by E. F. Benson
Miss A. Mary F. Robinson (Madame Duclaux) published, in 1889, a book called Emily Brontë. It contains the following passage about Emily’s relations with her brother:
There was one woman’s heart strong enough in its compassion to bear the daily disgusts, weaknesses, sins of Branwell’s life, and yet persist in aid and affection. Night after night, when Mr. Brontë was in bed, when Anne and Charlotte had gone upstairs to their room, Emily still sat up waiting. She often had very long to wait in the silent house before the staggering tread, the muttered oath, the fumbling hand at the door, bade her rouse herself from her sad thoughts and rise to let in the prodigal, and lead him in safety to his rest. But she never wearied in her kindness. In that silent house, it was ever the silent Emily who had ever a cheering word for Branwell; it was Emily who remembered that he was her brother, without that remembrance freezing her heart to numbness.
Then follows a spirited account of a fire that broke out in Branwell’s room one night. He had gone to bed and fallen into a drugged or drunken sleep, and his candle had upset, setting his sheets alight. Emily dashed downstairs for a couple of pails of water, extinguished the flames and rescued her brother. Miss Robinson’s account is too full of vivid but impossible details to be accepted entirely. We cannot, for instance, believe that while Emily went to fetch water from downstairs Charlotte, Anne, and the servant ‘stood huddled together in amazed horror’ against the wall of the passage outside without making the slightest attempt to pull Branwell off the burning bed, or see what could be done with the water-jug, but Miss Robinson has stated that she derived the information that Emily befriended and tried to help Branwell until the end, and that she did thus rescue him when his bed was on fire, from Ellen Nussey herself. This disposes of the suggestion that, because Emily allowed that her brother was a ‘hopeless being,’ she therefore abandoned him, and that this story of the fire was a mere myth incubated from the similar incident in Jane Eyre in which Jane rescues Rochester from the bed to which his lunatic wife had set fire. Indeed, considering how invariably Charlotte wove into her novels pieces of personal experience, the fact that an identical scene occurs in her book points to its being derived from the actual incident for which Ellen Nussey is the source. We are thus also enabled to date this rescue by Emily of her brother as having occurred before Jane Eyre was begun in the summer of 1846. Nature would otherwise be imitating Art with an almost indecent fidelity. A further confirmation of this date is supplied by our knowledge that for two years before his death Branwell slept in the same room as his father: at the time of the fire he must still have been occupying a room to himself.
Finally, as regards Emily’s unbroken friendship and pity for Branwell during these appalling years when the other sisters watched him, with aversion or to point a moral, being wrecked by self-indulgence and dying of consumption, we have only to read her poem The Wanderer from the Fold, which was the last she ever wrote and was composed between Branwell’s death in September 1848 and her own in December of the same year. It is not questioned that it refers to him:
How few of all the hearts that loved, Are grieving for thee now: And why should mine to-night be moved With such a sense of woe?
Too often thus, when left alone Where none my thoughts can see, Comes back a word, a passing tone From thy strange history.
Sometimes I seem to see thee rise, A glorious child again; All virtues beaming from thine eyes That ever honoured men;
Courage and truth, a generous breast Where sinless sunshine lay: A being whose very presence blest Like gladsome summer day.
Oh, fairly spread thy early sail, And fresh and pure and free Was the first impulse of the gale Which urged life’s wave for thee!
Why did the pilot, too confiding, Dream o’er that ocean’s foam, And trust in Pleasure’s careless guiding To bring his vessel home?
For well he knew what dangers frowned, What mists would gather dim; What rocks and shelves and sands lay round Between his port and him.
The very brightness of the sun, The splendour of the main, The wind that blew him wildly on Should not have warned in vain.
An anxious gazer from the shore — I marked the whitening wave, And wept above thy fate the more Because — I could not save.
It recks not now, when all is over: But yet my heart will be A mourner still, though friend and lover Have both forgotten thee!
