The Key to the Bronte Works Part 7

I could see ... an elderly woman [Tabitha Aykroyd--the Mrs. Dean of _Wuthering Heights_], somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, ... knitting a stocking.... Two young, graceful women [Emily and Anne Bronte]--ladies in every point--sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning, ... which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces: a large old ... dog [Emily had a favourite dog] rested his ma.s.sive head on the knee of one girl--in the lap of the other was cus.h.i.+oned a black cat. A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants [but they were ever fond of it]. Who were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table [Tabitha]; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs; and yet, as I gazed on them I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them handsome--they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each bent over a book they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes to which they frequently referred; comparing them ... with the smaller books they held in their hands like people consulting a dictionary to aid ... in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the fire-lit apartment a picture.

"Listen, Diana [Emily Bronte]", said one of the absorbed students, ... and in a low voice she read ... in German.... The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line.... "Good!" ... she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eyes sparkled, ... "I like it!"

"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?" asked the old woman [Tabitha, using her Haworth Yorks.h.i.+re dialect], and being told there is:--"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t'one t'other: and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?"

"... Not all--for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don't speak German...."

"And what good does it do you?"

"We mean to teach it some time--or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now."

"Varry like; but give ower studying: ye've done enough for to-night."

"I think we have.... I wonder when St. John [the Rev. Patrick Bronte] will come home."

"Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten" (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle). "It rains fast.

Hannah, will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?"

Charlotte seems to have portrayed particularly those happy months at home in 1842, when, after the death of their aunt, all three sisters were together and their brother Branwell was away. It is Anne Bronte who, as Mary Rivers, consults her watch. For the circ.u.mstances in which she acquired this gold watch see the will of Miss Elizabeth Branwell, her aunt.[40]

The woman [Tabitha] rose: she opened a door, ... soon I heard her stir the fire in an inner room. She presently came back: "Ah childer!" said she, "it fair troubles me to go into yond room now: it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner."

The Bronte sisters were "always children in the eyes of Tabitha."

Continuing her description of her sisters, Charlotte as Jane says:--

Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One [Emily Bronte] to be sure had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it: Mary's [Anne Bronte's]

pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth; Diana's [Emily Bronte's] duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls....

[She] had a voice toned to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm, Mary's [Anne Bronte's] countenance was equally intelligent--her features equally pretty; but her expression was more reserved; and her manner, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority [it was Emily Bronte's manner]: she had a will.... It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers; and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will.

The following is the portrait of Charlotte Bronte's father (Method II., the altering the age of the character portrayed) as her imagination pictured him to have been in his young days. St. John's was the Rev.

Patrick Bronte's college at Cambridge:--

Mr. St. John ... had he been a statue instead of a man ... could not have been easier. He was ... tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline; quite a straight cla.s.sic nose, quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom indeed an English face comes so near the antique models as did his.... His eyes were large and blue, ... his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.... He ... scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle ... or even of a placid nature; ... there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which ... indicated elements within either restless, or hard or eager.

Charlotte Bronte's references herewith, and in other instances, to the pa.s.sionate nature of her father are interesting reading, especially in view of the fact that this point has been the subject of controversy. To return to _Jane Eyre_:--

Mr. Rivers [Mr. Bronte] now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his pictorial-looking eyes full upon me. There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now which told that intention ... had hitherto kept it averted ... St. John's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.

He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarra.s.s than to encourage.

Mrs. Gaskell states that even in his old age Mr. Bronte[41] was a tall and a striking-looking man, with a n.o.bly shaped head and erect carriage, and that in youth he must have been unusually handsome. And to use the words of Hannah, "Mr. St. John when he grew up would go to college and be a parson." Continuing, Mrs. Gaskell further says:--

The course of his life shows a powerful and remarkable character, originating and pursuing a purpose in a resolute and independent manner--separating himself from his family. There was no trace of his Irish origin in his speech; he never could have shown his Celtic origin in the straight Greek lines and long oval of his face.

Another writer accentuating this says Mr. Bronte was "proud of his Greek profile," and we have now seen that Charlotte Bronte herself says his (St. John's) face was "like a Greek face, pure in outline." Mr. Bronte had also "fine blue eyes," like Mr. St. John. "His (Mr. Bronte's) pa.s.sionate nature was compressed down with stoicism, but it was there, notwithstanding all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour, though he did not speak when displeased. He was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many miles. He dined alone, and did not require companions.h.i.+p."

