THE KEY TO THE
BRONTË WORKS.
THE KEY TO THE
BRONTË WORKS
THE KEY TO CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S "WUTHERING HEIGHTS,"
"JANE EYRE," AND HER OTHER WORKS.
SHOWING THE METHOD OF THEIR CONSTRUCTION AND THEIR
RELATION TO THE FACTS AND PEOPLE OF HER LIFE.
BY
JOHN MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.
London and Felling-on-Tyne:
THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
1911.
_All Rights Reserved._
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. OUTLINE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S LIFE 13
II. ORIGIN OF THE CANDLE-BEARING BEDSIDE VISITANT AND
THE UNCOUTH SERVANT IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND
"JANE EYRE" 20
III. ORIGIN OF THE FOUNDLING HEATHCLIFFE AND HIS NAME
IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"--ORIGIN OF THE INSANE
LADY AND THE WHITE VEIL SCENE IN "JANE EYRE" 33
IV. A RAINY DAY IN CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILDHOOD:
THE OPENING INCIDENT IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
OF THE HEROINES OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND
"JANE EYRE" 37
V. CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S FRIEND, TABITHA AYKROYD, THE
BRONTËS' SERVANT, AS MRS. DEAN OF "WUTHERING
HEIGHTS," AND AS BESSIE AND HANNAH OF "JANE EYRE" 43
VI. CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE
PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE" 52
VII. THE ORIGINALS OF GIMMERTON, GIMMERDEN, GIMMERTON
KIRK AND CHAPEL, PENISTON CRAGS, THE FAIRY CAVE,
ETC., IN "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND OF THE FAIRY
CAVE AND THE FAIRY JANET IN "JANE EYRE" 57
VIII. THE RIVERS OR BRONTË FAMILY IN "JANE EYRE" 69
IX. ORIGIN OF THE YORKSHIRE ELEMENT IN CHARLOTTE
BRONTË'S HUNSDEN OF "THE PROFESSOR"; HEATHCLIFFE
OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"; ROCHESTER OF "JANE EYRE";
AND YORKE OF "SHIRLEY" 83
X. HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" AND ROCHESTER
OF "JANE EYRE" ONE AND THE SAME 90
XI. CATHERINE AND HEATHCLIFFE OF "WUTHERING HEIGHTS"
AS JANE AND ROCHESTER OF "JANE EYRE" 93
XII. EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE.
I. MDLLE. LAGRANGE AND HER MANUSCRIPT
"CATHERINE BELL, THE ORPHAN" 104
XIII. EUGÈNE SUE AND CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S BRUSSELS LIFE.
II. ACCUSATIONS AND PROTESTATIONS! 120
XIV. THE RECOIL, I. 130
XV. THE RECOIL, II. 143
XVI. THE BRONTË POEMS 156
APPENDIX.
MINOR IDENTIFICATIONS OF PERSONS AND PLACES IN THE
BRONTË WORKS 159
THE HÉGER PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN THE
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 162
INDEX 169
LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS TO THE FIRST EDITION 179
PREFACE.
_The Key to the Brontë Works_ is the absolutely necessary companion
volume to Charlotte Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_, _Jane Eyre_,
_Shirley_, _The Professor_, and _Villette_. Without it the reader cannot
know the real Currer Bell and her people, or see her works as they were
to herself. Great indeed and continuous has been the task of writing
this volume: a comprehension of my duty to law and literature, to
posterity and to Charlotte Brontë, set aside any other consideration. It
could be no compliment to my learned and distinguished subscribers to
assume importance would attach to _The Key to the Brontë Works_ were the
volume a mere skimming of extant Brontë biography, albeit that has its
province of interest. _The Key to the Brontë Works_, I repeat, is the
only book which shows us the life and works of Charlotte Brontë as
intimately known to herself. Herein is my task accomplished; herewith is
my reward. To quote my words from a private correspondence with Sir
Charles Holroyd, Kt., Director of the National Gallery, London:--
"After her return from Brussels in 1844, Charlotte Brontë
conceived the idea of perpetuating the drama of her life. Again
and again, true artist as she was, she cleared her presentations,
till finally the world had those great works which stand as a
signal testimony to the high value of the true artist, and as
testimony to the divine origin of real inspiration. And now
priest, statesman, writer--whatsoever a man may be, he will
discover in the works of Charlotte Brontë salutary instruction,
and at the same time will perceive with thrilling admiration the
greatness of Art when she is at one with Genius. As I pen these
lines to you, Sir Charles, I am reminded of the evanescence of the
halo of romance round so many historic characters and personages
when sober history speaks apart; but Charlotte Brontë we find to
be a greater luminary the closer we approach her."
