The Key to the Bronte Works Part 4

Of "Dean" or Tabitha Aykroyd in the role of Hannah of the family "Jane"

says:--"I had a feeling that she did not understand me, ... that she was prejudiced against me." Nevertheless she says to her: "You ... have been an honest and faithful servant, I will say so much for you."

Much stress is placed by Tabitha Aykroyd, as Nelly Dean, and Bessie, on Charlotte Bronte's pa.s.sionateness. Says Mrs. Dean of Catherine in _Wuthering Heights_:

"The doctor had said that she would not bear crossing much, she ought to have her own way; and it was nothing less than murder in his eyes, for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her, ... serious threats of a fit ... often attended her rages."

Thus I find there is a connection between Catherine's "fit of frenzy"

and delirium in _Wuthering Heights_, Chapters XI. and XII., and the scenes attendant upon Jane's fit of frenzy in _Jane Eyre_, Chapters I., II., III. The one is told by Charlotte as from Tabitha Aykroyd's (Bessie's) standpoint, the other from Catherine's (Charlotte Bronte's), an inversion of att.i.tude which proves Charlotte Bronte to be the author and heroine of _Wuthering Heights_.

_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._

Charlotte Bronte in the locked Charlotte Bronte in the locked chamber, and Tabitha Aykroyd, chamber, and Tabitha Aykroyd, the Bronte servant, told by the Bronte servant, told by Tabitha, as it were. Charlotte.

She [Catherine--Charlotte I [Jane--Charlotte Bronte] sat Bronte] rang the bell till it looking at the white bed, ...

broke.... I [Tabitha--Nelly occasionally turning a Dean] entered leisurely. It was fascinated eye towards the ...

enough to try the temper of a mirror ... I hushed my sobs, saint, such senseless, wicked fearful lest ... signs of grief rages! There she lay das.h.i.+ng her might waken a preternatural head against the ... sofa and voice ... or elicit from the grinding her teeth.... I brought gloom some haloed face.... This a gla.s.s of water; and as she ... I felt would be terrible....

would not drink, I sprinkled it At this moment a light gleamed on her face. In a few seconds on the wall; ... shaken as my she stretched herself out stiff, nerves were by agitation, I and ... a.s.sumed the aspect of thought the swift-darting beam death. was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My Linton [? Mr. Bronte] looked heart beat thick, my head grew terrified. "There is nothing the hot; a sound filled my ears matter," ... and I which I deemed the rus.h.i.+ng of [Tabitha--Mrs. Dean] told him wings: something seemed near me; how she had resolved ... on I was oppressed, suffocated; exhibiting a fit of frenzy. I endurance broke down; I rushed incautiously gave the account to the door and shook the lock aloud, ... she [Charlotte in desperate effort. Steps came Bronte] started up ... and then running along the ... pa.s.sage, rushed from the room. The master ... Bessie and Abbot entered.

directed me to follow; I did to her chamber door; she ... "Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said secured it against me.... On the Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd].

third day Catherine [Charlotte Bronte] un-barred her door, ... "What a dreadful noise! It went desired a basin of gruel, for through me!" exclaimed Abbot.

she believed she was dying.

"Take me out!" was my cry.

"These ... awful nights; I've never closed my lids--and oh!... "... Are you hurt? Have you seen I've been ... haunted, Nelly! something?" demanded Bessie [Tabitha]. But I begin to fancy [Tabitha].

you don't like me.... They have all turned to enemies; ... "Oh! I ... thought a ghost would _they_ have, the people _here_." come."

Tossing about, she increased her "She has screamed on purpose,"

feverish bewilderment of declared Abbot [?].... "And what madness.... "Don't you see that a scream! If she had been in face?" she inquired, gazing pain one would have excused it, nervously at the mirror.... "Oh! but she only wanted to bring us Nelly [Tabitha], the room is all here: I know her naughty haunted! I'm afraid of being tricks."

left alone...."

