Chapter VIII: Part 8

Peace under green grass could never be the end of Heathcliff or of such a tragedy as _Wuthering Heights_. Its real end is the tale told by the shepherd whom Lockwood meets on the moor.

"'I was going to the Grange one evening--a dark evening, threatening thunder--and, just at the turn of the Heights, I encountered a little boy with a sheep and two lambs before him; he was crying terribly; and I supposed the lambs were skittish and would not be guided.

"'What is the matter, my little man?' I asked.

"'There's Heathcliff and a woman, yonder, under t' Nab,' he blubbered, 'un' I darnut pass 'em.'"

It is there, the end, in one line, charged with the vibration of the supernatural. One line that carries the suggestion of I know not what ghostly and immaterial passion and its unearthly satisfaction.

* * * * *

And this book stands alone, absolutely self-begotten and self-born. It belongs to no school; it follows no tendency. You cannot put it into any category. It is not "Realism", it is not "Romance", any more than _Jane Eyre_: and if any other master's method, De Maupassant's or Turgeniev's, is to be the test, it will not stand it. There is nothing in it you can seize and name. You will not find in it support for any creed or theory. The redemption of Catherine Linton and Hareton is thrown in by the way in sheer opulence of imagination. It is not insisted on. Redemption is not the keynote of _Wuthering Heights_. The moral problem never entered into Emily Brontë's head. You may call her what you will--Pagan, pantheist, transcendentalist mystic and worshipper of earth, she slips from all your formulas. She reveals a point of view above good and evil. Hers is an attitude of tolerance that is only not tenderness because her acceptance of life and of all that lives is unqualified and unstinting. It is too lucid and too high for pity.

Heathcliff and Catherine exist. They justify their existence by their passion. But if you ask what is to be said for such a creature as Linton Heathcliff, you will be told that he does not justify his existence; his existence justifies him.

Do I despise the timid deer,
Because his limbs are fleet with fear?
Or, would I mock the wolf's death-howl,
Because his form is gaunt and foul?
Or, hear with joy the lev'ret's cry,
Because it cannot bravely die?
No! Then above his memory
Let Pity's heart as tender be.

After all it _is_ pity; it is tenderness.

And if Emily Brontë stands alone and is at her greatest in the things that none but she can do, she is great also in some that she may be said to share with other novelists; the drawing of minor characters, for instance. Lockwood may be a little indistinct, but he is properly so, for he is not a character, he is a mere impersonal looker-on. But Nelly Dean, the chief teller of the story, preserves her rich individuality through all the tortuous windings of the tale. Joseph, the old farm-servant, the bitter, ranting Calvinist, is a masterpiece. And masterly was that inspiration that made Joseph chorus to a drama that moves above good and evil. "'Thank Hivin for all!'" says Joseph. "'All warks togither for gooid, to them as is chozzen and piked out fro' the rubbidge. Yah knaw whet t' Scripture sez.'" "'It's a blazing shame, that I cannot oppen t' blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to Sattan, and all t' flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into the warld.'"

Charlotte Brontë said of her sister: "Though her feeling for the people round her was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced ... 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." And yet you might have said she had been listening to Joseph all her life, such is her command of his copious utterance: "'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph. 'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall just tum'le o'er them brocken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to Churstmas, flinging t' precious gifts o' God under fooit i' yer flaysome rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i' that plisky. I nobbut wish he may.'"

Edgar Linton is weak in drawing and in colour; but it was well-nigh impossible to make him more alive beside Catherine and Heathcliff. If Emily's hand fails in Edgar Linton it gains strength again in Isabella. These two are the types of the civilized, the over-refined, the delicate wearers of silk and velvet, dwellers in drawing-rooms with pure white ceilings bordered with gold, "with showers of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre". They, as surely as the tainted Hindley, are bound to perish in any struggle with strong, fierce, primeval flesh and blood. The fatal moment in the tale is where the two half-savage children, Catherine and Heathcliff, come to Thrushcross Grange. Thrushcross Grange, with all its sickly brood, is doomed to go down before Wuthering Heights. But Thrushcross Grange is fatal to Catherine too. She has gone far from reality when she is dazzled by the glittering glass-drops and the illusion of Thrushcross Grange. She has divorced her body from her soul for a little finer living, for a polished, a scrupulously clean, perfectly presentable husband.

Emily Brontë shows an unerring psychology in her handling of the relations between Isabella and Catherine. It is Isabella's morbid passion for Heathcliff that wakes the devil in Catherine. Isabella is a sentimentalist, and she is convinced that Heathcliff would love her if Catherine would "let him". She refuses to believe that Heathcliff is what he is. But Catherine, who _is_ Heathcliff, can afford to accuse him. "'Nelly,'" she says, "'help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is.... He's not a rough diamond--a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic; he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" But Isabella will not believe it. "'Mr. Heathcliff is not a fiend,'" she says; "'he has an honourable soul, and a true one, or how could he remember her?'" It is the same insight that made George Meredith represent Juliana, the sentimental passionist, as declaring her belief in Evan Harrington's innocence while Rose Jocelyn, whose love is more spiritual and therefore more profoundly loyal, doubts. Emily Brontë, like George Meredith, saw a sensualist in every sentimentalist; and Isabella Linton was a little animal under her silken skin. She is ready to go to her end _quand même_, whatever Heathcliff is, but she tricks herself into believing that he is what he is not, that her sensualism may justify itself to her refinement. That is partly why Heathcliff, who is no sensualist, hates and loathes Isabella and her body.

But there are moments when he also hates the body of Catherine that betrayed her. Emily Brontë is unswerving in her drawing of Heathcliff. It is of a piece with his strangeness, his unexpectedness, that he does not hate Edgar Linton with anything like the same intensity of hatred that he has for Isabella. And it is of a piece with his absolute fiery cleanness that never for a moment does he think of taking the lover's obvious revenge. For it is not, I imagine, that Emily Brontë deliberately shirked the issue, or deliberately rejected it; it is that that issue never entered her head. Nor do I see here, in his abandonment of the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not need it, Emily let it go.