The utmost possible interest attaches to my sensational evidence, now
first showing Charlotte Brontë to be the author and heroine of
_Wuthering Heights_, a book many have declared "the finest work of
genius written by a woman," and some look upon as "one of the greatest
novels in our or any other literature." In view of my evidence it will
be impossible hereafter to convince the world that Charlotte Brontë did
not write _Wuthering Heights_. _The Key to the Brontë Works_ in his
hands, every reader is an expert upon the subject. By resort to each
indexed reference to Charlotte Brontë's methods I have discovered, and
named Methods I. and II., sensational ratification of all I say hereon
will be found.
It will presently seem incredible the chief argument hitherto advanced
against my assertion that Charlotte Brontë wrote _Wuthering Heights_ was
that _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ are "totally dissimilar in
style, thought, etc.," for my evidence is proof absolute to the
opposite. A recent writer on the Brontës[1] says _Wuthering Heights_
contains nothing whatsoever biographically, or in any way, suggestive of
Emily Brontë and her personality, and admits upon the other hand that
the characteristic of Charlotte Brontë's writing is her full and
intimate self-revelation of the incidents of her own life. Nothing can
recall these words. They are a frank, or an ingenuous, statement of
irrefutable fact; and though the writer did not journey to the logical
conclusion, it is well he is associated with this fundamental admission.
The same significant truth is voiced still more recently by another
writer, who says: "_Wuthering Heights_ reveals nothing of Emily Brontë.
Not one of the characters thought or felt as did the quiet, retiring"
Emily[2].
Much detached yet valuable and interesting evidence I have omitted for
the sake of clearness, but it has aided me in regard to the final
discoveries I now present, and is ready further to substantiate my
conclusions. One of these detached pieces of evidence shows that the
younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw--the two lovers who at the close
of _Wuthering Heights_ become teacher and pupil--latterly were to
Charlotte Brontë herself and M. Héger. Apparently she did not wish to
end _Wuthering Heights_ without a picture of reconciled relations
between two characters who could present a phase of M. Héger and
herself. The teacher and pupil relations between Miss Brontë and M.
Héger were most dear and gladdening to her memory. We have a glimpse of
them in _Villette_, _Shirley_, and in _The Professor_, Chapter XIX.,
where Crimsworth is reading a book with Francis Evans Henri, whom he is
teaching to read and pronounce English. These two characters represent
M. Héger and Charlotte Brontë; and Miss Brontë taught M. Héger to read
and pronounce English out of her own favourite old books, "consecrated
to her by other associations," to quote her own words in _Wuthering
Heights_, Chapter XXXI., though often in _The Professor_ she alternates
the position of the characters by an interchange of the sexes, a method
of Miss Brontë I have discovered and termed her Method I. Let the reader
peruse carefully the scene in _The Professor_ in the light of my
reference to Eugène Sue and Charlotte Brontë's old copy in English of
_The Imitation of Christ_ at Brussels, and in the light of the "reading
and pronouncing" scenes in Chapters XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., of
_Wuthering Heights_;
also:--
Charlotte Brontë in a letter:-- _Wuthering Heights_,
Chapter XXXI.:--
"If you could see and hear "I heard him trying to read to
the efforts I make to teach himself, and pretty blunders he
[M. Héger] to pronounce ... and makes!... it was extremely funny
[his] unavailing attempts to ... still, he has no right to
imitate you would laugh to all appropriate what is mine, and
eternity."--Mrs. GASKELL'S make it ridiculous to me with
_Life of Charlotte Brontë_. his vile mistakes and
mispronunciations! Those books,
both prose and verse, are
consecrated to me by other
associations, and I hate to have
them debased and profaned in his
mouth."
