Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes

by Bronte Sisters

  ‘Had his sins been scarlet in their dye, I believe now they are white as wool. He is at rest, and that comforts us all. Long before he quitted this world, life had no happiness for him.

  ‘Blackwood’s mention of Jane Eyre gratified me much, and will gratify me more, I dare say, when the ferment of other feelings than that of literary ambition shall have a little subsided in my mind.

  ‘The doctor has told me I must not expect too rapid a restoration to health; but to-day I certainly feel better. I am thankful to say my father has hitherto stood the storm well; and so have my dear sisters, to whose untiring care and kindness I am chiefly indebted for my present state of convalescence. — Believe me, my dear sir, yours faithfully,

  ‘C. Brontë.’

  The last letter in order of date that I have concerning Branwell is addressed to Ellen Nussey’s sister: —

  TO MISS MERCY NUSSEY

  ‘Haworth, October 25th, 1848.

  ‘My dear Miss Nussey, — Accept my sincere thanks for your kind letter. The event to which you allude came upon us 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 the case, thought it one of immediate danger. He was out of doors two days before 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 relatives 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. This change could not be owing to the fear of death, for till 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.

  ‘Give my best love to Mrs. Nussey and your sister, and — Believe me, my dear Miss Nussey, yours sincerely,

  ‘C. Brontë.’

  My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature — he was not aware that they had ever published a line.

  Who that reads these words addressed to Mr. Williams can for a moment imagine that Charlotte is speaking other than the truth? And yet we have Mr. Grundy writing:

  Patrick Brontë declared to me that he wrote a great portion of ‘Wuthering Heights’ himself.

  And Mr. George Searle Phillips, with more vivid imagination, describes Branwell holding forth to his friends in the parlour of the Black Bull at Haworth, upon the genius of his sisters, and upon the respective merits of Jane Eyre and other works. Mr. Leyland is even so foolish as to compare Branwell’s poetry with Emily’s, to the advantage of the former — which makes further comment impossible. ‘My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature’ — these words of Charlotte’s may be taken as final for all who had any doubts concerning the authorship of Wuthering Heights.

  CHAPTER VI: EMILY JANE BRONTË

  Emily Brontë is the sphinx of our modern literature. She came into being in the family of an obscure clergyman, and she went out of it at twenty-nine years of age without leaving behind her one single significant record which was any key to her character or to her mode of thought, save only the one famous novel, Wuthering Heights, and a few poems — some three or four of which will live in our poetic anthologies for ever. And she made no single friend other than her sister Anne. With Anne she must have corresponded during the two or three periods of her life when she was separated from that much loved sister; and we may be sure that the correspondence was of a singularly affectionate character. Charlotte, who never came very near to her in thought or sympathy, although she loved her younger sister so deeply, addressed her in one letter ‘mine own bonnie love’; and it is certain that her own letters to her two sisters, and particularly to Anne, must have been peculiarly tender and in no way lacking in abundant self-revelation. When Emily and Anne had both gone to the grave, Charlotte, it is probable, carefully destroyed every scrap of their correspondence, and, indeed, of their literary effects; and thus it is that, apart from her books and literary fragments, we know Emily only by two formal letters to her sister’s friend. Beyond these there is not one scrap of information as to Emily’s outlook upon life. In infancy she went with Charlotte to Cowan Bridge, and was described by the governess as ‘a pretty little thing.’ In girlhood she went to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head; but there, unlike Charlotte, she made no friends. She and Anne were inseparable when at home, but of what they said to one another there is no record. The sisters must have differed in many ways. Anne, gentle and persuasive, grew up like Charlotte, devoted to the Christianity of her father and mother, and entirely in harmony with all the conditions of a parsonage. It is impossible to think that the author of ‘The Old Stoic’ and ‘Last Lines’ was equally attached to the creeds of the churches; but what Emily thought on religious subjects the world will never know. Mrs. Gaskell put to Miss Nussey this very question: ‘What was Emily’s religion?’ But Emily was the last person in the world to have spoken to the most friendly of visitors about so sacred a theme. For a short time, as we know, Emily was in a school at Law Hill near Halifax — a Miss Patchet’s. She was, for a still longer period, at the Héger Pensionnat at Brussels. Mrs. Gaskell’s business was to write the life of Charlotte Brontë and not of her sister Emily; and as a result there is little enough of Emily in Mrs. Gaskell’s book — no record of the Halifax and Brussels life as seen through Emily’s eyes. Time, however, has brought its revenge. The cult which started with Mr. Sydney Dobell, and found poetic expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold’s fine lines on her,

  ‘Whose soul

  Knew no fellow for might,

  Passion, vehemence, grief,

  Daring, since Byron died,’

  culminated in an enthusiastic eulogy by Mr. Swinburne, who placed her in the very forefront of English women of genius.