The evil wrought by Heathcliff, like the passion that inspired and tortured him, is an unearthly thing. Charlotte showed insight when she said in her preface to _Wuthering Heights_: "Heathcliff betrays one solitary human feeling, and that is _not_ his love for Catherine; which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman ... the single link that connects Heathcliff with humanity is his rudely confessed regard for Hareton Earnshaw--the young man whom he has ruined; and then his half-implied esteem for Nelly Dean." But that Heathcliff is wholly inhuman--"a ghoul, an afreet"--I cannot really see. Emily's psychology here is perforce half on the unearthly plane; it is above our criticism, lending itself to no ordinary tests. But for all his unearthliness, Heathcliff is poignantly human, from his childhood when he implored Nelly Dean to make him "decent", for he is "going to be good", to his last hour of piteous dependence on her. You are not allowed for a moment to forget, that, horrible and vindictive as he is, the child Heathcliff is yet a child. Take the scene where the boy first conceives his vengeance.

"On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely:

"'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!'

"'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people. We should learn to forgive.'

"'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.'"

It is very like Heathcliff. It is also pathetically like a child.

In Hareton Earnshaw Emily Brontë is fairly on the earth all the time, and nothing could be finer than her handling of this half-brutalized, and wholly undeveloped thing, her showing of the slow dawn of his feelings and intelligence. Her psychology is never psychologic. The creature reveals himself at each moment of his unfolding for what he is. It was difficult; for in his degradation he had a certain likeness in unlikeness to the degraded Heathcliff. It was Heathcliff's indomitable will that raised him. Hareton cannot rise without a woman's hand to help him. The younger Catherine again was difficult, because of her likeness to her mother. Her temper, her vanity, her headstrong trickiness are Catherine Earnshaw. But Catherine Linton is a healthy animal, incapable of superhuman passion, capable only (when properly chastened by adversity) of quite ordinary pity and devotion. She inspires bewilderment, but terror and fascination never; and never the glamour, the magic evoked by the very name of Catherine Earnshaw. Her escapades and fantasies, recalling Catherine Earnshaw, are all on an attenuated scale.

Yet Catherine Earnshaw seems now and then a less solid figure. That is because her strength does not lie in solidity at all. She is a thing of flame and rushing wind. One half of her is akin to the storms of Wuthering Heights, the other belongs to her unseen abiding-place. Both sides of her are immortal.

And they are of that immortality which is the spirit of place--the spirit that, more than all spirits, inspired Emily Brontë. Two of Charlotte's books, _The Professor_ and _Villette_, might have been written away from Haworth; Emily's owes much of its outward character to the moors, where it was brought forth. Not even Charlotte could paint, could suggest scenes like Emily Brontë. There is nobody to compare with her but Thomas Hardy; and even he has to labour more, to put in more strokes to achieve his effect. In four lines she gives the storm, the cold and savage foreground, and the distance of the Heights: "One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns, all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun."

See the finish of this landscape, framed in a window: "They sat together in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed, beyond the garden trees and the wild green park, the valley of Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was invisible; it rather dips down on the other side."

In six lines she can paint sound, and distance, and scenery, and the turn of the seasons, and the two magics of two atmospheres. "Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain."

That music is the prelude to Heathcliff's return, and to the passionate scene that ends in Catherine's death.

And nothing could be more vivid, more concrete, than Emily Brontë's method. Time is marked as a shepherd on the moors might mark it, by the movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars; by weather, and the passage of the seasons. Passions, emotions, are always presented in bodily symbols, by means of the bodily acts and violences they inspire. The passing of the invisible is made known in the same manner. And the visible world moves and shines and darkens with an absolute illusion of reality. Here is a road seen between sunset and moonrise: "... all that remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by the light of that splendid moon".

The book has faults, many and glaring faults. You have to read it many times before you can realize in the mass its amazing qualities. For it is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, this story of two houses and of three generations that the man Lockwood is supposed to tell. Not only has Lockwood to tell of things he could not possibly have heard and seen, but sometimes you get scene within vivid scene, dialogue within dialogue, and tale within tale, four deep. Sometimes you are carried back in a time and sometimes forward. You have to think hard before you know for certain whose wife Catherine Heathcliff really is. You cannot get over Lockwood's original mistake. And this poor device of narrative at second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand, is used to convey things incredible, inconceivable; all the secret, invisible drama of the souls of Catherine and Heathcliff, as well as whole acts of the most visible, the most tangible, the most direct and vivid and tumultuous drama; drama so tumultuous, so vivid, and so direct, that by no possibility could it have been conveyed by any medium. It simply happens.

And that is how Emily Brontë's genius triumphs over all her faults. It is not only that you forgive her faults and forget them, you are not--in the third reading anyhow--aware of them. They disappear, they are destroyed, they are burnt up in her flame, and you wonder how you ever saw them. All her clumsy contrivances cannot stay her course, or obscure her light, or quench her fire. Things happen before your eyes, and it does not matter whether Lockwood, or Nelly Dean, or Heathcliff, or Catherine, tells you of their happening.

And yet, though Lockwood and Nelly Dean are the thinnest, the most transparent of pure mediums, they preserve their personalities throughout. Nelly especially. The tale only begins to move when Lockwood drops out and Nelly takes it up. At that point Emily Brontë's style becomes assured in its directness and simplicity, and thenceforward it never falters or changes its essential character.

