But I turn from the critical, unsympathetic public — inclined to judge harshly because they have only seen superficially and not thought deeply. I appeal to that larger and more solemn public, who know how to look with tender humility at faults and errors; how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence with warm, full hearts all noble virtue. To that Public I commit the memory of Charlotte Bronte.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË by T. Wemyss Reid
Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid (1842–1905) was a British newspaper editor, novelist and biographer. He became chief reporter on the Newcastle Journal aged 19. While working on the Leeds Mercury, he won the right for provincial newspapers to be admitted to the House of Commons press gallery. From 1890–99, he edited his own moderate Liberal magazine The Speaker and wrote a number of biographies, including this detailed account of the life of Charlotte Bronte, which was first published in 1877.
Sir Thomas Wemyss Reid with William Thomas Stead, by Sydney Prior Hall, 1889
CONTENTS
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
II.
THE STORY OF “JANE EYRE.”
III.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE BRONTËS.
IV.
THE FAMILY AT HAWORTH.
V.
LIFE AS A GOVERNESS.
VI.
THE TURNING-POINT.
VII.
AUTHORSHIP AND BEREAVEMENT.
VIII.
“SHIRLEY.”
IX.
LONELINESS AND FAME.
X.
“VILLETTE.”
XI.
MARRIAGE AND DEATH.
XII.
POSTHUMOUS HONOURS.
XIII.
THE BRONTË NOVELS.
XIV.
CONCLUSION.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
It is just twenty years since one of the most fascinating and artistic biographies in the English language was given to the world. Mrs. Gaskell’s “Life of Charlotte Brontë” no sooner appeared than it took firm possession of the public mind; and it has ever since retained its hold upon all who take an interest in the career of one who has been called, in language which is far less extravagant in reality than in appearance, “the foremost woman of her age.” Written with admirable skill, in a style at once powerful and picturesque, and with a sympathy such as only one artist could feel for another, it richly merited the popularity which it gained and has kept. Mrs. Gaskell, however, laboured under one serious disadvantage, which no longer exists in anything like the same degree in which it did twenty years ago. Writing but a few months after Charlotte Brontë had been laid in her grave, and whilst the father to whom she was indebted for so much that was characteristic in her life and genius was still living, Mrs. Gaskell had necessarily to deal with many circumstances which affected living persons too closely to be handled in detail. Even as it was she involved herself in serious embarrassment by some of her allusions to incidents connected more or less nearly with the life of Charlotte Brontë; corrections and retractations were forced upon her, the later editions of the book differed considerably from the first, and at last she was compelled to announce that any further correspondence concerning it must be conducted through her solicitors. Thus she was crippled in her attempt to paint a full-length picture of a remarkable life, and her story was what Mr. Thackeray called it, “necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable.”
There was, moreover, another matter in which Mrs. Gaskell was at fault. She seems to have set out with the determination that her work should be pitched in a particular key. She had formed her own conception of Charlotte Brontë’s character, and with the passion of the true artist and the ability of the practised writer she made everything bend to that conception. The result was that whilst she produced a singularly striking and effective portrait of her heroine, it was not one which was absolutely satisfactory to those who were the oldest and closest friends of Charlotte Brontë. If the truth must be told, the life of the author of “Jane Eyre” was by no means so joyless as the world now believes it to have been. That during the later years in which this wonderful woman produced the works by which she has made her name famous, her career was clouded by sorrow and oppressed by anguish both mental and physical, is perfectly true. That she was made what she was in the furnace of affliction cannot be doubted; but it is not true that she was throughout her whole life the victim of that extreme depression of spirits which afflicted her at rare intervals, and which Mrs. Gaskell has presented to us with so much vividness and emphasis. On the contrary, her letters show that at any rate up to the time of her leaving for Brussels, she was a happy and high-spirited girl, and that even to the very last she had the faculty of overcoming her sorrows by means of that steadfast courage which was her most precious possession, and to which she was so much indebted for her successive victories over trials and disappointments of no ordinary character. Those who imagine that Charlotte Brontë’s spirit was in any degree a morbid or melancholy one do her a singular injustice. Intensely reserved in her converse with all save the members of her own household, and the solitary friend to whom she clung with such passionate affection throughout her life, she revealed to these
The other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
which were and have remained hidden from the world, but which must be seen by those who would know what Charlotte Brontë really was as a woman. Alas! those who knew her and her sisters well during their brief lives are few in number now. The Brontës who plucked the flower of fame out of the thorny waste in which their lots were cast survive in their books and in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography. But the Brontës, the women who lived and suffered thirty years ago, and whose characters were instinct with so rare and lofty a nobility, so keen a sensitiveness, so pure a nobility, are known no longer.
Yet one mode of making acquaintance with them is still open to some among us. From her school-days down to the hour in which she was stretched prostrate in her last sickness, Charlotte Brontë kept up the closest and most confidential intercourse with her one life-long friend. To that friend she addressed letters which may be counted by hundreds, scarcely one of which fails to contain some characteristic touch worthy of the author of “Villette.” No one can read this remarkable correspondence without learning the secret of the writer’s character; none, as I believe, can read it without feeling that the woman who “stole like a shadow” into the field of English literature in 1847, and in less than eight years after stole as noiselessly away, was truer and nobler even than her works, truer and nobler even than that masterly picture of her life for which we are indebted to Mrs. Gaskell.
