CHAPTER VIII.
THE RIVERS OR BRONTË FAMILY IN "JANE EYRE."
Charlotte Brontë, while she often portrayed the main characters of her stories from people in her own life, was quite at home with them in whatsoever condition or surroundings she placed them.[38] She loved the memory of Tabitha Aykroyd—that faithful servant, companion, and friend; hated the vices of her brother Branwell Brontë, and was obsessed by thoughts of M. Héger, her Brussels friend. So she placed the good old housekeeper of the parsonage—under an ecclesiastical cognomen truly—as Mrs. Dean at Wuthering Heights; set up her brother Branwell on the same premises as Hindley Earnshaw, and put her Brussels friend in the position of master of that abode.
In Jane Eyre Tabitha Aykroyd is Bessie of Mrs. Reed's household, and Hannah of the Rivers family; Branwell is among better surroundings as John Reed, and M. Héger is portrayed more proportionately as the master of Thornfield; while in the same work Charlotte Brontë portrays her own sister Maria Brontë, and makes her say she is a native of Northumberland and describe the scenery round her birthplace there!
In Shirley Charlotte admits to having placed Emily Brontë as "Shirley Keeldar," surrounded by the environment of a wealthy woman—a landed proprietress in the Dewsbury neighbourhood; and she gives us phases of M. Héger as a resident of Yorkshire, in the two Moores.
Villette contains in Dr. John, towards the close, a portrait of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls, who became her husband, as a resident of the foreign town Villette—for I find the character Dr. John was a portrait not wholly drawn, as is supposed, from Mr. Smith of Messrs. Smith & Elder, the Brontë publishers; and glimpses of Mr. Thackeray as a Villette lecturer appear in a flitting usurpation of M. Héger's rights as the original of M. Paul.
Charlotte Brontë's thus placing given characters against any background is doubtless responsible for the fact that when I wrote the Fortnightly Review article, "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil: A New Study of the Brontë Family," in March, 1907, nigh on sixty years of readers of the Brontë works had failed to recognize Charlotte Brontë had portrayed in Jane Eyre not only herself and her sister, Maria Brontë, as was commonly known, but also her brother, Branwell Brontë; her Aunt Branwell; her cousin, Eliza Branwell; her sister, Elizabeth Brontë; her sister, Emily Brontë; her sister, Anne Brontë; her father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë; and also Tabitha Aykroyd, the Brontë servant. Perhaps it was because readers believed Morton was Hathersage, Derbyshire, that a suspicion of the Rivers family being the Brontë family at Haworth never had been entertained.
I found, however, that all the above-mentioned members of the Brontë family were placed in Jane Eyre under a "Rivers" surname; and proceeding into the inquiry as to their identity, I perceived this discovery of the Brontë family in Jane Eyre numbered with the more important of my Brontë discoveries, and that despite her purposed and reasonable cross-scents—the spired church, the mention of knife-grinders, and the hinting at the proximity of Sheffield, all so necessary in her day to permit the portrayal of phases of the life at Haworth Parsonage—Morton to Charlotte Brontë was in the main Haworth. What importance would attach to a discovery of an unknown portrait group of his family deliberately painted from life by an old master! Such is the importance of this discovery of the Brontë family drawn by the pen of Charlotte Brontë herself in Jane Eyre. Currer Bell portrayed with unvarying truth; and with cunning artistry she brought forward in her literary legacy to the English novel the sure characteristics—the very soul, the shallowness, the pretty affectionateness, the cooing "dove-like voice," the "blue steel glance," of those she had watched and loved and feared.
Now, in the selection of a Christian name for the heroine Jane Eyre, in whom she had portrayed herself, there was every reason why Charlotte Brontë would be unlikely to adopt the second name of her sister, Emily Jane. We have seen, however, that Charlotte Brontë had been led by Montagu's mention of the Fairy Jannet, or Janet, poetically to make her heroine a Fairy Janet. This evidence shows, therefore, that "Jane" was really only secondary. The Fairy Cave which this fairy was supposed to frequent is near Malham or Gimmerton, and, as I have said, the Fairy Janet is termed "the queen of the Malhamdale elves that frequent the enchanted land round the source of the Aire." Montagu mentions the fact that the river Ayre takes its rise at Malham—at Malham Tarn, and hence Charlotte Brontë seems to have named her heroine originally Janet Aire. Obvious it is she would be led, naturally, to use later some variant of Aire or Ayre; and the fact that she visited in the summer of 1845 (evidence shows she had read Montagu at the time)[39] her friend Miss Nussey, then at Hathersage in Derbyshire, where Eyre is a common name, would suggest she was led to adopt this variant through her visit there. We already have seen Charlotte Brontë used the variant of "Hare" for "Air" in Wuthering Heights for the boy Hareton from Montagu's boy-guide, Robert Airton. And that she wished in Jane Eyre to break through the confines of the variant she had chosen for Aire, and give open expression to her original and poetic idea, is seen plainly enough where Adèle asks:—