An author may bring himself to believe that he can bear blame with
equanimity, from whatever quarter it comes; but its force is derived
altogether from the character of this. To the public, one reviewer may
be the same impersonal being as another; but an author has frequently
a far deeper significance to attach to opinions. They are the verdicts
of those whom he respects and admires, or the mere words of those for
whose judgment he cares not a jot. It is this knowledge of the individual
worth of the reviewer’s opinion which makes the censures of some sink so
deep, and prey so heavily upon an author’s heart. And thus, in proportion
to her true, firm regard for Miss Martineau, did Miss Brontë suffer
under what she considered her misjudgment not merely of writing, but of
character.
She had long before asked Miss Martineau to tell her whether she
considered that any want of womanly delicacy or propriety was betrayed
in _Jane Eyre_. And on receiving Miss Martineau’s assurance that she
did not, Miss Brontë entreated her to declare it frankly if she thought
there was any failure of this description in any future work of “Currer
Bell’s.” The promise then given of faithful truth-speaking, Miss
Martineau fulfilled when _Villette_ appeared. Miss Brontë writhed under
what she felt to be injustice.
This seems a fitting place to state how utterly unconscious she was of
what was, by some, esteemed coarse in her writings. One day, during
that visit at the Briery when I first met her, the conversation turned
upon the subject of women’s writing fiction; and someone remarked on
the fact that, in certain instances, authoresses had much outstepped
the line which men felt to be proper in works of this kind. Miss Brontë
said she wondered how far this was a natural consequence of allowing the
imagination to work too constantly; Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth
and I expressed our belief that such violations of propriety were
altogether unconscious on the part of those to whom reference had been
made. I remember her grave, earnest way of saying, “I trust God will take
from me whatever power of invention or expression I may have, before He
lets me become blind to the sense of what is fitting or unfitting to be
said!”
Again, she was invariably shocked and distressed when she heard of any
disapproval of _Jane Eyre_ on the ground above-mentioned. Someone said
to her in London, “You know, you and I, Miss Brontë, have both written
naughty books!” She dwelt much on this; and, as if it weighed on her
mind, took an opportunity to ask Mrs. Smith, as she would have asked a
mother—if she had not been motherless from earliest childhood—whether,
indeed, there was anything so wrong in _Jane Eyre_.
I do not deny for myself the existence of coarseness here and there
in her works, otherwise so entirely noble. I only ask those who read
them to consider her life—which has been openly laid bare before
them—and to say how it could be otherwise. She saw few men; and among
these few were one or two with whom she had been acquainted since early
girlhood—who had shown her much friendliness and kindness—through whose
family she had received many pleasures—for whose intellect she had a
great respect—but who talked before her, if not to her, with as little
reticence as Rochester talked to Jane Eyre. Take this in connection with
her poor brother’s sad life, and the outspoken people among whom she
lived—remember her strong feeling of the duty of representing life as it
really is, not as it ought to be—and then do her justice for all that she
was, and all that she would have been (had God spared her), rather than
censure her because her circumstances forced her to touch pitch, as it
were, and by it her hand was for a moment defiled. It was but skin-deep.
Every change in her life was purifying her; it hardly could raise her.
Again I cry, “If she had but lived!”