CRANFORD
PART 7
CHAPTER VII—VISITING
One morning, as Miss Matty
and I sat at our work—it was before twelve o’clock, and Miss Matty had not
changed the cap with yellow ribbons that had been Miss Jenkyns’s best, and
which Miss Matty was now wearing out in private, putting on the one made in
imitation of Mrs Jamieson’s at all times when she expected to be seen—Martha
came up, and asked if Miss Betty Barker might speak to her mistress. Miss
Matty assented, and quickly disappeared to change the yellow ribbons, while
Miss Barker came upstairs; but, as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was
rather flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see
her return with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite unconscious
of it herself, and looked at us, with bland satisfaction. Nor do I think
Miss Barker perceived it; for, putting aside the little circumstance that she
was not so young as she had been, she was very much absorbed in her errand,
which she delivered herself of with an oppressive modesty that found vent in
endless apologies.
Miss Betty
Barker was the daughter of the old clerk at Cranford who had
officiated in Mr Jenkyns’s time. She and her sister had had pretty good
situations as ladies’ maids, and had saved money enough to set up a milliner’s
shop, which had been patronised by the ladies in the neighbourhood. Lady
Arley, for instance, would occasionally give Miss Barkers the pattern of an old
cap of hers, which they immediately copied and circulated among the élite
of Cranford. I say the élite, for Miss Barkers had caught the
trick of the place, and piqued themselves upon their “aristocratic
connection.” They would not sell their caps and ribbons to anyone without
a pedigree. Many a farmer’s wife or daughter turned away huffed from Miss
Barkers’ select millinery, and went rather to the universal shop, where the
profits of brown soap and moist sugar enabled the proprietor to go straight to
(Paris, he said, until he found his customers too patriotic and John Bullish to
wear what the Mounseers wore) London, where, as he often told his customers,
Queen Adelaide had appeared, only the very week before, in a cap exactly like
the one he showed them, trimmed with yellow and blue ribbons, and had been
complimented by King William on the becoming nature of her head-dress.
Miss
Barkers, who confined themselves to truth, and did not approve of miscellaneous
customers, throve notwithstanding. They were self-denying, good
people. Many a time have I seen the eldest of them (she that had been
maid to Mrs Jamieson) carrying out some delicate mess to a poor person.
They only aped their betters in having “nothing to do” with the class
immediately below theirs. And when Miss Barker died,
their profits and income were found to be such that Miss Betty was justified in
shutting up shop and retiring from business. She also (as I think I have
before said) set up her cow; a mark of respectability in Cranford almost as
decided as setting up a gig is among some people. She dressed finer than
any lady in Cranford; and we did not wonder at it; for it was understood that
she was wearing out all the bonnets and caps and outrageous ribbons which had
once formed her stock-in-trade. It was five or six years since she had
given up shop, so in any other place than Cranford her dress might have been
considered passée.
And now
Miss Betty Barker had called to invite Miss Matty to tea at her house on the
following Tuesday. She gave me also an impromptu invitation, as I
happened to be a visitor—though I could see she had a little fear lest, since
my father had gone to live in Drumble, he might have engaged in that “horrid
cotton trade,” and so dragged his family down out of “aristocratic
society.” She prefaced this invitation with so many apologies that she
quite excited my curiosity. “Her presumption” was to be excused.
What had she been doing? She seemed so over-powered by it I could only
think that she had been writing to Queen Adelaide to ask for a receipt for
washing lace; but the act which she so characterised was only an invitation she
had carried to her sister’s former mistress, Mrs Jamieson. “Her former
occupation considered, could Miss Matty excuse the liberty?” Ah! thought
I, she has found out that double cap, and is going to rectify Miss Matty’s
head-dress. No! it was simply to extend her invitation to
Miss Matty and to me. Miss Matty bowed acceptance; and I wondered that,
in the graceful action, she did not feel the unusual weight and extraordinary
height of her head-dress. But I do not think she did, for she recovered
her balance, and went on talking to Miss Betty in a kind, condescending manner,
very different from the fidgety way she would have had if she had suspected how
singular her appearance was. “Mrs Jamieson is coming, I think you said?”
asked Miss Matty.
“Yes.
Mrs Jamieson most kindly and condescendingly said she would be happy to
come. One little stipulation she made, that she should bring Carlo.
I told her that if I had a weakness, it was for dogs.”
“And Miss
Pole?” questioned Miss Matty, who was thinking of her pool at Preference, in
which Carlo would not be available as a partner.
“I am
going to ask Miss Pole. Of course, I could not think of asking her until
I had asked you, madam—the rector’s daughter, madam. Believe me, I do not
forget the situation my father held under yours.”
“And Mrs
Forrester, of course?”
“And Mrs
Forrester. I thought, in fact, of going to her before I went to Miss
Pole. Although her circumstances are changed, madam, she was born at
Tyrrell, and we can never forget her alliance to the Bigges, of Bigelow Hall.”
Miss Matty
cared much more for the little circumstance of her being a very good
card-player.
“Mrs
Fitz-Adam—I suppose”—
“No,
madam. I must draw a line somewhere. Mrs
Jamieson would not, I think, like to meet Mrs Fitz-Adam. I have the
greatest respect for Mrs Fitz-Adam—but I cannot think her fit society for such
ladies as Mrs Jamieson and Miss Matilda Jenkyns.”
Miss Betty
Barker bowed low to Miss Matty, and pursed up her mouth. She looked at me
with sidelong dignity, as much as to say, although a retired milliner, she was
no democrat, and understood the difference of ranks.
“May I beg
you to come as near half-past six to my little dwelling, as possible, Miss
Matilda? Mrs Jamieson dines at five, but has kindly promised not to delay
her visit beyond that time—half-past six.” And with a swimming curtsey
Miss Betty Barker took her leave.
My
prophetic soul foretold a visit that afternoon from Miss Pole, who usually came
to call on Miss Matilda after any event—or indeed in sight of any event—to talk
it over with her.
“Miss
Betty told me it was to be a choice and select few,” said Miss Pole, as she and
Miss Matty compared notes.
“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 bachelor, 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 into 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 every-day 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 malapropos
answers to what was said; and at last, seized with a bright idea, she
exclaimed, “Poor, sweet Carlo! I’m forgetting him. Come downstairs
with me, poor ittie 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 ittie 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
ladies 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 hankering 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
arm-chair 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 aslee
“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 yon 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—macaroons 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 daresay, 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-pepper over our 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.
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.
To be continued
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