Brontës (125 page)

Recognizing the abruptness of her change in tone, Charlotte added a final rejoinder: ‘It was a twinge of the gout which dictated that postscript.'
²²

There can be no doubt that Smith, Elder & Co. were right to reject this preface: it did not answer any of the criticisms made, its sarcastic flippancy could easily be mistaken for simple frivolity and, in publicly assuming the role of a crusty ‘old bachelor', Charlotte was simply laying herself open to future criticisms as and when her true sex and identity became known. Both Williams and George Smith urged her to replace her ‘Word to the “Quarterly”' with a biographical preface which would be a far more effective answer to the critic once the tragedies of the last year were revealed. Charlotte refused. ‘I cannot change my preface. I can shed no tears before the public, nor utter any groan in the public ear.' Her life was irrelevant to her book, she declared, pointing out that it was not ‘C. Brontë' who had been attacked by the
Quarterly:
, ‘it is “Currer Bell” who was insulted – he must reply'. Equally, she refused to offer a properly argued defence of her book, declaring to George Smith that she could not condescend to be serious with the
Quarterly
, ‘it is too silly for solemnity'. In the face of Charlotte's intransigence, Smith, Elder & Co. were left with no option but to refuse to publish the preface. Charlotte was deeply annoyed and brusquely declined to replace it with another.
²³

By fair means or foul, however, Charlotte contrived to get her chance of ‘a little word' to her critic on the subject of governesses in the pages of the
novel itself. When Mrs Pryor attempts to dissuade Caroline Helstone from becoming a governess, she describes the misery of her own previous employment in that capacity with the Hardman family. Relaying Miss Hardman's pronouncements on governesses, ‘a bore' to the ladies and ‘a tabooed woman' to the gentlemen, ‘to whom they were interdicted from granting the usual privileges of the sex', and yet who ‘annoyed them by frequently crossing their path', a woman who ‘must ever be kept in a sort of isolation' in order to maintain ‘that distance which the reserve of English manners and the decorum of English families exact', Mrs Pryor was actually quoting verbatim from the
Quarterly Review.
²⁴
By putting these remarks into this context, Charlotte invited her readers to condemn them, though few, if any, can have recognized their source. The rejection of her more overt attack on Elizabeth Rigby was a keen disappointment, particularly as Charlotte was gradually coming to realize the insidious effect of the review on potential readers. She herself had kept it from her father, as she knew it would have worried him, but she learnt that Miss Heald, sister of the vicar of Birstall, relying solely on the authority of the
Quarterly
had declared
Jane Eyre
to be ‘a wicked book' – ‘an expression which – coming from her – I will here confess – struck somewhat deep'.
²⁵

With the publication of her second book, the question of her sex and her identity, which had been so virulently attacked in the
Quarterly
, came up for renewed discussion. Smith, Elder & Co., anxious on her behalf to deflect further speculation and unnecessary comment in the reviews – and probably also with an eye to the sensation that the unmasking of‘Currer Bell' would cause – suggested that she should abandon her pseudonym. Now that her sisters were dead, her obligation to preserve their secret had come to an end and there was no real need for her to maintain the pretence. It was tempting to reveal her true identity so that she could meet famous authors and take her place in a society made accessible by her literary success. But she had learnt the benefits of anonymity and was now reluctant to lose it. The most obvious one was also the most practical. ‘I think if a good fairy were to offer me the choice of a gift, I would say – grant me the power to walk invisible', Charlotte told George Smith, ‘though certainly I would add – accompany it by the grace never to abuse the privilege.'
²⁶
In
Jane Eyre
Charlotte had been able to get away with her portraits from the life, even in the case of William Carus Wilson and the Clergy Daughters' School, because the events had happened long ago. In
Shirley
, however, though the story was set in the past, the characters were drawn on people
who were not only still alive but also nearly all living in the small communities of Birstall and Gomersal, where everyone knew everyone else and most were related by marriage if not birth. It was inevitable that readers of the novel would recognize not only the setting of the novel in that area but also themselves and their neighbours.