... Mrs. Reed [Aunt Branwell]

I [Nelly Dean--Tabitha] came.... "Silence!" she attempted to steal to the door exclaimed; "this scene is ... but I was summoned back by a repulsive." I was a precocious piercing scream. actor in her eyes. She sincerely looked upon me [Charlotte] as a ... "As soon as ever I barred compound of virulent pa.s.sions, the door," proceeded Catherine mean spirit, and dangerous [Charlotte Bronte], "utter duplicity.... I suppose I had a darkness overwhelmed me, and I species of fit: unconsciousness fell on the floor. I couldn't closed the scene.... The next explain ... how certain I felt thing I remembered is waking ...

of having a fit, or going mad." with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare ...

"A sound sleep would do you agitation, uncertainty, and a good," said Nelly Dean--Tabitha predominant sense of terror Aykroyd. confused my faculties.... Bessie [Tabby] stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand.

"Do you feel as if you could sleep, Miss?" asked Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd] rather softly.

For me [Charlotte] the watches of that long night pa.s.sed in ghostly watchfulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread, such dread as children only can feel.

By her Method II.: altering the age of a character portrayed, Charlotte Bronte gives us Tabitha Aykroyd as a young woman in Bessie; and by the same Method II, in the scene just read from _Wuthering Heights_, we have an instance of her presenting, as an incident in womanhood, an incident which the testimony of _Jane Eyre_ and other evidences show occurred really in Charlotte's own childhood. As she relates in _Jane Eyre_, her dread was "such dread as children only can feel"; and she goes on to say "this incident [of the locked room] gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day." Thus in both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ Charlotte paints an excellent picture of the matter-of-fact but good-hearted Tabitha Aykroyd going to the room in response to her, Charlotte Bronte's, frantic appeal, sceptical and certainly unsympathetic.

The part played by the wild summoning of Tabitha to the room, the references to "a fit," the ghost and haunted chamber, the dread of the mirror, the suggestion that the frenzy of fear was wilfully a.s.sumed, the piercing scream, Tabitha Aykroyd with her basin and her final suggestion of sleep, are in themselves ample evidence that Charlotte Bronte in both _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ drew this scene from an experience of the kind in her own childhood. In each work stress is laid by her upon her own hypersensitiveness, and we learn how the Bronte household misunderstood her excessive pa.s.sionateness and misread it as wicked acting[26].

We see Tabitha best in Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_, as Hannah of the Rivers family of _Jane Eyre_, and by Currer Bell's Method II., alteration of age of the character portrayed, as Bessie of that work.

Tabitha Aykroyd lives and breathes her life through the pages of Charlotte Bronte's _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ to-day, and ever will she remain in literature, a real Yorks.h.i.+re woman amazingly translated from the wide Yorks.h.i.+re hearth with its great, wind-whitened fire and smell of hot cakes, to the pages of two of the finest examples of the English novel. Her portrayal I declare to be one of the most admirable achievements in the works of Charlotte Bronte.

CHAPTER VI.

CHARLOTTE BRONTe'S CHILD APPARITION IN "THE PROFESSOR," "WUTHERING HEIGHTS," AND "JANE EYRE."

Mrs. Gaskell, the Bronte biographer, relates that a friend of Charlotte Bronte said Charlotte had told her "a misfortune was often preceded by the dream which she gives to Jane Eyre of carrying a wailing child. She, Charlotte Bronte, described herself as having the most painful sense of pity for the little thing.... The misfortunes she mentioned were not always to herself. She thought such sensitiveness to omens was ...

present to susceptible people...." This in the main explains the origin of the child-apparition as an omen of disaster in Charlotte Bronte's works.

It would seem by Charlotte's statement in _Jane Eyre_ that Tabitha Aykroyd, as "Bessie," was responsible for the origin of this little superst.i.tion; and it is instructive to find the child-apparition as an ill-omen in connection with Tabitha Aykroyd as Mrs. Dean in _Wuthering Heights_. I have shown John Reed and Hindley Earnshaw represent Branwell Bronte; we may notice, therefore, that the child-apparition is given equally in _Wuthering Heights_ and in _Jane Eyre_ as coming before disaster or disgrace to Branwell Bronte.

