Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (453 page)

The foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which the little Brontës were interested; but their desire for knowledge must have been excited in many directions, for I find a “list of painters whose works I wish to see,” drawn up by Charlotte when she was scarcely thirteen: —

“Guido Reni, Julio Romano, Titian, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Annibal Caracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Carlo Cignani, Vandyke, Rubens, Bartolomeo Ramerghi.”

Here is this little girl, in a remote Yorkshire parsonage, who has probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life, studying the names and characteristics of the great old Italian and Flemish masters, whose works she longs to see some time, in the dim future that lies before her!  There is a paper remaining which contains minute studies of, and criticisms upon, the engravings in “Friendship’s Offering for 1829;” showing how she had early formed those habits of close observation, and patient analysis of cause and effect, which served so well in after-life as handmaids to her genius.

The way in which Mr. Brontë made his children sympathise with him in his great interest in politics, must have done much to lift them above the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local gossip.  I take the only other remaining personal fragment out of “Tales of the Islanders;” it is a sort of apology, contained in the introduction to the second volume, for their not having been continued before; the writers had been for a long time too busy, and latterly too much absorbed in politics.

“Parliament was opened, and the great Catholic question was brought forward, and the Duke’s measures were disclosed, and all was slander, violence, party-spirit, and confusion.  Oh, those six months, from the time of the King’s speech to the end!  Nobody could write, think, or speak on any subject but the Catholic question, and the Duke of Wellington, and Mr. Peel.  I remember the day when the Intelligence Extraordinary came with Mr. Peel’s speech in it, containing the terms on which the Catholics were to be let in!  With what eagerness Papa tore off the cover, and how we all gathered round him, and with what breathless anxiety we listened, as one by one they were disclosed, and explained, and argued upon so ably, and so well! and then when it was all out, how aunt said that she thought it was excellent, and that the Catholics could do no harm with such good security!  I remember also the doubts as to whether it would pass the House of Lords, and the prophecies that it would not; and when the paper came which was to decide the question, the anxiety was almost dreadful with which we listened to the whole affair: the opening of the doors; the hush; the royal dukes in their robes, and the great duke in green sash and waistcoat; the rising of all the peeresses when he rose; the reading of his speech — Papa saying that his words were like precious gold; and lastly, the majority of one to four (sic) in favour of the Bill.  But this is a digression,” &c., &c.

This must have been written when she was between thirteen and fourteen.

It will be interesting to some of my readers to know what was the character of her purely imaginative writing at this period.  While her description of any real occurrence is, as we have seen, homely, graphic, and forcible, when she gives way to her powers of creation, her fancy and her language alike run riot, sometimes to the very borders of apparent delirium.  Of this wild weird writing, a single example will suffice.  It is a letter to the editor of one of the “Little Magazines.”

“Sir, — It is well known that the Genii have declared that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year, of a mysterious nature, all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and gathered together in one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary grandeur through the vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the four high princes of the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by Eternity; and the impudence of this is only to be paralleled by another of their assertions, namely, that by their magic might they can reduce the world to a desert, the purest waters to streams of livid poison, and the clearest lakes to stagnant waters, the pestilential vapours of which shall slay all living creatures, except the blood-thirsty beast of the forest, and the ravenous bird of the rock.  But that in the midst of this desolation the palace of the Chief Genii shall rise sparkling in the wilderness, and the horrible howl of their war-cry shall spread over the land at morning, at noontide and night; but that they shall have their annual feast over the bones of the dead, and shall yearly rejoice with the joy of victors.  I think, sir, that the horrible wickedness of this needs no remark, and therefore I haste to subscribe myself, &c.

“July 14, 1829.”

It is not unlikely that the foregoing letter may have had some allegorical or political reference, invisible to our eyes, but very clear to the bright little minds for whom it was intended.  Politics were evidently their grand interest; the Duke of Wellington their demi-god.  All that related to him belonged to the heroic age.  Did Charlotte want a knight-errant, or a devoted lover, the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles Wellesley, came ready to her hand.  There is hardly one of her prose-writings at this time in which they are not the principal personages, and in which their “august father” does not appear as a sort of Jupiter Tonans, or Deus ex Machinâ.

