UC-NRLF B 3 5M7 7M7 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 3 un rt ^g^ (4 O o St**' .- Ji M t^ --P O ;^ .S •^ •> T3 ■ ri ■>-' '^ o O c c 3 O C3 to o o 3 I -i -. O C3 H 'S -d c 7 o o bo 1-1 J3 73 C ih 9 13 O O bo •^ l-H ^ O bjj c '•3 3 I M ^ (t) 3 OJ j3 in VO U •a OJ w o o 8 o l^ 00 < 00 M H ^ d i^ rt C/3 o 2i CO ^ vo kT m 6 0) bo 1— < 3 • l-H ri CO -& 5 3 0) , ffi .3 ►«J o 00 s Ov •d t^ 3 3 .— § M O U3 fO ►ci to M 00 « H J 3 0) M — o 3 (1, • Edinburgh NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF The Bronte Novels Printed at the Ballantyne Press, on antique cream-laid paper, bound in dark red and gold, and each Volume containing i6 full-page Pen-and-ink Illustrations. Price 2s, 6d, NOW READY. JANE EYRE. With 16 Illustrations by F. H. TOWN SEND. "A veritable edition de luxe." — Liverpool Daily Post. " Excellently illustrated." — The Art Journal. "Charmingly embellished from drawings by Mr. F. H. Townsend, it is at once the cheapest and most admirably printed edition we know of Charlotte Bronte's great book." St. James's Budget. " There could hardly be a better edition." — The Scotsman. JUST PUBLISHED. SHIRLEY. With 16 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. SERVICE & PATON, 5 Henrietta Street, London, W.C. XUiistrateH €ngUsl) ilttjracp Printed on antique cream-laid paper. Large crown 8vo, and Sixteen Original Illustrations. Price 2s, 6d, " Charmingly illustrated." — Magazine of Art. "A series of standard works that, for printing, paper, binding, and illustration, is unsurpassed at the price." Pall Mall Gazette. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND. By W. M. Thackeray. Illustrated by Chris. Hammond. Ready. HYPATIA. By Charles KiNGSLEY. Illustrated by Lance- lot Speed. Ready. JANE EYRE. By Charlotte BRONTii. Illustrated by F. H. TowNSEND. Ready. IVANHOE. By Sir Walter Scott. Illustrated by C. E. Brock. Ready. THE LAST OF THE BARONS. By Lord Lytton Illustrated by Fred. Pegram. Ready. CHARLES O'MALLEY. By Charles Lever. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Ready. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. By Lord Lytton. Illustrated by Lancelot Speed. Ready. SHIRLEY. By Charlotte Bronte. Illustrated by F. H. Townsend. Ready. THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. By W. M.Thackeray. Illustrated by Chris. Hammond. Ready. To be followed by many others. SERVICE & PATON, 5 Henrietta Street, London, W.C. NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF The Romances of Nathaniel Hawthorne WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, L.H.D. NOW READY. THE SCARLET LETTER. With 8 Illustrations by F. H. TOWNSEND. Crown 8vo, gilt top, antique deckle-edged paper. Price 3s. 6d, net. It is universally acknowledged that Nathaniel Hawthorne is the greatest writer that America, and one of the greatest that any country, has produced. In spite of this fact no adequate edition of his works has been published either here or in America, and it is with this in view that the present edition is being issued. An Introduction to each volume is being written by Dr. Moncure D. Conway, one of the few intimate friends of Hawthorne still surviving. The binding design has been specially prepared by A. A. Turbayne, and is one of his most successful efforts. The Illustrations have been intrusted to the most prominent pen-and-ink artists, and the printing will be executed by Messrs. T. and A. Constable of Edinburgh. SERVICE & PATON, 5 Henrietta Street, London, W.C. c/ . ^-r-TT, T AO»l» "HATE HOME U$E CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. OaCDfcyr D£C3 74 LD21 — A-40m-5,'74 General Library (R8191L.) University of California Berkeley UC BERKELEY LIBRARIES CD31filbbm # Mackay, A« ^!» 7591)14 955 B869 l,'il5 . The BrontSs mi Ho Y .m '^vW, i^ 5B2 »t> 4;)f .';..; ■ .'■■^ijfi 759914 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY