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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810 - 1865) Mrs Gaskell (then Elizabeth Stevenson), high-spirited and handsome, passed the winters of 1829 and 1830 with the Reverend William Turner in Clavering Place, Newcastle. Her relative, the eminent physician and travel writer, Sir Henry Holland (q.v.), had spent four happy years of schooling with the family (1799-1803), then at 248 Westgate Road. Turner's social, practical Christianity appealed to Elizabeth's compassion and sense of justice as evinced in novels like Mary Barton and the controversial Ruth, her 'Newcastle novel' as she called it. It is probable that Turner's daughter, Ann, was the model for Faith Benson in that book, and the reverend Thurstan Benson may well be based on Turner. Like him, he is a Unitarian pastor, a man of rare goodness, charm and active charity during the Hungry Forties. The great North East cholera epidemic of the early '30s forms the climax of Ruth. Mrs Gaskell writes to Miss Fox in 1849: 'I picked up quantities of charming expressive words in canny New Castle.' Elizabeth enjoyed the town and had many friends there with whom she went dancing. The well-known bust of Elizabeth by the younger David Dunbar, was probably executed in Newcastle at this time. The dashing harpooner, Charley Kinraid, in her novel Sylvia's Lovers comes from Cullercoats and has a Northumbrian burr. There are also many knowledgeable references to Newcastle in the first half of the book, where Side, New Gate and Broad Chare are mentioned. At a dramatic point in the narrative, Kinraid sings 'Weel may the keel row' in the streets of Acre in Palestine.
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