As one evidence how Wellesley haunted her imagination, I copy out a few of the titles to her papers in the various magazines.

“Liffey Castle,” a Tale by Lord C. Wellesley.

“Lines to the River Aragua,” by the Marquis of Douro.

“An Extraordinary Dream,” by Lord C. Wellesley.

“The Green Dwarf, a Tale of the Perfect Tense,” by the Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley.

“Strange Events,” by Lord C. A. F. Wellesley.

Life in an isolated village, or a lonely country-house, presents many little occurrences which sink into the mind of childhood, there to be brooded over.  No other event may have happened, or be likely to happen, for days, to push one of these aside, before it has assumed a vague and mysterious importance.  Thus, children leading a secluded life are often thoughtful and dreamy: the impressions made upon them by the world without — the unusual sights of earth and sky — the accidental meetings with strange faces and figures (rare occurrences in those out-of-the-way places) — are sometimes magnified by them into things so deeply significant as to be almost supernatural.  This peculiarity I perceive very strongly in Charlotte’s writings at this time.  Indeed, under the circumstances, it is no peculiarity.  It has been common to all, from the Chaldean shepherds — “the lonely herdsman stretched on the soft grass through half a summer’s day” — the solitary monk — to all whose impressions from without have had time to grow and vivify in the imagination, till they have been received as actual personifications, or supernatural visions, to doubt which would be blasphemy.

To counterbalance this tendency in Charlotte, was the strong common sense natural to her, and daily called into exercise by the requirements of her practical life.  Her duties were not merely to learn her lessons, to read a certain quantity, to gain certain ideas; she had, besides, to brush rooms, to run errands up and down stairs, to help in the simpler forms of cooking, to be by turns play-fellow and monitress to her younger sisters and brother, to make and to mend, and to study economy under her careful aunt.  Thus we see that, while her imagination received vivid impressions, her excellent understanding had full power to rectify them before her fancies became realities.  On a scrap of paper, she has written down the following relation: —

“June 22, 1830, 6 o’clock p.m.
“Haworth, near Bradford.

“The following strange occurrence happened on the 22nd of June, 1830: — At the time Papa was very ill, confined to his bed, and so weak that he could not rise without assistance.  Tabby and I were alone in the kitchen, about half-past nine ante-meridian.  Suddenly we heard a knock at the door; Tabby rose and opened it.  An old man appeared, standing without, who accosted her thus: —

“
Old Man
. — ‘Does the parson live here?’

“
Tabby
. — ‘Yes.’

“
Old Man
. — ‘I wish to see him.’

“
Tabby
. — ‘He is poorly in bed.’

“
Old Man
. — ‘I have a message for him.’

“
Tabby
. — ‘Who from?’

“
Old Man
. — ‘From the Lord.’

“
Tabby
. — ‘Who?’

“
Old Man
. — ‘The Lord.  He desires me to say that the Bridegroom is coming, and that we must prepare to meet him; that the cords are about to be loosed, and the golden bowl broken; the pitcher broken at the fountain.’

“Here he concluded his discourse, and abruptly went his way.  As Tabby closed the door, I asked her if she knew him.  Her reply was, that she had never seen him before, nor any one like him.  Though I am fully persuaded that he was some fanatical enthusiast, well meaning perhaps, but utterly ignorant of true piety; yet I could not forbear weeping at his words, spoken so unexpectedly at that particular period.”

Though the date of the following poem is a little uncertain, it may be most convenient to introduce it here.  It must have been written before 1833, but how much earlier there are no means of determining.  I give it as a specimen of the remarkable poetical talent shown in the various diminutive writings of this time; at least, in all of them which I have been able to read.

THE WOUNDED STAG.

