Book: The Life of Charlotte Bronte

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"Colonel Henry Esmond is just arrived. He looks very antique and
distinguished in his Queen Anne's garb; the periwig, sword, lace,
and ruffles are very well represented by the old 'Spectator'
type."

In reference to a sentence towards the close of this letter, I
may mention what she told me; that Mr. Bronte was anxious that
her new tale should end well, as he disliked novels which left a
melancholy impression upon the mind; and he requested her to make
her hero and heroine (like the heroes and heroines in
fairy-tales) "marry, and live very happily ever after." But the
idea of M. Paul Emanuel's death at sea was stamped on her
imagination till it assumed the distinct force of reality; and
she could no more alter her fictitious ending than if they had
been facts which she was relating. All she could do in compliance
with her father's wish was so to veil the fate in oracular words,
as to leave it to the character and discernment of her readers to
interpret her meaning.

To W. S. WILLIAMS, ESQ.

"Nov. 6th, 1852.

"My dear Sir,--I must not delay thanking you for your kind
letter, with its candid and able commentary on 'Villette.' With
many of your strictures I concur. The third volume may, perhaps,
do away with some of the objections; others still remain in
force. I do not think the interest culminates anywhere to the
degree you would wish. What climax there is does not come on
till near the conclusion; and even then, I doubt whether the
regular novel-reader will consider the 'agony piled sufficiently
high' (as the Americans say), or the colours dashed on to the
canvas with the proper amount of daring. Still, I fear, they must
be satisfied with what is offered: my palette affords no brighter
tints; were t to attempt to deepen the reds, or burnish the
yellows, I should but botch.

"Unless I am mistaken, the emotion of the book will be found to
be kept throughout in tolerable subjection. As to the name of the
heroine, I can hardly express what subtlety of thought made me
decide upon giving her a cold name; but, at first, I called her
'Lucy Snowe' (spelt with an 'e'); which Snowe I afterwards
changed to 'Frost.' Subsequently, I rather regretted the change,
and wished it 'Snowe' again. If not too late, I should like the
alteration to be made now throughout the MS. A COLD name she must
have; partly, perhaps, on the 'lucus a non lucendo' principle--
partly on that of the 'fitness of things,' for she has about her
an external coldness.

"You say that she may be thought morbid and weak, unless the
history of her life be more fully given. I consider that she is
both morbid and weak at times; her character sets up no
pretensions to unmixed strength, and anybody living her life
would necessarily become morbid. It was no impetus of healthy
feeling which urged her to the confessional, for instance; it was
the semi-delirium of solitary grief and sickness. If, however,
the book does not express all this, there must be a great fault
somewhere. I might explain away a few other points, but it would
be too much like drawing a picture and then writing underneath
the name of the object intended to be represented. We know what
sort of a pencil that is which needs an ally in the pen.

"Thanking you again for the clearness and fulness with which you
have responded to my request for a statement of impressions, I
am, my dear Sir, yours very sincerely,

"C. BRONTE."

"I trust the work will be seen in MS. by no one except Mr. Smith
and yourself."

"Nov. 10th, 1852.

"My dear Sir,--I only wished the publication of 'Shirley' to be
delayed till 'Villette' was nearly ready; so that there can now be
no objection to its being issued whenever you think fit. About
putting the MS. into type, I can only say that, should I be able
to proceed with the third volume at my average rate of
composition, and with no more than the average amount of
interruptions, I should hope to have it ready in about three
weeks. I leave it to you to decide whether it would be better to
delay the printing that space of time, or to commence it
immediately. It would certainly be more satisfactory if you were
to see the third volume before printing the first and the second;
yet, if delay is likely to prove injurious, I do not think it is
indispensable. I have read the third volume of 'Esmond.' I found
it both entertaining and exciting to me; it seems to possess an
impetus and excitement beyond the other two,--that movement and
brilliancy its predecessors sometimes wanted, never fails here.
In certain passages, I thought Thackeray used all his powers;
their grand, serious force yielded a profound satisfaction. 'At
last he puts forth his strength,' I could not help saying to
myself. No character in the book strikes me as more masterly than
that of Beatrix; its conception is fresh, and its delineation
vivid. It is peculiar; it has impressions of a new kind--new, at
least, to me. Beatrix is not, in herself, all bad. So much does
she sometimes reveal of what is good and great as to suggest this
feeling--you would think she was urged by a fate. You would think
that some antique doom presses on her house, and that once in so
many generations its brightest ornament was to become its
greatest disgrace. At times, what is good in her struggles
against this terrible destiny, but the Fate conquers. Beatrix
cannot be an honest woman and a good man's wife. She 'tries, and
she CANNOT.' Proud, beautiful, and sullied, she was born what she
becomes, a king's mistress. I know not whether you have seen the
notice in the Leader; I read it just after concluding the book.
Can I be wrong in deeming it a notice tame, cold, and
insufficient? With all its professed friendliness, it produced on
me a most disheartening impression. Surely, another sort of
justice than this will be rendered to 'Esmond' from other
quarters. One acute remark of the critic is to the effect that
Blanche Amory and Beatrix are identical--sketched from the same
original! To me they are about as identical as a weazel and a
royal tigress of Bengal; both the latter are quadrupeds,--both
the former, women. But I must not take up either your time or my
own with further remarks. Believe me yours sincerely,

