Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (550 page)

Far from being hopelessly a ‘miserable fellow,’ an ‘unprincipled dreamer,’ an ‘unnerved and garrulous prodigal,’ as we have been told he was, he had, in fact, within him, an abundance of worthy ambition, a modest confidence in his own ability, which he was never known to vaunt, and a just pride in the celebrity of his family, which, it may be trusted, will remove from him, at any rate, the imputation of a lack of moral power to do anything good or forcible at all.

Those who have heard fall from the lips of Branwell Brontë — and they are few now — all those weird stories, strange imaginings, and vivid and brilliant disquisitions on the life of the people of the West-Riding, will recognize that there was at least no opposition, but rather an affinity, between the tendency of his thoughts and those of the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ And, as to special points in the story, it may be said that Branwell Brontë had tasted most of the passions, weaknesses, and emotions there depicted; had loved, in frenzied delusion, as fiercely as Heathcliff loved; as with Hindley Earnshaw, too, in the pain of loss, ‘when his ship struck; the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel.’ He had, too, indeed, manifested much of the doating folly of the unhappy master of the ‘Heights’; and, finally, there is no doubt that he possessed, nevertheless, almost as much force of character, determination, and energy as Heathcliff himself.

The following extract from a lecture by Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, will show the opinion of that gentleman — which he applies to prove that Branwell was in part the subject of his sister’s work — that there is a distinct correspondence in the feelings and utterances of Heathcliff and Branwell in this book, which, as he observes, critics have again and again declared to be like the dream of an opium-eater, which we have seen that Branwell was. Mr. Reid states: ‘I said that, perhaps, the most striking part of “Wuthering Heights” was that which deals with the relations of Heathcliff and Catherine, after she had become the wife of another. Whole pages of the story are filled with the ravings and ragings of the villain against the man whose life stands between him and the woman he loves. Similar ravings are to be found in all the letters of Branwell Brontë written at this period of his career; and we may be sure that similar ravings were always on his lips, as, moody and more than half mad, he wandered about the rooms of the parsonage at Haworth. Nay, I have found some striking verbal coincidences between Branwell’s own language and passages in “Wuthering Heights.” In one of his own letters there are these words in reference to the object of his passion: “My own life without her will be hell. What can the so-called love of her wretched, sickly husband be to her compared with mine?” Now, turn to “Wuthering Heights,” and you will read these words: “Two words would comprehend my future —
death
and
hell
: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton’s attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”‘
  

If Mr. Reid had quoted the beginning of this paragraph, another point of correspondence would have been perceived between the feelings manifested in it and those which had actuated Branwell Brontë. Heathcliff is speaking: ‘“You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?” he said. “Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her own assurance could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt!”‘

We have seen that, in the summer of 1845, Branwell lost his employment, and returned to the neighbourhood of Haworth, and that he, too, at that most miserable period of
his
life, when he wrote his novel, and ‘Real Rest,’ and ‘Penmaenmawr,’ had had a notion that the lady of his affections had nearly forgotten him.

It may be observed that Catherine Earnshaw, in an earlier part of the book, uses a like antithesis to that quoted by Mr. Reid. ‘Whatever our souls are made of,’ says she, speaking of Heathcliff and herself, ‘his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.’ Though it is not strictly accurate that in
all
Branwell’s letters at this period there are similar ravings, or that such were always on his lips, there are, at all events, other coincidences of thought and expression to be found in his letters and poems with certain features and passages in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ which are not less striking. A few instances will illustrate much in that work which it is not easy to believe could have been transcribed by the writer from the utterances of another. Even so early as his letter to John Brown, we have seen with what force Branwell could express himself when he chose. He speaks in that letter of one who ‘will be used as the tongs of hell,’ and of another ‘out of whose eyes Satan looks as from windows.’ Let us turn to where Heathcliff’s eyes are described, in Chapter vii. of the novel, as ‘that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies;’ and, in Chapter xvii., where Isabella Heathcliff says of them: ‘The clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not fear to hazard another sound of derision.’

We have noticed how Branwell plays upon the word
castaway
at the close of his letter on his novel. Charlotte has said they all had a leaning to Cowper’s poem, ‘The Castaway,’ and appropriated it in one way or another; she told Mrs. Gaskell that Branwell had done so. The word is used twice in ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Heathcliff is described as having been a ‘little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway,’ and the younger Catherine addresses pious Joseph, oddly enough, and by a coincidence singular enough, remembering Branwell’s allusion in his letter, in these words: ‘No, reprobate! you are a castaway — be off, or I’ll hurt you seriously! I’ll have you all modelled in wax and clay.’

Mention may also be made here, with reference to the occurrence of the names ‘Linton’ and ‘Hareton’ in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ that, somewhat before the time of the writing of his novel, Branwell was accustomed frequently to visit a place of the former designation, and that he had, as we have seen, when he was in Broughton-in-Furness, a friend of the name of Ayrton.

In the above letter on his novel it will be remembered, in speaking of the character of his work, that Branwell says he hopes to leap from the present bathos of fictitious literature to the firmly-fixed rock honoured by the foot of a Smollett or a Fielding, and speaks of revealing man’s heart as faithfully as in the pages of ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Lear.’ In the first four chapters of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ which serve as prelude to the darker portions of the story, we are introduced to the inmates of the farm that gives its name to the novel. Mr. Lockwood, who has rented Thrushcross Grange of Heathcliff, and has come to reside there, relates his experience of two visits he pays to his landlord at the ‘Heights.’ In the excellent humour of this portion of the story we are certainly reminded of Branwell Brontë, and perhaps of Smollett and Fielding too. The succeeding chapters are related in a manner more subdued, proper to the narration of the housekeeper. There is just one mention of ‘King Lear’ in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ on the second of these visits, when, at last, Mr. Lockwood, after he has been knocked down by the dogs, addresses the inmates of the ‘Heights,’ ‘with several incoherent threats of retaliation, that, in their infinite depth of virulency, smacked of “King Lear.”‘ More than once have this story and Shakspeare’s great tragedy been named in kinship, and Miss Robinson, unaware of Branwell’s observation on his own prose tale, gives a second place, with ‘King Lear,’ to ‘Wuthering Heights.’

