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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Harriet Martineau's novel, 'Deerbrook', is a captivating representation of early 19th-century English rural life, focusing on the challenges faced by the residents of a small village. The narrative portrays themes of love, friendship, social class, and gender roles, all woven together in Martineau's eloquent and thought-provoking prose. As one of the earliest works of English social realism, 'Deerbrook' offers a unique perspective on the complexities of village life during the time period. Martineau's attention to detail and nuanced character development make this novel a timeless classic in English literature. Harriet Martineau, a trailblazing feminist and social reformer, drew upon her own experiences and observations to craft 'Deerbrook'. Her strong advocacy for women's rights and progressive social views are reflected in the novel's narrative, making it a significant contribution to the feminist literary canon. I highly recommend 'Deerbrook' to readers interested in historical fiction, feminist literature, and early 19th-century social commentary. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Deerbrook
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Table of Contents
Introduction
In a village where every window seems to look inward as much as outward, Deerbrook traces how private conscience and public opinion press upon love, work, and everyday kindness until the very conduct that sustains a community threatens to undo it, staging the quiet drama of reputations formed in parlors and at garden gates, the testing of principle when medicine meets fear, and the delicate bargain between individual dignity and the collective urge to judge, so that ordinary choices, magnified by curious attention and well-meant talk, slowly gather the weight of destiny for neighbors who must learn how to live together.
Harriet Martineau’s Deerbrook is a realist domestic novel set in an English village, first published in 1839 during the early Victorian period. Drawing on Martineau’s authority as a social analyst, it observes provincial middle-class life with patient exactness, making household routines, medical practice, and neighborly visits the stage for moral inquiry. The setting is not picturesque background so much as a working social system; shop, surgery, parlor, and lane together shape what can be known and done. Within this focused canvas, Martineau brings questions of conduct and community into view, using the familiar forms of courtship and friendship to probe civic responsibility.
A pair of sisters arrives from the city to stay with relations in Deerbrook, and their entrance into village society quickly entangles them with two neighboring households, including a conscientious young physician whose work brings him into every home. The novel begins as a narrative of acquaintance—walks, teas, errands, and conversations—before deepening into a study of how attention, kindness, and misapprehension accumulate. Martineau’s omniscient voice is lucid and steady, gently ironic without cruelty, committed to fair hearing while clear about frailty. The pacing is deliberative, the scenes well lit, the arguments explicit, offering a reading experience at once sociable, reflective, and searching.
At the center stands the question of what public opinion is for: a means of mutual care or a weapon of surveillance. Martineau asks how reputations form, why rumor travels faster than evidence, and where duty to neighbors ends. She explores the ethics of professional life through the physician’s daily choices, showing how competence, candor, and sympathy can be demanded and resented at once. Domestic happiness is treated not as escape but as a practical art of justice, requiring work, patience, and truth-telling. Themes of class feeling, economic vulnerability, illness, and charity frame the village as a moral commons.
Much of the book’s power lies in its attention to inward weather: the tussle between pride and tenderness, the discipline of self-command, the temptations of resentment, the relief of candor. Martineau considers how women think and choose within the conventions that shape their prospects, presenting marriage as a partnership of character rather than a mere event. She respects feeling yet insists on responsibility, tracing how judgment of others often masks the need for self-knowledge. Her training in social inquiry sharpens, rather than chills, the psychological portraiture, so that motive, habit, and belief are shown interacting with circumstance to produce moral consequence.
For contemporary readers, Deerbrook’s village is recognizably our own, transposed from lanes to feeds: reputations rise and fall through talk, partial knowledge breeds certainty, and professional trust can be won or jeopardized by forces beyond competence. The novel illuminates ethical strain in care work, the negotiations between vocation and private life, and the cost of public misreading. It invites reflection on how communities balance transparency and privacy, help and intrusion, judgment and mercy. In an age impatient with slowness, its careful pace models attention, asking what we notice, whom we believe, and how we might turn scrutiny into stewardship.
Approached as a social novel of quiet stakes, Deerbrook rewards readers who linger over its conversations and notice how small acts ripple outward. Martineau composes a civic anatomy without reducing anyone to a case, and her equable tone makes space for complexity rather than verdict. The book matters now because it honors both the need to belong and the courage to think, showing that reforms of feeling are themselves public goods. To read it is to practice patience, to test one’s own habits of inference, and to imagine communities in which justice is made daily through attentiveness, restraint, and care.
Synopsis
Published in 1839, Harriet Martineau’s Deerbrook places a tale of courtship and kinship in a quiet English village to explore how character is tested by opinion, illness, and reform. The narrative follows two sisters, Hester and Margaret Ibbotson, who arrive to stay with relatives and enter a world where every conversation is weighed by neighbors. Martineau interweaves domestic incident with debates about professional duty and public morality, using the rhythms of village life to frame larger questions of trust, reputation, and self-government. The result is a study of how private choices acquire public meanings within a community that notices everything.
Deerbrook’s social field forms around parlors, gardens, and chance meetings on the green. The sisters’ hosts introduce them to the physician Edward Hope, the respectable Rowland family, and Philip Enderby, whose good nature and family ties complicate every gathering. Observant and reserved, Margaret reads people with care; high-strung and proud, Hester seeks certainty and esteem. From the outset, the village’s habits of conjecture shape expectations about who will attach to whom, and on what grounds. Martineau shows how glances, visits, and borrowed books become data for communal judgment, establishing the climate in which the young people must choose their futures.
Misread signals and social pressure soon unsettle the courtships. Hope’s attentions, interpreted through gossip, drift into a mistaken consensus that constrains frank speech. Out of this climate a marriage is made between Hester and Edward, honorable yet shadowed by uneasy comparisons with Margaret’s quieter strengths. Martineau traces the marriage with unusual candor for its time, examining duty, pride, and the craving for exclusive affection. The union anchors the plot while raising questions about what sustains companionship when admiration is mixed with doubt. Around it revolve friendly loyalties and watchful eyes, as neighbors treat domestic milestones as occasions for collective inference.
