Very quietly and sedately did “Currer Bell” take her sudden change of fortune. She corresponded freely with her publishers, and with the critics who had written to her concerning her book; she told her father the secret of her authorship, and exhibited to him the draft which was the substantial recompense of her labours; but in her letters to her friend no difference of tone is to be detected. Success was very sweet to her, as we know; but she bore her honours meekly, betraying nothing of the gratified ambition which must have filled her soul. She had not even revealed her identity to the publisher till, by an accident, she became aware of the rumour that the writer had satirised Mr. Thackeray under the character of Rochester, and had even obtruded on the sorrows of his private life. Shocked at this supposition, she went to London by the night train, accompanied by Anne, and having breakfasted at the station, walked to the establishment in Cornhill, where she had much difficulty in penetrating to the head of the house, having stated that he would not know her by her name. At last he came into the shop, saying, with some annoyance: “Young woman, what can you want with me?” “Sir, we have come up from Yorkshire. I wish to speak to you privately. I wrote ‘Jane Eyre.’” “You wrote ‘Jane Eyre!’” cried the delighted publisher; and taking them into his office, insisted on their coming to the house of his mother, who would take every care of them. Charlotte related afterwards the strange contrast between the desolate waiting at the station in the early morning, and their loneliness in the crowd of the great city, and finding themselves in the evening seated among the brilliant company at the Opera House, listening to the performance of Jenny Lind.
But her thoughts were soon turned from her literary triumphs. Branwell, who had been so long the dark shadow in their “humble home,” was taken from them without any lengthened preliminary warning. Sharing to the full the eccentricity of the family, he resolved to die as nobody else had ever died before; and when the last agony came on he rose to his feet, as though proudly defying death itself to do its worst, and expired standing. In the following letter, hitherto unpublished, to one of her friends — not to her old schoolfellow — Charlotte thus speaks of the last act in the tragedy of her brother’s life:
Haworth, October 14th, 1848.
The event to which you allude came upon us indeed with startling suddenness, and was a severe shock to us all. My poor brother has long had a shaken constitution, and during the summer his appetite had been diminished and he had seemed weaker; but neither we, nor himself, nor any medical man who was consulted on his case, thought it one of immediate danger: he was out of doors two days before his death, and was only confined to bed one single day. I thank you for your kind sympathy. Many, under the circumstances, would think our loss rather a relief than otherwise; in truth, we must acknowledge, in all humility and gratitude, that God has greatly tempered judgment with mercy; but yet, as you doubtless know from experience, the last earthly separation cannot take place between near relations without the keenest pangs on the part of the survivors. Every wrong and sin is forgotten then; pity and grief share the heart and the memory between them. Yet we are not without comfort in our affliction. A most propitious change marked the few last days of poor Branwell’s life; his demeanour, his language, his sentiments, were all singularly altered and softened, and this change could not be owing to the fear of death, for within half an hour of his decease he seemed unconscious of danger. In God’s hands we leave him! He sees not as man sees. Papa, I am thankful to say, has borne the event pretty well. His distress was great at first. To lose an only son is no ordinary trial. But his physical strength has not hitherto failed him, and he has now in a great measure recovered his mental composure; my dear sisters are pretty well also. Unfortunately illness attacked me at the crisis, when strength was most needed; I bore up for a day or two, hoping to be better, but got worse; fever, sickness, total loss of appetite and internal pain were the symptoms. The doctor pronounced it to be bilious fever — but I think it must have been in a mitigated form; it yielded to medicine and care in a few days; I was only confined to my bed a week, and am, I trust, nearly well now. I felt it a grievous thing to be incapacitated from action and effort at a time when action and effort were most called for. The past month seems an overclouded period in my life.
Alas! the brave woman who felt it to be “a grievous thing” that she could not bear her full share of the family burden, little knew how terribly that burden was to be increased, how much heavier and blacker were the clouds which awaited her than any through which she had yet passed. The storm which even then was gathering upon her path was one which no sunshine of fame or prosperity could dissipate. The one to whom Charlotte’s heart had always clung most fondly, the sister who had been nearest to her in age and nearest to her in affection, Emily, the brilliant but ill-fated child of genius, began to fade. “She had never,” says Charlotte, speaking in the solitude of her fame, “lingered over any task in her life, and she did not linger now.” Yet the quick decline of Emily Brontë is one of the saddest of all the sad features of the story. I have spoken of her reserve. So intense was it that when dying she refused to admit even to her own sisters that she was ill. They saw her fading before their eyes; they knew that the grave was yawning at her feet; and yet they dared not offer her any attention such as an invalid needed, and such as they were longing to bestow upon her. It was the cruellest torture of Charlotte’s life. During the brief period of Emily’s illness, her sister writes as follows to her friend:
I mentioned your coming to Emily as a mere suggestion, with the faint hope that the prospect might cheer her, as she really esteems you perhaps more than any other person out of this house. I found, however, it would not do; any, the slightest excitement or putting out of the way, is not to be thought of, and indeed I do not think the journey in this unsettled weather, with the walk from Keighley and back, at all advisable for yourself. Yet I should have liked to see you, and so would Anne. Emily continues much the same: yesterday I thought her a little better, but to-day she is not so well. I hope still, for I must hope; she is as dear to me as life. If I let the faintness of despair reach my heart I shall become worthless. The attack was, I believe, in the first place, inflammation of the lungs; it ought to have been met promptly in time; but she would take no care, use no means, she is too intractable. I do wish I knew her state and feelings more clearly. The fever is not so high as it was, but the pain in the side, the cough, the emaciation are there still.
