By Mrs. Gaskell

One cannot help envying the person who is able to produce something which is acknowledged to be the very best of its kind. This Mrs. Gaskell did when she wrote "Cranford." She selected a little village, and described it and its inhabitants quite faithfully. Many people have done this before and since, but no one has ever shaken "Cranford" on its throne.

It has very little plot, and nothing sensational ever happens; but a more fragrant and delightful book it is impossible to find. The scent of lavender is strong on every page. The people to whom we are introduced are drawn with so much delicacy, so much feeling, and so much humour, that they become living realities in the mind of the reader. It is sad to reflect that to-day the original Cranford (Knutsford, twenty miles from Manchester) is a cotton manufacturing town of 5,000 inhabitants. What would Miss Matty or Miss Betty Barker have thought of the " horrid cotton trade " invading even their exclusive little village ?

From our modern point of view it was very easy to be vulgar in Cranford. Captain Brown's daughters were almost not "called on," because Captain Brown was heard to say that he could not afford the rent of a certain house.

Apparently, however, there were not so many ways of being vulgar in those days as now there are. Then the borders between gentility and vulgarity were so definite that inhabitants of the two countries seldom strayed over the border. To be "genteel". was the aim and end in life of the ladies who lived in Cranford.

Why is "Cranford" Interesting?

In the whole range of English fiction it would be difficult to find another scene so quiet, so almost commonplace, and yet so completely moving as the chapter where Miss Matty and her young friend are sitting going over old letters. The letters were written by Miss Matty's parents and grand-parents, persons who do not enter into the

The Arts book at any other time, and whose letters have nothing to do with helping on any action in the story itself.

With such exquisite skill, however, has Mrs. Gaskell approached her subject, that it is impossible to read untouched the fragments given us of the letters exchanged between the far-away young couple who afterwards became Miss Matty's parents. Moreover, when this delving into the past leads Miss Matty into telling the story of her merry young brother, with his fatal taste for jokes (how well we can see the high - spirited boy coming home to the Rectory from school to one demure and one terrific sister, an indulgent mother, and an adoring, but Johnsonian father!) one feels that it is amazing that Mrs. Gaskell is not more generally acclaimed a great writer.

But although nothing ever happened in Cranford worthy of a newspaper placard in these days, it must not be supposed that life was without its thrills. It is one of the achievements of the book, in fact, that Mrs. Gaskell makes us enter fully into the enormous excitement felt by the ladies of Cranford when somebody's cousin came to stay, or somebody else's dog died; and as for the sensation when there was an alarm of burglars, why, the reader is in turn as excited and as alarmed as if he were guarding the Bank of England singlehanded against a band of armed villains.

Miss Matty is the heroine of "Cranford," if heroine there be at all. The gentle little lady, absolutely adamant on questions of propriety and conduct, has become a household word with all who have read of her.

She is like a figure carved in cameo, and the tender affection and humour with which she is sketched are among the most admirable things in the book. When she has lost even the slender pittance on which she has lived, she is installed by her friends as a seller of tea, because men do not buy tea, "and it was of men particularly she was afraid; they had such sharp, loud ways with them, and added up accounts and counted their change so quickly. Indeed, if she might only sell comfits to children, she was sure she could please them."

Miss Matty sets up Shop

The account of her setting up in business is too good to be left unquoted. She was provided with "all manner of comfits and lozenges, in order to tempt the little people whom Miss Matty loved so much to come about her. Tea in bright green canisters, and comfits in tumblers - Miss Matty and I felt quite proud as we looked round us on the evening before the shop was to be opened. Martha had scoured the floor to a bright cleanness, and it was adorned with a brilliant piece of oilcloth, on which customers were to stand before the table - counter. The wholesome smell of plaster and whitewash pervaded the apartment. A very small 'matilda Jenkyns, licensed to sell tea,' was hidden under the lintel of the new door, and two boxes of tea, with cabalistic inscriptions all over them, stood ready to disgorge their contents into the canisters.

"Miss Matty, as I ought to have mentioned before, had had some scruples of conscience at selling tea when there was already Mr. Johnson in the town, who

The Arts included it among his numerous commodities and, before she could quite reconcile herself to the adeption of her new business, she had trotted down to his shop, unknown to me. to tell him of the project that was entertained, and to inquire if it was likely to injure his business. My father called this idea of hers 'great nonsense,' and 'wondered how tradespeople were to get on if there was to be a continual consulting of each other's interests, which would put a stop to all competition directly.' And, perhaps, it would not have done in Drumble, but in Cranford it answered very well; for not only did Mr. Johnson kindly put at rest all Miss Matty's scruples and fear of injuring his business, but, I have reason to know, he repeatedly sent customers to her, saying that the teas he kept were of a common kind, but that Miss Jenkyns had all the choice sorts." After reading this, no one will be surprised to hear how she conducted business.

Miss Matty's Sweets

"If a little child came in to ask for an ounce of almond comfits (and four of the large kind which Miss Matty sold weighed that much), she always added one more by

' way of make-weight,' as she called it, although the scale was handsomely turned before; and when I remonstrated against this, her reply was, 'the little things like it so much!' There was no use in telling her that the fifth comfit weighed a quarter of an ounce, and made every sale into a loss to her pocket. So ... I told her how unwholesome almond-comfits were, and how ill excess in them might make the little child rcn. This argument produced some effect; for henceforward, instead of the fifth comfit, she always told them to hold out their tiny palms, "into which she shook either peppermint or ginger lozenges, as a preventive to the dangers that might arise from the previous sale. Altogether, the lozenge trade conducted on these principles, did not promise to be remunerative; but I was happy to find she had made more than twenty pounds during the last year by her sales of tea; and, moreover, that now she was accustomed to it. she did not dislike the employment, which brought her into kindly intercourse with many of the people round about."

Gibraltar Tower House, Carnforth In the Tower Mrs. Gaskell wrote a great deal, and it is specially asscciated with "Ruth." The top room of the Tower was that used by Mrs. Gaskell

It is while Miss Matty is sitting in her shop one day that the long-lost brother of forty years before comes back, and the reunion is described with just the same qualities which make the whole of "Cran-ford " a classic.

An unknown gentleman comes into the shop.

" Apparently he was at a loss how to announce himself, for he looked round at last in search of something to buy, so as to gain time, and, as it happened, his eye caught on the almond -comfits, and he boldly asked for a pound of 'those things.' I doubt if Miss Matty had a whole pound in the shop, and, besides the unusual magnitude of the order, she was distressed with the idea of the indigestion they would produce, taken in such unlimited quantities. She looked up to remonstrate. Something of tender relaxation in his face struck home to her heart. She said, ' It is - oh, sir, can you be Peter ?,' "

With him came financial ease, and everybody was given presents who had ever done the smallest service to Miss Matty. The book closes on a note of general good-will and quiet peace.

A Different World

One wonders what would be the reception of ' Cranford " if it came out for the first time to-day in book form, or ran through a magazine, as it originally did.

It belongs to a different world from ours of to-day, a world that had leisure to be genteel, to make its own preserves, to pay calls in the morning, and dine at five in the afternoon, if fashionable; at three if unfashionable. And yet it is a book that is true of any age because the human nature in it never strikes false, and one can even find in some youthful-minded, middle-aged lady of to-day, belonging to her own club, living her own life, and emancipated from all household cares, the same qualities that Miss Matty had.

It is true that we have no Cranford now, but we shall never be without Miss Matty, nor the energetic Miss Pole, nor severe Miss Jenkyns, nor any of the other types that we meet in this fragrant volume.