Brontës (100 page)

No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere

I see Heaven's glories shine

And Faith shines equal arming me from fear

O God within my breast

Almighty ever-present Deity

Life, that in me hast rest

As I Undying Life, have power in thee

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by thy infinity

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of Immortality

With wide-embracing love

Thy spirit animates eternal years

Pervades and broods above

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone

And suns and universes ceased to be

And thou wert left alone

Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death

Nor atom that his might could render void

Since thou art Being and Breath

And what thou art may never be destroyed.
¹⁷

This poem, written in January 1846, was to be the last that Emily considered worth transcribing into her fair copy notebooks.
¹⁸
Though she did not altogether abandon poetry, her efforts in future would principally be channelled into prose. One cannot regret the creation of
Wuthering Heights
, but there must be a lingering sense of frustration that Emily's poetic career was ended so abruptly. The sustained quality and increased philosophical depth of the poems she had produced over the previous eighteen months prove that Emily was at the very height of her poetic powers when Charlotte proposed publication. Though she was then a lone voice crying in the wilderness, few now would disagree with Charlotte's assessment of Emily's gifts:

I know – no woman that ever lived – ever wrote such poetry before – Condensed energy, clearness, finish – strange, strong pathos are their characteristics – utterly
different from the weak diffusiveness – the laboured yet most feeble wordiness which dilute the writings of even very popular poetesses.
¹⁹

Charlotte's discovery of Emily's poems was the catalyst she needed to pull herself out of the apathy she had suffered since returning from Brussels. At last she had a renewed sense of purpose in life and she set about the problem of publication with her old determination, sweeping aside her sisters' doubts and writing round to prospective publishers. At first, she made as little headway as Branwell had in his efforts to publish in
Blackwood's Magazine
. Undeterred, she wrote to William and Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, publishers of one of the Brontës' favourite periodicals,
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal
, seeking their advice: ‘they may have forgotten the circumstance,' Charlotte wrote warmly some years later, ‘but I have not, for from them I received a brief and business-like but, civil and sensible reply.'
²⁰
Charlotte's gratitude suggests that their advice – which has not survived – bore fruit.

One can therefore presume that it was as a result of this advice that she wrote the following equally ‘brief and business-like' letter to Aylott & Jones, a small publishing house at No. 8, Paternoster Row, London.

Jany – 28th – /46

Gentlemen

May I request to be informed whether you would undertake the publication of a Collection of short poems in I vol. oct[avo] –

If you object to publishing the work at your own risk – would you undertake it on the Author's account? –

I am Gentlemen

Your obdt hmble Servt

C Brontë

Address

Revd P. Brontë

Haworth Bradford – Yorkshire
²¹

Aylott & Jones must have replied positively by return of post, for on 31 January Charlotte was writing to them again asking for an estimate of the cost of printing ‘200 to 250 pages' of an octavo volume ‘of the same quality of paper and size of type as Moxon's last edition of Wordsworth'. On 6 February she posted them the manuscript, being obliged to divide it into
two parcels on account of the weight, and following it with several anxious enquiries as to the safe arrival of both parcels.
²²

The plan to model the book of poems on Moxon's edition of Wordsworth had to be abandoned almost immediately for Charlotte's inexperience had led her substantially to overestimate the published size of the completed manuscript. ‘The M.S. will certainly form a thinner vol. than I had anticipated', she admitted, before suggesting a reduction in size to a duodecimo format and specifying a long primer type. On 3 March, less than five weeks after her initial enquiry, Charlotte sent a banker's draft for £3110s. so that printing could commence.
²³
The fact that the sisters were able to scrape together such a large sum – just over three-quarters of Anne's annual salary at Thorp Green – is an indication of Charlotte's ambition to get into print at whatever cost.

As the prospect of achieving her goal grew closer, Charlotte's spirits rose. Her sense of duty was always stricter and more oppressive when she was miserable but, as soon as she had a purpose in life, it was flung aside. Now, busy and happy for the first time in three years, she suddenly abandoned her resolution neither to go away nor invite her friends to stay while Branwell remained at home and agreed to visit Ellen at Brookroyd. She left home on 18 February
²⁴
with the intention of staying for a week or nine days but Ellen, with her usual tenacity, soon undermined this resolution. As she had done when they were staying together at Hathersage, Ellen sought Emily's permission for a longer stay. The answer came back as laconic as ever.

Dear Miss Ellen,

I fancy this note will be too late to decide one way or the other with respect to Charlotte's stay – yours only came this morning (Wedensday) and unless mine travels faster you will not receive it till Friday – Papa, of course misses C and will be glad to have her back. Anne and I ditto – but as she goes from home so seldom you may keep her a day or two longer if your eloquence is equal to the task of persuading her – that is if she be still with you when you get this permission

Yours truly EJ Brontë

As an afterthought, she added ‘love from Anne'.
²⁵

In the event, Charlotte was able to justify a longer absence from home. One of Ellen's cousins had married William Carr, ‘an experienced surgeon'
who practised in Gomersal, and Charlotte took the opportunity to consult him about her father's increasing blindness. His advice was that an operation could be performed and would be successful in restoring his sight but that it should be delayed until the cataract which was causing the problem had hardened enough to be removable.

