Born: 21 April 1816, United Kingdom
Died: 31 March 1855
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Currer Bell
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Charlotte Brontë, an English novelist, the author of Jane Eyre. Public interest in Charlotte Brontë was first aroused in 1847. In October of that year there appeared in London a novel that created a sensation, the like of which had not been known since the publication of Waverly. Its stern and paradoxical disregard for the conventional, its masculine energy, and its intense realism, startled the public, and proclaimed to all in accents unmistakable that a new, strange and splendid power had become into literature.
And with the success of Jane Eyre came a lively curiosity to know something of the personality of the author. This was not gratified for some time. There were many conjectures, all of them far amiss. The majority of readers asserted confidently that the work must be that of a man; the touch was unmistakably masculine. At length the mystery was cleared, and the curious world knew that the author of Jane Eyre was the daughter of a clergyman in the little village of Haworth, and that the literary sensation of the day found its source in a nervous, shrinking, awkward, plain, delicate young creature, thirty-one years of age, whose life, with the exception of two years, had been spent on the bleak and dreary moorland of Yorkshire, and for the most part in the narrow confines of a grim gray stone parsonage. There she had lived a pinched and meagre little life, full of sadness and self-denial, with two sisters more delicate than herself, a dissolute brother, and her only parent – a stern and forbidding father. this was no genial environment for an author, even if helpful to her vivid imagination. Nor was it a temporary condition; it was a permanent one. Nearly all the influences in Charlotte Brontë‘s life were such as these, which would seem to cramp if not to stifle sensitive talent.
Her mother died when Charlotte was five years old, and her father, eccentric and solitary in his habits, was ill fitted to replace a mother’s love. In 1824 Charlotte and two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, went to a school at Cowan’s Bridge. It was an institution for clergymen’s children, a vivid picture of which appears in Jayne Eyre. It was so badly managed and the food was so poor that many of the children fell sick, among them Maria Brontë, who died in 1825. Elizabeth followed her a few months later, and Charlotte returned to Haworth where she endeavored, together with her sister Emily, to establish a school at home. But pupils were not to be had, and after some years of struggle, and of service as a governess, Charlotte turned her thoughts to literature.
Her first novel was The Professor, and the day the manuscript was returned to her, she began writing Jane Eyre. She finished in 1847, and it was accepted by the publishers promptly upon examination. After its publication, she continued her literary work quietly, and unaffected by the furor she aroused. A few brief visits to London, where attempts were made to lionize her, 0f very much to her distaste – a few literary friendships, notably those with Thackeray, George Henry Lewes, Mrs. Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, were the only features that distinguished her simple life at Haworth.
Shirley was published in 1849, and in 1953 appeared Villette, her last finished work, and the one considered by herself the best.
In June 1854, she married her father’s curate, A. B. Nicholls. It was a happy union, and seemed to assure a period of peace and rest for the sorely tired soul, bu in a few months fate snapped the slender threads of her life, and the sad episode of her existence was ended. She died in March, 1855, of an illness incidental to childbirth.
Thackeray describes her personal appearance:
“I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always.”
Among literary critics, Frederick Harrison says:
“With all its faults, its narrowness of range, its occasional extravagances, Jayne Eyre will long be remembered as one of the most creative influences of the Victorian literature, one of the most poetic pieces of English romance, and among the most vivid masterpieces in the rare order of literary “confessions,’ – Charlotte Brontë painted not the world, hardly a corner of the world, but the very soul of one proud and loving girl. That is enough; we need ask no more. It was done with consummate power.”
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Miss Bronté is best known by her novel Jane Eyre. Some of the sufferings depicted in the book are records of her own experiences. The life of Miss Bronté is of deep and pathetic interest.
Her father was a poor English clergyman, eccentric and unlovely. Charlotte was born at Harishead, near Leeds, but the family subsequently moved to Haworth. the parsonage was “bleak and uncomfortable, a low oblong stone building standing at the top of the straggling village on a steep hill, without the shelter of a tree, with the churchyard pressing down on it on both sides, and behind, a long tract of wild moors.”
By the father’s direction of the children were fed on vegetable diet and clothed in coarse clothes to make them hardy and prevent their becoming proud. They were far from hardy; on the contrary, they were small, feeble, and stunted in growth. The mother died when they were all young, and the children were mostly left to themselves.
Four of the girls were sent away to school, Charlotte among them. The food was poor and insufficient and they were treated with inhuman severity. “Miss Scratchhard” in Jane Eyre is a reproduction of the manager of the school. A fever broke out and the girls returned home, but two of them died as a result of the treatment and the sickness contracted at the school.
When nineteen years of age, Charlotte became a teacher, but owing to poor health she was obliged to give it up. She next took a situation as a governess, but the people treated her harshly and this was abandoned.
She determined to establish a private school with her sisters Emily and Anne. Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels to fit themselves. At the end of six months they were employed in the school they were attending, but at a pitifully small salary.
On their return they attempted to gather pupils, but none came. They next tried literary work; in fact, they had written much from childhood up. They issued a volume of poems but it met with little success. Their next venture was in prose tales. The productions were, The Professor, by Charlotte; Wuthering heights by Emily; and Agnes Grey, by Anne. Each wrote under an assumed name. While those of Emily and Anne were accepted, Charlotte’s was everywhere rejected and was not published until after her death.
In the face of all this failure and discouragement, Charlotte proceeded to write Jane Eyre. It met with immediate and immense success. Few works of an unknown author have been received with such sudden and general acclamation. It was translated into most of the languages of Europe, and was put on the stage in England and Germany under the title of The Orphan of Lowood. She next wrote Shirley, but it was much inferior to Jane Eyre. Her third novel was Villette, which is a picture of life as she saw it in Brussels. This proved exceedingly popular. It proceeded slowly to completion as the result of long interruptions from failing health.