Note how in _The Professor_ and _Wuthering Heights_ the male lover is
unable to devote himself to the reading lesson because of the
distraction of the heroine's interesting physiognomy. In this connection
we may glance at the following little parallel of the hen-killing
figure, with which, like the foregoing, I do not deal in the course of
_The Key to the Brontë Works_. Again we perceive Charlotte Brontë's
Method I.:--
_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._
Chapter XXX. Chapter XIV.
Hareton contented himself with Mr. Rochester had been looking
... looking at Catherine instead ... at the fire, and I had been
of the book. She continued looking at him, when, turning
reading. His attention became suddenly, he caught my gaze
... quite centred in the study fastened on his physiognomy.
of her ... curls ... and perhaps
not quite aware to what he did "You examine me, Miss Eyre,"
... he put out his hand and said he; "do you think me
stroked one curl as gently as if handsome?"
it were a bird. He might have
stuck a knife into her neck, she "No sir."
started with such a taking....
"And so under the pretence of
stroking and soothing me into
placidity, you stick a sly
penknife under my ear."
Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre were of course M. Héger and Miss Brontë. It
is indeed important and interesting to find at the old farmstead of
Wuthering Heights scenes reminiscent of the intimately pedagogic
relations that existed between Charlotte Brontë and M. Héger of the
school at Brussels.
Discovering _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ are practically as the
same book, I have disclosed their relationship in parallel columns--the
most satisfactory and conclusive evidence in the world. Herewith we see
both volumes agree in scenes and chapters virtually word for word, and
from beginning to end. Both works we now find are one in origin, each
containing not less than four identical characters portrayed by
Charlotte Brontë from her own life, she herself being the original of
the heroine in each book, and her friend M. Héger in the main the
original of the hero thereof. Charlotte Brontë's brother, Branwell
Brontë, in agreement with her estimate of him as a wreck of selfishness,
is the unhappy fool of both books; while her life-long companion,
Tabitha Aykroyd, who was to her as nurse, mother, and friend, is therein
the indispensable domestic servant and motherly good woman of the humble
class.
I will not occupy my preface with an enumeration of the many important
and interesting Brontë discoveries I have been enabled to make and
present herewith in _The Key to the Brontë Works_. I may briefly
indicate my chief sensational discoveries:--The discovery of the origin
of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_; the discovery that in _Jane
Eyre_ Charlotte Brontë immortalized not only herself and M. Héger, but
also her father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, her brother, four sisters, her
aunt and a cousin, and Tabitha Aykroyd, the Brontë servant or
housekeeper; the discovery first revealing the history of Charlotte
Brontë's life at Brussels and friendship with M. Héger, the original of
her chief heroes; and the discovery of the most sensational fact that
Charlotte Brontë and not Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and was
herself the original of the heroine and M. Héger that of the hero, as I
have mentioned.
My warm thanks are due to Mr. Harold Hodge, who commissioned me to write
my article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" for _The Saturday Review_;[3] and to
Mr. W. L. Courtney, M.A., LL.D., the editor of _The Fortnightly Review_,
who commissioned me to write my article "The Lifting of the Brontë Veil:
A New Study of the Brontë Family."[4] Mr. Courtney's words of
encouragement--those of a true gentleman and an eminent literary scholar
and author--have made bright to me the accomplishment of this work.
I thank Lady Ritchie--the gifted author-daughter of Thackeray the writer
of _Vanity Fair_ to whom Charlotte Brontë in her second edition
dedicated _Jane Eyre_--for her kind permission to use in _The Key to the
Brontë Works_ what her ladyship had written me privately in regard to
her sitting at dinner beside Charlotte Brontë on June 12th, 1850, with
Mr. Thackeray and Mr. George Smith the publisher, when Miss Brontë was
wearing a light green dress, an incident that has relation to the green
dress in the interesting Héger portrait of Charlotte Brontë drawn in
1850, now the property of the nation and in the National Portrait
Gallery, London.
