The Bronte Family Volume Ii Part 6

It must have been when the sisters became aware that publishers would not accept the poetry of unknown writers on any other terms, that they turned their thoughts to prose composition. Branwell, in his dire distress, had fixed his attention on the writing of a three-volume novel, princ.i.p.ally as a refuge from mental disquiet; but his sisters, now, with very different feelings, each set to work on a one-volume tale. It had occurred to them, we are told, that by novel writing money was to be made. They were, in fact, influenced by precisely the view of the profit to be derived from fiction which Branwell had propounded in his remarkable letter to his friend Leyland. 'Ill-success,' says Charlotte, 'failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced "Wuthering Heights," Acton Bell, "Agnes Grey," and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume.'

The business-like way in which the sisters went about their novel writing, forbids us to believe that they brooded very much on the conduct of their brother when the literary fervour was upon them; but Miss Robinson leads her readers to think that his character and failings had much to do with the tone which their works a.s.sumed.

Writing under this belief, and with this intention,--as might have been expected,--she has found it necessary to paint every circ.u.mstance relating to him, and the inmates of the parsonage, in the darkest colours, and often has arrived at conclusions widely different from the actual facts. Moreover this writer, in supporting her views, has fallen into the serious error of placing the event which completed Branwell's disappointment, and its consequences to him, four months earlier than they occurred.

The novels which the sisters wrote under the influence of these troubles do not, indeed, bear any marked traces of them. 'The Professor,' Charlotte's story, which was not published until long after, is the direct outcome of her personal experiences in Brussels, and the few shadows that one finds in it are the record of such troubles as she had there. In this book, Currer Bell describes the life of endeavour, which seemed to her the most honourable, the treading of those paths in the outer world whose pleasures and pains she had found so keen. Already, in the March of 1845, she had written to a friend telling her that she was no longer happy at Haworth, though it was her duty to remain there. 'There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to me; it is not so now. I feel as if we were all buried here. I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action.' Thus 'The Professor' is the story of the work and of the life of action for which the author herself was pining. William Crimsworth, neglected by his rich relations, cut off by his brutal brother, seeks his fortune in Brussels, and obtains a place as professor of English in a school there. He leads a life that Charlotte knows well; he is in the place she has learned to love; and he describes, with close observation, the character and the routine to which she is so well accustomed. Pelet, his master, is an original, as Paul Emanuel is, and Zorade Reuter is the prototype of Madame Beck. These characters are forcibly conceived, as is that of Mademoiselle Henri; but the book bears the traces of a novice's hand. Thus, how unnatural does the proposal which Crimsworth makes to Frances read to us, where, while asking her to be his wife, demanding of her what regard she has for him, he says not a word of his own devotion to her; and where, even when she grants him all he has been hoping for so long, his sole remark is, 'Very well, Frances!' But a stronger point of interest for us in the book is the spirit which moves Crimsworth in his endeavours, where he struggles with might and main, just as Charlotte herself wished to do, for a competency; and there is the school, too, which his wife designs and establishes, the very pattern of that which was in Charlotte's own mind. It is instructive and singular that in this book we find Crimsworth suffering from the hypochondria which beset its author, and that, too, at the time when he should have been happiest.

'Man,' he says, 'is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was my mortal nature which now faltered and plained; my nerves, which jarred and gave a false sound, because the soul, of late rushing headlong to an aim, had over-strained the body's comparative weakness. A horror of great darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly, but had thought for ever departed. I was temporarily a prey to hypochondria. She had been my acquaintance, nay, my guest, once before in boyhood; I had entertained her at bed and board for a year; for that s.p.a.ce of time I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, gra.s.s and green tree; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom, and holding me with arms of bone.' This was the phantom that visited Charlotte also. Of the effect of her brother's conduct on her I have found but two pa.s.sages in 'The Professor,'--that which I have quoted respecting the youth of Victor Crimsworth earlier in this volume, and that, in Chapter xx., where William Crimsworth leaves Pelet's house lest a 'practical modern French novel' should be in process beneath its roof. It was Charlotte's design, in writing 'The Professor,' to lend it no charm of romance. Her hero was to work his way through life, and to find no sudden turn to endow him with wealth, for he was to earn every shilling he possessed, and he was not even to marry a beautiful girl or a lady of rank in the end. 'In the sequel, however,' says Charlotte, 'I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical;' and for this reason, probably, the book did not find a publisher so soon as 'Agnes Grey,'

and 'Wuthering Heights,' which were sent from the parsonage with it.

