The Key to the Bronte Works Part 15

Miss Bronte believed it better to leave Brussels and avoid the possibilities of the peculiar situation--a situation always fraught with temptation. Hence her sudden resolve to return to England.

Arrived at Haworth the full recoil came. She had won through a great ordeal, and she knew that surrounded by his wife and family,[77]

comforted by piety and the knowledge of his happy issue from involution in disastrous complications, M. Heger would resume tranquilly his accustomed course of life. To Charlotte Bronte, who by the showing of all evidence was initially responsible for a morally gratifying outcome of their dangerous attachment, this was a galling picture. Knowing nothing of the ecstatic delights of the pietist in the sacrificial sense of M. Heger, who was a devoted member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and, as he is made to describe himself in _Villette_, "a sort of lay Jesuit," she became just a woman living in the world of her primal nature and conceiving but that she had lost. Miss Rigby--afterwards Lady Eastlake--who wrote the remarkable article on _Jane Eyre_ in _The Quarterly Review_ of 1849, perceived with a flash of real insight and the instinct of womanhood that Currer Bell's pen had presented ungarbed, vital relations of some man and woman identical in both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_. The circ.u.mstances were full difficult for the reviewer; she was irritated and encompa.s.sed. _Wuthering Heights_, which so soon had followed the appearance of _Jane Eyre_, she suddenly recognized as the very storm-centre of this literary tornado of pa.s.sionate declamation; and she chastised that work in the name of _Jane Eyre_, for she could not know all the cruel truth, and she feared to popularize _Wuthering Heights_. Although Miss Rigby wrote:--"It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength," she added, "but it is the strength of a mere heathenish mind which is a law unto itself." And later, turning upon _Wuthering Heights_ she says with a final vehemency, and most sensationally:--

There can be no interest attached to the writer of _Wuthering Heights_--a novel succeeding _Jane Eyre_ ... and purporting [!] to be written by Ellis Bell--unless it were for the sake of a more individual reprobation. For though there is a decided family likeness between the two [!], yet the aspect of the Jane and Rochester animals in their native state as Catherine and Heathcliffe [!], is abominably pagan.

Miss Rigby thus excused herself a further consideration of _Wuthering Heights_. In the days of the gratification of discovering the one she loved in return loved her,[78] this recognition stood between Charlotte Bronte and "every thought of religion, as an eclipse between man and the broad sun," so in another sense truly did the contemplation of M.

Heger's self-pacification intervene in the time of reaction. The doubtings and agonizing emotions of her equivocal season in Brussels were now precipitated. Her poems "Gilbert," "Frances," and "Preference"

are testimony to her vengeful and retaliative instinct; as are her portrayals of M. Heger as M. Pelet of _The Professor_ and as Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_. But as I show in the next chapter, Charlotte Bronte afterwards regretted her human weakness and her vituperations of the day of the recoil. She began to set forth the story of her ordeal more sanely and proportionately in _Jane Eyre_. As one who soberly rewrites of fact, she recited therein much that she already had given detachedly; and consistently she presented by aid of the frame-work of "plot" from Montagu's _Gleanings in Craven_ which already had given her elemental suggestions for her _Wuthering Heights_, the history of her life in _Jane Eyre_--a work that stands as testimony to Charlotte Bronte's love of truth as to her heroic battling in the days of fiercest temptation.

A constant yearning to fine a presentation from untruthfulness is the G.o.d-given attribute of the artist, and this was responsible for much that is called harsh in Charlotte Bronte's character as a writer: she would not even spare her own physical and nervous imperfections in her self-portrayals. Emily Bronte would have presented Branwell Bronte as viewed through _couleur de rose_, yet Charlotte Bronte immortalized him as Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed--as she saw him: weak, tyrannical, a moral wreck. So she presented M. Heger. She knew his faults--and they were many; but she loved him though she hated them. Her sense of truth and justice, albeit she had lost the rancour of the time of the reaction, determined her in _Jane Eyre_, it is obvious, to show the occultation of her life's happiness by the incidents of her Brussels life. She would show there had been a day when the barriers between them would have been rashly ignored by him. Thus Rochester is made to sing in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. XXIV.:--

"I dreamed it would be nameless bliss, As I loved, loved to be; And to this object did I press As blind as eagerly.

But wide as pathless[79] was the s.p.a.ce That lay, our lives, between, And dangerous as the foamy race Of ocean-surges green.

And haunted as a robber-path Through wilderness or wood; For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath, Between our spirits stood.[80]

I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned; I omens did defy: Whatever menaced, hara.s.sed, warned,[81]

I pa.s.sed impetuous by.

On sped my rainbow, fast as light; I flew as in a dream; For glorious rose upon my sight That child of Shower and Gleam.