The days went by in the parsonage, slowly, solemnly, each bringing some fresh burden of sorrow to the broken hearts of Charlotte and Anne. Emily’s resolute spirit was unbending to the last. Day after day she refused to own that she was ill, refused to take rest or medicine or stimulants; compelled her trembling hands to labour as of old. And so came the bitter morning in December, the story of which has been told by Mrs. Gaskell with simple pathos, when she “arose and dressed herself as usual, making many a pause, but doing everything for herself,” even going on with her sewing as at any time during the years past; until suddenly she laid the unfinished work aside, whispered faintly to her sister: “If you send for a doctor I will see him now,” and in two hours passed quietly away.
The broken father, supported on either side by his surviving daughters, followed Emily to her grave in the old church. There was one other mourner — the fierce old dog whom she had loved better almost than any human being.
Yes — says Charlotte, writing to her friend — there is no Emily in time or on earth now. Yesterday we put her poor wasted mortal frame quietly under the church pavement. We are very calm at present. Why should we be otherwise? The anguish of seeing her suffer is over. We feel she is at peace. No need now to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not feel them. She died in a time of promise. We saw her taken from life in its prime. But it is God’s will, and the place where she is gone is better than that she has left.
It was in the very month of December, 1848, when Charlotte passed through this fierce ordeal, and
wrote these tender words of love and resignation, that the Quarterly Review denounced her as an improper woman, who “for some sufficient reason” had forfeited the society of her sex!
Terrible was the storm of death which in three short months swept off two of the little household at Haworth; but it had not even yet exhausted all its fury. Scarcely had Emily been laid in the grave than Anne, the youngest and gentlest of the three sisters, began to fade. Very slowly did she droop. The winter passed away, and the spring came with a glimmer of hope; but the following unpublished letter, written on the 16th of May, shows with what fears Charlotte set forth on that visit to Scarborough which her sister insisted upon undertaking as a last resource:
Next Wednesday is the day fixed for our departure; Ellen accompanies us at her own kind and friendly wish. I would not refuse her society, but dared not urge her to go, for I have little hope that the excursion will be one of pleasure or benefit to those engaged in it. Anne is extremely weak. She herself has a fixed impression that the sea-air will give her a chance of regaining strength. That chance therefore she must have. Having resolved to try the experiment, misgivings are useless, and yet when I look at her misgivings will rise. She is more emaciated than Emily was at the very last, her breath scarcely serves her to mount the stairs, however slowly. She sleeps very little at night, and often passes most of the forenoon in a semi-lethargic state. Still she is up all day, and even goes out a little when it is fine. Fresh air usually acts as a temporary stimulus, but its reviving power diminishes.
I am indebted to the faithful friend and companion to whom allusion is made above, for the following account of the sad journey to Scarborough, and of its tragic end:
On our way to Scarborough we stopped at York, and after a rest at the George Hotel, and partaking of dinner, which she enjoyed, Anne went out in a bath-chair, and made purchases, along with Charlotte, of bonnets and dresses, besides visiting the minister. The morning after her arrival at Scarborough, she insisted on going to the baths, and would be left there with only the attendant in charge. She walked back alone to her lodgings, but fell exhausted as she reached the garden-gate. She never named this, but it was discovered afterwards. The same day she had a drive in a donkey carriage, and talked with the boy-driver on kindness to animals. On Sunday she wanted again to be left alone, and for us to go to church. Finding we would not leave her, she begged that she might go out, and we walked down towards the saloon, she resting half way, and sending us on with the excuse that she wanted us to see the place, this being our first visit, though not hers. In the evening, after again asking us to go to church, she sat by the sitting-room window, enjoying a very glorious sunset. Next morning (the day she died) she rose by seven o’clock and dressed herself, refusing all assistance. She was the first of the little party to be ready to go downstairs; but when she reached the head of the stairs, she felt fearful of descending. Charlotte went to her and discovered this. I fancying there was some difficulty, left my room to see what it was, when Anne smilingly told me she felt afraid of the steps downward. I immediately said: “Let me try to carry you;” she looked pleased, but feared for me. Charlotte was angry at the idea, and greatly distressed, I could see, at this new evidence of Anne’s weakness. Charlotte was at last persuaded to go to her room and leave us. I then went a step or two below Anne, and begged her to put her arms round my neck, and I said: “I will carry you like a baby.” She still feared, but on my promising to put her down if I could not do it, she consented to trust herself to me. Strength seemed to be given for the effort, but on reaching the foot of the stairs, poor Anne’s head fell like a leaden weight upon the top of mine. The shock was terrible, for I felt it could only be death that was coming. I just managed to bear her to the front of her easy-chair and drop her into it, falling myself on my knees before her, very miserable at the fact, and letting her fall at last, though it was into her chair. She was shaken, but she put out her arms to comfort me, and said: “You know it could not be helped, you did your best.” After this she sat at the breakfast-table and partook of a basin of boiled milk prepared for her. As 11 A.M. approached, she wondered if she could be conveyed home in time to die there. At 2 P.M. death had come, and left only her beautiful form in the sweetest peace.
