nd
lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which
ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be (from
a review in the current _Fraser_) of remarkable strength and purity.'

It was a short-lived triumph, however, and Mrs. Gaskell soon found
herself, as she expressed it, 'in a veritable hornet's nest.' Mr.
Bronte, to begin with, did not care for the references to himself and the
suggestion that he had treated his wife unkindly. Mrs. Gaskell had
associated him with numerous eccentricities and ebullitions of temper,
which during his later years he always asserted, and undoubtedly with
perfect truth, were, at the best, the fabrications of a dismissed
servant. Mr. Nicholls had also his grievance. There was just a
suspicion implied that he had not been quite the most sympathetic of
husbands. The suspicion was absolutely ill-founded, and arose from Mr.
Nicholls's intense shyness. But neither Mr. Bronte nor Mr. Nicholls gave
Mrs. Gaskell much trouble. They, at any rate, were silent. Trouble,
however, came from many quarters. Yorkshire people resented the air of
patronage with which, as it seemed to them, a good Lancashire lady had
taken their county in hand. They were not quite the backward savages,
they retorted, which some of Mrs. Gaskell's descriptions in the beginning
of her book would seem to suggest. Between Lancashire and Yorkshire
there is always a suspicion of jealousy. It was intensified for the
moment by these sombre pictures of 'this lawless, yet not unkindly
population.' {17} A son-in-law of Mr. Redhead wrote to deny the account
of that clergyman's association with Haworth. 'He gives another as true,
in which I don't see any great difference.' Miss Martineau wrote sheet
after sheet explanatory of her relations with Charlotte Bronte. 'Two
separate householders in London _each_ declares that the first interview
between Miss Bronte and Miss Martineau took place at _her_ house.' In
one passage Mrs. Gaskell had spoken of wasteful young servants, and the
young servants in question came upon Mr. Bronte for the following
testimonial:--

'HAWORTH, _August_ 17_th_, 1857.

'I beg leave to state to all whom it may concern, that Nancy and
Sarah Garrs, during the time they were in my service, were kind to my
children, and honest, and not wasteful, but sufficiently careful in
regard to food, and all other articles committed to their charge.