'Agnes Grey,' Anne Bronte's story, like 'The Professor,' is the picture of things its author had known, painted almost as she saw them. Anne's experience as a governess had made her acquainted with certain phases of life, which she could not but reproduce. Hence Agnes Grey is thrown into the sphere of the careless and selfish family of the Bloomfields; and afterwards, with the Murrays at Horton Lodge, she sees a kind of personal character and social life which, on account of its coldness and worldliness, greatly repelled Anne Bronte, with her warm and sympathetic nature. She teaches the same lesson of the folly of _mariages de convenance_, and of the wrong of subjecting the affections, and bartering happiness for the sake of worldly position, which she afterwards dwells upon more strongly in 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.' It is in this fict.i.tious parallel of Anne Bronte's own experience, if anywhere in her writings, that we might expect to find some reflection of the recent history of her brother's fall. Mr. Reid has a.s.serted that this formed the dark turning-point in her life, for 'living under the same roof with him when he went astray,' she 'was compelled to be a closer and more constant witness of his sins and his sufferings than either Charlotte or Emily.' Her letters home, it has been stated, conveyed the news of her dark forebodings. But, all the same, the story she wrote, almost under the shadow of her brother's disgrace, is the simple, straightforward, humorous narrative of the gentle and pious Anne Bronte, revealing not so much as a suspicion of vice or thought of evil; and, in this respect, it presents a contrast to her second work. There is evidence that when the sisters wrote their novels they had already attributed monomania to Branwell, and could thus explain his history for themselves. It was not in the nature of 'Agnes Grey' to be successful as a novel, but we find in it that Anne possessed a faculty which scarcely appears in Charlotte's writings,--that of humour. Look, for instance, at the way in which she sketches so forcibly, and with such droll perception, the character of the youthful Bloomfields, and, afterwards, of Miss Matilda Murray, with her equine propensities and masculine tastes.

'Wuthering Heights,' the work which Emily Bronte sent from the parsonage at the same time, incomparably finer in its powers than either 'The Professor' or 'Agnes Grey,' is a dramatic story of pa.s.sion and tragic energy that astonished the world,--and with which it has been said Branwell's life in those days had much concern.

Inferentially, it is contended that, without the darkening effect on her understanding of Branwell's misfortunes, without the neighbourhood of the 'brother of set purpose drinking himself to death out of furious thwarted pa.s.sion for a mistress he might not marry,' Emily Bronte could not have conceived it. It will, then, perhaps be better to defer the study of Emily's production till something more has been said of the period in which it was written; and until some new light has been thrown upon Branwell's character and career, and upon the anachronistic improprieties of previous writers.

Mrs. Gaskell pa.s.ses over the period in which the sisters betook themselves to novel writing with little comment. But she keeps in remembrance the presence of Branwell while their literary labours continued,--'the black shadow of remorse lying over one in their home.'

What it was that the biographer of Charlotte supposed stung Branwell's conscience is well-known; but, if there had been this cause for it in one of a naturally remorseful disposition, as his was, we must have met with some expression of it in his letters or poems, for

'The Mind, that broods o'er guilty woes, Is like the Scorpion girt by fire.'

Yet, perhaps, one of the most significant points to be observed in Branwell's writings, and in studying his conduct, is the absence of any such remorse. He encouraged himself--after the first shock of his disappointment--with the hope that time would bring him the happiness he wished; and, as some believe, with good and sufficient reason. He was unhappy when he thought of the supposed ill-health and sufferings of the lady.

