The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
the sharp practice connected with this astonishing judgment which led
to the sisters’ hurried journey to London in 1848—the famous journey
when the two little ladies in black revealed themselves to Mr. Smith,
and proved to him that they were not one Currer Bell, but two Miss
Brontës. It was Anne’s sole journey to London—her only contact with a
world that was not Haworth, except that supplied by her school-life at
Roehead and her two teaching engagements.
And there was and is a considerable narrative ability, a sheer moral
energy in “Wildfell Hall,” which would not be enough, indeed, to keep
it alive if it were not the work of a Brontë, but still betray its
kinship and source. The scenes of Huntingdon’s wickedness are less
interesting but less improbable than the country-house scenes of “Jane
Eyre”; the story of his death has many true and touching passages; the
last love-scene is well, even in parts admirably, written. But the
book’s truth, so far as it is true, is scarcely the truth of
imagination; it is rather the truth of a tract or a report. There can
be little doubt that many of the pages are close transcripts from
Branwell’s conduct and language,—so far as Anne’s slighter personality
enabled her to render her brother’s temperament, which was more akin to
Emily’s than to her own. The same material might have been used by
Emily or Charlotte; Emily, as we know, did make use of it in “Wuthering
Heights”; but only after it had passed through that ineffable
transformation, that mysterious, incommunicable heightening which makes
and gives rank in literature. Some subtle, innate correspondence
between eye and brain, between brain and hand, was present in Emily and
Charlotte, and absent in Anne. There is no other account to be given of
this or any other case of difference between serviceable talent and the
high gifts of “Delos” and Patara’s own “Apollo.”
The same world of difference appears between her poems and those of her
playfellow and comrade, Emily. If ever our descendants should establish
the schools for writers which are even now threatened or attempted,
they will hardly know perhaps any better than we what genius is, nor
how it can be produced. But if they try to teach by example, then Anne
and Emily Brontë are ready to their hand. Take the verses written by
Emily at Roehead which contain the lovely lines which I have already
quoted in an earlier “Introduction.”[1] Just before those lines there
are two or three verses which it is worth while to compare with a poem
of Anne’s called “Home.” Emily was sixteen at the time of writing; Anne
about twenty-one or twenty-two. Both sisters take for their motive the
exile’s longing thought of home. Emily’s lines are full of faults, but
they have the indefinable quality—here, no doubt, only in the bud, only
as a matter of promise—which Anne’s are entirely without. From the
twilight schoolroom at Roehead, Emily turns in thought to the distant
upland of Haworth and the little stone-built house upon its crest:—
There is a spot, ’mid barren hills,
Where winter howls, and driving rain;
But, if the dreary tempest chills,
There is a light that warms again.
The house is old, the trees are bare,
Moonless above bends twilight’s dome,
But what on earth is half so dear—
So longed for—as the hearth of home?
The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o’ergrown,
I love them—how I love them all!
Anne’s verses, written from one of the houses where she was a
governess, express precisely the same feeling, and movement of mind.
But notice the instinctive rightness and swiftness of Emily’s, the
blurred weakness of Anne’s!—
For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between—
Restore to me that little spot,
With gray walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.
Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,
And though its halls are fair within—
Oh, give me back my Home!
A similar parallel lies between Anne’s lines “Domestic Peace,”—a sad
and true reflection of the terrible times with Branwell in 1846—and
Emily’s “Wanderer from the Fold”; while in Emily’s “Last Lines,” the
daring spirit of the sister to whom the magic gift was granted
separates itself for ever from the gentle and accustomed piety of the
sister to whom it was denied. Yet Anne’s “Last Lines”—“I hoped that
with the brave and strong”—have sweetness and sincerity; they have
gained and kept a place in English religious verse, and they must
always appeal to those who love the Brontës because, in the language of
Christian faith and submission, they record the death of Emily and the
passionate affection which her sisters bore her.
