FOOTNOTES:
[7] The quotation is from Margaret’s ‘Summer on the Lakes,’ where this story is related in the episode of ‘Mariana.’ Mrs. Howe’s condensed account has been given, though possibly inexact in one particular. Margaret does not describe the preceptress as having joined in the practical joke.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS).
(Currer Bell.)
1816-1855.
EMILY BRONTË.
(Ellis Bell.)
1818-1848.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË (NICHOLLS.)
(Currer Bell.)
1816-1855.
EMILY BRONTË.
(Ellis Bell.)
1818-1848.
The story of the Brontës is essentially the story of a family; not of one member, not even of its two famous members. This has been felt by the biographers of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, who have pictured for us the whole group with a vividness which, paradoxical as it may seem, is more characteristic of fiction than of biography. These lonely lives were knit fast together; it is hard to separate an individual thread from the others. At least the story of the family must first be told.
The Reverend Patrick Brontë (formerly Prunty), and Maria Branwell, his wife, had six children: Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte (born at Thornton, in the West Riding, April 21, 1816), Patrick Branwell, Emily (born at Thornton, in 1818), and Anne. In February, 1820, the Brontës removed to the famous parsonage of Haworth. In September, 1821, Mrs. Brontë died. The strange life of the motherless children, under the care of their aunt, Miss Branwell, is described in the following extracts. In 1824, the four older girls were sent to the school for clergymen’s daughters, at Cowan’s Bridge, which Charlotte afterward raised to a bad eminence in Jane Eyre, under the name of Lowood Institution. A long account of this shamefully mismanaged school may be found in Miss Robinson’s ‘Emily Brontë.’ Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption in 1825; their deaths were doubtless hastened by exposure and want of proper nourishment. In the autumn of the same year Charlotte and Emily were taken from the Cowan’s Bridge school.
Miss Branwell taught the children at home for some time; in 1831, Charlotte was again sent to school—this time to Miss Wooler’s, at Roe Head, on the road from Leeds to Haddersfield. She remained at this school a year and a half, and on returning taught her sisters what she had learned. At Roe Head began her life-long friendship with Ellen Nussey. In 1835, Charlotte went to teach at Miss Wooler’s, and Emily also went as a pupil to Roe Head, but remained there only three months, when Anne took her place, afterward becoming a teacher in the school. All her life Emily was passionately attached to the dreary parsonage and the lonely moors, and became actually ill when forced to be absent from home. In September, 1836, she obtained a hard position as teacher in a large school near Halifax, which she was obliged to leave the following spring.
In the meantime Miss Wooler had removed to Dewsbury Moor. Anne Brontë continued teaching in her establishment until December, 1837; Charlotte, until the following summer, when her health obliged her to return to Haworth. In 1839 both obtained positions as governess, Charlotte, however, leaving hers after a short time. Her second and more agreeable experience of this kind was in 1841, when she taught in a congenial family from March until Christmas. January, 1842, found all three sisters at home. It was now determined that Charlotte and Emily should spend six months in Brussels, at the Pensionnat of Monsieur and Madame Héger, preparatory to setting up a school for themselves—a plan which had long been discussed at the parsonage. Miss Branwell advanced the money for this undertaking, and the two sisters left home in February.
Their stay in Brussels was prolonged beyond expectation, on the proposal of Mme. Héger that they should spend the next term with her as pupil-teachers, Charlotte giving instruction in English, Emily in music. In October they were recalled to England by the news of Miss Branwell’s death. Anne being now in an excellent position, Emily volunteered to remain at home as housekeeper. Charlotte, acting on the advice of M. Héger, returned to Brussels in January, 1843, to complete her studies there; paying her way as before by teaching in the school, and receiving in addition a trifling salary.
About this time Patrick, or Branwell, Brontë, who, during an idle life about the village, had fallen into evil ways, and had recently been dismissed in disgrace from his situation as station-master at a small place on the line of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, obtained employment as tutor in the house where Anne was governess.
In January, 1844, Charlotte returned to Haworth, and the sisters endeavored to start the school of which they had long been dreaming. It was a complete failure. They were unable to secure a single pupil; and by November the cherished plan was relinquished.
Charlotte and Emily lived down their failure together in the dreary parsonage. Their father was growing old, was losing his sight. Anne was out of health; they were troubled about Branwell. At last, in June, 1845, a great blow fell upon them. Their brother had engaged in an intrigue with his employer’s wife: he was discovered, denounced, sent home in shame; and from that time forth “thought of little but stunning or drowning his agony of mind” with drink or opium. The miserable state of things at Haworth for the next three years is almost inconceivable; yet it was out of this very field of nettles that the flower of immortality was plucked.
In May, 1846, a little volume of verse “by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell” was put forth, but failed as the school had failed. Meanwhile, in the winter of 1845-6 and the following spring, each of the three sisters had been at work upon a novel. Emily’s was Wuthering Heights, Anne’s, Agnes Grey, and Charlotte’s, The Professor. They were despatched to various publishers, at first together, afterwards singly. In August, 1846, Mr. Brontë underwent an operation for cataract at Manchester, Charlotte being his companion and nurse. The operation was successful. At the end of September father and daughter returned to Haworth. In August, 1847, Jane Eyre was completed and sent to Messrs. Smith & Elder as the work of “Currer Bell.” It was accepted, and was published in October. In December another publishing house brought out Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. Jane Eyre almost immediately created a great sensation.
In the summer of 1848 a misunderstanding with their respective publishers led Charlotte and Anne to take a hurried journey to London, where they astonished Messrs. Smith & Elder with a call. They were very kindly received, and introduced to the friends of Mr. Smith as “the Miss Browns.”
In September, 1848, the unhappy Branwell died. Emily never left the house after the day of his funeral. A troublesome cough developed into consumption. After months of increasing weakness borne in a spirit of silent and stubborn resistance, in December, 1848, Emily Brontë followed her brother. Anne, always delicate, did not linger long behind them. In the ensuing spring she died at Scarborough, whither Charlotte and Miss Nussey had brought her but a few days before for the benefit of the sea air. Charlotte and her father were left alone together.
Shirley, began before Emily’s death, was published in October, 1849; and toward the end of the year Charlotte visited London. The mask of “Currer Bell” was dropped, and Miss Brontë made the acquaintance of Thackeray, Harriet Martineau and others. In June, 1850, she was again in London. This year she took a flying trip to Scotland. She was Miss Martineau’s guest at Ambleside in December. In this month appeared the second edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, which she had edited, writing a preface, and a biographical notice of Emily and Anne. In June, 1851, she again visited London. Early in 1853 Villette was published.
About this time the Reverend Arthur Nicholls, Mr. Brontë’s assistant, asked Charlotte to be his wife. Her father was bitterly opposed to the marriage; the daughter obeyed him; and Mr. Nicholls left Haworth. It was not until 1854 that Mr. Brontë could be induced to give his consent. On June 29th of this year, Charlotte was married to Mr. Nicholls. They visited Ireland, and on their return took up a happy and useful life at Haworth. The future seemed full of promise, the only cloud upon it being Mr. Nicholls’ lack of sympathy with his wife’s literary pursuits. But the story so sad till now was to be soon and sadly ended. On the 31st of March, 1855, Charlotte died at Haworth.
“Alas,” sings Matthew Arnold:[8]
“Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laurels unwon,
Dying too soon!”
But in turning to Emily Brontë, his voice takes the accent of wonder:
“She
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died.”
Haworth.
The village of Haworth stands, steep and gray, on the topmost side of an abrupt low hill. Such hills, more steep than high, are congregated round, circle beyond circle, to the utmost limit of the horizon. Not a wood, not a river. As far as eye can reach these treeless hills, their sides cut into fields by gray walls of stone with here and there a gray stone village, and here and there a gray stone mill, present no other colors than the singular north-country brilliance of the green grass, and the blackish gray of the stone. Now and then a toppling, gurgling mill-beck gives life to the scene. But the real life, the only beauty of the country, is set on the top of all the hills, where moor joins moor from Yorkshire into Lancashire, a coiled chain of wild, free places. White with snow in winter, black at midsummer, it is only when spring dapples the dark heather-stems with the vivid green of the sprouting whortleberry bushes, only when in early autumn the moors are one humming mass of fragrant purple, that any beauty of tint lights up the scene. But there is always a charm in the moors for hardy and solitary spirits. Between them and heaven nothing dares to interpose. The shadows of the coursing clouds alter the aspect of the place a hundred times a day. A hundred little springs and streams well in its soil, making spots of vivid greenness round their rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying and singing there. Larks sing; cuckoos call; all the tribe of linnets and finches twitter in the bushes; plovers moan; wild ducks fly past; more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over the treeless and houseless moors. There in the spring you may take in your hands the weak, halting fledglings of the birds; rabbits and game multiply in the hollows. There in the autumn the crowds of bees, mad in the heather, send the sound of their humming down the village street. The winds, the clouds, Nature and life, must be the friends of those who would love the moors.
