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  THE KEY TO THE
  BRONTE WORKS.




  THE KEY TO THE
  BRONTE WORKS

  THE KEY TO CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S "WUTHERING HEIGHTS,"
  "JANE EYRE," AND HER OTHER WORKS.

  SHOWING THE METHOD OF THEIR CONSTRUCTION AND THEIR
  RELATION TO THE FACTS AND PEOPLE OF HER LIFE.


  BY
  JOHN MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.


  London and Felling-on-Tyne:
  THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
  NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
  1911.

  _All Rights Reserved._




CONTENTS.


  CHAP.                                                     PAGE

     I. OUTLINE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LIFE                    13

    II. ORIGIN OF THE CANDLE-BEARING BEDSIDE VISITANT AND
          THE UNCOUTH SERVANT IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND
          "JANE EYRE"                                         20

   III. ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDLING HEATHCLIFFE AND HIS NAME
          IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"--ORIGIN OF THE INSANE
          LADY AND THE WHITE VEIL SCENE IN "JANE EYRE"        33

    IV. A RAINY DAY IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S CHILDHOOD:
          THE OPENING INCIDENT IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
          OF THE HEROINES OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND
          "JANE EYRE"                                         37

     V. CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S FRIEND, TABITHA AYKROYD, THE
          BRONTES' SERVANT, AS MRS. DEAN OF "WUTHERING
          HEIGHTS," AND AS BESSIE AND HANNAH OF "JANE EYRE"   43

    VI. CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE
          PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE"    52

   VII. THE ORIGINALS OF GIMMERTON, GIMMERDEN, GIMMERTON
          KIRK AND CHAPEL, PENISTON CRAGS, THE FAIRY CAVE,
          ETC., IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND OF THE FAIRY
          CAVE AND THE FAIRY JANET IN "JANE EYRE"             57

  VIII. THE RIVERS OR BRONTE FAMILY IN "JANE EYRE"            69

    IX. ORIGIN OF THE YORKSHIRE ELEMENT IN CHARLOTTE
          BRONTE'S HUNSDEN OF "THE PROFESSOR"; HEATHCLIFFE
          OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"; ROCHESTER OF "JANE EYRE";
          AND YORKE OF "SHIRLEY"                              83

     X. HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND ROCHESTER
          OF "JANE EYRE" ONE AND THE SAME                     90

    XI. CATHERINE AND HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"
          AS JANE AND ROCHESTER OF "JANE EYRE"                93

   XII. EUGENE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S BRUSSELS LIFE.
          I. MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT
          "CATHERINE BELL, THE ORPHAN"                       104

  XIII. EUGENE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S BRUSSELS LIFE.
          II. ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS!                 120

   XIV. THE RECOIL, I.                                       130

    XV. THE RECOIL, II.                                      143

   XVI. THE BRONTE POEMS                                     156


APPENDIX.

  MINOR IDENTIFICATIONS OF PERSONS AND PLACES IN THE
    BRONTE WORKS                                             159

  THE HEGER PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE IN THE
    NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY                                162

  INDEX                                                      169

  LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FIRST EDITION                   179




PREFACE.


_The Key to the Bronte Works_ is the absolutely necessary companion
volume to Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_,
_Shirley_, _The Professor_, and _Villette_. Without it the reader cannot
know the real Currer Bell and her people, or see her works as they were
to herself. Great indeed and continuous has been the task of writing
this volume: a comprehension of my duty to law and literature, to
posterity and to Charlotte Bronte, set aside any other consideration. It
could be no compliment to my learned and distinguished subscribers to
assume importance would attach to _The Key to the Bronte Works_ were the
volume a mere skimming of extant Bronte biography, albeit that has its
province of interest. _The Key to the Bronte Works_, I repeat, is the
only book which shows us the life and works of Charlotte Bronte as
intimately known to herself. Herein is my task accomplished; herewith is
my reward. To quote my words from a private correspondence with Sir
Charles Holroyd, Kt., Director of the National Gallery, London:--

    "After her return from Brussels in 1844, Charlotte Bronte
    conceived the idea of perpetuating the drama of her life. Again
    and again, true artist as she was, she cleared her presentations,
    till finally the world had those great works which stand as a
    signal testimony to the high value of the true artist, and as
    testimony to the divine origin of real inspiration. And now
    priest, statesman, writer--whatsoever a man may be, he will
    discover in the works of Charlotte Bronte salutary instruction,
    and at the same time will perceive with thrilling admiration the
    greatness of Art when she is at one with Genius. As I pen these
    lines to you, Sir Charles, I am reminded of the evanescence of the
    halo of romance round so many historic characters and personages
    when sober history speaks apart; but Charlotte Bronte we find to
    be a greater luminary the closer we approach her."

The utmost possible interest attaches to my sensational evidence, now
first showing Charlotte Bronte to be the author and heroine of
_Wuthering Heights_, a book many have declared "the finest work of
genius written by a woman," and some look upon as "one of the greatest
novels in our or any other literature." In view of my evidence it will
be impossible hereafter to convince the world that Charlotte Bronte did
not write _Wuthering Heights_. _The Key to the Bronte Works_ in his
hands, every reader is an expert upon the subject. By resort to each
indexed reference to Charlotte Bronte's methods I have discovered, and
named Methods I. and II., sensational ratification of all I say hereon
will be found.

It will presently seem incredible the chief argument hitherto advanced
against my assertion that Charlotte Bronte wrote _Wuthering Heights_ was
that _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ are "totally dissimilar in
style, thought, etc.," for my evidence is proof absolute to the
opposite. A recent writer on the Brontes[1] says _Wuthering Heights_
contains nothing whatsoever biographically, or in any way, suggestive of
Emily Bronte and her personality, and admits upon the other hand that
the characteristic of Charlotte Bronte's writing is her full and
intimate self-revelation of the incidents of her own life. Nothing can
recall these words. They are a frank, or an ingenuous, statement of
irrefutable fact; and though the writer did not journey to the logical
conclusion, it is well he is associated with this fundamental admission.
The same significant truth is voiced still more recently by another
writer, who says: "_Wuthering Heights_ reveals nothing of Emily Bronte.
Not one of the characters thought or felt as did the quiet, retiring"
Emily[2].

Much detached yet valuable and interesting evidence I have omitted for
the sake of clearness, but it has aided me in regard to the final
discoveries I now present, and is ready further to substantiate my
conclusions. One of these detached pieces of evidence shows that the
younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw--the two lovers who at the close
of _Wuthering Heights_ become teacher and pupil--latterly were to
Charlotte Bronte herself and M. Heger. Apparently she did not wish to
end _Wuthering Heights_ without a picture of reconciled relations
between two characters who could present a phase of M. Heger and
herself. The teacher and pupil relations between Miss Bronte and M.
Heger were most dear and gladdening to her memory. We have a glimpse of
them in _Villette_, _Shirley_, and in _The Professor_, Chapter XIX.,
where Crimsworth is reading a book with Francis Evans Henri, whom he is
teaching to read and pronounce English. These two characters represent
M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte; and Miss Bronte taught M. Heger to read
and pronounce English out of her own favourite old books, "consecrated
to her by other associations," to quote her own words in _Wuthering
Heights_, Chapter XXXI., though often in _The Professor_ she alternates
the position of the characters by an interchange of the sexes, a method
of Miss Bronte I have discovered and termed her Method I. Let the reader
peruse carefully the scene in _The Professor_ in the light of my
reference to Eugene Sue and Charlotte Bronte's old copy in English of
_The Imitation of Christ_ at Brussels, and in the light of the "reading
and pronouncing" scenes in Chapters XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., of
_Wuthering Heights_;

also:--

  Charlotte Bronte in a letter:--     _Wuthering Heights_,
                                      Chapter XXXI.:--

  "If you could see and hear          "I heard him trying to read to
  the efforts I make to teach         himself, and pretty blunders he
  [M. Heger] to pronounce ... and     makes!... it was extremely funny
  [his] unavailing attempts to        ... still, he has no right to
  imitate you would laugh to all      appropriate what is mine, and
  eternity."--Mrs. GASKELL'S          make it ridiculous to me with
  _Life of Charlotte Bronte_.         his vile mistakes and
                                      mispronunciations! Those books,
                                      both prose and verse, are
                                      consecrated to me by other
                                      associations, and I hate to have
                                      them debased and profaned in his
                                      mouth."

Note how in _The Professor_ and _Wuthering Heights_ the male lover is
unable to devote himself to the reading lesson because of the
distraction of the heroine's interesting physiognomy. In this connection
we may glance at the following little parallel of the hen-killing
figure, with which, like the foregoing, I do not deal in the course of
_The Key to the Bronte Works_. Again we perceive Charlotte Bronte's
Method I.:--

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Chapter XXX.                        Chapter XIV.

  Hareton contented himself with      Mr. Rochester had been looking
  ... looking at Catherine instead    ... at the fire, and I had been
  of the book. She continued          looking at him, when, turning
  reading. His attention became       suddenly, he caught my gaze
  ... quite centred in the study      fastened on his physiognomy.
  of her ... curls ... and perhaps
  not quite aware to what he did      "You examine me, Miss Eyre,"
  ... he put out his hand and         said he; "do you think me
  stroked one curl as gently as if    handsome?"
  it were a bird. He might have
  stuck a knife into her neck, she    "No sir."
  started with such a taking....
                                      "And so under the pretence of
                                      stroking and soothing me into
                                      placidity, you stick a sly
                                      penknife under my ear."

Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre were of course M. Heger and Miss Bronte. It
is indeed important and interesting to find at the old farmstead of
Wuthering Heights scenes reminiscent of the intimately pedagogic
relations that existed between Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger of the
school at Brussels.

Discovering _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ are practically as the
same book, I have disclosed their relationship in parallel columns--the
most satisfactory and conclusive evidence in the world. Herewith we see
both volumes agree in scenes and chapters virtually word for word, and
from beginning to end. Both works we now find are one in origin, each
containing not less than four identical characters portrayed by
Charlotte Bronte from her own life, she herself being the original of
the heroine in each book, and her friend M. Heger in the main the
original of the hero thereof. Charlotte Bronte's brother, Branwell
Bronte, in agreement with her estimate of him as a wreck of selfishness,
is the unhappy fool of both books; while her life-long companion,
Tabitha Aykroyd, who was to her as nurse, mother, and friend, is therein
the indispensable domestic servant and motherly good woman of the humble
class.

I will not occupy my preface with an enumeration of the many important
and interesting Bronte discoveries I have been enabled to make and
present herewith in _The Key to the Bronte Works_. I may briefly
indicate my chief sensational discoveries:--The discovery of the origin
of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_; the discovery that in _Jane
Eyre_ Charlotte Bronte immortalized not only herself and M. Heger, but
also her father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, her brother, four sisters, her
aunt and a cousin, and Tabitha Aykroyd, the Bronte servant or
housekeeper; the discovery first revealing the history of Charlotte
Bronte's life at Brussels and friendship with M. Heger, the original of
her chief heroes; and the discovery of the most sensational fact that
Charlotte Bronte and not Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and was
herself the original of the heroine and M. Heger that of the hero, as I
have mentioned.

My warm thanks are due to Mr. Harold Hodge, who commissioned me to write
my article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" for _The Saturday Review_;[3] and to
Mr. W. L. Courtney, M.A., LL.D., the editor of _The Fortnightly Review_,
who commissioned me to write my article "The Lifting of the Bronte Veil:
A New Study of the Bronte Family."[4] Mr. Courtney's words of
encouragement--those of a true gentleman and an eminent literary scholar
and author--have made bright to me the accomplishment of this work.

I thank Lady Ritchie--the gifted author-daughter of Thackeray the writer
of _Vanity Fair_ to whom Charlotte Bronte in her second edition
dedicated _Jane Eyre_--for her kind permission to use in _The Key to the
Bronte Works_ what her ladyship had written me privately in regard to
her sitting at dinner beside Charlotte Bronte on June 12th, 1850, with
Mr. Thackeray and Mr. George Smith the publisher, when Miss Bronte was
wearing a light green dress, an incident that has relation to the green
dress in the interesting Heger portrait of Charlotte Bronte drawn in
1850, now the property of the nation and in the National Portrait
Gallery, London.

I desire to express my gratitude to Miss Catherine Galbraith Welch, who
introduced an outline of my Bronte discoveries to the readers of _The
New York Times Saturday Review of Books_. I thank _The Spectator_, _The
Outlook_, and other organs for their open acknowledgment of the fact
that I have made a discovery at last throwing light upon Charlotte
Bronte's Brussels experiences and her relations with the Hegers at
Brussels. And I wish also to thank the anonymous and scholarly writer
who penned the long and careful article in _The Dundee Advertiser_ under
the heading "The Original of Jane Eyre," containing an encouraging
appreciation of the importance of my discovery I dealt with in my
article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" in _The Saturday Review_.

I would like to give a pressure of the hand to my subscribers for the
first edition of _The Key to the Bronte Works_. Your kind letters to me
and your active interest in _The Key to the Bronte Works_ will ever
dwell among my pleasant memories. One I grieve will never see on earth
these pages--the late Most Honourable Marquis of Ripon, K.G., who
numbered with my earliest subscribers.

The readers of _The Key to the Bronte Works_ will love Charlotte Bronte
more and know her better than ever they have loved or known her in the
past. They will see her books are rich with new-found treasures, and
will recognize her to be a world's writer--a character of signal
eminence, one of the most illustrious of women.

Truth will out, and facts have their appointed day of revelation; thus I
cannot help it that more than sixty years of writing on the Brontes is
placed out of date by my discoveries.

                                               JOHN MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.




THE KEY TO THE BRONTE WORKS.




CHAPTER I.

OUTLINE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S LIFE.


St. Michael the Prince of Messengers--to him was dedicated the little
church on the hill at Haworth, in the Parish of Bradford, Yorkshire,
whose living gave sustenance to the family of the restless, ambitious
son of Erin, Patrick Bronte.[5] Is it for nothing that a spiritual
banner is raised by man and appeal made for the beneficent influence of
a conception of definite personal character? Within this sacred
circumscription came to be written the works of Charlotte Bronte, and
herefrom the words of a Messenger went out to the uttermost parts of the
world.

The mystery of impulse! The servant is not master, nor is the messenger
he that sendeth. Behind the lives of the great was ever an influence to
do: blind may be the early groping of Genius, stumbling her feet on the
rugged road of a darksome journey begun in the veiling mist of life's
dawn, but onward and ever onward is she impelled to the journey's end.
Ere Night blots out Genius her Message has accomplished. Glancing back
to the literary strivings of Charlotte Bronte's childhood, and upon
those quaint little efforts [Greek: peri ton apiston], which her young
brother and sisters sought to emulate,[6] we see her responsive to some
inward prompting that told her she must write.

Born on April 21st, 1816, at Thornton, near Bradford, during her
father's curacy of that parish, Charlotte Bronte was one of a family of
six, whose mother died in 1821. The story of her literary beginnings
shows them to have been of the kind known to many aspirants. There were
the rebuffs of editors and of at least one famous author; and, in
addition, was the divertisement of her life as teacher and governess.
Her correspondence is voluminous. It was ever written down to the
intended recipient. As to the somewhat commonplace Ellen Nussey, whose
friendship, begun at Roe Head, near Dewsbury, the school of a Miss
Margaret Wooler, lasted to the end: she invariably discussed the
domestic and social happenings of the acquaintances known by or of
interest to them. Thus her letters[7] are commonly circumstantial and
seldom soared beyond the capacity, or exceeded the limits of the
departmental interests, of those for whom they were written.

This was primarily the result of Charlotte Bronte's nervous perception
of character and recognition of the want of a truly psychical
reciprocity with her friends. She tells us that of all living beings
only "Rochester" understood her, and her letters to M. Heger, of her
Brussels school--the original of this character--were not preserved. In
the day of high fame, when she corresponded with literary folk, she
felt herself as on parade, rushed to make opinions, as say, on Miss
Austen, whom she criticized somewhat adversely. Obviously she hated to
be at the service of bookish letter-writers. Erratically she responded
to their promptings, trying not to be ruffled, but she could not reveal
her heart. From these letters, and the epistles of the class I have
previously mentioned, Mrs. Gaskell in the main wrote her famous
biography. The Charlotte Bronte known of the recipients of this
correspondence her biographer presented, backed with the necessary local
colour. She had enjoyed in the days of Miss Bronte's popularity a short
acquaintance with her; and when, at the death of Currer Bell, Mr. Bronte
requested her to write his daughter's "life," she was eminently fitted
to give the world Charlotte Bronte as known by her acquaintances.

But of the intimate Charlotte Bronte, and the origin of the Bronte
works, the method of their construction, and their relation to the facts
and people of her life, Mrs. Gaskell could tell us virtually nothing.
Neither could she, nor any succeeding biographer, throw light upon Miss
Bronte's Brussels life, or upon the subject of her friendship with M.
Heger, who is discovered by internal evidence to be the original of
Currer Bell's chief heroes. Charlotte Bronte's was an intensely reserved
nature. She built to herself a universe which she peopled in secret. Her
real life she lived out again in her books. Therein appeared the real
Charlotte Bronte, and see we her life and its people as known to
herself. Whether she thought the secrets of her works would be revealed
I cannot tell; but as the traveller who in far distant lands inscribes
on some lonely rock the relation of his experience, conscious that a
future explorer will read the tale, so does Genius, with the faith which
gave her being, leave her message in the hope of an early day of
revelation, and in the secure knowledge of the final penetration of
truth.

We now, sixty years after, find by aid of the many discoveries I have
made and present my readers in the pages of this, _The Key to the Bronte
Works_, that Charlotte Bronte, penning in her connective works the story
of her life, gave us the spectacle of a living drama wherein she was
herself a leading actor. Herein we see the imperfections and
shortcomings of human nature, and Charlotte Bronte herself is shown
standing in the slippery places. Before our eyes flits the procession of
the people who moved about her, and the air is filled with the
atmosphere through which her genius saw the world. In this new light of
revelation we perceive her great message is--the Martyrdom of Virtue. A
more poignant message I know not! And Charlotte Bronte was martyr in
this moving drama--nay, I believe there also was another. Spending two
years at a Brussels _pensionnat_ she gained the friendship of Monsieur
Heger, a devout Roman Catholic and a man of intellect who, himself once
a teacher at the establishment, as was M. Pelet in _The Professor_ at a
similar school, came to marry the mistress. Miss Bronte went twice to
Brussels, on the first occasion being accompanied by her sister Emily.
Finally, Charlotte Bronte left Brussels abruptly on account, it has been
said, of the harsh attitude of Madame Heger, who even forbade her
husband to correspond with Miss Bronte. Concerning this period and the
incidents associated therewith, I have been enabled to lift the veil. We
have thus, for the first time, external evidence that shows Charlotte
Bronte, at Brussels, endured the greatest ordeal through which it is the
lot of a woman to pass. We see how she and M. Heger emerged triumphantly
from dangerous temptation, and how they were aided, the one by her
Christian upbringing, the other by the influence of his Church.

It was in January 1844 when Charlotte Bronte returned finally from
Brussels; and she and her sisters printed a circular in connection with
a project of starting a private school at Haworth, but no progress was
made. Charlotte Bronte's life at this period will be better understood
by a reference to the chapters on "The Recoil" in this work--it was her
darkest time: when the human in her cried out--as it has, alas! in so
many at the bitter hour. She rebelled. Not violently; but by reproach.
Only her own pen can tell how cruelly she suffered mentally. She had
done no wrong and had resisted a great evil, but the recoil found her
weak: it was the martyrdom of virtue. She was suffering for the sake of
right; and that she cried aloud as in an agony showed her suffering was
intense. The storm left the world _Wuthering Heights_. The tone of
ribald caricature in dealing with the Pharisee Joseph; the impatient,
vindictive pilloring of her own nervous and physical infirmities as
"Catherine"; the ruthless baring of the flesh to show "Heathcliffe's"
heart was stone; the wilful plunging into an atmosphere of harsh levity,
crude animalism, and repulsive hypochondria, all contributed to a sombre
and powerful work of art grand in its perpetration, standing alone in
solemn majesty like the black rack that stretches low athwart a clear
sky--the rearward of the storm. But it bears the story of a sad Night,
and Charlotte Bronte's subsequent works were written in repentance: for
in Heathcliffe and Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_ she had portrayed M.
Heger and herself.

In this dark hour of Charlotte Bronte's life, Emily Bronte, to whom she
afterwards gave _Wuthering Heights_, was writing, on July 30th, 1845,[8]
that she, Emily, was "contented and undesponding," and was engaged upon
and intended to continue some puerile compositions called _The Gondal
Chronicles_, which she spoke of as "delighting" her and Anne. She and
Anne had been engaged upon this effort three and a half years, and it
was yet unfinished.

While making comparison between Emily's and Charlotte's standpoint at
this time--and Charlotte obtained for herself the names of Currer Bell
from Montagu's book which, as I show, contained the "plot," etc., of
_Wuthering Heights_, for her own use in the Bronte poem publishing
project of 1845-46--it is most important to note that but some months
after Emily's diary entry _Wuthering Heights_ was offered by Charlotte
to Messrs. Aylott and Jones, with _The Professor_ and _Agnes Grey_--on
April 6th, 1846. The literal evidence of _The Key to the Bronte Works_
does not require that we ask by what miracle the "contented" Emily
Bronte, who had collaborated three and a half years with Anne on _The
Gondal Chronicles_, and declared an intention at the end of July 1845 to
"stick firmly" to their composition, could come, in addition to
preparing her poems for the press, to begin and to finish _Wuthering
Heights_ by or before April 6th, 1846.[9]

After Charlotte Bronte's return from Brussels the degeneracy of her only
brother, Patrick Branwell Bronte, a young man ambitious, but not
successful, as an artist, made him an object of her disgust and
antipathy, and we find she portrayed him unflinchingly as Hindley
Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, and again as John Reed of _Jane Eyre_.
Emily, we have been told, liked her brother, though an attempt was made
somewhat recently to dissipate the tradition.[10] But Charlotte, after
the deaths of her elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, the eldest of the
family, obviously was piqued from childhood by the advantage Branwell's
sex gave him over her seniority, more especially as he seems to have
been brutal to her:--See "A Rainy Day in Charlotte Bronte's Childhood,"
in _The Key to the Bronte Works_.

It may be observed Charlotte Bronte went to three schools, and that each
had a remarkable influence upon her life and literature. The first was
the Clergy Daughters' School in the Kendal locality, to which her
sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily also went upon the death of the
ailing Mrs. Bronte at Haworth. The second was Miss Wooler's school
already mentioned, and the third the Brussels _pensionnat_. The fact
that _Jane Eyre_ virtually opens with the Clergy Daughters' School
incidents--incidents drawn from her child-memory regarding the temporary
mismanagement of an establishment which subsequently has proved a most
useful foundation--shows she began _Jane Eyre_ with the utmost possible
fidelity to truth in so far as regarded herself and her associations.
The story of how this famous work was sent in 1847 to a firm of
publishers who had just declined her novel _The Professor_ is well known
history, as is the relation of the subsequent success of the book and
the elevation of Charlotte Bronte to the highest recognition.

_Wuthering Heights_ had been published as Ellis Bell's work, a _nom de
guerre_ that also had appeared over Emily Bronte's poems. It was issued
under the condition that the next book by its author went to the same
publisher, a Mr. Newby, which, of course, made impossible thereafter
Charlotte Bronte's acknowledging her authorship of this work, as the
next book by the author of _Wuthering Heights_, her _Jane Eyre_, was
published by another house. But there are evidences in _Shirley_ that
despite her nervous apprehensions, and her letters show she was very
much afraid of this Mr. Newby, who afterwards asserted she wrote
_Wuthering Heights_, she therein carefully placed significations of her
authorship of _Wuthering Heights_.

_Villette_ was published in January 1853, and in the June of 1854 Currer
Bell married her father's curate, the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, whom she
previously had refused. She married him, it may be, as a final
immolation of herself on the altar of Right and Duty. Her married life
was but for some few months--it was so short we yet call her Charlotte
Bronte. Her father outlived her by six years. The last survivor of the
young Brontes, she died in March 1855, within a month of old Tabitha
Aykroyd, her best loved woman friend and companion apart from her own
kinsfolk. Charlotte Bronte, with other members of her family, rests in
the grey fabric which is the modern representative of that early
described as the church of St. Michael the Archangel de Haworth. Her
message is yet with us; the tablets of her life she has bequeathed to
posterity, and the key to open the way to their repository is now in our
hands. Her genius has shown the price of right-doing and the grim and
dangerous valley through which Virtue must go ere break of Day.




CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGIN OF THE CANDLE-BEARING BEDSIDE VISITANT AND THE UNCOUTH
SERVANT IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND "JANE EYRE."


My evidence shows that between 1837 and 1847 Charlotte Bronte was
perusing very attentively a little volume entitled _Gleanings in Craven,
or the Tourist's Guide_, by one Frederic Montagu of Lincoln's Inn, son
of Basil Montagu, second (natural) son of John Montagu, fourth Earl of
Sandwich, whose ancestor brought Charles II. over from Holland on the
Restoration in 1660 and therefor received his earldom.[11] The book,
which had never been associated by any person with the name or works of
Charlotte Bronte till I wrote my article, "The Key to _Jane Eyre_," upon
it for _The Saturday Review_, was in the form of "Six letters to a
friend in India," addressed as, "My dear Howard ... now at Bombay," and
was dedicated by special permission to the Duke of Devonshire, a fact
not mentioned save in the early editions. It was printed at Briggate,
Leeds, by A. Pickard, and published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838.
Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. were the London publishers.

Frederick Montagu was a gentleman travelling in Yorkshire for his
health's sake it seems, and it occurred to him to relate in epistolary
form the story of his adventures. He had read the local writers, but it
is most clear Charlotte Bronte was particularly influenced in the
construction of her great masterpieces, _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane
Eyre_, by his purely personal contributions. It was not only as a
gleaner of local hearsay that Montagu wrote the long panegyric upon Miss
Currer which obviously resulted in Charlotte Bronte's choosing the name,
but as one whose attention had been drawn to her literary eminence.
Thomas Frognall Dibdin, who in his _Reminiscences of a Literary Life_
(1836) spoke so good a word for Basil Montagu, Frederic's father,[12]
under whom he had studied for the bar, also devoted in those
_Reminiscences_ many pages to Miss Currer and Eshton Hall. Thus we read
in Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_:--

    And now as to literature ... Miss Currer is the head of all the
    female bibliopolists (_sic_) in Europe, the library of Eshton Hall
    fully bearing out this truth.... In taking my leave of Eshton
    Hall, there is a subject upon which I must say a word: it is only
    the repetition of the echo I have heard about Eshton.... There was
    one name connected by every person with worth and excellence--one
    who in the continual performance of charity, like a pure but
    imbedded stream, silently pursues her kind course, nourishing all
    within her sweet influence:--I believe it may be truly said no
    person is more deservedly loved and respected than Miss Currer.

As to "Bell," which like "Currer," came to be chosen by Charlotte Bronte
from Montagu's book for her pen-name in the poem publishing project of
autumn 1845--only some months before _Wuthering Heights_ was supposed to
have been written--Montagu says:--

    Kirkby-Lonsdale is a neat, stone-built town, and has a free
    Grammar School.... It was at this school that the celebrated
    lawyer, and one of his late Majesty's Counsels, the late John
    Bell, Esq., received his education.

And three lines before this Montagu has described the views of the Lune,
"and the prospect from the churchyard, taking in Casterton Hall."[13]
This is the very background of the early chapters of _Jane Eyre_.
Indeed, Casterton Hall was the original of Brocklehurst Hall in _Jane
Eyre_, and here resided the Rev. W. Carus-Wilson, the original of Mr.
Brocklehurst, "the black marble clergyman" of the school at Lowood;
while Kirkby-Lonsdale was the original of Lowton of _Jane Eyre_. These
facts compel us to perceive that Charlotte Bronte would naturally be led
by Montagu's words, to recall she too as regards her education had been
associated with the locality mentioned. These references seem to have
made Currer Bell relate in _Jane Eyre_ her experiences in that district.
Neither Miss Bronte nor Mrs. Gaskell, her biographer, gave any
information as to the origin of the "Currer" and "Bell" of Currer Bell,
but it is known the "Bell" was not chosen from the name of the Rev. A.
Bell Nicholls whom she afterwards married.[14]

A further personal contribution by Montagu, one he based on gossip
rather than on tradition, was the story of a foundling who, he says, was
discovered by a shepherd on a rocky elevation. This I find Charlotte
Bronte evolved into "a cuckoo story." The circumstance that this male
child was found on the craggy summit of a hill may have dictated to her
the name of the foundling Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_.

I moreover find that, influenced by Montagu's quaint descriptions of the
wild and remote neighbourhood, Charlotte Bronte made Malham and the
valley of Malham the background of her story, _Wuthering Heights_. With
Malham, Montagu associated the names of Linton and Airton (Hareton); the
Fairy Cave, the Crags, glens, mists; a grey old church in the valley,
the "Kirk" by Malham, Kirkby Malham Church, which Charlotte Bronte calls
in _Wuthering Heights_ Gimmerton Kirk; a rapid stream and a Methodist
chapel. And he draws attention to Malham, being at the foot of a range
of steep mountains--"the Heights," and having an annual sheep fair, when
over one hundred thousand sheep are shown at one time, the which
observation was, we now discover, responsible for Charlotte Bronte's
choice of "Gimmerton" and "Gimmerden," from "gimmer," a female sheep,
and meaning respectively the village of sheep and the valley of sheep, a
characteristic of hers being that she often chose her names on what she
termed the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle.[15]

Having in _Wuthering Heights_ made so pointed a reference to the Fairy
Cave in the neighbourhood of Gimmerton, and having therein associated
with it the names of Airton (Hareton) and Linton, which Montagu
connected with Gimmerton or Malham, Charlotte Bronte had not openly
mentioned in that work the Fairy Janet referred to by Montagu, though
she hinted at "the mysteries of the Fairy Cave." But I find that her
"elfish" imagination induced her later, in _Jane Eyre_, to appropriate
for herself the role of the Fairy Janet, the Queen of the Malhamdale or
Gimmerden elves, who ruled in the neighbourhood of Gimmerton and of
Wuthering Heights, the home of Catherine Earnshaw. Thus we see Charlotte
Bronte primarily associated both Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of
_Wuthering Heights_, and Jane Eyre, the heroine of _Jane Eyre_, with
Malham. And discovering the impetuosity of her imaginative nature and
its romantic turn, I doubt not she was impatient to begin the tale of
the "fairy-born and human-bred" heroine whose surname she took from the
River Aire or Ayre, which sprang, as Montagu carefully indicates, from
Malham, or Gimmerton, as Charlotte Bronte would say in her _Wuthering
Heights_. From this came the suggestion of the "Rivers" family, with
which I deal later, the names employed by Charlotte Bronte being
River(s), Burn(s), Aire or Eyre, Severn, Reed, and Keeldar.

Another of Montagu's personal contributions which greatly influenced
Charlotte Bronte was on the leaf before the mention of John Bell, Esq.,
and on the same leaf as the mention of Casterton Hall, headed "A Night's
Repose." This was the narration of a night's adventure, Montagu telling
how he went to a lonely hostelry and found an unwillingness in the
hostess to give him bed and shelter. He also discovered a mystery
surrounded the hostess and a peculiar, harsh-voiced country-bred
man-servant--who came to be the original of Joseph of _Wuthering
Heights_. At night the apparition of the hostess appears at Montagu's
bedside, white-faced and lighted candle in hand. It is plain the
peculiar man-servant appealed very strongly to Charlotte Bronte, and
thus in both her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ transcriptions of
the midnight incident this characteristic is marked and recognizable: in
Joseph; and in Grace Poole, by what I have termed Charlotte Bronte's
Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters. In _Wuthering
Heights_, by her same Method I., Montagu's inhospitable hostess became
the inhospitable host Heathcliffe; but in each of Charlotte Bronte's
versions--_Wuthering Heights_ or _Jane Eyre_--a central figure of the
incidents she based upon Montagu's story of "A Night's Repose" was the
uncouth, coarse-voiced country-bred servant.

We also shall see that Montagu's reference to lunacy being an exception
to his objection against the separation of husband and wife, and the use
he made of a verse in his Malham letter, likening the moon to

      "A ... lady lean and pale
  Who totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil,
  Out of her chamber led by the insane
  And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,"

were responsible for the "plot" of _Jane Eyre_ including an insane lady
who wanders out of her chamber at night and dons a vapoury veil.

And evidence of the enthusiasm with which Charlotte Bronte applied
herself to _Jane Eyre_ is the fact that she at once took from Montagu's
little volume for this her second story based upon the book's
suggestions, the names of

    Broughton, Poole (from Pooley), Eshton, Georgiana, Lynn (from
    Linton), Lowood (from Low-wood), Mason, Ingram, Helen,[16] and
    possibly Millcote (from Weathercote).

Thus far we see Charlotte Bronte drew _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane
Eyre_ from the same source; that in a word, _Jane Eyre_, was Charlotte's
second attempt to utilize and amplify the suggestions in Montagu's work
which had appealed to her when she began _Wuthering Heights_, and we see
the suggestions she utilized in _Jane Eyre_ always bear unmistakable
relationship to those she had utilized in her _Wuthering Heights_. But
the use Charlotte Bronte made of Montagu's book was not in the nature of
literary theft; that volume simply afforded suggestions which she
enlarged upon.

I shall presently show how I find _Jane Eyre_ is the second attempt of
Currer Bell to enlarge upon suggestions that had appealed to her when
she first read Montagu. For a commencement I will refer to the early
construction of her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. As simple
stories they both are based upon the description Montagu gives of an
isolated hostelry with an inhospitable hostess, a midnight apparition,
and an air of mystery that surrounds the hostess and a peculiar, uncouth
servant, to whom I have already alluded. The stage properties of this
narrative, the characters, and the "action" or plot, I will give side by
side, as they appear severally, first in Montagu, next in _Wuthering
Heights_, and finally in _Jane Eyre_. Herewith the reader will have
excellent examples of the two chief methods I find Charlotte Bronte
employed often when she drew from a character in more than one work or
instance, or when she desired to veil the identity of her originals.
Charlotte Bronte's Methods I. and II., being discovered equally in
_Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ show, as conclusively as any other
evidence, that she was the author of both works. No consideration
whatsoever can alter the iron fact or depreciate from its significance,
that it was absolutely my discovery of Charlotte Bronte's Methods I. and
II., which revealed to me the sensational verbal and other parallels
between _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ I give in _The Key to the
Bronte Works_:--

Read carefully:--

Charlotte Bronte's Method I.--The interchange of sexes. Thus the
original of A may be a woman, and the original of B a man; but A may be
represented as a man, and B as a woman.

Charlotte Bronte's Method II.--Altering the age of a character
portrayed. Thus the original of C may be young, and the original of D
old; but C may be represented as old, and D as young.

The literal extracts to which I have referred I print as occurring in
the three works:--Montagu the original, _Wuthering Heights_, and _Jane
Eyre_. I will first give the substance, or subject matter, side by
side:--

  MONTAGU.                _Wuthering Heights._    _Jane Eyre._

  Montagu goes on         Lockwood, of whom       Jane (Method I.,
  horseback to a          Montagu was palpably    interchange of the
  solitary house at a     the original, goes      sexes) goes to a
  distance from any       on horseback to a       solitary house,
  habitable dwelling,     solitary house at a     alone. Comfort is all
  alone, and seeks a      distance from any       around, but an air of
  night's repose. But     habitable dwelling,     mystery surrounds
  though comfort is all   alone, and seeks a      the master's wife and
  around, he finds an     night's repose. But     a peculiar
  air of mystery          he finds an air of      harsh-voiced female
  surrounds the           mystery surrounds the   servant (Method I.,
  inhospitable hostess    inhospitable host       interchange of the
  and her deep-voiced,    (Charlotte Bronte's     sexes).
  Yorkshire               Method I.,
  dialect-speaking,       interchange of the
  country-bred            sexes) and his
  man-servant.            harsh-voiced,
                          Yorkshire
                          dialect-speaking,
                          country-bred
                          man-servant.

  Montagu is shown to     Lockwood is shown to    Jane, in bed one
  bed up a step-ladder    bed, and sleeps only    night, sleeps only
  that leads through a    fitfully, dreaming.     fitfully, dreaming.
  trap, and sleeps only   He hears noises and     She hears noises and
  fitfully, dreaming.     perceives a gleam of    perceives a gleam of
  He hears noises and     light. He starts to     light. She starts to
  perceives a gleam of    find the white-faced    find the apparition
  light He starts to      apparition of his       of her master's wife
  find the white-faced    host standing at his    standing at her
  apparition of his       bedside, lighted        bedside, lighted
  hostess standing at     candle in hand, his     candle in hand, her
  his bedside, lighted    features convulsed      features convulsed
  candle in hand, her     with diabolical rage.   with diabolical rage.
  features convulsed      The harsh-voiced,       The harsh-voiced,
  with diabolical rage.   Yorkshire               peculiar female
  The deep-voiced,        dialect-speaking        servant Jane first
  Yorkshire               man-servant, a sour     encountered after
  dialect-speaking        old man (Charlotte      having gone to the
  peculiar man-servant    Bronte's Method II.,    attics and through a
  he sees by looking      the altering of the     trap-door to the
  down the step-ladder    age of a character      roof.
  through the trap.       portrayed), comes
                          down a step-ladder
                          that vanished through
                          a trap.

In the literal extracts I now give the reader will perceive that in the
description of the bedside, candle-bearing apparition in _Jane Eyre_,
Charlotte Bronte followed Montagu almost word for word, and in the whole
staging of the midnight episode at the house of the inhospitable host in
_Wuthering Heights_ followed him entirely in outlining the story. Both
the _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ versions give unequivocal
evidence of being refractions from Montagu conveyed through one brain
alone, the peculiar idiosyncrasy and elective sensitiveness of which are
undeniably recognizable as Charlotte Bronte's:--

  MONTAGU.                _Wuthering Heights._    _Jane Eyre._

  A Night's Repose.       A Night's Repose.       A Night's Repose.

