The marriage took place on June 29th, 1854. A neighbouring clergyman

read the service; Charlotte's "dear Nell" was the solitary bridesmaid;

her old schoolmistress, whose friendship had ever been dear to her,

Miss Wooler, gave her away; and visitors to Haworth who are shown the

marriage register will see that these two faithful and trusted friends

were the only witnesses. Immediately after the marriage the bride and

bridegroom started for Ireland, to visit some of the relatives of Mr.

Nicholls. "I trust I feel thankful to God for having enabled me to

make a right choice; and I pray to be enabled to repay as I ought the

affectionate devotion of a truthful, honourable, unboastful man," are

words which appear in the first letter written from Ireland. A month

later the bride writes as follows to her friend:

Dublin, July 28th, 1854.

I really cannot rest any longer without writing you a line, which

I have literally not had time to do during the last fortnight. We

have been travelling about, with only just such cessation as

enabled me to answer a few of the many notes of congratulation

forwarded, and which I dared not suffer to accumulate till my

return, when I know I shall be busy enough. We have been to

Killarney, Glen Gariffe, Tarbert, Tralee, Cork, and are now once

more in Dublin again on our way home, where we hope to arrive next

week. I shall make no effort to describe the scenery through which

we have passed. Some parts have exceeded all I ever imagined. Of

course, much pleasure has sprung from all this, and more, perhaps,

from the kind and ceaseless protection which has ever surrounded

me, and made travelling a different matter to me from what it has

heretofore been. Dear Nell, it is written that there shall be no

unmixed happiness in this world. Papa has not been well, and I

have been longing, _longing intensely_ sometimes, to be at

home. Indeed, I could enjoy and rest no more, and so home we are

going.

It was a new life to which she was returning. Wedded to one who had

proved by years of faithfulness and patience how strong and real was

his love for her, it seemed as though peace and sunshine, the

brightness of affection and the pleasures of home, were at length

about to settle upon her and around her. The bare sitting-room in the

parsonage, which for six years of loneliness and anguish had been

peopled only by the heart-sick woman and the memories of those who had

left her, once more resounded with the voices of the living. The

husband's strong and upright nature furnished something for the wife

to lean against; the painful sense of isolation which had so long

oppressed her vanished utterly, and in its place came that "sweet

sense of depending" which is the most blessed fruit of a trustful

love. A great calm seemed to be breathed over the spirit of her life

after the fitful fever which had raged so long; and her friends saw

new shoots of tenderness, new blossoms of gentleness and affection,

peeping forth in nooks of her character which had hitherto been

barren. Of her letters during these happy months of peace and

expectation I cannot quote much; they are too closely intertwined with

the life of those who survive to permit of this being done; but all of

them breathe the same spirit. They show that the courage, the

patience, the cheerfulness with which the rude buffetings of fate had

been borne in that stormy middle-passage of her history, had brought

their own reward; and that joy had come at last, not perhaps in the

shape she had imagined in her early youth, but as a substantial

reality, and no longer a mocking illusion.

August 9th, 1854.

---- will probably end by accepting ----; and judging from what you

say, it seems to me that it would be rational to do so. If, indeed,

some one else whom she preferred _wished_ to have her, and had duly

and sincerely come forward, matters would be different. But this it

appears is not the case; and to cherish any _unguarded_ and

unsustained preference is neither right nor wise. Since I came home

I have not had one unemployed moment. My life is changed indeed; to

be wanted continually, to be constantly called for and occupied,

seems so strange; yet it is a marvellously good thing. As yet I

don't quite understand how some wives grow so selfish. As far as my

experience of matrimony goes, I think it tends to draw you out and

away from yourself.... Dear Nell, during the last six weeks the

colour of my thoughts is a good deal changed. I know more of the

realities of life than I once did. I think many false ideas are

propagated, perhaps unintentionally. I think those married women

who indiscriminately urge their acquaintance to marry, much to

blame. For my part I can only say with deeper sincerity and fuller

significance, what I always said in theory: Wait God's will.

Indeed, indeed, Nell, it is a solemn and strange and perilous thing

for a woman to become a wife. Man's lot is far, far different....

Have I told you how much better Mr. Nicholls is? He looks quite

strong and hale. To see this improvement in him has been a great

source of happiness to me; and, to speak truth, a source of wonder

too.

Haworth, September 7th, 1854.

I send a French paper to-day. You would almost think I had given

them up, it is so long since one was despatched. The fact is they

had accumulated to quite a pile during my absence. I wished to

look them over before sending them off, and as yet I have scarcely

found time. That same _time_ is an article of which I once had a

large stock always on hand; where it is all gone to now it would

be difficult to say, but my moments are very fully occupied. Take

warning, Ellen. The married woman can call but a very small

portion of each day her own. Not that I complain of this sort of

monopoly as yet, and I hope I never shall incline to regard it as

a misfortune, but it certainly exists. We were both disappointed

that you could not come on the day I mentioned. I have grudged

this splendid weather very much. The moors are in their glory; I

never saw them fuller of purple bloom; I wanted you to see them at

their best. They are fast turning now, and in another week, I

fear, will be faded and sere. As soon as ever you can leave home,

be sure to write and let me know.... Papa continues greatly

better. My husband flourishes; he begins indeed to express some

slight alarm at the growing improvement in his condition. I think

I am decent--better certainly than I was two months ago; but

people don't compliment me as they do Arthur--excuse the name; it

has grown natural to use it now.

Haworth, September 16th, 1854.

MY DEAR MISS ----,--You kindly tell me not to write while Ellen is

with me; I am expecting her this week; and as I think it would be

wrong long to defer answering a letter like yours, I will reduce

to practice the maxim: "There is no time like the present," and do

it at once. It grieves me that you should have had any anxiety

about my health; the cough left me before I quitted Ireland, and

since my return home I have scarcely had an ailment, except

occasional headaches. My dear father, too, continues much better.

Dr. B---- was here on Sunday, preaching a sermon for the Jews, and

he gratified me much by saying that he thought Papa not at all

altered since he saw him last--nearly a year ago. I am afraid this

opinion is rather flattering; but still it gave me pleasure, for I

had feared that he looked undeniably thinner and older. You ask

what visitors we have had. A good many amongst the clergy, &c., in

the neighbourhood, but none of note from a distance. Haworth is,

as you say, a very quiet place; it is also difficult of access,

and unless under the stimulus of necessity, or that of strong

curiosity, or finally, that of true and tried friendship, few take

courage to penetrate to so remote a nook. Besides, now that I am

married, I do not expect to be an object of much general interest.

Ladies who have won some prominence (call it either _notoriety_ or

celebrity) in their single life, often fall quite into the

background when they change their names. But if true domestic

happiness replace fame, the change is indeed for the better. Yes,

I am thankful to say that my husband is in improved health and

spirits. It makes me content and grateful to hear him, from time

to time, avow his happiness in the brief but plain phrase of

sincerity. My own life is more occupied than it used to be; I have

not so much time for thinking: I am obliged to be more practical,

for my dear Arthur is a very practical as well as a very punctual,

methodical man. Every morning he is in the national school by nine

o'clock; he gives the children religious instruction till

half-past ten. Almost every afternoon he pays visits amongst the

poor parishioners. Of course he often finds a little work for his

wife to do, and I hope she is not sorry to help him. I believe it

is not bad for me that his bent should be so wholly towards

matters of real life and active usefulness--so little inclined to

the literary and contemplative. As to his continued affection and

kind attentions, it does not become me to say much of them; but as

yet they neither change nor diminish. I wish, my dear Miss ----,

_you_ had some kind, faithful companion to enliven your solitude

at R----, some friend to whom to communicate your pleasure in the

scenery, the fine weather, the pleasant walks. You never complain,

never murmur, never seem otherwise than thankful; but I know you

must miss a privilege none could more keenly appreciate than

yourself.

There are other letters like the foregoing, all speaking of the

constant occupation of time, which once hung heavily, all giving

evidence that peace and love had made their home in her heart, all

free from that strain of sadness which was so common in other years.

One only of these letters, that written on the morrow of her last

Christmas Day, need be quoted, however.

Haworth, December 26th.

I return Mrs. ----'s letter: it is as you say, very genuine,

truthful, affectionate, _maternal_, without a taint of sham or

exaggeration. She will love her child without spoiling it, I

think. She does not make an uproar about her happiness either. The

longer I live the more I suspect exaggerations. I fancy it is

sometimes a sort of fashion for each to vie with the other in

protestations about their wondrous felicity--and sometimes they

_fib_! I am truly glad to hear you are all better at B----. In the

course of three or four weeks now I expect to get leave to come

to you. I certainly long to see you again. One circumstance

reconciles me to this delay--the weather. I do not know whether it

has been as bad with you as with us; but here for three weeks we

have had little else than a succession of hurricanes.... You

inquire after Mrs. Gaskell. She has not been here, and I think I

should not like her to come now till summer. She is very busy now

with her story of "North and South." I must make this note very

short. Arthur joins me in sincere good wishes for a happy

Christmas and many of them to you and yours. He is well, thank

God, and so am I; and he _is_ "my dear boy" certainly--dearer

now than he was six months ago. In three days we shall actually

have been married that length of time.

