Chapters 1 and 2

Section 1 of Mr. Harrison's Confessions by Elizabeth Gaskell Chapter 1 The fire was burning gaily. My wife had just gone upstairs to put baby to bed. Charles sat opposite to me, looking very brown and handsome. It was pleasant enough that we should feel sure of spending some weeks under the same roof, a thing which we had never done since we were mere boys. I felt too lazy to talk, so I ate walnuts and looked into the fire. But Charles grew restless. Now that your wife is gone upstairs, Will, you must tell me what I've wanted to ask you ever since I saw her this morning. Tell me all about the wooing and winning. I want to have the receipt for getting such a spicy little wife of my own. Your letters only gave the barest details. So set two, man, and tell me every particular. If I tell you all, it will be a long story. Never fear. If I get tired, I can go to sleep and dream that I am back again, a lonely bachelor in Ceylon. And I can waken up when you have done, to know that I am under your roof. Dash away, man. Once upon a time, a gallant young bachelor. There's a beginning for you. Well, then, once upon a time, a gallant young bachelor was sorely puzzled where to settle when he had completed his education as a surgeon. I must speak in the first person. I cannot go on as a gallant young bachelor. I had just finished walking the hospitals when you went to Ceylon. And, if you remember, I wanted to go abroad like you, and thought of offering myself as a ship surgeon. But I found I should rather lose caste in my profession, so I hesitated. And, while I was hesitating, I received a letter from my father's cousin, Mr. Morgan, that old gentleman who used to write such long letters of good advice to my mother, and who tipped me a five-pound note when I agreed to be bound apprentice to Mr. Howard instead of going to sea. Well, it seems the old gentleman had all along thought of taking me as his partner, if I turned out pretty well. And, as he heard a good account of me from an old friend of his who was a surgeon at Guy's, he wrote to propose this arrangement. I was to have a third of the profits for five years, after that half, and eventually I was to succeed to the whole. It was no bad offer for a penniless man like me, as Mr. Morgan had a capital country practice. And, though I did not know him personally, I had formed a pretty good idea of him as an honourable, kind-hearted, fidgety, meddlesome old bachelor. And a very correct notion it was, as I found out in the very first half-hour of seeing him. I had had some idea that I was to live in his house, as he was a bachelor and a kind of family friend. And I think he was afraid that I should expect this arrangement, for, when I walked up to his door, with the porter carrying my portmanteau, he met me on the steps, and while he held my hand and shook it, he said to the porter, �Jerry, if you�ll wait a moment, Mr. Harrison will be ready to go with you to his lodgings at Jocelyn�s, you know.� And then, turning to me, he addressed his first words of welcome. I was a little inclined to think him inhospitable, but I got to understand him better afterwards. �Jocelyn�s,� said he, �is the best place I have been able to hit upon in a hurry, and there is a good deal of fever about, which made me desirous that you should come this month, a low kind of typhoid in the oldest part of the town. I think you�ll be comfortable there for a week or two. I have taken the liberty of desiring my housekeeper to send down one or two things, which give the place a little more of a home aspect, an easy chair, a beautiful case of preparations, and one or two little matters in the way of eatables. But, if you�ll take my advice, I�ve a plan in my head which we will talk about tomorrow morning. At present, I don�t like to keep you standing out on the steps here, so I�ll not detain you from your lodgings, where I rather think my housekeeper is gone to get tea ready for you.� I thought I understood the old gentleman�s anxiety for his own health, which he put upon care for mine, for he had on a kind of loose grey coat and no hat on his head. But I wondered that he did not ask me indoors instead of keeping me on the steps. I believe, after all, I made a mistake in supposing he was afraid of taking cold. He was only afraid of being seen in disabil�. And, for his apparent inhospitality, I had not been long in Duncombe before I understood the comfort of having one�s house considered as a castle into which no one might intrude, and saw a good reason for the practice Mr. Morgan had established of coming to his door to speak to everyone. It was only the effect of habit that made him receive me so. Before long I had