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’ (Famous Women Series). Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883.
The Parsonage.
The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a crowded church-yard, and a small garden or court in front of the clergyman’s house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore, although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within the stone-wall, which keeps out the surrounding church-yard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass-plot and a gravel walk. The house is of gray stone, two stories high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred years ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on the right (as the visitor stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the front door), belonging to Mr. Brontë’s study, the two on the left to the family sitting-room.... The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full of upright tombstones.
Elizabeth C. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë,’ Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1857.
Interior of the parsonage.
The interior of the now far-famed parsonage lacked drapery of all kinds. Mr. Brontë’s horror of fire forbade curtains to the windows. There was not much carpet anywhere except in the sitting-room and on the study floor. The hall floor and stairs were done with sand-stone, always beautifully clean, as everything else was about the house; the walls were not papered, but stained in a pretty dove-colored tint; hair-seated chairs and mahogany tables, book-shelves in the study, but not many of these elsewhere.... A little later on, [Miss N. is writing of 1833], there was the addition of a piano.
Ellen Nussey: Article on Charlotte Brontë, Scribner’s Monthly, May, 1871.
Parentage of the Brontës.
The children’s father was a nervous, irritable, and violent man, who endowed them with a nervous organization easily disturbed, and an indomitable force of volition. The girls, at least, showed both these characteristics. Patrick Branwell must have been a weaker, more brilliant, more violent, less tenacious, less upright copy of his father; and seems to have suffered no modification from the patient and steadfast moral nature of his mother. She was the model that her daughters copied, in different degrees, both in character and in health. Passion and will their father gave them.... On both sides, the children got a Celtic strain; and this is a matter of significance, meaning a predisposition to the superstition, imagination, and horror that is a strand in all their work. Their mother, Maria Branwell, was of a good, middle-class Cornish family, long established as merchants in Penzance. Their father was the son of an Irish peasant, Hugh Prunty, settled in the north of Ireland, but native to the south.
A. M. F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Patrick Brontë’s career.
His change of name.
His talents were early recognized by Mr. Tighe, the rector of Drumgooland. This gentleman undertook part, at least, of the cost of his education, which was completed at St. John’s College, Cambridge. As to the change of name from Prunty to Brontë, many fantastic stories have been told. Among them is one which represents the Brontës as having derived their name from that of the Bronterres, an ancient Irish family with which they were connected. The connection may possibly have existed, but there is no doubt upon one point. The incumbent of Haworth in early life bore the name of Prunty, and it was not until very shortly before he left Ireland for England that he changed it at the request of his patron, Mr. Tighe, for the more euphonious appellation of Brontë.
His character.
He appears to have been a strange compound of good and evil. That he was not without some good is acknowledged by all who knew him. He had kindly feelings towards most people, and he delighted in the stern rectitude which distinguished many of his Yorkshire flock. When his daughter became famous, no one was better pleased at the circumstance than he was. He cut out of every newspaper every scrap which referred to her; he was proud of her achievements, proud of her intellect, and jealous of her reputation. But throughout his whole life there was but one person with whom he had any real sympathy, and that person was himself. Passionate, self-willed, vain, habitually cold and distant in his demeanor towards those of his own household, he exhibited in a marked degree many of the characteristics which Charlotte Brontë afterwards sketched in the portrait of the Mr. Helstone of ‘Shirley.’... Among the many stories told of him by his children, there is one relating to the meek and gentle woman who was his wife.... Somebody had given Mrs. Brontë a very pretty dress, and her husband, who was as proud as he was self-willed, had taken offence at the gift. A word to his wife, who lived in habitual dread of her lordly master, would have secured all he wanted; but in his passionate determination that she should not wear the obnoxious garment, he deliberately cut it to pieces, and presented her with the tattered fragments. Even during his wife’s lifetime he formed the habit of taking his meals alone; he constantly carried loaded pistols in his pockets, and when excited he would fire these at the doors of the out-houses, so that the villagers were quite accustomed to the sound of pistol-shots at any hour of the day in their pastor’s house. It would be a mistake to suppose that violence was one of the weapons to which Mr. Brontë habitually resorted. However stern and peremptory might be his dealings with his wife (who soon left him to spend the remainder of his life in a dreary widowhood), his general policy was to secure his end by craft rather than by force. A profound belief in his own superior wisdom was conspicuous among his characteristics, and he felt convinced that no one was too clever to be outwitted by his diplomacy. He had also an amazing persistency, which led him to pursue any course on which he had embarked with dogged determination. It happened in later years, when his strength was failing, and when at last he began to see his daughter in her true light, that he quarreled with her regarding the character of one of their friends [Mr. Nicholls]. The daughter, always dutiful and respectful, found that any effort to stem the torrent of his bitter and unjust wrath when he spoke of the friend who had offended him, was attended by consequences which were positively dangerous. The veins of his forehead swelled, his eyes glared, his voice shook, and she was fain to submit lest her father’s passion should prove fatal to him. But when, wounded beyond endurance by his violence and injustice, she withdrew for a few days from her home, and told her father she would receive no letters from him in which this friend’s name was mentioned, the old man’s cunning took the place of passion. He wrote long and affectionate letters to her on general subjects; but accompanying each letter was a little slip of paper, which professed to be a note from Charlotte’s dog, Flossy, to his “much-respected and beloved mistress,” in which the dog, declaring that he saw “a good deal of human nature that was hid from those who had the gift of language,” was made to repeat the attacks upon the obnoxious person which Mr. Brontë dared no longer to make in his own character.
Childhood of the Brontës.
The parson’s children were not allowed to associate with their little neighbors in the hamlet; their aunt, who came to the parsonage after their mother’s death, had scarcely more sympathy with them than their father himself; their only friend was the rough but kindly servant Tabby, who pitied the bairns without understanding them.... So they grew up strange, lonely, old-fashioned children, with absolutely no knowledge of the world outside; so quiet and demure in their habits, that years afterward, when they had invited some of their Sunday scholars up to the parsonage, and wished to amuse them, they found that they had to ask the scholars to teach them how to play—they had never learned. Carefully secluded from the rest of the world, the little Brontë children found out fashions of their own in the way of amusement, and curious fashions they were. While they were still in the nursery, when the oldest of the family, Maria, was barely nine years old, and Charlotte, the third, was just six, they had begun to take a quaint interest in literature and politics. Heaven knows who it was who first told these wonderful pigmies of the great deeds of a Wellington or the crimes of a Bonaparte; but at an age when other children are generally busy with their bricks or their dolls, and when all life’s interests are confined for them within the walls of a nursery, these marvellous Brontës were discussing the life of the Great Duke, and maintaining the Tory cause as ardently as the oldest and sturdiest of the village politicians in the neighboring inn.
Effect on Charlotte’s work in later life.
It may be well to bear in mind the frequency with which the critics have charged Charlotte Brontë with exaggerating the precocity of children. What we know of the early days of the Brontës proves that what would have been exaggeration in any other person was in the case of Charlotte nothing but a truthful reproduction of her own experiences.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’ New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.
Early reading.
On their father’s shelves were few novels, and few books of poetry. The clergyman’s study necessarily boasted its works of divinity and reference; for the children there were only the wild romances of Southey, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish mother, and “some mad Methodist magazines full of miracles and apparitions and preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe ‘from the Dead to the Living’,” familiar to readers of ‘Shirley.’ To counterbalance all this romance and terror, the children had their interest in politics and Blackwood’s Magazine, “the most able periodical there is,” says thirteen-year-old Charlotte. They also saw John Bull, “a high Tory, very violent, the Leeds Mercury, Leeds Intelligencer, a most excellent Tory newspaper,” and thus became accomplished fanatics in all the burning questions of the day.
Their aunt’s training.
Miss Branwell took care that the girls should not lack more homely knowledge. Each took her share in the day’s work, and learned all details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cooking school. Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework; there she felt able and necessary.
