The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Title: The Moorland Cottage.
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell.
Genre: Literature, fiction, romance, feminism.
Country: England, U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1850.
Summary: Growing up in Yorkshire, the daughter of a deceased clergyman, Maggie Browne is encouraged to devote herself to her brother, Edward, upon whom their widowed mother dotes. Through the example and guidance of her mentor, Mrs Buxton, Maggie learns that self-sacrifice is the key to living a fulfilled life. But how much personal happiness will she forgo in the name of duty and devotion to her selfish, entitled brother, especially when true love and happiness comes calling?
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ If you take the turn to the left, after you pass the lyke-gate at Combehurst Church, you will come to the wooden bridge over the brook; keep along the field-path, which mounts higher and higher, and, in half a mile or so, you will be in a breezy upland field, almost large enough to be called a down, where sheep pasture on the short, fine, elastic turf. You look down on Combehurst and its beautiful church spire. After the field is crossed, you come to a common, richly coloured with the golden gorse and the purple heather, which in summer time send out their warm scents into the quiet air. The swelling waves of the upland make a near horizon against the sky; the line is only broken in one place by a small grove of Scotch firs, which always look black and shadowed even at midday, when all the rest of the landscape seems bathed in sunlight. The lark quivers and sings high up in the air; too high - in too dazzling a region for you to see her. Look! She drops into sight; but, as if loath to leave the heavenly radiance, she balances herself and floats in the ether. Now she falls suddenly right into her nest, hidden among the ling, unseen except by the eyes of Heaven, and the small bright insects that run hither and thither on the elastic flower stalks. With something like the sudden drop of the lark, the path goes down a green abrupt descent; and in a basin, surrounded by the grassy hills, there stands a dwelling, which is neither cottage nor house, but something between the two in size. Nor yet is it a farm, though surrounded by living things.
♥ "I wish it would always rain on Sundays," said Edward one day to Maggie, in a garden conference.
"Why?" asked she.
"Because then we bustle out of church, and get home as fast as we can, to save mamma's crape; and we have not to go and cry over papa."
"I don't cry," said Maggie. "Do you?"
Edward looked round before he answered, to see if they were quite alone, and then said, "No; I was sorry a long time about papa, but one can't go on being sorry for ever. Perhaps grown-up people can."
"Mamma can," said little Maggie. "Sometimes I am very sorry, too; when I am by myself, or playing with you, or when I am wakened up by the moonlight in our room. Do you ever waken and fancy you heard papa calling you? I do sometimes; and then I am very sorry to think we shall never hear him calling us again."
"Ah, it's different with me, you know. He used to call me to lessons."
"Sometimes he called me when he was displeased with me. But I always dream that he was calling us with his own kind voice, as he used to do when he wanted us to walk with him, or to show us something pretty."
Edward was silent, playing with something on the ground. At last he looked round again, and having convinced himself that they could not be overheard, he whispered, "Maggie, sometimes I don't think I'm sorry that papa is dead - when I'm naughty, you know; he would have been so angry with me if he had been here; and I think - only sometimes, you know - I'm rather glad he is not."
"Oh, Edward! You don't mean to say so, I know. Don't let us talk about him. We can't talk rightly, we're such little children."
♥ Thus every hour in its circle brought a duty to be fulfilled; but duties fulfilled are as pleasures to the memory, and little Maggie always thought those early childish days most happy, and remembered them only as filled with careless contentment.
♥ Ned, who was uncertain whether to like or dislike the prospect of school, was very much offended by the old servant's remark, on first hearing of the project.
"It's time for him. He'll learn his place there, which, it strikes me, he and others too are apt to forget at home."
♥ If Mrs Buxton could bear the noise of children, she could not think why she shut herself up in that room, and gave herself such airs. She supposed it was because she was the granddaughter of Sir Henry Biddulph that she took upon herself to have such whims, and not sit at the head of her table, or make tea for her company in a civil, decent way. Poor Mr Buxton! What a sad life for a merry lighthearted man to have such a wife! It was a good thing for him to have agreeable society sometimes. She thought he looked a deal better for seeing his friends. He must be sadly moped with that sickly wife.
