BRANWELL BRONTE AND 'WUTHERING HEIGHTS.'
'Wuthering Heights'--Reception of the Book by the Public--It is
Misunderstood--Its Authorship--Mr. Dearden's Account--Statements
of Mr. Edward Sloane and Mr. Grundy--Remarks by Mr. T. Wemyss
Reid--Correspondences between 'Wuthering Heights' and Branwell's
Letters--The 'Carving-knife Episode'--Further Correspondences--
Resemblances of Thought in Branwell and Emily.
We have now become acquainted with the principal features of
Branwell's career, have obtained some insight into his character, and
learned much respecting his genius. We have gained also some knowledge
of the history of the Bronte sisters in that most crucial period of
their lives, when they returned again to literature with the new
earnest which led them to fame.
We have seen that it was Branwell who first seriously undertook the
production of a novel, and we have noticed Mr. Grundy's statement
concerning the authorship of 'Wuthering Heights.' Here, then, is the
proper place in which to say something on this question; for there
have not been wanting others also to assert that Branwell was, in
great part, the writer of it. Miss Robinson, in her 'Emily Bronte,'
dismisses the assertion as altogether untrue; but she rightly says, as
all will agree, that 'in the contemptuous silence of those who know
their falsity, such slanders live and thrive like unclean insects
under fallen stones.' It cannot, therefore, be inappropriate, in such
a work as the present, to record, as clearly and succinctly as may be,
what has been said on the subject, and to make a suggestion--for it is
nothing more--as to what is the truth of the matter.
When 'Wuthering Heights,' after its slow progress through the press,
was given to the world in the December of 1847, neither the critics
nor the public were very well able to grasp its meaning. Reviewers,
to quote Charlotte Bronte, 'too often remind us of the mob of
Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before the "writing
on the wall," and unable to read the characters or make known the
interpretation.' In 'Wuthering Heights' they found the subject
disagreeable, the characters brutal, the conception crude, and the
object of the work wholly unintelligible. The most that could be made
of it, was that some rude soul in the north of England, burning with
spite against his species, had set himself, with intent little short
of diabolical, to lay open the most vicious depths of selfishness and
crime, which he had embodied in the actions of characters so lost and
revolting, that the mind recoiled with a shudder from the perusal of
the monstrosity he had created. One critic, who dwelt at some length
on the want of 'tone' and polish in the book, surmised that the writer
of it had suffered, 'not disappointment in love, but some great
mortification of pride,' which had so embittered his spirit that he
had prepared this stinging story in vengeance on his species, and had
flung it, crying, 'There, take that!' with cynical pleasure, in the
very teeth of humankind.
This writer even felt it his duty to caution young people against the
book. 'It ought to be banished from refined society,' he says. 'The
whole tone of the book smacks of lowness.'--'A person may be
ill-mannered from want of delicacy of perception or cultivation, or
ill-mannered intentionally; the author of "Wuthering Heights" is
both.'--'But the taint of vulgarity in our author extends deeper than
mere snobbishness; he is rude, because he prefers to be so.' I quote
these remarks, as an extreme instance, to show that a critic, who
could recognize the great imaginative power, the subtlety, the keen
insight, and the fine dramatic character of 'Wuthering Heights,' yet
felt such a strong repugnance to its unknown author that he thought
him unfit to associate with his fellow-men. It never crossed the minds
of the critics in those times that the book could be by any but a man
of strong personal character, and one with a wide experience of the
dark side of human nature.
However, a feeling speedily grew up that 'Wuthering Heights' was an
earlier and immature production, attempted to be palmed off upon the
public, of the author of 'Jane Eyre,' against whom a charge of bad
faith was thereby virtually made; and even Sydney Dobell (in the
'Palladium' of September, 1850), the first critic who had sympathy
enough with genius to discern the nature and comprehend the
significance of the book, did not escape this error. It is not
necessary here to repeat the unfortunate consequences of this
misunderstanding, which caused Charlotte eventually to throw off the
disguise, and declare openly that 'Wuthering Heights' was the work of
her sister Emily. 'Unjust and grievous error!' says Charlotte. 'We
laughed at it at first, but I deeply lament it now.' In the face of
her statement, further remark on the authorship was naturally
silenced; but, from time to time, when the book was discussed, much
astonishment was manifested that a simple and inexperienced girl, like
Emily Bronte, had been able to draw, with such nervous and morbid
analysis, so sombre a picture of the workings of passions which she
could never have actually known, and of natures 'so relentless and
implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen,' as those of Heathcliff and
Hindley Earnshaw.
