Emily Brontë
foreboding, intense and narrow, was passed over, disregarded. One
author, indeed, in one review, Sydney Dobell, in the _Palladium_ spoke
nobly and clearly of the energy and genius of this book; but when that
clarion augury of fame at last was sounded, Emily did not hear. Two
years before they had laid her in the tomb.
No praise for Ellis Bell. It is strange to think that of Charlotte's two
sisters it was Anne who had the one short draught of exhilarating fame.
When the 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall' was in proof, Ellis's and Acton's
publisher sold it to an American firm as the last and finest production
of the author of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights.' Strange, that even
a publisher could so blunder, even for his own interest. However, this
mistake caused sufficient confusion at Cornhill to make it necessary
that the famous Charlotte, accompanied by Anne, in her quality of
secondary and mistakable genius, should go to town and explain their
separate existence. No need to disturb the author of 'Wuthering
Heights,' that crude work of a 'prentice hand, over whose reproduction
no publishers quarrelled; such troublesome honours were not for her.
"Yet," says Charlotte, "I must not be understood to make these things
subject for reproach or complaint; I dare not do so; respect for my
sister's memory forbids me. By her any such querulous manifestation
would have been regarded as an unworthy and offensive weakness."
When, indeed, did the murmur of complaint pass those pale, inspired
lips? Failure can have come to her with no shock of aghast surprise. All
her plans had failed; Branwell's success, the school, her poems: her
strong will, had not carried them on to success.
But though it could not bring success, it could support her against
despair. When this last, dearest, strongest work of hers was weighed in
the world's scales and found wanting, she did not sigh, resign herself,
and think the battle over; she would have fought again.
But the battle was over, over before victory was declared. No more
failures, no more strivings for that brave spirit. It was in July that
Charlotte and Anne returned from London, in July when the heather is in
bud; scarce one last withered spray was left in December to place on
Emily's deathbed.
CHAPTER XVI.
'SHIRLEY.'
While 'Wuthering Heights' was still in the reviewer's hands, Emily
Bronte's more fortunate sister was busy on another novel. This book has
never attained the steady success of her masterpiece, 'Villette,'
neither did it meet with the _furor_ which greeted the first appearance
of 'Jane Eyre.' It is, indeed, inferior to either work; a very quiet
study of Yorkshire life, almost pettifogging in its interest in
ecclesiastical squabbles, almost absurd in the feminine inadequacy of
its heroes. And yet 'Shirley' has a grace and beauty of its own. This it
derives from the charm of its heroines--Caroline Helstone, a lovely
portrait in character of Charlotte's dearest friend, and Shirley
herself, a fancy likeness of Emily Bronte.
Emily Bronte, but under very different conditions. No longer poor, no
longer thwarted, no longer acquainted with misery and menaced by
untimely death; not thus, but as a loving sister would fain have seen
her, beautiful, triumphant, the spoiled child of happy fortune. Yet in
these altered circumstances Shirley keeps her likeness to Charlotte's
hardworking sister; the disguise, haply baffling those who, like Mrs.
Gaskell, "have not a pleasant impression of Emily Bronte," is very
easily penetrated by those who love her. Under the pathetic finery so
lovingly bestowed, under the borrowed splendours of a thousand a year,
a lovely face, an ancestral manor-house, we recognise our hardy and
headstrong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the inefficiency of this
masquerade of grandeur, so indifferent and unnecessary to her. We
recognise Charlotte's sister; but not the author of 'Wuthering Heights.'
Through these years we discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of
infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed and overworked Vicar's
daughter. Imperial Shirley, no need to wave your majestic wand, we have
bowed to it long ago unblinded; and all its illusive splendours are not
so potent as that worn-down goose-quill which you used to wield in the
busy kitchen of your father's parsonage.
Yet without that admirable portrait we should have scant warrant for our
conception of Emily Bronte's character. Her work is singularly
impersonal. You gather from it that she loved the moors, that from her
youth up the burden of a tragic fancy had lain hard upon her; that she
had seen the face of sorrow close, meeting that Medusa-glance with rigid
and defiant fortitude. So much we learn; but this is very little--a
one-sided truth and therefore scarcely a truth at all.
Charlotte's portrait gives us another view, and fortunately there are
still a few alive of the not numerous friends of Emily Bronte. Every
trait, every reminiscence paints in darker, clearer lines, the
impression of character which 'Shirley' leaves upon us. Shirley is
indeed the exterior Emily, the Emily that was to be met and known
thirty-five years ago, only a little polished, with the angles a little
smoothed, by a sister's anxious care. The nobler Emily,
deeply-suffering, brooding, pitying, creating, is only to be found in a
stray word here and there, a chance memory, a happy answer, gathered
from the pages of her work, and the loving remembrance of her friends;
but these remnants are so direct, unusual, personal, and characteristic,
this outline is of so decided a type, that it affects us more distinctly
than many stippled and varnished portraits do.