  We have said that Emily Brontë is a sphinx whose riddle no amount of research will enable us to read; and this chapter, it may be admitted, adds but little to the longed-for knowledge of an interesting personality. One scrap of Emily’s handwriting, of a personal character, has indeed come to me — overlooked, I doubt not, by Charlotte when she burnt her sister’s effects. I have before me a little tin box about two inches long, which one day last year Mr. Nicholls turned out from the bottom of a desk. It is of a kind in which one might keep pins or beads, certainly of no value whatever apart from its associations. Within were four little pieces of paper neatly folded to the size of a sixpence. These papers were covered with handwriting, two of them by Emily, and two by Anne Brontë. They revealed a pleasant if eccentric arrangement on the part of the sisters, which appears to have been settled upon eve
n after they had passed their twentieth year. They had agreed to write a kind of reminiscence every four years, to be opened by Emily on her birthday. The papers, however, tell their own story, and I give first the two which were written in 1841. Emily writes at Haworth, and Anne from her situation as governess to Mr. Robinson’s children at Thorp Green. At this time, at any rate, Emily was fairly happy and in excellent health; and although it is five years from the publication of the volume of poems, she is full of literary projects, as is also her sister Anne. The Gondaland Chronicles, to which reference is made, must remain a mystery for us. They were doubtless destroyed, with abundant other memorials of Emily, by the heart-broken sister who survived her. We have plentiful material in the way of childish effort by Charlotte and by Branwell, but there is hardly a scrap in the early handwriting of Emily and Anne. This chapter would have been more interesting if only one possessed Solala Vernon’s Life by Anne Brontë, or the Gondaland Chronicles by Emily!

  A PAPER to be opened

  when Anne is

  25 years old,

  or my next birthday after

  if

  all be well.

  Emily Jane Brontë. July the 30th, 1841.

  It is Friday evening, near 9 o’clock — wild rainy weather. I am seated in the dining-room, having just concluded tidying our desk boxes, writing this document. Papa is in the parlour — aunt upstairs in her room. She has been reading Blackwood’s Magazine to papa. Victoria and Adelaide are ensconced in the peat-house. Keeper is in the kitchen — Hero in his cage. We are all stout and hearty, as I hope is the case with Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne, of whom the first is at John White, Esq., Upperwood House, Rawdon; the second is at Luddenden Foot; and the third is, I believe, at Scarborough, enditing perhaps a paper corresponding to this.

  A scheme is at present in agitation for setting us up in a school of our own; as yet nothing is determined, but I hope and trust it may go on and prosper and answer our highest expectations. This day four years I wonder whether we shall still be dragging on in our present condition or established to our hearts’ content. Time will show.

  I guess that at the time appointed for the opening of this paper we, i.e. Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just gathered in for the midsummer ladyday. Our debts will be paid off, and we shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, aunt, and Branwell will either have been or be coming to visit us. It will be a fine warm, summer evening, very different from this bleak look-out, and Anne and I will perchance slip out into the garden for a few minutes to peruse our papers. I hope either this or something better will be the case.

  The Gondaliand are at present in a threatening state, but there is no open rupture as yet. All the princes and princesses of the Royalty are at the Palace of Instruction. I have a good many books on hand, but I am sorry to say that as usual I make small progress with any. However, I have just made a new regularity paper! and I must verb sap to do great things. And now I close, sending from far an exhortation of courage, boys! courage, to exiled and harassed Anne, wishing she was here.

  Anne, as I have said, writes from Thorp Green.

  July the 30th, A.D. 1841.

  This is Emily’s birthday. She has now completed her 23rd year, and is, I believe, at home. Charlotte is a governess in the family of Mr. White. Branwell is a clerk in the railroad station at Luddenden Foot, and I am a governess in the family of Mr. Robinson. I dislike the situation and wish to change it for another. I am now at Scarborough. My pupils are gone to bed and I am hastening to finish this before I follow them.

  We are thinking of setting up a school of our own, but nothing definite is settled about it yet, and we do not know whether we shall be able to or not. I hope we shall. And I wonder what will be our condition and how or where we shall all be on this day four years hence; at which time, all be well, I shall be 25 years and 6 months old, Emily will be 27 years old, Branwell 28 years and 1 month, and Charlotte 29 years and a quarter. We are now all separate and not likely to meet again for many a weary week, but we are none of us ill that I know of and all are doing something for our own livelihood except Emily, who, however, is as busy as any of us, and in reality earns her food and raiment as much as we do.

  How little know we what we are

  How less what we may be!

