‘Yes, so she said. Not even Mrs Fitz-Adam.’
Now Mrs Fitz-Adam was the widowed sister of the Cranford surgeon, whom I have named before. Their parents were respectable farmers, content with their station. The name of these good people was Hoggins. Mr Hoggins was the Cranford doctor now; we disliked the name, and considered it coarse; but, as Miss Jenkyns said, if he changed it to Piggins it would not be much better. We had hoped to discover a relationship between him and that Marchioness of Exeter whose name was Molly Hoggins; but the man, careless of his own interests, utterly ignored and denied any such relationship; although, as dear Miss Jenkyns had said, he had a sister called Mary, and the same Christian names were very apt to run in families.
Soon after Miss Mary Hoggins married Mr Fitz-Adam, she disappeared from the neighbourhood for many years. She did not move in a sphere in Cranford society sufficiently high to make any of us care to know what Mr Fitz-Adam was. He died and was gathered to his fathers, without our ever having thought about him at all. And then Mrs Fitz-Adam reappeared in Cranford (‘as bold as a lion,’ Miss Pole said), a well-to-do widow, dressed in rustling black silk, so soon after her husband’s death, that poor Miss Jenkyns was justified in the remark she made, that ‘bombazine would have shown a deeper sense of her loss’.
I remember the convocation of ladies, who assembled to decide whether or not Mrs Fitz-Adam should be called upon by the old blue-blooded inhabitants of Cranford. She had taken a large rambling house, which had been usually considered to confer a patent of gentility upon its tenant; because, once upon a time, seventy or eighty years before, the spinster daughter of an earl had resided in it. I am not sure if the inhabiting this house was not also believed to convey some unusual power of intellect; for the earl’s daughter, Lady Jane, had a sister, Lady Anne, who had married a general officer, in the time of the American war; and this general officer had written one or two comedies, which were still acted on the London boards; and which, when we saw them advertised, made us all draw up, and feel that Drury Lane was paying a very pretty compliment to Cranford. Still, it was not at all a settled thing that Mrs Fitz-Adam was to be visited, when dear Miss Jenkyns died; and, with her, something of the clear knowledge of the strict code of gentility went out too. As Miss Pole observed, ‘As most of the ladies of good family in Cranford were elderly spinsters, or widows without children, if we did not relax a little, and become less exclusive, by-and-by we should have no society at all.’
Mrs Forrester continued on the same side.
‘She had always understood that Fitz meant something aristocratic; there was Fitz-Roy – she thought that some of the King’s children had been called Fitz-Roy; and there was Fitz-Clarence now – they were the children of dear good King William the Fourth. Fitz-Adam! – it was a pretty name; and she thought it very probably meant “Child of Adam.” No one, who had not some good blood in their veins, would dare to be called Fitz; there was a deal in a name – she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ffs – ffoulkes, – and he always looked down upon capital letters, and said they belonged to lately-invented families. She had been afraid he would die a batchelor, he was so very choice. When he met with a Mrs ffarringdon, at a watering-place, he took to her immediately; and a very pretty genteel woman she was – a widow with a very good fortune; and “my cousin,” Mr ffoulkes, married her; and it was all owing to her two little ffs.’
Mrs Fitz-Adam did not stand a chance of meeting with a Mr Fitz-anything in Cranford, so that could not have been her motive for settling there. Miss Matty thought it might have been the hope of being admitted in the society of the place, which would certainly be a very agreeable rise for ci-devant Miss Hoggins; and if this had been her hope, it would be cruel to disappoint her.
So everybody called upon Mrs Fitz-Adam – everybody but Mrs Jamieson, who used to show how honourable she was by never seeing Mrs Fitz-Adam, when they met at the Cranford parties. There would be only eight or ten ladies in the room, and Mrs Fitz-Adam was the largest of all, and she invariably used to stand up when Mrs Jamieson came in, and curtsey very low to her whenever she turned in her direction – so low, in fact, that I think Mrs Jamieson must have looked at the wall above her, for she never moved a muscle of her face, no more than if she had not seen her. Still Mrs Fitz-Adam persevered.
