Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (501 page)

It was to the care of such a father as this, in the midst of the rude and uncongenial society of the lonely manufacturing village, that six motherless children, five daughters and one son, were left in the year 1821. The parson’s children were not allowed to associate with their little neighbours in the hamlet; their aunt, who came to the parsonage after their mother’s death, had scarcely more sympathy with them than their father himself; their only friend was the rough but kindly servant Tabby, who pitied the bairns without understanding them, and whose acts of graciousness were too often of such a character as to give them more pain than pleasure. So they grew up strange, lonely, old-fashioned children, with absolutely no knowledge of the world outside; so quiet and demure in their habits that, years afterwards, when they invited some of their Sunday scholars up to the parsonage, and wished to amuse them, they found that they had to ask the scholars to teach them how to play — they had never learned. Carefully secluded from the rest of the world, the little Brontë children found out fashions of their own in the way of amusement, and curious fashions they were. Whilst they were still in the nursery, when the oldest of the family, Maria, was barely nine years old, and Charlotte, the third, was just six, they had begun to take a quaint interest in literature and politics. Heaven knows who it was who first told these wonderful pigmies of the great deeds of a Wellington or the crimes of a Bonaparte; but at an age when other children are generally busy with their bricks or their dolls, and when all life’s interests are confined for them within the walls of a nursery, these marvellous Brontës were discussing the life of the Great Duke, and maintaining the Tory cause as ardently as the oldest and sturdiest of the village politicians in the neighbouring inn.

There is a touching story of Charlotte at six years old, which gives us some notion of the ideal life led by the forlorn little girl at this time, when, her two elder sisters having been sent to school, she found herself living at home, the eldest of the motherless brood. She had read “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and had been fascinated, young as she was, by that wondrous allegory. Everything in it was to her true and real; her little heart had gone forth with Christian on his pilgrimage to the Golden City, her bright young mind had been fired by the Bedford tinker’s description of the glories of the Celestial Place; and she made up her mind that she too would escape from the City of Destruction, and gain the haven towards which the weary spirits of every age have turned with eager longing. But where was this glittering city, with its streets of gold, its gates of pearl, its walls of precious stones, its streams of life and throne of light? Poor little girl! The only place which seemed to her to answer Bunyan’s description of the celestial town was one which she had heard the servants discussing with enthusiasm in the kitchen, and its name was Bradford! So to Bradford little Charlotte Brontë, escaping from that Haworth Parsonage which she believed to be a doomed spot, set off one day in 1822. Ingenious persons may speculate if they please upon the sore disappointment which awaited her when, like older people, reaching the place which she had imagined to be Heaven, she found that it was only Bradford. But she never even reached her imaginary Golden City. When her tender feet had carried her a mile along the road, she came to a spot where overhanging trees made the highway dark and gloomy; she imagined that she had come to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and, fearing to go forward, was presently discovered by her nurse cowering by the roadside.

Of the school-days of the Brontës nothing need be said here. Every reader of “Jane Eyre” knows what Charlotte Brontë herself thought of that charitable institution to which she has given so unenviable a notoriety. There she lost her oldest sister, whose fate is described in the tragic tale of Helen Burns; and it was whilst she was at this place that her second sister, Elizabeth, also died. Only one thing need be added to this dismal record of the stay at Cowan Bridge. During the whole time of their sojourn there, the young Brontës scarcely ever knew what it was to be free from the pangs of hunger.

Charlotte was now the head of the little family; the remaining members of which were her brother Branwell and her sisters Emily and Anne. Mrs. Gaskell has given the world a vivid picture of the life which these four survivors from the hardships of Cowan Bridge led between the years 1825 and 1831. They spent those years at Haworth, almost without care or sympathy. Their father saw little in their lot to interest him, nothing to drag him out of his selfish absorption in his own pursuits; their aunt, a permanent invalid, conceived that her duty was accomplished when she had taught them a few lessons and insisted on their doing a certain amount of needlework every day. For the rest they were left to themselves, and thus early they showed the bent of their genius by spending their time in writing novels.