Passing amid the deepest shade
   Of the wood’s sombre heart,
Last night I saw a wounded deer
   Laid lonely and apart.

Such light as pierced the crowded boughs
   (Light scattered, scant and dim,)
Passed through the fern that formed his couch
   And centred full on him.

Pain trembled in his weary limbs,
   Pain filled his patient eye,
Pain-crushed amid the shadowy fern
   His branchy crown did lie.

Where were his comrades? where his mate?
   All from his death-bed gone!
And he, thus struck and desolate,
   Suffered and bled alone.

Did he feel what a man might feel,
   Friend-left, and sore distrest?
Did Pain’s keen dart, and Grief’s sharp sting
   Strive in his mangled breast?

Did longing for affection lost
   Barb every deadly dart;
Love unrepaid, and Faith betrayed,
   Did these torment his heart?

No! leave to man his proper doom!
   These are the pangs that rise
Around the bed of state and gloom,
   Where Adam’s offspring dies!

CHAPTER VI

This is perhaps a fitting time to give some personal description of Miss Brontë.  In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years of age, very small in figure — “stunted” was the word she applied to herself, — but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a description, as they appeared to me in her later life.  They were large and well shaped; their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris was closely examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints.  The usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive orbs.  I never saw the like in any other human creature.  As for the rest of her features, they were plain, large, and ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue them, you were hardly aware of the fact, for the eyes and power of the countenance over-balanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth and the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the attention, and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have cared to attract.  Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a bird in the middle of my palm.  The delicate long fingers had a peculiar fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork, of whatever kind — writing, sewing, knitting — was so clear in its minuteness.  She was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire; but she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves.

I can well imagine that the grave serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children.  But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned;” and in 1831, the period of which I now write, we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the wife and daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart.

In January, 1831, Charlotte was sent to school again.  This time she went as a pupil to Miss W — -, who lived at Roe Head, a cheerful roomy country house, standing a little apart in a field, on the right of the road from Leeds to Huddersfield.  Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George Armitage’s park.  Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they enjoyed a different climate.  The soft curving and heaving landscape round the former gives a stranger the idea of cheerful airiness on the heights, and of sunny warmth in the broad green valleys below.  It is just such a neighbourhood as the monks loved, and traces of the old Plantagenet times are to be met with everywhere, side by side with the manufacturing interests of the West Riding of to-day.  There is the park of Kirklees, full of sunny glades, speckled with black shadows of immemorial yew-trees; the grey pile of building, formerly a “House of professed Ladies;” the mouldering stone in the depth of the wood, under which Robin Hood is said to lie; close outside the park, an old stone-gabled house, now a roadside inn, but which bears the name of the “Three Nuns,” and has a pictured sign to correspond.  And this quaint old inn is frequented by fustian-dressed mill-hands from the neighbouring worsted factories, which strew the high road from Leeds to Huddersfield, and form the centres round which future villages gather.  Such are the contrasts of modes of living, and of times and seasons, brought before the traveller on the great roads that traverse the West Riding.  In no other part of England, I fancy, are the centuries brought into such close, strange contact as in the district in which Roe Head is situated.  Within six miles of Miss W — -’s house — on the left of the road, coming from Leeds — lie the remains of Howley Hall, now the property of Lord Cardigan, but formerly belonging to a branch of the Saviles.  Near to it is Lady Anne’s well; “Lady Anne,” according to tradition, having been worried and eaten by wolves as she sat at the well, to which the indigo-dyed factory people from Birstall and Batley woollen mills would formerly repair on Palm Sunday, when the waters possess remarkable medicinal efficacy; and it is still believed by some that they assume a strange variety of colours at six o’clock on the morning of that day.

All round the lands held by the farmer who lives in the remains of Howley Hall are stone houses of to-day, occupied by the people who are making their living and their fortunes by the woollen mills that encroach upon and shoulder out the proprietors of the ancient halls.  These are to be seen in every direction, picturesque, many-gabled, with heavy stone carvings of coats of arms for heraldic ornament; belonging to decayed families, from whose ancestral lands field after field has been shorn away, by the urgency of rich manufacturers pressing hard upon necessity.

