6 agait: cf. ‘agate’. See n. 9, Chapter IV
CHAPTER XXVIII: The Ordeal
1 Our God, our help: opening lines of Isaac Watts's famous hymn, adapted from Psalm 90, one of the appointed psalms for the order for the Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer. The psalm describes the temporality of human life and God's everlasting power.
2 ‘Old Grouse in the gun-room’: from Act II, scene i, of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773), in which Hardcastle, instructing his servant Diggory how to behave when he has guests, tells him he must not start laughing if he tells a good story; Diggory replies, ‘Then, ecod, your worship must not tell the story of old Grouse in the gun-room: I can't help laughing at that.’ (Sanders.)
3 greeting: weeping, sorrowing.
4 vade-mecum: book or manual suitable for carrying about for ready reference.
5 dateless: stupefied, disordered in mind.
CHAPTER XXIX: Wedding Raiment
1 ‘close at his ear’: recalls Milton's Paradise Lost, Book IV, lines 799–800. Satan, disguised as a serpent, is discovered by the angels in his role as tempter: ‘him there they found/Squat like a toad, close at the eare of Eve.’
2 an apple of Sodom: see n. 1 to Chapter XIII.
3 Robin Hood's Bay: coastal fishing and resort village about seven miles south of Whitby. Here, Gaskell has no hesitation in using a real place-name from the area.
4 ‘From him that would ask’: misquotation of Matthew 5:42: ‘Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away.’
5 shanry: from shandrydan, kind of chaise or light open carriage with a hood.
CHAPTER XXX: Happy Days
1 ‘sit in her parlour… seam’: from the nursery rhyme, ‘Curly locks‘:
Curly locks, Curly locks,
Wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash dishes
Nor yet feed the swine,
But sit on a cushion
And sew a fine seam,
And feed upon strawberries,
Sugar and cream.
2 ‘white work’: white embroidery on white material. (Sanders.)
3 ‘ox and the ass’: perhaps recall of Exodus 20:17, the tenth commandment: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife… nor his ox, nor his ass.’ A common conjunction – see v. 3 of Christina Rossetti's well-known carol, ‘In the bleak mid-winter’.
4 ‘Long may ye live’: in a letter of 18 August 1858 to Mary Howitt, Gaskell explains that one of the ‘country customs' of her youth was the singing of this verse at weddings, an event which occurred at her own marriage in September 1832.
5 pattens: clogs or wooden overshoes worn to keep feet dry.
CHAPTER XXXI: Evil Omens
1 declension: downward fortunes.
2 flytin’: chiding, scolding, quarrelling with.
3 Cumberland ‘statesman’: i.e. ‘estatesman’, one of a class of sturdy smallholders, originally in this region.
4 ‘A crust of bread and liberty’: last line of Imitations of Horace, Book II, satire VI (1738) by Alexander Pope (1688–1744).
5 the west side of the town: Gaskell substituted ‘west' for the original ‘north' in manuscript and earlier editions of the novel, James Dixon having pointed out to her the topographical error. She made a similar change from ‘northern' to ‘western' in the next paragraph.
CHAPTER XXXII: Rescued from the Waves
1 crazy: full of flaws, shaky, frail.
CHAPTER XXXIII: An Apparition
1 balm-tea: tea made from leaves of lemon balm, a relaxing remedy for the nervous and digestive systems, relieving anxiety and tension.
CHAPTER XXXIV: A Reckless Recruit
1 Sir Sidney Smith: for Gaskell's sources for the scenes in the novel concerning Smith and the siege of Acre, see Appendix 1.
2 ‘at heaven's gate’: from song in Cymbeline, Act II, scene 3: ‘Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings, and Phoebus gins arise.’
3 Good lork: exclamation of surprise, often written ‘lawk‘.
4 Oud Harry: the Devil.
5 gawby: fool, dunce.
6 the fatal shilling: men were often manipulated into enlisting for the army by being offered a ‘King's shilling' by the recruiting officer, which, once accepted, bound them to service.
CHAPTER XXXV: Things Unutterable
1 mazed: bewildered.
CHAPTER XXXVI: Mysterious Tidings
1 fell: enraged, fierce, violent.
