Nom de Plume

by Carmela Ciuraru

  “My hopes ebb low indeed about Branwell,” Charlotte wrote of the brother she had once idolized. “I sometimes fear he will never be fit for much.” He was dead at thirty-one.

  Charlotte took the initiative with regard to publication by sending query letters to publishers, but she had trouble even getting a response. Presenting herself as an “agent” writing on behalf of the authors, she sent a letter to the firm Aylott & Jones in January 1846:

  Gentlemen—May I request to be informed whether you would undertake the publication of a Collection of short poems in I vol. oct.

  If you object to publishing the work at your own risk, would you undertake it on the Author’s account—I am gentlemen,

  Your obdt. Hmble. Servt.

  C. Brontë

  They agreed to accept the book for publication, provided it was at the authors’ own expense. Charlotte had very specific ideas about how the book should be presented: “I should like it to be printed in 1 octavo volume of the same quality of paper and size of type as Moxon’s last edition of Wordsworth,” she wrote. “The poems will occupy—I should think from 200 to 250 pages.” She also expressed herself emphatically on the printing: “clear type—not too small—and good paper.”

  Having reached an agreement, Charlotte sent the manuscript (as “C. Brontë Esq”) to Aylott & Jones. “You will perceive that the Poems are the work of three persons—relatives—their separate pieces are distinguished by their separate signatures,” she explained.

  When Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell came out in the summer of 1846, the savvy Charlotte oversaw advertising and promotion. She had directed the design, and now she suggested how the book should be released to the public and which publications ought to review it. She was gratified by the positive critical reception that Poems received. “It is long since we have enjoyed a volume of such genuine poetry as this,” one reviewer wrote, expressing curiosity regarding “the triumvirate” and wondering whether the Bells might be pseudonymous authors. Another contemplated the possibility that the trio might be “one master spirit . . . that has been pleased to project itself into three imaginary poets.” Charlotte was more than happy to feed public curiosity: writing a letter to one magazine editor (under her pseudonym), she thanked him for his very kind review and referred to “my brothers, Ellis and Acton.”

  Four years later, in the posthumous editions of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, Charlotte would explain fully the motive behind their pseudonyms:

  Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because—without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine”—we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

  Despite the positive reviews of the book, it was a failure financially. Only two copies were sold. (The initial print run was around a thousand.) Charlotte was not the least bit discouraged. “The mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence,” she wrote. “It must be pursued.”

  A year later, seeing that nothing had come of their poetic debut, Charlotte, tenacious as ever, sent copies of the slim green volume to various celebrated authors, including Tennyson, Wordsworth, and De Quincey, with an imploring letter to each:

  Sir,

  My relatives, Ellis and Acton Bell, and myself, heedless of the repeated warnings of various respectable publishers, have committed the rash act of printing a volume of poems.

  The consequences predicted have, of course, overtaken us; our book is found to be a drug; no man needs or heeds it. In the space of a year our publisher has disposed but of two copies, and by what painful efforts he succeeded in getting rid of these two, himself only knows.

  Before transferring the edition to the trunk-makers, we have decided on distributing as presents a few copies of what we cannot sell—We beg to offer you one in acknowledgement of the pleasure and profit we have often and long derived from your works.

  I am, sir, yours very respectfully,

  Currer Bell.

  Undeterred by the Bells’ lackluster debut, Charlotte wrote a follow-up letter to Aylott & Jones, advising them that “C. E. & A. Bell are now preparing for the Press a work of fiction—consisting of three distinct and unconnected tales which may be published together as a work of 3 vols. of ordinary novel-size, or separately as single vols—as shall be deemed most advisable.” And she brashly advised them to respond soon, as other publishers might be interested as well. They declined the solicitation.

  What they foolishly turned down, of course, were novels that would become part of the canon of English literature: Anne was writing Agnes Grey. Emily had begun Wuthering Heights (whose ferocity of emotion Charlotte found rather off-putting). And Charlotte had collected all the material she needed for her novel Jane Eyre, having worked, quite miserably, as a governess—but the novel she’d written first was The Professor, with its male narrator, Charles Grimsworth, who teaches at a girls’ school in Brussels. The story, which she’d completed in June 1846, was based on her own formative time at a Brussels girls’ school, where she fell in love (unrequited) with her headmaster before homesickness set in and she returned, deeply depressed, to the refuge of Haworth.

  Though she tried submitting their works for consideration elsewhere, she had no luck. Finally, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted by a minor publisher, Thomas Cautley Newby, but he didn’t want The Professor. Charlotte sent it to other publishers, and it was repeatedly rejected. In fact, she would not see the novel published in her lifetime. It came out in 1857, two years after her death.