It is noteworthy that something inconsequent, in putting down Branwell's conduct entirely to remorse in this way, was the feature of Mrs. Gaskell's work, to which so great an a.n.a.lyzer of motives as George Eliot, as shown by her letters published quite recently, took exception, and regretted.[24]

[24] 'George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters and Journals,' arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross, 1885, vol. i., p. 441.

If we believe Branwell to have been subject to hallucination, we may then, perhaps, gain an idea of the true cause of the wretchedness he endured when he fell back on his own reflections. His life had been one of severe disappointment. Those early aims in art, for which he had spent so much preparation, and from which he hoped so much, had fallen away before him; his first efforts as usher and tutor had come to nothing; then followed the lapse which ended his stay with the railway company; and, lastly, the infatuation which had seized him in his late employment, with its vision of future opulence, and rest from all former change and trouble, ending in dismissal, distraction, and disgrace. All these things, rushing back upon his mind in moments of reflection, were more than he could bear, and he sought, in various ways, some honourable to him, to divert himself from the subject, but sometimes in a manner that gave cause for complaint at home, and resulted in moodiness and irritability of temper. On the other hand, he seems to have felt himself aggrieved by a want of sympathy on the part of his family in sufferings they did not comprehend.

Mr. George Searle Phillips, with whom Branwell became acquainted at Bradford, and who visited him at Haworth, says that he complained sometimes of the way in which he was treated at home; and, as an instance, relates the following:

'One of the Sunday-school girls, in whom he and all his house took much interest, fell very sick, and they were afraid she would not live. "I went to see the poor little thing," he said; "sat with her half-an-hour, and read a psalm to her, and a hymn at her request. I felt very like praying with her too," he added, his voice trembling with emotion; "but, you see, I was not good enough. How dare I pray for another, who had almost forgotten how to pray for myself! I came away with a heavy heart, for I felt sure she would die, and went straight home, where I fell into melancholy musings. I wanted somebody to cheer me. I often do, but no kind word finds its way even to my ears, much less to my heart. Charlotte observed my depression, and asked what ailed me. So I told her. She looked at me with a look I shall never forget--if I live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It was not like her at all. It wounded me as if some one had struck me a blow in the mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It was a dubious look. It ran over me, questioning, and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It said, 'Did my ears deceive me, or did I hear aright?' And then came the painful, baffled expression, which was worse than all. It said, 'I wonder if that's true?' But, as she left the room, she seemed to accuse herself of having wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my little scholar, and I will go and see her.' I replied not a word. I was too much cut up. When she was gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull,' and made a note of it in sheer disgust and desperation. Why could they not give me some credit when I was trying to be good?"'[25]

[25] 'The Mirror,' 1872.

At the beginning of March, Charlotte returned from a visit to a friend, and we hear that she found it very forced work to address her brother when she went into the room where he was; but he took no notice, and made no reply; he was stupefied; she had heard that he had got a sovereign while she was away, on pretence of paying a pressing debt, and had changed it, at a public-house, with the expected result.

Again Charlotte says, on March 31st, 1846: 'I am thankful papa continues pretty well, though often made very miserable by Branwell's wretched conduct. _There_--there is no change but for the worse.'

At this time Branwell wrote the following beautiful ode, somewhat incomplete in its expression, yet characteristic of his genius, which seems to have been inspired by the outcast feelings of which he spoke to Mr. Phillips, and to contain some reproach to those who thought him deficient in natural affection. It bears date April 3rd, 1846:

EPISTLE FROM A FATHER TO A CHILD IN HER GRAVE.

'From Earth,--whose life-reviving April showers Hide withered gra.s.s 'neath Springtide's herald flowers, And give, in each soft wind that drives her rain, Promise of fields and forests rich again,-- I write to thee, the aspect of whose face Can never change with altered time or place; Whose eyes could look on India's fiercest wars Less shrinking than the boldest son of Mars; Whose lips, more firm that Stoic's long ago, Would neither smile with joy nor blanch with woe; Whose limbs could sufferings far more firmly bear Than mightiest heroes in the storms of war; Whose frame, nor wishes good, nor shrinks from ill, Nor feels distraction's throb, nor pleasure's thrill.