the free run of his house. There was every sign of kind attention and forethought on the part of someone whom I could not doubt to be Mr. Morgan in my lodgings. I was too lazy to do much that evening, and sat in the little bow window which projected over Jocelyn�s shop, looking up and down the street. Duncombe calls itself a town, but I should call it a village. Really, looking from Jocelyn�s, it is a very picturesque place. The houses are anything but regular. They may be mean in their details, but altogether they look well. They have not that flat, unrelieved front, which many towns of far more pretensions present. Here and there a bow window, every now and then a gable cutting up against the sky. Occasionally a projecting upper storey throws good effect of light and shadow along the street, and they have a queer fashion of their own of colouring the whitewash of some of the houses with the sort of pink blotting paper tinge, more like the stone of which Mayence is built than anything else. It may be very bad taste, but to my mind it gives a rich warmth to the colouring. Then, here and there, a dwelling-house has a court in front, with a grass plot on each side of the flagged walk, and a large tree or two, limes or horse chestnuts, which send their great projecting upper branches over into the street, making round dry places of shelter on the pavement in the times of summer showers. While I was sitting in the bow window thinking of the contrast between this place and the lodgings in the heart of London, which I had left only twelve hours before, the window opened here, and, although in the centre of the town, admitting only scents from the mignonette boxes on the sill, instead of the dust and smoke of X Street, the only sound heard in this, the principal street, being the voices of mothers calling their playing children home to bed, and the eight o'clock bell of the old parish church bim-bombing in remembrance of the curfew. While I was sitting thus idly, the door opened, and the little maidservant, dropping a curtsy, said, Please, sir, Mrs. Munton's compliments, and she would be glad to know how you are after your journey. There was not that hearty and kind, would even the dearest chum I had at guise have thought of doing such a thing, while Mrs. Munton, whose name I had never heard of before, was doubtless suffering anxiety till I should relieve her mind by sending back word that I was pretty well. My compliments to Mrs. Munton, and I am pretty well, much obliged to her. It was as well to say only pretty well, for very well would have destroyed the interest Mrs. Munton evidently felt in me. Good Mrs. Munton, kind Mrs. Munton, perhaps also young, handsome, rich, widowed Mrs. Munton. I rubbed my hands with delight and amusement, and, resuming my post of observation, began to wonder at which house Mrs. Munton lived. Again the little tap and the little maidservant. Please, sir, Miss Tomkinson's compliments, and they would be glad to know how you feel yourself after your journey. I don't know why, but Miss Tomkinson's name had not such a halo about it as Mrs. Munton's. Still, it was very pretty in Miss Tomkinson's to send and inquire. I only wished I did not feel so perfectly robust. I was almost ashamed that I could not send word I was quite exhausted by fatigue, and had fainted twice since my arrival, if I had but had a headache at least. I heaved a deep breath, my chest was in perfect order, I had caught no cold, so I answered again, much obliged to the Miss Tomkinson's, I am not much fatigued, tolerably well, my compliments. Little Sally could hardly have got downstairs before she returned, bright and breathless. Mr. and Mrs. Bullock's compliments, sir, and they hope you are pretty well after your journey. Who would have expected such kindness from such an unpromising name? Mr. and Mrs. Bullock were less interesting, it is true, than their predecessors, but I graciously replied, my compliments, a night's rest will perfectly recruit me. The same message was presently brought up from one or two more unknown kind hearts. I really wished I were not so ruddy-looking. I was afraid I should disappoint the tender-hearted town when they saw what a hale young fellow I was, and I was almost ashamed of confessing to a great appetite for supper when Sally came up to inquire what I would have. Beefsteaks were so tempting, but perhaps I ought rather to have water gruel than go to bed. The beefsteak carried the day, however. I need not have felt such a gentle elation of spirits, as this mark of the town's attention is paid to everyone when they arrive after a journey. Many of the same people have sent to inquire after you, great hulking brown fellow as you are, only Sally spared you the infliction of devising interesting answers. The next morning Mr. Morgan came before I had finished breakfast. He was the most dapper little man I ever met. I see the affection with which people cling to the style of dress that was in vogue when they were bows and bells, and received the most admiration. They are unwilling to believe that their youth and beauty are gone, and think that the prevailing mode is unbecoming. Mr. Morgan will in vain buy the hour together against frock coats, for instance, and whiskers. He keeps his chin close shaven, wears a black dress coat and dark grey pantaloons, and in his morning round to his town patients he invariably wears the brightest and blackest of Hessian boots, with dangling silk tassels on each side. When he goes home about ten o'clock to prepare for his ride to see his country patients, he puts on the most dandy top boots I ever saw, which he gets from some wonderful bootmaker a hundred miles off. His appearance is what one calls jemmy. There is no other word that will do for it. He was evidently a little discomfited when he saw me in my breakfast costume, with the habits which I brought with me from the fellows at Guy's. My feet against the fireplace, my chair balanced on its hind legs, a habit of sitting which I afterwards discovered he particularly abhorred, slippers on my feet, which also he considered a most ungentlemanly piece of untidiness out of a bedroom. In short, from what I afterwards learned, every prejudice he had was outraged by my appearance on this first visit of his. I put my book down and sprang up to receive him. He stood, hat and cane in hand. I came to inquire if it would be convenient for you to accompany me on my morning's round and to be introduced to a few of our friends. I quite detected the little tone of coldness induced by his disappointment at my appearance, though he never imagined that it was in any way perceptible. I will be ready directly, sir, said I, and bolted into my bedroom, only too happy to escape his scrutinizing eye. When I returned, I was made aware by sundry, indescribable little coughs and hesitating noises that my dress did not satisfy him. I stood ready, hat and gloves in hand, but still he did not offer to set off on our round. I grew very red and hot. At length he said, Excuse me, my dear young friend, but may I ask if you have no other coat besides that cutaway, I believe you call them? We are rather stickless for propriety, I believe, in Duncombe, and much depends on the first impression. Let it be professional, my dear sir. Black is the garb of our profession. Forgive my speaking so plainly, but I consider myself in loco parentis. He was so kind, so bland, and in truth so friendly that I felt it would be most childish to take offence, but I had a little resentment in my heart at this way of being treated. However, I mumbled, Oh, certainly, sir, if you wish it, and returned once more to change my coat. My poor cutaway! Those coats, sir, give a man rather too much of a sporting appearance, not quite befitting the learned professions. More as if you came down here to hunt than to be the Galen or Hippocrates of the neighbourhood. He smiled graciously, so I smothered a sigh, for, to tell you the truth, I had rather anticipated, and, in fact, had boasted at guise of the runs I hoped to have with the hounds, for Duncombe was in a famous hunting district. But all these ideas were quite dispersed when Mr. Morgan led me to the inn-yard, where there was a horse-dealer on his way to a neighbouring fair, and strongly advised me, which in our relative circumstances was equivalent to an injunction, to purchase a little, useful, fast-trotting brown cob instead of a fine, showy horse, who would take any fence I put him to, as the horse-dealer assured me. Mr. Morgan was evidently pleased when I bowed to his decision and gave up all hopes of an occasional hunt. He opened out a great deal more after this purchase. He told me his plan of establishing me in a house of my own, which looked more respectable, not to say professional, than being in lodgings. And then he went on to say that he had lately lost a friend, a brother-surgeon in a neighbouring town, who had left a widow with a small income, who would be very glad to live with me and act as mistress to my establishment, thus lessening the expense. She is a lady-like woman, said Mr. Morgan, to judge from the little I have seen of her, about forty-five or so, and may rarely be of some help to you in the little etiquettes of our profession. The slight delicate attentions which every man has to learn if he wishes to get on in life. This is Mrs. Munton's, sir, said