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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:36 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11698-0.txt b/11698-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1efa23 --- /dev/null +++ b/11698-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8278 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11698 *** + +_By the same Author:_ + +THE CREATORS +THE DIVINE FIRE +TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION +THE HELPMATE +KITTY TAILLEUR +MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON +ANN SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS +ARNOLD WATERLOW: A LIFE +UNCANNY STORIES +THE RECTOR OF WYCK +THE ALLINGHAMS +A CURE OF SOULS +FAR END +HISTORY OF ANTHONY WARING +TALES TOLD BY SIMPSON +ETC. + + + + + + +THE THREE BRONTËS + + +_by_ + +MAY SINCLAIR + + +1912 + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +My thanks are due, first and chiefly, to Mr. Clement K. Shorter who +placed all his copyright material at my disposal; and to Mr. G.M. +Williamson and Mr. Robert H. Dodd, of New York, for allowing me to draw +so largely from the Poems of Emily Brontë, published by Messrs. Dodd, +Mead, and Co. in 1902; also to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, the +publishers of the Complete Poems of Emily Brontë, edited by Mr. Shorter; +and to Mr. Alfred Sutro for permission to use his translation of _Wisdom +and Destiny_. Lastly, and somewhat late, to Mr. Arthur Symons for his +translation from St. John of the Cross. If I have borrowed from him more +than I had any right to without his leave, I hope he will forgive me. + +MAY SINCLAIR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +INTRODUCTION + +THE THREE BRONTËS + +APPENDIX I + +APPENDIX II + +INDEX + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a +short essay on "The Three Brontës" I agreed with some misgiving. + +Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in +any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and +protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with _another_ +Brontë book, seems not only a dangerous, but a futile and a fatuous +adventure. All I can say is that I did not mean to do it. I certainly +never meant to write so long a book. + +It grew, insidiously, out of the little one. Things happened. New +criticisms opened up old questions. When I came to look carefully into +Mr. Clement Shorter's collection of the _Complete Poems of Emily +Brontë_, I found a mass of material (its existence I, at any rate, had +not suspected) that could not be dealt with in the limits of the +original essay. + +The book is, and can only be, the slightest of all slight appreciations. +None the less it has been hard and terrible for me to write it. Not only +had I said nearly all that I had to say already, but I was depressed at +the very start by that conviction of the absurdity of trying to say +anything at all, after all that has been said, about Anne, or Emily, or +Charlotte Brontë. + +Anne's case, perhaps, was not so difficult. For obvious reasons, Anne +Brontë will always be comparatively virgin soil. But it was impossible +to write of Charlotte after Mrs. Gaskell; impossible to say more of +Emily than Madame Duclaux has said; impossible to add one single little +fact to the vast material, so patiently amassed, so admirably arranged +by Mr. Clement Shorter. And when it came to appreciation there were Mr. +Theodore Watts-Dunton, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Birrell, and +Mrs. Humphry Ward, lying along the ground. When it came to eulogy, after +Mr. Swinburne's _Note on Charlotte Brontë_, neither Charlotte nor Emily +have any need of praise. + +And on Emily Brontë, M. Maeterlinck has spoken the one essential, the +one perfect and final and sufficient word. I have "lifted" it +unblushingly; for no other word comes near to rendering the unique, the +haunting, the indestructible impression that she makes. + +So, because all the best things about the Brontës have been said +already, I have had to fall back on the humble day-labour of clearing +away some of the rubbish that has gathered round them. + +Round Charlotte it has gathered to such an extent that it is difficult +to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; +much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The +excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious +error. Mr. Swinburne's _Note_ immortalizes his. M. Héger was dug up +again the other day. + +It may be said that I have been calling up ghosts for the mere fun of +laying them; and there might be something in it, but that really these +ghosts still walk. At any rate many people believe in them, even at this +time of day. M. Dimnet believes firmly that poor Mrs. Robinson was in +love with Branwell Brontë. Some of us still think that Charlotte was in +love with M. Héger. They cannot give him up any more than M. Dimnet can +give up Mrs. Robinson. + +Such things would be utterly unimportant but that they tend to obscure +the essential quality and greatness of Charlotte Brontë's genius. +Because of them she has passed for a woman of one experience and of one +book. There is still room for a clean sweep of the rubbish that has been +shot here. + +In all this, controversy was unavoidable, much as I dislike its +ungracious and ungraceful air. If I have been inclined to undervalue +certain things--"the sojourn in Brussels", for instance--which others +have considered of the first importance, it is because I believe that it +is always the inner life that counts, and that with the Brontës it +supremely counted. + +If I have passed over the London period too lightly, it is because I +judge it extraneous and external. If I have tried, cruelly, to take from +Charlotte the little beige gown that she wore at Mr. Thackeray's +dinner-party, it is because her home-made garments seem to suit her +better. She is more herself in skirts that have brushed the moors and +kept some of the soil of Haworth in their hem. + +I may seem to have exaggerated her homesickness for Haworth. It may be +said that Haworth was by no means Charlotte's home as it was Emily's. I +am aware that there were moments--hours--when she longed to get away +from it. I have not forgotten how Mary Taylor found her in such an hour, +not long after her return from Brussels, when her very flesh shrank from +the thought of her youth gone and "nothing done"; nothing before her but +long, empty years in Haworth. The fact remains that she was never happy +away from it, and that in Haworth her genius most certainly found itself +at home. And this particular tone of misery and unrest disappeared from +the moment when her genius declared itself, so that I am inclined to see +in it a little personal dissatisfaction, if you will, but chiefly the +unspeakable restlessness and misery of power unrecognized and +suppressed. "Nothing done!" That was her reiterated cry. + +Again, if I have overlooked the complexities of Charlotte's character, +it is that the great lines that underlie it may be seen. In my heart I +agree with M. Dimnet that the Brontës were not simple. All the same, I +think that his admirable portrait of Charlotte is spoiled by his +attitude of pity for "_la pauvre fille_", as he persists in calling her. +I think he dwells a shade too much on her small asperities and +acidities, and on that "_ton de critique mesquine_", which he puts down +to her provincialism. No doubt there were moments of suffering and of +irritation, as well as moments of uncontrollable merriment, when +Charlotte lacked urbanity, but M. Dimnet has almost too keen an eye for +them. + +In making war on theories I cannot hope to escape a countercharge of +theorizing. Exception may be taken to my own suggestion as to the effect +of _Wuthering Heights_ on Charlotte Brontë's genius. If anybody likes to +fling it on the rubbish heap they may. I may have theorized a little too +much in laying stress on the supernatural element in _Wuthering +Heights_. It is because M. Dimnet has insisted too much on its +brutality. I may have exaggerated Emily Brontë's "mysticism". It is +because her "paganism" has been too much in evidence. It may be said +that I have no more authority for my belief that Emily Brontë was in +love with the Absolute than other people have for theirs, that +Charlotte was in love with M. Héger. + +Finally, much that I have said about Emily Brontë's hitherto unpublished +poems is pure theory. But it is theory, I think, that careful +examination of the poems will make good. I may have here and there given +as a "Gondal" poem what is not a "Gondal" poem at all. Still, I believe, +it will be admitted that it is in the cycle of these poems, and not +elsewhere, that we should look for the first germs of _Wuthering +Heights_. The evidence only demonstrates in detail--what has never been +seriously contested--that the genius of Emily Brontë found its sources +in itself. + +_10th October, 1911._ + + + + +The Three Brontës + + +It is impossible to write of the three Brontës and forget the place they +lived in, the black-grey, naked village, bristling like a rampart on the +clean edge of the moor; the street, dark and steep as a gully, climbing +the hill to the Parsonage at the top; the small oblong house, naked and +grey, hemmed in on two sides by the graveyard, its five windows flush +with the wall, staring at the graveyard where the tombstones, grey and +naked, are set so close that the grass hardly grows between. The church +itself is a burying ground; its walls are tombstones, and its floor +roofs the forgotten and the unforgotten dead. + +A low wall and a few feet of barren garden divide the Parsonage from the +graveyard, a few feet between the door of the house and the door in the +wall where its dead were carried through. But a path leads beyond the +graveyard to "a little and a lone green lane", Emily Brontë's lane that +leads to the open moors. + +It is the genius of the Brontës that made their place immortal; but it +is the soul of the place that made their genius what it is. You cannot +exaggerate its importance. They drank and were saturated with Haworth. +When they left it they hungered and thirsted for it; they sickened till +the hour of their return. They gave themselves to it with passion, and +their works ring with the shock and interchange of two immortalities. +Haworth is saturated with them. Their souls are henceforth no more to be +disentangled from its soul than their bodies from its earth. All their +poetry, their passion and their joy is there, in this place of their +tragedy, visible, palpable, narrow as the grave and boundless. + +In the year eighteen-twenty the Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife +Maria brought their six children, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick +Branwell, Emily, and Anne, from Thornton, where they were born, to +Haworth. Mr. Brontë was an Irishman, a village schoolmaster who won, +marvellously, a scholarship that admitted him to Cambridge and the +Church of England. Tales have been told of his fathers and his +forefathers, peasants and peasant farmers of Ballynaskeagh in County +Down. They seem to have been notorious for their energy, eccentricity, +imagination, and a certain tendency to turbulence and excess. Tales have +been told of Mr. Brontë himself, of his temper, his egotism, his +selfishness, his fits of morose or savage temper. The Brontës' +biographers, from Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux[A] to Mr. Birrell, +have all been hard on this poor and unhappy and innocent old man. It is +not easy to see him very clearly through the multitude of tales they +tell: how he cut up his wife's silk gown in a fit of passion; how he +fired off pistols in a series of fits of passion; how, in still gloomier +and more malignant fits, he used to go for long solitary walks. And when +you look into the matter you find that the silk gown was, after all, a +cotton one, and that he only cut the sleeves out, and _then_ walked into +Keighley and brought a silk gown back with him instead; that when he +was a young man at Drumballyroney he practised pistol firing, not as a +safety valve for temper but as a manly sport, and that as a manly sport +he kept it up. As for solitary walks, there is really no reason why a +father should not take them; and if Mr. Brontë had insisted on +accompanying Charlotte and Emily in their walks, his conduct would have +been censured just the same, and, I think, with considerably more +reason. As it happened, Mr. Brontë, rather more than most fathers, made +companions of his children when they were little. This is not quite the +same thing as making himself a companion for them, and the result was a +terrific outburst of infant precocity; but this hardly justifies Mrs. +Gaskell and Madame Duclaux. They seem to have thought that they were +somehow appeasing the outraged spirits of Emily and Charlotte by +blackening their father and their brother; whereas, if anything could +give pain to Charlotte and Emily and innocent Anne in heaven, it would +be the knowledge of what Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux have done for +them. + +[Footnote A: A. Mary F. Robinson.] + +There was injustice in all that zeal as well as indiscretion, for Mr. +Brontë had his good points as fathers go. Think what the fathers of the +Victorian era could be, and what its evangelical parsons often were; and +remember that Mr. Brontë was an evangelical parson, and the father of +Emily and Charlotte, not of a brood of gentle, immaculate Jane Austens, +and that he was confronted suddenly and without a moment's warning with +Charlotte's fame. Why, the average evangelical parson would have been +shocked into apoplexy at the idea of any child of his producing +_Wuthering Heights_ or _Jane Eyre_. Charlotte's fame would have looked +to him exceedingly like infamy. We know what Charles Kingsley, the least +evangelical of parsons, once thought of Charlotte. And we know what Mr. +Brontë thought of her. He was profoundly proud of his daughter's genius; +there is no record and no rumour of any criticism on his part, of any +remonstrance or amazement. He was loyal to Charlotte to the last days of +his life, when he gave her defence into Mrs. Gaskell's hands; for which +confidence Mrs. Gaskell repaid him shockingly. + +But he was the kind of figure that is irresistible to the caustic or +humorous biographer. There was something impotently fiery in him, as if +the genius of Charlotte and Emily had flicked him in irony as it passed +him by. He wound himself in yards and yards and yards of white cravat, +and he wrote a revolutionary poem called "Vision of Hell". It is easy to +make fun of his poems, but they were no worse, or very little worse, +than his son Branwell's, so that he may be pardoned if he thought +himself more important than his children. Many fathers of the Victorian +era did. + +And he _was_ important as a temporary vehicle of the wandering creative +impulse. It struggled and strove in him and passed from him, choked in +yards and yards of white cravat, to struggle and strive again in +Branwell and in Anne. As a rule the genius of the race is hostile to the +creative impulse, and the creative impulse is lucky if it can pierce +through to one member of a family. In the Brontës it emerges at five +different levels, rising from abortive struggle to supreme +achievement--from Mr. Brontë to his son Branwell, from Branwell to Anne, +from Anne to Charlotte, and from Charlotte to Emily. And Maria, who +died, was an infant prodigy. + +And Mr. Brontë is important because he was the tool used by their +destiny to keep Charlotte and Emily in Haworth. + +The tragedy we are too apt to call their destiny began with their +babyhood, when the mother and six children were brought to Haworth +Parsonage and the prospect of the tombstones. They had not been there +eighteen months before the mother sickened and died horribly of cancer. + +She had to be isolated as far as possible. The Parsonage house was not +large, and it was built with an extreme and straight simplicity; two +front rooms, not large, right and left of the narrow stone-flagged +passage, a bedroom above each, and between, squeezed into the small +spare space above the passage, a third room, no bigger than a closet and +without a fireplace. This third room is important in the story of the +Brontës, for, when their mother's illness declared itself, it was in +this incredibly small and insufferably unwholesome den that the five +little girls were packed, heaven knows how, and it was here that the +seeds of tuberculosis were sown in their fragile bodies. After their +mother's death the little fatal room was known as the children's study +(you can see, in a dreadful vision, the six pale little faces, pressed +together, looking out of the window on to the graves below). It was used +again as a night-nursery, and later still as the sleeping-place shared +by two, if not three, of the sisters, two of whom were tuberculous. + +The mother died and was buried in a vault under the floor of the church, +not far from the windows of her house. Her sister, Miss Branwell, came +up from Penzance to look after the children. You can see this small, +middle-aged, early Victorian spinster, exiled for ever from the sunshine +of the town she loved, dragging out her sad, fastidious life in a cold +and comparatively savage country that she unspeakably disliked. She took +possession of the room her sister died in (it was the most cheerful room +in the house), and lived in it. Her nieces had to sit there with her +for certain hours while she taught them sewing and all the early +Victorian virtues. Their father made himself responsible for the rest of +their education, which he conducted with considerable vigour and +originality. Maria, the eldest, was the child of promise. Long before +Maria was eleven he "conversed" with her on "the leading topics of the +day, with as much pleasure and freedom as with any grown-up person". + +For this man, so gloomy, we are told, and so morose, found pleasure in +taking his tiny children out on to the moors, where he entertained them +alternately with politics and tales of brutality and horror. At six +years old each little Brontë had its view of the political situation; +and it was not until a plague of measles and whooping-cough found out +their tender youth that their father realized how very young and small +and delicate they were, and how very little, after all, he understood +about a nursery. In a sudden frantic distrust of the climate of Haworth, +of Miss Branwell, and his own system, he made up his mind to send Maria +and Elizabeth and Charlotte and Emily to school. + +And there was only one school within his means, the Clergy Daughters' +School, established at Cowan Bridge in an unwholesome valley. It has +been immortalized in _Jane Eyre_, together with its founder and patron, +the Reverend Carus Wilson. There can be no doubt that the early +Victorian virtues, self-repression, humility, and patience under +affliction, were admirably taught at Cowan Bridge. And if the carnal +nature of the Clergy Daughters resisted the militant efforts of Mr. +Carus Wilson, it was ultimately subdued by low diet and primitive +drainage working together in an unwholesome valley. Mr. Carus Wilson, +indeed, was inspired by a sublime antagonism to the claims of the +perishable body; but he seems to have pushed his campaign against the +flesh a bit too far, and was surprised at his own success when, one +after another, the extremely perishable bodies of those children were +laid low by typhus. + +The fever did not touch the four little Brontës. They had another +destiny. Their seed of dissolution was sown in that small stifling room +at Haworth, and was reaped now at Cowan Bridge. First Maria, then +Elizabeth, sickened, and was sent home to die. Charlotte stayed on for a +while with Emily. She ran wild, and hung about the river, watching it, +and dabbling her feet and hands in the running water. Their doom waited +for Charlotte and for Emily. + +There is no record of Elizabeth except that, like Anne Brontë, she was +"gentle". But Maria lived in Charlotte's passionate memory, and will +live for ever as Helen Burns, the school-fellow of Jane Eyre. Of those +five infant prodigies, she was the most prodigious. She was the first of +the children to go down into the vault under Haworth Church; you see her +looking back on her sad way, a small, reluctant ghost, lovely, +infantile, and yet maternal. Under her name on the flat tombstone a +verse stands, premonitory, prophetic, calling to her kindred: "Be ye +also ready." + +Charlotte was nine years old when her sisters died. Tragedy tells at +nine years old. It lived all her life in her fine nerves, reinforced by +shock after shock of terror and of anguish. + +But for the next seven years, spent at the Parsonage without a break, +tragedy was quiescent. Day after day, year after year passed, and +nothing happened. And the children of the Parsonage, thrown on +themselves and on each other, were exuberantly happy. They had the +freedom of the moors, and of the worlds, as wild, as gorgeous, as +lonely, as immeasurable, which they themselves created. They found out +that they were not obliged to be the children of the Parsonage; they +could be, and they were, anything they chose, from the Duke of +Wellington down to citizens of Verdopolis. For a considerable number of +years they were the "Islanders". "It was in 1827" (Charlotte, at +thirteen, records the date with gravity--it was so important) "that our +plays were established: _Young Men_, June 1826; _Our Fellows_, July +1827; _The Islanders_, December 1827. These are our three great plays +that are not kept secret." + +But there were secret plays, Emily's and Charlotte's; and these you +gather to be the shy and solitary flights of Emily's and Charlotte's +genius. They seem to have required absolutely no impulsion from without. +The difficult thing for these small children was to stop writing. Their +fire consumed them, and left their bodies ashen white, fragile as ashes. +And yet they were not, they could not have been, the sedentary, +unwholesome little creatures they might seem to be. The girls were kept +hard at work with their thin arms, brushing carpets, dusting furniture, +and making beds. And for play they tramped the moors with their brother; +they breasted the keen and stormy weather; the sun, the moon, the stars, +and the winds knew them; and it is of these fierce, radiant, elemental +things that Charlotte and Emily wrote as no women before them had ever +written. Conceive the vitality and energy implied in such a life; and +think, if you can, of these two as puny, myopic victims of the lust of +literature. It was from the impressions they took in those seven years +that their immortality was made. + +And then, for a year and a half, Charlotte went to school again, that +school of Miss Wooler's at Roe Head, where Ellen Nussey found her, "a +silent, weeping, dark little figure in the large bay-window". She was +then sixteen. + +Two years later she went back to Miss Wooler's school as a teacher. + +In the register of the Clergy Daughters' School there are two immortal +entries: + +"Charlotte Brontë.... Left school, June 1st, 1825--Governess." + +"Emily Brontë.... Left, June 1st, 1825. Subsequent career--Governess." + +They did not question the arrangement. They were not aware of any other +destiny. They never doubted that the boy, Branwell, was the child of +promise, who was to have a glorious career. In order that he should have +it the sisters left Haworth again and again, forcing themselves to the +exile that destroyed them, and the work they hated. It was Charlotte and +Anne who showed themselves most courageous and determined in the +terrible adventure; Emily, who was courage and determination incarnate, +failed. Homesickness had become a disease with them, an obsession, +almost a madness. They longed with an immitigable longing for their +Parsonage-house, their graveyard, and their moors. Emily was consumed by +it; Anne languished; Charlotte was torn between it and her passion for +knowledge. + +She took Emily back with her to Roe Head as a pupil, and Emily nearly +died of it. She sent Emily home, and little Anne, the last victim, took +Emily's place. She and Charlotte went with the school when it was +removed to Dewsbury Moor. Then Emily, who had nearly died of Roe Head, +shamed by Charlotte's and Anne's example, went to Halifax as a teacher +in Miss Patchett's Academy for Young Ladies. She was at Halifax--Halifax +of all places--for six months, and nearly died of Halifax. And after +that Charlotte and Anne set out on their careers as nursery-governesses. + +It was all that they considered themselves fit for. Anne went to a Mrs. +Ingham at Blake Hall, where she was homesick and miserable. Charlotte +went to the Sidgwicks at Stonegappe near Skipton, where "one of the +pleasantest afternoons I spent--indeed, the only one at all +pleasant--was when Mr. Sidgwick walked out with his children, and I had +orders to follow a little way behind". You have an impression of years +of suffering endured at Stonegappe. As a matter of fact, Charlotte was +there hardly three months--May, June, July, eighteen-thirty-nine. + +And most of the time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at +Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the "Black Bull". The +"Black Bull" stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of +the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves. Branwell +was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that +gathered there. Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth. It had a +Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, with John Brown, the grave-digger, +for Worshipful Master. Branwell was at one and the same time secretary +to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was +not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad +portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally +fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_. + +One formidable letter (the third he sent) is headed in large letters: +"Sir, read what I write." It begins: "And would to Heaven you would +believe in me, for then you would attend to me and act upon it", and +ends: "You lost an able writer in James Hogg, and God grant you may get +one in Patrick Branwell Brontë." Another followed, headed: "Sir, read +now at last", and ending, "Condemn not unheard". In a final letter +Branwell inquires whether Mr. Blackwood thinks his magazine "so perfect +that no addition to its power would be either possible or desirable", +and whether it is pride that actuates him, or custom, or prejudice, and +conjures him: "Be a man, sir!" + +Nothing came of it. Mr. Blackwood refused to be a man. + +Yet Branwell had his chance. He went to London, but nothing came of it. +He went to Bradford and had a studio there, but nothing came of it. He +lived for a brief period in a small provincial Bohemia. It was his best +and happiest period, but nothing came of it beyond the letters and the +reams of verse he sent to Leyland the sculptor. There was something +brilliant and fantastic about the boy that fascinated Leyland. But a +studio costs money, and Branwell had to give his up and go back to +Haworth and the society of John Brown the stone-mason and grave-digger. +That John Brown was a decent fellow you gather from the fact that on a +journey to Liverpool he had charge of Branwell, when Branwell was at his +worst. They had affectionate names for each other. Branwell is the +Philosopher, John Brown is the Old Knave of Trumps. The whole trouble +with Branwell was that he could not resist the temptation of impressing +the grave-digger. He himself was impressed by the ironic union in the +Worshipful Master of conviviality and a sinister occupation. + +A letter of Branwell's (preserved by the grave-digger in a quaint +devotion to his friend's memory) has achieved an immortality denied to +his "Effusions". Nothing having come of the "Effusions", Branwell, to +his infinite credit, followed his sisters' example, and became tutor +with a Mr. Postlethwaite. The irony of his situation pleased him, and +he wrote to the Old Knave of Trumps thus: "I took a half-year's farewell +of old friend whisky at Kendal on the night after I left. There was a +party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel, and I joined them. We ordered in +supper and whisky-toddy as hot as hell! They thought I was a physician, +and put me in the chair. I gave several toasts that were washed down at +the same time till the room spun round and the candles danced in our +eyes.... I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a +glass, and a corkscrew beside me. Since then I have not tasted anything +stronger than milk-and-water, nor, I hope, shall, till I return at +midsummer; when we will see about it. I am getting as fat as Prince +William at Springhead, and as godly as his friend Parson Winterbotham. +My hand shakes no longer. I ride to the banker's at Ulverston with Mr. +Postlethwaite, and sit drinking tea, and talking scandal with old +ladies. As for the young ones! I have one sitting by me just +now--fair-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired, sweet eighteen--she little +thinks the devil is so near her!"--and a great deal more in the same +silly, post-Byronic strain. + +In his postscript Branwell says: "Of course you won't show this letter", +and of course John Brown showed it all round. It was far too good to be +kept to himself; John Brown's brother thought it so excellent that he +committed it to memory. This was hard on Branwell. The letter is too +fantastic to be used against him as evidence of his extreme depravity, +but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he +had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family. +Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity, +was bad for Branwell. + +He stayed with Mr. Postlethwaite for a month longer than Charlotte +stayed with the Sidgwicks. + +Then, for a whole year, Charlotte was at Haworth, doing housemaid's +work, and writing poems, and amusing herself at the expense of her +father's curates. She had begun to find out the extent to which she +could amuse herself. She also had had "her chance". She had refused two +offers of marriage, preferring the bondage and the exile that she knew. +Nothing more exhilarating than a proposal that you have rejected. Those +proposals did Charlotte good. But it was not marriage that she wanted. +She found it (for a year) happiness enough to be at Haworth, to watch +the long comedy of the curates as it unrolled itself before her. She saw +most things that summer (her twenty-fifth) with the ironic eyes of the +comic spirit, even Branwell. She wrote to Miss Nussey: "A distant +relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune +in the wild, wandering, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the +Leeds and Manchester Railroad." And she goes on to chaff Miss Nussey +about Celia Amelia, the curate. "I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with +eagerness to hear something about W. Weightman, whom she adores in her +heart, and whose image she cannot efface from her memory." + +Some of her critics, including Mrs. Oliphant (far less indulgent than +the poor curates who forgave her nobly), have grudged Charlotte her +amusement. There is nothing, from her fame downwards, that Mrs. Oliphant +did not grudge her. Mr. Birrell sternly disapproves; even Mr. Swinburne, +at the height of his panegyric, is put off. Perhaps Charlotte's humour +was not her most attractive quality; but nobody seems to have seen the +pathos and the bravery of it. Neither have they seen that Miss Nussey +was at the bottom of its worst development, the "curate-baiting". Miss +Nussey used to go and stay at Haworth for weeks at a time. Haworth was +not amusing, and Miss Nussey had to be amused. All this school-girlish +jesting, the perpetual and rather tiresome banter, was a playing down to +Miss Nussey. It was a kind of tender "baiting" of Miss Nussey, who had +tried on several occasions to do Charlotte good. And it was the natural, +healthy rebound of the little Irish _gamine_ that lived in Charlotte +Brontë, bursting with cleverness and devilry. I, for my part, am glad to +think that for one happy year she gave it full vent. + +She was only twenty-four. Even as late as the mid-Victorian era to be +twenty-four and unmarried was to be middle-aged. But (this cannot be too +much insisted on) Charlotte Brontë was the revolutionist who changed all +that. She changed it not only in her novels but in her person. Here +again she has been misrepresented. There are no words severe enough for +Mrs. Oliphant's horrible portrait of her as a plain-faced, lachrymose, +middle-aged spinster, dying, visibly, to be married, obsessed for ever +with that idea, for ever whining over the frustration of her sex. What +Mrs. Oliphant, "the married woman", resented in Charlotte Brontë, over +and above her fame, was Charlotte's unsanctioned knowledge of the +mysteries, her intrusion into the veiled places, her unbaring of the +virgin heart. That her genius was chiefly concerned in it does not seem +to have occurred to Mrs. Oliphant, any more than it occurred to her to +notice the impression that Charlotte Brontë made on her male +contemporaries. It is doubtful if one of them thought of her as Mrs. +Oliphant would have us think. They gave her the tender, deferent +affection they would have given to a charming child. Even the very +curates saw in her, to their amazement, the spirit of undying youth. +Small as a child, and fragile, with soft hair and flaming eyes, and +always the pathetic, appealing plainness of a plain child, with her +child's audacity and shyness, her sudden, absurd sallies and retreats, +she had a charm made the more piquant by her assumption of austerity. +George Henry Lewes was gross and flippant, and he could not see it; +Branwell's friend, Mr. Grundy, was Branwell's friend, and he missed it. +Mrs. Oliphant ranges herself with Mr. Grundy and George Henry Lewes. + +But Charlotte's fun was soon over, and she became a nursery-governess +again at Mrs. White's, of Rawdon. Anne was with Mrs. Robinson, at Thorp +Green. + +Emily was at Haworth, alone. + +That was in eighteen-forty-one. Years after their death a little black +box was found, containing four tiny scraps of paper, undiscovered by +Charlotte when she burnt every line left by Anne and Emily except their +poems. Two of these four papers were written by Emily, and two by Anne; +each sister keeping for the other a record of four years. They begin in +eighteen-forty-one. Emily was then twenty-four and Anne a year and a +half younger. Nothing can be more childlike, more naïve. Emily heads her +diary: + + A PAPER to be opened + when Anne is + 25 years old, + or my next birthday after + if + all be well. +Emily Jane Brontë. July the 30th, 1841. + +She says: "It is Friday evening, near nine o'clock--wild rainy weather. +I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our +desk-boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour--Aunt upstairs +in her room.... Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house. +Keeper is in the kitchen--Hero in his cage." + +Having accounted for Victoria and Adelaide, the tame geese, Keeper, the +dog, and Hero, the hawk, she notes the whereabouts of Charlotte, +Branwell, and Anne. And then (with gravity): + +"A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of +our own."... "This day four years I wonder whether we shall be dragging +on in our present condition or established to our hearts' content." + +Then Emily dreams her dream. + +"I guess that on the time appointed for the opening of this paper we, +_i.e._ Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own +sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just +gathered in for the midsummer holiday. Our debts will be paid off and we +shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, Aunt, and +Branwell, will either have been or be coming to visit us." + +And Anne writes with equal innocence (it is delicious, Anne's diary): +"Four years ago I was at school. Since then I have been a governess at +Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York +Minster."... "We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it, +and also got a hawk. Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three +tame ones, one of which has been killed." + +It is Emily who lets out the dreary secret of the dream--the debts which +could not be paid; probably Branwell's. + +But the "considerable amount of cash in hand" was to remain a dream. +Nothing came of Branwell's knight-errantry. He muddled the accounts of +the Leeds and Manchester Railroad and was sent home. It was not good for +Branwell to be a clerk at a lonely wayside station. His disaster, which +they much exaggerated, was a shock to the three sisters. They began to +have misgivings, premonitions of Branwell's destiny. + +And from Mrs. White's at Rawdon, Charlotte sends out cry after desolate +cry. Again we have an impression of an age of exile, but really the +exile did not last long, not much longer than Emily's imprisonment in +the Academy for Young Ladies, nothing like so long as Anne's miserable +term. + +The exile really began in 'forty-two, when Charlotte and Emily left +England for Brussels and Madame Héger's Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the +Rue d'Isabelle. It is supposed to have been the turning-point in +Charlotte's career. She was then twenty-six, Emily twenty-four. + +It is absurd and it is pathetic, but Charlotte's supreme ambition at +that time was to keep a school, a school of her own, like her friend +Miss Wooler. There was a great innocence and humility in Charlotte. She +was easily taken in by any of those veiled, inimical spectres of the +cross-roads that youth mistakes for destiny. She must have refused to +look too closely at the apparition; it was enough for her that she saw +in it the divine thing--liberty. Her genius was already struggling in +her. She had begun to feel under her shoulders the painful piercing of +her wings. Her friend, Mary Taylor, had written to her from Brussels +telling her of pictures and cathedrals. Charlotte tells how it woke her +up. "I hardly know what swelled in my breast as I read her letter: such +a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work; such a strong wish +for wings--wings such as wealth can furnish; such an urgent desire to +see, to know, to learn; something internal seemed to expand bodily for a +minute. I was tantalized by the consciousness of faculties unexercised." +But Charlotte's "wings" were not "such as wealth can furnish". They were +to droop, almost to die, in Brussels. + +Emily was calmer. Whether she mistook it for her destiny or not, she +seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at +the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the +"streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest +she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her +letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it +must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying passion for +knowledge and the spectacle of the world, with her psychological +interest in M. Héger and his wife, Charlotte hardly came out of it with +her soul alive. But Emily was not interested in M. Héger nor in his +wife, nor in his educational system. She thought his system was no good +and told him so. What she thought of his wife is not recorded. + +Then, in their first year of Brussels, their old aunt, Miss Branwell, +died. That was destiny, the destiny that was so kind to Emily. It sent +her and her sister back to Haworth and it kept her there. Poor Anne was +fairly launched on her career; she remained in her "situation", and +somebody had to look after Mr. Brontë and the house. Things were going +badly and sadly at the Parsonage. Branwell was there, drinking; and +Charlotte was even afraid that her father ... also sometimes ... +perhaps.... + +She left Emily to deal with them and went back to Brussels as a pupil +teacher, alone. She went in an agony of self-reproach, desiring more and +more knowledge, a perfect, inalienable, indestructible possession of +the German language, and wondering whether it were right to satisfy that +indomitable craving. By giving utterance to this self-reproach, so +passionate, so immense, so disproportioned to the crime, the innocent +Charlotte laid herself open to an unjust suspicion. Innocent and unaware +she went, and--it is her own word--she was "punished" for it. + +Nothing that she had yet known of homesickness could compare with that +last year of solitary and unmitigated exile. It is supposed, even by the +charitable, that whatever M. Héger did or did not do for Charlotte, he +did everything for her genius. As a matter of fact, it was at Brussels +that she suffered the supreme and ultimate abandonment. She no longer +felt the wild unknown thing stirring in her with wings. So little could +M. Héger do for it that it refused to inhabit the same house with him. +She records the result of that imprisonment a few weeks after her +release: "There are times now when it appears to me as if all my ideas +and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, are changed from +what they used to be; something in me, which used to be enthusiasm, is +tamed down and broken." + +At Brussels surely enlightenment must have come to her. She must have +seen, as Emily saw, that in going that way, she had mistaken and done +violence to her destiny. + +She went back to Haworth where it waited for her, where it had turned +even the tragedy of her family to account. Everything conspired to keep +her there. The school was given up. She tells why. "It is on Papa's +account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell +you that he is losing his sight. I have felt for some months that I +ought not to be away from him; and I feel now that it would be too +selfish to leave (at least as long as Branwell and Anne are absent) to +pursue selfish interests of my own. With the help of God I will try to +deny myself in this matter, and to wait." + +And with the help of God she waited. + +There are three significant entries in Emily's sealed paper for +eighteen-forty-five. "Now I don't desire a school at all, and none of us +have any great longing for it." "I am quite contented for myself ... +seldom or never troubled with nothing to do and merely desiring that +everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and +then we should have a very tolerable world of it." "I have plenty of +work on hand, and writing...." This, embedded among details of an +incomparable innocence: "We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost +the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless +dead." + +And Anne, as naïve as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: "Emily +is upstairs ironing. I am sitting in the dining-room in the +rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender. Papa is in the +parlour. Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen. Keeper and +Flossy are, I do not know where. Little Dick is hopping in his cage." +And then, "Emily ... is writing some poetry.... I wonder what it is +about?" + +That is the only clue to the secret that is given. These childlike +diaries are full of the "Gondal Chronicles",[A] an interminable fantasy +in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne. They flourished the +"Gondal Chronicles" in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying +to see which could keep it up the longer. Under it all there was a +mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, "Best plays were +secret plays," and the sisters kept their best hidden. And then suddenly +the "Gondal Chronicles" were dropped, the mystery broke down. All three +of them had been writing poems; they had been writing poems for years. +Some of Emily's dated from her first exile at Roe Head. Most of Anne's +sad songs were sung in her house of bondage. From Charlotte, in her +Brussels period, not a line. + +[Footnote A: See _supra_, pp. 193 to 209.] + +But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her +free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were +excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The +Professor_, _Jane Eyre_. In the same term that found her also, poor +child, free, and at Haworth, Anne wrote _Agnes Grey_ and _The Tenant of +Wildfell Hall_. + +And Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_. + +They had found their destiny--at Haworth. + + * * * * * + +Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that +came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters. It has been +said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that +poems did not pay. It would be truer to say that they wrote them because +it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and +that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return. + +Before they knew where they were, Charlotte found herself involved in +what she thought was a businesslike and masculine correspondence with +publishing firms. + +The _Poems_ by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and +nothing happened. _The Professor_ travelled among publishers, and +nothing happened. Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came +_Jane Eyre_, and Charlotte was famous. + +But not Emily. _Wuthering Heights_ appeared also, and nothing happened. +It was bound in the same volume with Anne's humble tale. Its lightning +should have scorched and consumed _Agnes Grey_, but nothing happened. +Ellis and Acton Bell remained equals in obscurity, recognized only by +their association with the tremendous Currer. When it came to publishing +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, and association became confusion, +Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity. +Emily stayed at Haworth, superbly indifferent to the proceedings. She +was unseen, undreamed of, unrealized, and in all her life she made no +sign. + +But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the +seven miles to Keighley on a Friday evening in a thunderstorm, and took +the night train up. On the Saturday morning they appeared in the office +at Cornhill to the amazement of Mr. George Smith and Mr. Williams. With +childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in +Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown. When +entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr. Croly +preach. They did not hear him; they only heard _The Barber of Seville_ +at Covent Garden. They tried, with a delicious solemnity, to give the +whole thing an air of business, but it was really a breathless, +infantile escapade of three days. Three days out of four years. + + * * * * * + +And in those four years poor Branwell's destiny found him also. After +many minor falls and penitences and relapses, he seemed at length to +have settled down. He had been tutor for two and a half years with the +Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess. He +was happy at first; an ominous happiness. Then Anne began to be aware of +something. + +Mr. Birrell has said rather unkindly that he has no use for this young +man. Nobody had any use for him. Not the editors to whom he used to +write so hysterically. Not the Leeds and Manchester Railroad Company. +And certainly not Mrs. Robinson, the lady for whom he conceived that +insane and unlawful passion which has been made to loom so large in the +lives of the Brontës. After all the agony and indignation that has +gathered round this episode, it is clear enough now, down to the last +sordid details. The feverish, degenerate, utterly irresponsible Branwell +not only declared his passion, but persuaded himself, against the +evidence of his senses, that it was returned. The lady (whom he must +have frightened horribly) told her husband, who instantly dismissed +Branwell. + +Branwell never got over it. + +He was destined to die young, and, no doubt, if there had been no Mrs. +Robinson, some other passion would have killed him. Still, it may be +said with very little exaggeration that he died of it. He had not +hitherto shown any signs of tuberculosis. It may be questioned whether +without this predisposing cause he would have developed it. He had had +his chance to survive. _He_ had never been packed, like his sisters, +first one of five, then one of three, into a closet not big enough for +one. But he drank harder after the Robinson affair than he had ever +drunk before, and he added opium to drink. Drink and opium gave +frightful intensity to the hallucination of which, in a sense, he died. + +It took him more than three years, from July, eighteen-forty-five, the +date of his dismissal, to September, eighteen-forty-eight, the date of +his death. + +The Incumbent of Haworth has been much blamed for his son's +shortcomings. He has been charged with first spoiling the boy, and then +neglecting him. In reality his only error (a most unusual one in an +early Victorian father) was that he believed in his son's genius. When +London and the Royal Academy proved beyond him he had him taught at +Bradford. He gave him a studio there. He had already given him an +education that at least enabled him to obtain tutorships, if not to keep +them. The Parsonage must have been a terrible place for Branwell, but it +was not in the Vicar's power to make it more attractive than the Bull +Inn. Branwell was not a poet like his sisters, and moors meant nothing +to him. To be sure, when he went into Wales and saw Penmaenmawr, he +wrote a poem about it. But the poem is not really about Penmaenmawr. It +is all about Branwell; Penmaenmawr _is_ Branwell, a symbol of his +colossal personality and of his fate. For Branwell was a monstrous +egoist. He was not interested in his sisters or in his friends, or +really in Mrs. Robinson. He was interested only in himself. What could a +poor vicar do with a son like that? There was nothing solid in Branwell +that you could take hold of and chastise. There was nothing you could +appeal to. His affection for his family was three-fourths +sentimentalism. Still, what the Vicar could do he did do. When Branwell +was mad with drink and opium he never left him. There is no story more +grim and at the same time more poignant and pathetic than that which +Mrs. Gaskell tells of his devotion to his son in this time of the boy's +ruin. Branwell slept in his father's room. He would doze all day, and +rage all night, threatening his father's life. In the morning he would +go to his sisters and say: "The poor old man and I have had a terrible +night of it. He does his best, the poor old man, but it is all over with +me." He died in his father's arms while Emily and little Anne looked on. + +They say that he struggled to his feet and died standing, to prove the +strength of his will; but some biographer has robbed him of this poor +splendour. It was enough for his sisters--and it should be enough for +anybody--that his madness left him with the onset of his illness, and +that he went from them penitent and tender, purified by the mystery and +miracle of death. + +That was on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of September. From that day Emily +sickened. She caught cold at Branwell's funeral. On September the +thirtieth she was in church listening to his funeral sermon. After that, +she never crossed the threshold of the Parsonage till in December her +dead body was carried over it, to lie beside her brother under the +church floor. + +In October, a week or two after Branwell's death, Charlotte wrote: +"Emily has a cold and cough at present." "Emily's cold and cough are +very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch +a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly." In +November: "I told you Emily was ill, in my last letter. She has not +rallied yet. She is very ill.... I think Emily seems the nearest thing +to my heart in all the world." And in December: "Emily suffers no more +from pain or weakness now ... there is no Emily in time, or on earth +now.... We are very calm at present. Why should we be otherwise? The +anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of +death is gone by: the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No +need to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not +feel them. She died in a time of promise.... But it is God's will, and +the place where she has gone is better than that which she has left." + +It could have been hardly daylight on the moors the morning when +Charlotte went out to find that last solitary sprig of heather which she +laid on Emily's pillow for Emily to see when she awoke. Emily's eyes +were so drowsed with death that she could not see it. And yet it could +not have been many hours later when a fire was lit in her bedroom, and +she rose and dressed herself. Madame Duclaux[A] tells how she sat before +the fire, combing her long, dark hair, and how the comb dropped from her +weak fingers, and fell under the grate. And how she sat there in her +mortal apathy; and how, when the servant came to her, she said dreamily: +"Martha, my comb's down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up." + +[Footnote A: "Emily Brontë": _Eminent Women Series_.] + +She dragged herself down to the sitting-room, and died there, about two +o'clock. She must have had some horror of dying in that room of death +overhead; for, at noon, when the last pains seized her, she refused to +be taken back to it. Unterrified, indomitable, driven by her immortal +passion for life, she fought terribly. Death took her as she tried to +rise from the sofa and break from her sisters' arms that would have laid +her there. Profoundly, piteously alienated, she must have felt that Anne +and Charlotte were in league with death; that they fought with her and +bound her down; and that in her escape from them she conquered. + +Another month and Anne sickened. As Emily died of Branwell's death, so +Emily's death hastened Anne's. Charlotte wrote in the middle of +January: "I can scarcely say that Anne is worse, nor can I say she is +better.... The days pass in a slow, dull march: the nights are the test; +the sudden wakings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one +lies in her grave, and another, not at my side, but in a separate and +sick bed." And again in March: "Anne's decline is gradual and +fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful." And yet again in April: +"If there were no hope beyond this world ... Emily's fate, and that +which threatens Anne, would be heartbreaking. I cannot forget Emily's +death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently +recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn, +conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life." + +Mrs. Oliphant has censured Emily Brontë for the manner of her dying. She +might as well have censured Anne for drawing out the agony. For Anne was +gentle to the end, utterly submissive. She gave death no trouble. She +went, with a last hope, to Scarborough, and died there at the end of +May. She was buried at Scarborough, where she lies alone. It is not easy +to believe that she had no "preference for place", but there is no doubt +that even to that choice of her last resting-place she would have +submitted--gently. + +"I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright, +waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me +with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange +ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. +The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so +long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all +silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were +laid--in what narrow, dark dwellings--never more to reappear on +earth.... I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their +sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal +affliction.... To sit in a lonely room, the clock ticking loud through a +still house...." Charlotte could see nothing else before her. + +It was July. She had come home after a visit to Miss Nussey. + +In that month she wrote that chapter of _Shirley_ which is headed "The +Valley of the Shadow". The book (begun more than eighteen months before) +fairly quivers with the shock that cut it in two. + +It was finished somewhere in September of that year of Anne's death. +Charlotte went up to London. She saw Thackeray. She learned to accept +the fact of her celebrity. + +Somehow the years passed, the years of Charlotte's continuous celebrity, +and of those literary letters that take so disproportionate a part in +her correspondence that she seems at last to have forgotten; she seems +to belong to the world rather than to Haworth. And the world seems full +of Charlotte; the world that had no place for Emily. And yet _Wuthering +Heights_ had followed _Shirley_. It had been republished with +Charlotte's introduction, her vindication of Emily. It brought more fame +for Charlotte, but none--yet--for Emily. + +Two years later came _Villette_. Charlotte went up to London a second +time and saw Thackeray again. And there were more letters, the admirable +but slightly self-conscious letters of the literary woman, artificially +assured. They might deceive you, only the other letters, the letters to +Ellen Nussey go on; they come palpitating with the life of Charlotte +Brontë's soul that had in it nothing of the literary taint. You see in +them how, body and soul, Haworth claims her and holds her, and will not +let her go. + +Nor does she desire now to be let go. Her life at Haworth is part of +Emily's life; it partakes of the immortality of the unforgotten dead. +London and Thackeray, the Smiths, Mrs. Gaskell, and Miss Martineau, Sir +John and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, her celebrity and the little train of +cheerful, unfamiliar circumstances, all these things sink into +insignificance beside it. They are all extraneous somehow, and out of +keeping. Nothing that her biographers have done (when they have done +their worst) can destroy or even diminish the effect her life gives of +unity, of fitness, of profound and tragic harmony. It was Mrs. Gaskell's +sense of this effect that made her work a masterpiece. + +And in her marriage, at Haworth, to her father's curate, Arthur +Nicholls, the marriage that cut short her life and made an end of her +celebrity, Charlotte Brontë followed before all things her instinct for +fitness, for unity, for harmony. It was exquisitely in keeping. It did +no violence to her memories, her simplicities and sanctities. It found +her in the apathy of exhaustion, and it was yet one with all that was +passionate in her and undying. She went to it one morning in May, all +white and drooping, in her modest gown and that poor little bridal +bonnet with its wreath of snowdrops, symbolic of all the timidities, the +reluctances, the cold austerities of spring roused in the lap of winter, +and yet she found in it the secret fire of youth. She went to it afraid; +and in her third month of marriage she still gives a cry wrung from the +memory of her fear. "Indeed, indeed, Nell, it is a solemn and strange +and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife." + +And yet for all that, after London, after fame and friendships in which +her dead had no share, her marriage was not the great departure; it was +the great return. It was the outcome of all that had gone before it; the +fruit of painful life, which is recognition, acceptance, the final trust +in destiny. There were to be no more false starts, no more veiled ghosts +of the cross-roads, pointing the disastrous way. + +And in its abrupt and pitiful end her life rang true; it sustained the +tragic harmony. It was the fulfilment of secret prophecies, forebodings, +premonitions, of her reiterated "It was not to be." You may say that in +the end life cheated and betrayed her. + +And inevitably; for she had loved life, not as Emily loved it, like an +equal, with power over it and pride and an unearthly understanding, +virgin and unafraid. There was something slightly subservient, +consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it +secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity +and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would +propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring forth life. + +When the end came she could not realize it. For the first time she was +incredulous of disaster. She heard, out of her last stupor, her husband +praying that God would spare her, and she whispered, "Oh, I am not going +to die, am I? He will not separate us; we have been so happy." + +You can see her youth rising up beside that death-bed and answering, +"That is why." + +And yet, could even Charlotte's youth have been so sure as to the +cheating and betrayal? That happiness of hers was cut short in the +moment of its perfection. She was not to suffer any disenchantment or +decline; her love was not to know any cold of fear or her genius any +fever of frustration. She was saved the struggle we can see before her. +Arthur Nicholls was passionately fond of Charlotte. But he was hostile +to Charlotte's genius and to Charlotte's fame. A plain, practical, +robust man, inimical to any dream. He could be adorably kind to a sick, +submissive Charlotte. Would he have been so tender to a Charlotte in +revolt? She was spared the torture of the choice between Arthur Nicholls +and her genius. We know how she would have chosen. It is well for her, +and it is all one to literature, that she died, not "in a time of +promise", but in the moment of fulfilment. + + * * * * * + +No. Of these tragic Brontës the most tragic, the most pitiful, the most +mercilessly abused by destiny, was Anne. An interminable, monstrous +exile is the impression we get of Anne's life in the years of her +girlhood. There is no actual record of them. Nobody kept Anne's letters. +We never hear her sad voice raised in self-pity or revolt. It is +doubtful if she ever raised it. She waited in silence and resignation, +and then told her own story in _Agnes Grey_. But her figure remains dim +in her own story and in the classic "Lives". We only know that she was +the youngest, and that, unlike her sisters, she was pretty. She had +thick brown curling hair, and violet-blue eyes, and delicate dark +eyebrows, and a skin rose and white for her sisters' sallow, that must +have given some ominous hint of fever. This delicate thing was broken on +the wheel of life. They say of Anne perpetually that she was "gentle". +In Charlotte's sketch of her she holds her pretty head high, her eyes +gaze straight forward, and you wonder whether, before the breaking +point, she was always as gentle as they say. But you never see her in +any moment of revolt. Her simple poems, at their bitterest, express no +more than a frail agony, an innocent dismay. That little raising of the +head in conscious rectitude is all that breaks the long plaint of _Agnes +Grey_. + +There is no piety in that plaint. It is purely pagan; the cry of youth +cheated of its desire. Life brought her no good gifts beyond the slender +ineffectual beauty that left her undesired. Her tremulous, expectant +womanhood was cheated. She never saw so much as the flying veil of joy, +or even of such pale, uninspired happiness as she dreamed in _Agnes +Grey_. She was cheated of her innocent dream. + +And by an awful irony her religion failed her. She knew its bitterness, +its terrors, its exactions. She never knew its ecstasies, its flaming +mysteries, nor, even at her very last, its consolations. Her tender +conscience drew an unspeakable torment from the spectacle of her +brother's degradation. + +For it was on Anne, who had no genius to sustain her, that poor +Branwell, with the burden of his destiny, weighed most hard. It was Anne +at Thorp Green who had the first terrible misgivings, the intolerable +premonitions. + +That wretched story is always cropping up again. The lady whom Mrs. +Gaskell, with a murderous selection of adjectives, called "that mature +and wicked woman", has been cleared as far as evidence and common sense +could clear her. But the slander is perpetually revived. It has always +proved too much for the Brontë biographers. Madame Duclaux published it +again twenty years after, in spite of the evidence and in spite of Mrs. +Gaskell's retractation. You would have thought that Branwell might have +been allowed to rest in the grave he dug for himself so well. But no, +they will not let him rest. Branwell drank, and he ate opium; and, as if +drink and opium and erotic madness were not enough, they must credit +him with an open breach of the seventh commandment as well. M. Dimnet, +the most able of recent critics of the Brontës, thinks and maintains +against all evidence that there was more in it than Branwell's madness. +He will not give up the sordid tragedy _à trois_. He thinks he knows +what Anne thought of Branwell's behaviour, and what awful secret she was +hinting at, and what she told her sisters when she came back to Haworth. +He argues that Anne Brontë saw and heard things, and that her testimony +is not to be set aside. + +What did Anne Brontë see and hear? She saw her brother consumed by an +illegitimate passion; a passion utterly hopeless, given the nature of +the lady. The lady had been kind to Anne, to Branwell she had been +angelically kind. Anne saw that his behaviour was an atrocious return +for her kindness. Further than that the lady hardly counted in Anne's +vision. Her interest was centred on her brother. She saw him taking +first to drink and then to opium. She saw that he was going mad, and he +did go mad. One of the most familiar symptoms of morphia mania is a +tendency to erotic hallucinations of the precise kind that Branwell +suffered from. Anne was unable to distinguish between such a +hallucination and depravity. But there is not a shadow of evidence that +she thought what M. Dimnet thinks, or that if she had thought it she +made Charlotte and Emily think it too. Branwell's state was quite enough +in itself to break their hearts. His letters to Leyland, to John Brown, +the sexton, to Francis Grundy, record with frightful vividness every +phase of his obsession. + +It is inconceivable that such letters should have been kept, still more +inconceivable that they should have been published. It is inconceivable +that Mrs. Gaskell should have dragged the pitiful and shameful figure +into the light. Nobody can save poor Branwell now from the dreadful +immortality thrust on him by his enemies and friends with equal zeal. +All that is left to us is a merciful understanding of his case. +Branwell's case, once for all, was purely pathological. There was +nothing great about him, not even his passion for Mrs. Robinson. +Properly speaking, it was not a passion at all, it was a disease. +Branwell was a degenerate, as incapable of passion as he was of poetry. +His sisters, Anne and Charlotte, talked with an amazing innocence about +Branwell's vices. Simple and beautiful souls, they never for a moment +suspected that his worst vice was sentimentalism. In the beginning, +before it wrecked him, nobody enjoyed his own emotions more than +Branwell. At his worst he wallowed voluptuously in the torments of +frustration. At the end, what with drink and what with opium, he was +undoubtedly insane. His letters are priceless pathological documents. +They reveal all the workings of his peculiar mania. He thinks everybody +is plotting to keep him from Mrs. Robinson. Faced at every turn with the +evidence of this lady's complete indifference, he gives it all a lunatic +twist to prove the contrary. He takes the strangest people into his +confidence, John Brown, the sexton, and the Robinsons' coachman. Queer +flames of lucidity dart here and there through this madness: "The +probability of her becoming free to give me herself and estate ever rose +to drive away the prospect of her decline under her present grief." "I +had reason to hope that ere very long I should be the husband of a lady +whom I loved best in the world, and with whom, in more than competence, +I might live at leisure to try to make myself a name in the world of +posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless +botherments, which, like mosquitoes, sting us in the world of work-day +toil. That hope and herself are gone--she to wither into patiently +pining decline--_it_ to make room for drudgery." It is all sordid as +well as terrible. We have no right to know these things. Mrs. Oliphant +is almost justified in her protest against Charlotte as the first to +betray her brother. + +But did Charlotte betray Branwell? Not in her letters. She never +imagined--how could she?--that those letters would be published. Not in +her novels. Her novels give no portrait of Branwell and no hint that +could be easily understood. It is in her prefaces to her sisters' novels +that he appears, darkly. Charlotte, outraged by the infamous article in +the _Quarterly_, was determined that what had been said of her should +never be said of Anne and Emily. She felt that their works offered +irresistible provocation to the scandalous reviewer. She thought it +necessary to explain how they came by their knowledge of evil. + +This vindication of her sisters is certainly an indictment of her +brother to anybody who knew enough to read between the lines. Charlotte +may have innocently supposed that nobody knew or ever would know enough. +Unfortunately, Mrs. Gaskell knew; and when it came to vindicating +Charlotte, she considered herself justified in exposing Charlotte's +brother because Charlotte herself had shown her the way. + +But Charlotte might have spared her pains. Branwell does not account for +Heathcliff any more than he accounts for Rochester. He does not even +account for Huntingdon in poor Anne's novel. He accounts only for +himself. He is important chiefly in relation to the youngest of the +Brontës. Oddly enough, this boy, who was once thought greater than his +sister Emily, was curiously akin to the weak and ineffectual Anne. He +shows the weird flickering of the flame that pulsed so feebly and +intermittently in her. He had Anne's unhappy way with destiny, her knack +of missing things. She had a touch of his morbidity. He was given to +silences which in anybody but Anne would have been called morose. It was +her fate to be associated with him in the hour and in the scene of his +disgrace. And he was offered up unwittingly by Charlotte as a sacrifice +to Anne's virtue. + + * * * * * + +Like Branwell, Anne had no genius. She shows for ever gentle, and, in +spite of an unconquerable courage, conquered. And yet there was more in +her than gentleness. There was, in this smallest and least considerable +of the Brontës, an immense, a terrifying audacity. Charlotte was bold, +and Emily was bolder; but this audacity of Anne's was greater than +Charlotte's boldness or than Emily's, because it was willed, it was +deliberate, open-eyed; it had none of the superb unconsciousness of +genius. Anne took her courage in both hands when she sat down to write +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. There are scenes, there are situations, +in Anne's amazing novel, which for sheer audacity stand alone in +mid-Victorian literature, and which would hold their own in the +literature of revolt that followed. It cannot be said that these scenes +and situations are tackled with a master-hand. But there is a certain +grasp in Anne's treatment, and an astonishing lucidity. Her knowledge of +the seamy side of life was not exhaustive. But her diagnosis of certain +states, her realization of certain motives, suggests Balzac rather than +any of the Brontës. Thackeray, with the fear of Mrs. Grundy before his +eyes, would have shrunk from recording Mrs. Huntingdon's ultimatum to +her husband. The slamming of that bedroom door fairly resounds through +the long emptiness of Anne's novel. But that door is the _crux_ of the +situation, and if Anne was not a genius she was too much of an artist to +sacrifice her _crux_. + +And not only was Anne revolutionary in her handling of moral situations, +she was an insurgent in religious thought. Not to believe in the dogma +of eternal punishment was, in mid-Victorian times and evangelical +circles, to be almost an atheist. When, somewhere in the late +'seventies, Dean Farrar published his _Eternal Hope_, that book fell +like a bomb into the ranks of the orthodox. But long before Dean +Farrar's book Anne Brontë had thrown her bomb. There are two pages in +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ that anticipate and sum up his now +innocent arguments. Anne fairly let herself go here. And though in her +"Word to the Elect" (who "may rejoice to think themselves secure") she +declares that + + None shall sink to everlasting woe + Who have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven, + +she presently relents, and tacks on a poem in a lighter measure, +expressing her hope + + That soon the wicked shall at last + Be fitted for the skies; + And when their dreadful doom is past + To light and life arise. + +It is said (Charlotte said it) that Anne suffered from religious +melancholy of a peculiarly dark and Calvinistic type. I very much +suspect that Anne's melancholy, like Branwell's passion, was +pathological, and that what her soul suffered from was religious doubt. +She could not reach that height where Emily moved serenely; she could +not see that + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain. + +There was a time when her tremulous, clinging faith was broken by +contact with Emily's contempt for creeds. When Anne was at Haworth she +and Emily were inseparable. They tramped the moors together. With their +arms round each other's shoulders, they paced up and down the parlour of +the Parsonage. They showed the mysterious attraction and affinity of +opposites. Anne must have been fascinated, and at the same time +appalled, by the radiant, revealing, annihilating sweep of Emily's +thought. She was not indifferent to creeds. But you can see her fearful +and reluctant youth yielding at last to Emily's thought, until she +caught a glimpse of the "repose" beyond the clash of "conquered good and +conquering ill". You can see how the doctrine of eternal punishment went +by the board; how Anne, who had gone through agonies of orthodox fear on +account of Branwell, must have adjusted things somehow, and arrived at +peace. Trust in "the merits of the Redeemer" is, after all, trust in the +Immensity beyond Redeemer and redeemed. Of this trust she sang in a +voice, like her material voice, fragile, but sweet and true. She sang +naïvely of the "Captive Dove" that makes unheard its "joyless moan", of +"the heart that Nature formed to love", pining, "neglected and alone". +She sang of the "Narrow Way", "Be it," she sings, "thy constant aim + + "To labour and to love, + To pardon and endure, + To lift thy heart to God above, + And keep thy conscience pure." + +She hears the wind in an alien wood and cries for the Parsonage garden, +and for the "barren hills": + + Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees + Can yield an answering swell, + But where a wilderness of heath + Returns the sound as well. + + For yonder garden, fair and wide, + With groves of evergreen, + Long winding walks, and borders trim + And velvet lawns between. + + Restore to me that little spot, + With grey hills compassed round, + Where knotted grass neglected lies, + And weeds usurp the ground. + +For she, too, loved the moors; and through her love for them she wrote +two perfect lines when she called on Memory to + + Forever hang thy dreamy spell + Round mountain star and heather-bell. + +The critics, the theorists, the tale-mongers, have left Anne quiet in +that grave on the sea-coast, where she lies apart. Her gentle +insignificance served her well. + + * * * * * + +But no woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more +lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty +of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called +for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with +challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a +reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public +with its "right to know". Mrs. Gaskell with all her indiscretions had +not given it enough. The great classic _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ was, +after all, incomplete. Until something more was known about her, +Charlotte herself was incomplete. It was nothing that Mrs. Gaskell's +work was the finest, tenderest portrait of a woman that it was ever +given to a woman to achieve; nothing that she was not only recklessly +and superbly loyal to Charlotte, but that in her very indiscretions she +was, as far as Charlotte was concerned, incorruptibly and profoundly +true. + +Since Mrs. Gaskell's time, other hands have been at work on Charlotte, +improving Mrs. Gaskell's masterpiece. A hundred little touches have been +added to it. First, it was supposed to be too tragic, too deliberately +and impossibly sombre (that sad book of which Charlotte's friend, Mary +Taylor, said that it was "not so gloomy as the truth"). So first came +Sir Wemyss Reid, conscientiously working up the high lights till he got +the values all wrong. "If the truth must be told," he says, "the life of +the author of _Jane Eyre_ was by no means so joyless as the world now +believes it to have been." And he sets out to give us the truth. But all +that he does to lighten the gloom is to tell a pleasant story of how +"one bright June morning in 1833, a handsome carriage and pair is +standing opposite the 'Devonshire Arms' at Bolton Bridge". In the +handsome carriage is a young girl, Ellen Nussey, waiting for Charlotte +Brontë and her brother and sisters to go with her for a picnic to Bolton +Abbey. + +"Presently," says Sir Wemyss Reid, "on the steep road which stretches +across the moors to Keighley, the sound of wheels is heard, mingled with +the merry speech and merrier laughter of fresh young voices. Shall we go +forward unseen," he asks, "and study the approaching travellers whilst +they are still upon the road? Their conveyance is no handsome carriage, +but a rickety dog-cart, unmistakably betraying its neighbourship to the +carts and ploughs of some rural farmyard. The horse, freshly taken from +the fields, is driven by a youth who, in spite of his countrified dress, +is no mere bumpkin. His shock of red hair hangs down in somewhat ragged +locks behind his ears, for Branwell Brontë esteems himself a genius and +a poet, and, following the fashion of the times, has that abhorrence of +the barber's shears which genius is supposed to affect. But the lad's +face is a handsome and striking one, full of Celtic fire and humour, +untouched by the slightest shade of care, hopeful, promising, even +brilliant. How gaily he jokes with his three sisters; with what +inexhaustible volubility he pours out quotations from his favourite +poets, applying them to the lovely scenes around him; and with what a +mischievous delight in his superior nerve and mettle, he attempts the +feats of charioteering, which fill the heart of the youngest of the +party with sudden terrors! Beside him, in a dress of marvellous +plainness, and ugliness, stamped with the brand "home-made" in +characters which none can mistake, is the eldest of the sisters. +Charlotte is talking too; there are bright smiles upon her face; she is +enjoying everything around her, the splendid morning, the charms of +leafy trees and budding roses, and the ever musical stream; most of all, +perhaps, the charm of her brother's society, and the expectation of that +coming meeting with her friends, which is so near at hand. Behind sits a +pretty little girl, with fine complexion and delicate regular features, +whom the stranger would pick out as the beauty of the company, and a +tall, rather angular figure, clad in a dress exactly resembling +Charlotte's. Emily Brontë does not talk so much as the rest of the +party, but her wonderful eyes, brilliant and unfathomable as the pool at +the foot of a waterfall, but radiant also with a wealth of tenderness +and warmth, show how her soul is expanding under the influences of the +scene; how quick she is to note the least prominent of the beauties +around her, how intense is her enjoyment of the songs of the birds, the +brilliancy of the sunshine, the rich scent of the flower-bespangled +hedgerows. If she does not, like Charlotte and Anne, meet her brother's +ceaseless flood of sparkling words with opposing currents of speech, she +utters a strange, deep guttural sound which those who know her best +interpret as the language of a joy too deep for articulate expression. +Gaze at them as they pass you in the quiet road, and acknowledge that, +in spite of their rough and even uncouth exteriors, a happier four could +hardly be met with in this favourite haunt of pleasure-seekers during a +long summer's day." + +And you do gaze at them and are sadder, if anything, than you were +before. You see them, if anything, more poignantly. You see their +cheerful biographer doing all he knows, and the light he shoots across +the blackness only makes it blacker. + + Nessun maggior dolore + Che ricordarsi di tempo felice + Nella miseria; + +and in the end the biographer with all his cheerfulness succumbs to the +tradition of misery, and even adds a dark contribution of his own, the +suggestion of an unhappy love-affair of Charlotte's. + +After Sir Wemyss Reid came Mr. Francis Grundy with _his_ little +pictures, _Pictures of the Past_, presenting a dreadfully unattractive +Charlotte. + +Then came Mr. Leyland, following Mr. Grundy, with his glorification of +Branwell and his hint that Charlotte made it very hard at home for the +poor boy. He repeats the story that Branwell told Mr. George Searle +Phillips, how he went to see a dying girl in the village, and sat with +her half an hour, and read a psalm to her and a hymn, and how he felt +like praying with her too, but he was not "good enough", how he came +away with a heavy heart and fell into melancholy musings. "Charlotte +observed my depression," Branwell said, "and asked what ailed me. So I +told her. She looked at me with a look which I shall never forget if I +live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It was not like +her at all. It wounded me as if someone had struck me a blow in the +mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It ran over me, +questioning and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It said, 'Did +my ears deceive me, or did I hear aright?' And then came the painful, +baffled expression, which was worse than all. It said, 'I wonder if +that's true?' But, as she left the room, she seemed to accuse herself of +having wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my +little scholar, and I will go and see her.' I replied not a word. I was +too much cut up! When she was gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull' +and made a note of it...." + +You see the implication? It was Charlotte who drove him to the "Black +Bull". That was Branwell's impression of Charlotte. Just the sort of +impression that an opium-eater would have of a beloved sister. + +But Branwell's impression was good enough for Madame Duclaux to found +her theory on. Her theory is that Charlotte was inferior to Emily in +tenderness. It may well be so, and yet Charlotte would remain above most +women tender, for Emily's wealth would furnish forth a score of sisters. +The simple truth is that Charlotte had nerves, and Branwell was +extremely trying. And it is possible that Emily had less to bear, that +in her detachment she was protected more than Charlotte from Branwell at +his worst. + +Meanwhile tales were abroad presenting Charlotte in the queerest lights. +There is that immortal story of how Thackeray gave a party for Currer +Bell at his house in Young Street, and how Currer Bell had a headache +and lay on a sofa in the back drawing-room, and refused to talk to +anybody but the governess; and how Thackeray at last, very late, with a +finger on his lip, stole out of the house and took refuge in his club. +No wonder if this quaint and curious Charlotte survived in the memory +of Thackeray's daughter. But, even apart from the headache, you can see +how it came about, how the sight of the governess evoked Charlotte +Brontë's unforgotten agony. She saw in the amazed and cheerful lady her +own sad youth, slighted and oppressed, solitary in a scene of +gaiety--she could not have seen her otherwise--and her warm heart rushed +out to her. She was determined that that governess should have a happy +evening if nobody else had. Her behaviour was odd, if you like, it was +even absurd, but it had the sublimity of vicarious expiation. Has anyone +ever considered its significance, the magnitude of her deed? For +Charlotte, to be the guest of honour on that brilliant night, in the +house of Thackeray, her divinity, was to touch the topmost height of +fame. And she turned her back on the brilliance and the fame and the +face of her divinity, and offered herself up in flames as a sacrifice +for all the governesses that were and had ever been and would be. + +And after the fine stories came the little legends--things about +Charlotte when she was a governess herself at Mrs. Sidgwick's, and the +tittle-tattle of the parish. One of the three curates whom Charlotte +made so shockingly immortal avenged himself for his immortality by +stating that the trouble with Charlotte was that she _would_ fight for +mastery in the parish. Who can believe him? If there is one thing that +seems more certain than another it is Charlotte's utter indifference to +parochial matters. But Charlotte was just, and she may have objected to +the young man's way with the Dissenters; we know that she did very +strongly object to Mr. William Weightman's way. And that, I imagine, was +the trouble between Charlotte and the curates. + +As for the Sidgwicks, Charlotte's biographers have been rather hard on +them. Mr. Leslie Stephen calls them "coarse employers". They were +certainly not subtle enough to divine the hidden genius in their sad +little governess. It was, I imagine, Charlotte's alien, enigmatic face +that provoked a little Sidgwick to throw a Bible at her. She said Mrs. +Sidgwick did not know her, and did not "intend to know her". She might +have added that if she _had_ intended Mrs. Sidgwick could not possibly +have known her. And when the Sidgwicks said (as they did say to their +cousin, Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson) that if Miss Brontë "was invited +to walk to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about +like a slave; if she was not invited she imagined she was being excluded +from the family circle", that was simply their robust view of the +paralysed attitude of a shy girl among strangers, in an agony of fear +lest she should cut in where she was not wanted. + +And allowances must be made for Mrs. Sidgwick. She was, no doubt, +considerably annoyed at finding that she had engaged a thoroughly +incompetent and apparently thoroughly morbid young person who had +offered herself as a nursery-governess and didn't know how to keep order +in the nursery. Naturally there was trouble at Stonegappe. Then one fine +day Mrs. Sidgwick discovered that there was, after all, a use for that +incomprehensible and incompetent Miss Brontë. Miss Brontë had a gift. +She could sew. She could sew beautifully. Her stitching, if you would +believe it, was a dream. And Mrs. Sidgwick saw that Miss Brontë's one +talent was not lodged in her useless. So Charlotte sat alone all evening +in the schoolroom at Stonegappe, a small figure hidden in pure white, +billowy seas of muslin, and lamented thus: "She cares nothing in the +world about me except to contrive how the greatest possible quantity of +labour may be squeezed out of me, and to that end she overwhelms me +with oceans of needlework, yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps +to make, and above all things, dolls to dress." And Mrs. Sidgwick +complained that Charlotte did not love the children, and forgot how +little she liked it when the children loved Charlotte, and was unaware, +poor lady, that it was recorded of her, and would be recorded to all +time, that she had said, "Love the _governess_, my dear!" when her +little impulsive boy put his hand in Charlotte's at the dinner-table, +and cried "I love 'ou, Miss Brontë." It was the same little, impulsive +boy who threw the Bible at Charlotte, and also threw a stone which hit +her. + +No wonder that Miss Brontë's one and only "pleasant afternoon" was when +Mr. Sidgwick went out walking in his fields with his children and his +Newfoundland dog, and Charlotte (by order) followed and observed him +from behind. + +Of course, all these old tales should have gone where Mrs. Sidgwick's +old muslin caps went; but they have not, and so it has got about that +Charlotte Brontë was not fond of children. Even Mr. Swinburne, at the +height of his magnificent eulogy, after putting crown upon crown upon +her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in +her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to +compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of +Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, +"had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded +imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious +quality." There was little Georgette in _Villette_, to say nothing of +Polly, and there was Adèle in _Jane Eyre_. But Mr. Swinburne had +forgotten about little Georgette. Like George Henry Lewes he is +"well-nigh moved to think one of the most powerfully and exquisitely +written chapters in _Shirley_ a chapter which could hardly have been +written at all by a woman, or, for that matter, by a man, of however +noble and kindly a nature, in whom the instinct, or nerve, or organ of +love for children was even of average natural strength and sensibility"; +so difficult was it for him to believe in "the dread and repulsion felt +by a forsaken wife and tortured mother for the very beauty and dainty +sweetness of her only new-born child, as recalling the cruel, sleek +charm of the human tiger that had begotten it". And so he crowns her +with all crowns but that of "love for children". He is still tender to +her, seeing in her that one monstrous lack; he touches it with sorrow +and a certain shame. + +Mr. Birrell follows him. "Miss Brontë," he says with confidence, "did +not care for children. She had no eye for them. Hence it comes about +that her novel-children are not good." He is moved to playful sarcasm +when he tells how in August of eighteen-fifty-three "Miss Brontë +suffered a keen disappointment". She went to Scotland with some friends +who took their baby with them. The parents thought the baby was ill when +it wasn't, and insisted on turning back, and Charlotte had to give up +her holiday. "All on account of a baby," says Mr. Birrell, and refers +you to Charlotte's letter on the subject, implying that it was +cold-blooded. The biographer can quote letters for his purpose, and Mr. +Birrell omits to tell us that Charlotte wrote "had any evil consequences +followed a prolonged stay, I should never have forgiven myself". You are +to imagine that Charlotte could have forgiven herself perfectly well, +for Charlotte "did not care for children". + +Mrs. Oliphant does not echo that cry. She was a woman and knew better. + +For I believe that here we touch the very heart of the mystery that was +Charlotte Brontë. We would have no right to touch it, to approach it, +were it not that other people have already violated all that was most +sacred and most secret in that mystery, and have given the world a +defaced and disfigured Charlotte Brontë. I believe that this love of +children which even Mr. Swinburne has denied to her, was the key to +Charlotte's nature. We are face to face here, not with a want in her, +but with an abyss, depth beyond depth of tenderness and longing and +frustration, of a passion that found no clear voice in her works, +because it was one with the elemental nature in her, undefined, +unuttered, unutterable. + +She was afraid of children; she was awkward with them; because such +passion has shynesses, distances, and terrors unknown to the average +comfortable women who become happy mothers. It has even its perversions, +when love hardly knows itself from hate. Such love demands before all +things possession. It cries out for children of its own flesh and blood. +I believe that there were moments when it was pain for Charlotte to see +the children born and possessed by other women. It must have been agony +to have to look after them, especially when the rule was that they were +not to "love the governess". + +The proofs of this are slender, but they are sufficient. There is little +Georgette, the sick child that Lucy nurses in the Pensionnat: "Little +Georgette still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her +familiar term, 'Minnie, Minnie, me very poorly!' till my heart ached." +... "I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and loving child; to hold +her in my lap, or carry her in my arms, was to me a treat. To-night she +would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her +little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which +she pressed her cheek to mine made me almost cry with a sort of tender +pain." + +Once during a spring-cleaning at Upperwood House Charlotte was Mrs. +White's nursemaid as well as her governess, and she wrote: "By dint of +nursing the fat baby it has got to know me and be fond of me. I suspect +myself of growing rather fond of it." Years later she wrote to Mrs. +Gaskell, after staying with her: "Could you manage to convey a small +kiss to that dear but dangerous little person, Julia? She +surreptitiously possessed herself of a minute fraction of my heart, +which has been missing ever since I saw her." + +Mrs. Gaskell tells us that there was "a strong mutual attraction" +between Julia, her youngest little girl, and Charlotte Brontë. "The +child," she says, "would steal her little hand into Miss Brontë's +scarcely larger one, and each took pleasure in this apparently +unobserved caress." May I suggest that children do not steal their +little hands into the hands of people who do not care for them? Their +instinct is infallible. + +Charlotte Brontë tried to give an account of her feeling for children; +it was something like the sacred awe of the lover. "Whenever I see +Florence and Julia again I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor, +who views at a distance the fair personage to whom, in his clownish awe, +he dare not risk a near approach. Such is the clearest idea I can give +you of my feeling towards children I like, but to whom I am a +stranger--and to what children am I not a stranger?" + +Extraordinary that Charlotte's critics have missed the pathos of that +_cri de coeur_. It is so clearly an echo from the "house of bondage", +where Charlotte was made a stranger to the beloved, where the beloved +threw stones and Bibles at her. You really have to allow for the shock +of an experience so blighting. It is all part of the perversity of the +fate that dogged her, that her feeling should have met with that +reverse. But it was there, guarded with a certain shy austerity. She +"suspected" herself of getting rather fond of the baby. + +She hid her secret even from herself, as women will hide these things. +But her dreams betrayed her after the way of dreams. Charlotte's dream +(premonitory, she thought, of trouble) was that she carried a little +crying child, and could not still its cry. "She described herself," Mrs. +Gaskell says, "as having the most painful sense of pity for the little +thing, lying _inert_, as sick children do, while she walked about in +some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church." This +dream she gives to _Jane Eyre_, unconscious of its profound significance +and fitness. It is a pity that Mr. Swinburne did not pay attention to +Charlotte's dream. + +All her life, I think, she suffered because of the perpetual insurgence +of this secret, impassioned, maternal energy. Hence the sting of Lewes's +famous criticism, beginning: "The grand function of woman, it must +always be remembered" (as if Charlotte had forgotten it!) "is +Maternity"; and, working up from his criticism of that chapter in +_Shirley_ to a climax of adjuration: "Currer Bell, if under your heart +had ever stirred a child; if to your bosom a babe had ever been +pressed--that mysterious part of your being, towards which all the rest +of it was drawn, in which your whole soul was transported and +absorbed--never could you have _imagined_ such a falsehood as that!" It +was impossible for Charlotte to protest against anything but the +abominable bad taste of Lewes's article, otherwise she might have told +him that she probably knew rather more about those mysteries than he +did. It was she who gave us that supreme image of disastrous love. "I +looked at my love; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a +cold cradle!" + +And this woman died before her child was born. + + * * * * * + +Then there is Mrs. Oliphant again. Though she was not one of those who +said Charlotte Brontë was not fond of children, though she would have +died rather than have joined Lewes in his unspeakable cry against her, +Mrs. Oliphant made certain statements in no better taste than his. She +suggests that Charlotte, fond or not fond of children, was too fond of +matrimonial dreams. Her picture (the married woman's picture) is of an +undesired and undesirable little spinster pining visibly and shamelessly +in a parsonage. She would have us believe that from morning till night, +from night till morning, Charlotte Brontë in the Parsonage thought of +nothing but of getting married, that her dreams pursued, ruthlessly, the +casual visitor. The hopelessness of the dream, the undesirability of +Charlotte, is what makes her so irresistible to her sister novelist. + +There was "one subject", she says, "which Charlotte Brontë had at her +command, having experienced in her own person, and seen her nearest +friends under the experience, of that solitude and longing of women of +which she has made so remarkable an exposition. The long silence of life +without an adventure or a change, the forlorn gaze out of windows which +never show anyone coming who can rouse the slightest interest in the +mind, the endless years and days which pass and pass, carrying away the +bloom, extinguishing the lights of youth, bringing a dreary middle age +before which the very soul shrinks, while yet the sufferer feels how +strong is the current of life in her own veins, and how capable she is +of all the active duties of existence--this was the essence and soul of +the existence she knew best. Was there no help for it? Must the women +wait and see their lives thrown away, and have no power to save +themselves! + +"The position," she goes on, "in itself so tragic, is one which can +scarcely be expressed without calling forth inevitable ridicule, a laugh +at the best, more often a sneer, at the women whose desire for a husband +is thus betrayed. Shirley and Caroline Helstone both cried out for that +husband with an indignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and +injury, which stopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous, +but it was horribly genuine and true." (This is more than can be said of +Mrs. Oliphant's view of the adorable Shirley Keeldar who was Emily +Brontë. It is ludicrous enough, and it may be genuine, but it is +certainly not true.) But Mrs. Oliphant is careful not to go too far. +"Note," she says, "there was nothing sensual about these young women. It +was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosser thoughts which +the world with its jeers attributes to them: of such thoughts they were +unconscious in a primitive innocence which, perhaps, only women +understand." Yet she characterizes their "outcry" as "indelicate". "All +very well to talk of women working for their living, finding new +channels for themselves, establishing their independence. How much have +we said of all that" (Mrs. Oliphant thinks that she is rendering +Charlotte Brontë's thought), "endeavouring to persuade ourselves! +Charlotte Brontë had the courage of her opinions. It was not education +nor a trade that her women wanted. It was not a living, but their share +in life.... Miss Brontë herself said correct things" (observe that +insincerity is insinuated here) "about the protection which a trade is +to a woman, keeping her from a mercenary marriage; but this was not in +the least the way of her heroines." (Why, you naturally wonder, should +it have been?) "They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things +they wanted their share in life, to have their position by the side of +men, which alone confers a natural equality, to have their shoulder to +the wheel, their hands on the reins of common life, to build up the +world and link the generations each to each." (And very proper of them, +too.) "In her philosophy, marriage was the only state which procured +this, and if she did not recommend a mercenary marriage she was at least +very tolerant about its conditions, insisting less upon love than was to +be expected" (!) "and with a covert conviction in her mind, that if not +one man, then another was better than any complete abandonment of the +larger path. Lucy Snowe for a long time had her heart very much set on +Dr. John and his placid breadth of Englishism; but when she finally +found out that to be impossible her tears were soon dried by the +prospect of Paul Emanuel, so unlike him, coming into his place." + +The obvious answer to all this is that Charlotte Brontë was writing in +the mid-Victorian age, about mid-Victorian women, the women whom she saw +around her; writing, without any "philosophy" or "covert conviction", in +the days before emancipation, when marriage was the only chance of +independence that a woman had. It would have been marvellous, if she had +not had her sister Emily before her, that in such an age she should have +conceived and created Shirley Keeldar. As for poor little Lucy with her +two men, she is not the first heroine who mistook the false dawn for the +true. Besides, Miss Brontë's "philosophy" was exactly the opposite to +that attributed to her, as anybody may see who reads _Shirley_. In +these matters she burned what her age adored, and adored what it burned, +a thorough revolutionary. + +But this is not the worst. Mrs. Oliphant professes to feel pity for her +victim. "Poor Charlotte Brontë! She has not been as other women, +protected by the grave from all betrayal of the episodes in her own +life." (You would imagine they were awful, the episodes in Charlotte +Brontë's life.) "Everybody has betrayed her, and all she thought about +this one, and that, and every name that was ever associated with hers. +There was a Mr. Taylor from London, about whom she wrote with great +freedom to her friend, Miss Nussey, telling how the little man had come, +how he had gone away without any advance in the affairs, how a chill +came over her when he appeared and she found him much less attractive +than when at a distance, yet how she liked it as little when he went +away, and was somewhat excited about his first letter, and even went so +far as to imagine with a laugh that there might possibly be a dozen +little Joe Taylors before all was over." + +This is atrocious. But the malice and bad taste of it are nothing to the +gross carelessness and ignorance it reveals--ignorance of facts and +identities and names. Charlotte's suitor was Mr. James Taylor and not +Joe. Joe, the brother of her friend, Mary Taylor, was married already to +a lady called Amelia, and it is of Joe and his Amelia that Charlotte +writes. "She must take heart" (Amelia had been singularly unsuccessful), +"there may yet be a round dozen of little Joe Taylors to look after--run +after--to sort and switch and train up in the way they should go." + +Of Mr. James Taylor she writes more decorously. Miss Nussey, as usual, +had been thinking unwarrantable things, and had made a most unbecoming +joke about Jupiter and Venus, which outraged Charlotte's "common +sense". "The idea of the little man," says Charlotte, "shocks me less. +He still sends his little newspaper; and the other day there came a +letter of a bulk, volume, pith, judgment and knowledge, fit to have been +the product of a giant. You may laugh as much and as wickedly as you +please, but the fact is, there is a quiet constancy about this, my +diminutive and red-haired friend, which adds a foot to his stature, +turns his sandy locks dark, and altogether dignifies him a good deal in +my estimation." This is all she says by way of appreciation. She says +later, "His manners and his personal appearance scarcely pleased me more +than at the first interview.... I feel that in his way he has a regard +for me; a regard which I cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in +kind, and yet its withdrawal leaves a painful blank." Miss Nussey +evidently insists that Charlotte's feelings are engaged this time, +arguing possibly from the "painful blank"; and Charlotte becomes +explicit. She speaks of the disadvantages of the alleged match, and we +gather that Miss Nussey has been urging her to take the little man. "But +there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pass than +any of these. Would Mr. Taylor and I ever suit? Could I ever feel for +him enough love to accept him as a husband? Friendship--gratitude--esteem +I have, but each moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes +fastened on me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away, I feel far +more gently to him; it is only close by that I grow rigid--stiffening +with a strange mixture of apprehension and anger--which nothing +softens but his retreat, and a perfect subduing of his manner." +And again, "my conscience, I can truly say, does not _now_ accuse +me of having treated Mr. Taylor with injustice or unkindness ... +but with every disposition and with every wish, with every intention +even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last +visit, it was impossible to me in my inward heart to think of him as one +that might one day be acceptable as a husband." Could anything be _more_ +explicit? There is a good deal more of it. After one very searching +criticism of Mr. Taylor: "One does not like to say these things, but one +had better be honest." And of her honesty Charlotte's letters on this +subject leave no doubt. There is not the smallest ground for supposing +that even for a moment had she thought of Mr. James Taylor as "one that +one day might be acceptable", much less is there for Mr. Clement +Shorter's suggestion that if he had come back from Bombay she would have +married him. + +But Joe or James, it is all one to Mrs. Oliphant, with her theory of +Charlotte Brontë. "For her and her class, which did not speak of it, +everything depended upon whether the women married or did not marry. +Their thoughts were thus artificially fixed to one point in the +horizon." The rest is repetition, ending in the astounding verdict: "The +seed she thus sowed has come to many growths that would have appalled +Charlotte Brontë. But while it would be very unjust to blame her for the +vagaries that have followed, and to which nothing could be less +desirable than any building of the house or growth of the race, any +responsibility or service, we must still believe that it was she who +drew the curtain first aside and opened the gates to imps of evil +meaning, polluting and profaning the domestic hearth." + +That is Mrs. Oliphant on Charlotte Brontë. + +And even Mr. Clement Shorter, who has dealt so admirably with outrageous +legends, goes half the way with the detractor. He has a theory that +Charlotte Brontë was a woman of morbid mood, "to whom the problem of sex +appealed with all its complications", and that she "dwelt continually on +the problem of the ideal mate". + +Now Charlotte may have dreamed of getting married (there have been more +criminal dreams); she may have brooded continually over the problem of +the ideal mate, only of all these dreams and broodings there is not one +atom of evidence--not one. Not a hint, not a trace, either in her +character as we know it, or in her very voluminous private +correspondence. The facts of her life disprove it. Her letters to Ellen +Nussey (never meant for publication) reveal the workings of Charlotte's +feminine mind when applied to "the sex problem"; a mind singularly +wholesome and impersonal, and singularly detached. Charlotte is full of +lights upon this awful subject of matrimony, which, by the way, had +considerably more interest for Miss Nussey than it had for her. In fact, +if it had not been for Miss Nussey it would not have appeared so often +as it did in Charlotte's letters. If you pay attention to the context (a +thing that theorists never do) you see, what is indeed obvious, that a +large portion of Charlotte Brontë's time was taken up in advising and +controlling Ellen Nussey, that amiable and impulsive prototype of +Caroline Helstone. She is called upon in all Miss Nussey's hours of +crisis, and there seem to have been a great many of them. "Do not," she +writes, "be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect--I do +not say _love_, because I think if you can respect a person before +marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense +passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling. In the first +place, it seldom or never meets with a requital; and in the second +place, if it did, the feeling would be only temporary; it would last the +honeymoon, and then, perhaps, give place to disgust, or indifference, +worse perhaps than disgust. Certainly this would be the case on the +man's part; and on the woman's--God help her if she is left to love +passionately and alone. + +"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all." + +And again, to Miss Nussey, six months later: "Did you not once say to me +in all childlike simplicity, 'I thought, Charlotte, no young lady should +fall in love till the offer was actually made'? I forgot what answer I +made at the time, but I now reply, after due consideration, Right as a +glove, the maxim is just, and I hope you will always attend to it. I +will even extend and confirm it: no young lady should fall in love till +the offer has been made, accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and +the first half-year of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then +begin to love, but with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, +very rationally. If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold +look cuts her to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much +that her husband's will is her law, and that she has got into a habit of +watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she will +soon be a neglected fool. Did I not tell you of an instance...?" + +What could be more lucid, more light-hearted, and more sane? And if +Charlotte is suspicious of the dangers of her own temperament, that only +proves her lucidity and sanity the more. + +Later, at Brussels, when confronted with "three or four people's" idea +that "the future _époux_ of Miss Brontë is on the Continent", she +defends herself against the "silly imputation". "Not that it is a crime +to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, +which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor +beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, +and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves +that they are unattractive, and that they had better be quiet, and think +of other things than wedlock." Can anything be clearer? + +So much for herself. But she has to deal with Miss Nussey, in +difficulties again, later: "Papa has two or three times expressed a fear +that since Mr. ---- paid you so much attention, he will, perhaps, have +made an impression on your mind which will interfere with your comfort. +I tell him I think not, as I believe you to be mistress of yourself in +those matters. Still, he keeps saying that I am to write to you and +dissuade you from thinking of him. I never saw Papa make himself so +uneasy about a thing of the kind before; he is usually very sarcastic on +such subjects. + +"Mr. ---- be hanged! I never thought very well of him, and I am much +disposed to think very ill of him at this blessed minute. I have +discussed the subject fully, for where is the use of being mysterious +and constrained?--it is not worth while." + +And yet again it is Ellen Nussey. "Ten years ago I should have laughed +at your account of the blunder you made in mistaking the bachelor doctor +of Bridlington for a married man. I should have certainly thought you +scrupulous over-much, and wondered how you could possibly regret being +civil to a decent individual merely because he happened to be single +instead of double. Now, however, I can perceive that your scruples are +founded on common sense. I know that if women wish to escape the stigma +of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay--cold, +expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, +sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike +construed by the world into the attempt to" (I regret to say that +Charlotte wrote) "to hook a husband." + +Later, she has to advise her friend Mr. Williams as to a career for his +daughter Louisa. And here she is miles ahead of her age, the age that +considered marriage the only honourable career for a woman. "Your +daughters--no more than your sons--should be a burden on your hands. +Your daughters--as much as your sons--should aim at making their way +honourably through life. Do you not wish to keep them at home? Believe +me, teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid and despised, but the girl who +stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the hardest-wrought and +worst-paid drudge of a school. Whenever I have seen, not merely in +humble but in affluent houses, families of daughters sitting waiting to +be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well--very +well--if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give +their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the +peevishness of disappointment, and the listlessness of idleness will +infallibly degrade their nature.... Lonely as I am, how should I be if +Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career...? How should I +be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where +there is not a single educated family? In that case I should have no +world at all. As it is, something like a hope and a motive sustains me +still. I wish all your daughters--I wish every woman in England, had +also a hope and a motive." + +Whatever the views of Charlotte Brontë's heroines may or may not have +been, these were her own views--sober, sincere, and utterly +dispassionate. Mrs. Oliphant set them aside, either in criminal +carelessness, or with still more criminal deliberation, because they +interfered with her theory. They are certainly not the views of a woman +given to day-dreaming and window-gazing. Lucy Snowe may have had time +for window-gazing, but not Charlotte Brontë, what with her writing and +her dusting, sweeping, ironing, bed-making, and taking the eyes out of +the potatoes for poor old Tabby, who was too blind to see them. +Window-gazing of all things! Mrs. Oliphant could not have fixed upon a +habit more absurdly at variance with Charlotte's character. + +For she was pure, utterly and marvellously pure from sentimentalism, +which was (and she knew it) the worst vice of the Victorian age. Mr. +Leslie Stephen said that, "Miss Brontë's sense of humour was but +feeble." It was robust enough when it played with sentimentalists. But +as for love, for passion, she sees it with a tragic lucidity that is +almost a premonition. And her attitude was by no means that of the +foredoomed spinster, making necessity her virtue. There was no +necessity. She had at least four suitors (quite a fair allowance for a +little lady in a lonely parish), and she refused them all. Twice in her +life, in her tempestuous youth, and at a crisis of her affairs, she +chose "dependence upon coarse employers" before matrimony. She was +shrewd, lucid, fastidious, and saw the men she knew without any glamour. +To the cold but thoroughly presentable Mr. Henry Nussey she replied +thus: "It has always been my habit to study the character of those among +whom I chance to be thrown, and I think I know yours and can imagine +what description of woman would suit you for a wife. The character +should not be too marked, ardent and original, her temper should be +mild, her piety undoubted, and her personal attractions sufficient to +please your eyes and gratify your just pride. As for me you do not know +me...." She was only three-and-twenty when she wrote that, with the +prospect of Stonegappe before her. For she had not, and could not have +for him, "that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for +him; and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I +will regard my husband". Later, in her worst loneliness she refused that +ardent Mr. Taylor, who courted her by the novel means of newspapers sent +with violent and unremitting regularity through the post. He represented +to some degree the larger life of intellectual interest. But he offended +her fastidiousness. She was sorry for the little man with his little +newspaper, and that was all. She refused several times the man she +ultimately married. He served a long apprenticeship to love, and +Charlotte yielded to his distress rather than to her own passion. She +describes her engaged state as "very calm, very expectant. What I taste +of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband. I am +grateful for his tender love for me.... Providence offers me this +destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me." + +These are not the words, nor is this the behaviour of Mrs. Oliphant's +Charlotte Brontë, the forlorn and desperate victim of the obsession of +matrimony. + +I do not say that Charlotte Brontë had not what is called a +"temperament"; her genius would not have been what it was without it; +she herself would have been incomplete; but there never was a woman of +genius who had her temperament in more complete subjection to her +character; and it is her character that you have to reckon with at every +turn. + +The little legends and the little theories have gone far enough. And had +they gone no farther they would not have mattered much. They would at +least have left Charlotte Brontë's genius to its own mystery. + +But her genius was the thing that irritated, the enigmatic, inexplicable +thing. Talent in a woman you can understand, there's a formula for +it--_tout talent de femme est un bonheur manqué_. So when a woman's +talent baffles you, your course is plain, _cherchez l'homme_. +Charlotte's critics argued that if you could put your finger on the man +you would have the key to the mystery. This, of course, was arguing that +her genius was, after all, only a superior kind of talent; but some of +them had already begun to ask themselves, Was it, after all, anything +more? So they began to look for the man. They were certain by this time +that there was one. + +The search was difficult; for Charlotte had concealed him well. But they +found him at last in M. Constantin Héger, the little Professor of the +Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the Rue d'Isabelle. Sir Wemyss Reid had +suggested a love-affair in Brussels to account for Charlotte's +depression, which was unfavourable to his theory of the happy life. Mr. +Leyland seized upon the idea, for it nourished his theory that Branwell +was an innocent lamb who had never caused his sisters a moment's misery. +They _made_ misery for themselves out of his harmless peccadilloes. Mr. +Angus Mackay in _The Brontës, Fact and Fiction_, gives us this fiction +for a fact. He is pleased with what he calls the "pathetic significance" +of his "discovery". There _was_ somebody, there had to be, and it had to +be M. Héger, for there wasn't anybody else. Mr. Mackay draws back the +veil with a gesture and reveals--the love-affair. He is very nice about +it, just as nice as ever he can be. "We see her," he says, "sore +wounded in her affections, but unconquerable in her will. The discovery +... does not degrade the noble figure we know so well.... The moral of +her greatest works--that conscience must reign absolute at whatever +cost--acquires a greater force when we realize how she herself came +through the furnace of temptation with marks of torture on her, but with +no stain on her soul." + +This is all very well, but the question is: _Did_ Charlotte come through +a furnace? _Did_ she suffer from a great and tragic passion? It may have +been so. For all we know she may have been in fifty furnaces; she may +have gone from one fit of tragic passion to another. Only (apart from +gossip, and apart from the argument from the novels, which begs the +question) we have no evidence to prove it. What we have points all the +other way. + +Gossip apart, believers in the tragic passion have nourished their +theory chiefly on that celebrated passage in a letter of Charlotte's to +Ellen Nussey: "I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death, prompted by +what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish +folly by a withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind." + +Here we have the great disclosure. By "irresistible impulse" and +"selfish folly", Charlotte could only mean indulgence in an illegitimate +passion for M. Héger's society. Peace of mind bears but one +interpretation. + +Mr. Clement Shorter, to his infinite credit, will have none of this. He +maintains very properly that the passage should be left to bear the +simple construction that Miss Nussey and Mr. Nicholls put upon it. But I +would go farther. I am convinced that not only does that passage bear +that construction, but that it will not bear the weight of any other. + +In eighteen-forty-two Charlotte's aunt died, and Charlotte became the +head of her father's household. She left her father's house in a time of +trouble, prompted by "an irresistible impulse" towards what we should +now call self-development. Charlotte, more than two years later, in a +moment of retrospective morbidity, called it "selfish folly". In that +dark mid-Victorian age it was sin in any woman to leave her home if her +home required her. And with her aunt dead, and her brother Branwell +drowning his grief for his relative in drink, and her father going blind +and beginning in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that +her home did require her. Equally she felt that either Emily or she had +got to turn out and make a living, and since it couldn't possibly be +Emily it must be she. The problem would have been quite simple even for +Charlotte--but _she wanted to go_. Therefore her tender conscience +vacillated. When you remember that Charlotte Brontë's conscience was, +next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate +part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, +her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Héger +is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by +detaching words from their context. The letter from which that passage +has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for +Charlotte. Charlotte says "any project which infers the necessity of my +leaving home is impracticable to me. If I could leave home I should not +be at Haworth now. I know life is passing away, and I am doing nothing, +earning nothing--a very bitter knowledge it is at moments--but I see no +way out of the mist"; and so on for another line or two, and then: +"These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consult my +conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and +bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release." +And then, the passage quoted _ad nauseam_, to support the legend of M. +Héger. + +A "total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind". This letter is dated October 1846--more than two years since her +return from Brussels in January, eighteen-forty-four. In those two years +her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell +achieved his destiny. The passage refers unmistakably to events at +Haworth. It is further illuminated by another passage from an earlier +letter. Ellen Nussey is going through the same crisis--torn between duty +to herself and duty to her people. She asks Charlotte's advice and +Charlotte gives judgment: "The right path is that which necessitates the +greatest sacrifice of self-interest." The sacrifice, observe, not of +happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of +self. It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she +went to Brussels for. + +And Charlotte's letters from Brussels--from the scene of passion in the +year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three--sufficiently reveal the nature of +the trouble there. Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily. +Emily was alone at Haworth. The few friends she had in Brussels left +soon after her arrival. She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness +was terrible. You can trace the malady in all its stages. In March she +writes: "I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my +good fortune. I hope I am thankful" (clearly she isn't thankful in the +least!), "and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely +or long for companionship or friendship, or whatever they call it, I +should do very well." In the same letter you learn that she is giving +English lessons to M. Héger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle. "If you +could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like +Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to +all eternity." Charlotte is at first amused at the noises made by M. +Héger and his brother-in-law. + +In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse. Still, she is +"indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement" that she had, and in +spite of her indebtedness, she records a "total want of companionship". +"I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which ... I ought to be +very thankful" (but she is not). May I point out that though you may be +"silent" in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you +are not "stagnant", and certainly not "easeful". + +At the end of May she finds out that Madame Héger does not like her, and +Monsieur is "wondrously influenced" by Madame. Monsieur has in a great +measure "withdrawn the light of his countenance", but Charlotte +apparently does not care. In August the _vacancies_ are at hand, and +everybody but Charlotte is going home. She is consequently "in low +spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment".... +"I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart." But she +will see it through. She will stay some months longer "till I have +acquired German". And at the end: "Everybody is abundantly civil, but +homesickness comes creeping over me. I cannot shake it off." That was in +September, in M. Héger's absence. Later, she tells Emily how she went +into the cathedral and made "a real confession _to see what it was +like_". Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of +the "temptation". Unfortunately for the theory it happened in +September, when M. Héger and temptation were not there. In October she +finds that she no longer trusts Madame Héger. At the same time "solitude +oppresses me to an excess". She gave notice, and M. Héger flew into a +passion and commanded her to stay. She stayed very much against, not her +conscience, but her will. In the same letter and the same connection she +says, "I have much to say--many little odd things, queer and puzzling +enough--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day +perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the +fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling +our hair--I may communicate to you." + +Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it, +intellectually, not emotionally. + +In November: "Twinges of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and +then." On holidays "the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs +down one's spirits like lead.... Madame Héger, good and kind as I have +described her" (_i.e._ for all her goodness and kindness), "never comes +near me on these occasions." ... "She is not colder to me than she is to +the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I am." But +the situation is becoming clearer. Charlotte is interested. "I fancy I +begin to perceive the reason of this mighty distance and reserve; it +sometimes makes me laugh, and at other times nearly cry. When I am sure +of it I will tell you." + +There can be no doubt that before she left Brussels Charlotte was sure; +but there is no record of her ever having told. + +The evidence from the letters is plain enough. But the first thing that +the theorist does is to mutilate letters. He suppresses all those parts +of a correspondence which tell against his theory. When these torn and +bleeding passages are restored piously to their contexts they are +destructive to the legend of tragic passion. They show (as Mr. Clement +Shorter has pointed out) that throughout her last year at Brussels +Charlotte Brontë saw hardly anything of M. Héger. They also show that +before very long Charlotte had a shrewd suspicion that Madame had +arranged it so, and that it was not so much the absence of Monsieur that +disturbed her as the extraordinary behaviour of Madame. And they show +that from first to last she was incurably homesick. + +Now if Charlotte had been in any degree, latently, or increasingly, or +violently in love with M. Héger, she would have been as miserable as you +like in M. Héger's house, but she would not have been homesick; she +would not, I think, have worried quite so much about Madame's behaviour; +and she would have found the clue to it sooner than she did. + +To me it is all so simple and self-evident that, if the story were not +revived periodically, if it had not been raked up again only the other +day,[A] there would be no need to dwell upon anything so pitiful and +silly. + +[Footnote A: See _The Key to the Brontë Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby, +1911.] + +It rests first and foremost on gossip, silly, pitiful gossip and +conjecture. Gossip in England, gossip in Brussels, conjecture all round. +Above all, it rests on certain feline hints supplied by Madame Héger and +her family. Charlotte's friends were always playfully suspecting her of +love-affairs. They could never put their fingers on the man, and they +missed M. Héger. It would never have occurred to their innocent +mid-Victorian minds to suspect Charlotte of an attachment to a married +man. It would not have occurred to Charlotte to suspect herself of it. +But Madame Héger was a Frenchwoman, and she had not a mid-Victorian +mind, and she certainly suspected Charlotte of an attachment, a flagrant +attachment, to M. Héger. It is well known that Madame made statements to +that effect, and it is admitted on all hands that Madame had been +jealous. It may fairly be conjectured that it was M. Héger and not +Charlotte who gave her cause, slight enough in all conscience, but +sufficient for Madame Héger. She did not understand these Platonic +relations between English teachers and their French professors. She had +never desired Platonic relations with anybody herself, and she saw +nothing but annoyance in them for everybody concerned. Madame's attitude +is the clue to the mystery, the clue that Charlotte found. She accused +the dead Charlotte of an absurd and futile passion for her husband; she +stated that she had had to advise the living Charlotte to moderate the +ardour of her admiration for the engaging professor; but the truth, as +Charlotte in the end discovered, was that for a certain brief period +Madame was preposterously jealous. M. Héger confessed as much when he +asked Charlotte to address her letters to him at the Athénée Royale +instead of the Pensionnat. The correspondence, he said, was disagreeable +to his wife. + +Why, in Heaven's name, disagreeable, if Madame Héger suspected Charlotte +of an absurd and futile passion? And why should Madame Héger have been +jealous of an absurd and futile woman, a woman who had seen so little of +Madame Héger's husband, and who was then in England? I cannot agree with +Mr. Shorter that M. Héger regarded Charlotte with indifference. He was a +Frenchman, and he had his vanity, and no doubt the frank admiration of +his brilliant pupil appealed to it vividly in moments of conjugal +depression. Charlotte herself must have had some attraction for M. +Héger. Madame perceived the appeal and the attraction, and she was +jealous; therefore her interpretation of appearances could not have been +so unflattering to Charlotte as she made out. Madame, in fact, +suspected, on her husband's part, the dawning of an attachment. We know +nothing about M. Héger's attachment, and we haven't any earthly right to +know; but from all that is known of M. Héger it is certain that, if it +was not entirely intellectual, not entirely that "_affection presque +paternelle_" that he once professed, it was entirely restrained and +innocent and honourable. It is Madame Héger with her jealousy who has +given the poor gentleman away. Monsieur's state of mind--extremely +temporary--probably accounted for "those many odd little things, queer +and puzzling enough", which Charlotte would not trust to a letter; +matter for curl-paper confidences and no more. + +Of course there is the argument from the novels, from _The Professor_, +from _Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_. I have not forgotten it. But really +it begs the question. It moves in an extremely narrow and an extremely +vicious circle. Jane Eyre was tried in a furnace of temptation, +therefore Charlotte must have been tried. Lucy Snowe and Frances Henri +loved and suffered in Brussels. Therefore Charlotte must have loved and +suffered there. And if Charlotte loved and suffered and was tried in a +furnace of temptation, that would account for Frances and for Lucy and +for Jane. + +No; the theorists who have insisted on this tragic passion have not +reckoned with Charlotte Brontë's character, and its tremendous power of +self-repression. If at Brussels any disastrous tenderness had raised its +head it wouldn't have had a chance to grow an inch. But Charlotte had +large and luminous ideas of friendship. She was pure, utterly pure from +all the illusions and subtleties and corruptions of the sentimentalist, +and she could trust herself in friendship. She brought to it ardours and +vehemences that she would never have allowed to love. If she let herself +go in her infrequent intercourse with M. Héger, it was because she was +so far from feeling in herself the possibility of passion. That was why +she could say, "I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what +the parting with M. Héger cost me. It grieved me so much to grieve him +who has been so true, kind, and disinterested a friend." That was how +she could bring herself to write thus to Monsieur: "_Savez-vous ce que je +ferais, Monsieur? J'écrirais un livre et je le dédierais à mon maître de +littérature, au seul maître que j'aie jamais eu--à vous Monsieur! Je +vous ai dit souvent en français combien je vous respecte, combien je +suis redevable à votre bonté à vos conseils. Je voudrais le dire une +fois en anglais ... le souvenir de vos bontés ne s'effacera jamais de ma +mémoire, et tant que ce souvenir durera le respect que vous m'avez +inspiré durera aussi._" For "_je vous respecte_" we are not entitled to +read "_je vous aime_". Charlotte was so made that kindness shown her +moved her to tears of gratitude. When Charlotte said "respect" she meant +it. Her feeling for M. Héger was purely what Mr. Matthew Arnold said +religion was, an affair of "morality touched with emotion". All her +utterances, where there is any feeling in them, no matter what, have a +poignancy, a vibration which is Brontësque and nothing more. And this +Brontësque quality is what the theorists have (like Madame Héger, and +possibly Monsieur) neither allowed for nor understood. + + * * * * * + +For this "fiery-hearted Vestal", this virgin, sharp-tongued and +sharper-eyed, this scorner of amorous curates, had a genius for +friendship. This genius, like her other genius, was narrow in its range +and opportunity, and for that all the more ardent and intense. It fed on +what came to its hand. It could even grow, like her other genius, with +astounding vitality out of strange and hostile soil. She seems to have +had many friends, obscure and great; the obscure, the Dixons, the +Wheelrights, the Taylors, the Nusseys, out of all proportion to the +great. But properly speaking she had only two friends, Mary Taylor and +Ellen Nussey, the enchanting, immortal "Nel". + +There _is_ something at first sight strange and hostile about Mary +Taylor, the energetic, practical, determined, terribly robust person you +see so plainly trying, in the dawn of their acquaintance, to knock the +nonsense out of Charlotte. Mary Taylor had no appreciation of the +Brontësque. When Charlotte told Mary Taylor that at Cowan Bridge she +used to stand in the burn on a stone to watch the water flow by, Mary +Taylor told Charlotte that she should have gone fishing. When _Jane +Eyre_ appeared she wrote to Charlotte in a strain that is amusing to +posterity. There is a touch of condescension in her praise. She is +evidently surprised at anything so great coming out of Charlotte. "It +seemed to me incredible that you had actually written a book." "You are +very different from me," she says, "in having no doctrine to preach. It +is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production." She is +thinking of his prototype when she criticizes the character of St. John +Rivers. "A missionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, +or he goes for enthusiasm, and that is both too good and too bad a +quality for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in +such a man." As an intellectual woman Mary Taylor realized Charlotte +Brontë's intellect, but it is doubtful if she ever fully realized what, +beyond an intellect, she had got hold of in her friend. She was a woman +of larger brain than Ellen Nussey, she was loyal and warm-hearted to the +last degree, but it was not given to her to see in Charlotte Brontë what +Ellen Nussey, little as you would have expected it, had seen. She did +not keep her letters. She burnt them "in a fit of caution", which may +have been just as well. + +But Mary Taylor is important. She had, among her more tender qualities, +an appalling frankness. It was she who told poor little Charlotte that +she was very ugly. Charlotte never forgot it. You can feel in her +letters, in her novels, in her whole nature, the long reverberation of +the shock. She said afterwards: "You did me a great deal of good, +Polly," by which she meant that Polly had done her an infinity of harm. + +Her friends all began by trying to do her good. Even Ellen Nussey tried. +Charlotte is very kindly cautioned against being "tempted by the +fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance", and +in a parenthesis Ellen Nussey begs her not to be offended. "Oh, Ellen," +Charlotte writes, "do you think I could be offended by any good advice +you may give me?" She thanks her heartily, and loves her "if possible +all the better for it". Ellen Nussey in her turn asks Charlotte to tell +her of her faults and "cease flattering her". Charlotte very sensibly +refuses; and it is not till she has got away from her sisters that her +own heart-searchings begin. They are mainly tiresome, but there is a +flash of revelation in her reply to "the note you sent me with the +umbrella". "My darling, if I were like you, I should have to face +Zionwards, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist +over the glorious vision before me, for with all your single-hearted +sincerity you have your faults, but _I_ am not like you. If you knew my +thoughts; the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at +times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly +insipid, you would pity me, and I dare say despise me." Miss Nussey +writes again, and Charlotte trembles "all over with excitement" after +reading her note. "I will no longer shrink from your question," she +replies. "I _do_ wish to be better than I am. I pray fervently sometimes +to be made so ... this very night I will pray as you wish me." + +But Charlotte is not in the least like Ellen Nussey, and she still +refuses to be drawn into any return of this dangerous play with a +friend's conscience and her nerves. "I will not tell you all I think and +feel about you, Ellen. I will preserve unbroken that reserve which alone +enables me to maintain a decent character for judgment; but for that, I +should long ago have been set down by all who knows me as a Frenchified +fool. You have been very kind to me of late, and gentle, and you have +spared me those little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miserable +and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince, as +if I had been touched with hot iron. Things that nobody else cares for +enter into my mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings +are absurd, and therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the +deeper for concealment. I'm an idiot!" + +Miss Nussey seems to have preserved her calm through all the excitement +and to have never turned a hair. But nothing could have been worse for +Charlotte than this sort of thing. It goes on for years. It began in +eighteen-thirty-three, the third year of their friendship, when she was +seventeen. In 'thirty-seven it is at its height. Charlotte writes from +Dewsbury Moor: "If I could always live with you, if your lips and mine +could at the same time drink the same draught at the same pure fountain +of mercy, I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better +than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit +and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to be. I often plan the +pleasant life we might lead, strengthening each other in the power of +self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion which the past Saints of +God often attained to." + +Now a curious and interesting thing is revealed by this correspondence. +These religious fervours and depressions come on the moment Charlotte +leaves Haworth and disappear as soon as she returns. All those letters +were written from Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor, while the Haworth letters +of the same period are sane and light-hearted. And when she is fairly +settled at Haworth, instead of emulating the Saints of God, she and Miss +Nussey are studying human nature and the art of flirtation as exhibited +by curates. Charlotte administers to her friend a formidable amount of +worldly wisdom, thus avenging herself for the dance Miss Nussey led her +round the throne of grace. + +For, though that morbid excitement and introspection belonged solely to +Charlotte's days of exile, Miss Nussey was at the bottom of it. Mary +Taylor would have been a far robuster influence. But Charlotte's +friendship for Mary Taylor, warm as it was, strikes cold beside her +passionate affection for Ellen Nussey. She brought her own fire to that, +and her own extraordinary capacity for pain. Her letters show every +phase of this friendship, its birth, its unfolding; and then the sudden +leaping of the flame, its writhing and its torture. She writes with a +lover's ardour and impatience. "Write to me very soon and dispel my +uncertainty, or I shall get impatient, almost irritable." "I read your +letter with dismay. Ellen--what shall I do without you? Why are we to be +denied each other's society? It is an inscrutable fatality.... Why are +we to be divided?" (She is at Roe Head, and Roe Head suggests the +answer.) "Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving +each other too well--of losing sight of the _Creator_ in idolatry of the +_creature_." She prays to be resigned, and records "a sweet, placid +sensation like those that I remember used to visit me when I was a +little child, and on Sunday evenings in summer stood by the window +reading the life of a certain French nobleman who attained a purer and +higher degree of sanctity than has been known since the days of the +Early Martyrs. I thought of my own Ellen--" "I wish I could see you, my +darling; I have lavished the warmest affections of a very hot tenacious +heart upon you; if you grow cold, it is over." She was only twenty-one. + +A few more years and the leaping and the writhing and the torture cease, +the fire burns to a steady, inextinguishable glow. There is gaiety in +Charlotte's tenderness. She is "infuriated" on finding a jar in her +trunk. "At first I hoped it was empty, but when I found it heavy and +replete, I could have hurled it all the way back to Birstall. However, +the inscription A.B. softened me much. You ought first to be tenderly +kissed, and then as tenderly whipped. Emily is just now sitting on the +floor of the bedroom where I am writing, looking at her apples. She +smiled when I gave them and the collar as your presents, with an +expression at once well pleased and slightly surprised." + +The religious fervours and the soul-searchings have ceased long ago, so +has Miss Nussey's brief spiritual ascendency. But the friendship and the +letters never cease. They go on for twenty years, through exile and +suffering, through bereavement, through fame and through marriage, +uninterrupted and, except for one brief period, unabridged. There is +nothing in any biography to compare with those letters to Ellen Nussey. +If Charlotte Brontë had not happened to be a great genius as well as a +great woman, they alone would have furnished forth her complete +biography. There is no important detail of her mere life that is not +given in them. Mrs. Gaskell relied almost entirely on them, and on +information supplied to her by Miss Nussey. And each critic and +biographer who followed her, from Sir Wemyss Reid to Mr. Clement +Shorter, drew from the same source. Miss Nussey was almost the only safe +repository of material relating to Charlotte Brontë. She had possessed +hundreds of her letters and, with that amiable weakness which was the +defect of her charming quality, she was unable to withhold any of them +from the importunate researcher. There seems to have been nothing, +except one thing, that Charlotte did not talk about to Miss Nussey when +they sat with their feet on the fender and their hair in curl-papers. +That one thing was her writing. It is quite possible that in those +curl-paper confidences Miss Nussey learnt the truth about Charlotte's +friend, M. Héger. She never learnt anything about Charlotte's genius. In +everything that concerned her genius Charlotte was silent and secret +with her friend. That was the line, the very sharp and impassable line +she drew between her "dear, _dear_ Ellen", her "dearest Nel", and her +sisters, Anne and Emily. The freemasonry of friendship ended there. You +may search in vain through even her later correspondence with Miss +Nussey for any more than perfunctory and extraneous allusions to her +works. It was as if they had never been. Every detail of her daily life +is there, the outer and the inner things, the sewing and ironing and +potato-peeling, together with matters of the heart and soul, searchings, +experiences, agonies; the figures of her father, her brother, her +sisters, move there, vivid and alive; and old Tabby and the curates; and +the very animals, Keeper and Flossie, and the little black cat, Tom, +that died and made Emily sorry; but of the one thing not a word. The +letters to Ellen Nussey following the publication of _Jane Eyre_ are all +full of gossip about Miss Ringrose and the Robinsons. Presently Ellen +hears a rumour of publication. Charlotte repudiates it and friction +follows. + +Charlotte writes: "Dear Ellen,--write another letter and explain that +note of yours distinctly.... Let me know what you heard, and from whom +you heard it. You do wrong to feel pain from any circumstance, or to +suppose yourself slighted...." "Dear Ellen,--All I can say to you about +a certain matter is this: the report ... must have had its origin in +some absurd misunderstanding. I have given _no one_ a right to affirm or +hint in the most distant manner that I am publishing (humbug!). Whoever +has said it--if anyone has, which I doubt--is no friend of mine. Though +twenty books were ascribed to me, I should own none. I scout the idea +utterly. Whoever, after I have distinctly rejected the charge, urges it +upon me, will do an unkind and ill-bred thing." If Miss Nussey is asked, +she is authorized by Miss Brontë to say, "that she repels and disowns +every accusation of the kind. You may add, if you please, that if anyone +has her confidence, you believe you have, and she has made no drivelling +confessions to you on that subject." "Dear Ellen,--I shall begin by +telling you that you have no right to be angry at the length of time I +have suffered to slip by since receiving your last, without answering +it; because you have often kept me waiting much longer, and having made +this gracious speech, thereby obviating reproaches, I will add that I +think it a great shame, when you receive a long and thoroughly +interesting letter, full of the sort of details you fully relish, to +read the same with selfish pleasure, and not even have the manners to +thank your correspondent, and express how very much you enjoyed the +narrative. I _did_ enjoy the narrative in your last very keenly.... +Which of the Miss Woolers did you see at Mr. Allbutts?" + +A beautiful but most unequal friendship. "The sort of details you fully +relish--" How that phrase must have rankled! You can hear the passionate +protest: "Those details are not what I relish in the least. Putting me +off with your Woolers and your Allbutts! If only you had told me about +_Jane Eyre_!" For it turned out that all the time Mary Taylor had been +told. The inference was that Mary Taylor, with her fits of caution, +could be trusted. + +This silence of Charlotte's must have been most painful and +incomprehensible to the poor Ellen who was Caroline Helstone. She had +been the first to divine Charlotte's secret; for she kept the letters. +She must have felt like some tender and worshipping wife to whom all +doors in the house of the beloved are thrown open, except the door of +the sanctuary, which is persistently slammed in her charming face. There +must have come to her moments of terrible insight when she felt the +danger and the mystery of the flaming spirit she had tried to hold. But +Charlotte's friend can wear her half-pathetic immortality with grace. +She could at least say: "She told me things she never told anyone else. +I have hundreds of her letters. And I had her heart." + + * * * * * + +Nothing so much as this correspondence reveals the appalling solitude in +which the Brontës lived. Here is their dearest and most intimate friend, +and she is one to whom they can never speak of the thing that interested +them most. No doubt "our best plays mean secret plays"; but Charlotte, +at any rate, suffered from this secrecy. There was nothing to counteract +Miss Nussey's direful influence on her spiritual youth. "Papa" highly +approved of the friendship. He wished it to continue, and it did; and it +was the best that Charlotte had. I know few things more pathetic than +the cry that Charlotte, at twenty-one, sent out of her solitude (with +some verses) to Southey and to Wordsworth. Southey told her that, +"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not +to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure +will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To +those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be +less eager for celebrity." A sound, respectable, bourgeois opinion so +far, but Southey went farther. "Write poetry for its own sake," he said; +and he could hardly have said better. Charlotte treasured the letter, +and wrote on the cover of it, "Southey's advice, to be kept for ever." +Wordsworth's advice, I am sorry to say, provoked her to flippancy. + +And that, out of the solitude, was all. Not the ghost, not the shadow of +an Influence came to the three sisters. There never was genius that owed +so little to influence as theirs. + +I know that in Charlotte's case there is said to have been an Influence. +An Influence without which she would have remained for ever in +obscurity, with _Villette_, with _Shirley_, with _Jane Eyre_, with _The +Professor_, unborn, unconceived. + +Need I say that the Influence is--M. Héger? + +"The sojourn in Brussels," says Mr. Clement Shorter, "made Miss Brontë +an author," and he is only following Sir Wemyss Reid, who was the first +to establish Brussels as the turning-point. Mr. Shorter does not believe +in M. Héger as the inspirer of passion, but he does believe in him as +the inspirer of genius. He thinks it exceedingly probable that had not +circumstances led Charlotte Brontë to spend some time at Brussels not +only would "the world never have heard of her", but it would never have +heard of her sisters. He is quite certain about Charlotte anyhow; she +could not have "arrived" had she not met M. Héger. "She went," he says, +"to Brussels full of the crude ambitions, the semi-literary impulses +that are so common on the fringe of the writing world. She left Brussels +a woman of genuine cultivation, of educated tastes, armed with just the +equipment that was to enable her to write the books of which two +generations of her countrymen have been justly proud." + +This is saying that Charlotte Brontë had no means of expression before +she wrote _devoirs_ under M. Héger. True, her genius did not find itself +until after she left Brussels, that is to say, not until she was nearly +thirty. I have not read any of her works as Lord Charles Albert Florian +Wellesley, and I do not imagine they were works of genius. But that only +means that Charlotte Brontë's genius took time. She was one of those +novelists who do not write novels before they are nearly thirty. But she +could write. Certain fragments of her very earliest work show that from +the first she had not only the means, but very considerable mastery of +expression. What is more, they reveal in germ the qualities that marked +her style in its maturity. Her styles rather, for she had several. There +is her absolutely simple style, in which she is perfect; her didactic +style, her fantastic style, which are mere temporary aberrations; and +her inspired style, in which at her worst she is merely flamboyant and +redundant, and at her best no less than perfect. You will find a faint, +embryonic foreshadowing of her perfections in the fragments given by +Mrs. Gaskell. There is THE HISTORY OF THE YEAR 1829, beginning: "Once +Papa lent my sister Maria a book. It was an old geography book; she +wrote on its blank leaf, "Papa lent me this book." This book is a +hundred and twenty years old; it is at this moment lying before me. +While I write this I am in the kitchen of the Parsonage, Haworth; Tabby, +the servant, is washing up the breakfast things, and Anne, my youngest +sister (Maria was my eldest), is kneeling on a chair, looking at some +cakes, which Tabby has been baking for us." You cannot beat that for +pure simplicity of statement. There is another fragment that might have +come straight out of _Jane Eyre_. "One night, about the time when the +cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snowstorms +and high piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting +round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel +with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she +came off victorious, no candle having been produced." And there is a +dream-story that Mr. Clement Shorter gives. She is in the "Mines of +Cracone", under the floor of the sea. "But in the midst of all this +magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror, for the +sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring +winds and dashing waves, it seemed as if the storm was violent. And now +the massy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the +glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed. When I heard the +rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud +shriek of terror." The dream changes: she is in a desert full of barren +rocks and high mountains, where she sees "by the light of his own fiery +eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers. His terrible +eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang, and the rocks echoed with +the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang +towards me." And there is her letter to the editor of one of their +_Little Magazines_: "Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared +that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year, of a +mysterious nature, all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and +gathered together in one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary +splendour through the vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the +four high princes of the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by +Eternity; and the impudence of this is only to be paralleled by another +of their assertions, namely, that by their magic might they can reduce +the world to a desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and +the clearest lakes to stagnant water, the pestilential vapours of which +shall slay all living creatures, except the bloodthirsty beast of the +forest, and the ravenous bird of the rock. But that in the midst of this +desolation the palace of the chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the +wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over the +land at morning, at noontide, and at night; but that they shall have +their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly rejoice +with the joy of victors. I think, sir, that the horrible wickedness of +this needs no remark, and therefore I hasten to subscribe myself, etc." + +Puerile, if you like, and puerile all the stuff that Charlotte Brontë +wrote before eighteen-forty-six; but her style at thirteen, in its very +rhythms and cadences, is the unmistakable embryo of her style at thirty; +and M. Héger no more cured her of its faults that he could teach her its +splendours. Something that was not Brussels made Miss Brontë a +prodigious author at thirteen. The mere mass of her _Juvenilia_ +testifies to a most ungovernable bent. Read the list of works, appalling +in their length, which this child produced in a period of fifteen +months; consider that she produced nothing but melancholy letters during +her "sojourn in Brussels"; and compare M. Héger's academic precepts with +her practice, with the wild sweep and exuberance of her style when she +has shaken him off, and her genius gets possession of her. + +I know there is a gulf fixed between Currer Bell and Charles Townsend, +who succeeded Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and the Marquis of +Douro, about eighteen-thirty-eight; but it is bridged by the later +_Poems_ which show Charlotte's genius struggling through a wrong medium +to the right goal. She does not know--after the sojourn in Brussels she +does not yet know--that her right medium is prose. She knew no more than +she knew in November, eighteen-forty-one, when, on the eve of her flight +from Haworth, she writes: "The plain fact is, I was not, I am not now, +certain of my destiny." It was not until two years after she had +returned to Haworth that she received her certainty. For posterity, +overpowered by the labour of the Brontë specialists, it may seem as if +Charlotte Brontë's genius owed everything to her flight from Haworth. In +reality her flight merely coincided with the inevitable shooting of its +wings; and the specialists have mistaken coincidence for destiny. + +Heaven only knows what would have happened to her genius if, blind to +her destiny, she had remained in Brussels. For, once there, its +wing-feathers left off growing. Its way was blocked by every conceivable +hostile and obstructive thing. Madame Héger was hostile, and Monsieur, I +think, purely obstructive. Emily saw through him, and denounced his +method as fatal to all originality. Charlotte, to be sure, called him +"my dear master, the only master that I ever had", but if that was not +her "absurd charity", it was only her Brontësque way. There was no sense +in which he was her master. He taught her French; to the very last the +habit of using "a few French words" was the King Charles's head in her +manuscripts; and the French he taught her did her harm. The restraint he +could and would have taught her she never learnt until her genius had +had, in defiance and in spite of him, its full fling. + +And what a fling! It is the way of genius to look after itself. In spite +of obstacles, Charlotte Brontë's took hold of every man and woman that +crossed and barred its path, and ultimately it avenged itself on +Monsieur and on Madame Héger. Those two were made for peaceful, +honourable conjugal obscurity, but it was their luck to harbour a +half-fledged and obstructed genius in their Pensionnat, a genius +thirsting for experience; and somehow, between them, they contrived to +make it suffer. That was their tragedy. Monsieur's case is pitiful; for +he was kind and well-meaning, and he was fond of Charlotte; and yet, +because of Charlotte, there is no peace for him in the place where he +has gone. Her genius has done with him, but her ghost, like some malign +and awful destiny, pursues him. No sooner does he sink back quiet in his +grave than somebody unearths him. Why cannot he be allowed to rest, once +for all, in his amiable unimportance? He became, poor man, important +only by the use that Charlotte's genius made of him. It seized him as it +would have seized on any other interesting material that came its way. +Without him we might have had another Rochester, and we should not have +had any Paul Emanuel, which would have been a pity; that is all. + +There is hardly any hope that Brontë specialists will accept this view. +For them the sojourn in Brussels will still stand as the turning-point +in Charlotte Brontë's career. Yet for her, long afterwards, Brussels +must have stood as the danger threatening it. She would have said, I +think, that her sojourn in Haworth was the turning-point. It was destiny +that turned Emily back to Haworth from the destruction that waited for +her at Brussels, so that she conceived and brought forth _Wuthering +Heights_; her own destiny that she secretly foreknew, consoling and +beneficent. And, no doubt, it was destiny of a sort, unforeknown, +deceitful, apparently malignant, that sent Charlotte back again to +Brussels after her aunt's death. It wrung from her her greatest book, +_Villette_. But Haworth, I think, would have wrung from her another and +perhaps a greater. + +For the first-fruits of the sojourn in Brussels was neither _Villette_ +nor _Jane Eyre_, but _The Professor_. And _The Professor_ has none of +the qualities of _Jane Eyre_ or of _Villette_; it has none of the +qualities of Charlotte's later work at all; above all, none of that +master quality which M. Héger is supposed to have specially evoked. +Charlotte, indeed, could not well have written a book more destructive +to the legend of the upheaval, the tragic passion, the furnace of +temptation and the flight. Nothing could be less like a furnace than the +atmosphere of _The Professor_. From the first page to the last there is +not one pulse, not one breath of passion in it. The bloodless thing +comes coldly, slowly tentatively, from the birth. It is almost as frigid +as a _devoir_ written under M. Héger's eye. The theorists, I notice, are +careful not to draw attention to _The Professor_; and they are wise, for +attention drawn to _The Professor_ makes sad work of their theory. + +Remember, on the theory, Charlotte Brontë has received her great +awakening, her great enlightenment; she is primed with passion; the +whole wonderful material of _Villette_ is in her hand; she has before +her her unique opportunity. You ought, on the theory, to see her +hastening to it, a passionate woman, pouring out her own one and supreme +experience, and, with the brand of Brussels on her, never afterwards +really doing anything else. Whereas the first thing the impassioned +Charlotte does (after a year of uninspired and ineffectual poetizing) is +to sit down and write _The Professor_; a book, remarkable not by any +means for its emotion, but for its cold and dispassionate observation. +Charlotte eliminates herself, and is Crimsworth in order that she may +observe Frances Henri the more dispassionately. She is inspired solely +by the analytic spirit, and either cannot, or will not, let herself go. +But she does what she meant to do. She had it in mind to write, not a +great work of imagination, but a grey and sober book, and a grey and +sober book is what she writes. A book concerned only with things and +people she has seen and known; a book, therefore, from which passion and +the poetry that passion is must be rigidly excluded, as belonging to +the region of things not, strictly speaking, known. It is as if she had +written _The Professor_ in rivalry with her sister Anne, both of them +austerely determined to put aside all imagination and deal with +experience and experience alone. Thus you obtain sincerity, you obtain +truth. And with nothing but experience before her, she writes a book +that has no passion in it, a book almost as bloodless and as gentle as +her sister Anne's. + +Let us not disparage _The Professor_. Charlotte herself did not +disparage it. In her Preface she refused to solicit "indulgence for it +on the plea of a first attempt. A first attempt," she says, "it +certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn in +a practice of some years." In that Preface she shows plainly that at the +very outset of her career she had no sterner critic than herself; that +she was aware of her sins and her temptations, and of the dangers that +lurked for her in her imaginative style. "In many a crude effort, +destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I +might have had for ornamented and decorated composition, and come to +prefer what was plain and homely." Observe, it is not to the lessons of +the "master", but to the creation and destruction that went on at +Haworth that she attributes this purgation. She is not aware of the +extent to which she can trust her genius, of what will happen when she +has fairly let herself go. She is working on a method that rules her +choice of subject. "I said to myself that my hero should work his way +through life, as I had seen real, living men work theirs--that he should +never get a shilling that he had not earned--that no sudden turns should +lift him in a moment to wealth and high station; that whatever small +competency he might gain should be won by the sweat of his brow; that +before he could find so much as an arbour to sit down in, he should +master at least half the ascent of the Hill Difficulty; that he should +not marry even a beautiful girl or a lady of rank." + +There was no fine madness in that method; but its very soundness and +sanity show the admirable spirit in which Charlotte Brontë approached +her art. She was to return to the method of _The Professor_ again and +yet again, when she suspected herself of having given imagination too +loose a rein. The remarkable thing was that she should have begun with +it. + +And in some respects _The Professor_ is more finished, better +constructed than any of her later books. There is virtue in its extreme +sobriety. Nothing could be more delicate and firm than the drawing of +Frances Henri; nothing in its grey style more admirable than the scene +where Crimsworth, having found Frances in the cemetery, takes her to her +home in the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges. + +"Stepping over a little mat of green wool, I found myself in a small +room with a painted floor and a square of green carpet in the middle; +the articles of furniture were few, but all bright and exquisitely +clean--order reigned through its narrow limits--such order as it suited +my punctilious soul to behold.... Poor the place might be; poor truly it +was, but its neatness was better than elegance, and had but a bright +little fire shone on that clean hearth, I should have deemed it more +attractive than a palace. No fire was there, however, and no fuel laid +ready to light; the lace-mender was unable to allow herself that +indulgence.... Frances went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, +and she came out a model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black +stuff dress, so accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, +with her spotless white collar turned back from a fair and shapely +neck, with her plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her +temples and in a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had +none--neither brooch, ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough without +them--perfection of fit, proportion of form, grace of carriage, +agreeably supplied their place." Frances lights a fire, having fetched +wood and coal in a basket. + +"'It is her whole stock, and she will exhaust it out of hospitality,' +thought I. + +"'What are you going to do?' I asked: 'not surely to light a fire this +hot evening? I shall be smothered.' + +"'Indeed, Monsieur, I feel it very chilly since the rain began; besides, +I must boil the water for my tea, for I take tea on Sundays; you will be +obliged to bear the heat.'" + +And Frances makes the tea, and sets the table, and brings out her +pistolets, and offers them to Monsieur, and it is all very simple and +idyllic. So is the scene where Crimsworth, without our knowing exactly +how he does it, declares himself to Frances. The dialogue is half in +French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very +favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in _Jane Eyre_. +Frances is delicious in her very solidity, her absence of abandonment. +She refuses flatly to give up her teaching at Crimsworth's desire, +Crimsworth, who will have six thousand francs a year. + +"'How rich you are, Monsieur!' And then she stirred uneasily in my arms. +'Three thousand francs!' she murmured, 'while I get only twelve +hundred!' She went on faster. 'However, it must be so for the present; +and, Monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my +place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast'; and her little fingers emphatically +tightened on mine. + +"'Think of marrying you to be kept by you, Monsieur! I could not do it; +and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close, +noisy schoolrooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering +at home, unemployed and solitary. I should get depressed and sullen, and +you would soon tire of me.' + +"'Frances, you could yet read and study--two things you like so well.' + +"'Monsieur, I could not; I like contemplative life, but I like an active +better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have taken notice, +Monsieur, that people who are only in each other's company for +amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so +highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer together!'" + +To which Crimsworth replies, "You speak God's truth, and you shall have +your own way, for it is the best way." + +There is far more common sense than passion in the solid little Frances +and her apathetic lover. It is Frances Henri's situation, not her +character, that recalls so irresistibly Lucy Snowe. Frances has neither +Lucy's temperament, nor Lucy's terrible capacity for suffering. She +suffers through her circumstances, not through her temperament. The +motives handled in _The Professor_ belong to the outer rather than the +inner world; the pressure of circumstance, bereavement, poverty, the +influences of alien and unloved surroundings, these are the springs that +determine the drama of Frances and of Crimsworth. Charlotte is +displaying a deliberate interest in the outer world and the material +event. She does not yet know that it is in the inner world that her +great conquest and dominion is to be. The people in this first novel are +of the same family as the people in _Jane Eyre_, in _Shirley_, in +_Villette_. Crimsworth is almost reproduced in Louis Moore. Yorke +Hunsden is the unmistakable father of Mr. Yorke and Rochester; Frances, +a pale and passionless sister of Jane Eyre, and a first cousin of Lucy. +Yet, in spite of these relationships, _The Professor_ stands alone. In +spite of its striking resemblance to _Villette_ there is no real, no +spiritual affinity. And the great gulf remains fixed between _The +Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. + +This difference lies deeper than technique. It is a difference of +vision, of sensation. The strange greyness of _The Professor_, its +stillness, is not due altogether to Charlotte's deliberate intention. It +is the stillness, the greyness of imperfect hearing, of imperfect +seeing. I know it has one fine piece of word-painting, but not one that +can stand among Charlotte Brontë's masterpieces in this kind. + +Here it is. "Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze +stirred the air, purified by lightning; I left the west behind me, where +spread a sky like opal, azure inmingled with crimson; the enlarged sun, +glorious in Tyrian dyes, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, +eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the +arch of an even rainbow; a perfect rainbow--high, wide, vivid. I looked +long; my eye drank in the scene, and I suppose my brain must have +absorbed it; for that night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long +time, watching the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the +retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last fell +asleep; and then in a dream was reproduced the setting sun, the bank of +clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a terrace; I leaned +over a parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not +fathom, but hearing an endless splash of waves, I believed it to be the +sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense blue; +all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold +glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, appeared, +enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, +under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dark clouds diffused behind. +It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed like +raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation, coloured what seemed +face and limbs; a large star shone with still lustre on an angel's +forehead--" But the angel ruins it. + +And this is all, and it leaves the dreariness more dreary. In _The +Professor_ you wander through a world where there is no sound, no +colour, no vibration; a world muffled and veiled in the stillness and +the greyness of the hour before dawn. It is the work of a woman who is +not perfectly alive. So far from having had her great awakening, +Charlotte is only half awake. Her intellect is alert enough and avid, +faithful and subservient to the fact. It is her nerves and senses that +are asleep. Her soul is absent from her senses. + + * * * * * + +But in _Jane Eyre_, she is not only awakened, but awake as she has never +been awake before, with all her virgin senses exquisitely alive, every +nerve changed to intense vibration. Sometimes she is perniciously awake; +she is doing appalling things, things unjustifiable, preposterous; +things that would have meant perdition to any other writer; she sees +with wild, erroneous eyes; but the point is that she sees, that she +keeps moving, that from the first page to the last she is never once +asleep. To come to _Jane Eyre_ after _The Professor_ is to pass into +another world of feeling and of vision. + +It is not the difference between reality and unreality. _The Professor_ +is real enough, more real in some minor points--dialogue, for +instance--than _Jane Eyre_. The difference is that _The Professor_ is a +transcript of reality, a very delicate and faithful transcript, and +_Jane Eyre_ is reality itself, pressed on the senses. The pressure is so +direct and so tremendous, that it lasts through those moments when the +writer's grip has failed. + +For there are moments, long moments of perfectly awful failure in _Jane +Eyre_. There are phrases that make you writhe, such as "the etymology of +the mansion's designation", and the shocking persistency with which +Charlotte Brontë "indites", "peruses", and "retains". There are whole +scenes that outrage probability. Such are the scenes, or parts of +scenes, between Jane and Rochester during the comedy of his courtship. +The great orchard scene does not ring entirely true. For pages and pages +it falters between passion and melodrama; between rhetoric and the _cri +de coeur_. Jane in the very thick of her emotion can say, "I have +talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight +in--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, +Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I +absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity for +departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death." And the +comedy is worse. Jane elaborates too much in those delicious things she +says to Rochester. Rochester himself provokes the parodist. (Such +manners as Rochester's were unknown in mid-Victorian literature.) + +"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck +seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed +terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal +were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For +caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch +on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was +all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to +anything more tender." + +Yet there is comedy, pure comedy in those scenes, though never +sustained, and never wrought to the inevitable dramatic climax. Jane is +delightful when she asks Rochester whether the frown on his forehead +will be his "married look", and when she tells him to make a +dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite +series of waistcoats out of the black satin". _The Quarterly_ was much +too hard on the earlier _cadeau_ scene, with Rochester and Jane and +Adèle, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and +precision. + +_"'N'est-ce pas, Monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre, +dans votre petit coffre?'"_ + +"'Who talks of _cadeaux_?' said he gruffly; 'did you expect a present, +Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?' and he searched my face with eyes +that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing. + +"'I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them; they are +generally thought pleasant things.'" + +Charlotte Brontë was on her own ground there. But you tremble when she +leaves it; you shudder throughout the awful drawing-room comedy of +Blanche Ingram. Blanche says to her mother: "Am I right, Baroness Ingram +of Ingram Park?" And her mother says to Blanche, "My lily-flower, you +are right now, as always." Blanche says to Rochester, "Signor Eduardo, +are you in voice to-night?" and he, "Donna Bianca, if you command it, I +will be." And Blanche says to the footman, "Cease that chatter, +blockhead, and do my bidding." + +That, Charlotte's worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene +itself is unimportant. But what can be said of the crucial scene of the +novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation? There _is_ +passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the +afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding. + +"'Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one +little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his +bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake +slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody +blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?'... 'You +know I am a scoundrel, Jane?' ere long he inquired wistfully, wondering, +I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness; the result of weakness +rather than of will. + +"'Yes, sir.' + +"'Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me.' + +"'I cannot; I am tired and sick. I want some water.' + +"He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and, taking me in his arms, +carried me downstairs." + +But there are terrible lapses. After Rochester's cry, "'Jane, my little +darling ... If you were mad, do you think I should hate you,'" he +elaborates his idea and he is impossible: "'Your mind is my treasure, +and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my +arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in +fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that +woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace at least as +fond as it would be restrictive.'" + +And in the final scene of temptation there is a most curious mingling of +reality and unreality, of the passion which is poetry, and the poetry +which is not passion. + +"'Never,' said he, as he ground his teeth, 'never was anything so frail, +and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!' And he shook me +with the force of his hold. 'I could bend her with my finger and thumb; +and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? +Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out +of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph. +Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful +creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only +let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate +would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay +dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue +and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself, you +could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would; +seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence--you +will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh, come, Jane, come!'" + +It is the crucial scene of the book; and with all its power, with all +its vehemence and passionate reality it is unconvincing. It stirs you +and it leaves you cold. + +The truth is that in _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Brontë had not mastered the +art of dialogue; and to the very last she was uncertain in her handling +of it. In this she is inferior to all the great novelists of her time; +inferior to some who were by no means great. She understood more of the +spiritual speech of passion than any woman before her, but she ignores +its actual expression, its violences, its reticences, its silences. In +her great scenes she is inspired one moment, and the next positively +handicapped by her passion and her poetry. In the same sentence she +rises to the sudden poignant _cri du coeur_, and sinks to the artifice +of metaphor. She knew that passion is poetry, and poetry is passion; +you might say it was all she knew, or ever cared to know. But her +language of passion is too often the language of written rather than of +spoken poetry, of poetry that is not poetry at all. It is as if she had +never heard the speech of living men and women. There is more actuality +in the half-French chatter of Adèle than in any of the high utterances +of Jane and Rochester. + +And yet her sense of the emotion behind the utterance is infallible, so +infallible that we accept the utterance. By some miracle, which is her +secret, the passion gets through. The illusion of reality is so strong +that it covers its own lapses. _Jane Eyre_ exists to prove that truth is +higher than actuality. + +"'Jane suits me: do I suit her?' + +"'To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.'" + +If no woman alive had ever said that, it would yet be true to Jane's +feeling. For it is a matter of the finest fibres, this passion of +Jane's, that set people wondering about Currer Bell, that inflamed Mrs. +Oliphant, as it inflamed the reviewer in _The Quarterly_, and made +Charles Kingsley think that Currer Bell was coarse. Their state of mind +is incredible to us now. For what did poor Jane do, after all? Nobody +could possibly have had more respect for the ten commandments. For all +Rochester's raging, the ten commandments remain exactly where they were. +It was inconceivable to Charlotte Brontë that any decent man or woman +could make hay, or wish to make hay, of them. And yet Jane offended. She +sinned against the unwritten code that ordains that a woman may lie till +she is purple in the face, but she must not, as a piece of gratuitous +information, tell a man she loves him; not, that is to say, in as many +words. She may declare her passion unmistakably in other ways. She may +exhibit every ignominious and sickly sign of it; her eyes may glow like +hot coals; she may tremble; she may flush and turn pale; she may do +almost anything, provided she does not speak the actual words. In +mid-Victorian times an enormous licence was allowed her. She might +faint, with perfect propriety, in public; she might become anaemic and +send for the doctor, and be ordered iron; she might fall ill, horridly +and visibly, and have to be taken away to spas and places to drink the +waters. Everybody knew what that meant. If she had shrieked her passion +on the housetops she could hardly have published it more violently; but +nobody minded. It was part of the mid-Victorian convention. + +Jane Eyre did none of these things. As soon as she was aware of her +passion for Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her +voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and +fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher +than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And +nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing +(poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with +the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was +the enormity that was never forgiven her. + +"'You'll like Ireland, I think,'" says Rochester in his torturing mood; +"'they are such kind-hearted people there.' + +"'It is a long way off, sir.' + +"'No matter, a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the +distance.' + +"'Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier.' + +"'From what, Jane?' + +"'From England and from Thornfield, and--' + +"'Well?' + +"'From _you_, sir.'" + +She had done it. She had said, or almost said the words. + +It just happened. There was magic in the orchard at Thornfield; there +was youth in her blood; and--"Jane, did you hear the nightingale singing +in that wood?" + +Still, she had done it. + +And she was the first heroine who had. Adultery, with which we are +fairly familiar, would have seemed a lesser sin. There may be +extenuating circumstances for the adulteress. There were extenuating +circumstances for Rochester. He could plead a wife who went on all +fours. There were no extenuating circumstances for little Jane. No use +for her to say that she was upset by the singing of the nightingale; +that it didn't matter what she said to Mr. Rochester when Mr. Rochester +was going to marry Blanche Ingram, anyway; that she only flung herself +at his head because she knew she couldn't hit it; that her plainness +gave her a certain licence, placing her beyond the code. Not a bit of +it. Jane's plainness was one thing that they had against her. Until her +time no heroine had been permitted to be plain. Jane's seizing of the +position was part of the general insolence of her behaviour. + +Jane's insolence was indeed unparalleled. Having done the deed she felt +no shame or sense of sin; she stood straight up and defended herself. +That showed that she was hardened. + +It certainly showed--Jane's refusal to be abject--that Jane was far +ahead of her age. + +"'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. +'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an +automaton?--a machine without feelings, and can bear to have my morsel +of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from +my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am +soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and +fully as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much +wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now +for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of +custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that +addresses'" ("Addresses"? oh, Jane!) "'your spirit; just as if both had +passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we +are!'" + +This, allowing for some slight difference in the phrasing, is twentieth +century. And it was this--Jane's behaviour in the orchard, and not +Rochester's behaviour in the past--that opened the door to the "imps of +evil meaning, polluting and defiling the domestic hearth." + +Still, though _The Quarterly_ censured Jane's behaviour, it was +Rochester who caused most of the trouble and the scandal by his +remarkable confessions. In a sense they _were_ remarkable. Seldom, +outside the pages of French fiction, had there been so lavish and public +a display of mistresses. And while it was agreed on all hands that +Rochester was incredible with his easy references to Céline and Giacinta +and Clara, still more incredible was it that a young woman in a country +parsonage should have realized so much as the existence of Clara and +Giacinta and Céline. But, when Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux invoked +Branwell and all his vices to account for Charlotte's experience, they +forgot that Charlotte had read Balzac,[A] and that Balzac is an +experience in himself. She had also read Moore's _Life of Byron_, and +really there is nothing in Rochester's confessions that Byron and a +little Balzac would not account for. So that they might just as well +have left poor Branwell in his grave. + +[Footnote A: I am wrong. Charlotte did not read Balzac till later, when +George Henry Lewes told her to. But there were those twenty "clever, +wicked, sophistical, and immoral French books" that she read in +eighteen-forty. They may have served her purpose better.] + +Indeed, it was the manner of Rochester's confession that gave away the +secret of Currer Bell's sex; her handling of it is so inadequate and +perfunctory. Rochester is at his worst and most improbable in the +telling of his tale. The tale in itself is one of Charlotte's clumsiest +contrivances for conveying necessary information. The alternate baldness +and exuberant, decorated, swaggering boldness (for Charlotte's style was +never bolder than when she was essaying the impossible) alone betrayed +the hand of an innocent woman. Curious that these makeshift passages +with their obviously second-hand material, their palpably alien _mise en +scène_, should ever have suggested a personal experience and provoked +_The Quarterly_ to its infamous and immortal utterance: "If we ascribe +the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to +one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of +her own sex." + +_The Quarterly_, to do it justice, argued that Currer Bell was a man, +for only a man would have betrayed such ignorance of feminine resources +as to make Jane Eyre, on a night alarm, "hurry on a frock and shawl". +The reasoning passed. Nobody saw that such a man would be as innocent as +any parson's daughter. Nobody pointed out that, as it happened, Currer +Bell had provided her dowagers with "vast white wrappers" on the second +night alarm. And, after all, the sex of _The Quarterly_ reviewer itself +remains a problem. Long ago Mr. Andrew Lang detected the work of two +hands in that famous article. You may say there were at least three. +There was, first, the genial reviewer of _Vanity Fair_, who revels in +the wickedness of Becky Sharpe, and who is going to revel in the +wickedness of Jane. Then suddenly some Mr. Brocklebank steps in, and you +get a "black-marble clergyman" on _Jane Eyre_. + +"We have said," says this person, "that this was the picture of a +natural heart. This, to our view, is the great and crying mischief of +the book. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate +and undisciplined spirit, the more dangerous to exhibit from that +prestige of principle and self-control, which is liable to dazzle the +eyes too much for it to observe the insufficient and unsound foundation +on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral +strength; but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law +unto itself.... She has inherited the worst sin of our fallen +nature--the sin of pride." + +Jane, you see, should have sinned to show her Christian humility. The +style, if not the reasoning, is pure Brocklebank. He does "not hesitate +to say that the tone of mind and thought, which has overthrown authority +and violated every code, human and divine, abroad, and fostered Chartism +and rebellion at home, is the same which has written _Jane Eyre_". + +Ellis and Acton (poor Acton!) Bell get it even stronger than that; and +then, suddenly again, you come on a report on the "Condition of +Governesses", palpably drawn up by a third person. For years Miss Rigby, +who was afterwards Lady Eastlake, got the credit for the whole absurd +performance, for she was known to have written the review on _Vanity +Fair_. What happened seems to have been that Miss Rigby set out in all +honesty to praise _Jane Eyre_. Then some infuriated person interfered +and stopped her. The article was torn from the unfortunate Miss Rigby +and given to Brocklebank, who used bits of her here and there. +Brocklebank, in his zeal, overdid his part, so the report on Governesses +was thrown in to give the whole thing an air of seriousness and +respectability. So that it is exceedingly doubtful whether, after all, +it was a woman's hand that dealt the blow. + +If Charlotte Brontë did not feel the effect of it to the end of her +life, she certainly suffered severely at the time. It was responsible +for that impassioned defence of Anne and Emily which she would have been +wiser to have left alone. + +It must be admitted that _Jane Eyre_ was an easy prey for the truculent +reviewer, for its faults were all on the surface, and its great +qualities lay deep. Deep as they were, they gripped the ordinary +uncritical reader, and they gripped the critic in spite of himself, so +that he bitterly resented being moved by a work so flagrantly and +obviously faulty. What was more, the passion of the book was so intense +that you were hardly aware of anything else, and its author's austere +respect for the ten commandments passed almost unobserved. + +But when her enemies accuse Charlotte Brontë of glorifying passion they +praise her unaware. Her glory is that she did glorify it. Until she +came, passion between man and woman had meant animal passion. Fielding +and Smollett had dealt with it solely on that footing. A woman's gentle, +legalized affection for her husband was one thing, and passion was +another. Thackeray and Dickens, on the whole, followed Fielding. To all +three of them passion is an affair wholly of the senses, temporary, +episodic, and therefore comparatively unimportant. Thackeray intimated +that he could have done more with it but for his fear of Mrs. Grundy. +Anyhow, passion was not a quality that could be given to a good woman; +and so the good women of Dickens and Thackeray are conspicuously +without it. And Jane Austen may be said to have also taken Fielding's +view. Therefore she was obliged to ignore passion. She gave it to one +vulgar woman, Lydia Bennett, and to one bad one, Mrs. Rushworth; and +having given it them, she turned her head away and refused to have +anything more to do with these young women. She was not alone in her +inability to "tackle passion". No respectable mid-Victorian novelist +could, when passion had so bad a name. + +And it was this thing, cast down, defiled, dragged in the mud, and +ignored because of its defilement, that Charlotte Brontë took and lifted +up. She washed it clean; she bathed it in the dew of the morning; she +baptized it in tears; she clothed it in light and flame; she showed it +for the divine, the beautiful, the utterly pure and radiant thing it is, +"the very sublime of faith, truth and devotion". She made it, this +spirit of fire and air, incarnate in the body of a woman who had no +sensual charm. Because of it little Jane became the parent of Caterina +and of Maggie Tulliver; and Shirley prepared the way for Meredith's +large-limbed, large-brained, large-hearted women. + +It was thus that Charlotte Brontë glorified passion. The passion that +she glorified being of the finest fibre, it was naturally not understood +by people whose fibres were not fine at all. + +It was George Henry Lewes (not a person of the finest fibre) who said of +_Jane Eyre_ that "the grand secret of its success ... as of all great +and lasting successes was its reality". In spite of crudities, +absurdities, impossibilities, it remains most singularly and startlingly +alive. In _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Brontë comes for the first time into her +kingdom of the inner life. She grasps the secret, unseen springs; in her +narrow range she is master of the psychology of passion and of +suffering, whether she is describing the agony of the child Jane shut +up in that terrible red room, or the anguish of the woman on the morning +of that wedding-day that brought no wedding. Or take the scene of Jane's +flight from Thornfield, or that other scene, unsurpassed in its passion +and tenderness, of her return to Rochester at Ferndean. + +"To this house I came just ere dark, on an evening marked by the +characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small, penetrating +rain.... Even within a very short distance of the manor-house you could +see nothing of it; so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood +about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, +and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of +close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest +aisle, between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I +followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on +and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was +visible.... At last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently +I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light, +distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying +walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a +space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a +semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad +gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of +the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the +windows were latticed and narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one +step led up to it.... It was still as a church on a week-day; the +pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible.... + +"I heard a movement--that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some +shape was about to issue from the grange. + +"It opened slowly; a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the +step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel +whether it rained. Dark as it was I had recognized him.... + +"His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in +his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that +reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous +to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes +cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson." + +Again--Rochester hears Jane's voice in the room where she comes to him. + +"'And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but +I must feel or my heart will stop and my brain burst.'... + +"He groped. I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine. + +"'Her very fingers!' he cried; 'her small, slight fingers! If so, there +must be more of her.' + +"The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my +shoulder--neck--wrist--I was entwined and gathered to him.... + +"I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept +back his hair from his brow and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to +rouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. + +"'It is you--is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?' + +"'I am.'" + +The scene as it stands is far from perfect; but only Charlotte Brontë +could sustain so strong an illusion of passion through so many lapses. +And all that passion counts for no more than half in the astounding +effect of reality she produces. Before _Jane Eyre_ there is no novel +written by a woman, with the one exception of _Wuthering Heights_, that +conveys so poignant an impression of surroundings, of things seen and +heard, of the earth and sky; of weather; of the aspects of houses and of +rooms. It suggests a positive exaltation of the senses of sound and +light, an ecstasy, an enchantment before the visible, tangible world. It +is not a matter of mere faithful observation (though few painters have +possessed so incorruptibly the innocence of the eye). It is an almost +supernatural intentness; sensation raised to the _n_th power. Take the +description of the awful red room at Gateshead. + +"A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of +deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two +large windows with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in +festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at +the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a +soft fawn colour, with a flush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the +toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly-polished old mahogany. Out of +these deep surrounding shades rose high and glared white the piled-up +mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles +counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair +near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and +looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.... Mr. Reed had been dead +nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in +state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and since +that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent +intrusion." + +Could anything be more horrible than that red room? Or take the +descriptions of the school at Lowood where the horror of pestilence +hangs over house and garden. Through all these Gateshead and Lowood +scenes Charlotte is unerring and absolute in her reality. + +Her very style, so uncertain in its rendering of human speech, becomes +flawless in such passages as this: "It was three o'clock; the +church-bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour +lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. +I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, +for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral +treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its +utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made +no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, +and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, +worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on +each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the +little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like +single russet leaves about to drop. + +"This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay.... I then turned +eastward. + +"On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but +brightening momently; she looked over Hay which, half lost in trees, +sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys; it was yet a mile distant, +but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. +My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I could +not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks +threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of +the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote. + +"A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so +far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp; a metallic clatter, +which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass +of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong +on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny +horizon, and blended clouds, where tint melts into tint. + +"The din sounded on the causeway...." + +Flawless this, too, of the sky after sunset: "Where the sun had gone +down in simple state--pure of the pomp of clouds--spread a solemn +purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one +point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still +softer, over half heaven." + +And this of her own moors: "There are great moors behind and on each +hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at +my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on +these roads: they stretch out east, west, north and south--white, broad, +lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and +wild to their very verge." + +She has given the secret of the moor country in a phrase: "I felt the +consecration of its loneliness." In that one line you have the real, the +undying Charlotte Brontë. + +It is such immortal things that make the difference between _Jane Eyre_ +and _The Professor_. So immeasurable is that difference that it almost +justifies the theorist in assuming an "experience" to account for it, an +experience falling between the dates of _The Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. +Unfortunately there was none; none in the sense cherished by the +researcher. Charlotte's letters are an unbroken record of those two +years that followed her return from Brussels. Her life is laid bare in +its long and cramped monotony, a life singularly empty of "experience". + +And yet an experience did come to her in that brief period. If the +researcher had not followed a false scent across the Channel, if his +_flair_ for tragic passion had not destroyed in him all sense of +proportion, he could not possibly have missed it; for it stared him in +the face, simple, obvious, inevitable. But miss it he certainly did. +Obsessed by his idea, he considered it a negligible circumstance that +Charlotte should have read _Wuthering Heights_ before she wrote _Jane +Eyre_. And yet, I think that, if anything woke Charlotte up, it was +that. Until then, however great her certainty of her own genius, she did +not know how far she could trust it, how far it would be safe to let +imagination go. Appalled by the spectacle of its excesses, she had +divorced imagination from the real. But Emily knew none of these cold +deliberations born of fear. _Wuthering Heights_ was the fruit of a +divine freedom, a divine unconsciousness. It is not possible that +Charlotte, of all people, should have read _Wuthering Heights_ without a +shock of enlightenment; that she should not have compared it with her +own bloodless work; that she should not have felt the wrong done to her +genius by her self-repression. Emily had dared to be herself; _she_ had +not been afraid of her own passion; she had had no method; she had +accomplished a stupendous thing without knowing it, by simply letting +herself go. And Charlotte, I think, said to herself, "That is what I +ought to have done. That is what I will do next time." And next time she +did it. The experience may seem insufficient, but it is of such +experiences that a great writer's life is largely made. And if you +_must_ have an influence to account for _Jane Eyre_, there is no need +to go abroad to look for it. There was influence enough in her own home. +These three Brontës, adoring each other, were intolerant of any other +influence; and the strongest spirit, which was Emily's, prevailed. To be +sure, no remonstrances from Emily or Charlotte could stop Anne in her +obstinate analysis of Walter Huntingdon; but it was some stray spark +from Emily that kindled Anne. As for Charlotte, her genius must have +quickened in her when her nerves thrilled to the shock of _Wuthering +Heights_. This, I know, is only another theory; but it has at least the +merit of its modesty. It is not offered as in the least accounting for, +or explaining, Charlotte's genius. It merely suggests with all possible +humility a likely cause of its release. Anyhow, it is a theory that does +Charlotte's genius no wrong, on which account it seems to me preferable +to any other. It is really no argument against it to say that Charlotte +never acknowledged her sister's influence, that she was indeed unaware +of it; for, in the first place, the stronger the spiritual tie between +them, the less likely was she to have been aware. In the second place, +it is not claimed that _Wuthering Heights_ was such an influence as the +"sojourn in Brussels" is said to have been--that it "made Miss Brontë an +author". It is not claimed that if there had been no _Wuthering Heights_ +and no Emily Brontë, there would have been no _Jane Eyre_; for to me +nothing can be more certain that whatever had, or had not happened, +Charlotte's genius would have found its way. + +Charlotte's genius indeed was so profoundly akin to Charlotte's nature +that its way, the way of its upward progress, was by violent impetus and +recoil. + +In _Shirley_ she revolts from the passion of _Jane Eyre_. She seems to +have written it to prove that there are other things. She had been stung +by _The Quarterly's_ attack, stung by rumour, stung by every adverse +thing that had been said. And yet not for a moment was she "influenced" +by her reviewers. It was more in defiance than in submission that she +answered them with _Shirley_. _Shirley_ was an answer to every criticism +that had yet been made. In _Shirley_ she forsook the one poor play of +hearts insurgent for the vast and varied movement of the world; social +upheavals, the clash of sects and castes, the first grim hand-to-hand +struggle between capital and labour, all are there. The book opens with +a drama, not of hearts but of artisans insurgent; frame-breakers, not +breakers of the marriage law. In sheer defiance she essays to render the +whole real world, the complex, many-threaded, many-coloured world; where +the tragic warp is woven with the bright comedy of curates. It is the +world of the beginnings; the world of the early nineteenth century that +she paints. A world with the immensity, the profundity, the darkness of +the brooding sea; where the spirit of a woman moves, troubling the +waters; for Charlotte Brontë has before her the stupendous vision of the +world as it was, as it yet is, and as it is to be. + +That world, as it existed from eighteen-twelve to Charlotte's own time, +eighteen-fifty, was not a place for a woman with a brain and a soul. +There was no career for any woman but marriage. If she missed it she +missed her place in the world, her prestige, and her privileges as a +woman. What was worse, she lost her individuality, and became a mere +piece of furniture, of disused, old-fashioned furniture, in her father's +or her brother's house. If she had a father or a brother there was no +escape for her from dependence on the male; and if she had none, if +there was no male about the house, her case was the more pitiable. And +the traditions of her upbringing were such that the real, vital things, +the things that mattered, were never mentioned in her presence. Religion +was the solitary exception; and religion had the reality and vitality +taken out of it by its dissociation with the rest of life. A woman in +these horrible conditions was only half alive. She had no energies, no +passions, no enthusiasms. Convention drained her of her life-blood. What +was left to her had no outlet; pent up in her, it bred weak, anaemic +substitutes for its natural issue, sentimentalism for passion, and +sensibility for the nerves of vision. This only applies, of course, to +the average woman. + +Charlotte Brontë was born with a horror of the world that had produced +this average woman, this creature of minute corruptions and hypocrisies. +She sent out _Jane Eyre_ to purify it with her passion. She sent out +_Shirley_ to destroy and rebuild it with her intellect. Little Jane was +a fiery portent. Shirley was a prophecy. She is modern to her +finger-tips, as modern as Meredith's great women: Diana, or Clara +Middleton, or Carinthia Jane. She was born fifty years before her time. + +This is partly owing to her creator's prophetic insight, partly to her +sheer truth to life. For Shirley was to a large extent a portrait of +Emily Brontë who was born before her time. + +It is Emily Brontë's spirit that burns in Shirley Keeldar; and it is the +spirit of Shirley Keeldar that gives life to the unwilling mass of this +vast novel. It is almost enough immortality for Shirley that she is the +only living and authentic portrait of Emily Brontë in her time. +Charlotte has given her the "wings that wealth can give", and they do +not matter. She has also given her the wings of Emily's adventurous +soul, the wealth of her inner life. + +"A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins; +unmingled--untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, +because by no human agency bestowed: the pure gift of God to His +creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her +experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all +verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence +angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her +soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it." + +"Her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes +it--" That was the secret of Emily's greatness, of her immeasurable +superiority to her sad sisters. + +And again: "In Shirley's nature prevailed at times an easy indolence: +there were periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy of hand and +eye--moments when her thoughts, her simple existence, the fact of the +world being around--and heaven above her, seemed to yield her such +fulness of happiness, that she did not need to lift a finger to increase +the joy. Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny +afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of +friendly umbrage: no society did she need but that of Caroline, and it +sufficed if she were within call; no spectacle did she ask but that of +the deep blue sky, and such cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across +its span; no sound but that of the bee's hum, the leaf's whisper." + +There are phrases in Louis Moore's diary that bring Emily Brontë +straight before us in her swift and vivid life. Shirley is "Sister of +the spotted, bright, quick-fiery leopard." "Pantheress!--beautiful +forest-born!--wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain. I +see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild +woods, and pinings after virgin freedom." "How evanescent, fugitive, +fitful she looked--slim and swift as a Northern streamer!" "... With +her long hair flowing full and wavy; with her noiseless step, her pale +cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, +spirit-like--a thing made of an element--the child of a breeze and a +flame--the daughter of ray and raindrop--a thing never to be overtaken, +arrested, fixed." + +Like Emily she is not "caught". "But if I were," she says, "do you know +what soothsayers I would consult?... The little Irish beggar that comes +barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the +wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a +crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee." + +And yet again: "She takes her sewing occasionally: but, by some +fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five +minutes at a time: her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce +threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs; perhaps she goes to +seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book, or older +china-topped work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment +indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she +recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; +perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular +view where Briarfield Church and Rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered +in trees. She has scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of +cambric, or square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and +strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to open +it for him; it is a hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to +the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is +replenished. Through the open kitchen-door the court is visible, all +sunny and gay, and peopled with turkeys and their poults, peahens and +their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea fowls, and a bright variety of pure +white and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon-plumed pigeons. +Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, +and she stands on the doorstep scattering crumbs: around her throng her +eager, plump, happy, feathered vassals.... There are perhaps some little +calves, some little new-yeaned lambs--it may be twins, whose mothers +have rejected them: Miss Keeldar ... must permit herself the treat of +feeding them with her own hand." + +Like Emily she is impatient of rituals and creeds. Like Emily she adores +the Earth. Not one of Charlotte's women except Shirley could have +chanted that great prose hymn of adoration in which Earth worships and +is worshipped. "'Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling +before those red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her +altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in +deserts, for lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods.... I see her, +and I will tell you what she is like: she is like what Eve was when she +and Adam stood alone on earth.' 'And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley,' +says Caroline, and Shirley answers: 'No, by the pure Mother of God, she +is not.' Shirley is half a Pagan. She would beg to remind Milton 'that +the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: +from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus.... I +say, there were giants on the earth in those days, giants that strove to +scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this +world yielded daring which could contend with Omnipotence; the strength +which could bear a thousand years of bondage--the vitality which could +feed that vulture death through uncounted ages--the unexhausted life +and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after +millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring +forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart +whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the +undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.'... + +"'You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.' + +"'I saw--I now see--a woman-Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the +outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil, white as +an avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of +lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple +like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her +steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear--they are deep as +lakes--they are lifted and full of worship--they tremble with the +softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse +of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark +gathers: she reclines her bosom on the edge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty +hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face, she speaks with +God.'" + +It is the living sister speaking for the dead; for Charlotte herself had +little of Emily's fine Paganism. But for one moment, in this lyric +passage, her soul echoes the very soul of Emily as she gathers round her +all the powers and splendours (and some, alas, of the fatal rhetoric) of +her prose to do her honour. + +It is not only in the large figure of the Titan Shirley that Charlotte +Brontë shows her strength. She has learnt to draw her minor masculine +characters with more of insight and of accuracy--Caroline Helstone, the +Yorkes, Robert Moore, Mr. Helstone, Joe Scott, and Barraclough, the +"joined Methody". With a few strokes they stand out living. She has +acquired more of the art of dialogue. She is a past master of dialect, +of the racy, native speech of these men. Not only is Mr. Yorke painted +with unerring power and faithfulness in every detail of his harsh and +vigorous personality, but there is no single lapse from nature when he +is speaking. The curates only excepted, Charlotte never swerves from +this fidelity. But when she is handling her curates, it is a savage and +utterly inartistic humour that inspires her. You feel that she is not +exercising the art of comedy, but relieving her own intolerable boredom +and irritation. No object could well be more innocent, and more +appealing in its innocence, than little Mr. Sweeting, curate of +Nunnerly. Mr. Sweeting at the tea-table, "having a dish of tarts before +him, and marmalade and crumpet upon his plate", should have moved the +Comic Spirit to tears of gentleness. + +Curates apart, two-thirds of _Shirley_ are written with an unerring +devotion to the real, to the very actual. They have not, for all that, +the profound reality of _Jane Eyre_. The events are confused, somehow; +the atmosphere is confusing; the northern background is drawn with a +certain hardness and apathy of touch; the large outlines are obscured, +delicate colours sharpened; it is hard and yet blurred, like a bad steel +engraving. Charlotte's senses, so intensely, so supernaturally alive in +_Jane Eyre_, are only passably awake in _Shirley_. It has some of the +dulness of _The Professor_, as it has more than its sober rightness. +But, for three-and-twenty chapters, the sobriety, the rightness triumph. +There are no improbabilities, no flights of imagination, none of the +fine language which was the shame when it was not the glory of _Jane +Eyre_. + +Then suddenly there comes a break--a cleavage. It comes with that +Chapter Twenty-four, which is headed "The Valley of the Shadow of +Death". It was written in the first months after Emily Brontë's death. + +From that point Charlotte's level strength deserts her. Ever after, she +falls and soars, and soars and falls again. There is a return to the +manner of _Jane Eyre_, the manner of Charlotte when she is deeply moved; +there is at times a relapse to Jane Eyre's worst manner. You get it at +once in "The Valley of the Shadow" chapter, in the scene of Caroline's +love-sick delirium. + +"'But he will not know I am ill till I am gone; and he will come when +they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold and stiff. + +"'What can my departed soul feel then? Can it see or know what happens +to the clay? Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living +flesh? Can the dead at all revisit those they leave? Can they come in +the elements? Will wind, water, fire lend me a path to Moore? + +"'Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulate sometimes--sings +as I have lately heard it sing at night--or passes the casement sobbing, +as if for sorrow to come? Does nothing then haunt it--nothing inspire +it?'" + +The awful improbability of Caroline is more striking because of its +contrast with the inspired rightness of the scene of Cathy's delirium in +_Wuthering Heights_. It is Charlotte feebly echoing Emily, and going +more and more wrong up to her peroration. + +Delirious Caroline wonders: "'What is that electricity they speak of, +whose changes make us well or ill; whose lack or excess blasts; whose +even balance revives?...' + +"'_Where_ is the other world? In _what_ will another life consist? Why +do I ask? Have I not cause to think that the hour is hasting but too +fast when the veil must be rent for me? Do I not know the Grand Mystery +is likely to break prematurely on me? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I +confide; whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from +early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands! Sustain me through +the ordeal I dread and must undergo! Give me strength! Give me patience! +Give me--oh, _give me_ FAITH!'" + +Jane Eyre has done worse than that, so has Rochester; but somehow, when +they were doing their worst with it, they got their passion through. +There is no live passion behind this speech of Caroline's, with its wild +stress of italics and of capitals. What passion there was in Charlotte +when she conceived Caroline was killed by Emily's death. + +And Mrs. Pryor, revealing herself to Caroline, is even more terrible. +She has all the worst vices of Charlotte's dramatic style. Mrs. Pryor +calls to the spirit of Caroline's dead father: "'James, slumber +peacefully! See, your terrible debt is cancelled! Look! I wipe out the +long, black account with my own hand! James, your child atones: this +living likeness of you--this thing with your perfect features--this one +good gift you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart and +tenderly called me "mother". Husband, rest forgiven.'" + +Even Robert Moore, otherwise almost a masterpiece, becomes improbable +when, in his great scene, Shirley refuses him. When Mr. Yorke asks him +what has gone wrong he replies: "The machinery of all my nature; the +whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the +heart, is fit to burst." + +Shirley herself is impossible with her "Lucifer, Star of the Morning, +thou art fallen," and her speech to her mercenary uncle: "Sir, your +god, your great Bell, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a +demon." + +What is worse than all, Louis Moore--Louis, the hero, Louis, the master +of passion, is a failure. He is Charlotte Brontë's most terrible, most +glaring failure. It is not true that Charlotte could not draw men, or +that she drew them all alike; Robert Moore, the hard-headed man of +business, the man of will and purpose, who never gives up, is not only +almost a masterpiece but a spontaneous masterpiece, one of the first +examples of his kind. But there is no blood in Louis' veins, no virility +in his swarthy body. He is the most unspeakable of schoolmasters. Yet +Charlotte lavished on this puppet half the wealth of her imagination. +She flings phrase after perfect phrase to him to cover himself +with--some of her best things have been given to Louis Moore to utter; +but they do not make him live. Again, she strangles him in his own +rhetoric. The courtship of Louis Moore and Shirley will not compare with +that of Jane and Rochester. There is no nightingale singing in their +wood. + +Yet, for all that, _Shirley_ comes very near to being Charlotte Brontë's +masterpiece. It is inspired from first to last with a great intention +and a great idea. It shows a vision of reality wider than her grasp. Its +faults, like the faults of _Jane Eyre_, are all on the surface, only +there is more surface in _Shirley_. If it has not _Jane Eyre's_ +commanding passion, it has a vaster sweep. It was literally the first +attempt in literature to give to woman her right place in the world. + +From first to last there is not a page or a line in it that justifies +the malignant criticism of Mrs. Oliphant. Caroline Helstone does not +justify it. She is no window-gazing virgin on the look-out, in love +already before the man has come. She is a young girl, very naturally in +love with a man whom she has known for years, who is always on the spot. +As for Shirley, she flung herself with all the vehemence of her +prophetic soul on the hypocritical convention that would make every +woman dependent on some man, and at the same time despises her for the +possession of her natural instincts. And Caroline followed her. "I +observe that to such grievances as society cannot cure, it usually +forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn: this scorn being only a sort of +tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of +ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing +on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an +obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and +shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless and +unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the +world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents.... +Men of England! Look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, +dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating +to sour old maids--envious, back-biting, wretched, because life is a +desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce +modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and +consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied. Fathers, cannot +you alter these things?... You would wish to be proud of your daughters, +and not to blush for them, then seek for them an interest and an +occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the +mischief-making talebearer. Keep your girl's minds narrow and +degraded--they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace +to you: give them scope and work--they will be your gayest companions in +health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in +old age." + +That is the argument from fathers, and it comes from Caroline Helstone, +not from Shirley. And the fact that Caroline married Robert Moore, and +Shirley fell in love when her hour came (and with Louis Moore, too!) +does not diminish the force or the sincerity or the truth of the tirade. + +_Shirley_ may not be a great novel; but it is a great prophetic book. +Shirley's vision of the woman kneeling on the hills serves for more than +Emily Brontë's vision of Hertha and Demeter, of Eve, the Earth-mother, +"the mighty and mystical parent"; it is Charlotte Brontë's vindication +of Eve, her vision of woman as she is to be. She faced the world once +for all with her vision: "I see her," she said, "and I will tell you +what she is like." + +Mrs. Oliphant did not see the woman kneeling on the hills. Neither +George Eliot nor Mrs. Gaskell saw her. They could not possibly have told +the world what she was like. It is part of Charlotte Brontë's superior +greatness that she saw. + + * * * * * + +You do not see that woman in _Villette_. She has passed with the +splendour of Charlotte's vision of the world. The world in _Villette_ is +narrowed to a Pensionnat de Demoiselles, and centred in the heart of one +woman. And never, not even in _Jane Eyre_, and certainly not in +_Shirley_, did Charlotte Brontë achieve such mastery of reality, and +with it such mastery of herself. _Villette_ is the final triumph of her +genius over the elements that warred in her. It shows the movement of +her genius, which was always by impulse and recoil. In _The Professor_ +she abjured, in the interests of reality, the "imagination" of her +youth. In _Jane Eyre_ she was urged forward by the released impetus of +the forces she repressed. In _Shirley_ they are still struggling with +her sense of the sober and the sane reality; the book is torn to +fragments in the struggle, and in the end imagination riots. + +But in _Villette_ there are none of these battlings and rendings, these +Titanic upheavals and subsidences. Charlotte Brontë's imagination, and +her sense of the real, are in process of fusion. There are few novels in +which an imagination so supreme is wedded to so vivid a vision of +actuality. It may be said that Charlotte Brontë never achieved positive +actuality before. The Pensionnat de Demoiselles is almost as visibly and +palpably actual as the Maison Vauquer in _Père Goriot_. It is a return +to the method of experience with a vengeance. Charlotte's success, +indeed, was so stunning that for all but sixty years _Villette_ has +passed for a _roman à clef_, the novel, not only of experience, but of +personal experience. There was a certain plausibility in that view. The +characters could all be easily recognized. And when Dr. John was +identified with Mr. George Smith, and his mother with Mr. George Smith's +mother, and Madame Beck with Madame Héger, and M. Paul Emanuel with +Madame Héger's husband, the inference was irresistible: Lucy Snowe was, +and could only be, Charlotte Brontë. And as the figure of M. Paul +Emanuel was ten times more vivid and convincing than that of Rochester, +so all that applied to Jane Eyre applied with ten times more force to +Lucy. In _Villette_ Charlotte Brontë was considered to have given +herself hopelessly away. + +I have tried to show that this view cannot stand before an unprejudiced +examination of her life and letters. No need to go into all that again. +On the evidence, Charlotte seems at the best of times to have fallen in +love with difficulty; and she most certainly was no more in love with +"the little man", Paul Emanuel, than she was with "the little man", Mr. +Taylor. The really important and interesting point is that, if she had +been, if he had thus obtained the reality with which passion endows its +object, her imagination would have had no use for him; its work would +have been done for it. + +To the supreme artist the order of the actual event is one thing, and +the order of creation is another. Their lines may start from the same +point in the actual, they may touch again and again, but they are not +the same, and they cannot run exactly parallel. There must always be +this difference between the actual thing and the thing drawn from it, +however closely, that each is embedded and enmeshed in a different +context. For a character in a novel to be alive it must have grown; and +to have grown it must have followed its own line of evolution, +inevitably and in its own medium; and that, whether or not it has been +"taken", as they say, "from life". The more alive it is the less likely +is it to have been "taken", to have been seized, hauled by the scruff of +its neck out of the dense web of the actual. All that the supreme artist +wants is what Charlotte Brontë called "the germ of the real", by which +she meant the germ of the actual. He does not want the alien, developed +thing, standing in its own medium ready-made. Charlotte Brontë said that +the character of Dr. John was a failure because it lacked the germ of +the real. She should have said that it lacked the germ of many reals; it +is so obviously drawn from incomplete observation of a single instance. +I am inclined to think that she did "take" Dr. John. And whenever +Charlotte Brontë "took" a character, as she took the unfortunate curates +and Mr. St. John Rivers, the result was failure. + +No supreme work of art was ever "taken". It was begotten and born and +grown, the offspring of faithful love between the soul of the artist and +reality. The artist must bring to his "experience" as much as he takes +from it. The dignity of Nature is all against these violences and +robberies of art. She hides her deepest secret from the marauder, and +yields it to the lover who brings to her the fire of his own soul. + +And that fire of her own soul was what Charlotte Brontë brought to her +supreme creations. It was certainly what she brought to Paul Emanuel. +Impossible to believe that M. Héger gave her more than one or two of the +germs of M. Paul. Personally, I can only see the respectable M. Héger as +a man whose very essence was a certain impassivity and phlegm under the +appearance of a temperament. Choleric he was, with the superficial and +temporary choler of the schoolmaster. A schoolmaster gifted with the +most extraordinary, the most marvellous, the most arresting faculty for +making faces, a faculty which in an Englishman would have argued him a +perfect volcano of erratic temperament. But I more than suspect that +when it came to temperament M. Héger took it out in faces; that he was +nothing more than a benevolent, sentimental, passably intellectual +bourgeois; but bourgeois to the core. Whereas, look at M. Paul! No +wonder that with that tame and solid stuff before her it took even +Charlotte Brontë's fiery spirit nine years (torturing the unwilling +dross that checked its flight) before it could create Paul Emanuel. +Because of her long work on him he is at once the most real and the best +imagined of her characters. + +I admit that in the drawing of many of her minor characters she seems to +have relied upon very close and intimate observation of the living +model. But in none of her minor characters is she at grips with the +reality that, for her, passion is. Charlotte refused to give heroic rank +to persons she had merely observed; she would not exalt them to the +dignity of passion. Her imagination could not work on them to that +extent. (That is partly why Caroline's delirium is so palpably "faked".) +Even in her portrait of the heroic Shirley, who was frankly "taken" from +her sister Emily, she achieved the likeness mainly by the artifice of +unlikeness, by removing Shirley Keeldar into a life in which Emily +Brontë had never played a part, whereby Shirley became for her a +separate person. (You cannot by any stretch of the imagination see Emily +falling in love with the schoolmaster, Louis Moore.) + +Lest there should be any doubt on the subject, Charlotte herself +explained to Mrs. Gaskell how her imagination worked. "I asked her," +Mrs. Gaskell says, "whether she had ever taken opium, as the description +given of its effects in _Villette_ was so exactly like what I had +experienced--vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the +outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied that +she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but +that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to +describe anything that had not fallen within her own experience; she had +thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling +asleep--wondering what it was like, or how it would be--till at length, +sometimes after her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, +she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had +in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word +for word, as it happened." + +To a mind like that the germ of the actual was enough. Charlotte +Brontë's genius, in fact, was ardently impatient of the actual: it cared +only for its own. At the least hint from experience it was off. A +glance, a gesture of M. Héger's was enough to fire it to the conception +of Paul Emanuel. He had only to say a kind word to her, to leave a book +or a box of bon-bons in her desk (if he _did_ leave bon-bons) for +Charlotte's fire to work on him. She had only to say to herself, "This +little man is adorable in friendship; I wonder what he would be like in +love," and she saw that he would be something, though not altogether, +like Paul Emanuel. She had only to feel a pang of half-remorseful, +half-humorous affection for him, and she knew what Lucy felt like in her +love-sick agony. As for Madame Héger, Madame's purely episodic jealousy, +her habits of surveillance, her small inscrutabilities of behaviour, +became the fury, the treachery, the perfidy of Madame Beck. For +treachery and perfidy, and agony and passion, were what Charlotte wanted +for _Villette_. + +And yet it is true that _Villette_ is a novel of experience, owing its +conspicuous qualities very much to observation. After all, a +contemporary novel cannot be made altogether out of the fire of the +great writer's soul. It is because Charlotte Brontë relied too much on +the fire of her own soul that in _Jane Eyre_ and parts of _Shirley_ she +missed that unique expression of actuality which, over and over again, +she accomplished in _Villette_. For the expression of a social _milieu_, +for manners, for the dialogue of ordinary use, for the whole detail of +the speech characteristic of an individual and a type, for the right +accent and pitch, for all the vanishing shades and aspects of the +temporary and the particular, the greatest and the fieriest writer is at +the mercy of observation and experience. It was her final mastery of +these things that made it possible to praise Charlotte Brontë's powers +of observation at the expense of her genius; and this mainly because of +M. Paul. + +No offspring of genius was ever more alive, more rich in individuality, +than M. Paul. He is alive and he is adorable, in his _paletot_ and +_bonnet grec_, from the moment when he drags Lucy up three pairs of +stairs to the solitary and lofty attic and locks her in, to that other +moment when he brings her to the little house that he has prepared for +her. Whenever he appears there is pure radiant comedy, and pathos as +pure. It is in this utter purity, this transparent simplicity, that +_Villette_ is great. There is not one jarring note in any of the +delicious dialogues between Lucy and M. Paul, not one of those passages +which must be erased if quotation is not to fail of its effect. Take the +scene where Lucy breaks M. Paul's spectacles. + +"A score of times ere now I had seen them fall and receive no +damage--this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so +fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star. + +"Now, indeed, dismay seized me--dismay and regret. I knew the value of +these _lunettes_: M. Paul's sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and +these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I +picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened +through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think +I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look the +bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak. + +"'_Là _!' he said: '_me voilà veuf de mes lunettes_! I think that +Mademoiselle Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply +earned; she trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress, +traitress! You are resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your +hands!' + +"I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering and +furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had +seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not +angry--not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of +clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint." + +Take the "Watchguard" scene. + +"M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I +said I was making a watchguard. He asked, 'For whom?' And I answered, +'For a gentleman--one of my friends.'" + +Whereupon M. Paul flies into a passion, and accuses Lucy of behaving to +him, "'With what pungent vivacities--what an impetus of mutiny--what a +_fougue_ of injustice.'... '_Chut! à l'instant!_ There! there I +went--_vive comme la poudre_.' He was sorry--he was very sorry: for my +sake he grieved over the hopeless peculiarity. This _emportement_, this +_chaleur_--generous, perhaps, but excessive--would yet, he feared, do me +a mischief. It was a pity. I was not--he believed, in his soul--wholly +without good qualities; and would I but hear reason, and be more sedate, +more sober, less _en l'air_, less _coquette_, less taken by show, less +prone to set an undue value on outside excellence--to make much of the +attentions of people remarkable chiefly for so many feet of stature, +_des couleurs de poupée, un nez plus ou moins bien fait_, and an +enormous amount of fatuity--I might yet prove a useful, perhaps an +exemplary character. But, as it was----And here the little man's voice +was for a moment choked. + +"I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing +word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so +odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd. + +"I thought he had nearly done: but no, he sat down that he might go on +at his ease. + +"'While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger +for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had +noticed in my dress.'" + + * * * * * + +"'And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, monsieur, you would +necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?' holding up +my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a +groan--I suppose over my levity. + +"After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the +chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired: + +"'Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me +entirely detest him?' + +"I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don't +think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good night on +friendly terms: and even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned +back just to explain that he would not be understood to speak in entire +condemnation of the scarlet dress.'... + +"'And the flowers under my bonnet, monsieur?' I asked. 'They are very +little ones.' + +"'Keep them little, then,' said he. 'Permit them not to become +full-blown.' + +"'And the bow, monsieur--the bit of ribbon?' + +"'_Va pour le ruban_!' was the propitious answer. + +"And so we settled it." + +That is good; and when Lucy presents the watchguard it is better still. + +"He looked at the box: I saw its clear and warm tint, and bright azure +circlet, pleased his eyes. I told him to open it. + +"'My initials!' said he, indicating the letters in the lid. 'Who told +you I was called Carl David?' + +"'A little bird, monsieur.' + +"'Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing +when needful.' + +"He took out the chain--a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with +silk and sparkling with beads. He liked that too--admired it artlessly, +like a child. + +"'For me?' + +"'Yes, for you.' + +"'This is the thing you were working at last night?' + +"'The same.' + +"'You finished it this morning?' + +"'I did.' + +"'You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?' + +"'Undoubtedly.' + +"'And offered on my fête-day?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'This purpose continued as you wove it?' + +"'Again I assented.' + +"'Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion--saying, +this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the +adornment of another?' + +"'By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.' + +"'This object is _all_ mine?' + +"'That object is yours entirely.' + +"Straightway monsieur opened his paletot, arranged the guard splendidly +across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he +could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought +decorative.... + +"'_À present c'est un fait accompli_,' said he, readjusting his +paletot...." + +To the last gesture of Monsieur it is superb. + +I have taken those scenes because they are of crucial importance as +indications of what Charlotte Brontë was doing in _Villette_, and yet +would do. They show not only an enormous advance in technique, but a +sense of the situation, of the _scène à faire_, which is entirely or +almost entirely lacking in her earlier work. + +If there be degrees in reality, Lucy and Pauline de Bassompierre are +only less real than M. Paul. And by some miracle their reality is not +diminished by Charlotte Brontë's singular change of intention with +regard to these two. Little Polly, the child of the beginning, the +inscrutable creature of nerves, exquisitely sensitive to pain, fretting +her heart out in love for her father and for Graham Bretton, is hardly +recognizable in Pauline, Countess de Bassompierre. She has preserved +only her fragility, her fastidiousness, her little air of +inaccessibility. Polly is obviously predestined to that profound and +tragic suffering which is Lucy Snowe's. + +"I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her head on her +hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of pocket-handkerchief +from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I heard her weep. Other +children in grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or restraint, but +this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her emotion." + +Again (Polly is parted from her father): "When the street-door closed, +she dropped on her knees at a chair with a cry--'Papa!' + +"It was low and long; a sort of 'why hast thou forsaken me?' During an +ensuing space of some minutes I perceived she endured agony. She went +through, in that brief interval of her infant life, emotions such as +some never feel; it was in her constitution: she would have more of such +instants if she lived." + +Polly is contrasted with the cold and disagreeable Lucy. "I, Lucy Snowe, +was calm," Lucy says when she records that agony. The effect she gives, +of something creepily insensitive and most unpleasant, is unmistakable +in these early chapters. She watches Polly with a cold, analytic eye. +"These sudden, dangerous natures--sensitive as they are called--offer +many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured +from participation in their vagaries." When Polly, charming Polly, waits +on her father at the tea-table, Lucy is impervious to her tiny charm. +"Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body." When Graham +Bretton repulses Polly, Lucy has some thoughts of "improving the +occasion by inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had +ever a tolerable stock ready for application." + +There is no sign in the beginning that this detestable Lucy is to be +heroine. But in Chapter Four Polly disappears and Lucy takes her place +and plays her part. The child Polly had a suffering and passionate +heart, for all her little air of fastidiousness and inaccessibility. It +is the suffering and passionate heart of Polly that beats in Lucy of the +Pensionnat. There is only enough of the original Lucy left to sit in +judgment on Ginevra Fanshawe and "the Parisienne". + +The child Polly had an Imagination. "'Miss Snowe,' said she in a +whisper, 'this is a wonderful book ... it tells about distant countries, +a long, long way from England, which no traveller can reach without +sailing thousands of miles over the sea.... Here is a picture of +thousands gathered in a desolate place--a plain spread with sand.... And +here are pictures more stranger than that. There is the wonderful Great +Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady with a foot littler than mine. +There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here--most strange of all--is a +land of ice and snow without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this +land they found some mammoth bones; there are no mammoths now. You don't +know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty +goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not +a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes if I met one in +a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it +would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a +grasshopper in a hay-field without knowing it.'" + +It is Polly's Imagination that appears again in Lucy's "Creative +Impulse". "I with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most +capricious, the most maddening of masters ... a deity which sometimes, +under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when +questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be +found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark +Baal with carven lips and blank eyeballs, and breast like the stone face +of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some +long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream +of electricity, the irrational Demon would awake unsolicited, would stir +strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a perturbed Dagon, +calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim +for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstances or +scene--rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, +perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to +give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the +desperate listener even a miserable remnant--yielding it sordidly, as +though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark +veins." + +That is Lucy. But when Polly reappears fitfully as Pauline de +Bassompierre, she is an ordinary, fastidious little lady without a spark +of imagination or of passion. + +Now in the first three chapters of _Villette_, Charlotte Brontë +concentrated all her strength and all her art on the portrait of little +Polly. The portrait of little Polly is drawn with the most delicate care +and tender comprehension, and the most vivid and entire reality. I +cannot agree with Mr. Swinburne that George Eliot, with her Totty and +Eppie and Lillo, showed a closer observation of the ways, or a more +perfect understanding of the heart of a child. Only little Maggie +Tulliver can stand beside little Polly in _Villette_. She is an answer +to every critic, from Mr. Swinburne downwards, who maintains that +Charlotte Brontë could not draw children. + +But Lucy at fourteen is drawn with slight and grudging strokes, +sufficient for the minor part she is evidently to play. Lucy at Bretton +is a mere foil to little Polly. Charlotte Brontë distinctly stated in +her letters that she did not care for Miss Snowe. "Lucy must not marry +Dr. John; he is far too youthful, handsome, bright-spirited, and +sweet-tempered; he is a 'curled darling' of Nature and of fortune, and +must draw a prize in life's lottery. His wife must be young, rich, +pretty; he must be made very happy indeed. If Lucy marries anybody, it +must be the Professor--a man in whom there is much to forgive, much to +'put up with'. But I am not leniently disposed towards Miss Frost: from +the beginning I never meant to appoint her lines in pleasant places." +"As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that +she should not occupy the pedestal to which Jane Eyre was raised by some +injudicious admirers. She is where I meant her to be, and where no +charge of self-laudation can touch her." + +But Lucy is _not_ altogether where she was meant to be. When she +reappears at the Pensionnat it is with "flame in her soul and lightning +in her eyes". She reminds M. Paul "of a young she wild creature, new +caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first +entrance of the breaker-in". + +"'You look,' said he, 'like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet +poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.'" + +There is no inconsistency in this. Women before now have hidden a soul +like a furnace under coldness and unpleasantness, and smothered +shrieking nerves under an appearance of apathy. Lucy Snowe is one of +them. As far as she goes, Lucy at Bretton is profoundly consistent with +Lucy in _Villette_. It is not Lucy's volcanic outbreaks in the +Pensionnat that do violence to her creator's original intention. It is +the debasement of Polly and the exaltation of Lucy to her tragic rôle, +the endowment of Lucy with Polly's rarest qualities, to the utter +impoverishment of Pauline de Bassompierre. Polly in _Villette_ is a mere +foil to Lucy. + +Having lavished such care and love on Polly, Charlotte Brontë could not +possibly have meant to debase her and efface her. How then did it happen +that Polly was debased and Lucy sublimely exalted? + +It happened, I think, partly because for the first time Charlotte Brontë +created a real living man. The reality of M. Paul Emanuel was too +strong both for Lucy and for Charlotte Brontë. From the moment when he +seized her and dragged her to the garret he made Lucy live as Charlotte +Brontë had never contemplated her living. He made her live to the utter +exclusion and extinction of Pauline de Bassompierre. + +And "the despotic little man" dominates the book to an extent that +Charlotte never contemplated either. Until the storm carried him out of +her sight, she was, I think, unaware of his dominion. Dr. John was her +hero. She told Mr. George Smith, his prototype, that she intended him +for the most beautiful character in the book (which must have been very +gratifying to Mr. George Smith). He was the type she needed for her +purpose. But he does not "come off", if only for the reason that she is +consciously preoccupied with him. Dr. John was far more of an obsession +to her than this little man, Paul Emanuel, who was good enough for Lucy +Snowe. Pauline de Bassompierre was to be finished and perfected to match +the high finish and perfection of Dr. John. Yet neither Pauline nor Dr. +John "came off". Charlotte Brontë cared too much for them. But for Paul +Emanuel she did not care. He comes off in a triumph of the detached, +divinely free "Creative Impulse". + +Charlotte, with all her schemes, is delivered over to her genius from +the moment when Lucy settles in Villette. To Charlotte's inexperience +Brussels was a perfect hotbed for the germs of the real. That, I think, +can be admitted without subscribing to the view that it was anything +more. Once in the Pensionnat, Lucy entered an atmosphere of the most +intense reality. From that point onward the book is literally inspired +by the sense of atmosphere, that sense to which experience brings the +stuff to work on. All Charlotte's experience and her suffering is there, +changed, intensified, transmuted to an experience and a suffering which +were not hers. + +This matured sense of actuality is shown again in the drawing of the +minor characters. There is a certain vindictiveness about the portrait +of Ginevra Fanshawe, a touch of that fierce, intolerant temper that +caused Blanche Ingram to be strangled by the hands of her creator. +Ginevra is not strangled. She lives splendidly; she flourishes in an +opulence of detail. + +Experience may have partly accounted for Ginevra. It could hardly have +accounted for the little de Hamel, and he is perfect as far as he goes. + +It is because of this increasing mastery, this new power in handling +unsympathetic types, because, in short, of its all round excellence, +that _Villette_ must count as Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. It is +marvellous that within such limits she should have attained such +comparative catholicity of vision. It is not the vast vision of +_Shirley_, prophetic and inspired, and a little ineffectual. It is the +lucid, sober, unobstructed gaze of a more accomplished artist, the +artist whose craving for "reality" is satisfied; the artist who is +gradually extending the limits of his art. When Charlotte Brontë wrote +_Jane Eyre_ she could not appreciate Jane Austen; she wondered why +George Henry Lewes liked her so much. She objected to Jane Austen +because there was no passion in her, and therefore no poetry and no +reality. When she wrote _Shirley_ she had seen that passion was not +everything; there were other things, very high realities, that were not +passion. By the time she wrote _Villette_ she saw, not only that there +are other things, but that passion is the rarest thing on earth. It does +not enter into the life of ordinary people like Dr. John, and Madame +Beck, and Ginevra Fanshawe. + +In accordance with this tendency to level up, her style in _Villette_ +attains a more even and a more certain excellence. Her flights are few; +so are her lapses. Her fearful tendency to rhetoric is almost gone. Gone +too are the purple patches; but there is everywhere delicate colour +under a vivid light. But there are countless passages which show the +perfection to which she could bring her old imaginative style. Take the +scene where Lucy, under the influence of opium, goes into Villette _en +fête_. + +"The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame had over-charged or +under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead of +stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought--to reverie +peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their +bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons.... + +"I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal +Haute-Ville; thence the music I heard certainly floated; it was hushed +now, but it might rewaken. I went on: neither band nor bell-music came +to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong tide, a +great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement gathered, +chimes pealed--to what was I coming? Entering on the level of a Grande +Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, plunged amidst a +gay, living, joyous crowd. + +"Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems +abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town by her own +flambeaux, beholds her own splendour--gay dresses, grand equipage, fine +horses and gallant riders, throng the bright streets. I see even scores +of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams." + +This is only beaten by that lyric passage that ends _Villette_; that +sonorous dirge that rings high above all pathos, which is somehow a song +of triumph, inspired by the whole power and splendour and magnificence +of storm and death. + +"The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; +but--he is coming. + +"Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind +takes its autumn moan; but--he is coming. + +"The skies hang full and dark--a rack sails from the west; the clouds +cast themselves into strange forms--arches and broad radiations; there +rise resplendent mornings--glorious, royal, purple, as monarch in his +state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at +its thickest--so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some +signs of the sky, I have noted them ever since childhood. God, watch +that sail! Oh, guard it! + +"The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--'keening' at every +window! It will rise--it will swell--it shrieks out long: wander as I +may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing +hours make it strong; by midnight all sleepless watchers hear and fear a +wild south-west storm. + +"That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the +Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had +gorged their fill of substance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest +had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was +thunder--the tremor of whose plumes was storm." + + * * * * * + +After _Villette_, the _Last Sketch_, the _Fragment of Emma_; that +fragment which Charlotte Brontë read to her husband not long before her +death. All he said was, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." + +The critics have fulfilled his cautious prophecy. The _Fragment_ passed +for one of those sad things of which the least said the better. It was +settled that Charlotte Brontë had written herself out, that if she had +lived she would have become more and more her own plagiarist. There is a +middle-aged lady in _Emma_, presumably conceived on the lines of Mrs. +Fairfax and Mrs. Pryor. There is a girls' school, which is only not +Lowood because it is so obviously Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor. There is a +schoolmistress with sandy hair and thin lips and a cold blue eye, +recalling Madame Beck, though there the likeness ceases. And in that +school, ill-treated by that schoolmistress, there is a little ugly, +suffering, deserted child. + +All this looks very much like repetition. But it does not shake my +private belief that _Emma_ is a fragment of what would have been as +great a novel as _Villette_. There are indications. There is Mr. Ellin, +who proves that Charlotte Brontë could create a live man of the finer +sort, an unexploited masculine type with no earthly resemblance to +Rochester or to Louis Moore or M. Paul. He is an unfinished sketch +rather than a portrait, but a sketch that would not too shamefully have +discredited Mr. Henry James. For there is a most modern fineness and +subtlety in _Emma_; and, for all its sketchy incompleteness, a peculiar +certainty of touch, an infallible sense of the significant action, the +revealing gesture. With a splendid economy of means, scenes, passages, +phrases, apparently slight, are charged with the most intense +psychological suggestion. When Mr. Ellin, summoned on urgent business by +Miss Wilcox, takes that preposterously long and leisurely round to get +to her, you know what is passing in the mind of Mr. Ellin as well as if +you had been told. In that brief scene between Mr. Ellin and the +schoolmistress, you know as well as if you had been told, that Miss +Wilcox has lost Mr. Ellin because of her unkindness to a child. When the +child, Matilda Fitzgibbon, falls senseless, and Mr. Ellin gives his +inarticulate cry and lifts her from the floor, the enigmatic man has +revealed his innermost nature. + +Now a fragment that can suggest all this with the smallest possible +expenditure of phrases, is not a fragment that can be set aside. It is +slight; but slightness that accomplishes so much is a sign of progress +rather than of falling-off. We shall never know what happened to Matilda +when Mr. Ellin took her from Miss Wilcox. We shall never know what +happened to Mr. Ellin; but I confess that I am dying to know, and that I +find it hard to forgive Mr. Nicholls for having killed them, so certain +am I that they would have lived triumphantly if Charlotte Brontë had not +married him. + +Some of us will be profoundly indifferent to this issue; for Charlotte +Brontë has no following in a certain school. She defies analysis. You +cannot label her. What she has done is not "Realism", neither is it +"Romance". She displeases both by her ambiguity and by her lack of form. +She has no infallible dramatic instinct. Even in _Villette_ she +preserves some of her clumsiness, her crudity, her improbability. The +progress of "the Novel" in our day is towards a perfection of form and a +reality she never knew. + +But "reality" is a large term; and, as for form, _who_ cared about it in +the fifties? As for improbability--as M. Dimnet says--she is not more +improbable than Balzac. + +And all these things, the ambiguity, the formlessness and the rest, she +was gradually correcting as she advanced. It is impossible to exaggerate +the importance and significance of her attainment in _Villette_; there +has been so much confused thinking in the consecrated judgment of that +novel. _Villette_ owes its high place largely to its superior +construction and technique; largely and primarily to Charlotte Brontë's +progress towards the light, towards the world, towards the great +undecorated reality. It is odd criticism that ignores the inevitable +growth, the increasing vision and grasp, the whole indomitable advance +of a great writer, and credits "experience" with the final masterpiece. +As a result of this confusion _Villette_ has been judged "final" in +another sense. Yes, final--this novel that shows every sign and token of +long maturing, long-enduring power. If Charlotte Brontë's critics had +not hypnotized themselves by the perpetual reiteration of that word +"experience", it would have been impossible for them, with the evidence +of her work before them, to have believed that in _Villette_ she had +written herself out. + +She was only just beginning. + + * * * * * + +Of Charlotte Brontë's _Poems_ there is not much to say. They are better +poems than Branwell's or Anne's, but that does not make them very good. +Still, they are interesting, and they are important, because they are +the bridge by which Charlotte Brontë passed into her own dominion. She +took Wordsworth with his Poems and Ballads for her guide, and he misled +her and delayed her on her way, and kept her a long time standing on her +bridge. For in her novels, and her novels only, Charlotte was a poet. In +her poems she is a novelist, striving and struggling for expression in a +cramped form, an imperfect and improper medium. But most indubitably a +novelist. Nearly all her poems which are not artificial are impersonal. +They deal with "situations", with "psychological problems", that cry +aloud for prose. There is the "Wife" who seems to have lived a long, +adventurous life with "William" through many poems; there is the +deserted wife and mother in "Mementos"; there is "Frances", the deserted +maiden; there is "Gilbert" with his guilty secret and his suicide, a +triple domestic tragedy in the three acts of a three-part ballad; there +is the lady in "Preference", who prefers her husband to her passionate +and profoundly deluded lover; there is the woman in "Apostasy", wrecked +in the conflict between love and priestcraft; and there is little else +beside. These poems are straws, showing the way of the wind that bloweth +where it listeth. + + * * * * * + +Too much has been written about Charlotte Brontë, and far too much has +been read. You come away from it with an enormous mass of printed stuff +wrecked in your memory, letters, simply hundreds of letters, legends and +theories huddled together in a heap, with all values and proportions +lost; and your impression is of tumult and of suffering, and of a +multitude of confused and incongruous happenings; funerals and +flirtations, or something very like flirtations, to the sound of the +passing bell and sexton's chisel; upheavals of soul, flights to and from +Brussels, interminable years of exile, and of lurid, tragic passion; +years, interminable, monotonous years of potato-peeling and all manner +of household piety; scenes of debauchery, horrors of opium and of drink; +celebrity, cataclysmal celebrity, rushings up to town in storm and +darkness, dim coffee-houses in Paternoster Row, dinner-parties; deaths, +funerals, melancholia; and still celebrity; years, interminable, +monotonous years of blazing celebrity, sounds of the literary workshop +overpowering the sexton's chisel; then marriage, sudden and swift; then +death. And in the midst of it all, one small and rather absurd and +obscure figure, tossed to and fro, said to be Charlotte Brontë. + +What an existence! + +This is the impression created by the bibliographical total. But sweep +four-fifths of it away, all the legends and half the letters, and sort +and set out what remains, observing values and proportions, and you get +an outer life where no great and moving event ever came, saving only +death (Charlotte's marriage hardly counts beside it); an outer life of a +strange and almost oppressive simplicity and silence; and an inner life, +tumultuous and profound in suffering, a life to all appearances +frustrate, where all nourishment of the emotions was reduced to the +barest allowance a woman's heart can depend on and yet live; and none +the less a life that out of that starvation diet raised enough of rich +and vivid and superb emotion to decorate a hundred women's lives; an +inner life which her genius fed and was fed from, for which no reality, +no experience, could touch its own intensity of realization. And, genius +apart, in the region of actual and ostensible emotion, no one of us can +measure the depth of her adoration of duty, or the depth, the force and +volume of her passion for her own people, and for the earth trodden by +their feet, the earth that covered them. Beside it every other feeling +was temporary and insignificant. In the light of it you see Charlotte +Brontë's figure for ever simple and beautiful and great; behind her for +ever the black-grey setting of her village and the purple of her moors. +That greatness and beauty and simplicity is destroyed by any effort to +detach her from her background. She may seem susceptible to the alien +influences of exile; but it is as an exile that she suffers; and her +most inspired moments are her moments of return, when she wrote prose +like this: "The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale; as glad as if +she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch +for his goddess to-night: there are no flocks on the mountains." + + * * * * * + +Around the figure of Emily Brontë there is none of that clamour and +confusion. She stands apart in an enduring silence, and guards for ever +her secret and her mystery. By the mercy of heaven the swarm of gossips +and of theorists has passed her by. She has no legend or hardly any. So +completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to +write the Life of Emily Brontë she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's +meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable +simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the +hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from her fingers. + +That is worth all the reams, the terrible reams that have been written +about Charlotte. + +There can be no doubt that Emily Brontë found her shelter behind +Charlotte's fame; but she was protected most of all by the +unapproachable, the unique and baffling quality of her temperament and +of her genius. Her own people seem to have felt it; Charlotte herself in +that preface to _Wuthering Heights_, which stands as her last +vindication and eulogy of her dead sister, even Charlotte betrays a +curious reservation and reluctance. You feel that Emily's genius +inspired her with a kind of sacred terror. + +Charlotte destroyed all records of her sister except her poems. Between +six and seven hundred of her own letters have been published; there are +two of Emily's. They tell little or nothing. And there was that diary +she kept for Anne, where she notes with extreme brevity the things that +are happening in her family. There never was a diary wherein the soul of +the diarist was so well concealed. + +And yet, because of this silence, this absence of legend and conjecture, +we see Emily Brontë more clearly than we can ever hope to see Charlotte +now. Though hardly anything is known of her, what _is_ known is +authentic; it comes straight from those who knew and loved her: from +Charlotte, from Ellen Nussey, from the servants at the Parsonage. Even +of her outward and visible presence we have a clearer image. The lines +are fewer, but they are more vivid. You see her tall and slender, in her +rough clothes, tramping the moors with the form and the step of a virile +adolescent. Shirley, the "_bête fauve_", is Emily civilized. You see her +head carried high and crowned with its long, dark hair, coiled simply, +caught up with a comb. You see her face, honey-pale, her slightly high, +slightly aquiline nose; her beautiful eyes, dark-grey, luminous; the +"kind, kindling, liquid eyes" that Ellen Nussey saw; and their look, one +moment alert, intent, and the next, inaccessibly remote. + +I have seen such kind and kindling eyes in the face of a visionary, born +with a profound, incurable indifference to the material event; for whom +the Real is the incredible, unapparent harmony that flows above, +beneath, and within the gross flux of appearances. To him it is the sole +thing real. That kind and kindling look I know to be simply a light +reflected from the surface of the dream. It is anything but cold; it has +indeed a certain tender flame; but you would be profoundly mistaken if +you argued from it more than the faintest polite interest in you and +your affairs. The kindling of Emily Brontë's eyes I take to have had at +times something of the same unearthly quality. Strangers received from +her an impression as of a creature utterly removed from them; a +remoteness scarcely human, hard to reconcile with her known tenderness +for every living thing. She seems to have had a passionate repugnance to +alien and external contacts, and to have felt no more than an almost +reluctant liking for the lovable and charming Ellen Nussey. Indeed, she +regarded Charlotte's friend with the large and virile tolerance that +refuses to be charmed. + +And yet in the depths of her virginal nature there was something +fiercely tender and maternal. There can be no doubt that she cared for +Charlotte, who called her "Mine own bonnie love"; but she would seem to +have cared far more for Anne who was young and helpless, and for +Branwell who was helpless and most weak. + +Thus there is absolutely nothing known of Emily that destroys or +disturbs the image that Haworth holds of her; nothing that detaches her +for a moment from her own people, and from her own place. Her days of +exile count not at all in her thirty years of home. No separation ever +broke, for one hour that counted, the bonds that bound her to her moors, +or frustrated the divine passion of her communion with their earth and +sky. Better still, no tale of passion such as they tell of Charlotte was +ever told of Emily. + +It may be told yet, for no secret thing belonging to this disastrous +family is sacred. There may be somewhere some awful worshipper of Emily +Brontë, impatient of her silence and unsatisfied with her strange, her +virgin and inaccessible beauty, who will some day make up a story of +some love-affair, some passion kindred to Catherine Earnshaw's passion +for Heathcliff, of which her moors have kept the secret; and he will +tell his tale. But we shall at least know that he had made it up. And +even so, it will have been better for that man if he had never been +born. He will have done his best to destroy or to deface the loveliness +of a figure unique in literature. And he will have ignored the one +perfect, the one essentially true picture of Emily Brontë, which is to +be found in Maurice Maeterlinck's _Wisdom and Destiny_. + +To M. Maeterlinck she is the supreme instance of the self-sufficing +soul, independent and regardless of the material event. She shows the +emptiness, the impotence, the insignificance of all that we call +"experience," beside the spirit that endures. "Not a single event ever +paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she could +claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and beauty, with +matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever happened; but +did not all things really happen to her much more directly and tangibly +than with most of us, seeing that everything that took place about her, +everything that she saw or heard was transformed within her into +thoughts and feelings, into indulgent love, admiration, adoration of +life...? + +"Of her happiness none can doubt. Not in the soul of the best of all +those whose happiness has lasted longest, been the most active, +diversified, perfect, could more imperishable harvest be found, than in +the soul Emily Brontë lays bare. If to her there came nothing of all +that passes in love, sorrow, passion or anguish, still did she possess +all that abides when emotion has faded away."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +What was true of Charlotte, that her inner life was luminous with +intense realization, was a hundred times more true of Emily. It was so +true that beside it nothing else that can be said is altogether true. It +is not necessary for a man to be convinced of the illusory nature of +time and of material happenings in order to appreciate Charlotte's +genius; but his comprehension of Emily's will be adequate or otherwise, +according to the passion and sincerity with which he embraces that idea. +And he must have, further, a sense of the reality behind the illusion. +It is through her undying sense of it that Emily Brontë is great. She +had none of the proud appearances of the metaphysical mind; she did not, +so far as we know, devour, like George Eliot, whole systems of +philosophy in her early youth. Her passionate pantheism was not derived; +it was established in her own soul. She was a mystic, not by religious +vocation, but by temperament and by ultimate vision. She offers the +apparent anomaly of extreme detachment and of an unconquerable love of +life. + +It was the highest and the purest passion that you can well conceive. +For life gave her nothing in return. It treated her worse than it +treated Charlotte. She had none of the things that, after all, Charlotte +had; neither praise nor fame in her lifetime; nor friendship, nor love, +nor vision of love. All these things "passed her by with averted head"; +and she stood in her inviolable serenity and watched them go, without +putting out her hand to one of them. You cannot surprise her in any +piteous gesture of desire or regret. And, unlike Charlotte, she made it +impossible for you to pity her. + +It is this superb attitude to life, this independence of the material +event, this detachment from the stream of circumstance, that marks her +from her sister; for Charlotte is at moments pitifully immersed in the +stream of circumstance, pitifully dependent on the material event. It +is true that she kept her head above the stream, and that the failure of +the material event did not frustrate or hinder her ultimate achievement. +But Charlotte's was not by any means "a chainless soul". It struggled +and hankered after the unattainable. What she attained and realized she +realized and attained in her imagination only. She knew nothing of the +soul's more secret and intimate possession. And even her imagination +waited to some extent upon experience. When Charlotte wrote of passion, +of its tragic suffering, or of its ultimate appeasing, she, after all, +wrote of things that might have happened to her. But when Emily wrote of +passion, she wrote of a thing that, so far as she personally was +concerned, not only was not and had not been, but never could be. It was +true enough of Charlotte that she created. But of Emily it was +absolutely and supremely true. + +Hers is not the language of frustration, but of complete and satisfying +possession. It may seem marvellous in the mouth of a woman destitute of +all emotional experience, in the restricted sense; but the real wonder +would have been a _Wuthering Heights_ born of any personal emotion; so +certain is it that it was through her personal destitution that her +genius was so virile and so rich. At its hour it found her virgin, not +only to passion but to the bare idea of passion, to the inner and +immaterial event. + +And her genius was great, not only through her stupendous imagination, +but because it fed on the still more withdrawn and secret sources of her +soul. If she had had no genius she would yet be great because of what +took place within her, the fusion of her soul with the transcendent and +enduring life. + +It was there that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her +secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She +never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and +Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on +"the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of +religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would +have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for +height and depth of supernatural attainment, there is no comparison +between Emily's grip of divine reality and poor Anne's spasmodic and +despairing clutch; and none between Charlotte's piety, her "God +willing"; "I suppose I ought to be thankful", and Emily's acceptance and +endurance of the event. + +I am reminded that one event she neither accepted nor endured. She +fought death. Her spirit lifted the pathetic, febrile struggle of +weakness with corruption, and turned it to a splendid, Titanic, and +unearthly combat. + +And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid. +There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance. It +shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all +revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius +and of her life. + +There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and +agony that rages through _Wuthering Heights_, or with the passion for +life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; +or with Catherine Earnshaw's dream of heaven: "heaven did not seem to be +my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and +the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the +heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy". +Catherine Earnshaw's dream has been cited innumerable times to prove +that Emily Brontë was a splendid pagan. I do not know what it does +prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her +genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and +invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine +Earnshaw. + +It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr. +Swinburne's magnificent eulogy. There _was_ in the "passionate great +genius of Emily Brontë", "a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive +nature-worship". That was where she was so poised and so complete; that +she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the +splendour of the passion of living, and holds her spirit in security and +her heart in peace. She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick +of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her +immersion. + +It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of +these antagonistic attitudes. It is not only entirely possible and +compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that +you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their +impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion +and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily +Brontë was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss +too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for +her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any +philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the +world and crystallized it in two lines: + + The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling + Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. + +It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that +her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has +reached there. She too knew what it was + + To see a world in a grain of sand, + And a Heaven in a wild flower, + To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, + And Eternity in an hour. + +She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same +light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics. + +Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of +transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at +least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation. + +In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary +soul: + + Shall earth no more inspire thee, + Thou lonely dreamer now? + Since passion may not fire thee, + Shall nature cease to bow? + + Thy mind is ever moving + In regions dark to thee; + Recall its useless roving, + Come back, and dwell with me. + + * * * * * + + Few hearts to mortals given + On earth so wildly pine; + Yet few would ask a heaven + More like this earth than thine. + +"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment; +and the human voice answers, resisting: + + Play with the scented flower, + The young tree's supple bough, + And leave my human feelings + In their own course to flow. + +But the other voice is stronger: + + The wanderer would not heed me; + Its kiss grew warmer still. + "Oh, come," it sighed so sweetly; + "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will. + + "Were we not friends from childhood? + Have I not loved thee long? + As long as thou, the solemn night, + Whose silence wakes my song. + + "And when thy heart is resting + Beneath the church-aisle stone, + _I_ shall have time for mourning, + And _thou_ for being alone." + +There are nine verses of "The Night-Wind", and the first eight are +negligible; but, as for the last and ninth, I do not know any poem in +any language that renders, in four short lines, and with such +incomparable magic and poignancy, the haunting and pursuing of the human +by the inhuman, that passion of the homeless and eternal wind. + +And this woman, destitute, so far as can be known, of all metaphysical +knowledge or training, reared in the narrowest and least metaphysical of +creeds, did yet contrive to express in one poem of four irregular verses +all the hunger and thirst after the "Absolute" that ever moved a human +soul, all the bewilderment and agony inflicted by the unintelligible +spectacle of existence, the intolerable triumph of evil over good, and +did conceive an image and a vision of the transcendent reality that +holds, as in crystal, all the philosophies that were ever worthy of the +name. + +Here it is. There are once more two voices: one of the Man, the other of +the Seer: + +THE PHILOSOPHER + + Oh, for the time when I shall sleep + Without identity. + And never care how rain may steep, + Or snow may cover me! + No promised heaven, these wild desires + Could all, or half fulfil; + No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, + Subdue this restless will. + + So said I, and still say the same; + Still, to my death, will say-- + Three gods, within this little frame, + Are warring night and day; + Heaven could not hold them all, and yet + They all are held in me; + And must be mine till I forget + My present entity! + Oh, for the time, when in my breast + Their struggles will be o'er! + Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, + And never suffer more! + + I saw a spirit, standing, man, + Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, + And round his feet three rivers ran, + Of equal depth, and equal flow-- + A golden stream--and one like blood, + And one like sapphire seemed to be; + But where they joined their triple flood + It tumbled in an inky sea. + The spirit sent his dazzling gaze + Down through that ocean's gloomy night; + Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,-- + The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- + White as the sun, far, far more fair + Than its divided sources were! + + And even for that spirit, seer, + I've watched and sought my lifetime long; + Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air, + An endless search and always wrong. + Had I but seen his glorious eye + _Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me, + I ne'er had raised this coward cry + To cease to think, and cease to be; + I ne'er had called oblivion blest, + Nor, stretching eager hands to death, + Implored to change for senseless rest + This sentient soul, this living breath-- + Oh, let me die--that power and will + Their cruel strife may close, + And conquered good and conquering ill + Be lost in one repose! + +That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of +life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and +painted. + +The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment, +which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it +has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive, +"confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless +soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its +agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the +"Messenger": + + He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. + Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, + And visions rise and change that kill me with desire. + + * * * * * + + But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; + The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; + Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, + That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me. + + Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; + My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: + Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, + Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound. + +That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has passed beyond +contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is +unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return: + + Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony-- + When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; + When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; + The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. + +There is no doubt about those three verses; that they are the expression +of the rarest and the most tremendous experience that is given to +humanity to know. + +If "The Visionary" does not touch that supernal place, it belongs +indubitably to the borderland: + + Silent is the house; all are laid asleep: + One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, + Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze + That whirls the wildering drift and bends the groaning trees. + + Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; + Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; + The little lamp burns straight, the rays shoot strong and far + I trim it well to be the wanderer's guiding-star. + + Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame! + Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame; + But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know, + What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow. + + What I love shall come like visitant of air, + Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; + What loves me no word of mine shall e'er betray, + Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay. + + Burn then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-- + Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air; + He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me: + Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy. + +Those who can see nothing in this poem but the idealization of an +earthly passion must be strangely and perversely mistaken in their Emily +Brontë. I confess I can never read it without thinking of one of the +most marvellous of all poems of Divine Love: "En una Noche Escura". + +EN UNA NOCHE ESCURA[A] + + Upon an obscure night + Fevered with Love's anxiety + (O hapless, happy plight!) + I went, none seeing me, + Forth from my house, where all things quiet be. + + * * * * * + + Blest night of wandering + In secret, when by none might I be spied, + Nor I see anything; + Without a light to guide + Save that which in my heart burnt in my side. + + That light did lead me on + More surely than the shining of noontide, + Where well I knew that One + Did for my coming bide; + Where he abode might none but he abide. + + O night that didst lead thus; + O night more lovely than the dawn of light; + O night that broughtest us + Lover to lover's sight, + Lover to loved, in marriage of delight! + +[Footnote A: "St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul." +Translated by Arthur Symons in vol. ii. of his _Collected Poems_.] + + * * * * * + +We know what love is celebrated there, and we do not know so clearly +what manner of supernal passion is symbolized in Emily Brontë's +angel-lover. There is a long way there between Emily Brontë and St. +John of the Cross, between her lamp-lit window and his "Dark Night of +the Soul", and yet her opening lines have something of the premonitory +thrill, the haunting power of tremendous suggestion, the intense, +mysterious expectancy of his. The spiritual experience is somewhat +different, but it belongs to the same realm of the super-physical; and +it is very far from Paganism. + +She wrote of these supreme ardours and mysteries; and she wrote that +most inspired and vehement song of passionate human love, "Remembrance": + + Cold in the earth--and the deep snow piled above thee, + Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! + Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee.... + +But "Remembrance" is too well known for quotation here. So is "The Old +Stoic". + +These are perfect and unforgettable things. But there is hardly one of +the least admirable of her poems that has not in it some unforgettable +and perfect verse or line: + + And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star + Has tracked the chilly grey! + What, watching yet? how very far + The morning lies away. + +That is how some watcher on Wuthering Heights might measure the long +passage of the night. + +"The Lady to her Guitar", that recalls the dead and forgotten player, +sings: + + It is as if the glassy brook + Should image still its willows fair, + _Though years ago the woodman's stroke + Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair_. + +She has her "dim moon struggling in the sky", to match Charlotte's "the +moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, glad as if she gave herself to +his fierce caress with love". At sixteen, in the schoolroom,[A] she +wrote verses of an incomparable simplicity and poignancy: + + A little while, a little while, + The weary task is put away, + And I can sing and I can smile, + Alike, while I have holiday. + + Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- + What thought, what scene invites thee now? + What spot, or near or far apart, + Has rest for thee, my weary brow? + + * * * * * + + The house is old, the trees are bare, + Moonless above bends twilight's dome; + But what on earth is half so dear-- + So longed for--as the hearth of home? + + The mute bird sitting on the stone, + The dank moss dripping from the wall, + The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, + I love them--how I love them all! + + Still, as I mused, the naked room, + The alien firelight died away, + And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, + I passed to bright, unclouded day. + + A little and a lone green lane + That opened on a common wide; + A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain + Of mountains circling every side. + + A heaven so clear, an earth so calm. + So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; + And, deepening still the dream-like charm, + Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. + +[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later +date--the year of Emily Brontë's exile in Brussels. Sir William +Robertson Nicoll also considers that "the 'alien firelight' suits +Brussels better than the Yorkshire hearth of 'good, kind' Miss Wooler". +To me the schoolroom of the Pensionnat suggests an "alien" stove, and +not the light of any fire at all.] + + * * * * * + +There was no nostalgia that she did not know. And there was no funeral +note she did not sound; from the hopeless gloom of + + In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, + A grey stone standing over thee; + Black mould beneath thee spread, + And black mould to cover thee. + + Well--there is rest there, + So fast come thy prophecy; + The time when my sunny hair + Shall with grass-roots entwined be. + + But cold--cold is that resting-place + Shut out from joy and liberty, + And all who loved thy living face + Will shrink from it shudderingly. + +From that to the melancholy grace of the moorland dirge: + + The linnet in the rocky dells, + The moor-lark in the air, + The bee among the heather-bells + That hide my lady fair: + + The wild deer browse above her breast; + The wild birds raise their brood; + And they, her smiles of love caressed, + Have left her solitude. + + * * * * * + + Well, let them fight for honour's breath, + Or pleasure's shade pursue-- + The dweller in the land of death + Is changed and careless too. + + And if their eyes should watch and weep + Till sorrow's source were dry, + She would not, in her tranquil sleep, + Return a single sigh. + + Blow, west wind, by the lowly mound, + And murmur, summer-streams-- + There is no need of other sound + To soothe my lady's dreams. + +There is, finally, that nameless poem--her last--where Emily Brontë's +creed finds utterance. It also is well known, but I give it here by way +of justification, lest I should seem to have exaggerated the mystic +detachment of this lover of the earth: + + No coward soul is mine, + No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: + I see Heaven's glories shine, + And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. + + O God within my breast, + Almighty, ever-present Deity! + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in thee! + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; + Worthless as withered weeds, + Or idlest froth amid the boundless main. + + To waken doubt in one + Holding so fast by thine infinity; + So surely anchored on + The steadfast rock of immortality. + + With wide-embracing love + Thy spirit animates eternal years, + Pervades and broods above, + Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. + + Though earth and man were gone, + And suns and universes ceased to be, + And Thou wert left alone, + Every existence would exist in Thee. + + There is not room for Death, + Nor atom that his might could render void: + Thou--THOU art Being and Breath, + And what THOU art may never be destroyed. + +It is not a perfect work. I do not think it is by any means the finest +poem that Emily Brontë ever wrote. It has least of her matchless, +incommunicable quality. There is one verse, the fifth, that recalls +almost painfully the frigid poets of Deism of the eighteenth century. +But even that association cannot destroy or contaminate its superb +sincerity and dignity. If it recalls the poets of Deism, it recalls no +less one of the most ancient of all metaphysical poems, the poem of +Parmenides on Being: + + [Greek: pos d' an epeit apoloito pelon, pos d' an ke genoito; + ei ge genoit, ouk est', oud ei pote mellei esesthai. + + * * * * * + + tos, genesis men apesbestai kai apiotos olethros. + oude diaireton estin, epei pan estin homoion + oude ti pae keneon.... + ....eon gar eonti pelazei.] + +Parmenides had not, I imagine, "penetrated" to Haworth; yet the last +verse of Emily Brontë's poem might have come straight out of his [Greek: +ta pros halaetheiaen]. Truly, an astonishing poem to have come from a +girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties. + +But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more +consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are +restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Brontë does not follow St. +Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight: + + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! + +For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Brontë. +Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have +been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not +accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too +well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal +quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of +the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering +cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee." +It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who +comes + + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars, + +her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly +consummation. + +There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism +either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Brontë. + +The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only +in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte +discovered them. + + * * * * * + +Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte +had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished +poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had +happened. + +And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has +unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and +with Charlotte's thirty-nine.[A] + +[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Emily Brontë._ Vol. I.--Poetry. (Messrs. +Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)] + +And the world continues more or less unaware. + +I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week. But +I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of +them. But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the +publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily +Brontë, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of +acclaim. + +And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in +its way. If the best poems in Mr. Shorter's collection cannot stand +beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them +reveal an aspect of Emily Brontë's genius hitherto unknown and undreamed +of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Brontë +than has yet been known. + +There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference. The few +people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Brontë much; it is +as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession +of young poets out of Vigo Street. There is a certain austerity about +Emily Brontë, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and +decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to +young lyrics loaded with "jewels five-words long". About Emily Brontë +there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves +in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple +vintage. She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous +side of mysticism. She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts +and hungers for these things. + +It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to +Emily Brontë. What you are not prepared for is the appearance of +indifference in her editors. They are pledged by their office to a +peculiar devotion. And the circumstances of Emily Brontë's case made it +imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show +rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm. Her alien and lonely state +should have moved Mr. Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry. It has +not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety. Perfect +piety would have saved him from the oversight, innocent but deplorable, +of attributing to Emily Brontë four poems which Emily Brontë could not +possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne: +"Despondency", "In Memory of a Happy Day in February", "A Prayer", and +"Confidence."[A] No doubt Mr. Shorter found them in Emily's handwriting; +but how could he, how _could_ he mistake Anne's voice for Emily's? + +[Footnote A: Published among Charlotte Brontë's posthumous "Selections" +in 1850.] + + My God (oh let me call Thee mine, + Weak, wretched sinner though I be), + My trembling soul would fain be Thine; + My feeble faith still clings to Thee. + +It is Anne's voice at her feeblest and most depressed. + +It is, perhaps, a little ungrateful and ungracious to say these things, +when but for Mr. Shorter we should not have had Emily's complete poems +at all. And to accuse Mr. Shorter of present indifference (in the face +of his previous achievements) would be iniquitous if it were not absurd; +it would be biting the hand that feeds you. The pity is that, owing to a +mere momentary lapse in him of the religious spirit, Mr. Shorter has +missed his own opportunity. He does not seem to have quite realized the +splendour of his "find". Nor has Sir William Robertson Nicoll seen fit +to help him here. Sir William Robertson Nicoll deprecates any +over-valuation of Mr. Clement Shorter's collection. "It is not claimed," +he says, "for a moment that the intrinsic merits of the verses are of a +special kind." And Mr. Clement Shorter is not much bolder in proffering +his treasures. "No one can deny to them," he says, "a certain +bibliographical interest." + +Mr. Shorter is too modest. His collection includes one of the +profoundest and most beautiful poems Emily Brontë ever wrote,[A] and at +least one splendid ballad, "Douglas Ride".