There was not much time for literary labours during these happy months

of married life. The wife, new to her duties, was engaged in mastering

them with all the patience, self-suppression, and industry which had

characterised her throughout her life. Her husband was now her first

thought; and he took the time which had formerly been devoted to

reading, study, thought, and writing. But occasionally the pressure

she was forced to put upon herself was very severe. Mr. Nicholls had

never been attracted towards her by her literary fame; with literary

effort, indeed, he had no sympathy, and upon the whole he would rather

that his wife should lay aside her pen entirely than that she should

gain any fresh triumphs in the world of letters. So she submitted, and

with cheerful courage repressed that "gift" which had been her solace

in sorrows deep and many. Yet once "the spell" was too strong to be

resisted, and she hastily wrote a few pages of a new story called

"Emma," in which once more she proposed to deal with her favourite

theme--the history of a friendless girl. One would fain have seen how

she would have treated her subject, now that "the colour of her

thoughts" had been changed, and that a happy marriage had introduced

her to a new phase of that life which she had studied so closely and

so constantly. But it was not to be. On January 19, when she had

returned to Haworth, after a visit to Sir J. K. Shuttleworth's, she

wrote to her friend as follows. This letter was the last written in

ink to her schoolfellow:

Haworth, January 19th, 1855.

Since our return from Gawthorpe we have had Mr. B----, one of

Arthur's cousins, staying with us. It was a great pleasure. I wish

you could have seen him and made his acquaintance: a true

gentleman by nature and cultivation is not, after all, an everyday

thing.... I very much wish to come to B----, and I hoped to be

able to write with certainty and fix Wednesday, the 31st January,

as the day; but the fact is I am not sure whether I shall be well

enough to leave home. At present I should be a most tedious

visitor. My health has really been very good ever since my return

from Ireland, till about ten days ago. Indigestion and continual

faint sickness have been my portion ever since. I never before

felt as I have done lately. I am rather mortified to lose my good

looks and grow thin as I am doing, just when I thought of going to

B----. Poor J----! I still hope he will get better, but A----

writes grievous though not always clear or consistent accounts.

Dear Ellen, I want to see you, and I hope I shall see you well.

Those around her were not alarmed at first. They hoped that before

long all would be well with her again; they could not believe that the

joys of which she had just begun to taste were about to be snatched

away. But her weakness grew apace; the sickness knew no abatement; and

a deadly fear began to creep into the hearts of husband and father.

She was soon so weak that she was compelled to remain in bed, and from

that "dreary bed" she wrote two or three faint pencil notes which

still exist--the last pathetic chapters in that life-long

correspondence from which we have gathered so many extracts. In one of

them, which Mrs. Gaskell has published, she says: "I want to give you

an assurance which I know will comfort you--and that is that I find in

my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly

comfort that ever woman had. His patience never fails, and it is tried

by sad days and broken nights." In another, the last, she says: "I

cannot talk--even to my dear, patient, constant Arthur I can say but

few words at once." One dreary March morning, when frost still bound

the earth and no spring sun had come to gladden the hearts of those

who watched for summer, her friend received another letter, written,

not in the neat, minute hand of Charlotte Brontë, but in her father's

tremulous characters:

Haworth, near Keighley,

March 30th, 1855.

MY DEAR MADAM,--We are all in great trouble, and Mr. Nicholls so

much so that he is not sufficiently strong and composed as to be

able to write. I therefore devote a few lines to tell you that my

dear daughter is very ill, and apparently on the verge of the

grave. If she could speak she would no doubt dictate to us whilst

answering your kind letter. But we are left to ourselves to give

what answer we can. The doctors have no hope of her case, and

fondly as we a long time cherished hope, that hope is now gone; and

we have only to look forward to the solemn event with prayer to God

that He will give us grace and strength sufficient unto our day.

Ever truly and respectfully yours,

P. Brontë.

The following day, March 31st, 1855, the blinds were drawn once again

at Haworth Parsonage; the last and greatest of the children of the

house had passed away; and the brilliant name of Charlotte Brontë had

become a name and nothing more! "We are left to ourselves," said Mr.

Brontë in the letter I have just quoted--and so it was. Not the glory

only, but the light, had fled from the parsonage where the childless

father and the widowed husband sat together beside their dead. Of all

the drear and desolate spots upon that wild Yorkshire moorland there

was none now so dreary and so desolate as the house which had once

been the home of Charlotte Brontë.

XII.

POSTHUMOUS HONOURS.

There is a deeper truth in the maxim which bids us judge no man happy

till his death than most of us are apt to perceive. For sometimes the

happiness of a life is crowned by death itself; and that which to the

superficial gaze seems but the dreary and tragic close of the play, is

really the welcome release from the burden which had become too heavy

to be borne longer. But where life and breath fail suddenly in the

moment of fullest hope, apparently in the moment also of greatest

bliss, the strain upon our faith is almost too severe, and blinded and

bewildered, we see nothing and feel nothing but the awful stroke of

fate which has laid the loved one low, and the great gap which remains

at the table and the hearth. It was with such a feeling as this that

the outer world heard of that Easter-day tragedy which had been

enacted to the bitter end among the Yorkshire hills. Those who knew

the little household at Haworth had been watching, as has already been

told, for that fulness of joy which seemed close at hand. They had

seen the lonely authoress developing into the trustful happy wife, and

they looked forward to no distant day when children should be gathered

at her knee, and a new generation, born amid happier circumstances,

freed from the strain and stress which had been laid upon her, should

perpetuate a great name, and perhaps something of a great genius.

The announcement that all these hopes had been brought to nothing fell

upon the world as a blow not easily to be borne. When it was made

known that the author of "Jane Eyre" was dead, there rose up even from

those who had been her bitter critics during her lifetime, a cry of

pain and regret which would have astonished nobody more than herself

had she been able to hear it. The genuine unaffected modesty which had

enabled her to preserve the simplicity of her character amid all the

temptations which thronged round her at the height of her fame, had

prevented her from ever feeling herself to be a person of consequence

in the world. What she did in the way of writing she did because she

could not escape the commanding authority of her own genius; but the

idea that by doing this she had made herself conspicuously great never

once occurred to her. There is not a letter extant from her which

shows that she thought anything of the fame or the fortune she had

acquired. On the contrary everything that remains of her inner life

proves that to the very last she esteemed herself as humbly as ever

she did during the days of her "governessing" in Yorkshire or at

Brussels. She knew of course that she attracted attention wherever she

went; but her own unfeigned belief seems to have been that this

attention was due solely to curiosity, and to curiosity of a not very

pleasant or flattering kind. Brought up as she had been among those

who regarded any literary pursuit, and above all the writing of a

book, as something beyond the proper limits of the rights and duties

of her sex, she had never quite escaped from the notion that in

putting pen to paper she was in some vague way offending against the

proprieties of society. It has been shown by an extract from one of

her letters, how keenly and indignantly she repudiated the notion that

she had ever written anything of which she needed to be ashamed. Her

pure heart vindicated her absolutely upon that point. But, from first

to last, she seemed during her literary career to feel that in writing

novels she had sinned against the conventional canons, and that she

was in consequence looked upon not as a great woman who had taken a

lofty place in the republic of letters, but as a social curiosity who

had done something which made her for the time-being notorious. How

ready she was to forget her success as a writer is shown by a thousand

passages in her correspondence, many of these passages being too

tender or sacred for quotation. It is impossible to read her letters

without seeing that, with the exception of a solitary friend, the

companions of her daily life in Yorkshire did not feel at all drawn

towards her by her literary fame. With her accustomed humility she

accepted herself at their valuation, and whilst the nations afar off

were praising her, she herself was perfectly ready to take a humble

place in the circle of her friends at home. The tastes of her husband

had unquestionably something to do in maintaining this simple and

sincere modesty up to the end of her life. He was resolute in putting

aside all thought of her literary achievements; his whole anxiety--an

anxiety arising almost entirely from his desire for her happiness--was

that she should cease entirely to be the author, and should become the

busy, useful, contented wife of the village clergyman. It would be

wrong to hide the fact that she was compelled to place a severe strain

upon herself in order to comply with her husband's wishes; and once,

as we have seen, her strength of self-repression gave way, and she

indulged in the forbidden luxury of work with the pen. But it is not

surprising that, surrounded by those who, loving her very dearly, yet

withheld from her all recognition of her position as one of the great

writers of the day, she should have accepted their estimate of her

place with characteristic humility, and believed herself to be of

little or no account outside the walls of her own home.

In this belief she lived and died. Among the letters before me, but

from which I must forbear to quote, are not a few written during that

last sad illness when the end began to loom before her vision. In

these, whilst there are many anxious inquiries after the friends of

early days, and many remarks upon their varying fortunes, many

allusions, too, to her husband and father, and to parish work at

Haworth, there is not a line which speaks of her own feelings as an

author, or of the work which she had accomplished during the brief

closing years of her life. The novelist has passed entirely out of

sight, and only the wife, the friend, the expectant mother, remains. I

know nothing which more touchingly shows one how small a thing is

great fame, how little even the most marked and marvellous successes

can affect the realities of life, than the last chapters of Charlotte

Brontë's correspondence do. Her death, all unknown to the great world

outside; her quiet funeral, treated only as the funeral of the

clergyman's daughter, the curate's wife; the modest announcement of

her end sent to the local papers--all these are in keeping with her

own low estimate of herself.