The spring evenings were getting bright and long, when three or four ladies in calashes met at Miss Barker’s door. Do you know what a calash is? It is a covering worn over caps, not unlike the heads fastened on old-fashioned gigs; but sometimes it is not quite so large. This kind of head-gear always made an awful impression on the children in Cranford; and now two or three left off their play in the quiet sunny little street, and gathered, in wondering silence, round Miss Pole, Miss Matty, and myself. We were silent too, so that we could hear loud, suppressed whispers, inside Miss Barker’s house: ‘Wait, Peggy! wait till I’ve run upstairs, and washed my hands. When I cough, open the door; I’ll not be a minute.’
And, true enough, it was not a minute before we heard a noise, between a sneeze and a crow; on which the door flew open. Behind it stood a round-eyed maiden, all aghast at the honourable company of calashes, who marched in without a word. She recovered presence of mind enough to usher us into a small room, which had been the shop, but was now converted into a temporary dressing-room. There we unpinned and shook ourselves, and arranged our features before the glass into a sweet and gracious company-face; and then, bowing backwards with ‘After you, ma’am,’ we allowed Mrs Forrester to take precedence up the narrow staircase that led to Miss Barker’s drawing-room. There she sat, as stately and composed as though we had never heard that odd-sounding cough, from which her throat must have been even then sore and rough. Kind, gentle, shabbily-dressed Mrs Forrester was immediately conducted to the second place of honour – a seat arranged something like Prince Albert’s near the Queen’s – good, but not so good. The place of pre-eminence was, of course, reserved for the Honourable Mrs Jamieson, who presently came panting up the stairs – Carlo rushing round her on her progress, as if he meant to trip her up.
And now, Miss Betty Barker was a proud and happy woman! She stirred the fire, and shut the door, and sat as near to it as she could, quite on the edge of her chair. When Peggy came in, tottering under the weight of the tea-tray, I noticed that Miss Barker was sadly afraid lest Peggy should not keep her distance sufficiently. She and her mistress were on very familiar terms in their everyday intercourse, and Peggy wanted now to make several little confidences to her, which Miss Barker was on thorns to hear; but which she thought it her duty, as a lady, to repress. So she turned away from all Peggy’s asides and signs; but she made one or two very mal-apropos answers to what was said; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she exclaimed, ‘Poor sweet Carlo! I’m forgetting him. Come down stairs with me, poor little doggie, and it shall have its tea, it shall!’
In a few minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before; but I thought she had forgotten to give the ‘poor little doggie’ anything to eat; judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded. I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; but somehow the heaps disappeared here. I saw Mrs Jamieson eating seed-cake, slowly and considerately, as she did everything; and I was rather surprised, for I knew she had told us, on the occasion of her last party, that she never had it in her house, it reminded her so much of scented soap. She always gave us Savoy biscuits. However, Mrs Jamieson was kindly indulgent to Miss Barker’s want of knowledge of the customs of high life; and, to spare her feelings, ate three large pieces of seed-cake, with a placid, ruminating expression of countenance, not unlike a cow’s.
After tea there was some little demur and difficulty. We were six in number; four could play at Preference, and for the other two there was Cribbage. But all, except myself – (I was rather afraid of the Cranford ladi
es at cards, for it was the most earnest and serious business they ever engaged in) – were anxious to be of the ‘pool’. Even Miss Barker, while declaring she did not know Spadille from Manille, was evidently handkering to take a hand. The dilemma was soon put an end to by a singular kind of noise. If a Baron’s daughter-in-law could ever be supposed to snore, I should have said Mrs Jamieson did so then; for, overcome by the heat of the room, and inclined to doze by nature, the temptation of that very comfortable armchair had been too much for her, and Mrs Jamieson was nodding. Once or twice she opened her eyes with an effort, and calmly but unconsciously smiled upon us; but, by-and-by, even her benevolence was not equal to this exertion, and she was sound asleep.
‘It is very gratifying to me,’ whispered Miss Barker at the card-table to her three opponents, whom, notwithstanding her ignorance of the game, she was ‘basting’ most unmercifully – ‘very gratifying indeed, to see how completely Mrs Jamieson feels at home in my poor little dwelling; she could not have paid me a greater compliment.’
