The Key to the Bronte Works Part 18

I find that M. Heger was Paul to none but Charlotte Bronte in 1850, and that before the publication, two years ago, of _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, by Mr. Clement Shorter, who, for reasons which he should explain, calls M. Constantin Gilles Romain Heger "M. Paul Heger," [Throughout that writer's correspondence in _The Times_, etc., and in _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_: beneath the portrait of M. Heger, facing page 198, and bearing the inscription:--M. Paul Heger: The Hero of _Villette_ and _The Professor_; and on page 161 of that work] no reference in print had been made to M. Heger but as Constantin. The Hegers state that M.

Heger was not called Paul, and that Dr. Paul Heger, his son, was the first member of the family named Paul.

A native of Haworth[98] who lived from 1830 till after the death of Charlotte Bronte in 1855, "within twenty yards of the Haworth Parsonage," her home, has p.r.o.nounced the Heger portrait of Miss Bronte to be a correct likeness and "just like her." He says that it reminds him of her as he knew her and as she was in her younger days, and he pointed out to me particularly that he had seen her with her hair as in the Heger likeness, "scores of times before she went away"--this giving the clue to the reference in the inscription to a pose in a portrait by Branwell "many years previous" to 1850; and I have seen a reproduction of a sketch by Branwell wherein the Bronte sisters have curls. Moreover, I find that Miss Bronte really liked curls and disliked the other styles, though she conformed to the fashion.

I also find that the paper on which the Heger portrait of Miss Bronte was drawn was that used in 1850 by the house where she was a guest in London in the early June of 1850, at the very time to within a day when, as there is indisputable evidence--despite a.s.sertions that she "never under any circ.u.mstances during the later period of her life wore a green dress"--Charlotte Bronte was wearing a light green dress. That was "the first occasion on which Miss Bronte wore colours," as the inscription tells us, and fact substantiates, after she had concluded the remarkably long mourning period for her sisters, which began with "the death of Emily" and did not end till twelve months after the death of Anne, who died on May 28th, 1849.

(Signed) J. MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.

Scarr Hill, Eccleshill, Bradford, May 16th, 1907.

The publication of this letter ended the controversy.[99] Since it was published Mrs. Gaskell's daughters, who well knew Miss Bronte, have declared themselves fully satisfied as to the authenticity of the Heger portrait of Charlotte Bronte and the faithfulness of the likeness. The testimony of Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, also supports this portrait. See my further references to my correspondence with her ladyship herewith. As regards the green dress, apart from the indisputable external evidence I referred to in the printed letter, I believe Charlotte Bronte speaks of it in _Villette_, though therein it is for obfuscation's sake (necessary indeed, since _Villette_ was published only a short time after her London visit) made "pink" and "flounceless." In Chapter XXVIII. we find M. Paul saying--and it is interesting thus to have connected with the green dress a character whose prototype was M. Heger--that:

"Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, _pea-green_ or sky-blue, [the dress] was all one."[100]

As I stated to Lady Ritchie in 1907, I believe that in Chapter XX. of _Villette_ we undoubtedly have a real glimpse of incidents connected with the wearing of the green dress; and it should be remembered that Mrs. Bretton and Dr. John Graham Bretton in this chapter represent Mrs.

Smith, and her son Mr. George Smith, the publisher, whose guest Charlotte Bronte was in 1850, when she first wore the green dress:--

One morning, Mrs. Bretton ... desired me to ... show her my dresses; which I did, without a word.

"That will do," said she.... "You must have a new one."

... She returned presently with a dressmaker. She had me measured.

"I mean," said she, "to follow my own taste, and to have my own way in this little matter."

Two days after came home--a pink [green] dress! "That is not for me," I said hurriedly, feeling that I would ... as soon clothe myself in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank.

... "You will wear it this ... evening."

I thought I should not; I thought no human force should avail to put me into it.... I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved it.

But wear it she did; and when Graham [Mr. George Smith] stood in the doorway looking at her, she tells us her uneasy aspiration was:--

"I _do_ hope he will not think I have been decking myself out to draw attention."

Clearly Charlotte Bronte wished posterity to learn how it came about she was garbed in "light fabric and bright tint," because the green dress was a page in her life's history. In a green dress she sat down to dine, as Mr. Thackeray's daughter, Lady Ritchie has written me she well remembers, when Charlotte Bronte dined at Thackeray's house on June 12, 1850--not the event of the distinguished party, when Carlyle, Miss Perry, Mrs. Procter, and others were present, though Lady Ritchie had once confounded the two in writing upon the subject[101]. Mr.

Thackeray's daughter was a young girl at the time to which she referred, but she has made clear to me she saw Miss Bronte three times; that the chief occasion was when Charlotte Bronte wore the light green dress.

This, to quote her ladyship's words to me, was "not Mrs. Brookfield's party, when neither my sister and I nor our governess dined--though we came down in the evening. The second occasion was just casually at my father's lecture-room, when she did not speak to me, and the third, finally, at the Brookfield evening party, which seems to have been such a solemn affair[102]."

These facts fix the wearing of the light green dress by Miss Bronte as June 12, 1850. Lady Ritchie tells me that "It was at an early family dinner by daylight with Charlotte Bronte, my father, Mr. George Smith, my sister and our governess, that I remember sitting next Miss Bronte at dinner and gazing at her _sleeve_ and mittens. Her dress was of some texture like one I had had myself, which I suppose impressed it upon me, and it had a little moss or coral pattern in green on a white ground. I only remember the sleeve, the straight look, and the smooth Victorian bandeaux of hair. I am sure she was _differently_ dressed at the Brookfield evening party."