As the household finds its rhythm, Hope’s professional principles collide with village politics. He insists on medical independence, refuses flattering falsity, and speaks for reforms that many consider unsettling. The Rowlands, influential and affronted, exploit rumor to punish what they perceive as presumption, turning minor slights into a campaign of coldness. Patients drift away, shopkeepers hedge their courtesies, and the doctor’s integrity quietly costs him bread. Martineau depicts how reputation can be unmade by whispers more effectively than by facts, and how a conscience tested in public becomes the true measure of a vocation devoted to service.
Margaret’s path, meanwhile, deepens the novel’s inquiry into women’s agency. Her rapport with Philip Enderby promises companionship grounded in shared regard, yet it is constantly exposed to interference from those who prize advantage over candor. Martineau shows Margaret practicing self-command amid slights she does not deserve, finding forms of usefulness that do not depend on marriage alone. Her steadiness contrasts with the anxieties that trouble Hester, widening the book’s view from romantic fulfillment to ethical self-formation. The sisters’ affection endures strains imposed by others’ schemes, posing the question of how loyalty can be maintained without surrendering independent judgment.
A public calamity compels Deerbrook to reconsider its values. When disease sweeps through the village, the doctor’s rounds become acts of moral witness as much as medical care, and the sisters’ capacities are tested in the practicalities of nursing, endurance, and restraint. Fear amplifies slander, but suffering also clears space for recognition, as usefulness outshines talk. The crisis concentrates the novel’s themes: the demands of duty under observation, the limits of self-love, and the slow repair of trust. Martineau’s scenes emphasize process over spectacle, developing character through repeated choices rather than single revelations, and pausing before final resolutions.
Without disclosing later turns, Deerbrook closes by reaffirming Martineau’s conviction that a just society depends on truthful speech, patient labor, and the courage to resist flattering error. The book endures for its fusion of village chronicle with political and ethical argument, anticipating social novels that treat public health, professional integrity, and women’s possibilities as inseparable from domestic life. Its conflicts remain recognizable: how to love without possessing, to serve without courting applause, and to keep faith with friends amid the din of opinion. In presenting ordinary lives under pressure, Martineau gives enduring shape to questions that still guide communal living.
Historical Context
Published in 1839, Harriet Martineau’s Deerbrook is set in a provincial English village in the early nineteenth century, at the cusp of the early Victorian era. The social landscape is structured by the Church of England parish, a local gentry hierarchy, and an emerging professional middle class that includes medical practitioners, shopkeepers, and attorneys. Daily life follows pre‑railway rhythms of coaching roads and close-knit visiting circles. Informal governance operates through vestries, magistrates, and charitable committees, where reputation counts as much as law. Within this setting, domestic interiors and public rooms alike become arenas for negotiating status, duty, and moral authority.
Britain in the 1830s underwent significant constitutional and municipal change that reshaped local power. The Reform Act of 1832 broadened the electorate in boroughs and counties, while the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 reorganized many town councils on more representative lines. Although small villages remained dominated by landowners and clergy, a self-confident middle class increasingly asserted influence through committees, petitions, and the press. The first wave of Chartist agitation (from 1838) further dramatized the language of rights and public opinion. Against this backdrop, Deerbrook’s attention to respectability, civic duty, and communal judgment mirrors the new weight of reputation in provincial life.
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act transformed relief for the destitute by consolidating parishes into unions and emphasizing workhouse provision over outdoor aid. Debates about charity, deservingness, and the unintended consequences of benevolence animated drawing rooms and vestry meetings alike. Harriet Martineau, already known for Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34), popularized classical economic ideas about incentives, prudence, and social welfare. Her didactic interests inform Deerbrook’s attention to household management, professional independence, and the ethics of giving. The novel situates private kindness within public frameworks of policy, inviting readers to scrutinize how well-intentioned interventions can either sustain or undermine self-reliance.
In the decades before Deerbrook appeared, Britain’s medical hierarchy was formalizing yet still contested. The Apothecaries Act of 1815 set training standards for general practitioners, while physicians and surgeons guarded older privileges. Public anxieties sharpened during the 1831–32 cholera epidemic, when ad hoc boards of health, quarantine debates, and mortality reports made doctors visible—and suspect. The Anatomy Act of 1832, passed after body-snatching scandals, heightened scrutiny of medical men in small communities. Martineau’s portrayal of a village practitioner turns on trust, competence, and social rank, reflecting how professional credibility could be strengthened or wrecked by rumor and rivalry.
Religion structured village allegiance and moral rhetoric. The Church of England remained the established church, collecting tithes until the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 altered how they were assessed. Dissenters—Baptists, Methodists, and Unitarians—gained greater civic participation after the 1828 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Harriet Martineau, a prominent Unitarian, wrote from a tradition emphasizing reason, conscience, and social improvement. Her stance lends Deerbrook a measured skepticism toward inherited authority and a sympathy with conscientious nonconformity. The novel’s debates over duty, charity, and honesty echo contemporary sermons and tracts, while sidestepping doctrinal polemic in favor of ethical inquiry.
The novel addresses women’s roles within a society organized by the ideology of separate spheres. In 1830s Britain, polite conduct books promoted female influence through domestic management, moral suasion, and tact, while formal political power remained largely male. Under coverture, a married woman’s property and legal identity were absorbed by her husband, reforms arriving only decades later (notably in 1870 and 1882). Courtship, marriage, and household economy therefore carried high stakes for middle-class women. Deerbrook’s exploration of conversation, reading, and prudent choice aligns with contemporary debates over female education and the right balance between sensibility, reason, and duty.
