The Brontës; fact and fiction

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THE BRONTES

FACT AND FICTION

THE BRONTES

FACT AND FICTION

jBy ANGUS M. MacKAY, B.A.^

(/

LONDON: SERVICE ^ PATON
5 HENRIETTA STREET ^ 1897

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson cr* Co
At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

^T^HE nucleus of the longer essay in
* this little volume is an article in
the Westminster Review of October 1895,
which is now out of print. I enlarge it
and republish it at the solicitation of some
of those who read it in its original form,
and with the desire to set at rest a vexed
question of Bronte bibliography. An
attempt to apply the methods of the
''higher criticism" to a modern book is
novel and may prove not uninteresting.

Let me hasten to say that I make no
charge of dishonesty against Dr. William

Wright. I concern myself with the credi-

vii

7599 1 4

Preface

billty of the book, not with the motives or
character of its author. In the seven-
teenth century, long before the key to
Egyptian hieroglyphics was discovered,
Kircher professed to give translations of
Egyptian stelae ; he was enthusiastic, he
was honest, he had spent years in studying
the subject, nothing could be laid to his
charge except, perhaps, a little unconscious
self-deception — and yet his translations
bore not the slightest resemblance to the
true meaning of the originals. So Dr.
Wright has, I am informed, been diligent
in inquiry, and I do not accuse him of bad
faith ; but I am convinced that his volume
is unreliable almost from cover to cover.

It may, perhaps, be thought that the
matter is here dealt with in too great
detail. It may be asked. Why break a fly

viii

Preface

upon the wheel ? But It must be remem-
bered that Dr. Wright's book has passed
through several editions, It was received
with a chorus of approval by the critics,
and Its narratives have been widely ac-
cepted as history : only a very thorough
exposure of Its unreliability can extirpate
the errors which It has sown broadcast.
But I have no doubt that the facts set
forth In the following pages will carry com-
plete conviction with them, and that those
who possess The Brontes in Ireland will
henceforth merely treasure it for what it
is — one of the curiosities of nineteenth-
century literature.

The other essay In this little book —
which Is here printed first — deals mainly
with the secret tragedy In Charlotte
Bronte's life which had so remarkable

ix

Preface

an effect in quickening and directing
her genius. Circumstances have made it
necessary to treat the matter now with
perfect frankness, but I trust I have
said nothing which is not compatible with
entire reverence for one of the noblest
and most gifted of women.

ANGUS M. MacKAY.

Aberdeen, April 1897.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. FRESH LIGHT ON BRONTE BIOGRAPHY 15

THE BRONTE FAMILY GROUP . . . . l6

THE RELIGIOUS VIEWS OF THE NOVELISTS 26

CHARLOTTE BRONTE'S SECRET .... 32

II. A CROP OF BRONTE MYTHS ... 85

THE GENEALOGICAL CHART . . . . 90
THE ALLEGED ORIGINALS OF " WUTHERING

HEIGHTS " 97

HUGH II. (the paragon) I26

THE IRISH UNCLES AND AUNTS OF THE

NOVELISTS 135

THE REVIEWER AND THE AVENGER . . . I46
THE ASSERTED IRISH ORIGIN OF THE BRONTE

NOVELS 161

PRUNTY V. BRONTE 166

SOURCES OF ERROR 172

"THE BRONTES IN IRELAND" AND THE CRITICS I79

FRESH LIGHT ON BRONTE
BIOGRAPHY

J J J

> ' » ' •>

FRESH LIGHT ON BRONTE
BIOGRAPHY

THE recent publication of Mr. Shorter's
admirable work, Charlotte Bronte and
her Circle, has quickened the interest which
is everywhere felt in Bronte biography.
Mr. Shorter has very skilfully grouped the
copious material placed at his disposal,
and we are now in possession of all the
facts which are ever likely to be known
concerning the wonderful Haworth family.
It must not be supposed, however, that the
mystery and glamour are now dispelled, and
that henceforth we are to see Charlotte,
Emily and Anne only in the light of com-
mon day. The doings and sufferings of
the shy, depressed, awkward girls at the bare

The Brontes

parsonage or in the fashionable Pensionnat
will continue to have a strange attraction
for all students of literary genius. It still
remains true that never before was a drama
so fascinating constructed out of such
homely material or acted upon so narrow
a stage, but about the characters of the
actors there is henceforth little room for
dubiety. It may be well to summarise the
impressions which result from a study of
the abundant material now at our dis-
posal.

The Bronte Family Group.

The character of the Rev. Patrick
Bronte, the father of the novelist, has
been alternately blackened and white-
washed since Mrs. Gaskell's Life appeared,
but these accretions are now removed, and
the original figure stands revealed. Indeed
one cannot but wonder at the skill with

which Mrs. Gaskell, w^ithout any violation

j6

Fact and Fiction

of good taste, was able to suggest the
blemishes no less than the excellences of
old Mr. Bronte, writing as she did during
his lifetime and at his request. The Vicar
of Haworth was eccentric, self-willed, some-
what vain ; he was grandiose in speech and
tyrannous in bearing when his will was
crossed. Once at least, as we are now
permitted to know, he took to excessive
whisky-drinking. Mr. Shorter amiably
tries to soften these unpleasant traits, but
the facts are too strong for him. When
the Rev. A. B. Nicholls had the pre-
sumption to propose to Charlotte Bronte
it is thus the daughter describes the effect
of the news upon her father :

" Papa worked himself into a state not
to be trifled with : the veins on his temples
started up like whipcord and his eyes
became suddenly bloodshot. I made haste
to promise that Mr. Nicholls should on the
morrow have a distinct refusal."

Alluding to this episode, Mr. Shorter

17 B

The Brontes

writes : " For once, and for the only time
in his life there is reason to believe, his
passions were thoroughly aroused." But
this will not do. Charlotte's words in
writing to Miss Nussey are : '' I only wish
you were here to see papa in his present
mood : you would know something of him ; "
and she goes on to speak of his relentless
cruelty to Mr. Nicholls. Her language is
capable of but one construction — the out-
burst was not exceptional, it was charac-
teristic. The story that in a gust of
passion he cut to pieces his wife's silk
gown has been contradicted ; but if it is
not true we must at least think it well
invented. And yet, while old Mr. Bronte
was far from immaculate, there is another
side of his character which inspires respect.
He was the reverse of commonplace, was
proud in the nobler sense of the word, pos-
sessed an indomitable will, and had abilities
decidedly above the average. The fact
that the Rev. Patrick Bronte, A.B., began

i8

Fact and Fiction

life as Patrick Prunty, the bare-footed
peasant, and owed his success entirely to
his own exertions, speaks for itself. Some
of his daughter's biographers, indeed, de-
scribe him as meanly ignoring his Irish
relations. This we now know is quite
untrue. He was in correspondence with
his Irish relatives till his death ; he visited
them and they him ; he mentioned them in
his will ; and, straitened as were his own
circumstances, he never failed to contribute
most generously to his mother's support so
long as she lived. When every fault has
been admitted, we can all give in our
adhesion to Mr. Shorter's verdict on him
as *' a thoroughly upright and honourable
man, who came manfully through a some-
what severe life-battle."

Patrick Branwell Bronte does not come
out so well under the fiercer light which
now beats upon the family group. Unless
want of balance is to be considered as

19

The Brontes

synonymous with genius, it is impossible
to credit him with unusual mental talents.
With his letters before us we cannot but
perceive that he was intellectually common-
place. As to his moral character, the less
said the better. A small incident may
sometimes serve as an index to wide
tracts of a man's disposition ; and any
one who reads the mean and sly letter to
Hartley Coleridge which appears on p. 126
of Mr. Shorter's book will think Branwell
capable of the worst which has been im-
puted to him.

As for the gentle Anne, she remains —
well, just the gentle Anne — pious, patient
and trustful. Her talent was of that
evangelical, pietistic type which never
lacks a certain gracefulness and never
rises above a certain intellectual level.
Had she lived in our day her novels
would have attracted little attention, and

her poetry would hardly have found ad-

20

Fact and Fiction

mission into any first-class magazine. It
remains clear as ever that her immortality-
is due to her sisters. Upon those bright
twin-stars many telescopes are turned, and
then there swims into the beholder's view
this third, mild-shining star of the tenth
magnitude, which otherwise would have
remained invisible. It follows that Anne
will always have a place assigned her in
the chart of the literary heavens. Nothing,
however, is ever likely to occur either to
heighten our estimate of her literary ability
or to lessen the affection which her character
inspires.

The author of Wtithering Heights still
remains, what she has ever been, the
sphynx of literature. Mr. Shorter prints
a curious document, written by Emily in
her twenty-seventh year, which shows how
the child-spirit survived in her, as it is apt
to do in men and women of genius, but it
sheds no farther light upon its writer's

21

The Brontes

personality. The mystery enshrouding her
is, indeed, partially accounted for when we
learn how almost absolutely impenetrable
was the reserve in which this lonely soul
clothed herself — a reserve so great that it
seems positively to have revolted some of
Charlotte's Brussels friends. But to account
for the presence of a mystery is not to ex-
plain the mystery itself, and we know now
more clearly than ever that Emily was one
of those self-centred natures which '' will
not abide our question." As her genius
was " rare " in the felicitous sense in which
that word is applied to Ben Jonson in the
famous epitaph, so her personality was
unique. It might be said of her, almost
more truly than of Milton :

♦'Her soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

Her genius may be compared to a mountain
peak, whose bold contour compels attention
yet forbids approach ; bare, steep, affording
no foothold to the explorer, and shrouding

22

Fact and Fiction

its summit in clouds which shift but do not
lift ; a Matterhorn which no Whymper
has yet appeared to scale. To this proud
isolation of spirit is partly due the strong
originality which places her in a rank above
her sister, and explains why those who have
appreciated her — from Sydney Dobell to
Mr. Swinburne — have been fit, if few.

But it need hardly be said that the great
bulk of the new material in Mr. Shorter's
book relates to Charlotte. We can hardly
say that it alters the figure now so familiar
to us, but it brings it into clearer light, and
confirms our former estimate of the great
novelist's genius and character. We now
know that Lockhart, the editor of the
Quarterly, some months before the criticism
appeared in his review which gave Charlotte
such pain, wrote thus of the author oijane
Eyre :

" I think her far the cleverest that has V
written since Austen and Edge worth were

23

The Brontes

in their prime, worth fifty Trollopes and
Martineaus rolled into one counterpane,
with fifty Dickenses and Bulwers to keep
them company."

It is a surprising estimate considering
the time and the man, but when truer
canons of criticism prevail, and our guides
in literature learn to discriminate between
the natural and the artificial, between crea-
tion and caricature — which at best is only
humorous imitation — it will not be found
one whit too high. Certainly the letters
of Charlotte Bronte, now made public for
the first time, increase our respect for her
intellectual ability ; nor do they lower our
previous admiration for her character ;
more than ever are we ready to unite
with Thackeray in doing homage to *' the
burning love of truth, the bravery, the
simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the
eager sympathy, the pious love and rever-
ence, the passionate honour, so to speak,
of the woman." The publication of Mr.

24

Fact and Fiction

Shorter's work will certainly tend to the
firmer establishment of Charlotte Bronte's
fame.

With the inferences which the author
draws from his copious material, however,
it is not always possible to agree. Some-
times, indeed, these appear directly con-
trary to the evidence on which they are
ostensibly based. While the instances of
this are not numerous enough to weaken
our gratitude to Mr. Shorter they are
important enough to call for instant chal-
lenge, and I purpose now to discuss two
of the subjects on which he has, as I think,
arrived at wrong conclusions. One of
the questions thus raised I shall touch
with extreme reluctance — I allude to the
relations between M. Heger and his gifted
pupil ; but I feel that it would be hurtful
to Charlotte's reputation to deal with it any
longer only by hint and innuendo. The
other question, which I shall treat first, is

25

The Brontes

that of the reHgious opinions of Charlotte
Bronte, which need not detain us long.

The Religious Views of the
Novelists.

The theological position of a person of
genius is always a matter of great interest,
as that is, naturally, an index to much else.
Mr. Shorter speaks of Charlotte's ultra-
Protestant education, of her "inheritance
of intolerance," of her sharing the views of
her sister Anne, and he leaves us with the
impression that she was a strict Tory
touched with Orangeism. As to her poli-
tical views I shall not here concern myself
beyond saying that I think Mr. Shorter
confuses the orirl's childlike enthusiasm for
the '' Great Duke " with the opinions of
the mature woman. But when we are
bidden to judge of the religion of the
daughters from the opinions of their

26

Fact and Fiction

father, it is needful to remember that

persons of strong intellect are apt to

vindicate their right to freedom of thought

by adopting some other opinions than those

offered by their environment, — Maurice be-

ofan life as a Unitarian, and Newman as

an Evangelical. In any case there is no

room for doubt as to the views of the

Bronte sisters. Anne kept most nearly to

the doctrine they had all been taught, but

even she departed from it in one particular,

for in her poem, '' A Word to the ' Elect ',"

she expresses a disbelief in the dogma of

eternal punishment. Emily's views are

not easily defined. The only fact that has

come down to us is that she expressed

approval of a friend who had refused to

state what her religious opinions were.

Her writings enable us to be certain of

only one thing — that she was far removed

from orthodoxy, and that what faith she

retained she held, not with the help of, but

in spite of, religious formulae.

27

The Brontes

" Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts ....
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity."

But about Charlotte's position after her
opinions had matured there surely can
be no dispute — it was midway between
those of her two sisters. Her views were
not stereotyped, nor were they utterly
formless. Her outspoken condemnation
of some of the fruits of Roman Catholi-
cism, as witnessed in the Pensionnat at
Brussels, has been set down to her sup-
posed Orange sympathies ; but it was quite
compatible with detachment of mind : the
ofirl who herself took refuo^e in the Con-
fessional in her loneliness and distress, and
who made a devoted Roman Catholic the
hero of her greatest work, was not a person
blinded by prejudices. Her attitude to-
wards religious questions was never other
than tolerant, but she was always out-
spoken where she saw, or thought she saw,

28

Fact and Fiction

what was blameworthy. She loved the
Church of England, but she knew its
faults and denounced them : '' God pre-
serve it! God also reform it," she says in
Shirley. Her verdict on its inferior clergy
is well known : " They seem to me a self-
seeking, vain, empty race." She hated
with all her heart that narrow ecclesias-
ticism which seems to have been common
in her day as it is in ours. She was gener-
ally painfully shy in company, but on one
occasion, when the three famous curates
''began glorifying themselves and abusing
the Dissenters," she surprised herself and
the company by some sharp sentences
which struck all dumb. In her corre-
spondence with W. S. Williams we get
many interesting glimpses of her opinions
on religious matters. When Mr. Williams
had made a confession to her which he
feared might displease her she wrote
back : *' I smile at you for supposing ....

that I could blame you for not being able,

29

The Brontes

when you look among sects and creeds, to
discover any one that you can exclusively
and implicitly adopt as yours. I perceive
myself that some light falls on earth from
heaven, that some rays from the shrine ot
truth pierce the darkness of this life and
world, but they are few, and faint, and
scattered." When the same correspon-
dent speaks of his views as resembling
those of Emerson she writes back : ** You
are already aware that in much of what
you say my opinion coincides with those
you express." But she urges : *' Ignor-
ance, weakness, or indiscretion must have
their props — they cannot walk alone. Let
them hold by what is purest in doctrine
and simplest in ritual ; something they
must have." She calls the Athanasian
Creed "profane," and when she expresses
her attachment to the Church of England
she explains that she draws the line at this
formulary. Her favourite divines are
Arnold and Maurice. For the former

30

Fact and Fiction

she expresses an unbounded veneration :
''Were there but ten such men among the
hierarchs of the Church of England ....
her sanctuaries would be purified, her rites
reformed, her withered veins would swell
again with vital sap ; but it is not so." So
again in another letter : ''A hundred such
men— fifty — nay ten or five such righteous
men might save any country ; might vic-
toriously champion any cause." Maurice
she heard preach when in London, and
she was deeply impressed. '' Had I the
choice," she wrote, ''it is Maurice whose
ministry I should frequent." Miss Mary A.
Robinson, in her book on Emily Bronte,
says of her heroine that she concealed her
opinions by the term " Broad Church,"
and "called herself a disciple of the
tolerant and thoughtful Maurice." There
is plainly no evidence of this, and it is
quite possible that a description of
Charlotte has been mistakenly applied to
Emily. In any case it is clear, from the

31

The Brontes

passages I have quoted from Charlotte's
letters — and they might be reinforced by-
passages from her novels — that '* Broad
Church " is the only title which can
describe her opinions. Had she been
living in our day her favourite divines
would have been Page- Roberts and
Phillips Brooks ; her attitude resembled
that of Tennyson and Browning and of
most men of genius who have remained
definitely Christian. To describe her as
infected with an Orange taint and profess-
ing a narrow Evangelicism is seriously to
misrepresent her.

Charlotte Bronte's Secret.

I now proceed to deal with the other
question upon which, as I think, Mr.
Shorter has come to a wroncf conclusion.
It is as follows : What was the nature
of Charlotte Bronte s feeling towards

32

Fact and Fiction

M. HdgeVy her Brussels teacher, and what
effect had this tipon her after-life ? Let
me state at the outset that I think this
subject should never have been publicly
touched upon. I do not say this because
I sympathise with the illogical demand
which has been made of late years that
portraits of public men should have all the
shadows left out. A biography which pre-
sents only what is good in the career of
its subject, and suppresses the rest, propa-
gates falsehood. Charlotte Bronte, who was
the very soul of truth, would undoubtedly
have wished to be presented to posterity
as she really was, and not as an ideal
figure. But the episode to which I am
about to refer was a secret which she kept
hidden from her dearest friends in her life-
time. It does not, as I shall attempt to
show, affect, though it confirms, our esti-
mate of her character, and the knowledofe
of it is not necessary to the appreciation of
her art. It should have been left alone.

