The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Anne Brontë
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY MRS HUMPHREY WARD
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1920
Contents
This Table of Contents contains the original chapter headings that were present
in the first printed edition of 1848. These headings were removed in later
(one-volume) editions of the text, after Anne Brontë’s death in 1849.
I. A Discovery
II. An Interview
III. A Controversy
IV. The Party
V. The Studio
VI. Progression
VII. The Excursion
VIII. The Present
IX. A Snake in the Grass
X. A Contract and a Quarrel
XI. The Vicar Again
XII. A Tête-à-Tête and a Discovery
XIII. A Return to Duty
XIV. An Assault
XV. An Encounter and its Consequences
XVI. The Warnings of Experience
XVII. Further Warnings
XVIII. The Miniature
XIX. An Incident
XX. Persistence
XXI. Opinions
XXII. Traits of Friendship
XXIII. First Weeks of Matrimony
XXIV. First Quarrel
XXV. First Absence
XXVI. The Guests
XXVII. A Misdemeanour
XXVIII. Parental Feelings
XXIX. The Neighbour
XXX. Domestic Scenes
XXXI. Social Virtues
XXXII. Comparisons: Information Rejected
XXXIII. Two Evenings
XXXIV. Concealment
XXXV. Provocations
XXXVI. Dual Solitude
XXXVII. The Neighbour Again
XXXVIII. The Injured Man
XXXIX. A Scheme of Escape
XL. A Misadventure
XLI. “Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast”
XLII. A Reformation
XLIII. The Boundary Past
XLIV. The Retreat
XLV. Reconciliation
XLVI. Friendly Counsels
XLVII. Startling Intelligence
XLVIII. Further Intelligence
XLIX.
L. Doubts and Disappointments
LI. An Unexpected Occurrence
LII. Fluctuations
LIII. Conclusion
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Anne Brontë
Moorland Scene, Haworth
Moorland scene (with water): Haworth
Moorland scene (with cottage), Haworth
Blake Hall—The Approach (Grassdale Manor)
Blake Hall—Front (Grassdale Manor)
Blake Hall—Side (Grassdale Manor)
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
Anne Brontë serves a twofold purpose in the study of what the Brontës
wrote and were. In the first place, her gentle and delicate presence,
her sad, short story, her hard life and early death, enter deeply into
the poetry and tragedy that have always been entwined with the memory
of the Brontës, as women and as writers; in the second, the books and
poems that she wrote serve as matter of comparison by which to test the
greatness of her two sisters. She is the measure of their genius—like
them, yet not with them.
Many years after Anne’s death her brother-in-law protested against a
supposed portrait of her, as giving a totally wrong impression of the
“dear, gentle Anne Brontë.” “Dear” and “gentle” indeed she seems to
have been through life, the youngest and prettiest of the sisters, with
a delicate complexion, a slender neck, and small, pleasant features.
Notwithstanding, she possessed in full the Brontë seriousness, the
Brontë strength of will. When her father asked her at four years old
what a little child like her wanted most, the tiny creature replied—if
it were not a Brontë it would be incredible!—“Age and experience.” When
the three children started their “Island Plays” together in 1827, Anne,
who was then eight, chose Guernsey for her imaginary island, and
peopled it with “Michael Sadler, Lord Bentinck, and Sir Henry Halford.”
She and Emily were constant companions, and there is evidence that they
shared a common world of fancy from very early days to mature
womanhood. “The Gondal Chronicles” seem to have amused them for many
years, and to have branched out into innumerable books, written in the
“tiny writing” of which Mr. Clement Shorter has given us facsimiles. “I
am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life,”
says Anne at twenty-one. And four years later Emily says, “The Gondals
still flourish bright as ever. I am at present writing a work on the
First War. Anne has been writing some articles on this and a book by
Henry Sophona. We intend sticking firm by the rascals as long as they
delight us, which I am glad to say they do at present.”
That the author of “Wildfell Hall” should ever have delighted in the
Gondals, should ever have written the story of Solala Vernon or Henry
Sophona, is pleasant to know. Then, for her too, as for her sisters,
there was a moment when the power of “making out” could turn loneliness
and disappointment into riches and content. For a time at least, and
before a hard and degrading experience had broken the spring of her
youth, and replaced the disinterested and spontaneous pleasure that is
to be got from the life and play of imagination, by a sad sense of
duty, and an inexorable consciousness of moral and religious mission,
Anne Brontë wrote stories for her own amusement, and loved the
“rascals” she created.
But already in 1841, when we first hear of the Gondals and Solala
Vernon, the material for quite other books was in poor Anne’s mind. She
was then teaching in the family at Thorpe Green, where Branwell joined
her as tutor in 1843, and where, owing to events that are still a
mystery, she seems to have passed through an ordeal that left her
shattered in health and nerve, with nothing gained but those melancholy
and repulsive memories that she was afterwards to embody in “Wildfell
Hall.” She seems, indeed, to have been partly the victim of Branwell’s
morbid imagination, the imagination of an opium-eater and a drunkard.
That he was neither the conqueror nor the villain that he made his
sisters believe, all the evidence that has been gathered since Mrs.
Gaskell wrote goes to show. But poor Anne believed his account of
himself, and no doubt saw enough evidence of vicious character in
Branwell’s daily life to make the worst enormities credible. She seems
to have passed the last months of her stay at Thorpe Green under a
cloud of dread and miserable suspicion, and was thankful to escape from
her situation in the summer of 1845. At the same moment Branwell was
summarily dismissed from his tutorship, his employer, Mr. Robinson,
writing a stern letter of complaint to Branwell’s father, concerned no
doubt with the young man’s disorderly and intemperate habits. Mrs.
Gaskell says: “The premature deaths of two at least of the sisters—all
the great possibilities of their earthly lives snapped short—may be
dated from Midsummer 1845.” The facts as we now know them hardly bear
out so strong a judgment. There is nothing to show that Branwell’s
conduct was responsible in any way for Emily’s illness and death, and
Anne, in the contemporary fragment recovered by Mr. Shorter, gives a
less tragic account of the matter. “During my stay (at Thorpe Green),”
she writes on July 31, 1845, “I have had some very unpleasant and
undreamt-of experience of human nature. . . . Branwell has . . . been a
tutor at Thorpe Green, and had much tribulation and ill-health. . . .
We hope he will be better and do better in future.” And at the end of
the paper she says, sadly, forecasting the coming years, “I for my part
cannot well be flatter or older in mind than I am now.” This is the
language of disappointment and anxiety; but it hardly fits the tragic
story that Mrs. Gaskell believed.
That story was, no doubt, the elaboration of Branwell’s diseased fancy
during the three years which elapsed between his dismissal from Thorpe
Green and his death. He imagined a guilty romance with himself and his
employer’s wife for characters, and he imposed the horrid story upon
his sisters. Opium and drink are the sufficient explanations; and no
time need now be wasted upon unravelling the sordid mystery. But the
vices of the brother, real or imaginary, have a certain importance in
literature, because of the effect they produced upon his sisters. There
can be no question that Branwell’s opium madness, his bouts of
drunkenness at the Black Bull, his violence at home, his free and
coarse talk, and his perpetual boast of guilty secrets, influenced the
imagination of his wholly pure and inexperienced sisters. Much of
“Wuthering Heights,” and all of “Wildfell Hall,” show Branwell’s mark,
and there are many passages in Charlotte’s books also where those who
know the history of the parsonage can hear the voice of those sharp
moral repulsions, those dismal moral questionings, to which Branwell’s
misconduct and ruin gave rise. Their brother’s fate was an element in
the genius of Emily and Charlotte which they were strong enough to
assimilate, which may have done them some harm, and weakened in them
certain delicate or sane perceptions, but was ultimately, by the
strange alchemy of talent, far more profitable than hurtful, inasmuch
as it troubled the waters of the soul, and brought them near to the
more desperate realities of our “frail, fall’n humankind.”
But Anne was not strong enough, her gift was not vigorous enough, to
enable her thus to transmute experience and grief. The probability is
that when she left Thorpe Green in 1845 she was already suffering from
that religious melancholy of which Charlotte discovered such piteous
evidence among her papers after death. It did not much affect the
writing of “Agnes Grey,” which was completed in 1846, and reflected the
minor pains and discomforts of her teaching experience, but it combined
with the spectacle of Branwell’s increasing moral and physical decay to
produce that bitter mandate of conscience under which she wrote “The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
“Hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature. She
hated her work, but would pursue it. It was written as a warning,”—so
said Charlotte when, in the pathetic Preface of 1850, she was
endeavouring to explain to the public how a creature so gentle and so
good as Acton Bell should have written such a book as “Wildfell Hall.”
