Cranford

Reunion with Mr. Holbrook

During the narrator’s extended visit to Miss Matilda, an unexpected reunion occurs when they encounter Mr. Holbrook in a shop where the narrator helps select colored silks. The tall, thin, Don Quixote-like old man, now about seventy years old and dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons and drab breeches, instantly recognizes Miss Matilda across the shop. He greets her with warm, repeated handshakes and exclamations of surprise at her changed appearance, though his manner is that of an old friend rather than a romantic figure. He walks home with the ladies, expressing honest pleasure at the meeting while acknowledging Miss Jenkyns’s recent death charitably. Miss Matilda, overwhelmed by the encounter, retreats to her room and does not appear until early tea, looking as though she has been crying.

CAPÍTULO IV.

Chapter IV, titled “A Visit to an Old Bachelor,” recounts the narrator’s day-long visit with Miss Matty and Miss Pole to Mr Holbrook’s country estate, Woodley. The visit rekindles Miss Matty’s memories of her early romance, culminates in Mr Holbrook’s unexpected announcement of a trip to Paris, and ends with Miss Matty’s decline into melancholy and the narrator’s concerned return to care for her.

The Invitation

A formal, old-fashioned note arrives from Mr Holbrook inviting both the narrator and Miss Matty to spend a long June day at his house, Woodley. He mentions that his cousin Miss Pole has also been invited so that the three ladies may share a fly to the property.

Miss Matty’s Reluctance

Despite the narrator’s expectation that Miss Matty would eagerly accept, she proves highly reluctant. She considers the visit improper and is half-annoyed when the others dismiss this concern. A more serious objection arises when she worries that her late sister Deborah would not have approved; it takes half a day of persuading before she relents, and the narrator immediately writes an acceptance to settle the matter.

Preparations for the Visit

The morning of the visit, Miss Matty asks the narrator to accompany her to the shop, where after much hesitation they choose three caps to try on at home so that the most becoming one can be selected to take on Thursday.

Arrival at Woodley

Miss Matty is in silent agitation throughout the drive to Woodley, having evidently never been there before. The journey follows paved, jolting lanes through quiet, pastoral country, and she sits bolt upright, gazing wistfully out at the prospect. The old-fashioned house stands among fields, with a garden where roses and currant-bushes meet, and the party alights at a little gate to walk up a straight box-edged path.

Mr Holbrook’s Hospitality

Mr Holbrook greets them at the door in great effervescence of hospitality, looking like the narrator’s idea of Don Quixote. His respectable housekeeper welcomes the elder ladies upstairs while the narrator asks to see the garden. Mr Holbrook, evidently pleased, leads her all around the property, showing her his twenty-six cows named after the letters of the alphabet, and along the way surprises her with apt quotations from Shakespeare, George Herbert, and modern poets, spoken as naturally as thoughts aloud.

The Garden Tour

Mr Holbrook gives the narrator a tour of his garden and grounds, displaying his six-and-twenty cows, each named for a different letter of the alphabet. As they walk, he quotes poetry with ease and feeling, demonstrating the literary tastes and solitary country contentment that characterise him.

Dinner in the Kitchen

Dinner is laid in the kitchen, a room with oak dressers and cupboards, a Turkey carpet on the flag-floor, and an unused oven that hints it could easily be made into a handsome parlour. The ladies are expected in a stiff, ugly apartment, but Mr Holbrook prefers his “counting-house,” filled with books that strew the floor, table, and walls—evidence of an extravagance of which he is half ashamed and half proud.

The Two-Pronged Forks

The company is dismayed at dinner to find only two-pronged black-handled forks for the ducks and green peas. Miss Matty spears peas one by one like Aminé from the Arabian tale, Miss Pole sighs and leaves hers untouched, while the narrator watches the host shovelling them wholesale into his mouth with his round-ended knife and imitates him successfully, though the ladies cannot bring themselves to do anything so ungenteel.