(If she had been clairvoyant at that moment, she might have seen Mr Buxton tenderly chafing his wife's hands, and feeling in his innermost soul a wonder how one so saint-like could ever have learnt to love such a boor as he was; it was the wonderful mysterious blessing of his life. So little do we know of the inner truths of the households, where we come and go like intimate guests!)
♥ But there was danger of the child becoming dreamy, and finding her pleasure in life in reverie, not in action, or endurance, or the holy rest which comes after both, and prepares for further striving or bearing. Mrs Buxton's kindness prevented this danger just in time.
♥ "You are so like a cloud," said she to Mrs Buxton. "Up at the thorn tree, it was quite curious how the clouds used to shape themselves, just according as I was glad or sorry. I have seen the same clouds, that, when I came up first, looked like a heap of little snow-hillocks over babies' graves, turn, as soon as I grew happier, to a sort of long bright row of angels. And you seem always to have had some sorrow when I am sad, and to turn bright and hopeful as soon as I grow glad. Dear Mrs Buxton!"
♥ The gay, volatile, wilful, warm-hearted Erminia was less earnest in all things. Her childhood had been passed amid the distractions of wealth; and passionately bent upon the attainment of some object at one moment, the next found her angry at being reminded of the vanished anxiety she had shown but a moment before. Her life was a shattered mirror; every part dazzling and brilliant, it wanting the coherency and perfection of a whole. Mrs Buxton strove to bring to her a sense of the beauty of completeness, and the relation which qualities and objects bear to each other; but in all her striving she retained hold of the golden clue of sympathy. She would enter into Erminia's eagerness, if the object of it varied twenty times a day; but, by and by, in her own mild, sweet, suggestive way, she would place all these objects in their right and fitting places, as they were worthy of desire. I do not know how it was, but all discords and disordered fragments seemed to fall into harmony and order before her presence.
She had no wish to make the two little girls into the same kind of pattern character. They were diverse as the lily and the rose. But she tried to give stability and earnestness to Erminia; while she aimed to direct Maggie's imagination, so as to make it a great minister to high ends, instead of simply contributing to the vividness and duration of a reverie.
She told her tales of saints and martyrs, and all holy heroines, who forgot themselves, and strove only to be "ministers of Him, to do His pleasure." The tears glistened in the eyes of hearer and speaker, while she spoke in her low, faint voice, which was almost choked at times when she came to the noblest part of all.
But when she found that Maggie was in danger of becoming too little a dweller in the present, from the habit of anticipating the occasion for some great heroic action, she spoke of other heroines. She told her how, though the lives of some of these women of old were only known to us through some striking glorious deed, they yet must have built up the temple of their perfection by many noiseless stories; how, by small daily offerings laid on the altar, they must have obtained their beautiful strength for the crowning sacrifice. And then she would speak of those whose name will never be blazoned on earth - some poor maidservant, or hard-worked artisan, or weary governess - who have gone on through life quietly, with holy purposes in their hearts, to which they gave up pleasures and ease, in a soft, still, succession of resolute days. She quoted those lines of George Herbert's,
All may have,
If they dare choose, a glorious life, or grave.
♥ Summers and winters came and went, with little to mark them, except the growth of the trees, and the quiet progress of young creatures.
♥ As he rode home he thought much of sorrow, and the different ways of bearing it. He decided that it was sent by God for some holy purposes, and to call out into existence some higher good; and he thought that if it were faithfully taken as His decree, there would be no passionate, despairing resistance to it; nor yet, if it were trustfully acknowledged to have some wise end, should we dare to baulk it, and defraud it by putting it on one side, and by seeking the distractions of worldly things, not let it do its full work.
♥ Frank had entertained some idea of studying for a barrister himself; not so much as a means of livelihood as to gain some idea of the code which makes and shows a nation's conscience: but Edward's details of the way in which the letter so often baffles the spirit, made him recoil. With some anger against himself, for viewing the procession with disgust, because it was degraded by those who embraced it, instead of looking upon it as what might be ennobled and purified into a vast intelligence by high and pure-minded men, he got up abruptly and left the room.
♥ He had dropped her hand, but now sought to take it again.