A writer in the 'Cornhill Magazine'[36] who attributes to Emily Bronte
the distinction that she has written a book 'which stands as
completely alone in the language as does "Paradise Lost," or the
"Pilgrim's Progress,"' thus speaks of it: 'Its power,' he says, 'is
absolutely Titanic; from the first page to the last it reads like the
intellectual throes of a giant. It is fearful, it is true, and perhaps
one of the most unpleasant books ever written: but we stand in amaze
at the almost incredible fact that it was written by a slim country
girl, who would have passed in a crowd as an insignificant person, and
who had had little or no experience of the ways of the world. In
Heathcliff, Emily Bronte has drawn the greatest villain extant, after
Iago. He has no match out of Shakespeare. The Mephistopheles of
Goethe's "Faust" is a person of gentlemanly proclivities compared with
Heathcliff.... But "Wuthering Heights" is a marvellous curiosity in
literature. We challenge the world to produce another work in which
the whole atmosphere seems so surcharged with suppressed electricity,
and bound in with the blackness of tempest and desolation.'
[36] Vol. xxviii, p. 54. 1873.
Perhaps this same grim and Titanic power of 'Wuthering Heights' is one
reason why many readers do not understand it fully. 'It is possible,'
Mr. Swinburne says, 'that, to take full delight in Emily Bronte's
book, one must have something by natural inheritance of her instinct,
and something by earlier association of her love of the special points
of earth--the same lights, and sounds, and colours, and odours, and
sights, and shapes of the same fierce, free landscape of tenantless,
and fruitless, and fenceless moor.'
But the composition of 'Wuthering Heights' was in great part
incomprehensible to Charlotte herself, though she endeavours to
account for it by a consideration of her sister's character and
circumstances. For, as we have seen, she says, 'I am bound to avow
that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry
amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who
sometimes pass her convent gates.'
'"Wuthering Heights,"' to quote Charlotte Bronte's Preface to the new
edition of it, 'was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of
homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary
moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be elicited a
head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one
element of grandeur--power. He wrought with a rude chisel, from no
model but the vision of his meditations. With time and labour, the
crag took human shape; and there it stands colossal, dark, and
frowning, half statue, half rock: in the former sense, terrible and
goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of
mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its
blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the
giant's foot.'
Many years ago, a writer in the 'People's Magazine,' speaking of the
authorship of 'Wuthering Heights,' said: 'Who would suppose that
Heathcliff, a man who never swerved from his arrow-straight course to
perdition from his cradle to his grave, ... had been conceived by a
timid and retiring female? But this was the case.' The perusal of this
sentence led Mr. William Dearden--author of the 'Star Seer' and the
'Maid of Caldene'--who was acquainted with Branwell Bronte, to
communicate to the 'Halifax Guardian,' in June, 1867, some facts,
within his personal knowledge, touching the question, which he
extracted from the MS. preface to his poem entitled, 'The Demon
Queen,' not then published.
It appears, from this account, that Branwell and Mr. Dearden had
entered into a friendly poetic contest. Each was to write a poem
in which the principal character was to have a real or imaginary
existence before the Deluge. They met, on the occasion, at the 'Cross
Roads,' a hostel a little more than a mile from Haworth on the road
to Keighley, where an evening was spent in the reading of their
respective productions. Leyland was to decide upon the merits of the
poems. In reference to this meeting Mr. Dearden says,
'We met at the time and place appointed ... I read the first act
of the "Demon Queen;" but, when Branwell dived into his hat--the
usual receptacle of his fugitive scraps--where he supposed he had
deposited his MS. poem, he found he had by mistake placed there
a number of stray leaves of a novel on which he had been trying
his "prentice hand." Chagrined at the disappointment he had
caused, he was about to return the papers to his hat, when both
friends earnestly pressed him to read them, as they felt a
curiosity to see how he could wield the pen of a novelist. After
some hesitation, he complied with the request, and riveted our
attention for about an hour, dropping each sheet, when read, into
his hat. The story broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence,
and he gave us the sequel, _viva voce_, together with the real
names of the prototypes of his characters; but, as some of these
personages are still living, I refrain from pointing them out to
the public. He said he had not yet fixed upon a title for his
production, and was afraid he should never be able to meet with a
publisher who would have the hardihood to usher it into the world.