Her works became a passport to the highest literary circles of London and the continent, and she met most of the prominent writers of the time. But she was of a retiring and sensitive disposition, largely the result of pain and she returned to her home.
Rev. Arthur Nicholls, who was her father’s curate, desired to marry her, but the father objected. She was now past thirty-four years of age, and Mr. Nicholls resigned. In the year following the father changed his mind and they were married.
For less than one year she knew the happiness of a true home life, though they lived in the bleak parsonage. But her health, like that of her sisters, had been poor for many years and she soon followed them. Early hardships had left a physical blight on each of them. Her death occurred March 31, 1855.
After her death her rejected tale, The Professor, was published. She had what Goethe calls the true secret of poetic genius.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
BRONTE, CHARLOTTE, EMILY, and ANN,
United as they are in death, as they were in life, and in the fame which followed the publication of their extraordinary works, these gifted sisters must appear in our pages as a triad of intellectual personifications; their names cannot be separated without injury to their individual characteristics, without rending apart sympathies and affections which united them more closely, and inextricably, than three of one family and household were perhaps ever knit before. They are the three strains, distinct, and yet ever blending intimately and harmoniously, of a wild sad melody, such as we might listen to amid the stillness of the solemn night, and scarcely know whether it came from earth or heaven. Those three voices, arising, as they did together, from the Yorkshire wolds; from that old quiet manse “on the very verge of the churchyard mould,” and taking possession of the public ear, gradually enchaining attention, and causing a general inquiry of “who can it be?” Then as the strains grow louder and bolder, giving evidence of power and passionate energy, as well as a delicate perception of all the secret windings and workings of the human heart, while yet the singers were veiled under the mysterious cognomen of “Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,” how the wonder deepened, and the question sped through France and Germany, and across the wide Atlantic, and back again, “who can it be?”
But let us come down to more sober narrative, and answer this query, once so rife among readers, and still asked by some to whom the sad secrets of the Yorkshire manse have not yet been revealed. There, in his silent study, sits the aged clergyman, Mr. Bronte—a descendant of the Bronterres, of Ireland, an ancient and honourable family—sits lonely and desolate in his parsonage house at Haworth, near Keighley, in the West-Riding. Long years ago his wife laid her down to rest in the green churchyard near at hand, and several of his children were taken while the dew of childhood yet lay fresh upon their hearts, as it were to bear her company. Four daughters and a son remained, to cheer his heart with parental hopes, and sometimes to gladden his home with loving looks and tones of affection; but only at intervals, for he was poor, and his children might not eat the bread of idleness. The sisters all went out as governesses, and suffered many of the hardships and insults to which that useful but despised class of persons are too commonly exposed. One of them came home and died in consequence, it is said, of what she had to endure at a school in which she was a teacher. In all, there was no doubt a pre-disposition to pulmonary disease, and the shortening of their lives may be attributed to the excessive toil, hard fare, and other miseries attendant on their state of dependence at educational establishments. The elder sister, Charlotte, (Currer Bell,) was for a year and a half at one of these establishments at Brussels, and while there she describes herself as never free from the gnawing sensation, or consequent feebleness, of downright hunger.
To this deprivation of sufficient food she attributes the smallness of her stature, which was below that of most women. In her novel of “Jane Eyre,” she no doubt exhibits some of her school experiences at this place of torture for mind and body. It was probably the desire to escape from such a thraldom as this which induced the girls to determine on trying their hands at authorship. “We had very early,” says Charlotte, in the preface to her third and last novel—’Villette’—”cherished the dream of becoming authors. This dream, never relinquished, even when distance divided, and absorbing tasks occupied us, now, (in 1845, when the three sisters were at home together,) suddenly acquired strength and consistency: it took the character of a resolve,” and led, we may add, after many obstacles were overcome, to the publication of a volume of “Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,” a title which gave no indication of the sex of the writers. This volume did not attract much attention; but, nothing daunted, the sisters set to work each upon a prose tale. Emily, “Wuthering Heights;” and Ann, “Agnes Grey.” The title of Charlotte’s first tale we do not learn; but it seems to have failed at the time in obtaining a publisher; and while it was going the round of the trade, its author was industriously working at her second and most successful novel, “Jane Eyre,” which, when finished, was at once accepted by Messrs. Smith and Elder, and achieved a decided success. “There are,” says a contemporary critic, “but few instances to be found in the literary history of the time, in which an unknown writer has taken a firmer hold at once on the public mind, than the authoress of “Jane Eyre.” The startling individuality of her portraits, drawn to the life, however strange and wayward that life may be, fixes them on the mind, and seems to ‘dare you to forget.’ Successions of scenes, rather than of story, are dashed off under a fit of inspiration, until the reader, awed as it were by the presence of this great mental power, draws breath, and confesses it must be truth; though perhaps not to be recognised among the phases of any life he may have known, or scenes he may have witnessed.”
Such is the wonderful story on which the literary reputation of Miss Bronte is based. Its appearance, in the autumn of 1847, took the world completely by surprise, and the sensation which it created was deepened in intensity by the mystery of its authorship; as well as that of the two other works by the younger sisters, which although certainly inferior in power and grasp of intellect, were yet evidently works of genius. Alas I they were the only ones which their authors lived to complete. With “Wuthering Heights,” finished the mental and all other labours of Emily Bronte, who died of consumption in December, 1848; and in six months from that time, the grave, on which the grass had only just begun to spring, was opened to receive the mortal remains of the younger sister Ann. In the same year died also the brother, a young man, we are told, of great promise; and Charlotte Bronte and her infirm father were left alone, to think over their bereavements, and to bear up as best they could against these heavy blows of affliction. In a touching tribute to the memory of her sisters, appended to her last work, “Villette,” Miss Bronte observes—”I may sum up all by saying, that for strangers they were nothing, for superficial observers less than nothing; but for those who had known them all their lives, in the intimacy of close relationship, they were genuine, good, and truly great.”
