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THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE Elizabeth Gaskell
A MERE INTERLUDE Thomas Hardy
A FAITHFUL HEART George Moore
THE SOLID GOLD REEF COMPANY, LIMITED Walter Besant
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE Henry James
Elizabeth Gaskell
(Household Words, Christmas 1858)
Mr and Mrs Openshaw came from Manchester to settle in London. Hehad been, what is called in Lancashire, a salesman for a largemanufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening awarehouse in the city; where Mr Openshaw was now to superintend theiraffairs. He rather enjoyed the change; having a kind of curiosityabout London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in his briefvisits to the metropolis. At the same time, he had an odd, shrewdcontempt for the inhabitants, whom he always pictured to himself asfine, lazy people, caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, andlounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining goodEnglish, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. Thehours that the men of business kept in the city scandalized him too,accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk andthe consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go toLondon, though he would not for the world have confessed it, even tohimself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demandedof him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by aconsiderable increase of salary. This, indeed, was so liberal that hemight have been justified in taking a much larger house than theone he did, had he not thought himself bound to set an example toLondoners of how little a Manchester man of business cared for show.Inside, however, he furnished it with an unusual degree of comfort,and, in the winter-time, he insisted on keeping up as large fires asthe grates would allow, in every room where the temperature was inthe least chilly. Moreover, his northern sense of hospitality was suchthat, if he were at home, he could hardly suffer a visitor to leavethe house without forcing meat and drink upon him. Every servant inthe house was well warmed, well fed, and kindly treated; for theirmaster scorned all petty saving in aught that conduced to comfort;while he amused himself by following out all his accustomed habits andindividual ways, in defiance of what any of his new neighbours mightthink.
His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. Hewas forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft andyielding. They had two children; or rather, I should say, she had two;for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs Openshaw's child by FrankWilson, her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, whocould just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in thebroadest and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keepup what he called the true Saxon accent.
Mrs Openshaw's Christian name was Alice, and her first husband hadbeen her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captainin Liverpool; a quiet, grave little creature, of great personalattraction when she was fifteen or sixteen, with regular features anda blooming complexion. But she was very shy, and believed herself tobe very stupid and awkward; and was frequently scolded by her aunt,her own uncle's second wife. So when her cousin, Frank Wilson, came