 Volume 2, Section 1, of the Life of Charnaud Bronte. Chapter 1 During the summer of 1846, while her literary hopes were waning, an anxiety of another kind was increasing. Her father's eyesight had become seriously impaired by the progress of the cataract which was forming. He was nearly blind. He could grope his way about, and recognize the figures of those he knew well, when they were placed against a strong light, but he could no longer see to read, and thus his eager appetite for knowledge and information of all kinds was severely bulged. He continued to preach, I have heard, that he was let up into the pulpit, and that his sermons were never so effective as when he stood there, a gray, sightless old man, his blind eyes looking out straight before him, while the words that came from his lips had all the vigor and force of his best days. Another fact has been mentioned to me, curious, as sharing the accurateness of his sensation of time. His sermons had always lasted exactly half an hour, with the clock right before him, and with his ready flow of words, this had been no difficult matter as long as he could see, but it was the same when he was blind, as a minute hand came to the point, marking the expiration of the thirty minutes, he concluded his sermon. And his great sorrow he was always patient, as in times of far greater affliction he enforced a quiet endurance of his row upon himself, but so many interests were quenched by this blindness that he was driven inwards, and must have dwelt much on what was painful and distressing in regard to his only son. No wonder that his spirit gave way and were depressed. For some time before this autumn, his daughters had been collecting all the information they could, respecting the probable success of operations for cataract, performed on a person of their father's age. About the end of July, Emily and Charlotte had made a journey to Manchester, for the purpose of searching out an operator. From there they heard of the fame of the late Mr. Wilson as an ocularist. They went to him at once, but he could not tell from description whether the eyes were ready for being operated upon or not. It therefore became necessary for Mr. Bronte to visit him, and towards the end of August Charlotte brought her father to him. He determined at once to undertake the operation, and recommended them to comfortable lodgings kept by an old servant of his. These were in one of numerous similar streets of small monotonous-looking houses in a suburb of the town. From thence the following letter is dated, on August 21st, 1846. I just scribble a line to you to let you know where I am, in order that you may write to me here, for it seems to me that a letter from you would relieve me from the feeling of spangeness I have in this big town. Papa and I came here on Wednesday. We saw Mr. Wilson, the ocularist, the same day. He pronounced Papa's eyes quite ready for an operation, and has fixed next Monday for the performance of it. Think of us on that day. We got into our lodgings yesterday. I think we shall be comfortable. At least our rooms are very good, but there is no mistress of the house. She is very ill and gone out into the country, and I am somewhat puzzled in managing about provisions, we bored ourselves. I find myself excessively ignorant. I can't tell what to order and the way of meat. For ourselves I could contrive, Papa's diet is so very simple, but there will be a nurse coming in a day or two, and I am afraid of not having things good enough for her. Papa requires nothing, you know, but plain beef and mutton, tea and bread and butter, but a nurse will probably expect to live much better. Give me some hints, if you can. Mr. Wilson says we shall have to stay here for a month, at least. I wonder how Emily and Dan will get on at home with Branwell. They too will have their troubles. What would I not give to have you here? One is forced, step by step, to get experience in the world, but the learning is so disagreeable. One cheerful feature in the business is that Mr. Wilson thinks most favourably of the case. August 26, 1846 The operation is over. It took place yesterday. Mr. Wilson performed it. Two other surgeons assisted. Mr. Wilson says he considers it quite successful, but Papa cannot yet see anything. The affair lasted precisely a quarter of an hour. It was not the simple operation of couching, Mr. C. described, but the more complicated one of extracting the cataract. Mr. Wilson entirely disapproves of couching. Papa displayed extraordinary patience and firmness. The surgeon seemed surprised. I was in the room all the time, as it was his wish that I should be there. Of course I neither spoke nor moved, till the thing was done, and then I felt that lest I said either to Papa or the surgeons, the better. Papa is now confined to his bed in a dark room, and is not to be stirred for four days. He is to speak and be spoken to as little as possible. I am greatly obliged to you for your latter, and your kind advice, which gave me extreme satisfaction, because I found I had arranged most things in accordance with it, and as your theory coincides with my practice, I feel assured the latter is right. I hope Mr. Wilson will soon allow me to dispense with the nurse. She is well enough, no doubt. But somewhat too obsequious, and not I should think to be much trusted, yet I was obliged to trust her in some things. Greatly was I amused by your account of blanks, flirtations, and yet something saddened also. I think nature intended him for something better than to fritter away his time in making a set of poor, unoccupied spinsters unhappy. The girls, unfortunately, are forced to care for him, and such as him, because while their minds are mostly unemployed, their sensations are all unworn and consequently fresh and green. And he, on the contrary, has had his fill of pleasure, and can with impunity make a mere pastime of other people's torments. This is an unfair state of things. The match is not equal. I only wish I had the power to infuse into the source of the persecuted a little of the quiet strength of pride, of the supporting consciousness of superiority, for they are superior to him because purer, of the fortifying resolve of firmness to bear the present and wake the end. Could all the virgin population of Blanc receive and retain these sentiments, he would continually have to feel his grasp before them. Perhaps luckily their feelings are not so acute as one would think, and the gentleman's shafts consequently don't wound so deeply as he might desire. I hope it is so. A few days later she rides thus. Papaya still lying in bed in a dark room with her eyes bandaged. No inflammation ensued, but still it appears the greatest care, perfect quiet, and utter privation of light are necessary to ensure good result from the operation. He is very patient, but of course depressed and wary. He was allowed to try his side for the first time yesterday. He could see dimly. Mr. Wilson seemed perfectly satisfied, and said all was right. I have had bad nights from the toothache since I came to Manchester. All this time notwithstanding the domestic anxieties, which were harassing them, notwithstanding the ill success of their poems, the three sisters were trying that other literary venture to which Charlotte made illusion in one of her letters to the messiah's ailet. Each of them had written a prose tale, hoping that the three might be published together, with the ring heights and Agnes Gray are before the world. The third, Charlotte's contribution, is yet in manuscript, but will be published shortly after the appearance of this memoir. The plot in itself is of no great interest, but it is a poor kind of interest that depends upon startling incidents rather than upon dramatic development of character, and Charlotte Bronte never excelled one or two sketches of portraits which he had given him the professor, nor in grace of womanhood, ever surpassed one of the female characters there described. By the time she wrote this tale, her taste and judgment had revolted against the exaggerated idealism of her early girlhood, and she went to the extreme of reality, closely depicting characters as they had shown themselves to her in actual life. If there they were strong even to caution us, as was the case with some that she had met with in flesh-and-blood existence, she wrote them down an airs. If the scenery of such life as she saw was for the most part wild and grotesque, instead of pleasant and picturesque, she described it light for line. The great of the one or two scenes in characters, which are drawn rather from her own imagination, than from absolute fact stand out an exquisite relief from the deep shadows and wayward lines of others, which call to mind some of the portraits of Rembrandt. The three tales had tried their fate and vain together, but length they were sent forth separately, and for many months was still continued ill-success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Jala 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. But she had the heart of Robert Bruce within her, and failure upon failure dawned at 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 depressed inquiritude, on those grey, wary, uniform streets, where all faces, save that of a kind doctor, were strange and untouched with sunlight to her. There and then did the brave genius begin J. Nair. Read what she herself says. Laura Bell's book found acceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgement of merit, so that something like the chill of despair began to invade his heart. And remember it was not the heart of a person who, disappointed in one hope, can turn with redoubled affection to the many certain blessings of that remain. Think of a home and the black shadows of remorse flying over one in it, till his very brain was amazed, and his gifts and his life were lost. Think of her father's side hanging on a thread, of her sister's delicate health and dependence on her care, and then admire, as it deserves to be admired, the steady courage which could work away at J. Nair all the time that a one-volume tale was plotting its wary round in London. I believe I have already mentioned, that some of her surviving friends consider that an incident which he heard when at school at Miss Woolers was a germ of the story of J. Nair. But of this nothing can be known except by conjecture. Those to whom she spoke upon the subject of her writings are dead and silent, and the reader may probably have noticed, that in the correspondence