BRANWELL'S FAILINGS.--PUBLICATION OF 'JANE EYRE.'
Novel-writing--The Sisters' Method of Work--Branwell's Failing Health
and Irregularities--'Jane Eyre'--Its Reception and Character--It was
not Influenced by Branwell--Letter and Sketches of Branwell, 1848.
But, at this time, neither 'Wuthering Heights' nor 'The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall' was before the public. It was not, indeed, till the
summer of 1847 that the former, with 'Agnes Grey,' was accepted for
publication. Meanwhile Anne was toiling away at her second book, and
Charlotte was writing 'Jane Eyre,' under spells of inspiration.
Mrs. Gaskell has told us that the sisters were wont to put away their
work at nine o'clock, and to walk about the sitting-room, talking over
the plots of their stories, and discussing the incidents of them. Once
or twice a week each was accustomed to read to the others what she had
written, and hear the opinions they passed upon it. Mr. Bronte retired
early to rest, and was in ignorance of the nature of the work going
on, for his daughters never spoke to him of it, any more than they did
to their friends. The writing of the sisters was, in fact, a secret
shared only by their brother Branwell, who unquestionably gave his
advice upon it, and instructed them on many points, besides, of
practical value in their dealings with publishers and literary men,
which their small knowledge of the world caused them to overlook.
But, at the time, Branwell's health was visibly failing, and it became
evident that, though naturally stronger than his sisters, he was not
exempt from the consumptive tendency of his family. All his endeavours
to obtain employment had proved futile. His physical health had long
been giving way, and this soon rendered him incapable of sustained
exertion. Much of his strange conduct arose probably from the reaction
of this weakness on a mind endowed with so much intellectual power.
In most winters on these Yorkshire hills there are spells of severe
frost and cold, and these were always times of suffering to the
Brontes. Influenza would become epidemic at Haworth, and seldom
neglected the inmates of the parsonage, close by the churchyard as the
house was. Mr. Bronte had struggled hard to have proper drainage
introduced into the village, but in vain. There was, indeed, 'such a
series of North-pole days' in the December of 1846, as Charlotte did
not remember; the sky looked like ice, and the wind was as keen as a
two-edged blade. The consequence was that all the house was laid up
with coughs and colds. Anne suffered from asthma; Mr. Bronte and
Branwell had influenza and cough. Anxiously must they have watched
every indication of change in the wind, and longed for the southwest
breezes that, even in winter, sometimes came over the moors with all
the softness of spring; and, on this occasion, they were not long
disappointed, and Anne became much better. The novel writing went on
as before. Branwell's weakness and failings sometimes broke in upon
this employment, but we do not find that, during the year 1847, he
gave such trouble as would be likely to influence his sisters' work.
Of course he had little or no money at hand, and we know that he had
contracted some small obligations during the period of distraction of
the previous year. The result of this was that a sheriff's-officer
arrived at Haworth, and Branwell's debts had to be paid, whereat his
sister Charlotte seems to have been very angry, for she appears
afterwards to accuse herself of being 'too demonstrative and
vehement.' About three months later Charlotte was again in doubt about
Branwell; she says his behaviour was 'extravagant,' and that he
dropped 'mysterious hints,' which led her to believe that he had
contracted further debts. In this, however, she was mistaken.
In the May of 1847, Charlotte invited 'E.' to visit her, and said that
Branwell was quieter, for the good reason that he had got to the end
of a considerable sum of money he became possessed of in the spring,
and was obliged to restrict himself in some degree. 'You must,' she
continues, 'expect to find him weaker in mind, and the complete rake
in appearance. I have no apprehension of his being uncivil to you; on
the contrary, he will be as smooth as oil.' It would appear that he
had had some sum laid out, which he then recovered; but, as we have
seen, he had got into debt before, and, in his alarm at the prospect
of imprisonment in York Castle, it is said, told his friends, in the
neighbourhood where he had been tutor, of his straits; upon which the
widow of his late employer sent him money in kindness of heart,
through a third person. At this period he expended much of his time at
home in reading, and he wrote several poems.