And in the second edition of “Wildfell Hall,” which appeared in 1848,
Anne Brontë herself justified her novel in a Preface which is reprinted
in this volume for the first time. The little Preface is a curious
document. It has the same determined didactic tone which pervades the
book itself, the same narrowness of view, and inflation of expression,
an inflation which is really due not to any personal egotism in the
writer, but rather to that very gentleness and inexperience which must
yet nerve itself under the stimulus of religion to its disagreeable and
repulsive task. “I knew that such characters”—as Huntingdon and his
companions—“do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from
following in their steps the book has not been written in vain.” If the
story has given more pain than pleasure to “any honest reader,” the
writer “craves his pardon, for such was far from my intention.” But at
the same time she cannot promise to limit her ambition to the giving of
innocent pleasure, or to the production of “a perfect work of art.”
“Time and talent so spent I should consider wasted and misapplied.” God
has given her unpalatable truths to speak, and she must speak them.
The measure of misconstruction and abuse, therefore, which her book
brought upon her she bore, says her sister, “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 shade to her brief, blameless life.”
In spite of misconstruction and abuse, however, “Wildfell Hall” seems
to have attained more immediate success than anything else written by
the sisters before 1848, except “Jane Eyre.” It went into a second
edition within a very short time of its publication, and Messrs. Newby
informed the American publishers with whom they were negotiating that
it was the work of the same hand which had produced “Jane Eyre,” and
superior to either “Jane Eyre” or “Wuthering Heights”! It was, indeed,
the sharp practice connected with this astonishing judgment which led
to the sisters’ hurried journey to London in 1848—the famous journey
when the two little ladies in black revealed themselves to Mr. Smith,
and proved to him that they were not one Currer Bell, but two Miss
Brontës. It was Anne’s sole journey to London—her only contact with a
world that was not Haworth, except that supplied by her school-life at
Roehead and her two teaching engagements.
And there was and is a considerable narrative ability, a sheer moral
energy in “Wildfell Hall,” which would not be enough, indeed, to keep
it alive if it were not the work of a Brontë, but still betray its
kinship and source. The scenes of Huntingdon’s wickedness are less
interesting but less improbable than the country-house scenes of “Jane
Eyre”; the story of his death has many true and touching passages; the
last love-scene is well, even in parts admirably, written. But the
book’s truth, so far as it is true, is scarcely the truth of
imagination; it is rather the truth of a tract or a report. There can
be little doubt that many of the pages are close transcripts from
Branwell’s conduct and language,—so far as Anne’s slighter personality
enabled her to render her brother’s temperament, which was more akin to
Emily’s than to her own. The same material might have been used by
Emily or Charlotte; Emily, as we know, did make use of it in “Wuthering
Heights”; but only after it had passed through that ineffable
transformation, that mysterious, incommunicable heightening which makes
and gives rank in literature. Some subtle, innate correspondence
between eye and brain, between brain and hand, was present in Emily and
Charlotte, and absent in Anne. There is no other account to be given of
this or any other case of difference between serviceable talent and the
high gifts of “Delos” and Patara’s own “Apollo.”
The same world of difference appears between her poems and those of her
playfellow and comrade, Emily. If ever our descendants should establish
the schools for writers which are even now threatened or attempted,
they will hardly know perhaps any better than we what genius is, nor
how it can be produced. But if they try to teach by example, then Anne
and Emily Brontë are ready to their hand. Take the verses written by
Emily at Roehead which contain the lovely lines which I have already
quoted in an earlier “Introduction.”[1] Just before those lines there
are two or three verses which it is worth while to compare with a poem
of Anne’s called “Home.” Emily was sixteen at the time of writing; Anne
about twenty-one or twenty-two. Both sisters take for their motive the
exile’s longing thought of home. Emily’s lines are full of faults, but
they have the indefinable quality—here, no doubt, only in the bud, only
as a matter of promise—which Anne’s are entirely without. From the
twilight schoolroom at Roehead, Emily turns in thought to the distant
upland of Haworth and the little stone-built house upon its crest:—
There is a spot, ’mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.
The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome,
But what on earth is half so dear—
So longed for—as the hearth of home?
The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them—how I love them all!
Anne’s verses, written from one of the houses where she was a
governess, express precisely the same feeling, and movement of mind.
But notice the instinctive rightness and swiftness of Emily’s, the
blurred weakness of Anne’s!—
For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between—
Restore to me that little spot,
With gray walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.
Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,
And though its halls are fair within—
Oh, give me back my Home!