Provincial sociability in the period revolved around visits, teas, assemblies, and reading circles, where news and moral verdicts spread quickly. A growing periodical press—assisted by cheaper newspaper stamps after 1836—extended the reach of public discourse, though small communities still relied on letters, sermons, and word of mouth. Circulating and subscription libraries supplied novels, travel writing, and improving texts to middle-class households. Deerbrook maps the pathways of rumor and correction through these intimate networks, showing how casual talk can harden into orthodoxy. The novel’s concern with evidence, testimony, and fair dealing responds to this lively, sometimes punitive, communicative world.
Economically and technologically, the 1830s mixed innovation with uneven reach. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830, yet many villages remained tied to market towns by horse transport. Trade fluctuations and professional competition sharpened anxieties about credit and livelihood. Reformist energies were high: Parliament abolished slavery in most of the British Empire in 1833, and voluntary societies campaigned for education, temperance, and public health. Martineau, an abolitionist and social observer, adapted these currents to the domestic novel. Deerbrook critiques class prejudice, moral cowardice, and credulity, advocating rational sympathy and earned professional esteem as markers of a modern, responsible community.
Deerbrook
Chapter One.
Moonlight to Townsfolk.
The moment the door closed behind Sophia, as she left the sisters in their apartment, Hester crossed the room with a step very like a dance, and threw up the window.
“I had rather look out than sleep,” said she. “I shall be ashamed to close my eyes on such a prospect. Morris, if you are waiting for us, you may go. I shall sit up a long while yet.”
Morris thought she had not seen Hester in such spirits since her father’s death. She was unwilling to check them, but said something about the fatigues of the journey, and being fresh for the next day.
“No fear for to-morrow, Morris. We are in the country, you know, and I cannot fancy being tired in the fields, and in such a park as that. Good-night, Morris.”
When she too was gone, Hester called Margaret to her, put her arm round her waist, and kissed her again and again.
“You seem happy to-night, Hester,” said Margaret’s gentle voice.
“Yes,” sighed Hester; “more like being happy than for a long time past. How little we know what we shall feel! Here have I been dreading and dreading this evening, and shrinking from the idea of meeting the Greys, and wanting to write at the last moment to say that we would not come;—and it turns out—Oh, so differently! Think of day after day, week after week of pure country life! When they were planning for us to-night, and talking of the brook, and lanes, and meadows, it made my very heart dance.”
“Thank God!” said Margaret. “When your heart dances, there is nothing left to wish.”
“But did not yours? Had you ever such a prospect before—such a prospect of delicious pleasure for weeks together—except perhaps when we caught our first sight of the sea?”
“Nothing can ever equal that,” replied Margaret. “Do not you hear now the shout we gave when we saw the sparkles on the horizon—heaving sparkles—when we were a mile off, and mamma held me up that I might see it better; and baby—dear baby—clapped his little hands? Does it not seem like yesterday?”
“Like yesterday: and yet, if baby had lived, he would now have been our companion, taking the place of all other friends to us. I thought of him when I saw Sydney Grey; but he would have been very unlike Sydney Grey. He would have been five years older, but still different from what Sydney will be at eighteen—graver, more manly.”
“How strange is the idea of having a brother!” said Margaret. “I never see girls with their brothers but I watch them, and long to feel what it is, just for one hour. I wonder what difference it would have made between you and me, if we had had a brother.”
“You and he would have been close friends—always together, and I should have been left alone,” said Hester, with a sigh. “Oh, yes,” she continued, interrupting Margaret’s protest, “it would have been so. There can never be the same friendship between three as between two.”
“And why should you have been the one left out?” asked Margaret. “But this is all nonsense—all a dream,” she added. “The reality is that baby died—still a baby—and we know no more of what he would have been, than of what he is. The real truth is, that you and I are alone, to be each other’s only friend.”
“It makes me tremble to think of it, Margaret. It is not so long since our home seemed full. How we used all to sit round the fire, and laugh and play with papa, as if we were not to separate till we had all grown old: and now, young as we are, here we are alone! How do we know that we shall be left to each other?”
“There is only one thing we can do, Hester,” said Margaret, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder. “We must make the most of being together while we can. There must not be the shadow of a cloud between us for a moment. Our confidence must be as full and free, our whole minds as absolutely open, as—as I have read and heard that two minds can never be.”
“Those who say so do not know what may be,” exclaimed Hester. “I am sure there is not a thought, a feeling in me, that I could not tell you, though I know I never could to any one else.”
“If I were to lose you, Hester, there are many, many things that would be shut up in me for ever. There will never be any one on earth to whom I could say the things that I can tell to you. Do you believe this, Hester?”
“I do. I know it.”
“Then you will never again doubt me, as you certainly have done sometimes. You cannot imagine how my heart sinks when I see you are fancying that I care for somebody else more than for you; when you think that I am feeling differently from you. Oh, Hester, I know every change of your thoughts by your face; and indeed your thoughts have been mistaken sometimes.”
“They have been wicked, often,” said Hester, in a low voice. “I have sometimes thought that I must be hopelessly bad, when I have found that the strongest affection I have in the world has made me unjust and cruel to the person I love best. I have a jealous temper, Margaret; and a jealous temper is a wicked temper.”
“Now you are unkind to yourself, Hester. I do believe you will never doubt me again.”
“I never will. And if I find a thought of the kind rising in me, I will tell you the moment I am aware of it.”
“Do, and I will tell you the moment I see a trace of such a thought in your face. So we shall be safe. We can never misunderstand each other for more than a moment.”
By the gentle leave of Heaven, all human beings have visions. Not the lowest and dullest but has the coarseness of his life relieved at moments by some scenery of hope rising through the brooding fogs of his intellect and his heart. Such visitations of mercy are the privilege of the innocent, and the support of the infirm. Here were the lonely sisters sustained in bereavement and self-rebuke, by the vision of a friendship which should be unearthly in its depth and freedom; they were so happy for the hour, that nothing could disturb them.