The scene of the fragment which Branwell read, and the characters
introduced in it--so far as then developed--were the same as those
in "Wuthering Heights," which Charlotte Bronte confidently asserts
was the production of her sister Emily.'
Another friend of Branwell Bronte also, Mr. Edward Sloane of Halifax,
author of a work entitled, 'Essays, Tales, and Sketches,' (1849)
declared to Mr. Dearden that Branwell had read to him, portion by
portion, the novel as it was produced, at the time, insomuch that he
no sooner began the perusal of 'Wuthering Heights,' when published,
than he was able to anticipate the characters and incidents to be
disclosed.[37] Thus Mr. Dearden and the late Mr. Sloane claimed to have
knowledge of 'Wuthering Heights' as the work of Branwell, before it
was issued from the press; and we have seen that Mr. Grundy declares
Branwell to have said, with the consent of his sister, that he had
written 'a great portion of "Wuthering Heights" himself,' a statement
which, remembering the 'weird fancies of diseased genius' with which
Branwell had entertained him at Luddenden Foot, inclined Mr. Grundy to
believe 'that the very plot was his invention rather than his
sister's.'[38]
[37] It should be stated, perhaps, that one recent newspaper
writer, possibly with the intention of discrediting any
claim that might be set up for Branwell's authorship of
'Wuthering Heights,' has drawn from the depths of his
memory, or, possibly, of his imagination, a story that
Branwell had read to him, as his own, the plot of 'Shirley.'
But, since 'Shirley' was not commenced very many months
before Branwell's death, and since he had been in his grave
a year when it was published, it is obviously impossible
that he can ever have desired to draw to himself the praise
which was bestowed upon it. And this ingenious writer has
adopted, curiously enough, almost the phraseology of Mr.
Dearden's account, published eighteen years ago, saying, 'he
took from his hat, the usual receptacle, &c.,' which
suggests an impression of unconscious plagiarism.
[38] 'Pictures of the Past,' by Francis H. Grundy, C.E.
1879, p. 80.
The evidence for the original ascription of authorship is simple in
the extreme. Charlotte Bronte has told us in the Biographical Notice,
as well as in the Preface, which she has prefixed to 'Wuthering
Heights,' that the book was the work of Ellis Bell; and clearly no
shadow of doubt was on her mind at the time as to the accuracy of this
statement; nor had the publisher of the book any uncertainty as to the
matter. Moreover, the servant Martha is said to have seen Emily Bronte
writing it. We are told, also, that it is impossible that the upright
spirit of the gentle Emily could resort to the miserable fraud of
appropriating a work which was not her own. And, lastly, modern
critics have not found it difficult to believe that a woman might be
the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' They see nothing incongruous or
impossible in the possession, by a feminine intellect, of such a
searching knowledge of sinister propensities as are developed in that
book, nor of its descending to those chaotic depths of black moral
distortion, where it is possible for Hindley Earnshaw, with hideous
blasphemy, to drink damnation to his soul, that he may be able to
'punish its Maker,' and where the life-long vengeance of Heathcliff is
drawn out, with wondrous power, to its ghastly and impotent end.
How far Charlotte's statement is weakened by the fact that, up to the
time when she discovered the volume of verse, and the three sisters
commenced their novels--at which period it will be remembered one
volume of Branwell's work was written--they had made no communication
to one another of the literary work which each had in progress, is,
perhaps, a matter for personal opinion. The declaration of Martha
would probably be of little value, unless we knew that what Emily was
writing was entirely independent of Branwell's work. And, again, those
who have sought to defend Ellis Bell from the charge of fraud, have
perhaps been over hasty; for, so far as I know, that charge has never
been either made or implied.