Returning home on 2 March, Charlotte reported Mr Carr's opinion to Patrick who was ‘much cheered … but I could perceive he caught gladly at the idea of deferring the operation a few months longer'.
²⁶
Less happily, she had a confrontation with Branwell, who had spent the day at the White Horse Tavern on the pretext of organizing a shooting match.

I went into the room where Branwell was to speak to him about an hour after I got home – it was very forced work to address him – I might have spared myself the trouble as he took no notice & made no reply – he was stupified – My fears were not vain Emily tells me that he got a sovereign from Papa while I have been away under pretence of paying a pressing debt – he went immediately & changed it at a public-house – and has employed it as was to be expected – she concluded her account with saying he was ‘a hopeless being' – it is too true – In his present state it is scarcely possible to stay in the room where he is – what the future has in store – I do not know –
²⁷

Charlotte could almost have added that she did not care for she had a far more absorbing prospect on hand. She had sent the money to Aylott & Jones the day after her return from Brookroyd and within a week she was viewing sample proof sheets. This threw her into some alarm about the competence of the proofreader – ‘such a mistake for instance as
tumbling
stars instead of
trembling
would suffice to throw an air of absurdity over a whole poem', she complained. Curbing her impatience to see the book in print, she decided that the authors would have to do the proofreading themselves, despite the delay it would cause. ‘You need not enclose the M.S.', she told Aylott & Jones, ‘as they can correct the errors from memory.'
²⁸

Up to this point the sisters seem to have been successful in keeping their authorship secret. Everyone at the parsonage had been kept in ignorance, as had Ellen Nussey. Even in her correspondence with Aylott & Jones Charlotte had scrupulously referred to the authors in the third person though it required no massive intellect to guess that the ‘C Brontë' who wrote their letters was likely to be one of the ‘three persons – relatives' who
had contributed some of the poems.
²⁹
The comings and goings of large packets of proofs, however, did not escape attention and Charlotte was obliged to write again to her publishers.

Gentlemen

As the proofs have hitherto always come safe to hand under the direction of C. Brontë
Esqre
– I have not thought it necessary to request you to change it, but a little mistake having occurred yesterday – I think it will be better to send them to me in future under my real address which is

Miss Brontë

Revd P. Brontës &c.

I am gentlemen Yrs trly

CB —

March 28th/46
³⁰

The ‘little mistake' would appear to have been that the parcel of proofs was delivered to one of the male members of the household. As Patrick was now so blind that he was unable to write his own letters and had to use Charlotte as his amanuensis,
³¹
it seems most probable that Branwell was the accidental recipient. Though Charlotte was later to assert that he never knew that his sisters had published a line, this seems unlikely. Initially, of course, his sisters' pseudonyms would have meant nothing to him, but even if he did not suspect that they were preparing manuscripts for publication, he could not have failed to see the numerous advance copies of their books in the house. He had only to dip into
Poems
to find verses familiar to him from the days when he and Charlotte had worked together on Angria and it needed little imagination to work out that Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell were Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. His friends, with more partisan spirit than accuracy, were later to claim that he boasted of his sister's success with
Jane Eyre
and even that he was the real author of
Wuthering Heights.
³²

If the parcel of proofs was delivered to Branwell by mistake, it is not surprising that his curiosity should have been aroused and that he made further investigations. Though it is pure supposition, another odd incident may possibly be laid at his door. On 7 May Charlotte told Aylott & Jones, ‘I have to mention that your three last communications and the parcel had all
been opened – where or by whom, I cannot discover; the paper covering the parcel was torn in pieces and the books were brought in loose.'
³³

It has to be said that Charlotte herself clearly did not suspect Branwell or she would not have told her publishers about the mishap. There were, too, other occasions long after Branwell's death on which parcels and letters from London to Haworth went astray.
³⁴
What makes it possible that Branwell was the culprit this time is that a letter he wrote to J.B. Leyland on 28 April closely reflects the contents of one of the damaged letters from Aylott & Jones. This was a reply to a letter from Charlotte requesting very specific information on how to set about finding a publisher for works of fiction. ‘It is evident', Charlotte had written,

that unknown authors have great difficulties to contend with before they can succeed in bringing their works before the public, can you give me any hint as to the way in which these difficulties are best met. For instance, in the present case, where a work of fiction is in question, in what form would a publisher be most likely to accept the M.S. –? whether offered as a work of 3 vols or as tales which might be published in numbers or as contributions to a periodical?

What publishers would be most likely to receive favourably a proposal of this nature?

Would it suffice to write to a publisher on the subject or would it be necessary to have recourse to a personal interview?

Your opinion and advice on these three points or on any other which your experience may suggest as important – would be esteemed by us a favour
³⁵

Only a fortnight after this was written, Branwell wrote miserably to J. B. Leyland bemoaning ‘the quietude of home, and the inability to make my family aware of the nature of most of my sufferings'.

Literary exertion would seem a resourse, but the depression attendant on it, and the almost hopelessness of bursting through the barriers of literary circles, and getting a hearing among publishers, make me disheartened and indifferent; for I cannot write what would be thrown, unread, in to a library fire: Otherwise I have the materials for a respectably sized volume, and if I were in London personally I might perhaps try Henry Moxon – a patronizer of the sons of rhyme; though I dare say the poor man often smarts for his liberality in publishing hideous trash.

As I know that, while here, I might send a manuscript to London, and say goodbye to it I feel it folly to feed the flames of a printers fire.