“I do not see,” observed Hester, “that it will be possible to enjoy any intimate intercourse with this family. Unless they are of a different order from what they seem, we cannot have much in common; but I am sure they mean to be kind, and they will let us be happy in our own way. Oh, what mornings you and I will have together in those woods! Did you ever see anything so soft as they look—in this light?”
“And the bend of the river glittering there! Here, a little more this way, and you will see it as I do. The moon is not at the full yet; the river will be like this for some nights to come.”
“And these rides and drives—I hope nothing will prevent our going through the whole list of them. What is the matter, Margaret? Why are you so cool about them?”
“I think all the pleasure depends upon the companionship, and I have some doubts about that. I had rather sit at work in a drawing-room all day, than go among mountains with people—”
“Like the Mansons; Oh, that spreading of shawls, and bustle about the sandwiches, before they could give a look at the waterfall! I am afraid we may find something of the same drawback here.”
“I am afraid so.”
“Well, only let us get out into the woods and lanes, and we will manage to enjoy ourselves there. We can contrive to digress here and there together without being missed. But I think we are judging rather hastily from what we saw this evening even about this family; and we have no right to suppose that all their acquaintance are like them.”
“No, indeed; and I am sure Mr. Hope, for one, is of a different order. He dropped one thing, one little saying, which proved this to my mind.”
“I know what you mean—about the old man that is to be our guide over that heath they were talking of—about why that heath is a different and more beautiful place to him than to us, or to his former self. Is it not true, what he said?”
“I am sure it is true. I have little to say of my own experience, or wisdom, or goodness, whichever it was that he particularly meant as giving a new power of sight to the old man; but I know that no tree waves to my eye as it did ten years ago, and the music of running water is richer to my ear as every summer comes round.”
“Yes; I almost wonder sometimes whether all things are not made at the moment by the mind that sees them, so wonderfully do they change with one’s mood, and according to the store of thoughts they lay open in one’s mind. If I lived in a desert island (supposing one’s intellect could go on to grow there), I should feel sure of this.”
“But not here, where it is quite clear that the village sot (if there be one[1]), and Mr. Hope, and the children, and we ourselves all see the same objects in sunlight and moonlight, and acknowledge them to be the same, though we cannot measure feelings upon them. I wish Mr. Hope may say something more which may lead to the old man on the heath again. He is coming to-morrow morning.”
“Yes; we shall see him again to-morrow.”
Chapter Two.
Making Acquaintance.
The sisters were not so fatigued with their journey but that they were early in the open air the next morning. In the shrubbery they met the twins, walking hand in hand, each with a doll on the disengaged arm.
“You are giving your dolls an airing before breakfast,” said Hester, stopping them as they would have passed on.
“Yes; we carry out our dolls now because we must not run before breakfast. We have made arbours in our own gardens for our dolls, where they may sit when we are swinging.”
“I should like to see your arbours and your gardens,” said Margaret, looking round her. “Will you take me to them?”
“Not now,” answered they; “we should have to cross the grass, and we must not go upon the grass before breakfast.”
“Where is your swing? I am very fond of swinging.”
“Oh! it is in the orchard there, under that large tree. But you cannot—”
“I see; we cannot get to it now, because we should have to cross the grass.” And Margaret began to look round for any place where they might go beyond the gravel-walk on which they stood. She moved towards the greenhouse, but found it was never unlocked before breakfast. The summerhouse remained, and a most unexceptionable path led to it. The sisters turned that way.
“You cannot go there,” cried the children; “Miss Young always has the schoolroom before breakfast.”
“We are going to see Miss Young,” explained Hester, smiling at the amazed faces with which the children stared from the end of the path. They were suddenly seen to turn, and walk as fast as they could, without its being called running, towards the house. They were gone to their mother’s dressing-room door, to tell her that the Miss Ibbotsons were gone to see Miss Young before breakfast.
The path led for some little way under the hedge which separated Mr. Grey’s from Mr. Rowland’s garden. There were voices on the other side, and what was said was perfectly audible. Uneasy at hearing what was not meant for them, Hester and Margaret gave tokens of their presence. The conversation on the other side of the hedge proceeded; and in a very short time the sisters were persuaded that they had been mistaken in supposing that what was said was not meant for them.
“My own Matilda,” said a voice, which evidently came from under a lady’s bonnet which moved parallel with Hester’s and Margaret’s; “My own Matilda, I would not be so harsh as to prevent your playing where you please before breakfast. Run where you like, my love. I am sorry for little girls who are not allowed to do as they please in the cool of the morning. My children shall never suffer such restriction.”
“Mother,” cried a rough little person, “I’m going fishing with Uncle Philip to-day. Sydney Grey and I are going, I don’t know how far up the river.”
“On no account, my dear boy. You must not think of such a thing. I should not have a moment’s peace while you are away. You would not be back till evening, perhaps; and I should be fancying all day that you were in the river. It is out of the question, my own George.”
“But I must go, mother. Uncle Philip said I might; and Sydney Grey is going.”
“That is only another reason, my dear boy. Your uncle will yield to my wishes, I am sure, as he always does. And if Mrs. Grey allows her son to run such risks, I am sure I should not feel myself justified. You will stay with me, love, won’t you? You will stay with your mother, my own boy.”
George ran roaring away, screaming for Uncle Philip; who was not at hand, however, to plead his cause.
“My Matilda,” resumed the fond mother, “you are making yourself a sad figure. You will not be fit to show yourself at breakfast. Do you suppose your papa ever saw such a frock as that? There! look—dripping wet! Pritchard, take Miss Matilda, and change all her clothes directly. So much for my allowing her to run on the grass while the dew is on! Lose no time, Pritchard, lest the child should catch cold. Leave Miss Anna with me. Walk beside me, my Anna. Ah! there is papa. Papa, we must find some amusement for George today, as I cannot think of letting him go out fishing. Suppose we take the children to spend the morning with their cousins at Dingleford?”
