I have given no one a right either to affirm, or hint, in the most distant manner, that I am ‘publishing’ – (humbug!) Whoever has said it – if any one has, which I doubt – is no friend of mine. Though twenty books were ascribed to me, I should own none. I scout the idea utterly. Whoever, after I have distinctly rejected the charge, urges it upon me, will do an unkind and an ill-bred thing The most profound obscurity is infinitely preferable to vulgar notoriety; and that notoriety I neither seek nor will have. If then any Birstalian or Gomersalian should presume to bore you on the subject, – to ask you what ‘novel’ Miss Brontë has been ‘publishing,’ – you can just say, with the distinct firmness of which you are perfect mistress, when you choose, that you are authorized by Miss Brontë to say, that she repels and disowns every accusation of the kind. You may add, if you please, that if anyone has her confidence, you believe you have, and she has made no drivelling confessions to you on the subject.34
Charlotte was in an impossible position, being bound by her promise to Emily to keep the secret of their authorship and yet, in so doing, putting Ellen in the invidious position of spreading a lie. Though written as if dashed off in a rage, Charlotte’s letter shows signs of being carefully thought out. She never actually denies her authorship, only refuses to acknowledge it; and it was certainly true that she had made no ‘drivelling confession’ of it to Ellen. Nevertheless, there is an undeniable cruelty in her unnecessary insistence on Ellen’s having her confidence and yet using her to deny the truth. If the secret ever did get out, then Ellen would be publicly humiliated for taking such a firm stance against the truth, especially when a simple denial of knowledge would have sufficed.
This deceit was especially unkind as Charlotte seems to have taken her other great friend, Mary Taylor, completely into her confidence. She, of course, was in New Zealand, but her family and circle were still in Gomersal so it would not have been impossible for the news to have leaked out through her. Writing at the end of June 1848, Mary noted that she had received a copy of Jane Eyre ‘about a month since’, but as the mailings took six months to travel from England to New Zealand, Charlotte must have sent her the book in January 1848 at the latest. ‘It seemed to me incredible that you had actually written a book’, Mary confessed to Charlotte. ‘Such events did not happen while I was in England.’ It is possible that Charlotte had Emily’s permission to exempt Mary Taylor from the general prohibition, for Mary seems to have received copies of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey at the same time. Comparing the three books, Mary, who was writing a book herself, commented:
You are very different from me in having no doctrine to preach. It is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your production … You have done wisely in choosing to imagine a high class of readers. You never stop to explain or defend anything & never seem bothered with the idea – if Mrs Fairfax or any other well intentioned fool gets hold of this what will she think? And yet you know the world is made up of such, & worse. Once more, how have you written through 3 vols. without declaring war to the knife against a few dozen absurd do[ct]rines each of which is supported by ‘a large & respectable class of readers’? Emily seems to have had such a class in her eye when she wrote that strange thing Wuthering Heights. Ann too stops repeatedly to preach commonplace truths. She has had a still lower class in her mind’s eye. Emily seems to have followed t[he] bookseller’s advice.
Not only did Mary have copies of the sisters’ books and know exactly who had written what, but also she was in full possession of all the details of their publication. ‘As to the price you got it [was] certainly Jewish … If I were in your place the idea of being bound in the sale of 2! more would prevent from ever writing again … I exceedingly regret having burnt your letters in a fit of caution, & I’ve forgotten all the names. Was the reader Albert Smith? What do they all think of you?’35 Though we can only regret that Mary had seen fit to burn Charlotte’s letters telling of her literary adventures, this in itself was an indication that Charlotte’s trust in her friend’s discretion was not misplaced.36
Charlotte could talk to Mary Taylor in a way that she could not to Ellen. The same was true of her correspondence with William Smith Williams, which had opened up a whole new world of literary and political discussion for Charlotte. The French Revolution of February 1848, in which Louis Philippe, the ‘Citizen King’, was forced to abdicate and flee to England, was a subject of the deepest interest to Charlotte and she found a fellow enthusiast in Williams. In letter after letter she discussed the ‘unhappy and sordid old man!’, ‘Mean, dishonest Guizot’, his chief minister whose dismissal had brought about the king’s own downfall, and ‘brilliant unprincipled Thiers’ who ‘writes as if the Shade of Bonaparte were walking to and fro in the room behind him, and dictating every line he pens’. She warned Williams against putting too much faith in the Republicans: there were too few men of rational intellect amongst them and too many Radicals demanding universal suffrage.37
While Charlotte retained her arguments for Williams, she shared her feelings on the subject with her old headmistress, Miss Wooler. Recalling her youthful, ardently partisan obsession with the Napoleonic wars, she wrote, rather ruefully:
I remember well wishing my lot had been cast in the troubled times of the late war, and seeing in its <?stimulating> exciting incidents a kind of stimulating charm which it made my pulses beat fast only to think of… I have now outlived youth; and, though I dare not say that I have outlived all its illusions – that the romance is quite gone from Life, the veil fallen from Truth, and that I see both in naked reality – yet certainly many things are not to me what they were ten years ago; and amongst the rest, ‘the pomp and circumstance of war’ have quite lost in my eyes their factitious glitter –
The girl who had once idolized Wellington as the personification of military glory was now a woman who saw more clearly the suffering war brought in its wake.
it appears to me that insurrections and battles are the acute diseases of nations, and that their tendency is to exhaust by their violence the vital energies of the countries where they occur. That England may be spared the spasms, cramps and frenzy-fits now contorting the Continent and threatening Ireland, I earnestly pray!