2 land-crimps or water-crimps: ‘crimp’, agent who procures seamen or soldiers, especially by decoying or impressing them.
3 ‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee’: benediction from Numbers 6:24–6.
CHAPTER XXXVII: Bereavement
1 ‘wrestling with the Lord’: in Genesis 33:24–9, Jacob wrestles with a man, eventually prevailing upon him to acknowledge God's power; Alice may be confusing her biblical source.
2 runnels: little streams or rivulets.
CHAPTER XXXVIII: The Recognition
1 terebinth or ilex tree: the terebinth is of the Anacardiaceae family, a source of Chian turpentine, hence also called turpentine tree; the ilex is the evergreen or holm-oak.
2 some fifty, some an hundredfold: from parable of the sower, Matthew 13:8. The quotation should read, ‘some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold‘.
3 rivalling the pomp of King Solomon: Matthew 6: 28–9: ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’
4 machicolated: with parapets or openings between the wall supports through which stones or lead could be poured on the attackers.
CHAPTER XXXIX: Confidences
1 Kinraid had all her money settled on her: until the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, a woman's husband took legal possession of all her property upon her marriage unless specific pre-nuptial agreements about ‘separate property' were made. Gaskell, whose first literary earnings were ‘composedly buttoned up' in William's pocket (letter of 26 April 1850), was well aware of the iniquities of this law, and she was one of the signatories of a petition organized in 1855 by a group of feminists, requesting Parliament for reform. Kinraid's action here shows his generosity towards his wife.
CHAPTER XL: An Unexpected Messenger
1 a heavenly and a typical city: according to Sanders, Alice is referring to a passage in the Epistle to the Galatians, 4:25–6, which contrasts the earthly Jerusalem ‘in bondage with her children' with an archetypal heavenly one which is ‘free’, the New Jerusalem described in Revelation 21.
CHAPTER XLI: The Bedesman of St Sepulchre
1 drouthy: variant of ‘droughty’, dry, thirsty, parched.
2 Hospital of St Sepulchre: probably based on the Hospital of St Cross in Winchester, founded between 1133 and 1136 by Henry de Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror. It cared for thirteen poor men and also provided food for a hundred more from the city. In 1151 it was put into the hands of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem. It was fully renovated in 1390 by the then Master, John de Campeden. A mid-Victorian scandal concerning the misappropriation of funds by Francis North, Master, later Earl of Guildford, inspired Anthony Trollope's novel, The Warden (1857). Visitors to the hospital now, as when Philip arrives, are entitled to the Wayfarer's Dole, a drink of beer and some bread.
3 manchet: small roll or loaf of fine wheaten bread.
4 the receipt as well as the masses: i.e. the recipe (‘receipt‘) as well as the amount (‘mass' originally meant a lump of dough).
5 th' four kingdoms: England, Scotland, Ireland, France.
6 company: here and in Chapter XLII, the first edition has ‘regiment‘. The substitution is another example of Gaskell's desire for credibility: a company is a subdivision of an infantry commanded by a captain; a regiment is a large body of troops forming a major unit of an army. The size of the latter would have made it un
likely that Philip would remember individuals within it.
7 the taking of Quebec: in 1758 Pitt gave General James Wolfe (1727–59) command of an expedition to take Quebec from the French. The city fell on 18 September 1759, five days after the initial attack, but Wolfe was fatally injured during the manoeuvre.
CHAPTER XLII: A Fable at Fault
1 Peregrine Pickle: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, first published in 1751, by Tobias Smollett (1721–71) is a satirical novel in the picaresque mode, about the adventures of a swashbuckling scoundrel.
2 Seven Champions of Christendom: Sanders maintains the unlikelihood of Philip's finding the story of Guy of Warwick in this work, frequently printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and dealing with the tales of the seven patron saints of Western Europe (George, Denis, James, Anthony, Andrew, Patrick and David). Whatever the source, the story of Guy's relation with his wife, Phillis, as given here, closely replicates the standard versions of the legend of Guy.