I desire to express my gratitude to Miss Catherine Galbraith Welch, who
introduced an outline of my Brontë discoveries to the readers of _The
New York Times Saturday Review of Books_. I thank _The Spectator_, _The
Outlook_, and other organs for their open acknowledgment of the fact
that I have made a discovery at last throwing light upon Charlotte
Brontë's Brussels experiences and her relations with the Hégers at
Brussels. And I wish also to thank the anonymous and scholarly writer
who penned the long and careful article in _The Dundee Advertiser_ under
the heading "The Original of Jane Eyre," containing an encouraging
appreciation of the importance of my discovery I dealt with in my
article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" in _The Saturday Review_.
I would like to give a pressure of the hand to my subscribers for the
first edition of _The Key to the Brontë Works_. Your kind letters to me
and your active interest in _The Key to the Brontë Works_ will ever
dwell among my pleasant memories. One I grieve will never see on earth
these pages--the late Most Honourable Marquis of Ripon, K.G., who
numbered with my earliest subscribers.
The readers of _The Key to the Brontë Works_ will love Charlotte Brontë
more and know her better than ever they have loved or known her in the
past. They will see her books are rich with new-found treasures, and
will recognize her to be a world's writer--a character of signal
eminence, one of the most illustrious of women.
Truth will out, and facts have their appointed day of revelation; thus I
cannot help it that more than sixty years of writing on the Brontës is
placed out of date by my discoveries.
JOHN MALHAM-DEMBLEBY.
THE KEY TO THE BRONTË WORKS.
CHAPTER I.
OUTLINE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S LIFE.
St. Michael the Prince of Messengers--to him was dedicated the little
church on the hill at Haworth, in the Parish of Bradford, Yorkshire,
whose living gave sustenance to the family of the restless, ambitious
son of Erin, Patrick Brontë.[5] Is it for nothing that a spiritual
banner is raised by man and appeal made for the beneficent influence of
a conception of definite personal character? Within this sacred
circumscription came to be written the works of Charlotte Brontë, and
herefrom the words of a Messenger went out to the uttermost parts of the
world.
The mystery of impulse! The servant is not master, nor is the messenger
he that sendeth. Behind the lives of the great was ever an influence to
do: blind may be the early groping of Genius, stumbling her feet on the
rugged road of a darksome journey begun in the veiling mist of life's
dawn, but onward and ever onward is she impelled to the journey's end.
Ere Night blots out Genius her Message has accomplished. Glancing back
to the literary strivings of Charlotte Brontë's childhood, and upon
those quaint little efforts [Greek: peri tôn apistôn], which her young
brother and sisters sought to emulate,[6] we see her responsive to some
inward prompting that told her she must write.
Born on April 21st, 1816, at Thornton, near Bradford, during her
father's curacy of that parish, Charlotte Brontë was one of a family of
six, whose mother died in 1821. The story of her literary beginnings
shows them to have been of the kind known to many aspirants. There were
the rebuffs of editors and of at least one famous author; and, in
addition, was the divertisement of her life as teacher and governess.
Her correspondence is voluminous. It was ever written down to the
intended recipient. As to the somewhat commonplace Ellen Nussey, whose
friendship, begun at Roe Head, near Dewsbury, the school of a Miss
Margaret Wooler, lasted to the end: she invariably discussed the
domestic and social happenings of the acquaintances known by or of
interest to them. Thus her letters[7] are commonly circumstantial and
seldom soared beyond the capacity, or exceeded the limits of the
departmental interests, of those for whom they were written.
This was primarily the result of Charlotte Brontë's nervous perception
of character and recognition of the want of a truly psychical
reciprocity with her friends. She tells us that of all living beings
only "Rochester" understood her, and her letters to M. Héger, of her
Brussels school--the original of this character--were not preserved. In
the day of high fame, when she corresponded with literary folk, she
felt herself as on parade, rushed to make opinions, as say, on Miss
Austen, whom she criticized somewhat adversely. Obviously she hated to
be at the service of bookish letter-writers. Erratically she responded
to their promptings, trying not to be ruffled, but she could not reveal
her heart. From these letters, and the epistles of the class I have
previously mentioned, Mrs. Gaskell in the main wrote her famous
biography. The Charlotte Brontë known of the recipients of this
correspondence her biographer presented, backed with the necessary local
colour. She had enjoyed in the days of Miss Brontë's popularity a short
acquaintance with her; and when, at the death of Currer Bell, Mr. Brontë
requested her to write his daughter's "life," she was eminently fitted
to give the world Charlotte Brontë as known by her acquaintances.
