Gothic Tales

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  1. Detective and Protective Police: See, for example, ‘The Modern Science of Thief-Taking’, Household Words, 2 (13 July 1850), pp. 368–72; ‘Detective Police Party’, Household Words, 2 (27 July 1850), pp. 409–14; and ‘Three “Detective” Anecdotes’, Household Words, 2 (14 September 1850), pp. 577–87.

  2. Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary: John Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London: 1791).

  3. Caleb Williams: Things as They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), by William Godwin (1756–1836), considered to be the first detective novel, is the story of a servant, Caleb Williams, who spies on his employer, is arrested on false charges and then escapes from jail, adopting different disguises along the way. He is pursued and eventually captured by the ‘offended and injured gentleman’ he had spied upon, Mr Falkland.

  4. Old Whig Society… Duchess of Devonshire… Mrs Crewe… Miss Linley: The Whigs were a political party who dominated the eighteenth century, made up largely of aristocratic landowners and wealthier members of the middle class; opponents of George III and in favour of a limited constitutional monarchy, they supported politicians who agreed with their views. Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire (1757–1806), had a reputation for flamboyance and was much admired in fashionable circles; a political activist for the Whig party, she was also a leading member of the ‘Devonshire House Circle’, among whom she included Frances Anne Crewe (?–1818) and the noted singer Elizabeth Linley (1754–92). See Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: HarperCollins, 1998).

  5. Dogberrys: Dogberry and Verges are foolish, overbearing constables in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

  6. grazier: ‘One who grazes or feeds cattle for the market’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

  7. Chambers's Journal: Popular nineteenth-century literary and scientific journal founded by Robert Chambers, of W. and R. Chambers publishing firm, in 1832. (Originally named Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.)

  8. Evangeline: Narrative poem (1847) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), about a bride's life-long search for her missing bridegroom.

  9. untamed Katherine of a bride: The ‘shrewish’ bride of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

  10. electric telegraph: First patented by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1837; the Electric Telegraph Company was formed in Britain in 1845.

  11. Hare and Burke horrors: William Burke (1792–1829), and William Hare (1790–c. 1860) murdered at least fifteen people in Edinburgh in the 1820s and sold their corpses to Dr Knox's School of Anatomy for £8 to £14 before they were arrested. Burke was then hanged to a chorus of ‘Burke him!’ from the crowds, while Hare turned King's evidence and was set at liberty in 1829.

  12. the time of Richard the Third: 1483–5.

  13. Gerard and Garratt: The editor of the Knutsford edition of Gaskell's works, A. W. Ward, places ‘Gerrard or Garrat Hall in Ancoats, distant about a mile from Mrs. Gaskell's own house in Plymouth Grove – an ancient hall formerly in the possession of a member of the Trafford family, for whom the boys of the Manchester Grammar School were bound to offer daily prayer as one of their benefactors. But the story of his successor to the property… I should be slow to seek to identify, although he is conjectured to have been a shoot of “a branch of the tree of the Lord of the Manor of Manchester”’, (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 2, p. xxix).

  14. sedan-chair: Covered chair placed on two poles and borne along by human carriers; a fashionable mode of transportation from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century.

  The Old Nurse's Story

  First published in A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire in Household Words, Extra Christmas No. (December 1852), pp. 11–20. The story appeared with ten others, including two by Charles Dickens, who also provided the loosest of framing devices by which to link them. For more information, see Deborah A. Thomas, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Number of Household Words and All the Year Round, 1850–1867’, in The Dickensian, ed. Michael Slater, 69 (January 1973), pp. 163–72. ‘The Old Nurse's Story’ also appeared in the Cheap edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), and the later edition of Lizzie Leigh (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 113–43, from which the present text is taken.

  1. Westmorland: Gaskell is very careful to set the location of this story; Hester comes from the county of Westmorland, now part of Cumbria, and Crosthwaite Church (p. 18) is just outside Keswick, also in Cumbria.

  2. massy andirons: Heavy ornamented utensils to support burning wood in a fireplace.