"Maggie, darling, may I speak?" Her lips moved, he saw, but he could not hear. A pang of affright ran through him that, perhaps, she did not wish to listen.
"May I speak to you?" he asked again, quite timidly. She tried to make her voice sound, but it would not; so she looked round. Her soft grey eyes were eloquent in that one glance. And, happier than his words, passionate and tender as they were, could tell, he spoke till her trembling was changed into bright flashing blushes, and even a shy smile hovered about her lips, and dimpled her cheeks.
The water bubbled over the pitcher unheeded. At last she remembered all the workaday world. She lifted up the jug, and would have hurried home, but Frank decidedly took it from her.
"Henceforward," said he, "I have a right to carry your burdens." So with one arm around her waist, and the other carrying the water, they climbed the steep turfy slope.
♥ She hid her face in her mother's lap for an instant; and then she lifted it up, as brimful of the light of happiness is the cup of a water lily of the sun's radiance.
♥ After tea, Frank asked Maggie if she would walk out with him, and accordingly they climbed the Fell Lane, and went out upon the moors, which seemed vast and boundless as their love.
♥ It was true of Mr Buxton, as well as of his son, that he had the seeds of imperiousness in him. His life had not been such as to call them into view. With more wealth than he required; with a gentle wife, who if she ruled him never showed it, or was conscious of the fact herself; looked up to by his neighbours, a simple affectionate set of people, whose fathers had lived near his father and grandfather in the same kindly elation receiving benefits cordially given, and requiting them with good will and respectful attention: such had been the circumstances surrounding him and until his son grew out of childhood, there had not seemed a wish which he had it not in his power to gratify as soon as formed. Again, when Frank was at school and at college, all went on prosperously; he gained honours enough to satisfy a far more ambitious father. Indeed, it was the honours he gained that stimulated his father's ambition. He received letters from tutors and headmasters, prophesying that, if Frank chose, he might rise to the "highest honours in Church or State"; and the idea thus suggested, vague as it was, remained, and filled Mr Buxton's mind; and, for the first time in his life, made him wish that his own career had been such as would have led him to form connections among the great and powerful. But as it was his shyness and gêne from being unaccustomed to society, had made him averse to Frank's occasional requests that he bring such and such a schoolfellow, or college chum, home on a visit. Now he regretted this, on account of the want of those connections which might thus have been formed; and, in his visions, he turned to marriage as the best way of remedying this.
♥ One comfort (and almost the only one arising from Edward's visit) was, that she could now often be spared to go up to the thorn tree, and calm down her anxiety, and bring all discords into peace, under the sweet influences of nature. Mrs Buxton had tried to teach her the force of the lovely truth, that the "melodies of the everlasting chime" may abide in the hearts of those who ply their daily task in towns, and crowded populous places; and that solitude is not needed by the faithful for them to feel the immediate presence of God; nor utter stillness of human sounds necessary, but before they can hear the music of His angel's footsteps: but as yet, her soul was a young disciple; and she felt it easier to speak to Him, and come to Him for help, sitting lonely, with wild moors swelling and darkening around her, and not a creature in sight but the white specks of distant sheep, and the birds that shun the haunts of men, floating in the still mid-air.
♥ But if marriage were to be made by due measurement and balance of character, and if others, with their scales, were to be the judges, what would become of all the beautiful services rendered by the loyalty of true love? Where would be the raising up of the weak by the strong? Or the patient endurance? Or the gracious trust of her,
Whose faith is fixt and cannot move;
She darkly feels him great and wise.
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,
I cannot understand: I love.
♥ She could not help wondering whence he obtained the money to pay for his dress, which she thought was of a very expensive kind. She heard him also incidentally allude to "runs up to town", of which, at the time, neither she nor her mother had been made aware. He seemed confused when she questioned him about these, although he tried to laugh it off; and asked her how she, a county girl, cooped up among one set of people, could have any idea of the life it was necessary for a man to lead who "had any hope of getting on in the world". He must have acquaintances and connections, and see something of life, and make an appearance. She was silenced, but not satisfied. Nor was she at ease with regard to his health. He looked ill, and worn; and, when he was not rattling and laughing, his face fell into a shape of anxiety and uneasiness which was new to her in it. He reminded her painfully of an old German engraving she had seen in Mrs Buxton's portfolio, called "Pleasure digging a Grave"; Pleasure being represented by a ghastly figure of a young man, eagerly industrious over his dismal work.