And so we are brought back to the point from which we started. It is
not as the writer of “Wildfell Hall,” but as the sister of Charlotte
and Emily Brontë, that Anne Brontë escapes oblivion—as the frail
“little one,” upon whom the other two lavished a tender and protecting
care, who was a witness of Emily’s death, and herself, within a few
minutes of her own farewell to life, bade Charlotte “take courage.”
“When my thoughts turn to Anne,” said Charlotte many years earlier,
“they always see her as a patient, persecuted stranger,—more lonely,
less gifted with the power of making friends even than I am.” Later on,
however, this power of making friends seems to have belonged to Anne in
greater measure than to the others. Her gentleness conquered; she was
not set apart, as they were, by the lonely and self-sufficing
activities of great powers; her Christianity, though sad and timid, was
of a kind which those around her could understand; she made no grim
fight with suffering and death as did Emily. Emily was “torn” from life
“conscious, panting, reluctant,” to use Charlotte’s own words; Anne’s
“sufferings were mild,” her mind “generally serene,” and at the last
“she thanked God that death was come, and come so gently.” When
Charlotte returned to the desolate house at Haworth, Emily’s large
house-dog and Anne’s little spaniel welcomed her in “a strange,
heart-touching way,” she writes to Mr. Williams. She alone was left,
heir to all the memories and tragedies of the house. She took up again
the task of life and labour. She cared for her father; she returned to
the writing of “Shirley”; and when she herself passed away, four years
later, she had so turned those years to account that not only all she
did but all she loved had passed silently into the keeping of fame.
Mrs. Gaskell’s touching and delightful task was ready for her, and
Anne, no less than Charlotte and Emily, was sure of England’s
remembrance.
MARY A. WARD.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE[2]
TO THE SECOND EDITION
While I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been
greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few
kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit
that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity
which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as
well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just. It is
scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his
censors and vindicate his own productions; but I may be allowed to make
here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first
edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the
misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or
be content to judge it by a hasty glance.
My object in writing the following pages was not simply to amuse the
Reader; neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate
myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for
truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a
well, it needs some courage to dive for it, especially as he that does
so will be likely to incur more scorn and obloquy for the mud and water
into which he has ventured to plunge, than thanks for the jewel he
procures; as, in like manner, she who undertakes the cleansing of a
careless bachelor’s apartment will be liable to more abuse for the dust
she raises than commendation for the clearance she effects. Let it not
be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the
errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my
humble quota towards so good an aim; and if I can gain the public ear
at all, I would rather whisper a few wholesome truths therein than much
soft nonsense.
As the story of “Agnes Grey” was accused of extravagant over-colouring
in those very parts that were carefully copied from the life, with a
most scrupulous avoidance of all exaggeration, so, in the present work,
I find myself censured for depicting _con amore_, with “a morbid love
of the coarse, if not of the brutal,” those scenes which, I will
venture to say, have not been more painful for the most fastidious of
my critics to read than they were for me to describe. I may have gone
too far; in which case I shall be careful not to trouble myself or my
readers in the same way again; but when we have to do with vice and
vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they
really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing
in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course
for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the
safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the
young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and
flowers? Oh, reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of
facts—this whispering, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, there
would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left
to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.
I would not be understood to suppose that the proceedings of the
unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here
introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society—the case
is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I know
that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from
following in their steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from
falling into the very natural error of my heroine, the book has not
been written in vain. But, at the same time, if any honest reader shall
have derived more pain than pleasure from its perusal, and have closed
the last volume with a disagreeable impression on his mind, I humbly
crave his pardon, for such was far from my intention; and I will
endeavour to do better another time, for I love to give innocent
pleasure. Yet, be it understood, I shall not limit my ambition to
this—or even to producing “a perfect work of art”: time and talents so
spent, I should consider wasted and misapplied. Such humble talents as
God has given me I will endeavour to put to their greatest use; if I am
able to amuse, I will try to benefit too; and when I feel it my duty to
speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I _will_ speak it,
though it be to the prejudice of my name and to the detriment of my
reader’s immediate pleasure as well as my own.
One word more, and I have done. Respecting the author’s identity, I
would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither
Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed
to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot
greatly signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I
should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man,