Still bright on clouds of suffering dim s.h.i.+nes that soft, solemn joy; Nor care I now, how dense and grim Disasters gather nigh;

I care not in this moment sweet, Though all I have rushed o'er Should come on pinion, strong and fleet, Proclaiming vengeance sore."

It is clear the impediment of M. Heger's marriage is suggested in these verses. But undeniable evidence as to Charlotte Bronte's having escaped by flight what she considered a most dangerous temptation, is the fact that we find she was influenced to pen these lines, wherein M. Heger (Rochester) is likened to a wild pursuer of a "shower and gleam" nymph who sped before him "fast as light" and "glorious rose upon his sight,"

by Montagu's reference, in _Gleanings in Craven_, to the story of a Craven nymph a satyr pursued yet lost by her being changed into a spring. Says Frederic Montagu:--

"In the _Polyolbion_, published in 1612, is the following pa.s.sage:--

In all my s.p.a.cious tract let them (so wise) survey Thy Ribble's rising banks, their worst and let them say; At Giggleswick, where I a fountain can you show, That eight times in a day is said to ebb and flow!

Who sometime was a Nymph, and in the mountains high Of Craven, whose blue heads, for caps put on the sky, Among the Oreads there, and Sylvans, made abode (It was ere human foot upon these hills had trod), Of all the mountain kind, and since she was most fair; It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair Flow loosely at her back, as up a cliff she clame, Her beauties noting well, her features and her frame, And after her he goes; which when she did espy, Before him like the wind, the nimble Nymph did fly: They hurry down the rocks, o'er hill and dale they drive, To take her he doth strain, t' outstrip him she doth strive, Like one his kind that knew, and greatly feared....

And to the Topic G.o.ds by praying to escape, They turned her to a Spring, which as she then did pant, When, wearied with her course, her breath grew wond'rous scant, Even as the fearful Nymph, then thick and short did blow, Now made by them a Spring, so doth she ebb and flow."

This is not all. We know now the truth regarding Charlotte Bronte's Brussels life, and seeing she discovered a pertinence in the state of the Craven Nymph to her own--for it is undeniable Rochester's song was modelled upon the lines Montagu quotes--it is likely that what I term the "river" suggestion and the Craven Elf suggestion which resulted in Charlotte Bronte's portraying herself in the role of the stream-named Craven elf, Janet Aire or Eyre, had to do with Montagu's mention of this nymph of Craven who escaped a dangerous persecution by becoming a spring. It seems, indeed, that if she did not at first utilize the parallel of this narrative in verse with her own experience, she yet in _Wuthering Heights_ was influenced by it, in the days which I call the period of the recoil, to represent her hero Heathcliffe as a ruin-creating, semi-human being. Whether the lines--

"It was a Satyr's chance to see her silver hair Flow loosely at her back as up a cliff she clame,"

had in the connection to do with the "cliffe" in "that ghoul Heathcliffe's" name a reference to Charlotte Bronte's Preface to _Wuthering Heights_, and her words on the creation of Heathcliffe, in my next chapter, may declare.

It is now impossible not to understand the origin of the Satyr and Nymph pa.s.sage and its implication in the chapter of _Jane Eyre_ containing Rochester's song, when he says to Jane in the very same chapter:--

"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I've wandered over shall be retrodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also."

CHAPTER XV.

THE RECOIL.

II.

A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused; ... the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition when ... reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position. Something of vengeance I had tasted....

As aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.... I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking--fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.

These words, written by Charlotte Bronte in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter IV., in relation to herself and "Mrs. Reed," give us an insight into her extraordinary alternations of mood. To inquire deeply into her determining initially to disavow the authors.h.i.+p of _Wuthering Heights_ requires a somewhat ruthless baring of the "fiendish" vindictiveness against M. Heger between the dates of 1844-46, that was a characteristic of the portrayals of him I have mentioned; but it also reveals her active turn to a spirit of repentance for past vindictive feeling, the which she acknowledges to have known.

It seems that it was in a spirit of reproach Charlotte Bronte wrote the vengeful scene between Heathcliffe and Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_, harsh in threat almost as her poem "Gilbert," wherein the man, satisfied with the affections of his wife and children, has banished the remembrance of her of whom he boasted--"She loved me more than life,"

and who is made to say, before her spirit in the form of a white-clad spectre comes to him:--

"As I am busied now, I could not turn from such pursuit To weep a broken vow."

Thus in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter XV., when Catherine is embraced by Heathcliffe, she says bitterly:--

"I wish I could hold you till we were both dead! I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say ... 'That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her; I shall be sorry that I must lose them!' Will you say so, Heathcliffe?" Well might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her, unless with her mortal body she cast away her mortal character also. [See my footnote in the foregoing chapter, on Catherine's dream that the angels flung her out of heaven.] Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness....

"Are you possessed with a devil," he pursued savagely, "to talk in that manner to me when you are dying?"