♥ "Dear Frank, you are not angry with me, are you? It is nonsense to think that we are to go about the world, picking and choosing men and women, as if they were fruit and we were to gather the best; as if there was something in our own hearts which, if we listen to it conscientiously, will tell us at once when we have met the one of all others."
♥ My father has been too careless and has placed his dependents in great temptation: and Crayston - he is an old man, with a large extravagant family - has yielded. He has been served with notice of my father's intention to prosecute him; and came over to confess all, and ask for forgiveness, and time to pay back what he could. A month ago, my father would have listened to him, I think; but now, he is stung by Mr Henry's sayings and gave way to a furious passion. It has been a most distressing morning. The worst side of everybody seems to have come out. Even Crayston, with all his penitence and appearance of candour, had to be questioned closely by Mr Henry before he would tell the whole truth. Good God! that money should have such power to corrupt men. It was all for money; and money's worth, that this degradation has taken place. As for Mr Henry, to save this client money, and to protect money, he does not care - he does not even perceive - how he induces deterioration of character. He has been encouraging my father in measures which I cannot call anything but vindictive. Crayston is to be made an example of, they say. As if my father had not half the sin on his own head! As if he had rightly discharged his duties as a rich man! Money was as dross to him; but he ought to have remembered how it might be as life itself to many, and be craved after, and coveted, till the black longing got the better of principle, as it has done with this poor Crayston. They say the man was once so truthful, and now his self-respect is gone; and he has evidently lost the very nature of truth. I dread riches. I dread the responsibility of them. At any rate, I wish I had begun life as a poor boy, and worked my way up to competence. Then I could understand and remember the temptations of poverty. I am afraid of my own heart becoming hardened as my father's is."
♥ "..I would go off to Australia at once. Indeed, Maggie, I think it would be the best thing we could do. My heart aches about the mysterious corruptions and evils of an old state of society such as we have in England. What do you say, Maggie? Would you go?"
She was silent - thinking.
"I would go with you directly, if it were right," said she at last. "But would it be? I think it would be rather cowardly. I feel what you say; but don't you think it would be braver to stay, and endure much depression and anxiety of mind for the sake of the good those always can do who see evils clearly? I am speaking all this time as if neither you nor I had any home duties, but were free to do as we liked."
"What can you or I do? We are less than drops in the ocean, as far as our influence can go to re-model a nation."
"As for that," said Maggie, laughing, "I can't re-model Nancy's old-fashioned ways; so I've never yet planned how to re-model a nation."
"Then what did you mean by the good those always can do who see evils clearly? The evils I see are those of a nation whose god is money."
"That is just because you have come away from a distressing scene. Tomorrow you will hear or read of some heroic action meeting with a nation's sympathy, and you will rejoice ad be proud of your company."
"Still I shall feel the evils of her complex state of society keenly; and where is the good I can do?"
"Oh! I can't tell in a minute. But cannot you bravely face these evils, and learn their nature and causes; and then has God given you no powers to apply to the discovery of their remedy? Dear Frank, think! It may be very little you can do - and you may never see the effect of it, any more than the widow saw the worldwide effect of her mite. Then, if all the good and thoughtful men run away from us to some new country, what are we to do with our poor, dear Old England?"
"Oh, you must run away with the good thoughtful men (I mean to consider that as a compliment to myself, Maggie!). Will you let me wish I had been born poor, if I am to stay in England? I should not then be liable to this fault into which I see the rich men fall, of forgetting the trials of the poor."
"I am not sure whether, if you had been poor, you might not have fallen into an exactly parallel fault, and forgotten the trials of the rich. It is so difficult to understand the errors into which their position makes all men liable to fall. Do you remember a story in 'Evening at Home' called the Transmigrations of Indra? Well! when I was a child, I used to wish I might be transmigrated (is that the right word?) into an American slave-owner for a little while, just that I might understand how he must suffer, and be sorely puzzled, and pray and long to be freed from his odious wealth, till at last he grew hardened to its nature; and since then, I have wished to be the Emperor of Russia for the same reason. Ah! You may laugh; but that is only because I have not explained myself properly."