But death, the great touchstone of humanity, revealed her true

position to the world, and to her surviving relatives and friends.

Copies of the newspapers of that sad March week in 1855 lie before me,

carefully treasured up by loving hands. They speak with an eloquence

which is not always that of mere words, of a nation's mourning for a

great soul gone prematurely to its account. Of all these tributes of

loving admiration, there are two which must be singled out for special

mention. One is Miss Martineau's generous though not wholly

satisfactory notice of "Currer Bell" in _The Daily News_, and the

other the far more sympathetic article by "Shirley," which appeared in

_Fraser's Magazine_ a few months later.

Her father, her husband, her life-long friend, were wonderfully

touched and moved when they found how closely the simple, modest

woman, who had been so long a sweet and familiar presence to them, had

wound herself round the great heart of the reading public. But they

were slow to grasp all the truth. When it was proposed that some

record of this noble life should be preserved, and when Mrs. Gaskell

was named as the fittest among all Charlotte's literary acquaintances

to undertake the office, there was strong and keen opposition on the

part of those who had been nearest and dearest to her. With a natural

feeling, to which no word of blame can be attached, but which again

throws light upon the character of her surroundings in life, they

objected to any revelation to the world of the real character and

career of the lost member of their household. Happily, their scruples

were overcome, and the world was permitted to read the story of the

Brontës as told by one who was herself a woman of genius and of the

highest moral worth. The reader of this monograph will not, it is to

be hoped, imagine that the writer has presumed to set himself up as a

rival to Mrs. Gaskell. He can no more pretend to equal her in the

treatment of his subject than in the freshness of the interest

attaching to it. And if he has found himself obliged to differ from

her on some points not wholly unimportant, it must be borne in mind

that the writer of to-day is free from not a few of the difficulties

and restraints which weighed upon the writer of twenty years ago. Mrs.

Gaskell had, indeed, to labour under serious disadvantages in her

task. Not only was she unable to obtain full and ready access to all

the materials which she needed to employ, but she was also compelled

to introduce much irrelevant and even hurtful matter into a delightful

and beautiful story. When, after gathering up the bare outline of the

life she proposed to write, she complained to Mr. Brontë that there

were not incidents enough in the history of his daughter to make an

interesting narrative of the ordinary length, his reply was a

characteristic one: "If there are not facts enough in Charlotte's life

to make a book, madam, you must invent some." There is no need to say

that Mrs. Gaskell declined to follow this advice; but none the less

was she hampered all through her work by the necessity of introducing

topics which had but little to do with her main theme; and we see the

result in the fact that the plain unadorned tale of Charlotte Brontë

and her sisters has been interwoven with dismal episodes with which

properly it had no concern.

The publication of Mrs. Gaskell's biography came, however, as a

revelation upon the world. Readers everywhere had learned to admire

the writings of "Currer Bell," and to mourn over the premature

extinction of her genius, but few of them had imagined that the life

and personal character of the author of "Jane Eyre" had been what it

was.

The following letter from Charles Kingsley to Mrs. Gaskell

sufficiently indicates the revulsion of feeling wrought in many minds

by the publication of the "Memoir:"

St. Leonards, May 14, 1857.

Let me renew our long-interrupted acquaintance by complimenting

you on poor Miss Brontë's "Life." You have had a delicate and a

great work to do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the

book will do good. It will shame literary people into some

stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical home life, is

consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame, too,

the prudery of a not over cleanly though carefully white-washed

age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now)

quite compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the

book has made me ashamed of myself. "Jane Eyre" I hardly looked

into, very seldom reading a work of fiction--yours, indeed, and

Thackeray's, are the only ones I care to open. "Shirley" disgusted

me at the opening, and I gave up the writer and her books with a

notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged

her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my

misconceptions into print, or recorded my misjudgments of one who

is a whole heaven above me.

Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a

valiant woman made perfect by sufferings. I shall now read

carefully and lovingly every word she has written, especially

those poems, which ought not to have fallen dead as they did, and

which seem to be (from a review in the current _Fraser_) of

remarkable, strength and purity.[1]

[1] "Charles Kingsley: his Letters and Memories of his

Life," vol. ii. p. 24.

The effect of the portrait was heightened by the admirable skill with

which the background was drawn; and the story of the life gained a

popularity which hardly any other recent English biography has

attained. Yet, from the first, people were found here and there who,

whilst acknowledging the skill, the sympathy, and the entire sincerity

displayed by Mrs. Gaskell, yet whispered that the Charlotte Brontë of

the story was not in all particulars the Charlotte Brontë they had

known.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF HAWORTH CHURCH.]

One great change resulted immediately from the publication of Mrs.

Gaskell's work. Haworth and its parsonage became the shrine to which

hundreds of literary pilgrims from all parts of the globe began to

find their way. To see the house in which the three sisters had spent

their lives and done their work, to stand at the altar at which

Charlotte was married, and beneath which her ashes now rest, and to

hear her aged father preach one of his pithy, sensible, but dogmatic

sermons, was what all literary lion-hunters aspired to do. In

Yorkshire, indeed, the stolid people of the West Riding were not

greatly moved by this enthusiasm. Just as Charlotte herself had seemed

an ordinary and rather obscure person to her Yorkshire friends, so

Haworth was still regarded as being a very dull and dreary village by

those who lived near it. But the empire of genius knows no

geographical boundaries, and if at her own doors Charlotte Brontë's

sway was unrecognised, from far-distant quarters of the world there

came the free and full acknowledgment of her power. No other land,

however, furnished so many eager and enthusiastic visitors to the

Brontë shrine as the United States, and the number of Americans who

found their way to Haworth during the ten years immediately following

the death of the author of "Jane Eyre" would, if properly recorded,

astonish the world. The bleak and lonely house by the side of the

moors, with its dismal little garden stretching down to the

churchyard, where the village dead of many a generation rest, and its

dreary out-look upon the old tower rising from its bank of nettles,

the squalid houses of the hamlet, and the bare moorlands beyond,

received almost as many visitors from the other side of the Atlantic

during those years as Abbotsford or Stratford-upon-Avon. Mr. Brontë

and Mr. Nicholls, though they were anxious to avoid the pertinacious

intrusion of these curious but enthusiastic guests, could not entirely

escape from meeting them. It followed that many an American lady and

gentleman wandered through the rooms where the three sisters had dwelt

together in love and unity, and where Charlotte had laboured alone

after the light of her life had fled from her, and many an American

magazine and newspaper contained the record of the impressions which

these visits left upon the minds of those who made them.

In only one case does it seem necessary to recall those impressions.

The late Mr. Raymond, for many years editor of _The New York Times_,

visited Haworth, and wrote an account of his visit, some passages of

which may well be reproduced here. He tells us how on his railway

journey to Keighley, at that time the nearest railway station to

Haworth, he "astonished an intelligent, sociable, and very agreeable

English lady, his sole companion in the railway carriage, by telling

her the errand which had brought him to Yorkshire. She lived in the

neighbourhood, had read the 'Jane Eyre' novels, and 'supposed the

girls were clever;' but 'she would not go ten steps to see where they

lived, nor could she understand how a stranger from America should

feel any interest in their affairs.'" Arrived at Haworth, and having

satisfied himself as to the appearance of the parsonage and the

character of the surrounding neighbourhood, Mr. Raymond went to the

Black Bull Inn to dine and sleep. "As I took my candle to go to my

chamber, I stepped for a moment into the kitchen, where the landlord

and landlady were having a comfortable chat over pipes and ale, with a

companionable rustic of the place, who proved to be a nephew of the

old servant Tabby, who lived so long, and at last died in the service

of the Brontë family. I joined the circle, and sat there till long

after midnight. Branwell was clearly the hero of the village worship.

A little red-headed fellow, the landlord said, quick, bright,

abounding in stories, in jokes, and in pleasant talk of every kind; he

was a general favourite in town, and the special wonder of the Black

Bull circles. Small as he was, it was impossible to frighten him. They

had seen him volunteer during a mill-riot to go in and thrash a dozen

fellows, any one of whom could have put him in his pocket and carried

him off at a minute's notice. Indeed a characteristic of the whole

family seems to have been an entire insensibility to danger and to

fear. Emily and Charlotte, these people told me, were one day walking

through the street, when their great dog, Keeper, engaged in a fight

with another dog of equal size. Whilst everybody else stood aloof and

shouted, these girls went in, caught Keeper by the neck, and by dint

of tugging, and beating him over the head, succeeded in dragging him

away." I extract this passage because of the confirmation which it

gives, on the authority of one who made his inquiries very soon after

the death of Charlotte Brontë, of the account of some of the family

characteristics which appear in these pages; nor will the story of Mr.

Raymond's interview with Mr. Brontë, told as it is with American

directness, be without its interest and its value.