The novel in which these remarks appeared, was published in 1853; “unlike her preceding works it was marked by no stirring incidents, no remote details. It is simply the history of life in a foreign school, (such as her own experience could supply,) but that little world is made to contain the elements of a sphere as extensive as humanity itself. Although not calculated from its deficiency of story, to be as universally popular as “Jane Eyre,” it met with high appreciation, as a remarkable result of that high order of genius which imparts its own powerful fascinations to the detail of events of the simplest character.” The critic from whom we here quote, also observes that “Currer Bell may almost be said to have founded a school of fiction, in which the ‘flower is shewn in the bud,’ and the child literally made ‘father to the man;’ in which some young spirit, starved of sympathy, turns inward and revenges the injuries of the few in scorn and distrust of the many; isolated and self-concentrated, till the well-spring of love, frozen, but not dried up, bursts its bonds under the influence of the first sunshine of affection, and expands itself with the reckless prodigality of a miser suddenly turned spendthrift.”
Miss Bronte’s second novel, “Shirley,” appeared in 1849. It was conceived and wrought out in the midst of fearful domestic grief, the sad experiences of that terrible year of bereavements. “There was something inexpressibly touching in the aspect of the frail little creature who had done such wonderful things, and who was able to bear up with so bright an eye, and so composed a countenance under such a weight of sorrow and such a prospect of solitude, In her deep mourning dress, (neat as a Quaker’s,) with her beautiful hair, smooth and brown, her fine eyes blazing with meaning, and her sensible face indicating a habit of self-control, if not of silence, she seemed a perfect household image, irresistably recalling Wordsworth’s description of the domestic treasure; and she was this. She was as able at the needle as the pen. The household knew the excellency of her cookery, before they heard of that of her books. In so utter a seclusion as she lived, in those dreary wilds where she was not strong enough to roam over the hills; in that retreat where her studious father rarely broke the silence, and there was no (me else to do it; in that forlorn house planted in the miry clay of the churchyard, where the graves of her sisters were before her window; in such a living sepulchre her mind could not but prey upon itself; and how it did suffer, we see, in the more painful portions of ‘Villette.’ She said, with a change in her steady countenance, that ‘she should feel very lonely when her aged father died.’ But she formed new ties after that; she married, and it is the aged father who survives to mourn her.” Thus is the cabinet picture drawn by one who evidently knew much of the inner life of Currer Bell.
A correspondent of the “Literary Gazette” will furnish us with the touching conclusion to this sad history. “Mr. Bronte is the Incumbent of Ha worth, and the father of ‘the three sisters;’ two had already died, when Mr. Nicholls, his curate, wished to marry the last sole hope. To this Mr. Bronte objected, as it might deprive him of his only child; and although they were much attached, the connection was so far broken, that Mr. Nicholls was to leave. Then the Vicar of Bradford interposed, by offering to secure for Mr; Nicholls the Incumbency of Haworth, after Mr. Bronte’s death. This obviated all objection, and last summer (1854) a study was built to the parsonage, and the lovers were married, remaining under the father’s roof. But alas! in three months the bride’s lungs were attacked, and in three more the father and husband committed, their loved one to the grave. Is it not a sad reality in which the romance ends. May God comfort the two mourners!”
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Leslie Stephen.
BRONTË, CHARLOTTE (1816–1855), afterwards Nicholls, novelist, was the daughter of Patrick Brontë (1777-1861), and sister of Patrick Branwell Brontë (1817-1848), Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848), and Anne Brontë (1820-1849). Patrick Brontë, born on 17 March 1777 at Ahaderg, co. Down, was one of the ten children of Hugh Prunty or Brontë. He changed his paternal name to Brontë shortly before leaving Ireland. At the age of 16 he had tried to make his own living by opening a school at Drumgooland in the same county. The liberality of Mr. Tighe, vicar of Drumgooland, enabled him to go to Cambridge, with a view to taking orders. He entered St. John’s College in October 1802, and graduated as B.A. in 1806. He was ordained to a curacy in Essex, and in 1811 to the curacy of Hartshead in Yorkshire. His improved means enabled him to allow 20l. a year to his mother during her life (Leyland, Brontë Family, 9). At Hartshead he met Maria, third daughter of Thomas Branwell of Penzance, then on a visit to her uncle, the Rev. J. Fennel, head-master of a Wesleyan academy near Bradford, and afterwards a clergyman of the church of England. They were married on 29 Dec. 1812 by the Rev. W. Morgan, who was at the same time married by Brontë to Fennel’s daughter (Gent. Mag. 1813, p. 179). Brontë published two simple-minded volumes of verse, ‘Cottage Poems’ (Halifax, 1811) and the ‘Rural Minstrel’ (Halifax, 1813), and a tract called ‘The Cottage in a Wood, or the Art of becoming Rich and Happy’ a new version of the Pamela Story (reprinted in 1859 from the 2nd edition of 1818). In 1818 he also published the ‘Maid of Killarney.’ These, and some letters upon catholic emancipation, which appeared in the ‘Leeds Intelligencer’ for January 1829, were his only publications. After five years at Hartshead, Brontë became perpetual curate of Thornton. His eldest child, Maria, was born at Hartshead. The parish register of Thornton shows that his second daughter, Elizabeth, was baptised there on 26 Aug. 1815; Charlotte (born 21 April) on 29 June 1816; Patrick Branwell on 23 July 1817; Emily Jane on 20 Aug. 1818; and Anne on 25 March 1820. On 25 Feb. 1820 the Brontës had moved to Haworth, nine miles from Bradford, of which Brontë had accepted the perpetual curacy), worth about 200l. a year and a house. Mrs Brontë had an annuity of 50l. a year. A previous incumbent of Haworth had been the famous William Grimshaw, one of Wesley’s first followers. Haworth was a country village, but great part of the population was employed in the woollen manufacture, then rapidly extending in the rural districts of Yorkshire. Dissent was strong in Haworth, and methodism had flourished there since the time of Grimshaw. Bronte, a strong churchman and a man of imperious and passionate character, extorted the respect of a sturdy and independent population. He is partly represented by Mr. Helston in ‘Shirley,’ though a Mr. Roberson, vicar of Heckmondwike, and a personal friend of Brontë’s, supplied some characteristic traits (Mrs. Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë (2nd edition), i. 120, ii. 121; Reid, p. 21). His behaviour is described by his daughter’s biographer as marked by strange eccentricity. He enforced strict discipline; the children were fed on potatoes without meat to make them hardy. He burnt their boots when he thought them too smart, and for the same reason destroyed a silk gown of his wife’s. He generally restrained open expression of his anger, but would relieve his feelings by firing pistols out of his back-door or destroying articles of furniture. He became unpopular by supporting the authorities against the Luddites, but afterwards showed equal vigour in supporting men on strike against the injustice of the millowners. He was unsocial in his habits, loved solitary rambles over the moors, and, in consequence of some weakness of digestion, dined alone even before his wife’s death and to the end of his own life (Gaskell, i. 49-53; Reid, pp. 20-23, 195, 198). Brontë himself complained of some of these statements as false, and Mr. Leyland (i. 41-56) accounts for the shooting and the silk-gown stories by misunderstandings and village gossip. Mrs. Brontë died of cancer on 15 Sept. 1821, and a year later her elder sister, Miss Branwell, undertook to manage Brontë’s household. She disliked the rough climate and surroundings of Haworth, and in later years seldom left her bedroom even for meals. She seems to have been a prim old maid, with whom the children were always reserved. From the time of their mother’s illness they were left very much to themselves. They showed extraordinary precocity of talent; they had few friends, saw little of their father or neighbours, and used to walk out alone upon the moors. The eldest, Maria, would shut herself up with a newspaper and study parliamentary debates in the intervals of her care of the younger children. Her father said that he could converse with her on any topics of the day, though she died at the age of eleven; and the whole family, cut off from childish companionship, learnt to take a keen interest in the topics discussed by their elders. A school for clergymen’s daughters had been founded in 1823 at Cowan’s Bridge, between Leeds and Kendal, chiefly through the exertions of the Rev. William Carus Wilson. Parents were to pay only 14l. a year, the necessary balance being provided by subscription. It was opened with only sixteen pupils, and fifty-three had been admitted when Charlotte left the school (Shepheard, Vindication). Brontë sent Maria and Elizabeth to this school in July 1824; Charlotte and Emily followed in September.
The school arrangements were at first defective; frugality led to roughness, and the food was badly cooked. A low fever broke out in the spring of 1825. The Brontës escaped; but Maria and Elizabeth soon afterwards became seriously ill, and were taken home only to die, Maria on 6 May 1825 in her twelfth year, and Elizabeth on 15 June in her eleventh year. The vivid picture of this part of her life in the opening scenes of ‘Jane Eyre’ (where ‘Helen Burns’ stands for Maria Brontë) represents the impression made upon Charlotte Brontë. She did not anticipate the obvious identification, and therefore did not hold herself bound to strict accuracy. That the account would be exaggerated if taken as an historical document may be fairly inferred from a ‘Vindication of the Clergy Daughters’ School,’ published by the Rev. H. Shepheard in 1859. Some mismanagement at starting was not surprising; reforms were speedily introduced; and fellow-pupils of the Brontës speak warmly of Mr. Wilson and even of Miss Scatcherd’s representative, as well as of the school. The diet and lodging could hardly have been rougher than that of Haworth; but the deaths of Maria and Elizabeth succeeding some severe treatment naturally impressed the sensitive imagination of their sister. Charlotte and Emily returned to the school after the summer holidays, but were removed on account of their health before the winter.
The family were now gathered at Haworth. Miss Branwell gave the girls lessons in her bedroom, while Charlotte acted as the childish guardian of her younger sisters. Branwell was chiefly taught by his father, making friends for himself in the village. There was a grammar school at Haworth, where the children may have had some lessons. An elderly woman called ‘Tabby’ began at this time a service of thirty years with the Brontës, and looked after the children. They were, however, thrown much upon their own resources, and amused themselves by writing. Charlotte made a ‘catalogue of her books’ written between April 1829 and August 1830. They filled twenty-two volumes of from sixty to a hundred pages of minute handwriting, a facsimile from which is given in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography. They consist of stories and childish ‘magazines.’ The extracts given by Mrs. Gaskell show remarkable indications of imaginative power, while it also appears that the children had imbibed from their father strong tory prejudices and a devoted admiration for the Duke of Wellington. A poem of Charlotte’s, written before 1833, given by Mrs. Gaskell, shows especial promise. The education was of course unsystematic. When Charlotte was again sent to school in January 1831, she was remarkably forward in some respects and equally backward in others.
The school was kept by Miss Wooler, at Roehead, between Leeds and Huddersfield. The number of pupils varied from seven to ten, and Charlotte became strongly attached to her teachers and to some of her schoolfellows. One of the latter, Miss Ellen Nussey (‘E.’ in Mrs. Gaskell’s biography), was a lifelong friend and correspondent. Two sisters, Mary and Martha Taylor, who lived at Gomersal, are the Rose and Jessie Yorke of ‘Shirley,’ where the whole Taylor family is vividly portrayed. Miss Nussey was the original of Caroline Helston in the same novel. Stories told by Miss Wooler of the days of the Luddites suggested other incidents, while a Mr. Cartwright, owner of a neighbouring factory, is represented by Robert Moore.
