times and letters in the Daily News. Nicholls broke silence—the only time in the forty years that he has done so—with two admirable letters to the Halifax Guardian. The Cowan Bridge controversy was a drawn battle, in spite of numerous and glowing testimonials to the virtues of Mr. Carus Wilson. Many abusing me. I should think seven or eight of this kind from the Carus Wilson clique. The Branwell matter was more serious.
Here Mrs. Gaskell had, indeed, shown a singular recklessness. The lady referred to by Branwell was Mrs. Robinson, the wife of the Rev. Edmund Robinson of Thorp Green, and afterwards Lady p. Branwell, under the influence of opium, made certain statements about his relations with Mrs. The recklessness of Mrs.
She wasted a considerable amount of rhetoric upon it. He died! I am assured by Mr. Leslie Stephen that his father, Sir James Stephen, was employed at the time to make careful inquiry, and that he and other eminent lawyers came to the conclusion that it was one long tissue of lies or hallucinations. It was a cruel infamy that the word of this wretched boy should have been so powerful for mischief. Here, at any rate, Mrs. Yet, when all is said, Mrs. Gaskell had done her work thoroughly and well.
To be interesting, it is perhaps indispensable that the biographer should be indiscreet, and certainly the Branwell incident—a matter of two or three pages—is the only part of Mrs. And for this she suffered cruelly. Gaskell succeeded in doing. It has sometimes been implied that the portrait drawn by Mrs. That there were long periods of gaiety for all the three sisters, surely no one ever doubted. To few people, fortunately, is it given to have lives wholly without happiness.
And yet, when this is acknowledged, how can one say that the p. At a miserable school, where she herself was unhappy, she saw her two elder sisters stricken down and carried home to die. In her home was the narrowest poverty. Her second school brought her, indeed, two kind friends; but her shyness made that school-life in itself a prolonged tragedy. Of the two experiences as a private governess I shall have more to say. They were periods of torture to her sensitive nature.
The ambition of the three girls to start a school on their own account failed ignominiously. The suppressed vitality of childhood and early womanhood made Charlotte unable to enter with sympathy and toleration into the life of a foreign city, and Brussels was for her a further disaster.
Then within two years, just as literary fame was bringing its consolation for the trials of the past, she saw her two beloved sisters taken from her. And, finally, when at last a good man won her love, there were left to her only nine months of happy married life. We have been so happy. That her life was a tragedy, was the opinion of the woman friend with whom on the intellectual side she had most in common.
Miss Mary Taylor wrote to Mrs. Gaskell the following letter from New Zealand upon receipt of the Life :—. Gaskell ,—I am unaccountably in receipt by post of two vols.
I have pleasure in attributing this compliment to you; I beg, therefore, to thank you for them. The book is a perfect success, in giving a true picture of a melancholy life, and you have p. Though not so gloomy as the truth, it is perhaps as much so as people will accept without calling it exaggerated, and feeling the desire to doubt and contradict it.
I have seen two reviews of it. I had rather the mouth and eyes had been nearer together, and shown the veritable square face and large disproportionate nose. You give much too favourable an account of the black-coated and Tory savages that kept the people down, and provoked excesses in those days.
Yet I doubt not her book will be of great use. You must be aware that many strange notions as to the kind of person Charlotte really was will be done away with by a knowledge of the true facts of her life. I have heard imperfectly of farther printing on the subject. As to the mutilated edition that is to come, I am sorry for it.
Libellous or not, the first edition was all true, and except the declamation all, in my opinion, useful to be published. Gaskell give them up. You know one dare not always say the world moves. The reply is, I hope, sufficient. Forty years have gone by, and they have been years of growing interest in the subject. Many new facts have come to light, and many details, moreover, which were too trivial in are of sufficient importance to-day; and many facts which were rightly suppressed then may honestly and honourably be given to the public at an interval of nearly half a century.
Added to all this, fortune has been kind to me. These are the Letters— in number—which Miss Nussey had lent to Mrs. Gaskell and to Sir Wemyss Reid. Of these letters Mrs.
Gaskell published about , and Sir Wemyss Reid added as many more as he considered circumstances justified twenty years back.
It was explained to me that the volume had been privately printed under a misconception, and that only some dozen copies were extant. Miss Nussey asked me if I would write something around what might remain of the unpublished letters, and if I saw my way to do anything which would add to the public appreciation of the friend who from early childhood until now has been the most absorbing interest of her life. At the same time arose the possibility of a veto being placed upon their publication.
I made up my mind to try and see Mr. I had heard of his disinclination to be in any way associated with the controversy which had gathered round his wife for all these years; but I wrote to him nevertheless, and received a cordial invitation to visit him in his Irish home.
It was one of many visits, and the beginning of an interesting correspondence. Nicholls placed all the papers in his possession in my hands. They were more varied and more abundant than I could possibly have anticipated. They included MSS. It was of some of these letters that Mrs. Gaskell wrote in enthusiastic terms when she had read them, and she was only permitted to see a few. Then I have to thank Mr.
My first effort succeeded, and the Miss Wheelwright kindly lent me all the letters that she had preserved. It is scarcely possible that time will reveal many more unpublished letters from the author of Jane Eyre. I have the assurance of Dr. Steps will be taken henceforth, it may be added, to vindicate Mr.
The view of Mr. It is the picture of a man who disliked the vanities of life so intensely, that the new shoes of his children and the silk dress of his wife were not spared by him in sudden gusts of passion. A stern old ruffian, one is inclined to consider him. His pistol-shooting rings picturesquely, but not agreeably, through Mrs. Gaskell on one of her missions of inquiry in the neighbourhood.