  3. Agnes: Gaskell could at times be a little careless with detail; Agnes's name switches rather abruptly to Bessy in the original before reverting to Agnes – this has been corrected.

  4. the younger sister: A younger sister would have been addressed by her first name, prefixed by ‘Miss’, whereas the oldest sister would have been addressed by ‘Miss’, followed by her last name.

  5. Flesh is grass: 1 Peter 1:24: ‘For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away’ (Authorized Version here and below).

  6. gowk: ‘A fool: a half-witted person’ (OED).

  7. maud: ‘A grey striped plaid worn by shepherds in the south of Scotland’ (OED).

  8. wiling: Deceiving, inducing by craft or cunning (or wiles).

  9. Pride will have a fall: Proverbs 16:18: ‘Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’

  10. the figure of a tall old man… clinging to her dress: Charles Dickens wrote a series of increasingly exasperated letters to Gaskell urging her to change the ending so that only the child Rosamund would see the ghostly figures, though everyone sees the phantom child. Gaskell, obviously, refused. See The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, Nina Burgis, 10 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), vol. 6, 6, 9 November and 1, 4, 6, 17 December 1852, pp. 799–801, 812, 815, 817, 822–3. See also Annette B. Hopkins, ‘Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 9:4 (1945–6), pp. 357–85.

  The Squire's Story

  First published in Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire, in Household Words, Extra Christmas No. (December 1853), pp. 19–25. Like ‘The Old Nurse's Story’, it appeared with seven others, one of which was Gaskell's ballad, ‘The Scholar's Story’. The article by Deborah A. Thomas, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Number of Household Words and All the Year Round, 1850–1867’, in The Dickensian, ed. Slater, also provides additional information about the group of stories. The lack of internal connections between them can be gauged by Dickens's comment to Gaskell when he solicited her contribution to his Christmas ‘round’ in a letter dated 19 September 1853: ‘It is supposed to be told by somebody at the Xmas Fireside, as before. And it need not be about Xmas and winter, and it need not have a moral, and it only needs to be done by you to be well done, and if you don't believe that – I can't help it’ (The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 7, p. 151). ‘The Squire's Story’ was published in the Cheap edition of Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), and in Lizzie Leigh (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 252–74, which is used for the present text.

  1. Barford: See note 3 to ‘Lois the Witch’.

  2. a younger son: A younger son would not be entitled to inherit either the estate or the title of his family, but in this case the intervening heirs die.

  3. gentlemen's seats: Houses in the country.

  4. blue garters fringed with silver… Bickerstaff's ward: The garters are those worn by members of the Order of the Garter, the highest order of British knighthood; ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’ was the pseudonym of Richard Steele (1672–1729) when he started the periodical The Tatler in 1709. ‘Bickerstaff’ wrote several columns about his nephews, of whom he was guardian, and described how he planned to make his youngest nephew �
�a page to a great lady of my acquaintance’ (p. 73). See The Tatler, With Notes and a General Index (Philadelphia: J. J. Woodward, 1831), no. 30, 18 June 1709, pp. 72–3; no. 207, 5 August 1710, pp. 351–2.

  5. to make… slab: From Shakespeare's Macbeth, IV.i.32. ‘Slab’ means semisolid.

  6. Since the days of the Roman Emperor… horses: Emperor Caligula made his horse, Incitatus, priest and consul, and had him fed from an ivory manger and golden pail.

  7. Doncaster or Newmarket: In South Yorkshire and Suffolk (home of the Jockey Club), respectively; both have traditions of racing which date back to the seventeenth century.

  8. aut a huntsman aut nullus: ‘Either a huntsman or nothing’. Gaskell adapts the motto of Cesare Borgia (1476–1507), ‘Aut Caesar, aut nihil’, which means ‘Either King or nothing’.

  9. hacked off the tail of the fox: Traditionally the hunter who is first in at the kill is allocated the right to the bush (tail) as a trophy.

  10. Catherine, his only child: Evidence of Gaskell's occasional haste and carelessness, as we learn later in the paragraph that Sir Harry has a son, Nathaniel.

