Her  experience  of  school  life  was  very  different  from
Charlotte  Bronte's.  She  was  with  friends  of  her  own
family,  who  took  a  keen  interest  in  the  pupil  who
afterwards  brought  so  much  credit  to  her  old  school,
though,  unfortunately,  the  principal  of  the  school  was
dead    before    Mrs.    Gaskell    became    known    as    an


JOURNEY   TO   STRATFORD-ON-AVON      93

author — except  for  the  short  account  of  Clopton
House,  which  appeared,  in  1840,  in  WilHam  Howitt's
Visits  to  Remarkable  Places.
Several  of  Maria  Byerley's  sisters  were  living  when
Mary  Barton  was  published,  and  were  able  to  rejoice
in  the  success  of  their  former  pupil,  when  she  became
known  as  a  distinguished  writer.
Beyond  a  few  visits  to  her  father  in  Chelsea,
Elizabeth  Stevenson  had  not  been  far  from  Knutsford
before  she  was  fifteen  years  of  age.  Writing  of  this
journey  to  school  in  1825,  she  says  :  "  Things  are
ver}'  different  to  what  they  were  in  my  youth.  Then
we,  who  travelled,  travelled  in  coaches,  carrying  six
inside,  and  making  a  two-days'  journey  out  of  what
people  now  go  over  in  a  couple  of  hours  with  a  whizz
and  a  flash,  and  a  screaming  whistle  enough  to
deafen  one."

Evidently  she  travelled  alone  from  Knutsford  to
Stratford-on-Avon,  stopping  with  friends  of  her  family
in  Birmingham  for  one  night.  An  account  of  that
journey  and  the  night  amongst  strangers  is  related  in
one  of  her  ghost  stories,  where  she  tells  of  her  journey
to  school  at  Dunchurch,  by  stage-coach,  and  of  her
staying  at  Birmingham  with  a  Quaker  couple  for  one
night.
"  I  was  to  be  put  in  charge  of  the  guard  of  the  coach
as  far  as  Birmingham,  where  a  friend  of  my  father's
was  to  meet  me,  and  take  me  to  sleep  at  his  house.