CHAPTER XLIII: The Unknown
1 Tom Tiddler's ground: a children's game in which one child, called ‘Tom Tiddler’, stands within a circle or behind a line drawn on the ground, while others run into his territory, calling out, ‘Here am I on Tom Tiddler's ground, picking up gold and silver.’ If Tom Tiddler can touch any intruder during these incursions, that child replaces him as the guardian of the territory.
2 Not a' mak o': not many.
3 my sister: in Chapter XXXVI we are told that Kester is lodging at Peggy Dawson's.
4 new buildings… grand new walk: Whitby began to expand at the end of the eighteenth century in the area west of the Esk, but Gaskell's reference to the ‘grand new walk' around the cliffs may be anachronistic. Cliff Street (at the end of Flowergate) and the developments on the West Cliff itself, including the ‘Khyber Pass‘, a footpath up to the cliff, did not appear until after 1848, when the West Cliff estate was purchased by George Hudson.
5 tyke: low-bred, surly fellow, vagrant.
6 stirabout: oatmeal porridge.
7 t' father o' lies: Jesus' retort to the Pharisees who are claiming God as their father, in John 8:44: ‘Ye are of your father the devil… When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.’
8 raxes: stretches.
CHAPTER XLIV: First Words
1 tickle: difficult to deal with, delicate.
2 ‘With God all things are possible’: Matthew 19:26.
CHAPTER XLV: Saved and Lost
1 fickleness: first edition has ‘feebleness’.
2 ‘wheere all tears are wiped away’: Revelation 21:4: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.’
3 ‘way to escape’: 1 Corinthians 10:13: ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.’
4 ‘what a Christian might be’: perhaps a reference to the wish of the dying Joseph Addison (1672–1719) that Lord Warwick, a riotous young nobleman, should witness his death to see ‘how a Christian can die’. (Sanders.)
5 that bringeth… unto all people: a paraphrase of Luke 2:10: ‘And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.’
6 ‘The former things are passed away’: another quotation from Revelation 21:4.
7 ‘there shall be no more sea’: Revelation 21:1: ‘and there was no more sea’. Here, as so often, Gaskell seems to be relying on her memory for biblical quotations.
8 Public Baths: erected in Whitby in 1826. The Subscription Library moved into the same building in 1827.
APPENDIX I: SOURCES
PRESS-GANG RIOTS
Gaskell's interest in impressment and its effect on local communities may have been long-standing. Press-gang activities would have been part of the naval history she gleaned from her own family, many of whom were connected with the navy; the outrages perpetrated were also recalled in prints and popular songs of the late eighteenth century, and, more movingly, in the story of ‘Ruth' in Crabbe's Tales of the Hall (1819), which tells of a girl whose sailor love is torn from her by the press-gang just before their wedding day – a narrative with which Gaskell was most likely familiar. But the most immediate source of her interest was probably the conversations she had with Whitby residents during her stay there. Most important of these was a John Corney, who not only provided her with details about whale fishery and the press-gang riots in Whitby in 1793, but also either lent her or alerted her to the Reverend George Young's History of Whitby (2 vols., 1817), in gratitude for which she sent him an autographed copy of the first edition of Sylvia's Lovers. Young's work, as well as supplying much background information about Whitby and its history, gave details about the riot of 1793 and its tragic aftermath.
The identity of Gaskell's informant is problematic. Mrs Chadwick refers to him as George Corney, though this is probably an error. More puzzlingly, the Whitby Gazette of 3 October 1890 records the death of a Mr John Corner, late of Whitby, a ‘diligent collector' of antiquarian items including Captain Cook's logbook, who, according to the 68th Report of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society of 31 October 1890, supplied Gaskell with ‘many particulars of OLD WHITBY [sic], its Whale Fisheries, and the Press-gang – information used by the gifted authoress in her popular and now famous story' (p. 4). On the other hand, the Whitby Gazette also records the death of two John Corneys, both cartwrights or wheelwrights in the parish of Aislaby within Whitby, the first on 22 September 1870, aged eighty-six, the second, his grandson, on 2 February 1920, aged seventy-seven. Since Ward claims that a John Corney first gave Gaskell (‘sent her‘) details about the 1793 press-gang riots in Whitby and reported conversations he had had with an old man of eighty-four ‘who well remembers the circumstances' (p. xxiii), it would seem that it was the elder Corney – or possibly his son, the father of the other one mentioned here – who is the informant in question.
