The Key to the Bronte Works Part 16

Catherine's illness, and her Caroline's illness, and her doubting the absent lover, doubting the absent lover, Heath(cliffe). Mrs. Dean in Moor(e). Mrs Pryor in attendance. attendance.

"And I dying!" exclaimed "Am I ill?" asked Caroline of Catherine to Mrs. Dean. "I on Mrs. Pryor, and looked at the brink of the grave! My G.o.d! herself in the gla.s.s; ... she does he know how I'm altered?" felt ... her brain in strange continued she, staring at her activity.... Now followed a hot, reflection in a mirror.... How parched, restless night ... one dreary to meet death surrounded terrible dream seized her like a by their cold faces.... Edgar [? tiger ... a fever of mental Mr. Bronte] standing solemnly by excitement, and a languor of to see it over; then offering long conflict and habitual prayers of thanks to G.o.d for sadness had fanned the flame ...

restoring peace to his house, and left a well-lit fire behind and going back to his _books_. it....

Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewilderment of "Oh!" exclaimed Caroline, "G.o.d madness, ... then, raising grant me a little comfort before herself, desired that ... [Mrs. I die!... But he [Moor(e)] will Dean] would open the window. come when I am senseless, cold, and stiff. What can my departed And farther on, in delirium, as soul feel then? Can it see or though her lover were present:-- know what happens to the clay?

Can spirits through any medium "Heath(cliffe) ... they may bury communicate with living flesh?

me twelve feet deep, and throw Can the dead at all re-visit the church down over me, and I those they leave? Can they come won't rest till you are with in the elements? Will wind, me!" ["Heath(cliffe), I only water, fire, lend me a path to wish us never to be parted, and Moor(e)? Is it for nothing the should a word of mine distress wind ... pa.s.ses the cas.e.m.e.nt you hereafter, think I feel the sobbing?... Does nothing haunt same distress underground," says it?"

Catherine, in a further chapter]

"I never will." She paused and When Catherine dies Heathcliffe resumed ... [Heath(cliffe's)] says:--"Catherine ... you said I considering--"He'd rather I'd killed you--haunt me then!" And come to him! Find a way haunt him she does. In the words then![84] not through that of Caroline Helstone of kirkyard. You are slow! Be _s.h.i.+rley_ she "revisits him she content, you always followed has left." She "goes in the me!" elements," "the wind lends her a path[84] to her lover," and it Mrs. Dean perceived it vain "to is not "for nothing the wind argue against her insanity." pa.s.ses the cas.e.m.e.nt of _Wuthering Heights_ sobbing"--she "haunts it" as the wailing phantom that cries as a child [Method II., altering the age of character portrayed], "Let me in--let me in!" outside "the lattice." And Heathcliffe, wrenching open "the lattice,"

sobs, "Come in!... Cathy, do come.... Catherine at last!" The spectre gives no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled ... through ... blowing out the light.

Chapter XIII.

Mrs. Dean continues:-- Convalescent, Caroline whispers:-- In those two months [Catherine]

encountered and conquered the "... I am better now.... I feel worst shock of what was where I am: this is Mrs. Pryor denominated as brain fever. The near me.... I was dreaming....

first time she left the chamber Does the churchyard look ... on her pillow [was] a peaceful?... Can you see many handful of golden crocuses; her long weeds and nettles among the eye, long stranger to any gleam graves, or do they look turfy or of pleasure, caught them in flowery?"

waking.

"I see closed daisy-heads, "These are the earliest flowers gleaming like pearls on some at the Heights!... Is there not mounds," replied Mrs. Pryor.[85]

a south wind, and is not the snow gone?"

It is in _s.h.i.+rley_ that Charlotte Bronte gives, inadvertently or purposely, the origin of the t.i.tle of _Wuthering Heights_, and we see therewith why she came afterwards to choose for her autobiographical-self in _Villette_, the name of Lucy Snowe. We perceive she had been singularly impressed by an old Scottish ballad, ent.i.tled, "Puir Mary Lee," and it is important and interesting to note that Dr.