A smoky atmosphere surrounds these old dwellings of former Yorkshire squires, and blights and blackens the ancient trees that overshadow them; cinder-paths lead up to them; the ground round about is sold for building upon; but still the neighbours, though they subsist by a different state of things, remember that their forefathers lived in agricultural dependence upon the owners of these halls; and treasure up the traditions connected with the stately households that existed centuries ago.  Take Oakwell Hall, for instance.  It stands in a pasture-field, about a quarter of a mile from the high road.  It is but that distance from the busy whirr of the steam-engines employed in the woollen mills at Birstall; and if you walk to it from Birstall Station about meal-time, you encounter strings of mill-hands, blue with woollen dye, and cranching in hungry haste over the cinder-paths bordering the high road.  Turning off from this to the right, you ascend through an old pasture-field, and enter a short by-road, called the “Bloody Lane” — a walk haunted by the ghost of a certain Captain Batt, the reprobate proprietor of an old hall close by, in the days of the Stuarts.  From the “Bloody Lane,” overshadowed by trees, you come into the field in which Oakwell Hall is situated.  It is known in the neighbourhood to be the place described as “Field Head,” Shirley’s residence.  The enclosure in front, half court, half garden; the panelled hall, with the gallery opening into the bed-chambers running round; the barbarous peach-coloured drawing-room; the bright look-out through the garden-door upon the grassy lawns and terraces behind, where the soft-hued pigeons still love to coo and strut in the sun, — are described in “Shirley.”  The scenery of that fiction lies close around; the real events which suggested it took place in the immediate neighbourhood.

They show a bloody footprint in a bed-chamber of Oakwell Hall, and tell a story connected with it, and with the lane by which the house is approached.  Captain Batt was believed to be far away; his family was at Oakwell; when in the dusk, one winter evening, he came stalking along the lane, and through the hall, and up the stairs, into his own room, where he vanished.  He had been killed in a duel in London that very same afternoon of December 9th, 1684.

The stones of the Hall formed part of the more ancient vicarage, which an ancestor of Captain Batt’s had seized in the troublous times for property which succeeded the Reformation.  This Henry Batt possessed himself of houses and money without scruple; and, at last, stole the great bell of Birstall Church, for which sacrilegious theft a fine was imposed on the land, and has to be paid by the owner of the Hall to this day.

But the Oakwell property passed out of the hands of the Batts at the beginning of the last century; collateral descendants succeeded, and left this picturesque trace of their having been.  In the great hall hangs a mighty pair of stag’s horns, and dependent from them a printed card, recording the fact that, on the 1st of September, 1763, there was a great hunting-match, when this stag was slain; and that fourteen gentlemen shared in the chase, and dined on the spoil in that hall, along with Fairfax Fearneley, Esq., the owner.  The fourteen names are given, doubtless “mighty men of yore;” but, among them all, Sir Fletcher Norton, Attorney-General, and Major-General Birch were the only ones with which I had any association in 1855.  Passing on from Oakwell there lie houses right and left, which were well known to Miss Brontë when she lived at Roe Head, as the hospitable homes of some of her school-fellows.  Lanes branch off for three or four miles to heaths and commons on the higher ground, which formed pleasant walks on holidays, and then comes the white gate into the field-path leading to Roe Head itself.

One of the bow-windowed rooms on the ground floor with the pleasant look-out I have described was the drawing-room; the other was the schoolroom.  The dining-room was on one side of the door, and faced the road.

The number of pupils, during the year and a half Miss Brontë was there, ranged from seven to ten; and as they did not require the whole of the house for their accommodation, the third story was unoccupied, except by the ghostly idea of a lady, whose rustling silk gown was sometimes heard by the listeners at the foot of the second flight of stairs.