A similar parallel lies between Anne’s lines “Domestic Peace,”—a sad
and true reflection of the terrible times with Branwell in 1846—and
Emily’s “Wanderer from the Fold”; while in Emily’s “Last Lines,” the
daring spirit of the sister to whom the magic gift was granted
separates itself for ever from the gentle and accustomed piety of the
sister to whom it was denied. Yet Anne’s “Last Lines”—“I hoped that
with the brave and strong”—have sweetness and sincerity; they have
gained and kept a place in English religious verse, and they must
always appeal to those who love the Brontës because, in the language of
Christian faith and submission, they record the death of Emily and the
passionate affection which her sisters bore her.
And so we are brought back to the point from which we started. It is
not as the writer of “Wildfell Hall,” but as the sister of Charlotte
and Emily Brontë, that Anne Brontë escapes oblivion—as the frail
“little one,” upon whom the other two lavished a tender and protecting
care, who was a witness of Emily’s death, and herself, within a few
minutes of her own farewell to life, bade Charlotte “take courage.”
“When my thoughts turn to Anne,” said Charlotte many years earlier,
“they always see her as a patient, persecuted stranger,—more lonely,
less gifted with the power of making friends even than I am.” Later on,
however, this power of making friends seems to have belonged to Anne in
greater measure than to the others. Her gentleness conquered; she was
not set apart, as they were, by the lonely and self-sufficing
activities of great powers; her Christianity, though sad and timid, was
of a kind which those around her could understand; she made no grim
fight with suffering and death as did Emily. Emily was “torn” from life
“conscious, panting, reluctant,” to use Charlotte’s own words; Anne’s
“sufferings were mild,” her mind “generally serene,” and at the last
“she thanked God that death was come, and come so gently.” When
Charlotte returned to the desolate house at Haworth, Emily’s large
house-dog and Anne’s little spaniel welcomed her in “a strange,
heart-touching way,” she writes to Mr. Williams. She alone was left,
heir to all the memories and tragedies of the house. She took up again
the task of life and labour. She cared for her father; she returned to
the writing of “Shirley”; and when she herself passed away, four years
later, she had so turned those years to account that not only all she
did but all she loved had passed silently into the keeping of fame.
Mrs. Gaskell’s touching and delightful task was ready for her, and
Anne, no less than Charlotte and Emily, was sure of England’s
remembrance.
MARY A. WARD.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE[2]
TO THE SECOND EDITION
While I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been
greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few
kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit
that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity
which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as
well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just. It is
scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his
censors and vindicate his own productions; but I may be allowed to make
here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first
edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the
misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or
be content to judge it by a hasty glance.
My object in writing the following pages was not simply to amuse the
Reader; neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate
myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for
truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a
well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does
so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water
into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he
procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a
careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust
she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects. Let it not
be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the
errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my
humble quota towards so good an aim; and if I can gain the public ear
at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much
soft nonsense.
As the story of “Agnes Grey” was accused of extravagant over-colouring
in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a
most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work,
I find myself censured for depicting _con amore_, with “a morbid love
of the coarse, if not of the brutal,” those scenes which, I will
venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of
my critics to read than they were for me to describe. I may have gone
too far; in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my
readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and
vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they
really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing
in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course
for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the
safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the
young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and
flowers? Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of
facts—this whispering, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, there
would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left
to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.
I would not be understood to suppose that the proceedings of the
unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here
introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society—the case
is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I know
that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from
following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from
falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not
been written in vain. But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall
have derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed
the last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly
crave his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will
endeavour to do better another time, for I love to give innocent
pleasure. Yet, be it understood, I shall not limit my ambition to
this—or even to producing “a perfect work of art”: time and talents so
spent, I should consider wasted and misapplied. Such humble talents as
God has given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am
able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to
speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I _will_ speak it,
though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my
reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.
One word more, and I have done. Respecting the author’s identity, I
would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither
Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed
to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot
greatly signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I
should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man,
or a woman, as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered. I
take the imputation in good part, as a compliment to the just
delineation of my female characters; and though I am bound to attribute
much of the severity of my censors to this suspicion, I make no effort
to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is
a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels
are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at
a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything
that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be
censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a
man.
_July_ 22_nd_, 1848.
CHAPTER I
You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.
My father, as you know, was a sort of gentleman farmer in ——shire; and
I, by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation,
not very willingly, for ambition urged me to higher aims, and
self-conceit assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying
my talent in the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel. My mother
had done her utmost to persuade me that I was capable of great
achievements; but my father, who thought ambition was the surest road
to ruin, and change but another word for destruction, would listen to
no scheme for bettering either my own condition, or that of my fellow
mortals. He assured me it was all rubbish, and exhorted me, with his
dying breath, to continue in the good old way, to follow his steps, and
those of his father before him, and let my highest ambition be to walk
honestly through the world, looking neither to the right hand nor to
the left, and to transmit the paternal acres to my children in, at
least, as flourishing a condition as he left them to me.