"C. BRONTE."

On a Saturday, a little later in this month, Miss Bronte
completed 'Villette,' and sent it off to her publishers. "I said
my prayers when I had done it. Whether it is well or ill done, I
don't know; D. V., I will now try and wait the issue quietly. The
book, I think, will not be considered pretentious; nor is it of a
character to excite hostility."

As her labour was ended, she felt at liberty to allow herself a
little change. There were several friends anxious to see her and
welcome her to their homes Miss Martineau, Mrs. Smith, and her
own faithful E----. With the last, in the same letter as that in
which she announced the completion of 'Villette,' she offered to
spend a week. She began, also, to consider whether it might not
be well to avail herself of Mrs. Smith's kind invitation, with a
view to the convenience of being on the spot to correct the
proofs.

The following letter is given, not merely on account of her own
criticisms on 'Villette,' but because it shows how she had
learned to magnify the meaning of trifles, as all do who live a
self-contained and solitary life. Mr. Smith had been unable to
write by the same post as that which brought the money for
'Villette,' and she consequently received it without a line. The
friend with whom she was staying says, that she immediately
fancied there was some disappointment about 'Villette,' or that
some word or act of hers had given offence; and had not the
Sunday intervened, and so allowed time for Mr. Smith's letter to
make its appearance, she would certainly have crossed it on her
way to London.

"Dec. 6th, 1852.

"My dear Sir,--The receipts have reached me safely. I received
the first on Saturday, enclosed in a cover without a line, and
had made up my mind to take the train on Monday, and go up to
London to see what was the matter, and what had struck my
publisher mute. On Sunday morning your letter came, and you have
thus been spared the visitation of the unannounced and unsummoned
apparition of Currer Bell in Cornhill. Inexplicable delays should
be avoided when possible, for they are apt to urge those
subjected to their harassment to sudden and impulsive steps. I
must pronounce you right again, in your complaint of the transfer
of interest in the third volume, from one set of characters to
another. It is not pleasant, and it will probably be found as
unwelcome to the reader, as it was, in a sense, compulsory upon
the writer. The spirit of romance would have indicated another
course, far more flowery and inviting; it would have fashioned a
paramount hero, kept faithfully with him, and made him supremely
worshipful; he should have been an idol, and not a mute,
unresponding idol either; but this would have been unlike real
LIFE--inconsistent with truth--at variance with probability. I
greatly apprehend, however, that the weakest character in the
book is the one I aimed at making the most beautiful; and, if
this be the case, the fault lies in its wanting the germ of the
real--in its being purely imaginary. I felt that this character
lacked substance; I fear that the reader will feel the same.
Union with it resembles too much the fate of Ixion, who was mated
with a cloud. The childhood of Paulina is, however, I think,
pretty well imagined, but her. . ." (the remainder of this
interesting sentence is torn off the letter). "A brief visit to
London becomes thus more practicable, and if your mother will
kindly write, when she has time, and name a day after Christmas
which will suit her, I shall have pleasure, papa's health
permitting, in availing myself of her invitation. I wish I could
come in time to correct some at least of the proofs; it would
save trouble."



CHAPTER XII.