33 c ^

/

/

The Brontes

But recent biographers of the Brontes
have so used their discretion as to make
any further reserve harmful. Sir Wemyss
Reid, in his Monog7'aph, was the first to
lift the curtain which concealed the tragedy
of Charlotte Bronte's life ; he described
her as leaving Brussels disillusioned, after
having "' tasted strange joys and drunk
deep of waters the very bitterness of
which seemed to endear them to her."
Mr. Augustine Birrell, in \\\^Life, published
ten years later, while protesting that ''it is
not admirable to seek to wrest the secrets
of a woman's heart from the works of her
genius," tells his readers they will find all
they want in Villette, and will carry away
from it " what they cannot doubt to be
true information," — in fact, while professing
anxiety to cover up the secret, he makes it
known to all the world. Other writers
have referred to the episode with the same
affectation of mystery, and Miss Frederika
Macdonald has more recently given, on

34

Fact and Fiction

the authority of some Brussels friends,
details which would, if true, have been
little to the credit of Charlotte Bronte.^
Luckily Mr. Shorter is able absolutely to
dispose of these latter allegations, and for
this we are grateful. I am apprehensive,
however, that his own treatment of the
Brussels episode may have an effect which
he him.self would be the first to regret.
Mr. Shorter assures us that there was no
tragedy, and he speaks of the allegation
that there was as "a silly and offensive im-
putation." His position may be sum-
marised thus : The story is not true^ but
if it were true it would be discreditable.
All admirers of Charlotte Bronte then wait
anxiously for a disproof which shall be
final. But they do not get it : on the con-
trary, the facts which Mr. Shorter has
to tell strengthen previous surmises, and
henceforth more than ever those who study
Bronte literature will be of the opinion of

* The Woman at Home, July 1894.
35

The Brontes

Sir Wemyss Reid and Mr. Birrell. Must
we, then, suppose Charlotte guilty of dis-
creditable conduct such as will depose her
from the high pedestal on which she has
been hitherto placed ? Such a supposi-
tion is only rendered possible by the
mysterious way in which the subject has
hitherto been treated. I should have
infinitely preferred, as I have said, that
the story should have been left in complete
obscurity, but the treatment by dark hints
and siofnificant nods is more danorerous
than frank discussion. I propose, there-
fore, to join issue with Mr. Shorter, and to
maintain. The story is probably true, but if
true it is not discreditable. When this
part of Charlotte Bronte's history is dis-
closed we shall pity her more, but I trust
we shall not love or esteem her less.

Let me now state the evidence relating
to the Brussels episode as it presents itself
to the close student of Bronte literature.
In doing so I shall first touch upon certain

36

Fact and Fiction

phenomena in Charlotte's writings which
have always seemed to suggest some secret
love tragedy in her life.

There is a peculiarity In Charlotte
Brontes novels which differentiates them
from all other writings of their class — I
refer to the fact that love in them is
treated, not from the man's, but from the
woman's point of view. This was almost
a new element in literature. In previous
love-tales, even when women were the
authors, it was the man who longed, who
suffered, who was left in suspense, and a
veil remained over the heart of the heroine
until shyly half-lifted in the closing scenes.
Charlotte Bronte's bolder method revealed
to us a hemisphere previously almost un-
known, or at least not mapped out. Turn
to Shirley, and it is not the hero, but
Caroline Helstone, who loves and suffers,
and whose fluctuating hopes and fears
make the interest of the story. This new

37

The Brontes

departure constituted a *' return to nature "
as real as that accomplished by Words-
worth in the domain of poetry. It attracted
attention from the first. It was this which
made those critics who confused the con-
ventional with the moral describe Jane
Eyre and Villette as " coarse." It was
this which led Miss Martineau to dwell
on Charlotte's '' incessant tendency to de-
scribe the need of being loved," and to
complain in her review of Villette, *'A11
the female characters, in all their thoughts
and lives, are full of one thing, or are re-
garded by the reader in the light of that
one thought — love. It begins with the
child of six years old at the opening, and it
closes with it at the last page." In reality,
however, it is this very originality of treat-
ment, combined with the knowledge of the
deep things of the heart which it displays,
which constitutes the value of this writer's
work. It is this which gives her the
supremacy over the other novelists of her

38

Fact and Fiction

sex. Miss Ferrier and Miss Austen were
artists as skilful in the use of the brush as
Charlotte Bronte ; indeed the former sur-
passes her in humour, and the latter in
delicacy of touch. But both these authors
dealt with subjects which, in comparison
with hers, were trivial : they painted the
surface of life ; she probed its depths.
Even George Eliot, incomparably superior
as she is in breadth of treatment and
variety of subject, has not shown us the
recesses of the human heart as has the
author of Villette and Shirley. Charlotte
Bronte herself was quite conscious wherein
lay the strength of her genius ; she realised
that a writer's ability to deal with the
deepest passions of human nature is the
true criterion of the greatness of his art.
It was on this ground she challenged Miss
Austen's right to that supreme position
which George Henry Lewes claimed for
her. Her criticism is well worth recalling
and well worth pondering :

39

/

The Brontes

"Jane Austen ruffles her reader by
nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing
profound. The passions are perfectly un-
known to her ; she rejects even a speaking
acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood.
Even to the feeHngs she vouchsafes no
more than an occasional graceful but dis-
tant recognition ; too frequent converse
with them would ruffle the smooth elegance
of her progress. Her business Is not half
so much with the human heart as with the
human eyes, mouth, hands and feet. What
sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly,
it suits her to study ; but what throbs fast
and full, though hidden, what the blood
rushes through, what is the unseen seat of
life and the sentient target of death^-this
Miss Austen ignores. She no more with
her mind's eye beholds the heart of her
race than each man, with bodily vision, sees
the heart in his heavlnof breast. ... If
this is heresy I cannot help it."

Charlotte Bronte's own art was the anti-

40

Fact and Fiction

thesis of that of Jane Austen. It was hers
to depict love in its deeper, more tragic,
more serious moods and aspects. She
could give us the ordinary 'Move scene,"
and charm us with a spell such as few
others can command — witness the passage
in The Professor, in which Crimsworth
claims Frances Henri — but it is the love
agony which is her element. The pain of
unrequited affection is the feeling she
never tires of depicting, and in describing
this she has no equal. Her novels may
end happily, but not till they have been
made the medium of exhibiting the suffer-
ing which the master passion brings with
it when unaccompanied by hope. Nowhere
else are to be found such piercing cries of
lonely anguish as may be heard in Shirley
and Villette. They are the very de pro-
fundis of love sunk in the abyss of despair.
And their author insists throughout how
much greater this suffering must be for
women than for men, both because they

41

The Brontes

are doomed to bear in silence, and because
they have not the distraction of an active
career. There Is a passage In Shirley
which may be taken as the text upon
which most of the novels were written :

''A lover feminine can say nothing ; if
she did the result would be shame and
anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery.
Nature would brand such demonstration
as a rebellion against her instincts, and
would vindictively repay It afterwards by
the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting
suddenly in secret. . . . You expected
bread, and you have got a stone ; break
your teeth on it, and don't shriek because
the nerves are martyrised. Do not doubt
that your mental stomach — If you have
such a thing — is strong as an ostrich's ;
the stone will digest. You held out your
hand for an ^%'g, and fate put into it a
scorpion. Show no consternation ; close
your fingers firmly upon the gift ; let it

sting through your palm. Never mind :

42

Fact and Fiction

In time, after your hand and arm have
swelled and quivered long with torture, the
squeezed scorpion will die, and you will
have learnt the great lesson how to endure
without a sob. In the whole remnant of
your life, if you survive the test — some, it
is said, die under it — you will be stronger,
wiser, less sensitive."

Now, on finding Charlotte Bronte so
perfect a mistress of all the moods of love
as it affects women, and especially of the
more tragic aspects of it, one cannot but
ask, How did she obtain this knowledge ?
Is she writing merely from observation or
from personal feeling? Luckily, we can
give the answer in her own words. *' De-
tails, situations which I do not understand
and cannot personally inspect, I would not
for the world meddle with. . . . Besides,
not one feeling on any subject, public or
private, will I ever affect that I do not
really experienced But this assurance is
not necessary to those who have lovingly

43

The Brontes

studied her works. The light that is in
them is not pale reflected light ; the burn-
ing rays come direct from the source in
which they were kindled. Personal feel-
ing vibrates in every line of Charlotte's
writing. That her novels are the outcome
of personal experience is, to those who
know her best, a self-evident truth.

We turn, then, to the numerous lives of
Charlotte Bronte to see where and when
were learnt those bitter lessons which her
writings teach. We knew her well before
Mr. Shorter s book appeared ; and now
she is perhaps more minutely known to
us than any other person of literary genius,
save perhaps Samuel Johnson — and even
this is a doubtful exception, for our know-
ledge of Johnson is confined to his table-
talk and his outward characteristics, he
never bared his heart to us as Charlotte
does in her novels. We can now trace
step by step every mile of her life's

44

Fact and Fiction

journey ; we know all her friends ; we can
peruse her copious correspondence ; we
can identify almost every character in
her novels, even the most subordinate.
And when we examine all this informa-
tion, this truth is forced upon us : that
the characteristic experiences recorded in
her books were not gained at Haworth :
there is no room for any love tragedy there.
The only gentlemen she met there were
the neighbouring curates ; through her
correspondence we now know them all,
and what she thought of them, and her
remarks are frank but the reverse of com-
plimentary. The way to Charlotte's heart,
we may be sure, lay through her intellect
and imagination, and the curates, as she
describes them, are not the men to have
captivated her. Plain though she was she
seems to have exercised a peculiar fascina-
tion over some natures. She had four offers
of marriage in all — two before she became
famous and two after ; and if we glance at

45

The Brontes

the way in which she dealt with them, we
shall learn that she certainly was not easily
susceptible of love.

Her first suitor was the Rev. Henry
Nussey, a brother of her life-long friend.
Her reply was of a very business-like
character, explaining that ''delay was
wholly unnecessary," returning "a decided
negative," and giving him a description oi
the kind of wife he ought to choose.

The next aspirant was the Rev. Mr.
Price, a young Irish clergyman fresh from
Dublin University, who proposed to her
after having spent only one afternoon and
evening in her company. On this adven-
ture she writes to her friend Miss Nussey :
"Well, thought I, I have heard of love
at first sight, but this beats all ; I leave
you to guess what my answer would be,
convinced that you will not do me the
injustice of guessing wrong. When we
meet I'll show you the letter. I hope
you are laughing heartily."

46

Fact and Fiction

This was in the year 1839. Nearly ten
years elapsed before another offer came,
and meanwhile the Brussels episode had
taken place.

The third suitor was a Mr. James
Taylor, a literary gentleman connected
with Messrs. Smith and Elder. He was
in every way a man to be respected, and
was most persevering in his endeavours
to attain his end. But, like most persons
who are liable to fall into the grasp
of a tyrannous affection, Charlotte was
capable also of strong antipathies. She
writes : '' Friendship, gratitude, esteem I
have ; but each moment that he came near
me, and that I could see his eyes fastened
upon me, my veins ran ice. Now that
he is away I feel far more gently towards
him ; it is only close by that I grow rigid
— stiffening with a strange mixture of ap-
prehension and anger, which nothing softens
but his retreat and a perfect subduing of
his manner." She respected and pitied

47

The Brontes

him, but she was firm in insisting that
as she did not love him she could not
marry him.

The story of the wooing of the Rev.
A. B. Nicholls, three years later, is as
interesting as anything in the novels.
When the first offer came Charlotte felt
that she could not marry him, and yet
the manner in which he pleaded his suit
evidently impressed her : " Shaking from
head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking
low, vehemently, yet with difficulty, he
made me for the first time feel what it
costs a man to declare affection when he
doubts response." She refused him, and
her father, as we have seen, treated his
pretensions to his daughter's hand with
disdain. Time passed on, and the suffer-
ings which the rejected lover endured
were such as could not fail to touch
Charlotte's pity. We read of his breaking
down while administering the Communion

to Charlotte in Haworth Church : '* He

48

Fact and Fiction

struggled, faltered, then lost command
over himself, stood before my eyes, and
in the sight of all the communicants, white,
shaking, voiceless." The women sobbed
audibly and tears came to Charlotte's eyes.
Another touching scene took place when
he called to take his final leave of Mr.
Bronte : '' Perceiving that he stayed long
before going out of the gate, and, re-
membering his long grief, I took courage
and went out, trembling and miserable.
I found him leaning against the garden
door in a paroxysm of anguish, sobbing
as women never sob. Of course I went
straight to him. Very few words were
exchanged, those few barely articulate."
A passion mighty as this was bound
to make an impression sooner or later
upon a heart so compassionate as Char-
lotte's, and we are not surprised to find
her writing to her confidante : " Dear
Nell, without loving him I don't like to
think of him suffering in solitude, and

49 P

The Brontes

wish him anywhere, so that he were
happy." Pity is proverbially akin to love,
and within eighteen months from the first
proposal a happy marriage was consum-
mated. But to the last she had no illusion
as to the nature of her own feelings. Only
a few weeks before the wedding she wrote :
*' I am still very calm, very inexpectant.
What I taste of happiness is of the soberest
order. I trust to love my husband. I am
grateful for his tender love to me. I believe
him to be an affectionate, a conscientious,
a high-principled man ; and if, with all
this, I should yield to regrets that fine
talents, congenial tastes and thoughts are
not added, it seems to me I should be
most presumptuous and thankless."

After marriage she writes in the same
sober strain. Mr. Nicholls indeed is en-
titled to the gratitude of all who appreciate
the genius of Charlotte Bronte. He brought
the first taste of unalloyed happiness into
her life. He taught her the sweet and

5^

Fact and Fiction

tranquil pleasures of an affection which
is almost more precious than love. But
it is plain that the over-mastering passion
depicted in the novels had no place in
her relations with him. The flame, it
would seem, had already passed on her,
and left behind nothing that was inflam-
mable. No chapter in her life at Haworth,
before the Brussels episode, can account
for the phenomena of the novels, and all
that took place there afterwards showed
that the experiences upon which the novels
were founded were already things of the
past.

To Brussels, then, perforce, we are driven
if we are to continue our quest. Every one
knows how Charlotte and Emily, aged
twenty-six and twenty-four respectively,
went to the Pensionnat Heger in the Rue
d'Isabelle to learn French and attain other
accomplishments. At the head of this
establishment was Madame Heger, but

51

The Brontes

literature was taught by her husband, the
Paul Emanuel of Villette. Any one who
wishes to know his general characteristics
has only to turn to the famous novel, where
he is painted with an effect more lifelike
than that of any photograph. Two points
only need to be emphasised. The first is
his great intellectual ability. All accounts
agree that, though he wTote no book, his
literary attainments were remarkable, and
his capacity for awakening enthusiasm for
what is great in literature amounted to
genius. His critical insight is evidenced
by the fact that at his interview with Mrs.
Gaskell, at a time when Emily was un-
known, and the fame of Charlotte was
spreading widely in Europe, he gave the
palm of genius to the younger sister, and
sketched her characteristics in language as
terse as it was true. The other point to
be noted is that he was a man of deeply
religious character. Mrs. Gaskell speaks
of him as " a kindly, wise, good and religious

52

Fact and Fiction

man;" and a lady in Brussels thus described
him some ten years after the Brontes had
left Brussels :

** Je ne connais pas personnellement
M. Heger, mais je sais qu'il est peu de
caracteres aussi nobles, aussi admirables
que le sien. II est un des membres les
plus z61es de cette Societe de S. Vincent
de Paul dont je I'ai deja parl4 et ne se
contente pas de servir les pauvres et les
malades, mais leur consacre encore les
soirees. Apres des journees absorb^es
tout entieres par les devoirs que sa place
lui impose, il reunit les pauvres, les
ouvriers, leur donne des cours gratuits, et
trouve encore le moyen de les amuser en
les instruisant. Ce d^vouement te dira
assez que M. Heger est profondement et
ouvertement religieux."

This was the man who first gave Char-
lotte that intellectual sympathy for which
she must have been craving all her life ;
who, day after day, sat by her side or bent

53

The Brontes

over her shoulder, correcting her mistakes,
reproving her faults, and acting towards
her as Paul Emanuel acted towards Lucy
Snowe or Crimsworth towards Frances
Henri. He did not, however, share the
warm feelings with which, in fiction,
these two gentlemen regarded their pupils.
He was interested, no doubt, in Charlotte's
intellectual freshness, and he pitied her
obvious forlornness. Miss Frederika Mac-
donald, who was his pupil many years
later, writes : *' He was a man of an extra-
ordinarily tender heart as well as a powerful
mind, whose most terrible moods — and his
moods were sometimes terrible — would sud-
denly melt and soften at the spectacle of
any token of genuine distress." We may
be sure that the loneliness of the friendless
girls would appeal very strongly to him.
He admired, too, Charlotte's character,
and spoke in warm terms to Mrs. Gaskell
of her unselfishness. But nothing is more
certain than that M. Heger had no feeling

54

Fact and Fiction

towards his plain awkward pupil which he
was not willing for the whole world to see.

When the Bronte girls had been at
Brussels nine months their aunt died, and
they hurried back to Haworth Vicarage.
Emily then elected to stay at home and
keep house for her father, but Charlotte
returned to Brussels. She herself thus
comments upon this decision in a letter
to Miss Nussey :

'*I returned to Brussels after aunt's
death against my conscience, prompted by
what then seemed an irresistible impulse.
I was punished for my selfish folly by a
total withdrawal for more than two years
of happiness and peace of mind."

