Life of Charlotte Bronte - Part 1

Summary

GASKELL, ELIZABETH CLEGHORN (1810–1865), novelist, born in Lindsey Row, now part of Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 29 Sept. 1810, was the daughter, by his first marriage, of William Stevenson [q. v.] He was a native of Berwick-on-Tweed, who, after quitting the unitarian ministry, had taken to agricultural pursuits, had written upon commerce, and finally settled as keeper of the records to the treasury in London, where he continued to write. The death of his brother Joseph, a lieutenant in the royal navy, in a French prison must have suggested an incident in ‘Cousin Phillis.’ A strong love of the sea ran in the family. Mrs. Gaskell's mother was a daughter of Mr. Holland of Sandle Bridge in Cheshire (the ‘Heathbridge’ of ‘Cousin Phillis’), a descendant of an ancient Lancashire family. Within a month after her birth the child lost her mother, and after being entrusted for a week to the care of a shopkeeper's wife was by a family friend, a Mrs. Whittington, taken down to her own mother's sister, Mrs. Lumb, at Knutsford in Cheshire. This journey is represented by the travels of the ‘babby’ in ‘Mary Barton’ (chap. ix.) Her aunt, but recently married, was obliged, for painful reasons, to live alone with her daughter; and Elizabeth was to be a companion to this child, who had become a cripple. She found a second mother in her aunt, more especially after the death of her cousin. The aunt was poor, and lived in a modest house with an old-fashioned garden on the heath. She had, however, other relatives at Knutsford: her uncle, Peter Holland (the grandfather of the present Lord Knutsford), who resided there, furnished her with a type, the good country doctor, of which she was fond (see Wives and Daughters and Mr. Harrison's Confessions).