THE SISTERS' POEMS AND NOVELS.--BRANWELL'S LITERARY OCCUPATIONS.
The Sisters as Writers of Poetry--They Decide to Publish--Each
begins a Novel--The Spirit under which the Work was Undertaken--
'The Professor'--'Agnes Grey'--'Wuthering Heights'--Branwell's
Condition--A Touching Incident--'Epistle from a Father to a Child
in her Grave'--Letter with Sonnet--Publication of the Sisters'
Poems.
If Branwell Bronte had devoted himself to literature under the impulse
of his misfortune, his sisters were not long unoccupied ere they also
entered upon its pursuit. 'One day, in the autumn of 1845,' says
Charlotte, 'I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse in my
sister Emily's handwriting.' The elder sister was not surprised,
knowing that the younger could and did write verse; but she thought
these were no common effusions. 'To my ear,' she says, 'they had also a
peculiar music--wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was
not a person of demonstrative character, nor one on the recesses of
whose mind and feelings even those nearest and dearest to her could,
with impunity, intrude unlicensed; it took hours to reconcile her to
the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems
merited publication.' Charlotte Bronte here grasped, with unfailing
precision, the very secret spell which we find in Emily's poetry; the
strange, wild, weird voice, with which it speaks to us, spoke first of
all to her, and she felt the heather-scented breath, even as we do, of
the moorland air on which its music was borne. Anne also produced
verses, which had 'a sweet, sincere pathos of their own;' and the three
sisters, believing, after anxious deliberation, that they might get
their respective productions accepted for publication in one volume,
set on foot inquiries on the subject, and now adopted the pseudonyms of
Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which were afterwards to become so
famous. It was not, however, to be expected that the effusions of
inexperienced and unknown writers would be of such value as to induce
any publisher to take them on his own risk. Indeed, Miss Bronte says
'the great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind
from the publishers to whom we applied.' She wrote to Messrs. Chambers,
of Edinburgh, asking advice, and received a brief and business-like
reply, upon which the sisters acted, and at last made way.
On the 28th of January, 1846, Charlotte, as we have been informed,
wrote to Messrs. Aylott and Jones, asking if they would publish a
one-volume, octavo, of poems; if not at their own risk, on the authors'
account. Messrs. Aylott and Jones did not hesitate to accept the latter
proposal.
It must have been when the sisters became aware that publishers would
not accept the poetry of unknown writers on any other terms, that they
turned their thoughts to prose composition. Branwell, in his dire
distress, had fixed his attention on the writing of a three-volume
novel, principally as a refuge from mental disquiet; but his sisters,
now, with very different feelings, each set to work on a one-volume
tale. It had occurred to them, we are told, that by novel writing money
was to be made. They were, in fact, influenced by precisely the view of
the profit to be derived from fiction which Branwell had propounded in
his remarkable letter to his friend Leyland. 'Ill-success,' says
Charlotte, 'failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a
wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on
a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced "Wuthering Heights," Acton Bell,
"Agnes Grey," and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume.'
The business-like way in which the sisters went about their novel
writing, forbids us to believe that they brooded very much on the
conduct of their brother when the literary fervour was upon them; but
Miss Robinson leads her readers to think that his character and
failings had much to do with the tone which their works assumed.
Writing under this belief, and with this intention,--as might have been
expected,--she has found it necessary to paint every circumstance
relating to him, and the inmates of the parsonage, in the darkest
colours, and often has arrived at conclusions widely different from the
actual facts. Moreover this writer, in supporting her views, has fallen
into the serious error of placing the event which completed Branwell's
disappointment, and its consequences to him, four months earlier than
they occurred.