And it is there, first of all, in that unfaltering, unchanging quality of style that she stands so far above her sister. She has no purple patches, no decorative effects. No dubiously shining rhetoric is hers. She does not deal in metaphors or in those ponderous abstractions, those dreadful second-hand symbolic figures--Hope, Imagination, Memory, and the rest of them, that move with every appearance of solidity in Charlotte's pages. There are no angels in her rainbows. Her "grand style" goes unclothed, perfect in its naked strength, its naked beauty. It is not possible to praise Charlotte's style without reservations; it is not always possible to give passages that illustrate her qualities without suppressing her defects. What was a pernicious habit with Charlotte, her use of words like "peruse", "indite", "retain", with Emily is a mere slip of the pen. There are only, I think, three of such slips in _Wuthering Heights_. Charlotte was capable of mixing her worst things with her best. She mixed them most in her dialogue, where sins of style are sinfullest. It is not always possible to give a scene, word for word, from Charlotte's novels; the dramatic illusion, the illusion of reality, is best preserved by formidable cutting.

But not only was Emily's style sinless; it is on the whole purest, most natural, and most inevitable in her dialogue; and that, although the passions she conceived were so tremendous, so unearthly, that she might have been pardoned if she found no human speech to render them.

What is more, her dramatic instinct never fails her as it fails Charlotte over and over again. Charlotte had not always the mastery and self-mastery that, having worked a situation up to its dramatic climax, leaves it there. A certain obscure feeling for rightness guides her in the large, striding movement of the drama; it is in the handling of the scenes that she collapses. She wanders from climax to climax; she goes back on her own trail; she ruins her best effects by repetition. She has no continuous dramatic instinct; no sense whatever of dramatic form.

These are present somehow in _Wuthering Heights_, in spite of its monstrous formlessness. Emily may have had no more sense of form for form's sake than Charlotte; she may have had no more dramatic instinct; but she had an instinct for the ways of human passion. She knew that passion runs its course, from its excitement to its climax and exhaustion. It has a natural beginning and a natural end. And so her scenes of passion follow nature. She never goes back on her effect, never urges passion past its climax, or stirs it in its exhaustion. In this she is a greater "realist" than Charlotte.

* * * * *

It is incredible that _Wuthering Heights_, or any line of it, any line that Emily Brontë ever wrote, should have passed for Charlotte's. She did things that Charlotte could never have done if she tried a thousand years, things not only incomparably greater, but unique.

Yet in her lifetime she was unrecognized. What is true of her prose is true also of her poems. They, indeed, did bring her a little praise, obscure and momentary. No less she was unrecognized to such an extent that _Wuthering Heights_ was said and believed to be an immature work of Charlotte's. Even after her death, her eulogist, Sydney Dobell, was so far from recognizing her, that he seems to have had a lingering doubt as to Ellis Bell's identity until Charlotte convinced him of his error.

And only the other day a bold attempt was made to tear from Emily Brontë the glory that she has won at last from time. The very latest theory,[A] offered to the world as a marvellous discovery, the fruit of passionate enthusiasm and research, is the old, old theory that Charlotte, and not Emily, wrote _Wuthering Heights_. And Sydney Dobell, with his little error, is made to serve as a witness. In order to make out a case for Charlotte, the enthusiast and researcher is obliged to disparage every other work of Emily's. He leans rashly enough on the assumption that her "Gondal Chronicles" were, in their puerility, beneath contempt, still more rashly on his own opinion that she was no poet.

[Footnote A: _The Key to the Brontë Works_, by J. Malham-Dembleby. See Appendix I.]

If this were the only line he took, this amusing theorist might be left alone. The publication of the _Complete Poems_ settles him. The value, the really priceless value, of his undertaking is in the long array of parallel passages from the prose of Charlotte and of Emily with which he endeavours to support it. For, so far from supporting it, these columns are the most convincing, the most direct and palpable refutation of his theory. If any uncritical reader should desire to see for himself wherein Charlotte and Emily Brontë differed; in what manner, with what incompatible qualities and to what an immeasurable degree the younger sister was pre-eminent, he cannot do better than study those parallel passages. If ever there was a voice, a quality, an air absolutely apart and distinct, not to be approached by, or confounded with any other, it is Emily Brontë's.

It was the glare of Charlotte's fame that caused in her lifetime that blindness and confusion. And Emily, between pride and a superb indifference, suffered it. She withdrew, with what seemed an obstinate perversity, into her own magnificent obscurity. She never raised a hand to help herself. She left no record, not a note or a word to prove her authorship of _Wuthering Heights_. Until the appearance in 1910 of her _Complete Poems_ the world had no proof of it but Charlotte's statement. It was considered enough, in Charlotte's lifetime. The world accepted her disclaimer.

But the trouble began again after Charlotte's death. Emily herself had no legend; but her genius was perpetually the prey of rumours that left her personality untouched. Among the many provoked by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, there was one attributing _Wuthering Heights_ to her brother Branwell.[A] Mr. Francis Grundy said that Branwell told him he had written _Wuthering Heights_. Mr. Leyland believed Mr. Grundy. He believed that Branwell was a great poet and a great novelist, and he wrote two solid volumes of his own in support of his belief.

[Footnote A: The curious will find a note on this point in Appendix II.]

Nobody believes in Mr. Grundy, or in Mr. Leyland and his belief in Branwell now. All that can be said of Branwell, in understanding and extenuation, is that he would have been a great poet and a greater novelist if he could have had his own way.

This having of your own way, unconsciously, undeliberately, would seem to be the supreme test of genius. Having your own way in the teeth of circumstances, of fathers and of brothers, and of aunts, of school-mistresses,[A] and of French professors, of the parish, of poverty, of public opinion and hereditary disease; in the teeth of the most disastrous of all hindrances, duty, not neglected, but fulfilled. By this test the genius of Emily Brontë fairly flames; Charlotte's stands beside it with a face hidden at times behind bruised and darkened wings. By this test even Anne's pale talent shows here and there a flicker as of fire. In all three the having of their own way was, after all, the great submission, the ultimate obedience to destiny.

[Footnote A: It was Miss Wooler who taught Charlotte to "peruse".]