“To-morrow would suit me better, my love,” replied the husband. “Indeed I don’t see how I can go to-day, or you either.” And Mr. Rowland lowered his voice, so as to show that he was aware of his liability to be overheard.
“Oh, as to that, there is no hurry,” replied the lady, aloud. “If I had nothing else to do, I should not make that call to-day. Any day will do as well.”
As Hester and Margaret looked at each other, they heard the gentleman softly say “Hush!” But Mrs. Rowland went on as audibly as ever.
“There is no reason why I should be in any hurry to call on Mrs. Grey’s friends, whoever and whatever they may be. Any day will do for that, my dear.”
Not having been yet forbidden to run before breakfast, Hester and Margaret fled to the summer-house, to avoid hearing any more of the domestic dialogues of the Rowland family.
“What shall we do when that woman calls?” said Hester. “How will it be possible to speak to her?”
“As we should speak to any other indifferent person,” replied Margaret. “Her rudeness is meant for Mrs. Grey, not for us; for she knows nothing about us: and Mrs. Grey will never hear from us what has passed.—Shall we knock?”
In answer to the knock, they were requested to enter. Miss Young rose in some confusion when she found her visitors were other than her pupils: but she was so lame that Hester made her sit down again, while they drew seats for themselves. They apologised for breaking in upon her with so little ceremony, but explained that they were come to be inmates at Mr. Grey’s for some months, and that they wished to lose no time in making themselves acquainted with every resort of the family of which they considered themselves a part. Miss Young was evidently pleased to see them. She closed her volume, and assured them they were welcome to her apartment; “For,” said she, “everybody calls it my apartment, and why should not I?”
“Do you spend all your time here?” asked Hester.
“Almost the whole day. I have a lodging in the village; but I leave it early these fine mornings, and stay here till dark. I am so lame as to make it inconvenient to pass over the ground oftener than is necessary; and I find it pleasanter to see trees and grass through every window here, than to look out into the farrier’s yard[3]—the only prospect from my lodging. The furnace and sparks are pretty enough on a winter’s evening, especially when one is too ill or too dismal to do anything but watch them; but at this season one grows tired of old horse-shoes and cinders; and so I sit here.”
To the sisters there seemed a world of desolation in these words. They were always mourning for having no brother. Here was one who appeared to be entirely alone. From not knowing exactly what to say, Margaret opened the book Miss Young had laid aside. It was German—Schiller’s Thirty Years’ War[2]. Every one has something to say about German literature; those who do not understand it asking whether it is not very mystical, and wild, and obscure; and those who do understand it saying that it is not so at all. It would be a welcome novelty if the two parties were to set about finding out what it is to be mystical—a point which, for aught that is known to the generality, is not yet ascertained. Miss Young and her visitors did not enter upon precise definitions this morning. These were left for a future occasion. Meantime it was ascertained that Miss Young had learned the German language by the aid of dictionary and grammar alone, and also that if she should happen to meet with any one who wished to enjoy what she was enjoying, she should be glad to afford any aid in her power. Hester was satisfied with thanking her. She was old enough to know that learning a new language is a serious undertaking. Margaret was somewhat younger, and ready for any enterprise. She thought she saw before her hours of long mornings, when she should be glad to escape from the work-table to Miss Young’s companionship and to study. The bright field of German literature seemed to open before her to be explored. She warmly thanked Miss Young, and accepted her offered assistance.
“So you spend all your days alone here,” said she, looking round upon the rather bare walls, the matted floor, the children’s desks, and the single shelf which held Miss Young’s books.
“Not exactly all the day alone,” replied Miss Young; “the children are with me five hours a day, and a set of pupils from the village comes to me besides, for a spare hour of the afternoon. In this way I see a good many little faces every day.”
“And some others too, I should hope; some besides little faces?”
Miss Young was silent. Margaret hastened on—
“I suppose most people would say here what is said everywhere else about the nobleness and privilege of the task of teaching children. But I do not envy those who have it to do. I am as fond of children as any one; but then it is having them out to play on the grass, or romping with them in the nursery, that I like. When it becomes a matter of desks and school-books, I had far rather study than teach.”
“I believe everybody, except perhaps mothers, would agree with you,” said Miss Young, who was now, without apology, plying her needle.
“Indeed! then I am very sorry for you.”
“Thank you; but there’s no need to be sorry for me. Do you suppose that one’s comfort lies in having a choice of employments? My experience leads me to think the contrary.”
“I do not think I could be happy,” said Hester, “to be tied down to an employment I did not like.”
“Not to a positively disgusting one. But I am disposed to think that the greatest number of happy people may be found busy in employments that they have not chosen for themselves, and never would have chosen.”
“I am afraid these very happy people are haunted by longings to be doing something else.”
“Yes: there is their great trouble. They think, till experience makes them wiser, that if they were only in another set of circumstances, if they only had a choice what they would do, a chance for the exercise of the powers they are conscious of, they would do such things as should be the wonder and the terror of the earth. But their powers may be doubted, if they do not appear in the conquest of circumstances.”
“So you conquer these giddy children, when you had rather be conquering German metaphysicians, or—, or—, what else?”
“There is little to conquer in these children,” said Miss Young; “they are very good with me. I assure you I have much more to conquer in myself, with regard to them. It is but little that I can do for them; and that little I am apt to despise, in the vain desire to do more.”
“How more?”
“If I had them in a house by myself, to spend their whole time with me, so that I could educate, instead of merely teaching them. But here I am doing just what we were talking of just now—laying out a pretty-looking field of duty, in which there would probably be as many thorns as in any other. Teaching has its pleasures—its great occasional, and small daily pleasures, though they are not to be compared to the sublime delights of education.”
“You must have some of these sublime delights mixed in with the humbler. You are, in some degree, educating these children while teaching them.”
