13 October 2022: "All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of looking over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers; for she had often spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of something painful. Tonight, however, she rose up after tea and went for them—in the dark; for she piqued herself on the precise neatness of all her chamber arrangements, and used to look uneasily at me when I lighted a bed-candle to go to another room for anything. When she returned there was a faint, pleasant smell of Tonquin beans in the room. I had always noticed this scent about any of the things which had belonged to her mother; and many of the letters were addressed to her—yellow bundles of love-letters, sixty or seventy years old." --Elizabeth Gaskell,
Cranford
My Victorian Literature class has moved onto Cranford. I re-read the passage above this morning, in preparation for tomorrow's class.
It's been an emotional week, with me thinking about Ryan (whose birthday was Sunday) and my family, the happy stuff, the hard stuff, the pain that lasts. I think last week's
celebration of life is also still on my mind. Everyone, everything just feels so fragile and fleeting.
Anyway, that bit about those letters--that still smell of Miss Matty's mother long after she's gone? It got to me. Teared up right at my desk and later this afternoon when talking to a student about it. It's just such a perfect bit of writing.