In 1832 Charlotte left Roehead, keeping up a correspondence with Miss Nussey. She read the standard books, of which her father had a respectable collection, and her remarks are such as might be expected from a clever girl in a secluded parsonage. The question of providing for the family was beginning to become urgent. Branwell, a lad of great promise, had contracted some dangerous intimacies, and was known in the public-house parlour. He read ‘Bell’s Life,’ took an interest in prize-fighting, and was anxious to see life in London. He had also read the classics, was fond of music, and could play the organ; while he was good-looking, though rather undersized, and had great powers of conversation. It is said that before going to London he could astonish bagmen at the ‘Black Bull’ by describing the topography of the metropolis. The whole family had certain artistic tastes, and Charlotte took infinite pains in minutely copying engravings until the practice injured her sight. Their father had procured them some drawing lessons from a Mr. W. Robinson of Leeds. Branwell had made acquaintance with some local artists and journalists, and contributed to the poets’ corner of local journals. A special friend was Joseph Bentley Leyland, a rising sculptor, born at Halifax. Leyland went to London (December 1833) to study, and afterwards settled there as a sculptor. Branwell, stimulated by his example, made a short visit to London, went to the sights, saw Tom Spring at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, and soon returned, either from his own want of perseverance or because his father could not support him. This was apparently in the later months of 1835.
On 6 July 1835 Charlotte says that she is to be a governess in order to enable her father to pay for Branwell’s education at the Royal Academy (Gaskell, i. 147). On 29 July Charlotte went as teacher to Miss Wooler’s school, taking Emily with her as pupil. After three months’ stay, Emily became ‘literally ill from home-sickness,’ and returned to Haworth. It was about this time that an incident, the marriage of a girl to a man who, as it turned out, was already married to a wife of deranged intellect, suggested the plot of ‘Jane Eyre’ (Gaskell, i. 151). Charlotte appears to have been happy at Miss Wooler’s, though with occasional fits of depression caused by weak nerves. Her conscientious labour was too much for her strength. Miss Wooler moved her school to Dewsbury Moor, in a lower situation, where Charlotte’s health suffered still more. Anne was also at the school, and apparently suffered from the change. In 1836 Emily again tried teaching, and passed six months at a school in Halifax, but soon found the burden of her duties and the absence from Haworth intolerable. Charlotte and Anne continued at Miss Wooler’s till Christmas 1837, when symptoms of incipient consumption in Anne alarmed Charlotte, and caused the two girls to return. Charlotte had a temporary misunderstanding with Miss Wooler for supposed indifference to Anne’s health; and though this was soon removed, and Charlotte was induced to return to her post in the spring of 1838, she found her health finally unequal to the task, and came back to Haworth.
For some time desultory attempts to find employment were the chief incidents of the sisters’ lives. It had come to be agreed that Emily was to remain at home; Anne found a situation as governess in the spring of 1839, and spent the rest of her life in various places, where the frequent dependence upon coarse employers seems to have been the source of much misery; Charlotte was a governess for a short time in 1839, and again from March to December 1841, finding kindly and considerate employers on the second occasion. She declined two offers of marriage, one in March 1839 to the prototype of St. John in ‘Jane Eyre,’ and one in the same autumn from an Irish clergyman. Soon afterwards she wrote and sent to Wordsworth a fragment of a story mentioned in the preface to the ‘Professor’ as one in which she had got over her taste for the high-flown style. She had already sent some poems to Southey on 29 Dec. 1836, who replied, pointing out the objections to a literary career, in a letter of which she acknowledged the kindness and wisdom (Gaskell, i. 162, 169-175; Southey, Life and Correspondence, vi. 327-30). Branwell had written soon afterwards to Wordsworth (19 Jan. 1837), but apparently no answer was made. Southey’s letter had led to Charlotte’s abandonment of literature for the time, and it seems from her reply to Wordsworth (Gaskell, i. 211) that his letter, though ‘kind and candid,’ was equally damping. Marriage and literature being renounced,she began to think of starting a school. The sisters thought that with the help of a loan from Miss Branwell’s savings they might adapt the parsonage to the purpose. In 1841 Miss Wooler proposed to give up her school to the Brontes. The offer was eagerly accepted, but it seemed desirable that they should qualify themselves by acquiring some knowledge of foreign languages on the continent. After some inquiries they decided upon entering a school of eighty or a hundred pupils, kept by M. and Mme. Héger in the Rue d’Isabelle, Brussels. Charlotte and Emily went thither in February 1842, their father going with them, and staying one night at the Chapter coffee-house, Paternoster Row, and one night at Brussels. M. Héger was a man of ability and strong religious principles, choleric but benevolent, and an active member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. He was professor of rhetoric and préfet des études at the Athénée, ultimately resigning his position because he was not allowed to introduce religious instruction. He soon perceived the talents of his new pupils, and, dispensing with the drudgery of grammar, set them to study pieces of classical French literature, and to practise original composition in French. Some of Charlotte’s exercises, printed by Mrs. Gaskell, show that she soon obtained remarkable command of the language. Although the sisters profited by this instruction, the general tone of the school was uncongenial; they disliked the Belgians, and the experience only intensified their protestantism and patriotic prejudices. Mary and Martha Taylor, their old friends, were resident in Brussels at this time; but the death of Martha Taylor, the original of Jessie Yorke, in the autumn of 1842, was a severe blow. News of the last illness and death of their aunt, Miss Branwell, reached them soon after. They started immediately for Haworth, and passed the rest of the year at home. The aunt’s will, made in 1833, left her money to four nieces, the three Brontës and Anne Kingston. The statement that she disinherited Branwell on account of his ill-conduct is erroneous (Leyland, ii. 31). M. Héger wrote a letter to their father, expressing a high opinion of their talents, and speaking of the possibility of his offering them a position. Charlotte had already begun to have lessons, and it was decided that she should return as a teacher, for a salary of 400 francs, out of which she was to pay for German lessons. She went in January 1843, and stayed till the end of the year. She felt the loneliness of her position, especially when left by herself during the vacation, and a coolness arose between her and Madame Héger, due partly at least to their religious differences. It is probable that she suffered at this time from some unfortunate attachment. Her father’s failing eyesight gave an additional reason for her presence at home, and she finally reached Haworth 2 Jan. 1844, with a certificate of her powers of teaching French, signed by M. Héger, and with the seal of the Athénée Royal. Her experiences at Brussels were used in the ‘Professor,’ and with surprising power in ‘Villette,’ which is to so great an extent a literal reproduction of her own personal history that some of the persons described complained of minor inaccuracies as though it had been avowedly a matter-of-fact narrative.
