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CHARLOTTE BRONTE

A CEN
rENAR Y MEMORIAL

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CHAI
LOTTE BRoXTE.

Frontispiece.

. .
CHARLOTTE BRONTE

1816- 1 9 16
A CENTENARY MEMORIAL

PREPARED BY THE BRONTË SOCIETY
.......
EDITED BY BUTLER WOOD, F.R.S.L.
WITH A FOREWORD BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
AND 3 MAPS AND z8 ILLUSTRATIONS

,

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE

First PuMis"'4 ;tt 19'7

( All riglm rll'r'fJtd)

FOREWORD

,

As President of the Brontë Society, I have been
asked-for my last appearance in that honourable
place !-to write a few words of Preface to this
H Centenary Memorial" of Charlotte Brontë. In
my o\vn paper, which was read at Bradford this
spring, and is printed in these pages, I have said
all that the reader of this book will want to hear
from myself on its ever-enthralling subject. But
there remains for me the pleasant task of pointing
such a reader to the variety of Brontë knowledge
and criticism which the other essays in this volume
contain. They are no drilled chorus, but the
fresh impressions and the first-hand research of
competent writers who have spoken their minds
both with love and courage. Very different judg-
ments will be found in them on very important
points, such as the relati ve rank of the two
great sisters, or of Charlotte Brontë's three novel
)
intlr se, or of her relation to her contemporaries.
This seems to me all to the good. It is by

5

Foreword

difference that we aU think; and "fret our minds
to an intenser play."
But what is unanimous, is not so much the
\varm praise of Charlotte Brontë, in which this
band of writers, from their various points of
view, ultimately agree, as the testimony they bear
to the feeling she still stirs in us-to the delight
she still gives to this later generation, after more
than half a century. The security of her fame,
we see, is'" year I y greater, as her star rises surel y
and steadily to its place in the nineteenth-century
heaven. Fluctuations of opinion there have been,
and must ahvays be, in the case of those who, like
the Brontës, challenge opinion) and, so to speak,
" take it by force. n But it seems to me that the
fluctuations are over, and the verdict given. And
the nlembers of the Brontë Society, during the last
twenty
; years, have certainly helped to make it
what it is. Their unworthy President bids them
now a gratefu] farewell.

MARY A. WARD.

8eplfmber, 19 1 ï.

ó

CONTENTS
f

.rAGJ:

FOREWOR.D. By Mrs. Humphry If/ard

5

INTRODUCTION I I
SOME THOUGHTS ON CHARLOTTE BRONTË. By
Mrs. Humphry Ward.
A WORD ON CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
Gosse) C.B.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË AS A ROMANTIC.
Chesterton
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: A PERSONAL SKETCH. By
Arthur C. Benson 55
CENTENARY ADDRESS AT HAWORTH. By the
Right Rev. Bishop lf/el/doll 63
CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN BRUSSELS. By 1l-I. H.
Spi
'manll
I
STORY OF THE BRONTË SOCIETY. By H. E. If root 1 I I
THE PLACE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN NINE-
TEENTH CENTURY FICTION. By the latt Dr.
Richard Garnett . 1+9
7

13
By Edmund
39
By G. K.
47

,

Contents

PAM

CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË: A COMPARISON
AND A CONTRAST. By Professor C. E.
17aughan, M.A. . 173
CHARLOTTE BRONTË IN LONDON. By Sir Sidney
Lee., LL.D. . 20 7
THE SPIRIT OF THE MOORS. By Halliwell
Sutcliffe . 249
THE BRONTËS AS ARTISTS AND PROPHETS. By
J. K. Snowden . 28 5
A BRONTË ITINERARY. By Butler If/ood. . 3 11

IN DEX

· 3 2 7

8

ILLUSTRA TIONS
f

PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË

Frontispiece

HAWORTH PARSONAGE
PORTRAIT OF MRS. GASKFI.L
HAWORTH CHURCH
PORTRAIT OF REV. A. B. NICHOLLS

Facing Pal

17
39
63
73

FACSIMILE OF CIRCULAR ISSUED BY THE RRONTË
SISTERS IN 1844 . I II
"BLACK BULL" INN, HAWORTH. . 129

DOG "FLOSS"
(From Wafer-C%ur Dro.wing bY C. BronÛ.)
HATHERSAGF.
HRONTË B IRTHPI ACE, THORNTON
BRONTË WATERFALL, HAWORTH MOOR .
QUARRIES ON HAWORTH MOOR .
THE R YDINGS, B IRST ALL
OAKWELL HALL, BIRSTALL
MOORSEATS, HATHERSAGE

. 133

. 14 I
. 161
. 16 9
. 17 2
. 177
. 177
. 193

9

Illustrations

PORTRAIT OF MR. GEORGE SMITH
PONDEN HOUSE (THRUSH CROSS GRANGE) .
ON HAWORTH MOOR

DOG "KEEPER" .
(From W ater-C %ur Drawing by E. Bronti)
VILLAGE OF STANBURY
THE WITHINS (WUTHERING HEIGHTS) .
PORTRAIT OF THE REV. PATRICK BRONTË
PORTRAIT OF MISS ELLEN N USSEY
HAWORTH FR01\1 THE MOOR EDGE
HAWORTH CHURCH
VIEW FROM HAWORTH MOOR
FOOT-BRIDGE NEAR BRONTË W ATFRFALL
HA WORTH FROM THE EAs'r

MAPS

"THE HAWORTH COUNTRY

THE" SHIRLEY" COUNTRY
l\...IRKBY LONSDALE AND COWAN BRIDGE

10

Facing pagt
. 20 9
. 225
. 249
. 257

. 273
. 273
. 281
. 281
. 28 9
. 28 9
. 3 0 5
. 3 0 5
. 3 1 5

. 3 1 7
. 3 1 9

. j21

INTRODUCTION

,

W HEN the Brontë Society discussed the question of
celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Charlotte
Brontë's birthday it was felt that the occasion
should be marked by something of a more
permanent nature than the public function which
had been arranged to be held at Ha worth, and
it was therefore decided to prepare for publication
a volume which should serve as a literary souvenir
of the Centenary year. Steps were thereupon
immediately taken to this end, and thanks to the
willing co-operation of some writers of eminence
who have notable syrnpathy with the objects of
the Society, it has been Inade possible to bring the
present work before the public.
In addition tu contributions written specially
for the occasion, a selection has been made from
the 1ransactions of the Society of those articles
which appear to be appropriate to the purpose of
the volume. '-rhey include appreciations by the
late Dr. Richard Garnett, Sir Sidney Lee, Prof.
I I

Introduction

c. E. Vaughan, Halliwell Sutcliffe, and J. Keighley
Snowden, and are included because it is felt
that they are well worthy of a more extended
publicity than it was possible to give them in the
limited issue of the Transactions of the Society.
Amongst the illustrations will be found a fac-
simile of the circular issued by the Brontë sisters
when contemplating the formation of a Boarding
School at the Haworth Parsonage in 1844. It
is reproduced from the only known leaflet now
existing, which is preserved in the Haworth
Museum.
The Council of the Society desire to record
their gratitude to Mr. A. C. Benson, Master of
Magdalene College, Cambridge, Mr. M. H.
Spielo1ann, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. G. K.
Chesterton, Bishop Welldon, Sir Sidney Lee,
Mr. J. Keighley Snowden, Mr. Halliwell Sut-
cliffe, Prof. C. E. Vaughan, and Mr. H. E.
Wroot, for the help they have generously ren-
dered; to the Editor of 'fhe Tinzes for permission
given to reprint Mr. Spielmann's article on
"Charlotte Brontë in Brussels;" to Mr. M. E.
Hartley, of Bradford, for preparing the subject
index, and to the President of the Society, Mrs.
Humphry Ward, for writing a foreword to
the volume and for permission to include her
Centenary Address.

12

SOME THOUGHTS
ON CHARLOTTE BRONTE

By MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

t

SOME THOUGHTS ON CHARLOTTE
BRONTË

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD TO THE
BRONTË SOCIETY, AT BRADFORD, FRIDAY, MARCH 3 0 , 1917.

A HUNDRED years ago last April, a third daughter
-Charlotte-was born to the Rev. Patrick
Brontë and Maria Brontë, his wife, at the
Yorkshire village of Thornton, in the parish of
Bradford. The little Charlotte's elder sisters
Maria and Elizabeth w
re still babies them-
selves when she appeared, and when not quite
four years later the whole famil y migrated to
Haworth, near Keighley, and took up their
residence in the small parsonage house, on the
edge of a Yorkshire moor, which is now so
famous in the history of literature, there were
six children, of whom the eldest was not much
more than six years old. Their gentle t refined
mother, worn-out perhaps by child-bearing, died
the year after the move, and the six wonderful
children were left motherless.
Was there ever such a brood! Think of
15

\

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Memorial
them in that first year at Haworth! Their
mother, whom they rarely saw, was dying;
their father was not fond of children, and
lived shut up in his study. Maria, aged seven,
was the mother and teacher of the rest. She
would shut herself up with a newspaper, in the
little fireless roon1 upstairs which was called the
" children's study" -there was no nursery in
that melancholy house!- and would be able to
tell the others all kinds of things when she
came out, about politics and Parliament, about
"the Duke," Charlotte's particular hero, and
Bonaparte, the Duke's vanquished foe, now safely
caged in St. Helena.
\Vhen the children went for a walk, they went
out all six together, on the moor behind the
house, alone, hand in hand, the elder ones help-
ing the babies. They never made a noise; their
happiest hours were spent \vhispering to each
other in the firelight on winter evenings; some-
how they all learnt to read-how, it is not
recorded; and books, the moors, and each other
sufficed them. They had no child friends,
no children's books, no pretty frocks, no
children's parties. Presently, their father, who
never walked with then1, or had a nleal with
them, began to realize they were not like other
children; and we have the well-known story of
his examination of them, when the eldest was
ten and the youngest four. H
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, SonJe 1'houghts 011 Char/otte Brontl

child wear a mask in turn and speak through
the mask, so as to give it courage. Anne) the
baby, was asked what a child like her n10st
wanted. She answered, Mr. Brontë says-is it
quite credible ?-" Age and experience." While
the eldest, Maria, aged ten, when asked what was
the best mode of spending time, replied :-" By
laying it out in preparation for a happy eternity."
A year later, the child who gave that answer was
dead, after that appalling year at the Cowan
Bridge School, of which Mrs. Gaskell gives an
account which has never been substantially shaken.
Her father left it on record that, long before
she died, he could talk to her about an y leading
topic of the day, as though she were a grown
person.
But still, she died, poor little motherless
mother !-and her younger sister, Elizabeth, also
died. MercifulJy Charlotte and Emily were
rescued from Cowan Bridge in time, and then
for nearly five years the marvellous children
were happy together in their own way. The
sisters loved each other passionately; they were
proud of their only brother, who was taught
by his father and kept at home; they were not
much interfered with by their aunt, who had
come to keep the house; they read the Bi ble,
Shakespeare, Bunyan, Addison, Johnson, Sheridan,
Cowper) for the past; Scott, Byron, Coleridge,
W ordiworth, Southey, for the moderns, with
17 B

Charlotte BroJJIP: (/ Celllc!/Jtlry AlelJJOlï
11
Blackwood's Magazine and a fulJ supply of
newspapers, both Whig and Tory.
rhey were
all politicians and desperate
rories; and the
record of what they \vrot
-the plays and poems
and miscellaneous tales and articles, in the "little
writing)" no\v so eagerly sought for by the
autograph collector, which most of us can only
read with a nlagnifying glass-before Charlotte, the
eldest, was fourteen, is more an1azing even than
the stories of wonder-children in Evelyn's Diar)',
or John Stuart Mill's recollections of his own
performances under the age of five. rrhe mere
list of Charlotte's childish works, in twenty-two
MS. volun1es, occupies a page and a half of
Mrs. Gaskell's biography.
Yet when Charlotte \vent to Roehead School,
at fourteen, she seemed at first so ignorant-it
\vas grammar and geography she was tested in-
that a kind schoolmistress told her pityingly she
must be placed with the little ones. Charlotte,
however, cried so much that a chance \vas given
her among the bigger girls. And then-stupe-
faction 1-the child who knew no grammar was
found to be steeped in literature and history.
"She looked a Ii ttle old woman" -said the
schoolfellow, i\1ary Taylor, writing to Mrs.
Gaskell ;-" so short-sighted that she always
appeared to be seeking something) and moving
her head from side to side to catch a sight of
it. She \vas very shy and nervous, and spoke
18

SOnlé'
rhoughts Oil Charlotte Brol/té.

with a strong Irish accent. \Ve thought her
very ignorant! But then she \vould confound us
by knowing things that \vere out of our range
altogether!" She told stories out of a "magazine"
,vritten by herself and her sisters. Once her
schoolfellows made her try to pIa y some ball
game with them. She tried, but she could not
see the balJ, so they" put her out." It was
pleasanter, she said, to stand under the trees
in the playground and \vatch the shadows and
the sky. Son1etimes she would talk politics
eagerly; and her Radical schoolfellows, reflecting
the opinions of Radical homes, found it was of
no use to argue with Charlotte about the Duke
of Wellington (the Reform Bill of )32 was just
passing)-for she knew everything about him,
and "we knew nothing." Her talent for story-
telling was endless. She and her sisters called
it "making out." '[he whole family used to
" 'make out' histories," says Mary Taylor again,
"and invent characters and events. She picked
up every scrap of information concerning paint-
ing, sculpture, poetry, music, etc., as if it were
gold. She never lost a moment of time! She
knew she must provide for herself.. '.
Yet, except for the year at Cowan Bridge,
Charlotte's childhood was not unhappy.
The power which overshadowed it, as also
that of her sisters, brought its own rewards. fhey
were thelTIselves well aware of its nature. Emily
19

Charlotte Rrontë: a Gten/ellary MeJJJorÍul

in particular has paid it immortal homage.
.A.gal n and again in those strange poen1s, written
in the simplest and commonest of metres,
scarcely one of which is without its touch of
geni us, while half a dozen belong to the mai n
poetic treasure of our race, Emily points to the
force \vhich nlade the bare, spartan life of the
hleak parsonage house a life of happiness, often
of joyous exci ten1en t, to the three sisters, so
long as they had each other to cling to, and
beforc Branwell's decadence began.

"Silent is the house; all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep,
Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze
That whirls the wildering drift, and bends
. . . the groaning trees.
Burn then little lamp; glimmer straight and clear.-
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air;
He for whom I wait thus ever comes to me ;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my con-
stancy."

What \vas the "Strange Power" that Enlil y
thus invokes? Simply lmagination-Poetry,
"making out." Emily was possessed by it;
so in a nlore nornlal degree was Charlotte,
and even the gen tle and timid Anne.
In Emily, it was mingled first with a. pas-
sionate love of home and country, and then
with ideas of violence and terror, partly sug-
gested, to her by books-the German Romantics
20

Sante Thoughts on Charlottf Brontl

whom she read at Brussels, or in translations
printed in Blackwood's 1VIagazine, which carne
regular 1 y to the parsonage-and part! y by her
own wild moors, and what she guessed of the
life around her, divining it fronl a face here,
and a fragment of talk there, seeing it all under
a light of storm, lit from the fire of her own
nature. I t is probable, I think, that the q uick-
ened pulse of phthisis, of \vhich she died , may
have had something to do \vith the peculiar
intensity, the self-devouring strength, of }1
mily's
genius. I have nlyself watched the effect of
the continuous fever of phthisis on a literary
gift, in the case of a great historian; there is
no doubt that it lent an added fire and energy
to his work; and I have often thought that the
same cause partly conditioned Emily Brontë's
poetic gift, and part! y explains the astonishing
glow and concentration of Wuthering Heights.
But it ,vas only an intensifying cause. With
Charlotte, imagination ,vas a cradle gift no less
than with Emily; and Anne, in frailer, feebler
Ineasure, was played on by the sanle power.
"The faculty of imagination,
' \vrites Char-
lotte to Mr. Willianls, "lifted me when I was
sinking, three months ago" (that is, after the death
of her sister Anne) ; "its active exercise has kept
my head above water since! "
And it ,vas imagination of a strong racial
type. Charlotte at school, says Mary rraylor

21

,

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary
lel11orial
spoke with a strong Irish accent. It should
never indeed be forgotten that the Brontës were
Irish on their father's side, and Cornish 011
their mother's.
rhat is to say, they were
Celtic by race, and they inherited the Celtic
gi fts.
" Never laugh at us Celts! " said Ernest Renan,
himself a Breton ;-" \ve shall not build the l
ar-
thenon-marble is not our affair. But we know
how to seize upon the heart and soul; we have
a power of piercing which belongs only to us.
We plunge our hands into the entrails of luau
and bring them out, like the witches in Macbeth,
full of the secrets of the infinite. Vv T e have no
turn for practical life, for chaffering and bar-
gaining. We are difficult to n10ve. We die
if you tear us from home. In the heart of our
race there is a perpetual spring of madness.
Fairy-land is our domain, the fairy-land that
only pure lips and faithfuJ hearts can enter! "
How many of these fan10us phrases suit the
Brontës! "We shall not build the Parthenon! "
Noone need look for classical perfection in the
Brontës. There is a morbid and feverish in-
equality in much of Charlotte's work, which drew
down upon her the critics of her own day, and
made Edward Fitzgerald call her "the Mistress
of the Disagreeable. U 11he structure, the build-
ing, both of Shirley and Villette break every
rule; and Charlotte, \vhen invited by George
22

Sonte ThfJugh S Oil Charlotte Brontë

Henry Lewes to consider the n1ild wisdom
and artistic perfection of Jane Austen, turned
almost angrily away. Charlotte and Emily
are Romantics through and through, and the
Celts in history and literature are the eternal
Romantics. For they are not thinking-striv-
ing to\vards-an artistic whole, in which feel-
ing, poetry, passion, shall be all brought into
bondage to a shaping and fastidious instinct,
\vhich is, in truth, the ultimate thing.
rhey
are grasping at poetry and passion for their o\vn
sakes, careless \vhat happens, so long as they
can exercise the piercing and arresting power
they are conscious of possessing.
Again: "In the heart of our race there rises,"
says Renan, "a spring of madness." And there
is a note of madness in the Brontë genius; con-
spicuously in Emily, but to be heard no\v and
then even in Charlotte. The wonderful chapter in
Villette describing Lucy Snowe, lonely, n1Íserable,
and delirious, \vhen she is left forsaken in the
peJ1sionnat through the sumnler holidays, has in
it something non-sane; one hears through it
the footfalJ of one who has known the border-
lands of the mind, where dream and 111elancholy
rule, where, for the time, responsibility and
reflection die. The genius of the poet and
rhapsodist-and it is essentiaIJy to that category
that the Brontë genius belongs-has ahvays been
held, as we know, to involve an element of
23

Charlotte Bront!: a Centtnary ]Vfel11orial

wildness, of something \vhich marks it from the
ordinary gifts of 111en-

Faster, faster,
Oh Circe, goddess,
Let th
wild thronging train,
'rhc bright procession of eddying forms.
Sweep through my soul!

It was in a n100d-a state-not far distant from
this that Charlotte Brontë \vrote the astonishing
pages at the end of Villette., where Lucy Snowe
wanders through the tnidnight Brussels en fête,
unknown, unrecognized-save for that one sharp
glance from the eyes of Dr. John-herself played
on by all the various il11pressions of night, crowd,
colour., fire, and by the different passions and
interests of the persons she sees; passing through
them like the very spirit of romance, and render-
ing scenes and characters in a marvellous language
-rich, flowing, now wildly and satirically gay,
no\v grave and quiet like the old Flen1ish streets
into \vhich she turns fron1 the noise and illumina-
tion of the park-just as Schumann or Brahms
would have rendered them in n1usic.
It is indeed this quality of poetry, sometimes
piercingly plaintive and touching, at others grin1
and fiery, with interludes of extravagance or gro-
tesq ue, that establishes the claim of Charlotte and
Emil y Brontë to their high place in literature.
Their claim, of course, is the Romantic claim
24

Some Thollghts on Charlotte Bront!

-the claitl1 of George Sand and Victor Hugo,
the claim of Coleridge, and in the main the claim
of Byron. But it was specially conditioned in
their case first by the Irish-the Cel tic-strai n of
blood; and secondly by a power of observation,
shre\vd or ironic, which is just as characteristic
of the Celt as the power of poetry, the touch
of madness, the lnelanchol y, the note of fairy-
land-which Renan claims for his race. Look,
for instance, at the work of J. M. Synge, or at sante
of the verse of the nlost modern Irish poets.
You will find in it exactly the mingling of these
two elenlents; poetry-that is, the sense of
nlystery and beauty in the world; together \vith
an eager interest in the human reality, often in
its most sordid and tri vial aspects, which is
subordinate, indeed, to the poetic po\ver, but
never fails in the end to bring that power to
the test of truth, even to find a puckish delight
in doing so. Charlotte, for instance, is eloquent
in praise of "observation" -she abhors senti-
nlentalism. Nevertheless, when you present her
with a realist like Jane Austen, she recoils. And
she \vould certainly have recoiled still further
(rorn the realists of to-day. She would have
found nothing, I believe, to please her in Cla)'-
h.anger or Kips. The detaiJ in her novels, good
or bad, is always subordinate to the (( strange
power" \vhom Emily invoked, to whom Char-
lotte turned \vhen she was " sinking" under grief.
25

II

Charlotte BrlJntl'.. 0 Centenary Memorial

The school detail, for instance, in 1ane Eyre, the
curates and the Y orkes in Shirle.'y; and all that
marvellous detail in Villette which has for ever
preserved, in its very habit as it lived, that pen-
.sionnat of Madame Beck's in the Rue Fossette :-
one may look upon it all as a good ilJustration of
a saying of Goethe's. In one of his talks with
Eckermann he says that the rarest and best kind
of imagination is that which spends itself on the
truth near at hand. Many writers, he says, with
direct reference to the monsters and nlarvels of the
German Romantic movement, prefer to write of
strange countries and times, and things they know
nothing about, and absurdly believe that they
culti vate their imagination by doing
o. The
master in poetry or fiction is he who can give
significance and beauty to the simplest incidents
of the life he knows. This is the "truth em-
bodied in a tale" which conquers the world.
But the whole question is as to the degree in
which the poetic faculty can transform and trans-
mute the detail it takes from reality.
Emily Brontë possessed the power of trans-
t11utation to a supreme degree. In spite of the
apparent realism of Wuthering Heights, its harsh
or brutal elements, it is passionate poetry-though
without a trace of "passion" in the ordinary
sense-from first to last. Charlotte possessed the
transmuting power less perfectly than Emily. But
Villette is the supreme example of it in her. All
26

SOllIe Thoughts on Charlotte Brantl

this small detail of a girl's school, of its activiti
s
and ambitions, of the persons living in it, and the
forces acting upon them, will live when half the
books and writers we are accuston1ed to admire
in this generation are wholly forgotten. The race
is not to the clever-or the voluble-or the in-
dustrious-or the ingenious. When nobody ever
wants to look at 'fhe New Machiavelli again,
still less at Anne Veronica, Villette wiU be read
and loved. Why? Not, of course. because of
its particular detail as con1pared with any other,
but because of the poetry and personality that
hold the detail, like the sunny water in \vhich the
ri ver- weeds swa y transfigured. That" strange
power" which Emil y invoked has touched it and
given it immortality.
But Charlotte was not al \va ys so happy in her
dealing with detail. The detail of the country
house scenes in lane Eyre is extravagant and
absurd-a little vulgar besides. The clerical
detail of Shirley leaves me uncon1fortable and
unconvinced. I wish that Charlotte had not, as
she confessed to Mr. WiJliams, photographed the
three curates fron1 the life. They have the faults
of photography, in its cruder stages. They are
not transn1uted; they remain raw and clumsy.
And that being so, the magic of art having failed
them, the moral question raises its head, the ques-
tion of justification; and one renlembers perhaps,
with discon1fort, a letter printed by Mr. Shorter,
27

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Mel1zarÎal
in which an old friend of Mr. James \\7. Smith,
the original of the l
ev. Peter Malone-hinlself
the little Sweeting of the nove]-denounces Char-
lotte Brontë's "photograph" of Peter Malone
as "false and cruel."
The n10ral question may also be raised \vith
regard to Villette. It is admitted that Madame
Heger was the original of Madanle Beck. But
Madan1e Heger had shown Charlotte Brontë
much kindness, and she was so justly hurt by
the portrait of Madame Beck that when Mrs.
Gaskell went over to Brussels in search of
material for her famous Life, Madd.t11e Heger
refused to see her. And yet, in time, you have
the Heger family, as it seems to me, recognizing,
with a personal magnanimity which is dependent
on a keen sense of art and literature, that Villette
is a wonderful book, that it is quite possible to
vindicate kind and n10therly Madarne Heger
frorn Charlotte Brontë's misjudgment of the real
wonlan-but that Villette without Madame Beck
would have been a shorn n1asterpiece. So that
artisticall y Charlotte Brontë is justified. 'I'hat is
to say-thinking of literature-we cannot regret
it. For-" qui veut la fin, veut les moyens."
But where the end-of artistic fusion-has not
been reached, where the material taken from life
remains crude, where the breath of the" maker t,
has not passed upon it, there the poet and the
story-teller hecon1es again an ordinary person to
28

10nle 1noltghts all Char/otte BrontE
he judged by ordinary rules; and although
Madame Beck is triumphant, the curates in Shirle."v
may be-at any rate partially--wished away!
Imagination, then-Celtic imagination-with its
head in the clouds, its heart on fire, its hands full
of treasures gathered from the comn10n earth, and
its feet walking in and loving the wilder, lone-
lier paths of life-it is so we must conceive
Charlotte's greatest gift. She is a dreamer who
observes, who is always observing; and she lives
precisely because of the mingling of these two
strains in her-the power of poetry and the power
of bringing the poetic faculty to bear on the truth
nearest her, the facts of her own daily life. "I
have seen so little," she complains once or twice.
But what she has made of that little! Beside
Pillette, a novel of a girls' school, how poor and
. ephemeral-already-do the novels look \vhich
are half journaJisn1-that is, either rhetoric, or
information, poured out for other ends than the
creative, the poetic end, like The New Machia-
velli, which I have already quoted; or the novels
which rest on an elaborate " documentation," like
Zola's Lourdes. Poetry, truth, feeling; and a
passion which is of the heart, not of the senses-
these are Charlotte's secrets. They are sin1ple,
but they are not to be had by everybody for the
-asking. Loti in the Péclzeur d'Islallde-Barrie
in The Window in 17zrums-many Russians in
many books-Victor Hugo in much of Les
29

Charlotte Brolltë: (l Centenary MeJJI0rÙlI
MiJérab/eJ-George Sand in her Berri stories
and in large sections of Consuela-they, with
many differences, stand in the sanle literary rank;
they walk the saine halls in the "House of
Fanle" with the Brontës.
There are, of course, other types and voices in
the House of Fame; but to this race of singers
and makers at least the golden gates are always
open; to the passionate, tht: pure in heart, the
SIncere.
Well, we have claimed for Charlotte Brontë, the
artist, imagination, truth, and po\ver. I t is one
of the strongest grounds of her immortality that
she was also a loving, faithful, suffering woman,
with a personal story which, thanks to Mrs.
Gaskell's Life, will never cease to touch the hearts
of English folk \vhile literature lasts. That best
of biographies was given me when I was seven-
teen by a dear kins\voman-Matthew Arnold's
youngest sister-now one of the fe\v survivors
who can renlember the living Charlotte; and 1
vividly recollect its effect upon me. rrhe story
of the gifted children in the small grim Y ork-
shire parsonage, with its graveyard in front and
its moors behind; their books, their plays, their
life in dream worlds of their own, nlore real to
them than the village world outside :-1 knew it
once by heart. I could see the parlour in the
firelight, with the three whispering to each other;
I could hear Martha and Tabby, their two maids,
3 0

Some ThouglltJ on Charlotte Brontë
in the kitchen. rrhe long village street, the high
moors behind the parsonage, the night winds
blowing over them, the glory of the heather in
summer, and the snow that covered them in
winter; they were all familiar to me through
Mrs. Gaskell' s art-as to many others--before
ever I set eyes on the real Haworth. And to
one who had been fronl her childhood scribbling
on her own account there was even greater fas-
cination in the story of the memorable years-
I 846 and 1 847-which saw the publication of the
Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, of Jane
Eyre and Wutherillg Heigh/s. The sudden journey
of the two sisters to London; their meeting with
their astonished publisher, to whom their arrival
first disclosed the identity of Currer Bell, the
supposed male author of Jane Eyre-that book
of which all the world was talking-with tht:
shy, plainly dressed, tiny creature who) with sup-
pressed excitement, put his own letter received
from him in Yorkshire the day before into his
hands as her credential: this too was a tale of
which I knew every turn. And a year after the
book was given me, I remember staying with a
friend in Brunswick Square and dragging her
out at night, to find Paternoster Rowand the
site at least of the Chapter Coffee l-Iouse. I had
never been in the City before, and I remember
the thrill of the deserted streets, the strong lights
and shades, th
great dome hovering darkly over-
3 1

.

Charlotte Brontë.' a G'en/eJltlry Menlo"J
l/

head, the darkness and silence of I>aternoster
Ro\v and Amen Corner; then Fleet Street, with
its illuminated newspaper offices; and, brooding
over it all, the sense of history, and of the
" mighty heart" of London, "lying still."
I little thought then that twenty years later
I should n1yself be in daily communication, as
an author, with the same Mr. George Smith in
whose hands, on July 16, 1848, Charlotte Brontë
had placed his o\vn letter as the proof of her
identity. I can never be grateful enough to
fortune that "Dr. John" became my constant
and generous friend, as he had been Charlotte
Brontë's. When I first knew him in 1886, he
was no longer indeed the "tall young man" of
t\venty-three whom Charlotte described in her
letters from London. But he was still in every
other respect the same man whose quick intel-
ligence discovered the Brontë genius; whose
endless kindness of heart and knowledge of the
resources of life and science might well, had she
but known him a few years earlier, have enabled
Charlotte to save her sisters from premature
death. When I made acquaintance with him
he was over sixty, with a full and varied life
behind him; the publisher of Thackeray and
Matthew Arnold, of Trollope, Huxley, the
Brownings, Leslie Stephen, and a score of others.
The qualities that Charlotte Brontë knew and
described in the picture of Graham Bretton,
3 2

SOIJJe ThlJughts on Charlotte Brol1të

who becomes the "Dr. John" of Villette, were
all there, undimmed. The help of them was full y
gi yen to me through fourteen years of friendship,
and I shall cherish while I live the memory of
" I)r. John."
We often talked of Charlotte Brontë, and he
spoke once to nle, with a twinkle of humour, of
the legend that he had proposed to her. Charlotte
herself, of course, disposes of the notion, to begin
with. She writes to Ellen N ussey that her young
publisher and she "understand each other very
well, and respect each other very sincerely. vVe
both know the wide breach tin1e has made
between us; \ve do not embarrass each other,
or very rarely; nlY six or eight years of seniority,
to say nothing of the lack of all pretension to
beauty, are a perfect safeguard." The" tall young
n1an," like other taIl young men, was indeed-as
Miss Brontë guessed-very susceptible to beauty.
'[he \vife whom Charlotte Brontë did not live
long enough to see, to whom, all her life, George
Smith was blessing and sunshine, was beautiful
even as I remember her last, in the year of the
outbreak of war, 1914, ,vhen she was over eighty.
But it was George Sn1ith' s gift for friendslzip-
true, faithful friendship-which nlarked him out
from others. Charlotte Brontë's short, sad life
was nlade the happier by it in a score of \vays ;
and I, brought forty years later into close and
long relation with the same man, can onl y testify,
33 C

.

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary Mel/lorial

with a hundred others in like case, that success
and fortune never spoiled" Dr. John." And it
\vas his peculiar gift to be able to hand on this
tpadition of friendship in business relations to his
colleague and successor in the historic firn1 of
Smith and Elder. The recent death of his son-
in-law, Mr. Reginald Smith, who married "Dr.
John's" youngest daughter, and carried on the
publishing business for sixteen years after George
Smith's death, has left a gap in the lives of many
men and women of this literary day, my own
among them, which will hardly be filled. For
both he and the great man who preceded him
belonged to that small band in each generation
\vho are able to infuse into the daily ways and
actions of practical life the quality and beauty of
their own high and beneficent spirit.
I have some other personal links with Charlotte
Brontë which I like to think of. rrhe interesting
letter printed by Mrs. Gaskell as written by a
" neighbour" in 1850, describing a visit to
Haworth in that year, \vas written by my aunt
and godmother, Mrs. W. E. Forster, the wife of
the Yorkshire member of Parliament who later on
became the Education Minister of J 870, and
Irish Chief Secretary, in the terrible years 1880-2.
Before that visit, however, Charlotte Brontë had
made friends in the Lake country with my own
people, the widow and children of Dr. Arnold,
of Rugby; and last summer I talked over the
34

Some ThfJughts on Charlotte Brontë

VISIt of Charlotte and Miss Martineau to Fox
How, with Dr. Arnold's youngest daughter and
only surviving child, who still remembers it.
Miss Martineau and Charlotte Brontë came over
to drink tea, and there was a young Oxonian in
the room, who looked at them with amused and
cri tical eyes, writing after\vards to a friend :-
"At seven came Miss Martineau and Miss
Brontë (Jane Eyre); I talked to Miss Martineau
(who blasphemes frightfully) about the prospects
of the Church of England, and, wretched man
that I am, promised to go and see her cow-
keeping miracles to-morrow, I who hardly know
a cow from a sheep. I talked to Miss Brontë
(past thirty and plain, with expressive grey eyes,
though) of her curates, of French novels, and
her education in a school at Brussels, and sen t
the lions roaring to their dens at half-past nine."
Miss Brontë, who talked very little, was not
apparently much drawn to the young author
of crhe Strayed Reveller, ,,,hich had appeared
three years earlier. She thought his n1anner
" foppish," and understood that "his theological
opinions were very vague and unsettled." But
she knew that already he was the author of "a
volume of poems," which, however, she had not
seen. I wish she had seen it: there are many
things in that first volume which would have
spoken to her. And I wish she could have
foreseen that from that young unknown Matthew
35

.

Charlotte Rro1l i!.. tl Centenary MelJlorÎal

.L-\rnold, whom she met in the Fox How drawing..
roonl, would come that tribute to her great
sister En1ily, which, long before the Brontë cult
had risen to anything like its present height,
bore testimony once again to that freemasonry,
that quick mutua] divination ,vhich marks the
"little clan" of poets, to whom, from age to
age, is left, in Keat's phrase, the carrying on of
"great verse." But these things were hidden
fronl the "expressive grey eyes " my uncle
noticed. Only, as though S0111e prescience of
thern touched her, as Miss Brontë left the roonl,
she passed n1Y aunt, then a girl of seventeen,
\vho was holding the door open, and suddenly
the little shy, silent woman said: "May I kiss
you?" and to the girl's astonishment darted
forward and kissed her. It was a very character-
istic, a very Brontë-ish, touch. Compunction,
perhaps, for that strange paralysis, that silence
benu111bing to herself and other people, which
often fell upon her in society, and once-as we
know from an ininlÏtable page of Lady Ritchie's
-drove Thackeray into letting himself out
quietly from his own front door, in the very
nlidst of a party he hinlself had gathered in
her honour; quick feeling; quick gratefulness
perhaps for the welcon1e given her by these un-
known people: there is all this in it and morc.

"And did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you?"
3 6

S0111e 1noughts 011 Charlotte Brontë

I t is with something of the sanIe wistfulness,
the same suppressed excitement as Browning here
expresses, that one talks now with one of the
very few persons in the world \vho ever saw
Charlotte Bront
.
Finally, what is it that nlakes the charm?
Along with the Celtic qualities, as we know,
she had the Celtic faults-occasional arrogance,
occasional vulgarity and extravagance. Enlily
Brontë had none of the loose rhetoric and
')hallow didactic into which Charlotte often fell.
But for all that Charlotte wielded a natural
tnagic of words, as George Sand did. There
are passages in her letters-especially in those
describing the deaths of her sisters-that belong
to the noblest and most moving of English
prose. To return to the phrase of M. Renan,
she had the "gift of piercing"; she had been
in fairy-land and brought back the tones of it-
tones as often sad as gay; and she possessed in
fiction an art of representation, especially an art
of dialogue, which was all her own, instinct
with poetry and life. Which was the greater,
she or Enlily? rro my mind, Enlily, by fat-.
But one is reminded of another saying of
{;oethe's to Eckennann: "For t\venty years the
public has been disputing \vhich is the greater,
Schiller or I-and it ought to be glad that it has
got a couple of fellows about \vhonl it can dispute."
Well, Yorkshire too may be proud, I think,
37

.

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Men10rial

that among its moors and heaths were reared
not one Charlotte Brontë, but such a par nobile
Ira/rum (to rescue the phrase of Horace from
its original context) as Currer and Ellis Bell.
Yorkshire does well to keep their memories
green; to read, discuss them, and, at need,
dispute about thenl.
" What do we mean by originality? " Goethe
asks again. "As soon as we are born the
world begins to work upon us, and this goes
on to the end. And after all, what can we call
our own except energy, strength, and will?"
" Energy, strength, and will." As writers,
Charlotte and Emily possessed them all, to a
marvellous degree. If you add feeling, fire,
magic-poetry, in short !-you come as near
perhaps as you can come to the definition of
their place in Literature.

Pale sisters! children of the moorland scree,
Deep dale and murmuring river, where ye plied
All household arts, 111eek, passion-taught, and free,
Kinship your joy, and fantasy your guide!-
Ah
who again 'mid English heaths shal] see
Such strength in frailest weakness, or so fierce
Behest on tender women laid. to pierce
'-rhe world's dull ear with burning poetry?
Whence was rour spell ?-and at what magic spring,
Under what guardian Muse, drank re so deep
'fhat still ye call, and we are listening;
That still ye plain to us, and we must weep?
-Ask of the winds that haunt the moors, what breath
Blows in their storms, outlasting life and death!
3 8

l\IW
. GASKELL.

T
face p. 38.

,

.

A WORD ON CHARLOTTE
BRONTE

By EDMUND GOSSE

"

\

A WORI) ON CHARLOTTE BRONTË

TH E century which has slipped by since the
birth of Charlotte Brontë may roughly be divided,
so far as she alone is concerned, into four equal
sections which claim our attention. During the
first of these she ,vas preparing, in conditions
at once extraordinarily romantic and of the n10st
painful mediocrity, for her labours as a novelist.
Another quarter of a century closes in her first
apotheosis, the publication of Mrs. Gaskell's
admirable Life of her. Exposed to new currents
of popular taste, her reputation now began
slo\vly to decline, till it was thought necessary
to assert, by way of defence, that her works
"\vill one day again be regarded as evidences of
exceptional intellectual power." Throughout a
final period this n10derate estin1ate has been vastly
exceeded. The apologist who would now clainl
for her no n10re praise than that would be
laughed out of court, and what, in starting in
a blaze of glory upon her second century,
Charlotte Brontë most pathetically calls for is,
not blank appreciation, but some judicious
'exercise of praise.

4 1

\

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Mel1l0rial

In the evolution of her fame, her disadvan-
tages have been transformed into advantages, as
toads are bewitched into pearls in some old
fairy-story. The hard, dry atmosphere of Ha-
worth, in the blast of a perpetual n10ral east
wind; the narrowness of the stage which the
three wonderful sisters trod; the ugliness which
surrounded them; the barrier which divided
them from the socia] amenities,-all these are
elements in the miracle of their production, and
each of these elements has added something to
the fascination of their books. We read these
\vith trebled interest because we know what the
conditions were. But we are in danger of not
percei ving that they were disad vantageous, of
supposing that they added a lustre to the genius
of the sisters, that they were intrinsically valuab]e.
I t is worse than useless to regret any of the
facts of literary history, but at least we need not
exult in them. Among the disadvantages of
Charlotte I place very high the puritanism which
surrounded her from her cradle, and which
entered into her very bones. I t made her use-
lessly and contentiously austere, and it darkened
her outlook upon 1ife. That artificial deepen-
ing of the shadows may render her work more
picturesque, but it deprives it of harmony. It
gi ves a certain aspect of the dried or shri veHed
to Charlotte's books when we compare then1 with
the serene fulness, the rich and harmonious
4 2

A Word 011 Charlotte Brontif

suavity, the ripeness, of the Inasterpieces of her
supreme contemporary, George Sand.
The imagination of Charlotte Brontë, despite
its prodigious vitality, was a Ii ttle puerile.
When she trusted to her own ears and eyes
she was excellent, but the narrow range within
which observation was possible for her leaves
us to the last with an impression of her as a
wonderful young person who never quite grew
up. She has the impatience, the unreasonable
angers and revolts, of an unappreciated adolescent.
When she seems most certainly adult she has
still her rebellious air of enduring tribulation with
an angry fortitude. Her ignorance sets traps
for her, and she falls into them without a
struggle. Mrs. Humphry Ward has COln-
mented on the amazing conversations of the
smart people at Thornfield Hall. Polite writers,
indulging the snobbishness of literature, think it
would have been "charming" to talk to Char-
lotte Brontë. It would probably have been
disconcerting to the highest degree, and Lad y
Ritchie's recollection of the London visit should
be a warning to such lioness-hunters of the
imagination.
It is a pity, perhaps, that Charlotte, when the
hour of unwelcome exile came, did not go to
Paris instead of to Brussels. What her mind
and her temperament needed then (in 1842)
was sunshine, geniality, ease, and breadth. She
43

,

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary MeJ110rial

proceeded on her sordid journey with her nerves
on edge, her fists clenched, her eyes set with a
fierce derision. In the Belgium of those days
there \vas nothing which could be expected to
soften her asperities or to civilize her moorland
savagery. There should have been, on the
other hand, n1uch for her to sympathize with
in the attitude of her Parisian contemporaries,
if merel y in the remarkable spectacle of that
conflict which \vas raging between the romantic
and the realistic. It \vould have been a whole-
some thing for Charlotte to have been persuaded
that there are relations, conditions, aspirations
in the hun1an soul not dreamed of by Lucy
Sno\ve or even by Jane Eyre. I do not think
that her own creations \vould have thrilled us
Jess, but in the long run probably n1ore, if she
had studied, with humility and complaisance,
the processes of the mighty n1ind of Balzac.
But she was protected against sympathy by a
moral pride (we should call it arrogance if we
were not so fond of her) which closed to
her violent individuality all the pathways of
instruction. She could only learn what she
taught herself.
vV c must admit, even at this n10ment of
exaltation, that she had faults-faults of know-
ledge, of temper, of social experience. But her
errors included none against high feeling. What
she endured, what she percei ved, she reproduced
. 44

A Word 011 Charlotte Brontë

with the purest intensity, an intensity which
transfers itself to the reader, who admits that he
is thrilled, in her own splendid phrase, "to the
finest fibre of my being, sir! "
ro this expres-
sion of concentrated emotion she brought a
faculty of power in which her work is unique.
She has a spell by n1eans of which she holds us
enchanted, while she lays before us the distresses
and the exasperations of humanity. Her great
gift, no doubt, Jay in the unconscious courage
with which she broke up the stereotyped com-
placency of the age. Her passion swept over
the pools of Early Victorian fiction and roused
them to storm; the undulations that it set in
motion have been vibrating in our literature
ever since, and perhaps the most wonderful
fact about Charlotte Brontë is that the en1an-
cipation of English fiction from the chains of
conventionality should have been brought about,
against her own will, by this Jittle provincial
Puritan. She was, in her own words, " furnace-
tried by pain, stamped by constancy," and out
of her fires she rose, a Phænix of poetic fancy,
crude yet without a rival, and now, in spite of
all imperfections, to live for ever in the forefront
of creative English genius.

EDMUND GOSSE.

45

\

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A
ROMANTIC

By G. K. CHES1'ERTON

9'

.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AS A
ROMANTIC

THE genius of Charlotte Brontë is unique in the
only valuable sense in which the word can be
applied; the only sense which separates the rarity
of some gift in a poet from the rarity of some
delusion in an asylum. However conlplex or
even grotesque an artistic power may be, it
must be as these qualities exist in a key, which
is one of the most complex and grotesque of
human objects, but \vhich has for its object the
opening of doors and the entrance into wider
things. Charlotte Brontë's art was something
n10re or less than complex: and it was not to
be described as grotesque; except rarely-and
unintentionally. But it was temperamental and,
like an things depending on temperanlent) un-
equal: and it was so personal as to be perverse.
I t is in connection with power of this kind,
however creative, that we have to discover and
define what distinguishes it from the uncreative
intensity of the insane. I cannot understand
what it was that made the Philistines of a former

49

D

,

.