“Well!—an honest and industrious farmer is one of the most useful
members of society; and if I devote my talents to the cultivation of my
farm, and the improvement of agriculture in general, I shall thereby
benefit, not only my own immediate connections and dependants, but, in
some degree, mankind at large:—hence I shall not have lived in vain.”
With such reflections as these I was endeavouring to console myself, as
I plodded home from the fields, one cold, damp, cloudy evening towards
the close of October. But the gleam of a bright red fire through the
parlour window had more effect in cheering my spirits, and rebuking my
thankless repinings, than all the sage reflections and good resolutions
I had forced my mind to frame;—for I was young then, remember—only
four-and-twenty—and had not acquired half the rule over my own spirit
that I now possess—trifling as that may be.
However, that haven of bliss must not be entered till I had exchanged
my miry boots for a clean pair of shoes, and my rough surtout for a
respectable coat, and made myself generally presentable before decent
society; for my mother, with all her kindness, was vastly particular on
certain points.
In ascending to my room I was met upon the stairs by a smart, pretty
girl of nineteen, with a tidy, dumpy figure, a round face, bright,
blooming cheeks, glossy, clustering curls, and little merry brown eyes.
I need not tell you this was my sister Rose. She is, I know, a comely
matron still, and, doubtless, no less lovely—in _your_ eyes—than on the
happy day you first beheld her. Nothing told me then that she, a few
years hence, would be the wife of one entirely unknown to me as yet,
but destined hereafter to become a closer friend than even herself,
more intimate than that unmannerly lad of seventeen, by whom I was
collared in the passage, on coming down, and well-nigh jerked off my
equilibrium, and who, in correction for his impudence, received a
resounding whack over the sconce, which, however, sustained no serious
injury from the infliction; as, besides being more than commonly thick,
it was protected by a redundant shock of short, reddish curls, that my
mother called auburn.
On entering the parlour we found that honoured lady seated in her
arm-chair at the fireside, working away at her knitting, according to
her usual custom, when she had nothing else to do. She had swept the
hearth, and made a bright blazing fire for our reception; the servant
had just brought in the tea-tray; and Rose was producing the
sugar-basin and tea-caddy from the cupboard in the black oak
side-board, that shone like polished ebony, in the cheerful parlour
twilight.
“Well! here they both are,” cried my mother, looking round upon us
without retarding the motion of her nimble fingers and glittering
needles. “Now shut the door, and come to the fire, while Rose gets the
tea ready; I’m sure you must be starved;—and tell me what you’ve been
about all day;—I like to know what my children have been about.”
“I’ve been breaking in the grey colt—no easy business that—directing
the ploughing of the last wheat stubble—for the ploughboy has not the
sense to direct himself—and carrying out a plan for the extensive and
efficient draining of the low meadowlands.”
“That’s my brave boy!—and Fergus, what have you been doing?”
“Badger-baiting.”
And here he proceeded to give a particular account of his sport, and
the respective traits of prowess evinced by the badger and the dogs; my
mother pretending to listen with deep attention, and watching his
animated countenance with a degree of maternal admiration I thought
highly disproportioned to its object.
“It’s time you should be doing something else, Fergus,” said I, as soon
as a momentary pause in his narration allowed me to get in a word.
“What _can_ I do?” replied he; “my mother won’t let me go to sea or
enter the army; and I’m determined to do nothing else—except make
myself such a nuisance to you all, that you will be thankful to get rid
of me on any terms.”
Our parent soothingly stroked his stiff, short curls. He growled, and
tried to look sulky, and then we all took our seats at the table, in
obedience to the thrice-repeated summons of Rose.
“Now take your tea,” said she; “and I’ll tell you what _I’ve_ been
doing. I’ve been to call on the Wilsons; and it’s a _thousand_ pities
you didn’t go with me, Gilbert, for Eliza Millward was there!”
“Well! what of her?”
“Oh, nothing!—I’m not going to tell you about her;—only that she’s a
nice, amusing little thing, when she is in a merry humour, and I
shouldn’t mind calling her—”
“Hush, hush, my dear! your brother has no such idea!” whispered my
mother earnestly, holding up her finger.