The novels which the sisters wrote under the influence of these
troubles do not, indeed, bear any marked traces of them. 'The
Professor,' Charlotte's story, which was not published until long
after, is the direct outcome of her personal experiences in Brussels,
and the few shadows that one finds in it are the record of such
troubles as she had there. In this book, Currer Bell describes the life
of endeavour, which seemed to her the most honourable, the treading of
those paths in the outer world whose pleasures and pains she had found
so keen. Already, in the March of 1845, she had written to a friend
telling her that she was no longer happy at Haworth, though it was her
duty to remain there. 'There was a time when Haworth was a very
pleasant place to me; it is not so now. I feel as if we were all buried
here. I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action.' Thus 'The
Professor' is the story of the work and of the life of action for which
the author herself was pining. William Crimsworth, neglected by his
rich relations, cut off by his brutal brother, seeks his fortune in
Brussels, and obtains a place as professor of English in a school
there. He leads a life that Charlotte knows well; he is in the place
she has learned to love; and he describes, with close observation, the
character and the routine to which she is so well accustomed. Pelet,
his master, is an original, as Paul Emanuel is, and Zoraide Reuter is
the prototype of Madame Beck. These characters are forcibly conceived,
as is that of Mademoiselle Henri; but the book bears the traces of a
novice's hand. Thus, how unnatural does the proposal which Crimsworth
makes to Frances read to us, where, while asking her to be his wife,
demanding of her what regard she has for him, he says not a word of his
own devotion to her; and where, even when she grants him all he has
been hoping for so long, his sole remark is, 'Very well, Frances!' But
a stronger point of interest for us in the book is the spirit which
moves Crimsworth in his endeavours, where he struggles with might and
main, just as Charlotte herself wished to do, for a competency; and
there is the school, too, which his wife designs and establishes, the
very pattern of that which was in Charlotte's own mind. It is
instructive and singular that in this book we find Crimsworth suffering
from the hypochondria which beset its author, and that, too, at the
time when he should have been happiest.
'Man,' he says, '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 over-strained 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.' This was the phantom that visited Charlotte also. Of the effect
of her brother's conduct on her I have found but two passages in 'The
Professor,'--that which I have quoted respecting the youth of Victor
Crimsworth earlier in this volume, and that, in Chapter xx., where
William Crimsworth leaves Pelet's house lest a 'practical modern French
novel' should be in process beneath its roof. It was Charlotte's
design, in writing 'The Professor,' to lend it no charm of romance. Her
hero was to work his way through life, and to find no sudden turn to
endow him with wealth, for he was to earn every shilling he possessed,
and he was not even to marry a beautiful girl or a lady of rank in the
end. 'In the sequel, however,' says Charlotte, 'I find that publishers
in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked
something more imaginative and poetical;' and for this reason,
probably, the book did not find a publisher so soon as 'Agnes Grey,'
and 'Wuthering Heights,' which were sent from the parsonage with it.
'Agnes Grey,' Anne Bronte's story, like 'The Professor,' is the
picture of things its author had known, painted almost as she saw
them. Anne's experience as a governess had made her acquainted with
certain phases of life, which she could not but reproduce. Hence Agnes
Grey is thrown into the sphere of the careless and selfish family of
the Bloomfields; and afterwards, with the Murrays at Horton Lodge, she
sees a kind of personal character and social life which, on account of
its coldness and worldliness, greatly repelled Anne Bronte, with her
warm and sympathetic nature. She teaches the same lesson of the folly
of _mariages de convenance_, and of the wrong of subjecting the
affections, and bartering happiness for the sake of worldly position,
which she afterwards dwells upon more strongly in 'The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall.' It is in this fictitious parallel of Anne Bronte's own
experience, if anywhere in her writings, that we might expect to find
some reflection of the recent history of her brother's fall. Mr. Reid
has asserted that this formed the dark turning-point in her life, for
'living under the same roof with him when he went astray,' she 'was
compelled to be a closer and more constant witness of his sins and his
sufferings than either Charlotte or Emily.' Her letters home, it has
been stated, conveyed the news of her dark forebodings. But, all the
same, the story she wrote, almost under the shadow of her brother's
disgrace, is the simple, straightforward, humorous narrative of the
gentle and pious Anne Bronte, revealing not so much as a suspicion of
vice or thought of evil; and, in this respect, it presents a contrast
to her second work. There is evidence that when the sisters wrote
their novels they had already attributed monomania to Branwell, and
could thus explain his history for themselves. It was not in the
nature of 'Agnes Grey' to be successful as a novel, but we find in it
that Anne possessed a faculty which scarcely appears in Charlotte's
writings,--that of humour. Look, for instance, at the way in which she
sketches so forcibly, and with such droll perception, the character of
the youthful Bloomfields, and, afterwards, of Miss Matilda Murray,
with her equine propensities and masculine tastes.
'Wuthering Heights,' the work which Emily Bronte sent from the
parsonage at the same time, incomparably finer in its powers than
either 'The Professor' or 'Agnes Grey,' is a dramatic story of passion
and tragic energy that astonished the world,--and with which it has
been said Branwell's life in those days had much concern.
Inferentially, it is contended that, without the darkening effect on
her understanding of Branwell's misfortunes, without the neighbourhood
of the 'brother of set purpose drinking himself to death out of furious
thwarted passion for a mistress he might not marry,' Emily Bronte could
not have conceived it. It will, then, perhaps be better to defer the
study of Emily's production till something more has been said of the
period in which it was written; and until some new light has been
thrown upon Branwell's character and career, and upon the anachronistic
improprieties of previous writers.