  My servant having       Heathcliffe, when he    Jane is shown the
  lamed his steed ...     saw my horse's breast   bedrooms of the
  I arrived alone at a    fairly pushing the      secluded Thornfield
  small hostelry in a     barrier, did put out    Hall:--
  secluded part of        his hand to unchain
  the country, and        it ... calling as we    "Do the servants
  apparently at some      entered the court,      sleep in these
  distance from any       "Joseph, take Mr.       rooms?"
  habitable dwelling.     Lockwood's horse; and
  Having determined to    bring some wine."       "No ... no one sleeps
  rest for the night,                             here. One would ...
  I discovered in the     Joseph was an           say that if there
  woman who seemed to     elderly, nay an old     were a ghost at
  be the hostess an       man, very old           Thornfield Hall this
  anxiety to get rid      perhaps, though hale    would be its haunt."
  of me; but with the     and sinewy. "The Lord
  usual obstinacy of      help us!" he            ... I followed ... to
  curiosity caused        soliloquised in an      the attics, and
  by this apparent        undertone of peevish    thence by a trap-door
  anxiety, I determined   displeasure, while      to the roof of the
  not to be thwarted;     relieving me of my      hall ... a laugh
  so, putting up my       horse, looking ... in   struck my ear ...
  horse, I entered the    my face so sourly       "Who is it?"
  house, and sat down     that I charitably
  to a humble but         conjectured he must     ... the laugh was as
  substantial meal,       have need of Divine     preternatural ... as
  prepared during         aid to digest his       any I ever heard....
  my absence in the       dinner, and his pious
  stable; and though      ejaculation had no      The ... door opened,
  comfort had sway with   reference to my         and a servant came
  all around me, yet      unexpected advent.      out--a woman of
  there was an evident                            between thirty and
  air of profound         "Guests are so          forty; a set,
  mystery between my      exceedingly rare in     square-made figure
  hostess and her         this house that I and   ... and with a hard,
  boy-of-all-work, a      my dogs hardly know     plain face....
  thick-set son of the    how to receive them,"
  north, with a deep      says Heathcliffe.       One day Jane, out for
  voice and a sturdy                              a walk, sees a
  manner; whilst I,       Resuming his            horseman approaching
  with all the            narrative in Chapter    who, in sympathy with
  malignant pleasure of   II., Lockwood tells     Montagu's story of
  counteracting any       us he goes again to     laming a horse, has
  mystery, secretly       Wuthering Heights and   an accident.
  enjoyed the hope of     gains admittance with
  discovering the         difficulty, after       "Did the horse fall
  reason of wishing my    muttering, "Wretched    in Hay Lane?" Jane
  absence.... I was not   inmates, you deserve    asks later of a
  at all disconcerted,    perpetual isolation     servant.
  but philosophically     ... for your churlish
  finished my meal ...    inhospitality. I        "Yes, it slipped."
  and at an early hour    don't care, I will
  requested to be shown   get in."                Thus Jane learns the
  where I was to rest                             horseman is the
  for the night.          "As to staying here,"   master of Thornfield
  Refusing to listen      cries Heathcliffe, "I   Hall. She discovers
  to any excuse, I was    don't keep              an air of mystery
  shown up a ladder       accommodations for      surrounds the master
  into a small room....   visitors: you must      of the house; and a
  I thanked my guide,     share a bed with        thick-set woman
  and ... laid down       Joseph [the             servant is involved.
  with the expectation    country-bred servant]
  of sleeping hard, an    if you do."
  expectation which was                           Chapter XV.
  not realized, for
  thoughts obtruded       Chapter III.            Though I had now
  themselves upon me,                             extinguished my
  wholly preventing       Lockwood at last is     candle and was laid
  repose. Midnight had    guided to bed by a      down in bed, I could
  scarcely fallen when    servant. While          not sleep for
  I heard voices in the   leading the way, she    thinking of the
  room below, and by a    recommended ... "I      [mystery that seemed
  light which grew        should hide the         to surround Mr.
  stronger every moment   candle, ... for her     Rochester].... I
  I felt some person      master had an odd       hardly knew whether I
  was about to ascend     notion about the        had slept or not
  the ladder.             chamber ... and never   after this musing; at
                          let anybody lodge       any rate I started
  Before Charlotte        there willingly."...    wide awake on hearing
  Bronte proceeds         I sank back in bed      a vague murmur.... I
  with the dramatic       and fell asleep....     wished I had kept my
  experiences of this     Alas! what could it     candle burning; the
  terrible night she      be that made me pass    night was drearily
  provides entirely       such a terrible         dark.... I rose and
  original matter         night? I don't          sat up in bed
  independent of          remember another that   listening;... I was
  Montagu, as a           I can compare with it   chilled with fear....
  preface. I will give    since I was capable     I began to feel the
  Montagu his space,      of suffering.           return of slumber.
  however, for we                                 But it was not fated
  have here a duet in     ... I began to          ... I should sleep
  unison, so to speak,    dream.... I had set     that night. A dream
  between _Wuthering      out on my way home,     had scarcely
  Heights_ and _Jane      with Joseph for a       approached my ear
  Eyre_. The trio will    guide. The snow lay     when it fled
  be resumed in perfect   yards deep in our       affrighted.... There
  sequence after          road. We came to a      was a demonia laugh
  Montagu has rested a    chapel.... Presently    ... at my chamber
  few bars in the         the whole chapel        door.... I thought
  introduction. My        resounded with          the goblin laughter
  reader will note with   rappings and            stood at my
  sensational interest,   counter-rappings; ...   bedside.... Something
  I am sure, that in      at last, to my          ... moaned. "Was that
  both of Charlotte       unspeakable relief,     Grace Poole?" [the
  Bronte's                they awoke me....       thick-set servant]
  introductions to the    What ... had            thought I.... There
  appearance of the       suggested the tumult?   was a candle burning
  candle-bearing,         ... the branch of a     outside.
  frenzied, bedside       fir-tree that touched
  apparition, the         my lattice as the
  separate narrators      blast wailed by....     Chapter XXV.
  tell us that a gale
  is blowing; that        I dreamt again, if      ... After I went to
  they dreamed most       possible still more     bed I could not
  disagreeably twice.     disagreeably than       sleep--a sense of
  The first dream being   before.... I heard      anxious excitement
  in each instance that   the gusty wind, ... I   depressed me. The
  of journeying upon an   thought I rose ... to   gale still rising
  unknown road, and the   unhasp the casement.    seemed to my ear to
  second dream that of    "I must stop [the fir   muffle a ... doleful
  an unknown ice-cold     bough's teasing         undersound.... During
  little child (always    sound]," I muttered,    my first sleep I was
  referred to in the      knocking my hand        following the
  neuter "it"), which     through the glass and   windings of an
  "wailed piteously"      stretching an arm out   unknown road; ...
  and "clung" to the      to seize the ...        rain pelted me; I was
  narrators in            branch; instead of      burdened with the
  "terror," intense       which my fingers        charge of a little
  horror being            closed on the fingers   child--a very small
  accentuated by their    of an ice-cold hand!    creature, ... which
  being unable to rid     The intense horror of   shivered in my cold
  themselves of the       nightmare came over     arms and wailed
  clinging, shivering     me: I tried to draw     piteously in my ear.
  small "creature," as    back my arm, but the
  Charlotte Bronte        hand clung to it, and   I dreamt another
  calls "it." The         a most melancholy       dream.... I still
  "doleful" moaning and   voice sobbed.... I      carried the unknown
  the "blast" play        discerned ... a         little child: I might
  their part in each      child's face looking    not lay it down
  version, and in both    through the window.     anywhere, however
  a "branch" is duly      Terror made me cruel,   tired were my
  grasped or seized by    and finding it          arms--however its
  the dreamer. For the    useless to attempt      weight impeded my
  origin of this          shaking the creature    progress, I must
  wailing little          off, I pulled its       retain it.... I
  creature see my         wrist on to the         climbed the thin
  chapter, "Charlotte     broken pane, ...        wall [of the house]
  Bronte's Child          rubbing it to and fro   with frantic,
  Apparition."            till the blood ran      perilous haste, ...
                          down; ... still it      the stones rolled
  Further, the reader     wailed ... and          from under my feet,
  will observe that in    maintained its          the ivy branches I
  both _Wuthering         tenacious gripe,        grasped gave way, the
  Heights_ and _Jane      almost maddening me     child clung round my
  Eyre_ Montagu's         with fear.              neck in terror, and
  bedside,                                        almost strangled
  candle-bearing          I said, "Let me go!"    me.... The blast blew
  apparition is not a     The fingers relaxed,    so strong.... I sat
  dream, but a            I snatched mine ...     down on the narrow
  candlelit reality,      and stopped my          ledge; I hushed the
  immediately sequent     ears.... Yet the        scared infant, ...
  to the dream of the     instant I listened      the wall crumbled; I
  tenacious child         again, there was the    was shaken; the child
  phantom.                doleful cry,            rolled from my knee;
                          moaning;... I tried     I lost my balance,
  I will here resume      to jump up, but could   fell, and awoke.
  Montagu's narrative:    not stir a limb....
  ... By a light which
  grew stronger every     Hasty footsteps         "Now, Jane, that is
  moment, I felt some     approached my chamber   all," put in
  person was about to     door, ... a light       Rochester. To which
  ascend the ladder. At   glimmered ... at the    Jane Eyre replies,
  this moment every       top of the bed. I sat   "All the preface; the
  murder ... I had        shuddering yet, and     tale is yet to come."
  heard of crowded upon   wiping the              On waking a gleam
  my brain, and I         perspiration from my    dazzled my eyes; ...
  instantly determined    forehead. The           it was candle
  to make the best        intruder appeared to    light.... A form
  fight I could, ...      hesitate....            emerged from the
  and with my partially                           closet; it took the
  closed eyes turned      ... Heathcliffe stood   light and held it
  towards the             near the entrance, in   aloft.... I had risen
  trap-door. I had only   his shirt and           up in bed, I bent
  just time to make my    trousers, with a        forward, ... then my
  arrangements when,      candle dripping over    blood crept cold
  clad in a white gown,   his fingers and his     through my veins....
  fastened close up to    face white.... The      It was not even that
  her neck, with her      first creak of the      strange woman Grace
  black hair, matted by   oak startled him, ...   Poole [the thick-set
  carelessness, hanging   the light leaped from   servant].... It
  over her collar, and    his hold....            seemed ... a woman
  as pale as death,                               ... with thick and
  ascended my hostess.    "It is only your        dark hair hanging
  Never shall I forget    guest, sir," I called   long down her back. I
  her dreadfully          out. "I had the         know not what dress
  hideous expression.     nightmare."             she had on: it was
  She came up to the                              white and straight;
  bedside and looked at   "Mr. Lockwood ... who   but whether gown,
  me for a full minute,   showed you up to this   sheet or shroud I
  and after passing the   room?" grinding his     cannot tell. The
  candle carefully        teeth to control the    features were fearful
  before my eyes, left    maxillary               and ghastly to me;
  me, and carefully       convulsions.            ... it was a savage
  descended the ladder.                           face. I wish I could
                          "It was your servant,   forget ... the
  Montagu arises, and,    Zillah," I replied,     lineaments.... Just
  looking down the        flinging myself on to   at my bedside the
  ladder, finds the       the floor, and ...      figure stopped: the
  thick-set servant is    resuming my             fiery eye glared upon
  also astir with the     garments.... "The       me--she thrust up her
  mysterious, hideous     place ... is swarming   candle close to my
  visitant. Then          with ghosts and         face, and
  Montagu hears his       goblins."               extinguished it under
  trap-door replaced;                             my eyes.
  and he wakes to learn   "What do you mean?"
  he has had the          asked Heathcliffe....   "Now," says
  nightmare.              "Lie down and finish    Rochester. "I'll
                          out the night since     explain to you all
                          you _are_ here...."     about it. It was half
                                                  dream, half reality:
                          I descended; ...        a woman did, I doubt
                          nothing was stirring    not, enter your room;
                          ... and then Joseph     and that woman
                          [shuffled] down a       was--must have
                          wooden ladder that      been--Grace Poole
                          vanished through a      [the thick-set
                          trap--the ascent to     servant]. You call
                          his garret, I           her a strange being
                          suppose.                yourself."

Truly Montagu's description of the coarse-voiced, thick-set,
country-bred servant, and his implication with the mystery of the lonely
house had impressed Charlotte Bronte considerably. Whether she portrayed
him as the Joseph of _Wuthering Heights_ or, by her Method I., as the
Grace Poole of _Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Bronte respects the original
associations of this character as they were figured to her by Frederic
Montagu's little fiction of "A Night's Repose." Herewith have we
evidence as to mental idiosyncrasy and elective-sensitiveness
recognizable as Charlotte Bronte's--proof that her brain and none other
was responsible for both the _Wuthering Heights_ and the _Jane Eyre_
versions of the midnight incident from Montagu.




CHAPTER III.

ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDLING HEATHCLIFFE AND HIS NAME IN "WUTHERING
HEIGHTS"--ORIGIN OF THE INSANE LADY AND THE WHITE VEIL SCENE IN
"JANE EYRE."


We have now seen that Montagu's book provided Charlotte Bronte with the
idea for a lonely house of mystery--a mystery which should surround a
host with a peculiar, harsh-voiced, uncouth, north-country servant, and
I have shown how that idea was adopted by her for _Wuthering Heights_
and afterwards for _Jane Eyre_. At one time Charlotte Bronte wrote the
_Tale of a Foundling_, and she certainly read with interest a remarkable
story told by Montagu of a foundling who, he tells us in the letter next
before the Malham letter, was discovered by a shepherd on the top of a
craggy "mountain," a circumstance which perhaps led her in making use of
this foundling story to name the child Heathcliffe. I will place the
substance of the two stories side by side:--

  MONTAGU.                            _Wuthering Heights._

  On the top of a craggy height       In a wild, hilly country, a male
  a male infant "was found by a       infant was brought home by a
  shepherd, who took it to his        farmer who had found it
  home, and after feeding and         homeless. He brought up the
  clothing it he had the child        child, and the rest of its
  named Simon; being himself but      career is the obvious "cuckoo
  a poor man he was unable to         story": the child ousts the poor
  maintain the foundling," when       farmer's family. It was called
  was agreed to by his friends        Heathcliffe.
  that the child should be kept
  "ameng 'em." The child was
  called Simon Amenghem.

The cuckoo story derived obviously from the history Montagu gives of the
foundling became thus the backbone of _Wuthering Heights_; but it is
possible that the cuckoo story requiring the foundling should be painted
with all the viciousness and cruelty of character necessary to his part,
Charlotte Bronte found herself dissatisfied with the story. And
portraying herself in the narrative as Catherine Earnshaw, her hero
became M. Heger. This naturally led to an awkward clashing. Whether the
extreme "demonism" of Heathcliffe must be understood as being in the
main due to his role as the "cuckoo," who was to oust the poor farmer's
offspring "like unfledged dunnocks," to quote Mrs. Dean, I will not in
this chapter inquire.

Turning again to Montagu's book, Charlotte saw a further suggestion that
contained excellent "plot" possibilities. This was the question of
lunacy being an exception to the objection against the separation of
husband and wife, Montagu's relation being Barry Cornwall (to whom, by
the way, Thackeray dedicated _Vanity Fair_), who was a Metropolitan
Commissioner in Lunacy. To Charlotte Bronte, however, the subject came
simply as a useful suggestion. She had no views upon it, and she desired
only that her heroine would marry Rochester, the hero with an insane
wife. At heart Charlotte was indifferent as to the vital point, even
nullifying the very theme of the plot by making Rochester aver that if
Jane Eyre had been the mad wife, he would still have loved and cherished
her.

It would appear that in conjunction with Montagu's remarks on lunacy and
the separation of husband and wife, an extract he gives from Shelley is
also responsible for a wife's lunacy being the theme of the plot of
_Jane Eyre_. The extract which Montagu quotes in the Malham letter is
where the poet speaks of "The Waning Moon" as like--

      "A ... lady lean and pale
  Who totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil
  Out of her chamber led by the insane
  And feeble wanderings of her fading brain."

Thus was evidently suggested to Charlotte Bronte the hanging up in the
closet of the "vapoury veil" for the stage purposes of the "insane
lady"; and in _Jane Eyre_ Montagu's night-wandering, candle-bearing
hostess became a lady who passed, after the manner of the lines he
quoted,--

  Out of her chamber led by the insane
  And feeble wanderings of her fading brain--

became Mrs. Rochester. Norton Conyers, a house near Ripon, it is said,
is associated with the story that a mad woman was once confined
there.[17] If Charlotte Bronte was familiar with this story, and we are
told the interior is somewhat similar to the descriptions of Thornfield,
we can understand that, perusing Montagu's book at the time when she was
utilizing his narrative of the candle-bearing, hideous-faced, white-clad
midnight visitant in a house of mystery, she would the more readily
appropriate the further suggestions his work contained in regard to a
wife's insanity, and the "veil-clad" apparition of a night-roaming
insane lady. It is important to note, however, that the evidence of my
preceding chapter proves indubitably the "mad woman" was but a secondary
suggestion--the primary suggestion responsible for the plot of _Jane
Eyre_ being that of Montagu's midnight apparition. And just as the
thick-set country-bred servant denotes in the question as to the origin
and author of the candle-bearing bedside visitant in _Wuthering Heights_
and _Jane Eyre_, the "gauzy veil" likewise denotes as to the origin of
the mad woman of _Jane Eyre_. So we read in the beginning of Chapter
XXV. of _Jane Eyre_, that Jane leaves the vapoury veil in the closet:--

    To conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which,
    at this evening hour ... gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer
    through the shadow of my apartment. "I will leave you by yourself,
    white dream," I said.

Then farther on we read that:--

    The moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close
    her curtain of cloud,

which is simply an antithetical paraphrase of Montagu's quoted verse on
"The Waning Moon" which, like

    A ... lady ... pale ... totters forth wrapt in a gauzy veil, out
    of her chamber.

And in the same chapter of _Jane Eyre_ we read finally that the insane
lady, who has come out of her chamber,

    "... took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it
    long, and then she threw it over her head, and turned to the
    mirror ... it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two
    parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."




CHAPTER IV.

A RAINY DAY IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S CHILDHOOD: THE OPENING INCIDENT IN THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF THE HEROINES OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND "JANE EYRE."


Seeing Catherine Earnshaw, the heroine of _Wuthering Heights_, was
drawn, as I find, by Charlotte Bronte for her autobiographical self, the
real commencement of that work, in so far as personal narrative was
concerned, is the diary extract she wrote of herself in her earliest
childhood.[18] In _Jane Eyre_ she placed her earliest childhood memories
at the beginning of the story. I will give extracts side by side, when
it will be seen they agree practically word for word. It is of course
undeniable that none but Charlotte Bronte herself would or could have
penned these incidents of her own childhood.

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Chapter III.                        Chapter I.

  A rainy day in the early            A rainy day in the early
  childhood of Catherine              childhood of Jane Eyre,
  Earnshaw, as told by herself.       as told by herself.

          --------                            --------

  ... All day had been flooding       There was no possibility of
  with rain; we could not go to       taking a walk that day, ...
  church.                             the cold winter wind had
                                      brought with it a rain so
                                      penetrating that further
                                      outdoor exercise was out of
                                      the question.

  Hindley [Branwell Bronte] and       Eliza, John [Branwell Bronte],
  his wife [? Sister Maria] basked    and Georgiana were now clustered
  downstairs before a comfortable     round their mamma [Aunt
  fire.                               Branwell] in the drawing-room
                                      ... by the fireside ... looking
                                      perfectly happy.

  Heathcliffe [Method I.,             Me she had dispensed from
  interchange of the sexes. In        joining the group.... A small
  the childhood of Heathcliffe        breakfast-room adjoined the
  Charlotte often portrays            drawing-room; I slipped in
  herself], myself, and the ...       there, ... I possessed myself of
  ploughboy were commanded to take    a volume, ... I mounted into the
  our prayer-books and mount ...      window-seat, ... and having
  on a sack ... [in the garret.       drawn the ... curtain nearly
  They go downstairs again].          close, I was shrined in ...
                                      retirement.... With ... [a book]
  "You forget you have a master in    on my knee I was ... happy; ...
  me," says the tyrant [Hindley:      but interruption ... came too
  Branwell Bronte].                   soon. The ... door opened:
                                      "Boh!" cried the voice of John
  ... We made ourselves ... snug      Reed [Branwell Bronte].
  ... in the arch of the dresser.
  I had just fastened our             "It is well I drew the curtain,"
  pinafores together and hung them    thought I, ... but Eliza ...
  up for a curtain, when in comes     said: "She is in the
  Joseph.[19]... He tears down my     window-seat, ... Jack
  handiwork [the curtain], boxes      [Branwell]."
  my ears, and ... thrust [a book]
  upon us.... I took my ... volume
  ... and hurled it into the
  dog-kennel, vowing I hated a
  good book.

  Hindley [Branwell Bronte]           I came out immediately, for I
  hurried up from his paradise on     trembled at the idea of being
  the hearth, and seizing ... us      dragged forth by the said Jack
  ... hurled both into the            [Branwell Bronte].
  back-kitchen.
                                      "What were you doing behind the
                                      curtain?" he asked. "I'll teach
                                      you to rummage my bookshelves,
                                      for they _are_ mine; all the
                                      house belongs to me, or soon
                                      will do.... Go ... by the door."

                                      I did so, ... but ... I saw him
                                      lift the book and stand in the
                                      act to hurl it.... The volume
                                      was flung.... He ran ... at
                                      me.... I saw in him a tyrant....
                                      Then Mrs. Reed [Aunt Branwell]
                                      subjoined: "Take her to the
                                      red-room."...

  ... How little did I dream that     ... All John Reed's [Branwell
  Hindley [Branwell Bronte] would     Bronte's] violent tyrannies ...
  ever make me cry so.... My head     turned in my disturbed mind....
  aches, till I cannot keep it on     My head still ached ... no one
  the pillow; and still I can't       reproved John [Branwell].... How
  give over.                          all my brain was in tumult.... I
                                      could not answer the question
                                      _why_ I thus suffered; now at
                                      the distance of--I will not say
                                      how many years--I see it clearly.

Thus we see the "volume-hurling" incident with which John Reed is
associated had its origin in some incident connected with Charlotte
Bronte's childhood and her brother Branwell. As Catherine, Charlotte
Bronte calls Hindley "a tyrant" in this connection, and as Jane Eyre she
calls John Reed "a tyrant" here. Branwell, as John Reed, is made to tell
Jane in connection with this incident that "all this house belongs to
me, or will do"; and as Hindley Earnshaw he tells his sister Catherine,
"You forget you have a master here." By Charlotte Bronte's Method II.,
altering the age of a character portrayed, Branwell is represented in
the _Wuthering Heights_ scene as a man in years. Without further appeal
it was likely enough that Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, was
drawn for Charlotte Bronte's brother, seeing Catherine was Charlotte.
Herewith we find an explanation for a fact Mr. Francis A. Leyland has
strongly emphasized in his work _The Bronte Family_, that in _Wuthering
Heights_ incidents (the carving-knife incident, etc.) and epithets known
by his intimates to have been common to Branwell Bronte are associated
with Hindley Earnshaw in the days of his moral deterioration. That
deterioration is reflected in the portrayal of the latter end of John
Reed in _Jane Eyre_; in _Wuthering Heights_ it is given in detail. As
for Emily Bronte, she always liked and commiserated with Branwell
Bronte.[20]

I hope the attempt to interfere with this tradition recently has no
relation to the fact that I briefly stated in my _Fortnightly Review_
article that John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw were one and the same. It is
plain to see that if Emily really liked Branwell, as people stated who
gleaned from hearsay, she could not have portrayed him as Hindley
Earnshaw. But a wrong estimate of the nature of the evidence I promised
to bring has been formed if it were thought I should base my book upon
such a point. It is enough that Charlotte Bronte's private letters
regarding Branwell are quite in agreement with her own harsh portrayals
of him in her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_.

It is interesting to recall Branwell avowed he, and not Emily, wrote
_Wuthering Heights_. This fact and the association of Branwell Bronte
incidents and epithets with the book induced Mr. Leyland to advocate
Branwell's authorship. _The Key to the Bronte Works_ shows the
absurdness of such a claim. Mr. Leyland suggested Branwell may have
collaborated with Emily; and he professed to discover a break in the
style. I find, however, that though there were violent psychical
fluctuations in the mood of the writer of _Wuthering Heights_, the book
is throughout the work of Charlotte Bronte. This may be proved alone by
the Chapter III., with which I now deal: it is the "key" chapter, and
is, so to speak, a microcosm of _Wuthering Heights_, as the reader will
perceive by help of my index. Whosoever was the writer of this third
chapter wrote the whole of _Wuthering Heights_, and we see it was Currer
Bell.

By Charlotte Bronte's Method I., interchange of the sexes, the
interloper Jane in the early chapters of _Jane Eyre_ and the interloper
Heathcliffe in the early chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ become one and
the same; and Hindley's tyrannizing over Heathcliffe is John Reed's
(Branwell Bronte's) tyrannizing over Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte).
Again, by Method I., interchange of the sexes, old Joseph, in
Charlotte's _Wuthering Heights_ version of the rainy day incident in her
childhood, serves the part of the servant Tabitha Aykroyd, for whom
Bessie in the _Jane Eyre_ version of the rainy day incident was drawn.
(See "Joseph" and his bit of garden, _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter
XXXIII.; also my footnote on page 47.) Thus Charlotte Bronte as
Catherine tells us that when she was banished from the comfortable fire
"Joseph" sermonizes, and that she hoped he might give "a short homily
for his own sake"; and in the scene in _Jane Eyre_ drawn from the same
incident Jane was left to Bessie, who "supplied the hiatus by a homily
of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the
most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof."

Catherine's story of the rainy day in _Wuthering Heights_ was written by
her in childhood on "a 'red-hot' Methodist's tract." Hence it is
interesting to read Charlotte Bronte's words in _Villette_, where as
Lucy Snowe she says she had "once read when a child certain Wesleyan
Methodist tracts seasoned with ... excitation to fanaticism." As
Caroline Helstone[21] in _Shirley_, Charlotte tells us she had read
"some mad Methodist magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of
preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; ...
from these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the
honey--they were tasteless to her now." Let the reader compare Charlotte
Bronte's reference to Briar Chapel and the shouts, yells, ejaculations,
frantic cries of "the assembly" in Chapter IX. of _Shirley_ with the
references in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_ to the frantic zeal of
"the assembly" of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough. It will be at once
recognized that the former is but the extension of the other, amplified
by the same hand.

Thus, in the light of the name Branderham ("Brander'em," from "brander,"
a hot iron over a fire) for the name of the zealous Rev. Jabes
Branderham,[22] of the chapel of Gimmerden Sough, of _Wuthering
Heights_, we see a connection with the play Charlotte Bronte makes upon
"burning and fire" in the hymn sung at Briar Chapel in Chapter IX. of
_Shirley_:--

  "For every fight
  Is dreadful and loud--
  The warrior's delight
  Is slaughter and blood;
  His foes overturning
  Till all shall expire--
  And this is with burning
  And fuel and fire."

In the rainy day incident Charlotte Bronte as Catherine vowed "she hated
a good book," and this rebellion against the thrusting upon her of
religious "lumber," as she calls it in _Wuthering Heights_, was a
characteristic of her childhood shown also in the "Jane Eyre and Mr.
Brocklehurst" incident, where the latter asks--

    "And the Psalms? I hope you like them?"

    "No, sir," replied Jane.

    "No? Oh, shocking!"

At heart, however, Charlotte Bronte was a true Christian, though
disliking excessive zealousness in the demonstrations of the members of
any church. Read what M. Emanuel says in Chap. XXXVI. of _Villette_; the
last paragraph. Lockwood tells us in the incident connected with
Catherine's diary that "a glare of white letters started from the dark
as vivid as spectres--the air swarmed with Catherines." This, Charlotte
Bronte's idea of spectral writing running in the air, occurs in Chap.
XV. of _Jane Eyre_, where Rochester speaks of a phantom hag (see
Charlotte Bronte's phantom hag in Chap. XII. of _Wuthering Heights_),
who "wrote in the air a memento which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all
along the house-front." Says Lockwood in _Wuthering Heights_,
continuing:--"An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown
Catherine, and I began ... to decipher her hieroglyphics"--the diary.




CHAPTER V.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S FRIEND, TABITHA AYKROYD, THE BRONTES' SERVANT,
AS MRS. DEAN OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND AS BESSIE AND HANNAH OF
"JANE EYRE."


It is a remarkable fact that of all the members of Charlotte Bronte's
home circle the one to whom, excepting herself, she gave most prominence
in her works was Tabitha Aykroyd, the Brontes' servant or housekeeper.
For I find this good woman was portrayed by Charlotte Bronte as Mrs.
Dean of _Wuthering Heights_, Bessie and Hannah of _Jane Eyre_, and, on
occasion, as Mrs. Pryor of _Shirley_. Indeed, strange though it may
sound to say, my discovery that Tabitha Aykroyd, as she appealed to
Currer Bell, was the original of these characters, alone explains the
chief mystery of _Wuthering Heights_, and shows clearly enough Charlotte
Bronte was its heroine and its author. In a word, we see by this
discovery that _Wuthering Heights_ is book the first of Charlotte
Bronte's life as told by herself from old Tabitha's standpoint, and
_Jane Eyre_ book the second, giving her life's story and confession as
related by herself entirely from her own point of view.

Never in _Wuthering Heights_ did Nelly Dean really understand Catherine,
and "the honest but inflexible servant," as Currer Bell calls Tabitha as
Hannah of _Jane Eyre_, never yielded herself to a surrender of her
rough-hearted but genuine nature wherein Charlotte was concerned.

"Tabby," said Mrs. Gaskell, "had a Yorkshire keenness of perception into
character, and it was not everybody she liked." That Tabitha Aykroyd
would readily appeal to Charlotte Bronte as fitted for the narrator of
the histories in _Wuthering Heights_ we may easily perceive by reading
Mrs. Gaskell's further words on this Bronte servant:--

"When Charlotte was little more than nine years old ... an elderly woman
of the village came to live as servant at the parsonage. She remained
there, as a member of the household, thirty years [Hannah was thirty
years with the Rivers family in _Jane Eyre_--an approximate date, of
course, when that work was written] and from the length of her faithful
service, and the attachment and respect she inspired is deserving of
mention. Tabby was a thorough specimen of a Yorkshire woman of her
class, in dialect, in character. She abounded in strong, practical sense
and shrewdness. Her words were far from flattering, but she would spare
no deeds in the cause of those whom she kindly regarded. She ruled the
children pretty sharply; and yet never grudged a little extra trouble to
provide them with such small treats as came within her power. In return
she claimed to be looked upon as a humble friend.... Tabby had lived in
Haworth in the days when the pack-horses went through once a week....
What is more, she had known the 'bottom' or valley in those primitive
days when the fairies frequented the margin of the 'beck' on moonlight
nights, and had known folk who had seen them. [See references to
'Bessie's' fairy tales in _Jane Eyre_, Chaps. I., II., and IV.].... No
doubt she had many a tale to tell of bygone days of the countryside: old
ways of living, former inhabitants, decayed gentry, who had melted away,
and whose places knew them no more; family tragedies and dark
superstitious dooms; and in telling these things, without the least
consciousness that there might ever be anything requiring to be softened
down, would give at full length the bare and simple details."

Says Mrs. Dean, the Yorkshire servant who narrates the family tragedies
of _Wuthering Heights_ just after the manner of Tabitha Aykroyd:--

    "But, Mr. Lockwood, I forget these tales cannot divert you, ... I
    could have told Heathcliffe's history, all that you need hear, in
    half-a-dozen words."

    "Sit still, Mrs. Dean," cried Lockwood, "... you've done just
    right to tell the story leisurely. That is the method I like....
    Excepting a few provincialisms, ... you have no marks of the
    manners ... peculiar to your class; ... you have been compelled to
    cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for
    frittering your life away in silly trifles."

    Mrs. Dean laughed. "I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable
    kind of body," she said; "not exactly from living among the hills
    and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from
    year's end to year's end; but I have undergone sharp discipline
    which has taught me wisdom."

"Jane" says of Mrs. Dean as "Bessie" of _Jane Eyre_, Chap. IV., Method
II., altering the age of characters portrayed:--

    When gentle, Bessie seemed to me the ... kindest being in the
    world;... I wished ... intensely ... she would always be so
    pleasant and amiable, and never push about or scold, or task me
    unreasonably, as she was ... wont to do. Bessie Lee[23] must, I
    think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was
    smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so,
    at least, I judge from the impression made upon me by her nursery
    tales.... But she had a capricious and hasty temper and
    indifferent ideas of principle or justice ["Hannah" would have
    driven off the destitute Jane Eyre], still, such as she was, I
    preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall.

"Mrs. Dean"[24] in her turn says of "Catherine"--Charlotte Bronte:--

    "She was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once
    and she defying us.... I vexed her frequently by trying to bring
    down her arrogance; she never took an aversion to me though."

In Chap. IV. of _Jane Eyre_ Bessie says to Jane Eyre, after the latter
has asked her not to scold:--

    "Well, I will, but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be
    afraid of me. Don't start when I chance to speak sharply."

    "I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie,
    because I have got used to you."

Jane suggests Bessie dislikes her, to which is replied:--

    "I don't dislike you.... I believe I am fonder of you than of all
    the others."

    "You don't show it."

    "You sharp little thing!... What makes you so venturesome and
    hardy?"

The idiosyncratic appeal Tabitha Aykroyd made to Charlotte is related
identically wherever she is portrayed. That Charlotte Bronte had been
initially entranced by her fairy tales, and the old songs she sang, is
shown more especially in the phases she gives of Tabitha as Bessie and
as Ellen Dean. Thus we read in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. IV., in the close of
the scene just given:--

"That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; ... in the evening Bessie
told me some of her most enchaining stories, and sang me some of her
sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine." And in
_Wuthering Heights_, Chap. XXII., Ellen Dean says of Miss Catherine
Linton (see my reference to this character as a phase of Charlotte
Bronte, in my preface):--"From dinner to tea she would lie doing nothing
except singing old songs--my nursery lore--to herself, ... half
thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express." So in the same
work, Chap. XXIV., the same Catherine says:--"He was charmed with two or
three pretty songs [I sang]--_your_ songs, Ellen." The italics are
Charlotte Bronte's.

_Jane Eyre_, Chap. III., says:--

    Bessie had now finished ... tidying the room ... she sang:--

        "In the days we went agipsying
              A long time ago."

    I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight;
    for Bessie had a sweet voice--at least I thought so. But now,
    though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an
    indescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she
    sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly: "a long time ago,"
    came like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed into
    another ballad.

Tabby Aykroyd going to the Parsonage when the motherless Charlotte
Bronte was but nine, Charlotte seems to have been drawn to look upon
her as a new-found friend, and afterwards she idealized those memories
associated with her. It is noticeable she had been impressed in
childhood by her singing and the sympathetic sweetness of her voice.
There is a world of meaning--a gracious waiving aside of qualifying fact
in the sentence, "Bessie had a sweet voice--at least I thought so."
Charlotte was fond of Scottish ballads, and in _Villette_, Chapter XXV.,
she identifies herself in her phase as Paulina (see my further reference
to this phase of Charlotte Bronte) with a a love for a Scottish song.
With Tabitha Aykroyd she loved to associate the singing of her favourite
ballads, as we have seen in her reference to the songs of Tabitha in her
phases as Bessie of _Jane Eyre_ and Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_.
And so it is we find Mrs. Dean telling us in Chapter IX. of _Wuthering
Heights_, 'I was rocking Hareton on my knee, and humming a song that
began:--

  "It was far in the night and the bairnies grat,
  The mither beneath the mools heard that."'

Whether traits of Nancy Garrs or her sister, or Martha Brown, the other
Bronte servants, contributed to Charlotte's portrayal is doubtful. I
think they did not. We see in this chapter the original of Bessie of
_Jane Eyre_ was certainly the original of Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering
Heights_--Tabitha Aykroyd; and as Charlotte Bronte portrayed Mrs. Dean
as an elderly woman servant, before she began _Jane Eyre_, we must
decide the question of the real age of the original of Bessie by that
fact. Confirming is the portrayal of the same character by Charlotte as
the elderly Hannah in _Jane Eyre_. See my chapter on "The Rivers or
Bronte Family."[25]

Of "Dean" or Tabitha Aykroyd in the role of Hannah of the family "Jane"
says:--"I had a feeling that she did not understand me, ... that she was
prejudiced against me." Nevertheless she says to her: "You ... have been
an honest and faithful servant, I will say so much for you."

Much stress is placed by Tabitha Aykroyd, as Nelly Dean, and Bessie, on
Charlotte Bronte's passionateness. Says Mrs. Dean of Catherine in
_Wuthering Heights_:

    "The doctor had said that she would not bear crossing much, she
    ought to have her own way; and it was nothing less than murder in
    his eyes, for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her,
    ... serious threats of a fit ... often attended her rages."

Thus I find there is a connection between Catherine's "fit of frenzy"
and delirium in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapters XI. and XII., and the
scenes attendant upon Jane's fit of frenzy in _Jane Eyre_, Chapters I.,
II., III. The one is told by Charlotte as from Tabitha Aykroyd's
(Bessie's) standpoint, the other from Catherine's (Charlotte Bronte's),
an inversion of attitude which proves Charlotte Bronte to be the author
and heroine of _Wuthering Heights_.

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Charlotte Bronte in the locked      Charlotte Bronte in the locked
  chamber, and Tabitha Aykroyd,       chamber, and Tabitha Aykroyd,
  the Bronte servant, told by         the Bronte servant, told by
  Tabitha, as it were.                Charlotte.

          --------                            --------

  She [Catherine--Charlotte           I [Jane--Charlotte Bronte] sat
  Bronte] rang the bell till it       looking at the white bed, ...
  broke.... I [Tabitha--Nelly         occasionally turning a
  Dean] entered leisurely. It was     fascinated eye towards the ...
  enough to try the temper of a       mirror ... I hushed my sobs,
  saint, such senseless, wicked       fearful lest ... signs of grief
  rages! There she lay dashing her    might waken a preternatural
  head against the ... sofa and       voice ... or elicit from the
  grinding her teeth.... I brought    gloom some haloed face.... This
  a glass of water; and as she        ... I felt would be terrible....
  would not drink, I sprinkled it     At this moment a light gleamed
  on her face. In a few seconds       on the wall; ... shaken as my
  she stretched herself out stiff,    nerves were by agitation, I
  and ... assumed the aspect of       thought the swift-darting beam
  death.                              was a herald of some coming
                                      vision from another world. My
  Linton [? Mr. Bronte] looked        heart beat thick, my head grew
  terrified. "There is nothing the    hot; a sound filled my ears
  matter," ... and I                  which I deemed the rushing of
  [Tabitha--Mrs. Dean] told him       wings: something seemed near me;
  how she had resolved ... on         I was oppressed, suffocated;
  exhibiting a fit of frenzy. I       endurance broke down; I rushed
  incautiously gave the account       to the door and shook the lock
  aloud, ... she [Charlotte           in desperate effort. Steps came
  Bronte] started up ... and then     running along the ... passage,
  rushed from the room. The master    ... Bessie and Abbot entered.
  directed me to follow; I did to
  her chamber door; she ...           "Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said
  secured it against me.... On the    Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd].
  third day Catherine [Charlotte
  Bronte] un-barred her door, ...     "What a dreadful noise! It went
  desired a basin of gruel, for       through me!" exclaimed Abbot.
  she believed she was dying.
                                      "Take me out!" was my cry.
  "These ... awful nights; I've
  never closed my lids--and oh!...    "... Are you hurt? Have you seen
  I've been ... haunted, Nelly!       something?" demanded Bessie
  [Tabitha]. But I begin to fancy     [Tabitha].
  you don't like me.... They have
  all turned to enemies; ...          "Oh! I ... thought a ghost would
  _they_ have, the people _here_."    come."

  Tossing about, she increased her    "She has screamed on purpose,"
  feverish bewilderment of            declared Abbot [?].... "And what
  madness.... "Don't you see that     a scream! If she had been in
  face?" she inquired, gazing         pain one would have excused it,
  nervously at the mirror.... "Oh!    but she only wanted to bring us
  Nelly [Tabitha], the room is        all here: I know her naughty
  haunted! I'm afraid of being        tricks."
  left alone...."
                                      ... Mrs. Reed [Aunt Branwell]
  I [Nelly Dean--Tabitha]             came.... "Silence!" she
  attempted to steal to the door      exclaimed; "this scene is
  ... but I was summoned back by a    repulsive." I was a precocious
  piercing scream.                    actor in her eyes. She sincerely
                                      looked upon me [Charlotte] as a
  ... "As soon as ever I barred       compound of virulent passions,
  the door," proceeded Catherine      mean spirit, and dangerous
  [Charlotte Bronte], "utter          duplicity.... I suppose I had a
  darkness overwhelmed me, and I      species of fit: unconsciousness
  fell on the floor. I couldn't       closed the scene.... The next
  explain ... how certain I felt      thing I remembered is waking ...
  of having a fit, or going mad."     with a feeling as if I had had a
                                      frightful nightmare ...
  "A sound sleep would do you         agitation, uncertainty, and a
  good," said Nelly Dean--Tabitha     predominant sense of terror
  Aykroyd.                            confused my faculties.... Bessie
                                      [Tabby] stood at the bed-foot
                                      with a basin in her hand.

                                      "Do you feel as if you could
                                      sleep, Miss?" asked Bessie
                                      [Tabitha Aykroyd] rather softly.

                                      For me [Charlotte] the watches
                                      of that long night passed in
                                      ghostly watchfulness; ear, eye,
                                      and mind were alike strained by
                                      dread, such dread as children
                                      only can feel.

By her Method II.: altering the age of a character portrayed, Charlotte
Bronte gives us Tabitha Aykroyd as a young woman in Bessie; and by the
same Method II, in the scene just read from _Wuthering Heights_, we have
an instance of her presenting, as an incident in womanhood, an incident
which the testimony of _Jane Eyre_ and other evidences show occurred
really in Charlotte's own childhood. As she relates in _Jane Eyre_, her
dread was "such dread as children only can feel"; and she goes on to say
"this incident [of the locked room] gave my nerves a shock of which I
feel the reverberation to this day." Thus in both _Wuthering Heights_
and _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte paints an excellent picture of the
matter-of-fact but good-hearted Tabitha Aykroyd going to the room in
response to her, Charlotte Bronte's, frantic appeal, sceptical and
certainly unsympathetic.

The part played by the wild summoning of Tabitha to the room, the
references to "a fit," the ghost and haunted chamber, the dread of the
mirror, the suggestion that the frenzy of fear was wilfully assumed, the
piercing scream, Tabitha Aykroyd with her basin and her final suggestion
of sleep, are in themselves ample evidence that Charlotte Bronte in both
_Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ drew this scene from an experience
of the kind in her own childhood. In each work stress is laid by her
upon her own hypersensitiveness, and we learn how the Bronte household
misunderstood her excessive passionateness and misread it as wicked
acting[26].

We see Tabitha best in Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_, as Hannah of
the Rivers family of _Jane Eyre_, and by Currer Bell's Method II.,
alteration of age of the character portrayed, as Bessie of that work.
Tabitha Aykroyd lives and breathes her life through the pages of
Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ to-day, and ever
will she remain in literature, a real Yorkshire woman amazingly
translated from the wide Yorkshire hearth with its great, wind-whitened
fire and smell of hot cakes, to the pages of two of the finest examples
of the English novel. Her portrayal I declare to be one of the most
admirable achievements in the works of Charlotte Bronte.




CHAPTER VI.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING
HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE."


Mrs. Gaskell, the Bronte biographer, relates that a friend of Charlotte
Bronte said Charlotte had told her "a misfortune was often preceded by
the dream which she gives to Jane Eyre of carrying a wailing child. She,
Charlotte Bronte, described herself as having the most painful sense of
pity for the little thing.... The misfortunes she mentioned were not
always to herself. She thought such sensitiveness to omens was ...
present to susceptible people...." This in the main explains the origin
of the child-apparition as an omen of disaster in Charlotte Bronte's
works.

It would seem by Charlotte's statement in _Jane Eyre_ that Tabitha
Aykroyd, as "Bessie," was responsible for the origin of this little
superstition; and it is instructive to find the child-apparition as an
ill-omen in connection with Tabitha Aykroyd as Mrs. Dean in _Wuthering
Heights_. I have shown John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw represent Branwell
Bronte; we may notice, therefore, that the child-apparition is given
equally in _Wuthering Heights_ and in _Jane Eyre_ as coming before
disaster or disgrace to Branwell Bronte.

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Chapter XI.                         Chapter XXI.

  Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition  Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition
  as a token of calamity to Branwell  as a token of calamity to Branwell
  Bronte.                             Bronte.

          --------                            --------

  Says Mrs. Dean [Tabitha]: "I        Presentiments are strange
  came to a stone which serves as     things! ... and so are signs....
  a guide-post to ... the Heights     Sympathies I believe exist (for
  and the village.... Hindley         instance, between far-distant
  [Branwell Bronte] and I held it     ... wholly estranged relatives).
  a favourite spot twenty years       When I was a ... girl I heard
  before, ... and ... it appeared     Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd] say
  that I beheld my ... playmate       that to dream of children was a
  seated on the ... turf, ... his     sure sign of trouble.... During
  little hand scooping out the        the last week scarcely a night
  earth."[27]                         had gone ... that had not
                                      brought ... the dream of an
  "Poor Hindley!" [Branwell           infant which I ... watched
  Bronte] I exclaimed                 playing with daisies on a lawn
  involuntarily. I started--my        or ... dabbling its hands in
  bodily eye was cheated in the       running water.[27] It was a
  belief that the child lifted its    wailing child this night, ... a
  face and stared straight into       laughing one the next, ... but
  mine! It vanished in a              whatever mood the apparition
  twinkling; but immediately I        evinced ... it failed not ... to
  felt an irresistible yearning to    meet me.... I grew nervous....
  be at the Heights. Superstition     It was from companionship with
  urged me to comply with this        this baby-phantom I had been
  impulse--"Suppose he were dead!     roused ... when I heard the cry:
  ... supposing it were a sign of     and on the ... day following ...
  death!"                             I found a man [Bessie's husband]
                                      waiting for me; ... he was ...
                                      in deep mourning, and the hat in
                                      his hand was surrounded with a
                                      crape band.

                                      "I hope no one is dead," I said.
                                      And the man replies that John
                                      Reed [Branwell Bronte] had got
                                      into great trouble and was dead.

Branwell Bronte was not dead when Charlotte Bronte wrote those two
versions, but it seems certain that an apparition of a child in some
period of Charlotte's life preceded a further debasement of Branwell,
the original of Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed. We may note Charlotte
Bronte's Method II., in regard to Hindley.

In Charlotte Bronte's _The Professor_ we find reference to her
child-phantom wailing outside, and to the eerie, premonitory signal made
against a lattice, as in her _Wuthering Heights_:--

  _Wuthering Heights._                _The Professor._

  Chapter III.                        Chapter XVI.

  Scene: An isolated homestead on     Scene: An isolated homestead on
  a winter's night, snow-wind         a winter's night, snow-wind
  blowing, storm threatening.         blowing, storm threatening.

          --------                            --------

  While leading me upstairs she       Take care, young man
  [Zillah, the stout housewife]       [recommended "the herdsman's
  recommended that I should hide      wife"], that you fasten the door
  the candle and not make a noise,    well, ... whatever sound you
  ... they had so many queer          hear stir not and look not out.
  goings-on.                          The night will soon fall, ...
                                      strange noises are often heard
  He sleeps and is awakened by--      ... you might chance to hear, as
                                      it were, a child cry, and on
  The branch of a fir that touched    opening the door to give it
  my lattice.... I listened           succour ... a shadowy goblin dog
  doubtingly, ... I heard the         might rush over the threshold;
  gusty wind and the driving of       or more awful still, if
  the snow;... I heard also the       something flapped, as with
  firbough repeat its teasing         wings, against the lattice, and
  sound.... I ... endeavoured to      then a raven or a white dove
  unhasp the casement, ...            flew in and settled on the
  knocking my knuckles through the    hearth, such a visitor would be
  glass, and stretching an arm out    a sure sign of misfortune.
  to seize the ... branch; instead
  of which my fingers closed on       The stranger, left alone,
  the fingers of a little ice-cold    listens awhile to the muffled
  hand.[28]... I tried to draw        snow-wind.
  back my arm, but the hand clung
  to it and a melancholy voice
  sobbed--"Let me in--let me in!"

  ... As it spoke, I discerned
  obscurely a child's face looking
  through the window.... Still it
  wailed "Let me in!" and it
  maintained its tenacious gripe,
  almost maddening me with fear.

  "How can I?" I said.... "Let
  _me_ go, if you want me to let
  you in." I stopped my ears to
  exclude the lamentable prayer,
  ... yet the instant I listened
  again, there was the doleful cry
  moaning on!

  "Begone!" I shouted; "I'll never
  let you in, not if you beg for
  twenty years."

In _Wuthering Heights_ Charlotte Bronte has worked the child-phantom
into the story proper, setting it for the spirit of the departed
Catherine, who as a child again (Method II., altering age of the
character portrayed) seeks Heathcliffe. The building of the
child-phantom in the plot of _Wuthering Heights_ created a peculiar
state of affairs; but as we have seen by Charlotte Bronte's reference to
it in the extract from _The Professor_, she was impressed by its
possibilities of giving a weird spiritual atmosphere, and she did not
extend the idea in _The Professor_. The substance of Charlotte Bronte's
two versions of the child-phantom wailing outside a house for admittance
is identical:--

  _The Professor._                    _Wuthering Heights._

  Scene: An isolated homestead on a   Scene: An isolated homestead on a
  winter's night, snow-wind blowing,  winter's night, snow-wind blowing,
  storm threatening. Young stranger   storm threatening. Young stranger
  admonished by the good housewife    admonished by the good housewife
  that there are queer goings-on      that there are queer goings-on
  thereabouts.                        thereabouts.

  Subjunctive Mood.                   Indicative Mood.

  Something might brush against       Something brushes against the
  the lattice, and a phantom-child    lattice, and a phantom-child
  might wail outside for succour.     wails outside for succour.
  On opening to admit it an awful,    On opening to admit it an awful,
  supernatural incident might occur.  supernatural incident occurs.

Thus we perceive the famous child-phantom incident in Chapter III. of
_Wuthering Heights_ had its origin (1) in Montagu's lonely-house
incident; (2) in Charlotte Bronte's awe of a child-apparition; (3) in
Charlotte Bronte's Method II., alteration of age of character portrayed,
by which Catherine the woman becomes a child again; and (4) in Charlotte
Bronte's notion, as evidenced in _Shirley_, Chapter XXIV., that a loved
dead one can "revisit those they leave"; can "come in the elements";
that "wind" could give "a path to Moor(e)"--Heath(cliffe), "passing the
casement sobbing"; that the loved dead one could "haunt" the wind.
These, then, we see were the notions in Charlotte Bronte's head
responsible for Catherine's returning so sensationally to the abode of
her lover as a child-spectre. For Catherine's love for Wuthering Heights
was not simply because of the place and its moors, as so many writers
have wrongly contended, but because it was associated with
Heathcliffe.[29] Let my reader peruse again the "wailing child" passages
I quote from _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ in Chapter II. of _The
Key to the Bronte Works_.

Truly the testimony of Charlotte Bronte's child-phantom were alone the
sign-manual that she and none other wrote _Wuthering Heights_.




CHAPTER VII.

THE ORIGINALS OF GIMMERTON, GIMMERDEN, GIMMERTON KIRK AND CHAPEL,
PENISTON CRAGS, THE FAIRY CAVE, ETC., IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND OF THE
FAIRY CAVE AND THE FAIRY JANET IN "JANE EYRE."


The uncommon stress Charlotte Bronte has laid upon the outlandishness of
the _Wuthering Heights_ country and its solitudes assuredly would have
been absent from that work had she drawn her background from the
comparatively characterless Haworth moors on the skirts of manufacturing
towns, and not from impressions created in her mind by Montagu's
description in his _Gleanings in Craven_ of the wildest and weirdest
scenery in Yorkshire. There has been a noticeable tendency on the part
of town-bred, and also of romantic, biographers to be awed by the
ordinary moorland surroundings of Haworth, and to associate with them
all the wildness of the Craven or Scottish Highlands, though Miss Mary
Robinson, whose work entitled _Emily Bronte_ is in effect an
"appreciation" of _Wuthering Heights_, says frankly regarding the house
standing beyond the street on the summit of Haworth Hill, shown as the
original of _Wuthering Heights_, that to her thinking "this fine old
farm of the Sowdens is far too near the mills of Haworth to represent
the God-forsaken, lonely house." But of course an author can place a
given abode against any background. Wuthering Heights has been connected
by some people with a locality called Withins--how wrongly a reference
to the origin of Gimmerton and Gimmerden alone shows. The primary origin
of the name and title of "Wuthering Heights" I reveal in the final
chapter on "The Recoil."

The following passage from _Wuthering Heights_ tells that Charlotte
Bronte's imagination was enjoying the latitude of a half-realized,
suggested background. It reads just like the traveller Montagu with his
horse, attendant servant on horseback, roadside inns, hostlers, and
description of country. But the connection of Montagu with Lockwood of
_Wuthering Heights_ we have already seen in the early chapters of _The
Key to the Bronte Works_:--

    1802--This September I was invited to devastate the moors of a
    friend in the North, and on my journey ... I unexpectedly came
    within fifteen miles of Gimmerton. The hostler at a roadside
    public-house was holding a pail of water to refresh my horses when
    a cart of very green oats ... passed by, and he remarked--

    "Yon's frough Gimmerton, nah! They're allus three wick after other
    folk wi' ther harvest."

    "Gimmerton?" I repeated; my residence in that locality had already
    grown dim and dreamy. "Ah, I know. How far is it from this?"

    "Happen fourteen mile o'er th' hills; and a rough road." A sudden
    impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange. It was scarcely
    noon, and I conceived that I might as well pass the night under my
    own roof as in an inn.... Having rested a while, I directed my
    servant to inquire the way to the village; and, with great fatigue
    to our beasts, we managed the distance in some three hours. I left
    him there, and proceeded ... down the valley alone. The grey
    church looked greyer, and the churchyard lonelier. I
    distinguished a moor sheep cropping the short turf on the
    graves.... The heat did not hinder me from enjoying the delightful
    scenery above and below; had I seen it nearer August, I'm sure it
    would have tempted me to waste a month among its solitudes. [Be it
    observed he would rather have done so than have gone to "the
    moors" of his friend.] In winter nothing more dreary than those
    glens shut in by hills,[30] and those bluff, bold swells of heath.

So we too would imagine, judging by Montagu's description of the
district in his little work.

Throughout _Wuthering Heights_ we hear mention of Gimmerton, but it is
apparent the village was "dim and dreamy" to Charlotte Bronte--somewhere
about the little valley we should imagine, to conclude by general
observations. However, clear it is that Gimmerton and Gimmerden were
drawn by Charlotte Bronte merely from impressions created in her mind by
other than a personal acquaintance with the district. Where then, and in
what peculiar circumstances, did Charlotte receive these
suggestions--suggestions that must have appealed to her at a time
immediately coincident with her commencing this foundling story with
the house of mystery, the inhospitable host, the uncouth man-servant,
and the candle-bearing bedside visitant--all from Montagu's book? My
evidence declares these suggestions also came from Montagu's little
work, and that the originals of Gimmerton in _Wuthering Heights_, and
Gimmerden, or the valley of Gimmerton, were Malham and Malhamdale, or
the valley of Malham. This district Montagu describes as being "most
interesting ... in its own variety of wildness."

I believe Kilnsey Crags, which Montagu describes on the last page of the
letter next to that written from Malham, figured in Charlotte Bronte's
mind as the originals of Peniston Crags ("Peniston" may have been
suggested by Montagu's mention of Pennigent). Montagu's description of
Kilnsey Crags I will place side by side with the reference to Peniston
Crags in _Wuthering Heights_:--

  MONTAGU.                            _Wuthering Heights._
                                      Chapter XVIII.

  KILNSEY CRAGS.                      PENISTON CRAGS.

  A lofty range of limestone rocks    The abrupt descent of Peniston
  ... stretching nearly half a        Crags particularly attracted her
  mile along the valley, and          notice; especially when the
  rendered perhaps, more striking     setting sun shone on it and the
  by contrasting with the vale        topmost heights, and the whole
  immediately at its base.            extent of the landscape, besides
                                      [by contrasting] lay in shadow.

Clearly Joseph's "leading of lime" from Peniston Crags in _Wuthering
Heights_ was suggested to Charlotte Bronte by the "Kiln" of Kilnsea
Crags, and Montagu's reference to the crags being limestone. Dean
describes them to Cathy, and her words are simply Montagu's
description--treated antithetically--of Gordale Scar in the Malham
letter:--

  MONTAGU.                            _Wuthering Heights._
                                      Chapter XVIII.

  In the clefts in the rocks'         They were bare masses of stone,
  sides, or wherever a lodgement      with hardly enough earth in
  of earth appears [is] the ...       their clefts to nourish ... a
  yew.                                tree.... One of the maids
                                      mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite
                                      turned her head....

In his Malham letter Montagu describes a Fairy Cave, and of course
Gimmerton has the Fairy Cave in its neighbourhood. It is placed under
the Crags, but we have no description in _Wuthering Heights_:--

  MONTAGU.                            _Wuthering Heights._
                                      Chapter XVIII.

  Montagu has a boy-guide "adapted    Says Catherine Linton to the boy
  to show the prominent features      Hareton:--"I want ... to hear
  to strangers." He takes Montagu     about the _fairishes_, as you
  on to Malham, where Montagu sees    call them.".... Hareton opened
  the Fairy Cave. This boy-guide      the mysteries of the Fairy Cave
  was called Robert Airton, and he    and twenty other queer places.
  was aged twelve.[31]                But ... I was not favoured with
                                      a description of the interesting
                                      objects she saw. I could gather,
                                      however, that her guide had been
                                      a favourite.

The name of Linton appears in Montagu in the letter next that in which
he describes the Fairy Cave. We may understand that Charlotte Bronte's
romantic imagination was entranced, as she says Catherine Linton's was,
with the mention of the Fairy Cave; and _Jane Eyre_ is testimony that
after writing _Wuthering Heights_ she turned again to consider its
possibilities of suggestion.

In fact, I find that Charlotte Bronte when she chose the name of Janet
Eyre for herself was also calling herself the Fairy Janet. And where,
then, read Charlotte Bronte of the fairy Janet Eyre? The evidence of
Montagu's work proves that when she wrote the name Eyre, she was
implying by this Derbyshire variant the name Aire or Ayre, meaning the
river Ayre. Where acquired Charlotte Bronte so intimate an acquaintance
with the history of the Fairy Janet of the Aire as to take upon herself
poetically, the role of that Craven elf and her name?

Mr. Harry Speight recently, in _The Craven Highlands_, told us "the
Fairy Jennet or Janet was queen of the Malhamdale elves" who frequented
the enchanted ground round the source of the Aire. But prior to
Montagu's dealing with Janet's Cave, the home of the Malhamdale fays,
the queen-elf had been referred to as Gennet. Montagu spelt the name
Jannet, and later writers having referred to him, the fairy cave now
bears the name Janet's Cave. A Malham writer prior to Montagu referred
only briefly to the Fairy Cave, and quite prosily. In his Malham letter
Montagu says:--

"Leaving a farmhouse at the entrance of the vale to the left, we [he and
his boy-guide] proceeded over two fields, then ascended about twenty
yards, suddenly turned an acute angle, and penetrating some bushes we
stood at the entrance of a deep and narrow glen, before a perpendicular
fall of water. At the foot of this cascade is

  JANNET'S CAVE.

It is so called from the queen or governess of a numerous tribe of
faeries, which tradition assures us anciently held their court here; and
as there may be some of my readers who may like at the moonlit hour to
be entertained at one of Jannet's banquets, I will give an idea as to
the mode of obtaining admission into such society.... On the evening
when I first learned the mystic lore, the golden sun had kissed every
flower, even unto the retiring lily, and was gliding westward when, from
the heart's couch of a moss rose, there came the eldest daughter of
faeryland, probably the self-same Jannet's daughter, saying:--

  'I have come from whence
  Peace with white sceptre wafting to and fro,
  Smooths the wide bosom of the Elysian world,'

and who, upon being informed that I was desirous of swearing allegiance
to her sweet mother, said that she would bring intelligence whether I
might be admitted to her pretty vassalage; she then bade her attendants
bring her car, which was a leaf of a favourite hyacinth, drawn by two
lady-birds who were guided by reins of gossamer; the mellow horn of the
herald bee summoned her attendants, who, to the number of twenty, obeyed
the call; and taking the coronets from off their brows, made low
obeisance to their young princess, which she pleasingly acknowledged.
Then they each captured a sphere of thistle-down, and seating themselves
thereon, followed their princess; who, attended by her guards, each
armed with a maiden's eye-lash, journeyed onwards towards the realms of
enchanted ground. I should think that not many minutes elapsed when the
cavalcade returned, and the charter written upon the leaf of a
'forget-me-not,' with the gold from a butterfly's wing, was placed into
my hand by 'a fay,' with injunctions not to divulge the secrets of the
order. I would have promised but awoke from this pleasant dream."

We will now read Montagu's description of the Fairy Janet, and a fairy
coming to him at sundown when adapted by Charlotte Bronte in _Jane
Eyre_.

Adele asks Rochester whether she is to go to school without her
governess, Jane Eyre:--

    "Yes," he replied; ... "for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon,
    and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among
    the volcano tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and
    only me."

    "... But you can't get her there...."

    "Adele ... late one evening ... I sat down to rest me on a stile
    ... when something came up the path.... Our speechless colloquy
    was to this effect--

    "It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said.... It told me of
    the alabaster cave and silver vale.... I said I should like to
    go.... 'Oh,' returned the fairy.... 'Here is a talisman which will
    remove all difficulties' and she held out a pretty gold ring...."

    "But what has mademoiselle [Jane Eyre] to do with it? I don't care
    for the fairy...."

    "Mademoiselle [Jane Eyre] is a fairy," he said, whispering
    mysteriously.

But Adele assures him she made no account of his "_contes de fee_."

For the present it is enough to know that in the main and ostensibly the
Fairy Janet Eyre was Charlotte Bronte's adaptation of Montagu's Fairy
Janet, the queen-elf of the Malhamdale fairies, said to frequent the
enchanted land round the source of the Aire.

The fairy idea, Charlotte discovered, served well to give a certain
gallantry to Rochester's bestowing of epithets. These the reader may
have interest in finding in _Jane Eyre_. For instance, when Jane,
returning from her visit to a dead relative, informs Rochester, he
says:--

    "A true _Janian_ reply! [italics mine]. Good angels be my guard!
    She comes from the other world--from the abode of people who are
    dead, and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the
    gloaming! If I dared, I'd touch you, to see if you are substance
    or shadow, you elf!--but I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue
    _ignis-fatuus_ light in the marsh."

A few lines lower Rochester asks:--

    "Tell me, now, fairy as you are--can't you give a charm?"

And then farther down:

    "Pass, Janet: go up home and stay your weary little wandering feet
    at a friend's threshold."

When Rochester's bed is in flames, and he awakes to find Janet has
thrown water upon it, he demands:--

    "In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?"

And so I might continue. It is observable Charlotte Bronte never allows
Rochester to call Jane Eyre "Janet" and "fairy" in the same breath. She
permits the use of Janet, however, when the fairy notion is concealed,
as when Rochester says:

    "Just put your hand in mine, Janet, that I may have the evidence
    of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me."

Certain it is that in Charlotte Bronte's inmost heart her
autobiographical self was called Janet Aire.[32]

Charlotte Bronte's conceptions, when she let her imagination have play
and forgot the world of readers were, like Jane Eyre's thoughts,
"elfish." See the fairy tale, _The Adventures of Ernest Alembert_
(attributed by Charlotte Bronte to her pen in her fifteenth year). It
has been remarked this story is not in the handwriting Charlotte Bronte
affected at this period, and that the manuscript has not Charlotte's
customary title-page.[33] In view of the evidence of _The Key to the
Bronte Works_, it is of interest to make a comparison between _Alembert_
and Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_, published eight years later than
the date Charlotte Bronte ascribed to its completion. The association of
the family of Lambert with hypothetical high treason and with being
extinct; with the Malham country as described by Montagu--the
references, so frequent in his pages, to the awe inspired by the
wildness of the scenery, to the underground torrent, the contrasting
range of crags, the lake, the fairy cave, the fairy and the admittance
into faerydom; to "the mellow hum of the bee," etc., are interesting in
the extreme, seeing by aid of Montagu that Malham as presented by him
became Gimmerton of _Wuthering Heights_. Whether "coincidence" has to do
with this matter of _Alembert_ and Montagu, or Charlotte Bronte has for
some reason ante-dated _Alembert_, I leave to the reader to decide.

  MONTAGU.                            _The Adventures of Ernest
                                      Alembert._

  Montagu, speaking of the church     Charlotte Bronte begins by
  of Kirkby-Malham, "in the ...       relating that there once lived
  vale of Malham," says:--"Some of    an Ernest Alembert. One of the
  the Lamberts are buried             Alemberts having been "beheaded"
  here--here is a monument to ...     for "high treason,"[34] "the
  John Lambert, who aided Cromwell    family had decayed" until the
  in his murder of Charles the        only survivor was Ernest
  First (as all did who were          Alembert. We are told that he
  implicated in Cromwell's            beside a valley; and the river
  rebellion)[34]--after the           became a lake. A stranger
  Restoration lived he died           putting him under a spell,
  banished and forgotten at           [A]lembert accepts him for a
  Guernsey. The family is now         guide, and they wend their way
  extinct."                           up the valley.

  In the chapter on Malham,           [A]lembert finds himself at a
  Montagu accepts a guide who         place where the torrent goes
  takes him up the vale of Malham.    underground.
  He mentions Malham Lake, or
  Tarn, and says of the River Aire
  in the connection that the water
  "delves into the mountain, and
  does not appear again until it
  reaches the village of Airton,
  below Malham."

  We have descriptions of wild        We have descriptions of wild
  moor, "tremendous" precipices,      moors and precipices, and
  and "grand and terrific             foaming cataracts. When they
  cataracts":--"At last we            stopped to rest after a climb
  attained the summit of the          "the scene was grand and awful
  mountain, when, looking down in     in the extreme.... The mellow
  the chasm beneath, horror and       hum of the bee was no longer
  immensity were defined with         heard.... Above rose tremendous
  thrilling truth."                   precipices, whose vast shadows
                                      blackened all that portion of
                                      the moor [see "Peniston Crags,"
                                      page 59], and deepened the frown
                                      on the face of unpropitious
                                      nature."

  Montagu and his guide go to a       [A]lembert and his guide go to a
  cave--the cave of the Fairy         cave. Farther on the guide
  Janet. Montagu falling asleep as    vanishes, but [A]lembert wakes
  it were, a fairy comes to his       to find him by his side as a
  side and tells him he is in the     fairy [Charlotte Bronte, Method
  realm of fairies. She promises      I., interchange of the sexes],
  to induct him into the wonders      who addresses [A]lembert as
  of faeryland, and "the mellow       follows:--
  horn of the herald bee" summoned
  her attendants. And so on. See      "I am a fairy. You have been,
  Charlotte Bronte's mention in       and still are, in the land of
  _Alembert_ of "the mellow hum of    fairies. Some wonders you have
  the bee."                           seen; many more you shall see if
                                      you choose to follow me." And so
                                      on in extension.

I have often wondered why no one has ever observed before that the hand
which wrote _The Adventures of Ernest Alembert_ must assuredly have
written every line of _Wuthering Heights_. We may well understand why
Charlotte Bronte in _Wuthering Heights_ wrote of Catherine Linton that
"the mentioning the Fairy Cave quite turned her head" with interest. And
that the original of the Fairy Cave in _Wuthering Heights_ was the Fairy
Cave of Malhamdale Montagu mentions at such length in his Malham
letter, the use of the names Linton and Airton in the connection
irrefutably proves without other appeal: Hareton--that variant of Aire,
cannot be associated with Derbyshire like "Eyre"; and despite the use of
"Eyre," Aire was the name in Charlotte Bronte's mind, just as "Airton"
was when she wrote "Hareton."

Both the "boy-guide" and "Gimmerton's mist" were obviously suggested to
Charlotte Bronte for _Wuthering Heights_ by Montagu, the original, as I
have shown, of Lockwood:--

  MONTAGU.                            _Wuthering Heights._

  I ... took leave of my host and     Says Heathcliffe:--"People
  followed the youthful steps of      familiar with these moors often
  my guide whose services I had       miss their road on such an
  accepted.... Upon the summit of     evening."
  the mountain is Kilnsea Moor,
  over which it is impossible to      "Perhaps I can get a guide among
  find a route to Malham Water        your lads, ... could you spare
  without a guide, more               one?" asks Lockwood of his host.
  particularly as a mist creates a
  difficulty, even to a person
  well acquainted with the
  locality.

Montagu's frequent references to the mountainous character of the Malham
country were doubtless responsible for Charlotte Bronte's choice of the
word "heights" used in her title. Why the name of Gimmer, from "gimmer"
a female sheep, and signifying with "ton" the place of sheep, was chosen
by her for Gimmerton, is clear when we read the etymology Montagu gives
of Skipton. He mentions Skibden and Skipton, proceeding to explain that
"Skipton, or Sceptown (from the Saxon word 'scep,' a sheep)" meant "the
town of sheep"; and Montagu tells us a native spoke of the village as
"the town of Malham." Hence we perceive why Charlotte Bronte coined
"Gimmerton," the village of sheep, and "Gimmerden," the valley of sheep,
for Malham and Malhamdale with the source of the Aire, the Fairy Cave,
the Sough, the adjacent crags, the heights, the glens, the rising mists,
the Methodist chapel and kirk in the lonely vale, when in the light of
all the foregoing we read in Montagu's work that:--

"Here [at Malham] there is an annual fair held on the 15th of October,
appropriated entirely for the sale of sheep.[35] I am within the limit
of fact when I say that upwards of one hundred thousand [sheep] have
been shown at one time. [Joseph takes cattle to "Gimmerton Fair," of
course not in October.] The houses are mostly built of limestone, and
covered with grit slates, and irregularly situated at the base of a
range of steep mountains"--"the Heights."

Malham he describes as "a small township, divided into east and west
portions by a rapid stream"--"the beck down Gimmerton." "There is a
Methodist chapel at Malham," he states, and says that the old church of
Kirkby-Malham "is in the very bosom of the vale of Malham." Thus
Gimmerton Kirk, in the lonely valley of Gimmerton,[36] was Charlotte
Bronte's name in _Wuthering Heights_ for the kirk by Malham, in the
lonely vale of Malham. This insight into the origin of the name of
"kirk" for a Yorkshire church excuses what, without it, would have been
an anachronistic misnomer. As for the Nonconformists' place of worship,
Dean is made to remark:--"They call the Methodists' or Baptists'
place--I can't say which it is at Gimmerton--a chapel."

In the light of the foregoing evidence it is impossible to ignore the
reference Montagu makes to "the sinks," where the water from Malham Tarn
sinks underground for a considerable distance. Whether Charlotte Bronte
thought this would produce a quag in the neighbourhood I cannot tell;
but if she has used the word "sough" (pronounced _suff_) in its ordinary
acceptance in Yorkshire, she originally meant "a subterranean passage or
tunnel, draining water as from a sink," if I may quote a definition in
Dr. Joseph Wright's _English Dialect Dictionary_. There is every sign in
her writings of a loose, composite adaptation of Montagu's topography,
etc., yet Charlotte Bronte was ever jealous of associations, and under a
guise or not she frequently preserved carefully recognizable
characteristics necessary to locality and to personality; and we see
Montagu had associated a sough with Malham. We have mention of Gimmerton
Sough in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_, and in Chapter X.:--"...
the valley of Gimmerton, with a long list of mist winding nearly to its
top (for very soon after you pass the chapel ... the sough that runs
from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen).
Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour." And we have read what
Montagu says about the mists of Malham.

The influence of Montagu's descriptions of this wild locality is
likewise observable in the scenery and the background of _Jane
Eyre_,[37] as I mentioned in the article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" I
wrote in _The Saturday Review_. The yews and evergreens, mentioned by
Montagu in connection with Malham, and introduced by Charlotte Bronte,
with other trees of the fir-tribe, in descriptions of Morton in _Jane
Eyre_, Chap. XXX., etc., and in _Wuthering Heights_, are not common to
Haworth.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE RIVERS OR BRONTE FAMILY IN "JANE EYRE."


Charlotte Bronte, while she often portrayed the main characters of her
stories from people in her own life, was quite at home with them in
whatsoever condition or surroundings she placed them.[38] She loved the
memory of Tabitha Aykroyd--that faithful servant, companion, and friend;
hated the vices of her brother Branwell Bronte, and was obsessed by
thoughts of M. Heger, her Brussels friend. So she placed the good old
housekeeper of the parsonage--under an ecclesiastical cognomen truly--as
Mrs. Dean at Wuthering Heights; set up her brother Branwell on the same
premises as Hindley Earnshaw, and put her Brussels friend in the
position of master of that abode.

In _Jane Eyre_ Tabitha Aykroyd is Bessie of Mrs. Reed's household, and
Hannah of the Rivers family; Branwell is among better surroundings as
John Reed, and M. Heger is portrayed more proportionately as the master
of Thornfield; while in the same work Charlotte Bronte portrays her own
sister Maria Bronte, and makes her say she is a native of Northumberland
and describe the scenery round her birthplace there!

In _Shirley_ Charlotte admits to having placed Emily Bronte as "Shirley
Keeldar," surrounded by the environment of a wealthy woman--a landed
proprietress in the Dewsbury neighbourhood; and she gives us phases of
M. Heger as a resident of Yorkshire, in the two Moores.

_Villette_ contains in Dr. John, towards the close, a portrait of the
Rev. Mr. Nicholls, who became her husband, as a resident of the foreign
town Villette--for I find the character Dr. John was a portrait not
wholly drawn, as is supposed, from Mr. Smith of Messrs. Smith & Elder,
the Bronte publishers; and glimpses of Mr. Thackeray as a Villette
lecturer appear in a flitting usurpation of M. Heger's rights as the
original of M. Paul.

Charlotte Bronte's thus placing given characters against any background
is doubtless responsible for the fact that when I wrote the _Fortnightly
Review_ article, "The Lifting of the Bronte Veil: A New Study of the
Bronte Family," in March, 1907, nigh on sixty years of readers of the
Bronte works had failed to recognize Charlotte Bronte had portrayed in
_Jane Eyre_ not only herself and her sister, Maria Bronte, as was
commonly known, but also her brother, Branwell Bronte; her Aunt
Branwell; her cousin, Eliza Branwell; her sister, Elizabeth Bronte; her
sister, Emily Bronte; her sister, Anne Bronte; her father, the Rev.
Patrick Bronte; and also Tabitha Aykroyd, the Bronte servant. Perhaps it
was because readers believed Morton was Hathersage, Derbyshire, that a
suspicion of the Rivers family being the Bronte family at Haworth never
had been entertained.

I found, however, that all the above-mentioned members of the Bronte
family were placed in _Jane Eyre_ under a "Rivers" surname; and
proceeding into the inquiry as to their identity, I perceived this
discovery of the Bronte family in _Jane Eyre_ numbered with the more
important of my Bronte discoveries, and that despite her purposed and
reasonable cross-scents--the spired church, the mention of
knife-grinders, and the hinting at the proximity of Sheffield, all so
necessary in her day to permit the portrayal of phases of the life at
Haworth Parsonage--Morton to Charlotte Bronte was in the main Haworth.
What importance would attach to a discovery of an unknown portrait group
of his family deliberately painted from life by an old master! Such is
the importance of this discovery of the Bronte family drawn by the pen
of Charlotte Bronte herself in _Jane Eyre_. Currer Bell portrayed with
unvarying truth; and with cunning artistry she brought forward in her
literary legacy to the English novel the sure characteristics--the very
soul, the shallowness, the pretty affectionateness, the cooing
"dove-like voice," the "blue steel glance," of those she had watched and
loved and feared.

Now, in the selection of a Christian name for the heroine Jane Eyre, in
whom she had portrayed herself, there was every reason why Charlotte
Bronte would be unlikely to adopt the second name of her sister, Emily
Jane. We have seen, however, that Charlotte Bronte had been led by
Montagu's mention of the Fairy Jannet, or Janet, poetically to make her
heroine a Fairy Janet. This evidence shows, therefore, that "Jane" was
really only secondary. The Fairy Cave which this fairy was supposed to
frequent is near Malham or Gimmerton, and, as I have said, the Fairy
Janet is termed "the queen of the Malhamdale elves that frequent the
enchanted land round the source of the Aire." Montagu mentions the fact
that the river Ayre takes its rise at Malham--at Malham Tarn, and hence
Charlotte Bronte seems to have named her heroine originally Janet Aire.
Obvious it is she would be led, naturally, to use later some variant of
Aire or Ayre; and the fact that she visited in the summer of 1845
(evidence shows she had read Montagu at the time)[39] her friend Miss
Nussey, then at Hathersage in Derbyshire, where Eyre is a common name,
would suggest she was led to adopt this variant through her visit there.
We already have seen Charlotte Bronte used the variant of "Hare" for
"Air" in _Wuthering Heights_ for the boy Hareton from Montagu's
boy-guide, Robert Airton. And that she wished in _Jane Eyre_ to break
through the confines of the variant she had chosen for Aire, and give
open expression to her original and poetic idea, is seen plainly enough
where Adele asks:--

    "And Mademoiselle--what is your name?"

    "Eyre--Jane Eyre."

    "Aire? bah, I cannot say it."

Having made this interesting discovery, I further found that, not
satisfied with appropriating for herself the "stream" surname, she
placed such a surname upon those who were related to her and whom she
had portrayed in _Jane Eyre_. So she used Burns from "burn," a stream
spelt with an "s," for Maria Bronte; Rivers, from a river also spelt
with an "s," for Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte, and the Rev. Patrick Bronte,
with Tabitha Aykroyd in attendance as Hannah; Reed, from the river of
that name for Charlotte's Aunt Branwell, her cousin Eliza Branwell, and
her brother, Branwell Bronte; Severn, from the river of that name for
her sister Elizabeth Bronte--just as she used Aire from the river of
that name for herself, as Janet Aire.

A reference to Mrs. Gaskell's Bronte _Life_ were sufficient to establish
the identifications, when I say that by Charlotte Bronte's Method II.
(the alteration of the age of a character portrayed) the Rev. Patrick
Bronte is represented as a young man in the Rev. St. John Eyre
Rivers--certainly a very necessary obfuscation, for it is to be seen the
home at Morton gives a most enlightening insight into the life at the
Haworth Parsonage. A death is supposed to have occurred in the Rivers
family; and when it is remembered Thornfield to Charlotte Bronte
represented the Hegers' establishment at Brussels, and that she left
Brussels the first time on account of the death of her aunt, Miss
Elizabeth Branwell who, after being the female head of the parsonage
some years, died there in the close of 1842, we may know for whom the
Rivers family were really in mourning. Charlotte Bronte tells us that,
looking through the window of Moor House--Haworth Parsonage:--

    I could see ... an elderly woman [Tabitha Aykroyd--the Mrs. Dean
    of _Wuthering Heights_], somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously
    clean, like all about her, ... knitting a stocking.... Two young,
    graceful women [Emily and Anne Bronte]--ladies in every
    point--sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower
    stool; both wore deep mourning, ... which sombre garb singularly
    set off very fair necks and faces: a large old ... dog [Emily had
    a favourite dog] rested his massive head on the knee of one
    girl--in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat. A strange
    place was this humble kitchen for such occupants [but they were
    ever fond of it]. Who were they? They could not be the daughters
    of the elderly person at the table [Tabitha]; for she looked like
    a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had
    nowhere seen such faces as theirs; and yet, as I gazed on them I
    seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them
    handsome--they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each
    bent over a book they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A
    stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes
    to which they frequently referred; comparing them ... with the
    smaller books they held in their hands like people consulting a
    dictionary to aid ... in the task of translation. This scene was
    as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the fire-lit
    apartment a picture.

    "Listen, Diana [Emily Bronte]", said one of the absorbed students,
    ... and in a low voice she read ... in German.... The other girl,
    who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while
    she gazed at the fire, a line.... "Good!" ... she exclaimed, while
    her dark and deep eyes sparkled, ... "I like it!"

    "Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old
    woman [Tabitha, using her Haworth Yorkshire dialect], and being
    told there is:--"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can
    understand t'one t'other: and if either o' ye went there, ye could
    tell what they said, I guess?"

    "... Not all--for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We
    don't speak German...."

    "And what good does it do you?"

    "We mean to teach it some time--or at least the elements, as they
    say; and then we shall get more money than we do now."

    "Varry like; but give ower studying: ye've done enough for
    to-night."

    "I think we have.... I wonder when St. John [the Rev. Patrick
    Bronte] will come home."

    "Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten" (looking at a
    little gold watch she drew from her girdle). "It rains fast.
    Hannah, will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the
    parlour?"

Charlotte seems to have portrayed particularly those happy months at
home in 1842, when, after the death of their aunt, all three sisters
were together and their brother Branwell was away. It is Anne Bronte
who, as Mary Rivers, consults her watch. For the circumstances in which
she acquired this gold watch see the will of Miss Elizabeth Branwell,
her aunt.[40]

    The woman [Tabitha] rose: she opened a door, ... soon I heard her
    stir the fire in an inner room. She presently came back: "Ah
    childer!" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond room now:
    it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a
    corner."

The Bronte sisters were "always children in the eyes of Tabitha."
Continuing her description of her sisters, Charlotte as Jane says:--

    Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed
    faces full of distinction and intelligence. One [Emily Bronte] to
    be sure had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a
    difference in their style of wearing it: Mary's [Anne Bronte's]
    pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth; Diana's [Emily
    Bronte's] duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls....
    [She] had a voice toned to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She
    possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face
    seemed to me full of charm, Mary's [Anne Bronte's] countenance was
    equally intelligent--her features equally pretty; but her
    expression was more reserved; and her manner, though gentle, more
    distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority [it was
    Emily Bronte's manner]: she had a will.... It was my nature to
    feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers; and
    to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an
    active will.

The following is the portrait of Charlotte Bronte's father (Method II.,
the altering the age of the character portrayed) as her imagination
pictured him to have been in his young days. St. John's was the Rev.
Patrick Bronte's college at Cambridge:--

    Mr. St. John ... had he been a statue instead of a man ... could
    not have been easier. He was ... tall, slender; his face riveted
    the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a
    straight classic nose, quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is
    seldom indeed an English face comes so near the antique models as
    did his.... His eyes were large and blue, ... his high forehead,
    colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks
    of fair hair.... He ... scarcely impressed one with the idea of a
    gentle ... or even of a placid nature; ... there was something
    about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which ... indicated
    elements within either restless, or hard or eager.

Charlotte Bronte's references herewith, and in other instances, to the
passionate nature of her father are interesting reading, especially in
view of the fact that this point has been the subject of controversy. To
return to _Jane Eyre_:--

    Mr. Rivers [Mr. Bronte] now closed his book, approached the table,
    and, as he took a seat, fixed his pictorial-looking eyes full upon
    me. There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided
    steadfastness in his gaze now which told that intention ... had
    hitherto kept it averted ... St. John's eyes, though clear enough
    in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.
    He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other
    people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which
    combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more
    calculated to embarrass than to encourage.

Mrs. Gaskell states that even in his old age Mr. Bronte[41] was a tall
and a striking-looking man, with a nobly shaped head and erect carriage,
and that in youth he must have been unusually handsome. And to use the
words of Hannah, "Mr. St. John when he grew up would go to college and
be a parson." Continuing, Mrs. Gaskell further says:--

    The course of his life shows a powerful and remarkable character,
    originating and pursuing a purpose in a resolute and independent
    manner--separating himself from his family. There was no trace of
    his Irish origin in his speech; he never could have shown his
    Celtic origin in the straight Greek lines and long oval of his
    face.

Another writer accentuating this says Mr. Bronte was "proud of his Greek
profile," and we have now seen that Charlotte Bronte herself says his
(St. John's) face was "like a Greek face, pure in outline." Mr. Bronte
had also "fine blue eyes," like Mr. St. John. "His (Mr. Bronte's)
passionate nature was compressed down with stoicism, but it was there,
notwithstanding all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour,
though he did not speak when displeased. He was an active walker,
stretching away over the moors for many miles. He dined alone, and did
not require companionship."

Which is, of course, all consonant with what we read of St. John Eyre
Rivers. Charlotte Bronte continues:--

    As to Mr. St. John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally ...
    between me and ... [my] sisters did not extend to him. One reason
    of the distance ... observed between us was, that he was
    comparatively seldom at home: a large proportion of his time
    appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered
    population of his parish. No weather seemed to hinder him in these
    pastoral excursions: rain or fair, he would, when his hours of
    morning study were over, take his hat and ... go out on his
    mission of love and duty.... But, besides his frequent absences,
    there was another barrier to friendship with him: he seemed of a
    reserved, an abstracted, and even a brooding nature. Zealous in
    his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet
    did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content
    which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and
    practical philanthropist. Often of an evening, when he sat at the
    window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading or
    writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I
    know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and
    exciting might be seen in the frequent dilation of his eye.

    I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of
    delight it was to his [my] sisters. He once expressed, and but
    once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the
    hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls
    he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in
    the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and
    never did he roam the moors for the sake of their soothing
    silence--never to seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful
    delights they could yield.

    Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an
    opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its
    calibre when I heard him preach in his own church.... I wish I
    could describe that sermon; but it is past my power. I cannot even
    render faithfully the effect it produced on me.

    It began calm, and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice
    went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly
    restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and
    prompted the nervous language. This grew to force--compressed,
    condensed, controlled.... Throughout there was a strange
    bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions
    to Calvinistic doctrines--election, predestination,
    reprobation--were frequent.... It seemed to me ... that the
    eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth
    where lay turbid dregs of disappointment--where moved troubling
    impulses of insatiable yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I
    was sure St. John Rivers, pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he
    was--had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all
    understanding: he had no more found it ... than had I: with my
    concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium.

"Charlotte Bronte," says Miss Laura C. Holloway, "early exhibited
antagonistic feelings towards the Calvinistic views of her father." And
so I might continue at great length. Excluding the love passages
necessary to "story" and the missionary suggestions for which it seems
that Brussels priest whom I may call Charlotte Bronte's Fenelon was
originally responsible, the portrayal of the Rev. Patrick Bronte, like
that of Charlotte's sisters, is absolutely true to prototype and
fact.[42] We discover that at heart Charlotte Bronte loved her father,
hence she honoured him--the head of the "Rivers" family--by giving him
the final word in her autobiography, speaking of him as he appeared to
her: an old man whose days were drawing to a close. Jane relates of
Morton:--

    Near the churchyard, and in the middle of the garden, stood a
    well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the
    parsonage.

In Charlotte Bronte's mind this was Haworth Parsonage; but it is clear
that, despite the church "spire" and other efforts at obfuscation, she
did not dare to portray her sisters and father in the parsonage. Thus
she placed the family in another house. And now we will have another
glimpse of Tabitha Aykroyd, this time as "Hannah," speaking her Haworth
Yorkshire dialect:--

    "Have you been with the family long?"

    "I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.... I thowt
    more o' th' childer nor of mysel'.... They've like nobody to tak'
    care on 'em but me ... I'm like to look sharpish."

    Hannah was evidently fond of talking [see my chapter on Tabitha
    Aykroyd]. While I picked the fruit and she made the paste for the
    pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about ... her
    deceased ... mistress, and "the childer," as she called the young
    people.... There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever
    had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time
    they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak" of their own
    [had individual character]. They had lived very little at home for
    a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on
    account of their father's [aunt's] death: but they did so like
    Marsh End and Morton [Haworth] and all these moors and hills
    about. They had been in ... many grand towns, but they always said
    there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with
    each other--never fell out nor "threaped" [asserted beyond the
    argumentative point]. She did not know where there was such a
    family for being united.

Emily Bronte as Diana says it is "a privilege we exercise in our home to
prepare our own meals when ... so inclined, or when Hannah [Tabby] is
baking, brewing, washing or ironing," which of course was true at
Haworth Parsonage. To give yet another description:--

    The Rivers [Brontes] clung to the purple moors behind and around
    their dwelling with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could
    comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I
    saw the fascination of the locality, ... my eye feasted on the
    outline of swell and sweep.... The strong blast and the soft
    breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and
    sunset ... developed for me ... the same attraction as for
    them--wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced
    theirs.

Then follow pictures of the life at Haworth Parsonage, which tell us how
Charlotte Bronte adored her sisters; and with the modesty of true genius
she places herself at their feet, as it were. We have a sketch of
Tabitha Aykroyd ironing Aunt Branwell's lace frills and crimping her
nightcap borders in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter I., wherein both figure as
Bessie and Aunt Reed. Years ago it came to be thought the original of
Jane Eyre's Aunt Reed was Miss Branwell, the aunt of the Bronte
children, though one writer identified her with a certain Mrs. Sidgwick
whose son threw a book at Miss Bronte in her governess days, because
"the son of Mrs. Reed" threw a Bible at Jane Eyre. The fact the
rainy-day narrations in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ establish,
that Charlotte Bronte associated a "volume-hurling" incident with her
childhood and Branwell Bronte's "tyranny," disposed finally of the
Sidgwick identifications. John Reed we have now seen was, like Hindley
Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, drawn by Charlotte Bronte from her
brother Branwell Bronte. Always she wrote of him vindictively, and with
a retributive justice, her strong characteristic. At about the period
when Currer Bell was penning _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_
Branwell was a source of considerable distress to her. He was disgraced;
his habits were the reverse of temperate, and it was daily feared that
in a fit of delirium he might make an attempt upon his own life. Indeed
Charlotte Bronte palpably writes of Branwell Bronte and those miserable
associations which brought trouble upon Mrs. Gaskell's first edition of
the Bronte _Life_, in _The Professor_, Chapter XX., where she says:--

    Limited as had yet been my experience of life, I had once had the
    opportunity of contemplating, near at hand, an example of the
    results produced by a course of ... domestic treachery.... I saw
    it bare and real, and it was very loathsome. I saw a mind degraded
    ... by the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by
    the infectious influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered
    much from the forced and prolonged view of this spectacle.

Charlotte's letters also show she was ashamed of and losing patience
with him. John Reed is spoken of as "a dissipated young man; they will
never make much of him, I think.... Some people call him a fine-looking
young man; but he has such thick lips." For obfuscation's sake he is
"tall," and Mrs. Gaskell in speaking of Branwell's profile says:--"There
are coarse lines about the mouth, and the lips, though handsome in
shape, are loose and thick, indicating self-indulgence." Aunt Reed
exclaims at the last of her favourite:--"John is sunken and degraded,
his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him." It was
near the time that Aunt Branwell died at Haworth there was this decided
degradation of her favourite nephew Branwell. For story purposes
Charlotte Bronte makes her aunt a married woman in _Jane Eyre_, and
places her nephew Branwell and her niece Eliza Branwell in the relation
of children to her as John and Eliza Reed--Georgiana is no doubt a
Bronte relative of whom we have not heard, and Charlotte thought vain.
The fact that in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXI., her name is mentioned in
connection with "a title," would show Currer Bell early apportioned her
a place in the book by reason of Montagu's reference to a Lady
Georgiana.

A child, sympathetic and intensely emotional, Charlotte Bronte,
evidently, felt injustices with an acuteness not easy to understand
without reading her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ by aid of _The
Key to the Bronte Works_. It would be like Maria Bronte to protest with
her younger sister on her holding resentment against Aunt Branwell; and
with the inference that she herself had endured her harshness, she says
as Helen Burns:--"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems
to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my
feelings. Would it not be happier if you tried to forget her severity,
together with the passionate emotions it excited?"