  11. Gretna Green: Village just past the Scottish borders, famous as the place where eloping couples went to be married, as Scottish marriage laws until 1856 were much less restrictive than English.

  12. collect his rents from… the south: Renting out real estate in London and other desirable areas became an increasingly common means of acquiring new wealth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  13. buffo: Comic, burlesque.

  14. Dissenter: Protestant who separates herself or himself from the Church of England due to theological disagreement and goes to a chapel.

  15. Mordecai: Cousin of Esther, the wife of King Ahasuerus, refused to bow to the king's favourite, Haman (Esther 3:1–6); the reference here seems to suggest someone who refuses to bow to any but legitimate authority.

  16. stage-coaches: Coaches that conveyed people and parcels between two places, usually inns, on specified days of the week.

  17. beginning to be enclosed: The Enclosure Acts divided and consolidated common grazing and agricultural grounds – ‘commons’ – into privately owned and managed farms by means of hedges or fences. Enclosure was at its height between 1750 and 1860, and was completed by the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to contributing to the decline of the yeoman class of independent farmers, as well as those farmers who did not own any land themselves, hedges made hunting on horseback more of a challenge.

  18. masculine Griselda: In ‘The Clerk's Tale’ (c. 1387) by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), ‘patient Griselda’ is subjected to cruel trials by her husband, the Marquis Walter, in order to test her obedience to, and love for, him.

  19. Dogberries and Verges: See note 5 to ‘Disappearances’.

  20. Gentleman's Magazine: Monthly literary periodical founded by Edward Cave under the pseudonym ‘Sylvanus Urban’ in 1731, including contributions from Samuel Johnson (see n. 14 to ‘Curious, if True’) and Charles Lamb.

  21. Charity covereth a multitude of sins: 1 Peter 4:8: ‘And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.’

  22. treacle posset: Hot drink intended as a remedy for colds, made with milk, treacle and lemon juice.

  23. Philologus: Man of letters (Greek). Davis mentions writing a response to an essay, presumably written by ‘Philologus’, a pseudonym which could have been used by any number of contributors.

  24. tapped a barrel of ginger wine… out of his pocket: Pierced the cask of ginger wine which is now fermented as a result of being ‘set by to work’. Higgins uses the paper to seal the join to prevent the spigot from leaking.

  25. Church-and-King-and-down-with-the-Rump: Cavalier toast, originating between 1648 and 1653, by supporters of Charles I, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War. ‘Rump’ is a contemptuous reference to the remains of the Long Parliament which abolished the House of Lords, executed Charles I in 1649, abolished the monarchy and declared England a commonwealth under Cromwell. Dissenters such as Miss Pratt would have found such a toast particularly offensive because religious minorities such as Jews, Antinomians, Anabaptists and Presbyterians found a degree of tolerance under the Puritan Cromwell (though not Catholics, Levellers or Diggers).

  26. Claude Duval: French highwayman (1643–70), who came to England during the Restoration; he was greatly noted for his favour among women, but was eventually hanged at Tyburn.

  The Poor Clare

  First published in Household Words, 14 (13, 20, 27 December 1856), pp. 510–15; 532–44; 559–65. It appeared in Round the Sofa and Other Tales (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1859), with an elaborate framing device that Gaskell wrote to link the stories. The device centres around visitors to an invalid, and the stories they tell to entertain each other, and each story is prefaced with an introduction to the speaker and closed. Since the frame was written mainly to accommodate the volume publication of the stories, it has been omitted from this edition, which is taken from the reprinting of Round the Sofa as My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales; Included in ‘Round the Sofa’ (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1861), pp. 259–307.

