Marianne Gaskell
1834-1920

'Marianne is as practical and humourous [sic] as ever. Her quick decision always makes me feel as if she was a kind of 'elder son' rather than daughter.' 1859

Marianne, the Gaskells' eldest daughter, was born in 1834. Elizabeth kept a diary of her early years, in which she recorded her extreme anxiety in the formation of her daughter's character, and also her joy in motherhood. This has been reprinted in Private Voices.

Marianne kept her mother’s letters, with all the amusing family details ‘the chickens were being hatched. . . 2 of Mr Armstrongs eggs, & 4 Dorkings, are already out, & more coming. . . the whitwashers are taking down your beds, sourcing, cleaning, knocking, thumping going on everywhere...’

Marianne seems to have been an obliging daughter, increasingly relied upon to help with her sisters and the hectic domestic arrangements. In 1851 Gaskell wrote, 'She is such 'a law unto herself' now, such a sense of duty, and obeys her sense. For instance she invariably gave the little ones 2 hours of patient steady teaching in the holidays. If there was to be any long excursion for the day she got up earlier, that was all; & they did too, influenced by her example. She also fixed on 9 o'clock for her own bed-time, and kept to it though all temptations.'

A letter to her in 1857 includes the request to 'look after Julia's two ends, i.e. hair and bowels'. Marianne was also referred to as as Polly, MA or Minnie and many of the surviving Gaskell letters were written to her.

She caused some problems by becoming engaged to her cousin, Thurstan Holland, in spite of his family's objections, mainly on financial gounds. These were eventually overcome and she married him in 1866. They had three children - the only direct descendants of Elizabeth and William Gaskell. Marianne died in 1920, the last of William and Elizabeth Gaskell’s daughters, but her great-great grand daughter, Mrs Rosemary Dabbs, is now one of the patrons of Manchester Historic Buildings Trust who are working to restore 84 Plymouth Grove.