Emily Brontë
Such is the home to which Emily Bronte clung with the passionate love of
the Swiss for his white mountains, with a homesickness in absence that
strained the very cords of life. Yet her childhood in that motherless
home had few of the elements of childish happiness, and its busy
strictness of daily life was saddened by the loss of Maria and
Elizabeth, dear, never-forgotten playfellows. Charlotte, now the eldest
of the family, was only two years older than Emily, but her sense of
responsibility made her seem quite of a different age. It was little
Anne who was Emily's companion--delicate, shrinking, pretty Anne, Miss
Branwell's favourite. Anne could enter only into the easiest or lightest
of her sister's moods, and yet she was so dear that Emily never sought
another friend. So from childhood she grew accustomed to keep her own
confidence upon her deepest thoughts and liveliest fancies.
A quiet regular life--carpet-brushing, sewing, dusting in the morning.
Then some necessary lessons said to their aunt upstairs; then, in the
evening, while Mr. Bronte wrote his sermons in the study and Miss
Branwell sat in her bedroom, the four children, alone in the parlour,
or sitting by the kitchen fire, while Tabby, the servant, moved briskly
about, would write their magazines or make their plays.
There was a great deal about politics still in the plays. Mr. Bronte,
who took a keen interest in the affairs of the world, always told the
children the chief public news of the day, and let them read what
newspapers and magazines they could lay hold on. So the little Brontes
prattled of the Duke of Wellington when other children still have Jack
the Giantkiller for a hero; the Marquis of Douro was their Prince
Charming; their Yahoos, the Catholics; their potent evil genii the
Liberal Ministry.
"Our plays were established," says Charlotte, the family chronicler, in
her history of the year 1829: "'Young Men,' June, 1826; 'Our Fellows,'
July, 1827; 'Islanders,' December, 1827. These are our three great plays
that are not kept secret. Emily's and my best plays were established the
1st of December, 1827; the others, March, 1828. Best plays mean secret
plays; they are very nice ones. All our plays are very strange ones.
Their nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always
remember them. The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden
soldiers Branwell had; 'Our Fellows' from AEsop's Fables; and the
'Islanders' from several events which happened. I will sketch out the
origin of our plays more explicitly if I can. First, 'Young Men.' Papa
bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when papa came home it
was night, and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our
door" (the little room over the passage. Anne slept with her aunt) "with
a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one
and exclaimed, 'This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be the
Duke.' When I had said this, Emily likewise took one up and said it
should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine
was the prettiest of the whole, the tallest and the most perfect in
every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him
'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we
called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, and called him Bonaparte."
In another play Emily chooses Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Lockhart and Johnny
Lockhart as her representatives; Charlotte the Duke of Wellington, the
Marquis of Douro, Mr. Abernethy, and Christopher North. This last
personage was indeed of great importance in the eyes of the children,
for _Blackwood's Magazine_ was their favourite reading. On their
father's shelves were few novels, and few books of poetry. The
clergyman's study necessarily boasted its works of divinity and
reference; for the children there were only the wild romances of
Southey, the poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish mother,
and "some mad Methodist magazines full of miracles and apparitions and
preternatural warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanaticism; and the
equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living,"
familiar to readers of 'Shirley.' To counterbalance all this romance and
terror, the children had their interest in politics and _Blackwood's
Magazine_, "the most able periodical there is," says thirteen-year-old
Charlotte. They also saw _John Bull_, "a high Tory, very violent, the
_Leeds Mercury_, _Leeds Intelligencer_, a most excellent Tory
newspaper," and thus became accomplished fanatics in all the burning
questions of the day.
Miss Branwell took care that the girls should not lack more homely
knowledge. Each took her share in the day's work, and learned all
details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cookery school.
Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework; there she felt
able and necessary; and, doubtless, upstairs, grimly listening to prim
Miss Branwell's stories of bygone gaieties, this awkward growing girl
was glad to remember that she too was of importance to the household,
despite her tongue-tied brooding.
The girls fared well enough; but not so their brother. Branwell's
brilliant purposelessness, Celtic gaiety, love of amusement and light
heart made him the most charming playfellow, but a very anxious charge.
Friends advised Mr. Bronte to send his son to school, but the peculiar
vanity which made him model his children's youth in all details on his
own forbad him to take their counsel. Since he had fed on potatoes, his
children should eat no meat. Since he had grown up at home as best he
might, why should Patrick Branwell go to school? Every day the father
gave a certain portion of his time to working with his boy; but a
clergyman's time is not his own, and often he was called away on parish
business. Doubtless Mr. Bronte thought these tutorless hours were spent,
as he would have spent them, in earnest preparation of difficult tasks.