Charlotte Brol1të.' a Centenary MeJJ10rial

generation regard Jane Eyre as morally unsound;
probably it was its almost exaggerated morality.
But if they had regarded it as mentally unsound,
I could have understood their prejudice, while
perceiving the nature of their error. Jane Eyre
is, among other things, one of the finest detective
stories in the world; and for anyone artistic all y
attuned to that rather electric atmosphere, the
discovery of the n1ad wife of Rochester is, as that
type of artistic sensation should always be, at once
startling and suitable. But a stolid reader, trained
in a tamer school of fiction, tnight be excused, I
think, if he came to the conclusion that the wife
was not very much madder than her husband, and
that even the governess herself was a little queer.
Such a critic, however, would be ill-taught, as
people often are in tame schools; for the mildest
school is anything but the most moral. The
distinction between the liberating violence that
belongs to virtue, as distinct from the merely
burrowing and self-burying violence that belongs
to vice, is something that can only be conveyed
by metaphors; such as that I have used about
the key. Some may feel disposed to say that the
Brontë spirit \vas not so much a key as a battering-
ram. She had indeed some command of both
instruments, and could use the more domestic
one quietly enough at times; but the vital point
is that they opened the doors. Or it might be
said that Jane Eyre and the n1ad woman lived in
50

Charlotte Brontë as a ROJnantic

the san1e dark and rambling house of mystery,
but for the maniac all doors opened continually
inwards, while for the heroine all doors, one after
the other, opened outwards towards the sun.
One of these universal values in the case of
Charlotte Brontë is the light she throws on a
very fashionable æsthetic fallacy: the over-
lterated contrast between realiS111 and romance.
They are spoken of as if they were two alternative
types of art, and sometimes even as if they were
two antagonistic directions of spiritual obligation.
But in truth they are things in two different
categories; and, like all such things, can exist
together, or apart, or in any degree of c0111bina-
tion. Romance is a spirit; and as for realism,
it is a convention. To say that S0111e literary
work is realistic, not romantic, is to be as
inconseq uent as the man \vho said to me once
(and it is heart-breaking to reflect how many
scores of equally inconsequent people have said
it), "The Irish are warm-hearted, not logical."
He, at any rate, was not logical, or he wou1d
have seen that his statement \vas like saying that
somebod y was red-haired rather than athletic.
There is no kind of reason why a man with
strong reasoning power should not have strong
affections; and it is rny experience, if anything,
that the man who can argue clearly in the
abstract generally does have a generosity of
blood and instincts. But he rnay not have it ;
51

Charlotte BroJ1të.' a Centenary Memorial

for the things are in different categories. This
case of an error about the Irish has some appli-
cation to the individual case of Charlotte Brontë,
who was Irish by blood, and in a sense, all the
n10re Irish for being brought up in Yorkshire.
An Irish friend of mine, \vho suffers the same exile
in the san1e environn1ent, once n1ade to me the
suggesti ve remark that the towering and over-
masculine h3.rbarians and lunatics, who dominate
the Brontë novels, simply represent the in1pres-
sion produced by the rather boastful Yorkshire
manners upon the more civilized and sensitive
Irish temperament. But the wider application
is that romance is an atmosphere, as distinct as
a separate dimension, which co-exists with and
penetrates the whole work of Charlotte Brontë ;
and is equally present in all her considerable
tri umphs of realism, and in her even greater
triumphs of unreality.
Realisn1 is a convention, as I have said: it
is generally a matter of external artistic form,
when it is not a n1atter of mere fashion or con-
venience, how far the details of life are given,
or how far they are the details of the life we
know best. It nlay be rather more difficult to
describe a winged horse than a war horse: but
after all it is as easy to count feathers as to
count hairs; it is as easy and as dull. The
story about a hero in which the hairs of his
horse were all numbered would not be a story
52

Charlotte Brontë as a RlJnlantic

at all; the line must be drawn a long while
before we come to anything like literal reality;
and the question of whether we give the horse
his \vings, or even trouble to mention his colour,
is merely a question of the artistic form we have
chosen. It is the question bet\veen casting a
. horse in bronze or carving him in marble; not
the question between describing a horse for the
purposes of a zoologist or for the purposes of a
bookie. But the spirit of the \vork is quite
another thing . Works of the wildest fantasti-.
cality in form can be filled with a rationalistic
and even a sober spirit: as are some of the works
of Lucian, of Swift and of Voltaire. On the
other hand, descriptions of the most humdrum
environments, told with the most homely inti-
macy, can be shot through and through with
the richest intensity, not onl y of the spirit of
sentiment but of the spirit of adventure. Few
\vilJ be inl pelIed to call the household of Mr.
Rochester a humdrum environment; but it is none
the less true that Charlotte Brontë can fill the
quietest rooms and corners with a psychological
romance ,vhich is rather a matter of temperature
than of time or place. After all, the sympathetic
treatment of Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is
not more intrinsically romantic and even exag-
gerative than the sympathetic treatment of Mr.
Paul Emanuel in Villette; though the first
may be superficially a sort of demon and the
53

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary Menlorlal

second more in the nature of an imp. To
present Mr. Emanuel sympathetically at all
was something of an arduous and chivalric
adventure. And Charlotte Brontë was chivalric
in this perfectly serious sense; perhaps in too
serious a sense, for she paid for the red-hot
reali ty of her romance in a certain insufficiency
of humour. She was ad venturous, but in an
intensely individualistic and therefore an in-
tensely \vomanly way. It is the most feminine
thing about her that we can think of her as a
knight-errant, but hardly as one of an order or
round table of knights-errant. Thackeray said
that she reminded him of Joan of Arc. But
it is one of the fascinating elenlents in the long
ronlance of Christendom that figures like Joan
of Arc have an existence in romance apart {ron1,
and even before, their existence in reality. This
vision of the solitary virgin, adventurous and in
arms, is very old in European literature and
mythology; and the spirit of it went with the
little governess along the roads to the dark
mansion of madness as if to the castle of an
ogre. The same tale had run I ike a silver thread
through the purple tapestries of Ariosto; and
we may willingly salute in our great country-
woman, especially amid the greatest epic of our
country, something of that nobility which is in
the very name of Bri tomart.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
54

CHARLOTTE BRONTE:
A PERSONAL SKETCH

By ARTHUR C. BENSON

9'

. .
CHARLOTfE BRON1
E: A PERSONAL
SKETCH

CHARLOTTE BRONTË was born a century ago,
on April 2 I , I 8 16; and she died on March
3 I, 1855 . Yet in those short years, years of
bleak and hard nurture, much depressing ill-
health, tragic sorrow, such as fall to the lot of
but few human beings, and with a temperanlent
so highly strung and sensitive that the simplest
situations of life over\vhelmed her with nervous
terrors, she attained an enduring fan1e, which
has increased and broadened every year. But
not onl y that. There are certain figures of
undeniable genius, whose work remains as a
substantial and venerated contribution to human
thought, but \vhose personality becomes absorbed
and folded into the past. On the other hand,
there are men and W0111en, the fascination of
\vhose personality and life seems even stronger
than that of their books. The smallest details
of their career are cherished, and contemporary
records are ransacked for traces of their words
and acts. This is undeniably the case with
57

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Menlorial
Charlotte Brontë. She was not one of those
,vho put the whole of themselves into their books,
leaving their lives silent and featureless. Rather
her books were just the natural outcome and
expression of her inmost self. The qualities
which her deepI y seated diffidence prevented her
from displaying in daily life, her humour, her
penetrating insight, her delicate fancy, her
liveliness, her passionate affections, her noble
scorn of all that was cold or mean, all these
flashed into life on her pages.
When her first great book, Jane Eyre,
appeared in 1847, it provoked attention and
speculation by its daring, its unconventional
standards, its realistic sensationalisn1, and its
austere and beautiful rendering of natural scenes.
But it was hardly realized at first that it contained
tnore than a novel kind of sentiment, bolder,
more natural, more self-revealing than the
orthodox and homely pieties of current fiction.
It evoked, it is true, both protest and even in-
dignation by a frankness which was confused with
indelicacy. But the later books, Shirley and
Villette, less romantic, more restrained, more
n1ature, brought home to their readers that a
new philosophy of love, fro1l1 the woman's point
of view, was here resolutely depicted. It was
not a revolt against tame and formal conven-
tions so much as a new sense of right and dignity,
a manifesto, so to speak, of the equality of noble
58

Charlotte Brontë.' a Personal Sketch

love. Compare the conception of love, from
the woman's standpoint, in the novels of Dickens
and Thackeray, with Charlotte Brontë's concep-
tion. In Dickens and Thackeray love is at
best a re\vard, a privilege, graciously tendered
and rapturously accepted; and the highest con-
ception of wifely love is one of fidelity and
patience and unselfish tendance gently rendered
by a domestic angel, whose glory is self-repres-
sion, and whose highest praise is to afford an
uncritical haven of repose to an undisputed
master.
But in Charlotte Brontë's books it is far other-
wise. 'fhe woman does not look upon marriage
as the door of escape fron1 obscurity into activity.
Her love is rather a noble surrender, only to be
won by a surrender no less noble. Marriage is
not submission, but a free and glowing partner-
ship, in which man and woman alike have to do
their best, in tenderness and reverence and grati-
tude, to maintain their love undimmed and ardent.
The man is not to decline into a conlfortable
supremacy surrounded by delicate attentions, with
full freedom to indulge his hun10urs. It is rather
to be a sacred and impassioned relationship, in
which both alike have to do their utmost to keep
the t11utual ideal of loyalty and duty fresh and
pure. Passionate as the affection is which draws
Charlotte Brontë's lovers together-was ever the
incredible thrill of human contact, the blankness
59

Charlotte Brontë.- a Centenary Memorial

of separation, the joy of meeting drawn with so
bold an outspokenness ?-yet there is ahvays
present in her love-affairs the germ of a deep
and tender friendship, sure to broaden and de-
velop, as the years go on, into a perfect trust
and union. Whatever happens, the two are
always to be thenlselves, not a faint and sym-
pathetic copy of each other, but strong and
independent, linked together in a joyful and
grateful service. That is, I believe, the message of
Charlotte Brontë's books-the high equalityof love.
Let us think for a n10ment of the background
upon which this great and noble creed outlined
itself. A bleak and wind-swept vicarage, between
the hill-village and the moor. The mother fades
early out of life; the father lives in a fiery and
impotent seclusion. The children live their own
lives, doing much of the house-work, and in-
dulging in endless plays and romances. They
go off to school, and two of the delicate creatures
fall victims to hard and insanitary conditions.
rrhe four who remain are drawn closely together,
a brother of amazing brilliance, one sister, Emily,
a poetess of high genius, but with a horror of the
intrusive \vorld, a younger sister, Anne, of tender
if sombre piety, and Charlotte herself. All their
little adventures, school-teaching and governess-
ships, are poisoned by shyness and h0111e-sickness.
But in the sojourn of Charlotte and Emily in
Brussels, at a girls' school, where they are half
60

'Charlotte Brontë: a Personal Sketch

pupils and half teachers, Charlotte Brontë's heart
and mind awake in an unconscious passion for a
teacher, M. Heger, a man of insight, mental
power, intellectual and moral stimulus. That
was really the moulding influence of Charlotte
Brontë's genius. It gave her an unrequited devo-
tion, but initiated her into the mystery of love,
while it gave her mind its firm and fine maturity.
rrhen the tragedy deepens and thickens; the
brother comes to hopeless grief, and saddens the
house by his dreary and base excesses. He dies
at last, and the other sisters follow him swift! y
to the gr
ve. But it was then, in solitude and
sorrow, that Charlotte Brontë's mind flowered
in her noblest book, Villette; and then, too, at
last she found her own ha ven in the deep and
wholesome love of a strong, tender and simple
n1an, her father's curate; she kne\v for once the
full delight of being needed, depended upon, and
cherished.
But we cannot make a greater mistake than to
think of Charlotte Brontë as in any sense a senti-
mentalist. F or all her diffidence and ill-health
and her high dreams and visions, she had a nature
almost relen tlessl y strong. There never was an y-
one with a more unflinching sense of duty. Her
judgments of other people are not mild and in-
dulgent. She had a scorn for all that was base
and mean and feeble. She made no excuses for
herself and she did not excuse weakness in others.
61

"

,

Charlotte Brollté.: a Centenary MeJJ10rial
All the practical steps ever taken by the house-
hold were planned and executed by her. When
she was harshly and insolently criticized, she was
not crushed by it; her in1pulse was to n1ake
sharp and spirited reply. She went on \vith her
work without fear or deference; she made no
concessions or compromises. She was not meekly
religious, accepting sorrow and defeat with mild
forbearance. She looked upon life as a probation,
a chance of learning great truths and large experi-
ences. She had a certain fear of life, but she
looked it firn11 y in the face, interrogated it, defied
it to harm her, laid hands upon its secret. Like
Jacob of old, she said to the stern visitant, "I
will not let thee go, until thou bless n1e." She
never craved for flight or for repose. She had a
sublime faith in God, believing that He had set
her in her place to endure, and wrestle, and to
say her say, and she knew that He would not
allo,v her to be worsted. It is by this wonderful
union of unconquerable courage and passionate
tenderness that she has won the affection and
worship of so many hearts, the lonely hearts that
suffer and would fain be beloved, as well as the
strong hearts that recognize in her a gallant
comrade in a stern battle. She is the champion
of strength in weakness as well as of love in
loneliness and the fame that resounds about her
,
grave is but the echo of gratitude and honour
and love.

AR 1
HUR C. BENSON.
62

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CENTENARY ADDRESS AT
HA WORTH

By THP: RIGHT REV. BISHOP WELLDON

r

CEN1 1 EN ARY .i\DDRESS AT
I-IA WORTH I

I f is with a deeply reverential feeling that I
have accepted the privilege of speaking a few
words, such as may not, I hope, be altogether
unsuitable to the nlemories which cling around
this House of God, in connection \vith the
Centenary year of Charlotte Brontë's birth.
She ,vas born, as you know, at Thorn ton on
.L
pril 2 I, 18 I 6. She was baptized in Thornton
Church on June 29th of the same year. She
died on March 3 I, I 855. 'rhus the associations
of living men and won1en \vith her life are
rapidly dying, if they are not now aln10st
dead. For me, the last of thenl "vas broken
by the death of my friend, Miss Margaret
l
n1ily Gaskell, the "Meta" of Charlotte
Brontë's letters, in October 19 I 3. So long as
Miss Gaskell lived, her house, so well kno\vn
to the literary and philanthropic \vor1d of Man-
chester, was the abiding link \vith Charlotte
Brontë. For it was there that Charlotte Brontc:

I Deli\crcd in Haworth Parish Church, June 17, 19 16 .
65 E

Charlotte Brol1të: a Centenary Menlorial

stayed on her visits to Manchester; there that,
in the stately and rather sombre drawing-room,
scarcel y altered between her own death and
Miss Gaskell's, she hid behind the curtains on
the sudden announcement of a strange visitor;
there, too, that her biography was written by
Mrs. Gaskell. Now, alas! that house in Ply-
n10uth Grove is closed, and the citizens of
Manchester look back, through an ever length-
ening and darkening vista, to the great nan1es
of Mrs. Gaskell and Charlotte Brontë.
The year 18 16 may be said to unite Charlotte
Brontë with the great generation 'v hich was
born in the first and second decades of the
nineteenth century. It ,vas a year memorable
in the achieven1ents of literary genius. For in
that year-just one hundred years ago-Scott
published The Antiquary, Byron the third Canto
of Childe Harold's Pilgrin'Jage, and Goethe the
first part of his ltalienische Reise.
No student of Charlotte Brontë's or her
sisters' writings would, perhaps, think of placing
them, as equals or compeers, in the sanle class
with these three illustrious authors. The sect,
or church, of the Brontë-worshippers is com-
parati vely smal1. But it n1ay be doubted
whether any votaries in the history of literature
have pursued their cult with more passionate
or pathetic feelings than they-shall I not say
we ?-\vho gather in spirit, and to-day in
66

Centenary Address at Haux}rth

person, around the graves of Charlotte Brontë
and so many other nlen1bers of her family.
If it be asked why our feelings are so deep,
as though we were mourning, in Charlotte
Brontë especially, not only a writer, ho\vever
bright she nlay have shone in the firnlament of
literature, but a friend in whose Ii fe ,ve \vould,
if we might, claim a sympathetic share, no doubt
the reason lies, to some extent, in the 111ystery,
I had almost said the tragedy, of the Brontës.
Never, it nlay be, has human genius asserted
itst:lf so suddenly and surprisingly as in the
three daughters of the Reverend Patrick Brontë.
Never has such genius been so suddenly and so
ruthlessl y extinguished by the Angel of Death.
Anne Bronte was t\venty-nine years of age at
her death, Emily only thirty years, Charlotte,
the nlost famous of clll the sisters, only thirty-
eight. T\vo other sisters there were-Elizabeth
and Maria-who died, one in the eleventh, and
the other in the twelfth, year of her age. Their
one brother-the unhappy BranwelI-\vhose gifts
were clouded by such errors and failings as cast
a shadow upon his whole fanlily, did not live
beyond his thirty-first year. Their mother died-
"departed to the Saviour" as the inscription upon
her grave tells-when her eldest child was only
six years old. Their father outlived his whole
family, and, after having been c, incumbent of
Haworth for upward of forty-one years," died
67

"

Charlotte Brontë: {I Centenary MeJJJorial
in the eighty-fifth year of his age-more than
six years after his daughter Charlotte's death.
It is the thought of genius so prenlaturely cut
oft
as men count days and deeds, of Charlotte
Brontë's especially, that inspired Matthew
.L-\.rnold's well-known lines upon Haworth
Churchyard.

Strew with laurel the grave
Of the early dying! Alas!
Early she goes on the path
To the silent country, and leaves
Half her laureJs unwon,
Dying too soon! Yet green
Laure15 she had, and a course
Short, but redoubled by fame.

F or of Charlotte Brontë it was true-if I
ma y quote the sacred words--that she "being
nlade perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long
time." " We live in deeds, not years," says
the author of "fer/us, ,vhose own centenary year
coincides \vith hers; he was born, I think,
onl y one day after her.

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not br
aths ;
Tn feelings, not in figures on a dia1.
We should count time by heart-throbs; h
most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, and acts the best.

Yet ,vas there ever a honle 'vhich might have
seemed to be so improbable a birth-place of
68

Centenary Address at Hawortll

literary works destined to affect the nlind and
the heart of the English-speaking world, as the
Parsonage of Haworth? \Vhen I was thinking
of nlY address, I could not but recall the
confession of hinl who was "no prophet,
neither a prophet's son," but only "an herds-
nlan and a gatherer of sycamore fruit"; yet
the Lord took him, "as he followed the
flock," and bade him "Go, prophesy unto My
people Israel." It is always, or often, in the
most unlikely places that hunlan genius lifts
its head. The three hundred years which have
elapsed since Shakespeare's death, if they have
at all drawn aside the veil which has happily
saved him from much desecrating criticism,
have only accentuated the contrast between his
parentage, his domestic life, his local and social
environnlents and hinlself. There can be no
more fatal nlistake on earth than the prej udice,
whether local or personal, \vhich lies in the
question, "Can there any good thing come
out of Nazareth? " For out of Nazareth
can1e the Highest and the Holiest of the
children of men, and the lesson of His birth
illumines and ennobles the possibilities of every
town and every age all the world over.
Still, it is possible that the history of human
literature affords no parallel to the life of the
Brontës at I-Iaworth Parsonage. The family
lived in their little home, cut off not only, at
ll
69

Charlotte Brol1të.. a Centenary Memoria!

times, fronl the great world, but for 111any weeks
or months from the neighbouring to\vns like
Leeds or Bradford, and even from Keighley.
They enjoyed few opportunities, if indeed any,
of social and intellectual culture. They saw no
friends, or hardly any; and until the name of
Brontë became famous, the arrival of a passing
visitor \vas itself an event. Their daily walks
took thenl across the bleak moors. I t ,vas, as
Charlotte Brontë herself said, "only the brief
flower-flush of August on the heather, or the
rare sunset-smlle of June, JJ which came as a relief
from the ever-present gloom of the moorland.
Below their home, as you see to-day, stood the
church, with the churchyard, which was possibly
the source of their frequent illnesses, lying in
part above it. The father of the three sisters
and their wayward brother was a recluse. How
nluch of their literary genius they owed to him
it is difficult to say. He too was, although he
is not generally known to have been, an author,
and a poet; but in his Cottage Poems there
is not perhaps a single stanza worth preserving.
Even if Mrs. Gaskell's stories of his eccentricity,
as shown by his habit of carrying a loaded pistol
\vith hinl by day and laying it on his dressing-
table at night, are discarded, yet he was an invalid,
generall y Ii ving, and even taking his nleals, by
himself; and never dreaming of all that was
going on, \vhen he had retired to bed, in the
70

Centenary Address at Haworth
little schoolroom of his house. Yet the story
of the way in \vhich Charlotte Brontë revealed
to him the publication of 1ane Eyre does not
forbid the thought of a tender sympathy between
father and daughter. The mother died, as I
have said, when all her children were young.
'[he aunt who took, or tried to take, the
nlother's place was always pretty well a stranger
to her nephew and nieces, and she spent the last
years of her life very n1uch in her own roon1.
Nothing could well exceed the loneliness of their
days. N or was it sensibly relieved by the
experiences they gained, whether as pupils, or as
teachers, in schools, or in M. Heger's Pensionnat
at Brussels. There is a world of meaning in
the note which Charlotte Brontë appended to
her sister Anne's poem, "Lines Vv'" ritten from
Home," when she said, "My sister Anne had
to taste the cu p of life as it is mixed for the
class termed 'Governesses.'" It has been some-
times held that Mrs. Gaskell's well-known Life
of Charlotte Bron/e" conveys an overdra\vn
impression of deep sadness. I do not think
that criticism will be passed by anyone \vho has
read the POe11lS by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,
or even the later poems of the three sisters;
for unless I anI wrong, there is among them
all one poenl, and one only, which is not tinged
by the sombre hue of melancholy. But what
faith, what courage was theirs! It was little
7 1

\

Charlotte Brontë.. fl Centenary MeJJI0rial

that they suffered the disappointment of seeing
their early n1anuscripts tossed from publisher to
publisher. That has been the fate of most, or of
many, authors \vho have attained celebrity in
letters. It is difficult indeed to escape the feeling
of astonishnlent at the blindness of so many
publishers to the writings of unknown genius.
Few however can be the writers \vho, some
time after the publication of their book, have
learnt that the copies of it which have been sold
\vere only two. It was, as is well known, on
the very day when Charlotte Brontë kne\v
the rejection of CJ:he Professor, the day too
when she was nursing her father after the
operation upon his eyes at Manchester, that she
began the writing of Jane Eyre.
I anl not called to pass a literary judgment
upon the three sisters, or upon Charlotte, the
most famous of thein, to-day. [hat would be
the office of another place and another time
than this. All that you will ask of nle is
some brief estimate of the part which religion
plays in the circumstances of her life. It is,
of course, true that she ,vas spiri tuall y the child
of the Church of England and of a clerical
home within that Church. She and her sisters
are striking figures in the long gallery of the
n1en and won1en distinguished, not only in
letters but in all aspects of public life, \vho have
been born and bred in the parsonages and
7 2

...,

,

A. B.
ICHOLLS.

FlOffi a photograph taken about I8úI.

"

'\

\..

To face p. 73.

,

Centenary Address at Haworth
manses of England, Scotland, and Wales. Her
loyalty to her Church was one source of her
unhappiness in the strictly Roman Catholic
school to which she ,vas sent at Brussels. She
was the daughter of a clergyman, she was the
wife of a clergyman. It does not seen1 that, fron1
first to last, any doubt of Christianity or of her
own national Church fell as a cloud upon her
sensItive SpIrit. If she \vas happy anywhere,
she was happy in her religion.
(;od gave her her genius, and she ackno\v-
ledged it as His gift. Many blessings there are
,vhich are born of inheritance or environment
or education; but the greatest of gifts, such as
beauty or genius, God keeps in His own hands.
Charlotte Brontë cannot ,yen have \vritten
seriously \vhen she told her lifelong friend,
Ellen N ussey, that the text which she quoted
in one of her letters, "1'he wind blo\veth
\vhere it listeth. '[,hou hearest the sound thereof,
hut canst not tell \vhence it cometh, nor ,vhither
it goeth," was, she believed, Scripture, though
in \vhat chapter or book, or whether it ,vas
correctly quoted, she could not possibly say.
\Vhethcr she kne\v it or not, it was true of her
f:1nlily and herself.

very one who has read the story of Charlotte
13rontë and her sisters is aware how much they
o\ved, in their ,vritings, to the events and
experiences of their o\vn Ii Yes. Few Ii ves
73

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

indeed, so strangely limited as theirs, can have
afforded so much material for literature. The
Professor, Shirley, Villette, and even Jane
Eyre in its central motive, ,vere inspired by
circumstances of her own life, or circumstances
which had con1e to be kno\vn to her in her
life. It is a curious tribute to the vivid effect
of her portraiture that she was criticized for
inaccuracy in some details of her characters, as
though she had meant her characters to be actual
photographs of real men and women. But genius
is nowhere more clearly seen than in the use
which it makes of such incidents as common
humanity passes by.
If Charlotte Brontë owed much to her own
life, most of all did she owe to its sadness. A
fe\v months of peace God granted her at the
last, but the r
st ,vas silent tragedy. So great
a poet as Shelley has said that

. . . most wretched men,
Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
'rhey learn in suffering what they teach in song.

Charlotte Brontë was not embittered by the
pains, the losses, and the disappointnlents of her
life. 'rhey only quickened her insight and
her sympathy. But it nlay \vell be doubted if
she could have written her books with such
pathetic intensity, if she had not passed through
the deep waters of affliction.
74

Centenary Address at Haworth

She was no prophet, nor was she, in an y
literary sense, a prophet's daughter, but the
Lord took her as she followed the flock, and
He bade her "Go, prophesy unto My people."
The charge of irreligion or itnmorality in her
writings may fall from her, I think, unanswered
and unheeded, because it is wholly undeserved.
Very touching are the poems of the three
sisters in their religious character. Emily was,
I believe, the truest poet, and the last lines
which she ever wrote were quoted not long
ago by a high living authority for their sub-
lime expression of an aln10st pantheistic faith
in God.

rrhough earth and men were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is no room for death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou-Thou art being and breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

But more touching are the last lines of Anne
Brontë, \vho so soon followed her sister Emily
to the grave, the lines \vhich have just been
sung in this ser\7ice. For they were \vritten
upon her deathbed, and as her sister Charlotte
said, U These lines written, the desk \vas closed,
the pen laid aside for ever."
75

.

Charlotte Bronti!: a Centenary Memorial

[f Thou shouI&;t bring me back to life,
More hunlbled I should be ;
More wise, more strengthened for the Hrit
,
More apt to lean on Thee.
Shou Id death be standing at the gate,
'rhus should I keep my vow;
But, Lord, whatever be my fate,
o let me serve Thee now!

'fhis is the inmost spirit of Charlotte Brontë
also. I t was understood by the wisest of her
contemporaries. I know not if all her admirers,
who listen to me now, are acquainted with an
article \vhich fhackeray, her o\vn literary hero,
\vrote in the Cornhill Magazine of April, 1860,
under the title" rrhe Last Sketch," as an intro-
duction to the fragment, which she left behind
her at her death, of a new novel to be cailed
Emma. It is worth reading, worth remembering
too; for he speaks in it of his own brief per-
sonal intercourse with her, and of the impres-
sion which she left upon his memory. " A
great and holy reverence of right and truth,"
he says, "seenled to be \vith her ahvays."
It will be well perhaps, in this Centenary yeclr
since her birth, to take leave of her with these
\vords of one whom she so greatly adn1Ìred.
She dedicated to hinl, as you know, the second
edition of 1 ane E
'Vre. His appreciation of her
literary \vork she valued, I think, above all
other re\vards.

7 6

CeJ1te/Jar)l Adtlress at Ha7.Dorth

y
t, we cannot take leave of her, above all
in the village where she lived and died, and
in this holy place where she often worshipped,
without asking \vhat her feelings would be if
she were living no\v in the agony of an almost
world-wide war. Certainly she would have felt
for the great soldier, whose death has saddened
of late the \vhole British Empire, something of
the admiration which she lavished upon the
Duke of \Vellington. Certainly she would have
honoured the gallant seat11en and soldiers \vho
have died for their country and their Empire in
the spirit of these lines of hers-not generalJ y
known-which I am courteousl y pern1Ïtted to
quote.

Weep for the Dying Martyr, \Veep.
And the soldier, laid on the battle-plain
Alone at the close of night, alone.
'rhe passing off of S01TIe warlike-strain
Blcnt with his latest moan;
His thoughts all for his fatherland,
His feeble heart, his unnerved hand
StiIl q:IÍveringly upraised to wield
Once more his bright sword on the field,
While wakes his fainting energy
To gain her yet one victory;
As he lies bleeding cold and low,
As life's red tide is ebbing slo\\',
Lament for fallen bravery.

For, alas! the world seems to have beconle
all a house of mourning. The stain of blood-
77

.

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Menlorial

shed is seen everywheïe, except, methinks, upon
the lintels of the houses when the Angel ot
Death passes by . Yet there is comfort, if there
is sorrow, in the retrospect of one hundred years.
When Charlotte Brontë ,vas born, the victory
of Waterloo had just been won. But it ,vould
be a historical error to think of that victory as
at once inaugurating an era of national peace
and prosperity. It was in 1816 that the
Luddite agitation assumed its most threatening
character. She has herself told the story of it
in Shirley. All over England the evils of
scarcity resulting from a bad harvest, of distress
in the manufacturing area, of commercial bank-
ruptcy, of unemploynlent, of discontent, and of
frequent rioting, ,vere felt to be portents of a
conling revolution. They pointed the \vay to
great social and political reforms, of which she
herself lived to be the witness-such as the
Reform Act, Roman Catholic Emancipation, and
the Abolition of the Corn Laws. But there are
some endowmènts of hunlan life which rise above
all social vicissitudes. One of these is literature;
another, I think, is religion. Charlotte Brontë,
an1Ídst the troubles of her time, pursued her way
undeviatingly to her appointed goal. She gave
herself to literature and to love. Few among
men and women can there have been who have
done less to stain the chrisoms of their baptism
than she. Yet like the saints, of whom the
7 8

Centenary Address at Haworth

anthem appointed for this nlen10rial service tells,
she had "come out of great tribulation," she
had "washed her robe and nlade it \vhite in the
blood of the Lamb. " " Therefore are they "-and
she, as we hunlbly believe-" before the throne
of God, and serve Hin1 day and night in His
tetnple: íl:nd He that sitteth on the throne
shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no
more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the
sun light on then1 nor any heat. F or the Lanlb
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed
them, and shall lead them unto living fountains
of waters: and God shall wipe a \va y all tears
from their eyes."

J. E. C. IP ELLDOlv.

79

CI-IARLOTTE BRONTË IN
BR USSELS

ßy M. H. SPIELMANN

f

,

F

.

CI-IARLOTTE BRONTE IN BRUSSELS

DU1"1llg the Charlotte Bron;'; Ct1ltenQlY wuk this Pap
r "[vas Pllhlisltd in
The Times Literary Supplement (13 April 19 I 6), and is Jure
republirh
d, by permission, with numerous emendations and aJdititms.

I

FEW novelists have been so n1uch the outcome
of their surroundings as Charlotte Brontë; fe\v
ha ve been more autobiographical under cover of
fiction, few have depended more for their 11'tÍse-
en-scène, down to veriest details and n1icroscopic
touches, on the localities adopted as the back-
ground of their plots. Wherefore the gan1e of
localizing places, streets, and houses tnentioned
in her books, as also of identifying, tant bien que
'JjJal, the personages of her stories, has been
played with rare enjoyment hy an ever-increasing
body of enthusiasts. 1'he sport has become a
cult, and Brontë literature is fast swelling into
a library of respectable dimensions.
Even the most zealous of the explorers must
be aware that whether Miss Brontë nleant to
reproduce this place or that with absolute
fidelity, or whether she was only fashioning the
characteristics of her backgrounds into a
83

,

Chûrlofte Bronti!.o 1I Centenary MelnorÙ11

sufficiently convincing h set," is a nlatter of
minor interest and of minimun1 literary inl-
portance. But the spot in \vhich so nlany
fruitful months of her life were passed-
inasmuch as they laid their inlpress so UJ1-
Inistakably upon her art and upon her character
and her life's happiness, tearing her heart
and awakening her soul, as appears again and
again in her human comedy, vivifying some of
her most poignant scenes and prompting her
most trenchant utterances-this stands in a
different category. Of this pregnant spot, this
sheltered nook, we have had descriptions in
The Professor and in Villette, in Mrs. Gaskell's
Life, and in the books of Mr. Clement Shorter,
Mrs. Chadwick, Mrs. lYlacdonald, Mr. W root,
and others, and we have seen photographs of
the exterior of the school and of the ancient
garden it embraced. But the whole hudget ex-
plains but inconlpletely the surroundings wherein
were played out the little life dramas of Paul
Emanuel and Lucy Snowe, of William Crimsworth
and Frances Henri, and at least one palpitating
scene of Charlotte Brontë's own experience, in
the matter of the half unwitting and wholly
unresponsi ve Professor Constantin Heger.
For that reason, a few months before the War
broke out, I presumed on friendship to beg
MademoiseUe Louise Heger to draw for me a
plan of the school-house and the surrounding
84

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

premises \vhere a great part of her life had been
passed, with all the accuracy which her cultivated
artist-memory would permit. Her suggestive
sketch, the result of gracious conlpliance, fornls
the basis of the map which-with certain obvious
errors in scale and numerous details added-\vas
duly drawn and printed, illustrating main build-
ings, routes, and points of interest connected \vith
the novels ånd with the author herself. Readers
may therefore realize henceforward with greater
ease the Brontë theatre and the stage, and the
exits and the entrances of the players.
Mademoiselle Heger, it will be remembered,
was the little Georgette of Pi//ette; she
loved Charlotte Brontë as the story-child loved
Lucy Snowe \vi th a love that was returned ; and
she still bears Miss Brontë's face and figure
clearly imprinted on her memory.
Hither, in 1842, the Rev. Patrick Brontë
brought his daughters Charlotte and En1ily,
and left the young W0t11en, soberly and earnestly
hopeful, in the charge of the motherly Madanle
Heger and her mercurial husband; and hither,
a year later, worn out by a trying journey in
foul \veather, Charlotte returned alone, drawn by
an irresistible attraction to continue her schemed-
out studies and to pursue her teaching.
When the weary traveller arrived in the Rue
d'Isabelle she reached the nursery of her genius.
Cradle assuredly it was not. Her genius had
85

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Memorial

long since quickened in Haworth, tended by
her father in her earliest years. In Brussels
1t was trained) developed, nurtured, and directed
by M. Heger, but inspired at least as much hy
her own thought and suffering as oy her master's
care. It would have blossomed in any case; yet
but for him-apart from that Romance which the
poor girl's letters so touchingly and so beautifuI1y
revealed-it assuredly would have blossomed into
a different flower) a bloom of another gro\vth,
less cultivated, perhaps less vivid in colour) less
rich) less s,veet) and less pungent in its perfume.
'"[he Charlotte Brontë we know and honour)
whose faculty was forced into the particular
luxuriance by which it is recognized through her
experiences in the Pensionnat, was, greatly in
her art and to SOl11e degree in her emotion, the
product of the Rue d'Isabelle.
In Villette) then) Miss Brontë pictures Lucy
Sno\ve's arrival in Brussels much as it occurred
to herself on her second visi t. N o\v let us follow
her, step by step-for the first time-to her
predestined hon1e. "Having left behind us the
l11iry Chaussée "-that is to say) the Chaussée
de Gand-the diligence rattled over the pave-
ment, passed through the l)orte de Flandre,
and stopped at the bureau. Hence Dr. John
Bretton courteously conducted Miss Snowe along
the houlevards, on foot, through darkness, fog,
anò rai 11, pa.st the AlJée Verte-at that time
86

Charlotte Brontë in Brusst!r

almost a civic pleasaunce, referred to in The
Professor, but now an arid waste of sand and
stone, a mere eastern quay to the Canal de
Willebroeck-until by the Rue Ducale or the
Rue de la Loi the north-east gate of the Park
,vas reached, and the park "crossed" to an
opening into the Rue Royale opposite the
Montagne du Pare, which descends to the Lower
Town. Here her guide left her, after having
instructed her how to reach a decent inn bv
descending the Belliard steps.
It has been supposed that this \vould in
reality have been too long a walk; but in the
author's eyes it n1ust have been a mere rarnble,
for in The Professor the newly affianced Crinls-
worth and Frances Henri celebrate their engage-
ment by making "a tour of the city by the
Boulevards "-a jaunt of twice the distance \vhich
tired the lady but "a little."
Lucy's progress frorn this point to the
Pensionnat has created some difficulty in readers'
tninds, yet it is clear enough. Misunderstanding
her instructions, she missed the Belliard steps I
to the Rue d'Isabelle, wherein, at its junction with
the Rue des I)ouze Apôtres and the Rue Je Ie!.
Chancellerie \vas supposed to stand the inn of

1 The opening in the Rue Royale would not reveal to
the passer-by, particularly at night-time, the existence of
the BeHiard steps, because th
head of the stairway is masked
by the pedestal of the General's statue.
87

,

Charlotte Brolltë.. a Centt?Jlar.y MefJlorÎal

\vhich she ,vas in search, and \vandered straight
on along "the magnificent street and square "-
no other than the Rue and the I>]ace Royale-
passed the great church (St. Jacques sur
Caudenberg) until, turning along the south side,
she was distnayed by being accosted by "two
Inoustachioed men \vho came sudden] y fronl
behind the pillars." What piUars were these?
The truth is that at the time when Miss Brontë
was in Brussels, as is shown by contemporary
maps, the Rue de la Régence had not yet
pierced the side of the square; the Place \vas
still shut in, and in the nliddle of it was a narrow
\vay flanked with pillars kno\vn as the Passage
des Colot1nes. I twas fronl this sinister recess
that the rascals en1erged and talked to the
frightened young WOnl:ln \vhile keeping pace
with her. They were moustachioed villains-
a delightfully feminine touch, ren1ind ing us of
those Early Victorian days when moustaches and
beard were datllning attributes, concrete synlbols
of the depravity natural to a foreigner, and
rarely, save in a fe\v deplorable instances, affected
by any but the most hardened Englishlnen. 1

I It may be recalled how, in the 'Forties, the editor of
the Art Journ,z/, shocked and incrcd ulous, declined to accept
as wholly tru
a newspaper report to the effect that an artist,
U wearing a mou:ìtache," had been arrested for some: minor
misdemeanour at Canterbury and had c1aimed to be an
Englishman! The outraged editor, Mr. Samuel Carter HaIl,
88

Charlotte Brontë ill BrllSJe!.r

What wondt:r, then, that these two n1t:n, \vith
"faces looking out of tht: forest of hair,
n1oustache, and whisker," afterwards turned out
to be the very same two evil-minded dand y pro-
fessors of the college, MM. Rochen10rt and Bois-
sec [shockingly significant names - thoroughly
appropriate to the hateful bearers of thetn J, who
basely doubted to Monsieur Paul the genuineness
of Lucy Snowe's devoir.
She fled-darting either along the Rue du
Musée and so on down the Rue Ravenstein, or by
the Montagne de la Cour and the Rue Ravenstein,
or the Rue Villa Hermosa. In any case she de-
scended the steps in which tern1Ïnates either of these
parallel lanes-nlistaking then1 for the BelJiarJ
steps--and found herself in the Rue r erarken.
Following the street to the right she walked 011
into the "Rue Fossette" (the Rue d'lsabelle),
and fetcheJ. up at the Pensionnat of Madame
Beck opposite the foot of the Belliard stairway.
Before this house stood the faltering Lucy Snowe.
All idea of an inn, thanks to directing if exhaust-
ing fate, had been renounced, forgotten; she
pleaded for adnlittance, and by good fortune
found it. Her real life in Villette ,vas begun.
These sanle Belliard steps, it ,vill be ren1enl-
hered, attracted young \Villian1 Crimsworth in

refused to believe that an Englishman and an artist would
so debase himsel f as to appear in pub] ic "i n the c harac ter
of a French poodle."

89

,

Charlotte Brr;ntë.. a Centenary Memorial
The Professor. Fron1 the Rue Royale, oppo-
site the spot occupied in the seventeenth century
by the DOlll us Isabellæ-by the Sovereign after
\vhom the street below was called-he ,( con-
templated the statue of General Belliard " (due
to the chisel of one of the brothers Geefs and
set up very shortly before Charlotte Brontë's
arrival) "and then I advanced to the top of the
great staircase beyond, and I looked down into a
narrow back street, which I afterwards learned
'vas called the Rue d'lsabelle. I well recollect
that my eye rested on the green door of a rather
large house opposite, where, on a brass plate, was
inscribed, 'Pensionnat de Demoiselles.' " It is
natural that one endowed with such excellent gift
of vision should have described so accurately the
locality in which he was to play an important
rôle.
Thus by her talent Miss Brontë transmogrifies
and develops into a dramatic incident her calm
arrival in Villette. Is it certain, by the \vay,
that this felicitous rechristening of Brussels was
from the first the author's intention ? We know
ho\v she changed names \vhich she had originalJ y
adopted and bettered then1 by that change. We
know how "The Master" became "The Pro-
fessor "; and how "Lucy Snowe" ,vas tenl-
porarily altered into the equally "cold name"
of "l..ucy Frost," and then turned back again.
"J should 11 ke the alteration to be nlade nov/
9 0

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

throughout the MS.," she wrote to Mr. Willianls
at her publishers'. \Vas it perhaps a sinlilar
after-thought that caused her to adopt " Villette"
1 n preference to a first idea of "Choseville"?
"
rhe carriage-wheels made a tremendous rattle
over the flinty Choseville pavement," she says
in chapter t\venty-seven, retaining, perhaps by
an oversight, the uncorrected name, when Lucy
Snowe brings Ginevra F anshawe back to the
school and administers" a sound moral drubbing"
on the way. We remenlber that this same flighty
Ginevra when asked some months before at what
place she is going to stay, had replied, " Oh! at
-chose." " 'Chose,' however, I found in this
instance, stood for Villette," says Lucy. 1'he
germ of the idea may perhaps be here, revealing
the fallible hand of the careless retoucher. But,
unless I am mistaken, Charlotte Brontë was not
the first \vriter to use the name "Villette."
The aspect of the Rue d'lsabelle, no\v, alas,
demolished, is wen known, with its school-houses,
its loftier dwelling-house of the Directress, and
beyond the row of eight cottages which, in
the seventeenth century, housed nlembers of
the aristocratic Guild of Crossbowmen, and
which now were o,vned by the circumspect
Madame Heger lest they should be occupied by
undesirable neighbours. At the farthest end of
their property was a I)orte Monumentale built by
the Infanta Isabella as a gate\vay to the .L\rba-
9 1

\

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

létriers' practice-ground, hut dismantled in 19 10
and removed by the Brussels municipality for
re-erection at some future time in the Museum.
Within stood the old Galerie, with its dated
sixteenth-century fire-back, used as a place of
recreation by Madanle and the pupils. All these
faced the Rue d'Isabelle-called by Miss Brontë
the Rue Fossette, after the F ossé aux Chiens
\vhich in more ancient days occupied the spot.'

II

Facing the Belliard sters, then, ,vas the main
doorway of the IJirectress's house, from the
lofty roof of ,vhich Monsieur Heger, when a
youth taking his share in the struggle in \vhich
Belgium won her independence-a strange four
days' battJe during which the combatants amiably
adjourned for refreshn1ents-fired into the park.
'rhis was in 1830, before he knew the lad y
\vho six years Jater \vas to become his wife.
To the right extended the school buildings-
three sides of a sq uare, with the addition of a
cross" galerie " or corridor which forn1ed a quad,
or " cour." Opposite the windows of the private
house \vas the Première Classe-the classroom

I It should be ren1embered that when the road was con-
structed in order that the Archduchess might have a direct
private \'vay from the Court to Ste. Gudule, it opened into the
space now occupied by the Place Royale.
9 2

Charlotte Bronti! ill Brussels

of the highest form-the southern doors of which
led straight out into the" Grand Berceau," and
the narrow continuation called the " Allée
Défendue," I skirting the long parapet wall
that rose above the retaining wall of the Athénée
playing-ground many feet below. 2 This is the
wall which Genevra's elegant and dapper lover,
the resourceful Comte ...t\.lfred de Hamal, would
scale in order to reach the great acacia-tree.
rrhis tree "shadowed the Grand Berceau and
rested some of its branches on the roof of the
first classe." By climbing this, too, he reached
the "Grande Salle," and even tuall y the arms of
the girl he wooed, first assuming for precaution's
sake the habit of the terrible Dryad, the ghostly
Nun. It may well be believed that the tree-
climbing performance was founded upon a true
incident, for use has been made of it by both
sisters-by Charlotte here in Villette, and by
Emily in WUlhering Heights, when Catherine,
whom the maniacal Heathcliff was keeping
prisoner, effected her escape. " Luckily, light-
ing on her mother's [chamber], she got easily
out of its lattice, and on to the ground, by means
I U Through the glass door [of the Première Classe] and
the arching berceau, I commanded the deep vista of the
Al1ée Défendue" (Pille/te, chap. xxxvi).
2 Cf. the reference in The Professor to "a bare gravelled
court, with an enormous pa! de géant in the middle, and
the monotonous walls and windows of a boys' school-house
round " (chap. vii).

