‘Hand and Heart’

‘Hand and Heart’ was the first of two stories published in the Sunday School Penny Magazine, in five parts: July–August, October–December 1849 (2, pp. 121–3; 141–4; 181–4; 201–5; 221–6). It was signed ‘Mrs Gaskell’, an indication of the public recognition which had followed three editions of Mary Barton. The magazine’s founder was Travers Madge (1823–66), a charismatic figure prominent in Manchester Unitarian circles, and a regular visitor to the Gaskells’ house in Upper Rumford Street. In 1848 he had accepted the post of ‘Home Visitor’ to the Lower Moseley Street Sunday schools, in which both WG and EG were active. ¹ ‘I have never seen anything approaching to the influence he exercised;’ Catherine Winkworth wrote at the time, ‘the almost worshipping reverence and attachment which he inspired in those around him from his own utter unselfishness, purity and holiness.’ ² EG was persuaded to contribute to the new magazine, conscious of writing for a different kind of reader. After the publication of her second story, ‘Bessy’s Troubles at Home’, in 1852, she determined to reprint the three from Howitt’s Journal, ‘Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras’, ‘The Sexton’s Hero’, ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’, and the two from the Sunday School Penny Magazine, ‘all moral & sensible’ tales, as she described them, in separate penny or two-penny pamphlets directed to younger readers. In the end ‘Hand and Heart’ and ‘Bessy’s Troubles at Home’ were reprinted, in 1855, together at four pence. ‘I am glad to hear that these stories are liked by working-men & women in your parts’, she wrote to a correspondent in 1855. ‘I sometimes get here the pleasantest little glimpses of their being liked; but I did not know how far Southrons would care for them’ (Letters, p. 365). ‘Hand and Heart’ was collected in Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (1855), and in The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1865). It was included in the 1906 Knutsford edition (Knutsford, vol. iii), and in Shorter’s 1913 World’s Classics edition (Shorter, vol. viii).