Victorian Short Stories, Vol. 2

Victorian Short Stories, Vol. 2

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Title: Victorian Short Stories, Vol. 2 Stories Of Successful Marriages
Author: Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
Release Date: March 4, 2005 [EBook #15252]
Language: English
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STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGES
THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE Elizabeth Gaskell
A MERE INTERLUDE Thomas Hardy
A FAITHFUL HEART George Moore
THE SOLID GOLD REEF COMPANY, LIMITED Walter Besant
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE Henry James

Elizabeth Gaskell THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE

(Household Words, Christmas 1858)
Mr and Mrs Openshaw came from Manchester to settle in London. He
had been, what is called in Lancashire, a salesman for a large
manufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening a
warehouse in the city; where Mr Openshaw was now to superintend
their affairs. He rather enjoyed the change; having a kind of curiosity
about London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in his brief
visits to the metropolis. At the same time, he had an odd, shrewd
contempt for the inhabitants, whom he always pictured to himself as
fine, lazy people, caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, and
lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining good
English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. The
hours that the men of business kept in the city scandalized him too,
accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk and the
consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go to London,
though he would not for the world have confessed it, even to himself,
and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demanded of him by
the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by a considerable
increase of salary. This, indeed, was so liberal that he might have been
justified in taking a much larger house than the one he did, had he not
thought himself bound to set an example to Londoners of how little a
Manchester man of business cared for show. Inside, however, he
furnished it with an unusual degree of comfort, and, in the winter-time,
he insisted on keeping up as large fires as the grates would allow, in
every room where the temperature was in the least chilly. Moreover, his
northern sense of hospitality was such that, if he were at home, he
could hardly suffer a visitor to leave the house without forcing meat
and drink upon him. Every servant in the house was well warmed, well
fed, and kindly treated; for their master scorned all petty saving in
aught that conduced to comfort; while he amused himself by following
out all his accustomed habits and individual ways, in defiance of what
any of his new neighbours might think.
His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He
was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and
yielding. They had two children; or rather, I should say, she had two;
for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs Openshaw's child by Frank
Wilson, her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who

could just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the
broadest and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up
what he called the true Saxon accent.
Mrs Openshaw's Christian name was Alice, and her first husband had
been her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captain in
Liverpool; a quiet, grave little creature, of great personal attraction
when she was fifteen or sixteen, with regular features and a blooming
complexion. But she was very shy, and believed herself to be very
stupid and awkward; and was frequently scolded by her aunt, her own
uncle's second wife. So when her cousin, Frank Wilson, came home
from a long absence at sea, and first was kind and protective to her;
secondly, attentive; and thirdly, desperately in love with her, she hardly
knew how to be grateful enough to him. It is true, she would have
preferred his remaining in the first or second stages of behaviour; for
his violent love puzzled and frightened her. Her uncle neither helped
nor hindered the love affair, though it was going on under his own eyes.
Frank's stepmother had such a variable temper, that there was