he, stopping short at a very unromantic-looking green door with the brass knocker. I had no time to say who is Mrs. Munton before we had heard Mrs. Munton was at home and were following the tidy elderly servant up the narrow carpeted stairs into the drawing-room. Mrs. Munton was the widow of a former vicar, upwards of sixty, rather deaf, but like all the deaf people I had ever seen, very fond of talking, perhaps because she then knew the subject which passed out of her grasp when another began to speak. She was ill of a chronic complaint which often incapacitated her from going out, and the kind people of the town were in the habit of coming to see her, and sit with her, and of bringing her the newest, freshest tidbits of news, so that her room was the centre of the gossip of Duncombe. Not of scandal, mind, for I make a distinction between gossip and scandal. Now, you can fancy the discrepancy between the ideal and the real Mrs. Munton. Instead of any foolish notion of a beautiful blooming widow tenderly anxious about the health of the stranger, I saw a homely, talkative, elderly person with a keen, observant eye, and marks of suffering on her face, plain in manner and dress, but still unmistakably a lady. She talked to Mr. Morgan, but she looked at me, and I saw that nothing I did escaped her notice. Mr. Morgan annoyed me by his anxiety to show me off, but he was kindly anxious to bring about every circumstance to my credit in Mrs. Munton's hearing, knowing well that the town crier had not more opportunities to publish all about me than she had. "'What was that remark you repeated to me of Sir Astley Cooper's?' asked he. It had been the most trivial speech in the world that I had named as we walked along, and I felt ashamed of having to repeat it. But it answered Mr. Morgan's purpose, and before night all the town had heard that I was a favourite pupil of Sir Astley's. I had never seen him but twice in my life, and Mr. Morgan was afraid that as soon as he knew my full value, I should be retained by Sir Astley to assist him in his duties as surgeon to the royal family. Every little circumstance was pressed into the conversation which could add to my importance. As I once heard Sir Robert Peel remark to Mr. Harrison, the father of our young friend here, the moons in August are remarkably full and bright. If you remember, Charles, my father was always proud of having sold a pair of gloves to Sir Robert when he was staying at the Grange near Biddicombe, and I suppose good Mr. Morgan had paid his only visit to my father at the time. But Mrs. Munton evidently looked at me with double respect after this incidental remark, which I was amused to meet with a few months afterwards, disguised in the statement that my father was an intimate friend of the Premier's, and had in fact been the advisor of most of the measures taken by him in public life. I sat by, half indignant and half amused. Mr. Morgan looked so complacently pleased at the whole effect of the conversation that I did not care to mar it by explanations, and, indeed, I had little idea at the time how small sayings were the seeds of great events in the town of Duncan. When we left Mrs. Munton's he was in a blandly communicative mood. You will find it a curious statistical fact, but five-sixths of our householders of a certain rank in Duncan are women. We have widows and old maids in rich abundance. In fact, my dear sir, I believe that you and I are almost the only gentlemen in the place. Mr. Bullock, of course, accepted. By gentlemen I mean professional men. It behooves us to remember, sir, that so many of the female sex rely upon us for the kindness and protection which every man who is worthy of the name is always so happy to render. Miss Tomkinson, where we next called, did not strike me as remarkably requiring protection from any man. She was a tall, gaunt, masculine-looking woman with an air of defiance about her naturally. This, however, she softened and mitigated as far as she was able in favour of Mr. Morgan. He, it seemed to me, stood a little in awe of the lady who was very brusque and plain-spoken and evidently piqued herself on her decision of character and sincerity of speech. So, this is the Mr. Harrison we have heard so much of from you, Mr. Morgan? I must say, from what I had heard, that I had expected something a little more hum... hum... But he's young yet. He's young. We have been all anticipating an Apollo, Mr. Harrison, from Mr. Morgan's description and an Aesculapius combined in one. Or, perhaps, I might confine myself to saying Apollo, as he, I believe, was the god of medicine. How could Mr. Morgan have described me without seeing me, I asked myself. Miss Tomkinson