CHARLOTTE BRONTE, 1816-1916

Evening Star, Issue 16090, 15 April 1916, Page 4

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, 1816-1916

[Contributed by J. R. Sinclair.]

No. 1

Ono hundred years agono—come tho 21st day of April, 1916—there was born at Thornton, Bradford parish, Yorksliire, the third child (a girl) of tho Rev. Pabrick Bronte, and Maria Branwell, his wife. The child grew up to be the Charlotte Bronte, whose books took the reading public of England by storm—who was loved and admired alike for the noblo simplicity of her character as. for her marvellous jifts —the Charlotte Brents' who shed a lustre upon Yorksliire, the child of whose moons she was, upon the little villago of Haworth, with which her girlhood and womarihood are associated, visited each year by a multitude who make the pilgrimage to pay homage at her resting-place to her 'genius ' and to her memory.

The mother diad young, leaving her husband, the poor clergyman, with a nest of little ones, two girls older than Charlotte, a boy, and two girls younger. A sister a year or so later came to live with them to help care for tho motherless children. She was, I judge, a kindly woman, not robust in health, who later, out of her slender means, helped Charlotte and Emily to go to school ia Jgtossels. The girls all inherited weakness of constitution, which sent first one, then another, to an early grave. Of the boy I say this only: he was gifted, as wera his" sisters, but he brought about his own ruin and died young.

The student, as he gets into touch with Charlotte Bronte's thought and methods, finds himself irresistibly associating her with ono seemingly very -unlike herself— Thomas Carlvle.

These two must be regarded as among the most sterling, and, therefore, the mosthelpful of our authors, apart altogether from their direct teaching itself by reason of the spirit that dominated everything they wrote. Differing in temperament, in characteristics widely as two beings may, they yet meet sharing the same ideals, with the same outlook on life, its seriousness borne in on them, embued both with the sacrednass of work, courage shown in difficulty and trouble, resting what they had to say upon tho sure foundation of faithfulness to thoroughness and truth; both contributing, regardless of consequences to themselves, of .tho best that was in them. With each, tnith was a passion. Much there was in common in their lot widely different as their surroundings were, entirely different as was tho literary medium th'ey adopted. Each began liberally endowed with genius, started life with 10 talents, had to discover without help how best to use them. They summoned themselves for battle against tho world, and fought indomitably to the end. Neither had the disadvantage of being the subject of patronage. Difficulties, not unlike in kind, beset both. Each had often to labor in suffering or pain, to face up-hill work, to leave the beaban track in order to deliver a message ; the one grim, at times aggressive; the other a girl, timid and retiring. Yet both stood, with fine courage, in defiance of cost to themselves, for the real; clothed honest work in dignity; despised padding ; discarded models; fashioned their own, resting always, on truth, yet well knowing that " truth Mings "; that society loves what is conventional; heedless both of Emerson's warning, that for nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

lhe more the devil pecks at me tho more vehemently I wring his nose,'' embodies Carlylc'a dogged determination to win through." The other timorous, yet m a gentle way resolute, with a wellbalanced mind and a true sense of proportion, well convinced "that weak concession creates selfishness, and that each human borne has his share of rights to which he should hold tenaciously "as thmartyr to Jiis creed." Each reached the goal of success as an author—Carlyle to enter that sacred band (as, Frederick Harrison puts it) whoso names outlive their own century, and give some special tone to then- national literature; Charlotte Bronto, who published but three tales in six yeans, and who died in her 39th year to bound into immediate fame-" a fame that alter all these years we do not even ??*T FT *? have been excessive"; the little lad who walked the 80 miles to Edinburgh when he left his home for the University to become the teacher whom honors could not honor; the delicate girl-handi-capped by short sight, by inherited weakness of _ constitution, whose sisters one bv Tm P1 ? e l and died—the shy child of the parsonage at Hawd'rth, to win the place accorded her-that of one of the four leading novelists of the nineTWL Centu #: ; , taki % her place with Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot What dxj Charlotte Bronte, whose story is one of the most moving and noble m English literature, and it is of her that I write-what did sho know of life, what fields had she explored when she produced amongst domestic anxieties which would have prostrated many a robust one, ' The Professor ?—a WO rk not published till after her death, a work of which a biographer writes : " Charlotte Bronte never excelled one or two sketches of portraits which sho has given in 'The Professor,' nor m grace of womanhood ever surpassed one of the female characters there described. She herself wrote later- "It would be difficult to explain to you bow ntlo actual experience I have had of life how few persons I had known, and how IFYJV* kn ?. w , a m °" The' author ot Makers of English Fiction' wrote : That one so utterly remote from the great currents of life could construct such books as these out of such scenes as lay at her door and such thoughts as burned within herself, j B one of the marvels of literature.

