Cranford

After Dinner

After dinner the company retires to the counting-house, which the servant-girl has cleaned in their absence. Miss Matty softly confesses how pleasant it is to dine with a bachelor, though she hopes it is not improper, while Miss Pole inspects the dusty books and worries that her cousin has grown uncouth in his solitary habits. Miss Matty defends him as eccentric, observing that very clever people always are.

Miss Matty and the Pipe

Following dinner, a clay pipe and spittoon are produced, and Mr Holbrook asks the ladies to withdraw if they dislike tobacco-smoke. As a relic of old-fashioned courtesy, he presents the pipe to Miss Matty and asks her to fill the bowl—a compliment that both shocks her refinement, trained by Deborah to abhor all smoking, and gratifies her feelings at being singled out. She delicately stuffs the tobacco into the pipe before they withdraw.

The Walk Through the Fields

Mr Holbrook proposes a walk in the fields, but the two elder ladies, fearing damp and dirt and lacking suitable calashes, decline. The narrator accompanies him on a turn to check on his men; he strides along either oblivious of her or soothed by his pipe, occasionally breaking into grand sonorous quotations triggered by trees, clouds, or distant pastures. At an old cedar tree near the house he pauses to admire Tennyson’s phrase “layers of shade,” and proceeds to praise the poet.

Ash-Buds in March

Still excited by his rediscovery of Tennyson, Mr Holbrook suddenly demands of the narrator what colour ash-buds are in March. Stumped, she admits ignorance, and he triumphantly recalls the line “black as ash-buds in March,” reproaching himself for living all his life in the country without knowing. He strides off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he has captured.

Reading Locksley Hall

On their return, Mr Holbrook insists on reading aloud the poems he has been quoting. Miss Pole ostensibly encourages him so the narrator may enjoy his fine reading, though she privately admits she wanted silence to count her crochet stitches. Miss Matty, to whom whatever he proposed would be right, falls sound asleep within five minutes of his beginning “Locksley Hall” and only wakes when he finishes. She then admires the book as “pretty,” prompting Mr Holbrook’s gentle reproof, and confusingly compares it to an unnamed poem of Dr Johnson’s.

The Return Home

As the ladies are getting into the fly to return home, Mr Holbrook mentions that he intends to call on them soon to inquire after their safe arrival—a remark that flutters Miss Matty. As the house disappears among the trees, however, her feelings turn into a distressing worry about whether Martha has seized the opportunity of her absence to entertain a “follower” at home.

Martha’s Unlucky Speech

On arriving home, Martha, who has been careful and attentive, makes the unfortunate remark that Miss Matty should not go out in the evening in such a thin shawl and should be more careful at her age. Miss Matty, unusually sharp, demands to know how old Martha thinks she is, and is stung to insist she is not yet fifty-two, though Martha has estimated her at “not far short of sixty.” The incident touches painfully on the golden youth she has been revisiting that day.

Mr Holbrook’s Farewell Visit

Miss Matty, who never speaks openly of her former intimacy with Mr Holbrook, begins wearing her best cap every day and sitting near the window to watch the street unseen. He duly calls, sitting with his hands on his widely-parted knees, head bent and whistling. Suddenly he springs up to deliver the news of his imminent departure.

The Gift of Poems

As he is leaving, Mr Holbrook turns back, remembering half his errand, and tugs from his coat-pocket a parcel of the poems the ladies admired at his house, presenting them with an affectionate “Good-bye, Matty”—the use of her old familiar name echoing across thirty years of separation.