7. patois: Dialect speech.
8. battants: Bars to secure a door.
9. Monsieur le Géanquilleur: Reference in ‘patois’ to Jack the Giant-killer.
10. flambeau: Candlestick or lighted torch.
11. Marché au Vendredi: Place in town where the Friday market is held.
12. Hôtel Cluny: In Paris, housing medieval collections and tapestries.
13. embonpoint: Stoutness.
14. Dr Johnson… retrace his steps: James Boswell recounts how Samuel Johnson's friend Dr [William] Adams described seeing Johnson (1709–84), essayist and biographer, when he was quite ill, ‘in a deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and restlessly walking from room to room’ (Life of Johnson, ed. Christopher Hibbert (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 127).
15. aristocratic ‘de’ for a prefix: Implying nobility or possession of a title, as does ‘von’ (p. 279).
16. chasseur: Huntsman or footman.
17. changes… since the days of Louis XVI: Louis XVI (1754–93) was guillotined by revolutionaries in Paris on charges of counterrevolution, and his execution was a public exhibition of the death of the monarchy. The ‘changes in the order of the peerage’ refer, presumably, to the emigration of many French nobles to England and other places following the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the resultant Terror; emigration intensified after Louis XVI's execution to avoid imprisonment and/or execution. See also note 7 to ‘The Grey Woman’ below.
18. eau sucré: Sugared water.
19. the emperor: Probably Napoleon III (1808–73), who was Emperor of France 1852–71.
20. vouée au blanc: Devoted to all things white.
21. John Bull? John Russell? John Bright: John Bull, a representative of the ‘typical’ Englishman, in common use in Gaskell's time. John Russell (1792–1878), the first Earl Russell, was Prime Minister 1846–52, and Foreign Minister in 1859. (He was elected Prime Minister again in 1865.) John Bright (1811–89), was an anti-Corn Law reformer, orator and Member of Parliament.
22. King Arthur's knights… help at England's need: See Elizabeth Gaskell's letter to Mary Howitt, [18 August 1838]: ‘And if you were on Alderley Edge, the hill between Cheshire and Derbyshire, could not I point out to you the very entrance to the cave where King Arthur and his knights lie sleeping in their golden armour till the day when England's peril shall summon them to her rescue’ (Letters, no. 12, p. 32).
23. Monsieur Sganarelle… ragaillardir l'affection: From the play by Molière, pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, The Reluctant Doctor (Le Médicin Malgré Lui) (1666), where Sganarelle defends his beating of his wife. Janice K. Kirkland translates: ‘There are little things which are from time to time necessary in love; and five or six blows with a sword between people who love each other can only revive their affection.’ She goes on to add that Gaskell has actually ‘changed one word in Molière's original lines: Sganarelle says “coups de baton” or blows with a stick, meaning wife-beating; Gaskell changes it to blows with a sword or rapier, meaning wife-murder’ (“Curious, if True”: Suggesting more’, Gaskell Society Journal, 12 (1998), p. 26).
24. reform bill, or the millennium: Many reform bills were introduced into Parliament between 1832 and 1870, all with the intention of increasing the franchise and extending similar political liberties, but none was passed until 1870, five years after Gaskell died. Whittingham's reference to the ‘millennium’ may be an ironic comment that such civil liberties could only occur in a never-never land of political and social equality, in contrast with which this magical château is much more grounded in reality.
25. Madame la Féemarraine: Fairy Godmother. Ward suggests that ‘the fairy-godmother who has assembled the ghostly evening-party in the enchanted chateau for our delectation, is our old friend Madame d'Aulnoy’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxvi).
The Grey Woman
First published in All the Year Round, 4 (5, 12, 19 January 1861), pp. 300–306; 321–8; 347–55. The present text is taken from The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), pp. 5–81.
1. Heidelberg: See Gaskell's letter to Elizabeth Holland, written some time in 1841, in which she describes a trip she made to Heidelberg, including a detailed description of the Neckar Valley and a ‘noble castle’, perhaps the inspiration for the château Les Rochers (Letters, no. 15, p. 42). See also Sharps, Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention, pp. 335–6; he suggests that the story is probably based on Gaskell's 1841 trip, rather than those she made in 1858 and 1860.
2. old Palatinate days: The Palatinate refers to geographical divisions of Germany into the Upper and Lower Palatinate, later absorbed into Bavaria and other nearby states. The ‘old Palatinate’ probably means the time before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, at which point the lands on the west side of the Rhine were incorporated into France from 1801 to 1814. It may be during this annexation that Herr Scherer's mills were burned down. Ward places the main action of Anna Scherer's experiences in ‘that part of France which lies on the left bank of the Middle Rhine, and south of the Moselle’ (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxviii).
3. Utrecht velvet: Worsted, mohair or cotton plush used to upholster furniture.
4. sins of the fathers are visited on their children: Numbers 14:18: ‘The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’ This is a key Gothic theme, that children are ‘cursed’ by their ancestor's crimes, occurring in such novels as Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1860) – as well as ‘The Poor Clare’ above.
5. Schöne Müllerin: Perhaps a reference to Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller), a song cycle (1823) by Franz Peter Schubert, but surely an odd one, since Anna's story takes place nearly thirty-five years before it was written.
6. pottage: Meat and vegetables boiled down to the consistency of thick soup.
7. ’89…events taking place at Paris: The start of the French Revolution, when the middle class established a parliamentary republic, which spread to become a popular revolt against an aristocratic, feudal society. The Bastille, prison and strategic fortress, was seized by the labouring population who effectively deposed Louis XVI and eventually abolished the monarchy. Anna comments at the end of her story on how her daughter's lover changed his name to sound less aristocratic, an indication of how out of control the revolutionaries and the Terror had become by the mid 1790s.
8. angel Gabriel: One of the archangels, according to Luke 1:26–38, who appeared to Mary to tell her she was to conceive Jesus: ‘And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God’ (1:30). Obviously, in this context, this is an ironic comparison with M. de la Tourelle.
9. Lefebvre: An example of Gaskell's economy with names: this surname also occurs in her ‘Traits and Stories of the Huguenots’, and, as Le Febvre, in My Lady Ludlow.
10. Les Rochers: Ward suggests that the bandits’ hideout could be a re-working of the castle of Schmittburg, inhabited by ‘Schinderhannes’ and his gang (see below, note 15), located near the site of sheer rock (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, p. xxx).
11. corbeille de mariage: Wedding presents.
12. chauffeurs: ‘Brigands who terrorised the left bank of the Rhine during the first years of the French Revolution’ (Enid L. Duthie, The Themes of Elizabeth Gaskell (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 148).
13. farrier's: One who shoes horses and treats their diseases.
14. galette: ‘A broad thin cake of bread or pastry’ (OED).
15. Schinderhannes: Ward suggests that Gaskell's character is based on the real-life Johannes Bückler (1778-1803), known as Schinderhannes (he had been an apprentice to an executioner (Schinder)), who chose a life of felony instead, including the robbery of
a Marquis La Ferrière, which led to his eventual execution (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, vol. 7, pp. xxix–xxxi).
16. salle-à-manger: Dining-room.
17. Numéro Un. Ainsi les Chauffeurs se vengent: Number One. Thus the Chauffeurs avenge themselves.
18. sage-femme: Midwife.
19. Lutherans: There is some confusion, as Anna initially advises her daughter to consult the priest Schriesheim, which contrasts oddly here with her insistence that she is a Lutheran (unlike her husband).
Elizabeth Gaskell, Gothic Tales
(Series: # )
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