[B] Here is the ballad, or +enough of it to show how live it is with sound and vision and speed. It +was written by a girl of twenty: + + What rider up Gobeloin's glen + Has spurred his straining steed, + And fast and far from living men + Has passed with maddening speed? + + I saw his hoof-prints mark the rock, + When swift he left the plain; + I heard deep down the echoing shock + Re-echo back again. + + * * * * * + + With streaming hair, and forehead bare, + And mantle waving wide, + His master rides; the eagle there + Soars up on every side. + + The goats fly by with timid cry, + Their realm rashly won; + They pause--he still ascends on high-- + They gaze, but he is gone. + + O gallant horse, hold on thy course; + The road is tracked behind. + Spur, rider, spur, or vain thy force-- + Death comes on every wind. + + * * * * * + + Hark! through the pass with threatening crash + Comes on the increasing roar! + But what shall brave the deep, deep wave, + The deadly pass before? + + Their feet are dyed in a darker tide, + Who dare those dangers drear. + Their breasts have burst through the battle's worst, + And why should they tremble here? + + * * * * * + + "Now, my brave men, this one pass more, + This narrow chasm of stone, + And Douglas for our sovereign's gore + Shall yield us back his own." + + I hear their ever-rising tread + Sound through the granite glen; + There is a tall pine overhead + Held by the mountain men. + + That dizzy bridge which no horse could track + Has checked the outlaw's way; + There like a wild beast turns he back, + And grimly stands at bay. + + Why smiles he so, when far below + He spies the toiling chase? + The pond'rous tree swings heavily, + And totters from its place. + + They raise their eyes, for the sunny skies + Are lost in sudden shade: + But Douglas neither shrinks nor flies, + He need not fear the dead. + +[Footnote A: See pp. 207, 208.] + +[Footnote B: I have removed the title from the preceding fragment to the +ballad to which it obviously belongs.] + +That is sufficiently unlike the Emily Brontë whom Charlotte edited. And +there is one other poem that stands alone among her poems with a strange +exotic beauty, a music, a rhythm and a magic utterly unlike any of the +forms we recognize as hers: + + Gods of the old mythology + Arise in gloom and storm; + Adramalec, bow down thy head, + Reveal, dark fiend, thy form. + The giant sons of Anakim + Bowed lowest at thy shrine, + And thy temple rose in Argola, + With its hallowed groves of vine; + And there was eastern incense burnt, + And there were garments spread, + With the fine gold decked and broidered, + And tinged with radiant red, + With the radiant red of furnace flames + That through the shadows shone + As the full moon when on Sinai's top + Her rising light is thrown. + +It is undated and unsigned, and so unlike Emily Brontë that I should not +be surprised if somebody were to rise up and prove that it is Coleridge +or somebody. Heaven forbid that this blow should fall on Mr. Clement +Shorter, and Sir William Robertson Nicoll, and on me. There is at least +one reassuring line. "Reveal, dark fiend, thy form", has a decided ring +of the Brontësque. + +And here again, on many an otherwise negligible poem she has set her +seal, she has scattered her fine things; thus: + + No; though the soil be wet with tears, + How fair so'er it grew, + The vital sap once perished + Will never flow again; + _And surer than that dwelling dread, + The narrow dungeon of the dead, + Time parts the hearts of men._ + +And again, she gives a vivid picture of war in four lines: + + In plundered churches piled with dead + The heavy charger neighed for food, + The wounded soldier laid his head + 'Neath roofless chambers splashed with blood. + +Again, she has a vision: + + In all the hours of gloom + My soul was rapt away. + I stood by a marble tomb + Where royal corpses lay. + +A frightful thing appears to her, "a shadowy thing, most dim": + + And still it bent above, + Its features still in view; + _It seemed close by; and yet more far + Than this world from the farthest star + That tracks the boundless blue._ + + Indeed 'twas not the space + Of earth or time between, + But the sea of deep eternity, + The gulf o'er which mortality + Has never, never been. + +The date is June 1837, a year earlier than the ballad. And here is the +first sketch or germ of "The Old Stoic": + + Give we the hills our equal prayer, + Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea, + _I ask for nothing further here + Than my own heart and liberty._ + +And here is another poem, of a sterner and a sadder stoicism: + + There was a time when my cheek burned + To give such scornful words the lie, + Ungoverned nature madly spurned + The law that bade it not defy. + Oh, in the days of ardent youth + I would have given my life for truth. + + For truth, for right, for liberty, + I would have gladly, freely died; + And now I calmly bear and see + The vain man smile, the fool deride, + Though not because my heart is tame, + Though not for fear, though not for shame. + + My soul still chokes at every tone + Of selfish and self-clouded error; + My breast still braves the world alone, + Steeled as it ever was to terror. + Only I know, howe'er I frown, + The same world will go rolling on. + +October 1839. It is the worldly wisdom of twenty-one! + + * * * * * + +If this, the ballad and the rest, were all, the world would still be +richer, by a wholly new conception of Emily Brontë, of her resources and +her range. + +But it is by no means all. And here we come to the opportunity which, +owing to that temporary decline of fervour, Mr. Shorter has so +unfortunately missed. + +He might have picked out of the mass wherein they lie scattered, all but +lost, sometimes barely recognizable, the fragments of a Titanic epic. He +might have done something to build up again the fabric of that +marvellous romance, that continuous dream, that stupendous and gorgeous +fantasy in which Emily Brontë, for at least eleven years, lived and +moved and had her being. + +Until the publication of the unknown poems, it was possible to ignore +the "Gondal Chronicles". They are not included in Mr. Clement Shorter's +exhaustive list of early and unpublished manuscripts. Nobody knew +anything about them except that they were part of a mysterious game of +make-believe which Emily and the ever-innocent Anne played together, +long after the age when most of us have given up make-believing. There +are several references to the Chronicles in the diaries of Emily and +Anne. Emily writes in 1841: "The Gondaland are at present in a +threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet. All the princes +and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction." Anne +wonders "whether the Gondaland will still be flourishing" in 1845. In +1845 Emily and Anne go for their first long journey together. "And +during our excursion we were Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet +Angusteena, Rosabella Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine +Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of +instruction to join the Royalists, who are hard pressed at present by +the victorious Republicans. "The Gondals," Emily says, "still flourish +bright as ever." Anne is not so sure. "We have not yet finished our +'Gondal Chronicles' that we began three years and a half ago. When will +they be done? The Gondals are at present in a sad state. The Republicans +are uppermost, but the Royalists are not quite overcome. The young +sovereigns, with their brothers and sisters, are still at the Palace of +Instruction. The Unique Society, about half a year ago, were wrecked on +a desert island as they were returning from Gaul. They are still there, +but we have not played at them much yet." + +But there are no recognizable references to the Gondal poems. It is not +certain whether Charlotte Brontë knew of their existence, not absolutely +certain that Anne, who collaborated on the Gondals, knew. + +"Brontë specialists" are agreed in dismissing the Chronicles as puerile. +But the poems cannot be so dismissed. Written in lyric or ballad form, +fluent at their worst and loose, but never feeble; powerful, vehement, +and overflowing at their best, their cycle contains some of Emily +Brontë's very finest verse. They are obscure, incoherent sometimes, +because they are fragmentary; even poems apparently complete in +themselves are fragments, scenes torn out of the vast and complicated +epic drama. We have no clue to the history of the Gondals, whereby we +can arrange these scenes in their right order. But dark and broken as +they are, they yet trail an epic splendour, they bear the whole +phantasmagoria of ancestral and of racial memories, of "old, unhappy, +far-off things, and battles long ago". These songs and ballads, strung +on no discernible thread, are the voice of an enchanted spirit, +recalling the long roll of its secular existences; in whom nothing lives +but that mysterious, resurgent memory. + +The forms that move through these battles are obscure. You can pick out +many of the Gondal poems by the recurring names of heroes and of lands. +But where there are no names of heroes and of lands to guide you it is +not easy to say exactly which poems are Gondal poems and which are not. +But after careful examination and comparison you can make out at least +eighty-three of them that are unmistakable, and ten doubtful. + +All the battle-pieces and songs of battle, the songs of mourning and +captivity and exile, the songs of heroism, martyrdom, defiance, songs, +or fragments of songs, of magic and divination, and many of the love +songs, belong to this cycle. What is more, many of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six and of eighteen-fifty are Gondal poems. + +For in the Gondal legend the idea of the Doomed Child, an idea that +haunted Emily Brontë, recurs perpetually, and suggests that the Gondal +legend is the proper place of "The Two Children", and "The Wanderer from +the Fold", which appear in the posthumous Selections of eighteen-fifty. +It certainly includes three at the very least of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six: "The Outcast Mother", "A Death-Scene", and "Honour's +Martyr". + +It does not look, I own, as if this hunt for Gondal literature could +interest a single human being; which is why nobody, so far as I know, +has pursued it. And the placing of those four poems in the obscure +Gondal legend would have nothing but "a bibliographical interest" were +it not that, when placed there, they show at once the main track of the +legend. And the main track of the legend brings you straight to the +courses of _Wuthering Heights_ and of the love poems. + +The sources of _Wuthering Heights_ have been the dream and the despair +of the explorer, long before Mrs. Humphry Ward tried to find them in the +_Tales of Hoffmann_. And "Remembrance", one of the most passionate love +poems in the language, stood alone and apart from every other thing that +Emily Brontë had written. It was awful and mysterious in its loneliness. + +But I believe that "Remembrance" also may be placed in the Gondal legend +without any violence to its mystery. + +For supreme in the Gondal legend is the idea of a mighty and disastrous +passion, a woman's passion for the defeated, the dishonoured, and the +outlawed lover; a creature superb in evil, like Heathcliff, and like +Heathcliff tragic and unspeakably mournful in his doom. He or some hero +like him is "Honour's Martyr". + + To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name, + And Hate will trample me, + Will load me with a coward's shame-- + A traitor's perjury. + + False friends will launch their covert sneers + True friends will wish me dead; + And I shall cause the bitterest tears + That you have ever shed. + +Like Heathcliff, he is the "unblessed, unfriended child"; the child of +the Outcast Mother, abandoned on the moor. + + Forests of heather, dark and long, + Wave their brown branching arms above; + And they must soothe thee with their song, + And they must shield my child of love. + + * * * * * + + Wakes up the storm more madly wild, + The mountain drifts are tossed on high; + Farewell, unblessed, unfriended child, + I cannot bear to watch thee die. + +In an unmistakable Gondal song Geraldine's lover calls her to the tryst +on the moor. In the Gondal poem "Geraldine", she has her child with her +in a woodland cavern, and she prays over it wildly: + + "Bless it! My Gracious God!" I cried, + "Preserve Thy mortal shrine, + For Thine own sake, be Thou its guide, + And keep it still divine-- + + "Say, sin shall never blanch that cheek, + Nor suffering change that brow. + Speak, in Thy mercy, Maker, speak, + And seal it safe from woe." + + * * * * * + + The revellers in the city slept, + My lady in her woodland bed; + I watching o'er her slumber wept, + As one who mourns the dead. + +Geraldine therefore is the Outcast Mother. In "The Two Children" the +doom gathers round the child. + + Heavy hangs the raindrop + From the burdened spray; + Heavy broods the damp mist + On uplands far away. + + Heavy looms the dull sky, + Heavy rolls the sea; + And heavy throbs the young heart + Beneath that lonely tree. + + Never has a blue streak + Cleft the clouds since morn + Never has his grim fate + Smiled since he was born. + + Frowning on the infant, + Shadowing childhood's joy. + Guardian-angel knows not + That melancholy boy. + + * * * * * + + Blossom--that the west wind + Has never wooed to blow, + Scentless are thy petals, + Thy dew is cold as snow! + + Soul--where kindred kindness + No early promise woke, + Barren is thy beauty, + As weed upon a rock. + + Wither--soul and blossom! + You both were vainly given: + Earth reserves no blessing + For the unblest of Heaven. + +The doomed child of the outcast mother is the doomed man, and, by the +doom, himself an outcast. The other child, the "Child of delight, with +sun-bright hair", has vowed herself to be his guardian angel. Their +drama is obscure; but you make out that it is the doomed child, and not +Branwell Brontë, who is "The Wanderer from the Fold". + + How few, of all the hearts that loved, + Are grieving for thee now; + And why should mine to-night be moved + With such a sense of woe? + + Too often thus, when left alone, + Where none my thoughts can see, + Comes back a word, a passing tone + From thy strange history. + + * * * * * + + An anxious gazer from the shore-- + I marked the whitening wave, + And wept above thy fate the more + Because--I could not save. + + It recks not now, when all is over; + But yet my heart will be + A mourner still, though friend and lover + Have both forgotten thee. + +Compare with this that stern elegy in Mr. Shorter's collection, "Shed no +tears o'er that tomb." A recent critic has referred this poem of +reprobation also to Branwell Brontë--as if Emily could possibly have +written like this of Branwell: + + Shed no tears o'er that tomb, + For there are angels weeping; + Mourn not him whose doom + Heaven itself is mourning. + + * * * * * + + ... he who slumbers there + His bark will strive no more + Across the waters of despair + To reach that glorious shore. + + The time of grace is past, + And mercy, scorned and tried, + Forsakes to utter wrath at last + The soul so steeled by pride. + + That wrath will never spare, + Will never pity know; + Will mock its victim's maddened prayer, + With triumph in his woe. + + Shut from his Maker's smile + The accursed man shall be; + For mercy reigns a little while, + But hate eternally. + +This is obviously related to "The Two Children", and that again to "The +Wanderer from the Fold". Obviously, too, the woman's lament in "The +Wanderer from the Fold" recalls the Gondal woman's lament for her +dishonoured lover. For there are two voices that speak and answer each +other, the voice of reprobation, and the voice of passion and pity. This +is the "Gondal Woman's Lament": + + Far, far is mirth withdrawn: + 'Tis three long hours before the morn, + And I watch lonely, drearily; + So come, thou shade, commune with me. + + Deserted one! thy corpse lies cold, + And mingled with a foreign mould. + Year after year the grass grows green + Above the dust where thou hast been. + + I will not name thy blighted name, + Tarnished by unforgotten shame, + Though not because my bosom torn + Joins the mad world in all its scorn. + + Thy phantom face is dark with woe, + Tears have left ghastly traces there, + Those ceaseless tears! I wish their flow + Could quench thy wild despair. + + They deluge my heart like the rain + On cursed Zamorna's howling plain. + Yet when I hear thy foes deride, + I must cling closely to thy side. + + Our mutual foes! They will not rest + From trampling on thy buried breast. + Glutting their hatred with the doom + They picture thine beyond the tomb. + +(Which is what they did in the song of reprobation. But passion and pity +know better. They know that) + + ... God is not like human kind, + Man cannot read the Almighty mind; + Vengeance will never torture thee, + Nor hurt thy soul eternally. + + * * * * * + + What have I dreamt? He lies asleep, + With whom my heart would vainly weep; + _He_ rests, and _I_ endure the woe + That left his spirit long ago. + +This poem is not quoted for its beauty or its technique, but for its +important place in the story. You can track the great Gondal hero down +by that one fantastic name, "Zamorna". You have thus four poems, +obviously related; and a fifth that links them, obviously, with the +Gondal legend. + +It is difficult to pick out from the confusion of these unsorted +fragments all the heroes of Emily Brontë's saga. There is Gleneden, who +kills a tyrant and is put in prison for it. There is Julius Angora, who +"lifts his impious eye" in the cathedral where the monarchs of Gondal +are gathered; who leads the patriots of Gondal to the battle of +Almedore, and was defeated there, and fell with his mortal enemy. He is +beloved of Rosina, a crude prototype of Catherine Earnshaw. "King Julius +left the south country" and remained in danger in the northern land +because a passion for Rosina kept him there. There is also Douglas of +the "Ride". He appears again in the saga of the Queen Augusta, the woman +of the "brown mountain side". But who he was, and what he was doing, and +whether he killed Augusta or somebody else killed her, I cannot for the +life of me make out. Queen Augusta, like Catherine Earnshaw, is a +creature of passion and jealousy, and her lover had been faithless. She +sings that savage song of defiance and hatred and lamentation: "Light up +thy halls!" + + Oh! could I see thy lids weighed down in cheerless woe; + Too full to hide their tears, too stern to overflow; + Oh! could I know thy soul with equal grief was torn, + This fate might be endured--this anguish might be borne. + + How gloomy grows the night! 'Tis Gondal's wind that blows; + I shall not tread again the deep glens where it rose, + I feel it on my face----Where, wild blast! dost thou roam? + What do we, wanderer! here, so far away from home? + + I do not need thy breath to cool my death-cold brow; + But go to that far land where she is shining now; + Tell her my latest wish, tell her my dreary doom; + Say that my pangs are past, but _hers_ are yet to come. + +And there is Fernando, who stole his love from Zamorna. He is a sort of +shadowy forerunner of Edgar Linton. + +There is the yeoman Percy, the father of Mary whom Zamorna loved. And +there is Zamorna. + +A large group of poems in the legend refer, obviously, I think, to the +same person. Zamorna is the supreme hero, the Achilles of this northern +Iliad. He is the man of sin, the "son of war and love", the child +"unblessed of heaven", abandoned by its mother, cradled in the heather +and rocked by the winter storm, the doomed child, grown to its doom, +like Heathcliff. His story is obscure and broken, but when all the +Zamorna poems are sorted from the rest, you make out that, like +Heathcliff, he ravished from her home the daughter of his mortal enemy +(with the difference that Zamorna loves Mary); and that like Heathcliff +he was robbed of the woman that he loved. The passions of Zamorna are +the passions of Heathcliff. He dominates a world of savage loves and +mortal enmities like the world of _Wuthering Heights_. There are +passages in this saga that reveal the very aspect of the soul of +Heathcliff. Here are some of them. + +Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his "false friend and treacherous +guide": + + "If I have sinned; long, long ago + That sin was purified by woe. + I have suffered on through night and day, + I've trod a dark and frightful way." + +It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw: "I've fought through a +bitter life since I last heard your voice." + +And again: + + If grief for grief can touch thee, + If answering woe for woe, + If any ruth can melt thee, + Come to me now. + +It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy. + +Again, he is calling to "Percy", the father of Mary, his bride, the rose +that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking. + + Bitterly, deeply I've drunk of thy woe; + When thy stream was troubled, did mine calmly flow? + And yet I repent not; I'd crush thee again + If our vessels sailed adverse on life's stormy main. + But listen! The earth is our campaign of war, + + * * * * * + + Is there not havoc and carnage for thee + Unless thou couchest thy lance at me? + +He proposes to unite their arms. + + Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still + This hand should ne'er work her sorrow or ill. + + * * * * * + + What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead + With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed? + +The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is +withering. + + Its faded buds already lie + To deck my coffin when I die. + Bring them here--'twill not be long, + 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; + And the final and dying words are sung + To the discord of lute strings all unstrung. + + * * * * * + + Have I crushed you, Percy? I'd raise once more + The beacon-light on the rocky shore. + Percy, my love is so true and deep, + That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep, + I'd fling the brand in the hissing sea, + The brand that must burn unquenchably. + Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade, + They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head + The blossoms to deck my home with the dead. + +Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose. + + On its bending stalk a bonny flower + In a yeoman's home close grew; + It had gathered beauty from sunshine and shower, + From moonlight and silent dew. + + * * * * * + + Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded, + He watched it grow both day and night; + From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded + That flush of roseate light. + And ever it glistened bonnilie + Under the shade of the old yew-tree. + + * * * * * + + The rose is blasted, withered, blighted + Its root has felt a worm, + And like a heart beloved and slighted, + Failed, faded, shrunk its form. + Bud of beauty, bonny flower, + I stole thee from thy natal bower. + + I was the worm that withered thee.... + +And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not +believe that she is dying. + + Oh! say not that her vivid dreams + Are but the shattered glass + Which but because more broken, gleams + More brightly in the grass. + Her spirit is the unfathomed lake + Whose face the sudden tempests break + To one tormented roar; + But as the wild winds sink in peace + All those disturbed waves decrease + Till each far-down reflection is + As life-like as before. + +Her death is not the worst. + + I cannot weep as once I wept + Over my western beauty's grave. + + * * * * * + + I am speaking of a later stroke, + A death the dream of yesterday, + Still thinking of my latest shock, + A noble friendship torn away. + I feel and say that I am cast + From hope, and peace, and power, and pride + + * * * * * + + Without a voice to speak to you + Save that deep gong which tolled my doom, + And made my dread iniquity + Look darker than my deepest gloom. + +But the crucial passage (for the sources) is the scene in the yeoman's +hall where Zamorna comes to Percy. He comes stealthily. + + That step he might have used before + When stealing on to lady's bower, + Forth at the same still twilight hour, + For the moon now bending mild above + Showed him a son of war and love. + His eye was full of that sinful fire + Which oft unhallowed passions light. + It spoke of quickly kindled ire, + Of love too warm, and wild, and bright. + Bright, but yet sullied, love that could never + Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline, + Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver.... + + * * * * * + + Now from his curled and shining hair, + Circling the brow of marble fair, + His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze + With stern and yet repenting rays. + + * * * * * + +He loves Percy whose rose was his, and he hates him, as Heathcliff might +have loved and hated, but with less brutality. + + Young savage! how he bends above + The object of his wrath and love, + How tenderly his fingers press + The hand that shrinks from their caress. + +The yeoman turns on "the man of sin". + + What brought you here? I called you not + + * * * * * + + Are you a hawk to follow the prey, + When mangled it flutters feebly away? + A sleuth-hound to track the deer by his blood, + When wounded he wins to the darkest wood, + There, if he can, to die alone? + +It might have been Heathcliff and a Linton. + +So much for Zamorna. + +Finally, there are two poems in Mr. Shorter's collection that, verse for +prose, might have come straight out of _Wuthering Heights_. One +(inspired by Byron) certainly belongs to the Zamorna legend of the +Gondal cycle. + + And now the house-dog stretched once more + His limbs upon the glowing floor; + The children half resume their play, + Though from the warm hearth scared away; + The good-wife left her spinning-wheel + And spread with smiles the evening meal; + The shepherd placed a seat and pressed + To their poor fare the unknown guest, + And he unclasped his mantle now, + And raised the covering from his brow, + Said, voyagers by land and sea + Were seldom feasted daintily, + And cheered his host by adding stern + He'd no refinement to unlearn. + +Which is what Heathcliff would have said sternly. Observe the effect of +him. + + A silence settled on the room, + The cheerful welcome sank to gloom; + But not those words, though cold or high, + So froze their hospitable joy. + No--there was something in his face, + Some nameless thing which hid not grace, + And something in his voice's tone + Which turned their blood as chill as stone. + The ringlets of his long black hair + Fell o'er a cheek most ghastly fair. + Youthful he seemed--but worn as they + Who spend too soon their youthful day. + When his glance dropped, 'twas hard to quell + Unbidden feelings' hidden swell; + And Pity scarce her tears could hide, + So sweet that brow with all its pride. + But when upraised his eye would dart + An icy shudder through the heart, + Compassion changed to horror then, + And fear to meet that gaze again. + + It was not hatred's tiger-glare, + Nor the wild anguish of despair; + It was not either misery + Which quickens friendship's sympathy; + No--lightning all unearthly shone + Deep in that dark eye's circling zone, + Such withering lightning as we deem + None but a spirit's look may beam; + And glad were all when he turned away + And wrapt him in his mantle grey, + And hid his head upon his arm, + And veiled from view his basilisk charm. + +That, I take it, is Zamorna, that Byronic hero, again; but it is also +uncommonly like Heathcliff, with "his basilisk eyes". And it is dated +July 1839, seven years before _Wuthering Heights_ was written. + +The other crucial instance is a nameless poem to the Earth. + + I see around me piteous tombstones grey + Stretching their shadows far away. + Beneath the turf my footsteps tread + Lie low and lone the silent dead; + Beneath the turf, beneath the mould, + For ever dark, for ever cold. + And my eyes cannot hold the tears + That memory hoards from vanished years. + For Time and Death and mortal pain + Give wounds that will not heal again. + Let me remember half the woe + I've seen and heard and felt below, + And heaven itself, so pure and blest, + Could never give my spirit rest. + Sweet land of light! Thy children fair + Know nought akin to our despair; + Nor have they felt, nor can they tell + What tenants haunt each mortal cell, + What gloomy guests we hold within, + Torments and madness, fear and sin! + Well, may they live in ecstasy + Their long eternity of joy; + At least we would not bring them down + With us to weep, with us to groan. + No, Earth would wish no other sphere + To taste her cup of suffering drear; + She turns from heaven a tearless eye + And only mourns that _we_ must die! + Ah mother! what shall comfort thee + In all this boundless misery? + To cheer our eager eyes awhile, + We see thee smile, how fondly smile! + But who reads not through the tender glow + Thy deep, unutterable woe? + Indeed no darling hand above + Can cheat thee of thy children's love. + We all, in life's departing shine, + Our last dear longings blend with thine, + And struggle still, and strive to trace + With clouded gaze thy darling face. + We would not leave our nature home + For _any_ world beyond the tomb. + No, mother, on thy kindly breast + Let us be laid in lasting rest, + Or waken but to share with thee + A mutual immortality. + +There is the whole spirit of _Wuthering Heights_; the spirit of +Catherine Earnshaw's dream; the spirit that in the last page broods over +the moorland graveyard. It is instinct with a more than pagan adoration +of the tragic earth, adored because of her tragedy. + +It would be dangerous to assert positively that "Remembrance" belongs to +the same song-cycle; but it undoubtedly belongs to the same cycle, or +rather cyclone, of passion; the cyclone that rages in the hearts of +Heathcliff and of Catherine. The genius of Emily Brontë was so far +dramatic that, if you could divide her poems into the personal and +impersonal, the impersonal would be found in a mass out of all +proportion to the other. But, with very few exceptions, you cannot so +divide them; for in her continuous and sustaining dream, the vision that +lasted for at least eleven years of her life, from eighteen-thirty-four, +the earliest date of any known Gondal poem, to eighteen-forty-five, the +last appearance of the legend, she _was_ these people; she lived, +indistinguishably and interchangeably, their tumultuous and passionate +life. Sometimes she is the lonely spirit that looks on in immortal +irony, raised above good and evil. More often she is a happy god, +immanent in his restless and manifold creations, rejoicing in this +multiplication of himself. It is she who fights and rides, who loves and +hates, and suffers and defies. She heads one poem naïvely: "To the Horse +Black Eagle that I rode at the Battle of Zamorna." The horse _I_ rode! +If it were not glorious, it would be (when you think what her life was +in that Parsonage) most mortally pathetic. + +But it is all in keeping. For, as she could dare the heavenly, divine +adventure, so there was no wild and ardent adventure of the earth she +did not claim. + + * * * * * + +Love of life and passionate adoration of the earth, adoration and +passion fiercer than any pagan knew, burns in _Wuthering Heights_. And +if that were all, it would be impossible to say whether her mysticism or +her paganism most revealed the soul of Emily Brontë. + +In _Wuthering Heights_ we are plunged apparently into a world of most +unspiritual lusts and hates and cruelties; into the very darkness and +thickness of elemental matter; a world that would be chaos, but for the +iron Necessity that brings its own terrible order, its own implacable +law of lust upon lust begotten, hate upon hate, and cruelty upon +cruelty, through the generations of Heathcliffs and of Earnshaws. + +Hindley Earnshaw is brutal to the foundling, Heathcliff, and degrades +him. Heathcliff, when his hour comes, pays back his wrong with the +interest due. He is brutal beyond brutality to Hindley Earnshaw, and he +degrades Hareton, Hindley's son, as he himself was degraded; but he is +not brutal to him. The frustrated passion of Catherine Earnshaw for +Heathcliff, and of Heathcliff for Catherine, hardly knows itself from +hate; they pay each other back torture for torture, and pang for +hopeless pang. When Catherine marries Edgar Linton, Heathcliff marries +Isabella, Edgar's sister, in order that he may torture to perfection +Catherine and Edgar and Isabella. His justice is more than poetic. The +love of Catherine Earnshaw was all that he possessed. He knows that he +has lost it through the degradation that he owes to Hindley Earnshaw. It +is because an Earnshaw and a Linton between them have robbed him of all +that he possessed, that, when his hour comes, he pays himself back by +robbing the Lintons and the Earnshaws of all that _they_ possess, their +Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He loathes above all loathely +creatures, Linton, his own son by Isabella. The white-blooded thing is +so sickly that he can hardly keep it alive. But with an unearthly +cruelty he cherishes, he nourishes this spawn till he can marry it on +its death-bed to the younger Catherine, the child of Catherine Earnshaw +and of Edgar Linton. This supreme deed accomplished, he lets the +creature die, so that Thrushcross Grange may fall into his hands. Judged +by his bare deeds, Heathcliff seems a monster of evil, a devil without +any fiery infernal splendour, a mean and sordid devil. + +But--and this is what makes Emily Brontë's work stupendous--not for a +moment can you judge Heathcliff by his bare deeds. Properly speaking, +there are no bare deeds to judge him by. Each deed comes wrapt in its +own infernal glamour, trailing a cloud of supernatural splendour. The +whole drama moves on a plane of reality superior to any deed. The spirit +of it, like Emily Brontë's spirit, is superbly regardless of the +material event. As far as material action goes Heathcliff is singularly +inert. He never seems to raise a hand to help his vengeance. He lets +things take their course. He lets Catherine marry Edgar Linton and +remain married to him. He lets Isabella's passion satisfy itself. He +lets Hindley Earnshaw drink himself to death. He lets Hareton sink to +the level of a boor. He lets Linton die. His most overt and violent +action is the capture of the younger Catherine. And even there he takes +advantage of the accident that brings her to the door of Wuthering +Heights. He watches and bides his time with the intentness of a brooding +spirit that in all material happenings seeks its own. He makes them his +instruments of vengeance. And Heathcliff's vengeance, like his passion +for Catherine, is an immortal and immaterial thing. He shows how little +he thinks of sordid, tangible possession; for, when his vengeance is +complete, when Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff are dead and their +lands and houses are his, he becomes utterly indifferent. He falls into +a melancholy. He neither eats nor drinks. He shuts himself up in Cathy's +little room and is found dead there, lying on Cathy's bed. + +If there never was anything less heavenly, less Christian, than this +drama, there never was anything less earthly, less pagan. There is no +name for it. It is above all our consecrated labels and distinctions. It +has been called a Greek tragedy, with the Aeschylean motto, [Greek: to +drasanti pathein]. But it is not Greek any more than it is Christian; +and if it has a moral, its moral is far more [Greek: to pathonti +pathein]. It is the drama of suffering born of suffering, and confined +strictly within the boundaries of the soul. + +Madame Duclaux (whose criticism of _Wuthering Heights_ is not to be +surpassed or otherwise gainsaid) finds in it a tragedy of inherited +evil. She thinks that Emily Brontë was greatly swayed by the doctrine of +heredity. "'No use,' she seems to be saying, 'in waiting for the +children of evil parents to grow, of their own will and unassisted, +straight and noble. The very quality of their will is as inherited as +their eyes and hair. Heathcliff is no fiend or goblin; the untrained, +doomed child of some half-savage sailor's holiday, violent and +treacherous. And how far shall we hold the sinner responsible for a +nature which is itself the punishment of some forefather's crime?'" + +All this, I cannot help thinking, is alien to the spirit of _Wuthering +Heights_, and to its greatness. It is not really any problem of heredity +that we have here. Heredity is, in fact, ignored. Heathcliff's race and +parentage are unknown. There is no resemblance between the good old +Earnshaws, who adopted him, and their son Hindley. Hareton does not +inherit Hindley's drunkenness or his cruelty. It is not through any +physical consequence of his father's vices that Hareton suffers. Linton +is in no physical sense the son of Heathcliff. If Catherine Linton +inherits something of Catherine Earnshaw's charm and temper, it is +because the younger Catherine belongs to another world; she is an +inferior and more physical creature. She has nothing in her of Catherine +Earnshaw's mutinous passion, the immortal and unearthly passion which +made that Catherine alive and killed her. Catherine Linton's "little +romance" is altogether another affair. + +The world of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is a world of spiritual +affinities, of spiritual contacts and recoils where love begets and +bears love, and hate is begotten of hate and born of shame. Even Linton +Heathcliff, that "whey-faced, whining wretch", that physical degenerate, +demonstrates the higher law. His weakness is begotten by his father's +loathing on his mother's terror. + +Never was a book written with a more sublime ignoring of the physical. +You only get a taste of it once in Isabella's unwholesome love for +Heathcliff; that is not passion, it is sentiment, and it is thoroughly +impure. And you get a far-off vision of it again in Isabella's fear of +Heathcliff. Heathcliff understood her. He says of her, "'No brutality +disgusted her.... I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, +in my experiments on what she could endure and still creep shamefully +back.'" This civilized creature is nearer to the animals, there is more +of the earth in her than in Catherine or in Heathcliff. They are +elemental beings, if you like, but their element is fire. They are +clean, as all fiery, elemental things are clean. + +True, their love found violent physical expression; so that M. +Maeterlinck can say of them and their creator: "We feel that one must +have lived for thirty years under chains of burning kisses to learn what +she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such minuteness, +such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two lovers of _Wuthering +Heights_; to mark the self-conflicting movements of the tenderness that +would make suffer, and the cruelty that would make glad, the felicity +that prayed for death, and the despair that clung to life, the repulsion +that desired, the desire drunk with repulsion--love surcharged with +hatred, hatred staggering beneath its load of love."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +True; but the passion that consumes Catherine and Heathcliff, that burns +their bodies and destroys them, is nine-tenths a passion of the soul. It +taught them nothing of the sad secrets of the body. Thus Catherine's +treachery to Heathcliff is an unconscious treachery. It is her innocence +that makes it possible. She goes to Edgar Linton's arms with blind +eyes, in utter, childlike ignorance, not knowing what she does till it +is done and she is punished for it. She is punished for the sin of sins, +the sundering of the body from the soul. All her life after she sees her +sin. She has taken her body, torn it apart and given it to Edgar Linton, +and Heathcliff has her soul. + +"'You love Edgar Linton,' Nelly Dean says, 'and Edgar loves you ... +where is the obstacle?' + +"_'Here!_ and _here_!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her +forehead, and the other on her breast: 'in whichever place the soul +lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong.'... 'I've no +more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if +the wicked man in there hadn't brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't +have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he +shall never know how I love him, and that, not because he's handsome, +Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are +made of, his and mine are the same.'" + +Not only are they made of the same stuff, but Heathcliff _is_ her soul. + +"'I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that +there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the +use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries +in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries ... my great thought in +living is himself.... Nelly! I _am_ Heathcliff! He's always, always in +my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but +as my own being.'" + +That is her "secret". + +Of course, there is Cathy's other secret--her dream, which passes for +Emily Brontë's "pretty piece of Paganism". But it is only one side of +Emily Brontë. And it is only one side of Catherine Earnshaw. When +Heathcliff turns from her for a moment in that last scene of passion, +she says: "'Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me +out of the grave. _That_ is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not +_my_ Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my +soul. And,' she added musingly, 'the thing that irks me most is this +shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm +wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not +seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of +an aching heart; but really with it and in it. Nelly, you think you are +better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength; you are +sorry for me--very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for +_you_. I shall be incomparably above and beyond you all.'" + +True, adoration of Earth, the All-Mother, runs like a choric hymn +through all the tragedy. Earth is the mother and the nurse of these +children. They are brought to her for their last bed, and she gives them +the final consolation. + +Yet, after all, the end of this wild northern tragedy is far enough from +Earth, the All-Mother. The tumult of _Wuthering Heights_ ceases when +Heathcliff sickens. It sinks suddenly into the peace and silence of +exhaustion. And the drama closes, not in hopeless gloom, the agony of +damned souls, but in redemption, reconciliation. + +Catherine, the child of Catherine and of Edgar Linton, loves Hareton, +the child of Hindley Earnshaw. The evil spirit that possessed these two +dies with the death of Heathcliff. The younger Catherine is a mixed +creature, half-spiritualized by much suffering. Hareton is a splendid +animal, unspiritualized and unredeemed. Catherine redeems him; and you +gather that by that act of redemption, somehow, the souls of Catherine +and Heathcliff are appeased. + +The whole tremendous art of the book is in this wringing of strange and +terrible harmony out of raging discord. It ends on a sliding cadence, +soft as a sigh of peace only just conscious after pain. + +"I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next +the moor: the middle one grey and half-buried in heath; Edgar Linton's +only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's +still bare. + +"I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths +fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind +breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine +unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." + + * * * * * + +But that is not the real end, any more than Lockwood's arrival at +Wuthering Heights is the beginning. It is only Lockwood recovering +himself; the natural man's drawing breath after the passing of the +supernatural. + +For it was not conceivable that the more than human love of Heathcliff +and Catherine should cease with the dissolution of their bodies. It was +not conceivable that Catherine, by merely dying in the fifteenth +chapter, should pass out of the tale. As a matter of fact, she never +does pass out of it. She is more in it than ever. + +For the greater action of the tragedy is entirely on the invisible and +immaterial plane; it is the pursuing, the hunting to death of an earthly +creature by an unearthly passion. You are made aware of it at the very +beginning when the ghost of the child Catherine is heard and felt by +Lockwood; though it is Heathcliff that she haunts. It begins in the +hour after Catherine's death, upon Heathcliff's passionate invocation: +"'Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest so long as I am living! You said +I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I +believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me +always--take any form--drive me mad! Only _do_ not leave me in this +abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unbearable! I _cannot_ +live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!'" + +It begins and is continued through eighteen years. He cannot see her, +but he is aware of her. He is first aware on the evening of the day she +is buried. He goes to the graveyard and breaks open the new-made grave, +saying to himself, "'I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, +I'll think it is the north wind that chills _me_; and if she be +motionless, it is sleep.'" A sighing, twice repeated, stops him. "'I +appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. +I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but as certainly as +you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though +it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt Cathy was there; not under +me, but on the earth.... Her presence was with me; it remained while I +refilled the grave, and led me home.'" + +But she cannot get through to him completely, because of the fleshly +body that he wears. + +He goes up to his room, his room and hers. "'I looked round +impatiently--I felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I +_could not_!... She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to +me! And since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the +sport of that intolerable torture!... When I sat in the house with +Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on +the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home, I +hastened to return; she _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was +certain! And when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I +couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either +outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or +even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a +child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a +hundred times a night--to be always disappointed! It racked me!... It +was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of +hair-breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen +years!'" + +In all Catherine's appearances you feel the impulse towards satisfaction +of a soul frustrated of its passion, avenging itself on the body that +betrayed it. It has killed Catherine's body. It will kill Heathcliff's; +for it _must_ get through to him. And he knows it. + +Heathcliff's brutalities, his cruelties, the long-drawn accomplishment +of his revenge, are subordinate to this supreme inner drama, this +wearing down of the flesh by the lust of a remorseless spirit. + +Here are the last scenes of the final act. Heathcliff is failing. +"'Nelly,' he says, 'there's a strange change approaching: I'm in its +shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life, that I +hardly remember to eat or drink. Those two who have left the room'" +(Catherine Linton and Hareton) "'are the only objects which retain a +distinct material appearance to me.... Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed +a personification of my youth, not a human being: I felt to him in such +a variety of ways that it would have been impossible to have accosted +him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine +connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose +the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for +what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I +cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the +flags? In every cloud, in every tree--filling the air at night, and +caught by glimpses in every object by day--I am devoured with her image! +The most ordinary faces of men and women--my own features--mock me with +a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda +that she did exist, and that I have lost her.'... + +"'But what do you mean by a _change_, Mr. Heathcliff?' I said, alarmed +at his manner.... + +"'I shall not know till it comes,' he said, 'I'm only half conscious of +it now.'" + +A few days pass. He grows more and more abstracted and detached. One +morning Nelly Dean finds him downstairs, risen late. + +"I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested +his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, +surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless +eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half +a minute together.... + +"'Mr. Heathcliff! master!' I cried, 'don't, for God's sake stare as if +you saw an unearthly vision.' + +"'Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud,' he replied. 'Turn round, and +tell me, are we by ourselves?' + +"'Of course,' was my answer, 'of course we are.' + +"Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a +sweep of his hand he cleared a space in front of the breakfast-things, +and leant forward more at his ease. + +"Now I perceived that he was not looking at the wall; for, when I +regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within +two yards' distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, +both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, +yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The +fancied object was not fixed: either his eyes pursued it with unwearied +diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly +reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to +touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his +hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they +reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim." + +He cannot sleep; and at dawn of the next day he comes to the door of his +room--Cathy's room--and calls Nelly to him. She remonstrates with him +for his neglect of his body's health, and of his soul's. + +"'Your cheeks are hollow, and your eyes bloodshot, like a person +starving with hunger, and going blind with loss of sleep.' + +"'It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,' he said.... 'I'll do +both as soon as I possibly can ... as to repenting of my injustices, +I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I am too happy; and yet +I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not +satisfy itself.'" ... "In the afternoon, while Joseph and Hareton were +at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, +bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I +declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner +frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his +companion alone. + +"'I believe you think me a fiend,' he said, with his dismal laugh: +'something too horrible to live under a decent roof.' Then, turning to +Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he +added, half sneeringly: 'Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! +to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who +won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! +It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear--even mine.'" + +It is Heathcliff's susceptibility to this immaterial passion, the fury +with which he at once sustains and is consumed by it, that makes him +splendid. + +Peace under green grass could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such +a tragedy as _Wuthering Heights_. Its real end is the tale told by the +shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor. + +"'I was going to the Grange one evening--a dark evening, threatening +thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little +boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I +supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided. + +"'What is the matter, my little man?' I asked. + +"'There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' Nab,' he blubbered, +'un' I darnut pass 'em.'" + +It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the +supernatural. One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what +ghostly and immaterial passion and its unearthly satisfaction. + + * * * * * + +And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born. It +belongs to no school; it follows no tendency. You cannot put it into any +category. It is not "Realism", it is not "Romance", any more than _Jane +Eyre_: and if any other master's method, De Maupassant's or Turgeniev's, +is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can +seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory. +The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way +in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is +not the keynote of _Wuthering Heights_. The moral problem never entered +into Emily Brontë's head. You may call her what you will--Pagan, +pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips +from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. +Hers is an attitude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her +acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting. +It is too lucid and too high for pity. + +Heathcliff and Catherine exist. They justify their existence by their +passion. But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton +Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his +existence justifies him. + + Do I despise the timid deer, + Because his limbs are fleet with fear? + Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl, + Because his form is gaunt and foul? + Or, hear with joy the lev'ret's cry, + Because it cannot bravely die? + No! Then above his memory + Let Pity's heart as tender be. + +After all it _is_ pity; it is tenderness. + +And if Emily Brontë stands alone and is at her greatest in the things +that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said +to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for +instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, +for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly +Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality +through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old +farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And +masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that +moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All +warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the +rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that +I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, +and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into the warld.'" + +Charlotte Brontë said of her sister: "Though her feeling for the people +round her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, +with very few exceptions, ever experienced ... she could hear of them +with interest and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and +accurate; but _with_ them she rarely exchanged a word." And yet you +might have said she had been listening to Joseph all her life, such is +her command of his copious utterance: "'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph. +'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall +just tum'le o'er them brocken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear +how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to +Churstmas, flinging t' precious gifts o' God under fooit i' yer flaysome +rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff +bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i' that +plisky. I nobbut wish he may.'" + +Edgar Linton is weak in drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh +impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If +Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella. +These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate +wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white +ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in +silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, +are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh +and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage +children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange. +Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down +before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine +too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering +glass-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her +body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a +scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband. + +Emily Brontë shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the +relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid +passion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a +sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if +Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is +what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse +him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell +her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing +oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella +will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he +has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'" +It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the +sentimental passionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's +innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore +more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Brontë, like George Meredith, saw a +sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little +animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand +même_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing +that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her +refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is no sensualist, hates +and loathes Isabella and her body. + +But there are moments when he also hates the body of Catherine that +betrayed her. Emily Brontë is unswerving in her drawing of Heathcliff. +It is of a piece with his strangeness, his unexpectedness, that he does +not hate Edgar Linton with anything like the same intensity of hatred +that he has for Isabella. And it is of a piece with his absolute fiery +cleanness that never for a moment does he think of taking the lover's +obvious revenge. For it is not, I imagine, that Emily Brontë +deliberately shirked the issue, or deliberately rejected it; it is that +that issue never entered her head. Nor do I see here, in his abandonment +of the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, +however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a +tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or +unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was +ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar +obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not +need it, Emily let it go. + +The evil wrought by Heathcliff, like the passion that inspired and +tortured him, is an unearthly thing. Charlotte showed insight when she +said in her preface to _Wuthering Heights_: "Heathcliff betrays one +solitary human feeling, and that is _not_ his love for Catherine; which +is a sentiment fierce and inhuman ... the single link that connects +Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for Hareton +Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied +esteem for Nelly Dean." But that Heathcliff is wholly inhuman--"a ghoul, +an afreet"--I cannot really see. Emily's psychology here is perforce +half on the unearthly plane; it is above our criticism, lending itself +to no ordinary tests. But for all his unearthliness, Heathcliff is +poignantly human, from his childhood when he implored Nelly Dean to make +him "decent", for he is "going to be good", to his last hour of piteous +dependence on her. You are not allowed for a moment to forget, that, +horrible and vindictive as he is, the child Heathcliff is yet a child. +Take the scene where the boy first conceives his vengeance. + +"On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely: + +"'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how +long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before +I do!' + +"'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked +people. We should learn to forgive.' + +"'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I +only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while +I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.'" + +It is very like Heathcliff. It is also pathetically like a child. + +In Hareton Earnshaw Emily Brontë is fairly on the earth all the time, +and nothing could be finer than her handling of this half-brutalized, +and wholly undeveloped thing, her showing of the slow dawn of his +feelings and intelligence. Her psychology is never psychologic. The +creature reveals himself at each moment of his unfolding for what he is. +It was difficult; for in his degradation he had a certain likeness in +unlikeness to the degraded Heathcliff. It was Heathcliff's indomitable +will that raised him. Hareton cannot rise without a woman's hand to help +him. The younger Catherine again was difficult, because of her likeness +to her mother. Her temper, her vanity, her headstrong trickiness are +Catherine Earnshaw. But Catherine Linton is a healthy animal, incapable +of superhuman passion, capable only (when properly chastened by +adversity) of quite ordinary pity and devotion. She inspires +bewilderment, but terror and fascination never; and never the glamour, +the magic evoked by the very name of Catherine Earnshaw. Her escapades +and fantasies, recalling Catherine Earnshaw, are all on an attenuated +scale. + +Yet Catherine Earnshaw seems now and then a less solid figure. That is +because her strength does not lie in solidity at all. She is a thing of +flame and rushing wind. One half of her is akin to the storms of +Wuthering Heights, the other belongs to her unseen abiding-place. Both +sides of her are immortal. + +And they are of that immortality which is the spirit of place--the +spirit that, more than all spirits, inspired Emily Brontë. Two of +Charlotte's books, _The Professor_ and _Villette_, might have been +written away from Haworth; Emily's owes much of its outward character to +the moors, where it was brought forth. Not even Charlotte could paint, +could suggest scenes like Emily Brontë. There is nobody to compare with +her but Thomas Hardy; and even he has to labour more, to put in more +strokes to achieve his effect. In four lines she gives the storm, the +cold and savage foreground, and the distance of the Heights: "One may +guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the +excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a +range of gaunt thorns, all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving +alms of the sun." + +See the finish of this landscape, framed in a window: "They sat together +in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, +beyond the garden trees and the wild green park, the valley of +Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very +soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that +runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). +Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was +invisible; it rather dips down on the other side." + +In six lines she can paint sound, and distance, and scenery, and the +turn of the seasons, and the two magics of two atmospheres. "Gimmerton +chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck +in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for +the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music +about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it +always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of +steady rain." + +That music is the prelude to Heathcliff's return, and to the passionate +scene that ends in Catherine's death. + +And nothing could be more vivid, more concrete, than Emily Brontë's +method. Time is marked as a shepherd on the moors might mark it, by the +movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars; by weather, and the +passage of the seasons. Passions, emotions, are always presented in +bodily symbols, by means of the bodily acts and violences they inspire. +The passing of the invisible is made known in the same manner. And the +visible world moves and shines and darkens with an absolute illusion of +reality. Here is a road seen between sunset and moonrise: "... all that +remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could +see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by the light of +that splendid moon". + +The book has faults, many and glaring faults. You have to read it many +times before you can realize in the mass its amazing qualities. For it +is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, this story +of two houses and of three generations that the man Lockwood is supposed +to tell. Not only has Lockwood to tell of things he could not possibly +have heard and seen, but sometimes you get scene within vivid scene, +dialogue within dialogue, and tale within tale, four deep. Sometimes you +are carried back in a time and sometimes forward. You have to think hard +before you know for certain whose wife Catherine Heathcliff really is. +You cannot get over Lockwood's original mistake. And this poor device of +narrative at second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, is used to convey +things incredible, inconceivable; all the secret, invisible drama of the +souls of Catherine and Heathcliff, as well as whole acts of the most +visible, the most tangible, the most direct and vivid and tumultuous +drama; drama so tumultuous, so vivid, and so direct, that by no +possibility could it have been conveyed by any medium. It simply +happens. + +And that is how Emily Brontë's genius triumphs over all her faults. It +is not only that you forgive her faults and forget them, you are not--in +the third reading anyhow--aware of them. They disappear, they are +destroyed, they are burnt up in her flame, and you wonder how you ever +saw them. All her clumsy contrivances cannot stay her course, or obscure +her light, or quench her fire. Things happen before your eyes, and it +does not matter whether Lockwood, or Nelly Dean, or Heathcliff, or +Catherine, tells you of their happening. + +And yet, though Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the thinnest, the most +transparent of pure mediums, they preserve their personalities +throughout. Nelly especially. The tale only begins to move when Lockwood +drops out and Nelly takes it up. At that point Emily Brontë's style +becomes assured in its directness and simplicity, and thenceforward it +never falters or changes its essential character. + +And it is there, first of all, in that unfaltering, unchanging quality +of style that she stands so far above her sister. She has no purple +patches, no decorative effects. No dubiously shining rhetoric is hers. +She does not deal in metaphors or in those ponderous abstractions, those +dreadful second-hand symbolic figures--Hope, Imagination, Memory, and +the rest of them, that move with every appearance of solidity in +Charlotte's pages. There are no angels in her rainbows. Her "grand +style" goes unclothed, perfect in its naked strength, its naked beauty. +It is not possible to praise Charlotte's style without reservations; it +is not always possible to give passages that illustrate her qualities +without suppressing her defects. What was a pernicious habit with +Charlotte, her use of words like "peruse", "indite", "retain", with +Emily is a mere slip of the pen. There are only, I think, three of such +slips in _Wuthering Heights_. Charlotte was capable of mixing her worst +things with her best. She mixed them most in her dialogue, where sins of +style are sinfullest. It is not always possible to give a scene, word +for word, from Charlotte's novels; the dramatic illusion, the illusion +of reality, is best preserved by formidable cutting. + +But not only was Emily's style sinless; it is on the whole purest, most +natural, and most inevitable in her dialogue; and that, although the +passions she conceived were so tremendous, so unearthly, that she might +have been pardoned if she found no human speech to render them. + +What is more, her dramatic instinct never fails her as it fails +Charlotte over and over again. Charlotte had not always the mastery and +self-mastery that, having worked a situation up to its dramatic climax, +leaves it there. A certain obscure feeling for rightness guides her in +the large, striding movement of the drama; it is in the handling of the +scenes that she collapses. She wanders from climax to climax; she goes +back on her own trail; she ruins her best effects by repetition. She has +no continuous dramatic instinct; no sense whatever of dramatic form. + +These are present somehow in _Wuthering Heights_, in spite of its +monstrous formlessness. Emily may have had no more sense of form for +form's sake than Charlotte; she may have had no more dramatic instinct; +but she had an instinct for the ways of human passion. She knew that +passion runs its course, from its excitement to its climax and +exhaustion. It has a natural beginning and a natural end. And so her +scenes of passion follow nature. She never goes back on her effect, +never urges passion past its climax, or stirs it in its exhaustion. In +this she is a greater "realist" than Charlotte. + + * * * * * + +It is incredible that _Wuthering Heights_, or any line of it, any line +that Emily Brontë ever wrote, should have passed for Charlotte's. She +did things that Charlotte could never have done if she tried a thousand +years, things not only incomparably greater, but unique. + +Yet in her lifetime she was unrecognized. What is true of her prose is +true also of her poems. They, indeed, did bring her a little praise, +obscure and momentary. No less she was unrecognized to such an extent +that _Wuthering Heights_ was said and believed to be an immature work of +Charlotte's. Even after her death, her eulogist, Sydney Dobell, was so +far from recognizing her, that he seems to have had a lingering doubt as +to Ellis Bell's identity until Charlotte convinced him of his error. + +And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Brontë +the glory that she has won at last from time. The very latest theory,[A] +offered to the world as a marvellous discovery, the fruit of passionate +enthusiasm and research, is the old, old theory that Charlotte, and not +Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. And Sydney Dobell, with his little +error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for +Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every +other work of Emily's. He leans rashly enough on the assumption that her +"Gondal Chronicles" were, in their puerility, beneath contempt, still +more rashly on his own opinion that she was no poet. + +[Footnote A: _The Key to the Brontë Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby. See +Appendix I.] + +If this were the only line he took, this amusing theorist might be left +alone. The publication of the _Complete Poems_ settles him. The value, +the really priceless value, of his undertaking is in the long array of +parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he +endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns +are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his +theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself +wherein Charlotte and Emily Brontë differed; in what manner, with what +incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger +sister was pre-eminent, he cannot do better than study those parallel +passages. If ever there was a voice, a quality, an air absolutely apart +and distinct, not to be approached by, or confounded with any other, it +is Emily Brontë's. + +It was the glare of Charlotte's fame that caused in her lifetime that +blindness and confusion. And Emily, between pride and a superb +indifference, suffered it. She withdrew, with what seemed an obstinate +perversity, into her own magnificent obscurity. She never raised a hand +to help herself. She left no record, not a note or a word to prove her +authorship of _Wuthering Heights_. Until the appearance in 1910 of her +_Complete Poems_ the world had no proof of it but Charlotte's statement. +It was considered enough, in Charlotte's lifetime. The world accepted +her disclaimer. + +But the trouble began again after Charlotte's death. Emily herself had +no legend; but her genius was perpetually the prey of rumours that left +her personality untouched. Among the many provoked by Mrs. Gaskell's +_Life_, there was one attributing _Wuthering Heights_ to her brother +Branwell.[A] Mr. Francis Grundy said that Branwell told him he had +written _Wuthering Heights_. Mr. Leyland believed Mr. Grundy. He +believed that Branwell was a great poet and a great novelist, and he +wrote two solid volumes of his own in support of his belief. + +[Footnote A: The curious will find a note on this point in Appendix II.] + +Nobody believes in Mr. Grundy, or in Mr. Leyland and his belief in +Branwell now. All that can be said of Branwell, in understanding and +extenuation, is that he would have been a great poet and a greater +novelist if he could have had his own way. + +This having of your own way, unconsciously, undeliberately, would seem +to be the supreme test of genius. Having your own way in the teeth of +circumstances, of fathers and of brothers, and of aunts, of +school-mistresses,[A] and of French professors, of the parish, of +poverty, of public opinion and hereditary disease; in the teeth of the +most disastrous of all hindrances, duty, not neglected, but fulfilled. +By this test the genius of Emily Brontë fairly flames; Charlotte's +stands beside it with a face hidden at times behind bruised and darkened +wings. By this test even Anne's pale talent shows here and there a +flicker as of fire. In all three the having of their own way was, after +all, the great submission, the ultimate obedience to destiny. + +[Footnote A: It was Miss Wooler who taught Charlotte to "peruse".] + +For genius like theirs _is_ destiny. And that brings us back to the +eternal question of the Sources. "Experience" will not account for what +was greatest in Charlotte. It will hardly account for what was least in +Emily. With her only the secret, the innermost experience counted. If +the sources of _Wuthering Heights_ are in the "Gondal Poems", the +sources of the poems are in _that_ experience, in the long life of her +adventurous spirit. Her genius, like Henry Angora and Rosina and the +rest of them, flew from the "Palaces of Instruction". As she _was_ Henry +Angora, so she _was_ Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. + +It is a case of "The Horse I rode at the battle of Zamorna", that is +all. + +There has been too much talk about experience. What the critic, the +impressionist, of the Brontës needs is to recover, before all things, +the innocence of the eye. No doubt we all of us had it once, and can +remember more or less what it was like. To those who have lost it I +would say: Go back and read again Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte +Brontë_. + +Years and years ago, when I was a child, hunting forlornly in my +father's bookshelves, I came upon a small, shabby volume, bound in +yellow linen. The title-page was adorned with one bad wood-cut that +showed a grim, plain house standing obliquely to a churchyard packed +with tombstones--tombstones upright and flat, and slanting at all +angles. In the foreground was a haycock, where the grave grass had been +mown. I do not know how the artist, whose resources were of the +slenderest, contrived to get his overwhelming but fascinating effect of +moorland solitude, of black-grey nakedness and abiding gloom. But he +certainly got it and gave it. There was one other picture, representing +a memorial tablet. + +Tombstones always fascinated me in those days, because I was mortally +afraid of them; and I opened that book and read it through. + +I could not, in fact, put it down. For the first time I was in the grip +of a reality more poignant than any that I had yet known, of a tragedy +that I could hardly bear. I suppose I have read that book a score of +times since then. There are pages in it that I shrink from approaching +even now, because of the agony of realization they revive. The passing +bell tolled continually in the prelude; it sounded at intervals +throughout; it tolled again at the close. The refrain of "Here lie the +Remains" haunted me like a dolorous song. It seemed to me a decorous and +stately accompaniment to such a tale, and that wood-cut on the +title-page a fitting ornament. I knew every corner of that house. I have +an impression (it is probably a wrong one) of a flagged path going right +down from the Parsonage door through another door and plunging among the +tombs. I saw six little white and wistful faces looking out of an upper +window; I saw six little children going up and up a lane, and I wondered +how the tiny feet of babies ever got so far. I saw six little Brontë +babies lost in the spaces of the illimitable moors. They went over +rough stones and walls and mountain torrents; their absurd petticoats +were blown upwards by the wind, and their feet were tangled in the +heather. They struggled and struggled, and yet were in an ecstasy that I +could well understand. + +I remember I lingered somewhat long over the schooldays at Cowan Bridge +and that I found the Brussels period dull; M. Héger struck me as a +tiresome pedant, and I wondered how Charlotte could ever have put up +with him. There was a great deal about Branwell that I could not +understand at all, and so forgot. And I skipped all the London part, and +Charlotte's literary letters. I had a very vague idea of Charlotte apart +from Haworth and the moors, from the Parsonage and the tombstones, from +Tabby and Martha and the little black cat that died, from the garden +where she picked the currants, and the quiet rooms where she wrote her +wonderful, wonderful books. + +But, for all that skipping and forgetting, there stood out a vivid and +ineffaceable idea of Emily; Emily who was tall and strong and +unconquerable; Emily who loved animals, and loved the moors; Emily and +Keeper, that marvellous dog; Emily kneading bread with her book propped +before her; Emily who was Ellis Bell, listening contemptuously to the +reviews of _Wuthering Heights_; Emily stitching at the long seam with +dying fingers; and Emily dead, carried down the long, flagged path, with +Keeper following in the mourners' train. + +And, all through, an invisible, intangible presence, something +mysterious, but omnipotently alive; something that excited these three +sisters; something that atoned, that not only consoled for suffering and +solitude and bereavement, but that drew its strength from these things; +something that moved in this book like the soul of it; something that +they called "genius". + +Now that, as truly as I can set it down, is the impression conveyed to a +child's mind by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. And making +some deductions for a child's morbid attraction to tombstones, and a +child's natural interest in children, it seems to me even now that this +innocent impression is the true one. It eliminates the inessential and +preserves the proportions; above all, it preserves the figure of Emily +Brontë, solitary and unique. + +Anyhow, I have never been able to get away from it. + +_September_ 1911. + + + + +APPENDIX I + +THE KEY TO THE BRONTË WORKS + + +More than once Mr. Malham-Dembleby has approached us with his mysterious +"Key". There was his "Key to _Jane Eyre_", published in the _Saturday +Review_ in 1902; there was his "Lifting of the Brontë Veil", published +in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1907; and there was the correspondence +that followed. Now he has gathered all his evidence together into one +formidable book, and we are faced with what he calls his "miraculous and +sensational" discovery that it was Charlotte and not Emily Brontë who +wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that in _Wuthering Heights_ she +immortalized the great tragic passion of her life, inspired by M. Héger, +who, if you please, is Heathcliff. + +This is Mr. Malham-Dembleby's most important contribution to the +subject. M. Héger, Mr. Malham-Dembleby declares, was Heathcliff before +he was M. Pelet, or Rochester, or M. Paul. And as it was Charlotte and +not Emily who experienced passion, Charlotte alone was able to +immortalize it. + +So much Mr. Malham-Dembleby assumes in the interests of psychology. But +it is not from crude psychological arguments that he forges his +tremendous Key. It is from the internal evidence of the works, supported +by much "sensational" matter from the outside. + +By way of internal evidence then, we have first the sensational +discovery of a work, _Gleanings in Craven, or The Tourists' Guide_, by +"one Frederic Montagu", published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838, which +work the author of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ must have read +and drawn upon for many things, names (including her own pseudonym of +Currer Bell), descriptions of scenery, local legends, as of that fairy +Jannet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, who haunted the sources of the +Aire and suggested Rochester's Queen of Elves, his fairy, Janet Eyre. +Parallel passages are given showing a certain correspondence between +Montagu's traveller's tale and the opening scene of _Wuthering Heights_. +Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house, like Lockwood, and, like +Lockwood, is shown to bed, dreams, and is awakened by a white-faced +apparition (his hostess, not his host), who holds a lighted candle, like +Heathcliff, and whose features, like Heathcliff's, are convulsed with +diabolical rage, and so on. Mr. Malham-Dembleby, in a third parallel +column, uses the same phrases to describe Jane Eyre's arrival at +Rochester's house, her dreams, and the appearance of Rochester's mad +wife at her bedside; his contention being that the two scenes are +written by the same hand. + +All this is very curious and interesting; so far, however, Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's sensational evidence does no more for us than suggest +that Charlotte and Emily may very likely have read Montagu's book. + +But the plot thickens. Mr. Malham-Dembleby first prints parallel +passages from Montagu's book and _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, +then, extensively, scene after scene from _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering +Heights_. + +Some of these coincidences seem on the first blush of it remarkable, for +instance, the child-phantom which appears both to Jane Eyre and to Nelly +Dean in _Wuthering Heights_; or the rainy day and the fireside scene, +which occur in the third chapter of _Wuthering Heights_ and the opening +chapter of _Jane Eyre_. Others again, such as the parallel between the +return of Heathcliff to Catherine and that of Jane to Rochester, will +not bear examination for a moment. Of this and most of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's parallels it may be said that they only maintain their +startling character by the process of tearing words from their +sentences, sentences from their contexts, contexts from their scenes, +and scenes from the living body of each book. Apparently to Mr. +Malham-Dembleby, a book, at any rate a Brontë book, is not a living +body; each is a box of German bricks, and he takes all the boxes and +tumbles them out on the floor together and rearranges them so as to show +that, after all, there was only one box of bricks in the family, and +that was Charlotte's. Much of his argument and the force of his parallel +passages depends on the identification of the characters in the Brontë +works, not only with their assumed originals, but with each other. For +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's purposes poor M. Héger, a model already +remorselessly overworked by Charlotte, has to sit, not only for M. +Pelet, for Rochester and Yorke Hunsden, for Robert and for Louis Moore, +but for Heathcliff, and, if you would believe it, for Hareton Earnshaw; +because (parallel passage!) the younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw +were teacher and pupil, and so (when she taught him English) were +Charlotte and M. Héger. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's work of identification is made easier for him by +his subsidiary discovery of Charlotte's two methods, Method I, +interchange of the sex; Method II, alteration of the age of her +characters. With this licence almost any character may be any other. +Thus Hareton Earnshaw looking at Catherine is Jane Eyre looking at Mr. +Rochester. When he touches her Nelly Dean says, "He might have stuck a +knife into her, she started in such a taking"; and Rochester says to +Jane, "You stick a sly penknife under my ear" (parallel passage!). +Lockwood at Wuthering Heights is Jane Eyre at Thornton Hall; Heathcliff +appearing at Lockwood's bedside, besides being M. Héger and Rochester, +is Rochester's mad wife. Heathcliff returning to Catherine is Jane +returning to Rochester, and so on. But however varied, however +apparently discriminated the characters, M. Héger is in all the men, and +Charlotte is in all the women, in the two Catherines, in Jane Eyre and +Frances Henri; in Caroline Helstone, in Pauline Bassompierre, and Lucy +Snowe. + +Now there is a certain plausibility in this. With all their vividness +and individuality Charlotte Brontë's characters have a way of shading +off into each other. Jane has much in common with Frances and with Lucy, +and Lucy with Pauline. Her men incline rather to one type, that of the +masterful, arbitrary, instructive male; that is the type she likes best +to draw. Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_ splits up into Rochester and +Robert Moore and Mr. Yorke; and there is a certain amount of Paul +Emanuel in all of them. But life gives us our types very much that way, +and there is a bit of somebody else in everybody. It is easy to suggest +identity by exaggerating small points of resemblance and suppressing +large and essential differences (which is what Mr. Malham-Dembleby does +all the time). But take each whole living man and woman as they have +been created for us, I don't care if Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre +_did_ each have a fit of passion in a locked room, and if a servant +waited upon each with gruel; there is no earthly likeness between the +soul of Catherine and the soul of Jane. I don't care if there was +"hell-light" in Rochester's eyes and Heathcliff's too, if they both +swore by the "Deuce", and had both swarthy complexions like Paul +Emanuel; for there is a whole universe between Heathcliff and Rochester, +between Rochester and M. Paul. Beside Heathcliff, that Titan raging on a +mountain-top, M. Paul is merely a little man gesticulating on an +_estrade_. + +So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to +force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Héger and of the +great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his +identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he +can lay his hands on, from the _Poems_, from _Wuthering Heights_, from +_Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_ and _The Professor_, "... all her life's +hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart..." +(_Villette_) "... faith was blighted, confidence destroyed..." (_Jane +Eyre_) ... "Mr. Rochester" (M. Héger, we are informed in confidential +brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that +Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument. +"Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark +season when Charlotte Brontë wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she +portrayed M. Héger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with +'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So +that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul +Héger". We must believe that _Wuthering Heights_ was written in pure +vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Brontë repudiated its authorship for +three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her +"heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified +animus of her portrait of M. Héger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for +certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence. + +Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely +upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his +own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in +Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared +after the publication of _Jane Eyre_. So far there is nothing new in his +discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugène Sue's +extinct novel of _Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice_, and gives us parallel +passages from that. For in _Miss Mary_, published in 1850-51[A] we have, +not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily +from _Jane Eyre_, but the situation in _The Professor_ and _Villette_ is +largely anticipated. We are told that Eugène Sue was in Brussels in +1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is +interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr. +Malham-Dembleby maintains--that M. Héger made indiscreet revelations to +Eugène Sue, but that Eugène Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took +his own where he found it, either in the pages of _Jane Eyre_ or in the +tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Héger may have +been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate, +have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer +for what Madame Héger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes +of Eugène Sue. + +[Footnote A: Serially in the _London Journal_ in 1850; in volume form in +Paris, 1851. It is possible, but not likely, that Eugène Sue may have +seen the manuscript of _The Professor_ when it was "going the round".] + +Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Héger portrait, +that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte +Brontë in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading _Shirley_. It is +signed Paul Héger, 1850, the year of _Shirley's_ publication, and the +year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two +inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's +death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Héger, done from life in +1850." The handwriting gives no clue. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, +which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in _Villette_. He +says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the +dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green +gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, +it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, +gown or no gown, the portrait _may_ be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says +that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's +house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that +Charlotte and M. Héger met in London that year, and that he then drew +this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very +creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Héger's children +maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly +evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of +another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the +portrait from the Héger family, a statement at variance with the +evidence of the Héger family itself. But granted that the children of M. +Héger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this +portrait of Charlotte Brontë from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, +I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of +the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication. + + + + +APPENDIX II + + +Leyland's theory is that Branwell Brontë wrote the first seventeen +chapters of _Wuthering Heights_. It has very little beyond Leyland's +passionate conviction to support it. There is a passage in a letter of +Branwell's to Leyland, the sculptor, written in 1845, where he says he +is writing a three-volume novel of which the first volume is completed. +He compares it with "Hamlet" and with "Lear". There is also Branwell's +alleged statement to Mr. Grundy. And there is an obscure legend of +manuscripts produced from Branwell's hat, before the eyes of Mr. Grundy, +in an inn-parlour. Leyland argues freely from the antecedent probability +suggested by Branwell's letters and his verse, which he published by way +of vindication. He could hardly have done Branwell a worse service. +Branwell's letters give us a vivid idea of the sort of manuscripts that +would be produced, in inn-parlours, from his hat. As for his verse--that +formless, fluent gush of sentimentalism--it might have passed as an +error of his youth, but for poor Leyland's comments on its majesty and +beauty. There are corpses in it and tombstones, and girls dying of +tuberculosis, obscured beyond recognition in a mush of verbiage. There +is not a live line in it. One sonnet only, out of Branwell's many +sonnets, is fitted to survive. It has a certain melancholy, sentimental +grace. But it is not a good sonnet, and it shows Branwell at his best. +At his worst he sinks far below Charlotte at her worst, and, compared +with Emily or with Charlotte at her best, Branwell is nowhere. Even Anne +beats him. Her sad, virginal restraint gives a certain form and value +to her colourless and slender gift. + +There is a psychology of such things, as there is a psychology of works +of genius. Emily Brontë's work, with all its faults of construction, +shows one and indivisible, fused in one fire from first to last. One +cannot take the first seventeen chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ and +separate them from the rest. There is no faltering anywhere and no break +in the power and the passion of this stupendous tale. And where passion +is, sentimentalism is not. And there is not anywhere in _Wuthering +Heights_ a trace of that corruption which for the life of him Branwell +could not have kept out of the manuscripts he produced from his hat. + + + + +INDEX + + +Absolute, the, 16, 176. +_Agnes Grey_, 39, 40, 49. +Augustine, St., 185. + +Ballynaskeagh, 20. +Balzac, 54, 120, 121, 163. +Bassompierre, Pauline de, in + Villette, 153-157. +Being, 184. + -- Parmenides on, 185. +Birrell, Mr., 14, 20, 31, 41, 65. +Blake, William, 175, 178. +Branwell, Miss, at Haworth, 23, + 24. + -- -- death of, 36. + -- Maria, marries Rev. Patrick + Brontë, 20. + -- -- illness of, 23. + -- -- death of, 23. +Brontë-- + Anne, 49-57. + -- 27, 28. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 27, 33, + 39. + -- at Thorp Green, 33, 36, + 38, 50. + -- in London, 40. + -- character of 49-51, 55, + 56. + -- death of, 45. + -- diary of, 34, 168, 194. + -- Poems of, 54-57, 188, + 246. + -- novels of, 39, 49-54. + -- and Branwell Brontë + compared, 54, 246. + Charlotte, 57-167. + Charlotte at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 15, 16, 19, + 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31, + 37, 39, 46, 47, 69, 83, 94, + 103, 105, 165, 235, 236. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25, + 27, 236. + -- at Roe Head, 26, 27, 94, + 95. + -- at Dewsbury Moor, 27, + 94. + -- at Stonegappe, 28, 62-64. + -- at Rawdon, 33, 35, 67. + -- in Brussels, 15, 35-37, + 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- in London, 15, 40, 46, + 47, 244. + -- character of, 16, 66 et + seq., 80, 82, 83-86, 167. + -- death of, 48, 49. + -- early writings of, 101-104. + -- genius of, 13, 14, 19, 20, + 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, 91, + 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, + 233. + -- marriage of, 47-49. + -- novels of, 105-165. + -- Poems of, 39, 103, 164, + 169, 170, 246. + -- her love of children, + 64-67, 156. + -- and Emily Brontë compared, + 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 31, 64, 65, 66, 68. + Emily Jane, 167-234. + -- at Haworth, 19, 20-22, + 25, 26, 27, 39. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- at Roe Head, 27, 39. + -- at Halifax, 27. + -- in Brussels, 35, 36, 37. + -- death of, 43, 44, 139, + 140, 173. + -- character of, 27, 167-173. + -- diary of, 33, 38, 194. + -- genius of, 14, 15, 16, 17, + 22, 171, 172, 185-186, 187, + 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, 236. + -- Poems of, 17, 39, 174-185, + 231, 232. + -- mysticism of, 16, 168, + 171, 173-181, 186. + -- novel of, 39. + -- paganism of, 16, 135, + 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- and Charlotte Brontë + compared, 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- M. Maeterlinck on, 14, + 170, 213. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 174. + Maria, 20, 22. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- character of, 24, 25. + -- death of, 25. + Patrick Branwell, 15, 22, 27, + 28, 29, 30, 34, 54, 55, 58, + 59, 61, 199, 236. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 25, + 28-30, 34, 42. + -- at Bradford, 28, 29. + -- at Luddenden Foot, 34. + -- at Thorp Green, 40, 41. + -- in London, 29. + -- character of, 40-43, 50-54. + -- death of, 43. + -- authorship of _Wuthering + Heights_ ascribed to, 233, 246, + 247. + Patrick Branwell and Emily + Brontë compared, 246, 247. + -- and Anne Brontë compared, + 54, 233. + -- and Mrs. Robinson, 40, + 41, 50-52. + -- Poems of, 28, 29, 42, + 164, 233, 246. + Patrick, Rev., 20-22, 24, 25, + 36, 37, 42, 43, 83. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20. + -- in Ireland, 20, 21. + -- character of, 20, 21, 22, + 24. + -- works of, 22. +_Brontës, The Fact and Fiction_, by + Angus Mackay, 81. +Brown, John, 28, 29, 30, 51. +Brussels, Charlotte Brontë in, 15, + 35-37, 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- Emily Brontë in, 35, 36, 37. + -- influence of, 15, 81-90, 158. +Byron, 121, 206, 207. + +Children, love of, 64-67, 156. + -- in Charlotte Brontë's + novels, 64, 65, 66, 156. + -- in George Eliot's novels, + 64, 156. +Cowan Bridge School, 24, 25, 27, + 91, 236. +Creative Impulse, the, 23, 155, + 157. +Criticism of Charlotte Brontë, + 15, 31-33, 64-75, 78-81, 117, + 120, 122. + -- of _Jane Eyre_, 114, 117, + 120-124, 128-142. + -- of _Shirley_, 65, 68, 131, 132, + 137, 138, 143. + -- of _Villette_, 143-149, 153-160, + 162, 163. + -- of _Emma_, 161, 162. + -- of Charlotte Brontë's + _Poems_, 164, 165. + -- of Emily Brontë's _Poems_, + 174-209. +Criticism of _Wuthering Heights_, + 209-234. + -- of _Agnes Grey_, 49, 50. + -- of _The Tenant of Wildfell + Hall_, 54, 55. + -- of Anne Brontë's _Poems_, + 54-57, 188, 246. + +Dean, Nelly, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 222, 224, 225, 229. +Destiny, 35, 36, 37, 39, 48, 103, + 105, 234. +_Destiny, Wisdom and_, quoted, 170. +Dewsbury, Charlotte Brontë at, + 27, 94. +Dialogue, 116, 117, 139, 140, 149, + 230. +Diary, Emily Brontë's, 33, 38, + 194. + -- Anne Brontë's, 34, 168, + 194. +Dimnet, M., 15, 16, 51, 163. + -- -- his criticism of Charlotte + Brontë, 16. + -- -- his criticism of + _Wuthering Heights_, 17. +Dobell, Sydney, on Emily + Brontë, 232. +Dramatic instinct of Charlotte + Brontë, 163, 231, 232. + -- -- of Emily Brontë, 231, + 232. +Duclaux, Madame, 14, 20, 21, 44, + 50, 61, 120. + -- -- her Emily Brontë, + 14, 21, 44, 50, 120, 167, 182. + -- -- on _Wuthering Heights_ + 211, 212. +Dunton, Mr. Theodore Watts-, + 14, 15. + +Earnshaw, Catherine, 169, + 173, 208-229. + -- -- character of, 212-216, + 227. + -- Hareton, 209-212. + -- -- character of, 215-218, + 226. +Earth, the, 127, 136, 143, 173, + 207, 208, 224. + -- Emily Brontë's love of, + 136, 174, 175, 208, 222. + -- Genius of, 175. + -- Poem to, 207, 208. +Ecstasy, 179. +Eliot, George, 64, 143, 156, 171. +Emanuel, Paul, 105, 144-146, + 148-153, 157, 242, 243. +_Emma, Fragment of_, 161, 162. +Experience, 144 et seq., 170, 172, + 173, 234. + -- novel of, 106, 107, 143-146, + 148, 164. + -- how far important, 144, + 145, 148, 234. + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 129, + 130, 172, 234. +Eyre, name whence derived, 239. + +Fanshawe, Ginevra, character + of, 154, 159. +Farrar, Dean, 55. +Fielding, 123. +_Fragment of Emma_, 161, 162. + +Gaskell, Mrs., 20, 21, 22, 30, + 42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 96, 101, + 120, 143, 147, 167. +Gaskell's, Mrs., _Life of Charlotte + Brontë_, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, 234-237. +Genius, + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 13, 14, + 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, + 91, 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, 233. + -- of Emily Brontë, 14, 15, + 16, 17, 22, 171, 172, 185, 186, + 187, 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, + 236. + -- the, of Place, 19, 20, 227, + 228. + -- the, of Earth, 174, 175. + -- test of, 233, 234. +"Gondal Chronicles", 38, 39, + 193, 194, 232. +"Gondal Poems", 17, 193-208, + 234. +Grundy, Francis, 33, 51, 60, 203, + 246. + +Haworth, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, + 29, 37, 42-44, 168. + -- influence of, 24, 25, 30, 47, + 94, 103, 105, 165, 166, 227, + 228, 235, 236. +Heathcliff, 53, 170, 197, 209-221, + 222, 224, 225, 239-242. + -- character of, 209, 210, 211, + 226. + -- and Zamorna, 202-207. +Héger, M. Constantin, 14, 35, 36, + 81-90. + -- -- character of, 88, 89, + 146, 147. + -- -- influence of, 36, 100, + 103-105. +Héger's, M. Constantin, relations + with Charlotte Brontë, + 14, 15, 81-90, 96, 100, 104, 105, + 130, 239-247. + -- -- original of Paul + Emanuel, 105, 144-150, 239-247. + -- Madame, 14, 15, 35, 36, + 85-89, 104, 148. + -- -- original of Madame + Beck, 144, 148, 149. +Helstone, Caroline, 98, 137, 139, + 141, 142, 143. + -- -- and Miss Ellen + Nussey, 75, 98. +Henri, Frances, 89, 108-110. +Heredity, 211, 212. + +Imagination and the real, 130, + 144. + +_Jane Eyre_, 21, 24, 39, 40, 64, 68, + 89, 91, 101, 103, 109, 110, + 112-131, 133, 143, 148, 159, + 239-247. + -- -- criticisms of, 112, + 116-124. + -- -- dialogue in, 113, 114, + 117, 118, 119. + -- -- passion in, 113, 114, + 115, 116, 117. + -- -- reality of, 112, 113, + 124. + -- -- style in, 128, 129. + -- -- and _The Professor_ + compared, 105, 109, 110, 112, + 113, 129, 138. + -- -- and _Shirley_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- -- quoted, 113-115, + 117-119, 125-129. +John of the Cross, St., 180, 181. + +Letters of Charlotte Brontë, + 46, 53, 75, 76, 165, 166. + -- -- to Miss Ellen Nussey, + 46, 72, 75-78, 82-92. + -- -- from Brussels, 84-87. + -- -- to M. Héger, 90. + -- -- to Southey, 99. + -- -- to Wordsworth, 99. +Leyland, Francis A., 60, 61. + -- -- on Branwell Brontë, + 81, 233, 246. + -- the sculptor, 29, 51, 246. +Lewes, George Henry, 33, 64, 68, + 124. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 68. +_Life of Charlotte Brontë_, Mrs. + Gaskell's, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, + 234-237. +Linton, Catherine, 212, 221, 222, + 227. +London, Charlotte Brontë in, 15, + 40, 46, 47, 244. + +Mackay, Mr. Angus, 81. +Maeterlinck, M., on Emily + Brontë, 14, 170, 213. +Malham-Dembleby, Mr. J., 87, + 232, 239-245. +Marriage of Charlotte Brontë, + 47-49. + -- Charlotte Brontë on, 69-80, + 141, 142. +Meredith, George, 133, 224. +Moore, Louis, 134, 141, 143. + -- Robert, 137, 140. +Motherhood, 65-68. +Mysticism, 16, 168, 169, 173-181, + 186. + +Nature in _Shirley_, 136, 137. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 173. + -- in Emily Brontë's Poems, + 207, 208. +Nicholls, Rev. Arthur Bell, + 47-49, 82. +Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, + 14, 182, 189, 190. +_Note on Charlotte Brontë_, by + Algernon Charles Swinburne, + 14, 64. +Novel, the, 163. +Novels of Charlotte Brontë, + 105-165. + -- of Anne Brontë, 39, 49-54. + -- of Emily Brontë, 39, 209-234. +Nussey, Miss Ellen, 26, 46, 58, + 72, 73, 75-78, 84, 168, 169. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + friendship with, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + letters to, 31, 46, 72, 75-78, + 86, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + advice to, 75-78, 84. + -- -- influence of, 91-93. + -- Rev. Henry, 79, 80. + -- -- original of St. John + Rivers, 91, 141, 145. + +Oliphant, Mrs., on Charlotte + Brontë, 31, 32, 33, 69-74, 79, + 80, 117, 141. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 70, 71, + 72, 141, 142. + +Paganism, Emily Brontë's, 16, + 135, 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 209, + 211, 214, 222. +Pantheism, Emily Brontë's, 171, + 184. +Parmenides, Poem on _Nature_, + 185. +Passion, Charlotte Brontë's treatment + of, 106, 116, 123, 124, + 176. + -- Emily Brontë's treatment + of, 172, 213, 214. + -- Dickens' Treatment of, + 123. + -- Fielding's treatment of, + 123. + -- Jane Austen's treatment + of, 124. + -- Smollett's treatment of, + 123. + -- Thackeray's treatment of, + 123. + -- in _Jane Eyre_, 113, 114, 115, + 116, 117. + -- in _Shirley_, 131, 141. + -- in _Villette_, 159. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 210, + 211, 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, + 224, 228, 231. + -- in Emily Brontë's Poems, + 179, 180, 182, 196, 199, 200, + 205, 208. + -- in Emily Brontë's soul, + 170-172, 174, 209. + -- test in reality, 159. +"Philosopher, The", 177. +Philosophy, Emily Brontë's, 169, + 175, 176, 177. +_Pictures of the Past_, by Francis + Grundy, 60. +Poems of Anne Brontë, 54-57, + 164, 188, 246. + -- of Branwell Brontë, 28, + 29, 42, 164, 233, 246. + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 39, + 103, 164, 169, 170, 246. + -- of Emily Brontë, 17, 39, + 174-185, 231, 232. + -- _The Complete_, of Emily + Brontë, +"Poems, Gondal", 17, 193-208, + 234. +_Professor, The_, 39, 89, 105, 106, + 107-112, 138. +_Professor, The_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, + 129, 138. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 111. + -- -- quoted, 107, 108, + 109, 111. +Pryor, Mrs., 140. + +_Quarterly Review, The_, 53, 114, + 117, 120, 121, 131. + +Real, the, + -- Imagination and the, 130, + 134. + -- germ of the, 138, 145, 158. +Realism, 163, 221, 231. +Reality, 113, 124, 138, 141, 143, + 145, 146, 147, 148, 158, 159, + 163, 171, 173, 174, 176, 228, + 230, 231. +Reid, Sir T. Wemyss, 58, 96. + -- -- on Charlotte Brontë, + 58, 81, 100. + -- -- quoted, 58-60. +Rigby, Miss (Lady Eastlake), 122. +Rivers, St. John, 91, 145. +Robinson, Miss A. Mary F. + _See_ Duclaux, Madame. + -- Mrs., 15, 33. + -- -- and Branwell Brontë, + 15, 41, 42, 52. + -- -- vindicated, 41, 50. +Rochester, character of, 113, 117, + 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 140, 141. +Roe Head, 26, 27, 95, 162. + +Sidgwick, Mr., 28, 64. + -- Mrs., 28, 62-64. +_Shirley_, 46, 65, 68, 72, 100, + 131-143. + -- portrait of Emily Brontë + in, 70, 71, 133, 137, 147. + -- dialogue in, 139-141. + -- criticism of, 64, 65, 68, + 137, 138. + -- style in, 139, 140, 141. + -- Woman in, 70, 71, 132, + 133, 137, 141, 143. +_Shirley_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- and _Villette_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- and _Wuthering Heights_ compared, + 139. + -- quoted, 133-137, 138, 139, + 140, 141, 142. +Shorter, Mr. Clement K., 13, + 14, 74, 82, 84, 87, 88, 96, 100, + 101, 186-190, 191, 193. _See + also_ Prefatory Note. +Smith, Mr. George, 40, 144, 158. +Smollett, 123. +Snowe, Lucy, 71, 79, 89. + -- -- and Pauline de + Bassompierre, 153-157. +Sources of _Wuthering Heights_, 16, + 196-209, 231. +Southey, Robert, Charlotte + Brontë's letter to, 99. +Southey's, Robert, advice to + Charlotte Brontë, 99. +Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 62, 63, 79. +Style, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, + 128, 160, 161, 162, 230, 231. +Sue, Eugène, 243, 244. +Supernatural, the, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 16, 207-221. +Swinburne, Mr., on Charlotte + Brontë, 14, 31, 64-65, 66, 68. + -- -- on Emily Brontë, 14, 174. + +Taylor, Miss Mary, 15, 35, 58, + 91, 92, 94, 98. + -- Mr. Joe, 72. + -- Mr. James, 72, 73, 74, 145. +Temperament, Charlotte Brontë's, + 73, 81. +_Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The_, 39, + 40, 54, 55. + -- -- audacity of, 54. + -- -- realism of, 54. + -- -- and Farrar's _Eternal + Hope_, 55. +Thackeray, 15, 47, 61, 123. +Theories, 16, 17, 57-90, 100, 106, + 231-332, 237, 238-247. +Thornton, 20. + +_Villette_, 46, 89, 100, 105, 140-161. + -- Lucy Snowe in, 71, 79, 89. + -- M. Paul in. _See_ Emanuel + Paul. + -- dialogue in, 149. + -- germ of the real in, 145, + 158. + -- reality of, 144, 145, 146, + 147, 148, 158, 159, 163. + -- realism of, 163, 164. + -- style in, 160, 161. + -- and _The Professor_ compared, + 98, 99, 111, 112. + -- and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- and _Shirley_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- quoted, 149-153, 154, 155, + 157. + +Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 14, 196. +Williams, Mr. W.S., 40. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + letter to, 78. +Wilson, Rev. Carus, 24, 25. +_Wisdom and Destiny_ quoted, 170, + 213. +Woman, 69, 70, 117, 118, 132, + 133, 140, 142, 143. +Woman, mid-Victorian, 71, 118, + 132. + -- modern, 133. +Woman's place in the world, 78, + 142. +Women, Charlotte Brontë's, 69, + 70, 132, 133. +Wooler, Miss, 26, 27, 35, 98. +Wordsworth, letters to, 99. +_Wuthering Heights_, 16, 17, 21, 39, + 40, 46, 105, 127, 128, 130, 131, + 139, 172, 173, 208-234. + -- -- criticism of, 209-233. + -- -- dialogue in, 218, 219, + 220-221, 223, 224. + -- -- mysticism in, 173. + -- -- paganism in, 209, + 211, 214, 222. + -- -- passion in, 210, 211, + 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, 224, + 228, 231. + -- -- realism in, 221, 224, + 228. + -- -- style in, 228, 230. + -- -- the supernatural in, + 17, 196-209, 216. + -- -- sources of, 232, 233, + 234. + +Zamorna. + -- _See_ Heathcliff. + -- _See_ "Gondal Poems". + + + + +2/- Hutchinson's 2/- +NET NET + +BOOKLOVER'S LIBRARY + + +The Booklover's Library is now accepted as one of the most successful +ventures of recent years. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Three Brontës + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: March 24, 2004 [EBook #11698] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BRONTËS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Linda Cantoni and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + +_By the same Author:_ + +THE CREATORS +THE DIVINE FIRE +TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION +THE HELPMATE +KITTY TAILLEUR +MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON +ANN SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS +ARNOLD WATERLOW: A LIFE +UNCANNY STORIES +THE RECTOR OF WYCK +THE ALLINGHAMS +A CURE OF SOULS +FAR END +HISTORY OF ANTHONY WARING +TALES TOLD BY SIMPSON +ETC. + + + + + + +THE THREE BRONTËS + + +_by_ + +MAY SINCLAIR + + +1912 + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +My thanks are due, first and chiefly, to Mr. Clement K. Shorter who +placed all his copyright material at my disposal; and to Mr. G.M. +Williamson and Mr. Robert H. Dodd, of New York, for allowing me to draw +so largely from the Poems of Emily Brontë, published by Messrs. Dodd, +Mead, and Co. in 1902; also to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, the +publishers of the Complete Poems of Emily Brontë, edited by Mr. Shorter; +and to Mr. Alfred Sutro for permission to use his translation of _Wisdom +and Destiny_. Lastly, and somewhat late, to Mr. Arthur Symons for his +translation from St. John of the Cross. If I have borrowed from him more +than I had any right to without his leave, I hope he will forgive me. + +MAY SINCLAIR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +INTRODUCTION + +THE THREE BRONTËS + +APPENDIX I + +APPENDIX II + +INDEX + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a +short essay on "The Three Brontës" I agreed with some misgiving. + +Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in +any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and +protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with _another_ +Brontë book, seems not only a dangerous, but a futile and a fatuous +adventure. All I can say is that I did not mean to do it. I certainly +never meant to write so long a book. + +It grew, insidiously, out of the little one. Things happened. New +criticisms opened up old questions. When I came to look carefully into +Mr. Clement Shorter's collection of the _Complete Poems of Emily +Brontë_, I found a mass of material (its existence I, at any rate, had +not suspected) that could not be dealt with in the limits of the +original essay. + +The book is, and can only be, the slightest of all slight appreciations. +None the less it has been hard and terrible for me to write it. Not only +had I said nearly all that I had to say already, but I was depressed at +the very start by that conviction of the absurdity of trying to say +anything at all, after all that has been said, about Anne, or Emily, or +Charlotte Brontë. + +Anne's case, perhaps, was not so difficult. For obvious reasons, Anne +Brontë will always be comparatively virgin soil. But it was impossible +to write of Charlotte after Mrs. Gaskell; impossible to say more of +Emily than Madame Duclaux has said; impossible to add one single little +fact to the vast material, so patiently amassed, so admirably arranged +by Mr. Clement Shorter. And when it came to appreciation there were Mr. +Theodore Watts-Dunton, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Birrell, and +Mrs. Humphry Ward, lying along the ground. When it came to eulogy, after +Mr. Swinburne's _Note on Charlotte Brontë_, neither Charlotte nor Emily +have any need of praise. + +And on Emily Brontë, M. Maeterlinck has spoken the one essential, the +one perfect and final and sufficient word. I have "lifted" it +unblushingly; for no other word comes near to rendering the unique, the +haunting, the indestructible impression that she makes. + +So, because all the best things about the Brontës have been said +already, I have had to fall back on the humble day-labour of clearing +away some of the rubbish that has gathered round them. + +Round Charlotte it has gathered to such an extent that it is difficult +to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; +much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The +excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious +error. Mr. Swinburne's _Note_ immortalizes his. M. Héger was dug up +again the other day. + +It may be said that I have been calling up ghosts for the mere fun of +laying them; and there might be something in it, but that really these +ghosts still walk. At any rate many people believe in them, even at this +time of day. M. Dimnet believes firmly that poor Mrs. Robinson was in +love with Branwell Brontë. Some of us still think that Charlotte was in +love with M. Héger. They cannot give him up any more than M. Dimnet can +give up Mrs. Robinson. + +Such things would be utterly unimportant but that they tend to obscure +the essential quality and greatness of Charlotte Brontë's genius. +Because of them she has passed for a woman of one experience and of one +book. There is still room for a clean sweep of the rubbish that has been +shot here. + +In all this, controversy was unavoidable, much as I dislike its +ungracious and ungraceful air. If I have been inclined to undervalue +certain things--"the sojourn in Brussels", for instance--which others +have considered of the first importance, it is because I believe that it +is always the inner life that counts, and that with the Brontës it +supremely counted. + +If I have passed over the London period too lightly, it is because I +judge it extraneous and external. If I have tried, cruelly, to take from +Charlotte the little beige gown that she wore at Mr. Thackeray's +dinner-party, it is because her home-made garments seem to suit her +better. She is more herself in skirts that have brushed the moors and +kept some of the soil of Haworth in their hem. + +I may seem to have exaggerated her homesickness for Haworth. It may be +said that Haworth was by no means Charlotte's home as it was Emily's. I +am aware that there were moments--hours--when she longed to get away +from it. I have not forgotten how Mary Taylor found her in such an hour, +not long after her return from Brussels, when her very flesh shrank from +the thought of her youth gone and "nothing done"; nothing before her but +long, empty years in Haworth. The fact remains that she was never happy +away from it, and that in Haworth her genius most certainly found itself +at home. And this particular tone of misery and unrest disappeared from +the moment when her genius declared itself, so that I am inclined to see +in it a little personal dissatisfaction, if you will, but chiefly the +unspeakable restlessness and misery of power unrecognized and +suppressed. "Nothing done!" That was her reiterated cry. + +Again, if I have overlooked the complexities of Charlotte's character, +it is that the great lines that underlie it may be seen. In my heart I +agree with M. Dimnet that the Brontës were not simple. All the same, I +think that his admirable portrait of Charlotte is spoiled by his +attitude of pity for "_la pauvre fille_", as he persists in calling her. +I think he dwells a shade too much on her small asperities and +acidities, and on that "_ton de critique mesquine_", which he puts down +to her provincialism. No doubt there were moments of suffering and of +irritation, as well as moments of uncontrollable merriment, when +Charlotte lacked urbanity, but M. Dimnet has almost too keen an eye for +them. + +In making war on theories I cannot hope to escape a countercharge of +theorizing. Exception may be taken to my own suggestion as to the effect +of _Wuthering Heights_ on Charlotte Brontë's genius. If anybody likes to +fling it on the rubbish heap they may. I may have theorized a little too +much in laying stress on the supernatural element in _Wuthering +Heights_. It is because M. Dimnet has insisted too much on its +brutality. I may have exaggerated Emily Brontë's "mysticism". It is +because her "paganism" has been too much in evidence. It may be said +that I have no more authority for my belief that Emily Brontë was in +love with the Absolute than other people have for theirs, that +Charlotte was in love with M. Héger. + +Finally, much that I have said about Emily Brontë's hitherto unpublished +poems is pure theory. But it is theory, I think, that careful +examination of the poems will make good. I may have here and there given +as a "Gondal" poem what is not a "Gondal" poem at all. Still, I believe, +it will be admitted that it is in the cycle of these poems, and not +elsewhere, that we should look for the first germs of _Wuthering +Heights_. The evidence only demonstrates in detail--what has never been +seriously contested--that the genius of Emily Brontë found its sources +in itself. + +_10th October, 1911._ + + + + +The Three Brontës + + +It is impossible to write of the three Brontës and forget the place they +lived in, the black-grey, naked village, bristling like a rampart on the +clean edge of the moor; the street, dark and steep as a gully, climbing +the hill to the Parsonage at the top; the small oblong house, naked and +grey, hemmed in on two sides by the graveyard, its five windows flush +with the wall, staring at the graveyard where the tombstones, grey and +naked, are set so close that the grass hardly grows between. The church +itself is a burying ground; its walls are tombstones, and its floor +roofs the forgotten and the unforgotten dead. + +A low wall and a few feet of barren garden divide the Parsonage from the +graveyard, a few feet between the door of the house and the door in the +wall where its dead were carried through. But a path leads beyond the +graveyard to "a little and a lone green lane", Emily Brontë's lane that +leads to the open moors. + +It is the genius of the Brontës that made their place immortal; but it +is the soul of the place that made their genius what it is. You cannot +exaggerate its importance. They drank and were saturated with Haworth. +When they left it they hungered and thirsted for it; they sickened till +the hour of their return. They gave themselves to it with passion, and +their works ring with the shock and interchange of two immortalities. +Haworth is saturated with them. Their souls are henceforth no more to be +disentangled from its soul than their bodies from its earth. All their +poetry, their passion and their joy is there, in this place of their +tragedy, visible, palpable, narrow as the grave and boundless. + +In the year eighteen-twenty the Reverend Patrick Brontë and his wife +Maria brought their six children, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick +Branwell, Emily, and Anne, from Thornton, where they were born, to +Haworth. Mr. Brontë was an Irishman, a village schoolmaster who won, +marvellously, a scholarship that admitted him to Cambridge and the +Church of England. Tales have been told of his fathers and his +forefathers, peasants and peasant farmers of Ballynaskeagh in County +Down. They seem to have been notorious for their energy, eccentricity, +imagination, and a certain tendency to turbulence and excess. Tales have +been told of Mr. Brontë himself, of his temper, his egotism, his +selfishness, his fits of morose or savage temper. The Brontës' +biographers, from Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux[A] to Mr. Birrell, +have all been hard on this poor and unhappy and innocent old man. It is +not easy to see him very clearly through the multitude of tales they +tell: how he cut up his wife's silk gown in a fit of passion; how he +fired off pistols in a series of fits of passion; how, in still gloomier +and more malignant fits, he used to go for long solitary walks. And when +you look into the matter you find that the silk gown was, after all, a +cotton one, and that he only cut the sleeves out, and _then_ walked into +Keighley and brought a silk gown back with him instead; that when he +was a young man at Drumballyroney he practised pistol firing, not as a +safety valve for temper but as a manly sport, and that as a manly sport +he kept it up. As for solitary walks, there is really no reason why a +father should not take them; and if Mr. Brontë had insisted on +accompanying Charlotte and Emily in their walks, his conduct would have +been censured just the same, and, I think, with considerably more +reason. As it happened, Mr. Brontë, rather more than most fathers, made +companions of his children when they were little. This is not quite the +same thing as making himself a companion for them, and the result was a +terrific outburst of infant precocity; but this hardly justifies Mrs. +Gaskell and Madame Duclaux. They seem to have thought that they were +somehow appeasing the outraged spirits of Emily and Charlotte by +blackening their father and their brother; whereas, if anything could +give pain to Charlotte and Emily and innocent Anne in heaven, it would +be the knowledge of what Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux have done for +them. + +[Footnote A: A. Mary F. Robinson.] + +There was injustice in all that zeal as well as indiscretion, for Mr. +Brontë had his good points as fathers go. Think what the fathers of the +Victorian era could be, and what its evangelical parsons often were; and +remember that Mr. Brontë was an evangelical parson, and the father of +Emily and Charlotte, not of a brood of gentle, immaculate Jane Austens, +and that he was confronted suddenly and without a moment's warning with +Charlotte's fame. Why, the average evangelical parson would have been +shocked into apoplexy at the idea of any child of his producing +_Wuthering Heights_ or _Jane Eyre_. Charlotte's fame would have looked +to him exceedingly like infamy. We know what Charles Kingsley, the least +evangelical of parsons, once thought of Charlotte. And we know what Mr. +Brontë thought of her. He was profoundly proud of his daughter's genius; +there is no record and no rumour of any criticism on his part, of any +remonstrance or amazement. He was loyal to Charlotte to the last days of +his life, when he gave her defence into Mrs. Gaskell's hands; for which +confidence Mrs. Gaskell repaid him shockingly. + +But he was the kind of figure that is irresistible to the caustic or +humorous biographer. There was something impotently fiery in him, as if +the genius of Charlotte and Emily had flicked him in irony as it passed +him by. He wound himself in yards and yards and yards of white cravat, +and he wrote a revolutionary poem called "Vision of Hell". It is easy to +make fun of his poems, but they were no worse, or very little worse, +than his son Branwell's, so that he may be pardoned if he thought +himself more important than his children. Many fathers of the Victorian +era did. + +And he _was_ important as a temporary vehicle of the wandering creative +impulse. It struggled and strove in him and passed from him, choked in +yards and yards of white cravat, to struggle and strive again in +Branwell and in Anne. As a rule the genius of the race is hostile to the +creative impulse, and the creative impulse is lucky if it can pierce +through to one member of a family. In the Brontës it emerges at five +different levels, rising from abortive struggle to supreme +achievement--from Mr. Brontë to his son Branwell, from Branwell to Anne, +from Anne to Charlotte, and from Charlotte to Emily. And Maria, who +died, was an infant prodigy. + +And Mr. Brontë is important because he was the tool used by their +destiny to keep Charlotte and Emily in Haworth. + +The tragedy we are too apt to call their destiny began with their +babyhood, when the mother and six children were brought to Haworth +Parsonage and the prospect of the tombstones. They had not been there +eighteen months before the mother sickened and died horribly of cancer. + +She had to be isolated as far as possible. The Parsonage house was not +large, and it was built with an extreme and straight simplicity; two +front rooms, not large, right and left of the narrow stone-flagged +passage, a bedroom above each, and between, squeezed into the small +spare space above the passage, a third room, no bigger than a closet and +without a fireplace. This third room is important in the story of the +Brontës, for, when their mother's illness declared itself, it was in +this incredibly small and insufferably unwholesome den that the five +little girls were packed, heaven knows how, and it was here that the +seeds of tuberculosis were sown in their fragile bodies. After their +mother's death the little fatal room was known as the children's study +(you can see, in a dreadful vision, the six pale little faces, pressed +together, looking out of the window on to the graves below). It was used +again as a night-nursery, and later still as the sleeping-place shared +by two, if not three, of the sisters, two of whom were tuberculous. + +The mother died and was buried in a vault under the floor of the church, +not far from the windows of her house. Her sister, Miss Branwell, came +up from Penzance to look after the children. You can see this small, +middle-aged, early Victorian spinster, exiled for ever from the sunshine +of the town she loved, dragging out her sad, fastidious life in a cold +and comparatively savage country that she unspeakably disliked. She took +possession of the room her sister died in (it was the most cheerful room +in the house), and lived in it. Her nieces had to sit there with her +for certain hours while she taught them sewing and all the early +Victorian virtues. Their father made himself responsible for the rest of +their education, which he conducted with considerable vigour and +originality. Maria, the eldest, was the child of promise. Long before +Maria was eleven he "conversed" with her on "the leading topics of the +day, with as much pleasure and freedom as with any grown-up person". + +For this man, so gloomy, we are told, and so morose, found pleasure in +taking his tiny children out on to the moors, where he entertained them +alternately with politics and tales of brutality and horror. At six +years old each little Brontë had its view of the political situation; +and it was not until a plague of measles and whooping-cough found out +their tender youth that their father realized how very young and small +and delicate they were, and how very little, after all, he understood +about a nursery. In a sudden frantic distrust of the climate of Haworth, +of Miss Branwell, and his own system, he made up his mind to send Maria +and Elizabeth and Charlotte and Emily to school. + +And there was only one school within his means, the Clergy Daughters' +School, established at Cowan Bridge in an unwholesome valley. It has +been immortalized in _Jane Eyre_, together with its founder and patron, +the Reverend Carus Wilson. There can be no doubt that the early +Victorian virtues, self-repression, humility, and patience under +affliction, were admirably taught at Cowan Bridge. And if the carnal +nature of the Clergy Daughters resisted the militant efforts of Mr. +Carus Wilson, it was ultimately subdued by low diet and primitive +drainage working together in an unwholesome valley. Mr. Carus Wilson, +indeed, was inspired by a sublime antagonism to the claims of the +perishable body; but he seems to have pushed his campaign against the +flesh a bit too far, and was surprised at his own success when, one +after another, the extremely perishable bodies of those children were +laid low by typhus. + +The fever did not touch the four little Brontës. They had another +destiny. Their seed of dissolution was sown in that small stifling room +at Haworth, and was reaped now at Cowan Bridge. First Maria, then +Elizabeth, sickened, and was sent home to die. Charlotte stayed on for a +while with Emily. She ran wild, and hung about the river, watching it, +and dabbling her feet and hands in the running water. Their doom waited +for Charlotte and for Emily. + +There is no record of Elizabeth except that, like Anne Brontë, she was +"gentle". But Maria lived in Charlotte's passionate memory, and will +live for ever as Helen Burns, the school-fellow of Jane Eyre. Of those +five infant prodigies, she was the most prodigious. She was the first of +the children to go down into the vault under Haworth Church; you see her +looking back on her sad way, a small, reluctant ghost, lovely, +infantile, and yet maternal. Under her name on the flat tombstone a +verse stands, premonitory, prophetic, calling to her kindred: "Be ye +also ready." + +Charlotte was nine years old when her sisters died. Tragedy tells at +nine years old. It lived all her life in her fine nerves, reinforced by +shock after shock of terror and of anguish. + +But for the next seven years, spent at the Parsonage without a break, +tragedy was quiescent. Day after day, year after year passed, and +nothing happened. And the children of the Parsonage, thrown on +themselves and on each other, were exuberantly happy. They had the +freedom of the moors, and of the worlds, as wild, as gorgeous, as +lonely, as immeasurable, which they themselves created. They found out +that they were not obliged to be the children of the Parsonage; they +could be, and they were, anything they chose, from the Duke of +Wellington down to citizens of Verdopolis. For a considerable number of +years they were the "Islanders". "It was in 1827" (Charlotte, at +thirteen, records the date with gravity--it was so important) "that our +plays were established: _Young Men_, June 1826; _Our Fellows_, July +1827; _The Islanders_, December 1827. These are our three great plays +that are not kept secret." + +But there were secret plays, Emily's and Charlotte's; and these you +gather to be the shy and solitary flights of Emily's and Charlotte's +genius. They seem to have required absolutely no impulsion from without. +The difficult thing for these small children was to stop writing. Their +fire consumed them, and left their bodies ashen white, fragile as ashes. +And yet they were not, they could not have been, the sedentary, +unwholesome little creatures they might seem to be. The girls were kept +hard at work with their thin arms, brushing carpets, dusting furniture, +and making beds. And for play they tramped the moors with their brother; +they breasted the keen and stormy weather; the sun, the moon, the stars, +and the winds knew them; and it is of these fierce, radiant, elemental +things that Charlotte and Emily wrote as no women before them had ever +written. Conceive the vitality and energy implied in such a life; and +think, if you can, of these two as puny, myopic victims of the lust of +literature. It was from the impressions they took in those seven years +that their immortality was made. + +And then, for a year and a half, Charlotte went to school again, that +school of Miss Wooler's at Roe Head, where Ellen Nussey found her, "a +silent, weeping, dark little figure in the large bay-window". She was +then sixteen. + +Two years later she went back to Miss Wooler's school as a teacher. + +In the register of the Clergy Daughters' School there are two immortal +entries: + +"Charlotte Brontë.... Left school, June 1st, 1825--Governess." + +"Emily Brontë.... Left, June 1st, 1825. Subsequent career--Governess." + +They did not question the arrangement. They were not aware of any other +destiny. They never doubted that the boy, Branwell, was the child of +promise, who was to have a glorious career. In order that he should have +it the sisters left Haworth again and again, forcing themselves to the +exile that destroyed them, and the work they hated. It was Charlotte and +Anne who showed themselves most courageous and determined in the +terrible adventure; Emily, who was courage and determination incarnate, +failed. Homesickness had become a disease with them, an obsession, +almost a madness. They longed with an immitigable longing for their +Parsonage-house, their graveyard, and their moors. Emily was consumed by +it; Anne languished; Charlotte was torn between it and her passion for +knowledge. + +She took Emily back with her to Roe Head as a pupil, and Emily nearly +died of it. She sent Emily home, and little Anne, the last victim, took +Emily's place. She and Charlotte went with the school when it was +removed to Dewsbury Moor. Then Emily, who had nearly died of Roe Head, +shamed by Charlotte's and Anne's example, went to Halifax as a teacher +in Miss Patchett's Academy for Young Ladies. She was at Halifax--Halifax +of all places--for six months, and nearly died of Halifax. And after +that Charlotte and Anne set out on their careers as nursery-governesses. + +It was all that they considered themselves fit for. Anne went to a Mrs. +Ingham at Blake Hall, where she was homesick and miserable. Charlotte +went to the Sidgwicks at Stonegappe near Skipton, where "one of the +pleasantest afternoons I spent--indeed, the only one at all +pleasant--was when Mr. Sidgwick walked out with his children, and I had +orders to follow a little way behind". You have an impression of years +of suffering endured at Stonegappe. As a matter of fact, Charlotte was +there hardly three months--May, June, July, eighteen-thirty-nine. + +And most of the time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at +Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the "Black Bull". The +"Black Bull" stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of +the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves. Branwell +was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that +gathered there. Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth. It had a +Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, with John Brown, the grave-digger, +for Worshipful Master. Branwell was at one and the same time secretary +to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was +not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad +portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally +fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_. + +One formidable letter (the third he sent) is headed in large letters: +"Sir, read what I write." It begins: "And would to Heaven you would +believe in me, for then you would attend to me and act upon it", and +ends: "You lost an able writer in James Hogg, and God grant you may get +one in Patrick Branwell Brontë." Another followed, headed: "Sir, read +now at last", and ending, "Condemn not unheard". In a final letter +Branwell inquires whether Mr. Blackwood thinks his magazine "so perfect +that no addition to its power would be either possible or desirable", +and whether it is pride that actuates him, or custom, or prejudice, and +conjures him: "Be a man, sir!" + +Nothing came of it. Mr. Blackwood refused to be a man. + +Yet Branwell had his chance. He went to London, but nothing came of it. +He went to Bradford and had a studio there, but nothing came of it. He +lived for a brief period in a small provincial Bohemia. It was his best +and happiest period, but nothing came of it beyond the letters and the +reams of verse he sent to Leyland the sculptor. There was something +brilliant and fantastic about the boy that fascinated Leyland. But a +studio costs money, and Branwell had to give his up and go back to +Haworth and the society of John Brown the stone-mason and grave-digger. +That John Brown was a decent fellow you gather from the fact that on a +journey to Liverpool he had charge of Branwell, when Branwell was at his +worst. They had affectionate names for each other. Branwell is the +Philosopher, John Brown is the Old Knave of Trumps. The whole trouble +with Branwell was that he could not resist the temptation of impressing +the grave-digger. He himself was impressed by the ironic union in the +Worshipful Master of conviviality and a sinister occupation. + +A letter of Branwell's (preserved by the grave-digger in a quaint +devotion to his friend's memory) has achieved an immortality denied to +his "Effusions". Nothing having come of the "Effusions", Branwell, to +his infinite credit, followed his sisters' example, and became tutor +with a Mr. Postlethwaite. The irony of his situation pleased him, and +he wrote to the Old Knave of Trumps thus: "I took a half-year's farewell +of old friend whisky at Kendal on the night after I left. There was a +party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel, and I joined them. We ordered in +supper and whisky-toddy as hot as hell! They thought I was a physician, +and put me in the chair. I gave several toasts that were washed down at +the same time till the room spun round and the candles danced in our +eyes.... I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a +glass, and a corkscrew beside me. Since then I have not tasted anything +stronger than milk-and-water, nor, I hope, shall, till I return at +midsummer; when we will see about it. I am getting as fat as Prince +William at Springhead, and as godly as his friend Parson Winterbotham. +My hand shakes no longer. I ride to the banker's at Ulverston with Mr. +Postlethwaite, and sit drinking tea, and talking scandal with old +ladies. As for the young ones! I have one sitting by me just +now--fair-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired, sweet eighteen--she little +thinks the devil is so near her!"--and a great deal more in the same +silly, post-Byronic strain. + +In his postscript Branwell says: "Of course you won't show this letter", +and of course John Brown showed it all round. It was far too good to be +kept to himself; John Brown's brother thought it so excellent that he +committed it to memory. This was hard on Branwell. The letter is too +fantastic to be used against him as evidence of his extreme depravity, +but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he +had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family. +Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity, +was bad for Branwell. + +He stayed with Mr. Postlethwaite for a month longer than Charlotte +stayed with the Sidgwicks. + +Then, for a whole year, Charlotte was at Haworth, doing housemaid's +work, and writing poems, and amusing herself at the expense of her +father's curates. She had begun to find out the extent to which she +could amuse herself. She also had had "her chance". She had refused two +offers of marriage, preferring the bondage and the exile that she knew. +Nothing more exhilarating than a proposal that you have rejected. Those +proposals did Charlotte good. But it was not marriage that she wanted. +She found it (for a year) happiness enough to be at Haworth, to watch +the long comedy of the curates as it unrolled itself before her. She saw +most things that summer (her twenty-fifth) with the ironic eyes of the +comic spirit, even Branwell. She wrote to Miss Nussey: "A distant +relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune +in the wild, wandering, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the +Leeds and Manchester Railroad." And she goes on to chaff Miss Nussey +about Celia Amelia, the curate. "I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with +eagerness to hear something about W. Weightman, whom she adores in her +heart, and whose image she cannot efface from her memory." + +Some of her critics, including Mrs. Oliphant (far less indulgent than +the poor curates who forgave her nobly), have grudged Charlotte her +amusement. There is nothing, from her fame downwards, that Mrs. Oliphant +did not grudge her. Mr. Birrell sternly disapproves; even Mr. Swinburne, +at the height of his panegyric, is put off. Perhaps Charlotte's humour +was not her most attractive quality; but nobody seems to have seen the +pathos and the bravery of it. Neither have they seen that Miss Nussey +was at the bottom of its worst development, the "curate-baiting". Miss +Nussey used to go and stay at Haworth for weeks at a time. Haworth was +not amusing, and Miss Nussey had to be amused. All this school-girlish +jesting, the perpetual and rather tiresome banter, was a playing down to +Miss Nussey. It was a kind of tender "baiting" of Miss Nussey, who had +tried on several occasions to do Charlotte good. And it was the natural, +healthy rebound of the little Irish _gamine_ that lived in Charlotte +Brontë, bursting with cleverness and devilry. I, for my part, am glad to +think that for one happy year she gave it full vent. + +She was only twenty-four. Even as late as the mid-Victorian era to be +twenty-four and unmarried was to be middle-aged. But (this cannot be too +much insisted on) Charlotte Brontë was the revolutionist who changed all +that. She changed it not only in her novels but in her person. Here +again she has been misrepresented. There are no words severe enough for +Mrs. Oliphant's horrible portrait of her as a plain-faced, lachrymose, +middle-aged spinster, dying, visibly, to be married, obsessed for ever +with that idea, for ever whining over the frustration of her sex. What +Mrs. Oliphant, "the married woman", resented in Charlotte Brontë, over +and above her fame, was Charlotte's unsanctioned knowledge of the +mysteries, her intrusion into the veiled places, her unbaring of the +virgin heart. That her genius was chiefly concerned in it does not seem +to have occurred to Mrs. Oliphant, any more than it occurred to her to +notice the impression that Charlotte Brontë made on her male +contemporaries. It is doubtful if one of them thought of her as Mrs. +Oliphant would have us think. They gave her the tender, deferent +affection they would have given to a charming child. Even the very +curates saw in her, to their amazement, the spirit of undying youth. +Small as a child, and fragile, with soft hair and flaming eyes, and +always the pathetic, appealing plainness of a plain child, with her +child's audacity and shyness, her sudden, absurd sallies and retreats, +she had a charm made the more piquant by her assumption of austerity. +George Henry Lewes was gross and flippant, and he could not see it; +Branwell's friend, Mr. Grundy, was Branwell's friend, and he missed it. +Mrs. Oliphant ranges herself with Mr. Grundy and George Henry Lewes. + +But Charlotte's fun was soon over, and she became a nursery-governess +again at Mrs. White's, of Rawdon. Anne was with Mrs. Robinson, at Thorp +Green. + +Emily was at Haworth, alone. + +That was in eighteen-forty-one. Years after their death a little black +box was found, containing four tiny scraps of paper, undiscovered by +Charlotte when she burnt every line left by Anne and Emily except their +poems. Two of these four papers were written by Emily, and two by Anne; +each sister keeping for the other a record of four years. They begin in +eighteen-forty-one. Emily was then twenty-four and Anne a year and a +half younger. Nothing can be more childlike, more naïve. Emily heads her +diary: + + A PAPER to be opened + when Anne is + 25 years old, + or my next birthday after + if + all be well. +Emily Jane Brontë. July the 30th, 1841. + +She says: "It is Friday evening, near nine o'clock--wild rainy weather. +I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our +desk-boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour--Aunt upstairs +in her room.... Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house. +Keeper is in the kitchen--Hero in his cage." + +Having accounted for Victoria and Adelaide, the tame geese, Keeper, the +dog, and Hero, the hawk, she notes the whereabouts of Charlotte, +Branwell, and Anne. And then (with gravity): + +"A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of +our own."... "This day four years I wonder whether we shall be dragging +on in our present condition or established to our hearts' content." + +Then Emily dreams her dream. + +"I guess that on the time appointed for the opening of this paper we, +_i.e._ Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own +sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just +gathered in for the midsummer holiday. Our debts will be paid off and we +shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, Aunt, and +Branwell, will either have been or be coming to visit us." + +And Anne writes with equal innocence (it is delicious, Anne's diary): +"Four years ago I was at school. Since then I have been a governess at +Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York +Minster."... "We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it, +and also got a hawk. Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three +tame ones, one of which has been killed." + +It is Emily who lets out the dreary secret of the dream--the debts which +could not be paid; probably Branwell's. + +But the "considerable amount of cash in hand" was to remain a dream. +Nothing came of Branwell's knight-errantry. He muddled the accounts of +the Leeds and Manchester Railroad and was sent home. It was not good for +Branwell to be a clerk at a lonely wayside station. His disaster, which +they much exaggerated, was a shock to the three sisters. They began to +have misgivings, premonitions of Branwell's destiny. + +And from Mrs. White's at Rawdon, Charlotte sends out cry after desolate +cry. Again we have an impression of an age of exile, but really the +exile did not last long, not much longer than Emily's imprisonment in +the Academy for Young Ladies, nothing like so long as Anne's miserable +term. + +The exile really began in 'forty-two, when Charlotte and Emily left +England for Brussels and Madame Héger's Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the +Rue d'Isabelle. It is supposed to have been the turning-point in +Charlotte's career. She was then twenty-six, Emily twenty-four. + +It is absurd and it is pathetic, but Charlotte's supreme ambition at +that time was to keep a school, a school of her own, like her friend +Miss Wooler. There was a great innocence and humility in Charlotte. She +was easily taken in by any of those veiled, inimical spectres of the +cross-roads that youth mistakes for destiny. She must have refused to +look too closely at the apparition; it was enough for her that she saw +in it the divine thing--liberty. Her genius was already struggling in +her. She had begun to feel under her shoulders the painful piercing of +her wings. Her friend, Mary Taylor, had written to her from Brussels +telling her of pictures and cathedrals. Charlotte tells how it woke her +up. "I hardly know what swelled in my breast as I read her letter: such +a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work; such a strong wish +for wings--wings such as wealth can furnish; such an urgent desire to +see, to know, to learn; something internal seemed to expand bodily for a +minute. I was tantalized by the consciousness of faculties unexercised." +But Charlotte's "wings" were not "such as wealth can furnish". They were +to droop, almost to die, in Brussels. + +Emily was calmer. Whether she mistook it for her destiny or not, she +seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at +the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the +"streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest +she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her +letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it +must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying passion for +knowledge and the spectacle of the world, with her psychological +interest in M. Héger and his wife, Charlotte hardly came out of it with +her soul alive. But Emily was not interested in M. Héger nor in his +wife, nor in his educational system. She thought his system was no good +and told him so. What she thought of his wife is not recorded. + +Then, in their first year of Brussels, their old aunt, Miss Branwell, +died. That was destiny, the destiny that was so kind to Emily. It sent +her and her sister back to Haworth and it kept her there. Poor Anne was +fairly launched on her career; she remained in her "situation", and +somebody had to look after Mr. Brontë and the house. Things were going +badly and sadly at the Parsonage. Branwell was there, drinking; and +Charlotte was even afraid that her father ... also sometimes ... +perhaps.... + +She left Emily to deal with them and went back to Brussels as a pupil +teacher, alone. She went in an agony of self-reproach, desiring more and +more knowledge, a perfect, inalienable, indestructible possession of +the German language, and wondering whether it were right to satisfy that +indomitable craving. By giving utterance to this self-reproach, so +passionate, so immense, so disproportioned to the crime, the innocent +Charlotte laid herself open to an unjust suspicion. Innocent and unaware +she went, and--it is her own word--she was "punished" for it. + +Nothing that she had yet known of homesickness could compare with that +last year of solitary and unmitigated exile. It is supposed, even by the +charitable, that whatever M. Héger did or did not do for Charlotte, he +did everything for her genius. As a matter of fact, it was at Brussels +that she suffered the supreme and ultimate abandonment. She no longer +felt the wild unknown thing stirring in her with wings. So little could +M. Héger do for it that it refused to inhabit the same house with him. +She records the result of that imprisonment a few weeks after her +release: "There are times now when it appears to me as if all my ideas +and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, are changed from +what they used to be; something in me, which used to be enthusiasm, is +tamed down and broken." + +At Brussels surely enlightenment must have come to her. She must have +seen, as Emily saw, that in going that way, she had mistaken and done +violence to her destiny. + +She went back to Haworth where it waited for her, where it had turned +even the tragedy of her family to account. Everything conspired to keep +her there. The school was given up. She tells why. "It is on Papa's +account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell +you that he is losing his sight. I have felt for some months that I +ought not to be away from him; and I feel now that it would be too +selfish to leave (at least as long as Branwell and Anne are absent) to +pursue selfish interests of my own. With the help of God I will try to +deny myself in this matter, and to wait." + +And with the help of God she waited. + +There are three significant entries in Emily's sealed paper for +eighteen-forty-five. "Now I don't desire a school at all, and none of us +have any great longing for it." "I am quite contented for myself ... +seldom or never troubled with nothing to do and merely desiring that +everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and +then we should have a very tolerable world of it." "I have plenty of +work on hand, and writing...." This, embedded among details of an +incomparable innocence: "We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost +the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless +dead." + +And Anne, as naïve as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: "Emily +is upstairs ironing. I am sitting in the dining-room in the +rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender. Papa is in the +parlour. Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen. Keeper and +Flossy are, I do not know where. Little Dick is hopping in his cage." +And then, "Emily ... is writing some poetry.... I wonder what it is +about?" + +That is the only clue to the secret that is given. These childlike +diaries are full of the "Gondal Chronicles",[A] an interminable fantasy +in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne. They flourished the +"Gondal Chronicles" in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying +to see which could keep it up the longer. Under it all there was a +mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, "Best plays were +secret plays," and the sisters kept their best hidden. And then suddenly +the "Gondal Chronicles" were dropped, the mystery broke down. All three +of them had been writing poems; they had been writing poems for years. +Some of Emily's dated from her first exile at Roe Head. Most of Anne's +sad songs were sung in her house of bondage. From Charlotte, in her +Brussels period, not a line. + +[Footnote A: See _supra_, pp. 193 to 209.] + +But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her +free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were +excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The +Professor_, _Jane Eyre_. In the same term that found her also, poor +child, free, and at Haworth, Anne wrote _Agnes Grey_ and _The Tenant of +Wildfell Hall_. + +And Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_. + +They had found their destiny--at Haworth. + + * * * * * + +Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that +came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters. It has been +said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that +poems did not pay. It would be truer to say that they wrote them because +it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and +that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return. + +Before they knew where they were, Charlotte found herself involved in +what she thought was a businesslike and masculine correspondence with +publishing firms. + +The _Poems_ by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and +nothing happened. _The Professor_ travelled among publishers, and +nothing happened. Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came +_Jane Eyre_, and Charlotte was famous. + +But not Emily. _Wuthering Heights_ appeared also, and nothing happened. +It was bound in the same volume with Anne's humble tale. Its lightning +should have scorched and consumed _Agnes Grey_, but nothing happened. +Ellis and Acton Bell remained equals in obscurity, recognized only by +their association with the tremendous Currer. When it came to publishing +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, and association became confusion, +Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity. +Emily stayed at Haworth, superbly indifferent to the proceedings. She +was unseen, undreamed of, unrealized, and in all her life she made no +sign. + +But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the +seven miles to Keighley on a Friday evening in a thunderstorm, and took +the night train up. On the Saturday morning they appeared in the office +at Cornhill to the amazement of Mr. George Smith and Mr. Williams. With +childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in +Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown. When +entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr. Croly +preach. They did not hear him; they only heard _The Barber of Seville_ +at Covent Garden. They tried, with a delicious solemnity, to give the +whole thing an air of business, but it was really a breathless, +infantile escapade of three days. Three days out of four years. + + * * * * * + +And in those four years poor Branwell's destiny found him also. After +many minor falls and penitences and relapses, he seemed at length to +have settled down. He had been tutor for two and a half years with the +Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess. He +was happy at first; an ominous happiness. Then Anne began to be aware of +something. + +Mr. Birrell has said rather unkindly that he has no use for this young +man. Nobody had any use for him. Not the editors to whom he used to +write so hysterically. Not the Leeds and Manchester Railroad Company. +And certainly not Mrs. Robinson, the lady for whom he conceived that +insane and unlawful passion which has been made to loom so large in the +lives of the Brontës. After all the agony and indignation that has +gathered round this episode, it is clear enough now, down to the last +sordid details. The feverish, degenerate, utterly irresponsible Branwell +not only declared his passion, but persuaded himself, against the +evidence of his senses, that it was returned. The lady (whom he must +have frightened horribly) told her husband, who instantly dismissed +Branwell. + +Branwell never got over it. + +He was destined to die young, and, no doubt, if there had been no Mrs. +Robinson, some other passion would have killed him. Still, it may be +said with very little exaggeration that he died of it. He had not +hitherto shown any signs of tuberculosis. It may be questioned whether +without this predisposing cause he would have developed it. He had had +his chance to survive. _He_ had never been packed, like his sisters, +first one of five, then one of three, into a closet not big enough for +one. But he drank harder after the Robinson affair than he had ever +drunk before, and he added opium to drink. Drink and opium gave +frightful intensity to the hallucination of which, in a sense, he died. + +It took him more than three years, from July, eighteen-forty-five, the +date of his dismissal, to September, eighteen-forty-eight, the date of +his death. + +The Incumbent of Haworth has been much blamed for his son's +shortcomings. He has been charged with first spoiling the boy, and then +neglecting him. In reality his only error (a most unusual one in an +early Victorian father) was that he believed in his son's genius. When +London and the Royal Academy proved beyond him he had him taught at +Bradford. He gave him a studio there. He had already given him an +education that at least enabled him to obtain tutorships, if not to keep +them. The Parsonage must have been a terrible place for Branwell, but it +was not in the Vicar's power to make it more attractive than the Bull +Inn. Branwell was not a poet like his sisters, and moors meant nothing +to him. To be sure, when he went into Wales and saw Penmaenmawr, he +wrote a poem about it. But the poem is not really about Penmaenmawr. It +is all about Branwell; Penmaenmawr _is_ Branwell, a symbol of his +colossal personality and of his fate. For Branwell was a monstrous +egoist. He was not interested in his sisters or in his friends, or +really in Mrs. Robinson. He was interested only in himself. What could a +poor vicar do with a son like that? There was nothing solid in Branwell +that you could take hold of and chastise. There was nothing you could +appeal to. His affection for his family was three-fourths +sentimentalism. Still, what the Vicar could do he did do. When Branwell +was mad with drink and opium he never left him. There is no story more +grim and at the same time more poignant and pathetic than that which +Mrs. Gaskell tells of his devotion to his son in this time of the boy's +ruin. Branwell slept in his father's room. He would doze all day, and +rage all night, threatening his father's life. In the morning he would +go to his sisters and say: "The poor old man and I have had a terrible +night of it. He does his best, the poor old man, but it is all over with +me." He died in his father's arms while Emily and little Anne looked on. + +They say that he struggled to his feet and died standing, to prove the +strength of his will; but some biographer has robbed him of this poor +splendour. It was enough for his sisters--and it should be enough for +anybody--that his madness left him with the onset of his illness, and +that he went from them penitent and tender, purified by the mystery and +miracle of death. + +That was on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of September. From that day Emily +sickened. She caught cold at Branwell's funeral. On September the +thirtieth she was in church listening to his funeral sermon. After that, +she never crossed the threshold of the Parsonage till in December her +dead body was carried over it, to lie beside her brother under the +church floor. + +In October, a week or two after Branwell's death, Charlotte wrote: +"Emily has a cold and cough at present." "Emily's cold and cough are +very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch +a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly." In +November: "I told you Emily was ill, in my last letter. She has not +rallied yet. She is very ill.... I think Emily seems the nearest thing +to my heart in all the world." And in December: "Emily suffers no more +from pain or weakness now ... there is no Emily in time, or on earth +now.... We are very calm at present. Why should we be otherwise? The +anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of +death is gone by: the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No +need to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not +feel them. She died in a time of promise.... But it is God's will, and +the place where she has gone is better than that which she has left." + +It could have been hardly daylight on the moors the morning when +Charlotte went out to find that last solitary sprig of heather which she +laid on Emily's pillow for Emily to see when she awoke. Emily's eyes +were so drowsed with death that she could not see it. And yet it could +not have been many hours later when a fire was lit in her bedroom, and +she rose and dressed herself. Madame Duclaux[A] tells how she sat before +the fire, combing her long, dark hair, and how the comb dropped from her +weak fingers, and fell under the grate. And how she sat there in her +mortal apathy; and how, when the servant came to her, she said dreamily: +"Martha, my comb's down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up." + +[Footnote A: "Emily Brontë": _Eminent Women Series_.] + +She dragged herself down to the sitting-room, and died there, about two +o'clock. She must have had some horror of dying in that room of death +overhead; for, at noon, when the last pains seized her, she refused to +be taken back to it. Unterrified, indomitable, driven by her immortal +passion for life, she fought terribly. Death took her as she tried to +rise from the sofa and break from her sisters' arms that would have laid +her there. Profoundly, piteously alienated, she must have felt that Anne +and Charlotte were in league with death; that they fought with her and +bound her down; and that in her escape from them she conquered. + +Another month and Anne sickened. As Emily died of Branwell's death, so +Emily's death hastened Anne's. Charlotte wrote in the middle of +January: "I can scarcely say that Anne is worse, nor can I say she is +better.... The days pass in a slow, dull march: the nights are the test; +the sudden wakings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one +lies in her grave, and another, not at my side, but in a separate and +sick bed." And again in March: "Anne's decline is gradual and +fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful." And yet again in April: +"If there were no hope beyond this world ... Emily's fate, and that +which threatens Anne, would be heartbreaking. I cannot forget Emily's +death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently +recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn, +conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life." + +Mrs. Oliphant has censured Emily Brontë for the manner of her dying. She +might as well have censured Anne for drawing out the agony. For Anne was +gentle to the end, utterly submissive. She gave death no trouble. She +went, with a last hope, to Scarborough, and died there at the end of +May. She was buried at Scarborough, where she lies alone. It is not easy +to believe that she had no "preference for place", but there is no doubt +that even to that choice of her last resting-place she would have +submitted--gently. + +"I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright, +waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me +with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange +ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. +The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so +long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all +silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were +laid--in what narrow, dark dwellings--never more to reappear on +earth.... I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their +sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal +affliction.... To sit in a lonely room, the clock ticking loud through a +still house...." Charlotte could see nothing else before her. + +It was July. She had come home after a visit to Miss Nussey. + +In that month she wrote that chapter of _Shirley_ which is headed "The +Valley of the Shadow". The book (begun more than eighteen months before) +fairly quivers with the shock that cut it in two. + +It was finished somewhere in September of that year of Anne's death. +Charlotte went up to London. She saw Thackeray. She learned to accept +the fact of her celebrity. + +Somehow the years passed, the years of Charlotte's continuous celebrity, +and of those literary letters that take so disproportionate a part in +her correspondence that she seems at last to have forgotten; she seems +to belong to the world rather than to Haworth. And the world seems full +of Charlotte; the world that had no place for Emily. And yet _Wuthering +Heights_ had followed _Shirley_. It had been republished with +Charlotte's introduction, her vindication of Emily. It brought more fame +for Charlotte, but none--yet--for Emily. + +Two years later came _Villette_. Charlotte went up to London a second +time and saw Thackeray again. And there were more letters, the admirable +but slightly self-conscious letters of the literary woman, artificially +assured. They might deceive you, only the other letters, the letters to +Ellen Nussey go on; they come palpitating with the life of Charlotte +Brontë's soul that had in it nothing of the literary taint. You see in +them how, body and soul, Haworth claims her and holds her, and will not +let her go. + +Nor does she desire now to be let go. Her life at Haworth is part of +Emily's life; it partakes of the immortality of the unforgotten dead. +London and Thackeray, the Smiths, Mrs. Gaskell, and Miss Martineau, Sir +John and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, her celebrity and the little train of +cheerful, unfamiliar circumstances, all these things sink into +insignificance beside it. They are all extraneous somehow, and out of +keeping. Nothing that her biographers have done (when they have done +their worst) can destroy or even diminish the effect her life gives of +unity, of fitness, of profound and tragic harmony. It was Mrs. Gaskell's +sense of this effect that made her work a masterpiece. + +And in her marriage, at Haworth, to her father's curate, Arthur +Nicholls, the marriage that cut short her life and made an end of her +celebrity, Charlotte Brontë followed before all things her instinct for +fitness, for unity, for harmony. It was exquisitely in keeping. It did +no violence to her memories, her simplicities and sanctities. It found +her in the apathy of exhaustion, and it was yet one with all that was +passionate in her and undying. She went to it one morning in May, all +white and drooping, in her modest gown and that poor little bridal +bonnet with its wreath of snowdrops, symbolic of all the timidities, the +reluctances, the cold austerities of spring roused in the lap of winter, +and yet she found in it the secret fire of youth. She went to it afraid; +and in her third month of marriage she still gives a cry wrung from the +memory of her fear. "Indeed, indeed, Nell, it is a solemn and strange +and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife." + +And yet for all that, after London, after fame and friendships in which +her dead had no share, her marriage was not the great departure; it was +the great return. It was the outcome of all that had gone before it; the +fruit of painful life, which is recognition, acceptance, the final trust +in destiny. There were to be no more false starts, no more veiled ghosts +of the cross-roads, pointing the disastrous way. + +And in its abrupt and pitiful end her life rang true; it sustained the +tragic harmony. It was the fulfilment of secret prophecies, forebodings, +premonitions, of her reiterated "It was not to be." You may say that in +the end life cheated and betrayed her. + +And inevitably; for she had loved life, not as Emily loved it, like an +equal, with power over it and pride and an unearthly understanding, +virgin and unafraid. There was something slightly subservient, +consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it +secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity +and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would +propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring forth life. + +When the end came she could not realize it. For the first time she was +incredulous of disaster. She heard, out of her last stupor, her husband +praying that God would spare her, and she whispered, "Oh, I am not going +to die, am I? He will not separate us; we have been so happy." + +You can see her youth rising up beside that death-bed and answering, +"That is why." + +And yet, could even Charlotte's youth have been so sure as to the +cheating and betrayal? That happiness of hers was cut short in the +moment of its perfection. She was not to suffer any disenchantment or +decline; her love was not to know any cold of fear or her genius any +fever of frustration. She was saved the struggle we can see before her. +Arthur Nicholls was passionately fond of Charlotte. But he was hostile +to Charlotte's genius and to Charlotte's fame. A plain, practical, +robust man, inimical to any dream. He could be adorably kind to a sick, +submissive Charlotte. Would he have been so tender to a Charlotte in +revolt? She was spared the torture of the choice between Arthur Nicholls +and her genius. We know how she would have chosen. It is well for her, +and it is all one to literature, that she died, not "in a time of +promise", but in the moment of fulfilment. + + * * * * * + +No. Of these tragic Brontës the most tragic, the most pitiful, the most +mercilessly abused by destiny, was Anne. An interminable, monstrous +exile is the impression we get of Anne's life in the years of her +girlhood. There is no actual record of them. Nobody kept Anne's letters. +We never hear her sad voice raised in self-pity or revolt. It is +doubtful if she ever raised it. She waited in silence and resignation, +and then told her own story in _Agnes Grey_. But her figure remains dim +in her own story and in the classic "Lives". We only know that she was +the youngest, and that, unlike her sisters, she was pretty. She had +thick brown curling hair, and violet-blue eyes, and delicate dark +eyebrows, and a skin rose and white for her sisters' sallow, that must +have given some ominous hint of fever. This delicate thing was broken on +the wheel of life. They say of Anne perpetually that she was "gentle". +In Charlotte's sketch of her she holds her pretty head high, her eyes +gaze straight forward, and you wonder whether, before the breaking +point, she was always as gentle as they say. But you never see her in +any moment of revolt. Her simple poems, at their bitterest, express no +more than a frail agony, an innocent dismay. That little raising of the +head in conscious rectitude is all that breaks the long plaint of _Agnes +Grey_. + +There is no piety in that plaint. It is purely pagan; the cry of youth +cheated of its desire. Life brought her no good gifts beyond the slender +ineffectual beauty that left her undesired. Her tremulous, expectant +womanhood was cheated. She never saw so much as the flying veil of joy, +or even of such pale, uninspired happiness as she dreamed in _Agnes +Grey_. She was cheated of her innocent dream. + +And by an awful irony her religion failed her. She knew its bitterness, +its terrors, its exactions. She never knew its ecstasies, its flaming +mysteries, nor, even at her very last, its consolations. Her tender +conscience drew an unspeakable torment from the spectacle of her +brother's degradation. + +For it was on Anne, who had no genius to sustain her, that poor +Branwell, with the burden of his destiny, weighed most hard. It was Anne +at Thorp Green who had the first terrible misgivings, the intolerable +premonitions. + +That wretched story is always cropping up again. The lady whom Mrs. +Gaskell, with a murderous selection of adjectives, called "that mature +and wicked woman", has been cleared as far as evidence and common sense +could clear her. But the slander is perpetually revived. It has always +proved too much for the Brontë biographers. Madame Duclaux published it +again twenty years after, in spite of the evidence and in spite of Mrs. +Gaskell's retractation. You would have thought that Branwell might have +been allowed to rest in the grave he dug for himself so well. But no, +they will not let him rest. Branwell drank, and he ate opium; and, as if +drink and opium and erotic madness were not enough, they must credit +him with an open breach of the seventh commandment as well. M. Dimnet, +the most able of recent critics of the Brontës, thinks and maintains +against all evidence that there was more in it than Branwell's madness. +He will not give up the sordid tragedy _à trois_. He thinks he knows +what Anne thought of Branwell's behaviour, and what awful secret she was +hinting at, and what she told her sisters when she came back to Haworth. +He argues that Anne Brontë saw and heard things, and that her testimony +is not to be set aside. + +What did Anne Brontë see and hear? She saw her brother consumed by an +illegitimate passion; a passion utterly hopeless, given the nature of +the lady. The lady had been kind to Anne, to Branwell she had been +angelically kind. Anne saw that his behaviour was an atrocious return +for her kindness. Further than that the lady hardly counted in Anne's +vision. Her interest was centred on her brother. She saw him taking +first to drink and then to opium. She saw that he was going mad, and he +did go mad. One of the most familiar symptoms of morphia mania is a +tendency to erotic hallucinations of the precise kind that Branwell +suffered from. Anne was unable to distinguish between such a +hallucination and depravity. But there is not a shadow of evidence that +she thought what M. Dimnet thinks, or that if she had thought it she +made Charlotte and Emily think it too. Branwell's state was quite enough +in itself to break their hearts. His letters to Leyland, to John Brown, +the sexton, to Francis Grundy, record with frightful vividness every +phase of his obsession. + +It is inconceivable that such letters should have been kept, still more +inconceivable that they should have been published. It is inconceivable +that Mrs. Gaskell should have dragged the pitiful and shameful figure +into the light. Nobody can save poor Branwell now from the dreadful +immortality thrust on him by his enemies and friends with equal zeal. +All that is left to us is a merciful understanding of his case. +Branwell's case, once for all, was purely pathological. There was +nothing great about him, not even his passion for Mrs. Robinson. +Properly speaking, it was not a passion at all, it was a disease. +Branwell was a degenerate, as incapable of passion as he was of poetry. +His sisters, Anne and Charlotte, talked with an amazing innocence about +Branwell's vices. Simple and beautiful souls, they never for a moment +suspected that his worst vice was sentimentalism. In the beginning, +before it wrecked him, nobody enjoyed his own emotions more than +Branwell. At his worst he wallowed voluptuously in the torments of +frustration. At the end, what with drink and what with opium, he was +undoubtedly insane. His letters are priceless pathological documents. +They reveal all the workings of his peculiar mania. He thinks everybody +is plotting to keep him from Mrs. Robinson. Faced at every turn with the +evidence of this lady's complete indifference, he gives it all a lunatic +twist to prove the contrary. He takes the strangest people into his +confidence, John Brown, the sexton, and the Robinsons' coachman. Queer +flames of lucidity dart here and there through this madness: "The +probability of her becoming free to give me herself and estate ever rose +to drive away the prospect of her decline under her present grief." "I +had reason to hope that ere very long I should be the husband of a lady +whom I loved best in the world, and with whom, in more than competence, +I might live at leisure to try to make myself a name in the world of +posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless +botherments, which, like mosquitoes, sting us in the world of work-day +toil. That hope and herself are gone--she to wither into patiently +pining decline--_it_ to make room for drudgery." It is all sordid as +well as terrible. We have no right to know these things. Mrs. Oliphant +is almost justified in her protest against Charlotte as the first to +betray her brother. + +But did Charlotte betray Branwell? Not in her letters. She never +imagined--how could she?--that those letters would be published. Not in +her novels. Her novels give no portrait of Branwell and no hint that +could be easily understood. It is in her prefaces to her sisters' novels +that he appears, darkly. Charlotte, outraged by the infamous article in +the _Quarterly_, was determined that what had been said of her should +never be said of Anne and Emily. She felt that their works offered +irresistible provocation to the scandalous reviewer. She thought it +necessary to explain how they came by their knowledge of evil. + +This vindication of her sisters is certainly an indictment of her +brother to anybody who knew enough to read between the lines. Charlotte +may have innocently supposed that nobody knew or ever would know enough. +Unfortunately, Mrs. Gaskell knew; and when it came to vindicating +Charlotte, she considered herself justified in exposing Charlotte's +brother because Charlotte herself had shown her the way. + +But Charlotte might have spared her pains. Branwell does not account for +Heathcliff any more than he accounts for Rochester. He does not even +account for Huntingdon in poor Anne's novel. He accounts only for +himself. He is important chiefly in relation to the youngest of the +Brontës. Oddly enough, this boy, who was once thought greater than his +sister Emily, was curiously akin to the weak and ineffectual Anne. He +shows the weird flickering of the flame that pulsed so feebly and +intermittently in her. He had Anne's unhappy way with destiny, her knack +of missing things. She had a touch of his morbidity. He was given to +silences which in anybody but Anne would have been called morose. It was +her fate to be associated with him in the hour and in the scene of his +disgrace. And he was offered up unwittingly by Charlotte as a sacrifice +to Anne's virtue. + + * * * * * + +Like Branwell, Anne had no genius. She shows for ever gentle, and, in +spite of an unconquerable courage, conquered. And yet there was more in +her than gentleness. There was, in this smallest and least considerable +of the Brontës, an immense, a terrifying audacity. Charlotte was bold, +and Emily was bolder; but this audacity of Anne's was greater than +Charlotte's boldness or than Emily's, because it was willed, it was +deliberate, open-eyed; it had none of the superb unconsciousness of +genius. Anne took her courage in both hands when she sat down to write +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. There are scenes, there are situations, +in Anne's amazing novel, which for sheer audacity stand alone in +mid-Victorian literature, and which would hold their own in the +literature of revolt that followed. It cannot be said that these scenes +and situations are tackled with a master-hand. But there is a certain +grasp in Anne's treatment, and an astonishing lucidity. Her knowledge of +the seamy side of life was not exhaustive. But her diagnosis of certain +states, her realization of certain motives, suggests Balzac rather than +any of the Brontës. Thackeray, with the fear of Mrs. Grundy before his +eyes, would have shrunk from recording Mrs. Huntingdon's ultimatum to +her husband. The slamming of that bedroom door fairly resounds through +the long emptiness of Anne's novel. But that door is the _crux_ of the +situation, and if Anne was not a genius she was too much of an artist to +sacrifice her _crux_. + +And not only was Anne revolutionary in her handling of moral situations, +she was an insurgent in religious thought. Not to believe in the dogma +of eternal punishment was, in mid-Victorian times and evangelical +circles, to be almost an atheist. When, somewhere in the late +'seventies, Dean Farrar published his _Eternal Hope_, that book fell +like a bomb into the ranks of the orthodox. But long before Dean +Farrar's book Anne Brontë had thrown her bomb. There are two pages in +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ that anticipate and sum up his now +innocent arguments. Anne fairly let herself go here. And though in her +"Word to the Elect" (who "may rejoice to think themselves secure") she +declares that + + None shall sink to everlasting woe + Who have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven, + +she presently relents, and tacks on a poem in a lighter measure, +expressing her hope + + That soon the wicked shall at last + Be fitted for the skies; + And when their dreadful doom is past + To light and life arise. + +It is said (Charlotte said it) that Anne suffered from religious +melancholy of a peculiarly dark and Calvinistic type. I very much +suspect that Anne's melancholy, like Branwell's passion, was +pathological, and that what her soul suffered from was religious doubt. +She could not reach that height where Emily moved serenely; she could +not see that + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain. + +There was a time when her tremulous, clinging faith was broken by +contact with Emily's contempt for creeds. When Anne was at Haworth she +and Emily were inseparable. They tramped the moors together. With their +arms round each other's shoulders, they paced up and down the parlour of +the Parsonage. They showed the mysterious attraction and affinity of +opposites. Anne must have been fascinated, and at the same time +appalled, by the radiant, revealing, annihilating sweep of Emily's +thought. She was not indifferent to creeds. But you can see her fearful +and reluctant youth yielding at last to Emily's thought, until she +caught a glimpse of the "repose" beyond the clash of "conquered good and +conquering ill". You can see how the doctrine of eternal punishment went +by the board; how Anne, who had gone through agonies of orthodox fear on +account of Branwell, must have adjusted things somehow, and arrived at +peace. Trust in "the merits of the Redeemer" is, after all, trust in the +Immensity beyond Redeemer and redeemed. Of this trust she sang in a +voice, like her material voice, fragile, but sweet and true. She sang +naïvely of the "Captive Dove" that makes unheard its "joyless moan", of +"the heart that Nature formed to love", pining, "neglected and alone". +She sang of the "Narrow Way", "Be it," she sings, "thy constant aim + + "To labour and to love, + To pardon and endure, + To lift thy heart to God above, + And keep thy conscience pure." + +She hears the wind in an alien wood and cries for the Parsonage garden, +and for the "barren hills": + + Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees + Can yield an answering swell, + But where a wilderness of heath + Returns the sound as well. + + For yonder garden, fair and wide, + With groves of evergreen, + Long winding walks, and borders trim + And velvet lawns between. + + Restore to me that little spot, + With grey hills compassed round, + Where knotted grass neglected lies, + And weeds usurp the ground. + +For she, too, loved the moors; and through her love for them she wrote +two perfect lines when she called on Memory to + + Forever hang thy dreamy spell + Round mountain star and heather-bell. + +The critics, the theorists, the tale-mongers, have left Anne quiet in +that grave on the sea-coast, where she lies apart. Her gentle +insignificance served her well. + + * * * * * + +But no woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more +lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty +of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called +for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with +challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a +reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public +with its "right to know". Mrs. Gaskell with all her indiscretions had +not given it enough. The great classic _Life of Charlotte Brontë_ was, +after all, incomplete. Until something more was known about her, +Charlotte herself was incomplete. It was nothing that Mrs. Gaskell's +work was the finest, tenderest portrait of a woman that it was ever +given to a woman to achieve; nothing that she was not only recklessly +and superbly loyal to Charlotte, but that in her very indiscretions she +was, as far as Charlotte was concerned, incorruptibly and profoundly +true. + +Since Mrs. Gaskell's time, other hands have been at work on Charlotte, +improving Mrs. Gaskell's masterpiece. A hundred little touches have been +added to it. First, it was supposed to be too tragic, too deliberately +and impossibly sombre (that sad book of which Charlotte's friend, Mary +Taylor, said that it was "not so gloomy as the truth"). So first came +Sir Wemyss Reid, conscientiously working up the high lights till he got +the values all wrong. "If the truth must be told," he says, "the life of +the author of _Jane Eyre_ was by no means so joyless as the world now +believes it to have been." And he sets out to give us the truth. But all +that he does to lighten the gloom is to tell a pleasant story of how +"one bright June morning in 1833, a handsome carriage and pair is +standing opposite the 'Devonshire Arms' at Bolton Bridge". In the +handsome carriage is a young girl, Ellen Nussey, waiting for Charlotte +Brontë and her brother and sisters to go with her for a picnic to Bolton +Abbey. + +"Presently," says Sir Wemyss Reid, "on the steep road which stretches +across the moors to Keighley, the sound of wheels is heard, mingled with +the merry speech and merrier laughter of fresh young voices. Shall we go +forward unseen," he asks, "and study the approaching travellers whilst +they are still upon the road? Their conveyance is no handsome carriage, +but a rickety dog-cart, unmistakably betraying its neighbourship to the +carts and ploughs of some rural farmyard. The horse, freshly taken from +the fields, is driven by a youth who, in spite of his countrified dress, +is no mere bumpkin. His shock of red hair hangs down in somewhat ragged +locks behind his ears, for Branwell Brontë esteems himself a genius and +a poet, and, following the fashion of the times, has that abhorrence of +the barber's shears which genius is supposed to affect. But the lad's +face is a handsome and striking one, full of Celtic fire and humour, +untouched by the slightest shade of care, hopeful, promising, even +brilliant. How gaily he jokes with his three sisters; with what +inexhaustible volubility he pours out quotations from his favourite +poets, applying them to the lovely scenes around him; and with what a +mischievous delight in his superior nerve and mettle, he attempts the +feats of charioteering, which fill the heart of the youngest of the +party with sudden terrors! Beside him, in a dress of marvellous +plainness, and ugliness, stamped with the brand "home-made" in +characters which none can mistake, is the eldest of the sisters. +Charlotte is talking too; there are bright smiles upon her face; she is +enjoying everything around her, the splendid morning, the charms of +leafy trees and budding roses, and the ever musical stream; most of all, +perhaps, the charm of her brother's society, and the expectation of that +coming meeting with her friends, which is so near at hand. Behind sits a +pretty little girl, with fine complexion and delicate regular features, +whom the stranger would pick out as the beauty of the company, and a +tall, rather angular figure, clad in a dress exactly resembling +Charlotte's. Emily Brontë does not talk so much as the rest of the +party, but her wonderful eyes, brilliant and unfathomable as the pool at +the foot of a waterfall, but radiant also with a wealth of tenderness +and warmth, show how her soul is expanding under the influences of the +scene; how quick she is to note the least prominent of the beauties +around her, how intense is her enjoyment of the songs of the birds, the +brilliancy of the sunshine, the rich scent of the flower-bespangled +hedgerows. If she does not, like Charlotte and Anne, meet her brother's +ceaseless flood of sparkling words with opposing currents of speech, she +utters a strange, deep guttural sound which those who know her best +interpret as the language of a joy too deep for articulate expression. +Gaze at them as they pass you in the quiet road, and acknowledge that, +in spite of their rough and even uncouth exteriors, a happier four could +hardly be met with in this favourite haunt of pleasure-seekers during a +long summer's day." + +And you do gaze at them and are sadder, if anything, than you were +before. You see them, if anything, more poignantly. You see their +cheerful biographer doing all he knows, and the light he shoots across +the blackness only makes it blacker. + + Nessun maggior dolore + Che ricordarsi di tempo felice + Nella miseria; + +and in the end the biographer with all his cheerfulness succumbs to the +tradition of misery, and even adds a dark contribution of his own, the +suggestion of an unhappy love-affair of Charlotte's. + +After Sir Wemyss Reid came Mr. Francis Grundy with _his_ little +pictures, _Pictures of the Past_, presenting a dreadfully unattractive +Charlotte. + +Then came Mr. Leyland, following Mr. Grundy, with his glorification of +Branwell and his hint that Charlotte made it very hard at home for the +poor boy. He repeats the story that Branwell told Mr. George Searle +Phillips, how he went to see a dying girl in the village, and sat with +her half an hour, and read a psalm to her and a hymn, and how he felt +like praying with her too, but he was not "good enough", how he came +away with a heavy heart and fell into melancholy musings. "Charlotte +observed my depression," Branwell said, "and asked what ailed me. So I +told her. She looked at me with a look which I shall never forget if I +live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It was not like +her at all. It wounded me as if someone had struck me a blow in the +mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It ran over me, +questioning and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It said, 'Did +my ears deceive me, or did I hear aright?' And then came the painful, +baffled expression, which was worse than all. It said, 'I wonder if +that's true?' But, as she left the room, she seemed to accuse herself of +having wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my +little scholar, and I will go and see her.' I replied not a word. I was +too much cut up! When she was gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull' +and made a note of it...." + +You see the implication? It was Charlotte who drove him to the "Black +Bull". That was Branwell's impression of Charlotte. Just the sort of +impression that an opium-eater would have of a beloved sister. + +But Branwell's impression was good enough for Madame Duclaux to found +her theory on. Her theory is that Charlotte was inferior to Emily in +tenderness. It may well be so, and yet Charlotte would remain above most +women tender, for Emily's wealth would furnish forth a score of sisters. +The simple truth is that Charlotte had nerves, and Branwell was +extremely trying. And it is possible that Emily had less to bear, that +in her detachment she was protected more than Charlotte from Branwell at +his worst. + +Meanwhile tales were abroad presenting Charlotte in the queerest lights. +There is that immortal story of how Thackeray gave a party for Currer +Bell at his house in Young Street, and how Currer Bell had a headache +and lay on a sofa in the back drawing-room, and refused to talk to +anybody but the governess; and how Thackeray at last, very late, with a +finger on his lip, stole out of the house and took refuge in his club. +No wonder if this quaint and curious Charlotte survived in the memory +of Thackeray's daughter. But, even apart from the headache, you can see +how it came about, how the sight of the governess evoked Charlotte +Brontë's unforgotten agony. She saw in the amazed and cheerful lady her +own sad youth, slighted and oppressed, solitary in a scene of +gaiety--she could not have seen her otherwise--and her warm heart rushed +out to her. She was determined that that governess should have a happy +evening if nobody else had. Her behaviour was odd, if you like, it was +even absurd, but it had the sublimity of vicarious expiation. Has anyone +ever considered its significance, the magnitude of her deed? For +Charlotte, to be the guest of honour on that brilliant night, in the +house of Thackeray, her divinity, was to touch the topmost height of +fame. And she turned her back on the brilliance and the fame and the +face of her divinity, and offered herself up in flames as a sacrifice +for all the governesses that were and had ever been and would be. + +And after the fine stories came the little legends--things about +Charlotte when she was a governess herself at Mrs. Sidgwick's, and the +tittle-tattle of the parish. One of the three curates whom Charlotte +made so shockingly immortal avenged himself for his immortality by +stating that the trouble with Charlotte was that she _would_ fight for +mastery in the parish. Who can believe him? If there is one thing that +seems more certain than another it is Charlotte's utter indifference to +parochial matters. But Charlotte was just, and she may have objected to +the young man's way with the Dissenters; we know that she did very +strongly object to Mr. William Weightman's way. And that, I imagine, was +the trouble between Charlotte and the curates. + +As for the Sidgwicks, Charlotte's biographers have been rather hard on +them. Mr. Leslie Stephen calls them "coarse employers". They were +certainly not subtle enough to divine the hidden genius in their sad +little governess. It was, I imagine, Charlotte's alien, enigmatic face +that provoked a little Sidgwick to throw a Bible at her. She said Mrs. +Sidgwick did not know her, and did not "intend to know her". She might +have added that if she _had_ intended Mrs. Sidgwick could not possibly +have known her. And when the Sidgwicks said (as they did say to their +cousin, Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson) that if Miss Brontë "was invited +to walk to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about +like a slave; if she was not invited she imagined she was being excluded +from the family circle", that was simply their robust view of the +paralysed attitude of a shy girl among strangers, in an agony of fear +lest she should cut in where she was not wanted. + +And allowances must be made for Mrs. Sidgwick. She was, no doubt, +considerably annoyed at finding that she had engaged a thoroughly +incompetent and apparently thoroughly morbid young person who had +offered herself as a nursery-governess and didn't know how to keep order +in the nursery. Naturally there was trouble at Stonegappe. Then one fine +day Mrs. Sidgwick discovered that there was, after all, a use for that +incomprehensible and incompetent Miss Brontë. Miss Brontë had a gift. +She could sew. She could sew beautifully. Her stitching, if you would +believe it, was a dream. And Mrs. Sidgwick saw that Miss Brontë's one +talent was not lodged in her useless. So Charlotte sat alone all evening +in the schoolroom at Stonegappe, a small figure hidden in pure white, +billowy seas of muslin, and lamented thus: "She cares nothing in the +world about me except to contrive how the greatest possible quantity of +labour may be squeezed out of me, and to that end she overwhelms me +with oceans of needlework, yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps +to make, and above all things, dolls to dress." And Mrs. Sidgwick +complained that Charlotte did not love the children, and forgot how +little she liked it when the children loved Charlotte, and was unaware, +poor lady, that it was recorded of her, and would be recorded to all +time, that she had said, "Love the _governess_, my dear!" when her +little impulsive boy put his hand in Charlotte's at the dinner-table, +and cried "I love 'ou, Miss Brontë." It was the same little, impulsive +boy who threw the Bible at Charlotte, and also threw a stone which hit +her. + +No wonder that Miss Brontë's one and only "pleasant afternoon" was when +Mr. Sidgwick went out walking in his fields with his children and his +Newfoundland dog, and Charlotte (by order) followed and observed him +from behind. + +Of course, all these old tales should have gone where Mrs. Sidgwick's +old muslin caps went; but they have not, and so it has got about that +Charlotte Brontë was not fond of children. Even Mr. Swinburne, at the +height of his magnificent eulogy, after putting crown upon crown upon +her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in +her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to +compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of +Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, +"had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded +imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious +quality." There was little Georgette in _Villette_, to say nothing of +Polly, and there was Adèle in _Jane Eyre_. But Mr. Swinburne had +forgotten about little Georgette. Like George Henry Lewes he is +"well-nigh moved to think one of the most powerfully and exquisitely +written chapters in _Shirley_ a chapter which could hardly have been +written at all by a woman, or, for that matter, by a man, of however +noble and kindly a nature, in whom the instinct, or nerve, or organ of +love for children was even of average natural strength and sensibility"; +so difficult was it for him to believe in "the dread and repulsion felt +by a forsaken wife and tortured mother for the very beauty and dainty +sweetness of her only new-born child, as recalling the cruel, sleek +charm of the human tiger that had begotten it". And so he crowns her +with all crowns but that of "love for children". He is still tender to +her, seeing in her that one monstrous lack; he touches it with sorrow +and a certain shame. + +Mr. Birrell follows him. "Miss Brontë," he says with confidence, "did +not care for children. She had no eye for them. Hence it comes about +that her novel-children are not good." He is moved to playful sarcasm +when he tells how in August of eighteen-fifty-three "Miss Brontë +suffered a keen disappointment". She went to Scotland with some friends +who took their baby with them. The parents thought the baby was ill when +it wasn't, and insisted on turning back, and Charlotte had to give up +her holiday. "All on account of a baby," says Mr. Birrell, and refers +you to Charlotte's letter on the subject, implying that it was +cold-blooded. The biographer can quote letters for his purpose, and Mr. +Birrell omits to tell us that Charlotte wrote "had any evil consequences +followed a prolonged stay, I should never have forgiven myself". You are +to imagine that Charlotte could have forgiven herself perfectly well, +for Charlotte "did not care for children". + +Mrs. Oliphant does not echo that cry. She was a woman and knew better. + +For I believe that here we touch the very heart of the mystery that was +Charlotte Brontë. We would have no right to touch it, to approach it, +were it not that other people have already violated all that was most +sacred and most secret in that mystery, and have given the world a +defaced and disfigured Charlotte Brontë. I believe that this love of +children which even Mr. Swinburne has denied to her, was the key to +Charlotte's nature. We are face to face here, not with a want in her, +but with an abyss, depth beyond depth of tenderness and longing and +frustration, of a passion that found no clear voice in her works, +because it was one with the elemental nature in her, undefined, +unuttered, unutterable. + +She was afraid of children; she was awkward with them; because such +passion has shynesses, distances, and terrors unknown to the average +comfortable women who become happy mothers. It has even its perversions, +when love hardly knows itself from hate. Such love demands before all +things possession. It cries out for children of its own flesh and blood. +I believe that there were moments when it was pain for Charlotte to see +the children born and possessed by other women. It must have been agony +to have to look after them, especially when the rule was that they were +not to "love the governess". + +The proofs of this are slender, but they are sufficient. There is little +Georgette, the sick child that Lucy nurses in the Pensionnat: "Little +Georgette still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her +familiar term, 'Minnie, Minnie, me very poorly!' till my heart ached." +... "I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and loving child; to hold +her in my lap, or carry her in my arms, was to me a treat. To-night she +would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her +little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which +she pressed her cheek to mine made me almost cry with a sort of tender +pain." + +Once during a spring-cleaning at Upperwood House Charlotte was Mrs. +White's nursemaid as well as her governess, and she wrote: "By dint of +nursing the fat baby it has got to know me and be fond of me. I suspect +myself of growing rather fond of it." Years later she wrote to Mrs. +Gaskell, after staying with her: "Could you manage to convey a small +kiss to that dear but dangerous little person, Julia? She +surreptitiously possessed herself of a minute fraction of my heart, +which has been missing ever since I saw her." + +Mrs. Gaskell tells us that there was "a strong mutual attraction" +between Julia, her youngest little girl, and Charlotte Brontë. "The +child," she says, "would steal her little hand into Miss Brontë's +scarcely larger one, and each took pleasure in this apparently +unobserved caress." May I suggest that children do not steal their +little hands into the hands of people who do not care for them? Their +instinct is infallible. + +Charlotte Brontë tried to give an account of her feeling for children; +it was something like the sacred awe of the lover. "Whenever I see +Florence and Julia again I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor, +who views at a distance the fair personage to whom, in his clownish awe, +he dare not risk a near approach. Such is the clearest idea I can give +you of my feeling towards children I like, but to whom I am a +stranger--and to what children am I not a stranger?" + +Extraordinary that Charlotte's critics have missed the pathos of that +_cri de coeur_. It is so clearly an echo from the "house of bondage", +where Charlotte was made a stranger to the beloved, where the beloved +threw stones and Bibles at her. You really have to allow for the shock +of an experience so blighting. It is all part of the perversity of the +fate that dogged her, that her feeling should have met with that +reverse. But it was there, guarded with a certain shy austerity. She +"suspected" herself of getting rather fond of the baby. + +She hid her secret even from herself, as women will hide these things. +But her dreams betrayed her after the way of dreams. Charlotte's dream +(premonitory, she thought, of trouble) was that she carried a little +crying child, and could not still its cry. "She described herself," Mrs. +Gaskell says, "as having the most painful sense of pity for the little +thing, lying _inert_, as sick children do, while she walked about in +some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church." This +dream she gives to _Jane Eyre_, unconscious of its profound significance +and fitness. It is a pity that Mr. Swinburne did not pay attention to +Charlotte's dream. + +All her life, I think, she suffered because of the perpetual insurgence +of this secret, impassioned, maternal energy. Hence the sting of Lewes's +famous criticism, beginning: "The grand function of woman, it must +always be remembered" (as if Charlotte had forgotten it!) "is +Maternity"; and, working up from his criticism of that chapter in +_Shirley_ to a climax of adjuration: "Currer Bell, if under your heart +had ever stirred a child; if to your bosom a babe had ever been +pressed--that mysterious part of your being, towards which all the rest +of it was drawn, in which your whole soul was transported and +absorbed--never could you have _imagined_ such a falsehood as that!" It +was impossible for Charlotte to protest against anything but the +abominable bad taste of Lewes's article, otherwise she might have told +him that she probably knew rather more about those mysteries than he +did. It was she who gave us that supreme image of disastrous love. "I +looked at my love; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a +cold cradle!" + +And this woman died before her child was born. + + * * * * * + +Then there is Mrs. Oliphant again. Though she was not one of those who +said Charlotte Brontë was not fond of children, though she would have +died rather than have joined Lewes in his unspeakable cry against her, +Mrs. Oliphant made certain statements in no better taste than his. She +suggests that Charlotte, fond or not fond of children, was too fond of +matrimonial dreams. Her picture (the married woman's picture) is of an +undesired and undesirable little spinster pining visibly and shamelessly +in a parsonage. She would have us believe that from morning till night, +from night till morning, Charlotte Brontë in the Parsonage thought of +nothing but of getting married, that her dreams pursued, ruthlessly, the +casual visitor. The hopelessness of the dream, the undesirability of +Charlotte, is what makes her so irresistible to her sister novelist. + +There was "one subject", she says, "which Charlotte Brontë had at her +command, having experienced in her own person, and seen her nearest +friends under the experience, of that solitude and longing of women of +which she has made so remarkable an exposition. The long silence of life +without an adventure or a change, the forlorn gaze out of windows which +never show anyone coming who can rouse the slightest interest in the +mind, the endless years and days which pass and pass, carrying away the +bloom, extinguishing the lights of youth, bringing a dreary middle age +before which the very soul shrinks, while yet the sufferer feels how +strong is the current of life in her own veins, and how capable she is +of all the active duties of existence--this was the essence and soul of +the existence she knew best. Was there no help for it? Must the women +wait and see their lives thrown away, and have no power to save +themselves! + +"The position," she goes on, "in itself so tragic, is one which can +scarcely be expressed without calling forth inevitable ridicule, a laugh +at the best, more often a sneer, at the women whose desire for a husband +is thus betrayed. Shirley and Caroline Helstone both cried out for that +husband with an indignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and +injury, which stopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous, +but it was horribly genuine and true." (This is more than can be said of +Mrs. Oliphant's view of the adorable Shirley Keeldar who was Emily +Brontë. It is ludicrous enough, and it may be genuine, but it is +certainly not true.) But Mrs. Oliphant is careful not to go too far. +"Note," she says, "there was nothing sensual about these young women. It +was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosser thoughts which +the world with its jeers attributes to them: of such thoughts they were +unconscious in a primitive innocence which, perhaps, only women +understand." Yet she characterizes their "outcry" as "indelicate". "All +very well to talk of women working for their living, finding new +channels for themselves, establishing their independence. How much have +we said of all that" (Mrs. Oliphant thinks that she is rendering +Charlotte Brontë's thought), "endeavouring to persuade ourselves! +Charlotte Brontë had the courage of her opinions. It was not education +nor a trade that her women wanted. It was not a living, but their share +in life.... Miss Brontë herself said correct things" (observe that +insincerity is insinuated here) "about the protection which a trade is +to a woman, keeping her from a mercenary marriage; but this was not in +the least the way of her heroines." (Why, you naturally wonder, should +it have been?) "They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things +they wanted their share in life, to have their position by the side of +men, which alone confers a natural equality, to have their shoulder to +the wheel, their hands on the reins of common life, to build up the +world and link the generations each to each." (And very proper of them, +too.) "In her philosophy, marriage was the only state which procured +this, and if she did not recommend a mercenary marriage she was at least +very tolerant about its conditions, insisting less upon love than was to +be expected" (!) "and with a covert conviction in her mind, that if not +one man, then another was better than any complete abandonment of the +larger path. Lucy Snowe for a long time had her heart very much set on +Dr. John and his placid breadth of Englishism; but when she finally +found out that to be impossible her tears were soon dried by the +prospect of Paul Emanuel, so unlike him, coming into his place." + +The obvious answer to all this is that Charlotte Brontë was writing in +the mid-Victorian age, about mid-Victorian women, the women whom she saw +around her; writing, without any "philosophy" or "covert conviction", in +the days before emancipation, when marriage was the only chance of +independence that a woman had. It would have been marvellous, if she had +not had her sister Emily before her, that in such an age she should have +conceived and created Shirley Keeldar. As for poor little Lucy with her +two men, she is not the first heroine who mistook the false dawn for the +true. Besides, Miss Brontë's "philosophy" was exactly the opposite to +that attributed to her, as anybody may see who reads _Shirley_. In +these matters she burned what her age adored, and adored what it burned, +a thorough revolutionary. + +But this is not the worst. Mrs. Oliphant professes to feel pity for her +victim. "Poor Charlotte Brontë! She has not been as other women, +protected by the grave from all betrayal of the episodes in her own +life." (You would imagine they were awful, the episodes in Charlotte +Brontë's life.) "Everybody has betrayed her, and all she thought about +this one, and that, and every name that was ever associated with hers. +There was a Mr. Taylor from London, about whom she wrote with great +freedom to her friend, Miss Nussey, telling how the little man had come, +how he had gone away without any advance in the affairs, how a chill +came over her when he appeared and she found him much less attractive +than when at a distance, yet how she liked it as little when he went +away, and was somewhat excited about his first letter, and even went so +far as to imagine with a laugh that there might possibly be a dozen +little Joe Taylors before all was over." + +This is atrocious. But the malice and bad taste of it are nothing to the +gross carelessness and ignorance it reveals--ignorance of facts and +identities and names. Charlotte's suitor was Mr. James Taylor and not +Joe. Joe, the brother of her friend, Mary Taylor, was married already to +a lady called Amelia, and it is of Joe and his Amelia that Charlotte +writes. "She must take heart" (Amelia had been singularly unsuccessful), +"there may yet be a round dozen of little Joe Taylors to look after--run +after--to sort and switch and train up in the way they should go." + +Of Mr. James Taylor she writes more decorously. Miss Nussey, as usual, +had been thinking unwarrantable things, and had made a most unbecoming +joke about Jupiter and Venus, which outraged Charlotte's "common +sense". "The idea of the little man," says Charlotte, "shocks me less. +He still sends his little newspaper; and the other day there came a +letter of a bulk, volume, pith, judgment and knowledge, fit to have been +the product of a giant. You may laugh as much and as wickedly as you +please, but the fact is, there is a quiet constancy about this, my +diminutive and red-haired friend, which adds a foot to his stature, +turns his sandy locks dark, and altogether dignifies him a good deal in +my estimation." This is all she says by way of appreciation. She says +later, "His manners and his personal appearance scarcely pleased me more +than at the first interview.... I feel that in his way he has a regard +for me; a regard which I cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in +kind, and yet its withdrawal leaves a painful blank." Miss Nussey +evidently insists that Charlotte's feelings are engaged this time, +arguing possibly from the "painful blank"; and Charlotte becomes +explicit. She speaks of the disadvantages of the alleged match, and we +gather that Miss Nussey has been urging her to take the little man. "But +there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pass than +any of these. Would Mr. Taylor and I ever suit? Could I ever feel for +him enough love to accept him as a husband? Friendship--gratitude--esteem +I have, but each moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes +fastened on me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away, I feel far +more gently to him; it is only close by that I grow rigid--stiffening +with a strange mixture of apprehension and anger--which nothing +softens but his retreat, and a perfect subduing of his manner." +And again, "my conscience, I can truly say, does not _now_ accuse +me of having treated Mr. Taylor with injustice or unkindness ... +but with every disposition and with every wish, with every intention +even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last +visit, it was impossible to me in my inward heart to think of him as one +that might one day be acceptable as a husband." Could anything be _more_ +explicit? There is a good deal more of it. After one very searching +criticism of Mr. Taylor: "One does not like to say these things, but one +had better be honest." And of her honesty Charlotte's letters on this +subject leave no doubt. There is not the smallest ground for supposing +that even for a moment had she thought of Mr. James Taylor as "one that +one day might be acceptable", much less is there for Mr. Clement +Shorter's suggestion that if he had come back from Bombay she would have +married him. + +But Joe or James, it is all one to Mrs. Oliphant, with her theory of +Charlotte Brontë. "For her and her class, which did not speak of it, +everything depended upon whether the women married or did not marry. +Their thoughts were thus artificially fixed to one point in the +horizon." The rest is repetition, ending in the astounding verdict: "The +seed she thus sowed has come to many growths that would have appalled +Charlotte Brontë. But while it would be very unjust to blame her for the +vagaries that have followed, and to which nothing could be less +desirable than any building of the house or growth of the race, any +responsibility or service, we must still believe that it was she who +drew the curtain first aside and opened the gates to imps of evil +meaning, polluting and profaning the domestic hearth." + +That is Mrs. Oliphant on Charlotte Brontë. + +And even Mr. Clement Shorter, who has dealt so admirably with outrageous +legends, goes half the way with the detractor. He has a theory that +Charlotte Brontë was a woman of morbid mood, "to whom the problem of sex +appealed with all its complications", and that she "dwelt continually on +the problem of the ideal mate". + +Now Charlotte may have dreamed of getting married (there have been more +criminal dreams); she may have brooded continually over the problem of +the ideal mate, only of all these dreams and broodings there is not one +atom of evidence--not one. Not a hint, not a trace, either in her +character as we know it, or in her very voluminous private +correspondence. The facts of her life disprove it. Her letters to Ellen +Nussey (never meant for publication) reveal the workings of Charlotte's +feminine mind when applied to "the sex problem"; a mind singularly +wholesome and impersonal, and singularly detached. Charlotte is full of +lights upon this awful subject of matrimony, which, by the way, had +considerably more interest for Miss Nussey than it had for her. In fact, +if it had not been for Miss Nussey it would not have appeared so often +as it did in Charlotte's letters. If you pay attention to the context (a +thing that theorists never do) you see, what is indeed obvious, that a +large portion of Charlotte Brontë's time was taken up in advising and +controlling Ellen Nussey, that amiable and impulsive prototype of +Caroline Helstone. She is called upon in all Miss Nussey's hours of +crisis, and there seem to have been a great many of them. "Do not," she +writes, "be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect--I do +not say _love_, because I think if you can respect a person before +marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense +passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling. In the first +place, it seldom or never meets with a requital; and in the second +place, if it did, the feeling would be only temporary; it would last the +honeymoon, and then, perhaps, give place to disgust, or indifference, +worse perhaps than disgust. Certainly this would be the case on the +man's part; and on the woman's--God help her if she is left to love +passionately and alone. + +"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all." + +And again, to Miss Nussey, six months later: "Did you not once say to me +in all childlike simplicity, 'I thought, Charlotte, no young lady should +fall in love till the offer was actually made'? I forgot what answer I +made at the time, but I now reply, after due consideration, Right as a +glove, the maxim is just, and I hope you will always attend to it. I +will even extend and confirm it: no young lady should fall in love till +the offer has been made, accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and +the first half-year of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then +begin to love, but with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, +very rationally. If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold +look cuts her to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much +that her husband's will is her law, and that she has got into a habit of +watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she will +soon be a neglected fool. Did I not tell you of an instance...?" + +What could be more lucid, more light-hearted, and more sane? And if +Charlotte is suspicious of the dangers of her own temperament, that only +proves her lucidity and sanity the more. + +Later, at Brussels, when confronted with "three or four people's" idea +that "the future _époux_ of Miss Brontë is on the Continent", she +defends herself against the "silly imputation". "Not that it is a crime +to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, +which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor +beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, +and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves +that they are unattractive, and that they had better be quiet, and think +of other things than wedlock." Can anything be clearer? + +So much for herself. But she has to deal with Miss Nussey, in +difficulties again, later: "Papa has two or three times expressed a fear +that since Mr. ---- paid you so much attention, he will, perhaps, have +made an impression on your mind which will interfere with your comfort. +I tell him I think not, as I believe you to be mistress of yourself in +those matters. Still, he keeps saying that I am to write to you and +dissuade you from thinking of him. I never saw Papa make himself so +uneasy about a thing of the kind before; he is usually very sarcastic on +such subjects. + +"Mr. ---- be hanged! I never thought very well of him, and I am much +disposed to think very ill of him at this blessed minute. I have +discussed the subject fully, for where is the use of being mysterious +and constrained?--it is not worth while." + +And yet again it is Ellen Nussey. "Ten years ago I should have laughed +at your account of the blunder you made in mistaking the bachelor doctor +of Bridlington for a married man. I should have certainly thought you +scrupulous over-much, and wondered how you could possibly regret being +civil to a decent individual merely because he happened to be single +instead of double. Now, however, I can perceive that your scruples are +founded on common sense. I know that if women wish to escape the stigma +of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay--cold, +expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, +sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike +construed by the world into the attempt to" (I regret to say that +Charlotte wrote) "to hook a husband." + +Later, she has to advise her friend Mr. Williams as to a career for his +daughter Louisa. And here she is miles ahead of her age, the age that +considered marriage the only honourable career for a woman. "Your +daughters--no more than your sons--should be a burden on your hands. +Your daughters--as much as your sons--should aim at making their way +honourably through life. Do you not wish to keep them at home? Believe +me, teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid and despised, but the girl who +stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the hardest-wrought and +worst-paid drudge of a school. Whenever I have seen, not merely in +humble but in affluent houses, families of daughters sitting waiting to +be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well--very +well--if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give +their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the +peevishness of disappointment, and the listlessness of idleness will +infallibly degrade their nature.... Lonely as I am, how should I be if +Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career...? How should I +be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where +there is not a single educated family? In that case I should have no +world at all. As it is, something like a hope and a motive sustains me +still. I wish all your daughters--I wish every woman in England, had +also a hope and a motive." + +Whatever the views of Charlotte Brontë's heroines may or may not have +been, these were her own views--sober, sincere, and utterly +dispassionate. Mrs. Oliphant set them aside, either in criminal +carelessness, or with still more criminal deliberation, because they +interfered with her theory. They are certainly not the views of a woman +given to day-dreaming and window-gazing. Lucy Snowe may have had time +for window-gazing, but not Charlotte Brontë, what with her writing and +her dusting, sweeping, ironing, bed-making, and taking the eyes out of +the potatoes for poor old Tabby, who was too blind to see them. +Window-gazing of all things! Mrs. Oliphant could not have fixed upon a +habit more absurdly at variance with Charlotte's character. + +For she was pure, utterly and marvellously pure from sentimentalism, +which was (and she knew it) the worst vice of the Victorian age. Mr. +Leslie Stephen said that, "Miss Brontë's sense of humour was but +feeble." It was robust enough when it played with sentimentalists. But +as for love, for passion, she sees it with a tragic lucidity that is +almost a premonition. And her attitude was by no means that of the +foredoomed spinster, making necessity her virtue. There was no +necessity. She had at least four suitors (quite a fair allowance for a +little lady in a lonely parish), and she refused them all. Twice in her +life, in her tempestuous youth, and at a crisis of her affairs, she +chose "dependence upon coarse employers" before matrimony. She was +shrewd, lucid, fastidious, and saw the men she knew without any glamour. +To the cold but thoroughly presentable Mr. Henry Nussey she replied +thus: "It has always been my habit to study the character of those among +whom I chance to be thrown, and I think I know yours and can imagine +what description of woman would suit you for a wife. The character +should not be too marked, ardent and original, her temper should be +mild, her piety undoubted, and her personal attractions sufficient to +please your eyes and gratify your just pride. As for me you do not know +me...." She was only three-and-twenty when she wrote that, with the +prospect of Stonegappe before her. For she had not, and could not have +for him, "that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for +him; and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I +will regard my husband". Later, in her worst loneliness she refused that +ardent Mr. Taylor, who courted her by the novel means of newspapers sent +with violent and unremitting regularity through the post. He represented +to some degree the larger life of intellectual interest. But he offended +her fastidiousness. She was sorry for the little man with his little +newspaper, and that was all. She refused several times the man she +ultimately married. He served a long apprenticeship to love, and +Charlotte yielded to his distress rather than to her own passion. She +describes her engaged state as "very calm, very expectant. What I taste +of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband. I am +grateful for his tender love for me.... Providence offers me this +destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me." + +These are not the words, nor is this the behaviour of Mrs. Oliphant's +Charlotte Brontë, the forlorn and desperate victim of the obsession of +matrimony. + +I do not say that Charlotte Brontë had not what is called a +"temperament"; her genius would not have been what it was without it; +she herself would have been incomplete; but there never was a woman of +genius who had her temperament in more complete subjection to her +character; and it is her character that you have to reckon with at every +turn. + +The little legends and the little theories have gone far enough. And had +they gone no farther they would not have mattered much. They would at +least have left Charlotte Brontë's genius to its own mystery. + +But her genius was the thing that irritated, the enigmatic, inexplicable +thing. Talent in a woman you can understand, there's a formula for +it--_tout talent de femme est un bonheur manqué_. So when a woman's +talent baffles you, your course is plain, _cherchez l'homme_. +Charlotte's critics argued that if you could put your finger on the man +you would have the key to the mystery. This, of course, was arguing that +her genius was, after all, only a superior kind of talent; but some of +them had already begun to ask themselves, Was it, after all, anything +more? So they began to look for the man. They were certain by this time +that there was one. + +The search was difficult; for Charlotte had concealed him well. But they +found him at last in M. Constantin Héger, the little Professor of the +Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the Rue d'Isabelle. Sir Wemyss Reid had +suggested a love-affair in Brussels to account for Charlotte's +depression, which was unfavourable to his theory of the happy life. Mr. +Leyland seized upon the idea, for it nourished his theory that Branwell +was an innocent lamb who had never caused his sisters a moment's misery. +They _made_ misery for themselves out of his harmless peccadilloes. Mr. +Angus Mackay in _The Brontës, Fact and Fiction_, gives us this fiction +for a fact. He is pleased with what he calls the "pathetic significance" +of his "discovery". There _was_ somebody, there had to be, and it had to +be M. Héger, for there wasn't anybody else. Mr. Mackay draws back the +veil with a gesture and reveals--the love-affair. He is very nice about +it, just as nice as ever he can be. "We see her," he says, "sore +wounded in her affections, but unconquerable in her will. The discovery +... does not degrade the noble figure we know so well.... The moral of +her greatest works--that conscience must reign absolute at whatever +cost--acquires a greater force when we realize how she herself came +through the furnace of temptation with marks of torture on her, but with +no stain on her soul." + +This is all very well, but the question is: _Did_ Charlotte come through +a furnace? _Did_ she suffer from a great and tragic passion? It may have +been so. For all we know she may have been in fifty furnaces; she may +have gone from one fit of tragic passion to another. Only (apart from +gossip, and apart from the argument from the novels, which begs the +question) we have no evidence to prove it. What we have points all the +other way. + +Gossip apart, believers in the tragic passion have nourished their +theory chiefly on that celebrated passage in a letter of Charlotte's to +Ellen Nussey: "I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death, prompted by +what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish +folly by a withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind." + +Here we have the great disclosure. By "irresistible impulse" and +"selfish folly", Charlotte could only mean indulgence in an illegitimate +passion for M. Héger's society. Peace of mind bears but one +interpretation. + +Mr. Clement Shorter, to his infinite credit, will have none of this. He +maintains very properly that the passage should be left to bear the +simple construction that Miss Nussey and Mr. Nicholls put upon it. But I +would go farther. I am convinced that not only does that passage bear +that construction, but that it will not bear the weight of any other. + +In eighteen-forty-two Charlotte's aunt died, and Charlotte became the +head of her father's household. She left her father's house in a time of +trouble, prompted by "an irresistible impulse" towards what we should +now call self-development. Charlotte, more than two years later, in a +moment of retrospective morbidity, called it "selfish folly". In that +dark mid-Victorian age it was sin in any woman to leave her home if her +home required her. And with her aunt dead, and her brother Branwell +drowning his grief for his relative in drink, and her father going blind +and beginning in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that +her home did require her. Equally she felt that either Emily or she had +got to turn out and make a living, and since it couldn't possibly be +Emily it must be she. The problem would have been quite simple even for +Charlotte--but _she wanted to go_. Therefore her tender conscience +vacillated. When you remember that Charlotte Brontë's conscience was, +next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate +part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, +her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Héger +is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by +detaching words from their context. The letter from which that passage +has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for +Charlotte. Charlotte says "any project which infers the necessity of my +leaving home is impracticable to me. If I could leave home I should not +be at Haworth now. I know life is passing away, and I am doing nothing, +earning nothing--a very bitter knowledge it is at moments--but I see no +way out of the mist"; and so on for another line or two, and then: +"These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consult my +conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and +bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release." +And then, the passage quoted _ad nauseam_, to support the legend of M. +Héger. + +A "total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind". This letter is dated October 1846--more than two years since her +return from Brussels in January, eighteen-forty-four. In those two years +her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell +achieved his destiny. The passage refers unmistakably to events at +Haworth. It is further illuminated by another passage from an earlier +letter. Ellen Nussey is going through the same crisis--torn between duty +to herself and duty to her people. She asks Charlotte's advice and +Charlotte gives judgment: "The right path is that which necessitates the +greatest sacrifice of self-interest." The sacrifice, observe, not of +happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of +self. It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she +went to Brussels for. + +And Charlotte's letters from Brussels--from the scene of passion in the +year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three--sufficiently reveal the nature of +the trouble there. Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily. +Emily was alone at Haworth. The few friends she had in Brussels left +soon after her arrival. She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness +was terrible. You can trace the malady in all its stages. In March she +writes: "I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my +good fortune. I hope I am thankful" (clearly she isn't thankful in the +least!), "and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely +or long for companionship or friendship, or whatever they call it, I +should do very well." In the same letter you learn that she is giving +English lessons to M. Héger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle. "If you +could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like +Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to +all eternity." Charlotte is at first amused at the noises made by M. +Héger and his brother-in-law. + +In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse. Still, she is +"indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement" that she had, and in +spite of her indebtedness, she records a "total want of companionship". +"I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which ... I ought to be +very thankful" (but she is not). May I point out that though you may be +"silent" in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you +are not "stagnant", and certainly not "easeful". + +At the end of May she finds out that Madame Héger does not like her, and +Monsieur is "wondrously influenced" by Madame. Monsieur has in a great +measure "withdrawn the light of his countenance", but Charlotte +apparently does not care. In August the _vacancies_ are at hand, and +everybody but Charlotte is going home. She is consequently "in low +spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment".... +"I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart." But she +will see it through. She will stay some months longer "till I have +acquired German". And at the end: "Everybody is abundantly civil, but +homesickness comes creeping over me. I cannot shake it off." That was in +September, in M. Héger's absence. Later, she tells Emily how she went +into the cathedral and made "a real confession _to see what it was +like_". Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of +the "temptation". Unfortunately for the theory it happened in +September, when M. Héger and temptation were not there. In October she +finds that she no longer trusts Madame Héger. At the same time "solitude +oppresses me to an excess". She gave notice, and M. Héger flew into a +passion and commanded her to stay. She stayed very much against, not her +conscience, but her will. In the same letter and the same connection she +says, "I have much to say--many little odd things, queer and puzzling +enough--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day +perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the +fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling +our hair--I may communicate to you." + +Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it, +intellectually, not emotionally. + +In November: "Twinges of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and +then." On holidays "the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs +down one's spirits like lead.... Madame Héger, good and kind as I have +described her" (_i.e._ for all her goodness and kindness), "never comes +near me on these occasions." ... "She is not colder to me than she is to +the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I am." But +the situation is becoming clearer. Charlotte is interested. "I fancy I +begin to perceive the reason of this mighty distance and reserve; it +sometimes makes me laugh, and at other times nearly cry. When I am sure +of it I will tell you." + +There can be no doubt that before she left Brussels Charlotte was sure; +but there is no record of her ever having told. + +The evidence from the letters is plain enough. But the first thing that +the theorist does is to mutilate letters. He suppresses all those parts +of a correspondence which tell against his theory. When these torn and +bleeding passages are restored piously to their contexts they are +destructive to the legend of tragic passion. They show (as Mr. Clement +Shorter has pointed out) that throughout her last year at Brussels +Charlotte Brontë saw hardly anything of M. Héger. They also show that +before very long Charlotte had a shrewd suspicion that Madame had +arranged it so, and that it was not so much the absence of Monsieur that +disturbed her as the extraordinary behaviour of Madame. And they show +that from first to last she was incurably homesick. + +Now if Charlotte had been in any degree, latently, or increasingly, or +violently in love with M. Héger, she would have been as miserable as you +like in M. Héger's house, but she would not have been homesick; she +would not, I think, have worried quite so much about Madame's behaviour; +and she would have found the clue to it sooner than she did. + +To me it is all so simple and self-evident that, if the story were not +revived periodically, if it had not been raked up again only the other +day,[A] there would be no need to dwell upon anything so pitiful and +silly. + +[Footnote A: See _The Key to the Brontë Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby, +1911.] + +It rests first and foremost on gossip, silly, pitiful gossip and +conjecture. Gossip in England, gossip in Brussels, conjecture all round. +Above all, it rests on certain feline hints supplied by Madame Héger and +her family. Charlotte's friends were always playfully suspecting her of +love-affairs. They could never put their fingers on the man, and they +missed M. Héger. It would never have occurred to their innocent +mid-Victorian minds to suspect Charlotte of an attachment to a married +man. It would not have occurred to Charlotte to suspect herself of it. +But Madame Héger was a Frenchwoman, and she had not a mid-Victorian +mind, and she certainly suspected Charlotte of an attachment, a flagrant +attachment, to M. Héger. It is well known that Madame made statements to +that effect, and it is admitted on all hands that Madame had been +jealous. It may fairly be conjectured that it was M. Héger and not +Charlotte who gave her cause, slight enough in all conscience, but +sufficient for Madame Héger. She did not understand these Platonic +relations between English teachers and their French professors. She had +never desired Platonic relations with anybody herself, and she saw +nothing but annoyance in them for everybody concerned. Madame's attitude +is the clue to the mystery, the clue that Charlotte found. She accused +the dead Charlotte of an absurd and futile passion for her husband; she +stated that she had had to advise the living Charlotte to moderate the +ardour of her admiration for the engaging professor; but the truth, as +Charlotte in the end discovered, was that for a certain brief period +Madame was preposterously jealous. M. Héger confessed as much when he +asked Charlotte to address her letters to him at the Athénée Royale +instead of the Pensionnat. The correspondence, he said, was disagreeable +to his wife. + +Why, in Heaven's name, disagreeable, if Madame Héger suspected Charlotte +of an absurd and futile passion? And why should Madame Héger have been +jealous of an absurd and futile woman, a woman who had seen so little of +Madame Héger's husband, and who was then in England? I cannot agree with +Mr. Shorter that M. Héger regarded Charlotte with indifference. He was a +Frenchman, and he had his vanity, and no doubt the frank admiration of +his brilliant pupil appealed to it vividly in moments of conjugal +depression. Charlotte herself must have had some attraction for M. +Héger. Madame perceived the appeal and the attraction, and she was +jealous; therefore her interpretation of appearances could not have been +so unflattering to Charlotte as she made out. Madame, in fact, +suspected, on her husband's part, the dawning of an attachment. We know +nothing about M. Héger's attachment, and we haven't any earthly right to +know; but from all that is known of M. Héger it is certain that, if it +was not entirely intellectual, not entirely that "_affection presque +paternelle_" that he once professed, it was entirely restrained and +innocent and honourable. It is Madame Héger with her jealousy who has +given the poor gentleman away. Monsieur's state of mind--extremely +temporary--probably accounted for "those many odd little things, queer +and puzzling enough", which Charlotte would not trust to a letter; +matter for curl-paper confidences and no more. + +Of course there is the argument from the novels, from _The Professor_, +from _Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_. I have not forgotten it. But really +it begs the question. It moves in an extremely narrow and an extremely +vicious circle. Jane Eyre was tried in a furnace of temptation, +therefore Charlotte must have been tried. Lucy Snowe and Frances Henri +loved and suffered in Brussels. Therefore Charlotte must have loved and +suffered there. And if Charlotte loved and suffered and was tried in a +furnace of temptation, that would account for Frances and for Lucy and +for Jane. + +No; the theorists who have insisted on this tragic passion have not +reckoned with Charlotte Brontë's character, and its tremendous power of +self-repression. If at Brussels any disastrous tenderness had raised its +head it wouldn't have had a chance to grow an inch. But Charlotte had +large and luminous ideas of friendship. She was pure, utterly pure from +all the illusions and subtleties and corruptions of the sentimentalist, +and she could trust herself in friendship. She brought to it ardours and +vehemences that she would never have allowed to love. If she let herself +go in her infrequent intercourse with M. Héger, it was because she was +so far from feeling in herself the possibility of passion. That was why +she could say, "I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what +the parting with M. Héger cost me. It grieved me so much to grieve him +who has been so true, kind, and disinterested a friend." That was how +she could bring herself to write thus to Monsieur: "_Savez-vous ce que je +ferais, Monsieur? J'écrirais un livre et je le dédierais à mon maître de +littérature, au seul maître que j'aie jamais eu--à vous Monsieur! Je +vous ai dit souvent en français combien je vous respecte, combien je +suis redevable à votre bonté à vos conseils. Je voudrais le dire une +fois en anglais ... le souvenir de vos bontés ne s'effacera jamais de ma +mémoire, et tant que ce souvenir durera le respect que vous m'avez +inspiré durera aussi._" For "_je vous respecte_" we are not entitled to +read "_je vous aime_". Charlotte was so made that kindness shown her +moved her to tears of gratitude. When Charlotte said "respect" she meant +it. Her feeling for M. Héger was purely what Mr. Matthew Arnold said +religion was, an affair of "morality touched with emotion". All her +utterances, where there is any feeling in them, no matter what, have a +poignancy, a vibration which is Brontësque and nothing more. And this +Brontësque quality is what the theorists have (like Madame Héger, and +possibly Monsieur) neither allowed for nor understood. + + * * * * * + +For this "fiery-hearted Vestal", this virgin, sharp-tongued and +sharper-eyed, this scorner of amorous curates, had a genius for +friendship. This genius, like her other genius, was narrow in its range +and opportunity, and for that all the more ardent and intense. It fed on +what came to its hand. It could even grow, like her other genius, with +astounding vitality out of strange and hostile soil. She seems to have +had many friends, obscure and great; the obscure, the Dixons, the +Wheelrights, the Taylors, the Nusseys, out of all proportion to the +great. But properly speaking she had only two friends, Mary Taylor and +Ellen Nussey, the enchanting, immortal "Nel". + +There _is_ something at first sight strange and hostile about Mary +Taylor, the energetic, practical, determined, terribly robust person you +see so plainly trying, in the dawn of their acquaintance, to knock the +nonsense out of Charlotte. Mary Taylor had no appreciation of the +Brontësque. When Charlotte told Mary Taylor that at Cowan Bridge she +used to stand in the burn on a stone to watch the water flow by, Mary +Taylor told Charlotte that she should have gone fishing. When _Jane +Eyre_ appeared she wrote to Charlotte in a strain that is amusing to +posterity. There is a touch of condescension in her praise. She is +evidently surprised at anything so great coming out of Charlotte. "It +seemed to me incredible that you had actually written a book." "You are +very different from me," she says, "in having no doctrine to preach. It +is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production." She is +thinking of his prototype when she criticizes the character of St. John +Rivers. "A missionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, +or he goes for enthusiasm, and that is both too good and too bad a +quality for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in +such a man." As an intellectual woman Mary Taylor realized Charlotte +Brontë's intellect, but it is doubtful if she ever fully realized what, +beyond an intellect, she had got hold of in her friend. She was a woman +of larger brain than Ellen Nussey, she was loyal and warm-hearted to the +last degree, but it was not given to her to see in Charlotte Brontë what +Ellen Nussey, little as you would have expected it, had seen. She did +not keep her letters. She burnt them "in a fit of caution", which may +have been just as well. + +But Mary Taylor is important. She had, among her more tender qualities, +an appalling frankness. It was she who told poor little Charlotte that +she was very ugly. Charlotte never forgot it. You can feel in her +letters, in her novels, in her whole nature, the long reverberation of +the shock. She said afterwards: "You did me a great deal of good, +Polly," by which she meant that Polly had done her an infinity of harm. + +Her friends all began by trying to do her good. Even Ellen Nussey tried. +Charlotte is very kindly cautioned against being "tempted by the +fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance", and +in a parenthesis Ellen Nussey begs her not to be offended. "Oh, Ellen," +Charlotte writes, "do you think I could be offended by any good advice +you may give me?" She thanks her heartily, and loves her "if possible +all the better for it". Ellen Nussey in her turn asks Charlotte to tell +her of her faults and "cease flattering her". Charlotte very sensibly +refuses; and it is not till she has got away from her sisters that her +own heart-searchings begin. They are mainly tiresome, but there is a +flash of revelation in her reply to "the note you sent me with the +umbrella". "My darling, if I were like you, I should have to face +Zionwards, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist +over the glorious vision before me, for with all your single-hearted +sincerity you have your faults, but _I_ am not like you. If you knew my +thoughts; the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at +times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly +insipid, you would pity me, and I dare say despise me." Miss Nussey +writes again, and Charlotte trembles "all over with excitement" after +reading her note. "I will no longer shrink from your question," she +replies. "I _do_ wish to be better than I am. I pray fervently sometimes +to be made so ... this very night I will pray as you wish me." + +But Charlotte is not in the least like Ellen Nussey, and she still +refuses to be drawn into any return of this dangerous play with a +friend's conscience and her nerves. "I will not tell you all I think and +feel about you, Ellen. I will preserve unbroken that reserve which alone +enables me to maintain a decent character for judgment; but for that, I +should long ago have been set down by all who knows me as a Frenchified +fool. You have been very kind to me of late, and gentle, and you have +spared me those little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miserable +and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince, as +if I had been touched with hot iron. Things that nobody else cares for +enter into my mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings +are absurd, and therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the +deeper for concealment. I'm an idiot!" + +Miss Nussey seems to have preserved her calm through all the excitement +and to have never turned a hair. But nothing could have been worse for +Charlotte than this sort of thing. It goes on for years. It began in +eighteen-thirty-three, the third year of their friendship, when she was +seventeen. In 'thirty-seven it is at its height. Charlotte writes from +Dewsbury Moor: "If I could always live with you, if your lips and mine +could at the same time drink the same draught at the same pure fountain +of mercy, I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better +than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit +and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to be. I often plan the +pleasant life we might lead, strengthening each other in the power of +self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion which the past Saints of +God often attained to." + +Now a curious and interesting thing is revealed by this correspondence. +These religious fervours and depressions come on the moment Charlotte +leaves Haworth and disappear as soon as she returns. All those letters +were written from Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor, while the Haworth letters +of the same period are sane and light-hearted. And when she is fairly +settled at Haworth, instead of emulating the Saints of God, she and Miss +Nussey are studying human nature and the art of flirtation as exhibited +by curates. Charlotte administers to her friend a formidable amount of +worldly wisdom, thus avenging herself for the dance Miss Nussey led her +round the throne of grace. + +For, though that morbid excitement and introspection belonged solely to +Charlotte's days of exile, Miss Nussey was at the bottom of it. Mary +Taylor would have been a far robuster influence. But Charlotte's +friendship for Mary Taylor, warm as it was, strikes cold beside her +passionate affection for Ellen Nussey. She brought her own fire to that, +and her own extraordinary capacity for pain. Her letters show every +phase of this friendship, its birth, its unfolding; and then the sudden +leaping of the flame, its writhing and its torture. She writes with a +lover's ardour and impatience. "Write to me very soon and dispel my +uncertainty, or I shall get impatient, almost irritable." "I read your +letter with dismay. Ellen--what shall I do without you? Why are we to be +denied each other's society? It is an inscrutable fatality.... Why are +we to be divided?" (She is at Roe Head, and Roe Head suggests the +answer.) "Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving +each other too well--of losing sight of the _Creator_ in idolatry of the +_creature_." She prays to be resigned, and records "a sweet, placid +sensation like those that I remember used to visit me when I was a +little child, and on Sunday evenings in summer stood by the window +reading the life of a certain French nobleman who attained a purer and +higher degree of sanctity than has been known since the days of the +Early Martyrs. I thought of my own Ellen--" "I wish I could see you, my +darling; I have lavished the warmest affections of a very hot tenacious +heart upon you; if you grow cold, it is over." She was only twenty-one. + +A few more years and the leaping and the writhing and the torture cease, +the fire burns to a steady, inextinguishable glow. There is gaiety in +Charlotte's tenderness. She is "infuriated" on finding a jar in her +trunk. "At first I hoped it was empty, but when I found it heavy and +replete, I could have hurled it all the way back to Birstall. However, +the inscription A.B. softened me much. You ought first to be tenderly +kissed, and then as tenderly whipped. Emily is just now sitting on the +floor of the bedroom where I am writing, looking at her apples. She +smiled when I gave them and the collar as your presents, with an +expression at once well pleased and slightly surprised." + +The religious fervours and the soul-searchings have ceased long ago, so +has Miss Nussey's brief spiritual ascendency. But the friendship and the +letters never cease. They go on for twenty years, through exile and +suffering, through bereavement, through fame and through marriage, +uninterrupted and, except for one brief period, unabridged. There is +nothing in any biography to compare with those letters to Ellen Nussey. +If Charlotte Brontë had not happened to be a great genius as well as a +great woman, they alone would have furnished forth her complete +biography. There is no important detail of her mere life that is not +given in them. Mrs. Gaskell relied almost entirely on them, and on +information supplied to her by Miss Nussey. And each critic and +biographer who followed her, from Sir Wemyss Reid to Mr. Clement +Shorter, drew from the same source. Miss Nussey was almost the only safe +repository of material relating to Charlotte Brontë. She had possessed +hundreds of her letters and, with that amiable weakness which was the +defect of her charming quality, she was unable to withhold any of them +from the importunate researcher. There seems to have been nothing, +except one thing, that Charlotte did not talk about to Miss Nussey when +they sat with their feet on the fender and their hair in curl-papers. +That one thing was her writing. It is quite possible that in those +curl-paper confidences Miss Nussey learnt the truth about Charlotte's +friend, M. Héger. She never learnt anything about Charlotte's genius. In +everything that concerned her genius Charlotte was silent and secret +with her friend. That was the line, the very sharp and impassable line +she drew between her "dear, _dear_ Ellen", her "dearest Nel", and her +sisters, Anne and Emily. The freemasonry of friendship ended there. You +may search in vain through even her later correspondence with Miss +Nussey for any more than perfunctory and extraneous allusions to her +works. It was as if they had never been. Every detail of her daily life +is there, the outer and the inner things, the sewing and ironing and +potato-peeling, together with matters of the heart and soul, searchings, +experiences, agonies; the figures of her father, her brother, her +sisters, move there, vivid and alive; and old Tabby and the curates; and +the very animals, Keeper and Flossie, and the little black cat, Tom, +that died and made Emily sorry; but of the one thing not a word. The +letters to Ellen Nussey following the publication of _Jane Eyre_ are all +full of gossip about Miss Ringrose and the Robinsons. Presently Ellen +hears a rumour of publication. Charlotte repudiates it and friction +follows. + +Charlotte writes: "Dear Ellen,--write another letter and explain that +note of yours distinctly.... Let me know what you heard, and from whom +you heard it. You do wrong to feel pain from any circumstance, or to +suppose yourself slighted...." "Dear Ellen,--All I can say to you about +a certain matter is this: the report ... must have had its origin in +some absurd misunderstanding. I have given _no one_ a right to affirm or +hint in the most distant manner that I am publishing (humbug!). Whoever +has said it--if anyone has, which I doubt--is no friend of mine. Though +twenty books were ascribed to me, I should own none. I scout the idea +utterly. Whoever, after I have distinctly rejected the charge, urges it +upon me, will do an unkind and ill-bred thing." If Miss Nussey is asked, +she is authorized by Miss Brontë to say, "that she repels and disowns +every accusation of the kind. You may add, if you please, that if anyone +has her confidence, you believe you have, and she has made no drivelling +confessions to you on that subject." "Dear Ellen,--I shall begin by +telling you that you have no right to be angry at the length of time I +have suffered to slip by since receiving your last, without answering +it; because you have often kept me waiting much longer, and having made +this gracious speech, thereby obviating reproaches, I will add that I +think it a great shame, when you receive a long and thoroughly +interesting letter, full of the sort of details you fully relish, to +read the same with selfish pleasure, and not even have the manners to +thank your correspondent, and express how very much you enjoyed the +narrative. I _did_ enjoy the narrative in your last very keenly.... +Which of the Miss Woolers did you see at Mr. Allbutts?" + +A beautiful but most unequal friendship. "The sort of details you fully +relish--" How that phrase must have rankled! You can hear the passionate +protest: "Those details are not what I relish in the least. Putting me +off with your Woolers and your Allbutts! If only you had told me about +_Jane Eyre_!" For it turned out that all the time Mary Taylor had been +told. The inference was that Mary Taylor, with her fits of caution, +could be trusted. + +This silence of Charlotte's must have been most painful and +incomprehensible to the poor Ellen who was Caroline Helstone. She had +been the first to divine Charlotte's secret; for she kept the letters. +She must have felt like some tender and worshipping wife to whom all +doors in the house of the beloved are thrown open, except the door of +the sanctuary, which is persistently slammed in her charming face. There +must have come to her moments of terrible insight when she felt the +danger and the mystery of the flaming spirit she had tried to hold. But +Charlotte's friend can wear her half-pathetic immortality with grace. +She could at least say: "She told me things she never told anyone else. +I have hundreds of her letters. And I had her heart." + + * * * * * + +Nothing so much as this correspondence reveals the appalling solitude in +which the Brontës lived. Here is their dearest and most intimate friend, +and she is one to whom they can never speak of the thing that interested +them most. No doubt "our best plays mean secret plays"; but Charlotte, +at any rate, suffered from this secrecy. There was nothing to counteract +Miss Nussey's direful influence on her spiritual youth. "Papa" highly +approved of the friendship. He wished it to continue, and it did; and it +was the best that Charlotte had. I know few things more pathetic than +the cry that Charlotte, at twenty-one, sent out of her solitude (with +some verses) to Southey and to Wordsworth. Southey told her that, +"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not +to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure +will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To +those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be +less eager for celebrity." A sound, respectable, bourgeois opinion so +far, but Southey went farther. "Write poetry for its own sake," he said; +and he could hardly have said better. Charlotte treasured the letter, +and wrote on the cover of it, "Southey's advice, to be kept for ever." +Wordsworth's advice, I am sorry to say, provoked her to flippancy. + +And that, out of the solitude, was all. Not the ghost, not the shadow of +an Influence came to the three sisters. There never was genius that owed +so little to influence as theirs. + +I know that in Charlotte's case there is said to have been an Influence. +An Influence without which she would have remained for ever in +obscurity, with _Villette_, with _Shirley_, with _Jane Eyre_, with _The +Professor_, unborn, unconceived. + +Need I say that the Influence is--M. Héger? + +"The sojourn in Brussels," says Mr. Clement Shorter, "made Miss Brontë +an author," and he is only following Sir Wemyss Reid, who was the first +to establish Brussels as the turning-point. Mr. Shorter does not believe +in M. Héger as the inspirer of passion, but he does believe in him as +the inspirer of genius. He thinks it exceedingly probable that had not +circumstances led Charlotte Brontë to spend some time at Brussels not +only would "the world never have heard of her", but it would never have +heard of her sisters. He is quite certain about Charlotte anyhow; she +could not have "arrived" had she not met M. Héger. "She went," he says, +"to Brussels full of the crude ambitions, the semi-literary impulses +that are so common on the fringe of the writing world. She left Brussels +a woman of genuine cultivation, of educated tastes, armed with just the +equipment that was to enable her to write the books of which two +generations of her countrymen have been justly proud." + +This is saying that Charlotte Brontë had no means of expression before +she wrote _devoirs_ under M. Héger. True, her genius did not find itself +until after she left Brussels, that is to say, not until she was nearly +thirty. I have not read any of her works as Lord Charles Albert Florian +Wellesley, and I do not imagine they were works of genius. But that only +means that Charlotte Brontë's genius took time. She was one of those +novelists who do not write novels before they are nearly thirty. But she +could write. Certain fragments of her very earliest work show that from +the first she had not only the means, but very considerable mastery of +expression. What is more, they reveal in germ the qualities that marked +her style in its maturity. Her styles rather, for she had several. There +is her absolutely simple style, in which she is perfect; her didactic +style, her fantastic style, which are mere temporary aberrations; and +her inspired style, in which at her worst she is merely flamboyant and +redundant, and at her best no less than perfect. You will find a faint, +embryonic foreshadowing of her perfections in the fragments given by +Mrs. Gaskell. There is THE HISTORY OF THE YEAR 1829, beginning: "Once +Papa lent my sister Maria a book. It was an old geography book; she +wrote on its blank leaf, "Papa lent me this book." This book is a +hundred and twenty years old; it is at this moment lying before me. +While I write this I am in the kitchen of the Parsonage, Haworth; Tabby, +the servant, is washing up the breakfast things, and Anne, my youngest +sister (Maria was my eldest), is kneeling on a chair, looking at some +cakes, which Tabby has been baking for us." You cannot beat that for +pure simplicity of statement. There is another fragment that might have +come straight out of _Jane Eyre_. "One night, about the time when the +cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snowstorms +and high piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting +round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel +with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she +came off victorious, no candle having been produced." And there is a +dream-story that Mr. Clement Shorter gives. She is in the "Mines of +Cracone", under the floor of the sea. "But in the midst of all this +magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror, for the +sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring +winds and dashing waves, it seemed as if the storm was violent. And now +the massy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the +glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed. When I heard the +rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud +shriek of terror." The dream changes: she is in a desert full of barren +rocks and high mountains, where she sees "by the light of his own fiery +eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers. His terrible +eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang, and the rocks echoed with +the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang +towards me." And there is her letter to the editor of one of their +_Little Magazines_: "Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared +that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year, of a +mysterious nature, all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and +gathered together in one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary +splendour through the vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the +four high princes of the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by +Eternity; and the impudence of this is only to be paralleled by another +of their assertions, namely, that by their magic might they can reduce +the world to a desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and +the clearest lakes to stagnant water, the pestilential vapours of which +shall slay all living creatures, except the bloodthirsty beast of the +forest, and the ravenous bird of the rock. But that in the midst of this +desolation the palace of the chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the +wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over the +land at morning, at noontide, and at night; but that they shall have +their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly rejoice +with the joy of victors. I think, sir, that the horrible wickedness of +this needs no remark, and therefore I hasten to subscribe myself, etc." + +Puerile, if you like, and puerile all the stuff that Charlotte Brontë +wrote before eighteen-forty-six; but her style at thirteen, in its very +rhythms and cadences, is the unmistakable embryo of her style at thirty; +and M. Héger no more cured her of its faults that he could teach her its +splendours. Something that was not Brussels made Miss Brontë a +prodigious author at thirteen. The mere mass of her _Juvenilia_ +testifies to a most ungovernable bent. Read the list of works, appalling +in their length, which this child produced in a period of fifteen +months; consider that she produced nothing but melancholy letters during +her "sojourn in Brussels"; and compare M. Héger's academic precepts with +her practice, with the wild sweep and exuberance of her style when she +has shaken him off, and her genius gets possession of her. + +I know there is a gulf fixed between Currer Bell and Charles Townsend, +who succeeded Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and the Marquis of +Douro, about eighteen-thirty-eight; but it is bridged by the later +_Poems_ which show Charlotte's genius struggling through a wrong medium +to the right goal. She does not know--after the sojourn in Brussels she +does not yet know--that her right medium is prose. She knew no more than +she knew in November, eighteen-forty-one, when, on the eve of her flight +from Haworth, she writes: "The plain fact is, I was not, I am not now, +certain of my destiny." It was not until two years after she had +returned to Haworth that she received her certainty. For posterity, +overpowered by the labour of the Brontë specialists, it may seem as if +Charlotte Brontë's genius owed everything to her flight from Haworth. In +reality her flight merely coincided with the inevitable shooting of its +wings; and the specialists have mistaken coincidence for destiny. + +Heaven only knows what would have happened to her genius if, blind to +her destiny, she had remained in Brussels. For, once there, its +wing-feathers left off growing. Its way was blocked by every conceivable +hostile and obstructive thing. Madame Héger was hostile, and Monsieur, I +think, purely obstructive. Emily saw through him, and denounced his +method as fatal to all originality. Charlotte, to be sure, called him +"my dear master, the only master that I ever had", but if that was not +her "absurd charity", it was only her Brontësque way. There was no sense +in which he was her master. He taught her French; to the very last the +habit of using "a few French words" was the King Charles's head in her +manuscripts; and the French he taught her did her harm. The restraint he +could and would have taught her she never learnt until her genius had +had, in defiance and in spite of him, its full fling. + +And what a fling! It is the way of genius to look after itself. In spite +of obstacles, Charlotte Brontë's took hold of every man and woman that +crossed and barred its path, and ultimately it avenged itself on +Monsieur and on Madame Héger. Those two were made for peaceful, +honourable conjugal obscurity, but it was their luck to harbour a +half-fledged and obstructed genius in their Pensionnat, a genius +thirsting for experience; and somehow, between them, they contrived to +make it suffer. That was their tragedy. Monsieur's case is pitiful; for +he was kind and well-meaning, and he was fond of Charlotte; and yet, +because of Charlotte, there is no peace for him in the place where he +has gone. Her genius has done with him, but her ghost, like some malign +and awful destiny, pursues him. No sooner does he sink back quiet in his +grave than somebody unearths him. Why cannot he be allowed to rest, once +for all, in his amiable unimportance? He became, poor man, important +only by the use that Charlotte's genius made of him. It seized him as it +would have seized on any other interesting material that came its way. +Without him we might have had another Rochester, and we should not have +had any Paul Emanuel, which would have been a pity; that is all. + +There is hardly any hope that Brontë specialists will accept this view. +For them the sojourn in Brussels will still stand as the turning-point +in Charlotte Brontë's career. Yet for her, long afterwards, Brussels +must have stood as the danger threatening it. She would have said, I +think, that her sojourn in Haworth was the turning-point. It was destiny +that turned Emily back to Haworth from the destruction that waited for +her at Brussels, so that she conceived and brought forth _Wuthering +Heights_; her own destiny that she secretly foreknew, consoling and +beneficent. And, no doubt, it was destiny of a sort, unforeknown, +deceitful, apparently malignant, that sent Charlotte back again to +Brussels after her aunt's death. It wrung from her her greatest book, +_Villette_. But Haworth, I think, would have wrung from her another and +perhaps a greater. + +For the first-fruits of the sojourn in Brussels was neither _Villette_ +nor _Jane Eyre_, but _The Professor_. And _The Professor_ has none of +the qualities of _Jane Eyre_ or of _Villette_; it has none of the +qualities of Charlotte's later work at all; above all, none of that +master quality which M. Héger is supposed to have specially evoked. +Charlotte, indeed, could not well have written a book more destructive +to the legend of the upheaval, the tragic passion, the furnace of +temptation and the flight. Nothing could be less like a furnace than the +atmosphere of _The Professor_. From the first page to the last there is +not one pulse, not one breath of passion in it. The bloodless thing +comes coldly, slowly tentatively, from the birth. It is almost as frigid +as a _devoir_ written under M. Héger's eye. The theorists, I notice, are +careful not to draw attention to _The Professor_; and they are wise, for +attention drawn to _The Professor_ makes sad work of their theory. + +Remember, on the theory, Charlotte Brontë has received her great +awakening, her great enlightenment; she is primed with passion; the +whole wonderful material of _Villette_ is in her hand; she has before +her her unique opportunity. You ought, on the theory, to see her +hastening to it, a passionate woman, pouring out her own one and supreme +experience, and, with the brand of Brussels on her, never afterwards +really doing anything else. Whereas the first thing the impassioned +Charlotte does (after a year of uninspired and ineffectual poetizing) is +to sit down and write _The Professor_; a book, remarkable not by any +means for its emotion, but for its cold and dispassionate observation. +Charlotte eliminates herself, and is Crimsworth in order that she may +observe Frances Henri the more dispassionately. She is inspired solely +by the analytic spirit, and either cannot, or will not, let herself go. +But she does what she meant to do. She had it in mind to write, not a +great work of imagination, but a grey and sober book, and a grey and +sober book is what she writes. A book concerned only with things and +people she has seen and known; a book, therefore, from which passion and +the poetry that passion is must be rigidly excluded, as belonging to +the region of things not, strictly speaking, known. It is as if she had +written _The Professor_ in rivalry with her sister Anne, both of them +austerely determined to put aside all imagination and deal with +experience and experience alone. Thus you obtain sincerity, you obtain +truth. And with nothing but experience before her, she writes a book +that has no passion in it, a book almost as bloodless and as gentle as +her sister Anne's. + +Let us not disparage _The Professor_. Charlotte herself did not +disparage it. In her Preface she refused to solicit "indulgence for it +on the plea of a first attempt. A first attempt," she says, "it +certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn in +a practice of some years." In that Preface she shows plainly that at the +very outset of her career she had no sterner critic than herself; that +she was aware of her sins and her temptations, and of the dangers that +lurked for her in her imaginative style. "In many a crude effort, +destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I +might have had for ornamented and decorated composition, and come to +prefer what was plain and homely." Observe, it is not to the lessons of +the "master", but to the creation and destruction that went on at +Haworth that she attributes this purgation. She is not aware of the +extent to which she can trust her genius, of what will happen when she +has fairly let herself go. She is working on a method that rules her +choice of subject. "I said to myself that my hero should work his way +through life, as I had seen real, living men work theirs--that he should +never get a shilling that he had not earned--that no sudden turns should +lift him in a moment to wealth and high station; that whatever small +competency he might gain should be won by the sweat of his brow; that +before he could find so much as an arbour to sit down in, he should +master at least half the ascent of the Hill Difficulty; that he should +not marry even a beautiful girl or a lady of rank." + +There was no fine madness in that method; but its very soundness and +sanity show the admirable spirit in which Charlotte Brontë approached +her art. She was to return to the method of _The Professor_ again and +yet again, when she suspected herself of having given imagination too +loose a rein. The remarkable thing was that she should have begun with +it. + +And in some respects _The Professor_ is more finished, better +constructed than any of her later books. There is virtue in its extreme +sobriety. Nothing could be more delicate and firm than the drawing of +Frances Henri; nothing in its grey style more admirable than the scene +where Crimsworth, having found Frances in the cemetery, takes her to her +home in the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges. + +"Stepping over a little mat of green wool, I found myself in a small +room with a painted floor and a square of green carpet in the middle; +the articles of furniture were few, but all bright and exquisitely +clean--order reigned through its narrow limits--such order as it suited +my punctilious soul to behold.... Poor the place might be; poor truly it +was, but its neatness was better than elegance, and had but a bright +little fire shone on that clean hearth, I should have deemed it more +attractive than a palace. No fire was there, however, and no fuel laid +ready to light; the lace-mender was unable to allow herself that +indulgence.... Frances went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, +and she came out a model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black +stuff dress, so accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, +with her spotless white collar turned back from a fair and shapely +neck, with her plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her +temples and in a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had +none--neither brooch, ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough without +them--perfection of fit, proportion of form, grace of carriage, +agreeably supplied their place." Frances lights a fire, having fetched +wood and coal in a basket. + +"'It is her whole stock, and she will exhaust it out of hospitality,' +thought I. + +"'What are you going to do?' I asked: 'not surely to light a fire this +hot evening? I shall be smothered.' + +"'Indeed, Monsieur, I feel it very chilly since the rain began; besides, +I must boil the water for my tea, for I take tea on Sundays; you will be +obliged to bear the heat.'" + +And Frances makes the tea, and sets the table, and brings out her +pistolets, and offers them to Monsieur, and it is all very simple and +idyllic. So is the scene where Crimsworth, without our knowing exactly +how he does it, declares himself to Frances. The dialogue is half in +French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very +favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in _Jane Eyre_. +Frances is delicious in her very solidity, her absence of abandonment. +She refuses flatly to give up her teaching at Crimsworth's desire, +Crimsworth, who will have six thousand francs a year. + +"'How rich you are, Monsieur!' And then she stirred uneasily in my arms. +'Three thousand francs!' she murmured, 'while I get only twelve +hundred!' She went on faster. 'However, it must be so for the present; +and, Monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my +place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast'; and her little fingers emphatically +tightened on mine. + +"'Think of marrying you to be kept by you, Monsieur! I could not do it; +and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close, +noisy schoolrooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering +at home, unemployed and solitary. I should get depressed and sullen, and +you would soon tire of me.' + +"'Frances, you could yet read and study--two things you like so well.' + +"'Monsieur, I could not; I like contemplative life, but I like an active +better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have taken notice, +Monsieur, that people who are only in each other's company for +amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so +highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer together!'" + +To which Crimsworth replies, "You speak God's truth, and you shall have +your own way, for it is the best way." + +There is far more common sense than passion in the solid little Frances +and her apathetic lover. It is Frances Henri's situation, not her +character, that recalls so irresistibly Lucy Snowe. Frances has neither +Lucy's temperament, nor Lucy's terrible capacity for suffering. She +suffers through her circumstances, not through her temperament. The +motives handled in _The Professor_ belong to the outer rather than the +inner world; the pressure of circumstance, bereavement, poverty, the +influences of alien and unloved surroundings, these are the springs that +determine the drama of Frances and of Crimsworth. Charlotte is +displaying a deliberate interest in the outer world and the material +event. She does not yet know that it is in the inner world that her +great conquest and dominion is to be. The people in this first novel are +of the same family as the people in _Jane Eyre_, in _Shirley_, in +_Villette_. Crimsworth is almost reproduced in Louis Moore. Yorke +Hunsden is the unmistakable father of Mr. Yorke and Rochester; Frances, +a pale and passionless sister of Jane Eyre, and a first cousin of Lucy. +Yet, in spite of these relationships, _The Professor_ stands alone. In +spite of its striking resemblance to _Villette_ there is no real, no +spiritual affinity. And the great gulf remains fixed between _The +Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. + +This difference lies deeper than technique. It is a difference of +vision, of sensation. The strange greyness of _The Professor_, its +stillness, is not due altogether to Charlotte's deliberate intention. It +is the stillness, the greyness of imperfect hearing, of imperfect +seeing. I know it has one fine piece of word-painting, but not one that +can stand among Charlotte Brontë's masterpieces in this kind. + +Here it is. "Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze +stirred the air, purified by lightning; I left the west behind me, where +spread a sky like opal, azure inmingled with crimson; the enlarged sun, +glorious in Tyrian dyes, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, +eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the +arch of an even rainbow; a perfect rainbow--high, wide, vivid. I looked +long; my eye drank in the scene, and I suppose my brain must have +absorbed it; for that night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long +time, watching the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the +retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last fell +asleep; and then in a dream was reproduced the setting sun, the bank of +clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a terrace; I leaned +over a parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not +fathom, but hearing an endless splash of waves, I believed it to be the +sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense blue; +all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold +glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, appeared, +enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, +under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dark clouds diffused behind. +It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed like +raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation, coloured what seemed +face and limbs; a large star shone with still lustre on an angel's +forehead--" But the angel ruins it. + +And this is all, and it leaves the dreariness more dreary. In _The +Professor_ you wander through a world where there is no sound, no +colour, no vibration; a world muffled and veiled in the stillness and +the greyness of the hour before dawn. It is the work of a woman who is +not perfectly alive. So far from having had her great awakening, +Charlotte is only half awake. Her intellect is alert enough and avid, +faithful and subservient to the fact. It is her nerves and senses that +are asleep. Her soul is absent from her senses. + + * * * * * + +But in _Jane Eyre_, she is not only awakened, but awake as she has never +been awake before, with all her virgin senses exquisitely alive, every +nerve changed to intense vibration. Sometimes she is perniciously awake; +she is doing appalling things, things unjustifiable, preposterous; +things that would have meant perdition to any other writer; she sees +with wild, erroneous eyes; but the point is that she sees, that she +keeps moving, that from the first page to the last she is never once +asleep. To come to _Jane Eyre_ after _The Professor_ is to pass into +another world of feeling and of vision. + +It is not the difference between reality and unreality. _The Professor_ +is real enough, more real in some minor points--dialogue, for +instance--than _Jane Eyre_. The difference is that _The Professor_ is a +transcript of reality, a very delicate and faithful transcript, and +_Jane Eyre_ is reality itself, pressed on the senses. The pressure is so +direct and so tremendous, that it lasts through those moments when the +writer's grip has failed. + +For there are moments, long moments of perfectly awful failure in _Jane +Eyre_. There are phrases that make you writhe, such as "the etymology of +the mansion's designation", and the shocking persistency with which +Charlotte Brontë "indites", "peruses", and "retains". There are whole +scenes that outrage probability. Such are the scenes, or parts of +scenes, between Jane and Rochester during the comedy of his courtship. +The great orchard scene does not ring entirely true. For pages and pages +it falters between passion and melodrama; between rhetoric and the _cri +de coeur_. Jane in the very thick of her emotion can say, "I have +talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight +in--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, +Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I +absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity for +departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death." And the +comedy is worse. Jane elaborates too much in those delicious things she +says to Rochester. Rochester himself provokes the parodist. (Such +manners as Rochester's were unknown in mid-Victorian literature.) + +"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck +seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed +terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal +were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For +caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch +on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was +all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to +anything more tender." + +Yet there is comedy, pure comedy in those scenes, though never +sustained, and never wrought to the inevitable dramatic climax. Jane is +delightful when she asks Rochester whether the frown on his forehead +will be his "married look", and when she tells him to make a +dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite +series of waistcoats out of the black satin". _The Quarterly_ was much +too hard on the earlier _cadeau_ scene, with Rochester and Jane and +Adèle, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and +precision. + +_"'N'est-ce pas, Monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre, +dans votre petit coffre?'"_ + +"'Who talks of _cadeaux_?' said he gruffly; 'did you expect a present, +Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?' and he searched my face with eyes +that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing. + +"'I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them; they are +generally thought pleasant things.'" + +Charlotte Brontë was on her own ground there. But you tremble when she +leaves it; you shudder throughout the awful drawing-room comedy of +Blanche Ingram. Blanche says to her mother: "Am I right, Baroness Ingram +of Ingram Park?" And her mother says to Blanche, "My lily-flower, you +are right now, as always." Blanche says to Rochester, "Signor Eduardo, +are you in voice to-night?" and he, "Donna Bianca, if you command it, I +will be." And Blanche says to the footman, "Cease that chatter, +blockhead, and do my bidding." + +That, Charlotte's worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene +itself is unimportant. But what can be said of the crucial scene of the +novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation? There _is_ +passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the +afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding. + +"'Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one +little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his +bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake +slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody +blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?'... 'You +know I am a scoundrel, Jane?' ere long he inquired wistfully, wondering, +I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness; the result of weakness +rather than of will. + +"'Yes, sir.' + +"'Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me.' + +"'I cannot; I am tired and sick. I want some water.' + +"He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and, taking me in his arms, +carried me downstairs." + +But there are terrible lapses. After Rochester's cry, "'Jane, my little +darling ... If you were mad, do you think I should hate you,'" he +elaborates his idea and he is impossible: "'Your mind is my treasure, +and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my +arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in +fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that +woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace at least as +fond as it would be restrictive.'" + +And in the final scene of temptation there is a most curious mingling of +reality and unreality, of the passion which is poetry, and the poetry +which is not passion. + +"'Never,' said he, as he ground his teeth, 'never was anything so frail, +and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!' And he shook me +with the force of his hold. 'I could bend her with my finger and thumb; +and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? +Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out +of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph. +Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful +creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only +let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate +would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay +dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue +and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself, you +could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would; +seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence--you +will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh, come, Jane, come!'" + +It is the crucial scene of the book; and with all its power, with all +its vehemence and passionate reality it is unconvincing. It stirs you +and it leaves you cold. + +The truth is that in _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Brontë had not mastered the +art of dialogue; and to the very last she was uncertain in her handling +of it. In this she is inferior to all the great novelists of her time; +inferior to some who were by no means great. She understood more of the +spiritual speech of passion than any woman before her, but she ignores +its actual expression, its violences, its reticences, its silences. In +her great scenes she is inspired one moment, and the next positively +handicapped by her passion and her poetry. In the same sentence she +rises to the sudden poignant _cri du coeur_, and sinks to the artifice +of metaphor. She knew that passion is poetry, and poetry is passion; +you might say it was all she knew, or ever cared to know. But her +language of passion is too often the language of written rather than of +spoken poetry, of poetry that is not poetry at all. It is as if she had +never heard the speech of living men and women. There is more actuality +in the half-French chatter of Adèle than in any of the high utterances +of Jane and Rochester. + +And yet her sense of the emotion behind the utterance is infallible, so +infallible that we accept the utterance. By some miracle, which is her +secret, the passion gets through. The illusion of reality is so strong +that it covers its own lapses. _Jane Eyre_ exists to prove that truth is +higher than actuality. + +"'Jane suits me: do I suit her?' + +"'To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.'" + +If no woman alive had ever said that, it would yet be true to Jane's +feeling. For it is a matter of the finest fibres, this passion of +Jane's, that set people wondering about Currer Bell, that inflamed Mrs. +Oliphant, as it inflamed the reviewer in _The Quarterly_, and made +Charles Kingsley think that Currer Bell was coarse. Their state of mind +is incredible to us now. For what did poor Jane do, after all? Nobody +could possibly have had more respect for the ten commandments. For all +Rochester's raging, the ten commandments remain exactly where they were. +It was inconceivable to Charlotte Brontë that any decent man or woman +could make hay, or wish to make hay, of them. And yet Jane offended. She +sinned against the unwritten code that ordains that a woman may lie till +she is purple in the face, but she must not, as a piece of gratuitous +information, tell a man she loves him; not, that is to say, in as many +words. She may declare her passion unmistakably in other ways. She may +exhibit every ignominious and sickly sign of it; her eyes may glow like +hot coals; she may tremble; she may flush and turn pale; she may do +almost anything, provided she does not speak the actual words. In +mid-Victorian times an enormous licence was allowed her. She might +faint, with perfect propriety, in public; she might become anaemic and +send for the doctor, and be ordered iron; she might fall ill, horridly +and visibly, and have to be taken away to spas and places to drink the +waters. Everybody knew what that meant. If she had shrieked her passion +on the housetops she could hardly have published it more violently; but +nobody minded. It was part of the mid-Victorian convention. + +Jane Eyre did none of these things. As soon as she was aware of her +passion for Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her +voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and +fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher +than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And +nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing +(poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with +the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was +the enormity that was never forgiven her. + +"'You'll like Ireland, I think,'" says Rochester in his torturing mood; +"'they are such kind-hearted people there.' + +"'It is a long way off, sir.' + +"'No matter, a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the +distance.' + +"'Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier.' + +"'From what, Jane?' + +"'From England and from Thornfield, and--' + +"'Well?' + +"'From _you_, sir.'" + +She had done it. She had said, or almost said the words. + +It just happened. There was magic in the orchard at Thornfield; there +was youth in her blood; and--"Jane, did you hear the nightingale singing +in that wood?" + +Still, she had done it. + +And she was the first heroine who had. Adultery, with which we are +fairly familiar, would have seemed a lesser sin. There may be +extenuating circumstances for the adulteress. There were extenuating +circumstances for Rochester. He could plead a wife who went on all +fours. There were no extenuating circumstances for little Jane. No use +for her to say that she was upset by the singing of the nightingale; +that it didn't matter what she said to Mr. Rochester when Mr. Rochester +was going to marry Blanche Ingram, anyway; that she only flung herself +at his head because she knew she couldn't hit it; that her plainness +gave her a certain licence, placing her beyond the code. Not a bit of +it. Jane's plainness was one thing that they had against her. Until her +time no heroine had been permitted to be plain. Jane's seizing of the +position was part of the general insolence of her behaviour. + +Jane's insolence was indeed unparalleled. Having done the deed she felt +no shame or sense of sin; she stood straight up and defended herself. +That showed that she was hardened. + +It certainly showed--Jane's refusal to be abject--that Jane was far +ahead of her age. + +"'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. +'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an +automaton?--a machine without feelings, and can bear to have my morsel +of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from +my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am +soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and +fully as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much +wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now +for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of +custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that +addresses'" ("Addresses"? oh, Jane!) "'your spirit; just as if both had +passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we +are!'" + +This, allowing for some slight difference in the phrasing, is twentieth +century. And it was this--Jane's behaviour in the orchard, and not +Rochester's behaviour in the past--that opened the door to the "imps of +evil meaning, polluting and defiling the domestic hearth." + +Still, though _The Quarterly_ censured Jane's behaviour, it was +Rochester who caused most of the trouble and the scandal by his +remarkable confessions. In a sense they _were_ remarkable. Seldom, +outside the pages of French fiction, had there been so lavish and public +a display of mistresses. And while it was agreed on all hands that +Rochester was incredible with his easy references to Céline and Giacinta +and Clara, still more incredible was it that a young woman in a country +parsonage should have realized so much as the existence of Clara and +Giacinta and Céline. But, when Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux invoked +Branwell and all his vices to account for Charlotte's experience, they +forgot that Charlotte had read Balzac,[A] and that Balzac is an +experience in himself. She had also read Moore's _Life of Byron_, and +really there is nothing in Rochester's confessions that Byron and a +little Balzac would not account for. So that they might just as well +have left poor Branwell in his grave. + +[Footnote A: I am wrong. Charlotte did not read Balzac till later, when +George Henry Lewes told her to. But there were those twenty "clever, +wicked, sophistical, and immoral French books" that she read in +eighteen-forty. They may have served her purpose better.] + +Indeed, it was the manner of Rochester's confession that gave away the +secret of Currer Bell's sex; her handling of it is so inadequate and +perfunctory. Rochester is at his worst and most improbable in the +telling of his tale. The tale in itself is one of Charlotte's clumsiest +contrivances for conveying necessary information. The alternate baldness +and exuberant, decorated, swaggering boldness (for Charlotte's style was +never bolder than when she was essaying the impossible) alone betrayed +the hand of an innocent woman. Curious that these makeshift passages +with their obviously second-hand material, their palpably alien _mise en +scène_, should ever have suggested a personal experience and provoked +_The Quarterly_ to its infamous and immortal utterance: "If we ascribe +the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to +one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of +her own sex." + +_The Quarterly_, to do it justice, argued that Currer Bell was a man, +for only a man would have betrayed such ignorance of feminine resources +as to make Jane Eyre, on a night alarm, "hurry on a frock and shawl". +The reasoning passed. Nobody saw that such a man would be as innocent as +any parson's daughter. Nobody pointed out that, as it happened, Currer +Bell had provided her dowagers with "vast white wrappers" on the second +night alarm. And, after all, the sex of _The Quarterly_ reviewer itself +remains a problem. Long ago Mr. Andrew Lang detected the work of two +hands in that famous article. You may say there were at least three. +There was, first, the genial reviewer of _Vanity Fair_, who revels in +the wickedness of Becky Sharpe, and who is going to revel in the +wickedness of Jane. Then suddenly some Mr. Brocklebank steps in, and you +get a "black-marble clergyman" on _Jane Eyre_. + +"We have said," says this person, "that this was the picture of a +natural heart. This, to our view, is the great and crying mischief of +the book. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate +and undisciplined spirit, the more dangerous to exhibit from that +prestige of principle and self-control, which is liable to dazzle the +eyes too much for it to observe the insufficient and unsound foundation +on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral +strength; but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law +unto itself.... She has inherited the worst sin of our fallen +nature--the sin of pride." + +Jane, you see, should have sinned to show her Christian humility. The +style, if not the reasoning, is pure Brocklebank. He does "not hesitate +to say that the tone of mind and thought, which has overthrown authority +and violated every code, human and divine, abroad, and fostered Chartism +and rebellion at home, is the same which has written _Jane Eyre_". + +Ellis and Acton (poor Acton!) Bell get it even stronger than that; and +then, suddenly again, you come on a report on the "Condition of +Governesses", palpably drawn up by a third person. For years Miss Rigby, +who was afterwards Lady Eastlake, got the credit for the whole absurd +performance, for she was known to have written the review on _Vanity +Fair_. What happened seems to have been that Miss Rigby set out in all +honesty to praise _Jane Eyre_. Then some infuriated person interfered +and stopped her. The article was torn from the unfortunate Miss Rigby +and given to Brocklebank, who used bits of her here and there. +Brocklebank, in his zeal, overdid his part, so the report on Governesses +was thrown in to give the whole thing an air of seriousness and +respectability. So that it is exceedingly doubtful whether, after all, +it was a woman's hand that dealt the blow. + +If Charlotte Brontë did not feel the effect of it to the end of her +life, she certainly suffered severely at the time. It was responsible +for that impassioned defence of Anne and Emily which she would have been +wiser to have left alone. + +It must be admitted that _Jane Eyre_ was an easy prey for the truculent +reviewer, for its faults were all on the surface, and its great +qualities lay deep. Deep as they were, they gripped the ordinary +uncritical reader, and they gripped the critic in spite of himself, so +that he bitterly resented being moved by a work so flagrantly and +obviously faulty. What was more, the passion of the book was so intense +that you were hardly aware of anything else, and its author's austere +respect for the ten commandments passed almost unobserved. + +But when her enemies accuse Charlotte Brontë of glorifying passion they +praise her unaware. Her glory is that she did glorify it. Until she +came, passion between man and woman had meant animal passion. Fielding +and Smollett had dealt with it solely on that footing. A woman's gentle, +legalized affection for her husband was one thing, and passion was +another. Thackeray and Dickens, on the whole, followed Fielding. To all +three of them passion is an affair wholly of the senses, temporary, +episodic, and therefore comparatively unimportant. Thackeray intimated +that he could have done more with it but for his fear of Mrs. Grundy. +Anyhow, passion was not a quality that could be given to a good woman; +and so the good women of Dickens and Thackeray are conspicuously +without it. And Jane Austen may be said to have also taken Fielding's +view. Therefore she was obliged to ignore passion. She gave it to one +vulgar woman, Lydia Bennett, and to one bad one, Mrs. Rushworth; and +having given it them, she turned her head away and refused to have +anything more to do with these young women. She was not alone in her +inability to "tackle passion". No respectable mid-Victorian novelist +could, when passion had so bad a name. + +And it was this thing, cast down, defiled, dragged in the mud, and +ignored because of its defilement, that Charlotte Brontë took and lifted +up. She washed it clean; she bathed it in the dew of the morning; she +baptized it in tears; she clothed it in light and flame; she showed it +for the divine, the beautiful, the utterly pure and radiant thing it is, +"the very sublime of faith, truth and devotion". She made it, this +spirit of fire and air, incarnate in the body of a woman who had no +sensual charm. Because of it little Jane became the parent of Caterina +and of Maggie Tulliver; and Shirley prepared the way for Meredith's +large-limbed, large-brained, large-hearted women. + +It was thus that Charlotte Brontë glorified passion. The passion that +she glorified being of the finest fibre, it was naturally not understood +by people whose fibres were not fine at all. + +It was George Henry Lewes (not a person of the finest fibre) who said of +_Jane Eyre_ that "the grand secret of its success ... as of all great +and lasting successes was its reality". In spite of crudities, +absurdities, impossibilities, it remains most singularly and startlingly +alive. In _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Brontë comes for the first time into her +kingdom of the inner life. She grasps the secret, unseen springs; in her +narrow range she is master of the psychology of passion and of +suffering, whether she is describing the agony of the child Jane shut +up in that terrible red room, or the anguish of the woman on the morning +of that wedding-day that brought no wedding. Or take the scene of Jane's +flight from Thornfield, or that other scene, unsurpassed in its passion +and tenderness, of her return to Rochester at Ferndean. + +"To this house I came just ere dark, on an evening marked by the +characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small, penetrating +rain.... Even within a very short distance of the manor-house you could +see nothing of it; so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood +about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, +and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of +close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest +aisle, between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I +followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on +and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was +visible.... At last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently +I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light, +distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying +walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a +space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a +semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad +gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of +the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the +windows were latticed and narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one +step led up to it.... It was still as a church on a week-day; the +pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible.... + +"I heard a movement--that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some +shape was about to issue from the grange. + +"It opened slowly; a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the +step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel +whether it rained. Dark as it was I had recognized him.... + +"His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in +his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that +reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous +to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes +cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson." + +Again--Rochester hears Jane's voice in the room where she comes to him. + +"'And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but +I must feel or my heart will stop and my brain burst.'... + +"He groped. I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine. + +"'Her very fingers!' he cried; 'her small, slight fingers! If so, there +must be more of her.' + +"The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my +shoulder--neck--wrist--I was entwined and gathered to him.... + +"I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept +back his hair from his brow and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to +rouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. + +"'It is you--is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?' + +"'I am.'" + +The scene as it stands is far from perfect; but only Charlotte Brontë +could sustain so strong an illusion of passion through so many lapses. +And all that passion counts for no more than half in the astounding +effect of reality she produces. Before _Jane Eyre_ there is no novel +written by a woman, with the one exception of _Wuthering Heights_, that +conveys so poignant an impression of surroundings, of things seen and +heard, of the earth and sky; of weather; of the aspects of houses and of +rooms. It suggests a positive exaltation of the senses of sound and +light, an ecstasy, an enchantment before the visible, tangible world. It +is not a matter of mere faithful observation (though few painters have +possessed so incorruptibly the innocence of the eye). It is an almost +supernatural intentness; sensation raised to the _n_th power. Take the +description of the awful red room at Gateshead. + +"A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of +deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two +large windows with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in +festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at +the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a +soft fawn colour, with a flush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the +toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly-polished old mahogany. Out of +these deep surrounding shades rose high and glared white the piled-up +mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles +counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair +near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and +looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.... Mr. Reed had been dead +nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in +state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and since +that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent +intrusion." + +Could anything be more horrible than that red room? Or take the +descriptions of the school at Lowood where the horror of pestilence +hangs over house and garden. Through all these Gateshead and Lowood +scenes Charlotte is unerring and absolute in her reality. + +Her very style, so uncertain in its rendering of human speech, becomes +flawless in such passages as this: "It was three o'clock; the +church-bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour +lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. +I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, +for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral +treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its +utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made +no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, +and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, +worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on +each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the +little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like +single russet leaves about to drop. + +"This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay.... I then turned +eastward. + +"On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but +brightening momently; she looked over Hay which, half lost in trees, +sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys; it was yet a mile distant, +but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. +My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I could +not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks +threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of +the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote. + +"A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so +far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp; a metallic clatter, +which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass +of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong +on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny +horizon, and blended clouds, where tint melts into tint. + +"The din sounded on the causeway...." + +Flawless this, too, of the sky after sunset: "Where the sun had gone +down in simple state--pure of the pomp of clouds--spread a solemn +purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one +point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still +softer, over half heaven." + +And this of her own moors: "There are great moors behind and on each +hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at +my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on +these roads: they stretch out east, west, north and south--white, broad, +lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and +wild to their very verge." + +She has given the secret of the moor country in a phrase: "I felt the +consecration of its loneliness." In that one line you have the real, the +undying Charlotte Brontë. + +It is such immortal things that make the difference between _Jane Eyre_ +and _The Professor_. So immeasurable is that difference that it almost +justifies the theorist in assuming an "experience" to account for it, an +experience falling between the dates of _The Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. +Unfortunately there was none; none in the sense cherished by the +researcher. Charlotte's letters are an unbroken record of those two +years that followed her return from Brussels. Her life is laid bare in +its long and cramped monotony, a life singularly empty of "experience". + +And yet an experience did come to her in that brief period. If the +researcher had not followed a false scent across the Channel, if his +_flair_ for tragic passion had not destroyed in him all sense of +proportion, he could not possibly have missed it; for it stared him in +the face, simple, obvious, inevitable. But miss it he certainly did. +Obsessed by his idea, he considered it a negligible circumstance that +Charlotte should have read _Wuthering Heights_ before she wrote _Jane +Eyre_. And yet, I think that, if anything woke Charlotte up, it was +that. Until then, however great her certainty of her own genius, she did +not know how far she could trust it, how far it would be safe to let +imagination go. Appalled by the spectacle of its excesses, she had +divorced imagination from the real. But Emily knew none of these cold +deliberations born of fear. _Wuthering Heights_ was the fruit of a +divine freedom, a divine unconsciousness. It is not possible that +Charlotte, of all people, should have read _Wuthering Heights_ without a +shock of enlightenment; that she should not have compared it with her +own bloodless work; that she should not have felt the wrong done to her +genius by her self-repression. Emily had dared to be herself; _she_ had +not been afraid of her own passion; she had had no method; she had +accomplished a stupendous thing without knowing it, by simply letting +herself go. And Charlotte, I think, said to herself, "That is what I +ought to have done. That is what I will do next time." And next time she +did it. The experience may seem insufficient, but it is of such +experiences that a great writer's life is largely made. And if you +_must_ have an influence to account for _Jane Eyre_, there is no need +to go abroad to look for it. There was influence enough in her own home. +These three Brontës, adoring each other, were intolerant of any other +influence; and the strongest spirit, which was Emily's, prevailed. To be +sure, no remonstrances from Emily or Charlotte could stop Anne in her +obstinate analysis of Walter Huntingdon; but it was some stray spark +from Emily that kindled Anne. As for Charlotte, her genius must have +quickened in her when her nerves thrilled to the shock of _Wuthering +Heights_. This, I know, is only another theory; but it has at least the +merit of its modesty. It is not offered as in the least accounting for, +or explaining, Charlotte's genius. It merely suggests with all possible +humility a likely cause of its release. Anyhow, it is a theory that does +Charlotte's genius no wrong, on which account it seems to me preferable +to any other. It is really no argument against it to say that Charlotte +never acknowledged her sister's influence, that she was indeed unaware +of it; for, in the first place, the stronger the spiritual tie between +them, the less likely was she to have been aware. In the second place, +it is not claimed that _Wuthering Heights_ was such an influence as the +"sojourn in Brussels" is said to have been--that it "made Miss Brontë an +author". It is not claimed that if there had been no _Wuthering Heights_ +and no Emily Brontë, there would have been no _Jane Eyre_; for to me +nothing can be more certain that whatever had, or had not happened, +Charlotte's genius would have found its way. + +Charlotte's genius indeed was so profoundly akin to Charlotte's nature +that its way, the way of its upward progress, was by violent impetus and +recoil. + +In _Shirley_ she revolts from the passion of _Jane Eyre_. She seems to +have written it to prove that there are other things. She had been stung +by _The Quarterly's_ attack, stung by rumour, stung by every adverse +thing that had been said. And yet not for a moment was she "influenced" +by her reviewers. It was more in defiance than in submission that she +answered them with _Shirley_. _Shirley_ was an answer to every criticism +that had yet been made. In _Shirley_ she forsook the one poor play of +hearts insurgent for the vast and varied movement of the world; social +upheavals, the clash of sects and castes, the first grim hand-to-hand +struggle between capital and labour, all are there. The book opens with +a drama, not of hearts but of artisans insurgent; frame-breakers, not +breakers of the marriage law. In sheer defiance she essays to render the +whole real world, the complex, many-threaded, many-coloured world; where +the tragic warp is woven with the bright comedy of curates. It is the +world of the beginnings; the world of the early nineteenth century that +she paints. A world with the immensity, the profundity, the darkness of +the brooding sea; where the spirit of a woman moves, troubling the +waters; for Charlotte Brontë has before her the stupendous vision of the +world as it was, as it yet is, and as it is to be. + +That world, as it existed from eighteen-twelve to Charlotte's own time, +eighteen-fifty, was not a place for a woman with a brain and a soul. +There was no career for any woman but marriage. If she missed it she +missed her place in the world, her prestige, and her privileges as a +woman. What was worse, she lost her individuality, and became a mere +piece of furniture, of disused, old-fashioned furniture, in her father's +or her brother's house. If she had a father or a brother there was no +escape for her from dependence on the male; and if she had none, if +there was no male about the house, her case was the more pitiable. And +the traditions of her upbringing were such that the real, vital things, +the things that mattered, were never mentioned in her presence. Religion +was the solitary exception; and religion had the reality and vitality +taken out of it by its dissociation with the rest of life. A woman in +these horrible conditions was only half alive. She had no energies, no +passions, no enthusiasms. Convention drained her of her life-blood. What +was left to her had no outlet; pent up in her, it bred weak, anaemic +substitutes for its natural issue, sentimentalism for passion, and +sensibility for the nerves of vision. This only applies, of course, to +the average woman. + +Charlotte Brontë was born with a horror of the world that had produced +this average woman, this creature of minute corruptions and hypocrisies. +She sent out _Jane Eyre_ to purify it with her passion. She sent out +_Shirley_ to destroy and rebuild it with her intellect. Little Jane was +a fiery portent. Shirley was a prophecy. She is modern to her +finger-tips, as modern as Meredith's great women: Diana, or Clara +Middleton, or Carinthia Jane. She was born fifty years before her time. + +This is partly owing to her creator's prophetic insight, partly to her +sheer truth to life. For Shirley was to a large extent a portrait of +Emily Brontë who was born before her time. + +It is Emily Brontë's spirit that burns in Shirley Keeldar; and it is the +spirit of Shirley Keeldar that gives life to the unwilling mass of this +vast novel. It is almost enough immortality for Shirley that she is the +only living and authentic portrait of Emily Brontë in her time. +Charlotte has given her the "wings that wealth can give", and they do +not matter. She has also given her the wings of Emily's adventurous +soul, the wealth of her inner life. + +"A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins; +unmingled--untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, +because by no human agency bestowed: the pure gift of God to His +creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her +experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all +verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence +angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her +soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it." + +"Her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes +it--" That was the secret of Emily's greatness, of her immeasurable +superiority to her sad sisters. + +And again: "In Shirley's nature prevailed at times an easy indolence: +there were periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy of hand and +eye--moments when her thoughts, her simple existence, the fact of the +world being around--and heaven above her, seemed to yield her such +fulness of happiness, that she did not need to lift a finger to increase +the joy. Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny +afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of +friendly umbrage: no society did she need but that of Caroline, and it +sufficed if she were within call; no spectacle did she ask but that of +the deep blue sky, and such cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across +its span; no sound but that of the bee's hum, the leaf's whisper." + +There are phrases in Louis Moore's diary that bring Emily Brontë +straight before us in her swift and vivid life. Shirley is "Sister of +the spotted, bright, quick-fiery leopard." "Pantheress!--beautiful +forest-born!--wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain. I +see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild +woods, and pinings after virgin freedom." "How evanescent, fugitive, +fitful she looked--slim and swift as a Northern streamer!" "... With +her long hair flowing full and wavy; with her noiseless step, her pale +cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, +spirit-like--a thing made of an element--the child of a breeze and a +flame--the daughter of ray and raindrop--a thing never to be overtaken, +arrested, fixed." + +Like Emily she is not "caught". "But if I were," she says, "do you know +what soothsayers I would consult?... The little Irish beggar that comes +barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the +wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a +crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee." + +And yet again: "She takes her sewing occasionally: but, by some +fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five +minutes at a time: her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce +threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs; perhaps she goes to +seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book, or older +china-topped work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment +indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she +recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; +perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular +view where Briarfield Church and Rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered +in trees. She has scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of +cambric, or square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and +strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to open +it for him; it is a hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to +the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is +replenished. Through the open kitchen-door the court is visible, all +sunny and gay, and peopled with turkeys and their poults, peahens and +their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea fowls, and a bright variety of pure +white and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon-plumed pigeons. +Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, +and she stands on the doorstep scattering crumbs: around her throng her +eager, plump, happy, feathered vassals.... There are perhaps some little +calves, some little new-yeaned lambs--it may be twins, whose mothers +have rejected them: Miss Keeldar ... must permit herself the treat of +feeding them with her own hand." + +Like Emily she is impatient of rituals and creeds. Like Emily she adores +the Earth. Not one of Charlotte's women except Shirley could have +chanted that great prose hymn of adoration in which Earth worships and +is worshipped. "'Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling +before those red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her +altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in +deserts, for lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods.... I see her, +and I will tell you what she is like: she is like what Eve was when she +and Adam stood alone on earth.' 'And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley,' +says Caroline, and Shirley answers: 'No, by the pure Mother of God, she +is not.' Shirley is half a Pagan. She would beg to remind Milton 'that +the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: +from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus.... I +say, there were giants on the earth in those days, giants that strove to +scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this +world yielded daring which could contend with Omnipotence; the strength +which could bear a thousand years of bondage--the vitality which could +feed that vulture death through uncounted ages--the unexhausted life +and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after +millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring +forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart +whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the +undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.'... + +"'You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.' + +"'I saw--I now see--a woman-Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the +outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil, white as +an avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of +lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple +like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her +steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear--they are deep as +lakes--they are lifted and full of worship--they tremble with the +softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse +of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark +gathers: she reclines her bosom on the edge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty +hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face, she speaks with +God.'" + +It is the living sister speaking for the dead; for Charlotte herself had +little of Emily's fine Paganism. But for one moment, in this lyric +passage, her soul echoes the very soul of Emily as she gathers round her +all the powers and splendours (and some, alas, of the fatal rhetoric) of +her prose to do her honour. + +It is not only in the large figure of the Titan Shirley that Charlotte +Brontë shows her strength. She has learnt to draw her minor masculine +characters with more of insight and of accuracy--Caroline Helstone, the +Yorkes, Robert Moore, Mr. Helstone, Joe Scott, and Barraclough, the +"joined Methody". With a few strokes they stand out living. She has +acquired more of the art of dialogue. She is a past master of dialect, +of the racy, native speech of these men. Not only is Mr. Yorke painted +with unerring power and faithfulness in every detail of his harsh and +vigorous personality, but there is no single lapse from nature when he +is speaking. The curates only excepted, Charlotte never swerves from +this fidelity. But when she is handling her curates, it is a savage and +utterly inartistic humour that inspires her. You feel that she is not +exercising the art of comedy, but relieving her own intolerable boredom +and irritation. No object could well be more innocent, and more +appealing in its innocence, than little Mr. Sweeting, curate of +Nunnerly. Mr. Sweeting at the tea-table, "having a dish of tarts before +him, and marmalade and crumpet upon his plate", should have moved the +Comic Spirit to tears of gentleness. + +Curates apart, two-thirds of _Shirley_ are written with an unerring +devotion to the real, to the very actual. They have not, for all that, +the profound reality of _Jane Eyre_. The events are confused, somehow; +the atmosphere is confusing; the northern background is drawn with a +certain hardness and apathy of touch; the large outlines are obscured, +delicate colours sharpened; it is hard and yet blurred, like a bad steel +engraving. Charlotte's senses, so intensely, so supernaturally alive in +_Jane Eyre_, are only passably awake in _Shirley_. It has some of the +dulness of _The Professor_, as it has more than its sober rightness. +But, for three-and-twenty chapters, the sobriety, the rightness triumph. +There are no improbabilities, no flights of imagination, none of the +fine language which was the shame when it was not the glory of _Jane +Eyre_. + +Then suddenly there comes a break--a cleavage. It comes with that +Chapter Twenty-four, which is headed "The Valley of the Shadow of +Death". It was written in the first months after Emily Brontë's death. + +From that point Charlotte's level strength deserts her. Ever after, she +falls and soars, and soars and falls again. There is a return to the +manner of _Jane Eyre_, the manner of Charlotte when she is deeply moved; +there is at times a relapse to Jane Eyre's worst manner. You get it at +once in "The Valley of the Shadow" chapter, in the scene of Caroline's +love-sick delirium. + +"'But he will not know I am ill till I am gone; and he will come when +they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold and stiff. + +"'What can my departed soul feel then? Can it see or know what happens +to the clay? Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living +flesh? Can the dead at all revisit those they leave? Can they come in +the elements? Will wind, water, fire lend me a path to Moore? + +"'Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulate sometimes--sings +as I have lately heard it sing at night--or passes the casement sobbing, +as if for sorrow to come? Does nothing then haunt it--nothing inspire +it?'" + +The awful improbability of Caroline is more striking because of its +contrast with the inspired rightness of the scene of Cathy's delirium in +_Wuthering Heights_. It is Charlotte feebly echoing Emily, and going +more and more wrong up to her peroration. + +Delirious Caroline wonders: "'What is that electricity they speak of, +whose changes make us well or ill; whose lack or excess blasts; whose +even balance revives?...' + +"'_Where_ is the other world? In _what_ will another life consist? Why +do I ask? Have I not cause to think that the hour is hasting but too +fast when the veil must be rent for me? Do I not know the Grand Mystery +is likely to break prematurely on me? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I +confide; whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from +early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands! Sustain me through +the ordeal I dread and must undergo! Give me strength! Give me patience! +Give me--oh, _give me_ FAITH!'" + +Jane Eyre has done worse than that, so has Rochester; but somehow, when +they were doing their worst with it, they got their passion through. +There is no live passion behind this speech of Caroline's, with its wild +stress of italics and of capitals. What passion there was in Charlotte +when she conceived Caroline was killed by Emily's death. + +And Mrs. Pryor, revealing herself to Caroline, is even more terrible. +She has all the worst vices of Charlotte's dramatic style. Mrs. Pryor +calls to the spirit of Caroline's dead father: "'James, slumber +peacefully! See, your terrible debt is cancelled! Look! I wipe out the +long, black account with my own hand! James, your child atones: this +living likeness of you--this thing with your perfect features--this one +good gift you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart and +tenderly called me "mother". Husband, rest forgiven.'" + +Even Robert Moore, otherwise almost a masterpiece, becomes improbable +when, in his great scene, Shirley refuses him. When Mr. Yorke asks him +what has gone wrong he replies: "The machinery of all my nature; the +whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the +heart, is fit to burst." + +Shirley herself is impossible with her "Lucifer, Star of the Morning, +thou art fallen," and her speech to her mercenary uncle: "Sir, your +god, your great Bell, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a +demon." + +What is worse than all, Louis Moore--Louis, the hero, Louis, the master +of passion, is a failure. He is Charlotte Brontë's most terrible, most +glaring failure. It is not true that Charlotte could not draw men, or +that she drew them all alike; Robert Moore, the hard-headed man of +business, the man of will and purpose, who never gives up, is not only +almost a masterpiece but a spontaneous masterpiece, one of the first +examples of his kind. But there is no blood in Louis' veins, no virility +in his swarthy body. He is the most unspeakable of schoolmasters. Yet +Charlotte lavished on this puppet half the wealth of her imagination. +She flings phrase after perfect phrase to him to cover himself +with--some of her best things have been given to Louis Moore to utter; +but they do not make him live. Again, she strangles him in his own +rhetoric. The courtship of Louis Moore and Shirley will not compare with +that of Jane and Rochester. There is no nightingale singing in their +wood. + +Yet, for all that, _Shirley_ comes very near to being Charlotte Brontë's +masterpiece. It is inspired from first to last with a great intention +and a great idea. It shows a vision of reality wider than her grasp. Its +faults, like the faults of _Jane Eyre_, are all on the surface, only +there is more surface in _Shirley_. If it has not _Jane Eyre's_ +commanding passion, it has a vaster sweep. It was literally the first +attempt in literature to give to woman her right place in the world. + +From first to last there is not a page or a line in it that justifies +the malignant criticism of Mrs. Oliphant. Caroline Helstone does not +justify it. She is no window-gazing virgin on the look-out, in love +already before the man has come. She is a young girl, very naturally in +love with a man whom she has known for years, who is always on the spot. +As for Shirley, she flung herself with all the vehemence of her +prophetic soul on the hypocritical convention that would make every +woman dependent on some man, and at the same time despises her for the +possession of her natural instincts. And Caroline followed her. "I +observe that to such grievances as society cannot cure, it usually +forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn: this scorn being only a sort of +tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of +ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing +on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an +obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and +shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless and +unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the +world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents.... +Men of England! Look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, +dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating +to sour old maids--envious, back-biting, wretched, because life is a +desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce +modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and +consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied. Fathers, cannot +you alter these things?... You would wish to be proud of your daughters, +and not to blush for them, then seek for them an interest and an +occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the +mischief-making talebearer. Keep your girl's minds narrow and +degraded--they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace +to you: give them scope and work--they will be your gayest companions in +health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in +old age." + +That is the argument from fathers, and it comes from Caroline Helstone, +not from Shirley. And the fact that Caroline married Robert Moore, and +Shirley fell in love when her hour came (and with Louis Moore, too!) +does not diminish the force or the sincerity or the truth of the tirade. + +_Shirley_ may not be a great novel; but it is a great prophetic book. +Shirley's vision of the woman kneeling on the hills serves for more than +Emily Brontë's vision of Hertha and Demeter, of Eve, the Earth-mother, +"the mighty and mystical parent"; it is Charlotte Brontë's vindication +of Eve, her vision of woman as she is to be. She faced the world once +for all with her vision: "I see her," she said, "and I will tell you +what she is like." + +Mrs. Oliphant did not see the woman kneeling on the hills. Neither +George Eliot nor Mrs. Gaskell saw her. They could not possibly have told +the world what she was like. It is part of Charlotte Brontë's superior +greatness that she saw. + + * * * * * + +You do not see that woman in _Villette_. She has passed with the +splendour of Charlotte's vision of the world. The world in _Villette_ is +narrowed to a Pensionnat de Demoiselles, and centred in the heart of one +woman. And never, not even in _Jane Eyre_, and certainly not in +_Shirley_, did Charlotte Brontë achieve such mastery of reality, and +with it such mastery of herself. _Villette_ is the final triumph of her +genius over the elements that warred in her. It shows the movement of +her genius, which was always by impulse and recoil. In _The Professor_ +she abjured, in the interests of reality, the "imagination" of her +youth. In _Jane Eyre_ she was urged forward by the released impetus of +the forces she repressed. In _Shirley_ they are still struggling with +her sense of the sober and the sane reality; the book is torn to +fragments in the struggle, and in the end imagination riots. + +But in _Villette_ there are none of these battlings and rendings, these +Titanic upheavals and subsidences. Charlotte Brontë's imagination, and +her sense of the real, are in process of fusion. There are few novels in +which an imagination so supreme is wedded to so vivid a vision of +actuality. It may be said that Charlotte Brontë never achieved positive +actuality before. The Pensionnat de Demoiselles is almost as visibly and +palpably actual as the Maison Vauquer in _Père Goriot_. It is a return +to the method of experience with a vengeance. Charlotte's success, +indeed, was so stunning that for all but sixty years _Villette_ has +passed for a _roman à clef_, the novel, not only of experience, but of +personal experience. There was a certain plausibility in that view. The +characters could all be easily recognized. And when Dr. John was +identified with Mr. George Smith, and his mother with Mr. George Smith's +mother, and Madame Beck with Madame Héger, and M. Paul Emanuel with +Madame Héger's husband, the inference was irresistible: Lucy Snowe was, +and could only be, Charlotte Brontë. And as the figure of M. Paul +Emanuel was ten times more vivid and convincing than that of Rochester, +so all that applied to Jane Eyre applied with ten times more force to +Lucy. In _Villette_ Charlotte Brontë was considered to have given +herself hopelessly away. + +I have tried to show that this view cannot stand before an unprejudiced +examination of her life and letters. No need to go into all that again. +On the evidence, Charlotte seems at the best of times to have fallen in +love with difficulty; and she most certainly was no more in love with +"the little man", Paul Emanuel, than she was with "the little man", Mr. +Taylor. The really important and interesting point is that, if she had +been, if he had thus obtained the reality with which passion endows its +object, her imagination would have had no use for him; its work would +have been done for it. + +To the supreme artist the order of the actual event is one thing, and +the order of creation is another. Their lines may start from the same +point in the actual, they may touch again and again, but they are not +the same, and they cannot run exactly parallel. There must always be +this difference between the actual thing and the thing drawn from it, +however closely, that each is embedded and enmeshed in a different +context. For a character in a novel to be alive it must have grown; and +to have grown it must have followed its own line of evolution, +inevitably and in its own medium; and that, whether or not it has been +"taken", as they say, "from life". The more alive it is the less likely +is it to have been "taken", to have been seized, hauled by the scruff of +its neck out of the dense web of the actual. All that the supreme artist +wants is what Charlotte Brontë called "the germ of the real", by which +she meant the germ of the actual. He does not want the alien, developed +thing, standing in its own medium ready-made. Charlotte Brontë said that +the character of Dr. John was a failure because it lacked the germ of +the real. She should have said that it lacked the germ of many reals; it +is so obviously drawn from incomplete observation of a single instance. +I am inclined to think that she did "take" Dr. John. And whenever +Charlotte Brontë "took" a character, as she took the unfortunate curates +and Mr. St. John Rivers, the result was failure. + +No supreme work of art was ever "taken". It was begotten and born and +grown, the offspring of faithful love between the soul of the artist and +reality. The artist must bring to his "experience" as much as he takes +from it. The dignity of Nature is all against these violences and +robberies of art. She hides her deepest secret from the marauder, and +yields it to the lover who brings to her the fire of his own soul. + +And that fire of her own soul was what Charlotte Brontë brought to her +supreme creations. It was certainly what she brought to Paul Emanuel. +Impossible to believe that M. Héger gave her more than one or two of the +germs of M. Paul. Personally, I can only see the respectable M. Héger as +a man whose very essence was a certain impassivity and phlegm under the +appearance of a temperament. Choleric he was, with the superficial and +temporary choler of the schoolmaster. A schoolmaster gifted with the +most extraordinary, the most marvellous, the most arresting faculty for +making faces, a faculty which in an Englishman would have argued him a +perfect volcano of erratic temperament. But I more than suspect that +when it came to temperament M. Héger took it out in faces; that he was +nothing more than a benevolent, sentimental, passably intellectual +bourgeois; but bourgeois to the core. Whereas, look at M. Paul! No +wonder that with that tame and solid stuff before her it took even +Charlotte Brontë's fiery spirit nine years (torturing the unwilling +dross that checked its flight) before it could create Paul Emanuel. +Because of her long work on him he is at once the most real and the best +imagined of her characters. + +I admit that in the drawing of many of her minor characters she seems to +have relied upon very close and intimate observation of the living +model. But in none of her minor characters is she at grips with the +reality that, for her, passion is. Charlotte refused to give heroic rank +to persons she had merely observed; she would not exalt them to the +dignity of passion. Her imagination could not work on them to that +extent. (That is partly why Caroline's delirium is so palpably "faked".) +Even in her portrait of the heroic Shirley, who was frankly "taken" from +her sister Emily, she achieved the likeness mainly by the artifice of +unlikeness, by removing Shirley Keeldar into a life in which Emily +Brontë had never played a part, whereby Shirley became for her a +separate person. (You cannot by any stretch of the imagination see Emily +falling in love with the schoolmaster, Louis Moore.) + +Lest there should be any doubt on the subject, Charlotte herself +explained to Mrs. Gaskell how her imagination worked. "I asked her," +Mrs. Gaskell says, "whether she had ever taken opium, as the description +given of its effects in _Villette_ was so exactly like what I had +experienced--vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the +outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied that +she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but +that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to +describe anything that had not fallen within her own experience; she had +thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling +asleep--wondering what it was like, or how it would be--till at length, +sometimes after her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, +she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had +in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word +for word, as it happened." + +To a mind like that the germ of the actual was enough. Charlotte +Brontë's genius, in fact, was ardently impatient of the actual: it cared +only for its own. At the least hint from experience it was off. A +glance, a gesture of M. Héger's was enough to fire it to the conception +of Paul Emanuel. He had only to say a kind word to her, to leave a book +or a box of bon-bons in her desk (if he _did_ leave bon-bons) for +Charlotte's fire to work on him. She had only to say to herself, "This +little man is adorable in friendship; I wonder what he would be like in +love," and she saw that he would be something, though not altogether, +like Paul Emanuel. She had only to feel a pang of half-remorseful, +half-humorous affection for him, and she knew what Lucy felt like in her +love-sick agony. As for Madame Héger, Madame's purely episodic jealousy, +her habits of surveillance, her small inscrutabilities of behaviour, +became the fury, the treachery, the perfidy of Madame Beck. For +treachery and perfidy, and agony and passion, were what Charlotte wanted +for _Villette_. + +And yet it is true that _Villette_ is a novel of experience, owing its +conspicuous qualities very much to observation. After all, a +contemporary novel cannot be made altogether out of the fire of the +great writer's soul. It is because Charlotte Brontë relied too much on +the fire of her own soul that in _Jane Eyre_ and parts of _Shirley_ she +missed that unique expression of actuality which, over and over again, +she accomplished in _Villette_. For the expression of a social _milieu_, +for manners, for the dialogue of ordinary use, for the whole detail of +the speech characteristic of an individual and a type, for the right +accent and pitch, for all the vanishing shades and aspects of the +temporary and the particular, the greatest and the fieriest writer is at +the mercy of observation and experience. It was her final mastery of +these things that made it possible to praise Charlotte Brontë's powers +of observation at the expense of her genius; and this mainly because of +M. Paul. + +No offspring of genius was ever more alive, more rich in individuality, +than M. Paul. He is alive and he is adorable, in his _paletot_ and +_bonnet grec_, from the moment when he drags Lucy up three pairs of +stairs to the solitary and lofty attic and locks her in, to that other +moment when he brings her to the little house that he has prepared for +her. Whenever he appears there is pure radiant comedy, and pathos as +pure. It is in this utter purity, this transparent simplicity, that +_Villette_ is great. There is not one jarring note in any of the +delicious dialogues between Lucy and M. Paul, not one of those passages +which must be erased if quotation is not to fail of its effect. Take the +scene where Lucy breaks M. Paul's spectacles. + +"A score of times ere now I had seen them fall and receive no +damage--this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so +fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star. + +"Now, indeed, dismay seized me--dismay and regret. I knew the value of +these _lunettes_: M. Paul's sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and +these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I +picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened +through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think +I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look the +bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak. + +"'_Là_!' he said: '_me voilà veuf de mes lunettes_! I think that +Mademoiselle Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply +earned; she trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress, +traitress! You are resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your +hands!' + +"I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering and +furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had +seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not +angry--not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of +clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint." + +Take the "Watchguard" scene. + +"M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I +said I was making a watchguard. He asked, 'For whom?' And I answered, +'For a gentleman--one of my friends.'" + +Whereupon M. Paul flies into a passion, and accuses Lucy of behaving to +him, "'With what pungent vivacities--what an impetus of mutiny--what a +_fougue_ of injustice.'... '_Chut! à l'instant!_ There! there I +went--_vive comme la poudre_.' He was sorry--he was very sorry: for my +sake he grieved over the hopeless peculiarity. This _emportement_, this +_chaleur_--generous, perhaps, but excessive--would yet, he feared, do me +a mischief. It was a pity. I was not--he believed, in his soul--wholly +without good qualities; and would I but hear reason, and be more sedate, +more sober, less _en l'air_, less _coquette_, less taken by show, less +prone to set an undue value on outside excellence--to make much of the +attentions of people remarkable chiefly for so many feet of stature, +_des couleurs de poupée, un nez plus ou moins bien fait_, and an +enormous amount of fatuity--I might yet prove a useful, perhaps an +exemplary character. But, as it was----And here the little man's voice +was for a moment choked. + +"I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing +word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so +odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd. + +"I thought he had nearly done: but no, he sat down that he might go on +at his ease. + +"'While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger +for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had +noticed in my dress.'" + + * * * * * + +"'And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, monsieur, you would +necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?' holding up +my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a +groan--I suppose over my levity. + +"After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the +chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired: + +"'Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me +entirely detest him?' + +"I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don't +think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good night on +friendly terms: and even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned +back just to explain that he would not be understood to speak in entire +condemnation of the scarlet dress.'... + +"'And the flowers under my bonnet, monsieur?' I asked. 'They are very +little ones.' + +"'Keep them little, then,' said he. 'Permit them not to become +full-blown.' + +"'And the bow, monsieur--the bit of ribbon?' + +"'_Va pour le ruban_!' was the propitious answer. + +"And so we settled it." + +That is good; and when Lucy presents the watchguard it is better still. + +"He looked at the box: I saw its clear and warm tint, and bright azure +circlet, pleased his eyes. I told him to open it. + +"'My initials!' said he, indicating the letters in the lid. 'Who told +you I was called Carl David?' + +"'A little bird, monsieur.' + +"'Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing +when needful.' + +"He took out the chain--a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with +silk and sparkling with beads. He liked that too--admired it artlessly, +like a child. + +"'For me?' + +"'Yes, for you.' + +"'This is the thing you were working at last night?' + +"'The same.' + +"'You finished it this morning?' + +"'I did.' + +"'You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?' + +"'Undoubtedly.' + +"'And offered on my fête-day?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'This purpose continued as you wove it?' + +"'Again I assented.' + +"'Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion--saying, +this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the +adornment of another?' + +"'By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.' + +"'This object is _all_ mine?' + +"'That object is yours entirely.' + +"Straightway monsieur opened his paletot, arranged the guard splendidly +across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he +could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought +decorative.... + +"'_À present c'est un fait accompli_,' said he, readjusting his +paletot...." + +To the last gesture of Monsieur it is superb. + +I have taken those scenes because they are of crucial importance as +indications of what Charlotte Brontë was doing in _Villette_, and yet +would do. They show not only an enormous advance in technique, but a +sense of the situation, of the _scène à faire_, which is entirely or +almost entirely lacking in her earlier work. + +If there be degrees in reality, Lucy and Pauline de Bassompierre are +only less real than M. Paul. And by some miracle their reality is not +diminished by Charlotte Brontë's singular change of intention with +regard to these two. Little Polly, the child of the beginning, the +inscrutable creature of nerves, exquisitely sensitive to pain, fretting +her heart out in love for her father and for Graham Bretton, is hardly +recognizable in Pauline, Countess de Bassompierre. She has preserved +only her fragility, her fastidiousness, her little air of +inaccessibility. Polly is obviously predestined to that profound and +tragic suffering which is Lucy Snowe's. + +"I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her head on her +hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of pocket-handkerchief +from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I heard her weep. Other +children in grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or restraint, but +this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her emotion." + +Again (Polly is parted from her father): "When the street-door closed, +she dropped on her knees at a chair with a cry--'Papa!' + +"It was low and long; a sort of 'why hast thou forsaken me?' During an +ensuing space of some minutes I perceived she endured agony. She went +through, in that brief interval of her infant life, emotions such as +some never feel; it was in her constitution: she would have more of such +instants if she lived." + +Polly is contrasted with the cold and disagreeable Lucy. "I, Lucy Snowe, +was calm," Lucy says when she records that agony. The effect she gives, +of something creepily insensitive and most unpleasant, is unmistakable +in these early chapters. She watches Polly with a cold, analytic eye. +"These sudden, dangerous natures--sensitive as they are called--offer +many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured +from participation in their vagaries." When Polly, charming Polly, waits +on her father at the tea-table, Lucy is impervious to her tiny charm. +"Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body." When Graham +Bretton repulses Polly, Lucy has some thoughts of "improving the +occasion by inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had +ever a tolerable stock ready for application." + +There is no sign in the beginning that this detestable Lucy is to be +heroine. But in Chapter Four Polly disappears and Lucy takes her place +and plays her part. The child Polly had a suffering and passionate +heart, for all her little air of fastidiousness and inaccessibility. It +is the suffering and passionate heart of Polly that beats in Lucy of the +Pensionnat. There is only enough of the original Lucy left to sit in +judgment on Ginevra Fanshawe and "the Parisienne". + +The child Polly had an Imagination. "'Miss Snowe,' said she in a +whisper, 'this is a wonderful book ... it tells about distant countries, +a long, long way from England, which no traveller can reach without +sailing thousands of miles over the sea.... Here is a picture of +thousands gathered in a desolate place--a plain spread with sand.... And +here are pictures more stranger than that. There is the wonderful Great +Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady with a foot littler than mine. +There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here--most strange of all--is a +land of ice and snow without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this +land they found some mammoth bones; there are no mammoths now. You don't +know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty +goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not +a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes if I met one in +a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it +would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a +grasshopper in a hay-field without knowing it.'" + +It is Polly's Imagination that appears again in Lucy's "Creative +Impulse". "I with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most +capricious, the most maddening of masters ... a deity which sometimes, +under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when +questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be +found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark +Baal with carven lips and blank eyeballs, and breast like the stone face +of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some +long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream +of electricity, the irrational Demon would awake unsolicited, would stir +strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a perturbed Dagon, +calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim +for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstances or +scene--rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, +perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to +give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the +desperate listener even a miserable remnant--yielding it sordidly, as +though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark +veins." + +That is Lucy. But when Polly reappears fitfully as Pauline de +Bassompierre, she is an ordinary, fastidious little lady without a spark +of imagination or of passion. + +Now in the first three chapters of _Villette_, Charlotte Brontë +concentrated all her strength and all her art on the portrait of little +Polly. The portrait of little Polly is drawn with the most delicate care +and tender comprehension, and the most vivid and entire reality. I +cannot agree with Mr. Swinburne that George Eliot, with her Totty and +Eppie and Lillo, showed a closer observation of the ways, or a more +perfect understanding of the heart of a child. Only little Maggie +Tulliver can stand beside little Polly in _Villette_. She is an answer +to every critic, from Mr. Swinburne downwards, who maintains that +Charlotte Brontë could not draw children. + +But Lucy at fourteen is drawn with slight and grudging strokes, +sufficient for the minor part she is evidently to play. Lucy at Bretton +is a mere foil to little Polly. Charlotte Brontë distinctly stated in +her letters that she did not care for Miss Snowe. "Lucy must not marry +Dr. John; he is far too youthful, handsome, bright-spirited, and +sweet-tempered; he is a 'curled darling' of Nature and of fortune, and +must draw a prize in life's lottery. His wife must be young, rich, +pretty; he must be made very happy indeed. If Lucy marries anybody, it +must be the Professor--a man in whom there is much to forgive, much to +'put up with'. But I am not leniently disposed towards Miss Frost: from +the beginning I never meant to appoint her lines in pleasant places." +"As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that +she should not occupy the pedestal to which Jane Eyre was raised by some +injudicious admirers. She is where I meant her to be, and where no +charge of self-laudation can touch her." + +But Lucy is _not_ altogether where she was meant to be. When she +reappears at the Pensionnat it is with "flame in her soul and lightning +in her eyes". She reminds M. Paul "of a young she wild creature, new +caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first +entrance of the breaker-in". + +"'You look,' said he, 'like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet +poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.'" + +There is no inconsistency in this. Women before now have hidden a soul +like a furnace under coldness and unpleasantness, and smothered +shrieking nerves under an appearance of apathy. Lucy Snowe is one of +them. As far as she goes, Lucy at Bretton is profoundly consistent with +Lucy in _Villette_. It is not Lucy's volcanic outbreaks in the +Pensionnat that do violence to her creator's original intention. It is +the debasement of Polly and the exaltation of Lucy to her tragic rôle, +the endowment of Lucy with Polly's rarest qualities, to the utter +impoverishment of Pauline de Bassompierre. Polly in _Villette_ is a mere +foil to Lucy. + +Having lavished such care and love on Polly, Charlotte Brontë could not +possibly have meant to debase her and efface her. How then did it happen +that Polly was debased and Lucy sublimely exalted? + +It happened, I think, partly because for the first time Charlotte Brontë +created a real living man. The reality of M. Paul Emanuel was too +strong both for Lucy and for Charlotte Brontë. From the moment when he +seized her and dragged her to the garret he made Lucy live as Charlotte +Brontë had never contemplated her living. He made her live to the utter +exclusion and extinction of Pauline de Bassompierre. + +And "the despotic little man" dominates the book to an extent that +Charlotte never contemplated either. Until the storm carried him out of +her sight, she was, I think, unaware of his dominion. Dr. John was her +hero. She told Mr. George Smith, his prototype, that she intended him +for the most beautiful character in the book (which must have been very +gratifying to Mr. George Smith). He was the type she needed for her +purpose. But he does not "come off", if only for the reason that she is +consciously preoccupied with him. Dr. John was far more of an obsession +to her than this little man, Paul Emanuel, who was good enough for Lucy +Snowe. Pauline de Bassompierre was to be finished and perfected to match +the high finish and perfection of Dr. John. Yet neither Pauline nor Dr. +John "came off". Charlotte Brontë cared too much for them. But for Paul +Emanuel she did not care. He comes off in a triumph of the detached, +divinely free "Creative Impulse". + +Charlotte, with all her schemes, is delivered over to her genius from +the moment when Lucy settles in Villette. To Charlotte's inexperience +Brussels was a perfect hotbed for the germs of the real. That, I think, +can be admitted without subscribing to the view that it was anything +more. Once in the Pensionnat, Lucy entered an atmosphere of the most +intense reality. From that point onward the book is literally inspired +by the sense of atmosphere, that sense to which experience brings the +stuff to work on. All Charlotte's experience and her suffering is there, +changed, intensified, transmuted to an experience and a suffering which +were not hers. + +This matured sense of actuality is shown again in the drawing of the +minor characters. There is a certain vindictiveness about the portrait +of Ginevra Fanshawe, a touch of that fierce, intolerant temper that +caused Blanche Ingram to be strangled by the hands of her creator. +Ginevra is not strangled. She lives splendidly; she flourishes in an +opulence of detail. + +Experience may have partly accounted for Ginevra. It could hardly have +accounted for the little de Hamel, and he is perfect as far as he goes. + +It is because of this increasing mastery, this new power in handling +unsympathetic types, because, in short, of its all round excellence, +that _Villette_ must count as Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece. It is +marvellous that within such limits she should have attained such +comparative catholicity of vision. It is not the vast vision of +_Shirley_, prophetic and inspired, and a little ineffectual. It is the +lucid, sober, unobstructed gaze of a more accomplished artist, the +artist whose craving for "reality" is satisfied; the artist who is +gradually extending the limits of his art. When Charlotte Brontë wrote +_Jane Eyre_ she could not appreciate Jane Austen; she wondered why +George Henry Lewes liked her so much. She objected to Jane Austen +because there was no passion in her, and therefore no poetry and no +reality. When she wrote _Shirley_ she had seen that passion was not +everything; there were other things, very high realities, that were not +passion. By the time she wrote _Villette_ she saw, not only that there +are other things, but that passion is the rarest thing on earth. It does +not enter into the life of ordinary people like Dr. John, and Madame +Beck, and Ginevra Fanshawe. + +In accordance with this tendency to level up, her style in _Villette_ +attains a more even and a more certain excellence. Her flights are few; +so are her lapses. Her fearful tendency to rhetoric is almost gone. Gone +too are the purple patches; but there is everywhere delicate colour +under a vivid light. But there are countless passages which show the +perfection to which she could bring her old imaginative style. Take the +scene where Lucy, under the influence of opium, goes into Villette _en +fête_. + +"The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame had over-charged or +under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead of +stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought--to reverie +peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their +bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons.... + +"I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal +Haute-Ville; thence the music I heard certainly floated; it was hushed +now, but it might rewaken. I went on: neither band nor bell-music came +to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong tide, a +great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement gathered, +chimes pealed--to what was I coming? Entering on the level of a Grande +Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, plunged amidst a +gay, living, joyous crowd. + +"Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems +abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town by her own +flambeaux, beholds her own splendour--gay dresses, grand equipage, fine +horses and gallant riders, throng the bright streets. I see even scores +of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams." + +This is only beaten by that lyric passage that ends _Villette_; that +sonorous dirge that rings high above all pathos, which is somehow a song +of triumph, inspired by the whole power and splendour and magnificence +of storm and death. + +"The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; +but--he is coming. + +"Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind +takes its autumn moan; but--he is coming. + +"The skies hang full and dark--a rack sails from the west; the clouds +cast themselves into strange forms--arches and broad radiations; there +rise resplendent mornings--glorious, royal, purple, as monarch in his +state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at +its thickest--so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some +signs of the sky, I have noted them ever since childhood. God, watch +that sail! Oh, guard it! + +"The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--'keening' at every +window! It will rise--it will swell--it shrieks out long: wander as I +may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing +hours make it strong; by midnight all sleepless watchers hear and fear a +wild south-west storm. + +"That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the +Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had +gorged their fill of substance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest +had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was +thunder--the tremor of whose plumes was storm." + + * * * * * + +After _Villette_, the _Last Sketch_, the _Fragment of Emma_; that +fragment which Charlotte Brontë read to her husband not long before her +death. All he said was, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." + +The critics have fulfilled his cautious prophecy. The _Fragment_ passed +for one of those sad things of which the least said the better. It was +settled that Charlotte Brontë had written herself out, that if she had +lived she would have become more and more her own plagiarist. There is a +middle-aged lady in _Emma_, presumably conceived on the lines of Mrs. +Fairfax and Mrs. Pryor. There is a girls' school, which is only not +Lowood because it is so obviously Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor. There is a +schoolmistress with sandy hair and thin lips and a cold blue eye, +recalling Madame Beck, though there the likeness ceases. And in that +school, ill-treated by that schoolmistress, there is a little ugly, +suffering, deserted child. + +All this looks very much like repetition. But it does not shake my +private belief that _Emma_ is a fragment of what would have been as +great a novel as _Villette_. There are indications. There is Mr. Ellin, +who proves that Charlotte Brontë could create a live man of the finer +sort, an unexploited masculine type with no earthly resemblance to +Rochester or to Louis Moore or M. Paul. He is an unfinished sketch +rather than a portrait, but a sketch that would not too shamefully have +discredited Mr. Henry James. For there is a most modern fineness and +subtlety in _Emma_; and, for all its sketchy incompleteness, a peculiar +certainty of touch, an infallible sense of the significant action, the +revealing gesture. With a splendid economy of means, scenes, passages, +phrases, apparently slight, are charged with the most intense +psychological suggestion. When Mr. Ellin, summoned on urgent business by +Miss Wilcox, takes that preposterously long and leisurely round to get +to her, you know what is passing in the mind of Mr. Ellin as well as if +you had been told. In that brief scene between Mr. Ellin and the +schoolmistress, you know as well as if you had been told, that Miss +Wilcox has lost Mr. Ellin because of her unkindness to a child. When the +child, Matilda Fitzgibbon, falls senseless, and Mr. Ellin gives his +inarticulate cry and lifts her from the floor, the enigmatic man has +revealed his innermost nature. + +Now a fragment that can suggest all this with the smallest possible +expenditure of phrases, is not a fragment that can be set aside. It is +slight; but slightness that accomplishes so much is a sign of progress +rather than of falling-off. We shall never know what happened to Matilda +when Mr. Ellin took her from Miss Wilcox. We shall never know what +happened to Mr. Ellin; but I confess that I am dying to know, and that I +find it hard to forgive Mr. Nicholls for having killed them, so certain +am I that they would have lived triumphantly if Charlotte Brontë had not +married him. + +Some of us will be profoundly indifferent to this issue; for Charlotte +Brontë has no following in a certain school. She defies analysis. You +cannot label her. What she has done is not "Realism", neither is it +"Romance". She displeases both by her ambiguity and by her lack of form. +She has no infallible dramatic instinct. Even in _Villette_ she +preserves some of her clumsiness, her crudity, her improbability. The +progress of "the Novel" in our day is towards a perfection of form and a +reality she never knew. + +But "reality" is a large term; and, as for form, _who_ cared about it in +the fifties? As for improbability--as M. Dimnet says--she is not more +improbable than Balzac. + +And all these things, the ambiguity, the formlessness and the rest, she +was gradually correcting as she advanced. It is impossible to exaggerate +the importance and significance of her attainment in _Villette_; there +has been so much confused thinking in the consecrated judgment of that +novel. _Villette_ owes its high place largely to its superior +construction and technique; largely and primarily to Charlotte Brontë's +progress towards the light, towards the world, towards the great +undecorated reality. It is odd criticism that ignores the inevitable +growth, the increasing vision and grasp, the whole indomitable advance +of a great writer, and credits "experience" with the final masterpiece. +As a result of this confusion _Villette_ has been judged "final" in +another sense. Yes, final--this novel that shows every sign and token of +long maturing, long-enduring power. If Charlotte Brontë's critics had +not hypnotized themselves by the perpetual reiteration of that word +"experience", it would have been impossible for them, with the evidence +of her work before them, to have believed that in _Villette_ she had +written herself out. + +She was only just beginning. + + * * * * * + +Of Charlotte Brontë's _Poems_ there is not much to say. They are better +poems than Branwell's or Anne's, but that does not make them very good. +Still, they are interesting, and they are important, because they are +the bridge by which Charlotte Brontë passed into her own dominion. She +took Wordsworth with his Poems and Ballads for her guide, and he misled +her and delayed her on her way, and kept her a long time standing on her +bridge. For in her novels, and her novels only, Charlotte was a poet. In +her poems she is a novelist, striving and struggling for expression in a +cramped form, an imperfect and improper medium. But most indubitably a +novelist. Nearly all her poems which are not artificial are impersonal. +They deal with "situations", with "psychological problems", that cry +aloud for prose. There is the "Wife" who seems to have lived a long, +adventurous life with "William" through many poems; there is the +deserted wife and mother in "Mementos"; there is "Frances", the deserted +maiden; there is "Gilbert" with his guilty secret and his suicide, a +triple domestic tragedy in the three acts of a three-part ballad; there +is the lady in "Preference", who prefers her husband to her passionate +and profoundly deluded lover; there is the woman in "Apostasy", wrecked +in the conflict between love and priestcraft; and there is little else +beside. These poems are straws, showing the way of the wind that bloweth +where it listeth. + + * * * * * + +Too much has been written about Charlotte Brontë, and far too much has +been read. You come away from it with an enormous mass of printed stuff +wrecked in your memory, letters, simply hundreds of letters, legends and +theories huddled together in a heap, with all values and proportions +lost; and your impression is of tumult and of suffering, and of a +multitude of confused and incongruous happenings; funerals and +flirtations, or something very like flirtations, to the sound of the +passing bell and sexton's chisel; upheavals of soul, flights to and from +Brussels, interminable years of exile, and of lurid, tragic passion; +years, interminable, monotonous years of potato-peeling and all manner +of household piety; scenes of debauchery, horrors of opium and of drink; +celebrity, cataclysmal celebrity, rushings up to town in storm and +darkness, dim coffee-houses in Paternoster Row, dinner-parties; deaths, +funerals, melancholia; and still celebrity; years, interminable, +monotonous years of blazing celebrity, sounds of the literary workshop +overpowering the sexton's chisel; then marriage, sudden and swift; then +death. And in the midst of it all, one small and rather absurd and +obscure figure, tossed to and fro, said to be Charlotte Brontë. + +What an existence! + +This is the impression created by the bibliographical total. But sweep +four-fifths of it away, all the legends and half the letters, and sort +and set out what remains, observing values and proportions, and you get +an outer life where no great and moving event ever came, saving only +death (Charlotte's marriage hardly counts beside it); an outer life of a +strange and almost oppressive simplicity and silence; and an inner life, +tumultuous and profound in suffering, a life to all appearances +frustrate, where all nourishment of the emotions was reduced to the +barest allowance a woman's heart can depend on and yet live; and none +the less a life that out of that starvation diet raised enough of rich +and vivid and superb emotion to decorate a hundred women's lives; an +inner life which her genius fed and was fed from, for which no reality, +no experience, could touch its own intensity of realization. And, genius +apart, in the region of actual and ostensible emotion, no one of us can +measure the depth of her adoration of duty, or the depth, the force and +volume of her passion for her own people, and for the earth trodden by +their feet, the earth that covered them. Beside it every other feeling +was temporary and insignificant. In the light of it you see Charlotte +Brontë's figure for ever simple and beautiful and great; behind her for +ever the black-grey setting of her village and the purple of her moors. +That greatness and beauty and simplicity is destroyed by any effort to +detach her from her background. She may seem susceptible to the alien +influences of exile; but it is as an exile that she suffers; and her +most inspired moments are her moments of return, when she wrote prose +like this: "The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale; as glad as if +she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch +for his goddess to-night: there are no flocks on the mountains." + + * * * * * + +Around the figure of Emily Brontë there is none of that clamour and +confusion. She stands apart in an enduring silence, and guards for ever +her secret and her mystery. By the mercy of heaven the swarm of gossips +and of theorists has passed her by. She has no legend or hardly any. So +completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to +write the Life of Emily Brontë she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's +meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable +simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the +hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from her fingers. + +That is worth all the reams, the terrible reams that have been written +about Charlotte. + +There can be no doubt that Emily Brontë found her shelter behind +Charlotte's fame; but she was protected most of all by the +unapproachable, the unique and baffling quality of her temperament and +of her genius. Her own people seem to have felt it; Charlotte herself in +that preface to _Wuthering Heights_, which stands as her last +vindication and eulogy of her dead sister, even Charlotte betrays a +curious reservation and reluctance. You feel that Emily's genius +inspired her with a kind of sacred terror. + +Charlotte destroyed all records of her sister except her poems. Between +six and seven hundred of her own letters have been published; there are +two of Emily's. They tell little or nothing. And there was that diary +she kept for Anne, where she notes with extreme brevity the things that +are happening in her family. There never was a diary wherein the soul of +the diarist was so well concealed. + +And yet, because of this silence, this absence of legend and conjecture, +we see Emily Brontë more clearly than we can ever hope to see Charlotte +now. Though hardly anything is known of her, what _is_ known is +authentic; it comes straight from those who knew and loved her: from +Charlotte, from Ellen Nussey, from the servants at the Parsonage. Even +of her outward and visible presence we have a clearer image. The lines +are fewer, but they are more vivid. You see her tall and slender, in her +rough clothes, tramping the moors with the form and the step of a virile +adolescent. Shirley, the "_bête fauve_", is Emily civilized. You see her +head carried high and crowned with its long, dark hair, coiled simply, +caught up with a comb. You see her face, honey-pale, her slightly high, +slightly aquiline nose; her beautiful eyes, dark-grey, luminous; the +"kind, kindling, liquid eyes" that Ellen Nussey saw; and their look, one +moment alert, intent, and the next, inaccessibly remote. + +I have seen such kind and kindling eyes in the face of a visionary, born +with a profound, incurable indifference to the material event; for whom +the Real is the incredible, unapparent harmony that flows above, +beneath, and within the gross flux of appearances. To him it is the sole +thing real. That kind and kindling look I know to be simply a light +reflected from the surface of the dream. It is anything but cold; it has +indeed a certain tender flame; but you would be profoundly mistaken if +you argued from it more than the faintest polite interest in you and +your affairs. The kindling of Emily Brontë's eyes I take to have had at +times something of the same unearthly quality. Strangers received from +her an impression as of a creature utterly removed from them; a +remoteness scarcely human, hard to reconcile with her known tenderness +for every living thing. She seems to have had a passionate repugnance to +alien and external contacts, and to have felt no more than an almost +reluctant liking for the lovable and charming Ellen Nussey. Indeed, she +regarded Charlotte's friend with the large and virile tolerance that +refuses to be charmed. + +And yet in the depths of her virginal nature there was something +fiercely tender and maternal. There can be no doubt that she cared for +Charlotte, who called her "Mine own bonnie love"; but she would seem to +have cared far more for Anne who was young and helpless, and for +Branwell who was helpless and most weak. + +Thus there is absolutely nothing known of Emily that destroys or +disturbs the image that Haworth holds of her; nothing that detaches her +for a moment from her own people, and from her own place. Her days of +exile count not at all in her thirty years of home. No separation ever +broke, for one hour that counted, the bonds that bound her to her moors, +or frustrated the divine passion of her communion with their earth and +sky. Better still, no tale of passion such as they tell of Charlotte was +ever told of Emily. + +It may be told yet, for no secret thing belonging to this disastrous +family is sacred. There may be somewhere some awful worshipper of Emily +Brontë, impatient of her silence and unsatisfied with her strange, her +virgin and inaccessible beauty, who will some day make up a story of +some love-affair, some passion kindred to Catherine Earnshaw's passion +for Heathcliff, of which her moors have kept the secret; and he will +tell his tale. But we shall at least know that he had made it up. And +even so, it will have been better for that man if he had never been +born. He will have done his best to destroy or to deface the loveliness +of a figure unique in literature. And he will have ignored the one +perfect, the one essentially true picture of Emily Brontë, which is to +be found in Maurice Maeterlinck's _Wisdom and Destiny_. + +To M. Maeterlinck she is the supreme instance of the self-sufficing +soul, independent and regardless of the material event. She shows the +emptiness, the impotence, the insignificance of all that we call +"experience," beside the spirit that endures. "Not a single event ever +paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she could +claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and beauty, with +matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever happened; but +did not all things really happen to her much more directly and tangibly +than with most of us, seeing that everything that took place about her, +everything that she saw or heard was transformed within her into +thoughts and feelings, into indulgent love, admiration, adoration of +life...? + +"Of her happiness none can doubt. Not in the soul of the best of all +those whose happiness has lasted longest, been the most active, +diversified, perfect, could more imperishable harvest be found, than in +the soul Emily Brontë lays bare. If to her there came nothing of all +that passes in love, sorrow, passion or anguish, still did she possess +all that abides when emotion has faded away."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +What was true of Charlotte, that her inner life was luminous with +intense realization, was a hundred times more true of Emily. It was so +true that beside it nothing else that can be said is altogether true. It +is not necessary for a man to be convinced of the illusory nature of +time and of material happenings in order to appreciate Charlotte's +genius; but his comprehension of Emily's will be adequate or otherwise, +according to the passion and sincerity with which he embraces that idea. +And he must have, further, a sense of the reality behind the illusion. +It is through her undying sense of it that Emily Brontë is great. She +had none of the proud appearances of the metaphysical mind; she did not, +so far as we know, devour, like George Eliot, whole systems of +philosophy in her early youth. Her passionate pantheism was not derived; +it was established in her own soul. She was a mystic, not by religious +vocation, but by temperament and by ultimate vision. She offers the +apparent anomaly of extreme detachment and of an unconquerable love of +life. + +It was the highest and the purest passion that you can well conceive. +For life gave her nothing in return. It treated her worse than it +treated Charlotte. She had none of the things that, after all, Charlotte +had; neither praise nor fame in her lifetime; nor friendship, nor love, +nor vision of love. All these things "passed her by with averted head"; +and she stood in her inviolable serenity and watched them go, without +putting out her hand to one of them. You cannot surprise her in any +piteous gesture of desire or regret. And, unlike Charlotte, she made it +impossible for you to pity her. + +It is this superb attitude to life, this independence of the material +event, this detachment from the stream of circumstance, that marks her +from her sister; for Charlotte is at moments pitifully immersed in the +stream of circumstance, pitifully dependent on the material event. It +is true that she kept her head above the stream, and that the failure of +the material event did not frustrate or hinder her ultimate achievement. +But Charlotte's was not by any means "a chainless soul". It struggled +and hankered after the unattainable. What she attained and realized she +realized and attained in her imagination only. She knew nothing of the +soul's more secret and intimate possession. And even her imagination +waited to some extent upon experience. When Charlotte wrote of passion, +of its tragic suffering, or of its ultimate appeasing, she, after all, +wrote of things that might have happened to her. But when Emily wrote of +passion, she wrote of a thing that, so far as she personally was +concerned, not only was not and had not been, but never could be. It was +true enough of Charlotte that she created. But of Emily it was +absolutely and supremely true. + +Hers is not the language of frustration, but of complete and satisfying +possession. It may seem marvellous in the mouth of a woman destitute of +all emotional experience, in the restricted sense; but the real wonder +would have been a _Wuthering Heights_ born of any personal emotion; so +certain is it that it was through her personal destitution that her +genius was so virile and so rich. At its hour it found her virgin, not +only to passion but to the bare idea of passion, to the inner and +immaterial event. + +And her genius was great, not only through her stupendous imagination, +but because it fed on the still more withdrawn and secret sources of her +soul. If she had had no genius she would yet be great because of what +took place within her, the fusion of her soul with the transcendent and +enduring life. + +It was there that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her +secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She +never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and +Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on +"the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of +religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would +have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for +height and depth of supernatural attainment, there is no comparison +between Emily's grip of divine reality and poor Anne's spasmodic and +despairing clutch; and none between Charlotte's piety, her "God +willing"; "I suppose I ought to be thankful", and Emily's acceptance and +endurance of the event. + +I am reminded that one event she neither accepted nor endured. She +fought death. Her spirit lifted the pathetic, febrile struggle of +weakness with corruption, and turned it to a splendid, Titanic, and +unearthly combat. + +And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid. +There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance. It +shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all +revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius +and of her life. + +There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and +agony that rages through _Wuthering Heights_, or with the passion for +life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; +or with Catherine Earnshaw's dream of heaven: "heaven did not seem to be +my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and +the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the +heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy". +Catherine Earnshaw's dream has been cited innumerable times to prove +that Emily Brontë was a splendid pagan. I do not know what it does +prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her +genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and +invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine +Earnshaw. + +It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr. +Swinburne's magnificent eulogy. There _was_ in the "passionate great +genius of Emily Brontë", "a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive +nature-worship". That was where she was so poised and so complete; that +she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the +splendour of the passion of living, and holds her spirit in security and +her heart in peace. She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick +of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her +immersion. + +It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of +these antagonistic attitudes. It is not only entirely possible and +compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that +you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their +impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion +and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily +Brontë was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss +too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for +her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any +philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the +world and crystallized it in two lines: + + The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling + Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. + +It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that +her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has +reached there. She too knew what it was + + To see a world in a grain of sand, + And a Heaven in a wild flower, + To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, + And Eternity in an hour. + +She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same +light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics. + +Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of +transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at +least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation. + +In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary +soul: + + Shall earth no more inspire thee, + Thou lonely dreamer now? + Since passion may not fire thee, + Shall nature cease to bow? + + Thy mind is ever moving + In regions dark to thee; + Recall its useless roving, + Come back, and dwell with me. + + * * * * * + + Few hearts to mortals given + On earth so wildly pine; + Yet few would ask a heaven + More like this earth than thine. + +"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment; +and the human voice answers, resisting: + + Play with the scented flower, + The young tree's supple bough, + And leave my human feelings + In their own course to flow. + +But the other voice is stronger: + + The wanderer would not heed me; + Its kiss grew warmer still. + "Oh, come," it sighed so sweetly; + "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will. + + "Were we not friends from childhood? + Have I not loved thee long? + As long as thou, the solemn night, + Whose silence wakes my song. + + "And when thy heart is resting + Beneath the church-aisle stone, + _I_ shall have time for mourning, + And _thou_ for being alone." + +There are nine verses of "The Night-Wind", and the first eight are +negligible; but, as for the last and ninth, I do not know any poem in +any language that renders, in four short lines, and with such +incomparable magic and poignancy, the haunting and pursuing of the human +by the inhuman, that passion of the homeless and eternal wind. + +And this woman, destitute, so far as can be known, of all metaphysical +knowledge or training, reared in the narrowest and least metaphysical of +creeds, did yet contrive to express in one poem of four irregular verses +all the hunger and thirst after the "Absolute" that ever moved a human +soul, all the bewilderment and agony inflicted by the unintelligible +spectacle of existence, the intolerable triumph of evil over good, and +did conceive an image and a vision of the transcendent reality that +holds, as in crystal, all the philosophies that were ever worthy of the +name. + +Here it is. There are once more two voices: one of the Man, the other of +the Seer: + +THE PHILOSOPHER + + Oh, for the time when I shall sleep + Without identity. + And never care how rain may steep, + Or snow may cover me! + No promised heaven, these wild desires + Could all, or half fulfil; + No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, + Subdue this restless will. + + So said I, and still say the same; + Still, to my death, will say-- + Three gods, within this little frame, + Are warring night and day; + Heaven could not hold them all, and yet + They all are held in me; + And must be mine till I forget + My present entity! + Oh, for the time, when in my breast + Their struggles will be o'er! + Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, + And never suffer more! + + I saw a spirit, standing, man, + Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, + And round his feet three rivers ran, + Of equal depth, and equal flow-- + A golden stream--and one like blood, + And one like sapphire seemed to be; + But where they joined their triple flood + It tumbled in an inky sea. + The spirit sent his dazzling gaze + Down through that ocean's gloomy night; + Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,-- + The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- + White as the sun, far, far more fair + Than its divided sources were! + + And even for that spirit, seer, + I've watched and sought my lifetime long; + Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air, + An endless search and always wrong. + Had I but seen his glorious eye + _Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me, + I ne'er had raised this coward cry + To cease to think, and cease to be; + I ne'er had called oblivion blest, + Nor, stretching eager hands to death, + Implored to change for senseless rest + This sentient soul, this living breath-- + Oh, let me die--that power and will + Their cruel strife may close, + And conquered good and conquering ill + Be lost in one repose! + +That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of +life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and +painted. + +The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment, +which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it +has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive, +"confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless +soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its +agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the +"Messenger": + + He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. + Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, + And visions rise and change that kill me with desire. + + * * * * * + + But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; + The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; + Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, + That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me. + + Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; + My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: + Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, + Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound. + +That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has passed beyond +contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is +unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return: + + Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony-- + When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; + When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; + The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. + +There is no doubt about those three verses; that they are the expression +of the rarest and the most tremendous experience that is given to +humanity to know. + +If "The Visionary" does not touch that supernal place, it belongs +indubitably to the borderland: + + Silent is the house; all are laid asleep: + One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, + Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze + That whirls the wildering drift and bends the groaning trees. + + Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; + Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; + The little lamp burns straight, the rays shoot strong and far + I trim it well to be the wanderer's guiding-star. + + Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame! + Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame; + But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know, + What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow. + + What I love shall come like visitant of air, + Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; + What loves me no word of mine shall e'er betray, + Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay. + + Burn then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-- + Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air; + He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me: + Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy. + +Those who can see nothing in this poem but the idealization of an +earthly passion must be strangely and perversely mistaken in their Emily +Brontë. I confess I can never read it without thinking of one of the +most marvellous of all poems of Divine Love: "En una Noche Escura". + +EN UNA NOCHE ESCURA[A] + + Upon an obscure night + Fevered with Love's anxiety + (O hapless, happy plight!) + I went, none seeing me, + Forth from my house, where all things quiet be. + + * * * * * + + Blest night of wandering + In secret, when by none might I be spied, + Nor I see anything; + Without a light to guide + Save that which in my heart burnt in my side. + + That light did lead me on + More surely than the shining of noontide, + Where well I knew that One + Did for my coming bide; + Where he abode might none but he abide. + + O night that didst lead thus; + O night more lovely than the dawn of light; + O night that broughtest us + Lover to lover's sight, + Lover to loved, in marriage of delight! + +[Footnote A: "St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul." +Translated by Arthur Symons in vol. ii. of his _Collected Poems_.] + + * * * * * + +We know what love is celebrated there, and we do not know so clearly +what manner of supernal passion is symbolized in Emily Brontë's +angel-lover. There is a long way there between Emily Brontë and St. +John of the Cross, between her lamp-lit window and his "Dark Night of +the Soul", and yet her opening lines have something of the premonitory +thrill, the haunting power of tremendous suggestion, the intense, +mysterious expectancy of his. The spiritual experience is somewhat +different, but it belongs to the same realm of the super-physical; and +it is very far from Paganism. + +She wrote of these supreme ardours and mysteries; and she wrote that +most inspired and vehement song of passionate human love, "Remembrance": + + Cold in the earth--and the deep snow piled above thee, + Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! + Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee.... + +But "Remembrance" is too well known for quotation here. So is "The Old +Stoic". + +These are perfect and unforgettable things. But there is hardly one of +the least admirable of her poems that has not in it some unforgettable +and perfect verse or line: + + And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star + Has tracked the chilly grey! + What, watching yet? how very far + The morning lies away. + +That is how some watcher on Wuthering Heights might measure the long +passage of the night. + +"The Lady to her Guitar", that recalls the dead and forgotten player, +sings: + + It is as if the glassy brook + Should image still its willows fair, + _Though years ago the woodman's stroke + Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair_. + +She has her "dim moon struggling in the sky", to match Charlotte's "the +moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, glad as if she gave herself to +his fierce caress with love". At sixteen, in the schoolroom,[A] she +wrote verses of an incomparable simplicity and poignancy: + + A little while, a little while, + The weary task is put away, + And I can sing and I can smile, + Alike, while I have holiday. + + Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- + What thought, what scene invites thee now? + What spot, or near or far apart, + Has rest for thee, my weary brow? + + * * * * * + + The house is old, the trees are bare, + Moonless above bends twilight's dome; + But what on earth is half so dear-- + So longed for--as the hearth of home? + + The mute bird sitting on the stone, + The dank moss dripping from the wall, + The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, + I love them--how I love them all! + + Still, as I mused, the naked room, + The alien firelight died away, + And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, + I passed to bright, unclouded day. + + A little and a lone green lane + That opened on a common wide; + A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain + Of mountains circling every side. + + A heaven so clear, an earth so calm. + So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; + And, deepening still the dream-like charm, + Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. + +[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later +date--the year of Emily Brontë's exile in Brussels. Sir William +Robertson Nicoll also considers that "the 'alien firelight' suits +Brussels better than the Yorkshire hearth of 'good, kind' Miss Wooler". +To me the schoolroom of the Pensionnat suggests an "alien" stove, and +not the light of any fire at all.] + + * * * * * + +There was no nostalgia that she did not know. And there was no funeral +note she did not sound; from the hopeless gloom of + + In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, + A grey stone standing over thee; + Black mould beneath thee spread, + And black mould to cover thee. + + Well--there is rest there, + So fast come thy prophecy; + The time when my sunny hair + Shall with grass-roots entwined be. + + But cold--cold is that resting-place + Shut out from joy and liberty, + And all who loved thy living face + Will shrink from it shudderingly. + +From that to the melancholy grace of the moorland dirge: + + The linnet in the rocky dells, + The moor-lark in the air, + The bee among the heather-bells + That hide my lady fair: + + The wild deer browse above her breast; + The wild birds raise their brood; + And they, her smiles of love caressed, + Have left her solitude. + + * * * * * + + Well, let them fight for honour's breath, + Or pleasure's shade pursue-- + The dweller in the land of death + Is changed and careless too. + + And if their eyes should watch and weep + Till sorrow's source were dry, + She would not, in her tranquil sleep, + Return a single sigh. + + Blow, west wind, by the lowly mound, + And murmur, summer-streams-- + There is no need of other sound + To soothe my lady's dreams. + +There is, finally, that nameless poem--her last--where Emily Brontë's +creed finds utterance. It also is well known, but I give it here by way +of justification, lest I should seem to have exaggerated the mystic +detachment of this lover of the earth: + + No coward soul is mine, + No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: + I see Heaven's glories shine, + And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. + + O God within my breast, + Almighty, ever-present Deity! + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in thee! + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; + Worthless as withered weeds, + Or idlest froth amid the boundless main. + + To waken doubt in one + Holding so fast by thine infinity; + So surely anchored on + The steadfast rock of immortality. + + With wide-embracing love + Thy spirit animates eternal years, + Pervades and broods above, + Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. + + Though earth and man were gone, + And suns and universes ceased to be, + And Thou wert left alone, + Every existence would exist in Thee. + + There is not room for Death, + Nor atom that his might could render void: + Thou--THOU art Being and Breath, + And what THOU art may never be destroyed. + +It is not a perfect work. I do not think it is by any means the finest +poem that Emily Brontë ever wrote. It has least of her matchless, +incommunicable quality. There is one verse, the fifth, that recalls +almost painfully the frigid poets of Deism of the eighteenth century. +But even that association cannot destroy or contaminate its superb +sincerity and dignity. If it recalls the poets of Deism, it recalls no +less one of the most ancient of all metaphysical poems, the poem of +Parmenides on Being: + + [Greek: pos d' an epeit apoloito pelon, pos d' an ke genoito; + ei ge genoit, ouk est', oud ei pote mellei esesthai. + + * * * * * + + tos, genesis men apesbestai kai apiotos olethros. + oude diaireton estin, epei pan estin homoion + oude ti pae keneon.... + ....eon gar eonti pelazei.] + +Parmenides had not, I imagine, "penetrated" to Haworth; yet the last +verse of Emily Brontë's poem might have come straight out of his [Greek: +ta pros halaetheiaen]. Truly, an astonishing poem to have come from a +girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties. + +But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more +consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are +restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Brontë does not follow St. +Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight: + + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! + +For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Brontë. +Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have +been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not +accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too +well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal +quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of +the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering +cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee." +It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who +comes + + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars, + +her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly +consummation. + +There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism +either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Brontë. + +The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only +in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte +discovered them. + + * * * * * + +Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte +had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished +poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had +happened. + +And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has +unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and +with Charlotte's thirty-nine.[A] + +[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Emily Brontë._ Vol. I.--Poetry. (Messrs. +Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)] + +And the world continues more or less unaware. + +I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week. But +I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of +them. But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the +publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily +Brontë, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of +acclaim. + +And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in +its way. If the best poems in Mr. Shorter's collection cannot stand +beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them +reveal an aspect of Emily Brontë's genius hitherto unknown and undreamed +of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Brontë +than has yet been known. + +There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference. The few +people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Brontë much; it is +as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession +of young poets out of Vigo Street. There is a certain austerity about +Emily Brontë, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and +decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to +young lyrics loaded with "jewels five-words long". About Emily Brontë +there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves +in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple +vintage. She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous +side of mysticism. She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts +and hungers for these things. + +It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to +Emily Brontë. What you are not prepared for is the appearance of +indifference in her editors. They are pledged by their office to a +peculiar devotion. And the circumstances of Emily Brontë's case made it +imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show +rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm. Her alien and lonely state +should have moved Mr. Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry. It has +not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety. Perfect +piety would have saved him from the oversight, innocent but deplorable, +of attributing to Emily Brontë four poems which Emily Brontë could not +possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne: +"Despondency", "In Memory of a Happy Day in February", "A Prayer", and +"Confidence."[A] No doubt Mr. Shorter found them in Emily's handwriting; +but how could he, how _could_ he mistake Anne's voice for Emily's? + +[Footnote A: Published among Charlotte Brontë's posthumous "Selections" +in 1850.] + + My God (oh let me call Thee mine, + Weak, wretched sinner though I be), + My trembling soul would fain be Thine; + My feeble faith still clings to Thee. + +It is Anne's voice at her feeblest and most depressed. + +It is, perhaps, a little ungrateful and ungracious to say these things, +when but for Mr. Shorter we should not have had Emily's complete poems +at all. And to accuse Mr. Shorter of present indifference (in the face +of his previous achievements) would be iniquitous if it were not absurd; +it would be biting the hand that feeds you. The pity is that, owing to a +mere momentary lapse in him of the religious spirit, Mr. Shorter has +missed his own opportunity. He does not seem to have quite realized the +splendour of his "find". Nor has Sir William Robertson Nicoll seen fit +to help him here. Sir William Robertson Nicoll deprecates any +over-valuation of Mr. Clement Shorter's collection. "It is not claimed," +he says, "for a moment that the intrinsic merits of the verses are of a +special kind." And Mr. Clement Shorter is not much bolder in proffering +his treasures. "No one can deny to them," he says, "a certain +bibliographical interest." + +Mr. Shorter is too modest. His collection includes one of the +profoundest and most beautiful poems Emily Brontë ever wrote,[A] and at +least one splendid ballad, "Douglas Ride".[B] Here is the ballad, or +enough of it to show how live it is with sound and vision and speed. It +was written by a girl of twenty: + + What rider up Gobeloin's glen + Has spurred his straining steed, + And fast and far from living men + Has passed with maddening speed? + + I saw his hoof-prints mark the rock, + When swift he left the plain; + I heard deep down the echoing shock + Re-echo back again. + + * * * * * + + With streaming hair, and forehead bare, + And mantle waving wide, + His master rides; the eagle there + Soars up on every side. + + The goats fly by with timid cry, + Their realm rashly won; + They pause--he still ascends on high-- + They gaze, but he is gone. + + O gallant horse, hold on thy course; + The road is tracked behind. + Spur, rider, spur, or vain thy force-- + Death comes on every wind. + + * * * * * + + Hark! through the pass with threatening crash + Comes on the increasing roar! + But what shall brave the deep, deep wave, + The deadly pass before? + + Their feet are dyed in a darker tide, + Who dare those dangers drear. + Their breasts have burst through the battle's worst, + And why should they tremble here? + + * * * * * + + "Now, my brave men, this one pass more, + This narrow chasm of stone, + And Douglas for our sovereign's gore + Shall yield us back his own." + + I hear their ever-rising tread + Sound through the granite glen; + There is a tall pine overhead + Held by the mountain men. + + That dizzy bridge which no horse could track + Has checked the outlaw's way; + There like a wild beast turns he back, + And grimly stands at bay. + + Why smiles he so, when far below + He spies the toiling chase? + The pond'rous tree swings heavily, + And totters from its place. + + They raise their eyes, for the sunny skies + Are lost in sudden shade: + But Douglas neither shrinks nor flies, + He need not fear the dead. + +[Footnote A: See pp. 207, 208.] + +[Footnote B: I have removed the title from the preceding fragment to the +ballad to which it obviously belongs.] + +That is sufficiently unlike the Emily Brontë whom Charlotte edited. And +there is one other poem that stands alone among her poems with a strange +exotic beauty, a music, a rhythm and a magic utterly unlike any of the +forms we recognize as hers: + + Gods of the old mythology + Arise in gloom and storm; + Adramalec, bow down thy head, + Reveal, dark fiend, thy form. + The giant sons of Anakim + Bowed lowest at thy shrine, + And thy temple rose in Argola, + With its hallowed groves of vine; + And there was eastern incense burnt, + And there were garments spread, + With the fine gold decked and broidered, + And tinged with radiant red, + With the radiant red of furnace flames + That through the shadows shone + As the full moon when on Sinai's top + Her rising light is thrown. + +It is undated and unsigned, and so unlike Emily Brontë that I should not +be surprised if somebody were to rise up and prove that it is Coleridge +or somebody. Heaven forbid that this blow should fall on Mr. Clement +Shorter, and Sir William Robertson Nicoll, and on me. There is at least +one reassuring line. "Reveal, dark fiend, thy form", has a decided ring +of the Brontësque. + +And here again, on many an otherwise negligible poem she has set her +seal, she has scattered her fine things; thus: + + No; though the soil be wet with tears, + How fair so'er it grew, + The vital sap once perished + Will never flow again; + _And surer than that dwelling dread, + The narrow dungeon of the dead, + Time parts the hearts of men._ + +And again, she gives a vivid picture of war in four lines: + + In plundered churches piled with dead + The heavy charger neighed for food, + The wounded soldier laid his head + 'Neath roofless chambers splashed with blood. + +Again, she has a vision: + + In all the hours of gloom + My soul was rapt away. + I stood by a marble tomb + Where royal corpses lay. + +A frightful thing appears to her, "a shadowy thing, most dim": + + And still it bent above, + Its features still in view; + _It seemed close by; and yet more far + Than this world from the farthest star + That tracks the boundless blue._ + + Indeed 'twas not the space + Of earth or time between, + But the sea of deep eternity, + The gulf o'er which mortality + Has never, never been. + +The date is June 1837, a year earlier than the ballad. And here is the +first sketch or germ of "The Old Stoic": + + Give we the hills our equal prayer, + Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea, + _I ask for nothing further here + Than my own heart and liberty._ + +And here is another poem, of a sterner and a sadder stoicism: + + There was a time when my cheek burned + To give such scornful words the lie, + Ungoverned nature madly spurned + The law that bade it not defy. + Oh, in the days of ardent youth + I would have given my life for truth. + + For truth, for right, for liberty, + I would have gladly, freely died; + And now I calmly bear and see + The vain man smile, the fool deride, + Though not because my heart is tame, + Though not for fear, though not for shame. + + My soul still chokes at every tone + Of selfish and self-clouded error; + My breast still braves the world alone, + Steeled as it ever was to terror. + Only I know, howe'er I frown, + The same world will go rolling on. + +October 1839. It is the worldly wisdom of twenty-one! + + * * * * * + +If this, the ballad and the rest, were all, the world would still be +richer, by a wholly new conception of Emily Brontë, of her resources and +her range. + +But it is by no means all. And here we come to the opportunity which, +owing to that temporary decline of fervour, Mr. Shorter has so +unfortunately missed. + +He might have picked out of the mass wherein they lie scattered, all but +lost, sometimes barely recognizable, the fragments of a Titanic epic. He +might have done something to build up again the fabric of that +marvellous romance, that continuous dream, that stupendous and gorgeous +fantasy in which Emily Brontë, for at least eleven years, lived and +moved and had her being. + +Until the publication of the unknown poems, it was possible to ignore +the "Gondal Chronicles". They are not included in Mr. Clement Shorter's +exhaustive list of early and unpublished manuscripts. Nobody knew +anything about them except that they were part of a mysterious game of +make-believe which Emily and the ever-innocent Anne played together, +long after the age when most of us have given up make-believing. There +are several references to the Chronicles in the diaries of Emily and +Anne. Emily writes in 1841: "The Gondaland are at present in a +threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet. All the princes +and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction." Anne +wonders "whether the Gondaland will still be flourishing" in 1845. In +1845 Emily and Anne go for their first long journey together. "And +during our excursion we were Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet +Angusteena, Rosabella Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine +Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of +instruction to join the Royalists, who are hard pressed at present by +the victorious Republicans. "The Gondals," Emily says, "still flourish +bright as ever." Anne is not so sure. "We have not yet finished our +'Gondal Chronicles' that we began three years and a half ago. When will +they be done? The Gondals are at present in a sad state. The Republicans +are uppermost, but the Royalists are not quite overcome. The young +sovereigns, with their brothers and sisters, are still at the Palace of +Instruction. The Unique Society, about half a year ago, were wrecked on +a desert island as they were returning from Gaul. They are still there, +but we have not played at them much yet." + +But there are no recognizable references to the Gondal poems. It is not +certain whether Charlotte Brontë knew of their existence, not absolutely +certain that Anne, who collaborated on the Gondals, knew. + +"Brontë specialists" are agreed in dismissing the Chronicles as puerile. +But the poems cannot be so dismissed. Written in lyric or ballad form, +fluent at their worst and loose, but never feeble; powerful, vehement, +and overflowing at their best, their cycle contains some of Emily +Brontë's very finest verse. They are obscure, incoherent sometimes, +because they are fragmentary; even poems apparently complete in +themselves are fragments, scenes torn out of the vast and complicated +epic drama. We have no clue to the history of the Gondals, whereby we +can arrange these scenes in their right order. But dark and broken as +they are, they yet trail an epic splendour, they bear the whole +phantasmagoria of ancestral and of racial memories, of "old, unhappy, +far-off things, and battles long ago". These songs and ballads, strung +on no discernible thread, are the voice of an enchanted spirit, +recalling the long roll of its secular existences; in whom nothing lives +but that mysterious, resurgent memory. + +The forms that move through these battles are obscure. You can pick out +many of the Gondal poems by the recurring names of heroes and of lands. +But where there are no names of heroes and of lands to guide you it is +not easy to say exactly which poems are Gondal poems and which are not. +But after careful examination and comparison you can make out at least +eighty-three of them that are unmistakable, and ten doubtful. + +All the battle-pieces and songs of battle, the songs of mourning and +captivity and exile, the songs of heroism, martyrdom, defiance, songs, +or fragments of songs, of magic and divination, and many of the love +songs, belong to this cycle. What is more, many of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six and of eighteen-fifty are Gondal poems. + +For in the Gondal legend the idea of the Doomed Child, an idea that +haunted Emily Brontë, recurs perpetually, and suggests that the Gondal +legend is the proper place of "The Two Children", and "The Wanderer from +the Fold", which appear in the posthumous Selections of eighteen-fifty. +It certainly includes three at the very least of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six: "The Outcast Mother", "A Death-Scene", and "Honour's +Martyr". + +It does not look, I own, as if this hunt for Gondal literature could +interest a single human being; which is why nobody, so far as I know, +has pursued it. And the placing of those four poems in the obscure +Gondal legend would have nothing but "a bibliographical interest" were +it not that, when placed there, they show at once the main track of the +legend. And the main track of the legend brings you straight to the +courses of _Wuthering Heights_ and of the love poems. + +The sources of _Wuthering Heights_ have been the dream and the despair +of the explorer, long before Mrs. Humphry Ward tried to find them in the +_Tales of Hoffmann_. And "Remembrance", one of the most passionate love +poems in the language, stood alone and apart from every other thing that +Emily Brontë had written. It was awful and mysterious in its loneliness. + +But I believe that "Remembrance" also may be placed in the Gondal legend +without any violence to its mystery. + +For supreme in the Gondal legend is the idea of a mighty and disastrous +passion, a woman's passion for the defeated, the dishonoured, and the +outlawed lover; a creature superb in evil, like Heathcliff, and like +Heathcliff tragic and unspeakably mournful in his doom. He or some hero +like him is "Honour's Martyr". + + To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name, + And Hate will trample me, + Will load me with a coward's shame-- + A traitor's perjury. + + False friends will launch their covert sneers + True friends will wish me dead; + And I shall cause the bitterest tears + That you have ever shed. + +Like Heathcliff, he is the "unblessed, unfriended child"; the child of +the Outcast Mother, abandoned on the moor. + + Forests of heather, dark and long, + Wave their brown branching arms above; + And they must soothe thee with their song, + And they must shield my child of love. + + * * * * * + + Wakes up the storm more madly wild, + The mountain drifts are tossed on high; + Farewell, unblessed, unfriended child, + I cannot bear to watch thee die. + +In an unmistakable Gondal song Geraldine's lover calls her to the tryst +on the moor. In the Gondal poem "Geraldine", she has her child with her +in a woodland cavern, and she prays over it wildly: + + "Bless it! My Gracious God!" I cried, + "Preserve Thy mortal shrine, + For Thine own sake, be Thou its guide, + And keep it still divine-- + + "Say, sin shall never blanch that cheek, + Nor suffering change that brow. + Speak, in Thy mercy, Maker, speak, + And seal it safe from woe." + + * * * * * + + The revellers in the city slept, + My lady in her woodland bed; + I watching o'er her slumber wept, + As one who mourns the dead. + +Geraldine therefore is the Outcast Mother. In "The Two Children" the +doom gathers round the child. + + Heavy hangs the raindrop + From the burdened spray; + Heavy broods the damp mist + On uplands far away. + + Heavy looms the dull sky, + Heavy rolls the sea; + And heavy throbs the young heart + Beneath that lonely tree. + + Never has a blue streak + Cleft the clouds since morn + Never has his grim fate + Smiled since he was born. + + Frowning on the infant, + Shadowing childhood's joy. + Guardian-angel knows not + That melancholy boy. + + * * * * * + + Blossom--that the west wind + Has never wooed to blow, + Scentless are thy petals, + Thy dew is cold as snow! + + Soul--where kindred kindness + No early promise woke, + Barren is thy beauty, + As weed upon a rock. + + Wither--soul and blossom! + You both were vainly given: + Earth reserves no blessing + For the unblest of Heaven. + +The doomed child of the outcast mother is the doomed man, and, by the +doom, himself an outcast. The other child, the "Child of delight, with +sun-bright hair", has vowed herself to be his guardian angel. Their +drama is obscure; but you make out that it is the doomed child, and not +Branwell Brontë, who is "The Wanderer from the Fold". + + How few, of all the hearts that loved, + Are grieving for thee now; + And why should mine to-night be moved + With such a sense of woe? + + Too often thus, when left alone, + Where none my thoughts can see, + Comes back a word, a passing tone + From thy strange history. + + * * * * * + + An anxious gazer from the shore-- + I marked the whitening wave, + And wept above thy fate the more + Because--I could not save. + + It recks not now, when all is over; + But yet my heart will be + A mourner still, though friend and lover + Have both forgotten thee. + +Compare with this that stern elegy in Mr. Shorter's collection, "Shed no +tears o'er that tomb." A recent critic has referred this poem of +reprobation also to Branwell Brontë--as if Emily could possibly have +written like this of Branwell: + + Shed no tears o'er that tomb, + For there are angels weeping; + Mourn not him whose doom + Heaven itself is mourning. + + * * * * * + + ... he who slumbers there + His bark will strive no more + Across the waters of despair + To reach that glorious shore. + + The time of grace is past, + And mercy, scorned and tried, + Forsakes to utter wrath at last + The soul so steeled by pride. + + That wrath will never spare, + Will never pity know; + Will mock its victim's maddened prayer, + With triumph in his woe. + + Shut from his Maker's smile + The accursed man shall be; + For mercy reigns a little while, + But hate eternally. + +This is obviously related to "The Two Children", and that again to "The +Wanderer from the Fold". Obviously, too, the woman's lament in "The +Wanderer from the Fold" recalls the Gondal woman's lament for her +dishonoured lover. For there are two voices that speak and answer each +other, the voice of reprobation, and the voice of passion and pity. This +is the "Gondal Woman's Lament": + + Far, far is mirth withdrawn: + 'Tis three long hours before the morn, + And I watch lonely, drearily; + So come, thou shade, commune with me. + + Deserted one! thy corpse lies cold, + And mingled with a foreign mould. + Year after year the grass grows green + Above the dust where thou hast been. + + I will not name thy blighted name, + Tarnished by unforgotten shame, + Though not because my bosom torn + Joins the mad world in all its scorn. + + Thy phantom face is dark with woe, + Tears have left ghastly traces there, + Those ceaseless tears! I wish their flow + Could quench thy wild despair. + + They deluge my heart like the rain + On cursed Zamorna's howling plain. + Yet when I hear thy foes deride, + I must cling closely to thy side. + + Our mutual foes! They will not rest + From trampling on thy buried breast. + Glutting their hatred with the doom + They picture thine beyond the tomb. + +(Which is what they did in the song of reprobation. But passion and pity +know better. They know that) + + ... God is not like human kind, + Man cannot read the Almighty mind; + Vengeance will never torture thee, + Nor hurt thy soul eternally. + + * * * * * + + What have I dreamt? He lies asleep, + With whom my heart would vainly weep; + _He_ rests, and _I_ endure the woe + That left his spirit long ago. + +This poem is not quoted for its beauty or its technique, but for its +important place in the story. You can track the great Gondal hero down +by that one fantastic name, "Zamorna". You have thus four poems, +obviously related; and a fifth that links them, obviously, with the +Gondal legend. + +It is difficult to pick out from the confusion of these unsorted +fragments all the heroes of Emily Brontë's saga. There is Gleneden, who +kills a tyrant and is put in prison for it. There is Julius Angora, who +"lifts his impious eye" in the cathedral where the monarchs of Gondal +are gathered; who leads the patriots of Gondal to the battle of +Almedore, and was defeated there, and fell with his mortal enemy. He is +beloved of Rosina, a crude prototype of Catherine Earnshaw. "King Julius +left the south country" and remained in danger in the northern land +because a passion for Rosina kept him there. There is also Douglas of +the "Ride". He appears again in the saga of the Queen Augusta, the woman +of the "brown mountain side". But who he was, and what he was doing, and +whether he killed Augusta or somebody else killed her, I cannot for the +life of me make out. Queen Augusta, like Catherine Earnshaw, is a +creature of passion and jealousy, and her lover had been faithless. She +sings that savage song of defiance and hatred and lamentation: "Light up +thy halls!" + + Oh! could I see thy lids weighed down in cheerless woe; + Too full to hide their tears, too stern to overflow; + Oh! could I know thy soul with equal grief was torn, + This fate might be endured--this anguish might be borne. + + How gloomy grows the night! 'Tis Gondal's wind that blows; + I shall not tread again the deep glens where it rose, + I feel it on my face----Where, wild blast! dost thou roam? + What do we, wanderer! here, so far away from home? + + I do not need thy breath to cool my death-cold brow; + But go to that far land where she is shining now; + Tell her my latest wish, tell her my dreary doom; + Say that my pangs are past, but _hers_ are yet to come. + +And there is Fernando, who stole his love from Zamorna. He is a sort of +shadowy forerunner of Edgar Linton. + +There is the yeoman Percy, the father of Mary whom Zamorna loved. And +there is Zamorna. + +A large group of poems in the legend refer, obviously, I think, to the +same person. Zamorna is the supreme hero, the Achilles of this northern +Iliad. He is the man of sin, the "son of war and love", the child +"unblessed of heaven", abandoned by its mother, cradled in the heather +and rocked by the winter storm, the doomed child, grown to its doom, +like Heathcliff. His story is obscure and broken, but when all the +Zamorna poems are sorted from the rest, you make out that, like +Heathcliff, he ravished from her home the daughter of his mortal enemy +(with the difference that Zamorna loves Mary); and that like Heathcliff +he was robbed of the woman that he loved. The passions of Zamorna are +the passions of Heathcliff. He dominates a world of savage loves and +mortal enmities like the world of _Wuthering Heights_. There are +passages in this saga that reveal the very aspect of the soul of +Heathcliff. Here are some of them. + +Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his "false friend and treacherous +guide": + + "If I have sinned; long, long ago + That sin was purified by woe. + I have suffered on through night and day, + I've trod a dark and frightful way." + +It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw: "I've fought through a +bitter life since I last heard your voice." + +And again: + + If grief for grief can touch thee, + If answering woe for woe, + If any ruth can melt thee, + Come to me now. + +It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy. + +Again, he is calling to "Percy", the father of Mary, his bride, the rose +that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking. + + Bitterly, deeply I've drunk of thy woe; + When thy stream was troubled, did mine calmly flow? + And yet I repent not; I'd crush thee again + If our vessels sailed adverse on life's stormy main. + But listen! The earth is our campaign of war, + + * * * * * + + Is there not havoc and carnage for thee + Unless thou couchest thy lance at me? + +He proposes to unite their arms. + + Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still + This hand should ne'er work her sorrow or ill. + + * * * * * + + What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead + With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed? + +The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is +withering. + + Its faded buds already lie + To deck my coffin when I die. + Bring them here--'twill not be long, + 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; + And the final and dying words are sung + To the discord of lute strings all unstrung. + + * * * * * + + Have I crushed you, Percy? I'd raise once more + The beacon-light on the rocky shore. + Percy, my love is so true and deep, + That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep, + I'd fling the brand in the hissing sea, + The brand that must burn unquenchably. + Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade, + They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head + The blossoms to deck my home with the dead. + +Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose. + + On its bending stalk a bonny flower + In a yeoman's home close grew; + It had gathered beauty from sunshine and shower, + From moonlight and silent dew. + + * * * * * + + Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded, + He watched it grow both day and night; + From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded + That flush of roseate light. + And ever it glistened bonnilie + Under the shade of the old yew-tree. + + * * * * * + + The rose is blasted, withered, blighted + Its root has felt a worm, + And like a heart beloved and slighted, + Failed, faded, shrunk its form. + Bud of beauty, bonny flower, + I stole thee from thy natal bower. + + I was the worm that withered thee.... + +And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not +believe that she is dying. + + Oh! say not that her vivid dreams + Are but the shattered glass + Which but because more broken, gleams + More brightly in the grass. + Her spirit is the unfathomed lake + Whose face the sudden tempests break + To one tormented roar; + But as the wild winds sink in peace + All those disturbed waves decrease + Till each far-down reflection is + As life-like as before. + +Her death is not the worst. + + I cannot weep as once I wept + Over my western beauty's grave. + + * * * * * + + I am speaking of a later stroke, + A death the dream of yesterday, + Still thinking of my latest shock, + A noble friendship torn away. + I feel and say that I am cast + From hope, and peace, and power, and pride + + * * * * * + + Without a voice to speak to you + Save that deep gong which tolled my doom, + And made my dread iniquity + Look darker than my deepest gloom. + +But the crucial passage (for the sources) is the scene in the yeoman's +hall where Zamorna comes to Percy. He comes stealthily. + + That step he might have used before + When stealing on to lady's bower, + Forth at the same still twilight hour, + For the moon now bending mild above + Showed him a son of war and love. + His eye was full of that sinful fire + Which oft unhallowed passions light. + It spoke of quickly kindled ire, + Of love too warm, and wild, and bright. + Bright, but yet sullied, love that could never + Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline, + Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver.... + + * * * * * + + Now from his curled and shining hair, + Circling the brow of marble fair, + His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze + With stern and yet repenting rays. + + * * * * * + +He loves Percy whose rose was his, and he hates him, as Heathcliff might +have loved and hated, but with less brutality. + + Young savage! how he bends above + The object of his wrath and love, + How tenderly his fingers press + The hand that shrinks from their caress. + +The yeoman turns on "the man of sin". + + What brought you here? I called you not + + * * * * * + + Are you a hawk to follow the prey, + When mangled it flutters feebly away? + A sleuth-hound to track the deer by his blood, + When wounded he wins to the darkest wood, + There, if he can, to die alone? + +It might have been Heathcliff and a Linton. + +So much for Zamorna. + +Finally, there are two poems in Mr. Shorter's collection that, verse for +prose, might have come straight out of _Wuthering Heights_. One +(inspired by Byron) certainly belongs to the Zamorna legend of the +Gondal cycle. + + And now the house-dog stretched once more + His limbs upon the glowing floor; + The children half resume their play, + Though from the warm hearth scared away; + The good-wife left her spinning-wheel + And spread with smiles the evening meal; + The shepherd placed a seat and pressed + To their poor fare the unknown guest, + And he unclasped his mantle now, + And raised the covering from his brow, + Said, voyagers by land and sea + Were seldom feasted daintily, + And cheered his host by adding stern + He'd no refinement to unlearn. + +Which is what Heathcliff would have said sternly. Observe the effect of +him. + + A silence settled on the room, + The cheerful welcome sank to gloom; + But not those words, though cold or high, + So froze their hospitable joy. + No--there was something in his face, + Some nameless thing which hid not grace, + And something in his voice's tone + Which turned their blood as chill as stone. + The ringlets of his long black hair + Fell o'er a cheek most ghastly fair. + Youthful he seemed--but worn as they + Who spend too soon their youthful day. + When his glance dropped, 'twas hard to quell + Unbidden feelings' hidden swell; + And Pity scarce her tears could hide, + So sweet that brow with all its pride. + But when upraised his eye would dart + An icy shudder through the heart, + Compassion changed to horror then, + And fear to meet that gaze again. + + It was not hatred's tiger-glare, + Nor the wild anguish of despair; + It was not either misery + Which quickens friendship's sympathy; + No--lightning all unearthly shone + Deep in that dark eye's circling zone, + Such withering lightning as we deem + None but a spirit's look may beam; + And glad were all when he turned away + And wrapt him in his mantle grey, + And hid his head upon his arm, + And veiled from view his basilisk charm. + +That, I take it, is Zamorna, that Byronic hero, again; but it is also +uncommonly like Heathcliff, with "his basilisk eyes". And it is dated +July 1839, seven years before _Wuthering Heights_ was written. + +The other crucial instance is a nameless poem to the Earth. + + I see around me piteous tombstones grey + Stretching their shadows far away. + Beneath the turf my footsteps tread + Lie low and lone the silent dead; + Beneath the turf, beneath the mould, + For ever dark, for ever cold. + And my eyes cannot hold the tears + That memory hoards from vanished years. + For Time and Death and mortal pain + Give wounds that will not heal again. + Let me remember half the woe + I've seen and heard and felt below, + And heaven itself, so pure and blest, + Could never give my spirit rest. + Sweet land of light! Thy children fair + Know nought akin to our despair; + Nor have they felt, nor can they tell + What tenants haunt each mortal cell, + What gloomy guests we hold within, + Torments and madness, fear and sin! + Well, may they live in ecstasy + Their long eternity of joy; + At least we would not bring them down + With us to weep, with us to groan. + No, Earth would wish no other sphere + To taste her cup of suffering drear; + She turns from heaven a tearless eye + And only mourns that _we_ must die! + Ah mother! what shall comfort thee + In all this boundless misery? + To cheer our eager eyes awhile, + We see thee smile, how fondly smile! + But who reads not through the tender glow + Thy deep, unutterable woe? + Indeed no darling hand above + Can cheat thee of thy children's love. + We all, in life's departing shine, + Our last dear longings blend with thine, + And struggle still, and strive to trace + With clouded gaze thy darling face. + We would not leave our nature home + For _any_ world beyond the tomb. + No, mother, on thy kindly breast + Let us be laid in lasting rest, + Or waken but to share with thee + A mutual immortality. + +There is the whole spirit of _Wuthering Heights_; the spirit of +Catherine Earnshaw's dream; the spirit that in the last page broods over +the moorland graveyard. It is instinct with a more than pagan adoration +of the tragic earth, adored because of her tragedy. + +It would be dangerous to assert positively that "Remembrance" belongs to +the same song-cycle; but it undoubtedly belongs to the same cycle, or +rather cyclone, of passion; the cyclone that rages in the hearts of +Heathcliff and of Catherine. The genius of Emily Brontë was so far +dramatic that, if you could divide her poems into the personal and +impersonal, the impersonal would be found in a mass out of all +proportion to the other. But, with very few exceptions, you cannot so +divide them; for in her continuous and sustaining dream, the vision that +lasted for at least eleven years of her life, from eighteen-thirty-four, +the earliest date of any known Gondal poem, to eighteen-forty-five, the +last appearance of the legend, she _was_ these people; she lived, +indistinguishably and interchangeably, their tumultuous and passionate +life. Sometimes she is the lonely spirit that looks on in immortal +irony, raised above good and evil. More often she is a happy god, +immanent in his restless and manifold creations, rejoicing in this +multiplication of himself. It is she who fights and rides, who loves and +hates, and suffers and defies. She heads one poem naïvely: "To the Horse +Black Eagle that I rode at the Battle of Zamorna." The horse _I_ rode! +If it were not glorious, it would be (when you think what her life was +in that Parsonage) most mortally pathetic. + +But it is all in keeping. For, as she could dare the heavenly, divine +adventure, so there was no wild and ardent adventure of the earth she +did not claim. + + * * * * * + +Love of life and passionate adoration of the earth, adoration and +passion fiercer than any pagan knew, burns in _Wuthering Heights_. And +if that were all, it would be impossible to say whether her mysticism or +her paganism most revealed the soul of Emily Brontë. + +In _Wuthering Heights_ we are plunged apparently into a world of most +unspiritual lusts and hates and cruelties; into the very darkness and +thickness of elemental matter; a world that would be chaos, but for the +iron Necessity that brings its own terrible order, its own implacable +law of lust upon lust begotten, hate upon hate, and cruelty upon +cruelty, through the generations of Heathcliffs and of Earnshaws. + +Hindley Earnshaw is brutal to the foundling, Heathcliff, and degrades +him. Heathcliff, when his hour comes, pays back his wrong with the +interest due. He is brutal beyond brutality to Hindley Earnshaw, and he +degrades Hareton, Hindley's son, as he himself was degraded; but he is +not brutal to him. The frustrated passion of Catherine Earnshaw for +Heathcliff, and of Heathcliff for Catherine, hardly knows itself from +hate; they pay each other back torture for torture, and pang for +hopeless pang. When Catherine marries Edgar Linton, Heathcliff marries +Isabella, Edgar's sister, in order that he may torture to perfection +Catherine and Edgar and Isabella. His justice is more than poetic. The +love of Catherine Earnshaw was all that he possessed. He knows that he +has lost it through the degradation that he owes to Hindley Earnshaw. It +is because an Earnshaw and a Linton between them have robbed him of all +that he possessed, that, when his hour comes, he pays himself back by +robbing the Lintons and the Earnshaws of all that _they_ possess, their +Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He loathes above all loathely +creatures, Linton, his own son by Isabella. The white-blooded thing is +so sickly that he can hardly keep it alive. But with an unearthly +cruelty he cherishes, he nourishes this spawn till he can marry it on +its death-bed to the younger Catherine, the child of Catherine Earnshaw +and of Edgar Linton. This supreme deed accomplished, he lets the +creature die, so that Thrushcross Grange may fall into his hands. Judged +by his bare deeds, Heathcliff seems a monster of evil, a devil without +any fiery infernal splendour, a mean and sordid devil. + +But--and this is what makes Emily Brontë's work stupendous--not for a +moment can you judge Heathcliff by his bare deeds. Properly speaking, +there are no bare deeds to judge him by. Each deed comes wrapt in its +own infernal glamour, trailing a cloud of supernatural splendour. The +whole drama moves on a plane of reality superior to any deed. The spirit +of it, like Emily Brontë's spirit, is superbly regardless of the +material event. As far as material action goes Heathcliff is singularly +inert. He never seems to raise a hand to help his vengeance. He lets +things take their course. He lets Catherine marry Edgar Linton and +remain married to him. He lets Isabella's passion satisfy itself. He +lets Hindley Earnshaw drink himself to death. He lets Hareton sink to +the level of a boor. He lets Linton die. His most overt and violent +action is the capture of the younger Catherine. And even there he takes +advantage of the accident that brings her to the door of Wuthering +Heights. He watches and bides his time with the intentness of a brooding +spirit that in all material happenings seeks its own. He makes them his +instruments of vengeance. And Heathcliff's vengeance, like his passion +for Catherine, is an immortal and immaterial thing. He shows how little +he thinks of sordid, tangible possession; for, when his vengeance is +complete, when Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff are dead and their +lands and houses are his, he becomes utterly indifferent. He falls into +a melancholy. He neither eats nor drinks. He shuts himself up in Cathy's +little room and is found dead there, lying on Cathy's bed. + +If there never was anything less heavenly, less Christian, than this +drama, there never was anything less earthly, less pagan. There is no +name for it. It is above all our consecrated labels and distinctions. It +has been called a Greek tragedy, with the Aeschylean motto, [Greek: to +drasanti pathein]. But it is not Greek any more than it is Christian; +and if it has a moral, its moral is far more [Greek: to pathonti +pathein]. It is the drama of suffering born of suffering, and confined +strictly within the boundaries of the soul. + +Madame Duclaux (whose criticism of _Wuthering Heights_ is not to be +surpassed or otherwise gainsaid) finds in it a tragedy of inherited +evil. She thinks that Emily Brontë was greatly swayed by the doctrine of +heredity. "'No use,' she seems to be saying, 'in waiting for the +children of evil parents to grow, of their own will and unassisted, +straight and noble. The very quality of their will is as inherited as +their eyes and hair. Heathcliff is no fiend or goblin; the untrained, +doomed child of some half-savage sailor's holiday, violent and +treacherous. And how far shall we hold the sinner responsible for a +nature which is itself the punishment of some forefather's crime?'" + +All this, I cannot help thinking, is alien to the spirit of _Wuthering +Heights_, and to its greatness. It is not really any problem of heredity +that we have here. Heredity is, in fact, ignored. Heathcliff's race and +parentage are unknown. There is no resemblance between the good old +Earnshaws, who adopted him, and their son Hindley. Hareton does not +inherit Hindley's drunkenness or his cruelty. It is not through any +physical consequence of his father's vices that Hareton suffers. Linton +is in no physical sense the son of Heathcliff. If Catherine Linton +inherits something of Catherine Earnshaw's charm and temper, it is +because the younger Catherine belongs to another world; she is an +inferior and more physical creature. She has nothing in her of Catherine +Earnshaw's mutinous passion, the immortal and unearthly passion which +made that Catherine alive and killed her. Catherine Linton's "little +romance" is altogether another affair. + +The world of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is a world of spiritual +affinities, of spiritual contacts and recoils where love begets and +bears love, and hate is begotten of hate and born of shame. Even Linton +Heathcliff, that "whey-faced, whining wretch", that physical degenerate, +demonstrates the higher law. His weakness is begotten by his father's +loathing on his mother's terror. + +Never was a book written with a more sublime ignoring of the physical. +You only get a taste of it once in Isabella's unwholesome love for +Heathcliff; that is not passion, it is sentiment, and it is thoroughly +impure. And you get a far-off vision of it again in Isabella's fear of +Heathcliff. Heathcliff understood her. He says of her, "'No brutality +disgusted her.... I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, +in my experiments on what she could endure and still creep shamefully +back.'" This civilized creature is nearer to the animals, there is more +of the earth in her than in Catherine or in Heathcliff. They are +elemental beings, if you like, but their element is fire. They are +clean, as all fiery, elemental things are clean. + +True, their love found violent physical expression; so that M. +Maeterlinck can say of them and their creator: "We feel that one must +have lived for thirty years under chains of burning kisses to learn what +she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such minuteness, +such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two lovers of _Wuthering +Heights_; to mark the self-conflicting movements of the tenderness that +would make suffer, and the cruelty that would make glad, the felicity +that prayed for death, and the despair that clung to life, the repulsion +that desired, the desire drunk with repulsion--love surcharged with +hatred, hatred staggering beneath its load of love."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +True; but the passion that consumes Catherine and Heathcliff, that burns +their bodies and destroys them, is nine-tenths a passion of the soul. It +taught them nothing of the sad secrets of the body. Thus Catherine's +treachery to Heathcliff is an unconscious treachery. It is her innocence +that makes it possible. She goes to Edgar Linton's arms with blind +eyes, in utter, childlike ignorance, not knowing what she does till it +is done and she is punished for it. She is punished for the sin of sins, +the sundering of the body from the soul. All her life after she sees her +sin. She has taken her body, torn it apart and given it to Edgar Linton, +and Heathcliff has her soul. + +"'You love Edgar Linton,' Nelly Dean says, 'and Edgar loves you ... +where is the obstacle?' + +"_'Here!_ and _here_!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her +forehead, and the other on her breast: 'in whichever place the soul +lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong.'... 'I've no +more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if +the wicked man in there hadn't brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't +have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he +shall never know how I love him, and that, not because he's handsome, +Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are +made of, his and mine are the same.'" + +Not only are they made of the same stuff, but Heathcliff _is_ her soul. + +"'I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that +there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the +use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries +in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries ... my great thought in +living is himself.... Nelly! I _am_ Heathcliff! He's always, always in +my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but +as my own being.'" + +That is her "secret". + +Of course, there is Cathy's other secret--her dream, which passes for +Emily Brontë's "pretty piece of Paganism". But it is only one side of +Emily Brontë. And it is only one side of Catherine Earnshaw. When +Heathcliff turns from her for a moment in that last scene of passion, +she says: "'Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me +out of the grave. _That_ is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not +_my_ Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my +soul. And,' she added musingly, 'the thing that irks me most is this +shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm +wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not +seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of +an aching heart; but really with it and in it. Nelly, you think you are +better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength; you are +sorry for me--very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for +_you_. I shall be incomparably above and beyond you all.'" + +True, adoration of Earth, the All-Mother, runs like a choric hymn +through all the tragedy. Earth is the mother and the nurse of these +children. They are brought to her for their last bed, and she gives them +the final consolation. + +Yet, after all, the end of this wild northern tragedy is far enough from +Earth, the All-Mother. The tumult of _Wuthering Heights_ ceases when +Heathcliff sickens. It sinks suddenly into the peace and silence of +exhaustion. And the drama closes, not in hopeless gloom, the agony of +damned souls, but in redemption, reconciliation. + +Catherine, the child of Catherine and of Edgar Linton, loves Hareton, +the child of Hindley Earnshaw. The evil spirit that possessed these two +dies with the death of Heathcliff. The younger Catherine is a mixed +creature, half-spiritualized by much suffering. Hareton is a splendid +animal, unspiritualized and unredeemed. Catherine redeems him; and you +gather that by that act of redemption, somehow, the souls of Catherine +and Heathcliff are appeased. + +The whole tremendous art of the book is in this wringing of strange and +terrible harmony out of raging discord. It ends on a sliding cadence, +soft as a sigh of peace only just conscious after pain. + +"I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next +the moor: the middle one grey and half-buried in heath; Edgar Linton's +only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's +still bare. + +"I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths +fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind +breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine +unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." + + * * * * * + +But that is not the real end, any more than Lockwood's arrival at +Wuthering Heights is the beginning. It is only Lockwood recovering +himself; the natural man's drawing breath after the passing of the +supernatural. + +For it was not conceivable that the more than human love of Heathcliff +and Catherine should cease with the dissolution of their bodies. It was +not conceivable that Catherine, by merely dying in the fifteenth +chapter, should pass out of the tale. As a matter of fact, she never +does pass out of it. She is more in it than ever. + +For the greater action of the tragedy is entirely on the invisible and +immaterial plane; it is the pursuing, the hunting to death of an earthly +creature by an unearthly passion. You are made aware of it at the very +beginning when the ghost of the child Catherine is heard and felt by +Lockwood; though it is Heathcliff that she haunts. It begins in the +hour after Catherine's death, upon Heathcliff's passionate invocation: +"'Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest so long as I am living! You said +I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I +believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me +always--take any form--drive me mad! Only _do_ not leave me in this +abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unbearable! I _cannot_ +live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!'" + +It begins and is continued through eighteen years. He cannot see her, +but he is aware of her. He is first aware on the evening of the day she +is buried. He goes to the graveyard and breaks open the new-made grave, +saying to himself, "'I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, +I'll think it is the north wind that chills _me_; and if she be +motionless, it is sleep.'" A sighing, twice repeated, stops him. "'I +appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. +I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but as certainly as +you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though +it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt Cathy was there; not under +me, but on the earth.... Her presence was with me; it remained while I +refilled the grave, and led me home.'" + +But she cannot get through to him completely, because of the fleshly +body that he wears. + +He goes up to his room, his room and hers. "'I looked round +impatiently--I felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I +_could not_!... She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to +me! And since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the +sport of that intolerable torture!... When I sat in the house with +Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on +the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home, I +hastened to return; she _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was +certain! And when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I +couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either +outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or +even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a +child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a +hundred times a night--to be always disappointed! It racked me!... It +was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of +hair-breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen +years!'" + +In all Catherine's appearances you feel the impulse towards satisfaction +of a soul frustrated of its passion, avenging itself on the body that +betrayed it. It has killed Catherine's body. It will kill Heathcliff's; +for it _must_ get through to him. And he knows it. + +Heathcliff's brutalities, his cruelties, the long-drawn accomplishment +of his revenge, are subordinate to this supreme inner drama, this +wearing down of the flesh by the lust of a remorseless spirit. + +Here are the last scenes of the final act. Heathcliff is failing. +"'Nelly,' he says, 'there's a strange change approaching: I'm in its +shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life, that I +hardly remember to eat or drink. Those two who have left the room'" +(Catherine Linton and Hareton) "'are the only objects which retain a +distinct material appearance to me.... Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed +a personification of my youth, not a human being: I felt to him in such +a variety of ways that it would have been impossible to have accosted +him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine +connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose +the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for +what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I +cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the +flags? In every cloud, in every tree--filling the air at night, and +caught by glimpses in every object by day--I am devoured with her image! +The most ordinary faces of men and women--my own features--mock me with +a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda +that she did exist, and that I have lost her.'... + +"'But what do you mean by a _change_, Mr. Heathcliff?' I said, alarmed +at his manner.... + +"'I shall not know till it comes,' he said, 'I'm only half conscious of +it now.'" + +A few days pass. He grows more and more abstracted and detached. One +morning Nelly Dean finds him downstairs, risen late. + +"I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested +his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, +surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless +eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half +a minute together.... + +"'Mr. Heathcliff! master!' I cried, 'don't, for God's sake stare as if +you saw an unearthly vision.' + +"'Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud,' he replied. 'Turn round, and +tell me, are we by ourselves?' + +"'Of course,' was my answer, 'of course we are.' + +"Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a +sweep of his hand he cleared a space in front of the breakfast-things, +and leant forward more at his ease. + +"Now I perceived that he was not looking at the wall; for, when I +regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within +two yards' distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, +both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, +yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The +fancied object was not fixed: either his eyes pursued it with unwearied +diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly +reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to +touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his +hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they +reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim." + +He cannot sleep; and at dawn of the next day he comes to the door of his +room--Cathy's room--and calls Nelly to him. She remonstrates with him +for his neglect of his body's health, and of his soul's. + +"'Your cheeks are hollow, and your eyes bloodshot, like a person +starving with hunger, and going blind with loss of sleep.' + +"'It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,' he said.... 'I'll do +both as soon as I possibly can ... as to repenting of my injustices, +I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I am too happy; and yet +I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not +satisfy itself.'" ... "In the afternoon, while Joseph and Hareton were +at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, +bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I +declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner +frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his +companion alone. + +"'I believe you think me a fiend,' he said, with his dismal laugh: +'something too horrible to live under a decent roof.' Then, turning to +Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he +added, half sneeringly: 'Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! +to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who +won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! +It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear--even mine.'" + +It is Heathcliff's susceptibility to this immaterial passion, the fury +with which he at once sustains and is consumed by it, that makes him +splendid. + +Peace under green grass could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such +a tragedy as _Wuthering Heights_. Its real end is the tale told by the +shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor. + +"'I was going to the Grange one evening--a dark evening, threatening +thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little +boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I +supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided. + +"'What is the matter, my little man?' I asked. + +"'There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' Nab,' he blubbered, +'un' I darnut pass 'em.'" + +It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the +supernatural. One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what +ghostly and immaterial passion and its unearthly satisfaction. + + * * * * * + +And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born. It +belongs to no school; it follows no tendency. You cannot put it into any +category. It is not "Realism", it is not "Romance", any more than _Jane +Eyre_: and if any other master's method, De Maupassant's or Turgeniev's, +is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can +seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory. +The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way +in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is +not the keynote of _Wuthering Heights_. The moral problem never entered +into Emily Brontë's head. You may call her what you will--Pagan, +pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips +from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. +Hers is an attitude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her +acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting. +It is too lucid and too high for pity. + +Heathcliff and Catherine exist. They justify their existence by their +passion. But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton +Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his +existence justifies him. + + Do I despise the timid deer, + Because his limbs are fleet with fear? + Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl, + Because his form is gaunt and foul? + Or, hear with joy the lev'ret's cry, + Because it cannot bravely die? + No! Then above his memory + Let Pity's heart as tender be. + +After all it _is_ pity; it is tenderness. + +And if Emily Brontë stands alone and is at her greatest in the things +that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said +to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for +instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, +for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly +Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality +through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old +farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And +masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that +moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All +warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the +rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that +I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, +and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into the warld.'" + +Charlotte Brontë said of her sister: "Though her feeling for the people +round her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, +with very few exceptions, ever experienced ... she could hear of them +with interest and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and +accurate; but _with_ them she rarely exchanged a word." And yet you +might have said she had been listening to Joseph all her life, such is +her command of his copious utterance: "'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph. +'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall +just tum'le o'er them brocken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear +how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to +Churstmas, flinging t' precious gifts o' God under fooit i' yer flaysome +rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff +bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i' that +plisky. I nobbut wish he may.'" + +Edgar Linton is weak in drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh +impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If +Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella. +These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate +wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white +ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in +silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, +are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh +and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage +children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange. +Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down +before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine +too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering +glass-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her +body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a +scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband. + +Emily Brontë shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the +relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid +passion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a +sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if +Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is +what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse +him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell +her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing +oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella +will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he +has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'" +It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the +sentimental passionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's +innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore +more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Brontë, like George Meredith, saw a +sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little +animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand +même_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing +that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her +refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is no sensualist, hates +and loathes Isabella and her body. + +But there are moments when he also hates the body of Catherine that +betrayed her. Emily Brontë is unswerving in her drawing of Heathcliff. +It is of a piece with his strangeness, his unexpectedness, that he does +not hate Edgar Linton with anything like the same intensity of hatred +that he has for Isabella. And it is of a piece with his absolute fiery +cleanness that never for a moment does he think of taking the lover's +obvious revenge. For it is not, I imagine, that Emily Brontë +deliberately shirked the issue, or deliberately rejected it; it is that +that issue never entered her head. Nor do I see here, in his abandonment +of the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, +however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a +tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or +unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was +ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar +obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not +need it, Emily let it go. + +The evil wrought by Heathcliff, like the passion that inspired and +tortured him, is an unearthly thing. Charlotte showed insight when she +said in her preface to _Wuthering Heights_: "Heathcliff betrays one +solitary human feeling, and that is _not_ his love for Catherine; which +is a sentiment fierce and inhuman ... the single link that connects +Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for Hareton +Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied +esteem for Nelly Dean." But that Heathcliff is wholly inhuman--"a ghoul, +an afreet"--I cannot really see. Emily's psychology here is perforce +half on the unearthly plane; it is above our criticism, lending itself +to no ordinary tests. But for all his unearthliness, Heathcliff is +poignantly human, from his childhood when he implored Nelly Dean to make +him "decent", for he is "going to be good", to his last hour of piteous +dependence on her. You are not allowed for a moment to forget, that, +horrible and vindictive as he is, the child Heathcliff is yet a child. +Take the scene where the boy first conceives his vengeance. + +"On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely: + +"'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how +long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before +I do!' + +"'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked +people. We should learn to forgive.' + +"'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I +only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while +I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.'" + +It is very like Heathcliff. It is also pathetically like a child. + +In Hareton Earnshaw Emily Brontë is fairly on the earth all the time, +and nothing could be finer than her handling of this half-brutalized, +and wholly undeveloped thing, her showing of the slow dawn of his +feelings and intelligence. Her psychology is never psychologic. The +creature reveals himself at each moment of his unfolding for what he is. +It was difficult; for in his degradation he had a certain likeness in +unlikeness to the degraded Heathcliff. It was Heathcliff's indomitable +will that raised him. Hareton cannot rise without a woman's hand to help +him. The younger Catherine again was difficult, because of her likeness +to her mother. Her temper, her vanity, her headstrong trickiness are +Catherine Earnshaw. But Catherine Linton is a healthy animal, incapable +of superhuman passion, capable only (when properly chastened by +adversity) of quite ordinary pity and devotion. She inspires +bewilderment, but terror and fascination never; and never the glamour, +the magic evoked by the very name of Catherine Earnshaw. Her escapades +and fantasies, recalling Catherine Earnshaw, are all on an attenuated +scale. + +Yet Catherine Earnshaw seems now and then a less solid figure. That is +because her strength does not lie in solidity at all. She is a thing of +flame and rushing wind. One half of her is akin to the storms of +Wuthering Heights, the other belongs to her unseen abiding-place. Both +sides of her are immortal. + +And they are of that immortality which is the spirit of place--the +spirit that, more than all spirits, inspired Emily Brontë. Two of +Charlotte's books, _The Professor_ and _Villette_, might have been +written away from Haworth; Emily's owes much of its outward character to +the moors, where it was brought forth. Not even Charlotte could paint, +could suggest scenes like Emily Brontë. There is nobody to compare with +her but Thomas Hardy; and even he has to labour more, to put in more +strokes to achieve his effect. In four lines she gives the storm, the +cold and savage foreground, and the distance of the Heights: "One may +guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the +excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a +range of gaunt thorns, all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving +alms of the sun." + +See the finish of this landscape, framed in a window: "They sat together +in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, +beyond the garden trees and the wild green park, the valley of +Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very +soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that +runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). +Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was +invisible; it rather dips down on the other side." + +In six lines she can paint sound, and distance, and scenery, and the +turn of the seasons, and the two magics of two atmospheres. "Gimmerton +chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck +in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for +the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music +about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it +always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of +steady rain." + +That music is the prelude to Heathcliff's return, and to the passionate +scene that ends in Catherine's death. + +And nothing could be more vivid, more concrete, than Emily Brontë's +method. Time is marked as a shepherd on the moors might mark it, by the +movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars; by weather, and the +passage of the seasons. Passions, emotions, are always presented in +bodily symbols, by means of the bodily acts and violences they inspire. +The passing of the invisible is made known in the same manner. And the +visible world moves and shines and darkens with an absolute illusion of +reality. Here is a road seen between sunset and moonrise: "... all that +remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could +see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by the light of +that splendid moon". + +The book has faults, many and glaring faults. You have to read it many +times before you can realize in the mass its amazing qualities. For it +is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, this story +of two houses and of three generations that the man Lockwood is supposed +to tell. Not only has Lockwood to tell of things he could not possibly +have heard and seen, but sometimes you get scene within vivid scene, +dialogue within dialogue, and tale within tale, four deep. Sometimes you +are carried back in a time and sometimes forward. You have to think hard +before you know for certain whose wife Catherine Heathcliff really is. +You cannot get over Lockwood's original mistake. And this poor device of +narrative at second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, is used to convey +things incredible, inconceivable; all the secret, invisible drama of the +souls of Catherine and Heathcliff, as well as whole acts of the most +visible, the most tangible, the most direct and vivid and tumultuous +drama; drama so tumultuous, so vivid, and so direct, that by no +possibility could it have been conveyed by any medium. It simply +happens. + +And that is how Emily Brontë's genius triumphs over all her faults. It +is not only that you forgive her faults and forget them, you are not--in +the third reading anyhow--aware of them. They disappear, they are +destroyed, they are burnt up in her flame, and you wonder how you ever +saw them. All her clumsy contrivances cannot stay her course, or obscure +her light, or quench her fire. Things happen before your eyes, and it +does not matter whether Lockwood, or Nelly Dean, or Heathcliff, or +Catherine, tells you of their happening. + +And yet, though Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the thinnest, the most +transparent of pure mediums, they preserve their personalities +throughout. Nelly especially. The tale only begins to move when Lockwood +drops out and Nelly takes it up. At that point Emily Brontë's style +becomes assured in its directness and simplicity, and thenceforward it +never falters or changes its essential character. + +And it is there, first of all, in that unfaltering, unchanging quality +of style that she stands so far above her sister. She has no purple +patches, no decorative effects. No dubiously shining rhetoric is hers. +She does not deal in metaphors or in those ponderous abstractions, those +dreadful second-hand symbolic figures--Hope, Imagination, Memory, and +the rest of them, that move with every appearance of solidity in +Charlotte's pages. There are no angels in her rainbows. Her "grand +style" goes unclothed, perfect in its naked strength, its naked beauty. +It is not possible to praise Charlotte's style without reservations; it +is not always possible to give passages that illustrate her qualities +without suppressing her defects. What was a pernicious habit with +Charlotte, her use of words like "peruse", "indite", "retain", with +Emily is a mere slip of the pen. There are only, I think, three of such +slips in _Wuthering Heights_. Charlotte was capable of mixing her worst +things with her best. She mixed them most in her dialogue, where sins of +style are sinfullest. It is not always possible to give a scene, word +for word, from Charlotte's novels; the dramatic illusion, the illusion +of reality, is best preserved by formidable cutting. + +But not only was Emily's style sinless; it is on the whole purest, most +natural, and most inevitable in her dialogue; and that, although the +passions she conceived were so tremendous, so unearthly, that she might +have been pardoned if she found no human speech to render them. + +What is more, her dramatic instinct never fails her as it fails +Charlotte over and over again. Charlotte had not always the mastery and +self-mastery that, having worked a situation up to its dramatic climax, +leaves it there. A certain obscure feeling for rightness guides her in +the large, striding movement of the drama; it is in the handling of the +scenes that she collapses. She wanders from climax to climax; she goes +back on her own trail; she ruins her best effects by repetition. She has +no continuous dramatic instinct; no sense whatever of dramatic form. + +These are present somehow in _Wuthering Heights_, in spite of its +monstrous formlessness. Emily may have had no more sense of form for +form's sake than Charlotte; she may have had no more dramatic instinct; +but she had an instinct for the ways of human passion. She knew that +passion runs its course, from its excitement to its climax and +exhaustion. It has a natural beginning and a natural end. And so her +scenes of passion follow nature. She never goes back on her effect, +never urges passion past its climax, or stirs it in its exhaustion. In +this she is a greater "realist" than Charlotte. + + * * * * * + +It is incredible that _Wuthering Heights_, or any line of it, any line +that Emily Brontë ever wrote, should have passed for Charlotte's. She +did things that Charlotte could never have done if she tried a thousand +years, things not only incomparably greater, but unique. + +Yet in her lifetime she was unrecognized. What is true of her prose is +true also of her poems. They, indeed, did bring her a little praise, +obscure and momentary. No less she was unrecognized to such an extent +that _Wuthering Heights_ was said and believed to be an immature work of +Charlotte's. Even after her death, her eulogist, Sydney Dobell, was so +far from recognizing her, that he seems to have had a lingering doubt as +to Ellis Bell's identity until Charlotte convinced him of his error. + +And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Brontë +the glory that she has won at last from time. The very latest theory,[A] +offered to the world as a marvellous discovery, the fruit of passionate +enthusiasm and research, is the old, old theory that Charlotte, and not +Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. And Sydney Dobell, with his little +error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for +Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every +other work of Emily's. He leans rashly enough on the assumption that her +"Gondal Chronicles" were, in their puerility, beneath contempt, still +more rashly on his own opinion that she was no poet. + +[Footnote A: _The Key to the Brontë Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby. See +Appendix I.] + +If this were the only line he took, this amusing theorist might be left +alone. The publication of the _Complete Poems_ settles him. The value, +the really priceless value, of his undertaking is in the long array of +parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he +endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns +are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his +theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself +wherein Charlotte and Emily Brontë differed; in what manner, with what +incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger +sister was pre-eminent, he cannot do better than study those parallel +passages. If ever there was a voice, a quality, an air absolutely apart +and distinct, not to be approached by, or confounded with any other, it +is Emily Brontë's. + +It was the glare of Charlotte's fame that caused in her lifetime that +blindness and confusion. And Emily, between pride and a superb +indifference, suffered it. She withdrew, with what seemed an obstinate +perversity, into her own magnificent obscurity. She never raised a hand +to help herself. She left no record, not a note or a word to prove her +authorship of _Wuthering Heights_. Until the appearance in 1910 of her +_Complete Poems_ the world had no proof of it but Charlotte's statement. +It was considered enough, in Charlotte's lifetime. The world accepted +her disclaimer. + +But the trouble began again after Charlotte's death. Emily herself had +no legend; but her genius was perpetually the prey of rumours that left +her personality untouched. Among the many provoked by Mrs. Gaskell's +_Life_, there was one attributing _Wuthering Heights_ to her brother +Branwell.