Of Eliza Reed (Cousin Eliza Branwell), as seen by Jane at the death of
Aunt Reed, we are told: "she was now very thin, and there was something
ascetic in her look." She wore "a nun-like ornament of a string of ebony
beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace
little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless
visage." In 1840 Charlotte Bronte wrote of her "Cousin Eliza Branwell"
that she spoke of nothing but botany, her own conversion, Low Church,
Evangelical clergy, and the Millennium.[43] And thus in _Jane Eyre_ we
read of Cousin Eliza Reed, by way of emphasis on this side of her
character:--

    Eliza ... had no time to talk, ... yet it was difficult to say
    what she did.... Three times a day she studied a little book which
    I found ... was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was
    the great attraction of that volume, and she said 'the Rubric.'
    Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of
    a square crimson cloth; ... she informed me it was ... for the
    altar of a new church.... Two hours she devoted to ... working by
    herself in the kitchen garden. [Cousin Eliza's parterre is also
    referred to in Chapter IV. of _Jane Eyre_.] Eliza [attended] a
    saint's-day service at ... church--for in matters of religion she
    was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual
    discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or
    foul she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on
    week-days as there were prayers. And by way of climax, Jane Eyre
    tells us that Cousin Eliza says:--"I shall devote myself ... to
    the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful
    study of the workings of their system; if I find it to be, as I
    half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of
    all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of
    Rome and probably take the veil."

The river Reed, I may remark, has its rise close to the Cheviot Hills,
within about five miles of the source of the Keeldar Burn, which name
Charlotte Bronte used later in _Shirley_ for the surname of Shirley
Keeldar who, the world knows, is really Emily Bronte. To quote a ballad
of Leyden,

  "The heath-bell blows where Keeldar flows,
  By Tyne the primrose pale."

The Reed has a Rochester near, which doubtless provided a name for
Charlotte's hero.

Having now the key to this method of Charlotte Bronte, we also discover
portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ an utterly neglected sister of Currer Bell in
Julia Severn, called after a river. Remembering that Emily Bronte would
be younger than Charlotte, we perceive Julia must mean Elizabeth Bronte,
born, like Emily, in July. We almost had forgotten this sister was at
the Clergy Daughters' School. One of two things was responsible, it
seems, for the choice of "Julia": either her natal month or her going to
the above school in July. Elizabeth Bronte, the second sister of
Charlotte Bronte, was born at Hartshead, near Dewsbury.

    "Miss Temple," cries Mr. Brocklehurst, "... what--_what_ is that
    girl with curled hair--red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?"

    "It is Julia Severn," replies Miss Temple quietly, ... "Julia's
    hair curls naturally."

Thus from this discovery the world learns for the first time that Diana
Rivers represents Emily Bronte, afterwards Shirley Keeldar;[44] Mary
Rivers, Annie or Anne Bronte; St. John Eyre Rivers, the Rev. Patrick
Bronte; and the elderly Hannah, the old, dialect-speaking Tabitha
Aykroyd--the original of Charlotte Bronte's Mrs. Dean and Bessie; that
Aunt Reed represents Aunt Branwell; Cousin Eliza Reed, Cousin Eliza
Branwell; John Reed, Charlotte Bronte's brother Branwell; and Julia
Severn, her sister Elizabeth Bronte, all of whom but for _The Key to the
Bronte Works_ would have remained for ever hidden and unrecognized in
_Jane Eyre_.

I have refrained from extending this volume with full extracts from the
Bronte books, once having indicated the place and nature of my
references. I must emphasize, however, that in dealing with the Rivers
family Charlotte Bronte gives most appealing portrayals of the various
phases of the life at Haworth Parsonage:--The studying, the
painting,[45] the minor interesting domestic incidents dear to her
memory, the parting of the Bronte sisters with St. John (Mr. Bronte),
the "house-cleaning"--so very "Yorkshire"!--the preparations for
Christmas, the return home of the Bronte girls, and many other facts and
associations that render _Jane Eyre_ in the light of _The Key to the
Bronte Works_ the surpassing of all Bronte biographies. Presented for
posterity by her own sure hand, Charlotte Bronte's picture is bright and
exhilarating; and as we glance uneasily again to Mrs. Gaskell's sombre
portrayal, we on a sudden remember that biographer wrote in the shadow
of death. But it is with life we have to do.




CHAPTER IX.

THE ORIGIN OF THE YORKSHIRE ELEMENT IN CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S HUNSDEN OF
"THE PROFESSOR"; HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"; ROCHESTER OF "JANE
EYRE"; AND YORKE OF "SHIRLEY."


M. Heger, Miss Bronte's Brussels friend, by the showing of all evidence
was essentially the original of her leading male characters.[46] M.
Sue's _Miss Mary_ and its "Manuscript of Mdlle. Lagrange," which I
present farther on, are sufficient testimony that M. Heger was the
original of the inner Heathcliffe and Rochester, and Charlotte Bronte's
other chief male characters. An inquiry, therefore, is at once required
as to the significance of Mrs. Gaskell's statement that she suspected
Charlotte Bronte drew from the sons of the Taylor family[47] "all that
was of truth in the characters of the heroes of her first two works."
That the Yorkshire element of her heroes was provided by a living model
or models from one family, is proved by a consistency of the
characterization in this regard. I find, truly enough, that male members
of the Taylor family were indeed the originals to which she referred in
the composition of a Yorkshire-Heger.[48] The Taylors, of the Red House,
Gomersall, (obviously the Briarmains of the Yorkes), and of Hunsworth,
were mill-owner friends, and Independents, with whom Charlotte Bronte
visited. In _Shirley_ Miss Bronte ostensibly portrayed Mr. Taylor and
his two daughters, her friends Mary and Martha, as Mr. Yorke and Rose
and Jessie. Mary and Martha Taylor were at school with Charlotte at Roe
Head, near Dewsbury and Huddersfield. They were also at Brussels with
Charlotte, though not at the Hegers'. Martha was taken ill and died at
Brussels; a touching reference to her death is made where she is
portrayed as Jessie Yorke, in _Shirley_, Chapter XXIII. Mary Taylor
(Rose Yorke) was in New Zealand when Charlotte Bronte died. Her fondness
for travel is mentioned in the _Shirley_ chapter named. The male members
of this family were thought by Currer Bell most characteristic Yorkshire
folk, hence the name of Yorke. I mention Yorke Hunsden as one of the
Yorkshire-Hegers of Miss Bronte's method of dual portraiture. I believe
this important character in _The Professor_ will be found, like his
fellows, to be entirely a Taylor-Heger. The name for Hunsden was
apparently dictated by the Taylors' connection with Hunsworth, and it
may be noted his Christian name of Yorke came to be later the surname of
Mr. Taylor as portrayed in _Shirley_.

But the Heger element was always superior to the Yorkshire element in
Charlotte Bronte's heroes. The latter might provide useful and necessary
external characteristics, but the "intensitives" were the lines she drew
from her model, M. Heger. Of him as M. Pelet in _The Professor_, she
writes:--

    His face was pale, his cheeks were sunk, and his eyes hollow; his
    features ... had a French turn, ... the degree of harshness
    softened by ... a melancholy, almost suffering expression of
    countenance; his physiognomy was _fine et spirituelle_.

This "melancholy almost suffering expression of countenance" she thus
described was evidently once a marked characteristic of M. Heger's
physiognomy. A reference to it occurs in M. Sue's _Miss Mary_, in the
French and "adapted" version, where we find M. de Morville, whom I
identify as a phase of M. Heger, sitting in a reverie:--

    ... l'expression de legere souffrance habituelle a sa physionomie,
    d'ailleurs si ouverte, s'est compliquee d'une sorte de contrainte
    lorsqu'il se trouve au milieu de sa famille. Seul, et ne subissant
    pas cette contrainte ... M. de Morville semble profondement
    attriste.

Thus, of Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_, we read:--

    His general bearing intimated complete ... satisfaction, ... yet,
    at times, an indescribable shade passed like an eclipse over his
    countenance, and seemed to me like the sign of a sudden and strong
    inward doubt of himself, ... an energetic discontent, ... perhaps
    ... it might only be a bilious caprice.

And again of Hunsden, in the same vein:--

    I discerned ... there would be contrasts between his inward and
    outward man; contentions too.... Perhaps in these
    incompatibilities of the "physique" with the "morale" lay the
    secret of that fitful gloom; he _would_ but _could_ not, and the
    athletic mind scowled scorn on its more fragile companion, ... his
    features ... character had set a stamp upon ... expression re-cast
    them at her pleasure, and strange metamorphoses she wrote, giving
    him now the mien of a morose bull, and anon, that of an ... arch
    girl.

Regarding these facial metamorphoses Charlotte Bronte wrote similarly
concerning M. Heger.[49]

I remark that M. Heger's harshness evidently had impressed Charlotte
Bronte considerably at first, and thus reflects her thoughts on this
point in the introduction of the phases she gives of him in her books.
So we read of Yorke Hunsden, of Heathcliffe, and of Rochester:--

  _The Professor._        _Wuthering Heights._    _Jane Eyre._

  I said to myself "his   Heathcliffe's "walk     There was something
  rough freedom pleases   in" expressed the       in the forced, stiff
  me not at all."...      sentiment "Go to        bow, in the
  There was something     the Deuce."[50]...      impatient, yet formal
  in Mr. Hunsden's        I think that            tone which seemed ...
  point-blank mode of     circumstance            to express: "What the
  speech which rather     determined me           Deuce is it to me
  pleased me than         to accept the           whether Miss Eyre be
  otherwise, because it   invitation; I felt      there or not?[50] At
  set me at my ease.      interested in a         this moment I am not
  I continued the         man who seemed          disposed to accost
  conversation with       more exaggeratedly      her." I sat down,
  a degree of             reserved than           quite disembarrassed.
  interest....            myself.                 A reception of
  Hunsden's manner now                            finished politeness
  bordered on the                                 would probably have
  impertinent, still                              confused me, ... but
  his manner did not                              harsh caprice laid me
  offend me in the                                under no
  slightest--it only                              obligation....
  piqued my curiosity;                            Besides, the
  I wanted him to go                              eccentricity of the
  on.                                             proceeding was
                                                  piquant. I felt
                                                  interested to see how
                                                  he would go on.

We read of Rochester:--"The frown, the roughness of the stranger
set me at my ease"; and in _Villette_, we read of M. Heger as M.
Paul:--"Once ... I held him harsh and strange, ... the darkness, the
manner displeased me. Now ... I preferred him before all humanity,"
which explains why Charlotte Bronte wrote of Rochester:--"The sarcasm
that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only
like keen condiments in a choice dish," and explains why she admits to
the piquancy in exploiting the possibilities of Heathcliffe's startling
harshness.

And again, as further evidence of the influence of M. Heger over her
Yorkshire Hunsden, we find this character in the close of _The
Professor_ implicated with a mysterious "Lucia," whom he would have
married but could not, which Lucia we discover to have meant really the
original of the Lucy Snowe of _Villette_--Charlotte Bronte herself.

It is obvious that while Currer Bell, for "story" and other purposes,
made use of a composite method in presenting a portrait, she drew from
characters who possessed much in common: as with the composite character
of the Rev. Mr. Helstone, meant for her father, a clergyman, but
presenting also a phase of another clergyman, the Rev. Hammond Roberson;
and as with Dr. John Bretton, a composite character drawn from the two
Scotsmen, Mr. Smith her publisher, and the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, who
subsequently became her husband. Doubtless, characteristics in the
Taylors were similar to some of M. Heger's. Perhaps the fact that they
spoke French and sojourned on the Continent, accentuated to her these
characteristics. In a letter, Miss Bronte described all the Taylors as
"Republicans." And so of Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_, Chap. XXIV.,
we read, "republican, lord-hater, as he was, Hunsden was proud of his
old ----shire blood ... and family standing." Thus, in _Shirley_, Chap.
IV., in which work that character appears stripped of the Heger element,
as Mr. Yorke, we read of the latter:--

    Kings and nobles and priests ... were to him an abomination....
    The want of ... benevolence made him very impatient of ... all
    faults which grated on his strong, shrewd nature: it left no check
    to his ... sarcasm. As he was not merciful, he would sometimes
    wound ... without ... caring how deep he thrust.... Mr. Yorke's
    family was the first and oldest in the district.

_Via_ Yorke Hunsden of _The Professor_ and Mr. Yorke of _Shirley_ the
reader has returned to a character who typified more than any other of
Charlotte Bronte's Yorkshire-Heger portrayals the merciless, strong and
shrewd-natured Taylor--Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_. But the
Yorkshire element in Heathcliffe was a caricature and an exaggeration
for the purposes of the "cuckoo story," resulting from the tale Montagu
tells of a foundling; and the emphasis laid upon his barbarity was
largely a result, too, of the consideration I mention in the chapters
entitled "The Recoil," which consideration had to do with the Heger
phase of Heathcliffe. The fact that evidence shows Heathcliffe to have
been, like Hunsden and Rochester, a composite character drawn from a
dual model--the Taylor-Heger model--traceable in origin absolutely to
Charlotte Bronte's idiosyncratic estimate of two male characters who are
shown to have seriously interested her, in itself sufficiently
demonstrates her authorship of _Wuthering Heights_, and is indeed of
great interest.

If reference be made to a letter written by Charlotte Bronte in
1846, the year when she offered _Wuthering Heights_ to a publisher,
it will be found she mentioned that one of the Taylors had--like
Heathcliffe--suffered in the teens of years from hypochondria, "a most
dreadful doom," Charlotte called it, and related she herself had endured
it for a year.[51]

Having herself suffered thus, there was a temptation--at what I
elsewhere call the dark season of Charlotte Bronte's inner life, at the
season of the recoil--to present in her work _Wuthering Heights_ the
Yorkshire-Heger with the hypochondria of her Yorkshire model, and let
his demon be the original of her Catherine Earnshaw--be herself. To this
temptation Charlotte Bronte gave no opposition, much to her regret
later. Herewith we have the origin of Heathcliffe's miserable
hypochondria and monomania--his digging for Catherine in the grave till
his spade scraped the coffin, in _Wuthering Heights_, Chap. XXIX., and
his saying because his "preternatural horror" always haunted, but never
abided with him:--

    "She showed herself, ... a devil to me! And, since then ... I've
    been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal--keeping my
    nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut,
    they would long ago have relaxed.... It racked me! I've groaned
    aloud.... It was a strange way of killing! not by inches, but by
    fractions of hairbreadths, ... through eighteen years!" Mr.
    Heathcliffe paused, ... his hair wet with perspiration, ... the
    brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the
    grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of
    trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one
    absorbing subject.

In the light of the foregoing, therefore, we may understand the truth of
Charlotte Bronte's narration in _The Professor_, Chap. XXIII.:--

    My nerves ... jarred ... A horror of great darkness fell upon me;
    I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly, ... I was
    ... a prey to hypochondria. She had been ... my guest ... before
    ... for a year.... I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me,
    she ate with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills,
    where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear
    veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree;
    taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom and holding me with
    arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such hours!... How
    she would discourse to me of her own country--the grave.... I was
    glad when ... I could ... sit ... freed from the dreadful tyranny
    of my demon.

Both by reason of Mrs. Gaskell's suspicion that she had drawn from them
in the portrayals of the heroes of her first books and by reason of the
undeniable evidence of her works, we must accept the Taylors as the
originals of most that was "Yorkshire" in Charlotte Bronte's Yorke
Hunsden, Heathcliffe, Rochester, and Yorke, understanding the term in
Currer Bell's implication of "independent," "hard," and "open-spoken."
But M. Heger contributed what Charlotte Bronte calls in Chap. XXVII. of
_Villette_, in speaking of him as M. Paul Emanuel--"that swart, sallow,
southern darkness which spoke his Spanish blood," and this gave colour
to the physiognomy of "the swart, sallow" Heathcliffe and Rochester.[52]

In the succeeding chapters I deal more particularly with the relation of
Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_, to Rochester of _Jane Eyre_, and I
promise my readers to present therein most important and sensational
revelations.




CHAPTER X.

HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND ROCHESTER OF "JANE EYRE" ONE
AND THE SAME.


Without herewith further entering into the question as to the original
of the morose and harsh characters who were the heroes of Charlotte
Bronte's novels, I will at once show she had drawn from the same model
in both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. I have given in the
foregoing chapter the introduction of Lockwood to Heathcliffe and that
of Jane to Rochester side by side. Let us also read the following:--

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Heathcliffe.                        Rochester.

  With a stubborn countenance ...     Most people would have thought
  Heathcliffe is a dark-skinned       Mr. Rochester an ugly man; yet
  gipsy in aspect, in dress and       there was an unconscious pride
  manners a gentleman; ... rather     in his port; so much ease in his
  slovenly, perhaps, yet not          demeanour; such a look of
  looking amiss with his              complete indifference to his own
  negligence, because he has an       appearance ... that ... one
  erect and handsome figure; and      inevitably shared the
  rather morose. Possibly some        indifference, and even in a
  people might suspect him of a       blind sense put faith in his
  degree of under-bred pride; I       confidence.... He was proud,
  have a sympathetic cord within      sardonic; ... in my secret soul
  that tells me it is nothing of      I knew his kindness to me was
  the sort: I know by instinct his    balanced by unjust severity to
  reserve springs from an aversion    others. He was moody, too, ...
  to showy displays of feeling--to    and when he looked up a morose,
  manifestations of mutual            almost a malignant, scowl
  kindliness. He'll love and hate     blackened his features.
  equally under one cover, and
  esteem it a species of
  impertinence to be loved or
  hated again. No, I am running on
  too fast; I bestow my own
  attributes over liberally on
  him.

Heathcliffe and Rochester are both black-avised, stubborn of
countenance, negligent as to external appearance, moody, proud in carry,
and morose. Charlotte Bronte tells us of one that on external judgment
"most people would have thought him" possessed of a disqualification,
and of the other that "some people might suspect him" of having a
disqualification. And in each case a similar offset--the internal
reading of the man's character--is brought forth by Charlotte Bronte as
Lockwood or Jane:--"A sympathetic cord within" tells the former that
Heathcliffe's reserve read as under-bred pride springs from an aversion
to "manifestations of mutual kindliness"; and Jane, commenting on
Rochester's being proud and sardonic, says, "In my secret heart I
knew ... his kindliness to me was balanced by unjust severity to
others."

I find the singular expression indicated by the "hell's light" epithets
applied to Heathcliffe's eyes was an expression Charlotte Bronte had
apparently noticed in the original of this character. Rochester's eyes
in _Jane Eyre_ have "strange gleams," and we are told "his eye had a
tawny--nay, a bloody light in its gloom," and so forth. Indeed,
Heathcliffe's eyes, which were "clouded windows of hell" with
"black-fire in them," are seen in Rochester's clearly enough, and the
singular "hell's light" is associated with them at considerable length,
in

  _Jane Eyre_:--

    And as for the vague something--was it a sinister or a sorrowful
    ... expression?--that opened upon a careful observer ... in his
    eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth
    partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and
    shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills,
    and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape.

The following description of Heathcliffe could be read as of Rochester,
whose "olive cheek" and "deep eyes" Jane describes:--

  _Wuthering Heights._

    His cheeks were sallow and half-covered with black whiskers, the
    brows were lowering, the eyes deep-set and singular. I remembered
    the eyes. His upright carry suggested his having been in the army
    [M. Heger had fought as a soldier] ... His countenance ... looked
    intelligent. A half-civilized ferocity lurked in the depressed
    brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued, and his
    manner was even dignified, though too stern for grace.

In view of the general evidence that Heathcliffe, like Rochester, was
drawn by Charlotte Bronte from M. Heger, her Brussels friend the
professor, it is not surprising that Heathcliffe's was "a deep voice and
foreign in sound." Her reference in _Wuthering Heights_ to his Spanish
extraction reminds us of M. Paul Emanuel's "jetty hair and Spanish face"
in _Villette_, and of course it is well known M. Paul Emanuel was drawn
by Currer Bell from M. Heger.




CHAPTER XI.

CATHERINE AND HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AS JANE AND ROCHESTER
OF "JANE EYRE."


We have already seen Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_ represented
Charlotte Bronte as intimately portrayed by herself in the work, and
that Heathcliffe was drawn by her from the original of the Rochester of
_Jane Eyre_. So faithfully did Charlotte Bronte tell again in _Jane
Eyre_ the history of her life in relation to her family and M. Heger,
that she gives the main lines of her biography in both works. I will
show them side by side.

For the literal parallels when not given in this chapter see the index.
My amazing discovery on the return of the runaway Heathcliffe to
Catherine and the return of the runaway Jane to Rochester I give
literally herewith.

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Opening scene: A rainy day in       Opening scene: A rainy day in
  Catherine's (Charlotte Bronte's)    Jane's (Charlotte Bronte's)
  childhood. She is treated           childhood. She is treated
  unkindly by the rest of the         unkindly by the rest of the
  household. It is impossible to      household. It is impossible to
  go out on account of the rain.      go out on account of the rain.
  She had been commanded to keep      She had been commanded to keep
  aloof from the family group.        aloof from the family group.
  This group included in              This group included in
  particular, little Catherine        particular, little Jane tells us
  tells us with bitter feeling,       with bitter feeling, John Reed
  Hindley Earnshaw (Branwell          (Branwell Bronte), who
  Bronte), who luxuriated in the      luxuriated in the warmth of the
  warmth of the fire with other       fire with other members of the
  members of the family.              family.

  Nevertheless, though banished,      Nevertheless, though banished
  Catherine (Charlotte Bronte)        herself, Jane (Charlotte Bronte)
  makes herself snug in a recess      makes herself snug in a recess
  behind a curtain, and believes      behind a curtain, and believes
  herself secure, when Hindley        herself secure, when John Reed
  Earnshaw (Branwell Bronte),         (Branwell Bronte), coming up
  coming up from his paradise on      from his paradise on the hearth,
  the hearth, makes her come out      makes her come out of the recess
  of the recess precipitantly,        precipitantly. He hurls the book
  after she has hurled the book       she was reading. Little Jane
  she was reading. Little             (Charlotte Bronte) sees a tyrant
  Catherine (Charlotte Bronte)        in John Reed (Branwell Bronte).
  sees a tyrant in Hindley            He tells her that he is the
  Earnshaw (Branwell Bronte). He      master of the house, or soon
  tells her that he is the master     will be.
  of the house.

  Later, Catherine complains to       Later, Jane complains to herself
  herself of her brother Hindley's    of John Reed's (Branwell's)
  (Branwell's) tyrannies. He has      tyrannies. He has made her cry
  made her cry and her head ached,    and her head ached, she says, as
  she says, as a result of his        a result of his behaviour.
  behaviour.

  Little Catherine (Charlotte         Little Jane (Charlotte Bronte),
  Bronte), although she was held      although she was held to be
  to be passionate, and was           passionate, and was treated
  treated harshly and almost as an    harshly and almost an outsider
  outsider by the rest of the         by the rest of the household,
  household, finds a kind, but        finds a kind, but apparently
  apparently unsympathetic, friend    unsympathetic, friend in a
  in a woman-servant, Nelly Dean,     woman-servant, Bessie, who has a
  who has a remarkable gift of        remarkable gift of narrative,
  narrative, like Tabitha Aykroyd,    like Tabitha Aykroyd, whom
  whom Charlotte Bronte loved, and    Charlotte Bronte loved, and who
  who came to the Haworth             came to the Haworth parsonage
  parsonage when Charlotte was        when Charlotte was about nine
  about nine years of age. But        years of age. But even Bessie
  even Nelly Dean (Tabitha            (Tabitha Aykroyd) sometimes
  Aykroyd) sometimes tasked and       tasked and scolded Jane
  scolded Catherine (Charlotte        (Charlotte Bronte) unreasonably,
  Bronte) unreasonably, and           and mistrusted her.
  mistrusted her.

  She even believes that Catherine    She even believes that Jane
  (Charlotte Bronte) is an actor      (Charlotte) is an actor and
  and feigns in regard to certain     feigns in regard to certain fits
  fits of frenzy.                     of frenzy.

  On the occasion of one of these     On the occasion of one of these
  bouts of frenzy, Catherine          bouts of frenzy, Jane (Charlotte
  (Charlotte Bronte) is in a room,    Bronte) is in a room, the door
  the door of which has been          of which has been locked.
  locked.

  In a paroxysm of alarm,             In a paroxysm of alarm, Jane
  Catherine (Charlotte Bronte)        (Charlotte Bronte) summons
  summons Mrs. Dean (Tabitha          Bessie (Tabitha Aykroyd)
  Aykroyd) frantically, and with a    frantically, and with a piercing
  piercing scream. The latter         scream. The latter enters
  enters annoyed, and quite           annoyed, and quite
  unsympathetic.                      unsympathetic.

  It is suggested Catherine was       It is suggested Jane was only
  only acting, and Catherine          acting, and Jane overhears this.
  overhears this. She had desired     She finds Bessie (Tabitha
  Mrs. Dean (Tabitha Aykroyd) to      Aykroyd) at the foot of her bed
  bring her a basin of gruel.         with a basin in her hand.

  Catherine (Charlotte) relates       Jane (Charlotte) relates her
  her fears of the locked room:       fears of the locked room: How
  How she thought it haunted; she     she thought it haunted; she
  showed fear of the mirror, and      showed fear of the mirror, and
  describes excitedly to Mrs. Dean    describes excitedly to Bessie
  (Tabitha) her terrifying            (Tabitha) her terrifying
  sensations previous to her          sensations previous to her
  losing consciousness, and how       losing consciousness. She
  she supposed she must               supposed she must immediately
  immediately have had a species      have had a species of fit.
  of fit.

  Mrs. Dean (Tabitha) suggests        Bessie (Tabitha) suggests sleep
  sleep to Catherine (Charlotte       to Jane (Charlotte Bronte).
  Bronte).

  Mrs. Dean (Tabitha) believes        Bessie (Tabitha) believes that
  that to see the apparition of a     the apparition of a child is a
  child is a sign of calamity         sign of calamity having befallen
  having befallen some one near       some one near akin. Jane dreams
  akin. One day Mrs. Dean sees a      of a child-apparition, and fears
  child-apparition, and fears it      it may be a sign of calamity,
  may be a sign of calamity to        and the day following Bessie's
  Catherine's (Charlotte's)           husband brings word of the
  brother, Hindley Earnshaw           disgrace of John Reed (Branwell
  (Branwell Bronte). He is really     Bronte, Charlotte's brother).
  in disgrace.

  Catherine falls in love with        Jane falls in love with a
  a morose, "sallow-cheeked"          morose, "olive-cheeked"
  individual with deep eyes, that     individual with deep eyes, that
  have a singular expression,         have a singular expression,
  which makes the narrator            which makes the narrator
  associate "hell's light" with       associate "hell's light" with
  them. He has a handsome, erect      them. He has a handsome, erect
  carry, but is rather negligent      carry, but is rather negligent
  in his apparel. His speech is       in his apparel. His speech is
  abrupt. (His name is                abrupt. (His name is Rochester.)
  Heathcliffe.)

  But Catherine loved him, and he     But Jane loved him, and he loved
  loved Catherine. Indeed,            Jane. Indeed, Jane likens
  Catherine likens themselves to a    themselves to a cloven tree,
  cloven tree by saying that          which is one at the root, but
  whosoever would come between        divided by storm. Thus she
  them to divide them would meet      believes in the "twin-soul" or
  the fate of Milo, who, of           the elective affinities, and
  course, endeavoured to drive        says of Rochester:--
  asunder a cloven tree held
  firmly at its base, and was
  himself trapped by it for his
  pains. Thus she believes in the
  "twin-soul" or the elective
  affinities, and says:--

  "It would degrade me to marry       "I feel akin to him.... I have
  Heathcliffe now; so he shall        something in my brain and heart
  never know how I love him; and      that assimilates me mentally to
  that not because he's handsome,     him.... I know I must conceal my
  ... but because he's more myself    sentiments.... Yet, while I
  than I am. Whatever our souls       breathe and think, I must love
  are made of, his and mine are       him."[53]
  the same."[53]

  However, Heathcliffe and            However, Rochester and Jane
  Catherine part, Heathcliffe         part, Jane running away
  running away unexpectedly.          unexpectedly.
  (Method I., interchange of
  the sexes of characters.)

  Catherine dreams she is in          Jane finds refuge with the
  heaven, but broke her heart to      Rivers family (the Bronte family
  come to earth again, upon which     at Haworth). She is tempted to
  the angels flung her out near       take to a religious
  Heathcliffe's abode, where she      life:--"Angels beckoned, and
  awoke sobbing for joy: Catherine    Heaven rolled together like a
  preferred her lover to              scroll," but she heard
  heaven.[54]                         Rochester's voice calling,
                                      though he was miles away. Jane
                                      preferred her lover to
                                      heaven.[54]

  The two parted lovers, however,     The two parted lovers, however,
  meet again, and by Charlotte        meet again, and by Charlotte
  Bronte's Method I., (interchange    Bronte's Method I., (interchange
  of the sexes of characters          of the sexes of characters
  portrayed), we arrive at another    portrayed), we arrive at another
  of my sensational and important     of my sensational and important
  Bronte discoveries.                 Bronte discoveries.


  THE RETURN OF THE RUNAWAY LOVER     THE RETURN OF THE RUNAWAY LOVER
  HEATHCLIFFE TO CATHERINE.[55]       JANE TO ROCHESTER.[55]

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Chapter X.                          Chapter XXXVII.

  On [an] ... evening ... I was       ... I came, just ere dark ...
  coming from the garden.... It       the darkness ... of dusk
  had got dusk, ... the moon          gathered.... I beheld the
  causing ... shadows to lurk in      house--scarce by this dim light
  the corners of ... portions of      distinguishable.... Entering a
  the building. I set my burden on    portal fastened by a latch, ...
  the house steps by the ... door     I stood.... The windows were
  and lingered to rest ... my back    latticed, ... the front door was
  to the entrance, when I heard a     narrow; ... one step led up to
  voice behind me say:--              it.... I heard a movement--that
                                      narrow front-door was unclosing,
  "... Is that you?"                  and some shape was about to
                                      issue from the grange.
  It was a deep voice, and foreign    [Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering
  in sound.... Something stirred      Heights_ version of the returned
  in the porch; and moving nearer     runaway lover, is also staged at
  I distinguished a tall man          "the grange."] It opened slowly:
  dressed in dark clothes, with       a figure came out into the
  dark face and hair. He leant        twilight and stood on the step;
  against the side, and held his      a man, ... he stretched forth
  fingers on the latch as if          his hand.... Dusk as it was I
  intending to open for               had recognized him--it was my
  himself.... A ray fell on his       master ... Rochester. I stayed
  features; the cheeks were           my step, almost my breath....
  sallow, and half-covered with       His form was of the same strong
  black whiskers; the brows           and stalwart contour as ever:
  lowering, the eyes deep-set and     his port was still erect, his
  singular. I remembered the eyes.    hair was still raven-black: nor
                                      were his features altered or
                                      sunk.... But in his countenance
                                      I saw a change: that looked
                                      desperate and brooding--that
                                      reminded me of some wronged and
                                      fettered wild beast or bird,
                                      dangerous to approach in his
                                      sullen woe.... He closed the
                                      door. I now drew near and
                                      knocked: John's wife opened for
                                      me.... She started as if she had
                                      seen a ghost: I calmed her. To
                                      her hurried "Is it really you,
  "What!" I cried, uncertain          Miss, come at this late
  whether to regard him as a          hour...?" I answered by taking
  worldly visitor, and raised my      her hand.
  hands in amazement. "What! you
  come back? Is it really you? Is     "... Tell your master ... a
  it?"                                person wishes to speak to him."

  "Yes; Heathcliffe," he replied      When she returned, I inquired
  ... "where is she?... Is she        what he had said.
  here? Speak! I want to have one
  word with her--your mistress        "You are to send in your name
  [Catherine]. Go, and say some       and business," she replied.
  person ... desires to see her."
                                      She then proceeded to fill a
  "... And you _are_ Heathcliffe.     glass of water, and place it on
  But altered!"                       a tray, together with candles.

  ... I could not persuade myself     "Is that what he rang for?" I
  to proceed. At length I resolved    asked.
  on making an excuse to ask if
  ... [Catherine] would have the      "Yes; he always has candles
  candles lighted, and I opened       brought in at dusk...."
  the door. [She] sat ... by a
  window whose lattice lay back.      "Give the tray to me, I will
                                      carry it in."
  "What does he want?" asked
  Catherine.                          ... Mary opened the door for
                                      me.... Mr. Rochester turned
  "I did not question him," I         mechanically.
  answered.
                                      "This is you, Mary, is it not?"
  ... Mr. Edgar inquired ... who
  it was?                             "Mary is in the kitchen," I
                                      answered.
  "Some one mistress does not
  expect," I replied. "That           "_Who_ is it? _What_ is it? Who
  Heathcliffe.... Hush! you must      speaks?"
  not call him ... names.... She'd
  be sadly grieved to hear you.       "... I came only this evening,"
  She was nearly heart-broken when    I answered.
  he ran off. I guess his return
  will make a jubilee to her."        "Great God!--what delusion has
                                      come over me? What sweet madness
  "Oh, ... Heathcliffe's come         has seized me?... Oh! I _cannot_
  back--he is," panted Catherine.     see.... Whatever--whoever you
  "... I'll ... secure my guest.      are--be perceptible to my touch
  I'm afraid the joy is too great     or I cannot live!"
  to be real!"
                                      I arrested his hand and prisoned
  "... Catherine, try to be glad      it in both mine.
  without being absurd! The whole
  household need not witness the      "Is that Jane?"
  sight of your welcoming a
  runaway servant."                   "... This is her voice," I
                                      added.... "My dear master, ... I
  I ... found Heathcliffe ... and     am Jane Eyre:... I am come back
  ushered him into the presence of    to you."
  the master and mistress.
                                      "In truth?--in the flesh? My
  ... Now, I was amazed [by] the      living Jane?"
  transformation of
  Heathcliffe;... A half-civilized    "You touch me, sir--you hold me.
  ferocity lurked yet in the          I am not vacant like air, am I?"
  depressed brows and eyes full of
  black fire, but it was subdued,     "... But I cannot be so blest
  quite divested of roughness,        after all my misery. It is a
  though too stern for grace....      dream: such dreams I have
  He took a seat opposite             had.... But I always woke and
  Catherine, who kept her gaze        found it an empty mockery; and I
  fixed on him, as if she feared      was desolate and abandoned."
  he would vanish were she to
  remove it. He did not raise his     ... I began ... to withdraw
  to her often; a quick glance now    myself from his arms--but he
  and then sufficed; but it           eagerly snatched me closer:--
  flashed back each time; ... the
  undisguised delight he drank        "No, you must not go. No--I have
  from hers.... Catherine ... rose    touched you, heard you; ... my
  and seized Heathcliffe's hands      very soul demands you.... Who
  again, and laughed like one         can tell what a dark, hopeless
  beside herself.                     life I have dragged on for
                                      months past? ... feeling but a
  "I shall think it a dream           ceaseless sorrow, and at times a
  to-morrow!" she cried. "I shall     very delirium of desire to
  not be able to believe that I       behold my Jane again. Yes; for
  have seen and touched, and          her restoration I longed....
  spoken to you once more....         Will she not depart as suddenly
  Cruel Heathcliffe! You don't        as she came? To-morrow ... I
  deserve this welcome. To be         shall find her no more....
  absent and silent for three         Cruel, cruel deserter! O Jane,
  years, and never to think of        what did I feel when I
  me!"                                discovered you had fled and left
                                      Thornfield?"
  "... I've fought through a
  bitter life since I last heard       "Jane! ... my heart swells
  your voice, and you must forgive    with gratitude to the beneficent
  me, for I struggled only for        God of this earth just now.... I
  you!"                               did wrong: I would have sullied
                                      my innocent flower: the
  "... The event of this evening,"    Omnipotent snatched it from me.
  said Catherine, "has reconciled     I, in my stiff-necked rebellion,
  me to God and humanity! I had       almost cursed the dispensation:
  risen in angry rebellion against    instead of bending to the decree
  Providence--oh, I've endured        I defied it.... Of late, Jane,
  very, very bitter misery.... I      ... I began to experience
  can afford to suffer anything       remorse, repentance; the wish
  hereafter! Should the meanest       for reconciliation to my
  thing alive slap me on the          Maker.... Now I thank God."
  cheek, I'd not only turn the
  other, but I'd ask pardon for
  provoking it.... I'm an angel!"

  (Later on in _Wuthering Heights_
  Charlotte Bronte, temporarily
  neglecting her use of Method I.,
  interchange of the sexes, in
  this connection, makes
  Heathcliffe say to Catherine:--

  "Why did you betray your own
  heart, Cathy?... You loved me,
  then what _right_ had you to
  leave me?... Because misery and
  degradation and death and
  nothing that God or Satan could
  inflict would have parted us,
  _you_ of your own will did it.").

The above parallel descriptions, it will be found, agree practically
word for word. I will now give the substance side by side, and let the
reader keep in mind Charlotte Bronte's Method I., interchange of the
sexes of characters:--

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Jane Eyre._

  Catherine and Heathcliffe love      Jane and Rochester love each
  each other, but Heathcliffe         other, but Jane suddenly
  suddenly disappears.                disappears.

  One evening Heathcliffe as          One evening Jane as suddenly
  suddenly returns. The narrator      returns. The narrator of the
  of the return of the runaway        return of the runaway Jane tells
  Heathcliffe tells us that it is     us that it is evening, and she
  evening, and she is outside the     is outside the house, when in
  house, when in the dim light she    the dim light she distinguishes
  distinguishes the figure of a       the figure of a man, a stranger
  man, a stranger she has not seen    she has not seen for some time.
  for some time. Dusk as it is,       Dusk as it is, she recognizes
  she recognizes Heathcliffe.         Rochester.

  In his countenance, however,        In his countenance, however,
  there is "a transformation, ...     there is "a change--that looked
  a half-civilized ferocity lurked    desperate and brooding--that
  yet in his eyes full of black       reminded ... of ... some
  fire, but was subdued."             fettered wild beast ...
                                      dangerous to approach in his
                                      sullen woe."

  "What! you come back? Is it         "Is it really you, Miss, come at
  really you?" cries the servant,     this late hour?" cries the
  "raising her hands, uncertain       servant, "starting as if she had
  whether to regard him as a          seen a ghost," addressing the
  worldly visitor," addressing the    runaway Jane.
  runaway Heathcliffe.

  "I want to have one word with       "... Tell your master a person
  your mistress," says Heathcliffe    wishes to see him," says Jane to
  to the servant. "Go and tell her    the servant.
  some person ... desires to see
  her."

  But there is a difficulty, and      But there is a difficulty, and
  eventually, to accomplish the       eventually, to accomplish the
  meeting of the parted lovers,       meeting of the parted lovers,
  the taking in of the candles is     the taking in of the candles is
  considered as a pretext.            considered as a pretext.

  Catherine cries:--"Heathcliffe's    Rochester cries:--"... What
  come back--he is.... I'm afraid     sweet delusion has come over me?
  the joy is too great to be          What sweet madness has seized
  real!"                              me?"

  "I shall think it a dream           "I am come back to you," says
  to-morrow. I shall not be able      Jane.
  to believe I have seen and
  touched and spoken to you once      "I have touched you, heard
  more," says Catherine to            you.... To-morrow I fear I shall
  Heathcliffe. And reproachfully      find [you] no more," says
  he exclaims:--                      Rochester to Jane. And
                                      reproachfully he exclaims:--
  "I've fought through a bitter
  life since last I heard your        "Who can tell what a dark,
  voice, and you must forgive me,     hopeless life I have dragged on
  for I struggled only for you."      for months past? ... feeling ...
                                      but ... a ceaseless sorrow and
  "Cruel Heathcliffe, you don't       ... a very delirium of desire to
  deserve this welcome," says         behold my Jane again. Yes; for
  Catherine; "to be absent ... and    her restoration I longed....
  never think of me."                 Cruel, cruel, deserter! O Jane,
                                      what did I feel when I
                                      discovered you had fled from
                                      Thornfield?" says Rochester.

  Catherine had risen in angry        Rochester had risen in angry
  rebellion against God because of    rebellion against God because of
  the cruel fate that had divided     the cruel fate that had divided
  her and Heathcliffe; but now        him and Jane, but now that she
  that he was restored to her, she    was restored to him, he was
  was reconciled, and was thankful    reconciled, and was thankful of
  of heart.                           heart.

          --------                            --------

  And thus, from the rainy day        And thus, from the rainy day
  incident in Catherine's early       incident in Jane's early
  childhood to the reconciliation     childhood to the reconciliation
  of Catherine and Heathcliffe, we    of Jane and Rochester, we have
  have the main narrative of the      the main narrative of the
  heroine and hero of _Wuthering      heroine and hero of _Jane Eyre_,
  Heights_, obviously written by      obviously written by Charlotte
  Charlotte Bronte from facts in      Bronte from facts in her own
  her own life.                       life.

The absolute dependence of Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane
Eyre_, and _Villette_ upon her own inner life in relation to M. Heger is
proved by the evidence in the chapter on "The Rivers Family," in the
chapters on "Eugene Sue and Charlotte Bronte's Brussels Life," and in
those entitled "The Recoil."




CHAPTER XII.

EUGENE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S BRUSSELS LIFE.


I.

MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT "CATHERINE BELL THE ORPHAN."

When Mrs. Gaskell published her Bronte biography it was discovered that
while she had been enabled by aid of the mass of commonplace Bronte
correspondence to present an interesting picture of the domestic
conditions at the Haworth parsonage, she had yet been unable to throw
any light upon that episode in Charlotte Bronte's life which, it had
been suspected, was responsible for the extraordinary love passages in
the Bronte works and Miss Bronte's insistence in choosing the hero of
each of her books from the same model.

It is therefore most miraculous and sensational that after having found
Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ was the key to _Wuthering Heights_ and
_Jane Eyre_, I should further come to discover, what the world had
thought would never be found: external evidence throwing light upon Miss
Bronte's real relations with the Hegers at Brussels, to whose
_pensionnat_ she went in the 'forties. This discovery was the subject of
my article "The Lifting of the Bronte Veil" Mr. W. L. Courtney
commissioned me to write in the _Fortnightly Review_. Therein I showed
Eugene Sue had presented the whole history of M. Heger's passion for
Charlotte Bronte, and Madame Heger's jealousy, in a work entitled _Miss
Mary ou l'Institutrice_, published in 1850-51--seven years before the
publication of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, and before the publication of
either _The Professor_ or _Villette_; and we saw that M. Heger knew all
Miss Bronte's literary secrets in 1850.

Skilfully enough Eugene Sue in this story--the first version of which
was issued serially in September 1850, from _The Weekly Times_ Office,
London, whence were published many of M. Sue's serials;[56] the second,
an abridged and altered version for French readers, published in Paris
in March 1851--gave two phases of Charlotte Bronte, something after the
method we see Miss Bronte herself employed in _Jane Eyre_, wherein she
gave two phases of Tabitha Aykroyd, one in the beginning as Bessie,
another later on as Hannah of the Rivers family.[57]

Indeed it will be found that in this work Eugene Sue also imitated
Charlotte Bronte's Method I., interchange of the sexes of characters
portrayed from life.

The two phases of Miss Bronte in this romance are Miss Mary Lawson, an
Irish governess at the de Morville establishment; and Mademoiselle
Lagrange, a former governess at the same house. The Mademoiselle
Lagrange is, however, always referred to in the abstract, and serves to
illustrate, it appears, Miss Bronte before her first departure from and
return to Brussels, as well as after, for she was twice at the Hegers.
And it may be observed that Charlotte Bronte was called "Mademoiselle
Charlotte" at the Heger _pension_ when she was governess there in 1843.
Certainly the choice of Lagrange for Miss Bronte was pertinent: _la
grange_ is French for "the barn," and may have been suggested by the
Eyre of _Jane Eyre_, which to a French ear would recall _aire_--a barn
floor. Mdlle. Lagrange who had left the de Morville (_Anglice_, Morton.
As we have seen, Morton of _Jane Eyre_ was Haworth to Charlotte Bronte)
establishment on account of the jealousy of Madame de Morville, whom I
identify as Madame Heger, is a plain-featured literary aspirant, and she
writes a manuscript entitled not exactly Currer Bell, but "Kitty Bell,
the Orphan."

