"Gaskell, Elizabeth C - The Life Of Charlotte Bronte - vol 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gaskell Elizabeth C)

from the 1906 Smith, Elder and Co. edition.





The Life of Charlotte Bronte




CHAPTER I



The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the
Aire; a slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring
river of Wharfe. Keighley station is on this line of railway,
about a quarter of a mile from the town of the same name. The
number of inhabitants and the importance of Keighley have been
very greatly increased during the last twenty years, owing to the
rapidly extended market for worsted manufactures, a branch of
industry that mainly employs the factory population of this part
of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre and metropolis.

Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-
fashioned village, into a still more populous and flourishing
town. It is evident to the stranger, that as the gable-ended
houses, which obtrude themselves corner-wise on the widening
street, fall vacant, they are pulled down to allow of greater
space for traffic, and a more modern style of architecture. The
quaint and narrow shop-windows of fifty years ago, are giving way
to large panes and plate-glass. Nearly every dwelling seems
devoted to some branch of commerce. In passing hastily through
the town, one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyer and
doctor can live, so little appearance is there of any dwellings of
the professional middle-class, such as abound in our old cathedral
towns. In fact, nothing can be more opposed than the state of
society, the modes of thinking, the standards of reference on all
points of morality, manners, and even politics and religion, in
such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in the north, and any
stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the south. Yet the
aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness, if not
picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built
of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform
and enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels
of the windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks
of stone. There is no painted wood to require continual
beautifying, or else present a shabby aspect; and the stone is
kept scrupulously clean by the notable Yorkshire housewives. Such