A. M. F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Anecdote of Charlotte.
There is a touching story of Charlotte at six years old which gives us some notion of the ideal life led by the forlorn little girl at this time, when, her two elder sisters having been sent to school, she found herself living at home, the eldest of the motherless brood. She had read ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ and had been fascinated, young as she was, by that wondrous allegory. Everything in it was to her true and real; her little heart had gone forth with Christian on his pilgrimage to the Golden City, her bright young mind had been fixed by the Bedford tinker’s description of the glories of the Celestial Place; and she made up her mind that she too would escape from the City of Destruction, and gain the haven towards which the weary spirits of every age have turned with eager longing. But where was this glittering city, with its streets of gold, its gates of pearl, its walls of precious stones, its stream of life and throne of light? Poor little girl! The only place which seemed to her to answer Bunyan’s description of the celestial town was one which she had heard the servants discussing with enthusiasm in the kitchen, and its name was Bradford! So to Bradford little Charlotte Brontë, escaping from that Haworth parsonage which she believed to be a doomed spot, set off one day in 1822. Ingenious persons may speculate if they please upon the sore disappointment which awaited her when, like older people, reaching the place which she had imagined to be heaven, she found that it was only Bradford. But she never even reached her imaginary Golden City. When her tender feet had carried her a mile along the road, she came to a spot where overhanging trees made the highway dark and gloomy; she imagined that she had come to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and, fearing to go forward, was presently discovered by her nurse cowering by the road side.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Charlotte at fifteen.
First impressions of a school-mate.
I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the school-room, her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.
—— ——: Communication, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
I can well imagine that the grave, serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called, (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned;” and in 1831 ... we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Miss Nussey’s account of Charlotte at this period.
Combined ignorance and precocity.
She never seemed to me the unattractive little person others designated her, but certainly she was at this time anything but pretty; even her good points were lost, her naturally beautiful hair of soft silky-brown being then dry and frizzy-looking, screwed up in tight curls, showing features that were all the plainer from her exceeding thinness and want of complexion; she looked “dried in.” A dark, rusty green stuff dress of old-fashioned make detracted still more from her appearance; but let her wear what she might, or do what she would, she had ever the demeanor of a born gentlewoman; vulgarity was an element that never won the slightest affinity with her nature. Some of the elder girls, who had been years at school, thought her ignorant. This was true in one sense; ignorant she was indeed in the elementary education which is given in schools, but she far surpassed her most advanced school-fellows in knowledge of what was passing in the world at large, and in the literature of her country. She knew a thousand things in these matters unknown to them.
Near-sightedness.
Her hands.
Music she wished to acquire, for which she had both ear and taste, but her near-sightedness caused her to stoop so dreadfully in order to see her notes that she was dissuaded from persevering in the acquirement, especially as she had at this time an invincible objection to wearing glasses. Her very taper fingers, tipped with the most circular nails, did not seem very suited for instrumental execution; but when wielding the pen or the pencil, they appeared in the very office they were created for.
A vegetarian diet.
Conscientiousness.
Her appetite was of the smallest; for years she had not tasted animal food; she had the greatest dislike to it; she always had something specially provided for her at our mid-day repast. Toward the close of the first half-year she was induced to take, little by little, meat gravy with vegetables, and in the second half-year she commenced taking a very small portion of animal food daily. She then grew a little bit plumper, looked younger and more animated, though she was never what is called lively at this period. She always seemed to feel that a deep responsibility rested upon her; that she was an object of expense to those at home, and that she must use every moment to attain her purpose for which she was sent to school, i.e., to fit herself for governess life. She had almost too much opportunity for her conscientious diligence. We were so little restricted in our doings, the industrious might accomplish the appointed tasks of the day and enjoy a little leisure, but she chose in many things to do double lessons when not prevented by class arrangement or a companion.
A hard student.
She did not play or amuse herself when others did. When her companions were merry round the fire, or otherwise enjoying themselves during the twilight, which was always a precious time of relaxation, she would be kneeling close to the window occupied with her studies, and this would last so long that she was accused of seeing in the dark.
Ellen Nussey: Article on Charlotte Brontë, Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century.
Life at home after Charlotte’s return from Miss Wooler’s.
Emily on the moors.
Charlotte staid a year and a half at school, and returned in the July of 1832 to teach Emily and Anne what she had learned in her absence—French, English and Drawing was pretty nearly all the instruction she could give. Happily genius needs no curriculum. Nevertheless the sisters toiled to extract their utmost boon from such advantages as came within their range. Every morning from nine till half-past twelve they worked at their lessons; then they walked together over the moors, just coming into flower. The moors knew a different Emily to the quiet girl of fourteen who helped in the housework and learned her lessons so regularly at home. On the moors she was gay, frolicsome, almost wild. She would set the others laughing with her quaint, humorous sallies and genial ways. She was quite at home there, taking the fledgling birds in her hands so softly that they were not afraid, and telling stories to them.
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Emily’s appearance in girlhood.
Emily Brontë had ... a lithesome, graceful figure. She was the tallest person in the house, except her father. Her hair, which was naturally as beautiful as Charlotte’s, was in the same unbecoming tight curl and frizz; and there was the same want of complexion. She had very beautiful eyes—kind, kindling, liquid eyes; but she did not often look at you; she was too reserved. Their color might be said to be dark-gray, at other times dark-blue, they varied so. She talked very little. She and Anne were like twins—inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.
Ellen Nussey: Article on Charlotte Brontë, Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century.
All through her life her temperament was more than merely peculiar. She inherited not a little of her father’s eccentricity untempered by her father’s savoir faire. Her aversion to strangers has been already mentioned. When the curates, who formed the only society of Haworth, found their way to the parsonage, she avoided them as though they had brought the pestilence in their train. On the rare occasions when she went out into the world, she would sit absolutely silent in the company of those who were unfamiliar to her. So intense was this reserve that even in her own family, where alone she was at ease, something like dread was mingled with the affection felt towards her.
Love of animals.
Her chief delight was to roam on the moors, followed by her dogs, to whom she would whistle in masculine fashion. Her heart, indeed, was given to the dumb creatures of the earth. She never forgave those who ill-treated them, nor trusted those whom they disliked. One is reminded of Shelley’s “Sensitive Plant” by some traits of Emily Brontë; like the lady of the poem, her tenderness and charity could reach even
“——the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.”
Personal courage.
Love of home.
One instance of her remarkable personal courage is related in ‘Shirley,’ where she herself is sketched under the character of the heroine. It is her adventure with the mad dog which bit her at the door of the parsonage kitchen while she was offering it water. The brave girl took an iron from the fire, where it chanced to be heating, and immediately cauterized the wound on her arm, making a broad, deep scar, which was there until the day of her death. Not until many weeks after this did she tell her sisters what had happened. Passionately fond of her home among the hills, and of the rough Yorkshire people among whom she had been reared, she sickened and pined away when absent from Haworth. A strange, untamed and untamable character was hers; and none but her two sisters ever seem to have appreciated her remarkable merits.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Emily in 1833.
In 1833 Emily was nearly fifteen, a tall, long-armed girl, full grown, elastic of tread; with a slight figure that looked queenly in her best dresses, but loose and boyish when she slouched over the moors whistling to her dogs, and taking long strides over the rough earth. A tall, thin, loose-jointed girl—not ugly, but with irregular features and a pallid, thick complexion. Her dark-brown hair was naturally beautiful, and in later days looked well loosely fastened with a tall comb at the back of her head; but in 1833 she wore it in an unbecoming tight curl and frizz. She had very beautiful eyes of hazel color.... She had an aquiline nose, a large expressive, prominent mouth. She talked little. No grace or style in dress belonged to Emily, but under her awkward clothes her natural movements had the lithe beauty of the wild creatures that she loved.... Never was a soul with a more passionate love of Mother Earth, of every weed and flower, of every bird, beast and insect that lived. She would have peopled the house with pets had not Miss Branwell kept her niece’s love of animals in due subjection. Only one dog was allowed, who was admitted into the parlor at stated hours, but out of doors Emily made friends with all the beasts and birds. She would come home carrying in her hands some young bird or rabbit, and softly talking to it as she came. “Ee, Miss Emily,” the young servant would say, “one would think the bird could understand you.” “I am sure it can,” Emily would answer. “Oh, I am sure it can.”
A dual life.
Two lives went on side by side in her heart, neither ever mingling with or interrupting the other. Practical housewife with capable hands, dreamer of strange horrors: each self was independent of the companion to which it was linked by day and night. People in those days knew her but as she seemed—“t’ Vicar’s Emily”—a shy, awkward girl, never teaching in the Sunday-school like her sisters, never talking with the villagers like merry Branwell, but very good and hearty in helping the sick and distressed: not pretty in the village estimation—a “slinky lass,” no prim, trim little body like pretty Anne, nor with Charlotte Brontë’s taste in dress; just a clever lass with a spirit of her own. So the village judged her. At home they loved her with her strong feelings, untidy frocks, indomitable will and ready contempt for the commonplace; she was appreciated as a dear and necessary member of the household. Of Emily’s deeper self, her violent genius, neither friend nor neighbor dreamed in those days.