At the end of July, Charlotte, as we have been told, consulted her
brother as to the reason why Messrs. Smith and Elder, to whom she had
sent 'The Professor,' did not reply. He at once set it down to her not
having enclosed a postage stamp. On the 2nd of August, she wrote
again, and promptly received the considerate answer which encouraged
her to send to them, on the twenty-fourth of the same month, her
three-volume work, 'Jane Eyre.' This was accepted, and given to the
world in the following October. Meanwhile, in the beginning of August,
'E.' had paid her visit to the parsonage, and the friends had enjoyed
the glorious weather in walking on the moors. Charlotte had returned
the visit almost immediately, and the proofs of 'Jane Eyre' were
corrected by her during her absence, sitting even at the same table
with her friend, to whom, curiously enough, she said not a word about
the work in hand. Upon her return to Haworth, she wrote: 'I reached
home, and found all well. Thank God for it.' 'Wuthering Heights' and
'Agnes Grey' still lingered in the hands of the publisher, from whom
the authors had obtained but impoverishing terms; 'a bargain,' says
Mrs. Gaskell, in mentioning the circumstance, 'to be alluded to
further.' Nothing more, however, appears in the 'Life of Charlotte' on
the subject; and we may hope that the celebrity which the novels of
the 'Messrs. Bell' soon acquired, made a substantial difference in the
first terms of the agreement. During the next three months, Charlotte
was in correspondence with Messrs. Smith and Elder, Mr. G. H. Lewes,
and Mr. W. S. Williams, in respect of the reviews of 'Jane Eyre,'
which were then appearing.
'Jane Eyre' came upon the reading world of 1847 as a veritable
revelation. It was a tragic story of the feelings, so different in
character from the trite affectations of the commonplace novel of the
day; it was informed with such a passionate energy, and filled with
such soul-absorbing interests, that it was received at once as a
monument of great and undoubted genius. Reading the book to-day, we
can easily understand why Charlotte Bronte gained such a mastery over
the spirits of her time, and earned for herself an imperishable
renown. She would do the same now. The strange, lonely, unfriended
childhood of Jane Eyre, the experiences she undergoes at Gateshead,
and at the Lowood School, and her confidence and self-reliance through
them all, mark the story as vitally true; but, when this plain little
personage manifests the depths of her feelings, and calls forth our
human sympathies in her hopes and her sorrows; when we read the
terrific tragedy of her relationship with Rochester, and are shaken
with the storm and stress of the feelings that move her; when, above
all, we see her come out from the shadow, with her nobility and purity
unsullied, though once more she is friendless and alone, we are
carried beyond ourselves in admiration of the genius who has painted a
picture at once so truly human and so very strange.
'Jane Eyre,' the book, was the natural and unforced outcome of its
author's personality, and, though Jane Eyre, the character, is not
Charlotte Bronte in the sense in which Lucy Snowe is, yet in Charlotte
Bronte were all the powers and capabilities that moved Jane Eyre. This
book, then, came upon people in 1847 as a revelation; they felt
themselves in the hands of a very Titan, and were carried on by an
uncontrollable stream. But there were some amongst them who struggled
against its influence, when they found that the shallow bounds of
conventionality had been far overpassed, and when they saw that its
author was little skilled in the ways of the world. These revolted
against the power that made them, perforce, interested in a character,
in Rochester, who had fallen away from the high Christian ideal. Hence
arose that outcry against what was termed the 'immorality' of the
book, against its 'coarseness,' its 'laxity of tone,' and the
'heathenish doctrine of religion' that filled it, which gave such
pain, in the parsonage at Haworth, to the simple-minded girl, its
author, against whom the dictum of the 'Quarterly Review' was written:
'If we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but
to ascribe it to one who has for some sufficient reason long forfeited
the society of her own sex.'