As to the capability of Branwell to write 'Wuthering Heights,' not
much need be said here. Those who read this book will see that,
despite his weaknesses and his follies, Branwell was, indeed,
unfortunate in having to bear the penalty, in ceaseless open
discussion, of 'une fanfaronnade des vices qu'il n'avait pas,' and
that, moreover, his memory has been darkened, and his acts
misconstrued, by sundry writers, who have endeavoured to find in
his character the source of the darkest passages in the works of
his sisters.
Far from being hopelessly a 'miserable fellow,' an 'unprincipled
dreamer,' an 'unnerved and garrulous prodigal,' as we have been told
he was, he had, in fact, within him, an abundance of worthy ambition,
a modest confidence in his own ability, which he was never known to
vaunt, and a just pride in the celebrity of his family, which, it may
be trusted, will remove from him, at any rate, the imputation of a
lack of moral power to do anything good or forcible at all.
Those who have heard fall from the lips of Branwell Bronte--and they
are few now--all those weird stories, strange imaginings, and vivid
and brilliant disquisitions on the life of the people of the
West-Riding, will recognize that there was at least no opposition, but
rather an affinity, between the tendency of his thoughts and those of
the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' And, as to special points in the
story, it may be said that Branwell Bronte had tasted most of the
passions, weaknesses, and emotions there depicted; had loved, in
frenzied delusion, as fiercely as Heathcliff loved; as with Hindley
Earnshaw, too, in the pain of loss, 'when his ship struck; the captain
abandoned his post; and the crew, instead of trying to save her,
rushed into riot and confusion, leaving no hope for their luckless
vessel.' He had, too, indeed, manifested much of the doating folly of
the unhappy master of the 'Heights'; and, finally, there is no doubt
that he possessed, nevertheless, almost as much force of character,
determination, and energy as Heathcliff himself.
The following extract from a lecture by Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, will show
the opinion of that gentleman--which he applies to prove that Branwell
was in part the subject of his sister's work--that there is a distinct
correspondence in the feelings and utterances of Heathcliff and
Branwell in this book, which, as he observes, critics have again and
again declared to be like the dream of an opium-eater, which we have
seen that Branwell was. Mr. Reid states: 'I said that, perhaps, the
most striking part of "Wuthering Heights" was that which deals with
the relations of Heathcliff and Catherine, after she had become the
wife of another. Whole pages of the story are filled with the ravings
and ragings of the villain against the man whose life stands between
him and the woman he loves. Similar ravings are to be found in all the
letters of Branwell Bronte written at this period of his career; and
we may be sure that similar ravings were always on his lips, as, moody
and more than half mad, he wandered about the rooms of the parsonage
at Haworth. Nay, I have found some striking verbal coincidences
between Branwell's own language and passages in "Wuthering Heights."
In one of his own letters there are these words in reference to the
object of his passion: "My own life without her will be hell. What can
the so-called love of her wretched, sickly husband be to her compared
with mine?" Now, turn to "Wuthering Heights," and you will read these
words: "Two words would comprehend my future--_death_ and _hell_:
existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy
for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine.
If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as
much in eighty years as I could in a day."'[39]
[39] Lecture by Mr. T. Wemyss Reid.
If Mr. Reid had quoted the beginning of this paragraph, another point
of correspondence would have been perceived between the feelings
manifested in it and those which had actuated Branwell Bronte.
Heathcliff is speaking: '"You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?" he
said. "Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that
for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me!
At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it
haunted me on my return to the neighbourhood last summer; but only her
own assurance could make me admit the horrible idea again. And then,
Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I
dreamt!"'
We have seen that, in the summer of 1845, Branwell lost his employment,
and returned to the neighbourhood of Haworth, and that he, too, at
that most miserable period of _his_ life, when he wrote his novel, and
'Real Rest,' and 'Penmaenmawr,' had had a notion that the lady of his
affections had nearly forgotten him.