This manuscript has been sent by the author for an opinion of its merits
to M. de Morville, who reads it aloud to his family. It is a parody, as
it were, of _Jane Eyre_, with an imitation of Charlotte Bronte's methods
of introducing private biographical facts. For instance, in presenting
the Lowood school incidents it calls the school "the Kendall Institute,"
named after "a Mr. Kendall, its founder." Evidently the writer had
heard, as only few indeed had at this early day, that the Lowood school
of _Jane Eyre_ was afterwards removed to Casterton in the Union of
Kendal, or had heard that in a wise it was connected with a place of
that name.

Other extraordinary facts with which he shows acquaintance are, that
Charlotte Bronte had a sister Elizabeth at this school; that Helen Burns
was her sister; that there was a West Indian girl at the school; that
Charlotte Bronte was born on or about the 21st of April; that she might
be called Kitty (Currer) Bell at home, but she must be called Catherine
(Catherine Earnshaw); that Miss Bronte was the governess-daughter of an
Irishman; that the original of John Reed was her brother and was no
hero, and had shown strange signs of insanity during the last year or
two, as it is now known he had at the time; that a female relative had
provided Miss Bronte the money for the _pensionnat_; that skin disorders
as well as the typhus fever were prevalent at the Clergy Daughters'
School (it is in a private letter that Miss Bronte referred to scrofula
at this school); that the original of Mr. Rochester was a foreigner and
a resident abroad, an ex-soldier, and married to a lady who was not
pretty, albeit "la vivacite, l'agrement de sa physionomie expressive,
suppleaient a la beaute qui lui manquait"; that Charlotte Bronte had had
in her possession since her childhood an old copy in English of _The
Imitation of Christ_; that Miss Bronte was called a _bas bleu_ at the
_pensionnat_; that to form an opinion of her character by Madame Heger's
estimate of her disposition would be completely erroneous; that M. Heger
was accustomed to read _feuilletons_ aloud; that religious differences
existed between her and others at the establishment where Charlotte
Bronte was; that Catherine's (Catherine Earnshaw's) rival was Isabella
(Heathcliffe's wife--Madame Heger of the Rue d'Isabelle); that Miss
Bronte travelled alone to Brussels and was accosted by _deux jeunes
gens_--compare the opening chapters of _Miss Mary_ with Lucy Snowe's
arrival at Villette, evidently in some wise founded on fact, as to these
two young men. See also _The Professor_, Chapter VII.

But to return to "Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript," the pseudo _Jane Eyre_,
which of course at once identifies its author, Mdlle. Lagrange, as
Charlotte Bronte, I find therein the whole Lowood school incidents--the
typhus fever, the hair-cutting incident, the death of the consumptive
Helen Burns, etc., amplified with biographical additions. For instance,
take the hair-cutting incident of _Jane Eyre_ as represented in
"Lagrange's Manuscript"--

    The master called out:--

    "Elizabeth----"

    ... Meanwhile all the Elizabeths in the school must have felt the
    claws of the tiger in their necks, for who could tell which of them
    it was?...

    "Superintendent of the Kendall Institute! you are aware, madam, one
    of the rules of this establishment enjoins you to cut short the
    hair of every new girl.... And yet what do I see? Six girls with
    long hair...."

    The last of these had not been a week at the institution. She was a
    girl of fourteen, very dark, ... with a fine tinge of the Creole in
    her face. How well I thought did Isabella Hutchinson, with her
    dark, West Indian head, look by the side of the fair Yorkshire
    girl, Sophia Leigh, whose pale, straw-coloured locks, looked paler
    still by the side of that dark heap of hair, blacker than a raven's
    wing...[!]

We have seen in the chapter on "The Rivers or Bronte Family in _Jane
Eyre_" that Charlotte Bronte portrayed in the character Julia Severn,
who is first mentioned in connection with the hair-cutting incident, her
sister Elizabeth, and it is most significant that M. Sue made play upon
the name Elizabeth in the connection. In regard to the mention of a West
Indian girl at the Lowood school and her being coupled with a
fair-haired Yorkshire girl, it is important to note that no reference is
made in _Jane Eyre_ to a West Indian girl at this school. It is indeed
astonishing how much M. Sue knew of Charlotte Bronte's private life.
Here we find him telling the world in 1850 of a West Indian girl being
with Charlotte Bronte at the Clergy Daughters' School, and not till
seven years later did Mrs. Gaskell learn of the Rev. Patrick
Bronte--Charlotte Bronte was then dead--that a girl from the West Indies
had been Charlotte's friend at this school. Her name, he thought, was
Mellany Hane, so far as he could remember to pronounce it. Mysteriously
enough, the words "West Indies" or "West Indian" in this connection have
been deleted from the later editions of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of
Charlotte Bronte_. See the Second Edition.

"Lagrange's Manuscript" is of considerable length and interest, and can
be drawn upon in future editions of _The Key to the Bronte Works_.
Frequently it follows in parallel to _Jane Eyre_, but as parody
interspersed with biographical details which must have been intended
chiefly for Charlotte Bronte herself, as scarcely any one else could at
that day have understood the pertinence of the references.[58] Take a
Helen Burns incident whereby M. Sue shows he is aware she was a Bronte
sister, older than Charlotte--Maria Bronte who died of consumption:--

    But the inexorable hand ... was upon Agnes Jones [Helen Burns].
    Day by day I saw her pretty cheeks growing thinner and thinner,
    her eyes sinking still more deeply into her head, her little mouth
    becoming more blue and ashy, her long, thin fingers more
    transparent. Her voice, at all times so meek and low, dwindled
    away to that thin and tiny sound to which we listen as to
    something absent--already gone--something that comes from above or
    below us--that is not living amongst us--not breathing as we
    breathe--a retreating echo, rather than a living voice--a sigh,
    and not a sound.... It was not much I had learned from Agnes
    [Helen] since I had been at the institution; but never till then
    had I known her spirit so genial, her heart so lovingly
    persuasive; the beneficent lessons of those days, burning like
    candles within me, have since guided me well through life: _she
    spoke to me like a prophet, and I listened to her like a
    believer_. Oh, I could have lived for ever in that chamber, and
    Agnes [Helen] might have been to me the world! How often, as our
    cheeks lay against each other have I wished that I, too, had been
    ill, so that I also might have died, as she was dying, in my
    innocence!... One evening, ... just at that pleasant hour of
    twilight when two of God's wonders--night and day--cross each
    other like ships on the sea, Agnes [Helen] said:--'Life has its
    holiness as well as death, Catherine [Jane]; and you may live in
    the world as purely and justly as those who die in the cradle.'

    "The world is full of temptation?"

    "So it is, but there lies the merit, my dear; wrestle with
    temptation and do what is right, ... you must not allow my death
    to afflict you much, since I rejoice at it.... If you think of me,
    think of me living, not dead. Think of your playfellow in the
    garden; think of your elder sister who lived with you for six
    years."

Maria Bronte, Charlotte's eldest sister, and the original of Helen
Burns, died when Charlotte was eight or nine. It is sensational indeed,
that M. Sue thus identified Helen Burns seven years before the
publication of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. The death of
this character in "Lagrange's Manuscript" is in perfect agreement with
that of Helen Burns. I will place the two side by side:--

  _Jane Eyre._                        "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

  Chapter IX.                         By the Mademoiselle Lagrange, of
                                      Eugene Sue's _Miss Mary ou
  By Currer Bell.                     L'Institutrice_.

  The death of Helen Burns.           The death of Agnes Jones.

  That forest dell, where Lowood      The Master of the Kendall
  lay, was the cradle of ...          Institution ... had ... been
  fog-bred pestilence, which ...      very much shocked by the ravages
  crept into the Orphan Asylum,       of typhus fever, and since the
  breathed typhus through [it] ...    reports of Agnes's health had
  and transformed the seminary        become serious, had sent several
  into a hospital.... One evening     times to ascertain how she
  ... Mr. Bates came out, and ...     was.... "Miss Bell, I am come to
  a nurse.... I ran up to her.        inquire after our friend, Miss
                                      Jones."
  "How is Helen Burns?"
                                      "... Agnes is always calm and
  "Very poorly," was the              easy-minded.... This is very
  answer.... Two hours later ... I    kind of you."
  reached ... Miss Temple's room,
  ... I looked in. My eye sought      ... As I was preparing to lie
  Helen, and feared to find           down in the room, Agnes called
  death.... "Helen!" I whispered      to me:--
  softly; "are you awake?"
                                      "Catherine, my dear, I feel
  ... I got on to her crib and        rather cold to-night; will you
  kissed her: her forehead was        sleep with me?"
  cold, and her cheek both cold
  and thin, and so were her hand      Of course I complied, and we lay
  and wrist, but she smiled as of     talking in each other's arms
  old.                                until the sweet dove fell
                                      asleep. Poor Agnes, she was
  "Jane, ... lie down and cover       indeed cold; a strange chill
  yourself with the quilt."           came through me as I lay by her
                                      side.... I still heard my sister
  I did so: she put her arm over      orphan breathe and pant.... Why
  me, and I nestled close to her.     did I listen ... so greedily?
                                      Why--when the poor thing turned
  ... I clasped my arms closer        round once in the night, and
  round Helen; she seemed dearer      said: "Another kiss,
  to me than ever; I felt as if I     Catherine!"--why did I feel in
  could not let her go; I lay with    giving it her, as if a hundred
  my face hidden on her neck.         steel arrows had gone through my
  Presently she said:--"... Don't     heart? How long I lay awake and
  leave me, Jane; I like to have      thinking--wondering at the cold
  you near me."                       emerging from the pure body at
                                      my side, I know not! I must have
  "I'll stay with you, _dear_         slept, too; for I remember
  Helen; no one shall take me         opening my eyes with the first
  away."... She kissed me, and I      dawn, before the bells rang.
  her; and we soon slumbered. When
  I awoke it was day; an unusual      "Agnes!" said I, softly; "are
  movement roused me.                 you awake?"

  A day or two afterwards, I          But there was no answer!... I
  learned that Miss Temple, on        called again--then a third, and
  returning to her own room at        a fourth time! But still ... no
  dawn, had found me laid in a        reply! Wondering at this
  little crib; my face against        silence, ... I listened for that
  Helen Burn's shoulder, my arms      hard breathing I knew so well.
  round her neck. I was asleep,       But nothing--not a sound could I
  and Helen was--dead.                hear! Alarmed, but unwilling to
                                      trust my fears, I felt for her
                                      hand. Oh, God! it was cold as
                                      ice, and rigid as stone! Wild
                                      with affright, ... I started up
                                      ... and rushed out to call the
                                      Superintendent [Miss Temple]. I
                                      found her preparing to come to
                                      us.... When we entered the
                                      chamber, we found no Agnes
                                      there! No; her spirit had fled,
                                      and all we saw was the lifeless
                                      body of a poor houseless girl.

Another biographical passage occurs where Catherine Bell first sees the
Miss Temple of "Lagrange's Manuscript," who herself, under the name of
Ashton (Eshton),[59] is at times Miss Bronte, who took the name of the
original of Miss Temple (Evans) for herself in the phase of Frances
Evans Henri in _The Professor_, a work not published, we must note, till
after Charlotte Bronte's death:--

    "I love you, madam," I said.

    "Your name, I believe, is Catherine Bell, is it not?"

    "Kitty Bell, if you please, madam," I answered.

    "Kitty Bell at home, my dear, but here we must call you Catherine;
    for a school, you know, is where many forms must be observed. How
    old are you?"

    "I shall be ten next birthday, madam."

    "And when will that be?"

    "On the 23rd of April."

    "Shakespeare's Day, I declare!"

The above is, of course, not in _Jane Eyre_. There is a stroke of
sarcasm in the last sentence. It would appear that Currer Bell playfully
had moved her birthday forward two days, in her private conversation
with one from whom M. Sue had gleaned information--and this could be
only M. Heger himself. Charlotte Bronte, as Lucy Snowe, in _Villette_,
Chapter XLI., tells us that M. Paul Emanuel (M. Heger) said:--

"I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I _could_ keep a secret. How often
has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution!
How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the
secret of Polichinelle!" And this had doubtless a reference to some such
indiscretions as resulted in M. Sue whilst at Brussels (and he was
publishing _L'Orgueil_ from Brussels in 1844, in the January of which
year Charlotte Bronte arrived home from the Belgian capital), learning
the literary secrets of _Jane Eyre_, and perhaps _Wuthering Heights_.

A further reference to Currer Bell's literary aspirations--in the spirit
of Mdlle. Reuter's sneers, in _The Professor_, at Mdlle. Henri's
literary ambition--occurs in M. Sue's _feuilleton_ in another version of
the fortune-telling incident of _Jane Eyre_:--

    "Here," said I, to a brown, sunburnt damsel, ... "take this
    shilling and tell me when I shall be Empress of Morocco?"

    I held out my hand.... The young girl looked at it, ... then shook
    her head doubtfully:--

    "Your life, lady, will be a troubled one--full of hopes and
    fears!"

    "So I suppose; most people's lives are pretty well divided in this
    manner."

    "But not so much as yours will be.... First, you are without
    father or mother?... Without fortune, too?"

    "True, what more?"

    "You will be married and not married."

    "That's impossible. What can you mean by married and not married?"

    "That deserves another shilling!"

    "No; I only want a shillingsworth, ... that will do for to-day."

"Mdlle. Lagrange's Manuscript" was bound in blue morocco leather, and
the term "Empress of Morocco" may have a reference to a literary
ambition, as has the "Shakspeare's Day, I declare!" passage.

For constructive purposes the West Indian girl, or Creole, in
"Lagrange's Manuscript," is made to take the place of the Mrs. Rochester
of _Jane Eyre_, who is therein represented as a Creole:--

    I did my best [continues Catherine Bell] to make a friend of her,
    but to no purpose. Whatever was the reason she disliked me from
    the first. ["I am convinced she does not like me," wrote Charlotte
    to Emily of Madame Heger.] I felt intuitively she was my enemy....
    Had we been thrown together when I was a child [!] I should
    probably have suited her ... for at that time I was a little given
    to flattery myself. But that was before I had learned how many
    better things there are than mere beauty.... Perhaps ... I
    preferred more solid advantages, because my vanity assured me that
    I had them myself, whilst my personal appearance was insignificant
    compared with hers. I was certainly fond of talking of what I
    knew, which answered very well with those who knew as much, and
    was rather pleasing to those who knew more. [M. Heger seems to
    have found pleasure in his intellectual talks with Currer Bell],
    but to Isabella [this, as I have said, is the name of Catherine's
    rival in _Wuthering Heights_, who was married to Heathcliffe] it
    was hateful. She imagined I wanted to expose her ignorance.

I have given some of the biographical facts respecting Miss Bronte
embodied in Mdlle. Lagrange's story, and before closing this chapter
dealing with that extraordinary manuscript I will print a further
extract or so from it. The opening is as follows:--

  "KITTY BELL, THE ORPHAN."

    I was not above four years old when my mother died, my father
    having gone to his grave two years before.... Oh, it is a sad, sad
    thing to be an orphan!... My little head has been cut with more
    than one fall, and blood has flowed down my neck. But nobody
    cared.... It was only Kitty Bell.... There was no loving heart to
    take me to itself and soothe me.... I had been taken home by some
    relation of my mother, ... a widow [Mrs. Burke], and though she
    treated me with great rigour, she melted on her death-bed.

She is locked in the room wherein Mrs. Burke died, after the manner of
the same incident in _Jane Eyre_, and the writer takes an opportunity of
inserting the most distinctive feature of _Jane Eyre_, the light-bearing
apparition, the original of which I have shown Charlotte Bronte found in
Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_:--

    Suddenly there came a gleam of light through the key-hole, ... and
    now I could hear a short, heavy tread upon the stairs--it was
    coming up.... The gleam shot through the key-hole a third time,
    with treble radiance. But what had I seen?... Was it a vision? was
    it a ghost? It was a tall figure in white, like a winding sheet,
    with a hideous face and balls of gleaming fire where the eyes
    should be. The sight had stunned and levelled me almost like a
    blow on the temple.... I cannot say how long I continued in this
    swoon, but when I began to recover myself I was in my own bed.

She had received medical treatment, she learns as did Jane Eyre in the
similar incident. The "ghost," however, had been only George Burke--the
John Reed of _Jane Eyre_. Hence the choice of the name Burke by reason
of its connection with the Hare of the Burke and Hare association, the
writer by this choice showing his acquaintance with the fact that in
real life the Reeds and Jane Eyre were relations. After this incident
the story is for a while occupied with the petty happenings connected
with this orphan who "was not yet nine years old." An aunt of the Burkes
[? Aunt Branwell] comes to live with them, a "poor, quiet, elderly
spinster who paid a small stipend in order to preserve her independence
and keep up her dignity.... I must not attempt to describe her ... she
was fully six feet high." This is palpably antithetical: Miss Branwell
was not tall. And it is this aunt who provides the money for Catherine
Bell to go to school. Under the guise of presenting the Lowood school in
"Lagrange's Manuscript," M. Sue gives us often the Heger _pensionnat_.
Aunt Branwell provided Charlotte Bronte the money that enabled her to go
to the Hegers'.

I will give in parallel columns the arrival of Charlotte Bronte at the
Clergy Daughters' Institute as it is described in "Mademoiselle
Lagrange's Manuscript," and in _Jane Eyre_ the original:--

  _Jane Eyre._                        "Kitty Bell, the Orphan."

                                      By the Mademoiselle Lagrange,
  By Currer Bell.                     of Eugene Sue's _Miss Mary ou
                                      L'Institutrice_.

  The first days at the               The first days at the
  Institution.                        Institution.

  The coach door was open and ...     We got to Kendall House.... I
  a servant was standing at it: I     had been sitting near my trunk
  saw her ... by the light of the     on the outside of the coach, and
  lamps.                              my legs were numb with cold. I
                                      was quite unable to move, so the
  "Is there a little girl called      coachman lifted me down along
  Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I       with my box. The door was open
  answered "Yes," and was lifted      when the coach stopped; a
  out, my trunk was handed down.      servant was standing there with
                                      a lamp. "Are you Catherine Bell
                                      we expects down here to-day?"
                                      she asked me.

                                      "My name is Kitty Bell, if you
                                      please," replied I.

  The servant led me ... into a       The girl returned no answer, but
  room, with a fire, where she        having ushered me into a
  left me alone.... I stood and       spacious room with a fire in it,
  warmed my numbed fingers over       she left me there by myself; ...
  the blaze; ... there was no         there was no candle. I stood ...
  candle.                             warming my numb hands and limbs.
                                      I heard the door open ... and I
  The door opened, and an             saw a face ... I never can
  individual entered, ... a tall      forget. My heart told me
  lady with dark hair, dark eyes,     directly it was Miss Ashton
  and a pale and large forehead       [Eshton]. Dear, noble girl! her
  [Miss Temple. Her real name was     face was rather large, but
  Miss Evans], her countenance was    accurately oval--just as you see
  grave, her bearing erect.           them in the fine sacred pictures
                                      of Murillo--those pictures of
                                      grand female beauty.

  She considered me attentively       Everything in that face was
  for a minute or two.                great, open, frank, truthlike,
                                      ... and yet there was a grave
  ... "Are you tired?" she asked,     ... melancholy overspreading
  placing her hand on my shoulder.    that regal countenance.... It
                                      was singular to see a woman
  ... "A little, ma'am."              acting as the manager of a
                                      benevolent institution and
                                      living apart from the world who
                                      might have shone in any court in
                                      Europe and ... perhaps had no
                                      equal on any throne ... [!] She
                                      advanced towards me stately, but
                                      kindly, touched my cheek with
                                      her finger, and then seeing me
                                      smile, she smiled in return,
                                      and, after scanning my features
                                      a moment, she lifted me up and
                                      kissed me.

                                      "I love you, madam," I said.
                                      Then she set me down ... and,
                                      putting her hand upon my head,
                                      she asked me:--

                                      "Your name is Catherine Bell, is
                                      it not?"... [Here follows the
                                      "Shakespeare's Day" reference I
                                      have already given.]

  I have not ... alluded to the       I had been at the Kendall
  visits of Mr. Brocklehurst [Rev.    Institute about three weeks
  Mr. Carus Wilson]; his absence      without seeing Mr. King [Mr.
  was a relief to me.... One          Brocklehurst] the master or
  afternoon (I had ... been three     registrar.... One morning when I
  weeks at Lowood) ... I              woke up I heard the bells in the
  recognized almost instinctively     dormitories ringing louder than
  that gaunt outline, ... it was      ever....
  Mr. Brocklehurst.
                                      I knew without being told this
  After some lines we have the        strange man was Mr. King.
  hair-cutting incident I have
  quoted already from "Lagrange's     "Catherine Bell!" called out
  Manuscript." This incident comes    Miss Ashton.
  after and not before Catherine
  (Jane) has been commanded to
  stand before the class.

                                      On hearing my name I left my
                                      place in the rank, and
                                      advanced....

                                      "So! this is Catherine Bell, is
                                      it?" cried Mr. King. "I have
                                      heard her kind friends at home
                                      speak of Catherine Bell, and
  ... "Fetch that stool," said Mr.    they tell me she is a naughty,
  Brocklehurst.... "Place the         vicious, headstrong child--very
  child upon it."                     ungrateful to those for whose
                                      generosity she ought to have so
  And I was placed there.             much respect and gratitude! Is
                                      this true, Catherine Bell?"
  "Miss Temple, ... children, it
  becomes my duty to warn you that    "No, sir; not a word of it."
  this girl ... is a little
  castaway, ... this girl is--a       "What, child!... Are you a
  liar!... Let her stand ... on       little liar as well as an
  that stool."                        ingrate? Stand here!"

  What my sensations were no          The passions and feelings of a
  language can describe.... I         child are only known to
  mastered the rising hysteria ...    children. Grown-up people seem
  and took a firm stand on the        to have forgotten them.[60] I
  stool.                              stood there with cheeks burning
                                      with shame, indignation, and
                                      anger.... My pride had been
                                      savagely assailed. I did not
                                      want pity. I wanted ... a
                                      refutation of the cruel charge;
                                      I was not a liar; and those who
                                      taxed me with ingratitude had no
                                      gratitude to claim from me.
                                      Great God! what emotions there
                                      were raging in my breast! and
                                      how my little heart did swell!

Often Mdlle. Lagrange's "Kitty Bell the Orphan" is mysterious in its
allusions. As when Catherine Bell says she does not like a French lady
teacher. The seed-cake incident of Chapter VIII. of _Jane Eyre_, which
is given at length in "Lagrange's Manuscript," is herewith worked in
again:--

    "I don't like Madame Dubois...."

    "Why so? she is a very good sort of a woman."

    "That may be, but she takes snuff...."

    "What is that to you or me, Catherine Bell? Surely it is no
    business of ours?"

    "Sometimes it is, though.... I gave her a slice of my seed-cake
    yesterday, and she returned me half of it."

    "That showed a good disposition in poor Madame Dubois; did it
    not?"

    "Yes; but when I was going to eat it myself I was seized with a
    fit of sneezing, which I shall not forget in a hurry, I promise
    you!"

    "You took snuff then, Catherine Bell, for the first time in your
    life?"

    "ALL IN--ALL IN--FOR SCHOOL!" shouted the teachers and examples
    that moment.

The following is an extract dealing with the fever scenes of _Jane
Eyre_:--

    Fever and consumption had fixed their abode under the large roof
    of Kendall Institution, death was stealing along with its soft,
    wolf-like tread, to feed upon these poor children. The first
    symptoms I remember that startled me were certain cold shiverings
    and sudden fits of perspiration without warmth, which seized upon
    the younger children. Then sickness and nausea, followed
    immediately by vomiting. [M. Sue had been a surgeon.] ... Oh, how
    cruel, how bitter it was to us when we saw the first little coffin
    borne out of the school!... And now we began to hear, for the
    first time, the dismal word _typhus_ uttered here and there in
    whispers through the school.... When we went to the church on
    Sundays, and saw the many little mounds of fresh black earth lying
    over our innocent playmates of yesterday, our heads sank upon our
    bosoms and we wept most sorrowfully.

Faithful to its model, "Lagrange's Manuscript" brings Isabella the
Creole as the rival of Catherine Bell, and thus of the Creole's husband
Catherine writes:--

    Unwittingly, and quite unknown to myself, I became the object of
    his admiration--nay, of his marked preference; but I rejected
    indignantly the homage of an affection which he had sworn to
    another, and which it was his sacred duty to preserve
    undefiled.... In the hope of overcoming my persistency in refusing
    his so often proffered and as often rejected love, he urged on by
    every imaginable means the final decision, which in the eyes of
    man were to permit a second marriage, guilty in the sight of God.
    With the natural instinct of divination peculiar to female
    jealousy, his wife had guessed who was the deity at whose altar
    the captain was burning his incense.... Nor did she consider
    whether I encouraged or rebuked him. She suspected, she spied, she
    believed, and unscrupulously involved me in the hateful vengeance
    she swore to take both on her husband and myself.

For a portrait of Mdlle. Lagrange who, as the author of this version of
_Jane Eyre_, is of course meant for Charlotte Bronte, we turn to the
_feuilleton_ itself:--

    Meanwhile we have lost sight of our blue-stocking friend, Mdlle.
    Lagrange ['Madame herself deemed me a regular _bas bleu_,' says
    Lucy Snowe of Madame Beck (Madame Heger) in _Villette_] ... her
    character ... remains to be described. Now, to form any opinion of
    it by Madame de Morville's [Madame Heger's] appreciation of that
    girl's disposition, would be completely erroneous. Lagrange was
    not devoid of intellectual faculties; she possessed an imaginative
    mind, rather too fond of romance, and too little of practical
    truths; but, above all, cunning and ambition formed the main basis
    of her character: she had risen from nothing, and _would_ become
    something. Imbued as she was with the ideas prevalent among the
    lower rank [Had Charlotte Bronte related her father's history to
    the Hegers? She had 'views' on money. M. Sue, however, never seems
    to have forgotten the rank of his own god-parents], she deemed it
    her right and duty to concentrate all the power of her faculties
    towards the end she sighed for--wealth and a name. Thus it was she
    displayed all the resources of her subtle nature to make every
    circumstance serve to the gratifying of her ambition. What, then,
    was to be her means of success? Marriage?--yes, that perpetual
    dream of maidens, and a dream which too often ends in an
    everlasting nightmare. But the task was not easy, for, it has been
    said, beauty had been forgotten by Dame Nature among the few gifts
    she had granted her.[61] What the appearance failed in, the mind
    should, at any cost, supply [!]. This had become her ruling
    desire. Thence the manuscript ['Catherine Bell, The Orphan'] we
    have already read had been the first ponderous lucubration of her
    fortune-seeking imagination: she had been praised for this first
    attempt by her friends, and also by one two distinguished
    critics.[62] This was already a point gained, and an encouragement
    to her literary propensities.

Thus far the Mdlle. Lagrange phase of Currer Bell according to Eugene
Sue, and before the publication of _The Professor_, _Villette_, and Mrs.
Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. The next chapter shall deal with
Eugene Sue's relation of her as "Miss Mary," the leading character of
this extraordinary _feuilleton_, whereby it will be proved finally that
in her works Charlotte Bronte has written from her own life-story.




CHAPTER XIII.

EUGENE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S BRUSSELS LIFE.


II.

ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS!

I have said Eugene Sue, in _Miss Mary ou l'Institutrice_, gave two
phases of Charlotte Bronte. With the one as Mdlle. Lagrange I dealt in
the preceding chapter, and now I write concerning that wherein Miss
Bronte is openly represented as the Irish governess at the de Morville
establishment.[63] Easy it is to recognize this character is a phase of
Charlotte Bronte, but as her pupil Alphonsine puts it plainly in
describing her, she is "Mdlle. Lagrange, avec la beaute de
plus"--Charlotte Bronte, with beauty and virtues exaggerated. The
following incident I find only in the _feuilleton_ (not the extant
volume), the which circumstances support as history concerning the days
of Miss Bronte's dejection at the Brussels _pensionnat_. It should be
read in the light of the lines in Chapter XIX. of _The Professor_, where
she, as Frances Evans Henri, tells Crimsworth, obviously M. Heger, that
he remarked her _devoirs_ dwelt a great deal on fortitude in bearing
grief. In the evening Alphonsine, M. de Morville's daughter, who says
many things we know must have issued from M. Heger's lips--(this is in
palpable imitation of Charlotte Bronte's Method I., interchange of the
sexes of characters portrayed from life. For further use of this method
see also the close of Chapter XII. and elsewhere in _The Professor_, and
my writing on _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_)--pays a visit to the
chamber of the Irish governess:--

    "Were you not reading?... I see a book on your work-table. May I
    look?... _The Imitation of Christ!_" exclaimed Alphonsine, after
    having read the title-page. "Oh! this is a beautiful book, is it
    not?"

    "Truly beautiful!" answered Mary; "the cover is old, the pages
    worn out in many places. You must not wonder at it: from the age I
    began to read, I don't think I ever passed three nights without
    reading at least one chapter of this admirable work."

_The Imitation of Christ_ in English was a book Charlotte Bronte was
setting much store upon when she was but nine years of age.[64] Her copy
was then an old one. Evidently she took the book with her to Brussels
and read it at the _pensionnat_. It would seem M. Heger, whom she
instructed in English, requested to hear the work in this English
translation:--

    "Pray what chapter were you reading?" continues Alphonsine. "I
    should so much like to hear you read it to me: I have occasionally
    read a page of _The Imitation_, but always in French; now, if you
    would be so good as to read slowly and pronounce very distinctly,
    I think I could understand this pious work in your language."

She read:--

    "THE NECESSITY OF HUMBLE SUBMISSION.

    "Let your conscience be pure, and surely God will know how to
    defend you.... Learn to suffer in silence, without repining, and
    you will ... receive assistance from Him."

    "What a truthful, becalming lesson!" observed Alphonsine; "you
    will read to me every evening some passage of your _Imitation_,
    will you not? English sounds so sweetly to my ear when spoken by
    you. We will begin to-morrow evening, n'est ce pas?"

Surely this is M. Heger and his sympathetic, depressed English teacher.

There is in the opening chapter of _Miss Mary_ a long conversation
regarding the departed governess Lagrange, and Madame de Morville
(Madame Heger) avows she had been jealous of her, and that her harshness
towards the governess had resulted in her abruptly leaving on a false
plea of ill-health. Thus she says to M. de Morville:--

    "I am speaking seriously to you of my foolish but most acute
    sufferings ... tandis que tu restais seul ici avec tes livres. You
    never suspected them;... I endeavoured to suppress them, to
    suffer no part of what I felt to transpire; for I must confess
    poor Lagrange was quite the lamb du bon Dieu, yet in spite of
    myself I sometimes broke out into fits of petulance and absurd
    irony, which wounded her. I saw it did by the sudden dejection of
    that excellent young person. But even this was not all."

    "Louise! is it you who speaks thus? You whose kind, benevolent
    heart I have so often admired."

    "Would you that I should avow something worse to you? What made me
    tolerate that poor Lagrange is that she was as ugly as the seven
    cardinal sins.... In fine, I cannot conceal from myself that the
    result of all this was that Mdlle. Lagrange gave up her situation
    on the plea of ill-health. ["Ah! she was not dismissed," said
    Mdlle. Reuter (Madame Heger) in _The Professor_, Chapter XVIII.,
    when the Professor asked whether Mdlle. Frances Henri[65] (Miss
    Bronte) had left voluntarily. "... No need to have recourse to
    such extreme measures, I assure you."] Enfin, it faut bien me
    l'avouer, le resultat de tout ceci a ete que Mademoiselle Lagrange
    a demande a quitter la maison, sous pretexte de sante; veritable
    pretexte. For the rest I will do myself this justice, I would have
    suffered even to the end rather than have sent back that excellent
    girl."

The Hegers were surprised at Miss Bronte's sudden resolution to leave
them, but she is said to have had her father's failing eyesight as a
reason. "I suffered much before I left Brussels," wrote Charlotte, and
this was in mind, not body.

    "I have long concealed the greater part of these resentful
    sentiments from you," continues Madame de Morville,
    "notwithstanding the implicit trust reposed in you. I wish I alone
    had suffered by them. But no, poor Lagrange doubtless could not
    endure the thousand vexations and spites ('taquineries
    sournoises') to which she was subjected, and was thereby driven
    from our house."

All this should be read as in connection with the departure of Miss
Mary, the other phase of Miss Bronte, towards the end of the book. "I
think, however long I live I shall not forget what the parting with M.
Heger cost me," said Charlotte Bronte.[66]

Here is M. Sue's version:--

    M. de Morville started, then regarding the governess with stupor,
    for he could not believe what he heard, he cried:--

    "Quoi! Miss Mary, vous dites?"

    "I say, monsieur, that I return to England, where I am recalled by
    my family."

The real reason why Miss Bronte left is given in the Lagrange passages
to which I have alluded.

    "Partir! but that is impossible! A departure so brusque, si peu
    attendu!"

    "Pray do not perceive, monsieur," says the Irish governess, "in
    this unlooked for departure any want of regard for you; ... il a
    fallu des raisons graves, very grave, to compel me to such a
    resolution."

    "Partir!" wailed M. de Morville. "What! that this should be the
    last time that I should see you, that I should speak to you! But
    this is not possible! They do not kill a man thus by a single
    blow! For you well know that you kill me! You well know that I
    love you! Oh! do not say you were unaware of my unhappy love," he
    continues, "you know well enough what an irresistible charm has
    drawn me towards you, what happiness I have had to tell you my
    life, my secret thoughts, my wrongs even! A timid reserve followed
    the first entrancement, but it was the struggle of respect, of
    honour against a fatal passion. Ah! the traces of that struggle,
    should they not have been too evident to your eyes! What! have
    not you divined the cause of that sombre discouragement which made
    me seek solitude where I isolated myself from all interests, from
    all affection? And those nights without sleep passed in consuming
    my tears, exaggerating more the consequences of that fatal
    passion!... What! you have divined nothing, read nothing of mes
    traits, in my eyes red with tears and sleeplessness? Mon Dieu! mon
    Dieu! to have suffered so much ... suffered so much, and not to
    have even the consolation of saying: She knows that I have
    suffered."

The reader of _Miss Mary_ will perceive throughout this scene in the
extant and apparently re-written French volume that M. de Morville's
unhappy love was that of an honourable and a loyal-hearted man, while
the governess was also without reproach. (These extracts do not occur in
the _feuilleton_ as published in English.) As he asks:--

    "Is it my fault if in the monotony of my existence est tout a coup
    apparue a person whose talents, education, and character have been
    appreciated by all and by me.... Have I attempted to pervert your
    mind, to seduce your heart? No, no! I have suffered, suffered in
    silence [see my reference to the _Imitation of Christ_], suffered
    alone, suffered always. And my crime, what is it?... It is to make
    to you the avowal of suffering on the day when you go to leave me
    for ever a prey to incurable despair!"

Thus have we real insight into the state of affairs at Brussels when
Miss Bronte left. We see the divining, jealous Madame de
Morville--Madame Heger, of course--subjecting her to the "taquineries
sournoises"; we hear Madame saying of her: "Ce que me faisait tolerer
cette pauvre Mdlle. Lagrange, c'est qu'elle etait laide comme les sept
peches mortels," and sneering at the excuse she made to leave the
establishment, calling it a "veritable pretexte" when the real reason
was Madame's jealousy and its causes. Oh, the bitterness of it! And now
in this light read the carefully worded representation of Mrs Gaskell
that:--

    Towards the end of 1843 various reasons conspired ... to make her
    [Charlotte Bronte] feel that her presence was absolutely and
    imperatively required at home, while she was ... no longer
    regarded with the former kindliness of feeling by Madame Heger. In
    consequence of this state of things working down with a sharp edge
    into a sensitive mind, she suddenly announced to that lady her
    immediate intention of returning to England.

Something of the foregoing I gave in my article "The Lifting of the
Bronte Veil" in _The Fortnightly Review_, and I have to thank the press
generally for their kind acknowledgment of my important discovery. _The
Spectator_, in consonance with others, says:--"Mr. Malham-Dembleby has
found a _feuilleton_ by Eugene Sue which is curious, as it certainly
indicates a knowledge of Charlotte Bronte and of Monsieur and Madame
Heger at Brussels."

In the extant French copy Eugene Sue has given a dramatic version of the
parting scene between "Miss Mary" and "Madame de Morville"--Charlotte
Bronte and Madame Heger. The latter had surprised her husband and the
Irish governess, _tete-a-tete_ in the lonely pavilion, late in the
evening. Monsieur protests:--

    "Madame," he cries, "... I will not permit you, in my presence, to
    dare to calumniate and outrage Mademoiselle Lawson."

    Miss Mary asks him not to defend her, as she does not wish to be a
    cause of irritating discussion between them.

    "That is charming!" cried Madame de Morville, with a burst of
    sardonic laughter--"Grace au bon accord du menage, mademoiselle
    would desire to continue in perfect tranquillity the undignified
    role she has played at my house!"

Her husband protests that she outrages one of the purest characters in
the world, but the governess interrupts by addressing the wife:--

    "Madam, suspicions so odious, so senseless, are unable to wound an
    honourable soul.... I reply nothing to these words, which you will
    soon regret. The two years that I have been here [Charlotte Bronte
    was two years with the Hegers] I have learned to know you, madam;
    and if sometimes I have without complaint [see the Lagrange
    passages] suffered from the vivacite de vos premiers mouvements, I
    have also often been able to appreciate your goodness of heart."

    "Enough, mademoiselle, enough! Believe you that you can dupe me by
    your hypocrisies and base flatteries? Do you think you can impose
    my silence by that pretended resignation?"

So the scene continues until Madame de Morville accuses the other of
wishing to take the affections of her husband. To this, the governess
retorts:--

    "You accuse me, madam, of wishing to win the affections of M. de
    Morville, and of desiring to dominate at your house? Here is my
    reply."

And her reply is that she is returning to England.

    "You go away!" cried Madame de Morville.... "No, no, that is a lie
    or a trick!"... Madame ... fut completement deroutee par
    l'annonce du depart de Miss Mary.

The latter says she profoundly regrets if she had caused "malheurs," for
she had been the involuntary cause.

    "Involuntary or not," cried Madame de Morville, "you are un
    _porte-malheur_, and thus have been two years, since your arrival
    here. I have said it to M. de Morville, who, par prevision without
    doubt, took at once your part against me.... And on whom, then,
    will that responsibility fall!... We were all happy and peaceful
    before your advent here, and to-day, when you go you leave us dans
    le chagrin."

    To which Miss Mary retorts:--

    "Ah! madame, le jour le plus malheureux de ma vie serait celui ou
    je quitterais votre famille avec la douloureuse conviction que mon
    nom y serait maudit."

There were, we see, conflicting views in Brussels social and literary
circles, in the eighteen-forties, as to the degree of intimacy to which
Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger attained. It is when we perceive the
ambiguity of the relations existing between Miss Bronte and the
professor that we recognize the fidelity of Eugene Sue's portrayal of
Currer Bell's Brussels life. Even Charlotte Bronte herself, in
_Villette_, published after M. Sue's story, relates that M. Paul Emanuel
(M. Heger) said to her:--"I call myself your brother. I hardly know what
I am--brother--friend--I cannot tell. I know I think of you--I feel I
wish you well--but I must check myself; you are to be feared. My best
friends point out danger and whisper caution." In Mdlle. Lagrange and
Catherine Bell, Charlotte Bronte figures as represented by those who
said ill of her; as Miss Mary Lawson, the Irish governess, she has
"beauty, youth, and grace," which charms, Jane tells us, she possessed
in Rochester's eyes. Of her, in the phase of Catherine Bell, we have
many insinuations of a detractive character, the keynote to which is
found in the fortune-telling incident, wherein Catherine is foretold she
will be "married and not married"; while in Miss Mary Lawson we have a
portrayal of _un bon ange_[67] of whom Madame de Morville is jealous,
not without reason, though, to use Miss Mary's own words, she had been
"la cause involontaire."

We must, therefore, set it to the credit of Eugene Sue that he placed
two versions in the balance; and his evidence for ever sweeps away the
illogical and unfair contention of some writers on the Brontes, that
Charlotte Bronte may have cared for M. Heger, but that he, in his turn,
had been only "intellectually" interested in her. M. Sue shows the
attitude of M. Heger was ever unequivocal as regards Charlotte Bronte;
whether in her phase as "Lagrange," as "Catherine Bell," or as "Miss
Mary Lawson"--she was loved by him. We now see Morton of _Jane Eyre_ was
Haworth to Charlotte Bronte, and Thornfield, the home of Mr. Rochester,
the Pensionnat Heger. And the flight from temptation at Thornfield and
seeking refuge with the Rivers family were really representative of her
leaving Brussels and returning home to her father and sisters. Obviously
M. Sue wrote his _feuilleton_ to aid, maliciously or not, in breaking
the dangerous friendship between M. Heger and Miss Bronte. Charlotte
Bronte's works are testimony it was not only Madame Heger's harsh
jealousy that led her to leave Brussels. In Chapter XX. of _The
Professor_, published years after M. Sue's work, but written before it,
she gives us the reason for this determination. By her Method I.,
Interchange of the sexes of characters portrayed from life, Professor
Crimsworth, who is alternately Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger, in this
instance is Charlotte Bronte, while Mdlle. Reuter is M. Heger.
Crimsworth [Miss Bronte] says:--

    I could not conceal ... that it would not do for me to remain....
    Her [his] present demeanour towards me was deficient neither in
    dignity nor propriety; but I knew her [his] former feeling was
    unchanged. Decorum now repressed, and Policy masked it, but
    Opportunity would be too strong for either of these--Temptation
    would shiver their restraints. I was no pope, ... in short, if I
    stayed, the probability was that, in three months' time, a
    practical modern French novel would be in full process of
    concoction.... From all this resulted the conclusion that I must
    leave, ... and that instantly.... The Spirit of Evil ... sought to
    lead me astray.[68] Rough and steep was the path indicated by
    divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which
    Temptation strewed flowers.

And thus at last do we understand why Charlotte Bronte asks herself as
Jane Eyre when at home with the Rivers family--with her father, her
sisters, and Tabby at Haworth:--

    Which is better? To have surrendered to temptation; listened to
    passion; made no painful effort--no struggle; but to have sunk
    down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it
    ... to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress
    ... I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty,
    youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to
    possess these charms.... Whether is it better, I ask, to be a
    slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive
    bliss one hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse
    and shame the next--or to be a village schoolmistress [The Bronte
    school project was under contemplation in 1844], free and honest,
    in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? Yes, I
    feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and
    crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed
    me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance.

And her fervent gratitude is as sincere when in the same connection she
says in _Villette_ of her confessor--her Fenelon[69]:--"He was kind when
I needed kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!" But we now see
Charlotte Bronte did not suffer alone. Eugene Sue has given us an
insight into the bitterness of M. de Morville's (M. Heger's) life, which
resulted from their unhappy love, and doubtless those words of
Heathcliffe to Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_ were uttered or written
by M. Heger in reproach to Charlotte Bronte:--

    "_Why_ did you despise me? _Why_ did you betray your own heart,
    Cathy?... You loved me--then what _right_ had you to leave me?...
    Because misery and degradation and death, and nothing that God or
    Satan could inflict would have parted us, _you_, of your own will
    did it. I have not broken your heart--_you_ have broken it; and in
    breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I
    am strong."

Charlotte Bronte tells us in _Jane Eyre_ she loved to imagine she and
Mr. Rochester had met under happier conditions; and if the meeting of
the runaway lovers Charlotte Bronte repeats so faithfully in _Wuthering
Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ did not refer to a private meeting subsequent
to the beginning of 1844, between her and M. Heger, or to their meeting
again when she returned to Brussels the second time, then have we
evidence of the fact that she at one time perhaps believed _Wuthering
Heights_ would be never published. Assuredly nothing was sweeter to
Currer Bell's fancy than a dream of the happiness that might have been
hers, and well may she have written in the last sentences of
_Villette_:--

    Leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the
    delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture
    of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the
    fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding
    life.

