The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 26

"I am afraid it will try my eyes too much."

"But it is not in ma.n.u.script; it is printed."

"My dear, you've never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss; for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name."

"But, papa, I don't think it will be a loss. No more will you if you will just let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it."

So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father, and then, giving him the copy of "Jane Eyre" that she intended for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea he said: "Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?"

Soon the whole reading world of England was in a ferment to discover the unknown author. Even the publishers were ignorant whether "Currer Bell"

was a real or an a.s.sumed name till a flood of public opinion had lifted the book from obscurity and had laid it high on the everlasting hills of fame.

The authorship was kept a close secret in the Bronte family, and not even the friend who was all but a sister--Ellen Nussey--knew more about it than the rest of the world. It was indeed through an attempt at sharp practice by another firm that Messrs. Smith & Elder became aware of the ident.i.ty of the author with Miss Bronte. In the June of 1848, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," a second novel by Anne Bronte--"Acton Bell"--was submitted for publication to the firm which had previously published "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey," and this firm announced the new book in America as by the author of "Jane Eyre," although Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. had entered into an agreement with an American house for the publication of "Currer Bell's" next tale. On hearing of this, the sisters, Charlotte and Anne, set off instantly for London to prove personally that they were two and not one; and women, not men.

On reaching Mr. Smith's office, Charlotte put his own letter into his hand as an introduction.

"Where did you get this?" said he, as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures and diminutive stature, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain.

An explanation ensued, and the publisher at once began to form plans for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the visitors during their three days' stay in London.

In September, 1848, her brother Branwell died. After the Sunday succeeding Branwell's death, Emily Bronte never went out of doors, and in less than three months she, too, was dead. To the last she adhered tenaciously to her habits of independence. She would suffer no one to a.s.sist her. On the day of her death she arose, dressed herself, and tried to take up her sewing.

Anne Bronte, too, drooped and sickened from this time in a similar consumption, and on May 28, 1849, died peacefully at Scarborough, pathetically appealing to Charlotte with her ebbing breath: "Take courage, Charlotte; take courage."

_VI.--Charlotte Bronte's Closing Years_

"Shirley" had been begun soon after the publication of "Jane Eyre."

Shirley herself is Charlotte's representation of Emily as she would have been if placed in health and prosperity. It was published five months after Anne's death. The reviews, Charlotte admitted, were "superb."

Visits to London made Miss Bronte acquainted with many of the literary celebrities of the day, including Thackeray and Miss Martineau. In Yorkshire her success caused great excitement. She tells herself how "Martha came in yesterday puffing and blowing, and much excited.

'Please, ma'am, you've been and written two books--the grandest books that ever was seen. They are going to have a meeting at the Mechanics'

Inst.i.tute to settle about ordering them.' When they got the volumes at the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, all the members wanted them. They cast lots, and whoever got a volume was allowed to keep it two days, and was to be fined a shilling per diem for longer detention."

In the spring of 1850, Charlotte Bronte paid another visit to London, and later to Scotland, where she found Edinburgh "compared to London like a vivid page of history compared to a dull treatise on political economy; as a lyric, brief, bright, clean, and vital as a flash of lightning, compared to a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic."

She was in London again in 1851, and was dismayed by the attempts to lionise her. "Villette," written in a constant fight against ill-health, was published in 1853, and was received with one burst of acclamation.

This brought to a close the publication of Charlotte's life-time.

The personal interest of the two last years of Charlotte Bronte's life centres on her relations with her father's curate, the Rev. A.B.

Nicholls. In 1853, he asked her hand in marriage. He was the fourth man who had ventured on the same proposal. Her father disapproved, and Mr.

Nicholls resigned his curacy. Next year, however, her father relented.

Mr. Nicholls again took up the curacy, and the marriage was celebrated on June 29, 1854. Henceforward the doors of home are closed upon her married life.

On March 31, 1855, she died before she had attained to motherhood, her last recorded words to her husband being: "We have been so happy." Her life appeals to that large and solemn public who know how to admire generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence all n.o.ble virtue.

EDWARD GIBBON

Memoirs

Gibbon's autobiography was published in 1796, two years after his death, by his friend, Lord Sheffield, under the t.i.tle "Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., with Memoirs of His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself." "After completing his history," says Mr. Birrell, "Gibbon had but one thing left him to do in order to discharge his duty to the universe. He had written a magnificent history of the Roman Empire; it remained to write the history of the historian. It is a most studied performance, and may be boldly p.r.o.nounced perfect. It is our best, and best known, autobiography." That the writing was studied is shown by the fact that six different sketches were left in Gibbon's handwriting, and from all these the published memoirs were selected and put together. The memoir was briefly completed by Lord Sheffield. Bagehot described the book as "the most imposing of domestic narratives." Truly, it was impossible for Gibbon to doff his dignity, but through the cadenced formality of his style the reader can detect a happy candour, careful sincerity, complacent temper, and a loyalty to friendship that recommend the man as truly as the writer.

