‘Wuthering Heights’ — Reception of the Book by the Public — It is Misunderstood — Its Authorship — Mr. Dearden’s Account — Statements of Mr. Edward Sloane and Mr. Grundy — Remarks by Mr. T. Wemyss Reid — Correspondences between ‘Wuthering Heights’ and Branwell’s Letters — The ‘Carving-knife Episode’ — Further Correspondences — Resemblances of Thought in Branwell and Emily.
We have now become acquainted with the principal features of Branwell’s career, have obtained some insight into his character, and learned much respecting his genius. We have gained also some knowledge of the history of the Brontë sisters in that most crucial period of their lives, when they returned again to literature with the new earnest which led them to fame.
We have seen that it was Branwell who first seriously undertook the production of a novel, and we have noticed Mr. Grundy’s statement concerning the authorship of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Here, then, is the proper place in which to say something on this question; for there have not been wanting others also to assert that Branwell was, in great part, the writer of it. Miss Robinson, in her ‘Emily Brontë,’ dismisses the assertion as altogether untrue; but she rightly says, as all will agree, that ‘in the contemptuous silence of those who know their falsity, such slanders live and thrive like unclean insects under fallen stones.’ It cannot, therefore, be inappropriate, in such a work as the present, to record, as clearly and succinctly as may be, what has been said on the subject, and to make a suggestion — for it is nothing more — as to what is the truth of the matter.
When ‘Wuthering Heights,’ after its slow progress through the press, was given to the world in the December of 1847, neither the critics nor the public were very well able to grasp its meaning. Reviewers, to quote Charlotte Brontë, ‘too often remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before the “writing on the wall,” and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation.’ In ‘Wuthering Heights’ they found the subject disagreeable, the characters brutal, the conception crude, and the object of the work wholly unintelligible. The most that could be made of it, was that some rude soul in the north of England, burning with spite against his species, had set himself, with intent little short of diabolical, to lay open the most vicious depths of selfishness and crime, which he had embodied in the actions of characters so lost and revolting, that the mind recoiled with a shudder from the perusal of the monstrosity he had created. One critic, who dwelt at some length on the want of ‘tone’ and polish in the book, surmised that the writer of it had suffered, ‘not disappointment in love, but some great mortification of pride,’ which had so embittered his spirit that he had prepared this stinging story in vengeance on his species, and had flung it, crying, ‘There, take that!’ with cynical pleasure, in the very teeth of humankind.
This writer even felt it his duty to caution young people against the book. ‘It ought to be banished from refined society,’ he says. ‘The whole tone of the book smacks of lowness.’ — ‘A person may be ill-mannered from want of delicacy of perception or cultivation, or ill-mannered intentionally; the author of “Wuthering Heights” is both.’ — ‘But the taint of vulgarity in our author extends deeper than mere snobbishness; he is rude, because he prefers to be so.’ I quote these remarks, as an extreme instance, to show that a critic, who could recognize the great imaginative power, the subtlety, the keen insight, and the fine dramatic character of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ yet felt such a strong repugnance to its unknown author that he thought him unfit to associate with his fellow-men. It never crossed the minds of the critics in those times that the book could be by any but a man of strong personal character, and one with a wide experience of the dark side of human nature.
However, a feeling speedily grew up that ‘Wuthering Heights’ was an earlier and immature production, attempted to be palmed off upon the public, of the author of ‘Jane Eyre,’ against whom a charge of bad faith was thereby virtually made; and even Sydney Dobell (in the ‘Palladium’ of September, 1850), the first critic who had sympathy enough with genius to discern the nature and comprehend the significance of the book, did not escape this error. It is not necessary here to repeat the unfortunate consequences of this misunderstanding, which caused Charlotte eventually to throw off the disguise, and declare openly that ‘Wuthering Heights’ was the work of her sister Emily. ‘Unjust and grievous error!’ says Charlotte. ‘We laughed at it at first, but I deeply lament it now.’ In the face of her statement, further remark on the authorship was naturally silenced; but, from time to time, when the book was discussed, much astonishment was manifested that a simple and inexperienced girl, like Emily Brontë, had been able to draw, with such nervous and morbid analysis, so sombre a picture of the workings of passions which she could never have actually known, and of natures ‘so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen,’ as those of Heathcliff and Hindley Earnshaw.
A writer in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ who attributes to Emily Brontë the distinction that she has written a book ‘which stands as completely alone in the language as does “Paradise Lost,” or the “Pilgrim’s Progress,”‘ thus speaks of it: ‘Its power,’ he says, ‘is absolutely Titanic; from the first page to the last it reads like the intellectual throes of a giant. It is fearful, it is true, and perhaps one of the most unpleasant books ever written: but we stand in amaze at the almost incredible fact that it was written by a slim country girl, who would have passed in a crowd as an insignificant person, and who had had little or no experience of the ways of the world. In Heathcliff, Emily Brontë has drawn the greatest villain extant, after Iago. He has no match out of Shakespeare. The Mephistopheles of Goethe’s “Faust” is a person of gentlemanly proclivities compared with Heathcliff…. But “Wuthering Heights” is a marvellous curiosity in literature. We challenge the world to produce another work in which the whole atmosphere seems so surcharged with suppressed electricity, and bound in with the blackness of tempest and desolation.’
