Emily Brontë
common north-country surname of Bell. They did not wish to be known as
women: "we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be
looked on with prejudices;" yet their fastidious honour prevented them
from wearing a mask they had no warrant for; to satisfy both scruples
they assumed names that might equally belong to a man or a woman. In the
part of Yorkshire where they lived children are often christened by
family names; over the shops they would see "Sunderland Akroyd," varied
by "Pighills Sunderland," with scarce a John or James to bear them
company. So there was nothing strange to them in the fashion so
ingeniously turned to their own uses. Ellis veiled Emily; Currer,
Charlotte; Acton, Anne. The first and last are common names enough--a
Miss Currer who was one of the subscribers to Cowan's Bridge may have
suggested her pseudonym to Charlotte. At last every detail was
discussed, decided, and the packet sent off to London to try its
fortunes in the world:--
"This bringing out of our little book was hard work. As was to be
expected neither we nor our poems were at all wanted; but for this we
had been prepared at the outset; though inexperienced ourselves, we had
read the experience of others. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of
getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom we applied.
Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, I ventured to apply to the
Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh for a word of advice: _they_ may have
forgotten the circumstance, but _I_ have not; for from them I received a
brief and business-like but civil and sensible reply, on which we acted,
and at last made a way."[21]
Ultimately the three sisters found a publisher who would undertake the
work upon commission; a favourable answer came from Messrs. Aylott &
Jones, of Paternoster Row, who estimated the expense of the book at
thirty guineas. It was a great deal for the three sisters to spare from
their earnings, but they were eager to print, eager to make sacrifices,
as though in some dim way they saw already the glorious goal. But at
present there was business to do. They bought one of the numerous little
primers that are always on sale to show the poor vain moth of amateur
authorship how least to burn his wings--little books more eagerly bought
and read than any of those that they bring into the world. Such a
publisher's guide, meant for ambitious schoolboys, the Brontes bought
and studied as anxiously as they. By the end of February all was
settled, the type decided upon, the money despatched, the printers at
work. Emily Bronte's copy is dated May 7th, 1846.
What eagerness at the untying of the parcel in which those first copies
came! What disappointment, chequered with ecstasy, at reading their own
verse, unaltered, yet in print! An experience not so common then as now;
to be a poetess in those days had a certain distinction, and the three
sisters must have anxiously waited for a greeting. The poems had been
despatched to many magazines: _Colburne's_, _Bentley's_, _Hood's_,
_Jerrold's_, _Blackwood's_, their early idol; to the _Edinburgh Review_,
_Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, the _Dublin University Magazine_; to the
_Athenaeum_, the _Literary Gazette_, the _Critic_, and to the _Daily
News_, the _Times_, and to the _Britannia_ newspaper. Surely from some
quarter they would hear such an authentic word of warning or welcome as
should confirm at once their hopes or their despairs. They had grown
used to waiting; but they had long to wait. At last, on July 4th, the
_Athenaeum_ reviewed their book in a short paragraph, and it is
remarkable that, though in such reviews of the poems as appeared after
the publication of 'Jane Eyre,' it is always Currer Bell's "fine sense
of nature," Currer Bell's "matured intellect and masterly hand," that
wins all the praise; still, in this early notice, the yet unblinded
critic has perceived to whom the palm is due. Ellis Bell he places
first of the three supposed brothers, naming him "a fine quaint spirit
with an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here
attempted." Next to him the critic ranks Currer, lastly Anne. Scarce
another notice did they see.
The little book was evidently a failure; it had fallen still-born from
the press. Were all their hopes to die as soon as they were born? At
least they resolved not to be too soon baffled, and already, in the
thick of their disappointment, began to lay the plots of the novels they
would write. Like our army, they gained their battles by never owning
they were beaten.
They kept it all to themselves, this disappointment, these resolutions.
When the inquisitive postman asked Mr. Bronte if he knew who was that
Mr. Currer Bell for whom so many letters always came, the old gentleman
answered with a sense of authority, "My good man, there is no such
person in the parish;" and when, on rare occasions, Branwell came into
the room where they were writing, no word was said of the work that was
going on. Not even to the sisterly Ellen, so near to all their hearts,
was any confession made of the way they spent their time.
"We have done nothing (to _speak_ of) since you were here," says
conscientious Anne. Nevertheless their friend drew her conclusions.
About this time she came to stay at Haworth, and sometimes (a little
amused at their reticence) she would tease them with her suspicions, to
Charlotte's alarmed surprise. Once, at this time, when they were walking
on the moor together, a sudden change and light came into the sky.
"Look," said Charlotte; and the four girls looked up and saw three suns
shining clearly overhead. They stood a little while silently gazing at
the beautiful parhelion; Charlotte, her friend, and Anne clustered
together, Emily a little higher, standing on a heathery knoll. "That is
you!" said Ellen at last. "You are the three suns." "Hush!" cried
Charlotte, indignant at the too shrewd nonsense of her friend; but as
Ellen, her suspicions confirmed by Charlotte's violence, lowered her
eyes to the earth again, she looked a moment at Emily. She was still
standing on her knoll, quiet, satisfied; and round her lips there
hovered a very soft and happy smile. She was not angry, the independent
Emily. She had liked the little speech.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: 'Memoir.' C. B.]
