Now I did not know all this; and Mr Nicholls is a terribly tickle person to have to do with; if I asked him for leave to make large extracts from her letters as I am doing/, he would, ten to one, refuse it, – if I did not ask him, but went on, as I am doing, I think he would sigh & submit; but I could not feel sure … what shall I do if Mr N were to prohibit all I have written from appearing[?]
George Smith was just as alive to the problem as Mrs Gaskell. The letters gave the memoir much of its life and originality: without them it would be a much poorer work. ‘I am most careful to put nothing in from Miss Brontës letters that can in any way implicate others’, she declared. ‘I conceal in some cases the names of the persons she is writing to.’62 She seems to have been impervious to the fact that Arthur himself was unmistakably revealed to the world making his trembling proposal of marriage and being accepted as a less than brilliant destiny by his future wife.
Publisher and author put their heads together and came up with a scheme to outwit Charlotte’s husband. They decided that George Smith would send him a ‘business form of application’ which would transfer the copyright of the ‘materials of the biography’ into Mrs Gaskell’s hands: this seems to have been passed off as standard practice – a simple precaution to obviate any future financial claims on the biographer by Charlotte’s executors.63 Though completely unused to the workings of the publishing world, Arthur was not to be fooled by the small print. He declined to sign, ‘not because I have, or ever had the slightest intention of making any pecuniary claim on Mrs Gaskell on account of the work on which she is engaged; but simply because, if I did so, I should be thereby precluded from making any further use of the MS. referred to –’. Patiently explaining his own reluctant involvement in commissioning the biography – ‘if such a work was undertaken at all I would rather she did it than anyone else, as I knew her kindly feelings toward my wife’ – he nevertheless pointed out that his only role had been to forward manuscripts to her ‘but never with any idea of giving
George Smith, ‘the man-of-business’ as Charlotte had so often teasingly called him, now showed the steel that underlay his genial manner. Though his side of the correspondence is missing, he seems to have accused Arthur of reneging on his agreement with Mrs Gaskell. To a man of such transparent honesty, such an accusation was unbearable: ‘I never authorized her to publish a single line of my wife’s MS & correspondence’, he wrote indignantly, ‘such a thing was never mentioned – in fact until the receipt of your note I was not even aware that it was contemplated –’.65 Arthur bowed to the pressure and did as he was required, but not without considerable bitterness at the way he had been outmanoeuvred. ‘I have signed the enclosed document,’ he told George Smith,
as it seems to be taken for granted that I am to do so, tho’ why it should, I know not, as I never entered into any arrangement with Mrs Gaskell to convey to her the copyright of any of my wife’s MS. for the purposes of the Memoir or any other – I trust I shall not be required to do anything more in a matter, which from beginning to end has been a source of pain and annoyance to me; as I have been dragged into sanctioning a proceeding utterly repugnant to my feelings – Indeed nothing but an unwillingness to thwart Mr Brontës wishes could have induced me to acquiesce in a project, which in my eyes is little short of desecration –66
As Arthur Nicholls retired hurt, George Smith reported his triumph to Mrs Gaskell. ‘I am so glad that it was you, and not I, that had “the fierce correspondence” with Mr Nicholls’, she replied. ‘I shd have been daunted at once.’67 Grateful that even now Arthur had not demanded to see a copy of the book before it was published, Mrs Gaskell hastened to complete her arrangements. A photographer, Mr Stewart, was sent over to Haworth to take the Richmond portrait and, encouraged by Mrs Gaskell herself, took views of the village, church and parsonage, all of which he offered to Cornhill for engraving and inclusion in the book.68 The manuscript, still in a very disorganized state with additions and emendations interleaved and letters copied so hastily that names and sensitive passages had not been deleted, was sent to Smith, Elder & Co. in December 1856 and the proofs began to appear in early January.69 Recognizing the extraordinary expenses – such as the visit to Brussels – to which the biography had put her, George Smith paid Mrs Gaskell £800 for the English copyright, allowing her to negotiate further sums for German, French and American editions. She obviously had a guilty conscience about her treatment of Arthur, for in thanking George Smith for his generosity, she informed him, ‘I
