T. WEMYSS REID: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’
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[Sidenote: Mr. Brontë informed about ‘Jane Eyre.’]
The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and disappointment by witnessing his.... Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the postman, meeting Mr. Brontë, as the latter was leaving the house, and inquiring from the parson where one Currer Bell could be living, to which Mr. Brontë replied that there was no such person in the parish.... Now, however, when the demand for the work had assured success to ‘Jane Eyre,’ her sisters urged Charlotte to tell their father of its publication. She accordingly went into his study one afternoon after his early dinner, carrying with her a copy of the book, and one or two reviews, taking care to include a notice adverse to it. She informed me that something like the following conversation took place:
“Papa, I’ve been writing a book.”
“Have you, my dear?”
“Yes, and I want you to read it.”
“I am afraid it will try my eyes too much.”
“But it is not in manuscript: it is printed.”
“My dear! you’ve never thought of the expense it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name.”
“But, papa, I don’t think it will be a loss; no more will you, if you will let me read you a review or two, and tell you more about it.”
So she sat down and read some of the reviews to her father; and then, giving him the copy of ‘Jane Eyre’ that she intended for him, she left him to read it. When he came in to tea, he said, “Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely?”
MRS. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Charlotte’s subsequent portrait of Emily.]
Shirley [is] a fancy likeness of Emily Brontë. Emily Brontë, but under very different conditions. No longer poor, no longer thwarted, no longer acquainted with misery and menaced by untimely death; not thus, but as a loving sister would fain have seen her, beautiful, triumphant, the spoiled child of happy fortune. Yet in these altered circumstances Shirley keeps her likeness to Charlotte’s hard-working sister. Under the pathetic finery so lovingly bestowed, under the borrowed splendors of a thousand a year, a lovely face, an ancestral manor-house, we recognize our hardy and headstrong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the inefficacy of this masquerade of grandeur, so indifferent and unnecessary to her. Through these years we discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed and over-worked vicar’s daughter.... Shirley is indeed the exterior Emily, the Emily that was to be met and known thirty-five years ago, only a little polished, with the angles a little smoothed, by a sister’s anxious care. The nobler Emily, deeply suffering, brooding, pitying, creating, is only to be found in a stray word here and there, a chance memory, a happy answer, gathered from the pages of her work, and the loving remembrance of her friends. But to know how Emily Brontë looked, moved, sat and spoke, we still return to Shirley. A host of corroborating memories start up in turning the pages. Who but Emily was always accompanied by a “rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed between a mastiff and a bull-dog”? It is familiar to us as Una’s lion.
Certainly “Captain Keeldar,” with her cavalier airs, her ready disdain, her love of independence, does bring back with vivid brilliance the memory of our old acquaintance, “the Major,”[9]... We know her, too, by her kindness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made with her own hands for her servant’s friend, yet remembered visits of Martha’s little cousin to the kitchen, where Miss Emily would bring in her own chair for the ailing girl; anecdotes of her early rising through many years to do the hardest work, because the first servant was too old, and the second too young to get up so soon; and she, Emily, was so strong. A hundred little sacrifices, dearer to remember than Shirley’s open purse, awaken in our hearts and remind us that, after all, Emily was the nobler and more lovable heroine of the twain.... And Shirley’s love of picturesque and splendid raiment is not without an echo in our memories. It was Emily who, shopping in Bradford with Charlotte and her friend, chose a white stuff patterned with lilac thunder and lightning, to the scarcely concealed horror of her more sober companions.... She, too, had Shirley’s taste for the management of business.
A. MARY F. ROBINSON: ‘Emily Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: “Keeper.”]
The same tawny bull-dog, called “Tartar” in ‘Shirley,’ was “Keeper” in Haworth parsonage; a gift to Emily. With the gift came a warning. Keeper was faithful to the depths of his nature as long as he was with friends; but he who struck him with a stick or whip, roused the relentless nature of the brute, who flew at his throat forthwith, and held him there till one or the other was at the point of death. Now Keeper’s household fault was this: He loved to steal up-stairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs on the comfortable beds, covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper’s was so objectionable, that Emily in reply to Tabby’s remonstrances, declared that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of warning and his well-known ferocity of nature, would beat him so severely that he would never offend again. In the gathering dusk of an autumn evening, Tabby came, half triumphantly, half tremblingly, but in great wrath, to tell Emily that Keeper was lying on the best bed, in drowsy voluptuousness. Charlotte saw Emily’s whitening face, and set mouth, but dared not speak to interfere: no one dared when Emily’s eyes glowed in that manner out of the paleness of her face, and when her lips were so compressed into stone. She went up-stairs, and Tabby and Charlotte stood in the gloomy passage below, full of the dark shadows of coming night. Down the stairs came Emily, dragging after her the unwilling Keeper, his hind legs set in a heavy attitude of resistance, held by the “scaft of his neck,” but growling low and savagely all the time. The watchers would fain have spoken, but durst not, for fear of taking off Emily’s attention, and causing her to avert her head for a moment from the enraged brute. She let him go, planted in a dark corner at the bottom of the stairs; no time was there to fetch stick or rod, for fear of the strangling clutch at her throat--her bare clenched fist struck against his red fierce eyes, before he had time to make his spring, and in the language of the turf, she “punished him” till his eyes were swelled up, and the half-blind, stupefied beast was led to his accustomed lair, to have his swelled head fomented and cared for by the very Emily herself. The generous dog owed her no grudge; he loved her dearly ever after; he walked first among the mourners at her funeral; he slept moaning for nights at the door of her empty room, and never, so to speak, rejoiced, dog fashion, after her death.
MRS. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: Emily saves Branwell’s life.]
At last [Branwell] grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early, and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came up-stairs to sleep. Emily had gone on first into the little passage room where she still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell’s partly-opened door, saw a strange bright flare inside. “Oh, Emily!” she cried, “the house is on fire!”
Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She had remembered her father’s great horror of fire; it was the one dread of a brave man; he would have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his house. She came out silently and saw the flame; then, very white and determined, dashed from her room down stairs into the passage, where every night full pails of water stood. One in each hand she came up-stairs. Anne, Charlotte, the young servant, shrinking against the wall, huddled together in amazed horror--Emily went straight on and entered the blazing room. In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. Fortunately the flame had not reached the woodwork; drunken Branwell, turning in his bed, must have upset the light on to his sheets, for they and the bed were all on fire, and he unconscious in the midst, when Emily went in, even as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, bade them go and rest--but where she slept herself that night no one remembers now.