But such critics as these forgot that the people whom we love most in
life, are not those who are supremely noble, absolutely perfect,
superhuman, and angelic; but those who are beautiful and true in spite
of their failings, and though clogged with all the faults with which
our humanity has laden them; those who, like the child in Wordsworth's
ode, live 'trailing clouds of glory' with them from divinity, in the
midst of the shame and sin of the world. These are the lights which
illumine 'Jane Eyre,' with a loveliness that is truly and perfectly
human. So the book made its way, after the wild fervour of its first
reception, to a pinnacle in English literature where it must ever
remain, as the work of a great and original genius, and, as we now
know, of a true and noble woman.
Small need was there, then, that Mrs. Gaskell should seek to explain
those features of Charlotte's genius, which brought down upon 'Jane
Eyre' and its author such expressions of blame as these, by references
to her brother's character and history, as she understood them.
Whatever may have been the case with the novels of Emily and Anne,
those of Charlotte were clearly the outcome of her own nature and of
her own experience, and were uninfluenced in one way or other by her
brother. If she takes a suggestion from his affairs at all, she deals
with it coldly or sternly. Take for instance that passage I have
quoted from 'The Professor,' where William Crimsworth speaks of his
recollection of an instance of domestic treachery.
In December, 1847, appeared the works of Ellis and Acton Bell. The
Christmas of that year found the three sisters noted in the world of
authors--Currer Bell, famous. Not often can so much be recorded of a
family. Branwell seems to have been considerably elated by their
success, and the festivities of the season were indulged in by him to
his injury. His feeble health was soon affected by things that would
have had little influence upon ordinarily strong men, and he suffered
the consequences. On the 11th of January, 1848, Charlotte writes:--'We
have not been very comfortable here at home lately. Branwell has, by
some means, continued to get more money from the old quarter, and has
led us a sad life.... Papa is harassed day and night; we have little
peace; he is always sick; has two or three times fallen down in fits;
what will be the ultimate end, God knows. But who is without their
drawback, their scourge, their skeleton behind the curtain? It remains
only to do one's best, and endure with patience what God sends.' In
this month the second edition of 'Jane Eyre' appeared.
It must have been in reference to this period that Mrs. Gaskell has
said it might well have happened that Branwell had shot his father.
But the statement is an exaggeration; and, indeed, I have been told,
both by Martha Brown and Nancy Wainwright, that Branwell was not
nearly so bad as Mrs. Gaskell has made him appear. 'If he had wanted
to shoot his father,' says my informant, 'he could easily have done
it, for there were loaded guns and pistols hung over the bed-room door
constantly.' She relates that, on one occasion, she was occupied in
tidying up the bed-room, and had just taken down the fire-arms to
dust, when Mr. Bronte entered the room in great consternation,
forbidding her, at any time thenceforth, on any account whatever, to
meddle with them, for they were loaded even then, and might have been
accidentally discharged to her own danger. He again hung up the arms
himself. Mr. Bronte carried on this singular practice, and could not
be induced to discontinue it; and, as the reader is aware, Branwell
and his father occupied this bed-room.
Branwell himself was very conscious of his failings at this time, and
somewhat ashamed of them. He writes to Leyland during the January of
1848: 'I was _really_ far enough from well when I saw you last week at
Halifax; and, if you should happen to see Mrs. ---- of ----, you would
greatly oblige me by telling her that I consider her conduct towards
me as most kind and motherly, and that, if I did anything during
temporary illness, to offend her, I deeply regret it, and beg her to
take my regret as my apology till I see her again; which I trust will
be ere long.' He continues, speaking in general terms of his literary
work, and his poems, mentioning especially the poem of 'Caroline,'
which he had written a long time before, and concludes by promising a
longer letter later on.
There is prefixed to this letter a drawing, one of the strangest that
Branwell ever made,--which he advises his friend to destroy,--a
portrait of himself, head and shoulders, vigorously executed with the
pen, and an admirable likeness too, in profile, grave and thoughtful,
wearing his spectacles, but a portrait of Branwell in what a plight!
For, just as the martyrs of old are represented with the knife planted
in their breast, and the rope placed round their neck, so has Branwell
pictured himself, with the halter about his throat, in the morbid
martyrdom of his feverish imagination.