(See also HISTORY.)

_I.--Birth and Education_

I was born at Putney, in the county of Surrey, April 27, in the year 1737, the first child of the marriage of Edward Gibbon, Esq., and Jane Porten.

From my birth I have enjoyed the right of primogeniture; but I was succeeded by five brothers and one sister, all of whom were s.n.a.t.c.hed away in their infancy. So feeble was my const.i.tution, so precarious my life, that in the baptism of each of my brothers my father's prudence successively repeated my Christian name of Edward, that, in the case of the departure of the eldest son, this patronymic appellation might be still perpetuated in the family.

To preserve and to rear so frail a being the most tender a.s.siduity was scarcely sufficient, and my mother's attention was somewhat diverted by an exclusive pa.s.sion for her husband and by the dissipation of the world; but the maternal office was supplied by my aunt, Mrs. Catherine Porten, at whose name I feel a tear of grat.i.tude trickling down my cheek.

After this instruction at home, I was delivered at the age of seven into the hands of Mr. John Kirkby, who exercised for about eighteen months the office of my domestic tutor, enlarged my knowledge of arithmetic, and left me a clear impression of the English and Latin rudiments. In my ninth year, in a lucid interval of comparative health, I was sent to a school of about seventy boys at Kingston-upon-Thames, and there, by the common methods of discipline, at the expense of many tears and some blood, purchased a knowledge of the Latin syntax. After a nominal residence at Kingston of nearly two years, I was finally recalled by my mother's death. My poor father was inconsolable, and he renounced the tumult of London, and buried himself in the rustic solitude of Buriton; but as far back as I can remember, the house of my maternal grandfather, near Putney Bridge, appears in the light of my proper and native home, and that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, was the true mother of my mind, as well as of my health.

At this time my father was too easily content with such teachers as the different places of my residence could supply, and it might now be apprehended that I should continue for life an illiterate cripple; but as I approached my sixteenth year, nature displayed in my favour her mysterious energies: my const.i.tution was fortified and fixed, and my disorders most wonderfully vanished.

Without preparation or delay, my father carried me to Oxford, and I was matriculated in the university as a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College before I had accomplished the fifteenth year of my age. As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading, free desultory reading, had been the employment and comfort of my solitary hours, and I was allowed, without control or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an unripe taste. My indiscriminate appet.i.te subsided by degrees into the historic line; and I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed.

The happiness of boyish years I have never known, and that time I have never regretted. To the university of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College, and they proved the fourteen months the most idle and profitless of my whole life. The sum of my improvement there is confined to three or four Latin plays. It might at least be expected that an ecclesiastical school should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference. The blind activity of idleness urged me to advance without armour into the dangerous mazes of controversy, and at the age of sixteen I bewildered myself in the errors of the church of Rome.

Translations of two famous works of Bossuet achieved my conversion, and surely I fell by a n.o.ble hand.

No sooner had I settled my new religion than I resolved to profess myself a Catholic, and on June 8, 1753, I solemnly abjured the errors of heresy. An elaborate controversial epistle, addressed to my father, announced and justified the step which I had taken. My father was neither a bigot nor a philosopher, but his affection deplored the loss of an only son, and his good sense was astonished at my departure from the religion of my country. In the first sally of pa.s.sion, he divulged a secret which prudence might have suppressed, and the gates of Magdalen College were for ever shut against my return.

_II.--A Happy Exile_

It was necessary for my father to form a new plan of education, and effect the cure of my spiritual malady. After much debate it was determined to fix me for some years at Lausanne, in Switzerland, under the roof and tuition of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister. Suddenly cast on a foreign land, I found myself deprived of the use of speech and hearing, incapable of asking or answering a question in the common intercourse of life. Such was my first introduction to Lausanne, a place where I spent nearly five years with pleasure and profit.

This seclusion from English society was attended with the most solid benefits. Before I was recalled home, French, in which I spontaneously thought, was more familiar than English to my ear, my tongue, and my pen. My awkward timidity was polished and emboldened; M. Pavilliard gently led me from a blind and undistinguishing love of reading into the path of instruction. He was not unmindful that his first task was to reclaim me from the errors of popery, and I am willing to allow him a handsome share of the honour of my conversion, though it was princ.i.p.ally effected by my private reflections.

It was now that I regretted the early years which had been wasted in sickness or idleness or mere idle reading, and I determined to supply this defect. My various reading I now digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large commonplace book--a practice, however, which I do not strenuously recommend. I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time, and I must agree with Dr. Johnson that what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.

I hesitate from the apprehension of ridicule when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice, and, though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her father lived content with a small salary and laborious duty in the obscure lot of minister of Cra.s.sy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. In her short visit to Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, the erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. At Cra.s.sy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity, but on my return to England I discovered that my father would not hear of this alliance. After a painful struggle I yielded. I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life.

_III.--To England and Authorship_