CHAPTER XIII.
TROUBLES.
While Emily Bronte was striving to create a world of fancy and romance
natural to her passionate spirit, the real, everyday existence in which
she had to work and endure was becoming day by day more anxious and
troubled. An almost unliveable life it seems, recalling it, stifled with
the vulgar tragedy of Branwell's woes, the sordid cares that his debts
entailed, the wearing anxiety that watched the oncoming blindness of old
Mr. Bronte. These months of 1846 during which, let us remember, Emily
was writing 'Wuthering Heights,' must have been the heaviest and
dreariest of her days; it was during their weary course that she at last
perceived how utterly hopeless, how insensible to good, must be the
remaining life of her brother.
For so long as the future was left him, Branwell never reached the limit
of abasement. He drank to drown sorrow, to deaden memory and the flight
of time; he went far, but not too far to turn back when the day should
dawn which should recall him to prosperity and happiness. He was still,
though perverted and debased, capable of reform and susceptible to holy
influences. He had not finally cast away goodness and honour; they were
but momentarily discarded, like rings taken off for heavy work;
by-and-by he would put them on again.
Suddenly the future was taken away. One morning, about six months after
his dismissal, a letter came for Branwell announcing the death of his
former employer. All he had ever hoped for lay at his feet--the good,
wronged man was dead. His wife, his wealth, should now make Branwell
glad. A new life, earned by sin and hatred, should begin; a new good
life, honourable and happy. It was in Branwell's nature to be glad when
peace and honour came to him, although he would make no effort to attain
them, and this morning he was very happy.
"He fair danced down the churchyard as if he were out of his mind; he
was so fond of that woman," says my informant.
The next morning he rose, dressed himself with care, and prepared for a
journey, but before he had even set out from Haworth two men came riding
to the village post haste. They sent for Branwell, and when he arrived,
in a great state of excitement, one of the riders dismounted and went
with him into the "Black Bull." They went into the brown parlour of the
inn, the cheerful, wainscotted parlour, where Branwell had so often
lorded it over his boon companions from his great three-cornered chair.
After some time the messenger rose and left; and those who were in the
inn thought they heard a strange noise in the parlour--a bleating like a
calf's. Yet, being busy people, they did not go in to see if anything
had happened, and amid the throng of their employments the sound passed
out of their ears and out of their memory. Hours afterwards the young
girl who used to help in the housework at the inn, the Anne who still
remembers Branwell's fluent greetings, found occasion to enter the
parlour. She went in and found him on the floor, looking changed and
dreadful. He had fallen down in a sort of stupefied fit. After that day
he was an altered being.
The message he had heard had changed the current of his life. It was not
the summons he expected; but a prayer from the woman he loved not to
come near her, not to tempt her to ruin; if she saw him once, the care
of her children, the trust of their fortunes, all was forfeited. She
entreated him to keep away; anxious, perhaps, in this sudden loneliness
of death, to retrieve the past, or by some tender superstition made less
willing to betray the dead than the living; or, it may be, merely eager
to retain at all costs the rank, the station, the honours to which she
was accustomed. Be it as it may, Branwell found himself forgotten.
"Oh, dreadful heart of woman,
That in one day forgets what man remembers,
Forgetting him therewith."
After that day he was different. He despaired, and drank himself to
death, drinking to the grave and forgetfulness, gods of his Sabbath, and
borrowing a transient pleasure at fearful interest. But to such a man
the one supreme temptation is enjoyment: it must be had, though life and
heaven go forfeit. And while he caroused, "and by his whole manner gave
indications of intense enjoyment,"[22] his old father grew quite blind,
Anne day by day more delicate and short of breath, ambitious Charlotte
pined like an eagle in a cage, and Emily, writing 'Wuthering Heights,'
called those affected who found the story more terrible than life.
It was she who saw most of her abandoned brother, for Anne could only
shudder at his sin, and Charlotte was too indignant for pity. But Emily,
the stern, charitable woman, who spared herself no pang, who loved to
carry tenderly the broken-winged nestlings in her hardworking hands,
Emily was not revolted by his weakness. Shall I despise the deer for his
timid swiftness to fly, or the leveret because it cannot die bravely, or
mock the death-agony of the wolf because the beast is gaunt and foul to
see? she asks herself in one of the few personal poems she has left us.
No! An emphatic no; for Emily Bronte had a place in her heart for all
the wild children of nature, and to despise them for their natural
instincts was impossible to her. And thus it came about that she ceased
to grow indignant at Branwell's follies; she made up her mind to accept
with angerless sorrow his natural vices. All that was left of her ready
disdain was an extreme patience which expected no reform, asked no