93

Charlotte Brolltë: a G1 e /lte/lilry .lvlelJJoriai
of the fir-tree close by." It is unlikely that
either sister would have plagiarized from the
other, but a circumstance known to both could
by both be used.
In the great arbour, "vast and vine-draped,"
known as the Grand Berceau, Mme. Beck
would teach on sun1mer afternoons; Lucy,
too, would hold her class, and Monsieur l
aul
\vould do his gardening. Miss Brontë's taste was
for the greater privacy of the Allée Défendue,
the secluded branch-tunnelled alley forbidden
to pupils bt:cause its low wall flanked the Athénée
boys' playground some fifteen or twenty feet below.
She found it a charming retreat for conten1plation,
and it is the scene of many an incident alike in
Villette and 'ine J)rofessor. At its southern
extremity Charlotte places the aged, half-dead
pear-tree-the mighty patriarch "Methuselah"
that stood sentinel over the nun's torture-grave
(as the author invented it). In the hole at its
root Lucy Sno,ve buried her treasured letters
fron1 Dr. Bretton, and returned to it to
n10urn her sad a\vakening, when she was joined
by Monsieur Paul in poignant interview, and
with him witnessed yet again the passing of the
N un. It \vas here, too, that the casket was
dropped which Dr. Bretton rushed in to reclaitl1,
thrown from a window of \vhich more must
presently be said; and it was fron1 here that
the love passage between M. Pelet and Mlle.
94

Charlotte BroJltë in Brussels

Reuter rose to the ears of Crin1sworth seated at
the lattice above.
Below in this \vall,I and at its foot, may still
be seen-for the destruction of this neighbour-
hood is not yet so complete as has been repre-
sented-two doorways entered from the level
of the Athénée courtyard and playground below.
1'hat nearest to "Methuselah" may be identified
with the door of communication through which,
declared Monsieur Paul to Lucy Snowe, he ll1ade
secret entrance frorn the colJege to the Pensionnat
by way of the tool-shed in the upper garden-
the same tool-shed whence Lucy brought slate
and mortar to set by way of tombstone on her
letters' grave. 2

J The parapet remains, with the coping-stones clamped
on, in consequence of their having once been shifted through
the hurricane violence of a storm such as Lucy Snowe
describes.
2 In my Notes on the Brontë-Heger letters published in
The Times I made the suggestion that the burying of the
Bretton letters as described with such realistic detail by
Lucy Snowe might have been inspired by Miss Brontë having
similarly treated Professor C. Heger's letters at Haworth.
Thereupon Mr. Percy A. Fielding wrote to Tht Times to
point out that he had made the like suggestion to the Brontë
Society a few months before, and drew attention to the
fact that in her letters of June IS and July 3 0 , 1850,
"there is a reference to certain re-roofing operations that
were taking place at Haworth Parsonage, and from this
one may suppose that both slates and material for mortar
were being used on the premises." It has, I believe, been

95

Charlotte Brol1të: tl Centenary Me1Jl0ria/

Miss Brontë's descriptions of the garden are
remarkable in their fidelity to fact, and alleys
and plantations all aid the development of the
story. Chief of all is that "alley bordered by
enormous old fruit trees down the middle,"
many tinles alluded to, in blossonl and in fruit.
l
hese trees, says Mrs. Gaskell, fornled part of
the orchard that had stood here even before
the crossbo\vnlen's day. Ancient pear-trees they
were, fanled far beyond the borders of Belgi urn,
and visited by fructiculturists frol11 all parts by
reason of their marvellous qualities. They
yielded a rich seasonal harvest that was stored
in cellars extending below the Belliard steps;
and for months in each year they regaled the
inhabitants of the school, who numbered not
fewer than one hundred and thirty persons at
the tinle when "little Georgette" had grown
to be fruit-keeper and visited the cellars with
her father to select and fetch the accustonled
dessert.

III

Here we must introduce a new personage, a
new "original," to Brontë readers and Brontë
students. This is no other than Monsieur Pelet,
a leading character in :the Professor. This
shown that no such opportunity for letter-burying-so får
as a tree is concerned-ever offered itself in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Parsonage. But the moors?
9 6

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

character seems to have puzzled every con1-
mentator. One of them awards him the title-rôle
in the book. Son1e see in hin1 a distorted portrait
of M. Heger, or at least an individual based
upon his personality. Others declare his school
"without disguise, the Athénée" or eJse place
it in the Rue d'Isabelle. Others, again, pro-
nounce M. Pelet, this Fenchnlan, a fign1ent of
the author's brain, and write hin1 down in con-
sequence "unconvincing," and a conlparative
failure, as n1ight be expected in a figure not
inspired by the life. Everyone of these con-
jectures is incorrect. Mrs. Hun1phry Ward
came nearest to the truth when she recognized
reality in the portrait, and applauded it as "an
extremel y clever sketch." It is strange, indeed,
that the existence of M. Pelet's school should
have remained unsuspected among the students
who have exan1ined Miss Brontë's works under
the literary microscope, for the bell-ringing
incident related t1.rther on affords the necessary
cl ue.
As a matter of fact, M. Pelet was not only
drawn from life-he was depicted with startling
veracity so far as externals are concerned; and
J am assured by those who kne\v hinI that no
character in the Brussels chapters of the two
books has been presented \vith greater truth as
to appearance and sty Ie. M. Pelet was no other
tha!l Monsieur Lebel, who is still remen1bered

97

G

,

Char/ollt Bronti!.- a Centenary Menloria/

with respect in Brussels, where he long resided,
and who towards the end, I believe, returned to
France. He was the French refugee school-
master, the man distinguished in air, quiet in
method, Parisian in characteristics, suave and silky
in manner_Parisian, indeed, to the finger tips,
almost elegant in his easy assumption of superi-
ority which others were made to feel-he was
exactly as Charlotte Brontë has presented him.
M. Lebel's school-house for boys stood on
the north side of the Rue Terarken, beside
some of the Athénée buildings. The back of
it, partly veiled by tall shrubs, was pierced by
a single casement in a lower storey, whence, after
it had been un boarded, Crimsworth, now one
of M. Pelet's teachers (and before he had
developed into a professor at the Athénée itself),
looked into the garden of the Pensionnat, [ and
whence, too, M. Paul Emanuel, cynical psycho-
logist as he was, instructed by the Jesuit priest,
the Père Silas, watched his girl pupils at play
and at quarrel, and probed the phenomena of
feminine character in their persons and in the
persons, too, of the several mistresses, even,
of the Directress herself: for which purpose,
indeed, he had hired it. If Miss Brontë brings
out this point, is it not to show that the building

J d I shall now at last see the mysterious garden : I shall
gaze both on the angels and their Eden" (The Profil1or,
chap. viii).

9 8

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

could not have belonged to the Athénée, other-
wise the leading professor of that Royal college
would have taken possession of this post of
observation as by right of privilege and not of
leasehold? It was, as we are told in f/illette,
merely a "boarding-house of the neighbouring
college, and not the Athénée itself." From an
"attic toophole high up, opening from the
sleeping-room" of a servant, there dropped the
casket intended for Ginevra but delivered by
fate into the hands of Lucy Snowe.
M. Lebel does not reappear in Pillette. The
author had used him up in her earlier picture of
Brussels life. She had done with him and he
had no part in the new dralna of which M.
Paul was the hero; there \vas no room for two
col1ege directors here.

IV

To the west of the Pensionnat of the Rue
d'lsabelle stood the Athénée Royale, on a level
considerably lower. Its buildings, especially at
their northern extremity, came in contact with
the Heger School, but the only material and social
link between the two establishments was the
common well, still to be seen ruined and
uncovered. Indeed, laid \vaste though the site
now is-for the Athénée has long since been
removed to the Rue du Chêne and its old
99

Charlotte Brontë: a Celltenary Me!Jlorial

buildings have been razed-almost unrecog-
nizable as is the quarter by reason of wholesale
demolition and vast roadway construction, we
can at this very moment trace a good nlany of
the old landmarks. In the retaining-waU there
still remain the two large niches which accommo-
dated the Professor on his estrade-one at each
end. One of these is beside the old well, to the
north of it; the other is where, at the southern
extremity, we recognize the site of a denlolished
class-room.
Such was the island of garden and buildings
which daily met the eyes of Charlotte Brontë
as the reflective, contemplative English girl trod
the paths or took refuge for recueillement in her
small berceau or in the allée déftndue. It was here
that she evolved her thoughts and meditations:
in the classroon1 she learned how to form, to
order, and to express them. It was truly the
nursery of her genius, where she was taught that
nothing is too insignificant for treatment in
literary expression. Thus the natural acuteness
of her observation was sharpened; she nlissed
little or nothing; she acquired the power
of taking literary advantage of even the most
trivial incidents and utilizing them with curious
effect.
Here are two examples, which will be new to
the reader, still spoken of in the Heger and the
Errera families.

100

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

At the corner of the Rue Royale and the
opening to the Belliard steps stands the splendid
nlansion formerly occupied by the well-known
banker, M. Errera, no\v belonging to his widow.
It is noteworthy enough in its exterior aspect,
but exceptionally beautiful within, exquisitely
designed, and famous for its occupation by the
Napoleonic chief during the French ascendancy
in Brussels. The basement of it was on a level
with an upper floor of the Pensionnat Heger
and separated from it but by the \vidth of the
street and the houses on its hither side. In
this basement during the absence of the family
one of the footmen would freq uently exercise
his exceptional talent on the French horn.
rrhis trivial circumstance, always remembered in
the Heger household, was utili zed by Miss
Brontë \vith much effect in rrhe Professor,
without, of course, revealing its very donlestic
source :-" Here a strain of music stole in upon
111Y monologue," says Crims\vorth, "and sus-
pended it; it was a bugle, very skilfully played,
in the neighbourhood of the park, I thought,
or un the Place Royale. . . . The strain retreated,
its sound waxed fainter and fainter, and \-vas
soon gone; 111Y ear prepared to repose on the
absolute hush of 111idnight once more. nAnd
when he listened again it ,vas the love-talk of
Mlle. Reuter and M. Pelet of \vhich he \vas
the unwilling auditor.

101

G'harlotte Brolltë.. a Centenary Memorial

The bell-ringing incident, again, as has already
been said, has its importance :-
At the conclusion of Crimsworth's first lesson
at Mlle. Reuter's pensionnat, "a bell clanging
out in the yard announced the moment for the
cessation of school labours. I heard our own
bell at the same time, and that of a certain
puhlic college immediately after"; that is to
say, the first bell sounded was at Mlle. Reuter's
in the Rue d'lsabelle; the second was at
M. Pelet's, where Crin1sworth was in residence;
and the third at the f\.thénée Royale-the usual
order. Later on, the incipient flirtation between
Mlle. Reuter and her young English professor
Crims\vorth is broken short by the dinner-bell
which rang out "both at her house and M.
P I ' "
e et s.

v

Beyond these inlmediate confines we may note
the historic Maison Ravenstein; next, the former
Court Chapel hard by the entrance to the present
Musée Moderne,I where Crimsworth sought for
his lost Frances Henri; the Palais des Académ ies,
which seems to be indicated as the scene of the
Athénée prize-giving, where the little finale of

1 Here are held the Art Exhibitions which Lucy Snowe
criticized with such clear and just perception. Her views on
art were marked by freedom and sanity unusual in Early
Victorian days, especially in the provinces.
102

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

M. Paul's "qu'en dites-vous?" to Lucy Snowe
after his lecture is a little maliciously adapted
from Thackeray's similar question to Miss Brontë
after his own address. And in the Rue Royale
stood the old Hôtel Mengelle (formerly a great
apartment-house and now rebuilt into a modern
hotel of the smartest and most elegant order)
which Brontë critics by common consent aver is
identical with a house of importance in the story
-the Hôtel Crécy of the Rue Crécy.
In this view, when all the circumstances are
taken into account, it is impossible to acquiesce.
Those who have been fan1iliar with the old
Hôtel MengeIle, and who retain a clear recollec-
tion of its construction, its general aspect and
architecture, cannot, surel y, recognize in it " the
sumptuous Hôtel Crécy," where lived the little
Countess Pau1ina de Bassompierre with her father,
even though every allowance be made for some
decline from pristine splendour. When Ginevra
Fanshawe elopes with the Comte de Hamal and
their carriage dashes northwards (as is den1on-
strable) along the Rue des Douze Apôtres, \ve
are told that "neither the Hôtel Crécy nor the
Château de la Terrasse lies in that direction."
This could not be said of the Hôtel Mengelle
in the Rue Royale. Moreover, we are told as
\vell of a Boulevard de Crécy with its Car1nelite
con'vent, and of a Porte de Crécy, all details of
l11atter-of-fact topography. \Vhere, then, are
10 3

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centellary Me1J10rial
these? What is there to correspond with
them? The answer is clear, and should, I think,
be final.
The in-dwellers of Brussels will tell you-
what Charlotte Brontë practically tells us her-
self-that the most probable solution of the puzzle
(a solution to satisfy every point raised) is to be
found not in the Rue Royale at aU, but in the
Boulevard de Waterloo with its occasional fine
,
houses, its Petits Carmes can vent and its Eglise
des Carmes, the Porte de Hal, and, opposi te to
it, the Chaussée de Waterloo, which led towards
the picturesque outskirts a mile and more away
that might well provide the locale of the Bret-
tons' hon1e, "La Terrasse.)) Here, then, you
have the Boulevard, the town gate, the
Carmelite convent, and the direction all a

indicated. Moreover, in the Rue Crécy l..ucy
Snowe takes her German lessons. Would
honest Fräulein Anna Braun have found lodg-
nlent in the "palatial" Rue Royale? And
to reach it would Lucy and Paulina have taken
the "nearest ,vay" by the Place Royale and
entered the park ?
rhe reiteration of the name
should he some indication. What is more inl-
portant is the close connexion of idea between
the two epoch-making victories, Crécy and
Waterloo. Mrs. Gaskell tells us that Charlotte
"worshipped the Duke of Wellington," that the
Duke "had been her hero from childhood."
10 4

Charlotte Bronti! in Brussels

Her admirable devoir, "Sur la mort de N apo-
léon," we remember, contained a passionate yet
reasoned eulogy on the victor at the expense of
the fallen Emperor. Charlotte Brontë's relative
silence on the subject, alike in her letters and in her
novels, has been the subject of remark; here, at
least, is reason to believe that she had Waterloo
in her mind-she who had lived so long close to
the battlefield where the struggle was fought out
the year before she was born-but was debarred
by her scheme of pseudonymity fron1 mentioning
it by name. So Crécy became an irreproachable
substitute, offering a mystery not too obscure for
solution. At the time when Villette was being
written the Duke was sinking, and died in
September 1852: the event may likely enough
have given a turn to the author's thoughts and
influenced her choice of venue. Surely, as to the
identity of the Boulevard de Waterloo, the Car-
melite convent should settle the matter definitely.
Within the space of a few hundred square
yards, with her mind's eye manifestly fixed upon
a lnap such as has si nce been devised and puh-
lished, Miss Brontë could depict a scene as
hrilliant and varied as that of the l)atriotic Fête
in the park and build up one of the tllost in1-
portant and significant chapters in the book, all
the \vhile accounting to herself for every step
taken by the narrator. By the Rue l"'erarken,
up the steps of the H.ue Villa Herlnosa, across
10 5

,

Charlotte Brontë.- a Centenary Memorial
the Place Royale walks Lucy Snowe, and, passing
through the gate opposite the Hôtel Bellevue (the
frontage of the hostelry pitted with bullet-holes),
she enters the park-then and for some years later
surrounded by a mere palisade and not by its
present imposing iron railing. Her passage from
spot to spot is described too clearly to be mistaken.
She seeks to wend her way to one of the two
"stone basins," with its clear green water-pro-
bably the one nearer to the Royal Palace; and
she is here recognized by M. Miret-a genuine
character, by the way, sketched with great
accuracy from the excellent bookseller to the
Pensionnat Heger. She passes along the alleys,
wanders to the " green knoll "-the raised ground
crowned by a seat \vhich was shadowed by " three
fine tall trees gro\ving close" -the spot where
the "secret junta" unwittingly reveals to the
listening Lucy the answer to the riddle hitherto
unsolvable. Then she quits the park, descends
the dimly lighted Montagne du Parc I C' only
one street lies between me and the Rue
Fossette "-necessarily the Rue des Douze
Apôtres and no other), when the eloping Ginevra
thunders past, as already recounted; and so home
-to. find the Nun's "ghost" deposited in her
bed.

I Where lived the priest of Ste. Gudule to whom Miss
Brontë confessed. rrhis presumably should be the Rue des
Mages of f/lIlette-a set-off to the real Rue des 1Vlinimes.
106

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

This is but a type of Charlotte Brontë's
method, and it may suffice. Thus did she work
up her backgrounds and plan her goings and
comings, lavishing upon them as much care and
deliberation as upon the stories she constructed
and set against them. The method is sound in
relation to her talent, for while it imparts to
her incidents an aspect of stereoscopic relief, her
art subdues the over-insistence on the cold fact
of the décor, so that the reality \vhich is evolved
grips us as a quietly convincing truth.

VI

Later inquirers have not always understood
that the premises in the Rue d'lsabelle were not
left unchanged after the Brontë sisters' departure.
In 1857 important alterations were effected in
the dwelling-house, but the school-house wa

left pretty much as it was. The institution had
already become a place of pilgrimage to hoth
English and Americans. The devotees ,vho
could scarcely have been very welcome to the
misrepresented and injured chiefs of the school,
were courteously received, notwithstanding, and
shown al1 the points of interest concentrated in
Charlotte ßrontë's pages. "And this," they
would ask, "is this really the Carré? -this the
Réfectoire ? "-or what not; and then some-
times a whitening head would thrust itself forth
10 7

\

.

Charlotte Brontë.: a Centenary Melnori'al
from a suddenly opened door and snap out, but
not angrily, "Qui !-et moi je suis Monsieur
Paul! "
And now, where this busy little world that
hummed with life in the educational centre of
the Rue d'Isabelle and helped to form and
develop characters which have stood the test in
these later days of trial is a scene of cruel
desolation. Houses and school buildings have
gone. Rubblc stre\vs the ground, and a broken
branch, thrusting its torn limb through the
rubbish here and there, is all that is left of the
historic garden. Yet the destruction, as has here
been said, is not entirely complete, and (where
the encroachments of the vast new works have
not wholl y covered up or overturned it) suffi-
cient evidence still remains for the practised
explorer to reconstitute, in part at least, the old
flourishing institutions and buildings that clustered
round the spot. Even the first out of the
four flights of steps of the Escalier Belliard may
yet be seen, though they, too, are to be swal-
lowed up, as soon as may be, \vhen peace returns
to heroic Belgium, by the rising road nlount-
ing to the Rue Royale. A pictorial record of
some fullness will doubtless one day be issued
illustrating the temporary home of the honoured
sisters, for the m3.terial for it exists. Brontë-
Heger-land is not destined to pass unpictured
and forgotten; its scenes will live for us and
108

Charlotte Brontë in Brussels

bring nearer to us the more tutored genius of
Charlotte Brontë, to whom, on the centenary
of her birth, the tribute of our hon1age is paid
to-da y.

M H. SPIELMANN.

109

([:þe
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FACSDIlLE OF A CIHCt.:L.\H IS
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18-1--1-.

To CaCe p. 110.

,

THE BRONTË SOCIETY AND ITS
WORK

By HERBERT E. WROOT

,-

,

TI-IE BRONTË SOCIE
rY AND ITS
WORK

I N the ear] y days of this Great War, \vhen no
one had thought for literary anniversaries, there
passed unnoticed the twenty-first birthday of
the Brontë Society. It is a rare event in literary
history for such an association to attain to its
"coming of age." rrhe mortality of infancy
and adolescence is high among litcrary societies;
or perhaps it should be considered that since,
like the" flies of latter spring," they come full y
equipped and in the maxim of energy into their
little world, it is but the course of nature that
their days are short. They

lay their eggs, and sting and sing,
And weave their pretty cells and die.

A good many societies have been founded in
England with purpose akin to that of the
Brontë Society, with very diverse fields to cuI.
tivate, yet only one-the Chaucer Society-has
attained to such length of years; and in that
113 H

Charlotte Brol1/
.. n Centenary MelJlorial
case, brilliantly exceptional, the longevity of the
society was rather evidence of the inexhaustible
youthfulness of its founder and vital spirit, the
late Dr. Furni vall, than of its own inherent
virility. With good reason Furnivall called it
"nlY Chaucer Society," and it endured and
laboured nearly thirty years in the strength of
his \vilI, till he pernlitted it to sing its Nunc
di1nittis over the great Oxford edition of the
"master dear and father reverent" of English
poets, the production of which its studies had
rendered possi ble.
Even though they had an inexhaustible
nlountain in \vhich to quarry, the two Shake-
spere Societies fell far short of this record.
The original society, sustained by the industry
of Halliwell-Phillipps and the enthusiasrn-the
sot11ewhat intemperate enthusiasm, as was un-
happily proved-of John Payne Collier, lasted
from 1841 to 1853- The New Shakespere
Society, another of Dr. Furnivall's literary
children, strong in purpose, prolonged its exist-
ence to some eighteen years, yet was its strength
labour and sorrow ere it was" cut off." Other
co-operative efforts of literature have all been
comparatively transient. The Wordsworth
Society endured as "a bond of union amongst
those who are in sympathy with the general
teaching and spirit of Wordsworth" for not
quite six years; and, whether it be true or not)
114

l'he Brontë Society and its Work

as Dean Church grumbled, that cc W ords-
worthians" fared rather badly at the hands of
the VV ordsworth Society
the syn1pathetic souls
had d\vindled to the secretary and another-
the industrious Professor Knight and one patient
con1mittee-n1an-before the Society n1ade up its
l11ind that Grasmere and the mountains consti-
tuted, after all, a stronger and 1110re enduring
bond of union. The Shelley Society fared even
worse. I t was late in the field. The name of
Shelley had, as Lord Houghton exulted, been
alread y raised by the youth of Oxford from
"the obscurity and even the infamy" which
had attached to it in earlier days, and there was
not much work to do. The society survived,
however, long enough to consecrate, under the
leadership of Tennyson, a library as memorial
and shrine at the poet's birthplace at Horshanl,
but otherwise left little mark in history. The
Browning Society existed but a dozen years-
from 188 I to 1893. Perhaps some local Brown-
ing Societies less fatally authoritative attained to
a mellower age in different parts of the country
-their number was at one time considerable;
but it is sad to remember that the young ladies
of Girton exhausted Browning-or themselves-
even during the poet's lifetime. In 1886 they
dissol ved their Browning Societf, and by vote
of the members spent the accumulated balance
of funds upon chocolates. pro some poets such
liS

\

Charlotte Broll/ë.' a Centenary Me1110rial

desertion of high intellectuality for the sensuous
pleasures which cloy (and spoil the digestion)
might have been as heart-breaking as a Quarterly
Revie.w attack. But Browning had a sense of
humour. How his eyes must have twinkled!
Perhaps some day some philosophic bookworm,
some twentieth-century Isaac D'Israeli, sym-
pathetic with the calamities which beset litera-
ture on its co-operative and corporate side as well
as in its inòi vid ualistic aspect, wiU set himself to

find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.

Unless in these latter days the art of keeping
a diary has becon1e as atrophied as the art of
writing letters, there ought to be on record
some\vhere, and well worthy of coJlection, much
pungent anecdotage concerning literary associa-
tions. Meanwhile, perhaps no one has come
closer to an analysis of the centrifugal forces
which disperse such organizations than Mr.
Max Beerbohm, whose caustic caricature of
U Mr. Browning taking tea with the Browning
Society" needs no single word of comment.
No imagination, even. Mr. Max Beerbohm's
own, has risen to the conception of Charlotte
or Emily or Anne Brontë serving tea at Haworth
Parsonage to the members of the Brontë Society.
116

The BrfJlltë Society and its Work

Emily would have resented the intrusion, but
of Charlotte one is not so sure. Though
Charlotte confessed to a cold sweat when
Martha Bro\vn, the l)arsonage servant - \vho
was promptly snubbed-proclaimed her discovery
that the n1istress had "been and \vritten the
grandest books that ever were seen" and inti-
mated that a n1eeting was to be held at the
Mechanics' Institute to settle about ordering
them, one can hardly doubt that she would
have faced the situation with the calm courage
wi th \vhich she adn1inistered a "comfortable
cup of tea" to Mr. Donne-the curate of
Shirley, who did not like Yorkshire folk-while
she sat on guard) ready at a n1oment's notice
to "have it out with him." But the right to
existence of such a society is not the attitude
in which \ve may fancy it confronted by the
author it studies, but its usefulness in its own
day. "It is for my generation and myself
that I want the Society in being)" said one of
the founders of the Browning Society at its
inauguration ; and every lover of the works of
the Brontës) and every reader whose heart has
been touched and q nickened at the story of the
Brontës, has had reason to congratulate himself
and his generation that the ,york of the Brontë
Society has been carried forward \vith so n1uch
enthusiasm and'industry during these twenty-on

years.

!I7

,

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Me,norial

The Brontë Society had its origin in a con-
versation which took place towards the end
of the year I 893 in the private office of
Mr. Butler Wood, the chief Ii brarian of the
Bradford Public Libraries. 'fhe incident is
unrecorded in the archives of the Society, but
Mr. Wood's n1en10ry is that there took part in
it Mr. J. Horsfall Turner, of Idle, near
Bradford, Mr. W. W. Yates, of Dewsbury,
and Mr. (after\vards Sir) John Brigg, M.P., of
Kildwick.

11he first suggestion can1e fron1 Mr. Horsfall
rrurner. Mr. Horsfall '[urner was an anti-
l}uary of rare energy, who has left in our libraries
a whole shelf-ful of memorials of his enter-
prise. 1
he Brontë episode he took almost in
his stride from Saxon charters to modern politics
of a characteristically vigorous idiosyncrasy. But
Charlotte Brontë was nevertheless a particular
interest of his, and enjoying as he did excep-
tional ad vantages at one period of his life,
through his friendship with Miss Ellen Nussey-
Charlotte's lifelong friend and confidant-he
denlonstrated the depth of his enthusiasm by
preparing and printing in their entirety that
precious series of letters which Miss N ussey
had the prescience to preserve. Unluckily for
himself, Mr. Turner's enterprise took insuffi-

ient account of the tran1mels of the law of
1)8

The Brontë Society and its Work
copyright, and the whole edition printed had
to be destroyed. So that a copy of Mr. Horsfall
Turner's Story of the Brontis is now among the
rarest of bibliographical curiosities. It was, how-
ever, a literary calanlity nlodified by some con-
solation, for the suppression left the field clear
for the fuller collection of the Brontë letters
to many correspondents which in due season
Mr. Clement Shorter gave to us in his two
fine volumes, The Brontfis: Life and Letters.
And those readers \vho cherish the format as
well as the matter of a book will congratulate
themselves that they have in Mr. Shorter's fair
print and paper books worthy of the story
they tell. Mr. Turner's books unfortunately
revealed him as austerely .Puritan in artistic
nlatters as the seventeenth-century divines who
-beside the Brontës-were his literary heroes.
Mr. Turner's original conception for a Brontë
Club-as he called it-was strictly utilitarian,
and was free of any tinge of what critics of
the Browning Society reproved as idolatry.
He proposed a snlall body strictly lin1Ïted in
numbers, and in the main composed of those
who had \vritten on the Brontës-headed, as
he hoped, by Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Birrell, Sir
Leslie Stephen, and Sir Wemyss Reid; and the
programnle of work which he projected \vas
mainly the preparation of a cOlnplete and

xhaustiv
bibliography of Brontë literature,
119

Charlotte Brontf.. a Celltenary Melnorial

and as a secondary object the preservation of
such traditions of the Brontës as might still be
current in the dales and n100rlands of the
Worth valley.
Mr. Butler Wood accords the credit for the
\vider lines upon vvhich the idea developed to
Mr. Yates, though it may bc suspected that
his o\vn literary tastes had something to do
\vith thc Inatter. Mr . Yates attached great
weight to the personal traditions yet to be
collected. His keen devotion to his own town
of Dc\vsbury made the Brontë episode in J.
sense a chapter of the local history, since it
\vas as curate of the church of that ancient
parish that the father of the Brontës first appeared
in Yorkshire. Mr. Yates fa voured also the
idea of establishing a Brontë Museum-an insti-
tution in which n1Ïght be brought together
such relics as were interesting of the ren1ark-
able family, and all that n1Ïght be gathered of
their literary remains. And it was an organiza-
tion on these lines which ultimately came to
birth. One n1ay say here, anticipating the
rnarch of events son1ewhat, that while the
Society may ,veIl look to these t\VO tnen,
Mr. HorsfaJl r[urner and Mr. Yates, \vith
filial respect, it honours also with especial ten-
derness among those whose services it has lost
by death the n1en10ry of Sir John Brigg. Sir
John Brigg was nati ve to the soil he long
120

The Brontë Society and its Work

represented in Parliament: he had grown up
in the very atmosphere in \vhich the Brontës
moved and had their being. Where few had
kno\vn the Brontës in anything more than
externals, he had known about them fronl his
earliest days. So that it \vas lllore than his
keen Yorkshire intellect and his literary taste
which made hinl an untiring reader and a
devoted admirer of the great books which came
do\vn from Ha\vorth through Keighley to the
,vorld. The Brontë Society, then, \vas nursed
and nourished by Sir John Brigg fronl its infancy,
though his part in its development was achieved
so unostenta60usly that few outside the Council
of the Society realized the energy he put into the
Society's affairs. They \vere glad occasionally
after a moorland ramble at Haworth to take
tea at the liberally spread tables over which he
presided as host, but Sir John Brigg's services
to the Society were far nlore intinlate than all
that alone implies.
The first public step \vas the issue in the
nanle of the then Mayor of Bradford (the late
Alderlnan Jonas Whitley) of invitations to a
conference, upon December 16, 1893, at the
Bradford Town Hall, "to consider the advis-
ability of forming a Brontë Society and Museunl."
The Rev. W. l-I. Keeling, for nlany years head-
master of the Bradford Granlmar School, \vas
voted to the chair, and it may be interesting to
12J

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary Memorial

record the names of those present. They were:
Messrs. E. Alexander, F. C. Barrans, G. Bell;
Hugh Bingham (Oakenshaw) ; Alderman (after-
wards Sir) John Brigg (Kildwick) ; J. J. Brigg
(Keighley); W. M. Brookes; John Clough, j un.
(Steeton); the Rev. J. "V. Dunne (Létisterdyke) ;
C. A. Federer, George Field, W. T. Field;
Geddes (Liverpool); J. A. (afterwards Sir Arthur)
Godwin; James Gordon; Herbert Hardy
(Earlsheaton); H. Hartley (Morton); T. H.
Horsfall; the Rev. W. T. Keyworth (Halifax) ;
H. F. Killick, Edmund Lee, W. T. McGowen,
Town Clerk of Bradford; Frank Peel (Heck-
nlondwike); Collingwood Pollard (l
nornton) ;
John Popplewell (long Chairman of the Bradford
Free Libraries Committee); Percival Ross;
W. Scruton; A. B. Smith (Keighley); J. J.
Stead (Heckmond\vike); J. A. Erskine Stuart
(Batley); J. H.
rattersfield (Mirfield); Robert
Thornton (Heckmondwike) ; J. Horsfall Turner
(Idle); S. P. Unwin (Shipley); C. Watson,
F. Denby Wheater (Haworth); Butler Wood,
W. W. Yates (Dewsbury), Miss Yates. En-
couraging letters and messages were also received
from Messrs. W. Ackroyd (Birkenshaw); the
Rev. Canon Bardsley (Vicar of Bradford);
Jonathan Caldwell (Brig house); the Rt. Rev.
Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon; the
Rev. Canon Lowther Clarke (Vicar of Dewsbury
and afterwards Bishop of Melbourne); the Misse

122

The Brontë Society and its Work
Cockshott (Oakworth); Alderman (afterwards
the Right Hon.) C. Milnes Gaskell (Wakefield) ;
Mr. (afterwards Sir) Mark Oldroyd, M.P.;
Mr. Asa H. Pyrah (Mayor of Dewsbury);
Mr. W. E. B. (afterwards Sir William) Priest-
ley; Mr. (afterwards Sir) T. Wen1Yss Reid,
Mr. George Smith, the veteran head of the
firm of Smith, Elder & Co.-Char1otte Brontë's
publishers; Mr. William Smith (Morley);
Mr. Harry Speight (Bingley); Mrs. C. E.
Sugden (Haworth); Mrs. Stevenson (Market
Harborough); Mr. W. Douglas Walker (New
York); Mr. A. H. Wall (Shakespere Museunl,
Stratford-on-A von); Mr. Josiah Winn (Hali-
fax); Mr. (afterward Sir) Joseph Woodhead
(Huddersfield).
Encouraged with the promise of success in
numbers and influence-so much beyond the
expectation of the original promoters-the meet-
ing proceeded in high spirits to resolve-

That a Brontë Society be and is hereby formed, and
that the objects of such Society be, amongst other
things, to establish a Museum to contain not only
drawings, manuscripts, paintings, and other personal
relics of the Brontë family, but all editions of their
works, the writings of authors upon these works, or
upon any member of the family, together with photo-
graphi of places or premises with which the family
was associated.

Upon this basis the Hrontë Society canle Into
12 3

\

.

CharlfJtte Brontë.' a Centenary MelnfJrÎal

existence. It continued to work upon these
simple lines as a literary association, until the
growing wealth of its collections and a conse-
quent sense of responsibility rendered the Council
appointed to deal with the Society's affairs
anxious that the existence and purpose of their
organization should in due form be nlade known
to the law of the land. Consequently in 1902
the Society secured a certificate of Incorporation
under the Corn panies Act, I 862.
In its primary task of estahlishing a Museum
of Brontë relics the Society has had a great
nleasure of success. The first question which
arose was that of situation. The literary pilgrim
may well think that the question settles itself, and
that only amid the "heath-clad showery hills"
of Ha\vorth \vhere those " unquiet souls" found
themselves would such an institution be in its
true atmosphere. But there were difficult ques-
tions of acconlmodation and guardianship to be
arranged, and sonle members of the Council
thought the permanence of the institution and
appeal to the widest possible circle of readers
dictated the establishment of the collection in
one of the larger to\vns or cities of the West
Riding. Mr . Yates urged the claims of Dews-
bury-others thought Bradford a quite natural
as well as convenient centre, for \vere not the
Brontë sisters born in Thornton, within the
boundaries of the old parish and the modern
1 2 4

1ne Brol1të Society and its IJ 7 0rk
city of Bradford? Haworth, of \vhom hard
things have in the past most unjustly been
said, was not unmindful of its own. Haworth
Brontë lovers-and they ever were numerous
-took a good part in the organ ization of the
Society, and the governing body of the district,
wi th local patriotism, pressed the claims of their
little moorland town. It was, however, only
upon a divided vote of six to four that Ha\vorth
was chosen-though the minute-book of the
Society takes note of the fact that before the
voting was reached the Haworth members of
the Council had trustfully left to catch their
train. There has never been a moment of doubt
since that the decision was wise.
The ideal locality for the Museum comme-
morating the Brontës would obviously be the
Parsonage-house consecrated by the romance
and tragedy of their lives. Precedents as well
as sentiment pointed a finger in that direction.
The chief shrine of Shakesperians at Stratford-
on-Avon is naturally the poet's birthplace; that
of lovers of Milton the little Buckinghamshire
Eottage, wreathed in sweetbrier and vine and
the twisted eglantine, which must ever have
remained in the inward eye of the poet in his
days of blindness as the very picture of rural
delight. The Scottish literary pilgrim turns to
the little thatched clay biggin of but and ben on
the road to Alloway, where Burns first saw the
12 5

Charlotte BroJJtë: a Centenary MenJOrÙ,1

light, with even greater charm perhaps than to
the pretentious but (let it be confessed) rather
clumsy magnificence of Abbotsford. And there
are in this land of ours sin1ple homes richly
" humanized "-as Mrs. Browning put it-with
cherished associations, standing as memorials
of Bunyan, Carlyle, Stevenson, and Barrie, of
Co\vper the poet, of Borrow and }.'itzgerald.
Above all in appeal, perhaps, is the Dove
Cottage at the rrown End of Grasmere-that
"little nook of n10untain ground" - " the
loveliest spot that man hath ever found" -which
is inseparably associated \vith \tv ordsworth's days
of poverty and genius. rrhe difficulties in the
way of securing the Haworth Parsonage to house
the Brontë Society's collections have hitherto
proved insuperable. The building is vested in
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and they are
bound to administer their estates on the strictest
business principles without fear, favour, or literary
sentiment. The difficulties are primarily thus
a matter of finance, and then perhaps of red
tape. rrhe red tape would probably be easy to
cut, but for the present the Society has not
felt itself in a financial position to go to the
Commissioners with a proposal for the purchase
or the leasing of the old Parsonage. '1 'he
securing of that building, so rich in memories,
is, however, an ideal by no n1eans lost
sight of.

126

1ne Brontë Society find its 1f 7 ork

In other roonls-pren1ises without romance
but with convenience enough for the present
and just at the head of the steep village street
by the church-the little Museum has been
arranged. I t is to be supposed, of course, that
the officers of a society formed to do honour to
the Brontës would be gratified to find the Brontës
already high in honour \vith the collectors, but
the circumstances must have been also just a
little embarrassing. Even if the American
millionaires had not commenced to lay up for
themselves treasures of a literary character,
prices for the more desirable of Brontë manu-
scripts might reasonably be fran1ed on a consider-
able scale. Emily's and Anne's autographs are
not very n1uch more numerous than those
of Shakespere himself, for after their deaths
Charlotte destroyed nearly all within her reach;
and Charlotte's own, though not rare, are almost
always so characterful that the slightest scrap
of her writing is sure to be cherished as of
interest. With her, of course, the autograph
collector knows nothing of the mere common-
places of life, the uninspiring acceptances of
invitations to dinner or excuses for their refusal,
and the like, which mark the course through the
world of most successful authors. So that the
Society's representative has had to bite his lip
when collections of letters and even single docu-
ments have been offered in the sale-roo111s and
1 2 7

Charlotte Bront?: a Centenary Mel/Jorial
have attracted bids altogether beyond the Society's
resources to com pete.
Such esteen1 in the market has brought other
dangers. That apt and versatile rascal the
literary forger has been ten1pted to try his hand
at supplying the den1ands, and there have been
from time to tin1e at least a few proved forgeries
of Brontë documents put before the public, and
others much to be suspected. Even a great
institution like the National Portrait Gallery,
for all the learning and critical acumen of its
staff, has not been proof against these dangers, as
the unlucky picture of "Charlotte Brontë"
"wearin' of the green H bought in 1906 proved.
Moreover the Brontë Museum is not merely a
collection of literary and artistic objects, the
genuineness of which n1ay be tested, but it
includes objects of domestic association with the
family. As may be imagined, these present
frequent difficulties of provenance, due not to
dishonesty but (shall one say?) to the charitable
disposition of the owner to give his rather doubt-
ful treasure all the benefit of the doubt. Thus
some curious facts have come to light. For
instance, there are extant no fewer than five
pianos from the Brontë household. Who would
have supposed that a household so small, with
so little money for superfluities, and in musical
matters of no particular virtuosity, could have
had use for that number of instruments?
128

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The Brontë Society and its Work

Spectacles worn by the Rev. Patrick Brontë are
in the hands of dealers in such matters as
numerous as though some melnber of the fan1ily
of the incumbent of Haworth had, like the un-
lucky heir of his neighbour the Vicar of \" ake-
field, bought a bargain lot at the fair. It is
only just to say, however, that StIch relics of
unequivocal authenticity are rather nun1erous.
Indeed, three pairs have been admitted to the
Museum.
Steering a cautious way amid these dangers, the
Council of the Society has laid the foundation
of an excellen t and most interesting collection.
No doubt now that, when the pern1anence of the
organization and the evergreen freshness of the
Brontë story in the public mind have been proved
by time, Brontë collectors who have collected
for love and not for "an investlllent" will
appreciate the opportunity of handing to the
Society's guardianship treasures which they do
not choose to imagine scattered to the winds in
the sordid profanation of the auction. Already
at least one distinguished American Brontë
enthusiast, and n10re than one on this side of the
l\.tlantic, has intimated pri vatel y to the Council
of the Society an intention to "remember in his
\viJl" the little institution at Haworth.
Little space need here be devoted to a review
of the collection, for then; has been issued among
the Society's publications an annotated and illus-
129 I

Charlotte Brolltë: a Centenary Menlorial
trated catalogue of the Museum, compiled by the
Hon. Secretary, Mr. W. T. Field. The Brontë
student, it may, however, be said, wiIJ feel that
all goes well and upon the right lines. Already
the series of portraits is fairly full. No one, of
course, will grudge the fact that Richmond's
drawing of Charlotte Brontë is here only in
reproduction. The original is in the National
Portrait Gallery-where it ought to be; and
Branwell Brontë's portrait, too, of his sister Emily,
for all its technical imperfections, sustains, not
without dignity, a great name among her peers
in the national collection. l
he Brontë Society
has, however, a number of pencil sketches by
Branwell of his sisters and a water-colour of
Emily which is probably by him, though it has
come to be attributed to Charlotte's own hand.
But Charlotte certainly drew a portrait of her
sister Anne which is very welcome here. Anne
was the beauty of the family, and the picture
suggests a sweet expression of countenance, though
her neck is hardly "in drawing, U as an artist
would say. But we must remember that the
"Books of Beauty U of the tinle favoured for
ladies a peculiar elongation of neck. Tom
Moore set forth the ideal throat for a lady as
" swan-like," and the ideal has evidently affected
the real in Charlotte's picture. As for Branwell
himself, there is here a silhouette-a work not
without a great deal of character-and a large
13 0

The Brontë Society and its if/ork
and we]} modelled medallion by Ley land of
Halifax, who \vas one of his associates in the
days when BralHvell's optin1Ïsm foresa\v fame and
fortune as a painter. The original daguerreo-
type of the father, hea vi I y stocked, and grimmer
in expression than the worst gossip of Haworth
ever made him in reality, is here, and beside it
is a water-colour picture by a professional like-
ness-maker of Mrs. Brontë, endorsed laconically
by the old man "This is my wife. tt Mr. Brontë
did not wear his heart on his sleeve. Of those
who can1e within the Brontë orbit a very good
series has been accumulated. l
here are gaps
yet to be fiJIed, but the institution has become
the natural depositary for the portraits of the
notabilities of the country-side, and n1any of those
who figure in the novels or are named in the
letters are represented. Of personal souvenirs of
the Brontës there are many. Charlotte's hus-
band, the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, who had so
brief a married life after his long and patient
waiting for her hand, preserved his wife's denlure
wedding-dress and bridal bouquet, and they are
here. From his keeping, hal f a century after
Charlotte's death, came also toys from the
Haworth nursery, painting appliances, and inti-
mate treasures like desks and work-boxes, which
apparently had never been opened since Charlotte
herself closed the lids. In one of them, among
other cherished trifles, was found the silver medal
13 1

Charlotte BrfJntë.' a Centenary Melnorial
which Charlotte gained at Miss W ooler's school
at Roe Head. l\1iss N ussey has told the story
of this relic. l'he medal was a trophy at the
school, to be \vorn for the time being by the girl
who most distinguished herself in "the fulfiln1ent
of duties." Charlotte won it in her first half-
year at school, and never had to pass it on to a
n10re exemplary companion, so that upon her
leaving the school the medal was presented to her.
One feels that such a relic is in its proper place
in the Museum. There are pencil and \vater-
colour dra\vings by almost every n1en1ber of the
family-very nun1erous examples by Charlotte,
including a really spirited dra\ving of her dog
Floss, but n10st of then1 are precise and painful
reproductions of steel engravings or lithographs.
Their interest is mainly their disclosure of an
imaginative interest in the Haydon and Stotharù
type of composition hardly tolerable to the
modern generation of art-lovers. A drawing by
Emily of her faithful and n1uch loved bull-dog
Keeper-who himself played his part in Shirley,
and is remembered as having broken-heartedly
followed his young mistress's coffin into the very
church-this is priceless.
The budding literary amhition is represented
by the microscopic n1agazines written by the
children in the Haworth nursery-those queer
little compositions in which they practised their
'prentice hands in \vild poetry, and \vilder prose,
13 2

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The Bronti'" Society find its Work

A good many of Branwell's compositions are in
the collection. Those of the sisters have pro-
duced such prodigious prices in the sale-rooms
that the Society has had to content itself with a
specimen and await the generosity of its friends.
Then, of course, there are d ul y represented the
hooks by which fame came.-the poems and then
the novels. Most of these are in modern editions
or translations. First editions will no doubt
con1e some day. The first step in the ladder of
fan1e is represented here, and one rejoices in the
circunlstance that it has been preserved. Every
one remenlbers that of the little book of poems
on the publication of which the sisters expended
a bequest from their aunt only two copies were
sold. One of these somehow came into the hands
of Frederick Enoch, the author of the song, once
famous, "My s \veetheart \vhen a boy." Hi s
perception was sufficiently acute to recognize
genius in the work, and he \vrote to the unknown
poetesses for their autographs. Here is the sheet
of demurely written signatures-" Currer Bell,"
"f]lis Bell" and "Acton Bell "-in hands Ull-
n1Ïstakably felninine, which was sent in response
to the request, hut cautiously posted in London,
through the instrumentality of their publishers,
lest their anonymity should be conlpron1ised.
At the opening of the exhihition the Society
\vas privileged to have awhile on loan the
original manuscripts of Jane Eyre and Villette-
133

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

out of the almost inexhaustible store of treasures
belonging to the firm of Messrs. Smith, Elder &
Co., the original publishers of the novels. But
as a permanent possession, of course, such relics
are beyond hope. The only one of the manu-
scripts which did not pass into the possession of
the firm-that of 11ze Professor, or, as it was
originally caBed, The Master-is now in the col-
lection of Mr. Pierpont Morgan in New York.
But already the series of letters by Charlotte is
rich in interest. A few have been bought, but
for the most part the Society looks with gratitude
to Mr ']'. J. Wise, the well-known collector,
for the gift of docuInen ts of the tenderest interest.
Among them, bound sumptuously, are those last
faint lines in pencil, almost too sacred for full
publication in print, which Charlotte wrote to
her friend Ellen N ussey from "my weary bed"
within a few hours of her death. These are
where they should be-in the keeping of those
who will reverence theln.
A few manuscripts of Mrs. Gaskell, of Mr.
Nicholls, and of Mr. Brontë are included, among
them being an elaborate list of French phrases
compiled by Mr. Brontë for his own use during
his t:xpedition to Brussels in 1842 to deposit
his daughters in the famous school in the Rue
d'lsabelle. Space forbids that the review of the
little coBection of treasures should be carried
farther. Suffice it to say that Brontë lovers
134

1ne Brontë Society and its Work

and even the casual public have found encourage-
ment and reward for frequent visits to the
Museum. During the twenty-one years it has
been open there have paid for admission n10re
than 54,000 persons. This takes no account of
the members of the Society, who are admitted
freely and whose visits and revisits are unrecorded.
The first publication issued by the Society-
in January 189 5-was an extensive "Biblio-
graphy of the Works of the Brontë Family:
including a list of books and magazine articles
on the Brontës, together with a notice of works
relating to Haworth." It was prepared by Mr.
Butler Wood, who early in the Society's work
had been marked out by the Council to act as
Bibliographical and Publication Secretary. This
first effort was followed two and a half years
later by a suppleInentary list. Sonle evidence
of the interest which successive generations of
readers and wri ters have taken in the Bron tës
and their books, is afforded by the fact that
these two bibliographical lists enumt:rated nearly
seven hundred items. And they are now
twenty years or more old. Since the Society's
work initiated a new era of widespread interest,
a positive flood of literature discussing the
ßrontës has proceeded from the press, and it is
quite probable that a second supplement to the
Bibliography could be corn piled as extensive as
both the prt:vious lists taken together. I t is
135

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

a task for the future. Meanwhile one n1ay
note that the cosmopolitan character of the
reputation of the novels is indicated by the fact
that beside the nUInerous reprints which have
appeared in England, Scotland, the United
States of America, Canada, and Australia, trans-
lations of one or more have been published in
France, Russia, Germany, and Austria, and
dramatized versions have been printed in the
United States, France, Germany, Italy, and
Denmark. Jane Eyre has most commended
itself to the foreign taste. Mr. G. K. Chester-
ton once shocked the Society by commending
Jane Eyre as the best "penny dreadful," the
most thrilling detective-story ever written in
English, and he lamented that it alone of the
novels of Charlotte Brontë followed the true
n1elodramatic sequence. Whatever may be
thought of Mr. Chesterton's striking and un-
expected way of putting things, the truth which
he was emphasizing (or over-emphasizing) no
doubt lies at the root of the popularity of Jane
Eyre in a foreign dress. Shirley, despite those
qualities-or perhaps because of them-which
make it most typical and photographically real
of all Yorkshire novels ever written, has also
found some acceptance in France and Germany.
But, curiously, Villette, which many English
readers would be disposed to regard as the
most delightful, the most powerful of the series,
13 6

1Ïze Brontë Society and its Work

has never found a French translator-and that
notwithstanding its brilliantly drawn background
of the little city of Brussels. Perhaps the main
reason is that the point of view is so singularly
individual, so rernote and perhaps so incompre-
hensible to the Continental mind; for the original
reason \vhich prevented its translation - the
desire to spare the feel ings of persons all too
easily to be identified-can have little weight
when after this lapse of years all who were con-
cerned have passed away.
I t is a little curious, too, that on the Continent
the name of " Brontë" is still altnost unknown,
and the works of the sisters still bear only their
early pseudonyms, " Currer BeIJ," "Ellis Bell,"
and" Acton Bell." It is only within the last few
years that, in the pages mainly of the Abbé
Dimnet, there has reached Continental readers
some echo of the pathetic story which surrounds
the production of the novels and some fragrance
of the peat-smoke of the old homesteads of
the Haworth moors and hillsides. Even M.
Maeterlinck's contribution to Brontë literature
is rather a study of Wuthering Heights in vacuo.
I Ie divined son1ething of the truth, hut did not
really con1prehend its author-she

whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief

Daring, since Byron Jied.
137

Charlotte Brontë.' a CeJJteJJary Menloria/
In the earlier days of the Society a good
deal of labour was devoted to the task of
searching out the originals of the places which
Charlotte Brontë drew in her novels and of the
characters with which she peopled those scenes.
Charlotte Brontë's genius was curiously objective.
Qui te as much as any of the writers of her
generation she was "subjective" in her themes.
Just as n1uch as Wordsworth, though without
a trace of his egotism, she was interested-and
interested her readers-in the working of her
own mind and of her own emotions. Except
in that single and splendid instance when she
allowed her fancy to conceive what might have
been had Nature endowed the stalwart spirit
of her sister Emily with a healthy body and
the social opportunities of a lady of a nlanor,
Charlotte herself was her o\vn heroine, and her
spiritual adventures were, \vith singularly little
translation and imaginative extension, the pur-
pose of her work. It is this realism which
appeals to the soul of the reader; but it is
supported by an appeal to the mind through a
precision of observation and meticulous delinea-
tion of the objects and the people around her,
such as one finds in equal degree in few other
writers. If the Celt \vithin her indulged in the
building of castles of romance, the Y orkshire-
woman saw to it that they were constructed uf
sound materials and firm based as solid earth
13 8

The Brontë Society and its Work
-the rough rock of mind and heart which
she found in the men and women about her,
the picturesque and enduring gritstone and oak
of the Pennine homesteads, or maybe the brick
and stucco of her Belgian schooldays.
Thus Yorkshire folk recognized even in the
backgrounds of the drama a phase of interest
lost to the stranger-or only unconsciously
enjoyed-that interest in familiar things pictured
which is of universal appeal. The examination
of origins did not, of course, imply blindness or
numbness to the greater purpose-the psycho-
logical drama, but was the development of a further
charm for those who could share it. One need
not stay here to defend this research, though
it has been denied that the admirer of a work of
art has any right to peep behind the veil \vhich
hides the artist in his studio, to ask any questions
about his models, or to analyze his palette.
That attitude was hardly possible even as a
monastic ideal, and generations far removed
from one another in other points of view ha ye
agreed in treasuring even indifferent pictures
when they could recognize Dante, or Raphael,
or the young Keats drawn to the life in figures
in the background, and to accept even the
faultless craftsn1anship of a Millais as enhanced
in interest by the knowledge that his picture \vas
something more than a fancy out of Boccaccio
or Chaucer, but gave us veritable likenesses of his
139

.

