Cranford

The Parents’ Courtship Letters

The earliest bundle is tied and ticketed in Miss Jenkyns’s hand as “Letters interchanged between my ever-honoured father and my dearly-beloved mother, prior to their marriage, in July 1774.” The narrator guesses the rector was about twenty-seven at the time and his bride just eighteen. Strange as it seems against the stiff, wigged portrait in the dining-parlour—with its full-bottomed wig, gown, cassock, bands, and hand resting on his only published sermon—the letters throb with eager, passionate ardour, written in short, homely, heartfelt sentences far removed from the grand Latinised Johnsonian style of his printed assize sermon. His letters stand in curious contrast to his girl-bride’s, who seems mildly puzzled by his many demands for professions of love but is entirely single-minded about one practical longing.

The White Paduasoy

Six or seven of the young woman’s letters are principally occupied with begging her lover to use his influence with her parents to obtain various articles of dress, especially a white Paduasoy—a finery she plainly cannot be married without. The rector assures her she is always lovely enough for him regardless of what she wears and begs her to put words of preference into his answers so she can show his wishes to her parents. At length, divining that she will not wed until her trousseau suits her, he sends a letter accompanying a whole box of finery and asking that she be dressed in everything her heart desires. This first letter is docketed in a frail, delicate hand “From my dearest John,” and shortly afterwards the correspondence ceases and the couple are married.