Cranford

not be difficult to name some dozen families now existing which have set
their mark upon the times, trump cards in the game of life, so to speak,
and to one of these families Mrs. Gaskell’s mother belonged. The poor
young lady died very soon after her little girl was born, and the child
was taken away to the care of an aunt, her mother’s sister, who was
living at Knutsford in Cheshire with an only child, a cripple. The whole
story was very melancholy, and one can imagine that it may have been a
somewhat sad and silent home for a little girl full of life and
imagination. There was an uncle also dwelling in the same little country
town, Dr. Peter Holland, who was the father of the great physician Sir
Henry Holland, and the grandfather of the present Lord Knutsford.
Besides their houses in Knutsford the Holland family had a pretty old
country house some two or three miles beyond the town, from whence Mrs.
Gaskell’s own mother had come. The house where Mrs. Gaskell lived as a
little girl with her aunt is on the Heath, a tall red house, with a wide
spreading view, and with a pretty carved staircase and many light
windows both back and front.

I have heard that Mrs. Gaskell was not always quite happy in those