It may be observed that Catherine Earnshaw, in an earlier part of the
book, uses a like antithesis to that quoted by Mr. Reid. 'Whatever our
souls are made of,' says she, speaking of Heathcliff and herself, 'his
and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from
lightning, or frost from fire.' Though it is not strictly accurate
that in _all_ Branwell's letters at this period there are similar
ravings, or that such were always on his lips, there are, at all
events, other coincidences of thought and expression to be found in
his letters and poems with certain features and passages in 'Wuthering
Heights,' which are not less striking. A few instances will illustrate
much in that work which it is not easy to believe could have been
transcribed by the writer from the utterances of another. Even so
early as his letter to John Brown, we have seen with what force
Branwell could express himself when he chose. He speaks in that letter
of one who 'will be used as the tongs of hell,' and of another 'out
of whose eyes Satan looks as from windows.' Let us turn to where
Heathcliff's eyes are described, in Chapter vii. of the novel, as
'that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their
windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies;'
and, in Chapter xvii., where Isabella Heathcliff says of them: 'The
clouded windows of hell flashed a moment towards me; the fiend which
usually looked out, however, was so dimmed and drowned that I did not
fear to hazard another sound of derision.'
We have noticed how Branwell plays upon the word _castaway_ at the
close of his letter on his novel. Charlotte has said they all had a
leaning to Cowper's poem, 'The Castaway,' and appropriated it in one
way or another; she told Mrs. Gaskell that Branwell had done so. The
word is used twice in 'Wuthering Heights.' Heathcliff is described as
having been a 'little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway,' and
the younger Catherine addresses pious Joseph, oddly enough, and by a
coincidence singular enough, remembering Branwell's allusion in his
letter, in these words: 'No, reprobate! you are a castaway--be off, or
I'll hurt you seriously! I'll have you all modelled in wax and clay.'
Mention may also be made here, with reference to the occurrence of the
names 'Linton' and 'Hareton' in 'Wuthering Heights,' that, somewhat
before the time of the writing of his novel, Branwell was accustomed
frequently to visit a place of the former designation, and that he
had, as we have seen, when he was in Broughton-in-Furness, a friend of
the name of Ayrton.
In the above letter on his novel it will be remembered, in speaking of
the character of his work, that Branwell says he hopes to leap from
the present bathos of fictitious literature to the firmly-fixed rock
honoured by the foot of a Smollett or a Fielding, and speaks of
revealing man's heart as faithfully as in the pages of 'Hamlet' or
'Lear.' In the first four chapters of 'Wuthering Heights,' which serve
as prelude to the darker portions of the story, we are introduced to
the inmates of the farm that gives its name to the novel. Mr.
Lockwood, who has rented Thrushcross Grange of Heathcliff, and has
come to reside there, relates his experience of two visits he pays to
his landlord at the 'Heights.' In the excellent humour of this portion
of the story we are certainly reminded of Branwell Bronte, and perhaps
of Smollett and Fielding too. The succeeding chapters are related in a
manner more subdued, proper to the narration of the housekeeper. There
is just one mention of 'King Lear' in 'Wuthering Heights,' on the
second of these visits, when, at last, Mr. Lockwood, after he has been
knocked down by the dogs, addresses the inmates of the 'Heights,'
'with several incoherent threats of retaliation, that, in their
infinite depth of virulency, smacked of "King Lear."' More than once
have this story and Shakspeare's great tragedy been named in kinship,
and Miss Robinson, unaware of Branwell's observation on his own prose
tale, gives a second place, with 'King Lear,' to 'Wuthering Heights.'
It is impossible to read 'Wuthering Heights' without being struck with
the part which consumption and death are made to play in the progress
of the story. Scarcely a character is there depicted in whom we do
not recognize some trait, some weakness, remotely or more closely,
indicating deep-seated phthisis; and evidences of a true and certain
observation, in the writer, are to be found in the pictures of its
power there delineated. In Branwell's poem on 'Caroline,' we have
already seen with what certain touch he depicts her death from that
disease; and how deeply, and almost morbidly, he broods on its
ravages; and, in one of his later poems, we have a second and more
striking picture of decline. In Emily's verse anything of the kind is
entirely wanting; and, indeed, it is what we miss in her poems, even
more than what we find in Branwell's, that must ever surprise us when
we look for the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' Branwell, in his
writings, is often engaged with subjects of real and personal
interest, and the scheme of his work is apparent. Several of his
poems, indeed, when once read, leave an impress on the memory which
is evidence enough of the power and originality by which they are
inspired. For the most part, Emily's poems are impersonal,
imaginative, and ideal.