from which I have recorded, there has been no illusion, whatever, to the publication of her poems, nor is there the least hint of the intention of the sisters to publish any tales. I remember, however, many little particulars which Miss Bronte gave me, an answer to my inquiries respecting her mode of composition, etc. She said that it was not every day that she could ride. Sometimes weeks or even months elapsed before she felt, that she had anything to add to that portion of her story which was already written. Then some morning she would waken up, and the progress of her tale lay clear and bright before her, in distinct vision. When this was the case, all her care was to discharge her household and filial duties, so as to obtain leisure to sit down and write out the incidents and consequent thoughts which were, in fact, more present to her mind at such times, than erect her life itself. Yet, notwithstanding this possession, as it were, those who survive of her daily and household companions are clear, and their testimony, that never was a claim of any duty, never was a call of another for help neglected for an instant. It had become necessary to give Tabby, now nearly eighty years of age, the assistance of a girl. Tabby relinquished any of her work with jealous reluctance, and could not bear to be reminded, though ever so delicately, that the acuteness of her senses was dulled by age. The other servant might not interfere with what she chose to consider her exclusive work. Among other things, she reserved to herself the right of peeling the potatoes for dinner. But as she was growing blind, she often left in those black specks, which we in the North call the eyes of the potato. Miss Ronte was too dainty a housekeeper to put up with this, yet she could not bear to herd the faithful old servant by bidding the younger maiden go over the potato again, and so reminding Tabby that her work was less effectual than formerly. Suddenly she would steal into the kitchen and quietly carry off the bowel of vegetables, without Tabby's being aware, and breaking off the full flow of interest and inspiration in her writing. Carefully cut out the specks in the potatoes, and noiselessly carried them back to their place. This little proceeding may show how orderly and fully she accomplished her duties, even at those times when possession was upon her. Someone who has studied her writings, whether in print or in her letters, any one who has enjoyed the rare privilege of listening to her talk, must have noticed a singular felicity in the choice of words. She herself, in writing her books, was solicitous on this point. One set of words was a truthful mirror of her thoughts. No others, however apparently identical a meaning would do. She had that strong practical regard for the simple holy truth of expression which Mr. Trent has enforced as a duty too often neglected. She would wait patiently, searching for the right term until it presented itself to her. It might be provincial, it might be derived from the Latin, so that it accurately represented her idea. She did not mind whence it came. But this care makes a style present, the finish of a piece of music. Each component part, however small, has been dropped into its right place. She never wrote down a sentence, until she clearly understood what she wanted to say, had deliberately chosen the words, and arranged them in their right order. Hands it comes that, in the scraps of paper covered with her pencil writing which I have seen, there will occasionally be a sentence scored out but seldom if ever a word or an expression. She wrote them these bits of paper in a minute hand, holding each against a piece of board, such as is used in binding books for a desk. This plan was necessary for one so short-sighted as she was, and besides it enabled her to use pencil and paper, as she sat near the fire in the twilight hours, or if as was too often the case, she was wakeful for hours in the night. Her finished manuscripts were copied from these pencil scraps in clear, legible, delicate traced writing, almost as easy to read as print. The sisters retained the old habit, which was begun in the Rant's lifetime, of putting away their work at nine o'clock, and beginning their study, pacing up and down the sitting-room. At this time they talked over the stories they were engaged upon, and described their plots, one's or twice a week, each read to the others what she had written, and heard what they had to say about it. Charla told me that the remarks made had seldom any effect in inducing her to alter her work, so possessed was she with a 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 Charla determined to make her hair in plain, small and unattractive, in defiance of the accepted canon. The writer of the beautiful obituary article on The Death of Carabelle most likely learned from herself what is there stated, and which I will take the liberty of quoting, about Jane Eyre. She once told her sisters that they were wrong, even morally wrong, in making their hair in as beautiful as a matter of cause. They replied that it was impossible to make a hair in interesting on any other terms. Her answer was, I will prove to you that you are wrong. I will show you a hair in as plain and as small as myself, which I'll be as interesting as any of yours. Hence Jane Eyre, said she in telling the anecdote, but she is not myself any further than that. As the work went on, the interest deepened through the writer. When she came to Thornfield, she could not stop. Being short-sighted to excess, she wrote in little square paper books held close to her eyes, and the first copy in pencil. On she went riding incessantly for three weeks, by which time she had carried her heron away from Thornfield, and was herself in a fever which compelled her to pause. This is all, I believe, which can now be told respecting the conception and composition of this wonderful book, which was, however, only at its commencement, when Miss Bronte returned with her father to a house, after the ranchers' expedition to Manchester. They arrived at home about the end of September. Miss Bronte was daily gaining strength, but he was still forbidden to exercise his side much. Things had gone on more comfortably while she was away than Charlotte had dared to hope, and she expressed herself thankful for the good insured and the evil spared during her absence. Soon after this some proposal, of which I have not been able to gain a clear recant, was again mooted for Miss Bronte's opening a school at some place distant from Howarth. It elicited the following fragment of a characteristic reply. Leave home! I shall neither be able to find place nor employment. Perhaps, too, I shall be quite past the prime of life. My faculties will be rusted, and my few requirements in a great measure forgotten. These ideas sting me keenly sometimes, but whenever I consult my conscience, it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and bitter are its upradings when I yield to an eager desire for release. I could hardly expect success if I were to err against such warnings. I should like to hear from you again soon. Bring Blank to the point, and make him give you a clear, not a vague account of what pupils he really could promise. People often think they can do great things, and that way till they have tried. But getting pupils is unlike getting any other sort of goods. Whatever might be of the nature and extent of this negotiation. The end of it was that Charlotte adhered to the decision of her conscience, which bade her remain at home, as long as a present could cheer or comfort those who were in distress, or had the slightest influence over him who was the cause of it. The next extract gives us a glimpse into the cares of that home. It is from a letter dated December 15th. I hope you are not frozen up. The cold here is dreadful. I do not remember such a series of North Pole days. England might really have taken a slide up into the arctic zone. The sky looks like ice. The earth is frozen. The wind is as keen as a two-edged blade. We have all had severe colds and cuffs in consequence of the weather. Poor Anne has suffered greatly from asthma, but as now, we are glad to say, rather better. She had two nights last week when her cough and difficulty of breathing were painful indeed to hear and witness, and must have been most distressing to suffer. She bore it, as she bears all affliction without one complaint, only sighing now and then were nearly worn out. She has an extraordinary heroism of endurance. I admire, but I certainly could not imitate her. You say I am to tell you plenty. What would you have me say? Nothing happens at ours. Nothing at least of a pleasant kind. One little incident occurred about a week ago to sting us to life. But if it gives no more pleasure for you to hear, than it did for us to witness, you must scarcely thank me for averting to it. It was merely the arrival of a sheriff's officer on a visit to be, and fighting him either to pay his debts or take a trip to York. Of course, his debts had to be paid. It is not agreeable to lose money time after time in this way, but where is the use of dwelling on such subjects? It will make him no better. December 28. I feel as if it was almost too fast to sit down and write to you now, with nothing to say worth listening to, and indeed, if it were not for two reasons, I should put off the business at least a fourth night hence. The first reason is, I want another letter from you, for your letters are interesting, they have something in them, some results of experience and observation. One receives them with pleasure, and reads them with relish, and these letters I cannot expect to get unless I reply to them. I wish the correspondence could be managed, so as to be all on one side. The second reason is derived from a remark of your last, that you felt lonely, something as I was at Brussels, and that consequently you had peculiar desire to hear from all the acquaintance. I can understand and sympathize with this. I remember the shortest note was a treat to me when I was at the above-named place, therefore I am right. I have also a third reason. It is a haunting terror, lest you should imagine I forget you, that my regard cools with absence. It is not in my nature to forget your nature, though I dare say I should spit fire and explode sometimes if we live together continually, and you too would get angry, and then we should get reconciled and jog on as before. Do you ever get dissatisfied with your