Mrs. Gaskell has given us some idea of the character of these juvenile performances in a series of extracts which sufficiently indicate their rare merit. She has, however, paid exclusive attention to Charlotte’s productions. All readers of the Brontë story will remember the account of the play of “The Islanders,” and other remarkable specimens, showing with what real vigour and originality Charlotte could handle her pen whilst she was still in the first year of her teens; but those few persons who have seen the whole of the juvenile library of the family bear testimony to the fact that Branwell and Emily were at least as industrious and successful as Charlotte herself. Indeed, even at this early age, the
bizarre
character of Emily’s genius was beginning to manifest itself, and her leaning towards weird and supernatural effects was exhibited whilst she composed her first fairy tales within the walls of her nursery. It may be well to bear in mind the frequency with which the critics have charged Charlotte Brontë with exaggerating the precocity of children. What we know of the early days of the Brontës proves that what would have been exaggeration in any other person was in the case of Charlotte nothing but a truthful reproduction of her own experiences.

Only one specimen of these earliest writings of the Brontës can be quoted here: it is that to which I have already referred, the play of “The Islanders:”

June the 31st, 1829.

The play of “The Islanders” was formed in December, 1827, in the following manner. One night, about the time when the cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snow-storms and high piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she came off victorious, no candles having been produced. A long pause succeeded, which was at length broken by Branwell saying, in a lazy manner, “I don’t know what to do.” This was echoed by Emily and Anne.

Tabby.
Wha, ya may go t’ bed.

Branwell.
I’d rather do anything than that.

Charlotte.
Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby? Oh! suppose we had each an island of our own.

Branwell.
If we had, I would choose the Island of Man.

Charlotte.
And I would choose the Isle of Wight.

Emily.
The Isle of Arran for me.

Anne.
And mine shall be Guernsey.

We then chose who should be the chief men in our islands. Branwell chose John Bull, Astley Cooper, and Leigh Hunt; Emily, Walter Scott, Mr. Lockhart, Johnny Lockhart; Anne, Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, Sir Henry Halford. I chose the Duke of Wellington and two sons, Christopher North and Co., and Mr. Abernethy. Here our conversation was interrupted by the, to us, dismal sound of the clock striking seven, and we were summoned off to bed.

IV.

THE FAMILY AT HAWORTH.

The years have slipped away, and the Brontës are no longer children. They have passed out of that strange condition of premature activity in which their brains were so busy, their lives so much at variance with the lives of others of their age; they have even “finished” their education, according to the foolish phrase of the world, and, having made some acquaintances and a couple of friends at good Miss Wooler’s school at Roehead, Charlotte is again at home, young, hopeful, and in her own way merry, waiting with her brother and her sisters till that mystery of life which seems filled with hidden charms to those who still have it all before them shall be revealed.

One bright June morning in 1833, a handsome carriage and pair is standing opposite the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Bridge, the spot loved by all anglers and artists who know anything of the scenery of the Wharfe. In the carriage with some companions is a young girl, whose face, figure, and manner may be conjured up by all who have read “Shirley,” for this pleasant, comely Yorkshire maiden, as we see her on this particular morning, is identical with the Caroline Helston who figures in the pages of that novel. Miss N —
 
— is waiting for her quondam schoolfellow and present bosom friend, Charlotte Brontë, who is coming with her brother and sisters to join in an excursion to the enchanted site of Bolton Abbey hard by. Presently, on the steep road which stretches across the moors to Keighley, the sound of wheels is heard, mingled with the merry speech and merrier laughter of fresh young voices. Shall we go forward unseen, and study the approaching travellers whilst they are still upon the road? Their conveyance is no handsome carriage, but a rickety dogcart, unmistakably betraying its neighbourship to the carts and ploughs of some rural farmyard. The horse, freshly taken from the fields, is driven by a youth who, in spite of his countrified dress, is no mere bumpkin. His shock of red hair hangs down in somewhat ragged locks behind his ears, for Branwell Brontë esteems himself a genius and a poet, and, following the fashion of the times, has that abhorrence of the barber’s shears which genius is supposed to affect. But the lad’s face is a handsome and a striking one, full of Celtic fire and humour, untouched by the slightest shade of care, giving one the impression of somebody altogether hopeful, promising, even brilliant. How gaily he jokes with his three sisters; with what inexhaustible volubility he pours out quotations from his favourite poets, applying them to the lovely scene around him; and with what a mischievous delight, in his superior nerve and mettle, he attempts feats of charioteering which fill the timid heart of the youngest of the party with sudden terrors! Beside him, in a dress of marvellous plainness and ugliness, stamped with the brand “home-made” in characters which none can mistake, is the eldest of the sisters. Charlotte is talking too; there are bright smiles upon her face; she is enjoying everything around her, the splendid morning, the charms of leafy trees and budding roses, and the ever-musical stream; most of all, perhaps, the charm of her brother’s society, and the expectation of that coming meeting with her friend, which is so near at hand. Behind sit a pretty little girl, with fine complexion and delicate regular features, whom the stranger would at once pick out as the beauty of the company, and a tall, rather angular figure, clad in a dress exactly resembling Charlotte’s. Emily Brontë does not talk so much as the rest of the party, but her wonderful eyes, brilliant and unfathomable as the pool at the foot of a waterfall, but radiant also with a wealth of tenderness and warmth, show how her soul is expanding under the influences of the scene; how quick she is to note the least prominent of the beauties around her, how intense is her enjoyment of the songs of the birds, the brilliancy of the sunshine, the rich scent of the flower-bespangled hedgerows. If she does not, like Charlotte and Anne, meet her brother’s ceaseless flood of sparkling words with opposing currents of speech, she utters at times a strange, deep guttural sound which those who know her best interpret as the language of a joy too deep for articulate expression. Gaze at them as they pass you in the quiet road, and acknowledge that, in spite of their rough and even uncouth exteriors, a happier four could hardly be met with in this favourite haunt of pleasure-seekers during a long summer’s day.