But to know how Emily Bronte looked, moved, sat and spoke, we still
return to 'Shirley.' A host of corroborating memories start up in
turning the pages. Who but Emily was always accompanied by a "rather
large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed
between a mastiff and a bulldog?" it is familiar to us as Una's lion; we
do not need to be told, Currer Bell, that she always sat on the
hearthrug of nights, with her hand on his head, reading a book; we
remember well how necessary it was to secure him as an ally in winning
her affection. Has not a dear friend informed us that she first obtained
Emily's heart by meeting, without apparent fear or shrinking, Keeper's
huge springs of demonstrative welcome?
Certainly "Captain Keeldar," with her cavalier airs, her ready disdain,
her love of independence, does bring back with vivid brilliance the
memory of our old acquaintance, "the Major." We recognise that pallid
slimness, masking an elastic strength which seems impenetrable to
fatigue--and we sigh, recalling a passage in Anne's letters, recording
how, when rheumatism, coughs, and influenza made an hospital of Haworth
Vicarage during the visitations of the dread east wind, Emily alone
looked on and wondered why anyone should be ill--"she considers it a
very uninteresting wind; it does not affect her nervous system." We know
her, too, by her kindness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories
throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made with her own hands for her
servant's friend, yet-remembered visits of Martha's little cousin to the
kitchen, where Miss Emily would bring in her own chair for the ailing
girl; anecdotes of her early rising through many years to do the hardest
work, because the first servant was too old, and the second too young to
get up so soon; and she, Emily, was so strong. A hundred little
sacrifices, dearer to remembrance than Shirley's open purse, awaken in
our hearts and remind us that, after all, Emily was the nobler and more
lovable heroine of the twain.
How characteristic, too, the touch that makes her scornful of all that
is dominant, dogmatic, avowedly masculine in the men of her
acquaintance; and gentleness itself to the poetic Philip Nunnely, the
gay, boyish Mr. Sweeting, the sentimental Louis, the lame, devoted
boy-cousin who loves her in pathetic canine fashion. That courage, too,
was hers. Not only Shirley's flesh, but Emily's, felt the tearing fangs
of the mad dog to whom she had charitably offered food and water; not
only Shirley's flesh, but hers, shrank from the light scarlet, glowing
tip of the Italian iron with which she straightway cauterised the wound,
going quickly into the laundry and operating on herself without a word
to any one.
Emily, also, singlehanded and unarmed, punished her great bulldog for
his household misdemeanours, in defiance of an express warning not to
strike the brute, lest his uncertain temper should rouse him to fly at
the striker's throat. And it was she who fomented his bruises. This
prowess and tenderness of Shirley's is an old story to us.
And Shirley's love of picturesque and splendid raiment is not without an
echo in our memories. It was Emily who, shopping in Bradford with
Charlotte and her friend, chose a white stuff patterned with lilac
thunder and lightning, to the scarcely concealed horror of her more
sober companions. And she looked well in it; a tall, lithe creature,
with a grace half-queenly, half-untamed in her sudden, supple movements,
wearing with picturesque negligence her ample purple-splashed skirts;
her face clear and pale; her very dark and plenteous brown hair fastened
up behind with a Spanish comb; her large grey-hazel eyes, now full of
indolent, indulgent humour, now glimmering with hidden meanings, now
quickened into flame by a flash of indignation, "a red ray piercing the
dew."
She, too, had Shirley's taste for the management of business. We
remember Charlotte's disquiet when Emily insisted on investing Miss
Branwell's legacies in York and Midland Railway shares. "She managed, in
a most handsome and able manner for me when I was in Brussels, and
prevented by distance from looking after our interests, therefore I will
let her manage still and take the consequences. Disinterested and
energetic she certainly is; and, if she be not quite so tractable or
open to conviction as I could wish, I must remember perfection is not
the lot of humanity, and, as long as we can regard those whom we love,
and to whom we are closely allied, with profound and never-shaken
esteem, it is a small thing that they should vex us occasionally by what
appear to us headstrong and unreasonable notions."[28]
So speaks the kind elder sister, the author of 'Shirley.' But there are
some who will never love either type or portrait. Sydney Dobell spoke a
bitter half-truth when, ignorant of Shirley's real identity, he
declared: "We have only to imagine Shirley Keeldar poor to imagine her
repulsive." The silenced pride, the thwarted generosity, the unspoken
power, the contained passion of such a nature are not qualities which
touch the world when it finds them in an obscure and homely woman. Even
now, very many will not love a heroine so independent of their esteem.
They will resent the frank imperiousness, caring not to please, the
unyielding strength, the absence of trivial submissive tendernesses, for
which she makes amends by such large humane and generous compassion. "In
Emily's nature," says her sister, "the extremes of vigour and simplicity
seemed to meet. Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial taste and
an unpretending outside, lay a power and fire that might have informed
the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly
wisdom--her powers were unadapted to the practical business of life--she
would fail to defend her most manifest rights, to consult her legitimate
advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the
world. Her will was not very flexible and it generally opposed her
interest. Her temper was magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit
altogether unbending."[29]