Charlotte Bronti!.' a Centenary Memorial
kindred spirits in the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood.
I t is true this work of identifying originals
in the novels of Charlotte Brontë was commenced
a little too soon for the authoress's own peace of
mind, and, as is the way of a gossip-loving \vorld,
it was nlostly the least complimentary features
which were recognized-Cromwell's wart rather
than his massive brow and far-seeing eye-and
was in consequence resented. But one could
\vish that it had entered into the heart of one of
Charlotte's contemporaries to have annotated her
novels, for much that bears the convincing
sirnilitude of realism in personality and cir-
cumstance is not now to be connected with its
orIgin.
'fhe first volume of the Transactions of the
Society contained valuable aids to the study of
the topography of the novels. Dr. J. A. ]-
rskine
Stuart, who had been perhaps the first to give
the subject earnest study, read to the Society in
1894 a suggestive paper on the Brontë Nomen-
clature.
The Rev. T. Keyworth and Mr. J. J. Stead
in 1896 put before the Society clear evidence
for the identification of the Morton of lane Eyre
with the little Derbyshire viJIage of Hathersage,
the home of the Rev. Henry Nussey, brother of
Charlotte's friend, Ellen N ussey-a zealous young
clergyman \vho ,vas beyond question the model
14 0

L

o
E-<

o
...,-:

::z::
E-o
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The Bronti' Society and its Work

for the strongly individual character of St. John
Rivers in the novel. Mr. Stead also compiled in
1896, for an excursion of the Society to the
country about Birstall depicted in Shirley, a precise
little guide-book-if it may be so called--which
has been very useful and was reprinted by the
Society, with additions and excellent illustrations,
ten years later. And the late Mr. P. F. Lee
recounted some associations of Charlotte with
Bridlington \vhich threw a little light on some
passages i 11 the novels and much more upon a
pleasant episode of Charlotte's life. In a series
of parts of the 'lransactions of the Society-
constituting the third volume-the writer of
these lines was permitted to bring together a
n10re exhaustive account, from published and
unpublished sources, of 1ne Persons and Places
of the Bronie" Novels.
In the san1e spirit, though less directly associated
with the Brontës and their writings, have been
the studies of the local history of Haworth and
of Thornton which the n1embers have received
through the instrumentality of the Society. The
former was originally written by Mr. J. Frederick
Greenwood, of Haworth, to be put into the
hands of the melnbers of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, on the occasion
of the Bradford meeting in 1900, when an
excursion to Haworth was included among the
relaxations from tht sterner labours of the lecture-
14 1

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Menlorial
r00111S. Rightly judging the work to be of too
much permanent interest to be lost sight of in
the casual papers of that meeting, the Council of
the Society secured permission to reprint it, and
it now takes its place in the second volume of the
'rransactions. The historical sketch of Thornton
entitled Thornton and the Bronfis was issued as
a separate publication by Mr. William Scruton,
the author of man y historical studies of Bradford
and its neighbourhood, and by the generosity of
Sir William Priestley, M.P., a copy was presented
to each n1ember of the Society. The work is of
special interest to Brontë students not only for
its careful presentation of the remote little village
in which the Brontës were born-an environment
which affected the novels themselves in many
ways-but also because there are embodied in
it the impressions of several of those who had
personal association with the Brontës in their
own home.
1"'he Society has also manifested its interest in
the topographical side of Brontë studies by
organizing each summer an excursion to one
place or another associated with the Brontës and
their books. Ha worth, of course, has claimed
most attention, and assemblies there have been
numerous-sometimes to visit the Museum,
sometin1es to enjoy the scent of the heather on the
moors, sometin1es to push farther afield to the
old homesteads Ponden and Wycoller, which were
14 2

7Ïze Brontë Society and itJ Work

fami liar scenes to the sisters and find SQlne
reflection in the scenery of the novels. Several
visits have been made to Oakwell I-Iall-the
principal scene of Shirley -and to other spots of
interest in its vicinity-to the Kirkby Lonsdale
district on the borders of Westmorland and the
Derbyshire village of Hathersage painted in 1ane
Eyre, and on one occasion it ,vas proposed to
undertake a visit to Brussels. Unluckily the
enterprise was postponed, and before another
opportunity arose the Rue d'lsabelle and the old
school buildings themselves had been whoJI y
swept away in the grandiose preparations for the
erection of a Central railway station.
1
he reading of papers) a form of activity which
has been disparaged as the ploughing of sands,
was, as will have been noticed, not the prime and
supreme object of the Brontë Society as it was
\vith the Wordsworth, Browning, and similar
societies. But the men1bers have very gladly
listened to all who had a "message." It nlay be
confessed that it was with the hope of securing
for the Brontës a place in that noble series of
addresses on literary suhjects, for which Lord
Rosebery secured the gratitude of book-lovers,
that the members at the outset of the Society
elected his lordship as their president. Lord
J{osebery was at the monlent engrossed with
the labours of the Foreign Office, and very soon
afterwards was to become Premier. Apparently
143

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary MeJJlori'al

he hesitated; he sent the Society an encouraging
assurance of his interest in their \vork, but
ultimately declined the office. I..ord Houghton,
after\vards the Marquis of Crewe) himself a poet
and the son of a Yorkshire poet) accepted the
position of president, but though he held it for
twelve years he was unhappily prevented fronl
taking any part in the work of the Society. He
was succeeded in 1906 by Sir John Brigg, M.I
.,
who remained president till his death in 191 I,
when Mrs. Hun1phry Ward acceded to the
request of the Society to undertake the duties.
Of Sir John Brigg's part in the affairs of the
Society something has already been said, and
Mrs. \Vard has on one or two occasions found
it possible to encourage the Society by her
presence and speech.
Other distinguished students of literature have
fron1 time to tinle addressed the Society. Sir
T. WenlYss Reid, who was, after Mrs. Gaskell,
the first to raise the veil for \vorshippers at the
Brontë shrine, was only prevented by illness
fronl formally opening the Museun1 in 1895,
and a paper which he prepared for that occa-
sion, and an address he delivered to the Society
in 1898, are printed an10ng the Society's Trans-
actions. Mr. Swinburne and Mr. J\ugustine
BirreJl could never be persuaded to add any-
thing by \vay of personal encouragement to the
Society beyond the stinlulus afforded by
heiJ:
144

1ïze Brontë Society and lis Work

admirable contributions to Brontë literature.
But Mr. Shorter, the editor of the letters-to
vvhom aU Brontë students are suprell1el y grate-
ful-and Sir W. Robertson Nicoll were early
in their assistance and couns,=l. rrhe literary
problems of the Brontës, their genius, their place
in the history of the
:nglish nove], have been
very suggestively discussed by Dr. !{. Garnett, long
of the British Museulll, Mr. G. K. Chesterton
and Mr. .A.. C. Benson-who devoted themselves
particularly to the \vork of Charlotte Brontë; by
Lord I--laldane and Mr. J. Fotheringhan1-who
dealt specifically with Emily Brontë ; and aspects
of the subject have been treated n10re generally
by Professor G. Saintsbury, Mr. Edmund Gosse,
Mr. Ernest de Sélincourt, Professor C. E.
Vaughan, and Mr. 'rholnas Seccombe. Mr.
Halliwell SutclifFe, who has enriched the Ha\vorth
district and the wild country beyond by an
assiduous collection and a skilled literary treat-
ment of a mass of tradition untouched by the
Brontës, dealt almost lyrically of" The Spirit
of the Moors" in one address to the Society; and
Mr. Keighley Snowden, another novelist native
to the soil who has found yet other sources of
local inspiration, has been among those who
have paid tribute to the genius of the Brontë
family. 'T'he contributions of Sir Sidney Lee,
of the Right Rev. J. E. C. Welldon (Dean of
Manchester), and of Mrs. l
:Ilis H. Chadwick

145

K

Charlotte Broil!?: a Centenory Me1JI0ria/

have been of a biographical character. Sir
Sidney Lee related Inany interesting retlliniscences
still current in the family of the late Sir George
Smith, concerning Charlotte Brontë's relations
with the fÏ.rnl of Snlith, EJder & Co., and of
her visits to London. Bishop vVelldon dealt
with certain Manchester literary associations, for
it will he relnelnbered that it was w hiJst at
Manchester that Charlotte Brontë c0l11menced
to write Jane 1!...yre. These and other addresses
have nluch enriched the Society's Transactions.
})ioneer work in the study of material untouched
hitherto-the J uveniJia-has been carried out by
Dr. George Edwin MacLean, the forn1er head'
of the UnIversity of Io\va, in the United States,
and he has shown that there exists here a profit-
able fieJd which it may be hoped will continue
to be cultivated. One n1ust not forget in this
brief review of the Society's publications that
through the generosity of Mr. John Waugh-
an enthusiastic Brontë collector-the Society was
enabled to reprint for the members' use the
adnlirable article which rv1iss Nusser wrote in
Scribner's Magazine as long ago as 187 I, pre-
serving most valuable renliniscences of her life-
long friend. Miss N ussey had attai ned a very
ad vanced age before the Society came into
existence, and she could never be persuaded to
leave the seclusion with which she ever sur-
rounded herself to take a part in the Society's
14 6

1ne Brontë Societ)' and its Work

affairs, but she n1anifested the keenest interest
in its "vork, and many of the relics which she
had preserved find a place in the Museum.
From the beginning the Society has been
fortunate in its officers. The duties of Secretary
were at the outset carried out by Mr. J. Hors-
fall Turner. On his retirement Mr. Butler
Wood was elected as Bibliographical Secretary
and Mr. vVilliam T. F
ield as Corresponding
Secretary, and it is fair to say that the Society
owes much of its success to their enthusiastic
energy and caution. The Treasurers of the
Society have been the late F. G. Galloway, of
Bradford (I 894 to his death in 1896); the late
Alfred Newboult, of Bradford (1896 to his death
in 1897); Mr. J. J. Stead, of Heckmondwike
(1898-1906); Mr. Frederick A. T. Mossman,
of Bradford (1906-1915); and Mr. W. Robert-
shaw (since 1915). Though the membership of
the Society has been drawn from practically all
parts of the English-speaking world, it has been a
matter of convenience that the members of the
Council of the Society have principally been
residents within easy reach of Haworth and
Bradford, and it is satisfactory that there has
never been a moment when interest in the
Society's affairs has flagged. The following
ha ve acted as chairmen of the Council :-Sir
John Brigg, M.P. (1894-1896); Mr. J. J.
Brigg, of Keighley (1897); Mr. J. F. Green-
147

Charlotte Brol1ti!: a Centenary MelJ10rin!
wood, of Haworth (1898-1900); Mr. W. W.
Yates, of Dewsbury (1901); Mr. S. P. Unwin,
of Shipley (1902-1905); Mr. Butler Wood, of
Bradford (I 906- I 908) ; Mr. J. J. Stead, of Heck-
mondwike (1909-1910); Miss Cockshott, of Oak-
worth (191 I) ; Mr. W. de Witt Blackstock, of
Chapel-en-le-Frith (1912); Mr. John Watkin-
son, of Huddersfield (1913); Mr. George Day,
of Oewsbury (1914) ; and Mr. Frederick A. T.
Mossman, of Bradford (1915-1916).

14 8

THE PLACE OF CHARLOTTE
BRONTË IN NINETEENTH
CENTURY FICTION

By DR. RICHARD GARNETT, C.B.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE BRONTË SOCIETY AT KEIGHLEY,
ON JANUARY 23, 19 0 4-

,

THE PLACE OF CHARI
OTT'E BRON1'Ë
IN NINETEENTH CEN1"'UI{Y FIC1'ION

THE invitation to address, on the subject of
Charlotte Brontë, an audience of Charlotte
ßrontë's country people, who, if her life could
have been prolonged to the present day, would
have been her friends and neighbours, and
failing that are her sincere venerators and ad-
mirers, may well be regarded as both an honour
and a pleasure by any to \vhose lot it nlay fall.
In nlY case it is attended with peculiar gratifica-
tion, inasmuch as, though not a native or an
inhabitant of the Brontë country, I Jnay clain1
sonIC affinity with it. My ancestors, when I
first encounter then1, are found dwelling in
the little n100rland halnlet of Eldwick, in the
neighbourhood of Bingley, and I was tHyself
baptized in Bingley Parish Church. The possi-
hility of walking fronl Bingley to Ha\vorth and
back in a long sumn1er morning was, whcn I
was younger and more active than I anl now,
victoriousl y demonstrated by tnyself. I feel,
therefore, that I anI not altogether anlong
15 1

Charlotte Brollti:": a Centenary Me1JlorÎal

strangers, and that I t11ay clainl sonIe little parti-
cipation in the honour which the birth of
Charlotte Brontë at Haworth reflects upon the
district. Happy the district which does possess
a nlinor tutelary divinity, or at least a local
hero or heroine! Daniel Webster, addressing
the citizens of Rochester in the State of New
York, a place celebrated for its lofty waterfaJl,
informed thenl that no people had ever lost
their liberties "vho had a "vaterfall forty feet
high.

tan statement; taller, some think,
than the \vaterfall. But it is perfectly true that
a conlmunity with a great nlenlory of person
or event to \vhich it can and does look up is
more certain than a cot11munity less fortunate
in this particular of retaining its self-respect.
The very fact, ho\vever, that I share in the
patriotic feeling which has founded and which
nlaintains the Brontë Society, admonishes nle to
be cautious in my treatnle!lt of Charlotte Brontë.
Among the reports of the proceedings of previous
nleetings which have been kindJ y sent nle for
p
rusal 1 observe an excellent remark, not
emanating fronl a distinguished visitor but fronl
one of yoursel ves, that there is a danger attend-
ing all societies fornled for the study and
celebration of particular authors, the danger,
namely, that the author in question may conle
to be regarded as the centre, so to speak, of a
solar systenl, around whonl all other authors
15 2

Charlotte Brontë ill Nineteenth Century Fiction

revolve like Ininor lutninaries.
rhis would be
a \vrong position even for a Shakespeare or a
Dante, or a Goethe, not to say a Spenser or a
Chaucer. "[here is no centre for the uni verse
of Literature but the ideal of Literature her-
self, the light that never was on sea or land.
Especially is this danger aggravated when, as in
our case, patriotic fervour blends \vith æsthetic
adn1Ïration. vVithin due lilnits this fervour is
a t110st excellent thing. It supplies warmth and
colour; to vary slightly a saying of Emerson's,
it sets criticist11 aflanle \vith emotion: nay, it
aids to the shortconling of the critical faculty.
As so finely said by Shelley, "Love \vhere
Wisdon1 fails makes Cythna wise." But, carried
to excess, it affixes a note of provincialisn1 upon
the admirers, and, which is lnuch worse, upon
the object of their adnliration also. '[his inl-
putation of provincialisnl may be extrelnely
unjust, but so long as it adheres it is fatal, and
rightl y so, for provincialisnl in the sense in which
laIn en1ploying the term denotes a stratunl ot
n1Ïnd below the region of the highest excellence,
pernlanent) y and irremediahly at a lower level.
It is not like a stain upon a fine stuff, it is a
stuff of inferior texture throughout; and in
worse plight than material stuff inasnluch as it
cannot be converted into a finer Inaterial by
mechanical procêss, as Sir John Cutler's worsted
stockings becalne silk stockings by assiduous
153

Charlotte _Brontë: a Centenary Memorial
darning. I will not say that it cannot be dyed
to look for awhile like the better quality, but
such dyes are deficient in permanence, and you
cannot dye a second-rate author once a fortnight,
Eke a Persian's beard. We could not do Charlotte
Brontë a greater disservice than to fix the note
of Provincialism upon her. I nstead, therefore,
of devoting my paper to an encomium upon
her, which might be perilous, I shall compare
her \vith those great, and, as I frankly admit,
in nlany respects greater, authors of her time
\vith \VhOnl she admits of comparison, and
endeavour to show that she has a sphere of her
own independent of any of theirs, which she
occupies with as much mastery as any of them
occupy their own, and which but for her would
have remained unoccupied by any first-class
writer. The sphere I nlean is a sphere of sub-
jective feeling in the narrowest sense of the
tern1. I aln not comparing Charlotte Brontë
with \vriters like George Eliot, who delineate
subjective enlotion fronl the outside as creators
or observers, and paint states of feeling nlost
alien to their own, inspired by passions of which
they thernselves have had no experience. Such
a nlethod is a blending of the objective and
subjective; it is subjective in so far as it deline-
ates mental states, and only uses incident as a
means of producing those states; but it is
objective in so far as it describes conditions
L54

Charlotte Brontë in Mneteenth Century Fiction

external to the author, and unshared by hin1.
The subjectivity of Charlotte Brontë is that more
intense subjectivity of which, when fictitious
narrative is its medium, Byron is perhaps the
most conspicuous example in our literature,
where fictitious narrative is merely the means
of expressing the writer's own personality, and,
substantially, story and character and reflection
are but the externa] projection of his own being.
In making the round of Charlotte Brontë and
those of her contemporaries \vho have pretensions
to stand in the first rank, I think \ve shall find
that she is the only one who absolutely conforms
to this model : and if so, she has a sphere of her
own; and if this is the case, and if she fills this
sphere wi th no less power and mastery than her
most eminent contemporaries fill theirs, she is
no less entitled to the first-class rank than they
are, even though her sphere may be considerably
more restricted. Of course she was very far
from having the field of subjective fiction of the
intenser type entirely to herseJf. The number
of novels of this type published in the Early
and Middle Victorian periods was very great,
and nlany of them were very excellent fictions,
but I do not think that there are any besides hers
for which anyone at the present day would be
disposed to clain] the attribute of genius. One
result of this method of treatment Inust be that
we shan have Jess to say of Charlotte Brontë:
155

,

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary JvlenllJrial

herself and more of her contemporaries than
might be expected in a discourse of which she
is the professed subject. But it is well in her
own interest to turn aside for awhile from the
direct contemplation of her as an isolated literary
phenomenon, and note ho\v she stands with refer-
ence to those kindred geniuses who share with
her the admiration of posterity. If she appeared
as the satellite of any of these she would have to
be content \vith a secondary position. But I
think it will appear that she occupies quite a
distinct position of her o\vn, and fills a place to
which they do not pretend. I do not, of course,
intend by this a merely local position as the
laureate of the nloorlands, or even as the literary
representative of the great West Riding of Y ork-
shire. It is here that the caution which I have
ventured to give against provincialism is applic-
able. The West Riding may and should glory
in her; but if she is to rank among great writers,
it nlust be shown that her West Riding tales are
as fit for universal humanity as George Sand's
id yIls of Berrichon country life, no less steeped
in local colouring than Charlotte Brontë's novels,
but readable fronl China to Peru.

rhe great novelists of the early and middle
divisions of the Victorian era, who constitute the
constellation of which we maintain Charlotte
Brontë to have been a bright particular star, are
Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Kingsley

1$6

Charlotte BroJ1/if ÙI Nineteenth Century Fiction
Anthony Trollope, Mrs. Gaskell, Bulwer, Borrow,
and Disraeli. The list is rigidly framed, exclud-
ing writers so exceJJent in their respective styles
as Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Y onge, and Wilkie
Collins. I think it will be allowed that the
quality of genius may be predicated of them all.
Some doubts might possibly arise respecting the
claims of Bulwer and Trollope to this di vine
attribute: but, even if the n1en were not in the
strictest sense geniuses, their talent appears all
the more prodigious, and their productiveness
renders them more conspicuous in our literature
than writers of finer endowments whose spheres
were more limited and partial.
Dickens and Thackeray, though each had too
much good taste to depreciate the other openly,
neither admired nor sympathized with each other
as they might have done. Nevertheless, their
names are as intimately coupled in our literature
as are in German literature the names of the two
poets whose union in mind and heart was most
perfect, Goethe and Schiller, and for the same
reason, not merely because they were iJlustrious
contemporaries, but because they are both the
contrasts to and the complements of each other.
Dickens is the prose poet, Thackeray the con-
summatt: master of prose. Dickens is the great
painter of the teeming life of the humbler orders
of society: Thackeray of the higher and of the
upper middle classes and those parasitic growths
157

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary lYfeJllorial

of humbler origin-the valet, the biJJ discounter,
the toady, and the like-which insinuate then1-
selves into their sphere. Dickens is the unsur-
passed master of broad hun10ur whether jovial
or grotesque; Thackeray of humour in its more
refined n1anifestations. Thackeray is a most
adn1Ïrable \vriter both of humorous and pathetic
verse, but you can scarcely call him a poet:
Dickens is rarel yother than a poet, though much
beside, but his n1etrical performances are insig-
nificant. Neither touch Charlotte Brontë any-
where, they leave the field entirely open for her
peculiar gift: and, notwithstanding her enthusi-
astic adn1iration for Thackeray, she \vould have
\vritten as she has written if he had not existed.
It is scarcely needful to discuss the relation of
Anthony Trollope and George Eliot to Charlotte
Brontë, as they both came after her, and had
there oeen any question of borrowing or of
influence, thèy would evidently have been the
indebted parties. In fact no such question arises:
hut it is impossible, in however brief a survey
of Charlotte Brontë's position in the literature of
her time, to pass over the strong affinity between
her work and a portion of George Eliot's. At
first sight this is not so apparent, owing to the
great dissimilarity of atmosphere and en viron-
ment. George Eliot never came into Yorkshire,
or resided at Brussels, or was brought up at a
sen1i-charity school, or shared the hard lot of
15 8

Charlotte Bronti! tÌl M.J/cteellth Century Fiction

private-school teachers or governesses. Charlotte
13rontë kne,,, little about the Midland counties,
or Florence, or political agitations, or foreign
gaming tables. Nevertheless there is one fibre
almost identical, or if distinction there be it is
that in Charlotte Brontë's case the fibre is the
whole woman, while in George Eliot's it is hut
one string of a most ample harp. I mean the
fibre of passion. Passion is the dominant note
of Charlotte Brontë's, nay it is more, it is the
music. Take away this ardent, i01petuous, some-
times tempestuous feeling, and Ii ttle remains.
But it exists equally in the rich nature of George
Eliot, only in conlpany with so Inany other
e010tions as to be o1uch less conspicuous. Take,
however, the character of Maggie rrulliver, and
you will see passion fully as intense and fully as
genuine as any that Charlotte Brontë ever de-
picted: only surrounded with such a crowd of
circumstances in to which passion ùoes not enter,
but which are represented with equal mastery,
that it does not produce the same overwhelming
effect. You cannot well think of Maggie Tul-
liver without the three aunts coming to mind
also. The point for us, however, is that there
is no trace of any direct influence of Charlotte
Brontë upon George Eliot. Both drew from the
book of Nature, both oheyed the precept: Look
into thy heart and write. There can be no douht
that Maggie is a closer portrait ,of George Eliot
159

Charlotte Bronti!.. a Centenary MeJ110rÙ11

than any of her other personages, but she is only
one aspect of a various and opulent nature, while
Jane Eyre and Caroline Helston and Lucy
Snowe are substantially Charlotte Brontë herself.
Hence their surpassing force; they gain in in-
tensity \vhat they lose in breadth. In truth to
nature and in the interest of person and situation,
there is nothing to choose between Charlotte and
her successor. It is worthy of remark that Char-
lotte Bront
o\ves much of her energy of repre-
sentation to her custom of writing in the first
person. Two of her three novels are so com-
posed, and hence emotion comes straight from
author to reader without the interposition of an y
medium. 'fhis method has its disadvantages,
but is excellent for the subjective writer whose
forte is passion. 1ne Sorrows of Werther could
not other\vise have been made impressive, but
when Goethe came to give a picture of general
society he dropped it: nor is it a usual method
with the novelists who have given us entire
worlds of personages, Scott and Dickens, and
George Eliot. I might almost add Anthony
Trollope, though perhaps the bulk of the latter's
work might be more correctly described as con-
stituting not a world but a panorama. A mar-
vellous panorama it is of " all sorts and conditions
of men," and if wanting the creative breath
which pervades Dickens it o1ay at least be said
that rrollope's observation sometimes aids him
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where Dickens's deserts hirn. Dickens is a poet,
and a poet cannot work unless he be in some
degree in syo1pathy with his subject. Dickens's
sympathy apparently abandoned him \vhen he
came to deal with the higher classes, and his
portraits of these are little better than caricatures.
He is the painter, whose ability to render faith-
fully what he sees distinctly may be impaired by
the state of his nerves, or anyone of a thousand
accidents. But Trollope is like a camera ; fit the
instrun1ent up properly, bring the object to it or
it to the object, and you may be sure of a faith-
ful rendering, though it may depend much upon
the state of the atmosphere whether bright or
prosaic. I t is evident therefore that he can have
little in C001010n with Charlotte Brontë, and that
each is far froo1 encroaching on the other's sphere.
In truth, three out of the four novelists who
have been mentioned are parted from Charlotte
Brontë by a wide and deep gulf. They are
objective-that is, they describe scenes and create
characters external to themselves: \vhile she is
subjective-that is, almost everything she writes
is related not n1erely artistically but vitally to
herself, and has in some sense been lived over
by her. George Eliot is to a certain extent in
the same category as Charlotte Brontë, but so
wide is her range that the portion of the work
of which this can be affirmed appears but small
in comparison with that which lies outside of
161 L

,

.

Charlotte Brontë.' tl Centenary Me//lorial

Charlotte's sphere: she cannot, therefore, be
regarded as the especial representative of sub-
jective passion. There is also strong evidence
of a desire to n1ake her fictions operate upon the
world, and contribute to its amelioration, a feeling
entirely absent from Charlotte Brontë, as it must
be from every purely subjective writer. I do
not think that George Eliot has carried it to any
inartistic length: but this is more than can be
said of the next distinguished novelist upon our
list, Charles Kingsley. Kingsley's earliest novels
are written to recommend the ideas of Christian
socialism: his Hypatia and 1"Ywo Years Ago are
manifestos of Broad Church theology; Westward
Ho! endeavours the revival of the age of
Elizabeth. All approach perilously near the
region of the tract: but all are saved by the
writer's energy and marvellous gift of picturesque
description, as well as the fine moral tone and the
translation of the ideas of Carlyle into ordinary
speech. They have this much in common with
Charlotte Brontë's novels that they are works of
intense passion, but hers is the passion of an
individual and his the enthusiasm of humanity.
A novelist of equal genius, but who appears at
first sight at the opposite pole fron1 Kingsley-
Disraeli-resembles him in the extent to which
he writes with a direct purpose. Long before
Charlotte Brontë's. time Vivian Grey had been
written to satirize the politics of the day, and
162

Char/ott
Brontë ÙI NÙleteellth Century Pictio1l

point out the possibility of the formation of a
new party: and Contarini Flenzing to idealize
Disraeli hinlself in the character of poet, to which
he then sincerely thought he had a clain1. During
the period of Charlotte's literary activity Disraeli
produced three novels with the most unn1Ístakable
political purpose, and therefore not touching
at all upon her peculiar domain. Contarini
Fleming in some measure does so, and the
contrast of method is instructi vel We see
Charlotte representing the heroines who in1per-
son ate her conception of herself in the simplest
manner, with the least possible diversity of
circumstances fronl her own; in a word, painting
herself as she really was. Disraeli, on the
contrary, envelops his childhood with picturesque-
ness and magnificence, places himself in ideal
surroundings and in an ideal atmosphere, and,
while not unfaithful to his own conception of
his own character, makes his environment not
what it was, but what he would have wished
it to have been. This fundamental difference
of method places even his subjective' work in
quite a different category from Charlotte Brontë's.
Borrow presents a curious combination of
objective and subjective tendencies. No writer
can possibly be more vivid in description, or more
interested in things external to himself: on the
other hand his works are pervaded by his own
personality, and, while most graphic in depicting
16 3

,

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary J\;Iemorial

salient traits of character, he gives us no whole
man except himself. 111 both these character-
istics he differs from Charlotte Brontë, upon
\vhom he can have exerted no influence. There
remain two authors of singular versatility, Bulwer
and Mrs. Gaskell. Bulwer's passion was literary
fame; in pursuit of this he accomnlodates
hinlself \vith unrivalled dexterity to the taste of
the day, but you never can be sure of having his
real mind, unless perhaps when his novels turn
upon occult studies. He cannot, therefore, be
compared with Charlotte Brontë. The last great
novelist on our list, Mrs. Gaskell, not the least ot
whose titles to fame is her admirable and classical
biography of her heroine Charlotte, ,vas, like
Bulwer, though from different motives, so versatile,
that it is hard to say where the real manifestation
of her individuality is to be found. All her books
are masterly, but no two are alike. It is difficult,
therefore, to parallel her with an authoress so
thoroughly self-consistent as Charlotte Brontë.
This hasty and imperfect review of the
characteristics of the chief writers of Charlotte
Brontë's period who have any claim to be
accounted her rivals should at all events suffice
to establish that she occupies a niche of her own,
and cannot be classified with any of them. This
is enough to rescue her from the charge of
provincialism. She is not merely the repre-
sentative of a particular district, but occupies a
16 4

Charlotte Brontë ill M'lleteenth Century Fiction

place in the great Pantheon of English literature
which but for her would have remained unfiJIed.
I f I were now writing a history of English
literature it would be needful to define this place,
and vindicate by examples her right to hold it.
This is unnecessary on the present occasion,
when I am addressing an audience well read in
her writings and patrioticaJly interested in them,
and which has, moreover, frequently had the
advantage of hearing them discussed by critics
of eminence. We may assume as generally
adn1Ítted that the predominant characteristic of
Charlotte Brontë's writings is Passion-whether
the passion of love or the passion of hate, or local
or patriotic enthusiasm, or any other by \vhich
her intense and indomitable nature n1Ïght at the
time be actuated. None of her contemporaries
are open to the impressions of powerful feeling
in an equal degree, and none are so exclusivel y
possessed by them. Her sphere, therefore, while
it has many points of contact \vith theirs,
tspecially with George Eliot's, is nevertheless
dissimilar. This is to say that she is original,
and indeed I can hardly think of any \vriter of
her day, except Borrow and Browning, of \VhOnl
absolute originality can be so unequivocally pre-
dicated. j\ considerable affinity to Byron 111ay
be traced. Like him she possessed

a faun t of fiery life
Whjch ':Iervcd for a Titanic strife.
16 5

.

Charlotte Brolltë.' a Centenary MemOr1tll
But while Byron marred splendid work by
frequent affectation and insincerity, nothing is
more characteristic of Charlotte Brontë than her
absolute truthfulness. Some of her pictures)
especially of the schools where she was pupil and
teacher, have been taxed with inaccuracy. This
may be the fact, but none can doubt that she
described them as they appeared to herself. She
would not for the world have debased her art to
a manufacture, or put pen to paper in the absence
of a definite call. Once, indeed) she was prevailed
upon to lengthen by an episode a novel which
had fallen short of the regular three-vol ume
quantum, but the episode is one of the best things
in the book. As this austere conscientiousness
is one of her glories, so it is correlated with her
principal shortcoming, not a shortcoming which
in any way detracts fronl the merits of the novels
which she has given us, hut one which prevented
her from giving us Inany more. She is deficient
in invention and creative inlagination : she can
onl y speak of what she has realized by her
personal experience. Hence aU three novels are
mainly autobiographica1. She is indeed fully
capable of Jra\ving portraits of persons external
and even distasteful to herself with startling effect,
\vitness the wonderful picture of Madame Beck
in Villette, but they must be people she has
knovrn, and who have come within her own
sphere. She cannot create a character by sheer
166

Charlotte Brolltë ill Nineteenth Century Piction

force of imagination, nor can she devise a set of
circumstances out of which to construct a story.
The consequence was a great limitation in her
powers of production. She had by no means
worn her mind out, but she had exhausted her
materia]; and as she would not condescend with
man y another novelist to use the old material
over again, it is probable that even if her life
had been prolonged she would have written little
more. If, like George Sand, \vhile retaining
uninlpaired the passion which first set her pen
in motion, she had been able to devise an endless
series of novel scenes and incidents, she might,
with life and health, have filled a prodigious place
in our literature. As it is, her praise must be the
reverse to have produced a greater effect than
almost any other novelist \vhose production is
limited to three books.
It is not easy to speak of Currer Bell without
naming Ellis and Acton. Anne Brontë lives
by her sisters; a single lyric reveals the poetess.
Some distinguished critics have preferred Emily
to Charlotte. I should deprecate the com-
parison: their genius and their spheres are
dissimilar. Charlotte is not a poet, and Emily
is not an artist. l'he apology for the savage
repulsi veness) tempered by the deepest tender-
ness, of her Wu/lzering Heights is that save in
fonn it is a lyric, a \,york of poetical inspiration.
It came to her, she did not plan or scheme it.
16 7

.

Charlotte Bronti!: a Centenary Menlorial

The same is true of her better poems, especialJ y
of her masterpiece, the lines beginning, " No
coward soul is mine," one of the very few
exalnples of the sublime in English poetry of
the Victorian era, and in intensity of feeling and
magnificence of expression surpassing every other
lyric of an English poetess. Had she lived and
had this inspiration continued to be vouchsafed
to her, whether in prose or verse, her place must
have been high indeed. But it was fitful and
capricious, independent of her own will, and
might never have revisited her. In any case,
neither with it nor without it, would she have
emulated the more disciplined genius of her
sister) anymore than the latter would have
rivalled her as a poetess.
I an1 about to concI ude my discourse by
reading an anecdote of Charlotte Brontë from
a book which, being privately printed, is probably
unknown to you, supplemented by some reflec-
tions and reminiscences by the writer, a man
of the most delightful nature and the highest
culture. I-Ie is the late William Johnson Cory,
dear to son1e few as a poet, appreciated by still
fewer as an historian, though without a rival
in pregnancy and conciseness; the most efficient
J1-':ton n1aster of his day and the best nlodern
writer of Latin verse; the refornler of King's
College, Calnbridge, in conj unction \vi th Henry
ßradsha w; and who nevertheless, with all
168

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To race p. 168.'

.

Charlotte Brontë ill Mneteenth Century Fiction

these titles to distinction, has remained almost
unknown. I will endeavour to make him
known here as an admirer of Charlotte Brontë.
He says in the privately printed book to
which J have alluded, the Extracts froni his
Letters and Journals, printed after his death,
describing a visit paid to Haworth in 1867:-

Went to Haworth with the three Butlers. Glad to
find Arthur Butler thinking as I do about Shirley, the best
of books. They told me what Richmond told them about
Charlotte Brontë's portrait. She \vas very shy, and for t\VO
sittings he was out of hope; but the third time she met the
Duke of Wellington's servant leaving the house, \vhich made
Richmond say, " If you had been here a quarter of an hour
sooner you would have seen the Duke of Wellington."
Whereupon she broke out into eager asking about the Duke;
and so the painter caught the eager expression given in his
portrait, of which J bought a photograph in Keighley.
When Richmond was getting on well with the portrait she
stood behind him looking at it : he heard a sob-she said,
"Excuse me-it is so like my Ûster Emily."

Mr. Cory visited the
descri bes as a n1Ïserable
adds :-

parsonage, which
homestead, and

he
he

Out of that p'rison the little Charlotte put forth a hand
to feel for the world of human emotion, I wish she would
come back to us, and count up the myriads to whom she
has given new souls.
Now I remember reading Jane Eyre straight through at
a sitting in my home drawing-room, and again on the black,
16 9

Charlotte Bronti!: a Centenary Me/florial

gnarled wreathed rocks of Bude (1850) where there was a
lowering stormcloud and a sunset on a distant sail, and a
hollow roar in the reefs, and the reading broken off by
a queer rattle of shingle which turned out to be a sheep
tàllen from the cliff: the last summer holidays spent with
my mother.

There is a peculiar propriety In Mr. Cory's
record of his having read 1ane Eyre upon the
cliffs at Bude, for you will renlenlber that Charlotte
Brontë's mother was a Cornish WOll1an. I do
not think, however, that her Cornish ancestors
were, like her father's family, Celtic. Much of
her genius may be traced with probability to
the happy rnixture of blood, connected with
the environment of her youth) peculiar, inde-
pendent, original, but much less rough than Mrs.
Gaskell ll1ade it out to be. I \vill not suppress
Mr. Cory's pretty cOlnpliment to the fair sex of
these parts. "The women," he says, "talk
n10st musically." \\Then he speaks of having
read Jane Eyre straight through at a sitting, we
must conclude that he had the day before him
vvhen he began. 1'his is not quite my experience.
\Vhen I first read 1aJ1e Eyre my days \vere given
to official work, and I could read only in the
evening. I renlembcr how the book kept nle
up to two o'clock in the morning, and ho\v I
closed it at the end of that thrilling passage
where Jane proves to Mr. Rochester that an evil
thing has reall y been near her by showing hin1
170

Charlotte Brontp ill MÍ1eteenth Ce11tury Fiction
that her veil has been torn from the top to the
bottom. Fame might be founded on this incident
alone: but it is a stronger proof of Charlotte
s
genius that her work and life as a whole should
he able to awaken intense interest in readers so
cultured and refined, so tender and manly and
sweet-natured as Mr. Cory's letters and journals
show him to have been.
Will she retain this power? I think so. It
is a remark of Aubrey, writing three quarters
of a century after Shakespeare, that Shakespeare's
dramatic contemporaries, frequently preferred to
him in his own age, are already out of date
because they merely depict contemporary manners,
while Shakespeare depicts universal manners.
This is just what Charlotte Brontë does in her
far more limited sphere; she gives us the
emotions which will be always true, always living,
and her work owes little or nothing to the merely
accidental and temporary. Works which repro-
duce "the very form and pressure of the time,U
and deal with the questions, momentous as these
may be, which principally interest the time, are
inevitably doomed to dwindle in attractiveness-
although, if true works of genius, they cannot
die-until their abiding worth comes to be mainly
historical. They n1ay in this stage be compared
to fossils, the in1posing skeletons of grand and
gigantic creatures whose softer parts have under-
gone deconlPosition: while the simply subjective
171

.

Charlotte Brontë.. a CeJJtenary Me1l10rial

romance, derived from a source of perennial
feeling, reaches posterity like the pebble, which
the everlasting roll of Time
s ocean has only
served to polish.

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17 2

CHARLOTTE & EMILY BRONTË:
A COMPARISON AND A CON-
TRAST

By PROF. C. E. VAUGHAN, M.A.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE BRONTË SOCIETY AT KEIGHLEY,
ON JANUARY 20, 1912.

,

.

CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË: A
COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST

I H A V E called my lecture this evening "Char-
lotte and Emil y Brontë: a Comparison and a
Contrast." I shall make no atten1pt to keep
the bounds between the comparison and the
contrast scrupulously exact. In the main, how-
ever, I shall begin by indicating what I con-
ceive to be the points of resen1blance between
the sisters; and in the main, I shall devote the
latter part of the lecture to those points of
contrast between them ,vhich can hardly fail
to strike us. With this saving condition, let
us pass at once to some points of resen1blance
which suggest themselves at the first glance.
Both sisters-we shall feel this the moment we
enter on a serious stud y of their writings-both
sisters strike the note of passion. And I think
we shall never do com plete justice to their
genius unless we bear in mind that they were
among the first English novelists to do so.
Thin k of the great names among the novelists
\vho had gone before. Think of Fielding and
175

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary JvlemfJrial
of Sterne. Think of Miss Burney and Miss
Austen. Think of the utter lack of passion in
the whole generation of Early Victorian novelists,
until Charlotte and Emily Brontë appeared.
Think, above all, of the two novelists who
were at the height of their fanle when the
sisters published their first works, Thackera y
and Dickens. Then, and then on] y, you will
see what an enormous service they rendered to
the novel in this country by striking this note
of passion; and striking it with a depth and
clearness that has seldon1 been equalled, and
still n10re seldom, if ever, surpassed.
In order to do justice to their precursors, one
has indeed to remember that alTIOng thenl were
two men who came near to forestalling the
Brontës in this matter; and that these t\VO
nlen are an10ng the greatest. rrhey are Richárd-
son and Scott. In Clarissa you will hear some-
thing not far removed fronl the note of passion.
It would be a gross injustice to deny it. Yet,
after all, the fate of Clarissa, great as is the
po\ver with \vhich it is brought before us, is
rather the fate of passive suffering than the
fate of a won1an under the spell and doonl of
passion. She is the victim of wrongs done by
others. She has not the \vill and the sweep of
energy that \ve associate with passion. In the
B ride of Lam1JZerlnOor, again you have some-
thing that yet more nearly approaches \vhat J
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To face p. 176.

Charlotte and Ell1ily Brol1të: a Comparison
should call the unn1istakable note of passion.
But, even there, you will find a difference \vhich
it is not well to overlook. Scott, as you
n1ight have expected from his nature and genius,
confines himself entirely to action. In him
there is nothing of that subtle analysis, that
power of tracing the inn10st workings of the
soul, which is conspicuous in the Brontës, par-
ticularly in Charlotte. There we see, we follow
step by step, the growth and swell of passion,
its conflict \vith the abiding instincts of the
soul. We watch the storm sweep over the very
heing of the hero or heroine and rush them to
suffering and despair. In Scott aU, or some,
of this may perhaps be implied. It may, if the
imagination of the reader be keen and observ-
ant, without n1uch difficulty be possibly inferred.
But it is certainl y not in the picture which he
actually paints. It is not in the story as he
tells it. With the Brontës, on the other hand,
at any rate with Charlotte, it forms the then1e
of the whole work. And what writer, I would
like to know-what writer, at any rate in our
own country-can be compared with them for
supreme mastery of this inner note of passion?
Then again, there is in both sisters what I
think we should all agree to call the lyric cry.
But it takes a different form in each. In Emily
Brontë it is diffused through the whole story.
In Charlotte, it gathers itself together in one
177 M

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary MelJ10ria/

or two magnificent scenes. Emily, no doubt,
sometimes allows it to flash upon us in a single
phrase, a single image, or chain of images, as
in those where the heroine of Wuthering Heights
paints her identity of soul with Heathcliff. The
passage will be in the memory of many of us,
but there can be no harm in repeating it: "I
love him . . . because he's more myself than I
am. \Vhatever our souls are made of, his and
mine are the same: and Linton's is as different
as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.
My love for Linton is like the foliage in
the \voods: tinle will change it, I'm well aware,
as winter changes the trees. My love for
Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath:
a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
I am Heathcliff! he's always, always in my
mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am
ahvays a pleasure to myself, but as my own
being. "
Still, such passages are rare. And in Emily
Brontë the lyric note is more comnlonly to be
heard as an undertone than as a melody. With
Charlotte, it is exactly the reverse. And when
we think of the lyric cry in her, we think,
I suppose, first and foremost) of two or three
great scenes: the scene, for instance, in which,
when her marriage has been dashed into pieces
before her eyes, Jane Eyre shuts herself in her
room and fights out her duty with herself and
17 8

Charlotte find EJJu./y Bronfi:: fl Compariso1l

God alone; the scene where, like a hunted
hare, she takes refuge upon the summer moor;
the scene where, months after\vards, when her
faith wavers and she is about to yield to the
insistence of her un worth y sui tor, the voice of
Rochester suddenly thrills upon her ear, calling
" Jane! Jane!" we again recall, largely, the
rapture of Louis Moore as he looks out upon
the wind-swept radiance of the moon, or the lyric
passion which reigns through the closing pages
of Pillelte-surely amongst the nlost magnificent
prose lyrics ever conceived by the imagination
of a poet. I
Then again,
common to both sisters is what
I would call the cry of revolt. And that, like
the two qualities of which I have already spoken,
was, so far as the novel is concerned, a ne\v
thing in the literature of England. Yet here
again, between the two the difference is very
marked. Emily is a rebel so convinced that it
never enters her mind to argue about the matter.
She takes revolt for granted, and there is
no more to be said. Char lotte, on the other
hand-perhaps less sure of her ground, certainly
less extreme in her conclusions-stands by us
at every step to justify and explain it. Emily
tacitly assumes a world in which Society with its

1 Time forbade me to say anything of the Brontë Poems.
I deeply regret this, as it inevitably results in an injustice
to Emily.

179

Chtlrlotle Bronti!: a Centenary Me1l10rial

con ventions is nothing, in which the indi vidual,
the passionate individual, stands alone, unques-
tioning and unquestioned. That, I think, is the
conception we can hardly fail to recognize
throughout the whole of Wuthering Heights.
Turn to Jane Eyre or Villette, and you will find
something curiously different. There we have
the rebel in the very torrent and tempest of
revolt. Be it Rochester or Jane Eyre, be it Lucy
Snowe or Paul Emanuel, they are brought before
us in the very act of tearing do\vn the con ven-
tions, of breaking through the barriers, which
public opinion-the opinion of the sluggish and
the timorous-has set up. And the \vriter exults
in showing us how those barriers give \vay
before that strong will; how nothing-nothing
but the counteraction of the san1e will-can
check hero or heroine in the fulfilment of their
purpose.
I t has sometimes been denied that we can
speak of either sister-and in particular of Char-
lotte-as being in revolt against the conventions
of Society. I must say that) to my mind, that
denial rests upon a very curious misapprehension.
It is, I think, impossible to deny that they are
both in revolt against the conventions of Society
unless, in a very arbitrary \vay, you limit those
conventions down to one-to the marriage law.
Against the marriage law it is) of course, perfectly
true that Charlotte, at any rate, is in no sense
180

Charlotte and BJJllïy Brolltë: a CfJlnparison
in revolt. The whole scheme of Jane Eyre, its
central idea, would rise in protest against any
such belief as that. But surely it is a delusion,
and a very dull delusion, to say that, unless it
be against the marriage law, nothing shall count
with us for revolt. It is, I suppose, nothing but
the example of the French novel that has led
us to put such a strange1 y narrow construction
upon the term "revolt." And it seen1S to nle
abundantl y clear that when we thro\v aside
all such arbitrary and accidental interpretations,
both sisters are) and it is the glory of both
sisters to have been, eternal rebels. Both are
fired by the conviction that the individual is
here, that each soul is here on earth, not to
follow the prescriptions and the rules laid down
for it by others, but to obey the best
pronlptings of its own nature, and, when they
clearly point in one direction, entirely to dis-
regard all the traditional barriers, all the human
conventions, that would drive it in another. And
it is the force with which both of them gave
utterance to that conviction, the imaginative
genius with which they clothed it, that is one
of the chief glories of the Brontës.
I need not waste words in proving this of
Emily. But do you remenlber SOt1le very strik-
ing words that Charlotte wrote to her friend,
Mr. Williams, one of the firm \vho published
for her? '[hey are as follows: "If you knew
181

..

Charlotte Brolltë: a Centenary Atlemorial
the dreams that absorb me, the fiery imagina-
tion that at times eats me up and makes Ole
feel Society as it exists wretched] y insipid) then
you would pity and, I dare say, despise me."
Let us hope that Mr. Williams neither pitied
nor despised her. There was certainly no need.
But I will ask you-with these words in your
ear, with all that corresponds to then1 in the
novels present to your mind-can you doubt
for a moment that among the faiths \vhich lay
nearest to the heart of Charlotte Brontë-as it
was also among those which fired the imagination
of Emily-was the faith that under certain
circumstances-circumstances which at one time
or other are bound to confront the life of each
one of us-rebellion against the established code
is the first duty, revolt against the tyranny of
social custom the one thing needful? It may
be a right faith, or a wrong faith. For myself,
I believe that, in the n1ain, it is a right one.
But that it was the faith of Charlotte and Emily
Brontë) I have no doubt whatsoever.
Up to this moment I have been speaking of
what may seem to be rather abstract matters.
.L
nd there has been little, perhaps too little) to
remind you that these two great women \vere,
above alJ, great imaginati ve wri ters, great
novelists and great artists. That being so, it
is only what we should expect when we find
that all these characteristics of which 1 have
J82

Charlotte and Emily Brontë: a ConlParison
been speaking to you hitherto are summed up
and gathered together) and crystallized) in the
characters which move through the pages of
their stories. The note of passion, the lyric cry)
the cry of revolt-all these are embodied, are
they not? in the figures of Catherine and Heath-
cliff) of Rochester and Jane Eyre, of Lucy
Snowe and Paul Emanuel. They are so again,
though certainly under a less nlarked and obvious
form, in the figure of Shirley. And it is the
greatness of these two writers that there is
nothing vague or abstract about their creations ;
that everything did present itself to them in a
concrete shape; that all these ideas) instincts,
convictions which were surging through their
minds-all could be, and all were) embodied by
them in figures of flesh and blood.
So far as this applies to En1ily Brontë, I think
the statement justifies itself. No one surely
can read Wuthering Heights without adn1Ïtting
it on the spot. I t is none the less true of the
finest work of Charlotte. It is true at any
rate of 'Jane Eyre) and it is true of Villette.
There) too) it is no abstract thing \vith which
we are concerned. There, too, it is round the
central figures of her story that the whole of
our interest is gathered.
1
hink for a monlent how new and how
original was the conception at the time \vhen
it was first flashed upon this world. Think
18 3

Charlotte Brontë." a Centenary lvlelJlorial

what would have been the effect if the imaginary
characters of whonl we have been speaking had
suddenly, in very flesh and blood, been shown
into an Early Victorian drawing-roon1. I
imagine that the horsehair chairs and sofas
\vould at once have disjointed themselves, that
the waHs would have been shattered in pieces
and the ceilings, with all their prisnlatic pend-
ants, have flown to the four quarters of the
sky. They are figures of a larger build and
of a bigger nlake, they are souls of more fire
and energy than those to which the men and
women of that day were accustomed. And this
again is one of the glories of the Brontës. Here
again, here above all, they throw all conven-
tion to the winds. They refuse to follow the
beaten track of fashion and prescription, to
paint men and women as dwarfed and mangled
by social pressure and tradition. They have
courage to present human nature, not as they
\vere told to presetlt it, not as they were taught
to conceive it, not even as experience, their
own very limited experience, might have led
them to suppose it; but as they knew it-I
\vould rather say, as they divined it-in their
own heart, their own inlagination, their own
unconq uerable wiU.
This courage is splendid in itself. It is still
more precious in its imaginative results. For as
we read, we feel that a breath from the outer
J84

Charlotte and Enlily Brontë: a Comparison

wor Id, a breeze from the moors and the eternal
hills, is sweeping over us; ,ve know that a new
vigour and a new force has come into our lives,
or might come if \ve were only wise enough to
make it our own. I reckon this one of the
greatest services a writer can render to the
world.
But, as you are well aware, it is just this
pronounced conception of character which has
called down the thunder of the critics. It gave
great offence in certain quarters at the time;
it has continued to do so ever since. The
critics, even the friendly critics, were disposed
to find great fault with Charlotte Brontë for
painting character in this fashion. George
Henry Lewes, for instance, who ought to have
known better, took her roundly to task on this
account. " Why," he asked in effect, "why do
you go outside all the limits of your own
experience? why do you insist on creating men
and \vomen out of your own heart and your
own soul? why do you not follow in the steps
of that great woman, Miss Austen? why don't
you observe the wise precepts which beam fron1
her mild eyes?"
Incidentally) I n1ay say that the last phrase
seems to me one of the worst judged, the nlost
misleading, I have ever read. Have you ever
seen a portrait of Miss Austen? Have you ever
looked into those "mild eyes"? If you have,
18 5

.

Charlotte Brontt.' a Centenary Menlorial
you will have seen the most cutting pair of
eyes ever created. I can assure you that, wh
n
I look at them, I am left to wonder how it was
that any man, woman, or child ever ventured
to open their lips in the owner's presence. So
much for the mildness of Miss Austen's eyes,
and the sharpness of Mr. Lewes's.
Well, Charlotte Brontë, as might ha ve been
predicted, \vould have none of such preposterous,
such impertinent advice. She roundly declared
that every author has not only the right, but
the duty, to follow the bent of his own genius;
and she hinted pretty plainly that, in her own
conviction, however much she might be inferior
to Miss Austen in observation, in delicacy of
touch, in the artist's power of adapting means to
ends, yet in imagination, in poetry, in all the
higher and deeper qualities of genius, the posi-
tions were reversed. And ho\vever deeply we
may admire Miss Austen-\vithin her own
lin1its it is impossible to admire her too deeply
or too warmly-can we doubt that Charlotte
Brontë was in the right?
Here are two paragraphs from the letter in
which she thrust the well-meant patronage of
George Lewes indignantly aside:-
"Imagination is a strong, restless faculty
which claims to be heard and exercised. Are
we to be quite deaf to her cry and insensate
to her struggles? When she shows us bright
186

Charlotte and Emily Brontë: a Comparison

pictures, are we never to look at them, or try
to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent
and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are
we not to write to her dictation? . . . \Vhen
authors write best, or at least when they write
nlost fl uentl y, an infl uence seems to waken in
them \vhich becomes their nlaster; which will
have its own way; putting out of view alJ
behests but its own, dictating certain words and
insisting on their being used, whether vehement
or measured in their nature; ne\v-nloulding
characters, giving unthought-of turns to inci-
dents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas)
and suddenly creating and adopting new ones."
In yet another letter to Mr. Willianls, she
sums up the whole matter in a dozen words:
"I must have my own way in the matter of
writing. " rrhat, I think, is the last word upon
the subject. It is, it ought to be, the last word
from the side of the author. It ought to be,
if it is not, the last word to the conscience of
the critic. Genius has its o\vn law, and is
bound to follow it-that is the first principle
on which the author ought to act; it is the
first principle by which the critic ought to judge.
And it was because Charlotte Brontë had the
courage of her own convictions, because she
was resolved that nothing should n1ake her turn
aside from the dictates of her own genius that
she has cast, and has deserved to cast, so strong
18 7

Charlotte Bro17të: a Centenary MelJlorial

a spell upon the heart and the in1agination of
her readers. Fron1 Emilv \ve have no such
,
declaration. Her portion, during her short life
as an author, \vas not criticism, but neglect. Yet
had she been challenged on the subject, had she
received the same stupid advice as that inflicted
on her sister, we all know how she would have
met it. At the first breath, she would ha ve
brushed it aside with a gesture still more con-
temptuous than Charlotte's.
I have said that this conlplaint against Char-
lotte-the complaint is, if you please, that she
was too original-is sometinles renewed in our
own day. Once n10re the critics are there to
tell us that she ought to have followed, that
she ought to have anticipated, such or such
models in her craft; that she ought to have
treated her theme like Richardson, that she
ought to have treated it like Balzac; that she
ought to have pointed the way to Gustave FJau-
bert, that she ought to have pointed it to
Meredith. N ow I nlust decline to stand by while
a great writer is thus draped in the white sheet.
Once start upon this crooked path, once adopt a
notion so crude as that one writer should take
another for his model, and heaven only knows
where you are going to stop. You \vill find
yourself driven to ask Milton, U Why did you
not follow Shakespeare?" or Heine, "Why do
you not follow Goethe? " or Boccaccio, " Why do
188

Charlotte and Enll/y Brontë: a COlJ1pariso1J
you not follow Dante?" And then, \vhen you
have got to the end of your list, I see no reason
why you should not begin it again, by the simple
process of turning the tables upon Shakespeare,
Goethe, Dante, and as many other authors as
your memory, on the spur of the moment, may
supply. The whole thing rests, in fact, upon an
absolute miscol1ception-I would rather say, a
fatal ignorance-of the very first principles upon
which both authorship and criticism are based.
The first thing the critic has to make up his
mind to is that genius is its own law. And if
he makes bold to ten a man or woman of genius
that they are to follow rules and copy models,
he not only makes himself ridiculous-that may
be a small loss, it may easily be a positive gain-
but, unless he can count upon resistance as
steadfast as that of the Brontës, he runs the risk
of being listened to and of throttling genius at
its birth. It is fortunate for us that Charlotte
Brontë had the wisdon1 and firmness to thrust
aside all such impertinent suggestions and to
trust her own genius against the world.
I t is, of course, perfectly t
ue that, writing as
she did out of her own genius and her own soul,
she was sometimes betra yed into unfortunate
mistakes. But that was only when she strayed
into a field that \vas not hers, and essayed a task
for which her own genius did not fit her. 1'hus,
when she set herself, as she did in 'Jane Eyre, to
18 9

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary MelJlorial

paint the manners of sn1art Society-the manners
of what Horace Walpole called the "great
vulgar "--shè painted something which was not
in the least like the original and, so far, must
be admitted to have failed. Fortunately, this is
but one short episode in the book, and the core
of the novel remains entirely untouched. The
critic, however, is equal to the occasion. He
catches hold of that one episode, he sees nothing
but that single blemish, and cheerily pronounces
that the genius which could have been guilty of
such an error n1ust have been radically unsound.
What may be the nature of such a critic's genius,
I will refrain from asking. I would really rather
not.
Seeing that so much has been made of this
particular error, I would wish, if I may, to say
a word by way of defence. 1 cannot, and wilJ
not, say that I do not consider it an error.
But I will say that I hold it to have been
n1agnified beyond all reason; and I think there
may be some instruction in tracing it to its
source.
In judging, as she clearly did judge, the tone,
the fashions and many of the personages of what
we call high society to be inherently vulgar,
Charlotte Brontë was certainly in the right. But
when she came to paint these things, she made
the rather fatal n1istake of painting the wrong
sort of vulgarity; of attributing to them a
19 0

Charlotte and Elnily Brol1të.' a COJnpariSol1

vu1garity which may be better or worse than
what you actually find in them, but \vhich,
whether better or worse, is certainly of a very
different kind. However, even the mistakes of
a great writer often throw an instructive light
upon its genius. And this particular error brings
us hack once more to the fact that, an10ng her
many other qualities, Charlotte Brontë was
essentially a novelist of revolt.
In painting the high society, the county
families of Jane Eyre, I suppose there was a
certain ferment of personal mortification working
in her mind. She was, so to speak, taking
vengeånce for the humiliations she had passed
through during the months in which she acted
as governess in families of pretension. And
perhaps there is a little too much of that spice of
personal pique to be altogether pleasant. J think
there is. But it is very characteristic that she
should have taken hold of that part of her
experience and have worked it into her novel
in this way. It shows on the one hand that,
keen as she was to observe, her observation was
too much at the mercy of her personal feelings,
above all of her antipathies. And if one instance
of this is not enough, we may cite her handling
of Mr. Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre, and of the
curates in Shirley, as a second and a third. It
proves on the other hand, if further proof were
needed, how wrong-headed was the advice of
19 1

..

Charlotle Bronte.' a Ce11tenary MelJ10riill
Lewes when he strove to bind her down to
observation, for which her talent was so limited
and uncertain, and to frighten her away from
the work of creation in which she has seldon1
been approached.
Yet the very defect, of which this is an
instance, is only the other side of a quality which
lies at the very heart and centre of her genius.
Figures like Blanche Ingram may be mere
parodies of what they were meant to be. But
at least they faithfully represent the feelings of
the woman who had chafed under the vulgar
contempt of those who thought themselves her
betters, but who, for all who had eyes to see,
were immeasurably beneath her. They may be
false as portraits of others. But, in a sense which
you will readily catch, they are a true reflection
of Charlotte Brontë herself, and of the type of
woman she best loved to take as heroine of her
tales. And the creation of that type, let us never
forget it, was among her most marked and
original contributions to the novel of her day
and country.
Charlotte Brontë, I suppose, was the first
English novelist to bring upon the stage a figure
long familiar to the French novelist, the [emlf/C
incomprise, the misunderstood woman; the woman
who has great thoughts in her soul, who is
capable of great deeds and of deep sympathies,
but who, for one reason or another, meets with
192

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Charlotte and Enlily Brolltë.' a Conlparison
little but scorn and neglect fronl the \vorld and
those who slavishly accept the judgments of the
world. We know that Charlotte had strong
feelings on this matter . We know that she
reproached her sisters with clinging to the old
tradition that the heroine of a novel is necessarily
born with beauty and all kinds of feminine
attractions. I \vill take, she said, a heroine
who has no looks and no attraction, and I will
show that she can be made as interesting, as
full of charm, as any doll in the nursery
of fiction. And one almost hears Charlotte,
as she writes) saying to herself, or rather
speaking through the lips of her heroine to
her own employers of the past: "I am little
and puny, and insignificant in comparison with
you. Quite true; in the body I cut a very
poor figure by your side. But, if you could
look within, you would find a spirit, before
which yours would shrivel like a parched scroll,
and you would know that I dwell habitually in
regions where you dare not soar, not even for
an instant." There is all that-is there not r-
in the mood and temper which is stamped so
strongly on Jane Eyre, but which, it is welJ
to remember, fades out of her later novels-
those written when her character had softened
and her genius mellowed. You will find little
of it in Shirley, some stray touches to the
contrary; you will find still less of it in Villette.
193 N

Char/otlt Brontë.' a Ctlltenary Mflnorial
So far, 1 have dealt mainly with the qualities
which the two sisters have in COmnlOl1. I now
pass to speak very short! y of the points in which
they differ. And first and foremost, it is, I
suppose, clear to all of us that of the two, the
spirit of Emily is, beyond doubt, the more
intense. This is her great glory. I know of
nothing in the English novel so intense, so
absolutely the spontaneous creation of a strong
and fiery spirit, as the characters of Catherine
and Heathcliff. It is futile to say that nothing
like them has ever been seen, or ever will be
seen, upon the earth. How do we know? It
is far more probable that beings, who under
favouring conditions might have grown to some-
thing of their form and stature, have existed,
now and again, from the beginning, and will
continue to do so tilJ the end. An that Emily
has done is to supply such conditions and let
them work their will upon natures who, without
them, wou1d ha ve remained the starved and
stunted creatures that are within the experience
of us an. This is the privilege of the creative
artist; the method by which the supreme poets
ha ve achieved some of the greatest of their
triumphs-the method by which Milton created
Satan: and Æschylus, Clytemnestra, and Victor
Hugo, Gilliatt or Jean Valjean. Emily Brontë
is not on the same scale as these great figures,
but she may claim the same defence.
194

Charlotte an{1 Emily BrfJJ/të.' a COlnparl
fon

Enlily, then, 15 nlore intense in spirit than her
sister) but, after all, Charlotte follows not very
far behind. \Ve will not look beyond the
t:nglish novel; and in the English novel, where
will you find anything conlparable, in this matter,
to Wutltering Heights, unless in such figures as
Jane Eyre and Rochester, as Paul Emanuel and
Paulina ? For myself, I should wish to add
Shirley and, in her inspired moments, Lucy
Snowe also to the list. In all these there is a
softened echo-and the echo is not so soft either
-of the cry that rings from Catherine and
l-Ieathcliff. The difference is one not of kind
but of degree. '"[he two sisters inhabit the
same world, though they may dwell in different
regions of it; they have the freedonl of the
same city, though their homes may be in different
quarters. It is the difference not between the
vegetation of the tenlperate zone and that of
the tropics, but between the vegetation imme-
diatel y under the equator and that of a degree or
two farther north or a degree or two farther south.
And I dwell upon this because I think that
Charlotte has often perhaps hardly had justice
done to her in the matter. She invites, she
chal1enges comparison with her sister; and on
that c0t11parison every man with eyes in his
head must admit that, in this particular point,
Emily is the stronger; I will not say far
stronger, but yet stronger and yet more intense.
195

\

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenar)' lVIenzfJrial

1 take a second poin t : There is, I think, a
very marked contrast, a very clear distinction,
between the ways in which the two sisters worked
upon their nIaterials, in which they went about
to create the various characters of their stories.
Emily created purely and simply out of her own
soul and her own genius. Observation counted
for nothing at all; it is the spontaneous outflow
of her genius, or it is nothing. Now with Char-
lotte, although there are obvious affinities to this
process, still there is no less obvious difference.
One gathers-and I think the evidence is pretty
clear upon tht: point-that she was nlost at her
ease when she could take the first hint frot11
some one she had seen; from some l11an or
\VOnlan with whonl she had been brought into
contact, if only for a monlent; fronl some hUlnan
being on whom her eye had actually rested.
1
he most n1arked instance of this-and it is
absolutely authentic - is her creation of the
character of Helston, the "old Cossack" who
rules the roost in Shirley. She tells us herself
that she saw the old Cossack once only with her
bodily eyes when she \vas at the mature age of
ten. As it was at the consecration of a church,
he can hardly then, I imagine, have been per-
forming Cossack duties. But the curve of
his nose and the eagle glance of his eye struck
hon1e at once to her imagination; and out of
that fleeting vision, a vision that can hardly have
19 6

Charlotte antI El1Uïy Brontë.- a C0111parÎS0l1

lasted for more than-well, sermons were long
j n those days, shall we say two hours? -she
constructed that extraordinarily vivid 'character,
that masterpiece of a clerical dragoon: and all
this, close on thirty years after she had seen
him.
So again we are told, and it certainly seems
probable, that the greatest of all her triumphs,
Paul Emanuel in Villette, is wrought out of hints
-hints faint and fugitive in the extreme-drawn
from her old instructor in Brussels, M. Heger.
That would seem to be a1 most beyond doubt.
But, if I had met M. Heger, I an1 perfectly
certain that I at any rate should not have seen,
and I greatly doubt whether a single soul but
Charlotte Brontë wouid have seen, the amazing
combination of qualities which Inake Monsieur
Paul one of the most striking and surely quite
the most lovable, of all the characters in English
fiction; and an this, relnember, was the pure
act of the genius of Charlotte, working upon
materials which 111 amount \vere absolutely
beggarly and which to no eye but hers would
have meant anything at all.
To start from a hint of experience or obser-
vation, to let her own instincts freely \vork upon
it, her own imagination transform it out of all
knowledge-this, then, was the distinctive method
of Charlotte Brontë, the pecul iar channel along
\vhich her genius most naturally flowed. [he
197

Charlotte Brolltë: a Centenary Melnorial

most pathetic instance of this, I think, is to
be found in the character of Shirley . You will
all remember that. She took her sister Elnily
and created out of her, not what Emily was
in her brief life of sorrow and suffering and
anguish, but what she might have been, what
she would have been if her circun1stances had
been less grievous, if an ampler atmosphere had
been around her, if there had been son1e gleams
of sunshine to break the almost unrelieved glooln
and sadness of her days. rrhat surely is very
beautiful. And what n10nunlent to the great
spiri t \vho had been snatched from her side
could have been nobler than this tribute, this
vision of what n1ight have been, that Charlotte
thus laid upon her grave?
I take one other point which can hardly fail
to suggest itself to us, as we consider the \vork
of the two sisters. I n width of genius, in extent
and range of po\vers, I think it must be adn1itted
that Charlotte was the richer of the two. rrhis,
I think, is partly because, as \ve have just seen,
observation enters far Blore largely into her \vork
than into Emily's. And, \vhen used as her genius
prompted her to use it, when used not as a lin1it
iOlposed from without, but as a suggestion to
set her imagination \vorking f.'on1 within, this
gave a variety and richness to her creations, a
command of many ditrerent types of character,
which apparent! y \vas denied to Eo1Íl y, and which
19 8

Charlotte and E1J1ily Brontë.' a C01Jlparison
I doubt whether Emily would have taken even
at a gift.
But, closely connected with this, there is
another gift \vhich, above all others, went to
widen the range of Charlotte. I mean the gift
of humour. In her latest work at any rate, in
Pillette, she showed herself to possess a fund of
humour, of which her earlier books had offered
comparatively little promise, of which there is no
trace in the solitary \vork of Emil y, and to which
I do not believe that Elnil y could ever have
attained. You may say that Joseph Smith in
Wuthering Heights is a humorous character.
So he is, but surely not in the same rare and
deep-reaching sense in \vhich we say this of
Paul Emal)uel. The elements are in themselves
coarser, and they are nlore coarsel y mingled.
There is nothing in him of the fire and radiance,
nothing of the human kindliness and far-flashing
tenderness which, by their weird contrasts, move
us at once to tears and laughter in the master-
piece of Charlotte. And I can hardly conceive
that Emily had it in her to create a character
like this.
'I'he little Professor in {/illette is, no doubt,
the supreme instance of Charlotte Brontt's
humour. But he is by no nleans the only one.
rrhe character of Hortense Moore, in the early
part of Shirley, is unfortunately little more than
a sketch. But, sketch though it be, it is full
199

Charlotte BroJltë: fl Centenary Menlorial
of humour; humour of the genial kind, the
kind that we associate with Fielding, and even
with Shakespeare; or, to take a name less im-
posing, the kind in which Mrs. Gaskell, on her
more modest scale, \vas mistress unsurpassed.
And I shall never cease to regret that, after
chalking that brilliant sketch in her open-
ing pages, Charlotte should afterwards, for
exigencies of her own, have allowed the kindly
but rigid champion of all the domestic decencies
to fade silently out of the story, and we see
her no more.
I return, however, to the figure of Monsieur
Paul, as one of the greatest triumphs which
human genius, in this field, has ever won.
Where, 1 should like to know, where shall we
find anything that goes more swiftly and more
deepl y to the heart than the figure of this little
man, that strange blending of reason and un-
reason, of strength and of sweetness, of wilful-
ness and self-abasement, of fury and of tender-
ness, who slowly works himself into our affections
but, when once he has found his home there, \vill
never again be surrendered, so long as we live?
Finally, one word must be said about the style
of these t\VO writers. And here again we are
met with a curious, not to say a startling,
contrast. The style of Emily, as we all know,
is severely simple. Nothing could be more so.
It is the rarest thing for her to allow herself an
200

Charlotte and Emily BroJ1të.. a ConlParison

image, a set picture, of any kind. Pictures there
are in plenty \vhich burn themselves upon the
imagination. But you will find, I think, that
they commonly do so in virtue of the sheer power
and vividness with which the circumstances are
conceived and rendered, that they commonly owe
little to tone or colour, still less to any literary
elaboration of style. So it is in the passage to
which the Chairman I referred in his opening
words: the passage describing the haunted dream
of the man who tells the story, near the beginning
of Wuthering Heights. So it is in a score of
other passages, on which it would be a pleasure
to linger, if time allowed. Once and again,
however, Emily breaks through the rigid limits
which she would seem habitually to have laid
upon herself. And then at one stroke she shows
herself a master. An in1age, perhaps a succession
of inlages, is flashed upon our vision; and the
very austerity of the setting makes it all the
more radiant and unforgettable. One instance
of this is offered by the words of Catherine
about Heathcliff, which I have already quoted.
Another, and it is the last to which I will refer,
is that which describes Heathcliff as he stands
beneath the window of the woman he loved,
waiting in Inotionless agony until her tortured
spirit should at last be set free. The servant, you
will remember, goes out and finds him there,
I Mr. Halliwell Sutcliffe was Chairman at this meeting.
201

Charlotte Brolltë.. a Centenary MenlorÎal
the strong man propped against a tree in the
dripping rain; and she knows he has been stand-
ing there like a stone for hours, because there
were t,vo ouzels flying backwards and forwards
in front of him, gathering Inaterial for their
nest, his presence nlaking no more difference to
them than if he had been a stock or bush, like
the rest. That is a magnificent image, and it
is one that none but a great poet could have
conceived, none but a great stylist have cut anJ
fashioned. It is, however, an exception, and,
generally speaking, I am sure you will agree with
me that the style of Emily is severely simple.
The style of Charlotte, on the other hand, I
think it must be said, is anything but simple.
She has, in fact, a strong vein-I do not use
the word in any unpleasant sense-of literary
rhetoric and, as you know, the critics have
fastened upon this and have counted it for an
unpardonable offence. For rnyself I must say
that I think these objections are very finicking,
and it seems to me that for some years past
-1 hope the blight is at last beginning to blow
over-there has been a tendency to judge style
hy a false standard. The only qualities of style
that some critics are prepared to re:;cognize are
such qualities as urbanity and plainness and
simplicity. Now, I am not going to deny the
merits of all these, but after all-and it conles
back to the same train of thought which has
202

Charlotte anti Elnily Brolltë.' a Comparison

alread y confronted us in considering the Brontës'
method of handling character-after all, steadi-
ness, demureness, propriety may be very excellent
qualities in a duenna, a governess, or a valet, but
they are not exactly the qualities which I should
be most anxious to find in a writer of genius,
which I should be apt to consider the surest
test of genius. Anyhow it is quite certain that
Charlotte Brontë would have none of them. It
is quite certain also, though I doubt whether
this has been sufficiently recognized, that she
was in no small measure under the speJl of a
very great figure in con tem porary literature, the
greatest writer of the time, the French poet,
Victor Hugo.
Now, I will not deny that, with all his genius,
Victor Hugo is in some ways a perilous model.
I will not deny that, in following this model,
Charlotte sometimes allowed herself to be be-
trayed into extravagance. But for all that, it
remains true that Victor Hugo himself: in style
as in all other q uali ties of the poet, was a Titan,
and, although Charlotte may not have been his
equal-I do not for a moment suppose she was
his equal-still that in no way proves that she
too, in style, as in nlan yother points of supreme
importance, was not a c0111manding figure, a spirit
of genius. I am confident that she was, and in
style, as in matters (if indeed there be such) yet
lnore vital, this declares itself, as I must think,
20 3

\

Charlotte BroJJtë.. a Centenary Memorl
11
beyond dispute. This is true, above all, of those
passages where it is evident that she herself was
deeply moved. Then all that betrays labour and
effort, aU that elsewhere wakes the suspicion that
she is striving for effect, vanishes upon the instant
and we hear the very music, the fiery n1elody of
her soù1. I might appeal to a score of passages
scattered through the pages of Jane Eyre and
Shirley, but I would recall to your memory as
the crowning instance of it, the closing passage
of Villette. You will remember the circum-
stances. The heroine has betrothed herself to
Paul En1anuel, whom she passionately loves.
Immediately after the betrothal, Emanuel has
had to leave her on a self-denying errand of three
years in the service of others, and at the n10ment
when the book closes, the three long years of
separation are at last over and Lucy is awaiting
her lover's return. :For the sake of eXplaining
one allusion, I may remind you that the cry of
the Banshee, the spirit that moves in the stornl,
has been heard once before by the heroine, at the
very beginning of the story, and that on that
occasion it had heen the warning of an approach-
ing death.

'fhc sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leav

grow sere; but-he is coming.
Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in
advance; the wind takes its autumn moan; but-he is
comIng.

20 4

Charlotte and Elnlïy Brontë.. a Cr.J1Jlpariron

The skies hang full and dark-a rack sails from the west;
the clouds cast themselves into strange forms-arches and
broad radiations ; there rise resplenden t mornings-glorious,
royal, purple as monarch in his state; the heavens are one
flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest-
so bloody, they shame victory in her pride. I know some
signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood.
God watch that sail! Oh! guard it!
The wind shifts to the we:>t. Peace, peace, Banshee-
U keening" at every window! It win rise-it will swell-
it shrieks out long: wander as I may through the house this
night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make
it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watc hers hear and fear
a wild south-\vest storm.
That storm roared frenzied for seven days. It did not
cease till the Atlantic \vas strewn with wrecks: it did not
lul] till the deeps had gorged their ful] of sustenance. Not till
the destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect
work, would he fold the wings whose waft was thunder-
the tremor of whose plumes was stornl.
Peace, be still! Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in
agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was
not uttered-not uttered till, when the hush came, some
could not feel it : till, when the sun returned, his light was
night to some!

That is a highl y-\vrought passage. I an1 not
concerned to deny it. On the contrary, I insist
on it and I exult in it. And I will t
ll you that,
in the whole range of English prose, there are
few passages which I \vould sooner have written
than that. And I say this not onl y because the
style, as a mere arrangement of words, is
supremely beautiful; but also, and far more,
20 5

\

......

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

because it reflects, and reflects with the mastery
that genius alone could give, that unforced, that
mysterious, blending of sorrow and of triun1ph..
\vhich constitutes the very essence and spirit of
great tragedy.
Neither in drama nor in novel do I know of
anything which seems to me n10re accurately)
more consummately, to reflect that spirit, as
Milton for instance understood it, than the clos-
ing passage of Villette. In its whole tone and
in its whole tenor, it reminds me of that blended
cry of anguish and exultation which rings out
at the end of his own supreme drama, Samson
Agonistes :-

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

Yes; "calm of mind, aU passion spent "-those
are the words, the last words of Milton himself,
which at once leap into our thoughts; that is the
tone, the deep organ tone, which peals upon our
ears in the closing passage of Pillelte.

(J, E, f/ AUGHAN.

206

CHARLOTTE BRONTE IN
LONDON

By SIR SIDNEY LEE, D.LITT., LL.D.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE BRONTË SOCIETY, AT
HARROGATE, ON JANUARY 23, 1909.

Rtprinted from the "Cornhill Magazine" by permission if
Messrs. Smith, Elder f;f Co.

,

il

; I

To face p. %083

.

CHARLOTfE RRONTË IN LONDON

:FOR nearer forty than thirty years I have been
a whole-hearted admirer of Charlotte Brontë's
genius. I have a distinct nlenlory of reading
Jane Eyre as a boy. l'he weirdness of the
mystery and the fiery glow of the language
worked like magic on my youthful olind, and
the impression has never faded fronl me.
Nor did my juvenile enthusiasm for Charlotte
Hront
stop \vith her ,york. Mrs. Gaskell's
sensitive pen taught me the grey pathos of the
novelist's donlestic distresses, which had a gloomy
fascination for my early thought. In my young
days, long before the Brontë Society was con-
templated, I made a solitary pilgrimage to
Haworth; I drained a glass to Charlotte Brontë's
memory at the Black BuH Inn, sat there in the
ill-starred Branwell's chair, and wandered in
Charlotte Bront
's footsteps across the windy
moor. I well remember ho\v my interest was
stimulated by reading on their first appearance Mr.
Swinburne's impassioned " Note JJ and Sir Wemyss
Reid's sober monograph, both of which came out
209 0

Charlotte BroJltë: a Centenary Melnorial
in 1877. I nlake no claim to have kept abreast
of the vast sequel of critical and biographical
literature which has since circled round Charlotte
Brontë's head. I respect the untiring labours
of recent explorers; I have
ssayed no excava-
tions on my o\vn account. Myoid enthusiasm
has been checked neither by independent research
nor by close study of the ever-expanding com-
mentary. Zeal, which is untutored by the new
learning, olay seen1 a poor credential for one
who speaks to a hand of learned disciples. In
arrest of judgment on what may appear pre-
suolption, I oftèr t\VO pleas of justification.
In the first place, I happen to be, for the tiole
heing, through the indulgence of my colleagues,
the chairnlan of the rfrustees of Shakespeare's
Birthplace at Stratford-on-A von. Comparison
bet\veen Shakesoeare and Charlotte Brontt: is
..
profitless. I merely urge that Shakespeare's
Birthplace Trust has in a very general sense
an aiol in COOlmon with the Brontë Society.
Both institutions endeavour to keep alive national
interest in an that survives of two homes of
genius. rrhe problem of genius is insoluble,
and speculation has as yet failed to account for
the miracle of its birth. It comes into being in
nlost unexpected places) more often in the cottage
than in the palace, more often in the house of
the poor parson than in the mansion of the
rich merchant. Its manifestations are rare and
210

Charlotte Brontë III London

mysterious. But \vith all ernphasis should it
be said that, at whatever hearth it take living
shape, it is to the spiritual benefit of nlen and
women to sanctify the place. It is good for
every human being to recognize the obligation
to reverence genius, and that sense of reverence
\vill always be stimulated-at any rate in matter-
of-fact minds) which are in the majority-by
preserving haunts which genius has illumined.
IIaworth and Stratford-on-Avon may well be
mentioned in the same breath, because the care
locall y bestowed on surviving memorials of their
native heirs of genius draws visitors to both
places from afar. The Brontë Society and the
Trustees of Shakespeare's Birthplace engage in
cognate work, in the \vork of quickening the
national reverence for inspired writers. I am
glad of the opportunity of offering a greeting
to the Guardians of the Brontë Museum from
the Trustees at Stratford-on-A Yon.
My second justificatory plea descends to a
somewhat lower plane of argument. On March
31st next, fifty-four years will have passed away
since Charlotte Brontë died. I The number of
persons who saw her face to face is now small;
her intiolate associates are now dead. Those
who can boast acquaintance with her at second
hand, who have heard of her from her personal
friends, are happily still numerous. Many beside
1 Written January 23, 1909.
211

Charlotte BroJ/të: a Centenary Menloria/
myself have learnt something of her from those
who spoke with her and grasped her hand.
But it was nlY good fortune to enjoy through
great part of twenty years close relations with
one who not merely presided over Charlotte
Brontë's short feast of fame, but was the uncon-
scious nlodel of the most attractive of all the
full-length portraits of men in her great gallery.
Mr. George Sn1Ïth) Charlotte Brontë's publisher,
closed a long and honoured life nearly eight
years ago. His publishing acti vities fiJled near
six decades. Charlotte Brontë's friendly relations
with hinl synchronized with the first decade
only; my relations belonged to the last two.
An amply filled interval of thirty years and
upwards divides the publication of Jane Eyre
from the planning of the Dictionary of N aJÍonal
Biography. But Mr. Smith's powers of memory
throughout his career were alert and vivid.
In the comparatively recent period of my
association with him, I gathered much from
him of his early experience. Nor did his vigour
know change or decay in his later years. In
all essential features he was, I am persuaded, the
same manly, keen-nlinded, sympathetic figure
in my day as in Charlotte Brontë's. I therefore
believe that I may without immodesty bring
some personal knowledge and impressions of
my own to bear on those classical episodes in
the story of Charlotte Brontë's life and work
212

Charlotte Brontë in London

In which Mr. George Smith played a foremost
part.
Another friend of mine \vho sa\v Charlotte
Brontë and talked \vith her is the daughter of
the great novelist, Thackeray. Lad y Ritchie,
Thackeray's daughter, is still in all the vigour
of a sympathetic personality, which speaks
illuminatingly of her tàther's genius. Concern-
ing the impressions which Charlotte Brontë gave
and received when in London, I can cite testimony
which I owe to two first-hand witnesses, Lady
Ritchie and Mr. George Smith. There are no
higher authorities on the topic. I have no
secrets to divulge. In all its main features the
story of Charlotte Brontë in London has often
been told before. But it has features of perennial
interest, and perhaps I ma y be able to ten
it again in a sOlnewhat different1y refracted
light.
Much has been written by Charlotte Brontë's
biographers of her friendship with Mr. George
Smith, her publisher. Less has been said of
the place which that incident fills either in
Mr. Smith's biography or in literary history.
Yet J to take the last aspect first, it throws
a very broad and healthy light on an iOl-
portant tract of literary territory. I have
elsewhere styled Mr. Snlith's association ,vith
Charlotte Brontë "a publishing idyll." It is
rare that the epithet "idyllic" figures in tht:
21 3

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary 1vle1Jlorial
joint chronicles of publishing and authorship.
Publishers and authors are usually held to be
linked together by no tie more sentimental than
desire to make nIoney out of one another. There
are notable exceptions; but experience bears
witness that few publishers and authors of enlin-
ence have throughout their working days been
bound together in firm unbroken links of amity
and trustfulness. It is a common failing on the
part of publishers and authors to regard each
other as nlutual foes and preys. Yet the facts
of Charlotte Brontë's connection with Mr. Smith,
her publisher, show with convincing harrnony that
there is nothing in the natur.e of the publisher's
or the author's vocation to set thenl at variance.
The conditions of amity may be difficult of attain-
ment. But my present parable plainly points the
moral that, given on the one hand a publisher
of high principle, of alert human sympathy, of
capacity to appreciate great literature, and given
on the other hand an author of genius, of
modesty, of shrewdness, of frankness, and of
honesty, there is no room for any sentin1ent
between the two save genuine regard.
The manner in which Charlotte Brontë first
made Mr. Sn1Ïth's acquaintance is too wen-worn
a topic to merit repetition here. But for the
sake of clearness a brief reference must be made
to the episode. Everybody knows how Charlotte
Brontë and her t\VO younger sisters, while they
21 4

Charlotte Brontë ÙI Lonllon

w
re in their teens, filled reams of paper with
poems and novels. Survi ving specinlens show
a sti]ted juvenility of the vaguest promise. The
domestic griefs of adult years stimulated rather
than slackened the three ladies' literary energies,
but their first youth seems to have passed before
the anlbition seized them to see themselves in
print. It \vas not till 1846, \vhen Charlotte was
thirty years old, that she and her sisters conl-
missioned a London pub]isher to publish at their
o\vn expense a first vol un1e-a collection of poems.
The book had no success. But the sisters had
tasted blood, and they now each offered a novel
to a London firm. 'I'he aim of Charlotte's sister
took effect. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey
were accepted. But her own efFort of 1Ï1e
Professor was rejected ,vithout thanks. The
failure did not daunt her pertinacity. Five tinles
she re-addressed her man uscri pt to London
publishers, only to meet with as nlany rebuffs.
A seventh trial bore different fruit. rrhe ill-
fated manuscript reached a sympathetic har-
bourage in the office of Smith, Elder & Co., of
65 Cornhi]I. 'rhere it attracted the notice of
the firm's reader, Mr. Sn1Îth Williatns, a
thoughtful critic, a student of fine taste.
Williams detected the promise of 1ïze Professor,
and, while declining its publication, inviteJ \vith
kindly encouragen1ent another specilllen of the
author's \vork. lane Eyre ,vas despatched on
2IS

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Melnorial

August 24, 1847. 1" he result is universally
known.
The tnanuscript fascinated Smith Williams.
Mr. Smith read it one Sunday from end to end
in the little study of his mother's house at
\Vestbourne Place. It absorbed him from early
tnorning till late at night. He could not tear
himself from it to keep the day's engagements or
even to take his meals. 1"he book was q uickl y
sent to press. Within a fe\v weeks, on October
16, 1847, Charlotte Brontë's genius \vas reveal
d
to the world. I
F e\v will need to be renlinded that Charlotte
Brontë addressed the firm under the masculine
pseudonyn1 of "Currer Bell," and represented
herself as a man in aU her early correspondence.
Fron1 the first Mr. Smith saw through the
disguise. His shrewd instinct convinced hinl
that "Currer Bell, Esq.," was a woman.
In the early n10nths of 18+8 some friendly
correspondence passed bet\veen Mr. Snli th and

I Nlr. Smith has noted the small circumstance that
Char10tte Brontë in sending to his firnl the manuscript of
Ja!u Eyrt apologized for her inability to prepay at Haworth
the cost of carriage. She asked the firm to let her know the:
amount which should be charged on delivery, and promised
to remit the sum in postage stamps. The simple req uest
showed innocent anxiety lest the author's high hopes might
be thwarted by a trifling accident, and points to obsolete
perils of cOlnmunication between writers living in remot<;
p]aces and London publishers.
2.6

Charlotte Brontë Ùz London

Charlotte Brontë in her assun1ed name, but they
did not meet till July, nine months after the
publication of ] ane Eyre. The inlmediate cause
of the meeting need only be briefly indicated.
Charlotte Brontë began Shirley very soon after
she had finished Jane Eyre. At the same tirne
hcr sister ...t\nne had just COOl pleted her second
novel, The '/ènal1t of jf/ildftll flail) and \vas
arranging to publish it under the accepted
pseudonym of "Acton Bell," \vith Mr. Newby,
the publisher of her first book, 11gnes Grey. Mr.
Newby informed Smith, Elder & Co. of an
unfounded suspicion that Acton and Currer Bel I
were one person. Charlotte Brontë deemed it
a point of honour to prove their separate
identities. Suddenly she resolved that she and
her sister Anne should reveal themselves in person
to Mr. Sn1Ïth in London. They arrived late one
Friday night in July 18+8) and next 1110rning
presented themselves at 65 Cornhill. Mr. SnlÌth
\vas busily occupied, and was for a moment
puzzled by the intrusion. Charlotte drew frool
an envelope inscribed "Currer Bell, J
sq.," a
letter \vhich she declared that the firm had sent
her. Mr. Smith asked with some coolness what
was it. wOll1an's title to a comnlunication \vhich
the firm had addressed to a Inan. The needful
explanation followed, and there and then was
formed that chivalric friendship which only
death terruinated.