For genius like theirs _is_ destiny. And that brings us back to the eternal question of the Sources. "Experience" will not account for what was greatest in Charlotte. It will hardly account for what was least in Emily. With her only the secret, the innermost experience counted. If the sources of _Wuthering Heights_ are in the "Gondal Poems", the sources of the poems are in _that_ experience, in the long life of her adventurous spirit. Her genius, like Henry Angora and Rosina and the rest of them, flew from the "Palaces of Instruction". As she _was_ Henry Angora, so she _was_ Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

It is a case of "The Horse I rode at the battle of Zamorna", that is all.

There has been too much talk about experience. What the critic, the impressionist, of the Brontës needs is to recover, before all things, the innocence of the eye. No doubt we all of us had it once, and can remember more or less what it was like. To those who have lost it I would say: Go back and read again Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_.

Years and years ago, when I was a child, hunting forlornly in my father's bookshelves, I came upon a small, shabby volume, bound in yellow linen. The title-page was adorned with one bad wood-cut that showed a grim, plain house standing obliquely to a churchyard packed with tombstones--tombstones upright and flat, and slanting at all angles. In the foreground was a haycock, where the grave grass had been mown. I do not know how the artist, whose resources were of the slenderest, contrived to get his overwhelming but fascinating effect of moorland solitude, of black-grey nakedness and abiding gloom. But he certainly got it and gave it. There was one other picture, representing a memorial tablet.

Tombstones always fascinated me in those days, because I was mortally afraid of them; and I opened that book and read it through.

I could not, in fact, put it down. For the first time I was in the grip of a reality more poignant than any that I had yet known, of a tragedy that I could hardly bear. I suppose I have read that book a score of times since then. There are pages in it that I shrink from approaching even now, because of the agony of realization they revive. The passing bell tolled continually in the prelude; it sounded at intervals throughout; it tolled again at the close. The refrain of "Here lie the Remains" haunted me like a dolorous song. It seemed to me a decorous and stately accompaniment to such a tale, and that wood-cut on the title-page a fitting ornament. I knew every corner of that house. I have an impression (it is probably a wrong one) of a flagged path going right down from the Parsonage door through another door and plunging among the tombs. I saw six little white and wistful faces looking out of an upper window; I saw six little children going up and up a lane, and I wondered how the tiny feet of babies ever got so far. I saw six little Brontë babies lost in the spaces of the illimitable moors. They went over rough stones and walls and mountain torrents; their absurd petticoats were blown upwards by the wind, and their feet were tangled in the heather. They struggled and struggled, and yet were in an ecstasy that I could well understand.

I remember I lingered somewhat long over the schooldays at Cowan Bridge and that I found the Brussels period dull; M. Héger struck me as a tiresome pedant, and I wondered how Charlotte could ever have put up with him. There was a great deal about Branwell that I could not understand at all, and so forgot. And I skipped all the London part, and Charlotte's literary letters. I had a very vague idea of Charlotte apart from Haworth and the moors, from the Parsonage and the tombstones, from Tabby and Martha and the little black cat that died, from the garden where she picked the currants, and the quiet rooms where she wrote her wonderful, wonderful books.

But, for all that skipping and forgetting, there stood out a vivid and ineffaceable idea of Emily; Emily who was tall and strong and unconquerable; Emily who loved animals, and loved the moors; Emily and Keeper, that marvellous dog; Emily kneading bread with her book propped before her; Emily who was Ellis Bell, listening contemptuously to the reviews of _Wuthering Heights_; Emily stitching at the long seam with dying fingers; and Emily dead, carried down the long, flagged path, with Keeper following in the mourners' train.

And, all through, an invisible, intangible presence, something mysterious, but omnipotently alive; something that excited these three sisters; something that atoned, that not only consoled for suffering and solitude and bereavement, but that drew its strength from these things; something that moved in this book like the soul of it; something that they called "genius".

Now that, as truly as I can set it down, is the impression conveyed to a child's mind by Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Brontë_. And making some deductions for a child's morbid attraction to tombstones, and a child's natural interest in children, it seems to me even now that this innocent impression is the true one. It eliminates the inessential and preserves the proportions; above all, it preserves the figure of Emily Brontë, solitary and unique.

Anyhow, I have never been able to get away from it.

_September_ 1911.

APPENDIX I

THE KEY TO THE BRONTË WORKS

More than once Mr. Malham-Dembleby has approached us with his mysterious "Key". There was his "Key to _Jane Eyre_", published in the _Saturday Review_ in 1902; there was his "Lifting of the Brontë Veil", published in the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1907; and there was the correspondence that followed. Now he has gathered all his evidence together into one formidable book, and we are faced with what he calls his "miraculous and sensational" discovery that it was Charlotte and not Emily Brontë who wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that in _Wuthering Heights_ she immortalized the great tragic passion of her life, inspired by M. Héger, who, if you please, is Heathcliff.

This is Mr. Malham-Dembleby's most important contribution to the subject. M. Héger, Mr. Malham-Dembleby declares, was Heathcliff before he was M. Pelet, or Rochester, or M. Paul. And as it was Charlotte and not Emily who experienced passion, Charlotte alone was able to immortalize it.

So much Mr. Malham-Dembleby assumes in the interests of psychology. But it is not from crude psychological arguments that he forges his tremendous Key. It is from the internal evidence of the works, supported by much "sensational" matter from the outside.

By way of internal evidence then, we have first the sensational discovery of a work, _Gleanings in Craven, or The Tourists' Guide_, by "one Frederic Montagu", published at Skipton-in-Craven in 1838, which work the author of _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_ must have read and drawn upon for many things, names (including her own pseudonym of Currer Bell), descriptions of scenery, local legends, as of that fairy Jannet, Queen of the Malhamdale Elves, who haunted the sources of the Aire and suggested Rochester's Queen of Elves, his fairy, Janet Eyre. Parallel passages are given showing a certain correspondence between Montagu's traveller's tale and the opening scene of _Wuthering Heights_. Montagu goes on horseback to a solitary house, like Lockwood, and, like Lockwood, is shown to bed, dreams, and is awakened by a white-faced apparition (his hostess, not his host), who holds a lighted candle, like Heathcliff, and whose features, like Heathcliff's, are convulsed with diabolical rage, and so on. Mr. Malham-Dembleby, in a third parallel column, uses the same phrases to describe Jane Eyre's arrival at Rochester's house, her dreams, and the appearance of Rochester's mad wife at her bedside; his contention being that the two scenes are written by the same hand.