Mr. Shorter endeavours to account for
this confession by saying that old Mr.
Bronte took to excessive whisky-drink-
ing at this time under the influence of a
curate of convivial tastes, and that Char-
lotte felt she should have stayed to protect
him : he fails to see that this leaves the

55

The Brontes

really suggestive phrases In this passage
unexplained. Granted that anxiety for her
father caused a part, or even the whole,
of the uneasiness of conscience of which
Charlotte speaks, the question remains,
what was that ''irresistible impulse" which
impelled so dutiful a daughter to act thus ?
And how are we to account for the last
half of the statement ? Mr. Shorter admits
that the daughter's return speedily rescued
the father from his evil habit, and she only
stayed in Brussels one year. Yet Char-
lotte, who was accustomed to weigh her
words, states thaty^r two years she suffered
a total withdrawal of happiness and peace
of mind. Whatever it may have been,
something must have happened at Brussels
to account for this melancholy result.

Charlotte's second stay at the Pensionnat
was less happy than the first had been.
Emily was no longer with her, and her
friend Mary Taylor had left the city.
She was now more lonely than ever, had

56

Fact and Fiction

a deeper craving for sympathy, and was
more grateful for every word and look of
kindness. Meanwhile she was brought
into still closer relationship with M.
Heger, for she not only received from him
lessons in literature but she instructed him
and his brother-in-law in English. At
times, especially in the vacation, when she
was left almost entirely alone, she suffered
terribly, as all readers of Villette knows.
It was shortly before she left Brussels that
she paid that visit to the Confessional
which she has dramatised in her greatest
novel. Mr. Shorter prints a letter to
Emily in which she speaks of it lightly as
a whim ; but we may be sure that it must
have been desperate need which em-
boldened this sensitive girl — so shy that
she could not pass a stranger on the
Haworth roads without putting up her
hand to hide her face — to seek advice in
such a quarter. In after years, in one of
her letters she wrote of Lucy Snowe — and

57

The Brontes

Lucy Snowe, we all know, was Charlotte
Bronte — '* It was no impetus of healthy
feelinor which uro^ed her to the confes-
sional, it was the semi-delirium of grief
and sickness ; " and this, we may be sure, is
the true account. What could have been
the nature of her communication to the
father confessor ? She says to Emily, " I
actually did confess — a real confession " ;
but we may safely conclude that it was of
sorrow rather than of sin she spoke, and
that she sought not absolution but con-
solation. Consolation, however, did not
readily come. Three months later we find
her writing to Emily : '' Low spirits have
afflicted me much lately. ... I am not ill
in body. It is only the mind that is a
little shaken — for want of comfort."

Suddenly Charlotte resolved to return
home. She was helped to this decision by
Mary Taylor, to whom she wrote speaking
of the low and depressed condition into
which she had fallen. Her friend advised

58

Fact and Fiction

her to go home or elsewhere at once,
otherwise she would not have energy to
move, and her friends would be in ignor-
ance of her condition. For this advice
Charlotte displayed a gratitude so deep
that it seems to have puzzled both her
friend and Mrs. Gaskell ; but to those who
believe in the Brussels tragedy Mary
Taylor's words will be significant of
much :

** Charlotte wrote that I had done her a
great service, that she should certainly
follow my advice, and was much obliged to
me. I have often wondered at this letter.
Though she patiently tolerated advice she
could always put it aside and do as she
thought fit. More than once afterwards
she mentioned the * service ' I had done
her. She sent me ^lo to New Zealand
on hearing some exaggerated accounts of
my circumstances, and told me she hoped
it would come in seasonably ; it was a debt
she owed me ' for the service I had done

59

The Brontes

her.' I should think ^lo was a quarter of
her income."

Mrs. Gaskell makes it clear that M. and
Mme. Heger were surprised at her sudden
resolution, but as she alleged as a reason
her father's increasinof blindness — which,
as Mrs. Gaskell admits, was not the whole
reason — they could offer no opposition. Her
first biographer tells of her deep distress and
tears when the time of parting came. On
whose account were the tears shed ? We
know what she thought of Madame Heger,
whom she has pilloried as Madame Becke
and Mdlle. Reuter; she despised the pupils,
she detested the teachers. But, indeed, she
answers my question herself in a letter
written a month after her return home:
*'I suffered much before I left Brussels. I
think, however long I live, I shall not
forget what the parting with M. Heger
cost me." In the same letter she writes :
*' I do not know whether you feel as I do,
but there are times now when it appears

60

Fact and Fiction

to me as If all my ideas and feelings,
except a few friendships and affections, are
changed from what they used to be ;
something in one, which used to be enthu-
siasm, is tamed down and broken. I have
fewer illusions ; what I wish for now is
active exertion — a stake in life. Haworth
now seems such a quiet spot, buried away
from the world. ... It seems as if I ought
to be working, and braving the rough
realities of the world as other people do."
Readers of Shirley will remember several
passages in which Caroline Helstone,"^
when feeling ''the pangs of despis'd love,"
utters just such plaints as the above.
Plainly Charlotte was still suffering under
''the total withdrawal of all happiness and
peace of mind."

Such were the facts of the Brussels
episode as they were known before the

* Caroline Helstone is often said to be a portrait of
Miss Ellen Nussey, but this is true only of external
aspect : the inner life depicted is undoubtedly that of
Charlotte Bronte.

6i

The Brontes

publication of Mr. Shorter's book. But
Mr. Shorter, who asks us to scout the idea
of any tragedy of the heart at Brussels,
adds one or two facts which make it
almost impossible to follow his advice.
He admits that Madame Heger and her
children suspected that Charlotte felt too
warmly for her teacher, and he tells us on
unimpeachable authority that the subse-
quent correspondence between Charlotte
and M. Heger, after it had lasted only
eighteen months, came to an abrupt end
through the intervention of Madame
H6ger, who objected to it. The facts
were sufficient before to convince such
close Bronte students as Sir Wemyss Reid
and Mr. Augustine Birrell of the reality
of the Brussels tragedy. With the addi-
tions which Mr. Shorter makes it will be
more difficult than ever to stop short of
this conclusion.

If now we turn from the Brussels

62

Fact and Fiction

history, as recorded in the biographies, to
Charlotte's novels, one or two significant
phenomena immediately present them-
selves. We are surprised to find how
absolutely Charlotte accepts M. Heger as
her beau iddal. Her heroes are nearly
always dark men of intense nature, strong-
willed, masterful, abrupt, with a dash of
the pedagogue, and yet at heart chivalrous
and tender. I do not mean that there
is any monotony in Charlotte's picture
gallery. Each character has its own
distinct individuality, but they remind one
of the ''composite photograph" which is
made by combining several faces into one,
and in each there is a strong blend of the
Brussels professor. In Paul Emanuel we
have an undisguised portrait of M. Heger:
it is as startlingly lifelike as a Moroni
painting ; no other character can vie with
it in piquancy and interest. Next to it
in vividness comes old Helstone, Rector
of Briarfield, the ''clerical cossack" of

63

The Brontes

Shirley ; he is just the Belgian professor
with the imagination and the tender heart
omitted from his composition. Robert
and Louis Moore and Crimsworth are
merely paler copies of the same original
with one or two distinguishing traits
thrown in. Even Rochester has a few of
the same lineaments, though here some
other face is superimposed on the dark
intense visage which is so familiar to us.
As when we have gazed long on some
object in a bright light it reproduces itself
in whatever direction we look, so was
Charlotte's vision haunted by the figure of
M. Heger. Account for it how we may, it
is clear that this remarkable man domi-
nated her imagination.

Another significant phenomenon is the
frequency of love scenes between master
and pupil in these works ; indeed, the thing
is repeated so often that only the sweet
magic of Charlotte Bronte's art could have
prevented it from becoming wearisome.

64

Fact and Fiction

In the pages of three out of her four
novels love and lessons always go on
simultaneously. In this pleasant way
Robert Moore in Shirley teaches the
charming Caroline Helstone, and Louis
Moore the equally charming Shirley
Keelder. So in Villette does M. Paul
Emanuel teach Lucy Snowe, and so in
The Professor does William Crimsworth
instruct Frances Henri. How was it that
this great writer could hardly picture any
wooing which did not involve this relation-
ship ? It is certain, of course, that no
approach to love-making ever went on in
the Pensionnat Heger, but it is difficult to
resist the impression that it was the play
of the imagination on the memory of her
Brussels experiences which produced the
scenes which have so subtle a charm for
us.

In Jane Eyre alone the lovers do not
stand in the relation of teacher and taught ;
but Jane Eyre too lends its corroboration to

6s E

The Brontes

the theory we are considering. For what
is the thesis of the book ? The suffering
which is occasioned to a woman who is
innocently led into love for one who belongs
to another ; the agony which in such case
the parting costs ; the long and painful
struggle which ensues in attempting to
crucify affections which have no longer
the right to live. How intensely all this
is indicated in Jane Eyre all readers will
know. How poignant is the feeling in the
following passage :

'' Self- abandoned, relaxed, and effortless,
I seemed to have laid me down in the
dried-up bed of a great river ; I heard a
flood loosened in remote mountains, and
felt the torrent come. . . . The whole
consciousness of my life lorn, my love
lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-
struck, swayed full and mighty above me
in one sullen mass. That bitter hour
cannot be described : in truth ' the waters
came into my soul ; I sank in the deep

66

Fact and Fiction

mire ; I felt no standing ; I came into
deep waters ; the floods overflowed me.'

*' Some time in the afternoon I raised
my head, and, looking round and seeing
the western sun gilding the sign of its
decline on the wall, I asked, ' What am
I to do?'

'' But the answer my mind gave — * Leave
Thornfield at once ' — was so prompt, so
dread, that I stopped my ears : I said I
could not bear such words now. ' That I
am not Edward Rochester's bride is the
least part of my woe,' I alleged: 'that I
have wakened out of the most glorious
dreams and found them all void and vain
is a horror I could bear and master ; but
that I must leave him decidedly, instantly,
entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it.'

" But then a voice within me averred
that I could do it and foretold that I
should do it. I wrestled with my own
resolution : I wanted to be weak, that I
might avoid the awful passage of further

67

The Brontes

suffering that I saw laid out for me ; and
conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by
the throat, told her tauntingly she had yet
but dipped her dainty foot in the slough,
and swore that with that arm of iron he
would thrust her down to unsounded depths
of agony.

'* ' Let me be torn away, then ! ' I cried.
' Let another help me.'

" ' No ; you shall tear yourself away,
none shall help you : you shall yourself
pluck out your right eye : yourself cut off
your right. hand: your heart shall be the
victim, and you the priest to transfix
it.'"

The wrench, Jane Eyre tells us, was
worse than death :

" * If I could go out of life now, without
too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,'
I thought ; ' then I should not have to
make the effort of cracking my heart-
strings in rending them from among Mr.
Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears

68

Fact and Fiction

I do not want to leave him — I cannot
leave him.' "

But in the novel we are never permitted
to doubt that the heroine will be true to
conscience. In her secret heart her deter-
mination was taken from the first :

" ' I will hold to the principles received
by me when I was sane, and not mad — as
I am now. Laws and principles are not
for the times when there is no temptation :
they are for such moments as this when
body and soul rise in mutiny against their
rigour ; stringent are they ; inviolate they
shall be.' "

No moralist ever more sternly Inculcated
submission to conscience and principle than
did Charlotte Bronte ; none more unflinch-
ingly practised it.

Concerning the bearing of Shirley and
The Professor upon the theory of a
Brussels tragedy enough has been said.
As to Villette, it is now everywhere ac-
knowledged that the part of it which

69

The Brontes

deals with the Pensionnat is autobiography
with a mere touch of romance added.
All the characters in it can be identified :
nothing is changed from the reality except
the names. When we remember that
Charlotte herself is Lucy Snowe, and
that M. Hdger is M. Paul Emanuel, the
curious ending of the book is significant.
Old Mr. Bronte was urgent that the story
should end happily, and that the Pro-
fessor and his pupil should marry ; but his
daughter, usually so compliant to his
wishes, proved in this matter inflexible.
She knew that there is a point at which
it is necessary to draw the line even in
imagination. The lovers in her other
novels were composite characters ; they
had no absolute originals in real life ; she
could do with them as she would. But as
regards Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel
it was different : hence their ultimate fate
is left shrouded in uncertainty, and the

curtain falls on them still unwed.

70

Fact and Fiction

In the poems of Charlotte Bronte we
find traces of the same thoughts and ideas
which so persistently haunt the novels.
As a rule her verses are jejune enough,
but the following, taken from a poem
entitled '' Frances " — a name significant
to those who have read The Professor —
are not wanting in life and passion :

" God help me in my grievous need,
God help me in my inward pain ;
Which cannot ask for pity's meed,
Which has no licence to complain,

" Which must be borne ; yet who can bear
Hours long, days long, a constant weight —
The yoke of absolute despair,
A suffering wholly desolate ?

" Who can for ever crush the heart.
Restrain its throbbings, curb its life ?
Dissemble truth with ceaseless art,
With outward calm mask inward strife ?

" Unloved I love; unwept I weep ;
Grief I restrain, hope I repress :
Vain is the anguish — fixed and deep ;
Vainer desires and dreams of bliss.

71

The Brontes

" For me the universe is dumb,

Stone-deaf and blank and wholly blind ;
Life I must bound, existence sum
In the strait limits of one mind ;

" That mind my own. Oh 1 narrow cell.
Dark, imageless — a living tomb !
There must I sleep, there wake and dwell
Content with palsy, pain and gloom.
« * * «

" Still strong and young, and warm with vigour.
Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow ;
And many a storm of wildest rigour
Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough.

" Rebellious now to blank inertion,

My unused strength demands a task ;
Travel and toil and full exertion
Are the last only boon I ask."

Here again we have a love that must
remain unspoken, a love which must not
even ask for pity ; here again we have the
agony of unrequited affection, the longing
to be set such toilsome tasks as may
deaden sensation to the pangs within.
For my part I cannot but think that the
feelings thus often and eloquently expressed

72

Fact and Fiction

were the feelings not merely of the author
but of the woman.

I might multiply indefinitely passages
from Charlotte's works which illustrate the
hidden tragedy of her life ; but let these
suffice as specimens. I think every one
will admit that, when taken in conjunction
with the facts of her history, they constitute
a body of evidence not easily explained
away. No doubt it falls short of absolute
demonstration. But if the strength of a
theory is to be measured by the complete-
ness with which it accounts for the facts
of the subject-matter to which it is applied,
then this theory must be accounted strong
indeed. In the course of our inquiry
many questions have presented themselves :
Where did Charlotte Bronte obtain that
intimate knowledge of love in which she
surpasses all other novelists.? How is it
that she dwells almost exclusively upon
the agony of unrequited affection ? What
was that ''irresistible impulse" which

73

The Brontes

drove her to Brussels the second time ?
Why did she suffer such fearful distress
on parting finally with the Brussels Pro-
fessor? What was the cause of the two
years of utter gloom and despair? Why
does the figure of M. Heger haunt the
pages of all her novels ? Why do her love
scenes almost invariably connect themselves
with the schoolroom ? These and a dozen
other questions are all answered by the
theory under discussion, and I cannot see
that it is possible to answer them in any
other way. I do not say this with any
desire to convert others to my view — that
is not my object. But I think it will be
admitted that the subject cannot be dis-
missed as lightly as Mr. Shorter supposes.
On the contrary, there are many of us to
whom the quickening of the genius of
Charlotte Bronte by a hidden tragedy at
Brussels will seem a fact as clearly proved
as the nature of the case will admit. We
could not think otherwise if we would.

74

Fact and Fiction

It only remains now to ask, Must those
who agree with Sir Wemyss Reid on this
matter therefore think less highly of Char-
lotte Bronte's character ? To this question
I reply by an emphatic negative. I main-
tain that, if we accept this sad chapter of
her life as authentic, more than ever she
answers to Kingsley's description of her
as ''a valiant woman made perfect by
suffering."

He must be a Pharisee Indeed who can
fail to see that Charlotte was more to be
pitied than blamed for the growth of her
strong attachment to her teacher. Owing
to her shyness and the isolation of her
position, she had known no man intimately
till she went to Brussels, save her father
and brother : she had met at Haworth
only a few of those curates whom she
described as " highly uninteresting, narrow,
and unattractive specimens of the ' coarser
sex.' " Then suddenly her duty brought her
daily into close association with one whose

75

The Brontes

personality was magnetic, whose intellectual
gifts had an irresistible attraction for such
a mind as hers, and whose sympathy was,
during long lonely months, her only solace
amid a world of strangers. The ripening
of friendship and gratitude into a stronger
feeling would be by imperceptible stages,
and she herself would not know when that
line was crossed which divides friendship
from that stronger form of attachment
which makes separation from its object
an agony. If we call this attachment
''love," it is for want of a more discrim-
inating word : whatever the feeling was,
it was known in her consciousness only
as suffering, and was kept prisoner in
secret in the depths of her own heart.
She was "martyr by the pang without
the palm." Even Miss Frederika Mac-
donald, who seems to hold a brief for
Madame Heger and her daughters, ac-
knowledges that Charlotte's feeling for her
teacher "was not tainted nor disfigured by

76

Fact and Fiction

the shadow of any attempt or desire to
draw on herself affections that were pledged
elsewhere." Under all the circumstances
it seems to me that, like Jane Eyre in
the story, she was drawn into love of her
"master" quite innocently. If we have
nothing but pity for Jane in the romance,
we can have no harsher feeling for Charlotte
in real life.

