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The Reverend Mr. Gardiner dies in Spring 1793 of consumption, in Lisbon, where he has been sent (paradoxically) for his health. He is befriended in his last days by a young man who forms the link with the family whose history the novel details and who dies of consumption himself three years later. Mr. Gardiner is survived by his pregnant wife of fifteen years, Maria, and five children, not counting two sons who had died in childhood. The surviving children include three daughters and two sons, joined by the infant Henry who is soon born. Maria Gardiner sells off her possessions to her good, concerned neighbors and leaves the parsonage. Her eldest son, George, is taken in hand by the young curate who serves also as schoolmaster, while the second son, William, is taken in by a kindly farmer, Mr. Gooch, and the third, the infant Henry, is kept largely off stage until he later figures in the plot of the story.
The three Gardiner daughters present predictably diverse characters. The eldest, Maria, is a handsome, animated young woman who combines with 'a lively sensibility...a sweetness of temper, patience of disposition, and firmness of mind, not often united with acute feeling' that lends her a maturity that makes her appear 'likely to be not only . . . a second mother to the younger branches of her family, but in some measure to supply to their surviving parent the friend she had lost.' Sarah, the next daughter, is a beautiful gentle, meek but nevertheless enthusiastic soul who, despite her innate timidity 'was blessed with an excellent understanding, to which was added intuitive taste, a fine perception of whatever was presented to her mind ‘of beautiful and good,’ and a faculty of pursuing and combining ideas not often found in early life.' The bright and playful Betsey, who is eleven when her father dies, is saved by her 'excellent education' from becoming 'that dangerous thing, a female wit.'
The eldest daughter, Maria, gives up her own aspirations in order to help stabilize the family situation. The studious Maria, who is temperamentally inclined to be a teacher, observes that she is under-qualified for that occupation but over-qualified for a governess and too young for either in any case, just as she is too young to be a lady’s maid. She therefore chooses to devote herself to what she believes to be her appropriate station - that of milliner, so as to sustain her mother and send Betsey to school. When the decidedly impractical Sarah asks Maria what she is to do, Maria responds, 'You must muse and draw, and poetize, and nurse little Henry, my love, and comfort our mother; you can do nothing better than that, my dear Sarah, for then you will do us all good.'
In fact, Maria is taken on as an apprentice by a local milliner, Mrs. Ideson, who offers to let Mrs. Gardiner and her younger daughters learn glove-making from her to help make ends meet. Betsey is set up in an inexpensive boarding school. Sarah, left somewhat on her own, is at home one day when a brusque older woman calls; Sarah confides to her her own fondness for drawing. When the woman subsequently returns, Sarah inadvertently insults her, for which she is made to feel great shame. It turns out that the blustery woman is Lady Barbara Blount, herself a widow of a wealthy man whose two children had died within a single week of scarlet fever and whose current brusque manner to children masks her keen sensitivity to them. She befriends Sarah and her family and sees to it that Sarah receives instructions in drawing from a young Mr. Montgomery whose patron Lady Barbara is. By the end of the novel Sarah becomes proficient in her art and the wife of her young instructor. Meanwhile son George is taken up by a distant cousin, John Staniland, who learns of the Gardiners’ misfortune and whose only son has died. Now aged fourteen, George is dispatched to his new residence where he is subsequently apprenticed in the medical profession. Soon Mrs. Gardiner receives a letter indicating that Mr. Staniland is so impressed with George that he intends to make him his full partner when George reaches the age of 23. In the meantime, William, who has been residing with the Gooches, secures a position at Christ’s Hospital in London, where he also thrives. The youngest child, Henry, remains a difficulty, for no one sees any way of directing or providing for his future.
Maria, however, receives a marriage proposal from a very eligible young man, Mr. Clarkson, whose proposal has the approval of both his father and Maria’s. When Maria rejects his proposal both parents are startled and annoyed; only later do we learn that Maria loves the young curate, Mr. Wallingford, whom she eventually marries - happily - when he is set up with his own curacy. Soon comes a letter announcing a settlement upon Mrs. Gardiner of some twenty-five hundred pounds, an arrangement concluded through the agency of Lady Barbara. Betsey, now turned nineteen, is betrothed to that Mr. Clarkson whose proposal her sister Maria had earlier rejected.
Mrs. Gardiner now moves back to her home parish, near Maria and her husband and visited frequently by Henry. William, we are told, has gone off to college, George is thriving, and Betsey remains the good-humored center of the household. Lady Barbara now turns over her house and possessions to her artistic young protégée, Mr. Montgomery, which enables him to propose to Sarah, who quickly accepts. At the novel’s conclusion in 1810, these are the developments: Maria has given birth to two young Wallingfords; the Montgomerys are both enjoying fame; Betsey has married Mr. Clarkson; George has married John Staniland’s daughter and has taken over his father-in-law’s business; William has obtained a fellowship in his college, where he is much admired; Henry has taken a position with the elder Mr. Clarkson; and Mrs. Gardiner is living happily 'in a pretty cottage near the parsonage, where she enjoys the daily sight of her grandchildren, and the society of their invaluable mother [Maria].'
© 2000 Stephen C. Behrendt / Sheffield Hallam University
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