All this is very curious and interesting; so far, however, Mr. Malham-Dembleby's sensational evidence does no more for us than suggest that Charlotte and Emily may very likely have read Montagu's book.

But the plot thickens. Mr. Malham-Dembleby first prints parallel passages from Montagu's book and _Wuthering Heights_ and _Jane Eyre_, then, extensively, scene after scene from _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering Heights_.

Some of these coincidences seem on the first blush of it remarkable, for instance, the child-phantom which appears both to Jane Eyre and to Nelly Dean in _Wuthering Heights_; or the rainy day and the fireside scene, which occur in the third chapter of _Wuthering Heights_ and the opening chapter of _Jane Eyre_. Others again, such as the parallel between the return of Heathcliff to Catherine and that of Jane to Rochester, will not bear examination for a moment. Of this and most of Mr. Malham-Dembleby's parallels it may be said that they only maintain their startling character by the process of tearing words from their sentences, sentences from their contexts, contexts from their scenes, and scenes from the living body of each book. Apparently to Mr. Malham-Dembleby, a book, at any rate a Brontë book, is not a living body; each is a box of German bricks, and he takes all the boxes and tumbles them out on the floor together and rearranges them so as to show that, after all, there was only one box of bricks in the family, and that was Charlotte's. Much of his argument and the force of his parallel passages depends on the identification of the characters in the Brontë works, not only with their assumed originals, but with each other. For Mr. Malham-Dembleby's purposes poor M. Héger, a model already remorselessly overworked by Charlotte, has to sit, not only for M. Pelet, for Rochester and Yorke Hunsden, for Robert and for Louis Moore, but for Heathcliff, and, if you would believe it, for Hareton Earnshaw; because (parallel passage!) the younger Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw were teacher and pupil, and so (when she taught him English) were Charlotte and M. Héger.

Mr. Malham-Dembleby's work of identification is made easier for him by his subsidiary discovery of Charlotte's two methods, Method I, interchange of the sex; Method II, alteration of the age of her characters. With this licence almost any character may be any other. Thus Hareton Earnshaw looking at Catherine is Jane Eyre looking at Mr. Rochester. When he touches her Nelly Dean says, "He might have stuck a knife into her, she started in such a taking"; and Rochester says to Jane, "You stick a sly penknife under my ear" (parallel passage!). Lockwood at Wuthering Heights is Jane Eyre at Thornton Hall; Heathcliff appearing at Lockwood's bedside, besides being M. Héger and Rochester, is Rochester's mad wife. Heathcliff returning to Catherine is Jane returning to Rochester, and so on. But however varied, however apparently discriminated the characters, M. Héger is in all the men, and Charlotte is in all the women, in the two Catherines, in Jane Eyre and Frances Henri; in Caroline Helstone, in Pauline Bassompierre, and Lucy Snowe.

Now there is a certain plausibility in this. With all their vividness and individuality Charlotte Brontë's characters have a way of shading off into each other. Jane has much in common with Frances and with Lucy, and Lucy with Pauline. Her men incline rather to one type, that of the masterful, arbitrary, instructive male; that is the type she likes best to draw. Yorke Hunsden in _The Professor_ splits up into Rochester and Robert Moore and Mr. Yorke; and there is a certain amount of Paul Emanuel in all of them. But life gives us our types very much that way, and there is a bit of somebody else in everybody. It is easy to suggest identity by exaggerating small points of resemblance and suppressing large and essential differences (which is what Mr. Malham-Dembleby does all the time). But take each whole living man and woman as they have been created for us, I don't care if Catherine Earnshaw and Jane Eyre _did_ each have a fit of passion in a locked room, and if a servant waited upon each with gruel; there is no earthly likeness between the soul of Catherine and the soul of Jane. I don't care if there was "hell-light" in Rochester's eyes and Heathcliff's too, if they both swore by the "Deuce", and had both swarthy complexions like Paul Emanuel; for there is a whole universe between Heathcliff and Rochester, between Rochester and M. Paul. Beside Heathcliff, that Titan raging on a mountain-top, M. Paul is merely a little man gesticulating on an _estrade_.

So much for the identifications. Mr. Malham-Dembleby has been tempted to force them thus, because they support his theory of M. Héger and of the great tragic passion, as his theory, by a vicious circle, supports his identifications. His procedure is to quote all the emotional passages he can lay his hands on, from the _Poems_, from _Wuthering Heights_, from _Jane Eyre_, from _Villette_ and _The Professor_, "... all her life's hope was torn by the roots out of her own riven and outraged heart..." (_Villette_) "... faith was blighted, confidence destroyed..." (_Jane Eyre_) ... "Mr. Rochester" (M. Héger, we are informed in confidential brackets) was not "what she had thought him". Assuring us that Charlotte was here describing her own emotions, he builds his argument. "Evidence" (the evidence of these passages) "shows it was in her dark season when Charlotte Brontë wrote _Wuthering Heights_, and that she portrayed M. Héger therein with all the vindictiveness of a woman with 'a riven, outraged heart', the wounds in which yet rankled sorely." So that, key in hand, for "that ghoul Heathcliff!" we must read "that ghoul Héger". We must believe that _Wuthering Heights_ was written in pure vindictiveness, and that Charlotte Brontë repudiated its authorship for three reasons: because it contained "too humiliating a story" of her "heart-thrall"; because of her subsequent remorse (proof, the modified animus of her portrait of M. Héger as Rochester and as M. Paul), and for certain sound business considerations. So much for internal evidence.