The stories of the burnt shoes and the mutilated dress have been relegated to the realm of myth, and the pistol-shooting may now be acknowledged p. It is certain, were the matter of much interest to-day, that Mr. The present Incumbent of Haworth will point out to you, on the old tower of Haworth Church, the marks of pistol bullets, which he is assured were made by Mr.
I have myself handled both the gun and the pistol—this latter a very ornamental weapon, by the way, manufactured at Bradford—which Mr. From both he had obtained much innocent amusement; but his son-in-law, Mr.
Nicholls, who, at the distance of forty years still cherishes a reverent and enthusiastic affection for old Mr. He was one of the ten children of Hugh Brunty, farmer, and his nine brothers and sisters seem all of them to have spent their lives in their Irish home, to have married and been given in marriage, and to have gone to their graves in peace.
Patrick alone had ambition, and, one must add, the opportune friend, without whom ambition counts for little in the great struggle of life. At sixteen he was a kind of village schoolmaster, or assistant schoolmaster, and at twenty-five, stirred thereto by the vicar of his parish, Mr. Tighe, he was on his way from Ireland to St. From Cambridge, after taking orders in , Mr. Augustine Birrell has told us, with that singular literary charm of his, how the good-looking Irish curate made successful love to a young parishioner—Miss Mary Burder.
She was spirited away from the neighbourhood, and the lovers never met again. There are doubtful points in Mr. Mary Burder, as the wife of a Nonconformist minister, died in , in her seventy-seventh year.
This lady, from whom doubtless either directly or indirectly the tradition was obtained, may have amplified and exaggerated a very innocent flirtation. One would like further evidence for the statement that when Mr. In any case, Mr. His next curacy, however, which was obtained in , by a removal to Hartshead, near Huddersfield, brought flirtation for Mr.
In , when thirty-three years of age, he married Miss Maria Branwell, of Penzance. Miss Branwell had only a few months before left her Cornish home for a visit to an uncle in Yorkshire.
This uncle was a Mr. John Fennell, a clergyman of the Church of England, who had been a Methodist minister. This book was given to me in July But here I must refer to the letters which Maria Branwell wrote to her lover during the brief courtship. Gaskell, it will be remembered, makes but one extract from this correspondence, which was handed to her by Mr.
Long years before, the little packet had been taken from Mr. I did read them, in a frame of mind I cannot describe. The papers were yellow with time, all having been written before I was born. It was strange now to peruse, for the first time, the records of a mind whence my own sprang; and most strange, and at once sad and sweet, to find that mind of a truly fine, pure, and elevated order. They were written to papa before they were married. There is a rectitude, a refinement, a constancy, a modesty, a sense, a gentleness about them indescribable.
I wish she had lived, and that I had known her. Handling, with a full sense of their sacredness, these letters, written more than eighty years ago by a good woman to her lover, one is tempted to hope that there is no breach of the privacy which should, even in our day, guide certain sides of life, in publishing the correspondence in its completeness.
With the letters I find a little MS. Keep it as a memorial of her. There is no reason to suppose that the MS. It abounds in the obvious. He published, in all, four books, three pamphlets, and two sermons. Of his books, two were in verse and two in prose. Reading over these old-fashioned volumes now, one admits that they possess but little distinction. It has been pointed out, indeed, that p. It is the one line of his that will live. Like his daughter Charlotte, Mr.
The Cottage in the Wood ; or , the Art of Becoming Rich and Happy , is a kind of religious novel—a spiritual Pamela , in which the reprobate pursuer of an innocent girl ultimately becomes converted and marries her.
The Maid of Killarney ; or , Albion and Flora is more interesting. Under the guise of a story it has something to say on many questions of importance. But in spite of this didactic weakness there are one or two pieces of really picturesque writing, notably a description of an Irish wake, and a forcible account of the defence of a house against some Whiteboys. But many a prolific writer of the day passes muster as a genius among his contemporaries upon as small a talent; and Mr.
Thirty years were to elapse before there were to be any more books from this family of writers; but Jane Eyre owes something, we may be sure, to The Maid of Killarney. She was in her twenty-ninth year, and was one of five children—one son and four daughters—the father of whom, Mr. Thomas Branwell, had died in By a curious coincidence, another sister, Charlotte, was married in Penzance on the same day—the 18th of December The teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion to slay the souls of men.
Another sampler is by Elizabeth Branwell; another by Margaret, and another by Anne. These, some miniatures, and the book and papers to which I have referred, are all that remain to us as a memento of Mrs.
The miniatures, which are in the possession of Miss Branwell, of Penzance, are of Mr. To return, however, to our bundle of love-letters. Comment is needless, if indeed comment or elucidation were possible at this distance of time. TO REV. Do not think that I am so wavering as to repent of what I have already said. No, believe me, this will never be the case, unless you give me cause for it.
You need not fear that you have been mistaken in my character. If I know anything of myself, I am incapable of making an ungenerous return to the smallest degree of kindness, much less to you whose attentions and conduct have been so particularly obliging. I will frankly confess that your behaviour and what I have seen and heard of your character has excited my warmest esteem and regard, and be assured you shall never have cause to repent of any confidence you may think proper to place in me, and that it will always be my endeavour to deserve the good opinion which you have formed, although human weakness may in some instances cause me to fall short.
In giving you these assurances I do not depend upon my own strength, but I look to Him who has been my unerring guide through life, and in whose continued protection and assistance I confidently trust. I hope you do not feel any bad effects from it?
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