21. Mr Defoe, who had written a book: ‘A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day After her Death, to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, the 8th of September 1705’ (1706), by Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), is considered to be the first modern ghost-story. Defoe is better known as the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
22. mutch: Woman's head-covering or cap.
23. witting: Knowing.
24. shriven: To have made confession and been absolved.
25. Poor Clare: The Convent of the Poor Clares was established by Clare Offreduccio de Favarone (1193–1253) in San Damiano, Italy, in 1212. This contemplative order is based upon the teachings and beliefs of Saint Francis of Assisi, and members of the enclosed community live according to the principles of poverty, sisterly communion and solitude. Ermentine of Bruges (1210–80) founded the Belgian communities of Poor Clares in Bruges, Ypres, Werken and Gand. Ward writes that the convent at Levenshulme, ‘within a quarter of an hour's walk from Plymouth Grove, Manchester’, could have been Gaskell's inspiration (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 5, p. xxi). In Gaskell's letter to Caroline Davenport, she describes hearing a history of the Poor Clares ‘from a Flemish Lady in (Belgium) Antwerp who had a sister – a poor Clare’ (Chapple, ‘Elizabeth Gaskell's Morton Hall, p. 49). Gaskell visited Antwerp in late 1841, which she describes in a letter to Elizabeth Holland, in The Letters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. J. A. V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (Manchester: Mandolin Press, 1997), no. 15, p. 41. For Gaskell's ambiguous views on the conventual life, see her letter to Lady Kay Shuttleworth, 14 May 1850, in Letters, no. 72, pp. 116–18. Finally, for a brief mention of her husband's ‘abhorrence’ of Catholicism, see Gaskell's letter to W. W. Storey, 9 May 1862, in Letters, no. 507, p. 687.
26. Magdalen: Disciple of Christ, once a prostitute, but she reformed and was elevated to sainthood.
27. Antwerp… Austrians: Sharps places the action of this part of the story between ‘the end of the War of Spanish Succession and the beginning of that of the Austrian Succession’ (Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, p. 251). One result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13) was the handover of the Netherlands, including Antwerp, to the Austrian Habsburgs. Gaskell's story implies hostility and antagonism on the part of the Antwerp citizens against their foreign ‘masters’, the Austrians, with whom Gisborne has aligned himself.
28. Therefore, if thine enemy… drink: Romans 12:20. Interestingly, Gaskell does not provide the rest of the text which concludes: ‘for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’, which indicates perhaps her discomfort with the suggestion that to succour the enemy is actually to enrage him.
The Doom of the Griffiths
First published in the American periodical Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 16 (January 1858), pp. 220–34. It is the only story in this collection to be published in a periodical under Gaskell's own name. In England it appeared in Round the Sofa in 1859, and in My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales; Included in ‘Round the Sofa’ (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1861), pp. 186–217, from which the present text is taken.
1. Owen Glendower: Or Owain Glyndwr (c. 1354–c. 1416), the self-proclaimed Prince of Wales, led the last major attempt by a Welshman to overthrow English rule under Henry IV. He seized the crown in 1399 but was defeated twice by Henry IV’s son, who became Henry V. Glendower's efforts to establish Welsh statehood made him a national hero.
2. the Welsh prize poem at Oxford: A puzzling reference, as The Historical Register of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) lists no such prize. It is possible that Gaskell might have been thinking of the English essay by Starling William Day which won the Chancellor's Prize in 1853, entitled ‘Popular Poetry Considered as a Test of National Character’ (Oxford: T. and G. Shrimpton, 1853). Day mentions how ‘the Welsh bards chaunted to a warlike people the praises of “Owen swift and Owen strong”’ as an example of popular martial poetry.
3. ‘At my nativity…Hotspur's irreverent question in reply: From Shakespeare's I Henry IV (1598), III.i.13–14; Hotspur's reply is ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; / But will they come when you do call for them?’ III.i.52–3.