put on her spectacles and adjusted them on her Roman nose. Suddenly relaxing from her severity of inspection, she said to Mr. Morgan, But you must see Caroline. I had nearly forgotten it. She is busy with the girls, but I will send for her. She had a bad headache yesterday and looked very pale. It made me very uncomfortable. She rang the bell and desired the servant to fetch Miss Caroline. Miss Caroline was the younger sister, younger by twenty years, and so considered as a child by Miss Tomkins, who was fifty-five at the very least. If she was considered as a child, she was also petted and caressed and cared for as a child, for she had been left as a baby to the charge of her elder sister. And when the father died and they had had to set up a school, Miss Tomkins took upon herself every difficult arrangement and denied herself every pleasure and made every sacrifice in order that Carrie might not feel the change in their circumstances. My wife tells me she once knew the sisters purchased a piece of silk, enough with management to have made two gowns, but Carrie wished for flounces or some such falels, and, without a word, Miss Tomkins gave up her gown to have the whole made up, as Carrie wished, into one handsome gown, and wore an old shabby affair herself as cheerfully as if it were Genoa velvet. That tells the sort of relationship between the sisters as well as anything, and I consider myself very good to name it and thus early, for it was long before I found out Miss Tomkinson's real goodness, and we had a great quarrel first. Miss Caroline looked very delicate and die-away when she came in. She was as soft and sentimental as Miss Tomkinson was hard and masculine. She had a way of saying, O sister, how can you, at Miss Tomkinson's startling speeches, which I never liked, especially as it was accompanied by a sort of protesting look at the company present, as if she wished to have it understood that she was shocked at her sister's outré manners. Now, that was not faithful between sisters. A remonstrance in private might have done good, though, for my own part, I have grown to like Miss Tomkinson's speeches and ways, but I don't like the way some people have of separating themselves from what may be unpopular in their relations. I know I spoke rather shortly to Miss Caroline when she asked me whether I could bear the change from the great metropolis to a little country village. In the first place, why could not she call it London or town and have done with it? And in the next place, why should she not love the place that was her home well enough to fancy that everyone would like it when they came to know it as well as she did? I was conscious I was rather abrupt in my conversation with her, and I saw that Mr. Morgan was watching me, though he pretended to be listening to Miss Tomkinson's whispered account of her sister's symptoms. But when we were once more in the street, he began, I winced, for all the morning I had noticed that when he was going to give me a little unpalatable advice, he always began with, He had done so about the horse. My dear young friend, there are one or two hints I should like to give you about your manner. The great Sir Everard Holme used to say, a general practitioner should either have a very good manner or a very bad one. Now, in the latter case, he must be possessed of talents and acquirements sufficient to ensure his being sought after, whatever his manner might be. But the rudeness will give notoriety to these qualifications. Abernathy is a case in point. I rather myself question the taste of bad manners. I, therefore, have studied to acquire an attentive, anxious politeness, which combines ease and grace with a tender regard and interest. I am not aware whether I have succeeded, few men do, in coming up to my ideal. But I recommend you to strive after this manner, peculiarly befitting our profession. Identify yourself with your patients, my dear Sir. You have sympathy in your good heart, I am sure, to really feel pain when listening to their account of their sufferings, and it soothes them to see the expression of this feeling in your manner. It is, in fact, Sir, manners that make the man in our profession. I don't set myself up as an example, far from it, but this is Mr. Hutton's, our vicar, one of the servants is indisposed, and I shall be glad of the opportunity of introducing you. We can resume our conversation at another time. I had not been aware that we had been holding a conversation in which, I believe, the assistance of two persons is required. Why had not Mr. Hutton sent to ask after my health the evening before, according to the custom of the place? I felt rather offended. End of section 1