"CRANFORD" REVISITED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 156, 19 June 1942, Page 16

"CRANFORD" REVISITED

Readings From Station 2YA OME books aro to be read and some are to be read and re-read, On the whole, the books that we tead at school with half an eye on examination results are tucked away and seldom looked at again, but these are often the very books that would most repay re-opening. For often it is only with an experience of life and people that these books can be properly appreciated. One book that is frequently held up in school for premature appreciation is Cranford. To schoolchildren, the lavender atmosphere and the elderly "ladies," with their petty economies and petty gossipings, may at times, seem insufferably tedious, but a re-reading often shows with what a sure

touch the frailties of all human beings have been sketched And though the setting is so unmistakably early nineteenth century, it would also bo true to say that Cranford "chooses its own inhabitants and is everywhere where people have individuality and kindliness." This was so much the most popular book by Mrs. Gaskell that it has overshadowed her other books and writings. Mrs. Gaskell herself, in a letter replying to Ruskin, says of it, "It is the only one of my own books that I can read again; but sometimes when I am ailing or ill, I take Cranford, and I was going to say enjoy it, but that would not be pretty-laugh over it afresh. And it is true, too, for I have seen the cow that wore the grey flannel jacket-and I know the cat that swallowed the lace that belonged to the lady that sent for the doctor that gave the Pes Miss Margaret Johnston is giving readings from Cranford from 2YA on Saturday mornings at 11 a.m., beginning this Saturday, June 20. These will take listeners through chapters of a book that first appeared in serial form. Indeed the first episode about Captain Brown was not ..intended to go any further. "I never meant to write more," wrote Mrs. Gaskell, "so killed Captain Brown very much against my own will." This was by way of explanation to Ruskin, who said that the first time he read Cranford he flew into such a rage at Captain Brown’s being killed that he wouldn’t go any further, But the parties, the sorting of old letters, the new carpet that had to have newspapers spread all over it, Miss Matty’s bonnets and long-buried love affair, the breaking of the local bank and the ruin that it brought on Miss Matty--these are incidents that many listeners to Miss Jobnston’s readings will await with keen anticipation.