“Well,” resumed Rose; “I was going to tell you an important piece of
news I heard there—I have been bursting with it ever since. You know it
was reported a month ago, that somebody was going to take Wildfell
Hall—and—what do you think? It has actually been inhabited above a
week!—and we never knew!”
“Impossible!” cried my mother.
“Preposterous!!!” shrieked Fergus.
“It has indeed!—and by a single lady!”
“Good gracious, my dear! The place is in ruins!”
“She has had two or three rooms made habitable; and there she lives,
all alone—except an old woman for a servant!”
“Oh, dear! that spoils it—I’d hoped she was a witch,” observed Fergus,
while carving his inch-thick slice of bread and butter. “Nonsense,
Fergus! But isn’t it strange, mamma?”
“Strange! I can hardly believe it.”
“But you may believe it; for Jane Wilson has seen her. She went with
her mother, who, of course, when she heard of a stranger being in the
neighbourhood, would be on pins and needles till she had seen her and
got all she could out of her. She is called Mrs. Graham, and she is in
mourning—not widow’s weeds, but slightish mourning—and she is quite
young, they say,—not above five or six and twenty,—but _so_ reserved!
They tried all they could to find out who she was and where she came
from, and, all about her, but neither Mrs. Wilson, with her
pertinacious and impertinent home-thrusts, nor Miss Wilson, with her
skilful manœuvring, could manage to elicit a single satisfactory
answer, or even a casual remark, or chance expression calculated to
allay their curiosity, or throw the faintest ray of light upon her
history, circumstances, or connections. Moreover, she was barely civil
to them, and evidently better pleased to say “good-by,” than “how do
you do.” But Eliza Millward says her father intends to call upon her
soon, to offer some pastoral advice, which he fears she needs, as,
though she is known to have entered the neighbourhood early last week,
she did not make her appearance at church on Sunday; and she—Eliza,
that is—will beg to accompany him, and is sure _she_ can succeed in
wheedling something out of her—you know, Gilbert, _she_ can do
anything. And _we_ should call some time, mamma; it’s only proper, you
know.”
“Of course, my dear. Poor thing! How lonely she must feel!”
“And pray, be quick about it; and mind you bring me word how much sugar
she puts in her tea, and what sort of caps and aprons she wears, and
all about it; for I don’t know how I can live till I know,” said
Fergus, very gravely.
But if he intended the speech to be hailed as a master-stroke of wit,
he signally failed, for nobody laughed. However, he was not much
disconcerted at that; for when he had taken a mouthful of bread and
butter and was about to swallow a gulp of tea, the humour of the thing
burst upon him with such irresistible force, that he was obliged to
jump up from the table, and rush snorting and choking from the room;
and a minute after, was heard screaming in fearful agony in the garden.
As for me, I was hungry, and contented myself with silently demolishing
the tea, ham, and toast, while my mother and sister went on talking,
and continued to discuss the apparent or non-apparent circumstances,
and probable or improbable history of the mysterious lady; but I must
confess that, after my brother’s misadventure, I once or twice raised
the cup to my lips, and put it down again without daring to taste the
contents, lest I should injure my dignity by a similar explosion.
The next day my mother and Rose hastened to pay their compliments to
the fair recluse; and came back but little wiser than they went; though
my mother declared she did not regret the journey, for if she had not
gained much good, she flattered herself she had imparted some, and that
was better: she had given some useful advice, which, she hoped, would
not be thrown away; for Mrs. Graham, though she said little to any
purpose, and appeared somewhat self-opinionated, seemed not incapable
of reflection,—though she did not know where she had been all her life,
poor thing, for she betrayed a lamentable ignorance on certain points,
and had not even the sense to be ashamed of it.
“On what points, mother?” asked I.
“On household matters, and all the little niceties of cookery, and such
things, that every lady ought to be familiar with, whether she be
required to make a practical use of her knowledge or not. I gave her
some useful pieces of information, however, and several excellent
receipts, the value of which she evidently could not appreciate, for
she begged I would not trouble myself, as she lived in such a plain,
quiet way, that she was sure she should never make use of them. ‘No
matter, my dear,’ said I; ‘it is what every respectable female ought to
know;—and besides, though you are alone now, you will not be always so;
you _have_ been married, and probably—I might say almost certainly—will
be again.’ ‘You are mistaken there, ma’am,’ said she, almost haughtily;
‘I am certain I never shall.’—But I told her _I_ knew better.”
“Some romantic young widow, I suppose,” said I, “come there to end her
days in solitude, and mourn in secret for the dear departed—but it
won’t last long.”