Not that Mr. Malham-Dembleby relies on it altogether. He draws largely upon legend and conjecture, and on more "sensational discoveries" of his own. He certainly succeeds in proving that legend and conjecture in Brussels began at a very early date. Naturally enough it fairly flared after the publication of _Jane Eyre_. So far there is nothing new in his discoveries. But he does provide a thrill when he unearths Eugène Sue's extinct novel of _Miss Mary, ou l'Institutrice_, and gives us parallel passages from that. For in _Miss Mary_, published in 1850-51[A] we have, not only character for character and scene for scene, "lifted" bodily from _Jane Eyre_, but the situation in _The Professor_ and _Villette_ is largely anticipated. We are told that Eugène Sue was in Brussels in 1844, the year in which Charlotte left the Pensionnat. This is interesting. But what does it prove? Not, I think, what Mr. Malham-Dembleby maintains--that M. Héger made indiscreet revelations to Eugène Sue, but that Eugène Sue was an unscrupulous plagiarist who took his own where he found it, either in the pages of _Jane Eyre_ or in the tittle-tattle of a Brussels salon. However indiscreet M. Héger may have been, he was a man of proved gravity and honour. He would, at any rate, have drawn the line at frivolous treachery. Nobody, however, can answer for what Madame Héger and her friends may not have said. Which disposes of Eugène Sue.

[Footnote A: Serially in the _London Journal_ in 1850; in volume form in Paris, 1851. It is possible, but not likely, that Eugène Sue may have seen the manuscript of _The Professor_ when it was "going the round".]

Then there is that other "sensational discovery" of the Héger portrait, that little drawing (now in the National Portrait Gallery) of Charlotte Brontë in curls, wearing a green gown, and reading _Shirley_. It is signed Paul Héger, 1850, the year of _Shirley's_ publication, and the year in which Charlotte sat to Richmond for her portrait. There are two inscriptions on the back: "The Wearin' of the Green; First since Emily's death"; and below: "This drawing is by P. Héger, done from life in 1850." The handwriting gives no clue.

Mr. Malham-Dembleby attaches immense importance to this green gown, which he "identifies" with the pink one worn by Lucy in _Villette_. He says that Lady Ritchie told him that Charlotte wore a green gown at the dinner-party Thackeray gave for her in June, 1850; and when the green gown turns out after all to be a white one with a green pattern on it, it is all one to Mr. Malham-Dembleby. So much for the green gown. Still, gown or no gown, the portrait _may_ be genuine. Mr. Malham-Dembleby says that it is drawn on the same paper as that used in Mr. George Smith's house, where Charlotte was staying in June 1850, and he argues that Charlotte and M. Héger met in London that year, and that he then drew this portrait of her from the life. True, the portrait is a very creditable performance for an amateur; true, M. Héger's children maintained that their father did not draw, and there is no earthly evidence that he did; true, we have nothing but one person's report of another person's (a collector's) statement that he had obtained the portrait from the Héger family, a statement at variance with the evidence of the Héger family itself. But granted that the children of M. Héger were mistaken as to their father's gift, and that he did draw this portrait of Charlotte Brontë from Charlotte herself in London in 1850, I cannot see that it matters a straw or helps us to the assumption of the great tragic passion which is the main support of Mr. Malham-Dembleby's amazing fabrication.

APPENDIX II

Leyland's theory is that Branwell Brontë wrote the first seventeen chapters of _Wuthering Heights_. It has very little beyond Leyland's passionate conviction to support it. There is a passage in a letter of Branwell's to Leyland, the sculptor, written in 1845, where he says he is writing a three-volume novel of which the first volume is completed. He compares it with "Hamlet" and with "Lear". There is also Branwell's alleged statement to Mr. Grundy. And there is an obscure legend of manuscripts produced from Branwell's hat, before the eyes of Mr. Grundy, in an inn-parlour. Leyland argues freely from the antecedent probability suggested by Branwell's letters and his verse, which he published by way of vindication. He could hardly have done Branwell a worse service. Branwell's letters give us a vivid idea of the sort of manuscripts that would be produced, in inn-parlours, from his hat. As for his verse--that formless, fluent gush of sentimentalism--it might have passed as an error of his youth, but for poor Leyland's comments on its majesty and beauty. There are corpses in it and tombstones, and girls dying of tuberculosis, obscured beyond recognition in a mush of verbiage. There is not a live line in it. One sonnet only, out of Branwell's many sonnets, is fitted to survive. It has a certain melancholy, sentimental grace. But it is not a good sonnet, and it shows Branwell at his best. At his worst he sinks far below Charlotte at her worst, and, compared with Emily or with Charlotte at her best, Branwell is nowhere. Even Anne beats him. Her sad, virginal restraint gives a certain form and value to her colourless and slender gift.

There is a psychology of such things, as there is a psychology of works of genius. Emily Brontë's work, with all its faults of construction, shows one and indivisible, fused in one fire from first to last. One cannot take the first seventeen chapters of _Wuthering Heights_ and separate them from the rest. There is no faltering anywhere and no break in the power and the passion of this stupendous tale. And where passion is, sentimentalism is not. And there is not anywhere in _Wuthering Heights_ a trace of that corruption which for the life of him Branwell could not have kept out of the manuscripts he produced from his hat.

INDEX

Absolute, the, 16, 176. _Agnes Grey_, 39, 40, 49. Augustine, St., 185.