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
The turning-point in Charlotte’s career.
It was Charlotte’s visit to Brussels, first as pupil and afterwards as teacher in the school of Madame Héger, which was the turning-point in her life, which changed its currents, and gave to it a new purpose and a new meaning. Up to the moment of that visit she had been the simple, kindly, truthful Yorkshire girl, endowed with strange faculties, carried away at times by burning impulses, moved often by emotions the nature of which she could not fathom, but always hemmed in by her narrow experiences, her limited knowledge of life and the world. Until she went to Belgium, her sorest troubles had been associated with her dislike to the society of strangers, her heaviest burden had been the necessity under which she lay of tasting that “cup of life as it is mixed for governesses,” which she detested so heartily. Under the belief that they could qualify themselves to keep a school of their own if they had once mastered the delicacies of the French and German languages, she and Emily set off for this sojourn in Brussels.
One may be forgiven for speculating as to her future lot had she accepted the offer of marriage she received in her early governess days, and settled down as the faithful wife of a sober English gentleman. In that case ‘Shirley’ perhaps might have been written, but ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette’ never. She learned much during her two years’ sojourn in the Belgian capital; but the greatest of all the lessons she mastered while there was that self-knowledge the taste of which is so bitter to the mouth, though so wholesome to the life.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
The sisters’ life in Brussels.
The flower-market out of doors, with clove-pinks, tall Mary-lilies, and delicate roses d’amour, filling the quaint mediæval square before the beautiful old façade of the Hôtel de Ville; Sainte-Gudule, with its spires and arches; the Montagne de la Cour (almost as steep as Haworth Street), its windows ablaze at night with jewels; the little, lovely park, its great elms just coming into leaf, its statues just bursting from their winter sheaths of straw; the galleries of ancient pictures, their walls a sober glory of colors, blues, deep as a summer night, rich reds, brown-golds, most vivid greens. All this should have made an impression on the two home-keeping girls from Yorkshire; and Charlotte, indeed, perceived something of its beauty and strangeness. But Emily, from a bitter sense of exile, from a natural narrowness of spirit, rebelled against it all as an insult to the memory of her home—she longed, hopelessly, uselessly, for Haworth. The two Brontës were very different to the Belgian school-girls in Madame Héger’s Pensionnat. They were, for one thing, ridiculously old to be at school—twenty-four and twenty-six—and they seemed to feel their position; their speech was strained and odd; all the “sceptical, wicked, immoral French novels, over forty of them, the best substitute for French conversation to be met with,” which the girls had toiled through with so much singleness of spirit, had not cured the broadness of their accent nor the artificial idioms of their Yorkshire French. Monsieur Héger, indeed, considered that they knew no French at all. Their manners, even among English people, were stiff and prim; the hearty, vulgar, genial expansion of their Belgian school-fellows must have made them seem as lifeless as marionettes. Their dress—Haworth had permitted itself to wonder at the uncouthness of those amazing leg-of-mutton sleeves (Emily’s pet whim in and out of fashion), at the ill-cut lankness of those skirts, clumsy enough on round little Charlotte, but a very caricature of mediævalism on Emily’s tall, thin, slender figure. They knew they were not in their element, and kept close together, rarely speaking. Yet, Monsieur Héger, patiently watching, felt the presence of a strange power under those uncouth exteriors. It was with the delight of a botanist discovering a rare plant in his garden, of a politician detecting a future statesman in his nursery, that he perceived the unusual faculty which lifted his two English pupils above their school-fellows.... It was Emily who had the larger share of Monsieur Héger’s admiration.... He gave her credit for logical powers, for a capacity for argument unusual in a man, and rare, indeed, in a woman. She, not Charlotte, was the genius in his eyes, although he complained that her stubborn will rendered her deaf to all reason, when her own determination, or her own sense of right, was concerned.
That time in Brussels was wasted upon Emily. The trivial characters which Charlotte made immortal merely annoyed her. The new impressions which gave another scope to Charlotte’s vision were nothing to her. All that was grand, remarkable, passionate, under the surface of that conventional Pensionnat de Demoiselles, was invisible to Emily. Notwithstanding her genius she was very hard and narrow. Poor girl, she was sick for home.... Charlotte’s engrossment in her new life, her eagerness to please her master, was a contemptible weakness to the imbittered heart. She would laugh when she found her elder sister trying to arrange her homely gowns in the French taste, and stalk silently through the large school-rooms with a fierce satisfaction in her own ugly sleeves, in the Haworth cut of her skirts. She seldom spoke a word to any one; only sometimes she would argue with Monsieur Héger, perhaps secretly glad to have the chance of shocking Charlotte. If they went out to tea, she would sit still on her chair, answering “Yes,” and “No;” inert, miserable, with a heart full of tears. When her work was done she would walk in the Crossbowmen’s ancient garden, under the trees, leaning on her shorter sister’s arm, pale, silent—a tall, stooping figure.... Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a favorite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of Hoffman left its impression on the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ She worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling school-girl became a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in grammar and literature, was a constant study.
Emily at home during Charlotte’s second sojourn in Brussels.
Emily was alone in the gray house, save for her secluded father and old Tabby now over seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could be freer than her own; it was she that disposed, she too that performed most of the household work. She always got up first in the morning, and did the roughest part of the day’s labor before frail old Tabby came down; since kindness and thought for others were part of the nature of this unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household ironing and most of the cookery. She made the bread; and her bread was famous in Haworth for its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded the dough, she would glance now and then at an open book propped up before her. It was her German lesson. But not always did she study out of books; those who worked with her in that kitchen, young girls called in to help in stress of business, remember how she would keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and how, when the moment came that she could pause in her cooking or her ironing, she would jot down some impatient thought and then resume her work. With these girls she was always friendly and hearty—“pleasant, sometimes quite jovial, like a boy,” “so genial and kind, a little masculine,” say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher’s boy or the baker’s man came to the kitchen door, she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlor till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. Not easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: “A deal of folk thout her th’ clever’st o’ them a’, hasumiver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn’t frame to let it aat.”
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Origin of the three-fold book of Poems.
Pseudonyms.
One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse, in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me—a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of a demonstrative character, nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her, could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed: it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.... Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily’s had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.... We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of ‘Currer,’ ‘Ellis,’ and ‘Acton Bell’; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because,——without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine,”—we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked on with prejudice.
Charlotte Brontë: Biographical Preface to ‘Wuthering Heights.’ London, 1850.
Evenings at Haworth novel-writing.
The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in their aunt’s life-time, of putting away their work at nine o’clock, and beginning their study, pacing up and down their sitting-room. At this time, they talked over the stories they were engaged upon, and described their plots. Once or twice a week, each read to the other what she had written, and heard what they had to say about it. Charlotte told me, that the remarks made had seldom any effect in inducing her to alter her work, so possessed was she with the feeling that she had described reality; but the readings were of great and stirring interest to all, taking them out of the gnawing pressure of daily-recurring cares, and setting them in a free place. It was on one of these occasions that Charlotte determined to make her heroine plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon.
Charlotte’s firmness.
The three tales, ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Agnes Grey,’ and ‘The Professor,’ had tried their fate in vain together; at length they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still-continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation [for cataract]. But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, and failure upon failure daunted her no more than him. Not only did ‘The Professor’ return again to try his chance among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of care and depressing inquietude—in those gray, weary, uniform streets where all faces, save those of her kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her—there and then, did the brave genius begin ‘Jane Eyre.’
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Immediate success of ‘Jane Eyre.’
Those who remember that winter [of 1847] know how something like a ‘Jane Eyre’ fever raged among us. The story which had suddenly discovered a glory in uncomeliness, a grandeur in overmastering passion, moulded the fashion of the hour, and “Rochester airs” and “Jane Eyre graces” became the rage. The book, and its fame and influence, travelled beyond the seas with a speed which in those days was marvellous. In sedate New England homes the history of the English governess was read with an avidity which was not surpassed in London itself, and within a few months of the publication of the novel it was famous throughout two continents. No such triumph has been achieved in our time by any other English author; nor can it be said, upon the whole, that many triumphs have been better merited. It happened that this anonymous story, bearing the unmistakable marks of an unpractised hand, was put before the world at the very moment when another great masterpiece of fiction was just beginning to gain the ear of the English public. But at the moment of publication ‘Jane Eyre’ swept past ‘Vanity Fair’ with a marvellous and impetuous speed which left Thackeray’s work in the distant background; and its unknown author in a few weeks gained a wider reputation than that which one of the master minds of the century had been engaged for long years in building up. The reaction from this exaggerated fame of course set in, and it was sharp and severe.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Mr. Brontë informed about ‘Jane Eyre.’