Which is, of course, all consonant with what we read of St. John Eyre Rivers. Charlotte Bronte continues:--

As to Mr. St. John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally ...

between me and ... [my] sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the distance ... observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish. No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat and ... go out on his mission of love and duty.... But, besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friends.h.i.+p with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent dilation of his eye.

I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was to his [my] sisters. He once expressed, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and h.o.a.ry walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence--never to seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.

Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church.... I wish I could describe that sermon; but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me.

It began calm, and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled.... Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent.... It seemed to me ... that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiable yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers, pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of G.o.d which pa.s.seth all understanding: he had no more found it ... than had I: with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium.

"Charlotte Bronte," says Miss Laura C. Holloway, "early exhibited antagonistic feelings towards the Calvinistic views of her father." And so I might continue at great length. Excluding the love pa.s.sages necessary to "story" and the missionary suggestions for which it seems that Brussels priest whom I may call Charlotte Bronte's Fenelon was originally responsible, the portrayal of the Rev. Patrick Bronte, like that of Charlotte's sisters, is absolutely true to prototype and fact.[42] We discover that at heart Charlotte Bronte loved her father, hence she honoured him--the head of the "Rivers" family--by giving him the final word in her autobiography, speaking of him as he appeared to her: an old man whose days were drawing to a close. Jane relates of Morton:--

Near the churchyard, and in the middle of the garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage.

In Charlotte Bronte's mind this was Haworth Parsonage; but it is clear that, despite the church "spire" and other efforts at obfuscation, she did not dare to portray her sisters and father in the parsonage. Thus she placed the family in another house. And now we will have another glimpse of Tabitha Aykroyd, this time as "Hannah," speaking her Haworth Yorks.h.i.+re dialect:--

"Have you been with the family long?"

"I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.... I thowt more o' th' childer nor of mysel'.... They've like n.o.body to tak'

care on 'em but me ... I'm like to look sharpish."

Hannah was evidently fond of talking [see my chapter on Tabitha Aykroyd]. While I picked the fruit and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about ... her deceased ... mistress, and "the childer," as she called the young people.... There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak" of their own [had individual character]. They had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father's [aunt's] death: but they did so like Marsh End and Morton [Haworth] and all these moors and hills about. They had been in ... many grand towns, but they always said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other--never fell out nor "threaped" [a.s.serted beyond the argumentative point]. She did not know where there was such a family for being united.

Emily Bronte as Diana says it is "a privilege we exercise in our home to prepare our own meals when ... so inclined, or when Hannah [Tabby] is baking, brewing, was.h.i.+ng or ironing," which of course was true at Haworth Parsonage. To give yet another description:--

The Rivers [Brontes] clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality, ... my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep.... The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset ... developed for me ... the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.

Then follow pictures of the life at Haworth Parsonage, which tell us how Charlotte Bronte adored her sisters; and with the modesty of true genius she places herself at their feet, as it were. We have a sketch of Tabitha Aykroyd ironing Aunt Branwell's lace frills and crimping her nightcap borders in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter I., wherein both figure as Bessie and Aunt Reed. Years ago it came to be thought the original of Jane Eyre's Aunt Reed was Miss Branwell, the aunt of the Bronte children, though one writer identified her with a certain Mrs. Sidgwick whose son threw a book at Miss Bronte in her governess days, because "the son of Mrs. Reed" threw a Bible at Jane Eyre. The fact the rainy-day narrations in _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ establish, that Charlotte Bronte a.s.sociated a "volume-hurling" incident with her childhood and Branwell Bronte's "tyranny," disposed finally of the Sidgwick identifications. John Reed we have now seen was, like Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine's brother, drawn by Charlotte Bronte from her brother Branwell Bronte. Always she wrote of him vindictively, and with a retributive justice, her strong characteristic. At about the period when Currer Bell was penning _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ Branwell was a source of considerable distress to her. He was disgraced; his habits were the reverse of temperate, and it was daily feared that in a fit of delirium he might make an attempt upon his own life. Indeed Charlotte Bronte palpably writes of Branwell Bronte and those miserable a.s.sociations which brought trouble upon Mrs. Gaskell's first edition of the Bronte _Life_, in _The Professor_, Chapter XX., where she says:--

Limited as had yet been my experience of life, I had once had the opportunity of contemplating, near at hand, an example of the results produced by a course of ... domestic treachery.... I saw it bare and real, and it was very loathsome. I saw a mind degraded ... by the habit of perfidious deception, and a body depraved by the infectious influence of the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced and prolonged view of this spectacle.