Charlotte seems to have been blissfully unaware of this, answering Williams' query as to whether she thought she would escape identification in Yorkshire with a cheerful ‘I am so little known, that I think I shall.' Blithely describing how she had managed her characters, she declared, ‘Besides the book is far less founded on the Real – than perhaps appears.' Instancing Mr Helstone, Caroline's uncle and rector of Briarfield, Charlotte explained:

If this character had an original, it was in the person of a clergyman who died some years since at the advanced age of eighty. I never saw him except once – at the consecration of a Church – when I was a child of ten years old. I was then struck with his appearance and stern, martial air. At a subsequent period I heard him talked about in the neighbourhood where he had resided – some mentioned him with enthusiasm – others with detestation – I listened to various anecdotes, balanced evidence against evidence and drew an inference.
²⁷

Remarkably, even though Charlotte had analysed and reproduced Hammond Roberson's character so minutely, it seems never to have occurred to her that others would recognize his portrait. Similarly, in depicting the Reverend William Margetson Heald, vicar of Birstall, as Mr Hall, rector of Nunnely, Charlotte underestimated the accuracy of her own portrayal and the perspicacity of her subject: ‘he knows me slightly,' she conceded, ‘but he would as soon think I had closely observed him or taken him for a character – he would as soon, indeed, suspect me of writing a book – a novel – as he would his dog – Prince'.
²⁸

Just how wrong she was in her assumptions Charlotte was soon to discover. Rumours were clearly rife. In London, Smith, Elder & Co. were actively fielding enquiries about her identity: the name ‘Charlotte Brontë' had obviously been whispered about, possibly by Thomas Cautley Newby, her sisters' publisher, though as yet it meant nothing to the curious. In Keighley, where the ‘gossiping inquisitiveness of small towns is rife', her envelopes of proofs were, Charlotte suspected, being opened and examined by those curious to find out why she received so many letters and packages
from London.
²⁹
The real damage came from Birstall and Gomersal, however, and that even before
Shirley
had come into the district.

On 24 October, two days before the novel was due to be published, Charlotte went to Birstall to stay with Ellen Nussey, calling in at the dentist in Leeds on the way.
³⁰
Ellen had at last been formally admitted to the secret of the Brontës' authorship, Charlotte having presented her with a copy of
Wuthering Heights
during her visit to Haworth after Emily's death. Mary Taylor had known for even longer, but it was her brother Joe, whose suspicions had prompted him to visit the previous summer, who finally made Charlotte's secret an open one. Evidently believing him to be more trustworthy than he proved, and fearing that the realism of her portraits of the Taylor family as the Yorkes in
Shirley
might offend, Charlotte had sent him copies of those chapters in which they featured. With remarkable equanimity for someone who had just discovered his sister's friend to be the notorious ‘Currer Bell' and himself and his family to have been ‘daguerreo-typed' as characters in her next novel, Joe Taylor simply remarked that ‘she had not drawn them strong enough'.
³¹

The day after her return home, Charlotte wrote to Williams in considerable chagrin.

During my \late/ visit I have too often had reason – sometimes in a pleasant – sometimes in a painful form to fear that I no longer walk invisible – ‘Jane Eyre' – it appears has been read all over the district – a fact of which I never dreamt – a circumstance of which the possibility never occurred to me – I met sometimes with new deference, with augmented kindness – old schoolfellows and old teachers too, greeted me with generous warmth – and again – ecclesiastical brows lowered thunder on me. When I confronted one or two large-made priests I longed for the battle to come on – I wish they would speak out plainly.
³²

The implicit disapproval in the attitude of some of her Birstall acquaintances who suspected her of being ‘Currer Bell' was soon to be replaced by the more overt criticism of the reviewers.
Shirley
, a novel in three volumes by Currer Bell, was published on 26 October 1849. The first review appeared five days later in the
Daily News
. ‘Let me speak the truth – when I read it my heart sickened over it… On the whole I am glad a decidedly bad notice has come first – a notice whose inexpressible ignorance first stuns and then stirs me.' The reviewer had declared the opening chapter
‘vulgar … unnecessary … disgusting', and, ironically, given the reaction in Birstall and Gomersal, ‘Not one of its men are genuine. There are no such men. There are no
Mr Helstones, Mr Yorkes
, or
Mr Moores
. They are all as unreal as Madame Tussaud's waxworks.' ‘Are there no such men as the Helstones and Yorkes?' Charlotte demanded furiously of Williams.
‘Yes there are

Is the first chapter disgusting or vulgar?