With the French and Irish, I have no sympathy. With the Germans and Italians I think the case is different: as different as the love of Freedom is from the lust for License.38
Charlotte’s nervousness about the spread of revolution from the Continent to the United Kingdom was compounded by the presence in her locality of so many English Radicals. The French Revolution had sparked off a huge revival of the Chartist movement and their mass meetings, often several thousand strong, were being held uncomfortably close to Haworth. Only days before Charlotte’s letter to Miss Wooler, there was one such gathering at Gilstead Moor above Bingley; the following week 8,000 met on Farnhill Moor near Kildwick, where they were addressed by the Haworth Chartist, Archibald Leighton, and between four and five thousand met the day after in Keighley market place. At the end of May there were serious riots in Bradford where 5500 men, including many heads of families, were on relief; a further 7000 in the outlying districts were in the same position and the poor rate was running at seven shillings in the pound to support them. Extra regiments were drafted into the town from Colne, just across the Lancashire border, and Manchester, to keep the populace under control.39
Charlotte was able to write about the Chartists with greater detachment than she had written about the French. ‘Your remarks respecting the Chartists seem to me truly sensible’, she congratulated Williams:
their grievances should not indeed ‘be neglected, nor the existence of their sufferings ignored’. It would now be the right time, when an ill-advised movement has been judiciously repressed to examine carefully into their causes of complaint and make such concessions as justice and humanity dictate. If Government would act so, how much good might be done by the removal of ill-feeling and the substitution of mutual kindliness in its place!40
> This curious lack of involvement in the struggles of the Chartists, which were taking place literally before her eyes, was characteristic also of the passages she was then currently writing in Shirley. It is extraordinary that a writer with such a deserved reputation for realism, truth and feeling did not allow the contemporary sufferings of the Chartists to inform her portrayal of the Luddites. Conditions in the 1840s were very similar to those in the early decades of the century: a prolonged slump in the textile trade brought in its wake high unemployment and abysmally low wages; the price of bread was high and disease made rapid inroads on the working population; the consequence at this time, as it had been then, was that the mill workers took refuge in Radical politics. Charlotte could not have stepped out of the front door of her home without seeing the suffering all around her and, as the rector’s daughter, she could not have avoided some parish-visiting among the poor. Nevertheless, she might as well have lived on a rural estate in the south of England for all the effect that her personal experience brought to her book. While one cannot criticize an author for choosing to write about the middle rather than the working classes, one can surely question the lack of heart in dealing with the Luddites themselves when their activities are central to the plot. The only working man whose character is at all fleshed out, Joe Scott, is not only a cut above his fellows because of his education and position as foreman, but also is on the side of the authorities. It is ironic that despite Charlotte’s abundant opportunities to observe the sufferings of the poor during periods of distress, she relied instead on her reading, conscientiously consulting the files of the Leeds Mercury ‘in order to understand the spirit of those eventful times’.41 For a novelist whose stated objective was to write only about details and situations she could understand, Shirley was a missed opportunity: the starving and desperate Luddites are merely incidental to her plot, their cause effectively seen only from the point of view of those in authority, and depicted with less realism and sympathy than in those reports she had read in the Leeds Mercury.
Discussing her new work with Williams, Charlotte declared her intention of avoiding the subject of governesses because she did not wish the book to resemble Jane Eyre. However, almost despite herself, a theme was gradually emerging. ‘I often wish to say something about the “condition of women” question’, she told Williams,
– but it is one respecting which so much ‘cant’ has been talked, that one feels a sort of repugnance to approach it. It is true enough that the present market for female labour is quite overstocked – but where or how could another be opened? Many say that the professions now filled only by men should be open to women also – but are not their present occupants and candidates more than numerous enough to answer every demand? Is there any room for female lawyers, female doctors, female engravers, for more female artists, more authoresses? One can see where the evil lies – but who can point out the remedy? When a woman has a little family to rear and educate and a household to conduct, her hands are full, her vocation is evident – when her destiny isolates her – I suppose she must do what she can – live as she can – complain as little – bear as much – work as well as possible. This is not high theory – but I believe it is sound practice –42
This was a subject to which Charlotte would return again and again, it being one of obvious relevance to her own situation. One cannot escape the conclusion that her intellectual engagement with the subject arose purely and simply as a result of her own unhappiness. If she had been financially independent, ‘the condition of women’ would not have mattered to her. She could not write about a cause for ideological reasons, out of empathy or even altruism, though she admired those, like Mrs Gaskell or Harriet Beecher Stowe, who could. Personal experience alone could engage her interest. ‘I have always been accustomed to think that the necessity of earning one’s subsistence is not in itself an evil;’ she explained in a later letter:
but I feel it may become a heavy evil if health fails, if employment lacks; if the demand upon our efforts made by the weakness of others dependent upon us, becomes greater than our strength suffices to answer … I think you speak excellent sense when you say that girls without fortune should be brought up and accustomed to support themselves; and that if they marry poor men, it should be with a prospect of being able to help their partners. If all parents thought so, girls would not be reared on speculation with a view to their making mercenary marriages – and consequently women would not be so piteously degraded as they now too often are.43
In taking up ‘the “condition of women” question’, Charlotte was making her ‘protest against the world’s absurdities’ which Mary Taylor had sought but failed to find in Jane Eyre; Shirley, unlike her first published novel, would have a ‘doctrine to preach’.44
While Charlotte struggled to recapture the white heat of intensity with which she had written Jane Eyre, Anne was putting the finishing touches to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The new work was soon being advertised by Thomas Cautley Newby with what Charlotte described as ‘a certain tricky turn in its wording which I do not admire’, and was published in the last week of June 1848. With characteristic ingenuity and an audacity he had not yet dared reveal in London, Newby had also sold the first sheets of the book to an American publisher as the latest work by Currer Bell, extracting a high price for the privilege. Smith, Elder & Co.’s American correspondent, learning that a rival had received the book, wrote indignantly to complain of foul play, enclosing a letter from Newby, ‘affirming that “to the best of his belief” “Jane Eyre” “Wuthering Heights” – “Agnes Grey” – and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (the new work) were all the production of one writer”’. ‘This was a lie’, Charlotte declared furiously to Mary Taylor, ‘as Newby had been told repeatedly that they were the productions of 3 different authors – but the fact was he wanted to make a dishonest move in the game’.45
Smith, Elder & Co.’s response, undoubtedly prompted by the thought that Charlotte had somehow managed to find a publisher for The Professor, was a letter to their author ‘all in alarm, suspicion and wrath’ demanding an explanation.46 There was only one way of proving to everyone’s satisfaction that the Bells were three separate persons and that was to provide ocular proof. Though they no doubt attempted to persuade her to accompany them, Emily flatly refused to go to London: the insistence on anonymity had been her sine qua non for publishing and she had no intention of coming forward at this late stage. Besides, she could argue that the whole matter was simply Charlotte and Anne’s problem, as it had arisen over Anne’s book and Charlotte’s name. If it was really necessary to go to the publishers in person, then two authors would do as well as three – there was no need to involve her. The argument probably raged for most of the day, for though the letter arrived in the morning post on 7 July, Charlotte and Anne did not set out until the late afternoon. Even then, though Charlotte would have liked to have used the opportunity to abandon her pseudonym, Emily insisted that only the two publishers should be let into their secret. ‘The upshot of it’, Charlotte later told Mary Taylor,
was that on the very day I received Smith & Elder’s letter – Anne and I packed up a small box, sent it down to Keighley – set out ourselves after tea – walked through a thunderstorm to the station, got to Leeds and whirled up by the Night train to London – with the view of proving our separate identity to Smith & Elder and confronting Newby with his lie –47
Though they had travelled by second-class ticket from Keighley to Leeds, they changed to a first-class carriage for the night train to London, arriving about eight o’clock the next morning at the Chapter Coffee House in Paternoster Row – ‘our old place Polly’, Charlotte told Mary, ‘we did not well know where else to go’. They washed themselves, had some breakfast, sat for a few minutes and then set off to 65, Cornhill ‘in queer, inward excitement’.
We found 65 – to be a large bookseller’s shop in a street almost as bustling as the Strand – we went in – walked up to the counter �
�� there were a great many young men and lads here and there – I said to the first I could accost – ‘May I see Mr Smith –?’ – he hesitated, looking a little surprised – but went to fetch him – We sat down and waited awhile – looking a[t] some books on the counter – publications of theirs well known to us – of many of which they had sent us copies as presents.48
Saturday being a full working day, George Smith was already in his office but he was busy and anxious not to be disturbed. When the clerk came with the message that two ladies wished to see him, Smith sent out to ask for their names which the Brontës declined to give, saying they had come on a private matter. Ever courteous, Smith concealed his impatience and went out to meet the two ‘rather quaintly dressed little ladies, pale-faced and anxious-looking’, who were waiting for him.49 An amused Charlotte later reported their first meeting.
somebody came up and said dubiously
‘Did you wish to see me, Ma’am?’
‘Is it Mr Smith?’ I said/ looking up through my spectacles at a young, tall, gentlemanly man.
‘It is.’
I then put his own letter into his hand directed to ‘Currer Bell.’ He looked at it – then at me – again – yet again – I laughed at his queer perplexity – A recognition took place – I gave my real name – ‘Miss Brontë’ – We were both hurried from the shop into a little back room – ceiled with a great skylight and only large enough to hold 3 chairs and a desk – and there explanations were rapidly gone into – Mr Newby being anathematized, I fear with undue vehemence. Smith hurried out and returned quickly with one whom he introduced as Mr Williams – a pale, mild, stooping man of fifty – very much like a faded Tom Dixon – Another recognition – a long, nervous shaking of hands – Then followed talk – talk – talk – Mr Williams being silent – Mr Smith loquacious –
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