Charlotte's letters also show she was ashamed of and losing patience with him. John Reed is spoken of as "a dissipated young man; they will never make much of him, I think.... Some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips." For obfuscation's sake he is "tall," and Mrs. Gaskell in speaking of Branwell's profile says:--"There are coa.r.s.e lines about the mouth, and the lips, though handsome in shape, are loose and thick, indicating self-indulgence." Aunt Reed exclaims at the last of her favourite:--"John is sunken and degraded, his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him." It was near the time that Aunt Branwell died at Haworth there was this decided degradation of her favourite nephew Branwell. For story purposes Charlotte Bronte makes her aunt a married woman in _Jane Eyre_, and places her nephew Branwell and her niece Eliza Branwell in the relation of children to her as John and Eliza Reed--Georgiana is no doubt a Bronte relative of whom we have not heard, and Charlotte thought vain.

The fact that in _Jane Eyre_, Chapter XXI., her name is mentioned in connection with "a t.i.tle," would show Currer Bell early apportioned her a place in the book by reason of Montagu's reference to a Lady Georgiana.

A child, sympathetic and intensely emotional, Charlotte Bronte, evidently, felt injustices with an acuteness not easy to understand without reading her _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ by aid of _The Key to the Bronte Works_. It would be like Maria Bronte to protest with her younger sister on her holding resentment against Aunt Branwell; and with the inference that she herself had endured her harshness, she says as Helen Burns:--"What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would it not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the pa.s.sionate emotions it excited?"

Of Eliza Reed (Cousin Eliza Branwell), as seen by Jane at the death of Aunt Reed, we are told: "she was now very thin, and there was something ascetic in her look." She wore "a nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage." In 1840 Charlotte Bronte wrote of her "Cousin Eliza Branwell"

that she spoke of nothing but botany, her own conversion, Low Church, Evangelical clergy, and the Millennium.[43] And thus in _Jane Eyre_ we read of Cousin Eliza Reed, by way of emphasis on this side of her character:--

Eliza ... had no time to talk, ... yet it was difficult to say what she did.... Three times a day she studied a little book which I found ... was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and she said 'the Rubric.'

Three hours she gave to st.i.tching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth; ... she informed me it was ... for the altar of a new church.... Two hours she devoted to ... working by herself in the kitchen garden. [Cousin Eliza's parterre is also referred to in Chapter IV. of _Jane Eyre_.] Eliza [attended] a saint's-day service at ... church--for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers. And by way of climax, Jane Eyre tells us that Cousin Eliza says:--"I shall devote myself ... to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system; if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil."

The river Reed, I may remark, has its rise close to the Cheviot Hills, within about five miles of the source of the Keeldar Burn, which name Charlotte Bronte used later in _s.h.i.+rley_ for the surname of s.h.i.+rley Keeldar who, the world knows, is really Emily Bronte. To quote a ballad of Leyden,

"The heath-bell blows where Keeldar flows, By Tyne the primrose pale."

The Reed has a Rochester near, which doubtless provided a name for Charlotte's hero.

Having now the key to this method of Charlotte Bronte, we also discover portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ an utterly neglected sister of Currer Bell in Julia Severn, called after a river. Remembering that Emily Bronte would be younger than Charlotte, we perceive Julia must mean Elizabeth Bronte, born, like Emily, in July. We almost had forgotten this sister was at the Clergy Daughters' School. One of two things was responsible, it seems, for the choice of "Julia": either her natal month or her going to the above school in July. Elizabeth Bronte, the second sister of Charlotte Bronte, was born at Hartshead, near Dewsbury.

"Miss Temple," cries Mr. Brocklehurst, "... what--_what_ is that girl with curled hair--red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?"

"It is Julia Severn," replies Miss Temple quietly, ... "Julia's hair curls naturally."