Table Of ContentMISS MILES
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Miss Miles
or
A Tale of Yorkshire Life
60 Years Ago
MARY TAYLOR
With an Introduction by
Janet H. Murray
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1990
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Introduction Copyright (g) 1990 by Janet Horowitz Murray
First Edition of MISS MILES or
A TALE OF YORKSHIRE LIFE 60 YEARS AGO,
1890, published by Remington & Co., Publishers, London.
This paperback edition, with new editorial matter, first published
in 1990 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Mary, 1817-1893.
Miss Miles, or, A tale of Yorkshire life 60 years ago / Mary
Taylor : with an introduction by Janet H. Murray.
p. cm.
Originally published : London : Remington 8c Co., 1890.
ISBN 0-19-506492-5
1. Murray, Janet Horowitz, 1946- II. Title. III. Title: Miss
Miles. IV. Title: Tale of Yorkshire life 60 years ago.
PR5549.T35M57 1990
823'.8-dc20 90-31290
2468109753
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction to the Oxford Edition
of Miss Miles, vii
Bibliography, xxv
List of Yorkshire Terms and
German Phrases, xxvii
MISS MILES, 1
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. Die Goldene zeit des Wardens 1
II. Hold fast to the Faith without Wavering 16
III.. Heaven lies about us in our Infancy ... 30
IV. And Fades into the Light of Common Day 40
V. De Profundis 57
VI. The Common Lot 67
VII. Daylight to Fight by 81
VIII. And Hope again Elastic Springs 98
IX. Lonely and Helpless 109
X. Their Words are Sweet as Honey 120
XI. Trip on Farther, Pretty Sweeting 133
XII. Quips and Cranks and Wanton Wiles 148
XIII. In the Valley of the Shadow 161
XIV. The Tumult of the People 176
XV. Out into the World 194
XVI. Wir menschen werden wunderbar gepriift 219
XVII. Hope again Elastic Springs 229
XVIII. Forget the Things which are Behind 241
XIX. In Two Minds 269
XX. Are the White Hours for ever Fled? 292
XXI. An Evil Genius 312
XXII. Death Comes to All 324
XXIII. Anarch Custom 343
XXIV. Eine anhang von sinnlichkeit die sich niemals
concentrirt 373
XXV. Every Hearth Knoweth its own Bitterness 394
XXVI. Subtle Serpent 404
XXVII. Tearlessly, Fearlessly 421
XXVIII. If we can't help ourselves we can help one an-
other! 436
XXIX. As the Morning Spread upon the Mountains 449
Introduction to the Oxford Edition
ot Miss Miles
Janet Horowitz Murray
Mary alone has more energy and power in her nature
than any ten men you can pick out. ... It is vain to
limit a character like hers within ordinary bound-
aries—she will overstep them. I am morally certain
Mary will establish her own landmarks. . . . (Ws
no. 107, 3 January 1841)
So predicted Charlotte Bronte of her closest friend—a predic-
tion that Mary Taylor fulfilled in her life and in her writings.
Her unconventional and feminist views, her outspoken nature,
her love of adventure and travel, her delight in self-reliance,
and her fierce loyalty to her friends yielded a rich and vigor-
ously lived life and an intensely felt and profoundly feminist
novel. Mary Taylor worked on Miss Miles from her early wom-
anhood until the end of her life. Although it is not autobio-
graphical, it reflects her lifelong advocacy of independence for
women and her lifelong experience of women's courage and
sustaining friendships.