Mrs. Gaskell passes over the period in which the sisters betook
themselves to novel writing with little comment. But she keeps in
remembrance the presence of Branwell while their literary labours
continued,--'the black shadow of remorse lying over one in their home.'
What it was that the biographer of Charlotte supposed stung Branwell's
conscience is well-known; but, if there had been this cause for it in
one of a naturally remorseful disposition, as his was, we must have met
with some expression of it in his letters or poems, for
'The Mind, that broods o'er guilty woes,
Is like the Scorpion girt by fire.'
Yet, perhaps, one of the most significant points to be observed in
Branwell's writings, and in studying his conduct, is the absence of any
such remorse. He encouraged himself--after the first shock of his
disappointment--with the hope that time would bring him the happiness
he wished; and, as some believe, with good and sufficient reason. He
was unhappy when he thought of the supposed ill-health and sufferings
of the lady.
It is noteworthy that something inconsequent, in putting down
Branwell's conduct entirely to remorse in this way, was the feature of
Mrs. Gaskell's work, to which so great an analyzer of motives as George
Eliot, as shown by her letters published quite recently, took
exception, and regretted.[24]
[24] 'George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters and
Journals,' arranged and edited by her husband, J. W. Cross,
1885, vol. i., p. 441.
If we believe Branwell to have been subject to hallucination, we may
then, perhaps, gain an idea of the true cause of the wretchedness he
endured when he fell back on his own reflections. His life had been one
of severe disappointment. Those early aims in art, for which he had
spent so much preparation, and from which he hoped so much, had fallen
away before him; his first efforts as usher and tutor had come to
nothing; then followed the lapse which ended his stay with the railway
company; and, lastly, the infatuation which had seized him in his late
employment, with its vision of future opulence, and rest from all
former change and trouble, ending in dismissal, distraction, and
disgrace. All these things, rushing back upon his mind in moments of
reflection, were more than he could bear, and he sought, in various
ways, some honourable to him, to divert himself from the subject, but
sometimes in a manner that gave cause for complaint at home, and
resulted in moodiness and irritability of temper. On the other hand, he
seems to have felt himself aggrieved by a want of sympathy on the part
of his family in sufferings they did not comprehend.
Mr. George Searle Phillips, with whom Branwell became acquainted at
Bradford, and who visited him at Haworth, says that he complained
sometimes of the way in which he was treated at home; and, as an
instance, relates the following:
'One of the Sunday-school girls, in whom he and all his house took much
interest, fell very sick, and they were afraid she would not live. "I
went to see the poor little thing," he said; "sat with her
half-an-hour, and read a psalm to her, and a hymn at her request. I
felt very like praying with her too," he added, his voice trembling
with emotion; "but, you see, I was not good enough. How dare I pray for
another, who had almost forgotten how to pray for myself! I came away
with a heavy heart, for I felt sure she would die, and went straight
home, where I fell into melancholy musings. I wanted somebody to cheer
me. I often do, but no kind word finds its way even to my ears, much
less to my heart. Charlotte observed my depression, and asked what
ailed me. So I told her. She looked at me with a look I shall never
forget--if I live to be a hundred years old--which I never shall. It
was not like her at all. It wounded me as if some one had struck me a
blow in the mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It was a
dubious look. It ran over me, questioning, and examining, as if I had
been a wild beast. It said, 'Did my ears deceive me, or did I hear
aright?' And then came the painful, baffled expression, which was worse
than all. It said, 'I wonder if that's true?' But, as she left the
room, she seemed to accuse herself of having wronged me, and smiled
kindly upon me, and said, 'She is my little scholar, and I will go and
see her.' I replied not a word. I was too much cut up. When she was
gone, I came over here to the 'Black Bull,' and made a note of it in
sheer disgust and desperation. Why could they not give me some credit
when I was trying to be good?"'[25]
[25] 'The Mirror,' 1872.
At the beginning of March, Charlotte returned from a visit to a friend,
and we hear that she found it very forced work to address her brother
when she went into the room where he was; but he took no notice, and
made no reply; he was stupefied; she had heard that he had got a
sovereign while she was away, on pretence of paying a pressing debt,
and had changed it, at a public-house, with the expected result.
Again Charlotte says, on March 31st, 1846: 'I am thankful papa
continues pretty well, though often made very miserable by Branwell's
wretched conduct. _There_--there is no change but for the worse.'