It will be remembered that Mr. Grundy, in his 'Pictures of the Past,'
has given an account of his last interview with Branwell, which he
declares took place but a few days before Branwell died. I have shown
conclusively that the interview is ascribed by Mr. Grundy, and by Miss
Robinson following him, to a wrong date, and that it took place, in
fact, in 1846, when the manuscript was still in the author's hands,
perhaps, indeed, undergoing revision at the time. Branwell, according
to his friend, had concealed in his coat sleeve, on this occasion, a
carving-knife, with which, in his frenzy, he designed to kill the
devil, whose call, he supposed, had summoned him to the inn; and he
was surprised to find Mr. Grundy there instead. I have surmised that,
when this grotesque episode occurred, Branwell was but jesting with
his friend, who, in his surprise, took him altogether _au serieux_;
and, remembering that Mr. Grundy says Branwell had declared to him
before that 'Wuthering Heights' was in great part his own work, it
will be seen that there are passages in the novel which seem to lend
probability both to this surmise as to Branwell's intention, and also
to Mr. Grundy's statement. Thus, in Chapter ix., Hindley Earnshaw
returns to the house in a state of frenzied intoxication, and, finding
Nelly Dean stowing away his son in a cupboard, he flies at her with a
madman's rage, crying: 'By heaven and hell, you've sworn between you
to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of
my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the
carving-knife, Nelly! You needn't laugh; for I've just crammed
Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Blackhorse marsh; two is the same as
one--and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!'
To which Nelly Dean replies, 'But I don't like the carving-knife, Mr.
Hindley; it has been cutting red herrings. I'd rather be shot, if you
please.' Again, in Chapter xvii., when Isabella's taunts have stung
Heathcliff to retaliation, he snatches up a dinner-knife and flings it
at her head; and she is struck beneath the ear. We may believe, then,
that when Branwell appeared in this strange guise before his friend,
he was but jestingly rehearsing in act, with an 'antic disposition'
such incidents as he had recently described in the volume he had
mentioned to Mr. Grundy.
Miss Robinson, in her 'Emily Bronte' (p. 95), has some sarcastic
remarks about Branwell's pride in his family name. 'Proud of his
name!' she writes: 'He wrote a poem on it, "Bronte," an eulogy of
Nelson, which won the patronizing approbation of Leigh Hunt, Miss
Martineau, and others, to whom, at his special request, it was
submitted. Had he ever heard of his dozen aunts and uncles, the
Pruntys of Ahaderg? Or if not, with what sensations must the Vicar
(_sic_) of Haworth have listened to this blazoning forth and
triumphing over the glories of his ancient name?' Branwell's pride in
the name of Bronte would have been foolish enough if it had been of
the nature Miss Robinson supposes; but perhaps it had another meaning.
At any rate Nelly Dean puts pride of birth in quite a different light
in 'Wuthering Heights,' where she gives good advice to Heathcliff.
'You're fit for a prince in disguise,' she says even to the 'little
Lascar,' the 'American or Spanish castaway.' 'Who knows but your
father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of
them able to buy up, with one week's income, Wuthering Heights and
Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors
and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high
notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me
courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!'
This was exactly what Branwell Bronte did.
There are two other points in which I will indicate correspondences
between the phraseology and ideas of 'Wuthering Heights' and those of
Branwell Bronte. In one of his letters here published, Branwell,
sketching a criminal grinning with the halter round his neck, asks the
question: 'Is there really such a thing as the _Risus Sardonicus_? Did
a man ever laugh the morning he was to be hanged?' Now, in the novel,
Isabella Heathcliff says: 'I was in the condition of mind to be
shocked at nothing: in fact, I was as reckless as some malefactors
show themselves at the foot of the gallows.' Lastly, Heathcliff
declares, speaking of Hindley Earnshaw: 'Correctly, that fool's body
should be buried at the cross-roads, without ceremony of any kind.'
Now Branwell was not only familiar with the traditions of suicides
buried at the cross-roads near Haworth, as well as at similar
cross-roads, but he was accustomed, in his perambulations through the
district, when in this direction, to visit the ancient hostel at that
place: and, indeed, it was this house he fixed upon for the reading of
the poem he had written, and where he read, as we have seen, in lieu
of it, the portion, of his novel, surmised to be 'Wuthering Heights,'
to Mr. Dearden and his other friend. It would be tedious to indicate
all the minor similarities of expression in the novel to those in
Branwell's letters.