The next morning I prepared to call at the parsonage. I was told

that Mr. Brontë and Mr. Nicholls declined to receive strangers,

having a great aversion to visits of curiosity, and being

exceedingly retiring and reserved in their habits. I sent in my

card, however, and was shown into the little library at the right

of the entrance, where I was asked to await Mr. Nicholls's

appearance. The room was small, very plainly furnished, with small

bookcases round the walls, the one between the windows containing

copies of the Brontë novels. Mr. Nicholls soon came in and made me

welcome. To my apologies for my intrusion he assured me that while

they were under the necessity of declining many visits, both he

and his father were always happy to see their friends, and that

the words "New York" upon my card were quite sufficient to insure

me a welcome. Mr. Brontë, he said, was not up when I called, but

had desired him to detain me until he could dress and come down,

as he did soon after. I had an exceedingly pleasant conversation

of half an hour with them both.... Mr. Brontë's personal

appearance is striking and peculiar. He is tall, thin, and rather

muscular, has a quick energetic manner, a reflective and by no

means unpleasant countenance, and a resolute promptness of

movement which indicated marked decision and firmness of

character. The extraordinary stories told by Mrs. Gaskell of his

inflammable temper, of his burning silk dresses belonging to his

wife which he did not approve of her wearing, of his sawing chairs

and tables, and firing off pistols in the back-yard by way of

relieving his superfluous anger, find no warrant certainly in his

present appearance, and are generally considered exaggerations. I

remarked to him that I had been agreeably disappointed in the face

of the country and the general aspect of the town, that they were

less sombre and repulsive than Mrs. Gaskell's descriptions led me

to expect. Mr. Nicholls and Mr. Brontë smiled at each other, and

the latter remarked: "Well, I think Mrs. Gaskell tried to make us

all appear as bad as she could." Mr. Brontë wears a very wide

white neckcloth, and usually sinks his chin so that his mouth is

barely visible over it. This gives him rather a singular

expression, which is rendered still more so by spectacles with

large round glasses enclosed in broad metallic rims. Though over

eighty years old and somewhat infirm, he preaches once every

Sunday in his church.... As I rose to take my leave Mr. Nicholls

asked me to step into the parlour and look at Charlotte's

portrait. It is the one from which the engraving in the "Life" is

made; but the latter does no justice to the picture, which Mr.

Nicholls said was a perfect likeness of the original. I remarked

that the engraving gives to the face, and especially to the eyes,

a weird, sinister, and unpleasant expression which did not appear

in the portrait. He said he had observed it, and that nothing

could be more unjust, for Charlotte's eyes were as soft and

affectionate in their expression as could possibly be conceived.

Slight as these scraps from the pen of an American "interviewer" may

seem, they have their value as contemporary records of scenes and

incidents the memory of which is fast fading away. Yet even to-day old

men and women are to be found in Haworth who can regale the curious

stranger with many a reminiscence, more or less original, of the

family which has given so great a glory to the place.

Mr. Brontë lived six years after the death of Charlotte. In spite of

his great age he preached regularly in the church till within a few

months of his death; and when at last he took to his bed, he retained

his active interest in the affairs of the world. The newspapers which

Charlotte mentions in one of her juvenile lucubrations as being

regularly "taken in" at the patronage--_The Leeds Mercury_ and

_The Intelligencer_--were still brought to him, and read aloud.

Every scrap of political information which he could gather up he

cherished as a precious morsel; and any visitor who could tell him how

the currents of public life were moving in the great West Riding towns

around him, was certain to be welcome. But the chief enjoyment of his

later years was connected with the public respect shown for his

daughter's memory. The tributes to her virtues and her genius which

were poured from the press after the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's

work were valued by him to the latest moment of his life; and in the

end he at last understood something of the character and the inner

life of the child who had dwelt so long a stranger under her father's

roof.

One point I must notice ere I quit the subject of Charlotte Brontë's

father. Some of those who knew him in his later years, including one

who is above all others entitled to an opinion on the subject, have

objected to the portrait of him presented in these pages, as being

over-coloured. So far as his early life and manhood are concerned, I

cannot admit the force of the objection; for what has been told of Mr.

Brontë in these pages has been gathered from the best of all

sources--from the letters of his children and the recollections of

those who saw much of him during that period. But it is perfectly true

that in old age, after the marriage, and still more after the death of

Charlotte, he was wonderfully softened in character. The fierce

outburst of opposition to the engagement between his daughter and Mr.

Nicholls was almost the last trace of that vehement passion which

consumed him during his earlier years; and those visitors who, like

Mr. Raymond, first became acquainted with him in the closing days of

his life, found it difficult to believe that the stories told of his

propensities in youth and middle-age could possibly be true. Time did

its work at last, even on his adamantine character, softening the

asperities, and wearing away the corners of a disposition, the angular

eccentricities of which had long been so noticeable. Nor ought mention

of the closing scenes of Mr. Brontë's life to be made without some

reference to the part which Mr. Nicholls played at Haworth during

those last sad years. The faithful husband remained under the

parsonage roof in the character of a faithful son. The two men, bound

together by so tender and sacred a tie, were not lightly to be

separated, now that the living and visible link had been taken away.

To some it may seem strange that Charlotte Brontë should have given

her heart to one who was little disposed to sympathise with the

overmastering passion inspired by her genius. But if in her husband

she had found one who was not likely to have helped her in her

literary work, she had also found in him a friend whose steadfastness

even to the death was nobly proved. During all these sad and lonely

years, whilst the father of the Brontës waited for the summons which

should call him once more into their company, Charlotte's husband

lived with him, the patient companion of his hours of pain and

weariness, the faithful guardian of that living legacy which had been

bequeathed to him by the woman whom he loved. And by this

self-sacrificing life he did greater honour to the memory of Charlotte

Brontë than by the most tender and vivid appreciation of her

intellectual greatness.

There is a strange sad harmony between the closing chapter of the

Brontë story and the earlier ones. The brightness had fled for ever

from the parson's house; the gaiety which it had once witnessed was

gone; even its fame as the home of one who was a living force in

English literature had departed; but there still remained one to bear

witness in his own person to the nobleness of that entire devotion to

duty of the necessity of which Charlotte was so fully convinced. The

friendship by which Mr. Nicholls soothed the last days of Mr. Brontë

is a touching episode in the Haworth story, and it is one which cannot

be allowed to pass unnoticed.

When Mr. Brontë died there was a general wish, not only among those

who were impressed by the claims of all connected with his family upon

Haworth, but by the parishioners themselves, that his son-in-law

should succeed him, and that the relationship of the Brontës to the

place where their lives had been spent and their work accomplished,

should thus not be absolutely severed. But the bestowal of church

patronage is not always influenced by considerations of this kind. The

incumbency of Haworth was given to a stranger; Mr. Nicholls returned

to Ireland; and new faces and a new life filled the parsonage-house in

which "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" were written.

[Illustration: THE ORGAN LOFT, OVER THE BRONTË TABLET AND PEW.]

XIII.

THE BRONTË NOVELS.

The Brontë novels continued to sell largely for some time after

Charlotte's death. The publication of Mrs. Gaskell's "Life" added not

a little to the sale, and both at home and abroad the fame of the

three sisters was greatly increased. But in recent years the

disposition has been almost to ignore these books; and though fresh

editions have recently been issued they have had no circulation worthy

of being compared with that which they maintained between 1850 and

1860. Yet though there has not been the same interest in these

remarkable performances as that which formerly prevailed, they

continue from time to time to attract the attention of literary

critics both in this and other countries, the works of "Currer Bell"

naturally holding the foremost place in the critiques upon the

writings of the sisters.

"Wuthering Heights," the solitary prose work of Emily Brontë, is now

practically unread. Even those who admire the genius of the family,

those who have the highest opinion of the qualities displayed in "Jane

Eyre" or "Villette," turn away with something like a shudder from

"that dreadful book," as one who knew the Brontës intimately always

calls it. But I venture to invite the attention of my readers to this

story, as being in its way as marvellous a _tour de force_ as "Jane

Eyre" itself. It is true that as a novel it is repulsive and almost

ghastly. As one reads chapter after chapter of the horrible chronicles

of Heathcliff's crimes, the only literary work that can be recalled

for comparison with it is the gory tragedy of "Titus Andronicus." From

the first page to the last there is hardly a redeeming passage in the

book. The atmosphere is lurid and storm-laden throughout, only lighted

up occasionally by the blaze of passion and madness. The hero himself

is the most unmitigated villain in fiction; and there is hardly a

personage in the story who is not in some shape or another the victim

of mental or moral deformities. Nobody can pretend that such a story

as this ever ought to have been written; nobody can read it without

feeling that its author must herself have had a morbid if not a

diseased mind. Much, however, may be said in defence of Emily Brontë's

conduct in writing "Wuthering Heights." She was in her twenty-eighth

year when it was written, and the reader has seen something of the

circumstances of her life, and the motives which led her to take up

her pen. The life had been, so far as the outer world could judge,

singularly barren and unproductive. Its one eventful episode was the

short visit to Brussels. But Brussels had made no such impression upon

Emily as it made upon Charlotte. She went back to Haworth quite

unchanged; her love for the moors stronger than ever; her self-reserve

only strengthened by the assaults to which it had been exposed during

her residence among strangers; her whole nature still crying out for

the solitary life of home, and the sustenance which she drew from the

congenial society of the animals she loved and the servants she

understood. When, partly in the forlorn hope of making money by the

use of her pen, but still more to give some relief to her pent-up

feelings, she began to write "Wuthering Heights," she knew nothing of

the world. "I am bound to avow," says Charlotte, "that she had

scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasants amongst whom she

lived than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her

convent gates." Love, except the love for nature and for her own

nearest relatives, was a passion absolutely unknown to her--as any one

who cares to study the pictures of it in "Wuthering Heights" may

easily perceive. Of harsh and brutal, or deliberate crime, she had no

personal knowledge. She had before her, it is true, a sad instance of

the results of vicious self-indulgence, and from that she drew

materials for some portions of her story. But so far as the great

movements of human nature were concerned--of those movements which are

not to be mastered by book learning, but which must come as the tardy

fruits of personal experience--she was in absolute ignorance. Little

as Charlotte herself knew at this time of the world, and of men and

women, she was an accomplished mistress of the secrets of life, in

comparison with Emily.

