Cranford

Lord Mauleverer’s Visit

In one such letter Miss Jenkyns recounts that the Honourable Mrs Jamieson has announced a visit from her late husband’s old friend Lord Mauleverer, who came to Cranford to see Captain Brown—a companion of his “plumed wars” who once saved his life off the Cape of Good Hope. Lord Mauleverer lodged at the Angel Hotel but shared the Brunonian meals for two days. Mrs Jamieson could not disclose the nature of the peril, and the town’s only preparations Miss Jenkyns could discover were Miss Jessie’s purchase of a leg of lamb; she hopes “the feast of reason and the flow of soul” compensated, and gently wonders whether any mortal is free from worldly failings.

The New Carpet

Miss Pole and Miss Matty, writing by the same post, make the most of so great an event. Miss Matty, despite bad spelling, gives the liveliest picture of the commotion, for beyond the people at the Angel, the Browns, Mrs Jamieson, and a small boy his lordship swore at for driving a hoop against his legs, no one seems to have held conversation with him. The narrative then turns to the narrator’s next summer visit, whose greatest event is Miss Jenkyns’s purchase of a new drawing-room carpet, against whose brilliance she and Miss Matty chase the afternoon sunbeams with newspaper patches and, before a party, stitch paper paths for every guest’s shoes.

The Literary Dispute

Captain Brown and Miss Jenkyns remain stiff with each other; the literary dispute about Dr Johnson is a “raw” that the lightest touch aggravates. Miss Jenkyns cannot refrain from talking at him about Johnson, and although he does not reply, his drumming fingers strike her as disparaging. He is ostentatious in his preference for Mr Boz, walking so absorbed that he nearly runs into her; his apologies are sincere, but she owns she would rather he had knocked her down than been reading a lower style of literature. The narrator observes that, despite the quarrel, the Captain looks only older and more threadbare.