The difficulty that presented itself most strongly to me, when I
first had the honour of being requested to write this biography,
was how I could show what a noble, true, and tender woman
Charlotte Bronte really was, without mingling up with her life
too much of the personal history of her nearest and most intimate
friends. After much consideration of this point, I came to the
resolution of writing truly, if I wrote at all; of withholding
nothing, though some things, from their very nature, could not be
spoken of so fully as others.

One of the deepest interests of her life centres naturally round
her marriage, and the preceding circumstances; but more than all
other events (because of more recent date, and concerning another
as intimately as herself), it requires delicate handling on my
part, lest I intrude too roughly on what is most sacred to
memory. Yet I have two reasons, which seem to me good and valid
ones, for giving some particulars of the course of events which
led to her few months of wedded life--that short spell of
exceeding happiness. The first is my desire to call attention to
the fact that Mr. Nicholls was one who had seen her almost daily
for years; seen her as a daughter, a sister, a mistress and a
friend. He was not a man to be attracted by any kind of literary
fame. I imagine that this, by itself, would rather repel him when
he saw it in the possession of a woman. He was a grave, reserved,
conscientious man, with a deep sense of religion, and of his
duties as one of its ministers.

In silence he had watched her, and loved her long. The love of
such a man--a daily spectator of her manner of life for years--is
a great testimony to her character as a woman.

How deep his affection was I scarcely dare to tell, even if I
could in words. She did not know--she had hardly begun to
suspect--that she was the object of any peculiar regard on his
part, when, in this very December, he came one evening to tea.
After tea, she returned from the study to her own sitting-room,
as was her custom, leaving her father and his curate together.
Presently she heard the study-door open, and expected to hear the
succeeding clash of the front door. Instead, came a tap; and,
"like lightning, it flashed upon me what was coming. He entered.
He stood before me. What his words were you can imagine; his
manner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it. He made me,
for the first time, feel what it costs a man to declare affection
when he doubts response. . . . The spectacle of one, ordinarily
so statue-like, thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a
strange shock. I could only entreat him to leave me then, and
promise a reply on the morrow. I asked if he had spoken to Papa.
He said he dared not. I think I half led, half put him out of the
room."

So deep, so fervent, and so enduring was the affection Miss
Bronte had inspired in the heart of this good man! It is an
honour to her; and, as such, I have thought it my duty to speak
thus much, and quote thus fully from her letter about it. And now
I pass to my second reason for dwelling on a subject which may
possibly be considered by some, at first sight, of too private a
nature for publication. When Mr. Nicholls had left her, Charlotte
went immediately to her father and told him all. He always
disapproved of marriages, and constantly talked against them. But
he more than disapproved at this time; he could not bear the idea
of this attachment of Mr. Nicholls to his daughter. Fearing the
consequences of agitation to one so recently an invalid, she made
haste to give her father a promise that, on the morrow, Mr.
Nicholls should have a distinct refusal. Thus quietly and
modestly did she, on whom such hard judgments had been passed by
ignorant reviewers, receive this vehement, passionate declaration
of love,--thus thoughtfully for her father, and unselfishly for
herself, put aside all consideration of how she should reply,
excepting as he wished!

The immediate result of Mr. Nicholls' declaration of attachment
was, that he sent in his resignation of the curacy of Haworth;
and that Miss Bronte held herself simply passive, as far as words
and actions went, while she suffered acute pain from the strong
expressions which her father used in speaking of Mr. Nicholls,
and from the too evident distress and failure of health on the
part of the latter. Under these circumstances she, more gladly
than ever, availed herself of Mrs. Smith's proposal, that she
should again visit them in London; and thither she accordingly
went in the first week of the year 1853.

From thence I received the following letter. It is with a sad,
proud pleasure I copy her words of friendship now.

"January 12th, 1853.

"It is with YOU the ball rests. I have not heard from you since I
wrote last; but I thought I knew the reason of your silence, viz.
application to work,--and therefore I accept it, not merely with
resignation, but with satisfaction.