On June 12, 1850, Charlotte Bronte wrote to her friend, Miss Nussey, from the Smiths' in London, saying:--

Thackeray made a call.... If all be well, I am to dine at his house this evening.[103]

And this was when Miss Bronte sat in a light green dress at the Thackeray dinner-table.

The Richmond portrait of Charlotte Bronte being now also in the National Portrait Gallery, I may remark that Mrs. Gaskell herself says of this portrait:--"Those best acquainted with the original were least satisfied with the resemblance.... Mr. Bronte thought ... it looked good and lifelike." Charlotte Bronte herself said her father thought the portrait looked older than she. In view of the new interest now attaching to Tabitha Aykroyd and Charlotte, it is instructive to find the latter telling us Tabitha "maintains that it is not like," and also, that Tabitha thought it "too old looking." Then she apologized for the old servant in a sentence that pathetically recalls Mrs. Dean and Bessie of "Catherine's" and "Jane's" childhood--"Doubtless she confuses her recollections of me as I was in childhood, with present impressions."[104] We discover, therefore, that in the main there was really dissatisfaction at the "old looking" presentation, and we see Charlotte Bronte from the beginning must have wished she had had her hair arrangement in that portrait as was common to her at home and in her younger days. Hence do we get a further insight into the origin of the different pose in the more characteristic and intimately faithful Heger portrait of Charlotte Bronte.

INDEX.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL KEY INDEX.

I stated in a letter to _The Academy_, August 1st, 1908, that "were it possible by application of a cipher code to discover the words 'Emily Bronte' in every sentence of _Wuthering Heights_, I could not even then say any one wrote the book but Charlotte Bronte." If people write before they think, then importance can be attached to clerical testimony and external a.s.sociations to the disadvantage of internal and literal evidence. But inspiration, thought, and fact denote in questions of authorship, and therefore that is author of a work whose thoughts and words are expressed and inmost life revealed therein. _Wuthering Heights_, we now see, is Charlotte Bronte, and it matters not what amanuensis dealt with the relation--what sequence of complications resulted from her first day of handing over the work to her sister, and of conspiring to conceal her authorship.

Had not my own two sisters died, I might have been tempted to make them novelists: out of my bottom drawer I could have provided them with a novel each and one for a "follow-on," and yet have left myself some maturer works in hand. But _my_ sisters would have had to copy out the ma.n.u.scripts for the printers from my first drafts, and in every way possible to merit and to establish a.s.sociation with the books as authors. And how indignant we would have been--nay, alarmed, had there been a "Newby arrangement," at some daring critic, like Lady Eastlake and Sydney Dobell, imputing they were the work of one mind! Would we not have appealed to clerical testimony? With a more practised hand Charlotte Bronte in her days of fame corrected and edited _Wuthering Heights_. Emily was dead. Well might Charlotte say the labour left her "prostrate and entombed." What memories had it recalled!--what a history! It is obvious to all who consider carefully the letter Charlotte Bronte penned Wordsworth, to which I refer in the footnote on page 17 of _The Key to the Bronte Works_, that she wrote her books rapidly; and a review of the fact that the Bronte school project was renounced in favour of literary projects suggests Currer Bell in 1845-46 revealed to her sisters the advantages of having a bottom drawer. Let any reader use what I have termed the Key Index to the works of Charlotte Bronte, and it will be perceived quite easily that _Wuthering Heights_ is irrefutably at one with Currer Bell and all her other books--that the works of Charlotte Bronte are all related to each other, to Charlotte Bronte, and to the facts and people of her life as seen and known by herself. The reader of a given Bronte work will glance down the list in the Key Index under the heading of the particular book in hand to find these very important and intensely interesting connections, now first shown to exist:--

THE KEY INDEX

TO THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLOTTE BRONTe.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

Its relation to Charlotte Bronte's life, vii.-xi.[105], 16-19, 32-3, 37-53, 55-7, 69, 78-9, 83, 85-103, 106, 108-112, 114-8, 120-1, 126-9, 130-155, 156-8, 160-1, 168

In relation to Branwell Bronte, x., 18, 37-40, 52-3, 78-9, 93-5, 139

---- Tabby Aykroyd, x., 38, 40-1, 43-53, 77, 94-5, 147-8, 160, 168

---- M. Heger, viii., xi., 16, 17, 34, 56, 87, 89, 91-3, 96-103, 106, 111, 120-1, 128-9, 134-154, 157

---- Madame Heger, 106-7, 117

---- Taylor of Hunsworth, 83-9

---- Rev. Patrick Bronte, 49, 147; the younger Cathy's father, 161

---- Maria Bronte, 37

---- Emily Bronte, viii., 17, 18, 40, 138, 146, 153, 156, 169

---- M. Sue, ix., 103-4, 106-112, 114, 121, 128, 132-142

---- Charlotte Bronte's _Poems_, 56, 97, 128, 132-7, 139, 140-5, 150-1, 157-8

---- Montagu, x., 17, 20-35, 55, 57-68, 71, 141-5

---- _Jane Eyre_, vii., viii., x., 18, 20, 22-56, 58-68, 71-2, 79, 83, 85-103, 106, 108-112, 114-119, 121, 128-9, 134-146, 151-4, 157, 168

---- _Shirley_, ix., 18-9, 41, 43, 55-6, 83, 85-9, 136, 146-153, 160-1

---- _The Professor_, ix., x., 53-6, 78-9, 84-9, 121, 127-9, 138-9, 145, 151