Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 14

'_October_ 2_nd_, 1848.

'MY DEAR SIR,--"We have hurried our dead out of our sight." A lull begins to succeed the gloomy tumult of last week. It is not permitted us to grieve for him who is gone as others grieve for those they lose. The removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us rather in the light of a mercy than a chastis.e.m.e.nt.

Branwell was his father's and his sisters' pride and hope in boyhood, but since manhood the case has been otherwise. It has been our lot to see him take a wrong bent; to hope, expect, wait his return to the right path; to know the sickness of hope deferred, the dismay of prayer baffled; to experience despair at last--and now to behold the sudden early obscure close of what might have been a n.o.ble career.

'I do not weep from a sense of bereavement--there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost--but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had aspirations and ambitions for him once, long ago--they have perished mournfully. Nothing remains of him but a memory of errors and sufferings. There is such a bitterness of pity for his life and death, such a yearning for the emptiness of his whole existence as I cannot describe. I trust time will allay these feelings.

'My poor father naturally thought more of his _only_ son than of his daughters, and, much and long as he had suffered on his account, he cried out for his loss like David for that of Absalom--my son my son!--and refused at first to be comforted. And then when I ought to have been able to collect my strength and be at hand to support him, I fell ill with an illness whose approaches I had felt for some time previously, and of which the crisis was hastened by the awe and trouble of the death-scene--the first I had ever witnessed. The past has seemed to me a strange week. Thank G.o.d, for my father's sake, I am better now, though still feeble. I wish indeed I had more general physical strength--the want of it is sadly in my way. I cannot do what I would do for want of sustained animal spirits and efficient bodily vigour.

'My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature--he was not aware that they had ever published a line. We could not tell him of our efforts for fear of causing him too deep a pang of remorse for his own time mis-spent, and talents misapplied.

Now he will _never_ know. I cannot dwell longer on the subject at present--it is too painful.

'I thank you for your kind sympathy, and pray earnestly that your sons may all do well, and that you may be spared the sufferings my father has gone through.--Yours sincerely,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO W. S. WILLIAMS

'HAWORTH, _October_ 6_th_, 1848.

'MY DEAR SIR,--I thank you for your last truly friendly letter, and for the number of _Blackwood_ which accompanied it. Both arrived at a time when a relapse of illness had depressed me much. Both did me good, especially the letter. I have only one fault to find with your expressions of friendship: they make me ashamed, because they seem to imply that you think better of me than I merit. I believe you are p.r.o.ne 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. Believe all men, and women too, to be dust and ashes--a spark of the divinity now and then kindling in the dull heap--that is all. When I looked on the n.o.ble face and forehead of my dead brother (nature had favoured him with a fairer outside, as well as a finer const.i.tution, than his sisters) and asked myself what had made him go ever wrong, tend ever downwards, when he had so many gifts to induce to, and aid in, an upward course, I seemed to receive an oppressive revelation of the feebleness of humanity--of the inadequacy of even genius to lead to true greatness if unaided by religion and principle. In the value, or even the reality, of these two things he would never believe till within a few days of his end; and then all at once he seemed to open his heart to a conviction of their existence and worth. The remembrance of this strange change now comforts my poor father greatly. I myself, with painful, mournful joy, heard him praying softly in his dying moments; and to the last prayer which my father offered up at his bedside he added, "Amen." How unusual that word appeared from his lips, of course you, who did not know him, cannot conceive. Akin to this alteration was that in his feelings towards his relations--all the bitterness seemed gone.

'When the struggle was over, and a marble calm began to succeed the last dread agony, I felt, as I had never felt before, that there was peace and forgiveness for him in Heaven. All his errors--to speak plainly, all his vices--seemed nothing to me in that moment: every wrong he had done, every pain he had caused, vanished; his sufferings only were remembered; the wrench to the natural affections only was left. If man can thus experience total oblivion of his fellow's imperfections, how much more can the Eternal Being, who made man, forgive His creature?

'Had his sins been scarlet in their dye, I believe now they are white as wool. He is at rest, and that comforts us all. Long before he quitted this world, life had no happiness for him.

'_Blackwood's_ mention of _Jane Eyre_ gratified me much, and will gratify me more, I dare say, when the ferment of other feelings than that of literary ambition shall have a little subsided in my mind.

'The doctor has told me I must not expect too rapid a restoration to health; but to-day I certainly feel better. I am thankful to say my father has. .h.i.therto stood the storm well; and so have my _dear_ sisters, to whose untiring care and kindness I am chiefly indebted for my present state of convalescence.--Believe me, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

The last letter in order of date that I have concerning Branwell is addressed to Ellen Nussey's sister:--

TO MISS MERCY NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _October_ 25_th_, 1848.

'MY DEAR MISS NUSSEY,--Accept my sincere thanks for your kind letter.

The event to which you allude came upon us with startling suddenness, and was a severe shock to us all. My poor brother has long had a shaken const.i.tution, and during the summer his appet.i.te had been diminished, and he had seemed weaker, but neither we, nor himself, nor any medical man who was consulted on the case, thought it one of immediate danger. He was out of doors two days before death, and was only confined to bed one single day.