'I write to thee what thou wilt never read, For heed me thou _wilt not_, howe'er may bleed The heart that many think a worthless stone, But which oft aches for some beloved one; Nor, if that life, mysterious, from on high, Once more gave feeling to thy stony eye, Could'st thou thy father know, or feel that he Gave life and lineaments and thoughts to thee; For when thou died'st, thy day was in its dawn, And night still struggled with Life's opening morn; The twilight star of childhood, thy young days Alone illumined, with its twinkling rays, So sweet, yet feeble, given from those dusk skies, Whose kindling, coming noontide prophesies, But tells us not that Summer's noon can shroud Our sunshine with a veil of thunder-cloud.

'If, when thou freely gave the life, that ne'er To thee had given either hope or fear, But quietly had shone; nor asked if joy Thy future course should cheer, or grief annoy;

'If then thoud'st seen, upon a summer sea, One, once in features, as in blood, like thee, On skies of azure blue and waters green, Melting to mist amid the summer sheen, In trouble gazing--ever hesitating 'Twixt miseries each hour new dread creating, And joys--whate'er they cost--still doubly dear, Those "troubled pleasures soon chastised by fear;"

If thou _had'st_ seen him, thou would'st ne'er believe That thou had'st yet known what it was to live!

'Thine eyes could only see thy mother's breast; Thy feelings only wished on that to rest; That was thy world;--thy food and sleep it gave, And slight the change 'twixt it and childhood's grave.

Thou saw'st this world like one who, p.r.o.ne, reposes, Upon a plain, and in a bed of roses, With nought in sight save marbled skies above, Nought heard but breezes whispering in the grove: I--thy life's source--was like a wanderer breasting Keen mountain winds, and on a summit resting, Whose rough rocks rose above the gra.s.sy mead, With sleet and north winds howling overhead, And Nature, like a map, beneath him spread; Far winding river, tree, and tower, and town, Shadow and sunlight, 'neath his gaze marked down By that mysterious hand which graves the plan Of that drear country called "The Life of Man."

'If seen, men's eyes would loathing shrink from thee, And turn, perhaps, with no disgust to me; Yet thou had'st beauty, innocence, and smiles, And now hast rest from this world's woes and wiles, While I have restlessness and worrying care, So sure, thy lot is brighter, happier far.

'So let it be; and though thy ears may never Hear these lines read beyond Death's darksome river, Not vainly from the borders of despair May rise a sound of joy that thou art freed from care!'

On the 6th of April of this year, Charlotte wrote to Messrs. Aylott & Jones, informing them that 'the Messrs. Bell' were preparing for the press a work of fiction, consisting of three distinct and unconnected tales, which might be published either together, as a work of three volumes of the ordinary novel size, or separately, as single volumes.

It was not their intention to publish these at their own expense, and they wished to know if Messrs. Aylott would be likely to undertake the work, if approved.

The novels must have been well on towards completion before the sisters ventured on these inquiries. The firm thus addressed kindly offered advice, of which Charlotte gladly availed herself to ask some questions. These were respecting the difficulty which unknown authors find in obtaining a.s.sistance from publishers; and Charlotte has indeed informed us that the three tales were going about among them 'for the s.p.a.ce of a year and a half.' But 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey'

at last found acceptance in the early summer of 1847.

A friendly compact had been made between Branwell and Leyland that the latter should model a medallion of his friend, and that Branwell should write the poem 'Morley Hall,'--to which I have had occasion above to allude--a subject in which the sculptor was much interested. Shortly after his sister made the inquiries from Messrs. Aylott, Branwell visited Halifax to sit for his medallion; and, on the 28th of April, he wrote the following letter to his friend:--

'Haworth, Bradford, 'Yorks.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'As I am anxious--though my return for your kindness will be like giving a sixpence for a sovereign lent--to do my best in my intended lines on Morley, I want answers to the following questions.... If I learn these facts, I'll do my best, but in all I try to write I desire to stick to probabilities and local characteristics.