These letters lie before me as I write. Here are the faded sheets of 1832, written in the school-girl’s hand, filled with the school-girl’s extravagant terms of endearment, yet enriched here and there by sentences which are worthy to live — some of which have already, indeed, taken their place in the literature of England; and here is the faint pencil note written to “my own dear Nell” out of the writer’s “dreary sick-bed,” which was so soon to be the bed of death! Between the first letter and that last sad note what outpourings of the mind of Charlotte Brontë are embodied in this precious pile of cherished manuscript! Over five-and-twenty years of a blameless life this artless record stretches. So far as Charlotte Brontë’s history as a woman, and the history of her family are concerned, it is complete for the whole of that period, the only breaks in the story being those which occurred when she and her friend were together. Of her early literary ventures we find little here, for even to her friend she did not dare in the first instance to betray the novel joys which filled her soul when she at last discovered her true vocation, and spoke to a listening world; but of her later life as an author, of her labours from the day when she owned “Jane Eyre” as the child of her brain, there are constant and abundant traces. Here, too, we read all her secret sorrows, her hope
s, her fears, her communings with her own heart. Many things there are in this record too sacred to be given to the world. Even now it is with a tender and a reverent hand that one must touch these “noble letters of the dead;” but those who are allowed to see them, to read them and ponder over them, must feel as I do, that the soul of Charlotte Brontë stands revealed in these unpublished pages, and that only here can we see what manner of woman this really was who in the solitude and obscurity of the Yorkshire hill-parsonage built up for herself an imperishable name, enriched the literature of England with treasures of priceless value, and withal led for nearly forty years a life that was made sacred and noble by the self-repression and patient endurance which were its most marked characteristics.
Mrs. Gaskell has done her work so well that the world would scarcely care to listen to a mere repetition of the Brontë story, even though the story-teller were as gifted as the author of “Ruth” herself. But those who have been permitted to gain a new insight into Charlotte Brontë’s character, those who are allowed to command materials of which the biographer of 1857 could make no use, may venture to lay a tribute-wreath of their own upon the altar of this great woman’s memory — a tribute-wreath woven of flowers culled from her own letters. And it cannot be that the time is yet come when the name or the fame or the touching story of the unique and splendid genius to whom we owe “Jane Eyre,” will fall upon the ears of English readers like “a tale of little meaning” or of doubtful interest.
II.
THE STORY OF “JANE EYRE.”
In the late autumn of 1847 the reading public of London suddenly found itself called to admire and wonder at a novel which, without preliminary puff of any kind, had been placed in its hands. “‘Jane Eyre,’ by Currer Bell,” became the theme of every tongue, and society exhausted itself in conjectures as to the identity of the author, and the real meaning of the book. It was no ordinary book, and it produced no ordinary sensation. Disfigured here and there by certain crudities of thought and by a clumsiness of expression which betrayed the hand of a novice, it was nevertheless lit up from the first page to the last by the fire of a genius the depth and power of which none but the dullest could deny. The hand of its author seized upon the public mind whether it would or no, and society was led captive, in the main against its will, by one who had little of the prevailing spirit of the age, and who either knew nothing of conventionalism, or despised it with heart and soul. Fierce was the revolt against the influence of this new-comer in the wide arena of letters, who had stolen in, as it were in the night, and taken the citadel by surprise. But for the moment all opposition was beaten down by sheer force of genius, and “Jane Eyre” made her way, compelling recognition, wherever men and women were capable of seeing and admitting a rare and extraordinary intellectual supremacy. “How well I remember,” says Mr. Thackeray, “the delight and wonder and pleasure with which I read ‘Jane Eyre,’ sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through.” It was the same everywhere. Even those who saw nothing to commend in the story, those who revolted against its free employment of great passions and great griefs, and those who were elaborately critical upon its author’s ignorance of the ways of polite society, had to confess themselves bound by the spell of the magician. “Jane Eyre” gathered admirers fast; and for every admirer she had a score of readers.
Those who remember that winter of nine-and-twenty years ago know how something like a “Jane Eyre” fever raged among us. The story which had suddenly discovered a glory in uncomeliness, a grandeur in overmastering passion, moulded the fashion of the hour, and “Rochester airs” and “Jane Eyre graces” became the rage. The book, and its fame and influence, travelled beyond the seas with a speed which in those days was marvellous. In sedate New England homes the history of the English governess was read with an avidity which was not surpassed in London itself, and within a few months of the publication of the novel it was famous throughout two continents. No such triumph has been achieved in our time by any other English author; nor can it be said, upon the whole, that many triumphs have been better merited. It happened that this anonymous story, bearing the unmistakable marks of an unpractised hand, was put before the world at the very moment when another great masterpiece of fiction was just beginning to gain the ear of the English public. But at the moment of publication “Jane Eyre” swept past “Vanity Fair” with a marvellous and impetuous speed which left Thackeray’s work in the distant background; and its unknown author in a few weeks gained a wider reputation than that which one of the master minds of the century had been engaged for long years in building up.