Miss Barker provided me with some literature in the shape of three or four handsomely-bound fashion-books ten or twelve years old, observing, as she put a little table and a candle for my especial benefit, that she knew young people liked to look at pictures. Carlo lay, and snorted, and started at his mistress’s feet. He, too, was quite at home.
The card-table was an animated scene to watch; four ladies’ heads, with niddle-noddling caps, all nearly meeting over the middle of the table, in their eagerness to whisper quick enough and loud enough: and every now and then came Miss Barker’s ‘Hush, ladies! if you please, hush! Mrs Jamieson is asleep.’
It was very difficult to steer clear between Mrs Forrester’s deafness and Mrs Jamieson’s sleepiness. But Miss Barker managed her arduous task well. She repeated the whisper to Mrs Forrester, distorting her face considerably, in order to show, by the motions of her lips, what was said; and then she smiled kindly all round at us, and murmured to herself, ‘Very gratifying, indeed; I wish my poor sister had been alive to see this day.’
Presently the door was thrown wide open; Carlo started to his feet, with a loud snapping bark, and Mrs Jamieson awoke: or, perhaps, she had not been asleep – as she said almost directly, the room had been so light she had been glad to keep her eyes shut, but had been listening with great interest to all our amusing and agreeable conversation. Peggy came in once more, red with importance. Another tray! ‘Oh, gentility!’ thought I, ‘can you endure this last shock?’ For Miss Barker had ordered (nay, I doubt not, prepared, although she did say, ‘Why! Peggy, what have you brought us?’ and looked pleasantly surprised at the unexpected pleasure) all sorts of good things for supper – scalloped oysters, potted lobsters, jelly, a dish called ‘little Cupids’ (which was in great favour with the Cranford ladies, although too expensive to be given, except on solemn and state occasions – maccaroons sopped in brandy, I should have called it, if I had not known its more refined and classical name). In short, we were evidently to be feasted with all that was sweetest and best; and we thought it better to submit graciously, even at the cost of our gentility – which never ate suppers in general – but which, like most non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions.
Miss Barker, in her former sphere, had, I dare say, been made acquainted with the beverage they call cherry-brandy. We none of us had ever seen such a thing, and rather shrank back when she proffered it us – ‘just a little, leetle glass, ladies; after the oysters and lobsters, you know. Shell-fish are sometimes thought not very wholesome.’ We all shook our heads like female mandarins! but, at last, Mrs Jamieson suffered herself to be persuaded, and we followed her lead. It was not exactly unpalatable, though so hot and so strong that we thought ourselves bound to give evidence that we were not accustomed to such things, by coughing terribly – almost as strangely as Miss Barker had done, before we were admitted by Peggy.
‘It’s very strong,’ said Miss Pole, as she put down her empty glass; ‘I do believe there’s spirit in it.’
‘Only a little drop – just necessary to make it keep,’ said Miss Barker. ‘You know we put brandy-paper over preserves to make them keep. I often feel tipsy myself from eating damson tart.’
I question whether damson tart would have opened Mrs Jamieson’s heart as the cherry-brandy did; but she told us of a coming event, respecting which she had been quite silent till that moment.
‘My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me.’
There was a chorus of ‘Indeed!’ and then a pause. Each one rapidly reviewed her wardrobe, as to its fitness to appear in the presence of a Baron’s widow; for, of course, a series of small festivals were always held in Cranford on the arrival of a visitor at any of our friends’ houses. We felt very pleasantly excited on the present occasion.
Not long after this, the maids and the lanterns were announced. Mrs Jamieson had the sedan chair, which had squeezed itself into Miss Barker’s narrow lobby with some difficulty, and most literally ‘stopped the way’. It required some skilful manoeuvring on the part of the old chairmen (shoemakers by day; but when summoned to carry the sedan, dressed up in a strange old livery – long great-coats, with small capes, coeval with the sedan, and similar to the dress of the class in Hogarth’s pictures) to edge, and back, and try at it again, and finally to succeed in carrying their burden out of Miss Barker’s front door. Then we heard their quick pit-a-pat along the quiet little street, as we put on our calashes, and pinned up our gowns; Miss Barker hovering about us with offers of help; which, if she had not remembered her former occupation, and wished us to forget it, would have been much more pressing.