4. Sir David Gam…sought to murder Owen: David Gam (d. 1415), Welsh warrior, remained faithful to Henry IV during Owen's revolt, but rumours that he had plotted to assassinate Owen were unfounded. ‘As black a traitor as if he had been born in Builth’ refers to the ambush and assassination of Prince Llewelyn in 1282, who was beheaded in Buellt (now Builth Wells).
5. mark of Cain: Genesis 4.15: When Cain killed his brother Abel, he was driven from his home and feared retribution from everyone. ‘And the Lord said unto [Cain], Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.’ The ‘mark of Cain’, then, was actually a mark set upon him by God to protect him, but commonly means a brand to stigmatize him, as in Gaskell's story.
6. Merionethshire…Caernarvonshire: According to Worrall's Directory of North Wales, which was published twenty years after Gaskell's story, the geography in ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’ is very nearly precise, with a few minor spelling discrepancies. See John Worrall, Worrall's Directory of North Wales (Oldham: John Worrall, 1874), p. 239. Gaskell knew the area well, as she often holidayed in North Wales at her uncle Sam Holland's house in Plas Penrhyn, close to Tremadoc, Portmadoc and Cardigan Bay. Her ‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’ is also set in this area, as well as the scenes in Ruth where Ruth spends an idyllic few months in unmarried bliss with her seducer Bellingham. Jenny Uglow speculates that the plot of ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’ was ‘probably based on a local scandal heard at Plas Penrhyn’ (Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 122). Sadly, it was also at Portmadoc that Gaskell's nine-month-old son William died in 1845, a tragedy which is perhaps echoed in this story. Worrall's spells ‘Criccaeth’ as ‘Criccieth’, and ‘Ynysynhanarn’ is ‘Ynyscynhaiarn’.
7. dark: Harper's New Monthly Magazine (p. 221) reads ‘dank’, which may be more appropriate in this context.
8.Jesus College: Founded in 1571 ‘due to the initiative and generosity of Hugh Price, treasurer of St. David's Cathedral’, who ‘approached the Queen for her support’ (The Encyclopedia of Oxford, ed. Christopher Hibbert and Edward Hibbert (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 198). Historically the college attracted Welsh scholars (Price was Welsh).
9. Cambrian antiquities…Dr Pugh: I.e. Welsh manuscripts. William Owen Pughe (1759–1835), lexicographer and antiquary, produced the first Welsh–English dictionary (1793–1803) and edited the Cambrian Register, a publication of Welsh history and literature.
10. assizes: Periodic court sessions that travelled around to try civil and criminal cases.
11. Augharad: Should be spelled ‘Angharad’, a popular Welsh name.
12. incubus: Nightmare, or weight on the mind.
13. Oedipus Tyrannus: Also known as Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles (496–406 BC), the Greek tragedy of Oedipus who, learning from an oracle that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother, leaves his adoptive home in a futile effort to avoid his fate.
14. the Avenger: Ate, the goddess of vengeance in Greek mythology who was cast out of Olympus by Zeus, the king of the gods.
15. The March of the men of Harlech: A Welsh battle song commemorating the hold-out of Harlech Castle, the last stronghold to surrender to Yorkist forces in 1468, still sung today by Welsh male choirs.
16. cwrw: Beer.
17. mob-cap: Women's indoor cap worn in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
18. triad: Literary device and common feature of the oral tradition dating back to bardic times, when collections or lists of figures and stories were traditionally grouped in threes as a mnemonic device. ‘Triads are a common feature of Welsh literature. The original ones (c. eighth–tenth centuries) were aides memoires for bardic tales, and presumably for their audiences… Typical examples are the “Three
Great Treacheries”, “Three Red Ravagers”, “Three Frivolous Bards”. [Triads and] summaries of the poems survive, but only a very few of the poems themselves, specifically in the Mabinogion and a couple of other manuscripts. The Triadic form also continues to the present day, as in this example from “The Doom of the Griffiths”’ (my thanks to Kate Jones and Geoff Jones). The correct spelling of ‘ysgnbwr’ is ‘ysgubor’, ‘yd’ should be ‘pd’ and ‘ddiawd’ should be ‘ddiod’.