The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and disappointment by witnessing his.... Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the postman, meeting Mr. Brontë, as the latter was leaving the house, and inquiring from the parson where one Currer Bell could be living, to which Mr. Brontë replied that there was no such person in the parish.... Now, however, when the demand for the work had assured success to ‘Jane Eyre,’ her sisters urged Charlotte to tell their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his study one afternoon after his early dinner, carrying with her a copy of the book, and one or two reviews, taking care to include a notice adverse to it. She informed me that something like the following conversation took place:
“Papa, I’ve been writing a book.”
“Have you, my dear?”
“Yes, and I want you to read it.”
“I am afraid it will try my eyes too much.”
“But it is not in manuscript: it is printed.”
“My dear! you’ve never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name.”
“But, papa, I don’t think it will be a loss; no more will you, if you will let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it.”
So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father; and then, giving him the copy of ‘Jane Eyre’ that she intended for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea, he said, “Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?”
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Charlotte’s subsequent portrait of Emily.
Shirley [is] a fancy likeness of Emily Brontë. Emily Brontë, but under very different conditions. No longer poor, no longer thwarted, no longer acquainted with misery and menaced by untimely death; not thus, but as a loving sister would fain have seen her, beautiful, triumphant, the spoiled child of happy fortune. Yet in these altered circumstances Shirley keeps her likeness to Charlotte’s hard-working sister. Under the pathetic finery so lovingly bestowed, under the borrowed splendors of a thousand a year, a lovely face, an ancestral manor-house, we recognize our hardy and headstrong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the inefficacy of this masquerade of grandeur, so indifferent and unnecessary to her. Through these years we discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed and over-worked vicar’s daughter.... Shirley is indeed the exterior Emily, the Emily that was to be met and known thirty-five years ago, only a little polished, with the angles a little smoothed, by a sister’s anxious care. The nobler Emily, deeply suffering, brooding, pitying, creating, is only to be found in a stray word here and there, a chance memory, a happy answer, gathered from the pages of her work, and the loving remembrance of her friends. But to know how Emily Brontë looked, moved, sat and spoke, we still return to Shirley. A host of corroborating memories start up in turning the pages. Who but Emily was always accompanied by a “rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between a mastiff and a bull-dog”? It is familiar to us as Una’s lion.
Certainly “Captain Keeldar,” with her cavalier airs, her ready disdain, her love of independence, does bring back with vivid brilliance the memory of our old acquaintance, “the Major,”[9]... We know her, too, by her kindness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made with her own hands for her servant’s friend, yet remembered visits of Martha’s little cousin to the kitchen, where Miss Emily would bring in her own chair for the ailing girl; anecdotes of her early rising through many years to do the hardest work, because the first servant was too old, and the second too young to get up so soon; and she, Emily, was so strong. A hundred little sacrifices, dearer to remember than Shirley’s open purse, awaken in our hearts and remind us that, after all, Emily was the nobler and more lovable heroine of the twain.... And Shirley’s love of picturesque and splendid raiment is not without an echo in our memories. It was Emily who, shopping in Bradford with Charlotte and her friend, chose a white stuff patterned with lilac thunder and lightning, to the scarcely concealed horror of her more sober companions.... She, too, had Shirley’s taste for the management of business.
A. Mary F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
“Keeper.”
The same tawny bull-dog, called “Tartar” in ‘Shirley,’ was “Keeper” in Haworth parsonage; a gift to Emily. With the gift came a warning. Keeper was faithful to the depths of his nature as long as he was with friends; but he who struck him with a stick or whip, roused the relentless nature of the brute, who flew at his throat forthwith, and held him there till one or the other was at the point of death. Now Keeper’s household fault was this: He loved to steal up-stairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs on the comfortable beds, covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper’s was so objectionable, that Emily in reply to Tabby’s remonstrances, declared that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely that he would never offend again. In the gathering dusk of an autumn evening, Tabby came, half triumphantly, half tremblingly, but in great wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy voluptuousness. Charlotte saw Emily’s whitening face, and set mouth, but dared not speak to interfere: no one dared when Emily’s eyes glowed in that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so compressed into stone. She went up-stairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night. Down the stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the “scaft of his neck,” but growling low and savagely all the time. The watchers would fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily’s attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the enraged brute. She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the strangling clutch at her throat—her bare clenched fist struck against his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and in the language of the turf, she “punished him” till his eyes were swelled up, and the half-blind, stupefied beast was led to his accustomed lair, to have his swelled head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself. The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he walked first among the mourners at her funeral; he slept moaning for nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced, dog fashion, after her death.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Emily saves Branwell’s life.
At last [Branwell] grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early, and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came up-stairs to sleep. Emily had gone on first into the little passage room where she still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell’s partly-opened door, saw a strange bright flare inside. “Oh, Emily!” she cried, “the house is on fire!”
Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She had remembered her father’s great horror of fire; it was the one dread of a brave man; he would have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his house. She came out silently and saw the flame; then, very white and determined, dashed from her room down stairs into the passage, where every night full pails of water stood. One in each hand she came up-stairs. Anne, Charlotte, the young servant, shrinking against the wall, huddled together in amazed horror—Emily went straight on and entered the blazing room. In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. Fortunately the flame had not reached the woodwork; drunken Branwell, turning in his bed, must have upset the light on to his sheets, for they and the bed were all on fire, and he unconscious in the midst, when Emily went in, even as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that night no one remembers now.
A. M. F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Emily’s personal resemblance to G. H. Lewes.
I have seen Lewes.... I could not feel otherwise to him than half-sadly, half-tenderly—a queer word that last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewes’s face almost moves me to tears; it is so wonderfully like Emily—her eyes, her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, the forehead—even, at moments, the expression.
Charlotte Brontë: Letter, 1850, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
Death of Emily Brontë.
The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the creatures their supper. She got up, walking slowly, holding out in her thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. But when she reached the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forward much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their last supper from her hands.
The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had been out to the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to the moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienated from life.
Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now—the tall, loose-jointed, “slinky” girl—her hair in its plenteous dark abundance was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it.... At last the servant came in: “Martha,” she said, “my comb’s down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.”
She finished her dressing, and came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering steps, down stairs into the little, bare parlor where Anne was working and Charlotte writing a letter. Emily took up some work and tried to sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered face, were ominous of the end. But still a little hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. “She grows daily weaker,” wrote Charlotte, on that memorable Tuesday morning; seeing surely no portent that this—this! was to be the last of the days and the hours of her weakness.
The morning grew on to noon, and Emily grew worse. She could no longer speak, but—gasping in a husky whisper—she said: “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now!” Alas, it was too late. The shortness of breath and rending pain increased; even Emily could no longer conceal them. Towards two o’clock her sisters begged her, in an agony, to let them put her to bed. “No, no,” she cried, tormented with the feverish restlessness that comes before the last, most quiet peace. She tried to rise, leaning with one hand upon the sofa. And thus the chord of life snapped. She was dead.
She was twenty-nine years old.
They buried her, a few days after, under the church pavement; under the slab of stone where the mother lay, and Maria and Elizabeth and Branwell.... And though no wind ever rustles over the grave on which no scented heather springs, nor any bilberry bears its sprigs of greenest leaves and purple fruit, she will not miss them now; she who wondered how any could imagine unquiet slumbers for them that sleep in the quiet earth.
A. M. F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Charlotte alone on the moors.
“I am free to walk on the moors; but when I go out there alone, everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heath, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry-leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read it.”
Charlotte Brontë: Letter, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
Wearied out by the vividness of her sorrowful recollections, she sought relief in long walks on the moors. A friend of hers gives an anecdote which may well come in here.
Anecdote of the old woman’s “cofe.”
“They are mistaken in saying that she was too weak to roam the hills for the benefit of the air. I do not think any one, certainly not any woman in this locality, went so much on the moors as she did, when the weather permitted. Indeed, she was so much in the habit of doing so, that people, who live quite away on the edge of the common, knew her perfectly well. I remember on one occasion an old woman saw her at a little distance, and she called out ‘How! Miss Brontë! Hey yah (have you) seen aught o’ my cofe (calf)?’ Miss Brontë told her she could not say, for she did not know it. ‘Well!’ she said, ‘Yah know, it’s getting up like nah (now), between a cah (cow) and a cofe—what we call a stirk, yah know, Miss Brontë; will yah turn it this way if yah happen to see’t, as yah’re going back, Miss Brontë; nah do, Miss Brontë.’”
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Mrs. Gaskell’s first impression.
