The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 25

_I.--The Children Who Never Played_

Into the midst of the lawless yet not unkindly population of Haworth, in the West Riding, the Rev. Patrick Bronte brought his wife and six little children in February, 1820, seven heavily-laden carts lumbering slowly up the long stone street bearing the "new parson's" household goods.

A native of County Down, Mr. Bronte had entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1802, obtained his B.A. degree, and after serving as a curate in Ess.e.x, had been appointed curate at Hartshead, in Yorkshire.

There he was soon captivated by Maria Branwell, a little gentle creature, the third daughter of Mr. Thomas Branwell, merchant, of Penzance. In 1816 he received the living of Thornton, in Bradford Parish, and there, on April 21, Charlotte Bronte was born. She was the third daughter, Maria and Elizabeth being her elder sisters, and fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane and Anne.

"They kept themselves to themselves very close," in the account given by those who remember the family coming to Haworth. From the first, the walks of the children were directed rather towards the heathery moors sloping upwards behind the parsonage than towards the long descending village street. Hand in hand they used to make their way to the glorious moors, which in after days they loved so pa.s.sionately.

They were grave and silent beyond their years. "You would never have known there was a child in the house, they were such still, noiseless, good little creatures," said one of my informants. "Maria would often shut herself up" (Maria of seven!) "in the children's study with a newspaper or a periodical, and be able to tell anyone everything when she came out, debates in parliament, and I know not what all."

Mr. Bronte wished to make the children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress. His strong pa.s.sionate nature was in general compressed down with resolute stoicism. Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet spirit thought invariably on the bright side, would say: "Ought I not to be thankful that he never gave me an angry word?"

In September, 1821, Mrs. Bronte died, and the lives of those quiet children must have become quieter and lonelier still. Their father did not require companionship, and the daughters grew out of childhood into girlhood bereft in a singular manner of such society as would have been natural to their age, s.e.x and station. The children did not want society. To small infantine gaieties they were unaccustomed. They were all in all to each other. They had no children's books, but their eager minds "browsed undisturbed among the wholesome pasturage of English literature," as Charles Lamb expressed it.

Their father says of their childhood that "since they could read and write they used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the Duke of Wellington, Charlotte's hero, was sure to come off conqueror. When the argument got warm I had sometimes to come in as arbitrator." Long before Maria Bronte died, at the age of eleven, her father used to say he could converse with her on any topic with as much freedom and pleasure as with any grown-up person.

In 1824, the four elder girls were admitted as pupils to Cowan Bridge School for the daughters of clergymen, where they were half starved amid the most insanitary surroundings. Helen Burns in "Jane Eyre" is as exact a transcript of Maria Bronte as Charlotte's wonderful power of representing character could give. In 1825 both Maria and Elizabeth died of consumption, and Charlotte was suddenly called from school into the responsibilities of the eldest sister in a motherless family.

At the end of the year, Charlotte and Emily returned home, where Branwell was being taught by his father, and their aunt, Miss Branwell, who acted as housekeeper, taught them what she could. An immense amount of ma.n.u.script dating from this period is in existence--tales, dramas, poems, romances, written princ.i.p.ally by Charlotte, in a hand it is almost impossible to decipher without the aid of a magnifying gla.s.s.

They make in the whole twenty-two volumes, each volume containing from sixty to a hundred pages, and all written in about fifteen months. The quality strikes me as of singular merit for a girl of thirteen or fourteen.

_II.--Girlhood of Charlotte Bronte_

In 1831, Charlotte Bronte was a quiet, thoughtful girl, nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure--stunted was the word she applied to herself--fragile, with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes. They were large and well shaped, their colour a reddish brown, and if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence, but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw the like in any other human creature. The rest of her features were plain, large, and ill-set; but you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance overbalanced every physical defect. The crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all those whom she would herself have cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of her hands was placed in mine it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm.

