Volume 9, Number 10 · December 7, 1967
Blunt Relations
By V.S. Pritchett
The general portrait of the country people of Haworth which is given by Mrs. Gaskell in her life of Charlotte Brontë very closely fitted the character of my Yorkshire relations if one allows for the taming effects of lower-middle-class gentility. Haworth-like tales were common among the Sawdons. They were proud, violent, egotistical. They had—according to your view—either a strong belief in the plain virtues or a rock-like moral conceit. Everything was black or white to them. They were blunt to your face, practical and unimaginative, kind yet iron-minded, homely and very hospitable; but they suspected good manners, they flayed you with their hard and ironical gaze. They were also frugal, close and calculating about money—they were always talking about 'brass'—and they looked on outsiders with scorn. They were monosyllabic talkers but their silences concealed strong passions that (as Mrs. Gaskell said) lasted for life, whether that passion was of love or hatred. Their friendship or their enmity was for ever. To listen to their talk was like listening to a fire crackling. They had no heroes. They were cautious and their irony was laconic.
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