The plan of setting up a school was again discussed by the sisters. They could not leave their father, but with the sum left by Miss Branwell they intended to fit the parsonage for receiving pupils. No pupils, however, would come to the remote village, and troubles were accumulating. Branwell’s early promise was vanishing. After his visit to London he made some efforts to gain a living by painting portraits. He passed two or three years in desultory efforts, but his want of any serious training was fatal. A portrait of his sisters, described by Mrs. Gaskell, shows that he had some power of seizing a likeness, but was otherwise a mere dauber. He took lodgings at Bradford, joined the meetings of ‘the artistic and literary celebrities of the neighbourhood’ at the George Hotel (Leyland, i. 203), and rambled about the country. He was a member of the masonic ‘Lodge of the Three Graces’ at Haworth, of which John Brown, the sexton, was ‘worshipful master.’ He learnt to take opium, and occasionally drank to excess. On 1 Jan. 1840 he became tutor in the family of Mr. Postlethwaite of Broughton-in-Furness, and soon afterwards wrote a letter to his friend the sexton (ib. i. 255-9), which proves sufficiently that he was deeply tainted with vicious habits. He next got a place as clerk on the Leeds and Manchester railroad, being employed at Sowerby Bridge from October 1840, and a few months later at Luddenden Foot. At the beginning of 1842 he was dismissed for culpable negligence in his accounts and the defalcations of a subordinate. After the Christmas holidays in that year he became tutor in a family where Anne was already a governess. Here he appears to have fallen in love with the wife of his employer, seventeen years his senior, and to have misinterpreted her kindness into a return of his affection. When his behaviour became openly offensive, she spoke to her husband, and Branwell was summarily dismissed in July 1845. He bragged to all his friends of his supposed conquest in the fashion of a village Don Juan, and chose to say that the lady acted under compulsion, and was ready to marry him upon her husband’s death. Meanwhile he stayed with his father, still writing occasional scraps, and making applications for employment. He became reckless, took opium, and had attacks of delirium tremens. Emily Brontë appears to have tolerated him, Anne suffered cruelly, and Charlotte was indignant and disgusted. She speaks of his ‘frantic folly,’ says (3 March 1846) that it is ‘scarcely possible to stay in the room where he is,’ and regards the case as ‘hopeless.’ If he got a sovereign he spent it at the public-house. In 1846 his late employer died, and Branwell hoped, if, as is charitably suggested, he was under an hallucination, that the widow would marry him. He told his story to every one who would listen, adding that he would mention it to no other human being. After this he rapidly deteriorated, developed symptoms of consumption, and died 26 Sept. 1848. In his last moments he started convulsively to his feet and fell dead. This incident apparently gave rise to Mrs. Gaskell’s statement that he carried out a previous resolution that he would die standing, in order to prove the strength of his will.
These facts must be mentioned, because they explain one cause of the sisters’ depression, and because they have unfortunately been misstated. Biographers believed in Branwell’s story of the vileness of his employer’s wife, and though when first published it was met with an indignant denial and instantly suppressed, it has since been reported as authentic. It rests solely upon the testimony of the pothouse brags of a degraded creature. All the statements which can now be checked are false. The husband’s will did not, as Branwell asserted, make the lady’s fortune conditional on her not seeing him. On the contrary, it shows complete confidence in her. Branwell did not die with his pocket ‘full of her letters,’ She never wrote to him, and the letters were from another person (Leyland, ii. 142, 284). The whole may be dismissed as a shameful lie, possibly based in part on real delusion. A claim has been set up for Branwell to a partial authorship of ‘Wuthering Heights.’ He wrote, even to the last, some poems (many published by Mr. Leyland) which, though often feeble, show distinct marks of the family talent. He had finished by September 1845 one volume of a three-volume novel. He told Mr. Grundy, apparently in 1846, that he had written a great part of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ and, as Mr. Grundy adds, ‘what his sister said bore out the assertion.’ Two of his friends also stated (Leyland, ii. 186-8) that Branwell had read to them part of a novel, which, from recollection, they identified with ‘Wuthering Heights.’ On the other hand, Charlotte Brontë, who was in daily communication with her sisters at every step, obviously had no doubt that it was written by her sister Emily. Her testimony is conclusive. She could not have been deceived, nor is it possible to suppose that Emily would have carried out such a deception. The sisters still consulted Branwell on their work, and Emily was least repelled by him. That he may have given her some suggestions is probable enough; nor is it improbable that the reprobate who was slandering his employer’s wife was making a false claim to part of his sister’s novel. Stories of this kind are common enough in literary history-‘Garth did not write his own “Dispensary”‘-and this claim of Branwell’s may be dismissed with others of the same class. The internal evidence cannot be discussed; though it may be said that Emily’s poems show far higher promise than anything of Branwell’s, and so far strengthen her claim to a story of astonishing power. Branwell’s habits at this time were as unfavourable to good work as conducive to the disappearance of any fragments he may have written. When Charlotte left Brussels, her father’s eyesight was failing. The weak health of Tabby increased the labour of housekeeping. On 25 Aug. 1846 Mr. Brontë underwent a successful operation for cataract. The sisters now turned their thoughts to literature. Charlotte tells M. Héger in 1845 that she had been approved by Southey and (Hartley) Coleridge (Gaskell, i. 321). The latter was known to some of Branwell’s friends, and it is said that he and Wordsworth gave some encouragement to Branwell. In the autumn of 1845 Charlotte had accidentally found some poems of Emily’s. Anne then confessed to having also written verse; and the three put together a small volume, which was published at their expense in May 1846 by Messrs. Aylott & Jones. It attracted little notice, though reviewed in the ‘Athenæum’ (4 Judy 1846). The sisters adopted the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, corresponding to their initials. They next offered their novels, the ‘Professor,’ ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey,’ to various publishers. A refusal of the ‘Professor’ reached Charlotte on the day of her father’s operation, and on the same day she began ‘Jane Eyre.’ In the spring of 1847, Emily’s and Anne’s stories were accepted by J. Cautley Newby. Before they had appeared Charlotte received a letter from Messrs. Smith & Elder containing a refusal of the ‘Professor,’ but ‘so delicate, reasonable, and courteous as to be more cheering than some acceptances.’ It encouraged her to offer them ‘Jane Eyre,’ already nearly finished. The reader, the late Mr. W. S. Williams, recognised its great power. It was immediately accepted and published in August 1847. ‘Jane Eyre’ achieved at once surprising success. Charlotte had overcome the tendency to fine writing of her first story, and the reaction into dryness of the ‘Professor.’ She had learnt to combine extraordinary power of expressing passion with an equally surprising power of giving reality to her pictures which transfigures the commonest scenes and events in the light of genius. ‘Jane Eyre,’ which owed little to contemporary critics, was warmly praised in the ‘Examiner,’ and by G. H. Lewes in ‘Fraser’s Magazine’ for December; but the rush for copies, ‘which began early in greatest artistic weakness. ‘Villette’ was finished, after many interruptions caused by ill-health and depression, at the end of 1852, and published in the following spring. Her extreme sensibility was shown by a desire to publish it anonymously, but its success was equal at the time to that of its predecessors.
Miss Brontë had now become famous, and the life at Haworth was interrupted by occasional visits to the friends who had gathered round her, in spite of the extreme shyness of a sensitive nature reared in such peculiar seclusion. Her visit to Mr. Smith in London in the end of 1849 was followed by others in June 1850, in June 1851, and in January 1853. In 1849 she met Thackeray, the contemporary whom she most admired, though she was a little puzzled to know whether he was ‘in jest or earnest’ in conversation, and complained of what she thought his perversity in satire. She mentions (Gaskell, ii. 162) how she told him of his faults in 1850, and how his excuses were often worse than his crimes. Miss Brontë’s sense of humour was feeble. In 1851 she attended one of his lectures, and the author of ‘Jane Eyre’ found herself the centre of observation to a London audience, and was introduced to Mr. Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton). A description of Thackeray’s sensitiveness to the opinions of his hearers is adapted to the case of M. Paul Emanuel in ‘Villette.’ Thackeray’s impressions of Miss Brontë are given in a short introduction to a fragment called’ Emma,’ published in the ‘Cornhill’ for April 1860 (i. 485). She made the acquaintance of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth in 1850, and while staying with him near Bowness the same August met her future biographer, Mrs. Gaskell, with whom she formed a warm friendship. An admiring criticism of Wuthering Heights’ by Sydney Dobell in the ‘Palladium’ in September 1850 led to another warm friendship with the author. She met G. H. Lewes, whose early admiration of ‘Jane Eyre’ had pleased her, though she accepted with some difficulty his advice to study Miss Austen. He hurt her by a review of ‘Shirley’ in the ‘Edinburgh’ for June 1850, where she was annoyed by the stress laid upon her sex. ‘I can be on my guard against my enemies,’ she wrote pithily, ‘but God preserve me from my friends !’ Lewes appeared to her to be over-confident and dogmatic, but she respected him enough to say that he was guilty rather of ‘rough play than of foul play.’ Though she made it a duty to read all critiques, she was sensitive under reproof, and especially to any charge against her delicacy. A reviewer of ‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Jane Eyre’ in the ‘Quarterly’ for December 1848 had brought against her the charge of coarseness. She asked Miss Martineau, whose acquaintance she had made in 1850, to tell her faithfully of any such fault in future novels. Miss Martineau promised and kept her word by condemning ‘Villette’ upon that and other grounds in the ‘Daily News.’ Miss Brontë had stayed in Miss Martineau’s house, and, though repelled by some of her hostess’s religious opinions, had refused to give up the friendship upon that account. This criticism of ‘Villette’ induced Miss Brontë to signify that their intercourse must cease (Reid, p. 159). Miss Martineau afterwards wrote in the ‘Daily News’ a generous notice of Miss Brontë on her death.
A third offer of marriage had been made to Miss Brontë in the spring of 1851 by a man of business in good position, and was apparently favoured by her father. In July 1846 she had denied a report of an engagement to her father’s curate, Mr. A. B. Nicholls (Gaskell, i. 351 ; Reid, i. 72). He is alluded to in ‘Shirley’ as the ‘true Christian gentleman’ who had succeeded the three curates. In December 1852 Mr. Nicholls proposed marriage, and Miss Brontë, though returning his affection, refused him next day at her father’s dictation. Mr. Nicholls resigned his curacy and left Haworth. The father’s unreasonable indignation gradually calmed as he saw that his daughter’s health was suffering. In March 1854 Miss Brontë wrote with his consent to invite Mr. Nicholls to return. She had arranged that the marriage should not disturb her father’s seclusion, and should be a gain instead of a loss of money. It took place accordingly on 19 June 1854, and while health lasted was productive of unmixed happiness. After a visit with her husband to his Irish relations she returned to Haworth, where in the next winter her health became precarious. She sank gradually, and died on 31 March 1855. The father survived her for six years, retaining his interest in public affairs and cherishing all memorials of his daughters. Mr. Nicholls continued to live with him, and a letter from Mr. Raymond, editor of the ‘New York Times’ (partly reprinted in Reid, p. 194), describes an interview with the two. Patrick Brontë died on 7 June 1861.