Suddenly the dogcart rattles noisily into the open space in front of the Devonshire Arms, and the Brontës see the carriage and its occupants. In an instant there is silence; Branwell contrasts his humble equipage with that which already stands at the inn door, and a flush of mortified pride colours his face; the sisters scarcely note this contrast, but to their dismay they see that their friend is not alone, and each draws a long deep breath, and prepares for that fiercest of all the ordeals they know, a meeting with entire strangers. The laughter is stilled; even Branwell’s volubility is at an end; the glad light dies out of their eyes, and when they alight and submit to the process of being introduced to Miss N —
 
— ‘s companions, their faces are as dull and commonplace as their dresses. It is no imaginary scene we have been watching. Miss N —
 
— still recalls that painful moment when the merry talk and laughter of her friends were quenched at sight of the company awaiting them, and when throughout a day to which all had looked forward with anticipations of delight, the three Brontës clung to each other or to their friend, scarcely venturing to speak above a whisper, and betraying in every look and word the positive agony which filled their hearts when a stranger approached them. It was this excessive shyness in the company of those who were unfamiliar to them which was the most marked characteristic of the sisters. The weakness was as much physical as moral; and those who suppose that it was accompanied by any morbid depression of spirits, or any lack of vigour and liveliness when the incubus of a stranger’s presence was removed, entirely mistake their true character. Unhappily, first impressions are always strongest, and running through the whole of Mrs. Gaskell’s story, may be seen the impression produced at her first meeting with Charlotte Brontë by her nervous shrinking and awkwardness in the midst of unknown faces.

It was not thus with those who, brought into the closest of all fellowship with her, the fellowship of school society, knew the secrets of her heart far better than did any who became acquainted with her in after life. To such the real Charlotte Brontë, who knew no timidity in their presence, was a bold, clever, outspoken and impulsive girl; ready to laugh with the merriest, and not even indisposed to join in practical jokes with the rest of her schoolfellows. The picture we get in the “Life” is that of a victim to secret terrors and superstitious fancies. The real Charlotte Brontë, when stories were current as to the presence of a ghost in the upper chambers of the old school-house at Roehead, did not hesitate to go up to these rooms alone and in the darkness of a winter’s night, leaving her companions shivering in terror round the fire downstairs. When she had left school, and began that correspondence with Miss N —
 
— which is the great source of our knowledge, not merely of the course of her life, but of the secrets of her heart, it must not be supposed that she wrote always in that serious spirit which pervades most of the letters quoted by Mrs. Gaskell. On the contrary, those who have access to the letters will find that even some of the passages given in the “Life” are allied to sentences showing that the frame of mind in which they were written was very different from that which it appears to have been. The following letter, written from Haworth in the beginning of 1835, is an example:

Well, here I am as completely separated from you as if a hundred, instead of seventeen, miles intervened between us. I can neither hear you nor see you nor feel you. You are become a mere thought, an unsubstantial impression on the memory, which, however, is happily incapable of erasure. My journey home was rather melancholy, and would have been very much so but for the presence and conversation of my worthy companion. I found him a very intelligent man. He told me the adventures of his sailor’s life, his shipwreck and the hurricane he had witnessed in the West Indies, with a much better flow of language than many of far greater pretensions are masters of. I thought he appeared a little dismayed by the wildness of the country round Haworth, and I imagine he has carried back a pretty report of it.