19. she was motherless: Gaskell was apparently very reserved about her feelings about the loss of her own mother, who died when she was a year old, but in a letter to George Hope, 13 February 1849, she wrote: ‘I think no one but one so unfortunate as to be early motherless can enter into the craving one has after the lost mother’ (Letters, no. 614, p. 797).
20. beds, closed up after the manner of the Welsh: ‘Besides low truckle beds, which could be pushed away under higher ones, additional beds might fold up into small cupboards’ (Richard Bebb, Welsh Country Furniture, Shire Album Series (Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 1994), p. 9).
21. fable of Undine: Undine was an elemental water-spirit written about by Paracelsus (Theophrast Bombast von Hohenheim, 1493?–1541), who was created without a soul, but gained one when married to a mortal with whom she had a child.
22. yr buten: Should probably read ‘y butain’, meaning ‘the whore’ (Kate Jones and Geoff Jones).
23. mimming: Affected modesty or primness.
24. settle: A bench big enough for several people, similar to a movable church pew, with arms and back of varying heights.
25. bound up the jaw: To keep it from dropping in an undignified manner, a common practice in the care-taking of the dead.
26. the days of the Tudors: During the reigns of Henry VII–Elizabeth I (1485–1603).
Lois the Witch
First published in All the Year Round, 1 (8, 15, 22 October 1859), pp. 564–71; 587–97; 609–24. The present text is taken from Right at Last and Other Tales (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1860), pp. 85–240.
1. 1691: Gaskell explicitly opens her story more than six months before the witch-hunting epidemic began in Salem, Massachusetts, in February 1692; she based her historical background largely on the Unitarian minister of Boston, Charles W. Upham's Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusions in Salem, in 1692 (Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babcock, 1831). The character of Lois Barclay is most probably patterned after Rebecca Nurse, whose trial and execution for witchcraft are described by Upham (pp. 83–4). Additionally, A. W. Ward cites a visit Gaskell made to a country magistrate in Essex in the early 1850s, when her host ‘was hastily summoned to prevent an attempt to bring to her death an old woman in a neighbouring village, who was suspected by the inhabitants of being a witch. The incident… made a deep impression upon Mrs. Gaskell, who frequently made mention of it in her family’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxiii).
2. Puritan colonists of New England: 700 Puritans went to America in 1630 under the leadership of John Winthrop (1587/8–1649), to escape persecution in England, and settled in the Massachusetts Bay area in the hope of forming a fully self-governing republic. The Puritans sought to differentiate themselves from Anglicanism and from Catholicism, and based their beliefs on those of the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli (1484–1531) and John Calvin (1509–64) of salvation by election (see note 3 to ‘Curious, if True’ below), with an emphasis on individual salvation through conversion. The Puritans valued a simplified church service, having abandoned The Book of Common Prayer, and exhibited a now-famous moral and religious earnestness which justified daily acts by reference to the Bible; they supported a rigid acceptance of doctrine, and a disapproval of ritual in worship as well as in daily life. Gaskell draws on all of these characteristics, most notably the moral severity and the continual references to Scripture, though she offers an implicit criticism in the way some Puritans misread and misinterpret biblical texts.
3. Barford…1661: Gaskell attended the Byerley sisters’ school at Barford House, 3 miles from Warwick (1821 – 4), before it moved to the Avonbank Mansion in Stratford-upon-Avon. See Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, pp. 35–6. Mr Barclay seems to be entirely Gaskell's own invention (Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, p. 319), as is Hickson.
4. jessamine: Jasmine.
5. the day of the later Stuarts: See note 4 to ‘The Poor Clare’.
6. withes: Branches twisted together to bind, tie or plait.
7. the Miller Lucy: The Lucys were a wealthy and well-established family in Warwickshire, dating back at least to the twelfth century. Their mill was in Stratford-upon-Avon and burned down in 1974.
8. Edgehill: The first battle in 1642, fought in Warwickshire, of the Civil War (see note 25 to ‘The Squire's Story’).
9. schismatic: Independent or Presbyterian who separated from the Church of England on the basis of doctrinal disagreement.