When a woman has lived such a life as that of "Ellis Bell," her first

literary effort must be regarded as the attempt of an innocent and

ignorant child. It may be full of faults; all the conditions which

should govern a work of art may have been neglected; the book itself,

so far as story, tone, and execution are concerned, may be an entire

mistake; but it will nevertheless give us far more insight into the

real character of the author than any more elaborate and successful

work, constructed after experience has taught her what to do and what

to avoid in order to secure the ear of the public.

"Wuthering Heights," then, is the work of one who, in everything but

years, was a mere child, and its great and glaring faults are to be

forgiven as one forgives the mistakes of childhood. But how vast was

the intellectual greatness displayed in this juvenile work! The author

seizes the reader at the first moment at which they meet, holds him

thrilled, entranced, terrified perhaps, in a grasp which never

relaxes, and leaves him at last, after a perusal of the story, shaken

and exhausted as by some great effort of the mind. Surely nowhere in

modern English fiction can more striking proof be found of the

possession of "the creative gift" in an extraordinary degree than is

to be obtained in "Wuthering Heights." From what unfathomed recesses

of her intellect did this shy, nervous, untrained girl produce such

characters as those which hold the foremost place in her story? Mrs.

Dean, the faithful domestic, we can understand; for her model was at

Emily's elbow in the kitchen at Haworth. Joseph, the quaint High

Calvinist, whose fidelity to his creed is unredeemed by a single touch

of fellow-feeling with the human creatures around him, was drawn from

life; and vigorous and powerful though his portrait is, one can

understand it also. But Heathcliff, and the two Catherines, and

Hareton Earnshaw--none of these ever came within the ken of Emily

Brontë. No persons approaching them in originality or force of

character were to be found in her circle of friends. Here and there

some psychologist, learned in the secrets of morbid human nature, may

have conceived the existence of such persons--evolved them from an

inner consciousness which had been enlightened by years of studious

labour. But no such slow and painful process guided the pen of Emily

Brontë in painting these weird and wonderful portraits. They come

forth with all the vigour and freshness, the living reality and

impressiveness, which can belong only to the spontaneous creations of

genius. They are no copies, indeed, but living originals, owing their

lives to her own travail and suffering.

Regarded in this light they must, I think, be counted among the

greatest curiosities of literature. Their very repulsiveness adds to

their force. I have said that Heathcliff is the greatest villain in

fiction. The reader of the story is disposed to echo the agonised cry

of his wife when she asks: "Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad?

And if not, is he a devil?" It is not pleasant to see such a character

obtruded upon us in a novel; but I repeat, it is far more difficult to

paint a consummate villain of the Heathcliff type than to draw any of

the more ordinary types of humanity. The concentration of power

required in performing the task is enormous. At every moment the

writer is tempted to turn aside and relieve the darkness by some touch

of light; and the risk which the artist must encounter if he gives way

to this temptation is that of destroying the whole effect of the

picture. Light and shade there must be, or the portrait becomes a mere

daub of blackness; and the man whom the author has desired to create

stands forth as a monster, unrecognisable as a creature belonging to

the same race as ourselves. But unless these lighter shades are

introduced with a tact and a self-command which belong rather to

genius than to art, there must, as I have said, be complete failure.

Now, Emily Brontë has not failed in her portrait of Heathcliff. He

stands, indeed, absolutely alone in that great human portrait-gallery

which forms one of the chambers in the noble edifice of English

literature. We can compare him to nobody else among the creatures of

fiction. We cannot even trace his literary pedigree. He is a distinct

being, not less original than he is hateful. But this circumstance

does not alter the fact that we accept him at once as a real being,

not a merely grotesque monster. He stands as much alone as

Frankenstein's creature did; but we recognise within him that subtle

combination of elements which gives him kinship with the human race.

Here, then, Emily Brontë has succeeded; and girl as she was when she

wrote, she has succeeded where some of the most practised writers have

failed entirely. Compare "Wuthering Heights," for example, with the

fantastic horrors of Lord Lytton's "Strange Story," and you feel at

once how much more powerful and masterly is the touch of the woman.

Lord Lytton's villain, though he has been drawn with so much care and

skill, is often absurd and at last entirely wearisome. Emily Brontë's

is consistent, terrible, fascinating, from beginning to end. Then,

again, the writer never tries to frighten her reader with a bogey. She

never hints at the possibility of supernatural agencies being at work

behind the scene. Even when she is showing us that Heathcliff is for

ever haunted by the dead Catherine, she makes it clear by the words

she puts into his own mouth that his belief on the subject is nothing

more than the delusion of a disordered brain, worried by a guilty

conscience. "I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by," says

Heathcliff, describing how he dug down into Catherine's grave on the

night after she had been buried; "but as certainly as you perceive the

approach to some substantial body in the dark, so certainly I felt

that Cathy was there: not under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense

of relief flowed from my heart through every limb. I relinquished my

labour of agony, and turned consoled at once--unspeakably consoled.

Her presence was with me; it remained while I refilled the grave and

led me home. You may laugh if you will; but I was sure I should see

her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to

her. Having reached the Heights I rushed eagerly to the door. It was

fastened; and I remember that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my

entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then

hurrying upstairs to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently--I

felt her by me--I could _almost_ see her, and yet I _could not_! I

ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning--from

the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not

one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me. And,

since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of

that intolerable torture.... When I sat in the house with Hareton, it

seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors

I should meet her coming in. When I went from home I hastened to

return. She _must_ be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And

when I slept in her chamber--I was beaten out of that. I couldn't lie

there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the

window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even

resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child;

and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a

hundred times a night--to be always disappointed!" Here is a picture

of a man who is really haunted. No supernatural agency is invoked; no

strain is put upon the reader's credulity. We are asked to believe in

the suspension of no law of nature. In one word, we can all understand

how a wicked man, whose brain has, as it were, been made drunk with

the fumes of his own wickedness, can be persecuted throughout his

whole life by terrors of this kind; and just because we are able to

conceive and understand it, this haunting of Heathcliff by the ghost

of his dead mistress is infinitely more terrible than if it had been

accompanied either by the paraphernalia of rococo horrors which Mrs.

Radcliffe habitually invoked, or by those refined and subtle

supernatural phenomena which Lord Lytton employs in his famous ghost

story.

This strict honesty which refused to allow the writer of the weirdest

story in the English language to avail herself of the easiest of all

the modes of stimulating a reader's terrors, is shown all through the

novel. The workmanship is good from beginning to end, though the art

is crude and clumsy. She never allows a date to escape her memory, nor

are there any of those broken threads which usually abound in the

works of inexperienced writers. All is neatly, clearly, carefully

finished off. Every date fits into its place, and so does every

incident. The reader is never allowed to wander into a blind alley.

Though at the outset he finds himself in a bewildering maze, far too

complicated in construction to comply with the canons of literary art,

he has only to go straight on, and in the end he will find everything

made plain. Emily permits no fact however minute to drop from her

grasp. Irrelevant though it may seem at the moment when the reader

meets with it, a place has been prepared for it in the edifice which

the patient hands are rearing, and in the end it will be fitted into

that place. Thus there is no scamped work in the story; nor any

sacrifice of details in order to obtain those broad effects in which

the tale abounds.

Let the reader turn to "Wuthering Heights," and he will find many a

simple innocent revelation of the character of the author peeping out

from its pages in unexpected places. We know how the story was

written, and how day by day it was submitted to the revision of

Charlotte and Anne. We may be sure under these circumstances that

Emily did not allow too much of her true inner nature to appear in

what she wrote. Even from her sisters she habitually concealed some of

the strongest and deepest emotions of her heart. But such passages as

the following, when read in the light of her history, as we know it

now, are of strange and abiding interest:

He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was

lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle

of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the

bloom, and the larks singing high up over head, and the blue sky

and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most

perfect idea of heaven's happiness. Mine was rocking in a rustling

green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds

flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles and

blackbirds and linnets and cuckoos, pouring out music on every

side, and the moors seen at a distance broken into cool dusky

dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves

to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world

awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of

peace. I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I

said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would

be drunk. I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could

not breathe in mine.

For "he," read "Anne," and accept Emily as speaking for herself, and

we have in this passage a vivid description of the opposing tastes of

the two sisters.

The abhorrence which Charlotte felt for the High Calvinism, which was

the favourite creed around her, was felt even more strongly by Emily.

Her poems throw not a little light upon this feature of her character;

but we also gain some from her solitary novel. Joseph, the old

man-servant, was a study from life, and he represented one of a class

whom the author thoroughly disliked, but for whom at the same time she

entertained a certain respect. Again and again she breaks forth with

all the force of sarcasm she can command against "the wearisomest,

self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the

promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours." Yet there

is no character in the story over whom she lingers more lovingly than

Joseph, and it is only in painting his portrait that she allows

herself to be betrayed into the display of any of that humour which,

according to her sisters, always lurked very near the surface of her

character, ever ready to show itself when no stranger was at hand. Few

who have read "Wuthering Heights" can have forgotten Joseph's quaint

remark when the boy Heathcliff has disappeared, and the others are

speculating on his fate.

