[37] See my footnote, page 58.
[38] Thus she put her cousin Eliza Branwell under the same roof as herself and Branwell Brontë in Jane Eyre.
[39] The Poems prepared for publication in the autumn of 1845 bear evidence of the influence of Montagu's work. It was at this time Montagu's work provided Charlotte Brontë's nom de guerre of Currer Bell. See my foot-note on Frances of The Professor as the Fairy Jane, page 63.
[40] A copy of this will is printed in The Brontës: Life and Letters.
[41] Mr. Augustine Birrell in his Life of Charlotte Brontë (1887), gives a very interesting insight into a love episode of Mr. Brontë, during his first curacy, at Wethersfield, near Braintree, Essex. Mr. Brontë found a home with a Miss Mildred Davy, with whose niece, a "comely damsel of eighteen—a Miss Mary Mildred Davy Burder—with brown curls and blue eyes" he fell in love. A plotting guardian uncle, however, removed Miss Burder and wrongly intercepted all Mr. Brontë's letters. Subsequently Mr. Brontë married Miss Maria Branwell, of Penzance, visiting in Yorkshire, whom he married at St. Oswald's Church, Guiseley, near Leeds. After the death of his wife, Mr. Brontë offered to marry Miss Burder, but was refused. She became the wife of the Rev. Peter Sibree, of Wethersfield. Mr. W. W. Yates' book, The Father of the Brontës, 1897, shows us Mr. Brontë as a curate at Dewsbury. Mr. Yates, who is the originator of the Brontë Society and Museum, rightly associated Mr. Brontë with Mr. Helstone of Shirley, supporting his contention by evidence.
[42] For story and other purposes Miss Brontë makes St. John Rivers ask Jane's hand in marriage; and of course as the original of Moor House has been supposed to be at Hathersage in Derbyshire, and it was there the Rev. Henry Nussey lived—Miss Nussey's brother—who had offered to marry Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Gaskell's Brontë's Life and a following (including even a recent catalogue of the Brontë Museum, wherein reference is made to Mr. Nussey's portrait!) have given it forth that Mr. Nussey was the original of St. John Rivers—notwithstanding that Mr. Nussey was a married man when Charlotte was visiting at Hathersage. That Mr. Nussey and St. John Rivers are wholly dissimilar is contended at length in Charlotte Brontë and Her Sisters, pp. 166-170.
[43] The Brontës: Life and Letters.
[44] In the love relations of Shirley Keeldar, however, we must expect to find phases of circumstances associated with Charlotte Brontë herself. Thus Shirley Keeldar is at times Currer Bell.
[45] Mr. Rochester's remarks in Jane Eyre, Chapter XII., on Jane's drawings would seem to show that though M. Héger, the original of this character, was interested in Charlotte Brontë's gift as an artist (and we know she sent M. Héger a drawing of hers as late as August 1845), he spoke of them in disparagement—a fact that alone argues he was her superior in art, and understood drawing. Indeed, after seeing the various water-colour and other drawings of Charlotte Brontë, some thirty of which, including "a pencil drawing of Louis Philippe of France, drawn by C. Brontë during her stay in Brussels," are numbered with the Brontë relics, I may say we can take it as really the expression of M. Héger concerning her sketches when Mr. Rochester observes of Jane's efforts in drawing:—"You have secured the shadow of your thought, but no more probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give it being," for this is the truth concerning Charlotte Brontë's efforts of the kind. Nevertheless, I find evidence of a Brussels tradition in the eighteen-fifties that she was clever as a painter, M. Sue giving ability to his Miss Mary in this direction. It is more emphasized in his feuilleton than volume portrayal of this "Institutrice," both of which works we shall see presented phases of Miss Brontë as she was known. Hence we read, "Eh bien! monsieur, trouvez-vous qu'elle sait un peu dessiner, MA Miss Mary?" The italics, etc., are M. Sue's.
[46] Charlotte Brontë and Her Sisters, page 181.