A little lady in a black silk gown, whom I could not see at first for the dazzle in the room; she came up and shook hands with me at once.... She is (as she calls herself) undeveloped, thin, and more than half a head shorter than I am; soft brown hair, not very dark; eyes (very good and expressive, looking straight and open at you), of the same color as her hair; a large mouth; the forehead square, broad, and rather overhanging. She has a very sweet voice; rather hesitates in choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an effort admirable, and just befitting the occasion; there is nothing overstrained, but perfectly simple.
Mrs. Gaskell: Letter, published in ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Charlotte at home.
Miss Brontë put me in mind of her own ‘Jane Eyre.’ She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so quietly and noiselessly, just like a little bird, as Rochester called her, barring that all birds are joyous, and that joy can never have entered that house since it was first built.... There is something touching in the sight of that little creature entombed in such a place, and moving about herself like a spirit, especially when you think that the slight still frame encloses a force of strong fiery life, which nothing has been able to freeze or extinguish.
Letter from a Visitor: Quoted by Mrs. Gaskell.
The Rev. Patrick Brontë.
Charlotte’s appearance and manner.
Her eyes.
I knocked at the door, and presently a tall, not uncourtly, but ancient and venerable man, with a gray head, and the most notable Milesian features, opened it, and smiling kindly upon me as I told my name, invited me in; and asking pardon for leaving me alone, vanished into a room on the right hand of the door, telling me he would ring for his daughter. The bell had hardly sounded before the door opened, and Miss Brontë stood before me. I was agreeably disappointed at her appearance. I had always heard that she was very plain and unprepossessing, with bashful manners. Instead of this, I found her exceedingly agreeable, from the first moment of her entrance to the last of the interview, and, instead of being plain, I thought her uncommonly attractive. She had the slightest, fairy-like figure, and very small hands and feet. Her head was superb, and her forehead broad and deep and square, appearing so more especially in her profile. Her eyes had, for me, a strange fascination, so weird, mystical, unfathomable they seemed; and this expression was deepened by a slight obliquity in them. She had over-worked herself, she said, and was tired, and her eyes were very weary and painful; all which was evident in her appearance; and I saw that the light was painful to her, although the room was darkened by the drawn blinds. She was dressed very simply, but neatly, and with taste.
George S. Phillips: ‘Visit to Charlotte Brontë.’ ‘The Ladies’ Repository,’ September, 1872.
A parcel arrived for me, enclosing a book, and a note which was examined as few notes ever are. The book was ‘Shirley’; and the note was from ‘Currer Bell.’ Here it is:
Charlotte’s first meeting with Harriet Martineau.
“Currer Bell offers a copy of ‘Shirley’ to Miss Martineau’s acceptance, in acknowledgment of the pleasure and profit he [she] has derived from her work. When C. B. first read ‘Deerbrook,’ he tasted a new and keen pleasure, and experienced a genuine benefit. In his mind, ‘Deerbrook’ ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas, and rectified his views of life.”
“November 7th, 1849.”
We examined this note to make out whether it was written by a man or a woman. The hand was a cramped and nervous one, which might belong to anybody who had written too much, or was in bad health, or who had been badly taught. The erased “she” seemed at first to settle the matter; but somebody suggested that the “she” might refer to me under a form of sentence which might easily have been changed in the penning. I had made up my mind, as I had repeatedly said, that a certain passage in ‘Jane Eyre,’ about sewing on brass rings, could have been written only by a woman or an upholsterer. I now addressed my reply externally to ‘Currer Bell, Esq.’ and began it “Madam.” [A second note from Currer Bell, expressing a wish to meet Miss Martineau, was answered by an invitation to tea.]
The footman would certainly announce this mysterious personage by his or her right name; and, as I could not hear the announcement, I charged my cousins to take care that I was duly informed of it. Precisely as the time-piece struck six, a carriage stopped at the door; and after a minute of suspense, the footman announced “Miss Brogden”; whereupon my cousin informed me that it was Miss Brontë; for we had heard the name before, among others, in the way of conjecture. I thought her the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair) and her eyes blazed, as it seemed to me. She glanced quickly round; and my trumpet pointing me out, she held out her hand frankly and pleasantly. I introduced her, of course, to the family, and then came a moment which I had not anticipated. When she was seated by me on the sofa, she cast up at me such a look,—so loving, so appealing,—that, in connection with her deep mourning dress, and the knowledge that she was the sole survivor of her family, I could with utmost difficulty return her smile, or keep my composure. I should have been heartily glad to cry. We soon got on very well; and she appeared more at ease that evening than I ever saw her afterwards, except when we were alone.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
Mr. Lewes’ account of Charlotte.
Lewes was describing Currer Bell to me yesterday as a little, plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid. Yet what passion, what fire in her! Quite as much as in George Sand, only the clothing is less voluptuous.
George Eliot: Letter to Sara Hennell, 1853. ‘George Eliot’s Life as related in her Letters and Journals,’ arranged and edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
Thackeray’s recollection.
I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions.... She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely; but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me....
Wm. M. Thackeray: ‘Roundabout Papers.’ London: Smith & Elder, 1863.
Mrs. Gaskell’s elaborate description.
She was ... very small in figure—“stunted” was the word she applied to herself—but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her. With soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description as they appeared to me in her later life. They were large and well shaped; their color a reddish-brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any human creature. As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork of whatever kind—writing, sewing, knitting—was so clear in its minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
A caricature.
Redeeming features.
There is a little caricature sketched by herself lying before me as I write. In it all the more awkward of her physical points are ingeniously exaggerated. The prominent forehead bulges out in an aggressive manner, suggestive of hydrocephalus, the nose, “tip-tilted like the petal of a flower,” and the mouth are made unnecessarily large, while the little figure is clumsy and ungainly. But though she could never pretend to beauty, she had redeeming features, her eyes, hair, and massive forehead all being attractive points.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Charlotte’s well-known portrait.
The engraving.
Mr. Nicholls asked me to step into the parlor and look at Charlotte’s portrait. It is the one from which the engraving in the ‘Life’ (Mrs. Gaskell’s) is made; but the latter does no justice to the picture, which Mr. Nicholls said was a perfect likeness of the original. I remarked that the engraving gives to the face, and especially to the eyes, a weird, sinister and unpleasant expression which did not appear in the portrait. He said he had observed it, and that nothing could be more unjust, for Charlotte’s eyes were as soft and affectionate in their expression as could possibly be conceived.
Account of an Interview with Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls, quoted by T. W. Reid.
Personal traits: Miss Martineau’s notes.
Slightly morbid.
Between the appearance of ‘Shirley’ and that of ‘Villette’ she came to me;—in December, 1850. Our intercourse then confirmed my deep impression of her integrity, her noble conscientiousness about her vocation, and her consequent self-reliance in the moral conduct of her life. I saw at the same time tokens of a morbid condition of mind, in one or two directions;—much less than might have been expected, or than would have been seen in almost any one else under circumstances so unfavorable to health of body and mind as those in which she lived.
Unspoilable.
She was not only unspoiled by her sudden and prodigious fame, but obviously unspoilable. She was somewhat amazed by her fame, but oftener annoyed; at least when obliged to come out into the world to meet it, instead of its reaching her in her secluded home in the wilds of Yorkshire.
Passionate love of truth.
“I know,” she wrote, “that you will give me your thoughts upon my book, [‘Villette’] as frankly as if you spoke to some near relative whose good you preferred to her gratification. I wince under the pain of condemnation—like any other weak structure of flesh and blood; but I love, I honor, I kneel to Truth. Let her smite me on one cheek—good! the tears may spring to the eyes; but courage! There is the other side—hit again—hit sharply!” This was the genuine spirit of the woman. She might be weak for once; but her permanent temper was one of humility, candor, integrity and conscientiousness.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Mrs. Gaskell’s record: Charlotte’s dread of a strange face.
I had several opportunities of perceiving how this nervousness was ingrained in her constitution, and how acutely she suffered in striving to overcome it. One evening we had, among other guests, two sisters who sang Scottish ballads exquisitely. Miss Brontë had been sitting quiet and constrained till they began “The Bonnie House of Airlie,” but the effect of that and “Carlisle Yetts,” which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the Piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose, and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see them the next morning, when they would sing as long as ever she liked; and she promised gladly and thankfully. But on reaching the house her courage failed. We walked some time up and down the street; she upbraiding herself all the while for folly, and trying to dwell on the sweet echoes in her memory, rather than on the thoughts of a third sister who would have to be faced if we went in. But it was of no use; and dreading lest this struggle with herself might bring on one of her trying headaches, I entered at last and made the best apology I could for her non-appearance.
Superstitiousness.