_Wuthering Heights._ _Jane Eyre._

Chapter XI. Chapter XXI.

Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition Tabitha Aykroyd's child-apparition as a token of calamity to Branwell as a token of calamity to Branwell Bronte. Bronte.

Says Mrs. Dean [Tabitha]: "I Presentiments are strange came to a stone which serves as things! ... and so are signs....

a guide-post to ... the Heights Sympathies I believe exist (for and the village.... Hindley instance, between far-distant [Branwell Bronte] and I held it ... wholly estranged relatives).

a favourite spot twenty years When I was a ... girl I heard before, ... and ... it appeared Bessie [Tabitha Aykroyd] say that I beheld my ... playmate that to dream of children was a seated on the ... turf, ... his sure sign of trouble.... During little hand scooping out the the last week scarcely a night earth."[27] had gone ... that had not brought ... the dream of an "Poor Hindley!" [Branwell infant which I ... watched Bronte] I exclaimed playing with daisies on a lawn involuntarily. I started--my or ... dabbling its hands in bodily eye was cheated in the running water.[27] It was a belief that the child lifted its wailing child this night, ... a face and stared straight into laughing one the next, ... but mine! It vanished in a whatever mood the apparition twinkling; but immediately I evinced ... it failed not ... to felt an irresistible yearning to meet me.... I grew nervous....

be at the Heights. Superst.i.tion It was from companions.h.i.+p with urged me to comply with this this baby-phantom I had been impulse--"Suppose he were dead! roused ... when I heard the cry: ... supposing it were a sign of and on the ... day following ...

death!" I found a man [Bessie's husband]

waiting for me; ... he was ...

in deep mourning, and the hat in his hand was surrounded with a c.r.a.pe band.

"I hope no one is dead," I said.

And the man replies that John Reed [Branwell Bronte] had got into great trouble and was dead.

Branwell Bronte was not dead when Charlotte Bronte wrote those two versions, but it seems certain that an apparition of a child in some period of Charlotte's life preceded a further debas.e.m.e.nt of Branwell, the original of Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed. We may note Charlotte Bronte's Method II., in regard to Hindley.

In Charlotte Bronte's _The Professor_ we find reference to her child-phantom wailing outside, and to the eerie, premonitory signal made against a lattice, as in her _Wuthering Heights_:--

_Wuthering Heights._ _The Professor._

Chapter III. Chapter XVI.

Scene: An isolated homestead on Scene: An isolated homestead on a winter's night, snow-wind a winter's night, snow-wind blowing, storm threatening. blowing, storm threatening.

While leading me upstairs she Take care, young man [Zillah, the stout housewife] [recommended "the herdsman's recommended that I should hide wife"], that you fasten the door the candle and not make a noise, well, ... whatever sound you ... they had so many queer hear stir not and look not out.

goings-on. The night will soon fall, ...

strange noises are often heard He sleeps and is awakened by-- ... you might chance to hear, as it were, a child cry, and on The branch of a fir that touched opening the door to give it my lattice.... I listened succour ... a shadowy goblin dog doubtingly, ... I heard the might rush over the threshold; gusty wind and the driving of or more awful still, if the snow;... I heard also the something flapped, as with firbough repeat its teasing wings, against the lattice, and sound.... I ... endeavoured to then a raven or a white dove unhasp the cas.e.m.e.nt, ... flew in and settled on the knocking my knuckles through the hearth, such a visitor would be gla.s.s, and stretching an arm out a sure sign of misfortune.

to seize the ... branch; instead of which my fingers closed on The stranger, left alone, the fingers of a little ice-cold listens awhile to the m.u.f.fled hand.[28]... I tried to draw snow-wind.

back my arm, but the hand clung to it and a melancholy voice sobbed--"Let me in--let me in!"

... As it spoke, I discerned obscurely a child's face looking through the window.... Still it wailed "Let me in!" and it maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear.

"How can I?" I said.... "Let _me_ go, if you want me to let you in." I stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer, ... yet the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on!