The works published by the three sisters are as follows : 1. ‘Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,’ 1846. 2. ‘Jane Eyre,’ 1847. 3. ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey’ (3 vols., of which ‘Agnes Grey’ is the last), 1847. 4. ‘The Tenant of Wildfell cember’ (Gaskell, li. 20), indicated a hold upon public interest which needed no critical sanction. The second edition, dedicated to Thackeray, appeared in January 1848. ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey’ were published in December, with comparatively little success. By the next June Anne’s ‘Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ was offered to the same publisher. Hitherto the secret of the authorship of ‘Jane Eyre’ had been revealed by Charlotte to no one but her father, and to him only after its assured success (Gaskell, ii. 36). It had been conjectured by some readers that the three Bells were in reality one. A foolish and impossible story attributed ‘Jane Eyre’ to an imaginary governess of Thackeray’s, represented by Becky Sharp, who was supposed to have retorted by describing Thackeray as Rochester (Quarterly Review, December 1848).
On 28 April and 3 May 1848, Charlotte wrote to Miss Nussey, denying the rumour of its true origin with much vehemence, though with a self-betraying effort to avoid direct falsehood. She had, it seems, promised secrecy to her sisters. Meanwhile, the publisher of Emily’s and Anne’s novels had promised early sheets of the ‘Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ to an American house, stating his belief that it was by the author of ‘Jane Eyre.’ A difficulty arose with Messrs. Smith & Elder, who had promised the next work of the same author to another American firm. They wrote to Miss Brontë, and she, with Anne, immediately went to London in July to clear up the point decisively (Reid, p. 89). The sisters went to the Chapter coffee-house and immediately called at Messrs. Smith & Elder’s. They refused an invitation to stay at Mr. Smith’s house, and, after going to the opera and seeing a few London sights, returned to Haworth, and to severe domestic trials.
Branwell died in September. Emily’s health then showed symptoms of collapse. She would not complain, nor endure questioning. Only when actually dying (19 Dec. 1848) she said that she would see a doctor. Shirley Keeldar was Emily’s portrait of her sister as she might have been under happier circumstances. The story of the courage with which Shirley burns out the scar of a mad dog’s bite was true of Emily. The dog ‘Tartar’ was Emily’s mastiff (Keeper). She once gave him a severe thrashing for a domestic offence, though she had been told that if touched by a stick he would certainly throttle her. The dog, it is added, loved her ever afterwards, followed her to her grave, became decrepit, and died in December 1851 (Gaskell, ii. 239). Emily has been regarded by some critics as the ablest of the sisters. ‘Wuthering Heights’ and some of the poems give a promise more appreciable by critics than by general readers. The novel missed popularity by the general painfulness of the situation, by clumsiness of construction, and by the absence of the astonishing power of realisation manifest in ‘Jane Eyre.’ In point of style it is superior, but it is the nightmare of a recluse, not a direct representation of facts seen by genius. Though enthusiastically admired by good judges, it will hardly be widely appreciated. After Emily’s death Anne rapidly sickened. Consumption soon declared itself. On 24 May she left Haworth for Scarborough, and died there, after patient endurance of her sufferings, on 28 May 1849. A touching poem, ‘I hoped that with the brave and strong,’ was her last composition.
For the next few years Charlotte lived alone with her father. She suffered frequently from nervous depression. Household cares troubled her. The old servant Tabby had broken her leg in 1837, when the younger Brontës insisted upon keeping her in the house, though she might have lived in tolerable ease with a sister. In the autumn of 1849 Tabby, now at the age of eighty, had a fit; a younger servant who helped was seriously ill, and Miss Brontë had to do all the housework besides nursing the patients (Gaskell, ii. 122). She still persevered in literary composition, and ‘Shirley,’ the least melancholy of her stories, was published on 26 Oct. 1849. A Haworth man living at Liverpool easily divined the authorship, and the secret, already transparent, was openly abandoned. On a visit to Mr. George Smith, of Smith & Elder’s, in the antumn of the same year, she was introduced to Thackeray and in various literary circles. It is curious that she denied explicitly that the characters in ‘Shirley’ were ‘literal portraits’ (Gaskell, ii. 129). Yet it is admitted that an original stood for almost every person, if not for every person, introduced. Besides Shirley herself, who was meant for Emily, Mr. Helstone, who partly represented the elder Brontë, Caroline, who represented Miss Nussey, Mrs. Pryor and Mr. Hall had certainly originals; the whole family of Yorkes were ‘almost daguerreotypes’ (Gaskell, i. 115), and one of the sons himself confirmed their accuracy ; while the ‘three curates’ not only recognised their own likenesses, but called each other by the names given in the novel. In her last finished story, ‘Villette,’ the same method is applied to her life at Brussels. A too close reproduction of realities is in fact her Hall,’ by Acton Bell, 1848. 5. ‘Shirley,’ 1849. 6. A new edition of ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Agnes Grey,’ with ‘Selections from the literary remains of Ellis and Acton Bell,’ a biographical notice of Ellis and Acton Bell by Currer Bell, and prefaces to ‘Wuthering Heights’ and the ‘Selections’ of poetry). 7. ‘Villette,’ 1853. 8. ‘Emma’ (a fragment) in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ for April 1860. All these are comprised, together with Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life,’ in the collective edition in 7 vols. published in 1872 ; as is also Patrick Brontë’s ‘Cottage Poems.’ Illustrations of the places described are also given.