Genteel poverty, the subject of a great deal of English literature, is a thing of the past, not only because of the decline of gentility in general, but because the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s put paid to the very possibility of it once and for all. Now there are only lack of money and inability to buy what you want.
Cranford, still Mrs Gaskell’s most popular book, is peopled by the genteel poor, almost all of them female. Of course, they are not really poor in the absolute sense, such as the industrial working classes of the time were. For example, all of Cranford’s impoverished gentlefolk have at least one servant; and, as an American economist once said with more truth than delicacy, a single servant is worth a household full of appliances. As we have most of us learnt by experience, a rising income does not confer that greatest of all luxuries, time to call one’s own. The women of Cranford were richly endowed with that luxurious luxury.
The surgeon at Cranford, who plays a large part in the story but never makes a personal appearance, is called Mr Hoggins. This name is in itself sufficient to disqualify him from moving in the best Cranford circles, for it is incompatible with refinement (indeed, it is rather difficult to imagine a romantic poet, say, or an orchestral conductor with such a name, though perhaps not a rugby forward). As it happens, Mr Hoggins is described as a man of rather vulgar manner who has the temerity to marry Lady Glenmire, a misalliance that leads to a break in relations between the latter and her sister-in-law, the Honourable Mrs Jamieson.
Despite his vulgarity, however, Mr Hoggins is universally regarded as a competent medical man. But this (from our standpoint at the beginning of the 21st century) raises the interesting question: of what, exactly, did Mr Hoggins’ competence consist? Refraining from harming as many people as his colleagues harmed? A country practitioner of the time would hardly have been able to cure anything.
The mystery deepens when we consider one of the medical incidents in the book. A travelling magician, who calls himself Signor Brunoni, but who is really named Brown, is injured in his horse-drawn vehicle, but does not break any bones. Signor Brunoni fails to improve until he is taken in hand by Mr Hoggins; and such was the reputation of the surgeon in the town that “when he said, that with care and attention [the Signor] might rally, we had no more fear for him.”
And, indeed, the Signor really did rally, and rally fast, thanks to the surgeon’s care. But what could the injury have been, and what the cure, that Mr Hoggins’ intervention made all the difference? Try as I might, I can’t think of anything that would answer this question.
Is it misguided to be so literal-minded in reading fiction? Should one just suspend disbelief and accept the characters’ estimate of Mr Hoggins’ skill? Of course, the fundamental implausibility of Cranford is that anyone could be so misguided as to think a surgeon either vulgar or a social inferior.
The fundamental implausibility of Cranford is that anyone could be so misguided as to think a surgeon either vulgar or a social inferior