[A] Mr. Francis Grundy said that Branwell told him he had +written _Wuthering Heights_. Mr. Leyland believed Mr. Grundy. He +believed that Branwell was a great poet and a great novelist, and he +wrote two solid volumes of his own in support of his belief. + +[Footnote A: The curious will find a note on this point in Appendix II.] + +Nobody believes in Mr. Grundy, or in Mr. Leyland and his belief in +Branwell now. All that can be said of Branwell, in understanding and +extenuation, is that he would have been a great poet and a greater +novelist if he could have had his own way. + +This having of your own way, unconsciously, undeliberately, would seem +to be the supreme test of genius. Having your own way in the teeth of +circumstances, of fathers and of brothers, and of aunts, of +school-mistresses,[A] and of French professors, of the parish, of +poverty, of public opinion and hereditary disease; in the teeth of the +most disastrous of all hindrances, duty, not neglected, but fulfilled. +By this test the genius of Emily Brontë fairly flames; Charlotte's +stands beside it with a face hidden at times behind bruised and darkened +wings. By this test even Anne's pale talent shows here and there a +flicker as of fire. In all three the having of their own way was, after +all, the great submission, the ultimate obedience to destiny. + +[Footnote A: It was Miss Wooler who taught Charlotte to "peruse".] + +For genius like theirs _is_ destiny. And that brings us back to the +eternal question of the Sources. "Experience" will not account for what +was greatest in Charlotte. It will hardly account for what was least in +Emily. With her only the secret, the innermost experience counted. If +the sources of _Wuthering Heights_ are in the "Gondal Poems", the +sources of the poems are in _that_ experience, in the long life of her +adventurous spirit. Her genius, like Henry Angora and Rosina and the +rest of them, flew from the "Palaces of Instruction". As she _was_ Henry +Angora, so she _was_ Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. + +It is a case of "The Horse I rode at the battle of Zamorna", that is +all. + +There has been too much talk about experience. What the critic, the +impressionist, of the Brontës needs is to recover, before all things, +the innocence of the eye. No doubt we all of us had it once, and can +remember more or less what it was like. To those who have lost it I +would say: Go back and read again Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte +Brontë_. + +Years and years ago, when I was a child, hunting forlornly in my +father's bookshelves, I came upon a small, shabby volume, bound in +yellow linen. The title-page was adorned with one bad wood-cut that +showed a grim, plain house standing obliquely to a churchyard packed +with tombstones--tombstones upright and flat, and slanting at all +angles. In the foreground was a haycock, where the grave grass had been +mown. I do not know how the artist, whose resources were of the +slenderest, contrived to get his overwhelming but fascinating effect of +moorland solitude, of black-grey nakedness and abiding gloom. But he +certainly got it and gave it. There was one other picture, representing +a memorial tablet. + +Tombstones always fascinated me in those days, because I was mortally +afraid of them; and I opened that book and read it through. + +I could not, in fact, put it down. For the first time I was in the grip +of a reality more poignant than any that I had yet known, of a tragedy +that I could hardly bear. I suppose I have read that book a score of +times since then. There are pages in it that I shrink from approaching +even now, because of the agony of realization they revive. The passing +bell tolled continually in the prelude; it sounded at intervals +throughout; it tolled again at the close. The refrain of "Here lie the +Remains" haunted me like a dolorous song. It seemed to me a decorous and +stately accompaniment to such a tale, and that wood-cut on the +title-page a fitting ornament. I knew every corner of that house. I have +an impression (it is probably a wrong one) of a flagged path going right +down from the Parsonage door through another door and plunging among the +tombs. I saw six little white and wistful faces looking out of an upper +window; I saw six little children going up and up a lane, and I wondered +how the tiny feet of babies ever got so far. I saw six little Brontë +babies lost in the spaces of the illimitable moors. They went over +rough stones and walls and mountain torrents; their absurd petticoats +were blown upwards by the wind, and their feet were tangled in the +heather. They struggled and struggled, and yet were in an ecstasy that I +could well understand. + +I remember I lingered somewhat long over the schooldays at Cowan Bridge +and that I found the Brussels period dull; M. Héger struck me as a +tiresome pedant, and I wondered how Charlotte could ever have put up +with him. There was a great deal about Branwell that I could not +understand at all, and so forgot. And I skipped all the London part, and +Charlotte's literary letters. I had a very vague idea of Charlotte apart +from Haworth and the moors, from the Parsonage and the tombstones, from +Tabby and Martha and the little black cat that died, from the garden +where she picked the currants, and the quiet rooms where she wrote her +wonderful, wonderful books. + +But, for all that skipping and forgetting, there stood out a vivid and +ineffaceable idea of Emily; Emily who was tall and strong and +unconquerable; Emily who loved animals, and loved the moors; Emily and +Keeper, that marvellous dog; Emily kneading bread with her book propped +before her; Emily who was Ellis Bell, listening contemptuously to the +reviews of _Wuthering Heights_; Emily stitching at the long seam with +dying fingers; and Emily dead, carried down the long, flagged path, with +Keeper following in the mourners' train. + +And, all through, an invisible, intangible presence, something +mysterious, but omnipotently alive; something that excited these three +sisters; something that atoned, that not only consoled for suffering and +solitude and bereavement, but that drew its strength from these things; +something that moved in this book like the soul of it; something that +they called "genius". + +Now that, as truly as I can set it down, is the impression conveyed to a +child's mind by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. And making +some deductions for a child's morbid attraction to tombstones, and a +child's natural interest in children, it seems to me even now that this +innocent impression is the true one. It eliminates the inessential and +preserves the proportions; above all, it preserves the figure of Emily +Brontë, solitary and unique. + +Anyhow, I have never been able to get away from it. + +_September_ 1911. + + + + +APPENDIX I + +THE KEY TO THE BRONTË WORKS + + +More than once Mr. Malham-Dembleby has approached us with his mysterious +"Key". There was his "Key to _Jane Eyre_", published in the _Saturday +Review_ in 1902; there was his "Lifting of the Brontë Veil", published +in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1907; and there was the correspondence +that followed. Now he has gathered all his evidence together into one +formidable book, and we are faced with what he calls his "miraculous and +sensational" discovery that it was Charlotte and not Emily Brontë who +wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that in _Wuthering Heights_ she +immortalized the great tragic passion of her life, inspired by M. Héger, +who, if you please, is Heathcliff. + +This is Mr. Malham-Dembleby's most important contribution to the +subject. M. Héger, Mr. Malham-Dembleby declares, was Heathcliff before +he was M. Pelet, or Rochester, or M. Paul. And as it was Charlotte and +not Emily who experienced passion, Charlotte alone was able to +immortalize it. + +So much Mr. Malham-Dembleby assumes in the interests of psychology. But +it is not from crude psychological arguments that he forges his +tremendous Key. It is from the internal evidence of the works, supported +by much "sensational" matter from the outside. + +By way of internal evidence then, we have first the sensational +discovery of a work, _Gleanings in Craven, or The Tourists' Guide_, by +"one Frederic Montagu", published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838, which +work the author of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ must have read +and drawn upon for many things, names (including her own pseudonym of +Currer Bell), descriptions of scenery, local legends, as of that fairy +Jannet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, who haunted the sources of the +Aire and suggested Rochester's Queen of Elves, his fairy, Janet Eyre. +Parallel passages are given showing a certain correspondence between +Montagu's traveller's tale and the opening scene of _Wuthering Heights_. +Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house, like Lockwood, and, like +Lockwood, is shown to bed, dreams, and is awakened by a white-faced +apparition (his hostess, not his host), who holds a lighted candle, like +Heathcliff, and whose features, like Heathcliff's, are convulsed with +diabolical rage, and so on. Mr. Malham-Dembleby, in a third parallel +column, uses the same phrases to describe Jane Eyre's arrival at +Rochester's house, her dreams, and the appearance of Rochester's mad +wife at her bedside; his contention being that the two scenes are +written by the same hand. + +All this is very curious and interesting; so far, however, Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's sensational evidence does no more for us than suggest +that Charlotte and Emily may very likely have read Montagu's book. + +But the plot thickens. Mr. Malham-Dembleby first prints parallel +passages from Montagu's book and _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, +then, extensively, scene after scene from _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering +Heights_. + +Some of these coincidences seem on the first blush of it remarkable, for +instance, the child-phantom which appears both to Jane Eyre and to Nelly +Dean in _Wuthering Heights_; or the rainy day and the fireside scene, +which occur in the third chapter of _Wuthering Heights_ and the opening +chapter of _Jane Eyre_. Others again, such as the parallel between the +return of Heathcliff to Catherine and that of Jane to Rochester, will +not bear examination for a moment. Of this and most of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's parallels it may be said that they only maintain their +startling character by the process of tearing words from their +sentences, sentences from their contexts, contexts from their scenes, +and scenes from the living body of each book. Apparently to Mr. +Malham-Dembleby, a book, at any rate a Brontë book, is not a living +body; each is a box of German bricks, and he takes all the boxes and +tumbles them out on the floor together and rearranges them so as to show +that, after all, there was only one box of bricks in the family, and +that was Charlotte's. Much of his argument and the force of his parallel +passages depends on the identification of the characters in the Brontë +works, not only with their assumed originals, but with each other. For +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's purposes poor M. Héger, a model already +remorselessly overworked by Charlotte, has to sit, not only for M. +Pelet, for Rochester and Yorke Hunsden, for Robert and for Louis Moore, +but for Heathcliff, and, if you would believe it, for Hareton Earnshaw; +because (parallel passage!) the younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw +were teacher and pupil, and so (when she taught him English) were +Charlotte and M. Héger. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's work of identification is made easier for him by +his subsidiary discovery of Charlotte's two methods, Method I, +interchange of the sex; Method II, alteration of the age of her +characters. With this licence almost any character may be any other. +Thus Hareton Earnshaw looking at Catherine is Jane Eyre looking at Mr. +Rochester. When he touches her Nelly Dean says, "He might have stuck a +knife into her, she started in such a taking"; and Rochester says to +Jane, "You stick a sly penknife under my ear" (parallel passage!). +Lockwood at Wuthering Heights is Jane Eyre at Thornton Hall; Heathcliff +appearing at Lockwood's bedside, besides being M. Héger and Rochester, +is Rochester's mad wife. Heathcliff returning to Catherine is Jane +returning to Rochester, and so on. But however varied, however +apparently discriminated the characters, M. Héger is in all the men, and +Charlotte is in all the women, in the two Catherines, in Jane Eyre and +Frances Henri; in Caroline Helstone, in Pauline Bassompierre, and Lucy +Snowe. + +Now there is a certain plausibility in this. With all their vividness +and individuality Charlotte Brontë's characters have a way of shading +off into each other. Jane has much in common with Frances and with Lucy, +and Lucy with Pauline. Her men incline rather to one type, that of the +masterful, arbitrary, instructive male; that is the type she likes best +to draw. Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_ splits up into Rochester and +Robert Moore and Mr. Yorke; and there is a certain amount of Paul +Emanuel in all of them. But life gives us our types very much that way, +and there is a bit of somebody else in everybody. It is easy to suggest +identity by exaggerating small points of resemblance and suppressing +large and essential differences (which is what Mr. Malham-Dembleby does +all the time). But take each whole living man and woman as they have +been created for us, I don't care if Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre +_did_ each have a fit of passion in a locked room, and if a servant +waited upon each with gruel; there is no earthly likeness between the +soul of Catherine and the soul of Jane. I don't care if there was +"hell-light" in Rochester's eyes and Heathcliff's too, if they both +swore by the "Deuce", and had both swarthy complexions like Paul +Emanuel; for there is a whole universe between Heathcliff and Rochester, +between Rochester and M. Paul. Beside Heathcliff, that Titan raging on a +mountain-top, M. Paul is merely a little man gesticulating on an +_estrade_. + +So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to +force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Héger and of the +great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his +identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he +can lay his hands on, from the _Poems_, from _Wuthering Heights_, from +_Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_ and _The Professor_, "... all her life's +hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart..." +(_Villette_) "... faith was blighted, confidence destroyed..." (_Jane +Eyre_) ... "Mr. Rochester" (M. Héger, we are informed in confidential +brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that +Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument. +"Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark +season when Charlotte Brontë wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she +portrayed M. Héger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with +'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So +that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul +Héger". We must believe that _Wuthering Heights_ was written in pure +vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Brontë repudiated its authorship for +three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her +"heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified +animus of her portrait of M. Héger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for +certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence. + +Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely +upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his +own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in +Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared +after the publication of _Jane Eyre_. So far there is nothing new in his +discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugène Sue's +extinct novel of _Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice_, and gives us parallel +passages from that. For in _Miss Mary_, published in 1850-51[A] we have, +not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily +from _Jane Eyre_, but the situation in _The Professor_ and _Villette_ is +largely anticipated. We are told that Eugène Sue was in Brussels in +1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is +interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr. +Malham-Dembleby maintains--that M. Héger made indiscreet revelations to +Eugène Sue, but that Eugène Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took +his own where he found it, either in the pages of _Jane Eyre_ or in the +tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Héger may have +been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate, +have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer +for what Madame Héger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes +of Eugène Sue. + +[Footnote A: Serially in the _London Journal_ in 1850; in volume form in +Paris, 1851. It is possible, but not likely, that Eugène Sue may have +seen the manuscript of _The Professor_ when it was "going the round".] + +Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Héger portrait, +that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte +Brontë in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading _Shirley_. It is +signed Paul Héger, 1850, the year of _Shirley's_ publication, and the +year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two +inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's +death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Héger, done from life in +1850." The handwriting gives no clue. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, +which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in _Villette_. He +says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the +dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green +gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, +it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, +gown or no gown, the portrait _may_ be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says +that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's +house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that +Charlotte and M. Héger met in London that year, and that he then drew +this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very +creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Héger's children +maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly +evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of +another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the +portrait from the Héger family, a statement at variance with the +evidence of the Héger family itself. But granted that the children of M. +Héger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this +portrait of Charlotte Brontë from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, +I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of +the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication. + + + + +APPENDIX II + + +Leyland's theory is that Branwell Brontë wrote the first seventeen +chapters of _Wuthering Heights_. It has very little beyond Leyland's +passionate conviction to support it. There is a passage in a letter of +Branwell's to Leyland, the sculptor, written in 1845, where he says he +is writing a three-volume novel of which the first volume is completed. +He compares it with "Hamlet" and with "Lear". There is also Branwell's +alleged statement to Mr. Grundy. And there is an obscure legend of +manuscripts produced from Branwell's hat, before the eyes of Mr. Grundy, +in an inn-parlour. Leyland argues freely from the antecedent probability +suggested by Branwell's letters and his verse, which he published by way +of vindication. He could hardly have done Branwell a worse service. +Branwell's letters give us a vivid idea of the sort of manuscripts that +would be produced, in inn-parlours, from his hat. As for his verse--that +formless, fluent gush of sentimentalism--it might have passed as an +error of his youth, but for poor Leyland's comments on its majesty and +beauty. There are corpses in it and tombstones, and girls dying of +tuberculosis, obscured beyond recognition in a mush of verbiage. There +is not a live line in it. One sonnet only, out of Branwell's many +sonnets, is fitted to survive. It has a certain melancholy, sentimental +grace. But it is not a good sonnet, and it shows Branwell at his best. +At his worst he sinks far below Charlotte at her worst, and, compared +with Emily or with Charlotte at her best, Branwell is nowhere. Even Anne +beats him. Her sad, virginal restraint gives a certain form and value +to her colourless and slender gift. + +There is a psychology of such things, as there is a psychology of works +of genius. Emily Brontë's work, with all its faults of construction, +shows one and indivisible, fused in one fire from first to last. One +cannot take the first seventeen chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ and +separate them from the rest. There is no faltering anywhere and no break +in the power and the passion of this stupendous tale. And where passion +is, sentimentalism is not. And there is not anywhere in _Wuthering +Heights_ a trace of that corruption which for the life of him Branwell +could not have kept out of the manuscripts he produced from his hat. + + + + +INDEX + + +Absolute, the, 16, 176. +_Agnes Grey_, 39, 40, 49. +Augustine, St., 185. + +Ballynaskeagh, 20. +Balzac, 54, 120, 121, 163. +Bassompierre, Pauline de, in + Villette, 153-157. +Being, 184. + -- Parmenides on, 185. +Birrell, Mr., 14, 20, 31, 41, 65. +Blake, William, 175, 178. +Branwell, Miss, at Haworth, 23, + 24. + -- -- death of, 36. + -- Maria, marries Rev. Patrick + Brontë, 20. + -- -- illness of, 23. + -- -- death of, 23. +Brontë-- + Anne, 49-57. + -- 27, 28. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 27, 33, + 39. + -- at Thorp Green, 33, 36, + 38, 50. + -- in London, 40. + -- character of 49-51, 55, + 56. + -- death of, 45. + -- diary of, 34, 168, 194. + -- Poems of, 54-57, 188, + 246. + -- novels of, 39, 49-54. + -- and Branwell Brontë + compared, 54, 246. + Charlotte, 57-167. + Charlotte at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 15, 16, 19, + 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31, + 37, 39, 46, 47, 69, 83, 94, + 103, 105, 165, 235, 236. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25, + 27, 236. + -- at Roe Head, 26, 27, 94, + 95. + -- at Dewsbury Moor, 27, + 94. + -- at Stonegappe, 28, 62-64. + -- at Rawdon, 33, 35, 67. + -- in Brussels, 15, 35-37, + 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- in London, 15, 40, 46, + 47, 244. + -- character of, 16, 66 et + seq., 80, 82, 83-86, 167. + -- death of, 48, 49. + -- early writings of, 101-104. + -- genius of, 13, 14, 19, 20, + 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, 91, + 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, + 233. + -- marriage of, 47-49. + -- novels of, 105-165. + -- Poems of, 39, 103, 164, + 169, 170, 246. + -- her love of children, + 64-67, 156. + -- and Emily Brontë compared, + 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 31, 64, 65, 66, 68. + Emily Jane, 167-234. + -- at Haworth, 19, 20-22, + 25, 26, 27, 39. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- at Roe Head, 27, 39. + -- at Halifax, 27. + -- in Brussels, 35, 36, 37. + -- death of, 43, 44, 139, + 140, 173. + -- character of, 27, 167-173. + -- diary of, 33, 38, 194. + -- genius of, 14, 15, 16, 17, + 22, 171, 172, 185-186, 187, + 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, 236. + -- Poems of, 17, 39, 174-185, + 231, 232. + -- mysticism of, 16, 168, + 171, 173-181, 186. + -- novel of, 39. + -- paganism of, 16, 135, + 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- and Charlotte Brontë + compared, 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- M. Maeterlinck on, 14, + 170, 213. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 174. + Maria, 20, 22. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- character of, 24, 25. + -- death of, 25. + Patrick Branwell, 15, 22, 27, + 28, 29, 30, 34, 54, 55, 58, + 59, 61, 199, 236. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 25, + 28-30, 34, 42. + -- at Bradford, 28, 29. + -- at Luddenden Foot, 34. + -- at Thorp Green, 40, 41. + -- in London, 29. + -- character of, 40-43, 50-54. + -- death of, 43. + -- authorship of _Wuthering + Heights_ ascribed to, 233, 246, + 247. + Patrick Branwell and Emily + Brontë compared, 246, 247. + -- and Anne Brontë compared, + 54, 233. + -- and Mrs. Robinson, 40, + 41, 50-52. + -- Poems of, 28, 29, 42, + 164, 233, 246. + Patrick, Rev., 20-22, 24, 25, + 36, 37, 42, 43, 83. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20. + -- in Ireland, 20, 21. + -- character of, 20, 21, 22, + 24. + -- works of, 22. +_Brontës, The Fact and Fiction_, by + Angus Mackay, 81. +Brown, John, 28, 29, 30, 51. +Brussels, Charlotte Brontë in, 15, + 35-37, 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- Emily Brontë in, 35, 36, 37. + -- influence of, 15, 81-90, 158. +Byron, 121, 206, 207. + +Children, love of, 64-67, 156. + -- in Charlotte Brontë's + novels, 64, 65, 66, 156. + -- in George Eliot's novels, + 64, 156. +Cowan Bridge School, 24, 25, 27, + 91, 236. +Creative Impulse, the, 23, 155, + 157. +Criticism of Charlotte Brontë, + 15, 31-33, 64-75, 78-81, 117, + 120, 122. + -- of _Jane Eyre_, 114, 117, + 120-124, 128-142. + -- of _Shirley_, 65, 68, 131, 132, + 137, 138, 143. + -- of _Villette_, 143-149, 153-160, + 162, 163. + -- of _Emma_, 161, 162. + -- of Charlotte Brontë's + _Poems_, 164, 165. + -- of Emily Brontë's _Poems_, + 174-209. +Criticism of _Wuthering Heights_, + 209-234. + -- of _Agnes Grey_, 49, 50. + -- of _The Tenant of Wildfell + Hall_, 54, 55. + -- of Anne Brontë's _Poems_, + 54-57, 188, 246. + +Dean, Nelly, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 222, 224, 225, 229. +Destiny, 35, 36, 37, 39, 48, 103, + 105, 234. +_Destiny, Wisdom and_, quoted, 170. +Dewsbury, Charlotte Brontë at, + 27, 94. +Dialogue, 116, 117, 139, 140, 149, + 230. +Diary, Emily Brontë's, 33, 38, + 194. + -- Anne Brontë's, 34, 168, + 194. +Dimnet, M., 15, 16, 51, 163. + -- -- his criticism of Charlotte + Brontë, 16. + -- -- his criticism of + _Wuthering Heights_, 17. +Dobell, Sydney, on Emily + Brontë, 232. +Dramatic instinct of Charlotte + Brontë, 163, 231, 232. + -- -- of Emily Brontë, 231, + 232. +Duclaux, Madame, 14, 20, 21, 44, + 50, 61, 120. + -- -- her Emily Brontë, + 14, 21, 44, 50, 120, 167, 182. + -- -- on _Wuthering Heights_ + 211, 212. +Dunton, Mr. Theodore Watts-, + 14, 15. + +Earnshaw, Catherine, 169, + 173, 208-229. + -- -- character of, 212-216, + 227. + -- Hareton, 209-212. + -- -- character of, 215-218, + 226. +Earth, the, 127, 136, 143, 173, + 207, 208, 224. + -- Emily Brontë's love of, + 136, 174, 175, 208, 222. + -- Genius of, 175. + -- Poem to, 207, 208. +Ecstasy, 179. +Eliot, George, 64, 143, 156, 171. +Emanuel, Paul, 105, 144-146, + 148-153, 157, 242, 243. +_Emma, Fragment of_, 161, 162. +Experience, 144 et seq., 170, 172, + 173, 234. + -- novel of, 106, 107, 143-146, + 148, 164. + -- how far important, 144, + 145, 148, 234. + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 129, + 130, 172, 234. +Eyre, name whence derived, 239. + +Fanshawe, Ginevra, character + of, 154, 159. +Farrar, Dean, 55. +Fielding, 123. +_Fragment of Emma_, 161, 162. + +Gaskell, Mrs., 20, 21, 22, 30, + 42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 96, 101, + 120, 143, 147, 167. +Gaskell's, Mrs., _Life of Charlotte + Brontë_, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, 234-237. +Genius, + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 13, 14, + 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, + 91, 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, 233. + -- of Emily Brontë, 14, 15, + 16, 17, 22, 171, 172, 185, 186, + 187, 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, + 236. + -- the, of Place, 19, 20, 227, + 228. + -- the, of Earth, 174, 175. + -- test of, 233, 234. +"Gondal Chronicles", 38, 39, + 193, 194, 232. +"Gondal Poems", 17, 193-208, + 234. +Grundy, Francis, 33, 51, 60, 203, + 246. + +Haworth, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, + 29, 37, 42-44, 168. + -- influence of, 24, 25, 30, 47, + 94, 103, 105, 165, 166, 227, + 228, 235, 236. +Heathcliff, 53, 170, 197, 209-221, + 222, 224, 225, 239-242. + -- character of, 209, 210, 211, + 226. + -- and Zamorna, 202-207. +Héger, M. Constantin, 14, 35, 36, + 81-90. + -- -- character of, 88, 89, + 146, 147. + -- -- influence of, 36, 100, + 103-105. +Héger's, M. Constantin, relations + with Charlotte Brontë, + 14, 15, 81-90, 96, 100, 104, 105, + 130, 239-247. + -- -- original of Paul + Emanuel, 105, 144-150, 239-247. + -- Madame, 14, 15, 35, 36, + 85-89, 104, 148. + -- -- original of Madame + Beck, 144, 148, 149. +Helstone, Caroline, 98, 137, 139, + 141, 142, 143. + -- -- and Miss Ellen + Nussey, 75, 98. +Henri, Frances, 89, 108-110. +Heredity, 211, 212. + +Imagination and the real, 130, + 144. + +_Jane Eyre_, 21, 24, 39, 40, 64, 68, + 89, 91, 101, 103, 109, 110, + 112-131, 133, 143, 148, 159, + 239-247. + -- -- criticisms of, 112, + 116-124. + -- -- dialogue in, 113, 114, + 117, 118, 119. + -- -- passion in, 113, 114, + 115, 116, 117. + -- -- reality of, 112, 113, + 124. + -- -- style in, 128, 129. + -- -- and _The Professor_ + compared, 105, 109, 110, 112, + 113, 129, 138. + -- -- and _Shirley_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- -- quoted, 113-115, + 117-119, 125-129. +John of the Cross, St., 180, 181. + +Letters of Charlotte Brontë, + 46, 53, 75, 76, 165, 166. + -- -- to Miss Ellen Nussey, + 46, 72, 75-78, 82-92. + -- -- from Brussels, 84-87. + -- -- to M. Héger, 90. + -- -- to Southey, 99. + -- -- to Wordsworth, 99. +Leyland, Francis A., 60, 61. + -- -- on Branwell Brontë, + 81, 233, 246. + -- the sculptor, 29, 51, 246. +Lewes, George Henry, 33, 64, 68, + 124. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 68. +_Life of Charlotte Brontë_, Mrs. + Gaskell's, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, + 234-237. +Linton, Catherine, 212, 221, 222, + 227. +London, Charlotte Brontë in, 15, + 40, 46, 47, 244. + +Mackay, Mr. Angus, 81. +Maeterlinck, M., on Emily + Brontë, 14, 170, 213. +Malham-Dembleby, Mr. J., 87, + 232, 239-245. +Marriage of Charlotte Brontë, + 47-49. + -- Charlotte Brontë on, 69-80, + 141, 142. +Meredith, George, 133, 224. +Moore, Louis, 134, 141, 143. + -- Robert, 137, 140. +Motherhood, 65-68. +Mysticism, 16, 168, 169, 173-181, + 186. + +Nature in _Shirley_, 136, 137. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 173. + -- in Emily Brontë's Poems, + 207, 208. +Nicholls, Rev. Arthur Bell, + 47-49, 82. +Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, + 14, 182, 189, 190. +_Note on Charlotte Brontë_, by + Algernon Charles Swinburne, + 14, 64. +Novel, the, 163. +Novels of Charlotte Brontë, + 105-165. + -- of Anne Brontë, 39, 49-54. + -- of Emily Brontë, 39, 209-234. +Nussey, Miss Ellen, 26, 46, 58, + 72, 73, 75-78, 84, 168, 169. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + friendship with, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + letters to, 31, 46, 72, 75-78, + 86, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + advice to, 75-78, 84. + -- -- influence of, 91-93. + -- Rev. Henry, 79, 80. + -- -- original of St. John + Rivers, 91, 141, 145. + +Oliphant, Mrs., on Charlotte + Brontë, 31, 32, 33, 69-74, 79, + 80, 117, 141. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 70, 71, + 72, 141, 142. + +Paganism, Emily Brontë's, 16, + 135, 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 209, + 211, 214, 222. +Pantheism, Emily Brontë's, 171, + 184. +Parmenides, Poem on _Nature_, + 185. +Passion, Charlotte Brontë's treatment + of, 106, 116, 123, 124, + 176. + -- Emily Brontë's treatment + of, 172, 213, 214. + -- Dickens' Treatment of, + 123. + -- Fielding's treatment of, + 123. + -- Jane Austen's treatment + of, 124. + -- Smollett's treatment of, + 123. + -- Thackeray's treatment of, + 123. + -- in _Jane Eyre_, 113, 114, 115, + 116, 117. + -- in _Shirley_, 131, 141. + -- in _Villette_, 159. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 210, + 211, 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, + 224, 228, 231. + -- in Emily Brontë's Poems, + 179, 180, 182, 196, 199, 200, + 205, 208. + -- in Emily Brontë's soul, + 170-172, 174, 209. + -- test in reality, 159. +"Philosopher, The", 177. +Philosophy, Emily Brontë's, 169, + 175, 176, 177. +_Pictures of the Past_, by Francis + Grundy, 60. +Poems of Anne Brontë, 54-57, + 164, 188, 246. + -- of Branwell Brontë, 28, + 29, 42, 164, 233, 246. + -- of Charlotte Brontë, 39, + 103, 164, 169, 170, 246. + -- of Emily Brontë, 17, 39, + 174-185, 231, 232. + -- _The Complete_, of Emily + Brontë, +"Poems, Gondal", 17, 193-208, + 234. +_Professor, The_, 39, 89, 105, 106, + 107-112, 138. +_Professor, The_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, + 129, 138. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 111. + -- -- quoted, 107, 108, + 109, 111. +Pryor, Mrs., 140. + +_Quarterly Review, The_, 53, 114, + 117, 120, 121, 131. + +Real, the, + -- Imagination and the, 130, + 134. + -- germ of the, 138, 145, 158. +Realism, 163, 221, 231. +Reality, 113, 124, 138, 141, 143, + 145, 146, 147, 148, 158, 159, + 163, 171, 173, 174, 176, 228, + 230, 231. +Reid, Sir T. Wemyss, 58, 96. + -- -- on Charlotte Brontë, + 58, 81, 100. + -- -- quoted, 58-60. +Rigby, Miss (Lady Eastlake), 122. +Rivers, St. John, 91, 145. +Robinson, Miss A. Mary F. + _See_ Duclaux, Madame. + -- Mrs., 15, 33. + -- -- and Branwell Brontë, + 15, 41, 42, 52. + -- -- vindicated, 41, 50. +Rochester, character of, 113, 117, + 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 140, 141. +Roe Head, 26, 27, 95, 162. + +Sidgwick, Mr., 28, 64. + -- Mrs., 28, 62-64. +_Shirley_, 46, 65, 68, 72, 100, + 131-143. + -- portrait of Emily Brontë + in, 70, 71, 133, 137, 147. + -- dialogue in, 139-141. + -- criticism of, 64, 65, 68, + 137, 138. + -- style in, 139, 140, 141. + -- Woman in, 70, 71, 132, + 133, 137, 141, 143. +_Shirley_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- and _Villette_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- and _Wuthering Heights_ compared, + 139. + -- quoted, 133-137, 138, 139, + 140, 141, 142. +Shorter, Mr. Clement K., 13, + 14, 74, 82, 84, 87, 88, 96, 100, + 101, 186-190, 191, 193. _See + also_ Prefatory Note. +Smith, Mr. George, 40, 144, 158. +Smollett, 123. +Snowe, Lucy, 71, 79, 89. + -- -- and Pauline de + Bassompierre, 153-157. +Sources of _Wuthering Heights_, 16, + 196-209, 231. +Southey, Robert, Charlotte + Brontë's letter to, 99. +Southey's, Robert, advice to + Charlotte Brontë, 99. +Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 62, 63, 79. +Style, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, + 128, 160, 161, 162, 230, 231. +Sue, Eugène, 243, 244. +Supernatural, the, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 16, 207-221. +Swinburne, Mr., on Charlotte + Brontë, 14, 31, 64-65, 66, 68. + -- -- on Emily Brontë, 14, 174. + +Taylor, Miss Mary, 15, 35, 58, + 91, 92, 94, 98. + -- Mr. Joe, 72. + -- Mr. James, 72, 73, 74, 145. +Temperament, Charlotte Brontë's, + 73, 81. +_Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The_, 39, + 40, 54, 55. + -- -- audacity of, 54. + -- -- realism of, 54. + -- -- and Farrar's _Eternal + Hope_, 55. +Thackeray, 15, 47, 61, 123. +Theories, 16, 17, 57-90, 100, 106, + 231-332, 237, 238-247. +Thornton, 20. + +_Villette_, 46, 89, 100, 105, 140-161. + -- Lucy Snowe in, 71, 79, 89. + -- M. Paul in. _See_ Emanuel + Paul. + -- dialogue in, 149. + -- germ of the real in, 145, + 158. + -- reality of, 144, 145, 146, + 147, 148, 158, 159, 163. + -- realism of, 163, 164. + -- style in, 160, 161. + -- and _The Professor_ compared, + 98, 99, 111, 112. + -- and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- and _Shirley_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- quoted, 149-153, 154, 155, + 157. + +Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 14, 196. +Williams, Mr. W.S., 40. + -- -- Charlotte Brontë's + letter to, 78. +Wilson, Rev. Carus, 24, 25. +_Wisdom and Destiny_ quoted, 170, + 213. +Woman, 69, 70, 117, 118, 132, + 133, 140, 142, 143. +Woman, mid-Victorian, 71, 118, + 132. + -- modern, 133. +Woman's place in the world, 78, + 142. +Women, Charlotte Brontë's, 69, + 70, 132, 133. +Wooler, Miss, 26, 27, 35, 98. +Wordsworth, letters to, 99. +_Wuthering Heights_, 16, 17, 21, 39, + 40, 46, 105, 127, 128, 130, 131, + 139, 172, 173, 208-234. + -- -- criticism of, 209-233. + -- -- dialogue in, 218, 219, + 220-221, 223, 224. + -- -- mysticism in, 173. + -- -- paganism in, 209, + 211, 214, 222. + -- -- passion in, 210, 211, + 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, 224, + 228, 231. + -- -- realism in, 221, 224, + 228. + -- -- style in, 228, 230. + -- -- the supernatural in, + 17, 196-209, 216. + -- -- sources of, 232, 233, + 234. + +Zamorna. + -- _See_ Heathcliff. + -- _See_ "Gondal Poems". + + + + +2/- Hutchinson's 2/- +NET NET + +BOOKLOVER'S LIBRARY + + +The Booklover's Library is now accepted as one of the most successful +ventures of recent years. Beautifully produced and covering a wide range +of subjects, the books have been eagerly sought by a discriminating +public. + +Published in the first instance at a price from 30/- and below, each +title selected for this library is generally admitted to be a little +masterpiece in its own particular sphere. + +Here are the eighteen titles which are now available: + +First titles in the + +BOOKLOVER'S LIBRARY + +No. 1. + +HAWORTH PARSONAGE + +by Isabel C. Clarke + +_Sphere._--"This biography of that tragical family whose private lives +far transcended the gloom of the magnificent work they produced, is a +matter of interest to all who have read and loved _Jane Eyre_ and +_Wuthering Heights_." + +No. 2. + +ROMANCE OF EMPIRE by Sir Philip Gibbs + +Sir Philip Gibbs unfolds in his graphic, picturesque way the amazing +record of vision, courage and sacrifice on the part of the pioneers in +the great adventure of Empire. + +No. 3. + +THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS + +by W.P. Pycraft + +The aim of this book is to bring together a most astounding collection +of facts in regard to the Courtship of Animals of all kinds, from Apes +to Ants. + +No. 4. + +THE GHOST BOOK by Cynthia Asquith + +Weird, uncanny stories of the supernatural by May Sinclair; Algernon +Blackwood; Mrs. Belloc Lowndes; L.P. Hartley; Denis Mackail; Clemence +Dane; C. Ray; Hugh Walpole; Desmond MacCarthy; Walter de la Mare; Arthur +Machen; D.H. Lawrence; Oliver Onions; Mary Webb; Charles Whibley; Enid +Bagnold. + +No. 5. + +PASSION MURDER & MYSTERY + +by Bruce Graeme + +_Sunday Times._--"Mr. Graeme has the true knack of the story-teller, and +lovers of the gruesome will find all they want in this collection of +tales, as they are tragic." + +No. 6. + +TAHITI--ISLE OF DREAMS + +by Robert Keable + +_Illustrated London News._--"This is a book of charm and personal +philosophy which will not be forgotten by those who read it." + +No. 7. + +THE THREE BRONTËS by May Sinclair + +Mr. Clement K. Shorter in the _Sphere._--"Assuredly she has produced a +book in which there is not a dull line, upon what is acknowledged to be +one of the most fascinating subjects in the whole range of literature." + +No. 8. + +LESS THAN THE DUST: The Autobiography of a Tramp by Joseph Stamper + +Compton McKenzie in the _Daily Mail._--"... there are pages with the +quality of Maxim Gorki ... absorbed me sufficiently to make me read +every page, starting at three o'clock in the morning after having read +several other books--and I cannot say more for a book than that." + +No. 9. + +THE JUTLAND SCANDAL + +by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon + +_Daily News._--"... a concise exposition of the tactics at Jutland and a +stinging rebuke to those who accuse of having missed a glorious +opportunity through over-caution and lack of fighting spirit." + +No. 10. + +HENRY VIII & HIS WIVES + +by Walter Jerrold + +In this volume Mr. Jerrold has set out to relate the personal history, +so far as it is ascertainable, of the much-married Henry and the six +women whom he successfully wedded. + +_Observer._--"... a rich mine of controversy...." + +No. 11 + +BEYOND KHYBER PASS + +by Lowell Thomas + +_Spectator._--"Unchanged in the last thousand years, the people of +Central Asia stroll through Mr. Thomas's pages, shrouded girls, +swashbuckling youths, peasants, princes ... it is an amazing pageant +that he presents to us." + +No. 12. + +LIFE AND LAUGHTER 'MIDST THE CANNIBALS by Clifford Collinson + +_Yorkshire Herald._--"This is a fascinating narrative of life in the +South Seas, and emphasizes that fact proves more interesting than +fiction...." + +No. 13. + +LIKE SHADOWS ON THE WALL + +by W.B. Maxwell + +_Spectator._--"Mr. Maxwell sketches in a character, a scene, or an +incident with remarkable rapidity and vividness ... his book is salted +with a humour all his own." + +No. 14. + +SPOOK STORIES by E.F. Benson + +_Times._--"Mr. Benson is well-versed in the gentle art of sending cold +shivers racing down other people's spines." + +_Spectator._"These spook stories could not be beaten; every chapter +makes one's flesh creep." + +No. 15. + +ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' + +by Sir Harry Lauder + +_Daily Chronicle._--"It is so vivid that it gives the impression of not +being written at all, but spoken in that vivid, pawky, homely way which +makes him 'get over' the footlights as no other artist can do." + +No. 16. + +WITH LAWRENCE IN ARABIA + +by Lowell Thomas + +_Daily Mail._--"Recounts the extraordinary and almost legendary career +of Colonel Lawrence. His experiences indeed read like an 'Arabian Night' +of the twentieth century. He played his part marvellously." + +No. 17. + +THE KASÎDAH of Hâjî Abdû El Yezdi + +by Sir Richard F. Burton, K.C.M.G. + +A Lay of the Higher Law + +The Kasîdah has been described by some of Sir Richard Burton's admirers +as his masterpiece, and this edition brings it within the reach of a +much greater public than has been possible before. + +No. 18. + +THE SOUL OF THE WAR + +by Philip Gibbs + +_The Author._--"If there is any purpose in what I have written beyond +mere record it is to reveal the soul of war so nakedly that it cannot be +glossed over by the glamour of false sentiment and false heroics." + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Brontës, by May Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BRONTËS *** + +***** This file should be named 11698-8.txt or 11698-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/6/9/11698/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Linda Cantoni and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11698-8.zip b/old/11698-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..50569e9 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11698-8.zip diff --git a/old/11698.txt b/old/11698.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..81ed846 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11698.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8700 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Brontes, by May Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Three Brontes + +Author: May Sinclair + +Release Date: March 24, 2004 [EBook #11698] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BRONTES *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Linda Cantoni and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + +_By the same Author:_ + +THE CREATORS +THE DIVINE FIRE +TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION +THE HELPMATE +KITTY TAILLEUR +MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON +ANN SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS +ARNOLD WATERLOW: A LIFE +UNCANNY STORIES +THE RECTOR OF WYCK +THE ALLINGHAMS +A CURE OF SOULS +FAR END +HISTORY OF ANTHONY WARING +TALES TOLD BY SIMPSON +ETC. + + + + + + +THE THREE BRONTES + + +_by_ + +MAY SINCLAIR + + +1912 + + + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +My thanks are due, first and chiefly, to Mr. Clement K. Shorter who +placed all his copyright material at my disposal; and to Mr. G.M. +Williamson and Mr. Robert H. Dodd, of New York, for allowing me to draw +so largely from the Poems of Emily Bronte, published by Messrs. Dodd, +Mead, and Co. in 1902; also to Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, the +publishers of the Complete Poems of Emily Bronte, edited by Mr. Shorter; +and to Mr. Alfred Sutro for permission to use his translation of _Wisdom +and Destiny_. Lastly, and somewhat late, to Mr. Arthur Symons for his +translation from St. John of the Cross. If I have borrowed from him more +than I had any right to without his leave, I hope he will forgive me. + +MAY SINCLAIR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +INTRODUCTION + +THE THREE BRONTES + +APPENDIX I + +APPENDIX II + +INDEX + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +When six months ago Mr. Thomas Seccombe suggested that I should write a +short essay on "The Three Brontes" I agreed with some misgiving. + +Yet that deed was innocent compared with what I have done now; and, in +any case, the series afforded the offender a certain shelter and +protection. But to come out like this, into the open, with _another_ +Bronte book, seems not only a dangerous, but a futile and a fatuous +adventure. All I can say is that I did not mean to do it. I certainly +never meant to write so long a book. + +It grew, insidiously, out of the little one. Things happened. New +criticisms opened up old questions. When I came to look carefully into +Mr. Clement Shorter's collection of the _Complete Poems of Emily +Bronte_, I found a mass of material (its existence I, at any rate, had +not suspected) that could not be dealt with in the limits of the +original essay. + +The book is, and can only be, the slightest of all slight appreciations. +None the less it has been hard and terrible for me to write it. Not only +had I said nearly all that I had to say already, but I was depressed at +the very start by that conviction of the absurdity of trying to say +anything at all, after all that has been said, about Anne, or Emily, or +Charlotte Bronte. + +Anne's case, perhaps, was not so difficult. For obvious reasons, Anne +Bronte will always be comparatively virgin soil. But it was impossible +to write of Charlotte after Mrs. Gaskell; impossible to say more of +Emily than Madame Duclaux has said; impossible to add one single little +fact to the vast material, so patiently amassed, so admirably arranged +by Mr. Clement Shorter. And when it came to appreciation there were Mr. +Theodore Watts-Dunton, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Birrell, and +Mrs. Humphry Ward, lying along the ground. When it came to eulogy, after +Mr. Swinburne's _Note on Charlotte Bronte_, neither Charlotte nor Emily +have any need of praise. + +And on Emily Bronte, M. Maeterlinck has spoken the one essential, the +one perfect and final and sufficient word. I have "lifted" it +unblushingly; for no other word comes near to rendering the unique, the +haunting, the indestructible impression that she makes. + +So, because all the best things about the Brontes have been said +already, I have had to fall back on the humble day-labour of clearing +away some of the rubbish that has gathered round them. + +Round Charlotte it has gathered to such an extent that it is difficult +to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; +much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The +excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious +error. Mr. Swinburne's _Note_ immortalizes his. M. Heger was dug up +again the other day. + +It may be said that I have been calling up ghosts for the mere fun of +laying them; and there might be something in it, but that really these +ghosts still walk. At any rate many people believe in them, even at this +time of day. M. Dimnet believes firmly that poor Mrs. Robinson was in +love with Branwell Bronte. Some of us still think that Charlotte was in +love with M. Heger. They cannot give him up any more than M. Dimnet can +give up Mrs. Robinson. + +Such things would be utterly unimportant but that they tend to obscure +the essential quality and greatness of Charlotte Bronte's genius. +Because of them she has passed for a woman of one experience and of one +book. There is still room for a clean sweep of the rubbish that has been +shot here. + +In all this, controversy was unavoidable, much as I dislike its +ungracious and ungraceful air. If I have been inclined to undervalue +certain things--"the sojourn in Brussels", for instance--which others +have considered of the first importance, it is because I believe that it +is always the inner life that counts, and that with the Brontes it +supremely counted. + +If I have passed over the London period too lightly, it is because I +judge it extraneous and external. If I have tried, cruelly, to take from +Charlotte the little beige gown that she wore at Mr. Thackeray's +dinner-party, it is because her home-made garments seem to suit her +better. She is more herself in skirts that have brushed the moors and +kept some of the soil of Haworth in their hem. + +I may seem to have exaggerated her homesickness for Haworth. It may be +said that Haworth was by no means Charlotte's home as it was Emily's. I +am aware that there were moments--hours--when she longed to get away +from it. I have not forgotten how Mary Taylor found her in such an hour, +not long after her return from Brussels, when her very flesh shrank from +the thought of her youth gone and "nothing done"; nothing before her but +long, empty years in Haworth. The fact remains that she was never happy +away from it, and that in Haworth her genius most certainly found itself +at home. And this particular tone of misery and unrest disappeared from +the moment when her genius declared itself, so that I am inclined to see +in it a little personal dissatisfaction, if you will, but chiefly the +unspeakable restlessness and misery of power unrecognized and +suppressed. "Nothing done!" That was her reiterated cry. + +Again, if I have overlooked the complexities of Charlotte's character, +it is that the great lines that underlie it may be seen. In my heart I +agree with M. Dimnet that the Brontes were not simple. All the same, I +think that his admirable portrait of Charlotte is spoiled by his +attitude of pity for "_la pauvre fille_", as he persists in calling her. +I think he dwells a shade too much on her small asperities and +acidities, and on that "_ton de critique mesquine_", which he puts down +to her provincialism. No doubt there were moments of suffering and of +irritation, as well as moments of uncontrollable merriment, when +Charlotte lacked urbanity, but M. Dimnet has almost too keen an eye for +them. + +In making war on theories I cannot hope to escape a countercharge of +theorizing. Exception may be taken to my own suggestion as to the effect +of _Wuthering Heights_ on Charlotte Bronte's genius. If anybody likes to +fling it on the rubbish heap they may. I may have theorized a little too +much in laying stress on the supernatural element in _Wuthering +Heights_. It is because M. Dimnet has insisted too much on its +brutality. I may have exaggerated Emily Bronte's "mysticism". It is +because her "paganism" has been too much in evidence. It may be said +that I have no more authority for my belief that Emily Bronte was in +love with the Absolute than other people have for theirs, that +Charlotte was in love with M. Heger. + +Finally, much that I have said about Emily Bronte's hitherto unpublished +poems is pure theory. But it is theory, I think, that careful +examination of the poems will make good. I may have here and there given +as a "Gondal" poem what is not a "Gondal" poem at all. Still, I believe, +it will be admitted that it is in the cycle of these poems, and not +elsewhere, that we should look for the first germs of _Wuthering +Heights_. The evidence only demonstrates in detail--what has never been +seriously contested--that the genius of Emily Bronte found its sources +in itself. + +_10th October, 1911._ + + + + +The Three Brontes + + +It is impossible to write of the three Brontes and forget the place they +lived in, the black-grey, naked village, bristling like a rampart on the +clean edge of the moor; the street, dark and steep as a gully, climbing +the hill to the Parsonage at the top; the small oblong house, naked and +grey, hemmed in on two sides by the graveyard, its five windows flush +with the wall, staring at the graveyard where the tombstones, grey and +naked, are set so close that the grass hardly grows between. The church +itself is a burying ground; its walls are tombstones, and its floor +roofs the forgotten and the unforgotten dead. + +A low wall and a few feet of barren garden divide the Parsonage from the +graveyard, a few feet between the door of the house and the door in the +wall where its dead were carried through. But a path leads beyond the +graveyard to "a little and a lone green lane", Emily Bronte's lane that +leads to the open moors. + +It is the genius of the Brontes that made their place immortal; but it +is the soul of the place that made their genius what it is. You cannot +exaggerate its importance. They drank and were saturated with Haworth. +When they left it they hungered and thirsted for it; they sickened till +the hour of their return. They gave themselves to it with passion, and +their works ring with the shock and interchange of two immortalities. +Haworth is saturated with them. Their souls are henceforth no more to be +disentangled from its soul than their bodies from its earth. All their +poetry, their passion and their joy is there, in this place of their +tragedy, visible, palpable, narrow as the grave and boundless. + +In the year eighteen-twenty the Reverend Patrick Bronte and his wife +Maria brought their six children, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Patrick +Branwell, Emily, and Anne, from Thornton, where they were born, to +Haworth. Mr. Bronte was an Irishman, a village schoolmaster who won, +marvellously, a scholarship that admitted him to Cambridge and the +Church of England. Tales have been told of his fathers and his +forefathers, peasants and peasant farmers of Ballynaskeagh in County +Down. They seem to have been notorious for their energy, eccentricity, +imagination, and a certain tendency to turbulence and excess. Tales have +been told of Mr. Bronte himself, of his temper, his egotism, his +selfishness, his fits of morose or savage temper. The Brontes' +biographers, from Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux[A] to Mr. Birrell, +have all been hard on this poor and unhappy and innocent old man. It is +not easy to see him very clearly through the multitude of tales they +tell: how he cut up his wife's silk gown in a fit of passion; how he +fired off pistols in a series of fits of passion; how, in still gloomier +and more malignant fits, he used to go for long solitary walks. And when +you look into the matter you find that the silk gown was, after all, a +cotton one, and that he only cut the sleeves out, and _then_ walked into +Keighley and brought a silk gown back with him instead; that when he +was a young man at Drumballyroney he practised pistol firing, not as a +safety valve for temper but as a manly sport, and that as a manly sport +he kept it up. As for solitary walks, there is really no reason why a +father should not take them; and if Mr. Bronte had insisted on +accompanying Charlotte and Emily in their walks, his conduct would have +been censured just the same, and, I think, with considerably more +reason. As it happened, Mr. Bronte, rather more than most fathers, made +companions of his children when they were little. This is not quite the +same thing as making himself a companion for them, and the result was a +terrific outburst of infant precocity; but this hardly justifies Mrs. +Gaskell and Madame Duclaux. They seem to have thought that they were +somehow appeasing the outraged spirits of Emily and Charlotte by +blackening their father and their brother; whereas, if anything could +give pain to Charlotte and Emily and innocent Anne in heaven, it would +be the knowledge of what Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux have done for +them. + +[Footnote A: A. Mary F. Robinson.] + +There was injustice in all that zeal as well as indiscretion, for Mr. +Bronte had his good points as fathers go. Think what the fathers of the +Victorian era could be, and what its evangelical parsons often were; and +remember that Mr. Bronte was an evangelical parson, and the father of +Emily and Charlotte, not of a brood of gentle, immaculate Jane Austens, +and that he was confronted suddenly and without a moment's warning with +Charlotte's fame. Why, the average evangelical parson would have been +shocked into apoplexy at the idea of any child of his producing +_Wuthering Heights_ or _Jane Eyre_. Charlotte's fame would have looked +to him exceedingly like infamy. We know what Charles Kingsley, the least +evangelical of parsons, once thought of Charlotte. And we know what Mr. +Bronte thought of her. He was profoundly proud of his daughter's genius; +there is no record and no rumour of any criticism on his part, of any +remonstrance or amazement. He was loyal to Charlotte to the last days of +his life, when he gave her defence into Mrs. Gaskell's hands; for which +confidence Mrs. Gaskell repaid him shockingly. + +But he was the kind of figure that is irresistible to the caustic or +humorous biographer. There was something impotently fiery in him, as if +the genius of Charlotte and Emily had flicked him in irony as it passed +him by. He wound himself in yards and yards and yards of white cravat, +and he wrote a revolutionary poem called "Vision of Hell". It is easy to +make fun of his poems, but they were no worse, or very little worse, +than his son Branwell's, so that he may be pardoned if he thought +himself more important than his children. Many fathers of the Victorian +era did. + +And he _was_ important as a temporary vehicle of the wandering creative +impulse. It struggled and strove in him and passed from him, choked in +yards and yards of white cravat, to struggle and strive again in +Branwell and in Anne. As a rule the genius of the race is hostile to the +creative impulse, and the creative impulse is lucky if it can pierce +through to one member of a family. In the Brontes it emerges at five +different levels, rising from abortive struggle to supreme +achievement--from Mr. Bronte to his son Branwell, from Branwell to Anne, +from Anne to Charlotte, and from Charlotte to Emily. And Maria, who +died, was an infant prodigy. + +And Mr. Bronte is important because he was the tool used by their +destiny to keep Charlotte and Emily in Haworth. + +The tragedy we are too apt to call their destiny began with their +babyhood, when the mother and six children were brought to Haworth +Parsonage and the prospect of the tombstones. They had not been there +eighteen months before the mother sickened and died horribly of cancer. + +She had to be isolated as far as possible. The Parsonage house was not +large, and it was built with an extreme and straight simplicity; two +front rooms, not large, right and left of the narrow stone-flagged +passage, a bedroom above each, and between, squeezed into the small +spare space above the passage, a third room, no bigger than a closet and +without a fireplace. This third room is important in the story of the +Brontes, for, when their mother's illness declared itself, it was in +this incredibly small and insufferably unwholesome den that the five +little girls were packed, heaven knows how, and it was here that the +seeds of tuberculosis were sown in their fragile bodies. After their +mother's death the little fatal room was known as the children's study +(you can see, in a dreadful vision, the six pale little faces, pressed +together, looking out of the window on to the graves below). It was used +again as a night-nursery, and later still as the sleeping-place shared +by two, if not three, of the sisters, two of whom were tuberculous. + +The mother died and was buried in a vault under the floor of the church, +not far from the windows of her house. Her sister, Miss Branwell, came +up from Penzance to look after the children. You can see this small, +middle-aged, early Victorian spinster, exiled for ever from the sunshine +of the town she loved, dragging out her sad, fastidious life in a cold +and comparatively savage country that she unspeakably disliked. She took +possession of the room her sister died in (it was the most cheerful room +in the house), and lived in it. Her nieces had to sit there with her +for certain hours while she taught them sewing and all the early +Victorian virtues. Their father made himself responsible for the rest of +their education, which he conducted with considerable vigour and +originality. Maria, the eldest, was the child of promise. Long before +Maria was eleven he "conversed" with her on "the leading topics of the +day, with as much pleasure and freedom as with any grown-up person". + +For this man, so gloomy, we are told, and so morose, found pleasure in +taking his tiny children out on to the moors, where he entertained them +alternately with politics and tales of brutality and horror. At six +years old each little Bronte had its view of the political situation; +and it was not until a plague of measles and whooping-cough found out +their tender youth that their father realized how very young and small +and delicate they were, and how very little, after all, he understood +about a nursery. In a sudden frantic distrust of the climate of Haworth, +of Miss Branwell, and his own system, he made up his mind to send Maria +and Elizabeth and Charlotte and Emily to school. + +And there was only one school within his means, the Clergy Daughters' +School, established at Cowan Bridge in an unwholesome valley. It has +been immortalized in _Jane Eyre_, together with its founder and patron, +the Reverend Carus Wilson. There can be no doubt that the early +Victorian virtues, self-repression, humility, and patience under +affliction, were admirably taught at Cowan Bridge. And if the carnal +nature of the Clergy Daughters resisted the militant efforts of Mr. +Carus Wilson, it was ultimately subdued by low diet and primitive +drainage working together in an unwholesome valley. Mr. Carus Wilson, +indeed, was inspired by a sublime antagonism to the claims of the +perishable body; but he seems to have pushed his campaign against the +flesh a bit too far, and was surprised at his own success when, one +after another, the extremely perishable bodies of those children were +laid low by typhus. + +The fever did not touch the four little Brontes. They had another +destiny. Their seed of dissolution was sown in that small stifling room +at Haworth, and was reaped now at Cowan Bridge. First Maria, then +Elizabeth, sickened, and was sent home to die. Charlotte stayed on for a +while with Emily. She ran wild, and hung about the river, watching it, +and dabbling her feet and hands in the running water. Their doom waited +for Charlotte and for Emily. + +There is no record of Elizabeth except that, like Anne Bronte, she was +"gentle". But Maria lived in Charlotte's passionate memory, and will +live for ever as Helen Burns, the school-fellow of Jane Eyre. Of those +five infant prodigies, she was the most prodigious. She was the first of +the children to go down into the vault under Haworth Church; you see her +looking back on her sad way, a small, reluctant ghost, lovely, +infantile, and yet maternal. Under her name on the flat tombstone a +verse stands, premonitory, prophetic, calling to her kindred: "Be ye +also ready." + +Charlotte was nine years old when her sisters died. Tragedy tells at +nine years old. It lived all her life in her fine nerves, reinforced by +shock after shock of terror and of anguish. + +But for the next seven years, spent at the Parsonage without a break, +tragedy was quiescent. Day after day, year after year passed, and +nothing happened. And the children of the Parsonage, thrown on +themselves and on each other, were exuberantly happy. They had the +freedom of the moors, and of the worlds, as wild, as gorgeous, as +lonely, as immeasurable, which they themselves created. They found out +that they were not obliged to be the children of the Parsonage; they +could be, and they were, anything they chose, from the Duke of +Wellington down to citizens of Verdopolis. For a considerable number of +years they were the "Islanders". "It was in 1827" (Charlotte, at +thirteen, records the date with gravity--it was so important) "that our +plays were established: _Young Men_, June 1826; _Our Fellows_, July +1827; _The Islanders_, December 1827. These are our three great plays +that are not kept secret." + +But there were secret plays, Emily's and Charlotte's; and these you +gather to be the shy and solitary flights of Emily's and Charlotte's +genius. They seem to have required absolutely no impulsion from without. +The difficult thing for these small children was to stop writing. Their +fire consumed them, and left their bodies ashen white, fragile as ashes. +And yet they were not, they could not have been, the sedentary, +unwholesome little creatures they might seem to be. The girls were kept +hard at work with their thin arms, brushing carpets, dusting furniture, +and making beds. And for play they tramped the moors with their brother; +they breasted the keen and stormy weather; the sun, the moon, the stars, +and the winds knew them; and it is of these fierce, radiant, elemental +things that Charlotte and Emily wrote as no women before them had ever +written. Conceive the vitality and energy implied in such a life; and +think, if you can, of these two as puny, myopic victims of the lust of +literature. It was from the impressions they took in those seven years +that their immortality was made. + +And then, for a year and a half, Charlotte went to school again, that +school of Miss Wooler's at Roe Head, where Ellen Nussey found her, "a +silent, weeping, dark little figure in the large bay-window". She was +then sixteen. + +Two years later she went back to Miss Wooler's school as a teacher. + +In the register of the Clergy Daughters' School there are two immortal +entries: + +"Charlotte Bronte.... Left school, June 1st, 1825--Governess." + +"Emily Bronte.... Left, June 1st, 1825. Subsequent career--Governess." + +They did not question the arrangement. They were not aware of any other +destiny. They never doubted that the boy, Branwell, was the child of +promise, who was to have a glorious career. In order that he should have +it the sisters left Haworth again and again, forcing themselves to the +exile that destroyed them, and the work they hated. It was Charlotte and +Anne who showed themselves most courageous and determined in the +terrible adventure; Emily, who was courage and determination incarnate, +failed. Homesickness had become a disease with them, an obsession, +almost a madness. They longed with an immitigable longing for their +Parsonage-house, their graveyard, and their moors. Emily was consumed by +it; Anne languished; Charlotte was torn between it and her passion for +knowledge. + +She took Emily back with her to Roe Head as a pupil, and Emily nearly +died of it. She sent Emily home, and little Anne, the last victim, took +Emily's place. She and Charlotte went with the school when it was +removed to Dewsbury Moor. Then Emily, who had nearly died of Roe Head, +shamed by Charlotte's and Anne's example, went to Halifax as a teacher +in Miss Patchett's Academy for Young Ladies. She was at Halifax--Halifax +of all places--for six months, and nearly died of Halifax. And after +that Charlotte and Anne set out on their careers as nursery-governesses. + +It was all that they considered themselves fit for. Anne went to a Mrs. +Ingham at Blake Hall, where she was homesick and miserable. Charlotte +went to the Sidgwicks at Stonegappe near Skipton, where "one of the +pleasantest afternoons I spent--indeed, the only one at all +pleasant--was when Mr. Sidgwick walked out with his children, and I had +orders to follow a little way behind". You have an impression of years +of suffering endured at Stonegappe. As a matter of fact, Charlotte was +there hardly three months--May, June, July, eighteen-thirty-nine. + +And most of the time their brother Branwell was either at Bradford or at +Haworth, dreaming of greatness, and drinking at the "Black Bull". The +"Black Bull" stands disastrously near to the Parsonage, at the corner of +the churchyard, with its parlour windows looking on the graves. Branwell +was the life and soul of every party of commercial travellers that +gathered there. Conviviality took strange forms at Haworth. It had a +Masonic Lodge of the Three Graces, with John Brown, the grave-digger, +for Worshipful Master. Branwell was at one and the same time secretary +to the Three Graces and to the Haworth Temperance Society. When he was +not entertaining bagmen, he was either at Bradford painting bad +portraits, or at Haworth pouring out verses, fearfully long, fatally +fluent verses, and writing hysterical letters to the editor of +_Blackwood's Magazine_. + +One formidable letter (the third he sent) is headed in large letters: +"Sir, read what I write." It begins: "And would to Heaven you would +believe in me, for then you would attend to me and act upon it", and +ends: "You lost an able writer in James Hogg, and God grant you may get +one in Patrick Branwell Bronte." Another followed, headed: "Sir, read +now at last", and ending, "Condemn not unheard". In a final letter +Branwell inquires whether Mr. Blackwood thinks his magazine "so perfect +that no addition to its power would be either possible or desirable", +and whether it is pride that actuates him, or custom, or prejudice, and +conjures him: "Be a man, sir!" + +Nothing came of it. Mr. Blackwood refused to be a man. + +Yet Branwell had his chance. He went to London, but nothing came of it. +He went to Bradford and had a studio there, but nothing came of it. He +lived for a brief period in a small provincial Bohemia. It was his best +and happiest period, but nothing came of it beyond the letters and the +reams of verse he sent to Leyland the sculptor. There was something +brilliant and fantastic about the boy that fascinated Leyland. But a +studio costs money, and Branwell had to give his up and go back to +Haworth and the society of John Brown the stone-mason and grave-digger. +That John Brown was a decent fellow you gather from the fact that on a +journey to Liverpool he had charge of Branwell, when Branwell was at his +worst. They had affectionate names for each other. Branwell is the +Philosopher, John Brown is the Old Knave of Trumps. The whole trouble +with Branwell was that he could not resist the temptation of impressing +the grave-digger. He himself was impressed by the ironic union in the +Worshipful Master of conviviality and a sinister occupation. + +A letter of Branwell's (preserved by the grave-digger in a quaint +devotion to his friend's memory) has achieved an immortality denied to +his "Effusions". Nothing having come of the "Effusions", Branwell, to +his infinite credit, followed his sisters' example, and became tutor +with a Mr. Postlethwaite. The irony of his situation pleased him, and +he wrote to the Old Knave of Trumps thus: "I took a half-year's farewell +of old friend whisky at Kendal on the night after I left. There was a +party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel, and I joined them. We ordered in +supper and whisky-toddy as hot as hell! They thought I was a physician, +and put me in the chair. I gave several toasts that were washed down at +the same time till the room spun round and the candles danced in our +eyes.... I found myself in bed next morning with a bottle of porter, a +glass, and a corkscrew beside me. Since then I have not tasted anything +stronger than milk-and-water, nor, I hope, shall, till I return at +midsummer; when we will see about it. I am getting as fat as Prince +William at Springhead, and as godly as his friend Parson Winterbotham. +My hand shakes no longer. I ride to the banker's at Ulverston with Mr. +Postlethwaite, and sit drinking tea, and talking scandal with old +ladies. As for the young ones! I have one sitting by me just +now--fair-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired, sweet eighteen--she little +thinks the devil is so near her!"--and a great deal more in the same +silly, post-Byronic strain. + +In his postscript Branwell says: "Of course you won't show this letter", +and of course John Brown showed it all round. It was far too good to be +kept to himself; John Brown's brother thought it so excellent that he +committed it to memory. This was hard on Branwell. The letter is too +fantastic to be used against him as evidence of his extreme depravity, +but it certainly lends some support to Mrs. Gaskell's statements that he +had begun already, at two-and-twenty, to be an anxiety to his family. +Haworth, that schooled his sisters to a high and beautiful austerity, +was bad for Branwell. + +He stayed with Mr. Postlethwaite for a month longer than Charlotte +stayed with the Sidgwicks. + +Then, for a whole year, Charlotte was at Haworth, doing housemaid's +work, and writing poems, and amusing herself at the expense of her +father's curates. She had begun to find out the extent to which she +could amuse herself. She also had had "her chance". She had refused two +offers of marriage, preferring the bondage and the exile that she knew. +Nothing more exhilarating than a proposal that you have rejected. Those +proposals did Charlotte good. But it was not marriage that she wanted. +She found it (for a year) happiness enough to be at Haworth, to watch +the long comedy of the curates as it unrolled itself before her. She saw +most things that summer (her twenty-fifth) with the ironic eyes of the +comic spirit, even Branwell. She wrote to Miss Nussey: "A distant +relation of mine, one Patrick Boanerges, has set off to seek his fortune +in the wild, wandering, knight-errant-like capacity of clerk on the +Leeds and Manchester Railroad." And she goes on to chaff Miss Nussey +about Celia Amelia, the curate. "I know Mrs. Ellen is burning with +eagerness to hear something about W. Weightman, whom she adores in her +heart, and whose image she cannot efface from her memory." + +Some of her critics, including Mrs. Oliphant (far less indulgent than +the poor curates who forgave her nobly), have grudged Charlotte her +amusement. There is nothing, from her fame downwards, that Mrs. Oliphant +did not grudge her. Mr. Birrell sternly disapproves; even Mr. Swinburne, +at the height of his panegyric, is put off. Perhaps Charlotte's humour +was not her most attractive quality; but nobody seems to have seen the +pathos and the bravery of it. Neither have they seen that Miss Nussey +was at the bottom of its worst development, the "curate-baiting". Miss +Nussey used to go and stay at Haworth for weeks at a time. Haworth was +not amusing, and Miss Nussey had to be amused. All this school-girlish +jesting, the perpetual and rather tiresome banter, was a playing down to +Miss Nussey. It was a kind of tender "baiting" of Miss Nussey, who had +tried on several occasions to do Charlotte good. And it was the natural, +healthy rebound of the little Irish _gamine_ that lived in Charlotte +Bronte, bursting with cleverness and devilry. I, for my part, am glad to +think that for one happy year she gave it full vent. + +She was only twenty-four. Even as late as the mid-Victorian era to be +twenty-four and unmarried was to be middle-aged. But (this cannot be too +much insisted on) Charlotte Bronte was the revolutionist who changed all +that. She changed it not only in her novels but in her person. Here +again she has been misrepresented. There are no words severe enough for +Mrs. Oliphant's horrible portrait of her as a plain-faced, lachrymose, +middle-aged spinster, dying, visibly, to be married, obsessed for ever +with that idea, for ever whining over the frustration of her sex. What +Mrs. Oliphant, "the married woman", resented in Charlotte Bronte, over +and above her fame, was Charlotte's unsanctioned knowledge of the +mysteries, her intrusion into the veiled places, her unbaring of the +virgin heart. That her genius was chiefly concerned in it does not seem +to have occurred to Mrs. Oliphant, any more than it occurred to her to +notice the impression that Charlotte Bronte made on her male +contemporaries. It is doubtful if one of them thought of her as Mrs. +Oliphant would have us think. They gave her the tender, deferent +affection they would have given to a charming child. Even the very +curates saw in her, to their amazement, the spirit of undying youth. +Small as a child, and fragile, with soft hair and flaming eyes, and +always the pathetic, appealing plainness of a plain child, with her +child's audacity and shyness, her sudden, absurd sallies and retreats, +she had a charm made the more piquant by her assumption of austerity. +George Henry Lewes was gross and flippant, and he could not see it; +Branwell's friend, Mr. Grundy, was Branwell's friend, and he missed it. +Mrs. Oliphant ranges herself with Mr. Grundy and George Henry Lewes. + +But Charlotte's fun was soon over, and she became a nursery-governess +again at Mrs. White's, of Rawdon. Anne was with Mrs. Robinson, at Thorp +Green. + +Emily was at Haworth, alone. + +That was in eighteen-forty-one. Years after their death a little black +box was found, containing four tiny scraps of paper, undiscovered by +Charlotte when she burnt every line left by Anne and Emily except their +poems. Two of these four papers were written by Emily, and two by Anne; +each sister keeping for the other a record of four years. They begin in +eighteen-forty-one. Emily was then twenty-four and Anne a year and a +half younger. Nothing can be more childlike, more naive. Emily heads her +diary: + + A PAPER to be opened + when Anne is + 25 years old, + or my next birthday after + if + all be well. +Emily Jane Bronte. July the 30th, 1841. + +She says: "It is Friday evening, near nine o'clock--wild rainy weather. +I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our +desk-boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour--Aunt upstairs +in her room.... Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house. +Keeper is in the kitchen--Hero in his cage." + +Having accounted for Victoria and Adelaide, the tame geese, Keeper, the +dog, and Hero, the hawk, she notes the whereabouts of Charlotte, +Branwell, and Anne. And then (with gravity): + +"A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of +our own."... "This day four years I wonder whether we shall be dragging +on in our present condition or established to our hearts' content." + +Then Emily dreams her dream. + +"I guess that on the time appointed for the opening of this paper we, +_i.e._ Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own +sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just +gathered in for the midsummer holiday. Our debts will be paid off and we +shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, Aunt, and +Branwell, will either have been or be coming to visit us." + +And Anne writes with equal innocence (it is delicious, Anne's diary): +"Four years ago I was at school. Since then I have been a governess at +Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York +Minster."... "We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it, +and also got a hawk. Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three +tame ones, one of which has been killed." + +It is Emily who lets out the dreary secret of the dream--the debts which +could not be paid; probably Branwell's. + +But the "considerable amount of cash in hand" was to remain a dream. +Nothing came of Branwell's knight-errantry. He muddled the accounts of +the Leeds and Manchester Railroad and was sent home. It was not good for +Branwell to be a clerk at a lonely wayside station. His disaster, which +they much exaggerated, was a shock to the three sisters. They began to +have misgivings, premonitions of Branwell's destiny. + +And from Mrs. White's at Rawdon, Charlotte sends out cry after desolate +cry. Again we have an impression of an age of exile, but really the +exile did not last long, not much longer than Emily's imprisonment in +the Academy for Young Ladies, nothing like so long as Anne's miserable +term. + +The exile really began in 'forty-two, when Charlotte and Emily left +England for Brussels and Madame Heger's Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the +Rue d'Isabelle. It is supposed to have been the turning-point in +Charlotte's career. She was then twenty-six, Emily twenty-four. + +It is absurd and it is pathetic, but Charlotte's supreme ambition at +that time was to keep a school, a school of her own, like her friend +Miss Wooler. There was a great innocence and humility in Charlotte. She +was easily taken in by any of those veiled, inimical spectres of the +cross-roads that youth mistakes for destiny. She must have refused to +look too closely at the apparition; it was enough for her that she saw +in it the divine thing--liberty. Her genius was already struggling in +her. She had begun to feel under her shoulders the painful piercing of +her wings. Her friend, Mary Taylor, had written to her from Brussels +telling her of pictures and cathedrals. Charlotte tells how it woke her +up. "I hardly know what swelled in my breast as I read her letter: such +a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work; such a strong wish +for wings--wings such as wealth can furnish; such an urgent desire to +see, to know, to learn; something internal seemed to expand bodily for a +minute. I was tantalized by the consciousness of faculties unexercised." +But Charlotte's "wings" were not "such as wealth can furnish". They were +to droop, almost to die, in Brussels. + +Emily was calmer. Whether she mistook it for her destiny or not, she +seems to have acquiesced when Charlotte showed her the veiled figure at +the cross-roads, to have been led blindfold by Charlotte through the +"streaming and starless darkness" that took them to Brussels. The rest +she endured with a stern and terrible resignation. It is known from her +letters what the Pensionnat was to Charlotte. Heaven only knows what it +must have been to Emily. Charlotte, with her undying passion for +knowledge and the spectacle of the world, with her psychological +interest in M. Heger and his wife, Charlotte hardly came out of it with +her soul alive. But Emily was not interested in M. Heger nor in his +wife, nor in his educational system. She thought his system was no good +and told him so. What she thought of his wife is not recorded. + +Then, in their first year of Brussels, their old aunt, Miss Branwell, +died. That was destiny, the destiny that was so kind to Emily. It sent +her and her sister back to Haworth and it kept her there. Poor Anne was +fairly launched on her career; she remained in her "situation", and +somebody had to look after Mr. Bronte and the house. Things were going +badly and sadly at the Parsonage. Branwell was there, drinking; and +Charlotte was even afraid that her father ... also sometimes ... +perhaps.... + +She left Emily to deal with them and went back to Brussels as a pupil +teacher, alone. She went in an agony of self-reproach, desiring more and +more knowledge, a perfect, inalienable, indestructible possession of +the German language, and wondering whether it were right to satisfy that +indomitable craving. By giving utterance to this self-reproach, so +passionate, so immense, so disproportioned to the crime, the innocent +Charlotte laid herself open to an unjust suspicion. Innocent and unaware +she went, and--it is her own word--she was "punished" for it. + +Nothing that she had yet known of homesickness could compare with that +last year of solitary and unmitigated exile. It is supposed, even by the +charitable, that whatever M. Heger did or did not do for Charlotte, he +did everything for her genius. As a matter of fact, it was at Brussels +that she suffered the supreme and ultimate abandonment. She no longer +felt the wild unknown thing stirring in her with wings. So little could +M. Heger do for it that it refused to inhabit the same house with him. +She records the result of that imprisonment a few weeks after her +release: "There are times now when it appears to me as if all my ideas +and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, are changed from +what they used to be; something in me, which used to be enthusiasm, is +tamed down and broken." + +At Brussels surely enlightenment must have come to her. She must have +seen, as Emily saw, that in going that way, she had mistaken and done +violence to her destiny. + +She went back to Haworth where it waited for her, where it had turned +even the tragedy of her family to account. Everything conspired to keep +her there. The school was given up. She tells why. "It is on Papa's +account; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves me to tell +you that he is losing his sight. I have felt for some months that I +ought not to be away from him; and I feel now that it would be too +selfish to leave (at least as long as Branwell and Anne are absent) to +pursue selfish interests of my own. With the help of God I will try to +deny myself in this matter, and to wait." + +And with the help of God she waited. + +There are three significant entries in Emily's sealed paper for +eighteen-forty-five. "Now I don't desire a school at all, and none of us +have any great longing for it." "I am quite contented for myself ... +seldom or never troubled with nothing to do and merely desiring that +everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and +then we should have a very tolerable world of it." "I have plenty of +work on hand, and writing...." This, embedded among details of an +incomparable innocence: "We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost +the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless +dead." + +And Anne, as naive as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: "Emily +is upstairs ironing. I am sitting in the dining-room in the +rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender. Papa is in the +parlour. Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen. Keeper and +Flossy are, I do not know where. Little Dick is hopping in his cage." +And then, "Emily ... is writing some poetry.... I wonder what it is +about?" + +That is the only clue to the secret that is given. These childlike +diaries are full of the "Gondal Chronicles",[A] an interminable fantasy +in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne. They flourished the +"Gondal Chronicles" in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying +to see which could keep it up the longer. Under it all there was a +mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, "Best plays were +secret plays," and the sisters kept their best hidden. And then suddenly +the "Gondal Chronicles" were dropped, the mystery broke down. All three +of them had been writing poems; they had been writing poems for years. +Some of Emily's dated from her first exile at Roe Head. Most of Anne's +sad songs were sung in her house of bondage. From Charlotte, in her +Brussels period, not a line. + +[Footnote A: See _supra_, pp. 193 to 209.] + +But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her +free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were +excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The +Professor_, _Jane Eyre_. In the same term that found her also, poor +child, free, and at Haworth, Anne wrote _Agnes Grey_ and _The Tenant of +Wildfell Hall_. + +And Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_. + +They had found their destiny--at Haworth. + + * * * * * + +Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that +came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters. It has been +said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that +poems did not pay. It would be truer to say that they wrote them because +it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and +that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return. + +Before they knew where they were, Charlotte found herself involved in +what she thought was a businesslike and masculine correspondence with +publishing firms. + +The _Poems_ by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and +nothing happened. _The Professor_ travelled among publishers, and +nothing happened. Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came +_Jane Eyre_, and Charlotte was famous. + +But not Emily. _Wuthering Heights_ appeared also, and nothing happened. +It was bound in the same volume with Anne's humble tale. Its lightning +should have scorched and consumed _Agnes Grey_, but nothing happened. +Ellis and Acton Bell remained equals in obscurity, recognized only by +their association with the tremendous Currer. When it came to publishing +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, and association became confusion, +Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity. +Emily stayed at Haworth, superbly indifferent to the proceedings. She +was unseen, undreamed of, unrealized, and in all her life she made no +sign. + +But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the +seven miles to Keighley on a Friday evening in a thunderstorm, and took +the night train up. On the Saturday morning they appeared in the office +at Cornhill to the amazement of Mr. George Smith and Mr. Williams. With +childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in +Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown. When +entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr. Croly +preach. They did not hear him; they only heard _The Barber of Seville_ +at Covent Garden. They tried, with a delicious solemnity, to give the +whole thing an air of business, but it was really a breathless, +infantile escapade of three days. Three days out of four years. + + * * * * * + +And in those four years poor Branwell's destiny found him also. After +many minor falls and penitences and relapses, he seemed at length to +have settled down. He had been tutor for two and a half years with the +Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess. He +was happy at first; an ominous happiness. Then Anne began to be aware of +something. + +Mr. Birrell has said rather unkindly that he has no use for this young +man. Nobody had any use for him. Not the editors to whom he used to +write so hysterically. Not the Leeds and Manchester Railroad Company. +And certainly not Mrs. Robinson, the lady for whom he conceived that +insane and unlawful passion which has been made to loom so large in the +lives of the Brontes. After all the agony and indignation that has +gathered round this episode, it is clear enough now, down to the last +sordid details. The feverish, degenerate, utterly irresponsible Branwell +not only declared his passion, but persuaded himself, against the +evidence of his senses, that it was returned. The lady (whom he must +have frightened horribly) told her husband, who instantly dismissed +Branwell. + +Branwell never got over it. + +He was destined to die young, and, no doubt, if there had been no Mrs. +Robinson, some other passion would have killed him. Still, it may be +said with very little exaggeration that he died of it. He had not +hitherto shown any signs of tuberculosis. It may be questioned whether +without this predisposing cause he would have developed it. He had had +his chance to survive. _He_ had never been packed, like his sisters, +first one of five, then one of three, into a closet not big enough for +one. But he drank harder after the Robinson affair than he had ever +drunk before, and he added opium to drink. Drink and opium gave +frightful intensity to the hallucination of which, in a sense, he died. + +It took him more than three years, from July, eighteen-forty-five, the +date of his dismissal, to September, eighteen-forty-eight, the date of +his death. + +The Incumbent of Haworth has been much blamed for his son's +shortcomings. He has been charged with first spoiling the boy, and then +neglecting him. In reality his only error (a most unusual one in an +early Victorian father) was that he believed in his son's genius. When +London and the Royal Academy proved beyond him he had him taught at +Bradford. He gave him a studio there. He had already given him an +education that at least enabled him to obtain tutorships, if not to keep +them. The Parsonage must have been a terrible place for Branwell, but it +was not in the Vicar's power to make it more attractive than the Bull +Inn. Branwell was not a poet like his sisters, and moors meant nothing +to him. To be sure, when he went into Wales and saw Penmaenmawr, he +wrote a poem about it. But the poem is not really about Penmaenmawr. It +is all about Branwell; Penmaenmawr _is_ Branwell, a symbol of his +colossal personality and of his fate. For Branwell was a monstrous +egoist. He was not interested in his sisters or in his friends, or +really in Mrs. Robinson. He was interested only in himself. What could a +poor vicar do with a son like that? There was nothing solid in Branwell +that you could take hold of and chastise. There was nothing you could +appeal to. His affection for his family was three-fourths +sentimentalism. Still, what the Vicar could do he did do. When Branwell +was mad with drink and opium he never left him. There is no story more +grim and at the same time more poignant and pathetic than that which +Mrs. Gaskell tells of his devotion to his son in this time of the boy's +ruin. Branwell slept in his father's room. He would doze all day, and +rage all night, threatening his father's life. In the morning he would +go to his sisters and say: "The poor old man and I have had a terrible +night of it. He does his best, the poor old man, but it is all over with +me." He died in his father's arms while Emily and little Anne looked on. + +They say that he struggled to his feet and died standing, to prove the +strength of his will; but some biographer has robbed him of this poor +splendour. It was enough for his sisters--and it should be enough for +anybody--that his madness left him with the onset of his illness, and +that he went from them penitent and tender, purified by the mystery and +miracle of death. + +That was on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of September. From that day Emily +sickened. She caught cold at Branwell's funeral. On September the +thirtieth she was in church listening to his funeral sermon. After that, +she never crossed the threshold of the Parsonage till in December her +dead body was carried over it, to lie beside her brother under the +church floor. + +In October, a week or two after Branwell's death, Charlotte wrote: +"Emily has a cold and cough at present." "Emily's cold and cough are +very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch +a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly." In +November: "I told you Emily was ill, in my last letter. She has not +rallied yet. She is very ill.... I think Emily seems the nearest thing +to my heart in all the world." And in December: "Emily suffers no more +from pain or weakness now ... there is no Emily in time, or on earth +now.... We are very calm at present. Why should we be otherwise? The +anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of +death is gone by: the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No +need to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not +feel them. She died in a time of promise.... But it is God's will, and +the place where she has gone is better than that which she has left." + +It could have been hardly daylight on the moors the morning when +Charlotte went out to find that last solitary sprig of heather which she +laid on Emily's pillow for Emily to see when she awoke. Emily's eyes +were so drowsed with death that she could not see it. And yet it could +not have been many hours later when a fire was lit in her bedroom, and +she rose and dressed herself. Madame Duclaux[A] tells how she sat before +the fire, combing her long, dark hair, and how the comb dropped from her +weak fingers, and fell under the grate. And how she sat there in her +mortal apathy; and how, when the servant came to her, she said dreamily: +"Martha, my comb's down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up." + +[Footnote A: "Emily Bronte": _Eminent Women Series_.] + +She dragged herself down to the sitting-room, and died there, about two +o'clock. She must have had some horror of dying in that room of death +overhead; for, at noon, when the last pains seized her, she refused to +be taken back to it. Unterrified, indomitable, driven by her immortal +passion for life, she fought terribly. Death took her as she tried to +rise from the sofa and break from her sisters' arms that would have laid +her there. Profoundly, piteously alienated, she must have felt that Anne +and Charlotte were in league with death; that they fought with her and +bound her down; and that in her escape from them she conquered. + +Another month and Anne sickened. As Emily died of Branwell's death, so +Emily's death hastened Anne's. Charlotte wrote in the middle of +January: "I can scarcely say that Anne is worse, nor can I say she is +better.... The days pass in a slow, dull march: the nights are the test; +the sudden wakings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one +lies in her grave, and another, not at my side, but in a separate and +sick bed." And again in March: "Anne's decline is gradual and +fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful." And yet again in April: +"If there were no hope beyond this world ... Emily's fate, and that +which threatens Anne, would be heartbreaking. I cannot forget Emily's +death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently +recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn, +conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life." + +Mrs. Oliphant has censured Emily Bronte for the manner of her dying. She +might as well have censured Anne for drawing out the agony. For Anne was +gentle to the end, utterly submissive. She gave death no trouble. She +went, with a last hope, to Scarborough, and died there at the end of +May. She was buried at Scarborough, where she lies alone. It is not easy +to believe that she had no "preference for place", but there is no doubt +that even to that choice of her last resting-place she would have +submitted--gently. + +"I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright, +waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me +with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange +ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others. +The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so +long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all +silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were +laid--in what narrow, dark dwellings--never more to reappear on +earth.... I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their +sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal +affliction.... To sit in a lonely room, the clock ticking loud through a +still house...." Charlotte could see nothing else before her. + +It was July. She had come home after a visit to Miss Nussey. + +In that month she wrote that chapter of _Shirley_ which is headed "The +Valley of the Shadow". The book (begun more than eighteen months before) +fairly quivers with the shock that cut it in two. + +It was finished somewhere in September of that year of Anne's death. +Charlotte went up to London. She saw Thackeray. She learned to accept +the fact of her celebrity. + +Somehow the years passed, the years of Charlotte's continuous celebrity, +and of those literary letters that take so disproportionate a part in +her correspondence that she seems at last to have forgotten; she seems +to belong to the world rather than to Haworth. And the world seems full +of Charlotte; the world that had no place for Emily. And yet _Wuthering +Heights_ had followed _Shirley_. It had been republished with +Charlotte's introduction, her vindication of Emily. It brought more fame +for Charlotte, but none--yet--for Emily. + +Two years later came _Villette_. Charlotte went up to London a second +time and saw Thackeray again. And there were more letters, the admirable +but slightly self-conscious letters of the literary woman, artificially +assured. They might deceive you, only the other letters, the letters to +Ellen Nussey go on; they come palpitating with the life of Charlotte +Bronte's soul that had in it nothing of the literary taint. You see in +them how, body and soul, Haworth claims her and holds her, and will not +let her go. + +Nor does she desire now to be let go. Her life at Haworth is part of +Emily's life; it partakes of the immortality of the unforgotten dead. +London and Thackeray, the Smiths, Mrs. Gaskell, and Miss Martineau, Sir +John and Lady Kay-Shuttleworth, her celebrity and the little train of +cheerful, unfamiliar circumstances, all these things sink into +insignificance beside it. They are all extraneous somehow, and out of +keeping. Nothing that her biographers have done (when they have done +their worst) can destroy or even diminish the effect her life gives of +unity, of fitness, of profound and tragic harmony. It was Mrs. Gaskell's +sense of this effect that made her work a masterpiece. + +And in her marriage, at Haworth, to her father's curate, Arthur +Nicholls, the marriage that cut short her life and made an end of her +celebrity, Charlotte Bronte followed before all things her instinct for +fitness, for unity, for harmony. It was exquisitely in keeping. It did +no violence to her memories, her simplicities and sanctities. It found +her in the apathy of exhaustion, and it was yet one with all that was +passionate in her and undying. She went to it one morning in May, all +white and drooping, in her modest gown and that poor little bridal +bonnet with its wreath of snowdrops, symbolic of all the timidities, the +reluctances, the cold austerities of spring roused in the lap of winter, +and yet she found in it the secret fire of youth. She went to it afraid; +and in her third month of marriage she still gives a cry wrung from the +memory of her fear. "Indeed, indeed, Nell, it is a solemn and strange +and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife." + +And yet for all that, after London, after fame and friendships in which +her dead had no share, her marriage was not the great departure; it was +the great return. It was the outcome of all that had gone before it; the +fruit of painful life, which is recognition, acceptance, the final trust +in destiny. There were to be no more false starts, no more veiled ghosts +of the cross-roads, pointing the disastrous way. + +And in its abrupt and pitiful end her life rang true; it sustained the +tragic harmony. It was the fulfilment of secret prophecies, forebodings, +premonitions, of her reiterated "It was not to be." You may say that in +the end life cheated and betrayed her. + +And inevitably; for she had loved life, not as Emily loved it, like an +equal, with power over it and pride and an unearthly understanding, +virgin and unafraid. There was something slightly subservient, +consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it +secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity +and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would +propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring forth life. + +When the end came she could not realize it. For the first time she was +incredulous of disaster. She heard, out of her last stupor, her husband +praying that God would spare her, and she whispered, "Oh, I am not going +to die, am I? He will not separate us; we have been so happy." + +You can see her youth rising up beside that death-bed and answering, +"That is why." + +And yet, could even Charlotte's youth have been so sure as to the +cheating and betrayal? That happiness of hers was cut short in the +moment of its perfection. She was not to suffer any disenchantment or +decline; her love was not to know any cold of fear or her genius any +fever of frustration. She was saved the struggle we can see before her. +Arthur Nicholls was passionately fond of Charlotte. But he was hostile +to Charlotte's genius and to Charlotte's fame. A plain, practical, +robust man, inimical to any dream. He could be adorably kind to a sick, +submissive Charlotte. Would he have been so tender to a Charlotte in +revolt? She was spared the torture of the choice between Arthur Nicholls +and her genius. We know how she would have chosen. It is well for her, +and it is all one to literature, that she died, not "in a time of +promise", but in the moment of fulfilment. + + * * * * * + +No. Of these tragic Brontes the most tragic, the most pitiful, the most +mercilessly abused by destiny, was Anne. An interminable, monstrous +exile is the impression we get of Anne's life in the years of her +girlhood. There is no actual record of them. Nobody kept Anne's letters. +We never hear her sad voice raised in self-pity or revolt. It is +doubtful if she ever raised it. She waited in silence and resignation, +and then told her own story in _Agnes Grey_. But her figure remains dim +in her own story and in the classic "Lives". We only know that she was +the youngest, and that, unlike her sisters, she was pretty. She had +thick brown curling hair, and violet-blue eyes, and delicate dark +eyebrows, and a skin rose and white for her sisters' sallow, that must +have given some ominous hint of fever. This delicate thing was broken on +the wheel of life. They say of Anne perpetually that she was "gentle". +In Charlotte's sketch of her she holds her pretty head high, her eyes +gaze straight forward, and you wonder whether, before the breaking +point, she was always as gentle as they say. But you never see her in +any moment of revolt. Her simple poems, at their bitterest, express no +more than a frail agony, an innocent dismay. That little raising of the +head in conscious rectitude is all that breaks the long plaint of _Agnes +Grey_. + +There is no piety in that plaint. It is purely pagan; the cry of youth +cheated of its desire. Life brought her no good gifts beyond the slender +ineffectual beauty that left her undesired. Her tremulous, expectant +womanhood was cheated. She never saw so much as the flying veil of joy, +or even of such pale, uninspired happiness as she dreamed in _Agnes +Grey_. She was cheated of her innocent dream. + +And by an awful irony her religion failed her. She knew its bitterness, +its terrors, its exactions. She never knew its ecstasies, its flaming +mysteries, nor, even at her very last, its consolations. Her tender +conscience drew an unspeakable torment from the spectacle of her +brother's degradation. + +For it was on Anne, who had no genius to sustain her, that poor +Branwell, with the burden of his destiny, weighed most hard. It was Anne +at Thorp Green who had the first terrible misgivings, the intolerable +premonitions. + +That wretched story is always cropping up again. The lady whom Mrs. +Gaskell, with a murderous selection of adjectives, called "that mature +and wicked woman", has been cleared as far as evidence and common sense +could clear her. But the slander is perpetually revived. It has always +proved too much for the Bronte biographers. Madame Duclaux published it +again twenty years after, in spite of the evidence and in spite of Mrs. +Gaskell's retractation. You would have thought that Branwell might have +been allowed to rest in the grave he dug for himself so well. But no, +they will not let him rest. Branwell drank, and he ate opium; and, as if +drink and opium and erotic madness were not enough, they must credit +him with an open breach of the seventh commandment as well. M. Dimnet, +the most able of recent critics of the Brontes, thinks and maintains +against all evidence that there was more in it than Branwell's madness. +He will not give up the sordid tragedy _a trois_. He thinks he knows +what Anne thought of Branwell's behaviour, and what awful secret she was +hinting at, and what she told her sisters when she came back to Haworth. +He argues that Anne Bronte saw and heard things, and that her testimony +is not to be set aside. + +What did Anne Bronte see and hear? She saw her brother consumed by an +illegitimate passion; a passion utterly hopeless, given the nature of +the lady. The lady had been kind to Anne, to Branwell she had been +angelically kind. Anne saw that his behaviour was an atrocious return +for her kindness. Further than that the lady hardly counted in Anne's +vision. Her interest was centred on her brother. She saw him taking +first to drink and then to opium. She saw that he was going mad, and he +did go mad. One of the most familiar symptoms of morphia mania is a +tendency to erotic hallucinations of the precise kind that Branwell +suffered from. Anne was unable to distinguish between such a +hallucination and depravity. But there is not a shadow of evidence that +she thought what M. Dimnet thinks, or that if she had thought it she +made Charlotte and Emily think it too. Branwell's state was quite enough +in itself to break their hearts. His letters to Leyland, to John Brown, +the sexton, to Francis Grundy, record with frightful vividness every +phase of his obsession. + +It is inconceivable that such letters should have been kept, still more +inconceivable that they should have been published. It is inconceivable +that Mrs. Gaskell should have dragged the pitiful and shameful figure +into the light. Nobody can save poor Branwell now from the dreadful +immortality thrust on him by his enemies and friends with equal zeal. +All that is left to us is a merciful understanding of his case. +Branwell's case, once for all, was purely pathological. There was +nothing great about him, not even his passion for Mrs. Robinson. +Properly speaking, it was not a passion at all, it was a disease. +Branwell was a degenerate, as incapable of passion as he was of poetry. +His sisters, Anne and Charlotte, talked with an amazing innocence about +Branwell's vices. Simple and beautiful souls, they never for a moment +suspected that his worst vice was sentimentalism. In the beginning, +before it wrecked him, nobody enjoyed his own emotions more than +Branwell. At his worst he wallowed voluptuously in the torments of +frustration. At the end, what with drink and what with opium, he was +undoubtedly insane. His letters are priceless pathological documents. +They reveal all the workings of his peculiar mania. He thinks everybody +is plotting to keep him from Mrs. Robinson. Faced at every turn with the +evidence of this lady's complete indifference, he gives it all a lunatic +twist to prove the contrary. He takes the strangest people into his +confidence, John Brown, the sexton, and the Robinsons' coachman. Queer +flames of lucidity dart here and there through this madness: "The +probability of her becoming free to give me herself and estate ever rose +to drive away the prospect of her decline under her present grief." "I +had reason to hope that ere very long I should be the husband of a lady +whom I loved best in the world, and with whom, in more than competence, +I might live at leisure to try to make myself a name in the world of +posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless +botherments, which, like mosquitoes, sting us in the world of work-day +toil. That hope and herself are gone--she to wither into patiently +pining decline--_it_ to make room for drudgery." It is all sordid as +well as terrible. We have no right to know these things. Mrs. Oliphant +is almost justified in her protest against Charlotte as the first to +betray her brother. + +But did Charlotte betray Branwell? Not in her letters. She never +imagined--how could she?--that those letters would be published. Not in +her novels. Her novels give no portrait of Branwell and no hint that +could be easily understood. It is in her prefaces to her sisters' novels +that he appears, darkly. Charlotte, outraged by the infamous article in +the _Quarterly_, was determined that what had been said of her should +never be said of Anne and Emily. She felt that their works offered +irresistible provocation to the scandalous reviewer. She thought it +necessary to explain how they came by their knowledge of evil. + +This vindication of her sisters is certainly an indictment of her +brother to anybody who knew enough to read between the lines. Charlotte +may have innocently supposed that nobody knew or ever would know enough. +Unfortunately, Mrs. Gaskell knew; and when it came to vindicating +Charlotte, she considered herself justified in exposing Charlotte's +brother because Charlotte herself had shown her the way. + +But Charlotte might have spared her pains. Branwell does not account for +Heathcliff any more than he accounts for Rochester. He does not even +account for Huntingdon in poor Anne's novel. He accounts only for +himself. He is important chiefly in relation to the youngest of the +Brontes. Oddly enough, this boy, who was once thought greater than his +sister Emily, was curiously akin to the weak and ineffectual Anne. He +shows the weird flickering of the flame that pulsed so feebly and +intermittently in her. He had Anne's unhappy way with destiny, her knack +of missing things. She had a touch of his morbidity. He was given to +silences which in anybody but Anne would have been called morose. It was +her fate to be associated with him in the hour and in the scene of his +disgrace. And he was offered up unwittingly by Charlotte as a sacrifice +to Anne's virtue. + + * * * * * + +Like Branwell, Anne had no genius. She shows for ever gentle, and, in +spite of an unconquerable courage, conquered. And yet there was more in +her than gentleness. There was, in this smallest and least considerable +of the Brontes, an immense, a terrifying audacity. Charlotte was bold, +and Emily was bolder; but this audacity of Anne's was greater than +Charlotte's boldness or than Emily's, because it was willed, it was +deliberate, open-eyed; it had none of the superb unconsciousness of +genius. Anne took her courage in both hands when she sat down to write +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. There are scenes, there are situations, +in Anne's amazing novel, which for sheer audacity stand alone in +mid-Victorian literature, and which would hold their own in the +literature of revolt that followed. It cannot be said that these scenes +and situations are tackled with a master-hand. But there is a certain +grasp in Anne's treatment, and an astonishing lucidity. Her knowledge of +the seamy side of life was not exhaustive. But her diagnosis of certain +states, her realization of certain motives, suggests Balzac rather than +any of the Brontes. Thackeray, with the fear of Mrs. Grundy before his +eyes, would have shrunk from recording Mrs. Huntingdon's ultimatum to +her husband. The slamming of that bedroom door fairly resounds through +the long emptiness of Anne's novel. But that door is the _crux_ of the +situation, and if Anne was not a genius she was too much of an artist to +sacrifice her _crux_. + +And not only was Anne revolutionary in her handling of moral situations, +she was an insurgent in religious thought. Not to believe in the dogma +of eternal punishment was, in mid-Victorian times and evangelical +circles, to be almost an atheist. When, somewhere in the late +'seventies, Dean Farrar published his _Eternal Hope_, that book fell +like a bomb into the ranks of the orthodox. But long before Dean +Farrar's book Anne Bronte had thrown her bomb. There are two pages in +_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ that anticipate and sum up his now +innocent arguments. Anne fairly let herself go here. And though in her +"Word to the Elect" (who "may rejoice to think themselves secure") she +declares that + + None shall sink to everlasting woe + Who have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven, + +she presently relents, and tacks on a poem in a lighter measure, +expressing her hope + + That soon the wicked shall at last + Be fitted for the skies; + And when their dreadful doom is past + To light and life arise. + +It is said (Charlotte said it) that Anne suffered from religious +melancholy of a peculiarly dark and Calvinistic type. I very much +suspect that Anne's melancholy, like Branwell's passion, was +pathological, and that what her soul suffered from was religious doubt. +She could not reach that height where Emily moved serenely; she could +not see that + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain. + +There was a time when her tremulous, clinging faith was broken by +contact with Emily's contempt for creeds. When Anne was at Haworth she +and Emily were inseparable. They tramped the moors together. With their +arms round each other's shoulders, they paced up and down the parlour of +the Parsonage. They showed the mysterious attraction and affinity of +opposites. Anne must have been fascinated, and at the same time +appalled, by the radiant, revealing, annihilating sweep of Emily's +thought. She was not indifferent to creeds. But you can see her fearful +and reluctant youth yielding at last to Emily's thought, until she +caught a glimpse of the "repose" beyond the clash of "conquered good and +conquering ill". You can see how the doctrine of eternal punishment went +by the board; how Anne, who had gone through agonies of orthodox fear on +account of Branwell, must have adjusted things somehow, and arrived at +peace. Trust in "the merits of the Redeemer" is, after all, trust in the +Immensity beyond Redeemer and redeemed. Of this trust she sang in a +voice, like her material voice, fragile, but sweet and true. She sang +naively of the "Captive Dove" that makes unheard its "joyless moan", of +"the heart that Nature formed to love", pining, "neglected and alone". +She sang of the "Narrow Way", "Be it," she sings, "thy constant aim + + "To labour and to love, + To pardon and endure, + To lift thy heart to God above, + And keep thy conscience pure." + +She hears the wind in an alien wood and cries for the Parsonage garden, +and for the "barren hills": + + Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees + Can yield an answering swell, + But where a wilderness of heath + Returns the sound as well. + + For yonder garden, fair and wide, + With groves of evergreen, + Long winding walks, and borders trim + And velvet lawns between. + + Restore to me that little spot, + With grey hills compassed round, + Where knotted grass neglected lies, + And weeds usurp the ground. + +For she, too, loved the moors; and through her love for them she wrote +two perfect lines when she called on Memory to + + Forever hang thy dreamy spell + Round mountain star and heather-bell. + +The critics, the theorists, the tale-mongers, have left Anne quiet in +that grave on the sea-coast, where she lies apart. Her gentle +insignificance served her well. + + * * * * * + +But no woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more +lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty +of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called +for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with +challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a +reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public +with its "right to know". Mrs. Gaskell with all her indiscretions had +not given it enough. The great classic _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ was, +after all, incomplete. Until something more was known about her, +Charlotte herself was incomplete. It was nothing that Mrs. Gaskell's +work was the finest, tenderest portrait of a woman that it was ever +given to a woman to achieve; nothing that she was not only recklessly +and superbly loyal to Charlotte, but that in her very indiscretions she +was, as far as Charlotte was concerned, incorruptibly and profoundly +true. + +Since Mrs. Gaskell's time, other hands have been at work on Charlotte, +improving Mrs. Gaskell's masterpiece. A hundred little touches have been +added to it. First, it was supposed to be too tragic, too deliberately +and impossibly sombre (that sad book of which Charlotte's friend, Mary +Taylor, said that it was "not so gloomy as the truth"). So first came +Sir Wemyss Reid, conscientiously working up the high lights till he got +the values all wrong. "If the truth must be told," he says, "the life of +the author of _Jane Eyre_ was by no means so joyless as the world now +believes it to have been." And he sets out to give us the truth. But all +that he does to lighten the gloom is to tell a pleasant story of how +"one bright June morning in 1833, a handsome carriage and pair is +standing opposite the 'Devonshire Arms' at Bolton Bridge". In the +handsome carriage is a young girl, Ellen Nussey, waiting for Charlotte +Bronte and her brother and sisters to go with her for a picnic to Bolton +Abbey. + +"Presently," says Sir Wemyss Reid, "on the steep road which stretches +across the moors to Keighley, the sound of wheels is heard, mingled with +the merry speech and merrier laughter of fresh young voices. Shall we go +forward unseen," he asks, "and study the approaching travellers whilst +they are still upon the road? Their conveyance is no handsome carriage, +but a rickety dog-cart, unmistakably betraying its neighbourship to the +carts and ploughs of some rural farmyard. The horse, freshly taken from +the fields, is driven by a youth who, in spite of his countrified dress, +is no mere bumpkin. His shock of red hair hangs down in somewhat ragged +locks behind his ears, for Branwell Bronte esteems himself a genius and +a poet, and, following the fashion of the times, has that abhorrence of +the barber's shears which genius is supposed to affect. But the lad's +face is a handsome and striking one, full of Celtic fire and humour, +untouched by the slightest shade of care, hopeful, promising, even +brilliant. How gaily he jokes with his three sisters; with what +inexhaustible volubility he pours out quotations from his favourite +poets, applying them to the lovely scenes around him; and with what a +mischievous delight in his superior nerve and mettle, he attempts the +feats of charioteering, which fill the heart of the youngest of the +party with sudden terrors! Beside him, in a dress of marvellous +plainness, and ugliness, stamped with the brand "home-made" in +characters which none can mistake, is the eldest of the sisters. +Charlotte is talking too; there are bright smiles upon her face; she is +enjoying everything around her, the splendid morning, the charms of +leafy trees and budding roses, and the ever musical stream; most of all, +perhaps, the charm of her brother's society, and the expectation of that +coming meeting with her friends, which is so near at hand. Behind sits a +pretty little girl, with fine complexion and delicate regular features, +whom the stranger would pick out as the beauty of the company, and a +tall, rather angular figure, clad in a dress exactly resembling +Charlotte's. Emily Bronte does not talk so much as the rest of the +party, but her wonderful eyes, brilliant and unfathomable as the pool at +the foot of a waterfall, but radiant also with a wealth of tenderness +and warmth, show how her soul is expanding under the influences of the +scene; how quick she is to note the least prominent of the beauties +around her, how intense is her enjoyment of the songs of the birds, the +brilliancy of the sunshine, the rich scent of the flower-bespangled +hedgerows. If she does not, like Charlotte and Anne, meet her brother's +ceaseless flood of sparkling words with opposing currents of speech, she +utters a strange, deep guttural sound which those who know her best +interpret as the language of a joy too deep for articulate expression. +Gaze at them as they pass you in the quiet road, and acknowledge that, +in spite of their rough and even uncouth exteriors, a happier four could +hardly be met with in this favourite haunt of pleasure-seekers during a +long summer's day." + +And you do gaze at them and are sadder, if anything, than you were +before. You see them, if anything, more poignantly. You see their +cheerful biographer doing all he knows, and the light he shoots across +the blackness only makes it blacker. + + Nessun maggior dolore + Che ricordarsi di tempo felice + Nella miseria; + +and in the end the biographer with all his cheerfulness succumbs to the +tradition of misery, and even adds a dark contribution of his own, the +suggestion of an unhappy love-affair of Charlotte's. + +After Sir Wemyss Reid came Mr. Francis Grundy with _his_ little +pictures, _Pictures of the Past_, presenting a dreadfully unattractive +Charlotte. + +Then came Mr. Leyland, following Mr. Grundy, with his glorification of +Branwell and his hint that Charlotte made it very hard at home for the +poor boy. He repeats the story that Branwell told Mr. George Searle +Phillips, how he went to see a dying girl in the village, and sat with +her half an hour, and read a psalm to her and a hymn, and how he felt +like praying with her too, but he was not "good enough", how he came +away with a heavy heart and fell into melancholy musings. "Charlotte +observed my depression," Branwell said, "and asked what ailed me. So I +told her. She looked at me with a look which I shall never forget if I +live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It was not like +her at all. It wounded me as if someone had struck me a blow in the +mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It ran over me, +questioning and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It said, 'Did +my ears deceive me, or did I hear aright?' And then came the painful, +baffled expression, which was worse than all. It said, 'I wonder if +that's true?' But, as she left the room, she seemed to accuse herself of +having wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my +little scholar, and I will go and see her.' I replied not a word. I was +too much cut up! When she was gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull' +and made a note of it...." + +You see the implication? It was Charlotte who drove him to the "Black +Bull". That was Branwell's impression of Charlotte. Just the sort of +impression that an opium-eater would have of a beloved sister. + +But Branwell's impression was good enough for Madame Duclaux to found +her theory on. Her theory is that Charlotte was inferior to Emily in +tenderness. It may well be so, and yet Charlotte would remain above most +women tender, for Emily's wealth would furnish forth a score of sisters. +The simple truth is that Charlotte had nerves, and Branwell was +extremely trying. And it is possible that Emily had less to bear, that +in her detachment she was protected more than Charlotte from Branwell at +his worst. + +Meanwhile tales were abroad presenting Charlotte in the queerest lights. +There is that immortal story of how Thackeray gave a party for Currer +Bell at his house in Young Street, and how Currer Bell had a headache +and lay on a sofa in the back drawing-room, and refused to talk to +anybody but the governess; and how Thackeray at last, very late, with a +finger on his lip, stole out of the house and took refuge in his club. +No wonder if this quaint and curious Charlotte survived in the memory +of Thackeray's daughter. But, even apart from the headache, you can see +how it came about, how the sight of the governess evoked Charlotte +Bronte's unforgotten agony. She saw in the amazed and cheerful lady her +own sad youth, slighted and oppressed, solitary in a scene of +gaiety--she could not have seen her otherwise--and her warm heart rushed +out to her. She was determined that that governess should have a happy +evening if nobody else had. Her behaviour was odd, if you like, it was +even absurd, but it had the sublimity of vicarious expiation. Has anyone +ever considered its significance, the magnitude of her deed? For +Charlotte, to be the guest of honour on that brilliant night, in the +house of Thackeray, her divinity, was to touch the topmost height of +fame. And she turned her back on the brilliance and the fame and the +face of her divinity, and offered herself up in flames as a sacrifice +for all the governesses that were and had ever been and would be. + +And after the fine stories came the little legends--things about +Charlotte when she was a governess herself at Mrs. Sidgwick's, and the +tittle-tattle of the parish. One of the three curates whom Charlotte +made so shockingly immortal avenged himself for his immortality by +stating that the trouble with Charlotte was that she _would_ fight for +mastery in the parish. Who can believe him? If there is one thing that +seems more certain than another it is Charlotte's utter indifference to +parochial matters. But Charlotte was just, and she may have objected to +the young man's way with the Dissenters; we know that she did very +strongly object to Mr. William Weightman's way. And that, I imagine, was +the trouble between Charlotte and the curates. + +As for the Sidgwicks, Charlotte's biographers have been rather hard on +them. Mr. Leslie Stephen calls them "coarse employers". They were +certainly not subtle enough to divine the hidden genius in their sad +little governess. It was, I imagine, Charlotte's alien, enigmatic face +that provoked a little Sidgwick to throw a Bible at her. She said Mrs. +Sidgwick did not know her, and did not "intend to know her". She might +have added that if she _had_ intended Mrs. Sidgwick could not possibly +have known her. And when the Sidgwicks said (as they did say to their +cousin, Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson) that if Miss Bronte "was invited +to walk to church with them, she thought she was being ordered about +like a slave; if she was not invited she imagined she was being excluded +from the family circle", that was simply their robust view of the +paralysed attitude of a shy girl among strangers, in an agony of fear +lest she should cut in where she was not wanted. + +And allowances must be made for Mrs. Sidgwick. She was, no doubt, +considerably annoyed at finding that she had engaged a thoroughly +incompetent and apparently thoroughly morbid young person who had +offered herself as a nursery-governess and didn't know how to keep order +in the nursery. Naturally there was trouble at Stonegappe. Then one fine +day Mrs. Sidgwick discovered that there was, after all, a use for that +incomprehensible and incompetent Miss Bronte. Miss Bronte had a gift. +She could sew. She could sew beautifully. Her stitching, if you would +believe it, was a dream. And Mrs. Sidgwick saw that Miss Bronte's one +talent was not lodged in her useless. So Charlotte sat alone all evening +in the schoolroom at Stonegappe, a small figure hidden in pure white, +billowy seas of muslin, and lamented thus: "She cares nothing in the +world about me except to contrive how the greatest possible quantity of +labour may be squeezed out of me, and to that end she overwhelms me +with oceans of needlework, yards of cambric to hem, muslin night-caps +to make, and above all things, dolls to dress." And Mrs. Sidgwick +complained that Charlotte did not love the children, and forgot how +little she liked it when the children loved Charlotte, and was unaware, +poor lady, that it was recorded of her, and would be recorded to all +time, that she had said, "Love the _governess_, my dear!" when her +little impulsive boy put his hand in Charlotte's at the dinner-table, +and cried "I love 'ou, Miss Bronte." It was the same little, impulsive +boy who threw the Bible at Charlotte, and also threw a stone which hit +her. + +No wonder that Miss Bronte's one and only "pleasant afternoon" was when +Mr. Sidgwick went out walking in his fields with his children and his +Newfoundland dog, and Charlotte (by order) followed and observed him +from behind. + +Of course, all these old tales should have gone where Mrs. Sidgwick's +old muslin caps went; but they have not, and so it has got about that +Charlotte Bronte was not fond of children. Even Mr. Swinburne, at the +height of his magnificent eulogy, after putting crown upon crown upon +her head, pauses and wonders: had she any love for children? He finds in +her "a plentiful lack of inborn baby-worship"; she is unworthy to +compare in this with George Eliot, "the spiritual mother of Totty, of +Eppie, and of Lillo". "The fiery-hearted Vestal of Haworth," he says, +"had no room reserved in the palace of her passionate and high-minded +imagination as a nursery for inmates of such divine and delicious +quality." There was little Georgette in _Villette_, to say nothing of +Polly, and there was Adele in _Jane Eyre_. But Mr. Swinburne had +forgotten about little Georgette. Like George Henry Lewes he is +"well-nigh moved to think one of the most powerfully and exquisitely +written chapters in _Shirley_ a chapter which could hardly have been +written at all by a woman, or, for that matter, by a man, of however +noble and kindly a nature, in whom the instinct, or nerve, or organ of +love for children was even of average natural strength and sensibility"; +so difficult was it for him to believe in "the dread and repulsion felt +by a forsaken wife and tortured mother for the very beauty and dainty +sweetness of her only new-born child, as recalling the cruel, sleek +charm of the human tiger that had begotten it". And so he crowns her +with all crowns but that of "love for children". He is still tender to +her, seeing in her that one monstrous lack; he touches it with sorrow +and a certain shame. + +Mr. Birrell follows him. "Miss Bronte," he says with confidence, "did +not care for children. She had no eye for them. Hence it comes about +that her novel-children are not good." He is moved to playful sarcasm +when he tells how in August of eighteen-fifty-three "Miss Bronte +suffered a keen disappointment". She went to Scotland with some friends +who took their baby with them. The parents thought the baby was ill when +it wasn't, and insisted on turning back, and Charlotte had to give up +her holiday. "All on account of a baby," says Mr. Birrell, and refers +you to Charlotte's letter on the subject, implying that it was +cold-blooded. The biographer can quote letters for his purpose, and Mr. +Birrell omits to tell us that Charlotte wrote "had any evil consequences +followed a prolonged stay, I should never have forgiven myself". You are +to imagine that Charlotte could have forgiven herself perfectly well, +for Charlotte "did not care for children". + +Mrs. Oliphant does not echo that cry. She was a woman and knew better. + +For I believe that here we touch the very heart of the mystery that was +Charlotte Bronte. We would have no right to touch it, to approach it, +were it not that other people have already violated all that was most +sacred and most secret in that mystery, and have given the world a +defaced and disfigured Charlotte Bronte. I believe that this love of +children which even Mr. Swinburne has denied to her, was the key to +Charlotte's nature. We are face to face here, not with a want in her, +but with an abyss, depth beyond depth of tenderness and longing and +frustration, of a passion that found no clear voice in her works, +because it was one with the elemental nature in her, undefined, +unuttered, unutterable. + +She was afraid of children; she was awkward with them; because such +passion has shynesses, distances, and terrors unknown to the average +comfortable women who become happy mothers. It has even its perversions, +when love hardly knows itself from hate. Such love demands before all +things possession. It cries out for children of its own flesh and blood. +I believe that there were moments when it was pain for Charlotte to see +the children born and possessed by other women. It must have been agony +to have to look after them, especially when the rule was that they were +not to "love the governess". + +The proofs of this are slender, but they are sufficient. There is little +Georgette, the sick child that Lucy nurses in the Pensionnat: "Little +Georgette still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her +familiar term, 'Minnie, Minnie, me very poorly!' till my heart ached." +... "I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and loving child; to hold +her in my lap, or carry her in my arms, was to me a treat. To-night she +would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her +little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which +she pressed her cheek to mine made me almost cry with a sort of tender +pain." + +Once during a spring-cleaning at Upperwood House Charlotte was Mrs. +White's nursemaid as well as her governess, and she wrote: "By dint of +nursing the fat baby it has got to know me and be fond of me. I suspect +myself of growing rather fond of it." Years later she wrote to Mrs. +Gaskell, after staying with her: "Could you manage to convey a small +kiss to that dear but dangerous little person, Julia? She +surreptitiously possessed herself of a minute fraction of my heart, +which has been missing ever since I saw her." + +Mrs. Gaskell tells us that there was "a strong mutual attraction" +between Julia, her youngest little girl, and Charlotte Bronte. "The +child," she says, "would steal her little hand into Miss Bronte's +scarcely larger one, and each took pleasure in this apparently +unobserved caress." May I suggest that children do not steal their +little hands into the hands of people who do not care for them? Their +instinct is infallible. + +Charlotte Bronte tried to give an account of her feeling for children; +it was something like the sacred awe of the lover. "Whenever I see +Florence and Julia again I shall feel like a fond but bashful suitor, +who views at a distance the fair personage to whom, in his clownish awe, +he dare not risk a near approach. Such is the clearest idea I can give +you of my feeling towards children I like, but to whom I am a +stranger--and to what children am I not a stranger?" + +Extraordinary that Charlotte's critics have missed the pathos of that +_cri de coeur_. It is so clearly an echo from the "house of bondage", +where Charlotte was made a stranger to the beloved, where the beloved +threw stones and Bibles at her. You really have to allow for the shock +of an experience so blighting. It is all part of the perversity of the +fate that dogged her, that her feeling should have met with that +reverse. But it was there, guarded with a certain shy austerity. She +"suspected" herself of getting rather fond of the baby. + +She hid her secret even from herself, as women will hide these things. +But her dreams betrayed her after the way of dreams. Charlotte's dream +(premonitory, she thought, of trouble) was that she carried a little +crying child, and could not still its cry. "She described herself," Mrs. +Gaskell says, "as having the most painful sense of pity for the little +thing, lying _inert_, as sick children do, while she walked about in +some gloomy place with it, such as the aisle of Haworth Church." This +dream she gives to _Jane Eyre_, unconscious of its profound significance +and fitness. It is a pity that Mr. Swinburne did not pay attention to +Charlotte's dream. + +All her life, I think, she suffered because of the perpetual insurgence +of this secret, impassioned, maternal energy. Hence the sting of Lewes's +famous criticism, beginning: "The grand function of woman, it must +always be remembered" (as if Charlotte had forgotten it!) "is +Maternity"; and, working up from his criticism of that chapter in +_Shirley_ to a climax of adjuration: "Currer Bell, if under your heart +had ever stirred a child; if to your bosom a babe had ever been +pressed--that mysterious part of your being, towards which all the rest +of it was drawn, in which your whole soul was transported and +absorbed--never could you have _imagined_ such a falsehood as that!" It +was impossible for Charlotte to protest against anything but the +abominable bad taste of Lewes's article, otherwise she might have told +him that she probably knew rather more about those mysteries than he +did. It was she who gave us that supreme image of disastrous love. "I +looked at my love; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a +cold cradle!" + +And this woman died before her child was born. + + * * * * * + +Then there is Mrs. Oliphant again. Though she was not one of those who +said Charlotte Bronte was not fond of children, though she would have +died rather than have joined Lewes in his unspeakable cry against her, +Mrs. Oliphant made certain statements in no better taste than his. She +suggests that Charlotte, fond or not fond of children, was too fond of +matrimonial dreams. Her picture (the married woman's picture) is of an +undesired and undesirable little spinster pining visibly and shamelessly +in a parsonage. She would have us believe that from morning till night, +from night till morning, Charlotte Bronte in the Parsonage thought of +nothing but of getting married, that her dreams pursued, ruthlessly, the +casual visitor. The hopelessness of the dream, the undesirability of +Charlotte, is what makes her so irresistible to her sister novelist. + +There was "one subject", she says, "which Charlotte Bronte had at her +command, having experienced in her own person, and seen her nearest +friends under the experience, of that solitude and longing of women of +which she has made so remarkable an exposition. The long silence of life +without an adventure or a change, the forlorn gaze out of windows which +never show anyone coming who can rouse the slightest interest in the +mind, the endless years and days which pass and pass, carrying away the +bloom, extinguishing the lights of youth, bringing a dreary middle age +before which the very soul shrinks, while yet the sufferer feels how +strong is the current of life in her own veins, and how capable she is +of all the active duties of existence--this was the essence and soul of +the existence she knew best. Was there no help for it? Must the women +wait and see their lives thrown away, and have no power to save +themselves! + +"The position," she goes on, "in itself so tragic, is one which can +scarcely be expressed without calling forth inevitable ridicule, a laugh +at the best, more often a sneer, at the women whose desire for a husband +is thus betrayed. Shirley and Caroline Helstone both cried out for that +husband with an indignation, a fire and impatience, a sense of wrong and +injury, which stopped the laugh for the moment. It might be ludicrous, +but it was horribly genuine and true." (This is more than can be said of +Mrs. Oliphant's view of the adorable Shirley Keeldar who was Emily +Bronte. It is ludicrous enough, and it may be genuine, but it is +certainly not true.) But Mrs. Oliphant is careful not to go too far. +"Note," she says, "there was nothing sensual about these young women. It +was life they wanted; they knew nothing of the grosser thoughts which +the world with its jeers attributes to them: of such thoughts they were +unconscious in a primitive innocence which, perhaps, only women +understand." Yet she characterizes their "outcry" as "indelicate". "All +very well to talk of women working for their living, finding new +channels for themselves, establishing their independence. How much have +we said of all that" (Mrs. Oliphant thinks that she is rendering +Charlotte Bronte's thought), "endeavouring to persuade ourselves! +Charlotte Bronte had the courage of her opinions. It was not education +nor a trade that her women wanted. It was not a living, but their share +in life.... Miss Bronte herself said correct things" (observe that +insincerity is insinuated here) "about the protection which a trade is +to a woman, keeping her from a mercenary marriage; but this was not in +the least the way of her heroines." (Why, you naturally wonder, should +it have been?) "They wanted to be happy, no doubt, but above all things +they wanted their share in life, to have their position by the side of +men, which alone confers a natural equality, to have their shoulder to +the wheel, their hands on the reins of common life, to build up the +world and link the generations each to each." (And very proper of them, +too.) "In her philosophy, marriage was the only state which procured +this, and if she did not recommend a mercenary marriage she was at least +very tolerant about its conditions, insisting less upon love than was to +be expected" (!) "and with a covert conviction in her mind, that if not +one man, then another was better than any complete abandonment of the +larger path. Lucy Snowe for a long time had her heart very much set on +Dr. John and his placid breadth of Englishism; but when she finally +found out that to be impossible her tears were soon dried by the +prospect of Paul Emanuel, so unlike him, coming into his place." + +The obvious answer to all this is that Charlotte Bronte was writing in +the mid-Victorian age, about mid-Victorian women, the women whom she saw +around her; writing, without any "philosophy" or "covert conviction", in +the days before emancipation, when marriage was the only chance of +independence that a woman had. It would have been marvellous, if she had +not had her sister Emily before her, that in such an age she should have +conceived and created Shirley Keeldar. As for poor little Lucy with her +two men, she is not the first heroine who mistook the false dawn for the +true. Besides, Miss Bronte's "philosophy" was exactly the opposite to +that attributed to her, as anybody may see who reads _Shirley_. In +these matters she burned what her age adored, and adored what it burned, +a thorough revolutionary. + +But this is not the worst. Mrs. Oliphant professes to feel pity for her +victim. "Poor Charlotte Bronte! She has not been as other women, +protected by the grave from all betrayal of the episodes in her own +life." (You would imagine they were awful, the episodes in Charlotte +Bronte's life.) "Everybody has betrayed her, and all she thought about +this one, and that, and every name that was ever associated with hers. +There was a Mr. Taylor from London, about whom she wrote with great +freedom to her friend, Miss Nussey, telling how the little man had come, +how he had gone away without any advance in the affairs, how a chill +came over her when he appeared and she found him much less attractive +than when at a distance, yet how she liked it as little when he went +away, and was somewhat excited about his first letter, and even went so +far as to imagine with a laugh that there might possibly be a dozen +little Joe Taylors before all was over." + +This is atrocious. But the malice and bad taste of it are nothing to the +gross carelessness and ignorance it reveals--ignorance of facts and +identities and names. Charlotte's suitor was Mr. James Taylor and not +Joe. Joe, the brother of her friend, Mary Taylor, was married already to +a lady called Amelia, and it is of Joe and his Amelia that Charlotte +writes. "She must take heart" (Amelia had been singularly unsuccessful), +"there may yet be a round dozen of little Joe Taylors to look after--run +after--to sort and switch and train up in the way they should go." + +Of Mr. James Taylor she writes more decorously. Miss Nussey, as usual, +had been thinking unwarrantable things, and had made a most unbecoming +joke about Jupiter and Venus, which outraged Charlotte's "common +sense". "The idea of the little man," says Charlotte, "shocks me less. +He still sends his little newspaper; and the other day there came a +letter of a bulk, volume, pith, judgment and knowledge, fit to have been +the product of a giant. You may laugh as much and as wickedly as you +please, but the fact is, there is a quiet constancy about this, my +diminutive and red-haired friend, which adds a foot to his stature, +turns his sandy locks dark, and altogether dignifies him a good deal in +my estimation." This is all she says by way of appreciation. She says +later, "His manners and his personal appearance scarcely pleased me more +than at the first interview.... I feel that in his way he has a regard +for me; a regard which I cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in +kind, and yet its withdrawal leaves a painful blank." Miss Nussey +evidently insists that Charlotte's feelings are engaged this time, +arguing possibly from the "painful blank"; and Charlotte becomes +explicit. She speaks of the disadvantages of the alleged match, and we +gather that Miss Nussey has been urging her to take the little man. "But +there is another thing which forms a barrier more difficult to pass than +any of these. Would Mr. Taylor and I ever suit? Could I ever feel for +him enough love to accept him as a husband? Friendship--gratitude--esteem +I have, but each moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes +fastened on me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away, I feel far +more gently to him; it is only close by that I grow rigid--stiffening +with a strange mixture of apprehension and anger--which nothing +softens but his retreat, and a perfect subduing of his manner." +And again, "my conscience, I can truly say, does not _now_ accuse +me of having treated Mr. Taylor with injustice or unkindness ... +but with every disposition and with every wish, with every intention +even to look on him in the most favourable point of view at his last +visit, it was impossible to me in my inward heart to think of him as one +that might one day be acceptable as a husband." Could anything be _more_ +explicit? There is a good deal more of it. After one very searching +criticism of Mr. Taylor: "One does not like to say these things, but one +had better be honest." And of her honesty Charlotte's letters on this +subject leave no doubt. There is not the smallest ground for supposing +that even for a moment had she thought of Mr. James Taylor as "one that +one day might be acceptable", much less is there for Mr. Clement +Shorter's suggestion that if he had come back from Bombay she would have +married him. + +But Joe or James, it is all one to Mrs. Oliphant, with her theory of +Charlotte Bronte. "For her and her class, which did not speak of it, +everything depended upon whether the women married or did not marry. +Their thoughts were thus artificially fixed to one point in the +horizon." The rest is repetition, ending in the astounding verdict: "The +seed she thus sowed has come to many growths that would have appalled +Charlotte Bronte. But while it would be very unjust to blame her for the +vagaries that have followed, and to which nothing could be less +desirable than any building of the house or growth of the race, any +responsibility or service, we must still believe that it was she who +drew the curtain first aside and opened the gates to imps of evil +meaning, polluting and profaning the domestic hearth." + +That is Mrs. Oliphant on Charlotte Bronte. + +And even Mr. Clement Shorter, who has dealt so admirably with outrageous +legends, goes half the way with the detractor. He has a theory that +Charlotte Bronte was a woman of morbid mood, "to whom the problem of sex +appealed with all its complications", and that she "dwelt continually on +the problem of the ideal mate". + +Now Charlotte may have dreamed of getting married (there have been more +criminal dreams); she may have brooded continually over the problem of +the ideal mate, only of all these dreams and broodings there is not one +atom of evidence--not one. Not a hint, not a trace, either in her +character as we know it, or in her very voluminous private +correspondence. The facts of her life disprove it. Her letters to Ellen +Nussey (never meant for publication) reveal the workings of Charlotte's +feminine mind when applied to "the sex problem"; a mind singularly +wholesome and impersonal, and singularly detached. Charlotte is full of +lights upon this awful subject of matrimony, which, by the way, had +considerably more interest for Miss Nussey than it had for her. In fact, +if it had not been for Miss Nussey it would not have appeared so often +as it did in Charlotte's letters. If you pay attention to the context (a +thing that theorists never do) you see, what is indeed obvious, that a +large portion of Charlotte Bronte's time was taken up in advising and +controlling Ellen Nussey, that amiable and impulsive prototype of +Caroline Helstone. She is called upon in all Miss Nussey's hours of +crisis, and there seem to have been a great many of them. "Do not," she +writes, "be over-persuaded to marry a man you can never respect--I do +not say _love_, because I think if you can respect a person before +marriage, moderate love at least will come after; and as to intense +passion, I am convinced that that is no desirable feeling. In the first +place, it seldom or never meets with a requital; and in the second +place, if it did, the feeling would be only temporary; it would last the +honeymoon, and then, perhaps, give place to disgust, or indifference, +worse perhaps than disgust. Certainly this would be the case on the +man's part; and on the woman's--God help her if she is left to love +passionately and alone. + +"I am tolerably well convinced that I shall never marry at all." + +And again, to Miss Nussey, six months later: "Did you not once say to me +in all childlike simplicity, 'I thought, Charlotte, no young lady should +fall in love till the offer was actually made'? I forgot what answer I +made at the time, but I now reply, after due consideration, Right as a +glove, the maxim is just, and I hope you will always attend to it. I +will even extend and confirm it: no young lady should fall in love till +the offer has been made, accepted, the marriage ceremony performed, and +the first half-year of wedded life has passed away. A woman may then +begin to love, but with great precaution, very coolly, very moderately, +very rationally. If she ever loves so much that a harsh word or a cold +look cuts her to the heart, she is a fool. If she ever loves so much +that her husband's will is her law, and that she has got into a habit of +watching his looks in order that she may anticipate his wishes, she will +soon be a neglected fool. Did I not tell you of an instance...?" + +What could be more lucid, more light-hearted, and more sane? And if +Charlotte is suspicious of the dangers of her own temperament, that only +proves her lucidity and sanity the more. + +Later, at Brussels, when confronted with "three or four people's" idea +that "the future _epoux_ of Miss Bronte is on the Continent", she +defends herself against the "silly imputation". "Not that it is a crime +to marry, or a crime to wish to be married; but it is an imbecility, +which I reject with contempt, for women, who have neither fortune nor +beauty, to make marriage the principal object of their wishes and hopes, +and the aim of all their actions; not to be able to convince themselves +that they are unattractive, and that they had better be quiet, and think +of other things than wedlock." Can anything be clearer? + +So much for herself. But she has to deal with Miss Nussey, in +difficulties again, later: "Papa has two or three times expressed a fear +that since Mr. ---- paid you so much attention, he will, perhaps, have +made an impression on your mind which will interfere with your comfort. +I tell him I think not, as I believe you to be mistress of yourself in +those matters. Still, he keeps saying that I am to write to you and +dissuade you from thinking of him. I never saw Papa make himself so +uneasy about a thing of the kind before; he is usually very sarcastic on +such subjects. + +"Mr. ---- be hanged! I never thought very well of him, and I am much +disposed to think very ill of him at this blessed minute. I have +discussed the subject fully, for where is the use of being mysterious +and constrained?