What do you think of the course politics are taking? I make this inquiry because I now think you have a wholesome interest in the matter; formerly you did not care greatly about it. B —
 
— , you see, is triumphant. Wretch! I am a hearty hater, and if there is any one I thoroughly abhor it is that man. But the Opposition is divided. Red-hots and lukewarms; and the Duke (
par excellence the
Duke) and Sir Robert Peel show no signs of insecurity, although they have been twice beat. So “
courage, mon amie!
” Heaven defend the right! as the old Cavaliers used to say before they joined battle. Now, Ellen, laugh heartily at all that rodomontade. But you have brought it on yourself. Don’t you remember telling me to write such letters to you as I wrote to Mary? There’s a specimen! Hereafter should follow a long disquisition on books; but I’ll spare you that.

Those who turn to Mrs. Gaskell’s “Life” will find one of the sentences in this letter quoted, but without the burst of laughter over “all that rodomontade” at the end which shows that Charlotte’s interest in politics was not unmingled with the happy levity of youth. Still more striking as an illustration of her true character, with its infinite variety of moods, its sudden transitions from grave to gay, is the letter I now quote:

Last Saturday afternoon, being in one of my sentimental humours, I sat down and wrote to you such a note as I ought to have written to none but M —
 
— , who is nearly as mad as myself; to-day, when I glanced it over, it occurred to me that Ellen’s calm eye would look at this with scorn, so I determined to concoct some production more fit for the inspection of common sense. I will not tell you all I think and feel about you, Ellen. I will preserve unbroken that reserve which alone enables me to maintain a decent character for judgment; but for that I should long ago have been set down by all who know me as a Frenchified fool. You have been very kind to me of late, and gentle; and you have spared me those little sallies of ridicule which, owing to my miserable and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince as if I had been touched with a hot iron; things that nobody else cares for enter into my mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings are absurd, and therefore I try to hide them; but they only sting the deeper for concealment, and I’m an idiot. Ellen, I wish I could live with you always, I begin to cling to you more fondly than ever I did. If we had but a cottage and a competency of our own, I do think we might live and love on till death, without being dependent on any third person for happiness.

Mrs. Gaskell has made a very partial and imperfect use of this letter, by quoting merely from the words “You have been very kind to me of late,” down to “they only sting the deeper for concealment.” Thus it will be seen that an importance is given to an evanescent mood which it was far from meriting, and that lighter side to Charlotte’s character which was prominent enough to her nearest and dearest friends is entirely concealed from the outer world. Again, I say, we must not blame Mrs. Gaskell. Such sentences as those which she omitted from the letter I have just given are not only entirely inconsistent with that ideal portrait of “Currer Bell” which the world had formed for itself out of the bare materials in existence during the author’s lifetime, but are also utterly at variance with Mrs. Gaskell’s personal conception of Charlotte Brontë’s character, founded upon her brief acquaintance with her during her years of loneliness and fame.

The quick transitions which marked her moods in converse with her friends may be traced all through her letters to Miss N —
 
— . The quotations I have already made show how suddenly on the same page she passes from gaiety to sadness; and so her letters, dealing as they do with an endless variety of topics, reflect only the mood of the writer at the moment that she penned them, and it is only by reading and studying the whole, not by selecting those which reflect a particular phase of her character, that we can complete the portrait we would fain produce.

Here are some extracts from letters which are not to be found in the “Life,” and which illustrate what I have said. They were all written between the beginning of 1832 and the end of 1835:

Tell M —
 
— I hope she will derive benefit from the perusal of Cobbett’s lucubrations; but I beg she will on no account burden her memory with passages to be repeated for my edification, lest I should not fully appreciate either her kindness or their merit, since that worthy personage and his principles, whether private or political, are no great favourites of mine.

I am really very much obliged to you — she writes in September, 1832 — for your well-filled and
very
interesting letter. It forms a striking contrast to my brief meagre epistles; but I know you will excuse the utter dearth of news visible in them when you consider the situation in which I am placed, quite out of the reach of all intelligence except what I obtain through the medium of the newspapers, and I believe you would not find much to interest you in a political discussion, or a summary of the accidents of the week…. I am sorry, very sorry, that Miss —
 
— has turned out to be so different from what you thought her; but, my dearest Ellen, you must never expect perfection in this world; and I know your naturally confiding and affectionate disposition has led you to imagine that Miss —
 
— was almost faultless…. I think, dearest Ellen, our friendship is destined to form an exception to the general rule regarding school friendships. At least I know that absence has not in the least abated the sisterly affection which I feel towards you.