In May 1846 occurred Mr. Robinson’s death. ‘It served Branwell,’ wrote Charlotte, ‘for a pretext to throw all about him into hubbub and confusion with his emotion, &c. &c.’ Of that sufficient has already been said; all that is solid about it is that the year before he had doubtless made love to the woman, and that very properly she told her husband about it, who dismissed him and told him not to hold any communication with her. Probably she was sorry for him and had friendly feelings towards him, as a perfectly respectable woman may towards a man who has tried to make love to her, for more than once subsequently Charlotte records that Branwell had been sent presents of money from ‘the old quarter,’ which is sufficiently explicit. All the rest we may confidently consider a fiction on Branwell’s part, composed with the object of making himself a love-lorn and tragic figure. Unfortunately Charlotte believed, though with hesitation, his fantastic tale, for her letters to Ellen contain several most bitter allusions to Mrs. Robinson, as if it was she who, by making advances to Branwell and then throwing him over, was responsible for his degradation. With that we may dismiss the rest of the sordid episode as being in the main a drunkard’s imaginings, since every detail of it can be directly traced to Branwell himself.
Early in June 1846, to judge by the date of reviews in the Critic and Athenæum, the joint book of poems by the three sisters was published. The Critic gave it a very good notice; the Athenæum declared that Ellis Bell had a ‘fine quaint spirit’; but for the present only one copy was actually purchased, fourteen being sent out for review.
Meanwhile the three novels were going their weary journeys, and after long intervals returned to their authors with uncommenting refusals; and Mr. Brontë’s eyes were getting worse. He could grope about still, but no longer could he see the face of his watch which he took with him into the pulpit on Sunday to regulate the length of his discourse; from habit, however, he still preached for a precise half-hour. But his eyes were now ripe for the operation, and in August Charlotte accompanied him to Manchester, having with admirable efficiency made all arrangements with the surgeon and having engaged lodgings for herself and him. She was racked with toothache which kept her awake at night; she had no idea how to cater for the nurse who would attend her father after the operation, and on the very morning when it took place a fatal parcel arrived which she knew to be the manuscript of The Professor, which, like the dove, had once more found no resting-place. At her father’s wish she was present in the room throughout the operation, and during the days that followed, when he had to remain in the dark in charge of the nurse whom, as a stranger, she disliked and distrusted, she set to work on a new novel, Jane Eyre.
The Rev. Patrick Brontë
It would be hard to find an instance of a more indomitable pluck, a more iron determination not to be overborne by any phalanx of adverse circumstances. There was nothing whatever in prospect at home: there was a drunken brother for whom she felt nothing but loathing and contempt; every scheme which she had made for the career of herself and her sisters had crumbled, their poems were still-born, their novels found no publisher; life was passing away, she was earning nothing, and those acquirements for teaching which she had won at such cost to her peace were rusting in disuse. Most keenly and most bitterly and with an ever-growing pessimism did she feel these tribulations, but her will and the fire of her imagination flamed up unquenched through the smoke and the damp smouldering; indeed, she found fuel in what would have finally extinguished a less ardent soul. She stoked up the fires of her imagination and threw into them the bitterness of heart with which she wrote of her schooldays at Cowan Bridge and the death of her
sisters. A year had already elapsed since her ‘discovery’ of Emily’s poems had kindled, after long ash-covered smouldering, the flame of literary ambition, and though that year had brought forth nothing but disappointment, it burned unquenched. Hermetically secret about it, never a word or hint did she vouchsafe to Ellen about what she had written, what she and her sisters had published, or what she was now writing.