Joseph Wright's _English Dialect Dictionary_ refers readers to this very same poem in connection with the origin of the northern word "wuthering," in the form of the verb "whudder," or "wuther." And so, in a letter to Mr. W. S. Williams, of November 6th, 1852, Miss Bronte wrote of Lucy Snowe[86]:--

As to the name of the heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety of thought made me decide upon giving her a cold name; but at first I called her 'Lucy Snowe' (spelt with an 'e'), which 'Snowe'

I afterwards changed to 'Frost.' Subsequently I rather regretted the change, and wished it 'Snowe' again. If not too late, I should like the alteration to be made now throughout the MS. A _cold_ name she must have; partly, perhaps on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle--partly on that of the 'fitness of things,' for she has about her an external coldness.

Thus we understand Charlotte Bronte was anxious that her autobiographical-self in _Villette_ should be called Snowe. While, in mentioning the matter to her publishers, she endeavoured to show a superficial and commonplace reason for her singular choice, the truth underlies her words wherein she says she "can hardly express what subtlety of thought" made her decide upon "a cold name."

The subtlety of thought that dictated the choice of the "cold name"

Snowe had, we shall see, a connection with the old Scottish ballad, "Puir Mary Lee," which evidence shows was responsible at the dark season to which I have referred for Charlotte Bronte's choice of the t.i.tle of _Wuthering Heights_--for her identifying her own bitterness with that of "Puir Mary Lee."

It is in _s.h.i.+rley_, Chapter VII., that Charlotte Bronte writes:--

Nature ... is an excellent friend, sealing the lips, interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation; a dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down to sorrow and paleness in time, then pa.s.sing away, and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because half-bitter.

[As Lucy Snowe, Charlotte Bronte writes in _Villette_ in perfect sympathy with this: "If I feel, may I never express? I groaned under her (Reason's) bitter sternness ... she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right."] Who has read the ballad of 'Puir Mary Lee'?--that old Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by what hand. Mary had been ill-used--probably in being made to believe that truth which is falsehood; she is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you hear her thoughts ... those of a deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home, to the white-shrouded and icy hills: crouched under the 'cauld drift,' she recalls every image of horror, ... she hates these, but 'waur' she hates 'Robin-a-Ree!'

"Oh! ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn-- The warld was in love wi' me; But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn, And curse black Robin-a-Ree!

"Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast, And sough through the scrunty tree, And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast And ne'er let the sun me see!

"Oh, never melt awa' thou wreath o' snaw, That's sae kind in graving me; But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"

Thus internal evidence proves that the name of _Wuthering Heights_ for the abode of the "deeply feeling, strongly resentful peasant girl,"

Catherine Earnshaw, was primarily chosen by Charlotte Bronte because of its special appeal to her own mood at a given period, in relation to the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee," and proves that the choice of the name of Snowe for her "cold and altered" autobiographical self in _Villette_ was dictated by its connection therewith.

In this light glance at Charlotte Bronte's poem "Mementos," and at the following verses from her "Frances":--

"And when thy opening eyes shall see Mementos, on the chamber wall, Of one who has forgotten thee, Shed not the tear of acrid gall.

"Vain as the pa.s.sing gale, my crying; Though lightning-struck,[87] I must live on; I know, at heart, there is no dying Of love and ruined hope alone.

"The very wildness of my sorrow Tells me I yet have innate force; My track of life has been too narrow, Effort shall trace a broader course."

There is an apparent relations.h.i.+p of this last verse with the remarks in Chapter XXV. of _The Professor_, on Hunsden's "Lucia," of whom he says:--"I should ... have liked to marry her, and that I _have_ not done so is a proof that I _could_ not." Lucia's (Miss Bronte's) "faculty" was literature: the physiognomy was obviously an obfuscation. It is significant that Charlotte Bronte again took "Lucia," for the Christian name of Lucia or Lucy Snowe. See my references to Hunsden as a phase of M. Heger.