'I thank you for your kind sympathy. Many, under the circ.u.mstances, would think our loss rather a relief than otherwise; in truth, we must acknowledge, in all humility and grat.i.tude, that G.o.d has greatly tempered judgment with mercy. But yet, as you doubtless know from experience, the last earthly separation cannot take place between near relatives without the keenest pangs on the part of the survivors. Every wrong and sin is forgotten then, pity and grief share the heart and the memory between them. Yet we are not without comfort in our affliction. A most propitious change marked the few last days of poor Branwell's life: his demeanour, his language, his sentiments were all singularly altered and softened. This change could not be owing to the fear of death, for till within half-an-hour of his decease he seemed unconscious of danger. In G.o.d's hands we leave him: He sees not as man sees.

'Papa, I am thankful to say, has borne the event pretty well. His distress was great at first--to lose an only son is no ordinary trial, but his physical strength has not hitherto failed him, and he has now in a great measure recovered his mental composure; my dear sisters are pretty well also. Unfortunately, illness attacked me at the crisis when strength was most needed. I bore up for a day or two, hoping to be better, but got worse. Fever, sickness, total loss of appet.i.te, and internal pain were the symptoms. The doctor p.r.o.nounced it to be bilious fever, but I think it must have been in a mitigated form; it yielded to medicine and care in a few days. I was only confined to my bed a week, and am, I trust, nearly well now. I felt it a grievous thing to be incapacitated from action and effort at a time when action and effort were most called for. The past month seems an overclouded period in my life.

'Give my best love to Mrs. Nussey and your sister, and--Believe me, my dear Miss Nussey, yours sincerely,

'C. BRONTE.'

_My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature_--_he was not aware that they had ever published a line_.

Who that reads these words addressed to Mr. Williams can for a moment imagine that Charlotte is speaking other than the truth? And yet we have Mr. Grundy writing:

_Patrick Bronte declared to me that he wrote a great portion of_ '_Wuthering Heights_' _himself_.

And Mr. George Searle Phillips, {142} with more vivid imagination, describes Branwell holding forth to his friends in the parlour of the Black Bull at Haworth, upon the genius of his sisters, and upon the respective merits of _Jane Eyre_ and other works. Mr. Leyland is even so foolish as to compare Branwell's poetry with Emily's, to the advantage of the former--which makes further comment impossible. 'My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature'--these words of Charlotte's may be taken as final for all who had any doubts concerning the authorship of _Wuthering Heights_.

CHAPTER VI: EMILY JANE BRONTE

Emily Bronte is the sphinx of our modern literature. She came into being in the family of an obscure clergyman, and she went out of it at twenty-nine years of age without leaving behind her one single significant record which was any key to her character or to her mode of thought, save only the one famous novel, _Wuthering Heights_, and a few poems--some three or four of which will live in our poetic anthologies for ever. And she made no single friend other than her sister Anne.

With Anne she must have corresponded during the two or three periods of her life when she was separated from that much loved sister; and we may be sure that the correspondence was of a singularly affectionate character. Charlotte, who never came very near to her in thought or sympathy, although she loved her younger sister so deeply, addressed her in one letter 'mine own bonnie love'; and it is certain that her own letters to her two sisters, and particularly to Anne, must have been peculiarly tender and in no way lacking in abundant self-revelation.

When Emily and Anne had both gone to the grave, Charlotte, it is probable, carefully destroyed every sc.r.a.p of their correspondence, and, indeed, of their literary effects; and thus it is that, apart from her books and literary fragments, we know Emily only by two formal letters to her sister's friend. Beyond these there is not one sc.r.a.p of information as to Emily's outlook upon life. In infancy she went with Charlotte to Cowan Bridge, and was described by the governess as 'a pretty little thing.' In girlhood she went to Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head; but there, unlike Charlotte, she made no friends. She and Anne were inseparable when at home, but of what they said to one another there is no record. The sisters must have differed in many ways. Anne, gentle and persuasive, grew up like Charlotte, devoted to the Christianity of her father and mother, and entirely in harmony with all the conditions of a parsonage. It is impossible to think that the author of 'The Old Stoic' and 'Last Lines' was equally attached to the creeds of the churches; but what Emily thought on religious subjects the world will never know. Mrs. Gaskell put to Miss Nussey this very question: 'What was Emily's religion?' But Emily was the last person in the world to have spoken to the most friendly of visitors about so sacred a theme.

For a short time, as we know, Emily was in a school at Law Hill near Halifax--a Miss Patchet's. {145a} She was, for a still longer period, at the Heger Pensionnat at Brussels. Mrs. Gaskell's business was to write the life of Charlotte Bronte and not of her sister Emily; and as a result there is little enough of Emily in Mrs. Gaskell's book--no record of the Halifax and Brussels life as seen through Emily's eyes. Time, however, has brought its revenge. The cult which started with Mr. Sydney Dobell, and found poetic expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold's fine lines on her,

'Whose soul Knew no fellow for might, Pa.s.sion, vehemence, grief, Daring, since Byron died,' {145b}

culminated in an enthusiastic eulogy by Mr. Swinburne, who placed her in the very forefront of English women of genius.

