The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) (70 page)

‘My aunt is particularly fond of flowers,’ she observed, ‘and she is fond of Staningley too: I brought you here to offer a petition in her
behalf that this may be her home as long as she lives, and – if it be not our home likewise – that I may often see her and be with her; for I fear she will be sorry to lose me; and, though she leads a retired and contemplative life, she is apt to get low-spirited if left too much alone.’

‘By all means, dearest Helen! – do what you will with your own. I should not dream of wishing your aunt to leave the place under any circumstances; and we will live either here or elsewhere as you and she may determine, and you shall see her as often as you like. I know she must be pained to part with you, and I am willing to make any reparation in my power. I love her for your sake, and her happiness shall be as dear to me as that of my own mother.’

‘Thank you, darling! you shall have a kiss for that Goodbye. There now – there Gilbert – let me go – here’s Arthur, don’t astonish his infantile brain with your madness.’

But it is time to bring my narrative to a close – anyone but you would say I had made it too long already; but for
your
satisfaction, I will add a few words more; because I know you will have a fellow-feeling for the old lady, and will wish to know the last of her history. I did come again in spring, and agreeably to Helen’s injunctions, did my best to cultivate her acquaintance. She received me very kindly, having been doubtless already prepared to think highly of my character, by her niece’s too favourable report. I turned my best side out of course, and we got along marvellously well together. When my ambitious intentions were made known to her, she took it more sensibly than I had ventured to hope. Her only remark on the subject, in my hearing, was –

‘And so Mr Markham, you are going to rob me of my niece I understand. Well! I hope God will prosper your union, and make my dear girl happy at last. Could she have been contented to remain single, I own I should have been better satisfied; but if she must marry again, I know of no one, now living and of a suitable age, to whom I would more willingly resign her than yourself, or who would be more likely to appreciate her worth and make her truly happy, as far as I can tell.’

Of course I was delighted with the compliment, and hoped to show her she was not mistaken in her favourable judgment.

‘I have, however one request to offer,’ continued she. ‘It seems I am still to look on Staningley as my home: I wish you to make it yours likewise, for Helen is attached to the place and to me – as I am to her. There are painful associations connected with Grassdale, which she cannot easily overcome; and I shall not molest you with my company or interference here: I am a very quiet person, and shall keep my own apartments and attend to my own concerns, and only see you now and then.’

Of course I most readily consented to this; and we lived in the greatest harmony with our dear aunt until the day of her death, which melancholy event took place a few years after – melancholy, not to herself (for it came quietly upon her, and she was glad to reach her journey’s end), but only to the few loving friends and grateful dependants she left behind.

To return, however, to my own affairs: I was married in summer, on a glorious August morning. It took the whole eight months, and all Helen’s kindness and goodness to boot, to overcome my mother’s prejudices against my bride elect, and to reconcile her to the idea of my leaving Linden-Car
³
and living so far away. Yet she was gratified at her son’s good fortune after all, and proudly attributed it all to his own superior merits and endowments. I bequeathed the farm to Fergus,
⁴
with better hopes of its prosperity than I should have had a year ago under similar circumstances; for he had lately fallen in love with the vicar of L—’s eldest daughter, a lady whose superiority had roused his latent virtues and stimulated him to the most surprising exertions, not only to gain her affection and esteem, and to obtain a fortune sufficient to enable him to aspire to her hand, but to render himself worthy of her, in his own eyes, as well as in those of her parents; and in the end he was successful, as you already know. As for myself, I need not tell you how happily my Helen and I have lived and loved together, and how blessed we still are in each other’s society, and in the promising young scions that are growing up about us. We are just now looking forward to the advent of you and Rose, for the time of your annual visit draws nigh, when you must leave
your dusty, smoky, noisy, toiling, striving city for a season of invigorating relaxation and social retirement with us.

Till then, farewell,

GILBERT MARKHAM

Staningley, June 10th
, 1847.
⁵

THE END

All biblical references are to the Authorized Version (1611). Shakespeare references are to the Arden Shakespeare. References to novels are (unless otherwise indicated) made to Penguin editions. Anne Brontë’s poetry is referred to in the edition,
The Poems of Anne Brontë
, ed. Edward Chitham (Macmillan, 1979); Emily Bronte’s poetry is referred to in C. W. Hatfield’s edition,
The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë
(Columbia University Press, 1941). References to John Bunyan’s
The Pilgrim’s Progress
are to the edition by Roger Sharrock (Penguin, 196J); references to John Milton’s
Paradise Lost
are to the edition by Alastair Fowler (Longman, 1968).

The following abbreviations have been used to frequently cited works:
CH: The Brontes: The Critical Heritage
, ed. Miriam Allott (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).

Hargreaves:
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
, ed. G. D. Hargreaves and introduced by Winifred Gérin (Penguin, 1979).

OED: The Oxford English Dictionary
, ed. Sir James Murray et al. (OUP, 1888– 1928).

Life
: Edward Chitham,
A Life of Anne Brontë
(Blackwell, 1991). Rosengarten:
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
, ed. Herbert Rosengarten and introduced by Margaret Smith (OUP, 1992).

SHLL
: ’The Shakespeare Head Press Brontë’:
The Brontës, Their Lives, Friendships and Correspondence
, 4 vols. (Blackwell, 1933, reissued 1980).

1
.
success of the present work: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
was a success by comparison with
Agnes Grey
, which had been published jointly as part of a three-volume work with Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights
in late 1847 by T. C. Newby. The authors had subsidized publication by £50. At
least 250 copies of 500 copies of the first edition of
Wildfell Hall
were sold: in all, Anne received £50 for the work. As three-volume novels sold at a retail price of £1. us. 6d. (perhaps £10 by today’s rates), only circulating lending libraries and affluent private subscribers could afford to buy them. Unsold sheets of the first edition seem to have been sold as the ‘second edition’, with the addition of a Preface, perhaps in order to boost sales by implying demand.

2
.
praises it has elicited… it has been censured
: in fact praise and censure were often vehemently mingled, as critics struggled to assimilate their admiration for the ‘power, effect, and… nature’ of Acton Bell’s work with ‘his’ disposition to the savage, brutal and coarse (
Spectator
, 8 July 1848, 21, pp. 662–3; in
CH
, p. 250).

3
.
it needs some courage to dive for it… the clearance she effects
: the eccentric pair of comparisons for the novelist’s liability to be abused by society for truth-telling is typically an androgynous pairing: a male diver, stirring up the mud from which he has salvaged the emblematic ‘jewel’, truth, is succeeded by an honest-to-goodness cleaning woman, whose dust-raising activities in the ‘careless bachelor’s apartment’ are scorned because they reveal the filthy conditions in which privileged males live. This wittily preludes the major theme of male debauch. Chitham (
Life
, p. 168) notes that the Parsonage well had been cleansed in September 1847 of effluent, no doubt odoriferous.

4
.
accused of extravagant over-colouring
: evidence of such an accusation is hard to find. Normally Anne Brontë’s plain realism was praised, and the statement in
Atlas
(22 January 1948;
CH
, p. 232) cited by Hargreaves (‘Preface’, n. 3) that
Agnes Grey
is ‘not wholly free from exaggeration’ is obviously ironic, since it goes on ‘(there are some detestable young ladies in it)’ and concludes by insisting that the novel ‘does not offend by any startling improbabilities’.

5
.
a morbid love of the coarse, if not of the brutal: Spectator
, 8 July 1848 (
CH
, p.250).

6
.
’Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace
: this quotation from Jeremiah 8:11 is apocalyptic, denouncing those who ‘have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace’. Anne Brontë, in accusing her society of wilfully exposing its daughters and sons to outrage, also invokes the prophet’s wrath on society’s silences.

7
.
Such humble talents
: refers to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. Anne Brontë, fearful of hiding her gifts like the ‘wicked and slothful servant’ (Matthew 25:26) who wasted his talent (originally, a sum of
money), represents the writing of her narrative as a spiritual duty, which to have left undone would have incurred eternal consequences.