Perceiving, therefore, that Charlotte Bronte had likened herself to the heroine of "Puir Mary Lee," in so far as to be influenced by it to give the t.i.tle of _Wuthering Heights_ to one of her works, and to take the name of Snowe later for her autobiographical self, we understand why she wrote in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXVI.:--

Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman, ... was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost [see my reference to the name of Lucy Frost] had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud [see "the snow-storm, the white-shrouded and frosty hills," the "cauld drift," the "whuddering blast," etc., of "Puir Mary Lee" in _s.h.i.+rley_], lanes which last night blushed full of flowers to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, ... now spread waste, wild, and white as pine forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom.... I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it s.h.i.+vered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr.

Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been.... I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea [see "Robin-a-Ree"], and from his presence I must go; _that_ I perceived well.... That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, 'the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire; I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.'

The inclusion in _s.h.i.+rley_ of the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee" and the remarks anent it were apparently digressive, but they are followed by the "subtle" disclaimer:--

But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of things between her and Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong; he had told her no lie; it was she that was to blame, if any one was; what bitterness her mind distilled should and would be poured on her own head.

Indeed, there is evidence of a reconciliation between M. Heger and Charlotte Bronte, this being most marked in _Jane Eyre_ and _s.h.i.+rley_.

In connection with the reasons responsible for Charlotte Bronte's choice of the t.i.tle of _Wuthering Heights_, it is interesting to note some "subtlety of thought" dictated Charlotte's telling us in _s.h.i.+rley_, Chapter x.x.xIII., of Caroline and her lover that:--

The air was now dark with snow; an Iceland blast was driving it wildly. This pair neither heard the long "wuthering" rush, nor saw the white burden it drifted; each seemed conscious but of one thing--the presence of the other.

After the close of 1850, Charlotte Bronte resolved into the mood which was an earlier characteristic; and the choice of the name of Snowe for herself and the extraordinary tenacity with which she held to the name, having it re-inscribed in _Villette_ by the printers though she had herself changed it, show she had returned somewhat to that state in regard to her affection for M. Heger responsible for the pa.s.sionateness of her _Wuthering Heights_. And as following the completion of _Villette_ she decided to marry a man she did not really love, I would say her mood was honestly in sympathy with that in which she wrote _Wuthering Heights_ through bitter, adverse circ.u.mstances and the warping of destiny, and did not result from Sydney Dobell's advice to her when, having read _s.h.i.+rley_ and _Jane Eyre_, and despite her disclaimer in a preface, thinking she was the author of _Wuthering Heights_, he advised her to resume the frame of mind in which she had penned her _Wuthering Heights_.[88]

Dobell's supposition that she wrote the book had no connection whatsoever with my discovering Charlotte Bronte was the author of _Wuthering Heights_; neither had the fact that Miss Rigby--Lady Eastlake--in _The Quarterly Review_, spoke of _Wuthering Heights_ as "purporting to be written by Ellis Bell" but having "a decided family likeness to _Jane Eyre_," and with still more point, identified "Catherine and Heathcliffe of _Wuthering Heights_ as Jane and Rochester of _Jane Eyre_ in their native state." For I early found I must credit only the internal evidence of the Bronte works as my interpretative guide. Having written "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" nothing could prevent my discovery of that novel's kins.h.i.+p with _Wuthering Heights_; and so far back as August 29, 1902, I penned in a private letter enclosed with the proof sheets of my article to Mr. Harold Hodge, the editor of _The Sat.u.r.day Review_, a confession that I was finding a strong kins.h.i.+p between the two novels. I owe to my persistent consciousness of this close kins.h.i.+p the fact that I finally discovered the amazing secrets of _Wuthering Heights_, and was enabled to state publicly in my _Fortnightly Review_ article of March 1907, Charlotte Bronte and none other wrote _Wuthering Heights_. It was then I turned with interest to the remarks of Sydney Dobell, the author of _Balder_, and "a notable figure in the history of English thought" as he has been named, whose review of Charlotte Bronte's works had resulted in her being acclaimed a leading author and a genius. It was in _The Palladium_ of September 1850 Sydney Dobell said:--