“No, I think not,” observed Rose; “for she didn’t seem _very_
disconsolate after all; and she’s excessively pretty—handsome
rather—you must see her, Gilbert; you will call her a perfect beauty,
though you could hardly pretend to discover a resemblance between her
and Eliza Millward.”
“Well, I can imagine many faces more beautiful than Eliza’s, though not
more charming. I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I
maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would be less
interesting.”
“And so you prefer her faults to other people’s perfections?”
“Just so—saving my mother’s presence.”
“Oh, my dear Gilbert, what nonsense you talk!—I know you don’t mean it;
it’s quite out of the question,” said my mother, getting up, and
bustling out of the room, under pretence of household business, in
order to escape the contradiction that was trembling on my tongue.
After that Rose favoured me with further particulars respecting Mrs.
Graham. Her appearance, manners, and dress, and the very furniture of
the room she inhabited, were all set before me, with rather more
clearness and precision than I cared to see them; but, as I was not a
very attentive listener, I could not repeat the description if I would.
The next day was Saturday; and, on Sunday, everybody wondered whether
or not the fair unknown would profit by the vicar’s remonstrance, and
come to church. I confess I looked with some interest myself towards
the old family pew, appertaining to Wildfell Hall, where the faded
crimson cushions and lining had been unpressed and unrenewed so many
years, and the grim escutcheons, with their lugubrious borders of rusty
black cloth, frowned so sternly from the wall above.
And there I beheld a tall, lady-like figure, clad in black. Her face
was towards me, and there was something in it which, once seen, invited
me to look again. Her hair was raven black, and disposed in long glossy
ringlets, a style of coiffure rather unusual in those days, but always
graceful and becoming; her complexion was clear and pale; her eyes I
could not see, for, being bent upon her prayer-book, they were
concealed by their drooping lids and long black lashes, but the brows
above were expressive and well defined; the forehead was lofty and
intellectual, the nose, a perfect aquiline and the features, in
general, unexceptionable—only there was a slight hollowness about the
cheeks and eyes, and the lips, though finely formed, were a little too
thin, a little too firmly compressed, and had something about them that
betokened, I thought, no very soft or amiable temper; and I said in my
heart—“I would rather admire you from this distance, fair lady, than be
the partner of your home.”
Just then she happened to raise her eyes, and they met mine; I did not
choose to withdraw my gaze, and she turned again to her book, but with
a momentary, indefinable expression of quiet scorn, that was
inexpressibly provoking to me.
“She thinks me an impudent puppy,” thought I. “Humph!—she shall change
her mind before long, if I think it worth while.”
But then it flashed upon me that these were very improper thoughts for
a place of worship, and that my behaviour, on the present occasion, was
anything but what it ought to be. Previous, however, to directing my
mind to the service, I glanced round the church to see if any one had
been observing me;—but no,—all, who were not attending to their
prayer-books, were attending to the strange lady,—my good mother and
sister among the rest, and Mrs. Wilson and her daughter; and even Eliza
Millward was slily glancing from the corners of her eyes towards the
object of general attraction. Then she glanced at me, simpered a
little, and blushed, modestly looked at her prayer-book, and
endeavoured to compose her features.
Here I was transgressing again; and this time I was made sensible of it
by a sudden dig in the ribs, from the elbow of my pert brother. For the
present, I could only resent the insult by pressing my foot upon his
toes, deferring further vengeance till we got out of church.
Now, Halford, before I close this letter, I’ll tell you who Eliza
Millward was: she was the vicar’s younger daughter, and a very engaging
little creature, for whom I felt no small degree of partiality;—and she
knew it, though I had never come to any direct explanation, and had no
definite intention of so doing, for my mother, who maintained there was
no one good enough for me within twenty miles round, could not bear the
thoughts of my marrying that insignificant little thing, who, in
addition to her numerous other disqualifications, had not twenty pounds
to call her own. Eliza’s figure was at once slight and plump, her face
small, and nearly as round as my sister’s,—complexion, something
similar to hers, but more delicate and less decidedly blooming,—nose,
_retroussé_,—features, generally irregular; and, altogether, she was
rather charming than pretty. But her eyes—I must not forget those
remarkable features, for therein her chief attraction lay—in outward
aspect at least;—they were long and narrow in shape, the irids black,
or very dark brown, the expression various, and ever changing, but
always either preternaturally—I had almost said _diabolically_—wicked,
or irresistibly bewitching—often both. Her voice was gentle and
childish, her tread light and soft as that of a cat:—but her manners
more frequently resembled those of a pretty playful kitten, that is now
pert and roguish, now timid and demure, according to its own sweet
will.