  Four years ago I was at school. Since then I have been a governess at Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York Minster. Emily has been a teacher at Miss Patchet’s school, and left it. Charlotte has left Miss Wooler’s, been a governess at Mrs. Sidgwick’s, left her, and gone to Mrs. White’s. Branwell has given up painting, been a tutor in Cumberland, left it, and become a clerk on the railroad. Tabby has left us, Martha Brown has come in her place. We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it, and also got a hawk. Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three tame ones, one of which has been killed. All these diversities, with many others, are things we did not expect or foresee in the July of 1837. What will the next four years bring forth? Providence only knows. But we ourselves have sustained very little alteration since that time. I have the same faults that I had then, only I have more wisdom and experience, and a little more self-possession than I then enjoyed. How will it be when we open this paper and the one Emily has written? I wonder whether the Gondaliand will still be flourishing, and what will be their condition. I am now engaged in writing the fourth volume of Solala Vernon’s Life.

  For some time I have looked upon 25 as a sort of era in my existence. It may prove a true presentiment, or it may be only a superstitious fancy; the latter seems most likely, but time will show.

  Anne Brontë.

  Let us next take up the other two little scraps of paper. They are dated July the 30th, 1845, or Emily’s twenty-seventh birthday. Many things have happened, as she says. She has been to Brussels, and she has settled definitely at home again. They are still keenly interested in literature, and we still hear of the Gondals. There is wonderfully little difference in the tone or spirit of the journals. The concluding ‘best wishes for this whole house till July the 30th, 1848, and as much longer as may be,’ contain no premonition of coming disaster. Yet July 1848 was to find Branwell Brontë on the verge of the grave, and Emily on her deathbed. She died on the 14th of December of that year.

  Haworth, Thursday, July 30th, 1845.

  My birthday — showery, breezy, cool. I am twenty-seven years old to-day. This morning Anne and I opened the papers we wrote four years since, on my twenty-third birthday. This paper we intend, if all be well, to open on my thirtieth — three years hence, in 1848. Since the 1841 paper the following events have taken place. Our school scheme has been abandoned, and instead Charlotte and I went to Brussels on the 8th of February 1842.

  Branwell left his place at Luddenden Foot. C. and I returned from Brussels, November 8th 1842, in consequence of aunt’s death.

  Branwell went to Thorp Green as a tutor, where Anne still continued, January 1843.

  Charlotte returned to Brussels the same month, and, after staying a year, came back again on New Year’s Day 1844.

  Anne left her situation at Thorp Green of her own accord, June 1845.

  Anne and I went our first long journey by ourselves together, leaving home on the 30th of June, Monday, sleeping at York, returning to Keighley Tuesday evening, sleeping there and walking home on Wednesday morning. Though the weather was broken we enjoyed ourselves very much, except during a few hours at Bradford. And during our excursion we were, Ronald Macalgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosabella Esmaldan, Ella and Julian Egremont, Catharine Navarre, and Cordelia Fitzaphnold, escaping from the palaces of instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans. The Gondals still flourish bright as ever. I am at present writing a work on the First War. Anne has been writing some articles on this, and a book by Henry Sophona. We intend sticking firm by the rascals as lo
ng as they delight us, which I am glad to say they do at present. I should have mentioned that last summer the school scheme was revived in full vigour. We had prospectuses printed, despatched letters to all acquaintances imparting our plans, and did our little all; but it was found no go. Now I don’t desire a school at all, and none of us have any great longing for it. We have cash enough for our present wants, with a prospect of accumulation. We are all in decent health, only that papa has a complaint in his eyes, and with the exception of B., who, I hope, will be better and do better hereafter. I am quite contented for myself: not as idle as formerly, altogether as hearty, and having learnt to make the most of the present and long for the future with the fidgetiness that I cannot do all I wish; seldom or ever troubled with nothing to do, and merely desiring that everybody could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding, and then we should have a very tolerable world of it.

  By mistake I find we have opened the paper on the 31st instead of the 30th. Yesterday was much such a day as this, but the morning was divine.

  Tabby, who was gone in our last paper, is come back, and has lived with us two years and a half; and is in good health. Martha, who also departed, is here too. We have got Flossy; got and lost Tiger; lost the hawk Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless dead, for when I came back from Brussels I inquired on all hands and could hear nothing of him. Tiger died early last year. Keeper and Flossy are well, also the canary acquired four years since. We are now all at home, and likely to be there some time. Branwell went to Liverpool on Tuesday to stay a week. Tabby has just been teasing me to turn as formerly to ‘Pilloputate.’ Anne and I should have picked the black currants if it had been fine and sunshiny. I must hurry off now to my turning and ironing. I have plenty of work on hands, and writing, and am altogether full of business. With best wishes for the whole house till 1848, July 30th, and as much longer as may be, — I conclude.