Despite some last-minute hitches, including insertions of new material at proof stage and the substitution of Mrs Gaskell’s bad drawing of the parsonage and church for Mr Stewart’s unengravable photographs, the book was completed by 7 February 1857. And please to remember I am just the reverse of Miss Brontë;’ she wrote to George Smith. ‘I never want to see or hear of any reviews; when I have done with a book I want to shake off the recollection thereof forever.’71 With that, Mrs Gaskell packed her bags and departed for Italy, leaving her book to its fate.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë was published by Smith, Elder & Co. on 25 March 1857, in a two-volume set. Two thousand and twenty-one copies were printed, the odd number being accounted for by the complimentary copies Mrs Gaskell had promised to those who had assisted her in the project. Given the level of interest in Charlotte Brontë and the unusually high costs of publishing the book, it was a surprisingly small print run and a further 1,500 copies had to be printed on 22 April, followed by a further 700 on 4 May.72
The book created a sensation comparable to the first publication of Jane Eyre. It was seized upon and avidly read by everyone, from London literati to provincial novel readers, all of whom were intrigued to discover how and why a woman as retired as Charlotte Brontë had produced some of the most passionate and explosive fiction the world had yet seen. The success of Mrs Gaskell’s decision to vindicate her friend by blaming her family and her upbringing in Haworth for all the critical condemnation of her writing was amply vindicated by the reviews. ‘A strange childhood! – out of which, through various schools and other harsh experiences, the Brontës grew up to man and woman’s estate, and which explains a good deal in their subsequent history’, declared Fraser’s Magazine.73 Charlotte’s old foe, the Christian Remembrancer, was even more explicit.
Charlotte Brontës small glimpse of the world showed her but an indifferent part of it, and her home held a monster whom the strong ties of an inordinate family affection constrained her to love and care for and find excuses for. Whatever extenuation can be found for want of refinement – for grosser outrages on propriety than this expression indicates – the home and the neighbourhood of Charlotte Brontë certainly furnish; she wrote in ignorance of offending public opinion.74
The North American Review, which had so violently castigated the ferocious Bells and their appalling books, was similarly compelled to admit that the Life of Charlotte Brontë explained and excused the faults it had once condemned:
the knowledge that the authors painted life as it lay around them in their daily path is sufficient refutation of the charge, that they revelled in coarseness for coarseness’ sake, and drew pictures of vice in accordance with their own inherent depravity … there are several points wherein our present knowledge of the author decidedly modifies, and others in which it totally changes, opinions passed upon it in the absence of such knowledge.75
The extraordinary way in which the biography completely changed the opinions of even Charlotte’s most bigoted critics was epitomized by Charles Kingsley, author of Westward Ho! and The Water Babies, in a private letter to Mrs Gaskell. ‘Shirley disgusted me at the opening: and I gave up the writer and her books with the notion that she was a person who liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never put a word of my misconceptions into p
rint, or recorded my misjudgements of one who is a whole heaven above me.’76
In the general chorus of breast-beating, only one reviewer had the courage to question the whole idea that the author’s life should be used to vindicate the perceived faults of her fiction. William Roscoe, writing in the National Review, took issue with Mrs Gaskell’s emotive denunciation of the ‘thoughtless critics’ who had not realized that the ‘sad and gloomy views of life’ in the Brontës’ novels were ‘wrung out of them by the living recollection of the long agony they suffered’. ‘A living author is known to the world by his works only, or, if not so, it is with his works alone the public are concerned;’ he pointed out,
and he has no cause of complaint if he is fairly judged by them without any allowance for the private conditions under which they were produced. On the other hand, he has the corresponding right to demand that personal considerations and private information shall not be dragged in as elements of literary judgement, and that his publicity as an artist shall [not] give pretext for invading the seclusion of his private life …77
One cannot help feeling that the Brontë sisters themselves would have added a fervent amen to this statement. It was, after all, the very reason why they had chosen to appear before the public under pseudonyms in the first place: so that their work should be judged on its merits alone and not by the circumstances of their sex or personal life. Mrs Gaskell had turned their stand for anonymity on its head: their lives were now the excuse for their works and henceforward it would be impossible to judge the two separately.