Through Corney – or Young – Gaskell also learnt that one of the chief rioters was called William Atkinson and that he was subsequently tried at York and hanged, facts which she was able to verify in the following months when she was pursuing researches for her novel. She consulted volumes of the Annual Register, much of which had been written and compiled by her father, William Stevenson, for the years 1793 and beyond (William borrowed them for her from the Portico Library, Manchester). She also used official government documents: from the Admiralty Records she obtained a copy of a letter from Lieutenant W. H. Atkinson, Keeper of the Whitby Rendezvous at the time of the riots, to Philip Stevens, probably an official at the Admiralty. This letter, reproduced by Ward, gives details of the disturbances which took place on the evenings of Saturday, the 23rd, and Sunday, 24 February 1793, in which the Rendezvous was attacked, the furnishings destroyed, the press-gang assaulted, and the landlord almost murdered, proceedings halted only by the arrival of the militia with a magistrate to disperse the mob whose ‘ringleaders are the protected men in the Greenland ships' (p. xxiv). Further details were supplied in the Calendar of Felons and Malefactors, which recorded that an old man, William Atkinson, one of three people ‘charged… of a Felony in having with diverse other persons… on Sat 23d… about nine o'clock at night riotously assembled themselves together against the peace of our Lord the King, and with force and arms, unlawfully began to pull down and demolish the dwelling House of Whitby‘, was hanged at York Castle on 13 April 1793. Chadwick says that a Mrs Scott, who was living in the house in Abbey Terrace when Gaskell and her daughters were staying there, told her that the words with which Atkinson incited the mob and which her own grandmother had heard are exactly replicated in the speech which Daniel Robson makes on the same occasion – a further confirmation of Gaskell's desire for accuracy of detail.
As well as talking to local inhabitants, Gaskell had many people ‘at work for me, in Yorkshire' (letter of March 1860). The most important of these was General T. Perronet Thompson, Member of Parliament for Hull. Thompson's niece, Isabel, was a friend of Marianne and Meta Gaskell, and, according to Ward, wrote to her uncle (at Gaskell's request?) for information about press-gang operations in Yorkshire. Thompson was clearly familiar with such matters, as Mrs Edith Thompson's draft biography of him (in the University of Hull library) makes evident: the manuscript contains Thompson's reference, c. 1825–6, to ‘a paper on Impressment, (of which you know I know something, I have done the foul deed myself)’. In February 860, Thompson sent Gaskell details of an incident which occurred in Hull in 1798 in which a fight broke out between the sailors of a whaler, the Blenheim, and the press-gang, resulting in the death of one of the impressment crew; the killer was tried at York, but was acquitted. In April 1860, Thompson sent further details about this incident, plus information about a similar violent confrontation of 1794 in which a whaleman and a press-gang man named Charles Darley were killed; Thompson says he himself witnessed the former's funeral procession, although it is clear that he was not present at the ‘Battle of the Blenheim’, as the event came to be known. She also consulted Sir Charles Napier, formerly Commander of the Channel Fleet.
Interestingly, in her text Gaskell gives the name Darley to the young whaleman who is killed and who receives a ceremonious burial at Monkshaven. Charley becomes the Christian name of the heroic figure whom Sylvia first meets at the funeral and who is to become so central in her life.
WHALING
By the time that Gaskell visited Whitby the whaling industry had been over for at least thirty years, so although undoubtedly there were still inhabitants old enough to supply her with reminiscences or handed-down memories (John Corney was probably one such), she had to rely on written sources for much of her information. The chief of these was William Scoresby's An Account of the Arctic Regions with a history and description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (2 vols., 1820). Scoresby's work draws on his own experiences as a crew member of several whalers, including the Resolution of Whitby – mentioned anachronistically in Gaskell's text – commanded by his father, Captain William Scoresby (1760–1829), one of the most successful and adventurous whaling captains from the area. It also reproduces many details taken from Captain Scoresby's journals and logbooks kept on his voyages, particularly the eight he made in the Resolution from 1803 to 1810.
Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Page 61