There may be some, indeed, who will
assume that Charlotte knew her own heart
by the time she first left Brussels. These
may perhaps urge that to return was a
highly censurable action, and that here she
falls far short of the heroic inflexibility of
her own heroine, Jane Eyre. But even if
we suppose that at this time Charlotte
knew the nature of her own feelings —
which I am not prepared to admit — her
case and Jane Eyre's are not here parallel.
Jane, if she had returned to Mr. Roches-
ter, would have gone back to a man who
loved her and who was bent on forcing

77

The Brontes

her Into a wrong path. Charlotte, in
returning to Brussels, ran no such risks :
she went with her will fixed upon carrying
out the course she had mapped out, even
though it involved the draining of the
bitter cup — nine parts gall to one of sweet-
ness— of which she had already tasted.
She was one of those strong souls who can
walk with security along the edges of
dizzy precipices where others would faint.
She knew, for she had proved it in many
a struggle, that she was mistress of her-
self Even had I to grant that in re-
turning to a sphere so dangerous to her
peace she was guilty of a moral error, I
should recall the path of thorns and flints
into which that error led her, and blame
would be almost lost in admiration for the
Stoic courage with which she trod that
path.

For my part, however, I do not grant
any moral error. I think that she did not
analyse at the time the " irresistible im-

78

Fact and Fiction

pulse " which took her back to Brussels ;
that she did not then understand, or but
half understood, her own feelings ; and
that if she failed it was only in that self-
knowledge in which we all fail. I cannot
agree, however, with a recent writer who,
while expressing belief in the tragedy of
Charlotte's life, says that probably '' never
in the most secret and inward imagina-
tions of her own heart " did she describe
her feeling for M. Heger as other than
friendship. Charlotte Bronte had not
that facile power of self-deception which
belongs to most of us, and it seems
certain that, when she wrote her novels,
she recognised clearly the nature of the
struggle she had come through. At the
same time it should be remembered that
''love" has probably as many shades of
meaning as there are varieties of human
character, and in Charlotte's vocabulary it
was expressive of all that is pure and
noble. Let me recall the indignant words

79

The Brontes

she wrote to Miss Martlneau in reply to
some unworthy criticism : "I know what
love is as I understand it ; and if man or
woman should be ashamed of feeling such
love, then is there nothing right, noble,
faithful, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as
I comprehend rectitude, fidelity, truth and
disinterestedness." True, it is not allow-
able to cherish even such a feeling as
this for one who is another's. But there
can be no doubt that, as soon as she
thoroughly knew her own heart, Charlotte
broke the chain and fled. This involved
the same terrible struggle that she
describes in two of her novels, and it
issued in the same noble victory. The
Brussels episode, as I understand it, calls
not for the censure of fallible human
nature, but for its respectful admiration.

The flight from Brussels did not, as we
know, put an end to all intercourse
between M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte.
For some eighteen months they main-

80

Fact and Fiction

tained a friendly correspondence, the tone
of which can be judged from the specimen
of it in Mrs. Gaskell's Life. The recent
suggestion that Charlotte expressed her-
self with an unseemly warmth, and that
her Brussels friends were therefore obliged
to restrict her to two letters a year, which
should contain only ''a plain account of
her circumstances and occupations," need
not be too deeply resented since it has
called forth, in Mr. Shorter's book, a true
account of how the friendly intercourse
ceased. Madame Heger, who disliked
Charlotte, objected to any correspond-
ence, and M. Heger, unwilling to sever all
connection with his talented pupil, asked
her to address her letters to a Boys' School
where he taught. It was a very unwise
suggestion, but not perhaps entirely inex-
cusable if we assume, as I think we may,
that M. Heger had never reason to
suspect Charlotte's secret. But his corre-
spondent could give but one reply to such

8i F

The Brontes

a request. '' I stopped writing at once,"
she told her friend Miss Wheelwright.
** I would not have dreamt of writing to
him when I found it was disagreeable to
his wife ; certainly I would not write
unknown to her." This rigid fidelity to
principle is what all who know Charlotte
Bronte's character would have expected
from her on such an occasion. We may
be sure it marked all her relations with the
Rogers.

To sum up, then : Charlotte Bronte's
writings have proved a palimpsest, and
scholars have from time to time hinted
of the older sentences they could discern
beneath the present characters. More
recently there have been signs that hints
are to be replaced by innuendos, and I
have therefore endeavoured to restore the
whole of the old text so far as it is still
decipherable. It turns out to be a tragedy
which for human interest equals anything

$2

Fact and Fiction

in the novels, and which cannot but render
those who peruse it wiser and stronger.
Its central figure is Charlotte herself, as
noble and brave a heroine as any which
her imagination created. We see an acute
sensitiveness which attracts our pity,
wedded to a dauntless fortitude which
compels our admiration. We see her sore
wounded in her affections, but unconquer-
able in her will. The discovery of the
secret of her life does not degrade the
noble figure we know so well ; it adds to
it a pathetic significance. The moral of
her greatest works — that conscience must |
reign absolute at whatever cost — acquires
a greater force when we realise how she
herself came through the furnace of tempta-
tion with marks of torture on her, but with
no stain on her soul. And if there are
passages in her books by which she
appeals to our deepest experiences as
hardly any other writer can, we know now
that it was because the pen with which

83

The Brontes

she wrote was dipped in her heart's blood.
The inner lives of few men or women
have been unveiled to the public gaze as
has that of Charlotte Bronte, but few could
stand the scrutiny so well. Those who
are most familiar with her history will ever
be those most ready to exclaim with
Kingsley, " She is a whole heaven above
me," and to endorse Sir Wemyss Reid's
/ assertion, "No apology need be offered
j for any single feature of Charlotte Bronte's
I life or character."

84

A CROP OF BRONTE MYTHS

I

A CROP OF BRONTE MYTHS

N 1893 Dr> William Wright issued a
book* in which he professed not only
to trace the history of four generations of
Irish Brontes, but to prove that the plot of
Wuthering Heights was founded on family
history, and that the other Bronte novels
had likewise an Irish origin. As a Bronte
enthusiast I was naturally interested ; but
when review after review came to hand, all
speaking of Dr. Wright's book in laudatory
terms, and declaring that he had established
his thesis, my curiosity died down, and I
accepted this verdict as final. About two
years ago I procured his volume for the

* The Brontes in Ireland; or^ Facts stranger than
Fiction. By Dr. William Wright. London: Hodder
and Stoughton.

87

The Brontes

purpose of keeping my Bronte knowledge
up to date. Imagine my surprise to find
it a work neither consistent nor coherent,
bearing its own refutation on every page
for any reader who, with adequate know-
ledge, would examine its statements. It
reminded me of nothing so much as of that
prophetical literature which once under-
took to prove that Napoleon III. was
Antichrist, and which still is prepared to fix
the date of the end of the world. There
was the same absence of all critical faculty,
the same unreasoning acceptance of every
alleged fact which could serve the end in
view, the same substitution of faith for
proof I could only account for the favour-
able reception of the book by supposing
that the reviewers had been too busy to do
more than to read it as one would read a
novel. I at once wrote an article in the
Westminster Review (October 1895) point-
ing out the mythical character of the work ;
but public interest in the matter was for

88

Fact and Fiction

the time spent, and though my criticism
attracted the attention of a few Bronte
specialists it eluded the notice of that guile-
less public which had so warmly welcomed
The Brontes in Ireland, and Dr. Wright
himself attempted no reply to my damaging
criticism.

So matters remained till the great revival
of interest in Bronte history which has
marked the last few months. The publi-
cation of Mr. Clement Shorter's valuable
work, Charlotte Bronte and her Circle^
however, then seemed to make further
action desirable. It moved Dr. Wright to
renewed efforts to circulate his book, and so
indirectly promoted the spread of the very
mischief which it was my purpose to check.
On the other hand, Mr. Shorter, by ex-
pressing agreement with my view of The
Brontes in Ireland, and drawing attention
pointedly to the Westminster article, com-
pelled Dr. Wright to break silence, and
thus has provided me with new material

89

The Brontes

It is plainly desirable, therefore, that the
matter should now be brought to an issue,
and I propose to analyse the work once
more with a view to proving, once and for
all, that it can have no serious significance
for Bronte students. It is not a pleasant
task to upset a favourable verdict ; but, if
Dr. Wright's theories are accepted, the
whole broadening stream of Bronte biblio-
graphy will be deflected and made turbid.
In the interests, then, of truth, and of
the Bronte fame, the utterly untrustworthy
character of the book must be exposed.

The Genealogical Chart.

As a preparation for our investigation, I
shall give, with dates, a genealogical table
of the characters who appear in Dr.
Wright's pages ; and this is the more
necessary as our author is as confused
in his account of the family relationship
as in most else ; for example, on p. 1 9, the

90

Fact and Fiction

•C to

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91

The Brontes

grandfather of Hugh Bronte II. Is called
his father, and on p. 49, Hugh I. is de-
scribed as the great-great-great-grandfather
of the novelists, where there is a *' great "
too much. Once we grasp the relationships,
a mere comparison of dates will be enough
to bring the whole story toppling down like
a house of cards. For the sake of greater
distinctness I shall give cognomens to the
three Hughs in the chart. The first I
shall call the Founder; Hugh II., the grand-
father of the novelists, I shall dub the
Paragon,^ for if Dr. Wright's stories could
be accepted he would be one of the most
remarkable peasants who ever lived ; for
the third Hugh, the uncle of the novelists,
I will retain the nickname of Dr. Wright's
choosing, viz., the Giant, though probably
"the Avenger" would be more appro-
priate in view of the remarkable story,

* I apply this title not, of course, to the real Hugh II.,
who was doubtless an estimable man, but to the
imaginary personage who is the hero of Dr. Wright's
romance.

92

Fact and Fiction

to which I shall have to direct attention
further on. I will ask the reader then to
refer, when need be, to the chart on p. 91,
remembering always that Hugh II. is the
character upon whom all else depends, the
hero of the whole romance.

Now it is of great importance that the
reader should convince himself that this
genealogical tree does truly represent the
alleged facts as set forth in Dr. Wright's
book. The chart appeared originally in
the Westminster article, and when sixteen
months later Dr. Wright attempted a
reply, in the Bookman of February 1897,
his defence took the form of denying the
validity of his own dates. He writes as
follows :

'' Hugh Brontes [the Paragon's] stories
contained no fixed point in chronology.
. . . The early Bronte house was on the
banks of the Boyne. As a conjecture I
placed the date vaguely after the battle
which made the river famous. It was a

93

The Brontes

mere approximation. It might have been
earlier or it might have been later ; most
likely later. I had no chronological land-
marks to guide me," &c.

Dr. Wright, as we shall see, has a
habit of thus shifting his ground as soon
as it is seriously assailed, but he must not
suppose that ground so vacated is not in
possession of the enemy. His credibility
as an historian must necessarily suffer by
these sudden chancres of his text. Let us
see what are his own words in his book :
''Shortly after the events which in 1688
rendered the Boyne memorable, Hugh
Bronte, the elder, occupied, as we have
seen, a house and farm on the banks of
that river. It is not improbable that
he received his possession for Imperial ser-
vices rendered in those turbulent times "

(p. 156).

Here there is no perad venture about the
date, but only as to whether Hugh I. had
received the estate as the reward of loyalty.

94

Fact and Fiction

Hugh II., the Paragon, confirms this latter
conjecture ; he is made to say : ** The
Brontes had occupied a piece of forfeited
land, with well-defined obligations to a
chief or landlord," &c. ; and let it be
remembered that upon the alleged stories
of Hugh II. most of the book is founded,
so that if he is not reliable the narrative
falls to pieces. But the chart, of course,
does not depend upon this one date. On
p. i6 Dr. Wright says that Hugh II. was
taken from his home by a villain named
Welsh ''some time about the middle of
the last century or a little earlier," when
Hugh II. was about five years old. This
is not a date about which Hugh II. could
have been in error to any material extent,
and from this fixed date of 1750 we can
work at ease either backwards or forwards.
It follows that the Paragon was born circa
1745. He was a very young member of a
*' large " family, he had ''numerous brothers
and sisters," and therefore his father's

95

The Brontes

marriage must have been at least ten years
earlier, say 1735. The father, from the
story, was evidently a young unmarried
man of twenty-five or so when he settled
in the South of Ireland, so that, even
supposing him to have been married
immediately after this, he could not have
been born later than 1710. He, too,
belonged to a large family, and allowing
for the time it would take Hugh I., the
Founder, to accomplish all that the tale
tells us — drain the estate, improve the
land, build a fine house, grow rich by
cattle-dealing, and rear a family to man-
hood— undoubtedly we do find ourselves
taken back to the date of the Battle of the
Boyne, or shortly after. In a similar way,
starting from the same date of 1750, we
may work downward. Hugh stayed eleven
years with Welsh, which brings us to 1761.
He married Alice McClory in 1776, and
the other dates are from authentic records.
Of course 7ny belief is that most of the

96

Fact and Fiction

events covered by these dates are fictitiouSy
but the dates are based on the allegfed facts
in such a way that, if the facts are as
narrated by Dr. Wright, then the chart is,
for the purposes of this controversy, un-
assailable.

The Alleged Originals of Wuthering
Heights.

Let us glance first at the opening
chapter of the romance relating chiefly
to Hugh I., the Founder, and Welsh.
Hugh I. settled on his farm about 1690,
and was a cattle-dealer as well as farmer.
He became rich and prosperous. His
sons were brought up in comparative
luxury, were well educated and had been
much in England. Then one day Hugh I.
(the Mr. Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights^
finds on a Liverpool boat a Lascar baby
and adopts it. This boy, Welsh (the Heath-

97 G

The Brontes

cliffe of Wuthering Heights), makes him-
self very useful to Hugh I., and gradually
gets the management of the whole business
into his own hands. He uses as tools a
hypocrite named Gallagher (the Joseph of
Wuthering Heights) and a woman, Meg,
whose chief business apparently was to
murder illegitimate children. At last
Hugh I. goes over to Liverpool with the
largest consignment of cattle he had ever
taken, and on the way back he dies —
murdered, we are led to suppose, by
Welsh. What has become of the money
received for the cattle no one knows ; all
the business-books have disappeared and
the capital is in Welsh's pocket. The
villain succeeds after a time in driving his
foster-brothers out of the farm to which
they cling, and, with Meg's help, he
compels Mary, the youngest sister, to
marry him. So the curtain falls, with
Welsh rich and prosperous, married to his
master's daughter and living in the Brontes'

98

Fact and Fiction

ancestral farm, while the Bronte sons are
beggared and homeless.

Now, to begin with, it is somewhat start-
ling to find Dr. Wright describing so
minutely events which happened nearly
two hundred years ago, when he has
nothing but oral tradition to rely upon.
And it becomes more than startling when
we are told that these events, known in
such detail to Dr. Wright and his in-
formants, were unknown to most of the
Irish Brontes themselves. The fons et
origo of this history, and of much else to
follow, is alleged to be Hugh II., the
Paragon, who is represented as a perfect
genius, and who told the story in a most
graphic fashion to many persons. We
may be quite sure that the persons most
interested in the story would be his ten
children, all of them most remarkable
characters according to Dr. Wright, and
living nearly a century nearer the alleged
events than we. One of these, Alice, lived

99

The Brontes

to a great age and died in 1890. If they
or their children knew not of this story it
will appear to most persons that it cannot
be true, and further, that it cannot really
have originated with Hugh II. And even
on Dr. Wright's own showing we might
conclude that these narratives do not rest
on Bronte evidence. These are his own
words on p. 50 :

" With the exception of Alice, none of
the Irish Brontes knew anything of the
early history of the family. I visited most
of them, and the vague information they
had to communicate was merely an echo
from English biographies. Even Alice
mixed up different events in a way some-
times that made it difficult to disentangle
them."

What Alice's evidence amounted to we
shall have occasion to see later on.

Further, the story itself is surely in-
credible. Even at the beginning of last

century an interloper could not murder his

100

Fact and Fiction

foster-father and embezzle the whole ;.Qf a *.•{:»•;, •'.{
rich man's capital without being criminally-
prosecuted. If Welsh had had to do with
helpless children the improbabilities would
have been less, but he had to do with a
number of young men "brought up in
comparative luxury " and '' well educated,"
and when we realise these circumstances
the story becomes absurd.
f Moreover, if Hugh II. was indeed re-
sponsible for this piece of family history, it
will be well to know with what sort of an
historian we are dealing. He tells us
repeatedly (p. 148) that his grandfather,
Hugh I., was unjustly dealt with by
means of legal documents issued under
George III.'s authority. It will be seen
that Hugh I. would have been over one
hundred years old when George III.
ascended the throne in 1760, and as he
left a young family behind him when he
died, he must have begun the begetting of
his numerous offspring when he was about

lOI

The Brontes

eighty ! Wonderful men, truly, these Irish
Brontes !