own temper when you are long fixed to one place, then one scene, subject to one monotonous species of annoyance? I do. I am now in that unenviable frame of mind. My humour, I think, is too soon over, thrown, too sore, too demonstrative and vehement. I almost long for some of the uniform serenity you describe in Mrs. Blanks's disposition, or at least I would feign have her power of self-control and concealment, but I would not take her artificial habits and ideas along with the composure. After all, I should prefer being as I am. You do right not to be annoyed at any magazines of conventionality you meet with, regard all new ways and the light of fresh experience for you, if you see any honey gather it. I don't, after all, consider that you ought to despise everything we see in the world, merely because it is not what you are accustomed to. I suspect, on the contrary, that there are not infrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd, and if I were ever again to find myself among strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned. Indiscriminating irony and thought-finding are just some freshness, and that is all. Anne is now much better, but papa has been for near a fortnight far from well with the influenza. He has at times a most distressing cough, and the spirits are much depressed. So, and at the year 1846. CHAPTER II The next year opened with a spell of cold dreary weather, which told severely on a constitution already tried by anxiety and care. Miss Bronte describes herself as having utterly lost her appetite and as looking gray, old, worn, and sunk from her sufferings during the inclement season. The cold brought on severe toothache. Toothache was the cause of a succession of restless miserable nights, and long wakefulness tolled acutely upon her nerves, making them feel with redoubled sensitiveness all the harras of her oppressive life. Yet she would not allow herself to lay her bad health to the charge of an uneasy mind. For, after all, said she at this time, I have many, many things to be thankful for. But the real state of things may be gathered from the following extracts from her letters. March 1st Even at the risk of appearing very exacting, I can't help saying that I should like a letter as long as your last every time you write. Short notes give one the feeling of a very small piece of a very good thing to eat. They set the appetite on edge and don't satisfy it. A letter leaves you more contented, and yet, after all, I am very glad to get notes. So don't think when you are pinched for time and materials that it is useless to write a few lines. Be assured, a few lines are very acceptable as far as they go, and though I like long letters, I would by no means have you to make a task of writing them. I really should like you to come to Haworth before I go again to be, and it is natural and right that I should have this wish. To keep friendship in proper order, the balance of good offices must be preserved, otherwise a disquieting and anxious feeling creeps in and destroys mutual comfort. In summer and in fine weather your visit here might be much better managed than in winter. We could go out more, be more independent of the house and of our room. Branwell has been conducting himself very badly lately. I expect, from the extravagance of his behaviour and from mysterious hints he drops, for he never will speak out plainly, that we shall be hearing news of fresh debts contracted by him soon. My health is better. I lay the blame of its feebleness on the cold weather, more than on an uneasy mind. March 24, 1847 It is at Haworth, if all be well, that we must next see each other again. I owe you a grudge for giving Miss M some very exaggerated account about my not being well, and setting her on to urge my leaving home as quite a duty. I'll take care not to tell you next time when I think I am looking specially old and ugly, as if people could not have that privilege without being supposed to be at the last gasp. I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone, like a dream, and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little. The quiet sad year stole on. The sisters were contemplating near at hand and for a long time the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused, in the person of that brother, once their fond darling and dearest pride. They had to cheer the poor old father into whose heart all trials sank the deeper, because of the silent stoicism of his endurance. They had to watch over his health, of which, whatever was its state, he seldom complained. They had to save, as much as they could, the precious remnants of his sight. They had to order the frugal household with increased care, so as to supply wants and expenditure utterly foreign to their self-denying natures. Though they shrank from over much contact with their fellow-beings, for all whom they met, they had kind words, if few, and when kind actions were needed they were not spared if the sisters of the parsonage could render them. They visited the parish schools duly, and often were Charlotte's rare and brief holidays of a visit from home, shortened by her sense of the necessity of being in her place at the Sunday school. In the intervals of such a life as this Jane Eyre was making progress. The professor was passing slowly and heavily from publisher to publisher. Wuthering Heights and Agnes Gray had been accepted by another publisher on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors, a bargain to be alluded to more fully hereafter. It was lying in his hands awaiting his pleasure for its passage through the press during all the months of early summer. The piece of external brightness to which the sisters looked during these same summer months was the hope that the friend to whom so many of Charlotte's letters are addressed, and who was her chosen companion, whenever circumstances permitted them to be together, as well as a favorite with Emily and Anne, would be able to pay them a visit at Haworth. Fine weather had come in May, Charlotte writes, and they hoped to make their visitor decently comfortable. Their brother was tolerably well having got to the end of a considerable sum of money which he became possessed of in the spring, and therefore under the wholesome restriction of poverty. But Charlotte warns her friend that she must expect to find a change in his appearance, and that he is broken in mind, and ends her note of entreating invitation by saying, I pray for fine weather that we may get out while you stay. At length the day was fixed. Friday will suit us very well. I do trust nothing will now arise to prevent your coming. I shall be anxious about the weather on that day. If it rains I shall cry. Don't expect me to meet you. Where would be the good of it? I neither like to meet nor to be met. Unless indeed you had a box or a basket for me to carry, then there would be some sense in it. Come in black, blue, pink, white or scarlet as you like. Come shabby or smart. Neither the color nor the condition signifies provided only the dress contains E. All will be right. But there came the first of a series of disappointments to be born. One feels how sharp it must have been to have wrung out the following words. May 20. Your letter of yesterday did indeed give me a cruel chill of disappointment. I cannot blame you, for I know it was not your fault. I do not altogether exempt blank from reproach. This is bitter, but I feel bitter. As to going to be, I will not go near the place till you have been to Haworth. My respects to all and Sundry, accompanied with a large amount of warm wood and gall from the effusion of which you and your mother are alone, accepted. C. B. You are quite at liberty to tell what I think if you judge proper. Though it is true I may be somewhat unjust for I am deeply annoyed. I thought I had arranged your visit tolerably comfortable for you this time. I may find it more difficult on another occasion. I must give one sentence for a letter written about this time, as it shows distinctly the clear strong sense of the writer. I was amused by what she says respecting her wish that when she marries her husband will at least have a will of his own, even should he be a tyrant. Tell her, when she forms that aspiration again, she must make it conditional if her husband has a strong will he must also have strong sense, a kind heart, and a thoroughly correct notion of justice, because a man with a weak brain and a strong will is merely an intractable brute. You can have no hold of him, you can never lead him right. A tyrant under any circumstances is a curse. Meanwhile the professor had met with many refusals from different publishers. Some I have reason to believe not over-curtiously worded in writing to an unknown author, and none alleging any distinct reasons for its rejection. Courtesy is always due, but it is perhaps hardly to be expected that, in the press of business in a great publishing house, they should find time to explain why they decline particular works. Yet, though one course of action is not to be wondered at, the opposite may fall upon a grieved and disappointed mind with all the graciousness of due, and I can well sympathize with the published account which Currer Bell gives of the feelings experienced on reading Messer's Smith and Elder's letter containing the rejection of the professor. As a forlorn hope we tried one publishing house more, ere long in a much shorter space than that on which experience had taught him to calculate, there came a letter, which he opened in the dreary anticipation of finding two hard hopeless lines intimating that Messer's Smith and Elder were not disposed to publish the manuscript, and instead he took out of the envelope a letter of two pages he read it trembling. It declined, indeed, to publish that tale for business reasons, but it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, so considerably, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention. Mr. Smith has told me a little circumstance connected with the reception of this manuscript, which seems to me indicative of no ordinary character. It came, accompanied by the note given below, in a brown paper parcel to sixty-five Cornhill. Besides the address to Messer's Smith and Company, there were on it those of other publishers to whom the tale had been sent, not obliterated but simply scored through, so that Messer's Smith at once perceived the names of some of the houses in the trade to which the unlucky parcel had gone without success. To Messer's Smith and Elder, July 15, 1847 Gentlemen, I beg to submit to your consideration the accompanying manuscript. I should be glad to learn whether it be such as you approve, and would undertake to publish at as early a period as possible. Address Mr. Kerrer Bell, under cover to Miss Bronte, Howard Bradford, Yorkshire Some time elapsed before an answer was returned. A little circumstance might be mentioned here, though it belongs to a somewhat earlier period, as showing Miss Bronte's inexperience of the ways of the world and willing deference to the opinion of others. She had written to a publisher about one of her manuscripts which she had sent him, and, not receiving any reply, she consulted her brother as to what could be the reason for the prolonged silence. He at once set it down to her not having enclosed a postage stamp in her letter. She accordingly wrote a game to repair her former omission and apologize for it. To Messer's Smith and Elder, August 2, 1847 Gentlemen, about three weeks since I sent for your consideration a manuscript entitled The Professor, a Tale by Kerrer Bell. I should be glad to know whether it reached your hand safely and likewise to learn at your earliest convenience whether it be such as you can undertake to publish. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, Kerrer Bell. I enclose a directed cover for your reply. This time her note met with a prompt answer. For four days later she writes, in reply to the letter which she afterwards characterized in the preface to the second edition of Weathering Heights, as containing a refusal so delicate reasonable and courteous as to be more cheering than some acceptances. Your objection to the want of varied interest in the tale is, I am aware, not without grounds. Yet it appears to me that it might be published without serious risk if its appearance were speedily followed up by another work from the same pen of a more striking and exciting character. The first work might serve as an introduction and a custom the public to the author's name. The success of the second might thereby be rendered more probable. I have a second narrative in three volumes now in progress and nearly completed to which I have endeavored to impart a more vivid interest than belongs to the Professor. In about a month I hope to finish it so that if a publisher were found for the Professor the second narrative might follow as soon as was deemed advisable and thus the interest of the public, if any interest was aroused, might not be suffered to cool. Will you be kind enough to favor me with your judgment on this plan? While the minds of the three sisters were in this state of suspense, their long-expected friend came to pay her promised visit. She was with them at the beginning of the glowing August of that year. They were out on the moors for the greater part of the day, basking in the golden sunshine, which was bringing on an unusual plenteousness of harvest, for which, somewhat later, Charlotte expressed her earnest desire that there should be a thanksgiving service in all the churches. August was the season of glory for the neighborhood of Haworth. Even the smoke lying in the valley between that village and Keithley took beauty from the radiant colors on the moors above, the rich purple of the heather bloom calling out an harmonious contrast in the tawny golden light that, in the full heat of summer evenings, comes stealing everywhere through the done atmosphere of the hollows. And up on the moors, turning away from all habitations of men, the royal ground on which they stood would expand into long swells of amethyst-tinted hills, melting away into aerial tints and the fresh and fragrant scent of the heather and the murmur of innumerable bees would lend a poignancy to the relish with which they welcomed their friend to their own true home on the wild and open hills. There, too, they could escape from the shadow in the house below. Throughout this time, during all these confidences, not a word was uttered to their friend of the three tales in London, too accepted and in the press, one trembling in the balance of a publisher's judgment, nor did she hear of that other story nearly completed, lying in manuscript in the gray old parsonage down below. She might have her suspicions that they all wrote with an intention of publication some time, but she knew the bounds which they set to themselves in their communications. Nor could she nor can any one else wonder at their reticence when remembering how scheme after scheme had failed just as it seemed close upon accomplishment. Mr. Bronte, too, had his suspicions of something going on, but, never being spoken to, he did not speak on the subject, and consequently his ideas were vague and uncertain, only just prophetic enough to keep him from being actually stunned when, later on, he heard of the success of Jane Eyre to the progress of which we must now return. Two Messages, Smith and Elder, August 24. I now send you, per rail, a manuscript entitled Jane Eyre, a novel in three volumes by Kerr Bell. I find I cannot prepay the carriage of the parcel as money for that purpose is not received at the small station house where it is left. If, when you acknowledged the receipt of the manuscript, you would have the goodness to mention the amount charged on delivery, I will immediately transmit it in postage stamps. It is better in future to address Mr. Kerr Bell undercover to Miss Bronte, Haworth, Bradford, Yorkshire, as there is a risk of letters otherwise directed, not reaching me at present, to save trouble I enclose an envelope. Jane Eyre was accepted and printed and published by October 16. While it was in the press, Miss Bronte went to pay a short visit to her friend at B. The proofs were forwarded to her there, and she occasionally sat at the same table with her friend, correcting them, but they did not exchange a word on the subject. Immediately on her return to the parsonage, she wrote, September I had a very wet, windy walk home from Keithley, but my fatigue quite disappeared when I reached home and found all well, thank God for it. My boxes came safe this morning, I have distributed the presents. Papa says I am to remember him most kindly to you, the screen will be very useful and he thanks you for it. Tabby was charmed with her cap. She said she never thought of not a to-sort as mis-sending her ought, and she is sure she can never thank her enough for it. I was infuriated on finding a jar in my trunk. At first I hoped it was empty, but when I found it heavy and replete I could have hurled it all the way back to B. However, the inscription A B softened me much. It was at once kind and villainous in you to send it. You ought first to be tenderly kissed, and then afterwards as tenderly whipped. Emily is just now on the floor of the bedroom where I am writing, looking at her apples. She smiled when I gave the collar to her as your present, with an expression at once well pleased and slightly surprised. All send their love, yours in a mixture of anger and love. When the manuscript of Jane Eyre had been received by the future publishers of that remarkable novel, it fell to the share of a gentleman connected with the firm to read it first. He was so powerfully struck by the character of the tale that he reported his impression in very strong terms to Mr. Smith, who appears to have been much amused by the admiration excited. You seem to have been so enchanted that I do not know how to believe you, he laughingly said. But when the second reader, in the person of a clear-headed scotchman, not given to enthusiasm, had taken the manuscript home in the evening and became so deeply interested in it as to sit up half the night to finish it, Mr. Smith's curiosity was sufficiently excited to prompt him to read it for himself, and great as were the praises which had been bestowed upon it, he found that they had not exceeded the truth. On its publication copies were presented to a few private literary friends. Their discernment had been rightly reckoned upon. They were of considerable standing in the world of letters, and one and all returned expressions of high praise along with their thanks for the book. Among them was the great writer of fiction for whom Miss Beranti felt so strong an admiration, he immediately appreciated and, in a characteristic note to the publishers, acknowledged its extraordinary merits. The reviews were more tardy or more cautious. The Athenium and the Spectator gave short notices, containing qualified admissions of the power of the author. The literary gazette was uncertain as to whether it was safe to praise an unknown author. The Daily News declined accepting the copy which had been sent on the score of a rule never to review novels, but a little later on there appeared a notice of the bachelor of the Albany in that paper, and Messers Smith and Elder again forwarded a copy of Jane Eyre to the editor with a request for a notice. This time the work was accepted, but I am not aware what was the character of the article upon it. The examiner came forward to the rescue, as far as the opinions of professional critics were concerned. The literary articles in that paper were always remarkable for their genial and generous appreciation of merit. Nor was the notice of Jane Eyre an exception. It was full of hearty, yet delicate, and discriminating praise. Otherwise the press in general did little to promote the sale of the novel. The demand for it among librarians had begun before the appearance of the review in the examiner. The power of fascination of the tale itself made its merits known to the public, without the kindly finger-posts of professional criticism, and early in December the rush began for copies. I will insert two or three of Miss Beranti's letters to her publishers in order to show how timidly the idea of success was received by one so unaccustomed to adopt a sanguine view of any subject in which she was individually concerned. The occasions on which these notes were written will explain themselves. October 19, 1847 Gentlemen, the six copies of Jane Eyre reached me this morning. You have given the work every advantage which good paper, clear type, and a seemly outside can supply. If it fails, the fault will lie with the author. You are exempt. I now await the judgment of the press and the public. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, C. Bell. Messrs. Smith Elder and Company, October 26, 1847 Gentlemen, I have received the newspapers. They speak quite as favorably of Jane Eyre as I expected them to do. The notice in the literary gazette seems certainly to have been indicted in rather a flat mood, and the Athenium has a style of its own which I respect but cannot exactly relish. Still, when one considers that journals of that standing have a dignity to maintain, which would be deranged by too cordial recognition of the claims of an obscure author, I suppose there is every reason to be satisfied. Meantime, a brisk sale would be effectual support under the auteur of lofty critics. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, C. Bell. Messrs. Smith Elder and Company, November 13, 1847 Gentlemen, I have to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the eleventh of this month, and to thank you for the information it communicates. The notice from the People's Journal also duly reached me, and this morning I received the spectator. The critique in the spectator gives that view of the book which will naturally be taken by a certain class of minds. I shall expect it to be followed by other notices of a similar nature. The way to detraction has been pointed out and will probably be pursued. Most future notices will in all likelihood have a reflection of the spectator in them. I fear this turn of opinion will not improve the demand for the book, but time will show. If Jane Eyre has any solid worth in it, it ought to weather a gust of unfavorable wind. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, C. Bell. Messrs. Smith Elder and Company, November 30, 1847 Gentlemen, I have received the economist, but not the examiner, from some cause that paper has missed, as the spectator did on a former occasion. I am glad, however, to learn through your letter that its notice of Jane Eyre was favorable, and also that the prospects of the work appear to improve. I am obliged to you for the information respecting weathering heights. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, C. Bell. To Messrs. Smith Elder and Company, December 1, 1847 Gentlemen, the examiner reached me today. It had been missent on account of the direction which was to Kerr-Rubel, care of Miss Bronte. Allow me to intimate that it would be better in future not to put the name of Kerr-Rubel on the outside of communications. If directed simply to Miss Bronte, they will be more likely to reach their destination safely. Kerr-Rubel is not known in the district, and I have no wish that he should become known. The notice in the examiner gratified me very much. It appears to be from the pen of an able man who has understood what he undertakes to criticize. Of course, approbation from such a quarter is encouraging to an author, and I trust it will prove beneficial to the work. I am, gentlemen, yours respectfully, C. Bell. I received likewise seven other notices from provincial papers enclosed in an envelope. I thank you very sincerely for so punctually sending me all the various criticisms on Jane Eyre. To Messrs. Smith Elder and Company, December 10, 1847 Gentlemen, I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter in closing a bank post-bill, for which I thank you. Having already expressed my sense of your kind and upright conduct, I can now only say that I trust you will always have reason to be as well content with me as I am with you. If the result of any future exertions I may be able to make should prove agreeable and advantageous to you, I shall be well satisfied, and it would be a serious source of regret to me if I thought you ever had reason to repent being my publishers. You need not apologize, gentlemen, for having written to me so seldom. Of course, I am always glad to hear from you, but I am truly glad to hear from Mr. Williams likewise. He was my first favourable critic. He first gave me encouragement to persevere as an author. Consequently, I naturally respect him and feel grateful to him. Excuse the informality of my letter, and to believe me, gentlemen, yours respectfully. Kerr Bell. There is little record remaining of the manner in which the first news of its wonderful success reached and affected the one heart of the three sisters. I once asked Charlotte we were talking about the description of Lowood's school, and she was saying she was not sure whether she should have written it if she had been aware how instantaneously it would have been identified with Cowan Bridge, whether the popularity to which the novel attained had taken her by surprise. She hesitated a little and then said, I believed that what had impressed me so forcibly when I wrote it must make a strong impression on anyone who read it. I was not surprised at those who read Jane Eyre being deeply interested in it, but I hardly expected that a book by an unknown author could find readers. The sisters had kept the knowledge of their literary ventures from their father, fearing to increase their own anxieties and disappointment by witnessing his. For he took an acute interest in all that befell his children, and his own tendency had been towards literature in the days when he was young and hopeful. It was true that he did not much manifest his feelings in words. He would have thought that he was prepared for disappointment as the lot of man, and that he could have met it with stoicism. But words are poor and tardy interpreters of feelings to those who love one another, and his daughters knew how he would have borne ill success worse for them than for himself. So they did not tell him what they were undertaking. He says now that he suspected it all along, but his suspicions could take no exact form, as all he was certain of was that his children were perpetually writing and not writing letters. We have seen how the communications from their publishers were received under cover to Miss Bronte. Once Charlotte told me they overheard the postman meeting Mr. Bronte as the latter was leaving the house and inquiring from the parson where one curr bell could be living, to which Mr. Bronte replied that there was no such person in the parish. This must have been the misadventure to which Miss Bronte alludes in the beginning of her correspondence with Mr. Eilat. 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 between her and him. I wrote down her words the day after I heard them, and I am pretty sure they are quite accurate. Papa, I have 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 just 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 into tea he said, girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is much better than likely. But while the existence of Kerr Bell, the author, was like a piece of a dream to the quiet inhabitants of Haworth Parsonage, who went on with their uniform household life, their cares for their brother being its only variety, the whole reading world of England was in a ferment to discover the unknown author. Even the publishers of Jane Eyre were ignorant whether Kerr Bell was a real or an assumed name, whether it belonged to a man or a woman. In every town people sought out the list of their friends and acquaintances and turned away in disappointment. No one they knew had genius enough to be the author. Every little incident mentioned in the book was turned this way and that to answer if possible the much vexed question of sex, all in vain. People were content to relax their exertions to satisfy their curiosity and simply to sit down and greatly admire. I am not going to write an analysis of a book with which everyone who reads this biography is sure to be acquainted, much less a criticism upon a work which the great flood of public opinion has lifted up from the obscurity in which it first appeared and laid high and safe on the everlasting hills of fame. Before me lies a packet of extracts from newspapers and periodicals which Mr. Bronte has sent me. It is touching to look them over and see how there is hardly any notice however short and clumsily worded in any obscure provincial paper, but what has been cut out and carefully ticketed with its date by the poor bereaved father, so proud when he first read them, so desolate now. For one and all are full of praise of this great unknown genius which suddenly appeared amongst us. Conjecture as to the authorship ran about like wildfire. People in London smooth and polished as the Athenians of old and like them, spending their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing, were astonished and delighted to find that a fresh sensation, a new pleasure, was in reserve for them in the uprising of an author capable of depicting with accurate and titanic power the strong, self-reliant, racy and individual characters which were not after all extinct species but lingered still in existence in the North. They thought that there was some exaggeration mixed with the peculiar force of delineation. Those nearer to the spot where the scene of the story was apparently laid were sure from the very truth and accuracy of the writing that the writer was no Sutheran. For though dark and cold and rugged is the North, the old strength of the Scandinavian races yet abides there and glowed out in every character depicted in Jane Eyre. Farther than this, curiosity, both honourable and dishonourable, was at fault. When the second edition appeared in the January of the following year with the dedication to Mr. Thackeray, people looked at each other and wondered afresh. But Kerr Bell knew no more of William Makepeace Thackeray as an individual man of his life, age, fortunes or circumstances than she did of those of Mr. Michelangelo Titmarsh. The one had placed his name as author upon the title page of Vanity Fair the other had not. She was thankful for the opportunity of expressing her high admiration of a writer whom, as she says, she regarded as the social regenerator of his day, as the very master of that working core who would restore to rectitude the warped state of things. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius, that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Anne Bronte had been more than usually delicate all the summer and her sensitive spirit had been deeply affected by the great anxiety of her home. But now that Jane Eyre gave such indications of success, Charlotte began to plan schemes of future pleasure. Perhaps relaxation from care would be the more correct expression for their darling younger sister, the little one of the household. But, though Anne was cheered for a time by Charlotte's success, the fact was that neither her spirits nor her bodily strength were such as to incline her to much active exertion, and she led far too sedentary a life continually stooping either over her book or work or at her death. It is with difficulty, writes her sister, that we can prevail upon her to take a walk or induce her to converse. I look forward to next summer with the confident intention that she shall, if possible, make at least a brief sojourn at the seaside. In this same letter is a sentence telling how dearly home, even with its present terrible drawback, lay at the roots of her heart. But it is too much blended with reference to the affairs of others to bear quotation. Any author of a successful novel is liable to an in-road of letters from unknown readers containing commendation, sometimes of so fulsome and indiscriminating a character as to remind the recipient of Dr. Johnson's famous speech to one who offered presumptuous and injudicious praise, sometimes saying merely a few words which have power to stir the heart as with the sound of a trumpet, and in the high humility they excite to call forth strong resolutions to make all future efforts worthy of such praise, and occasionally containing that true appreciation of both merits and demerits, together with the sources of each, which forms the very criticism and help for which an inexperienced writer thirsts. Of each of these kinds of communication Curr-Rabelle received her full share, and her warm heart and true sense and high standard of what she aimed at affixed to each its true value. Among other letters of hers some to Mr. G. H. Lewis have been kindly placed by him at my service, and as I know Miss Bronte highly prized his letters of encouragement and advice, I shall give extracts from her replies as their dates occur, because they will indicate the kind of criticism she valued, and also because throughout, in anger, as in agreement and harmony, they show her character unblinded by any self-flattery, full of clear-sighted modesty as to what she really did well and what she failed in, grateful for friendly interest, and only sore and irritable when the question of sex in authorship was, as she thought, roughly or unfairly treated. As to the rest, the letters speak for themselves, to those who know how to listen, far better than I can interpret their meaning into my poorer and weaker words. Mr. Lewis has politely sent me the following explanation of that letter of his to which the succeeding one of Miss Bronte is a reply. When Jane Eyre first appeared the publishers courteously sent me a copy, the enthusiasm with which I read it made me go down to Mr. Parker and propose to write a review of it for Fraser's magazine. He would not consent to an unknown novel, for the papers had not yet declared themselves, receiving such importance, but thought it might make one on recent novels English and French, which appeared in Fraser December 1847. Meanwhile I had written to Miss Bronte to tell her the delight with which her book filled me, and seemed to have sermonized her to judge from her reply. To G. H. Lewis, Esquire, November 6, 1847. Dear sir, your letter reached me yesterday. I beg to assure you that I appreciate fully the intention with which it was written, and I thank you sincerely both for its cheering commendation and valuable advice. You warned me to beware of melodrama, and you exhort me to adhere to the real. When I first began to write, so impressed was I with the truth of the principles you advocate, that I determined to take nature and truth as my sole guides, and to follow in their very footprints. I restrained imagination, eschewed romance, repressed excitement, overbright coloring too I avoided, and sought to produce something which should be soft, grave, and true. My work, a tale in one volume being completed, I offered it to a publisher. He said it was original, faithful to nature, but he did not feel warranted in accepting it. Such a work would not sell. I tried six publishers in succession. They all told me it was deficient in startling incident and thrilling excitement, that it would never suit the circulating libraries, and as it was on those libraries the success of works of fiction mainly depended, they could not undertake to publish what would be overlooked there. Jane Eyre was rather objected to it first on the same grounds, but finally found acceptance. I mentioned this to you, not with a view of pleading exemption from censure, but in order to direct your attention to the root of certain literary evils. If in your forthcoming article in Fraser you would bestow a few words of enlightenment on the public who support the circulating libraries, you might, with your powers, do some good. You advised me too not to stray far from the ground of experience, as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction, and you say real experience is perennially interesting and to all men. I feel that this also is true, but, dear sir, is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong restless faculty which claims to be heard and exercised. Are we to be quite deaf to her cry and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent and speaks wraparably and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation? I shall anxiously search the next number of phraser for your opinions on these points. Believe me, dear sir, yours gratefully, C. Bell. But while gratified by appreciation as an author, she was cautious as to the person from whom she received it, for much of the value of the praise depended on the sincerity and capability of the person rendering it. Accordingly, she applied to Mr. Williams, a gentleman connected with her publisher's firm, for information as to who and what Mr. Lewis was. Her reply, after she had learned something of the character of her future critic and while awaiting his criticism, must not be omitted. Besides the reference to him, it contains some amusing allusions to the perplexity which began to be excited respecting the identity of the brother's bell, and some notice of the conduct of another publisher towards her sister, which I refrain from characterizing because I understand that truth is considered a libel in speaking of such people. I have received the Britannia and the sun, but not the spectator, which I rather regret, as censure, though not pleasant, is often wholesome. Thank you for your information regarding Mr. Lewis. I am glad to hear that he is a clever and sincere man. Such being the case, I can await his critical sentence with fortitude, even if it goes against me, I shall not murmur. Ability and honesty have a right to condemn, where they think condemnation is deserved. From what you say, however, I trust rather to obtain at least a modified approval. Your account of the various surmises respecting the identity of the brother's bell amused me much. Worthy enigma solved, it would probably be found not worth the trouble of solution, but I will let it alone. It suits ourselves to remain quiet and certainly injures no one else. The reviewer who noticed the little book of poems in the Dublin magazine conjectured that the Swatheysant three personages were in reality but one who, endowed with an unduly prominent organ of self-esteem, and consequently impressed with a somewhat weighty notion of his own merits, thought them too vast to be concentrated in a single individual, and accordingly divided himself into three, out of consideration, I suppose, for the nerves of the much-to-be-astounded public. This was an ingenious thought in the reviewer, very original and striking, but not accurate. We are three. A prose work by Ellis and Acton will soon appear. It should have been out indeed long since, for the first proof sheets were already in the press at the commencement of last August, before Kerr Bell had placed the manuscript of Jane Eyre in your hands. Mr. Blank, however, does not do business like Messys Smith and Elder. A different spirit seems to reside at Blank Street, to that which guides the helm at 65 Cornhill. My relations have suffered from exhausting delay and procrastination, while I have to acknowledge the benefits of a management at once businesslike and gentlemanlike, energetic and considerate. I should like to know if Mr. Blank often acts as he has done to my relations, or whether this is an exceptional instance of his method. Do you know, and can you tell me anything about him? You must excuse me for going to the point at once when I want to learn anything. If my questions are important, you are, of course, at liberty to decline answering them. I am, yours respectfully, C. Bell. To G. H. Lewis, Esquire, November 22nd, 1847 Dear sir, I have now read Ranthorpe. I could not get it till a day or two ago, but I have got it and read it at last, and in reading Ranthorpe I have read a new book, not a reprint, not a reflection of any other book, but a new book. I did not know such books were written now. It is very different to any of the popular works of fiction. It fills the mind with fresh knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the readers, and, to an author at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual. I await your criticism on Jane Eyre now with other sentiments than I entertained before the perusal of Ranthorpe. You were a stranger to me. I did not particularly respect you. I did not feel that your praise or blame would have any special weight. I knew little of your right to condemn or approve. Now I am informed on these points. You will be severe, your last letter taught me as much. Well, I shall try to extract good out of your severity. And besides, though I am now sure you are a just discriminating man, yet, being mortal, you must be fallible. And if any part of your censure galls me too keenly to the quick, gives me deadly pain, I shall for the present disbelieve it and put it quite aside, till such time as I feel able to receive it without torture. I am, dear sir, yours very respectfully, C. Bell. In December, 1847, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Gray appeared. The first named of these stories has revolted many readers by the power with which wicked and exceptional characters are depicted. Others again have felt the attraction of remarkable genius, even when displayed on grim and terrible criminals. Miss Bronte herself says with regard to this tale, where delineation of human character is concerned, the case is different. I am bound to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived than a nun has of the country people that pass her consent gates. My sister's disposition was not naturally gregarious. Circumstances favored and fostered her tendency to