It is not: it is real
.'

‘As for the praise of such a critic –', she added, ‘I find it silly and nauseous – and I scorn it.' The praise, which so stuck in Charlotte's throat, was particularly obnoxious to her because it all centred on the fact that the reviewer had divined that
‘Shirley
is the anatomy of the female heart' and that ‘Currer Bell is petticoated'.
³³

In some respects, the review in the
Daily News
set the tone for the rest. The critics were, without exception, unanimous in deciding that
Shirley
proved ‘Currer Bell' was a woman: ‘There is woman stamped on every page', declared the
Atlas
, and the
Critic
, more acutely, pointed out that ‘The female heart is here anatomized with a minuteness of knowledge of its most delicate fibres, which could only be obtained by one who had her own heart under inspection. The emotions so wondrously described were never
imagined:
they must have been
felt.'
The reviewer in
Fraser's Magazine
was even prepared to bet ‘a trifle' that ‘Currer Bell' was not only a woman – ‘She knows women by their brains and hearts, men by their foreheads and chests'! – but a Yorkshire woman and one who had been a governess.
³⁴

On the whole, however, and with one notable exception, the fact that Charlotte's sex had been ‘outed' did not influence the tone of the reviews in the way that she had feared. The criticisms were virtually uniform and mostly just, though put with varying degrees of force and perspicacity. Though Charlotte would often reject such criticisms out of hand when she considered the reviewer to be ‘to the last degree incompetent, ignorant, and flippant', as in the
Daily News
, she would accept quite meekly the same points made more thoughtfully and intelligently. The notice in
The Examiner
was typical in its criticisms, though untypical in the fact that Charlotte recognized its author as Albany Fonblanque, a man whose power and discernment she admired: ‘I bend to his censorship, I am grateful for his praise; his blame deserves consideration; when he approves, I permit myself a moderate emotion of pride'.
³⁵

Fonblanque was equal in his praise and blame, though meting out both
with greater enthusiasm than most of his contemporaries. He acknowledged that
Shirley
evinced the same ‘peculiar power' as
Jane Eyre
, but felt that the story, the characters and the theme all bore too strong a resemblance to the earlier work.

While we thus freely indicate the defects
of Shirley
, let us at the same time express, what we very strongly feel, that the freshness and lively interest which the author has contrived to impart to a repetition of the same sort of figures, grouped in nearly the same social relations, as in her former work, is really wonderful. It is the proof of genius.

The book possessed deep interest, an irresistible grasp of reality, a marvellous vividness and distinction of conception and an intense power of graphic delineation and expression. ‘There are scenes which for strength and delicacy of emotion are not transcended in the range of English fiction', he declared, but the faults were manifold. ‘Story there is none in
Shirley.'
‘The expression of motive by means of dialogue is … indulged to such minute and tedious extremes, that what ought to be developments of character in the speaker become mere exercitations of will and intellect in the author.' The characters are ‘created by intellect, and are creatures of intellect. Habits, actions, conduct are attributed to them, such as we really witness in human beings; but the reflections and language which accompany these actions, are those of intelligence fully developed, and entirely self-conscious … in real men and women such clear knowledge of self is rarely developed at all'; ‘even in the children … we find the intellectual predominant and supreme. The young Yorkes, ranging from twelve years down to six, talk like Scotch professors of metaphysics.' The old criticism of
Jane Eyre
reared its ugly head again: there was ‘an excess of the repulsive qualities not seldom rather coarsely indulged … She has a manifest pleasure in dwelling … on the purely repulsive in human character.'