Cranford

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.

The Paris Announcement

Mr Holbrook announces that he intends to travel to Paris in a week or two—a place he has never visited but always wished to see—reasoning that if he does not go soon he may never go at all. He plans to depart as soon as the hay is in, before harvest. The ladies, caught by surprise, can think of no commissions to send him.

Miss Matty’s Decline

After Mr Holbrook’s departure, Miss Matty visibly declines. She worries about his health abroad, fearing that French food will not agree with him. Martha sends occasional lines to the narrator reporting that her mistress is very low and off her food, and by November she is “sadly off” and “moping” since Miss Pole’s visit, prompting the narrator to pack up and return without waiting for a formal summons.

A Return to Cranford

The narrator arrives to a warm though flustered welcome and finds Miss Matty looking miserably ill. In a private talk at the kitchen fire Martha confirms that her mistress has been poorly for over a fortnight, having fallen into her moping state on the Tuesday after Miss Pole’s visit, and the narrator prepares to comfort and cosset her old friend.

第四章

Chapter IV opens with Martha’s grievance about being forbidden suitors, shifts through the illness and death of Miss Matty’s old admirer Thomas Holbrook, follows Miss Matty’s concealed grief and quiet self-reproach, and closes with her softened blessing of Martha’s courtship by Jem Hearn.