seclusion, except to go to church, or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though the feeling for the people around her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought, nor with very few exceptions ever experienced, and yet she knew them, knew their ways, their language, and their family histories. She could hear of them with interest and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate, but with them she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued that what her mind has gathered of the real concerning them was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more somber than sunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catherine. Having formed these beings she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of nature so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen, if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night and disturbed mental peace by day, Ella Spell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation. Had she but lived, her mind would of itself have grown like a strong tree, loftier, straighter, wider spreading, and its matured fruits would have attained a mellower ripeness and sunnier bloom. But on that mind time and experience alone could work. To the influence of other intellects she was not amenable. Whether justly or unjustly the productions of the two younger misbronties were not received with much favour at the time of their publication. Critics failed to do them justice. The immature but very real powers revealed in Wuthering Heights were scarcely recognized. Its import and nature were misunderstood. The identity of its author was misrepresented. It was said that this was an earlier and ruder attempt of the same pen which had produced Jane Eyre. Unjust and grievous error, we laughed at it at first, but I deeply lamented now. Henceforward Charlotte Bronte's existence becomes divided into two parallel currents. Her life as Kerr or Bell, the author, her life as Charlotte Bronte, the woman. There were separate duties belonging to each character, not to posing each other, not impossible, but difficult to be reconciled. When a man becomes an author it is probably merely a change of employment to him. He takes a portion of that time which has hitherto been devoted to some other study or pursuit. He gives up something of the legal or medical profession in which she has hitherto endeavored to serve others, or relinquishes part of the trade or business by which she has been striving to gain a livelihood, and another merchant or lawyer or doctor steps into his vacant place and probably does as well as he. But no other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the wife, or the mother, as well as she whom God has appointed to fill that particular place. A woman's principal work in life is hardly left to her own choice. Nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her as an individual for the exercise of the most splendid talents to wherever bestowed, and yet she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact of her possessing such talents. She must not hide her gift in a napkin. It was meant for the use and service of others. In a humble and faithful spirit must she labor to do what is not impossible, or God would not have set her to do it. I put into words what Charlotte Bronte put into actions. The year 1848 opened with sad domestic distress. It is necessary, however painful, to remind the reader constantly of what was always present to the hearts of father and sisters at this time. It is well that the thoughtless critics who spoke of the sad and gloomy views of life presented by the Bronte's in their tales should know how such words were wrung out of them by the living recollection of the long agony they suffered. It is well, too, that they who have objected to the representation of coarseness and shrank from it with repugnance, as if such conceptions arose out of the writers, should learn that not from the imagination, not from internal conception, but from the hard, cruel facts pressed down by external life upon their very senses for long months and years together did they write out what they saw, obeying the stern dictates of their consciences. They might be mistaken. They might err in writing at all when their affections were so great that they could not write otherwise than they did of life. It is possible that it would have been better to have described only good and pleasant people doing only good and pleasant things, in which case they could hardly have written at any time. All I say is that never, I believe, did women possessed of such wonderful gifts exercise them with a fuller feeling of responsibility for their use. As to mistakes, they stand now as authors as well as women before the judgment seat of God. January 11, 1848 We have not been very comfortable here at home lately. Branwell has, by some means, contrived to get more money from the old quarter and has led us a sad life. Papa is harassed day and night. We have little peace. He is always sick. Has two or three times fallen down in fits. What will be the ultimate end, God knows. But who is without their drawback, their scourge? Their skeleton behind the curtain. It remains only to do one's best and endure with patience what God sends. I suppose that she had read Mr. Lewis's review on recent novels when it appeared in the December of the last year, but I find no illusion to it till she writes to him on January 12, 1848. Dear sir, I thank you then sincerely for your generous review, and it is with the sense of double content I express my gratitude, because I am now sure the tribute is not superfluous or obtrusive. You were not severe on Jane Eyre. You were very lenient. I am glad you told me my faults plainly in private, for in your public notice you touch on them so lightly I should perhaps have passed them over thus indicated, with too little reflection. I mean to observe your warning about being careful how I undertake new works. My stock of materials is not abundant but very slender, and besides neither my experience, my acquirements nor my powers are sufficiently varied to justify my ever becoming a frequent writer. I tell you this because your article in Fraser left in me an uneasy impression that you were disposed to think better of the author of Jane Eyre than that individual deserved, and I would rather you had a correct than a flattering opinion of me, even though I should never see you. If I ever do write another book, I think I will have nothing of what you call melodrama. I think so, but I am not sure. I think, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen's mild eyes, to finish more and be more subdued, but neither am I sure of that. When authors write best, or at least when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master, which will have its own way, putting out a view all behests but its own, dictating certain words and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature, new molding characters giving unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we, indeed, counteract it? I am glad that another work of yours will soon appear. Most curious shall I be to see whether you will write up to your own principles and work out your own theories. You did not do it all together in Rand Thorpe, at least not in the latter part, but the first portion was, I think, nearly without fault. Then it had a pith, truth, significance in it, which gave the book sterling value, but to write so one must have seen and known a great deal, and I have seen and known very little. Why do you like Miss Austin so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones than any of the Waverly novels? I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate, deguero-typed portrait of a commonplace face, a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers, but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny back. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk. Now I can understand admiration of George's sand, for though I never saw any of her works which I admired throughout, even Consuelo, which is the best, or the best that I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence. Yet she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect. She is sagacious and profound. Miss Austin is only shrewd and observant. Am I wrong, or were you hasty in what you said? If you have time, I should be glad to hear further on this subject. If not, or if you think the question is frivolous, do not trouble yourself to reply. I am, yours respectfully, C. Bell. To G. H. Lewis Esquire, January 18, 1848 Dear sir, I must write one more note, though I had not intended to trouble you again so soon. I have to agree with you and to differ from you. You correct my crude remarks on the subject of the influence. Well, I accept your definition of what the effects of that influence should be. I recognize the wisdom of your rules for its regulation. What a strange lecture comes next in your letter. You say I must familiarize my mind with the fact that Miss Austin is not a poetess, has no sentiment, you scornfully enclose the word in inverted commas. No eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasm of poetry, and then you add I must learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ever lived. The last point only will I ever acknowledge. Can there be a great artist without poetry? What I call, what I will bend to as a great artist, then, cannot be destitute of the divine gift. But by poetry I am sure you understand something different to what I do, as you do by sentiment. It is poetry as I comprehend the word, which elevates the masculine George Sand, and makes out of something coarse, something godlike. It is sentiment, in my sense of the term, sentiment jealously hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable thackeray and converts what might be corrosive poison into purifying elixir. If Thackeray did not cherish in his large heart deep feeling for his kind he would delight to exterminate, as it is, I believe, he wishes only to reform. Miss Austin being, as you say, without sentiment, without poetry, maybe is sensible, real, more real than true, but she cannot be great. I submit to your anger, which I have now excited, for have I not questioned the perfection of your darling? The storm may pass over me. Nevertheless, I will, when I can, I do not know when that will be, as I have no access to a circulating library. Diligently peruse all Miss Austin's works as you recommend. You must