21 7

Charlotte Brontë.. tl Centenary Me1l10rial

A visit to London was always for Charlotte
Brontë a stirring venture. From girlhood, long
before she made personal acquaintance with the
city, the nan1e thrilled her \vith a sense of
mysterious wonder. Reports of its splendours
at once attracted and repelled her youthful mind.
It was her Babylon, her Nineveh, her ancient
Rome. When her friend, Ellen N ussey, spent
a few days there in 1834, Charlotte's letters
vibrated vicariously with excitement over the
dread experience. Ellen wrote carelessly of the
first sight of the capital. Charlotte in reply
confessed, by \vay of rebuke, "'astonishn1ent" and
" awe" at the in1agined marvels of St. Paul's
Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The
mention of St. J an1es' s Palace filled her with
U intense and ardent interest." The thought of
meeting heroes like the Duke of \tV ellington,
Sir Robert Peel, and Daniel O'Connell in the
London streets stirred her deepest feelings.
At the same time she was femininely inquisitive
about the Court and its ceremonies. An1Íd the
dithyrambics with \vhich she plied her fortunate
friend on her first London sojourn, she asked
\vith a comical bathos for "the number of
performers in the King's military band." "fhe
smallest details of London life moved her eager
curiosity.
London was indeed a word to conj ure with
among all the dwellers in I-Iaworth parsonage.
218

Charlotte Brontë in London

The dissolute, art-loving brother Branwell craved
in boyhood for a sight of the metropolis of art and
sport. He gratified it for a few unlucky nlonths
at the end of 1835, after studying at home under
his sister's eyes every thoroughfare marked on
the map of the City. Charlotte's conception of
London was first put to the test of experience in
February 1842, when she was twenty-six. On
her way \vith her sister Emily to M. Heger's
school at Brussels, she then spent her first night
and day in London. Her father acconlpanied
them. rrhe three visitors stayed at an old-
fashioned ta verJ1 in an alley off Paternoster Row,
at the Chapter Coffee House, in the very heart
of the City, within view, through a narrow
passage, of St. Paul's Cathedral. That object of
her early a,ve with its chimes and its dome-" a
solemn orbed mass, dark blue and dim "-
dominated on her arrival her mind and heart.
With passionate impressiveness she t\vice
described her first nocturnal sensations of St.
Paul's, in 'rhe Professor, and again in fuller detail
in Villette. Next lllorning "the spirit of this
great London" roused her to ecstasy. ".llt a
hound," she said, she got into the heart of City
) ife. She dared the perils of crossi ngs wi th a
light heart. rrhe West End, the parks, the fine
sq uares which she knew better at a later date
left her cold. But the earnestness of the City
held her spellbound. "Its business, its rush, its
21 9

\

Charlotte Bro/ltë.' a Centenary Me1JlorÎal

roar were such serious themes and sights and
sounds. .,
Glimpses of London even more fleeting were
caught during the next two years. She slept
again in the City on her return fronl Brussels to
I-Iaworth in the autun1n of 1842. On her second
visit to Brussels early next year (I H43) she drove
straight from Euston Railway Station to London
Bridge Wharf and spent the night, an unwelconle
passenger, on the Ostend packet, an incident
which she vividly sketched in 1.he Professor.
Nor does her stay in London seenl to have been
prolonged beyond a night and a day, when she
finally quitted Brussels for Haworth at the
extreme end of the year 1843. However great
its passing fascination at this period of her life,
she found no further opportunity of personal
scrutiny. London was still a hazy dream of
glorious possibilities when she paid her memorable
visit to Mr. Sn1Ïth at Cornhill in July 1848.
Then, for the first time, her sojourn lasted tor
Jll0re nights than one. She and her sister Anne
remained in the City for three full days. Their
headq uarters were still the Chapter Coffee House,
off Paternoster Row. Two of their evenings
\vere spent at the West End of the town, at No.
4 Westbourne Place, where Mr. Smith resided
with his mother and sisters. Mr. Smith did
not see Anne Brontë again. She died in less
than a year, on May 28, 1849.
220

Charlotte Brontë in London

There quickly follo\ved, during the next
four years, four visits which finally brought
London within Charlotte Brontë's full com-
prehension. During all these visits, she was
Mr. Smith's guest beneath his mother's roof.
It was under his auspices and in his society
that she realized her long-cherished ambition of
familiarizing herself with London-its thrilling
"themes and sights and sounds."
Only three months of her thirty-nine years
were devoted to the City of her early hopes
and fears. But those three months provided,
as she acknowledged, sonle of the most stirring
momen ts in her career. She taxed her strength
by her persistency as a sightseer. Her courage
was often tried by social in tercourse with her
literary compeers to whom Mr. Smith intro-
duced her. . She nerved herself for the encounters
with the self-questioning rebuke: "Who but
a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets?"
But her spirit often quailed. Yet her study of
hunlan character gained in subtlety and generosity
under the varied ordeals of the great City. In
her maturest novel, Villette, she garnered the
fruit of the broadened outlook on human
nature which she owed to her London experi-
ence.
Mr. Smith was" the guide, philosopher, and
friend" of Charlotte Hrontë's London days.
For full two-thirds of the nineteenth century he
221

\

Charlotte Bronti!.' a Centenary MelJlorial
played an interesting and important part on the
literary stage apart from her and her work.
His association with her was but one link in
a long chain of achievement. Yet studen ts of
Charlotte Brontë's history and work have an
especiall y good right to ask \v hat manner of
man he was as she knew him.
Miss Brontë's junior by eight years, Mr.
Smith had lately passed his t\venty-fourth birth-
day \vhen she, at the age of thirty-t\vO, first
introduced herself to him at his office in Corn-
hil1. London-born, a child of Scottish settlers,
he had already lived from boyhood a busy life,
and had sho\vn that large-minded spirit, that
keen intuition, that sense of responsibility, that
mercantile aptitude which characterized his re-
111aining three-and-fifty years. In 18 I 6, the
year of Charlotte Brontë's birth, his father, a
native of Eiginshire, had opened (with a partner,
Alexander Elder, a native of Banff) a booksellers'
and stationers' shop in Fenchurch Street.
" Booksellers" and "publishers" were then
convertible terms, and Smith & Elder were
publishers on a modest scale from early days.
Soon moving to Cornhill, the partners grafted
on their existing business an East India Agency,
and for more than thirty years the firnl pursued
in ever-increasing volume the joint work of
publishers and East India agents. Young Smith
entered the t\vin business at the age of thirteen,
222

Charlotte Brontë in London

and at first took nlore kindly to the publishing
than to the East Indian branch. His pupilage
was brief. When he was no more than twenty
-in I844-his father's retirement, owing to
failing health, flung on him the responsible
charge of the gro\ving concern, and circunlstances
quickly constituted him sole proprietor and
director. His father soon died. Encouraged
by his mother, from whom he inherited much
of his firm and sanguine spirit, he \veathered
fornlidable initial difficulties, and under his
control Smith, Elder & Co. became the chief
East India agents and one of the leading pub-
lishing houses in London.
Mr. Sn1Ïth had been only four years the
firm's responsible chief when Charlotte and
Anne Brontë called on him. A period of pros-
perity was opening for hin1 in all directions, and
hefore long he was to become the publisher of
the fJo\ver of contemporary literature. The firm
was already acting for Ruskin, then an unknown
man under thirty, and with Ruskin Mr. Smith
was already intimate. But at present the only
novelist of any repute with whom Smith, Elder
& Co. had been nearly associated was the gran-
diloquent writer of blood-curdling romance,
G. P. R. James.
Of the first impressions that Mr. Smith made
on Charlotte Brontë she has left a frank record
in her letters. She wrote there of his youth, of
223

.

Charlotte Bronti!.. fl Centenary Mel/JorÎal

his practical instinct, his caution, his sense of
honour, his enterprise, his quiet raillery. But
her final and comprehensive study of his char-
acter was made in the medium of fiction. There
are grounds for regarding Villette as her crown-
ing achievement in literature. The book is to
a large extent a recension of her early effort
The Professor. But her touch had grown far
firo1er, and her outlook on life had widened
since she made that first atten1pt. The old
canvas \vas painted anew. Characters, of which
she had no previous conception, were brought
into the foreground. Bright colour for the first
tinle illuminated the settled gloonl. The cause
of the cloud-lifting is not far to seek. The
radiance was clearly caught from the character
of Mr. Smith, from her close study of London
sights under his surveillance, and from the cheer-
ful hospitality which she enjoyed in his London
home. Dr. John Grahan1 Bretton, and his
n1other, Mrs. Bretton, \vho shed on the novel
its warmest glo\v, are Miss Brontë's full and
candid interpretations of the personalities of her
London host and hostess. She bequeathed to
posterity no more delightful gifts.
Miss Brontë has been charged with transcrib-
ing in all her novels her private experience
somewhat too literally to satisfy the best canons
of art. Of that charge I will speak briefly
before I close. In Villette, at any rate, she
224

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Charlotte Brolltë in LfJndon

paints with curious fidelity man y portrai ts of
those with whom she had been in living contact
both before and after she grew familiar with
London. Villette is Brussels; her own sojourn
at M. Heger's school and her companions there
form the staple of her argument. But with an
ingenuity that may be fairly styled felicitous
she weaves into her canvas all the brightest
threads of her London life.
No one who either knew Mr. Smith or heard
him speak of his mother can fai I to detect their
two likenesses in Mrs. Bretton and Dr. John.
To the portrayal of the son Charlotte Brontë
hrought her keen power of observation in its
fullest blossom. The mother is sketched n10re
lightly, but no less surely. No sign of either
is given in the first sketch of the book in 17ze
Professor.
Some idealization is inseparable from fictitious
portraiture even ,vhen the artist draws the
lineaments directly from life. In the setting of
Dr. John in medical practice at Villette there
is nothing which reflects any phase of Mr.
Smith's career. Dr. John's environrnent is either
imaginary or assimilates gleanings from another
household. It may be difficult here and there
to reconcile a feature in the counterfeit present-
ment with one's own impression of the original.
But the discrepancies are negligible. F or those
who knew Mr. Smith, Dr. John is a speaking
225 p

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Melnoriol

portrait. Nor does the resemblance end with
the graphic presentment of character and out-
ward aspect. In spite of divergence from actual
fact in the surroundings, Dr. John and Lucy
Snowe, the heroine of Villette, are involved in
some digressive adventures identical with ex-
periences which jointly befell Charlotte Brontë
and Mr. Smith when the writer was visiting
London.
In personal appearance Dr. John vividly recalls
his prototype. The well-proportioned figure,
the handsome and n1anly face and brow, the
imposing height, the - blue eyes, the hair worn
rather long, which are precisely described in the
novel, come straight from the unn1istakable
model. There is an unusual flicker of humour
in the stress laid on the indetertninate hue of
the hero's hair.-such as friends did not venture
to specify except as the sun shone on it" when
they called it golden."
It is in psychological analysis of her friend
and publisher's temperament that Miss Brontë
shows her full strength. Admiringly sympa-
thetic as is her prevailing tone, she \vas too
critical and too honest an artist to indulge in
unqualified panegyric. "Strong and cheerful,
firm and courteous, not rash yet valiant," are
the salient notes of her picture, and none who
kne\v Mr. Smith can question the justice of these
epithets' application. "M uch feeling spoke in
226

Charlotte Brontë 1n London

his features and nlore sat silent in his eye. "
Of Dr. John's "gay and sanguine" tempera-
ment, of his generosity, his good nature, his
amenity, Miss Brontë's pages do not lack the
proof. But to her penetrating vision " Dr. John
was not perfect any more than I am perfect."
She declined to credit him with th
attributes
of "a god." She had no intention, she wrote
to Mr. Smith himself, of keeping Dr. John
c, supremely worshipful" -" a being unlike reat
life, .inconsistent with real truth, at variance
with probability." u Human fallibility leaven
d
him throughout." Hut the shadows are not
dark. They add value to the portrait almost
as much froIn the light they shed on th

painter's idiosyncrasies as frolTI any inherent
value that attaches to them in the \vay of
portrai ture.
Charlotte Brontë's sen
e of hUluour was not
strong. '[hough no stranger to the playful l11ood,
she strictly checked its working. She was
usuall y too serious and too earnest to approve
any tendency to levity. Raillery or gentle
ridicule she suspected of insincerity or \vorse.
lnnocent fun lay outside the normal scope of her
intuition. Pritnness \vas intertwined with her
pa,sionate fibre. Hence came the main mis-
givings of her friend and publisher. In Mr.
Smith's letters and conversation she noted hints
of a playful disposition which puzzled her.
227

Charlottt Brontë.. a Centenary M
lnorial

\Vith charact
ristic frankn
ss she wrote to him
thus :-

J will tdl you a thing to be noted often in your letters and
almost always in your conversation, a psychological thing and
not a matter pertaining to style or intdlect-l mean an
undercurrent of quiet raillery, an inaudible laugh to yourself,
a not unkindly, but somewhat subtle, playing on your corre-
spondent or companion for the time being-in short, a sly
touch of a M ephistophdes with the fiend extracted.

She contessed that she was at titnes half afraid
of the enigmatic smile of questioning rebuk
to
which Mr. Smith's features lent then1selves in
her eyes.
[)r. John is invested with the like traits) and
she dissects then1 aln10st mercilessly. " One
could not in a hurry n1ake up one's n1ind,"
she writes in one chapter of Pillette) "as to the
descriptive epithet it [i.e. Dr. John's smile]
merited. \Vhile it pleased it brought surging
up into the mind alJ one's foibles and \\'eak
points." The sentence is an eloquent confession
of the writer's own sensitiveness. })r. John's
ct mischievous half-smile" at other times seemed
to her to betray either "masculine vanity elate
and tickled," or an U unconscious roguish arch-
ness,,, \vhich dashed the observer's equanimity.
More subtle failings suggested themselves as
her brush worked over the canvas. She \vas
inclined to blao1e her hero for a lighthearted
228

Charlotte Brontë in London

absorption in the pleasure of the moment and
for a masculine self-esteem, which hovered in
her judgment between a vice or virtue. While
she amply ackno\vledged his consideration for
others) she sometimes imputed to him slowness
to apprehend the felicity of unsolicited benevo-
lence.

'I'hough a kind, generous man, with fine feding, he was
not quick to seize or apprehend another's fec:1ings. Make
your need known, his hand was open; put your grief into
words, he turned no deaf ear; expect refinements of per-
ception, miracles of intuition, and realize disappointment.

Censure so searching bears \vitness to the exacting
terms which the author imposed on her beau-ideal.
Every side of Mr. Smith's character was
conscientiously surveyed under cover of Dr.
John. With graphic literalness Dr. John's
attributes reflect Mr. Smith's magnificent capa-
city for work and his Inethodical precision.
\Vhile Charlotte Hrontë was the guest of his
nlother in London, the calls of his heavy and
incessant labours at Cornhill were often reckoned
more than one rnan could sustain. It is obvious
what Charlotte Brontë had in her mind when
she made Lucy Snowe renlark of ))r. John :-

I can hardly tell how he mana
ed his engagemenb.
fhey were numerous; yet by dint of system he classed
(hem in an order which left him a daily period of liberty.
229

Charlotte Brontë.' (/ C
nt
J1ary Menlorial

I often saw him hard-worked, yet seldom over-driven, and
never irritated, confused, or oppressed. What he did was
accomp1ished with the ease and grace of all-sufficing strength;
with the bountiful cheerfulness of high and unbroken
energIes.

Nor does Charlotte Brontë depart a hair's
breath from her circumambient text when she
describes how Dr. John, despite his professional
preoccupations, found time to gratify the heroine's
taste for sightseeing. There is son1ething like
irrelevancy and inconsistency in the emphasis,
which is laid in l/illelle on Dr. John's perfect
kno,,"ledge of the poi nts of j nterest in that
}
'rench to\vn where, according to the fiction, he
\vas an alien d\veller. Mr. Stnith's exhaustive
acquaintance with London, and his own accounts
of the watchful care with which, at her instance,
he conducted Miss Brontë through the laby-
rinth of its wonders, supply the key to the
riddle.
rheatres, opera-houses) picture galleries,
ne\vspaper offices, prisons, banks, hospitals,
Parlian1ent house, were al1 open to her \vith
hin1 as her guide. "[he chief object of her
adoration, the Duke of Wel1ington, becan1e to
her a familiar figure, owing to Mr. Smith's
ingenious pursuit of hinl at church or in street.
\'Tell might I-Jucy Snowe say of Dr. John:
"Of every object worth seeing he seemed to
possess the Open, sesatne! . . . He took nle to
places of interest in the to\vn, whose names I
23 0

Charlotte BroJJtP in London

had not before so much as heard." It was in
one "happy fortnight" that Dr. John revealed
to Lucy Snowe "more of Villette, its environs
and inhabitants," than months could have shown
her with a less efficient escort. Villette and
London (as discovered to Charlotte Brontë by
Mr. Smith) are here convertible terms.
Dr. John's minutest characteristics as cicerone
are scrutinized with the same transparent signi-
ficance. Dr. John would leave Lucy Snowe in a
picture gallery or museum to study or meditate
alone for two or three hours, and call for her
\vhen his business set him free. He did not
oppress her with his own comment, nor pretend
to connoisseurship which he did not possess.
"He spoke his thought, which \vas sure to he
fresh. H His sensible criticism came from his
own resources. It was not borro,ved nor stolen
fron1 books, nor decked out with dry facts or
trite phrases or hackneyed opinions. Pertinent
details interested him. r-rhere was no superfi-
ciality about his power of observation. His talk
was neither cold nor vague. "He never
prosed. "
A touching charm envelops all the relations
\vhich the book allots to })r. John and his
lllother. Mrs. Bretton has practicaJJy no charac-
teristics which tradition fails to trace in Mr.
Smith's mother, and rnany of Mrs. Bretton's
phrases arc known to have fallen from Mrs.
23 1

,

.

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Memorial
Smith's lips. On her first introduction to
Miss Brontë, Mrs. Smith was fifty-one years
old, and had been a widow less than two years.
Her youthful spirit was undimmed, and her son,
as he often remarked, owed to her shrewdness,
vivacity, and sanguine temper a large measure
of the confidence with which he faced and con-
quered the heavy and complicated responsibilities
that devolved on his young shoulders when his
father died. The perfect understanding which
linked mother and son together Charlotte Brontë
transferred to her canvas with rare Iun1Ïnosity.
In a letter to a friend Miss Brontt: gave her
earliest impression of Mrs. Smith as "a portly,
handsome woman of her age," and of her younger
children as U all dark-eyed, dark-haired, and
having clear, pale faces." This is how Mrs.
Bretton was first brought to the reader's notice'
in Villette:-

She was not young as I remember her, but she was still
handsome, tall, well made, and though dark for an Engli5h-
woman, yet wearing always the clearness of health ia her
brunette cbeek, and its vivacity in a pair of fine cheerful
blac k eyes.

"rhroughout the book Mrs. Bretton is credited
at fifty with U the alacrity and strength of five-
and-twenty," with a self-reliant mood and a
decided bearing. She never, we are told, Inade
a fuss over trifles, and \vas ahvays self-possessed
23 2

Charlotte BroJ/të tÌl London

in the presence of anxiety. Though she could
be peremptory and commanding in manner,
cheerfulness and benevolence possessed her being.
Her son, who honoured her counsel, called her
II old lady." His affectionate regard for her
mingled at their hearth with a playful spirit
of camaraderie. Hints are given in the book
of a difficult pecuniary situation in the affairs of
the family, which Mrs. Bretton and her son
boldly met side by side. The reference to the
half-told episode ends in Villette with these words:
"So courageous a mother, with such a champion
in her son, was well fitted to fight a good fight
with the world, and to prevail ultimately." None
can doubt that Miss Brontë here was reproducing
some confidences given her by Mr. Smith or
his mother of the cia ys when he first took the
helm at Cornhill.
The best tribute that one can pay to Mrs. Smith
is that no more charming type of matronhood
than Mrs. Hretton is known to fiction. Charlotte
ßrontë's final judgment on the hospitality \vhich
mother and son offered her in London is found
in these fine sentences :-

There are human tempers-bland, glowing, and genial-
within whose influence it is as good for the poùr in spirit
to live, as it is for the tèeble in frame to bask in the glow
uf noon. Of the n umber of these choice natures were
certainly both Dr. Bretton's and his mother's. 1'hey liked
to communicate happiness, as some like to occasion misery.
233

\

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Menlorial

They did it instinctive1y, without fuss, and apparently with
little consciousness; the means to give pleasure rose spon-
taneously in their minds. Every day, while I 3tayed with
them, some little plan was proposed which resulted in
beneficial enjoyment.

'-[here are incidents in Villette which are
digressions from the nlain path of the story.
Most of them are memories of Charlotte
ßrontë's sojourns in her publisher's London
household. They at times il11peril the just per-
specti ve of the novel. Yet they have intrinsic
interest from the mode of presentation, and
bear eloquent testimony to the depth of the
impression that her London experience left on
her.
rhe n1Ïnute description of the concert at
the conservatoire in Villette is alive with touches
derived from Charlotte's attentive hearing and
observation of music recitals in London. It
\vill be. remembered that Mrs. Bretton causes
her guest, Lucy Snowe, some alarm by suddenly
bidding her to a concert at which royalty was
expected, and that the girl's lack of suitable
apparel \vas instantaneously met by her hostess's
provision of a new pink dress. I have heard
that the incident, in all the minuteness of its
detail, is true of an identical experience of
Charlotte Brontë at Mrs. Smith's Bayswater
home. Very familiar is the glowing description
of Lucy's visit to the Villette theatre to see
and hear the great tragic actress \T ashti. The
234

Charlotte Brontl' in London

heroine telJs how she was bewitched by that
magician of genius, who drew her heart out of
its wonted orbit, "who disclosed power like a
deep swollen winter river, thundering in cataract,
and bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep
and steely sweep of its descent." Few more
fervid tributes have been paid the histrionic art.
The whole passage is Miss Brontë's reminiscence
of the impersonations of the great French actress
Rachel, which the writer witnessed in Mr.
Smith's company at the London theatre in
Covent Garden.
'fhe Vashti chapter is long and highly strung.
I t closes with a vivid description of an outbreak
of fire in the playhouse. In the panic, Dr. John,
\vith his look of "colnely courage and cordial
calm," does an heroic deed of rescue, which
ultimate! y brings him a wife. The episode is
a curious idealization of a personal experience,
not of Charlotte Brontë, but of Mr. Smith, who
narrated the circumstances to her in a letter.
Charlotte Brontë had been, while in London,
escorted by Mr. Smith to one of those famous
amateur performances at the Duke of Devon-
shire's house in Piccadilly, in which Charles
I }ickens, .J ohn Forster, Wilkie Collins, and
other men of letters were wont occasionally to
take part. The theatre scene owes nothing-the
concert scene in the conservatoire in Villetlt
possibl V o\ves something-to this dramatic enter-
235

Charlotte BrOll!{I: a Centenary Memorial

tainn1ent which Charlotte witnessed with Mr.
Smith. Soon, however, after Charlotte left for
Haworth, Mr. Smith was again present at the
Devonshire House theatricals with his sister and
a lady friend. On this occasion some scenery
on the stage caught fire, and for a few seconds
a panic threatened. Mr. Smith gripped his two
con1panions by the wrist and with all his force
held them to their seats. They complained
bitterly of his roughness, but he helped thereby
to stem the alarm. The smouldering flame was
extinguished and confidence was restored. Mr.
Smith wrote of the episode to Charlotte Brontë,
and his story of the happily slender accident
and of his own conduct bred in her throbbing
tnind the shocks and perils of the burning play-
house in Villette.
'[he last illustration which I gi ve here of
Charlotte Brontë's literary use of her London
visits concerns not Mr. Smith alone, but also
and more immediately l'hackeray, the most
eminent of the authors \vhom he made person-
all y known to his guest.
Thackeray's fame was finally assurcd by the
publication of Vanity Fair in 1847, a fe\v Inonths
hefore the appearance of Jane Eyre. 'l
hackeray's
n1asterpicce filled Miss Brontc: with enthusiastic
ad miration, and the author bccame at once an
adored hero. She dedicated to him the second
edition of Jane
)rt ear] y in 1848. It was \vhile
23 6

Charlotte BrfJntë in LondfJn

Thackeray's second great novel Pendenl1tS \vas
nearing the close of its original tTIonthly issue
that Miss Brontë gratified one of her cherished
ambitions by meeting Thackeray in person.
The occasion was a dinner given by Mrs. Smith
and her son in I 849, when Miss Brontë was
paying then} a second visit. The thrilling event
proved for her a more trying ideal than she
anticipated. " In company," she \vrote in Villette,
"a wretched idiosyncrasy forbade me to see or
feel anything. . . . I never yet sa\v the welJ-
reared child, much less the educated adult, \vho
could not put me to shalne by the sustained
intelligence of its demeanour" in social inter-
course. When she first saw Thackeray face to
face her shyness was invincible. "Excitement
and exhaustion n1ade savage work of me that
evening," she wrote; "\vhat he thought of me
1 cannot tell." Thackeray long renlen1bered
U the trembling little frame, the little hand, the
great honest eyes." Other meetings foJIo\ved
bet\veen the t\VO; but though Miss Brontë lost
her first sense of speechless dread, the personal
association never proved quite congenial on either
side. 'rhackera v and Miss Brontë reverenced
each other's genius \vith genuine sincerity. Hut

rhackeray's easy half-cynical conversation ruffled
her austerity. "-[0 him she presented herself as
"a little austere Joan of _\.rc, nlarching in upon
llS and rebuking our easy Ii ves and our easy
237

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary MeJnorial

morals." His personality would seem to have
both attracted and repelled her. On a morning
can which Thackeray made her at Mr. Sn1Îth's
house, she improved the occasion by reproaching
him with his shortcomings. Mr. Smith has
vivaciousl y described his own unheralded entry
on u the queer scene." The little lady hardly
reached Thackeray's elbow, but she plied the
giant \vith a raking fire of invective before
peace was restored. Miss Bron të declared that
Thackeray behaved on the occasion "like a great
l
urk and heathen; his excuses were worse than
his crimes."
The peculiar1 y severe standard by which she
judged Thackeray has left a curious trace on
Villette. In May [ 85 I, Mr. Smith and his
mother took her to Willis's Rooms to hear
the novelist deliver the second of his lectures
on the Humourists. He recognized her in the:
audience, and after the lecture playfully intro-
duced her to his mother as Jane Eyre, the title
of her passionate heroine. Mr. Smith has re-
corded that she warmlv resented the mode of
"
address. But she was even more embarrassed
by Thackeray's frank appeal to her to tell him
how she enjoyed his performance. So natural
a request disturbed her equanimity, and she had
no word to offer. This slight fleeting encounter
was enshrined a few months later in Villette.
The Professor, Paul Emanuel, there gives, amid
23 8

CharlfJtte Brontë 111 LfJndon

applause, a lecture in the Villette Athénée, at
\vhich the heroine, Lucy Snowe, is present. Of
the Professor's subsequent demeanour Charlotte
Brontë writes thus in her rôle of Lucy Snowe :-

As our party left the Hall, he stood at the entrance ; h

saw and kn
w me, and lifted his hat; he offered his hand
in passing, and uttered the words "Qu'en dites-vous?"-
qu
stion eminently characteristic, and reminding me, ev
n
in this his moment of triumph, of that inquisitive restless-
n
ss, that absence of what I considered desirable self-control
which were among his faults. He should not have cared
just th
n to ask what I thought, or what anybody thought;
but he did care, and he was too natural to conceal, too
impulsive to repress, his wish. Wen! if I blamed his over-

agerness, r liked his naÏveli. r would hav
praised him:
I had plenty of praise in my heart; but, alas! no words
cam
to my lips. Who tas words at the right mom
nt!
I stammered some lame expressions, but was truly glad
when other people, coming up with profuse congratulations,
covered my deficiency with their redundancy.

rhe scene of May 185 I in Willis's H.oom5
IS here faithfully recorded.
Another scene, in which Charlotte Brontë
and Thackeray were the protagonists, was enacted
in Thackeray's house the following month. The
author of ]/ i/lettc found no place for this second
ad venture in her fiction. But all the details
still live freshly in the men10ry of Lady Ritchie,
Thackeray's daughter, who herself played a part
in the incident, and from her lips I learned a
little more than I knew a week or two ago.
239

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Memorial
Both sh
and Mr. Smith have already described
the chief features of the episode with vivacity
in print. But the points of interest, whether
new or old, are varied enough to excuse mention
of it here.
It was one evening in June 1851, when both
novelists were at the zenith of their high repu-
tations, that the giant author of PaltÏty J-I 1 air
gave at his house in Young Street, Kensington J
a small evening party in honour of the 1 i ttle
authoress of 1ane Eyre and Shirley. She \vas
on her longest visit to Mr. Smith and his n10ther
across the Park, and Mr. Smith accolnpanied
her to
rhackera y' s house. Lad y Ritchie. has
written of the excitement with which her father,
her sister, and herself awaited in the hall the
great little lady's arrival. Dressed in a little
barège dress \vith a pattern of faint green moss,
the tiny and delicate woman entered the drawing-
roon1, hanging on her host's arm, "in 111ittens,
in silence, and in seriousness." To meet the
celebrated writer there were gathered, as Ladr
Ritchie lately reminded me, wonlen of the Jnost
brilliant intellect and speech in London. 1"'here
\vert: Mrs. Carlyle, the witty and sardonic wife
of
rhonlas Carlyle; Mrs. Brookfield, the clever
,vife of the fashionable preacher; Mrs. Procter,
overflowing in good spirits and shrewdness,
wife of Charles Lamb's friend and biographer,
Barry Cornwall. All were anxiou
to sho
:
24 0

Charlott
Bronti' ill L011don

resp
ct for the distinguished guest, and were

xhilarated by the expectation of gr
eting
her. But Miss Brontë was under a nervous
spell, and her mental lassitude spread through
the room. A blight settled on the assembly.
Charlotte repulsed the ladies' advances. Mrs.
Brookfield opened conversation with the expres-
sion of a hope that Miss Brontë liked London.
The skirmish ended with the novelist's curt reply)
u I do and I don't. u rrhe gloom thick
ned;
the lamp began to smoke; Thackeray's native
gaiety drooped ; all hearts grew chill. The host,
unable to cope with the silence, as his daughter
tells us, furtively on tiptoe made for the street
door, and sought the consolation of his club.
His daughter, mystified by his retreat, suggested
to the party in the drawing-room that he would
be back soon; but he did not return till his
guests had departed. To Lady Ritchie's memory
Charlotte still presents herself as a shy and prim
little governess who regarded children like her-
self and her sister with a freezing severity. Mr.
Smith, Charlotte's companion at Thackeray's
memorable party, said that as she drove back
with him to his mother's house, she spoke acidly
of the two little girls.-

I I am informed by Miss Millais, daughter of the late Sir
John Everett Millais, President of the Royal Academy, that
her father was among Thackeray's guests at the party givell
in Charlotte Brontf's honour. Millais, then a youne man of

24 1

Q

Charlotte Brolllë: tl Celllellary MenJorial
One's sympathy goes out to this visitor to
London drawing-rooms fron1 the Yorkshire
n100rs. Seasoned Londoners could at a first
glance find little in her that was prepossessing,
and many probably acquiesced in George Henry
Le\ves's ungalJant designation of her as "a little
plain, provincial, sickly-looking old maid." In
her first draft of f/jilet/e, which emhodied so Inuch
of her London experience, she gave herself
(\vho is the heroine) the surname of " Frost,"
altering it to "Snowe n in the final version.
But her coldness was superficial. No good and
charitable judges could misconceive the \varm
enchantment of her genius, and her manner
yielded most of its self-conscious crudity and
asperity to the sympathetic influence of Mr.
Smith's hospitality.
The publication of Villette in January 1853,

(wo-and-twenty, had already made considerable reputation as
a painter. U 1 wish," Miss Millais writes to me on Februarr
28, 1909, "I had written down my father's recollections or
Miss Brontë. He saw her several times in 1851, and must
hav
been introduced to her at the party, which Lady Ritchie
describes wonderfuHy as being so painfu1. He told me very
much the same thing, and said he was taken up by Thackeray,
and Miss Brontë spoke to him. He said her eyes were:
quite remarkable, and afterwards Miss Brontë remained in
appearance his idea of a woman genius. The little lady
, looked tired with her own brains.' He met her afterwards
at Mrs. Procter's, where she was not so shy, and he was
anxious to do a drawing of her, but tound she was alr
ady
engaged to sit to G
orge Richmond."
24 2

Charlotte BroJ1tf ;11 London

brings Charlotte Brontë's relations with London
to a fitting close. The book was begun early
in 185 I, after she had twice-for some weeks
in each of the preceding t\VO years-enjoyed
the hospitality of Mrs. Smith and her son. The
manuscript occupied her at intervals until the
autumn of 1852. When she for\varded at that
season the greater portion to Mr. Smith, her
correspondence gives many signs of anxiety lest
her bold transcription of his character should
cause him discontent. But the wise publisher
kept his counsel, and she as prudently made no
excuses. He pronounced in general terms a
highly favourable verdict. Some of his criticisn1
on details she neglected, and he did not press
thenl. He hinted at some "discrepancy, U "a
want of perfect harmony" in the conception of
Dr. John. There came, too, a suggestion from
London that Dr. John should in the closing
chapters marry Lucy Snowe. Hut no such
intention found place In Charlotte Brontë's
design. "Lucy," she wrote to Mr. Smith,
U must not marry Dr. John: he is far too
youthful, handsome, bright-spirited, and sweet-
tempered; he is a curled darling of nature and
fortune, and must draw a prize in life's lottery.
His wife must be young, rich, pretty: he must
be made very happy indeed. U In the book
Dr. John is mated elsewhere, and he passes out
of Lucy Snowe's life without the exchange of
243

,

Charlotte Brontë: (l Centfnary Memorial
any confidence of the heart. The hetùine's
passion is centred on the grim, great-hearted
professor, Paul Emanuel, who dies shipwrecked
in the Atlantic Ocean. The knell. of death,
not "vedding bells, sounds the epilogue.
When in January 1853 the printing of
Villelte \vas on the point of completion, Miss
ßrontë stayed a fourth and last time under the
Smiths' roof in London. For a crowded fort-
night, sight-seeing was continued under Mr.
Sn1Ïth's escort with all the old ardour. Miss
Brontë was still Mr. Smith's guest on the day
of Pillette's publication, and she was at hand to
hear the burst of unqualified applause with
which London greeted this last of the works to
he published in' her lifetime. Early in February
1853 she left for Haworth, and Mr. Smith did
not meet her again. Later in the year their
t\VO lives underwent almost simultaneously a
momentous change. Mr. Smith became engaged
to the lady whom he married on February I I,
1854, and Miss Brontë accepted the long-urged
suit of her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls. Mr.
Smith and Charlotte Brontë exchanged notes of
mutual congratulation, and with her warm ex-
pressions of good wishes for Mr. Sn1ith's married
happiness Miss Brontë's correspondence with her
publisher seems to have closed. Her own quiet
wedding took place a few months later (June
29, 18 54), and she died on March 3 1 , 1855.
244

Charlotte Brontf in London

Mr. Smith lived on till April 6, 1901. Many
and vast were the new interests which absorbed
him in the long interval bet\veen Charlotte
Brontë's death and his own. Many \vere the
new titles he acquired to fame and affection in
rnidd]e life and in age. He has numerous claims
to live in literary history. He lives there as
the friend of authors so ilJ ustrious as Thackeray
and Browning, whose works he published after
he became Miss Brontë's publisher. He lives
there as the founder of the Cornhill Magazi11e
and of the Pall Mall Gazette, and even more
conspicuously as the public-spirited projector and
proprietor of the Dictionary of Natio,!al Bio-
graphy. But whatever recognition is due to these
achievements, it should never be forgotten by the
literary historian any more than by Charlotte
Brontë's disciples that he was in youth the
original of her sound-hearted, manly, and
sensible Dr. John, who ranks with the most
cheering portaits of masculine virtue that the
hand of genius has drawn.
That tendency, which Charlotte Brontë so
signally exemplifies in Dr. John and Mrs.
Bretton, of interpreting in her novels nlen and
women with whon1 she came into personal con-
tact, is often reckoned a defect in her art. It
is complained, too, that she indulged overn1uch
in self-portraiture, and that her heroines, Jane
Eyre and Lucy Snowe, present with too little
245

Charlotte Brontl.' a Centenary Memorial
qualification her own outlook on life as she
records it in her private correspondence. The
links that bind her fictitious personages to herself
and her living associates cro,vd, indeed, upon th

student of her life, and this " audacious fidelity,"
as one critic tenns it, has been cited as proof of
limitation in her power of invention. But the
point against her may easily be pressed too far.
Every novelist presents in his work something of
himself and his relations \vith kinsfolk, friends,
and acquaintances. Fielding, Miss Austen, Scott,
Thackeray, all faithfully transcribe much of them-
selves and of the life around them. Yet Miss
Brontë's censors, even when they admit the
question to be one only of degree, aver that she
depends more directly and to a larger extent than
any novelists in the first rank 011 the immediate
suggestion of her own sensation and environment.
Neither Sterne's Uncle Toby nor Thackeray's
Colonel Newcome, we are reminded, has an
identifiable model. Both, as far as are known,
were cOlupounded in the crucible of their creators'
imagination. On the other hand, Paul Emanuel,
Miss Brontë's most complex and nlost finished
presentlnent of human nature, is commonly
reckoned a portrait from the life; Dr. John, her
most radiant picture of mankind, is an avowed
delineation of Mr. Smith.
Broadly speaking, the argunlent \vould seent
to merit less attention than has been paid it.
24 6

Charlottt Brant' in London

After all, it matters little whence Charlott(:
Brontë gleaned her material compared with th

uses to which she put it. No artist in fiction
can reach a higher level of achievement than that
of producing an irresistible illusion of life with
its throbbing emotion, its elations, its depressions,
its hopes and fears. A novelist's records of fact
and observation come to little unless they are
clothed in the habiliments of genuine feeling.
In the absence of adequate inlagination, tnen and
women, whence-soever they come, lllove on the
printed page like lay figures. Miss Brontë'g
imaginative endo,vment has been excelled in
breadth and intensity. But her imaginative grip
was strong enough to transmute her studies fronl
the life into breathing entities of flesh and blood.
!)enetrating insight lent "a colossal phlegnl and
force" to the measure of creative faculty \vithin
her scope and the fiery glow of her language
leaves an abiding conviction that, whatever else
she closely studied, she was deeply versed in the
human heart. At any rate she was unflinching
in her pursui t of the truth about her tèllow-
creatures, and it was her patient and honest
scrutiny of Mr. Smith \vhich discovered for her
Dr. John's hunlane and cheery heroisnl.

SIDNEY. LEE.

247

\ I

O
HAWOlaH MUOH.

11". R. Blal/d.
.

To (ilce p. 248.

THE SPIRIT OF THE MOORS

By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE BRONTË SOCIETY, AT
MORLEY, ON JANUARY 18, 19oz.

,

FOREWORD

"THE Spirit of the Moors," written long ago,
roused odd feelings when I came to it afr
sh.
The years have gone, with their \vear and tear;
but I can find nothing to add, nothing to take
away. None but those who are bone of the
"
moor's bone-bred of the heath, reared on its
sun and sleet and tempests-can understand
what we of the free lands know, \vhat no way-
faring, save the Last Adventure, can ever
change. And on the far side of that Adventure
there will be, one thinks, a richer purple on the
heather, colours even nlore mystical and changeful
than the old days gave when sundown canle to
swart old Haworth Moor. In outlying farm-
steads of the heath there are peat-fires burning
still that have been alight for centuries. Night
by night the good ,vife has banked them up,
dusted away the ashes, and come do\vn next day
to stir the dying embers into heat again. I t is
so with the heart of the heath-bred man. His
fires may seen1 to slumber, with dull, grey ash
above thern; but at the core there is a red and
quiet heat, generations old, that cannot die.
25 1

Charlottt Brontl: a Centenary Mtmorial
Out of it all-the moor's splendour and its
storm-its man's strength and woman's coquetry,
and the little, ferny glens that are like children
singing as they gather posies-there was born a
spirit caged by human flesh. It was a hard life
Emily Brontë had, and her body \vould have been
too weak to bear it, if it had.. not been for this
fire at her heart that would not die. Whenever
she was away fronl Haworth Moor, she sickened
for the homeland; it \vas not the ins-and-outs
of parish life she needed, but the spaces of the
heath that swung out, free and faithful, to
Bouldsworth and the further crest of Pendle
Hill.
Out of her travail Wuthering HeightJ was born,
and she died of the adventure. And it was weIJ
,vorth while. She gave her life for that one book,
and it lives on among us-as Shakespeare lives)
who asked for no knighthood but remembrance.
When the dusk comes down on Haworth
Moor, and I walk among remelnbered farmsteads,
and scent the lusty fragrance of the byres, thert
is one scene in WUJhering Heights that returns
to me with the strength and grace of an older
da y. There is little Cathy tapping at the windo\v
of W uthering Heights, asking to be let in,
because it is cold in the Further Lands until her
mate joins her. And there is Heathcliff, dying
hard and sullenl y, with no faith in the Beyond
to help him through the time of separation.
2
2

'The Spirit oj' 1M Moors

At the end of all, there are primroses, dewy-
eyed with hope and faith in the long hereafter.
As long as there is a strip of Northern soil
untouched by mills and smoke-as long as the
heather-lands roam wide and free, a sanctuary for
the souls that reach out and beyond the crude
din of macl :nery-there will be the tapping of
little Cathy at the window, and smell of the
heath, and the magic of old dreams.

HALLIl ELL SUTCLIFFE.

Jill, 19 16 .