She had been a governess, had been in Belgium—first, as a learner, then as a teacher. Where had been, the opportunity of this child of the lonely moor? She made opportunity, wove with homely stutt, with everyday experience and adventure ; superior workmanship produced the exquisite fabric. Her material for work, the principle of treatment (and it is the keynote to the understanding of everything she did and wrote), let me give in her own clear and resolute words: I said to myself that my hero should work his way through life, as I had'seen real living men work theirs; that he should never get a shilling he had not earned 5 that no sudden turns should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station 5 that whatever small competency he might gain should be won by the , sweat of his brow; that before he should find so much as an arbor to sit down in ht> should master-at least half the ascent of the Hill of Difficulty; that ho should not even marry a beautiful girl, or a lady of rank. As Adam's son he should snare Adam's doom, and drain throughout life a mixed and moderate cup of enjoyment.

She found on trial " that although men in business are usually thought to° prefer the real, that the idea was often found fallacious; that a passionate preference for the wild, wonderful, thrilling, the strange, startling, and harrowing, agitates clivers souls that show a calm and sober surface." Nevertheless, in her stand for the real she took all risk, preferred what wa3 the plain and homely, worked with her own chosen material, just as did Carlyle, who refused to write on party lines even at a time when his daily bread was in the scale. "It shows the admirable spirit," as one puts it, "in which Charlotte Brcnte approached hor art." " says a writer, "when she believed she had accumulated something—some truth which she was hound to convey to the world—she would not touch her pen." Whoever attempts, at this time of'day, to speak of Charlotte Bronte, miist draw freely upon writers who have made her and her circle a life study, especially from her life hy Mrs Gaskell, between wnom and Charlotte Bronte (apart from thetie of letters) a warm and close friendship existed. I shall quote from her work, qf which Mr Clement Shorter, himself a writer of her biography, says:

In the whole of English biographical literature there is no book that can compare in widespread interest with th_e life of Charlotte. Bronte by Mrs

Mr Weymss Reid cays: '' It is one of Che most fascinating and artistic biographies in the English language." Those who do me the-' honor to follow ,\7iiat I have to say would Teadily discern, without .As frequent acknowledgment Sy me, t'ne master hand of the jifted iuihoress. To the writings on Charlotte Bronte's fascinating personality find genius if Frede rick Harrison, the .tight Hon. Augustine Birrell, Weymss' Reid, Element "Snorter, Swinburne, Chesterton, Miss Tlora son, Mrs Erederika .Macdonald, the author of 'The Makers >f English Miction,' and Miss May Sinclair I im equally indebted. Home object to quotation, but, as Mr Birrell amusingly puts it, some books, and some sermons, -aid I am sure I may say some essays, would be unbearable but for quotation. Go with me. then, to the grey stone village on the edge- of the Yorkshire moor. Wo pass Kdghley, tho old-fashion«d village that straggles into country as you move forward to Haworth, where the rainswept parsonage occupied by her father, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, is seen long before yon reach it on the side of the steep hill; the moor beyond, which stretches for miles in lonely wastes of purple—so wild then that eagles stooped low in search of food for their young. In ats solitude Charlotto Bronte loved to wander; there were held many of her communings ; the moor, whose influence is to be traced both in her life and in her work, for which she ever entertained a passionate love, "its witness attuned to the wildness of her imagination." You reach the quiet little street which leads to the Haworth parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of the lane, the parsonage, now enlarged, facing the church. The old church is gone. The house of grey stone was two stories high, four rooms on each story- Views of it and of the old church are given in Mi Weymss Reid's book. In ono of the rooms on the ground iloor to tho left the children spent a, great paxt of. their lives. What talcs the four walls of that square, simple room arid the walls of the box room above," where it is likely 'The Professor' and 'Jane Eyre' were composed, could tell had they,;.-voice! In the days of Charlotte Bronte we are told that everything about the place spoke of the most dainty order. The doorsteps spotless ; tho small, old-

