Part 8 (1/2)

February 15th.

I am very glad to hear that you got home all right, and that you managed to execute your commissions in Leeds so satisfactorily.

You do not say whether you remembered to order the Bishop's dessert; I shall know, however, by to-morrow morning. I got a budget of no less than seven papers yesterday and to-day. The import of all the notices is such as to make my heart swell with thankfulness to Him who takes note both of suffering and work and motives. Papa is pleased too. As to friends in general, I believe I can love them still without expecting them to take any large share in this sort of gratification. The longer I live, the more plainly I see that gentle must be the strain on fragile human nature. It will not bear much.

I have heard from Mrs. Gaskell. Very kind, panegyrical, and so on.

Mr. S---- tells me he has ascertained that Miss Martineau _did_ write the notice in _The Daily News_. J. T. offers to give me a regular blowing-up and setting down for 5, but I tell him _The Times_ will probably let me have the same gratis.

March 10th, 1853.

I only got _The Guardian_ newspaper yesterday morning, and have not yet seen either _The Critic_ or _Sharpe's Magazine_. _The Guardian_ does not wound me much. I see the motive, which, indeed, there is no attempt to disguise. Still I think it a choice little morsel for foes (Mr. ---- was the first to bring the news of the review to Papa), and a still choicer morsel for ”friends”

who--bless them!--while they would not perhaps positively do one an injury, still take a dear delight in das.h.i.+ng with bitterness the too sweet cup of success. Is _Sharpe's_ small article like a bit of sugar-candy, too, Ellen? or has it the proper wholesome wormwood flavour? Of course I guess it will be like _The Guardian_. My ”dear friends” will weary of waiting for _The Times_. ”O Sisera! why tarry the wheels of thy chariot so long?”

March 22nd.

Thank you for sending ----'s notes. Though I have not attended to them lately, they always amuse me. I like to read them; one gets from them a clear enough idea of her sort of life. ----'s attempts to improve his good partner's mind make me smile. I think it all right enough, and doubt not they are happy in their way; only the direction he gives his efforts seems of rather problematic wisdom.

Algebra and optics! Why not enlarge her views by a little well-chosen general reading? However, they do right to amuse themselves in their own way. The rather dark view you seem to take of the general opinion about ”Villette” surprises me the less, as only the more unfavourable reviews seem to have come in your way.

Some reports reach me of a different tendency; but no matter; time will show. As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that she should not occupy the pedestal to which ”Jane Eyre” was raised by some injudicious admirers. She is where I meant her to be, and where no charge of self-laudation can touch her.

XI.

MARRIAGE AND DEATH.

Every book, as we know, has its secret history, hidden from the world which reads only the printed pages, but legible enough to the author, who sees something more than the words he has set down for the public to read. Thackeray tells us how, reading again one of his smaller stories, written at a sad period of his own life, he brought back all the scene amid which the little tale was composed, and woke again to a consciousness of the pangs which tore his heart when his pen was busy with the imaginary fortunes of the puppets he had placed upon the mimic stage. Between the lines he read quite a different story from that which was laid before the reader. I have tried to show how largely this was the case with Charlotte Bronte's novels. Each was a double romance, having one meaning for the world, and another for the author. Yet she herself, when she wrote ”s.h.i.+rley” and ”Villette,” had no conception of the strange blending of the secret currents of the two books which was in store for her, or of the unexpected fate which was to befall the real heroine of her last work--to wit, herself.

I have told how fixed was her belief that ”Lucy Snowe's” fate was to be a tragic one--a life the closing years of which were to be spent in loneliness and anguish, and amid the bitterness of withered hopes.

Very few readers can have forgotten the closing pa.s.sage of ”Villette,”

in which the catastrophe, though veiled, can be readily discovered:

The sun pa.s.ses the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere; but--he is coming.

Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind takes its autumn moan; but--he is coming.

The skies hang full and dark--a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms--arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings--glorious, royal, purple as a monarch in his state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest--so b.l.o.o.d.y, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood. G.o.d, watch that sail! Oh! guard it!

The wind s.h.i.+fts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee--”keening” at every window! It will rise--it will swell--it shrieks out long: wander as I may through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watchers hear and fear a wild south-west storm....

Peace, be still! Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting sh.o.r.es, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till, when the hush came, some could not feel it; till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!

In darkness such as here is shadowed forth, Charlotte Bronte believed that her own life would close; all suns.h.i.+ne gone, all joys swept clean away by the bitter blast of death, all hopes withered or uprooted. But the end which she pictured was not to be. G.o.d was more merciful than her own imaginings; and at eventide there was light and peace upon her troubled path.

Those who turn to the closing pa.s.sage of ”s.h.i.+rley” will find there reference to ”a true Christian gentleman,” who had taken the place of the hypocrite Malone, one of the famous three curates of the story.

This gentleman, a Mr. McCarthy, was, like the rest, no fict.i.tious personage. His original was to be found in the person of Mr. Nicholls, who for several years had lived a simple, un.o.btrusive life at Haworth, as curate to Mr. Bronte, and whose name often occurs in Charlotte's letters to her friend. In none of these references to him is there the slightest indication that he was more than an honoured friend. Nor was it so. Whilst Mr. Nicholls, dwelling near Miss Bronte, and observing her far more closely than any other person could do, had formed a deep and abiding attachment for her, she herself was wholly unconscious of the fact. Its first revelation came upon her as something like a shock; as something also like a reproach. Whilst she had thought herself alone, doomed to a life of solitude and pain, a tender yet a manly love had all the while been growing round her.

It is obvious that the letters which she addressed at this time (December, 1852) to her friend cannot be printed here. Yet no letters more honourable to the woman, the daughter, and the lover have ever been penned. There is no restraint now in the outpourings of her heart. Her friend is taken into her full confidence, and every hope and fear and joy is spoken out as only women who are pure and truthful and entirely n.o.ble can venture to speak out. Mrs. Gaskell has briefly but distinctly stated the broad features of this strange love story, giving such promise at the time, so happy and beautiful in its brief fruition, so soon to be quenched in the great darkness. Mr. Bronte resented the attentions of Mr. Nicholls to his daughter in a manner which brought to light all the sternness and bitterness of his character. There had been of late years a certain mellowing of his disposition, which Charlotte had dwelt upon with hopeful joy, as her one comfort in her lonely life at Haworth. How much he owed to her none knew but himself. When he was sinking under the burden of his son's death, she had rescued him; when, for one dark and bitter interval, he had sought refuge from grief and remorse in the coward's solace, her brave heart, her gentleness, her unyielding courage, had brought him back again from evil ways, and sustained and kept him in the path of honour; and now his own ambitions were more than satisfied by her success; he found himself s.h.i.+ning in the reflected glory of his daughter's fame, and sunned himself, poor man, in the light and warmth. But all the old jealousy, the intense acerbity of his character, broke out when he saw another person step between himself and her, and that other no idol of the great world of London, but simply the honest man who had dwelt almost under his own roof-tree for years.