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Collinson relates virtually the same story as Maskell, and Collinson’s words are then quoted in John E. Farbrother,
Shepton Mallet: Notes on Its History, Ancient, Descriptive, and Natural
(Shepton Mallet: Albert Byrt, 1859), p. 145. See also Sharps,
Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention
, pp. 119–20, for a discussion of the discrepancies between Maskell’s and Gaskell’s versions.
    13 See Samuel Butler,
The Life and Letters of Samuel Butler
, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1896), vol. 1, p. 91.
    14 See Henry Green,
Knutsford: Its Traditions and History
(Manchester: E. J. Norton, 1969), pp. 93–4. See also Sharps,
Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention
, pp. 120–21, for the difference between Green’s and Gaskell’s accounts.
    15 ‘A Disappearance’,
Household Words
, 3 (21 June 1851), pp. 305–6; ‘A Disappearance Cleared up’,
Household Words
, 4 (21 February 1852), pp. 513–14. Interestingly, the edition of ‘Disappearances’ which was published in Gaskell’s collection of stories,
Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1855), concludes with a reprint of the first ‘Chips’ article which confirms the departure of the young man on a vessel, but does not mention his death (p. 55). The article reappears in
The Grey Woman and Other Tales
(London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 280, which is reprinted in the Appendix below.
    16 ‘Character-Murder’,
Household Words
, 19 (8 January 1859), pp. 139–40. See also Sharps,
Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention
, pp. 121–2, for a discussion of the ‘Chips’ articles.
    17 See Gaskell’s letter to Charles Eliot Norton, dated 9 March 1859,
Letters
, no. 418, pp. 534–6.
    18 See Green,
Knutsford
, pp. 119–21, for further discussion of the real-life Edward Higgins, where he also locates the legend in Thomas De Quincey’s
Autobiographical Sketches
(1834–53), and refers the reader to Higgins’s signed confession in
Universal Museum and Complete Magazine
, 3 (7 November 1767), pp. 580, 605.
    19 Sharps,
Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention
, p. 187.
    20 Charles W. Upham,
Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusions in Salem, in
1692 (Boston: Carter, Hendee and Babcock, 1831), pp. 83–4.
    21 Ibid., pp. 126–9.
    22 See Uglow,
Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories
, p. 122.
    23 See Sharps,
Mrs. Gaskell’s Observation and Invention
, p. 268, who challenges the idea that the story is based upon any historical origins, as there is no evidence to support the attempted assassination theory.
    24 For an in-depth reading of the power of ancestral curses in Gothic fiction, see Robert Mighall,
A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 78–129.
    25 Gaskell made several trips to Heidelberg, the first one in 1841; see, for example,
Letters
, no. 15, pp. 40–45 and no. 485, pp. 647–50.
    26 ‘The law against witchcraft passed by Parliament in the year of Queen Elizabeth’s accession (1559 [actually 1558]) remained on our statute-book till 1736’ (A. W. Ward,
The Works of Mrs. Gaskell
, 8 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), vol. 7, p. xx).
    27 Actually, there are many ways in which ‘The Old Nurse’s Story’ can be seen as a ‘borrowing’ of
Wuthering Heights
, most notably in the scenes where the ghost of the little girl stands beseechingly at the window, trying to incite the real, live Rosamund out into the cold and snowy fells. Moreover, in an uncanny moment of her own literary doubling, Gaskell recounts a story in
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
that ‘made a deep impression on Charlotte’s mind’, but which eerily repeats the plot of her own short story, written five years before the biography. It tells of a Haworth woman who had been seduced by her brother-in-law,