Yet there are two or three points noticeable in 'Wuthering Heights,'
which are marked in Emily's verse. Emily's love of Nature, of the
moors; her deep brooding on the mystery of being, which led her to
look on the calm of death as an assurance of future rest for all, are
to be found in her poetry; and, in a lesser degree, also in 'Wuthering
Heights.' Thus we read, in Chapter xvi. of the story, of Linton and
his dead wife: 'Next morning--bright and cheerful out of doors--stole
softened in through the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the
couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had
his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair
features were almost as death-like as those of the form beside him,
and almost as fixed: but _his_ was the hush of exhausted anguish, and
_hers_ of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips
wearing the expression of a smile; no angel in heaven could be more
beautiful than she appeared. And I partook of the infinite calm in
which she lay: my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed
on that untroubled image of Divine rest. I instinctively echoed the
words she had uttered a few hours before: "Incomparably beyond and
above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is
at home with God!"'
The reflections suggested to Nelly Dean by the spectacle of repose
presented by the dead Catherine seem to Mr. Reid to be characteristic
of Emily, speaking 'out of the fulness of her heart.' 'I don't know if
it be a peculiarity in me,' says the narrator in the story, 'but I am
seldom otherwise than happy while 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 inhabitants.' But Mr. Lockwood is made to
say, speaking of the housekeeper's anxiety to know if he thinks such
people are happy in the other world, 'I declined answering Mrs. Dean's
question, which struck me as something heterodox.' The story also
concludes, speaking of the head-stones of Edgar Linton, Heathcliff,
and Catherine: 'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched
the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the
soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could
ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.'
But there is in these very points a remarkable coincidence of feeling
between Branwell and Emily also. Indeed, in the expression of these
thoughts, Branwell's verse is well-nigh more powerful than Emily's. We
have known his desire for the oblivious peace of 'Real Rest'; and, in
his letters, he has sketched many head-stones, on one of which are the
words: 'I implore for rest'; and, in the 'Epistle to a Child in her
Grave,' he has told us of the freedom from ill of that quiet and
painless sepulchre. Here are a few stray lines of Branwell's, which
will serve as illustration of this coincidence:
'Think not that Life is happiness,
But deem it _duty_ joined with _care_;
Implore for _hope_ in your distress,
And for your answers, get _despair_;
Yet travel on, for Life's rough road
May end, at last, in rest with _God_!'
Again we may ask: did Branwell Bronte write 'Wuthering Heights,'
or any part of it? The evidence that he did so is, probably,
insufficient. But let it be remembered that, as stated in his letter
to Leyland, he had clearly undertaken a three-volume novel, and, in
one way or other, had written a volume of his story. The charge of
falsehood brought against Branwell in his statement to Mr. Grundy will
not now probably be renewed; but there may not be wanting some to say
that Mr. Grundy is in error in connecting what his friend said to him
about his own novel with some allusion of his sister's to 'Wuthering
Heights,' and that those gentlemen who believe the novel Branwell read
to them to be the same as that attributed to Emily are in error also.
It has been said that, on the rare occasions on which the father or
brother entered the room where the sisters were writing their novels,
nothing was said of the work in progress. But it must be confessed
that these views meet with little encouragement from what we know of
the history of that period.
We have seen that, prior to the autumn of 1845, Branwell had been
employed in writing his novel; a little later, we have reason to
suspect that he is not going on with it, and we find him writing a
poem with the same theme as a contemporary one of Emily's. We then
find the sisters taking up novel writing with precisely Branwell's
views of the profit to be derived from it. When he writes to Leyland
on the 28th of April, 1846, shortly before the poems of his sisters
were published, and while they are finishing their novels, Branwell
has ceased to speak of his, but says that, if he were in London
personally, he would try a certain publisher with his poems. Now it
was an edition of Wordsworth by this same publisher that Charlotte
had, four months earlier, fixed upon as a model for the sisters' own
volume of poems. Branwell, then, however strained his relations with
his sister Charlotte might be at this late date, must have known that
his sisters were writing their tales. Why, then, the change in his
aims? Why is he, who had propounded that view of the superior
advantages of prose over poetic writing, which afterwards determined
the sisters to write novels, silent about his own, and thinking of
publishing his poems? and never again do we hear of any attempt on his
part to finish his novel, though he lived a year after his sisters'
works were published. What had become of his novel in the interim?