'I cannot, without a smile at myself, think of my stay for three days in Halifax on a business which need not have occupied three hours; but, in truth, when I fall back _on_ myself, I suffer so much wretchedness that I cannot withstand any temptation to get _out_ of myself--and for that reason, I am prosecuting enquiries about situations suitable to me, whereby I could have a voyage abroad. The quietude of home, and the inability to make my family aware of the nature of most of my sufferings, makes me write:

'Home thoughts are not with me, Bright, as of yore; Joys are forgot by me, Taught to deplore!

My home has taken rest In an afflicted breast, Which I have often pressed, But may no more.

'Troubles never come alone--and I have some little troubles astride the shoulders of the big one.

'Literary exertion would seem a resource; but the depression attendant on it, and the almost hopelessness of bursting through the barriers of literary circles, and getting a hearing among publishers, make me disheartened and indifferent, for I cannot write what would be thrown unread into a library fire. Otherwise, I have the materials for a respectably sized volume, and, if I were in London personally, I might, perhaps, try ---- ----, a patronizer of the sons of rhyme; though I daresay the poor man often smarts for his liberality in publishing hideous trash. As I know that, while here, I might send a ma.n.u.script to London, and say good-bye to it, I feel it folly to feed the flames of a printer's fire. So much for egotism!

'I enclose a horribly ill-drawn daub done to while away the time this morning. I meant it to represent a very rough figure in stone.

'When all our cheerful hours seem gone for ever, All lost that caused the body or the mind To nourish love or friendship for our kind, And Charon's boat, prepared, o'er Lethe's river Our souls to waft, and all our thoughts to sever From what was once life's Light; still there may be Some well-loved bosom to whose pillow we Could heartily our utter self deliver; And if, toward her grave--Death's dreary road-- Our Darling's feet should tread, each step by her Would draw our own steps to the same abode, And make a festival of sepulture; For what gave joy, and joy to us had owed, Should death affright us from, when he would her restore?

'Yours most sincerely,

'P. B. BRONTe.'

The sketch, referred to in this letter, is in Indian-ink, and is of a female figure, with clasped hands, streaming hair, and averted face. We need not entertain a doubt as to whom it is intended to represent. It is inscribed, in Spanish, 'Nuestra Senora de la Pena'--Our Lady of Grief--which also appears on a headstone in the sketch.

The sonnet, which concludes this letter to Leyland, is beautiful as it is sad, and not only possesses the musical cadences, and completeness of theme, so essential in this mode of expression, but exhibits the high culture of Branwell's mind, and the direction in which the irrepressible emotions of his heart are moved.

Branwell, in this communication, makes no further mention of his novel.

Yet the experience of his sisters with their poems had only confirmed the judgment he expressed six months before, that no pecuniary advantage was to be obtained by publishing verse. The sisters had expended, on their little volume, over thirty pounds; but they valued it rightly as an effort to succeed. It was issued from the press early in May.

Charlotte had conducted the negotiations with the publishers in a very business-like way. She had directed them as to the copies to be sent for review, and as to the advertis.e.m.e.nts, on which she wished to expend little. The book appeared, and the world took little note of it: it was scarcely mentioned anywhere; but the sisters at Haworth waited patiently, and they were not dismayed that they waited in vain; for they had new-born hope in their other literary venture of the three prose stories. 'The book,' says Charlotte of the Poems, 'was printed: it is scarcely known, and all of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. The fixed conviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these poems has not indeed received the confirmation of much favourable criticism; but I must retain it notwithstanding.'

In his letter Branwell expresses himself as still anxious for employment; and wise in the direction in which he seeks it. A total change of scene and circ.u.mstance would have been, at this time, his best cure and greatest blessing. Unhappily, he failed in the attempt; and we find him again writing to Mr. Grundy, inquiring for some kind of occupation.