The Key to the Bronte Works Part 28

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Clement Shorter in _Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters_, p. 236; 1905.

[2] Clara H. Whitmore, A.M., in _Woman's Work in English Fiction_; 1910.

[3] _The Sat.u.r.day Review_, September 6, 1902. A correspondence followed.

[4] _The Fortnightly Review_, March 1907.

[5] _The Brontes in Ireland_, by Dr. William Wright, 1893, and _The Bronte Homeland_, by J. Ramsden, 1897, though they conflict, deal interestingly with Patrick Brunty's, or Bronte's, relations.

"Patrick ... after being a linen weaver secured the post of teacher in the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then that of teacher at Drumballyroney." Eventually he got a scholars.h.i.+p and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took Holy Orders. His father was a Hugh Brunty, who married a Roman Catholic, Alice McClory, or M'Clory. She is said to have become a Protestant, as was her husband. Of this marriage there were ten children, the eldest being Charlotte Bronte's father, who early took to "larnin'," to quote the Irish hearsay. _The Brontes in Ireland_ has been challenged as presenting many statements impossible of verification. The a.s.sertion that an Irish Brunty foundling story suggested the foundling of _Wuthering Heights_ raised a harsh and voluminous controversy. The Rev. Angus Mackay, in his little brochure _The Brontes--Fact and Fiction_, 1897, controverted Dr.

Wright, as did others elsewhere. The matter is summed up succinctly by Mr. Horsfall Turner, the Yorks.h.i.+re genealogist, in _The Rev. Patrick Bronte's Collected Works_, 1898, where, speaking of the Irish Brontes and the foundling story, he says:--"The only one who could transmit this story was Hugh Brunty, and not one of his descendants ever heard of it before Dr. Wright's book was issued, not even the vaguest tradition."

[6] The "wild, weird writings" of her childhood, which awed homely Mrs.

Gaskell, were merely badly, or I may say, childishly, a.s.similated fragments from English adaptations found in Dryden, Rowe, etc., of Lucan (Pharsalia, lib. 1, 73), and of other ancient writers.

[7] Her correspondence is given in Sir Wemyss Reid's _Monograph on Charlotte Bronte_, in Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, Haworth Edition, and in Mr. Clement Shorter's _The Brontes: Life and Letters_, 1908.

[8] _Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle_, by Clement Shorter.

[9] Charlotte Bronte, upon the other hand, was a most fluent writer of prose. She sent Wordsworth a story in 1840, and spoke of her facility in writing novels. (Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_, pages 189-190, Haworth Edition.) It is said Emily corrected misprints, etc., in her printed volume of _Wuthering Heights_; but whether or not she did this at Charlotte Bronte's instigation is of little interest and no importance in view of the literal evidence in _The Key to the Bronte Works_. It may be Emily turned Charlotte's amanuensis; and it would not be difficult to show Anne Bronte also had been Charlotte's understudy.

See my remarks on _Wildfell Hall_ in Appendix.

[10] See my remarks, page 39.

[11] When King Charles II. was crowned, Montagu carried the sceptre. A historian states that the Admiral--who, I may say, had been a great friend of Richard Cromwell--perished in the sea-fight with De Ruyter, because he would not leave his s.h.i.+p by a piece of obstinate courage, provoked by a reflection that he took care more of himself than of the king's honour.

[12] For Basil Montagu see _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[13] On the other side of the same page Montagu concluded the narration of his "A Night's Repose," with which I deal later.

[14] Clement Shorter's _Charlotte Bronte and Her Sisters_, p. 164.

[15] See my observations on the name of Lucy Snowe.

[16] The name of "Helen Burns," that saintly sister of Charlotte Bronte, may have been suggested by the St. Helen's Well which Montagu states was near Miss Currer's home, Eshton Hall.

[17] _The Bronte Country_, by Dr. Erskine Stuart.

[18] A recognizable idiosyncrasy of Charlotte Bronte's genius is the vivid minuteness with which she paints and records apparently unimportant details and happenings connected with her early childhood.

(See footnote on page 41.)

[19] See footnote page 47.

[20] _Emily Bronte_, Miss Mary Robinson; 1883.

[21] Angus Mackay, in _The Brontes: Fact and Fiction_ (1897), identifies Miss Bronte with Caroline Helstone. Charlotte Bronte's mother was a native of Penzance, near Helston.

[22] Catherine's diary was written on the margin of a printed sermon by the Rev. Jabes Branderham. Lockwood's "dream" in the connection was evidently a travesty on a sermon of the famous Rev. Jabes Bunting, a Wesleyan Methodist, and the zealousness of his hearers, concerning which preacher stories were possibly gathered by Charlotte Bronte from old Tabitha, who doubtless did occasional service as the old dialect-speaking Joseph. The Rev. Jabes Bunting was on the Halifax Circuit in the eighteen-twenties, and his sermons were printed in pamphlet form. Note the extract I have given from _Villette_ on Lucy Snowe's having read as a child certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts.

[23] "Lee" may have been suggested by the name of the heroine of "Puir Mary Lee," a Scottish ballad, which I find influenced Charlotte Bronte greatly when she began to write _Wuthering Heights_.

[24] Called Nelly or Ellen Dean, perhaps because of Charlotte Bronte's affection for her friend Nelly or Ellen Nussey.

[25] Of course Tabitha Aykroyd was twenty years younger when Charlotte was a child. Thus the early references to the more active Ellen Dean and Bessie in the main imply Tabby in the eighteen-twenties; those to her as the sedate and glum Mrs. Dean and Hannah, as Tabby in the eighteen-forties. We see Tabby quite in the caricature of Joseph in Charlotte's half-humorous references to her in the diary-like descriptions of the Bronte kitchen fireside life of her childhood in 1829, etc.--of which the rainy day incident in the childhood of little Catherine and Jane is so reminiscent--quoted by Mrs. Gaskell in the Bronte _Life_:--

"June the 21st, 1829.

"One night, about the time when the cold sleet of November [is]

succeeded by the snowstorms and the high, piercing night winds of winter, we were all sitting round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she came off victorious, no candle having been produced. A long pause succeeded, which was at last broken by Branwell saying, in a lazy manner, 'I don't know what to do.' This was echoed by Emily and Anne.

"Tabby: 'Wha ya may go t' bed.'

"Charlotte: 'Why are you so glum to-night, Tabby?'"

As time progressed Charlotte Bronte viewed more sentimentally the a.s.sociations of her early childhood. Whenever Tabby was "Joseph" of _Wuthering Heights_ Charlotte humorously caricatured her.

[26] See footnote on page 37.

[27] A remarkably recognizable idiosyncrasy of this child-phantom of Charlotte Bronte's brain is the part the little hands of the child play.

In Charlotte Bronte's child-phantom of _Wuthering Heights_, Chapter III., the hand of the child takes a princ.i.p.al part, as in her above two versions.

[28] See note on "the hand" of Charlotte Bronte's child-phantom, page 53.

[29] See the chapters on "The Recoil" for the origin of the t.i.tle of _Wuthering Heights_, and of the name Lucy Snowe; also my remarks on Charlotte Bronte's poem "Apostasy."

[30] "The breeze was sweet with scent of heath and rush, ... the hills shut us quite in; for the glen towards its head wound to their very core."--_Jane Eyre_, Chapter x.x.xIV.