  1. Starkey Manor-house: This story is an example of Gaskell's skilful interweaving of historical fact and local legend with her own fiction. According to John Geoffrey Sharps, ‘The principal seat of the Starkie family at the time of the tale was Huntroyde, built near Pendle Forest in the late sixteenth century…It seems that Mrs Gaskell used the Forest [of Bolland (modern spelling: Bowland)] as a location for the manor-house of a well-known Lancashire family; both the Forest and the name of Starkey (the spelling varies) would be recognized by her readers as authentic, yet their conjunction was of her own inventing’ (Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention: A Study of Her Non-Biographic Works (Sussex: Linden Press, 1970), p. 250). J. A. V. Chapple publishes a newly discovered letter from Gaskell to Caroline Davenport (later Lady Hatherton), 13 February 1857, which describes a story she heard from a M. Bonette, in the dowager Lady Elgin's Parisian home: it was apparently a true experience that happened to Bonette's acquaintance ‘in the South of France, as far as the Man's falling in love with a mysterious Girl at a watering place, & her telling him of the Fiendish Double by which she was haunted for some sin of her Father's’. Chapple concludes that Gaskell drew on Lancashire superstition for inspiration for her story (‘Elizabeth Gaskell's Morton Hall and The Poor Clare’, Brontë Society Transactions, 20: 1 (1990), p. 49). See also A. W. Ward (ed.), The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 5, p. xx.

  2. after the Stuarts came in: James I, also known as James VI in Scotland (1566–1625), the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was the first Stuart king of England. He succeeded the childless Elizabeth I in 1603, and ruled until his death in 1625, after which he was succeeded by his son, Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649.

  3. Heptarchy: Seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumberland.

  4. James the Second… disastrous Irish campaign: James II (1633–1701), the last Roman Catholic king of Great Britain, took the throne in 1685 after the death of his brother, Charles II. James lost the throne in 1688 when William of Orange (William III) was invited to lead the English army against France, after which he and his wife, James's daughter, Mary II, took the throne. The Battle of the Boyne (July 1690) was part of James's attemptto regain the throne, but he lost. Protestants in Northern Ireland still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.

  5. the court at St Germains: After losing his throne, James fled to exile in France, where he set up court at St Germains at the invitation of King Louis XIV.

  6. divine right of kings: Belief originating from the medieval period that kings derived their authority from God, that they could demand unquestioning obedience from their subjects and that their actions were exempt from accountability to any earthly authority (such as Parliament). The full
est expression of this ideology is to be found in James I’s True Law of Free Monarchs (1598), but the theory was abandoned when James II lost his throne.

  7. entail: Limitation on the settlement and the succession of property which forbids the property to be bequeathed at will by the possessor, or to be divided up unless this is expressly provided.

  8. laws against the Papists: After the Protestant Reformation, a series of acts were imposed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forbidding Catholics to vote, own land, teach, publish or sell Catholic primers. The restrictions on property were not lifted until the Relief Act of 1778. The Test Act of 1673 excluded Catholics from holding public office, and was not formally repealed until the 1860s and 1870s, but in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act abolished many legal restrictions.

  9. palmy days: Triumphant, flourishing time.

  10. younger son: See note 2 to ‘The Squire's Story’.

  11. Gray's Inn: Legal offices at the four Inns of Court in London, Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.

  12. mulct: Extract payment, often by illegitimate or unscrupulous means.

  13. Duke of Berwick's regiment: James Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick (1670–1734), illegitimate son of James II, was a leading officer in the French service and commanded an army of James's supporters.

  14. Jacobite's: Supporter of the exiled James II and his male descendants after the Revolution of 1688.

  15. grand tour: Wealthy young men traditionally travelled the Continent, visiting old and new sites of cultural interest, and meeting people of title and fashion.

  16. Litany…Rose of Sharon: A litany is a formulaic, penitential prayer in lead/response form. For Rose of Sharon, see Song of Solomon 2:1: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.’

  17. de vive voix: Questions asked during an oral examination.

  18. wrinkle: Tip or hint.

  19. unenclosed: See note 17 to ‘The Squire's Story’.

  20. Sir Matthew Hale: (1609–76), As judge at the Bury St Edmunds assizes in 1661–2, Hale presided over the hearing in which two old women were indicted for witchcraft, with Sir Thomas Browne giving evidence for the prosecution. The reference to Hale here may be a little anachronistic, as he died well before this part of the story in the late 1710s.