“Yes: but it is more a negative than a positive function, a very humble one. Governesses to children at home can do little more than stand between children and the faults of the people about them. I speak quite generally.”
“Is such an occupation one in which anybody can be happy?”
“Why not, as well as in making pins’ heads, or in nursing sick people, or in cutting square blocks out of a chalk pit for thirty years together, or in any other occupation which may be ordained to prove to us that happiness lies in the temper, and not in the object of a pursuit? Are there not free and happy pin-makers, and sick-nurses, and chalk-cutters?”
“Yes: but they know how much to expect. They have no idea of pin-making in itself being great happiness.”
“Just so. Well: let a governess learn what to expect; set her free from a hankering after happiness in her work, and you have a happy governess.”
“I thought such a thing was out of the order of nature.”
“Not quite. There have been such, though there are strong influences against it. The expectations of all parties are unreasonable; and those who are too humble, or too amiable, to be dissatisfied with others, are discontented with themselves, when the inevitable disappointment comes. There is a great deal said about the evils of the position of a governess—between the family and the servants—a great deal said that is very true, and always will be true, while governesses have proud hearts, like other people: but these are slight evils in comparison with the grand one of the common failure of the relation.—There! do you hear that bell?”
“What is it? The breakfast bell?”
“Yes. You must go. I would not be understood as inviting you here; for it is not, except upon sufferance, my room; and I have no inducement to offer. But I may just say, that you will always be welcome.”
“Always?” said Margaret. “In and out of school hours?”
“In and out of school hours, unless your presence should chance to turn my pupils’ heads. In that case, you will not be offended if I ask you to go away.”
Mary and Fanny had just reported in the breakfast-parlour, that the Miss Ibbotsons had been “such a time with Miss Young!” when Hester and Margaret entered. The testimony there was all in favour of Miss Young. Mr. Grey called her a most estimable young woman; and Mrs. Grey declared that, though she could not agree with her on all points, and decidedly thought that she overrated Matilda Rowland’s talents, she was convinced that her children enjoyed great advantages under her care. Sophia added, that she was very superior—quite learned. Mrs. Grey further explained that, though now so much at ease on the subject of her daughters’ education, no one could have an idea of the trouble she had had in getting the plan arranged. It had seemed a pity that the Rowlands and her children should not learn together: it was such an advantage for children to learn together! But Mrs. Rowland had made a thousand difficulties. After breakfast, she would show her young friends the room which she had proposed should be the schoolroom—as airy and advantageous in every way as could be imagined: but Mrs. Rowland had objected that she could not have Matilda and George come out in all weathers—as if they would have had to walk a mile, instead of just the sweep of the gravel-walk! Mrs. Rowland had proposed that her back-parlour should be the schoolroom: but really it was not to be thought of—so small and close, and such a dull room for Miss Young! The gentlemen had been obliged to take it up at last. Nobody could ever find out which of them it was that had thought of the summerhouse, though she was satisfied in her own mind that Mr. Rowland was not in the habit of having such clever ideas; but, however, it was soon settled. The summer-house was so exactly on the boundary-line between the two gardens, that really no objection had been left for Mrs. Rowland to make. She came as near to it as she could, however; for she had had the walk covered in at great expense from her garden door to the summer-house, when everybody knew she did not mind her children getting wet at other times on the grass before the dew was off.
“And the covered way is quite an eyesore from the drawing-room windows,” added Sophia.
“Quite,” said Mrs. Grey; “and it can be seen from ours, as I dare say you observed last night. But I have no doubt that entered into her calculations when she had it made.”
Mr. Grey inquired about the arrangements for the morning, and whether he could be of any service. It happened to be a leisure morning with him, and he did not know when he might have another at command. Sophia reminded her father that it would be impossible for the ladies of the family to go out, when they were expecting the neighbours to call: and this brought on another speculation as to who would call—and especially when the Rowlands might be looked for. Hester and Margaret believed they could have settled this matter; but they forbore to speak of what they had overheard. They began to wonder whether the subject of Mrs. Rowland was to be served up with every meal, for a continuance; and Hester found her anticipations of delight in a country life somewhat damped, by the idea of the frowning ghost of the obnoxious lady being for ever present.
Chapter Three.
Morning Calls.
The little girls had been dismissed to the schoolroom before Mr. Grey had finally pushed away his tea-cup. Not being wanted by the ladies, he walked off to his timber-yard, and his wife followed to ask him some question not intended for the general ear. Sophia was struck with a sudden panic at being left alone with the strangers, and escaped by another door into the store-room. As the last traces of the breakfast things vanished, Hester exclaimed—
“So we may please ourselves, it seems, as to what we are to do with our morning!”
“I hope so,” said Margaret. “Do let us get down to the meadow we see from our window—the meadow that looks so flat and green! We may very well take two hours’ grace before we need sit down here in form and order.”
Hester was willing, and the bonnets were soon on. As Margaret was passing down stairs again, she saw Mrs. Grey and Sophia whispering in a room, the door of which stood open. She heard it shut instantly, and the result of the consultation soon appeared. Just as the sisters were turning out of the house, Sophia ran after them to say that mamma wished they would be so good as to defer their walk; mamma was afraid that if they were seen abroad in the village, it would be supposed that they did not wish to receive visitors: mamma would rather that they should stay within this morning. There was nothing for it but to turn back; and Hester threw down her bonnet with no very good grace, as she observed to her sister that, to all appearance, a town life was more free than a country one, after all.
“Let us do our duty fully this first morning,” said Margaret. “Look, I am going to carry down my work-bag; and you shall see me sit on the same chair from this hour till dinner-time, unless I receive directions to the contrary.”