But it is time we passed on to the next
stage of this romance. When the curtain
again rises ''many years" have elapsed
(p. 32). I calculate these years as fifteen
at the least ; nothing less will meet the
demands of the history. Welsh, whom we
left in the possession of all the fortune of a
" rich and prosperous " man, has fallen into
abject poverty. His foster brothers and
sisters with one exception have all dis-
appeared for ever. But the exception, the
unnamed father of Hugh H., though he
had not a penny when we last saw him, is
now "a man in prosperous circumstances"
(p. 16). He is married and has a large
family, and his children live in luxury
(pp. Ill and 154). Farming in those
days appears to have resembled stock-
broking in these from the rapidity with
which fortunes were made and lost. One
of the younger members of this family was

I02

Fact and Fiction

the famous Hugh II., the Paragon, at this
time aged five. Suddenly appears on the
scene the infamous Welsh, who represents
himself as a rich but childless man pining
to adopt a little boy. He succeeds, of
course, in his nefarious scheme and carries
off little Hugh II., having first exchanged
a melodramatic oath with the father —
Welsh and his wife swearing that they
will never let Hugh II. know where his
family live, and the little boy's father
swearing that he will never inquire about
him. Then they drive off, and before the
lights of home have disappeared Welsh
begins to beat the child brutally. Then
follow eleven years of the most cruel
oppression, and at last, when aged six-
teen, Hugh II. runs away and begins life
for himself He never succeeds, however,
in discovering any trace of his father or his
family.

r' Surely nothing but the improbabilities
• are necessary to expose the falsity of this

103

The Brontes

so-called history. Hugh II.'s father, in
common with all the family, knew Welsh
to be an unmitigated scoundrel of the
deepest dye ; why then should he and his
wife give up to him a son to whom they
were tenderly attached ? The plea of
poverty does not come In, for they were
rich and prosperous. Again, what possible
object could Welsh, too poor to support
himself, have in burdening himself with a
little child ? Later on It Is stated that
he was promised ;^50 with the child,
which he did not receive. But Welsh, in
his feigned character of a rich man, could
not have asked for money, and If he had,
that at least would have opened the father's
eyes to his real motives. Again, how are
we to suppose that his wife, the excellent
Mary, could have lent herself to the dia-
bolical scheme ? And the way in which
the story is told is at least as ridiculous as
the plot. The child, If he had been Prince
Alexander of Battenberg, could not have

104

Fact and Fiction

been carried off with greater precautions
against recovery : they travelled only by
night, and slept during the day, and for
four nights the journey was continued. In
Chapter VI. we have a minutely detailed
account of all that happened during that
fearful journey, and a highly coloured de-
scription of the scenery. Interspersed with
metaphysical reflections, and all based on
the recollections of a child of five ! With
a remarkable want of humour the story
makes Welsh address this Infant at the
journey's end thus : " This Is the only
home you shall ever know, and you are
beholden to me for It. No airs here, my
fine fellow ! Your father was glad to be rid
of you, and this Is the gratitude you show
me for taking you to be my heir. Go to
bed out of my way, and I'll find you some-
thing to do in the morning to keep you
from becoming too great for the position."
To complete the absurdity of the story,
Welsh becomes a father for the first time

105

The Brontes

the year before Hugh runs away, or about
thirty years after his marriage with Mary !
Before leaving this part of the alleged
history it is necessary to point out that the
scenes where these too earlier parts of the
drama were enacted — like nearly all the
other evidence — are lost. As to the house
and farm, probably given in return for
services during the political troubles of
William III.'s reign, Dr. Wright fears
** that the tradition has now faded out of the
district." He says that this is not to be won-
dered at, since few families of the rank of the
Brontes can trace pedigrees to the sixth or
seventh generation. But this excuse will
not do. Alice, as we have seen, lived till
1890, and her grandfather is alleged to
have dwelt on the ancestral farm till he
was a young man of twenty-five or so ;
moreover, her father, Hugh H., had lived
In the immediate neighbourhood from his
fifth till his sixteenth year. Alice, indeed,

is quoted to the effect that an Aunt Mary,

106

Fact and Fiction

who visited her when a child, then still
lived near Drogheda on the Boyne, and
Dr. Wright would have us believe that this
was no other than Mrs. Welsh. But when
we examine the evidence it is of a piece
with all the rest, and is indeed not a
little ludicrous. A reference to our genea-
logical table will show that I have put
Mary Welsh's birth at 1715. That it
could not be later than that, supposing
the history a true one, I will now show
beyond all reasonable doubt. Hugh II.
was taken off by Welsh, says Dr. Wright,
about the year 1750 (p. 16). Welsh had
then been married "many years" (p. 32),
and as I have already shown, fifteen years
at least must be allow^ed for the events
which intervene. This gives us 1735
as the year when Welsh married Mary.
As he had tried for some years in vain
to make her marry him, we cannot be far
wrong in supposing her to be twenty at

least in 1735, and if so she cannot have

107

The Brontes

been born later than 17 15. Now old Alice
Bronte, who was born in 1800, said she
remembered her Aunt Mary coming from
Drogheda to visit her when a child. Even
supposing Alice to have been then only-
five years old, Aunt Mary must have been
about ninety. How then did old Alice
describe this nonogenarian ? "Tarrible
purty she was. A shop-keeper in Rath-
friland courted her. . . . After she went
home he sent after her but she would not
take him / " "^ Dr. Wright in his book sug-
gests Alice may have alluded to a daughter
of Aunt Mary's, but though he was in
correspondence with Alice Bronte "directly
and indirectly till her death," she made no
such admission. Besides, as I have already
pointed out, Mary could scarcely have had
a daughter after being childless for thirty
years. Clearly it can be proved from the
book itself that the visit of this Aunt Mary,
Mrs. Welsh, is apocryphal.

The italics here and throughout are mine. —
A. M. M.

108

Fact and Fiction

But, as I have already warned the reader,
Dr. Wright, when convicted of an absurdity,
promptly shifts his ground. He has done
so in this case ; but I shall now show that
this manoeuvre does not enable him to
escape from the horns of the dilemma. After
the absurdity of the story was brought to
his notice, Dr. Wright defended himself
thus in the Bookman of February 1897 •

'' I followed the tradition that the lady
was Hugh's Aunt Mary, but Alice assured
Mr. Lusk"^ that she was Hugh's sister, and
Miss Shannon t is of the same opinion.
Possibly she may have been a younger
sister of Hugh's, who may have been stay-
ing at Drogheda with Aunt Mary after the
tragic death of Welsh."

In the first place, I must submit that
a statement given at first hand is not a
'' tradition," and the story of Mrs. Welsh's

* Rev. J. B. Lusk, who visited Alice Bronte on her
deathbed, and took down her account of the family,
t Great-grand-daughter of Hugh II., the Paragon.

109

The Brontes

visit is told three times in the book,
and the authority for it is twice given
as Alice Bronte, who "distinctly remem-
bered it" (pp. 50 and 158). Now Dr.
Wright, as we have seen, corresponded
with old Alice to the last. On a matter of
such importance could he have been de-
ceived ? I will show that he cannot have
been. On p. 34, alluding to the solemn
oath Mary Welsh took never to reveal the
situation of the home from which Hugh II.
had been taken, Dr. Wright says :

" The Bronte covenant was faithfully
kept, and even when Mary (Welsh) visited
Hugh in County Down some time about the
beginning of this century she could neither
be coaxed nor compelled to give him either
directly or indirectly a clue or hint by which
he might discover the home of his childhood^

Is that statement true ? If it is, why
does Dr. Wright now hint that it was not
Mary Welsh at all who paid the visit, but a
sister of Hugh II.'s, who could have had no

no

Fact and Fiction

reason to keep from him the site of his old
home ? If it is not true, Dr. Wright owes
it to himself to let us know who invented
this misstatement. The truth is, the story is
damaged beyond rehabilitation. It is clear
that there is no Bronte evidence, and
nothing beyond late and loose tradition, to
show that the Drogheda farm and house
" probably given for imperial services" ever
existed.

Again, as regards the house of Hugh II. 's
father " in the South of Ireland," there is
the same absence of all evidence. Dr.
Wright, when a young man, once spent
two months, '' disguised as a peasant,"
trying to find some trace of it, but in vain.
One is not surprised at this after the lapse
of more than a century, but how are we to
account for the fact that Alice Bronte,
Hugh the Paragon's youngest daughter,
was not apparently aware of the existence
of this house? In the narrative taken

III

The Brontes

down by the Rev. J. B. Lusk — one of the
few documents quoted by Dr. Wright —
Alice declares that her father '' came origi-
nally from Drogheda," on the Boyne. This
ignorance of the Bronte relatives about the
house ''in the South of Ireland" is even
more difficult to account for than the loss
of all trace of the ancestral farm near
Drogheda.

However, since Dr. Wright's book ap-
peared, a great discovery has been made.
The real home, so we are assured, has
been identified. The manner of its dis-
covery is so amusing and so characteristic
of the methods by which the " facts " of
this extraordinary book have been com-
piled, that I shall briefly allude to it.^ A
gentleman from that part of Ireland where
the Bronte myths originated, viz., County
Down, heard that a ferryman on Lough
Erne, Frank Prunty by name, said that he

* The narrative will be found in the Bookman, Feb-
ruary 1897.

112

Fact and Fiction

was related to the Brontes. This enthu-
siastic gentleman secured a photographer
and a camera, and at once set out to in-
vestigate the matter — for might not this
be a representative of the long-lost family
upon whom the curtain fell in 1750? He
found that the ferryman had heard of the
existence of the County Down Brontes,
and no doubt tourists had from time to
time spoken to him of the supposed
identity of the names Prunty and Bronte.
Asked about his ancestry, he said : '' My
father was a native of these parts, but
my grandfather or my great-grandfather
came from somewhere about Galway."
This must have been a damper ! The
Bronte who was "wanted" was one whose
ancestors had been driven by Welsh out
of the ancestral home near Drogheda on
the Boyne. However, after an afternoon
spent in conversation and taking views of
Mr. Prunty and his home, the gentleman
happened to mention Drogheda in con-

113 H

The Brontes

nection with the Brontes ; thereupon the
ferryman seems to have pricked up his
ears, and declared that he had made a
mistake. He had meant to say that his
ancestor came not from Gailway but from
Drogheda ; he had confused the names !

This is the story as told in the Bookman.
But in contradiction to this is the account
of another gentleman, quoted in the third
edition of The Brontes in Ireland^ who,
having interviewed Frank Prunty, reports,
** He knew nothing of the family beyond
his grandfather. ... He had no idea of
what part of the country his grandfather
had come from " ! In this third edition
Dr. Wright is quite certain that it was
Frank's grandfather who founded the
"South of Ireland" home, and so here
we have another of those laughable con-
sequences in which this book abounds.
Frank Prunty's father was, according to
both the accounts, born in 1 803 ; and if the
reader will consult the genealogical table,

114

Fact and Fiction

on page 91 he will find that on Dr.
Wright's theory he was a brother of
Hugh II. the Paragon. Now Hugh, who
was a younger member of a large family,
was born, we are told explicitly, about the
year 1745. So that the wonderful Bronte
who first settled in the South of Ireland —
the great-grandfather of the novelist — had
a large family by 1745, and then went on
begetting children for nearly sixty years j^
longer I This is the conclusion to which
Dr. Wright's contentions lead us, and there
is no escape from it.

The Frank Prunty story is indeed at
every point irreconcilable with Dr. Wright's
book. Hugh II. had always described
the lost home as ''in the South of Ire-
land." Loupfh Erne is in the north-east.
Dr. Wright tells us, with particularity, that
there were three brothers scattered from
the ancestral home by the Boyne ; but
Frank Prunty says " there w^ere two
brothers of them, but only my great-

115

The Brontes

grandfather came down here." Further,
he says the other brother "went off to-
wards Belfast, Newry, or somewhere in
that direction, but my father never knew
any of that branch." No doubt he or
his father founded this last conjecture on
their knowledge that there were Brontes
settled in County Down ; but these were,
of course, the novelists' aunts and uncles
and their descendants, well known to Dr.
Wright and his informants, and not mem-
bers of the missing family. The reader
shall judge for himself whether it is now a
settled fact that Frank Prunty is a descen-
dant of Hugh II.'s father, who was last
heard of in 1750, and he must form his
own conclusion as to the credibility of a
witness who does not know whether it was
his grandfather or his great-grandfather
who first settled at Lough Erne ; who con-
fuses Galway with Drogheda ; and who yet
can say not only at which part of the road
two brothers parted in 1735, viz., ''some-

n6

Fact and Fiction

where about Castle Sanderson," but can
tell in what direction his ofreat-orreat-uncle
then went off! But Dr. Wright, of course,
has no doubts. He speaks of his friend's
visit to Lough Erne as '' the identification
of a vigorous descendant of the dispersed
Brontes," and he adds : " I think that most
people capable of weighing evidence will
be satisfied that at last the early home of
Hugh Bronte has been discovered, aitd
the leading facts in his stories confirmed !''
Before leaving this part of my subject
it only remains to summarise the evidence
of members of the Bronte family living or
recently living. When I attacked the
book in 1895 ^ ^^^ ^"^Y the author's own
statements to go upon, but my criticisms
and those of Mr. Shorter have elicited
external testimony which confirms the
results at which I had arrived in every
particular. When we have this before us
we shall not only be convinced that the
earlier stories are inventions, but we shall

117

The Brontes

find ourselves wondering where Dr. Wil-
liam Wright could have obtained his
information, and how he could have per-
suaded himself to believe them and to
publish them.

In the first place, the truth about Alice's
testimony is now being extracted piece-
meal. Even in his book Dr. Wright
incautiously quotes Alice as saying : " My
father came originally from Drogheda "
(p. 157). In the Sketch of March 10,
1897, we have her story in the oblique
narration as reported by the Rev. J. B.
Lusk : "Her father Hughey came from
Drogheda. When he was eight years
of aee an uncle took him from his
father's place, intending to make him his
heir as he had no children. But after
he went to his uncle's his aunt had a
child. Her father then left his uncle
and came to Erndale (County Down),
and never saw either his mother or uncle

again."

118

Fact and Fiction

Here we have a plain unvarnished tale
with no gleam of romance about it. There
is no word about a home in the South of
Ireland, about an abduction, about the
brutality of Welsh, or any of the strange
things in Dr. Wright's story. We have
already seen that Dr. Wright himself —
in contradiction to all that he asserts in his
book — is now inclined to own that Alice
never said anything about Mary Welsh,
the villain's wife, visiting Hugh H., but
that the visitor was Hugh's sister ; so that
evidently Alice had never even heard of the
lost family and the lost homestead. Plainly
she thought that her father was a peasant
who had emigrated from the neighbour-
hood of Drogheda on the Boyne, and had
peasant relatives there.

We have now also the evidence of Mrs.
Heslip to go upon.^ This relative of
the Brontes has been recently discovered
at Oakenshaw, near Bradford. At the

* See Sketch, February lo, 1897.
119

The Brontes

time when his book was appearing in
the pages of McClures Magazine her
existence was unknown to Dr. Wright,
and indeed to every other Bronte student.
Mrs. Heslip is a daughter of Sarah, the
only one of the noveHsts' aunts who mar-
ried. She is thus a granddaughter of the
Paragon, and she Hved among her uncles
and aunts till her seventeenth year. Her
testimony must of necessity outweigh that
of Dr. William Wright. She says of the
earlier stories in his book that she must
have heard of them if they had been true
— which is obvious — and that she entirely
discredits the whole of them.

To these I can now add the testimony
of Miss Maggie Shannon, of Ballynas-
keagh, who may be taken to represent
all the County Down Brontes. Miss
Shannon is the granddaughter of Welsh
Bronte,"^ the fourth brother of the Rev.

* We are left to suppose that this Welsh was named
after the villain of an earlier generation — an improbable

1 20

Fact and Fiction

Patrick Bronte. Her mother during her
unmarried Hfe Hved next door to the
home of Hugh H. and his sons, and after
her marriage lived only a mile away, and
saw them almost daily. She thus had
complete knowledge, and her knowledge
descends to her daughter, who has never
left the neighbourhood. She writes me as
follows :

'' We never heard the story of little
Hugh Bronte's abduction nor of any one
of the name of Welsh connected with him.
Hugh Bronte [H.] was an only son and
had just one sister, and they were living
with an uncle, a brother of their mother's,
in Drogheda, both parents being dead.
Hugh afterwards came down to the neigh-
story on the face of it. Miss Shannon, however, tells
me that her grandfather, Welsh, was named after a
clergyman in their neighbourhood. We must, therefore,
reverse the supposition, and believe that Dr. Wright's
melodramatic villain was named after Miss Shannon's
grandfather by the individual — whoever he was — who
invented the myth.

12?

The Brontes

bourhood of Hilltown to some relatives of
his mother. ... His sister visited him
once after his marriage."

Finally, there is the very important
evidence of the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, the
husband of Charlotte Bronte, who still
survives. He lived at the parsonage
alone with the Rev. Patrick Bronte for six
years. His father-in-law, we are told, was
by no means disposed to reticence, yet he
" never heard one single word about the
stories," and believes them to be " purely
legendary."^

From these witnesses it becomes clear that
not only i\lice, Sarah, Welsh and Patrick,
but all the other sons and daughters of
Hugh n., were ignorant of the romantic
incidents narrated by Dr. Wright. Yet
Dr. Wright asks us to believe that Hugh 1 1,
was constantly narrating them. He says
of the account of the abduction, which
occupies sixteen pages of his book, that

* Charlotte Bronte and her Circle^ p. 158.

122

Fact and Fiction

he received* it from four different nar-
rators, and that all agreed on the main
incidents (p. 46), and he states in the
Bookman (February 1897) t^3,t he ''knew
Hug/ts minute narrative by hearth Can
any one reconcile these two sets of facts ?
I confess I cannot. It is clear that the
stories are untrue ; and it seems now
equally certain that it was not Hugh II. who
propagated them. Who then was it that
hoaxed the four narrators ? I fear we must
leave the problem as quite unsolvable.^

I have now concluded the examination
of that part of Dr. Wright's story which
he alleges forms the groundwork of Wuther-
ing Heights, Since its manifold absurdi-

* Dr. Wright is now inclined to make much of a letter
received in 1894 from a Mr. John Bronte, in New
Zealand, a grand-nephew of the Rev. Patrick Bronte.
It confirms some details about the novelists' uncles
which are not in dispute, but it says nothing about the
older stories of which we may be sure this Mr. John
Bronte never heard. He says the only point to which
he can take exception is the application of the term

123

The Brontes

ties were exposed in the Westminster, the
author has drawn a careful distinction
between two parts of his book ; what goes
before Hugh II.'s flight from Welsh, he
says, is traditional, what follows is his-
torical. I am afraid this is somewhat of
an afterthought. Traditional, of course,
much of the book is in the sense that
it has been orally transmitted, but Dr.
Wright certainly intended us to accept it
as quite trustworthy in all material points.
The sub- title of his volume is " Facts
Stranger than Fiction"; in the chapter on
the sources of his information he calls the
narrative ''history" (p. 14), and at the
beginning of his book he says : " I do not

Shthun to a lawful grocery business kept by his great-
uncle, but that does not mean that he is prepared to
endorse all the rest. He adds also : " Of one thing I
am certain ; you have given to the world the last word
on the history of the Brontes in the British Isles ; " and
in a sense this is true, for the biographical facts about
the novelists' uncles and aunts which we owe to the
Rev. J. B. Lusk are probably all we shall ever know.
(For this letter, see Bookman, March 1897.)