Nay, nay, he's noan at Gimmerton. I's never wonder but he's at t'

bottom of a bog-boile. This visitation worn't for nowt, and I wod

hev ye to look out, miss. Yah muh be t' next. Thank Hivin for all!

All works togither for gooid to them as is chozzen, and piked out

fro' th' rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture ses.

There is one passage in the story which furnishes so strange a

foreshadowing of Emily's own death, that it is difficult to believe

that she did not bear it in her mind during those last hours when she

faced the dread enemy with such unwavering resolution. She is writing

of the death of Mrs. Earnshaw.

Poor soul! till within a week of her death that gay heart never

failed her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay furiously, in

affirming her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him

that his medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and

he needn't put him to further expense by attending her, he

retorted:

"I know you need not. She's well; she does not want any more

attendance from you! She never was in a consumption. It was a

fever, and it is gone: her pulse is as slow as mine now, and her

cheek as cool!"

He told his wife the same story, and she seemed to believe him.

But one night while leaning on his shoulder, in the act of saying

she thought she should be able to get up to-morrow, a fit of

coughing took her--a very slight one--he raised her in his arms;

she put her two hands about his neck, her face changed, and she

was dead.

Strange and inscrutable, indeed, are the mysteries of the human heart!

Let the reader turn from the passage I have quoted to that letter in

which Charlotte laments that "Emily is too intractable," and let him

read how she refused to believe that she was ill until death caught

her as suddenly as it did the wife of Earnshaw. The blindness to the

approach of danger, which she describes so clearly in her story, was

but a few months afterwards displayed even more fully by herself. In

this last quotation, which I venture to make from a book now seldom

opened, we see the author speaking evidently out of the fulness of her

heart on a subject on which in conversation she was specially

reserved.

I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom

otherwise than happy when watching in the chamber of death, should

no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a

repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an

assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity

they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and

love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. I noticed on that

occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr.

Linton's, when he so regretted Catherine's blessed release! To be

sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient

existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at

last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not then

in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity,

which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant.

Even these fragments, culled from the pages of "Wuthering Heights,"

are sufficient to show how little the story has in common with the

ordinary novel. Differing widely in every respect from "Jane Eyre,"

dealing with characters and circumstances which belong to the romance

rather than the reality of life, it is yet stamped by the same

originality, the same daring, the same thoughtfulness, and the same

intense individuality. It is a marvel to all who know anything of the

secrets of literary work, that Haworth Parsonage should have produced

"Jane Eyre;" but how is the marvel increased, when we know that at the

same time it produced, from the brain of another inmate, the wonderful

story of "Wuthering Heights." Brimful of faults as it may be, that

book is alone sufficient to prove that a rare and splendid genius was

lost to the world when Emily Brontë died.

All interested in the story of the Brontës must be curious to know

whence Emily derived the materials for this romance. I have said that

Heathcliff and the other prominent characters of the story are

creations of her own; and indeed the book in its originality is almost

unique. But this does not affect the fact that somewhere, and at some

period during her life, the seed which brought forth this strange

fruit must have been sown. It has been suggested by some--strangely

ignorant, surely, of the conditions of West Riding life during the

present century--that Emily obtained the skeleton of her plot from her

own observation of people around her. But the life round Haworth was

really tame and commonplace. Josephs and Mrs. Deans could be found in

and about the village in abundance; but there were no people round

whose lives hung anything of the mystery which attaches to Heathcliff.

It was, so far as I can learn, during her early girlhood that Emily's

mind was filled with those grim traditions which she afterwards

employed in writing "Wuthering Heights." Mr. Brontë, in addition to

his other gifts, had the faculty of storytelling highly developed, and

his delight was to use this faculty in order to awaken superstitious

terrors in the hearts of his children.

Though he habitually took his meals alone, he would often appear at

the table where his daughters, with possibly their one female friend,

were breakfasting, and, without joining in the repast, would entertain

the little company of schoolgirls with wild legends not only relating

to life in Yorkshire during the last century, but to that still wilder

life which he had left behind him in Ireland. A cold smile would play

round his mouth as he added horror to horror in his attempts to move

his children; and his keen eyes sparkled with triumph when he found he

had succeeded in filling them with alarm. Emily listened to these

stories with bated breath, drinking them, in eagerly. She could repeat

them afterwards by the hour together to her sisters; and no better

proof of the deep root they took in her sensitive nature can be

desired, than the fact that they led her to write "Wuthering Heights."

Thus the paternal influence, strong as it was in the case of all the

daughters, was peculiarly strong as regarded Emily; and we can gauge

the nature of that influence in the weird and ghastly story which was

brought forth under its shadow.

It is with a feeling of curious disappointment that one rises from the

perusal of the writings of Anne Brontë. She wrote two novels, "Agnes

Grey" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," neither of which will really

repay perusal. In the first she sought to set forth some of the

experiences which had befallen her in that patient placid life which

she led as a governess. They were not ordinary experiences, the reader

should know. I have resolutely avoided, in writing this sketch of

Charlotte Brontë and her sisters, all unnecessary reference to the

tragedy of Branwell Brontë's life. But it is a strange sad feature of

that story, that the pious and gentle youngest sister was compelled to

be a closer and more constant witness of his sins and his sufferings

than either Charlotte or Emily. She was living under the same roof

with him when he went astray and was thrust out in deep disgrace. I

have said already that the effect of his career upon her own was as

strong and deep as Mrs. Gaskell represents it to have been. Branwell's

fall formed the dark turning-point in Anne Brontë's life. So it was

not unnatural that it should colour her literary labours. Accordingly,

whilst "Agnes Grey" gives us some of the scenes of her governess life,

dressed up in the fashion of the ordinary romances of thirty years

ago, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" presents us with a dreary and

repulsive picture of Branwell Brontë's condition after his fall.

Charlotte, in her brief memoir of her sisters, does bare justice to

Anne when she speaks in these words upon the subject:

"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," by "Acton Bell," had likewise an

unfavourable reception. At this I cannot wonder. The choice of

subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the

writer's nature could be conceived. The motives which dictated

this choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. She had in

the course of her life been called on to contemplate, near at

hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused

and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved,

and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind;

it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a

duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious

characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She

hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the

subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to

self-indulgence. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften,

or conceal. This well-meant resolution brought on her

misconception and some abuse, which she bore, as it was her custom

to bear whatever was unpleasant, with mild steady patience. She

was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the tinge of

religious melancholy communicated a sad hue to her brief blameless

life.

What a picture one gets of this third and least considered of the

Brontë sisters in the passage which I have quoted! A lovable,

fair-featured girl, leading a blameless life, lighted up by few hopes

of any brighter future--for the one little romance of her own heart

had been destroyed ere this by the unrelenting hand of death--and not

inspired as her sisters were by the passion of the artist or the

creator; a girl whose simple faith was still unmoved from its first

foundations; whose delight was in visiting the poor and helping the

sick, who had no sustaining conviction of her own strength such as

maintained Charlotte and Emily in their darkest hours, and whose very

piety was "tinged with melancholy." This is the girl who, not from any

of the irresistible impulses which attend the exercise of the creative

faculty, but from a simple sense of duty, set herself the hard task of

depicting in the pages of a novel the consequences of a shocking vice

with which her brother's degradation had brought her into close and

abiding contact. Of course she failed. It is not by hands so weak as

those of Anne Brontë that effective blows are struck at such sins as

she assailed. But whilst we acknowledge her failure, let us do justice

both to the self-sacrificing courage and the fervent piety which led

her to undertake this painful work.

Of Charlotte Brontë's novels, as a whole, I shall say nothing at this

point; but something may very properly be said here of the story which

she wrote at the time when her sisters were engaged in writing

"Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey." It was not published until after

her death, and after the world had learned from Mrs. Gaskell's pages

something of the truth about her life. Its interest to the ordinary

reader was to a considerable extent discounted by the fact that the

author had so largely used the materials in her last great work,

"Villette." But even as a mere novel "The Professor" has striking

merits, and would well repay perusal from that point of view alone;

whilst as a means of gaining fresh light with regard to the character

of the writer, it is not less valuable than "Wuthering Heights"

itself. True, "The Professor" is not really a first attempt. "A first

attempt it certainly was not," says Charlotte in reference to it, "as

the pen which wrote it had previously been worn a good deal in a

practice of some years." But the previous writings, of which hardly a

trace now remains--those early MSS. having been carefully destroyed,

with the exception of the few which Mrs. Gaskell was permitted to

see--were in no respect finished productions, nor had they been

written with a view to publication. The first occasion on which

Charlotte Brontë really began a prose work which she proposed to

commit to the press was on that day when, seated by her two sisters,

she joined them in penning the first page of a new novel.