Ballynaskeagh, 20.
Balzac, 54, 120, 121, 163.
Bassompierre, Pauline de, in
Villette, 153-157.
Being, 184.
-- Parmenides on, 185.
Birrell, Mr., 14, 20, 31, 41, 65.
Blake, William, 175, 178.
Branwell, Miss, at Haworth, 23,
24.
-- -- death of, 36.
-- Maria, marries Rev. Patrick
Brontë, 20.
-- -- illness of, 23.
-- -- death of, 23.
Brontë--
Anne, 49-57.
-- 27, 28.
-- at Thornton, 20.
-- at Haworth, 20, 27, 33,
39.
-- at Thorp Green, 33, 36,
38, 50.
-- in London, 40.
-- character of 49-51, 55,
56.
-- death of, 45.
-- diary of, 34, 168, 194.
-- Poems of, 54-57, 188,
246.
-- novels of, 39, 49-54.
-- and Branwell Brontë
compared, 54, 246.
Charlotte, 57-167.
Charlotte at Thornton, 20.
-- at Haworth, 15, 16, 19,
20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 31,
37, 39, 46, 47, 69, 83, 94,
103, 105, 165, 235, 236.
-- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25,
27, 236.
-- at Roe Head, 26, 27, 94,
95.
-- at Dewsbury Moor, 27,
94.
-- at Stonegappe, 28, 62-64.
-- at Rawdon, 33, 35, 67.
-- in Brussels, 15, 35-37,
81-90, 158, 241, 246.
-- in London, 15, 40, 46,
47, 244.
-- character of, 16, 66 et
seq., 80, 82, 83-86, 167.
-- death of, 48, 49.
-- early writings of, 101-104.
-- genius of, 13, 14, 19, 20,
21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80, 91,
103, 104, 130, 131, 171,
233.
-- marriage of, 47-49.
-- novels of, 105-165.
-- Poems of, 39, 103, 164,
169, 170, 246.
-- her love of children,
64-67, 156.
-- and Emily Brontë compared,
48, 167-169, 229-231,
233.
-- Mr. Swinburne on, 14,
31, 64, 65, 66, 68.
Emily Jane, 167-234.
-- at Haworth, 19, 20-22,
25, 26, 27, 39.
-- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25.
-- at Roe Head, 27, 39.
-- at Halifax, 27.
-- in Brussels, 35, 36, 37.
-- death of, 43, 44, 139,
140, 173.
-- character of, 27, 167-173.
-- diary of, 33, 38, 194.
-- genius of, 14, 15, 16, 17,
22, 171, 172, 185-186, 187,
208, 209, 229, 233, 234, 236.
-- Poems of, 17, 39, 174-185,
231, 232.
-- mysticism of, 16, 168,
171, 173-181, 186.
-- novel of, 39.
-- paganism of, 16, 135,
136, 174, 186, 208, 214.
-- and Charlotte Brontë
compared, 48, 167-169, 229-231,
233.
-- M. Maeterlinck on, 14,
170, 213.
-- Mr. Swinburne on, 14,
174.
Maria, 20, 22.
-- at Cowan Bridge, 24, 25.
-- character of, 24, 25.
-- death of, 25.
Patrick Branwell, 15, 22, 27,
28, 29, 30, 34, 54, 55, 58,
59, 61, 199, 236.
-- at Thornton, 20.
-- at Haworth, 20, 25,
28-30, 34, 42.
-- at Bradford, 28, 29.
-- at Luddenden Foot, 34.
-- at Thorp Green, 40, 41.
-- in London, 29.
-- character of, 40-43, 50-54.
-- death of, 43.
-- authorship of _Wuthering
Heights_ ascribed to, 233, 246,
247.
Patrick Branwell and Emily
Brontë compared, 246, 247.
-- and Anne Brontë compared,
54, 233.
-- and Mrs. Robinson, 40,
41, 50-52.
-- Poems of, 28, 29, 42,
164, 233, 246.
Patrick, Rev., 20-22, 24, 25,
36, 37, 42, 43, 83.
-- at Thornton, 20.
-- at Haworth, 20.
-- in Ireland, 20, 21.
-- character of, 20, 21, 22,
24.
-- works of, 22.
_Brontës, The Fact and Fiction_, by
Angus Mackay, 81.
Brown, John, 28, 29, 30, 51.
Brussels, Charlotte Brontë in, 15,
35-37, 81-90, 158, 241, 246.
-- Emily Brontë in, 35, 36, 37.
-- influence of, 15, 81-90, 158.
Byron, 121, 206, 207.

Children, love of, 64-67, 156.
-- in Charlotte Brontë's
novels, 64, 65, 66, 156.
-- in George Eliot's novels,
64, 156.
Cowan Bridge School, 24, 25, 27,
91, 236.
Creative Impulse, the, 23, 155,
157.
Criticism of Charlotte Brontë,
15, 31-33, 64-75, 78-81, 117,
120, 122.
-- of _Jane Eyre_, 114, 117,
120-124, 128-142.
-- of _Shirley_, 65, 68, 131, 132,
137, 138, 143.
-- of _Villette_, 143-149, 153-160,
162, 163.
-- of _Emma_, 161, 162.
-- of Charlotte Brontë's
_Poems_, 164, 165.
-- of Emily Brontë's _Poems_,
174-209.
Criticism of _Wuthering Heights_,
209-234.
-- of _Agnes Grey_, 49, 50.
-- of _The Tenant of Wildfell
Hall_, 54, 55.
-- of Anne Brontë's _Poems_,
54-57, 188, 246.

Dean, Nelly, in _Wuthering
Heights_, 222, 224, 225, 229.
Destiny, 35, 36, 37, 39, 48, 103,
105, 234.
_Destiny, Wisdom and_, quoted, 170.
Dewsbury, Charlotte Brontë at,
27, 94.
Dialogue, 116, 117, 139, 140, 149,
230.
Diary, Emily Brontë's, 33, 38,
194.
-- Anne Brontë's, 34, 168,
194.
Dimnet, M., 15, 16, 51, 163.
-- -- his criticism of Charlotte
Brontë, 16.
-- -- his criticism of
_Wuthering Heights_, 17.
Dobell, Sydney, on Emily
Brontë, 232.
Dramatic instinct of Charlotte
Brontë, 163, 231, 232.
-- -- of Emily Brontë, 231,
232.
Duclaux, Madame, 14, 20, 21, 44,
50, 61, 120.
-- -- her Emily Brontë,
14, 21, 44, 50, 120, 167, 182.
-- -- on _Wuthering Heights_
211, 212.
Dunton, Mr. Theodore Watts-,
14, 15.

