Gaskell House Blogs

A Letter from Julia Gaskell

Over the past year a number of unpublished letters from Elizabeth’s daughters have been brought to our notice. Last year, for example, a letter from Meta (Margaret) Gaskell was discovered in a volume of Ruth and Other Tales.

The latest discovery came from Cath Salmon, a supporter of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House and the Gaskell Society. Cath had purchased a letter from Julia Gaskell, Elizabeth’s youngest daughter. Cath felt strongly that this letter belonged at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, and approached the team with a very kind offer of donating it to our collection.

The letter is written from Julia to a ‘Mr Charles’, and is dated 14 March, but with no year. It reads as follows:

‘Dear Mr Charles,

My sister has been so ill or we should have written to ask you to dine with us.

Will you give us the pleasure of seeing you tomorrow about 4.30?

We are going away next week so I hope we may be fortunate enough to find you disengaged.

Sincerely yours…’

While initially there appears to be little information here, it certainly fills a gap in the daughters’ published correspondence which becomes quite sparse between 1903 and 1907 (there are only five dated letters from Meta and one from Julia during this period). I was asked to try and discover a possible year for the letter.

There are a few clues. It had to be before October 1908, as this is when Julia died. The mention of Meta’s illness also helped with dating. There are two published letters which mention Meta being ill during the early months of the year: one in 1905, another in 1908.

The latter could be discounted quite quickly, as on 17 March, Meta writes to Clement Shorter: ‘I am still so weak from a very bad attack of influenza that it is with some difficulty that I answer your letter’. It is therefore unlikely that she would want to have someone to dinner two days earlier.

1905, however, proved very likely, as on 23 March Meta writes to William Axon from Bordighera in Italy. This would fit exactly as the 23^rd is just over a week after Julia’s letter.

Finding the identity of Mr. Charles, however, was rather more problematic. Running Mr Charles through an Ancestry search came up with only one sensible result, a musician, born in Lambeth and living in Aldershot in 1901. While music could link with Elizabeth’s daughters, it is a tenuous link considering the distance and the timing.

The Trades Directory for 1903 came up with a more probable suggestion: Charles Charles. He was a Financial Agent with an office in Dickinson Street, Manchester, and a residence at 256 Brunswick Street, which is quite close to Plymouth Grove.

The tone of the letter suggests a degree of formality. Julia’s published letters are generally to women, and the men she knew on a more informal basis, like William Axon, she addresses as ‘My Dear…’. This supports the idea of a business associate rather than a friend. 

There is also a feeling that the person lives in Manchester as Julia and Meta would have invited him earlier had Meta not been ill, so he was obviously available. Moreover, Julia is keen to say that they wouldn’t be available the following week, as it appears he might be, so his stay in Manchester is over a prolonged period, suggesting he lived there.

If the recipient is Charles Charles, then the letter points to the fact that the daughters required assistance managing their financial affairs. Thus, what at first appeared to provide little information, on closer investigation reveals some quite interesting insights. Whoever he was, I am sure Mr Charles had a wonderful dinner, as Anne Thackeray Ritchie exclaims to her husband in 1891: ‘Oh what kind ladies! Oh what a delicious dinner!’

Blog by Dr Diane Duffy, Volunteer at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House

The team at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House wants to thank Cath Salmon for her very generous donation to our collection.