124

Fact and Fiction

even now pretend to have reached absolute
accuracy on every point referred to In the
following pages, but the statements are as
close approximation to fact as they can be
made by patient industry" (p. 13). To
his critics, however, it is not of the least
importance whether he calls the earlier
chapters history or tradition ; the only
question is, are they true? If not, they
have no interest for Bronte students. I
think I have shown that they are alike
inconsistent and incredible ; and there
fore the assertion that early Bronte
history is the basis of Wuthering Heights
falls to the ground. I proceed, however,
to examine those parts of the book which
Dr. Wright declares to be history and to
involve " practical certainty," and we shall
soon discover that most of the history is
as mythical as the tradition ; nay, that the
nearer the story approaches our own time
the more clearly it can be shown to have
no foundation in fact.

125

The Brontes

Hugh II. (the Paragon).

As the story of Hugh the Paragon is
the nucleus of the whole book, and as he
is the alleged authority for most of the
startling facts with which it abounds, it will
be well to realise what manner of person
he was. Let me first quote the un-
doubtedly genuine record of him from the
lips of his daughter Alice as taken down
by the Rev. J. B. Lusk: *' My father
came originally from Drogheda. He was
not very tall but purty stout ; he was
sandy-haired and my mother fair-haired.
He was very fond of his children, and
worked to the last for them." Dr.
Wright's account is a rather more highly
coloured description. Hugh II. was hand-
some in person and powerful in build, but
his physical gifts were as nothing compared
with his mental endowments. He was

apparently in the very first rank of great

126

Fact and Fiction

speakers. ** Mr. Mc Allister had heard
most of the orators of his time, including
O'Connell and Cooke and Chalmers, but
no man ever touched or roused and thrilled
by the force of eloquence as old Hugh
Bronte did " (p. 47). In force of imagination
he surpassed the girls who made his name
famous — indeed their novels were only his
own stories in an inferior dress : ''It may
be questioned if any tale ever told by
Hugh Bronte's granddaughters equalled
those which he narrated in wealth of
imagination or picturesque eloquence or
intensity of human feeling or vividness of
colouring or immediate effect" (p. 47).
Only opportunity was wanting to make him
a great politician : '' Under different circum-
stances he might have been an advanced
statesman, and saved his country from
unutterable woe" (p. 134). Such was the
remarkable person from whom Dr. Wright
indirectly derived most of the material
from which his book is constructed.

127

The Brontes

When we resume this hero's history at
Mount Pleasant, whither at the age of six-
teen he had fled from the tyrant Welsh, we
find still much to marvel at. Whileserving at
a lime-kiln he falls in love with the sister
of a young man evidently of his own class.
Difficulties arising on the part of the lady's
Roman Catholic relations, he leaves the
kiln and secretly takes service in her neigh-
bourhood as a farm servant ; and then we
hear that this peasant girl " was permitted
to ride about the neighbourhood quite
alone. She enjoyed horse exercise greatly,"
and she always rides "her own mare."
She is, in fact, suddenly transformed into a
squire's daughter. But to read Dr. Wright's
book is like being in a dream, nothing
surprises. Hugh II. at last secures her, of
course in the most romantic way and under
the most extraordinary circumstances,
eloping with her on the morning when
she was to have been married to a rival ;

and Dr. Wright is able to tell us exactly

128

Fact and Fiction

what had been prepared for that wedding
breakfast In 1776 — it has been handed down
orally for a century and a quarter — viz., a
great pudding of flour and potatoes, two
large turkeys In melted butter, and a
huge roast of beef, &c. Having thus
secured as a wife one who was "probably
the prettiest girl In County Down at the
time," the Paragon settles In that henceforth
classic region, and In a small way prospers
more and more as time rolls on ! ^

We must not suppose, however, that
Hugh H. became as other men, and that
the world Is to regard him merely as the
grandfather of Charlotte and Emily Bronte.
Dr. Wright claims for him that he was the
author of the modern theory of tenant-right.

* The story of the runaway match is as mythical as the
rest. Mrs. Heslip herself remembers her grandmother,
AUce McClory, but " she never heard of any runaway
marriage, such as described by Dr. W^right, which would
have surely been a family tradition if it had taken
place." I have a letter, too, from Miss Shannon, which
shows that no rumour of such a thing has ever reached
the County Down Brontes.

129 I

The Brontes

He makes much of this claim, and fore-
shadows it early in his book. In describing
the eviction of Hugh I.'s family by Welsh,
which must have taken place about the
year 1730, or fifteen years before the
birth of Hugh H., he says : "This sordid
transaction was fraught with far-reaching
consequences to landlordism. It gave
birth to a tenant-right theory of which we
shall hear something in a subsequent chap-
ter." Subsequent chapters inform us that
Hugh II. derived from this eviction his
views upon the land question, and that
with these views he revolutionised Ireland.
Some years after his flight from Welsh,
he became, we are told, farm labourer to a
country gentleman named Harshaw. The
children of this country gentleman con-
ceived a liking for Hugh II., now a grown
man, and taught him to read, as Catherine
taught Hareton Earnshaw in Withering
Heights — an interesting fact if it can be

established, but no proof is vouchsafed.

130

Fact and Fiction

The chain of evidence is then continued in
the following extraordinary fashion. Jane
Harshaw, who taught Hugh II. to read,
may have Imbibed as a child his theory of
tenant-right. She afterwards married a
neighbouring gentleman, Samuel Martin,
and had a son John. Jane Martin may
have instilled into her son John the tenant-
right notions she had adopted as a child
from the farm servant. John Martin met
at school the famous John Mitchell, and
may have communicated to him the ideas
he had imbibed from his mother. After
mentioning these possibilities and supposi-
tions, Dr. Wright sums up : ' / think there
is no doubt that John Martin's belief and
principles grew from seeds sown by Hugh
Bronte, the servant boy, in the sympathetic
mind of his mother."

Well, but the proof? Surely all this
will not be put forward without some evi-
dence ? Yes, a witness is called, and one
only, but his testimony is rather upsetting.

131

The Brontes

Of course, if Hugh II. had produced such
an impression on the Harshaw family, had
been taught by the children, and was the
indirect means of sending one of the grand-
children to penal servitude for ten years
(p. 98), his memory would have survived
among the Harshaws or nowhere. But
what says the present representative of the
family ? " The probability is that Hugh
Bronte hired with my grandfather, whose
land touched the Lough ; but I fear it is
too true that he passed through my grand-
father s service and left no permanent record
behind him " (p. 96).

But we have not disclosed the whole of
the debt which the Irish tenants of to-day
owe to Hugh II. For Hugh II. was a
tenant on an estate which belonged to
Sharman Crawford, '' a landlord who first
took up the cause of tenant-right, and
after spending a long life in its advocacy
bequeathed its defence to his sons and

daughters ; " and it seems to Dr. Wright

132

Fact and Fiction

** not only probable but morally certain "
that the words of Bronte II., dropped into
the justice-loving minds of the Crawfords,
were the primary seeds of all the recent
land legislation in Ireland. But again we
ask, what evidence is there 1 Dr. Wright
replies : ''I knew the late W. Sharman
Crawford, M.P., well ; and I once talked
with him of Hugh Bronte's tenant-right
theories, of which he was thoroughly aware.
/ did not ask hiTU if his father had got his
views from Bronte, as I had no doubt of the
fact'' (p. 153). However, he apparently
did ask another member of the family.
Miss M. Sharman Crawford, and she sent
the following very sensible reply : " My
father certainly originated tenant-right as
a public question, though, no doubt, long
before the period when he strove to amend
the position of Irish tenants, many thoughtful
minds like his must have protested against
the legalised injustice to which they were
subject" (p. 153). She admits, that is,

133

The Brontes

that Hugh Bronte, like many others, may
have proclaimed the injustice under which
tenants in Ireland were growing, but about
Dr. Wright's little story she evidently knew
nothing. No doubt, thousands of men of
every rank, even earlier than Hugh H.'s
time, must have given utterance to just
such sentiments as are attributed to him in
Dr. Wright's book.^ But there is not a
shred of evidence to connect our mythical
hero with recent Irish legislation, or to
show that the Irish Land Acts are due
to the eviction of the novelists' ancestors
at the beginning of last century. I have
examined this part of Dr. Wright's book
at some length because it is typical of the
rest, being a mass of illogical assumptions
unsupported by even the semblance of proof
Indeed the whole history of Hugh 1 1, seems
to be a pure myth. Beyond the fact that

* They are given apparently almost verbatim, and
occupy nearly ten pages. We cannot but wonder at
the prodigious memories which have preserved for us
these century-old records.

134

Fact and Fiction

the novelists' grandfather was named Hugh
and that he married an Alice McClory in
1776, I doubt whether we can depend on
a line of the book relating to Hugh the
Paragon.

The Irish Uncles and Aunts of the
Novelists.

In considering Dr. Wright's stories about
the next generation of the Brontes, the
uncles and aunts of the novelists, the reader
often finds himself asking, Did or did not
Dr. Wright personally know these remark-
able individuals, and if so what was the
extent of his intimacy with them ? In his
chapter on the sources of his information
he merely says that "he came into contact
with the Irish Brontes as a child^' and we
read on, assuming that his minute informa-
tion about these prodigies is derived from
others. But presently our belief is unsettled.
He says of Hugh III. (the Giant) in a note
on p. 292 :

135

The Brontes

" I often talked with Hugh of his adven-
ture in England, but the conversation
always came to an abrupt termination if I
referred to Haworth or the object of his
mission."

Here he seems to know one of the most
remarkable characters in the book quite
intimately. Another passage confirms this
impression. Dr. Wright declares on p. 173 :

*' When I first began to take an interest
in the Brontes I was admonished in a
mysterious manner to have nothing to do
with such people. I was advised to keep
out of their way lest I should hear their
odious language ; and it was even hinted
that they might in some satanic way do me
bodily harm."

From the context it seems impossible to
suppose that Dr. Wright is not here refer-
ring to the Irish aunts and uncles ; and
yet to our surprise in the body of his book
he seems to know nothing of them himself.
Even when he tells us such trivial facts as

136

Fact and Fiction

that one was ''very smart " or that another
could play the fiddle, the facts are never
given at first hand. Old Alice at least we
should have supposed was personally known
to him ; but though he was " in corre-
spondence with her directly or indirectly
till her death," whenever her remarks are
quoted it is always something that she has
said to the Rev. J. B. Lusk. It is curious
in what an atmosphere of fog Dr. Wright
leaves all his sources of information.

But, however his material may have
been acquired, it is certain that even when
the book brings us down to the time of the
novelists' uncles and aunts the mythical air
is not all dispersed. Dr. Wright gives a
description of these most remarkable per-
sons. It was given him when a boy by
his teacher, the Rev. Mr. McAllister, and
Mr. McAllister received it in turn from a
young cousin ; but although this tradition is
the best part of a century old, and has been
handed down through three generations,

137

The Brontes

Dr. Wright is able to give it apparently
word for word to the length of eight pages !
The scene described (Chapter XVIII.) is
the al fresco concert, dance and sports, in
which the young men and maidens of the
Bronte family indulged every favourable
afternoon on the '' Bronte dancing green."
The whole is like a scene from Spenser's
Faery Queen, and shows these Brontes to
have been extraordinary and unique in-
deed, moving habitually in ''the light that
never was on land or sea." The observers
whose words Dr. Wright records w^ere
" very young at the time " — and so we
should have supposed from their inflated
language —but apparently they were old
enough to be struck, not only by the
beauty and stateliness of form of the
Brontes, and the poetry of their move-
ments, but also by the originality of their
conversation. We are told of their '' quaint
conceptions," '' glowing thoughts," and their
"expressions far from commonplace";

138

Fact and Fiction

they used language which '' Hterally made
the flesh creep and the hair stand on end,"
and they uttered their thoughts " with a
pent-up and concentrated energy never
equalled in rugged force by the novelists."
Dr. Wright assures us that they were
looked upon as uncanny by the common
people, and '' held themselves carefully
aloof" from their neighbours. Unfortu-
nately this generation of Brontes lived so
near our own time that it is impossible to
keep off from them altogether '' the light of
common day," and with Dr. Wright's aid
we get the historical view of these aunts
and uncles of the novelists side by side
with the semi-mythical. Welsh opened a
public-house, which became a meeting-
place for the fast youth of the district.
Later, William kept a shebeen which be-
came a source of degradation both to the
neighbourhood and himself James was a
shoemaker, and his sister Alice describes
him as one who '' took a hand at every-

139

The Brontes

thing, and was very smart and active with
his tongue. He was a great favourite with
children." Hugh HI. and Welsh the same
sister describes as very industrious, and
making a great deal of money by mac-
adamising roads. In fact, the brothers and
sisters belonged to a capable type of Irish
peasant, but were by no means the awe-
some and ideal figures of the myth.
Nor did they always drop pearls and
diamonds when they opened their mouths,
as the Spenserian chapter would have
us believe. There are several of their
sayings scattered through the book, and all
of the most ordinary description. I have
already given Alice's account of her Aunt
Mary. Then there is James's account of
Charlotte on his return from a visit to
Haworth : " Charlotte is tarrible sharp and
inquisitive." It is admitted that they were
unable to understand their nieces' novels.
They took them, we are told, to the Rev.
Mr. McKee, and were delighted when he

140

Fact and Fiction

pronounced them **gran'," so that they
could tell their neighbours, '' Mr. McKee
thinks Charlotte very cliver." It is in-
teresting to compare in this manner the
real characters with the ideal. We thus
learn that, as the sun can make a gorgeous
sunset out of mist and smoke, so a beautiful
myth can be evolved out of most common-
place elements, provided a succession of
enthusiastic imaginations be set to work
upon them. That the al fresco chapter,
apart from its want of harmony with other
accounts of these Brontes, is inconsistent in
itself, any careful reader will discover who
will keep in mind the dates recorded in our
genealogical chart, and remember that the
scene described in that chapter took place
in 1812.^

* £.^., the women are described thus: "They were
mature maidens, but they had not lost their elegant
figures or their fresh red and white complexions."
This would lead us to suppose them women of thirty-
five ; in point of fact, in 1812 the three eldest were aged
twenty-three, twenty-one, and twenty respectively.

141

The Brontes

The conclusion to which the book itself
led me is strikingly confirmed by the ex-
ternal evidence which has become available
since my original exposure of Dr. Wright's
work appeared. The terms in which I de-
scribed the real Irish Brontes are re-echoed
quite independently by Miss Shannon, who,
of course, speaks with complete knowledge.
She writes that *' there was nothing re-
markable about them more than any other
family " save their foreign appearance and
quickness to resent insult. Mrs. Heslip's
evidence shows that whenever Dr. Wright
goes beyond such bare facts as that one
macadamised roads and another kept a
public-house, he falls into error. Through-
out his book he insists, as we have seen,
on the fact that these Brontes kept much
to themselves, and were looked upon as
uncanny by their neighbours. He supports
this by saying (p. 239) that they went
regularly to no place of worship ; that if

ever they did drop into a meeting-house,

142

Fact and Fiction

they were stared at as reprobates by the
worshippers ; that they incurred " the
stigma of Hving Hke heathen." Mrs.
HesHp says, on the contrary, they went
to church regularly, and continued to do
so till the infirmities of old age kept
them at home ; and the County Down
Brontes emphatically confirm this state-
ment. Again, Dr. Wright has some mar-
vellous ghost stories to tell of Hugh III.
(the Giant). Ghost-baiting, he says, was a
passion with the Brontes. One of Hugh's
sisters lived in a house in which a man
named Frazer had committed suicide.
Frazer's ghost haunted the house, and
Hugh HI. sought to exorcise it, and
challenored it to a combat. He afterwards
retired to bed in a delirium of frenzy, and
during the night the ghost appeared and
gave him a squeeze, from which he died
shortly after in great agony. Dr. Wright's
book leaves us with the impression that
this is a family tradition and he says, more-

143

The Brontes

over, that an old fellow named Norton, still
living, can confirm it. Hugh's niece and
grand-niece, however, point out that there
is no excuse for perpetuating such a tale,
since Hugh lived till March 1863, when
he died a very old man and without
sufferine."^ Then there is another marvel-
lous yarn about Hugh HI. and the devil.
On the occasion of a potato blight this
Hugh believed that the devil in bodily
form had destroyed the crop, and resolved
not to submit tamely to this personal
injury. In order to insult the fiend he
determined to gather a basketful of rotten
potatoes, and taking them to the edge of a
precipice, to '' call on the devil to behold
his foul and filthy work, and then with

* A correspondent points out to me that in his third
edition, at the end of a footnote in small print quoting
old Norton's testimony, Dr. Wright adds, in two lines,
the true facts as given by Hugh's relations. By these
facts the story is completely destroyed ; but instead of
cancelling the myth Dr. Wright puts the refutation where
few will notice it.