We have said that Emily Bronte is a sphinx whose riddle no amount of research will enable us to read; and this chapter, it may be admitted, adds but little to the longed-for knowledge of an interesting personality. One sc.r.a.p of Emily's handwriting, of a personal character, has indeed come to me--overlooked, I doubt not, by Charlotte when she burnt her sister's effects. I have before me a little tin box about two inches long, which one day last year Mr. Nicholls turned out from the bottom of a desk. It is of a kind in which one might keep pins or beads, certainly of no value whatever apart from its a.s.sociations. Within were four little pieces of paper neatly folded to the size of a sixpence.

These papers were covered with handwriting, two of them by Emily, and two by Anne Bronte. They revealed a pleasant if eccentric arrangement on the part of the sisters, which appears to have been settled upon even after they had pa.s.sed their twentieth year. They had agreed to write a kind of reminiscence every four years, to be opened by Emily on her birthday.

The papers, however, tell their own story, and I give first the two which were written in 1841. Emily writes at Haworth, and Anne from her situation as governess to Mr. Robinson's children at Thorp Green. At this time, at any rate, Emily was fairly happy and in excellent health; and although it is five years from the publication of the volume of poems, she is full of literary projects, as is also her sister Anne. The _Gondaland Chronicles_, to which reference is made, must remain a mystery for us. They were doubtless destroyed, with abundant other memorials of Emily, by the heart-broken sister who survived her. We have plentiful material in the way of childish effort by Charlotte and by Branwell, but there is hardly a sc.r.a.p in the early handwriting of Emily and Anne. This chapter would have been more interesting if only one possessed _Solala Vernon's Life_ by Anne Bronte, or the _Gondaland Chronicles_ by Emily!

[Picture: Facsimile of page of Emily Bronte's Diary]

_A PAPER to be opened_ _when Anne is_ 25 _years old_, _or my next birthday after_ _if_ _all be well_.

_Emily Jane Bronte_. _July the_ 30_th_, 1841.

_It is Friday evening_, _near 9 o'clock_--_wild rainy weather_. _I am seated in the dining-room_, _having just concluded tidying our desk boxes_, _writing this doc.u.ment_. _Papa is in the parlour_--_aunt upstairs in her room_. _She has been reading Blackwood's Magazine to papa_. _Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house_. _Keeper is in the kitchen_--_Hero in his cage_.

_We are all stout and hearty_, _as I hope is the case with Charlotte_, _Branwell_, _and Anne_, _of whom the first is at John White_, _Esq._, _Upperwood House_, _Rawdon_; _the second is at Luddenden Foot_; _and the third is_, _I believe_, _at Scarborough_, _enditing perhaps a paper corresponding to this_.

_A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own_; _as yet nothing is determined_, _but I hope and trust it may go on and prosper and answer our highest expectations_. _This day four years I wonder whether we shall still be dragging on in our present condition or established to our hearts' content_. _Time will show_.

_I guess that at the time appointed for the opening of this paper we_, i.e. _Charlotte_, _Anne_, _and I_, _shall be all merrily seated in our own sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary_, _having just gathered in for the midsummer ladyday_. _Our debts will be paid off_, _and we shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount_. _Papa_, _aunt_, _and Branwell will either_ _have been or be coming to visit us_. _It will be a fine warm_, _summer evening_, _very different from this bleak look-out_, _and Anne and I will perchance slip out into the garden for a few minutes to peruse our papers_. _I hope either this or something better will be the case_.

_The_ Gondaliand _are at present in a threatening state_, _but there is no open rupture as yet_. _All the princes and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction_. _I have a good many books on hand_, _but I am sorry to say that as usual I make small progress with any_. _However_, _I have just made a new regularity paper_!

_and I must verb sap to do great things_. _And now I close_, _sending from far an exhortation of courage_, _boys_! _courage_, _to exiled and hara.s.sed Anne_, _wishing she was here_.

Anne, as I have said, writes from Thorp Green.

_July the_ 30_th_, A.D. 1841.

_This is Emily's birthday_. _She has now completed her_ 23_rd_ _year_, _and is_, _I believe_, _at home_. _Charlotte is a governess in the family of Mr. White_. _Branwell is a clerk in the railroad station at Luddenden Foot_, _and I am a governess in the family of Mr. Robinson_. _I dislike the situation and wish to change it for another_. _I am now at Scarborough_. _My pupils are gone to bed and I am hastening to finish this before I follow them_.

_We are thinking of setting up a school of our own_, _but nothing definite is settled about it yet_, _and we do not know whether we shall be able to or not_. _I hope we shall_. _And I wonder what will be our condition and how or where we shall all be on this day four years hence_; _at which time_, _all be well_, _I shall be_ 25 _years and_ 6 _months old_, _Emily will be_ 27 _years old_, _Branwell_ 28 _years and_ 1 _month_, _and Charlotte_ 29 _years and a quarter_. _We are now all separate and not likely to meet again for many a weary week_, _but we are none of us ill_ _that I know of and all are doing something for our own livelihood except Emily_, _who_, _however_, _is as busy as any of us_, _and in reality earns her food and raiment as much as we do_.