Perhaps this same grim and Titanic power of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is one reason why many readers do not understand it fully. ‘It is possible,’ Mr. Swinburne says, ‘that, to take full delight in Emily Brontë’s book, one must have something by natural inheritance of her instinct, and something by earlier association of her love of the special points of earth — the same lights, and sounds, and colours, and odours, and sights, and shapes of the same fierce, free landscape of tenantless, and fruitless, and fenceless moor.’
But the composition of ‘Wuthering Heights’ was in great part incomprehensible to Charlotte herself, though she endeavours to account for it by a consideration of her sister’s character and circumstances. For, as we have seen, she says, ‘I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates.’
‘“Wuthering Heights,”‘ to quote Charlotte Brontë’s Preface to the new edition of it, ‘was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of grandeur — power. He wrought with a rude chisel, from no model but the vision of his meditations. With time and labour, the crag took human shape; and there it stands colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock: in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant’s foot.’
Many years ago, a writer in the ‘People’s Magazine,’ speaking of the authorship of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ said: ‘Who would suppose that Heathcliff, a man who never swerved from his arrow-straight course to perdition from his cradle to his grave, … had been conceived by a timid and retiring female? But this was the case.’ The perusal of this sentence led Mr. William Dear
den — author of the ‘Star Seer’ and the ‘Maid of Caldene’ — who was acquainted with Branwell Brontë, to communicate to the ‘Halifax Guardian,’ in June, 1867, some facts, within his personal knowledge, touching the question, which he extracted from the MS. preface to his poem entitled, ‘The Demon Queen,’ not then published.
It appears, from this account, that Branwell and Mr. Dearden had entered into a friendly poetic contest. Each was to write a poem in which the principal character was to have a real or imaginary existence before the Deluge. They met, on the occasion, at the ‘Cross Roads,’ a hostel a little more than a mile from Haworth on the road to Keighley, where an evening was spent in the reading of their respective productions. Leyland was to decide upon the merits of the poems. In reference to this meeting Mr. Dearden says,
‘We met at the time and place appointed … I read the first act of the “Demon Queen;” but, when Branwell dived into his hat — the usual receptacle of his fugitive scraps — where he supposed he had deposited his MS. poem, he found he had by mistake placed there a number of stray leaves of a novel on which he had been trying his “prentice hand.” Chagrined at the disappointment he had caused, he was about to return the papers to his hat, when both friends earnestly pressed him to read them, as they felt a curiosity to see how he could wield the pen of a novelist. After some hesitation, he complied with the request, and riveted our attention for about an hour, dropping each sheet, when read, into his hat. The story broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and he gave us the sequel, vivâ voce, together with the real names of the prototypes of his characters; but, as some of these personages are still living, I refrain from pointing them out to the public. He said he had not yet fixed upon a title for his production, and was afraid he should never be able to meet with a publisher who would have the hardihood to usher it into the world. The scene of the fragment which Branwell read, and the characters introduced in it — so far as then developed — were the same as those in “Wuthering Heights,” which Charlotte Brontë confidently asserts was the production of her sister Emily.’
Another friend of Branwell Brontë also, Mr. Edward Sloane of Halifax, author of a work entitled, ‘Essays, Tales, and Sketches,’ (1849) declared to Mr. Dearden that Branwell had read to him, portion by portion, the novel as it was produced, at the time, insomuch that he no sooner began the perusal of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ when published, than he was able to anticipate the characters and incidents to be disclosed. Thus Mr. Dearden and the late Mr. Sloane claimed to have knowledge of ‘Wuthering Heights’ as the work of Branwell, before it was issued from the press; and we have seen that Mr. Grundy declares Branwell to have said, with the consent of his sister, that he had written ‘a great portion of “Wuthering Heights” himself,’ a statement which, remembering the ‘weird fancies of diseased genius’ with which Branwell had entertained him at Luddenden Foot, inclined Mr. Grundy to believe ‘that the very plot was his invention rather than his sister’s.’
The evidence for the original ascription of authorship is simple in the extreme. Charlotte Brontë has told us in the Biographical Notice, as well as in the Preface, which she has prefixed to ‘Wuthering Heights,’ that the book was the work of Ellis Bell; and clearly no shadow of doubt was on her mind at the time as to the accuracy of this statement; nor had the publisher of the book any uncertainty as to the matter. Moreover, the servant Martha is said to have seen Emily Brontë writing it. We are told, also, that it is impossible that the upright spirit of the gentle Emily could resort to the miserable fraud of appropriating a work which was not her own. And, lastly, modern critics have not found it difficult to believe that a woman might be the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ They see nothing incongruous or impossible in the possession, by a feminine intellect, of such a searching knowledge of sinister propensities as are developed in that book, nor of its descending to those chaotic depths of black moral distortion, where it is possible for Hindley Earnshaw, with hideous blasphemy, to drink damnation to his soul, that he may be able to ‘punish its Maker,’ and where the life-long vengeance of Heathcliff is drawn out, with wondrous power, to its ghastly and impotent end.