To all practical intents, therefore, "The Professor" is entitled to be

regarded as a first work; and certainly nothing can show Charlotte's

peculiar views on the subject of novel-writing more clearly or

strikingly than this book does. The world knows how resolutely in all

her writings she strove to be true to life as she saw it. In "Jane

Eyre" there are, indeed, romantic incidents and situations, but even

in that work there is no trespassing beyond the limits always allowed

to the writer of fiction; whilst it must not be forgotten that "Jane

Eyre" was in part a response to the direct appeal from the publishers

for something different in character from "The Professor." In that

first story she determined that she would write a man's life as men's

lives usually are. Her hero was "never to get a shilling he had not

earned;" no sudden turns of fortune were "to lift him in a moment to

wealth and high station;" and he was not even to marry "a beautiful

girl or a lady of rank." "As Adam's son he should share Adam's doom,

and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment."

Very few novel-readers will share this conception of what a novel

ought to be. The writer of fiction is an artist whose accepted duty it

is to lift men and women out of the cares of ordinary life, out of the

sordid surroundings which belong to every lot in this world, and to

show us life under different, perhaps under fantastic, conditions: a

life which by its contrast to that we ourselves are leading shall

furnish some relief to our mental vision, wearied and jaded by its

constant contemplation of the fevers and disappointments, the crosses

and long years of weary monotony, which belong to life as it is. We

know how a great living writer has ventured to protest against this

theory, and how in her finest works of fiction she has shown us life

as it is, under the sad and bitter conditions of pain, sorrow, and

hopelessness. But Charlotte Brontë wrote "The Professor" long before

"George Eliot" took up her pen; and she must at least receive credit

for having been in the field as a reformer of fiction before her

fellow-labourer was heard of.

She was true to the conditions she had laid down for herself in

writing "The Professor." Nothing more sober and matter-of-fact than

that story is to be found in English literature. And yet, though the

landscape one is invited to view is but a vast plain, without even a

hillock to give variety to the prospect, it has beauties of its own

which commend it to our admiration. The story, as everybody knows,

deals with Brussels, from which she had just returned when she began

to write it. But it is sad to note the difference between the spirit

of "The Professor" and that which is exhibited in "Villette." Dealing

with the same circumstances, and substantially with the same story,

the author has nevertheless cast each in a mould of its own. Nor is

the cause of this any secret to those who know Charlotte Brontë. When

she wrote "The Professor," disillusioned though she was, she was still

young, and still blessed with that fervent belief in a better future

which the youthful heart can never quite cast out, even under the

heaviest blows of fate. She had come home restless and miserable,

feeling Haworth to be far too small and quiet a place for her; and her

mind could not take in the reality that under that modest roof the

remainder of her life was destined to be spent. Suffering and unhappy

as she was, she could not shut out the hope that brighter days lay

before her. The fever of life racked her; but in the very fact that it

burnt so high there was proof that love and hope, the capacity for a

large enjoyment of existence, still lived within her. So "The

Professor," though a sad, monotonous book, has life and hope, and a

fair faith in the ultimate blessedness of all sorrowful ones, shining

through all its pages; and it closes in a scene of rest and peace.

Very different is the case with "Villette." It was written years after

the period when "The Professor" was composed, when the hard realities

of life had ceased to be veiled under tender mists of sentiment or

imagination, and when the lonely present, the future, "which often

appals me," made the writer too painfully aware that she had drunk the

cup of existence almost to the dregs. As a piece of workmanship there

is no comparison between it and the earlier story. On every page we

see traces of the artist's hand. Genius flashes forth from both works

it is true, but in "Villette" it is genius chastened and restrained by

a cultivated taste, or working under that high pressure which only the

trained writer can bring to bear upon it. Yet, whilst we must admit

the immense superiority of the later over the earlier work, we cannot

turn from the one to the other without being painfully touched by the

sad, strange difference in the spirit which animates them. The

stories, as I have said, are nearly the same. With some curious

transformations, in fact, they are practically identical. But they are

only the same in the sense in which the portrait of the fair and

hopeful girl, with life's romance shining before her eyes, is the same

as the portrait of the worn and solitary woman for whom the romance is

at an end. A whole world of suffering, of sorrow, of patient

endurance, lies between the two. I have spoken of the mood in which

"The Professor" was written--Hope still lingered at that time in the

heart, breathing its merciful though illusory suggestions of something

brighter and better in the future. All who have passed through the

ordeal of a life's sorrow will be able to understand the distinction

between the temperament of the author at that period in her life, and

her temperament when she composed "Villette." For such suffering ones

know, how, in the first and bitterest moment of sorrow, the heart

cannot shut out the blessed belief that a time of release from the

pain will come--a time far off, perhaps, but in which a day bright as

that which has suddenly been eclipsed will shine again. It is only as

the years go by, and as the first ache of intolerable anguish has been

lulled into a dreary rest by habit, that the faith which gave them

strength to bear the keenest smart, takes flight, and leaves them to

the pale monotony of a twilight which can know no dawn. It was in this

later and saddest stage of endurance that "Villette" was written. The

sharpest pangs of the heart-experiences at Brussels had vanished. The

author, no longer full of the self-consciousness of the girl, could

even treat her own story, her own sorrows of that period, with a

lighter hand, a more artistic touch, than when she first wrote of

them; but through all her work there ran the dreary conviction that in

those days of mingled joy and suffering she had tasted life at its

best, and that in the future which lay before her there could be

nothing which should renew either the strong delights or keen anguish

of that time. So the book is pitched, as we know, in a key of almost

absolute hopelessness. Nothing but the genius of Charlotte Brontë

could have saved such a work from sinking under its own burden of

gloom. That this intense and tragic study of a soul should have had

power to fascinate, not the psychologist alone, but the vast masses of

the reading world, is a triumph which can hardly be paralleled in

recent literary efforts. In "The Professor" we move among the same

scenes, almost among the same characters and incidents, but the whole

atmosphere is a different one. It is a dull, cold atmosphere, if you

will, but one feels that behind the clouds the sun is shining, and

that sooner or later the hero and heroine will be allowed to bask in

his reviving rays. Set the two stories together, and read them in the

light of all that passed between the years in which they were

written--the death of Branwell, of Emily, and of Anne, the utter

shattering of some fair illusions which buoyed up Charlotte's heart in

the first years of her literary triumph, the apparent extinction of

all hope as to future happiness--and you will get from them a truer

knowledge of the author's soul than any critic or biographer could

convey to you.

Ere I part from "The Professor," which, naturally enough, never gained

much attention from the public, I must extract from it one passage, a

parallel to which may be found in many of Charlotte Brontë's letters.

It describes, as none but one who had suffered could do, one of those

seasons of mental depression, arising from bodily illness, by which

she was visited at intervals, and under the influence of which not a

little of her work was done. Reading it, we get some idea of the true

origin of much in her character that was supposed to be morbid and

unnatural:

Man is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was my mortal

nature which now faltered and plained; my nerves which jarred and

gave a false sound, because the soul, of late rushing headlong to

an aim, had overstrained the body's comparative weakness. A horror

of great darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by one I

had known formerly but had thought for ever departed. I was

temporarily a prey to hypochondria. She had been my acquaintance,

nay, my guest, once before in boyhood; I had entertained her at

bed and board for a year; for that space of time I had her to

myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out

with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we

could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over

me, and so hide sky and sun, grass and green tree; taking me

entirely to her death-cold bosom and holding me with arms of bone.

What tales she would tell me at such hours! What songs she would

recite in my ears! How she would discourse to me of her own

country--the grave--and again and again promise to conduct me

there ere long; and drawing me to the very brink of a black sullen

river, show me on the other side shores unequal with mound,

monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more hoary than

moonlight. "Necropolis!" she would whisper, pointing to the pale

piles, and add, "it contains a mansion prepared for you." But my

boyhood was lonely, parentless; uncheered by brother or sister;

and there was no marvel that, just as I rose to youth, a

sorceress, finding me lost in vague mental wanderings, with many

affections and few objects, glowing aspirations and gloomy

prospects, strong desires and tender hopes, should lift up her

illusive lamp to me in the distance, and lure me to her vaulted

home of horrors.

It was when, under the influence of occasional spells of physical

suffering such as she here describes, that Miss Brontë gave those who

saw her the impresion that her mind was naturally a morbid one; and,

as I have said before, the same influence is at times perceptible in

her writings. One of the purposes with which this little book has been

written is to show the world how much of the gloom and depression

which are now associated with her story, must be attributed to purely

physical or accidental causes.

XIV.

CONCLUSION.

No apology need be offered for any single feature of Charlotte

Brontë's life or character. She was what God made her in the furnace

of sore afflictions and yet more sore temptations; her life, instinct

with its extraordinary individuality, was, notwithstanding, always

subject to exterior influences for the existence of which she was not

responsible, and which more than once threatened to change the whole

nature and purpose of her being; her genius, which brought forth its

first-fruits under the cold shade of obscurity and adversity, was

developed far more largely by sorrow, loneliness, and pain, than by

the success which she gained in so abundant a degree. There are

features of her character which we can scarcely comprehend, for the

existence of which we are unable to account; and there are features of

her genius which jar upon our sympathies and ruffle our conventional

ideas; but for neither will one word of apology or excuse be offered

by any who really know and love this great woman.