She rendered up her soul with that sweetness and resignation of spirit which had adorned her throughout her brief life, even in the last hour crying: “Take courage, Charlotte, take courage!” as she bade farewell to the sister who was left.
Before me lie the few letters which remain of Emily and Anne. There is little in them worth preserving. Both make reference to the fact that Charlotte is the great correspondent of the family, and that their brief and uninteresting epistles can have no charm for one who is constantly receiving letters from her. Yet that modest reserve which distinguished the greatest of the three is plainly visible in what little remains of the correspondence of the others. They had discovered before their death the real power that lay within them; they had just experienced the joy which comes from the exercise of this power; they had looked forward to a future which should be sunny and prosperous, as no other part of their lives of toil and patient endurance had been. Suddenly death had confronted them, and they recognised the fact that they must leave their work undone. Each faced the dread enemy in her own way, but neither shrank even from that blow. Emily’s proud spirit refused to be conquered, and, as we have seen, up to the last agony she carried herself as one sternly indifferent to the weaknesses of the flesh, including that final weakness which must conquer all of us in the end. Anne found consolation, pure and deep, in her religious faith, and she died cheerfully in the firm belief that she was but entering upon that fuller life which lay beyond the grave. The one was defiant, the other resigned; but courage and fortitude were shown by each in accordance with her own special idiosyncrasy.
VIII.
“SHIRLEY.”
Charlotte went back from Scarborough to Haworth alone. Her father met her with unwonted demonstrations of affection, and she “tried to be glad” that she was once more under the familiar roof. “But this time joy was not to be the sensation.” Yet the courage which had held her sisters to the end supported her amid the pangs of loneliness and bereavement. Even now there was no bitterness, no morbid gloom in the heart which had suffered so keenly. Quietly but resolutely setting aside her own sorrow, refusing all the invitations of her friend to seek temporary relief in change of scene, she sat down to complete the story which was intended to tell the world what the lost Emily had seemed to be in the eyes of her fond sister. By herself, in the room in which a short year ago three happy sisters had worked together, within the walls which could never again echo with the old voices, or walking on the moors, which would never more be trodden by the firm, elastic step of Emily, she composed the brilliant story of “Shirley” — the brightest and healthiest of her works. As she writes she sometimes sends forth messages to those who love her, which tell us of the spirit of the hero or the martyr burning within the frail frame of the solitary woman. “Submission, courage, exertion when practicable — these seem to be the weapons with which we must fight life’s long battle;” and that these are no mere words she proves with all her accustomed honesty and sincerity, by acting up to them to the very letter. But at times the burden presses upon her till it is almost past endurance. Strangely enough, it is a comparative trifle, as the world counts it, the illness of a servant, that occasions her fiercest outburst of open grief:
You have to fight your way through labour and difficulty at home, it appears, but I am truly glad now you did not come to Haworth. As matters have turned out you would have found only discomfort and gloom. Both Tabby and Martha are at this moment ill in bed. Martha’s illness has been most serious. She was seized with internal inflammation ten days ago; Tabby’s lame leg has broken out, she cannot stand or walk. I have one of Martha’s sisters to help me, and her mother comes up sometimes. There was one day last week when I fairly broke down for ten minutes, and sat down an
d cried like a fool. Martha’s illness was at its height; a cry from Tabby had called me into the kitchen, and I had found her laid on the floor, her head under the kitchen-grate. She had fallen from her chair in attempting to rise. Papa had just been declaring that Martha was in imminent danger; I was myself depressed with headache and sickness that day; I hardly knew what to do or where to turn. Thank God, Martha is now convalescent; Tabby, I trust, will be better soon. Papa is pretty well. I have the satisfaction of knowing that my publishers are delighted with what I sent them — this supports me, but life is a battle. May we all be enabled to fight it well.
This letter is dated September 24, 1849, at which time “Shirley” is written, and in the hands of her publishers. She has painted the character of Emily in that of Shirley herself; and her friend Ellen is shadowed forth to the world in the person of Caroline Helston. When the book, with its vivid pictures of Yorkshire life at the beginning of the century, and its masterly sketches of characters as real as those which Shakespeare brings upon the stage, is published, there is but one outcry of praise, even from the critics who were so eager to condemn “Jane Eyre.” Up to this point she had preserved her anonymity, but now she is discovered, and her admirers in London persuade her at last to visit them, and make acquaintance with her peers in the Republic of Letters, the men and women whose names were household words in Haworth Parsonage long before “Currer Bell” had made her first modest appeal to the world.
THE “FIELD HEAD” OF SHIRLEY.
A passage from one of the following letters, written during this first sojourn in London, has already been published; but it will well bear reprinting:
Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Page 432