Charlotte Bronte and M. Constantin Gilles Romain Heger loved each other
as those who are worshippers of two high ideals, when one of these
ideals is love, the other honour. And this was tragedy. To the agonizing
nature of unrequitable affection endured for honour's sake do we owe
Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE RECOIL.


I.

The elements that conduce to reaction and recoil are sometimes fatal to
the best proposed and ablest evolved schemes of man. Priests and
counsellors may gravely devise; knight and maid may devoutly swear; the
pious neophyte and the exalted religionist may make solemn pledge, but
reaction often brings catastrophe. Thus the Christian Church is
rightfully a watchful Body, a militant Force, preaches the weakness of
man and cries "Ora continenter!" And herein lies the value of a
ponderous state procedure. Irritating in its slow gravity and
indifferent to the passionate appeals of emotionalism, such procedure
yet withstands the backward wave which comes as answer to courageous but
costly proposals.

The unsupported and undisciplined individual, like communities, cannot
always safely stand alone, and finally resolves into an automaton at the
service of unlicensed and unconsidered impulse when the day of reaction
comes. The anthropologist and the pathologist relate how exacting
straitness suddenly has broken down with a lamentable demonstration of
most morbid prurience; and relentless history has chronicled grievous
moral declensions in the lives of men and women whose careers in the
greater part were records of generous and unselfish devotion to a noble
cause or an honourable work. Until the day of reaction is safely fought
through the battle is not won.

Perhaps it was to prevent all possibility of a final and definite
reconciliation between M. Heger and Miss Bronte that M. Sue, aided by
his friends, ridiculed their attachment in his _feuilleton, Miss Mary_.
Not that Eugene Sue would do this necessarily for Virtue's sake, but the
position of moral reprehender gave him title to the role he had assumed.
M. Heger was sorely punished to lose Miss Bronte, as M. Sue has shown,
and as we have seen Charlotte Bronte herself tells us in a letter; and
the intensity of his affection for her is only further accentuated by
the light M. Sue throws upon the subject in a conversation which occurs
between Alphonsine and the jealous mother, concerning Mdlle. Lagrange in
the opening chapters of his _feuilleton_. As I have stated, evidence
compels us to perceive M. Sue often presented by imitation of Charlotte
Bronte's Method I., Interchange of the sexes for obfuscation's sake, M.
Heger in Alphonsine: Madame de Morville (Madame Heger) has just said
Mdlle. Lagrange (Miss Bronte) affected a little to speak of her humble
origin.

    "Elle affecter," replies Alphonsine, "... c'est une erreur. Quand,
    par hasard, elle parlait de sa famille, c'est que la conversation
    venait la-dessus. D'ailleurs, ecoute donc, Mademoiselle Lagrange
    eut ete fiere qu'elle en avait le droit."

    "Proud! what of? not of her face, poor girl."

    "No, that is true."

Madame de Morville admits that Mdlle. Lagrange was endowed with
patience, learning, and fortitude; and says, "Tu le sais, nous avions
pour elle les plus grands egards."

"Without doubt ... and myself, I loved her like a sister."

To which Madame de Morville retorts:

    "A ce point que, pendant les premiers jours qui ont suivi son
    depart je t'ai vue souvent pleurer, et que depuis je te trouve
    triste."

    "Que veux-tu ... se quitter apres plus de trois ans d'intimite,
    cela vous laisse du chagrin."

    "This sensibility does credit to your heart, but after all it
    seems to me that you and I shall be able by our mutual tenderness
    to console each other for the loss d'une etrangere."

    "Une etrangere!" says Alphonsine, naively; "dis donc une amie, une
    soeur.... Ainsi, toi ... tu es pour moi, n'est-ce pas, aussi
    affectueuse que possible; pourtant tu m'imposes toujours; il y a
    mille riens, mille folies, mille betises si tu veux, que je
    n'oserais jamais te dire, et qui nous amusaient et nous faisaient
    rire aux larmes avec cette pauvre Mademoiselle Lagrange; et puis
    ces causeries sans fin pendant les recreations, nos jeux memes,
    car elle etait tres enfant quand elle s'y mettait[70]; all this
    made our temps de l'etude pass like a dream, and that of
    recreation like a flash."

    "Without doubt," replied Madame de Morville, with a forced smile;
    ... "and I, ... je ne jouissais de la societe de ces demoiselles
    que lors de notre promenade d'avant diner, ou le soir jusqu'a
    l'heure du the."

The irreparableness of the loss at first to M. Heger is herein clearly
shown. But whether he would confess himself to Miss Bronte afterwards is
not certain. The tone of Charlotte Bronte's successive writings suggests
he did not, as do many points of evidence and the reference in
_Villette_, Chapter XIX., to that "He was a religious little man, in his
way: the self-denying and self-sacrificing part of the Catholic religion
commanded the homage of his soul."

Likely enough it is that M. Heger hailed, as do truly noble men, the day
of trial, and elevated by the very agony of great sacrifice the
personality which worshipped a conception of duty consonant with Divine
law. It seems, though, that then the battle was won; his day of reaction
was fought through. At the time of what M. Sue makes M. de Morville call
"ce premier entrainement" was the greatest danger, and abundant
testimony goes to prove he would have gone the length of indiscretion
but that Charlotte Bronte, herself innately honourable and influenced by
her Christian upbringing, checked the mad rush of impetuous passion.
Then the Church of M. Heger intervened. As Charlotte Bronte tells us in
_Villette_, Chapter XXXVI.: "We were under the surveillance of a
sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously her son through that mystic
lattice at which I had knelt once, and to which M. Emanuel drew nigh
month by month--the sliding panel of the confessional." She was much
gratified by M. Heger's fervent admiration, though she had perforce to
remember their circumstances. As M. Sue said of Lagrange so it had been
with Miss Bronte:--

    The girl had never before known love, save by reading and hearing
    of its magical influence. All the natural tenderness which lay in
    her heart she had year after year suppressed.

The references in her poems to a recognition of growing coldness in a
lover--see "Frances," "Preference," etc., if we may read them in the
biographical sense Mr. Mackay suggests, show there had been a day when
she perceived external influences were dictating to M. Heger a line of
moral procedure. Obviously, while she herself had held temptation at
bay she was strong; but once she discovered an ally was lessening the
necessity of her defence her woman's nature awoke. She doubted the
sincerity of the past protestations of passion; she saw in every eye a
sinister spy; she found in the Roman Church nothing but a partisan of
Madame Heger (see Madame Beck and the Roman Church in _Villette_), and
M. Heger became to her a very impersonation of insincerity and
treachery. Of the secret tempest which had begun to rage within herself
she would disclose nothing to M. Heger; and she would know that once the
storm slept the end might be the worst. But Charlotte Bronte was not yet
in the season of the recoil, though alone, wretched, and rapidly losing
faith in God and man. As for M. Heger, he was supported by the knowledge
that the ideal of the good and pious is glorified by sacrifice. That
"Hell holds no fury like a woman scorned" is a platitude, for a woman
scorned in the meaning of the writer is a woman with a shattered life.
In her fullest and native sense she ceases to exist thereafter. However,
as in many cases Nature provides a remedy for her maimed, woman has
given her dissimulation. But to quote Charlotte Bronte's poem,
"Frances":--

    "Who can for ever crush the heart,
    Restrain its throbbing, curb its life?
    Dissemble truth with ceaseless art,
    With outward calm mask inward strife?"

It is a dangerous day when woman is her very self and thwarted. Then,
and only then, can she utter the distressing blasphemies Charlotte
Bronte places in the mouth of the speaker in her verses, "Apostasy":--

    "Talk not of thy Last Sacrament,
    Tell not thy beads for me;
    Both rite and prayer are vainly spent,
    As dews upon the sea.
    Speak not one word of Heaven above
    Rave not of Hell's alarms;
    Give me but back my Walter's love,
    Restore me to his arms!

    "Then will the bliss of Heaven be won;
    Then will Hell shrink away;
    As I have seen night's terrors shun
    The conquering steps of day.
    'Tis my religion thus to love,
    My creed thus fixed to be;
    Not Death shall shake, nor Priestcraft break
    My rock-like constancy!"

And places in the mouth of Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter
IX., in the same connection:--

    "If I were in heaven ... I should be extremely miserable.... I
    dreamt once ... I was there, ... heaven did not seem to be my
    home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and
    the angels were so angry that they flung me out ... on the top of
    Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.[71] ... I cannot
    express it; but surely you ... have a notion that there is ... an
    existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if
    I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world
    have been Heathcliffe's miseries ... my great thought in living is
    himself. If all else perished, and _he_ remained, I should still
    continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated,
    the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a
    part of it. [See my remarks on Charlotte Bronte's belief in the
    elective affinities, page 96-7.] My love for Heathcliffe resembles
    the eternal rocks beneath.... I _am_ Heathcliffe,--he's always,
    always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am a
    pleasure to myself--but as my own being--so don't talk of our
    separation again."

It is of the barriers which divided the woman of the verses "Apostasy"
from her lover that the priest has reminded her. Thus she says:--

    "... Did I need that thou shouldst tell
    What mighty barriers rise
    To part me from that dungeon-cell
    Where my loved Walter lies?"

The whole history of Charlotte Bronte's Brussels life before us, the
fact that an insurmountable barrier--his marriage--separated her from M.
Heger, and the fact that she herself consulted[72] a Roman Catholic
priest whom I designate as her "Fenelon," advising, like the Mentor of
Telemaque,[73] the tempted one to "flee temptation," identify these
"barriers" as a covert reference to the circumstances unhappily existing
which made intimacy between Miss Bronte and M. Heger dangerous. To quote
my words in _The Fortnightly Review_:--"We see why Miss Bronte, herself
a Protestant, went to the confessional at Brussels.... We know this was
no freak, as also that it was impossible for Charlotte to mention the
subject to her sister without attributing it to a freak. More, we
perceive now the nature of her confession, and, the "Flee temptation!"
note of Fenelon's _Les Aventures de Telemaque_ fresh in our minds, we
see why she wrote of her father-confessor in _Villette_, Chapter XV.:--

    There was something of Fenelon about that benign old priest; and
    whatever ... I may think of his Church and creed, ... of himself I
    must ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I
    needed kindness; he did me good. May heaven bless him!

I mention that by her composite method of presenting characters, which
Charlotte Bronte admitted to have employed, Dr. John Bretton, while
often in the beginning representing Mr. Smith the publisher, becomes
finally a representation of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls who married Miss
Bronte.[74] So in _Jane Eyre_, St. John Rivers while in the main
representing the Rev. Patrick Bronte, becomes associated temporarily
with that priest I have called Charlotte Bronte's Brussels Fenelon. She
tells us in _Villette_ that she broke off the seduction of visiting this
priest and says:--"The probabilities are that had I visited ... at
the ... day appointed, I might just now ... have been counting my beads
in the cell of a ... convent...." Miss Bronte admits he had had great
influence with her, and this fact and the testimony of her poem
"Apostasy" just quoted show this priest and his admonitions were in her
mind when she wrote the final scene between herself and St. John Rivers
in _Jane Eyre_ (Chapter XXXV.). Therein, as in that poem and in
_Wuthering Heights_, "Religion" and "Angels"[75] are set as being less
to her than the vicinage of her lover. Indeed the India and the
missionary life of _Jane Eyre_, and the marriage with St. John (see
Chapter XXXIV.), may be said to have been in Miss Bronte's mind that
life of religious consecration which in _Villette_ she owns to have been
the likely result of her further listening to the advice of the priest,
to whom she had given "the ... outline of my experience," as she terms
it.

Therefore it is interesting to observe that, as the woman in "Apostasy"
suddenly hears the voice of her lover calling and says:--

    "He calls--I come--my pulse scarce beats,
      My heart fails in my breast.
    Again that voice--how far away,
      How dreary sounds that tone!
    And I, methinks, am gone astray
      In trackless wastes and lone.

    "I fain would rest a little while:
      Where can I find a stay,
    Till dawn upon the hills shall smile,
      And show some trodden way?[76]
    I come! I come! in haste she said,
      'Twas Walter's voice I heard!"
    Then up she sprang--but fell back, dead,
      His name her latest word.

so in the scene in _Jane Eyre_: St. John ejaculates--

    'My prayers are heard!' He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as
    if he claimed me; he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_ as if he
    loved me ["That priest had arms which could influence me; he was
    naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whose
    softness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting
    some sorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre
    of root in reality, which I could rely on my force wholly to
    withstand."--Charlotte Bronte speaking of her Brussels Fenelon in
    _Villette_, Chapter XV.], I say _almost_--I knew the
    difference--for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him,
    I now ... thought only of duty;... I sincerely, ... fervently
    longed to do what was right.... 'Show me, show me the path!' I
    entreated of Heaven.... My heart beat fast and thick.... I heard a
    voice somewhere cry 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' nothing more.... I had
    heard it--where or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was
    ... a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax
    Rochester.... 'I am coming!' I cried.... 'Wait for me! Oh, I will
    come!' I broke from St. John, who would have detained me. It was
    _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play, and in
    force. I told him to forbear question or remark.... I mounted to
    my chamber ... fell on my knees, and prayed in my way--a different
    way to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion.... I rose
    from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down ... eager but
    for the daylight.

Mrs. Gaskell related that Charlotte Bronte in private conversation in
reference to this preternatural crying of a voice, replied with much
gravity and without further enlightenment that such an incident really
did occur in her experience. Whether it occurred in connection with her
Brussels Fenelon and immediately preceded a reconciliation between
herself and M. Heger I know not. As, however, Charlotte Bronte's
expression of gratitude to this priest and the whole fervent story of
thankfulness for the deliverance from dangerous temptation were written
subsequently to her return from Brussels, it is clear there was never a
reconciliation which cost either her or M. Heger honour. I do not urge
this as an advocate; I state it upon the strength of unmistakable
evidence.

Miss Bronte believed it better to leave Brussels and avoid the
possibilities of the peculiar situation--a situation always fraught with
temptation. Hence her sudden resolve to return to England.

Arrived at Haworth the full recoil came. She had won through a great
ordeal, and she knew that surrounded by his wife and family,[77]
comforted by piety and the knowledge of his happy issue from involution
in disastrous complications, M. Heger would resume tranquilly his
accustomed course of life. To Charlotte Bronte, who by the showing of
all evidence was initially responsible for a morally gratifying outcome
of their dangerous attachment, this was a galling picture. Knowing
nothing of the ecstatic delights of the pietist in the sacrificial sense
of M. Heger, who was a devoted member of the Society of St. Vincent de
Paul, and, as he is made to describe himself in _Villette_, "a sort of
lay Jesuit," she became just a woman living in the world of her primal
nature and conceiving but that she had lost. Miss Rigby--afterwards Lady
Eastlake--who wrote the remarkable article on _Jane Eyre_ in _The
Quarterly Review_ of 1849, perceived with a flash of real insight and
the instinct of womanhood that Currer Bell's pen had presented ungarbed,
vital relations of some man and woman identical in both _Wuthering
Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. The circumstances were full difficult for the
reviewer; she was irritated and encompassed. _Wuthering Heights_, which
so soon had followed the appearance of _Jane Eyre_, she suddenly
recognized as the very storm-centre of this literary tornado of
passionate declamation; and she chastised that work in the name of _Jane
Eyre_, for she could not know all the cruel truth, and she feared to
popularize _Wuthering Heights_. Although Miss Rigby wrote:--"It is true
Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength," she added, "but it is
the strength of a mere heathenish mind which is a law unto itself." And
later, turning upon _Wuthering Heights_ she says with a final vehemency,
and most sensationally:--

    There can be no interest attached to the writer of _Wuthering
    Heights_--a novel succeeding _Jane Eyre_ ... and purporting [!] to
    be written by Ellis Bell--unless it were for the sake of a more
    individual reprobation. For though there is a decided family
    likeness between the two [!], yet the aspect of the Jane and
    Rochester animals in their native state as Catherine and
    Heathcliffe [!], is abominably pagan.

Miss Rigby thus excused herself a further consideration of _Wuthering
Heights_. In the days of the gratification of discovering the one she
loved in return loved her,[78] this recognition stood between Charlotte
Bronte and "every thought of religion, as an eclipse between man and the
broad sun," so in another sense truly did the contemplation of M.
Heger's self-pacification intervene in the time of reaction. The
doubtings and agonizing emotions of her equivocal season in Brussels
were now precipitated. Her poems "Gilbert," "Frances," and "Preference"
are testimony to her vengeful and retaliative instinct; as are her
portrayals of M. Heger as M. Pelet of _The Professor_ and as Heathcliffe
of _Wuthering Heights_. But as I show in the next chapter, Charlotte
Bronte afterwards regretted her human weakness and her vituperations of
the day of the recoil. She began to set forth the story of her ordeal
more sanely and proportionately in _Jane Eyre_. As one who soberly
rewrites of fact, she recited therein much that she already had given
detachedly; and consistently she presented by aid of the frame-work of
"plot" from Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ which already had given her
elemental suggestions for her _Wuthering Heights_, the history of her
life in _Jane Eyre_--a work that stands as testimony to Charlotte
Bronte's love of truth as to her heroic battling in the days of fiercest
temptation.

A constant yearning to fine a presentation from untruthfulness is the
God-given attribute of the artist, and this was responsible for much
that is called harsh in Charlotte Bronte's character as a writer: she
would not even spare her own physical and nervous imperfections in her
self-portrayals. Emily Bronte would have presented Branwell Bronte as
viewed through _couleur de rose_, yet Charlotte Bronte immortalized him
as Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed--as she saw him: weak, tyrannical, a
moral wreck. So she presented M. Heger. She knew his faults--and they
were many; but she loved him though she hated them. Her sense of truth
and justice, albeit she had lost the rancour of the time of the
reaction, determined her in _Jane Eyre_, it is obvious, to show the
occultation of her life's happiness by the incidents of her Brussels
life. She would show there had been a day when the barriers between
them would have been rashly ignored by him. Thus Rochester is made to
sing in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. XXIV.:--

    "I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,
      As I loved, loved to be;
    And to this object did I press
      As blind as eagerly.

    But wide as pathless[79] was the space
      That lay, our lives, between,
    And dangerous as the foamy race
      Of ocean-surges green.

    And haunted as a robber-path
      Through wilderness or wood;
    For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
      Between our spirits stood.[80]

    I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;
      I omens did defy:
    Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,[81]
      I passed impetuous by.

    On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
      I flew as in a dream;
    For glorious rose upon my sight
      That child of Shower and Gleam.

    Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
      Shines that soft, solemn joy;
    Nor care I now, how dense and grim
      Disasters gather nigh;

    I care not in this moment sweet,
      Though all I have rushed o'er
    Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
      Proclaiming vengeance sore."

It is clear the impediment of M. Heger's marriage is suggested in these
verses. But undeniable evidence as to Charlotte Bronte's having escaped
by flight what she considered a most dangerous temptation, is the fact
that we find she was influenced to pen these lines, wherein M. Heger
(Rochester) is likened to a wild pursuer of a "shower and gleam" nymph
who sped before him "fast as light" and "glorious rose upon his sight,"
by Montagu's reference, in _Gleanings in Craven_, to the story of a
Craven nymph a satyr pursued yet lost by her being changed into a
spring. Says Frederic Montagu:--

    "In the _Polyolbion_, published in 1612, is the following
    passage:--

        In all my spacious tract let them (so wise) survey
        Thy Ribble's rising banks, their worst and let them say;
        At Giggleswick, where I a fountain can you show,
        That eight times in a day is said to ebb and flow!
        Who sometime was a Nymph, and in the mountains high
        Of Craven, whose blue heads, for caps put on the sky,
        Among the Oreads there, and Sylvans, made abode
        (It was ere human foot upon these hills had trod),
        Of all the mountain kind, and since she was most fair;
        It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair
        Flow loosely at her back, as up a cliff she clame,
        Her beauties noting well, her features and her frame,
        And after her he goes; which when she did espy,
        Before him like the wind, the nimble Nymph did fly:
        They hurry down the rocks, o'er hill and dale they drive,
        To take her he doth strain, t' outstrip him she doth strive,
        Like one his kind that knew, and greatly feared....
        And to the Topic Gods by praying to escape,
        They turned her to a Spring, which as she then did pant,
        When, wearied with her course, her breath grew wond'rous scant,
        Even as the fearful Nymph, then thick and short did blow,
        Now made by them a Spring, so doth she ebb and flow."

This is not all. We know now the truth regarding Charlotte Bronte's
Brussels life, and seeing she discovered a pertinence in the state of
the Craven Nymph to her own--for it is undeniable Rochester's song was
modelled upon the lines Montagu quotes--it is likely that what I term
the "river" suggestion and the Craven Elf suggestion which resulted in
Charlotte Bronte's portraying herself in the role of the stream-named
Craven elf, Janet Aire or Eyre, had to do with Montagu's mention of this
nymph of Craven who escaped a dangerous persecution by becoming a
spring. It seems, indeed, that if she did not at first utilize the
parallel of this narrative in verse with her own experience, she yet in
_Wuthering Heights_ was influenced by it, in the days which I call the
period of the recoil, to represent her hero Heathcliffe as a
ruin-creating, semi-human being. Whether the lines--

    "It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair
    Flow loosely at her back as up a cliff she clame,"

had in the connection to do with the "cliffe" in "that ghoul
Heathcliffe's" name a reference to Charlotte Bronte's Preface to
_Wuthering Heights_, and her words on the creation of Heathcliffe, in my
next chapter, may declare.

It is now impossible not to understand the origin of the Satyr and Nymph
passage and its implication in the chapter of _Jane Eyre_ containing
Rochester's song, when he says to Jane in the very same chapter:--

    "You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence,
    Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I've wandered over shall be
    retrodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot
    shall step also."




CHAPTER XV.

THE RECOIL.


II.

    A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have
    been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused; ... the same ridge,
    black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have
    represented as meetly my subsequent condition when ... reflection
    had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my
    hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted....
    As aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its
    after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I
    had been poisoned.... I would fain exercise some better faculty
    than that of fierce speaking--fain find nourishment for some less
    fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.

These words, written by Charlotte Bronte in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter IV., in
relation to herself and "Mrs. Reed," give us an insight into her
extraordinary alternations of mood. To inquire deeply into her
determining initially to disavow the authorship of _Wuthering Heights_
requires a somewhat ruthless baring of the "fiendish" vindictiveness
against M. Heger between the dates of 1844-46, that was a characteristic
of the portrayals of him I have mentioned; but it also reveals her
active turn to a spirit of repentance for past vindictive feeling, the
which she acknowledges to have known.

It seems that it was in a spirit of reproach Charlotte Bronte wrote the
vengeful scene between Heathcliffe and Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_,
harsh in threat almost as her poem "Gilbert," wherein the man, satisfied
with the affections of his wife and children, has banished the
remembrance of her of whom he boasted--"She loved me more than life,"
and who is made to say, before her spirit in the form of a white-clad
spectre comes to him:--

    "As I am busied now,
    I could not turn from such pursuit
    To weep a broken vow."

Thus in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter XV., when Catherine is embraced by
Heathcliffe, she says bitterly:--

    "I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn't care
    what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why
    shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy
    when I am in the earth? Will you say ... 'That's the grave of
    Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose
    her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are
    dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that
    I am going to her; I shall be sorry that I must lose them!' Will
    you say so, Heathcliffe?" Well might Catherine deem that heaven
    would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she
    cast away her mortal character also. [See my footnote in the
    foregoing chapter, on Catherine's dream that the angels flung her
    out of heaven.] Her present countenance had a wild
    vindictiveness....

    "Are you possessed with a devil," he pursued savagely, "to talk in
    that manner to me when you are dying?"

And later, as though in answer to the apparent threat of the poem
"Gilbert," wherein, as I have said, the spectre of the woman who has
died broken-hearted through the neglect of her married lover haunts him
and drives him mad, Heathcliffe, in the words of that poem, "Wild as one
whom demons seize," cries:--

    "Catherine Earnshaw ... you said I killed you--haunt me then! The
    murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts
    _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive
    me mad!"

Charlotte Bronte's poems, "Frances,"[82] "Gilbert," and "Preference"
(wherein we have literature in allegory preferred to a lover), show
there had been to her a season of darkest misery when, to quote
_Villette_ concerning herself as Lucy Snowe, "all her life's hope was
torn by the roots out of her riven outraged heart." Whether this was the
time when, in the words of herself as Jane Eyre, "faith was blighted,
confidence destroyed": a time to her when Mr. Rochester (M. Heger) was
not to her "what she had thought him," the reader shall decide. But in
_Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_ she "would not ascribe vice to him; ... would
not say he had betrayed" her. She forgave him all: yet not in words, not
outwardly; only at [her] heart's core. See the phase of M. Pelet in the
_The Professor_.

Evidence shows it was in her dark season when Charlotte Bronte wrote
_Wuthering Heights_, and that she portrayed M. Heger therein with all
the vindictiveness of a woman with "a riven outraged heart," the wounds
in which yet rankled sorely. Thus may we understand her saying in her
famous preface to _Wuthering Heights_:--

    Heathcliffe betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is _not_
    his love for Catherine, which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a
    passion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some
    evil genius [see my reference to "Robin-a-Ree"; and to the Craven
    Satyr, page 142]; a fire that might form the tormented centre--the
    ever-suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its
    quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree
    which dooms him to carry Hell with him ... we should say he was a
    man's shape animated by demon life.... Whether it is right or
    advisable to create a being like Heathcliffe I do not know; I
    scarcely think it is.

Even in _Villette_ there were recurrences of the spasmodic spirit of
vindictiveness responsible for Charlotte Bronte's harsh portrayal of M.
Heger as Heathcliffe, though "at her heart's core she then forgave him."
In _Villette_, Chapter XX., she refers to M. Paul (M. Heger)
antithetically, and all the more significantly, in a comparison of him
with Dr. John Bretton, of whom she says:--

    Who could help liking him? _He_ betrayed no weakness which
    harassed all your feelings with considerations as to how its
    faltering must be propped; from _him_ broke no irritability which
    startled calm and quenched mirth; _his_ lips let fall no caustic
    that burned to the bone; _his_ eye shot no morose shafts that went
    cold, and rusty, and venomed through your heart.

_Wuthering Heights_, however, containing too humiliating a story of
Charlotte Bronte's heart-thrall, her misery and her wild vindictiveness,
and also for the reasons stated in the beginning of this chapter--her
saving remorse--she seems early to have determined to repudiate her
authorship of it; indeed, so largely is she now found to have used the
work in _Jane Eyre_, we might say she once had contemplated destroying
the manuscript. The subsequent arrangement made in the name of Ellis
Bell that the work by the same author should go to Mr. Newby, the
publisher of _Wuthering Heights_, gave finality to this tragedy of
authorship which, but for the discoveries in this, _The Key to the
Bronte Works_, would have remained for ever unrevealed, and a reproach
to literature--a thing of untruth thickly hidden.

Had Charlotte Bronte destroyed _Wuthering Heights_ before its
publication she would have saved this sensational disclosure. But she
hesitated to destroy the manuscript at once, and as an alternative to
identifying herself with its authorship, she sent forth her work under a
_nom de guerre_, part of which had been employed by her sister Emily. We
well know the difficulties that resulted; the judgment of scholars and
thinkers was impugned and their sane pronouncements were pilloried. To
cover Charlotte Bronte's regretful error were to connive against law and
literature. _Wuthering Heights_ being published, the work was the
world's property; it stood for public purposes, to submit to all
criticism and research, and it came neither in Charlotte Bronte's
province nor in that of any person to prevent its being subjected to the
final inquiry with which the cold light of truth exposes all things.

Doubtless Charlotte Bronte perceived this, and regretting the facileness
of her pen and the vituperativeness of her mood of that past and hateful
night, she set herself, in her subsequent works, to make clear she had
overdrawn the bitterness of the relations which one time had existed
between herself and M. Heger. Perhaps she could not expect her
retractions would be understood of all men, but it pleased her inmost
soul, and having a final sense of justice, and a softening of her heart
for her vehement passionateness, she continued in all her works
subsequent to her _Wuthering Heights_ to reconstruct this her early
version. Thus Charlotte Bronte as Caroline Helstone of _Shirley_ is
Catherine Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, with the distinction I
mention. Moore is admitted, as I have said, to have been drawn from M.
Heger[83]:--

  _Wuthering Heights._                _Shirley._

  Chapter XII.                        Chapter XXIV.

  Catherine's illness, and her        Caroline's illness, and her
    doubting the absent lover,          doubting the absent lover,
    Heath(cliffe). Mrs. Dean in         Moor(e). Mrs Pryor in
    attendance.                         attendance.

          --------                            --------

  "And I dying!" exclaimed            "Am I ill?" asked Caroline of
  Catherine to Mrs. Dean. "I on       Mrs. Pryor, and looked at
  the brink of the grave! My God!     herself in the glass; ... she
  does he know how I'm altered?"      felt ... her brain in strange
  continued she, staring at her       activity.... Now followed a hot,
  reflection in a mirror.... How      parched, restless night ... one
  dreary to meet death surrounded     terrible dream seized her like a
  by their cold faces.... Edgar [?    tiger ... a fever of mental
  Mr. Bronte] standing solemnly by    excitement, and a languor of
  to see it over; then offering       long conflict and habitual
  prayers of thanks to God for        sadness had fanned the flame ...
  restoring peace to his house,       and left a well-lit fire behind
  and going back to his _books_.      it....
  Tossing about, she increased her
  feverish bewilderment of            "Oh!" exclaimed Caroline, "God
  madness, ... then, raising          grant me a little comfort before
  herself, desired that ... [Mrs.     I die!... But he [Moor(e)] will
  Dean] would open the window.        come when I am senseless, cold,
                                      and stiff. What can my departed
  And farther on, in delirium, as     soul feel then? Can it see or
  though her lover were present:--    know what happens to the clay?
                                      Can spirits through any medium
  "Heath(cliffe) ... they may bury    communicate with living flesh?
  me twelve feet deep, and throw      Can the dead at all re-visit
  the church down over me, and I      those they leave? Can they come
  won't rest till you are with        in the elements? Will wind,
  me!" ["Heath(cliffe), I only        water, fire, lend me a path to
  wish us never to be parted, and     Moor(e)? Is it for nothing the
  should a word of mine distress      wind ... passes the casement
  you hereafter, think I feel the     sobbing?... Does nothing haunt
  same distress underground," says    it?"
  Catherine, in a further chapter]
  "I never will." She paused and      When Catherine dies Heathcliffe
  resumed ... [Heath(cliffe's)]       says:--"Catherine ... you said I
  considering--"He'd rather I'd       killed you--haunt me then!" And
  come to him! Find a way             haunt him she does. In the words
  then![84] not through that          of Caroline Helstone of
  kirkyard. You are slow! Be          _Shirley_ she "revisits him she
  content, you always followed        has left." She "goes in the
  me!"                                elements," "the wind lends her a
                                      path[84] to her lover," and it
  Mrs. Dean perceived it vain "to     is not "for nothing the wind
  argue against her insanity."        passes the casement of
                                      _Wuthering Heights_
                                      sobbing"--she "haunts it" as the
                                      wailing phantom that cries as a
                                      child [Method II., altering the
                                      age of character portrayed],
                                      "Let me in--let me in!" outside
                                      "the lattice." And Heathcliffe,
                                      wrenching open "the lattice,"
                                      sobs, "Come in!... Cathy, do
                                      come.... Catherine at last!" The
                                      spectre gives no sign of being;
                                      but the snow and wind whirled
                                      ... through ... blowing out the
                                      light.

  Chapter XIII.

  Mrs. Dean continues:--              Convalescent, Caroline
                                      whispers:--
  In those two months [Catherine]
  encountered and conquered the       "... I am better now.... I feel
  worst shock of what was             where I am: this is Mrs. Pryor
  denominated as brain fever. The     near me.... I was dreaming....
  first time she left the chamber     Does the churchyard look
  ... on her pillow [was] a           peaceful?... Can you see many
  handful of golden crocuses; her     long weeds and nettles among the
  eye, long stranger to any gleam     graves, or do they look turfy or
  of pleasure, caught them in         flowery?"
  waking.
                                      "I see closed daisy-heads,
  "These are the earliest flowers     gleaming like pearls on some
  at the Heights!... Is there not     mounds," replied Mrs. Pryor.[85]
  a south wind, and is not the
  snow gone?"

It is in _Shirley_ that Charlotte Bronte gives, inadvertently
or purposely, the origin of the title of _Wuthering Heights_,
and we see therewith why she came afterwards to choose for her
autobiographical-self in _Villette_, the name of Lucy Snowe. We perceive
she had been singularly impressed by an old Scottish ballad, entitled,
"Puir Mary Lee," and it is important and interesting to note that Dr.
Joseph Wright's _English Dialect Dictionary_ refers readers to this very
same poem in connection with the origin of the northern word
"wuthering," in the form of the verb "whudder," or "wuther." And so, in
a letter to Mr. W. S. Williams, of November 6th, 1852, Miss Bronte wrote
of Lucy Snowe[86]:--

    As to the name of the heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety
    of thought made me decide upon giving her a cold name; but at
    first I called her 'Lucy Snowe' (spelt with an 'e'), which 'Snowe'
    I afterwards changed to 'Frost.' Subsequently I rather regretted
    the change, and wished it 'Snowe' again. If not too late, I should
    like the alteration to be made now throughout the MS. A _cold_
    name she must have; partly, perhaps on the _lucus a non lucendo_
    principle--partly on that of the 'fitness of things,' for she has
    about her an external coldness.

Thus we understand Charlotte Bronte was anxious that her
autobiographical-self in _Villette_ should be called Snowe. While, in
mentioning the matter to her publishers, she endeavoured to show a
superficial and commonplace reason for her singular choice, the truth
underlies her words wherein she says she "can hardly express what
subtlety of thought" made her decide upon "a cold name."

The subtlety of thought that dictated the choice of the "cold name"
Snowe had, we shall see, a connection with the old Scottish ballad,
"Puir Mary Lee," which evidence shows was responsible at the dark season
to which I have referred for Charlotte Bronte's choice of the title of
_Wuthering Heights_--for her identifying her own bitterness with that of
"Puir Mary Lee."

It is in _Shirley_, Chapter VII., that Charlotte Bronte writes:--

    Nature ... is an excellent friend, sealing the lips, interdicting
    utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation; a dissimulation
    often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to
    sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a
    convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because half-bitter.
    [As Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Bronte writes in _Villette_ in perfect
    sympathy with this: "If I feel, may I never express? I groaned
    under her (Reason's) bitter sternness ... she could not rest
    unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and
    broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece
    of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all
    life to despond. Reason might be right."] Who has read the ballad
    of 'Puir Mary Lee'?--that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in
    what generation nor by what hand. Mary had been ill-used--probably
    in being made to believe that truth which is falsehood; she is not
    complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you
    hear her thoughts ... those of a deeply feeling, strongly
    resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook
    of home, to the white-shrouded and icy hills: crouched under the
    'cauld drift,' she recalls every image of horror, ... she hates
    these, but 'waur' she hates 'Robin-a-Ree!'

      "Oh! ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn--
        The warld was in love wi' me;
      But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn,
        And curse black Robin-a-Ree!

      "Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast,
        And sough through the scrunty tree,
      And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast
        And ne'er let the sun me see!

      "Oh, never melt awa' thou wreath o' snaw,
        That's sae kind in graving me;
      But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw
        O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"

Thus internal evidence proves that the name of _Wuthering Heights_ for
the abode of the "deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl,"
Catherine Earnshaw, was primarily chosen by Charlotte Bronte because of
its special appeal to her own mood at a given period, in relation to the
ballad of "Puir Mary Lee," and proves that the choice of the name of
Snowe for her "cold and altered" autobiographical self in _Villette_ was
dictated by its connection therewith.

In this light glance at Charlotte Bronte's poem "Mementos," and at the
following verses from her "Frances":--

    "And when thy opening eyes shall see
      Mementos, on the chamber wall,
    Of one who has forgotten thee,
      Shed not the tear of acrid gall.

         *       *       *       *       *

    "Vain as the passing gale, my crying;
      Though lightning-struck,[87] I must live on;
    I know, at heart, there is no dying
      Of love and ruined hope alone.

         *       *       *       *       *

    "The very wildness of my sorrow
      Tells me I yet have innate force;
    My track of life has been too narrow,
      Effort shall trace a broader course."

There is an apparent relationship of this last verse with the remarks in
Chapter XXV. of _The Professor_, on Hunsden's "Lucia," of whom he
says:--"I should ... have liked to marry her, and that I _have_ not done
so is a proof that I _could_ not." Lucia's (Miss Bronte's) "faculty" was
literature: the physiognomy was obviously an obfuscation. It is
significant that Charlotte Bronte again took "Lucia," for the Christian
name of Lucia or Lucy Snowe. See my references to Hunsden as a phase of
M. Heger.

Perceiving, therefore, that Charlotte Bronte had likened herself to the
heroine of "Puir Mary Lee," in so far as to be influenced by it to give
the title of _Wuthering Heights_ to one of her works, and to take the
name of Snowe later for her autobiographical self, we understand why she
wrote in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXVI.:--

    Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman, ... was a
    cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
    desolate. A Christmas frost [see my reference to the name of Lucy
    Frost] had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled
    over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing
    roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud [see "the
    snow-storm, the white-shrouded and frosty hills," the "cauld
    drift," the "whuddering blast," etc., of "Puir Mary Lee" in
    _Shirley_], lanes which last night blushed full of flowers to-day
    were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, ... now spread
    waste, wild, and white as pine forests in wintry Norway. My hopes
    were all dead--struck with a subtle doom.... I looked at my love:
    that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it
    shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle;
    sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr.
    Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh,
    never more could it turn to him; for faith was
    blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what
    he had been.... I would not say he had betrayed me: but the
    attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea [see
    "Robin-a-Ree"], and from his presence I must go; _that_ I
    perceived well.... That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth,
    'the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire; I felt no
    standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.'

The inclusion in _Shirley_ of the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee" and the
remarks anent it were apparently digressive, but they are followed by
the "subtle" disclaimer:--

    But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to
    Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of things between
    her and Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong; he had told
    her no lie; it was she that was to blame, if any one was; what
    bitterness her mind distilled should and would be poured on her
    own head.

Indeed, there is evidence of a reconciliation between M. Heger and
Charlotte Bronte, this being most marked in _Jane Eyre_ and _Shirley_.
In connection with the reasons responsible for Charlotte Bronte's choice
of the title of _Wuthering Heights_, it is interesting to note some
"subtlety of thought" dictated Charlotte's telling us in _Shirley_,
Chapter XXXIII., of Caroline and her lover that:--

    The air was now dark with snow; an Iceland blast was driving it
    wildly. This pair neither heard the long "wuthering" rush, nor saw
    the white burden it drifted; each seemed conscious but of one
    thing--the presence of the other.

After the close of 1850, Charlotte Bronte resolved into the mood which
was an earlier characteristic; and the choice of the name of Snowe for
herself and the extraordinary tenacity with which she held to the name,
having it re-inscribed in _Villette_ by the printers though she had
herself changed it, show she had returned somewhat to that state in
regard to her affection for M. Heger responsible for the passionateness
of her _Wuthering Heights_. And as following the completion of
_Villette_ she decided to marry a man she did not really love, I would
say her mood was honestly in sympathy with that in which she wrote
_Wuthering Heights_ through bitter, adverse circumstances and the
warping of destiny, and did not result from Sydney Dobell's advice to
her when, having read _Shirley_ and _Jane Eyre_, and despite her
disclaimer in a preface, thinking she was the author of _Wuthering
Heights_, he advised her to resume the frame of mind in which she had
penned her _Wuthering Heights_.[88]

Dobell's supposition that she wrote the book had no connection
whatsoever with my discovering Charlotte Bronte was the author of
_Wuthering Heights_; neither had the fact that Miss Rigby--Lady
Eastlake--in _The Quarterly Review_, spoke of _Wuthering Heights_ as
"purporting to be written by Ellis Bell" but having "a decided family
likeness to _Jane Eyre_," and with still more point, identified
"Catherine and Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_ as Jane and Rochester
of _Jane Eyre_ in their native state." For I early found I must credit
only the internal evidence of the Bronte works as my interpretative
guide. Having written "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" nothing could prevent my
discovery of that novel's kinship with _Wuthering Heights_; and so far
back as August 29, 1902, I penned in a private letter enclosed with the
proof sheets of my article to Mr. Harold Hodge, the editor of _The
Saturday Review_, a confession that I was finding a strong kinship
between the two novels. I owe to my persistent consciousness of this
close kinship the fact that I finally discovered the amazing secrets of
_Wuthering Heights_, and was enabled to state publicly in my
_Fortnightly Review_ article of March 1907, Charlotte Bronte and none
other wrote _Wuthering Heights_. It was then I turned with interest to
the remarks of Sydney Dobell, the author of _Balder_, and "a notable
figure in the history of English thought" as he has been named, whose
review of Charlotte Bronte's works had resulted in her being acclaimed a
leading author and a genius. It was in _The Palladium_ of September 1850
Sydney Dobell said:--

    That any hand but that which shaped _Jane Eyre_ and _Shirley_ cut
    out the rougher earlier statues [in _Wuthering Heights_] we should
    require more than the evidence of our senses to believe; ... the
    author of _Jane Eyre_ need fear nothing in acknowledging these ...
    immature creations.[89]... When Currer Bell writes her next novel,
    let her remember ... the frame of mind in which she sat down to
    write her first [_Wuthering Heights_]. She will never sin so much
    against consistent drawing as to draw another Heathcliffe.... In
    _Jane Eyre_ we find ... only further evidence of the same
    producing qualities to which _Wuthering Heights_ bears testimony.

Charlotte Bronte warmly thanked him and protested. With eager honesty he
again and again begged her to visit him and discuss the authorship of
_Wuthering Heights_. Could Sidney Dobell but have been told the secret
tragedy of Currer Bell's life and the bitterness of her cup, how he
would have shrunk from inflicting her with an intrusive personal
inquiry. And in all innocence he had asked her to revive the frame of
mind in which, to use the words in _Jane Eyre_, her heart had been
"weeping blood"!

_Wuthering Heights_ was wrought near the furnace of Charlotte Bronte's
fiery ordeal, and gives at its intensest that which glows through her
other works, finally to flash up and smoulder out in _Villette_. By
reason of its clear portrayal of woman when she is very woman _Wuthering
Heights_ towers above all common literary artistry, one of the finest
novels in the world, an abiding monument to the vital genius of
Charlotte Bronte. After her return from Brussels her life was a long
human conflict, with vain regrets, vindictive recriminations, and luring
memories opposing heroic commandings in the name of right and virtue.
All honour to her that she fought to win!

Had Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger been characterless individuals of the
common type who, knowing nothing of self-sacrifice and nobleness of
life, yield to the call of immediate and unlicensed impulse, we could
never have had these most vital representations, these most poignant
revelations of the Martyrdom of Virtue--the works of our immortal Currer
Bell. Her vehicle of confession--her dialect, was what men have termed
fiction. But her heart was satisfied that truth has its ultimate appeal;
and in the way of those sententious writers of old who garbed in an
attractive vesture veritable and momentous records which would be
preserved because they entertained, she gave the history of her life in
a series of dramas we call the Bronte novels. For sixty years these have
been read only as the creations of a brain that spun interesting
fiction! Now, by aid of _The Key to the Bronte Works_, it is revealed
they are more than this, and we discover the real greatness of Currer
Bell and the high rank of her genius. Like that which creates the
noblest and most enduring of the world's literature, the genius of
Charlotte Bronte truthfully preserves the past, while it will intimately
appeal to and have a salient lesson and an inspiring message for any one
so ever who shall read, be it here and now, or in the time to come.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE BRONTE POEMS.