  Amazingly, the year 1847 would bring publication for all three sisters, almost at once. Charlotte completed Jane Eyre, which she’d written in small square books. As she wrote, she suffered from an almost unbearably painful toothache and gum disease that would linger for years. (By 1851, Charlotte had very few teeth left.) But she persevered, and Jane Eyre was accepted with enthusiasm by the obscure publishing house Smith, Elder and Company in London.

  It wouldn’t remain unknown for long; in the latter half of the century, Smith, Elder became known as the distinguished publisher of Elizabeth Gaskell, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Thackeray, Browning, and Ruskin. The firm’s eventual success could be traced to having taken a chance on an unknown writer named Currer Bell.

  Charlotte submitted the manuscript to her publisher in August 1847, with a note indicating casually that “[i]t is better in future to address Mr Currer Bell, under cover to Miss Brontë, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed not reaching me at present.” Later, George Smith, the head of the firm, recalled his suspicions about Currer Bell: “For my own part I never had much doubt on the subject of the writer’s sex; but then I had the advantage over the general public of having the handwriting of the author before me.”

  Published just six weeks later on October 16, Jane Eyre, with its declarative opening line—“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day”—proved shocking to many Victorians, and even an assault against decorum. Yet it was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, and could count among its admirers Queen Victoria,
who read it aloud to her “dear Albert.” Thackeray, who’d received an early review copy, wrote to Charlotte’s publisher:

  I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it. . . . Who the author can be I can’t guess, if a woman she knows her language better than most ladies do, or has had a “classical” education. . . . Some of the love passages made me cry. . . . I don’t know why I tell you this but that I have been exceedingly moved and pleased by Jane Eyre. It is a woman’s writing, but whose?

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning thought it a fine novel (and superior to the subsequent Shirley and Villette) but wrote to a friend, “I certainly don’t think that the qualities, half savage and half freethinking, expressed in Jane Eyre are likely to suit a model governess or schoolmistress.” Although she found these “qualities” repugnant and expressed her disapproval, she was excited by the mystery of the authorship—particularly the scandalous gossip that “Currer Bell” was actually a young governess. Another critic declared that the novel was “[w]orth fifty Trollopes and Martineaus rolled into one counterpane, with fifty Dickenses and Bulwers to keep them company,” but added that the author of Jane Eyre was “rather a brazen Miss.”

  Compared with her sisters’ novels, Charlotte’s debut achieved by far the greatest commercial and critical success. Sales exceeded all expectations, and within six months Jane Eyre went into a third printing. Charlotte—or, rather, her nom de plume—became the most celebrated author in England. Deepening the mystery was the book’s curious title page: “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. Edited by Currer Bell.” It had been George Smith’s idea to add the provocative subtitle. The novel was very autobiographical indeed—for Charlotte, that is. Some critics believed that Bell was a woman, but to others it seemed obvious that the novel was simply too good to have been written by a female author. “It is no woman’s writing,” wrote one reviewer confidently. “Although ladies have written histories, and travels, and warlike novels, to say nothing of books upon the different arts and sciences, no woman could have penned the ‘Autobiography of Jane Eyre.’ It is all that one of the other sex might invent, and much more.” The critic George Henry Lewes wrote that the novel was perhaps not autobiographical “in the naked facts and circumstances,” but it certainly appeared to be “in the actual suffering and experience.”

  Some speculated that perhaps Acton and Currer Bell were the same person. A baffled critic surmised that the author’s identity was divided, “if we are not misinformed, with a brother and sister. The work bears the marks of more than one mind and more than one sex.” One writer argued that the novel’s “mistakes” about “preparing game and dessert dishes” proved beyond a doubt that the author was a man, because no female author would have been so clueless. But another claimed that “only a woman or an upholsterer” could have written the section about sewing on brass rings. Yet another reviewer was convinced that the name was a pseudonym, perhaps an anagram, and that the book was definitely by a woman from the north of England. “Who, indeed, but a woman could have ventured, with the smallest prospect of success, to fill three octavo volumes with the history of a woman’s heart?”

  As Elizabeth Gaskell wrote in her biography of Charlotte, following the publication of Jane Eyre Charlotte’s life became “divided into two parallel currents,” that of Bell and Brontë, and “there were separate duties belonging to each character—not opposing each other; not impossible, but difficult to be reconciled.” Gaskell noted ruefully that when a man becomes an author, “it is probably merely a change of employment to him,” but for a woman to take on the same role, especially in secret, the burdens seem too great to overcome. “[N]o other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother,” Gaskell wrote. Sequestered at the parsonage, where the most exciting part of her day was the postman’s call, Charlotte was somewhat protected from the pressures of her fame—but not entirely.