"I was only smiling to think how ambitious anyone might suppose you were who did not know you."
"I don't see any ambition in it - I don't think of the station - I only want sorely to see the 'What's resisted' of Burns, in order that I may have more charity for those who seem to me to have been the cause of such infinite woe and misery."
"What's done we partly may compute;
But know not what's resisted,"
repeated Frank musingly.
♥ "You must go," said she. "I know you; and I know you are not aware of the cruel way in which you have spoken to me, while asking me to give up the very hope and marrow of my life -" She could not go on for a moment; she was choked up with anguish.
"It was truth, Maggie," said he, somewhat abashed.
"It was the truth that made the cruelty of it. But you did not mean to speak cruelly to me, I know. Only it is hard all at once to be called upon to face the shame and blasted character of one who was once an innocent child at the same father's knee."
♥ When she opened the kitchen door, there was the same small, mizzling rain that had obscured the light for weeks, and now it seemed to obscure hope.
♥ "I know that I think too often and too much of myself. But this time I thought only of Frank. He loves me; it would break his heart if I wrote as Mr Buxton wishes, cutting our lives asunder, and giving no reason for it."
"He loves you so," said Edward tauntingly. "A man's love breaks his heart! You've got some pretty notions! Who told you that he loved you so desperately? How do you know it?"
"Because I love him so," said she, in a quiet earnest voice. "I do not know of any other reason; but that is quite sufficient to me. I believe him when he says he loves me; and I have no right to cause him the infinite, terrible pain, which my own heart tells me he would feel, if I did what Mr Buxton wishes me."
Her manner was so simple and utterly truthful, that it was as quiet and fearless as a child's; her brother's fierce looks of anger had no power over her, and his blustering died away before her into something of the frightened cowardliness he had shown in the morning.
♥ "I would have refused to appear against your brother, shamefully ungrateful as he has been. Now you cannot wonder that I act according to my agent's advice; and prosecute your brother as if he were a stranger."
He turned to go away. He was so cold and determined that for a moment Maggie was timid. But she then laid her hand on his arm.
"Mr Buxton," said she, "you will not do what you threaten. I know you better. Think! My father was your old friend. That claim is, perhaps, done away with by Edward's conduct. But I do not believe you can forget it always. If you did fulfil the menace you uttered just now, there would come times as you grew older, and life grew fainter and fainter before you - quiet times of thought when you remembered the days of your youth, and the friends you then had and knew; you would recollect that one of them had left an only son - who had done wrong; who had sinned, sinned against you in his weakness; and you would think then - you could not help it - how you had forgotten mercy in justice; and, as justice required he should be treated as a felon, you threw him among felons; where every glimmering of goodness was darkened for ever. Edward is, after all, more weak than wicked - but he will become wicked if you put him in prison, and have him transported. God is merciful - we cannot tell or think how merciful. Oh, sir, I am so sure you will be merciful, and give my brother, my poor sinning brother, a chance, that I will tell you all. I will throw myself upon your pity. Edward is even now at home, miserable and desperate; my mother is too much stunned to understand all our wretchedness - for very wretched we are in our shame."
As she spoke, the wind arose and shivered in the wiry leaves of the fir trees, and there was a moaning sound as of some Ariel imprisoned in the thick branches that, tangled overhead, made a shelter for them. Either the noise or Mr Buxton's fancy called up an echo to Maggie's voice - a pleading with her pleading - a sad tone of regret, distinct, yet blending with her speech, and a falling, dying sound, as her voice died away in miserable suspense.
♥ "And you'll be willing to give it up, if Frank wishes, when he knows all?" asked Mr Buxton.
She crossed her hands and drooped her head, but answered steadily:
"Whatever Frank wishes, when he knows all, I will gladly do. I will speak the truth. I do not believe that any shame surrounding me, and not in me, will alter Frank's love one tittle."
