The Old Nurse's Story

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s short story “The Old Nurse’s Story” (1852), an elderly nurse entertains her young charges with a ghost story from their mother’s childhood. One of Gaskell’s earliest works, this story was first published in Charles Dickens’s weekly literary magazine Household Words as part of a special Christmas number. In the same year, Gaskell was writing the series of short stories for Household Words that would become her first novel, Cranford.

The nurse, as a woman from Westmoreland, reflects Gaskell’s life-long interest in the people of northern England, especially the region’s women and working-class communities. Gaskell often expressed a desire to help readers from Southern England, particularly London, come to a better understanding of her neighbors in the North, whom she felt Londoners looked down on. “The Old Nurse’s Story” emphasizes domestic care and female authority.

This guide refers to the free online version of the text available at the Oxford Text Archive. This guide silently corrects typographical errors in the electronic text. Citations given are for paragraph numbers.

The nurse (Hester) begins her tale with recounting how the children’s grandmother came to the village school Hester attended, seeking a nursemaid for the baby she was expecting. The grandmother was the wife of the local curate, although she is herself a “real lady born” (1), a member of the aristocratic Furnivall family in Northumberland. The schoolteacher testifies to Hester’s respectability and work ethic, though she comes from a poor family, and young Hester is offered the place as nursemaid (or nanny) in the clergyman’s family.

The baby is born and is called Rosamond. Both the young nurse and the young mother dote on the baby while the father is often away serving his parish. When Rosamond is about five years old, her father dies of a fever, and her mother and a newborn baby also die within weeks. Before Rosamond’s mother dies, she makes the nurse promise that she will never leave Rosamond.

Strangers arrive to settle the family affairs. One of them, Lord Furnivall, decides that Rosamond and her nurse should move to the family manor. The nurse feels a sense of pride when people in the village learn that she will be living at Furnivall Manor, but her joy is tempered when she discovers that neither the current Lord Furnivall nor Rosamond’s mother ever lived in the house. Lord Furnivall’s valet assures her that it will be a healthy environment for a child. The nurse and her charge begin the journey north through increasingly remote countryside with a sense of anticipation. As they drive into the manor’s park, the nurse notes the wildness of the landscape, and her first glimpse of the house reveals that it is “desolate” but “even grander” than she expected (6).

The new arrivals are taken to meet the elderly Miss Furnivall (Lord Furnivall’s great-aunt) and her maid-companion Mrs. Stark, whom they find quietly working together on a tapestry. Then they are ushered through an imposing hallway to the old nursery where a cozy tea is set up for them. The nurse meets a manservant named James and his wife Dorothy, the housekeeper. Dorothy is also from Westmoreland and the two women find that they have much in common. Hester begins to feel at home, as does Rosamond who quickly charms all the inhabitants.

Rosamond falls into the habit of exploring the hall, except for the east wing which is shut up. One day Rosamond wants Dorothy to tell them about all the portraits that hang on the walls of the house. In the state drawing room they encounter a portrait of young Miss Furnivall when she was known as “Miss Grace,” the younger daughter of the family. The narrator comments on how cold and proud she looked as a handsome and fashionable young woman. Dorothy tells the nurse that Miss Grace’s older sister was even more beautiful. Her portrait also hangs in the hall, but she will only show it to them if they promise to keep it a secret because her husband James has forbidden her from telling people about it. Unsure that Rosamond will be able to keep her knowledge of the portrait quiet, Hester sends her to play hide-and-seek while the two women look at the painting of Miss Furnivall. The nurse finds the painting so beautiful that she wants to gaze at it for a long time, but Dorothy gets nervous and sends the nurse with a sense of urgency to find Rosamond because there are “some ugly places about the house” (13) that a child should not be alone in.

Fall comes. On quiet evenings after Rosamond has gone to bed, the narrator hears the great organ in the entrance hall being played. When she asks Dorothy and James about it, James tells her that she is foolish to mistake the wind in the trees for music. Hester notices that both Dorothy and Agnes, the maid of all work, seem unnerved by her question. The next day Hester finds Dorothy alone and asks her about the music. Dorothy remains silent on the subject, obedient to James.