253

THE SPIRJ'f OF 'fHE MOORS

J T has been well said that \vhen truth left the
valleys, it took refuge on the hills. From times
of old the hills have been the mothers of con-
q uering sons ; from times of old the hills have
sheltered every primitive virtue, of loyal love
and worthy hate, of mothers' tenderness and
fathers' pride; from of old the soldiers of the
\vorld have gone do\vn from the hill-tops and
have prevailed. This is true of the hills \vhere
cattle graze, and sheep clip the springy grass;
it is truer still of the moorland spaces \vhere
grass is hard in the winning, where ling and rush
and bilberry fight hand-to-hand with the acres
wrested from the heath.
Consider! Flodden Field-that last decisive,
desperate fight-was won by hill-fed thew and
sinew of our Craven men. It is the same through
history. The race has not been to the swift;
the victors have been slow farmer-fellows, who
have learned endurance fronl wind and rain and
cutting sleet, who have been taught the exquisite,
long lesson of patience under heavy odds. In
254

'1 he Spirli of the Moors

kil1 of arms alone the farmer stands supreme-
the world's history is his history, and seed and
growing blade and harvest-time have been with
him, like a benediction, when the ploughs hare
shaped itself into a pike, and the sickle straight-
ened itself into a broad and hilted sword.
Patience, infinite patience. Toil, infinite toil.
Faith beyond the limits of bread, which is oft-
times doubtful. These are the moorland virtues.
rrhe very ling, the crowberry, the late-budding
bracken, show the same tough fibre; the men
of the moors, the plants of the moors, are one
in spirit and endurance. What would come to
the ling and the bracken, if they had no heart to
Ineet the winter storms? What \vould chance
to the moorland farmers if they sank, as lesser
n1en would do, beneath the weight of cold in
winter, of drought in summer, of peevish autumn
storms? Life is a fight to the moor-man always,
and for this reason he is staunch in hatred, loyal
in love, quick to bear arms against the adversary.
He is no saint, this man of the moors. He
is no sinner. He feels the wind in his teeth,
and he fights it; and now and then he is answer-
able for dread deeds, which lesser folk can nei ther
understand nor judge. One knows of midnights
-historic now, so far as country tales can
Inake them-when the Squire drank level with
the poacher, and battered faces smiled at recol-
lection of some moon-mad prank played long
255

,

Charlott
Bronli'.. a C
nl(llary Mt1110rial

ago. We know of superstitions which set the
hair on end when passing lonely heaths. There
is the glamour and the terror of the Dog on
all the moonlit wastes of heath that lie between
Haworth and old Bouldsworth Hill. It is a
land of strength, and fear, and witchery.
And yet the voice of grouse and plover, of
snipe and moor-fowl, was stronger than man's
voice till Emily Brontë came. The outer world
knew nothing of the storm and fret of Haworth
Moor till Wuthering Heights was born. 1-' he
ling had bloomed in purple glory-the crow-
berry had ripened its black-purple berries-dawn
and sunset had weaved glory from the waste-
and none had told the world how sweet these
things can be. And then she came, and gave
us lf7uthering Heights, and died before the song
in her had reached its deepest compass.
These things of the heath are hard to speak
about; religion of any type is hard in the
telling to one who holds the faith; and to
attempt praise of Emily Brontë is to praise the
purple of dawn, the gold and red of sunset, the
full and satisfying glory of nature in her highest
moods. She came at a time when the novel
was at last the true expression of mind and soul
and heart; she came also at a time when the
older traditions still held a dying power, when
the green hue of sentimentality sicklied o'er the
live passions of bare human nature; yet she
25 6

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The Spirit if the MlJors

knew what she knew, and never once did she
waver in the expression of her faith.
Emily Brontë is the Joan of Arc of literature.
Joan of Arc had all the trappings of evident
romance. She rode in armour to the fray, and,
a woman, fought \vith men in open battle. She
is a picture in history such as the populace Jove;
she has the limelight on her always, and it is
easy for us all to applaud her heroism. Emily
Brontë had none of these things; she was a
pale, great-boned, unhappy girl who shunned her
fellows; she had no single outward gift that
could appeal to a man's senses; she knew no
lover; yet, with it all, she has dra\vn for us so
stupendous a picture of hun1an love, of human
hate, of hùman yearning after the impossible,
that 111en and women, who have known passion,
know also that she held passion's secret in her
pen. Whence can1e it? Whence comes the
pregnant sap in springtinle trees, whence comes
the unalterable n10therhood of kine, of birds at
mating-time, of women in their happiness?
None can tell. I t is God-given, and that is all
we know.
We who have been playnlates with the heath,
and bedfellows to the whistling winds and rain
and winter snow of Haworth Moor, kno\v that
the dullest line of Wutheril1g Heights has that
deepest interest of all-the interest of naked
passion and naked truth. It is the one book

257

R

Charlottt Brontë: a Centtnary Mtmorial

of the world, in that it could not, in a single
word, have been written otherwise. It is the
one book of the world, in that it shows the moor-
Jife, as it were, reflected in a tarn of crystal
clearness. It has no morality, it advocates no
creed ; its teaching is the teaching of the wind
as it sweeps from Lancashire across old Haworth
Moor; it is built upon the rock of Nature,
who is pitiless and tender, angelic and demoniac,
all in the one breath. The wor Jd has bowed a.t
the shrine of many conquerors-Cæsar, AJex-
ander, and the rest-but there is one Heathcliff,
and one only. Not Alexander at his greatest-
when he was sighing for f
esh worlds to conquer
-could have imagined a hero of Heathcliff's
fibre. Not Cleopatra at her softest could hav

pictured a heroine so tender, so illusive, and so
com plete, as Cathy. The thing is wi tchery.
Take 11:eathcliff frotn his surroundings, and
what have \ve? A morose, self-cen tred savage,
who loves his fleshly idol with a passion scarcely
decent. But set Heathcliff in the midst of bog
and heath and \vaving bracken, and he's a man
framed after the likeness of a god. He knows
no la\v, save of the wind and the whistling
plover; he knows no obstacle to love, save of
the woman's heart; he is complete, a man in
the swiftness and the surety of his passions-
and yet a superhuman creature, in that he is
never less than himself, never false by word or
25 8

'The Spirit qf' the MIJOY.f

deed to the past that lies behind him, to the
fate that lies ahead.
Indeed, it is this completeness of each character
in the book that makes Wuthering Heights a
masterpiece of art. The natural truth-of scene-
drawing and of the play of passion-alone would
have held us spellbound; but by its art-a
delicacy of art surprising in so rough a tale-
it clainls our quieter love upon a second-nay,
a twentieth reading. The very looseness of the
narrative, the casual cooling of a stranger to the
moors, and his interrupted sittings with the
teller of the tale, all help to conceal the st
ady
handling of a story such as no brain but Emily
Brontë's could have conceived, such as no pen
but hers could have set down. It is not Heath-
cliff only who satisfies us; it is not Cathy only;
it is each actor in this moorside dran1a, whether
a farm hind or a nurse, a Squire of the valley-
lands, or a hulking ploughboy of the uplands.
Joseph, Pharisee, farm-hand, and misanthrope,
\vho thrives on a sort of rough-edged joy in his
own righteousness and in the sins of other folk,
is as much a bit of Haworth Moor as the rocks
that underlie its heather and the sleeting wind
that whistles from the wastes of Stanbury. NeJJie
the nurse, a little prim, a little hard in the shell
and vastly soft in the kernel, full of housewife's
maxims and the bustling, tart satisfaction with
things as they are, which distinguishes the woman
259

\

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary MemfJrial
of her hands-she, too, is ready at this day to
grer:t you and to bre\v a cup of tea for you in
that happy, storm-swept land which lies between
the edge of Yorkshire and the edge of Lan-
cashire.
And what of Cathy? .L\.h, there's the south-
west wind about her! "rhe south-west wind,
that comes in sunln1er down the \vooded denes
and clefts of our grim moorland, the wind that
has the softness of the flowering ling about it,
the bitter-sweet of peat and bogland, the nameless
scents that are born every year, clean, sharp and
fragrant) when the tnoorland flowers awake,
and the primrose blo\vs in sheltered hollows,
and every n1Ïstal, shouldering green fields, gives
out its witching odour of the kine. She is just
this, the heroine of Wuthering Heights, and we
might as well criticize the wind of summer as
take her character to pieces, bit by bit, as is our
modern fashion, and set a price upon each word
and action. Like Heathcliff, she is above
praise or censure; her \viJJ is the will of the
moor-top and the sky, and \ve are satisfied.
Weare more; we are enamoured, and IV utheri1Jg
Heights is at war with wonlankind in that we
ciare not, j n our ideal of her sex, stoop lower
than this Cathy, with her strange eeriness and
stranger warmth of breathing flesh and blood,
with her perverseness that is sinless and her
passion that is strained-as it were i through
260

The Spirit of the Moors

gossamer threads of fairy-weaving-untiJ it
seems, not passion, but clear water from the
well which is needed to dilute the rough-edged
wine of Heathcliff's frenzy. She is a woman
to make men lightly sell their birthright-and
seJl it with a laugh upon their lips. .L\.11 feeling
comes back ultimately to odours, and Cathy is
to us what lavender is at flowering time, what
rosemary is, with all its s\veetness of remetllbrance,
what wild-roses are ,vhen they flower between
th
drooping tendrils of the honeysuckle.
Perhaps she is the truest note in all the book,
as possibly the short-lived sun1n1er of the up-
lands is the interpreter of storn1S that have
gone before, of tempests that wiJ1 surely follo\v.
Amid the roughness, the violence, the blows
and oaths and hardships of the tale, as ,ve get
these brief, ensnaring g1impses of the girl, as
we hear the pulse of Heathcliff beat high and
strong, and see the love-look in his gipsy eyes,
we are aware of sunshine and the scent of hay.
Heathcliff, for his part, ,vas not born of the
n10ors, and in this, too, there is a strange
surety of instinct. Had he been I11oor-born, he
would have: been tied bv old tradition; as it
was, he came, a nameless ,vaif picked up in
Liverpool, and ran wild about the heath with
no responsibility to forbears or to famil y pride.
How that picture of his con1Ìng to the Heights
lives \vith us! 1"\ swarthy slip of Pagandom,
261

Charlotte Brontl': a C
JJtenary Me1l10rial
brought home on a dark night beneath the
master's cloak. Even at this first monlent of
our seeing him, we feel the tragedy of after-
years loom mistily ahead; from the first he is
at war with alJ upon the moor, except little Cathy
and the doting master; from the first he is
acquiescent under ill-treatnlent, so long as he
wins his point at last; from the first, too, he
takes up the thread of that passion for Catherine
Earnshaw which is to gro\v to hitter fruit one
day. He grows fronl inch to inch-good bone
and muscle, all of it-and lives upon the nloors,
and sucks the nleaning of the \vind and storm as
other lads suck lollipops. Nothing affrights hinl,
except grace and gentleness; when he and Cathy
roan1 down to Linton Manor-a well-matched
pair of fly-by-nights--and the dog fixes its curved
teeth in the girl's ankle, he is afraid, lad as he:
is, only for her pain, and tries, with a cool eye
for ways and means which older men might
envy, to force open the foam-licked jaws with
the nearest lunlp of rock. \Vhen he is beaten,
bruised by the tnaster's jealous son, he never
whimpers-nor forgets. He is daunted only
,vhen Cathy-little Cathy, who had been his
guardian angel and his scapegrace playmate-
comes back after a five-\veeks' visit to the Lintons)
all dainty in her frippery, and ll1inded to play
the great lady as only a child can play it. fhen,
for the first time, Heathcliff is afraid, as a man
262

'Yhe Spirit
l. tht Moors

is afraid of crushing a flower beneath his thick,
nailed boots; for the first time he is jealous, with
a premonition that she will nevermore be to him
what she has been. The rift grows wider. On
one side is the girl, dainty, generous, headstrong;
on the other is the lad, who has never learned
that even flower-like lassies are to be won. by
long endurance. He is as the wind and God's
moorland made him; so long as he is free to blow
whither he listeth, he is musical and gay; but,
soon as he is thwarted, his note turns to sullen
wildness, as of tempest beating on thick, hill-top
\valls. Wider the rift grows and wider; he sees
the gentler folk from the valleys con1e mincing
and smirking into that grim house of W uthering
Heights which asked for sterner visitors; he sees
his Cathy grow daily fonder of soft speeches,
and soft clothing, and soft ways; small wonder
that he fled into that dismal prison-house called
" Self," and showed the sullen bars of hate to
all intruders, even to Cath y of the flower-like:
face and dancing heart.
Our love for Heathcliff would have gon
had
he done otherwise. 'rhe girl loved him-yes,
even in those days sht loved hin1 I-and she
played with her love as \vomen will play with

pple-bloom in Spring, forgetful that they are
robbing earth of her just harvest. Because her
love was in blossom only, not in fruit, she chost:
to play with it ; and afterwards the dead petals
26 3

,

"

Charlotte Brontë.- a Centenary Memorial

showered about her, and she wondered, all in a
maid's way, \vho had shaken the branches of
that Tree of Love. And Heathcliff, mean-
while-blunt, a man-did not ask whether this
were sport or earnest; all things were earnest
to him-blows, and winter snow, and promise
of the harvest-and he thought that Cathy was
forgetting. He had a right to think so; and
there was none at W uthering Heights well-versed
enough in trickery to tell him of the gulf that
lies between what a woman feels and what she
shows. His misery turned inward, like a
malignant growth ; he must have al I or nothing
-so much the moors had taught this gipsy-and,
since he had lost some of Cathy, he would forfeit
all that lay between herself and him. He ceased
to wash-he did not speak when company was
forced upon him-he did not trouble to un-arch
his sullen, gipsy brows, nor to let his heart speak
out of the dark, gipsy eyes. And most of all
he showed those outward signs of inward misery
when Cathy, mistress of his fate, was near. And
she, who had learned no lesson such as Eve
learned after her girlhood was over and done
with, must flout him for a boor. And so the
gulf widened, deepened, and Edgar Linton-a
toy-terrier of a nlan-can1e walking dovrn her
side of the valley.
She n1arried Linton. It was inevitable, pre-
destined. And she repented; that, too, was
26 4

'l'he Spirit
f the Moors

predestined and inevitable. No throstle in its
wicker cage was ever wilder with its wings against
the bars than Catherine Linton when she learned
what wedded life must be henceforward. She had
known the winds and the rains, even as Heathcliff
had known them; she had lived with men, who,
it is true, swore hard upon occasion, but who
understood what is written upon the naked heart
of life; and yet she was mated with one who,
if he had gentler manners, had also a vastly
tender skin. Heathcliff-her woman's instinct
told her that-had loved her with a man's passion;
her husband loved her as a petted spaniel loves
its mistress.
And so a second rift grew wide and wider,
and surely the wife was not to blame. Linton
should have mated in the valleys; he had no
place with such as Catherine. True he came out
in braver colours later, but over-late to convince
us ; and that, too, is a triumph of character-
drawing, for the author never meant that we
should see any mate but Heathcliff for Catherine
of the Heights. Like the wind, his only tutor J
Heathcliff disappears after Cathy's marriage; like
the wind he reappears, and woos the sister of his
rival; like the wind that riots in the autumn,
he overthrows well-garnered stacks, and \vhile
he woos the sister of his enemy, he snatches a
wild meeting fron1 his enen1Y's wife-from Cathy,
who was his by all laws of fellowship and love-
265

"

Charlotte Brontë: a L'elJtellary MtlJlOriai
and leaves poor Edgar Linton, with a flicker of
late-found bravery, to marshal his gardener and
.his stable-boys in battle array. And through it
all the author's mind is clear-she knows that
Heathcliff was robbed of his mate, and she deals
out the punishment, even as fat
deals out its
punishment, to innocent and guilty. Never,
perhaps, in any book has there been less regard
for obvious and untrue conclusions; there is no
moralizing, no appeal to blind maxims and blinder
powers of vengeance, because Heathcliff comes to
claim his own; the facts are stated-facts inevit-
able as the storms that lay the hard-won harvest
low-and we are left to gather in our fingers the
threads of a story inevitable, true, and therefore
just. What temptation would have beset a
writer of weaker fibre to point, at this juncture:t
a moral so trite as to be wearison1e! The toy
terrier of a husband might have been set in a
frame of martyrdom, and all his weakness for-
gotten amid a lurid tale of all his wrongs and all
poor Heathcliff's villanies. But Emily Brontë
is ahovt: such meannesses: she tells what is, and
in her heart, as we have said, she knows that
Heathcliff is the worthier man. As for Cathy-
unhappy, ill-n1ated, full of bodily weakness and
aware of a new life in her, a life that is not hers
and Heathcliff's, but hers and Linton's-Cathv
knows not what to say when her gipsy-lover
comes and shatters, \vith a single kiss, the
266

The Spirit of tht Moors
mockery of wedded life which she has scarcely
attempted to render real. Cathy knows not what
to say; women rarely do if there is anything
at stake; but what she feels is rendered clear by
a hundred subtle touches.
Oh, it is wrong, according to straight lines
and maxims ordered like a figure of geometry !
Yet she had as little power to help her gladness
as the thrush has, when for a moment it sees
its cage door opened and feels the singing wind
of heaven come beating in. Heathcliff was hers,
and she was his; they had wedded long ago,
with the hill-tops for their church, with laverock,
grouse, and plover for their choir; and no
haphazard marriage of the flesh could alter that.
Mark the clean way of it. This scene with
J-Ieathcliff, who C0l11eS to supplant the lawful
husband; there's never a touch of squalor or
of sin in it; it is no vulgar intrigue between a
woman tired of constancy and a nlan who preys
upon his neighbour's property; it is a scene of
natural tempest, of unavoidable, clean storm,
as when the clouds, full-charged with lightning,
and weary, like the kine at milking-time for
c:asing of their burden, break out in rain and
shattered tempest-wrack. 'rht: man and the:
\VOnlan do not halt to ask if they love each
other; as well might they question the number
of their linlbs, or the knowledge that they lived.
l'his one scene is the triumph and the key-
26 7

Charlotte Brolltë.. a CentelJa,.y Melnorial
note of the book; and after it is done, after
Heathcliff has vanished, gipsy-like, into the larger
spaces of th
moor, after Cathy lies down upon
a narrow bed and courts deliri urn, we realize
the \vonder and the witchery of this passion
which is truth. Cathy has lost what little sense
of \vor1dly prudence she has known; she lies
there in her weakness, and her heart is given
to us, naked, plain to be read. And over that
suffering, wilful, madly beating heart, there is
\vritten, across and across, the one name Heath-
cliff. When she remembers her husband, she
despises and is weary of him; and again she
goes over well-remembered scenes that she and
Heathcliff have lived through together. What
they dreamed, of fairies and of hobgoblins on
l}enistone Crag; how they had listened to the
wind as it blew through the stark old house
of W uthering Heights; little snatches of moor-
lore, learned long ago in company \vith her nlate.
Perhaps none but a moor-man can understand
the feeling that one passage from this drama
always wakes in one. It is after Cathy has lain
long abed, fasting and fevered; she takes the
piJ10w between her little teeth and tears it into
shreds-hut the scene cannot be described in
any other \vords but Emily Brontë's.

Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewild
rInent to
madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth ; then raising
268

The Spirit of the ]VIoors

herself up all burning, desired that I would open the window.
We were in the middle of winter, the wind blew strong from
the north-east, and I objected.
Both the expressions flitting over her face, and the changes
of her moods, began to alarm me terribly; and brought to
my recollection her former illness, aud the doctor's injunction
that she should not be crossed.
A minute previously she was violent: now, supported on
one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey her, she seemed
to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from the
rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet
according to their different species: her mind had strayed to
other associations.
" That's a turkey's," she murmured to her5elf; "and this
is a wild duck's; and this is a pigeon's. Ah, they put
pigeons' feathers in the pillows-no wonder I couldn't die!
Let me take care to throw it on the floor when I lie down.
And here is a moorcock's; and this-I should know it among
a thousand-it's a lapwing's. Bonny bird; wheeling over
our heads in the n1Ïddle of the moor. It wanted to get
to its nest, for the clouds touched the swells, and it felt rain
coming. This feather was picked up from the heath, the
bird was Hot shot-we saw its nest in the winter, full of little
skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones
dare not come. T made him promise he'd never shoot a
lapwing after that, and he didn't. Yes, here are more!
Did he shoot my lapwings, Nellie? Are they red, any of
them? Let me look."
u Give over with that baby-work
" I interrupted, drag-
ging the pillow away, and turning the holes to\\iards the
mattress, for she was removing its contents by handfuls.
Ie Lie down and shut your eyes; you're wandering. There's
a mess! The down is flying about like snow."

That gives us all the past in half a dozen
lines. The latent cruelty of Heathcliff, .the
26 9

,

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

power of Cathy over his cruelty, the intimate,
deep knowledge of the moors they shared-all
are brought before us as the scent of heather
brings back forgotten scenes, forgotten hopes,
forgotten lessons taught us by our mother,
Nature. That mention of the lapwing-it is
almost weird in its very fitness, like the keystone
of a graceful arch. The peewit is a well-nigh
sacred bird to the moor-folk, for it voices their
own feelings; and Heathcliff, untrammelled
by tradition, is restrained in cruelty by the
voice of one who has learned, from the far-off
fathers, the sanctity of the shrill-piping lap-
wing.
What is the charm this heath-born girl holds
in her pen-point? She cannot go astray;
whether she pictures the strength of passion, the
weakness of glad self-surrender, the least first
signs of springtime or of storm upon the heath,
she always satisfies. She knows, and she is
true to knowledge; she gives us an the things
that are, and passes by the things that valJey-
folk count worthy, with a courage scarcely
human.
They tell us Emil y Brol1të never mixed with
her fellows. Her own sister gravely states that
she knew as little of the world's life as a nun
knOW5 of the folk who pass her convent gate.
Yet they forget that smoke betokens fire, that
Wuthering Heights could never have been
270

Th
Spirit oj" th
Moors

written by one who did not know th
s
cret
places and the secret passions of the n100r; they
forget, too, that Emily Brontë, even in death,
,vas solitary, reliant, and alone. Her own family
-they have confessed it-feared to skirt the
fence that she had raised between herself and her
own class; yet they did not guess that she
sought her own companionship in her own way,
and that the farmer-folk of Ha\vorth were more
to her than all the genteel worldlings who gather
round a parsonage. She did not care for
parochiaJ life; the buzz of scandal, the clatter
of tea-cups, all the polite instruments that we
have devised for destroying our neighbours'
happiness and our own, had neither interest nor
attraction for her. She was silent, unapproach-
able, amid such matters; but, once her feet
\vere set upon that narrow and that lone green
way which led towards the heath, she was her-
self. Proof, beyond the pages of W uthering
Heights, is not needed to convince us that she
knew, as a native knows 1 t, that wilder world
of ling, and peat, and marsh, and lone farm-
steading, which lies beyond and above the world
of little folk. Her dialect alone is witness to
her knowledge; it is true to the old folk-speech
of Haworth and Stanbury Moor, in the days
before steam and all its million evils came to
undo the primitive, straight honesty of the hill-
IDen. Her knowledge of the springs of thought
27 1

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Memorial

is true. Her instinct of the things that matter,
as apart from the things that serve to pass an
idle hour, is direct as a north wind blowing over
winter snow.
It is part of fate's hunlour that truth should
be late-born; it is part of fate's humour that
Charlotte Brontë should have written, almost
wholly in apology, her preface to If/uthering
Heights.
rhe 'prentice hand pleaded for leniency
towards his master's work, and what was
written in flame and snloke of a soul's travail
,vas sent out to the world with a foreword
written by one who, great in her own way, had
yet no intimacy with the deeper springs of life,
of passion and of destiny.
The book itself, by grace of fortune, is still
with us. "[he spirit of the nloors is still with
us, though, like the Covenanters of old, it
hides among the highest hill-tops. Perhaps it
would be well to finish here, with these as our
last words; yet someho\v there is something
left still to be said of Wutllering lIeights-and
something, too, of that hapless brother of Emily
Brontë's who has found few kindly judges in
the \vorld.
Again the book must speak for itself, as a
weaker page cannot speak. Soon after the crucial
scene \vith Heathcliff, soon after those wild
memories of da ys gone by, wt:. fi.nd. Edga,:
Linton in his wife's chamber.
27 2

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Jo

-fl<

THE WITHIX:::i (WUTHERIXG HEIGHTS).

To f.lee p, l72.

'The Spirit of the Moors

At first sh
gav
him no glance of recognition; he was
in visible to her abstracted gaze.
The delirium was not fixed, however; having weaned her

yes from contemplating the outer darkness, by degrees she
centred her attention on him, and discovered who it was
that held her.
"Ah! you are come, are you, Edgar Linton?)) she said
with angry animation. " You are one of those things which
are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted,
never! J suppose we shall ha\Te plenty of lamentations now
-1 see we shall-but they can't keep me from my narrow
home out yonder: my resting-place, where I'm bound before
Spring is over! There it is: not among the Lintons, mind,
under the chapel roof, but in the open air with a headstone;
and you may please yourself whether you go to them or
come to me! "
"Catherine, what have you done?" commenced the
master. "Am I nothing to you any more? Do you love
that wretch Heath-"
"Hush!" cried Mrs. Linton. "Hush, this moment!
You mention that name and ] end the matter instantly, by
a spring from the window! What you touch at present you
may have; but my soul will be on that hill-top before you
lay hands on me again. I don't want you, Edgar: I'm
. "
past wanting you.

Again the true note is struck. "What you
touch at present you may have; but my soul will be
on that hill-top before you lay your hands on me
again!" There we have the expression of wifely
duty-of bodily duty, that is, because she had
never had more to promise Edgar Linton. 1-' here
we have the yearning for the hiJl-tops, always the
heathery, curlew-haunted hill-tops. There, too,
273 s

Charlotte BroJJtë: a Centenary M(lllOriai

we have that choice of burial ground which
afterwards, and in a cruder fashion, was to mark
the last moments of Heathcliff. Even in death
they were not divided, so far as the soul and
aching heart went; and their n1arriage, so far
as this world went, was to be consummated up
yonder on tht: heights, when clay met clay
against the riven coffin boards. Ah, surely this
was love-love of the old fashion, that dreaded
neither storm nor charnel-house. We have
gro\vn too weak for such strong nleat perhaps;
yet surely the dullest ears can hear the music
of it, and the truth. As \vell deny the wind's
power, or the sun's; this love of Catherine and
Heathcliff falls upon us, note by note, with a
persuasion which is neither man's nor Vroman's,
but which belongs to the singing wind, and the
big, wild voice of a Nature who will have her
way.
If Nature did not lead Emily Brontë-nay,
rather go hand in hand with her-\vho did?
Follow the after-plot of Wuthcring Heigh/s,
and mark its conclusion, inevitable, satisfying.
Cathy dies, and henceforth there is the one big
figure in the book-the figure of Heathcliff,
who remembers-remembers,. as better men
forget. There is no second love for him; there
could be none; and again it is inevitable that
he should grow soured beyond belief, savage
beyond conception, when all that spells the world
274

The Spirit of the Moors

to hinl is gone. His gaze is upon this world,
not upon the promise of the next; lose Cathy
in the flesh, and he loses her for ever, is Heath-
cliff's guiding thought; and agai n he snarls,
and growls, and curses, just as the north wind
does bet\veen the bleak wall-crevices of Haworth
Moor.
Yet in Heathcliff, too, there is that stuff of
soul \vhich ranges out heyond the coffin, the
mould, the blind wornl that hides beneath the
sod. \Ve are all of us, just now and then, a
little greater than the flesh that hems us in;
and Heathcliff, stronger I to the last than we
poor folk can be, is greatest at the moment of
his death.
We wilI not pry upon those final scenes; we
wiJI not dissect them, nor profane; enough
that, amid such gruesonle odours of the coffin
and the flesh dissolving into earth, we still hear
that clear, triumphant note which Cathy sounded
long ago. Their souls are on the hill-top

still-hers and Heathcliff's - while Linton's
crouches in the valley-lands, away out of sight
of the woman he married, of the lover he had
robbed of his true mate. Again and again, in
these last scenes, there is that weird insistence of
the spiritual, that plain, unswerving treatment of
the flesh which is our prison-house. Heathcliff
-Heathcliff the morose, the cruel, the Ishmael
anlong his kind-confesses to his faith in ghosts.
275

.

Cilarlotte Brolltë.' a G"entellary Me1l10rial
So does every nlan who has walked lonely on the
lonely heath, who has felt the fret of spirit
underlying the palpable, cold bluster of the
stornl. Heathcliff has faith in ghosts; he has
faith that spirits stalk this cruder earth; above
aU, he has faith that souls can marry, though
hodies have been long kept asunder. He dies,
and is laid to rest, with the gorse and the
waving bracken and the tough, sweet-scented
hay above him, beside the body of his mate.
And so this book of gloom and tragedy ends
happily; it ends, as the \vorld of heath revolves
beneath the s'tars, inevitably; it ends with a
sense of the world's injustice, and the hope of
recompense; and our hearts go out in yearning
for the happiness of Heathcliff the misunder-
stood, and of Cathy, who is the daintiest heroine
of fiction or of fact.
A lesser artist would have stayed here, content
with her own triumph. But Enlily Brontë goes
farther. She has finished her book; and, yet,
by quiet and quieter movements of her music
she leads us into that atmosphere of peace in
which she knows her favourites - Heathcliff
and Cathy-must rest. Again we are con1pelled
to reverence, not the conception alone, not the
development alone, of W uthering Heights, but
the sure courage that will not stoop to end
where recognized laws say" end "-which goes
forward to the true, inevitable finish. Lower
27 6

The Spirit of the MlJlJrs

and lower sounds the music; gentler and gentler
grows the voice of that wild tempest which has
wrecked the peace of Haworth Moor; till, at
the last, we have a passage that is but a whisper
of the summer breeze among the bells of heath.
"I lingered-"
So the book ends, and there's never a word
too much, never a word too little, in the \vhole
of it.
Etnily Brontë! What is there more to say
of her? The bravest and the s\veetest soul that
ever saw the truth and \vrote it down. She is
neither man nor won1an; a woman could never
have conceived the book, a lllan could never
have wrought such subtle lines of tenderness,
and truth, and purity, as she has done. Like
Heathcliff himself, she is above and beyond us;
she is a creature of the moors, a foster-daughter,
as it were, of Nature; and hers are the secrets
that running waters murmur as they wash their
peaty banks-the secrets that the lapwing shares
-the secrets of things old and unalterable,
hidden deep beneath the outer fret and struggle
of what we call the world of progress.
She must, we are sure, have kept always a
warm heart for her brother Branwell. She was
not one to blatne lightly, for she had \vatched
the hill-top thorn gro\v crooked under stress of
western gales, and she understood, as few can
\1nderstand, the great prilneval forces that shape
277

Char/ott
Brolltë.' Ll CenteJlary Mtnzorial
both trees and men into the final mould. Talent
this unhappy lad possessed; it may be genius;
but he was cursed by waywardness, and drifted,
like one lacking oars and rudder, across the
waters of his days- drifted, and left a ripple
here and there to nlark his going, and vanished
into silence. Yet he, too, has his place as a
foundation-stone of aU his sister's work. It \vas
Emily's part to be steadfast, to sufter and be
strong; it was Branwell's to riot and be weak;
yet had there been no Bran well Brontë, to give
a human meaning to the \vild traditions, the
wilder stories, on which his sister fed, there had
been no Wuthering l-Ieights. Branwell is dead,
and the time to judge his faults is past; unhappy,
sinning, seeking he knew not \vhat by tangled
and by miry paths, his nlemory has still for us
some magic, some touch of spoiled romance.
Nor was his life in vain; for out of his very
sins and follies his sister olade Olore threads than
one, from which to weave the finished piece called
Wuthering Heiglzts.
And now to finish. To say in a word what
defies the intrusion of any spoken word. 1'0
talk of that "Spirit of the Moors" which is
strong as rock, yet airy as a dream. It is a little
corner of the world, this heath that lies between
WycoJJer and Oxenhope, between Haworth and
old Hebden Brigg; yet somehow it is the touch-
stone of all ronlance, and spaciousness, and
27 8

:rht Spirit of tht Moors

glamour. Never a swart farm-bigging, shoulder-
ing the lonely hill-top, but has its story; never
a wrinkled slope of pasture but knows a Saga-
tale, of hunters who hunted the forbidden hare,
of keepers who c2ttue to fight, of battles that
,vere fierce, and fair, and truculent; never a
sheltered dene but smiles at n1emories of lad and
lass, and the ways and songs of mating tinles
long-dead. Out yonder is W ycoller Dene,
whither the \vooers used to \valk, once upon a
day, frorn distant Oxenhope, for the Dene was
full of bonnie maids as a ,vinter thorn is full
of haws; and in Wycoller we have as much
of legend as would fill a country-side in an y 121nd
less favoured than our Craven. 'fhe Cunliffes
who lived, and feasted, and were merry in that
dismantled hall-the Cunliffe who lay a-d ying,
and ordered his favourite pair of fighting-cocks
to be brought to the bed-foot, and died cheering
on the winning bird-that other far-off Cunliffe
who rides on the West wind of stormy nights,
rides, a ghost on a ghostly horse, all down the
Dene, and bet\veen the guardian ho]]ies of the
doorway, and up the stone steps into the bed-
roonl of the wife he loved and wronged and
killed three centuries ago or so. These things
are fronl of old, and from of old the wind brings
back to us, as we stand beside Wycoller's stream,
the fragrance and the strength of happier days.
The violets blew softer then, the primroses looked
279

\

.

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Menlorial

outward from their nooks with a deeper a.nd
more wistful look in their great eyes; the blood
ran redder in men" s veins, for love or hate, and
women were as full of panting life as thorn-set
roses are when the sun is in their hearts. For-
gotten no,v, as a dead man out of mind, is old
WycoHer Dene; so much the better, for we have
time-as love has time aOlong the ruins-to sit
and dreanl, and let that old-time madness of the
blood rise once again and take us captive. 11he
crowded ways of men-the street's confusion,
the statesman's harvest of clapping hands, the
hard-,von ease of houses bigger than our needs
-an these are blown away like smoke by the
winds of W ycoller , an d our eyes are opened.
and we know. Winter, or pride of sunlmer, all
is one. There is never a day so stark, so sleety.
or so dread, in W ycoJIer l)ene, but has its
stcady sunshine-the sunshine of Romance, \vho
is man's best friend on earth.
Yet we can leave Wycoller, and go east across
the pathless moor, and yet have witchery with
liS Ii ke a constant friend. Here the moor-fowl
nested yester-year, and there the bog has tales of
death to tell, if it could but open its dunlb t
greed y tnouth; up yonder, w,here the heather
hugs the sky, there was treasure hid when Prince
Charlie came marching west of Pendle Hill, and
when the Stanbury folk \vere doubtful lest he
and his Hielandnlen should COlne nearer still.

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The Spirit of the Moors

Yonder again, where the sunset flames, and pales,
and flanles again, there is the dreary tavern
whence a man went outward to his death, the
murderers stealing shadow-like behind him.
Here the old Squire fought with his own keepers,
and worsted them for sport; down in the hollo\v
there, where oak-fern trenlbles in the breeze,
there was a great and tender passion brought to
ri peness; in yonder strip of intake, hard won
from the heath, a nlan worked lonely, worked
eagerly, worked till he dropped in his own paces,
faithful to the labour he had set himself. See
the deep cleft there, hidden by its beard of ling
and bilberry; go back a space of fifty years or
so, and count the poachers as they come-ten,
t,venty, thirty-grim-visaged men and dour, who
nlarch together, their will the wind's will, to
forage where they list. The Squire has keepers
-true, but over.-few to nlatch these stalwart
enemies of written law. The Squire, the l:>arson,
and the Lawyer may drink their wine below there
in the sheltered valley-lands; but the poachers
are the n1agistrates on Haworth Moor, and the
un\vritten law they follow says that all which flies,
or swims, or runs upon four legs, is any man's
to take.
Watch then1 go up and up, their dogs beside
thenl. Watch the last flicker of the dying n100n
light up their swarthy faces. Then let the still-
ness fall, the starshine and the silence, broken only
28

Char/oilt Bronl
.' a Ctnttnary Mt"lorial
by the bark of fanners' dogs, the fretful protest
of the grouse. Sit down awhile upon a clump
of ling-the season of the year is dry enough-
and let the past and present mingle, with the reek
of hay and mistal-sweets to help the reverie.
About you, where you sit, is Haworth Moor,
ripe-rich in story before the Brontës knew it.
About you are the old, unconquerable tales, the
old, unconquerable roughness of the heath; and
truth, like a wistful, honleless maid, sits hand-
in-hand with you. Yet about you, as you sit,
there is the nearer presence of the Bront
s.
Visions come and go upon the stnooth night-wind
-of Emily striving to endure, and to perfect her
masterpiece-of the old father, querulous amid
the genius he has begotten-of Branwell, escaping
from the tavern window with a skin too full of
wine and foolishness.
It is enough. Let the dreanls die down, clnd
hearken to the lowing of the kine, and sup the
satisfying fragrance of the nlistals and the heath.
This is Haworth Moor, and until tinle is not,
and the world is crumpled into primeval space,
the moor-born heart \vi 11 neither waver nor
forget.
Listen again, now that the peevish wind gets
up to scatter peace. What is the cry that comes
across the bracken and the ling? It is the cry
of Cathy, beating with frail hands against the
window-bars. U I want to come in. I'm come

82.

The Spirit of the Moors

hom
. I lost my \vay on the moor. L
t m

come in! "
l
ouder the wind grows, and )oud
r still. it
is Heathcliff's voice. He is lying prone in the
little chamber, sobbing his heart out, and crying
on the ghost that once was flesh and blood.
Again the wind dies do\vn. And fron1 a
neighbouring n1istal conIes the honey-hearted
scent of kine.

28"

,

. .
THE BRONTES AS .L
RTISTS AND
AS PROPHETS

By J. KEIGHLEY SNOWDEN

AN ADDRI:SS DELIVERED TO THE BRONTË SOCIETY, AT
SHHFFIELD, JANUARY 18, J 908

t

,

THE BRONTËS AS ARTIsrrS AND AS
PROPHF
rrS

TH E reluctance that has drawn from your extreme
courtesy a third invitation to address the Brontë
Society is part of what one tèels in being called
upon to deal, in any critical way, with young
and splendid writers who were dear women.
Were? Isn't it better to say, are? }i'or me,
Emil y and Charlotte Brontë are not dead, but
alive. It is as if they might hear us. . . . I do
not attribute this daunting sense of them to
imagination. It is real-an effect of their work's
vitality. This is their triumph. The sensitive
passionate souls of the sisters passed into what
they wrote. and still confront us, defiant, delicate;
it is almost reasonable to say, conscious. Well,
one must either speak the truth about their
writings as one sees it, Of be silent; and, now
that their fame is established, now that nothing
matters, I would rather have kept silence, rever-
ently.
However, it has occufred to me that the
ßrontë Society may be wondering if its u
efulness
28 7

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary Memorial

is not near an end for the san1e reason. The
Societyt s main purpose in the beginning was to
establish their fame more surely. Its main pur-
pose now is of course educational. Is an interest
in the Brontës adequate for any society as an
educational purpose? Perhaps not. But one
may state the causes of its intensity and endur-
ance, and try to see, clearly, what the fiery spirit
of their work should mean to the world. 'fest
it in all ways first. They sit here listening, with
sincere, pathetic eyes. But those eyes have never
quailed; and, after all, the pure gold of any
literature is not to be had and \veighed but after
a fierce assay. 'fhey know this, fearlessly.
What, then, has criticism to say of the work
they did so young, with such sincerity? I-Iard
things. I suppose there are not four other
classical novels in the world that have been
found unsatisfactory from so n1any points of vie,,'
as Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and WUJhering
He'ights. The critic who holds that any fair
and sane estin1ate of life is humorously
balanced may reject them all but Villette, and
say of even this that it lacks warmth or that
the balance is due to a sense of justice more
than to humour. The others fret him with
passionate intention, and with c
rtain frank
narrownesses. The realist-by whom I under-
stand the critic insisting that, whatever stress
there be of imagination and feeling, people in
288

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LUTTE BHOXTF's TDIE.

To face p. 2EB. .