In January, 1831, Charlotte was sent to school again, this time as a pupil of Miss Wooler, who lived at Roe Head, between Leeds and Huddersfield, the surroundings being those described in "Shirley." The kind motherly nature of Miss Wooler, and the small number of the girls, made the establishment more like a private family than a school. Here Charlotte formed friendships with Miss Wooler and girls attending the school--particularly Ellen Nussey and Mary Taylor--which lasted through life.

Writing of Charlotte at this time "Mary" says the other girls "thought her very ignorant, for she had never learned grammar at all, and very little geography, but she would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether. She said she had never played, and could not play. She used to draw much better and more quickly than we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters. She made poetry and drawing very interesting to me, and then I got the habit I have yet of referring mentally to her opinion all matters of that kind, resolving to describe such and such things to her, until I start at the recollection that I never shall."

This tribute to her influence was written eleven years after Mary had seen Charlotte, nearly all those years having been pa.s.sed by Mary at the Antipodes.

"Her idea of self improvement," continues Mary, "was to cultivate her tastes. She always said there was enough of useful knowledge forced on us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine our minds, and she picked up every sc.r.a.p of information concerning painting, sculpture and music, as if it were gold."

In spite of her unsociable habits, she was a favourite with her schoolfellows, and an invaluable story-teller, frightening them almost out of their lives as they lay in bed.

_III.--Her Life as a Governess_

After a year and a half's residence at Roe Head, beloved and respected by all, laughed at occasionally by a few, but always to her face, Charlotte returned home to educate her sisters, to practise household work under the supervision of her somewhat exacting aunt, and to write long letters to her girl friends, Mary and Ellen--Mary, the Rose Yorke, and Ellen, the Caroline Helstone of "Shirley." Three years later she returned to Roe Head as a teacher, in order that her brother Branwell might be placed at the Royal Academy and her sister Emily at Roe Head.

Emily Bronte, however, only remained three months at school, her place being taken there by her younger sister, Anne.

"My sister Emily loved the moors," wrote Charlotte, explaining the change. "Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many a dear delight; and not the least and best loved was liberty. Without it she perished.

Her nature proved here too strong for her fort.i.tude. In this struggle her health was quickly broken. I felt in my heart that she would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall."

Charlotte's own life at Miss Wooler's was a very happy one until her health failed, and she became dispirited, and a prey to religious despondency. During the summer holidays of 1836, all the members of the family were occupied with thoughts of literature. Charlotte wrote to Southey, and Branwell to Wordsworth, of their ambitions, and Southey replied that "literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties the less leisure she will have for it, even as an accomplishment and recreation."

To this Charlotte meekly replied: "I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print."

On the school being removed to Dewsbury Moor, Charlotte, whose health and spirits had been affected by the change, and Anne returned home. "I stayed at Dewsbury Moor," she said in a letter to Ellen Nussey, "as long as I was able; but at length I neither could nor dare stay any longer.

My life and spirits had utterly failed me; so home I went, and the change at once roused and soothed me."

At this time Charlotte received an offer of marriage from a clergyman having a resemblance to St. John Rivers in "Jane Eyre"--a brother of her friend Ellen; but she refused him as she explains:

"I had a kindly leaning towards him as an amiable and well-disposed man.

Yet I had not and could not have that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him; and if ever I marry it must be in that light of adoration that I will regard my husband."

Teaching now seemed to the three sisters to be the only way of earning an independent livelihood, though they were not naturally fond of children. The hieroglyphics of childhood were an unknown language to them, for they had never been much with those younger than themselves; and they were not as yet qualified to take charge of advanced pupils.

They knew but little French, and were not proficient in music. Still, Charlotte and Anne both took posts as governesses, and eventually formed a plan of starting a school on their own account, their housekeeping Aunt Branwell providing the necessary capital. To fit them for this work Charlotte and Emily entered, in February, 1842, the Heger Pensionnat, Brussels, and meantime Anne came home to Haworth from her governess life. The brother, Branwell, had now given up his idea of art, and was a clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway.

In Brussels, Emily was homesick as ever, the suffering and conflict being heightened, in the words of Charlotte, "by the strong recoil of her upright, heretic, and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. She was never happy till she carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the old parsonage house, and desolate Yorkshire hills." "We are completely isolated in the midst of numbers. Yet I think I am never unhappy; my present life is so delightful, so congenial to my own nature, compared with that of a governess," was Charlotte's further description.