The restraint did not amount to this. Hester’s chair was placed opposite to Mrs. Grey, who seemed to have pleasure in gazing at her, and in indulging in audible hints and visible winks and nods about her beauty, to every lady visitor who sat near her. Margaret might place herself where she pleased. In the intervals of the visits of the morning, she was treated with a diversity of entertainments by Sophia, who occasionally summoned her to the window to see how Matilda Rowland was allowed to run across the road to her grandmamma’s, without so much as a hat upon her head—to see Jim Bird, the oldest man in the parish (believed to be near a hundred), who was resting himself on the bank of the hedge—to see the peacock which had been sent as a present from Sir William Hunter to Mr. James, the lawyer, and which was a great nuisance from its screaming—to say whether the two little Reeves, dropping their curtseys as they went home from school, were not little beauties—and, in short, to witness all the village spectacles which present themselves before the windows of an acute observer on a fine spring morning. The young ladies had to return to their seats as often as wheels were heard, or the approach of parasols was discerned.
Among the earliest visitors were Mrs. Enderby and her redoubtable son, Mr. Philip. Mrs. Enderby was a bright-eyed, brisk, little old lady, who was rather apt to talk herself quite out of breath, but who had evidently a stronger tendency still; and that was, to look on the bright side of everything and everybody. She smiled smiles full of meaning and assent in return for Mrs. Grey’s winks about Hester’s beauty; and really cheered Hester with accounts of how good everybody was at Deerbrook. She was thankful that her maid Phoebe was better; she knew that Mrs. Grey would not fail to inquire; really Phoebe was very much better; the influenza had left sad effects, but they were dispersing. It would be a pity the girl should not quite recover, for she was a most invaluable servant—such a servant as is very rarely to be met with. The credit of restoring her belonged to Mr. Hope, who indeed had done everything. She supposed the ladies would soon be seeing Mr. Hope. He was extremely busy, as everybody knew—had very large practice now; but he always contrived to find time for everything. It was exceedingly difficult to find time for everything. There was her dear daughter, Priscilla (Mrs. Rowland, whose husband was Mr. Grey’s partner); Priscilla devoted her life to her children (and dear children they were); and no one who knew what she did for her children would expect anything more from her; but, indeed, those who knew best, she herself, for instance, were fully satisfied that her dear Priscilla did wonders. The apology for Mrs. Rowland, in case she should not call, was made not without ingenuity. Hester fully understood it; and Mrs. Grey showed by her bridling that it was not lost upon her either.
Mr. Enderby, meanwhile, was behaving civilly to Margaret and Sophia; that is to say, he was somewhat more than merely civil to Margaret, and somewhat less to Sophia. It was obviously not without reason that Sophia had complained of his hauteur. He could not, as Sydney had pleaded, help being tall; but he might have helped the excessive frigidity with which he stood upright till invited to sit down. The fact was, that he had reason to believe that the ladies of Mr. Grey’s family made very free with his sister’s name and affairs; and though he would have been sorry to have been obliged to defend all she said and did, he felt some very natural emotions of dislike towards those who were always putting the worst construction upon the whole of her conduct. He believed that Mr. Grey’s influence was exerted on behalf of peace and good understanding, and he thought he perceived that Sydney, with the shrewdness which some boys show very early, was more or less sensible of the absurdity of the feud between the partners’ wives and daughters; and towards these members of the Grey family, Mr. Enderby felt nothing but good-will; he talked politics with Mr. Grey in the shrubbery after church on Sunday, executed commissions for him in London, and sent him game: and Sydney was under obligations to him for many a morning of sport, and many a service such as gentlemen who are not above five-and-twenty and its freaks can render to boys entering their teens. Whatever might be his opinion of women generally, from the particular specimens which had come in his way, he had too much sense and gentlemanly feeling to include Mrs. Grey’s guests in the dislike he felt towards herself, or to suppose that they must necessarily share her disposition towards his relations. Perhaps he felt, unknown to himself some inclination to prepossess them in favour of his connections; to stretch his complaisance a little, as a precaution against the prejudices with which he knew Mrs. Grey would attempt to occupy their minds. However this might be, he was as amicable with Margaret as his mother was with her sister.
He soon found out that the strangers were more interested about the natural features of Deerbrook than about its gossip. He was amused at the earnestness of Margaret’s inquiries about the scenery of the neighbourhood, and he laughingly promised that she should see every nook within twenty miles.
“People always care least about what they have just at hand,” said he. “I dare say, if I were to ask you, you have never seen a glass-bottle blown, or a tea-tray painted?”
“If I have,” said Margaret, “I know many ladies in Birmingham who have not.”
“You will not be surprised, then, if you find some ladies in Deerbrook who do not ride, and who can tell you no more of the pretty places near than if they had been brought up in Whitechapel. They keep their best sights for strangers, and not for common use. I am, in reality, only a visitor at Deerbrook. I do not live here, and never did; yet I am better able to be your guide than almost any resident. The ladies, especially, are extremely domestic: they are far too busy to have ever looked about them. But I will speak to Mr. Grey, and—”
“Oh, pray, do not trouble Mr. Grey! He has too much business on his hands already; and he is so kind, he will be putting himself out of his way for us; and all we want is to be in the open air in the fields.”
“ ‘All you want!’ very like starlings in a cage;” and he looked as if he was smiling at the well-known speech of the starling; but he did not quote it. “My mother is now saying that Mr. Hope finds time for everything: and she is right. He will help us. You must see Hope, and you must like him. He is the great boast of the place, next to the new sign.”
“Is the sign remarkable, or only new?”
“Very remarkable for ingenuity, if not for beauty. It is ‘The Bonnet so Blue[4]:’—a lady’s bonnet of blue satin, with brown bows, or whatever you may call the trimming when you see it; and we are favoured besides with a portrait of the milliner, holding the bonnet so blue. We talk nearly as much of this sign as of Mr. Hope; but you must see them both, and tell us which you like best.”
“We have seen Mr. Hope. He was here yesterday evening.”