Mary Taylor (1817-1893) was brought up by her Radical
Yorkshire wool trading family to value exertion and to ques-
tion authority. Her independence of spirit was apparent from
her schoolgirl years, and distinguished her from the equally
intense but much more socially timid Charlotte Bronte. Their
schoolmate Ellen Nussey remembered their last days at Miss
Wooler's school:
Then came a time that both Charlotte and Mary were so pro-
ficient in schoolroom attainments there was no more for them
viii INTRODUCTION.
to learn, and Miss Wooler set them Blair's Belle Lettres to
commit to memory. We all laughed at their studies. Charlotte
persevered, but Mary took her own line, flatly refused, and ac-
cepted the penalty of disobedience going supperless to bed
for about a month before she left school. When it was moon-
light, we always found her engaged in drawing on the chest
of drawers, which stood in the bay window, quite happy and
cheerful. (Stevens 10)
The fifteen year old's rebellion displays character traits Mary
would affirm throughout her life—a surprisingly serene disre-
gard for authority, a scorn for the useless busywork that was
so often recommended for women, and a clearly felt need for
meaningful activity.
Charlotte Bronte has left us a portrait of Mary at this period
of her life in the character of Rose Yorke in Shirley, a portrait
Mary Taylor affectionately appreciated as presenting her as
"a little lump of perfection" (Stevens, Letter 21):
Rose is a still, sometimes a stubborn girl now: her mother
wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself—a woman
of dark and dreary duties—and Rose has mind full-set, thick-
sown with the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It is
agony to her often to have these ideas trampled on and re-
pressed. She has never rebelled yet; but if hard driven she will
rebel one day, and then it will be once for all.
Mary's own mother, Ann Waring Taylor, was a cold, Cal-
vinistic chapel-goer who (unlike the Miles family and their
friends) emphasized the punitive aspects of her religion. In
later years Mary told a young friend that "my mother was
never a mother to rne," and described how she and her younger
sister Martha would conspire to evade their mother's prudish
and inhibiting spirit (S. Taylor 13). Significantly, it was after
her father's death—when she would have been expected to
make her home with her mother—that Mary began to seek her
fortune on the Continent and eventually in New Zealand. In
fact, she did not return to England until after her mother's
death.
Taylor's Radical father, on the other hand, seems to have
doted on her and to have encouraged her to take an active
INTRODUCTION. ix
role in the boisterous political discussions that marked the
Taylor family life. Bronte captures the tenderness in their re-
lationship:
Rose loves her father: her father does not rule her with a rod
of iron; he is good to her. He sometimes fears she will not
live, so bright are the sparks of intelligence, which, at mo-
ments, flash from her glance and gleam in her language. This
idea makes him often sadly tender to her. (Shirley, Chapter 9)
Miss Wooler was similarly reported to exclaim that Mary
was "too pretty to live" (Stevens 10). This anxiety was probably
often expressed about much-loved children at a time when one
out of five children did not live to adulthood. But with Mary
Taylor these fears were particularly unfounded, since she had
an exceptionally strong constitution. It was not her delicate
health but her assertive, disruptive nature—the "sparks of in-
telligence" which "flash from her glance and gleam in her lan-
guage"—that made Mary appear out of place and therefore at
risk in a world in which middle class women were expected to
look to men for their opinions and to meet their destinies with
passive acceptance.
Young Mary's outspokenness and unconventional behavior
extended to her romantic life. She seems to have had a crush
on Branwell Bronte, with the disastrous consequences Char-
lotte details in this letter to Ellen Nussey:
Did I not once tell you of an instance of a Relative of mine
who cared for a young lady till he began to suspect that she
cared more for him and then instantly conceived a sort of con-
tempt for her—? You know to what I allude—never as you
value your ears mention the circumstance—but I have two
studies—you are my study for the success, the credit, and the
respectability of a quiet, tranquil character. Mary is my study—
for the contempt, the remorse—the misconstruction which fol-
low the development of feelings in themselves noble, warm-
generous—devoted and profound—but which being too freely
revealed—too frankly bestowed—are not estimated at their real
value. God bless her—I never hope to see in this world a char-
acter more truly noble—she would die willingly for one she
loved—her intellect and her attainments are of the very high-
est standard. (Stevens 17; WS no. 106)
Description:The close friendship between Charlotte Bront? and Mary Taylor began in boarding school and lasted for the rest of their lives. It was Mary Taylor, in fact, who inspired Bront? to leave her oppressive parsonage home and go to Brussels, the eventual setting for her novel, Villette. Mary herself led a