William Roscoe was also one of the very few reviewers to protest that the essentially private nature of Charlotte’s life, passed effectively within the walls of one household and not on the public stage, rendered a biography so soon after her death peculiarly invasive. In so doing he unwittingly pinpointed the difference between Patrick and Arthur’s expectations of Mrs Gaskell’s work and what she actually produced.
The biographer who has to deal with such a life must choose between a mode of treatment which reduces his field to the limits of a memoir, and scarcely allows him to do justice to his task, or one which, on the other hand, is sure in its wider scope to do some injury to the rights and susceptibilities of others. Mrs Gaskell made her choice, and has unflinchingly acted upon it… Frankly we will state our conviction, that she was mistaken.78
Roscoe was virtually alone in his protest, however, the general tenor of the reviews being acclamation for Mrs Gaskell and sympathy for her subject: the school of’poor Charlotte’ biography had been born. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that it was the birth of a school of hagiography, for a disconcerting tendency to view Charlotte as a martyr to her sufferings was already apparent. G.H. Lewes, for example, foresaw that the book would create ‘a deep and permanent impression; for it… presents a vivid picture of a life noble and sad, full of encouragement and healthy teaching, a lesson in duty and self-reliance’, and Charles Kingsley declared that Mrs Gaskell had given the world a picture of ‘a valiant woman made perfect by sufferings’. Even Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, who had had the benefit of knowing Charlotte personally, added his paean of praise and expressed the hope that Arthur Nicholls would ‘learn to rejoice that his wife will be known as a Christian heroine, who could bear her cross with the firmness of a martyr saint’.79 The Spectator carried into print the view that ‘Mrs Gaskell’s account of Charlotte Brontë and her family [is] one of the pro-foundest tragedies of modern life, if tragedy be, as we believe it to be, the contest of humanity with inexorable fate – the anguish and the strife through which the spirit nerves itself for a grander sphere – the martyr’s pang, and the saint’s victory.’80
Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë was, as G.H. Lewes claimed, ‘a triumph for you’ and ‘a monument for your friend’.81 She had set out to vindicate Charlotte’s reputation and had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Unfortunately, her path was littered with casualties, not the least being the two men who had entrusted her with the task in the first place. Their different reactions were equally characteristic. Patrick wrote first to the publisher and then to the biographer herself. He had read the books ‘with a high degree of melancholy interest,’ he told George Smith, ‘and consider them amongst the ablest, most interesting and best works of the kind. Mrs Gaskell – though moveing in, to Her what/ was a new line, a somewhat critical matter – has done Herself great credit, by this Biographical Work, which I doubt not will place Her higher in literary fame, even than She stood before—’. To Mrs Gaskell he confessed that if she had not agreed to write the biography, in the final instance he would have undertaken the task himself. ‘But the work is now done, and done rightly, as I wish’d it to be, and in its completion, has afforded me, more satisfaction, than I have felt, during many years of a life, in which has been examplified the saying that “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards [“].’ Proclaiming the portraits of his family ‘full of truth and life’, he singled out that of Branwell for special praise: ‘The picture of my brilliant and unhappy son, and his diabolical seducer, are masterpieces.’ It was almost as an afterthought that he added, ‘There are a few trifling mistakes, which should it be deem’d necessary, may be corrected in the Second Edition.’82 To be able to speak so lightly of his own caricature speaks volumes for Patrick’s selfless pride and generosity, which would not let him diminish his daughter’s portrait in order to set the record straight on himself.