There was another circumstance that came to my knowledge at this period which told secrets about the finely-strung frame. One night I was on the point of relating some dismal ghost story, just before bed-time. She shrank from hearing it, and confessed that she was superstitious, and prone at all times to the involuntary recurrence of any thoughts of ominous gloom which might have been suggested to her. She said that on first coming to us she had found a letter on her dressing-table from a friend in Yorkshire, containing a story which had impressed her vividly ever since;—that it mingled with her dreams at night, and made her sleep restless and unrefreshing.
The Brontës not fond of children.
Neither Charlotte nor her sisters were naturally fond of children. The hieroglyphics of childhood were an unknown language to them, for they had never been much with those younger than themselves. I am inclined to think, too, that they had not the happy knack of imparting information, which seems to be a separate gift from the faculty of acquiring it.... The little Brontës had been brought up motherless; and from knowing nothing of the gaiety and sportiveness of childhood—from never having experienced caresses or fond attentions themselves—they were ignorant of the very nature of infancy, or how to call out its engaging qualities. Children were to them the troublesome necessities of humanity; they had never been drawn into contact with them in any other way. Years afterward, when Miss Brontë came to stay with us, she watched our little girls perpetually; and I could not persuade her that they were only average specimens of well brought up children. She was surprised and touched by any sign of thoughtfulness for others, of kindness to animals, or of unselfishness on their part; and constantly maintained that she was in the right, and I in the wrong, when we differed on the point of their unusual excellence.
My youngest little girl ... would steal her little hand into Miss Brontë’s scarcely larger one, and each took pleasure in this apparently unobserved caress. Yet once when I told Julia to take and show her the way to some room in the house, Miss Brontë shrank back: “Do not bid her do anything for me,” she said; “it has been so sweet hitherto to have her rendering her little attentions spontaneously.”
As illustrating her feelings with regard to children, I may give what she says in [one] of her letters to me:
“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? They seem to me little wonders; their talk, their ways, are all matter of half-admiring, half-puzzled speculation.”
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Manner of composing.
I remember many little particulars which Miss Brontë gave me, in answer to my inquiries respecting her mode of composition. She said, that it was not every day that she could write. Sometimes weeks or even months elapsed before she felt that she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written. Then, some morning, she would waken up, and the progress of her tale lay clear and bright before her, in distinct vision. When this was the case, all her care was to discharge her household and filial duties, so as to obtain leisure to sit down and write out the incidents and consequent thoughts, which were, in fact, more present to her mind at such times than her actual life itself. Notwithstanding this “possession,” ... those who survive, of her daily and household companions, are clear in their testimony, that never was the claim of any duty, never was the call of another for help, neglected for an instant. It had been necessary to give Tabby—now nearly eighty years of age—the assistance of a girl. Tabby relinquished any of her work with jealous reluctance, and could not bear to be reminded, though ever so delicately, that the acuteness of her senses was dulled by age. Among other things, she reserved to herself the right of peeling the potatoes for dinner; but as she was growing blind, she often left in those black specks, which we in the North call the “eyes” of the potato. Miss Brontë was too dainty a housekeeper to put up with this; yet she could not bear to hurt the faithful old servant, by bidding the younger maiden go over the potatoes again, and so reminding Tabby that her work was less effectual than formerly. Accordingly, she would steal into the kitchen, and quietly carry off the bowl of vegetables, without Tabby’s being aware, and breaking off in the full flow of interest and inspiration, in her writing, carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes, and noiselessly carry them back to their place. This little proceeding may show how orderly and fully she accomplished her duties, even at those times when the possession was upon her.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Handwriting, etc.
Miss Brontë’s handwriting was exceedingly small, nervous, and poor, but quite legible. Her first manuscript was a very small square book, or folding of paper, from which she copied, with extreme care. She was as much surprised to find that I never copy at all, as I was at her imposing on herself so much toil which seems to me unnecessary.
Harriet Martineau: ‘Autobiography.’
Charlotte’s pen-portrait of herself.
Those who would understand Charlotte, even more than those who would understand Emily, should study the difference of tenderness between the touch that drew Shirley Keeldar and the touch that drew Lucy Snowe. This latter figure, as Mr. Wemyss Reid has observed with indisputable accuracy of insight, was, doubtless, if never meant to win liking or made to find favor in the general reader’s eyes, yet none the less evidently on that account the faithful likeness of Charlotte Brontë, studied from the life, and painted by her own hand with the sharp austere precision of a photograph rather than a portrait. But it is herself with the consolation and support of her genius withdrawn, with the strength of her spiritual arm immeasurably shortened, the cunning of her right hand comparatively cancelled; and this it is that makes the main undertone and ultimate result of the book somewhat mournfuller even than the literal record of her mournful and glorious life.
A. C. Swinburne: ‘A Note on Charlotte Brontë.’ London: Chatto & Windus, 1877.
A chat with Mrs. Gaskell.
The parlor at Haworth in Charlotte’s last days.
We talked over the clear, bright fire; it is a cold country, and the fires were a pretty warm dancing light all over the house. The parlor has been evidently refurnished within the last few years, since Miss Brontë’s success has enabled her to have a little more money to spend. Everything fits into, and is in harmony with, the idea of a country parsonage, possessed by people of very moderate means. The prevailing color of the room is crimson, to make a warm setting for the cold, gray landscape without. There is her likeness by Richmond, and an engraving from Laurence’s picture of Thackeray; and two recesses on each side of the high, narrow, old-fashioned mantel-piece, filled with books—books given to her, books she has bought, and which tell of her individual pursuits and tastes; not standard books.
Charlotte’s weak sight.
She cannot see well, and does little beside knitting. The way she weakened her eyesight was this: When she was sixteen or seventeen, she wanted much to draw, and she copied nimini-pimini copper-plate engravings out of annuals (“stippling,” don’t the artists call it?); ... till at the end of six months she had produced an exquisitely faithful copy of the engraving. She wanted to learn to express her ideas by drawing. After she had tried to draw stories, and not succeeded, she took the better mode of writing, but in so small a hand that it is almost impossible to decipher what she wrote at this time.
Habits of order.
Emily “a Titan.”
A picture by Branwell.
I soon observed that her habits of order were such that she could not go on with the conversation if a chair was out of its place; everything was arranged with delicate regularity.... I told her of ——’s admiration of ‘Shirley,’ which pleased her, for the character of ‘Shirley’ was meant for her sister Emily, about whom she is never tired of talking, nor I of listening. Emily must have been a remnant of the Titans—great-grand-daughter of the giants who used to inhabit the earth. One day Miss Brontë brought down a rough, common-looking oil painting, done by her brother, of herself—a little, rather prim-looking girl of eighteen—and the two other sisters, girls of sixteen and fourteen, with cropped hair, and sad, dreamy-looking eyes.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Charlotte’s life-long friendship with Ellen Nussey.
In the sombre web of Charlotte’s existence there shone one thread of silver, all the brighter and more blessed for the contrast—it was the warm, steady, unfailing friendship of her school-fellow “E.” (Ellen Nussey). “Ma bien aimée, ma précieuse E., mon amie chère et chérie,” she calls her in one of her earlier letters. “If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do think we might live and love on till death, without being dependent on any third person for happiness.” “What am I compared to you?” she exclaims; “I feel my own utter worthlessness when I make the comparison. I am a very coarse, commonplace wretch.” But the affection that overflowed in such loving extravagance was no passing sentiment. As life deepened and grew more and more intense—and fuller of pain—for each, the closer became their attachment, the more constantly Charlotte turned for sympathy and support to her faithful companion. In her, indeed, she found all the greater rest and refreshment because of the difference in their natures. Her individuality colors the Caroline Helstone of ‘Shirley.’
R. W. Gilder, in ‘The Old Cabinet,’ in Scribner’s Monthly, now The Century, May, 1871.
Charlotte’s marriage.
It was fixed that the marriage was to take place on the 29th of June (1854). Her two friends (Ellen Nussey and Miss Wooler) arrived at Haworth Parsonage the day before; and the long summer afternoon and evening were spent by Charlotte in thoughtful arrangements for the morrow, and for her father’s comfort during her absence from home. When all was finished—the trunk packed, the morning’s breakfast arranged, the wedding-dress laid out—just at bed-time, Mr. Brontë announced his intention of stopping at home while the others went to church. What was to be done? Who was to give the bride away? There were only to be the officiating clergyman, the bride and bridegroom, the bridesmaid, and Miss Wooler present. The prayer-book was referred to; and there it was seen that the rubric enjoins that the minister shall receive “the woman from her father’s or friend’s hands,” and that nothing is specified as to the sex of the “friend.” So Miss Wooler, ever kind in emergency, volunteered to give her old pupil away.... The news of the wedding had slipped abroad before the little party came out of church, and many old humble friends were there, seeing her look “like a snow-drop,” as they say. Her dress was white embroidered muslin, with a lace mantle, and white bonnet trimmed with green leaves, which might suggest the resemblance of the pale wintry flower.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Her brief married life.