VIII
‘Your Ladyship’
Early the next morning – directly after twelve – Miss Pole made her appearance at Miss Matty’s. Some very trifling piece of business was alleged as a reason for the call; but there was evidently something behind. At last out it came.
‘By the way, you’ll think I’m strangely ignorant; but, do you really know, I am puzzled how we ought to address Lady Glenmire. Do you say, “Your Ladyship,” where you would say “you” to a common person? I have been puzzling all morning; and are we to say “My lady,” instead of “Ma’am?” Now, you knew Lady Arley – will you kindly tell me the most correct way of speaking to the Peerage?’
Poor Miss Matty! she took off her spectacles and she put them on again – but how Lady Arley was addressed, she could not remember.
‘It is so long ago,’ she said. ‘Dear! dear! how stupid I am! I don’t think I ever saw her more than twice. I know we used to call Sir Peter, “Sir Peter,” – but he came much oftener to see us than Lady Arley did. Deborah would have known in a minute. My lady – your ladyship. It sounds very strange, and as if it was not natural. I never thought of it before; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle.’
It was very certain Miss Pole would obtain no wise decision from Miss Matty, who got more bewildered every moment, and more perplexed as to etiquettes of address.
‘Well, I really think,’ said Miss Pole, ‘I had better just go and tell Mrs Forrester about our little difficulty. One sometimes grows nervous; and yet one would not have Lady Glenmire think we were quite ignorant of the etiquettes of high life in Cranford.’
‘And will you just step in here, dear Miss Pole, as you come back, please; and tell me what you decide upon? Whatever you and Mrs Forrester fix upon, will be quite right, I’m sure. “Lady Arley,” “Sir Peter,”’ said Miss Matty, to herself, trying to recall the old forms of words.
‘Who is Lady Glenmire?’ asked I.
‘Oh! she’s the widow of Mr Jamieson – that’s Mrs Jamieson’s late husband, you know – widow of his eldest brother. Mrs Jamieson was a Miss Walker, daughter of Governor Walker. Your ladyship. My dear, if they fix on that way of speaking, you must just let me practise a little on you first, for I shall feel so foolish and hot, saying it the first time to Lady Glenmire.’
It was really a relief t
o Miss Matty when Mrs Jamieson came on a very unpolite errand. I notice that apathetic people have more quiet impertinence than others; and Mrs Jamieson came now to insinuate pretty plainly that she did not particularly wish that the Cranford ladies should call upon her sister-in-law. I can hardly say how she made this clear; for I grew very indignant and warm, while with slow deliberation she was explaining her wishes to Miss Matty, who, a true lady herself, could hardly understand the feeling which made Mrs Jamieson wish to appear to her noble sister-in-law as if she only visited ‘county’ families. Miss Matty remained puzzled and perplexed long after I had found out the object of Mrs Jamieson’s visit.
When she did understand the drift of the honourable lady’s call, it was pretty to see with what quiet dignity she received the intimation thus uncourteously given. She was not in the least hurt – she was of too gentle a spirit for that; nor was she exactly conscious of disapproving of Mrs Jamieson’s conduct; but there was something of this feeling in her mind, I am sure, which made her pass from the subject to others, in a less flurried and more composed manner than usual. Mrs Jamieson was, indeed, the more flurried of the two, and I could see she was glad to take her leave.
A little while afterwards, Miss Pole returned, red and indignant. ‘Well! to be sure! You’ve had Mrs Jamieson here, I find from Martha; and we are not to call on Lady Glenmire. Yes! I met Mrs Jamieson, half-way between here and Mrs Forrester’s, and she told me; she took me so by surprise, I had nothing to say. I wish I had thought of something very sharp and sarcastic; I dare say I shall to-night. And Lady Glenmire is but the widow of a Scotch baron after all! I went on to look at Mrs Forrester’s Peerage, to see who this lady was, that is to be kept under a glass case: widow of a Scotch peer – never sat in the House of Lords – and as poor as Job, I dare say; and she – fifth daughter of some Mr Campbell or other. You are the daughter of a rector, at any rate, and related to the Arleys; and Sir Peter might have been Viscount Arley, every one says.’