forgive me for not always being able to think as you do, and still believe me, yours gratefully. C. Bell. I have hesitated a little before inserting the following extract from a letter to Mr. Williams, but it is strikingly characteristic, and the criticism contained in it is, from that circumstance, so interesting, whether we agree with it or not, that I have determined to do so, though I thereby displace the chronological order of the letters in order to complete this portion of a correspondence, which is very valuable, as showing the purely intellectual side of her character. To W. S. Williams, Esquire, April 26, 1848. My dear sir, I have now read Rose Blanche and Violet, and I will tell you, as well as I can, what I think of it. Whether it is an improvement on Ranthorpe, I do not know, for I liked Ranthorpe much, but at any rate it contains more of a good thing. I find in it the same power, but more fully developed. The author's character is seen in every page, which makes the book interesting, far more interesting than any story could do, but it is what the writer himself says that attracts far more than what he puts into the mouths of his characters. G. H. Lewis is, to my perception, decidedly the most original character in the book. The didactic passages seem to me the best, far the best, in the work. Very acute, very profound are some of the views they are given, and very clearly they are offered to the reader. He is a just thinker, he is a sagacious observer, there is wisdom in his theory, and I doubt not energy in his practice. But why, then, are you often provoked with him while you read? How does he manage, while teaching, to make his hearer feel as if his business was not quietly to receive the doctrines propounded, but to combat them? You acknowledge that he offers you gems of pure truth, why do you keep perpetually scrutinizing them for flaws? Mr. Lewis, I divine, with all his talents and honesty, must have some faults of manner. There must be a touch too much of dogmatism, a dash extra of confidence in him sometimes. This, you think, while you are reading the book, but when you have closed it and laid it down and sat a few minutes collecting your thoughts and settling your impressions, you find the idea or feeling predominant in your mind to be pleasure at the fuller acquaintance you have made with a fine mind and a true heart, with high abilities and manly principles. I hope he will not be long ere he publishes another book. His emotional scenes are somewhat too uniformly vehement, would not a more subdued style of treatment often have produced a more masterly effect? Now and then Mr. Lewis takes a French pen into his hand, wherein he differs from Mr. Thackeray, who always uses an English quill. However, the French pen does not far mislead Mr. Lewis, he wields it with British muscles, all honour to him for the excellent general tendency of his book. He gives no charming picture of London literary society and especially the female part of it, but all quotaries, whether they be literary, scientific, political or religious, must, it seems to me, have a tendency to change truth into affectation. When people belong to a clique, they must, I suppose, in some measure write, talk, think, and live for that clique, a harassing and narrowing necessity. I trust the press and the public show themselves disposed to give the book the reception at Merritt's, and that is a very cordial one, far beyond anything due to a Bower or Disraeli production. Let us return from Kerr-Bell to Charlotte-Bronty. The winter in Haworth had been a sickly season, influenza had prevailed amongst the villagers, and where there was a real need for the presence of the clergyman's daughters they were never found wanting, although they were shy bestowing mere social visits on the parishioners. They had themselves suffered from the epidemic, and severely, as in her case it had been attended with cough and fever enough to make her elder sisters very anxious about her. There is no doubt that the proximity of the crowded churchyard rendered the parsonage unhealthy and occasioned much illness to its inmates. Mr. Bronte represented the unsanitary state at Haworth pretty forcibly to the Board of Health, and, after the requisite visits from their officers, obtained a recommendation that all future interments in the churchyard should be forbidden, a new graveyard opened on the hillside and means set on foot for obtaining a water supply to each house, instead of the weary, hard-worked housewives having to carry every bucket full from a distance of several hundred yards up a steep street. But he was baffled by the ratepayers, as in many a similar instance quantity carried it against quality, numbers against intelligence, and thus we find that illness often assumed a low typhoid form in Haworth, and fevers of various kinds visited the place with sad frequency. In February 1848 Louis-Philippe was dethroned. The quick succession of events at that time called forth the following expression of Mr. Bronte's thoughts on the subject, in a letter addressed to Miss Wooler and dated March 31st. I remember well wishing my lot had been cast in the troubled times of the late war, and seeing in its exciting incidents a kind of stimulating charm which had made my pulses beat fast to think of. I remember even, I think, being a little impatient that you would not fully sympathize with my feelings on those subjects, that you heard my aspirations and speculations very tranquilly, and by no means seemed to think the flaming swords could be any pleasant addition to paradise. I have now outlived youth, and though I dare not say that I have outlived all its illusions that the romance is quite gone from life, the veil fallen from truth and that I see both in naked reality, yet certainly many things are not what they were ten years ago, and amongst the rest the pomp and circumstance of war have quite lost in my eyes their fictitious glitter. I have still no doubt that the shock of moral earthquakes wakens a vivid sense of life, both in nations and individuals, that the fear of dangers on a broad national scale diverts men's minds momentarily from brooding over small private perils, and for the time gives them something like largeness of views. But as little doubt have I that convulsive revolutions put back the world in all that is good, check civilization, bring the dregs of society to its surface. In short, it appears to me that insurrections and battles are the acute diseases of nations, and that their tendency is to exhaust by their violence the vital energies of the countries where they occur. That England may be spared, the spasms, cramps, and frenzy fits now contorting the continent and threatening Ireland, I earnestly pray. With the French and Irish I have no sympathy. With the Germans and Italians I think the case is different, as different as the love of freedom is from the lust for license. Her birthday came round. She wrote to the friend whose birthday was within a week of hers, wrote the accustomed letter, but reading it with our knowledge of what she had done, we perceive the difference between her thoughts and what they were a year or two ago, when she said, I have done nothing. There must have been a modest consciousness of having done something present in her mind as she wrote this year. I am now thirty-two, youth is gone, gone, and will never come back, can't help it. It seems to me that sorrow must come some time to everybody, and those who scarcely taste it in their youth often have a more brimming and bitter cup to drain in afterlife, whereas those who exhaust the dregs early, who drink the leaves before the wine, may reasonably hope for more palatable drafts to succeed. The authorship of Jane Eyre was as yet a close secret in the Bronte family. Not even this friend, who was all but a sister, knew more about it than the rest of the world. She might conjecture, it is true, both from her knowledge of previous habits and from the suspicious fact of the proofs having been corrected at B that some literary project was a foot, but she knew nothing, and wisely said nothing until she heard a report from others that Charlotte Bronte was an author, had published a novel. Then she wrote to her and received the two following letters, confirmatory enough, as it seems to me now, in their very vehemence and agitation of intended denial of the truth of the report. April 28, 1848. Write another letter and explain that last note of yours distinctly. If your illusions are to myself which I suppose they are, understand this. I have given no one a right to gossip about me and am not to be judged by frivolous conjectures emanating from any court or whatever. Let me know what you heard and from whom you heard it. May 3, 1848. All I can say to you about a certain matter is this. The report, if report there be, and if the lady who seems to have been rather mystified had not dreamt what she fancied had been told to her, must have had its origin in some absurd misunderstanding. I have given no one a right either to affirm or to hint in the most distant manner that I was publishing, humbug. Whoever has said it, if anyone has, which I doubt, is no friend of mine. Though twenty books were ascribed to me, I should own none. I scout the idea utterly. Whoever, after I have distinctly rejected the charge, urges it upon me, will do an unkind and an ill-bred thing. The most profound obscurity is infinitely preferable to vulgar notoriety, and that notoriety I neither seek nor will have. If then any B. N. or G. N. should presume to bore you on the subject to ask you what novel Miss Bronte has been publishing, you can just say with the distinct firmness of which you are perfect mistress when you choose, that you are authorized by Miss Bronte to say that she repels and disowns every accusation of the kind. You may add, if you please, that if anyone has her confidence you believe you have, and she has made no driveling confessions to you on the subject. I am at a loss to conjecture from what source this rumour has come, and I fear it has far from a friendly origin. I am not certain, however, and I should be very glad if I should gain certainty. Should you hear anything more, please let me know. Your offer of Simeon's life is a very kind one, and I thank you for it. I daresay Papa would like to see the work very much, as he knew Mr. Simeon. Laugh or scold A. out of the publishing notion, and believe me through all chances and changes whether columniated or let alone yours faithfully. C. Bronte.