I shall now read carefully and
lovingly every word she has written, especially those poems, which
ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and which seem to be (from
a review in the current _Fraser_) of remarkable strength and purity.'
It was a short-lived triumph, however, and Mrs. Gaskell soon found
herself, as she expressed it, 'in a veritable hornet's nest.' Mr.
Bronte, to begin with, did not care for the references to himself and the
suggestion that he had treated his wife unkindly. Mrs. Gaskell had
associated him with numerous eccentricities and ebullitions of temper,
which during his later years he always asserted, and undoubtedly with
perfect truth, were, at the best, the fabrications of a dismissed
servant. Mr. Nicholls had also his grievance. There was just a
suspicion implied that he had not been quite the most sympathetic of
husbands. The suspicion was absolutely ill-founded, and arose from Mr.
Nicholls's intense shyness. But neither Mr. Bronte nor Mr. Nicholls gave
Mrs. Gaskell much trouble. They, at any rate, were silent. Trouble,
however, came from many quarters. Yorkshire people resented the air of
patronage with which, as it seemed to them, a good Lancashire lady had
taken their county in hand. They were not quite the backward savages,
they retorted, which some of Mrs.
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