ABSTRACT
The pace of EG’s publications in Household Words accelerated towards the end of 1853, with ‘Morton Hall’ (19 and 26 November), ‘Traits and Stories of the Huguenots’ (10 December), ‘My French Master’ (17 and 24 December) and ‘The Squire’s Story’ in the Extra Christmas Number for 1853. Dickens declared himself ‘delighted to hear of Mrs. Gaskell’s contributions’ in a letter to Wills in mid-November, apropos of an injunction to ‘Keep “Household Words” Imaginative!’ (CD Letters, vol. vii, p. 200). Ostensibly an informative article, ‘Traits and Stories of the Huguenots’ (vol. viii, pp. 348–54) blends essay and story, and deserves Dickens’s commendation. Farmer Levebre’s smuggling out of his daughter Magdalen, the tale of the crippled martyr miraculously reunited with his wife in London, and the story of the couple who escape with their baby, are precursors of the interpolated tales in ‘My Lady Ludlow’ (see Volume 3 of this edition) and in her later article ‘French Life’ (see p. 359). All three works display considerable knowledge of French history.
