Part 12 (1/2)
Man is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was my mortal nature which now faltered and plained; my nerves which jarred and gave a false sound, because the soul, of late rus.h.i.+ng headlong to an aim, had overstrained the body's comparative weakness. A horror of great darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly but had thought for ever departed. I was temporarily a prey to hypochondria. She had been my acquaintance, nay, my guest, once before in boyhood; I had entertained her at bed and board for a year; for that s.p.a.ce of time I had her to myself in secret; she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, gra.s.s and green tree; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom and holding me with arms of bone.
What tales she would tell me at such hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she would discourse to me of her own country--the grave--and again and again promise to conduct me there ere long; and drawing me to the very brink of a black sullen river, show me on the other side sh.o.r.es unequal with mound, monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more h.o.a.ry than moonlight. ”Necropolis!” she would whisper, pointing to the pale piles, and add, ”it contains a mansion prepared for you.” But my boyhood was lonely, parentless; uncheered by brother or sister; and there was no marvel that, just as I rose to youth, a sorceress, finding me lost in vague mental wanderings, with many affections and few objects, glowing aspirations and gloomy prospects, strong desires and tender hopes, should lift up her illusive lamp to me in the distance, and lure me to her vaulted home of horrors.
It was when, under the influence of occasional spells of physical suffering such as she here describes, that Miss Bronte gave those who saw her the impresion that her mind was naturally a morbid one; and, as I have said before, the same influence is at times perceptible in her writings. One of the purposes with which this little book has been written is to show the world how much of the gloom and depression which are now a.s.sociated with her story, must be attributed to purely physical or accidental causes.
XIV.
CONCLUSION.
No apology need be offered for any single feature of Charlotte Bronte's life or character. She was what G.o.d made her in the furnace of sore afflictions and yet more sore temptations; her life, instinct with its extraordinary individuality, was, notwithstanding, always subject to exterior influences for the existence of which she was not responsible, and which more than once threatened to change the whole nature and purpose of her being; her genius, which brought forth its first-fruits under the cold shade of obscurity and adversity, was developed far more largely by sorrow, loneliness, and pain, than by the success which she gained in so abundant a degree. There are features of her character which we can scarcely comprehend, for the existence of which we are unable to account; and there are features of her genius which jar upon our sympathies and ruffle our conventional ideas; but for neither will one word of apology or excuse be offered by any who really know and love this great woman.
The fas.h.i.+on which exalted her to such a pinnacle of fame, like many another fas.h.i.+on, has lost its vogue; and the present generation, wrapped in admiration of another school of fiction, has consigned the works of ”Currer Bell” to a premature sepulchre. But her friends need not despair; for from that dreary tomb of neglect an hour of resurrection must come, and the woman who has given us three of the most masterful books of the century, will again a.s.sert her true position in the literature of her country. We hear nothing now of the ”immorality” of her writings. Younger people, if they turn from the sparkling or didactic pages of the most popular of recent stories to ”Jane Eyre” or ”Villette,” in the hope of finding there some stimulant which may have power to tickle their jaded palates, will search in vain for anything that even borders upon impropriety--as we understand the word in these enlightened days--and they will form a strange conception of the generation of critics which denounced ”Currer Bell”
as the writer of immoral works of fiction. But it is said that there is coa.r.s.eness in her stories, ”otherwise so entirely n.o.ble.” Even Mrs.
Gaskell has a.s.sented to the charge; and it is generally believed that Charlotte Bronte, as a writer, though not immoral in tone, was rude in language and coa.r.s.e in thought. The truth, I maintain, is, that this so-called coa.r.s.eness is nothing more than the simplicity and purity, the straightforwardness and unconsciousness which an unspotted heart naturally displays in dealing with those great problems of life which, alas! none who have drunk deep of the waters of good and evil can ever handle with entire freedom from embarra.s.sment. An American writer[2]
has spoken of Charlotte Bronte as ”the great pre-Raphaelite among women, who was not ashamed or afraid to utter what G.o.d had shown her, and was too single-hearted of aim to swerve one hairbreadth in duplicating nature's outlines.” She was more than this however; she was bold enough to set up a standard of right of her own; and when still the unknown daughter of the humble Yorks.h.i.+re parson, she could stir the hearts of readers throughout the world with the trumpet-note of such a declaration as this: ”Conventionality is not morality; self-righteousness is not religion; to pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”
Let it be remembered that these words were written nearly thirty years ago, when conventionalism was still a potent influence in checking the free utterance of our inmost opinions; and let us be thankful that in that heroic band to whom we owe the emanc.i.p.ation of English thought, a woman holds an honourable place.
[2] Harper's _New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1866.