--it is not worth while." + +And yet again it is Ellen Nussey. "Ten years ago I should have laughed +at your account of the blunder you made in mistaking the bachelor doctor +of Bridlington for a married man. I should have certainly thought you +scrupulous over-much, and wondered how you could possibly regret being +civil to a decent individual merely because he happened to be single +instead of double. Now, however, I can perceive that your scruples are +founded on common sense. I know that if women wish to escape the stigma +of husband-seeking, they must act and look like marble or clay--cold, +expressionless, bloodless; for every appearance of feeling, of joy, +sorrow, friendliness, antipathy, admiration, disgust, are alike +construed by the world into the attempt to" (I regret to say that +Charlotte wrote) "to hook a husband." + +Later, she has to advise her friend Mr. Williams as to a career for his +daughter Louisa. And here she is miles ahead of her age, the age that +considered marriage the only honourable career for a woman. "Your +daughters--no more than your sons--should be a burden on your hands. +Your daughters--as much as your sons--should aim at making their way +honourably through life. Do you not wish to keep them at home? Believe +me, teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid and despised, but the girl who +stays at home doing nothing is worse off than the hardest-wrought and +worst-paid drudge of a school. Whenever I have seen, not merely in +humble but in affluent houses, families of daughters sitting waiting to +be married, I have pitied them from my heart. It is doubtless well--very +well--if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give +their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the +peevishness of disappointment, and the listlessness of idleness will +infallibly degrade their nature.... Lonely as I am, how should I be if +Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career...? How should I +be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where +there is not a single educated family? In that case I should have no +world at all. As it is, something like a hope and a motive sustains me +still. I wish all your daughters--I wish every woman in England, had +also a hope and a motive." + +Whatever the views of Charlotte Bronte's heroines may or may not have +been, these were her own views--sober, sincere, and utterly +dispassionate. Mrs. Oliphant set them aside, either in criminal +carelessness, or with still more criminal deliberation, because they +interfered with her theory. They are certainly not the views of a woman +given to day-dreaming and window-gazing. Lucy Snowe may have had time +for window-gazing, but not Charlotte Bronte, what with her writing and +her dusting, sweeping, ironing, bed-making, and taking the eyes out of +the potatoes for poor old Tabby, who was too blind to see them. +Window-gazing of all things! Mrs. Oliphant could not have fixed upon a +habit more absurdly at variance with Charlotte's character. + +For she was pure, utterly and marvellously pure from sentimentalism, +which was (and she knew it) the worst vice of the Victorian age. Mr. +Leslie Stephen said that, "Miss Bronte's sense of humour was but +feeble." It was robust enough when it played with sentimentalists. But +as for love, for passion, she sees it with a tragic lucidity that is +almost a premonition. And her attitude was by no means that of the +foredoomed spinster, making necessity her virtue. There was no +necessity. She had at least four suitors (quite a fair allowance for a +little lady in a lonely parish), and she refused them all. Twice in her +life, in her tempestuous youth, and at a crisis of her affairs, she +chose "dependence upon coarse employers" before matrimony. She was +shrewd, lucid, fastidious, and saw the men she knew without any glamour. +To the cold but thoroughly presentable Mr. Henry Nussey she replied +thus: "It has always been my habit to study the character of those among +whom I chance to be thrown, and I think I know yours and can imagine +what description of woman would suit you for a wife. The character +should not be too marked, ardent and original, her temper should be +mild, her piety undoubted, and her personal attractions sufficient to +please your eyes and gratify your just pride. As for me you do not know +me...." She was only three-and-twenty when she wrote that, with the +prospect of Stonegappe before her. For she had not, and could not have +for him, "that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for +him; and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I +will regard my husband". Later, in her worst loneliness she refused that +ardent Mr. Taylor, who courted her by the novel means of newspapers sent +with violent and unremitting regularity through the post. He represented +to some degree the larger life of intellectual interest. But he offended +her fastidiousness. She was sorry for the little man with his little +newspaper, and that was all. She refused several times the man she +ultimately married. He served a long apprenticeship to love, and +Charlotte yielded to his distress rather than to her own passion. She +describes her engaged state as "very calm, very expectant. What I taste +of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband. I am +grateful for his tender love for me.... Providence offers me this +destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me." + +These are not the words, nor is this the behaviour of Mrs. Oliphant's +Charlotte Bronte, the forlorn and desperate victim of the obsession of +matrimony. + +I do not say that Charlotte Bronte had not what is called a +"temperament"; her genius would not have been what it was without it; +she herself would have been incomplete; but there never was a woman of +genius who had her temperament in more complete subjection to her +character; and it is her character that you have to reckon with at every +turn. + +The little legends and the little theories have gone far enough. And had +they gone no farther they would not have mattered much. They would at +least have left Charlotte Bronte's genius to its own mystery. + +But her genius was the thing that irritated, the enigmatic, inexplicable +thing. Talent in a woman you can understand, there's a formula for +it--_tout talent de femme est un bonheur manque_. So when a woman's +talent baffles you, your course is plain, _cherchez l'homme_. +Charlotte's critics argued that if you could put your finger on the man +you would have the key to the mystery. This, of course, was arguing that +her genius was, after all, only a superior kind of talent; but some of +them had already begun to ask themselves, Was it, after all, anything +more? So they began to look for the man. They were certain by this time +that there was one. + +The search was difficult; for Charlotte had concealed him well. But they +found him at last in M. Constantin Heger, the little Professor of the +Pensionnat de Demoiselles in the Rue d'Isabelle. Sir Wemyss Reid had +suggested a love-affair in Brussels to account for Charlotte's +depression, which was unfavourable to his theory of the happy life. Mr. +Leyland seized upon the idea, for it nourished his theory that Branwell +was an innocent lamb who had never caused his sisters a moment's misery. +They _made_ misery for themselves out of his harmless peccadilloes. Mr. +Angus Mackay in _The Brontes, Fact and Fiction_, gives us this fiction +for a fact. He is pleased with what he calls the "pathetic significance" +of his "discovery". There _was_ somebody, there had to be, and it had to +be M. Heger, for there wasn't anybody else. Mr. Mackay draws back the +veil with a gesture and reveals--the love-affair. He is very nice about +it, just as nice as ever he can be. "We see her," he says, "sore +wounded in her affections, but unconquerable in her will. The discovery +... does not degrade the noble figure we know so well.... The moral of +her greatest works--that conscience must reign absolute at whatever +cost--acquires a greater force when we realize how she herself came +through the furnace of temptation with marks of torture on her, but with +no stain on her soul." + +This is all very well, but the question is: _Did_ Charlotte come through +a furnace? _Did_ she suffer from a great and tragic passion? It may have +been so. For all we know she may have been in fifty furnaces; she may +have gone from one fit of tragic passion to another. Only (apart from +gossip, and apart from the argument from the novels, which begs the +question) we have no evidence to prove it. What we have points all the +other way. + +Gossip apart, believers in the tragic passion have nourished their +theory chiefly on that celebrated passage in a letter of Charlotte's to +Ellen Nussey: "I returned to Brussels after Aunt's death, prompted by +what then seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for my selfish +folly by a withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind." + +Here we have the great disclosure. By "irresistible impulse" and +"selfish folly", Charlotte could only mean indulgence in an illegitimate +passion for M. Heger's society. Peace of mind bears but one +interpretation. + +Mr. Clement Shorter, to his infinite credit, will have none of this. He +maintains very properly that the passage should be left to bear the +simple construction that Miss Nussey and Mr. Nicholls put upon it. But I +would go farther. I am convinced that not only does that passage bear +that construction, but that it will not bear the weight of any other. + +In eighteen-forty-two Charlotte's aunt died, and Charlotte became the +head of her father's household. She left her father's house in a time of +trouble, prompted by "an irresistible impulse" towards what we should +now call self-development. Charlotte, more than two years later, in a +moment of retrospective morbidity, called it "selfish folly". In that +dark mid-Victorian age it was sin in any woman to leave her home if her +home required her. And with her aunt dead, and her brother Branwell +drowning his grief for his relative in drink, and her father going blind +and beginning in his misery to drink a little too, Charlotte felt that +her home did require her. Equally she felt that either Emily or she had +got to turn out and make a living, and since it couldn't possibly be +Emily it must be she. The problem would have been quite simple even for +Charlotte--but _she wanted to go_. Therefore her tender conscience +vacillated. When you remember that Charlotte Bronte's conscience was, +next to her genius, the largest, and at the same time the most delicate +part of her, and that her love for her own people was a sacred passion, +her words are sufficiently charged with meaning. A passion for M. Heger +is, psychologically speaking, superfluous. You can prove anything by +detaching words from their context. The letter from which that passage +has been torn is an answer to Ellen Nussey's suggestions of work for +Charlotte. Charlotte says "any project which infers the necessity of my +leaving home is impracticable to me. If I could leave home I should not +be at Haworth now. I know life is passing away, and I am doing nothing, +earning nothing--a very bitter knowledge it is at moments--but I see no +way out of the mist"; and so on for another line or two, and then: +"These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but whenever I consult my +conscience it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and +bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release." +And then, the passage quoted _ad nauseam_, to support the legend of M. +Heger. + +A "total withdrawal for more than two years of happiness and peace of +mind". This letter is dated October 1846--more than two years since her +return from Brussels in January, eighteen-forty-four. In those two years +her father was threatened with total blindness, and her brother Branwell +achieved his destiny. The passage refers unmistakably to events at +Haworth. It is further illuminated by another passage from an earlier +letter. Ellen Nussey is going through the same crisis--torn between duty +to herself and duty to her people. She asks Charlotte's advice and +Charlotte gives judgment: "The right path is that which necessitates the +greatest sacrifice of self-interest." The sacrifice, observe, not of +happiness, not of passion, but of self-interest, the development of +self. It was self-development, and not passion, not happiness, that she +went to Brussels for. + +And Charlotte's letters from Brussels--from the scene of passion in the +year of crisis, eighteen-forty-three--sufficiently reveal the nature of +the trouble there. Charlotte was alone in the Pensionnat without Emily. +Emily was alone at Haworth. The few friends she had in Brussels left +soon after her arrival. She was alone in Brussels, and her homesickness +was terrible. You can trace the malady in all its stages. In March she +writes: "I ought to consider myself well off, and to be thankful for my +good fortune. I hope I am thankful" (clearly she isn't thankful in the +least!), "and if I could always keep up my spirits and never feel lonely +or long for companionship or friendship, or whatever they call it, I +should do very well." In the same letter you learn that she is giving +English lessons to M. Heger and his brother-in-law, M. Chapelle. "If you +could see and hear the efforts I make to teach them to pronounce like +Englishmen, and their unavailing attempts to imitate, you would laugh to +all eternity." Charlotte is at first amused at the noises made by M. +Heger and his brother-in-law. + +In May the noises made by Monsieur fail to amuse. Still, she is +"indebted to him for all the pleasure or amusement" that she had, and in +spite of her indebtedness, she records a "total want of companionship". +"I lead an easeful, stagnant, silent life, for which ... I ought to be +very thankful" (but she is not). May I point out that though you may be +"silent" in the first workings of a tragic and illegitimate passion, you +are not "stagnant", and certainly not "easeful". + +At the end of May she finds out that Madame Heger does not like her, and +Monsieur is "wondrously influenced" by Madame. Monsieur has in a great +measure "withdrawn the light of his countenance", but Charlotte +apparently does not care. In August the _vacancies_ are at hand, and +everybody but Charlotte is going home. She is consequently "in low +spirits; earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment".... +"I can hardly write, I have such a dreary weight at my heart." But she +will see it through. She will stay some months longer "till I have +acquired German". And at the end: "Everybody is abundantly civil, but +homesickness comes creeping over me. I cannot shake it off." That was in +September, in M. Heger's absence. Later, she tells Emily how she went +into the cathedral and made "a real confession _to see what it was +like_". Charlotte's confession has been used to bolster up the theory of +the "temptation". Unfortunately for the theory it happened in +September, when M. Heger and temptation were not there. In October she +finds that she no longer trusts Madame Heger. At the same time "solitude +oppresses me to an excess". She gave notice, and M. Heger flew into a +passion and commanded her to stay. She stayed very much against, not her +conscience, but her will. In the same letter and the same connection she +says, "I have much to say--many little odd things, queer and puzzling +enough--which I do not like to trust to a letter, but which one day +perhaps, or rather one evening--if ever we should find ourselves by the +fireside at Haworth or Brookroyd, with our feet on the fender curling +our hair--I may communicate to you." + +Charlotte is now aware of a situation; she is interested in it, +intellectually, not emotionally. + +In November: "Twinges of homesickness cut me to the heart, now and +then." On holidays "the silence and loneliness of all the house weighs +down one's spirits like lead.... Madame Heger, good and kind as I have +described her" (_i.e._ for all her goodness and kindness), "never comes +near me on these occasions." ... "She is not colder to me than she is to +the other teachers, but they are less dependent on her than I am." But +the situation is becoming clearer. Charlotte is interested. "I fancy I +begin to perceive the reason of this mighty distance and reserve; it +sometimes makes me laugh, and at other times nearly cry. When I am sure +of it I will tell you." + +There can be no doubt that before she left Brussels Charlotte was sure; +but there is no record of her ever having told. + +The evidence from the letters is plain enough. But the first thing that +the theorist does is to mutilate letters. He suppresses all those parts +of a correspondence which tell against his theory. When these torn and +bleeding passages are restored piously to their contexts they are +destructive to the legend of tragic passion. They show (as Mr. Clement +Shorter has pointed out) that throughout her last year at Brussels +Charlotte Bronte saw hardly anything of M. Heger. They also show that +before very long Charlotte had a shrewd suspicion that Madame had +arranged it so, and that it was not so much the absence of Monsieur that +disturbed her as the extraordinary behaviour of Madame. And they show +that from first to last she was incurably homesick. + +Now if Charlotte had been in any degree, latently, or increasingly, or +violently in love with M. Heger, she would have been as miserable as you +like in M. Heger's house, but she would not have been homesick; she +would not, I think, have worried quite so much about Madame's behaviour; +and she would have found the clue to it sooner than she did. + +To me it is all so simple and self-evident that, if the story were not +revived periodically, if it had not been raked up again only the other +day,[A] there would be no need to dwell upon anything so pitiful and +silly. + +[Footnote A: See _The Key to the Bronte Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby, +1911.] + +It rests first and foremost on gossip, silly, pitiful gossip and +conjecture. Gossip in England, gossip in Brussels, conjecture all round. +Above all, it rests on certain feline hints supplied by Madame Heger and +her family. Charlotte's friends were always playfully suspecting her of +love-affairs. They could never put their fingers on the man, and they +missed M. Heger. It would never have occurred to their innocent +mid-Victorian minds to suspect Charlotte of an attachment to a married +man. It would not have occurred to Charlotte to suspect herself of it. +But Madame Heger was a Frenchwoman, and she had not a mid-Victorian +mind, and she certainly suspected Charlotte of an attachment, a flagrant +attachment, to M. Heger. It is well known that Madame made statements to +that effect, and it is admitted on all hands that Madame had been +jealous. It may fairly be conjectured that it was M. Heger and not +Charlotte who gave her cause, slight enough in all conscience, but +sufficient for Madame Heger. She did not understand these Platonic +relations between English teachers and their French professors. She had +never desired Platonic relations with anybody herself, and she saw +nothing but annoyance in them for everybody concerned. Madame's attitude +is the clue to the mystery, the clue that Charlotte found. She accused +the dead Charlotte of an absurd and futile passion for her husband; she +stated that she had had to advise the living Charlotte to moderate the +ardour of her admiration for the engaging professor; but the truth, as +Charlotte in the end discovered, was that for a certain brief period +Madame was preposterously jealous. M. Heger confessed as much when he +asked Charlotte to address her letters to him at the Athenee Royale +instead of the Pensionnat. The correspondence, he said, was disagreeable +to his wife. + +Why, in Heaven's name, disagreeable, if Madame Heger suspected Charlotte +of an absurd and futile passion? And why should Madame Heger have been +jealous of an absurd and futile woman, a woman who had seen so little of +Madame Heger's husband, and who was then in England? I cannot agree with +Mr. Shorter that M. Heger regarded Charlotte with indifference. He was a +Frenchman, and he had his vanity, and no doubt the frank admiration of +his brilliant pupil appealed to it vividly in moments of conjugal +depression. Charlotte herself must have had some attraction for M. +Heger. Madame perceived the appeal and the attraction, and she was +jealous; therefore her interpretation of appearances could not have been +so unflattering to Charlotte as she made out. Madame, in fact, +suspected, on her husband's part, the dawning of an attachment. We know +nothing about M. Heger's attachment, and we haven't any earthly right to +know; but from all that is known of M. Heger it is certain that, if it +was not entirely intellectual, not entirely that "_affection presque +paternelle_" that he once professed, it was entirely restrained and +innocent and honourable. It is Madame Heger with her jealousy who has +given the poor gentleman away. Monsieur's state of mind--extremely +temporary--probably accounted for "those many odd little things, queer +and puzzling enough", which Charlotte would not trust to a letter; +matter for curl-paper confidences and no more. + +Of course there is the argument from the novels, from _The Professor_, +from _Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_. I have not forgotten it. But really +it begs the question. It moves in an extremely narrow and an extremely +vicious circle. Jane Eyre was tried in a furnace of temptation, +therefore Charlotte must have been tried. Lucy Snowe and Frances Henri +loved and suffered in Brussels. Therefore Charlotte must have loved and +suffered there. And if Charlotte loved and suffered and was tried in a +furnace of temptation, that would account for Frances and for Lucy and +for Jane. + +No; the theorists who have insisted on this tragic passion have not +reckoned with Charlotte Bronte's character, and its tremendous power of +self-repression. If at Brussels any disastrous tenderness had raised its +head it wouldn't have had a chance to grow an inch. But Charlotte had +large and luminous ideas of friendship. She was pure, utterly pure from +all the illusions and subtleties and corruptions of the sentimentalist, +and she could trust herself in friendship. She brought to it ardours and +vehemences that she would never have allowed to love. If she let herself +go in her infrequent intercourse with M. Heger, it was because she was +so far from feeling in herself the possibility of passion. That was why +she could say, "I think, however long I live, I shall not forget what +the parting with M. Heger cost me. It grieved me so much to grieve him +who has been so true, kind, and disinterested a friend." That was how +she could bring herself to write thus to Monsieur: "_Savez-vous ce que je +ferais, Monsieur? J'ecrirais un livre et je le dedierais a mon maitre de +litterature, au seul maitre que j'aie jamais eu--a vous Monsieur! Je +vous ai dit souvent en francais combien je vous respecte, combien je +suis redevable a votre bonte a vos conseils. Je voudrais le dire une +fois en anglais ... le souvenir de vos bontes ne s'effacera jamais de ma +memoire, et tant que ce souvenir durera le respect que vous m'avez +inspire durera aussi._" For "_je vous respecte_" we are not entitled to +read "_je vous aime_". Charlotte was so made that kindness shown her +moved her to tears of gratitude. When Charlotte said "respect" she meant +it. Her feeling for M. Heger was purely what Mr. Matthew Arnold said +religion was, an affair of "morality touched with emotion". All her +utterances, where there is any feeling in them, no matter what, have a +poignancy, a vibration which is Brontesque and nothing more. And this +Brontesque quality is what the theorists have (like Madame Heger, and +possibly Monsieur) neither allowed for nor understood. + + * * * * * + +For this "fiery-hearted Vestal", this virgin, sharp-tongued and +sharper-eyed, this scorner of amorous curates, had a genius for +friendship. This genius, like her other genius, was narrow in its range +and opportunity, and for that all the more ardent and intense. It fed on +what came to its hand. It could even grow, like her other genius, with +astounding vitality out of strange and hostile soil. She seems to have +had many friends, obscure and great; the obscure, the Dixons, the +Wheelrights, the Taylors, the Nusseys, out of all proportion to the +great. But properly speaking she had only two friends, Mary Taylor and +Ellen Nussey, the enchanting, immortal "Nel". + +There _is_ something at first sight strange and hostile about Mary +Taylor, the energetic, practical, determined, terribly robust person you +see so plainly trying, in the dawn of their acquaintance, to knock the +nonsense out of Charlotte. Mary Taylor had no appreciation of the +Brontesque. When Charlotte told Mary Taylor that at Cowan Bridge she +used to stand in the burn on a stone to watch the water flow by, Mary +Taylor told Charlotte that she should have gone fishing. When _Jane +Eyre_ appeared she wrote to Charlotte in a strain that is amusing to +posterity. There is a touch of condescension in her praise. She is +evidently surprised at anything so great coming out of Charlotte. "It +seemed to me incredible that you had actually written a book." "You are +very different from me," she says, "in having no doctrine to preach. It +is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production." She is +thinking of his prototype when she criticizes the character of St. John +Rivers. "A missionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, +or he goes for enthusiasm, and that is both too good and too bad a +quality for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd charity to believe in +such a man." As an intellectual woman Mary Taylor realized Charlotte +Bronte's intellect, but it is doubtful if she ever fully realized what, +beyond an intellect, she had got hold of in her friend. She was a woman +of larger brain than Ellen Nussey, she was loyal and warm-hearted to the +last degree, but it was not given to her to see in Charlotte Bronte what +Ellen Nussey, little as you would have expected it, had seen. She did +not keep her letters. She burnt them "in a fit of caution", which may +have been just as well. + +But Mary Taylor is important. She had, among her more tender qualities, +an appalling frankness. It was she who told poor little Charlotte that +she was very ugly. Charlotte never forgot it. You can feel in her +letters, in her novels, in her whole nature, the long reverberation of +the shock. She said afterwards: "You did me a great deal of good, +Polly," by which she meant that Polly had done her an infinity of harm. + +Her friends all began by trying to do her good. Even Ellen Nussey tried. +Charlotte is very kindly cautioned against being "tempted by the +fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance", and +in a parenthesis Ellen Nussey begs her not to be offended. "Oh, Ellen," +Charlotte writes, "do you think I could be offended by any good advice +you may give me?" She thanks her heartily, and loves her "if possible +all the better for it". Ellen Nussey in her turn asks Charlotte to tell +her of her faults and "cease flattering her". Charlotte very sensibly +refuses; and it is not till she has got away from her sisters that her +own heart-searchings begin. They are mainly tiresome, but there is a +flash of revelation in her reply to "the note you sent me with the +umbrella". "My darling, if I were like you, I should have to face +Zionwards, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist +over the glorious vision before me, for with all your single-hearted +sincerity you have your faults, but _I_ am not like you. If you knew my +thoughts; the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at +times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly +insipid, you would pity me, and I dare say despise me." Miss Nussey +writes again, and Charlotte trembles "all over with excitement" after +reading her note. "I will no longer shrink from your question," she +replies. "I _do_ wish to be better than I am. I pray fervently sometimes +to be made so ... this very night I will pray as you wish me." + +But Charlotte is not in the least like Ellen Nussey, and she still +refuses to be drawn into any return of this dangerous play with a +friend's conscience and her nerves. "I will not tell you all I think and +feel about you, Ellen. I will preserve unbroken that reserve which alone +enables me to maintain a decent character for judgment; but for that, I +should long ago have been set down by all who knows me as a Frenchified +fool. You have been very kind to me of late, and gentle, and you have +spared me those little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miserable +and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince, as +if I had been touched with hot iron. Things that nobody else cares for +enter into my mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings +are absurd, and therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the +deeper for concealment. I'm an idiot!" + +Miss Nussey seems to have preserved her calm through all the excitement +and to have never turned a hair. But nothing could have been worse for +Charlotte than this sort of thing. It goes on for years. It began in +eighteen-thirty-three, the third year of their friendship, when she was +seventeen. In 'thirty-seven it is at its height. Charlotte writes from +Dewsbury Moor: "If I could always live with you, if your lips and mine +could at the same time drink the same draught at the same pure fountain +of mercy, I hope, I trust, I might one day become better, far better +than my evil, wandering thoughts, my corrupt heart, cold to the spirit +and warm to the flesh, will now permit me to be. I often plan the +pleasant life we might lead, strengthening each other in the power of +self-denial, that hallowed and glowing devotion which the past Saints of +God often attained to." + +Now a curious and interesting thing is revealed by this correspondence. +These religious fervours and depressions come on the moment Charlotte +leaves Haworth and disappear as soon as she returns. All those letters +were written from Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor, while the Haworth letters +of the same period are sane and light-hearted. And when she is fairly +settled at Haworth, instead of emulating the Saints of God, she and Miss +Nussey are studying human nature and the art of flirtation as exhibited +by curates. Charlotte administers to her friend a formidable amount of +worldly wisdom, thus avenging herself for the dance Miss Nussey led her +round the throne of grace. + +For, though that morbid excitement and introspection belonged solely to +Charlotte's days of exile, Miss Nussey was at the bottom of it. Mary +Taylor would have been a far robuster influence. But Charlotte's +friendship for Mary Taylor, warm as it was, strikes cold beside her +passionate affection for Ellen Nussey. She brought her own fire to that, +and her own extraordinary capacity for pain. Her letters show every +phase of this friendship, its birth, its unfolding; and then the sudden +leaping of the flame, its writhing and its torture. She writes with a +lover's ardour and impatience. "Write to me very soon and dispel my +uncertainty, or I shall get impatient, almost irritable." "I read your +letter with dismay. Ellen--what shall I do without you? Why are we to be +denied each other's society? It is an inscrutable fatality.... Why are +we to be divided?" (She is at Roe Head, and Roe Head suggests the +answer.) "Surely, Ellen, it must be because we are in danger of loving +each other too well--of losing sight of the _Creator_ in idolatry of the +_creature_." She prays to be resigned, and records "a sweet, placid +sensation like those that I remember used to visit me when I was a +little child, and on Sunday evenings in summer stood by the window +reading the life of a certain French nobleman who attained a purer and +higher degree of sanctity than has been known since the days of the +Early Martyrs. I thought of my own Ellen--" "I wish I could see you, my +darling; I have lavished the warmest affections of a very hot tenacious +heart upon you; if you grow cold, it is over." She was only twenty-one. + +A few more years and the leaping and the writhing and the torture cease, +the fire burns to a steady, inextinguishable glow. There is gaiety in +Charlotte's tenderness. She is "infuriated" on finding a jar in her +trunk. "At first I hoped it was empty, but when I found it heavy and +replete, I could have hurled it all the way back to Birstall. However, +the inscription A.B. softened me much. You ought first to be tenderly +kissed, and then as tenderly whipped. Emily is just now sitting on the +floor of the bedroom where I am writing, looking at her apples. She +smiled when I gave them and the collar as your presents, with an +expression at once well pleased and slightly surprised." + +The religious fervours and the soul-searchings have ceased long ago, so +has Miss Nussey's brief spiritual ascendency. But the friendship and the +letters never cease. They go on for twenty years, through exile and +suffering, through bereavement, through fame and through marriage, +uninterrupted and, except for one brief period, unabridged. There is +nothing in any biography to compare with those letters to Ellen Nussey. +If Charlotte Bronte had not happened to be a great genius as well as a +great woman, they alone would have furnished forth her complete +biography. There is no important detail of her mere life that is not +given in them. Mrs. Gaskell relied almost entirely on them, and on +information supplied to her by Miss Nussey. And each critic and +biographer who followed her, from Sir Wemyss Reid to Mr. Clement +Shorter, drew from the same source. Miss Nussey was almost the only safe +repository of material relating to Charlotte Bronte. She had possessed +hundreds of her letters and, with that amiable weakness which was the +defect of her charming quality, she was unable to withhold any of them +from the importunate researcher. There seems to have been nothing, +except one thing, that Charlotte did not talk about to Miss Nussey when +they sat with their feet on the fender and their hair in curl-papers. +That one thing was her writing. It is quite possible that in those +curl-paper confidences Miss Nussey learnt the truth about Charlotte's +friend, M. Heger. She never learnt anything about Charlotte's genius. In +everything that concerned her genius Charlotte was silent and secret +with her friend. That was the line, the very sharp and impassable line +she drew between her "dear, _dear_ Ellen", her "dearest Nel", and her +sisters, Anne and Emily. The freemasonry of friendship ended there. You +may search in vain through even her later correspondence with Miss +Nussey for any more than perfunctory and extraneous allusions to her +works. It was as if they had never been. Every detail of her daily life +is there, the outer and the inner things, the sewing and ironing and +potato-peeling, together with matters of the heart and soul, searchings, +experiences, agonies; the figures of her father, her brother, her +sisters, move there, vivid and alive; and old Tabby and the curates; and +the very animals, Keeper and Flossie, and the little black cat, Tom, +that died and made Emily sorry; but of the one thing not a word. The +letters to Ellen Nussey following the publication of _Jane Eyre_ are all +full of gossip about Miss Ringrose and the Robinsons. Presently Ellen +hears a rumour of publication. Charlotte repudiates it and friction +follows. + +Charlotte writes: "Dear Ellen,--write another letter and explain that +note of yours distinctly.... Let me know what you heard, and from whom +you heard it. You do wrong to feel pain from any circumstance, or to +suppose yourself slighted...." "Dear Ellen,--All I can say to you about +a certain matter is this: the report ... must have had its origin in +some absurd misunderstanding. I have given _no one_ a right to affirm or +hint in the most distant manner that I am publishing (humbug!). Whoever +has said it--if anyone has, which I doubt--is no friend of mine. Though +twenty books were ascribed to me, I should own none. I scout the idea +utterly. Whoever, after I have distinctly rejected the charge, urges it +upon me, will do an unkind and ill-bred thing." If Miss Nussey is asked, +she is authorized by Miss Bronte to say, "that she repels and disowns +every accusation of the kind. You may add, if you please, that if anyone +has her confidence, you believe you have, and she has made no drivelling +confessions to you on that subject." "Dear Ellen,--I shall begin by +telling you that you have no right to be angry at the length of time I +have suffered to slip by since receiving your last, without answering +it; because you have often kept me waiting much longer, and having made +this gracious speech, thereby obviating reproaches, I will add that I +think it a great shame, when you receive a long and thoroughly +interesting letter, full of the sort of details you fully relish, to +read the same with selfish pleasure, and not even have the manners to +thank your correspondent, and express how very much you enjoyed the +narrative. I _did_ enjoy the narrative in your last very keenly.... +Which of the Miss Woolers did you see at Mr. Allbutts?" + +A beautiful but most unequal friendship. "The sort of details you fully +relish--" How that phrase must have rankled! You can hear the passionate +protest: "Those details are not what I relish in the least. Putting me +off with your Woolers and your Allbutts! If only you had told me about +_Jane Eyre_!" For it turned out that all the time Mary Taylor had been +told. The inference was that Mary Taylor, with her fits of caution, +could be trusted. + +This silence of Charlotte's must have been most painful and +incomprehensible to the poor Ellen who was Caroline Helstone. She had +been the first to divine Charlotte's secret; for she kept the letters. +She must have felt like some tender and worshipping wife to whom all +doors in the house of the beloved are thrown open, except the door of +the sanctuary, which is persistently slammed in her charming face. There +must have come to her moments of terrible insight when she felt the +danger and the mystery of the flaming spirit she had tried to hold. But +Charlotte's friend can wear her half-pathetic immortality with grace. +She could at least say: "She told me things she never told anyone else. +I have hundreds of her letters. And I had her heart." + + * * * * * + +Nothing so much as this correspondence reveals the appalling solitude in +which the Brontes lived. Here is their dearest and most intimate friend, +and she is one to whom they can never speak of the thing that interested +them most. No doubt "our best plays mean secret plays"; but Charlotte, +at any rate, suffered from this secrecy. There was nothing to counteract +Miss Nussey's direful influence on her spiritual youth. "Papa" highly +approved of the friendship. He wished it to continue, and it did; and it +was the best that Charlotte had. I know few things more pathetic than +the cry that Charlotte, at twenty-one, sent out of her solitude (with +some verses) to Southey and to Wordsworth. Southey told her that, +"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not +to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure +will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To +those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be +less eager for celebrity." A sound, respectable, bourgeois opinion so +far, but Southey went farther. "Write poetry for its own sake," he said; +and he could hardly have said better. Charlotte treasured the letter, +and wrote on the cover of it, "Southey's advice, to be kept for ever." +Wordsworth's advice, I am sorry to say, provoked her to flippancy. + +And that, out of the solitude, was all. Not the ghost, not the shadow of +an Influence came to the three sisters. There never was genius that owed +so little to influence as theirs. + +I know that in Charlotte's case there is said to have been an Influence. +An Influence without which she would have remained for ever in +obscurity, with _Villette_, with _Shirley_, with _Jane Eyre_, with _The +Professor_, unborn, unconceived. + +Need I say that the Influence is--M. Heger? + +"The sojourn in Brussels," says Mr. Clement Shorter, "made Miss Bronte +an author," and he is only following Sir Wemyss Reid, who was the first +to establish Brussels as the turning-point. Mr. Shorter does not believe +in M. Heger as the inspirer of passion, but he does believe in him as +the inspirer of genius. He thinks it exceedingly probable that had not +circumstances led Charlotte Bronte to spend some time at Brussels not +only would "the world never have heard of her", but it would never have +heard of her sisters. He is quite certain about Charlotte anyhow; she +could not have "arrived" had she not met M. Heger. "She went," he says, +"to Brussels full of the crude ambitions, the semi-literary impulses +that are so common on the fringe of the writing world. She left Brussels +a woman of genuine cultivation, of educated tastes, armed with just the +equipment that was to enable her to write the books of which two +generations of her countrymen have been justly proud." + +This is saying that Charlotte Bronte had no means of expression before +she wrote _devoirs_ under M. Heger. True, her genius did not find itself +until after she left Brussels, that is to say, not until she was nearly +thirty. I have not read any of her works as Lord Charles Albert Florian +Wellesley, and I do not imagine they were works of genius. But that only +means that Charlotte Bronte's genius took time. She was one of those +novelists who do not write novels before they are nearly thirty. But she +could write. Certain fragments of her very earliest work show that from +the first she had not only the means, but very considerable mastery of +expression. What is more, they reveal in germ the qualities that marked +her style in its maturity. Her styles rather, for she had several. There +is her absolutely simple style, in which she is perfect; her didactic +style, her fantastic style, which are mere temporary aberrations; and +her inspired style, in which at her worst she is merely flamboyant and +redundant, and at her best no less than perfect. You will find a faint, +embryonic foreshadowing of her perfections in the fragments given by +Mrs. Gaskell. There is THE HISTORY OF THE YEAR 1829, beginning: "Once +Papa lent my sister Maria a book. It was an old geography book; she +wrote on its blank leaf, "Papa lent me this book." This book is a +hundred and twenty years old; it is at this moment lying before me. +While I write this I am in the kitchen of the Parsonage, Haworth; Tabby, +the servant, is washing up the breakfast things, and Anne, my youngest +sister (Maria was my eldest), is kneeling on a chair, looking at some +cakes, which Tabby has been baking for us." You cannot beat that for +pure simplicity of statement. There is another fragment that might have +come straight out of _Jane Eyre_. "One night, about the time when the +cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snowstorms +and high piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting +round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel +with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she +came off victorious, no candle having been produced." And there is a +dream-story that Mr. Clement Shorter gives. She is in the "Mines of +Cracone", under the floor of the sea. "But in the midst of all this +magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror, for the +sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring +winds and dashing waves, it seemed as if the storm was violent. And now +the massy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the +glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed. When I heard the +rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud +shriek of terror." The dream changes: she is in a desert full of barren +rocks and high mountains, where she sees "by the light of his own fiery +eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers. His terrible +eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang, and the rocks echoed with +the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang +towards me." And there is her letter to the editor of one of their +_Little Magazines_: "Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared +that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year, of a +mysterious nature, all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and +gathered together in one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary +splendour through the vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the +four high princes of the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by +Eternity; and the impudence of this is only to be paralleled by another +of their assertions, namely, that by their magic might they can reduce +the world to a desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and +the clearest lakes to stagnant water, the pestilential vapours of which +shall slay all living creatures, except the bloodthirsty beast of the +forest, and the ravenous bird of the rock. But that in the midst of this +desolation the palace of the chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the +wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over the +land at morning, at noontide, and at night; but that they shall have +their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly rejoice +with the joy of victors. I think, sir, that the horrible wickedness of +this needs no remark, and therefore I hasten to subscribe myself, etc." + +Puerile, if you like, and puerile all the stuff that Charlotte Bronte +wrote before eighteen-forty-six; but her style at thirteen, in its very +rhythms and cadences, is the unmistakable embryo of her style at thirty; +and M. Heger no more cured her of its faults that he could teach her its +splendours. Something that was not Brussels made Miss Bronte a +prodigious author at thirteen. The mere mass of her _Juvenilia_ +testifies to a most ungovernable bent. Read the list of works, appalling +in their length, which this child produced in a period of fifteen +months; consider that she produced nothing but melancholy letters during +her "sojourn in Brussels"; and compare M. Heger's academic precepts with +her practice, with the wild sweep and exuberance of her style when she +has shaken him off, and her genius gets possession of her. + +I know there is a gulf fixed between Currer Bell and Charles Townsend, +who succeeded Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and the Marquis of +Douro, about eighteen-thirty-eight; but it is bridged by the later +_Poems_ which show Charlotte's genius struggling through a wrong medium +to the right goal. She does not know--after the sojourn in Brussels she +does not yet know--that her right medium is prose. She knew no more than +she knew in November, eighteen-forty-one, when, on the eve of her flight +from Haworth, she writes: "The plain fact is, I was not, I am not now, +certain of my destiny." It was not until two years after she had +returned to Haworth that she received her certainty. For posterity, +overpowered by the labour of the Bronte specialists, it may seem as if +Charlotte Bronte's genius owed everything to her flight from Haworth. In +reality her flight merely coincided with the inevitable shooting of its +wings; and the specialists have mistaken coincidence for destiny. + +Heaven only knows what would have happened to her genius if, blind to +her destiny, she had remained in Brussels. For, once there, its +wing-feathers left off growing. Its way was blocked by every conceivable +hostile and obstructive thing. Madame Heger was hostile, and Monsieur, I +think, purely obstructive. Emily saw through him, and denounced his +method as fatal to all originality. Charlotte, to be sure, called him +"my dear master, the only master that I ever had", but if that was not +her "absurd charity", it was only her Brontesque way. There was no sense +in which he was her master. He taught her French; to the very last the +habit of using "a few French words" was the King Charles's head in her +manuscripts; and the French he taught her did her harm. The restraint he +could and would have taught her she never learnt until her genius had +had, in defiance and in spite of him, its full fling. + +And what a fling! It is the way of genius to look after itself. In spite +of obstacles, Charlotte Bronte's took hold of every man and woman that +crossed and barred its path, and ultimately it avenged itself on +Monsieur and on Madame Heger. Those two were made for peaceful, +honourable conjugal obscurity, but it was their luck to harbour a +half-fledged and obstructed genius in their Pensionnat, a genius +thirsting for experience; and somehow, between them, they contrived to +make it suffer. That was their tragedy. Monsieur's case is pitiful; for +he was kind and well-meaning, and he was fond of Charlotte; and yet, +because of Charlotte, there is no peace for him in the place where he +has gone. Her genius has done with him, but her ghost, like some malign +and awful destiny, pursues him. No sooner does he sink back quiet in his +grave than somebody unearths him. Why cannot he be allowed to rest, once +for all, in his amiable unimportance? He became, poor man, important +only by the use that Charlotte's genius made of him. It seized him as it +would have seized on any other interesting material that came its way. +Without him we might have had another Rochester, and we should not have +had any Paul Emanuel, which would have been a pity; that is all. + +There is hardly any hope that Bronte specialists will accept this view. +For them the sojourn in Brussels will still stand as the turning-point +in Charlotte Bronte's career. Yet for her, long afterwards, Brussels +must have stood as the danger threatening it. She would have said, I +think, that her sojourn in Haworth was the turning-point. It was destiny +that turned Emily back to Haworth from the destruction that waited for +her at Brussels, so that she conceived and brought forth _Wuthering +Heights_; her own destiny that she secretly foreknew, consoling and +beneficent. And, no doubt, it was destiny of a sort, unforeknown, +deceitful, apparently malignant, that sent Charlotte back again to +Brussels after her aunt's death. It wrung from her her greatest book, +_Villette_. But Haworth, I think, would have wrung from her another and +perhaps a greater. + +For the first-fruits of the sojourn in Brussels was neither _Villette_ +nor _Jane Eyre_, but _The Professor_. And _The Professor_ has none of +the qualities of _Jane Eyre_ or of _Villette_; it has none of the +qualities of Charlotte's later work at all; above all, none of that +master quality which M. Heger is supposed to have specially evoked. +Charlotte, indeed, could not well have written a book more destructive +to the legend of the upheaval, the tragic passion, the furnace of +temptation and the flight. Nothing could be less like a furnace than the +atmosphere of _The Professor_. From the first page to the last there is +not one pulse, not one breath of passion in it. The bloodless thing +comes coldly, slowly tentatively, from the birth. It is almost as frigid +as a _devoir_ written under M. Heger's eye. The theorists, I notice, are +careful not to draw attention to _The Professor_; and they are wise, for +attention drawn to _The Professor_ makes sad work of their theory. + +Remember, on the theory, Charlotte Bronte has received her great +awakening, her great enlightenment; she is primed with passion; the +whole wonderful material of _Villette_ is in her hand; she has before +her her unique opportunity. You ought, on the theory, to see her +hastening to it, a passionate woman, pouring out her own one and supreme +experience, and, with the brand of Brussels on her, never afterwards +really doing anything else. Whereas the first thing the impassioned +Charlotte does (after a year of uninspired and ineffectual poetizing) is +to sit down and write _The Professor_; a book, remarkable not by any +means for its emotion, but for its cold and dispassionate observation. +Charlotte eliminates herself, and is Crimsworth in order that she may +observe Frances Henri the more dispassionately. She is inspired solely +by the analytic spirit, and either cannot, or will not, let herself go. +But she does what she meant to do. She had it in mind to write, not a +great work of imagination, but a grey and sober book, and a grey and +sober book is what she writes. A book concerned only with things and +people she has seen and known; a book, therefore, from which passion and +the poetry that passion is must be rigidly excluded, as belonging to +the region of things not, strictly speaking, known. It is as if she had +written _The Professor_ in rivalry with her sister Anne, both of them +austerely determined to put aside all imagination and deal with +experience and experience alone. Thus you obtain sincerity, you obtain +truth. And with nothing but experience before her, she writes a book +that has no passion in it, a book almost as bloodless and as gentle as +her sister Anne's. + +Let us not disparage _The Professor_. Charlotte herself did not +disparage it. In her Preface she refused to solicit "indulgence for it +on the plea of a first attempt. A first attempt," she says, "it +certainly was not, as the pen which wrote it had been previously worn in +a practice of some years." In that Preface she shows plainly that at the +very outset of her career she had no sterner critic than herself; that +she was aware of her sins and her temptations, and of the dangers that +lurked for her in her imaginative style. "In many a crude effort, +destroyed almost as soon as composed, I had got over any such taste as I +might have had for ornamented and decorated composition, and come to +prefer what was plain and homely." Observe, it is not to the lessons of +the "master", but to the creation and destruction that went on at +Haworth that she attributes this purgation. She is not aware of the +extent to which she can trust her genius, of what will happen when she +has fairly let herself go. She is working on a method that rules her +choice of subject. "I said to myself that my hero should work his way +through life, as I had seen real, living men work theirs--that he should +never get a shilling that he had not earned--that no sudden turns should +lift him in a moment to wealth and high station; that whatever small +competency he might gain should be won by the sweat of his brow; that +before he could find so much as an arbour to sit down in, he should +master at least half the ascent of the Hill Difficulty; that he should +not marry even a beautiful girl or a lady of rank." + +There was no fine madness in that method; but its very soundness and +sanity show the admirable spirit in which Charlotte Bronte approached +her art. She was to return to the method of _The Professor_ again and +yet again, when she suspected herself of having given imagination too +loose a rein. The remarkable thing was that she should have begun with +it. + +And in some respects _The Professor_ is more finished, better +constructed than any of her later books. There is virtue in its extreme +sobriety. Nothing could be more delicate and firm than the drawing of +Frances Henri; nothing in its grey style more admirable than the scene +where Crimsworth, having found Frances in the cemetery, takes her to her +home in the Rue Notre Dame aux Neiges. + +"Stepping over a little mat of green wool, I found myself in a small +room with a painted floor and a square of green carpet in the middle; +the articles of furniture were few, but all bright and exquisitely +clean--order reigned through its narrow limits--such order as it suited +my punctilious soul to behold.... Poor the place might be; poor truly it +was, but its neatness was better than elegance, and had but a bright +little fire shone on that clean hearth, I should have deemed it more +attractive than a palace. No fire was there, however, and no fuel laid +ready to light; the lace-mender was unable to allow herself that +indulgence.... Frances went into an inner room to take off her bonnet, +and she came out a model of frugal neatness, with her well-fitting black +stuff dress, so accurately defining her elegant bust and taper waist, +with her spotless white collar turned back from a fair and shapely +neck, with her plenteous brown hair arranged in smooth bands on her +temples and in a large Grecian plait behind: ornaments she had +none--neither brooch, ring, nor ribbon; she did well enough without +them--perfection of fit, proportion of form, grace of carriage, +agreeably supplied their place." Frances lights a fire, having fetched +wood and coal in a basket. + +"'It is her whole stock, and she will exhaust it out of hospitality,' +thought I. + +"'What are you going to do?' I asked: 'not surely to light a fire this +hot evening? I shall be smothered.' + +"'Indeed, Monsieur, I feel it very chilly since the rain began; besides, +I must boil the water for my tea, for I take tea on Sundays; you will be +obliged to bear the heat.'" + +And Frances makes the tea, and sets the table, and brings out her +pistolets, and offers them to Monsieur, and it is all very simple and +idyllic. So is the scene where Crimsworth, without our knowing exactly +how he does it, declares himself to Frances. The dialogue is half in +French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very +favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in _Jane Eyre_. +Frances is delicious in her very solidity, her absence of abandonment. +She refuses flatly to give up her teaching at Crimsworth's desire, +Crimsworth, who will have six thousand francs a year. + +"'How rich you are, Monsieur!' And then she stirred uneasily in my arms. +'Three thousand francs!' she murmured, 'while I get only twelve +hundred!' She went on faster. 'However, it must be so for the present; +and, Monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my +place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast'; and her little fingers emphatically +tightened on mine. + +"'Think of marrying you to be kept by you, Monsieur! I could not do it; +and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close, +noisy schoolrooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering +at home, unemployed and solitary. I should get depressed and sullen, and +you would soon tire of me.' + +"'Frances, you could yet read and study--two things you like so well.' + +"'Monsieur, I could not; I like contemplative life, but I like an active +better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have taken notice, +Monsieur, that people who are only in each other's company for +amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so +highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer together!'" + +To which Crimsworth replies, "You speak God's truth, and you shall have +your own way, for it is the best way." + +There is far more common sense than passion in the solid little Frances +and her apathetic lover. It is Frances Henri's situation, not her +character, that recalls so irresistibly Lucy Snowe. Frances has neither +Lucy's temperament, nor Lucy's terrible capacity for suffering. She +suffers through her circumstances, not through her temperament. The +motives handled in _The Professor_ belong to the outer rather than the +inner world; the pressure of circumstance, bereavement, poverty, the +influences of alien and unloved surroundings, these are the springs that +determine the drama of Frances and of Crimsworth. Charlotte is +displaying a deliberate interest in the outer world and the material +event. She does not yet know that it is in the inner world that her +great conquest and dominion is to be. The people in this first novel are +of the same family as the people in _Jane Eyre_, in _Shirley_, in +_Villette_. Crimsworth is almost reproduced in Louis Moore. Yorke +Hunsden is the unmistakable father of Mr. Yorke and Rochester; Frances, +a pale and passionless sister of Jane Eyre, and a first cousin of Lucy. +Yet, in spite of these relationships, _The Professor_ stands alone. In +spite of its striking resemblance to _Villette_ there is no real, no +spiritual affinity. And the great gulf remains fixed between _The +Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. + +This difference lies deeper than technique. It is a difference of +vision, of sensation. The strange greyness of _The Professor_, its +stillness, is not due altogether to Charlotte's deliberate intention. It +is the stillness, the greyness of imperfect hearing, of imperfect +seeing. I know it has one fine piece of word-painting, but not one that +can stand among Charlotte Bronte's masterpieces in this kind. + +Here it is. "Already the pavement was drying; a balmy and fresh breeze +stirred the air, purified by lightning; I left the west behind me, where +spread a sky like opal, azure inmingled with crimson; the enlarged sun, +glorious in Tyrian dyes, dipped his brim already; stepping, as I was, +eastward, I faced a vast bank of clouds, but also I had before me the +arch of an even rainbow; a perfect rainbow--high, wide, vivid. I looked +long; my eye drank in the scene, and I suppose my brain must have +absorbed it; for that night, after lying awake in pleasant fever a long +time, watching the silent sheet-lightning, which still played among the +retreating clouds, and flashed silvery over the stars, I at last fell +asleep; and then in a dream was reproduced the setting sun, the bank of +clouds, the mighty rainbow. I stood, methought, on a terrace; I leaned +over a parapeted wall; there was space below me, depth I could not +fathom, but hearing an endless splash of waves, I believed it to be the +sea; sea spread to the horizon; sea of changeful green and intense blue; +all was soft in the distance; all vapour-veiled. A spark of gold +glistened on the line between water and air, floated up, appeared, +enlarged, changed; the object hung midway between heaven and earth, +under the arch of the rainbow; the soft but dark clouds diffused behind. +It hovered as on wings; pearly, fleecy, gleaming air streamed like +raiment round it; light, tinted with carnation, coloured what seemed +face and limbs; a large star shone with still lustre on an angel's +forehead--" But the angel ruins it. + +And this is all, and it leaves the dreariness more dreary. In _The +Professor_ you wander through a world where there is no sound, no +colour, no vibration; a world muffled and veiled in the stillness and +the greyness of the hour before dawn. It is the work of a woman who is +not perfectly alive. So far from having had her great awakening, +Charlotte is only half awake. Her intellect is alert enough and avid, +faithful and subservient to the fact. It is her nerves and senses that +are asleep. Her soul is absent from her senses. + + * * * * * + +But in _Jane Eyre_, she is not only awakened, but awake as she has never +been awake before, with all her virgin senses exquisitely alive, every +nerve changed to intense vibration. Sometimes she is perniciously awake; +she is doing appalling things, things unjustifiable, preposterous; +things that would have meant perdition to any other writer; she sees +with wild, erroneous eyes; but the point is that she sees, that she +keeps moving, that from the first page to the last she is never once +asleep. To come to _Jane Eyre_ after _The Professor_ is to pass into +another world of feeling and of vision. + +It is not the difference between reality and unreality. _The Professor_ +is real enough, more real in some minor points--dialogue, for +instance--than _Jane Eyre_. The difference is that _The Professor_ is a +transcript of reality, a very delicate and faithful transcript, and +_Jane Eyre_ is reality itself, pressed on the senses. The pressure is so +direct and so tremendous, that it lasts through those moments when the +writer's grip has failed. + +For there are moments, long moments of perfectly awful failure in _Jane +Eyre_. There are phrases that make you writhe, such as "the etymology of +the mansion's designation", and the shocking persistency with which +Charlotte Bronte "indites", "peruses", and "retains". There are whole +scenes that outrage probability. Such are the scenes, or parts of +scenes, between Jane and Rochester during the comedy of his courtship. +The great orchard scene does not ring entirely true. For pages and pages +it falters between passion and melodrama; between rhetoric and the _cri +de coeur_. Jane in the very thick of her emotion can say, "I have +talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight +in--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, +Mr. Rochester, and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I +absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity for +departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death." And the +comedy is worse. Jane elaborates too much in those delicious things she +says to Rochester. Rochester himself provokes the parodist. (Such +manners as Rochester's were unknown in mid-Victorian literature.) + +"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck +seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed +terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal +were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For +caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch +on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was +all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to +anything more tender." + +Yet there is comedy, pure comedy in those scenes, though never +sustained, and never wrought to the inevitable dramatic climax. Jane is +delightful when she asks Rochester whether the frown on his forehead +will be his "married look", and when she tells him to make a +dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite +series of waistcoats out of the black satin". _The Quarterly_ was much +too hard on the earlier _cadeau_ scene, with Rochester and Jane and +Adele, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and +precision. + +_"'N'est-ce pas, Monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre, +dans votre petit coffre?'"_ + +"'Who talks of _cadeaux_?' said he gruffly; 'did you expect a present, +Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?' and he searched my face with eyes +that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing. + +"'I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them; they are +generally thought pleasant things.'" + +Charlotte Bronte was on her own ground there. But you tremble when she +leaves it; you shudder throughout the awful drawing-room comedy of +Blanche Ingram. Blanche says to her mother: "Am I right, Baroness Ingram +of Ingram Park?" And her mother says to Blanche, "My lily-flower, you +are right now, as always." Blanche says to Rochester, "Signor Eduardo, +are you in voice to-night?" and he, "Donna Bianca, if you command it, I +will be." And Blanche says to the footman, "Cease that chatter, +blockhead, and do my bidding." + +That, Charlotte's worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene +itself is unimportant. But what can be said of the crucial scene of the +novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation? There _is_ +passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the +afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding. + +"'Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one +little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his +bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake +slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody +blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?'... 'You +know I am a scoundrel, Jane?' ere long he inquired wistfully, wondering, +I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness; the result of weakness +rather than of will. + +"'Yes, sir.' + +"'Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me.' + +"'I cannot; I am tired and sick. I want some water.' + +"He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and, taking me in his arms, +carried me downstairs." + +But there are terrible lapses. After Rochester's cry, "'Jane, my little +darling ... If you were mad, do you think I should hate you,'" he +elaborates his idea and he is impossible: "'Your mind is my treasure, +and if it were broken it would be my treasure still; if you raved, my +arms should confine you and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in +fury, would have a charm for me; if you flew at me as wildly as that +woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace at least as +fond as it would be restrictive.'" + +And in the final scene of temptation there is a most curious mingling of +reality and unreality, of the passion which is poetry, and the poetry +which is not passion. + +"'Never,' said he, as he ground his teeth, 'never was anything so frail, +and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!' And he shook me +with the force of his hold. 'I could bend her with my finger and thumb; +and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? +Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out +of it, defying me, with more than courage--with a stern triumph. +Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it--the savage, beautiful +creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only +let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but the inmate +would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor of its clay +dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue +and purity--that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of yourself, you +could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart, if you would; +seized against your will you will elude the grasp like an essence--you +will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh, come, Jane, come!'" + +It is the crucial scene of the book; and with all its power, with all +its vehemence and passionate reality it is unconvincing. It stirs you +and it leaves you cold. + +The truth is that in _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Bronte had not mastered the +art of dialogue; and to the very last she was uncertain in her handling +of it. In this she is inferior to all the great novelists of her time; +inferior to some who were by no means great. She understood more of the +spiritual speech of passion than any woman before her, but she ignores +its actual expression, its violences, its reticences, its silences. In +her great scenes she is inspired one moment, and the next positively +handicapped by her passion and her poetry. In the same sentence she +rises to the sudden poignant _cri du coeur_, and sinks to the artifice +of metaphor. She knew that passion is poetry, and poetry is passion; +you might say it was all she knew, or ever cared to know. But her +language of passion is too often the language of written rather than of +spoken poetry, of poetry that is not poetry at all. It is as if she had +never heard the speech of living men and women. There is more actuality +in the half-French chatter of Adele than in any of the high utterances +of Jane and Rochester. + +And yet her sense of the emotion behind the utterance is infallible, so +infallible that we accept the utterance. By some miracle, which is her +secret, the passion gets through. The illusion of reality is so strong +that it covers its own lapses. _Jane Eyre_ exists to prove that truth is +higher than actuality. + +"'Jane suits me: do I suit her?' + +"'To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.'" + +If no woman alive had ever said that, it would yet be true to Jane's +feeling. For it is a matter of the finest fibres, this passion of +Jane's, that set people wondering about Currer Bell, that inflamed Mrs. +Oliphant, as it inflamed the reviewer in _The Quarterly_, and made +Charles Kingsley think that Currer Bell was coarse. Their state of mind +is incredible to us now. For what did poor Jane do, after all? Nobody +could possibly have had more respect for the ten commandments. For all +Rochester's raging, the ten commandments remain exactly where they were. +It was inconceivable to Charlotte Bronte that any decent man or woman +could make hay, or wish to make hay, of them. And yet Jane offended. She +sinned against the unwritten code that ordains that a woman may lie till +she is purple in the face, but she must not, as a piece of gratuitous +information, tell a man she loves him; not, that is to say, in as many +words. She may declare her passion unmistakably in other ways. She may +exhibit every ignominious and sickly sign of it; her eyes may glow like +hot coals; she may tremble; she may flush and turn pale; she may do +almost anything, provided she does not speak the actual words. In +mid-Victorian times an enormous licence was allowed her. She might +faint, with perfect propriety, in public; she might become anaemic and +send for the doctor, and be ordered iron; she might fall ill, horridly +and visibly, and have to be taken away to spas and places to drink the +waters. Everybody knew what that meant. If she had shrieked her passion +on the housetops she could hardly have published it more violently; but +nobody minded. It was part of the mid-Victorian convention. + +Jane Eyre did none of these things. As soon as she was aware of her +passion for Mr. Rochester she thrust it down into the pocket of her +voluminous mid-Victorian skirt and sat on it. Instead of languishing and +fainting where Rochester could see her, she held her head rather higher +than usual, and practised the spirited arts of retort and repartee. And +nobody gave her any credit for it. Then Rochester puts the little thing +(poor Jane was only eighteen when it happened) to the torture, and, with +the last excruciating turn of the thumbscrew, she confesses. That was +the enormity that was never forgiven her. + +"'You'll like Ireland, I think,'" says Rochester in his torturing mood; +"'they are such kind-hearted people there.' + +"'It is a long way off, sir.' + +"'No matter, a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the +distance.' + +"'Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier.' + +"'From what, Jane?' + +"'From England and from Thornfield, and--' + +"'Well?' + +"'From _you_, sir.'" + +She had done it. She had said, or almost said the words. + +It just happened. There was magic in the orchard at Thornfield; there +was youth in her blood; and--"Jane, did you hear the nightingale singing +in that wood?" + +Still, she had done it. + +And she was the first heroine who had. Adultery, with which we are +fairly familiar, would have seemed a lesser sin. There may be +extenuating circumstances for the adulteress. There were extenuating +circumstances for Rochester. He could plead a wife who went on all +fours. There were no extenuating circumstances for little Jane. No use +for her to say that she was upset by the singing of the nightingale; +that it didn't matter what she said to Mr. Rochester when Mr. Rochester +was going to marry Blanche Ingram, anyway; that she only flung herself +at his head because she knew she couldn't hit it; that her plainness +gave her a certain licence, placing her beyond the code. Not a bit of +it. Jane's plainness was one thing that they had against her. Until her +time no heroine had been permitted to be plain. Jane's seizing of the +position was part of the general insolence of her behaviour. + +Jane's insolence was indeed unparalleled. Having done the deed she felt +no shame or sense of sin; she stood straight up and defended herself. +That showed that she was hardened. + +It certainly showed--Jane's refusal to be abject--that Jane was far +ahead of her age. + +"'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. +'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an +automaton?--a machine without feelings, and can bear to have my morsel +of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from +my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am +soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and +fully as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much +wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now +for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of +custom, conventionalities, or even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that +addresses'" ("Addresses"? oh, Jane!) "'your spirit; just as if both had +passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal--as we +are!'" + +This, allowing for some slight difference in the phrasing, is twentieth +century. And it was this--Jane's behaviour in the orchard, and not +Rochester's behaviour in the past--that opened the door to the "imps of +evil meaning, polluting and defiling the domestic hearth." + +Still, though _The Quarterly_ censured Jane's behaviour, it was +Rochester who caused most of the trouble and the scandal by his +remarkable confessions. In a sense they _were_ remarkable. Seldom, +outside the pages of French fiction, had there been so lavish and public +a display of mistresses. And while it was agreed on all hands that +Rochester was incredible with his easy references to Celine and Giacinta +and Clara, still more incredible was it that a young woman in a country +parsonage should have realized so much as the existence of Clara and +Giacinta and Celine. But, when Mrs. Gaskell and Madame Duclaux invoked +Branwell and all his vices to account for Charlotte's experience, they +forgot that Charlotte had read Balzac,[A] and that Balzac is an +experience in himself. She had also read Moore's _Life of Byron_, and +really there is nothing in Rochester's confessions that Byron and a +little Balzac would not account for. So that they might just as well +have left poor Branwell in his grave. + +[Footnote A: I am wrong. Charlotte did not read Balzac till later, when +George Henry Lewes told her to. But there were those twenty "clever, +wicked, sophistical, and immoral French books" that she read in +eighteen-forty. They may have served her purpose better.] + +Indeed, it was the manner of Rochester's confession that gave away the +secret of Currer Bell's sex; her handling of it is so inadequate and +perfunctory. Rochester is at his worst and most improbable in the +telling of his tale. The tale in itself is one of Charlotte's clumsiest +contrivances for conveying necessary information. The alternate baldness +and exuberant, decorated, swaggering boldness (for Charlotte's style was +never bolder than when she was essaying the impossible) alone betrayed +the hand of an innocent woman. Curious that these makeshift passages +with their obviously second-hand material, their palpably alien _mise en +scene_, should ever have suggested a personal experience and provoked +_The Quarterly_ to its infamous and immortal utterance: "If we ascribe +the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to +one who has, for some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of +her own sex." + +_The Quarterly_, to do it justice, argued that Currer Bell was a man, +for only a man would have betrayed such ignorance of feminine resources +as to make Jane Eyre, on a night alarm, "hurry on a frock and shawl". +The reasoning passed. Nobody saw that such a man would be as innocent as +any parson's daughter. Nobody pointed out that, as it happened, Currer +Bell had provided her dowagers with "vast white wrappers" on the second +night alarm. And, after all, the sex of _The Quarterly_ reviewer itself +remains a problem. Long ago Mr. Andrew Lang detected the work of two +hands in that famous article. You may say there were at least three. +There was, first, the genial reviewer of _Vanity Fair_, who revels in +the wickedness of Becky Sharpe, and who is going to revel in the +wickedness of Jane. Then suddenly some Mr. Brocklebank steps in, and you +get a "black-marble clergyman" on _Jane Eyre_. + +"We have said," says this person, "that this was the picture of a +natural heart. This, to our view, is the great and crying mischief of +the book. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate +and undisciplined spirit, the more dangerous to exhibit from that +prestige of principle and self-control, which is liable to dazzle the +eyes too much for it to observe the insufficient and unsound foundation +on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral +strength; but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law +unto itself.... She has inherited the worst sin of our fallen +nature--the sin of pride." + +Jane, you see, should have sinned to show her Christian humility. The +style, if not the reasoning, is pure Brocklebank. He does "not hesitate +to say that the tone of mind and thought, which has overthrown authority +and violated every code, human and divine, abroad, and fostered Chartism +and rebellion at home, is the same which has written _Jane Eyre_". + +Ellis and Acton (poor Acton!) Bell get it even stronger than that; and +then, suddenly again, you come on a report on the "Condition of +Governesses", palpably drawn up by a third person. For years Miss Rigby, +who was afterwards Lady Eastlake, got the credit for the whole absurd +performance, for she was known to have written the review on _Vanity +Fair_. What happened seems to have been that Miss Rigby set out in all +honesty to praise _Jane Eyre_. Then some infuriated person interfered +and stopped her. The article was torn from the unfortunate Miss Rigby +and given to Brocklebank, who used bits of her here and there. +Brocklebank, in his zeal, overdid his part, so the report on Governesses +was thrown in to give the whole thing an air of seriousness and +respectability. So that it is exceedingly doubtful whether, after all, +it was a woman's hand that dealt the blow. + +If Charlotte Bronte did not feel the effect of it to the end of her +life, she certainly suffered severely at the time. It was responsible +for that impassioned defence of Anne and Emily which she would have been +wiser to have left alone. + +It must be admitted that _Jane Eyre_ was an easy prey for the truculent +reviewer, for its faults were all on the surface, and its great +qualities lay deep. Deep as they were, they gripped the ordinary +uncritical reader, and they gripped the critic in spite of himself, so +that he bitterly resented being moved by a work so flagrantly and +obviously faulty. What was more, the passion of the book was so intense +that you were hardly aware of anything else, and its author's austere +respect for the ten commandments passed almost unobserved. + +But when her enemies accuse Charlotte Bronte of glorifying passion they +praise her unaware. Her glory is that she did glorify it. Until she +came, passion between man and woman had meant animal passion. Fielding +and Smollett had dealt with it solely on that footing. A woman's gentle, +legalized affection for her husband was one thing, and passion was +another. Thackeray and Dickens, on the whole, followed Fielding. To all +three of them passion is an affair wholly of the senses, temporary, +episodic, and therefore comparatively unimportant. Thackeray intimated +that he could have done more with it but for his fear of Mrs. Grundy. +Anyhow, passion was not a quality that could be given to a good woman; +and so the good women of Dickens and Thackeray are conspicuously +without it. And Jane Austen may be said to have also taken Fielding's +view. Therefore she was obliged to ignore passion. She gave it to one +vulgar woman, Lydia Bennett, and to one bad one, Mrs. Rushworth; and +having given it them, she turned her head away and refused to have +anything more to do with these young women. She was not alone in her +inability to "tackle passion". No respectable mid-Victorian novelist +could, when passion had so bad a name. + +And it was this thing, cast down, defiled, dragged in the mud, and +ignored because of its defilement, that Charlotte Bronte took and lifted +up. She washed it clean; she bathed it in the dew of the morning; she +baptized it in tears; she clothed it in light and flame; she showed it +for the divine, the beautiful, the utterly pure and radiant thing it is, +"the very sublime of faith, truth and devotion". She made it, this +spirit of fire and air, incarnate in the body of a woman who had no +sensual charm. Because of it little Jane became the parent of Caterina +and of Maggie Tulliver; and Shirley prepared the way for Meredith's +large-limbed, large-brained, large-hearted women. + +It was thus that Charlotte Bronte glorified passion. The passion that +she glorified being of the finest fibre, it was naturally not understood +by people whose fibres were not fine at all. + +It was George Henry Lewes (not a person of the finest fibre) who said of +_Jane Eyre_ that "the grand secret of its success ... as of all great +and lasting successes was its reality". In spite of crudities, +absurdities, impossibilities, it remains most singularly and startlingly +alive. In _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte Bronte comes for the first time into her +kingdom of the inner life. She grasps the secret, unseen springs; in her +narrow range she is master of the psychology of passion and of +suffering, whether she is describing the agony of the child Jane shut +up in that terrible red room, or the anguish of the woman on the morning +of that wedding-day that brought no wedding. Or take the scene of Jane's +flight from Thornfield, or that other scene, unsurpassed in its passion +and tenderness, of her return to Rochester at Ferndean. + +"To this house I came just ere dark, on an evening marked by the +characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small, penetrating +rain.... Even within a very short distance of the manor-house you could +see nothing of it; so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood +about it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, +and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of +close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest +aisle, between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I +followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on +and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was +visible.... At last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently +I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light, +distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying +walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a +space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a +semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad +gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of +the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the +windows were latticed and narrow: the front-door was narrow too, one +step led up to it.... It was still as a church on a week-day; the +pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible.... + +"I heard a movement--that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some +shape was about to issue from the grange. + +"It opened slowly; a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the +step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel +whether it rained. Dark as it was I had recognized him.... + +"His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever.... But in +his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that +reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous +to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes +cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson." + +Again--Rochester hears Jane's voice in the room where she comes to him. + +"'And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but +I must feel or my heart will stop and my brain burst.'... + +"He groped. I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine. + +"'Her very fingers!' he cried; 'her small, slight fingers! If so, there +must be more of her.' + +"The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my +shoulder--neck--wrist--I was entwined and gathered to him.... + +"I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept +back his hair from his brow and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to +rouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him. + +"'It is you--is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?' + +"'I am.'" + +The scene as it stands is far from perfect; but only Charlotte Bronte +could sustain so strong an illusion of passion through so many lapses. +And all that passion counts for no more than half in the astounding +effect of reality she produces. Before _Jane Eyre_ there is no novel +written by a woman, with the one exception of _Wuthering Heights_, that +conveys so poignant an impression of surroundings, of things seen and +heard, of the earth and sky; of weather; of the aspects of houses and of +rooms. It suggests a positive exaltation of the senses of sound and +light, an ecstasy, an enchantment before the visible, tangible world. It +is not a matter of mere faithful observation (though few painters have +possessed so incorruptibly the innocence of the eye). It is an almost +supernatural intentness; sensation raised to the _n_th power. Take the +description of the awful red room at Gateshead. + +"A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of +deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two +large windows with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in +festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at +the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a +soft fawn colour, with a flush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the +toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly-polished old mahogany. Out of +these deep surrounding shades rose high and glared white the piled-up +mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles +counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair +near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and +looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.... Mr. Reed had been dead +nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in +state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and since +that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent +intrusion." + +Could anything be more horrible than that red room? Or take the +descriptions of the school at Lowood where the horror of pestilence +hangs over house and garden. Through all these Gateshead and Lowood +scenes Charlotte is unerring and absolute in her reality. + +Her very style, so uncertain in its rendering of human speech, becomes +flawless in such passages as this: "It was three o'clock; the +church-bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour +lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. +I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, +for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral +treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its +utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air stirred, it made +no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, +and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, +worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on +each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the +little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like +single russet leaves about to drop. + +"This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay.... I then turned +eastward. + +"On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but +brightening momently; she looked over Hay which, half lost in trees, +sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys; it was yet a mile distant, +but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. +My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I could +not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks +threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of +the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote. + +"A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so +far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp; a metallic clatter, +which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass +of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong +on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny +horizon, and blended clouds, where tint melts into tint. + +"The din sounded on the causeway...." + +Flawless this, too, of the sky after sunset: "Where the sun had gone +down in simple state--pure of the pomp of clouds--spread a solemn +purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one +point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still +softer, over half heaven." + +And this of her own moors: "There are great moors behind and on each +hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at +my feet. The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on +these roads: they stretch out east, west, north and south--white, broad, +lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and +wild to their very verge." + +She has given the secret of the moor country in a phrase: "I felt the +consecration of its loneliness." In that one line you have the real, the +undying Charlotte Bronte. + +It is such immortal things that make the difference between _Jane Eyre_ +and _The Professor_. So immeasurable is that difference that it almost +justifies the theorist in assuming an "experience" to account for it, an +experience falling between the dates of _The Professor_ and _Jane Eyre_. +Unfortunately there was none; none in the sense cherished by the +researcher. Charlotte's letters are an unbroken record of those two +years that followed her return from Brussels. Her life is laid bare in +its long and cramped monotony, a life singularly empty of "experience". + +And yet an experience did come to her in that brief period. If the +researcher had not followed a false scent across the Channel, if his +_flair_ for tragic passion had not destroyed in him all sense of +proportion, he could not possibly have missed it; for it stared him in +the face, simple, obvious, inevitable. But miss it he certainly did. +Obsessed by his idea, he considered it a negligible circumstance that +Charlotte should have read _Wuthering Heights_ before she wrote _Jane +Eyre_. And yet, I think that, if anything woke Charlotte up, it was +that. Until then, however great her certainty of her own genius, she did +not know how far she could trust it, how far it would be safe to let +imagination go. Appalled by the spectacle of its excesses, she had +divorced imagination from the real. But Emily knew none of these cold +deliberations born of fear. _Wuthering Heights_ was the fruit of a +divine freedom, a divine unconsciousness. It is not possible that +Charlotte, of all people, should have read _Wuthering Heights_ without a +shock of enlightenment; that she should not have compared it with her +own bloodless work; that she should not have felt the wrong done to her +genius by her self-repression. Emily had dared to be herself; _she_ had +not been afraid of her own passion; she had had no method; she had +accomplished a stupendous thing without knowing it, by simply letting +herself go. And Charlotte, I think, said to herself, "That is what I +ought to have done. That is what I will do next time." And next time she +did it. The experience may seem insufficient, but it is of such +experiences that a great writer's life is largely made. And if you +_must_ have an influence to account for _Jane Eyre_, there is no need +to go abroad to look for it. There was influence enough in her own home. +These three Brontes, adoring each other, were intolerant of any other +influence; and the strongest spirit, which was Emily's, prevailed. To be +sure, no remonstrances from Emily or Charlotte could stop Anne in her +obstinate analysis of Walter Huntingdon; but it was some stray spark +from Emily that kindled Anne. As for Charlotte, her genius must have +quickened in her when her nerves thrilled to the shock of _Wuthering +Heights_. This, I know, is only another theory; but it has at least the +merit of its modesty. It is not offered as in the least accounting for, +or explaining, Charlotte's genius. It merely suggests with all possible +humility a likely cause of its release. Anyhow, it is a theory that does +Charlotte's genius no wrong, on which account it seems to me preferable +to any other. It is really no argument against it to say that Charlotte +never acknowledged her sister's influence, that she was indeed unaware +of it; for, in the first place, the stronger the spiritual tie between +them, the less likely was she to have been aware. In the second place, +it is not claimed that _Wuthering Heights_ was such an influence as the +"sojourn in Brussels" is said to have been--that it "made Miss Bronte an +author". It is not claimed that if there had been no _Wuthering Heights_ +and no Emily Bronte, there would have been no _Jane Eyre_; for to me +nothing can be more certain that whatever had, or had not happened, +Charlotte's genius would have found its way. + +Charlotte's genius indeed was so profoundly akin to Charlotte's nature +that its way, the way of its upward progress, was by violent impetus and +recoil. + +In _Shirley_ she revolts from the passion of _Jane Eyre_. She seems to +have written it to prove that there are other things. She had been stung +by _The Quarterly's_ attack, stung by rumour, stung by every adverse +thing that had been said. And yet not for a moment was she "influenced" +by her reviewers. It was more in defiance than in submission that she +answered them with _Shirley_. _Shirley_ was an answer to every criticism +that had yet been made. In _Shirley_ she forsook the one poor play of +hearts insurgent for the vast and varied movement of the world; social +upheavals, the clash of sects and castes, the first grim hand-to-hand +struggle between capital and labour, all are there. The book opens with +a drama, not of hearts but of artisans insurgent; frame-breakers, not +breakers of the marriage law. In sheer defiance she essays to render the +whole real world, the complex, many-threaded, many-coloured world; where +the tragic warp is woven with the bright comedy of curates. It is the +world of the beginnings; the world of the early nineteenth century that +she paints. A world with the immensity, the profundity, the darkness of +the brooding sea; where the spirit of a woman moves, troubling the +waters; for Charlotte Bronte has before her the stupendous vision of the +world as it was, as it yet is, and as it is to be. + +That world, as it existed from eighteen-twelve to Charlotte's own time, +eighteen-fifty, was not a place for a woman with a brain and a soul. +There was no career for any woman but marriage. If she missed it she +missed her place in the world, her prestige, and her privileges as a +woman. What was worse, she lost her individuality, and became a mere +piece of furniture, of disused, old-fashioned furniture, in her father's +or her brother's house. If she had a father or a brother there was no +escape for her from dependence on the male; and if she had none, if +there was no male about the house, her case was the more pitiable. And +the traditions of her upbringing were such that the real, vital things, +the things that mattered, were never mentioned in her presence. Religion +was the solitary exception; and religion had the reality and vitality +taken out of it by its dissociation with the rest of life. A woman in +these horrible conditions was only half alive. She had no energies, no +passions, no enthusiasms. Convention drained her of her life-blood. What +was left to her had no outlet; pent up in her, it bred weak, anaemic +substitutes for its natural issue, sentimentalism for passion, and +sensibility for the nerves of vision. This only applies, of course, to +the average woman. + +Charlotte Bronte was born with a horror of the world that had produced +this average woman, this creature of minute corruptions and hypocrisies. +She sent out _Jane Eyre_ to purify it with her passion. She sent out +_Shirley_ to destroy and rebuild it with her intellect. Little Jane was +a fiery portent. Shirley was a prophecy. She is modern to her +finger-tips, as modern as Meredith's great women: Diana, or Clara +Middleton, or Carinthia Jane. She was born fifty years before her time. + +This is partly owing to her creator's prophetic insight, partly to her +sheer truth to life. For Shirley was to a large extent a portrait of +Emily Bronte who was born before her time. + +It is Emily Bronte's spirit that burns in Shirley Keeldar; and it is the +spirit of Shirley Keeldar that gives life to the unwilling mass of this +vast novel. It is almost enough immortality for Shirley that she is the +only living and authentic portrait of Emily Bronte in her time. +Charlotte has given her the "wings that wealth can give", and they do +not matter. She has also given her the wings of Emily's adventurous +soul, the wealth of her inner life. + +"A still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins; +unmingled--untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, +because by no human agency bestowed: the pure gift of God to His +creature, the free dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her +experience of a genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all +verdure and light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence +angels looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her +soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it." + +"Her eye seeks, and her soul possesses, the vision of life as she wishes +it--" That was the secret of Emily's greatness, of her immeasurable +superiority to her sad sisters. + +And again: "In Shirley's nature prevailed at times an easy indolence: +there were periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy of hand and +eye--moments when her thoughts, her simple existence, the fact of the +world being around--and heaven above her, seemed to yield her such +fulness of happiness, that she did not need to lift a finger to increase +the joy. Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny +afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of +friendly umbrage: no society did she need but that of Caroline, and it +sufficed if she were within call; no spectacle did she ask but that of +the deep blue sky, and such cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across +its span; no sound but that of the bee's hum, the leaf's whisper." + +There are phrases in Louis Moore's diary that bring Emily Bronte +straight before us in her swift and vivid life. Shirley is "Sister of +the spotted, bright, quick-fiery leopard." "Pantheress!--beautiful +forest-born!--wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain. I +see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild +woods, and pinings after virgin freedom." "How evanescent, fugitive, +fitful she looked--slim and swift as a Northern streamer!" "... With +her long hair flowing full and wavy; with her noiseless step, her pale +cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, +spirit-like--a thing made of an element--the child of a breeze and a +flame--the daughter of ray and raindrop--a thing never to be overtaken, +arrested, fixed." + +Like Emily she is not "caught". "But if I were," she says, "do you know +what soothsayers I would consult?... The little Irish beggar that comes +barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in the +wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a +crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee." + +And yet again: "She takes her sewing occasionally: but, by some +fatality, she is doomed never to sit steadily at it for above five +minutes at a time: her thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce +threaded, when a sudden thought calls her upstairs; perhaps she goes to +seek some just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book, or older +china-topped work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment +indispensable; perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she +recollects to have seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; +perhaps only to take a peep from a particular window at a particular +view where Briarfield Church and Rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered +in trees. She has scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of +cambric, or square of half-wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and +strangled whistle are heard at the porch door, and she must run to open +it for him; it is a hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to +the kitchen, and see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is +replenished. Through the open kitchen-door the court is visible, all +sunny and gay, and peopled with turkeys and their poults, peahens and +their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea fowls, and a bright variety of pure +white and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon-plumed pigeons. +Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She runs to the pantry for a roll, +and she stands on the doorstep scattering crumbs: around her throng her +eager, plump, happy, feathered vassals.... There are perhaps some little +calves, some little new-yeaned lambs--it may be twins, whose mothers +have rejected them: Miss Keeldar ... must permit herself the treat of +feeding them with her own hand." + +Like Emily she is impatient of rituals and creeds. Like Emily she adores +the Earth. Not one of Charlotte's women except Shirley could have +chanted that great prose hymn of adoration in which Earth worships and +is worshipped. "'Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling +before those red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her +altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in +deserts, for lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods.... I see her, +and I will tell you what she is like: she is like what Eve was when she +and Adam stood alone on earth.' 'And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley,' +says Caroline, and Shirley answers: 'No, by the pure Mother of God, she +is not.' Shirley is half a Pagan. She would beg to remind Milton 'that +the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother: +from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus.... I +say, there were giants on the earth in those days, giants that strove to +scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this +world yielded daring which could contend with Omnipotence; the strength +which could bear a thousand years of bondage--the vitality which could +feed that vulture death through uncounted ages--the unexhausted life +and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after +millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring +forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born: vast was the heart +whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the +undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.'... + +"'You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.' + +"'I saw--I now see--a woman-Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the +outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil, white as +an avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of +lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple +like that horizon: through its blush shines the star of evening. Her +steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear--they are deep as +lakes--they are lifted and full of worship--they tremble with the +softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse +of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark +gathers: she reclines her bosom on the edge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty +hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face, she speaks with +God.'" + +It is the living sister speaking for the dead; for Charlotte herself had +little of Emily's fine Paganism. But for one moment, in this lyric +passage, her soul echoes the very soul of Emily as she gathers round her +all the powers and splendours (and some, alas, of the fatal rhetoric) of +her prose to do her honour. + +It is not only in the large figure of the Titan Shirley that Charlotte +Bronte shows her strength. She has learnt to draw her minor masculine +characters with more of insight and of accuracy--Caroline Helstone, the +Yorkes, Robert Moore, Mr. Helstone, Joe Scott, and Barraclough, the +"joined Methody". With a few strokes they stand out living. She has +acquired more of the art of dialogue. She is a past master of dialect, +of the racy, native speech of these men. Not only is Mr. Yorke painted +with unerring power and faithfulness in every detail of his harsh and +vigorous personality, but there is no single lapse from nature when he +is speaking. The curates only excepted, Charlotte never swerves from +this fidelity. But when she is handling her curates, it is a savage and +utterly inartistic humour that inspires her. You feel that she is not +exercising the art of comedy, but relieving her own intolerable boredom +and irritation. No object could well be more innocent, and more +appealing in its innocence, than little Mr. Sweeting, curate of +Nunnerly. Mr. Sweeting at the tea-table, "having a dish of tarts before +him, and marmalade and crumpet upon his plate", should have moved the +Comic Spirit to tears of gentleness. + +Curates apart, two-thirds of _Shirley_ are written with an unerring +devotion to the real, to the very actual. They have not, for all that, +the profound reality of _Jane Eyre_. The events are confused, somehow; +the atmosphere is confusing; the northern background is drawn with a +certain hardness and apathy of touch; the large outlines are obscured, +delicate colours sharpened; it is hard and yet blurred, like a bad steel +engraving. Charlotte's senses, so intensely, so supernaturally alive in +_Jane Eyre_, are only passably awake in _Shirley_. It has some of the +dulness of _The Professor_, as it has more than its sober rightness. +But, for three-and-twenty chapters, the sobriety, the rightness triumph. +There are no improbabilities, no flights of imagination, none of the +fine language which was the shame when it was not the glory of _Jane +Eyre_. + +Then suddenly there comes a break--a cleavage. It comes with that +Chapter Twenty-four, which is headed "The Valley of the Shadow of +Death". It was written in the first months after Emily Bronte's death. + +From that point Charlotte's level strength deserts her. Ever after, she +falls and soars, and soars and falls again. There is a return to the +manner of _Jane Eyre_, the manner of Charlotte when she is deeply moved; +there is at times a relapse to Jane Eyre's worst manner. You get it at +once in "The Valley of the Shadow" chapter, in the scene of Caroline's +love-sick delirium. + +"'But he will not know I am ill till I am gone; and he will come when +they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold and stiff. + +"'What can my departed soul feel then? Can it see or know what happens +to the clay? Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living +flesh? Can the dead at all revisit those they leave? Can they come in +the elements? Will wind, water, fire lend me a path to Moore? + +"'Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulate sometimes--sings +as I have lately heard it sing at night--or passes the casement sobbing, +as if for sorrow to come? Does nothing then haunt it--nothing inspire +it?'" + +The awful improbability of Caroline is more striking because of its +contrast with the inspired rightness of the scene of Cathy's delirium in +_Wuthering Heights_. It is Charlotte feebly echoing Emily, and going +more and more wrong up to her peroration. + +Delirious Caroline wonders: "'What is that electricity they speak of, +whose changes make us well or ill; whose lack or excess blasts; whose +even balance revives?...' + +"'_Where_ is the other world? In _what_ will another life consist? Why +do I ask? Have I not cause to think that the hour is hasting but too +fast when the veil must be rent for me? Do I not know the Grand Mystery +is likely to break prematurely on me? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I +confide; whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from +early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands! Sustain me through +the ordeal I dread and must undergo! Give me strength! Give me patience! +Give me--oh, _give me_ FAITH!'" + +Jane Eyre has done worse than that, so has Rochester; but somehow, when +they were doing their worst with it, they got their passion through. +There is no live passion behind this speech of Caroline's, with its wild +stress of italics and of capitals. What passion there was in Charlotte +when she conceived Caroline was killed by Emily's death. + +And Mrs. Pryor, revealing herself to Caroline, is even more terrible. +She has all the worst vices of Charlotte's dramatic style. Mrs. Pryor +calls to the spirit of Caroline's dead father: "'James, slumber +peacefully! See, your terrible debt is cancelled! Look! I wipe out the +long, black account with my own hand! James, your child atones: this +living likeness of you--this thing with your perfect features--this one +good gift you gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart and +tenderly called me "mother". Husband, rest forgiven.'" + +Even Robert Moore, otherwise almost a masterpiece, becomes improbable +when, in his great scene, Shirley refuses him. When Mr. Yorke asks him +what has gone wrong he replies: "The machinery of all my nature; the +whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the +heart, is fit to burst." + +Shirley herself is impossible with her "Lucifer, Star of the Morning, +thou art fallen," and her speech to her mercenary uncle: "Sir, your +god, your great Bell, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a +demon." + +What is worse than all, Louis Moore--Louis, the hero, Louis, the master +of passion, is a failure. He is Charlotte Bronte's most terrible, most +glaring failure. It is not true that Charlotte could not draw men, or +that she drew them all alike; Robert Moore, the hard-headed man of +business, the man of will and purpose, who never gives up, is not only +almost a masterpiece but a spontaneous masterpiece, one of the first +examples of his kind. But there is no blood in Louis' veins, no virility +in his swarthy body. He is the most unspeakable of schoolmasters. Yet +Charlotte lavished on this puppet half the wealth of her imagination. +She flings phrase after perfect phrase to him to cover himself +with--some of her best things have been given to Louis Moore to utter; +but they do not make him live. Again, she strangles him in his own +rhetoric. The courtship of Louis Moore and Shirley will not compare with +that of Jane and Rochester. There is no nightingale singing in their +wood. + +Yet, for all that, _Shirley_ comes very near to being Charlotte Bronte's +masterpiece. It is inspired from first to last with a great intention +and a great idea. It shows a vision of reality wider than her grasp. Its +faults, like the faults of _Jane Eyre_, are all on the surface, only +there is more surface in _Shirley_. If it has not _Jane Eyre's_ +commanding passion, it has a vaster sweep. It was literally the first +attempt in literature to give to woman her right place in the world. + +From first to last there is not a page or a line in it that justifies +the malignant criticism of Mrs. Oliphant. Caroline Helstone does not +justify it. She is no window-gazing virgin on the look-out, in love +already before the man has come. She is a young girl, very naturally in +love with a man whom she has known for years, who is always on the spot. +As for Shirley, she flung herself with all the vehemence of her +prophetic soul on the hypocritical convention that would make every +woman dependent on some man, and at the same time despises her for the +possession of her natural instincts. And Caroline followed her. "I +observe that to such grievances as society cannot cure, it usually +forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn: this scorn being only a sort of +tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of +ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing +on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an +obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and +shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless and +unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the +world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents.... +Men of England! Look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, +dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating +to sour old maids--envious, back-biting, wretched, because life is a +desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce +modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and +consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied. Fathers, cannot +you alter these things?... You would wish to be proud of your daughters, +and not to blush for them, then seek for them an interest and an +occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the +mischief-making talebearer. Keep your girl's minds narrow and +degraded--they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace +to you: give them scope and work--they will be your gayest companions in +health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in +old age." + +That is the argument from fathers, and it comes from Caroline Helstone, +not from Shirley. And the fact that Caroline married Robert Moore, and +Shirley fell in love when her hour came (and with Louis Moore, too!) +does not diminish the force or the sincerity or the truth of the tirade. + +_Shirley_ may not be a great novel; but it is a great prophetic book. +Shirley's vision of the woman kneeling on the hills serves for more than +Emily Bronte's vision of Hertha and Demeter, of Eve, the Earth-mother, +"the mighty and mystical parent"; it is Charlotte Bronte's vindication +of Eve, her vision of woman as she is to be. She faced the world once +for all with her vision: "I see her," she said, "and I will tell you +what she is like." + +Mrs. Oliphant did not see the woman kneeling on the hills. Neither +George Eliot nor Mrs. Gaskell saw her. They could not possibly have told +the world what she was like. It is part of Charlotte Bronte's superior +greatness that she saw. + + * * * * * + +You do not see that woman in _Villette_. She has passed with the +splendour of Charlotte's vision of the world. The world in _Villette_ is +narrowed to a Pensionnat de Demoiselles, and centred in the heart of one +woman. And never, not even in _Jane Eyre_, and certainly not in +_Shirley_, did Charlotte Bronte achieve such mastery of reality, and +with it such mastery of herself. _Villette_ is the final triumph of her +genius over the elements that warred in her. It shows the movement of +her genius, which was always by impulse and recoil. In _The Professor_ +she abjured, in the interests of reality, the "imagination" of her +youth. In _Jane Eyre_ she was urged forward by the released impetus of +the forces she repressed. In _Shirley_ they are still struggling with +her sense of the sober and the sane reality; the book is torn to +fragments in the struggle, and in the end imagination riots. + +But in _Villette_ there are none of these battlings and rendings, these +Titanic upheavals and subsidences. Charlotte Bronte's imagination, and +her sense of the real, are in process of fusion. There are few novels in +which an imagination so supreme is wedded to so vivid a vision of +actuality. It may be said that Charlotte Bronte never achieved positive +actuality before. The Pensionnat de Demoiselles is almost as visibly and +palpably actual as the Maison Vauquer in _Pere Goriot_. It is a return +to the method of experience with a vengeance. Charlotte's success, +indeed, was so stunning that for all but sixty years _Villette_ has +passed for a _roman a clef_, the novel, not only of experience, but of +personal experience. There was a certain plausibility in that view. The +characters could all be easily recognized. And when Dr. John was +identified with Mr. George Smith, and his mother with Mr. George Smith's +mother, and Madame Beck with Madame Heger, and M. Paul Emanuel with +Madame Heger's husband, the inference was irresistible: Lucy Snowe was, +and could only be, Charlotte Bronte. And as the figure of M. Paul +Emanuel was ten times more vivid and convincing than that of Rochester, +so all that applied to Jane Eyre applied with ten times more force to +Lucy. In _Villette_ Charlotte Bronte was considered to have given +herself hopelessly away. + +I have tried to show that this view cannot stand before an unprejudiced +examination of her life and letters. No need to go into all that again. +On the evidence, Charlotte seems at the best of times to have fallen in +love with difficulty; and she most certainly was no more in love with +"the little man", Paul Emanuel, than she was with "the little man", Mr. +Taylor. The really important and interesting point is that, if she had +been, if he had thus obtained the reality with which passion endows its +object, her imagination would have had no use for him; its work would +have been done for it. + +To the supreme artist the order of the actual event is one thing, and +the order of creation is another. Their lines may start from the same +point in the actual, they may touch again and again, but they are not +the same, and they cannot run exactly parallel. There must always be +this difference between the actual thing and the thing drawn from it, +however closely, that each is embedded and enmeshed in a different +context. For a character in a novel to be alive it must have grown; and +to have grown it must have followed its own line of evolution, +inevitably and in its own medium; and that, whether or not it has been +"taken", as they say, "from life". The more alive it is the less likely +is it to have been "taken", to have been seized, hauled by the scruff of +its neck out of the dense web of the actual. All that the supreme artist +wants is what Charlotte Bronte called "the germ of the real", by which +she meant the germ of the actual. He does not want the alien, developed +thing, standing in its own medium ready-made. Charlotte Bronte said that +the character of Dr. John was a failure because it lacked the germ of +the real. She should have said that it lacked the germ of many reals; it +is so obviously drawn from incomplete observation of a single instance. +I am inclined to think that she did "take" Dr. John. And whenever +Charlotte Bronte "took" a character, as she took the unfortunate curates +and Mr. St. John Rivers, the result was failure. + +No supreme work of art was ever "taken". It was begotten and born and +grown, the offspring of faithful love between the soul of the artist and +reality. The artist must bring to his "experience" as much as he takes +from it. The dignity of Nature is all against these violences and +robberies of art. She hides her deepest secret from the marauder, and +yields it to the lover who brings to her the fire of his own soul. + +And that fire of her own soul was what Charlotte Bronte brought to her +supreme creations. It was certainly what she brought to Paul Emanuel. +Impossible to believe that M. Heger gave her more than one or two of the +germs of M. Paul. Personally, I can only see the respectable M. Heger as +a man whose very essence was a certain impassivity and phlegm under the +appearance of a temperament. Choleric he was, with the superficial and +temporary choler of the schoolmaster. A schoolmaster gifted with the +most extraordinary, the most marvellous, the most arresting faculty for +making faces, a faculty which in an Englishman would have argued him a +perfect volcano of erratic temperament. But I more than suspect that +when it came to temperament M. Heger took it out in faces; that he was +nothing more than a benevolent, sentimental, passably intellectual +bourgeois; but bourgeois to the core. Whereas, look at M. Paul! No +wonder that with that tame and solid stuff before her it took even +Charlotte Bronte's fiery spirit nine years (torturing the unwilling +dross that checked its flight) before it could create Paul Emanuel. +Because of her long work on him he is at once the most real and the best +imagined of her characters. + +I admit that in the drawing of many of her minor characters she seems to +have relied upon very close and intimate observation of the living +model. But in none of her minor characters is she at grips with the +reality that, for her, passion is. Charlotte refused to give heroic rank +to persons she had merely observed; she would not exalt them to the +dignity of passion. Her imagination could not work on them to that +extent. (That is partly why Caroline's delirium is so palpably "faked".) +Even in her portrait of the heroic Shirley, who was frankly "taken" from +her sister Emily, she achieved the likeness mainly by the artifice of +unlikeness, by removing Shirley Keeldar into a life in which Emily +Bronte had never played a part, whereby Shirley became for her a +separate person. (You cannot by any stretch of the imagination see Emily +falling in love with the schoolmaster, Louis Moore.) + +Lest there should be any doubt on the subject, Charlotte herself +explained to Mrs. Gaskell how her imagination worked. "I asked her," +Mrs. Gaskell says, "whether she had ever taken opium, as the description +given of its effects in _Villette_ was so exactly like what I had +experienced--vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the +outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, etc. She replied that +she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but +that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to +describe anything that had not fallen within her own experience; she had +thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling +asleep--wondering what it was like, or how it would be--till at length, +sometimes after her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, +she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had +in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word +for word, as it happened." + +To a mind like that the germ of the actual was enough. Charlotte +Bronte's genius, in fact, was ardently impatient of the actual: it cared +only for its own. At the least hint from experience it was off. A +glance, a gesture of M. Heger's was enough to fire it to the conception +of Paul Emanuel. He had only to say a kind word to her, to leave a book +or a box of bon-bons in her desk (if he _did_ leave bon-bons) for +Charlotte's fire to work on him. She had only to say to herself, "This +little man is adorable in friendship; I wonder what he would be like in +love," and she saw that he would be something, though not altogether, +like Paul Emanuel. She had only to feel a pang of half-remorseful, +half-humorous affection for him, and she knew what Lucy felt like in her +love-sick agony. As for Madame Heger, Madame's purely episodic jealousy, +her habits of surveillance, her small inscrutabilities of behaviour, +became the fury, the treachery, the perfidy of Madame Beck. For +treachery and perfidy, and agony and passion, were what Charlotte wanted +for _Villette_. + +And yet it is true that _Villette_ is a novel of experience, owing its +conspicuous qualities very much to observation. After all, a +contemporary novel cannot be made altogether out of the fire of the +great writer's soul. It is because Charlotte Bronte relied too much on +the fire of her own soul that in _Jane Eyre_ and parts of _Shirley_ she +missed that unique expression of actuality which, over and over again, +she accomplished in _Villette_. For the expression of a social _milieu_, +for manners, for the dialogue of ordinary use, for the whole detail of +the speech characteristic of an individual and a type, for the right +accent and pitch, for all the vanishing shades and aspects of the +temporary and the particular, the greatest and the fieriest writer is at +the mercy of observation and experience. It was her final mastery of +these things that made it possible to praise Charlotte Bronte's powers +of observation at the expense of her genius; and this mainly because of +M. Paul. + +No offspring of genius was ever more alive, more rich in individuality, +than M. Paul. He is alive and he is adorable, in his _paletot_ and +_bonnet grec_, from the moment when he drags Lucy up three pairs of +stairs to the solitary and lofty attic and locks her in, to that other +moment when he brings her to the little house that he has prepared for +her. Whenever he appears there is pure radiant comedy, and pathos as +pure. It is in this utter purity, this transparent simplicity, that +_Villette_ is great. There is not one jarring note in any of the +delicious dialogues between Lucy and M. Paul, not one of those passages +which must be erased if quotation is not to fail of its effect. Take the +scene where Lucy breaks M. Paul's spectacles. + +"A score of times ere now I had seen them fall and receive no +damage--this time, as Lucy Snowe's hapless luck would have it, they so +fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star. + +"Now, indeed, dismay seized me--dismay and regret. I knew the value of +these _lunettes_: M. Paul's sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and +these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I +picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened +through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think +I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look the +bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak. + +"'_La_!' he said: '_me voila veuf de mes lunettes_! I think that +Mademoiselle Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply +earned; she trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress, +traitress! You are resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your +hands!' + +"I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering and +furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had +seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crecy. He was not +angry--not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of +clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint." + +Take the "Watchguard" scene. + +"M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I +said I was making a watchguard. He asked, 'For whom?' And I answered, +'For a gentleman--one of my friends.'" + +Whereupon M. Paul flies into a passion, and accuses Lucy of behaving to +him, "'With what pungent vivacities--what an impetus of mutiny--what a +_fougue_ of injustice.'... '_Chut! a l'instant!_ There! there I +went--_vive comme la poudre_.' He was sorry--he was very sorry: for my +sake he grieved over the hopeless peculiarity. This _emportement_, this +_chaleur_--generous, perhaps, but excessive--would yet, he feared, do me +a mischief. It was a pity. I was not--he believed, in his soul--wholly +without good qualities; and would I but hear reason, and be more sedate, +more sober, less _en l'air_, less _coquette_, less taken by show, less +prone to set an undue value on outside excellence--to make much of the +attentions of people remarkable chiefly for so many feet of stature, +_des couleurs de poupee, un nez plus ou moins bien fait_, and an +enormous amount of fatuity--I might yet prove a useful, perhaps an +exemplary character. But, as it was----And here the little man's voice +was for a moment choked. + +"I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing +word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so +odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd. + +"I thought he had nearly done: but no, he sat down that he might go on +at his ease. + +"'While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger +for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had +noticed in my dress.'" + + * * * * * + +"'And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, monsieur, you would +necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?' holding up +my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a +groan--I suppose over my levity. + +"After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the +chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired: + +"'Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me +entirely detest him?' + +"I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don't +think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good night on +friendly terms: and even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned +back just to explain that he would not be understood to speak in entire +condemnation of the scarlet dress.'... + +"'And the flowers under my bonnet, monsieur?' I asked. 'They are very +little ones.' + +"'Keep them little, then,' said he. 'Permit them not to become +full-blown.' + +"'And the bow, monsieur--the bit of ribbon?' + +"'_Va pour le ruban_!' was the propitious answer. + +"And so we settled it." + +That is good; and when Lucy presents the watchguard it is better still. + +"He looked at the box: I saw its clear and warm tint, and bright azure +circlet, pleased his eyes. I told him to open it. + +"'My initials!' said he, indicating the letters in the lid. 'Who told +you I was called Carl David?' + +"'A little bird, monsieur.' + +"'Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing +when needful.' + +"He took out the chain--a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with +silk and sparkling with beads. He liked that too--admired it artlessly, +like a child. + +"'For me?' + +"'Yes, for you.' + +"'This is the thing you were working at last night?' + +"'The same.' + +"'You finished it this morning?' + +"'I did.' + +"'You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?' + +"'Undoubtedly.' + +"'And offered on my fete-day?' + +"'Yes.' + +"'This purpose continued as you wove it?' + +"'Again I assented.' + +"'Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion--saying, +this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the +adornment of another?' + +"'By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.' + +"'This object is _all_ mine?' + +"'That object is yours entirely.' + +"Straightway monsieur opened his paletot, arranged the guard splendidly +across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he +could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought +decorative.... + +"'_A present c'est un fait accompli_,' said he, readjusting his +paletot...." + +To the last gesture of Monsieur it is superb. + +I have taken those scenes because they are of crucial importance as +indications of what Charlotte Bronte was doing in _Villette_, and yet +would do. They show not only an enormous advance in technique, but a +sense of the situation, of the _scene a faire_, which is entirely or +almost entirely lacking in her earlier work. + +If there be degrees in reality, Lucy and Pauline de Bassompierre are +only less real than M. Paul. And by some miracle their reality is not +diminished by Charlotte Bronte's singular change of intention with +regard to these two. Little Polly, the child of the beginning, the +inscrutable creature of nerves, exquisitely sensitive to pain, fretting +her heart out in love for her father and for Graham Bretton, is hardly +recognizable in Pauline, Countess de Bassompierre. She has preserved +only her fragility, her fastidiousness, her little air of +inaccessibility. Polly is obviously predestined to that profound and +tragic suffering which is Lucy Snowe's. + +"I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her head on her +hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of pocket-handkerchief +from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I heard her weep. Other +children in grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or restraint, but +this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her emotion." + +Again (Polly is parted from her father): "When the street-door closed, +she dropped on her knees at a chair with a cry--'Papa!' + +"It was low and long; a sort of 'why hast thou forsaken me?' During an +ensuing space of some minutes I perceived she endured agony. She went +through, in that brief interval of her infant life, emotions such as +some never feel; it was in her constitution: she would have more of such +instants if she lived." + +Polly is contrasted with the cold and disagreeable Lucy. "I, Lucy Snowe, +was calm," Lucy says when she records that agony. The effect she gives, +of something creepily insensitive and most unpleasant, is unmistakable +in these early chapters. She watches Polly with a cold, analytic eye. +"These sudden, dangerous natures--sensitive as they are called--offer +many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured +from participation in their vagaries." When Polly, charming Polly, waits +on her father at the tea-table, Lucy is impervious to her tiny charm. +"Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body." When Graham +Bretton repulses Polly, Lucy has some thoughts of "improving the +occasion by inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had +ever a tolerable stock ready for application." + +There is no sign in the beginning that this detestable Lucy is to be +heroine. But in Chapter Four Polly disappears and Lucy takes her place +and plays her part. The child Polly had a suffering and passionate +heart, for all her little air of fastidiousness and inaccessibility. It +is the suffering and passionate heart of Polly that beats in Lucy of the +Pensionnat. There is only enough of the original Lucy left to sit in +judgment on Ginevra Fanshawe and "the Parisienne". + +The child Polly had an Imagination. "'Miss Snowe,' said she in a +whisper, 'this is a wonderful book ... it tells about distant countries, +a long, long way from England, which no traveller can reach without +sailing thousands of miles over the sea.... Here is a picture of +thousands gathered in a desolate place--a plain spread with sand.... And +here are pictures more stranger than that. There is the wonderful Great +Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady with a foot littler than mine. +There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here--most strange of all--is a +land of ice and snow without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this +land they found some mammoth bones; there are no mammoths now. You don't +know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty +goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not +a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes if I met one in +a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it +would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a +grasshopper in a hay-field without knowing it.'" + +It is Polly's Imagination that appears again in Lucy's "Creative +Impulse". "I with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most +capricious, the most maddening of masters ... a deity which sometimes, +under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when +questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be +found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark +Baal with carven lips and blank eyeballs, and breast like the stone face +of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some +long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream +of electricity, the irrational Demon would awake unsolicited, would stir +strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a perturbed Dagon, +calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim +for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstances or +scene--rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticination, +perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to +give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the +desperate listener even a miserable remnant--yielding it sordidly, as +though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark +veins." + +That is Lucy. But when Polly reappears fitfully as Pauline de +Bassompierre, she is an ordinary, fastidious little lady without a spark +of imagination or of passion. + +Now in the first three chapters of _Villette_, Charlotte Bronte +concentrated all her strength and all her art on the portrait of little +Polly. The portrait of little Polly is drawn with the most delicate care +and tender comprehension, and the most vivid and entire reality. I +cannot agree with Mr. Swinburne that George Eliot, with her Totty and +Eppie and Lillo, showed a closer observation of the ways, or a more +perfect understanding of the heart of a child. Only little Maggie +Tulliver can stand beside little Polly in _Villette_. She is an answer +to every critic, from Mr. Swinburne downwards, who maintains that +Charlotte Bronte could not draw children. + +But Lucy at fourteen is drawn with slight and grudging strokes, +sufficient for the minor part she is evidently to play. Lucy at Bretton +is a mere foil to little Polly. Charlotte Bronte distinctly stated in +her letters that she did not care for Miss Snowe. "Lucy must not marry +Dr. John; he is far too youthful, handsome, bright-spirited, and +sweet-tempered; he is a 'curled darling' of Nature and of fortune, and +must draw a prize in life's lottery. His wife must be young, rich, +pretty; he must be made very happy indeed. If Lucy marries anybody, it +must be the Professor--a man in whom there is much to forgive, much to +'put up with'. But I am not leniently disposed towards Miss Frost: from +the beginning I never meant to appoint her lines in pleasant places." +"As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that +she should not occupy the pedestal to which Jane Eyre was raised by some +injudicious admirers. She is where I meant her to be, and where no +charge of self-laudation can touch her." + +But Lucy is _not_ altogether where she was meant to be. When she +reappears at the Pensionnat it is with "flame in her soul and lightning +in her eyes". She reminds M. Paul "of a young she wild creature, new +caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first +entrance of the breaker-in". + +"'You look,' said he, 'like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet +poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.'" + +There is no inconsistency in this. Women before now have hidden a soul +like a furnace under coldness and unpleasantness, and smothered +shrieking nerves under an appearance of apathy. Lucy Snowe is one of +them. As far as she goes, Lucy at Bretton is profoundly consistent with +Lucy in _Villette_. It is not Lucy's volcanic outbreaks in the +Pensionnat that do violence to her creator's original intention. It is +the debasement of Polly and the exaltation of Lucy to her tragic role, +the endowment of Lucy with Polly's rarest qualities, to the utter +impoverishment of Pauline de Bassompierre. Polly in _Villette_ is a mere +foil to Lucy. + +Having lavished such care and love on Polly, Charlotte Bronte could not +possibly have meant to debase her and efface her. How then did it happen +that Polly was debased and Lucy sublimely exalted? + +It happened, I think, partly because for the first time Charlotte Bronte +created a real living man. The reality of M. Paul Emanuel was too +strong both for Lucy and for Charlotte Bronte. From the moment when he +seized her and dragged her to the garret he made Lucy live as Charlotte +Bronte had never contemplated her living. He made her live to the utter +exclusion and extinction of Pauline de Bassompierre. + +And "the despotic little man" dominates the book to an extent that +Charlotte never contemplated either. Until the storm carried him out of +her sight, she was, I think, unaware of his dominion. Dr. John was her +hero. She told Mr. George Smith, his prototype, that she intended him +for the most beautiful character in the book (which must have been very +gratifying to Mr. George Smith). He was the type she needed for her +purpose. But he does not "come off", if only for the reason that she is +consciously preoccupied with him. Dr. John was far more of an obsession +to her than this little man, Paul Emanuel, who was good enough for Lucy +Snowe. Pauline de Bassompierre was to be finished and perfected to match +the high finish and perfection of Dr. John. Yet neither Pauline nor Dr. +John "came off". Charlotte Bronte cared too much for them. But for Paul +Emanuel she did not care. He comes off in a triumph of the detached, +divinely free "Creative Impulse". + +Charlotte, with all her schemes, is delivered over to her genius from +the moment when Lucy settles in Villette. To Charlotte's inexperience +Brussels was a perfect hotbed for the germs of the real. That, I think, +can be admitted without subscribing to the view that it was anything +more. Once in the Pensionnat, Lucy entered an atmosphere of the most +intense reality. From that point onward the book is literally inspired +by the sense of atmosphere, that sense to which experience brings the +stuff to work on. All Charlotte's experience and her suffering is there, +changed, intensified, transmuted to an experience and a suffering which +were not hers. + +This matured sense of actuality is shown again in the drawing of the +minor characters. There is a certain vindictiveness about the portrait +of Ginevra Fanshawe, a touch of that fierce, intolerant temper that +caused Blanche Ingram to be strangled by the hands of her creator. +Ginevra is not strangled. She lives splendidly; she flourishes in an +opulence of detail. + +Experience may have partly accounted for Ginevra. It could hardly have +accounted for the little de Hamel, and he is perfect as far as he goes. + +It is because of this increasing mastery, this new power in handling +unsympathetic types, because, in short, of its all round excellence, +that _Villette_ must count as Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece. It is +marvellous that within such limits she should have attained such +comparative catholicity of vision. It is not the vast vision of +_Shirley_, prophetic and inspired, and a little ineffectual. It is the +lucid, sober, unobstructed gaze of a more accomplished artist, the +artist whose craving for "reality" is satisfied; the artist who is +gradually extending the limits of his art. When Charlotte Bronte wrote +_Jane Eyre_ she could not appreciate Jane Austen; she wondered why +George Henry Lewes liked her so much. She objected to Jane Austen +because there was no passion in her, and therefore no poetry and no +reality. When she wrote _Shirley_ she had seen that passion was not +everything; there were other things, very high realities, that were not +passion. By the time she wrote _Villette_ she saw, not only that there +are other things, but that passion is the rarest thing on earth. It does +not enter into the life of ordinary people like Dr. John, and Madame +Beck, and Ginevra Fanshawe. + +In accordance with this tendency to level up, her style in _Villette_ +attains a more even and a more certain excellence. Her flights are few; +so are her lapses. Her fearful tendency to rhetoric is almost gone. Gone +too are the purple patches; but there is everywhere delicate colour +under a vivid light. But there are countless passages which show the +perfection to which she could bring her old imaginative style. Take the +scene where Lucy, under the influence of opium, goes into Villette _en +fete_. + +"The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame had over-charged or +under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead of +stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought--to reverie +peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their +bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons.... + +"I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal +Haute-Ville; thence the music I heard certainly floated; it was hushed +now, but it might rewaken. I went on: neither band nor bell-music came +to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong tide, a +great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement gathered, +chimes pealed--to what was I coming? Entering on the level of a Grande +Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, plunged amidst a +gay, living, joyous crowd. + +"Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems +abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town by her own +flambeaux, beholds her own splendour--gay dresses, grand equipage, fine +horses and gallant riders, throng the bright streets. I see even scores +of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams." + +This is only beaten by that lyric passage that ends _Villette_; that +sonorous dirge that rings high above all pathos, which is somehow a song +of triumph, inspired by the whole power and splendour and magnificence +of storm and death. + +"The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; +but--he is coming. + +"Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind +takes its autumn moan; but--he is coming. + +"The skies hang full and dark--a rack sails from the west; the clouds +cast themselves into strange forms--arches and broad radiations; there +rise resplendent mornings--glorious, royal, purple, as monarch in his +state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at +its thickest--so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some +signs of the sky, I have noted them ever since childhood. God, watch +that sail! Oh, guard it! + +"The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--'keening' at every +window! It will rise--it will swell--it shrieks out long: wander as I +may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing +hours make it strong; by midnight all sleepless watchers hear and fear a +wild south-west storm. + +"That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not cease till the +Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull till the deeps had +gorged their fill of substance. Not till the destroying angel of tempest +had achieved his perfect work, would he fold the wings whose waft was +thunder--the tremor of whose plumes was storm." + + * * * * * + +After _Villette_, the _Last Sketch_, the _Fragment of Emma_; that +fragment which Charlotte Bronte read to her husband not long before her +death. All he said was, "The critics will accuse you of repetition." + +The critics have fulfilled his cautious prophecy. The _Fragment_ passed +for one of those sad things of which the least said the better. It was +settled that Charlotte Bronte had written herself out, that if she had +lived she would have become more and more her own plagiarist. There is a +middle-aged lady in _Emma_, presumably conceived on the lines of Mrs. +Fairfax and Mrs. Pryor. There is a girls' school, which is only not +Lowood because it is so obviously Roe Head or Dewsbury Moor. There is a +schoolmistress with sandy hair and thin lips and a cold blue eye, +recalling Madame Beck, though there the likeness ceases. And in that +school, ill-treated by that schoolmistress, there is a little ugly, +suffering, deserted child. + +All this looks very much like repetition. But it does not shake my +private belief that _Emma_ is a fragment of what would have been as +great a novel as _Villette_. There are indications. There is Mr. Ellin, +who proves that Charlotte Bronte could create a live man of the finer +sort, an unexploited masculine type with no earthly resemblance to +Rochester or to Louis Moore or M. Paul. He is an unfinished sketch +rather than a portrait, but a sketch that would not too shamefully have +discredited Mr. Henry James. For there is a most modern fineness and +subtlety in _Emma_; and, for all its sketchy incompleteness, a peculiar +certainty of touch, an infallible sense of the significant action, the +revealing gesture. With a splendid economy of means, scenes, passages, +phrases, apparently slight, are charged with the most intense +psychological suggestion. When Mr. Ellin, summoned on urgent business by +Miss Wilcox, takes that preposterously long and leisurely round to get +to her, you know what is passing in the mind of Mr. Ellin as well as if +you had been told. In that brief scene between Mr. Ellin and the +schoolmistress, you know as well as if you had been told, that Miss +Wilcox has lost Mr. Ellin because of her unkindness to a child. When the +child, Matilda Fitzgibbon, falls senseless, and Mr. Ellin gives his +inarticulate cry and lifts her from the floor, the enigmatic man has +revealed his innermost nature. + +Now a fragment that can suggest all this with the smallest possible +expenditure of phrases, is not a fragment that can be set aside. It is +slight; but slightness that accomplishes so much is a sign of progress +rather than of falling-off. We shall never know what happened to Matilda +when Mr. Ellin took her from Miss Wilcox. We shall never know what +happened to Mr. Ellin; but I confess that I am dying to know, and that I +find it hard to forgive Mr. Nicholls for having killed them, so certain +am I that they would have lived triumphantly if Charlotte Bronte had not +married him. + +Some of us will be profoundly indifferent to this issue; for Charlotte +Bronte has no following in a certain school. She defies analysis. You +cannot label her. What she has done is not "Realism", neither is it +"Romance". She displeases both by her ambiguity and by her lack of form. +She has no infallible dramatic instinct. Even in _Villette_ she +preserves some of her clumsiness, her crudity, her improbability. The +progress of "the Novel" in our day is towards a perfection of form and a +reality she never knew. + +But "reality" is a large term; and, as for form, _who_ cared about it in +the fifties? As for improbability--as M. Dimnet says--she is not more +improbable than Balzac. + +And all these things, the ambiguity, the formlessness and the rest, she +was gradually correcting as she advanced. It is impossible to exaggerate +the importance and significance of her attainment in _Villette_; there +has been so much confused thinking in the consecrated judgment of that +novel. _Villette_ owes its high place largely to its superior +construction and technique; largely and primarily to Charlotte Bronte's +progress towards the light, towards the world, towards the great +undecorated reality. It is odd criticism that ignores the inevitable +growth, the increasing vision and grasp, the whole indomitable advance +of a great writer, and credits "experience" with the final masterpiece. +As a result of this confusion _Villette_ has been judged "final" in +another sense. Yes, final--this novel that shows every sign and token of +long maturing, long-enduring power. If Charlotte Bronte's critics had +not hypnotized themselves by the perpetual reiteration of that word +"experience", it would have been impossible for them, with the evidence +of her work before them, to have believed that in _Villette_ she had +written herself out. + +She was only just beginning. + + * * * * * + +Of Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_ there is not much to say. They are better +poems than Branwell's or Anne's, but that does not make them very good. +Still, they are interesting, and they are important, because they are +the bridge by which Charlotte Bronte passed into her own dominion. She +took Wordsworth with his Poems and Ballads for her guide, and he misled +her and delayed her on her way, and kept her a long time standing on her +bridge. For in her novels, and her novels only, Charlotte was a poet. In +her poems she is a novelist, striving and struggling for expression in a +cramped form, an imperfect and improper medium. But most indubitably a +novelist. Nearly all her poems which are not artificial are impersonal. +They deal with "situations", with "psychological problems", that cry +aloud for prose. There is the "Wife" who seems to have lived a long, +adventurous life with "William" through many poems; there is the +deserted wife and mother in "Mementos"; there is "Frances", the deserted +maiden; there is "Gilbert" with his guilty secret and his suicide, a +triple domestic tragedy in the three acts of a three-part ballad; there +is the lady in "Preference", who prefers her husband to her passionate +and profoundly deluded lover; there is the woman in "Apostasy", wrecked +in the conflict between love and priestcraft; and there is little else +beside. These poems are straws, showing the way of the wind that bloweth +where it listeth. + + * * * * * + +Too much has been written about Charlotte Bronte, and far too much has +been read. You come away from it with an enormous mass of printed stuff +wrecked in your memory, letters, simply hundreds of letters, legends and +theories huddled together in a heap, with all values and proportions +lost; and your impression is of tumult and of suffering, and of a +multitude of confused and incongruous happenings; funerals and +flirtations, or something very like flirtations, to the sound of the +passing bell and sexton's chisel; upheavals of soul, flights to and from +Brussels, interminable years of exile, and of lurid, tragic passion; +years, interminable, monotonous years of potato-peeling and all manner +of household piety; scenes of debauchery, horrors of opium and of drink; +celebrity, cataclysmal celebrity, rushings up to town in storm and +darkness, dim coffee-houses in Paternoster Row, dinner-parties; deaths, +funerals, melancholia; and still celebrity; years, interminable, +monotonous years of blazing celebrity, sounds of the literary workshop +overpowering the sexton's chisel; then marriage, sudden and swift; then +death. And in the midst of it all, one small and rather absurd and +obscure figure, tossed to and fro, said to be Charlotte Bronte. + +What an existence! + +This is the impression created by the bibliographical total. But sweep +four-fifths of it away, all the legends and half the letters, and sort +and set out what remains, observing values and proportions, and you get +an outer life where no great and moving event ever came, saving only +death (Charlotte's marriage hardly counts beside it); an outer life of a +strange and almost oppressive simplicity and silence; and an inner life, +tumultuous and profound in suffering, a life to all appearances +frustrate, where all nourishment of the emotions was reduced to the +barest allowance a woman's heart can depend on and yet live; and none +the less a life that out of that starvation diet raised enough of rich +and vivid and superb emotion to decorate a hundred women's lives; an +inner life which her genius fed and was fed from, for which no reality, +no experience, could touch its own intensity of realization. And, genius +apart, in the region of actual and ostensible emotion, no one of us can +measure the depth of her adoration of duty, or the depth, the force and +volume of her passion for her own people, and for the earth trodden by +their feet, the earth that covered them. Beside it every other feeling +was temporary and insignificant. In the light of it you see Charlotte +Bronte's figure for ever simple and beautiful and great; behind her for +ever the black-grey setting of her village and the purple of her moors. +That greatness and beauty and simplicity is destroyed by any effort to +detach her from her background. She may seem susceptible to the alien +influences of exile; but it is as an exile that she suffers; and her +most inspired moments are her moments of return, when she wrote prose +like this: "The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale; as glad as if +she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch +for his goddess to-night: there are no flocks on the mountains." + + * * * * * + +Around the figure of Emily Bronte there is none of that clamour and +confusion. She stands apart in an enduring silence, and guards for ever +her secret and her mystery. By the mercy of heaven the swarm of gossips +and of theorists has passed her by. She has no legend or hardly any. So +completely has she been passed over that when Madame Duclaux came to +write the Life of Emily Bronte she found little to add to Mrs. Gaskell's +meagre record beyond that story, which she tells with an incomparable +simplicity and reticence, of Emily in her mortal illness, sitting by the +hearth, combing her long hair till the comb slips from her fingers. + +That is worth all the reams, the terrible reams that have been written +about Charlotte. + +There can be no doubt that Emily Bronte found her shelter behind +Charlotte's fame; but she was protected most of all by the +unapproachable, the unique and baffling quality of her temperament and +of her genius. Her own people seem to have felt it; Charlotte herself in +that preface to _Wuthering Heights_, which stands as her last +vindication and eulogy of her dead sister, even Charlotte betrays a +curious reservation and reluctance. You feel that Emily's genius +inspired her with a kind of sacred terror. + +Charlotte destroyed all records of her sister except her poems. Between +six and seven hundred of her own letters have been published; there are +two of Emily's. They tell little or nothing. And there was that diary +she kept for Anne, where she notes with extreme brevity the things that +are happening in her family. There never was a diary wherein the soul of +the diarist was so well concealed. + +And yet, because of this silence, this absence of legend and conjecture, +we see Emily Bronte more clearly than we can ever hope to see Charlotte +now. Though hardly anything is known of her, what _is_ known is +authentic; it comes straight from those who knew and loved her: from +Charlotte, from Ellen Nussey, from the servants at the Parsonage. Even +of her outward and visible presence we have a clearer image. The lines +are fewer, but they are more vivid. You see her tall and slender, in her +rough clothes, tramping the moors with the form and the step of a virile +adolescent. Shirley, the "_bete fauve_", is Emily civilized. You see her +head carried high and crowned with its long, dark hair, coiled simply, +caught up with a comb. You see her face, honey-pale, her slightly high, +slightly aquiline nose; her beautiful eyes, dark-grey, luminous; the +"kind, kindling, liquid eyes" that Ellen Nussey saw; and their look, one +moment alert, intent, and the next, inaccessibly remote. + +I have seen such kind and kindling eyes in the face of a visionary, born +with a profound, incurable indifference to the material event; for whom +the Real is the incredible, unapparent harmony that flows above, +beneath, and within the gross flux of appearances. To him it is the sole +thing real. That kind and kindling look I know to be simply a light +reflected from the surface of the dream. It is anything but cold; it has +indeed a certain tender flame; but you would be profoundly mistaken if +you argued from it more than the faintest polite interest in you and +your affairs. The kindling of Emily Bronte's eyes I take to have had at +times something of the same unearthly quality. Strangers received from +her an impression as of a creature utterly removed from them; a +remoteness scarcely human, hard to reconcile with her known tenderness +for every living thing. She seems to have had a passionate repugnance to +alien and external contacts, and to have felt no more than an almost +reluctant liking for the lovable and charming Ellen Nussey. Indeed, she +regarded Charlotte's friend with the large and virile tolerance that +refuses to be charmed. + +And yet in the depths of her virginal nature there was something +fiercely tender and maternal. There can be no doubt that she cared for +Charlotte, who called her "Mine own bonnie love"; but she would seem to +have cared far more for Anne who was young and helpless, and for +Branwell who was helpless and most weak. + +Thus there is absolutely nothing known of Emily that destroys or +disturbs the image that Haworth holds of her; nothing that detaches her +for a moment from her own people, and from her own place. Her days of +exile count not at all in her thirty years of home. No separation ever +broke, for one hour that counted, the bonds that bound her to her moors, +or frustrated the divine passion of her communion with their earth and +sky. Better still, no tale of passion such as they tell of Charlotte was +ever told of Emily. + +It may be told yet, for no secret thing belonging to this disastrous +family is sacred. There may be somewhere some awful worshipper of Emily +Bronte, impatient of her silence and unsatisfied with her strange, her +virgin and inaccessible beauty, who will some day make up a story of +some love-affair, some passion kindred to Catherine Earnshaw's passion +for Heathcliff, of which her moors have kept the secret; and he will +tell his tale. But we shall at least know that he had made it up. And +even so, it will have been better for that man if he had never been +born. He will have done his best to destroy or to deface the loveliness +of a figure unique in literature. And he will have ignored the one +perfect, the one essentially true picture of Emily Bronte, which is to +be found in Maurice Maeterlinck's _Wisdom and Destiny_. + +To M. Maeterlinck she is the supreme instance of the self-sufficing +soul, independent and regardless of the material event. She shows the +emptiness, the impotence, the insignificance of all that we call +"experience," beside the spirit that endures. "Not a single event ever +paused as it passed by her threshold; yet did every event she could +claim take place in her heart, with incomparable force and beauty, with +matchless precision and detail. We say that nothing ever happened; but +did not all things really happen to her much more directly and tangibly +than with most of us, seeing that everything that took place about her, +everything that she saw or heard was transformed within her into +thoughts and feelings, into indulgent love, admiration, adoration of +life...? + +"Of her happiness none can doubt. Not in the soul of the best of all +those whose happiness has lasted longest, been the most active, +diversified, perfect, could more imperishable harvest be found, than in +the soul Emily Bronte lays bare. If to her there came nothing of all +that passes in love, sorrow, passion or anguish, still did she possess +all that abides when emotion has faded away."