But she confided to Ellen a certain resolution she had made, of sufficient importance to be printed in capitals in one of her letters: ‘And if I were ever again to find myself among strangers I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned.’ This confession is striking. She was aware of her censorious habit, she knew it led her into erroneous conclusions, and yet it seemed an integral part of her character. She was too much of a fighter to rank herself with the non-combatants who suffer long and are kind; she was ever harshly critical of those who made her suffer. Strangers made her suffer, and the first thing she looked for in them was faults. She was abnormally shy of them; her shyness to the end of her days was torture to her, and she attributed her discomfort to their odious qualities. It was from this largely that her censoriousness sprang, but it was also due to her constitutional pessimism which, always expecting to find blemishes in others, was seldom disappointed. She was alert to detect faults, she was extreme to mark what was done amiss. Indeed this practice seemed rather to be a principle of hers, for she deprecated any sort of optimism about others.
I believe you are prone [she wrote a year or two later to Mr. W. S. Williams] to think too highly of your fellow-creatures in general — to see too exclusively the good points of those for whom you have a regard. Disappointment must be the inevitable result of this habit.
There is a certain cynical truth in her comment, but what she did not perceive was that her own habit of being over-eager to see faults was exactly what caused her not to arrive at a regard for others; nor did she perceive that those who go through life as she did, prone to think disparagingly of her fellow-creatures, lose more than they gain by saving themselves such inevitable disappointments, for they miss the vastly outweighing rewards which come to the kindlier disposition which is on the look-out for amiable qualities. Her instinct was always to judge, and this deprived her of all the unreflecting enjoyment which is part of the natural equipment of a normal human being: the light touch, the indulgence for herself and others which is like yeast in the otherwise heavy dough of existence, never seem to have been hers, nor that sense of humour that makes human failings endearing rather than culpable. This rigidity, pessimistic and puritanical, had the defects of its qualities, and it resulted in that absence of charity which revealed on all sides a multitude of sins, and it was the root of much of her unhappiness. Not until the last months of her life did she find the only possible antidote to it.
An alleviation to the monotonous gloom of the Parsonage this autumn was the recovery of Mr. Brontë’s eyesight. By November he was in full harness again, and capable of taking three Sunday services by himself. That was a matter for thankfulness, but it passed into routine, and in the winter she writes to Ellen that nothing pleasant happens at Haworth, and the only thing that has ‘stung us into life’ was the arrival of a sheriff’s officer for Branwell, ‘inviting him either to pay his debts or take a trip to York.’ Bitterness was about her path, and when Ellen tells her about a new white dress which she looks forward to wearing, while Charlotte commends her frankness in telling her of her pleasure, she warns her against indiscriminate frankness, and hopes that ‘an overdose of vanity will not spoil this blessing and turn it into a misfortune.’ She sends Ellen a piece of lace, but hopes that the Bradford Post Office will not steal it — for the officials there usually open letters that seem to contain something interesting. Then, though she had been firmly resolved that Ellen should not come to Haworth while Branwell was there, she now invites her, for
Branwell is quieter now and for a good reason; he has got to the end of a considerable sum of money, and consequently is obliged to restrict himself in some degree. You must expect to find him weaker in mind and a complete rake in appearance.
But the visit fell through: Ellen’s sister had already arranged to be away from home, and she could not leave her mother. Upon which vials of wormwood and gall are outpoured: Charlotte says that she may find it more difficult next time to arrange for Ellen to come. This entirely unreasonable letter she subsequently withdrew with apologies.