144

Fact and Fiction

great violence dash them down as a feast
for the fetid destroyer." Dr. Wright de-
scribes the incident in the following melo-
dramatic style :

"With bare outstretched arms, the
veins in his neck and forehead standing
out like hempen cords, and his voice
choking with concentrated passion, he
would apostrophise Beelzebub as the
bloated fly, and call on him to partake
of the filthy repast he had provided. The
address ended with wild scornful laughter
as Bronte hurled the rotten potatoes down
the bank" (p. 184).

A spectator told Dr. Wright that for a
few seconds he watched in terror, expect-
ing the fiend to appear, so powerful was
the spell of Hugh's earnestness. But now,
as Prince Henry said to Falstaff, ''mark
how a plain tale shall put you down ; " this
inconvenient Mrs. Heslip is here to give
us the true version : '* I gathered potatoes,
and helped him to carry the basket to the

145 K

The Brontes

cliffs ; and as we emptied he would say, in
a laughing style and for fun, ' There's a
mouthful for the devil.' " In fact, she says,
her uncle was full of such rollicking humour
on these occasions that she would lie down
on the ground and roar with laughter.
Here again we see how, under the touch
of an enthusiastic fancy, a commonplace
incident can be transformed into a roman-
tic myth. The latter part of Dr. Wright's
book is as full of such myths as the earlier.
Indeed, it would appear that there is
nothing trustworthy in our author's ac-
count of the novelists' aunts and uncles
beyond the few dry biographical facts
which old Alice Bronte gave to the Rev.
J. B. Lusk in 1890.

The Reviewer and the Avenger.

When we come to the latest narrative
in the book, which brings us nearly to the
year 1850, the reader will suppose that

1^6

Fact and Fiction

here, at least, we must reach solid ground.
But it is not so. Everyone has heard how
Hugh III. (the Giant) set out, shillelagh
in hand, on what Dr. Wright calls '' one
of the strangest undertakings within the
whole range of literary adventure," viz., to
find and slay the Qtcarterly reviewer who
had traduced his niece. The tale has
found its way, I believe, into almost every
newspaper in Great Britain, and will pro-
bably continue to be told as fact for many
a long year to come. Yet I shall be able
to show beyond all controversy that there
is not a word of truth in the story. My
suspicions were aroused by the incon-
sistencies and peculiarities of the narrative
itself, and by Dr. Wright's admissions that
he could never induce Hugh H I. to acknow-
ledge its truth, nor could the daughter of
the gentleman to whom Hugh is alleged
to have told it, and that it was unknown to
some of Hugh's brothers and sisters. I
resolved, therefore, to institute inquiries.

147

The Brontes

The story tells that Hugh III. called again
and again at Murray's, and inquired for the
reviewer ; the publishers gave him no infor-
mation, however, but, instead, tried to find
out from him the name of the anonymous
author oijane Eyre ; and, at last, seeing his
truculent character, forbade him the house.
A piquant anecdote such as this, I said to
myself, relating to so famous a person as
Charlotte Bronte, is sure to be treasured
among the literary reminiscences of the
firm of Murray. Accordingly I wrote to
them on the subject. Mr. John Murray
says in his reply that he is unable to
believe a word of the story, and adds :
"There is no record here of such a visit
having taken place, and I never heard my
father allude to it as a fact." Dr. Wright
proceeds to tell us that when the Avenger
was baffled at Murray's he went to Messrs.
Smith, Elder & Co., and told them his
errand ; they received him civilly, and pro-
cured for him admission into the British

148

Fact and Fiction

Museum reading-room, where he might
perchance find out the name of the offend-
ing reviewer. Now every one knows that
the relations between Charlotte Bronte
and her publishers were of the most friendly-
character ; they took the warmest interest
in all that concerned her literary work, and
they knew how deeply she had been hurt
by the review in the Quarterly, If this
extraordinary incident had taken place,
then, it would have made a great impres-
sion. The member of the firm with whom
Charlotte corresponded, and at whose
house she visited, is fortunately yet with
us, and could confirm the story if true.
But, in reply to my inquiries, the firm
write that they have ''no recollection" of
any such incident. f"Finally, Dr. Wright
tells us that Hugh III. haunted the British
Museum reading-room, and met there a
rich old gentleman who several times in-
vited him to his house, drank his health at
dinner, examined his shillelagh, and so

149

The Brontes

forth. Now it so happens that an accurate
and classified Hst is kept of all who are
admitted to the reading-room of the British
Museum. One of the officials has kindly
made a careful search for me, and no
Hugh Bronte visited the room as stated in
Dr. Wright's history. The story is plainly
apocryphal. Either Dr. Wright's informant
or Hugh HI. himself was romancing.

This external evidence will seem to
most people sufficient. But in order that
there may be left no pretext for resusci-
tating the tale, I propose next to test its
statements by other facts known to us.

The Quarterly containing the savage
attack upon the author oi Jane Eyre was
issued December 1848. The correspond-
ence in Mr. Shorter's book makes it clear
that, contrary to what has hitherto been
believed, the authorship of the offending
article did not long remain a secret ;
shortly after February 4, 1849, Charlotte
knew that Miss Rigby was the reviewer.

150

Fact and Fiction

The disclosure of this fact must have been
as a bolt out of the blue to Dr. Wright ;
but he is not easily staggered, and he soon
recovered himself In the Bookman of
December 1896 he explains how it all
happened. By the second week in
December the covert taunts of the sur-
rounding peasantry, who, no doubt, were
diligent readers of the Quarterly, had
roused Hugh III. to undertake his mis-
sion of vengeance : " The Brontes never
delayed, and Hugh must have reached
Haworth before Christmas. Hugh's
money and mission must certainly have
come to an end before the close of
January 1849."^ Very well : we will take
Dr. Wright's word for it, and will examine
the tale accordingly.

Before Christmas, then, Hugh the Giant
arrived at Haworth. Anne Bronte at this

* It is almost certain that Charlotte did not su the
offending article till the beginning of February. (See
Charlotte Bronte and her Circle^ p. igo.)

151

The Brontes

time was most seriously ill ;^ and on
December 19 Emily Bronte died. It was
a period of most poignant anguish, and
the agony of it still throbs in brave Char-
lotte's letters. How is it, then, that not
a word of all this occurs in Dr. Wright's
detailed account of the visit? Is it pos-
sible that Hugh, who must have been in
the house at the time of the death or the
funeral, or both, can have said nothing of
these sad circumstances to his Irish confi-
dants, when he gives so many other unim-
portant and trivial details of his visit ?

Hugh, we are told, '' reached the
vicarage on a Sunday, when all except
Martha, the old servant, were at Church."
Martha " rated him soundly for journeying
on the Sabbath," but allowed him to re-
main till the family returned. It will be
seen at once that this is quite irrecon-

* This appears from several of Charlotte's letters —
among others those dated January 10 (Mrs. Gaskell's
Life, p. 284) and January 2 and 18 {Charlotte Bronte and
her Circle, pp. 176 and 185).

152

Fact and Fiction

cileable with the facts. Anne at this time
was far gone in consumption, Charlotte
was engaged in nursing her, and both
sisters were prostrate with grief Is it
likely that they would be allowed on a
Sunday in mid-winter to go and sit in a
cold church ?

When the family returned, we are told,
'' the girls gathered round him," and lis-
tened eagerly to his ghost stories ! Appa-
rently Dr. Wright imagined that all three
sisters were alive and full of vivacity and
spirit. Imagine the two girls listening
eagerly to ghost stories at a time when
Emily was either lying dead upstairs or
had just been placed in her grave ! These
are minute points, perhaps, but I allude to
them to show that there is not a fino^er's
breadth in this narrative which does not
crumble away at a touch.

Old Mr. Bronte and Charlotte, we are
told, tried to dissuade Hugh III. from his
purpose, ''but gentle Anne sympathised

153

The Brontes

with him and wished him success." On
his return, unsuccessful, ''the gentle Anne
received him with the warmest welcome,
and talked of accompanying him to Ireland,
which she spoke of as 'home.' At part-
ing she threw her long slender arms round
his neck and called him her ' noble uncle,' "
(p. 291). Is this credible.'^ Remember
Hugh's purpose was murder: "The
scoundrel who had spoken of his niece as
if she were a strumpet must die. Hugh's
oath was pledged, and he meant to per-
form it " (p. 282). Before leaving Ireland,
we are told, he made his will, apparently
thinking that either he might be slain in
making his assault or fall into the hang-
man's hands afterwards. Is it conceivable
that the dying Anne, deeply religious as
we know her to have been, would have
encouraged an ignorant peasant to the
commission of a crime which would have
brought him to the gallows 1 I venture
to think there is not one of my readers

154

Fact and Fiction

who will not cry out upon this story, Im-
possible !

It is remarkable, too, that Hugh should
have known his niece to be the author of
Jane Eyre at a time when Charlotte was
most anxious to keep it a profound secret.
Dr. Wright says, indeed, that she sent
presentation copies of all her works to her
Irish relatives, and that he possesses some
of these himself. He does not tell us what
proof he has that the copies in his posses-
sion once belonged to the Irish Brontes,
and he acknowledges that the volumes of
Jane Eyre cannot be traced. I am afraid
it will need evidence much stronger than
is yet forthcoming to convince us that
Charlotte thus gave away her secret.
Ten months after the alleged mission of
vengeance we find her writing to Mr.
Williams : " I earnestly desire to preserve
my incognito." ^ Yet Dr. Wright wishes
us to believe that from the first the name

* See Charlotte Bronte and her Circle, p. 354.
155

The Brontes

of the author oi Jane Eyre had been known
not only to the people of the manse at
Ballynaskeagh, but to all the surrounding
peasantry ! Even could this be proved,
the mission of vengeance would still re-
main incredible. Charlotte would have
moved heaven and earth to prevent it.
It would have been intolerable to her that
the secret which had exercised all the
newspaper editors in Great Britain should
first be disclosed in the paragraphs of
police intelligence. Yet if she had allowed
a wild Irishman to go to London to
vindicate her honour with his shille-
lagh, that would have been the inevitable
result.

Again, if this story be true, old Mr.
Bronte knew in December 1848 that Hugh
both possessed a copy oi Jane Eyre and
was aware who was its author. That this
was not so I shall now prove from Dr.
Wright's own pen. There is a volume in
existence of a cheap edition oi Jane Eyre

156

Fact and Fiction

with the following inscription in Mr.
Bronte's own handwriting :

" To Mr. Hugh Bronte, Ballynaskeagh,
near Rathfisland, Ireland, — This is the
first work published by my daughter under
the fictitious name of ' Currer Bell,' which
is the usual way at first of authors, but
her real name is everywhere known. She
sold the copyright of this and her other
two works for fifteen hundred pounds, so
that she has to pay for the books she gets
the same as others. Her other books are
in six volumes, and would cost nearly four
pounds. This was formerly in three
volumes. In two years hence, when all
shall be published in a cheaper form, if all
be well, I may send them. You can let
my brothers and sisters read this.

^'P. Bronte, A.B.,

" Incumbent of Haworth, near Keighley.
*^ January 20, 1853."

Dr. Wright's own comment upon this

The Brontes

inscription is : " It assumes that the uncles
and aunts of the novelists had never seen
the first edition of their nieces' works."
But how could old Mr. Bronte have
believed, in 1853, that Hugh knew nothing
of Charlotte's writings, if in 1849 he had
tried to dissuade him from executing ven-
geance on the reviewer who had traduced
the author o{ Jane Eyre? Can any one
explain this puzzle ? Further, it can now
be proved from Charlotte's own letters that
ten months after Hugh's alleged mission
of veneeance old Mr. Bronte did not even
know of the offending reviewer s existence.
In August 1849 Charlotte writes to Mr.
W. S. Williams: "The Quarterly I kept to
myself: it would have worried papa."^

It is slaying the dead perhaps to pursue
the subject further, but I cannot forbear
to point out one more of the intrinsic
absurdities of the tale. The incumbent
of Haworth, we are told, endeavoured, by

* Charlotte Bronte and her Circle ^ p. 347.

158

Fact and Fiction

showing Hugh the sights of Yorkshire,
to draw his mind from its fierce intents.
*' He was careful that Hugh's entertain-
ment should be to his taste, and he took
him to see a prize-fight." Could anything
be more blankly incredible ? Even if he
had been the most flinty hearted wretch
then living, would this aged evangelical
clergyman have allowed himself to be seen
feasting his eyes on a pugilistic encounter
almost before his daughter Emily was cold
in her grave ? Yet this story has been
gravely accepted as history by half the
literary critics of this country !

I think one is now entitled to ask
Dr. Wright to explain the genesis of
this curious narrative. It is not oriven
as a vague myth, but as a detailed
history. We are told exactly how the
hero's shillelagh was fashioned for the
adventure, that he embarked at Warren-
point and landed at Liverpool, that the
name of the vessel in which he crossed was

The Brontes

the Sea Nymph, that the position of his
lodgings at Haworth was near the
river, and so forth. I am informed on
the best authority that the Brontes of
County Down deny the whole story ; and
Mrs. Heslip, the niece of Hugh III. and
Miss Shannon,^ his grand-niece, both assert
that at the date when their uncle was in
England the Bronte novels had neither
been written nor thought of. Dr. Wright
must have known these facts. What justi-
fication can he plead for publishing the
story without giving the slightest hint that
it was disputed ? All who are interested
in literature will wait with curiosity for
Dr. Wright's answer. In any case it is
clearly proved that Hugh III.'s adven-
tures are apocryphal, and if we cannot
trust our author's investigations when
they relate to events alleged to have

* Miss Shannon writes me : " Until we saw the
account of Hugh's visit to thrash the reviewer we never
heard of it, nor do we believe it."

i6o

Fact and Fiction

happened only half a century since, what
credit can we give to his two-hundred-year-
old records ?

The Asserted Irish Origin of the
Bronte Novels.

That Dr. Wright himself may unwit-
tingly have helped the growth of these
myths is rendered possible by an extra-
ordinary statement which he makes in the
second chapter of his book. He tells us
that when he was a boy his old school-
master, the Rev. Mr. McAllister, used to
dictate to him some of Hugh II. 's tales, as
well as the story of his life, as themes for
composition ; and then Dr. Wright pro-
ceeds :

*' It thus happens that I wrote screeds of
the Bronte novels before a line of them had
been penned at Haworth. ... I read the
Bronte novels with the feeling that I had

iGl L

The Brontes

already known what was coming, and I
was chiefly interested in the wording and
skilful manipulation of details" (p. 8).
He repeats the assertion on p. 139 : " The
stories are all Bronte stories, an echo
of the thrilling narratives related by old
Hugh." There cannot be a doubt that
Dr. Wright's memory is playing strange
pranks with him here. If we accepted the
history contained in his book as true, it
would show that Wuthering Heights was
based on facts, but it would not account
for a single line of the other novels. What
possible excuse, then, can Dr. Wright give
for saying, as he plainly does in the above
passage, that all the novels of Charlotte,
Emily and Anne Bronte were founded
either on Hugh H.'s life or his stories.^
It will not do to take refuge in the latter.
Wuthering Heights is a work of pure
imagination, and it is easy to shape a
myth so as to resemble it. But the stories
in the other books deal with places and

162

Fact and Fiction

conditions which were altogether beyond
the horizon of Hugh I I.'s experiences. Jane
Eyre treats of Hfe in a girl's charity school,
and then of the history of an English
governess. The plots of Villette and The
Professor are both laid in Belgian schools.
The characters in Shirley are Yorkshire
girls, Yorkshire parsons, and Yorkshire
manufacturers. Agnes Grey records the
experiences and trials of a private gover-
ness in various families. The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall deals with the history of a
besotted drunkard, and Charlotte tells us
distinctly that it was founded minutely on
observation. Indeed, the whole of the
Bronte novels, with the exception of
Wuthering Heights, are the result of the
play of a creative imagination on personal
experiences, and those who are familiar
with both the lives of the Brontes and
their novels can identify almost every
character of importance in them. It is
therefore utterly impossible that Dr.

163

The Brontes

Wright could have known what was
coming as he read the Bronte novels for
the first time, and he may be challenged to
point out any plot in Charlotte's or Anne's
books which could by any possibility have
been borrowed from the stories of an Irish
peasant in Hugh's circumstances.

And the claim that WutJiering Heights
is based upon this Hugh's history is as
ridiculous as that the other novels are
founded upon his stories. The improba-
bilities, the anachronisms, the inconsis-
tencies of that history, as told by Dr.
Wright, I have already exposed. I have
shown that not a scrap of evidence worthy
the name is adduced in its favour ; and I
have recalled the fact that the near re-
lations of Hugh n. were confessedly igno-
rant of the story which yet we are led to
believe was ever on his lips. But, even if
the evidence were as strong as it is weak,
we should still have to reject Dr. Wright's
theory. The truth - loving Charlotte's

164

Fact and Fiction

account of the matter must necessarily be
final. She might blamelessly have kept
silence about the origin of Wuthering
Heights, but she would never have de-
liberately misled us ; and she tells us
distinctly in her preface to her sister's
book, that the materials of Wuthering
Heights were gathered in Yorkshire.
Speaking of Emily's aloofness from all
her neighbours, she says : *' Yet she knew
them ; knew their ways, their language,
their family histories ; she could hear of
them with interest, and talk of them with
detail, minute, graphic and accurate ; but
with them she rarely exchanged a word.
Hence it ensued that what her mind had
gathered of the real concerning them was
too exclusively confined to those tragic
and terrible traits of which, in listening to
the secret annals of every rude vicinage,
the memory is sometimes compelled to re-
ceive the impress. Her imagination, which

was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more

165

The Brontes

powerful than sportive, fotmd in such traits
material whe7ice it wrought creations like
Heathcliffe, like Earns haw, like Catherine T
To all who really know Charlotte's cha-
racter, this is conclusive and final. Had
both plot and characters been derived from
the history of an ancestor, these words
would never have been written.