But of the intimate Charlotte Brontë, and the origin of the Brontë
works, the method of their construction, and their relation to the facts
and people of her life, Mrs. Gaskell could tell us virtually nothing.
Neither could she, nor any succeeding biographer, throw light upon Miss
Brontë's Brussels life, or upon the subject of her friendship with M.
Héger, who is discovered by internal evidence to be the original of
Currer Bell's chief heroes. Charlotte Brontë's was an intensely reserved
nature. She built to herself a universe which she peopled in secret. Her
real life she lived out again in her books. Therein appeared the real
Charlotte Brontë, and see we her life and its people as known to
herself. Whether she thought the secrets of her works would be revealed
I cannot tell; but as the traveller who in far distant lands inscribes
on some lonely rock the relation of his experience, conscious that a
future explorer will read the tale, so does Genius, with the faith which
gave her being, leave her message in the hope of an early day of
revelation, and in the secure knowledge of the final penetration of
truth.
We now, sixty years after, find by aid of the many discoveries I have
made and present my readers in the pages of this, _The Key to the Brontë
Works_, that Charlotte Brontë, penning in her connective works the story
of her life, gave us the spectacle of a living drama wherein she was
herself a leading actor. Herein we see the imperfections and
shortcomings of human nature, and Charlotte Brontë herself is shown
standing in the slippery places. Before our eyes flits the procession of
the people who moved about her, and the air is filled with the
atmosphere through which her genius saw the world. In this new light of
revelation we perceive her great message is--the Martyrdom of Virtue. A
more poignant message I know not! And Charlotte Brontë was martyr in
this moving drama--nay, I believe there also was another. Spending two
years at a Brussels _pensionnat_ she gained the friendship of Monsieur
Héger, a devout Roman Catholic and a man of intellect who, himself once
a teacher at the establishment, as was M. Pelet in _The Professor_ at a
similar school, came to marry the mistress. Miss Brontë went twice to
Brussels, on the first occasion being accompanied by her sister Emily.
Finally, Charlotte Brontë left Brussels abruptly on account, it has been
said, of the harsh attitude of Madame Héger, who even forbade her
husband to correspond with Miss Brontë. Concerning this period and the
incidents associated therewith, I have been enabled to lift the veil. We
have thus, for the first time, external evidence that shows Charlotte
Brontë, at Brussels, endured the greatest ordeal through which it is the
lot of a woman to pass. We see how she and M. Héger emerged triumphantly
from dangerous temptation, and how they were aided, the one by her
Christian upbringing, the other by the influence of his Church.
It was in January 1844 when Charlotte Brontë returned finally from
Brussels; and she and her sisters printed a circular in connection with
a project of starting a private school at Haworth, but no progress was
made. Charlotte Brontë's life at this period will be better understood
by a reference to the chapters on "The Recoil" in this work--it was her
darkest time: when the human in her cried out--as it has, alas! in so
many at the bitter hour. She rebelled. Not violently; but by reproach.
Only her own pen can tell how cruelly she suffered mentally. She had
done no wrong and had resisted a great evil, but the recoil found her
weak: it was the martyrdom of virtue. She was suffering for the sake of
right; and that she cried aloud as in an agony showed her suffering was
intense. The storm left the world _Wuthering Heights_. The tone of
ribald caricature in dealing with the Pharisee Joseph; the impatient,
vindictive pilloring of her own nervous and physical infirmities as
"Catherine"; the ruthless baring of the flesh to show "Heathcliffe's"
heart was stone; the wilful plunging into an atmosphere of harsh levity,
crude animalism, and repulsive hypochondria, all contributed to a sombre
and powerful work of art grand in its perpetration, standing alone in
solemn majesty like the black rack that stretches low athwart a clear
sky--the rearward of the storm. But it bears the story of a sad Night,
and Charlotte Brontë's subsequent works were written in repentance: for
in Heathcliffe and Catherine of _Wuthering Heights_ she had portrayed M.
Héger and herself.
In this dark hour of Charlotte Brontë's life, Emily Brontë, to whom she
afterwards gave _Wuthering Heights_, was writing, on July 30th, 1845,[8]
that she, Emily, was "contented and undesponding," and was engaged upon
and intended to continue some puerile compositions called _The Gondal
Chronicles_, which she spoke of as "delighting" her and Anne. She and
Anne had been engaged upon this effort three and a half years, and it
was yet unfinished.
While making comparison between Emily's and Charlotte's standpoint at
this time--and Charlotte obtained for herself the names of Currer Bell
from Montagu's book which, as I show, contained the "plot," etc., of
_Wuthering Heights_, for her own use in the Brontë poem publishing
project of 1845-46--it is most important to note that but some months
after Emily's diary entry _Wuthering Heights_ was offered by Charlotte
to Messrs. Aylott and Jones, with _The Professor_ and _Agnes Grey_--on
April 6th, 1846. The literal evidence of _The Key to the Brontë Works_
does not require that we ask by what miracle the "contented" Emily
Brontë, who had collaborated three and a half years with Anne on _The
Gondal Chronicles_, and declared an intention at the end of July 1845 to
"stick firmly" to their composition, could come, in addition to
preparing her poems for the press, to begin and to finish _Wuthering
Heights_ by or before April 6th, 1846.[9]
After Charlotte Brontë's return from Brussels the degeneracy of her only
brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë, a young man ambitious, but not
successful, as an artist, made him an object of her disgust and
antipathy, and we find she portrayed him unflinchingly as Hindley
Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, and again as John Reed of _Jane Eyre_.
Emily, we have been told, liked her brother, though an attempt was made
somewhat recently to dissipate the tradition.[10] But Charlotte, after
the deaths of her elder sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, the eldest of the
family, obviously was piqued from childhood by the advantage Branwell's
sex gave him over her seniority, more especially as he seems to have
been brutal to her:--See "A Rainy Day in Charlotte Brontë's Childhood,"
in _The Key to the Brontë Works_.
It may be observed Charlotte Brontë went to three schools, and that each
had a remarkable influence upon her life and literature. The first was
the Clergy Daughters' School in the Kendal locality, to which her
sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily also went upon the death of the
ailing Mrs. Brontë at Haworth. The second was Miss Wooler's school
already mentioned, and the third the Brussels _pensionnat_. The fact
that _Jane Eyre_ virtually opens with the Clergy Daughters' School
incidents--incidents drawn from her child-memory regarding the temporary
mismanagement of an establishment which subsequently has proved a most
useful foundation--shows she began _Jane Eyre_ with the utmost possible
fidelity to truth in so far as regarded herself and her associations.
The story of how this famous work was sent in 1847 to a firm of
publishers who had just declined her novel _The Professor_ is well known
history, as is the relation of the subsequent success of the book and
the elevation of Charlotte Brontë to the highest recognition.
_Wuthering Heights_ had been published as Ellis Bell's work, a _nom de
guerre_ that also had appeared over Emily Brontë's poems. It was issued
under the condition that the next book by its author went to the same
publisher, a Mr. Newby, which, of course, made impossible thereafter
Charlotte Brontë's acknowledging her authorship of this work, as the
next book by the author of _Wuthering Heights_, her _Jane Eyre_, was
published by another house. But there are evidences in _Shirley_ that
despite her nervous apprehensions, and her letters show she was very
much afraid of this Mr. Newby, who afterwards asserted she wrote
_Wuthering Heights_, she therein carefully placed significations of her
authorship of _Wuthering Heights_.
_Villette_ was published in January 1853, and in the June of 1854 Currer
Bell married her father's curate, the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, whom she
previously had refused. She married him, it may be, as a final
immolation of herself on the altar of Right and Duty. Her married life
was but for some few months--it was so short we yet call her Charlotte
Brontë. Her father outlived her by six years. The last survivor of the
young Brontës, she died in March 1855, within a month of old Tabitha
Aykroyd, her best loved woman friend and companion apart from her own
kinsfolk. Charlotte Brontë, with other members of her family, rests in
the grey fabric which is the modern representative of that early
described as the church of St. Michael the Archangel de Haworth. Her
message is yet with us; the tablets of her life she has bequeathed to
posterity, and the key to open the way to their repository is now in our
hands. Her genius has shown the price of right-doing and the grim and
dangerous valley through which Virtue must go ere break of Day.