fashioned window frames glittered like

a looking-glass. Inside and outside of that houso cleanliness went up into its essence, purity.

Of her home she wrote:

My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in tho world—the profound, the interne affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other when their minds -are cast in the same mould, thei'r ideas drawn from the same source : when they have ciung to each other since childhood, and when disputes have never sprung up to divide them. Such was Charlotte Bronte's home, longingly looked back tn, even to the point of homesickness, whenever she was away from it. " Our England is a bonnie island." she makes one of the characters in 'Shirley' say, ''and Yorkshire is one of her bonniest ncoks." The mother dead, brought up amid caies, the wonderful children—for surely a mere gifted child circle never existed—were thrown upon each other for society, their constructive genius weaving pi ays in which Bonaparte, Hannibal, and Caesar had places. Later, boarding school at Cowa.nbridge—a second Dotheboyu Hall which she left when she was nine years of age, with its trials, owing partly to ill-health and partly to unsympathetic treatment, -all vividly reproduced in 'Jane Eyre'—so exact a "transcript that when the book appeared those who had been at school with her knew that one of their group must have written it. Maria, and Elizabeth, her elder sisters, in turn went home to die. Charlotte had to take, the responsibilities of elder sister in a motherless family, to assume duties that sho regarded as a. sacred legacy bequeathed to her by the gentle elder sister, who had passed away—Maria, the prodigy (reproduced as the suffering Helen Bums in 'Jane Eyre'), with, whom, long before she was 11, her father conversed on the leading topics of the day with as much pleasure and freedom as with many grown-up persons. Tho children, with eneigy untameable, roamed the moors, taking delight in their beauties, happy in their freedom, faced rain'and sunshine, exchanged thoughts, held communings, seeing visions, dreaming dreams, genius their stock-in-common. It was from impressions then taken that, as a. writer puts it, their immortality was made. "It was of these elemental things that Charlotte and Emily wrote as no woman before them had ever written." School again, for a year ami a-half, at Miss Wooller's, at lice Head, some 20 miles from Haworth, amid surroundings loved by the monks long ago, the haunt of Robin Hood, sunny glades, old yew trees ; Oakley Hall described as " Fields Head," the home of Shirley, with its grassy lawns and terraces. An indefatigable student, strongly convinced at 15 of the necessity and value of education, tenacious of memory, intensely observant. The lady principal had talked to her pupils of the cruel conditions of labor at the close of the Peninsular War. That Charlotte Bronte absorbed the spirit of the time, that she was an attentive'listener to the narrative of " the surreptitious military training of thousands of maddened, desperate men, preparing for the day when right should struggle with might," readers of ' Shirley ' know well. Roe Head left to care for, she had to teach her two younger sisters, Ann and Emily. All worked together—sewing, drawing, reading, writing—for writing seemed to come naturally to each. Each produced her own work, in addition to a volume of verses issued jointly, of .which only two copies sold in a year—Ann, ' Atnes Grey' and the 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall'; Emily's tragic genius, ' Wuthering" Heights,' whose power and intensity overcome and even repel many a reader—a book that Swinburne says will never die and of which M. Chesterton writes that "the author's imagination was sometimes superhuman." But it is of Charlotte that I write. What was the appearance of this gentle personality, now nearing 15? In 1831 Charlotte Bronte was a quiet, thoughtful girl, very small in figure, slight fragile body, soft thick brown hair, t eyes large, well-shaped, of color a reddish-brown, the usual expression, quiet, listening intelligence, on occasion of vivid interest, a wholesomo indignation, a light would shine out as if some spiritual lamp had been kindled, features plain, large, and ill-set, but the eyes and power of countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the whole face arrested attention: the hands and feet, Mrs Gaskell tells us', tho smallest sho ever saw; long delicate fingers, had a peculiar fineness of sensation" all her handiwork, writing, sewing, knitting was .clear in its minuteness ; neat

