So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Héger and of the great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he can lay his hands on, from the Poems, from Wuthering Heights, from Jane Eyre, from Villette and The Professor, "… all her life's hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart…" (Villette) "… faith was blighted, confidence destroyed…" (Jane Eyre) … "Mr. Rochester" (M. Héger, we are informed in confidential brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument. "Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark season when Charlotte Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, and that she portrayed M. Héger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with 'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul Héger". We must believe that Wuthering Heights was written in pure vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Brontë repudiated its authorship for three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her "heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified animus of her portrait of M. Héger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence.

Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared after the publication of Jane Eyre. So far there is nothing new in his discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugène Sue's extinct novel of Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice, and gives us parallel passages from that. For in Miss Mary, published in 1850-51[A] we have, not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily from Jane Eyre, but the situation in The Professor and Villette is largely anticipated. We are told that Eugène Sue was in Brussels in 1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr. Malham-Dembleby maintains—that M. Héger made indiscreet revelations to Eugène Sue, but that Eugène Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took his own where he found it, either in the pages of Jane Eyre or in the tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Héger may have been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate, have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer for what Madame Héger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes of Eugène Sue.

[Footnote A: Serially in the London Journal in 1850; in volume form in Paris, 1851. It is possible, but not likely, that Eugène Sue may have seen the manuscript of The Professor when it was "going the round".]

Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Héger portrait, that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte Brontë in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading Shirley. It is signed Paul Héger, 1850, the year of Shirley's publication, and the year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Héger, done from life in 1850." The handwriting gives no clue.

Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in Villette. He says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, gown or no gown, the portrait may be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that Charlotte and M. Héger met in London that year, and that he then drew this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Héger's children maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the portrait from the Héger family, a statement at variance with the evidence of the Héger family itself. But granted that the children of M. Héger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this portrait of Charlotte Brontë from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication.

APPENDIX II

Leyland's theory is that Branwell Brontë wrote the first seventeen chapters of Wuthering Heights. It has very little beyond Leyland's passionate conviction to support it. There is a passage in a letter of Branwell's to Leyland, the sculptor, written in 1845, where he says he is writing a three-volume novel of which the first volume is completed. He compares it with "Hamlet" and with "Lear". There is also Branwell's alleged statement to Mr. Grundy. And there is an obscure legend of manuscripts produced from Branwell's hat, before the eyes of Mr. Grundy, in an inn-parlour. Leyland argues freely from the antecedent probability suggested by Branwell's letters and his verse, which he published by way of vindication. He could hardly have done Branwell a worse service. Branwell's letters give us a vivid idea of the sort of manuscripts that would be produced, in inn-parlours, from his hat. As for his verse—that formless, fluent gush of sentimentalism—it might have passed as an error of his youth, but for poor Leyland's comments on its majesty and beauty. There are corpses in it and tombstones, and girls dying of tuberculosis, obscured beyond recognition in a mush of verbiage. There is not a live line in it. One sonnet only, out of Branwell's many sonnets, is fitted to survive. It has a certain melancholy, sentimental grace. But it is not a good sonnet, and it shows Branwell at his best. At his worst he sinks far below Charlotte at her worst, and, compared with Emily or with Charlotte at her best, Branwell is nowhere. Even Anne beats him. Her sad, virginal restraint gives a certain form and value to her colourless and slender gift.

There is a psychology of such things, as there is a psychology of works of genius. Emily Brontë's work, with all its faults of construction, shows one and indivisible, fused in one fire from first to last. One cannot take the first seventeen chapters of Wuthering Heights and separate them from the rest. There is no faltering anywhere and no break in the power and the passion of this stupendous tale. And where passion is, sentimentalism is not. And there is not anywhere in Wuthering Heights a trace of that corruption which for the life of him Branwell could not have kept out of the manuscripts he produced from his hat.

INDEX

Absolute, the, 16, 176. Agnes Grey, 39, 40, 49. Augustine, St., 185.