Cranford

Cranford
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Published by Everyman's Library; Dent: London, Dutton: New York
244 pages

We purchased the BBC series Cranford and I was quite captured by the illustration of life in the 1840s in a small town. Most of my ancestors came from small towns (or farms nearby) and seeing the different episodes was an interesting foray back in time. I borrowed the Cranford book from the library and having now read it I can say that the series was somewhat faithful to the writings but where it made the story fit the series only added to the interest factor.

This is the story of a fictitious place named Cranford and possibly the location would be western England near the Welsh border and in the Midlands area because they are not far from Manchester which is in south east Lancashire right on the border. The writing rather reminds me of the story telling of my grandparents with whom I spent quite a bit of my youth; initially I listened to my grandfather Blake talk for hours but after his death when I was eight years old I then listened to my grandmother Pincombe tell me stories of her England. For my grandfather's stories were about small town/farming England and my grandmother had grown up in Birmingham and so her stories were of a large industrial city where she managed to escape the industrial aspect of it working as a seamstress/dressmaker after completing her apprenticeship.

My grandmother always said that I didn't love her until after my grandfather died and perhaps that is true. I was too young to know the difference and I rather think I was very shy of her as a small child. She was much younger than my grandfather to my eyes (he was born in 1875 and she is 1886) so not really that many years but children see things the way they see them. But I did love my grandmother dearly as I grew to know her and she taught me to knit and sew very cleverly as a child. I also learned to smock, tat, and crochet. Such skills I used throughout my life until the computer age which lured me away from such homemaking tasks and introduced me to the world. Eventually that world centered on genealogy but that was nearly ten years after I became immersed in the Internet.

The story begins by telling us all about Cranford and the people who lived there. Cranford was a retired widows/spinsters haven with a commercial town of Drumble close by on the railroad. Unlike the television series the railroad had come to Cranford. The old fashioned ways that I heard about as a child from both my mother and my grandfather were alive and in force in Cranford and these ways changed little in the small towns right up to the end of the 1800s for the stories in Cranford are reminiscent of how life flowed according to my grandfather. The need to obey the rules of etiquette at every level of society was extremely important and very much manifested in Cranbrook.

The plight of the unmarried daughters of a clergyman now deceased was the centre of the story in many ways with Elizabeth Gaskell being the witness who related the story. This witness was the daughter of a family friend who lived in Manchester and according to the television series her father had remarried and had a second family which was large and growing and the daughter from the first marriage escaped to Cranford as much as possible since her step mother was always trying to marry her off.

Interestingly, the sudden death aspect of life that is apparent in the television series does not play out in the book Cranford and that rather surprised me. I had watched the series first and it was that aspect that most stayed with me from the television series. I feel now that perhaps the idyllic life that my grandfather painted for his small village of Upper Clatford was probably closer to the book and more in line with how I thought life flowed in the 1800s in England in the country/small towns. I had rather attributed to the sudden death aspect of life to the large cities in particular the cities that were most heavily into the industrial revolution which by the 1840s had quite taken root with hundred of people living in "back to back" houses and eeking out a living on small wages from factories.

My grandmother often talked about the poverty in England. Initially I thought perhaps she had experienced such poverty first hand but gradually as I listened to her stories I realized that she too was an observer. Her life had not been absolutely easy but poverty had not touched her life as it did in some areas of England. The sudden death of her mother had forced her to give up school at age 11 but for the most part children were finished at the age of 12 and her father, who does appear to be educated, continued her schooling in the evening but I suspect he was a rather strict taskmaster although she was very articulate and clever with mathematics when I knew her. She did however have to look after her younger siblings (9, 7, 5 and 1) which was a lot for an 11 year old I am sure. The then sudden death of her father from pneumonia as well when she was 14 was devastating for the family although they were quickly swept up and taken off to live in a children's home. It was this good treatment that has led me to wonder about the stories that I learned from her as a child. She was actually offered a home with three of her father's sisters but I suspect she made the wiser choice in learning to be a seamstress/dressmaker at school as her aunts were not desirous of taking in the younger children. Five children is a lot and I can understand their reluctance.

But continuing with the rather interesting book of Mrs. Gaskell, the storyline continues through an entire year and allows us a peek into the homes and lives of the many people in Cranford. The foibles and happy times, the loves and hates, the proper etiquette all come together to paint a rather interesting picture of how life flowed in the 1840s. That her story holds truths seems reasonable given that she has written this for the entertainment of people in this time period and perhaps it was her legacy to time of how life moved in her lifetime. We can only be most grateful to her for writing it all down.

The style of writing I found rather interesting as it rather reminded me of my grandmother's story telling. She being a Midlander of Birmingham and the story being just northwest of there near Manchester. It contrasts with my grandfather's somewhat more wordy story telling which is perhaps reminiscent of southern England and his voice had less of the abruptness that was part of my grandmother's style of speaking and to be found in Cranford as well.

The center of the story is Matilda and second eldest child of the priest of the parish and her siblings. Gently the story of the family is teased out and spread over the 244 pages of text. The trials and tribulations of the family bringing a smile or a tear to the eye in turn. But perhaps what I most enjoyed was the customs that remained in English families of my acquaintance down into the mid 1900s. The necessary language and attitudes changed little up to that time. The glimpse into the past of the families was a welcome gift from both the television series and the book.

I would highly recommend the reading of the book and in advance of watching the television series as it does contain more information on Cranford. The television series has created a few story lines that do not appear as such in the book Cranford but may appear in other of her writings which I shall now pursue.