I took Wives and Daughters to read at the doctor's office Monday, and realized it had been a while since I had been treated to such a wit as hers - more than once she made me smile in that waiting room! Mrs. Gaskell's writing is tremendously clever, especially when it comes to bringing out the entertaining idiosyncrasies in her characters ... I suspect her adeptness in this area is one of the reasons her Cranford novels were such successes on screen in the recent BBC adaptions. In any case, her writing makes for a delightful read!
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'All Hollingford felt as if there was a great deal to be done before Easter this year. There was Easter proper, which always required new clothing of some kind, for fear of certain consequences from little birds, who were supposed to resent the impiety of those who do not wear some new article of dress on Easter-day. And most ladies considered it wiser that the little birds should see the new article for themselves, and not have to take it upon trust, as they would have to do if it were merely a pocket-handkerchief, or a petticoat, or any article of under-clothing. So piety demanded a new bonnet, or a new gown; and was barely satisfied with an Easter pair of gloves.'
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'Mrs. Goodenough felt herself particularly aggrieved; she had had her spectacles on for the last hour and a half, in order to be ready for the sight of the very first minute any one from the Towers appeared at the door.
"I had a headache," she complained, "and I should have sent my money, and never stirred out o' doors to-night; for I've seen a many of these here balls, and my lord and my lady too, when they were better worth looking at nor they are now; but every one was talking of the duchess, and the duchess and her diamonds, and I thought I shouldn't like to be behindhand, and never ha' seen neither the duchess nor her diamonds; so I'm here, and coal and candlelight wasting away at home, for I told Sally to sit up for me; and, above everything, I cannot abide waste. I took it from my mother, who was such a one against waste as you never see now-a-days. She was a manager, if ever there was a one, and brought up nine children on less than any one else could do, I'll be bound. Why! She wouldn't let us be extravagant -- not even in the matter of colds. Whenever any on us had got a pretty bad cold, she took the opportunity and cut our hair; for she said, said she, it was of no use having two colds when one would do -- and cutting of our hair was sure to give us a cold. But, for all that, I wish the duchess would come."'
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'Mrs. Goodenough ... had taken a deliberate survey of the grandees at the upper end of the room, spectacles on nose, and had inquired, in no very measured voice, who everybody was, from Mr. Sheepshanks, my lord's agent, and her very good neighbor, who in vain tried to check her loud ardour for information by replying to her in whispers. But she was rather deaf as well as blind, so his low tones only brought upon him fresh inquiries. Now, satisfied as far as she could be, and on her way to departure, and the extinguishing of fire and candlelight, she stopped opposite to Mrs. Gibson, and thus addressed her by way of renewal of their former subject of conversation, --
"Such a shabby thing for a duchess I never saw; not a bit of a diamond near her. They're none of them worth looking at except the countess, and she's always a personable woman, and not so lusty as she was. But they're not worth waiting up for till this time o' night."
There was a moment's pause. Then Lady Harriet put her hand out, and said, --
"You don't remember me, but I know you from having seen you at the Towers. Lady Cumnor is a good deal thinner than she was, but we hope her health is better for it."
"It's Lady Harriet," said Mrs. Gibson to Mrs. Goodenough, in reproachful dismay.'
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