“Well, then, you must see him again; and you must not think the worse of him for his being praised by everybody you meet. It is no ordinary case of a village apothecary.”
Margaret laughed; so little did Mr. Hope look like the village apothecary of her imagination.
“Ah, I see you know something of the predilection of villagers for their apothecary—how the young people wonder that he always cures everybody; and how the old people could not live without him; and how the poor folks take him for a sort of magician; and how he obtains more knowledge of human affairs than any other kind of man. But Hope is, though a very happy man, not this sort of privileged person. His friends are so attached to him that they confide to him all their own affairs; but they respect him too much to gossip at large to him of other people’s. I see you do not know how to credit this; but I assure you, though the inhabitants of Deerbrook are as accomplished in the arts of gossip as any villagers in England, Hope knows little more than you do at this moment about who are upon terms and who are not.”
“My sister and I must learn his art of ignorance,” said Margaret. “If it be really true that the place is full of quarrels, we shall be afraid to stay, unless we can contrive to know nothing about them.”
“Oh, do not suppose we are worse than others who live in villages. Since our present rector came, we have risen somewhat above the rural average of peace and quiet.”
“And the country has always been identical with the idea of peace and quiet to us town-bred people!” said Margaret.
“And very properly, in one sense. But if you leave behind the din of streets for the sake of stepping forth from your work-table upon a soft lawn, or of looking out upon the old church steeple among the trees, while you hear nothing but bleating and chirping, you must expect some set-off against such advantages: and that set-off is the being among a small number of people, who are always busy looking into one another’s small concerns.”
“But this is not a necessary evil,” said Margaret. “From what you were saying just now, it appears that it may be avoided.”
“From what I was saying about Hope. Yes; such an one as Hope may get all the good out of every situation, without its evils; but—”
“But nobody else,” said Margaret, smiling. “Well, Hester and I must try whether we cannot have to do with lawns and sheep for a few months, without quarrelling or having to do with quarrels.”
“And what if you are made the subject of quarrels?” asked Mr. Enderby. “How are you to help yourselves, in that case?”
“How does Mr. Hope help himself in that case?”
“It remains to be seen. As far as I know, the whole place is agreed about him at present. Every one will tell you that never was society so blessed in a medical man before;—from the rector and my mother, who never quarrel with anybody, down to the village scold. I am not going to prepossess you against even our village scold, by telling her name. You will know it in time, though your first acquaintance will probably be with her voice.”
“So we are to hear something besides bleating and chirping?”
A tremendous knock at the door occurred, as if in answer to this. All the conversation in the room suddenly stopped, and Mr. and Mrs. Rowland walked in.
“This is my sister, Mrs. Rowland,” observed Mr. Enderby to Margaret.
“This is my daughter Priscilla, Mrs. Rowland,” said Mrs. Enderby to Hester.
Both sisters were annoyed at feeling timid and nervous on being introduced to the lady. There is something imposing in hearing a mere name very often, in the proof that the person it belongs to fills a large space in people’s minds: and when the person is thus frequently named with fear and dislike, an idea is originated of a command over powers of evil which makes the actual presence absolutely awful. This seemed now to be felt by all. Sophia had nothing to say: Mrs. Grey’s head twitched nervously, while she turned from one to another with slight remarks: Mrs. Enderby ran on about their having all happened to call at once, and its being quite a family party in Mrs. Grey’s parlour; and Mr. Philip’s flow of conversation had stopped. Margaret thought he was trying to help laughing.
The call could not be an agreeable one. The partners’ ladies quoted their own children’s sayings about school and Miss Young, and Miss Young’s praise of the children; and each vied with the other in eulogium on Miss Young, evidently on the ground of her hopes of Fanny and Mary on the one hand, and of Matilda, George, and Anna, on the other. Mrs. Enderby interposed praises of all the children, while Mr. Rowland engaged Hester’s attention, calling off her observation and his own from the sparring of the rival mothers. Philip informed Margaret at length, that George was a fine little fellow, who would make a good sportsman. There was some pleasure in taking such a boy out fishing. But Mr. Philip had lighted on a dangerous topic, as he soon found. His sister heard what he was saying, and began an earnest protest against little boys fishing, on account of the danger, and against any idea that she would allow her George to run any such risks. Of course, this made Mrs. Grey fire up, as at an imputation upon her care of her son Sydney; and before the rest of the company could talk down the dispute, it bore too much of the appearance of a recrimination about the discharge of maternal duties. Margaret thought that, but for the relationship, Mrs. Rowland might fairly be concluded to be the village scold alluded to by Mr. Enderby. It was impossible that he could have been speaking of his sister; but Deerbrook was an unfortunate place if it contained a more unamiable person than she appeared at this moment. The faces of the two ladies were still flushed with excitement when Mr. Hope came in. The sisters thought he appeared like a good genius, so amiable did the party grow on his entrance. It seemed as if he was as great a favourite with the Rowlands as with the other family; so friendly was the gentleman, and so gracious the lady; while Mr. Hope was, to all appearance, unconscious of the existence of any unpleasant feelings among his neighbours. The talk flowed on about the concerns of personages of the village, about the aspect of public affairs, about the poets of the age, and what kind of poetry was most read in Deerbrook, and how the Book Society went on, till all had grown cordial, and some began to propose to be hospitable. Mrs. Rowland hoped for the honour of seeing the Miss Ibbotsons one day the next week, when Mr. Rowland should have returned from a little excursion of business. Mrs. Enderby wondered whether she could prevail on all her young friends to spend an evening with her before her son left Deerbrook; and Mrs. Grey gave notice that she should shortly issue her invitations to those with whom she wished her young cousins to become better acquainted.
All went right for the rest of the morning. When the Enderbys and Rowlands went away, the Levitts came. When Dr. Levitt inquired about the schools of Birmingham, it could not but come out that Hester and Margaret were dissenters[5]