Tht Brontës as Artists and as Prophets
novels should act and speak as people would
in life-the realist sides with the humorist; and
for him Villette, though true, is not a great book
as nlodern novels go. Its realism seems to have
quenched something. Wutlzering Heights con-
forms to the letter of his law, but is greatly
false to the spirit. In Shirley the heroine and
Caroline Helstone often talk like writing stylists,
and so does Rose Yorke, rebuking her mother
at twelve years of age. Jane Eyre argues with
a melodramatic Rochester in the same précieuse
diction, for which there is only this to be said,
that it fits with her deportment. Weare pre-
pared for it by a school-girl conversation in
which Miss Helen Burns, who is thirteen, re-
marks with great precociousness and elegance:
u I have been wondering how a man who wished
to do right could act so unj ustl y as Charles the
First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity
it was that, with his integrity and conscientious-
ness, he could see no further than the preroga-
ti yes of the Crown." At thirteen, Helen Burns
laments her "wretchedly defective nature," and,
in a passage of pulpit eloquence that any clergy-
man might envy, tells how U the pale human
soul" shal1 "brighten to the seraph. " In
conception and execution alike, the story is naïve.
For the critic who demands what is nowada ys
called a yarn, 1ane Eyre, however, puts into the
shade all else that either sister wrote; and he,
289 T

,

CharlfJtte _Brontë: a Ctnttl10ry M
nll)ri(]1
for his part, cannot imagine that Charlotte-
who produced it for the market-returned to
sober studies of her own free will: she must have
listened fat all y to George Henry Lewes. Caring
Jess for humour and realism in a novel than for
the romantic, this critic finds that Charlotte's
powers declined; and that Emily's never attained
to that mellowness of smooth performance which
is agreeable to those who love a story for its
own sake.
Nor may we dismiss the critics as mutually
destructive. "[hey will not presently, like th

Kilkenny cats, have done. Each teJIs a part
of the adverse truth, and the novel
have to
face the sum of these parts, not a difference or
a quotient. Fron1 any technical point of view,
however large, faults enough may be seen in
each of the Brontë books to l11ake o1aterial for
an instructive essay. A volunle of such essays
might be terrible.
There is, however, another sort of critic,
whose judgments are not technicaL
rhere is
the publisher's reader. He tries to estimate
selling value in the manuscripts he handles.
We]), you kno\v the history of Wuthering
Heights, The crc1Jant of Wildftll Holl, and 'l'he
Professor. It is nothing out of the way.
And, times having changed, and books with
them, it is interesting to ask oneself if either
of the four important books we are consider-
290

The Bront's as Artists and as Prophts

ing would be at once accepted n O\V, as a first
novel ?
To myself, as a working writer, the acceptance
of Charlotte's books at all, as they stand, is
strangely hard to imagine. I will tell you why
in a moment. Certainly, in these days of an
overcrowded market, the publisher who should
risk his money on even an unknown 1 ane E.yre
would feel that he was indulging a rashness.
1ane Eyre has unmistakably what is known as
selling value; once fairly under way, it is a
great yarn; but it starts too slowly, and is too
much more than a yarn, to please the sort of
publisher who would like it n10st on that
account; is at once too ingenuous d.nd too
stilted for a publisher \villing to admit
quality. In any case he would want it to
begin at the twelfth chapter. You nlust plunge
in medias res. Shirley moves so quietly and so
naturally, a panorama of real life without con-
structive principle or visible plot, that I suppose
no professional reader could nowada ys feel
anything but despair of its appeal-a despair
intensified, not relieved, by the searching truth
of its psychology and the wealth of its exq uisite
literary beauties. These are not " seJJing
qualities," and the publication of Shirley as a first
book would be a quixotism. As for f/illet/e-in1-
possible! It is a novel for bilingual readers,
and he would find it tame. Moreover, one hunts
291

Charlotte Brontë.' tl Centenary Meml}rial

on a fal
e scent for a hero, and in the end is
disappointed-faults not now excused. I
mily
Brontë's n1asterpiece might, on the other hand-
I think it \vould--have an easier birth and
kinder welcome no\v than killed her young
ambition. Its energy is modern and tremendous.
Its direct unhalting nlarch is nlodern. But the
temperamental strangeness of its attnosphere and
people looks nlore morbid than it can have
looked in those days of romanticisnl; and there
is a great deal of dialect. J n all likelihood,
IVuthering Heights would have to go the round.
\Vhat does it signify? The imnlediate sale-
ability of a book was never a measure of its
true value; never can be: it is only a nleasure
of culture and alertness in the reading public.
\V orse novels are published every year by
thousands, not all of them at the author's cost
or risk. Novels illiterate and vicious pass the
selling standard; hanal and vulgar novels are
sold by the hundred thousand copies. But is
there nothing, then, in the judgment of a
publisher's reader? No author who is wise
wiU say so. It does uphold against the new-
comer some artistic C,lnons of the time, if only
because they happen to be canons of success.
They have been arrived at in a keen competition
of craftsmen. fhe art of making novels in
all kinds has been so developed by this com-
petition since the Brontës wrote, that Que is
29 2

':the Bron/lls as Artists and as Prophets

obliged to adlnit the existence, in many classics,
of defects from which the most trivial piece
of work in the same kind is nowadays exempt.
rrhey endure, it seems, by virtue of qualities
that override craftsmanship.
Such classics are like the works of certain
old masters of painting, clumsy in design, or
strange in colour, or faulty in drawing, but
big with some human worthiness to which design,
colour, and drawing are secondary. In adn1iring
them welJ, what is our mental attitude ? We
do not blink their weaknesses: that would be
to pay false worship and to harm ourselves and
art: for \ve discern their strength truly when
most critical. Whoever should say that Tintoret
painted trees well would make us doubt that
he had any true sense of the master's imagination
and depth of soul. frees are painted better
by English art students. If Tintoret were
painting nowadays with such unequal and rude
execution, he would never become famous:
probably Tintoret \vould starve, or take to
screeving. What of that? If \ve ever have
a re-incarnation of '[intoret in fact, his genius
\vill of course assimilate the art of the new
age, and produce trees nearly as good as any-
body's.
But, with
no\vadays an
novels; and,

many fine exceptions, there is
immense manufacture of worthless
I an1 concerned at Jeast as nluch

293

Charlotte Bl'ontë: a CenttJ10ry Memorial

for the art of fiction as for a just apprecIatIon
of the Brontës, when I attempt to judge their
work by the best canons of the tinle. Consider
frankJy its defects of craftsmanship, and so
arrive at a firm and illuminating estimate of
its actual merits. It wiU be found, I think,
that these are poetic and ethical rather than
artistic.
Charlotte Brontë's estimate of Jane Austen
helps us to our estimate of herself. Mr. Lewes
has commended to her that placid worker as
i. One of the greatest artists . . . with the nicest
sense of means to an end, that ever lived." She
allows the nice sense of means to an end; hut
"Can there be a great artist without poetry?"
she demands-and Mr. Lewes has no rejoinder.
He should have written, she \vould say, "One
of the greatest craftsmen." Her conception of
a great artist is right; and if her own use of
means to an end be wanting in skill, or if her
purpose be something other than artistic, the
poetry is always there. Emily's use of means
to an end is masterly, and in its rude compelling
fashion unsurpassed. Moreover, Emily's purpose
is artistic, not at all didactic or controversial.
If Mr. Lewes had had the tact and insight to
write to the other sister a letter of respectful
homage on her strength of handling, \ve should
have thought more highly of his critical acumen,
though he had said with Charlotte that Wuthering
294

1'k Brolltfs as Artists and as Prophtts

Heights was sinister, dark and goblin-like. In
Emily, at least, he might have recognized a
great artist, a craftsman who was also a poet,
a savage Michael Angelo of letters. But she
wrought too much in the realm of imagination
to be appraised by Mr. Lewes.
Let that pass. Charlotte's artistry is now in
question as it appears to novelists and critics of
this generation. She wrote two kinds of stories-
what is known as the romantic "yarn," and
the story of real life. Her preference was for
the latter. Her first approach to a publisher
was made with an example of it, 1n( Professor,
and she returned to it. She is best known for
a single example of the romantic yarn. When
The Professor was rejected and she began ]alJf
Eyre, it was because, as she says a little con-
temptuously, the publishers wanted "something
more imaginative and poetical-something more
consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with
a taste for pathos." The story notion of a mad
wife or relative confined in a secret chamber
was in vogue: it Jnay be found in one of the
clever and forgotten novels of Miss J ewsbury.
the friend of Mrs. Carlyle. Charlotte made
the very most of it-with a depth and pure
intensity of feeling that no writer of the time
could match. It was a story notion strictly: in
actual life, no such secret could be kept frorn
the household, and nobody would suppose it
295

\

Charlotte Brontë: a Centenary Menlorial
could. This is what Leslie Stephen had in mind
when he called Jane Eyre a baseless nightmare.
Charlotte herself must have been very well aware
of the flaw when she wondered u if the analyses
of other fictions read as absurdly as that of Jane
Eyre always does" ; and, in Villette, the paralJel
episode of the pseudo-ghost is handled with a
strict regard for what is possible. But see how
much more finely the nightmare is invested with
proper circuolstance and human meaning than
that of The Castle of Otranto or Frankenstein.
What modern art has to say against this fantastic
order of romance is not that it was naïve-art
sometimes is-but that in spirit and execution
alike it was bound to be in a measure insincere.
Charlotte Brontë came nearest of anyone to
being wholly serious with it; she made a step
backward frolll Scott, however, and the wonder
is that she is so little blamed for doing so. The
true apostolical succession in roman tic fiction is
from Scott to Stevenson and Weyman and
Hewlett. l'he true practice of the art is based
upon a ronlantic way of seeing real events. It
selects, distorting nothing, eschewing improba-
bilities. It selects romantic deeds and personages,
paints romantic scenes with poetry and passion,
but has a care that every scene and stroke of
the detail shall be convincing. It is a practice
much more difficult-more masculine.
How is the art of Jane Eyre at outs with it ?
29 6

'the Brolltës as Artists and as Prophets

I have mentioned Helen Burns's impossible pre-
cocity. I do not think it open to dispute that
some of the conversations between Jane and
Rochester are still more ludicrous. They have
a schoolgirl air of mingled propriety and awful-
ness that is nowhere to be matched in any book
accepted as a classic. Mr. de Selin court has alread}'
said this. But more; the propriety is often
priggish on Jane's part, and passion in the most
tempestuous moments speaks in polished phrases.
7 ane Eyre is a very "young" book. That
this fact does not explain all its imperfections,
and that these were mainly due to Miss Brontë's
following bad models with her critical faculty
asleep or silenced, appears to n1e plain from the
truth and fine womanliness of SIzirley, which
came but two years later. Plain, too, from The
Proftssor, which is not so girlish either, though
it came first. And I an1 very sure that Charlotte
Brontë never desired to pin her reputation upon
the only novel that commends itself to Mr.
Chesterton. She indeed regarded Jane Eyre as
an attack upon conventionality; and the relent-
less study of bigotry in St. John Rivers, the
strong plea that love is greater than an y human
doctrines, and the rehabilitation of the governess,
nlust have made her glad, to the last, that she
had written it. But she knew its faults as well
as anyone, I think. In Villelte there are no
seventeenth-century bookish conversations. In
297

,

Charlotie Brontë.' (.l Centenary Meln 0 ria I
either V'ltlette or Shirley there is not an improba-
hi1ity that matters.
Those who believe that Charlotte Brontë's
greatest gift was the power to write a fascinat-
ing story hold that, in doing these later books,
she had missed her way. Well, she chose with
her eyes open. I think she was true to her
character in the choice, if not to a purely artistic
ideal; and I doubt very n1uch if a resolve to
spin yarns for their own sake, even in a modern
realistic manner, could have given us the
spontaneous and splendid self-realization of
Shirley, a book to which Mr. Meredith and
the \vhole fen1inist moven1ent owe much of their
inspiration. But, says Mr. Chesterton, ]anl
liyre is the unique novel in English literature of
the nineteenth century" where the dangerous
life of a good person was thoroughly expressed."
I do not know that "thoroughly" is the best
word; "exorbitant! y " seems to me a better
one; hut I do suppose that Mr. Chesterton
puts a finger there upon the secret of the book's
popularity and very life. The heroine is good
beyond all expectation. She is so good, that,
if Rochester had not been vain egregiously, as
well as an unlicked cub grown rather n10nstrous-
or if he had even been convincingly presented fron1
the first, his secret told us-the popular verdict
to-day must have been that she is righteous
overn1uch. His look of undesirability balances
29 8

The BrontëI as Artists and as Propkts

Jane's priggishness and school propriety; other-
wise the terrible plight of the man, chained to
a vampire, and loving Jane at last with his
whole despairing nature, would have made even
the prudes aware that what is called a woman's
h goodness" may in certain crises be selfish and
petty. One is tempted to quote the preface:
" Conventionality is not morality; self-righteous-
ness is not religion." But, for the sake of the
yarn, Jane acts conventionally in the crisis. She
runs away, leaving Rochester to his intolerable
tàte; and there is even a suggestion that hii
blindness, the consequence of an act of splendid
heroism, was meant by Providence to "chasten"
him for infidelity to the vampire. Was it so
meant by Charlotte Brontë, the Providence who
arranged it? Absurd! It is part of the yarn.
I f, as she held, pure love is greater than
human doctrines, it is greater, too, than human
laws; and Jane Eyre's goodness would have
been far nobler, if less popular, had she done
what love in its highest expression must always
make us do-forget ourselves for another.
Wh}' is Rivers introduced, but to bring this
knowledge home to us? }1
ven in it missionary
enterprise she cannot forget herself for hi111;

nd, called by a supernatural voice, she goes
hack to her lover. But the conventions are still
respected, the vampire wife having by that
time perished. It is a vastly ingenious plot on
299

Charlotte Brontë.' a Centenary 1vlel110rial

melodramatic lines; and, as I have said, it is
wrought out with extraordinary feeling and
imagination. These give to the story a certain
greatness. But these, by themselves, are never
passports to popularity. In the case of ]ant
Eyre, they do not seeln to have been passports
even to realism; and my own judgn1ent of this
story is that its naïvetés and unnatural notes
n1ight have ultimately killed it in spite of all, if
it had not said so much for "goodness." The
bold attack upon a certain type of bigot, sincere
in every word of it, is only incidental; yet it
is the content most characteristic of Charlotte
Bron të as a moralist.
Let me not be thought contemptuous of
selling value in a
ork of fiction. It is another
term for readableness. The first business of a
novel, whether yarn or story of common life,
work of art or work of Inorals, is to get itself
read. But there are various kinds of attractive-
ness. Turn now from 7ane Eyre to Shirley
and Villelle, and see ho\v modern canons are
applied to judge the selling value of these.
For a story of common life the canons are
stricter than for a yarn. Its intc=rest must
depend wholly upon treatlnent, and therefore, in
rnodern practice, such a story con1monl y begins
In a striking way, so as to (:nlist our interest
at onCe in its chief character or characters, and
to distinguish these from the rest. fhey are
3 00

'['he Brontës as Artists anti as Prophets

seen passing through some definite phase or
experience. .L\.ll the incidents, all subordinate
figures, all detail, are introduced and ordered
with a view to the definite purpose. They Inake
for a definite ending. It has been found possible,
by these means, to arrest and keep attention for
studies of life that are true to the most norma]
experience, and that point their own morals.
But in Charlotte Brontë's time there was
no such craftsmanship of realism; and, in
differing ways, Shirley and Villette fail to con-
sult the ease and pleasure of the reader by such
means. Villette is autobiographical; Shirley I
have called a panorama. We go to thelTI first
either because we have been assured that it is
very welJ worth our while, or because we are
honestly studious. They are caviare to the
general.
But what a feast for the lover of literature is
Shirley! Its fresh outlook and its beauty of
feeling are priceless. And what a ,vise and
graceful mind informs the story of Lucy Snowe !
More craftsmanship might have made then1 better
known, and especiall y sixty years back; but now
that they are accepted classics, the lack of it is
not complained of. fhe craftsmanship, such as
it is, has the great Inerit of being characteristic,
like that of all spontaneous art. Wh y is the hero
slow to appear, and slo\ver stiU to reveal himself
completeJy? Because Charlotte Brontë was not
3 01

Charlotte Brontë.o a Centenary Memorial

a woman who loved at sight, hut had first to see
her lover critically, and then to esteem hin1.
Why, indeed, do all her people grow upon us in
the same way? As she a vowed) her sense of
character was not quite intuiti
e, not rash; and
I believe her interest in exact and full apprecia-
tions was one of the main causes why she wrote.
However, in a book, the method of slow reve-
lation has drawbacks unless it be used for
some particular purpose of a plot. I t fogs the
undiscerning reader, suspends and baffles his
sy mpathies, and has led poor critics to say that
Charlotte Brontë's men were not weJl seen by
herself. Mr. Chesterton prefers the superficial
pen of Jane Austen in this respect. Mr. de
Selincourt, while sensible that Charlotte's "con-
ception of her drama/is personæ is nearly always
true," thinks that the manner she chooses to
reveal then1 is not only crudely inartistic but false
to life. The manner, I think, is true to life.
That is why it is inartistic. In the case of
Rochester, which Mr. de SeJincourt has especially
in mind, that fantastic look of the man is due to
his false position, which is unknown to the ïeader.
We have not, in English literature, a novelist
whose grasp of his drama/is personæ is more
absolute than Charlotte Brontë's. Their inmost
secret, their subtlest mutabilities of Inood and
action, are known to that searching gaze, as
welJ as their outward aspect and the effects
3 02

'the Brontës as

rtists and as Prophets

they make upon each other. l"hey are not,
all of them, known synlpathetically; the means
her scrutiny has used are often coldly ana-
lytical; but you must trust her insight. The
mischief is that you are required to do so; the
undiscerning reader sees a character behave
inexplicably, or provokingly; and, of all Char-
lotte Brontë's faults of craftsmanship, this is the
most damaging. [he early and decorative fault
of endowing people with artificial speech is by
comparison venial. Happily, we have consented
to look at life without misgivings as she
pictures it.
Why, again, has Shirley no structure, no real
story plot? Because Charlotte Brontë's way, in
life itself, is to be a quiet observer, letting life
go by: she is satisficd passively to interpret
its hidden passions, to feel its beauty, and to
meditate its meanings. Emily of the masculine
will and imagination works equally in her own
lnanner, a very different one. The truth is, these
Brontë sisters are so interesting as women that
one is best pleased to have it so. The interest
in their books is autobiographical chiefly; and
they are true to thenlselves in craftsmanship and
all things. It is the secret of their greatness.
All the faults we can find help us to prize what
remains impeccable.
Well, what do they nlean to us? What IS
the Brontë Society's educational stock?
3 0 3

Charlotte Brontë.. a Centenary Memorial

rhere is all they had to say for women. . . .
In this connection I think it fair to dissociate
Charlotte Brontë from the tnilitant sisterhood
\vho someti mes claim her as a prophetess and
leader. Her attitude to our sex is critical, but
passive ahvays. Shirley Keeldar calIs herself
U Captain," and takes her o\vn way with a pretty
air of nIannishness, but she is never unfenIinine
for a tTIoment, never stormy, or egregious, or
ungraceful. And Shirley, the liveliest type of
womanl y independence in the hooks, is not
Charlotte herself, hut "Emily in happier cir-
cumstances." In respect of sex attitude, Char-
lotte's habit is rather Seen in Jane Eyre and
Lucy Sno\ve. She wrote Shirley in chi valrous
defence of womanhood against misprizing egotis-
tical nIan, who in those days, and in Yorkshire,
stood very much in need of her satiric handling;
and there is one figure at least, that of Mr.
Sympson, who, being seen from the outside only,
and in a state of mind that Atnericans know as
(C hopping mad," has an air of caricature. But
she accepts Robert Moore after all. And she
utterly submits, in Villette, to the kind-hearted
tyrannies of M. Paul Emanuel, \"hich are even
more eccentric than Mr. Synlpson's. It is not
for a notion of equality in the sexes that Char-
lotte Brontë contends. I think she tried to set
us far too high. " Nothing ever charms me
more," says Shirley, "than when I tr1.
e
my
3 0 4

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,

'7he Brontës as Artisls alld as Prophets

superior. l"'he higher above me, so much the
better; it degrades to stoop: it is glorious to
look up:' And of man in the abstract, "I
would scorn to contend for empire with hinl-
I would scorn it. Shall my left hand dispute for
precedence with n1Y right?" No: we go to
Charlotte Brontë ' s hooks to see ourselves with
the clear eyes of a conscientious woman, for
whom love is the greatest good in life but who
can only love where she esteems highly. Her
glance is piercing, and for injustice, folly, or
humbug it is quite inexorable:: she breathes
defiance oftener than she sparkles fun : hut she
does us good like a medicine, and threatens
nothing harmful.
I do not say she is judicial. Charlotte Brontë
frankly takes the side of her sex. But, for a
jarti pris, it is fairly taken. 'fhe writing quality
forfeited in some degree by chan1pionship is
humour, and that loss is nearly all we have to
regret in it. Some poverty of humour, a
strenuous note of seriousness, at times a certain
want of good spirits and happy tolerance, cause
her realism to be classed below that of the
greatest writers of fiction. It is sad to find no
downright hearty laughs; her very smile, when
it is not beautiful with pity, has an air of quiet
malice; she does not Ii ve so warmly as to feel
perfectly indulgent. For her supreme gift is to
feel keenly, as Emily's is. A fuller and more
3 0 5 U

Charlotte Bro1J/é": tl G'e/ltt/Jary Melnorial
diversified contact with life than Emily's has
compelled her to find accommodations; but
this, alas! while dulling poetry has not made
her quite serenely optimist. She needed happi-
ness: happiness of a kind came too late. To
Emily, whose need was even greater, it never
came.
'fhe cry for happiness, h
ard in all their work
as an undertone, and uttercd frankly in many
passages of great beauty, seems to n1e to be verv
specially a Brontë note; and I think it is the
tragic contrast between their capacity for it and
the incon1pleteness of their lives that has won for
them so many lovers. The cry hag a sharpness
as if they had foreseen the end. We feel an
ache of tenderness for them, greater than for
either Keats, or Shelley, or Chatterton. It
makes critical estimates a heavy business, to be
done reluctant! y. When I consider the absence
of any such joy of labour in Villette as abounds
in Shirley, and remember the disenchantments and
the griefs endured before it was written, and
that nothing followed it, Charlotte Brontë's last
years appear extremely grey. One likes to
think that .she did know happiness before
she died. But it was terribly brief, and, how-
ever consoling, it had not the ecstasy of her
imagination. As for her work, its vital force
had ebbed as it had gained sobriety, balance, and
technical t:xcellence. The fiery and pure spirit
3 06

ThfÞ BrolltëI as Artists and as Prophtts

seems to have burned its frail envelope J as
Emily's had done seven years earlier.
What have they left to us, these rare spirits a
exquisitely young? "V ork so sincere that
we are as near to them as lovers can be ever.
rrheir very faults-Emily's her aloofness;
Charlotte's her bias, and Puritanisnl, and preach-
ing seriousness-their very faults endear them.
We see these faults as the defects of noble
q uali ties. They are women who ha ve suffered
much because the world will not arrange itself
to the great pattern of their ideals and sharp
desires; and doubtless they and all of us were
happier if we smiled at it. But is the world
to be without its martyrs and its prophets?
rrheirs is a divine discontent, by which we are
to learn how the world may be made a habitation
easier to smile in. fhey suffer for our sakes.
These dear women, delicate and passionate
idealists, have done what I take to be a priceless
thing for an age in which conventional faiths
were to crumble fast away. They put us in con-
tact with great N ature-a Book of Revelations of
which the glory is imperishable and the comfort-
able promise sure ;-and they have done this
in passages of pure and musica] English, poetic
and searching prose, that persuade us of the
truth of their meaning by its very beauty. It is
not a message to those who are happy and sure
already. It is not a message to the Philistines.
3 0 7

\

Charlotlt Brontë: a Centfnary ..t"Jefl1orial

I t is an auricular sweet message to the chosen.

in doubt and in adversity.
Nature has sunny tears and a
Emily, that n1ystery of spiritual
assures her that nothing dies,
explicable.

For Charlotte.
soft lap; for
meaning which
nothing is in-

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men'
hearts: unutterably VaIn:
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity.

So much poetry is nowhere else, in English
writers of fiction, to be found with such an
unsparing critical outlook and such sincerity of
self-expression as in the Brontës. Remark, that
sincerity and the critical spirit put them in
touch with modern thought inseverably; and
then consider, if you please, the question I asked
at first, and whether their educational force is
likel y to be soon exhausted. Their note, as
Dr. Robertson Nicoll feels it, is U fortitude."
Well, freedom and perfect honesty of thought,
scorn of untruth and of injustice, demand that
note in all who see the shams and cruelties of
men and yet keep faith in beauty, honour, love.
and a grea
design. The demand will not abate.
I t grows. I am glad that no horn-eyed person
has attempted a synthesis of Charlotte Brontë'i
3 08

crhe Brontës as Arti.rts anti as Proph
ts

intolerances and prepossessions, her scepticisms
and her beliefs, with a view to claim her for
this or that political class or sect of Christian
worshippers in her tinle. It nlay yet be done,
doubtless. They are probably not reconcilable,
these prejudices, and in any case the attempt
would be unintelligent. What we honour and
prize, alike in her anà in her stronger sister, is
the fearless, dainty spirit, true to itself as \vell
as to the higher hope. Freedonl's battle is
bequeathed to ourselves.
Lyrical and heroic souls, in their own day
they stood in the van of that battle, to give
succour and to fight with eq ua] helpfulnes
.
This is why they will not be forgotten. l"his
is the reason for a cult of Brontë worshippers,
who keep their praise ali ve and spread their
spirit.

J. KEIGHLEY SNOII/DEN.

309

II

A BRONTE ITINERARY
By BUTLER WOOD

r

-\ RRONTË ITINERARY

ALTHOUGH much has been \vritten on the
topography of the novels and other places con-
nected \vith the Brontë family, as far as I am
aware no attempt has hitherto been made to work
out an Itinerary which may be followed by those
who \vish to make a systematic tour of the dis-
tricts concerned. For the present purpose it wilt
not be necessary, nor is it desirable, to enter into
any detailed account of the places mentioned;
particulars of these must be looked for in such
works as Dr. Stuart's" Brontë Country," 1888,
and H. E. W root's "Persons and l)laces of the
Bront
Novels," 1906. Many articles on separate
places have also appeared fron1 time to time in
the '/"ra1lsactions of the Brontë Society and in
magazines and newspapers. These, and others
mentioned in the Bibliographies issued by the
Society, n1a y be consulted for further information.
For the sake of convenience the areas are
arranged into four divisions, covering all the
ground with the exception of Brussels, which
is ably dealt with by Mr. M. H. Spielmann in
3 1 3

Char!ott
Brontl: a Ctnttnary Mtmo,.ial
another part of this volume. These are as
follows :-

The Haworth Country, U Shirley" Coun-
try, Cowan Bridge and Kirkby Lonsdale,
and Hathersage.

HAWORTH COUNTRY
If we draw, say on the one-inch ordnance
map, a line cutting through Skipton, Colne,
Hebden Bridge, Halifax, Bradford, Keighley,
tlnd thence back to Skipton, we shall roughly
enclose the ared made c]assic ground by Jane
Eyre and Wutherillg Heights, and which will
ever remain sacred as the land wherein the
ßrontë family passed the greater part of their
lives; for within it lie Thornton, where Char-
lotte, Emily, Anne, and BranwelJ were born, and
Haworth, where all except Anne are buried.
The greater part consists of the moorland ridge
which separates the West-Riding from Lanca-
shire, and \vhich happily has changed little in
aspect since the Brolltë days. If the reader could
stand on the western side of the Nab, a bold

scarpment of millstone grit \vhich dominates
the Worth Valley at a height of 1,450 feet
above the sea-level, he would be able to take
in with one sweep of the eye the whole of
the moorland tract which surrounds the Brontë
home. Beyond the reaches of heather stretching
3 1 4

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awa y to the west are Boulsworth and Pendle
Hill. On the north-west the Keighley moors
rise in brown masses to the Lancashire border,
while the suave contours of Rombald's Moor
fill up the view on the north. Southward, the:
eye ranges along those billowy hills of brown
and purple which ron away into Derbyshire and
end in the magnificent mass of Kinder Scout.
Readers familiar with Jane Eyre will remenlber
with what a loving hand the moorlands are de-
scribed in the twenty-eighth chapter and other
portions of the book, but Emily's feeling to-
wards them, as revealed in Wuthering Heights, was
nothing less than a passion. Charlotte says of
her that "she had a particular love for them;
there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of
fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering
lark or linnet, but reminds nle of her."
Those who wish to explore this region should
take train to Keighley, which is on the Midland
main line-nine miles from Bradford and six-
teen miles from Leeds. Fron1 thence a branch
line runs up the Worth Valley to Haworth,
which is approached fron1 the station by a steep
rise of half a n1ile. At the top of the tortuous,
narrow street are situated the Black Bull Inn
and the Brontë Museun1, and within a short
distance the Church and Vicarage. 1'he inn,
too much frequented by the unfortunate Brallwell,
contains a replica of the chair in which he wai
3 1 5

,

Charlotte Brontl.' a Centtnory Menzorial

wont to sit on these occasions. Immediately
opposite is the Brontë Museum, wherein will be
found many interesting memorials of the family.
With the exception of the tower, the whole of
the old church was pulled down and a new build-
ing erected between 1879 and 188 I. Within
lie the remains of al J the members of the family
except Anne, who was buried at Scarborough.
.l-\ Brontë memorial tablet is placed on a wall
in the old tower, and in the south aisle of the
church is a stained-glass window in memory of
the Brontës, placed there by an American citizen.
l'he Brontë grave lies at the south end of the
communion-rail, and is n1arked by a brass tablet
bearing the names of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
Visitors should not omit to inspect the registers
containing entries relating to members of the
family.

rhe Vicarage, standing immediately behind the
church, remains unchanged, except that an addi-
tional wing has been built since the time it was
occupied by the Rev. l}atrick Brontë.
.AJter inspecting these places the visitor will
no\v be free to wander on the moor lying west
of the village. Proceeding along West Lane the:
moor road leading past the cemetery comes into
view, and if this be followed a distance of 2i
Iniles to the waterfall he will get a typical
example of West-Riding moorland scenery. On
the left arc the Haworth and Stanbury Moors)
3 16

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A Brontë Itinerary
and to the right is the Sladen V alley, acro
s which
the village of Stanbury can be seen perched on
the hill-top. This is the " Vale of Gimmerton"
described in Wuthering Heights. When nearing
the waterfall the path slopes down the valley side
to the Sladen Beck, into which the stream runs
from the fall. Here will be seen a stone foot-
bridge, and also a large boulder known as
Charlotte Brontë's chair.
A mile and a half west from this point rises
Withen's Height, 1,500 feet above the sea, on
the eastern slope of which stands a small farm-
house which local tradition identifies as "Wuther-
ing Heights." The situation may be that
described by Emily, but the house itself bears no
resemblance to that of the story; the probability
being in favour of a composition suggested by
High Sunderland, near Halifax and Ponden
House. The latter is situated three miles from
Haworth, near the road leading from that place
to Colne. It is a seventeenth-century structure
built by the Heatons of Ponden, and was often
visited by the Brontë sisters. Still following
this road, which now begins to rise rapidly up
to the moors, we shaH have an opportunity
of visiting Wycoller Hall, 6! miles from
Haworth. This is the
"'erndean Manor of 1 ant
Eyre. It is situated in Wycoller village, the
nearest approach to which is by a rough track
branching to the left from the road about a
3 1 7

,

Charlotte Brontë.- a Centenary Men/fJrial
quarter of a n1ile before reaching Top of Heather
Inn. The building is now in ruins, and was built
in the latter part of the sixteenth century by a
member of the Cunliffe fan1ily.
From Keighley the visitor can proceed to
Stonegappe, the Gateshead Hall of Jane Eyre,
where the early action of the story takes place,
and where Charlotte acted as governess in 1839.
I t is a substantial building situated about two miles
\vest of Kild wick station, which is on the Midland
main line five miles north-west of Keighley.
1'he village of Thornton, four miles west of
Bradford, is now included within the boundary
of this city. "fhe house in which the Brontë
children were born is situated in the High Street,
nearly opposite the Mechanics' Institute. It is
now used as a house and shop, but during the
Rev. Patrick Brontë's sojourn it served as the
Vicarage. There is a tablet on the wall indicating
its connection with the family_ The Old Church
\vhere the Rev. Patrick Brontë officiated is now
in ruins; it lies on the left of the road just before
entering the village, which may be reached by
tram-car from the ci ty.

l'HE "SHIRLEY" COUNTR Y

The locality in which the action of Shirley took
place has greatly altered since Charlotte Brontë's
day. It is known as the "Heavy Woollen
3 18

,
To lace P.3.1.

A Brontë Itinerary

District," for it is no\v the centre of the textile
industry devoted to the production of cloth
and blankets. In the early part of last century
the mills were sparsely scattered in a smiJing
landscape: to-day the area is teeming with large
factories and populous villages, but although
the landscape has suffered from this industrial
developnlent, it still retains much of the charm
of the earlier days.
The town of Heckmondwike, seven miles
from Bradford, lies abou t the centre of the
district, but for the purpose of a circular tour
it will be best to alight at Drighlington station
on the Great Northern line, from \vhence a field
path leads down to Oakwell Hall, which is the
" Fieldhead Jt of the story, the distance being
half a mile. It is a good example of the West-
Riding type of manor-house, and was built
in 1583 by one Henry Batt. 'fhe building is
minutely described in Shirley. Half a mile
farther is the village of Birstall (Briarfield).
Like that of Haworth, the church existing in
Charlotte Brontë's time has been demolished
wi th the exception of the tower, and replaced
by a new structure. The Rev. W. Margetson
Heald, vicar fro 111 180 I to 1836, was the
prototype of the Rev. Cyril Hall. Close by
stands " The R ydings," where Miss Ellen N ussey
lived when Charlotte first knew her, and where
the author was a frequent visitor between 1832
3 1 9

\

Charlotte BronIP.' a Centenary MelJJOrial

and 1837. The exterior answers to the descri p-
tion of Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre, but it is
fairly certain that Norton Conyers, near Ripon,
served as a picture of the interior of Rochester's
mansion. From Birstall the visitor should
proceed to Gomersal, lying half a mile farther
west, where Red House (Briarmains) is situated.
This was the residence of Joshua Taylor, a
sturdy and enterprising manufacturer, who
figures in the story as Hiran1 Yorke. His two
daughters, Mary and Martha (Rose and Jessie
Yorke), were Charlotte's school companions at
Roe Head. Close by Red House is a joiner's
shop which was formerly a dissenting place of
worship, and it was from this building that
the author heard the weird groanings and
chantings described in the ninth chapter of the
story.
By following the road from Gomcrsal to
Heckmond wike for a distance of I! miles
Heald's Hall will be reached. This was the
residence of the Rev. Hammond Roberson
(Rev. Matthewson Helstone) who kept a
boarding-school there in Charlotte Brontë's
time. About a mile to the west of this
place is Liversedge Church, built at Mr.
Roberson's own expense, and of which he was
vicar. A quarter of a mile beyond this stands
the house where the Rev. Patrick Brontë lodged
when appointed to the living of Hartshead in
3 20

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A Brol1të Itinerary

181 I, and ,vhere his daughters Maria and
Elizabeth were born. Going still farther west
for a mile in the direction of Hightown, the
road takes a sharp bend to the south towards
Hartshead Church, which is three-quarters of a
mile from Hightown village. The structure pos-
sesses a fine Norman porch, and other remains
of this period are to be found in the chancel.
This is the N unnely Church of the story.
From the churchyard can be seen that extensIve
prospect as described in the twelfth chapter of
the book. Roehead, the school where Charlotte
attended from 183 I to 1835, is reached by
passing through Hartshead village for a mile
on the road to Mirfield. Miss W oolJer, then
the mistress, figures as Mrs. Prior in the story.

COWAN BRIDGE AND KIRKBY LONSDALE
This locality is associated \vith the trying
school experiences of the Brontë children, so
graphically described in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life,"
and which are reproduced with such painful
fidelity in the early chapters of Jane Eyre.
To those who approach the district by the
Midland Railway, Ingleton will be found a
convenient starting-point, as conveyances can be
hired for a circular tour to Tunstall Church,
Kirkhy Lonsdale, Casterton, Cowan Bridge and
back again to lngleton. The road passes through
32l X

Charlotte Bronti:".. a Centenary Me1JI0ria!

Burton, 2! miles from Ingleton. Three n1Ïles
beyond, Thurland Castle is reached, and a mile
farther stands TunstaJJ Church, near the river
Lune. This is the Brocklebridge Church of
Jane Eyre. The follo\ving passage from the
story describes the experiences of the pupils
of Lowood School at this place: " We had
to \valk two n1iles to Brocklebridge Church,
\vhere our patron officiated. We set out
cold, we arrived at the church colder; during
morning service we became almost para-
lysed. It was too far to return for dinner, and
an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the
same penurious proportion observed in our
ordinary nleals, was served round between the
services. At the close of the afternoon service
we returned by an exposed and hilly road, wherc
the bitter wintry wind, blowing over a range
of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed
the skin fron1 our faces. t,
'[he room where the children had their mid-
day meal is imnlediately over the church porch.
Franl l'unstall the road now runs due north to
Kirkby Lonsdale, a distance of 3} miles. This
place, the Lowton of the story, is beautifully
situated on the fight bank of the Lune. The
church, with its architectural features of Norlnan
date, is well \vorth a visit. The view up the
Lune Valley from the churchyard \vas considered
by Ruskin to be one of the finest in England.
3 22

A Brolltë ItÙlerary
From here the visitor will proceed to Casterton,
crossing the river by the famous Devil's Bridge,
and passing Casterton Hall, which lies on the left
of the road a quarter of a n1ile before reaching the
village. This was the residence of the Rev. Carus
Wilson (Rev. Mr. Brocklehurst), who took an
active part in the management of Cowan Bridge
Clergy Daughters' School during the Brontë
period. The school was removed to Casterton in
1833, and since that time has done excellent educa-
tional work. There is accommodation for I 12
girls. Leaving Casterton the road now runs
south, intersecting the track of the Roman road at
Kirkby Lonsdale railway station, and from thence
south-east to Cowan Bridge, the Lowood of
1ane Eyre. The Leck Beck runs through the
village, which is 2! miles from Casterton. The
old school was close to the bridge, but only a
part of the original premises remains. This
consists of two long, bow-windowed cottages,
formerly used by the teachers, and where the
school kitchen was situated. The schoolrooms
and dormitories are not now in existence.
I t was opened in I 824 for the purpose
of providing an inexpensive education for the
daughters of poor clergymen, who paid part of
the cost, the remainder being provided by sub-
scriptions. On the gable-end facing the road a
tablet is fixed, indicating the connection of the
Brontës with the institution.
3 2 3

\

Charlotte Brolltë.. a Centenary Mt1110rlal

The tour is completed on returning to
Ingleton, four nliles from Co\van Bridge.
Visitors making Kirkby Lonsdale a centre can
go round by TunstaJ, Cowan Bridge, and
Casterton, or vice-versa.

HATHERSAGE

It was not until 1882 that this place began
to be associated with the village of Morton in
1 ane Eyre, and even then there \vas no direct
evidence in support of the conjecture. The
matter was settled, however, by Mr. Clement
Shorter in his Charlotte Bronfe" and ller Circle,
published in 1896. It is therein recorded that
Charlotte spent three weeks at this place in
the summer of 1845 with her friend Miss
Nussey, whose brother became vicar of Hather-
sage in 1844, and there can be no doubt that
Charlotte had this district in mind when she
described the village of Morton and the sur-
rounding moorlands. Mr. J. J. Stead's article
on Hathersage in Part IV of the Brontë Society's
Transactions should be consulted by those who
intend to visit this interesting locality.
The village is on the Dore and Chinley
branch ot the Midland Railway, and nlay be
approached fron1 Sheffield ( I 2 miles) or from
Manchester (30 miles). It is beautifully situated
in the Derwent V alley, and is surrounded by
3 2 4

A Brontë Itinerary

moorland very sin1Ïlar to that in the Haworth
district. The visitor should see the church, the
burial-place of the Eyre family, whose name
suggested the title of the novel. Here Robin
Hood's Little John is supposed to be buried.
Close by is the Vicarage, l11entioned in the fol-
lowing passage: "In crossing a field I saw the
church spire before nle; I hastened towards it.
Near the church, and in the middle of a garden,
stood a well-built though small house, which I
had no doubt was the Parsonage." The house
has, ho\vever, been enlarged since Charlotte
Brontë's time.
The home of the Rivers family, Moor House,
has been identified in a building called Moor
Seats, situated three-quarters of a n1Ìle fronl the
village, and lies not tãr frot11 the edge of the
l11oor.
In the romantic description of Jane Eyre's
flight from Thornfield Ban she leaves the
coach on the road leading across the open nloors
at \Vhitcross. This would be on the high-road
from Sheffield which Charlotte and Miss N ussey
traversed on their visit to Hathersage in 1845.
"Mr. Oliver's grand Hall in Morton Vale"
is easily recognized in Brookfield Manor, an
ancient nlansion situated in a fine park about
a nlile to the north of the village.

BU1'LER If/ODD.

3 2 5

INDEX

Agnts Grey, publication of, 215
Arnold, Matthew-
Meeting with Charlotte Bront
, 35
Poem on "Haworth Churchyard,"
68

" Bell, Currer," Identity r
v
aled, 31,
21 7
"Bell, Currer, Ellis and Acton,"
poems by, 3 I, 7 1
Benson, A. C., Charlotte Brontë, a
personal sketch, 57
Birstall, 319, 320
Blackstock, W. de W., 148
Boulsworth, 315
Bradford, 314
Bradford, Centenary address at, by
Mrs. Humphry Ward, 15
" Bretton, Dr. John," see Smith, George
" BriarfieJd," of Shirley, 319
" Briarmain's," of Shirley, 320
Brigg, Sir John, President of Brontë
Society, 118, lZO, 144, 147
Brigg, J. J., 147
"Brocklebridge," of Jan
.Eyr
, 322
"Brocklehurst, Rev. Mr.," 323
Brontë, Anne, 67
As poet, 75
Last lines, 75
Drontë, Charlotte-
As rom:mtic, 23, 49
Birth, IS, 57, 65
Centenary addres5
, 15, 65
Death, 57

Brontë, Charlotte (continued)-
In Brussels, 60, 8J
I n London, 209
In Manchester, 66
I rish origin, 52
Meeting with Arnold, 35
Meeting with Thackeray, 2J7
Novels, comparison \\ ith Dickens
and Thackeray, 59
Personal sketch, 57
Place in nineteenth century fiction,
15 1
School life at Cowan Bridg
, 3 Z 1
School life at Roehead, 19
Some thoughts on, 15
Word on,41
ßrontë, Elizabeth, 15, 67, 321
Brontë, Emily, in Brusie1s, 60
Poetic gift, 20, 75
Power of transmutation, 26
Brontë, Maria, 15, 67, 3 21
Brontë, Mrs. Maria, 15
Brontë, Rev. Patrick, ïO
Dea th, 67
Eccentricity, 70
Brontë, Patrick Branwdl, 6"', 219
Brontë family portraits, 1]0
Brontë Sisters-
As artists and prophets. 287
Charlotte and
mily, :I comparisoD
an(1 a contrast, 17S
Celtic origin, 22, 25, 2<), 37
Juvenile writings ot
18, 1 J2, 146
..\'u also Bell

3 2 7

llrontë- Heger letters in Timts, 95
Brontë bibliography, 135
Birthplace, 3 18
Itinerary, 3 I J
Museum, 121, 128, 315
Novels, foreign translations. I
6
Persons and places of, 141
Society, origin, I 18, 123
Society story of, 113
Brookfield Manor, 325
Brussels, Charlotte ßrontë in, 83
Heger Prnsionnat, ï I, 8

Burton, 322

C asterton, 32 1
Centenary aridres
at Haw,)rth, by
Bishop WelldQn, 65
Address at Bradford, by Mrs.
Humphry Ward, 15
Chadwick, Mrs. Ellis H., 84, 145
Chesterton, G. K., 136
On Charlotte Brontë as a romantic,

49
Clergy Daughters' School, Cowan
Briilge, 32.3
Cockshott, Miss, 148
Colne, 314
"Cottage Poems;' of Rev. Patrick
Brontë, 70
Cory, W. J., vigit to Ha\'.orth, 168
I mpressions of Jant! F.yrr, 170
Cowan Bridge, 17, 19, 32.1
Crewe, Marquis of, sr
Houghton,
Lord
Curates in Shirlry, 27

Day, G., 148
Dimnet, E., 137

" Emma," Set " Last Sketch"
Eyre family, 325

Index

U Ferndean Manor," of Jane Eyrr,
3 1 7
Field, W. T., 122,130,14"
" Fieldhead," of Shirle.J" 3 19
Fitzgerald, Edward, 22
Fotheringham, J., 145

Galloway, F. C., 147
Garnett, Richard, Place of Charlotte
Brontë in Nineteenth Century
Fiction, 1 5 I
Gaskell, Margaret Emily (" Meta "),
65
Gaskell, Mrs., Ii, ,8, 66, 71
U Gateshead Hall," of Jallr EY'r, 318
Gomersal, 320
Gosse, Edmund, A W orJ on Charlotte
Brontë, 41
Greenwood, J. F., I.p, 14-

Haldane
Lord, 145
Halifax, 314
" Hall, Rev. Cfril," 319
Hartshead, 320
Hathersage (" Morton U of Janr Eyrr),
14 0 , I4J, 3 2 4
Haworth, 315
Centenary address at, by Bishop
WeUdon,65
Parsonage, 69, 3 16
U Haworth Churchyard," Arnold'i
poem on, 68
Heald, Rev. W. M., 3'9
Heald's Hall, 320
Hebden Bridge, 314
Heckmondwike, 319
Heger Family, 28, 83-96
Pensionnat, 92 -96
Heger-Brontë letters in Timrs, 95
" Helstone, Rev. M.," 320
High Sunderland, 317
Hightown, 321
3 28

Houghton Lord (Marquis of Crewe),
President of Brontë Society, 144

Ingleton, 321
Itinerary of Brontë novels, 313

J an
Eyr. begun, 7 2
Publication of, 58,216
Second edition dedicated to Thac-
keray, 76
Juvenile writings of the Brontë sisters,
18, 132., 146

Keighley, 3 J4, 3 J 8
Keyworth, Rev. T., 140
Kildwick, 318
Kirkby Lonsdale, 32 J

" Last Sketch" (" Emma "), In Corn-
hill Maga'Zin
, 76
Lee, P. F., 141
Lee, Sir Sidney, Charlotte Brontë In
London, 209
Lewes, George Henry, 23, 185
Liversedge church, 320
London, Charlotte Brontë in, 209
"Lowood School," of Jane Eyre, 32.2.
U Lowton," of Jane Eyre, 3 2 2.
Luildite agitation, ;8

Macdonald, Fredericka, 84
Maeterlinck, M., 137
Manchester, visit of Charlotte Brontë
to, 66
" Meta," see Gaskell, M. E.
"Mistress of the Disagreeable," 2.2
"Moor House," of Jane Eyrf!, 325
Moor seats, 325
Moon, Spirit of, 2 S 1
Morton, see Hathersage
Mossman, F. A. T., 147, 148

Newboult, A., 147

Index

Newby, T. C., 217
Nicholls, Rev. A. B., 131
Nicoll, Sir W. R., 145
Norton Conyers, 320
"Nunnely," of Shirley, 32 [
Nusser, Ellen, 33, 118, 132" 14 6 ,
3 I 9, 3 2 4

Oakwell Hall, 319

Peel, F., 122
Pendle Hill, 3 1 S
Place-names of Brontë novels, see
Itinerary, 313-325
"Poems by Currer, Eliis, anri Acton
Bell," 3 1 , 71
Ponden House, 317
Priestley, Sir William, 142
" Prior, M n.," 3 2 I
Professor, Rejection of, 7 2 , 215

Red House, 32.0
Reid, Sir T. Wemyss, 144
Richmond, George, Portrait of Char-
lotte Brontë, 169
Ritchie, Lady, 2{0
"Rivers" Family, 325
Roberson, Rev. H., po
Robertshaw, W., 147
Roehead School, 18, 321
Romantic, Charlotte Brontë a'i, 23, 49
Rombald's Moor, 3 1 S
"Rydings" of Shirley, 319

Saintsbury, G., 145
Scruton, W., 122., 142
Seccombe, T., 145
Sélincourt, E. de, 145
Shirley, 303-4
Country, 141, JI8
Curates of, 27
Luddite agitation, is

3 2 9

y

\

Shorter, Clement K., 84, 119
Skipton, 314
Smith, George, marriage of, 244
Death of, 245
Meets Charlotte Brontë, 214
Prototype of "Dr. John Bretton,"
3 2 , 225-35
Smith, Mrs. George, 33
Smith, Reginalil, 34
Snowden, J. K., Brontës as artists
:1Od prophets, 1.87
Spielmann, M. H., Charlotte Brontë
in Brussels, 83
Stanbury, 316
Stead, J. j., 122, 14 0 , 147, 14 8
Stonegappe, 318
Stuart, J. A. E., 122
S\ltcliffe, Halliwell, Spirit ofthe moors,
25 1

Taylor, Joshua, 320
Taylor. Mary, 18, 19, 21
Tenant
f fYi/dfell Hall published, 217
Thackeray, W. M., meetings with
Charlotte Brontë, 237-241
Dedication of Jilne Eyre to, 76
"Thornfield Hall" of Jilne F.yre,43,
3 20 , ]25
Thornton, 65, 3 1 4-, 318
Thurland Castle, 322
TimEs, Brontë-Heger ldters in, 9S
Tunstall, 32 I
TUller, J. Hor!faU, lIa, 122, 147

Ua"iR, S. P., J....a

Index

" Vale of Gimmerton" of Wuthering
Heights, 317
Vaughan, C. E., Charlotte and Emily
Brontë: a comparison and a COD-
trast, I 75
Pillette, 23, 24, 84, 86, 93
Publication of, 242

Ward, Mrs. Humphry, A Foreword, v
Centenary address at Bradford, 15
President of Brontë Society, 144
Watkinson, J., 14 8
Welldon, Bishop, Centenary addresa
at Haworth, 65
Wellington, Duke of, 31 Brontë hero,
16, 19, 77
Whitcrols, 325
Williams, Smith, 21. 215
Wilson, Rev. Carus, 323
Wise, J. T., 134
Withen's Height, 317
Wood, Butler, 118, 120, 122, 135,
147. 14 8
Brontë itinerary, 313
Wooler, Miss, 321
Worth Valley, 314
Wroot, H. E, 84
Story of the Brontë Society, 113
H'uthering Htights, place-name, 317
Publication of, 21 S
Wyc:oller, 280, 317

Yates, W. W., 118, 120, 122, 124,
14 8
"Yorke, Hiram," 320

330

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