But Branwell, with all his father's superficial charm of manner, was
without the underlying strength of will, and he possessed, unchecked,
the temptations to self-indulgence, to which his father seldom yielded,
counteracting them rather by an ascetic regimen of life. These long
afternoons were spent, not in work, but in mischievous companionship
with the wilder spirits of the village, to whom "t' Vicar's Patrick" was
the standard of brilliant leadership in scrapes.
No doubt their admiration flattered Branwell, and he enjoyed the noisy
fun they had together. Nevertheless he did not quite neglect his
sisters. Charlotte has said that at this time she loved him even as her
own soul--a serious phrase upon those serious lips. But it was Emily and
Branwell who were most to each other: bright, shallow, exacting brother;
silent, deep-brooding, unselfish sister, more anxious to give than to
receive. In January, 1831, Charlotte went to school at Miss Wooler's, at
Roe Head, twenty miles away; and Branwell and Emily were thrown yet more
upon each other for sympathy and entertainment.
Charlotte stayed a year and a half at school, and returned in the July
of 1832 to teach Emily and Anne what she had learnt in her absence;
English-French, English and drawing was pretty nearly all the
instruction she could give. Happily genius needs no curriculum.
Nevertheless the sisters toiled to extract their utmost boon from such
advantages as came within their range. Every morning from nine till
half-past twelve they worked at their lessons; then they walked together
over the moors, just coming into flower. These moors knew a different
Emily to the quiet girl of fourteen who helped in the housework and
learned her lessons so regularly at home. On the moors she was gay,
frolicsome, almost wild. She would set the others laughing with her
quaint humorous sallies and genial ways. She was quite at home there,
taking the fledgeling birds in her hands so softly that they were not
afraid, and telling stories to them. A strange figure--tall, slim,
angular, with all her inches not yet grown; a quantity of dark-brown
hair, deep beautiful hazel eyes that could flash with passion, features
somewhat strong and stern, the mouth prominent and resolute.
The sisters, and sometimes Branwell, would go far on the moors;
sometimes four miles to Keighley in the hollow over the ridge, unseen
from the heights, but brooded over always by a dim film of smoke,
seemingly the steam rising from some fiery lake. The sisters now
subscribed to a circulating library at Keighley, and would gladly
undertake the rough walk of eight miles for the sake of bringing back
with them a novel by Scott, or a poem by Southey. At Keighley, too, they
bought their paper. The stationer used to wonder how they could get
through so much.
Other days they went over Stanbury Moor to the Waterfall, a romantic
glen in the heathy side of the hill where a little stream drips over
great boulders, and where some slender delicate birches spring, a wonder
in this barren country. This was a favourite haunt of Emily, and indeed
they all loved the spot. Here they would use some of their paper, for
they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved
to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing,
since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte
were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and
exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with far greater
freedom and certainty of touch. Some of Charlotte's paper, also, must
have gone in letter-writing. She had made friends at school, an event of
great importance to that narrow circle. One of these friends, the
dearest, was unknown to Haworth. Many a time must Emily and Anne have
listened to accounts of the pretty, accomplished, lively girl, a
favourite in many homes, who had won the heart of their shy plain
sister. She was, indeed, used to a very different life, this fair young
girl, but her bright youth and social pleasures did not blind her to the
fact that oddly-dressed, old-fashioned Charlotte Bronte was the most
remarkable person of her acquaintance. She was the first, outside
Charlotte's home, to discover her true character and genius; and that at
an age, in a position, when most girls would be too busy with visions of
a happy future for themselves to sympathise with the strange activities,
the morbid sensitiveness, of such a mind as Charlotte possessed. But so
early this girl loved her; and lives still, the last to have an intimate
recollection of the ways, persons and habits of the Bronte household.
In September, 1832, Charlotte left home again on a fortnight's visit to
the home of this dear friend. Branwell took her there. He had probably
never been from home before. He was in wild spirits at the beauty of the
house and grounds, inspecting, criticising everything, pouring out a
stream of comments, rich in studio terms, taking views in every
direction of the old battlemented house, and choosing "bits" that he
would like to paint, delighting the whole family with his bright
cleverness, and happy Irish ways. Meanwhile Charlotte looked on, shy and
dull. "I leave you in Paradise!" cried Branwell, and betook himself over
the moor to make fine stories of his visit to Emily and Anne in the bare
little parlour at Haworth.
Charlotte's friend, Ellen, sent her home laden with apples for her two
young sisters: "Elles disent qu'elles sont sur que Mademoiselle E. est
tres-aimable et bonne; l'une et l'autre sont extremement impatientes de
vous voir; j'espere que dans peu de mois elles auront ce plaisir----" So
writes Charlotte in the quaint Anglo-French that the friends wrote to
each other for practice. But winter was approaching, and winter is