Earnshaw, Catherine, 169,
173, 208-229.
-- -- character of, 212-216,
227.
-- Hareton, 209-212.
-- -- character of, 215-218,
226.
Earth, the, 127, 136, 143, 173,
207, 208, 224.
-- Emily Brontë's love of,
136, 174, 175, 208, 222.
-- Genius of, 175.
-- Poem to, 207, 208.
Ecstasy, 179.
Eliot, George, 64, 143, 156, 171.
Emanuel, Paul, 105, 144-146,
148-153, 157, 242, 243.
_Emma, Fragment of_, 161, 162.
Experience, 144 et seq., 170, 172,
173, 234.
-- novel of, 106, 107, 143-146,
148, 164.
-- how far important, 144,
145, 148, 234.
-- of Charlotte Brontë, 129,
130, 172, 234.
Eyre, name whence derived, 239.

Fanshawe, Ginevra, character of, 154, 159. Farrar, Dean, 55. Fielding, 123. _Fragment of Emma_, 161, 162.

Gaskell, Mrs., 20, 21, 22, 30,
42, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 96, 101,
120, 143, 147, 167.
Gaskell's, Mrs., _Life of Charlotte
Brontë_, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68, 234-237.
Genius,
-- of Charlotte Brontë, 13, 14,
19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 35, 80,
91, 103, 104, 130, 131, 171, 233.
-- of Emily Brontë, 14, 15,
16, 17, 22, 171, 172, 185, 186,
187, 208, 209, 229, 233, 234,
236.
-- the, of Place, 19, 20, 227,
228.
-- the, of Earth, 174, 175.
-- test of, 233, 234.
"Gondal Chronicles", 38, 39,
193, 194, 232.
"Gondal Poems", 17, 193-208,
234.
Grundy, Francis, 33, 51, 60, 203,
246.

Haworth, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27,
29, 37, 42-44, 168.
-- influence of, 24, 25, 30, 47,
94, 103, 105, 165, 166, 227,
228, 235, 236.
Heathcliff, 53, 170, 197, 209-221,
222, 224, 225, 239-242.
-- character of, 209, 210, 211,
226.
-- and Zamorna, 202-207.
Héger, M. Constantin, 14, 35, 36,
81-90.
-- -- character of, 88, 89,
146, 147.
-- -- influence of, 36, 100,
103-105.
Héger's, M. Constantin, relations
with Charlotte Brontë,
14, 15, 81-90, 96, 100, 104, 105,
130, 239-247.
-- -- original of Paul
Emanuel, 105, 144-150, 239-247.
-- Madame, 14, 15, 35, 36,
85-89, 104, 148.
-- -- original of Madame
Beck, 144, 148, 149.
Helstone, Caroline, 98, 137, 139,
141, 142, 143.
-- -- and Miss Ellen
Nussey, 75, 98.
Henri, Frances, 89, 108-110.
Heredity, 211, 212.

Imagination and the real, 130,
144.

_Jane Eyre_, 21, 24, 39, 40, 64, 68,
89, 91, 101, 103, 109, 110,
112-131, 133, 143, 148, 159,
239-247.
-- -- criticisms of, 112,
116-124.
-- -- dialogue in, 113, 114,
117, 118, 119.
-- -- passion in, 113, 114,
115, 116, 117.
-- -- reality of, 112, 113,
124.
-- -- style in, 128, 129.
-- -- and _The Professor_
compared, 105, 109, 110, 112,
113, 129, 138.
-- -- and _Shirley_ compared,
131, 138, 141.
-- -- and _Villette_ compared,
105, 144, 159.
-- -- quoted, 113-115,
117-119, 125-129.
John of the Cross, St., 180, 181.

Letters of Charlotte Brontë,
46, 53, 75, 76, 165, 166.
-- -- to Miss Ellen Nussey,
46, 72, 75-78, 82-92.
-- -- from Brussels, 84-87.
-- -- to M. Héger, 90.
-- -- to Southey, 99.
-- -- to Wordsworth, 99.
Leyland, Francis A., 60, 61.
-- -- on Branwell Brontë,
81, 233, 246.
-- the sculptor, 29, 51, 246.
Lewes, George Henry, 33, 64, 68,
124.
-- -- on _Shirley_, 68.
_Life of Charlotte Brontë_, Mrs.
Gaskell's, 47, 57, 58, 67, 68,
234-237.
Linton, Catherine, 212, 221, 222,
227.
London, Charlotte Brontë in, 15,
40, 46, 47, 244.

Mackay, Mr. Angus, 81. Maeterlinck, M., on Emily Brontë, 14, 170, 213. Malham-Dembleby, Mr. J., 87, 232, 239-245. Marriage of Charlotte Brontë, 47-49. -- Charlotte Brontë on, 69-80, 141, 142. Meredith, George, 133, 224. Moore, Louis, 134, 141, 143. -- Robert, 137, 140. Motherhood, 65-68. Mysticism, 16, 168, 169, 173-181, 186.

Nature in _Shirley_, 136, 137.
-- in _Wuthering Heights_, 173.
-- in Emily Brontë's Poems,
207, 208.
Nicholls, Rev. Arthur Bell,
47-49, 82.
Nicoll, Sir William Robertson,
14, 182, 189, 190.
_Note on Charlotte Brontë_, by
Algernon Charles Swinburne,
14, 64.
Novel, the, 163.
Novels of Charlotte Brontë,
105-165.
-- of Anne Brontë, 39, 49-54.
-- of Emily Brontë, 39, 209-234.
Nussey, Miss Ellen, 26, 46, 58,
72, 73, 75-78, 84, 168, 169.
-- -- Charlotte Brontë's
friendship with, 91-99.
-- -- Charlotte Brontë's
letters to, 31, 46, 72, 75-78,
86, 91-99.
-- -- Charlotte Brontë's
advice to, 75-78, 84.
-- -- influence of, 91-93.
-- Rev. Henry, 79, 80.
-- -- original of St. John
Rivers, 91, 141, 145.