It is impossible to read ‘Wuthering Heights’ without being struck with the part which consumption and death are made to play in the progress of the story. Scarcely a character is there depicted in whom we do not recognize some trait, some weakness, remotely or more closely, indicating deep-seated phthisis; and evidences of a true and certain observation, in the writer, are to be found in the pictures of its power there delineated. In Branwell’s poem on ‘Caroline,’ we have already seen with what certain touch he depicts her death from that disease; and how deeply, and almost morbidly, he broods on its ravages; and, in one of his later poems, we have a second and more striking picture of decline. In Emily’s verse anything of the kind is entirely wanting; and, indeed, it is what we miss in her poems, even more than what we find in Branwell’s, that must ever surprise us when we look for the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Branwell, in his writings, is often engaged with subjects of real and personal interest, and the scheme of his work is apparent. Several of his poems, indeed, when once read, leave an impress on the memory which is evidence enough of the power and originality by which they are inspired. For the most part, Emily’s poems are impersonal, imaginative, and ideal.

It will be remembered that Mr. Grundy, in his ‘Pictures of the Past,’ has given an account of his last interview with Branwell, which he declares took place but a few days before Branwell died. I have shown conclusively that the interview is ascribed by Mr. Grundy, and by Miss Robinson following him, to a wrong date, and that it took place, in fact, in 1846, when the manuscript was still in the author’s hands, perhaps, indeed, undergoing revision at the time. Branwell, according to his friend, had concealed in his coat sleeve, on this occasion, a carving-knife, with which, in his frenzy, he designed to kill the devil, whose call, he supposed, had summoned him to the inn; and he was surprised to find Mr. Grundy there instead. I have surmised that, when this grotesque episode occurred, Branwell was but jesting with his friend, who, in his surprise, took him altogether
au sérieux
; and, remembering that Mr. Grundy says Branwell had declared to him before that ‘Wuthering Heights’ was in great part his own work, it will be seen that there are passages in the novel which seem to lend probability both to this surmise as to Branwell’s intention, and also to Mr. Grundy’s statement. Thus, in Chapter ix., Hindley Earnshaw returns to the house in a state of frenzied intoxication, and, finding Nelly Dean stowing away his son in a cupboard, he flies at her with a madman’s rage, crying: ‘By heaven and hell, you’ve sworn between you to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Blackhorse marsh; two is the same as one — and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!’ To which Nelly Dean replies, ‘But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley; it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.’ Again, in Chapter xvii., when Isabella’s taunts have stung Heathcliff to retaliation, he snatches up a dinner-knife and flings it at her head; and she is struck beneath the ear. We may believe, then, that when Branwell appeared in this strange guise before his friend, he was but jestingly rehearsing in act, with an ‘antic disposition’ such incidents as he had recently described in the volume he had mentioned to Mr. Grundy.

Miss Robinson, in her ‘Emily Brontë’ (p. 95), has some sarcastic remarks about Branwell’s pride in his family name. ‘Proud of his name!’ she writes: ‘He wrote a poem on it, “Brontë,” an eulogy of Nelson, which won the patronizing approbation of Leigh Hunt, Miss Martineau, and others, to whom, at his special request, it was submitted. Had he ever heard of his dozen aunts and uncles, the Pruntys of Ahaderg? Or if not, with what sensations must the Vicar (
sic
) of Haworth have listened to this blazoning forth and triumphing over the glories of his ancient name?’ Branwell’s pride in the name of Brontë would have been foolish enough if it had been of the nature Miss Robinson supposes; but perhaps it had another meaning. At any rate Nelly Dean puts pride of birth in quite a different light in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ where she gives good advice to Heathcliff. ‘You’re fit for a prince in disguise,’ she says even to the ‘little Lascar,’ the ‘American or Spanish castaway.’ ‘Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week’s income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!’ This was exactly what Branwell Brontë did.

There are two other points in which I will indicate correspondences between the phraseology and ideas of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and those of Branwell Brontë. In one of his letters here published, Branwell, sketching a criminal grinning with the halter round his neck, asks the question: ‘Is there really such a thing as the
Risus Sardonicus
? Did a man ever laugh the morning he was to be hanged?’ Now, in the novel, Isabella Heathcliff says: ‘I was in the condition of mind to be shocked at nothing: in fact, I was as reckless as some malefactors show themselves at the foot of the gallows.’ Lastly, Heathcliff declares, speaking of Hindley Earnshaw: ‘Correctly, that fool’s body should be buried at the cross-roads, without ceremony of any kind.’ Now Branwell was not only familiar with the traditions of suicides buried at the cross-roads near Haworth, as well as at similar cross-roads, but he was accustomed, in his perambulations through the district, when in this direction, to visit the ancient hostel at that place: and, indeed, it was this house he fixed upon for the reading of the poem he had written, and where he read, as we have seen, in lieu of it, the portion, of his novel, surmised to be ‘Wuthering Heights,’ to Mr. Dearden and his other friend. It would be tedious to indicate all the minor similarities of expression in the novel to those in Branwell’s letters.