The sisters were so successful with their study of French that Madame Heger proposed that both should stay another half year, Charlotte to teach English, and Emily music; but from Brussels the girls were brought hastily home by the illness and death of their aunt, who left to each of them independently a share of her savings--enough to enable them to make whatever alterations were needed to turn the parsonage into a school.

Emily now stayed at home, and Charlotte (January, 1843) returned to Brussels to teach English to Belgian pupils, under a constant sense of solitude and depression, while she learned German. A year later she returned to Haworth, on receiving news of the distressing conduct of her brother Branwell and the rapid failure of her father's sight. On leaving Brussels, she took with her a diploma certifying that she was perfectly capable of teaching the French language, and her pupils showed for her, at parting, an affection which she observed with grateful surprise.

_IV.--The Sisters' Book of Poems_

The attempt to secure pupils at Haworth failed. At this time the conduct of the now dissipated brother Branwell--conduct bordering on insanity--caused the family the most terrible anxiety; their father was nearly blind with cataract, and Charlotte herself lived under the dread of blindness. It was now that she paid a visit to her friends the Nusseys, at Hathersage, in Derbyshire, the scene of the later chapters of "Jane Eyre." On her return she found her brother dismissed from his employment, a slave to opium, and to drink whenever he could get it, and for some time before he died he had attacks of delirium tremens of the most frightful character.

In the course of this sad autumn of 1845 a new interest came into the lives of the sisters through the publication, at their own expense, of "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," as explained in the biographical notice of her sisters, which Charlotte prefaced to the edition of "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey," that was published in 1850.

"One day in the autumn of 1845 I accidentally lighted on a ma.n.u.script volume of verses in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verses. I looked it over, and then something more than surprise seized me--a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, not at all like the poetry a woman generally writes. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. I took hours to reconcile my sister to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.

Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily's had given me pleasure I might like to look at hers. I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own. We had very early cherished the dream of one day being authors. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and if possible get them printed."

The "Poems" obtained no sale until the authors became otherwise known.

During the summer of 1846 the three sisters made attempts to find a publisher for a volume that was to consist of three prose tales, "Wuthering Heights," by Emily, "Agnes Grey" by Anne, and "The Professor"

by Charlotte. Eventually the two former were accepted for a three-volume issue, though eighteen months pa.s.sed and much happened before the book was actually circulated. Meantime, "The Professor" was plodding its way round London through many rejections. Under these circ.u.mstances, her brother's brain mazed and his gifts and life lost, her father's sight hanging on a thread, her sisters in delicate health and dependent on her care, did the brave genius begin, with steady courage, the writing of "Jane Eyre." While refusing to publish "The Professor," Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. expressed their willingness to consider favourably a new work in three volumes which "Currer Bell" informed them he was writing; and by October 16, 1847, the tale--"Jane Eyre"--was accepted, printed, and published.

_V.--The Coming of Success_

The gentleman connected with the firm who first read the ma.n.u.script was so powerfully struck by the character of the tale that he reported his impressions in very strong terms to Mr. Smith, who appears to have been much amused by the admiration excited. "You seem to have been so enchanted that I do not know how to believe you," he laughingly said.

But when a second reader, in the person of a clear-headed Scotsman, not given to enthusiasm, had taken the ma.n.u.script home in the evening, and became so deeply interested in it as to sit up half the night to finish it, Mr. Smith's curiosity was sufficiently excited to prompt him to read it himself; and great as were the praises which had been bestowed upon it he found that they did not exceed the truth. The power and fascination of the tale itself made its merits known to the public without the kindly fingerposts of professional criticism, and early in December the rush for copies began.

When the demand for the work had a.s.sured success, her sisters urged Charlotte to tell their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his study one afternoon, carrying with her a copy of the book and two or three reviews, taking care to include a notice adverse to it, and the following conversation took place.

"Papa, I've been writing a book."

"Have you, my dear?"

"Yes; and I want you to read it."