[2] Clara H. Whitmore, A.M., in Woman's Work in English Fiction; 1910.
[3] The Saturday Review, September 6, 1902. A correspondence followed.
[4] The Fortnightly Review, March 1907.
[5] The Brontës in Ireland, by Dr. William Wright, 1893, and The Brontë Homeland, by J. Ramsden, 1897, though they conflict, deal interestingly with Patrick Brunty's, or Brontë's, relations. "Patrick ... after being a linen weaver secured the post of teacher in the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then that of teacher at Drumballyroney." Eventually he got a scholarship and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took Holy Orders. His father was a Hugh Brunty, who married a Roman Catholic, Alice McClory, or M'Clory. She is said to have become a Protestant, as was her husband. Of this marriage there were ten children, the eldest being Charlotte Brontë's father, who early took to "larnin'," to quote the Irish hearsay. The Brontës in Ireland has been challenged as presenting many statements impossible of verification. The assertion that an Irish Brunty foundling story suggested the foundling of Wuthering Heights raised a harsh and voluminous controversy. The Rev. Angus Mackay, in his little brochure The Brontës—Fact and Fiction, 1897, controverted Dr. Wright, as did others elsewhere. The matter is summed up succinctly by Mr. Horsfall Turner, the Yorkshire genealogist, in The Rev. Patrick Brontë's Collected Works, 1898, where, speaking of the Irish Brontës and the foundling story, he says:—"The only one who could transmit this story was Hugh Brunty, and not one of his descendants ever heard of it before Dr. Wright's book was issued, not even the vaguest tradition."
[6] The "wild, weird writings" of her childhood, which awed homely Mrs. Gaskell, were merely badly, or I may say, childishly, assimilated fragments from English adaptations found in Dryden, Rowe, etc., of Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. 1, 73), and of other ancient writers.
[7] Her correspondence is given in Sir Wemyss Reid's Monograph on Charlotte Brontë, in Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, Haworth Edition, and in Mr. Clement Shorter's The Brontës: Life and Letters, 1908.
[8] Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, by Clement Shorter.
[9] Charlotte Brontë, upon the other hand, was a most fluent writer of prose. She sent Wordsworth a story in 1840, and spoke of her facility in writing novels. (Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë, pages 189-190, Haworth Edition.) It is said Emily corrected misprints, etc., in her printed volume of Wuthering Heights; but whether or not she did this at Charlotte Brontë's instigation is of little interest and no importance in view of the literal evidence in The Key to the Brontë Works. It may be Emily turned Charlotte's amanuensis; and it would not be difficult to show Anne Brontë also had been Charlotte's understudy. See my remarks on Wildfell Hall in Appendix.
[10] See my remarks, page 39.
[11] When King Charles II. was crowned, Montagu carried the sceptre. A historian states that the Admiral—who, I may say, had been a great friend of Richard Cromwell—perished in the sea-fight with De Ruyter, because he would not leave his ship by a piece of obstinate courage, provoked by a reflection that he took care more of himself than of the king's honour.