Charlotte Bronte loved her sisters Emily and Anne, but in her
introduction to the poetical selections from their literary remains she
says little concerning their verse, preferring to give of each sister a
kind of short biographical memoir. In dealing with Emily she dwelt
poetically upon the features of the Yorkshire moors, and thus extended
to Emily's verses that atmosphere and charm which she (Charlotte) had
fixed in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_; and in writing upon Anne
she complained her verse gave evidence of a too melancholy religious
feeling. The eldest surviving child in the Bronte family, after the
deaths of Maria and Elizabeth, it was Charlotte Bronte who would first
set the ideal of literary composition before the Bronte children. To her
initial impulse, therefore, owe we the literary compositions that came
from the pens of Emily, Anne, and Branwell. Evidence of this truth is
the fact that Emily, Anne, and Branwell, in their writing, never got
"right away," as the hunting phrase has it.

There are many definitions of genius: may I define it as a message?
Charlotte Bronte had a message. Emily had none. _Wuthering Heights_ and
all the other works of Charlotte Bronte, prose and verse, had a vital
message. Ellis Bell had no message. In a sort of idle, ruminative
contemplation Emily Bronte constructed verse unburdened with
purpose--verse that became involved at the moment it should have soared.

I believe we have the secret of what I may call Emily's "involved
moments" in Charlotte Bronte's description of her as Shirley Keeldar in
_Shirley_, Chapter XXII., wherein we are told Emily saw visions, as it
were, "faster than Thought can effect his combinations." We feel
something of the clouded chaos of her moment of writing in her more
impassioned or laboured verses; their illogic and incoherence fix it
distressfully. Charlotte, to resume her reference to Emily in _Shirley_
above quoted, further tells us that "so long as she is calm, indolence,
indulgence, humour, and tenderness possess" her eye; "incense her, ...
it instantly quickens to flame." And with her verse, so long as it was
unburdened, indolent, it ran smoothly and pleasantly along with the
simplicity of the _insouciant_; but confronted with magnitude the
imagination flamed, reason and logic were involved, and there was an end
of art. In her excited combativeness she hit out rashly. Thus in her
last verses, considered her masterpiece, she says the "thousand creeds"
which move men's hearts were "vain" to "waken doubt" in her creed, blind
to the fact that truth and worship finally converge to one point,
howsoever diverse their starting-places. The very unbeliever is a
witness to man's innate seeking for truth and right: he is a
non-believer in this or that because he conceives truth to be remote
from it. He seeks truth albeit he is a wide wanderer.

In "The Old Stoic" we have a "stoic" in Emily's role of bold challenger
of chimera. "Courage to endure" and "a chainless soul" are what this old
stoic would ask for! The poet was ignorant of or indifferent to the fact
that a true stoic, according to the rule of Epictetus, seeks to be not
other than he is, and is content wheresoever he be, whatsoever his lot.
The words of this poem are those of a bold neophyte, and they are
interesting chiefly because we see advanced in them the hypothesis of
punishment common to Emily's chimera-creating imagination. To repeat: so
long as her mood was calm her verse ran pleasantly and smoothly along.
But the saying tells us, "The good seaman is known in bad weather"; and
so with the poet. Life is not a placid lake: the lethal lightnings play,
and faith and happiness are threatened continually and on the whole
horizon.

Charlotte Bronte, with memory of her own life-storm which has left us
her _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and her other great prose works,
wrote her introduction to Emily's poems in the spirit of one who looked
upon her pieces as the reflections of an uneventful life in the inner
sense of vital soul-conflict.

Anne Bronte's gentle poems, like Emily's, will appeal particularly to
such readers as have sympathetic temperaments; they will not call to the
human heart like the clarion notes of Charlotte Bronte's poem "Passion,"
but mayhap their low whisperings may waken sadly pleasant memories.
With Currer Bell's poems I deal in various chapters, wherein we perceive
their relationship to _Wuthering Heights_ and her other books which
resulted from the harsh rigours of her tempest-bestormed night.

And shall we not say a word for Branwell Bronte? He too wrote verse.[90]
He was not a genius in the sense of my definition, but his verse is such
as might appear in a member of a family a generation or a degree of kin
removed from the genius of the house. Him we must remember
compassionately as one physically weak, an unhappy victim of
circumstances against which he had not the moral force to fight. Nor
shall we forget that the Rev. Patrick Bronte, the father, wrote and
published verse. His productions were printed in pamphlet form, and have
been collected and republished.[91] As literature they are unimportant,
but to the curious they may have a sort of interest.




APPENDIX.

MINOR IDENTIFICATIONS OF PERSONS AND PLACES IN THE BRONTE WORKS.


"WUTHERING HEIGHTS."

There is not satisfactory evidence to enable the identification of the
originals of Wuthering Heights the abode, and Thrushcross Grange.
Similar homesteads are found anywhere near the Yorkshire moors.
Architectural peculiarities and appointments are ever accretive
properties with the novelist of imagination and latitude. This
observation should be kept in mind also in regard to Charlotte Bronte's
other works. See my remarks on page 57.


"JANE EYRE."

The interior of Thornfield Hall, as I mention on page 35, has been
identified with that of "Norton Conyers," near Ripon; externally it has
been associated with "The Rydings," near Birstall. Ferndean Manor has
been identified with Wycollar Hall, near Colne. A Bronte biographer says
this place was set on fire by a mad woman,[92] but the story finds no
mention in _The Annals of Colne_, 1878, or in _Lancashire Legends_,
1873, though "Wyecoller Hall" is dealt with at length in each work.


"SHIRLEY."

Gomersall and Birstall, near Batley, Yorkshire, contribute to the
background of this story. "Field Head" has been identified with
Oakwell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion. Evidence shows that intimately the
Rectory in _Shirley_ was in the main Haworth Parsonage to Charlotte
Bronte. In _The Dictionary of National Biography_ Leslie Stephen
says:--"Bronte, ... a strong Churchman and a man of imperious and
passionate character, ... is partly represented by Mr. Helstone in
_Shirley_, though a [Rev.] Mr. Roberson ... supplied ... characteristic
traits." And Mr. Francis Leyland, who drew much of his information from
Nancy Garrs, a Bronte servant, says that the fourth chapter of
_Shirley_, wherein Charlotte speaks of the grossly untrue reports of
Mr. Helstone's dry-eyed mourning, etc., for his wife, is a defence
really of Mr. Bronte. Helstone was a composite character, as also was
Mrs. Pryor, to whom, without doubt, Miss Wooler contributed, though
Charlotte Bronte once had a grave difference with her. Miss Nussey, who
pathetically and wrongly believed herself Caroline Helstone, proclaimed
Miss Wooler, her schoolmistress, as the prototype of Mrs. Pryor.
Evidence declares, however, that in many regards this character was also
drawn from Tabitha Aykroyd. And we see that Charlotte Bronte, years
before, in her _Wuthering Heights_, had given an ecclesiastical
name--that of Dean--to her portrayal of the one woman who alone ever
took up the part of mother for her--Tabitha Aykroyd. Nevertheless Mrs.
Pryor was in the main a composite character, largely at the service of
"story" requirements. Sometimes she is Tabitha, sometimes Miss Wooler;
elsewhile she is neither. Mr. Macarthey is said to represent the Rev.
Arthur Bell Nicholls, who became Charlotte Bronte's husband.

The references in _Shirley_, Chapters XII. and XXVII., to Robin Hood's
connection with Nunnwood and to the ruins of a nunnery, identify Nunnely
in the circumstances, with Hartshead, near Brighouse and Dewsbury;
Nunnely Church with Hartshead Church (Mr. Bronte was once vicar here),
and the Priory with Kirklees Hall or Priory--Kirklees Park, as we may
see by turning to Dr. Whitaker's _Loidis and Elmete_, pages 306-9
(1816), wherein we find mention of Robin Hood and an old Cistercian
nunnery in connection with Kirklees, appropriately now the residence of
Sir George J. Armytage, Bart., one of the founders of the Harleian
Society. Whinbury has been identified with Dewsbury; but I do not know
that it has been remarked the name Dewsbury may have suggested to
Charlotte Bronte the dewberry, bramble, or blackberry, thus leading her
to adopt "whinberry" and, finally, Whinbury. The attack on Hollow's Mill
is said to have been founded on an attempt in 1812, when an assault was
made on the factory of Mr. Cartwright near Dewsbury.


"THE PROFESSOR" AND "VILLETTE."

_The Professor_, Charlotte Bronte offered to Messrs. Aylott & Jones in
April 1846, was not published till after her death. It is related to
_Villette_ in something of the way, though not so verbally and
intimately, that _Wuthering Heights_ is to _Jane Eyre_. The early
chapters deal vaguely with a West Riding of Yorkshire town, but the
scene quickly changes to Brussels. The Heger _pension_ is recognized as
the original of the schools in both novels, but in _Villette_ the place
Villette occasionally becomes London as Charlotte Bronte knew it on her
visits. Mr. George Smith, the Bronte publisher, and his mother, are
portrayed as the Brettons. Mr. Smith showed Charlotte Bronte the sights
of London: the theatres, picture galleries, churches, etc.; and we have
reflected in _Villette_ incidents associated with her seeing these
places.[93] The reader will find a phase of Currer Bell in Paulina--Miss
de Bassompierre, and a sympathetic phase of Mr. Bronte in her father,
for after the deaths of Emily, Anne, and Branwell, Charlotte and her
father were brought closer to each other. And like Mr. "Home" de
Bassompierre, he had "no more daughters and no son."[94] Towards the
close of _Villette_ we may find a phase of the Rev. Mr. Nicholls,
Charlotte Bronte's husband, in Dr. John Bretton, my previous remarks
upon whom observe. It was shortly after the completion of _Villette_ Mr.
Nicholls proposed successfully, but it would seem by the concluding
chapters Miss Bronte expected this. The picture of the disappointment of
the old father that his popular daughter would marry a plain character
in life suggests to us the disappointment of the Rev. Patrick Bronte in
regard to his daughter's marrying a curate. See Chapter XXXVII. Paulina,
of course, is the feminine of Paul; and the original of M. Paul of this
work we now well know. See footnote on page 120.

The chronological sequences in Charlotte Bronte's novels are seldom
carefully ordered: this should be remembered in reference to her record
of events in her own life.


"AGNES GREY" AND "THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL."

_Agnes Grey_ contains simple and natural portrayals of governess life in
the eighteen-forties; and the following _Wildfell Hall_, we may
conjecture, is built from evolved incidents founded on hearsay and
experience. Whether Miss Bronte had assisted Anne or not, it is certain
_Wildfell Hall_ has something in common with Currer Bell's novels. The
books connected with the name of Acton Bell, however, are not important
as literature in the higher sense of the word; and though a member of
Messrs. Smith & Elder remarked to Miss Bronte upon a similarity in the
leading male characters of _Wildfell Hall_ to Rochester, interest in it
is merely dependent upon its association with the greater Bronte works,
and the book does not call for sedulous inquiry.




THE HEGER PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.


The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London, purchased in July
1906, a hitherto unheard of portrait of Charlotte Bronte, painted in
water-colours in 1850, and stated to be by M. Heger. A reproduction of
the portrait was given in _The Cornhill Magazine_ for October 1906, Mr.
Reginald J. Smith, K.C., of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., the Bronte
publishers, having to do with its discovery.

In the early autumn of 1906, Mr. Lionel Cust, M.V.O., Surveyor of the
King's Pictures and Works of Art, then Director of the National Portrait
Gallery, was busily corresponding with me in regard to this portrait of
Charlotte Bronte, the authenticity of which became sensationally
attacked. At once I pointed out the importance and significance of the
portrait's being signed "Paul Heger," instead of "Constantin Heger"; and
other matters. In March 1907, I appended a footnote[95] to my article,
"The Lifting of the Bronte Veil," in _The Fortnightly Review_, and on
May 16th, 1907, the literary editor of _The Tribune_, Mr. E. G. Hawke,
having placed space at my disposal, I wrote as follows:--

  CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.
  THE HEGER PORTRAIT.

  To the Editor of _The Tribune_.

    SIR,--As the water-colour drawing by M. Heger is now a valuable
    property of the nation, and gives a more intimately faithful and
    characteristic likeness of Charlotte Bronte than the Richmond
    portrait of "Currer Bell," now also hung in the National Portrait
    Gallery, kindly permit me publicly to present some of the many
    interesting facts connected with it. The portrait is signed "Paul
    Heger, 1850" (the accent is correct), and it represents Miss Bronte
    with curls, and reading _Shirley_, on one leaf of which is a heart
    transfixed with an arrow. The dress that she wears is light green,
    and on the back of the drawing is inscribed:

    The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's death; that being
        the first occasion on which Miss Bronte wore colours after
        the death of her sister.

    And below:

    This drawing is by P. Heger (accent thus), done from life in 1850.
        The pose was suggested first by a sketch done by her brother
        Branwell many years previous.

     The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery acquired the portrait
     from a lady whose family obtained it nigh on forty years ago from
     Mr. Thomas Baylis, a personal friend of Lord Lytton. Mr. Baylis
     stated that he himself had acquired the portrait from the Heger
     family at Brussels. The children of the Mme. Heger who refused to
     see Mrs. Gaskell because of her dislike to Miss Bronte, aver that
     M. Heger never drew or painted. The statement, however, is directly
     opposed by indisputable evidence:

    (1.) The portrait is authentic, and was drawn from life in 1850, and
        the inscriptions that it bears it is proved could have been
        inspired by none other than Charlotte Bronte herself or
        M. Heger.

    (2.) The statement of Mr. Thomas Baylis, a well-connected gentleman.

    (3.) Eugene Sue, in his 1851 volume of _Miss Mary ou
        l'Institutrice_, gives, with a clouding of mystery,
        a lover--Gerard de Morville--drawing a portrait of Miss
        Mary "d'apres nature;" and M. Sue's _feuilleton_, as
        I showed in _The Fortnightly Review_ for March, identifies
        Miss Mary and the de Morvilles as phases of Charlotte
        Bronte and the Hegers.[96]

    (4.) Miss Bronte, in _Shirley_, herself presents M. Heger--Louis
        Gerard Moore--as an artist, and refers to past drawing
        episodes.[97]

    The authenticity of the inscriptions is not involved in the
    question as to whether Charlotte Bronte would use careless
    spelling, for, if she had written them, couching them in the third
    person, it is clear that she had not desired to be known as the
    writer. Upon the other hand, it is discovered to be utterly
    impossible for any one but Charlotte Bronte or M. Heger to have
    inspired the inscriptions, whosoever wrote them.

    SIGNIFICANT PIECES OF EVIDENCE.

    I find that M. Heger was Paul to none but Charlotte Bronte in 1850,
    and that before the publication, two years ago, of _Charlotte
    Bronte and Her Sisters_, by Mr. Clement Shorter, who, for reasons
    which he should explain, calls M. Constantin Gilles Romain Heger
    "M. Paul Heger," [Throughout that writer's correspondence in _The
    Times_, etc., and in _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_: beneath
    the portrait of M. Heger, facing page 198, and bearing the
    inscription:--M. Paul Heger: The Hero of _Villette_ and _The
    Professor_; and on page 161 of that work] no reference in print had
    been made to M. Heger but as Constantin. The Hegers state that M.
    Heger was not called Paul, and that Dr. Paul Heger, his son, was
    the first member of the family named Paul.

    A native of Haworth[98] who lived from 1830 till after the death
    of Charlotte Bronte in 1855, "within twenty yards of the Haworth
    Parsonage," her home, has pronounced the Heger portrait of Miss
    Bronte to be a correct likeness and "just like her." He says that
    it reminds him of her as he knew her and as she was in her younger
    days, and he pointed out to me particularly that he had seen her
    with her hair as in the Heger likeness, "scores of times before she
    went away"--this giving the clue to the reference in the
    inscription to a pose in a portrait by Branwell "many years
    previous" to 1850; and I have seen a reproduction of a sketch by
    Branwell wherein the Bronte sisters have curls. Moreover, I find
    that Miss Bronte really liked curls and disliked the other styles,
    though she conformed to the fashion.

    I also find that the paper on which the Heger portrait of Miss
    Bronte was drawn was that used in 1850 by the house where she was a
    guest in London in the early June of 1850, at the very time to
    within a day when, as there is indisputable evidence--despite
    assertions that she "never under any circumstances during the later
    period of her life wore a green dress"--Charlotte Bronte was
    wearing a light green dress. That was "the first occasion on which
    Miss Bronte wore colours," as the inscription tells us, and fact
    substantiates, after she had concluded the remarkably long mourning
    period for her sisters, which began with "the death of Emily" and
    did not end till twelve months after the death of Anne, who died on
    May 28th, 1849.

                                        (Signed) J. MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.
  Scarr Hill, Eccleshill, Bradford, May 16th, 1907.

The publication of this letter ended the controversy.[99] Since it was
published Mrs. Gaskell's daughters, who well knew Miss Bronte, have
declared themselves fully satisfied as to the authenticity of the Heger
portrait of Charlotte Bronte and the faithfulness of the likeness. The
testimony of Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, also supports this
portrait. See my further references to my correspondence with her
ladyship herewith. As regards the green dress, apart from the
indisputable external evidence I referred to in the printed letter, I
believe Charlotte Bronte speaks of it in _Villette_, though therein it
is for obfuscation's sake (necessary indeed, since _Villette_ was
published only a short time after her London visit) made "pink" and
"flounceless." In Chapter XXVIII. we find M. Paul saying--and it is
interesting thus to have connected with the green dress a character
whose prototype was M. Heger--that:

    "Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, _pea-green_ or sky-blue, [the
    dress] was all one."[100]

As I stated to Lady Ritchie in 1907, I believe that in Chapter XX. of
_Villette_ we undoubtedly have a real glimpse of incidents connected
with the wearing of the green dress; and it should be remembered that
Mrs. Bretton and Dr. John Graham Bretton in this chapter represent Mrs.
Smith, and her son Mr. George Smith, the publisher, whose guest
Charlotte Bronte was in 1850, when she first wore the green dress:--

    One morning, Mrs. Bretton ... desired me to ... show her my
    dresses; which I did, without a word.

    "That will do," said she.... "You must have a new one."

    ... She returned presently with a dressmaker. She had me measured.
    "I mean," said she, "to follow my own taste, and to have my own
    way in this little matter."

    Two days after came home--a pink [green] dress! "That is not for
    me," I said hurriedly, feeling that I would ... as soon clothe
    myself in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank.

    ... "You will wear it this ... evening."

    I thought I should not; I thought no human force should avail to
    put me into it.... I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved
    it.

But wear it she did; and when Graham [Mr. George Smith] stood in the
doorway looking at her, she tells us her uneasy aspiration was:--

    "I _do_ hope he will not think I have been decking myself out to
    draw attention."

Clearly Charlotte Bronte wished posterity to learn how it came about she
was garbed in "light fabric and bright tint," because the green dress
was a page in her life's history. In a green dress she sat down to dine,
as Mr. Thackeray's daughter, Lady Ritchie has written me she well
remembers, when Charlotte Bronte dined at Thackeray's house on June 12,
1850--not the event of the distinguished party, when Carlyle, Miss
Perry, Mrs. Procter, and others were present, though Lady Ritchie had
once confounded the two in writing upon the subject[101]. Mr.
Thackeray's daughter was a young girl at the time to which she referred,
but she has made clear to me she saw Miss Bronte three times; that the
chief occasion was when Charlotte Bronte wore the light green dress.
This, to quote her ladyship's words to me, was "not Mrs. Brookfield's
party, when neither my sister and I nor our governess dined--though we
came down in the evening. The second occasion was just casually at my
father's lecture-room, when she did not speak to me, and the third,
finally, at the Brookfield evening party, which seems to have been such
a solemn affair[102]."

These facts fix the wearing of the light green dress by Miss Bronte as
June 12, 1850. Lady Ritchie tells me that "It was at an early family
dinner by daylight with Charlotte Bronte, my father, Mr. George Smith,
my sister and our governess, that I remember sitting next Miss Bronte at
dinner and gazing at her _sleeve_ and mittens. Her dress was of some
texture like one I had had myself, which I suppose impressed it upon me,
and it had a little moss or coral pattern in green on a white ground. I
only remember the sleeve, the straight look, and the smooth Victorian
bandeaux of hair. I am sure she was _differently_ dressed at the
Brookfield evening party."

On June 12, 1850, Charlotte Bronte wrote to her friend, Miss Nussey,
from the Smiths' in London, saying:--

    Thackeray made a call.... If all be well, I am to dine at his
    house this evening.[103]

And this was when Miss Bronte sat in a light green dress at the
Thackeray dinner-table.

The Richmond portrait of Charlotte Bronte being now also in the National
Portrait Gallery, I may remark that Mrs. Gaskell herself says of this
portrait:--"Those best acquainted with the original were least satisfied
with the resemblance.... Mr. Bronte thought ... it looked good and
lifelike." Charlotte Bronte herself said her father thought the portrait
looked older than she. In view of the new interest now attaching to
Tabitha Aykroyd and Charlotte, it is instructive to find the latter
telling us Tabitha "maintains that it is not like," and also, that
Tabitha thought it "too old looking." Then she apologized for the old
servant in a sentence that pathetically recalls Mrs. Dean and Bessie of
"Catherine's" and "Jane's" childhood--"Doubtless she confuses her
recollections of me as I was in childhood, with present
impressions."[104] We discover, therefore, that in the main there was
really dissatisfaction at the "old looking" presentation, and we see
Charlotte Bronte from the beginning must have wished she had had her
hair arrangement in that portrait as was common to her at home and in
her younger days. Hence do we get a further insight into the origin of
the different pose in the more characteristic and intimately faithful
Heger portrait of Charlotte Bronte.




INDEX.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL KEY INDEX.


I stated in a letter to _The Academy_, August 1st, 1908, that "were it
possible by application of a cipher code to discover the words 'Emily
Bronte' in every sentence of _Wuthering Heights_, I could not even then
say any one wrote the book but Charlotte Bronte." If people write before
they think, then importance can be attached to clerical testimony and
external associations to the disadvantage of internal and literal
evidence. But inspiration, thought, and fact denote in questions of
authorship, and therefore that is author of a work whose thoughts and
words are expressed and inmost life revealed therein. _Wuthering
Heights_, we now see, is Charlotte Bronte, and it matters not what
amanuensis dealt with the relation--what sequence of complications
resulted from her first day of handing over the work to her sister, and
of conspiring to conceal her authorship.

Had not my own two sisters died, I might have been tempted to make them
novelists: out of my bottom drawer I could have provided them with a
novel each and one for a "follow-on," and yet have left myself some
maturer works in hand. But _my_ sisters would have had to copy out the
manuscripts for the printers from my first drafts, and in every way
possible to merit and to establish association with the books as
authors. And how indignant we would have been--nay, alarmed, had there
been a "Newby arrangement," at some daring critic, like Lady Eastlake
and Sydney Dobell, imputing they were the work of one mind! Would we not
have appealed to clerical testimony? With a more practised hand
Charlotte Bronte in her days of fame corrected and edited _Wuthering
Heights_. Emily was dead. Well might Charlotte say the labour left her
"prostrate and entombed." What memories had it recalled!--what a
history! It is obvious to all who consider carefully the letter
Charlotte Bronte penned Wordsworth, to which I refer in the footnote on
page 17 of _The Key to the Bronte Works_, that she wrote her books
rapidly; and a review of the fact that the Bronte school project was
renounced in favour of literary projects suggests Currer Bell in 1845-46
revealed to her sisters the advantages of having a bottom drawer. Let
any reader use what I have termed the Key Index to the works of
Charlotte Bronte, and it will be perceived quite easily that _Wuthering
Heights_ is irrefutably at one with Currer Bell and all her other
books--that the works of Charlotte Bronte are all related to each other,
to Charlotte Bronte, and to the facts and people of her life as seen and
known by herself. The reader of a given Bronte work will glance down the
list in the Key Index under the heading of the particular book in hand
to find these very important and intensely interesting connections, now
first shown to exist:--




THE KEY INDEX

TO THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

  Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii.-xi.[105], 16-19, 32-3,
        37-53, 55-7, 69, 78-9, 83, 85-103, 106, 108-112, 114-8, 120-1,
        126-9, 130-155, 156-8, 160-1, 168

  In relation to Branwell Bronte, x., 18, 37-40, 52-3, 78-9, 93-5, 139

  ---- Tabby Aykroyd, x., 38, 40-1, 43-53, 77, 94-5, 147-8, 160, 168

  ---- M. Heger, viii., xi., 16, 17, 34, 56, 87, 89, 91-3, 96-103, 106,
        111, 120-1, 128-9, 134-154, 157

  ---- Madame Heger, 106-7, 117

  ---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9

  ---- Rev. Patrick Bronte, 49, 147;
    the younger Cathy's father, 161

  ---- Maria Bronte, 37

  ---- Emily Bronte, viii., 17, 18, 40, 138, 146, 153, 156, 169

  ---- M. Sue, ix., 103-4, 106-112, 114, 121, 128, 132-142

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 56, 97, 128, 132-7, 139, 140-5,
        150-1, 157-8

  ---- Montagu, x., 17, 20-35, 55, 57-68, 71, 141-5

  ---- _Jane Eyre_, vii., viii., x., 18, 20, 22-56, 58-68, 71-2, 79, 83,
        85-103, 106, 108-112, 114-119, 121, 128-9, 134-146, 151-4, 157,
        168

  ---- _Shirley_, ix., 18-9, 41, 43, 55-6, 83, 85-9, 136, 146-153, 160-1

  ---- _The Professor_, ix., x., 53-6, 78-9, 84-9, 121, 127-9, 138-9,
        145, 151

  ---- _Villette_, ix., 92, 96-7, 103, 111, 121, 128-9, 136-8, 143-5,
        148-154, 161

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's Method I., viii.-x., 23-4, 25-31, 38, 40, 47,
        97-103

  ---- ---- Method II., viii., 25-31, 38-9, 48-51, 53, 55


JANE EYRE.

  Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii., viii., x.,[105] 15, 18,
        21-2, 30, 37-56, 69-119, 121-154, 157, 168

  In relation to Branwell Bronte, x., xi., 18, 37-40, 52-3, 78-9, 93-5,
        106, 139

  ---- Tabby Aykroyd, x., 40, 43-53, 77-8, 94-5, 105, 128, 168

  ---- M. Heger, x., 14, 82-9, 92-3, 96-107, 111, 120, 126-9, 136-146,
        148-154

  ---- Madame Heger, 106-7, 112, 117

  ---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9

  ---- Rev. Patrick Bronte, xi., 70-2, 74-7, 81-2, 128, 136

  ---- Maria Bronte, xi., 24, 70-1, 80-1, 106, 108-110

  ---- Anne Bronte, xi., 70-4, 77-8, 81-2;
    Elizabeth Bronte, xi., 72, 81, 106-7

  ---- Emily Bronte, xi., 70-4, 78, 81

  ---- Aunt Branwell, xi., 70-3, 77-81

  ---- Cousin Eliza Branwell, xi., 69, 70-2, 79-81

  ---- M. Sue, ix., x., 82-3, 103-121, 126-9, 135

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 97, 128, 135-8, 140-5, 150-1, 157-8

  ---- Montagu, x., 20-36, 60-8, 71-2, 140-5

  ---- _Wuthering Heights_, same as opposite

  ---- _Shirley_, 81, 83-9, 136, 147-153

  ---- _The Professor_, 79, 83-9, 111, 127-9, 139-142, 145, 151

  ---- _Villette_, 42, 86, 89, 92, 103, 118-9, 126, 128-9, 132-154

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's Method I., x., 23-4, 25-31, 97-103, 105

  ---- ---- Method II., 25-31, 45, 48-51, 72, 74


SHIRLEY.

  Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii., ix., 41, 43, 69, 75,
        81, 83-4, 87-9, 120, 136, 146-153, 156-7, 159, 160, 163

  In relation to Tabby Aykroyd, 43, 160

  ---- M. Heger, ix., 69, 81, 83-4, 120, 136, 146-153, 163

  ---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9;
    Martha and Mary, 83-4

  ---- Rev. Patrick Bronte, 41, 75, 159-161;
    Mrs. Bronte, 41, 159-161;
    Emily Bronte, 69, 81, 156-7

  ---- Rev. A. B. Nicholls, 160;
    M. Sue, 163;
    Miss Wooler, 160

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 136

  ---- _Wuthering Heights._ See Key Index for that work

  ---- _Jane Eyre._            "        "         "

  ---- _The Professor_, 83-9, 150-3

  ---- _Villette_, 41, 86, 89, 136-142, 146-154, 160-1


THE PROFESSOR.

  Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii., ix., 16, 18, 53-5, 63,
        71, 79, 83-9, 111, 120-9, 138-9, 145, 150-2, 160

  In relation to M. Heger, ix., 16, 63, 83-9, 111, 120-9, 138-9, 145,
        150-2, 160, 164

  ---- Madame Heger, 16, 111, 122-8, 131-3

  ---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9

  ---- M. Sue, ix., 63, 84, 104, 107, 111, 120-9

  ---- Branwell Bronte, 79

  ---- Montagu, 63, 71

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 63, 71, 128, 139, 151, 158

  ---- _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and _Shirley_. See Key Index
        for those works

  ---- _Villette_, ix., 86, 107, 111, 126-9, 139, 144-5, 149-151, 160

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's Method I., ix., 121, 127-8, 131


VILLETTE.

  Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii., ix., 41, 47, 86, 89,
        92, 97, 103, 107, 111, 118, 126, 128-9, 132-7, 140, 144-5,
        148-154, 160-1, 166-7

  In relation to M. Heger, ix., 70, 86, 89, 92, 97, 103, 111, 118, 126,
        128-9, 132-40, 145, 150-4, 166

  ---- Madame Heger, 106, 118, 133

  ---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 89

  ---- M. Sue, ix., 103-4, 111, 118, 120-9, 130-5

  ---- Lady Ritchie, xi., 165-8

  ---- Mr. George Smith, 69, 160-1, 166-8; Mrs. Smith, 161, 166-8

  ---- Thackeray, 70, 165-8

  ---- Rev. Patrick Bronte, 77, 136, 161

  ---- Rev. A. B. Nicholls, 69, 86, 161

  ---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 128, 132-7, 140-5, 149-152

  ---- _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, _Shirley_, and _The Professor_.
        See Key Index for those works

END OF THE KEY INDEX TO CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S WORKS.


WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

  Bronte, Charlotte, her life:--37-53, 93-103, 138-9, 153, 169;
    _Frances_ and Catherine, 133-4;
    throughout the work of, 18, 40;
    drawn by her from Montagu, 22-36, 57-68, 141-2;
    _Tale of a Foundling_, 33;
    _Alembert_, 65;
    as the younger Catherine, viii., 46, 161;
    as the two Cathys, 16, 17, 34, 106-118, 161;
    Authoritative evidence of her Methods I. and II.:--viii., 25-6,
        98-103, and of Key Index to the Bronte Works, 169, 170;
    gives it Emily, 17, 18, 169;
    offers it publishers, 17;
    story of a sad Night, 17;
    why she disavowed authorship of, 143-6;
    unable to admit authorship of, 18, 146, 153, 169;
    preface to, 142, 145;
    rainy day in her childhood, 37-42;
    fit of frenzy, 48-51;
    spectral writing, 42;
    phantom hag, 42;
    her childhood reading, 41;
    Rev. Jabez Bunting, 41;
    her cold, wailing child apparition, 28-30, 52-6;
    cloven tree, 96-7;
    and Heathcliffe's hypochondria, 16, 55-6, 87-8, 144;
    Isabella's rival, 106, 117-8;
    as Catherine of Malham, 23, 57-68;
    her mood in writing, 150-3;
    fears publisher, 18-9, 153, 169

  Bronte, Emily,
    unimportance of her corrected copy of, and implication, 17, 169,
        170;
    purporting to be by, 18, 138, 153, 169;
    _Wuthering Heights_, no internal evidence of, viii., 169, 170

  Bronte, Branwell, and authorship of, 40;
    as Hindley, 18, 37-40, 52-3, 69;
    carving knife incident, 39

  Bronte, Rev. Patrick, as Mr. Linton, 49, 147, 161

  Aykroyd, Tabitha, as Mrs. Dean, 43-51, 59, 69, 72, 78, 81, 160, 168;
    her old songs, 46-7;
    her fairy tales, 44-5;
    as Joseph, 38, 40, 47-8

  Heger, M., in, 16, 17, 34. Also, see Key Index for foregoing names

  Earnshaw, Catherine, and Heathcliffe, as Jane and Rochester, 93-103,
        139

  Heathcliffe, as Rochester, 89-92, 138-9, 153;
    as "that ghoul," 140-6;
    and Taylor, 83-9;
    return of the runaway, 93, 97-103;
    expression of eyes, 90-1;
    the foundling, 22;
    origin of name, 22, 142

  Hareton, origin of name, 22-3, 60, 64, 66;
    and M. Heger, viii.-x., 120-1

  Joseph, original of, 23;
    as Poole of _Jane Eyre_ and Montagu's uncouth servant, 23-8, 30-1

  Lockwood as Montagu, 23-32, 57-60, 66;
    his boy guide, 60, 66

  Newby, Mr. Thomas, publisher of, 19, 146, 153, 169

  Malham as Gimmerton, and Gimmerden;
    Malhamdale as the valley of Gimmerton, 22-3, 57-68, 71;
    Glens, 58, 66, 68;
    Peniston Crags, 22-3, 59, 60, 65-6;
    Fairy Cave, 22-3, 59-66;
    Chapel, 22, 66-8, and Briar Chapel of _Shirley_, 41;
    Kirk in the lonely valley, 22, 64, 66-8;
    Fair, 22, 66-7;
    mists, 68;
    stream, 22, 68;
    sough, 66-68;
    Heights, 22, 66-7;
    Catherine, of, 23, 71

  Montagu and, 20;
    Airton, 22-3;
    Airton, Robert, 60, 64, 71;
    Mrs., 60;
    lonely house of mystery and uncouth servant, 17, 23-32;
    cuckoo story or foundling "plot," 22-3, 33-4, 87;
    a night's repose and the candle-bearing bedside apparition, 21-32,
        30-2

  Brunty foundling controversy, 13;
    the key chapter, 40;
    origin of title, 56-7, 148-152;
    Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the abodes--originals not
        known, 159;
    Lady Eastlake and Dobell, 138-9, 153-4

  Published later than _Jane Eyre_, 118, 138, 169


JANE EYRE.

  Bronte, Charlotte,
    her life, 37-53, 69-103, 106-119, 123-155, 168, 169-170;
    her second work based on Montagu, 23-36, 60-6, 68-72, 140-2;
    Rivers family, 23, 69-82;
    Burns, Helen, 23-4, 69-71, 80,
    and Charles I., 64,
    as Agnes Jones (death of), 106-110,
    and M. Sue, 108-110.
    "Rivers," origin of suggestion, 23, 71-2, 141-2,
    Diana and Mary, 70-8, 81-2,
    St. John as Mr. Bronte, 70-8, 81-2,
    as Charlotte's Brussels priest, 77, 132, 136-7,
    not Rev. Mr. Nussey, 77;
    Hannah, and Bessie (Tabitha Aykroyd), 40, 43-53, 69-73, 78, 81,
    fairy tales and old songs, 44-7;
    Reed, name (and Keeldar), 23, 81;
    aunt, 38, 70-1;
    John (and Hindley), 37-40, 52-3, 71, 79, 113;
    Eliza and Georgiana, 69, 79-82;
    Severn Julia, 23, 81, 107;
    Lowood school, 18, 21-2;
    fever, etc., at, 106-110, 117;
    Miss Temple of, 81, 110-1;
    Brocklehurst, 21, 81, 115;
    Morton (Haworth), Moor House, 70-82, 105;
    Charlotte as Jane Eyre and Catherine Earnshaw (also see Key Index),
        37-42, 93-103, 150-2;
    rainy day in her childhood, 37-42;
    fit of frenzy, 48-51;
    spectral writing, 42;
    phantom hag, 42;
    cold, wailing child apparition, 28-30, 52-6, 151;
    cloven tree, 96-7;
    the Sidgwicks, 78;
    Gateshead Hall, 37-9, 45;
    her Thornfield, 72, 127-8;
    as Jane Eyre and Lucia Snowe, 148-152;
    as Jane Eyre, and Crimsworth of _The Professor_, ix.-x., 127-8;
    as Janet Aire or Jane Eyre of Malham, 22-3, 60-6, 70-2, 142;
    "Jane," a secondary adaptation, 71;
    Fairy Janet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, 23, 60-4;
    no views on lunacy, 34-6;
    Rochester's song, 140-2;
    the miraculous voice, 136-7;
    nymph and satyr, 141-2;
    missionary life and priest, 136-7;
    the runaway, 93, 97-103, 129;
    hen-killing figure in _Wuthering Heights_ and, ix.-x;
    "Rydings," "Norton Conyers," and "Thornfield," 35, 159;
    Wycollar Hall, 159

  ---- Rochester (see Key Index for M. Heger and the Taylors), x., 14,
        145, and _Wildfell Hall_, 161;
    _Jane Eyre_ the surpassing of all Bronte biographies, 82;
    "Key to _Jane Eyre_" The, xi., 20, 68, 153

  Malham or Gimmerton, background of _Jane Eyre_, 22-3, 58-68;
    source of river Aire or Ayre, 23, 60-71;
    Jane of, 22-3, 60-6, 70-2;
    see Fairy Janet Aire or Eyre of Malham

  Montagu, and opening of _Jane Eyre_, 21-2;
    lonely house of mystery, and uncouth servant (Grace Poole and
        Joseph), 17, 23-32
    --Jane Eyre's and Lockwood's two dreams in, 28-30
    --a night's repose and candle-bearing apparition in, 21, 23-32;
    origin of plot of insane lady, and of the white veil
        scene (Shelley), 24, 34-6;
    insane lady a secondary suggestion; suggests names, Aire or Eyre,
        Burns, Rivers, Reed, Keeldar, Broughton, Eshton, Georgiana,
        Helen, Ingram, Lowood, Lynn, Mason, Millcote, Poole, recalling
        perhaps a Rev. Mr. Pool, and Currer Bell, 21, 23-4


SHIRLEY.

  Bronte, Charlotte,
    as Shirley Keeldar, 81, 120;
    as Caroline Helstone (and Catherine Earnshaw), 41, 146-8, 152;
    her home the Rectory, 159;
    childhood reading, 41-2;
    Keeldar, name, 23;
    Shirley as Emily Bronte, 69, 156-7.
    Helstone, Mr., 86;
      original of, 75, 159-161;
      name, 41;
      and Rev. H. Roberson, 86, 159-160.
    Heger, M., and the Moores, 89, 146-8;
      Louis, 163;
      Robert, 152.
    Cartwright, Mr., 89, 160.
    Mr. Macarthey, 160.
    Mrs. Pryor, 147-8;
      a composite character, 160;
      and Mrs. Dean and Tabby, 43;
      Miss Wooler, 160.
    Yorke (Taylor), Hiram, 83-4;
      Matthew, 83;
      Rose, 83-4;
      Jessie, death of, 84

  Birstall, Batley, 159;
    "Briarmains," 83;
    "Field Head," 159;
    The Red House, Gomersall, 83, 159;
    Oakwell House, 159.
    Hartshead, Brighouse, 160;
      Nunnwood, Nunnerly and church, Robin Hood, Kirklees Park,
        Priory, 160;
      Hollows Mill, 160;
      Whinbury (Dewsbury), 160.
    Published in 1849


THE PROFESSOR.

  Bronte, Charlotte, as Henri Frances Evans, 71, 122;
    as Crimsworth, ix., 127-8;
    Fairy Janet, 63, 71;
    wailing child apparition, 53-5;
    Lucia, 86, 151

  Heger, M., as Crimsworth, 63, 127, 138;
    Hunsden, 83-9, 151;
    origin of name, 84;
    Pelet, 16, 84, 139, 145

  Heger, Madame, as Mdlle. Reuter, 111, 122

  Offered to publishers, 17;
    published, 160


VILLETTE.

  Bronte, Charlotte, as Lucy Snowe, 86, 131, 144, 120, 148-152;
    origin of name, 22, 56, 149, 151;
    childhood reading, 41;
    and Father Confessor, 77, 132, 136-7;
    as Paulina, 47, 120,
    and Cathy Linton, 161;
    Paulina and Mr. Home--Charlotte and Rev. Patrick Bronte, 161;
    final words in, 129

  Bretton, Dr. John, Paulina's lover, 69, 161;
    as Mr. George Smith and Rev. A. B. Nicholls, 69, 86, 145, 160-1.
    Mrs. Bretton, 166

  Heger, M., as Paul Emanuel, 42, 96-7, 126, 131, 145;
    his harshness, 85-6;
    and Thackeray, 70

  Heger, Madame, as Madame Beck, 118, 133

  Ritchie, Lady, and green dress, xi., 165-8

  Villette as London and Brussels, 160-1

  Published, 19;
    inception, 166

  _Agnes Grey_ and _Wildfell Hall_, 17, 161.




GENERAL INDEX.