  Literary London was buzzing about Currer Bell. Most agreed that whoever the author was, he or she had extraordinary talent. “This is not merely a work of great promise,” one critic said, “it is one of absolute performance. It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which has been published for many years.” There came an inevitable backlash—among other things, the novel was said to be coarse and immoral—but those reviews were drowned out by the praise. (Some critics wanted it both ways: The Economist declared the novel a triumph if written by a man, “odious” if written by a woman.)

  Charlotte could not resist sharing a copy of the book (along with some laudatory reviews) with her gruff father, who had no idea that she’d been published. All of Patrick’s support, interest, and hope for the future had been lost with his son. But he read the novel one afternoon, summoned his daughters to tea, declared the book “a better one than I expected,” and did not mention it again for the next few years.

  Although Charlotte found refuge in her anonymity, her happiness about the novel’s triumphant reception was tempered by the drubbing that Emily took for Wuthering Heights. Agnes Grey (like poor Anne) did not stir a strong reaction in anyone. Their novels were published together in December 1847, just as Charlotte was preparing for the second edition of Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, Emily and Anne found their publisher to have done a shamefully shoddy job; their books were riddled with mortifying mistakes of spelling and punctuation that they’d corrected on proof sheets, and new errors had been introduced. Most of the reviews of Wuthering Heights were unkind. Although critics recognized the power of Ellis Bell’s writing, one reviewer deemed the characters “grotesque, so entirely without art, that they strike us as proceeding from a mind of limited experience.” And readers were warned that they would be “disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity and the most diabolical hate and vengeance” in Wuthering Heights. Emily, always reclusive, did not speak of her pain at reading the negative reviews; nor did she admit how hurtful it was to see Charlotte’s work bask in adulation at the same time. But after her death it was discovered that tucked inside her desk, Emily had saved the clippings of the reviews comparing her novel unfavorably with Jane Eyre.

  Meanwhile, Charlotte clutched the protective umbrella of Currer Bell as the storm of publicity raged around her. In a letter to her editor, she wondered “what author would be without the advantage of being able to walk invisible?”

  For the third edition of Jane Eyre, she wrote a brief author’s note “to explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due. This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already have been made, and to prevent future errors.” Dated April 13, 1848, it was signed “Currer Bell.” She’d written it as an irked response to Emily’s and Anne’s disreputable publisher, who had led readers to believe that one “Mr. Bell” was responsible for the works by all three sisters. The Bell brothers were thus accused of “trickery.” This misrepresentation had brought trouble for Charlotte on a number of levels, including a need to assure her own publisher, George Smith, that his author was not working for a competitor behind his back.

  That year, Jane Eyre was sold in the United States, also to great acclaim, and the New York publisher Harper & Brothers had eagerly submitted a high bid to acquire the rights to Currer Bell’s next novel.

 
At home, people were clamoring to know who the elusive Bell was. Charlotte could not contain her secret much longer; nevertheless, she wrote to her publisher insisting that the author’s identity remain protected at all costs. “ ‘Currer Bell’ only I am and will be to the Public; if accident or design should deprive me of that name,” she wrote, “I should deem it a misfortune—a very great one. Mental tranquility would then be gone; it would be a task to write, a task which I doubt whether I could continue.”

  In July 1848, Charlotte made a dramatic decision: without giving notice, she traveled to London to introduce herself—her real self—to Smith and to her editor, W. S. Williams. Deeply grateful for everything the firm had done for her, she felt obliged to be forthright and to prove that one author was not responsible for the novels of all three. Originally she’d planned to surprise Smith at his office accompanied by both Anne and Emily, but Emily refused to go. She was upset about the turn of events and viewed the confession as a betrayal. Charlotte felt terribly guilty. Following her visit to the office she wrote to Williams, asking him to pretend that their meeting had never happened, at least as far as Emily was concerned.

  “Permit me to caution you not to speak of my sisters when you write to me,” Charlotte advised. “I mean, do not use the word in the plural. Ellis Bell will not endure to be alluded to under any other appellation than the nom de plume. I committed a grand error in betraying his identity to you and Mr. Smith. It was inadvertent—the words ‘we are three sisters’ escaped me before I was aware. I regretted the avowal the moment I had made it; I regret it bitterly now, for I find it is against every feeling and intention of Ellis Bell.” Even after her sisters died, she maintained “Currer Bell” as her authorial identity.