Prunty v. Bronte.

Enough has now been said to show that
Dr. Wright s book is not history but myth,
and substantially nothing else but myth.
But his errors have been the means of
eliciting light upon at least one interesting
question — that of the name of the Irish
ancestors of the novelists. Before the
publication of The Brontes in Ireland it
was conjectured that the novelists' father
had assumed his high-sounding cognomen
about the time (1799) when the dukedom

166

Fact and Fiction

of Bronte was conferred upon Nelson ; It
was asserted that Bronte was not an Irish
name, and Mr. Birrell and others sug-
gested that the novelists were descended
from Irish Pruntys. Dr. Wright In his
book set himself to prove that the name
had always been ''Bronte" and nothing
else, and In order to do this he used
what evidence was In his favour and
entirely omitted all that told against his
theory. The baptismal register of Patrick
Bronte and his brothers — extending be-
tween the years 1779 and 1791 — was
discovered by the Rev. H. W. Lett, and
here the surname is found as Brunty and
B run tee. Dr. Wright quotes all the
Christian-names from this register (p. 159),
but never gives a hint that the surname is
not Bronte.^ Similarly he tells us that he
possesses photographs of Patrick Bronte's
matriculation and graduation signatures,

* My references throughout are to Dr. Wright's first
edition.

167

The Brontes

and of the latter (1806) he gives a facsimile
— '' Patrick Bronte," without the diaeresis —
dut he gives us not a hint that at matricii-
lation (1802) the name is entered " Patrick
Branty^ Throughout his book he never
for a moment suororests that the name had
been written other than as at present, and
yet the evidence then in his possession
revealed prior to 1803 ^^ names B runty,
Bruntee and Branty, and not a single
Bronte. While thus suppressing the facts
that told against him, he asserts in his
preface (p. vi.) that the discovery of the
baptismal register ''disposes for ever of
the baseless assertion that the family was
called ' Prunty ' in Ireland." This is how
the matter was left when Dr. Wright first
issued his book.

But the publication of Charlotte Bronte
and her Circle brought to light the facts
which Dr. Wright had ignored. Mr.
Shorter revealed the surnames as written in
the baptismal register and in the list of ad-

168

Fact and Fiction

missions of St. John's College, Cambridge,
and further pointed out that the name took
several forms prior to 1799, but never that
of Bronte. Since these facts were made
known Dr. Wright, to do him justice, has
disclosed the further evidence which has
come under his notice, and very valuable it
is. He has received from the Rev. J. B.
Lusk — to whom belongs the credit of re-
covering them — certain old school-books of
the Brontes. On one of these on different
pages are found the following inscriptions :
** Patrick Pruty's book, bought in the year
1795 "5 P- 240, "Patrick Prunty his
book " ; p. 249, ** Patrick Prunty his book
and pen." On pp. 232 and 250 the
name *'Brunty" appears; and on pp. 66
and 240 '* Walsh Bronte." In another book
is found the inscription, *' Hugh Bronte.
His book in the year 1803." ^^- Wright
has also picked up a New Testament which
he declares, but without giving proof,
belonged to the wife of Hugh H., the

169

The Brontes

grandmother of the novelists, and in this
volume the name " Allie Bronte" is faintly
decipherable.

If all the above evidence be carefully
examined the following facts will seem
to emerge, though I do not pretend that
complete certainty can be arrived at. The
peasant ancestors of the Brontes spelt by
ear, so to speak, and were accustomed to
confuse P and B. Patrick, when a youth
of eighteen years of age with literary
ambitions, knew that the right spelling
was Prunty, and wrote it accordingly — for
*' Pruty " is evidently a mere slip. In
1802, when Patrick entered at St. John's
College, Cambridge, the plebeian Prunty
beofan to undero^o a transformation and
became Branty. In 1803, and again in
1806, we find Bronte, but without the
diaeresis. A little later and it assumes the
shape now so familiar to all admirers of
English literature. As to the adoption of

the modern form of the name by the Irish

170

Fact and Fiction

relations we must remember that the Rev.
Patrick Bronte was in life-long corre-
spondence with his brethren of County
Down, and doubtless, as Mr. Shorter
suggests, '* with a true Celtic sense of the
picturesqueness of the thing they seized
upon the more attractive surname." The
inscription, " Walsh Bronte," in the school-
book is accounted for when we remember
that Welsh was nine years younger than
Hugh, and probably would not come into
possession of Hugh's book till the change
of name was in progress. The inscrip-
tion, *' Allie Bronte," presents no diffi-
culties ; if it really belonged to the mother
of Patrick Bronte and not to his sister —
of which at present there is no proof — she
would, of course, take to spelling her name
as did her children, and especially as did
that kind son in England who contributed
so liberally to her support. If the original
name had been Bronte we may be sure
Patrick, the young and ambitious school-

171

The Brontes

master of County Down, would never have
written himself plain Patrick Prunty, nor
would Allie have registered her children as
Bruntys. It is true that we cannot yet
get beyond exceedingly probable conjec-
ture, but there is at least an end of Dr.
Wright's too confident assertion that the
name was never in Ireland called Prunty.^

Sources of Error.

Before closing my notice of Dr. Wright's
work two interesting questions suggest
themselves. The first is : How did Dr.
Wright come to put together such a book ?
It is a question I cannot fully answer,

* It is scarcely necessary to notice the statement of
Frank Prunty, the boatman on Lough Erne, who
"believes" that the name was spelt "Bronte" in the
south. There is no evidence of any such spelling pre-
vious to the conferring of Nelson's dukedom, and there
is clear evidence that it was then spelt " Prunty " and
" Brunty." The change from the plebeian to the aristo-
cratic form can be readily accounted for, but not so the
converse change.

172

Fact and Fiction

but I will endeavour in some measure to
assist the puzzled reader.

One source, possibly, of this strange
volume is indicated in our author's second
chapter. It may be partly founded upon
the tittle-tattle of a few Presbyterian
manses in County Down thirty or forty
years ago, unwittingly distorted, perhaps,
by the lapse of time since. All Dr.
Wright's geese are swans, and accordingly
the Rev. Mr. McAllister of Finard, the
Rev. Mr. McKee of Ballynaskeagh, and
the rest are marvels of erudition and literary
acumen. Mr. McKee in particular is re-
presented as an intellectual giant as well
as a moral paragon. =^ He may have seemed
so to Dr. Wright when a boy, but of his
critical faculty we are enabled to judge for
ourselves by an anecdote that our author

* " It was a common saying of the pupils that, had
he lived with more favourable surroundings, he would
have enriched the world with thoughts as brilliant as
Carlyle's, but without Carlyle's bile" {Brontes in Ireland,
p. 9).

173

The Brontes

has preserved. When a copy oi Jane Eyre
was brought to Mr. McKee by Hugh III.,
the uncle of the novelists, his criticism, after
reading it, was this: "The child, Jane
Eyre, is your father in petticoats, and
Mrs. Reed is the wicked uncle by the
Boyne " ! A more ridiculous comparison
it is impossible to imagine. The melo-
dramatic villain Welsh — a murderer and
embezzler — bears not the slightest resem-
blance to the narrow, hard, evangelical
lady whose severity is so distressing to
little Jane ; and the history of the boy
stolen from home and suffering for ten
years the physical torments and brutalities
of his father's enemy, is totally unlike the
history of the little orphan girl at Gates-
head Hall and Lowood School. But this
anecdote gives us a possible key to some
of the myths. One who could see resem-
blances between Welsh and Mrs. Reed,
Hugh H. and Jane Eyre, could see resem-
blances at will everywhere. Doubtless, as

174

Fact and Fiction

the fame of the Brontes grew, the ministers
became proud of their knowledge of the
Bronte ancestry,, and gradually, from tracing
imaginary resemblances, such as those just
given, they may have proceeded uncon-
sciously to colour " old Hugh's yarns," as
Mr. McKee calls them, with what they read
in Wuthermg Heights.

Another source of error is suggested by
Mr. Shorter in his recent book. '' Dr.
Wright," he says, "probably made his
inquiries with the stories of Emily and
Charlotte well in his mind. He souoht

o

for similar traditions, and the quick-witted
peasantry gave him all that he wanted.
They served up and embellished the current
traditions of the neighbourhood for his
benefit, as the peasantry do everywhere
for folk-lore enthusiasts." This theory
may account, perhaps, for the genesis of
some of the myths, but I fear it will not
carry us far.

The chief explanation of Dr. Wright's

^75

The Brontes

errors is to be found, doubtless, in his
strange conceptions of what constitutes
evidence and of what is legitimate in the
manipulation of facts. Our author is first
possessed by an idea, and then he finds in
every testimony he comes across *' con-
firmation strong as Holy Writ," even when
it is testimony distinctly unfavourable.
Several instances of this I have already
had occasion to notice ; let me strengthen
them by other examples.

In the preface, in which he expresses
indebtedness to those who assisted him in
his work. Dr. Wright devotes a paragraph
to Miss Nussey, the life-long and intimate
friend of Charlotte Bronte, and classes her
among the ladies who have ''helped" him.
And in the body of the book, where he
identifies the characters of Wuthering
Heights with his mythical personages, he
prefaces his observations with these words :
"Miss Nussey .... believes firmly that
the girls caught their inspiration from their

176

Fact and Fiction

father, and that Emily got not only her
inspiration but most of her facts from her
father's narratives." The effect of all this
upon the reader is the conviction — which
carries immense weight — that Miss Nussey
in some way helped Dr. Wright with his
work and is a convert to his theories. In
point of fact, however, nothing in this
volume originated with Miss Nussey, and
she entirely discredits his stories, ''firmly
believing them to be mythical."^

In replying in the Bookman of December
1896 to critics who discredited the story
of Hugh's mission of vengeance, Dr.
Wright wrote as follows :

'' Mrs. Heslip, a daughter of Sara Bronte,
Patrick's sister, first cousin to Charlotte,
writes me that she used to work for her
uncle Hugh, and remembers him coming
to England."

In a similar strain, and at greater length,
he quotes Miss Maggie Shannon, of Bally-

* Charlotte Bronte and her Circle, p. 158.
177 M

The Brontes

naskeagh, first premising that she has
" great stores of information " about the
Brontes. After quoting these two ladies,
he proudly claims to have demolished his
critics. The guileless readers of the Book-
man, of course, must have concluded that
these two relatives believed in the adven-
ture. Which of them would guess that
both entirely discredit it, and that Mrs.
Heslip had told Dr. Wright to his face
what she thought of his book?^ Surely
Dr. Wright himself will see on reflection
that a suppression of this kind is quite
indefensible ; he will not seriously contend
that he may quote two witnesses as
favourable when it is known that neither
of thcfu believes a word of his story. Yet
this lame defence is apparently all he has
to offer.

And Dr. Wright is apt to treat docu-
ments as he treats witnesses. In the
Bookman of December 1896 he quotes

* Sketch, February 14, 1897.
178

Fact and Fiction

from the Rev. J. B. Lusk's notes the
following particulars which Alice gave con-
cerning James* visit to England: ''Charlotte
asked particularly about the Knock Hill
and Lough Neagh .... Ann the youngest
wanted to come home with Jamie. He
thought it queer that she called Ireland
home," &c. But in his book these facts
are transferred from Jamie to Hugh.
There it is Hugh whom Charlotte questions
about the Knock Hill ; it is Hugh whom
Anne proposes to accompany to Ireland,
and to whom she speaks of Ireland as
home (p. 291). By the use of such
methods as these it is not surprising that
Dr. Wright is able to "prove " all sorts of
things that never happened.

The Brontes in Ireland AND THE
Critics.

The other question which is likely to be

aroused in the minds of my readers is, How

179

The Brontes

came such a work to run successfully the
gauntlet of the press ? 1 1 is certainly a
curious phenomenon that a book with con-
tradictions and absurdities written large on
every page should have been received
everywhere with applause, especially when
it is remembered that among those who
reviewed The Brontes in Ireland were
brilliant writers whose names are every-
where held in honour."^ A partial expla-
nation may be found if my suggestion be
accepted that the book was hastily read as
one might read a novel. But it is an un-
pleasant illustration of the way in which
editors perform their duties if a work of
this kind was assigned to men of facile pens
and uncritical minds who had no peculiar
knowledge of Bronte subjects.

And even if this explanation be accepted
it is not satisfactory. I have no hesitation

* In the advertisement of the third edition the favour-
able opinions of no less than thirty-one reviewers are
quoted, and the praises of many of them are quite
dithyrambic in their fervour.

i8o

Fact and Fiction

in asserting that the literary merits of
Dr. Wright's book are but little superior
to its historical qualities. I have already-
quoted a specimen of the melodramatic
style in Hugh III.'s defiance of the devil.
Let me give another from an account
of a pugilistic encounter between Welsh
Bronte and a neighbour, fought, I suppose,
the best part of a hundred years ago,
and of which Dr. Wright can only have
received an oral account: ''A few awful
moments followed. The spectators held
their breath and some fainted, others
covered their eyes with their hands or
averted their faces. Terrific crushing and
crashing blows resounded all over the
field, and when the blows ceased to resound
Sam Clarke was lying a motionless heap
in the ring .... No word above a whisper
had been heard during the long after-
noon ! . . . . All were agreed as to the
closing scene. During the last few seconds

the fight became so fierce and furious that

i8i

The Brontes

the blood of the spectators ran cold.
Nothing like it for wild fury and Titanic
ferocity had ever been witnessed by the
crowd, and no such battle has ever
before or since been fought in County
Down." I can assure any one who has
not read Dr. Wricrht's work that the
pabulum with which he presents his readers
is rich with such plums as these. One
enthusiastic critic says, ** There is a real
Homeric ring in the book," and I can only
suppose he is alluding to the occurrence of
such strained and exaggerated passages as
the above. If this is Homeric, then Homer
not only nods but snores.

But I must not omit to call attention to
our author in his softer moments. We
have also the popular novelette style. Let
me select as an instance the description
of Alice McClory, the heroine of the
apocryphal elopement with Hugh the
Paragon :

*' Her hair, which hung in a profusion

182

Fact and Fiction

of ringlets round her shoulders, was lumi-
nous gold ; her forehead was Parian marble ;
her evenly set teeth were lustrous pearls ;
and the roses of health orlowed on her
cheeks. She had the long dark brown
eyelashes that in Ireland so often accom-
pany golden hair, and her deep hazel eyes
had a violet tint and melting expression,"
&c. &c.

Some of our modern critics are evidently
much impressed to find such purple patches
in Dr. Wright's pages. If the other kind
is Homeric, I suppose it will be maintained
that this has Tennyson's mother-of-pearl
shimmer or is dipped in the rainbow hues
•of Shelley !

I must draw attention, too, to another
characteristic of the book — the lack of all
sense of humour which it evinces. I have
already alluded to one instance of this —
the mock heroic speech addressed by the
villain Welsh to an infant of five. An-
other very remarkable specimen occurs in

183

The Brontes

Chapter XV. Dr. Wright first describes
how the neiofhbours crowded into the Para-
gon's cottage to get within hearing of his
marvellous and fascinating stories ; and
then occurs the following : " Patrick, then
a baby, was lying on the heap of seeds
from which the fire was fed, with his eyes
fixed on his father, listening, like the resty
in breathless silence.''

I should have imagined the very first
clause in the preface to the book would
have damped the reviewer's ardour. It
runs thus :

** I trust it is unnecessary to say that I
disclaim all responsibility for the Bronte
acts, opinions and sentiments recorded in
this book. xA-s no one living could lay
claim to Bronte genius, even in its less
cultured condition, no one should be held
responsible for the eccentricities of that
orenius."

Could anything be more inane ? How
could Dr. Wright be held responsible for

184

Fact and Fiction

the opinions of persons long dead, even if
there was anything to be ashamed of in
those opinions, which there is not ? And
what sanity is there in suggesting that
these Irish peasants — about whom, in point
of fact, very little is known — had genius
such as no living person can lay claim to ?
Here was an inscription over the very
threshold of Dr. Wright's work, saying
plainly to any one in search of sense and
balance : " Abandon hope all ye who enter
here." But the critics were undeterred,
and their enthusiasm seems to have waxed
warmer and warmer as they proceeded.
It would almost seem as if a temporary
madness had befallen the literary world.

If this extraordinary book has the effect
of making editors more cautious and critics
more critical, it will not have been written
in vain. But it is difficult to see what
other object it can serve. Seeing how
entirely its stories have been disproved,
even when they relate to comparatively

185

The Brontes

recent times, we certainly cannot treat any
single page of it as trustworthy. True, in
the last chapter its author leaves the re-
cording of myths and sets about propound-
ing a theory. He argues that the famous
Quarterly article, though written by Lady
Eastlake, owed all its offensiveness to the
interpolations of Lockhart, its editor. But
this is as exploded as the rest of the book.
All who are qualified to judge are now con-
vinced that the article was written through-
out by Lady Eastlake, and Mr. Andrew
Lang, whom Dr. Wright quotes as sharing
his opinion, has now withdrawn his sup-
port. For what, then, are Bronte students
indebted to the author of The Brontes in
Ireland? His volume gives us, indeed,
the trivial and somewhat rambling state-
ments of poor old Alice Bronte, and a
copy (mutilated) of the baptismal register
of Patrick Bronte's brothers and sisters ;
but the former we owe to the Rev. J. B.
Lusk and the latter to the Rev. H. W.

i86

Fact and Fiction

Lett. If Dr. Wright has himself given
us any material fact about the Brontes
which was before unknown, let him point
it out ; and I, when convinced, shall be
duly grateful. But as to his theory of an
Irish origin for the Bronte novels, there
is nothing of it left ; and the genius of
Emily Bronte remains as inscrutable as
ever.

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