“Tait’s Magazine,” “The Examiner,” the “Athenæum,” and the “Literary Gazette,” followed in the same strain; while the “Daily News” spoke with qualified praise, and only the “Spectator,” according to Charlotte, was “flat.”
The club coteries paused, the literary log-rollers were nonplussed, and Thackeray sat reading instead of writing.
The interest in the story was intensified, inasmuch as no one knew whence had come the voice that had stirred all hearts. Nor did the interest diminish when the mystery was dispelled. On the contrary, it was much increased when it became known that the author was a little, shy, bright-eyed Yorkshire maiden, of Irish origin, who could scarcely reach up to great Thackeray’s arm, or reply unmoved to his simplest remark.
The Irish Brontës read the reviews of their niece’s book with intense delight. To them the pæans of praise were successive whiffs of pure incense. They had never doubted that they themselves were superior to their neighbors, and they felt quite sure that their niece Charlotte was superior to every other writer.
But the Brontës were not content to enjoy silently their niece’s triumph and fame. Their hearts were full, and overflowed from the lips. They had reached the period of decadence, and were often heard boasting of the illustrious Charlotte. Sometimes even they would read to uninterested and unappreciative listeners scraps of praise cut from the Newry papers, or supplied to them from English sources by Mr. McKee. The whole heaven of Brontë fame was bright and cloudless; suddenly the proverbial bolt fell from the blue.
“The Quarterly”[3] onslaught on “Jane Eyre” appeared, and all the good things that had been said were forgotten. The news travelled fast, and reached Ballynaskeagh. The neighbors, who cared little for what “The Times,” “Frazer,” “Blackwood,” and such periodicals said, had got hold of the “Quarterly” verdict in a very direct and simple form. The report went round the district like wild-fire that the “Quarterly Review” had said Charlotte Brontë, the vicar’s daughter, was a bad woman, and an outcast from her kind. The neighbors of the Brontës had very vague ideas as to what “The Quarterly” 177 might be, but I am afraid the one bad review gave them more piquant pleasure than all the good ones put together. In the changed atmosphere the uncles and aunts assumed their old unsocial and taciturn ways. When their acquaintances came, with simpering smiles, to sympathize with them, their gossip was cut short by the Brontës, who judged rightly that the sense of humiliation pressed lightly on their comforters.
In their sore distress they went to Mr. McKee. He was able to show them the “Review” itself. The reviewer had been speculating on the sex of Currer Bell, and, for effect, assumed that the author was a man, but he added:
“Whoever it be, it is a person who, with great mental power, combines a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, a heathenish doctrine of religion. For if we ascribe the work to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, from some sufficient reason, long forfeited the society of her sex.”
Mr. McKee’s reading of the review and words of comment gave no comfort to the Brontës. I am afraid his indignation at the cowardly attack only served to fan the flames of their wrath. The sun of his sympathy, however, touched their hearts, and their pent-up passion flowed down like a torrent of lava.
The uncles of Charlotte Brontë always expressed themselves, when roused, in language which combined simplicity of diction with depth of significance. Hugh was the spokesman. White with passion, the words hissing from his lips, he vowed to take vengeance on the traducer of his niece. The language of malediction rushed from him, hot and pestiferous, as if it had come from the bottomless pit, reeking with sulphur and brimstone.