Perhaps there is evidence, then, to warrant us in throwing out a
suggestion that there may have been some measure of collaboration
between Branwell and his sister, that he originated the idea, moulded
the characters, and wrote the earlier portion of the work, which she,
taking, revised, amended, completed, and imbued with enough of an
individual spirit to give unity to the whole. In support of this view,
it may be noted that, though there is no break in the style of
'Wuthering Heights,' yet all the interests of the original story are,
in a manner, completed in the seventeenth chapter--that is, something
more than half-way through the book. In that first portion of it we
trace the vehement passion of Heathcliff for Catherine up to her
death. We see his enmity to Edgar Linton, which is satisfied by his
possession of Linton's sister, whom he hates and despises, but who is
the mother of a child to be heir to Thrushcross Grange, and we see the
death of this unhappy wife. In this first portion of the novel is
unrolled also the gradual growth of Heathcliff's hatred of Earnshaw,
from the time when he says: 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay
Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at
last. I hope he will not die before I do,' up to the death of that
miserable character, whose son remains an ignorant dependent, because
his drunken father has been lured to make away with his wealth at the
gaming-table to his Mephistophelian pursuer. Here is depicted that
dark and malevolent spirit which ranks Heathcliff with the demons, as
where he says: 'I have no pity--I have no pity! The more the worms
writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails. It is a moral
teething, and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the
increase of pain.'
In the second part of the story, opening with the eighteenth chapter,
we are occupied with the fates of the children of Linton, Earnshaw,
and Heathcliff. We learn how the latter trains up his miserable,
puling son for the purpose of marrying the daughter of Linton, which
he forcibly brings about, and thus completes his possession of the
Grange; how he endeavours to pervert the youthful Hareton Earnshaw, to
'see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another with the same wind
to twist it;' and in the end how his vengeance is completely thwarted.
Thus there are two distinct parts in 'Wuthering Heights,' one being
the completion and complement of the other.
As some evidence for the view here thrown out, I may mention that, in
reading 'Wuthering Heights' in order to discover what correspondences
there might exist between it and Branwell's writings, in letters,
etc., I was very much struck with the fact that, for every five of
such correspondences which I discovered in the first part of the
novel, I could find only one in the latter. We need not, therefore, be
surprised if, in the concluding half of 'Wuthering Heights,' Branwell
has stood to the author as model for some details of character, though
these can be very few. Yet Nelly Dean does say of Heathcliff's love
for Catherine: 'He might have had a monomania on the subject of his
departed idol; but on every other point his wits were as sound as
mine.'[40]
[40] 'Wuthering Heights,' chap. xxxiii.
The collaboration which I have mentioned would by no means imply
unfair action on the part of Emily Bronte: she was ever a kind,
gentle, and faithful friend to Branwell, and had looked forward,
perhaps more anxiously than her sisters, to his success in the world.
There would be nothing extraordinary, then, in Branwell handing over
to his favourite sister, to whom he was always grateful for her
abiding affection, the work which he had begun, and which he, perhaps,
felt himself dissatisfied with, or unable to complete, or in his
supplying her with a plot, and assisting her with his experience in
the delineation of the characters in any story she might wish to
produce. To have done so would be quite consistent with what we know
of him; and he never claimed the authorship, so far as I know, after
the occasion of Mr. Grundy's visit to the parsonage twelve months
before the publication of the novel; and he read it to two or three
personal friends only, and to these, if my supposition be correct,
perhaps before his sister had taken up the work.
One other circumstance, besides the disappearance of Branwell's novel,
finds explanation in this view of the matter: that Emily, who never
undertook a second novel, produced, not only the most original and
powerful of the contemporary tales of the sisters, but one that is
also a much longer story than 'The Professor,' by Charlotte, and half
as long again as 'Agnes Grey,' by Anne. Here, then, must probably
remain the question of the origin of 'Wuthering Heights.'