The reaction from this exaggerated fame, of course, set in, and it was sharp and severe. The blots in the book were easily hit; its author’s unfamiliarity with the stage business of the play was evident enough — even to dunces; so it was a simple matter to write smart articles at the expense of a novelist who laid himself open to the whole battery of conventional criticism. In “Jane Eyre” there was much painting of souls in their naked reality; the writer had gauged depths which the plummet of the common story-teller could never have sounded, and conflicting passions were marshalled on the stage with a masterful daring which Shakespeare might have envied; but the costumes, the conventional by-play, the scenery, even the wording of the dialogue, were poor enough in all conscience. The merest playwright or reviewer could have done better in these matters — as the unknown author was soon made to understand. Additional piquancy was given to the attack by the appearance, at the very time when the “Jane Eyre” fever was at its height, of two other novels, written by persons whose sexless names proclaimed them the brothers or the sisters of Currer Bell. Human nature is not so much changed from what it was in 1847 that one need apologise for the readiness with which the reading world in general, and the critical world in particular, adopted the theory that “Wuthering Heights” and “Agnes Grey” were earlier works from the pen which had given them “Jane Eyre.” In “Wuthering Heights” some of the faults of the other book were carried to an extreme, and some of its conspicuous merits were distorted and exaggerated until they became positive blemishes; whilst “Agnes Grey” was a feeble and commonplace tale which it was easy to condemn. So the author of “Jane Eyre” was compelled to bear not only her own burden, but that of the two stories which had followed the successful novel; and the reviewers — ignorant of the fact that they were killing three birds at a single shot — rejoiced in the larger scope which was thus afforded to their critical energy.
Here and there, indeed, a manful fight on behalf of Currer Bell was made by writers who knew nothing but the name and the book. “It is soul speaking to soul,” cried Fraser’s Magazine in December, 1847; “it is not a book for prudes,” added Blackwood, a few months later; “it is not a book for effeminate and tasteless men; it is for the enjoyment of a feeling heart and critical understanding.” But in the main the verdict of the critics was adverse. It was discovered that the story was improper and immoral; it was said to be filled with descriptions of “courtship after the manner of kangaroos,” and to be impregnated with a “heathenish doctrine of religion;” whilst there went up a perfect chorus of reprobation directed against its “coarseness of language,” “laxity of tone,” “horrid taste,” and “sheer rudeness and vulgarity.” From the book to the author was of course an easy transition. London had been bewildered, and its literary quidnuncs utterly puzzled, when such a story first came forth inscribed with an unknown name. Many had been the rumours eagerly passed from mouth to mouth as to the real identity of Currer Bell. Upon one point there had, indeed, been something like unanimity among the critics, and the story of “Jane Eyre” had been accepted as something more than a romance, as a genuine autobiography in which real and sorrowful experiences were related. Even the most hostile critic of the book had acknowledged that “it contained the story of struggles with such inte
nse suffering and sorrow, as it was sufficient misery to know that any one had conceived, far less passed through.” Where then was this wonderful governess to be found? In what obscure hiding-place could the forlorn soul, whose cry of agony had stirred the hearts of readers everywhere, be discovered? We may smile now, with more of sadness than of bitterness, at the base calumnies of the hour, put forth in mere wantonness and levity by a people ever seeking to know some new thing, and to taste some new sensation. The favourite theory of the day — a theory duly elaborated and discussed in the most orthodox and respectable of the reviews — was that Jane Eyre and Becky Sharp were merely different portraits of the same character; and that their original was to be found in the person of a discarded mistress of Mr. Thackeray, who had furnished the great author with a model for the heroine of “Vanity Fair,” and had revenged herself upon him by painting him as the Rochester of “Jane Eyre!” It was after dwelling upon this marvellous theory of the authorship of the story that the Quarterly Review, with Pecksniffian charity, calmly summed up its conclusions in these memorable words: “If we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has for some sufficient reason long forfeited the society of her own sex.”
The world knows the truth now. It knows that these bitter and shameful words were applied to one of the truest and purest of women; to a woman who from her birth had led a life of self-sacrifice and patient endurance; to a woman whose affections dwelt only in the sacred shelter of her home, or with companions as pure and worthy as herself; to one of those few women who can pour out all their hearts in converse with their friends, happy in the assurance that years hence the stranger into whose hands their frank confessions may pass will find nothing there that is not loyal, true, and blameless. There was wonder among the critics, wonder too in the gay world of London, when the secret was revealed, and men were told that the author of “Jane Eyre” was no passionate light-o’-love who had merely transcribed the sad experiences of her own life; but “an austere little Joan of Arc,” pure, gentle, and high-minded, of whom Thackeray himself could say that “a great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always.” The quidnuncs had searched far and wide for the author of “Jane Eyre;” but we may well doubt whether, when the truth came out at last, they were not more than ever mystified by the discovery that Currer Bell was Charlotte Brontë, the young daughter of a country parson in a remote moorland parish of Yorkshire.
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 425