10. expedition against Canada: See Upham: ‘A recent expedition against Canada had exposed the colonies to the vengeance of France’ (Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 12).
11. loss of their charter: The Massachusetts State Charter was withdrawn by the English crown in 1685 as a reaction to Puritan refusal to comply with royal policies.
12. Prudence: There may be some confusion here, as Widow Smith's daughter, who is only mentioned once, bears the same name as Grace Hickson's youngest child.
13. wampum-beads: Wampum is a Native American (Indian) word for beads made from shells which served as currency between the Native Americans and Europeans and between Native American tribes.
14. Golden Wasser: Literally ‘Gold Water’, a spiced liquor or spirit containing chips of gold or gold-like pieces.
15. punken-pie…brandered: Pumpkin pie, a traditional New England dessert – dating back to at least the seventeenth century – eaten especially on Thanksgiving. To brander is to cook by broiling or grilling.
16. Elder Hawkins: Elders were chosen by elect members, and officers of the church also acted as officers of the state. The civil commonwealth functioned in accordance with the framework of the Church; hence, religious heresy was seen as a civil offence.
17. Jacobite: See note 14 to ‘The Poor Clare’.
18. Archbishop Laud: William Laud (1573 – 1645), Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I, an overzealous opponent of Calvinism who enforced the kinds of rituals and ceremonies, such as the wearing of surplices and bowing when Jesus’ name was mentioned, so antithetical to Puritan doctrine. Many Puritans emigrated to America expressly because of Laud's intolerance and his attempts to enforce conformity to Anglican forms of worship.
19. minute-men: Militia to be ready at a moment's notice in the battle against the Native Americans; Gaskell quotes here almost word for word from Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 11.
20. Lothrop's business: In 1675 Thomas Lothrop and his men were ambushed and killed by Native Americans.
21. Blasphemed custard through the nose: Hudibras (1663–78), by Samuel Butler (1612–80), Part I, Canto I, l. 230; a satirical reference to the nasal whine of devout sectarians, such as the Puritans.
22. Inasmuch as ye…unto me: Cf. Matthew 25:40: ‘And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’.
23. see what fruit their doctrine bore: Matthew 7:20: See ‘Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.’ This suggests perhaps an implicit criticism of some of the Puritans’ literal readings of the Bible which do not take account of subtleties of context and meaning.
24. like a roaring lion: See 1 Peter 5:8: ‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’
25. the devil is painted…Indians painted: The Puritan colonists believed both the ‘Indians’ and the French were sent by evil spirits in disguise to distract the New Englanders’ attention away from
their just battle with Satan (Upham, Lectures on Witchcraft, pp. 254–5). ‘King Philip's War’ (1675–6) was fought over the white colonists’ expulsion of the Native Americans from their hunting-grounds and effectively destroyed the Native resistance effort in southern New England; however, as Gaskell's story demonstrates, the colonists’ hostility and suspicion increased and intensified when the Native Americans entered into the pay of the French, who were Roman Catholics, in their war against England in 1690.
26. the Evil One in desert places: See Matthew 4:1: ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.’
27. a good day's journey to Salem: Upham confirms that in the 1690s, travel from Boston to Salem ‘was then the fatiguing, adventurous and doubtful work of an entire day’ (Lectures on Witchcraft, p. 12).
28. meeting-house: Place of worship (as opposed to established churches).
29. folio: A very large bound volume.
30. house-place: ‘Common living-room in a farm-house or cottage’ (OED).
31. Wellcome: In All the Year Round (p. 569), the name is ‘Wellbeloved’.
32. took the oaths to Charles Stuart, and stuck by his living: Those ministers who refused to recant their faith and swear allegiance instead to the order of service prescribed by the established church under Charles II lost their livings. Referring to the king as ‘Charles Stuart’ is deliberately contemptuous, denying his legitimacy.
33. settle: See note 24 to ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’.
34. Manasseh: Popular given name among Puritans. Manasseh in the Bible was the first-born son of Joseph, and the name means ‘one who causes to forget’ (Genesis 41:51). Interestingly, Manasseh was also the wicked king of Judah: see 2 Kings 21:1–18.