in personal attire, dainty as to the fit of her gloves and shoes. " So quiet and ladylike to look upon," was the description of her lifelong girl friend, Miss Ellen Nussey. It is well to keep in mind, in trying to know this gifted personality, to understand her outlook and treatment of material, that, though hor life was clouded by sorrow and oppressed by both mental and physical suffering, she'was for- years a happy and high-spirited girl, with a faculty, as one puts it, of overcoming sorrows by a steadfast courage which helped her to surmount trials and disappointments that would have broken down one of less even balance. The lighter side of her character was prominent always to her nearest and dearest friends; shy. but with a wholesome and healthy happiness Mr Weymss Boid tells us. Later a teacher, then a- governess; later still a, learner at Brussels with hor sister Emilv, " submitting at 26 to authority instead of exercising it," for French literature had to be studied trader conditions making for originality of thought and expression—(amid all her work, looking back with intense lon"inc to her loved Yorkshire home. At Brussels aha Ea,ir somewhat—quietly gathering material " of that grand old world of which sbo had dreamed. Every opot told its histories talo." Belgium—a, country alas destined to play a suffering part in pre-sent-day strife—a. country ' to whoso people purs owes a debtr-det ii bo well reiiuerabered, th&l> one genexation, oaa but>

scaroely tsgin to repay. The sisters cpent their leisure in quiet walks ; Emily happy in eilence "unsociable'' Chesterton ■outs it) "as a ..storm ;>t midnight" ; Charlotte's gentle maimer ievcr changing. Later, a teacher of English jr. Brussels, with a eatery of £l6 a year, jab of which Jio had to pay 10 2ranes a, month for lier<Jermau. Home again; work 'recommenced; literary '.lopes faint, but still holding on correspondence with publishers,' with, her old school friend, Miss Nuesey, who, torn between iuty to herself and her people, had applied to her for advice. "The right path is that which " necessitates tho greatest sacrifice of self-interest, which implies the ireatcst good to others." Sho practised what sho taught—devotion to her sisters, to her erring brother, to her father threatened with loss of sight—before everything else. ' The Professor' came back to her nards'; it had passed from publisher to publisher, as had Cavlyle's work of greatest genius ' Sartor Resartus,' rejected, the brown paper parcel which covered it having tho name of each publisher to whom it had bsen in turn submitted merely erased, each successive firm being by that means, notified that, the wsrk hail been rejected by those whose names had been 6imply scored through ; rigid adherence, at all cost, to openness and truth. "Tho father's sight was hanging by a thread, the black shadow cf remorse was over her brother," whose brilliant gifts had early promised so much and performed so little: her sister's health gone. Yet with fine courage die worked nwav at 'Jane Eyre,' labored hard. "But never was the claim of duty, never was the call of another for help neglected Icr an instant " ; always ready to give, although for herself asking so little. "The longer 1 live," she softly wrote, "tho mere plainly I .see that gentle must be the strain on fragile human nature; it will not bear much,"

(To bo continued.)