There was not much time for literary labors during these happy months of married life. The wife, new to her duties, was engaged in mastering them with all the patience, self-suppression, and industry which had characterized her throughout her life. Her husband was now her first thought; and he took the time which had formerly been devoted to reading, study, thought, and writing. But occasionally the pressure she was forced to put upon herself was very severe. Mr. Nicholls had never been attracted toward her by her literary fame: with literary effort he had no sympathy, and upon the whole he would rather that his wife should lay aside her pen entirely than that she should gain any fresh triumphs in the world of letters. So she submitted, and with cheerful courage repressed that “gift” which had been her solace in sorrows deep and many. Yet once the spell was too strong to be resisted, and she hastily wrote a few pages of a new story called ‘Emma,’ in which once more she proposed to deal with her favorite theme—the history of a friendless girl. One would fain have seen how she would have treated her subject, now that “the color of her thoughts” had been changed, and that a happy marriage had introduced her to a new phase of that life which she had studied so closely and so constantly. But it was not to be.
T. Wemyss Reid: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
Her death.
[Charlotte had been ill since January, 1855.] About the third week in March there was a change; a low wandering delirium came on; and in it she begged constantly for food and even for stimulants. She swallowed eagerly now; but it was too late. Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband’s woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer, that God would spare her. “Oh!” she whispered forth, “I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.”
Early on Saturday morning, March 31st, the solemn tolling of Haworth church-bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting desolate and alone in the old grey house.
Mrs. Gaskell: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
Charlotte’s and Emily’s work contrasted.
[Emily] tells us what she saw; and what she saw and what she was incapable of seeing are equally characteristic. All the wildness of that moorland, all the secrets of those lonely farms, all the capabilities of the one tragedy of passion and weakness that touched her solitary life, she divined and appropriated: but not the life of the village at her feet, not the bustle of the mills, the riots, the sudden alternation of wealth and poverty, not the incessant rivalry of church and chapel; and while the West Riding has known the proto-type of nearly every person and nearly every place in ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Shirley,’ not a single character in ‘Wuthering Heights’ ever climbed the hills round Haworth.
Say that two foreigners have passed though Staffordshire, leaving us their reports of what they have seen. The first, going by day, will tell us of the hideous blackness of the country, but yet more, no doubt, of that awful, patient struggle of man with fire and darkness, of the grim courage of those unknown lives; and he would see what they toil for, women with little children in their arms; and he would notice the blue sky beyond the smoke, doubly precious for such horrible environment. But the second traveller has journeyed through the night; neither squalor nor ugliness, neither sky nor children, has he seen, only a vast stretch of blackness shot through with flaming fires, or here and there burned to a dull red by heated furnaces; and before these, strange toilers, half naked, scarcely human, and red in the leaping flicker and gleam of the fire. The meaning of their work he could not see, but a fearful and impressive phantasmagoria of flame and blackness and fiery energies at work in the encompassing night. So differently did the black country of this world appear to Charlotte, clear-seeing and compassionate, and to Emily Brontë, a traveller through the shadows.
A. M. F. Robinson: ‘Emily Brontë.’
Their opposite methods.
Charlotte’s studies from the life.
The habit of direct study from life which has given us, among its finest and most precious results, these two contrasted figures of Shirley Keeldar and Lucy Snowe, affords yet another point of contrast or distinction between the manner and motive of work respectively perceptible in the design of either sister. Emily Brontë, like William Blake, would probably have said, or at least would presumably have felt, that such study after the model was to her impossible—an attempt but too certain to diminish her imaginative insight and disable her creative hand; while Charlotte evidently never worked so well as when painting more or less directly from nature. Almost the only apparent exception, as far as we—the run of her readers—know, is the wonderful and incomparable figure of Rochester.... In most cases probably the design begun by means of the camera was transferred for completion to the canvas. The likeness of Mr. Helstone to Mr. Brontë, for example, was thus at once enlarged and subdued, heightened and modified, by the skilful and noble instinct which kept it always within the gracious and natural bounds prescribed and maintained by the fine tact of filial respect.
The gift of the Brontë sisters.
The gift of which I would speak is that of a power to make us feel in every nerve, at every step forward which our imagination is compelled to take under the guidance of another’s, that thus and not otherwise, but in all things altogether even as we are told and shown, it was and it must have been with the human figures set before us in their action and their suffering; that thus and not otherwise they absolutely must and would have felt and thought and spoken under the proposed conditions. It is something for a writer to have achieved if he has made it worth our fancy’s while to consider by the light of imaginative reason whether the creatures of his own fancy would in actual fact and life have done as he has made them do or not; it is something, and by comparison it is much. But no definite terms of comparison will suffice to express how much more than this it is to have done what the youngest of capable readers must feel on first opening ‘Jane Eyre’ that the writer of its very first pages has shown herself competent to do.... Even in the best and greatest works of our best and greatest we do not find this one great good quality so innate, so immanent as in hers. At most we find the combination of event with character, the coincidence of action with disposition, the coherence of consequences with emotions, to be rationally credible and acceptable to the natural sense of a reasonable faith. We rarely or never feel that, given the characters, the incidents become inevitable; that such passion must needs bring forth none other than such action, such emotions cannot choose but find their only issue in such events. And certainly we do not feel, what it seems to me the highest triumph of inspired intelligence and creative instinct to succeed in making us feel, that the main-spring of all, the central relation of the whole, “the very pulse of the machine,” has in it this occult inexplicable force of nature. But when Catherine Earnshaw says to Nelly Dean, “I am Heathcliff!” and when Jane Eyre answers Edward Rochester’s question, whether she feels in him the absolute sense of fitness and correspondence to herself which he feels himself in her, with the words which close and crown the history of their twin-born spirits—“to the finest fibre of my nature, sir,”—we feel to the finest fibre of our own that these are no mere words. On this ground at least it might for once be not unpardonable to borrow their standing reference or illustration from the comparative school of critics, ... and say, as was said on another score of Emily Brontë in particular by Sydney Dobell, that either sister in this single point “has done no less” than Shakespeare. As easily might we imagine a change of the mutual relations between the characters of Shakespeare as a corresponding revolution or reversal of conditions among theirs.
Emily a true poet.
There was a dark unconscious instinct as of primitive nature-worship in the passionate great genius of Emily Brontë, which found no corresponding quality in her sister’s.... It is possible that to take full delight in Emily Brontë’s book one must have something by natural inheritance of her instinct and something by earliest association of her love for the same special points of earth—the same lights and sounds and colors and odors, and sights and shapes of the same fierce free landscape of tenantless and fenceless moor; but however that may be, it was assuredly with no less justice of insight and accuracy of judgment than humility of self-knowledge and fidelity of love that Charlotte in her day of solitary fame assigned to her dead sister the crown of poetic honor which she has rightfully disclaimed for herself. Full of poetic quality as her own work is throughout, that quality is never condensed or crystallised into the proper and final form of verse. But the pure note of absolutely right expression for things inexpressible in full by prose at its highest point of adequacy—the formal inspiration of sound which at once reveals itself, and which can fully reveal itself by metrical embodiment alone, in the symphonies and antiphonies of regular word-music and definite instinctive modulation of corresponsive tones—this is what Emily had for her birthright as certainly as Charlotte had it not.... The final expression in verse of Emily’s passionate and inspired intelligence was to be uttered from lips already whitened though not yet chilled by the present shadow of unterrifying death. No last words of poet or hero or sage or saint were ever worthy of longer or more reverent remembrance than that appeal which is so far above and beyond a prayer ... at once fiery and solemn, full alike of resignation and of rapture, as wholly stripped and cleared and lightened from all burdens and all bandages and all incrustations of creed as it is utterly pervaded and possessed by the sublime and irrefutable passion of belief.
A. C. Swinburne: ‘A Note on Charlotte Brontë.’
George Eliot on ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette.’
I have read ‘Jane Eyre,’ and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book is interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports.
George Eliot: Letter to Charles Bray, 1848.
I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading ‘Villette,’ a still more wonderful book than ‘Jane Eyre.’ There is something almost preternatural in its power.
George Eliot: Letter to Mrs. Bray, in ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ 1853.
Thackeray on Charlotte Brontë’s works and life.
Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist’s noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors!... As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable, history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one among the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God—with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear!
Wm. M. Thackeray: ‘Roundabout Papers.’