  Aire, or Ayre, Malham, source of the, 23, 60-1, 71

  Armytage, Bart., Sir Geo. J., 160

  Aykroyd, Tabby. See Bronte servants


  Branwell, Maria, of Penzance, marries Patrick Bronte, 75;
    death of, 14, 159-161

  ---- Aunt (Elizabeth), and the Hegers, 113-4;
    Branwell Bronte her favourite, 37, 78-9;
    in mourning for, 72-3

  ---- Cousin Eliza, 68, 80

  Bronte, Annie or Anne (Acton Bell),
    as understudy to Charlotte, 17, 169;
    _Gondal Chronicles_, 17;
    _Agnes Grey_ and _Wildfell Hall_, 17, 161;
    appearance and life, 70-4, 77-8, 81-2;
    Poems, 156-8;
    death of, 161-5

  ---- Charlotte, birthplace, 14;
    birthday, 14, 106;
    appearance, 118, 131, 165, 168.
    Childhood:
      a rainy day, 18, 37-42, 78;
      curtain incident, 38;
      Branwell as "tyrant" makes her head ache, 18, 37-42;
      "volume-hurling," 38-9, 78;
      Methodist literature, 40-2;
      writings and Mrs. Gaskell, 14;
      Tabby, 38, 40-1, 43-51, 168
        --her homily, 40
        --old songs and fairy tales (Charlotte's love of Scottish
          ballads), 47, 149, 150;
        the locked chamber, 48-51;
      passionateness, 45-6, 48-51, 116.
    Elfish imagination, 23;
    schools, 14, 16, 18, 21-2, 81, 104, 106-117
      --Clergy Daughters' School, 18, 21-2, 81, 106-117,
      Roe Head, 14, 16, 83,
      Heger _pension_, 16, 18, 72, 104;
    drawings, 82;
    her life from childhood to womanhood, 93-103;
    no psychical reciprocity with friends, 14;
    Wordsworth and her facility in writing novels, 17, 169;
    at Brussels (the Hegers),
      teacher and pupil, viii.-x., 63, 82, 120-2, 131, 138,
      dejection at, 120-1, 124;
    M. Heger, viii.-xi., 14-17, 93, 96-107, 111-2, 120-154, 162-8,
      and her literary secrets, 104, 162;
    Madame Heger, 16, 104-7, 111-2, 117-9, 122-7, 133,
      forbids corresponding, 16;
    Charlotte as Mdlle., 105,
      as M. Sue's Mdlle. Lagrange and Miss Mary, ix., 82, 103-132, 163;
    _Imitation of Christ_, ix., 121-2;
    her priest, 77, 132-8;
    departure from Brussels, 16, 127;
    flight from temptation, 105, 141-2, 122-9, 151-2;
    the fiery ordeal, 154;
    parting with the Hegers, 122-132;
    origin of her works, vii., 15, 20-36, 138;
    Montagu, see Key Index for _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_;
    _Alembert_, 64-5;
    Currer Bell, 17, 21-2;
    perpetuates drama of her life, vii., 15, 16, 154;
    Branwell, 18,
      and his aunt, 79;
    at Haworth Parsonage, 69-82;
    school project given up, 16, 169.
    Poems publishing, 17:
      "Apostasy" and "Regret," 96-7, 133-7;
      "Frances," 132, 134, 144, 150-1;
      "Gilbert," 139, 143-4;
      "The Letter," 105;
      "Mementos," 150;
      "Apostasy," 133-7;
      "Preference," 132;
      "Passion," 157.
    Her hypochondria, 16, 87-8;
    "Puir Mary Lee," 45, 149, 150;
    the storm, 16, 17, 130-154, 157-8;
    vindictiveness against M. Heger, 16, 17, 143-6, 152;
    Ghoul and Satyr notion, 140-6;
    Heger and her heroes (see also the Taylors, 83-9), 83-92;
    heaven undesired by lover, 97, 133-4, 139;
    elective affinities, cloven tree, and "twin-soul," 96-7, 147-8;
    supernatural "way" to "twin-soul" lover (and the haunted wind),
        55-6, 136-7, 140, 147-8;
    eerie signal against lattice, 28-30, 53-6, 147-8;
    dual portraiture, 69, 70, 77, 83-9, 120, 159, 160, 161;
    ice-cold wailing child apparition, 28-30, 52-6, 151;
    her two dreams preface to "bedside apparition," 28-30;
    name selection method, 22, 68;
    chronological sequences in her works, 161;
    character of her correspondence, 14, 15;
    Heger portrait of, in National Portrait Gallery, xi., 162-8;
    Richmond Portrait in N.P.G., 168;
    _Wuthering Heights_ complications (conspires to accredit and sustain
        Emily as author), 17, 146, 169;
    her fear of Mr. Newby, 19, 153, 169;
    limitations of Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, 15
      --disappointment of, 104;
    last survivor of the young Brontes, 19, 161;
    Introduction to her sisters' poems, 156-7;
    Miss Austen, 15;
    Rev. A. B. Nicholls, marriage with, 19, 96-7, 161
      --Catherine Winkworth on, 96;
    _Wildfell Hall_, 17, 161;
    at Thackeray's and the Smiths', xi., 166-8;
    dedicates _Jane Eyre_ to Thackeray, xi.;
    Greenwood Dyson and, 164.
    Last days:
      father and daughter, 161;
      her resting-place, 19;
    her Message and high rank of her genius, 16, 155.
    Also see the Key Index to her works

  ---- Elizabeth, 18, 71-2, 106-7

  ---- Emily (Ellis Bell), as understudy to Charlotte, 17, 169;
    conspires with her to sustain role of author of _Wuthering Heights_,
        17, 138, 146, 169;
    no internal evidence of her in _Wuthering Heights_, viii.;
    her life contrasted with Charlotte's, 17, 18, 156-7;
    relations with Branwell, 18, 39, 40, 139;
    appearance and life, 17, 72-4, 78, 81-2, 156-7;
    Poems, "Old Stoic," "Last Lines," 157;
    her literary limitations, 17, 156-7;
    death of, 161-5.
    See Key Index of _Shirley_

  ---- Maria (Helen Burns), 18, 41, 71.
    See Key Index; also M. Sue

  ---- Patrick Branwell, appearance, 79;
    artist, 18, 165-6;
    his verse, 158;
    enjoys the hearth, 37-8;
    a sign of trouble for, 52-3;
    evil days, 39, 78-9, 158;
    and Aunt Branwell, 78-9;
    and M. Sue, 106, 110.
    As Hindley and John Reed, x., 18, 37-8, 52-3, 69, 78-9, 139.
    See also Key Index for _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and
        _The Professor_

  ---- Rev. Patrick, parents, Hugh Brunty and Alice M'Clory, 13;
    at Ballynaskeagh and Drumballyroney, 13;
    at Cambridge,  13, 74-5;
    Wethersfield, 75, and Mary Burder;
    Dewsbury, 75;
    Vicar of Hartshead, 160;
    marries Maria Branwell, 18, 75, 159-161;
    Vicar of Thornton, 14;
    of Haworth, 13;
    appearance and life, 13, 70-7, 82, 147, 159-161, 167-8;
    verse, 13, 158;
    and Mrs. Gaskell's Life, 15.
    Also see Key Index

  ---- Poems, 156-8;
    Aylott and Jones, 17, 105, 160

  ---- servants:
    Aykroyd Tabitha, x.;
      as Nelly Dean and Bessie, 43-53, 168;
      does not understand Charlotte Bronte, 43, 45-6;
      and old songs, 45-7;
      also, 72, 77-8, 147-8, 160, 168;
      her homily, 40;
      her gift of narrative and fairy tales, 44-5;
      death of, 19, 96-7.
      Also see Key Index for _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_, and
        _Shirley_.
    Brown, Martha, 47, 96, 161;
    Brown, Tabitha (Mrs. Ratcliffe), and Charlotte Bronte's married
        life, 96;
    Garrs, Nancy, and sister, 47, 159

  Brookfield, Mrs., 167-8


  Carlisle, William, 167

  Carus-Wilson, Rev. Mr., 115

  Casterton Hall, 23;
    Clergy Daughters' School, 18, 81, 106, 108-111, 114-117

  Cornwall, Barry, 34

  Courtney, William Leonard, xi., 104

  Cust, Lionel, 162


  Devonshire, Duke of, 20

  Dewsbury, 14, 83, 160;
    Hartshead, 81, 160

  Dobell, Sydney, 153-4, 169

  Dyson, Greenwood, and Charlotte Bronte, 164


  Elf, of Craven, The, 60, 141-2

  Evans, Miss (Miss Temple), 110, 114


  Fairy Cave, The, and Fairy Janet: see Malham


  Gaskell, Mrs., and M. Heger, 15, 96, 104;
    Madame Heger, 163;
    West Indian girl mystery, 108

  ---- Misses, 165


  Hathersage, 70-1, 77

  Haworth, 68, 70, 138, 164;
    Church, 13, 19, 164;
    Parsonage, 69, 72-82, 159, 161, 164

  Heger, M., as Charlotte Bronte's pupil, viii.-x., 120, 122;
    original of her chief heroes, 14, 16-17, 83-6, 89-93, 96-7, etc.;
    not secretive, 111, 162;
    and Roman Catholic Church, 16, 132, 138;
    a great and religious personality, 121, 124, 126-9, 132-3, 137-8,
        154, 166;
    Charlotte Bronte's harsh portrayals of, 143-6;
    facial metamorphoses, 85;
    the bitterness of his life, 128-9, 130-2;
    "Paul," 162-6;
    as M. de Morville, 82, 104-6, 120-9, 132, 163.
    See Key Index for M. Heger

  ---- Madame, 16;
    her jealousy, 104, 112, 117-8, 122-3, 121-2;
    appearance of, 106;
    as Madame de Morville, 106-133.
    See Key Index for Madame Heger

  Hawke, E. G., 163

  Hodge, Harold, xi., 153

  Holloway, Laura C., 77

  Holmes, Professor Charles J., 165

  Holroyd, Kt., Sir Charles, vii.


  Kendal, 106;
    Kendall Institution, 114-7

  Kirkby Malham Church, 64, 66-8


  Lagrange's Manuscript "Catherine Bell," 104-119

  Lambert family, 64

  Lucan's "Pharsalia," 14

  Lytton, Lord, 163


  M'Clory, Alice, 13

  Malham, original of Gimmerton of _Wuthering Heights_:
    home of Catherine Earnshaw, and of Janet Aire of _Jane Eyre_, 22-3,
        57-68, 71;
    source of the Aire or Ayre, 71.
    See Key Index of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ for Malham in
        Montagu

  Malham, or Malam, origin of family, 67

  Malham and _Kalderworth_, 67

  Malhamdale, enchanted land, 60, 71

  Montagu or Mountagu, Admiral, and Charles II., 20, 64;
    De Ruyter, 20

  Montagu, Basil, 20-1

  Montagu, Frederic, his _Gleanings in Craven_ provides the Malham
        background, and the plots of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane
        Eyre_, and Charlotte Bronte's _nom de guerre_, Currer Bell,
        20-36, 57-68, 141-2, 145. See Montagu in the Key Index for
        those works

  Montagu, John, fourth Earl of Sandwich, 20

  Morville de, M., Alphonsine, and Gerard, see M. Heger;
    Madame, see Madame Heger


  National Portrait Gallery,
    and Heger Portrait of Charlotte Bronte, xi., 162-8;
    Thomas Baylis, 163;
    and Richmond portrait, 168

  Newby, Thomas, 19, 153, 169

  Nicholls, Rev. A. B., see Charlotte Bronte;
    also Key Index for _Villette_

  Nussey, Ellen or Nelly, 14, 45, 71, 77, 160, 168;
    Rev. Henry, 77


  Procter, Mrs., and Miss Perry, 167


  Rigby, Miss (Lady Eastlake), 138-9, 153, 169

  Ripon, K.G., Marquis of, xii.

  Ritchie, Lady, xi., 165-8


  Shorter, Clement K., viii., 22, 77, 83, 147, 162, 164

  Smith, George, xi., 86, 160-1, 166-8;
    Mrs. Smith, 166-7.
    See Key Index for _Villette_;
    Reginald John, K.C., 162;
    Smith Elder & Co., 161-2, 168

  Sue, Eugene, ix., 16, 103-129.
    See Key Index to the Bronte works.


  Taylor family of Hunsworth, 83-9 (see Key Index);
    Mary and Martha, 83-4

  Thackeray, W. M., xi., 34, 167-8.
    See Key Index, _Villette_


  Welch, Catherine Galbraith, xi.

  West Indian Girl, mystery of, 106-8, 112

  Winkworth, Catherine, 96

  Wise, Thomas J., 64

  Wooler, Margaret, 18, 160


  Yates, W. W., 75




WORKS.


  _Key to the Bronte Works_, John Malham-Dembleby:--
    Its place and importance, vii.-xii., 15, 17-19, 25, 58, 64, 80-2,
        104, 108, 146, 154.
    Importance of its Key Index, 169-171

  _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Mrs. Gaskell, 15, 22, 43-4, 52, 72, 83,
        118, 123, 149, 161, 168;
    cause of its sombreness, 82;
    disappointment, and limitations, of, 15, 104;
    and Branwell Bronte, 121.
    Haworth Edition, 14, 17, 85, 121

  _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Augustine Birrell, 75

  _Brontes: Life and Letters_, Clement K. Shorter, 14, 73, 80, 87

  _Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle_, Clement K. Shorter, 17, 135

  _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, Clement K. Shorter, viii., 22, 77,
        147, 159, 164

  _Bronte Country_, Dr. Erskine Stuart, 35

  _Life of Emily Bronte_, Miss Mary Robinson, 39;
    character of work, 57

  _Bronte Family_, Francis Leyland, 39-40, 158

  _Brontes, Fact and Fiction_, Rev. Angus Mackay, 13, 41, 132, 144

  _Bronte Homeland_, J. Ramsden, 13

  _Brontes in Ireland_, Dr. William Wright, 13

  _Charlotte Bronte: Monograph_, Sir T. Wemyss Reid, 14

  _Father of the Brontes_, W. W. Yates, 75

  _Rev. Patrick Bronte's Collected Works_, Horsfall Turner, 13, 158

  _Thornton and the Brontes_, William Scruton, 161

  _Chapters from Some Memories_, Lady Ritchie, 167

  _Craven Highlands_, Harry Speight, 60

  _Dictionary of National Biography_, Leslie Stephen, 21, 159

  _English Dialect Dictionary_, Dr. Joseph Wright, 68, 149

  _Gleanings in Craven_, Frederic Montagu, 20-36, 57-68; 141-2, 145;
    Leeds and Skipton, 20;
    dedicated to Duke of Devonshire, printed by A. Pickard, published by
        Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 20. Also see under _Wuthering Heights_
        and _Jane Eyre_, for Malham and Montagu, and Key Index to those
        works

  _Kalderworth, or Lawyer Vavasor's Secret_, John Malham-Dembleby,
    Malham background of, 67;
    when written, and origin of title, 67;
    published by Joseph Cooke, Sir Edward Russell, Kt., and A. G.
        Jeans, 67

  _Memorials of Two Sisters: Susanna and Catherine Winkworth_, 96

  _Miss Mary ou L'Institutrice_, Eugene Sue, 82, 84, 105-6, 120, 126-7,
        130, 163. See Key Index for M. Sue

  _Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle_, 167

  _Sydney Dobell's Life and Letters_, 153-4

  _Woman's Work in English Fiction_, Clara H. Whitmore, A.M., viii.




MAGAZINES, ETC.


  _Academy_, 169

  _Cornhill Magazine_, 162

  _Dundee Advertiser_, xi.

  _Fortnightly Review_, xi., 39, 70, 104, 125, 162-3

  _Liverpool Post_, 67

  _London and Paris Courier_, G. W. MacArthur Reynolds and M. Sue, 105

  _London Journal_; _Weekly Times_, 105

  _New York Times Saturday Review_, xi.

  _Outlook_, xi.

  _Palladium_, 153-4, 169

  _Quarterly Review_, 138-9, 153, 169

  _Saturday Review_, xi., xii., 20, 68, 153

  _Sheffield Independent_, 67

  _Spectator_, xi., 125

  _Times_, 162, 164

  _Tribune_, 162-5




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FOOTNOTES:


[1] Clement Shorter in _Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters_, p. 236; 1905.

[2] Clara H. Whitmore, A.M., in _Woman's Work in English Fiction_; 1910.

[3] _The Saturday Review_, September 6, 1902. A correspondence followed.

[4] _The Fortnightly Review_, March 1907.

[5] _The Brontes in Ireland_, by Dr. William Wright, 1893, and _The
Bronte Homeland_, by J. Ramsden, 1897, though they conflict, deal
interestingly with Patrick Brunty's, or Bronte's, relations.
"Patrick ... after being a linen weaver secured the post of teacher in
the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then that of teacher at
Drumballyroney." Eventually he got a scholarship and entered St. John's
College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took Holy Orders. His father
was a Hugh Brunty, who married a Roman Catholic, Alice McClory, or
M'Clory. She is said to have become a Protestant, as was her husband. Of
this marriage there were ten children, the eldest being Charlotte
Bronte's father, who early took to "larnin'," to quote the Irish
hearsay. _The Brontes in Ireland_ has been challenged as presenting many
statements impossible of verification. The assertion that an Irish
Brunty foundling story suggested the foundling of _Wuthering Heights_
raised a harsh and voluminous controversy. The Rev. Angus Mackay, in his
little brochure _The Brontes--Fact and Fiction_, 1897, controverted Dr.
Wright, as did others elsewhere. The matter is summed up succinctly by
Mr. Horsfall Turner, the Yorkshire genealogist, in _The Rev. Patrick
Bronte's Collected Works_, 1898, where, speaking of the Irish Brontes
and the foundling story, he says:--"The only one who could transmit this
story was Hugh Brunty, and not one of his descendants ever heard of it
before Dr. Wright's book was issued, not even the vaguest tradition."

[6] The "wild, weird writings" of her childhood, which awed homely Mrs.
Gaskell, were merely badly, or I may say, childishly, assimilated
fragments from English adaptations found in Dryden, Rowe, etc., of Lucan
(Pharsalia, lib. 1, 73), and of other ancient writers.

[7] Her correspondence is given in Sir Wemyss Reid's _Monograph on
Charlotte Bronte_, in Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Haworth
Edition, and in Mr. Clement Shorter's _The Brontes: Life and Letters_,
1908.

[8] _Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle_, by Clement Shorter.

[9] Charlotte Bronte, upon the other hand, was a most fluent writer of
prose. She sent Wordsworth a story in 1840, and spoke of her facility in
writing novels. (Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, pages
189-190, Haworth Edition.) It is said Emily corrected misprints, etc.,
in her printed volume of _Wuthering Heights_; but whether or not she did
this at Charlotte Bronte's instigation is of little interest and no
importance in view of the literal evidence in _The Key to the Bronte
Works_. It may be Emily turned Charlotte's amanuensis; and it would not
be difficult to show Anne Bronte also had been Charlotte's understudy.
See my remarks on _Wildfell Hall_ in Appendix.

[10] See my remarks, page 39.

[11] When King Charles II. was crowned, Montagu carried the sceptre. A
historian states that the Admiral--who, I may say, had been a great
friend of Richard Cromwell--perished in the sea-fight with De Ruyter,
because he would not leave his ship by a piece of obstinate courage,
provoked by a reflection that he took care more of himself than of the
king's honour.

[12] For Basil Montagu see _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[13] On the other side of the same page Montagu concluded the narration
of his "A Night's Repose," with which I deal later.

[14] Clement Shorter's _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, p. 164.

[15] See my observations on the name of Lucy Snowe.

[16] The name of "Helen Burns," that saintly sister of Charlotte Bronte,
may have been suggested by the St. Helen's Well which Montagu states was
near Miss Currer's home, Eshton Hall.

[17] _The Bronte Country_, by Dr. Erskine Stuart.

[18] A recognizable idiosyncrasy of Charlotte Bronte's genius is the
vivid minuteness with which she paints and records apparently
unimportant details and happenings connected with her early childhood.
(See footnote on page 41.)

[19] See footnote page 47.

[20] _Emily Bronte_, Miss Mary Robinson; 1883.

[21] Angus Mackay, in _The Brontes: Fact and Fiction_ (1897), identifies
Miss Bronte with Caroline Helstone. Charlotte Bronte's mother was a
native of Penzance, near Helston.

[22] Catherine's diary was written on the margin of a printed sermon by
the Rev. Jabes Branderham. Lockwood's "dream" in the connection was
evidently a travesty on a sermon of the famous Rev. Jabes Bunting, a
Wesleyan Methodist, and the zealousness of his hearers, concerning which
preacher stories were possibly gathered by Charlotte Bronte from old
Tabitha, who doubtless did occasional service as the old
dialect-speaking Joseph. The Rev. Jabes Bunting was on the Halifax
Circuit in the eighteen-twenties, and his sermons were printed in
pamphlet form. Note the extract I have given from _Villette_ on Lucy
Snowe's having read as a child certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts.

[23] "Lee" may have been suggested by the name of the heroine of "Puir
Mary Lee," a Scottish ballad, which I find influenced Charlotte Bronte
greatly when she began to write _Wuthering Heights_.

[24] Called Nelly or Ellen Dean, perhaps because of Charlotte Bronte's
affection for her friend Nelly or Ellen Nussey.

[25] Of course Tabitha Aykroyd was twenty years younger when Charlotte
was a child. Thus the early references to the more active Ellen Dean and
Bessie in the main imply Tabby in the eighteen-twenties; those to her as
the sedate and glum Mrs. Dean and Hannah, as Tabby in the
eighteen-forties. We see Tabby quite in the caricature of Joseph in
Charlotte's half-humorous references to her in the diary-like
descriptions of the Bronte kitchen fireside life of her childhood in
1829, etc.--of which the rainy day incident in the childhood of little
Catherine and Jane is so reminiscent--quoted by Mrs. Gaskell in the
Bronte _Life_:--

                                             "June the 21st, 1829.

    "One night, about the time when the cold sleet of November [is]
    succeeded by the snowstorms and the high, piercing night winds
    of 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 candle having been produced. A long pause
    succeeded, which was at last 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.'

    "Charlotte: 'Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby?'"

As time progressed Charlotte Bronte viewed more sentimentally the
associations of her early childhood. Whenever Tabby was "Joseph" of
_Wuthering Heights_ Charlotte humorously caricatured her.

[26] See footnote on page 37.

[27] A remarkably recognizable idiosyncrasy of this child-phantom of
Charlotte Bronte's brain is the part the little hands of the child play.
In Charlotte Bronte's child-phantom of _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter
III., the hand of the child takes a principal part, as in her above two
versions.

[28] See note on "the hand" of Charlotte Bronte's child-phantom, page
53.

[29] See the chapters on "The Recoil" for the origin of the title of
_Wuthering Heights_, and of the name Lucy Snowe; also my remarks on
Charlotte Bronte's poem "Apostasy."

[30] "The breeze was sweet with scent of heath and rush, ... the hills
shut us quite in; for the glen towards its head wound to their very
core."--_Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXXIV.

[31] I have known for many years the wife and children of this Robert
Airton. His father was, I believe, parish clerk for Coniston. Mrs.
Airton once told me that when she first met her husband he was playing a
violin in the entrance of a cave, under a crag in Malhamdale.

[32] It will be observed that in Chapter XXIII. of _The Professor_
Charlotte Bronte practically calls Frances the heroine, "Jane." Of
course she is the elf Janet (see Chapter XXV. of _The Professor_), and
this sprite was also Jane Eyre--Charlotte Bronte herself. Read the
verses in Chapter XXIII. in the light of my writing on "Eugene Sue and
Charlotte Bronte's Brussels Life" and "The Recoil."

[33] Mr. Thomas J. Wise has published and edited a valuable edition of
this story, 1896.

[34] "I like Charles the First," says Helen Burns in _Jane Eyre_,
Chapter VI.; "I respect him--I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his
enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How
dared they kill him!" Montagu of course would know that his own ancestor
brought over Charles the Second on the Restoration. Hence his warmth. We
now understand the origin of the detached fragment in _Jane Eyre_.

[35] It is a remarkable coincidence that Malham was the background of my
first novel, a work of the substantial number of 160,000 words, which I
wrote in my teens. It was published serially in _The Sheffield
Independent_ by Mr. Joseph Cooke, beginning in May 1896 and running till
September, under the title of _Kalderworth_, a name I had compounded
from the Yorkshire river Calder. Afterwards the serial rights were also
purchased by Sir Edward Russell and Mr. A. G. Jeans, of _The Liverpool
Post_, wherein the story ran serially as _Lawyer Vavasor's Secret_. I
did not choose Malham by reason of its being, as it is, the place from
which our family of Malham, or Malam, sprung: I had cycled over to the
remote village with my father. I was unaware that October 15 was an
especial day at Malham, nevertheless I began my story--_Kalderworth_:--

    "On the evening of the 15th of October, in the latter end of the
    Eighteen Hundred and Eighties, as the sun sank greyly behind the
    distant skyline of those wild hills that stretch from Malham and
    away into the North of Yorkshire, a solitary horseman pushed his
    way over a hard moorland road to a little deserted hamlet, where
    only one soul lived, and that a hag whose fame had spread as a
    dabbler in the black art and the mischievous doctrines."

I did not know of Montagu's book at the time; and of all the Bronte
novels I had only read _Jane Eyre_. I remember once reflecting--while
_Kalderworth_ was being published--that Charlotte Bronte must have
called her character Jane Eyre after the river Aire, just as I had
called my loosely composite village up in Malhamdale Kalderworth, from
the river Calder; and I thought Currer Bell, in her choice of the name
"Jane Eyre," had been actuated poetically by the fact of the adjacency
of the Yorkshire river Aire, or Ayre, and had changed the "A" in Aire,
just as I the "C" in Calder. Nor was it till years later that I knew
Charlotte Bronte had written in _Shirley_, Chapter XIX., of "Calder or
Aire thundering in flood."

[36] That Gimmerton in _Wuthering Heights_ means "the village of sheep"
was admitted years ago. The etymology is very obvious. We now have the
circumstances in which Charlotte Bronte chose the name.

[37] See my footnote, page 58.

[38] Thus she put her cousin Eliza Branwell under the same roof as
herself and Branwell Bronte in _Jane Eyre_.

[39] The Poems prepared for publication in the autumn of 1845 bear
evidence of the influence of Montagu's work. It was at this time
Montagu's work provided Charlotte Bronte's _nom de guerre_ of Currer
Bell. See my foot-note on Frances of _The Professor_ as the Fairy Jane,
page 63.

[40] A copy of this will is printed in _The Brontes: Life and Letters_.

[41] Mr. Augustine Birrell in his _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ (1887),
gives a very interesting insight into a love episode of Mr. Bronte,
during his first curacy, at Wethersfield, near Braintree, Essex. Mr.
Bronte found a home with a Miss Mildred Davy, with whose niece, a
"comely damsel of eighteen--a Miss Mary Mildred Davy Burder--with brown
curls and blue eyes" he fell in love. A plotting guardian uncle,
however, removed Miss Burder and wrongly intercepted all Mr. Bronte's
letters. Subsequently Mr. Bronte married Miss Maria Branwell, of
Penzance, visiting in Yorkshire, whom he married at St. Oswald's Church,
Guiseley, near Leeds. After the death of his wife, Mr. Bronte offered to
marry Miss Burder, but was refused. She became the wife of the Rev.
Peter Sibree, of Wethersfield. Mr. W. W. Yates' book, _The Father of the
Brontes_, 1897, shows us Mr. Bronte as a curate at Dewsbury. Mr. Yates,
who is the originator of the Bronte Society and Museum, rightly
associated Mr. Bronte with Mr. Helstone of _Shirley_, supporting his
contention by evidence.

[42] For story and other purposes Miss Bronte makes St. John Rivers ask
Jane's hand in marriage; and of course as the original of Moor House has
been supposed to be at Hathersage in Derbyshire, and it was there the
Rev. Henry Nussey lived--Miss Nussey's brother--who had offered to marry
Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell's Bronte's _Life_ and a following
(including even a recent catalogue of the Bronte Museum, wherein
reference is made to Mr. Nussey's portrait!) have given it forth that
Mr. Nussey was the original of St. John Rivers--notwithstanding that Mr.
Nussey was a married man when Charlotte was visiting at Hathersage. That
Mr. Nussey and St. John Rivers are wholly dissimilar is contended at
length in _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, pp. 166-170.

[43] _The Brontes: Life and Letters._

[44] In the love relations of Shirley Keeldar, however, we must expect
to find phases of circumstances associated with Charlotte Bronte
herself. Thus Shirley Keeldar is at times Currer Bell.

[45] Mr. Rochester's remarks in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XII., on Jane's
drawings would seem to show that though M. Heger, the original of this
character, was interested in Charlotte Bronte's gift as an artist (and
we know she sent M. Heger a drawing of hers as late as August 1845), he
spoke of them in disparagement--a fact that alone argues he was her
superior in art, and understood drawing. Indeed, after seeing the
various water-colour and other drawings of Charlotte Bronte, some thirty
of which, including "a pencil drawing of Louis Philippe of France, drawn
by C. Bronte during her stay in Brussels," are numbered with the Bronte
relics, I may say we can take it as really the expression of M. Heger
concerning her sketches when Mr. Rochester observes of Jane's efforts in
drawing:--"You have secured the shadow of your thought, but no more
probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give
it being," for this is the truth concerning Charlotte Bronte's efforts
of the kind. Nevertheless, I find evidence of a Brussels tradition in
the eighteen-fifties that she was clever as a painter, M. Sue giving
ability to his Miss Mary in this direction. It is more emphasized in his
_feuilleton_ than volume portrayal of this "Institutrice," both of which
works we shall see presented phases of Miss Bronte as she was known.
Hence we read, "Eh bien! monsieur, trouvez-vous _qu'elle sait un peu
dessiner_, MA _Miss Mary_?" The italics, etc., are M. Sue's.

[46] _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, page 181.

[47] The James Taylor in the firm of her publishers, who corresponded
with Miss Bronte, was not related to this Hunsworth family.

[48] See Matthew Yorke, Hiram Yorke's son, a character who has several
traits in common with Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_.--_Shirley_,
Chap. IX.

[49] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Haworth edition, p. 230.

[50] Note that in both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ it is assumed
this character made silent reference to "the Deuce"; though he never
uttered the name, his words seemed to "express" the sentiment.

[51] _The Brontes: Life and Letters_, p. 340, vol. i.

[52] The Moores of _Shirley_ were mainly drawn from M. Heger, and though
a Mr. Cartwright, supposed to have had foreign blood in his veins, is
conjectured to have contributed to their creation because his mill was
attacked with rioters, I find that the Yorkshire, or rather, "Taylor"
element, as conceived by Charlotte Bronte, also entered into their
composition.

[53] It is sad indeed to find Charlotte Bronte confessed, shortly before
her marriage to the Rev Mr. Nicholls, that there was no such sympathy
between herself and her prospective husband. See letters of Miss
Catherine Winkworth in _Memorials of Two Sisters: Susanna and Catherine
Winkworth_ (1908). Miss Winkworth and Miss Bronte discussed the matter
personally. Miss Catherine Winkworth wrote of Mr. Nicholls and Charlotte
Bronte:--"I am sure she will be really good to him. But I guess the true
love was Paul Emanuel [of _Villette_] after all ... but I don't know,
and don't think that Lily [Mrs. Gaskell] knows." I should say that Mrs.
Ratcliffe of Haworth--Tabitha Brown: her sister, Martha Brown, was one
of the Bronte servants--at whose house Tabitha Aykroyd breathed her
last, stated to me on February 21st, 1907, that as to Charlotte Bronte's
"wedded life, they lived happily together." Often do we discover
references to the elective affinities in regard to M. Heger and
Charlotte Bronte in Currer Bell's works. Thus we did not need that
Rochester should say in the last chapter but one of _Jane Eyre_:--"I am
not better than the old lightning-struck chestnut," for we had
understood by the touching apostrophe in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXV., that
he and Jane were implied. The words were:--"The cloven halves were not
broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them
unsundered below; ... they might be said to form one tree--a ruin, but
an entire ruin. 'You did right to hold fast to each other,' I said, as
if the monster splinters were living things; ... 'the time of pleasure
and love is over with you; but ... each of you has a comrade to
sympathize with.'" And Rochester tells Jane:--"You are my sympathy--my
better self; ... a fervent ... passion ... wraps; my existence about
you--and kindling in ... powerful flame, fuses you and me in one." M.
Heger as M. Paul in _Villette_ strikes the same note we hear in
_Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_:--"We are alike--there is affinity
between us.... Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the
threads of their destinies are difficult to entangle."

[54] See Charlotte Bronte's poems "Regret" and "Apostasy."

[55] I discovered these most remarkable parallelisms by my knowledge and
application of Charlotte Bronte's Method I., a fact that finally
declares her the author of both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_.

[56] Mr. G. W. MacArthur Reynolds, the editor of _The London Journal_
issued from _The Weekly Times_ Office, which ran M. Sue's _feuilleton_,
was well-known in French literary circles in the eighteen-forties. He
founded in Paris _The London and Paris Courier_, and was likely enough a
friend of M. Sue. It may be, indeed, there was some sort of
understanding between him and Eugene Sue to set before the world an
interpretation of _Jane Eyre_, with the extraordinary information come
privily to M. Sue. Some time after its publication, Mr. Reynolds stated
that "the main incidents in 'Mary Lawson' were founded on actual
realities." This we shall find. It is a remarkable fact in the
circumstances that _The London Journal_ for August 1, 1846--a year
before _Jane Eyre_ was published, printed on one page the opening
instalment of M. Sue's _Martin the Foundling_, and Charlotte Bronte's
poem "The Letter," with a footnote--"From a volume entitled _Poems by
Cuvier (sic), Ellis and Acton Bell_; London, Aylott & Jones." The reader
may perhaps recognize the original of Mr. Rochester in the person to
whom the letter is being written.

[57] See my footnote, page 120.

[58] It may be relative to this fact that "Lagrange's Manuscript" is not
printed in the extant French edition of _Miss Mary_.

[59] Great stress is laid in this _feuilleton_ by M. Sue upon the fact
that the trouble of this teacher is her dissolute brother. See my
footnote on p. 24.

[60] See my footnote, p. 37.

[61] Mrs. Gaskell dwelt much on Charlotte Bronte's plainness in her
_Life_, published seven years after the above.

[62] _Wuthering Heights_ with _Agnes Grey_ had been accepted by Mr.
Newby, its publisher, before Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. saw the
manuscript of _Jane Eyre_, but _Jane Eyre_ was published first.

[63] This artifice of presenting more than one phase of a character in
the same work is equivalent to that practised by the portrait-painter
who uses mirror effects to reveal some feature of his subject not in the
ordinary line of vision. It was as difficult for M. Sue to present a
complete portrait of the successful, feted Miss Bronte in poor Lagrange
as it was for Charlotte Bronte to present a complete portrait of herself
in the unhappy Lucy Snowe of _Villette_. So M. Sue also used the phase
of Miss Mary, and Charlotte Bronte that of Paulina--just as she gave us
M. Heger as Crimsworth and occasionally as M. Pelet of _The Professor_,
and just as she gave us herself in _Shirley_ as Caroline Helstone and
again (in regard only to her relations with M. Heger) as Shirley
Keeldar. Methods which were responsible for her first portraying herself
as the elder Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_ and then as the younger
Catherine, in which work M. Heger was portrayed by her often as
Heathcliffe and finally as Hareton Earnshaw. With Charlotte Bronte,
however, her secondary adaptations as portrayals, perhaps on account of
their improvization, frequently give evidence of being unprepared. Thus
the childhood of Paulina of _Villette_ is scarcely Charlotte Bronte's;
and Hareton Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, save for the lover and
pupil phase, was never M. Heger.

[64] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Haworth Edition, p. 55.
See my reference to Catherine teaching Hareton of _Wuthering Heights_,
in the Preface.

[65] Instead of "Swiss" pastor's daughter, read Irish.

[66] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_.

[67] As Rochester calls Jane his beneficent spirit, it is interesting to
read that M. de Morville says to his wife:--"Je crois aux bons genies,
aux bons anges."

"Aux bons anges?"

"Miss Mary, par exemple."

"Eh bien, Louise?"

"N'est-ce pas un bon genie, un bon ange, une bonne magicienne, enfin? Ne
m'a-t-elle pas jete un _sort_?"

[68] See my reference to Charlotte's Preface to _Wuthering Heights_ in
the second chapter of "The Recoil."

[69] See my references to Charlotte Bronte's poem "Apostasy"; and to St.
John Rivers as a phase of Charlotte's Brussels _Fenelon_.

[70] See M. Paul and Lucy Snowe (M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte) in the
close of Chapter XXI. of _Villette_.

[71] Mrs. Humphry Ward in her "Introductions" to the Haworth Edition of
the Bronte novels instanced this passage as showing Emily Bronte's
extravagant love for the moors, inferring she preferred the heath to
heaven. But Mrs. Ward in these same "Introductions" even argued that
_Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ were dissimilar in characterization
and style. Catherine's reference herewith in _Wuthering Heights_, to a
"subliminal" existence in a lover and to the notion that the absence or
loss of such a love (and hence, limiting of the bounds of existence,)
would make the universe a blank, having no sympathy or relation--a
stranger, is at one with Charlotte Bronte's further words in her poem,
"Frances":--

    "Unloved--I love; unwept--I weep;
       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    Vain is this anguish--fixed and deep;
       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

    "For me the universe is dumb,
      Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind;
    Life I must bound, existence sum
      In the strait limits of one mind;

    "That mind my own. Oh! narrow cell;
    Dark--imageless--a living tomb!"

[72] _Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle._

[73] Mentor's advice to Telemachus when tempted and miserable on the
island of Calypso is that given by the spirit of Jane Eyre's
mother--"Flee temptation!" "Virtue," argues Mentor, "now calls you back
to your country ... and forbids you to give up your heart to an unworthy
passion.... Fly, fly, ... for love is conquered only by flight ... in
retreat without deliberation, and ... looking back." "Neither Calypso
nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor" (_Shirley_, Chapter XXVII.).
Evidently M. Sue knew Charlotte Bronte had read this book at Brussels,
for he makes play upon it in "Lagrange's Manuscript," wherein
"Telemaque" is substituted for "Rasselas" in the equivalent scene in
_Jane Eyre_.

[74] See chapter on the Yorkshire element in Charlotte Bronte's heroes.

[75] "Religion called----Angels beckoned!----"

[76] See my reference to Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_ and Caroline
of _Shirley_, and their crying aloud when ill and delirious for "a way"
to the absent lover, pp. 147-8.

[77] See the reproach of the dying Catherine to Heathcliffe I quote in
the next chapter. See also Crimsworth's words in the beginning of
Chapter XIX. of _The Professor_.

[78] See close of Chapter XXIV. of _Jane Eyre_.

[79] See my footnote on "the trodden way" on p. 136.

[80] See my reference to "the barriers" in "Apostasy."

[81] "I called myself your brother," says M. Paul to Lucy Snowe, the
originals of whom were M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte. "... I know I
think of you--I feel I wish you well--but I must check myself; you are
to be feared. My best friends point out danger and whisper
caution."--_Villette_, Chap. xxxvi.

[82] Mr. Angus Mackay, in _The Brontes: Fact and Fiction_, identifies
Charlotte Bronte as the original of "Frances" of Charlotte's poem.

[83] _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, pp. 181-3.

[84] See pages 136 and 140.

[85] See my remarks on Mrs. Pryor in Appendix on _Shirley_.

[86] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_.

[87] See footnote on page 97.

[88] _Sydney Dobell: Life and Letters_; 1878.

[89] Of course Mr. Dobell did not know that by the terms of arrangement
with Mr. Newby, the publisher of _Wuthering Heights_, it was virtually
impossible for Charlotte Bronte, after the success of _Jane Eyre_, to
admit her authorship of _Wuthering Heights_ publicly. See my remarks
hereon in Chapter I.

[90] For this see Leyland's _The Bronte Family_.

[91] See footnote, page 13.

[92] _Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters_, page 162.

[93] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_.

[94] The fact that towards the end great affection sprang up between the
Rev. Patrick Bronte and his only surviving daughter cannot be too
strongly emphasized. A most touching narration of him and the dying
Currer Bell, related by Martha Brown, the Bronte servant, and herself
the eye-witness, is given by Mr. William Scruton, in _Thornton and The
Brontes_, page 133 (1898):--"When Charlotte heard her father coming
upstairs to her, she would strain every nerve to give him a pleasing
reception. On his entering the room she would greet him with, 'See,
papa, I am looking a little better.'" Mr. Home was "papa" to Paulina.
Compare the lightsome Paulina with the younger Catherine of _Wuthering
Heights_; and Mrs. Home's death, _Villette_, chap, xxiv., with Mrs.
Helstone's _Shirley_, chap. iv.

[95] The letters in _The Times_ in the close of 1906, and in the early
part of 1907, attacking the authenticity of the Heger portrait, were
written by Mr. Shorter. My footnote in _The Fortnightly_ ran:--"In
attacking the water-colour portrait of Charlotte Bronte purchased by the
Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, the discovery of which,
signed 'Paul Heger, 1850,' was inimical to Mr. Clement Shorter's
contention that Charlotte Bronte had but distantly interested M. Heger,
Mr. Shorter said, 'M. Heger certainly did not know even in 1850 that
Miss Bronte, his old pupil, and Currer Bell were identical,' and with
another asserted M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte never met after 1844. We
shall see here, however, that M. Heger knew all Miss Bronte's literary
secrets in 1850, and that they must have met after 1844, for M. Heger
could have acquired these secrets only in most intimate conversation
with Currer Bell herself: to none other would she have revealed them."

[96] In this connection it is of interest to read the remarks of one of
the jealous de Morville women on this portrait of the Irish
governess:--"Patience! ... qui vivra verra. Je garde ce portrait de
mademoiselle miss Mary, ca me fera souvent penser a elle--ca m'empechera
de l'oublier. Je vais la clouer a quatre epingles sur le papier de ma
chambre".... She threatens to stick pins in it.... "Oui, oui, la belle
Anglais!" she afterwards exclaims; "ce n'est pas seulement ton portrait
que je perce a coups d'epingle, c'est toi-meme!" Which would suggest
that a portrait of Charlotte Bronte could have remained at the Heger
establishment but at risk of being destroyed. I may observe these
mysterious references occur only in the 1851 volume; not in the 1850
_feuilleton_.

[97] See my footnote on p. 82.

[98] Mr. Greenwood Dyson, born in 1830 in the Fold opposite the White
Lion Hotel, in the house now a blacksmith's shop. "I was married in
1850," he stated to me, "and was living about twenty yards from Haworth
Church when Charlotte Bronte gave a black silk dress to my wife." The
Rev. Patrick Bronte signed a testimonial saying he well knew Mr. Dyson
as being reliable and trustworthy, as also did the Rev. A. B. Nicholls,
Miss Bronte's husband. I have examined the document. An interesting
glimpse of Charlotte Bronte I have not seen in any work is one of Mr.
Dyson's reminiscences. He tells me that "there was a draw-well situated
in the kitchen of the Rectory from which we boys used to draw water for
domestic purposes." He added that often he drew water for Charlotte
Bronte or others of the Bronte household before drawing for himself. "In
one of the upper windows," he once wrote me, "a board had been placed
instead of one of the panes of glass, in the centre of which was bored a
hole in which Miss Bronte inserted a telescope to take observations."
Perceiving in conversation with him the genuine pleasure the sight of
the Heger portrait of Charlotte Bronte gave Mr. Dyson, I later forwarded
him a large photograph, taken direct from the original Heger drawing of
Charlotte Bronte in the National Portrait Gallery. I print his reply to
me written on March 2, 1907:--

    "DEAR SIR,--I received the likeness of Charlotte Bronte (which you
    were kind enough to send me) this morning, for which I should like
    to express my appreciation. It really is a very nice portrait. I
    think it is very much like her. With sincerest thanks, I remain,
    very truly yours,
        J. MALHAM-DEMBLEBY, Esq.            (Signed)    G. DYSON."

[99] Through the courtesy of Professor Charles J. Holmes, the present
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, I am able to print herewith
the N.P.G. references to this portrait.

  NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY TABLET ON PICTURE:--

    CHARLOTTE BRONTE
    (Mrs. Arthur Bell Nicholls).
    1816-1855.
    Novelist. Author of _Jane Eyre_ and other works.
    Painted in 1850 by "Paul Heger."
    Purchased, July 1906.
                                                          (1444)

  NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY CATALOGUE:--

    Painted in water-colours in 1850, and stated to be by "Paul"
    (or Constantin) Heger, after an earlier portrait by her brother
    Branwell Bronte.

  NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE:--

    Water-colour drawing stated to be by "Paul" (or Constantin)
    Heger, after Branwell Bronte.
                                                          (1444)

I may add that the inverted commas used in regard to M. Heger's name are
employed because "Paul" was not his common name. He was an active member
of the Society of S. Vincent de Paul, and Charlotte Bronte portrayed him
as M. Paul in her novel, _Villette_, commenced not later than the close
of 1850 or the beginning of 1851.

[100] Italics mine.

[101] In _Chapters from Some Memories_, by Anne Thackeray Ritchie.

[102] By "Mrs. Brookfield's party" Lady Ritchie means the later
distinguished party. In _Mrs. Brookfield and her Circle_, page 305, vol
ii. (1905), a first dinner given by Mr. Thackeray for Charlotte Bronte
in November 1849, is spoken of by Mrs. Brookfield as not having been a
success; and the second great party at which some clever women were
present, to meet Miss Bronte in 1851, is mentioned with the fact of the
non-success of the 1849 party, on pages 355-6. All this now leaves clear
the occasion of the 1850 private family dinner at Mr. Thackeray's house,
when Charlotte Bronte sat next Lady Ritchie in a light green dress.

[103] Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_.

[104] _Ibid._

[105] The Roman numerals refer to the Preface.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Key to the Bronte Works, by
John Malham-Dembleby

*** 