Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell and her family

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born in Chelsea on 29 September 1810 but after her mother’s death, while still a baby, she went to live with her Aunt Lumb, her ‘more than Mother’ in the house of the Heath at Knutsford in Cheshire, where she grew up. Her father married again. Relations with her stepmother were never happy, and her only brother was lost without trace on an expedition to India. She had however an extended family in the county and a wide circle of Unitarian friends.

The first portraits we have of Elizabeth are the miniature by W. Thomson at John Rylands University Library Manchester, painted in 1829, before her marriage, and copies of a bust by David Dunbar made by Thornycroft, also at Rylands. Later portraits include one by George Richmond in 1851 now at the National Portrait Gallery, Samuel Laurence (1854) in a private collection, a watercolour by her daughter Meta, undated, now with the Chester Record Office, and photographs taken in 1854 in Edinburgh.

In 1832 Elizabeth married William Gaskell at Knutsford Parish Church. He was then assistant Minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester, so they came to live in the town, first at 1 Dover Street, then 121 Upper Rumford Street (both now demolished). In 1850 they moved to 84 (then 42) Plymouth Grove.  Only one letter from William to his wife survives, and none of the many she wrote to him, but it was a very supportive marriage.

Elizabeth died at Alton in Hampshire on 12 November 1865 and is buried at Brook Street Unitarian Chapel Knutsford in Cheshire.

Elizabeth and William had four surviving children Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily known as Meta (1837), Florence Elizabeth (1842) and  Julia Bradford (1846). Their first daughter was stillborn, and their only son William died of scarlet fever as a baby. There were possibly one or two other pregnancies as well. They were a very close family and Elizabeth letters are full of the detailed arrangements of their lives. As was usual in the nineteenth century, the daughters all lived at home until they married. As Meta and Julia remained single, they stayed with their parents and outlived both of them at 84 Plymouth Grove.

Full details of Elizabeth’s writing are given on the Gaskell Society website
www.gaskellsociety.co.uk


William Gaskell
1805-1884

"He is very shy, but very merry when he is well, delights in puns & punning, is very fond of children… 6 foot high, grey hair and whiskers….I do believe he does like Manchester better than any other place in the world; and his study the best place in Manchester "wrote Elizabeth Gaskell

Fortunately William’s study at 84 Plymouth Grove still has his original bookcases and will be restored. We may think of William as ‘the husband of Mrs Gaskell’, but in Manchester, in Cross Street Chapel, in Owens College (now the University of Manchester) and in all the other establishments in the city where he held a professional or honorary appointment, he made a lasting reputation entirely his own. His ‘genial humanity and unfailing courteousness’ were known throughout his life.

William, who came from a Unitarian Warrington family, came to Cross Street Chapel as Assistant Minister to J G Robberds in 1828. He combined his ministry with teaching, editorial work and writing.

He was deeply involved in the Unitarian Church’s efforts to improve the appalling conditions of the working class, and to give them basic education. He did not wish to court public recognition, but on the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment as a minister at Cross Street Chapel he was given a "soirée" in the Town Hall attended by eleven hundred people.

William loved his family. He did not want any guests on holiday with them, because he wanted to enjoy himself with no restraints. When the children were older he preferred to travel alone. Elizabeth and their daughters often went abroad, but as she explained  Mr Gaskell dreads foreign diet like poison. Usually he stayed with Rupert Potter and his family, including the young Beatrix, in the Lake district or Scotland.

William lived and worked in Manchester all his adult life: he refused a Unitarian appointment in London in 1859. Elizabeth approved of his decision not to ‘pull up [his] roots’. Five years later however she secretly bought a house in Hampshire for their retirement.  Sadly she died suddenly in 1865 in that very house.

William Gaskell never retired. He remained in Plymouth Grove with his two unmarried daughters until his death in 1884 and continued to be Minister in Cross Street with the love and respect of his congregation and friends.


Marianne Gaskell
1834-1920

'Marianne is as practical and humourous [sic] as ever. Her quick decision always makes me feel as if she was a kind of 'elder son' rather than daughter.'   1859

Marianne, the Gaskells' eldest daughter, was born in 1834. Elizabeth kept a diary of her early years, in which she recorded her extreme anxiety in the formation of her daughter's character, and also her joy in motherhood. This has been reprinted in Private Voices.

Marianne kept her mother’s letters, with all the amusing family details ‘the chickens were being hatched. . . 2 of Mr Armstrongs eggs, & 4 Dorkings, are already out, & more coming. . . the whitwashers are taking down your beds, sourcing, cleaning, knocking, thumping going on everywhere...’ 

Marianne seems to have been an obliging daughter, increasingly relied upon to help with her sisters and the hectic domestic arrangements. In 1851 Gaskell wrote, 'She is such 'a law unto herself' now, such a sense of duty, and obeys her sense. For instance she invariably gave the little ones 2 hours of patient steady teaching in the holidays. If there was to be any long excursion for the day she got up earlier, that was all; & they did too, influenced by her example. She also fixed on 9 o'clock for her own bed-time, and kept to it though all temptations.'

A letter to her in 1857 includes the request to 'look after Julia's two ends, i.e. hair and bowels'. Marianne was also referred to as as Polly, MA or Minnie and many of the surviving Gaskell letters were written to her.

She caused some problems by becoming engaged to her cousin, Thurstan Holland, in spite of his family's objections, mainly on financial gounds. These were eventually overcome and she married him in 1866. They had three children - the only direct descendants of Elizabeth and William Gaskell. Marianne died in 1920, the last of William and Elizabeth Gaskell’s daughters, but her great-great grand daughter, Mrs Rosemary Dabbs, is now one of the patrons of Manchester Historic Buildings Trust who are working to restore 84 Plymouth Grove.