The nurse finally convinces Agnes to admit that she has heard strange noises, and to recount that “folks did say” (14) that the ghost of the “old lord” plays the organ on winter nights. Hester, who considers herself a brave girl, decides that she enjoys the music anyway, and thinks it must be Miss Furnivall playing. One afternoon she opens the organ and discovers that it is completely broken inside. At that point, her “flesh began to creep a little” (14) and she runs back to the brightness of the nursery. From then on, she does not enjoy the music.

Meanwhile, Rosamond continues to delight everyone in the house. She regularly eats dinner formally with the elderly women but tells Hester that she prefers to be with her in the nursery. October arrives with early frosts. One evening at dinner Miss Furnivall observes that she is “afraid we will have a terrible winter,” (15) and Hester finds her tone significant. Mrs. Stark seems not to hear her and talks on about other things. The frosty weather does not keep Rosamond and the nurse from running races in the fresh air and exploring the fells. One day they come upon a new path and discover two old, gnarled holly trees standing along the east side of the house that strike Hester as remarkable. As the days grow shorter, she hears the music more often.

One Sunday afternoon in late November, Hester and Agnes decide to walk to church, but it’s too cold for Rosamond to go. Dorothy agrees to watch over her, and the nurse leaves for the afternoon. Heavy snow has fallen when they come out of church. When Hester gets to the house, Dorothy says has not seen the child because the elderly women have kept Rosamond with them in the drawing room. Rosamond is not in the drawing room, however. When Hester realizes that no one has seen Rosamond for over an hour, she hopes that Rosamond is playing hide-and-seek.

Dorothy and Agnes join her in searching the house, but they do not find the child. Miss Furnivall begins to shake at the news that Rosamond is missing. Then Hester sees two small footprints in the snow, disappearing around the east wing of the house, and she runs out to follow the footprints up to the holly trees where she sees a shepherd carrying a bundle. He calls to her that he has found a child stiff with cold, unconscious under the holly trees. Hester carries Rosamond into the house, alerts the others that she is found, and sits by her all night while she warms up.

In the morning, Rosamond seems recovered but has a strange story from the night before. Rosamond claims that on her way to the kitchen from the drawing room she was distracted by the brightness of the moonlight on the snow and, when she went to the window, she saw a pretty little girl beckon her to come outside. Rosamond says she found the poor child so attractive that she felt compelled to go with her. Hand-in-hand, the two children walked away from the house in the snow.

Hester chastises Rosamond for “telling stories,” (24) while Rosamond insists through tears that she is being truthful. Hester continues to scold her by pointing out that she had tracked her charge by footprints, so if there had been another little girl the nurse would have noticed two pairs of prints and not only one. Rosamond continues to insist that she is telling the truth and goes on to narrate how the other little girl held tight to her hand and walked her up to the old holly trees where they found a lady weeping, but the lady stopped weeping when she saw Rosamond and held her tightly to lull her to sleep. Rosamond insists that her dead mother knows she is telling the truth. The nurse (who is afraid Rosamond has a fever) pretends to believe her while the child repeats the story over and over.

When Rosamond finally sleeps again, Hester is called to the drawing room and recounts the story. When she gets to the part about the child calling Rosamond out in the snow, Miss Furnivall begins to scream. As Mrs. Stark tries to calm her down, Miss Furnivall speaks wildly to Hester, charging her to keep Rosamond away from that “evil child” and exclaiming “Oh! have mercy! Wilt Thou never forgive! It is many a long year ago—” (30). Mrs. Stark rushes a confused Hester out of the room.

Hester begins to guard Rosamond even more closely, afraid of what might happen if she loses her in the house again. Hester worries that Miss Furnivall might have a mental health condition and that Rosamond might have inherited a family illness.

One day “near Christmas” when Hester and Rosamond are playing together, the house goes very dark, though it is still daytime. Rosamond exclaims that she sees the pretty little girl outside again. Hester looks out and also sees the girl, poorly dressed for the bitter weather. The girl is crying and beating on the window to be let into the house, although there is no sound from her. Rosamond insists that the girl should be let in and the organ starts to play more loudly and wildly ever before. Hester takes Rosamond to Dorothy and Agnes for safekeeping in the kitchen.

