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257
Cranford
·
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
102
I
remember
the
convocation
of
ladies
who
assembled
to
decide
whether
or
not
Mrs
Fitz-Adam
should
be
called
upon
by
the
old
blue-blooded
inhabitants
of
Cranford.
She
had
taken
a
large
rambling
house,
which
had
been
usually
considered
to
confer
a
patent
of
gentility
upon
its
tenant,
because,
once
upon
a
time,
seventy
or
eighty
years
before,
the
spinster
daughter
of
an
earl
had
resided
in
it.
I
am
not
sure
if
the
inhabiting
this
house
was
not
also
believed
to
convey
some
unusual
power
of
intellect;
for
the
earl’s
daughter,
Lady
Jane,
had
a
sister,
Lady
Anne,
who
had
married
a
general
officer
in
the
time
of
the
American
war,
and
this
general
officer
had
written
one
or
two
comedies,
which
were
still
acted
on
the
London
boards,
and
which,
when
we
saw
them
advertised,
made
us
all
draw
up,
and
feel
that
Drury
Lane
was
paying
a
very
pretty
compliment
to
Cranford.
Still,
it
was
not
at
all
a
settled
thing
that
Mrs
Fitz-Adam
was
to
be
visited,
when
dear
Miss
Jenkyns
died;
and,
with
her,
something
of
the
clear
knowledge
of
the
strict
code
of
gentility
went
out
too.
As
Miss
Pole
observed,
“As
most
of
the
ladies
of
good
family
in
Cranford
were
elderly
spinsters,
or
widows
without
children,
if
we
did
not
relax
a
little,
and
become
less
exclusive,
by-and-by
we
should
have
no
society
at
all.”
Mrs
Forrester
continued
on
the
same
side.
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