"I am now in London, as the date above will show; staying very
quietly at my publisher's, and correcting proofs, etc. Before
receiving yours, I had felt, and expressed to Mr. Smith,
reluctance to come in the way of 'Ruth;' not that I think SHE
would suffer from contact with 'Villette'--we know not but that
the damage might be the other way; but I have ever held
comparisons to be odious, and would fain that neither I nor my
friends should be made subjects for the same. Mr. Smith proposes,
accordingly, to defer the publication of my book till the 24th
inst.; he says that will give 'Ruth' the start in the papers
daily and weekly, and also will leave free to her all the
February magazines. Should this delay appear to you insufficient,
speak! and it shall be protracted.

"I dare say, arrange as we may, we shall not be able wholly to
prevent comparisons; it is the nature of some critics to be
invidious; but we need not care we can set them at defiance; they
SHALL not make us foes, they SHALL not mingle with our mutual
feelings one taint of jealousy there is my hand on that; I know
you will give clasp for clasp.

"'Villette' has indeed no right to push itself before 'Ruth.'
There is a goodness, a philanthropic purpose, a social use in the
latter to which the former cannot for an instant pretend; nor can
it claim precedence on the ground of surpassing power I think it
much quieter than 'Jane Eyre.'

. . . . . . . . . . .

"I wish to see YOU, probably at least as much as you can wish to
see ME, and therefore shall consider your invitation for March as
an engagement; about the close of that month, then, I hope to pay
you a brief visit. With kindest remembrances to Mr. Gaskell and
all your precious circle, I am," etc.

This visit at Mrs. Smith's was passed more quietly than any
previous one, and was consequently more in accordance with her
own tastes. She saw things rather than persons; and being allowed
to have her own choice of sights, she selected the "REAL in
preference to the DECORATIVE side of life." She went over two
prisons,--one ancient, the other modern,--Newgate and
Pentonville; over two hospitals, the Foundling and Bethlehem. She
was also taken, at her own request, to see several of the great
City sights; the Bank, the Exchange, Rothschild's, etc.

The power of vast yet minute organisation, always called out her
respect and admiration. She appreciated it more fully than most
women are able to do. All that she saw during this last visit to
London impressed her deeply--so much so as to render her
incapable of the immediate expression of her feelings, or of
reasoning upon her impressions while they were so vivid. If she
had lived, her deep heart would sooner or later have spoken out
on these things.

What she saw dwelt in her thoughts, and lay heavy on her spirits.
She received the utmost kindness from her hosts, and had the old,
warm, and grateful regard for them. But looking back, with the
knowledge of what was then the future, which Time has given, one
cannot but imagine that there was a toning-down in preparation
for the final farewell to these kind friends, whom she saw for
the last time on a Wednesday morning in February. She met her
friend E---- at Keighley, on her return, and the two proceeded to
Haworth together.

"Villette"--which, if less interesting as a mere story than "Jane
Eyre," displays yet more of the extraordinary genius of the
author--was received with one burst of acclamation. Out of so
small a circle of characters, dwelling in so dull and monotonous
an area as a "pension," this wonderful tale was evolved!

See how she receives the good tidings of her success!

"Feb. 15th, 1853.

"I got a budget of no less than seven papers yesterday and
to-day. The import of all the notices is such as to make my heart
swell with thankfulness to Him, who takes note both of suffering,
and work, and motives. Papa is pleased too. As to friends in
general, I believe I can love them still, without expecting them
to take any large share in this sort of gratification. The longer
I live, the more plainly I see that gentle must be the strain on
fragile human nature; it will not bear much."

I suspect that the touch of slight disappointment, perceptible in
the last few lines, arose from her great susceptibility to an
opinion she valued much,--that of Miss Martineau, who, both in an
article on 'Villette' in the Daily News, and in a private letter
to Miss Bronte, wounded her to the quick by expressions of
censure which she believed to be unjust and unfounded, but which,
if correct and true, went deeper than any merely artistic fault.
An author may bring himself to believe that he can bear blame
with equanimity, from whatever quarter it comes; but its force is
derived altogether from the character of this. To the public, one
reviewer may be the same impersonal being as another; but an
author has frequently a far deeper significance to attach to
opinions. They are the verdicts of those whom he respects and
admires, or the mere words of those for whose judgment he cares
not a jot. It is this knowledge of the individual worth of the
reviewer's opinion, which makes the censures of some sink so
deep, and prey so heavily upon an author's heart. And thus, in
proportion to her true, firm regard for Miss Martineau, did Miss
Bronte suffer under what she considered her misjudgment not
merely of writing, but of character.