That any hand but that which shaped _Jane Eyre_ and _s.h.i.+rley_ cut out the rougher earlier statues [in _Wuthering Heights_] we should require more than the evidence of our senses to believe; ... the author of _Jane Eyre_ need fear nothing in acknowledging these ...

immature creations.[89]... When Currer Bell writes her next novel, let her remember ... the frame of mind in which she sat down to write her first [_Wuthering Heights_]. She will never sin so much against consistent drawing as to draw another Heathcliffe.... In _Jane Eyre_ we find ... only further evidence of the same producing qualities to which _Wuthering Heights_ bears testimony.

Charlotte Bronte warmly thanked him and protested. With eager honesty he again and again begged her to visit him and discuss the authors.h.i.+p of _Wuthering Heights_. Could Sidney Dobell but have been told the secret tragedy of Currer Bell's life and the bitterness of her cup, how he would have shrunk from inflicting her with an intrusive personal inquiry. And in all innocence he had asked her to revive the frame of mind in which, to use the words in _Jane Eyre_, her heart had been "weeping blood"!

_Wuthering Heights_ was wrought near the furnace of Charlotte Bronte's fiery ordeal, and gives at its intensest that which glows through her other works, finally to flash up and smoulder out in _Villette_. By reason of its clear portrayal of woman when she is very woman _Wuthering Heights_ towers above all common literary artistry, one of the finest novels in the world, an abiding monument to the vital genius of Charlotte Bronte. After her return from Brussels her life was a long human conflict, with vain regrets, vindictive recriminations, and luring memories opposing heroic commandings in the name of right and virtue.

All honour to her that she fought to win!

Had Charlotte Bronte and M. Heger been characterless individuals of the common type who, knowing nothing of self-sacrifice and n.o.bleness of life, yield to the call of immediate and unlicensed impulse, we could never have had these most vital representations, these most poignant revelations of the Martyrdom of Virtue--the works of our immortal Currer Bell. Her vehicle of confession--her dialect, was what men have termed fiction. But her heart was satisfied that truth has its ultimate appeal; and in the way of those sententious writers of old who garbed in an attractive vesture veritable and momentous records which would be preserved because they entertained, she gave the history of her life in a series of dramas we call the Bronte novels. For sixty years these have been read only as the creations of a brain that spun interesting fiction! Now, by aid of _The Key to the Bronte Works_, it is revealed they are more than this, and we discover the real greatness of Currer Bell and the high rank of her genius. Like that which creates the n.o.blest and most enduring of the world's literature, the genius of Charlotte Bronte truthfully preserves the past, while it will intimately appeal to and have a salient lesson and an inspiring message for any one so ever who shall read, be it here and now, or in the time to come.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BRONTe POEMS.

Charlotte Bronte loved her sisters Emily and Anne, but in her introduction to the poetical selections from their literary remains she says little concerning their verse, preferring to give of each sister a kind of short biographical memoir. In dealing with Emily she dwelt poetically upon the features of the Yorks.h.i.+re moors, and thus extended to Emily's verses that atmosphere and charm which she (Charlotte) had fixed in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_; and in writing upon Anne she complained her verse gave evidence of a too melancholy religious feeling. The eldest surviving child in the Bronte family, after the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth, it was Charlotte Bronte who would first set the ideal of literary composition before the Bronte children. To her initial impulse, therefore, owe we the literary compositions that came from the pens of Emily, Anne, and Branwell. Evidence of this truth is the fact that Emily, Anne, and Branwell, in their writing, never got "right away," as the hunting phrase has it.