That time in Brussels was wasted upon Emily. The trivial characters which Charlotte made immortal merely annoyed her. The new impressions which gave another scope to Charlotte’s vision were nothing to her. All that was grand, remarkable, passionate, under the surface of that conventional Pensionnat de Demoiselles, was invisible to Emily. Notwithstanding her genius she was very hard and narrow. Poor girl, she was sick for home.... Charlotte’s engrossment in her new life, her eagerness to please her master, was a contemptible weakness to the imbittered heart. She would laugh when she found her elder sister trying to arrange her homely gowns in the French taste, and stalk silently through the large school-rooms with a fierce satisfaction in her own ugly sleeves, in the Haworth cut of her skirts. She seldom spoke a word to any one; only sometimes she would argue with Monsieur Héger, perhaps secretly glad to have the chance of shocking Charlotte. If they went out to tea, she would sit still on her chair, answering “Yes,” and “No;” inert, miserable, with a heart full of tears. When her work was done she would walk in the Crossbowmen’s ancient garden, under the trees, leaning on her shorter sister’s arm, pale, silent--a tall, stooping figure.... Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a favorite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of Hoffman left its impression on the author of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ She worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling school-girl became a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in grammar and literature, was a constant study.
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[Sidenote: Emily at home during Charlotte’s second sojourn in Brussels.]
Emily was alone in the gray house, save for her secluded father and old Tabby now over seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could be freer than her own; it was she that disposed, she too that performed most of the household work. She always got up first in the morning, and did the roughest part of the day’s labor before frail old Tabby came down; since kindness and thought for others were part of the nature of this unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household ironing and most of the cookery. She made the bread; and her bread was famous in Haworth for its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded the dough, she would glance now and then at an open book propped up before her. It was her German lesson. But not always did she study out of books; those who worked with her in that kitchen, young girls called in to help in stress of business, remember how she would keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and how, when the moment came that she could pause in her cooking or her ironing, she would jot down some impatient thought and then resume her work. With these girls she was always friendly and hearty--“pleasant, sometimes quite jovial, like a boy,” “so genial and kind, a little masculine,” say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher’s boy or the baker’s man came to the kitchen door, she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlor till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. Not easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: “A deal of folk thout her th’ clever’st o’ them a’, hasumiver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn’t frame to let it aat.”
A. MARY F. ROBINSON: ‘Emily Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Origin of the three-fold book of Poems.]
[Sidenote: Pseudonyms.]
One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse, in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me--a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear they had also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and elevating. My sister Emily was not a person of a demonstrative character, nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her, could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed: it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.... Meantime, my younger sister quietly produced some of her own compositions, intimating that since Emily’s had given me pleasure, I might like to look at hers. I could not but be a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses too had a sweet sincere pathos of their own.... We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of ‘Currer,’ ‘Ellis,’ and ‘Acton Bell’; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because,----without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called “feminine,”--we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked on with prejudice.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Biographical Preface to_ ‘Wuthering Heights.’ London, 1850.
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[Sidenote: Evenings at Haworth novel-writing.]
The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in their aunt’s life-time, of putting away their work at nine o’clock, and beginning their study, pacing up and down their sitting-room. At this time, they talked over the stories they were engaged upon, and described their plots. Once or twice a week, each read to the other what she had written, and heard what they had to say about it. Charlotte told me, that the remarks made had seldom any effect in inducing her to alter her work, so possessed was she with the feeling that she had described reality; but the readings were of great and stirring interest to all, taking them out of the gnawing pressure of daily-recurring cares, and setting them in a free place. It was on one of these occasions that Charlotte determined to make her heroine plain, small, and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon.
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[Sidenote: Charlotte’s firmness.]
The three tales, ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘Agnes Grey,’ and ‘The Professor,’ had tried their fate in vain together; at length they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still-continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation [for cataract]. But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, and failure upon failure daunted her no more than him. Not only did ‘The Professor’ return again to try his chance among the London publishers, but she began, in this time of care and depressing inquietude--in those gray, weary, uniform streets where all faces, save those of her kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her--there and then, did the brave genius begin ‘Jane Eyre.’
MRS. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Immediate success of ‘Jane Eyre.’]
Those who remember that winter [of 1847] know how something like a ‘Jane Eyre’ fever raged among us. The story which had suddenly discovered a glory in uncomeliness, a grandeur in overmastering passion, moulded the fashion of the hour, and “Rochester airs” and “Jane Eyre graces” became the rage. The book, and its fame and influence, travelled beyond the seas with a speed which in those days was marvellous. In sedate New England homes the history of the English governess was read with an avidity which was not surpassed in London itself, and within a few months of the publication of the novel it was famous throughout two continents. No such triumph has been achieved in our time by any other English author; nor can it be said, upon the whole, that many triumphs have been better merited. It happened that this anonymous story, bearing the unmistakable marks of an unpractised hand, was put before the world at the very moment when another great masterpiece of fiction was just beginning to gain the ear of the English public. But at the moment of publication ‘Jane Eyre’ swept past ‘Vanity Fair’ with a marvellous and impetuous speed which left Thackeray’s work in the distant background; and its unknown author in a few weeks gained a wider reputation than that which one of the master minds of the century had been engaged for long years in building up. The reaction from this exaggerated fame of course set in, and it was sharp and severe.