Arthur was not as fulsome in his praise, perhaps because he was more aware than Patrick of the wider implications of some of Mrs Gaskell’s personal revelations about the Brontës. He was, however, scrupulously fair. ‘I have read the work with inexpressible pain’, he told George Smith, ‘– Mrs Gaskell has done justice to her subject – she has however fallen into many errors; but fewer perhaps than might have been expected. She has moreover inserted some things, which ought never to have been published – It was not without reason that I instinctively shrank from the proposal of a Biography – But I suppose, it matters not, provided the curiosity of the Publick be gratified –’.83 Arthur had more reason than most to regret Mrs Gaskell’s lack of discretion in her quotation from Charlotte’s letters. It must have been a terrible mortification for this sensitive and intensely private man to have his wife’s description of his emotional proposal of marriage and her unenthusiastic acceptance of it become public property – not least because the local papers gleefully seized upon this section and printed it for the edification of all his parishioners and clerical friends.84
Indeed, the local papers showed an even more remarkable insensitivity to the feelings of Charlotte’s father and widower than Mrs Gaskell herself. Where she had merely hinted or indicated that Patrick’s eccentricities had been largely responsible for his daughter’s unhappiness, they laid the blame squarely on his shoulders. One reporter from the Bradford Observerwas prompted by the Life of Charlotte Brontë to make what he called ‘a pilgrimage to Haworth’. With more poetic licence than accuracy he described the parsonage as ‘grim, solitary, neglected, and wretched-looking’ and then, blithely indifferent to the pain his remarks would cause, continued: ‘as we looked at that weatherbeaten house, and thought of the stern old man, left childless and alone, we could not help feeling for his troubles, although they had in a great measure been brought about by his own discipline and mode of life’. The reviewer in the Leeds Lntelligencer was more charitable, but still condemnatory, describing Patrick as ‘one who yet lives, bereft of all his children, in age, and we fear infirmity, which nevertheless has not availed to purchase for him a little forbearance from some who have reviewed his daughter’s memoirs. After all, the whole that can be said is that he may have made some mistakes in bringing up a family of girls’.85
In the light of comments such as these, it is not surprising that when pressed by William Gaskell, who was acting on his wife’s behalf in her absence abroad, Patrick requested some changes to the second edition, which was published on 22 April.
The principal mistake in the memoir – which I wish to mention, is that which states that I laid my Daughters under restriction with regard to their diet, obliging them to live chiefly on vegetable food. This I never did. After their Aunts death, with regard to housekeeping affairs they had all their own way. Thinking their constitutions to be delicate, the advice, I repeatedly gave them was that they should wear flannel, eat as much wholesome animal food as they could digest, take air and exercise in moderation, and not devote too much time and attention to study and composition.
As a postscript – and not as a firm request – he added with admirable mildness of manner, ‘The Eccentrick Movements ascribed to me, at pages 51 & 52, Vol 1. – have no foundation in fact –’.86
Though Patrick had been reluctant to cast doubt on the general veracity of the book by insisting on alterations, others were not so reticent. Everyone, it seemed, had a complaint to make. G.H. Lewes asked that a phrase should be inserted pointing out that his article in the Edinburgh Review was not disrespectful to women as Charlotte had suggested. Samuel Redhead’s son-in-law wrote to Mrs Gaskell and the Leeds Intelligencer disputing Scoresby’s highly coloured account of Redhead’s rejection by Haworth Church in 1819 and offering his father-in-law’s diary as proof of what really happened. Harriet Martineau, who could be a vitriolic correspondent when her blood was up, wrote ‘sheet upon sheet regarding the quarrel? misunderstanding? between her & Miss Brontë’.87 Most damaging of all, Mrs Gaskell was threatened with two suits for libel, one from the former Mrs Robinson, now Lady Scott, and one from William Carus Wilson.
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