They never were content to be mere lackeys of nature. They were above nature, and everything without and within themselves they placed under contribution.
Even the rough and rugged characters that have come from the hand of Emily show the work of the artist. She added to the repulsive Heathcliff qualities of her own. She is perfectly serious when she says: “Possibly some people might suspect him [Heathcliff] of a degree of under-bred pride. I have a sympathetic chord within me that tells me it is nothing of the sort. I know by instinct his reserve springs from an aversion to showy display of feeling, to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. No! I’m running on too fast. I bestow my own attributes over-liberally on him.”
Knowing the model from which Emily Brontë worked, there are few passages which throw more light on the artist than this. Catherine Linton was modelled on the lovely Alice McClory, who bequeathed to her clever granddaughters all the personal attractions they possessed; but here again Emily bestows attributes of herself and sisters on her stately and lily-like grandmother.
“She [Catherine] was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood. An admirable form, and the most exquisite little face I had ever had the pleasure of beholding; small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes, had they been agreeable in expression, that would have been irresistible.”
The picture is neither that of a Brontë of the Haworth vicarage nor is it a portraiture of the flower plucked in Ballynaskeagh by Hugh Brontë, but it is Alice McClory diluted with a dash of the Penzance Branwells, and the effect is a perfect and beautiful picture, more pleasing, indeed, than a life-like portrait, with all the radiant beauty of the charming Alice, when she rode off to Magherally Church with the dashing Hugh Brontë.
IV.
HUGH BRONTË AS A TENANT-RIGHTER.
Hugh Brontë worked up to his tenant-right doctrines by a series of assertions, negative and positive, on religious, political, and economic questions. His address, in which he set forth his views on such matters, approximated to the form of a lecture more nearly than any of his other talks, which were generally in the narrative form. The following are the chief points of the discourse, as given to me by my old tutor and friend, and the propositions were never varied, except in the mere wording, although the statement had never been formally written out.
Hugh Brontë always began with a little black Bible in his hand, or on his knee, and his first negative assertion was:
I. “The church is not Christ’s.”