She had long before asked Miss Martineau to tell her whether she
considered that any want of womanly delicacy or propriety was
betrayed in "Jane Eyre". And on receiving Miss Martineau's
assurance that she did not, Miss Bronte entreated her to declare
it frankly if she thought there was any failure of this
description in any future work of "Currer Bell's." The promise
then given of faithful truth-speaking, Miss Martineau fulfilled
when "Villette" appeared. Miss Bronte writhed under what she felt
to be injustice.

This seems a fitting place to state how utterly unconscious she
was of what was, by some, esteemed coarse in her writings. One
day, during that visit at the Briery when I first met her, the
conversation turned upon the subject of women's writing fiction;
and some one remarked on the fact that, in certain instances,
authoresses had much outstepped the line which men felt to be
proper in works of this kind. Miss Bronte said she wondered how
far this was a natural consequence of allowing the imagination to
work too constantly; Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth and I
expressed our belief that such violations of propriety were
altogether unconscious on the part of those to whom reference had
been made. I remember her grave, earnest way of saying, "I trust
God will take from me whatever power of invention or expression I
may have, before He lets me become blind to the sense of what is
fitting or unfitting to be said!"

Again, she was invariably shocked and distressed when she heard
of any disapproval of "Jane Eyre" on the ground above-mentioned.
Some one said to her in London, "You know, you and I, Miss
Bronte, have both written naughty books!" She dwelt much on this;
and, as if it weighed on her mind, took an opportunity to ask
Mrs. Smith, as she would have asked a mother--if she had not been
motherless from earliest childhood--whether, indeed, there was
anything so wrong in "Jane Eyre."

I do not deny for myself the existence of coarseness here and
there in her works, otherwise so entirely noble. I only ask those
who read them to consider her life,--which has been openly laid
bare before them,--and to say how it could be otherwise. She saw
few men; and among these few were one or two with whom she had
been acquainted since early girlhood,--who had shown her much
friendliness and kindness,--through whose family she had received
many pleasures,--for whose intellect she had a great
respect,--but who talked before her, if not to her with as little
reticence as Rochester talked to Jane Eyre. Take this in
connection with her poor brother's sad life, and the out-spoken
people among whom she lived,--remember her strong feeling of the
duty of representing life as it really is, not as it ought to
be,--and then do her justice for all that she was, and all that
she would have been (had God spared her), rather than censure her
because circumstances forced her to touch pitch, as it were, and
by it her hand was for a moment defiled. It was but skin-deep.
Every change in her life was purifying her; it hardly could raise
her. Again I cry, "If she had but lived!"

The misunderstanding with Miss Martineau on account of
"Villette," was the cause of bitter regret to Miss Bronte. Her
woman's nature had been touched, as she thought, with insulting
misconception; and she had dearly loved the person who had thus
unconsciously wounded her. It was but in the January just past
that she had written as follows, in reply to a friend, the tenor
of whose letter we may guess from this answer:--

"I read attentively all you say about Miss Martineau; the
sincerity and constancy of your solicitude touch me very much; I
should grieve to neglect or oppose your advice, and yet I do not
feel it would be right to give Miss Martineau up entirely. There
is in her nature much that is very noble; hundreds have forsaken
her, more, I fear, in the apprehension that their fair names may
suffer, if seen in connection with hers, than from any pure
convictions, such as you suggest, of harm consequent on her fatal
tenets. With these fair-weather friends I cannot bear to rank;
and for her sin, is it not one of those of which God and not man
must judge?

"To speak the truth, my dear Miss ----, I believe, if you were in
my place, and knew Miss Martineau as I do,--if you had shared
with me the proofs of her genuine kindliness, and had seen how
she secretly suffers from abandonment,--you would be the last to
give her up; you would separate the sinner from the sin, and feel
as if the right lay rather in quietly adhering to her in her
strait, while that adherence is unfashionable and unpopular, than
in turning on her your back when the world sets the example. I
believe she is one of those whom opposition and desertion make
obstinate in error; while patience and tolerance touch her deeply
and keenly, and incline her to ask of her own heart whether the
course she has been pursuing may not possibly be a faulty
course."

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