Margaret Emily (Meta) Gaskell
1837-1913

Meta is untidy, dreamy and absent; but so brim-full of I don’t know what to call it, for it is something deeper, and less showy than talent.  Music she is getting so fond of-----Then her drawings are equally thoughtful and good.---and she is quite able to appreciate any book I am reading. Letter 101,

Thus wrote Elizabeth Gaskell about her second daughter at fourteen. Meta was the most intellectual of Elizabeth’s daughters and, when only a few years older, frequently acted as her mother’s secretary. Later she was fiercely protective of her mother’s memory.

Meta went to a school in Liverpool, run on intelligent lines by Harriet Martineau’s sister  Rachel Martineau. Later Meta championed women’s education. She helped to raise the money to establish the Manchester High School for Girls at 1 Dover Street and was a governor of the school until her death.

Meta never married. At nineteen she had become engaged to Captain Charles Hill, who was twenty years her senior. Captain Hill was a widower with a six year old child. However, after discovering that her fiancé was not the honourable man she had believed him to be, she broke off the engagement. She was so deeply upset that her mother took her, with Marianne and Florence, to Germany. The holiday achieved its purpose and Meta once more busied herself with “almost too many interests….studying at Greek and German, teaching at the Ragged School etc., etc.” She was a talented artist, met Ruskin, Holman Hunt and Rossetti, and at one time considered becoming professional.

Throughout her life she was involved in trying to improve the living conditions of her fellow Mancunians. During the distress caused by the cotton famine of the early sixties she worked tirelessly to alleviate the sufferings of the poorest victims.

Music was one of Meta’s continuing passions; a talented pianist in her youth, taught by Mr. (later Sir) Charles Halle,. she served on the committee of the Northern College of Music and nurtured the career of young musicians.

Meta helped her mother to secretly buy and equip The Lawn, the house at Alton in Hampshire which was intended to be their final home. Tragically her mother died suddenly there, on 12 November 1865

Meta and her youngest sister, Julia lived on at Plymouth Grove, and looked  after their father until his death, but they also built themselves a house in Silverdale, called the Sheiling. They enjoyed walking together and were the first women to cross the Moming Pass in the Alps. After Julia’s death in 1908, she established the Ardwick Nurses’ Home as a memorial to her sister

Florence has no talents under the sun; and is very nervous and anxious.1851

Florence, also known as Flossy, was the third daughter, born in 1842. In spite of her mother's initial worries about her nervousness, Florence apparently grew up into a confident young woman. In 1864 she married Charles Crompton. Her sister Meta wrote this description of the courtship to Charles Eliot Norton in April 1863:

"You must remember her as such a very little girl, in the Skelwith
meadows...:but she is twenty,... she has a very decided, formed character, and is quite old enough in mind  and heart to meet this great---this climax of her life, rightly and wisely.

There is a fancy beginning to this attachment....  Florence had never met Mr C-till abt this time last year-when she went to stay in London. A few weeks previously Mr Crompton had seen in a stray photograph book a portrait of Florence, and been so much struck with it that when he heard that she was in London he made great efforts to meet her – and et en voila le fin.

Elizabeth Gaskell writes about her being 'a little bit tyrannical over her sweet-tempered husband'. But, 'if he could dress her in diamonds and feed her on gold, and give her the moon to play with...I don't think he would question the wisdom of indulging her'. She died, childless, in 1881.


Julia Bradford Gaskell
1846-1908

“Could you manage to convey a small kiss to that dear but dangerous little person, Julia? She has surreptitiously possessed herself of a minute fraction of my heart, which has been missing ever since I saw her”

Here, writing to her friend, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte describes how the five year old Julia Gaskell had captured her heart when she had paid her first visit to Plymouth Grove.

Julia, the youngest of the Gaskell daughters, was born in 1846, and was according to her mother “witty and wild, and clever and droll, the pet of the house” When she was very young she was often referred to as “baby” in Elizabeth’s letters

As she grew up she seems to have been a very lively, happy, child –a “chatterbox and perpetual singer” She left school when she was 18 years old and her mother reported that she was “full of promise,- the merriest grig, the most unselfish girl by nature that I ever knew---”  

There was a special bond between Julia and her elder sister Meta, despite their eight year difference in age.   Elizabeth wrote that Julia was most like Meta “except that she doesn’t read as much as Meta” When Elizabeth was away from home  the two sisters kept house for Mr Gaskell and were “such happy friends” They shared a love of the countryside and walking, especially in Silverdale, a beautiful area just south of the Lake District, where as children they spent many happy family holidays. When they were older, after the death of Elizabeth, they built a ‘cottage’ there, called The Shealing, a detached house in its own grounds which had beautiful views over the area.

Julia and Meta enjoyed enjoyed mountain climbing and were the first women to cross the Moming Pass in the Alps!

Julia was only nineteen when her mother died, and she along with Meta returned home to Plymouth Grove to take care of their father.  The two sisters continued their charitable work at the Cross Street Chapel and the Mosley Street School. Julia was also one of the founders of the Manchester Social Club in Lower Mosley Street  and she took a “strenuous part” in the development of the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution and in the administration of the Manchester Art Museum.

Meta and Julia continued to keep their home in Plymouth Grove as the centre of  social and cultural life in Manchester, just as it had been in their mother’s day When  Julia died, suddenly, in October 1908 her obituaries recorded her generosity not only to many philanthropic projects but  also to many individual cases of distress. Such was the affection and esteem in which she was held by the people of Manchester that on the day prior to her funeral the flags at the Manchester Town Hall were flown at half mast.


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