At this time Branwell wrote the following beautiful ode, somewhat
incomplete in its expression, yet characteristic of his genius, which
seems to have been inspired by the outcast feelings of which he spoke
to Mr. Phillips, and to contain some reproach to those who thought him
deficient in natural affection. It bears date April 3rd, 1846:
EPISTLE FROM A FATHER TO A CHILD IN HER GRAVE.
'From Earth,--whose life-reviving April showers
Hide withered grass 'neath Springtide's herald flowers,
And give, in each soft wind that drives her rain,
Promise of fields and forests rich again,--
I write to thee, the aspect of whose face
Can never change with altered time or place;
Whose eyes could look on India's fiercest wars
Less shrinking than the boldest son of Mars;
Whose lips, more firm that Stoic's long ago,
Would neither smile with joy nor blanch with woe;
Whose limbs could sufferings far more firmly bear
Than mightiest heroes in the storms of war;
Whose frame, nor wishes good, nor shrinks from ill,
Nor feels distraction's throb, nor pleasure's thrill.
'I write to thee what thou wilt never read,
For heed me thou _wilt not_, howe'er may bleed
The heart that many think a worthless stone,
But which oft aches for some beloved one;
Nor, if that life, mysterious, from on high,
Once more gave feeling to thy stony eye,
Could'st thou thy father know, or feel that he
Gave life and lineaments and thoughts to thee;
For when thou died'st, thy day was in its dawn,
And night still struggled with Life's opening morn;
The twilight star of childhood, thy young days
Alone illumined, with its twinkling rays,
So sweet, yet feeble, given from those dusk skies,
Whose kindling, coming noontide prophesies,
But tells us not that Summer's noon can shroud
Our sunshine with a veil of thunder-cloud.
'If, when thou freely gave the life, that ne'er
To thee had given either hope or fear,
But quietly had shone; nor asked if joy
Thy future course should cheer, or grief annoy;
'If then thoud'st seen, upon a summer sea,
One, once in features, as in blood, like thee,
On skies of azure blue and waters green,
Melting to mist amid the summer sheen,
In trouble gazing--ever hesitating
'Twixt miseries each hour new dread creating,
And joys--whate'er they cost--still doubly dear,
Those "troubled pleasures soon chastised by fear;"
If thou _had'st_ seen him, thou would'st ne'er believe
That thou had'st yet known what it was to live!
'Thine eyes could only see thy mother's breast;
Thy feelings only wished on that to rest;
That was thy world;--thy food and sleep it gave,
And slight the change 'twixt it and childhood's grave.
Thou saw'st this world like one who, prone, reposes,
Upon a plain, and in a bed of roses,
With nought in sight save marbled skies above,
Nought heard but breezes whispering in the grove:
I--thy life's source--was like a wanderer breasting
Keen mountain winds, and on a summit resting,
Whose rough rocks rose above the grassy mead,
With sleet and north winds howling overhead,
And Nature, like a map, beneath him spread;
Far winding river, tree, and tower, and town,
Shadow and sunlight, 'neath his gaze marked down
By that mysterious hand which graves the plan
Of that drear country called "The Life of Man."
'If seen, men's eyes would loathing shrink from thee,
And turn, perhaps, with no disgust to me;
Yet thou had'st beauty, innocence, and smiles,
And now hast rest from this world's woes and wiles,
While I have restlessness and worrying care,
So sure, thy lot is brighter, happier far.
'So let it be; and though thy ears may never
Hear these lines read beyond Death's darksome river,
Not vainly from the borders of despair
May rise a sound of joy that thou art freed from care!'
On the 6th of April of this year, Charlotte wrote to Messrs. Aylott &
Jones, informing them that 'the Messrs. Bell' were preparing for the
press a work of fiction, consisting of three distinct and unconnected
tales, which might be published either together, as a work of three
volumes of the ordinary novel size, or separately, as single volumes.
It was not their intention to publish these at their own expense, and
they wished to know if Messrs. Aylott would be likely to undertake the
work, if approved.
The novels must have been well on towards completion before the sisters
ventured on these inquiries. The firm thus addressed kindly offered
advice, of which Charlotte gladly availed herself to ask some
questions. These were respecting the difficulty which unknown authors
find in obtaining assistance from publishers; and Charlotte has indeed
informed us that the three tales were going about among them 'for the
space of a year and a half.' But 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Agnes Grey'
at last found acceptance in the early summer of 1847.