8
.
Respecting the author’s identity
: the Brontë sisters’ male-sounding pseudonyms – Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell – were intended to secure a fair hearing against the double standard of criticism pertaining for male and female authors. The names also generated confusion. Emily’s and Anne’s publisher, T. C. Newby, attempted to cash in on the success of Charlotte’s
Jane Eyre
by claiming that the three Bells were really one person. Charlotte and Anne accordingly visited the former’s publisher, Smith, Elder, in London, during the month in which the Preface was written, to identify themselves. See the vivid account in Lyndall Gordon’s
Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life
(Chatto & Windus, 1994), pp. 166–74.

1
.
TO J. HALFORD, ESQ
.: Halford, the first of the five ‘H’ characters in
Wildfell Hall
(Helen, Huntingdon, Hattersley, Hargrave), has no function other than to receive Markham’s letters and never appears in person. His name is probably a relic of Anne’s participation in the Brontes’ childhood games, ‘Sir Henry Halford’, being one of the ‘chief men’ named as hers in the ‘Play of the Islanders’ of 1827, when she was seven (see Christine Alexander,
The Early Writings of Charlotte Brontë
(Blackwell, 1983), Ch. 5). Halford’s imputed character, of grumpy reserve, however, meshes in with Anne Brontë’s notion of a male norm.

1
.
burying my talent… biding my light under a bushel
: Matthew 25:25 and 5:15, and see Preface, n. 7. The parental dispute about Gilbert’s profession is an authorial attempt to render a farmer culturally eligible for Helen’s hand.

2
.
looking neither to the right hand nor to the left
: Numbers 20:17, Deuteronomy 2:27, 5:32. Gilbert’s background transmits conservative and patriarchal values, from which he, however, is shown to deviate.

3
.
surtout
: a man’s top-coat.

4
.
Wildfell Hall
: Chitham describes Anne Brontë’s house, Wildfell Hall, as ‘mocking’ Emily’s Wuthering Heights by deromanticizing it and its mysterious inmate (
Life
, pp. 142–3); it may be more appropriate to think of it as a critical and rational alternative. Located five miles from the sea, which Anne especially loved, it seems to have been imagined as situated near her
personal terrain between Scarborough and Whitby, on the edge of the North Yorkshire moors. Winifred Gérin thought it based on Ponden Hall near Haworth (
Anne Brontë
(Nelson, 1976 edn.), p. 71). Such speculation is inconclusive. We note that Anne introduces the place in a spate of tea-table gossip rather than more portentously, thus domesticating our first view.

5
.
every lady ought to be familiar with
: Mrs Markham’s busybodying attempt to indoctrinate the newcomer with housewifely arts, which Helen resists, introduces the newcomer in a feminist light, as a strong and independent individual who stands against the norms spelt out, for instance, in the
Saturday Review
: ‘Married life is woman’s profession; and to this life her training – that of dependence – is modelled’ (‘Queen Bees or Working Bees?’,
Saturday Review
8 (November 1859), p. 576.)

6
.
grim escutcheons
: shields with armorial bearings, indicative of an ancient Wildfell dynasty, now defunct This family (as we learn later) may be Helen’s maternal ancestry.

7
.
shovel hat
: hard, broad-brimmed clerical hat.

8
.
How doth the little busy bee
: first line of Isaac Watts’s ‘Against Idleness and Mischief, from
Divine Songs for… the Use of Children
(1715), a traditional favourite amongst parents if not children, who had to learn it by heart in order to profit by the bee’s example, so as to ‘Improve each shining hour’ through industrious enterprise. This furnishes the first allusion to the debate about education, in the comic key.

9
.
old Eli, or David and Absalom
: Eli, judge and high priest in 1 Samuel 2–4, indulged his sons and forfeited his life; Absalom rebelled against David (2 Samuel 13–18), but at his death the father was inconsolable.

10
.
were assured it was all fancy
: Mr Mill ward’s dietary preoccupation seems a reversal of Jane Austen’s Mr Woodhouse’s nervous commendation of thin gruel and soft-boiled eggs in minute quantities in
Emma
(1815). The Markham narrative includes social comedy in the tradition of Austen, an author who was depreciated by Charlotte Brontë (‘the Passions are perfectly unknown’ (to Miss Austen), Letter to W. S. Williams, 12 April 1850,
SHLL
, Vol. 3, p.
99
).