The fashion which exalted her to such a pinnacle of fame, like many

another fashion, has lost its vogue; and the present generation,

wrapped in admiration of another school of fiction, has consigned the

works of "Currer Bell" to a premature sepulchre. But her friends need

not despair; for from that dreary tomb of neglect an hour of

resurrection must come, and the woman who has given us three of the

most masterful books of the century, will again assert her true

position in the literature of her country. We hear nothing now of the

"immorality" of her writings. Younger people, if they turn from the

sparkling or didactic pages of the most popular of recent stories to

"Jane Eyre" or "Villette," in the hope of finding there some stimulant

which may have power to tickle their jaded palates, will search in

vain for anything that even borders upon impropriety--as we understand

the word in these enlightened days--and they will form a strange

conception of the generation of critics which denounced "Currer Bell"

as the writer of immoral works of fiction. But it is said that there

is coarseness in her stories, "otherwise so entirely noble." Even Mrs.

Gaskell has assented to the charge; and it is generally believed that

Charlotte Brontë, as a writer, though not immoral in tone, was rude in

language and coarse in thought. The truth, I maintain, is, that this

so-called coarseness is nothing more than the simplicity and purity,

the straightforwardness and unconsciousness which an unspotted heart

naturally displays in dealing with those great problems of life which,

alas! none who have drunk deep of the waters of good and evil can ever

handle with entire freedom from embarrassment. An American writer[2]

has spoken of Charlotte Brontë as "the great pre-Raphaelite among

women, who was not ashamed or afraid to utter what God had shown her,

and was too single-hearted of aim to swerve one hairbreadth in

duplicating nature's outlines." She was more than this however; she

was bold enough to set up a standard of right of her own; and when

still the unknown daughter of the humble Yorkshire parson, she could

stir the hearts of readers throughout the world with the trumpet-note

of such a declaration as this: "Conventionality is not morality;

self-righteousness is not religion; to pluck the mask from the face of

the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns."

Let it be remembered that these words were written nearly thirty years

ago, when conventionalism was still a potent influence in checking the

free utterance of our inmost opinions; and let us be thankful that in

that heroic band to whom we owe the emancipation of English thought, a

woman holds an honourable place.

[2] Harper's _New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1866.

Writing of her life just after it had closed, her friend Miss

Martineau said of her: "In her vocation she had, in addition to the

deep intuitions of a gifted woman, the strength of a man, the patience

of a hero, and the conscientiousness of a saint." Those who know her

best will apply to her personal character the epithets which Miss

Martineau reserved for her career as an author. It has been my object

in these pages to supplement the picture painted in Mrs. Gaskell's

admirable biography by the addition of one or two features, slight in

themselves perhaps, and yet not unimportant when the effect of the

whole as a faithful portrait is considered. Charlotte Brontë was not

naturally a morbid person; in youth she was happy and high-spirited;

and up to the last moment of her life she had a serene strength and

cheerfulness which seldom deserted her, except when acute physical

suffering was added to her mental pangs. If her mind could have been

freed from the depressing influences exerted on it by her frail and

suffering body, it would have been one of the healthiest and most

equable minds of our age. As it was, it showed itself able to meet the

rude buffetings of fate without shrinking and without bravado; and the

woman who is to this day regarded by the world at large as a marvel of

self-conscious genius and of unchecked morbidness, was able to her

dying hour to take the keenest, liveliest interest in the welfare of

her friends, to pour out all her sympathy wherever she believed it was

needed and deserved, and to lighten the grim parsonage of Haworth by a

presence which, in the sacred recesses of her home, was bright and

cheerful, as well as steadfast and calm.

"Do not underrate her oddity," said a gifted friend who knew her

during her heyday of fame, while these pages were being written. Her

oddity, it must be owned, was extreme--so far as the world could

judge. But I have striven to show how much this eccentricity was

outward and superficial only, due in part to the peculiar conditions

of her early life, but chiefly to the excessive shyness in the

presence of strangers which she shared with her sisters. At heart, as

some of these letters will show, she was one of the truest women who

ever breathed; and her own heart-history was by no means so

exceptional, so far removed from the heart-history of most women, as

the public believes.

The key to her character was simple and unflinching devotion to duty.

Once she failed,[3] or rather, once she allowed inclination to blind

her as to the true direction of the path of duty, and that single

failure coloured the whole of her subsequent life. But her own

condemnation of herself was more sharp and bitter than any which could

have been passed upon her by the world, and from that one venial error

she drew lessons which enabled her henceforward to live with a steady,

constant power of self-sacrifice at her command such as distinguishes

saints and heroes rather than ordinary men and women. Hot, impulsive,

and tenacious in her affections, she suffered those whom she loved the

most dearly to be torn from her without losing faith in herself or in

God; tenderly sensitive as to the treatment which her friends

received, she repaid the cruelty and injustice of her father towards

the man whose heart she had won, by a depth of devotion and

self-sacrifice which can only be fully estimated by those who know

under what bitter conditions it was lavished upon an unworthy parent;

bound, as all the children of genius are, by the spell of her own

imagination, she was yet able during the closing months of her life to

lay aside her pen, and give herself up wholly, at the desire of her

husband, to those parish duties which had such slight attractions for

her. Those who, knowing these facts, still venture to assert that the

virtues which distinguished "Currer Bell" the author were lacking in

Charlotte Brontë the woman, must have minds warped by deep-rooted and

unworthy prejudices.

[3] I ought perhaps to point out, as this passage may

otherwise be open to misconception, that the failure to

which I refer is that confessed by herself in a letter I

have quoted on page 59.

I have expressed my conviction that the comparative neglect from which

"Jane Eyre" and its sister-works now suffer is only temporary. It is

true that in some respects these books are not attractive. Though they

are written with a terse vigour which must make them grateful to all

whose palates are cloyed by the pretty writing of the present

generation, they undoubtedly err on the side of a lack of literary

polish. And though the portraits presented to us in their pages are

wonderful as works of art, unsurpassed as studies of character, the

range of the artist is a limited one, and, as a rule, the subjects

chosen are not the most pleasing that could have been conceived. Yet

one great and striking merit belongs to this masterly painter of men

and women, which is lacking in some who, treading to a certain extent

in her footsteps, have achieved even a wider and more brilliant

reputation. There is no taint of the dissecting-room about her books;

we are never invited to admire the supreme cleverness of the operator

who, with unsparing knife, lays bare before us the whole cunning

mechanism of the soul which is stretched under the scalpel; nor are we

bidden to pause and listen to those didactic moralisings which belong

rather to the preacher or the lecturer than the novelist. It is the

artist, not the anatomist who is instructing us; and after all, we may

derive a more accurate knowledge of men and women as they are from the

cartoons of a Raphael than from the most elaborate diagrams or

sections of the most eminent of physiologists.

Perhaps no merit is more conspicuous in Charlotte Brontë's writings

than their unswerving honesty. Writing always "under the spell," at

the dictation, as it were, of an invisible and superior spirit, she

would never write save when "the fit was upon her" and she had

something to say. "I have been silent lately because I have

accumulated nothing since I wrote last," is a phrase which fell from

her on one occasion. Save when she believed that she had accumulated

something, some truth which she was bound to convey to the world, she

would not touch her pen. She had every temptation to write fast and

freely. Money was needed at home, and money was to be had by the mere

production of novels which, whether good, bad, or indifferent, were

certain to sell. But she withstood the temptation bravely, withstood

it even when it came strengthened by the supplications of her friends;

and from first to last she gave the world nothing but her best. This

honesty--rare enough unfortunately among those whose painful lot it is

to coin their brains into money--was carried far beyond these limits.

When in writing she found that any character had escaped from her

hands--and every writer of fiction knows how easily this may

happen--she made no attempt to finish the portrait according to the

canons of literary art. She waited patiently for fresh light; studying

deeply in her waking hours, dreaming constantly of her task during her

uneasy slumbers, until perchance the light she needed came and she

could go on. But if it came not she never pretended to supply the

place of this inspiration of genius by any clever trick of literary

workmanship. The picture was left unfinished--perfect so far as it

went, but broken off at the point at which the author's keen

intuitions had failed or fled from her. Nor when her work was done

would she consent to alter or amend at the bidding of others; for the

sake of no applause, of no success, would she change the fate of any

of her characters as they had been fixed in the crucible of her

genius. Even when her father exerted all his authority to secure

another ending to the tale of "Villette," he could only, as we have

seen, persuade his daughter to veil the catastrophe. The hero was

doomed; and Charlotte, whatever might be her own inclination, could

not save him from his fate. Books so true, so honest, so simple, so

thorough as these, depend for their ultimate fate upon no transitions

of fashion, no caprices of the public taste. They will hold their own

as the slow-born fruits of a great genius, long after the productions

of a score of facile pens now able to secure the world's attention

have been utterly forgotten. The daring and passion of "Jane Eyre,"

the broad human sympathies, sparkling humour, and graphic portraiture

of "Shirley," and the steady, patient, unsurpassed concentration of

power which distinguishes "Villette," can hardly cease to command

admiration whilst the literature of this century is remembered and

studied.

But when we turn from the author to the woman, from the written pages

to the writer, and when, forgetting the features and fortunes of those

who appear in the romances of "Currer Bell," we recall that touching

story which will for ever be associated with Haworth Parsonage and

with the great family of the Brontës, we see that the artist is

greater than her works, that the woman is nobler and purer than the

writer, and that by her life, even more than by her labours, the

author of "Jane Eyre" must always teach us those lessons of courage,

self-sacrifice, and patient endurance of which our poor humanity

stands in such pressing and constant need.

THE END.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.