Rosamond complains to Dorothy that Hester will not let the poor child in; she is being held by Hester and is crying, struggling, and slapping her. Hester notices a look of terror on Dorothy’s face. When Rosamond finally collapses into sleep, Hester tells Dorothy that she is going to take them to her father’s house nearby; her family may be poor but they will be safe there.

Dorothy points out that Hester has no right to take the child, as she is Lord Furnivall’s ward. Hester hectors Dorothy into telling what she knows about the “specter child.” Dorothy tells what she has heard the old villagers say about the time when Miss Grace was young. Miss Grace and her older sister Miss Maude Furnivall were so proud that they didn’t consider any of their suitors good enough to marry either of them. They inherited their pride from their father, who was a brutal man, but a devoted musician. Because he was willing to spend money to surround himself with good music, a very talented musician from Europe began to visit the house regularly. The musician encouraged the old lord to have a great organ brought from Holland and taught him to play it. While the lord was preoccupied with the organ, the musician courted both daughters without their father’s knowledge.

Both women were in love with the musician and became rivals. Miss Maude secretly married him. She gave birth to a baby girl in secret, making an excuse to be away from home. The musician continued to pay attention to Miss Grace (as, he said, a subterfuge) and both sisters became increasingly jealous and angry. The musician left for his annual visit to Europe. The old lord began to play more and more on the organ, and neighbors said that the music seemed to make him less cruel for a while. Both sisters were left to their own devices, as their widowed father became weaker, and their two older brothers stayed abroad and away from the Hall. Miss Maude took advantage of those absences to ride every week to the farmhouse where her daughter was being cared for. The musician returned one more time, but the sisters’ envious bickering again drove him away early, and he did not return. Miss Maude was abandoned with a child she doted on but could not acknowledge. Their father grew weaker and more fascinated by his music, and the two sisters came to a fragile truce by living in separate wings of the house. This relative isolation emboldened Miss Maude to decide that she could have her daughter with her under the pretense of deciding to bring a country child to live at the Hall. Dorothy tells Hester that no one in the area is sure exactly what happened then, but they speculate that Miss Maude decided to triumph over Miss Grace by telling her that she had married the musician. In a fit of jealous rage, Miss Grace was heard to say that she would have her revenge.

One snowy January night, the lord’s angry voice along with the cries of a small child, and a woman’s defiant voice ring out clearly. The lord calls together his servants and tells them that his daughter and her child have left the house in disgrace, forbidding any of them to offer them any assistance. Miss Grace stands by him triumphantly during this frightening speech. The following night, shepherds find Miss Maude under the holly trees holding her dead child. The child was wounded on her shoulder but, says Dorothy, the wound did not kill her: abandonment and cold did. Lord Furnivall died within the year.

Hester is now very afraid in the house but she won’t leave Rosamond. The other servants help her to keep the house locked and the windows shuttered so that Rosamond cannot escape or see the specter child. However, they cannot keep her from hearing the child’s voice and pleading to go out to her. Hester tries to encourage Rosamond to pray for Miss Grace but, very often when they try to pray, Rosamond is distracted by the sound of the child crying.

One night early in the New Year the elderly women call Hester to help them undo a bit of the tapestry work they have gotten wrong. Because Hester is afraid to leave Rosamond alone, she wraps the sleeping child up and takes her along to the drawing room. As Hester is working on the tapestry, Miss Furnivall suddenly starts up and insists that she hears screams and her father’s voice. Rosamond wakes up and struggles because she hears the young child crying. Hester also hears the noises for the first time and so she gathers Rosamond up and follows the two ladies through the house to the abandoned east wing.

The east door crashes open and Hester sees a raging old man pushing a beautiful proud woman ahead of him while a child clings to her. Rosamond insists that the mother and child are drawing her to them, and she “must go.” She struggles most strongly when she realizes that the old man is raising his crutch to strike the child on the shoulder. Rosamond faints, and Miss Grace Furnivall cries out to her father to have pity on the child. Just as he strikes the child, a new phantom appears to stand proudly by his side, and Hester recognizes her as the young Miss Grace. At that moment, old Miss Grace faints into a fit. They carry her to bed where she soon dies. On her deathbed she delivers the final line of the story: “what is done in youth can never be undone in age!” (52).