How far Charlotte’s statement is weakened by the fact that, up to the time when she discovered the volume of verse, and the three sisters commenced their novels — at which period it will be remembered one volume of Branwell’s work was written — they had made no communication to one another of the literary work which each had in progress, is, perhaps, a matter for personal opinion. The declaration of Martha would probably be of little value, unless we knew that what Emily was writing was entirely independent of Branwell’s work. And, again, those who have sought to defend Ellis Bell from the charge of fraud, have perhaps been over hasty; for, so far as I know, that charge has never been either made or implied.
As to the capability of Branwell to write ‘Wuthering Heights,’ not much need be said here. Those who read this book will see that, despite his weaknesses and his follies, Branwell was, indeed, unfortunate in having to bear the penalty, in ceaseless open discussion, of ‘une fanfaronnade des vices qu’il n’avait pas,’ and that, moreover, his memory has been darkened, and his acts misconstrued, by sundry writers, who have endeavoured to find in his character the source of the darkest passages in the works of his sisters.
Far from being hopelessly a ‘miserable fellow,’ an ‘unprincipled dreamer,’ an ‘unnerved and garrulous prodigal,’ as we have been told he was, he had, in fact, within him, an abundance of worthy ambition, a modest confidence in his own ability, which he was never known to vaunt, and a just pride in the celebrity of his family, which, it may be trusted, will remove from him, at any rate, the imputation of a lack of moral power to do anything good or forcible at all.
Those who have heard fall from the lips of Branwell Brontë — and they are few now — all those weird stories, strange imaginings, and vivid and brilliant disquisitions on the life of the people of the West-Riding, will recognize that there was at least no opposition, but rather an affinity, between the tendency of his thoughts and those of the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ And, as to special points in the story, it may be said that Branwell Brontë had tasted most of the passions, weaknesses, and emotions there depicted; had loved, in frenzied delusion, as fiercely as Heathcliff loved; as with Hindley Earnshaw, too, in the pain of loss, ‘when his ship struck; the captain abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her, rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless vessel.’ He had, too, indeed, manifested much of the doating folly of the unhappy master of the ‘Heights’; and, finally, there is no doubt that he possessed, nevertheless, almost as much force of character, determination, and energy as Heathcliff himself.
The following extract from a lecture by Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, will show the opinion of that gentleman — which he applies to prove that Branwell was in part the subject of his sister’s work — that there is a distinct correspondence in the feelings and utterances of Heathcliff and Branwell in this book, which, as he observes, critics have again and again declared to be like the dream of an opium-eater, which we have seen that Branwell was. Mr. Reid states: ‘I said that, perhaps, the most striking part of “Wuthering Heights” was that which deals with the relations of Heathcliff and Catherine, after she had become the wife of another. Whole pages of the story are filled with the ravings and ragings of the villain against the man whose life stands between him and the woman he loves. Similar ravings are to be found in all the letters of Branwell Brontë written at this period of his career; and we may be sure that similar ravings were always on his lips, as, moody and more than half mad, he wandered about the rooms of the parsonage at Haworth. Nay, I have found some striking verbal coincidences between Branwell’s own language and passages in “Wuthering Heights.” In one of his own letters there are these words in reference to the object of his passion: “My own life without her will be hell. What can the so-called love of her wretched, sickly husband be to her compared with mine
?” Now, turn to “Wuthering Heights,” and you will read these words: “Two words would comprehend my future — death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton’s attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”‘
If Mr. Reid had quoted the beginning of this paragraph, another point of correspondence would have been perceived between the feelings manifested in it and those which had actuated Branwell Brontë. Heathcliff is speaking: ‘“You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?” he said. “Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her own assurance could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt!”‘
We have seen that, in the summer of 1845, Branwell lost his employment, and returned to the neighbourhood of Haworth, and that he, too, at that most miserable period of his life, when he wrote his novel, and ‘Real Rest,’ and ‘Penmaenmawr,’ had had a notion that the lady of his affections had nearly forgotten him.
It may be observed that Catherine Earnshaw, in an earlier part of the book, uses a like antithesis to that quoted by Mr. Reid. ‘Whatever our souls are made of,’ says she, speaking of Heathcliff and herself, ‘his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.’ Though it is not strictly accurate that in all Branwell’s letters at this period there are similar ravings, or that such were always on his lips, there are, at all events, other coincidences of thought and expression to be found in his letters and poems with certain features and passages in ‘Wuthering Heights,’ which are not less striking. A few instances will illustrate much in that work which it is not easy to believe could have been transcribed by the writer from the utterances of another. Even so early as his letter to John Brown, we have seen with what force Branwell could express himself when he chose. He speaks in that letter of one who ‘will be used as the tongs of hell,’ and of another ‘out of whose eyes Satan looks as from windows.’ Let us turn to where Heathcliff’s eyes are described, in Chapter vii. of the novel, as ‘that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies;’ and, in Chapter xvii., where Isabella Heathcliff says of them: ‘The clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not fear to hazard another sound of derision.’
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 472