Cranford

Miss Matty’s Childhood Diary Memory

Miss Matty recalled how her father had once made the sisters keep a diary in two columns, with morning expectations set against the evening’s realities. One winter’s evening she had sat over the bedroom fire with Deborah, planning their futures. While Deborah dreamed of marrying an archdeacon and writing his charges, Miss Matty thought she could manage a household, for her mother called her her right hand, and she loved to nurse shy babies in the neighboring cottages. Yet after she grew sad and grave a year or two later, the little ones drew back from her, and though she still loved children and felt a strange yearning at the sight of any mother with her baby, the knack of comforting them had never returned.

Miss Matty’s Recurring Dream of a Little Girl

By a sudden blaze from the unstirred coals, the narrator saw Miss Matty’s eyes full of tears as she described a recurring dream. For many years she had dreamed of a little girl of about two who never grew older, who came noiselessly to her in moments of sorrow or joy. The child put up her mouth to be kissed, and Miss Matty had sometimes wakened with the clasp of the little arms about her neck. The previous night, perhaps because she had been thinking of a play-ball she was making for Phœbe, the little dream-child had come and asked to be kissed, just as real babies do with real mothers before bed.

Miss Matty’s Advice on Marriage and Credulity

Brushing aside her own tender disclosures, Miss Matty cautioned the narrator not to be frightened out of marriage by Miss Pole’s warnings. She could imagine it to be a very happy state, and a little credulity, she believed, carried one through life far more smoothly than constant doubting and the perpetual search for difficulties and disagreeables.