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +What was true of Charlotte, that her inner life was luminous with +intense realization, was a hundred times more true of Emily. It was so +true that beside it nothing else that can be said is altogether true. It +is not necessary for a man to be convinced of the illusory nature of +time and of material happenings in order to appreciate Charlotte's +genius; but his comprehension of Emily's will be adequate or otherwise, +according to the passion and sincerity with which he embraces that idea. +And he must have, further, a sense of the reality behind the illusion. +It is through her undying sense of it that Emily Bronte is great. She +had none of the proud appearances of the metaphysical mind; she did not, +so far as we know, devour, like George Eliot, whole systems of +philosophy in her early youth. Her passionate pantheism was not derived; +it was established in her own soul. She was a mystic, not by religious +vocation, but by temperament and by ultimate vision. She offers the +apparent anomaly of extreme detachment and of an unconquerable love of +life. + +It was the highest and the purest passion that you can well conceive. +For life gave her nothing in return. It treated her worse than it +treated Charlotte. She had none of the things that, after all, Charlotte +had; neither praise nor fame in her lifetime; nor friendship, nor love, +nor vision of love. All these things "passed her by with averted head"; +and she stood in her inviolable serenity and watched them go, without +putting out her hand to one of them. You cannot surprise her in any +piteous gesture of desire or regret. And, unlike Charlotte, she made it +impossible for you to pity her. + +It is this superb attitude to life, this independence of the material +event, this detachment from the stream of circumstance, that marks her +from her sister; for Charlotte is at moments pitifully immersed in the +stream of circumstance, pitifully dependent on the material event. It +is true that she kept her head above the stream, and that the failure of +the material event did not frustrate or hinder her ultimate achievement. +But Charlotte's was not by any means "a chainless soul". It struggled +and hankered after the unattainable. What she attained and realized she +realized and attained in her imagination only. She knew nothing of the +soul's more secret and intimate possession. And even her imagination +waited to some extent upon experience. When Charlotte wrote of passion, +of its tragic suffering, or of its ultimate appeasing, she, after all, +wrote of things that might have happened to her. But when Emily wrote of +passion, she wrote of a thing that, so far as she personally was +concerned, not only was not and had not been, but never could be. It was +true enough of Charlotte that she created. But of Emily it was +absolutely and supremely true. + +Hers is not the language of frustration, but of complete and satisfying +possession. It may seem marvellous in the mouth of a woman destitute of +all emotional experience, in the restricted sense; but the real wonder +would have been a _Wuthering Heights_ born of any personal emotion; so +certain is it that it was through her personal destitution that her +genius was so virile and so rich. At its hour it found her virgin, not +only to passion but to the bare idea of passion, to the inner and +immaterial event. + +And her genius was great, not only through her stupendous imagination, +but because it fed on the still more withdrawn and secret sources of her +soul. If she had had no genius she would yet be great because of what +took place within her, the fusion of her soul with the transcendent and +enduring life. + +It was there that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her +secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She +never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and +Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on +"the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of +religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would +have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for +height and depth of supernatural attainment, there is no comparison +between Emily's grip of divine reality and poor Anne's spasmodic and +despairing clutch; and none between Charlotte's piety, her "God +willing"; "I suppose I ought to be thankful", and Emily's acceptance and +endurance of the event. + +I am reminded that one event she neither accepted nor endured. She +fought death. Her spirit lifted the pathetic, febrile struggle of +weakness with corruption, and turned it to a splendid, Titanic, and +unearthly combat. + +And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid. +There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance. It +shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all +revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius +and of her life. + +There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and +agony that rages through _Wuthering Heights_, or with the passion for +life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; +or with Catherine Earnshaw's dream of heaven: "heaven did not seem to be +my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and +the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the +heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy". +Catherine Earnshaw's dream has been cited innumerable times to prove +that Emily Bronte was a splendid pagan. I do not know what it does +prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her +genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and +invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine +Earnshaw. + +It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr. +Swinburne's magnificent eulogy. There _was_ in the "passionate great +genius of Emily Bronte", "a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive +nature-worship". That was where she was so poised and so complete; that +she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the +splendour of the passion of living, and holds her spirit in security and +her heart in peace. She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick +of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her +immersion. + +It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of +these antagonistic attitudes. It is not only entirely possible and +compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that +you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their +impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion +and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily +Bronte was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss +too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for +her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any +philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the +world and crystallized it in two lines: + + The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling + Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. + +It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that +her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has +reached there. She too knew what it was + + To see a world in a grain of sand, + And a Heaven in a wild flower, + To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, + And Eternity in an hour. + +She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same +light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics. + +Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of +transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at +least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation. + +In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary +soul: + + Shall earth no more inspire thee, + Thou lonely dreamer now? + Since passion may not fire thee, + Shall nature cease to bow? + + Thy mind is ever moving + In regions dark to thee; + Recall its useless roving, + Come back, and dwell with me. + + * * * * * + + Few hearts to mortals given + On earth so wildly pine; + Yet few would ask a heaven + More like this earth than thine. + +"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment; +and the human voice answers, resisting: + + Play with the scented flower, + The young tree's supple bough, + And leave my human feelings + In their own course to flow. + +But the other voice is stronger: + + The wanderer would not heed me; + Its kiss grew warmer still. + "Oh, come," it sighed so sweetly; + "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will. + + "Were we not friends from childhood? + Have I not loved thee long? + As long as thou, the solemn night, + Whose silence wakes my song. + + "And when thy heart is resting + Beneath the church-aisle stone, + _I_ shall have time for mourning, + And _thou_ for being alone." + +There are nine verses of "The Night-Wind", and the first eight are +negligible; but, as for the last and ninth, I do not know any poem in +any language that renders, in four short lines, and with such +incomparable magic and poignancy, the haunting and pursuing of the human +by the inhuman, that passion of the homeless and eternal wind. + +And this woman, destitute, so far as can be known, of all metaphysical +knowledge or training, reared in the narrowest and least metaphysical of +creeds, did yet contrive to express in one poem of four irregular verses +all the hunger and thirst after the "Absolute" that ever moved a human +soul, all the bewilderment and agony inflicted by the unintelligible +spectacle of existence, the intolerable triumph of evil over good, and +did conceive an image and a vision of the transcendent reality that +holds, as in crystal, all the philosophies that were ever worthy of the +name. + +Here it is. There are once more two voices: one of the Man, the other of +the Seer: + +THE PHILOSOPHER + + Oh, for the time when I shall sleep + Without identity. + And never care how rain may steep, + Or snow may cover me! + No promised heaven, these wild desires + Could all, or half fulfil; + No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, + Subdue this restless will. + + So said I, and still say the same; + Still, to my death, will say-- + Three gods, within this little frame, + Are warring night and day; + Heaven could not hold them all, and yet + They all are held in me; + And must be mine till I forget + My present entity! + Oh, for the time, when in my breast + Their struggles will be o'er! + Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, + And never suffer more! + + I saw a spirit, standing, man, + Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, + And round his feet three rivers ran, + Of equal depth, and equal flow-- + A golden stream--and one like blood, + And one like sapphire seemed to be; + But where they joined their triple flood + It tumbled in an inky sea. + The spirit sent his dazzling gaze + Down through that ocean's gloomy night; + Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,-- + The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- + White as the sun, far, far more fair + Than its divided sources were! + + And even for that spirit, seer, + I've watched and sought my lifetime long; + Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air, + An endless search and always wrong. + Had I but seen his glorious eye + _Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me, + I ne'er had raised this coward cry + To cease to think, and cease to be; + I ne'er had called oblivion blest, + Nor, stretching eager hands to death, + Implored to change for senseless rest + This sentient soul, this living breath-- + Oh, let me die--that power and will + Their cruel strife may close, + And conquered good and conquering ill + Be lost in one repose! + +That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of +life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and +painted. + +The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment, +which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it +has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive, +"confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless +soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its +agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the +"Messenger": + + He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. + Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, + And visions rise and change that kill me with desire. + + * * * * * + + But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; + The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; + Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, + That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me. + + Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; + My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: + Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, + Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound. + +That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has passed beyond +contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is +unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return: + + Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony-- + When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; + When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; + The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain. + +There is no doubt about those three verses; that they are the expression +of the rarest and the most tremendous experience that is given to +humanity to know. + +If "The Visionary" does not touch that supernal place, it belongs +indubitably to the borderland: + + Silent is the house; all are laid asleep: + One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, + Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze + That whirls the wildering drift and bends the groaning trees. + + Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; + Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; + The little lamp burns straight, the rays shoot strong and far + I trim it well to be the wanderer's guiding-star. + + Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame! + Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame; + But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know, + What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow. + + What I love shall come like visitant of air, + Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; + What loves me no word of mine shall e'er betray, + Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay. + + Burn then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-- + Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air; + He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me: + Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy. + +Those who can see nothing in this poem but the idealization of an +earthly passion must be strangely and perversely mistaken in their Emily +Bronte. I confess I can never read it without thinking of one of the +most marvellous of all poems of Divine Love: "En una Noche Escura". + +EN UNA NOCHE ESCURA[A] + + Upon an obscure night + Fevered with Love's anxiety + (O hapless, happy plight!) + I went, none seeing me, + Forth from my house, where all things quiet be. + + * * * * * + + Blest night of wandering + In secret, when by none might I be spied, + Nor I see anything; + Without a light to guide + Save that which in my heart burnt in my side. + + That light did lead me on + More surely than the shining of noontide, + Where well I knew that One + Did for my coming bide; + Where he abode might none but he abide. + + O night that didst lead thus; + O night more lovely than the dawn of light; + O night that broughtest us + Lover to lover's sight, + Lover to loved, in marriage of delight! + +[Footnote A: "St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul." +Translated by Arthur Symons in vol. ii. of his _Collected Poems_.] + + * * * * * + +We know what love is celebrated there, and we do not know so clearly +what manner of supernal passion is symbolized in Emily Bronte's +angel-lover. There is a long way there between Emily Bronte and St. +John of the Cross, between her lamp-lit window and his "Dark Night of +the Soul", and yet her opening lines have something of the premonitory +thrill, the haunting power of tremendous suggestion, the intense, +mysterious expectancy of his. The spiritual experience is somewhat +different, but it belongs to the same realm of the super-physical; and +it is very far from Paganism. + +She wrote of these supreme ardours and mysteries; and she wrote that +most inspired and vehement song of passionate human love, "Remembrance": + + Cold in the earth--and the deep snow piled above thee, + Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! + Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee.... + +But "Remembrance" is too well known for quotation here. So is "The Old +Stoic". + +These are perfect and unforgettable things. But there is hardly one of +the least admirable of her poems that has not in it some unforgettable +and perfect verse or line: + + And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star + Has tracked the chilly grey! + What, watching yet? how very far + The morning lies away. + +That is how some watcher on Wuthering Heights might measure the long +passage of the night. + +"The Lady to her Guitar", that recalls the dead and forgotten player, +sings: + + It is as if the glassy brook + Should image still its willows fair, + _Though years ago the woodman's stroke + Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair_. + +She has her "dim moon struggling in the sky", to match Charlotte's "the +moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, glad as if she gave herself to +his fierce caress with love". At sixteen, in the schoolroom,[A] she +wrote verses of an incomparable simplicity and poignancy: + + A little while, a little while, + The weary task is put away, + And I can sing and I can smile, + Alike, while I have holiday. + + Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- + What thought, what scene invites thee now? + What spot, or near or far apart, + Has rest for thee, my weary brow? + + * * * * * + + The house is old, the trees are bare, + Moonless above bends twilight's dome; + But what on earth is half so dear-- + So longed for--as the hearth of home? + + The mute bird sitting on the stone, + The dank moss dripping from the wall, + The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, + I love them--how I love them all! + + Still, as I mused, the naked room, + The alien firelight died away, + And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, + I passed to bright, unclouded day. + + A little and a lone green lane + That opened on a common wide; + A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain + Of mountains circling every side. + + A heaven so clear, an earth so calm. + So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; + And, deepening still the dream-like charm, + Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. + +[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later +date--the year of Emily Bronte's exile in Brussels. Sir William +Robertson Nicoll also considers that "the 'alien firelight' suits +Brussels better than the Yorkshire hearth of 'good, kind' Miss Wooler". +To me the schoolroom of the Pensionnat suggests an "alien" stove, and +not the light of any fire at all.] + + * * * * * + +There was no nostalgia that she did not know. And there was no funeral +note she did not sound; from the hopeless gloom of + + In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, + A grey stone standing over thee; + Black mould beneath thee spread, + And black mould to cover thee. + + Well--there is rest there, + So fast come thy prophecy; + The time when my sunny hair + Shall with grass-roots entwined be. + + But cold--cold is that resting-place + Shut out from joy and liberty, + And all who loved thy living face + Will shrink from it shudderingly. + +From that to the melancholy grace of the moorland dirge: + + The linnet in the rocky dells, + The moor-lark in the air, + The bee among the heather-bells + That hide my lady fair: + + The wild deer browse above her breast; + The wild birds raise their brood; + And they, her smiles of love caressed, + Have left her solitude. + + * * * * * + + Well, let them fight for honour's breath, + Or pleasure's shade pursue-- + The dweller in the land of death + Is changed and careless too. + + And if their eyes should watch and weep + Till sorrow's source were dry, + She would not, in her tranquil sleep, + Return a single sigh. + + Blow, west wind, by the lowly mound, + And murmur, summer-streams-- + There is no need of other sound + To soothe my lady's dreams. + +There is, finally, that nameless poem--her last--where Emily Bronte's +creed finds utterance. It also is well known, but I give it here by way +of justification, lest I should seem to have exaggerated the mystic +detachment of this lover of the earth: + + No coward soul is mine, + No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: + I see Heaven's glories shine, + And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. + + O God within my breast, + Almighty, ever-present Deity! + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in thee! + + Vain are the thousand creeds + That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; + Worthless as withered weeds, + Or idlest froth amid the boundless main. + + To waken doubt in one + Holding so fast by thine infinity; + So surely anchored on + The steadfast rock of immortality. + + With wide-embracing love + Thy spirit animates eternal years, + Pervades and broods above, + Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. + + Though earth and man were gone, + And suns and universes ceased to be, + And Thou wert left alone, + Every existence would exist in Thee. + + There is not room for Death, + Nor atom that his might could render void: + Thou--THOU art Being and Breath, + And what THOU art may never be destroyed. + +It is not a perfect work. I do not think it is by any means the finest +poem that Emily Bronte ever wrote. It has least of her matchless, +incommunicable quality. There is one verse, the fifth, that recalls +almost painfully the frigid poets of Deism of the eighteenth century. +But even that association cannot destroy or contaminate its superb +sincerity and dignity. If it recalls the poets of Deism, it recalls no +less one of the most ancient of all metaphysical poems, the poem of +Parmenides on Being: + + [Greek: pos d' an epeit apoloito pelon, pos d' an ke genoito; + ei ge genoit, ouk est', oud ei pote mellei esesthai. + + * * * * * + + tos, genesis men apesbestai kai apiotos olethros. + oude diaireton estin, epei pan estin homoion + oude ti pae keneon.... + ....eon gar eonti pelazei.] + +Parmenides had not, I imagine, "penetrated" to Haworth; yet the last +verse of Emily Bronte's poem might have come straight out of his [Greek: +ta pros halaetheiaen]. Truly, an astonishing poem to have come from a +girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties. + +But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more +consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are +restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Bronte does not follow St. +Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight: + + Life--that in me has rest, + As I--undying Life--have power in Thee! + +For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Bronte. +Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have +been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not +accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too +well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal +quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of +the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering +cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee." +It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who +comes + + With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars, + +her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly +consummation. + +There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism +either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Bronte. + +The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only +in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte +discovered them. + + * * * * * + +Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte +had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished +poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had +happened. + +And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has +unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and +with Charlotte's thirty-nine.[A] + +[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Emily Bronte._ Vol. I.--Poetry. (Messrs. +Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)] + +And the world continues more or less unaware. + +I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week. But +I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of +them. But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the +publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily +Bronte, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of +acclaim. + +And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in +its way. If the best poems in Mr. Shorter's collection cannot stand +beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them +reveal an aspect of Emily Bronte's genius hitherto unknown and undreamed +of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Bronte +than has yet been known. + +There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference. The few +people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Bronte much; it is +as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession +of young poets out of Vigo Street. There is a certain austerity about +Emily Bronte, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and +decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to +young lyrics loaded with "jewels five-words long". About Emily Bronte +there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves +in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple +vintage. She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous +side of mysticism. She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts +and hungers for these things. + +It is not surprising, therefore, that the world should be callous to +Emily Bronte. What you are not prepared for is the appearance of +indifference in her editors. They are pledged by their office to a +peculiar devotion. And the circumstances of Emily Bronte's case made it +imperative that whoever undertook this belated introduction should show +rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm. Her alien and lonely state +should have moved Mr. Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry. It has +not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety. Perfect +piety would have saved him from the oversight, innocent but deplorable, +of attributing to Emily Bronte four poems which Emily Bronte could not +possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne: +"Despondency", "In Memory of a Happy Day in February", "A Prayer", and +"Confidence."[A] No doubt Mr. Shorter found them in Emily's handwriting; +but how could he, how _could_ he mistake Anne's voice for Emily's? + +[Footnote A: Published among Charlotte Bronte's posthumous "Selections" +in 1850.] + + My God (oh let me call Thee mine, + Weak, wretched sinner though I be), + My trembling soul would fain be Thine; + My feeble faith still clings to Thee. + +It is Anne's voice at her feeblest and most depressed. + +It is, perhaps, a little ungrateful and ungracious to say these things, +when but for Mr. Shorter we should not have had Emily's complete poems +at all. And to accuse Mr. Shorter of present indifference (in the face +of his previous achievements) would be iniquitous if it were not absurd; +it would be biting the hand that feeds you. The pity is that, owing to a +mere momentary lapse in him of the religious spirit, Mr. Shorter has +missed his own opportunity. He does not seem to have quite realized the +splendour of his "find". Nor has Sir William Robertson Nicoll seen fit +to help him here. Sir William Robertson Nicoll deprecates any +over-valuation of Mr. Clement Shorter's collection. "It is not claimed," +he says, "for a moment that the intrinsic merits of the verses are of a +special kind." And Mr. Clement Shorter is not much bolder in proffering +his treasures. "No one can deny to them," he says, "a certain +bibliographical interest." + +Mr. Shorter is too modest. His collection includes one of the +profoundest and most beautiful poems Emily Bronte ever wrote,[A] and at +least one splendid ballad, "Douglas Ride".[B] Here is the ballad, or +enough of it to show how live it is with sound and vision and speed. It +was written by a girl of twenty: + + What rider up Gobeloin's glen + Has spurred his straining steed, + And fast and far from living men + Has passed with maddening speed? + + I saw his hoof-prints mark the rock, + When swift he left the plain; + I heard deep down the echoing shock + Re-echo back again. + + * * * * * + + With streaming hair, and forehead bare, + And mantle waving wide, + His master rides; the eagle there + Soars up on every side. + + The goats fly by with timid cry, + Their realm rashly won; + They pause--he still ascends on high-- + They gaze, but he is gone. + + O gallant horse, hold on thy course; + The road is tracked behind. + Spur, rider, spur, or vain thy force-- + Death comes on every wind. + + * * * * * + + Hark! through the pass with threatening crash + Comes on the increasing roar! + But what shall brave the deep, deep wave, + The deadly pass before? + + Their feet are dyed in a darker tide, + Who dare those dangers drear. + Their breasts have burst through the battle's worst, + And why should they tremble here? + + * * * * * + + "Now, my brave men, this one pass more, + This narrow chasm of stone, + And Douglas for our sovereign's gore + Shall yield us back his own." + + I hear their ever-rising tread + Sound through the granite glen; + There is a tall pine overhead + Held by the mountain men. + + That dizzy bridge which no horse could track + Has checked the outlaw's way; + There like a wild beast turns he back, + And grimly stands at bay. + + Why smiles he so, when far below + He spies the toiling chase? + The pond'rous tree swings heavily, + And totters from its place. + + They raise their eyes, for the sunny skies + Are lost in sudden shade: + But Douglas neither shrinks nor flies, + He need not fear the dead. + +[Footnote A: See pp. 207, 208.] + +[Footnote B: I have removed the title from the preceding fragment to the +ballad to which it obviously belongs.] + +That is sufficiently unlike the Emily Bronte whom Charlotte edited. And +there is one other poem that stands alone among her poems with a strange +exotic beauty, a music, a rhythm and a magic utterly unlike any of the +forms we recognize as hers: + + Gods of the old mythology + Arise in gloom and storm; + Adramalec, bow down thy head, + Reveal, dark fiend, thy form. + The giant sons of Anakim + Bowed lowest at thy shrine, + And thy temple rose in Argola, + With its hallowed groves of vine; + And there was eastern incense burnt, + And there were garments spread, + With the fine gold decked and broidered, + And tinged with radiant red, + With the radiant red of furnace flames + That through the shadows shone + As the full moon when on Sinai's top + Her rising light is thrown. + +It is undated and unsigned, and so unlike Emily Bronte that I should not +be surprised if somebody were to rise up and prove that it is Coleridge +or somebody. Heaven forbid that this blow should fall on Mr. Clement +Shorter, and Sir William Robertson Nicoll, and on me. There is at least +one reassuring line. "Reveal, dark fiend, thy form", has a decided ring +of the Brontesque. + +And here again, on many an otherwise negligible poem she has set her +seal, she has scattered her fine things; thus: + + No; though the soil be wet with tears, + How fair so'er it grew, + The vital sap once perished + Will never flow again; + _And surer than that dwelling dread, + The narrow dungeon of the dead, + Time parts the hearts of men._ + +And again, she gives a vivid picture of war in four lines: + + In plundered churches piled with dead + The heavy charger neighed for food, + The wounded soldier laid his head + 'Neath roofless chambers splashed with blood. + +Again, she has a vision: + + In all the hours of gloom + My soul was rapt away. + I stood by a marble tomb + Where royal corpses lay. + +A frightful thing appears to her, "a shadowy thing, most dim": + + And still it bent above, + Its features still in view; + _It seemed close by; and yet more far + Than this world from the farthest star + That tracks the boundless blue._ + + Indeed 'twas not the space + Of earth or time between, + But the sea of deep eternity, + The gulf o'er which mortality + Has never, never been. + +The date is June 1837, a year earlier than the ballad. And here is the +first sketch or germ of "The Old Stoic": + + Give we the hills our equal prayer, + Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea, + _I ask for nothing further here + Than my own heart and liberty._ + +And here is another poem, of a sterner and a sadder stoicism: + + There was a time when my cheek burned + To give such scornful words the lie, + Ungoverned nature madly spurned + The law that bade it not defy. + Oh, in the days of ardent youth + I would have given my life for truth. + + For truth, for right, for liberty, + I would have gladly, freely died; + And now I calmly bear and see + The vain man smile, the fool deride, + Though not because my heart is tame, + Though not for fear, though not for shame. + + My soul still chokes at every tone + Of selfish and self-clouded error; + My breast still braves the world alone, + Steeled as it ever was to terror. + Only I know, howe'er I frown, + The same world will go rolling on. + +October 1839. It is the worldly wisdom of twenty-one! + + * * * * * + +If this, the ballad and the rest, were all, the world would still be +richer, by a wholly new conception of Emily Bronte, of her resources and +her range. + +But it is by no means all. And here we come to the opportunity which, +owing to that temporary decline of fervour, Mr. Shorter has so +unfortunately missed. + +He might have picked out of the mass wherein they lie scattered, all but +lost, sometimes barely recognizable, the fragments of a Titanic epic. He +might have done something to build up again the fabric of that +marvellous romance, that continuous dream, that stupendous and gorgeous +fantasy in which Emily Bronte, for at least eleven years, lived and +moved and had her being. + +Until the publication of the unknown poems, it was possible to ignore +the "Gondal Chronicles". They are not included in Mr. Clement Shorter's +exhaustive list of early and unpublished manuscripts. Nobody knew +anything about them except that they were part of a mysterious game of +make-believe which Emily and the ever-innocent Anne played together, +long after the age when most of us have given up make-believing. There +are several references to the Chronicles in the diaries of Emily and +Anne. Emily writes in 1841: "The Gondaland are at present in a +threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet. All the princes +and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction." Anne +wonders "whether the Gondaland will still be flourishing" in 1845. In +1845 Emily and Anne go for their first long journey together. "And +during our excursion we were Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet +Angusteena, Rosabella Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine +Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of +instruction to join the Royalists, who are hard pressed at present by +the victorious Republicans. "The Gondals," Emily says, "still flourish +bright as ever." Anne is not so sure. "We have not yet finished our +'Gondal Chronicles' that we began three years and a half ago. When will +they be done? The Gondals are at present in a sad state. The Republicans +are uppermost, but the Royalists are not quite overcome. The young +sovereigns, with their brothers and sisters, are still at the Palace of +Instruction. The Unique Society, about half a year ago, were wrecked on +a desert island as they were returning from Gaul. They are still there, +but we have not played at them much yet." + +But there are no recognizable references to the Gondal poems. It is not +certain whether Charlotte Bronte knew of their existence, not absolutely +certain that Anne, who collaborated on the Gondals, knew. + +"Bronte specialists" are agreed in dismissing the Chronicles as puerile. +But the poems cannot be so dismissed. Written in lyric or ballad form, +fluent at their worst and loose, but never feeble; powerful, vehement, +and overflowing at their best, their cycle contains some of Emily +Bronte's very finest verse. They are obscure, incoherent sometimes, +because they are fragmentary; even poems apparently complete in +themselves are fragments, scenes torn out of the vast and complicated +epic drama. We have no clue to the history of the Gondals, whereby we +can arrange these scenes in their right order. But dark and broken as +they are, they yet trail an epic splendour, they bear the whole +phantasmagoria of ancestral and of racial memories, of "old, unhappy, +far-off things, and battles long ago". These songs and ballads, strung +on no discernible thread, are the voice of an enchanted spirit, +recalling the long roll of its secular existences; in whom nothing lives +but that mysterious, resurgent memory. + +The forms that move through these battles are obscure. You can pick out +many of the Gondal poems by the recurring names of heroes and of lands. +But where there are no names of heroes and of lands to guide you it is +not easy to say exactly which poems are Gondal poems and which are not. +But after careful examination and comparison you can make out at least +eighty-three of them that are unmistakable, and ten doubtful. + +All the battle-pieces and songs of battle, the songs of mourning and +captivity and exile, the songs of heroism, martyrdom, defiance, songs, +or fragments of songs, of magic and divination, and many of the love +songs, belong to this cycle. What is more, many of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six and of eighteen-fifty are Gondal poems. + +For in the Gondal legend the idea of the Doomed Child, an idea that +haunted Emily Bronte, recurs perpetually, and suggests that the Gondal +legend is the proper place of "The Two Children", and "The Wanderer from +the Fold", which appear in the posthumous Selections of eighteen-fifty. +It certainly includes three at the very least of the poems of +eighteen-forty-six: "The Outcast Mother", "A Death-Scene", and "Honour's +Martyr". + +It does not look, I own, as if this hunt for Gondal literature could +interest a single human being; which is why nobody, so far as I know, +has pursued it. And the placing of those four poems in the obscure +Gondal legend would have nothing but "a bibliographical interest" were +it not that, when placed there, they show at once the main track of the +legend. And the main track of the legend brings you straight to the +courses of _Wuthering Heights_ and of the love poems. + +The sources of _Wuthering Heights_ have been the dream and the despair +of the explorer, long before Mrs. Humphry Ward tried to find them in the +_Tales of Hoffmann_. And "Remembrance", one of the most passionate love +poems in the language, stood alone and apart from every other thing that +Emily Bronte had written. It was awful and mysterious in its loneliness. + +But I believe that "Remembrance" also may be placed in the Gondal legend +without any violence to its mystery. + +For supreme in the Gondal legend is the idea of a mighty and disastrous +passion, a woman's passion for the defeated, the dishonoured, and the +outlawed lover; a creature superb in evil, like Heathcliff, and like +Heathcliff tragic and unspeakably mournful in his doom. He or some hero +like him is "Honour's Martyr". + + To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name, + And Hate will trample me, + Will load me with a coward's shame-- + A traitor's perjury. + + False friends will launch their covert sneers + True friends will wish me dead; + And I shall cause the bitterest tears + That you have ever shed. + +Like Heathcliff, he is the "unblessed, unfriended child"; the child of +the Outcast Mother, abandoned on the moor. + + Forests of heather, dark and long, + Wave their brown branching arms above; + And they must soothe thee with their song, + And they must shield my child of love. + + * * * * * + + Wakes up the storm more madly wild, + The mountain drifts are tossed on high; + Farewell, unblessed, unfriended child, + I cannot bear to watch thee die. + +In an unmistakable Gondal song Geraldine's lover calls her to the tryst +on the moor. In the Gondal poem "Geraldine", she has her child with her +in a woodland cavern, and she prays over it wildly: + + "Bless it! My Gracious God!" I cried, + "Preserve Thy mortal shrine, + For Thine own sake, be Thou its guide, + And keep it still divine-- + + "Say, sin shall never blanch that cheek, + Nor suffering change that brow. + Speak, in Thy mercy, Maker, speak, + And seal it safe from woe." + + * * * * * + + The revellers in the city slept, + My lady in her woodland bed; + I watching o'er her slumber wept, + As one who mourns the dead. + +Geraldine therefore is the Outcast Mother. In "The Two Children" the +doom gathers round the child. + + Heavy hangs the raindrop + From the burdened spray; + Heavy broods the damp mist + On uplands far away. + + Heavy looms the dull sky, + Heavy rolls the sea; + And heavy throbs the young heart + Beneath that lonely tree. + + Never has a blue streak + Cleft the clouds since morn + Never has his grim fate + Smiled since he was born. + + Frowning on the infant, + Shadowing childhood's joy. + Guardian-angel knows not + That melancholy boy. + + * * * * * + + Blossom--that the west wind + Has never wooed to blow, + Scentless are thy petals, + Thy dew is cold as snow! + + Soul--where kindred kindness + No early promise woke, + Barren is thy beauty, + As weed upon a rock. + + Wither--soul and blossom! + You both were vainly given: + Earth reserves no blessing + For the unblest of Heaven. + +The doomed child of the outcast mother is the doomed man, and, by the +doom, himself an outcast. The other child, the "Child of delight, with +sun-bright hair", has vowed herself to be his guardian angel. Their +drama is obscure; but you make out that it is the doomed child, and not +Branwell Bronte, who is "The Wanderer from the Fold". + + How few, of all the hearts that loved, + Are grieving for thee now; + And why should mine to-night be moved + With such a sense of woe? + + Too often thus, when left alone, + Where none my thoughts can see, + Comes back a word, a passing tone + From thy strange history. + + * * * * * + + An anxious gazer from the shore-- + I marked the whitening wave, + And wept above thy fate the more + Because--I could not save. + + It recks not now, when all is over; + But yet my heart will be + A mourner still, though friend and lover + Have both forgotten thee. + +Compare with this that stern elegy in Mr. Shorter's collection, "Shed no +tears o'er that tomb." A recent critic has referred this poem of +reprobation also to Branwell Bronte--as if Emily could possibly have +written like this of Branwell: + + Shed no tears o'er that tomb, + For there are angels weeping; + Mourn not him whose doom + Heaven itself is mourning. + + * * * * * + + ... he who slumbers there + His bark will strive no more + Across the waters of despair + To reach that glorious shore. + + The time of grace is past, + And mercy, scorned and tried, + Forsakes to utter wrath at last + The soul so steeled by pride. + + That wrath will never spare, + Will never pity know; + Will mock its victim's maddened prayer, + With triumph in his woe. + + Shut from his Maker's smile + The accursed man shall be; + For mercy reigns a little while, + But hate eternally. + +This is obviously related to "The Two Children", and that again to "The +Wanderer from the Fold". Obviously, too, the woman's lament in "The +Wanderer from the Fold" recalls the Gondal woman's lament for her +dishonoured lover. For there are two voices that speak and answer each +other, the voice of reprobation, and the voice of passion and pity. This +is the "Gondal Woman's Lament": + + Far, far is mirth withdrawn: + 'Tis three long hours before the morn, + And I watch lonely, drearily; + So come, thou shade, commune with me. + + Deserted one! thy corpse lies cold, + And mingled with a foreign mould. + Year after year the grass grows green + Above the dust where thou hast been. + + I will not name thy blighted name, + Tarnished by unforgotten shame, + Though not because my bosom torn + Joins the mad world in all its scorn. + + Thy phantom face is dark with woe, + Tears have left ghastly traces there, + Those ceaseless tears! I wish their flow + Could quench thy wild despair. + + They deluge my heart like the rain + On cursed Zamorna's howling plain. + Yet when I hear thy foes deride, + I must cling closely to thy side. + + Our mutual foes! They will not rest + From trampling on thy buried breast. + Glutting their hatred with the doom + They picture thine beyond the tomb. + +(Which is what they did in the song of reprobation. But passion and pity +know better. They know that) + + ... God is not like human kind, + Man cannot read the Almighty mind; + Vengeance will never torture thee, + Nor hurt thy soul eternally. + + * * * * * + + What have I dreamt? He lies asleep, + With whom my heart would vainly weep; + _He_ rests, and _I_ endure the woe + That left his spirit long ago. + +This poem is not quoted for its beauty or its technique, but for its +important place in the story. You can track the great Gondal hero down +by that one fantastic name, "Zamorna". You have thus four poems, +obviously related; and a fifth that links them, obviously, with the +Gondal legend. + +It is difficult to pick out from the confusion of these unsorted +fragments all the heroes of Emily Bronte's saga. There is Gleneden, who +kills a tyrant and is put in prison for it. There is Julius Angora, who +"lifts his impious eye" in the cathedral where the monarchs of Gondal +are gathered; who leads the patriots of Gondal to the battle of +Almedore, and was defeated there, and fell with his mortal enemy. He is +beloved of Rosina, a crude prototype of Catherine Earnshaw. "King Julius +left the south country" and remained in danger in the northern land +because a passion for Rosina kept him there. There is also Douglas of +the "Ride". He appears again in the saga of the Queen Augusta, the woman +of the "brown mountain side". But who he was, and what he was doing, and +whether he killed Augusta or somebody else killed her, I cannot for the +life of me make out. Queen Augusta, like Catherine Earnshaw, is a +creature of passion and jealousy, and her lover had been faithless. She +sings that savage song of defiance and hatred and lamentation: "Light up +thy halls!" + + Oh! could I see thy lids weighed down in cheerless woe; + Too full to hide their tears, too stern to overflow; + Oh! could I know thy soul with equal grief was torn, + This fate might be endured--this anguish might be borne. + + How gloomy grows the night! 'Tis Gondal's wind that blows; + I shall not tread again the deep glens where it rose, + I feel it on my face----Where, wild blast! dost thou roam? + What do we, wanderer! here, so far away from home? + + I do not need thy breath to cool my death-cold brow; + But go to that far land where she is shining now; + Tell her my latest wish, tell her my dreary doom; + Say that my pangs are past, but _hers_ are yet to come. + +And there is Fernando, who stole his love from Zamorna. He is a sort of +shadowy forerunner of Edgar Linton. + +There is the yeoman Percy, the father of Mary whom Zamorna loved. And +there is Zamorna. + +A large group of poems in the legend refer, obviously, I think, to the +same person. Zamorna is the supreme hero, the Achilles of this northern +Iliad. He is the man of sin, the "son of war and love", the child +"unblessed of heaven", abandoned by its mother, cradled in the heather +and rocked by the winter storm, the doomed child, grown to its doom, +like Heathcliff. His story is obscure and broken, but when all the +Zamorna poems are sorted from the rest, you make out that, like +Heathcliff, he ravished from her home the daughter of his mortal enemy +(with the difference that Zamorna loves Mary); and that like Heathcliff +he was robbed of the woman that he loved. The passions of Zamorna are +the passions of Heathcliff. He dominates a world of savage loves and +mortal enmities like the world of _Wuthering Heights_. There are +passages in this saga that reveal the very aspect of the soul of +Heathcliff. Here are some of them. + +Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his "false friend and treacherous +guide": + + "If I have sinned; long, long ago + That sin was purified by woe. + I have suffered on through night and day, + I've trod a dark and frightful way." + +It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw: "I've fought through a +bitter life since I last heard your voice." + +And again: + + If grief for grief can touch thee, + If answering woe for woe, + If any ruth can melt thee, + Come to me now. + +It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy. + +Again, he is calling to "Percy", the father of Mary, his bride, the rose +that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking. + + Bitterly, deeply I've drunk of thy woe; + When thy stream was troubled, did mine calmly flow? + And yet I repent not; I'd crush thee again + If our vessels sailed adverse on life's stormy main. + But listen! The earth is our campaign of war, + + * * * * * + + Is there not havoc and carnage for thee + Unless thou couchest thy lance at me? + +He proposes to unite their arms. + + Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still + This hand should ne'er work her sorrow or ill. + + * * * * * + + What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead + With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed? + +The alliance is refused. Percy is crushed. Mary is dying, the rose is +withering. + + Its faded buds already lie + To deck my coffin when I die. + Bring them here--'twill not be long, + 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; + And the final and dying words are sung + To the discord of lute strings all unstrung. + + * * * * * + + Have I crushed you, Percy? I'd raise once more + The beacon-light on the rocky shore. + Percy, my love is so true and deep, + That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep, + I'd fling the brand in the hissing sea, + The brand that must burn unquenchably. + Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade, + They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head + The blossoms to deck my home with the dead. + +Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff. He laments for his rose. + + On its bending stalk a bonny flower + In a yeoman's home close grew; + It had gathered beauty from sunshine and shower, + From moonlight and silent dew. + + * * * * * + + Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded, + He watched it grow both day and night; + From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded + That flush of roseate light. + And ever it glistened bonnilie + Under the shade of the old yew-tree. + + * * * * * + + The rose is blasted, withered, blighted + Its root has felt a worm, + And like a heart beloved and slighted, + Failed, faded, shrunk its form. + Bud of beauty, bonny flower, + I stole thee from thy natal bower. + + I was the worm that withered thee.... + +And he sings of Mary, on her death-bed in her delirium. He will not +believe that she is dying. + + Oh! say not that her vivid dreams + Are but the shattered glass + Which but because more broken, gleams + More brightly in the grass. + Her spirit is the unfathomed lake + Whose face the sudden tempests break + To one tormented roar; + But as the wild winds sink in peace + All those disturbed waves decrease + Till each far-down reflection is + As life-like as before. + +Her death is not the worst. + + I cannot weep as once I wept + Over my western beauty's grave. + + * * * * * + + I am speaking of a later stroke, + A death the dream of yesterday, + Still thinking of my latest shock, + A noble friendship torn away. + I feel and say that I am cast + From hope, and peace, and power, and pride + + * * * * * + + Without a voice to speak to you + Save that deep gong which tolled my doom, + And made my dread iniquity + Look darker than my deepest gloom. + +But the crucial passage (for the sources) is the scene in the yeoman's +hall where Zamorna comes to Percy. He comes stealthily. + + That step he might have used before + When stealing on to lady's bower, + Forth at the same still twilight hour, + For the moon now bending mild above + Showed him a son of war and love. + His eye was full of that sinful fire + Which oft unhallowed passions light. + It spoke of quickly kindled ire, + Of love too warm, and wild, and bright. + Bright, but yet sullied, love that could never + Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline, + Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver.... + + * * * * * + + Now from his curled and shining hair, + Circling the brow of marble fair, + His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze + With stern and yet repenting rays. + + * * * * * + +He loves Percy whose rose was his, and he hates him, as Heathcliff might +have loved and hated, but with less brutality. + + Young savage! how he bends above + The object of his wrath and love, + How tenderly his fingers press + The hand that shrinks from their caress. + +The yeoman turns on "the man of sin". + + What brought you here? I called you not + + * * * * * + + Are you a hawk to follow the prey, + When mangled it flutters feebly away? + A sleuth-hound to track the deer by his blood, + When wounded he wins to the darkest wood, + There, if he can, to die alone? + +It might have been Heathcliff and a Linton. + +So much for Zamorna. + +Finally, there are two poems in Mr. Shorter's collection that, verse for +prose, might have come straight out of _Wuthering Heights_. One +(inspired by Byron) certainly belongs to the Zamorna legend of the +Gondal cycle. + + And now the house-dog stretched once more + His limbs upon the glowing floor; + The children half resume their play, + Though from the warm hearth scared away; + The good-wife left her spinning-wheel + And spread with smiles the evening meal; + The shepherd placed a seat and pressed + To their poor fare the unknown guest, + And he unclasped his mantle now, + And raised the covering from his brow, + Said, voyagers by land and sea + Were seldom feasted daintily, + And cheered his host by adding stern + He'd no refinement to unlearn. + +Which is what Heathcliff would have said sternly. Observe the effect of +him. + + A silence settled on the room, + The cheerful welcome sank to gloom; + But not those words, though cold or high, + So froze their hospitable joy. + No--there was something in his face, + Some nameless thing which hid not grace, + And something in his voice's tone + Which turned their blood as chill as stone. + The ringlets of his long black hair + Fell o'er a cheek most ghastly fair. + Youthful he seemed--but worn as they + Who spend too soon their youthful day. + When his glance dropped, 'twas hard to quell + Unbidden feelings' hidden swell; + And Pity scarce her tears could hide, + So sweet that brow with all its pride. + But when upraised his eye would dart + An icy shudder through the heart, + Compassion changed to horror then, + And fear to meet that gaze again. + + It was not hatred's tiger-glare, + Nor the wild anguish of despair; + It was not either misery + Which quickens friendship's sympathy; + No--lightning all unearthly shone + Deep in that dark eye's circling zone, + Such withering lightning as we deem + None but a spirit's look may beam; + And glad were all when he turned away + And wrapt him in his mantle grey, + And hid his head upon his arm, + And veiled from view his basilisk charm. + +That, I take it, is Zamorna, that Byronic hero, again; but it is also +uncommonly like Heathcliff, with "his basilisk eyes". And it is dated +July 1839, seven years before _Wuthering Heights_ was written. + +The other crucial instance is a nameless poem to the Earth. + + I see around me piteous tombstones grey + Stretching their shadows far away. + Beneath the turf my footsteps tread + Lie low and lone the silent dead; + Beneath the turf, beneath the mould, + For ever dark, for ever cold. + And my eyes cannot hold the tears + That memory hoards from vanished years. + For Time and Death and mortal pain + Give wounds that will not heal again. + Let me remember half the woe + I've seen and heard and felt below, + And heaven itself, so pure and blest, + Could never give my spirit rest. + Sweet land of light! Thy children fair + Know nought akin to our despair; + Nor have they felt, nor can they tell + What tenants haunt each mortal cell, + What gloomy guests we hold within, + Torments and madness, fear and sin! + Well, may they live in ecstasy + Their long eternity of joy; + At least we would not bring them down + With us to weep, with us to groan. + No, Earth would wish no other sphere + To taste her cup of suffering drear; + She turns from heaven a tearless eye + And only mourns that _we_ must die! + Ah mother! what shall comfort thee + In all this boundless misery? + To cheer our eager eyes awhile, + We see thee smile, how fondly smile! + But who reads not through the tender glow + Thy deep, unutterable woe? + Indeed no darling hand above + Can cheat thee of thy children's love. + We all, in life's departing shine, + Our last dear longings blend with thine, + And struggle still, and strive to trace + With clouded gaze thy darling face. + We would not leave our nature home + For _any_ world beyond the tomb. + No, mother, on thy kindly breast + Let us be laid in lasting rest, + Or waken but to share with thee + A mutual immortality. + +There is the whole spirit of _Wuthering Heights_; the spirit of +Catherine Earnshaw's dream; the spirit that in the last page broods over +the moorland graveyard. It is instinct with a more than pagan adoration +of the tragic earth, adored because of her tragedy. + +It would be dangerous to assert positively that "Remembrance" belongs to +the same song-cycle; but it undoubtedly belongs to the same cycle, or +rather cyclone, of passion; the cyclone that rages in the hearts of +Heathcliff and of Catherine. The genius of Emily Bronte was so far +dramatic that, if you could divide her poems into the personal and +impersonal, the impersonal would be found in a mass out of all +proportion to the other. But, with very few exceptions, you cannot so +divide them; for in her continuous and sustaining dream, the vision that +lasted for at least eleven years of her life, from eighteen-thirty-four, +the earliest date of any known Gondal poem, to eighteen-forty-five, the +last appearance of the legend, she _was_ these people; she lived, +indistinguishably and interchangeably, their tumultuous and passionate +life. Sometimes she is the lonely spirit that looks on in immortal +irony, raised above good and evil. More often she is a happy god, +immanent in his restless and manifold creations, rejoicing in this +multiplication of himself. It is she who fights and rides, who loves and +hates, and suffers and defies. She heads one poem naively: "To the Horse +Black Eagle that I rode at the Battle of Zamorna." The horse _I_ rode! +If it were not glorious, it would be (when you think what her life was +in that Parsonage) most mortally pathetic. + +But it is all in keeping. For, as she could dare the heavenly, divine +adventure, so there was no wild and ardent adventure of the earth she +did not claim. + + * * * * * + +Love of life and passionate adoration of the earth, adoration and +passion fiercer than any pagan knew, burns in _Wuthering Heights_. And +if that were all, it would be impossible to say whether her mysticism or +her paganism most revealed the soul of Emily Bronte. + +In _Wuthering Heights_ we are plunged apparently into a world of most +unspiritual lusts and hates and cruelties; into the very darkness and +thickness of elemental matter; a world that would be chaos, but for the +iron Necessity that brings its own terrible order, its own implacable +law of lust upon lust begotten, hate upon hate, and cruelty upon +cruelty, through the generations of Heathcliffs and of Earnshaws. + +Hindley Earnshaw is brutal to the foundling, Heathcliff, and degrades +him. Heathcliff, when his hour comes, pays back his wrong with the +interest due. He is brutal beyond brutality to Hindley Earnshaw, and he +degrades Hareton, Hindley's son, as he himself was degraded; but he is +not brutal to him. The frustrated passion of Catherine Earnshaw for +Heathcliff, and of Heathcliff for Catherine, hardly knows itself from +hate; they pay each other back torture for torture, and pang for +hopeless pang. When Catherine marries Edgar Linton, Heathcliff marries +Isabella, Edgar's sister, in order that he may torture to perfection +Catherine and Edgar and Isabella. His justice is more than poetic. The +love of Catherine Earnshaw was all that he possessed. He knows that he +has lost it through the degradation that he owes to Hindley Earnshaw. It +is because an Earnshaw and a Linton between them have robbed him of all +that he possessed, that, when his hour comes, he pays himself back by +robbing the Lintons and the Earnshaws of all that _they_ possess, their +Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He loathes above all loathely +creatures, Linton, his own son by Isabella. The white-blooded thing is +so sickly that he can hardly keep it alive. But with an unearthly +cruelty he cherishes, he nourishes this spawn till he can marry it on +its death-bed to the younger Catherine, the child of Catherine Earnshaw +and of Edgar Linton. This supreme deed accomplished, he lets the +creature die, so that Thrushcross Grange may fall into his hands. Judged +by his bare deeds, Heathcliff seems a monster of evil, a devil without +any fiery infernal splendour, a mean and sordid devil. + +But--and this is what makes Emily Bronte's work stupendous--not for a +moment can you judge Heathcliff by his bare deeds. Properly speaking, +there are no bare deeds to judge him by. Each deed comes wrapt in its +own infernal glamour, trailing a cloud of supernatural splendour. The +whole drama moves on a plane of reality superior to any deed. The spirit +of it, like Emily Bronte's spirit, is superbly regardless of the +material event. As far as material action goes Heathcliff is singularly +inert. He never seems to raise a hand to help his vengeance. He lets +things take their course. He lets Catherine marry Edgar Linton and +remain married to him. He lets Isabella's passion satisfy itself. He +lets Hindley Earnshaw drink himself to death. He lets Hareton sink to +the level of a boor. He lets Linton die. His most overt and violent +action is the capture of the younger Catherine. And even there he takes +advantage of the accident that brings her to the door of Wuthering +Heights. He watches and bides his time with the intentness of a brooding +spirit that in all material happenings seeks its own. He makes them his +instruments of vengeance. And Heathcliff's vengeance, like his passion +for Catherine, is an immortal and immaterial thing. He shows how little +he thinks of sordid, tangible possession; for, when his vengeance is +complete, when Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff are dead and their +lands and houses are his, he becomes utterly indifferent. He falls into +a melancholy. He neither eats nor drinks. He shuts himself up in Cathy's +little room and is found dead there, lying on Cathy's bed. + +If there never was anything less heavenly, less Christian, than this +drama, there never was anything less earthly, less pagan. There is no +name for it. It is above all our consecrated labels and distinctions. It +has been called a Greek tragedy, with the Aeschylean motto, [Greek: to +drasanti pathein]. But it is not Greek any more than it is Christian; +and if it has a moral, its moral is far more [Greek: to pathonti +pathein]. It is the drama of suffering born of suffering, and confined +strictly within the boundaries of the soul. + +Madame Duclaux (whose criticism of _Wuthering Heights_ is not to be +surpassed or otherwise gainsaid) finds in it a tragedy of inherited +evil. She thinks that Emily Bronte was greatly swayed by the doctrine of +heredity. "'No use,' she seems to be saying, 'in waiting for the +children of evil parents to grow, of their own will and unassisted, +straight and noble. The very quality of their will is as inherited as +their eyes and hair. Heathcliff is no fiend or goblin; the untrained, +doomed child of some half-savage sailor's holiday, violent and +treacherous. And how far shall we hold the sinner responsible for a +nature which is itself the punishment of some forefather's crime?'" + +All this, I cannot help thinking, is alien to the spirit of _Wuthering +Heights_, and to its greatness. It is not really any problem of heredity +that we have here. Heredity is, in fact, ignored. Heathcliff's race and +parentage are unknown. There is no resemblance between the good old +Earnshaws, who adopted him, and their son Hindley. Hareton does not +inherit Hindley's drunkenness or his cruelty. It is not through any +physical consequence of his father's vices that Hareton suffers. Linton +is in no physical sense the son of Heathcliff. If Catherine Linton +inherits something of Catherine Earnshaw's charm and temper, it is +because the younger Catherine belongs to another world; she is an +inferior and more physical creature. She has nothing in her of Catherine +Earnshaw's mutinous passion, the immortal and unearthly passion which +made that Catherine alive and killed her. Catherine Linton's "little +romance" is altogether another affair. + +The world of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw is a world of spiritual +affinities, of spiritual contacts and recoils where love begets and +bears love, and hate is begotten of hate and born of shame. Even Linton +Heathcliff, that "whey-faced, whining wretch", that physical degenerate, +demonstrates the higher law. His weakness is begotten by his father's +loathing on his mother's terror. + +Never was a book written with a more sublime ignoring of the physical. +You only get a taste of it once in Isabella's unwholesome love for +Heathcliff; that is not passion, it is sentiment, and it is thoroughly +impure. And you get a far-off vision of it again in Isabella's fear of +Heathcliff. Heathcliff understood her. He says of her, "'No brutality +disgusted her.... I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, +in my experiments on what she could endure and still creep shamefully +back.'" This civilized creature is nearer to the animals, there is more +of the earth in her than in Catherine or in Heathcliff. They are +elemental beings, if you like, but their element is fire. They are +clean, as all fiery, elemental things are clean. + +True, their love found violent physical expression; so that M. +Maeterlinck can say of them and their creator: "We feel that one must +have lived for thirty years under chains of burning kisses to learn what +she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such minuteness, +such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two lovers of _Wuthering +Heights_; to mark the self-conflicting movements of the tenderness that +would make suffer, and the cruelty that would make glad, the felicity +that prayed for death, and the despair that clung to life, the repulsion +that desired, the desire drunk with repulsion--love surcharged with +hatred, hatred staggering beneath its load of love."[A] + +[Footnote A: _Wisdom and Destiny_, translated by Alfred Sutro.] + +True; but the passion that consumes Catherine and Heathcliff, that burns +their bodies and destroys them, is nine-tenths a passion of the soul. It +taught them nothing of the sad secrets of the body. Thus Catherine's +treachery to Heathcliff is an unconscious treachery. It is her innocence +that makes it possible. She goes to Edgar Linton's arms with blind +eyes, in utter, childlike ignorance, not knowing what she does till it +is done and she is punished for it. She is punished for the sin of sins, +the sundering of the body from the soul. All her life after she sees her +sin. She has taken her body, torn it apart and given it to Edgar Linton, +and Heathcliff has her soul. + +"'You love Edgar Linton,' Nelly Dean says, 'and Edgar loves you ... +where is the obstacle?' + +"_'Here!_ and _here_!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her +forehead, and the other on her breast: 'in whichever place the soul +lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong.'... 'I've no +more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if +the wicked man in there hadn't brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't +have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he +shall never know how I love him, and that, not because he's handsome, +Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are +made of, his and mine are the same.'" + +Not only are they made of the same stuff, but Heathcliff _is_ her soul. + +"'I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that +there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the +use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries +in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries ... my great thought in +living is himself.... Nelly! I _am_ Heathcliff! He's always, always in +my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am a pleasure to myself, but +as my own being.'" + +That is her "secret". + +Of course, there is Cathy's other secret--her dream, which passes for +Emily Bronte's "pretty piece of Paganism". But it is only one side of +Emily Bronte. And it is only one side of Catherine Earnshaw. When +Heathcliff turns from her for a moment in that last scene of passion, +she says: "'Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me +out of the grave. _That_ is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not +_my_ Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my +soul. And,' she added musingly, 'the thing that irks me most is this +shattered prison, after all. I'm tired of being enclosed here. I'm +wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not +seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of +an aching heart; but really with it and in it. Nelly, you think you are +better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength; you are +sorry for me--very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for +_you_. I shall be incomparably above and beyond you all.'" + +True, adoration of Earth, the All-Mother, runs like a choric hymn +through all the tragedy. Earth is the mother and the nurse of these +children. They are brought to her for their last bed, and she gives them +the final consolation. + +Yet, after all, the end of this wild northern tragedy is far enough from +Earth, the All-Mother. The tumult of _Wuthering Heights_ ceases when +Heathcliff sickens. It sinks suddenly into the peace and silence of +exhaustion. And the drama closes, not in hopeless gloom, the agony of +damned souls, but in redemption, reconciliation. + +Catherine, the child of Catherine and of Edgar Linton, loves Hareton, +the child of Hindley Earnshaw. The evil spirit that possessed these two +dies with the death of Heathcliff. The younger Catherine is a mixed +creature, half-spiritualized by much suffering. Hareton is a splendid +animal, unspiritualized and unredeemed. Catherine redeems him; and you +gather that by that act of redemption, somehow, the souls of Catherine +and Heathcliff are appeased. + +The whole tremendous art of the book is in this wringing of strange and +terrible harmony out of raging discord. It ends on a sliding cadence, +soft as a sigh of peace only just conscious after pain. + +"I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next +the moor: the middle one grey and half-buried in heath; Edgar Linton's +only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff's +still bare. + +"I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths +fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind +breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine +unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." + + * * * * * + +But that is not the real end, any more than Lockwood's arrival at +Wuthering Heights is the beginning. It is only Lockwood recovering +himself; the natural man's drawing breath after the passing of the +supernatural. + +For it was not conceivable that the more than human love of Heathcliff +and Catherine should cease with the dissolution of their bodies. It was +not conceivable that Catherine, by merely dying in the fifteenth +chapter, should pass out of the tale. As a matter of fact, she never +does pass out of it. She is more in it than ever. + +For the greater action of the tragedy is entirely on the invisible and +immaterial plane; it is the pursuing, the hunting to death of an earthly +creature by an unearthly passion. You are made aware of it at the very +beginning when the ghost of the child Catherine is heard and felt by +Lockwood; though it is Heathcliff that she haunts. It begins in the +hour after Catherine's death, upon Heathcliff's passionate invocation: +"'Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest so long as I am living! You said +I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I +believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me +always--take any form--drive me mad! Only _do_ not leave me in this +abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unbearable! I _cannot_ +live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!'" + +It begins and is continued through eighteen years. He cannot see her, +but he is aware of her. He is first aware on the evening of the day she +is buried. He goes to the graveyard and breaks open the new-made grave, +saying to himself, "'I'll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, +I'll think it is the north wind that chills _me_; and if she be +motionless, it is sleep.'" A sighing, twice repeated, stops him. "'I +appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. +I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but as certainly as +you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though +it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt Cathy was there; not under +me, but on the earth.... Her presence was with me; it remained while I +refilled the grave, and led me home.'" + +But she cannot get through to him completely, because of the fleshly +body that he wears. + +He goes up to his room, his room and hers. "'I looked round +impatiently--I felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I +_could not_!... She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to +me! And since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the +sport of that intolerable torture!... When I sat in the house with +Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on +the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home, I +hastened to return; she _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was +certain! And when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I +couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either +outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or +even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a +child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a +hundred times a night--to be always disappointed! It racked me!... It +was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of +hair-breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen +years!'" + +In all Catherine's appearances you feel the impulse towards satisfaction +of a soul frustrated of its passion, avenging itself on the body that +betrayed it. It has killed Catherine's body. It will kill Heathcliff's; +for it _must_ get through to him. And he knows it. + +Heathcliff's brutalities, his cruelties, the long-drawn accomplishment +of his revenge, are subordinate to this supreme inner drama, this +wearing down of the flesh by the lust of a remorseless spirit. + +Here are the last scenes of the final act. Heathcliff is failing. +"'Nelly,' he says, 'there's a strange change approaching: I'm in its +shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life, that I +hardly remember to eat or drink. Those two who have left the room'" +(Catherine Linton and Hareton) "'are the only objects which retain a +distinct material appearance to me.... Five minutes ago, Hareton seemed +a personification of my youth, not a human being: I felt to him in such +a variety of ways that it would have been impossible to have accosted +him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine +connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose +the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for +what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I +cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the +flags? In every cloud, in every tree--filling the air at night, and +caught by glimpses in every object by day--I am devoured with her image! +The most ordinary faces of men and women--my own features--mock me with +a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda +that she did exist, and that I have lost her.'... + +"'But what do you mean by a _change_, Mr. Heathcliff?' I said, alarmed +at his manner.... + +"'I shall not know till it comes,' he said, 'I'm only half conscious of +it now.'" + +A few days pass. He grows more and more abstracted and detached. One +morning Nelly Dean finds him downstairs, risen late. + +"I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested +his arms on the table, and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, +surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless +eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half +a minute together.... + +"'Mr. Heathcliff! master!' I cried, 'don't, for God's sake stare as if +you saw an unearthly vision.' + +"'Don't, for God's sake, shout so loud,' he replied. 'Turn round, and +tell me, are we by ourselves?' + +"'Of course,' was my answer, 'of course we are.' + +"Still, I involuntarily obeyed him, as if I were not quite sure. With a +sweep of his hand he cleared a space in front of the breakfast-things, +and leant forward more at his ease. + +"Now I perceived that he was not looking at the wall; for, when I +regarded him alone, it seemed exactly that he gazed at something within +two yards' distance. And, whatever it was, it communicated, apparently, +both pleasure and pain in exquisite extremes: at least the anguished, +yet raptured, expression of his countenance suggested that idea. The +fancied object was not fixed: either his eyes pursued it with unwearied +diligence, and, even in speaking to me, were never weaned away. I vainly +reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to +touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his +hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they +reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim." + +He cannot sleep; and at dawn of the next day he comes to the door of his +room--Cathy's room--and calls Nelly to him. She remonstrates with him +for his neglect of his body's health, and of his soul's. + +"'Your cheeks are hollow, and your eyes bloodshot, like a person +starving with hunger, and going blind with loss of sleep.' + +"'It is not my fault that I cannot eat or rest,' he said.... 'I'll do +both as soon as I possibly can ... as to repenting of my injustices, +I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing. I am too happy; and yet +I'm not happy enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does not +satisfy itself.'" ... "In the afternoon, while Joseph and Hareton were +at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, +bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I +declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner +frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his +companion alone. + +"'I believe you think me a fiend,' he said, with his dismal laugh: +'something too horrible to live under a decent roof.' Then, turning to +Catherine, who was there, and who drew behind me at his approach, he +added, half sneeringly: 'Will _you_ come, chuck? I'll not hurt you. No! +to you I've made myself worse than the devil. Well, there is _one_ who +won't shrink from my company! By God! she's relentless. Oh, damn it! +It's unutterably too much for flesh and blood to bear--even mine.'" + +It is Heathcliff's susceptibility to this immaterial passion, the fury +with which he at once sustains and is consumed by it, that makes him +splendid. + +Peace under green grass could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such +a tragedy as _Wuthering Heights_. Its real end is the tale told by the +shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor. + +"'I was going to the Grange one evening--a dark evening, threatening +thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little +boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I +supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided. + +"'What is the matter, my little man?' I asked. + +"'There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' Nab,' he blubbered, +'un' I darnut pass 'em.'" + +It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the +supernatural. One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what +ghostly and immaterial passion and its unearthly satisfaction. + + * * * * * + +And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born. It +belongs to no school; it follows no tendency. You cannot put it into any +category. It is not "Realism", it is not "Romance", any more than _Jane +Eyre_: and if any other master's method, De Maupassant's or Turgeniev's, +is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can +seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory. +The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way +in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is +not the keynote of _Wuthering Heights_. The moral problem never entered +into Emily Bronte's head. You may call her what you will--Pagan, +pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips +from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. +Hers is an attitude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her +acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting. +It is too lucid and too high for pity. + +Heathcliff and Catherine exist. They justify their existence by their +passion. But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton +Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his +existence justifies him. + + Do I despise the timid deer, + Because his limbs are fleet with fear? + Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl, + Because his form is gaunt and foul? + Or, hear with joy the lev'ret's cry, + Because it cannot bravely die? + No! Then above his memory + Let Pity's heart as tender be. + +After all it _is_ pity; it is tenderness. + +And if Emily Bronte stands alone and is at her greatest in the things +that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said +to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for +instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, +for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly +Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality +through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old +farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And +masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that +moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All +warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the +rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that +I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, +and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into the warld.'" + +Charlotte Bronte said of her sister: "Though her feeling for the people +round her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, +with very few exceptions, ever experienced ... she could hear of them +with interest and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and +accurate; but _with_ them she rarely exchanged a word." And yet you +might have said she had been listening to Joseph all her life, such is +her command of his copious utterance: "'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph. +'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall +just tum'le o'er them brocken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear +how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to +Churstmas, flinging t' precious gifts o' God under fooit i' yer flaysome +rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff +bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i' that +plisky. I nobbut wish he may.'" + +Edgar Linton is weak in drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh +impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If +Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella. +These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate +wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white +ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in +silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, +are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh +and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage +children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange. +Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down +before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine +too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering +glass-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her +body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a +scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband. + +Emily Bronte shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the +relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid +passion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a +sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if +Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is +what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse +him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell +her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing +oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella +will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he +has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'" +It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the +sentimental passionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's +innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore +more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Bronte, like George Meredith, saw a +sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little +animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand +meme_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing +that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her +refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is no sensualist, hates +and loathes Isabella and her body. + +But there are moments when he also hates the body of Catherine that +betrayed her. Emily Bronte is unswerving in her drawing of Heathcliff. +It is of a piece with his strangeness, his unexpectedness, that he does +not hate Edgar Linton with anything like the same intensity of hatred +that he has for Isabella. And it is of a piece with his absolute fiery +cleanness that never for a moment does he think of taking the lover's +obvious revenge. For it is not, I imagine, that Emily Bronte +deliberately shirked the issue, or deliberately rejected it; it is that +that issue never entered her head. Nor do I see here, in his abandonment +of the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, +however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a +tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or +unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was +ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar +obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not +need it, Emily let it go. + +The evil wrought by Heathcliff, like the passion that inspired and +tortured him, is an unearthly thing. Charlotte showed insight when she +said in her preface to _Wuthering Heights_: "Heathcliff betrays one +solitary human feeling, and that is _not_ his love for Catherine; which +is a sentiment fierce and inhuman ... the single link that connects +Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for Hareton +Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied +esteem for Nelly Dean." But that Heathcliff is wholly inhuman--"a ghoul, +an afreet"--I cannot really see. Emily's psychology here is perforce +half on the unearthly plane; it is above our criticism, lending itself +to no ordinary tests. But for all his unearthliness, Heathcliff is +poignantly human, from his childhood when he implored Nelly Dean to make +him "decent", for he is "going to be good", to his last hour of piteous +dependence on her. You are not allowed for a moment to forget, that, +horrible and vindictive as he is, the child Heathcliff is yet a child. +Take the scene where the boy first conceives his vengeance. + +"On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely: + +"'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how +long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before +I do!' + +"'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked +people. We should learn to forgive.' + +"'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I +only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while +I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.'" + +It is very like Heathcliff. It is also pathetically like a child. + +In Hareton Earnshaw Emily Bronte is fairly on the earth all the time, +and nothing could be finer than her handling of this half-brutalized, +and wholly undeveloped thing, her showing of the slow dawn of his +feelings and intelligence. Her psychology is never psychologic. The +creature reveals himself at each moment of his unfolding for what he is. +It was difficult; for in his degradation he had a certain likeness in +unlikeness to the degraded Heathcliff. It was Heathcliff's indomitable +will that raised him. Hareton cannot rise without a woman's hand to help +him. The younger Catherine again was difficult, because of her likeness +to her mother. Her temper, her vanity, her headstrong trickiness are +Catherine Earnshaw. But Catherine Linton is a healthy animal, incapable +of superhuman passion, capable only (when properly chastened by +adversity) of quite ordinary pity and devotion. She inspires +bewilderment, but terror and fascination never; and never the glamour, +the magic evoked by the very name of Catherine Earnshaw. Her escapades +and fantasies, recalling Catherine Earnshaw, are all on an attenuated +scale. + +Yet Catherine Earnshaw seems now and then a less solid figure. That is +because her strength does not lie in solidity at all. She is a thing of +flame and rushing wind. One half of her is akin to the storms of +Wuthering Heights, the other belongs to her unseen abiding-place. Both +sides of her are immortal. + +And they are of that immortality which is the spirit of place--the +spirit that, more than all spirits, inspired Emily Bronte. Two of +Charlotte's books, _The Professor_ and _Villette_, might have been +written away from Haworth; Emily's owes much of its outward character to +the moors, where it was brought forth. Not even Charlotte could paint, +could suggest scenes like Emily Bronte. There is nobody to compare with +her but Thomas Hardy; and even he has to labour more, to put in more +strokes to achieve his effect. In four lines she gives the storm, the +cold and savage foreground, and the distance of the Heights: "One may +guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the +excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a +range of gaunt thorns, all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving +alms of the sun." + +See the finish of this landscape, framed in a window: "They sat together +in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, +beyond the garden trees and the wild green park, the valley of +Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very +soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that +runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). +Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was +invisible; it rather dips down on the other side." + +In six lines she can paint sound, and distance, and scenery, and the +turn of the seasons, and the two magics of two atmospheres. "Gimmerton +chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck +in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for +the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music +about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it +always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of +steady rain." + +That music is the prelude to Heathcliff's return, and to the passionate +scene that ends in Catherine's death. + +And nothing could be more vivid, more concrete, than Emily Bronte's +method. Time is marked as a shepherd on the moors might mark it, by the +movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars; by weather, and the +passage of the seasons. Passions, emotions, are always presented in +bodily symbols, by means of the bodily acts and violences they inspire. +The passing of the invisible is made known in the same manner. And the +visible world moves and shines and darkens with an absolute illusion of +reality. Here is a road seen between sunset and moonrise: "... all that +remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could +see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by the light of +that splendid moon". + +The book has faults, many and glaring faults. You have to read it many +times before you can realize in the mass its amazing qualities. For it +is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, this story +of two houses and of three generations that the man Lockwood is supposed +to tell. Not only has Lockwood to tell of things he could not possibly +have heard and seen, but sometimes you get scene within vivid scene, +dialogue within dialogue, and tale within tale, four deep. Sometimes you +are carried back in a time and sometimes forward. You have to think hard +before you know for certain whose wife Catherine Heathcliff really is. +You cannot get over Lockwood's original mistake. And this poor device of +narrative at second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, is used to convey +things incredible, inconceivable; all the secret, invisible drama of the +souls of Catherine and Heathcliff, as well as whole acts of the most +visible, the most tangible, the most direct and vivid and tumultuous +drama; drama so tumultuous, so vivid, and so direct, that by no +possibility could it have been conveyed by any medium. It simply +happens. + +And that is how Emily Bronte's genius triumphs over all her faults. It +is not only that you forgive her faults and forget them, you are not--in +the third reading anyhow--aware of them. They disappear, they are +destroyed, they are burnt up in her flame, and you wonder how you ever +saw them. All her clumsy contrivances cannot stay her course, or obscure +her light, or quench her fire. Things happen before your eyes, and it +does not matter whether Lockwood, or Nelly Dean, or Heathcliff, or +Catherine, tells you of their happening. + +And yet, though Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the thinnest, the most +transparent of pure mediums, they preserve their personalities +throughout. Nelly especially. The tale only begins to move when Lockwood +drops out and Nelly takes it up. At that point Emily Bronte's style +becomes assured in its directness and simplicity, and thenceforward it +never falters or changes its essential character. + +And it is there, first of all, in that unfaltering, unchanging quality +of style that she stands so far above her sister. She has no purple +patches, no decorative effects. No dubiously shining rhetoric is hers. +She does not deal in metaphors or in those ponderous abstractions, those +dreadful second-hand symbolic figures--Hope, Imagination, Memory, and +the rest of them, that move with every appearance of solidity in +Charlotte's pages. There are no angels in her rainbows. Her "grand +style" goes unclothed, perfect in its naked strength, its naked beauty. +It is not possible to praise Charlotte's style without reservations; it +is not always possible to give passages that illustrate her qualities +without suppressing her defects. What was a pernicious habit with +Charlotte, her use of words like "peruse", "indite", "retain", with +Emily is a mere slip of the pen. There are only, I think, three of such +slips in _Wuthering Heights_. Charlotte was capable of mixing her worst +things with her best. She mixed them most in her dialogue, where sins of +style are sinfullest. It is not always possible to give a scene, word +for word, from Charlotte's novels; the dramatic illusion, the illusion +of reality, is best preserved by formidable cutting. + +But not only was Emily's style sinless; it is on the whole purest, most +natural, and most inevitable in her dialogue; and that, although the +passions she conceived were so tremendous, so unearthly, that she might +have been pardoned if she found no human speech to render them. + +What is more, her dramatic instinct never fails her as it fails +Charlotte over and over again. Charlotte had not always the mastery and +self-mastery that, having worked a situation up to its dramatic climax, +leaves it there. A certain obscure feeling for rightness guides her in +the large, striding movement of the drama; it is in the handling of the +scenes that she collapses. She wanders from climax to climax; she goes +back on her own trail; she ruins her best effects by repetition. She has +no continuous dramatic instinct; no sense whatever of dramatic form. + +These are present somehow in _Wuthering Heights_, in spite of its +monstrous formlessness. Emily may have had no more sense of form for +form's sake than Charlotte; she may have had no more dramatic instinct; +but she had an instinct for the ways of human passion. She knew that +passion runs its course, from its excitement to its climax and +exhaustion. It has a natural beginning and a natural end. And so her +scenes of passion follow nature. She never goes back on her effect, +never urges passion past its climax, or stirs it in its exhaustion. In +this she is a greater "realist" than Charlotte. + + * * * * * + +It is incredible that _Wuthering Heights_, or any line of it, any line +that Emily Bronte ever wrote, should have passed for Charlotte's. She +did things that Charlotte could never have done if she tried a thousand +years, things not only incomparably greater, but unique. + +Yet in her lifetime she was unrecognized. What is true of her prose is +true also of her poems. They, indeed, did bring her a little praise, +obscure and momentary. No less she was unrecognized to such an extent +that _Wuthering Heights_ was said and believed to be an immature work of +Charlotte's. Even after her death, her eulogist, Sydney Dobell, was so +far from recognizing her, that he seems to have had a lingering doubt as +to Ellis Bell's identity until Charlotte convinced him of his error. + +And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Bronte +the glory that she has won at last from time. The very latest theory,[A] +offered to the world as a marvellous discovery, the fruit of passionate +enthusiasm and research, is the old, old theory that Charlotte, and not +Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. And Sydney Dobell, with his little +error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for +Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every +other work of Emily's. He leans rashly enough on the assumption that her +"Gondal Chronicles" were, in their puerility, beneath contempt, still +more rashly on his own opinion that she was no poet. + +[Footnote A: _The Key to the Bronte Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby. See +Appendix I.] + +If this were the only line he took, this amusing theorist might be left +alone. The publication of the _Complete Poems_ settles him. The value, +the really priceless value, of his undertaking is in the long array of +parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he +endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns +are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his +theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself +wherein Charlotte and Emily Bronte differed; in what manner, with what +incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger +sister was pre-eminent, he cannot do better than study those parallel +passages. If ever there was a voice, a quality, an air absolutely apart +and distinct, not to be approached by, or confounded with any other, it +is Emily Bronte's. + +It was the glare of Charlotte's fame that caused in her lifetime that +blindness and confusion. And Emily, between pride and a superb +indifference, suffered it. She withdrew, with what seemed an obstinate +perversity, into her own magnificent obscurity. She never raised a hand +to help herself. She left no record, not a note or a word to prove her +authorship of _Wuthering Heights_. Until the appearance in 1910 of her +_Complete Poems_ the world had no proof of it but Charlotte's statement. +It was considered enough, in Charlotte's lifetime. The world accepted +her disclaimer. + +But the trouble began again after Charlotte's death. Emily herself had +no legend; but her genius was perpetually the prey of rumours that left +her personality untouched. Among the many provoked by Mrs. Gaskell's +_Life_, there was one attributing _Wuthering Heights_ to her brother +Branwell.[A] Mr. Francis Grundy said that Branwell told him he had +written _Wuthering Heights_. Mr. Leyland believed Mr. Grundy. He +believed that Branwell was a great poet and a great novelist, and he +wrote two solid volumes of his own in support of his belief. + +[Footnote A: The curious will find a note on this point in Appendix II.] + +Nobody believes in Mr. Grundy, or in Mr. Leyland and his belief in +Branwell now. All that can be said of Branwell, in understanding and +extenuation, is that he would have been a great poet and a greater +novelist if he could have had his own way. + +This having of your own way, unconsciously, undeliberately, would seem +to be the supreme test of genius. Having your own way in the teeth of +circumstances, of fathers and of brothers, and of aunts, of +school-mistresses,[A] and of French professors, of the parish, of +poverty, of public opinion and hereditary disease; in the teeth of the +most disastrous of all hindrances, duty, not neglected, but fulfilled. +By this test the genius of Emily Bronte fairly flames; Charlotte's +stands beside it with a face hidden at times behind bruised and darkened +wings. By this test even Anne's pale talent shows here and there a +flicker as of fire. In all three the having of their own way was, after +all, the great submission, the ultimate obedience to destiny. + +[Footnote A: It was Miss Wooler who taught Charlotte to "peruse".] + +For genius like theirs _is_ destiny. And that brings us back to the +eternal question of the Sources. "Experience" will not account for what +was greatest in Charlotte. It will hardly account for what was least in +Emily. With her only the secret, the innermost experience counted. If +the sources of _Wuthering Heights_ are in the "Gondal Poems", the +sources of the poems are in _that_ experience, in the long life of her +adventurous spirit. Her genius, like Henry Angora and Rosina and the +rest of them, flew from the "Palaces of Instruction". As she _was_ Henry +Angora, so she _was_ Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. + +It is a case of "The Horse I rode at the battle of Zamorna", that is +all. + +There has been too much talk about experience. What the critic, the +impressionist, of the Brontes needs is to recover, before all things, +the innocence of the eye. No doubt we all of us had it once, and can +remember more or less what it was like. To those who have lost it I +would say: Go back and read again Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte +Bronte_. + +Years and years ago, when I was a child, hunting forlornly in my +father's bookshelves, I came upon a small, shabby volume, bound in +yellow linen. The title-page was adorned with one bad wood-cut that +showed a grim, plain house standing obliquely to a churchyard packed +with tombstones--tombstones upright and flat, and slanting at all +angles. In the foreground was a haycock, where the grave grass had been +mown. I do not know how the artist, whose resources were of the +slenderest, contrived to get his overwhelming but fascinating effect of +moorland solitude, of black-grey nakedness and abiding gloom. But he +certainly got it and gave it. There was one other picture, representing +a memorial tablet. + +Tombstones always fascinated me in those days, because I was mortally +afraid of them; and I opened that book and read it through. + +I could not, in fact, put it down. For the first time I was in the grip +of a reality more poignant than any that I had yet known, of a tragedy +that I could hardly bear. I suppose I have read that book a score of +times since then. There are pages in it that I shrink from approaching +even now, because of the agony of realization they revive. The passing +bell tolled continually in the prelude; it sounded at intervals +throughout; it tolled again at the close. The refrain of "Here lie the +Remains" haunted me like a dolorous song. It seemed to me a decorous and +stately accompaniment to such a tale, and that wood-cut on the +title-page a fitting ornament. I knew every corner of that house. I have +an impression (it is probably a wrong one) of a flagged path going right +down from the Parsonage door through another door and plunging among the +tombs. I saw six little white and wistful faces looking out of an upper +window; I saw six little children going up and up a lane, and I wondered +how the tiny feet of babies ever got so far. I saw six little Bronte +babies lost in the spaces of the illimitable moors. They went over +rough stones and walls and mountain torrents; their absurd petticoats +were blown upwards by the wind, and their feet were tangled in the +heather. They struggled and struggled, and yet were in an ecstasy that I +could well understand. + +I remember I lingered somewhat long over the schooldays at Cowan Bridge +and that I found the Brussels period dull; M. Heger struck me as a +tiresome pedant, and I wondered how Charlotte could ever have put up +with him. There was a great deal about Branwell that I could not +understand at all, and so forgot. And I skipped all the London part, and +Charlotte's literary letters. I had a very vague idea of Charlotte apart +from Haworth and the moors, from the Parsonage and the tombstones, from +Tabby and Martha and the little black cat that died, from the garden +where she picked the currants, and the quiet rooms where she wrote her +wonderful, wonderful books. + +But, for all that skipping and forgetting, there stood out a vivid and +ineffaceable idea of Emily; Emily who was tall and strong and +unconquerable; Emily who loved animals, and loved the moors; Emily and +Keeper, that marvellous dog; Emily kneading bread with her book propped +before her; Emily who was Ellis Bell, listening contemptuously to the +reviews of _Wuthering Heights_; Emily stitching at the long seam with +dying fingers; and Emily dead, carried down the long, flagged path, with +Keeper following in the mourners' train. + +And, all through, an invisible, intangible presence, something +mysterious, but omnipotently alive; something that excited these three +sisters; something that atoned, that not only consoled for suffering and +solitude and bereavement, but that drew its strength from these things; +something that moved in this book like the soul of it; something that +they called "genius". + +Now that, as truly as I can set it down, is the impression conveyed to a +child's mind by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. And making +some deductions for a child's morbid attraction to tombstones, and a +child's natural interest in children, it seems to me even now that this +innocent impression is the true one. It eliminates the inessential and +preserves the proportions; above all, it preserves the figure of Emily +Bronte, solitary and unique. + +Anyhow, I have never been able to get away from it. + +_September_ 1911. + + + + +APPENDIX I + +THE KEY TO THE BRONTE WORKS + + +More than once Mr. Malham-Dembleby has approached us with his mysterious +"Key". There was his "Key to _Jane Eyre_", published in the _Saturday +Review_ in 1902; there was his "Lifting of the Bronte Veil", published +in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1907; and there was the correspondence +that followed. Now he has gathered all his evidence together into one +formidable book, and we are faced with what he calls his "miraculous and +sensational" discovery that it was Charlotte and not Emily Bronte who +wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that in _Wuthering Heights_ she +immortalized the great tragic passion of her life, inspired by M. Heger, +who, if you please, is Heathcliff. + +This is Mr. Malham-Dembleby's most important contribution to the +subject. M. Heger, Mr. Malham-Dembleby declares, was Heathcliff before +he was M. Pelet, or Rochester, or M. Paul. And as it was Charlotte and +not Emily who experienced passion, Charlotte alone was able to +immortalize it. + +So much Mr. Malham-Dembleby assumes in the interests of psychology. But +it is not from crude psychological arguments that he forges his +tremendous Key. It is from the internal evidence of the works, supported +by much "sensational" matter from the outside. + +By way of internal evidence then, we have first the sensational +discovery of a work, _Gleanings in Craven, or The Tourists' Guide_, by +"one Frederic Montagu", published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838, which +work the author of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ must have read +and drawn upon for many things, names (including her own pseudonym of +Currer Bell), descriptions of scenery, local legends, as of that fairy +Jannet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, who haunted the sources of the +Aire and suggested Rochester's Queen of Elves, his fairy, Janet Eyre. +Parallel passages are given showing a certain correspondence between +Montagu's traveller's tale and the opening scene of _Wuthering Heights_. +Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house, like Lockwood, and, like +Lockwood, is shown to bed, dreams, and is awakened by a white-faced +apparition (his hostess, not his host), who holds a lighted candle, like +Heathcliff, and whose features, like Heathcliff's, are convulsed with +diabolical rage, and so on. Mr. Malham-Dembleby, in a third parallel +column, uses the same phrases to describe Jane Eyre's arrival at +Rochester's house, her dreams, and the appearance of Rochester's mad +wife at her bedside; his contention being that the two scenes are +written by the same hand. + +All this is very curious and interesting; so far, however, Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's sensational evidence does no more for us than suggest +that Charlotte and Emily may very likely have read Montagu's book. + +But the plot thickens. Mr. Malham-Dembleby first prints parallel +passages from Montagu's book and _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, +then, extensively, scene after scene from _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering +Heights_. + +Some of these coincidences seem on the first blush of it remarkable, for +instance, the child-phantom which appears both to Jane Eyre and to Nelly +Dean in _Wuthering Heights_; or the rainy day and the fireside scene, +which occur in the third chapter of _Wuthering Heights_ and the opening +chapter of _Jane Eyre_. Others again, such as the parallel between the +return of Heathcliff to Catherine and that of Jane to Rochester, will +not bear examination for a moment. Of this and most of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's parallels it may be said that they only maintain their +startling character by the process of tearing words from their +sentences, sentences from their contexts, contexts from their scenes, +and scenes from the living body of each book. Apparently to Mr. +Malham-Dembleby, a book, at any rate a Bronte book, is not a living +body; each is a box of German bricks, and he takes all the boxes and +tumbles them out on the floor together and rearranges them so as to show +that, after all, there was only one box of bricks in the family, and +that was Charlotte's. Much of his argument and the force of his parallel +passages depends on the identification of the characters in the Bronte +works, not only with their assumed originals, but with each other. For +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's purposes poor M. Heger, a model already +remorselessly overworked by Charlotte, has to sit, not only for M. +Pelet, for Rochester and Yorke Hunsden, for Robert and for Louis Moore, +but for Heathcliff, and, if you would believe it, for Hareton Earnshaw; +because (parallel passage!) the younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw +were teacher and pupil, and so (when she taught him English) were +Charlotte and M. Heger. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby's work of identification is made easier for him by +his subsidiary discovery of Charlotte's two methods, Method I, +interchange of the sex; Method II, alteration of the age of her +characters. With this licence almost any character may be any other. +Thus Hareton Earnshaw looking at Catherine is Jane Eyre looking at Mr. +Rochester. When he touches her Nelly Dean says, "He might have stuck a +knife into her, she started in such a taking"; and Rochester says to +Jane, "You stick a sly penknife under my ear" (parallel passage!). +Lockwood at Wuthering Heights is Jane Eyre at Thornton Hall; Heathcliff +appearing at Lockwood's bedside, besides being M. Heger and Rochester, +is Rochester's mad wife. Heathcliff returning to Catherine is Jane +returning to Rochester, and so on. But however varied, however +apparently discriminated the characters, M. Heger is in all the men, and +Charlotte is in all the women, in the two Catherines, in Jane Eyre and +Frances Henri; in Caroline Helstone, in Pauline Bassompierre, and Lucy +Snowe. + +Now there is a certain plausibility in this. With all their vividness +and individuality Charlotte Bronte's characters have a way of shading +off into each other. Jane has much in common with Frances and with Lucy, +and Lucy with Pauline. Her men incline rather to one type, that of the +masterful, arbitrary, instructive male; that is the type she likes best +to draw. Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_ splits up into Rochester and +Robert Moore and Mr. Yorke; and there is a certain amount of Paul +Emanuel in all of them. But life gives us our types very much that way, +and there is a bit of somebody else in everybody. It is easy to suggest +identity by exaggerating small points of resemblance and suppressing +large and essential differences (which is what Mr. Malham-Dembleby does +all the time). But take each whole living man and woman as they have +been created for us, I don't care if Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre +_did_ each have a fit of passion in a locked room, and if a servant +waited upon each with gruel; there is no earthly likeness between the +soul of Catherine and the soul of Jane. I don't care if there was +"hell-light" in Rochester's eyes and Heathcliff's too, if they both +swore by the "Deuce", and had both swarthy complexions like Paul +Emanuel; for there is a whole universe between Heathcliff and Rochester, +between Rochester and M. Paul. Beside Heathcliff, that Titan raging on a +mountain-top, M. Paul is merely a little man gesticulating on an +_estrade_. + +So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to +force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Heger and of the +great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his +identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he +can lay his hands on, from the _Poems_, from _Wuthering Heights_, from +_Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_ and _The Professor_, "... all her life's +hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart..." +(_Villette_) "... faith was blighted, confidence destroyed..." (_Jane +Eyre_) ... "Mr. Rochester" (M. Heger, we are informed in confidential +brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that +Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument. +"Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark +season when Charlotte Bronte wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she +portrayed M. Heger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with +'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So +that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul +Heger". We must believe that _Wuthering Heights_ was written in pure +vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Bronte repudiated its authorship for +three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her +"heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified +animus of her portrait of M. Heger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for +certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence. + +Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely +upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his +own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in +Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared +after the publication of _Jane Eyre_. So far there is nothing new in his +discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugene Sue's +extinct novel of _Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice_, and gives us parallel +passages from that. For in _Miss Mary_, published in 1850-51[A] we have, +not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily +from _Jane Eyre_, but the situation in _The Professor_ and _Villette_ is +largely anticipated. We are told that Eugene Sue was in Brussels in +1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is +interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr. +Malham-Dembleby maintains--that M. Heger made indiscreet revelations to +Eugene Sue, but that Eugene Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took +his own where he found it, either in the pages of _Jane Eyre_ or in the +tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Heger may have +been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate, +have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer +for what Madame Heger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes +of Eugene Sue. + +[Footnote A: Serially in the _London Journal_ in 1850; in volume form in +Paris, 1851. It is possible, but not likely, that Eugene Sue may have +seen the manuscript of _The Professor_ when it was "going the round".] + +Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Heger portrait, +that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte +Bronte in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading _Shirley_. It is +signed Paul Heger, 1850, the year of _Shirley's_ publication, and the +year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two +inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's +death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Heger, done from life in +1850." The handwriting gives no clue. + +Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, +which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in _Villette_. He +says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the +dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green +gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, +it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, +gown or no gown, the portrait _may_ be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says +that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's +house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that +Charlotte and M. Heger met in London that year, and that he then drew +this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very +creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Heger's children +maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly +evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of +another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the +portrait from the Heger family, a statement at variance with the +evidence of the Heger family itself. But granted that the children of M. +Heger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this +portrait of Charlotte Bronte from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, +I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of +the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. +Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication. + + + + +APPENDIX II + + +Leyland's theory is that Branwell Bronte wrote the first seventeen +chapters of _Wuthering Heights_. It has very little beyond Leyland's +passionate conviction to support it. There is a passage in a letter of +Branwell's to Leyland, the sculptor, written in 1845, where he says he +is writing a three-volume novel of which the first volume is completed. +He compares it with "Hamlet" and with "Lear". There is also Branwell's +alleged statement to Mr. Grundy. And there is an obscure legend of +manuscripts produced from Branwell's hat, before the eyes of Mr. Grundy, +in an inn-parlour. Leyland argues freely from the antecedent probability +suggested by Branwell's letters and his verse, which he published by way +of vindication. He could hardly have done Branwell a worse service. +Branwell's letters give us a vivid idea of the sort of manuscripts that +would be produced, in inn-parlours, from his hat. As for his verse--that +formless, fluent gush of sentimentalism--it might have passed as an +error of his youth, but for poor Leyland's comments on its majesty and +beauty. There are corpses in it and tombstones, and girls dying of +tuberculosis, obscured beyond recognition in a mush of verbiage. There +is not a live line in it. One sonnet only, out of Branwell's many +sonnets, is fitted to survive. It has a certain melancholy, sentimental +grace. But it is not a good sonnet, and it shows Branwell at his best. +At his worst he sinks far below Charlotte at her worst, and, compared +with Emily or with Charlotte at her best, Branwell is nowhere. Even Anne +beats him. Her sad, virginal restraint gives a certain form and value +to her colourless and slender gift. + +There is a psychology of such things, as there is a psychology of works +of genius. Emily Bronte's work, with all its faults of construction, +shows one and indivisible, fused in one fire from first to last. One +cannot take the first seventeen chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ and +separate them from the rest. There is no faltering anywhere and no break +in the power and the passion of this stupendous tale. And where passion +is, sentimentalism is not. And there is not anywhere in _Wuthering +Heights_ a trace of that corruption which for the life of him Branwell +could not have kept out of the manuscripts he produced from his hat. + + + + +INDEX + + +Absolute, the, 16, 176. +_Agnes Grey_, 39, 40, 49. +Augustine, St., 185. + +Ballynaskeagh, 20. +Balzac, 54, 120, 121, 163. +Bassompierre, Pauline de, in + Villette, 153-157. +Being, 184. + -- Parmenides on, 185. +Birrell, Mr., 14, 20, 31, 41, 65. +Blake, William, 175, 178. +Branwell, Miss, at Haworth, 23, + 24. + -- -- death of, 36. + -- Maria, marries Rev. Patrick + Bronte, 20. + -- -- illness of, 23. + -- -- death of, 23. +Bronte-- + Anne, 49-57. + -- 27, 28. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 27, 33, + 39. + -- at Thorp Green, 33, 36, + 38, 50. + -- in London, 40. + -- character of 49-51, 55, + 56. + -- death of, 45. + -- diary of, 34, 168, 194. + -- Poems of, 54-57, 188, + 246. + -- novels of, 39, 49-54. + -- and Branwell Bronte + compared, 54, 246. + Charlotte, 57-167. + Charlotte at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 15, 16, 19, + 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31, + 37, 39, 46, 47, 69, 83, 94, + 103, 105, 165, 235, 236. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25, + 27, 236. + -- at Roe Head, 26, 27, 94, + 95. + -- at Dewsbury Moor, 27, + 94. + -- at Stonegappe, 28, 62-64. + -- at Rawdon, 33, 35, 67. + -- in Brussels, 15, 35-37, + 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- in London, 15, 40, 46, + 47, 244. + -- character of, 16, 66 et + seq., 80, 82, 83-86, 167. + -- death of, 48, 49. + -- early writings of, 101-104. + -- genius of, 13, 14, 19, 20, + 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, 91, + 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, + 233. + -- marriage of, 47-49. + -- novels of, 105-165. + -- Poems of, 39, 103, 164, + 169, 170, 246. + -- her love of children, + 64-67, 156. + -- and Emily Bronte compared, + 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 31, 64, 65, 66, 68. + Emily Jane, 167-234. + -- at Haworth, 19, 20-22, + 25, 26, 27, 39. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- at Roe Head, 27, 39. + -- at Halifax, 27. + -- in Brussels, 35, 36, 37. + -- death of, 43, 44, 139, + 140, 173. + -- character of, 27, 167-173. + -- diary of, 33, 38, 194. + -- genius of, 14, 15, 16, 17, + 22, 171, 172, 185-186, 187, + 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, 236. + -- Poems of, 17, 39, 174-185, + 231, 232. + -- mysticism of, 16, 168, + 171, 173-181, 186. + -- novel of, 39. + -- paganism of, 16, 135, + 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- and Charlotte Bronte + compared, 48, 167-169, 229-231, + 233. + -- M. Maeterlinck on, 14, + 170, 213. + -- Mr. Swinburne on, 14, + 174. + Maria, 20, 22. + -- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25. + -- character of, 24, 25. + -- death of, 25. + Patrick Branwell, 15, 22, 27, + 28, 29, 30, 34, 54, 55, 58, + 59, 61, 199, 236. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20, 25, + 28-30, 34, 42. + -- at Bradford, 28, 29. + -- at Luddenden Foot, 34. + -- at Thorp Green, 40, 41. + -- in London, 29. + -- character of, 40-43, 50-54. + -- death of, 43. + -- authorship of _Wuthering + Heights_ ascribed to, 233, 246, + 247. + Patrick Branwell and Emily + Bronte compared, 246, 247. + -- and Anne Bronte compared, + 54, 233. + -- and Mrs. Robinson, 40, + 41, 50-52. + -- Poems of, 28, 29, 42, + 164, 233, 246. + Patrick, Rev., 20-22, 24, 25, + 36, 37, 42, 43, 83. + -- at Thornton, 20. + -- at Haworth, 20. + -- in Ireland, 20, 21. + -- character of, 20, 21, 22, + 24. + -- works of, 22. +_Brontes, The Fact and Fiction_, by + Angus Mackay, 81. +Brown, John, 28, 29, 30, 51. +Brussels, Charlotte Bronte in, 15, + 35-37, 81-90, 158, 241, 246. + -- Emily Bronte in, 35, 36, 37. + -- influence of, 15, 81-90, 158. +Byron, 121, 206, 207. + +Children, love of, 64-67, 156. + -- in Charlotte Bronte's + novels, 64, 65, 66, 156. + -- in George Eliot's novels, + 64, 156. +Cowan Bridge School, 24, 25, 27, + 91, 236. +Creative Impulse, the, 23, 155, + 157. +Criticism of Charlotte Bronte, + 15, 31-33, 64-75, 78-81, 117, + 120, 122. + -- of _Jane Eyre_, 114, 117, + 120-124, 128-142. + -- of _Shirley_, 65, 68, 131, 132, + 137, 138, 143. + -- of _Villette_, 143-149, 153-160, + 162, 163. + -- of _Emma_, 161, 162. + -- of Charlotte Bronte's + _Poems_, 164, 165. + -- of Emily Bronte's _Poems_, + 174-209. +Criticism of _Wuthering Heights_, + 209-234. + -- of _Agnes Grey_, 49, 50. + -- of _The Tenant of Wildfell + Hall_, 54, 55. + -- of Anne Bronte's _Poems_, + 54-57, 188, 246. + +Dean, Nelly, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 222, 224, 225, 229. +Destiny, 35, 36, 37, 39, 48, 103, + 105, 234. +_Destiny, Wisdom and_, quoted, 170. +Dewsbury, Charlotte Bronte at, + 27, 94. +Dialogue, 116, 117, 139, 140, 149, + 230. +Diary, Emily Bronte's, 33, 38, + 194. + -- Anne Bronte's, 34, 168, + 194. +Dimnet, M., 15, 16, 51, 163. + -- -- his criticism of Charlotte + Bronte, 16. + -- -- his criticism of + _Wuthering Heights_, 17. +Dobell, Sydney, on Emily + Bronte, 232. +Dramatic instinct of Charlotte + Bronte, 163, 231, 232. + -- -- of Emily Bronte, 231, + 232. +Duclaux, Madame, 14, 20, 21, 44, + 50, 61, 120. + -- -- her Emily Bronte, + 14, 21, 44, 50, 120, 167, 182. + -- -- on _Wuthering Heights_ + 211, 212. +Dunton, Mr. Theodore Watts-, + 14, 15. + +Earnshaw, Catherine, 169, + 173, 208-229. + -- -- character of, 212-216, + 227. + -- Hareton, 209-212. + -- -- character of, 215-218, + 226. +Earth, the, 127, 136, 143, 173, + 207, 208, 224. + -- Emily Bronte's love of, + 136, 174, 175, 208, 222. + -- Genius of, 175. + -- Poem to, 207, 208. +Ecstasy, 179. +Eliot, George, 64, 143, 156, 171. +Emanuel, Paul, 105, 144-146, + 148-153, 157, 242, 243. +_Emma, Fragment of_, 161, 162. +Experience, 144 et seq., 170, 172, + 173, 234. + -- novel of, 106, 107, 143-146, + 148, 164. + -- how far important, 144, + 145, 148, 234. + -- of Charlotte Bronte, 129, + 130, 172, 234. +Eyre, name whence derived, 239. + +Fanshawe, Ginevra, character + of, 154, 159. +Farrar, Dean, 55. +Fielding, 123. +_Fragment of Emma_, 161, 162. + +Gaskell, Mrs., 20, 21, 22, 30, + 42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 96, 101, + 120, 143, 147, 167. +Gaskell's, Mrs., _Life of Charlotte + Bronte_, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, 234-237. +Genius, + -- of Charlotte Bronte, 13, 14, + 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, + 91, 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, 233. + -- of Emily Bronte, 14, 15, + 16, 17, 22, 171, 172, 185, 186, + 187, 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, + 236. + -- the, of Place, 19, 20, 227, + 228. + -- the, of Earth, 174, 175. + -- test of, 233, 234. +"Gondal Chronicles", 38, 39, + 193, 194, 232. +"Gondal Poems", 17, 193-208, + 234. +Grundy, Francis, 33, 51, 60, 203, + 246. + +Haworth, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, + 29, 37, 42-44, 168. + -- influence of, 24, 25, 30, 47, + 94, 103, 105, 165, 166, 227, + 228, 235, 236. +Heathcliff, 53, 170, 197, 209-221, + 222, 224, 225, 239-242. + -- character of, 209, 210, 211, + 226. + -- and Zamorna, 202-207. +Heger, M. Constantin, 14, 35, 36, + 81-90. + -- -- character of, 88, 89, + 146, 147. + -- -- influence of, 36, 100, + 103-105. +Heger's, M. Constantin, relations + with Charlotte Bronte, + 14, 15, 81-90, 96, 100, 104, 105, + 130, 239-247. + -- -- original of Paul + Emanuel, 105, 144-150, 239-247. + -- Madame, 14, 15, 35, 36, + 85-89, 104, 148. + -- -- original of Madame + Beck, 144, 148, 149. +Helstone, Caroline, 98, 137, 139, + 141, 142, 143. + -- -- and Miss Ellen + Nussey, 75, 98. +Henri, Frances, 89, 108-110. +Heredity, 211, 212. + +Imagination and the real, 130, + 144. + +_Jane Eyre_, 21, 24, 39, 40, 64, 68, + 89, 91, 101, 103, 109, 110, + 112-131, 133, 143, 148, 159, + 239-247. + -- -- criticisms of, 112, + 116-124. + -- -- dialogue in, 113, 114, + 117, 118, 119. + -- -- passion in, 113, 114, + 115, 116, 117. + -- -- reality of, 112, 113, + 124. + -- -- style in, 128, 129. + -- -- and _The Professor_ + compared, 105, 109, 110, 112, + 113, 129, 138. + -- -- and _Shirley_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- -- quoted, 113-115, + 117-119, 125-129. +John of the Cross, St., 180, 181. + +Letters of Charlotte Bronte, + 46, 53, 75, 76, 165, 166. + -- -- to Miss Ellen Nussey, + 46, 72, 75-78, 82-92. + -- -- from Brussels, 84-87. + -- -- to M. Heger, 90. + -- -- to Southey, 99. + -- -- to Wordsworth, 99. +Leyland, Francis A., 60, 61. + -- -- on Branwell Bronte, + 81, 233, 246. + -- the sculptor, 29, 51, 246. +Lewes, George Henry, 33, 64, 68, + 124. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 68. +_Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Mrs. + Gaskell's, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, + 234-237. +Linton, Catherine, 212, 221, 222, + 227. +London, Charlotte Bronte in, 15, + 40, 46, 47, 244. + +Mackay, Mr. Angus, 81. +Maeterlinck, M., on Emily + Bronte, 14, 170, 213. +Malham-Dembleby, Mr. J., 87, + 232, 239-245. +Marriage of Charlotte Bronte, + 47-49. + -- Charlotte Bronte on, 69-80, + 141, 142. +Meredith, George, 133, 224. +Moore, Louis, 134, 141, 143. + -- Robert, 137, 140. +Motherhood, 65-68. +Mysticism, 16, 168, 169, 173-181, + 186. + +Nature in _Shirley_, 136, 137. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 173. + -- in Emily Bronte's Poems, + 207, 208. +Nicholls, Rev. Arthur Bell, + 47-49, 82. +Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, + 14, 182, 189, 190. +_Note on Charlotte Bronte_, by + Algernon Charles Swinburne, + 14, 64. +Novel, the, 163. +Novels of Charlotte Bronte, + 105-165. + -- of Anne Bronte, 39, 49-54. + -- of Emily Bronte, 39, 209-234. +Nussey, Miss Ellen, 26, 46, 58, + 72, 73, 75-78, 84, 168, 169. + -- -- Charlotte Bronte's + friendship with, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Bronte's + letters to, 31, 46, 72, 75-78, + 86, 91-99. + -- -- Charlotte Bronte's + advice to, 75-78, 84. + -- -- influence of, 91-93. + -- Rev. Henry, 79, 80. + -- -- original of St. John + Rivers, 91, 141, 145. + +Oliphant, Mrs., on Charlotte + Bronte, 31, 32, 33, 69-74, 79, + 80, 117, 141. + -- -- on _Shirley_, 70, 71, + 72, 141, 142. + +Paganism, Emily Bronte's, 16, + 135, 136, 174, 186, 208, 214. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 209, + 211, 214, 222. +Pantheism, Emily Bronte's, 171, + 184. +Parmenides, Poem on _Nature_, + 185. +Passion, Charlotte Bronte's treatment + of, 106, 116, 123, 124, + 176. + -- Emily Bronte's treatment + of, 172, 213, 214. + -- Dickens' Treatment of, + 123. + -- Fielding's treatment of, + 123. + -- Jane Austen's treatment + of, 124. + -- Smollett's treatment of, + 123. + -- Thackeray's treatment of, + 123. + -- in _Jane Eyre_, 113, 114, 115, + 116, 117. + -- in _Shirley_, 131, 141. + -- in _Villette_, 159. + -- in _Wuthering Heights_, 210, + 211, 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, + 224, 228, 231. + -- in Emily Bronte's Poems, + 179, 180, 182, 196, 199, 200, + 205, 208. + -- in Emily Bronte's soul, + 170-172, 174, 209. + -- test in reality, 159. +"Philosopher, The", 177. +Philosophy, Emily Bronte's, 169, + 175, 176, 177. +_Pictures of the Past_, by Francis + Grundy, 60. +Poems of Anne Bronte, 54-57, + 164, 188, 246. + -- of Branwell Bronte, 28, + 29, 42, 164, 233, 246. + -- of Charlotte Bronte, 39, + 103, 164, 169, 170, 246. + -- of Emily Bronte, 17, 39, + 174-185, 231, 232. + -- _The Complete_, of Emily + Bronte, +"Poems, Gondal", 17, 193-208, + 234. +_Professor, The_, 39, 89, 105, 106, + 107-112, 138. +_Professor, The_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, + 129, 138. + -- -- and _Villette_ compared, + 111. + -- -- quoted, 107, 108, + 109, 111. +Pryor, Mrs., 140. + +_Quarterly Review, The_, 53, 114, + 117, 120, 121, 131. + +Real, the, + -- Imagination and the, 130, + 134. + -- germ of the, 138, 145, 158. +Realism, 163, 221, 231. +Reality, 113, 124, 138, 141, 143, + 145, 146, 147, 148, 158, 159, + 163, 171, 173, 174, 176, 228, + 230, 231. +Reid, Sir T. Wemyss, 58, 96. + -- -- on Charlotte Bronte, + 58, 81, 100. + -- -- quoted, 58-60. +Rigby, Miss (Lady Eastlake), 122. +Rivers, St. John, 91, 145. +Robinson, Miss A. Mary F. + _See_ Duclaux, Madame. + -- Mrs., 15, 33. + -- -- and Branwell Bronte, + 15, 41, 42, 52. + -- -- vindicated, 41, 50. +Rochester, character of, 113, 117, + 118, 119, 120, 121, 125, 140, 141. +Roe Head, 26, 27, 95, 162. + +Sidgwick, Mr., 28, 64. + -- Mrs., 28, 62-64. +_Shirley_, 46, 65, 68, 72, 100, + 131-143. + -- portrait of Emily Bronte + in, 70, 71, 133, 137, 147. + -- dialogue in, 139-141. + -- criticism of, 64, 65, 68, + 137, 138. + -- style in, 139, 140, 141. + -- Woman in, 70, 71, 132, + 133, 137, 141, 143. +_Shirley_ and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 131, 138, 141. + -- and _Villette_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- and _Wuthering Heights_ compared, + 139. + -- quoted, 133-137, 138, 139, + 140, 141, 142. +Shorter, Mr. Clement K., 13, + 14, 74, 82, 84, 87, 88, 96, 100, + 101, 186-190, 191, 193. _See + also_ Prefatory Note. +Smith, Mr. George, 40, 144, 158. +Smollett, 123. +Snowe, Lucy, 71, 79, 89. + -- -- and Pauline de + Bassompierre, 153-157. +Sources of _Wuthering Heights_, 16, + 196-209, 231. +Southey, Robert, Charlotte + Bronte's letter to, 99. +Southey's, Robert, advice to + Charlotte Bronte, 99. +Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 62, 63, 79. +Style, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, + 128, 160, 161, 162, 230, 231. +Sue, Eugene, 243, 244. +Supernatural, the, in _Wuthering + Heights_, 16, 207-221. +Swinburne, Mr., on Charlotte + Bronte, 14, 31, 64-65, 66, 68. + -- -- on Emily Bronte, 14, 174. + +Taylor, Miss Mary, 15, 35, 58, + 91, 92, 94, 98. + -- Mr. Joe, 72. + -- Mr. James, 72, 73, 74, 145. +Temperament, Charlotte Bronte's, + 73, 81. +_Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The_, 39, + 40, 54, 55. + -- -- audacity of, 54. + -- -- realism of, 54. + -- -- and Farrar's _Eternal + Hope_, 55. +Thackeray, 15, 47, 61, 123. +Theories, 16, 17, 57-90, 100, 106, + 231-332, 237, 238-247. +Thornton, 20. + +_Villette_, 46, 89, 100, 105, 140-161. + -- Lucy Snowe in, 71, 79, 89. + -- M. Paul in. _See_ Emanuel + Paul. + -- dialogue in, 149. + -- germ of the real in, 145, + 158. + -- reality of, 144, 145, 146, + 147, 148, 158, 159, 163. + -- realism of, 163, 164. + -- style in, 160, 161. + -- and _The Professor_ compared, + 98, 99, 111, 112. + -- and _Jane Eyre_ compared, + 105, 144, 159. + -- and _Shirley_ compared, 111, + 141, 148, 159. + -- quoted, 149-153, 154, 155, + 157. + +Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 14, 196. +Williams, Mr. W.S., 40. + -- -- Charlotte Bronte's + letter to, 78. +Wilson, Rev. Carus, 24, 25. +_Wisdom and Destiny_ quoted, 170, + 213. +Woman, 69, 70, 117, 118, 132, + 133, 140, 142, 143. +Woman, mid-Victorian, 71, 118, + 132. + -- modern, 133. +Woman's place in the world, 78, + 142. +Women, Charlotte Bronte's, 69, + 70, 132, 133. +Wooler, Miss, 26, 27, 35, 98. +Wordsworth, letters to, 99. +_Wuthering Heights_, 16, 17, 21, 39, + 40, 46, 105, 127, 128, 130, 131, + 139, 172, 173, 208-234. + -- -- criticism of, 209-233. + -- -- dialogue in, 218, 219, + 220-221, 223, 224. + -- -- mysticism in, 173. + -- -- paganism in, 209, + 211, 214, 222. + -- -- passion in, 210, 211, + 212, 213, 218, 221, 222, 224, + 228, 231. + -- -- realism in, 221, 224, + 228. + -- -- style in, 228, 230. + -- -- the supernatural in, + 17, 196-209, 216. + -- -- sources of, 232, 233, + 234. + +Zamorna. + -- _See_ Heathcliff. + -- _See_ "Gondal Poems". + + + + +2/- Hutchinson's 2/- +NET NET + +BOOKLOVER'S LIBRARY + + +The Booklover's Library is now accepted as one of the most successful +ventures of recent years. Beautifully produced and covering a wide range +of subjects, the books have been eagerly sought by a discriminating +public. + +Published in the first instance at a price from 30/- and below, each +title selected for this library is generally admitted to be a little +masterpiece in its own particular sphere. + +Here are the eighteen titles which are now available: + +First titles in the + +BOOKLOVER'S LIBRARY + +No. 1. + +HAWORTH PARSONAGE + +by Isabel C. Clarke + +_Sphere._--"This biography of that tragical family whose private lives +far transcended the gloom of the magnificent work they produced, is a +matter of interest to all who have read and loved _Jane Eyre_ and +_Wuthering Heights_." + +No. 2. + +ROMANCE OF EMPIRE by Sir Philip Gibbs + +Sir Philip Gibbs unfolds in his graphic, picturesque way the amazing +record of vision, courage and sacrifice on the part of the pioneers in +the great adventure of Empire. + +No. 3. + +THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS + +by W.P. Pycraft + +The aim of this book is to bring together a most astounding collection +of facts in regard to the Courtship of Animals of all kinds, from Apes +to Ants. + +No. 4. + +THE GHOST BOOK by Cynthia Asquith + +Weird, uncanny stories of the supernatural by May Sinclair; Algernon +Blackwood; Mrs. Belloc Lowndes; L.P. Hartley; Denis Mackail; Clemence +Dane; C. Ray; Hugh Walpole; Desmond MacCarthy; Walter de la Mare; Arthur +Machen; D.H. Lawrence; Oliver Onions; Mary Webb; Charles Whibley; Enid +Bagnold. + +No. 5. + +PASSION MURDER & MYSTERY + +by Bruce Graeme + +_Sunday Times._--"Mr. Graeme has the true knack of the story-teller, and +lovers of the gruesome will find all they want in this collection of +tales, as they are tragic." + +No. 6. + +TAHITI--ISLE OF DREAMS + +by Robert Keable + +_Illustrated London News._--"This is a book of charm and personal +philosophy which will not be forgotten by those who read it." + +No. 7. + +THE THREE BRONTES by May Sinclair + +Mr. Clement K. 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