Happy Families

The third Hesperus review this week (and don’t forget my competition draw) is from the pen of Elizabeth Gaskell – I can proudly state that I was one of those smug people who’d read Cranford before the Dames Eileen and Judi received their scripts. That’s not all, I had Wives and Daughters under my belt, as well as a couple of short story collections. No matter that I got Wives and Daughters confused with Sons and Lovers on occasion (titles only, you understand) and had avoided all the grim-oop-North novels, I think I could count myself a Gaskell aficiando. Or at least admirer.

So I swooped on Cousin Phillis like a swallow, er, swooping somewhere. If not simply for the author, also for the beautiful cover, and the fact that Jenny Uglow (a Gaskell biographer) wrote the Foreword.

Paul Manning is the first person narrator, who goes off into the countryside to make the acquaintance of distant relatives – Mr. and Mrs. Holman, and their young daughter Phillis. Their simple kindness wins over both Paul and the reader – Gaskell’s portrait of uncomplex country folk with hearts of gold has none of the absurdity of Dickens, nor a hint of patronisation, but comes across as both genuine and touching. When Manning’s sophisticated and admired colleague, Holdsworth, makes a lengthy visit, the trails of quiet passion and potential romance become far from simple, and leave a subtle and subdued heartache for more than one.

Cousin Phillis is a gentle tragedy without a baddie, a perfectly structured depiction of friendship, family, honesty and romance which is all the more moving for its verisimilitude. It is the sort of situation Gaskell would often frame in her short stories, though never so toucingly. Another Cranford this is not, neither in scope nor tone, but I can only agree with Uglow when she calls it a ‘perfect miniature nestling among the great Victorian three-volume novels’. Yesterday we saw that the Russians could do concise – who knew the Victorians could too? At this rate we’ll find a short sentence by Henry James.

7 thoughts on “Happy Families

  • March 14, 2008 at 9:25 am
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    That is a lovely cover – do churns exist nowadays?
    But more importantly, I love the way you write, Simon, and you always brighten up the morning!

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  • March 14, 2008 at 10:07 am
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    Karen – if churns exist nowadays it’s on very small farms who don’t sell their milk to commercial firms. All milk sold these days is collected in huge, refrigerated bulk tanks by milk tankers. And a good thing too, frankly, lugging full milk churns around must have been the cause of more farmers’ and farmers’ wives bad backs than any other single thing on a pre-bulk-tank dairy farm!

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  • March 14, 2008 at 10:09 am
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    … sorry, sentence should read ‘collected from huge, refrigerated bulk tanks on farms, by milk tankers. Confusing otherwise!

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  • March 14, 2008 at 2:14 pm
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    Thanks for the review. I love Gaskell and hadn’t read this one.

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  • March 14, 2008 at 3:21 pm
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    Someone brings the milk to our Church (for the after Church coffee) in a mini milk churn – no bad backs there then! But I also remember the special platform by the farm gate where the churns waited to be collected. The milkman then only had to lift them across to his lorry, rather than up to it. Still hard work I suppose. But they made a perfect place for Youth Hostellers to sit and quaff water scooped from the nearby cattle trough (tap) without having to lay down their rucksacks. Remember?
    Rural life was never simple and usually back-breaking (and probably heart-breaking too.) Think Thomas Hardy.

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  • March 15, 2008 at 12:00 pm
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    Thank you, Karen, what a lovely thing to say!

    And, Mum, rural life may not have been simple, but I bet the people were ;-) Some of us still are…

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  • March 15, 2008 at 12:00 pm
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    Thank you, Karen, what a lovely thing to say!

    And, Mum, rural life may not have been simple, but I bet the people were ;-) Some of us still are…

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