And later, as though in answer to the apparent threat of the poem "Gilbert," wherein, as I have said, the spectre of the woman who has died broken-hearted through the neglect of her married lover haunts him and drives him mad, Heathcliffe, in the words of that poem, "Wild as one whom demons seize," cries:--

"Catherine Earnshaw ... you said I killed you--haunt me then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad!"

Charlotte Bronte's poems, "Frances,"[82] "Gilbert," and "Preference"

(wherein we have literature in allegory preferred to a lover), show there had been to her a season of darkest misery when, to quote _Villette_ concerning herself as Lucy Snowe, "all her life's hope was torn by the roots out of her riven outraged heart." Whether this was the time when, in the words of herself as Jane Eyre, "faith was blighted, confidence destroyed": a time to her when Mr. Rochester (M. Heger) was not to her "what she had thought him," the reader shall decide. But in _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_ she "would not ascribe vice to him; ... would not say he had betrayed" her. She forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at [her] heart's core. See the phase of M. Pelet in the _The Professor_.

Evidence shows it was in her dark season when Charlotte Bronte wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she portrayed M. Heger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with "a riven outraged heart," the wounds in which yet rankled sorely. Thus may we understand her saying in her famous preface to _Wuthering Heights_:--

Heathcliffe betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is _not_ his love for Catherine, which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a pa.s.sion such as might boil and glow in the bad essence of some evil genius [see my reference to "Robin-a-Ree"; and to the Craven Satyr, page 142]; a fire that might form the tormented centre--the ever-suffering soul of a magnate of the infernal world: and by its quenchless and ceaseless ravage effect the execution of the decree which dooms him to carry h.e.l.l with him ... we should say he was a man's shape animated by demon life.... Whether it is right or advisable to create a being like Heathcliffe I do not know; I scarcely think it is.

Even in _Villette_ there were recurrences of the spasmodic spirit of vindictiveness responsible for Charlotte Bronte's harsh portrayal of M.

Heger as Heathcliffe, though "at her heart's core she then forgave him."

In _Villette_, Chapter XX., she refers to M. Paul (M. Heger) ant.i.thetically, and all the more significantly, in a comparison of him with Dr. John Bretton, of whom she says:--

Who could help liking him? _He_ betrayed no weakness which hara.s.sed all your feelings with considerations as to how its faltering must be propped; from _him_ broke no irritability which startled calm and quenched mirth; _his_ lips let fall no caustic that burned to the bone; _his_ eye shot no morose shafts that went cold, and rusty, and venomed through your heart.

_Wuthering Heights_, however, containing too humiliating a story of Charlotte Bronte's heart-thrall, her misery and her wild vindictiveness, and also for the reasons stated in the beginning of this chapter--her saving remorse--she seems early to have determined to repudiate her authors.h.i.+p of it; indeed, so largely is she now found to have used the work in _Jane Eyre_, we might say she once had contemplated destroying the ma.n.u.script. The subsequent arrangement made in the name of Ellis Bell that the work by the same author should go to Mr. Newby, the publisher of _Wuthering Heights_, gave finality to this tragedy of authors.h.i.+p which, but for the discoveries in this, _The Key to the Bronte Works_, would have remained for ever unrevealed, and a reproach to literature--a thing of untruth thickly hidden.

Had Charlotte Bronte destroyed _Wuthering Heights_ before its publication she would have saved this sensational disclosure. But she hesitated to destroy the ma.n.u.script at once, and as an alternative to identifying herself with its authors.h.i.+p, she sent forth her work under a _nom de guerre_, part of which had been employed by her sister Emily. We well know the difficulties that resulted; the judgment of scholars and thinkers was impugned and their sane p.r.o.nouncements were pilloried. To cover Charlotte Bronte's regretful error were to connive against law and literature. _Wuthering Heights_ being published, the work was the world's property; it stood for public purposes, to submit to all criticism and research, and it came neither in Charlotte Bronte's province nor in that of any person to prevent its being subjected to the final inquiry with which the cold light of truth exposes all things.

Doubtless Charlotte Bronte perceived this, and regretting the facileness of her pen and the vituperativeness of her mood of that past and hateful night, she set herself, in her subsequent works, to make clear she had overdrawn the bitterness of the relations which one time had existed between herself and M. Heger. Perhaps she could not expect her retractions would be understood of all men, but it pleased her inmost soul, and having a final sense of justice, and a softening of her heart for her vehement pa.s.sionateness, she continued in all her works subsequent to her _Wuthering Heights_ to reconstruct this her early version. Thus Charlotte Bronte as Caroline Helstone of _s.h.i.+rley_ is Catherine Earnshaw of _Wuthering Heights_, with the distinction I mention. Moore is admitted, as I have said, to have been drawn from M.

Heger[83]:--

_Wuthering Heights._ _s.h.i.+rley._

Chapter XII. Chapter XXIV.