By the summer of 1847 the book of poems had been out for a year, and in spite of favourable notices in the Critic, the Athenæum, and the Dublin University Magazine, only two copies in all had been sold. Before the remainder were scrapped Charlotte sent copies to Wordsworth, Tennyson, Lockhart, and De Quincey, with an identical letter of homage to each, in the name of the three authors, referring to the painful efforts their publishers must have made in getting rid of even two copies. To-day either of these would fetch at least a hundred pounds in the auction room. Southey, it may be noticed, who nine years before had very decidedly discouraged Charlotte from attempting to write verse, was not sent one. The poetical career for herself and her sisters had closed, and there was nothing to be done but to send the rest of the slender volumes to the trunk-makers for a paper lining to their boxes. But we cannot help wondering what would have been their fate if these volumes had been slenderer still, and had contained only Emily’s poems. As it was, these were sandwiched between the work of her two sisters, and that work, to speak quite frankly, is destitute of all poetical quality and distinction. There is not a stanza or even a line in it all which gleams or sings. Charlotte, in after days, at any rate, knew that herself: she says, ‘All of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell.’ It is strange that, when first she was arranging for the publication, that should not have struck her, and that her business sense should not have perceived how terribly Emily’s work was handicapped by being wedged in between plain, pious, ponderous pages by herself and Anne. No doubt the glamour of the joint ambition dazzled her.
Ellen’s deferred visit took place in August 1847: she came, she stayed, and she went away again in complete ignorance of all the excitement that raged beneath the peaceful surface at the Parsonage. For by now Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey had both been accepted by the publisher Mr. T. C. Newby, after their pedlar-pilgrimages, and though The Professor made yet one more unsuccessful journey to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., it came back on Charlotte’s hands not with the ‘two hard hopeless lines’ that had up till now accompanied its return, but, though refused, with a critical letter of two pages, showing, as Charlotte quaintly put it, ‘a discrimination so enlightened that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done.’ The firm also intimated that a manuscript of a three-volume novel would receive careful reading. Jane Eyre, begun just a year ago, at Manchester, when Mr. Brontë was lying in a dark room after his operation, was now nearly finished, and it was sent off to the publishers on August 24.
The reader for the firm, Mr. W. S. Williams, was enthusiastic about the book, so also was Mr. Smith, and it was at once accepted for publication in the autumn. Only a few weeks ago the prospect had been absolutely blank: two copies only of the joint volume of poems had been sold, and the three novels begun in the autumn of 1845 had journeyed wearily from publisher to publisher, returning always to Haworth. Now each sister had found a market for her wares, and among them was a book of supreme and matchless passion and Jane Eyre. Had it not been for Charlotte’s discovery of Emily’s poems two years before, and for the failure of her scheme to set up school, it is possible that neither of them would have been written. The Misses Brontë would have had a boarding-school for girls at Haworth Parsonage, and it would have kept them busy.
CHAPTER XIII
This visit of Ellen’s to Haworth in August was returned by a visit of Charlotte’s to Brookroyd the next month. Proofs of Jane Eyre were coming in fast, for it was being hurried through the Press, and Charlotte sat at t
he same table as her friend, with the printed galleys in front of her, yet not a word of question or volunteered information passed between them. Charlotte peered into her proofs and Ellen, with that excellent tact which characterised her, was completely blind to what was going on under her eyes. She must have been perfectly aware that Charlotte was correcting proofs and had therefore written a book, and the image of these two intimate friends sitting there in silence with this so highly exciting evidence sprawling on the table between them makes a pleasing picture.
She returned to Haworth and found her boxes stuffed with presents from her kindly friend. There was an eye-screen for Mr. Brontë, a peck of apples and a collar for Emily, who was pleased but astonished, a ‘crab cheese’ for Anne, that soothed her cough, a cap for Tabby, and a jar of preserves for Charlotte, for all which bounties Ellen got duly scolded. Other news from Haworth was that Mr. Nicholls was on holiday in Ireland, and that Anne’s delicate chest found the east winds troublesome. Mr. Grant, the master of Haworth Grammar School, as yet unconscious that Charlotte was taking note of his behaviour, and that he was to figure among the curates of her next book, was full of unintelligible apologies for not having made more of Ellen during her visit to Haworth. The foolish creature! ‘Why apologise for conduct which caused no suffering whatever?...’ But what about Miss Amelia Ringrose, a young lady who had lately developed a schwärm for Ellen? Charlotte had never seen her, and had never been more interested about a total stranger. Of Branwell not a word, and not a word of Jane Eyre.