Her sister, Mary, was several years older, several inches taller, and
of a larger, coarser build—a plain, quiet, sensible girl, who had
patiently nursed their mother, through her last long, tedious illness,
and been the housekeeper, and family drudge, from thence to the present
time. She was trusted and valued by her father, loved and courted by
all dogs, cats, children, and poor people, and slighted and neglected
by everybody else.
The Reverend Michael Millward himself was a tall, ponderous elderly
gentleman, who placed a shovel hat above his large, square,
massive-featured face, carried a stout walking-stick in his hand, and
incased his still powerful limbs in knee-breeches and gaiters,—or black
silk stockings on state occasions. He was a man of fixed principles,
strong prejudices, and regular habits, intolerant of dissent in any
shape, acting under a firm conviction that _his_ opinions were always
right, and whoever differed from them must be either most deplorably
ignorant, or wilfully blind.
In childhood, I had always been accustomed to regard him with a feeling
of reverential awe—but lately, even now, surmounted, for, though he had
a fatherly kindness for the well-behaved, he was a strict
disciplinarian, and had often sternly reproved our juvenile failings
and peccadilloes; and moreover, in those days, whenever he called upon
our parents, we had to stand up before him, and say our catechism, or
repeat, “How doth the little busy bee,” or some other hymn, or—worse
than all—be questioned about his last text, and the heads of the
discourse, which we never could remember. Sometimes, the worthy
gentleman would reprove my mother for being over-indulgent to her sons,
with a reference to old Eli, or David and Absalom, which was
particularly galling to her feelings; and, very highly as she respected
him, and all his sayings, I once heard her exclaim, “I wish to goodness
he had a son himself! He wouldn’t be so ready with his advice to other
people then;—he’d see what it is to have a couple of boys to keep in
order.”
He had a laudable care for his own bodily health—kept very early hours,
regularly took a walk before breakfast, was vastly particular about
warm and dry clothing, had never been known to preach a sermon without
previously swallowing a raw egg—albeit he was gifted with good lungs
and a powerful voice,—and was, generally, extremely particular about
what he ate and drank, though by no means abstemious, and having a mode
of dietary peculiar to himself,—being a great despiser of tea and such
slops, and a patron of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef,
and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive
organs, and therefore were maintained by him to be good and wholesome
for everybody, and confidently recommended to the most delicate
convalescents or dyspeptics, who, if they failed to derive the promised
benefit from his prescriptions, were told it was because they had not
persevered, and if they complained of inconvenient results therefrom,
were assured it was all fancy.
I will just touch upon two other persons whom I have mentioned, and
then bring this long letter to a close. These are Mrs. Wilson and her
daughter. The former was the widow of a substantial farmer, a
narrow-minded, tattling old gossip, whose character is not worth
describing. She had two sons, Robert, a rough countrified farmer, and
Richard, a retiring, studious young man, who was studying the classics
with the vicar’s assistance, preparing for college, with a view to
enter the church.
Their sister Jane was a young lady of some talents, and more ambition.
She had, at her own desire, received a regular boarding-school
education, superior to what any member of the family had obtained
before. She had taken the polish well, acquired considerable elegance
of manners, quite lost her provincial accent, and could boast of more
accomplishments than the vicar’s daughters. She was considered a beauty
besides; but never for a moment could she number me amongst her
admirers. She was about six and twenty, rather tall and very slender,
her hair was neither chestnut nor auburn, but a most decided bright,
light red; her complexion was remarkably fair and brilliant, her head
small, neck long, chin well turned, but very short, lips thin and red,
eyes clear hazel, quick, and penetrating, but entirely destitute of
poetry or feeling. She had, or might have had, many suitors in her own
rank of life, but scornfully repulsed or rejected them all; for none
but a gentleman could please her refined taste, and none but a rich one
could satisfy her soaring ambition. One gentleman there was, from whom
she had lately received some rather pointed attentions, and upon whose
heart, name, and fortune, it was whispered, she had serious designs.
This was Mr. Lawrence, the young squire, whose family had formerly
occupied Wildfell Hall, but had deserted it, some fifteen years ago,
for a more modern and commodious mansion in the neighbouring parish.
Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first
instalment of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I’ll send
you the rest at my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than
stuff your purse with such ungainly, heavy pieces,—tell me still, and
I’ll pardon your bad taste, and willingly keep the treasure to myself.
Yours immutably,
GILBERT MARKHAM.