A friendly compact had been made between Branwell and Leyland that the
latter should model a medallion of his friend, and that Branwell should
write the poem 'Morley Hall,'--to which I have had occasion above to
allude--a subject in which the sculptor was much interested. Shortly
after his sister made the inquiries from Messrs. Aylott, Branwell
visited Halifax to sit for his medallion; and, on the 28th of April, he
wrote the following letter to his friend:--
'Haworth, Bradford,
'Yorks.
'MY DEAR SIR,
'As I am anxious--though my return for your kindness will be like
giving a sixpence for a sovereign lent--to do my best in my
intended lines on Morley, I want answers to the following
questions.... If I learn these facts, I'll do my best, but in all I
try to write I desire to stick to probabilities and local
characteristics.
'I cannot, without a smile at myself, think of my stay for three
days in Halifax on a business which need not have occupied three
hours; but, in truth, when I fall back _on_ myself, I suffer so
much wretchedness that I cannot withstand any temptation to get
_out_ of myself--and for that reason, I am prosecuting enquiries
about situations suitable to me, whereby I could have a voyage
abroad. The quietude of home, and the inability to make my family
aware of the nature of most of my sufferings, makes me write:
'Home thoughts are not with me,
Bright, as of yore;
Joys are forgot by me,
Taught to deplore!
My home has taken rest
In an afflicted breast,
Which I have often pressed,
But may no more.
'Troubles never come alone--and I have some little troubles astride
the shoulders of the big one.
'Literary exertion would seem a resource; but the depression
attendant on it, and the almost hopelessness of bursting through
the barriers of literary circles, and getting a hearing among
publishers, make me disheartened and indifferent, for I cannot
write what would be thrown unread into a library fire. Otherwise, I
have the materials for a respectably sized volume, and, if I were
in London personally, I might, perhaps, try ---- ----, a patronizer
of the sons of rhyme; though I daresay the poor man often smarts
for his liberality in publishing hideous trash. As I know that,
while here, I might send a manuscript to London, and say good-bye
to it, I feel it folly to feed the flames of a printer's fire. So
much for egotism!
'I enclose a horribly ill-drawn daub done to while away the time
this morning. I meant it to represent a very rough figure in stone.
'When all our cheerful hours seem gone for ever,
All lost that caused the body or the mind
To nourish love or friendship for our kind,
And Charon's boat, prepared, o'er Lethe's river
Our souls to waft, and all our thoughts to sever
From what was once life's Light; still there may be
Some well-loved bosom to whose pillow we
Could heartily our utter self deliver;
And if, toward her grave--Death's dreary road--
Our Darling's feet should tread, each step by her
Would draw our own steps to the same abode,
And make a festival of sepulture;
For what gave joy, and joy to us had owed,
Should death affright us from, when he would her restore?
'Yours most sincerely,
'P. B. BRONTE.'
The sketch, referred to in this letter, is in Indian-ink, and is of a
female figure, with clasped hands, streaming hair, and averted face. We
need not entertain a doubt as to whom it is intended to represent. It
is inscribed, in Spanish, 'Nuestra Senora de la Pena'--Our Lady of
Grief--which also appears on a headstone in the sketch.
The sonnet, which concludes this letter to Leyland, is beautiful as it
is sad, and not only possesses the musical cadences, and completeness
of theme, so essential in this mode of expression, but exhibits the
high culture of Branwell's mind, and the direction in which the
irrepressible emotions of his heart are moved.
Branwell, in this communication, makes no further mention of his novel.
Yet the experience of his sisters with their poems had only confirmed
the judgment he expressed six months before, that no pecuniary
advantage was to be obtained by publishing verse. The sisters had
expended, on their little volume, over thirty pounds; but they valued
it rightly as an effort to succeed. It was issued from the press early
in May.
Charlotte had conducted the negotiations with the publishers in a very
business-like way. She had directed them as to the copies to be sent
for review, and as to the advertisements, on which she wished to expend
little. The book appeared, and the world took little note of it: it was
scarcely mentioned anywhere; but the sisters at Haworth waited
patiently, and they were not dismayed that they waited in vain; for
they had new-born hope in their other literary venture of the three
prose stories. 'The book,' says Charlotte of the Poems, 'was printed:
it is scarcely known, and all of it that merits to be known are the
poems of Ellis Bell. The fixed conviction I held, and hold, of the
worth of these poems has not indeed received the confirmation of much
favourable criticism; but I must retain it notwithstanding.'
In his letter Branwell expresses himself as still anxious for
employment; and wise in the direction in which he seeks it. A total
change of scene and circumstance would have been, at this time, his
best cure and greatest blessing. Unhappily, he failed in the attempt;
and we find him again writing to Mr. Grundy, inquiring for some kind of
occupation.