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 elite of Cranford.
I say the ELITE, 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 PASSEE.
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 asleep.
"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.
"My sister-in-law, Lady Glenmire, is coming to stay with me."
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.
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