The kind motherly nature of Miss W — -, and the small number of the girls, made the establishment more like a private family than a school.  Moreover, she was a native of the district immediately surrounding Roe Head, as were the majority of her pupils.  Most likely Charlotte Brontë, in coming from Haworth, came the greatest distance of all.  “E.’s” home was five miles away; two other dear friends (the Rose and Jessie Yorke of “Shirley”) lived still nearer; two or three came from Huddersfield; one or two from Leeds.

I shall now quote from a valuable letter which I have received from “Mary,” one of these early friends; distinct and graphic in expression, as becomes a cherished associate of Charlotte Brontë’s.  The time referred to is her first appearance at Roe Head, on January 19th, 1831.

“I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable.  She was coming to school at Miss W — -’s.  When she appeared in the schoolroom, her dress was changed, but just as old.  She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it.  She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent.  When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched it, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing.”

This was the first impression she made upon one of those whose dear and valued friend she was to become in after-life.  Another of the girls recalls her first sight of Charlotte, on the day she came, standing by the schoolroom window, looking out on the snowy landscape, and crying, while all the rest were at play.  “E.” was younger than she, and her tender heart was touched by the apparently desolate condition in which she found the oddly-dressed, odd-looking little girl that winter morning, as “sick for home she stood in tears,” in a new strange place, among new strange people.  Any over-demonstrative kindness would have scared the wild little maiden from Haworth; but “E.” (who is shadowed forth in the Caroline Helstone of “Shirley”) managed to win confidence, and was allowed to give sympathy.

To quote again from “Mary’s” letter: —

“We thought her very ignorant, for she had never learnt grammar at all, and very little geography.”

This account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her other school-fellows.  But Miss W — - was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of delicate tender sympathy.  She gave a proof of this in her first treatment of Charlotte.  The little girl was well-read, but not well-grounded.  Miss W — - took her aside and told her she was afraid that she must place her in the second class for some time till she could overtake the girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar, &c.; but poor Charlotte received this announcement with so sad a fit of crying, that Miss W — -’s kind heart was softened, and she wisely perceived that, with such a girl, it would be better to place her in the first class, and allow her to make up by private study in those branches where she was deficient.

“She would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range altogether.  She was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry that we had to learn by heart; would tell us the authors, the poems they were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, and tell us the plot.  She had a habit of writing in italics (printing characters), and said she had learnt it by writing in their magazine.  They brought out a ‘magazine’ once a month, and wished it to look as like print as possible.  She told us a tale out of it.  No one wrote in it, and no one read it, but herself, her brother, and two sisters.  She promised to show me some of these magazines, but retracted it afterwards, and would never be persuaded to do so.  In our play hours she sate, or stood still, with a book, if possible.  Some of us once urged her to be on our side in a game at ball.  She said she had never played, and could not play.  We made her try, but soon found that she could not see the ball, so we put her out.  She took all our proceedings with pliable indifference, and always seemed to need a previous resolution to say ‘No’ to anything.  She used to go and stand under the trees in the play-ground, and say it was pleasanter.  She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of sky, &c.  We understood but little of it.  She said that at Cowan Bridge she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by.  I told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted.  She always showed physical feebleness in everything.  She ate no animal food at school.  It was about this time I told her she was very ugly.  Some years afterwards, I told her I thought I had been very impertinent.  She replied, ‘You did me a great deal of good, Polly, so don’t repent of it.’  She used to draw much better, and more quickly, than anything we had seen before, and knew much about celebrated pictures and painters.  Whenever an opportunity offered of examining a picture or cut of any kind, she went over it piecemeal, with her eyes close to the paper, looking so long that we used to ask her ‘what she saw in it.’  She could always see plenty, and explained it very well.  She made poetry and drawing at least exceedingly interesting to me; and then I got the habit, which I have yet, of referring mentally to her opinion on all matters of that kind, along with many more, resolving to describe such and such things to her, until I start at the recollection that I never shall.”