♥ Mr Buxton was astonished at first by this proposal of Maggie's. He could not all at once understand the difference between what she now offered to do, and what he had urged upon her only this morning. But as he thought about it, he perceived that what was her own she was willing to sacrifice; but that Frank's heart once given into her faithful keeping, she was answerable for it to him and to God. Thus light came down upon him slowly; but when he understood, he admired with almost a wondering admiration. That little timid girl, brave enough to cross the ocean and go to a foreign land, if she could only help to save her brother!
♥ "He has been doing what was very wrong," said Maggie. "But you - none of you - know his good points - nor how he had been exposed to all sorts of bad influences, I am sure; and never had the advantages of a father's training and friendship, which are so inestimable to a son. Oh! Minnie, when I remember how we two used to kneel down in the evenings at my father's knee and say our prayers; and then listen in awestruck silence to his earnest blessing, which grew more like a prayer for us as his life waned away; I would do anything for Edward rather than that wrestling agony of supplication should have been in vain. I think of him as the little innocent boy, whose arm was round me as if to support me in the Awful Presence, whose true name of Love we had not learned. Minnie! He has had no proper training - no training, I mean, to enable him to resist temptation; and he has been thrown into it without warning or advice. Now he knows what it is; though I am but an unknowing girl, to warn and to strengthen him. Don't weaken my faith. Who can do right if we lose faith in them?"
♥ Her mind reverted to her darling son; but Maggie took her short slumber by her mother's side, with her mother's arms around her, and awoke and felt that her sleep had been blessed.
♥ But she wanted to look her last on the shoals of English people, who crowded backwards and forwards, like ants, on the pier. Happy people! who might stay among their loved ones. The mocking demons gathered round her, as they gather round all who sacrifice self, tempting. A crowd of suggestive doubts pressed upon her. "Was it really necessary that she should go with Edward? Could she do him any real good? Would he be any way influenced by her?" Then the demon tried another description of doubt. "Had it ever been her duty to go? She was leaving her mother alone. She was giving Frank much present sorrow. It was not even yet too late!" She could not endure longer, and replied to her own tempting heart:
"I was right to hope for Edward; I am right to give him the chance of steadiness which my presence will give. I am doing what my mother earnestly wishes me to do; and what to the last she felt relieved by my doing. I know Frank will feel sorrow, because I myself have such an aching heart; but if I had asked him whether I was not right in going, he would have been too truthful not to have said yes. I have tried to do right, and though I may fail, and evil may seem to arise rather than good out of my endeavour, yet still I will submit to my failure, and try and say 'God's will be done!'
♥ "My heart's darlings are taken away from me. Faith! Faith! Oh, my great God! I will die in peace, if Thou wilt but grant me faith in this terrible hour, to feel that thou wilt take care of my poor orphans. Hush! Dearest Billy," she cried out shrill to a little fellow in the boat, waiting for his mother; and the change in her voice, from despair to a kind of cheerfulness, showed what a mother's love can do. "Mother will come soon. Hide his face, Anne, and wrap your shawl tight round him." And then her voice sank down again, in the same low, wild prayer for faith.
♥ But she held Maggie's hand, as the girl knelt by her and spoke to her in a hushed voice, undisturbed by tears. Her miserable hearer could not find that relief.
"He is dead! - he is gone! - he will never come back again! If he had gone to America - it might have been years first - but he would have come back to me. But now he will never come back again; never - never!"
Her voice died away, as the wailings of the night wind die in the distance; and there was silence - silence more sad and hopeless than any passionate words of grief.
And to this day it is the same. She prizes her dead son more than a thousand living daughters, happy and prosperous as Maggie is now - rich in the love of many. If Maggie did not show such reverence to her mother's faithful sorrows, others might wonder at her refusal to be comforted by that sweet daughter. But Maggie treats her with such tender sympathy, never thinking of herself or her own claims, that Frank, Erminia, Mr Buxton, Nancy, and all, are reverent and sympathising too.
Over both old and young the memory of one who is dead broods like a dove - of one who could do but little during her lifetime; who was doomed only to "stand and wait"; who was meekly content to be gentle, holy, patient, and undefiled - the memory of the invalid Mrs Buxton.