Gothic Tales (59 page)

23
.
Philologus
: Man of letters (Greek). Davis mentions writing a response to an essay, presumably written by ‘Philologus', a pseudonym which could have been used by any number of contributors.

24
.
tapped a barrel of ginger wine… out of his pocket
: Pierced the cask of ginger wine which is now fermented as a result of being ‘set by to work'. Higgins uses the paper to seal the join to prevent the spigot from leaking.

25
.
Church-and-King-and-down-with-the-Rump
: Cavalier toast, originating between 1648 and 1653, by supporters of Charles I, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Oliver Cromwell in the Civil War. ‘Rump' is a contemptuous reference to the remains of the Long Parliament which abolished the House of Lords, executed Charles I in 1649, abolished the monarchy and declared England a commonwealth under Cromwell. Dissenters such as Miss Pratt would have found such a toast particularly offensive because religious minorities such as Jews, Antinomians, Anabaptists and Presbyterians found a degree of tolerance under the Puritan Cromwell (though not Catholics, Levellers or Diggers).

26
.
Claude Duval
: French highwayman (1643–70), who came to England during the Restoration; he was greatly noted for his favour among women, but was eventually hanged at Tyburn.

The Poor Clare

First published in
Household Words
, 14 (13, 20, 27 December 1856), pp. 510–15; 532–44; 559–65. It appeared in
Round the Sofa and Other Tales
(London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1859), with an elaborate framing device that Gaskell wrote to link the stories. The device centres around visitors to an invalid, and the stories they tell to entertain each other, and each story is prefaced with an introduction to the speaker and closed. Since the frame was written mainly to accommodate the volume publication of the stories, it has been omitted from this edition, which is taken from the reprinting of
Round the Sofa
as
My Lady Ludlow and Other Tales; Included in ‘Round the Sofa'
(London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1861), pp. 259–307.

1
.
Starkey Manor-house
: This story is an example of Gaskell's skilful interweaving of historical fact and local legend with her own fiction. According to John Geoffrey Sharps, ‘The principal seat of the Starkie family at the time of the tale was Huntroyde, built near Pendle Forest in the late sixteenth century…
It seems that Mrs Gaskell used the Forest [of Bolland (modern spelling: Bowland)] as a location for the manor-house of a well-known Lancashire family; both the Forest and the name of Starkey (the spelling varies) would be recognized by her readers as authentic, yet their conjunction was of her own inventing' (
Mrs. Gaskell's Observation and Invention: A Study of Her Non-Biographic Works
(Sussex: Linden Press, 1970), p. 250). J. A. V. Chapple publishes a newly discovered letter from Gaskell to Caroline Davenport (later Lady Hatherton), 13 February 1857, which describes a story she heard from a M. Bonette, in the dowager Lady Elgin's Parisian home: it was apparently a true experience that happened to Bonette's acquaintance ‘in the South of France, as far as the Man's falling in love with a mysterious Girl at a watering place, & her telling him of the Fiendish Double by which she was haunted for some sin of her Father's'. Chapple concludes that Gaskell drew on Lancashire superstition for inspiration for her story (‘Elizabeth Gaskell's
Morton Hall
and
The Poor Clare', Brontë Society Transactions
, 20: 1 (1990), p. 49). See also A. W. Ward (ed.),
The Works of Mrs. Gaskell
, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 5, p. xx.

2
.
after the Stuarts came in
: James I, also known as James VI in Scotland (1566–1625), the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, was the first Stuart king of England. He succeeded the childless Elizabeth I in 1603, and ruled until his death in 1625, after which he was succeeded by his son, Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649.

3
.
Heptarchy
: Seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumberland.

4
.
James the Second… disastrous Irish campaign
: James II (1633–1701), the last Roman Catholic king of Great Britain, took the throne in 1685 after the death of his brother, Charles II. James lost the throne in 1688 when William of Orange (William III) was invited to lead the English army against France, after which he and his wife, James's daughter, Mary II, took the throne. The Battle of the Boyne (July 1690) was part of James's attemptto regain the throne, but he lost. Protestants in Northern Ireland still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.

5
.
the court at St Germains
: After losing his throne, James fled to exile in France, where he set up court at St Germains at the invitation of King Louis XIV.

6
.
divine right of kings
: Belief originating from the medieval period that kings derived their authority from God, that they could demand unquestioning obedience from their subjects and that their actions were exempt from accountability to any earthly authority (such as Parliament). The fullest expression of this ideology is to be found in James I's
True Law of Free Monarchs
(1598), but the theory was abandoned when James II lost his throne.

7
.
entail
: Limitation on the settlement and the succession of property which forbids the property to be bequeathed at will by the possessor, or to be divided up unless this is expressly provided.

8
.
laws against the Papists
: After the Protestant Reformation, a series of acts were imposed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forbidding Catholics to vote, own land, teach, publish or sell Catholic primers. The restrictions on property were not lifted until the Relief Act of 1778. The Test Act of 1673 excluded Catholics from holding public office, and was not formally repealed until the 1860s and 1870s, but in 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act abolished many legal restrictions.

9
.
palmy days
: Triumphant, flourishing time.

10
.
younger son
: See note 2 to ‘The Squire's Story'.

11
.
Gray's Inn
: Legal offices at the four Inns of Court in London, Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.

12
.
mulct
: Extract payment, often by illegitimate or unscrupulous means.

13
.
Duke of Berwick's regiment
: James Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick (1670–1734), illegitimate son of James II, was a leading officer in the French service and commanded an army of James's supporters.

14
.
Jacobite's
: Supporter of the exiled James II and his male descendants after the Revolution of 1688.

15
.
grand tour
: Wealthy young men traditionally travelled the Continent, visiting old and new sites of cultural interest, and meeting people of title and fashion.

16
.
Litany
…
Rose of Sharon
: A litany is a formulaic, penitential prayer in lead/response form. For Rose of Sharon, see Song of Solomon 2:1: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.'

17
.
de vive voix
: Questions asked during an oral examination.

18
.
wrinkle
: Tip or hint.

19
.
unenclosed
: See note 17 to ‘The Squire's Story'.

20
.
Sir Matthew Hale
: (1609–76), As judge at the Bury St Edmunds assizes in 1661–2, Hale presided over the hearing in which two old women were indicted for witchcraft, with Sir Thomas Browne giving evidence for the prosecution. The reference to Hale here may be a little anachronistic, as he died well before this part of the story in the late 1710s.

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.