The August and succeeding issues of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE will contain a
series of papers giving the dramatic and hitherto unknown history of
the Brontes in Ireland. They will throw a vivid light upon the origin
of the Bronte novels, and upon the ancestors of the Brontes. As Doctor
Wright says:
"Hugh Bronte, the father of Patrick, and grandfather of the famous
novelists, first makes his appearance as if he had stepped out of
a Bronte novel. His early experiences qualified him to take a
permanent place beside the child 'Jane Eyre' at Mrs. Reed's. The
treatment that embittered his childhood is never referred to by
the grand-daughters in their correspondence, but it is quite
evident that the knowledge of his hardships dominated their minds,
and gave a bent to their imaginations, when depicting the misery
of young lives dependent on charity."
All the existing biographies of the Bronte sisters are confined to the
Brontes in England. There were but two people competent to give the
story of the Bronte ancestors: one, Captain Mayne Reid; and the other,
Doctor William Wright, who has spent many years preparing this
history.
Doctor Wright had exceptional advantages for his labor of love. In his
childhood his nurse told him the traditions of the Brontes; his tutor
was full of recollections of the father, uncles, and grandfather of
the novelists. As a student he wrote screeds of the Bronte novels in
place of essays, having first been told the incidents and events by
his tutor. His recollections, extending back to the early part of this
century, have been strengthened by years of patient investigation.
During different years Doctor Wright has spent several months at a
time in Ireland, following up obscure traces of the family, hunting
down traditions connected with the Brontes, or carefully verifying
minute points derived from his own recollections or the reports of
others. The result of these painstaking researches, which have
extended over a lifetime, is an authentic narrative of great human
interest.
The unadorned history of the family reads like a Bronte novel. The
adventures, the hairbreadth escapes, the struggles, the kidnapping,
the abuse, which figure in these chapters are stranger than fiction.
The courtship, elopement, and marriage of Hugh Bronte with Alice
McGlory form one of the most extraordinary narratives of love and
adventure that has ever been penned.
The half-humorous, half-pathetic, but always intensely interesting,
descriptions of the ancestors of the Bronte sisters, their peculiarities,
the superstition with which some of them were regarded as masters of the
black art, the respect that they commanded as fighters and singers and
workmen, the side-lights thrown upon the early and bitter contest over
tenant rights, the exposition of strange religious beliefs--all of this,
and more that cannot here even be hinted at, serve to present a curious
and vivid picture of everyday life in a corner of Ireland one hundred
years ago.
These articles bring out the hereditary and surrounding influences
which helped to shape the genius of Charlotte Bronte. Aside from the
value which they have because they furnish a remarkable commentary on
the work of the great novelist, they are pages of real life of
fascination and remarkable interest.
The first article will give a glimpse of the early Brontes and the
singular weird story of that dark foundling who brought ruin to his
benefactors, and whose machinations resulted in the absolute
separation of Hugh Bronte, the grandfather of the novelists, from his
parents--a separation so complete that he was never able to learn in
what part of Ireland his father's family lived. Hugh Bronte was
kidnapped when he was six years old. The strange narrative of his
abduction will be given in the August number of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE.